No, I will not give-up my computer!

I smile every time I read something about simplifying our lives, conveyed online, usually on a blog, harping on Zen or the like, yet dependent on high tech. That’s not to say I don’t admire writer Wendell Berry, who eschews TV and computers, writes everything out, since he practices a consistency I admire, though choose not to practice. I may admire Thoreau, but I’m not for building a cabin in the woods or begging the Amish to show me in. I will not give up my computer.

Can you imagine a world without the computer? Actually, I can’t do it, as it’s become a staple of my daily life with its untold benefits. I think it’s probably the same for you. This holiday season, for example, we’ve been able to Skype with our children on the West Coast, and for free. I don’t know about you, but we did our Christmas shopping all online. Smiles come to our faces every time we drive past our biggest mall with its jammed parking.

If we want quick info, there’s Google or Wikipedia.

Want to find a good movie, starting times, prices, you’ve got it.

Want to stick around the house instead, then you can stream that movie right into your computer, iPad, or television.

Get a reserved seat for a concert or sports event? No problem.

Like a good book or music album? At your finger tips.

Like to travel and at the best fares? Good lodging? Car rentals? Try Orbitz, Expedia and the like, or go direct to the airlines themselves.

Me, I’m a news buff and draw on my iPad for my daily fix.

Computers are also changing the way we learn, and present in virtually every school. Computers are making college accessible for millions, especially working adults. As a retired educator, I know this area first hand, having taught several courses online.

When it comes to having a bit of fun, it’s exciting to play scrabble, chess or bridge with others across the globe; or in your privacy, play mind games such as Sudoku, WhirlyWords, and Ladder; do crossword puzzles, or for just sheer fun, have a go at Angry Birds. No need for guilt here about wasted time. Medicine increasingly tells us that playing these games keeps our minds young, our reflexes nimble, and may even ward off dementia.

Some say computers are lessening our social contact. Unfounded in my book, what with Facebook and Twitter, along with countless chat sites offering a wide range of interests. I ride an MP3 500 Piaggio scooter. Sure enough, there’s a forum dedicated to my scooter. Believe me, I couldn’t ride without it.

Time Magazine has just selected “The Protestor” as its annual person of the year for 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and the subsequent collapse of entrenched tyrannies in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; incipient revolts in Syria and in Russia; and in our own country, the groundswell of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. All of these dynamic, history shaping movements have been, and are, energized by the Internet’s capacity to publicize and coordinate universally in mega seconds. Isolating us? I think not.

I like languages and I’m crazy about Spanish. With a computer, I can now listen, read, and share one of the world’s most spoken languages.

And let me not forget my being able to blog with you guys out there across the globe, a number of you responding via Twitter. By the way, my largest number of readers next to Americans, happens to be those of you in Russia, followed by Germany. The Internet makes this togetherness possible, and I rejoice in my new brothers and sisters.

If you asked me what I thought was the greatest of tech break-throughs, I’d be hard-pressed. They all build on each other: Gutenberg’s movable press, widening reader access; the steam engine, ushering in the Industrial Revolution and leading to railroads and, eventually, to cars and trucks; the typewriter, electric light, radio, telephone, TV. Don’t forget the airplane. How about the miracle of movies, today’s primary art form? The list goes on. I can’t really say which has been the most ground-breaking, but I do know computers, enhanced by the World Wide Web and its HTML linkage, has made all of us players in the modern landscape.

Gotta go now. Got emails to send out!

–rj

America’s assault on walking

Whatever happened to the good old activity known as walking? Doubtless the ease in using a car to get where you want to go is its principal cause. Add to the list, our addiction to television. According to the American Time Use Survey (June 2011), the average American watches TV nearly three hours a day. It’s just so much easier after working all day to adopt the couch-potato route.

I don’t know about you, but in America we walk so seldom that sometimes I have this paranoia about it akin to the way I feel when I bring cloth bags to the grocery store as a gesture to keep things green. Hey, am I the only guy doing this thing? What am I, some kind of goon? Hey, stop your staring!

But, then, walking can prove quite hazardous these days. Here in Lexington, Ky, we’ve lost several pedestrians to cars over the last several weeks, people simply trying to cross the street. Guess you don’t have to ride a motorcycle to invite danger. Looking for an adrenal rush? Can’t beat walking! In 2009, The National Highway Traffic Safety Board reported that some 4200 of our fellow citizens were bumpered into eternity, another 59,000 injured.

Doctors nonetheless frequently recommend walking as part of the health regimen, say 30-minutes five days a week minimum; and, oh, emphasis on vigorous. Strolling just doesn’t cut it. Damn! Why do they have to weigh me down with still more guilt?

I don’t know how it goes in Europe these days, but I have memories as a student there walking with European friends distances measured in hours, not miles. How far is it to Magdalen (an Oxford college). Answer: about a half-hour. I so hope the American paralysis, already widespread over there, has exempted walking.

It wasn’t like this for me as a kid. In Philly, we didn’t have this yellow funnel showing up at your door. I walked to school day-in and day-out over a mile going and coming in all kinds of weather and through all kinds of danger (not necessarily of bumper mode). I was hit by a car once, but I take responsibility for that, a 10-year old jay-walking kid not looking both ways.

On days off from school, I mean days I took off as a hookey addicted kid, I’d easily rack up miles that would test the limits of any pedometer, scouting the sites of the downtown city. On several occasions, I’d even venture walking over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden, NJ, no mean feat as any Philadelphian can tell you.

Just maybe behind our growing aversion to walking lies a value shift, or preference for insularity over the great outdoors. Gone are the porches that once fronted American homes. Today we prefer our stadiums domed, our shopping in sequestered malls. We ride around in our cars with windows rolled-up. Blame it on the rise of air conditioning, if you will, but the plain fact is we venture out less.

Even our children. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to gulp down breakfast and get to the good stuff like playing stick ball against factory facades in urban streets. Nowadays, more often than not, many of us have to oust our kids from their rooms, away from keyboards, video games, and cell phones, thrusting them outside. On a summer day, our streets resonate a Stephen King air of eery quiet in their absence of children. Where are the Jonnys and Susys riding their bikes, running down the street, playing hop scotch or jumping rope? Where have all the children gone? Long, long time ago.

For the few of us still mustering that evening walk, the same solemn emptiness as evening huddles in street corridors and, everywhere, a blue light emanating from house windows.

Our aversion to walking extends even to what wilderness remains. We want roads. We want even more of them so we can look out from our metal cages, while enjoying the boon of instrument panels that can nullify outdoor temperatures. As adults, we take our insularity with us in an umbilical cord of laptop, smart phone, and iPad. Our assault on walking is simply a facet of our declaring war on the great outdoors. We want our gadgets with us in our tents.

Now the wilderness is one thing. What we really prefer are parking lots. The idea is to park close and keep the motor running.

On life’s caprice

Guest editorial: Karen Joly

My wife, Karen, wrote this piece yesterday and I suggested she allow me to publish it for our blog readers. I think she speaks to many of us of life’s whacky incertitude and our need to get on with life each day in the here and now. RJ

A 22 year old Texas A&M football player was killed Thursday when he swerved to avoid a vulture in the road and ran into an 18 wheeler head-on. He had, earlier in the day, been with his teammates as they delivered packages to the needy.

I am over twice his age and yet I think about how short a time my 58 years seem…how I have articles of clothing or even pots and pans that are older than he will ever be..and it comes to me that, in the grander scheme of this planet’s history, how minuscule, how truly fleeting our lives are.

Why did this kid, Joseph, only get 22 years? Why have I made it safely to 58 thus far? And then there’s Dad. Saturday he will be officially just eight years shy of the century mark. Granted, some days he barely knows what’s going on, but he still “is.”

I delude myself daily with some false sense of security, avoiding the reality of my own mortality, a denial born out of my fear of winking into oblivion as those who have gone before me: Mother, all my grandparents, Steve Jobs, Elizabeth I, Aristotle, and billions of nameless others who left this world, some after mere seconds, some beyond a century…all of them gone nonetheless.

See, I love life. Beats the alternative. In fact, I’d give anything to spend every day that is left to me doing what I did this afternoon: riding a saddlebred around the arena…walking, trotting, and cantering until my toes are numb, my arms fatigued, my legs absolute rubber. I may have been riding only nine years, but I can say without hesitation that life would suck worse than a two-bit whore if I had to give it up.

Also, I love my life with RJ. He is a good, kind, fiercely loyal man. He is hardheaded, passionate, and spoils me rotten. In our 18 years of marriage, we have enjoyed more fun times than not…and I look forward to as many more as good fortune will allow us. (Because that’s what it is after all: fortune…fate…chance…metaphorically, a roll of the dice.)

Though I’ll take what I can get, the Karen model comes with this caveat: Driver is highly competitive and exceedingly greedy.

Time for a third party?

And so the defiant uprising of House Republicans has come to its whimpering end, as I predicted in my previous post. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell played a big part in this turnabout, publically decrying the House stance. President Obama would allude to the senator in his plea yesterday afternoon for House Republicans to accept compromise with the Senate version. A repentant Boehner now admits recalcitrance wasn’t the wisest thing for House Republicans. I will put it more bluntly: setting up a Rubicon was just plain dumb, ironically casting Republicans into a pro-tax increase faction while making Democrats look like the party of the 99 percent.

I think the fallout likely to linger, with Republicans generally perceived as a special interest constituency catering to Wall Street, this despite overwhelming Republican support in the Senate for a two month extension. The average Joe Citizen is governed more by impressions than specifics.

What we really need is a viable political alternative. For years, it used to be that the two major parties simply functioned as mirror images, until a robust Conservative versus Progressive alternative began to emerge in the late 60s. Now the choice is again diluted, this time by ideological purists who make it folly for most of us to vote for them.

I think it’s high time for a potent third party to give Americans a true option. This third party could be parented by disaffected moderate Republicans. Yes, they really do exist. The history of third parties is that they can’t win. Still, they often serve their purpose in influencing the major parties. They can also be spoilers, venting their dismay, and denying incumbency, as happened in 1992 with the defeat of Bush senior, not because of reneging on his “read my lips” pledge not to raise taxes, but because of Ross Perot’s entry into the race, siphoning off 18% of the vote. This made possible the election of Bill Clinton, with less than 50% of the vote. History would repeat itself in 1996, with Perot again entering the race.

In 2012, a viable mainstream candidate could actually win as opinion polls continue to show widespread disaffection with the Washington entrenched of both parties, including our President. Here the going gets rough. Just who would lead that third party? I’m open to our putting our heads together. There’s still time.

I know one thing: America needs a hero. Hey, where’s Josiah Bartlet when you need him?

Theater in D. C.: political impasse once again

Background:

Those of you who keep up with the news are aware of the House Republican leadership’s torpedoing the Senate’s recently passed legislation allowing for a two month continuation of the payroll tax, unemployment insurance, and an increase in Medicare reimbursement fees for doctors. It waited until the Senate adjourned for the holidays to turn up the heat in getting a bill more to its liking in its severer aspects, contending a one year extension is less disruptive to the market place.

Although House Speaker Boehner has announced the appointment of eight House Republicans to serve on a compromise committee to work out the differences, Senate Democrats appear unwilling to return to Washington to secure an agreement by year’s end. The House had passed its own version on December 13, but it included several controversial measures including provisions for financing the legislation.

In fairness to House Republicans, however, the House passed bill called for a one year extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, which President Obama had also called for. It also preempts a 27% Medicare reimbursement cut for doctors through 2013, or a two year extension.

The bottom-line behind the Republican action in the House lies in the under reported details of the House version.

Key aspects of the House passed bill:

Blocks the EPA from imposing new restrictions on industrial boilers.

Requires the President approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline with 60 days, unless he declares the project as not serving the nation’s interests.

Requires a freeze on he pay of civilian federal employees through 2013.

Raises fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for mortgage insurance.

Eliminates Medicare coverage for preventative medical care.

Raises Medicare premiums for retirees exceeding $80,000 income, which would include social security and pensions.

Prevents illegal immigrant parents from collecting child tax credit refunds.

Cuts off food stamps and unemployment benefits for the wealthy.

In short, House Republicans desire a fuller implementation of their bill’s provisions. Its foot-dragging is, doubtless, a throwback to the November, 2010, election that replaced many incumbents with militant Tea Party devotees, who feel they must fulfill their mandate to the electorate.

To do so, they are willing to resort to brinksmanship.

Likely outcome:

Despite only a ten day countdown remaining and the usual media stint for promoting a worse case scenario, I am confident the House and Senate will resolve their differences. I take the speaker’s defiance to be simply theater. Do Republicans really want to risk the fierce censure of the American public come January 1 and new elections?

House Republicans have gotten themselves into a corner in their back-room tactics, to say the least. The danger is that they may choose to save face rather than reconcile with their Senate colleagues, which includes many Republicans.

While we may not always like it, good politics often calls for pragmatic approaches to secure the welfare of the people, not the narrow interests of ideologues callous to the suffering of millions of their citizenry.

Do House Republicans dare to go there?

Do they dare to repeat by their actions Marie Antoinette’s damning dictum: “Let them eat cake”?

I think not.

Measures, complicated to be sure, nonetheless exist to save face and resolve the crisis. A settlement will be reached, though even then, not to everyone’s liking.

Quiz on American presidents

Quiz on our Presidents?

We’re all human, even our Presidents, of whom there have now been 44 in our brief appearance on the world scene. Let’s have a little fun and see how much you know about some of them. My answers come at the end. Be patient. Don’t cheat.

1. Which president spoke to his wife in a foreign language to avoid others from listening in? Extra credit: which language?

2. Which president liked telling racist jokes?

3. Which president formerly served as a public executioner?

4. Which president was known for his high pitched, squeaky voice?

5. Which president hated cats and would shoot them?

6. Which president was our shortest?

7. Which president killed a man and never served a day?

8. Which president had a different birth name?

9. Which president spoke with a lisp?

10. Which president couldn’t stop running to the outhouse?

Answers:

1. Herbert Hoover. He and his wife were both fluent in Chinese, having resided in China during the Boxer Rebellion.

2. Woodrow Wilson. He was considered an excellent mimic.

3. Grover Cleveland. While sheriff of Erie County, NY, in the 1870s, he twice put the noose around the condemned and sprang the trap door.

4. Abraham Lincoln.

5. Dwight Eisenhower. In his retirement, He would shoot stray cats at his Gettysburg farm.

6. James Madison. He was 5’4″. Our tallest? Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Baines Johnson at 6’4″.

7. Andrew Jackson. He had killed a man in a duel, surviving his own wounds.

8. Gerald R. Ford. He was originally named after his biological father, Henry Lynch King, who abandoned his family.

9. John Adams. He refused to wear dentures.

10. James K. Polk. He suffered from chronic diarrhea and would die from a bowel disorder.

Christopher Hitchens: a great heart stops

I woke up around 3 AM this morning, not unusual for me as I grow older and sleep less. When I do, invariably I resort to my iPad, usually tapping on the BBC news. I was saddened at the banner headline announcing the death of Christopher Hitchens from pneumonia as a complication of esophageal cancer. He was just 62.

I came upon Hitchens late, starting to read him, hit and miss, about 10-years ago. I never read any of his columns in Vanity Fair where he wrote monthly. I did, however, read several of his books, and I presently have his just published Arguably, a collection of many of his essays. An Oxford grad, he wrote 17 books, notably among them, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Articulate and fearless, he proved a formidable debater with short patience for proponents of the irrational such as religionists, whom he held were an inveterate threat to freedom and intellectual integrity and “the world’s main source of hate.”

In politics, he aroused the fury of the Left in his embrace of the Iraq war. Saddam was a menace worth getting rid of. He hadn’t started out this way, being very much a part of the 1960s ferment in opposing the Vietnam war. It turned him off when the liberal establishment manifested its tepid response to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for the death of writer Salman Rushdie.

One of my delights in reading Hitchens was his unabashed willingness to take on all comers rather than follow engrained opinion. Among those he excoriated were Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger, and Hillary and Bill Clinton.

I was also drawn to him because we frequently shared the same heroes; for example, Paine, Franklin, Jefferson, and Orwell.

Several years ago I concluded I could no longer accept the religious framework of my earlier years and embraced atheism. It made sense and has given me an abiding peace. Vanished are the mental squabbles concerning good and evil. We live in a world not of Mind, but of cosmic dice. Hitchens never failed to render my own dissonance into eloquence. He not only gave me comfort, but more importantly, courage. It’s just as difficult for Atheists to come out as it is for gays, perhaps more so, as lately gays have more traction in the mainstream.

One day, like a lightning bolt, it suddenly flashed upon me that I was a child of that remarkable phenomenon in history known as the Enlightenment. In its embrace, I found new heroes, among them Hitchens, bold devotees of rationality in a world governed largely by impulse and indulgence, to its own peril.

As Hitchens bravely noted in his final weeks, our lives are rationed. It follows then that we should measure out appropriately our individual portion wisely. In this, Hitchens was our exemplar as a fervent warrior for humanity’s potential secured by Reason and bold excoriator of hypocrisy and cant.

Just moments after his death, Salmon Rushdie movingly tweeted, “Good-bye my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops.”

A candle has, indeed, gone out, but its spark remains to light yet other candles.

P. S. to There they go again!

Well, the Republicans have done it, passed a bill of unprecedented meanness. For the full scoop and in conjunction with my previous post, please see Bill Passes.

There they go again!

As I write, the Republican dominated House is about to vote its pleasure on continuing the payroll tax cut, that is, the downsizing of paycheck contributions to Social Security formerly set at 6.2 on the initial $106,800 of income. This percentage had been in play since 1990 until it was cut this year to 4.2 as a move to stimulate consumer spending and help rekindle the economy.

The President would like to see it cut still more, or to 3.1 in 2012. The Republicans, bent on reducing deficit spending, have also included a measure to reduce federal unemployment insurance benefits from the current 73 weeks to 33 weeks. (Federal benefits begin when workers have exhausted state unemployment compensation, which usually runs 26-weeks.) They are also proposing a means test for Medicare recipients who have income exceeding $80,000. Income includes Social Security benefits, which is already subject to taxation. It’s a curious kind of legislation: one hand gives; the other takes away.

Since Republicans have made much of their opposition to increasing taxes, you would think it would be a no-brainer to agree to continue the payroll tax cut, but this isn’t the way this increasingly irascible party of ideologues thinks these days and it’s here they’ve revealed their hand, making a proviso in the bill that the controversial, now delayed, Keystone XL Project be implemented speedily, all of this in the face of a promised veto by the President. Seems they’re more interested once again in corporate profits than the welfare of the American people, many of whom cannot find work in an economy spun on its heels by a Wall Street/Banking axis.

The Republicans amaze me. If ever there were a political entity bent on self-destruction, you have it now in this current goon squad defiantly bent on disrupting the political process, callous to the middle class and the growing poor.
Just look at the pack of loonies seeking to run against the President in 2012. This is the cast of characters who’ve accused Obama of not being American born; deny global warming; want to cut back the EPA’s budget, if not abolish the agency; support a cut-off in aid to nations allowing abortion; and have vociferously opposed gays. One candidate denies evolution. One candidate, a former front runner, withdrew amid multiple accusations of harassing women, while the current front runner seems to prefer serial polygamy, though touting family values. GAWD, this is more fun than the circus!

I’m looking forward to November 2012 and Americans throwing these architects of gridlock out of office in what increasingly promises to be a landslide of their own making.

Looking through a glass darkly: the Strauss-Kahn case reexamined

All of France is a buzz, and why not? New revelations suggest that former IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the once preeminent obstacle to French president Sarkozy’s reelection, may have been set up by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo, who accused him of rape when she entered his room at the Sofitel Hotel in New York on May14.

We know that New York police initially regarded the case as credible, only to drop the case given a plethora of inconsistencies in Diallo’s account. Additionally, she had been overheard on a telephone call, telling a friend there was a good deal of money to be made. The Guinea-born maid had also lied at several points on her immigration application.

What’s reignited the bonfire is a just released surveillance video showing two hotel security personnel conversing with Diallo after the alleged rape, then dancing after her departure. Strauss-Kahn supporters say it lends evidence that Diallo was part of a set-up. Wallace Thomas, Diallo’s lawyer, says it does nothing of the kind; that, in fact, it supports Diallo in showing her reporting the incident to security personnel.

What may matter, however, is that one of the two individuals, the other unknown, has been identified as Brian Yearwood, who had been recently in communication with John Sheehan, security expert with Acor, which owns Sofitel and whose boss, Rene-Georges Querry, had once worked with a man presently in Sarkozy’s intelligence.

Before one scoffs in unbelief, I strongly recommend he/she read veteran investigator reporter Edward Jay Epstein’s detailed account appearing recently in the Dec. 22, 2011 New York Review of Books. Epstein’s no slouch when it comes to investigative reporting, possessing a special acumen for coming up with what others miss.

Key swipe records, to which Epstein had access, indicate a waiter enters the suite at 12:05, allegedly to clear the breakfast trays. We don’t know when he left, since key swipe records only record entrances. The waiter later refused to talk with police investigators.

At 12:06, Diallo enters. We don’t know when she left, except that she reenters at 12:26. In short, she and Strauss-Kahn may have been together 20-minutes. We do know that Strauss-Kahn called his daughter at 12:13 to tell her he would be late for their lunch. It’s likely that Diallo was with Strauss-Kahn for seven minutes, or in the interval between her entering the suite and Strauss-Kahn’s call.

Mysteriously, Strauss-Kahn’s BlackBerry has its GPS circuitry disabled at 12:51, which required technical know-how.

At 12:52, Diallo is brought to the hotel security office for questioning. Present are Brian Yearwood; the hotel’s chief engineer, Adrian Branch; the hotel’s security chief; and an unidentified tall man who had escorted Diallo to the office.

At 1:31, Branch calls the police, or one hour after Diallo first reported the incident.

Two minutes after the call, Yearwood and the tall man move into an adjacent room and “high-five each other, clap their hands, and do an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.”

Strauss-Kahn has admitted to the sexual encounter. The big unknown is whether Diallo initiated it to obtain forensic evidence against Strauss-Kahn.

And who was in nearby room 2820, which Diallo entered before proceeding to the Presidential Suite, room 2806? She would tell police she didn’t enter room 2820 after the assault, but key swipe records indicate she did. Why did she lie?

Why hasn’t the tall man been identified?

Why haven’t we been told who was the occupant in room 2820? Was it the tall man? Did she consult with him just before going into the Presidential Suite, then afterwards? We know he escorted her to the security office. Where did he come from?

Strauss-Kahn’s BlackBerry has never shown-up. BlackBerry records indicate it never left the hotel. Was it stolen to eliminate Strauss-Kahn’s intent to have it checked by technical experts for bugging? We know that he had received a text message earlier in the morning from a friend working in Sarkozy’s political office warning him that his BlackBerry email to his wife had been read. He should be aware his phone might be under electronic surveillance.

Is all of this far fetched? Consider that Sarkozy was facing a good probability of defeat up against Strauss-Kahn in next April’s elections.

The lust for power often drives politics and is surely up there with those two other primary motivators in the repertoire of human behavior, sex and money.

Think about the farce of the recent Russian election.

Think back to Watergate.