Loose Ends and Monkey Mail June 12, 2006January 15, 2017 But first . . . a quick word about the decline in public policy: Fallen star blames self, GOP tactics: Jail term served in N.H. phone plot By Michael Kranish Boston Globe June 10, 2006 For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power. He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes’s presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business. But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters . . . Raymond stressed that he was making no excuses for his role in the New Hampshire case; he pleaded guilty and told the judge he had done a ‘bad thing.’ But he said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones ‘pushed the envelope’ but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless. ‘Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business,’ he said. ‘It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities.’ . . . And an even more important story: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE PRESS? From Friday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer: By Kenneth F. Bunting Associate Publisher The blogosphere has been abuzz. But in the days since Rolling Stone magazine published a long piece that accused Republicans of widespread and intentional cheating that affected the outcome of the last presidential election, the silence in America’s establishment media has been deafening. In terms of bad news judgment, this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous “Downing Street memo,” the London Times story that was initially greeted by the U.S. media with a collective yawn. It is news. It certainly deserves mention, at the very least in stories about the story, reaction to it or even ones debunking it. Any of those choices would be better judgment than simply ignoring it. Those of us in what bloggers and Internet journalists derisively call “mainstream media” should have learned that lesson last year, when Internet-fueled curiosity about the “Downing Street memo” made us pay attention to a story we were too quick to dismiss as old news. It’s too early to tell whether it will become big news in the same delayed manner the British intelligence memo did. But the titans of the news industry still have things to learn about how news becomes news in the present-day media landscape. Editors will always have responsibility for filtering, and helping readers understand the importance and credibility of news reports. But nowadays, the American discourse is rightfully in hands other than ours. ☞ We learned endlessly about the $30,000 Whitewater investment the Clintons made that we spent $50 million of taxpayer money to investigate. (Michael Chertoff, who was the Republican legal counsel for the Senate Whitewater investigation, went on to become our Secretary of Homeland Security – can you think of better credentials for the job?) We learned endlessly about Travelgate and the $225 presidential haircut on the tarmac of Los Angeles International Airport. (It may or may not have delayed air traffic by 20 minutes.) Is there a citizen out there who does not know about the $100,000 Hillary made trading commodities? (According to an extensive investigation by Pulitzer prize-winning author James B. Stewart in Blood Sport, she did nothing wrong.) But when it comes to things like ‘fixing the facts around the policy’ to launch a disastrously ill-planned war . . . or, perhaps, subverting our democracy by stealing a presidential election . . . what does the average American who watches the news and reads the paper know? Heck, 70% of Bush voters this last time around believed Iraq attacked us on September 11. And most Americans have been led to believe ‘the jury is out’ on global warming, even though the scientific community is as sure of it as it was of the connection between smoking and cancer (on which ‘the jury was thought to be out’ for decades, thanks to misinformation, when it really was not). (For God’s sake, see the movie.) It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote that ‘whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government’ . . . going on to say, ‘whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.’ But how do we ‘attract their notice?’ What if they’re misinformed by the government and the rightwing press – and not informed by the mainstream press? # Okay – tomorrow: monkey mail, sand storms, chickens, eggs, forests, and other loose ends from last week
One Way We’re Like Bulgarian Newlyweds Plus: W's Straight Talk on Torture June 9, 2006March 4, 2017 We killed Zarqawi. We turned back a discriminatory amendment to the Constitution. We nixed the Republican plan to go deeper into debt in order to eliminate the estate tax on multi-millionaires, centi-millionaires, billionaires and deci-millionaires. (Mere millionaires pay no estate tax.) It was a good couple of days for America. The broader picture is cloudier and a jittery stock market seems to reflect that. We have a good new Secretary of the Treasury, but his main role, as some see it, is to manage an orderly – as opposed to a disorderly – decline in the dollar. Many of us feel flush because our homes have appreciated so nicely. But they’re no bigger than they were when we bought them, and Paul Krugman has written that ‘[we have become] a nation in which people make a living by selling one another houses, and they pay for the houses with money borrowed from China. Now that game seems to be coming to an end.’ We have a great system of higher education, but some of the foreign talent we used to attract we no longer allow in the country, and other foreign talent that used to stay here upon graduation now goes back to Bangalore. We have terrific kids graduating from high school this month – but so many others dropping out early or graduating with below-par skills or civically challenged. (We need to be able more readily to fire low-performing teachers and principals – humanely, and helping them find other work – both for the kids’ sake and, selfishly, our own.) We borrow huge sums from abroad to buy gasoline that we convert to carbon dioxide at the rate of 19 pounds per gallon. Slowly, we are impoverishing our nation, even as we lurch toward environmental catastrophe. (Katrina as a foretaste, but what was that dust storm that enveloped Phoenix Wednesday? Did you see that? Is this regular occurrence and I just missed the memo?) All of this can be fixed – as Al Gore says, ‘political will is a renewable resource’ – but it won’t fix itself. Cutting taxes for the rich turns out not to solve every problem. In fact, it’s only seemed to make the rich richer, which the median American family gets squeezed tighter and tighter. THE MOVIE Speaking of which: In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. – Roger Ebert ☞ Asked whether he’d see the movie (about a planetary emergency), you may recall that George Bush half-laughed, ‘Nah, probably not.’ That quote’s from memory, but pretty close. TORTURE “Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law … The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example.” – George W. Bush, June 26, 2003 BOREF And so, like Bulgarian newlyweds in Casablanca in quest of exit visas, we wait. And wait. And wait. The latest, from Borealis subsidiary Roche Bay: 8 June 2006 Roche Bay plc (US OTC: RCHBF), (“Roche Bay” or “the Company”), owner of one of the world’s largest undeveloped iron ore deposits, located in Nunavut, Canada, today announces three key executive appointments with immediate effect, two of which will join the company’s Board of Directors. Each individual brings considerable and valuable experience to the Roche Bay project, having held senior positions elsewhere in the mining and steel industries. Their appointment comes as the company moves towards the next phase of the project’s development. Daniel M. Botes joins the Company as Chief Operating Officer and will have day-to-day responsibility for mine engineering, construction, ore processing and all other on-site operations. He also joins the Board. Daniel has wide experience in mine engineering and product quality, as well as ore marketing and business strategy. Having completed a degree in Industrial Engineering in 1997 at the University of Pretoria, Daniel was employed by Iscor Ltd in the Mining Division in South Africa, which later became Kumba Resources. During his employment, he held the positions of Senior Industrial Engineer, Head of Quality Assurance, Technical Manager (Kumba Hong Kong), Marketing Manager and Manger, Strategic Projects. Melinda K. Moore joins Roche Bay as Chief Financial Officer and will also join the Board. As well as having responsibility for financial management of the project, Melinda will lead Roche Bay’s fund-raising initiatives. She joins Roche Bay from Steel Business Briefing, a widely-read industry information provider, where she was Chief Representative for China, based in Shanghai. This role provided her with an enviable understanding of the industry and the Asia-Pacific market in particular. As well as being a Post-Graduate Finance lecturer at the Securities Institute of Australia, she held a number of advisory roles at Truegrip Corporation, Intersuisse, Bell Securities and Hambros Equities in Australia. Dirk P. Swartz joins Roche Bay as Vice President of Engineering. Dirk has gained wide experience in coal & iron ore metallurgy, as well as other minerals processing, particularly crushing, screening & dense medium separation in South Africa Most recently, he has been an engineering project manager on behalf of South African mine engineering firm, LSL Consulting. Apart from project managing various feasibilities studies for coal and iron ore projects, he also acted as Project Engineer for Kumba’s 9 million tonne a year iron ore project, Sishen South. Previously, he held roles at Joest Ltd as Senior Process Engineer, at Schenckas Sales Manager for process equipment and at Kumba’s Sishen Iron Ore mine in senior operational management roles. Benjamin Cox, Chief Executive of Roche Bay, said: “Each one of these appointments is very exciting for Roche Bay and I am thrilled that we have attracted such high calibre and well regarded individuals to the Company. Equally, their confidence in joining Roche Bay is a testament to the attractiveness of our assets and the huge potential of this whole project. “We have delivered considerable progress over recent months, not least evidenced by our agreement announced last month with Corus Group plc, one of the world’s largest metal producers. I look forward to delivering further positive news as we move forward and the new team gets to work.” Who knows? With Borealis currently selling for less than $60 million (there are two houses in the Hamptons currently on the market for more), I continue to think of it as a lottery ticket where, two chances out of three, perhaps, you will ultimately lose your money; but where, if you don’t lose your money, you might make 10 or 50 times your bet. I will a admit to being surprised and disappointed to have seen no visible progress since “the plane moved” a year ago. But the plane did move, and there really is a steel company called Corus (I checked), so I wait. And wait. And wait. (In the meantime, go see the movie.)
And Now THIS June 8, 2006March 4, 2017 So the Republican Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment was defeated. Two Democrats and 47 Republicans voted for ‘cloture,’ to allow the Amendment itself to be voted on, but 60 were needed (and two-thirds would have been required for the Senate to approve the Amendment itself, and then three-quarters of the states). So that was that. Now comes the Republican push to eliminate the estate tax. At a time of war and gigantic deficit, they call for yet another tax cut, this one exclusively (not just mainly) for the rich. Matt Ball: ‘From the American Prospect blog: ‘If you’re ever confused about the GOP’s puzzling determination to eliminate the broadly supportable estate tax, this report showing that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cabinet will personally gain between $90 and $340 million dollars from the tax’s repeal clarifies things considerably. As for amassing the political will for the battle, a recent Center for Public Integrity report found that a handful of superrich families had spent $490 million lobbying against the tax. If they succeed, these same families will gain almost $72 billion. Now that’s what I call a good investment. – Ezra Klein Had enough?
Why Not Pull for These People? June 7, 2006March 4, 2017 SOLUTIONS Thanks to Roger who thanks Brian who may have thought this up himself, but it’s the Internet, so who cares? ‘1. Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border. 2. Use the dirt to raise the levees in New Orleans. 3. Put the Florida alligators in the moat. Any other problems that need to be solved today?’ ☞ Well, we have a lot of problems to solve, actually. But the President and Republican Senate have set aside this week to solve the problems of divorce and unwed mothers – which they propose to do, at least in part, by denying gay Americans equal rights and telling churches whom they may and may not marry. VOWS Jim Ries: ‘Here‘s an article about a small town in Missouri where it is illegal for three or more people to live together if unmarried. So, imagine a gay couple with children living there. They would have to get married, but would also be prohibited from getting married. Sometimes I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I grew up in small town Missouri. Sometimes I’m a bit embarrassed to say I grew up in the United States.’ John in Atlanta: ‘Someday same-sex marriage will be routine. I am married to a female, but I know right from wrong.’ Senator Feingold on Daily Kos: The last thing we should be doing right now is playing politics with the Constitution, or with the lives of gay and lesbian Americans, who see this proposal for what it is – discrimination, pure and simple. Gay and lesbian Americans are our friends, our family members, our neighbors, and our colleagues. They should not be used as pawns in a political exercise. Backers of the proposal say they want to support marriage. But this debate is not about supporting marriage. Everyone agrees that good and strong marriages should be supported and celebrated. The debate in the Senate is also not about whether states should permit same sex marriage. I happen to believe that two adults who love each other and want to make a lifelong commitment to each other with all of the responsibilities that commitment entails should be able to do so. Others may disagree. But the Senate debate is about whether we should amend the Constitution of the United States to try to define marriage, and restrict, rather than expand, the rights of our citizens. The answer to that question has to be “no.” It’s deeply disappointing to see the Senate consider this proposed constitutional amendment, and for such cynical reasons. . . . This attempt to pass this constitutional amendment isn’t about values. It’s an attempt to stir up prejudice and fear, but I think it’s going to stir up something else – outrage at Republican leaders. The proposal itself is an outrage, and so is its consideration at the expense of so many other important issues, from health care to gasoline prices to Iraq. . . . AIDS AND MARRIAGE John Gilliam: ‘Twenty-five years ago yesterday, a physician in Los Angeles reported to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that five men had come down with a strange pneumonia and completely lacked the natural defenses to fight it. Our president chose yesterday, of all days, to walk out into the White House Rose Garden and demand that the Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would for the first time use our blessed constitution to intentionally discriminate against a class of people . . . ‘ ☞ There’s a connection here. The Republicans’ famously slow reaction to the AIDS crisis, because it seemed to be confined to gay men and heroine addicts, has led to a trajectory of the disease that now has 65 million mostly heterosexual people infected. Imagine if, all things considered, a more muscular response had revved up research and prevention efforts to lower the trajectory of the curve. Over the long run, worldwide, tens of millions of lives – many of them children’s lives – would have been saved. So what’s the connection between AIDS 25 years ago and the proposed federal anti-marriage amendment today? Other than the obvious – Republican distaste for gay people – it is that promiscuity spreads AIDS. The Republican leadership has consistently worked to discourage and devalue stable, monogamous gay unions. The Republican Party is the party of promiscuity. AT THE END OF THE DAY IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE Like the families in these ads. Why not grant them equal rights? Why not pull for them instead of against them? What a nice idea: a society where we’re all pulling for each other.
More Monkey Mail June 6, 2006March 4, 2017 So? Have you seen the movie? (Or bought the book?) Have you read Rolling Stone? ELECTION FRAUD Dale Davis: ‘It’s clear that Republicans, led by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court, stole the White House in 2000. After reading Robert Kennedy’s article in Rolling Stone, it’s clear that they also stole it in 2004, thanks to Kenneth Blackwell. I’m beginning to think Republicans’ politics are too dirty to ever let us win again.’ ☞ If you are a Republican who disagrees, urge your representatives to back HR 550 and other ‘election protection’ legislation, to put this kind of speculation to rest. We need elections everyone can trust. What are we – Belarus? MARRIAGE Paul Rightley: ‘It would seem that Charles and my wife share the same birthday. I hope that he has had a great day. It doesn’t make sense to me that I should be allowed to marry my wife, while you are not allowed to marry Charles.’ ☞ Thanks, Paul. We pay a lot in taxes and do our best to be good citizens. It would be nice to have equal rights. But attitudes take time to change and I’m not as impatient as some. I marvel at how far the world has come since I was in college, and am encouraged that the trend seems to be generally positive. Look at Dick Cheney (of all people). He doesn’t favor the Republican anti-gay Constitutional Amendment because he knows someone who’s gay (his daughter). And Bush himself almost surely doesn’t give ‘two —-s’ about this either, as has been recently reported; it’s just a loathsome tactic to keep power. For Charles’s birthday I went to the Cartoon Bank and got him the original of a Barbara Smaller cartoon that shows two stylish women in a restaurant ladies room. ‘I can’t walk in these shoes,’ one is telling the other, ‘which is a problem because I can’t sit down in this dress.’ MONKEY MAIL Have you sent a monkey mail lately? I wrote about this a while back, but every once in a while one of you sends one to me – like this one – and it cracks me up every time.
Two Inconvenient Truths June 5, 2006March 4, 2017 So? Have you seen the movie? Have you read Rolling Stone? I can’t do all the work around here. PS – Today is Charles’s birthday. Buy yourself something nice.
Marry Me? And We Can Ride Off on Our Electric Bikes to Listen to Trees Fall in the Forest June 2, 2006March 4, 2017 Marriage is supposed to be the topic in the Senate this coming week. President Bush will be speaking in the Rose Garden Monday to push the Republican anti-gay marriage amendment. Here’s what I think: 1. No church or synagogue or mosque should be told by the government whom they may or may not marry. Thankfully, under the United States Constitution as currently written, none is. Why change that? 2. All taxpayers (and even non-taxpaying citizens) should shoulder equal responsibilities and receive equal benefits from their government. Latinos should be granted fishing licenses, women should be granted driver’s licenses, Christians should be granted marriage licenses. Overweight families should have access to federal flood insurance, Japanese-Americans – and WASPs – should be protected under the hate crimes statutes, disabled restaurateurs should be granted liquor licenses, gay couples should be granted Social Security survivors’ benefits, African Americans should have equal access to public schools, Native Americans should be allowed to vote. This is America, where we are all granted equal rights under the law, and where we are all free to pursue happiness unless it hurts others. In that long list, above, all those rights are granted* except one: Right now, gay couples and their children are not granted Social Security survivor benefits (or any of the other 1,138 benefits and responsibilities a civil marriage license provides). *Yes, WASPs are protected under the hate crimes statutes. If a gang pulls a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant off the street on the way home from church, shouting anti-WASP slurs, chains him to the back of a pick-up and drags him through town until decapitated, that would be covered under today’s federal hate crimes statute – just as it was when this was done to an African American in Texas. GREAT NEWS FOR HETEROSEXUALS ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE It’s voluntary. That’s right: even in California, where the legislature approved gay marriage (but the governor vetoed it), you would not be forced to marry a person of the same sex. What’s more (the news gets better and better), opposite-sex marriages would not only remain legal – and cherished – they would remain the norm. Ninety-eight percent of all marriages (or some number like that) would be between men and women. No church or synagogue or mosque would be forced to perform even a single same-sex marriage. SO WHAT IS THIS WEEK’S DEBATE ABOUT? Everybody knows the Republican plan to amend the Constitution will not pass. The purpose of this Amendment is to force Democrats to vote against it so their opponents can beat them over the head with that in November. THE NONSOLUTION A lot of very well-meaning people say they’re fine with equal rights, just not calling it marriage. Why not call it something else, separate but equal, and be done with it? Personally, I’d have no problem with that. (Not all agree.) But for it to work, we’d need to pass a different Constitutional amendment – one that superseded the hundreds of thousands of local and federal laws and regulations and millions of contracts that refer specifically to marriage and spouses. It would have to say that for the purposes of all those laws and contracts, the words ‘civil unions’ (or ‘garriage’?) and partners (or ‘gouses’ and ‘louses’?) shall be synonymous with ‘marriage’ and ‘spouse’ and so on. IRONY AND HYPOCRISY The Republican Party turns out to be the party of Big Brother. It can’t interrupt its August vacation when a crisis threatens the Gulf Coast or ‘Bin Laden Determined To Strike In the US‘ . . . but can interrupt its vacation to interfere with one family’s painful, personal end-of-life decisions. It is the party that would never suggest legislating economic disincentives to divorce, because so many of its marriage proponents are triply divorced . . . . . . that claims to abhor promiscuity, yet consistently works against stable same-sex relationships . . . . . . that claims compassion, yet sees political advantage in beating up on gay people: whether by refusing to classify murders like Matthew Shepard’s as hate crimes, or refusing to include GLBT citizens in the long list of citizens protected against being fired simply for being who they are, or refusing to allow them to serve their country even when they have the precise Arab language skills that might have prevented 9/11 . . . . . . or, yes, this week, by seeking to divide the country by proposing a Constitutional amendment that is presented for political purposes only. Let’s be clear: gay marriage is already legal. Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John can get married in every state in the Union. But if the people of Massachusetts wish to grant them the right to marry not each other (which is legal) but the persons they love, then the Republican Party puts its foot down and says no: Big Brother must step in and override the Massachusetts legislature to forbid this. Clearly, much of America is not ready for marriage equality. Those of us who are need to be respectful of those who are not. It’s an important discussion of a kind America is uniquely able to conduct, and it should continue. While Democrats are not of one mind – even our 2004 presidential candidate opposed same-sex marriage – we are all but unanimous that no Church should be told by the government what kind of marriages it must or must not perform. And we oppose what is proposed to be only the second Constitutional Amendment ever to restrict, rather than expand, individual freedoms. The other, I need hardly remind you, was Prohibition. You don’t have to favor wine, beer, or whiskey to know that Prohibition was a bad idea. And you don’t have to favor equal rights for favor same-sex couples to know that our Constitution should not be used as a political football to try to take the focus off Iraq, Katrina, Scooter Libby, and the $8 trillion in deficits that just three Republican Administrations will have racked up since 1980 – that’s $8 trillion out of a total $10 trillion since 1776 – by the time the keys to the White House change hands January 20, 2009. The hearings this week are not about protecting marriage from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres; they are about protecting Republicans and the pharmaceutical companies and those energy companies that had their secret meetings with Dick Cheney when the administration first took office – meetings so secret even a lawsuit from the GAO could not pry loose the attendee list. THAT’s what this weeks hearing are about. Protecting Republicans, not marriage. THE TRICYCLE MOVED – TODAY Gary Diehl: ‘[You could wait for that motor you linked to yesterday], or you could go here and get an electric version that is cheaper, almost certainly quieter, and available today.’ Peter Wilde: ‘Another pedal bike conversion: no emissions (electric motor), currently available (a friend just got his installed yesterday).’ THAT NOISY TREE Mark W. Budwig: ‘One must address the issue of whether an unobserved tree even exists. Pick a tree, a real one, and then turn your back to it. Is it still there? If you say yes, then why is it even slightly problematical to make the further assumption that its leaves rustle in the wind even when you cover your ears?’ ☞ Well, exactly. Or at least I would have thought so until I read this: Robert Cox: ‘Dan Nachbar wrote: ‘If you are a believer in the modern scientific method, then the answer, painful as it may seem at first, has been pretty well established as: the tree makes no noise.’ Not quite. The quantum mechanically correct answer is: ‘the question makes no sense.’ See the article ‘Is the moon there when nobody looks?‘ for an explanation. This question, by the way, is why Einstein didn’t like quantum mechanics. But experiments show that our ingrained belief that the world ‘is there when nobody looks’ isn’t accurate. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this.’ A NICE SURPRISE Commerce Bank (CBH), suggested here September 30 at $30.68, closed yesterday over 40 after it was added to the S&P 500. (That always makes stocks jump a bit, at least for a while, because S&P index funds need to buy shares to reflect the index.) WEEKEND READING You’re late! Go to work! But if you’re looking for something to read over the weekend, you could do worse than this interesting piece by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in Rolling Stone.
The Tricycle MOVED June 1, 2006March 4, 2017 WE’RE NUMBER ONE! Michael Rutkaus: ‘Consumer Reports has Honest Tea Highest Rated of all teas for Lemon iced tea and second after Arizona for green iced tea (July, pages 18-19). I always get it when it is available, love the low calories.’ ☞ My current favorite is the Mint White Tea. But the whole line seems to be taking off. In the New York market, for example, sales are up more than 100% over last year. Full disclosure to newcomers: Honest Tea is a private company, founded by a Yale B-School Professor and one of his former students. If you drink enough of it, I will get rich and, by reducing your antioxidants, you will live forever. (Or at least have a nice light caffeine buzz.) Mint White Tea – grown from the same plant as black and green tea, but picked at a “youthful” stage. White tea delivers the same potent antioxidants, but less caffeine than other teas. This season, white is the new black and green. Our Mint White Tea is a delicate organic white tea blended with organic spearmint and a touch of organic vanilla. Certified organic by Pennsylvania Certified Organic. DO CHICKENS HAVE EAR DRUMS? Dan Nachbar: ‘I think you’ve missed the point on the whole chicken/egg thing. It is not actually a question at all, but rather a pithy way to capture the difference in beliefs held by creationists and evolutionists. Creationists will answer ‘chicken’; evolutionist will answer ‘egg.’ Other seeming ‘odd’ questions are also terse statements of much deeper issues. For instance, ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ poses the question of whether God (and Heaven) have a physical manifestation measurable in our universe. As for trees falling in the woods, the deeper issue is whether one can/must consider things in the universe that are completely outside of human perception and knowledge. If you are a believer in the modern scientific method, then the ‘answer,’ painful as it may seem at first, has been pretty well established as ‘The tree makes no noise.” Joel Grow: ‘I read some physicist a while back who opined that a tree disturbs the air if it falls, but that this disturbance only registers as noise when and if it strikes an eardrum. So, if no body, and no eardrum, is present, it isn’t noise.’ ☞ Oh, my. I guess it depends on how you define noise. Or light. Or smell. If noise is something that is heard, then: no ears, no hears. If noise is something you’d hear if you were there, then falling trees make noise. Or are there two kinds of falling trees: the ones that fall silently and the ones that fall with a crash? Two kinds of roses? The ones you can smell and the ones that (because you’ve run inside to get a beer) you can’t? THE REPUBLICAN COURT From the Associated Press: WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote. In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs. Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security. Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers. The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court’s shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the arrival of Alito. . . . THE TRICYCLE MOVED Paul: ‘Here’s a motor I can imagine on three-wheeled bikes in retirement villages all over Florida. It won’t pull an airplane, but it will help Mom and Pop get the groceries when they don’t have a car.’ ☞ Cool! It’s apparently a front wheel that you can retrofit to your existing bike. Go 20 mph, 200-mile range, low emissions, $399 when it starts shipping (they say) next year.
Sell Your Puts May 31, 2006January 15, 2017 CHICKEN OR EGG On August 9, 1999, you read in this space the definitive answer: the egg. Are we really going to keep asking the same questions over and over? Can’t we settle some of these age-old questions? Q. If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one’s there to hear it? A. Of course it does. Q. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? A. The egg. Because at whatever stage you decide to define a chicken as being a chicken — mutated and evolved from whatever near-chicken precursor laid the egg that hatched it — there was an egg with a forthcoming chicken inside before there was a chicken to lay it. The egg was laid by the precursor to the chicken, which had perhaps spent too much time around a poorly-shielded nuclear power plant. The egg cracks, and to the surprise of the near-chicken, out pops . . . a chicken! Anything else on your mind? (For questions like “Why is the sky blue,” where it’s not in dispute, just hard to remember, try http://www.ask.com/ and type, “Why is the sky blue?” For questions having to with your refrigerator’s ice-maker, or any other GE appliance, call 800-626-2000 twenty-four hours a day, press 4, and you get great human service.) Now, nearly seven years later, it is confirmed. I want to crow about this, but I think it must be more appropriate to cluck. PICK AN ISSUE! You can pick nits in this quick video. For example, I’m not sure some idiot at the VA might not have taken home the agency’s database with 26 million Social Security numbers under Democratic leadership just as was done under Republican leadership. But in the main, isn’t this video stunningly on point? The Republicans spend so much time vilifying the federal government, they’re not very good at running it. SELL YOUR PUTS Okay, with Nitromed down from a little over $22 last summer to $3.80 last night, I’ve sold most of my puts. Not because I’d buy the stock here – $140 million for what? – but because most of the profit from this trade has been realized, and for me, at least, it’s time to move on. I’ve kept my short position (why pay the tax by covering it?) and some September 7.5 puts. But for the most part, game over. If only they all worked out so well.
The IQ of Bean Dip (These Two Items Are Actually Related) May 30, 2006March 4, 2017 DAVE BARRY’S TIPS FOR THE HURRICANE SEASON From Sunday’s Miami Herald: The 2006 hurricane season is here, and if you’re a resident of Florida, you know what that means: It means you have the IQ of bean dip. If you had any working brain cells, by now you’d have moved to some less risky place, such as Iraq. . . . ARIANNA’S TAKE ON THE MOVIE YOU MUST SEE From the Huffington Post: May 22 — Over the weekend, I flew from Washington to Cannes. In Washington, the talk was all about 2006. In Cannes, the talk is all about 2008. That’s because even with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Penelope Cruz, Jamie Foxx, and Halle Berry here for the film festival, the hottest star in town is Al Gore. In Cannes for the European premiere of his powerful global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has been surrounded by adoring crowds and deluged with interview requests. He told me that he gave 23 back-to-back-to-back interviews on Sunday, Hollywood junket-style (all on only one hour’s sleep), and had another 23 scheduled for Monday. “This is my second visit to Cannes,” he said. “The first was when I was fifteen years old and came here for the summer to study the existentialists — Sartre, Camus… We were not allowed to speak anything but French!” Which may explain his pitch-perfect French accent. It’s clear that the film, and the engaging “New Gore” on display both in the film and his public appearances promoting it, have connected with people in a big way. The film is an environmental punch in the gut. Gore 2.0 is a revelation, and a critical smash. When asked at his press conference how he should be addressed, he replied “Your Adequacy.” “Hanks himself could not have delivered the line more smoothly,” gushed The Guardian. The Washington Post’s Sebastian Mallaby labeled him “a hero.” Time’s Anne Marie Cox called him “a rock star.” New York magazine touted his “amazing comeback.” And even Fox News’ Roger Friedman described him as “funny and relaxed.” Talk about killer reviews. Of course, as potent as the film is (Friedman says the minds of skeptics “will be changed in a nanosecond” and Franklin Foer says “it will certainly change elite opinion”), the other reason is the “Will he or Won’t he?” speculation about 2008. He’s saying no — but you can hear the “Run, Al, Run” chant growing louder. “Democrats are looking everywhere to find their presidential candidate,” Graydon Carter told me. “But the solution may be right under their noses.” . . . Even major skeptics like myself (and I’ve never been shy about attacking Gore, as you can see here, here, here, and here) can’t help but be affected. It’s why he suddenly finds himself surrounded by people all but begging him to run. . . . ☞ I am enthusiastically neutral among all our fine potential Democratic candidates. So leave the politics aside and consider the planet. We’re operating it, more and more people are beginning to say, as if it were a business in liquidation. It’s as if we had the IQ of bean dip. Go see this movie – today if you live in New York or L.A., or next week as it opens wider (Friday: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Washington) . . . and then in the weeks to come as it opens ever wider still (Peoria: June 30).