I Just Need an Explanation, Please.

OK- the hurricane forecast for the 2007 season is out, from whatever wizard peers into his scrying mirror, doppler radar, or whatever substitute for tea leaves they use, and it looks like Doom For Sure. What I want to know is what this means. To me.

"He (N.E. Cromancer) says there's a 74% chance of a major hurricane making landfall on the US coast. He says there's a 49% chance of a major hurricane landfall on the Gulf Coast between the Florida Panhandle and Brownsville. The 20th century average was 30%."

We can dispose of #1 on the general assumption that since I don't live within 800 miles of a coast, we can call it a miss.

Does #2 mean "this year?" And, if so-

How does it relate to #3's stated average for the 20th Century (if I understand the concept of "average" aright, and I think I do)?

Am I correct in assuming that there can't be any real relation? Did the stoplight just change to green, and is that my favorite color? Did a few too many brain cells just go "poof?"

.....and a big thanks to YOU!

It goes without saying that this blog, and EVERY blog, should have this as its guiding light. Thanks to Big Daddy Drew at Kissing Suzy Kolber, excerpted from "A Hearty Welcome To Our New York Times Readers.":

And now that we have a more upscale readership thanks to you, the Times reader, we’re going to do our damnedest to model this site closely after the Paper of Record. So look out for movie reviews that don’t clearly recommend a film one way or another, conservative op-ed columns that aren’t actually conservative, Nicholas Kristof-style reports from Pakistan that make you feel like shit for a good five minutes, catty TV reviews, Frank Rich-style pieces that marry the latest hot button political issue to the latest pop culture trend in one very clever double entendre (Like, “How Iraq Became A Grind House”! That’s gold!), a printable science section you’ll roll up and use for kindling, the wedding details of wealthy white asshole couples you’d like to beat to death with a shovel, food recipes for things like homemade crème brulee that the author insists “couldn’t be easier to make” but in reality take five goddamn hours just to get in the oven, Al Sharpton quotes, reviews of ballets and operas no one under the age of 72 attends, letters to the editor from righteous dipshits, and a bitching obit section. All that and more!

I'll Do Anything You Want, Just Shut Up!

Of course, the current spasm of "green religion" (and someone has already used just that phrase, and in all seriousness) must run its course before any sense can emerge from our re-re-re discovered awareness that 1) fossil fuels aren't inexhaustible, and 2) we are fouling our own nest.

Nevertheless, it's simultaneously tedious and frustrating to read the 87th iteration of what amounts to the same mantra. Today's selection is "I'm running a mix of Wesson Oil, used french-fry squeezings, and the renderings of chit'lins in my '77 Mercedes 240D, after Alf the Diesel Doctor worked on it. I'm saving the world, now if all of us just...."

Ignoring the fact that you can act locally in such a situation, but you cannot apply it globally, I'm just on overload with the whole thing.

When Robert Benchley was writing as critic in The New Yorker back in the 1920's, he expressed this kind of frustration well, but on a different topic:

I am now definitely ready to announce that Sex, as a theatrical property, is as tiresome as the Old Mortgage....I am sick of rebellious youth and I'm sick of Victorian parents and I don't care if all the little girls in all sections of the United States get ruined, or want to get ruined, or keep from getting ruined. All I ask is: don't write plays about it and ask me to sit through them.

...and I don't care if the importance of french-fry oil is earth-shaking (which it's not), I just don't want to hear any more about it.

Yodish

Non-language of the day: "People may not be accepting of that."

Shame is that a......

Memorial Day, 2007

There are many good and thoughtful memorials, designed to help us remember those who have given their all in defense of this country. But on Memorial Day, there is a tendency to focus only on the external threats that the sacrifice of these individuals represent. Accordingly, I felt it appropriate to post something a bit centripetal:

Whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River, or make a track on Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we shall live forever, or die by suicide.

- Abe Lincoln, 1837

It's about time.

If they can have Book-O-Mania or whatever it is on C-SPAN, so can I. Besides, now that Don Imus is busy making his crawl in sackcloth and ashes to Canterbury Cathedral, I don't think books are mentioned anywhere else on TV, except when it's absolutely unavoidable.

Today, something short: E.M. Forster's The Celestial Omnibus. This is no fairy tale; it is absolutely true, and absolutely necessary for anyone who plans on maturing into a proper adult to take with deadly seriousness. I believe that the child is born, and the imagination, given proper stimuli, develops as a matter of course in any normal person. Lacking those stimuli (...and TV, quite specifically, qualifies as a "lack"), it will wither and die in adulthood, and that person becomes, at very best, pathetic.

There you are; a review of a short story, short and to the point.....

My Kind of Town

Spring in Newport, RI.....there may be better places to have a getaway, but this town is pretty nice. I suspect that late May is the lull between the rather low-level Winter and the hectic touristy Summer. Not our sort of place socially, of course. Apart from the Navy, much of the town seems to be folks with aspirations to gentility, but with more money than anything...including the knowledge of what they really want. They buy a house that was built in the early 18th c., but the founders of Providence Plantations who fled the New Jerusalem in Massachusetts are no closer to them, and no more of their mental furniture than those days in History class they missed. The old Quaker clapboards are mixed in with Victorian wedding cakes and the elegant Federal piles with fanlighted entrances....all telling their stories, if some part of a lifetime is spent learning to understand the tale. And there's precious little appetite for that, and, I suppose, in any age. What drives occupancy of these houses is the same thing that moves the owner to buy an Audi because the neighbors on each side have BMWs or Volvos: exclusivity. The overwhelming need of so many to somehow be distinguished from the mass of the middle class. We have no titles of nobility, and a ragamuffin's dress may belong to a bum or billionaire in this society, and so a particular accumulation of property becomes our identity, and a monument that will be raffled off like Scrooge's old bedclothes when we pass.

As for the rest of Newport- pretty much like the rest of these United States. Unserviceable traffic problems, made worse here by the insular geography. Street signs posted at regular intervals declare "Restricted Parking Resident Vehicle by Pass only 6PM - 6AM, May through October." These are the signs of our times.

Yeah, I knew that....

In perusing the Naval War College Review, Winter 2007 edition, I came across the article "Duty at All Costs" by George M. Clifford III. In treating a topic that must always be a possibility for the military profession, it nonetheless manages to give examples of those who "knew" that Vietnam, or Iraq, or, presumably, the campaign against the Barbary Pirates was immoral, bad policy, strategy, etc.

The article goes on to recount how certain individuals then -almost- went in and set fire to their commissions in front of the higher ups.....in the case of a four-star during Vietnam, he recounts "the day" when he was ready to walk in and fling those stars on LBJ's desk and walk out and hold a press conference.

But- somehow, it never quite happened on "that day," and when I reflect upon it, I can convince myself that there were one or two instances in my working life when I should have walked in and thrown down the gauntlet, burned all my bridges, and crossed the Rubicon generally on matter of principle.

And I wonder how many other human beings, in the autumn of their years, professional soldiers or no, could also fix on a time or times when that was the case. But "conscience doth make cowards of us all," and there is always personal responsibilities, or the crass consideration of pension and health care benefits, or the simple fact that most human beings are turtles in this regard, and just won't stick their necks out, even if it's something that stirs the passions as much as a war.

Then there's always the reconstruction of matters in hindsight. "Yes, it was controversial. Yes, I had my doubts. No, I didn't do anything about those doubts. But twenty years later, I can reassure myself that if only things had been -slightly- different, by golly I would've." And so what happened passes the bar into what ought to have happened, and from there it's not all that far to to what must have happened. Thus, the Will to Belief triumphs again.

Birthday Present.....

I was surprised and pleased to receive for my birthday this year the book version (which I had never seen) of the films I used for three decades in my U.S. History classes- Alistair Cooke's America series.
I never paid much attention to Cooke's epilogue, as it didn't really fit into the syllabus of a high school class, but something of it stuck with me. From the book:

I myself think I recognize here several of the symptoms that Edward Gibbon maintained were signs of the decline of Rome, and which arose not from external enemies but from inside the country itself. A mounting love of show and luxury. A widening gap between the very rich an the very poor. An obsession with sex. Freakishness in the arts masquerading as originality, and enthusiasm pretending to creativeness.

- Alistair Cooke, America, p. 387

I find little to disagree with.

Grandpa Again....

I became a grandpa for the second time yesterday. First time last August with a little girl, yesterday with a boy. Somehow, being a grandparent seems like the most natural thing in the world....and a good thing.

The Cold Equations

"16-year-old drivers are at 9 time greater risk of a fatal accident than the driving population at large." when I hear things like this on the radio -at least in the context of consciousness-raising crap, I either ignore it or get steamed, since in a case like this there is not a shred of hope that anything will actually be done to change the situation.
Well, when I heard this this morning, and this afternoon the paper carried a story of the consolidation of five rural school districts into a single co-operative high school, I reflected on the fact that the increased driving distances for the teenagers in question will automatically result in an increased death toll for the student population of the proposed school.

40 Reasons to Ban Guns

1. Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, Detroit & Chicago cops need guns.

2. Washington DC's low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis' high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.

3. Statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control but statistics showing increasing murder rates after gun control are "just statistics."

4. The Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban, both of which went into effect in 1994 are responsible for the decrease in violent crime rates,which have been declining since 1991.

5. We must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a shooting spree at any time and anyone who would own a gun out of fear of such a lunatic is paranoid.

6. The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals.

7. An intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if shot with a .357 Magnum will get angry and kill you.

8. A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.

9. When confronted by violent criminals, you should "put up no defense - give them what they want, or run" (Handgun Control Inc. Chairman Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die - People Do, 1981, p. 125).

10. The New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns; just like Guns & Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.

11. One should consult an automotive engineer for safer seat belts, a civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for internal medicine, a computer programmer for hard drive problems, and Sarah Brady for firearms expertise.

12. The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917.

13. The National Guard, federally funded, with bases on federal land, using federally-owned weapons, vehicles, buildings and uniforms, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a "state" militia.

14. These phrases: "right of the people peaceably to assemble," "right of the people to be secure in their homes," "enumerations herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people" all refer to individuals, but "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to the state.

15. "The Constitution is strong and will never change." But we should ban and seize all guns thereby violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to that Constitution.

16. Rifles and handguns aren't necessary to national defense! Of course, the army has hundreds of thousands of them.

17. Private citizens shouldn't have handguns, because they aren't "military weapons'', but private citizens shouldn't have "assault rifles'', because they are military weapons.

18. In spite of waiting periods, background checks, fingerprinting,government forms, etc., guns today are too readily available, which is responsible for recent school shootings. In the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's,anyone could buy guns at hardware stores, army surplus stores, gas stations,variety stores, Sears mail order, no waiting, no background check, no fingerprints, no government forms and there were no school shootings.

19. The NRA's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign about kids handling guns is propaganda, but the anti-gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign is responsible social activity.

20. Guns are so complex that special training is necessary to use them properly, and so simple to use that they make murder easy.

21. A handgun, with up to 4 controls, is far too complex for the typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile that only has 20.

22. Women are just as intelligent and capable as men but a woman with a gun is "an accident waiting to happen" and gun makers' advertisements aimed at women are "preying on their fears."

23. Ordinary people in the presence of guns turn into slaughtering butchers but revert to normal when the weapon is removed.

24. Guns cause violence, which is why there are so many mass killings at gun shows.

25. A majority of the population supports gun control, just like a majority of the population supported owning slaves.

26. Any self-loading small arm can legitimately be considered to be a "weapon of mass destruction" or an "assault weapon."

27. Most people can't be trusted, so we should have laws against guns, which most people will abide by because they can be trusted.

28. The right of Internet pornographers to exist cannot be questioned because it is constitutionally protected by the Bill of Rights, but the use of handguns for self defense is not really protected by the Bill of Rights.

29. Free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters, computers, and typewriters, but self- defense only justifies bare hands.

30. The ACLU is good because it uncompromisingly defends certain parts of the Constitution, and the NRA is bad, because it defends other parts of the Constitution.

31. Charlton Heston, a movie actor as president of the NRA is a cheap lunatic who should be ignored, but Michael Douglas, a movie actor as a representative of Handgun Control, Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the UN arms control summit.

32. Police operate with backup within groups, which is why they need larger capacity pistol magazines than do "civilians" who must face criminals alone and therefore need less ammunition.

33. We should ban "Saturday Night Specials" and other inexpensive guns because it's not fair that poor people have access to guns too.

34. Police officers have some special Jedi-like mastery over handguns that private citizens can never hope to obtain.

35. Private citizens don't need a gun for self- protection because the police are there to protect them even though the Supreme Court says the police are not responsible for their protection.

36. Citizens don't need to carry a gun for personal protection but police chiefs, who are desk-bound administrators who work in a building filled with cops, need a gun.

37. "Assault weapons" have no purpose other than to kill large numbers of people. The police need assault weapons. You do not.

38. When Microsoft pressures its distributors to give Microsoft preferential promotion, that's bad; but when the Federal government pressures cities to buy guns only from Smith & Wesson, that's good.

39. Trigger locks do not interfere with the ability to use a gun for defensive purposes, which is why you see police officers with one on their duty weapon.

40. Handgun Control, Inc., says they want to "keep guns out of the wrong hands." Guess what? You have the wrong hands.

Thanks to "militiajim" for this collection....

It's true, because.....

.....we so desperately wish it to be.

Thus: the recent e-mail about the 11-year old girl dispatching two armed assailants with a shotgun. I'll not reproduce it here, because it's easy to find. Internet wishful thinking at its finest, not only because the names used are highly questionable, but because we wish all 11-year-old girls could eliminate armed assailants. When it comes to these kinds of stories, I'm a real sucker for "Paris Hilton to go to jail for 45 days" .....even when I know that's not going to happen.

The real world is more complicated, even when it has a good outcome, as with the local case of a putative predator who got nailed by a good old classic Joe Friday police stakeout of a middle school, after a 12-year-old reported being accosted earlier in the week. I was somewhat frosted to learn in the newspaper account that the school authorities confirmed the girl's account, stating there had been "-similar occurrences." However, the story did not state if anyone in the previous cases, be it child, parent, or school officials, had called the cops. The police, whatever their supposed faults otherwise, can hardly be held to account if they don't know!

What? No Magic Bullet?

Oh, no!....Laptop computers NOT an instant brain-pill? I want my panacea, and I want it now!

Wally Schirra, RIP

I don't concern myself with obits, as a rule, but for someone like this, I'll make an exception. He and his fellow astronauts represent the single greatest human achievment during my lifetime, IMHO. With the great abundance of things that keep us mired in the mud below, we need reminders that there's also a sky above.

Those $65 million pale-green pants.....

....with nobody inside 'em.

So- I'm watching the subtitles on the TV at the gym this morning, as the cable-news jockeys go on about the "ridiculous" and "preposterous" lawsuit over the lost trou of the D.C. judge. At some point, even though my muscles are probably using more than their usual share of the body's oxygen, my brain gets enough to wonder "Hmmm....if it's that 'ridiculous,' why are you spending all this time & energy talking about it, between interviews with Anna Nicole Smith's mom and analysis of the Virginia Tech killer's toilet training?" Wait....never mind.

Tube Transformation

Although I suppose I'm of the original generation raised on TV (just as my children were the first on personal computers), it comes as a bit of a shock to read a narrative of just how much the Tragic Lantern has changed in the past half-century. It's actually a book review, but "Tune in Yesterday" by Nichlas Leman (New Yorker, April 30th) gives a decent précis of the transition between the live to the canned era....along with other changes that I'd never considered. One example would be the revolution from the early days of single-sponsorship, where a corporation exercised almost complete control over a program's content, to Sylvester "Pat" Weaver of NBC's introduction of so-called "magazine" sponsorship, which reduced corporate power to comparatively low levels. Then there was pioneer Weaver's notion of TV as a vehicle for cultural uplift, as opposed to the realprogrammatik of William S. Paley of CBS, who clearly perceived television as an unalterably mass medium....with all that that implies. And yet some people -which would include me, I suppose- think of TV not only as being more than it is, but that it can be more. Yet, after reading this article, I'm not sure that The Tube has any more than the lowest common denominator in it.

This Home Page is Out There!

If you like astronomical pictures- some of them the latest long-range photos from the Hubble Telescope, etc., then consider making this your home page.

Internal combustion....

In our normally quiet corner of the world, the diesels are snorting and roaring on all sides. The big wheels are spraying herbicide to the East and South, and a tandem dump truck is coming and going to the West, bringing loads of fill. That leaves the North, where a back hoe is spreading the fill as a base for the new garage......