Social Groups Vs. Solitude

It is a pervasively held belief in our society that it is not good for people to be alone. It seems that, whenever someone commits a terrible crime anywhere, the press goes to great pains to emphasize that the culprit was a loner: being a solitary, reclusive person hence is associated with being a potential menace to society. After all, why would any sane person prefer being alone to being surrounded by people?

I will admit up front that I have a reclusive nature and generally do not enjoy the company of others (close family members excepted). There are different reasons for this, but I will examine one for this article. And that is this: regardless how big the group is or to what purpose it is meant to serve, once a group of people form with a specific identity and authority structure, its members are always never quite “good enough” for that group. They then are manipulated by those aggressive people who seek and obtain leadership positions not only into giving, both in terms of material possessions and time, to the group’s aims, but also come to bear a psychological debt to the group. This leads to a situation whereby they cannot dare to honestly and assertively express their own independently arrived at thoughts within the group without fear of rejection or being ostracized.

If people want to associate with me, let them do so of their own free will and not because we’re both members of the same “group”. I feel a very strong aversion to loud and aggressive people, many of whom I believe are cowards who hide under the cover of a group’s label in order to lord themselves over the “sheep” within that organization. Many people, out of the compulsion to conform and not “rock the boat”, will put up with an incredible amount of manipulation and abuse in a group setting that they would never have done as individuals.

Although I admit that I prefer solitude to social mingling, I have nothing at all against another individual sitting with me and discussing our thoughts on different topics in a friendly and mutually-respectful manner. I believe that this is the conduit to true friendships, not joining up with a group in which most everyone is hiding their true feelings from each other (much as poker players shield their hands from each other’s eyes). No, although I still allow myself to occasionally get sucked into being in some groups, I’d much rather just sit down with my personal projects, or maybe just read a good book! And if anyone around wants to talk with me as a true friend, then that’s A-O-K with me, too!

Favorite Songs of 1997

For most of my favorites from 1997, I listened to an alternative rock station, 97.7-WRRX “97X” and a mainstream rock station, 103.7-WRUF “Rock 104”. I was also, at this time, heavily into listening to the first four studio albums by The Who, recorded from 1966-1968. My favorite album was their third, The Who Sell Out, with the best tracks being I Can’t Reach You, Relax, Sunrise, and Rael. Also, The Good’s Gone, from their first album The Who Sing My Generation, is my all-time #20 favorite song. I also bought Collective Soul’s album Disciplined Breakdown, and regard it as their best work. Here’s my list for 1997:

Precious Declaration (Collective Soul)
Maybe (Collective Soul)
Giving (Collective Soul)
Naked Eye (Luscious Jackson)
Casual Affair (Tonic)
Criminal (Fiona Apple)
Deadweight (Beck)
Everything To Everyone (Everclear)
Fly (Sugar Ray)
Four-Leaf Clover (Alba Moore)
The Girl I Love (Led Zeppelin)
How Bizarre (OMC)
Lakini’s Juice (Live)
The Big Time (Neil Young)
Lovefool (Cardigans)
The New Pollution (Beck)
Push (Matchbox 20)
A Change Would Do You Good (Sheryl Crow)
Semi-Charmed Life (Third Eye Blind)
The World Tonight (Paul McCartney)
Sunny Came Home (Shawn Colvin)
Everlong (Foo Fighters)
Sweet Surrender (Sarah McLachlan)
Taste Of India (Aerosmith)
Tubthumping (Chumbawamba)
Volcano Girls (Veruca Salt)
Where Have All The Cowboys Gone (Paula Cole)
You Were Meant For Me (Jewel)
Your Woman (White Town)
Bittersweet Symphony (Verve)
Brick (Ben Folds 5)
The Good’s Gone (The Who) [from 1966]
I Can’t Reach You (The Who) [from 1967]
Relax (The Who) [from 1967]
Sunrise (The Who) [from 1967]
Rael (The Who) [from 1967]

Precious Declaration, at the beginning of 1997, was my favorite. But as the year wore on, I became captivated by Luscious Jackson’s beautiful harmonizing in their catchy tune Naked Eye (which was my top favorite for 1997). The Foo Fighters put out an emotionally gut-wrenching tune in Everlong. Paul McCartney came out with his best tune in decades (and possibly ever as a solo artist) in The World Tonight. Sheryl Crow’s A Change Would Do You Good was a relentless, funny song containing some great lines. Sunny Came Home was a beautifully sung tune by Shawn Colvin (why haven’t I heard anything else by her?). My all-time favorite Beck song came out this year in Deadweight. And the tearjerker of the year award goes to old-time rocker Neil Young with his slow, sweet, and long ballad The Big Time.

Bible Observations: Genesis 6-8

These chapters concern the story of Noah and the Flood. There are so many questions I have with these passages that I wonder how anyone could reasonably read and believe their literal veracity, word-for-word. Here they are:

--Genesis 6:1-3 talks about the sons of God marrying the daughters of man. To this (mysterious in its own right) passage, God responds by limiting the life span of people to 120 years max! So, what did I miss here?

--Right after that, in Genesis 6:4, the Nephilim (whoever they were) were presented and described as being “the heroes of old, men of renown”. But what puzzles me is that the passage says that they “were on the earth in those days—and also afterward”. Reading ahead that a flood is on the verge of wiping out all of humankind (except for Noah and his immediate family), how then could the Nephilim be around afterward?

--When God gave Noah instructions on how many animals to take into the ark (Genesis 6:19-7:3), He first told him to take in two of every animal, and then later told him to take in seven of each type of clean animal and seven of each type of bird.

--Given the enormous number of species of birds, mammals, and reptiles (putting aside arguments for arthropods, amphibians, and other groups) and how utterly impossible it would have been to bring them out of their specialized habitats across the planet and then cram them into the ark while sustaining them for 150 days, how can anyone in his or her good mind, with a straight face, wave this book around in the air and claim that all of it is literal truth?

--In Genesis 7:11, it was revealed that God accomplished His feat of thoroughly flooding out the Earth by opening the “floodgates” of heaven and bursting open the springs of Earth. Doesn’t this imply that the writer of this passage believed that the Earth’s interior was chiefly water and that precipitation came from heaven after “gates” were open to let it through? And if this is only figurative language, then how can a reader reasonably pick and choose what seems appropriate for literal or figurative interpretation? And wouldn’t that contradict fundamentalist literalism?

--At the end of Genesis 8, God reveals that He will never again “curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.” And yet elsewhere in the Bible, drought and famine is revealed as a judgment against people who have strayed out of God’s favor.

The Flood, taken as a story of faith and morality instead of literal truth, brings out some important points for me. For one, being humble and reverent in one’s relationship with God will help to endure and survive through the various storms and calamities that inevitably befall everyone throughout their lives. God is not only concerned with the prospering of humans, but also reveres the survival of every species of animal. So, it’s important that we conserve our environment and protect endangered species. The importance of being in a family that sticks together through trials is also revealed here. And, of course, one that has stuck with me since I first heard this story is that sometimes doing the “right thing” can be a very lonely exercise, often leading to isolation, ridicule, and even becoming ostracized within one’s society.

Next: Genesis 9-11

Stalin and Bukharin

During the early years of the Soviet Union, the supreme leader was Vladimir Lenin. Surrounding him were others, the most notable being Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and Josef Stalin. After Lenin suffered a debilitating stroke and subsequently died, a power struggle ensued for control of the Communist Party and of the country as a whole. Stalin, by dint of his position as General Secretary, was able to recruit many new faces to the Party, with loyalty to him being a qualifying factor for acceptance. Also, he had bugs planted throughout the Kremlin in order to keep up with the actions of his rivals. The main conflict during this period was between Stalin, then allied with Bukharin, and Trotsky. Trotsky was pushed out of his position and ultimately exiled (to be assassinated in Mexico in 1940). During this period, the Stalin-Bukharin alliance emphasized slow, steady growth and a liberalization of economic policy which allowed for land ownership and market forces. Once Trotsky was defeated and out of the country, Stalin made a leftward turn, claiming that farmers were withholding their grain in order to enjoy higher prices. He began a brutal austerity program whereby raids on farms, in search of hidden grain hordes, were combined with the push for collectivization and forced grain requisitioning through severe quotas. The culminating effect of these actions was a period of mass famine, particularly in Ukraine. Bukharin, who had maintained a personal friendship with Stalin into 1928, was horrified at his colleague's shift. There ensued, within the Party at the highest levels, a political struggle between supporters of Bukharin and those of Stalin. At first, it appeared that Bukharin had a slightly upper hand in the contest. Then, at a crucial Party meeting in the summer of 1928, Stalin reportedly took Bukharin aside and told him, “You and I are the Himalayas. The rest are nobodies. Let’s come to an understanding.” Bukharin reacted to this gesture, not by embracing it and trying to reach an understanding, but rather by angrily storming back to his other colleagues and telling them what Stalin had said. From then on, the friendship that had existed between the two men went cold, and Stalin went all out and successfully outmaneuvered Bukharin, forcing him out of power. Later, in 1938, Bukharin would be one of the victims of Stalin’s Party purges of 1936-38 and was executed on a trumped-up charge.

When Stalin made his proposition to his old friend, Bukharin could have gone with it and stayed on in a more supportive role. He could have been on the inside when the tough actions were carried out in the ensuing months and years. And he could have carefully ameliorated the devastating effects as an insider, while as an outsider he could only shake his head in dismay. I wonder how the world would have turned out had he kept his cool with Stalin and worked out a deal. It’s a fact that Stalin, following the power struggle against Bukharin, became increasingly paranoid and suspected and imprisoned (if they were lucky, for many were shot) anyone he remotely suspected of disloyalty in his vast Gulag network of prisons. It was one of those moments when one has to ask, what if……

Monday Newsbreak: 11/12

--This past weekend was Veteran's Day Weekend. Those brave, honorable people who have given their time, and sometimes, their lives to serve this country in its defense deserve the gratitude and admiration of all of us.

--Pakistani President General Musharraf seems to be making radical decisions concerning his country's future, alternating suppressing demonstrations and putting his chief political opponent under house arrest with making public proclamations about holding parliamentary elections in the near future. The problem is that he claims to be reelected as Paksistan's president, although that recent election was boycotted by his main rival, Benazir Bhutto. President Bush rather flippantly threw out a comment the other day that Musharraf needed to take off his (general's) uniform if he was going to serve as the country's president. To me, all that does is confirm to the regime's more militant opponents their accusations that Musharraf is truly a puppet of the U.S., his recent actions to the contrary notwithstanding.

--Apparently, Hilliary Clinton's campaign has been guilty of planting her own people in the audience for question-and-answer sessions that the candidate attends. To which I say, of course they should stop it. But with this campaign being so ridiculously long, what's the point of all the other stuff (including those TV debates) as well? Let the voting commence and stop fiddling around. And while they're at it, they just might consider ending this unfair propping up of the states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in terms of their relative importance in the nominating process. And they're not even going to count my own vote for delegate selection in Florida when our primary takes place? What a sham of democracy!

--The furor over Turkey's objection to the U.S. House of Representative's resolution on the 1915 Armenian Holocaust has abated, with normally pro-human rights/pro-Christian conservatives viciously criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for pushing the resolution. The Armenians were a predominantly Christian nationality peacefully coexisting for centuries within the officially Muslim Ottoman Empire. When World War I broke out in 1914, the Ottoman leaders feared that they would soon be forced to fight Russia for control of the valuable Bosporus passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean that Russia so desperately wanted to acquire. The Eastern Orthodox capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) was also threatened at this time. There were Armenian groups in sympathy, if not outright alliance with the Russians. The Ottomans, besides taking the side of its longtime friend and benefactor Germany, sought to eliminate the presence of the Armenians within its borders by a mass forced exile march. That there was a holocaust cannot be reasonably denied. At the close of World War II, the Ottoman Empire disintegrated and was replaced by a new, secular Turkish state interested in joining the Western nations. Ironically, it is now the Kurds, many of whom were involved in the atrocities committed in 1915, who are now a threat to Turkey. As far as the House resolution is concerned, I have two opposing views: on the one hand, it's not for other countries to dictate what OUR OWN representatives can pass or not. On the other hand, I have to ask myself what the whole point and timing rationale was behind this resolution. Yes, what happened to the Armenians in 1915 was horrendous. But, with Turkey itself trying to withstand Islamic fundamentalist pressure within its own borders and America being dependent on its Turkish ally for its cooperation in our Middle East struggles, what was Nancy Pelosi thinking?

--It looks as if the University of Florida Gators football team is back on a winning track, handily winning their last two games over Vanderbilt and South Carolina. But in order for them to be able to play for the Southeastern Conference championship, Georgia must lose to Kentucky and Tennessee must lose either to Kentucky or Vanderbilt. That's improbable, but not outside the realm of possibility. And it makes me a de-facto Kentucky Wildcats fan for the next couple of weeks. Go, André Woodson, go!

Distracted Driving

One time, many, many years ago, I was working at a job and was about to get off from work. One of my co-workers was a young lady who had recently come to the U.S. and was very proud of having just purchased a car. She offered to give me, along with two other co-workers, rides home at the end of the day, doubtless to proudly show off to us her car. The problem was that, once we were on the road, we found out that she had an altogether different conception of the act of driving than the rest of us! Not only did she repeatedly and recklessly switch lanes, but she actually once went into the opposing lane to pass cars that were backed up in her own. I kept waiting for the big crash that (very) fortunately never came. This was my first true thrill ride experience. Another thing that this well-meaning driver did was endlessly fiddle around with the radio, completely taking her attention off the road to do so.

Back then (in 1980), this would have been called "reckless driving", but within the past few years, I've noticed that people seem to be driving around more and more like this. Not only do drivers manifest their immense impatience on the road with constant lane-switching, but they, taken as a whole, seem to be much more distracted with things besides actually looking where they're going. Cell phones, CDs, MP3s, radio, food, drink, passengers, even DVDs and reading are becoming increasingly pervasive distractions to driving. While driving, I'm continuously running across situations where I know that, if I had not been fully concentrating on where I was going, then I would have had an accident. Driving distracted presumes that others will behave appropriately. But if a pedestrian or bicyclist suddenly enters the field of traffic in front or you, then you'd better see it instantly and react instinctively. Personally, seeing how bad things have gotten, I'm not all that enthusiastic about resuming my old bicycling hobby. I've seen too many distracted drivers in front of me weaving off and on the road. To them, the bike path running parallel to the street is just some extra space for them to be able to drive through so that they can pay more attention to their "toys".

Chuck Schumer For President

Since 2001, I've grown quite fond of viewing United States Senate proceedings on C-Span-2, as well as some of their committee hearings from time to time. My favorite type of hearing is the confirmation hearing, which is held by the Judiciary Committee. This committee has on it some of my favorite senators from each party. Very conservative Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions and Texas Senator John Corbin, a Bush apologist, are both effective and persuasive speakers for their positions. The ranking Republican member, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, is, to me, the most fair-minded individual in the entire Senate body. There is no way that his party would get behind him on a Presidential run, but if they did, and he was up for the task (he has recently recovered from treatment for cancer), I would have a hard time not supporting him. On the Democratic side, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin is probably their most effective speaker. I'm also impressed with Russ Feingold (from Wisconsin), who tends to make many votes on principle, even if it involves going against his party. But my favorite of all of them is New York Senator Charles Schumer, whose opinions I not only value (while not always agreeing with them), but who also comes across to me as a compelling, likable sort of guy that people naturally take to. His recent decision to support President Bush's Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey when many of his colleagues demurred is an example of how he sees a broader view of issues than others. Although Mukasey gave an inconclusive answer to the "is water-boarding torture" question (causing most Democrats to vote against him), Mr. Schumer saw the sanctity of the Justice Department as an independent part of the Executive Branch to be a bigger issue. And being able to determine the big issue in a situation is an important qualifying trait for anyone who would serve in the office of United States President. Mr. Schumer has also been a very vocal advocate of making domestic national security a top priority, usually taking much more aggressive positions on this issue than the current Republican administration.

The fact that the front runners for 2008 in each party are New York politicians even accentuates further the comparatively higher level of competence, intelligence, understanding, and compassion for ordinary people that Mr. Schumer possesses and demonstrates while doing such a good job as Senator! Too bad they can't just draft him at the convention! Now that I've praised Senator Schumer so much, I sincerely hope that he doesn't turn around and say or do something really bone-headed!

Comments on Comments

I like using Blogger for posting my blog. One of the things I like about it is the enormous flexibility it gives me in designing, posting, and editing. Blogger is also very accommodating when it comes to allowing to me to customize how I would like to receive comments. Not only can I choose between no "comments at all allowed" or "post every comment", but I can choose to moderate comments so that I can preview them to ascertain their appropriateness for posting. Anyone who sends a comment can either fully identify themselves, just give a user name, or select the self-designation "anonymous". I wish that Blogger accorded me the choice of rejecting the so-called "anonymous" submissions out of hand for three reasons. First of all, a critical comment about one of my articles that has the tag "anonymous" attached to it comes out sounding (unfairly, I am sure) like the sender is only interested in pushing his or her own viewpoint on me and not at all interested in my blog. Second, any call-in talk show host will tell you that he or she is not interested in the identity of the callers, but needs to be able to use first names (or some kind of tag) in order to establish a true on-the-air dialogue. And if I receive comments expressing criticism of some entry I've made, then, when writing responses, I'd like to be accorded the dignity of being able to address them to "somebody", even if it is only to an assumed or user name. After all, I'm not in the least bit interested in the true identity of those reading and commenting on this blog. Finally, putting a user name on one's comments is in itself an act of anonymity. So to me, there is no need anyway for anyone to click the "anonymous" bubble in the comments window. And if they expect me to take some of my time to read their comments, then they can at least take a moment to enter some kind of user name.

If any of my readers has sent one of those "anonymous" comments to me and is disappointed that I haven't posted them, I would respectfully suggest that they re-post them and use some kind of tag that I can, in turn, respectfully refer to in any response I make. I'm just not going to publish them otherwise.

One other note about comments: if you send a comment that you would like posted, please do not include your e-mail address within the body of the comment. I want to respect the privacy of those sending comments and do not want their e-mail addresses exposed on my blog.

Favorite Songs of 1998

For the first few months of 1998, I greatly enjoyed listening on the radio to truly alternative rock music off 97.7-WRRX “97X”. Unfortunately, that time was short-lived because WRRX changed ownership in the late spring, as well as frequency and call letters (to 97.3-WSKY) It started a new format in June with (conservative) talk shows and news. For the rest of the year, I listened to 105.3-WYKS “Kiss-105” and 103.7-WRUF “Rock 104” for my music. I managed to procure a copy in 1998 of the Foo Fighters’ 1997 release, The Colour and the Shape, and included several tracks from it among my favorites. Here’s the list of my most-liked songs from 1998 (as I lived it):

Ain't Going To Goa (A3)
Good Riddance (Green Day)
Building A Mystery (Sarah McLachlan)
Karma Police (Radiohead)
The Shelf In The Room (Days of the New)
I Don't Want To Wait (Paula Cole)
The Way (Fastball)
Closing Time (Semisonic)
Mummer's Dance (Loreena McKennitt)
Shimmer (Fuel)
The Real World (Matchbox 20)
Push It (Garbage)
Most High (Plant-Page)
This Kiss (Faith Hill)
Adia (Sarah McLachlan)
Ava Adore (Smashing Pumpkins)
Space Lord (Monster Magnet)
Shining In The Light (Plant-Page)
Intergalactic (Beastie Boys)
One Week (Barenaked Ladies)
Celebrity Skin (Hole)
Lullaby (Shawn Mullins)
Fly Away (Lenny Kravitz)
Ray Of Light (Madonna)
The Power Of Goodbye (Madonna)
Hey Johnnie Park (Foo Fighters)
My Poor Brain (Foo Fighters)
Enough Space (Foo Fighters)
February Stars (Foo Fighters)

Sarah McLachlan’s Building a Mystery actually was a 1997 hit that I didn’t get around to paying attention to until early in 1998. Since then, it’s gradually grown more and more to my liking until now it’s my #2 all-time favorite song! But back then, my favorite song of the year was Lenny Kravitz’s great, loud, screaming ode to escape, Fly Away. Right behind it was the spooky Karma Police by Radiohead and the Beatle-like The Way by Fastball (a band that has since disappointed me with its lack of follow-up hits). Courtney Love’s band Hole surprised me with a well-crafted hit in Celebrity Skin. Madonna enchanted with the dreamy songs Ray of Light and The Power of Goodbye. Green Day stepped out of their pattern and produced a poignant, acoustic song in Good Riddance. Garbage’s Push It was one of their best, in my opinion. And the tearjerker-of-the-year award for 1998 was split between two songs: Fuel’s debut hit Shimmer and Shawn Mullins’s sweet ode to a struggling young lady in Lullaby.

Sports Talk Radio

Back in 2005-2006, I used to listen to Air America Radio. The selection of stations was slim for me, but I could pick them up at night, either on 1690-WWAA-Atlanta or on 1530-WCKY-Cincinnati. Then, in the middle of 2006, first on WWAA and then on WCKY, Air America was taken off and replaced with other programming. For WCKY, one of those 24-hour sports-talk networks replaced it and I thought to myself, "That's all we need: another sports-talk station!"

But since then, I've grown to enjoy listening to this genre of talk radio more than those focusing on politics, the paranormal, or personal advice. In particular, there are two shows that I think are the best talk shows on the air these days. The first is Sporting News Radio's Dave Smith Show. Dave is a Los Angeles-based sports talk show host who delivers an outrageously funny monologue to go with his informed opinions. There are also a few very funny, gimmicky segments he has on his show, my favorite being the "You've just lost your man-card" segment. The Dave Smith Show actually airs in the morning but is delayed-broadcast in the mid-afternoon here in Gainesville on 850-WRUF.

My other favorite sports-talk show is on Fox Sports Network and it plays weeknights 10pm-1am on 99.5-WBXY. Called Gametime React, it stars broadcasting personalities J.T. "the Brick" and Tomm Looney (also based in the Los Angeles area). The on-air chemistry between these two is the best I've heard on radio in years. They are entertaining, very opinionated, informative, and interactive with the listening audience.

And for around-the-clock sports coverage in Gainesville, I tune in (when possible) to ESPN Radio, broadcast locally on 1230-WGGG. I say "when possible" because WGGG broadcasts with a weak signal on the AM band, and I am often unable to pick it up. Otherwise, I'd probably be listening more to ESPN (and adding one or two of its shows to my favorites as well).

Universal Studios Revisited

This past August, my family and I visited Universal Studios, along with its sister park, Islands of Adventure for a day during my vacation. And as I described in an earlier entry, the whirlwind nature of our visit (we had Express Passes to boot), coupled with the extremely hot weather, made me realize that we needed to plan this sort of thing out better in the future. And since we have fifteen-month passes to the place, the future came pretty soon. In fact, yesterday we spent a few hours down there. We only visited Universal Studios, saving Islands of Adventure for another time. We didn't purchase Express Passes, but found that, due to it being off-season in the park (Halloween just having ended), the lines weren't very long. Once we got inside, our first destination was Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, a "virtual"-type ride that gave the rider the sense that he or she was inside the action being portrayed on the screen in front. I had been on it in 2003, and it's still one of my favorite rides in the park. Next, we went over a couple of blocks and saw their Blues Brothers show. Of course, the original cast wasn't there, but the replacements were very good. The saxophonist was incredible, and the lady who played Aretha Franklin's character stole the show with her singing. Unfortunately, after the show, we found that my favorite ride in the park, Revenge of the Mummy, was shut down. So we went on to try out Men in Black, with its notorious locker system. Turns out that ride was shut down, too! On the way, I looked over and saw that their Earthquake ride was completely closed down, and my map that they provided no longer showed it as a ride. But their website still features it, even to the point of showing a short promotional video for it! Well, you might imagine that we were pretty disappointed in the ride closures, but we went on, trying out Jaws. The boat's driver did a good performance, and we enjoyed it. Then, we went on Woody's Nuthouse Coaster, a small, short roller coaster that resembles Wild Adventure's (in Valdosta, Georgia) Ant Farm coaster. After that, we tried out E.T. Adventure again and then headed on back home. We had decided that staying too long at a time in theme parks like this just ended up wearing us all out, and having set limits on the visit in advance, leaving was much easier. We'll be back, I'm sure, in a few weeks, and explore some areas we missed this time around. All in all, even with the ride closures, we had a pretty good time!

Monday Newsbreak: 11/5

--It looks as if the reprieve we've enjoyed this past summer in the way of gasoline prices has ended. Prices are currently shooting up sky-high. Who knows where it will end. I remember President Carter making a priority thirty years ago of conserving energy and developing alternative sources in order to become more energy independent. But he got very little cooperation in this. And what has been done since then? It appears that we're like the frog in the pot of water which is unaware that it is slowly being cooked as the water's temperature gradually rises.

--Storm Noel, which has gone through several transformations from hurricane to tropical storm to depression to extra-tropical storm, has caused more deaths than any other named Atlantic storm this hurricane season. Of the 142 deaths attributed so far to Noel, most are from the island of Hispaniola, which comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

--Meanwhile, lakes in northern Georgia are now beginning to go completely dry. And a political tug-of-war for the scarce water supply is intensifying between the states with the greatest need and neighboring states. In particular, Georgia governor Sonny Perdue and Florida governor Charlie Christ are sparring with each other in the press over the degree to which Florida should send its water up north.

--Reports are surfacing about how Iraqis at-large are beginning to resume normal life after such a long time of being in fear of terrorists. I want very hard to believe the rosy news, but I know that this will take some time (after other optimistically inflated bubbles concerning Iraqi developments were burst in the past).

--I feel that the Kansas Jayhawks football team is being treated unfairly in the BCS poll. All they've done is go undefeated so far and in a tough conference at that (the Big 12). I want LSU to win it all, but why should they and Oregon, each with a loss already, be ranked ahead of Kansas? Hopefully, this incongruity will straighten itself out in the coming weeks, either by Kansas being given more respect in the polls if they keep winning, or by the Jayhawks finally losing a game (which many feel that they will, either to Missouri or to Oklahoma).

--The Seattle Supersonics NBA basketball franchise is apparently on its way to moving to Oklahoma City. Its new owner was angry because he couldn't get the local citizens in the Seattle area to agree to build (and fund) a new arena for the team to play its games in. I sincerely hope that they will change their nickname if they move. It's already asinine enough with some of the other franchises NOT changing names after moving: the Los Angeles Lakers (formerly of Minneapolis, in Minnesota, "Land of 10,000 Lakes"), the Utah Jazz (formerly of New Orleans), and the silliest, the Memphis Grizzlies (formerly of Vancouver). To give the Supersonics a new, apropos (to the current state of affairs in Oklahoma) nickname while keeping the general "s" sounds, I have a suggestion: why not call them the Oklahoma City Sillysenators (say that fast ten times)?

Music Videos

I’m trying to remember the first music videos I ever saw. I don’t mean live performances of artists on shows like Ed Sullivan, Shindig, Hullabaloo, and the like. I mean a special film that is released to accompany a record. I keep going back in my mind to the traumatic (for some) event in late 1966 when the Ed Sullivan show announced that the Beatles would be appearing on it. People in general (including my family) assumed that we’d see them on stage, either on the set or from England, performing a couple of their latest releases. But what we got instead was completely unexpected! The video for Strawberry Fields Forever depicted the Beatles acting totally weird, running backwards, jumping in and out of trees, and taking turns leering at the camera. But worst of all---say it ain’t so---they all wore moustaches! It was indeed quite a traumatic event for my family and me. I believe that it was the very showing of this video on Ed Sullivan that evening which began to turn my parents away from the Beatles. The tamer Penny Lane video, with the band riding around on horses for some reason (but still with moustaches), was also shown during this episode. From then on, artists began to gradually use the medium of videos more to market their products. In 1968, on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, guitarist Mason Williams appeared on the show with a dazzling video, depicting a rapid-fire succession of still imagery, for his hit Classical Gas. For the next few years, videos were there, but mainly in the background and underused. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1970s when I began to see them dramatically increase. Shows like Saturday Night Live then often featured bands such as the Eagles or Foreigner by showing special videos made for their hits. By 1981, of course, the genre had grown to the point that a new cable television network, MTV (Music TV) began an all-video programming schedule. In the summer of 1983, Ted Turner got into the act for a while with a weekend show on his TBS Superstation devoted to music videos (when they weren’t showing late Atlanta Braves baseball games, that is). It was while watching this show (whose title eludes me now) that I became very taken with videos. Turner’s show featured several acts played nowhere else, such as Kid Creole and the Coconuts, the Belle-Stars, Shakin’ Stevens, and the English Beat. The show was thick with videos, and the commercials were few and far between. Ah-h-h, those were the good old days!. I decided that getting MTV added to my cable TV service was a big deal in the summer that year, and they were pretty good, too. For a while. Then, the commercials seemed to keep getting longer and larger in number. The V-J’s (video jockeys) kept talking longer and longer between videos, and by the end of 1983, it was becoming more and more difficult for me to watch MTV for very long at a sitting. Then, Michael Jackson, after enjoying such phenomenal success with his album Thriller that year (along with the great videos for Billy Jean and Beat It), decided to embark on a short movie video project based on the title track. The showing of Thriller was an exclusive deal between Jackson and MTV, and they completely saturated their programming with showings of it or advertisements about it. But after driving me crazy with that, they weren’t satisfied and began showing and reshowing a feature they made titled The Making of Thriller. Well, I was by then getting close to calling it quits with MTV altogether. For then Michael Jackson came out with his notorious Pepsi commercial. Can you guess what happened? Yeah, MTV went nuts showing that as well. But wait, I’m not through! As utterly incredible as it may seem, this increasingly sorry network pulled off the abomination of all abominations: The Making of Michael Jackson’s Pepsi Commercial, which they, of course hyped and showed relentlessly. After that, if I remember correctly, I still kept MTV on my cable service (it was a package deal, anyway, and I liked some of the other stations) for a while. But when I did finally cancel my cable service later in 1984, I didn’t miss MTV at all. Nowadays, of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find music videos on any of their stations. And, quite frankly, most of the videos that come out these days are pretty sorry anyway.

But I’ll always have fond memories of that period in mid-to-late 1983 when music videos ruled my TV set! It’s too bad the programmers and big shots in charge couldn’t recognize a good thing when they saw it!

Don't Apologize to Me, Bro'!

One of my favorite television series of all time was the two-season British sci-fi/spy import The Prisoner, first shown in the late 1960s. In it, an unnamed former British agent (played by Patrick McGoohan) is kidnapped and transported to an isolated village aptly named "The Village". It is an open prison camp for political and espionage prisoners, with the objective of using various means (torture, hypnosis, drugs, trickery, etc.) to elicit desired information from the guests. The inmates are stripped of their real names and only referred to by number. McGoohan’s character is Number Six, and he spends the entire series alternating between trying to escape from the Village and disrupting the general aims of his captors. One late episode in the series, titled A Change of Mind, features a new plan by the Village to get its citizens to become more conforming and compliant. If a particular prisoner begins to show behavior of an independent nature, the “rulers” start a process whereby key "citizens" of the Village begin to accuse him of being “unmutual”. Then the process of social shunning sets in, involving the entire community ostracizing the “wayward” inmate. Finally, the prisoner in question is given the opportunity to publicly confess his delinquency. At the beginning of the episode, one such confession is shown, where a young, bearded male prisoner nervously walks up to the microphone in front of an audience and begins to hysterically rant about how “unmutual” he was and how he has now changed. The fervor of his speech climbs to the point where he closes it by screaming “believe me!” several times. Afterward, he steps down and is once again accepted as a member of this perverse “community”.

In a similar vein, we have today, in the “real” world, an example of a defiant individual being publicly ostracized and compelled to recant to the community for his “antisocial” behavior. Andrew Meyer’s only transgression is that he overstepped the rules for questioning at a public forum and then didn’t go into the mandated “play dead” stance when the local police began to rough-handle him, completely out of proportion to what the situation called for. Now Meyer has written letters of apology to several different parties concerned in the incident, directly or indirectly, as well as post an apology on the Internet. But are these apologies really free, or is it like the fictional prisoner, who, being accused of being “unmutual”, bellowed out his humiliating apology with “believe me!” Incidentally, Number Six (who should have been Meyer’s role model in this case) never recanted after himself being accused of being unmutual, and eventually turned the tables on his accusers. The whole Andrew Meyer incident, down to these apologies, sends a chill through my spine. Are we unwittingly becoming a prison-village, too?

Apparently, the local Gainesville authorities have decided that Andrew Meyer’s apologies may be good enough for them to at least drop the felony charge being considered against him. But they, according to MSNBC, have a card up their sleeve: if Meyer changes or denies his apologies within the next 18 months, they can still go back and prosecute him for that felony! So this American citizen’s mouth is essentially being zipped up on him by the State! My analogy between Meyer’s situation and the totalitarian “Village” portrayed in an old science fiction TV show isn’t so far-fetched after all.

Favorite Songs of 1999

As I lived through 1999, most of the songs I liked off the radio were played on 103.7-WRUF “Rock 104”. I also bought a few CDs/cassettes that year, favorite among them REM’s Up, the Moody Blues’ Strange Times, and the Talking Heads' Greatest Hits. REM was even more gloomier than they usually were with Up, but I liked several of the tracks, as the following list reflects. My favorites among them were Suspicion and Walk Unafraid. I feel that Suspicion would have been a monster singles hit had they released it and promoted it that way. The Talking Heads had three old hits that I hadn’t heard before, hearkening back to the 1970s. Don’t Worry About the Government was a hilarious depiction of life in the bureaucracy, while Warning Sign and No Compassion seemed to go well in succession together (although they were probably originally on separate albums). The Moody Blues came out with a rare new CD, and my favorite track on it, My Little Lovely, was written and sung by Ray Thomas, who was also responsible for my #9 all-time favorite song For My Lady. At the end of 1999, I rediscovered some of Soundgarden’s old songs, and I got into listening a lot to their track Face Pollution, off of their early 90s album Badmotorfinger. Here’s my list of favorites for 1999:

Thank U (Alanis Morissette)
What It's Like (Everlast)
You Get What You Give (New Radicals)
Special (Garbage)
Dragula (Rob Zombie)
Jumper (Third Eye Blind)
Every Morning (Sugar Ray)
Dizzy (Goo Goo Dolls)
Why I'm Here (Oleander)
That Don't Impress Me Much (Shania Twain)
Scar Tissue (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
Around The World (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
Smooth (Santana with Rob Thomas)
Take A Picture (Filter)
Sugar (System of a Down)
Pardon Me (Incubus)
Airportman (REM)
Suspicion (REM)
You're In The Air (REM)
Walk Unafraid (REM)
Daysleeper (REM)
Falls To Climb (REM)
My Little Lovely (Moody Blues)
Heavy (Collective Soul)
Beautiful Stranger (Madonna)
Don't Worry About The Government (Talking Heads)
Warning Sign (Talking Heads)
No Compassion (Talking Heads)
Face Pollution (Soundgarden)

As for songs that actually came out and were played on the radio in 1999, my top-favorite was Scar Tissue by the resurgent L.A. band the Red Hot Chili Peppers. System of a Down blasted onto the scene that year with their scorching Sugar. The Goo Goo Dolls surprised me with a likable song in Dizzy. Garbage continued their run of catchy tunes with their sad Special. Take a Picture, by Filter, was one of the songs that took me a while to appreciate, but it's stayed with me all these years as a favorite. Madonna’s submission to Austin Power’s movie soundtrack was one of her best: Beautiful Stranger once again demonstrated her pop savvy. And the tearjerker of the year award unexpectedly goes to Third Eye Blind with their compelling plea to stop a suicide in Jumper.

Street Plans

When I came into Knoxville, Tennessee on October 11, I had no idea where anything was, other than the hotel I was staying at and the home of the friends we were visiting. The problem that I have about the Knoxville street plan is that the roads are named and not numbered. This makes finding any address difficult, to say the least (unless you’ve lived there a while).

I have usually lived in places (South Florida and Gainesville) that used a numbered street plan. If I needed to find any place, I could locate it easily from its address and had no problem getting there. Hollywood, Florida, has an interesting twist: although their “east-west” streets are named, most of them are named after former U.S. Presidents (in chronological order). So, Hollywood has an historical theme to its street layout.

This isn’t to say that there haven’t been some glitches to the street-plans in my hometowns. If you go eastward in Hollywood toward the ocean, the avenues go down in number until you hit the Atlantic Ocean itself. At about where 5th Avenue would be is where you start to wade to the seaweed-saturated sea! Apparently, the Hollywood coastline has eroded quite a bit over the past several decades!

Gainesville has its own peculiarities. If you go west on NW 16 Avenue, you’ll find that it changes to NW 23 Avenue. And if you go west on NW 23 Avenue from the center of the city, you’ll find that it changes to NW 31 Boulevard! There is the heavily-traveled NW 53 Avenue that I drive down to go to my Publix grocery store. Along a stretch of this road, I can look off to my left and see another, completely different, residential road running parallel to it. Its name? NW 53 Avenue! And driving north on NW 34 Street, there is a side road turning off to the left. Its name? NW 34 Street!

But in Knoxville, they have their own way of doing things. For example, they have a street officially named after current (neither retired nor deceased nor fired yet) University of Tennessee head football coach Phillip Fulmer. I guess they really do take their football seriously up there!

Running on the Eights: 10/30

For the past eight weeks, I have been much more careful with my running. After recovering from my slight right-foot strain/tear, I obtained a more comfortable pair of shoes that seem to protect my feet more. And I’ve gradually built up my training, using only the treadmill and refraining from running on any hard/outside surface. I do plan to make the switch to outdoors running at some time in the future, but I doubt that I will ever completely abandon the treadmill (I’ve grown accustomed to its pace!). The theme for these past eight weeks has been “easy does it”, although I’ve tried to run fast during my workouts. I did miss a period of a little more than a week earlier this month, but part of that was due to my trip to Tennessee and Kentucky. Here is my running record (the first two entries were for the cross-trainer machine; the rest were for the treadmill).

DATE .MILES .TIME
9-04..... 1.0..... 8:03 (cross-trainer level 11)
9-06..... 1.3..... 8:23 (cross-trainer lever 11)
9-08..... 1.2..... 9:24 (treadmill)
9-11...... 1.3... 11:03
9-13...... 1.3... 10:42
9-15...... 1.3... 10:23
9-19...... 1.4... 11:53
9-22..... 1.4.... 11:17
9-26..... 1.5.... 12:49
9-28..... 1.5.... 11:52
10-03... 1.6.... 13:15
10-05... 1.6.... 12:31
10-15.... 1.0..... 7:53
10-19.... 1.2..... 9:33
10-23.... 1.4... 11:06
10-26.... 1.6... 12:09
10-29.... 1.7... 13:19

Monday Newsbreak: 10/29

--The major story of this past week concerned the terrible fires covering much of southern California. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and a few people actually lost their lives. Some who survived related stories of waves of fire sweeping toward them at an incredible speed (due to the firestorm wind conditions) as well as stories of certain homes coming through completely untouched, while others surrounding them were completely gutted. Some critics have pointed to the fires to justify their objection to people moving into these high-risk areas and ask whether the public should be responsible for their welfare should they decide to build there again. Others claim that at least the severity of the fires would have been much less had controlled burning of dry, unpopulated forested areas been permitted in order to break up the mass of combustible material that permitted the firestorms to form.

--Related to the California fires is a press conference that FEMA called to answer questions pertaining to its role, objectives, and performance regarding the disaster. The only problem was that the "reporters" asking questions were all FEMA employees and the conference was completely staged! This story made a laughingstock out of FEMA nationwide and angered the journalists who were shut out of the press conference. The White House reprimanded FEMA for the staged event, probably thinking (from experience) that the "legitimate" press working there now would probably have done an equally effective job as the FEMA employees of being compliant hacks for the government.

--Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama has reportedly decided to buckle under to criticism from some of his supporters and will criticize frontrunner Hillary Clinton more vehemently. Although at first glance this makes him and his campaign look a little weak and desperate, this also may be a ploy by him to take the first step toward the selection by Clinton as her running mate next year. After all, he didn't have to announce in advance this "strategy change", so why do it? To me, it means that he wants the Clinton camp to know that any further criticism they hear from him is not really from him personally, but rather something that his campaign forced him to do (a variation on "the devil made me do it").

--My local newspaper, the Gainesville Sun, is beginning to run articles giving runners who want to train for a local marathon in February advice on preparing for this grueling, 26-plus-mile event. And that's fine by me, although I think I'll pass up on it this time around. My problem with the Sun is that there are several local running races held annually and the results never appear in the paper. If they are so community-minded in this area as they would like to appear, then a little recognition to the participants would go a long way!

--With UN-sponsored peace talks opening up in Libya between the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebels fighting it in a devastating civil war, most of the rebel groups are reportedly boycotting the meeting. Which misses the point, as far as I can see. Sure, the rebels have grievances against Sudan. That's why they are having the meeting! If they could solve their disputes before attending the meeting, then why have a meeting?! With so many lives at stake, why do such supposedly responsible adults act like miffed little children? But then again, my own President is acting the same way regarding Iran and its leaders.

--The University of Florida football team convincingly lost its third game of the year to Georgia this past Saturday, 42-30. The Gator offensive line did not protect quarterback Tim Tebow well, resulting in several sacks. But more than that, Florida's defense showed in this game that it is a long way from the defense of last year, which had carried the team to the National Championship. Now the Gators should just stop worrying about titles and just concentrate on winning and improving. As for the team I'm now rooting for to go all the way, it's the Louisiana State University Tigers, from Baton Rouge, home of the tasty (but messy) beignet!

Hypocrisy and Iraq

“Hypocrisy” is a word that is getting a lot of use in the political arena lately. I heard it used by a Republican senator against a U.S. general who had become outspoken against the Iraq War. And a Democratic candidate for President made frequent use of the term during a campaign speech I was watching, particularly with reference to the ability of America to project its influence throughout the world as a peacemaker. In each case, the one using the term sounded oh-so holy and high-minded, but in my opinion, missed the point, albeit for different reasons.

When taking actions on anything, they must be done within a certain context. If a general in Iraq expressed support for the war effort there while he was on active assignment then, then he was doing so within the context of his then-role as an active military officer carrying out his Commander-in-Chief’s mandated policies. Once retired, that general’s context shifted to that of a private citizen, and he expressed his views about the war honestly and critically. The point is that if his context had been the same and he had said different things to suit his own aims, then I would agree that he had been guilty of hypocrisy. As for the United States (or any other sovereign nation for that matter), foreign policy decisions are made in different contexts as well, and some of them may seem to conflict with each other and present an appearance of hypocrisy as well. On 9/11/01, the U.S. was attacked by terrorists on a grand scale, and have since devoted a large portion of its foreign policy to armed conflict against those terrorist organizations deemed culpable, as well as against countries that were adjudged to be aiding them. This is the context of war, which unfortunately seems to happen from time to time. With the rest of the world, the U.S. conducts its foreign policy in a peaceful context, and thus sees itself as a “force” for resolving international disputes peacefully between other countries. The question of hypocrisy comes up in regard to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Was it done in the context of the “War on Terror”, as the Bush Administration claims, or did the U.S. commit an act of war against a peaceful nation? To the second question, consider that Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded two neighboring countries in the span of ten years, used chemical weapons on Iranians in Iran as well as its own citizens, and broke the terms of the 1991 cease-fire agreement that allowed the belligerent Iraqi regime to remain in power. These facts would tend to give credence to the suggestion that Iraq was belligerent, not peaceful. On the other hand, the U.S. never officially declared war against anyone, leaving the delineation between the contexts of peace and war fuzzy both at home and abroad. And it is here, I believe, that it is susceptible to charges of hypocrisy. However, in a very technical sense, the U.S. administration can and has argued that since the Iraq had violated the cease-fire provisions ending the first Gulf War, then that cease-fire agreement was voided and hostilities were again in effect. And this gave the U.S. its needed context of war in order to launch its invasion.

The bottom line is whether the United States should be criticizing other countries for their aggressive postures when it itself invaded another country. My problem with our actions is that some of the same criteria used to justify occupying Iraq could also be used in regard to several other countries (that they were helping terrorists and were openly expressing hostility to our country and its objectives). And they know it! That’s why some of them are rushing to acquire nuclear-weapon-capability.

Nick Saban and Don Shula

I've written earlier about not admiring Alabama head football coach Nick Saban. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on this gentleman. But let me first explain myself. When I was in my early years as a kid following professional football, there were two teams that I rooted for: the Miami Dolphins and the Baltimore Colts. The Dolphins, during the late 1960s, were an expansion team that, thanks to their general manager Joe Thomas, was being assembled into a complete team that would eventually go on in the early 1970s to Super Bowl glory. Their coach was George Wilson, a nice enough fellow who stumbled with his words in press conferences and stumbled with his team through four losing seasons. In 1969, the Dolphins' fourth year, there had been great expectations of a winning season, even possibly contention for the playoffs. But they foundered badly, finishing last in their division with a 3-10-1 record. And this was with essentially the same team (minus Paul Warfield and a few others) that would go through 1972 undefeated! So, it was decided that Miami needed a new coach for 1970. The Baltimore Colts, on the other hand, had been experiencing great success under their coach of several years, Don Shula. They made it to the NFL title game against Cleveland in 1964, lost only one regular-season game in 1967 (missing the playoffs nevertheless), and had an incredible run in 1968, only to lose to the upstart New York Jets in Super Bowl III. Shula had coached this veteran, increasingly-aging team well and the Baltimore fans had been rewarded with many successful, exciting seasons. But Shula saw the opening in Miami and decided to switch to the Dolphins. Since that involved breaking a contract with the Colts, the Dolphins had to pay a penalty to them in order to hire Shula. Almost instantly, Miami was transformed from a loser to a winner. Baltimore, without Shula, only went on to win the Super Bowl the very next year! The point is that Shula knew that the Colts would be undergoing rebuilding down the road and he felt that someone else who would be there a while should be in charge of it. And he stuck with Miami, coaching the Dolphins for twenty-six years. During that time, they were always competitive, suffering only two losing seasons in that span!

Now let's move up to recent years. After retiring from coaching the Dolphins, Shula became a figure in Dolphins management. The franchise went through coaches Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstadt with generally disappointing results (especially with the 4-12 2004 season). Finally, they had an opportunity to hire LSU coach Nick Saban as the new Dolphins coach. Saban was going to be in charge of rebuilding the Dolphins from the ground up, and he projected confidence and commitment to this task. The first season he was coaching (2005), the lowly Dolphins made a late-season charge and won six games in a row, barely missing out on the playoffs. Last year, in only Saban's second season, Miami's "new" quarterback Dante Culpepper suffered a season-ending injury while franchise running back Rickie Williams was suspended for marijuana use. They had a losing season, but they were also still rebuilding under Saban, who demanded almost complete control over his team. He was so intense and fanatical toward his job that when President Bush visited Miami just before the start of the 2006 season and invited him to dinner, he refused him, stating that he had work to do with his team! I am not a fan of George Bush, but he IS our President, and I thought that Saban's act of shunning him like that was awfully tacky. That should have told me something right there about him. Well, at the close of the 2006 season, the University of Alabama fans were almost in open revolt against their team's coaching staff, and the Crimson Tide set out to find a new head coach. And money would be no object. Their target? Why, Nick Saban, of course! For several days, though, Saban would adamantly declare, sometimes angrily, to the press, that he was committed to coaching the Dolphins and wasn't interested in Alabama. Then, suddenly, out of the blue came the announcement that Nick Saban had signed on to become the new Alabama head football coach, for a scandalously high amount of money. And thus he abruptly left his still relatively weak, rebuilding Dolphins team in the lurch. Don Shula, opening himself up to a charge of hypocrisy for his own switch back in 1970, vehemently criticized Saban in the press for his actions. But to me, when Shula switched back in 1970, he had already provided the Baltimore fans with several great seasons (he had coached them through seven years, a considerable time) and left them as a contender. Saban, on the other hand, had centralized the Dolphins operations to be personally run by himself and then abandoned the project (and the city of Miami) after only his second year. He left a franchise in tatters, struggling to find a leftover coach somewhere to come and try to pick up the pieces.

That is why I don't admire Nick Saban. Others are entitled to their own opinions.