A modern conversation

I got a text message from someone named Matt tonight.

Matt (9:08 PM) Wats good 5 5

me (9:12) wrong number

Matt (9:20) Dis ain't Jessica???

me (9:22) not even close

Matt (9:23) Dis Matt. who dis?

me (9:24) Dis a 60 year old man

Matt (9:25) Sorry about that sir
me (9:25) no prblm

Intelligent design

We’ve probably offended everyone’s political convictions on this blog by now, so let’s work on religion for a change. Somebody said more people have been killed in the name of religion than any other cause, and surely that is true. For this and other reasons, I don’t have much use for organized religion, but I’m much less sure what I think when it comes to the existence of God.

Surely for every person killed in the name of God, many more have been comforted by the knowledge that there is a God who loves them. There is so much evil in the world it is easy to discount the possibility of a benevolent, supreme being overseeing our lives, (much less accept the idea that “He needs your money” as George Carlin liked to remind us). Disbelief is the easy path; belief is hard work.

I have no ambivalence when it comes to teaching creationism or intelligent design in public schools however - that’s not the place for it – but I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts while humping away on the elliptical at the gym today and got to wondering about something.

“Studio 360” devoted the whole program to Darwin in honor of his 200th birthday. If there was ever anything you could characterize as intelligent design, wouldn’t it be evolution? It would be hard to imagine a more complex, elegant and logically structured system. Whether it was invented by God or just happened, it is certainly an intelligent design.

So why can’t evolution be the intelligent design certain Christians want to be taught in school? And why don’t scientists propose this idea? Wouldn’t it stop a lot of arguing and make society just a little more harmonious?

Happy Thanksgiving

I have nothing profound to add to the basic idea of the day. We all have something for which to be thankful. For starters, none of us are out in a rice paddy, standing in water up to our knees, digging for our dinners.

This is the best of all holidays; there are no competing religious dogma to divide us. We can all just be thankful for whatever gifts we've been given in whatever way pleases us.

We can be thankful that commercial interests have found it difficult to leverage Thanksgiving to much effect. Yes, there is the big parade, which has turned into one long television commercial, but Thanksgiving has become the last day we are actually semi-free of the unrelenting urging to "buy! buy! buy!" that will dominate our lives for the next 30 days. So far, the stores are holding off until at least midnight of the day after. Black Friday is a good name for it, too.

So I wish you all the best of all Thanksgivings. May you spend it with people you love, and who love you.

Warren O'Florida

I’ve been in Florida for eight days now, and based on the television advertising I would guess that the number one industry is suing people as a result of automobile accidents. It is also mandatory that in every commercial transaction that the buyer is asked, and provides, their Christian name before the transaction.

I’ve made a couple of critical acquaintances: the bookstore owner and the cigar shop proprietor. The former offers excellent dining advice and the latter serves excellent espresso and will talk about anything.

Did you know that there is a separate genre of fiction known as Florida lit? You may have heard of some of the better known practitioners of this craft like Carl Hiaasen or Randy Wayne Wright, but there are dozens. They feature wacky, iconoclastic people and situations; my new friend at the bookstore talked me on to one by Tim Dorsey who writes about a psychopathic serial killer who only kills people who need to be killed. I’ll give you a report later. And while this is an easy place at which to poke fun, it reminds me of Long Island with good weather.

I promised not to speak of the weather too often, but it is sorta the point of the place after all, and there is something pretty nice about sitting at the beach in shorts and a tee shirt in mid-November, as I am right now.

I’ve been driving my mother and her pals to the hair dresser, the grocery store and assorted other places. Does anyone know why the seat belt is so difficult for old people to either operate or to accept as a part of riding in a car? I have to put the belt on for all the old ladies and my mother pops hers off the moment we pull into her development and off the public roads.

It’s been pretty quiet. My only adventure was trying to find a good sports bar where I could watch the Ohio State game Saturday. The first try was closed (who’d want to watch a game on a Saturday afternoon in November?) and I ended up driving to Daytona Beach, truly a Long Island wannabe. Florida was playing South Carolina and had the big TV at the first place I stopped. I was relegated to a TV smaller than my mother’s with no HD, and I was sitting next to a guy who couldn’t tell me enough about how much he hated Ohio State in between singing along to the bad country music on the box.

I moved on to a nearby Hooters during a timeout. They had 40 TVs and at least as many Hooter girls, but none of them could manage to get ESPN to come in on the satellite. I made my way to the heart of DB where there was another big sports bar, but could not find a place to park within 20 blocks (Long Island again). I drove up the coast, getting desperate. I saw a small bar and pulled in. I was ready for a 19” b&w if necessary. There were four TVs – all tuned to the ‘gator game, each with a small knot of bikers huddled in front of it. It didn’t look like a crowd I’d have much success negotiating with.

Back on the coast road up to Ormond Beach I found a little restaurant. It had one small TV. The ‘gators were on but no one seemed to be watching. I requested and was granted permission to change channels. The barmaid asked my name before taking my order and told me hers. “I won’t have any trouble remembering that” I told her, “That’s my daughter’s name.”

When she brought me my beer she asked me if I was from Ohio, one thing led to another and it turned out she was from my hometown of Warren. She worked at the Lordstown GM plant and knew some people I knew. Her dad was only two years older than me, an unhappy revelation that seems to happen more frequently these days. The final amazing thing about the afternoon’s adventure is that her husband is from Sleepy Hollow, where I lived for 20 years. What are the odds?

Ohio State beat Iowa in overtime to win the Big 10 for the fifth year in a row.

Out-Googling Al Qaeda

We’ve had some of the most thoughtful comments ever on this blog to what was a throw-away comment in my last post about Muslim extremists. In addition to those comments I received several mails as well. I’d like to clarify my point and give everyone the opportunity to explore this issue further.

The first step in solving any problem is to recognize that the problem exists and call it by its true name. This is hardly a controversial point of view; it is shared by many people and is the first step in 12 step programs like AA.

One big problem facing this country is that radical Muslims are at war with us. Invading Iraq and Afghanistan may have exacerbated the problem, but they were at war with us long before those events, and they won’t stop killing us if we leave. Regardless of your position on the wars, this is a big problem that has taken many American lives and it isn’t going to go away by wishing it so.

Many Americans, including some members of the media, seem to be afraid to acknowledge this fact. I’m sure their reasons are varied, but it seems to stem from the belief that it would be even worse to acknowledge the problem because it would stigmatize innocent Muslims as well as those who make war against us. I don’t have an answer to that problem and I feel bad for the innocent. But the problem remains and is made worse by throwing a blanket of political correctness over it.

Failure to recognize the true problem has had us chasing Osama, Saadam, the Taliban and Al Qaeda when the real enemy is a belief system. It should be a propaganda war we are waging. It’s so ironic that a bunch of dark-age religious fanatics are beating us at the game of global communications and social networking. Maybe we should put the Google boys in charge of the war.

No one, not even the nut cases, are calling for Japanese-style internment camps. Quite the opposite; who best to help in this effort than loyal American Muslims who left the old world behind and want to enjoy the fruits of American liberal democracy.

Surely this is one issue where left and right can find some common ground and find a path to victory.

Hulk: please shut up

I turned on the TV this morning and found Hulk Hogan, wearing a pink doo rag, promoting his new book telling all about his recent depression and near suicide. Jesus Christ Almighty, is nothing sacred? What’s next, "T'he Navy Seal Diet" book? Dick Butkus coming out of the closet on Oprah? Why can’t people just shut up and keep a little tiny part of their lives to themselves? I don’t want to know.

F&LinR Update: I’ve been retired a month now. The farewell tour seems to be over. I kept my monthly train pass and Manhattan gym membership through October, but now I plan to visit the city only upon special invitation. I nearly went in yesterday for the Yankee parade, but came to my senses in time to spare myself the agony of being surrounded by 2-3 million blue-clad loud mouths who think they are special because they root for a team that can afford to spend unlimited dough to get the best players. My last “Canyon of Heroes” event was in ’81 when the Iran hostages got their parade; I’m glad I left it at that.

So I joined a new gym in Westchester and the contrast is interesting. In Manhattan the male/female ratio was about 50-50 and we all wore the same bland, baggy uniforms of blue shorts and gray tees. In Westchester it is a woman’s world. I’ve been one of only two men among 25 women in the spin classes, and there are no uniforms. These woman have a definite look. It would be a great setting for “The Housewives of Westchester County” should they make one. One should never judge a book by the cover, but where’s the fun in that? Let me try: good schools, a few years with prime jobs while living on the Upper West Side or Tribeca, then off to the suburbs once the kiddies arrived. They are nothing if not tasteful, and their typical gym outfit cost more than I used to spend on a suit. Whatever happened to natural fibers? It’s all high-tech, super-wicking microfiber and $150 shoes. I look like the pool man.

I like the suburban spin music better though. In the city the instructors were all sophistos, and the music had to represent their personal brand. We got a lot of Euro-Techno, Broadway show tunes, and indie-rock. The suburban instructors are more middle-of-the-road musically, but their selections are based on driving the class over displaying their artistic taste. Neither style is what I’d listen to for fun, but if you want something to help you sprint for a few minutes it’s hard to beat the last half of “Dueling Banjos.” Doo doo doot doot doo! We also get some country. Best lyric: “Cheater, cheater, where did you meet her, your low class, white trash whore.”

Great moments in political correctness: Have you noticed how hard the media is working to make sure we know that the Fort Hood murderer, Nidal Malik Hasan, was born and raised in the United States? When do you suppose we are going to stop pretending that it is some kind of coincidence that so many Muslims are killing Americans wherever they can find them? I really believe that the majority of us are capable of resisting the idea that this makes all Muslims bad, and the those who can’t only get more pissed off when they hear the media siding with the fairy tale that they comprise a tiny, random group of fanatics. Let’s keep searching the old ladies at the airport while the three young Yemeni men in turbans are given jobs in the airport.

I’m off to Florida Monday to scout for a new home.

Goodbye Afghanistan

Sometime soon President Obama is going to tell us what he intends to do about Afghanistan; in particular, whether he intends to commit additional U.S. troops to the cause of defeating the Taliban and flushing al qaeda from the country.

I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulty of the decision since he probably has a hundred times as much information as me, and it has taken me many months to come to my own conclusion about the right course of action. I’m not going to get into them here, but it is actually pretty easy to make a case for why we should continue fighting there, but in my mind, the case for disengaging is even stronger.

The arguments most often offered for leaving Afghanistan focus on the cost side of the cost/benefit equation, and there is no question that the cost of being there is very high. We’ve already lost over 900 men and women, and the pace of our loss is accelerating rapidly. It is unbearably sad to read their names, ages, and home towns each morning in the newspaper.
On top of this ultimate sacrifice, the country is draining the treasury of something like $67 billion per year at the current pace, which would certainly rise as additional troops are committed. Imagine how many bridges that money could repair here at home. You, no doubt, have your own wish list of projects better suited for the U.S. taxpayers’ money – or maybe we could just pay the minimum on the national MasterCard debt one of these months.

The list of negatives is long: we’re propping up a government so corrupt that the only credible alternative candidate decided to give up rather than go through another sham election even though it was the final run-off for the presidency. We all know the history of defeats suffered by global powers that have sought to conquer this vast and forbidding country. And the longer and more visibly we occupy the land of Allah, the more effectively we confirm the argument made by our enemies that we are the 21st century Knights of the Templar come to reclaim Jerusalem. Every soldier we send and every Afghan we kill only serves to recruit more Muslims to fight against us. Twas ever thus.

But ultimately it is the lack of substance on the benefit side of the equation that persuades me that it is time to exit Afghanistan. What exactly do we “win” if we win? The chief reason offered for fighting is the need to prevent al qaeda from having a safe haven there, but the core power of that organization is their ability to operate across borders, behind borders, and without borders. Most of the planning for 9/11 took place in Germany. The pilots trained in the United States. If we drive them from Afghanistan they will regroup in Pakistan, Yemen, the jungles of Indonesia, or the burned out shells of houses in Detroit.

We will be fighting these people for decades no matter what we do. We need a strategy and tactics appropriate to the challenge. Better intelligence, more and better drones, targeted humanitarian aid, and a better class of friends will serve us better than tens of thousands of soldiers bogged down in a hostel land for God knows how long.