Nina Simone - Ain't Got No...I've got Life

Once again courtesy of Splicetoday.com via YouTube. Those guys rule.

The Walls are Closing in on Israel

A terrific op-ed from today's New York Times about the current situation in the Gaza Strip that I wrote about here earlier today. The author is a bit more lenient towards Israel than I was. Israelis think that Israel is in trouble:

"Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter."

Well if the Europeans throw eggs...

...then surely it's ok to throw shoes. At least that's according to Muntazer al-Zaidi's (the shoe thrower) lawyer:

"Have you ever heard of anyone being killed by a shoe?" al-Saadi said. "In Europe, they throw eggs and rotten tomatoes to insult. In Iraq, throwing a shoe is a symbol of disrespect."

al-Zaidi's lawyers are trying to have the charge of assault against a foreign head of state, which carries a prison term of up to 15 years, dropped down to insulting a foreign head of state, which carries a sentence of 2 years. Maybe al-Zaidi should've stuck to tomatoes.

Avalanches

The fam and I are headed out to Whistler, B.C. for a week of skiing starting January 1st. I'm psyched, of course. But apparently over the last couple of weeks a lot of people have been killed in avalanches out west. The most disturbing item, from the LA Times:

"...the death toll in the backcountry was not unusual. It is the casualties at ski resorts, generally considered safe winter destinations, that illustrate how lethal the mountains have been this month."

Great. Luckily no one's been killed at Whistler so far this year. But my dad, brother and I will definitely be avoiding the backcountry and sticking to well-marked trails on the mountain.

The Israel article made it onto SpliceToday

Once again my friend John at SpliceToday was kind enough to post a reworked Israel article, which I posted on here yesterday, on his website. I'll post the link:

http://splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/end-israeli-hostility

I urge any/all of you who might be reading this to check out SpliceToday. It's a fun website with lots of news, music, and other cultural items that are sure to please.

The Sun Rises

After getting locked out of my apartment building last night and needing to call a locksmith, I woke up this morning to blazing sunshine.

I had forgotten during the long trip towards the winter Solstice, how nice it was to wake up and have the sun in your face. In recognition, I've decided to post a favorite classic of mine. Have a sunny day!

Mac Vs. PC

No More Bombs

Over the holiday (for Christians, anyway) weekend, Israel planes attacked several sites in the Gaza Strip (image below courtesy of the BBC).




For fun, I'll juxtapose that photo with one of Tel Aviv, Israel:




The two places look similar, no?

Anyway, the airstrikes have killed around 300 Palestinians (so far), and at last word the attacks are continuing.

For those of you who don't know much about the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I'll give a brief, probably biased, version of events:

Around 60 years ago, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the United Nations decided that Jews should have their own homeland. Rather than giving up any of their own land in Europe or Eastern Europe, the UN made the wonderful decision to settle the Jews in what the Torah claims is the Jews' homeland: the area in and around Jerusalem.

The problem was that there were already people living on that land: the Palestianians. And there were, literally, millions of them. That problem was solved by simply forcing the Palestinians to move, allowing the Jews to move in and create the quasi-democratic state of Israel. I say quasi because, although the Palestinians are governed by Israel and there are many more of them than there are Israelis, the Palestinians don't vote in Israeli elections and have no official voice in the main Israeli government. They have their own pseudo-government, run by the political party Hamas, which the Israeli government has conveniently labeled "terrorist" and which was the target of the weekend's airstrikes.

But anyway. The vast majority of Palestinians now live in either the West Bank or the tiny Gaza Strip. To add to that, Jewish Zionist settlers are continually building settlements that encroach on the small amounts of land the Palestinians still control. The Palestinians are literally fenced in, not allowed to travel freely, and are denied basic necessities including food, medicine, and education. Every once in a while, Israeli bulldozers will raze a few houses in response to a salvo of rockets aimed at Israeli towns.

An Israeli might tell you something like "Well have you ever been suicide bombed? Have you ever been attacked with rockets? These Palestinians are dangerous!" But that is ignoring the fact that the Palestinians view the Israeli state as having stolen the Palestinians' homeland. 60 years ago. The struggle against Israel is not, for many Palestinians, a struggle against Judaism or the West: it's a struggle for political freedom and sovereignty. They resent the West only because it is complicit in Israel's aggression.

Yes, the Palestinians do sometimes resort to terrorism to further their political goals. But, looking at the situation from their perspective, what other options do they have? They have no leverage politically or militarily. They are second class citizens being governed against their will by a much smaller minority.

Israel claims that its Palestinian foe is an existential threat and must be dealt with harshly by, amongst other tactics, bombing its governing party's headquarters with warplanes. But really, how dangerous can a people be when all that they can do to resist Israeli aggression is to throw stones at tanks:

Israel claims that its struggle against the Palestinians is a life or death conflict. But surely there must be a better solution than to allow an entire generation of young people to grow up in what amounts to a lawless refugee camp. What better terrorist recruiting environment could there be?

Stop with the warplanes and start allowing the Palestinians to assert their humanity. Give them food; give them medicine; give them education; give them democracy.

"Virginity Pledges" Don't Work...

So says the Washington Post, via MSNBC:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

Abstinence-only sex education was a hallmark of the Bush Years, and yet another demonstration of the Christian Right's refusal to connect with reality.

Happy Holidays

This is probably the coolest thing that I've ever seen.

Obama on Food

I've written before about my thoughts on the food industry in this country. Lots of others have also expressed hope that Obama might begin to do something about our over-reliance on King Corn. Alas, according to the New York Times:

Although Mr. Obama has proposed changes in the nation’s farm and rural policies and emphasizes the connection between diet and health, there is nothing to indicate he has a special interest in a radical makeover of the way food is grown and sold.

You can't really blame the guy. The economy's in the crapper and we're fighting two wars, after all. I suppose food policy can wait. For now.

Working on Christmas Eve

Out of a legal department of around 20 people, there might be 2 or 3 working today, including myself. You'd think that coming in on Christmas Eve would be a terrible thing, but to be honest it's not so bad.

I'm getting paid for a full day even though I'll probably only stay here until noon. On slow days like this I can almost hear my bank account growing before the inevitable weekend depletion.

I can basically phone it in on quiet days like this. I had NO new emails in my inbox. NONE. Plus both of my bosses are on vacation.

I don't have to travel very far to my parents' place, and coming to work gets me out of bed and I probably won't get on the road (train) any later than I would if I allowed myself to sleep in.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts for those people stuck in their cubicles on December 24th.

Torture Post Expanded

Hey all,

I decided to expand a bit upon my last torture blog entry and sent it to my friend at SpliceToday.com (which is a cool site that you should check out regularly). The link is:

http://splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/the-u-s-s-torturous-legacy-in-iraq

Thanks for the support!

Mexico's Drug War and Our Complicity

The Washington Post reports that 9 headless bodies were found near a busy road in southern Mexico, including several Mexican army troops. All of the bodies are believed to be casualties in Mexico’s increasingly violent drug war, which according to the Post has claimed around 5,800 lives so far this year. That’s more than two 9/11’s.

Condoleeza Rice, our oh-so-brilliant and effective Secretary of State (I nearly puked writing that) was in Mexico last week discussing the drug war. When asked whether she thought the Bush Administration’s decision in 2004 to let the US assault weapon ban expire (such guns are not sold anywhere in Mexico) had had any effect on the amount of weapons in Mexico, Rice said she didn’t think so.

Of course not. Because why would Mexican drug cartels cross the border, buy or steal readily-available assault weapons, and then use them to help kill other drug dealers and Mexican soldiers? That wouldn’t make any sense, would it?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Torturing the Shoe-Thrower

The Egyptian shoe-throwing journalist being held in an Iraqi prison has, according to his brother, who recently visited him in prison, been tortured. As a result:

Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had said: “After the torture and the cold-water shower, I told them to bring me a blank sheet of paper and I would sign it, and they could write whatever they wanted. I am ready to say I am a terrorist or whatever you want.”

This is the point that people often miss about the reasons why governments (including ours) torture people. It’s not that we actually believe we’re getting sound information. Those who are tortured are often willing to say anything at all, even confessing to crimes that they did not commit, in the hopes that the torture will cease. Governments then take those sham confessions and hold them up to ‘prove’ that the torture was effective and that a criminal has been outted. That’s what Hitler did; it’s what Stalin did; it’s what North Korea still does. And now, apparently, it’s what the US-backed Iraqi government does.

Torturing has never been about acquiring reliable information. It’s about cowing your opponents, real and/or imagined, into submission; and it’s about governments trying to legitimize oppressive tactics by conjuring fake confessions from battered inmates.

I hope Obama follows through on his promises. This isn’t what America should stand for.

Japan Labor and US Torture

The Japanese government admitted today that during WWII it used POW’s as forced laborers at a coal mine owned by the current Prime Minister’s family, Taro Aso. According to the report:

“300 British, Dutch and Australian prisoners of war worked at a mine owned by Aso Mining during the last four months of World War II in western Japan.”

During WWII the Japanese frequently abused military prisoners and civilians alike. And there are still controversies relating to Japan’s refusal to acknowledge its abuses in parts of China during the 1930s. It’s taken more than 60 years for Japan’s government to admit the abuse of “only” 300 prisoners for a term of four months.

We Americans of the 21st century were taught that Japan’s atrocities at the beginning of the century were reprehensible and unjustifiable. We are perplexed by Japan’s government’s reluctance to admit their own culpability.

So how and what do we think when we are increasingly certain that the uppermost officials in our own government condoned the use of torture against suspected foreign terrorists (and even against American citizens)? I hope for the sake of our country and the world that our government admits its mistakes soon and takes steps to make amends. I hope that in 60 years we as a country are not still struggling to come to terms with our past mistakes and making half-hearted admissions and apologies.

To do that, let’s take a hard look at indicting those responsible for the implementation of torture in US-run interrogation rooms. I’m thinking of you, Cheney, and you, Rumsfeld.

Clinton Was Part of the Problem!

In 1997 Bill Clinton passed a law that nearly eliminated capital gains taxes on real estate. The result:

"…many economists say that the law had a noticeable impact, allowing home sales to become tax-free windfalls. A recent study of the provision by an economist at the Federal Reserve suggests that the number of homes sold was almost 17 percent higher over the last decade than it would have been without the law."

Are we all still sure that we want to hold Clintonism up as the ideal economic model?

Corruption in Iraq? Seriously?!

The New York Times reported today that several dozen Iraqi government officials had been arrested for allegedly plotting a coup that would return Saddam’s Baathist party to power. While such an event is no doubt disturbing, I also can’t help but wonder if Iraq’s Prime Minister, Mr. Maliki, isn’t using the arrests to consolidate his own power.

The truth is probably somewhere in between those two poles. The arrested officials were probably plotting to seize more power, whether lawfully or unlawfully. But according to this NYTimes article, Mr. Maliki has recently been firing government anti-corruption officials.

Were the arrested officials actually disloyal? Or is Maliki using the corruption – corruption that his own policies have helped flourish – to clean the government of officials he views as less-than-loyal to him? We might never know the answer.

Well That Answers That...

How does Santa deliver his presents?

Easy:

"He understands that space stretches, he understands that you can stretch time, compress space and therefore he can, in a sense, actually have six Santa months to deliver the presents,' Professor Larry Silverberg from North Carolina State University said."

Professional Sports and Race

Over the years I’ve had several conversations with different people about the prevalence of black athletes in professional sports. When Jeremy Wariner won the gold medal in Athens in the 400m, we were amazed that "a skinny white guy" could outrun everyone else. After all, a white man hadn't won the 400m sprints in something like 40 years.

I came across this interesting article in Slate magazine relating to this topic and thought I’d share. The guy acknowledges that, as far as entire populations go, black people are slightly more likely than whites and even more likely than Asians to have genes that indicate an abundance of the “fast twitch” muscles that are necessary in most sports. But that slight genetic predisposition does not explain the overwhelming presence of black athletes in, for example, the NBA, where around 80% of the athletes are black. There are other factors at work.

What those other factors might be is a bit beyond the scope of that article, but the question intrigues me. Certainly there’s the idea in poor, mostly minority cultures that the only way out is through sports. Not only will sports give you riches, but it will also give you fame. How could that not be appealing to a kid who goes to a school where there aren’t enough books in the classroom?

People will often look at the prevalence of minority players in professional sports as a sign that America is becoming increasingly colorblind. But the owners are white and the coaches are white. In fact, I’d bet that minorities are underrepresented in every service market related to the sports industry: agents; hospitality; marketing; vendors. We trip over ourselves to say how wonderful it is that we, a mostly white society, give young black players a chance at money and fame on the sports field, but at the same time the whole show is run almost exclusively by whites.

If a poor young black child has moderate football skills and moderate intelligence, what are his parents, coaches, and teachers going to tell him? “Work your ass off to be a better football player, son! It’s the only way that you’ll ever make it to college and then to the big time.”

What about a young white kid in the suburbs with moderate football skills and moderate intelligence? I guarantee you his parents, coaches, and teachers will say “You can keep playing football but you’d better hit the books hard, son! It’s the only way you’ll ever make it to college and onto a good career.”

Which position would you rather be in? If the black kid gets hurt or just isn’t good enough, what options does he have left? He’s neglected his education and probably can’t afford to go to college without a football scholarship. But if the white kid turns out to be terrible at football, he still might get into an Ivy League school and at the very least he’s got a solid educational background and can probably afford a decent local college.

In the end, who’s going to work harder to be a professional sports player? The young black kid, who has no other options; or the young white kid, who if he’s not quite good enough at football, can always just go to college anyway.

We’ve got to find a way to make the system work better.

Well I Guess This is Growing Up

I went to a Christmas party hosted by a New York friend of mine last weekend. My girlfriend joined me, as did both of my roommates and several other people that constitute my “group” here in the Big Apple. I’ve met all of them through my roommate, Tyler, who met them through his affiliation with Teach for America.

It didn’t strike me as odd at the time, but thinking back it does seem a little strange that peers of mine threw, and I attended, an “adult” Christmas party (i.e. there weren’t any kegs and we didn’t play beer pong). The host made a really good ham and grilled potatoes, and someone else had brought salad and crackers with cheese. My girlfriend and I provided chips and salsa. We made sure to buy a really good brand without telling anyone that we hadn’t made it from scratch. It was a hit.

Gone are the days when I was forced to attend my parents’ friends’ Christmas parties wearing ridiculous holiday sweaters. I have awkward memories of being forced to socialize with unlikable children, and I remember always being relieved when we would leave.

But now my age group, like our parents before us, is slowly starting to throw and attend our own Christmas parties. It’s ridiculously strange to think that some day soon, my friends and I will be hauling our own unenthusiastic children to awkwardly socialize with one another. I’m getting older, I can feel it.

Crazy dad scaring his son

This kid is definitely going to need therapy.

Airbone Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight

Obama's Economic Appointments

A close friend of mine told me this morning that he “wished he had voted for Hillary.” Why Hillary? “At least we would have known what to expect,” was his answer. He was upset at Obama’s recent appointments to high level economic positions within his administration. "Where is Krugman?" my friend wondered. He believes that Bill Clinton bears a portion of the blame for the current economic disaster. After all, his main economic advisor was Alan Greenspan and if we’re going to blame “the last 30 years” of economic policy for our current predicament, we can’t arbitrarily ignore eight of them.

Because Clinton and his faintly neo-liberal economic team bear at least some blame for our current mess, my friend argued, then the last thing we should be doing is putting the same guys back in power to fix the problem that they had a hand in creating.

That’s a fair point, but only if you believe that economic policymakers are the ones who are going to fix the economy by themselves. As my Dad pointed out, one of the primary responsibilities of political leadership in a crisis is to instill confidence, and to banish fear. It was FDR who said in 1933, after all, that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Even if you have a sound economic framework, it’s not going to be ok unless people are willing to spend and invest their money. And they’re not going to do that unless they’re confident that they’ll be protected.

So Obama has two priorities for the next several months: first, to ease people’s fear; second, to appoint people who are capable of fixing the structural problems.

The calm and deliberate manner in which he’s made his economic appointments will go far in easing people’s fears. When Joe Shmoe turns on the TV and sees that several Clinton advisors are back in power, he’ll think “well I didn’t do so badly during the 90s. Maybe things aren’t as bleak as I had feared.” The hope is that at some point in the not-so-distant future, Joe Shmoe and the rest of us will start investing and spending again.

That being said, my friend’s concerns about the structural changes that will be made to the economy in the next six months are well-founded. As my friend put it, if your drunk friend just drove your car into a wall, you wouldn’t let him drive it again just because he promised he was sober. You’d get the DD.

So is it a good idea to bring in the people who helped screw things up to help fix everything? Obama seems to think so, and from what I’ve read in interviews and short biographies, these guys seem to recognize that times have changed and that their economic ideologies need tweaking. Will it be enough? Or will we shortly revert to free-market ideologies that help the rich and screw everyone else? Who knows, but I’m 100% certain that we have a better chance with Obama than we ever would have had with McCain. Or Hillary for that matter.

At the very least, I hope I persuaded my friend to give Obama a chance to be inaugurated and make policy before he jumps ship. Was I successful? And are there other already-disillusioned Obamacons out there? We’ll see on both counts.

Out With the Old...

How sad and frightening is it that the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the face of the earth, is totally ignored by the other Most Powerful People in the World. Bush was so incompetant, so bullish, so wrong about everything, that the elected leaders of the world can't even bring themselves to shake his hand.

It makes me doubly glad that we elected Obama. I'm sure that, at the very least, he'll be shaking everyone's hand.

Romney vs. Republicans

Mitt Romney has a good piece in the NYT today about the looming bankruptcies of the Big Three American car manufacturers. He argues eloquently that the companies should be allowed to go bankrupt, but that the government should guarantee bankruptcy financing and should also force them to undergo a lot of structural changes that will leave them in better shape to compete down the road.

While reading the article, though, I kept thinking to myself "there is no way that Romney would've said this had he still been running for president." And of course there's no way any Republican candidate could have written that in a political campaign. There's no room left for intelligent discourse in the Republican party, not with people like Palin, Kristol, and Bush running the show.

As a Republican you can't even pretend that you're intelligent, while across the aisle you've got Obama giving his incredible speech on race relations in Philadelphia. It must have been incredibly frustrating for someone like Romney, who's obviously a smart, intellectual guy, to have to hide that and answer questions like "Do you believe in evolution?" It makes you realize how behind the times Republicans are these days. They're eventually going to have to divorce themselves from the Christian Right and look clearly at where America is going: multicultural, educated, intelligent.

Beginning of the Big Fix?

The New York Times reports that Obama claims his campaign promises to big-time investments in new energy technology remains at the top of his agenda. Cool. My only question is: when Obama says that "millions of new jobs will be created," what types of jobs does he mean? I know that back during the New Deal a lot of guys my age signed up for jobs working on roads, parks, bridges, etc.

But what types of clean-energy jobs can I, and people like me, hope for in the coming years? I don't have a research/science background and I can't imagine that my next career move is installing solar panels. I wonder if my primary function will simply be to buy whatever cool new 'green' technologies make their debut over the next decade.

Hillary @ State

It looks like Obama's going to offer H. Clinton the Secretary of State cabinet position. Andrew Sullivan, for one, likes the idea. I'm not so sure. It would be hard for any politician, especially one as self-assured and ambitious as Clinton, to become suddenly obsequious when you've just come off a hard fought and bitter campaign. Especially when you were passed over for VP.

As for Obama, it will be nice to have someone of Clinton's stature negotiating with foreign powers, although Bill Clinton's ties to multinational corporations and shady foreign leaders makes me nervous. Plus, I thought the whole point of Obama winning the primaries was that we wouldn't have to deal with the Clintons in the White House this year. So Obama had better be a really good people-manager if he wants to take advantage of Clinton's leverage without sabotaging his own position.

And in all honesty, I really wanted to see Bill Richardson get State. I think he's a straight up guy, he was an early supporter of Obama after he dropped out of the race in spite of his close ties to the Clintons, and he's a link to the Latino demographic that helped get Obama New Mexico and Colorado.

Maybe the final question for Obama was where he wanted his biggest rival: in the Senate, where he'd have little control over what she did but where her attacking position might be limited; or in the White House, where he could control her more effectively but where she has the potential to do some real damage.

Obama's Victory

Throughout the prolonged primary/presidential contest, Obama’s mantra was that he was going to “change politics.” That message inspired, so it seemed, thousands of new voters, especially young ones and African American ones. Watching Obama’s huge rallies, I was convinced that the political demographics had really changed. I expected a huge turnout on Nov. 4th, and for Obama to be carried to victory on a swell of young/black/new voters.

As it turns out, that’s not quite what happened. Turnout was significantly higher than in 2004, 64% to 55%, but among the young voter demographic turnout wasn’t markedly different than usual. I’ve read reports that even without the overwhelming youth and black vote, Obama would’ve won. What pushed him over the top was that almost no independents voted for McCain, with most of them saying that antipathy towards Palin was what sealed their decision.

That’s disappointing to me in a couple of ways. There was such enthusiasm among my friends and family that I was sure everyone in all parts of the country was feeling. I was sure that people would be drawn to Obama’s decency, intellect, and character and choose to vote for him as opposed to the old fuddy-duddy.

But what really happened was that people hated Palin so much that they decided to vote for Obama. That brings up the scary thought that, had McCain chosen someone else, he might have won. And that’s what disappoints me. To me, Obama had seemed so fresh, new, and perfect for the situation. I wanted the rest of America to believe that along with me. But it turns out that they didn’t, really.

What Obama really succeeded in doing, I guess, was to energize the Democratic base more than we’d been energized before and making sure key constituencies (blacks especially) got out there and voted. I’m not sure how much expanding he did, especially when you consider that he got less votes in Ohio than Kerry did in 2004, and he only won because 300,000 Republican voters who voted for Bush in 2004 stayed home for McCain in 2008. Was that because they just couldn’t quite bring themselves to vote for Obama, and thought that a non-vote for McCain was the same as a vote for Obama, or was it simply because they were uninspired and unorganized this year? Who knows.

Still, Obama’s victory is important because it shows us Democrats that there are a lot of people out there who think like we do, and that the important thing is organizing and building a community. I just hope that the next 4 years justify our faith in him.

Our Relationship with Nature

In my junior high school English class I remember debating with the class and teacher our views concerning man’s relationship with nature. At the time I made the contrarian point that it was equally easy to meditate in a windowless office room as it was under a tree in the Rocky Mountains during the summer. Even back then I didn’t totally agree with the point that I was making and I remember the teacher being pretty explicit in his assertion that there’s something about nature that resonates with people.

You mentioned in your letter that walking along the ocean is so relaxing and so peaceful that it evinces a link between modern humans and our algae ancestors. An interesting comment, but as you said, probably not directly traceable. There’s a lot separating Ian circa 2008 and Grandpa Fish, circa 2 million BC.

In your letters describing various outdoor excursions, you unfailingly use words like “quiet”, “silent”, “peaceful” and “refreshing”. I find that I, too, use those words, as do many other writers more famous than ourselves (I’m thinking, of course, of my literary hero Hemingway). When we go on hikes or on canoe trips we find that we can’t properly describe the look of the place without describing how it makes us feel. Even photos can’t show people how we felt when we were alone in the forest.

So our attitudes toward nature aren’t entirely decided by how things look and our proximity to “natural” stuff. After all, we can go to a garden show or a zoo and be surrounded by various plants and animals but still not get that feeling we do in a canoe on the Delaware River. Even in England, where there are big fields and wild-looking parks, you don’t get the feeling that you’re in a totally natural environment. I’m closer to that feeling in those parks than sitting here in my cubicle, for sure, but I’m not quite there.

In your letter you suggested that our history as wild animals living in a wild world has something to do with it. I totally agree with you. For 2 million years we evolved to be perfectly adapted to a wild world where it was dark when the sun went down, and where it was always quiet except when you spoke to your tiny tribe. The loudest noise was thunder, the brightest light was the sun. Imagine how in tune with the natural world we must have been! For millions of years! No wonder it seems familiar in a very basic, biological way.

We’ve spent the past 10,000 years or so trying to distance ourselves as much as possible from that “barbaric” life. Of course we’ve eliminated a lot of the crappy things about living in caves. Modern medicine is nice, we live longer and healthier than we used to and I guess there’s something to be said about self awareness and intellectual life. We’re becoming increasingly unfamiliar with the physical world we live in. So unfamiliar, really, that we’re gradually killing it.

We’re creating a new world and lifestyle that is not totally suited to our evolutionary heritage. For example, when you turn off the lights in your house at night you’re blind for 10 minutes until your eyes gradually adjust. You might wonder, “Well why don’t our eyes adjust instantaneously?” As Ben suggested the other day, I think it’s because evolutionary our eyes didn’t need to. In the ancient world the lights never went on or off immediately. The sun sets gradually, and it rises gradually, giving our eyes time to gradually adjust. There’s still something fundamental about ourselves that’s used to going to sleep at dusk and rising with the dawn.

So when we walk along the ocean or go on a canoe trip and explain to everyone how quiet and peaceful it was, I think we’re trying to express that part of us that still hasn’t totally left the forest. At the same time that we build concrete cities, our fondest wish is to spend a day alone in the woods.

I guess it all just goes back to the fundamental question that all humans, post and pre-civilization, must have asked themselves at one point or another: what on earth am I doing here?

Generation We

Obama's Speech in Richmond 10-23-08

I felt as though I wanted to save this one.

Centro-Matic "Rat Patrol and DJs"

Awesome song.

England, from the Outside Looking In

I was perusing through old emails yesterday at work and came across several of the group emails I had written back in ‘05/’06 while I was abroad in England. What a carefree life I lived! One email dated in early May, immediately after my return from Greece, noted that my next exam was not until early June so I had three full weeks with nothing to do but “read and think.” Sitting here in my cubicle staring at a computer screen, with no windows within 30 feet, that sounds just about like paradise.

It gets you wondering: will I ever be as happy as I was in England? Maybe it’s just the passage of time and the older version of myself romanticizing a time that must have felt at least a little uncertain. I know I wasn’t content in England. I was restless and worried that I was missing out on something, though I wasn’t sure what it was. I missed my friends and family from home and was upset over a past relationship.

But still, I know that for a great deal of time I was consciously happy, even exuberant. I read a ton, wandered a ton, traveled a ton, partied a ton. Even as I was living it, I knew that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m still young and only have light responsibilities, but my experiences in England seem very remote to my life here in NYC. From here on, things only get more rigid as I add more and more responsibilities.

And even though, given the opportunity, I probably wouldn’t want to have a repeat of junior year in college again, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever feel as happy as I did then, whether what I’m experiencing will ever fit so perfectly with my desires and expectations.

Could it be that the best years of a person’s life are when they’re in college? Doesn’t that seem just a little bit unfair?

Jeremy Messersmith - Miracles

Old Nike Commerical with Stephen Jackson and Shawn Merriman

This is one of my most favorite commercials of all time:

Dating on Demand!

You Won't Believe This is a Bread Commercial

Voltaire, Candide, and Cultivating your own Garden

When I get frustrated with the way things are going in this country, sometimes I think of the final scene in Voltaire's 'Candide'. It refreshes me, and maybe will do the same to you. I'll paste the ending below.

""Work then without disputing," said Martin; "it is the only way to render life supportable."

The little society, one and all, entered into this laudable design and set themselves to exert their different talents. The little piece of ground yielded them a plentiful crop. Cunegund indeed was very ugly, but she became an excellent hand at pastrywork: Pacquette embroidered; the old woman had the care of the linen. There was none, down to Brother Giroflee, but did some service; he was a very good carpenter, and became an honest man. Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide:

"There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts."

"Excellently observed," answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden." "

Patrick's Memorial

Last weekend I attended Patrick’s memorial service in Bethesda, MD. There was quite a crowd there. Maybe 300-400 people packed into a local high school theater. I spotted quite a few people from Dickinson whom I haven’t seen in years because they had graduated earlier than I did.

I had run track with many of them. At one point, we stood together and talked and laughed about Patrick’s antics at track practice. We all had the same memories and laughed at the same stories. Seeing the others gave me a sense of togetherness, that we were all connected in this particular way, through track and through Patrick. We had come together again, maybe for the last time, but in a way it felt good to know that my memories of Patrick and of track were shared by others.

I guess that’s the silver lining at funerals. That people separated by distance, age, and experience can share a connection that impels them to come together at the end of things.

Another silver lining, for me anyway, was that I was able to pay a visit to my friend Julia, who lives in the DC area and whom I hadn’t seen in long time. We went to dinner at a nice burger joint in DC, sat by a fountain drinking coffee and catching up, and then at night walked the length of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

From directly beneath the Washington Monument, on one side you can see the WWII and Lincoln Memorials, far off to your left you can see the dome of the Capitol, and across the water you can just glimpse the Jefferson Memorial.

Let me tell you: it was great. Washington is a majestic city, especially when compared with NYC. There are lots of marble and granite building, and the whole place just emanates feelings of power, history, and importance. This, I suppose, is why you find so many power-hungry blood sucking politicians in the area.

It was a day of conflicting feelings. I said goodbye to Patrick, but reaffirmed connections with many other people. As bad as this might be to say, I felt lucky that I hadn’t been extremely close to Pat. I can’t imagine the devastation of his parents, of his brothers, and of his close friends. The whole day made me feel very mortal, but contentedly so.

Who doesn't like a fat guy dancing?

Obama's Parents...very funny

The End of Things

A college friend of mine died over the weekend after falling off the roof of his apartment building in New York. We heard from his parents that he “slipped while climbing to his favorite spot.” I don’t fault him his affection for the rooftop view. The Manhattan skyline is spectacular at night.

I ran track with Pat for either one or two years, I can’t remember exactly. He was incredibly outgoing and pretty wild. I know that he left school for a couple of semesters to deal with depression, so I’m sure that the wildness helped deflect attention from the sadness.

I’m not used to people from my age group dying. I’ve never been to a friend’s funeral. It feels like there’s a big difference between the death of a young person and the death of an older person. When we young people go to an older relatives’ funeral, it seems to make more sense. A life has ended, but at least a life has been fully lived.

When our friends die, we are not comforted by the ordered nature of everything: the funeral, the burial, the grieving process. Everything is new, nothing is familiar, and the finality of it haunts us. There is so much left undone. You just can’t get your head around it.

Tucker Bounds is made to look like a fool

Daily Show takes on Palin

Somewhere Over the Rainbow video...with the help of Katie

Sarah Palin as VP

My thoughts on McCain's selection this morning of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska since November of 2006 (that's 19 months on the job, people):

It's about as good as McCain can do, but in reality we have to ask ourselves: Who is Sarah Palin? And the answer is that she's a small-town mayor (5500 people in 2000) who's been governor of a tiny state for less than two years. She's conservative on at least one issue (abortion) that puts her at odds with every independent or left-leaning woman in America. How stupid does McCain think women in this country are?

It's the height of hypocrisy for McCain to slam Obama for his supposed lack of experience and then go ahead and pick someone with even LESS experience than Obama. After all, Obama has been talking and living with Americans and running a multi-million dollar mini-bureacracy for two years now. Palin has been...well, no one knows.

The idea of having a VP is to make the line of succession clear. McCain is 72. He's at the point in his life where it wouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone if his health suddenly failed and the VP took over. And do we really want this no-name small-town ultra-conservative woman running the most powerful country in the world? Are you kidding me? This woman describes herself as a hockey mom! I love moms of both the soccer and hockey variety, but I do not want one of them running the country unless they have loads of relevant experience.

In the end I think that the VP choices matter a lot less than people think. Mondale ran with Ferraro on the ticket in 1984, and no Democrat has ever done worse amongst women than he did. The underlying messages of the campaigns don't change at all. In fact, the choice of someone with no Washington experience whatsoever highlights Obama's point that the GOP is an ideologically bankrupt group. All their old ideas are failures, and to inject "new ideas" into the race they give us a 19 month governor? What types of new ideas, relevant for the USA, does she have?

The choice might look good on the surface, but that's about the only place it looks good. McCain is trying to run an old-fashioned GOP campaign but he's too scared to put an old-fashioned GOP name on the ticket because he knows he'll lose. So he chooses a young woman, and he expects people to suddenly think "hey, she looks young and kind of cool...let's vote for her and ignore everything that McCain has done for the past 30 years." It's baloney, if you ask me, just another Rove-style gimmick that Americans are sick and tired of.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the issue. Will it matter? Probably a little, but not much more than that. The dynamics of this race don't change. And anyway, put Biden and Palin in the same room, turn on the cameras, and we'll see who's the dynamic choice.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Maybe some of you know this song already. It's a really awesome cover of the classic songs "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World" by a guy named Israel Kamakawiwo Ole. I heard it for the first time when Jason Castro played it on last season's American Idol. Check it out, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A2Jt4WOxN8, and let me know what you think.

Defining Yourself as a New Yorker

There are lots of people who try to define New York, and what it means to be a New Yorker. There’s that really annoying quote that a city authority displayed on the subways a while back saying that native New Yorkers give the city its “stability,” the commuters give it “restlessness,” and the recent emigrants give the city its “passion.” And the article in today’s New York Times talks about the assimilation of newcomers. No matter where they’re from, New York is always eager to transform recent arrivals into “New Yorkers.” The only question is how long it takes.

Why so eager to transform them? And transform them into what?

There are a lot of compelling narratives that help define New York. There’s the story of the immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; of the Harlem heydays in the 1920s and 30s; of the decline and redemption in the 70s, 80s, and 90s; and of a post-9/11 resurgence in this century. Which one of these defines New York City? I don’t think anyone can tell you for sure, but surely it’s some combination of them all.

My real question is, why is New York so eager to define itself? I’ve lived outside of Philadelphia for most of my life, and it’s never seemed so eager to talk about anything other than the Declaration of Independence and the Eagles. I’m sure that interesting stuff happened between those two events, but you don’t find Philadelphians obsessing over them.

Of course, New York City has probably had more interesting things happen to it over the past one hundred years. And for at least that long, New Yorkers have been trying to persuade everyone else how great a story New York really is. Times Square, the tourism office will tell you, is the center of the universe! Central Park is the loveliest of city parks! And look at our buildings – aren’t they so tall?!?!

Yes, they’re tall, Central Park is definitely beautiful, and Times Square is really bright and crowded. But why the self obsession? Perhaps it’s because, even more so than Washington, DC, New York portrays itself as America’s First City. In order to be that kind of city, it has to have a compelling story. And in order for its residents to feel like they are a part of that larger story, they try to fashion their own compelling stories.

But there are two sides to the story. If New York is bigger and flashier than it used to be, it’s also more materialistic and plain loud. If there is more diversity, then there is also less access to good education. I’ve written before how I think that New Yorkers aren’t more tolerant of others – we simply don’t care about one another.

Maybe the fact that New York is so big, and has such a wonderful story, compels people to write their own stories. But the fact that they are written does not necessarily make them true. It’s easy for friends of mine to write in their blogs about how classy and sophisticated they are, and how they just couldn’t possibly live anywhere but “the city.” But is sipping overpriced cocktails at swank (i.e. "sleazy") Manhattan bars the definition of urban sophisticate?

The people most eager, after all, to write themselves into New York’s history are the one’s who weren’t born here. They’re the ones who, according to that writer (a NYC emigrant himself), give the city its “passion.” At least that’s what they’d like you to think. But really, what does a recent college graduate who moved here in 2008 have to do with the Fitzgeraldian NYC of the 1920s? Why not try to come up with your own definition of who you are, and what sorts of things appeal to you?

My point is that New Yorkers seem to be more willing than those living elsewhere to tell you how important they are, and how perfectly their lives fit in whatever New York narrative they are compelled by at the moment. There are lots of interesting people here, for sure. But to me, the most interesting people are those who don’t forcefully insert themselves in a historical narrative that they had nothing to do with.

The Morality of Power

I remember having an intense debate senior year in high school during English class with a friend of mine, whom I’ll refer to as C, concerning the idea that “might makes right.” I don’t remember in what context the debate took place. We read E.M. Forster’s Passage to India that year, so it’s possible we were debating the merits of imperialism.

C asserted that if a country is powerful enough to dictate its will upon a weaker country, then it is morally acceptable to do so. C also tried to sign up for the Navy on September 12, 2001, and I’m sure had well-worn copies of Nietzsche in his bedroom. Me being who I am, and my high school classmates being who they were, tried to refute C’s position by informing him that morality is separate from strength and power. He didn’t agree with us, and I guess the matter was dropped.

I was reminded of this mini debate while watching the miniseries Generation Kill on HBO the other day. The show centers on a Marine unit participating in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The series is fictional, but it was written by a Rolling Stone journalist who was embedded with this Marine unit back in 2003. One Marine, named Trombley, is particularly anxious to find and fight the Iraqis. Once, after exposing himself to enemy fire, he explains that he “gets more nervous watching a game show on the couch at home” than he does in Iraq, under fire. He says that “deep down,” he wants to know what it’s like to be shot.

The other Marines are incredulous. They’re all eager to fight, but Trombley displays something different. One Marine, talking with a comrade, concludes by saying that “he’s a psycho. But at least he’s our psycho.”

At least he’s our psycho. Might makes right. Aren’t those two statements related? We’d rather have Trombley on our side than on the enemy’s, and we definitely don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Strong vs. Weak equation. The world is a violent place, so even though we liberals might talk about a morality divorced from power, isn’t it still coldly comforting to have the psychos making sure we’re strong?

The Other Side

Another weekend, another family reunion. Once again I nabbed a train down to the parents’ house on Friday after work and headed out the next morning to Bedford County, PA for a family reunion. This time we’d be hanging out with my mom’s side.

Whereas most of my dad’s side of the family is from the suburbs around New York and Philadelphia, my mom’s side is firmly rooted in rural, central Pennsylvania. I don’t have a very firm grasp on the ancestry, but from what I gather the Nunamaker family has been located in the same general vicinity for at least the greater part of the twentieth century.

I’ve been going to these annual gatherings for as long as I remember. The things that stick out when I think of them are really good, really unhealthy food, and lots of it; corny games; and lots of country accents. In the most recent incarnation, all of those things held true.

The food was once again spectacular. There was a zucchini dish that was out of this world. And the fried chicken, brownies, scalloped potatoes, sausage, and other assorted bits and pieces of country flavor weren’t so bad either.

And yes, once again there were corny games. There was one where you throw a hand-sized sandbag into a hole in a wooden platform. It was sort of like horseshoes. In another game you threw two golf balls tied by a string onto a series of poles set up about 25 feet away from you. I’m happy to report my dominance in both of these events. In reality, my main competitors were a 7 year old girl and her 11 year old brother.

One family who had brought a lot of games to the picnic explained that they had so many because they “always took them to church camp.” That’s the sort of vibe that you get when you go to family reunions in Bible Country, Pennsylvania. There’s church camp, there’s grace, there’s the money collected to send Bibles to Africa.

In general there aren’t too many political discussions at these events. I think it’s because everyone agrees on the important political issues. They’re all very conservative, very religious, pro-gun, pro-life, pro-military, card-carrying Red Staters. I remember once during a hunting trip (I go hunting with this side of the family), one family member of mine said that if the government ever tried to take away his guns they’d have to “pry it out of my cold dead hands.” Another expressed incredulity when someone joked that he’d hold hands with another man for $1 million: “now that just ain’t right!”

This is crazy stuff for a decidedly Blue State liberal to be hearing from members of his own family. When I come to these types of gatherings I’m always reminding myself that these are the types of voters that drive me up the wall. They’re against progress, I say! They’re delusional and backwards! Why won’t they think outside of what their pastor tells them?!

And yet, here they are, and I’m playing this weirdly fun sandbag throwing game with their children. It doesn’t make sense. On the one hand, they’re my family. They’ve always been absolutely supportive and friendly to me. I very rarely hear them speak hatefully towards other people. They’re honest, good people. But on the other hand they spend their entire lives in these tiny towns and go to church camp where, presumably, they’re told that evolution isn’t the truth and that America always has God on its side. They’re the mythical evangelical voters.

Do I resent them or appreciate them? Do their political/social/religious views make more sense to me because I know them, or less? Are their small-town American views the best America has to offer, or a handicap as we move into the 21st century? I don’t know.

I’m not sure where I’m going with all this. It goes to show you the power of family, I suppose, for better and for worse.

Omnivore's Dilemma

I read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma last week, and thought I’d write down some of the things that were particularly striking to me:

--At least a quarter of the food we eat is based on corn

--Most of the corn that’s grown in this country isn’t really edible in its “natural” form. It has to be heavily processed and broken down before we’ll eat it

--About half of the average corn farmer’s income comes in the form of government subsidies. This is because so much corn is grown that the price has fallen to a point where it’s impossible for farmers to make a profit. However, instead of restricting the amount of acreage dedicated to corn and thereby increasing its price, the government encourages farmers to devote more and more acreage to corn. The low cost of corn benefits the big food processing companies, who take the cheap corn and turn it into a million different things that we consumers buy.

The farmer is the one who loses in this deal. He loses money on the only product that food processing plants will buy. As a result, the government pays the farmer to produce a crop whose price is so low that without the payment, the farmer would go broke.

And who ends up footing the bill that pays farmers to sell corn cheaply to the food processors? The taxpayers. So even though we get cheap food on the shelves, we pay for it by financing the farmers’ subsidies. The only entity in this equation that benefits is the food processing plant.

--One popular argument that Pollan seeks to undermine is the one that goes something like “well, cheap food is in the best interests of everyone!” His counter is that while the up front cost of processed foods is definitely pretty low, there are tons of hidden costs that we’re paying for even if we don’t realize it.

It costs a TON of energy to produce food these days. For every one calorie of beef that we eat, for example, it takes 8 calories of energy (i.e. oil, water, natural gas). That’s just not a sustainable equation in the long run!

And, of course, the processed food that we’re eating is pretty unhealthy. A lot of those ingredients with weird names on the food labels are refined petroleum. We’re eating refined petroleum! The nation’s obesity epidemic began in the 70s, which is just about the time that the government really started funding big agribusiness and subsidizing farmers.

Food is the only major item that most Americans buy simply based on price. We refuse to pay $3.99 for a dozen eggs when we can get it for 99 cents. There are two reasons, Pollan says, that this is not such a good idea. First: we’ll pay $50,000 for a BMW when we can get a Focus for $17,000. The justification for the expensive car is that it’s a better product, and therefore we’re willing to pay more. But we don’t use that type of logic when buying food. We blindly assume that the 99 cent eggs are the exact same as the $3.99 eggs and therefore why would we want to pay four times as much? That would make sense if the eggs were of the same quality. But in study after study, time after time, Pollan demonstrates that processed food is of a decidedly lower grade than natural food. Shouldn’t that make us think twice about instinctively reaching for the cheaper eggs?

And secondly, the costs of the “cheaper” food are hidden, back end costs. Those costs include the energy requirements necessary to sustain our current food chain; the large costs to the environment; the costs to our own health, not to mention the questionable ethics of mass-produced and slaughtered animals. All of these things aren’t easily quantifiable, so they’re easier to ignore. But don’t they have real value nonetheless?

--Pollan describes certain types of farms that erase all of the back end costs. These types of farms are a combination of old fashioned and cutting edge farming techniques. They’re really cool to read about. The food is more expensive, $3.99 for a dozen eggs instead of $.99, but at least we pay everything up front. The animals are treated ethically, the environment isn’t harmed, and we’re eating better food. And there are lots of them around!

Anyway, the point is, read the book. If it doesn’t totally change your mind about our current processed food chain, it’ll at least make you think differently about what you put in your stomach.

The LSAT is HARD

I took a diagnostic LSAT test last night at Kaplan's East Village center, and was disappointed to find out that the LSAT is a totally different animal than the GRE.

The GRE is basically just the SAT moved up a couple notches. The designers aren't really trying to trick you. They just put out certain levels of straightforward questions and see if you can answer them. Very vocab-heavy, the math stuff is high schoolish (but still impossible for me), and the reading comp. isn't TOO bad.

But the LSAT diagnostic test basically kicked my ass. It didn't help that the test didn't start till 6 30 on a Monday. Even so, the test was HARD. Probably one of the hardest tests I've taken. The questions weren't straightforward, and neither were the answer choices. Everything about the thing was made to trick you. I walked out of the place at 10 totally exhausted.

As my dad, himself a lawyer, eloquently put it: "I remember thinking the LSAT was dumb when I took it. I was certain (and still am) that they had some of the answers wrong themselves. I detested by standardized testing people. A bunch of arrogant idiots sitting up in Princeton, thinking they're smarter than everybody else."

I agree with him. At times last night I just wanted to rip up the practice test and throw it away and walk out. The questions and answers were just so obviously silly and irrelevent and needlessly pointy-headed, if you know what I mean. It made me mad, but it was also sort of intimidating. Maybe that's why I was mad - because it was so hard. Though then again, maybe I should wait to see my score before I continue my rant.

Philadelphia Fans

I know that there are those out there who will maintain until the last bit of earth is dropped on their coffins that there is nothing greater than being a sports fan in Philadelphia. They will point to Philly fans’ passion and our ever-willing enthusiasm to support perennial losers.

Philadelphia, they will say, is one of the few four-sport cities (Phillies, Eagles, Sixers, Flyers), and over the course of time each of those teams has had at least a moderate run of success. The Phillies won the World Series back in 1983, at the same time that the Sixers were winning championships. The Flyers won championships back in the 1970s, and the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl in 1980. You’ll notice that all of these dates are prior to my birth.

And if historical success is your guide, then Philadelphia’s 14 major championships don’t seem like such a bad tally. But then you look at the rest of the list, and you see that LA has 16, Boston 31, Toronto 37, New York 51. Are you kidding me? Freakin’ Toronto? http://www.nuttyaboutsports.com/cities-of-champions.shtml

Boston’s 31 championships seem particularly aggravating, coming as they do from a city whose population of 599,391 is less than half of Philadelphia’s 1.4 million. What does Boston have that Philadelphia doesn’t? Both are historic cities, and both played significant parts in the Revolution. Philadelphia was even the US Capital for a while!

For young fans, especially, Philadelphia is a terrible place to be. As mentioned earlier, no Philadelphia team has won a championship since the 1980s. The Flyers came pretty close in the 1990s, the Phillies lost the World Series in 1993 (and then didn’t make it back to the playoffs for 14 years), and both the Sixers and the Eagles lost championship games in the 2000s. So for anyone born in the 1980s, all we have ever known is losing. The closest I’ve come to savoring victory is seeing the Giants win this year’s Super Bowl (I had just moved to Brooklyn).

Let me try to list the major accomplishments of Philadelphia sports teams over the past 15 years or so, excluding our losses in title games:

--We booed and threw snowballs at Santa Claus.
--We cheered Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury.
--We threw batteries at J.D. Drew.
--Terrell Owens.
--The Eagles made it to 4 straight NFC Championship games, losing 3 of them.
--The Phillies, after a 14 year drought and after the Mets’ monumental collapse, finally made it to the playoffs in 2007 before being swept by the Rockies in 3 games in the first round.

“Come on,” the average Philly fan will say, “how awesome is it that we boo EVERYONE?!?!”

Not so awesome, I think. You wouldn't eat an OK-tasting meal at a restaurant and then throw it at the waitress’ face because it wasn’t the best you’ve ever had. Likewise, normal fans shouldn’t cheer a player who hits a home run in his first at bat and then boo him viciously when he strikes out during the next. And yet, this is what Philly fans do.

Taken as a whole, Philadelphia sports fans resemble an increasingly paranoid mental patient. On the good days, after a win, we love our sports teams and are sure that they will bring us happiness. On the bad days, after a loss, we hate the teams and wonder why we ever supported them in the first place.

These emotional swings don’t happen from season to season, and they don’t take place solely during the playoffs. They happen after every game during every season. If the Phillies beat the Mets sometime in April, we think “surely this year will be OUR year!!!” But if Donovan McNabb throws two interceptions in September, we should bench him, cut him, and bring in a free agent. Over and over, season after season.

It is not easy being a sports fan in Philadelphia. It sucks, really. Our teams always seem to be just this side of the winners’ circle. The fans, disillusioned and deluded past the point of rationality, are unaware of any role our behavior might play in our teams’ failures. We are not the greatest fans in all of sports. We are the most mentally unbalanced.

Wolf Parade Concert

I bought tickets to the Wolf Parade concert more than a month ago, I think. Even before their second album, At Mount Zoomer, was released during the middle of June. My friend John introduced me to the band several years ago, when I was studying in England. I loved their first (and only full length) album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, from the very first time I listened to it and was disappointed when I realized that Wolf Parade’s members are also members of other bands and therefore don’t tour very often as Wolf Parade.

The new album was released in June and WP planned a mini tour to promote it. As I mentioned earlier, I hadn’t yet listened to the new one yet when I bought the tickets, so I was a little concerned about a sophomore slump (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Killers, and Animal Collective all come to mind). But luckily for me, I wasn’t disappointed. At Mount Zoomer has a different sound than Apologies, but it’s really good. Maybe not as great, but nearly so.

After work yesterday, I met Ashley and Tyler for burgers at SoHo Park at the corner of Prince and Lafayette. Tyler and Ashley had gotten drunk together (while I slept) the previous night while watching 30 Rock, so neither of them felt very energetic but Ashley was my date to the show and was pretty excited about it, too.

After we parted ways with Tyler, Ashley and I hopped on the subway and made our way to the venue, Terminal 5, which is located at 56th and 11th. After sorting out some problems related to my water-logged tickets (I accidentally took them on a swim in the ocean at Coney Island a few weeks ago), we found ourselves amongst the first arrivals and staked out a nice spot towards the front.

Everyone around us was sitting, and the floor was clean, so we sat down for a while, too, until the floor gradually started filling up and we stood up and Ashley sent me on a mission to grab a couple of (overpriced) beers.

I returned with the drinks just as the opening band (Winter Sleeve?? Maybe??) started playing. Their opening song was pretty good, but neither Ashley nor I liked the rest of their set and I was anxious for WP to come onstage.

Once Wolf Parade did take the stage, they didn’t disappoint. The set list was evenly mixed between songs from the new album and the best ones from the old. The band sounded good, were pretty loud, and the crowd knew the songs. The only annoying part was the moshers. I’ll never understand people who mosh, especially at a concert where the music is not REALLY loud nor all that fast. But to each his own, and they did add an extra bit of energy to the scene. Ashley and I were both bounced around a little bit but it was fun and we both laughed.

Overall, the experience was great. The crowd wasn’t too unruly, the music was fantastic, and the venue was fun. I realized that it had been too long since the last concert I attended. I’m going to try to go to shows more often from now on. You just can’t beat live music, especially in a place like New York City.

The Great Debate (not really)

I'm going to paste a continuing facebook wall-to-wall conversation between my friend Mike and me. I'll update it for sure, and am mostly just putting it on here for myself:


Mike: Stop sending me your liberal propaganda. This country can't afford Obama so no, I won't join any Obama (Facebook)groups. Wanna join a Michael Savage one?

Me: Mikey, I know you're a liberal at heart. Enough of this Stop Obama stuff. He's clearly the better choice

Mike: He's not the better choice. And neither is McCain. Mark my words...the next few months are going to be very interesting. I don't think our economy is gonna be doing so well.

Me: Oh I'll be marking them. And it's neither Obama's nor McCain's fault about the economy - we can blame our friends in the bush administration. by the way, did you hear that Karl Rove was asked to testify before congress, refused, and then fled the country?

And rather than a practical conservative, you should call yourself a "conservative" as opposed to the current fascist-conservative brand of conservatism

Mike: I'm not a "neo-con," if that's what you mean. Those are the people running things. Look into the Federal Reserve. They're the ones that run things, and because of how they run things (bail outs), our dollar is dropping in value increasingly by the minute. What will Obama do to help this? Spend more money on handouts and civil programs? Allow illegal immigrants rights, thus encouraging more emigration? We spend over 100 million every year just to "take care" of them... and they're not legally here!! What about the people in this country who could use that help? I used to be "liberal" like that, but it just isn't practical!

Me: So you'd rather have huge banking companies fail and therefore lose whatever money you had invested in them? Imagine what would happen if companies like Morgan Stanley, Bear Sterns, and Merryl Lynch failed and how many people would lose all of their money and how many other business would fail. The government has to keep them afloat because they're what's keeping our economy afloat. And as far as illegal immigration is concerned, I tend to agree with you that something has to be done. But the fact is that there is an economic benefit to allowing immigrants because they keep the prices on everything pretty low. But there does need to be some sort of compromise.

And Michael Savage is a lunatic. People like him aren't concerned with facts, only ratings.

Mike: When was the last time you actually listened to Michael Savage? And I mean listened to, not just heard clips issued by Media Matters, a leftist, gay-mafia run organization. Ratings? He bashes big business, George Bush, John McCain, Democrats, Republicans, etc all the time. He hates Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and is one of the few people who have a clue. I used to think he was nuts too, but then I actually listened to him. It's libs like you who aren't concerned with facts. You guys are the nuts! You can't accept people telling the truth. Know what, forget the truth; you can't accept someone with a different opinion--take him off the air, he's a crazy! How bout, he's conservative, but he's written over 20 books, has a PhD, and has raised millions of dollars for a freedom of speech defense fund. What have you done? :-D

Me: Wow Mikey, a real burst of expression. i haven't 'done' anything, but then again neither has Michael Savage. He talks on the radio and stirs people up and makes occasionally outlandish statements. He's not a leader, he's just a talking head - in fact, he's not even a talking head, he's just a voice. The only problem I have with conservatives is that in a broad historical sense, they're always wrong. Conservatives have never won any permanent battles. They want things to stay the same, and liberals want things to change. conservatives think things are perfect the way they are, liberals want to try to make things better for more people. And in that argument, I'll always side with the liberals regardless of whether I agree with every particular issue. Do the libs have dumb ideas? Yeah, plenty of them. But in the end liberalism is always on the correct side of the important issues.

(I send him a link about how a radio station is losing ads because of Savage)

And that ridiculous anti-Obama group you belong to. You realize, of course, that Obama had no relationship with either Tony Rezko or Louis Farrakhan? The only connection to Rezko is that they're both from Chicago. The connection to Farrakhan is also totally indirect: Obama's church's magazine praised Farrakhan. This is the same church, mind you, that's headed by Jeremiah Wright, the lunatic whom Obama has repeatedly denounced.

Mike: Media Matters is a fraud. They took 86 seconds of Michael Savage's 70 minute dialogue and discussion. I agree, on the surface, those comments are ridiculous. But, if you know what Michael Savage is about, listen to his show, and had heard his discussion on the over-medication of today's children. Media Matters has taken many things that Dr. Savage has said, taken them out of context, and sent the clips the focus groups around the country in efforts to get his show taken off the air. Now, if I remember correctly, the First Amendment of our Constitution allows all citizens of this great nation freedom of speech. What Media Matters is doing here is trying to strip these rights from conservative thinkers. Guess what--if these people don't like what he has to say, then why the hell are they spending time listening to him!? Liberals have no problem saying whatever they want, but the minute someone with a varying opinion challenges them, they try to have him thrown off the air!

And why is Nancy Pelosi (Mussolini in a skirt) trying to push the Fairness Doctrine so hard? Is she offended by the verbal attacks from conservative talk show hosts? Guess what, the libs had their shot at radio programming. Remember Air America? I seem to remember that their ratings were so low that they were forced to vacate to satellite radio and YouTube. My point is that the libs have had their chance to argue back, no one cared and/or knew they were full of poop. So the Dems want there to be fairness on the airwaves; I guess that means they'll need to get conservative radio sacked before that will happen.

"but in the end liberalism is always on the correct side of the important issues"...like what? Gimme an example so I can dismantle your arguments one by one. I tend to rant, so it'll be easier to address things individually. So how long until I start getting hate mail from your friends lol?

And also, give me five good reasons why Obama is more qualified for the Presidency than John McCain. Mind you, I don't like John McCain either. We have two Socialists running against one another: McCain is a socialist for the extreme rich (like Bush) and Obama is a Socialist for the extreme poor. When will we not have a nation that is made up of wimps and beaten men? The over-feminization of our culture (or lack of a culture) has turn our nation into oversensitive nincompoops who care more about taking care of everyone else than its own citizens! Not to mention that all this money we spend abroad "helping" everyone else is making our dollar weaker and weaker...and its not even helping Americans. When we elect officials, we elect them to do what's in OUR best interest--not the rest of the world's.His relationships with the aforementioned men (Rezko, Farrakhan) aren't what concern me. I'm more worried about his relationship with AIPAC. I don't understand why everyone hails Obama as the messiah who will lead us out of war. After all, he continues to support war funding (that's just based on his voting record in the Senate). He's said himself "No president should ever hesitate to use force—unilaterally if necessary—to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened."


Me: Mike, the point I'm trying to make is that 'conservative' talk radio hosts aren't actually talking about conservative issues. They're just blowhards doing anything that will get them ratings. The reason people don't listen to 'liberal' people is that liberals in general stick to the facts. I don't know anything about media matters, but the point they're trying to make isn't that savage doesn't have the right to broadcast what he wants - they're saying that it's irresponsible for people who knowingly disseminate falsehoods to be given access to millions of unknowing listeners. Free speech isn't a get out of jail free card. You can't spread hate, and you shouldn't be able to spread harmful lies, either. But free speech is, again, an entirely different matter

And let's see, conservative issues that have lost...where shall I begin? We'll start at the American Revolution: the term loyalist was used synonymously with conservative. The Civil War: Lincoln was liberal, slaveholders from the south were conservative. The depression: FDR was the greatest champion of liberal values of the 20th century. Civil Rights: conservatives blocked every single civil rights bill from 1873 until Lyndon Johnson passed the first civil rights act in 1957. Those are the highlights that I can think of. Every single time, the liberals have been right and the conservatives have been wrong. And of course I'm not talking about just democrats vs. republicans - those labels change.

And five reasons for Obama:
1) He was against the Iraq war in the first place, and his current position is the SAME as the Iraqi prime minister's
2) He's against nearly every single position taken by the bush administration, whereas McCain is in line with a lot of them (including the tax cuts and Iraq)
3) He actually inspires me-he's not an old fogey like McCain
4) That being said, I also think he's a capable politician, which is exactly what we need (in my opinion): someone who believes in the same things that I do and is willing to go out and fight for them
5) his commitment to the environment, i.e. renewable resources, lowering greenhouse emissions, etc. I recognize McCain agrees with Obama on this point, and that's one of the FEW things that I dig about Johnny


Mike: You sent me a link praising two radio stations removing Savage, mentioning that his hateful rhetoric is orally offensive and how Media Matters came to the rescue, alarming parents of children with autism about this comments (out of context I might add). If his words are indeed hateful, and he should be thrown off the air, who do you want to have do it? The government?
And about his "lies," I think it is a pretty ignorant thing to believe that all conservative talk radio hosts are "blowhards" who spew lies. If you're such a liberal, you're supposed to be open-minded to new ideas & thought (progressive). You're the ignorant close-minded one! Isn't it a bit premature to judge someone who has millions of listeners & has thousands of hours of monologue? Get back to me when you've heard more of Savage than what Media Matters blows the whistle on.

-"the term loyalist was used synonymously with conservative."I seem to remember Edmund Burke being pro-revolution.-"the civil war: Lincoln was liberal, slaveholders from the south were conservative"I just think the war was unconstitutional. And if you think the bleeding heart liberals came down to fight that war just to free the slaves, you're outta your mind.I can't take this anymore. FDR was the only good guy you mentioned, even though the Fed could have ending the Depression literally overnight by lowering interest rates, thus pumping money into the economy, rendering FDR's liberal programs irrelevant. Do you really think the President has that much power? Money talks buddy.

Me: Mike, the fact simply is that the famous 'conservative' personalities are all blowhards! Limbaugh, Coulter, Rove, Cheney - all they do is lie to further their own twisted agendas. And no, the gov't shouldn't be the ones to throw him off the air - his bosses should be! I'm not saying that what he's doing is ILLEGAL, only unethical. And since he has a boss, let his boss fire him. There's more to life than the bottom line.

And I think you're stretching the truth a little bit when you dismiss the civil war and the revolution as triumphs of liberalism. No, Lincoln didn't invade the south because he wanted to free the slaves. He invaded because the south seceded because they were afraid that the north wanted to take away the slaves! The whole freaking thing was about slaves! Not everyone was altruistic about it, but there would NOT have been a civil war if neither the north nor the south had slaves or if they both had them. Slaves were the catalyst, and freeing them was the only way to make the union whole again.

Mike: We agree with something. Those people (Limbaugh, Coulter, etc…) are frauds and i don't agree with much (if anything) they say. but, i choose not to listen to them. The same choice anyone else has that chooses to listen to them. don't like it? THEN TURN IT OFF!

"Whereas McCain is in line with a lot of them (including the tax cuts and Iraq)"You think I'm voting for McCain don't you?

Me: no, you said you weren't voting for McCain. I don't know what type of person you WOULD vote for, though. Politicians will always be politicians, and none of them will ever be perfect.

Mike: I'm probably going to vote for Ron Paul. You may ask why, since he's no longer really in the running. I'll vote for him simply because it isn't like my one vote for either Obama or McCain will sway the election in either candidate's favor. Therefore, I should take advantage of my constitutional right to vote and vote for the person who best represents my views. That’s a major problem that I have: we've been so brainwashed by the media and their representation of the election and bipartisanship. If everyone thought like I did, heck, we'd probably have somewhat more than a two-party system.In terms of tax cuts, well, I personally don't think we can afford Obama. Our country is heading into a complete economic crisis, simply because we're a nation of borrowers who produces very little in the global economy (jobs and production being shipped overseas). What happens when Obama raises taxes? How are people going to afford that?

(Mike sends link in support of Savage)

Me: I don't begrudge you voting for Paul. I think he's got some pretty cool ideas, and is a traditional "conservative" type - not insane, just with a different worldview than me. That's fine. As far as Savage is concerned, I'll leave it at this: His fundamental point is probably not too far off. Doctors these days are definitely really quick to prescribe medication and diagnose illnesses. That being said, Savage's problem was that, like ALL media types (liberal and conservative alike), you have to frame your story in a way that draws listeners/viewers/audiences. And Savage framed it terribly. He was trying to make a good point but in trying to draw listeners he totally obliterated his own point and ended up saying something totally retarded. Which he is :)

(I send link saying that a man who murdered two people at a Tennessee Church loved and read a lot of Michael Savage)

Mike: Yeah dude, I heard about that. It'll be interesting to hear what Savage says about that today. But don't let this liberal propaganda scare you. I think it is funny that now, four months before this critical election, all these media outlets are attacking conservatives. They can say whatever they want. If you don't like it, then don't read or listen to it! It's that simple. We should also remember that Timothy McVeigh was extremely liberal (he was a communist if I remember correctly). Look what he did. My point is that there are bad people everywhere, weak minded people who can take anything out of context for bad or for good. Again, I used to think Savage was a nut (Ann Coulter is a nut, but Hannity and the Leprechaun are actually neo-cons who side with the Bush cronies more than you think, and Bush isn't exactly conservative. He's pretty freakin liberal if you ask me, and bad at it). Listen to his show 710AM in NYC 6-9pm make up your own mind.

Me: Perhaps I would if I had a radio. But the thing that gets me about conservatism is that there's always a tendency to mold it into an ideology of hate, you know? Hate liberalism, hate gays, hate everything. And once you introduce hate into the political process, then shit goes south pretty quickly and nothing ever gets done. I don't hate conservatives, but I do hate the haters. Ron Paul isn't a hater, nor are McCain and Obama, so I don't hate them. But Cheney's a hater, rove is a hater, and Bush is just an idiot. I just completely disagree with the republican agenda.

I think, actually, that it would be helpful if we came up with a definition of liberals vs. conservatives that we both agreed with.

Mike: "I just completely disagree with the republican agenda." As do I. What we have in the GOP party are a bunch of phonies. They're liberal on a lot of issues. Look at McCain. Instead of trying to get the middle-America conservative vote, he's completely ignoring them and going after focus groups. La RaZa is a hispanic lobbyist group that McCain has been pandering to. They're not going to vote for him anyway, but because we live in the "politically correct" times, and because he's facing a candidate whose camp won't hesitate to pull out the race card (and a mainstream media who won't give him the coverage he deserves because they're too busy praising the messiah, b. hussein obama, and everything he does. So naturally, McCain has been trying to appeal to these focus groups probably to get more media coverage and show the left that he's compassionate and sensitive too. Oh, btw, "La Raza" means "The Race." A little supremacist in my opinion. Again, enough with the sensitivity.

"I think, actually, that it would be helpful if we came up with a definition of liberals vs. conservatives that we both agreed with."Ok, be my guest. I meant to ask you if you know what fascism really is (by definition).

Me: "what fascism is". The way I see it, fascism is the logical end of the conservative idea of ultra-individuality. Countries/states coalesce behind a dictator and become ridiculously nationalist and/or racist. They believe that all states are in natural competition, that the strongest will survive, and that the competition makes the state stronger. As a result, fascism is very militaristic.

And I guess communism is just the opposite. The logical end of the liberal idea that we should always do what's best for the community.

Mike: "and I guess communism is just the opposite. The logical end of the liberal idea that we should always do what's best for the community."Wouldn't this result in extreme totalitarian military like fascism?

Me: Ideally, no. Realistically, yes. Either way you end up with a dictator. Either a dictator on behalf of the individual or a dictator on behalf of the masses. Neither extreme is desirable, but in my opinion left of center is where society needs to be.

Liberal: Belief in individual freedom. Government’s purpose is to ensure that other individuals and/or businesses do not infringe on those freedoms. Belief in community: a healthy community is beneficial to everyone, and the government should do all it can (including the creation of programs and/or regulations) to ensure that the greatest number of people can have the greatest amount of opportunity. Distrust of business.

Conservative: Belief in individual freedom. Government’s purpose is to ensure that individuals have the greatest amount of autonomy possible. Belief that if each individual does what’s best for himself, then society as a whole will benefit. Distrust of government spending and other attempts to change the status quo. Trust that markets can regulate business.

The Big Move

After a couple weeks of annoying delays, we finally moved in to the new place on 7th Avenue on Saturday. My brother and Dad came up and we rented a moving van (we were also treated to the sight of a lady rear-ending a parked car) and hauled stuff back and forth until four or five in the afternoon.

I think the universal opinion about moving is that it sucks. It always takes longer than you think it will, and you always discover about a million tiny things that you forgot to pack in boxes and end up having to put in plastic bags or some other ill suited container. Even worse are the things too big to fit in boxes but too small to need more than one person to carry them. I hate having to waste a trip up and down the stairs to carry a lamp and a curtain rod. When it comes to moving (and everything else), I’m all about efficiency. I bet you the Germans are really good movers.

We rented the smallest van possible, thinking that we’d need only one trip, possibly two, to move everything. We needed three. There’s still a good bit of stuff left at the old place that we’ll need a car to move. I’m not looking forward to that.

The upside, though, is that our new place is totally awesome. There are three full bedrooms, each with at least one window. That is a significant upgrade from the old place. We also hope that the new apartment will be free of bugs. It got so bad in the old place that we found roaches living in the microwave. Evolutionary wonders, they are.

On Sunday, instead of moving I saw The Dark Knight, and like everyone else on the planet I thought it was awesome. It’s a shame that Heath Ledger died but like most other people I think it adds extra poignancy to the performance. He’ll probably win the Oscar. Though you never know with that group of whackos. I still shudder to think that Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for best picture back in 1998 or 1999.

So now I’m nearly moved in and the next phase begins. My Dad and I spoke briefly about how this time around, one year into my NYC excursion, I feel as though I’m actually living the NYC “experience.” I have a great apartment, a job, a girlfriend, friends I really like. Things finally seem to be settling down, and as we all sat together at the bar across the street from the new apartment sipping on cold beer, I felt like I actually belonged here.