Independence 2014

In a matter of hours we'll be celebrating our Day of Independence here in the USA.  We celebrate with our families and friends, over food and drink; watching fireworks in the evening after a day spotting warplanes as they fly-by.

Its an old tradition, and - as happens with Christmas, we tend to focus on the fun and forget some of the meaning.

But we shouldn't let this happen to arguably the most important US National Holiday of them all.  We need to remember exactly what Independence means and why we must keep it.

So, when dawn rises on July 4, 2014,  I will spend some time reflecting on the bravery of the founders of this Republic, and the close calls that could have ended the experiment before it began, because it was a close thing, folks.

I will also reflect on the dangers now threatening our Independence, and none of them involve being taken over by another country, or people, or culture.  Our dangers come entirely from within, forced upon ourselves by domestic spying, irreparably divisive politics, and moral disconnects like gun-fans who equate Independence with the ability to stand their ground, no matter what.  Dangers come from crazy rulings that corporations are people and can have religious beliefs and spend unlimited money in elections.  And from government vendettas against investigative journalism - Egypt may imprison news crews but so do we.

We've had times of danger to our independence before, and we've always survived them.  The time since September 2001 has been particularly bad, though, and the threats have been unrelenting to the point that survival of our Independence is in doubt.

The Patriot Act - so named to make anyone considering voting against its intrusive provisions appear treasonous, started us off under a wall of fear.  And it has only gotten worse.  Even our progressive President and his Democratic Party have drunk the  koolaid and invaded our privacy. Put people on watch-lists and no-fly lists on meager evidence with no viable means of redress.  Even killed American citizens overseas without due process.

Its not looking good, folks.  Independence in American is down on one knee and is having trouble rising back up. And now that good knee is looking a little shaky too.

So on July 4, 2014, remember that our founders rebelled against Britain not because they particularly wanted America to be a separate county, but because the British government - their own government - had taken away a measure of their Independence, and they wanted it back.

Spend some time thinking about that and the state of our Independence today; where its headed, and what that may mean for you and your family.  Practice your right to Independent ideas and reflect.  It may be an increasingly rare opportunity.

Mistakes of Logic

The clear window of sound logical reasoning is perhaps the greatest tool available to the human mind.  It helps us decipher truth from supposition, and helps us predict the consequences of actions.

Sadly, logical reasoning - often called 'thinking critically', is a seldom and poorly-applied instrument in the realms of government and law, where you'd think they should be most abundantly and expertly employed.

Hobbling Logic at Hobby Lobby

Take for instance, the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision just announced.  In a 5-4 decree, the court agreed that a private, for-profit company could be excluded based on religious belief from the requirement to pay for emergency birth control as a feature of its government-mandated health insurance.  The majority of the Justices appear to feel that this is justified since birth control is controversial and opposition to it could be a strongly held religious belief.  They said that this decision would not impact other provisions of the health insurance law that mandate other controversial services, but let's examine that logically:

What difference would there be?  That opposition to birth control is a more strongly-held religious belief than other concerning provisions? 

I would be willing to bet you can find people who are as upset about other clauses in the healthcare laws. 

And what about belief systems that say the only healing you should receive comes from God and not from medicine?  Or that only alternative medications and therapies based on strong religious and cultural beliefs are correct and not western medicine?  

Logically, the arguments are the same, and if the right to allow an exclusion based on religion is right in one case, it's logically right in every case.  

Logic is destroyed by biased interpretation - if your personal concern is a dislike of birth control, that's what you seek to exempt on religious grounds. And you make up illogical reasons why the same exclusion does not apply to other mandated procedures and services. But logically, if any one provision can be excluded based on religion, then any of them can. 

Certainly the precedent will be now be set for court cases testing each and every one of the provisions.

Also missing from the Court's decision was any logical consideration of the rights of the employees.  Those working for Hobby Lobby will not have access to the same coverage as those working for other companies.  As the arguers for the Hobby Lobby decision claimed, the company's workers might be able to get birth control from some other path, but that doesn't change the fact that their beliefs are not being considered while the beliefs of the company's owner hold sway.  This makes no logical sense considering the health services are for the individual worker's benefit, not the company's.  A company does not and can not receive birth control; that service applies only to its individual workers.

The Sterling Conundrum

The LA Clippers ownership debacle is another example, with less impact on society but no less illogical.  

You may recall that owner Donald Sterling was purged from participating in the National Basketball Association based on the leak to the press of racist comments he made in private conversations.  Part of that purge included pressure on him to sell the Clippers to another party, but this was something he didn't want to do and vowed to fight the move.

Enter the plan for his ex-wife and co-owner to have him declared unfit based on diminished capacity and forge a deal without his permission.

So, where's the logical mistake here?  Well, simply this:  if Donald Sterling is suffering from diminished mental capacity, then couldn't his racist remarks be the result of that mental deterioration? If so, then he is suffering an illness and should not have been excluded from the League and forced to sell.  On the other hand, if he is not mentally deficient, then he can't be excluded from decisions on the sale of the team.  

It's either one or the other, logically speaking, but our disgust at his rants have biased us against him, and make us willing to listen to specious and illogical arguments being used to disenfranchise him.  We don't like him so we suspend logic, but that isn't the way decisions should be made.  Of course, that's the way decisions are made all the time. 

It's human nature to look for loopholes in logic to suit our biases, but - logically, there are no such things ...

 

Waiting To Go

The hours before a momentous departure lead to introspection.  As I type this the anti-malarials I started a few hours ago are slowly saturating my blood and turning me inhospitable to Plasmodium (it is hoped).  This drug combo also lightens the head and could be fuzzing my thoughts, but I must 'speak' anyway.

You see, my Uncle passed away last week, after a run of 92 years.  We all thought he'd glide through 100 still motoring around his beloved Island, but life ran out and the ticket's been punched for his last great voyage. Near the end, he was more than ready to go, I'm told.  Tired and not interested in fighting for another day.  He'd been through a tough surgery with complications that ensured he'd never go home again.  Instead, he went to rehab and then hospice, and then ... just gone.

The last few weeks of his life, he was just waiting to go.

I can hear you commenting that this man had a long life, and that we should all be so lucky.  And I can't disagree.

But I miss him, and as I find myself waiting to go on another kind of voyage, I can't help but feel a commonality.  After all, we'll all follow him sooner or later.

Memorial Wings

It's a quiet Monday here in Los Angeles, with most of the city relaxing over one more barbecue with friends.

Or it would be quiet if there weren't the periodic drone of old piston-driven props overhead, as a squadron of WWII-era dive bombers or T-6 trainers make the Memorial Day requisite fly-by of military machinery.

Something about an old plane pleases me more than seeing a B-2 sneak its stealthy (but not that quiet) way overheard, but I still wonder why we have to beat the drum.

After all, this day is meant to remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in our wars - and the sacrifices made by their families, friends, and of the greater societies to which they belonged.  When one of our young men and women die in service, a ripple effect alters many lives.

It is that importance of every life and the dearness of the sacrificing of those lives that we should be honoring and remembering today, not the glorification of the wars and war machinery that took those lives away.

April Stumbles into May

A touch of rain... barely; then a foreshadowing blast of high Summer heat borne on the Santa Ana winds, then breezy cooling from the always chilly-'round-here Pacific.

That was how April saw us into May here in Los Angeles.

Or, at least that's how my memory pieces the time together. If I am getting it a little wrong, I should be forgiven. I had other things to think about: family mostly, with all the usual cares that parenthood brings, and work (and there's never been a time I've felt more grateful to be saying that), but also 'World Events'.

'World Events' is quite a bucketful of topics these days, right?  Russia dining on the Ukraine like a colossal mutant housefly dines on a lump of sugar. Syria - merging into the news background while Russia holds the stage, quietly (to us) continuing to destroy itself as the World watches nervously.  Our long-term houseguest Afghanistan keeps vomiting on our carpet but we can't seem to get him out the door, while our ex-roomie Iraq seems bent on erasing the meager few hopeful things we left for him to remember us.

And what would 'World Events' be without another Middle East Peace Snafu as part of the mix?  Just when Mr. Kerry is doing what passes as his best to reboot the reboot of the 'peace process', the Palestinian factions decide to kiss and make up, bringing in a partner Israel just can't get jiggy with.  Where it all goes from here is heartbreakingly predictable, and I'm beginning to think there is no real will on either side to find a solution that doesn't include either the utter annihilation or essential subjugation of one of the sides.  The impasse seems so very deep and wide that not even the ghost of Evel Kneivel on a winged and turbocharged Hayabusa could jump it.

But not even these weighty matters could overshadow the momentous news that Stephen Colbert was going to replace David Letterman on the Late Show.

When that news hit I found out by the flurry of texts I received from my wife.  She is all for it.  Me, I'm a little down since I've come to see the Colbert Report as one of the two non-sports shows I'd continue to watch even if it was broadcast by vampires and cost me a pint of blood per episode.  The change feels like an abandonment to me, and I fear the Late Show format will lobotomize the remnants of the Colbert character we've all come to love and laugh with.

In any case, April is over and we are stumbling through May.  There weren't enough April showers here to bring a real bloom of May flowers, but we can all hope this month will be chill enough to cool the heads of the World's decision makers, and we can make it into June with a little less worry and a touch more optimism.

The Tides of March

March 2014 has been interesting ...

Back in The USSR, Playing Chess - The Ukrainians, at least those living in and around Kiev, decided their future should involve closer ties to the West and not Russia, so they forced out their elected leader who'd chosen to spoon with Russia instead. Looked good for a brief moment for the Ukraine and its people, but like many moves on a chessboard it appeared superb only until the opposition made its move.  'Pro-Russian' (but NOT Russian, they exclaimed) troops, masked and without discernable insignia, and strangely well-organzied for a sudden opportunistic action, quickly surrounded all Ukrainian military bases in the Crimea.  Then also very quickly the Crimean parliament (the region was semi-autonomous, like Scotland only without kilts and the inscrutable accents) arranged a referendum for Crimea to declare itself independent, while at the same time petitioning Russia (aka Vladimir Putin) to take them in. Whew!  That's more action in a short time than the US Congress could ever manage, even with advance planning.  No wonder our government was caught on the back foot by this speed of action. Before we knew it, the game was over, no moves left for us that could win, left to angle for a draw instead of conceding abject defeat.  This tale has one caution to the Crimeans and one moral for us:  be careful what you wish for, because it might come with borscht-induced gastritis; and, never play chess with a Russian, unless you are built of silicon and your name is Deep Blue.

Mystery Over Malaysia - In our modern tracked-from-birth-to-death world, where radar pings every moving thing above 500 feet and satellites can spot a medium sized truck from space, we just don't expect to lose something as big as a Boeing 777.  So how on earth could we possibly lose track of Malaysian airlines flight MH370 and its ill-fated souls?  The mystery of where this giant of a plane went has dragged on for weeks now, reaching the point where some less credible pundits are suggesting alien intervention or some Bermuda-triangle like event.  Evidence suggests the plane was deliberately diverted from its planned course, but why? Nobody who might have a real clue is talking, so its left to the rest of us to wonder and to fervently hope for the innocent people caught up in this nightmare.

Rumble and Choke - Our leaders here in California tell us we are in a drought, but not so bad yet that we need mandatory water rationing.  I don't know, but its been pretty damned dry this 'Winter', and last year was no deluge either, but, hey, we'll take the relaxed attitude for now and watch our lawns wither, and our skies fill up with smoke from the inevitable fires.  And maybe some dust kicked up by the recent March earthquakes (biggest so far of 5.1) rumbling around parts of Orange County.  The cluster of quakes sit on one fault in a web of faults that criss-cross the state, feeding into and out of the Mother Fault, the San Andreas.  When the ground shifts, dust rises into the air. Consumption be done about it? Of cough not! (apologies Woody).

This March we could basically forget about the Ides and focus instead on the whole enchilada.  It's been an interesting lesson in the chessiness of World Politics; a reaffirmation that mysteries can still happen (sadly in the case of Flight MH370), and a reminder that those who live in Paradise will eventually feel the Earth move - and not in a good way.  Happy April, everyone!

Numbers

What's in a number?

Today I heard a couple of numbers that caught my attention:

45% of men will get cancer, and

35% of women will.

Think about that for a moment while you are with your friends and family.  Nearly half of all the men in your circle of friends are statistically likely to face cancer, most likely prostate cancer.  Over a third of all the women you care about are at risk, mainly from breast cancer.

And yet, my impression is that cancer is rising but still affects only a relative few.  That if we don't smoke and abstain from binge drinking our risk is very low.  I'll bet that's your impression too.

But those numbers say our impressions are dead wrong.

I heard another set of numbers on the news as well.  70% of young men and women in Greece are unemployed - whether they have a college degree or not.  The overall jobless rate exceeds 40%.

Take a moment to wrap you head around that.  Now add on top of that unemployment, the austerity budget the Greek government had to adopt to get EU bailout money.

Now stop a moment and figure what the current odds are for a Greek man: about half are likely to be unemployed and doomed to face cancer too.

No wonder the news reports say the Greeks are depressed.

So why am I telling you about these depressing numbers?  Am  I depressed? Am I Greek?  (No and No)

I give these numbers for your consideration, because they mean so much but we pay so little attention to them.  They come at us in the news, fast but not furious, as if meant to draw us in but then allow us to easily forget and move on to lighter fare.

Let's try to remember the important numbers we hear in 2014.  A lot may count on it.