If I didn't know better, I'd begin to believe that my name was Alice and I have found myself down a rabbit hole . . . because there seems to be an ever-increasing disconnect between reality and how people are reacting to certain events of the world.
Ferinstance: the White Sox?!?!?!? In a sweep!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Ferinstance the second: Harriet Miers's withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme Court. I never found her lack of judicial experience a flaw--the Constitution does not require that judges only are eligible for selection to the highest court in the land. Heck, the Constitution doesn't even require that nominees be attorneys!
The Founding Fathers were onto something there. The Court could use a non-lawyer or two. And I am speaking as someone who graduated in the top 10 (not top 10%, top ten) of her law school class. Lawyers get so caught up in the niceties of the law that they can forget how reality works. An example: there is a legal concept that someone who is drunk has diminished capacity and thus is less responsible than a sober person would be for his actions which resulted in harm to another. As a purely intellectual exercise, I understand that. However, as a human being I object to the entire concept. No one poured the booze down the drinker's throat. Why can't it be said that since the drinker knew he was drinking, which by definition put him at risk of drinking to excess, he assumed the risk of having to take full responsibility for whatever harm he caused while drunk?
Anyway, I seemed to be in the minority, but I actually thought Miers's lack of ivory tower experience in exchange for "real world" experience was a plus for her. Oh, well. It's moot now.
My objection to Miers was that she seemed to be the sort of person who would say whatever she thought her audience wanted to hear . . . and that she didn't seem to have a serious grasp of certain Constitutional issues and principles to boot. In a written questionnaire submitted to her some time ago by a right wing group, she said she would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Yet some time later, in a speech before a women's group in Texas, she said she would work to protect a woman's right to choose. I do think that, lawyer or not, judge or not, someone who is nominated to sit on the Supreme Court ought to have a basic philosophy of life other than (and higher than) naked expediency.
As I said, however, it's moot now. But before I thank the gods for that, I must warn us all to brace ourselves--because whomever Dubya nominates now may be 1000 times worse than Miers ever could have been. I sense a "be careful what you ask for" moment coming. That leaves me in a state of generalized dread.
Another, but milder, disconnect: "Scooter" Libby has been indicted, not for violating any laws about revealing the name of a covert CIA agent, but for lying about whether he revealed the name. As with Watergate, it's not the act, it's the coverup, that's going to bring the bad guys down. And yet Karl Rove remains unindicted . . . for the moment. Don't get me wrong: I understand entirely prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's rationale for indicting Libby as he has. Fitzgerald knows he can prove the lies, which constitute perjury, making false statements, and obstruction of justice; he doesn't yet have the evidence, largely because of the lies, to indict for the underlying violation. Emphasize yet. I hope he doesn't stop there, despite what George Stephanopolous said about Fitzpatrick's body language indicating that he's done, because there is obviously more dastardliness to be revealed.
Will the true believers get it, however? No. They are still claiming that Dubya was not wrong to go into Iraq because "the intelligence was faulty." They are conveniently ignoring the fact that Dubya knew the intelligence was faulty and insisted on using it anyway, but that's because that's not what they want to hear.
And more than 2000 of our precious troops are dead. I agree with John Kerry on this one. It's time to get our act together in terms of pulling out. The Iraqis have their new constitution; let them fight it out amongst themselves as to what final form it will take. The longer we stay, the more we are naught but a recruiting tool for Al Quaida.
And a few random disconnects to complete the missive: have you ever noticed that the people who assure us that "money isn't everything" are the people who have all the money?
Likewise, the people who say "money can't buy happiness" are in complete denial about the misery that the lack of money can cause--especially when the lack of money interferes with getting decent health care or other basic necessities of life.
Likewise, the people who squawk the most about people needing to take "personal responsibility" for their actions are the ones who won't take same for their own misdeeds. Whenever this is pointed out to them, they switch to the tactic of blaming the victim. Neither leopards nor cheetahs (say it with a Bostonian accent to get "cheaters") ever change their spots, apparently.
And now for something completely different: God bless Rosa Parks. I'll bet she's sitting at the very front of St. Peter's bus.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Saturday, October 15, 2005
On Hurricanes And Other Actors On The Human Condition
I have been overwhelmed by the events surrounding hurricanes Katrina and Rita and their aftermaths. And yet the natural disasters just keep coming. New Jersey and New Hampshire, among other places along the Atlantic coast, presently seem to be under water . . . Pakistan is shaking itself to pieces, literally; it's already snowing blizzards in Colorado; and we're experiencing long-term drought in eastern Nebraska.
Right after Katrina, a lot of "pundits" wrote letters to the editor of the Omaha World-Herald, suggesting (often in impolite terms) that New Orleans did not deserve to be rebuilt and that it would be a waste of money to do so.
If we followed that philosophy, no one would be able to live anywhere. We'd have abandoned San Francisco in 1906 (and 1988), Tucson in 1983 (flooding), Galveston at the turn of the last century, much of Florida after hurricane season (pick your year), Grand Island, Nebraska after the night of the 9 tornadoes, and so on.
Face it, folks. Life is risk. There is no place 100% safe to live. [Personally, and after having lived in/near all of the above-mentioned areas and in Southeast Asia besides, I prefer to stay in Nebraska: if a tornado comes, one has a possibility of NOT being smacked, but when any of the other named natural disasters occur, if you're where they are happening, you are smacked.--Ed.] Besides, we need to live in these "dangerous" places: they have ports, natural resources, gorgeous scenery, and other advantages we deem necessary for modern life.
What we need to stop doing is trying to control nature, for that seems only to increase the magnitude of the inevitable disasters when they occur. We must not destroy our wetlands (indeed, we must restore them), we must work to stop global warming, we must build with known technologies (and also develop new technologies) that let buildings survive earthquakes, storm surges, mudslides, and the like . . . and we need to remember that we are all in this together. More cooperation and less sniping are always in order.
If we'd learn to build and inhabit with nature and each other in mind, we'd better survive the storms of life, and better preserve the planet for our progeny to boot.
* * * * * * * * *
Coincidentally, I've just finished reading two books with widely divergent subjects, yet each deeply resonant after the present spate of natural disasters. The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin, recounts the events and aftermath of a blizzard that hit the northern Midwest on January 12 and 13, 1888, wherein an inordinate number of children died because the storm came up suddenly just as they were leaving their rural schools for the day. "In three minutes, the front subtracted eighteen decrees from the air's temperature. Then evening gathered in and temperatures kept dropping in the northwest gale. By morning on Friday, January 13, 1888, more than a hundred children lay dead on the Dakota-Nebraska prairie . . ." (emphasis added)
The Great Mortality, by John Kelly, tells "the intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time."
Both books are so well-written that they read like novels, not like dry, dusty, self-important "History." Both books reveal the spectrum of human reaction, from selfless bravery to selfish venality, in the face of nearly incomprehensible events. And both books in their analysis show that some things don't change, no matter the time, the place, or the circumstances.
In The Children's Blizzard, one of the sub-stories is that of the fledgling federal weather service, some of its members' interactions with local bigwigs with clout, and those members' ouster in the face of the need always to find and punish scapegoats while letting the real architects of disaster off the hook. [Whatever happened to 'the buck stops here,' anyway?--Ed.] In The Great Mortality, one of the sub-stories contrasts what happened in the aftermath of plague in England as opposed to on the continent, concluding that "[s]ocial cohesion is a complex phenomenon, but applied gently--with respect for the vast differences in time and place--the Broken Windows theory of human behavior may speak to the relatively low level of upheaval in Black Death England.
"The theory, which informs much modern police work, holds that the physical environment buttresses the psychological environment the way a beam buttresses a roof. Why? Broken windows, dirty streets, abandoned cars, boarded-up storefronts, empty grass- and refuse-covered lots send the message: 'No one is in charge here.' And when authority and leadership break down, people become more prone to lawlessness, violence, and despair."
Eerie, isn't it? The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I read that, because the reported chaos in New Orleans fit that description exactly.
And yet, I wonder. Does the theory drive our perceptions, or do our perceptions drive the theory? After all, much of what was alleged to have happened in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina in actuality did not--I refer to the rapes, the robberies, the massively reported looting, and the shootings and beatings and what not. As more time passes, and better perspective is gained, we are finding that members of the Fourth Estate were so eager to get scoops on the air that they didn't check their facts first. And then the alleged horror stories took on lives of their own, and became embedded in our memories AS IF they were 100% fact, when they were in fact mostly false.
We have a microcosm of the birth of an urban legend here, methinks.
Don't misunderstand me. I do think the Broken Windows theory of human behavior is a good one. I've seen it myself. Neighborhoods that clean up and erase gang-related graffiti quickly after it appears have much less trouble with gang-related crimes than do neighborhoods which allow the graffiti to stay and besmirch them. But it's like any other stereotype: rooted in an observable fact, it can and has become so distorted and rigid that it becomes 100% true in people's minds despite being an incomplete description of isolated, specific behavior in one particular instance. So, did we see the rampant violence and lawlessness in New Orleans because that's what we expected to see, or did what we (thought we) saw shape our interpretation of events?
I am not sure what all this means. Every generation bemoans the declines in civilization and civility it sees as its children and grandchildren take over running the world . . . and this has been true for thousands upon thousands of years. Seems to me that we'd have hit bottom long ago if the naysayers in the older generations were completely right.
We must remember that difference does not inevitably equal decay.
And yet, when I compare "Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!" to "Who let the dogs out?" I wonder.
Right after Katrina, a lot of "pundits" wrote letters to the editor of the Omaha World-Herald, suggesting (often in impolite terms) that New Orleans did not deserve to be rebuilt and that it would be a waste of money to do so.
If we followed that philosophy, no one would be able to live anywhere. We'd have abandoned San Francisco in 1906 (and 1988), Tucson in 1983 (flooding), Galveston at the turn of the last century, much of Florida after hurricane season (pick your year), Grand Island, Nebraska after the night of the 9 tornadoes, and so on.
Face it, folks. Life is risk. There is no place 100% safe to live. [Personally, and after having lived in/near all of the above-mentioned areas and in Southeast Asia besides, I prefer to stay in Nebraska: if a tornado comes, one has a possibility of NOT being smacked, but when any of the other named natural disasters occur, if you're where they are happening, you are smacked.--Ed.] Besides, we need to live in these "dangerous" places: they have ports, natural resources, gorgeous scenery, and other advantages we deem necessary for modern life.
What we need to stop doing is trying to control nature, for that seems only to increase the magnitude of the inevitable disasters when they occur. We must not destroy our wetlands (indeed, we must restore them), we must work to stop global warming, we must build with known technologies (and also develop new technologies) that let buildings survive earthquakes, storm surges, mudslides, and the like . . . and we need to remember that we are all in this together. More cooperation and less sniping are always in order.
If we'd learn to build and inhabit with nature and each other in mind, we'd better survive the storms of life, and better preserve the planet for our progeny to boot.
* * * * * * * * *
Coincidentally, I've just finished reading two books with widely divergent subjects, yet each deeply resonant after the present spate of natural disasters. The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin, recounts the events and aftermath of a blizzard that hit the northern Midwest on January 12 and 13, 1888, wherein an inordinate number of children died because the storm came up suddenly just as they were leaving their rural schools for the day. "In three minutes, the front subtracted eighteen decrees from the air's temperature. Then evening gathered in and temperatures kept dropping in the northwest gale. By morning on Friday, January 13, 1888, more than a hundred children lay dead on the Dakota-Nebraska prairie . . ." (emphasis added)
The Great Mortality, by John Kelly, tells "the intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time."
Both books are so well-written that they read like novels, not like dry, dusty, self-important "History." Both books reveal the spectrum of human reaction, from selfless bravery to selfish venality, in the face of nearly incomprehensible events. And both books in their analysis show that some things don't change, no matter the time, the place, or the circumstances.
In The Children's Blizzard, one of the sub-stories is that of the fledgling federal weather service, some of its members' interactions with local bigwigs with clout, and those members' ouster in the face of the need always to find and punish scapegoats while letting the real architects of disaster off the hook. [Whatever happened to 'the buck stops here,' anyway?--Ed.] In The Great Mortality, one of the sub-stories contrasts what happened in the aftermath of plague in England as opposed to on the continent, concluding that "[s]ocial cohesion is a complex phenomenon, but applied gently--with respect for the vast differences in time and place--the Broken Windows theory of human behavior may speak to the relatively low level of upheaval in Black Death England.
"The theory, which informs much modern police work, holds that the physical environment buttresses the psychological environment the way a beam buttresses a roof. Why? Broken windows, dirty streets, abandoned cars, boarded-up storefronts, empty grass- and refuse-covered lots send the message: 'No one is in charge here.' And when authority and leadership break down, people become more prone to lawlessness, violence, and despair."
Eerie, isn't it? The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I read that, because the reported chaos in New Orleans fit that description exactly.
And yet, I wonder. Does the theory drive our perceptions, or do our perceptions drive the theory? After all, much of what was alleged to have happened in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina in actuality did not--I refer to the rapes, the robberies, the massively reported looting, and the shootings and beatings and what not. As more time passes, and better perspective is gained, we are finding that members of the Fourth Estate were so eager to get scoops on the air that they didn't check their facts first. And then the alleged horror stories took on lives of their own, and became embedded in our memories AS IF they were 100% fact, when they were in fact mostly false.
We have a microcosm of the birth of an urban legend here, methinks.
Don't misunderstand me. I do think the Broken Windows theory of human behavior is a good one. I've seen it myself. Neighborhoods that clean up and erase gang-related graffiti quickly after it appears have much less trouble with gang-related crimes than do neighborhoods which allow the graffiti to stay and besmirch them. But it's like any other stereotype: rooted in an observable fact, it can and has become so distorted and rigid that it becomes 100% true in people's minds despite being an incomplete description of isolated, specific behavior in one particular instance. So, did we see the rampant violence and lawlessness in New Orleans because that's what we expected to see, or did what we (thought we) saw shape our interpretation of events?
I am not sure what all this means. Every generation bemoans the declines in civilization and civility it sees as its children and grandchildren take over running the world . . . and this has been true for thousands upon thousands of years. Seems to me that we'd have hit bottom long ago if the naysayers in the older generations were completely right.
We must remember that difference does not inevitably equal decay.
And yet, when I compare "Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!" to "Who let the dogs out?" I wonder.
What I Did On My Autumn Vacation
Mens sana in corpore sano.
Well, those of you who know me know that I was forced to give up on the corpore sano part quite some time ago . . . but I am doing my best to maintain a sound mind. Believe it or not!
How do I do that? I like to do the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle--in ink. My goal is not just to finish it, but to finish it without making any errors. I have even achieved that goal more than once. I would have achieved it even more than I have if I were more careful about making sure I was entering answers in the right boxes.
I recently got hooked on the new puzzle craze, Sudoku. I completely wrecked 2 of the first 5 puzzles I tried, but I think I have the hang of it now. The goal is to enter each of the numbers 1 through 9 into a grid of 81 squares (subdivided into 9 three by three mini grids) so that each number appears once and only once across each row of 9, down each column of 9, and in each mini grid of 9. A few numbers are already filled in to get one started.
It's really a process of elimination. My approach is to figure out what numbers can possibly fit in each open square. This is done by seeing what numbers cannot be entered because they are already in the intersecting column, row, or mini grid. Then, looking at each available possibility, one will find at least one open square that has only one possible entry. Enter that, then remove it as a possibility from each other open square in its column, row, or mini grid, and so on and so forth.
If you get stuck, look at a row or column that has most of its numbers entered, and figure out what numbers must be used to complete the 1 through 9 sequence. That will eliminate certain other possibilities (which still must be used in the appropriate mini grid), and allow you to enter another number or two.
And you proceed, thinking outside the box while working within the boxes, until you get to a point where there's only one possible number left for each open square, and then complete the puzzle.
But my real passion of late has become the three dimensional jigsaw puzzles known as Puzz 3-D.
Alas, my kitties like them too. The foam on the back of each piece, which is what makes it suitable for 3-D construction, is wonderfully firm yet chewy. So I must be very careful about when and where I construct, and I have to keep my finished products in a room closed off from the "kids."
I've done the Cologne Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, Neuschwanstein (that was close to being irritating: just how many subtle variations in the color white are there, anyway?), the Sistine Chapel--which is neat because many of the pieces have pictures on both sides, so that you can open the roof and see Michangelo's famous ceiling and his Last Judgment--a Bavarian wall clock, with working clockworks, a mini (33" tall) grandfather clock, also with working clockworks, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the London clocktower we Americans mistakenly call Big Ben, and la piece de la resistance, "New York, New York."
That's the largest and most complicated Puzz 3-D of all, with over 3100 pieces, and it includes not only the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, but the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
It took me the better part of two weeks. It was worth every second.
I wonder if I'll live long enough to be able to transplant my brain into a working body.
Well, those of you who know me know that I was forced to give up on the corpore sano part quite some time ago . . . but I am doing my best to maintain a sound mind. Believe it or not!
How do I do that? I like to do the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle--in ink. My goal is not just to finish it, but to finish it without making any errors. I have even achieved that goal more than once. I would have achieved it even more than I have if I were more careful about making sure I was entering answers in the right boxes.
I recently got hooked on the new puzzle craze, Sudoku. I completely wrecked 2 of the first 5 puzzles I tried, but I think I have the hang of it now. The goal is to enter each of the numbers 1 through 9 into a grid of 81 squares (subdivided into 9 three by three mini grids) so that each number appears once and only once across each row of 9, down each column of 9, and in each mini grid of 9. A few numbers are already filled in to get one started.
It's really a process of elimination. My approach is to figure out what numbers can possibly fit in each open square. This is done by seeing what numbers cannot be entered because they are already in the intersecting column, row, or mini grid. Then, looking at each available possibility, one will find at least one open square that has only one possible entry. Enter that, then remove it as a possibility from each other open square in its column, row, or mini grid, and so on and so forth.
If you get stuck, look at a row or column that has most of its numbers entered, and figure out what numbers must be used to complete the 1 through 9 sequence. That will eliminate certain other possibilities (which still must be used in the appropriate mini grid), and allow you to enter another number or two.
And you proceed, thinking outside the box while working within the boxes, until you get to a point where there's only one possible number left for each open square, and then complete the puzzle.
But my real passion of late has become the three dimensional jigsaw puzzles known as Puzz 3-D.
Alas, my kitties like them too. The foam on the back of each piece, which is what makes it suitable for 3-D construction, is wonderfully firm yet chewy. So I must be very careful about when and where I construct, and I have to keep my finished products in a room closed off from the "kids."
I've done the Cologne Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, Neuschwanstein (that was close to being irritating: just how many subtle variations in the color white are there, anyway?), the Sistine Chapel--which is neat because many of the pieces have pictures on both sides, so that you can open the roof and see Michangelo's famous ceiling and his Last Judgment--a Bavarian wall clock, with working clockworks, a mini (33" tall) grandfather clock, also with working clockworks, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the London clocktower we Americans mistakenly call Big Ben, and la piece de la resistance, "New York, New York."
That's the largest and most complicated Puzz 3-D of all, with over 3100 pieces, and it includes not only the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, but the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
It took me the better part of two weeks. It was worth every second.
I wonder if I'll live long enough to be able to transplant my brain into a working body.
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