The New Like

I was thrilled when I got an email from one of the discussions on Linkedin to notify me that I had a comment on my post. I eagerly connected with the discussion to find out what kind of response my brilliant education comments had inspired in the professional community. I discovered someone named Amy "liked" my post and left me a link to the thought-provoking publications of a hot lingerie retailer, and I don’t even mean hot like in stolen property hot, although maybe there is a little of that in there somewhere too. Loward knows I do what I can to consume my share of racy women’s underwear, but somehow I feel more exploited than the models. I signed up for Linkedin to find a job, not as a convenient marketing tool for some enterprising juvenile-delinquent, social-media manipulator.

The truth is that the fast and loose, free-spirited exchange of blogging, like the internet in general, is morphing into a giant multi-level marketing promotion, with the marketers using their family connections to promote commercial enterprise. The concepts of social network marketing hardly apply because networks are no longer any more social than any infomercial exploitation. Every business has a Facebook page and a Facebook link. Hell, we even have a Facebook page and a Facebook link at the Office of Information Fluency. Sometimes we even talk about doing something with it, but the truth is also that if you can’t somehow integrate that in your identity, it becomes additional baggage in already complicated lives.

Why complicate it more with commerce? An inevitable consequence, the complexity of life has caught up with the convenient illusion that electronic communication is somehow more sanitary than the people who produce it. Sorry folks, our ideas aren’t much better than we are, at least in application. Conceptually, maybe, but you have to consider who comes up with this stuff and what it is they really want. What they really want is to sell underwear, or whatever it is they really sell, probably Viagra or Botox treatments.

Here's Thinking for You,
Iffy

A Farewell to Ereck Plancher

Okay, aside from the emotional and spiritual aspects of the Ereck Plancher situation that are beyond price, and the challenge of putting money value on the life of a human being, he was was worth ten million. I’ll give you that. Wide receivers are hard to come by in a recession. UCF knew or should have known he was at risk for serious health problems. But at that rate, let’s see. We squandered about 5,000 American lives in Iraq if you only count fatalities, and the truth is that we spent a lot more money getting them going than we spent preparing Ereck Plancher for higher education and athletic greatness, but ten million is a nice round number, lots of zeros. (If it bothers you to think of them as squandered, just explain to me what exactly we accomplished there, please. I wish someone would, someone with something like normal human sensibilities, meaning not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld.) The U.S. knew or should have known invasion of Iraq was a risk of fatal injuries. At ten million a pop, that’s (10 X 5,000) million = 50,000 million, or fifty billion, right? My eyes sort of glaze over in the billions, so you have to check my numbers.

Then there are the 75,000 Iraqi collateral civilian deaths. Iraqis aren’t worth as much as Americans, of course, which explains why so many had to be eliminated, and 75,000 is vaguely in the realm of the requisite ten-to-one ratio that we approved for Viet-Nam with a comfortable margin, so for the sake of convenience, let’s do something crazy to humor my challenged arithmetic and assume (at least for financial purposes) that Iraqis are worth as much as aspiring American athletes. 75,000 Iraqi fatalities at ten million each is (10 X 75,000) million = 750,000 million, or 750 billion, right?

You know and I know there is no validity in making our military and those Iraqi civilians equal in value to college football players. The military chose to get involved, and the Iraqis had no choice, therefore, they have no legal recourse and no practical monetary value, but I’m just sort of wondering. You know what I mean? The odd thing is that the total comes out to about what has been spent on “operations” in Iraq so far.

Maybe that’s a good place to stop in more ways than one, so we don’t have to look at it too closely.

Here’s Thinking for You,
Iffy

Test the Dangerous People

I have an idea. Let’s have drug tests for state legislators. They get state money. In fact, you have to apply and meet income restrictions for public assistance, but your friends put you in the legislature regardless of how much money you have. Who is the most likely to steal the most public money? An unemployed construction worker looking for a job, or a greedy manipulator with control of state revenue? The answer to that is pretty clear, and the answer is not welfare mothers.

Here's thinking for you,
Iffy

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-hypodermic-needle-image17107497
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http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/04/rick-scott-puts-crony-firms-on-the-state-payroll/

The Crock Heard Round the World

For once I’m about half sympathetic to Sarah Palin’s plight, which for me is going the extra light year or so in the name of fairness. On the other hand, I’m more inclined to laugh at the irony than leap to her defense. The problem, as usual, is Palin’s choice of words. Her sense of history may not be as distorted in this case as even Fox News wants to believe. The truth is that Paul Revere could have actually warned the British about the consequences of rashly intimidating the colonists by occupying their property and confiscating their weapons, but as everybody who went to the fourth grade in US public schools knows, Paul Revere warned the colonists about the British, not the other way around.

Paul Revere was a fairly prominent activist in Massachusetts. That’s partly how he happened to be tasked with surveillance and communications for colonial opposition to unilateral British administration. Whether Paul actually ever spoke directly to responsible British authorities, I don’t know, but it’s perfectly plausible. Suggesting that Revere warned the British, not in the sense of imminent action by the colonists, but warned them in the sense that their aggressive actions were going to provoke a reaction from the colonists if they didn’t cool their jets, would be within the realm of possibility.

In any case they didn’t listen to good advice, and the words “Paul Revere warned” have been forever since indelibly connected in the American psyche with raising the alarm to resist invading red coats, not with a cautionary message to the invaders themselves. Ask any properly programmed American who Paul Revere warned, and they aren’t going to reply that it was the British. To suggest any other application is as un-American as Mohammed, pedophiles, and tofu turkey. No wonder even Fox News has her on their hit list. Facts aren’t an issue for Fox news, but regardless of Paul Revere, you still have to wonder if you want someone for President with Palin’s instinct for word choice. The next thing you know she’ll be cheering on the Seventh Cavalry in memory of Wounded Knee. Well, why not? They got more Medals of Honor than any other US military engagement in history, and they should have. The Indians were poorly equipped, freezing, malnourished, and way outnumbered. That’s the real secret for carrying out any kind of successful preemptive military action. What do you mean that’s not how it’s supposed to work? Didn’t Paul Revere warn them the cavalry was coming?

That’s the best I can do for you, Sarah, and unfortunately, it ain’t much.

Here's Thinking for You,
Iffy

Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean Revisited, Revisited, and Revisited, or: Whatever Floats Your Boat

I’m a Johnny Depp fan, but not hugely a Johnny Depp fan, and that’s probably a pretty good barometer for the effect of the latest installment of the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow. This was a flick, like Penelope Cruz, pregnant with possibilities, but we’ll hope Penelope has a more successful delivery. After two hours I was pretty much squirming in my seat, hoping for a stray musket ball to end my impatience.

As a general assessment, this production suffers from a classic case of sequel effects, the dependence in a rather desperate and incoherent way on misguided ideas about what has worked for you before. The result is an array of boring, stereotypical characters, ambiguous discrimination, mediocre action sequences, and unsuccessful drama, with the exception of the striking visual effects (to which 3-D added little noticeable impact, by the way). A summary of the development is unnecessary if you have witnessed any of the previous installments. Think the original less most of the interesting quirks.

Consider some failed possibilities. The King of England is an intriguing character with a comically superficial manner but hints of underlying intelligence and perception that are never realized. What if the King had turned out to have some more profound personal agenda than simply competing with Spain? Likewise, Blackbeard is a bad guy with no redeeming qualities. He starts out in a promising way, with cynical disdain for the minor inconvenience of general mutiny on his ship, but it turns out he isn’t even gloriously or heroically bad. He’s just bad in mean and petty ways. He tortures helpless mermaids to no purpose, not even his own amusement, and rejects the loyalty of his daughter. The mermaids are just what you would expect, monsters disguised as attractive, predatory Caucasian women who must be controlled. In fact, the whole ideology achieves a largely Anglo-European male supremacist effect. The Conquistadores arrive in the end to wreck the Fountain of Youth in the name of religious faith (only God can give youth), but whether that is theology or spirituality represented by the enigmatic character of the evangelist, or a critical comment about imperialism and disregard for the environmental context of culture, depends strictly on perception. It is not a compelling argument either way. It’s more like a how the hell did all these Conquistadores get here anyway question.

Otherwise the content is about equally divided between missed opportunities and pathetic stock gags such as teeter-tottering in competition to get the chalices on Ponce De Leon’s ship, inexplicably balanced on the face of a cliff in the vicinity of the fountain. What if the motif of hanging from provocative pub signs had been extended, more had been made of confusion about Jack’s identity, or the characters had even paused to respond contemptuously when Jack mentions his spectacular destruction of the lighthouse that attracted the dangerous crowd of carnivorous mermaids? What if the crew had included some memorably colorful characters? What if the Jack Sparrow impersonator had turned out to be the Voo Doo woman on a mission instead of the convenient, anglo-fied fantasy Latina with incomprehensible conflicting loyalties? (And I don’t mean her tattooed boobs.)

In that respect, the narrative had a strong sense of superficial rush job without much thought to the connections. In the end, Jack Sparrow, apparently unable to resolve his sexual identity problems and take responsibility for a serious relationship, abandons his pregnant girlfriend on a deserted island again and escapes in a leaky rowboat while Barbossa sails off in command of a new ship, neither of which indicates narrative finality, so don’t feel bad if this episode didn’t seem to measure up. There will be more to come. My sense is that Disney has not nearly abandoned hope of squeezing the last doubloon out of the fat Caribbean galleon, and as my wife says, take consolation from knowing that with a little effort, even a prominent group of creative artists with a proven concept and virtually unlimited funds can build a boat that won’t float. I’m just sorry they had to take me with them. Otherwise, if Johnny Depp and fine cinematic effects glad you enough, you can probably endure the proceedings comfortably, regardless.

Here's Thinking for You,

Iffy

Taking Out Snooki

I agree with Michael Moore that Osama Bin Laden’s exit strategy was an execution as much as anything. What else can you say about shooting an unarmed man in his pajamas? It didn’t appear that he had any idea who was hammering on his door in the middle of the night, never mind that they were dangerous, which inspires a lot of the skeptical diplomatic questions about Pakistan and management of their internal controls, if nothing else. That they have a lot of challenges is no mystery, but at the very least you have to wonder about their ability to insure any kind of secure and consistent administrative strategy and performance.

In spite of the legal implications and ideological hypocrisy, however, I’m not sure taking Bin Laden alive would have been either just or helpful. Pakistan’s shaky grip on political loyalty makes it abundantly clear that there was no way of knowing what exactly the hit squad was going to find. They could conceivably have ended up in a shootout with the entire Pakistani army. The mere need for the kind of excluisve secrecy maintained indicates a precarious lack of confidence in the circumstances. I take it Bin Laden’s arrangements for escape or protection were pretty much unknown. Explosives? Tunnels? A squad of battle-hardened immortals? Or even if he was there at all? Bin Laden alive could have meant missing our one chance to hold him accountable. Do the interests of justice ever exceed the interests of due process, even once in a millenium? How willing was Bin Laden to engage the international legal system? Maybe that’s the real test. How much did international law mean to Osama Bin Laden? I haven’t noticed Al-Quaida appealing to the international court for representation lately.

I also haven’t seen Bin Laden’s birth certificate, but unlike President Obama and Hawaii, I don’t think connections to a de facto U.S. territory like Saudi Arabia makes Bin Laden a U.S. citizen, so no problem there. He would not be entitled to either post bail or run for president. Taking him out may be a technical violation of international law, which is the sticky point, but what if in the course of human events the authority demonstrates unwillingness and inability to enforce the law? This would be comparable to a situation in which Mayor Snooki of Chicago sends out agents from Parks and Recreation to ram a trailer truck into an office building in Texas, killing thousands of school children at a Christian temperance rally. The mayor admits privately to planning the operation and ordering the landscapers to crash the truck, but she escapes into the South Dakota badlands and disappears. The Texas Rangers complain to the federal government. The government responds that they’re working on it.

Hot on Mayor Snooki’s trail, the Texas Rangers turn over critical information to the Feds, only to discover Mayor Snooki has been tipped off and escaped from the Corn Palace in Mitchell where she was known to have been holed up under the protection of local sheep ranchers. Ten years later, the Feds are still working on it when the Rangers find a Facebook page for Mayor Snooki and she turns up in Sioux Falls, working as a contestant on a reality survival show and living at the local Hilton hotel in a witness protection program after ratting on the New Jersey mob.

The Texas Rangers send special forces disguised as a Zydeco band into Sioux falls to take down Snooki in the hotel. During the raid, Snooki’s business manager dies in anguish from a fatally irregular bass beat and the lead guitarist steps on her chihuahua. In the dark hotel room, the Rangers discover a stash of hunting equipment from Snooki’s escape into the wilderness and erroneously conclude they have blundered into a trophy hunt for an endangered species by Mama Bear Palin, where they will be gunned down at the first opportunity, so as a precaution, they execute her on the spot with a portable electric chair.

I realize this is trivializing the entire terrorist issue, which is not funny for a lot of people, and with good reason, but it could happen, and you see the point. Who would complain about the Texas Rangers?

Here's thinking for you,

Iffy

The Gods Must Be Crazy

A colony of carpenter ants turned up in the mulch lining the bottom of the clay pot under the scraggly skeleton of the little tree with yellow flowers that died in the winter. Carpenter ants are the big busy kind, black and transluscent brown, big enough to be scary, but they mind their business pretty much, intense and focused, even in a crisis.

I guess mulch must be sort of perfect for carpenter ants, splintered wood with plenty of spaces, carpenter ant prefab. Apparently the moisture wasn’t a problem for them, maybe even an enhancement, and the whole thing was enclosed by the solid sides of the clay pot, like rock. I wonder if the ant philosophers and ant media bloggers ever remarked about the secure location, design, and planning. To an ant, it must have been structurally secure, solid and dense, with all the necessary conveniences of an ant community comfortably enclosed inside. From all appearances, the community thrived. Hundreds, maybe thousands of big gregarious ants swarming busily thorough passages connecting all kinds of compartments, nurseries, storage, dining, who knows? A retail mall? A convention center? A situation room?

In the end, they needed more than a situation room. The winter was cold. In the spring, the little tree didn’t recover. There was also a big old stump in the yard I wanted to cut up when I got everything squared away in the Spring, but one of the first things was clearing away the dead plants. I turned the pot over and dumped it all out and there was the ant colony in the mulch in what had been the bottom of the pot and the ants swarming in confusion and dismay through what had been the comfortable, routine passages of their lives.

Damn, man. What the hell? This thing was rated good to 90 degree rotation. Who could have predicted a total overturn? It’s a once in a lifetime event. Where the hell’s the queen when you need her?

Ants, however, are remarkably resilient. Ants are not given to extended introspection or organizational paralysis in a crisis. Almost as fast as the pot went over, scouts were looking for a refuge. They returned quickly, apparently with news of the nearby stump. Swarms of workers dragged the precious egg cases from the wreckage of the colony, somewhat hampered by disputes over who exactly would take charge of each project and what route exactly would be followed. Dragging an awkward load as big and heavy as your own body through the tangled roots and stems of thick grass must be an unimaginably challenging task. I watched one stout worker hauling a load resolutely through the tangle, sometimes bracing and virtually flinging the heavy bulb over obstacles, then climbing over and resuming the slow journey. After several minutes of this sporadic progress, a small brown lizard scampered down from the stump and took up a position on a fallen branch with a panoramic view of the proceedings.

When the ant with the egg case finally reached a convenient proximity, the lizard reached down with an attitude for all the world as if to say “Pardon, mate, I’ll just have that,” And removed the cargo from the grasp of its bearer. At first the ant completely paused, as if in consternation and disbelief, but finding no explanation or resolution, made a couple of vague, searching lunges, shrugged in resignation, and scurried back toward the ruined colony. Ants are not given to excessive agony or regrets either. The egg was gone. The work must go on.

By the next morning, the entire population had disappeared into the comforting security of the stump. I reflected on the heroic determination of individuals in the face of disaster, the resourcefulness, the selflessness, the sheer resolute sense of purpose despite the fragile vulnerability of society and the foolishness of confidence. In this simple drama, I recognized the unpredictable effects of fate and profound irony as I somewhat uncomfortably readied my chain saw to cut the stump in pieces.

Here's thinking for you,

Iffy