Babble-On 30

It's all about fitness ...

Not So Fit - News reports have Honda recalling 140,000 of their 2007-2008 model year Fit hatchbacks in North America, and many more worldwide due to a very strange and unusual fire hazard: apparently, a glitch may allow water to enter the power window machinery, causing overheating which can spark a fire. So all you Fit owners out there, don't wash your cars. (I'd be perfectly safe on that account.)

Kirstie and Me - I have something in common with Kirstie Alley, whom I've followed since first seeing her as Lt. Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and later in Cheers. I too have lost weight and then gained it back. My backsliding has been largely private, however, while Ms. Alley's has been very public, having been a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. At first she denied it, then when she couldn't hide her re-plumping any longer, planned a reality show about it. I'd like to think if I was being paid to lose fat and keep it off, at say (and I'm guessing here) about $10,000 to $20,000 per pound, motivation wouldn't be an issue. So maybe this new reality show will do the trick. If not, she can always star in 'Celebrity Biggest Looser' ...

Unfit TV - Perhaps another thing Kirstie and I have in common is we both watch too much television, i.e., we are fellow couch potatoes. An Australian study showed those who watch 4 or more hours a day have an 80 percent greater chance of dying from cardiovascular disease, and a 46 percent increase in death from any cause (presumably including vegemite and Fox news). Each hour of viewing, according to the study, correlated with an increase in 11% risk of death from any cause and 18% from heart problems, but didn't comment on whether some shows were worse for you than others (or some networks). The researchers believed sitting on your arse for hours caused you to burn fewer calories (gee, really?), but I think the real reason is the TV content. I've been in Australia and I can testify it's lethal...

So, here's the skinny for today: watch as little TV as you can - especially in Australia, or at least make it worth the risk and watch only good shows, perhaps like Kirstie Alley's upcoming reality gig. And please keep your Fit out of the rain ...

State of Obama

I was afraid this was going to happen. I hoped it wouldn't. Everything looked so good a year ago when the nation elected Barack Obama as its 44th President. We had, for the first time in a long while, a President who was intelligent and also capable of expressing that intelligence in public. He made us all look good. We could hold our heads up when traveling abroad, rather than hurrying through crowds muttering 'I'm Canadian'.

And he made promises most of us wanted him to keep. Shut down Gitmo. Get us out of Iraq. Finally make some headway on Health Care, and bring us into step with the rest of the world in battling global warming. In general, we wanted him to keep his promises of moving us away from a social and financial system favored under Bush. A system geared towards serving the needs of big business regardless of the effects on the middle class and the poor. It was high time the pendulum swung the other way and gave the poorer four-fifths of the population a helping hand.

And it looked like he could pull it off. After all, the disaffection with the former administration which swept him into office put a lot of other Democrats in office too. President Obama had public support AND a Congress controlled by his own party. No way to loose, right?

Well, sadly, we all overlooked the incredible ability of the Democratic party to wound itself. Repeatedly. Like stepping on a rake and hitting yourself in the head, again and again.

Or maybe we just forgot how fractured the Democrats are. We knew all about that at the end of the Clinton era. Heck, we saw it in 1994. They were all over the ideological map then and still are. Once they achieved the goal that united them in 2008 - of defeating George Bush, they lost no time in undermining each other in 2009 in every way they could.

Meanwhile, the defeated Republicans remain a fairly unified bunch. They vote as a block. They obstruct the Democrats in Congress as a block. And they have looney but powerful allies in the conservative news media who seemingly spin every news story into a tale of failure for President Obama or the Democrats.

The Republicans and their news allies have even managed to turn the State of The Union address into what might better be called a 'State of Obama' address. Something more of a defense of his own first year than a discussion of the condition and future of the country.

How they've done this in the face of a massive Democratic majority (even with the Massachusetts decision) and a still largely favorable public opinion towards the President, would make a good lesson in political science if it wasn't an even better lesson in modern pop psychology and old fashioned propaganda.

Still, we can't give the Republicans all the 'credit' for putting Obama in this position. Not even the Democrats are entirely to blame. The President himself has helped his political opponents put him on the defensive, by failing to follow through on many (if not most) of his campaign promises.

By backing down on issues important to his electorate, most critically concerning the war and health care, Obama has lost focus. He's now a blurry, low definition version of his 2008 self.

So, what is the State of Obama?

If he was the quarterback of a football team I'd say he's chalked up impressive yardage but scored no touchdowns. His passes have gone astray or his receivers have dropped the ball and the turnarounds are hurting the team, half of whom have gone back to the bench. A few have even wandered over to the other side of the field. The fans are restless and the cheers are becoming half-hearted. Some are eyeing the exits. The commentators are already looking ahead to next season and contemplating a new quarterback.

But it's still the First Quarter and the team can rally. Give Obama protection in the pocket and run some good patterns, and, most critically, catch the ball, hold on to it, and score.

Now, if the Demos only had a good cheerleading squad ...

Kill Switch

Technology can save us, like when you need to reattach that hand you inadvertently removed with your new Christmas band saw. Modern microsurgery beats Dr. Frankenstein's techniques by a wide margin.

Technology can also kill us: witness the news about those nifty electronic keyless ignitions that are so complicated you can't turn your car off when, let's say, it begins to accelerate out of control and you hit 90 in the parking lot at TJs.

Trapped in a speeding car and unable to twist a conventional key and turn the thing off might be exciting. And we all need the occasional surge of adrenaline to remind us we are alive. But dying while doing so is somewhat pointless, unless you are trying to make a point, like 'TJ's parking lots suck'. Even so, the point is nearly moot, since you'll be dead and unable to enjoy the larger, roomier, vroomier lots.

Sadly, the automobile industry is in a conundrum, and this conundrum is making the whole keyless thing more pesky and sometimes deadly than it ought to be. The car makers are having what appears to be a format war, not as heated as Betamax vs VHS, or Blue Ray vs whatever that other boring format was, but certainly more dangerous. I've never heard of anyone getting killed by a Betamax, unless they happened to be under one when it was thrown unceremoniously out a high-story window.

Now, apparently, you CAN turn off a moving car equipped with a keyless push button ignition, but the technique differs between manufacturers and most require the driver to push and hold the button for three seconds, or tap it three times, or some other OCD kind of code. Now imagine yourself whipping down your local residential street at 60 and accelerating and there's a sharp right turn ahead bordered on all sides by immovable buildings and trees. Unless your driver training included preparation as a stunt driver for the Dukes of Hazzard, you are not going to make that turn and will be frantically searching for a way to turn the car off. And you won't have three seconds.

It would be best if the factories could make cars that can listen and respond to their drivers. So, if you scream like a frightened wolverine the car shuts off. Or better yet slows gracefully and takes it's delirious passenger safely to the nearest curb and dials his therapist.

That would be cool, but I imagine it would require even more complicated technology, and there could be differences between manufacturer implementations. For one, you scream like the aforementioned wolverine, for another like a stuck pig. Confusing.

Luckily, there's a low-tech and simple answer to the conundrum which has been employed on motorcycles for ages: the Kill Switch. A simple little rocker arm that when flicked cuts power and turns the vehicle off. Period. In far less than three seconds, with no tapping or counting.

There you go automobile folks, problem solved. I await my commission ...

The Latening

For the past five years or so the viewing public have been carefully prepared by the powers-that-be to accept 'The Tonight Show, with Conan O'Brien'. When Jay Leno downshifted and throttled off to prime time infamy, most of us were ready for the move.

I say 'most of us' since the biggest portion of the show's target audience last watched when Johnny Carson was awake behind the wheel. That group has either moved to 'Letterman' (Johnny's originally intended heir) or has used the time for other activities, perhaps those fueled by Viagra, the invention and rise of which came after Carson's reign.

So, with such foresight and careful preparation, how is it possible that NBC let it all unravel so rapidly and messily? I ask that question because I don't know the answer, but I can take a guess: the folks who run the network now likely aren't the same who ran it five-odd years ago. Or, if they are, they've either started taking drugs - or stopped taking them.

Someone certainly must have been high or fighting withdrawal when they offered to move Leno back to 11:30 for a half-hour, and shift 'The Tonight Show' to midnight. Certainly they must know that the first 30 minutes are the golden ones. Most people who stay up after the news come to watch the monologues. If something else sounds interesting, like a musical guest or hot movie star - or animals, always a perennial favorite - they might keep watching. More likely they'll press 'record' and move on to sleep or something more immediately entertaining (see Viagra, above).

In any case, it's those first 30 minutes that count. The advertisers know it. And so do Leno and O'Brien even if the network wonks seemed not to. That's why Leno agreed and O'Brien didn't. They both knew that Leno at 11:30, even for half an hour, would be 'The Tonight Show' in effect, if not in title.

So it's back to square one, minus the redhead. Which is a shame on many levels, not least of which is the seeming waste of Conan's youth - he's given his best years to NBC, and there's not much call for another late night talk show - or a 45 year old comedian. Luckily he has a decent lawyer and is getting a nice settlement out of this divorce.

Toll of Years

I first saw the remake of 'War of The Worlds' in a theater not far from the Bayswater Underground station in London. As I sat watching the Tripods wiping out the human race the world was not quite four years past the downing of the twin towers, and just a little more than a week from the Underground bombings.

As Tom Cruise ran through the street dodging death rays, the war in Iraq was two years old, and 'Mission Accomplished' was already an embarrassing memory.

The Toll of the Years was heavy and getting heavier. In that theater, in a city which would soon know sorrow, I had no revelation of the future. I wouldn't have believed it if I did: five more years of war added to the Toll. Tens of thousands dead. Impossible, I would have said.

But here we are now, with no end in sight. Death still stalks Iraq, and runs wild in Afghanistan. Bin Laden still abides in Pakistan - or somewhere, perhaps powerless, perhaps not.

And a new President in the US hasn't stemmed the Toll. What will? Perhaps the Tripods will have to come tearing up from beneath our cities. Knock us all down separately, to raise us all up together.

Could Spielberg craft a happy ending for us? Could Cruise help us accomplish this impossible mission?

If I knew then, in that theater in Bayswater, what I know now, I might have gone crazy - or entered politics.

Boxing Pandora

James Cameron makes interesting choices in projects. And he likes to connect the dots between them - just look at 'The Abyss' and his latest epic 'Avatar' and compare the bioluminescence in both. (The jellyfish-like 'seeds' in 'Avatar' were another reminder.)

The word 'Abyss' brings to mind a deep, dark, mysterious, and dangerous region, which the movie populated with benevolent and angelic aliens. The name 'Pandora' - the moon inhabited by Cameron's aliens in Avatar, conjurs a place filled with mischief and destruction. And indeed the flora and fauna of Pandora are dangerous to humans - even the atmosphere is promptly fatal. But the natives of Pandora are well-adjusted to their world, and in their way as benevolent as the beings in 'The Abyss'.

In both movies the true dangers come from humanity. Maybe that's why some people are experiencing the strong desire to make 'Pandora' real - and suffering when they realize they can't.

As far as I could discern, no one ever had that reaction to 'The Abyss', but then the oceanic deep is a scary place, even with angelic aliens bustling about. Pandora with all it's dangers seems more appealing, as long as you can go as one of the natives.

So, for those who long for that perfectly balanced world, and can't find it here on Earth version 2010, is there a way to box Pandora and bring it home? Can it be made real enough to satisfy those humans who long to escape humanity?

Holodecks, we need you now...

Global What?

Proponents of Global Warming point to summers with record high temperatures. Opponents point to winters with record lows.

I can vouch for the high temperatures - although last summer seemed a step back towards the average, it's felt generally warmer and warmer here in LA. Cold is out of my experience, unless it's the cold felt 100 feet down in the chilly Pacific, or the icy blast that knifes through gaps in the jetway in frozen midwest airports. But it does seem the winters have been tougher and tougher - at least the winter we are experiencing now has been a brute.

So what will it be, runaway greenhouse or Ice Age revisited?

That is an important question. Our human culture can prepare for one or the other, but not for both. Actually, if it was just a technical problem, we could probably deal with a future of increasing extremes of both heat and cold, but only if all countries cooperate. From what I've seen and heard, there's little chance of that without clear and unequivocal evidence. And that's exactly what we won't get if the world is getting both warmer and colder. 'Experts' will shout each other down at conferences and media pundits will rail against whatever position they feel will garner the highest ratings.

At the moment, the argument is one of Global Warming versus Status Quo. Either we are getting warmer or we aren't. I haven't heard any advocates of Global Freezing yet, which is fortunate since that would only complicate the debate. And our representatives can't handle a complicated debate. Nuance is anathema to politicians, unless it's about politics.

So, I cringe when asking for it, but could Mother Earth allow us a year or two of clear directions in temperatures, warmer or colder but not both? We need the clarity to spur needed action.

Rumble, Rumble

Egad, a 6.5 quake shakes the coast of northern California. With the pot-leaves quivering in those cool oceanside forests and fields, a growing demand for medical MJ in the southern portions of the state is easy to predict.

Millions of stress and worry migraines will need dimming. And moving ground causes nausea if you happen to be jiggling on top of it. Depression too is a justifiable indication for natural medication, and what's more depressing than the certainty that you will be next. A quake is coming, and it has your number.

Los Angeles sits just west of the moving edge of the Pacific Tectonic Plate, which is twisting like some infernal dial, slowly, but inexorably tearing LA along with Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and other points of interest north by northwest. Cracks in the earth's crust spiderweb outwards from the edge and fan beneath LA, ensuring nothing gets spared. Anyone seen 2012? Exaggeration in the cause of entertainment, but it got one thing right - no spot of land in LA LA Land will get a pass on the shake, rattle, and roll.

So expect lines at the local 'herbal collective'. Normally, as far as passersby would discern, ours is lifeless. Only by entering the convenience store next door would you detect vital signs. The store shares a dividing wall with the collective, and that wall is not hermetically sealed. The sickly sweet smells of herbal culture sneak across. Let's just say you would be well advised to avoid that store for a month in advance of any mandatory drug testing.

But life will soon be obvious at that outlet and many others like it. Now that NorCal has been rung like a bell, thoughts will crystalize around fears of who 'gets it' next. Anyone following earthquake reports the past few years will crystalize the reality best: everywhere else has been hit. Japan, China, Indonesia, South American, Mexico - the usual suspects on the 'Ring of Fire'. It's like a giant-size Wheel of Fortune only it's not good for the needle to stop on you.

But it may be LA's turn.

Or possibly San Francisco. Yeah, that's it, San Francisco. Simpatico Medicos in the Haight, get your prescription books ready ...

One If By Land

lines that is ...

In these days when expectations are falling like leaves in a hurricane, one thing we DO take for granted is staying connected.

And there are so many ways: facebook, twitter, email, cell phones, tapping into the DOD communications satellite.

Who could survive a day without contact from a friend, or a dozen friends, or even people you dislike but love to mock (virtually). Who could survive a sudden lack of intel on the latest Hungarian recipes of national security interest?

Not me. And that's why I keep my Land Line.

Yes, I have an old-fashioned phone connected by wires to other phones. Well, actually, it's connected to computers these days, but gosh darn it, the connections to those digital boxes are good old copper wires. Unless they are fiber optics, but who doesn't like light?

Wait, you say? How can I keep connected using puny Land Lines? Where's the Magic in that, Jack?

Easy - when that bored geek somewhere decides to launch a denial of service attack on every major connectivity service on the internet, just for kicks and possibly his masters thesis, I can pick up my Land Line and call someone and ask 'What's Up?'

I'll probably be calling tech support. Possibly the very geek that crashed the net. What could be more connected than that?

Welcome 2010: Try, Try, Again

I began the year 2009, like many others did, with a good deal of hope. Cautious hope, but hope. And there have been reasons to believe hope was justified. Not many, but any improvement was welcome.

The economy began to show signs of renewed life. Some banks made profits, a few made big profits. A few even gave their chiefs big bonuses while keeping the money spigot tightly shut to borrowers. The job losses slowed (but haven't stopped), and in a few industries people were getting hired rather than fired. I could actually afford an occasional latte at Starbucks again (only a 'Tall', though).

Our government appeared to care. At least in comparison to the last administration, which cared about 'the average Joe' as much as Sarah Palin cared about being governor of Alaska, which is to say only as much as minimally necessary.

President Obama came out ready to cook and immediately stuck his fingers in every pie that needed re-baking or a new recipe. Maybe too much too soon, but he was trying, and he did seem to really care, even if we were left with a few old finger-poked pies where we'd hoped for something new, tasty, and complete. It didn't help that his loyal republican opposition acted like nightmare competitors on 'Iron Chef' who, rather than providing alternate dishes, simply interfered with Obama's cooking by turning off the stove and hiding ingredients.

And the conflict in Iraq has apparently subsided. At least the news media aren't reporting much about it, instead focusing on the increasing mess in Afghanistan. But with Iraq no news is probably good news, so count that as a positive.

On the downside, we are still sending soldiers to fight, kill, and die in undeclared wars against enemies we can barely distinguish from 'friends'. Our politicians are more partisan puppets than ever, with big business and the very rich pulling their strings and getting most of their love. In some very important and sad ways, the more things appear to change, the more they stay the same.

So, if 2009 was a year characterized by 'at first you don't succeed...', then 2010 will have to be the year of 'try, try, again'. Let's hope more tangible progress is made.