The perp walk

One of the time-honored traditions of law enforcement is the perp walk, where the authorities parade the guilty party in front of the cameras to show the public that they are doing their job. This is done by both the FBI and the local police.

Above left is a picture of this morning's featured perp, the "baby-faced" (according to all the newspapers) Carvett Gentles, whose stray bullet managed to find its way into the skull of innocent 17-year-old bystander Vada Vasquez.

The picture brought to mind a pattern I've observed over the past few years, whereby the law enforcement authorities seem to try to match their perps with an officer of the same race, at least while the cameras are rolling. The image of an innocent-looking young black boy, no matter how heinous his crime, being manhandled by two Dick Butkus-lookalikes is not the one that the NYPD wants to project in this racially hypersensitive age. So they carefully matched young Carvett with an older "brother" to hold his left arm.

The thinking seems to be, well, we all know that law enforcement is dominated by whites, and we all know that crime, especially violent crime, is committed disproportionately by nonwhites. But be that as it may, we have to work against the perception fostered by the media that we're just a bunch of cowboys going around looking for minorities to roust. So every time we stage a perp walk, let's make sure that we have an officer on hand who looks like the perp.

The same thinking was at work with the arrest a month ago of hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam. Evidently the FBI didn't have an ethnic Indian available, so they made do with the closest thing, an East Asian, to hold his arm for the cameras (see picture above right). The feds were able to hit the mark exactly, however, when announcing their indictment of Rajaratnam: they had U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara handle the news conference.

You know, just so no one would think they were "racist."

It's a wonderful new world we live in: if you commit a crime, you get to be arrested by your own, at least when the cameras are rolling. (No such guarantees when it comes to the unfilmed jail guards, however.) It's unclear exactly what the point of all this is, other than proving that the law enforcement authorities are exquisitely sensitive to ethnic sensibilities these days.

If you're aware of this pattern, you'll notice a lot of it. This transparent image-burnishing would actually be sort of funny if it did not reflect a deeper rot.

A long, sad journey

When I was 17, I read Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and thought it was the greatest book I had ever read. As a teenager, I was also partial to Herman Hesse and Kurt Vonnegut.

In my twenties, I was an omnivorous reader, with a slight preference for science fiction and thrillers.

In my thirties, mysteries became my favorite form of escape. (Particularly mysteries I had already read.)

By my forties, I had lost my sense of shame, and was happy to indulge in gossipy books.

By age fifty, my favorite reading was the National Enquirer. (The Kitty Kelley oeuvre simply required too much uninterrupted attention.)

Now that I'm addicted to the internet, I can no longer even make it through an entire Enquirer.

The really sad thing is, none of this bothers me in the least.

Why we're better than them

I'm not sure how, but I seem to have gotten onto the HumanEvents mailing list. Today they sent out an email containing an article written by Chuck Norris. Yes, that Chuck Norris. I normally don't read his stuff because, frankly, his writing is about on a par with his acting. (He strikes me as a fine fellow, by the way, just not much of an actor or a writer.) But today's article was titled "Visiting Major Nidal Hasan's Hospital" and I was curious what it was about.

The article was mostly about Norris' visits to Ft. Hood and West Point. He got very welcoming receptions from the soldiers at both places. Norris said he was sickened (and moved) by the fact that Hasan was receiving the finest care in the Brooke Army Medical Center, the same place where the soldiers he wounded were being treated.

This got me to thinking, in how many other countries would this be the case? Certainly not in the countries we are fighting wars in right now. Speaking as someone who is a fan of neither war, and who would like to see all our troops withdrawn immediately from both places, I have to say that this is as much proof as anyone would ever need that we are a civilized country and they are not.

In fact, it would make me downright proud -- if it weren't for the fact that I'm not so civilized.

I'd prefer to see Hasan handed over to the parents of the soldiers he shot.

Sociopathic motivation

(Alyssa Bustamante)

From the AP this morning:

Girl, 15, Charged as Adult in Murder

Police Say She Killed 9-Year-Old to 'Know What It Felt Like'

By DAVID A. LIEB

AP

With HP wireless printers, you could have printed this from any room in the house. Live wirelessly. Print wirelessly.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Nov. 18) - Blessed with a Friday off school, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante dug two holes in the ground to be used as a grave, authorities said. For the next week, she attended classes, all the while plotting the right time for a murder, they said.

That time arrived the evening of Oct. 21, when Bustamante strangled 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olten without provocation, cut the girl's throat and stabbed her, prosecutors said. Why?

"Ultimately, she stated she wanted to know what it felt like," Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. David Rice testified Wednesday during a court hearing over the slaying.

It's surprising how often one hears of a motive like this for murder. Most people, upon hearing such a statement, usually assume that there must have been some other, hidden motive, like a long standing animosity, or jealousy, or somesuch. But with a sociopath, a mild curiosity is all it takes.

Edmund Kemper, the 6'9", 280 pound serial killer who operated near Santa Cruz in the 1970's, killed his grandparents when he was fifteen. He later stated he did it just out of curiosity to see what it felt like. Around fifteen years ago there was a case in New Jersey where a boy killed a pizza delivery man. He later said he just wanted to see what it felt like.

You can't understand sociopaths until you can fathom their absolute lack of consideration for other human beings. To them, you're no more than a toy, to be discarded when they have no further use for you. The problem with recognizing sociopaths is, they are often so good at counterfeiting the positive emotions (love, affection, loyalty, gratitude) that at first you are apt to think them actually nicer than average. But they are merely acting. The only reason most sociopaths won't kill you is that they don't want to be bothered with the possible repercussions.

It's hard for a normal person to get his mind around such an alien mentality. But it's better to understand them, and be on your guard against them, than to let them catch you unaware.

The Rockford Files

(James Garner as Jim Rockford)

One of the best shows ever to run on TV was The Rockford Files, which lasted from 1974 to 1980. The show has been in syndication ever since. I've watched a number of episodes recently (you can see them on Hulu.com).

The show starred James Garner as private eye Jim Rockford. Rockford was a departure from previous television heroes in that he would lose half the fistfights he got into, and was also a self-professed coward. All previous private eyes had essentially been superheroes. Garner was perfect for the role, exuding a regular guy-ness which was refreshing in that era.

Almost every show had a designated turkey, usually Rockford's friend or client, as well as a villain. The turkey -- often Angel Martin, played by Stuart Margolin with consummate sliminess -- was there to give Rockford a foil, as well as someone to rescue.

The Rockford Files ended mid-season in 1980, not because of sagging ratings, but because Garner's various injuries were causing him too much pain. (Garner did most of his own stunts.) There hadn't been any studio-related contractual dispute, either, as it was Garner's company, Cherokee Productions, which produced the show. (Garner is one quarter Cherokee.)

Watching the show now, the frequent car chase scenes seem curiously anachronistic. (Garner had raced cars when he was younger, and must have encouraged the inclusion of such scenes.) Rockford is a little too good to be true, though that's forgivable for a TV hero, and Rocky (his father) is a bit too cornpone. And the plots don't always make perfect sense.

But the shows are still worth watching, both for the dialogue and the humor.

Much of the humor is set up by each show's designated turkey. In one episode, Rockford is trying to help a young lady who is being scammed by a corrupt "guru" who is in fact only interested in her money. When Rockford asks her a specific question regarding her situation, she airily replies, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (This was a popular pseudo-mystical, Zen-derived expression of the era.) Later on, when the guru's scheme unravels and the girl provokes him, he slaps her. Rockford witnesses this, then informs her, "That was the sound of one hand clapping."

One of the funniest episodes revolved around Rockford's unwilling partnership with another private eye, Lance White, played by Tom Selleck (soon to become famous as Magnum PI). White is adored by all the characters Rockford is despised by, including the police lieutenant Rockford regularly locks horns with. White is also impossibly idealistic and naive -- but turns out to always be right, against all odds. In one scene when he and Rockford are held captive by an aging, legendary criminal kingpin (who has just been rejected for asylum in Israel), White high-mindedly informs the man, "You should know by now -- crime doesn't pay." (Of course, it has for this kingpin, and spectacularly so.) Both the kingpin and Rockford roll their eyes at this. But of course, White is able -- through a very lucky set of circumstances -- to bring the man to justice. And Rockford, though he saves White on several occasions, ends up looking like White's ineffectual sidekick.

Unfortunately, this episode is not available on Hulu, but many others, all worth watching, are.

Good witches, bad witches

(Above left, Sharon Stone; right, Megan Fox; below, Bette Davis)














I watched The Wizard of Oz (I must be part gay) for a few minutes last night, and happened to catch the scene where Dorothy first arrives in Oz. When she says she thought all witches were old and ugly, Glinda (the Good Witch of the North) informs her, "Only bad witches are ugly."

That got me to thinking, is there any correlation between looks and character? Most of the beautiful women I've known have been nice, if a tad spoiled.

Then I thought, how could the arrangement of features on a face have anything to do with the psychology on the inside of the skull? But then I thought, good-looking people are generally treated better, even in childhood, so maybe this somehow allows them to develop into more gracious, kindly personalities. And ugly people, who are more likely to be ignored, do have more reason to be bitter.

Then I thought of the one place where the most beautiful women congregate: Hollywood.

I thought of Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone, Megan Fox, Anne Heche, Margot Kidder, Sean Young, Lindsay Lohan, Halle Berry, Farrah Fawcett, and Mischa Barton. Then I thought back a bit further, to Joan Crawford, Frances Farmer, and Bette Davis.

If you read the gossip pages, as I do -- as I said, I'm part gay -- you realize part of the job requirement for being an actress is, you have to be sorta insane. (Okay, scratch the sorta.) It's as basic a requirement for the job as having a narcissistic personality is for being President (unless you're an accidental President like George Bush Sr. or Gerald Ford.)

Conclusion: You can't believe everything you hear in The Wizard of Oz after all.

If you're thinking that I'm just using this ridiculously trite piece as an excuse to put up pictures of beautiful women (with reputations as bad witches), you're right. I've come to the conclusion that in order to hold peoples' interest, I can't just keep putting up dry political pieces (see "I'd vote for this guy" or "Blood" for examples of extreme aridity).

I have to make this blog more like a tabloid and tart it up a bit.

Barack Obama hard at work deciding what to do about Afghanistan

Okay, so you can outjump some white boys who are probably throwing the game anyway.

It's time to make up your mind, sir.

Charla Nash

The online edition of this morning's New York Post has a photograph of Charla Nash, the woman who was mauled by the chimp in Stamford earlier this year. I was going to include a link to it, but decided against it. I am usually less bothered by this kind of thing than most people, so I looked at the photograph. But I was quite disturbed by it.

In a case like this, it's hard not to think that she might have been better off dying. She's lost her eyes, her jaw, her nose, and all but one of her fingers. She says she is not bitter, which, if true, is testimony to a remarkable strength of character.

In the meantime, she's suing the state of Connecticut for $150 million, saying that they had been warned that the chimp which mauled her had been brought to the attention of authorities before, and they had done nothing about it (which is true).

Any jury with normal human instincts, when they see her, will award her a lot of money. At least her family will be rich when she passes on.

I'd vote for this guy

What we need is a no-nonsense leader who will say:

No more foreign adventures, we are not the world cop. Let's pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and unconditionally. And while we're at it, let's withdraw all aid from the Middle East, we shouldn't be in the business of propping up governments. Let the other countries destroy each other, it's not worth American lives and money.

Collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps must be regulated like any other security. Firms which want to trade these instruments must put up margin just as with futures and options. Wall Street firms must have capital ratios of no more than ten (times their equity in assets). With those regulations in place, if a Wall Street firm still fails from excessive amounts of the wrong kinds of bets, too bad. You're bankrupt, and so are your shareholders. No more gambling with taxpayer money. And at the banks currently on governmental life support, no one gets paid more than half a million a year. Period.

If a car company goes bankrupt, the bondholders own it. Not the unions. That's the law. The unions -- along with incompetent management and lousy engineers -- are what made the car companies bankrupt in the first place.

We have to take serious steps to balance the budget. Otherwise this is going to be the United States of China.

It's not the government's business to deal with victimless crimes. Let gays do what they want, including marry each other. The government's only role when it comes to sex is to protect children and nonconsenting adults.

No more racial politics. Disparate impact is inevitable in a diverse society. Not all groups have the exact same abilities or inclinations. Affirmative action or any other form of racial spoils systems are out. For college admissions offices to take into account an impoverished background is fine -- that's merely equalizing opportunity, not outcome. If proportionally more blacks than whites get helped, that's fine, too, because they're being helped because they're poor, not because of their race.

No special categories of hate crimes, which is merely affirmative action punishment favoring certain protected groups. The laws regarding violent crime are plenty adequate already.

If you feel abortion is immoral, don't get one. If you want one, go ahead; it just means people with your instincts will go extinct more quickly.

The borders need to be sealed. US citizenship is not the birthright of everyone in the world. And it's also not available to a child whose mother sneaks across the border to have her baby.

My guess is, this is how the majority of the electorate feels. The problem is, neither the Republican nor Democratics offers such a platform. The libertarians do, but they are considered a fringe group. Our two party system is superior to the communists' old one party system, but a system which made room for more than two parties would be even better.

Blood (the complete version)

The recent massacre brings up the issues of dual loyalties, affirmative action, and racial profiling, and places their outcome squarely in front of the American public.

It's not surprising that Nidal Malik Hasan, with his radical Islamic views, would open fire on US soldiers in Ft. Hood. What is surprising is that with all of the warning signs he gave off, no one did anything about him beforehand. Hasan was even promoted to Major earlier this year despite extremely poor performance reviews. When he "counseled" returning veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, instead of trying to help them heal, he evidently harangued them about the unjustness of the wars they had just fought in.

But he was promoted anyway, because the Army has unofficial quotas for minorities, including Muslims, and wants to appear a model of diversity.

Hasan told his fellow soldiers that infidels should be killed. He said that Muslims should wage war on Americans. He said he was a Muslim first and an American second. And he made absolutely no effort to hide his beliefs. (Sure enough, he yelled "Allahu akbar!" as he began his killing spree.)

Now it's emerging that he attended the mosque of a radical imam in Virginia and had tried to get in touch with al Qaeda. Yet the FBI, which had intercepted those emails, dismissed them as inconsequential.

So why did nobody do anything? Because the Army brass, the FBI, and everyone else involved in this sordid affair are all afraid of being called racist.

Race is, of course, America's great sacred cow. We are supposed to repeat, "Our diversity is our strength" until we actually believe it. But a Balkanized America -- which is what all these racial set-asides have resulted in -- is a much weaker America. Yet, we're not supposed to notice.

Over the past eight years, I've never once been singled out for individual attention when boarding an airplane. I'm swarthy, male, and vaguely ethnic (some would say fanatical-looking as well) in a way that should scream "terrorist!" to any half-awake security person. Yet I've always been whisked right by, while witnessing little old white ladies being pulled aside for special attention.

This certainly doesn't make me feel any safer. Call me silly, but I value my life over my (possibly hurt) feelings any day.

Japanese-Americans who live on the West Coast were interned during World War II simply because of their ancestry. No one today regards this as anything but a tremendous injustice. At the time, FDR -- that great liberal icon -- thought there was a possibility that Japanese who lived on the West Coast might side with the Japanese if they invaded America. This was not entirely unreasonable; blood is often thicker than citizenship. It certainly was with Nidal Malik Hasan. Or look at la Raza's stance on immigration.

During World War II, Japanese-Americans who were from Hawaii and elsewhere were allowed to serve in the US Armed forces, and they often served with distinction. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii won the Medal of Honor for having served on the European front. Yet Japanese-Americans were not allowed to serve on the Pacific front because it was thought that they would have mixed feelings about fighting people of their own ancestry.

While the internment was completely unfair, it seems reasonable that the Army would quietly steer soldiers away from situations in which they would be asked to kill their own kin.

What should have been done with Nidal Malik Hasan, a Palestinian Muslim whose sympathies lay entirely with the other side? First, he should never have been promoted. Secondly, he should have been fired from his job after his horrible performance reviews at Walter Reed. And the Army -- and FBI -- should have taken some sort of action when it became apparent he was trying to contact al Qaeda. He had tried to commit treason long before actually pulling the trigger.

The Army should also have some sort of clawback provision for soldiers who get hundreds of thousands of dollars of free medical education at their expense, but then for some reason prove themselves unfit to serve.

In the meantime, it's entertaining to watch the dance Barack Obama and the media are doing to steer public opinion away from any commonsensical conclusions about this incident. Obama's first response was that we shouldn't rush to judgment -- something he himself was all too willing to do in the Henry Gates affair. And the media has suggested that Hasan somehow caught PTSD from the soldiers he counseled (as if it were contagious, like a venereal disease).

Certain ethnicities are more likely to react in a certain ways, and commit certain types of crimes. If the authorities are prohibited from taking this into account, they will not be able to do their jobs effectively. Willful blindness has never been a wise policy.

It certainly wasn't in Ft. Hood, where our diversity proved to be our weakness.

The kind of husband you want

The following account is from this morning's NY Times:

The police say they have an audiotape that disproves claims by the 37-year-old wife of a wealthy health care executive that she was abducted from her Forida beach community by a 25-year-old mechanic. Investigators say that the audiotape proves that the wife, Quinn Gray, plotted the kidnapping with Jasmin Osmanovic, who the police say was her lover. The sheriff of St. John's Count, David Shoar, said Ms. Gray and Mr. Osmanovic, were heard plotting their extortion scheme on the tape. The authorities in Ponte Vedra said Ms. Gray's 38-year-old husband, Reid Gray, found a note from his wife on Sep. 4. The note said that three men wanted him to deliver a ransom of $50,000 and that he was not to involve the police. Mr. Gray is standing by his wife in the case, paying for her legal defense as she and Mr. Osmanovic face extortion charges.

Love to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. ("Oh honey, you know I'd never do that. I love you way, way too much to ever try to pull a crazy stunt like that. The police are just trying to make themselves look good. You're the most important thing in the world to me, you know you are.")

Sounds as if somebody needs an education in sociopathy. (Actually, he got one but seems to be ignoring it.)

This willfully obtuse fellow is a successful health care executive, too. If this incident is any illustration of the brains it takes to succeed in that field, well, no wonder a trip to the doctor costs so much these days.

Whither Steinbrenner?

It used to be in the old days, George Steinbrenner, owner of the NY Yankees, was a dominating, domineering presence. Back in the 70's, when he used to hire and fire manager Billy Martin, he made as many headlines as any two of the players combined.

I'm not a baseball fan, but learned enough through osmosis to know that he was a guy everyone loved to hate.

In all of the articles I've seen about the Yankees' World Series win, I have yet to see Steinbrenner's name mentioned. I checked Wikipedia to make sure he was still alive, and sure enough, he is, and still owner of the Yankees, although he is no longer chief executive, a role he has delegated to his sons Hank and Hal.

According to Wikipedia, Hank is similar in temperament to his father. But he either purposely keeps a lower profile, or the media has deliberately chosen to ignore him.

Good coaches, bad coaches

This article might actually be of slight interest to nonswimmers, as it is more about the relationship between coaches and athletes and less about swimming:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/22513.asp?q=Good%20Coaches,%20Bad%20Coaches

Our man in Afghanistan

(On left, Hamid Karzai; on right, actor Ben Kingsley)

President Obama evidently just made a congratulatory phone call to Hamid Karzai on his "election." Back in August, Karzai had stuffed the ballot box with more than a million fake votes. When this became embarrassingly apparent, it was determined that there be a runoff election between Karzai and runner up Abdullah Abdullah. Yesterday, however, Abdullah withdrew from the election, saying that it would be fraudulent as the first. So today Karzai was declared the "victor."

Personally, I think anyone who tries to steal an election should not only be automatically disqualified, but clapped in jail as well. But the White House seems to be figuring, well, we gotta bet on someone. Karzai may be corrupt, but at least the former CIA operative is our corrupt leader. (The current administration, hailing as it does from Chicago, may feel a certain sympathy for that particular foible.)

Karzai seems to bear a strong resemblance to Ben Kingsley, who is most famous for his Oscar-winning turn as Mohandas Gandhi back in 1982. In behavior, however, Karzai probably more closely resembles another Kingsley role: Meyer Lansky (in Bugsy, 1991). The resemblance resonates all the more when you consider that Hamid's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is reputed to be one of the biggest heroin dealers in all of Afghanistan.

This farcical "election" underlines more clearly than ever why we should get out of Afghanistan. We first went there with the intention of rooting out Al Qaeda and finding Osama bin Laden. We merely pushed al Qaeda into Pakistan and we never found Osama. But somewhere along the way our mission turned into an attempt to remake Afghanistan as a united, modern democracy. The only problem with that is that the various Afghan tribes have no interest in uniting, they have no interest in democracy, and they despise the U.S.-approved Karzai for being the corrupt man he is. And the longer we stay there, the more they hate us.

If you were at a party where everyone hated you, wouldn't you leave?

The problem is, Obama doesn't want to be seen as the one who lost the "war on terror" when he runs for reelection in 2012. Obama doesn't want to wage war on Muslims in some faraway land. All he cares about is making sure that black people get a larger share of the pie. But because he wants to be reelected, he'll let the Afghan war drag on in a desultory fashion with no satisfactory conclusion either way. This is why when he finally makes a decision, it will probably be to send more troops, but not as many as McChrystal wants. (This is the equivalent, as others have pointed out, of voting "present" in the Senate, something Obama was known for.)

If they ever make a movie about this war, at least they'll know who to cast as Hamid. That will be the only straightforward part of this whole sordid, misbegotten venture.

For exercise addicts only

Training your body to do something is actually a fairly straightforward concept: you must train hard so that your body adapts to the training, and you must keep giving it progressively harder exercises to do, so that it becomes increasingly stronger.

At the same time, you must also recover let your body recover in between workouts. If you train hard and never give your body a chance to build itself back up, you'll simply wear yourself down to a crisp.

It's a simple concept, but one which a lot of people seem to get wrong.

What you're doing when you're exercising is actually tearing your muscles down. After you've torn them down, those muscles, with proper nutrition and rest, then rebuild themselves in ways that next time it will perform that exercise better. But without that recovery period, you'll just continually tear your muscles down and not give them a chance to recover.

Most people do either too little or too much. People who aren't into exercise just let themselves go, and wind up with minimal muscle and maximal fat. And people who are addicted to their exercise tend to overdo it, and get injured that way. Injuries tend to happen when someone doesn't give himself enough recovery time. And that period of recovery time needs to be longer as we get older.

The average jogger will run something like three miles a day, every day, at eight minute pace. What he is effectively training himself to do is run three miles a day at eight minute pace. Period. He'd be better off running five miles, every other day. He'd not only be training his body to run further, and therefore be stronger, but he'd be allowing it to recover in between runs.

He'd be even better off if he varied his exercise more, so his body adapted to different types of stress. If he ran sprints and did calisthenics Monday, took Tuesday off, ran long distance Wednesday, took Thursday off, then swam on Friday, he'd find himself feeling much stronger than if he just ran three miles every day. He'd have more speed and explosive power, more endurance, more looseness to his muscles, and healthier joints. He'd also look a lot better.

Look at the people you know who run daily but do nothing else. They mostly look like the before picture in the old Charles Atlas ads. Plus they develop a certain brittleness to their bodies. They'd be much better off varying their exercises, and incorporating yoga and other upper body exercises. With the advent of Pilates, body sculpting classes, kettlebells, yoga, etc, fewer people are getting it wrong than twenty years ago; but many still are.

A former Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates, trained each muscle group exactly once a week. He said if he went hard, that was all he needed to do. And he understood the damage that overtraining can do. Arnold Schwarzenegger, back in his Mr. Olympia days, once purposely sabotaged up and comer Lou Ferrigno by telling him that he himself trained with massive amounts of reps -- which wasn't true. (Not unlike the way the California legislature is now sabotaging Schwarzenegger.)

Think of the sprinters in both swimming and running. Most of them are basically lazy But as a result, many of them have more explosive power. Sprinters tend to look like studly, distance athletes geeky. Some of this is genetics, but some of it is the nature of their training. Be dedicated, work hard, turn yourself into a wimp.

Another concept that many people tend to lose sight of is specificity of training. If you're training to swim a 100 yard freestyle in under 50 seconds, doing endless repeats of 100 free's (or multiples of 100 free's) at 1:10 pace will do you next to no good, and it could even harm you. What you should be doing is repeats of 50 freestyles in as close to 25 seconds as you can get. These stressful days should be interspersed with easy days, which might include 100 yard freestyles at 1:10 pace. But if all you do is swim long distances slowly, your sprinting will never improve. (I use swimming as an example because serious track athletes tend not to get this concept wrong as often.)

My apologies for this boring post, but it's advice some would do well to take.

I suppose I could heed it myself. Last night my son mocked me by pulling his t-shirt over his chin (to represent my weak chin) and whining, "I can't get my books published." When I told him that he shouldn't be so hurtful to me during my formative years, he replied, "Yeah, formative -- formative of that spare tire around your stomach."

Without attribution

A friend forwarded this to me. I looked for it on the web in an effort to give credit to the author, but even though I found it several places, the author's name was never listed. Anyway, it's quite clever (you have to read it all the way through):

John was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets,' and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.

This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.

John's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover. To John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.

He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making.

Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention?

Vote carefully next year - the bells are not always audible.

O'Reilly vs. Olbermann

The recent brouhaha between the White House and Fox News, and subsequent comparisons between Fox and MSNBC, spurred me to quantify an impression I’d had in the past: that primetime Fox News regularly has guests with opposing viewpoints, whereas MSNBC does not. To that end I watched both Bill O'Reilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC from 8 to 9PM on Monday and Tuesday evenings. (Olbermann wasn't on Wednesday night.) I flipped back and forth to make sure I didn't miss any guests. My impression was confirmed. On Monday evening, most of O'Reilly's guests had conservative views, but he did have Juan Williams, a liberal, and also Mary Ann Marsh, a Democratic strategist. Williams generally tones himself down when on Fox, so let's count Monday night's tally as one and a half Democrats. On Tuesday, O'Reilly interviewed Joe Sestak and Anthony Weiner, both Democratic Congressmen. He interviewed Alan Colmes, one of Fox's two token in-house liberals. And he had on legal expert Jennifer Smetters, who argued vigorously with O’Reilly, although she didn't seem a political animal. We’ll call that three and a half Democrats for Tuesday night. Keith Olbermann had on exactly zero Republicans Monday night. His guests included Chuck Schumer, Ariana Huffington, Chris Hayes (the Washington editor of The Nation), Richard Wolffe, an MSNBC analyst, and author Susie Essman. Tuesday night’s lineup also featured zero Republicans. Olbermann had on Senator Wyden, Rose Ann Demoro (from the National Nurses Organizing Committee), Howard Fineman, an MSNBC analyst, and Gene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist. This trend tends to continue, by the way, for the next hour. Sean Hannity of Fox does occasionally have Democrats on (though generally not as many as O'Reilly), whereas Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has no Republicans on her show. What does it say about a talk show host that he won’t allow any opposing viewpoints? Is he afraid to get into an argument because he knows, or at least senses, that the facts won’t back him up? Is it intellectual laziness? Is he afraid that the brittleness of his personality will be exposed by having to face an actual opponent? Is it all of the above? Liberals are always forever congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness. Yet one would think true open-mindedness would require at least hearing the counter argument. But neither Olbermann nor Maddow is willing to do this. (So much for "diversity.") This is in keeping with attitude of liberals on campus, who will often shout down conservative speakers in an effort to prevent them from getting their message across. Part of the reason for this, of course, is their fear that an audience might be swayed by their opponents' arguments. (Conservatives on campus simply don’t do this to liberal speakers.) In election years, candidates will often try to make it appear that their opponent is the one unwilling to debate. Fox seems to have won this battle. Watch O'Reilly, and after a while it becomes apparent that crocodile smile exudes smugness. His driving force seems to be egotism. Watch Olbermann, and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s driven by hate, the emotion liberals love to disparage yet themselves indulge in so frequently. With Olbermann, it’s his very lifeblood. You’ll never hear him say much positive about the left; he far prefers to spend his hour insulting Republicans. There are also undercurrents of hysteria and compulsiveness that pervade Olbermann's presentation. He doesn't seem able to help himself: he absolutely must sneer at every Republican he mentions. On Tuesday night alone, Obermann referred to Rick "Mad Dog" Santorum," "Failed presidential candidate Fred Thompson," "Lead teabaggist Dick Armey," "apparent Adirondack expert Newt Gingrich" (who had gotten into an argument with other Republicans over whether to support the Republican or Conservative candidate in a local race), "streetwalker for the insurance industry" (in reference to a Republican who didn't support the health bill, I didn't catch the name), and "the torture President" (Bush). The reference to Armey, for those unfamiliar with it, was Olbermannn's way of twisting the Republican term "tea parties," named after the famous Boston one which preceded the Revolutionary War, into "teabagging," a sexual practice among gay men. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, making this a completely gratuitous and nonsensical reference on Olbermann's part. Had a Republican said this, he would of course have been accused of being homophobic. When O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have Democrats on their show, they are generally polite, if argumentative. One gets the sense that this would be beyond Olbermann's capacity. This isn't even an indictment of all of MSNBC. Chris Matthews, a liberal who hosts an earlier show, exudes earnestness and good will. Pat Buchanan, of all people, is a regular commentator. Unfortunately, MSNBC has reserved prime time for their most rigid, strident voices.

Socialism 101

Barack Obama, in an excerpt from a radio interview with WBEZ in Chicago from 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

Keep in mind, these are all Obama's words. It wasn't as if the interviewer gave that speech and then asked Obama if he agreed, and Obama replied, "Yeah, I guess so." You don't talk at length about how the tragedy of the civil rights movement is that if failed to bring about redistributive change unless it's something you've thought long and hard about, and feel strongly about.

Any time you hear the phrase "redistribution of wealth" used in a positive way, or the phrase "economic justice" used in any way, you're listening to a socialist.

Now ask yourself, what are the odds that Obama had a major change of heart between 2001 and 2008 and shifted his world view rightward?

(I agree.)

Will the real Barack Obama please stand up? Well, he did, back in 2001. He stayed in his chair in 2008, but he's standing again now.

I have no problem with Obama being socialist, that's certainly his right. But I do have a problem with the way he posed as something else during his Presidential campaign.

Ask and tell

The reasoning against allowing openly gay people in the military is roughly as follows: the other soldiers would be uncomfortable with a homosexual in the barracks, and it might hurt the esprit de corps. 

But the guys most comfortable with gays tend to be those most secure in their own masculinity, and you'd think the macho types in the barracks wouldn't be upset by their presence. (Though this does tend to be truer of 30-somethings than 18-year-olds.) 

Gays abound in corporations. Yet you never hear people complain, "We can't get any business done, those homos are just blowing each other left and right and are really hurting the company morale." (My impression is that they make great workers.) 

Some might point out that coworkers at a corporation don't have to sleep in the same room, which is true enough. But students often room -- and even shower -- with gays in college dormitories. You never hear anybody complain that they can't get any studying done as a result. 

Gays are certainly omnipresent on Capitol Hill. Well, that may not be the best example of a place which remains functional despite their presence. 

Heteros tend to imagine that any gathering of gays will automatically turn into a big orgy. But this is not so. I went to a gay-themed swimming meet once (it was held in conjunction with the Pride festivities of 2004, and I was looking for a meet in a fast pool). I was apprehensive beforehand, and was one of the few non-gays there. But the meet was well run, people were polite and helpful, and there were zero public displays of affection that I saw. 

The only place which has a widespread homosexual harassment problem is prison. And it seems that most of the rape there is committed by animals whose orientation would be straight on the outside, but who will jump on anything that moves. (This is not a brief for abolishing prisons, though something should be done to protect prisoners from homosexual rape. On second thought, if their crimes were odious enough, maybe not.) 

As it is, gays are not banned from the military unless they "tell," which means that some are serving now. Yet you never hear of cases of gay-caused disruption. ("We were attacked by the Taliban, and we might have held them off, but Bruce and Geoffrey were too busy painting their nails to bother to pick up their rifles.") 

Army culture will always be macho -- as it should be, if you're interested in winning wars -- but that doesn't have to exclude gays. The gays drawn to the military are probably a fiercer breed than the ones drawn to fashion. 

Some of the biggest Olympic stars have been gay. Given that sport is essentially stylized, nonlethal combat, many of those gay athletes would undoubtedly have made great soldiers. Greg Louganis, after suffering a concussion from hitting his head on the springboard in 1988, continued to compete, and went on to win the gold medal. If it had been me, I probably would have listened to the doctor and quit. Louganis would have made a better soldier than me. 

Spartan soldiers were known to have homosexual relations with each other. The case could be made that soldiers thus bonded would be even more loyal to each other. (Check out the movie 300; it's proof that soldiers who wax their chests make incredibly effective warriors.) 

In 2002, the military saw an increase in enlistments because of the surge of patriotism which followed 9/11. But as the war dragged on, enlistments faltered and the military had to lower its standards in order to make its quotas. 

More recently, enlistments have risen again because of the economy, and the standards have risen commensurately. (The Army can once again insist on high school diplomas and a minimum IQ of roughly 92.) 

If gays knew that they would be accepted, they would enlist in larger numbers, and that might allow the Army to raise its standards even further. (Who knows, they might also improve the decor of those drab barracks.) 

It's hard enough to recruit people willing to die for our country. Turning some of them down on the basis of their sexuality seems wasteful. (Rather than turning them away, we should be honoring them.) Gays have always been with us, and always will be. The military might as well take advantage. 

Any fighting force brave enough to face enemies with guns is more than brave enough to face gays in their barracks.

What insurance is

The biggest controversy attached to the ever-evolving health bill is whether to include a public option. There seems to be much less publicity about the insurance companies being forced to take on people with pre-existing conditions. This stands the idea of insurance on its head.

If, once you develop a serious -- and expensive -- illness, no insurance company can turn you down, there is little incentive to purchase insurance beforehand.

You can't wait until your house burns down to buy fire insurance, and then expect to be paid off for the fire. Neither can you buy life insurance on people who are already dead. When you buy insurance, you're guarding against the small possibility of a catastrophe. If a lot of people are willing to pay a small amount for a tiny chance of a large payout, then insurance companies can make money and survive.

In that sense it's not unlike the lottery, which is a government program to make money.

If, once you found out what the winning number of the previous lottery was, you could then retroactively order a ticket with that number, and demand a payout, the state would soon go bust. Yet this is what Obama is recommending for insurance companies.

Several versions of the new plan make it compulsory for everyone to buy insurance of some sort, and include a $3700 penalty for people who don't. But how could this possibly be enforced? And although Obama has said that he won't raise taxes a single dime to pay for this health plan, that $3700 smells an awful lot like a tax, just under a different name. I suppose that would be one way to pay for the new "insurance."

The fundamental problem is that you can't repeal the basic laws of economics, any more than you can repeal the law of gravity. Yet this seems to be what the Obama administration is attempting. They did it when they shortchanged the GM and Chrysler bondholders in favor of the unions. And they want to do it here. To be fair, the Bush administration also did it with their TARP program. They also did it when they changed the rules for mortgages in an effort to get more minorities into houses. (That sure worked out well.) In fact, any interference on the part of the government can be construed as interfering with the laws of economics. But most government interference, at least to date, is meant to gently nudge things in one direction or another, not turn economics on its head. In general, the more government interference there is, the more the laws of economics are disrespected.

But that's sort of like messing with Mother Nature. Many drugs have side effects, which is why in that field, pharmaceutical companies which want to mess with Mother must have their products go through very extensive testing, including double blind experiments to measure every conceivable side effect.

The health insurance bill will go through no such testing process. It will just be sprung on the public immediately, full force.

In a way, though, Obama's effort to nationalize and unionize as much of the economy as possible has been tried before. It was tried in the Soviet Union starting in 1917. It was tried with a number of Eastern European countries a little later. And it is still being tried in Cuba and North Korea now.

Judge for yourself how successful those experiments have been.