The "Old Country"

I am currently sitting (at this writing) outside a new Dunkin' Donuts here in Gainesville near the intersection of Archer Road and SW 34 Street, a few minutes before I go in to work, about a mile down the road. Even on a relatively light traffic day as this, it is heavily congested in this part of town. The irony is that, back in 1980, I moved to this section of Gainesville because then it was so peaceful and quiet (and very close to my workplace)!

I still refer to this part of town as "The Old Country". I lived and worked here for six years and, if you include my present job, have worked here for eighteen more. I also met my wife here. The area began to drastically change in 1987, when a large field adjacent to my apartment became the site of a Wal-Mart/Lowes shopping center. Then restaurants were built lining up and down Archer Road. And finally, an expansive network of shopping centers were built further west, almost reaching Interstate-75. If I were to be transported in time from 1984 25 years into the future to 2009, I wouldn't recognize the place. But thanks to DD, it's a convenient, pleasant place to stop off at on the way to work!

Still, I prefer to hang out at the Magnolia Parke Starbucks on NW 39 Avenue, away from this incredible (for me) congestion. I honestly don't know what I'd do if I had to be in a big city like Chicago or New York for any substantial period of time.

Submission

In religious circles the concept of submission is often bandied about. One must submit to God, the church (or whatever the religious establishment is called), one's elders, one's spouse, the particular religion's scriptures, and so on. Sometimes people who have experienced this demand for submission within a religious body will rebel and abandon it, possibly even renouncing that religion (and any others) altogether. And I sympathize with these people, considering the enormous potential and temptation there is within religions for manipulation and abuse. But is submission in itself a dirty word?

Naturally, as social creatures, we all have to submit to laws and social norms in order to effectively function in our daily lives. That is a reasonable application of submission. But also, in order to accomplish anything worth accomplishing, we also must foster a habit of self-discipline. And that involves defining for ourselves our own standards, to which we then submit ourselves. This can be a most difficult form of submission, since there is ample opportunity for self-deception and backsliding without immediate social consequences. But I hold that it is ultimately the most important form of submission there is.

Some people interpret the concept of freedom as being freedom from submission. But in order to be a viable, responsible adult, one must have the self-discipline to submit him/herself to standards that ultimately enhance freedom by opening up opportunities and enabling positive social feedback from achievements. But one also needs to develop the wisdom to distinguish that from manipulation on the part of others who seem to have issues with control and power.

On Second Thought...

I had written up an article for yesterday on this blog and was about to publish it when I read it over one last time. And then concluded that I had written stuff that I didn't really believe. It concerned a distant memory, more than thirty years past, and the behavior of an individual within that memory. In my article, I had sugar-coated that behavior, which in reality had badly offended me. So I'm going to have to rewrite that article and probably use a different example to make my point. It's hard for me to forgive certain people in my past, especially since they themselves couldn't care less. They may also be in a position, like that particular individual, where they are unable to care less, due the fact that they are dead.

This tendency to distort one's memories of childhood is highlighted in the very disturbing hour-long Twilight Zone episode titled The Incredible World of Horace Ford. In it, a grown man has created an alternative memory of his own childhood that he eventually must come to grips with in order to survive in the present, real world. Being a kid isn't all fun and games. And some of the negative experiences can have a scarring effect throughout one's life. I think that, as an adult, it is important to be honest with myself about those experiences while recognizing that my reality is in the present, not my distant past.

The Useful Enemy

President Barack Obama had better be careful with his attempts to bring down Al-Qaeda, solve the Afghanistan War by engaging with the Taliban, improve relations with adversaries Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, and have more cooperative relationships with other nations. He may be left without a "useful enemy" against which he can rally his country around him. After all, that is what his predecessor, George W. Bush, was a master at. But, perhaps our new president has his own ideas about who (or what) our enemies should be.

I believe that Barack Obama is a true idealist (as opposed to W., a cynic) in that he sees the challenges ahead as not fighting enemies, but solving problems. He sees this country's abandonment of its manufacturing base, the diminishing and politicizing of our science, our overdependence on foreign sources of energy, the state of health care and its debilitating effect, both economically and psychologically, on the people, and the growing threats to our environment. And of course, terrorism. He believes that the U.S. should reach out and engage in cooperative efforts with other nations to tackle these challenges.

Still, President Obama may find that fighting concepts may not carry the same political clout as fighting tangible, named targets. I wonder whether, in a year or two, we'll have a new set of "enemies" to get all worked up over.

In this vein, I also wonder who in Obama's staff will emerge to shape and manipulate this concept of who and what our adversaries are. You can be assured of one thing: we will always have our enemies, if for no other reason than that our leaders need them for us to feel that we need our leaders to protect us from them.

2009 Major League Baseball Starts

The start to the 2009 Major League Baseball season began Sunday, with the Atlanta Braves defeating defending World Series champion Philadelphia 4-1. One game down, only 161 more to go! How can anyone get interested in individual games that mean so little? The only redeeming factor would be if the actual games were interesting to watch. But to me, baseball is so-o-o boring!

I should be tickled that my home state Tampa Bay Rays won the American League pennant last year. But I was only mildly happy about it. They're probably going to settle down this year to a respectable third-place finish in their division behind Boston and New York. I generally root for the Yankees anyway, so that doesn't bother me.

In the National League, it is time for the Florida Marlins to peak during their six-year cycle and win it all. They won the World Series in 1997 and 2003, and here we are in 2009. Ironically, even with two championships behind them, they've never won their own division! But it doesn't matter. Even if the Marlins have a lousy spring season, they'll surge in late summer and make the playoffs. Assuming they conform to the "pattern" (I hope). I guess by this you can conclude that I'm not exactly very scientific in my baseball analysis.

I've given up trying to pick the different divisional winners. One team can do really lousy one year and, with little change to their lineup, will burn up the league the next season. Or the reverse.

I suppose that, as in previous years, I will continue to make the Atlanta Braves my traditional team of choice to root for. But I don't even know most of their players, and I don't see myself setting aside time to watch their games. Oh well, it's spring. Maybe by July or August I'll see things differently.

Most Wanted?

I'm not sure whether to just laugh or to express my gratitude at the "apparently" diminishing rate of serious crime in my home county. For at the bottom of page ten in Monday's Independent Florida Alligator newspaper is a "Most Wanted" ad, showing a mug shot of a 32 year-old man. The horrible crimes for which he is wanted and the ad and his picture posted? "Resisting Officer Without Violence, False ID Given To Law Enforcement Officer and Driving While License Suspended 2nd Offense." A phone number is given at the bottom of the posting for any snitch inclined to turn the poor loser in.

Now I have a theory concerning the police and our society's level of criminal activity. I believe that, regardless of how "criminally" people are behaving, the police are going to get in their quota of citations and arrests. If the community were suddenly to stop all felonious crimes, and even desist from serious misdemeanors, the police would be handcuffing people and hauling them in for jaywalking or loitering. Wait, come to think of it, they may already be doing this for loitering. Night after night, on my way home from work, I see a number of police cars parked at one of my local public parks (which has no closing times). I wonder what would happen if, some night, I were just to pull in to the park, park my car, get out, and just go sit on a park bench to gather my thoughts. I wonder how long before they slapped the 'cuffs on me! Or if I escaped their grasp, would my picture grace the next day's paper? What's really sad is that, a few years ago, I would have regarded this as a paranoid rant if I heard it coming from someone else's mouth. Now I'm not so sure. I know in my heart that the police are protecting me from criminals who would do me harm. But I also feel that many of our police regard me (and others in general), not as a citizen under their charge to protect, but rather as a prospective arrest to be plucked "out of the crowd". This makes them seem more like predators than protectors. The fact that police testimony during trials is usually accepted without question by juries just increases my disquiet.

Me Studying Chinese

Having decided a little while ago to concentrate my foreign language study on learning Chinese, I have begun to set aside time in the day to accomplish this. I am in the process of writing out the characters I am learning that will make my total at about 3,500 (from 1,700). This should enable me to more effectively follow the text in Chinese newspapers and give me a more fighting chance at understanding spoken Chinese. I did have a bit of a setback on the Internet: I can't seem to get the VOA Mandarin Chinese webcasts, which I had been planning to download on to my MP3 to listen to at work . However, as I reported in yesterday's article, I did find some podcasts from the BBC and Australia in Chinese that I was able to download. Also, I have a Chinese reader that I study from time to time. But I find myself disappointed for not having spent enough time studying Chinese.

So, in summation my strategy with Chinese for now is to learn the new characters, find some way to download webcasts onto my MP3, listen for long stretches to those webcasts, read Chinese text off the Internet, and continue to study my graded Chinese readers. I don't have someone with whom I am have regular contact to practice speaking Chinese with. Should that change, I'll have another dimension added to my study.

Exploring and Downloading Podcasts

I've just discovered the enormous quantity and variety of podcasts available for free downloading. I am currently using the site Podcast Alley to find various types of podcasts which suit my interests. So far, I've downloaded Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (about history, of course), Dump Runners Club (a Colorado-based runner gives some pretty good running tips), and Chess is Cool with Chess Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk (ranked #5 worldwide for women). And I've only begun to explore what's out there. At first, I had wanted to get some political podcasts, but the ones I found, both pro-left and pro-right, were so crude and hate-filled that I decided to defer that for a while. But there are many other categories to explore. And I can listen for long stretches of time at work on my MP3 player. Much better than the radio!

I also discovered sites that enable free, legal downloads of music that (some) artists provide to promote themselves. The best one I've been using is BetterPropaganda. You're not going to get the Beatles or Rolling Stones, but some of the more obscure acts can be quite generous in providing some free samples of their works.

I've also discovered that certain radio stations, such as BBC and Radio Australia, have downloadable podcasts in Chinese, the language I am currently learning. So I can also listen to those podcasts at work, as well.

One "down" side to this is that, since I've been devoting so much time to listening to my MP3 player, I haven't been keeping up with the news as much. So a lot of what's going on has been passing me by. Maybe I should just set aside a certain time each day to just catch up with the news. But I can accomplish this by perusing my daily newspaper and click on a couple of news websites (like CNN.com). I don't need to keep up-to-date on what the professional spin-doctors are doing.

ID Check

One of the problems I've heard that our national intelligence services have in infiltrating terrorist cells is that they are usually very small and intimate, as well as cut off from each other. The members don't protect the security of the cells by wearing identification badges on their shirts; they simply recognize each other by sight and voice. But for domestic U.S. citizens, going about on their daily work business, we've gone "ID Crazy". Just take where I work.

I suppose that, if there were any place in which security measures are justified, then the U.S. Postal Service would be high on the list. It has suffered from highly-publicized attacks of violence in the past, as well as the anthrax terrorist attack in 2001 that killed some of its employees. So I'm all in favor of security. But the way they are trying to accomplish this leaves me a little confused. Take the identification check, for example.

On a regular basis, floor supervisors are required to walk around the workroom floor and check to make sure that all employees under their authority are sporting their own official (with picture) ID badge. The supervisors go around with a clipboard and check off names as they do this. This is supposed to be a security-enhancing procedure. But how? In doing this, the supervisor is only checking people that (s)he already recognizes as being legitimate employees, not suspicious outsiders. And the different floor supervisors and managers all have a pretty basic understanding about who is supposed to be there and who isn't. By recognition, not by badges. When a "stranger" (such as an outside auditor) does make an appearance on the workroom floor, heads turns everywhere, and a "buzz" goes around, through employees and their supervisors, regarding the "strange" presence. There is nothing official about this; rather, it is the same type of security sense that those subversive cells use to keep out intruders. It is much, much more sophisticated and difficult to crack than the crude official methods that management concocts.

Conversely, if a person who was unfamiliar to anyone did happen to show up wearing an "official" badge, this would in itself do little to alleviate concern about his/her presence there. That individual would stick out like a sore thumb!

There is also a segment to this argument regarding the actual security of entrances, and how restricted the access to the building's interior really is. But discretion tells me that perhaps this blog isn't a very appropriate forum in which to discuss it. That is regrettable, because actual entry to the facilities is much more important within the discussion of security than inane ID badge checks.

Sufjan Stevens

A few weeks ago, I was listening to AOL Radio, on their "Indie Rock" channel. I lucked out, getting a string of great songs (later on I found out that this wasn't the norm). In the middle of it was a song titled Chicago by someone called Sufjan Stevens. It was the best of the lot, and I investigated this artist on the Internet.

Sufjan Stevens is an independent/alternative popular musician who grew up in Michigan, lived in Chicago, and now resides in New York. He has made several albums since since his debut A Sun Came in 2001. Stevens put out an electronica album titled Enjoy Your Rabbit, based on each of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac (Year of the Monkey, Year of the Tiger, etc.). He has released five Christmas albums as well as an album of original Christian-themed folk songs (Seven Swans). But his best works, in my opinion, are his "fifty-state project" albums.

Around 2003, Sufjan Stevens released an album titled Michigan, which then examined various aspects and locales of that state. A couple of years later, he repeated the process with his Illinois (technically titled Sufjan Stevens Invites You to Come On Feel the Illinoise). Illinois received much critical praise and several awards in 2005, but didn't break through to the general radio airwaves. It contains 15 full songs, each of which I regard as excellent. And the themes are, naturally, Illinois-based: cities like Chicago, Decatur, and Jacksonville; the holiday Casimir Pulaski Day; the Palisades; the Sear's Tower (transformed by Stevens into The Seer's Tower); the depraved serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr.; and the nineteenth century Black Hawk War, to name a few topics. By the way, if you count the or's, The Black Hawk War, a two-minute wordless-but-sung track, is the longest title that I have ever encountered: The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!' .

Stevens is an accomplished musician in several instruments and sings with a soft, soothing voice. But his lyrics are often very cutting, and his clear vocal delivery gives the listener little opportunity to miss anything he has to say. He also recorded his albums with multiple tracks. On Illinois, he separated the lengthy instrumental endings of some of its songs by calling them separate pieces. That gave two alternative endings for some of the songs.

Various rumors have floated around as to whether Sufjan Stevens will follow through on his expressed plan to record albums about all fifty states. He is a bit of a prankster, so who knows. But Illinois came out about four years ago, so he needs to "get cranking" if he wants to accomplish this before the "Star Trek Era" commences around 2060 (my way of saying "before hell freezes over")! I personally doubt that he will continue his "states" theme much longer, seeing that his first two, Michigan and Illinois, have strong autobiographical themes to them. I expect much of the same in any later works as well.

Here are my favorite Sufjan Stevens songs so far (with their albums in parentheses):

1: Casimir Pulaski Day (Illinois)
2: Jacksonville (Illinois)
3: Chicago (Illinois)
4: Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois (Illinois)
5: Come On Feel the Illinoise (Illinois)
6: In the Devil's Territory (Seven Swans)
7: All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace! (Michigan)
8: Decatur (Illinois)
9: The Henney Buggy Band (The Avalanche)
10: Jason (A Sun Came)

But We Need the Rain

North central Florida, today, tomorrow, and Friday. Flood watch until then. Take THAT, you pesky forest fires!

Contrived Editorial Letter Page

I've noticed, from time to time, that a newspaper's editorial page will pick up a letters-to-the-editor viewpoint about an issue that doesn't really merit discussion and bat it around for weeks at a time. I've experienced an example of this recently in my hometown "newspaper" The Gainesville Sun, whose editor seems determined to bring its standards down to the level of a high school newspaper. A few days ago, a letter was printed decrying the local PBS radio station, 89.1/WUFT. The writer complained about listening to slave-trading dead white men's music. And what was he referring to? Classical music!

The inflammatory (and asinine) tone of this letter revealed, by its printing, an ulterior motive by The Sun's editor: whip up a torrent of responding letters to artificially create an issue that heretofore didn't exist. And for several days thereafter, just I suspected, the newspaper printed letter after letter taking sides on whether or not WUFT should play classical music. The original letter complained that by playing classical music, WUFT wasn't being "diverse" enough, when the truth is that they have long stretches of programming where they play jazz and the blues. Not to mention the incredible variety of other music that they broadcast, along with informative news shows. And the editor knew this "no-brainer", of course.

I don't mind a real issue being discussed. But putting the local PBS station under scrutiny, especially when considering the relative homogeneity of commercial broadcasting across the radio dial, is ridiculous.

Let me give another example. From time to time, a motorist will write (and get printed) an editorial letter complaining about bicyclists who disobey traffic laws. Or a bicyclist will write complaining about motorists who don't respect their presence on the road. And this goes back and forth for a while.

Or how about the tried-and-true (and tired and old) argument about evolution vs. creationism? That's always good for a few days at a time on the editorial page. As if public opinion should decide what is "science" and what isn't, based on twitter-length editorial letters!

Sometimes I think that my local newspaper's editorial page isn't much better than those exploitative television talk show hosts like Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, who create a divisive topic in advance, invite people involved in that topic as guests on the show, and then "objectively" sit back and watch them heatedly argue with each other, with the "concerned" studio audience weighing in. All of which is phony and contrived! Can't we do better than that with our journalism?

Late Night Television

I usually get home from work at about 12:20 AM. Sometimes I turn on the television to see if there is anything worthwhile to watch. Unfortunately, the vast majority of channels are thoroughly worthless to me. But there are a few that suit my peculiar tastes.

On our digital TV service here in Gainesville, we can pick up the various Encore movie channels. Quite often, I'll find at least one movie on them that's good. On BBC-America, which recently had a marathon of James Bond movies, I can also watch episodes from the old, hilarious Monty Python's Flying Circus series. Bravo and AMC (American Movie Classics) are other good movie channels carrying some good films. And the Sci-Fi Channel and Spike occasionally show something interesting.

Besides movies, I like watching old series. Especially cartoon series. Niktoons currently shows old SpongeBob SquarePants episodes late at night. Also, I've grown somewhat attached to their cute My Life As a Teenage Robot series as well. But my current cartoon favorite is the side-splitting South Park, a series that I only discovered less than a year ago. My favorite episodes so far? Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes, obviously a satire on the negative reaction many have to Wal-Mart stores opening in their towns, and Manbearpig, which parodied Al Gore. My favorite South Park character? Who else but the villainous brat Eric Cartmen! I can pick up South Park on two different stations, as well as the Web.

Sometimes C-Span has an interesting replay of an interview or hearing (but usually not). Sometimes I can watch the end of a west-coast basketball game, or just a recap of the day's sports news. But sometimes the programming is pretty dried up for me. It is then that I flick over to MSNBC and watch the replays of their three "liberal" shows: Hardball (with Chris Matthews), Countdown (with Keith Olbermann), and Rachel Maddow. It's too bad that I can't receive this type of liberal commentary programming on my radio, which has been taken over by right-wing talk shows . And (like most other working human beings), I'm not allowed to watch TV on my job. However, I've recently discovered the many choices I have with downloadable podcasts, ranging the entire political spectrum, and to which I can listen almost anywhere on my MP3 player.

Finally, if the worst happens and all late-night programming stinks (or if I'm just in the mood), I turn my cable channels to the music stations they offer. My preferences? Alternative Rock, Soundscapes (new age music), Classical, and Retro Alternative.

Of course, the ultimate option in the absence of anything good on TV is to just turn it off and go on to bed!

But, wait! I've just discovered the ultimate soothing late-night channel: PBS's Sprout, which is aimed at pre-school audiences and is simple and sweet throughout its programming. It's obviously not very intellectually stimulating, but it has a very positive tone which is very relaxing to me.

NCCA Men's Basketball Down to Four Teams

Now we're down to the Final Four in the NCAA men's basketball tournament for 2009. North Carolina, one of my favorites, has done well to advance. They will play Villanova in the semifinals, while Connecticut will play Michigan State. I predict a North Carolina-Connecticut final. It's too bad that none of the teams from the Southeastern Conference advanced far into the tournament.

When all is said and done, the Southeastern Conference really didn't do all that well this year in men's college basketball. None of the three SEC teams in the NCAA tournament made the "Sweet Sixteen" and none of their four teams in the National Invitation Tournament (including two number one seeds, Florida being one of them) made the "Final Four". Pretty sorry year for the conference! Why was this?

I can only speak about the UF Gators when I say that this was a very young team, with only one starting senior (Walter Hodge) and no starting juniors. The acknowledged "star", if you can use that term with this team, is sophomore guard Nick Calathes. Other returning starters for next year are Dan Werner, Alex Tyus, and Chandler Parsons. Erving Walker also was a factor in what success the Florida had this year, and he will be returning as well. So the Gators promise to be much improved next year. But unlike the national championship squads of 2006 and 2007, they seem to get stressed out in close games and don't play together as a close-knit team whose members fully understand each other and their strengths and limitations (in my amateur opinion). They seemed to keep repeating the same mistakes during play without learning from them. Coach Billy Donovan has a lot of work ahead of him if he wants the 2010 edition of the University of Florida men's basketball team to get back to making the NCAA tournament instead of once again being relegated to the "runner up" NIT.

One final note: one of the factors that the NCAA tournament selection committee held against Florida (and some other SEC schools) was the extremely soft non-conference schedule they played, effectively padding their win-loss record to make them look better than they really were. The message is clear: UF and other schools need to schedule more competitive games in December if they want more serious consideration in March!

Economic Recovery Perception Danger

As we look for signs of recovery from our current recession, we may see different trends that may not correlate too well. This past week, the stock market has had a small-scale surge. Whether or not this continues remains to be seen, but I believe that eventually the market will recover and long-term investors (especially in those all-important retirement accounts) will recoup their losses. However, one important fact needs to be taken into consideration.

In a recovery following a recession, one of the last statistics to turn around is the unemployment rate. In fact, unemployment may continue to rise for a while at the same time that businesses are starting to show profitability again. While this tends to bother some people, the current situation dictates restraint on their part.

During this recession, our federal government, under both the previous and current administrations, has pumped more than a trillion dollars worth of economic stimulus and recovery money into the economy and stands to take much of the credit (and responsibility) for ending the recession. With this may come the temptation to criticize profitable businesses who had benefited from the various "stimuli" but haven't rehired their laid-off employees. And some may be continuing to down-size their payroll as they make their comeback. I know that this criticism is on the way, and government officials may be tempted to try to dictate, through hearings and legislation, that businesses take back workers. This would be a horrendous mistake, in my opinion. Some of those businesses needed to change their directions in order to remain viable. As they begin to grow, they will increase their staff to fit their needs. And the unemployment rate will naturally go down. As it has done in the previous five (my own count) post-World War II recessions. As Al Gore has stated (regarding a different topic), this is "an inconvenient truth".

Big Bro' Don't Know Drugs

I'm looking at a headline in today's Independent Florida Alligator newspaper: SMOKERS, BUSINESSES PREPARE FOR CIGARETTE TAX INCREASE. According to the writer Jacquelyne Smith, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says the tax for small cigarettes will increase from 39 cents to $1.01 for each pack and from $3.90 to $10.07 for each carton. Although the increased tax is certain to cause a spike in prices, local business owners were reportedly unconcerned that cigarette sales would suffer in the long run. I say, of course, that's because cigarette smoking is an addiction! And I wonder about the wisdom of conveniently laying this "sin tax" on an officially-frowned upon commodity.

I've already revealed my opinion about smoking, never having lit up even once and having undergone death in my own family, caused by smoking. Smoking cigarettes is a nasty, dangerous thing to do. But nicotine is a very highly addictive drug and its regular users are addicts. And should be treated as such. If the price gets too high for them to get their cigarette "fix", then they will behave as addicts to illegal drugs behave: they will seek their drug through the black market.

And don't think that this isn't going on right now. When are politicians going to understand that you can't legislate people out of addictions, be it proscribing the responsible drugs or levying impossibly high taxes on them? All this does is create a criminally-based alternate economy that exploits and brutalizes its own consumers and diminishes our law-based civil society.

I've heard the argument that having a high tax on cigarettes will encourage users to finally "kick the habit". But as I have said, it isn't a habit; it's an addiction! Yes, people can overcome addictions, but this ain't gonna do the trick, bro'. Otherwise, why not legalize and heavily tax cocaine, heroin, and any other currently banned addictive drug?

I believe that our "War on Drugs" has been an unmitigated disaster. All it has accomplished is to empower criminal elements across the world, who in turn have empowered hostile governments and terrorist movements. Hillary Clinton was right to apologize to Mexico for U.S. complicity in their drug/crime problems. For our own laws and their enforcement have created the very market that these foreign-based cartels exist to satisfy. Legalization of these drugs, without "sin taxes" and with a concomitant stringent regulatory process overseeing their provision to users, would completely undercut those crime organizations and send THEM into a severe economic downturn! But I'm afraid that this will never happen, with all of the pious self-righteous moral goody-goodies running around reacting in a knee-jerk negative manner to any proposed reasonable reforms on this topic while demonizing anyone who would advocate such reforms.

Assorted Musings

--I've been recalcitrant with this blog, but I think things will most likely begin to kick back up again soon...

---Anyone around me (including myself) who has problems with respiratory allergies is suffering greatly, with all of the pollen currently floating around in the air...

---I recently tried something interesting: watching two movies at the same time. They were Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Unforgiven and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. They were simultaneously on two different channels (Bravo and Encore Mystery) and I sat there, switching back and forth on my remote. I've done this before with movies that I've already seen, but I think this is the first time for two first-runs (for me). The result? I came out of it feeling as if I watched two movies in their entirety! And they were both quite good (and very different from each other)...

---The University of Florida women's basketball team bowed out of the NCAA championship tournament with an expected loss to #1 Connecticut. Meanwhile the men's team lost to Penn State in the NIT quarterfinals. Congratulations to both teams (although I'm sure they are pretty disappointed right now). Next year, the women's team will need to rebuild, but the men's should be much stronger, with almost everyone returning.

---The US Postal Service has been in the news lately, announcing plans to cut its workforce. My only comment is that they would be better served to invest a little in offering some tangible incentives for early retirement. I believe that many longtime employees are currently refraining from retiring due to uncertainty about the economy and the plunging value of their retirement accounts...

---Once I get over my present health issues mainly concerning allergies, I plan to resume my running. I'm already doing much more this year than I had since 1975. And back then, I lived in South Florida and encountered ZERO hills. Here in Gainesville, I have been running a course that involves running up and down several hills. And the surrounding trees should provide some much needed shade during the summer months. Much better training!

---Hopefully, we'll begin to get more rainfall, starting this week. If not, we're due for a disastrous fire season here in north central Florida...

Gainesville Coffee Shops Pros and Cons

At the beginning of Roger Moore's stint portraying James Bond, in the 1973 movie Live and Let Die, he invites his superior, M, into his flat to receive his new assignment. And then treats him to coffee, using his extremely (then) complicated looking espresso-making apparatus. M can only stand there, looking befuddled at the trouble that Bond is going through for a cup of coffee.

Nowadays, of course, this is all "old hat" with the various espresso coffee shops everywhere, especially those with the Starbucks trademark. I welcome the new culture of coffee drinking, especially that part of it that encourages customers to bring their laptops, books, and (with me) word processors to sit around for lengthy time periods without the fear of being run out of the shop for loitering. This lazier, informal environment is what I imagined (correctly or not) about street cafés in Europe. It represents for me a positive shift in the attitudes of (some) businesses in favor of customer service and away from the notion of seeing customers as a tool to extract money from, then sending them off (and away) on their merry way. So that trend I totally dig.

But there is, alas, a different trend I see, at least here in Gainesville. In large cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, there may be a culture of around-the-clock places to drink coffee and study, but not here. But we used to have several places where I could go in at any time of the night, get a cup of coffee, and study or write. Now, I could still go to certain restaurants like Steak N' Shake, Waffle House, or Perkins late at night, but they all have the idea of getting their customers seated, getting them fed, getting them to pay, and then getting them out (and the sooner the better). We used to have doughnut shops that stayed open around the clock, but that number has dwindled down to one, Krispy Kreme on US 441 three block north of the University of Florida campus.

My work schedule is such that I don't feel the need to go out in the wee hours of the night/morning, but sometimes, around 11pm-1am, if I do happen to be out at that time, it would be nice to be able to stop off somewhere and sit for a few minutes and enjoy a decaf coffee. But the Starbucks shops around here close up by 10 pm. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Bad "Feel Good" Legislation

Back in 2005, the case of a brain-dead woman named Terri Schiavo dominated the news. Her husband, consistently supported by the courts (even by ardently conservative judges), wanted her to be allowed to die, while her parents (and the religious right with their political clout) fought to keep her body alive. The struggle continued to the U.S. Senate, where the Republicans, led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, pushed a special bill, called the Terri Schiavo Bill, specifically designed to determine the outcome of that one single case. Democrats roundly criticized it, claiming that this was poor, knee-jerk legislation. Now let's fast forward to the present.

After losing so much money and procuring so much bailout assistance from the federal government, AIG Corporation infuriated the president and congress by handing out lavish bonuses to its top executives. The only problem was that this was perfectly legal. So the Democrats in the House of Representatives, along with some Republicans, just passed a bill levying a 90% tax specifically on those AIG bonuses. AFTER it was learned that they were being given. Now it is the Republican Party leadership's turn to "stand on principle" and denounce this as knee-jerk legislation targeted at only one circumstance. And they are right; they're just hypocrites, that's all.

I deplore those bonuses as well. And I generally support what the Democrats are trying to do in government. But this time they missed the boat and committed the same after-the-fact faux pas that their political rivals committed four years earlier by enacting legislation retroactively affecting a single party. It may carry popular support and make people feel good, but it's bad legislation. Better to simply recognize the loophole that AIG exploited and fill it in any future bailouts in order to prevent this from happening again.

Crichton and Gore on Global Warming

Continuing with my discussion of Michael Crichton, I have to comment on his method of presenting his opposition to the theory of global warming in the novel State of Fear. Crichton uses a completely fictional story with completely fictional characters to refute this theory, referencing apparently real scientific and academic journal articles with extensive footnotes throughout the book (making this work of fiction appear like an academic article). And different characters, especially the mysterious Kenner, spout out detailed statistic after statistic from the tops of their heads demonstrating how global warming is a scare tactic designed to control people, put in place by the "PLM" (political-legal-media). [How do you like that nice touch of his, making all of this sound like the PLO?]

How does Crichton portray believers in global warming? They are either fanatical terrorists or are shallow, vain, hypocritical dupes who want to hold on to their creature comforts while depriving most of the world's population of the same. Sounds like a real rap from me against Crichton, doesn't it?

Well, not completely. For one, I don't want to disparage the recently deceased too much. For another, Michael Crichton brings up some good points (if you can stand his ranting through the mouths of his characters, that is). Assuming his revealed research isn't part of his fiction, temperatures in various places across the world haven't really been following any discernible pattern for the past 150 years. Crichton opines that much of the measured warming comes from urbanization and deforestation, not increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Plus, he shows that the amount of added carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is actually very minuscule. But the best argument I got is the chaos argument: you can't linearly change an element of a chaotic, untested system and then expect to get a predictable outcome from it. And our atmosphere, from our many frustrated years of trying to predict and control the weather, is the essence of a chaotic system. So Crichton's views, albeit expressed in a distasteful manner, did make an impact on me. And they reminded me of another voice on global warming: Al Gore.

Former Vice-President Al Gore, as most people know, is famous for his movie An Inconvenient Truth, which sounds the big alarm about global warming and advocates drastic changes in how we run our economies worldwide and use energy. One of Gore's biggest arguments is to make a direct correlation between increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increasing temperatures. And it's here that I simultaneously have a problem with Gore's approach and begin to scratch my head in confusion. For urbanization and deforestation, which skeptic Crichton acknowledges as warming factors, also correlate with increased carbon dioxide. So what caused the warming then? And what about those figures denoting increasing global temperatures, and how are they reconciled with Crichton's mixed figures? Just because two trends correlate, that doesn't automatically imply a cause and effect relationship between them.
Aside from this confusion, I was a bit taken aback by Gore's flagrant bouts of self-adulation in An Inconvenient Truth. Those rosy autobiographical parts detracted from his message by making Gore appear (to me) as being narcissistic and opportunistic. It's this aspect of Gore that the television series South Park seized upon in its merciless Manbearpig episode about him a few years ago.

So both Michael Crichton and Al Gore have presented their opposing opinions on the subject of global warming, each in their own personally obnoxious and irritating manner. What do I think on the subject? I'm not sure, but if Crichton and Gore can cash in on the subject while making complete nuisances out of themselves in the process, there has to be something in it for me! Let me put on my thinking cap and I'll get back to you on it......O.K., I'm back. I just figured out what I have to do: first, like Crichton and Gore, I have to become famous for entirely something else, and then I can present my alternative theory as an "expert" and reap in the rewards!