The Appearance Of Impropriety

Finished reading The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society, by Peter W. Morgan and Glenn Reynolds.

The thesis, in brief, is that the Watergate era spawned a lot of formal ethical claptrap, the announced purpose of which was to remove "even the appearance of impropriety," but the actual result of which was a fog of ethical confusion. People get prosecuted for mere appearances despite having done nothing really wrong, and other people commit gross ethical violations while hiding behind the fact that they followed the official ethical check list.

Beware of confusingly detailed ethical rules
designed to play the innocent for fools.

Chick-Fil Full

I'm fine with the formal hitching of gay folk, but I'm amused by the chicken backlash.

It was a mistake, I believe, for politicians to threaten a sandwich chain's owner for believing what Obama said he believed four years ago. The Chicago stores were reportedly quite busy today. Apparently free speech remains a local value.

Somehow there was no similar boycott drama
four years ago about the beliefs of Obama.

Chatting About The Cattiness Of Cats

I sip at, Wikipedia, fount of neutral wisdom:

The problem of universals is about their status; as to whether universals exist independently of the individuals of whom they can be predicated or if they are merely convenient ways of talking about and finding similarity among particular things that are radically different.

It seems a hard choice - "independent" or "merely convenient".
I seek another path, objective but lenient.

No Spoilers

For me, Dark Knight Rises
held pleasant surprises.

Graphic Failure

Here's a light-bulb-with-caduceus graphic, from a Chicago Tribune article. The opinion-piece, by an "ethicist," argues that tech innovation will thrive under the new health care reform law.

Getting efficient about handling records, data, imaging, biomonitoring and sharing information is a key goal of reform.

Yes, they need more info about your health on federal computers. And it's going to work well! After all, it's a "key goal".

(I will say nothing about how well federal programs generally meet their announced "key goals".)

Anyway, what interests me is the graphic. Why does an article about federally-induced tech innovation feature an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb? Shouldn't it feature a federally-mandated twisty fluorescent?



These pricey bulbs, although
mandated from above,
have failed to earn the glow
of consumer love.

South Shore Tri

I did Chicago's South Shore Triathlon this morning.

Last time I swam without a wetsuit. This time I wore won. My swim was faster this year - by about two minutes.

But my transition from swimming to biking was slower this year - by about two minutes.

The trouble with wetsuits in triathlon is - the time you spend getting OUT of them counts against  you.

The advantage gained
was not retained.

Polling the Disturbance in the Force

So now everybody's polling the "didn't build it" thing:

Republicans are doing their own voter surveys, and they note that Mr. Obama's problem is that his words cause an emotional response, and that they disturb voters in nearly every demographic.

"Nearly" every. Well, clearly some demographic likes it! Progressive intellectuals, I suppose.

The clip, even the long version, sounds too much like a person who is begrudging the success of others. That makes Americans uneasy. They sense there's a sort of sin involved in assaulting simple success.

Envy eats at the soul.
Don't let it gobble you whole.

Why Did The Mantis Cross The Sidewalk

I'm not sure why he was crossing the sidewalk, but he was, which is why I was able to see him. In the grass he would have been invisible to me.

I knelt low to take this photo, so low that a lady driving by stopped to ask me if I was okay!

Why did he venture across the gray
open expanse of concrete?

Was he going to church to pray,
or looking for something to eat?

Time and Time Again

Finished reading Alan Ayckbourn's comedy, "Time and Time Again". As usual with his plays, I thoroughly enjoyed the reading, but felt dissatisfied with the end. There's laughter in the chase and a bitter aftertaste.

In Context

Context doesn't always soften
an ugly quotation.

Often,
it makes the reputation
of the speaker
even weaker.

Repeat What I Meant, Not What I Said

New York's mayor went on tv and declared he couldn't understand why cops don't go out on strike to demand tighter gun control laws:

“I don’t understand why the police officers across his country don’t stand up collectively and say, ‘We’re going to go on strike. We're not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required to keep us safe,” Bloomberg said Monday on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” as part of his ramped-up campaign against illegal guns in the wake of the Colorado theater massacre.

Of course, a lot of people thought this was an idiotic proposal. So the next day he tried to rewind that that suggestion:

“I didn’t mean literally go on strike. In fact, in New York, they can’t go on strike. There’s a law against it."

That thing I said? I didn't mean that. Somebody else repeated it!

They repeated it word for word,
and somehow it sounded absurd.

Tri Training

Workouts make Thighs ache.

Got Bot?

If a robot kiss
would fill you with bliss,
perhaps you should hurry and order this:

Marat/Sade

Saw Marat/Sade tonight, in its spectacular Right Brain Project production. I had never seen or read it before and was surprised by what a philosophical play it is. Ah - the French. They do like plays with some abstract argumentation! It's also a lively and very theatrical script, and this was a very well done production.

I also had no idea how musical a play it is.

It was closing night - and sold out - but I went anyway and they had a few cancellations so I was able to get a seat.

Lucky me,
I got to see.

Real Dirt

Some spoilsport scientist is debunking my favorite rule of low cuisine: the "5-second rule".

This rule states that food dropped to the ground is still safe to eat if you can pick it up within 5 seconds.

“A dropped item is immediately contaminated and can’t really be sanitized,” says Jorge Parada, MD, MPH, FACP, FIDSA, medical director of the infection prevention and control program at Loyola University Health System. “When it comes to folklore, the ‘five-second rule’ should be replaced with ‘when in doubt, throw it out’.”

What I like about this guy is that his new rule, 'when in doubt, throw it out,' rhymes.

But here's one point I wish to insert -
every carrot was once in the dirt.

But about that dirt we don't care at all,
even though it's a place where bacteria crawl.

You People

Today at work someone was cluck-clucking about Ann Romney reportedly saying "you people..."

I asked who she had said it to. It sounded like she had said it to reporters. If so, I though, this didn't amount to much. Reporters aren't an oppressed group that people feel sorry for.

Since then, I'd heard she was answering a black reporter, which would raise the question of whether she meant "you reporter people" or "you African American people".

But, now it seems she didn't even say the offending phrase.

I'm still not sure why "you people" sounds so bad. If you said "you human beings" it wouldn't sound nearly so awful, would it?

It's a case of misquotation
with unfortunate connotation.

For the Birds

Some crows spilled some flour,

which somehow tied up a HazMat team for an hour.

Races Enumerated

Athlinks.com let me know recently that it had found 100 races I'd run. It's an online web service that robo-searches through "race results" web sites and ties the results back to individuals.

Because it's a program, it does make some mistakes. Sometimes it double-counts a single race. Other times it mixes me up with a different John Enright, who's a couple of years younger than me, but who lives in the greater metro area. So once every couple of years I go in and clean up their data.

So, instead of them having 100 of my races, it was more like 91.

But... their data for me only goes back to 1996, and they don't catch every race.

I do have every race I've run. In a text file. Very old school. It's not set up for easy counting, but I just counted. Races completed: 206.

I had no idea and I'm kind of shocked. Granted, that goes back 25 years.

I'm thinking of all the entry fees
I've paid to go pounding the road with my knees,
and all the rubber soles
I've scuffed away in pursuit of my goals.

Somebody Else

Over at Taranto's "best of the web" on the Wall St. Journal site:

Barack Obama really does seem like an Ayn Rand villain at times.

He's referring to this bit of brilliance:

If you've got a business--you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Right, there are no individual contributions. There's no such thing as earned success.

Don't bother working hard.
For no matter what you do,
he's ready to play the card:
"Somebody Else" helped too!

Today At Calumet Park Beach

I saw a couple married on the sand.
It was a public beach, the children played,
the lifeguards rowed. I lounged and read my book.
They stood in white and joined their lives together.

When it was done, the two walked hand in hand
toward the water, for a calf-deep wade,
then kissed, and turned, and waved and threw a look
back to their friends, and up to sunny weather.

Perhaps The Police Could Teach The Proper Technique

In Stockholm, Sweden, police arrested a bunch of middle school kids for pot smoking, but none of them tested positive for drugs in their bloodstream, so they were all set free again.

Widell of the police also had a theory as to why none of the students tested positive for marijuana.

"Kids at this age don’t inhale the smoke properly. That’s one explanation why they didn’t test positive,” he said.

I know there's a Bill Clinton joke in here somewhere!

When kids don't inhale
marijuana smoke,
police raids fail
and look like a joke.

Third in Chinatown

I see that I took third place in my age group yesterday in the Chinatown 5k. There were only 8 in my age group.

They did not hand out age group medals. So I'm glad I didn't hang around afterward! I mean, I thought I had a chance. It was a smallish race. And it seemed to have drawn lots of young people, not lots of old people.

Age group medals are kind of a funny thing. It's not quite "everybody wins!", but it's a step in that direction.

In that little 8 person race,
I took third place.

Sarah Hoyt on Better Outcomes

Sarah Hoyt, who was born in Portugal, writes of an encounter at the DMV where she met an American woman who said she wanted to leave the U.S.

“You see, here we don’t have a right to free health care.”

At which point I rotated my head like something out of The Exorcist and said in my best *I am controlling my voice because otherwise I’ll shriek so loudly people from Kansas will run in to see what is going on* tone: “You don’t want the free health care they have in other countries. I grew up with it. And Portugal is not as bad as some.”

She smugly gave me the “Better outcomes. Cheaper.”

At this point I started giving her home truths and anecdotes. I started with the “better outcomes” being because it’s so hard to GET in the system (and not be sent home to die) that most people aren’t in the system when they die — hence, not “outcome” of health care.

I love Sarah Hoyt when she gets on a rant. There's more of it, and I enjoyed it all, including the explanation of how Portugal's actual health system improved when they brought back private insurance.

The price is free.
But you must wait.
Your turn, you see,
may come too late.

Strong Will

I'm reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir, by Haruki Murakami.

It's odd, but I'm ripping through it.

It was a Christmas gift from my brother Bill, and for some reason I picked it up. I'm a terrible person to buy books for. I like to read, but I tend to read what I feel like reading next, usually on some exploratory agenda of my own.

He's telling the story while training for a marathon in his late fifties. Which, I will note in passing, is my current situation.

I was amused by this:

When I tell people I run every day, some are quite impressed. "You must have a strong will," they sometimes tell me.

He then makes the point that he likes running, so whether he has a strong will or not, he runs because it suits him.

But later in the book he quotes from an article about his first marathon run, which was a solo run from Athens to Marathon, in summer heat:

At around twenty-three miles I start to hate everything. Enough already! My energy has scraped bottom, and I don't want to run anymore. I feel like I'm driving a car on empty.
...
I've totally forgotten how to move my body. All my muscles feel like they've been shaved away with a rusty plane.

He finished anyway. He says that he almost always feels that way at mile 23. Which I think settles the question of whether he has a strong will.

Pushing through that much pain and fatigue
puts him in the "strong-willed" league.

Capitalism and Romance

Troy Camplin linked to a Cato piece that asked a strange question:

Was Ayn Rand right that romanticism is the proper literary reflection of capitalism?

It's a strange question, at least to me, because I don't recall her putting the issue that way. She did think something along those lines:

Romanticism is a product of the nineteenth century—a (largely subconscious) result of two great influences: Aristotelianism, which liberated man by validating the power of his mind—and capitalism, which gave man's mind the freedom to translate ideas into practice (the second of these influences was itself the result of the first),

William H. Patterson Jr., the author of the Cato piece, comes to his question from a different direction:

I like to work by referring questions to the nature of the genre.

He then shifts to discussing the romance, as a genre, describing it as story of "personal status lost and then restored". Which is all very well, but not what Rand had in mind exactly.

His piece is an interesting meditation on genre and narrative arc,
but he and Rand, terminologically, are ships that pass in the dark.

In Love With Friedrich Hayek

There once was a woman named Moe...

Well, it's short for Maureen, I believe, a common enough shortening, except usually it's rendered as : "Mo".

Anyway, this woman named Moe wrote a hit-piece on Gawker.com against a young woman, a college student named Dorian.

Unfortunately for rhyming purposes, Dorian doesn't seem to have a one syllable nickname.

If Maureen goes by Mo,
shouldn't Dorian go by Do?
But... no.

The reason for Moe's wrath? Dorian did a couple of light-hearted market-themed music videos, including this one: "I'm in Love with Friedrich Hayek".



Which is loads of nerdy fun, in my opinion.

I thought this was the funniest part of the song:

Come to my couch, on which you can rest
I'll make tea, we'll talk credit and interest
Then I can talk about my interest in you
Of course we'll talk 'bout the economy, too

Too Early To Tell

They're not sure yet, but it's a great headline:

Illinois inmates may be receiving illegal unemployment benefits
State begins cross-checking records, finds 420 suspicious cases

I guess Illinois isn't actually mailing any unemployment checks to prison addresses.

But someone on the outside might collect
and fraudulently cash an inmate's check.

Pyramid Scheme

Not sure how seriously to take this:

An online magazine has offered translations to Arabic news sources that purportedly indicate that Egypt's Salafi party has come forth with plants to demolish Egypt's Great Pyramids in an effort to bring down what it calls "symbols of paganism."

Of course, it does bring to mind the fate of those big Buddhist statues in Afghanistan:

They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were "idols".

Is the persistence of the pyramids at odds
with that rule about "strange gods"?

I hope it's just a scare
that doesn't have a prayer.

State Secret

In Jacksonville, Florida, a drug-resistant form of TB first spread through their homeless population, and then branched out into the general citizenry. But authorities didn't want to tell people.

“What you don’t want is for anyone to have another reason why people should turn their backs on the homeless,” said Charles Griggs, the public information officer for the Duval County Health Department.

When the homeless cough and hack,
I admit I turn my back.

The key problem is that TB takes a while to treat.

Some wanderer doesn't stay on their meds.
Soon it spreads.

So how is that working out?

In 2012, the CDC was invited to help with a sudden spike in cases of the same rare strain the schizophrenic patient had. What they found is the worst outbreak they have investigated in 20 years, and it is not contained.

Not contained. Great.

Don't tell anyone, but the homeless sector
can be an illness vector.

Depression as Disability

I recently spoke with an acquaintance, a very experienced psychologist, who said she had heard that depression is increasingly being used as a justification for getting on permanent disability benefits. What bothered her about this trend is that she sees depression as highly treatable, by multiple methods. With treatment, she said, it should rarely be a permanent condition.

Her suspicion was that the system is being gamed.

Would people on a benefits quest
simply pretend to be depressed?

UPDATE - click below for detailed description of how depression is evaluated by the Social Security Administration:

Depression is a common allegation on Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability claims. Sometimes depression is found to be disabling, and sometimes it isn’t. It all depends on the severity of the depression. Here is a description at what the Social Security Administration looks at when evaluating the severity of depression to determine eligibility for Social Security disability benefits.

Charlie's Paradox

"Money isn't the important thing--as long as you have a bunch of it."

-Charlie McDanger's page-a-day calendar

Of course, the thing about money is that it enables the acquisition of so many other things. After all, money evolves first as a solution to the problem of arranging complex barter arrangements.

Barter remains. It does not vanish completely.

Friendship, from an economic point of view, is kind of like barter. You don't pay your friends money to be your friends. But you exchange values, enjoyments, and kindnesses.

If you have a punning sort of mind,
you might call friendship "payment in kind".

Unemployment and Disability

Distressing headline from the Daily Mail:

85,000 Americans went on disability benefit in June (while only 80,000 jobs were added in same period)

And it's not a one-month fluke. As Investor's Business Daily reports, it's a trend:

While the economy has created 2.6 million jobs since June 2009, fully 3.1 million workers signed up for disability benefits.

I suppose some of this is our aging population. The baby boom is in the red zone for disability claims - old, but not old enough for Medicare and Social Security based on age alone.

But a lot of it is the unemployment situation. People can't find a job they want to do, or possibly any job at all. Their unemployment benefits run out. And if they have a condition that might qualify, they go through the hassle of applying for disability benefits. They wouldn't have done that if they had a job, or unemployment insurance, but... they don't.

I've known "disabled" people who could, in fact, have been doing productive work. Not all, but definitely some.

It's a bad trend.
When will it end?

Hack and Stretch

As Mary Catelli writies:

A story has a natural length, and hacking or stretching it past those limits distorts it -- not to its benefit.

They are very well paid for their trouble, but I do feel bad sometimes for writers who work on TV shows.

Their stories have to work out nicely
while fitting in a time slot precisely.

Hot Spell Going Well?

Back in 1995, Chicago had a streak of very hot weather around the start of July, and a bunch of people died from the heat, quite of a few of them old people who died in their apartments.

In the typical case, the person had no a/c, and had sealed up their windows, and had stayed in their apartment, perhaps because they lived in tough neighborhoods.

Well, we're having a record hot spell this year, but so far I haven't heard of a high number of such heat deaths. I know programs were put in place to try to prevent this from happening - including programs where neighbors check on old people in their neighborhoods on hot days. Also, "cooling centers" were designated and announced - you know, public places with air conditioning.

I'm hoping this July
fewer die.

Batty for the Fourth

While the fireworks were booming,
we watched a bat zooming.

For a drink it went skimming
a pool meant for swimming.

Black Comedy

By the way, Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy is very clever but so dark.

It's set in an apartment where the electric lights are out for most of the play.

The play is written to be staged under a reversed lighting scheme: the play opens on a darkened stage. A few minutes into the show there is a short circuit, and the stage is illuminated to reveal the characters in a "blackout." On the few occasions when matches, lighters, or torches are lit, the lights grow dimmer.

It was fun to read, but I found the characters so unappealing
that I was left with an unhappy feeling.

First Choice, Best Choice

Or is it just a bias?

Experiment 1 demonstrated an implicit preference to buy goods from the first salesperson encountered and to join teams encountered first, even when the difference in encounter is mere seconds. In Experiment 2 the first of two consumer items presented in quick succession was more likely to be chosen.

I can see where it could be a time-saving bias, but the best shoppers I know are patient comparison shoppers.

When it comes to shoppers, I'm one of the worst.
I always buy whatever's first.

The Library At Alexandria

I visited the Library at Alexandria today.

Alexandria, Virginia, that is. Nice little library, but their a/c wasn't working properly.

Tonight I'm back in the City of Wind,
wishing someone would rescind
this massive wave of sweltering heat.

Please, Mr. Summer, sound the retreat!

Switcheroo Report

CBS reports our chief justice switched his vote on the health care mandate. And they suggest he caved in the face of pressure from opinionated opponents:

Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.

It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, "wobbly," the sources said.

Of course, this leak just makes him look deceitful in a different way.

Of course, we don't know how true this version of the story is. How could we? Even if he did change his vote, it's hard be sure exactly why he did from the facts provided.

I continue to be grimly puzzled by the fact that the Congress cannot regulate inactivity, but can tax it.

I search the constitution
in vain for a solution.

WF in DC

Showed the video of my play, Wild Flowers, to an audience here at the Atlas Summit conference in DC. Enjoyed sharing it with friends, and watching it again myself.

I miss the cast.
We had a blast
Helping that play
Find its way.

Reconstituting the Penalty

So it turns out the individual mandate penalty is actually a tax on not buying something - sort of a non-sales tax.

As the joke goes:

Shopkeeper: Would you like to buy something?

Browser: No thanks. You don't have what I want.

Shopkeeper: That will be 14.95.

I'm not a legal scholar,
but it makes me want to holler.

• 
  

Deja Vu

Last night in my post I mentioned the Chicago Tribune's infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline.

And today... CNN duplicated that feat, covering themselves in something other than glory.

As Chief Justice John Roberts began reading his decision on the future of President Obama's health care overhaul, the CNN team inside the courtroom jumped the gun, believing that Roberts was saying the individual mandate was unconstitutional and would be overturned.

CNN, it doesn't please me
when you tease me.

Alternate Futures

The Chicago Sun-Times reportedly posted alternate versions of tomorrow's lead story online. That is, they put up their stories for:

1) the health care reform act is completely overturned
2) the health care reform act is partly overturned
3) the health care reform act stands as law

Well, it's not as bad as the time the Chicago Tribune had a paper headline announcing "Dewey Defeats Truman".

There will be joy and sorrow
whatever comes tomorrow.

Whirl

I just spent some time staring at a ceiling fan. If I stared at one spot on the fan, such as the center, I saw a blur of motion. But if I let my eyes wander over the fan, individual blades emerged briefly from the blur, before dissolving back into it.

Out of the blur, a blade
catches my eye,
then merges back in the pack
without a goodbye.

Overwhelmed by speed,
the eye makes do
by catching what it can
as it comes through.

Unwise Rulers

I really feel for this guy:

A University of Illinois math professor who derided states ethics training as childish, “petty tyranny” and “Orwellian” ended his four-year boycott by agreeing to pay a fine and submit to the training, a state ethics panel disclosed Monday.

Unwise rulers? Surely not here in Illinois! Oh, wait...

an ethics program put into place in 2004 by impeached ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Maybe the math professor has a point. But the state has kept after him with threats of serious fines, and he is finally caving in.

Well, he tried.

By coincidence, I am reading The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society, the thesis of which is:

That our tut-tutting society
has become cluttered with rules
which can be useful as devious tools,
but which do little to stop actual impropriety.

Obama Campaign Registry

Snopes verifies:

Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up?

Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl.

So if you're dreading
receiving gifts for your wedding,
redirect your swag
into his campaign bag!

Die Zirkusprinzessin

Last night we went with friends to see a production of "The Circus Princess", an operetta by Emmerich Kalman.

It was in an English translation, which still seems to be done with operettas, although it seems to be verboten with operas these days.

I enjoyed it. Charming music, strong voices, and lots of spectacular circus elements. The acting was a bit uneven, but you almost expect that in musical productions, where singing tends to trump acting.

There was a bit of a stage mishap involving accidental broken glass on the floor in the final act. And yes, before it was over, one of the actors had cut himself.

Okay, that's 3 shows I've seen in the past few years where people got cut on stage from dropped glass.

Actors on stage are bundles of nerves
and sometimes can drift toward the spastic.

To deal with their unaccountable swerves
"glass" props should be made of plastic.

This clip, from somewhere else, give an idea of what the music is like:

Up From The Projects

I just finished "Up From The Projects," by Walter Williams, a prominent black free-market economist. I found it quite charming. It's a short book, told in an apparently simple, just-the-bare-facts sort of style.

Thomas Sowell wrote of the book:

The first chapter, about Walter’s life growing up in the Philadelphia ghetto, was especially fascinating. It brought back a whole different era in black communities — an era that is now almost irretrievably lost, to the great disadvantage of today’s generation growing up in the same neighborhoods where Walter grew up in Philadelphia or where I grew up in Harlem.

The civil rights revolution was helpful in many ways, but Williams points out that it was accompanied by worsening crime problems in black neighborhoods, and a lessening of expectations for black students in schools.

Some policies were built
on feelings of white guilt
without carefully thinking through
what those policies would do.

(Reason interview with Williams about his biography is here.)

Credit Divide

I read today about the "credit divide" - a situation where people with great credit scores can borrow cheaply, but other people cannot borrow much at all.

A lot of it's an effect of the Lords of Finance doing somewhat contrary things. On the one hand, the Fed has pursued an easy money policy. On the other hand, after the mortgage bubble collapsed, banking regulators have pursued tight lending rules.

It's like putting a humidifier and a dehumidifer together in a room, and letting them fight it out!

If you're credit's great,
don't wait,
borrow today and stimulate
that big sluggish horse
we call Workforce.

He's lumbering slowly along the course.

Real Gains

One other Deirdre McCloskey quote that struck me as worthwhile:

Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is.

Efficiency may be sufficient to survive,
but innovation makes us thrive.

Reality Based

Deidre McCloskey on a rampage, trying to impart some historical knowledge to fellow academics:

It seems to me that a political philosophy based on fairy tales about what happened in history or what humans are like is going to be less than useless. It is going to be mischievous.

How do I know that my narrative is better than yours? The experiments of the 20th century told me so.

Observe the flood
of blood.

Bandwagon in Reverse

We went to the Second City comedy club last night. There were political jokes, as always. And they cut deeper into the elephants than the donkeys, as always. But there was vocal pushback from some members of the audience.

One of the performers shot back, "If you're booing now, hold onto your f---ing hats!"

 But in decades of going to Second City, I have never heard Republican pushback before. Never. This is Chicago, of course.

 I took it as a startling sign
that donkey chances are in decline.

Mystery of Grandfather Resolved

That's my mom's dad. My mom's parents split up very early in her life, and contact had been lost. My mother heard that he had remarried and had a couple more children. My mother invited him to her wedding, writing to the the last known address, but never heard back from him.

As we found out much later, her dad was already dead at the time of her wedding. We figured that out from an inquiry to Social Security.

My mom died a few years ago. But recently my brother Mark and his wife and I finally dug up enough information to track down my mother's half-siblings, a brother and a sister, who are still alive.

The internet is a cornucopia of confusing data, but we sifted through it. It didn't help that my grandfather had a fairly common name - Harold Wright.

My brother Bill, who lives in the Bay Area, met the other night with our long lost aunt who lives in the same area. He found her very charming. She provided the photo above, which is the only color photo I've seen of the man. It was taken shortly before his death, at 46, of a heart attack. He was working long days as an executive at a plant where they made aircraft engines during World War II. He came into work, didn't feel well, and died at the office.

I'm sure my mother would have liked to meet
her siblings, so this ending's bittersweet.

The Tricking of America

That hitchhiking writer who got randomly shot, the one ironically writing a book called "The Kindness of America"?

Turns out it wasn't a random shooting at all. It was, as I speculated, a publicity stunt.

Valley County sheriff's officials said they believe 39-year-old Ray Dolin shot himself as a desperate act of self-promotion, but they offered no further details.

You know, it's not really nice to send law enforcement officials on a wild goose chase looking for a fictional assailant.

Next time, find a stunt
that doesn't involve a gun in front
and an exit wound behind.

To yourself, and America, be kind.

Autonomous Autos

When all cars are Google cars, able to drive without human intervention, when the technology is solid, will people stop learning to drive, the way most Americans have stopped learning to drive stick?

Parents won't have to ferry their kids to each and every location.
Instead, just put them in the car and state a destination!

Quick Acting Kayaker

A first-time kayaker fished a man in a business suit out of the Chicago River yesterday:

"I thought about putting him on the kayak, but his body was really heavy," Gonzalez said. "So I grabbed him by the back of the head, with his shirt, and put my other hand under his chin to hold his head up."

Apparently the victim was reading on the riverwalk and passed out, tumbling into the slow-flowing waters of dubious cleanliness.

Close to that river ain't
a safe place to faint.

Overloading The Nation's Irony Detection System

If it's not just a publicity stunt:

A West Virginia man who was hitchhiking across the United States and writing a memoir titled “The Kindness of America” was shot by a motorist in a random attack in northeastern Montana, authorities say.

Perhaps at this point it's vital
to change the title.

Protective Reaction

There are things that make a man lose his temper:

Residents of the small Texas town of Shiner are standing up for a father who beat another man to death when he allegedly caught him trying to molest his 4-year-old daughter, saying they would have done the same thing to protect their child, reports CBS affiliate KENS.

Of course, I don't know if the story is true.

But you can see where a guy might see red
till the other guy was dead.

Daunting

There are people who find innocence an offense, and who heap abuse on the innocent in order to disabuse them of the notion that life is fair.

And the innocent march on with hesitant feet,
puzzled by the monsters that they meet.

Life on Mars

On Netflix we watched all the episodes of the American version of Life On Mars, a series about a police detective who gets hit by a car in 2009 and wakes up on the street in 1973. How that could happen is the continuing mystery of the series. I figured it would never get satisfactorily explained, especially with clues that seem to point in different directions, and so I was quite surprised when the final episode actually offered what I felt was a satisfying explanation.

It seemed, at least, preplanned,
Not at the last minute, off hand.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Missed Race Report

Just spent 2 hours looking for a 5k race at Main Park in Mokena, IL. Google actually gave me not one but two bad locations.

The second bad location was a different park, where a local was able to give me good info. Another person there mentioned that others had come before me, looking for Main Park.

Got to Main Park with a little time to spare, but the parking lot was full. Plenty of police, but no sign they knew their lot was full. Was directed to park about a quarter mile away, but by then it was simply too late to make the start.

Mapquest, to its credit, does know the right location.

It turns out that the organizers gave the address as being at 10925 LaPorte Rd. Google needs the address to be La Porte Rd. Otherwise Google sends you to Francis Rd.



If you give LaPorte to Google without the space
it turns out you're in danger of missing the race.

The Shaw-Rostand Connection

I found out today, by reading some of his letters, that George Bernard Shaw liked the plays of Edmond Rostand. I had no idea.

Apparently Shaw had a good understanding of French, although he didn't like to speak it with Parisians, which is perfectly understandable, since they pretend not to understand you unless you speak it perfectly. As Mark Twain had it:

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

I have seen the Shaw and Rostand opposed to one another, and with good reason:

In an age when Bernard Shaw was writing cynical tracts like Man and Superman, Rostand revels in romanticism:

I sing, dream, laugh, and go where I please, alone and free. My eyes see clearly and my voice is strong. I'm quarrelsome or benign as it suits my pleasure, always ready to fight a duel or write a poem at the drop of a hat.

What was the connection? My take is that Shaw was not really a cynic, more of a disappointed idealist, and he shared with Rostand a hatred of hypocrisy and a love of the authentic.

Rostand was far more lyrical,
but both were sharply satirical.

Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega was a Spanish contemporary of Shakespeare's.

Reportedly he was on one of the ships of the ill-fated Armada that sailed to attack England.

His reputation in the world of Spanish literature is second only to that of Cervantes, while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature.

That "sheer volume" includes about 1800 plays, typically in verse.

Many of his works are lost, possibly as many as 1,000 to 1,300 of them.

Talk about prolific. But how many are available in English? Not as many as I would like. I'm thinking I could find online Spanish texts and feed them through translation software. But feeding golden age Spanish verse through a translation program gives you stuff like this:

As scene opens: Cyrus and Mithridates, the two in habit of villains.

MITHRIDATES:
Take away I have the life.

CYRUS:
Take, father, the Cudgel ;
that I suffer, raised,
but I can fall.

And my own Spanish, at its very best,
is not up to the test.

Bumper Crop

We have some cherry trees in our front yard, that Marsha planted years ago. In recent years we've had a problem with the cherries getting moldy or blighted before they were ripe. Marsha blamed wet weather.

But this year the weather has cooperated and we have so many cherries we are having trouble picking them all. Well, some are simply too high to pick. But we've had local children over to pick for their own families.

You can see a small sample above.

Luscious, sweet,
and too many to eat!

Never Mind

Apparently the exit polls in Wisconsin predicted a tight race and a long night.

But the actual polls were a Walker landslide.

Put not your faith in exit polls.
Their scientific method must contain some gaping holes.

Another Goodbye

Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago has moved to a new building. Which turns out to be hard on the hearts of some grieving family members whose deceased children were treated there, lived there, died there. So the hospital staff set up a farewell ceremony for the building itself.

To cushion the psychic blow of the old building’s loss, the hospital staff organized a “closing reception for bereaved families” on Sunday afternoon on the rooftop of the parking deck overlooking the hospital.

We did not go. The building didn't inspire that depth of feeling in us. But I understand how it happens.

All that emotion
of love and devotion
can fasten on a place
that calls to mind the face
of the one
who is gone.

Tall Tale Fail

My new random hypothesis about Elizabeth Warren is that she started off by telling gullible Easterners tall tales - the way Westerners sometimes do - just to amuse herself.



Probably she had a bunch of Massachusetts people believing in jackalopes (pictured above), and she just kept going with this wacky stuff about "pow wow chow" with Grey Poupon, and her parents having to elope because her mother was 1/16th Native American, and the latest story about her grandma driving a wagon in a land rush.

Maybe instead of "she misspoke"
it's just that she was telling a joke.

Surely the voters will be good eggs
once she admits she's been pulling their legs.

Habit Hiatus

In January, our local park district indoor pool tends to close for cleaning. Typically for a month. I never seem to know about it in advance. This year I showed up one day and there was the sign, so I drove back home.

But once I get out of the habit of going, I never seem to go back to swimming until summer is here and triathlon season looms.

Yes, I went swimming today. Outdoors.

I really shouldn't let a one month closing
make my swimming habit start decomposing.

Prom Night

He had a busy night:

A West Side man has been charged for allegedly hijacking a sports-utility vehicle at gun-point before he went to prom with his girlfriend.

The girlfriend called to complain to police that her prom was ruined.

Why rent a limo
when you can jack a car?

But if you're caught
your prom will turn subpar.

Choosing When To Live

I was reminded today of a quotation I love:

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.

It's a statement of great rhetorical flourish, which actually invites some analysis, because of course it can't be literally true. You can't really live in the future.

Yet we speak constantly of choosing to live in the time of our choice. We are told not to live in the past. We are told, very often lately, to live fully in the present.

What people are talking about is where our mental focus is, where our minds dwell.

I think of us as living in a wildly elastic present. Our minds are built to grasp vast epochs of time. This is not a gift that we should turn away from as a matter of policy. Living only in the moment, if understood literally as not looking ahead or behind, is a recipe for short sighted disaster and a strange obliviousness about the course of one's life.

I am reminded of some haunting words from Into The Woods:

Oh. if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one-!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one.

We are possessed of both memory and vision, and the one supplies the other with the raw materials for bettering our existence.

You have to breathe now
but it's up to you how
your mind leaps about
as it works your life out.

Dust to Dust

Death at the sort of church service
that makes most people nervous:

A "serpent-handling" West Virginia pastor died after his rattlesnake bit him during a church ritual, just as the man had apparently watched a snake kill his father years before.

You've handled them before
and you plan to handle more,
it's like standing in front of God's door,
but don't let it go to your head.

One day the rattles shake
and your colorful slithering snake
decides to make
you dead.

Fracking Beans

Small farmers in India are ramping up their production of guar beans.

Guar gum, which is also used to make sauces and ice cream, is a main ingredient of the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process used to extract oil and gas from oil shale.

It may seem bizarre,
but to frack you need guar
as a filler.

Now the farmer must race
to keep pace
with the shale oil driller.

Tough Run

The temperature yesterday set a record high for a Chicago Memorial Day, and my 10k was a hot one.

Fortunately, it's a neighborhood run, and the neighbors had extra water on the course - water in cups - and water in sprinklers arranged along the course so that you could run through sprinklers on a pretty regular basis.

The 10k took me an hour and four seconds! Three weeks ago I ran a 10k - went off course and ran a bit farther - and still finished  3 and a half minutes sooner than I did yesterday.

I didn't fall or stumble,
but heat has the power to humble.

Warm

One salient downside of central air: When it fails it's hot in the house everywhere.

Timon of Athens

We saw Ian McDiarmid last night on stage, playing the title character in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.



McDiarmid is most famous as the guy who plays the Emperor in Star Wars.

I can't say I cared much for the play, but McDiarmid's performance was very impressive. He was quite spry for a man of 67, and his vocal technique as an actor seemed to outmatch everyone else on stage. He seemed to move through a couple of octaves when speaking, without drawing attention to the changes in pitch. He projected his voice even when apparently speaking quietly and reflectively. And his pronunciation was crisp and distinct, articulating his consonants and vowels, again while seeming natural about it. Mind you, he was on stage with a lot of very experienced Chicago Shakespeareans, who have spent a lot of time on that same stage, so his superiority was actually a bit puzzling to me.

The play is unlike other Shakespeare plays, in various ways, including having an extremely simple story line. Shakespeare's plots are usually complicated. Current scholarly thinking has Shakespeare writing two thirds of the play, with Thomas Middleton writing the rest.

For some reason, this production recast two female prostitutes into one lascivious male soldier/prostitute. I didn't know this going in, but I suspected genders had been altered while watching the play. The dialog and relationships weren't making sense to me. So I researched it today.

Despite the players' acting chops,
gender switching often flops.

Packet Pickup

I just picked up my shirt and race bib for the Ridge Run, a local 10k. I believe this will be my 29th running of this race, the first 10k I ever ran.

Maybe once I hit 30 I can stop. A lot of my contemporaries, who used to be Ridge Run regulars, have stopped. Mostly it's their knees that stopped them. I've been lucky with my knees, so far. Knock on cartilage.

They're a kind of pivotal hinge
with a nasty potential for twinge.

Bain and GM

I'm not sure how long the Obama campaign
can keep harping on Bain.

“Let’s compare apples to apples,” the other CNN host said to the DNC chair. “It seems to me the criticism you’re offering is that Mitt Romney went into businesses and laid people off. But wouldn’t the apples to apples comparison be that’s exactly what Barack Obama did when he touts the auto industry as a feather in his cap, didn’t the federal government and Barack Obama go in and layoff thousands of autoworkers to save that industry?”

Let the topic subtly alter
whenever your logic starts to falter.

Rules for Thee but Not for Me

Classic Bloomberg:

An amateur video, filmed by an annoyed Manhattanite and broadcast Tuesday on WABC-TV, showed the mayor landing and taking off several times over the weekend from the East 34th Street helipad, where trips on Saturday and Sunday have been expressly banned for more than a decade.

Now that he has been publicly shamed, he has agreed to stop.

I always liked that helipad. When I lived on 38th Street I liked to walk over and watch the whirlybirds. Chicago doesn't seem to have a similar helipad. We did have a whole mini-airport on the waterfront near downtown, but our previous mayor bulldozed it in the dead of night. To solve the noise problem. Or the risk of crashes. Or something.

And so I'm jealous
of NYC where truly zealous
copter pilots can land all week
in a whirling roaring streak.

Bicycle Cops

The Chicago police used bicycles a lot during the NATO protests. They would line them up in impromptu barrier walls and stand behind them, which struck me as a novel tactic.

Much less scary than a row of tanks,
but, still, a way to hold ranks.

Magic

By some strange coincidence, the most recent plays I've been moved by lately have been "fairy tale" sorts of stories:

1) my friends at Dream are doing part 2 of their Peter Pan trilogy, by Jeremy Menekseoglu.

2) I was into Into The Woods, by Sondheim and Lapine. I was playing Cinderella's father.

3) My friend, Jordan Leigh Wakefield, played the prince in The Fantasists, by Randy Wyatt, a clever children's story featuring a quest to save a kingdom from an ill-intentioned ice witch.

I have seen nary a fairy,
but their tales rarely fail.

Makeup!

After all these years, I now have experience putting on eyeliner. My tendency to flinch, when anything gets near my eye, was not helpful.

Sometimes it seems a bit daft,
the things we do in the acting craft.

Molotov Cocktails, Undeployed

Police here have arrested a few people and accused them of making, or planning to make, Molotov cocktails. Alleged targets include Obama campaign HQ, Rahm Emanuel's home, and police stations.

The defense lawyer called it a set-up:

At least two informants "ingratiated themselves" with the three men, brought the materials and made the alleged plans, he insisted, calling it "an entrapment to the highest degree."

You have to be careful with the entrapment defense, since, like the insanity defense, it starts an admission that you did it.

Yes, your honor, I did it, but I've got a good excuse,
so I hope you'll let me loose.

Not Much To Report

This would have been a regular workday in downtown Chicago. But due to all the scare stories about the NATO confab and the protesters...

downtown
was mostly shut down.

I went to work. But a lot of people didn't. I think my morning train was one quarter full at best.

I saw the protesters go by my building 3 times. I had a good view. There weren't a lot of them. My favorite sign:

Give Class War A Chance!

Well, they've got 3 more days to protest before the NATO Show blows town.

Maybe this was just a warm up.
Maybe tomorrow they'll swarm up
in much bigger groups
of class warfare dupes.

Energetic Opening

Our production of Into The Woods opened tonight, with a big burst of energy. I think Act One was 15 minutes shorter than it was the night before in dress rehearsal. And I didn't hear of any mistakes that the audience was likely to detect as such.

The audience gobbled it up like the wolf gobbled up granny, laughing, clapping, cheering.

It's great fun to have a crowd
that's happy and loud.



(photo by one of the Murphy boys)

Old Dog, New Tricks

The young woman in charge of costumes, for the play I'm in, thought it would suit my character to be wearing a red bow tie. So I bought one. And then I had to learn to tie it!

I've worn bowties a few times in my life. I think I had a clip-on bowtie in elementary school. And the couple of times I've rented a tux... but they came with pre-tied bowties that you just fastened somehow.

Anyway, I found a video on the web, and worked at it. Well, I'm getting better. The good thing is that my character, Cinderella's father, is a bit of a wino, so you wouldn't expect his tie to be too perfect.



Now I sort of know
how to tie one in a bow
I should maybe buy some mo.

Dubious Distinction

Another first:

A 1997 piece from the Fordham Law Review lists Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as the “first woman of color” hired by Harvard Law School, according to reports.

From what I can see
she's the same shade as me.

White is a color, right?

On reflection, I think
we're closer to pink.

First Gay Prez

Newsweek, which gave us the "We're All Socialists Now" cover a couple of years ago, now gives us this:



I've seen that rainbow halo referred to as a gaylo, which was funny. It sure is eye-catching. I imagine they'll sell more issues than usual, which shouldn't be hard.

Boil that pot, if you know what I mean,
and hope someone buys your magazine.

Events Piled Up

The weekend was wildly busy and stressful.
I'm tired and dizzy, but it was successful.

Long Lost and Found

I've posted a couple of times about the mystery of my maternal grandfather. Well, it's all nailed down now, and we've made contact with his other descendants. One of my brothers spoke today to my late mother's half-sister, whom my mom never met. There's a living half-brother, as well, and he has a child and grandchildren of his own.

There's one funny coincidence that leaps out. My grandfather was an engineer, and at the time of his early death he was working at a Westinghouse plant where they made engines for WWII planes.

One of my brothers, and my son, both have doctorates in aerospace engineering.

Is it a random pattern in the noise,
or is there a gene that showed up in those boys?

Everland

Went to see the opening of Peter Pan's Shadow, Part Two: Everland. It's a wild, funny, touching adventure that's set after the events of the regular Peter Pan story.

It is set, much of it, in the belly of the beast - a crocodile. Or, not its belly always, but other inside parts as well, for this a cavernous croc. It's a journey undertaken by Peter Pan's sister and Captain Hook, played by Anna and Jeremy Menekseoglu. They have been swallowed up, and are endeavoring to escape with their lives. Beginning as something like enemies, they end as something like friends, and the sense of relationship between the two is palpable throughout, like a beating heart, like drums in the background.

As usual with Dream Theatre shows, all of the acting was riveting. Chad Sheveland plays Mr. Skylights, another pirate, with crisp comic flair. Annelise Lawson, as the heartwrenching, magical Tink, explains at last why she is such a powerful fairy. Rachel Martindale is adorable as Wendy and quite frightening as the Mad Mother Doll. Avery Ferguson was bursting with energy as the Mock Shadow. And Annie Hoeg was sprightly and cocky as Mock Peter Pan.

Samantha Schmidt is utterly charming as Jane. By a funny coincidence, the only other role I've seen Sam play is Jane from Pride and Prejudice. Has she been name-cast?

Visually, the show was spectacular, and the wooden sword fight looked scary from where I was sitting.

The unbalanced mind of Captain Hook,
could fill an abnormal psychology book,
but still, in his way, he is wondrous wise
at seeing through the world's lies.

Another Story Bites The Dust

That story about a dentist pulling every single tooth
out of her ex? Not the truth.

Dress for Duress

There are news reports that downtown Chicago office workers are being encouraged to treat "NATO Monday" as Logo-Free Casual Day:

Some workers have been asked to dress down so protesters won't target them, according to Crain's Chicago Business. Security staffs reportedly even told employees to avoid wearing anything with corporate logos.

Actually, I've seen reports that a lot of today's fashionable anarchists come to protest in dark-hued duds with designer labels. They're anti-corporate, but they wear the right brands. It's almost as if a lot of them are bored rich kids, afflicted with guilt over inheriting trust funds.

I'm predicting that the protests here are being vastly over-hyped.

Perhaps that day, just for yucks,
I could go to work in a tux.

Politician

The longer "I'm evolving" is your position,
the more it looks like purposeful indecision.

80 Million Down The Hole

Not encouraging:

After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous.

Apparently a bunch of normal State Department security rules were waived in order to build this now-to-be abandoned consulate, which is all-too-vulnerable to car bombs. The article lays the blame on the late Richard Holbrooke, who was appointed by our current president to head up diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan, and who seemed to be in a rush to make a good impression on the locals.

It isn't smart diplomacy to build
where you can easily be killed.

Homophonia

A "foreword" comes at the start of a book, 
but "forward" is the direction 
you go as you turn the pages to look 
whether it's worth your selection.

Be Careful Who You Follow

Today I ran a 10k,
but sad to say
I ran the wrong way.

I was following some other people on trails in the woods. They went the wrong way at a fork. I, not realizing, kept following them. And it was no shortcut. More of a longcut.

And thus,
for this mistaken group of us,
it was more of a 10k plus!

Old Friends, Young Enthusiasm

An old friend of mine, Evan Picoult, invited us to a very enjoyable Ayn Rand Institute fund-raising dinner last night in Chicago.

Evan, who lives in New York, ended up not being able to make it himself, which was a big disappointment. I knew him when we were both students at Columbia in New York. I was an undergrad, he was a grad student in physics.

Even without Evan, we did have a very good time. The food was delicious, the speakers entertaining and knowledgeable.

I was also glad to see Lin Zinser again. I hadn't seen her in quite a while. She's currently director of Public Outreach at the institute.

Terry Savage, a syndicated financial columnist, was there, as was Jonathan Hoenig, who frequently appears on the Fox News channel.

One of the highlights, for me, was the short speech given by a young man of about 13, a student in the Chicago public school system, who was a happy beneficiary of the institute's free-books-for-schools program. His enthusiasm was contagious.

The world is forever sprung
anew in the minds of the young.

Canada Is Getting Rid Of Them

A penny, composed of copper and zinc,
costs more than a penny to make.
Which leads me to think:
there's been a mistake.

Bloody

Lately, when watching House MD, I wait for the moment when blood comes pouring out of the patient's eyes or mouth. It's as if no episode is complete without a splattering of red.

The writers must believe there's ratings glory
in scenes that run to the gory.

Skip This Story If You're Scared Of Dentists

Malpractice or domestic violence?

A Polish woman is facing three years in prison after she removed all of her ex-boyfriend's teeth during dental surgery just days after their breakup.

He made the mistake of thinking he could still trust in her professionalism, but she had gone from dental to mental.

She was ruthless,
now he's toothless.