Babbleocity 20

Things that never seem to happen ...

Peace in the Muddle East - There's been tension, conflict, and death in the narrow strip of land known by many as 'The Promised Land', since 1948. Somehow I don't think the Hebrew founding fathers had the current situation in mind when they moved in. If they knew, they might have chosen to settle elsewhere, say in Greece, Italy, or Brooklyn. Why smart men and women haven't found a solution in all these years is a testament to the thick-headedness of the devoutly religious. The belief in divine right to a piece of land is behind the sorriest behavior of humanity. The problem isn't lessened by those people who get and obtain their power only because of conflict. They have no reason to end the fighting and every reason to keep it going as long as possible. And there are plenty of those people on both sides of the equation, and among some on-lookers and partner countries-in-crime as well. If you could remove the religious theocracy, the warlords, and the political opportunists from both sides, and if you could keep other countries out of the mix, peace would result in a relatively short time. Ordinary folks only want to live and let live, raise their families, and enjoy whatever time on Earth we have.

The End of Poverty in the USA - The current recession has gutted our coffers mightily, but somehow the government still can round up trillions to bail out banks, car companies, and sundry other businesses. It's a mystery then, why, in normal times, we can't muster enough cash to help raise people out of grinding poverty. A condition that breeds, among other forms of social malaise, drug abuse, crime, and a tendency to watch too much reality TV. Surely, helping those who can and want to become gainfully employed taxpayers is a good idea and a better investment than Goldman Sachs. And getting mentally ill people, who may not be able to improve their financial lot, at least off the streets and into proper care would pay for itself in happier communities and improved tourism. But even if it didn't pay for itself, how can a country let ill people sink or swim on the streets while handing financialistas golden parachutes and enough pay to maintain their vacation homes, yachts, and $500 haircuts? It's time to commit to ending poverty - at least here in the USA where we presumably have control, and end it within a decade. No more waiting. No more excuses. No more shame.

Winning the Drug 'War' - Let's face it, we've lost and it's time to compromise. In California and other states there's been some progress in getting the use of marijuana decriminalized - even legal for medical use. But the federal government lags behind and retains the option of arresting anyone it chooses for marijuana use. It's been 30 years or more that one organization or another has been constantly lobbying for legalization, and it might have happened earlier but for the dark years of Reagan-Bush. There will always be people who want everyone to conform to their beliefs, no matter how ill-advised and outdated those beliefs may be. It's time we legalize marijuana, tax it, control it, and subject the forms of the drug that are smoked to the same restrictions as cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. Marijuana should be evaluated for it's potential to cause lung disease when smoked, and any risk should be clearly noted on packaging, just like cigarettes. Legal but controlled is the best answer for everyone - except the criminal underground and DAs looking for easy convictions.

These issues have been around for a half-century or more, with little or no progress. Time to get our acts together, engage, and make-it-so.

The Goodbyes Issue

Comes in threes, I guess ...

Goodbye Jacko - Michael Jackson, American oddity, pop legend, and once-upon-a-time genuine top-notch performer, passed away this past week at age 50.  He was a Thriller in his day, and certainly Off the Wall, but in the end he was just Bad, perhaps Dangerous, not Invincible, and certainly sad.  Despite his personal and professional decline in later years, he will always have a memorable place in music HIStory.

Goodbye Angel - Now matter how hard she tried to ditch the association, Farrah Fawcett will always be remembered as an original Charlie's Angel.  Despite just one  year on the series, Fawcett left an imprint on the 70's like few others.  She was married to 6 million dollar man, Lee Majors, making her almost 70's TV royalty, and later partnered with Ryan O'Neal, another icon of 60's and 70's movies and TV.  Her posters were a must-have for adolescent (and older) males, and hair styles mimicked hers well into the 80's (to the point of utter madness).  Not one to go gently into the night, she spiced up her later career with controversial spreads in Playboy, and even televised her ultimately futile struggle with cancer.  History may not look back on Farrah as a great actress, but it will certainly record her as influential.  And that's not too bad.  Not too bad at all. Go, Angel!

And here's .... Eddie! (Goodbye Mr. McMahon) - One of my earliest TV memories is of watching Johnny Carson on the show 'Who Do You Trust?'.  My toddler sense of humor and wonder was piqued by Johnny's shenanigans, and by his repartee with his supporting host, Ed McMahon.  It was a must-see.  After Ed and Johnny went on to 'Tonight Show' fame, I lost track of the duo until the late 60's, when I was finally 'old enough' to stay up late to watch the show. In the intervening years I was more pre-occupied with 'Mr. Ed' then McMahon.  In the 70's and through the early 80's, however, I was positively glued to the TV at 11:30  - at least for the opening and monologue, and often the whole show.  You never knew what was going to happen, given the flotilla of fading or fringe celebrities who appeared willing to do or say something outrageous (for the time) to regain the spotlight, if even for a few moments.  But those moments counted for a lot on the Tonight Show.  Ed McMahon knew how to stay out of the way of the action, yet knew, somehow, just when to step in and contribute to keep things rolling.  He was indispensable and everyone knew it.  He both set and broke the mold for TV 'second bananas', and there will be no other quite like him.  Hi-Yo!

30 Years Of Night

If you were alive in 1980 and old enough to vote, you were faced with an interesting decision on the next American President.  Continue with Jimmy Carter, who as President personified both the best and worst of progressive politics, or go with a known conservative who openly spoke about dismantling government, Ronald Reagan.

In the end, the election was more about image and world power than domestic politics.  Carter was viewed by too many as weak on the world stage, and Reagan strong (although he'd done nothing yet).  Carter's inability to end the hostage crisis in Iran was the principal evidence used by many in their decision to vote against him.  It didn't help that Jimmy Carter wore his heart on his sleeve and looked visibly depressed and strained, while Ronald Reagan looked either righteously stern or amiably upbeat, but never distressed, in his public appearances.  The public wanted reassurance, and Carter couldn't give it to them.

But Jimmy Carter was right about a lot of things, not least that energy policy was critical to the nation's future - the 'moral equivalent of war'.  That phrase seemed overwrought to his critics at the time, but we now know how prescient a phrase it was.

After the election in 1980, President Reagan fulfilled his promise of dismantling as much of the government as he could, memorably gutting the Interior Department and stopping decades of progress in cleaning up and protecting the environment, all in the name of promoting business. You might say Reagan's 'moral equivalent of war' was undoing Carter's progressive policies, and as much of Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' as he could.

He took aim at Carter's energy policies as well. As related in an article in a recent issue of The Atlantic (July/August 2009), Reagan had the solar panels Jimmy Carter installed on the White House removed, following that symbolic gesture shortly thereafter by shedding many of the government programs to subsidize and encourage alternative energy.  

The Reagan and Bush Years almost completely ignored alternatives to fossil fuels, except perhaps to rekindle interest in nuclear power, once Three Mile Island and Chernobyl began to recede in memory.  Even Democrat Bill Clinton didn't pick up Carter's torch when his chance came.  Too risky perhaps, after being bloodied on Health Care, or just another piece of evidence that Clinton was first and foremost a political animal, guarding his power at the expense of his beliefs.

Now, 30 years later, President Obama has it to do all over again.

Poetry Break: Little Victories

I've never won at Lotto

I fail miserably at cards

Slots elude my efforts

'til my bank account's in shards

I'm not so good at fighting

I've never been to war

In football all my passes missed

Or else were thrown too far

But life is what you make of it

The brew may be bitter or fine

It's the Little Victories you'll remember

When the last loss ends your time

The way your children smile at you

Sunlight on a cloudy day

A rainbow coming out

After rain has moved away

A good friend, a steadfast mate

A quiet evening, an exciting date

Little Victories are remembered

When that last loss ends your time

Scareplane 2009

If you need more evidence of the dearth of critical thinking in the cable news arena, just look at today's frantic reporting of the Continental Airlines incident in which a pilot died of (apparent) natural causes in flight.

Judging from the excited and urgent tones emitted by the 'reporters', and the endless shots of a cloudy runway in Newark waiting expectantly for the afflicted plane to land, you'd be forgiven for thinking there was a gaping hole in the cockpit with, instead of a functioning pilot, a windblown dental hygienist from Scranton (recruited hastily from seat 39c) at the controls.

Of course, the reality was less exciting.  There were two other qualified pilots on board and they took over immediately.  The plane was never in any danger at any time.  

But you would never know from the breathless reporting ...

Perhaps those 'reporters' were associating this incident in their minds with Continental's much more worrisome misrouting of two minors flying alone.  Now, if you are a parent, that's scary.

iPhony

There's always a catch ...

Have you seen the advertisements for the $99 iPhone?  They feature a good deal - get the 'current' iPhone for $100 less just before the newer version is released.  For those who don't need the extra features, it's a bargain, right?  

Well, hold on there Harry (or Harriet), it's not so simple.  First, don't forget you will need to pay $30 a month for the iPhone service.  And an additional $5 per month for unlimited text messaging, which is NOT included in the $30 service. (And those fees are all separate from your basic calling plan fees.) You will also want Applecare extended warranty (two years), since replacing your $99 phone will actually cost you $499 if you have to buy another before you are eligible for another upgrade.  So add $69 for that.  

And then, just to add a little salt to your unexpected wounds, AT&T charges you sales tax on the $499 price - the 'regular' retail price of the phone, rather than the 'sale' price of $99.  So out the door you go with your $99 iPhone, having paid just north of $200 (plus $35 per month) for the privilege.  

Lovely little scheme, 'eh?

It's hard to imagine any other industry getting away with those kind of 'gotchas', particularly that sales tax dodge, but the incredibly wasteful mobile telephony business seems to catch a lot of slack from the Feds.

Very lovely scheme, indeed.

Reform Redux

The rise and wimpering demise of Clinton's health care reform attempt seem as events from a lost epoch.  But then, my memory isn't what it used to be.  Perhaps it would be better, now, if some progress had actually been made, and I could afford a brain scan once in a while without risking my DirectTV budget.

The events of this morning are much easier to remember.  President Obama courageously stood before a bunch of AMA doctors (and presumably lobbyists and lawyers) and told them some details about his plan for reforming the health care system.  Response to Mr. Obama's plan was for the most part polite, and in some places even enthusiastic. By and large, though, it's plain to see that the President is in for a rough and long haul.  By the time he's through he'll probably feel like having gone through a few dozen colonoscopies - maybe a few hundred.  Think Afghanistan is a bitter pill to swallow, Mr. President?  The health insurance companies will be glad to provide you with a special enema.  Enjoy.

Not that what the President said didn't make perfect sense.  It did - even to most of the assembled AMA members.  It's just that change is scary.  The medical world as it exists in America will need to alter in ways that mystify most, and thus frighten them.  Mr. Obama tried to explain, but there's really no way to encapsulate all that must be done in a single speech - even a very long one. 

Everyone knows that the best change - or at least the easiest to accept, is change which comes about gradually, like melting glaciers.  Unfortunately, as the President so clearly conveyed, the upward zoom of medical costs is likely to kill off our economy more surely than any other among the multitude of crises facing us - even global warming. And do it so quickly few people will be able to afford those newly - minted beachfront properties in, say, Fresno, when the glacial meltwater comes.  

Back in the early days of the Clinton administration, the goal was no less than a single payor system, and let's have that right now, thank you very much.  That was just too much change and planned to come too quickly for most at the time to accept.  Today, Mr. Obama wasn't talking single payor, but he was preaching speed.  Then, the country was on the verge of a lifting economic wave that benefited a swath of society wide enough to make the increased cost of health care seem less a crisis.  Now, the picture is entirely different.  Many American's simply can't afford health care, and many that can are on the brink of affordability.  Relief must come quickly.

So can he do it?  Can our President lead the scared and squabbling masses into a brave, new, medical universe where everyone is covered, costs are kept reasonable, and the care is of the best quality?  Maybe, but those colonoscopies and that enema are going to hurt, Sir.

Babble-On 19

Engage!

A Bigger Black Hole - Scientists have long believed that most, if not all, galaxies, including our very own 'Milky Way' home, have a black hole at their centers.  After all, those billions and billions of stars have to be swirling around something, right?  What better than a single, nearly infinite point of mass at which matter becomes infinite and time stops in its tracks?  Like a Giant Pac-Man or your local DMV.  Problem is, measurements of the probable size of the black hearts of 'local' galaxies were much smaller than those suspected in distant Quasars.  Luckily for the theorists, a new model of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 - a neighboring spiral only 50 million light-years distant, so 'local', indicates it to be more massive than previously thought, at something like 6.4 billion solar masses.  That new mass brings it more into line with those Quasarian holes whose measurements (and a bit of swagging) indicate 10 billion solar masses.  Whew!   The article relating this discovery didn't mention what kind of 'model' was used, but certainly it must be some high-tech complex thing that can only run on the latest supercomputer and not something you download to your iPhone.

A Star May Be Born - Meanwhile,  other scientists have found a nearby 'massive, tranquil' cloud that may be a stellar nursery. At only 23,000 light years distant, it really IS 'local', and at 120 times the heft of our sun, it really is massive.  If this interstellar cloud is going to produce a star, its life will be brief and hot, and will end explosively in a supernova.  Like having a cute neighbor baby who grows up to be Jeffrey Dahmer, this new star might become unwelcome sometime in our future, say another 23,000 years or so.  My mortgage should be paid off by then ...

Aim towards the star on the right, and go straight on until morning ... (Uh, Captain, have you been adding whiskey to your Earl Grey?)

My Inner Neandertal

Anthropologists and Paleoarcheologists have been hard at it attempting to decipher the mystery of the disappearance of our (presumably) close cousins, the Neandertals, and whether we - modern humans, aka 'Cro-Magnons', had anything to do with it.

Some speculation has focused on whether our direct ancestors had inappropriate relationships with Neandertals which may have led to mixed offspring.  Some even speculate whether those offspring are us - or at least some of us, like Republicans or NASCAR fans.  

While it's true that most reputable scientists dispute the contention that our genome contains even a hint of our more brutish cousins, I am convinced that if you are a Republican AND a NASCAR fan, you may be part Neandertal.  If you are both and also can't work your DVR to record the races, it's case closed.  Grab a club and head to your cave.

But whether or not our blood contains ancient thuggish genes, I believe it's possible that those Cro-Magnons of old picked up some bad habits from their hairier neighbors.

I can certainly feel it at times.  Like when I am in the appointment line at the DMV and, just when it's my turn to walk up to the window, someone dashes in from the side to 'ask a few quick questions'.  I have an urge to hit them with something.  I'd like to pick them up and fling them across the room - to the back of the line.  I am sure Neandertals had the brawn to do that.

Like whenever George W. Bush appeared on TV for a press conference.  I'd have mental visions of someone (presumably not me) grabbing his ears and whupping his head against the dais until sense returned (or should I say, arrived). That has to be a case of one Neandertal recognizing another and not liking it.

Like lately whenever I've seen a GM commercial pop up on TV talking about the 'new' GM and what wonderful things are in store for us (this after filing Chapter 11).  It must be my inner Neandertal that wants to take a sledge to the nearest Jeep (not a Hummer, Neandertals would like Hummers).  [OK, so a Jeep is a Chrysler and not a GM, what do you expect from a Neandertal, accuracy?]

All this puzzles me.   I am not a NASCAR fan (at least, not since sometime in the 80's), and I am most certainly NOT a Republican (although I spring from a long line of those misbegotten souls).  Maybe our Cro-Magnon ancestors were a little frisky with their cousins, back when Global cooling and finding enough Mammoths were the big concerns.

All we can do is to make peace with our inner Neandertals and keep them on a tight leash.  Unless  you are a pro-Wrestler or a Republican NASCAR fan.  If your are either (or God forbid both), don't even try.

Dyer Reality

Sunday morning, flipping channels...

On local PBS, Dr. Wayne Dyer's  'Excuses Begone!', one of those fundraising 'specials'. On Direct TV's 101 channel, some clips from a Farm Aid concert.

A real contrast in realities ...

Listening to Dr. Wayne, and seeing all the gray and graying heads in the audience nodding in agreement on each word, left me wondering what the hell happened to My Generation.  Listening to the Farm Aid concert, I couldn't help but wonder what's been done to it.  Or, honestly, what it's done to itself.

Dyer's diatribes are excuses at the end of night.  The songs of Neil Young, Steve Earle, John Mellencamp, and Willie Nelson are wake ups on a harsh dawn. 

The Dyer Way is to accept. Farm Aid's message is to accept what is and then do something to change it (and not just the perception of it).

How have we come to this? What's been the error of our course?  What's led us to Dr. Dyer and his empty salves to our consciousness?  Somehow, in my mind at least, the answer is connected to the reason Farm Aid exists.  It's a shout against easy over hard.  Bigger and cheaper over better (morally, if nothing else) but dearer.  

Both Dyer and Farm Aid have tough messages for us - Dr. Wayne's unintentionally so.  I know which I'd rather listen to on a Sunday morning, flipping channels...

Keeping On

Some days you can't win.  Some days are better spent in bed, warm covers up to your nose.  Maybe with a pot of tea at the ready.

But necessity - or ingrained routine, pulls you up and sends you out to keep on keeping on.

At least most of us have the luxury to every now and again stay in bed.  Not so the President.  At least not this President.

On the road again and speaking to a tough and skeptical audience, Mr. Obama seems never to rest.  He's getting a bit grayer and has a little less spring in his step, but he keeps on regardless of how tired he must - at times - be.  

I've not bothered to look at statistics, but my guess is that our current President has already logged more air miles than the last President did in, oh, say, his first four years.  And power naps just don't seem this President's style.

Maybe he's getting some good sleep on Air Force One - it comes equipped with a Presidential 'bedroom' after all.  Or maybe the White House refrigerator is stocked with energy drinks.

Well, wherever he get his energy and drive, I hope he can keep it up.  It pains me to see him so constantly busy.  I can imagine it pains his family too.  But the plain fact is we need him out there doing what he's doing.  Who else can do it?  Who else would want to?

We need him to keep on keeping on...

Moments

Things can change in a moment.  Life can change in a moment.  Life can end in the blink of an eye.  Or in the time it takes an automated message to broadcast distress.

The passengers and crew of Air France flight 447 experienced their last moment above the stormy waters of the Atlantic.  And no matter how hard we try, we can't truly imagine what that moment was like.  We can't (or won't) force ourselves to go there.  That moment is too real.  So real we'd call it 'surreal' just to ease the cold, sharp, starkness of it.

From the pier in Manhattan Beach today, I watched children and dolphins at play.  Surfers waited for the best waves as raindrops fell from a shaded sky.

Our moment may come at any time.  But kids and dolphins will still play on both sides of the water's edge, and surfers will still shiver as they wait for 'the' wave.

O'Reilly Over The Line

Fox news pundit Bill O'Reilly needed to make only one comment yesterday regarding the murder of abortion practitioner Dr. George Tiller. He should have said, simply, 'I have disagreed with Dr. Tiller's practice and have spoken against it and him at every opportunity.  However, I absolutely condemn his murder and the violent, terrorist path it represents.'

That's what he should have said.  Of course, he couldn't do it.  Bill O'Reilly instead launched into a guilty defense of his numerous rants against Dr. Tiller in an attempt to deflect claims he may have spurred on the murderer with his rhetoric.  In doing so he trotted out all his negative comments about Dr. Tiller and his practice and rehashed them in every way possible. He invited guests along to revisit all of the doctor's 'crimes'. He might as well of just said,  'Hey, maybe my comments led some nut to kill him, but, well, he deserved it.'  That seemed to be the heart of his defense.

Maybe I should say 'the core' of his defense. From what I saw and heard on his show yesterday, it's clear to me that Bill O'Reilly has no 'heart' that most of us would recognize as such.  He does have a lot of fear, though, and a good deal of hate.