Friday, June 27, 2008

Strict Constructionist--NOT!

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has done it again. In writing for a razor-thin 5-4 majority, he ruled that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution does not allow any governmental entity to prohibit "handguns held and used for self-defense in the home." He bolstered his assertion by claiming that the "historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted proves his view. This from a man who claims to be a strict constructionist, whose understanding of the Constitution and its meaning starts and stops with the intent of the Founding Fathers.

Right. And I'm the Queen of the May, and I have a bridge to sell you. This ruling is just another example of the lie the so-called strict constructionists promulgate. The fact is that they use truly "strict construction" only when it suits their purposes to do so. To anyone out there who disagrees, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

If Scalia were to implement his claimed beliefs, he'd begin his analysis by looking within the "four corners" of the document itself. It is axiomatic that the words the Founders used, and the way the Founders structured those words, reveal most clearly the Founders' intent and meaning. Grammatically, when subordinate clauses [sentence elements that cannot stand as complete sentences on their own, usually because they lack a verb--Ed.] are written ahead of the main clause of a sentence, those subordinate clauses modify or restrict the meaning of the main clause--because they are literally listed ahead of it and thus are enhanced in their importance relative to it. But that fact does not support Scalia's purposes, so he ignores it.

The Second Amendment in its entirety says: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." So the prohibition on the people's right to bear arms literally is modified by the government's need and power to regulate state militias. (In today's lingo, the National Guard.)

But for Scalia, people have an absolute right to keep handguns in their homes. Nor can the government make them equip those guns with trigger locks or keep those guns disassembled. The government has no power to regulate these things. Yet Scalia's opinion also says the government can require that guns be licensed and can restrict or even prohibit the presence of guns in governmental buildings or other public accommodations. So he ignores all of the Second Amendment but the phrase "shall not be infringed"--except when he says the right is infringed. This isn't even loose construction. It's bald-faced legislating from the bench.

The irony here is that Scalia's ruling actually confirms that the US Constitution implicitly affirms the people's right to privacy. Scalia believes no right to privacy exists because it's not "within the four corners" of the document. But his ruling makes it the sine qua non for implementing the Second Amendment (you have the unfettered right to keep handguns in your home, remember). This is the identical rationale the Court has cited in the past for implementing the other rights explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Oops! Scalia didn't see that one coming, I'll wager.

Scalia also stressed that the government cannot restrict law-abiding citizens from owning handguns because handguns are Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense. They "can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police." I'd love to see some statistics on how many times this scenario is what unfolds when there's a gun-related incident in someone's home. The more typical scenario according to everything I've read is that the burglar manages to take the gun away from the homeowner and turn it against him. When the burglar gets away, yet another gun is loosed illegally on the streets. Scalia's ruling therefore may have the real world consequence of increasing the number and presence of illegal guns, thus the amount of violence, in our society. I'll bet he didn't see that one coming, either.

What's scariest about Scalia's opinion is that despite Scalia's and the media's assurances that nothing in the ruling prevents governments from keeping guns, assault weapons, and the like out of the hands of felons, this ruling opens the door to other cases being brought to the Supreme Court with the aim of restricting the government's authority to do just those things. The National Rifle Association intends to keep pushing its agenda. According to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom." [Emphasis added.--Ed.]

I don't place much trust in LaPierre's assertion that these rights are only for law-abiding Americans. The other thing that too many people fail to realize is that laws do NOT change behavior. If someone is determined to do something that's illegal, he's going to do it. What laws do is give those of us who want a civilized society the means to impose consequences on him.

With guns, however, we move into an area where imposing consequences is not enough. Nothing can make up for the lives lost to gun violence. Yet for Scalia and LaPierre it's OK, because the violence is largely confined to minority areas--like Washington, DC, the site of the law Scalia's ruling strikes down. I think I am safe in presuming that Scalia does not himself live in a part of DC infected with gun violence. So far, anyway. Remember: as the number of guns spreads, so widens the circle of violence around them.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

A Little Sports, A Little Politics, A Little Of This And That

As for Fresno State winning the College World Series goes, never bet against Cinderella. Go Bulldogs!

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Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous: after ESPN aired Fresno State's wonderful win Tuesday, it showed an NBA Draft Preview. The commentators were blatant in their disregard of what was best for the players themselves while discussing the NBA rule requiring players to be a full year out of high school before becoming NBA draft-eligible. It gives the NBA an extra year to evaluate the playere' abilities, and the NBA doesn't have to pay those players while waiting that extra year. It's also better because with the rare exception of players like LeBron James, these players don't leave high school "NBA ready."

The commentators didn't say it would be better for the players to get a year of college education for its own sake, just in case they sometime get so injured that they can no longer make a career in the NBA; they didn't say it would be better for the players to have an additional year to get beyond being teenagers and learn how to live and behave in the world as adults; they didn't say that it would be better for their still-growing bodies just to get another year in before having to collide repeatedly and often with full-grown NBA players. I will concede that the "they're not yet NBA ready" comment implies these things--but the vast majority of the discussion focused on how much better the rule was for the NBA and its finances. The interests of the players themselves were secondary, a mere throw-away.

Is it just me, or is the naked gall of "Capitalism" getting ever more brazen? Don't we as a society WANT to value character and attitude and behavior ahead of money?

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Lately, most of the political discussion of energy policy has focused on the need to end our "dependence on foreign oil." What's wrong with this picture? How 'bout if we work to end our dependence on OIL, period? It's a finite resource. It's going to run out. Even if we drill everywhere and ruin ANWR among other places, even if drilling technology continues to improve, the OIL itself is going to run out. Based on the then-existing technology, we originally thought we were going to run out by the end of the 1970s. But our will to invest in alternate energy sources faded almost instantly once the 70s OPEC embargo ended.

So here we have another example of America's collective historical short-sightedness. And the chutzpah of John McCain to admit that most of his energy policy proposals are themselves gimmicks! Puh-leeze! Then again, as P.T. Barnum said, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." One of my cousins has maternal relatives who, in line with their fundamentalist beliefs, sincerely believe that since the Earth is only 6,000 years old, there's no such thing as fossil fuels, and that the oil is provided by God and will never run out . . . QED.

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Why have the pictures about Big Brown's loose shoe on his right rear hoof just now come to light? More importantly, if the loose shoe explains his poor performance at the Belmont Stakes, why didn't the trainer and the medical staff and the owners notice it when they examined the horse after the race? No one on any of the sports reports about it that I've seen, heard, or read has even asked the latter question, let alone tried to answer it. Nor has anyone ever addressed the issue of the abnormally high air temperatures as they may directly have hurt Big Brown's bid to win the Triple Crown.

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I am no fan of Adam "Pacman" Jones, but Don Imus's remarks Monday and Tuesday were inexcusable and unbelievable. On Monday, after Imus's sports reporter recounted the litany of Jones's problems with the law, all Imus wanted to know was "What color is he?" When told Jones was African-American, Imus said, "Well, there you go. Now we know."

On Tuesday, Imus said he was but making a sarcastic point about how the law unfairly picks on black people. I might be willing to cut Imus some slack--a neutral reading of his words, without hearing the tone and tenor and context of his Monday conversation, can be stretched to cover Imus's claims as to what he meant by what he said. Two reasons make it totally impossible to let Imus off the hook, however: (1) he's already screwed up badly (remember the Rutgers women's basketball team remarks?); (2) on Monday, just before he put his foot in it, Imus was talking about how people who go to nightclubs where there are drugs and booze and women and guns should not be surprised when bad things happen and the law shows up to arrest people. Thus the context of his remarks Monday becomes "how stupid ARE these people?"

As he said on Tuesday, Imus admitted he's have to be an idiot to say what people [myself included--Ed.] are claiming he said. Right. He's an idiot. His racism is so ingrained that he can't even see it, even after all the trouble he's already made for himself in the past. As Tom Johnson said on NFL Live, "I heard what you said and I heard the way you said it."

Too bad Imus's employer, WABC-NY, doesn't get it, either. No disciplinary actions are planned against Imus's most recent racially-insensitive outrage. How sad that no one seems to care enough to get really worked up about it, either.

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A high school senior in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, hacked into the school's computer system and changed his grades from Ds and Fs to As and Bs. He apparently did the same for a few friends. He also stole exams and answers. He was caught, and the family and his lawyer are up in arms about how "his life should not be ruined because of this." Though his hacking gave him the same consideration from college recruiters as students who actually earned their grades--effectively degrading the efforts of those who earned theirs--even those classmates think the charges are "a little harsh." Multiple incidents of theft, fraud, breaking and entering, and the charges are "a little harsh"?

I think I'm going to puke. When did such blatant cheating become "no big deal"? This is no Ferris Bueller prank. This is repeated serious criminal behavior. Yet the student responsible should not have his life ruined? Not to make him face the consequences of his actions is to reward his criminal behavior. If we do that,will it be any wonder when our entire country goes down the toilet? This is beyond sad. This is tragic.

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How do the people who claim that speculators (by using the so-called "Enron loophole") are NOT driving the price of gas through the roof explain away that this is exactly what happened to the electric energy markets in California when people there were getting hit with $600/month electric bills just before Enron collapsed? Record windfall profits, record high prices, consumers getting squeezed dry, the energy producers trading energy futures instead of producing energy, and the only thing these same consumers want is to open ANWR to drilling?

What astonishes me the most about this is that even a cursory study of American history reveals innumerable episodes of deregulation producing excessively greedy profit-taking, greatly hurting ordinary people, eventually prompting re-regulation, and when markets settle down a bit, the push for deregulation starts all over again. The affected industry may change, but the pattern is a constant cycle in American history.

I say again: greed is not a positive fundamental social value on which to base a civilized society. It pits people against each other instead of allowing us to find ways to work together for the ultimate benefit of all of us. Ah, well. Wiser heads than mine have already realized that not to know one's history is to be doomed to repeat it.

Monday, June 23, 2008

My Modest Proposal

OK, I know. I'm no Jonathan Swift. Neither is anyone else, except Dean Swift himself. Nor do I advocate the eating of Irish infants . . . but I do have a modest proposal about another English obsession: soccer.

Of late, I have been watching the UEFA matches on ESPN, along with several World Cup qualifying matches. I have been watching soccer on a more or less regular basis ever since my three-year stint of living in Europe. I still don't get what all the fuss is about. Soccer is BORING! Actually, it's more than that: it's irrepressibly drab and awful. [Thank you, Michael Palin.--Ed.] I suppose Europeans would tell me the same thing about baseball, but I disagree. In baseball, there is strategy and movement on every pitch, and no one knows exactly what will happen at any given moment. In soccer, on the other hand [or foot--Ed.], everything comes down to the same three maneuvers: move the ball toward the goal, veer off to the side, kick it back to the middle, and hope someone redirects it into the goal. Hockey is similar in this regard, but it, too, is more interesting than soccer for two reasons: (1) the field of play is smaller; (2) the pace of the game is much faster. If I could choose, I'd prefer to watch hockey to watching soccer--but I prefer even more to watch baseball to watching either hockey or soccer.

Yet I keep trying, in the hopes that sheer exposure to the game will somehow open its mysterious attractions to me. So far, no luck. I suspect this has to do with how the winner of any given match is decided. In the vast majority of matches, nobody scores (or if anyone does, the sides typically are tied at 1-1) and the game comes down to penalty kicks. Penalty kicks always make me think of the old joke about the guy who takes home his beer and pours it straight into the toilet because he's "eliminating the middle man." Thus my modest proposal: let's just skip the 90+ minutes of pointless running around and go straight to the penalty kicks. What a great time-saver! It has the additional advantages of being (1) very interesting immediately and throughout, and (2) faster-paced than the interminable "game" played to get to said kicks in the first place.

But my modest proposal will never fly--TV advertisers would never go for it. No place to put all the ads that normally infest sports telecasts.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Last night, I heard once again Cindy McCain's sniping at Michelle Obama for Obama's comment some time ago that for the first time, she was "proud of [her] country." McCain said, for those of you who didn't hear it, that she had no idea what Obama was talking about, because she's "always been proud of [her] country."

I started thinking about all the reactions to Obama's comment, and I realized something I'd not noticed before. All the people who sniped at her were members of what traditionally have been the "Have" elements of our society. No one from a background that traditionally called a "Have Not" has complained about what Obama said, at least, not that I've heard. OK, I've heard a few lower economic stratus whites spew about it, but let's face it: they're bigots, as their overall behavior demonstrates.

True, the Obamas are wealthy--much more so than I, for instance--but by white folks' standards, their means are still relatively modest, and since it takes wealth to participate in national politics, they've come a long way, baby (largely by dint of their own efforts). And I can understand perfectly well what Michelle Obama meant: a black man, of mixed race ancestry, is for the first time being taken really seriously at the highest levels of national American politics. [No, I am not discounting Jesse Jackson and others who've run before--without them blazing the trail, Obama would not have been able to get to where he is--but I don't think anyone except naive idealists gave Jackson's try for the presidency any serious chances of success. Obama has a more than serious chance at success. He's actually well ahead of McCain in several very significant national polls.--Ed.] This is a cause for celebration, as it means that significant portions of the American body politic have gotten past the prejudices of the past.

But it's also perfectly clear why people like Cindy McCain and Rush Limbaugh snipe at Obama's comment. Their vast monetary resources have insulated them from the daily realities many of us face. It's easy to be a patriot when you're on the receiving end of the country's largesse, and not the ones being squeezed. You can afford to lobby to put the country's financial burdens on people other than you: those the least able to afford it. McCain inherited her money--and the profit she stands to make from the potential sale of Anheuser Busch to a foreign company is not only obscene, it strikes me as being un-American. How can you take Budweiser and sell it into overseas control? You can if your fundamental loyalty is to making money and not to your country's well-being and self-image. Yes, Limbaugh "earned" his money by spewing hatred at anyone not of the Radical Right, but he's obviously forgotten his roots. He started out wanting to be a rock n' roll DJ, but he failed at that--and ever since, he's taken out his revenge against those who rejected him as a DJ by slamming those of us who, in his perception, share the values of the people who rejected him.

In some ways, they are no different from the people who make money off their profession of their Christian faith. Not just the televangelists (who are all charlatans and con men and women), but people like Thomas Kincade, the self-styled "Painter of Light." Not only did he not invent the painting technique he claims to have invented (Impressionists were doing it 100 years ago, people), he seems to think he's justified in charging hundreds of dollars for a single lithograph--that's a print, not an original--of his paintings because gullible people will pay that much for them: people who are moved by his "sincere" Christianity and his thankfulness for all of God's blessings that have rained down upon him (apparently because of his artistic talent and because he's such a good and faithful believer).

I'd like to see just how much of a good Christian he'd be if his lovely home in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, and his family, and his bank accounts, and everything else were taken away from him. It's easy to preach the Protestant version of the Gospel, which I call the Gospel of Prosperity, when one is more than financially comfortable. That doesn't have a lot to do with Jesus, frankly. I think the Jesuits are much closer to the Truth when they say that the reason Jesus came to Earth was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." At least that's more consistent with what I read in the Bible than what the rich folk read--and don't--in theirs.

Lest you think I've gone completely off topic, my point is that all this demonstrates that people who have never known want, or the feeling of being a second-class citizen--or who have known it, but who've escaped it and deliberately forgotten it--seem totally unable to get outside their own heads and even try to understand what people who aren't "just like them" are saying. And why.

Someone wrote an op-ed column about this recently (I think it may have been Leonard Pitts, Jr., but I cannot remember--my apologies) in terms of race relations. Surveys show that white people, by and large, look at the past 40-50 years and see how much better things are now: no more legislative bans on interracial marriage, no more sitting in the back of the bus, and so on. They thus think that the civil rights problems of the past have been solved. As a result, many are amenable to the idea of ending affirmative action and other programs (that were the only reasons any of these situations have improved in the first place).

Blacks, on the other hand, mostly see how far they still have to go: most are still stuck in the mire of economic segregation, with poorer neighborhoods, lesser quality schools, fewer opportunities to break out of such straits, and (worst of all) the intractable attitudes of those who couldn't care less. The difference is as stark as night and day. The problem is that there's no level playing field on which to start. I'm not exactly enamored of affirmative action--I would prefer that Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson be true, that "our Constitution [be] color blind," but until everybody starts by being able to attend the same high quality schools and living in decent housing, I don't see any way to get rid of it. It's not perfect, but it's the best alternative we have to make up for even some of the inequities and injustices of the past.

But back to the root of the problem: people are talking past each other instead of to each other. There's no true communication when that happens. Each side has presuppositions that inform its point of view. The side with less power knows what the other side's presuppositions are--it has to, in order to survive. The side with more power, however, doesn't know and doesn't care about the other side's presuppositions. It doesn't need to know or care; it already has more power, so it feels free to ignore anything challenging its world view. But remember: might does NOT make right.

If we want to make the reality of America better reflect the ideals of America (you know, to form a "more perfect union"), however, we need to get those with the social, economic, and political power to stop sniping at those with whom they disagree and start examining--and trying to understand--why others disagree with them. Oh, and to make Cindy McCain stop plagiarizing cookie recipes.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

People Listen, But Are They Really Paying Any Attention?

I have a friend who is very intelligent yet who insists that Paul Simon's song "I Am A Rock" is the ultimate anthem to independence. This mystifies me, as I am equally sure that the song is the ultimate expression of lonely, agonized pain. Of course, my friend was not an English major, so perhaps it is not surprising that he doesn't see the literary devices in Simon's truly poetic lyrics which reveal Simon's clear intent.

The character singing the song is trying to convince us and himself that he is what he claims to be, "a rock . . . an island" who "feels no pain" and who "never cries." He is frantic to do this because he knows in his heart (even if he doesn't know it consciously) that just the opposite is true. If he really were so strong and independent, he'd be out among people, loudly proclaiming his strength, not hiding alone in his room, looking out at and down on the cold and impersonal world. (Hence the images of "cold and dark December" and a "silent shroud of snow.") Also note how the "and an island never cries" lyric seems to stumble to a halt at the song's end. The hesitancy with which it is sung shows the character's own lack of belief in what he's singing.

Besides, earlier in the song he says he is "hiding" in his room. Someone who was really so strong and independent most definitely would not be "hiding." There are additional literary devices that can be teased out of the song, but I've made my point. Nor is my friend's misinterpretation unique. Other people--lots of them--have misunderstood or misinterpreted other songs over the years, too.

When I was a junior in high school [Yes, back in the Dark Ages--Ed.], the song of choice for every prom seemed to be Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven." Here is a song about someone full of self-delusion, who thinks she can buy happiness because she is rich. This strikes me as not being the most appropriate theme for a prom, but I guess no one on any of the prom committees got past the words "stairway to Heaven" and thought that was a great image to use for the prom's theme.

In the same vein, starting a year or two earlier, Carly Simon's song "The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be (You Want To Marry Me)" seemingly got played at every wedding reception and even during some weddings--despite the fact that this song is most assuredly NOT a paean to love and marriage. It's the somber cry of disillusionment of a woman who feels trapped and who has no other options but to marry the man who's asked her, despite her knowing her future will be full of isolation, loneliness, and despair, as the song's lyrics make plain. No irony here. It's stated flat out. Yet nearly no one gets beyond the title lyric to see what the song really means.

I see this tendency to ignore what's really being said also affecting and infecting people's ability to examine and digest the news. How anyone listening objectively to the news can continue to support not just Dubya's administration, but also John McCain's run to become "Dubya, Part III" is totally unfathomable to me. Yet (at least in these parts) a lot of people still do support both Dubya and McCain.

Many times it's because the people doing so presume that (1) anyone who disagrees with them is biased [but they never bother to examine their own biases first--Ed.] and (2) [and worse--Ed.] anyone who disagrees with them is a liberal. Gasp! Oh, horrors! That's a fate worse than death to some of the people around here. Yet neither of their suppositions is intrinsically true. But they will not or cannot see how their own biases and presuppositions color their view of the world. [Feel free here to break into a chorus of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black."--Ed.]

I will admit that some of my friends just don't think deeply about any of these matters. They presume that the President (when he's a Republican, that is, and "just like us") would be incapable of doing anything harmful to the country, so they think it is impossible for him to do anything harmful to the country. Even when it's plain as day that he has done harm to the country, they don't believe he could, therefore he has not. "Don't confuse me with the facts--I've made up my mind."

My mother--who is correct about this as she is about so many other things--blames our collectively increasingly short attention span on TV and the Internet. As said span gets shorter and shorter, we pay less and less close attention to things that require sustained thought, and pretty soon, we are incapable of paying attention to much of anything. And so TV and Internet segments in turn get shorter and shorter, starting a vicious cycle that ultimately will leave us unable to pay attention to ANYthing for more than about 5 seconds at a time--without being bored and turning to something else . . . for another 5 seconds. Our collective ruination cannot be far behind.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

For Shame! For Shame!

In the past few days, I have received several emails (from people I've known most of my life--heck, I'm related to some of them) that are full of the most vile lies and frightening predictions about what's going to happen to this country if Barack Obama is elected president. I am stunned by the viciousness of their tone. I am shocked by their hatefulness. I am saddened beyond measure by what they show about how little we as a nation have learned in the past 40-plus years.

Not only do these emails claim that Obama is a Muslim (he most emphatically is NOT), they claim he's already in league with terrorists and is literally going to hand the US over to them if he's elected. Their tone is so extreme that I can see their writers spitting, spewing, and frothing at the mouth.

Now, my correspondents did not pen these emails themselves. They just forwarded them to me, either because they think I agree with them (how wrong is that?) or because they are trying to educate me. I certainly got some schooling, but not necessarily in the way my correspondents intended.

I refuse to quote from the email screeds because I do not want to add even one iota to their credibility quotient [Zero plus one iota is one iota, after all.--Ed.]. I also deleted them from my computer as soon as finished them. Yes, I read them all the way through. Everyone is entitled to a hearing. Besides, I was in such a state of disbelief that people whom I consider friends could say such things, that I was hoping that the emails would end by saying, " . . . NOT!" No such luck. I am left with a filthy taste in my mouth and a deep wish I'd never read the things to begin with.

The original writers are the very people Obama indelicately called "bitter" in his speech in San Francisco several months ago. Believe me, calling these people "bitter" is an understatement. But what saddens me the most is that the writers feel so free to express their bigotry in such vile ways. I know we collectively have a long way to go, but I thought race relations in this country had improved in innumerable little ways which in turn would bring about long-term improvements. Again, no such luck.

The original writers of these embarrassments are at heart afraid. They seem to think that by giving an opportunity to someone not 100% just like them means they are losing something and that they will thus be diminished or reduced somehow as a result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Diversity in success improves all our lives. But they are acting like cornered, wounded animals. They are jaw-droppingly vicious and irrational in their attacks on Obama.

I would like very much to help them, to reassure them, to correct their errors of fact and logic, but I know I cannot. I'd get attacked as being just another one of those evil. liberal, elitists who are trying to ruin the country. I am neither evil nor elitist. I am liberal on most issues, but not because I presuppose the liberal stand is the correct one. I am liberal where I am liberal because I think through the issues using facts and logic to get to what is the best result for the benefit of my country. I LOVE my country, thank you very much. That's why all this blind, raging hatred so distresses me.

Besides, Mark Twain was right: Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Postscript: I am not calling anyone a pig, either. It's just a metaphor!

There Are No Atheists In Foxholes . . . Or In Tornado Shelters

The storms of the past 10 days or so must be the single worst stretch of bad weather I've experienced in all my years in Nebraska. And I was lucky enough to have missed most of the worst of it. [My heart aches for the families of the Boy Scouts who were killed or injured at their camp in Little Sioux, Iowa.--Ed.] Still, it was bad enough.

My house has the good (or bad, take your pick) fortune to be located in the eastern part of Bellevue, equidistant from Offutt Air Force Base and City Hall. I thus get double weather warnings, as the base and the city do not coordinate their tornado sirens. The base's sirens sound when there's an immediate risk to the base; the city's, when there is an immediate risk to the city. Usually, they do not sound at the same time. I have learned from experience that when the base's sirens sound, the threat tends to be far enough south and west of my house that I can disregard the sirens. Likewise, when the city's sirens sound, the threat is to the north and west of my house, and again, I can disregard the sirens. However, when both the base's and city's sirens sound at the same time, the threat is headed right at me, and my moving immediately to the safest part of the basement is in order.

I spent a lot of time in the basement over the past 10 days. Usually late at night. With the power out. I couldn't even watch the Weather Channel for updates. Nor were the cats around--they disappeared into some secret nether region as soon as the first thunderclap sounded, and they didn't come out till well after the storms had passed. On the other hand, once they did come out, they attached themselves to my ankles and shadowed me even when they normally would be napping or otherwise ignoring me.

This has been traumatic for all of us. Every time I hear of a beloved pet that gets lost or killed in a storm, I want to cry. I don't know what I'd do without my "kids." I know they couldn't survive long without me, either, should we get hit by a tornado and separated.

Nor do I want to sound like a "Nervous Nellie." Nor do I want to make the mistake of confusing "weather" with "climate." But I have to wonder, when this many storms come this fast and this early, and daily high temperatures that we don't typically experience till August are occurring in early June, what the heck is going on?

I should not be as astonished as I am that people deny the human impact on climate change. After all, the oil companies and their ilk have a vested interest in denying it; the scientific "experts" [read that "quacks"--Ed.] who deny it are well paid by those who have that vested interest in denying it; and the individuals who deny it seem to engage in other activities that preclude thinking, like getting their "facts" from Fox News.

As a simple matter of logic, however, it is irrefutable: humans are having a massive impact on global climate. The worldwide population of over 6 billion [yes, that's "billion" with a "B."--Ed.] has been on this earth for only a little more than two hundred and fifty years . . . coinciding with the start of the Industrial Revolution. Coincidentally enough, the Industrial Revolution is also the beginning of drastic changes to what humans use for transportation, fuel, manufacturing, and just about every other activity in which we as a species engage.

The volume alone--the population is over 6 times bigger than it's been in all previous history--makes a huge difference. For a visual representation, put red food coloring in an ounce of water. One or two drops hardly shows. Several more make light pink. The whole bottle makes it blood red. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that the higher the quantity, the more extreme the result. You cannot compare the climate of the past few centuries with all the previous geological records and conclude what we are experiencing now is just a "normal swing in the climate cycle." Our mere presence in record-shattering numbers has introduced a variable into the calculation that has to be analyzed on its own terms.

And we know by looking at air quality statistics in, for example, Los Angeles over the past 40-50 years that humans can make things much, much worse or much, much better depending on what they decide to do and how they do it.

If I were to be granted one wish, I'd have to wish that people would think things through before just reacting along what they perceive as their favored political lines. Not everything in this world is political. Nor should it be. But I guess it's easier for many to cling to what they "know," the facts and logic be damned. What a shame! Our collective unwillingness to think or to challenge our presuppositions is going to destroy this planet and everyone and everything on it.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

More Evidence That The Engine Of Our Economy Is Greed

A woman in California has developed a thriving business by creating and selling wedding cake toppers for diverse ethnic groups--including gays. She tried a year or two ago to get her merchandise included in Macy's wedding registry offerings, and Macy's turned her down flat.

Now that gay marriage is legal in California, however, Macy's jumped at the chance to add her product line to its wedding registry offerings. So much so that it took out a million-dollar full page ad in several of the state's largest newspapers to trumpet the fact.

Macy's has decided that it stands to make more money from courting the gay marriage market than it stands to lose by doing the same. Morality doesn't enter into it. Macy's is after the most money possible . . . all in the best interests of its shareholders, of course [she added, sarcastically--Ed] . . . and so will take advantage of whatever new business the change in California's law brings it. If that's not greed, I don't know what is.

What I don't know is why more people cannot or will not recognize that for what it is: naked opportunism. We really should either regulate our businesses to make them comply with our stated moral goals, or give up claiming we believe in one thing but acting like we believe in the exact opposite. I can't stand the hypocrisy.

Consider also the case of General Motors and its negotiations with the United Auto Workers in the 1950s. Walter Reuther, head of the union, suggested that GM come to Washington with him and lobby Congress to make health care for its workers (and by extension, everyone) a governmental responsibility, thus reducing GM's costs and responsibilities under the union contracts. Well, the dim bulbs at GM turned him down flat: (1) it's SOCIALISM [oh, horrors--Ed.]; (2) as the contracts were written, GM was out nothing, because it just passed all those costs along to those who bought its cars. "We don't care about anyone else--we are taking care of our own--and at your expense, so it's no skin off our noses," nicely sums up GM's attitude.

The upshot? GM is now paying for the health care expenses of workers who retired decades ago. Because GM never realized that it was going to have to compete in the auto sales market with higher quality, less expensive imports, GM never realized it was going to have to start eating those health care costs. And now Detroit is the heart of the Rust Belt, suffering unconscionably high unemployment, and GM as a corporation is losing money hand over fist and is no longer the world's biggest car company.

It would have been, and still is, much cheaper for everyone in the country to get health care from one provider than what we're suffering through now. Don't kid yourselves: GM's troubles hurt all of us, as declining sales increase unemployment and decrease demand for both new cars and car parts and thus ripple throughout the entire US economy.

The real reason people are against universal, single-payer health care is because they think it's going to cost them more than they'd otherwise have to pay. [We're back to greed as motivator.--Ed.] They are wrong about that for two reasons. (1) It doesn't matter how many people in your family lived to ripe old ages and died peacefully in their sleep and never saw a doctor till the day they died--it takes only ONE catastrophic illness or injury to wipe you out financially. There's no guarantee that you won't have such an illness or injury, either. You can plan and prepare and do everything right and still get hammered. (Look at what happened to me, if you doubt it.) John Lennon was right about this: "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."

(2) Everyone already is paying higher costs then they would under a single-payer system that covers everyone. Since those costs are indirect, however, people don't realize they are paying them. The simplest example (as cited by Roger Lowenstein in a recent NPR interview about his book While America Aged) is Starbucks Coffee. Starbucks pays more every year for its workers' health care costs than it pays for coffee beans, which are the sine qua non of its business. Starbucks is not paying those health care costs out if its own pockets. It's adding them into the price it charges you for those lattes you drink every day. You are already paying . . . you just don't realize that you are nor how much you are.

The reason a single-payer, truly universal health care system would be less expensive to all of us is that a single payer can negotiate rates for everyone, as opposed to Starbucks' negotiating rates for its workers, and GM for its, and every other employer's for its. [You'd also know exactly how much you were paying, because you'd be able to see the entirety, not just your part of it--Ed.]. To use a crafts metaphor, a single piece of fabric is both more uniform and stronger than a patchwork of pieces loosely stitched together. It's not socialism. It's sensible. Heaven help us if we don't recognize it and fix things soon.

Maybe It's Time For Occam's Razor

I've been waiting since Saturday, along with many others, for the official word on why Big Brown performed so poorly in the Belmont Stakes. I am (as are many others, I'm sure) relieved to know that it wasn't because of the repair to the quarter crack on his hoof; nor that it was because he did not get the Winstrol steroid shot he normally would have received on May 15th (no signs of internal bleeding or other respiratory distress).

I am not, however (unlike many others) mystified as to the probable cause of Big Brown's comedown. He most probably simply didn't like running in the heat. The track temperature at race time was 93° according to the race telecast. This was at 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. All afternoon, horses were being given toddler-sized ice packs immediately after completing their races and being unsaddled. I've never seen that before--anywhere at any time, let alone at Belmont Park in early June. Just as some people feel more energetic in the heat and others wilt, some horses run better in the heat and others wilt. Big Brown wilted. He certainly was unhappy about something--he'd been acting much more fractious than usual all day, and it was easy to see he was sweating even before the race began. [Frankly, I can't blame him. I don't like the heat, either. Nor do I function well in hot weather. I just don't buck and kick. Much.--Ed.]

After all, as Occam's Razor posits, the simplest explanation in line with all the facts is usually the correct one. No other cause was uncovered. No one connected with the horse or the track has said anything about the heat NOT adversely affecting Big Brown. The heat is the one factor at Belmont that Big Brown never otherwise faced. Therefore the heat is most probably what "done him in." Let's hope that Big Brown's connections figure that out and that the horse's future value is not diminished. He didn't win the Triple Crown, but he's no slouch. Whether one assesses his value in terms of future stud fees or in terms of his rekindling popular interest in the sport of kings, Big Brown deserves our applause.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Brilliant!

I just discovered a Robert Kennedy quote that I think everyone needs to read--and to think about, especially as it pertains to their own attitudes:

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not in what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

This crystallizes my dislike of extremism of every stripe, be it religious, political, economic, social, whatever. I confess to being intolerant myself--but what I don't tolerate is intolerance itself. Don't coerce me, and I'll tolerate you, and I'll work to find ways to live in peace with you--but the second you say "It's my way or the highway," I'm hitting the road--to speak out against your intolerance.

Once again, we see the genius of the American system. Compromise is the essence of public life. The government must stand neutral on matters of personal belief, so that everyone's voice can be heard. Call it a "free market economy of ideas." Let the people see and consider all stripes of belief, and decide for themselves what they accept. So long as they give other people room to accept different beliefs, and most importantly, so long as the government, the official power of the state, does not raise one belief set above any other, our system works.

And that's why I so detest the Radical Religious Right. Its members are trying to hijack the government to support their beliefs at the expense of the rest of us. They may have fine goals, such as the saving of all our souls, but just because they think they are correct, they do not have the right to use the power of government to make the rest of us agree with them, even if we do so only "on paper." Too many in the Radical Right think that disagreeing with them means they are being attacked. Far from it. Disagreeing with them may well mean disagreeing with EVERYONE. Disagreeing with them may be the only way to preserve the neutrality of the system for all of us, including them.

Too many of them just don't get the difference between saying "the public schools won't teach your kids about Jesus" and "the public schools can't teach your kids about Jesus." In our system, "can't" is the operative expression. The government must stand neutral, for the sake of its citizens who do not believe in Jesus. Doesn't mean YOU cannot proselytize your neighbors to your heart's content . . . unless, of course, you are becoming a public nuisance or a stalker or the like. It just means you cannot use the government to do your proselytizing for you.

But then again, asking the intolerant to tolerate may be just too much to ask. And so the noble American experiment will collapse into failure, because some of us just can't get out of our own way. And that's incredibly sad.

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!

I see from many news sources this week that a lot of Hillary Clinton's most ardent supporters have threatened either to sit out the November election or vote for John McCain rather than support Barack Obama's bid for the presidency. They are miffed at what they perceive as misogyny directed against Hillary (and by extension, them) by Obama and his campaign staffers.

Let me preface my comments by saying I am in those women's demographic group: 50-somethings who've felt the sting of discrimination against women very personally and directly in their own lives. I was not eligible to apply to the US Air Force Academy once I became a high school graduate--women were not accepted until a few years later. My sports participation predated Title IX, so there was no funding or support even though we were official University of Nebraska representatives (yes, it was bowling. So what? I was good. I was the only one who made it to the All-Star team from NU one year.) Nearing the end of my undergraduate career, I was not eligible to apply for Rhodes or Fulbright Scholarships because they were not given to women. I was subjected to a lot of "women are in law school to get their M-R-S degrees" comments and behavior while in law school (as were all the women in my class). Never mind that I and several other women were graduated in the top 10--not top 10 percent, top 10--of our class. While married, I was expected to subordinate my career to my husband's, but then when he wanted out of our marriage, he said he didn't have to provide me any financial support because it was my choice to follow him all over the Earth. Never mind that I was already physically disabled at that point.

But back to the topic at hand: these Clinton supporters need to get their priorities straight. Obama wasn't my first choice, either . . . but he's a damn sight better than getting a third-Dubya-term-by-proxy by voting for John McCain. John McCain, who says he's for governmental fiscal responsibility, but who has lived off government money all his life; John McCain, who says he is for family values, but who ditched his first wife, the mother of his children, for a rich, blond trophy wife; John McCain, who says he has supported every effort to find out what really went wrong leading up to, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, but who in fact, as his public record shows, has voted AGAINST every single piece of legislation relating to same as being "too expensive;" John McCain, who says he's a maverick and an independent thinker, but whose voting record demonstrates he's a clone of Dubya and a toady of the Radical Right.

Ladies, untwist your knickers! Take a slightly longer view, and use your brains, not your emotions. When the choice is between Obama and McCain, Obama is the only plausible option. Otherwise, you're "burning down the village in order to save it." If you insist on your Pyrrhic victory, you'll have done nothing but prove right all the men who disparage you for being unstable, emotional, whiny idiots who don't deserve to exercise the power of the vote or otherwise express your political opinions.

Politics is tough. There are winners and losers every time. If you take it personally, you guarantee that you'll lose, because you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. Maybe Abagail Adams was too polite when she reminded her husband John to "remember the ladies" as he helped establish the government of the United States . . . but going too far the other way, and having a very public hissy fit, is no way get a better result now.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Bobby?

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Robert Francis Kennedy. This, in many ways, is the day hope died in America. John Kennedy's assassination was a body blow to the country--it knocked the wind out of America. But the twin assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Robert Kennedy in April and June, 1968, were the knockout punches. 1968 descended into chaos after that; the country, into despair; the Right, into repeatedly abusive exercise of power.

Fear (of lawlessness) is what got Nixon elected in 1968--and he turned out to be one of the most lawless of Presidents. I always used to say Watergate made Nixon, hands down, the worst president in US history, because Nixon knew better. Nixon knew history, understood history, and understood America's uniqueness and that America's genius lay in her systems of government requiring compromise to get things done. Nixon signed the original Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, for goodness' sake.

But because Watergate allowed the Radical Right to destroy the moderate wing of the Republican Party, and thus ultimately to let Dubya and his minions take control of our government, Nixon is in large part responsible for the mess we're in today. Dubya and his minions have turned using fear to manipulate the populace into an art form. A perverse art form, but an art form. The reason I now say Dubya's administration is the worst in US history, however, is that Dubya's administration doesn't even care about the pretense of adhering to uniquely American values and ways of doing things. No one in the current government knows a thing about history, judging from the things Dubya and others have said and done. Their only goal was getting, keeping, and expanding their political power by any means at all.

But back to Bobby Kennedy.

As much as I admire John Kennedy's accomplishments, intelligence, genuine wit, and vision for the country, I have to admit that Bobby Kennedy turned out to be the better man. He didn't start out that way--his public, political persona was the conservative hatchet-man, from his start as an investigator/prosecutor of organized crime to his days as his brother's Attorney General. Something in his brother's death changed him, however. It took him time to find his true voice, but by 1968, he was speaking eloquently about our need to help those Americans who could do him no good politically--the poor, the disenfranchised, the educationally and economically marginalized. The people who didn't need a hand out, but who did need a hand. Our fellow Americans, who should have been our primary focus, and not proxy wars overseas which brought naught but suffering to the civilian populations in the countries unlucky enough to be the battlegrounds.

The trait that I admire the most in Bobby Kennedy is the same trait I admire most in Abraham Lincoln: the ability to learn and to grow as a person, and to change one's thinking and focus in line with higher principles as opportunities to do so arose. John Kennedy, for all his progressive ideas, was by today's standards very conservative economically. He used to say "a rising tide lifts all boats." In modern terms, that's "trickle down" economics, a philosophy discredited among those who've taken the time to study the matter objectively. Bobby Kennedy, by 1968, knew that insisting the poor and disenfranchised wait longer was wrong. He was going to work to solve their problems right then and there.

Yet they are still waiting. John McCain accuses Barack Obama of embracing the "failed policies of the past," like "big government." He's wrong. He's the one embracing the "failed policies," like endless WAR. War spending, on unnecessary wars, like the war in Iraq, is what has failed the country. War spending has diverted and squandered our money and our young men's and women's lives, all for the sake of a military-industrial complex which cares only for making ever more money off the most destructive enterprise on the face of the Earth.

Forty years later, and how little has improved. Maybe this November will mark the true beginning of what Bobby Kennedy tried to start in the early, heady, optimistic days of 1968.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Oh, The Huge Manatees!

(With apologies to Herbert Morrison and Les Nessman)

Ideas that have crossed my mind of late:

How can Dick Cheney have been involved in public life for so many years and still have managed to insult the entire state of West Virginia in one sentence? His remark about having Cheneys in his ancestry on both sides of his family, "but we're not from West Virginia," is beyond jaw-droppingly dumb. Sure, he apologized, but he shouldn't have said it in the first place. Methinks this is a perfect example of the arrogance of power. He's gotten away with so much for so long that he no longer bothers to engage his brain before opening his mouth. Lucky for us his departure from office will come soon. It cannot come soon enough for the well-being of the country.

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Have you seen the Miller Lite "Beer Heaven" commercial? I get the intended message: Miller Lite is so good that you'll think you're in heaven after drinking it. But I wonder: did the ad's creators get the unintended implication of their work? "Drink Miller Lite, and DIE." Talk about your "things that make you go hmmm . . ."!

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Big Brown may be a lock to win the Belmont Stakes and thus become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. But no one knows until the race is run for real. Things happen. The Chicago Cubs were a lock to win the NL pennant in 1969, too . . . until a black cat at Shea Stadium and the so-called Miracle Mets wrecked that dream.

If you believe in that sort of thing.

So, while I am going to enjoy the good things I see happening in sports this summer, I am not going to anticipate or presume anything.

While we're on the subject of horse racing: if Big Brown does win it, I will have been privileged to have seen 1/4 of all the Triple Crown winners accomplish the feat. I do wish, however, that Big Brown had a more Triple Crown-winner-worthy name. "Secretariat" has a special ring of class to it. "Big Brown" sounds like a lunch bag . . . or something that goes down the toilet . . . He's a really nicely conformed horse, too, so his name totally doesn't match his quality. I wish it were less pedestrian.

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What's wrong with this picture? WGN, a Chicago TV station, is now announcing all its show times in Eastern and Pacific (which it's calling "East" and "West," God help us!), not in Central, the time zone in which Chicago is located. Count me as one viewer who dislikes that intensely. Why give the "stuck up sticky beaks" (thank you, Graham Chapman) on either coast another reason to look down upon the middle of the country as something to fly over?

Sheesh! We Midwesterners have enough self-esteem problems as it is!

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One of humanity's great talents is to take a disparate batch of things and make something coherent out of them. We see patterns in things, which lets us find the significance of seemingly unrelated things. It's a great survival mechanism. Then again, we also see patterns where none really exist, which can distract us into defending against dangers that aren't really there.

Two benign manifestations of this human tendency are constellations and calendar conjunctions. Constellations I had nothing to do with. I do find it amusing, however, that the Big Dipper is eventually going to look like a stiletto heel before it disappears completely (from Earth's point of view, that is). Calendar conjunctions are one of my own pet patterns, even though I have no idea why. I find it fascinating, for example, that Ernie Kovacs and James Joyce both died on the same day--decades apart. Don't know why that should be of cosmic significance, much less what that significance might be, but it seems somehow to have great import. Likewise the notion that the first day of Lou Gehrig's Ironman streak (2,130 consecutive games played for the Yankees) and his death occurred on the same day, again, decades apart. It's easier to see why this matters, because what killed Gehrig (ALS) is the same thing that stopped his Ironman streak, but at some visceral level, doesn't it strike you as eerie that the two events coincide on the calendar?

And William Shakespeare is believed to have been born and to have died on the same day . . . again, decades apart. April is the cruelest month, isn't it? Unless June is--for Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Ronald Reagan died, on the same day 36 years apart. Both the Left and the Right thus mourn on June 5th.

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There are no new plots in science fiction--just nuances in how we tell them. I was watching an episode of David Tennant's Doctor Who and I suddenly realized that it was just the same plot as Star Trek V and aspects of Quantum Leap all roiled up into one neat package . . . by using a theatrical device that goes back to at least the Greeks. The Doctor Who episode was called "The Satan Pit," and was about a bunch of humans who found a planet orbiting a black hole (yes, even the people in the episode said it was impossible--that's why they were there, to investigate it and figure out what was going on). It turns out that the original incarnation of Evil had been captured and chained in a pit 10 miles plus under the planet's surface--and Evil wanted out.

So It transferred Its consciousness to one of the humans and set things up so the humans would leave, thus taking Its consciousness with them and loosing It again on the universe. The Doctor, of course, saved the day, but all the way through the episode, I kept hearing Captain Kirk saying, "What would God want with a starship?" I also figured out within the first few minutes of the first part of the episode (a two-hour two-parter) that while the Doctor's Tardis had disappeared, it would come back just when all hope seemed lost, thus literally becoming a deus ex machina, especially if you accept that the Doctor is the human incarnation of science as God.

Which is not to say that any of this was not entertaining. It was hugely enjoyable. Hey, I stayed up past midnight on Saturday night two weeks in a row just to watch it, even though I'd already figured out the overall sequence of events.

So the Doctor is like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap, popping in and setting right things that once went wrong--or should I say that Doctor Who inspired Quantum Leap since the original Doctor Who goes back at least 40 years?

And the whole idea of Evil needing curious humans (or humanoids) to escape Its prison comes straight out of Star Trek V, which in turn owes the idea to any number of previous stage plays, novels, and teleplays.

Let's hear it for Ecclesiastes. There really is nothing new under the sun. Just how we tell it.

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Speaking of science fiction: did you see the Arts and Entertainment remake of The Andromeda Strain last week? Compared to the original movie, what a stinkeroo! OK, the special effects were better, and the cast was more high-powered than the original movie's cast, but the reworked script put in a bunch of cliched and extraneous plot devices that made me roll my eyes in disgust. When it was just a story of an alien plague dropping to Earth and the humans' race to figure it out and find a cure before the entire planet died, it was a taut thriller. Yet its emphasis on science made it somewhat low-key and extremely credible.

But to turn the thing into a mish-mosh of government conspiracies, time travel, and assassination attempts (some successful) diminished the significance of the story and went way beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief. For one thing, would wiping out the killer bug instantly return all the flora (and fauna?--the miniseries never made this plain) back to life the way the special effects showed? I mean, even if "the Andromeda strain" was killed, wouldn't all the Earthly things it had killed stay dead?

Also, the very end of the movie posited the type of time travel "do-loop" that is the bane of serious science fiction writers--people in the future send a warning to those of the past, but the need for the warning doesn't exist until after the warning from the future has gone awry in the past and caused people to do the very things that require sending the warning in the first place. Huh? That's why I call it a "do-loop"--there's no starting or stopping point. You can't have the future event without the past event, but the future event is what caused the past event in the first place. Makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration.

I will give the A&E version some props. A lot of the dialog was snappy (though too many of the characters were walking cliches). Rick Schroeder, as a US Army Major and doctor and biological weapons researcher had the best line in the whole miniseries. When asked by one of his fellow scientists if he had a girl waiting for him outside the lab, he said, "If you don't ask, I won't tell."

That was brilliant, but not enough to overcome the miniseries' plethora of shortcomings. Michael Crichton should be ashamed of himself for allowing this updated "improvement" of his original work to be produced.