Where goes the dollar?

I found interesting the following commentary on the weakening US dollar by Harold Maass, a columnist for the magazine The Week. (Adam Smith is the 18th Century Scotch author of The Wealth of Nations, in which he wrote of the "Invisible hand" of economic systems. Jim Cramer is the blustery TV commentator on the economy and the stock market.)

The dollar can decline along the Adam Smith path or the Jim Cramer path, says David Ignatius in The Washington Post. In the "Adam Smith version," natural market mechanisms help the dollar make its necessary downward slide gradually. China starts saving in other currencies, the declining greenback shrinks our deficit, and then "the dollar eventually will begin to rise again." But in the "Jim Cramer version," the dollar's "gradual adjustment" turns into a "stampede," fueled by "emotional, volatile traders." The Fed raises rates, we stop consuming, and the U.S. sinks into a recession. The sinking dollar can be "part of the cure," but Smith makes the medicine go down easier.

Bad guys who can't get it right

There seems to be no end of stupid criminal stories--real ones. We've heard about the burglar-to-be who got stuck in an air vent at his intended target and had to be extricated by firemen, or the carjacker who found he didn't know how to shift the gears of the car he intended to make off with.

Another to be added to these misadventures appeared in the Baltimore Sun today. A guy went to a Baltimore bank, gave a handwritten note to a teller announcing a holdup, and took off with his loot ($526). However, there was one little flaw in his plan: he wrote the note on the back of a blank check from a checkbook he had gotten from that bank when he had an account there, but which had been closed six years ago. You guessed it: he left the note behind at the bank. At least, he showed customer loyalty by going back to his old bank.

He will have plenty of time to think about a better plan for his next heist--a judge gave him twelve years in prison for his little caper.

The giant-killers in the western North Carolina mountains

There must be something in that mountain air (or maybe the bootleg moonshine which is said to be made in those hills) that makes giant-killers out of the sports teams at small colleges in western North Carolina.

First, Appalachian State University (a contender in the small-school football division of the NCAA) beat mighty University of Michigan 34-32 on September 1st this year (at Michigan's home field), when Michigan was rated no. 5 in the nation. This was certainly one of the greatest upsets in U.S. college football history--as dozens of sports columnists and TV commentators breathlessly told the world. To make it even more of a David and Goliath story, Appalachian came from behind 31-32 with 1 minute, 11 seconds left in the game (with no more times-out available) to score a field goal and then block a last-minute field goal attempt by Michigan, to win by 34-32.

Then, on November 7th, another David hit another Goliath between the eyes. Gardner-Webb, a tiny Baptist school, thrashed the University of Kentucky, long a powerhouse in college basketball, by an 84-68 score (also on Kentucky's home turf). I have heard that Gardner-Webb was never behind in the score throughout the game.

The initial response by the sports media to both upsets was, "Who is Appalachian State/Gardner-Webb?" and "Where in the country are they?" The answers: Appalachian State, with about 15,000 students is located in Boone, North Carolina (population about 15,000); Gardner-Webb, with about 4,000 students, is in Boiling Springs, North Carolina (population about 4,000). I obtained that info from the schools' websites; I found it interesting that the student population and the town's population were about the same in each case.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The giant-killers in the western North Carolina mountains.": And your Tar Heels just barely escaped tiny Davidson last night on the hardwood!

Hey, Anonymous,
Davidson isn't up in the mountains, and Carolina did win.
Mycroft

Google can goof

Believe it or not, Google can screw up. When I keyed in "richard milhaus nixon" to make sure I had his middle name right in my immediately foregoing posting, Google asked me "did you mean richard milhous nixon" (no question mark at the end). Then it went on to list numerous citations for "Richard Milhaus Nixon."

Another Richard Nixon

Yes, there was another Richard Nixon (his middle name was Williams, not Milhaus). A native of New Hanover County, North Carolina, he graduated from the University of North Carolina on June 2, 1859. He and my paternal grandfather were classmates. All of this I stumbled upon on the Internet, which provides a photocopy of the original program of the commencement exercises from the university library.

The use of Latin at prestigious universities was cool at that time--the state of North Carolina was referred to as Carolinae Borealis, the officials of the university as Gubernatori, and the graduating students as Juvenes hodie primi gradus in Artibus honorem petentes. The students' names were put into Latin where possible: Nixon's first name was listed as Ricardus, my grandfather's middle name (which was Henry) as Henricus; others were listed as Gulielmus (for William), Georgius (for George), Robertus (for Robert), and so on.

Young Nixon was one of the eleven graduating seniors who was a commencement speaker during the morning ceremonies (there were four more in the afternoon). His topic was "The Imagination; to be Cultivated." The other speakers were North Carolinians except those noted below. Their topics were:

"Latin Salutatory"
"The Hamiltonian System"
"Objections to an Elective Judiciary"
"The Persecution of the Jews" (New York)
"The Man of Letters"
"The Common Sense Man" (Alabama)
"The Independent Thinker" (Virginia)
"The American Student"
"To be great is to be misunderstood"
"Comparative merits of Curriculum Colleges"

There was "Music" (otherwise unidentified) between each speech.

The commencement ceremonies included a Christian hymn, a prayer, reading of "Psalm CXVII", and a benediction.

My grandfather's 1859 diploma (all in Latin) hangs in my house alongside mine, also from the University of North Carolina, presented to me 90 years later in the class of 1949 (all in English). There were no hymns or psalms at my commencement, but my diploma does say "...this sixth day of June in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-nine..." I guess that no such religious phrasing is included in the university's diplomas today.

CBS is a bummer

I have never before used this blog to register complaints about any service provider. If my complaint involved someone who billed my credit card, I contacted MasterCard (or whoever) not to pay them; otherwise, I have settled the matter with the other party. ("Angie's List" is a good website to describe a subscriber complaint--or even better, to search for a service company one might want to use to see criticisms/plaudits from others who have used them.)

However, CBS is beyond the pale, in my opinion. I signed up for their college football website (at $14.95 a month) several weeks ago; this website is supposed to allow paid customers to watch their video of some games and get an up-to-the-minute status on others in progress. Although CBS has billed me, they never recognize me when I log in. When I go to their "Help" link, they say they will e-mail my password to me, but never do. I am just before cancelling.

Today (10/28/07), when I registered to make comments on CBS programming, I was thanked for registering. However, after I spent some time criticising Lesley Stahl's clumsy handling of her interview on "Sixty Minutes" with French president Nicolas Sarkozy--she repeatedly mispronounced his name--when I tried to submit my comments, the website didn't recognize me.

No wonder CBS ranks third among the over-the-air networks.

DO cry for Argentina

Argentinians have a lot about which to cry (or maybe laugh). In their general elections held on Sunday, October 28 there were three women among the fourteen candidates running for president. In the USA there is a huge debate over whether a female candidate can make it to the presidency, Hillary being the only one trying to do so at the moment. But imagine the difficulty of an Argentine feminist having to pick among the three. Of course, with eleven male candidates to pick from, an Argentine voter may have an easier choice as to whether or not to vote for a woman: should Hillary be the Democratic candidate in the U.S. election in November 2008, some voters who would be inclined not to vote for a woman may choose her anyway because they could never bring themselves to vote for whoever the Republican candidate might be (their only alternatives being to not vote at all or to vote for some minor party candidate).

Who are the three women candidates? There is an interesting similarity with the U.S. here--one is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of the outgoing president, Néstor Kirchner (a Bill and Hillary act). She is 54 years old and was elected in 2005 to the country's senate. The other two are Elisa Carrió, age 50, a member of the house of deputies, and Vilma Ripoll, age 53, a nurse and a member of the Buenos Aires city council.

Should one of these women win the election, she would be the first elected female president of the country. (Eva Perón was put into office as president by her husband Juan Perón in 1974 to follow him; he had not gained that office in a free election.)

An interesting sidelight: All Argentine registered voters age 18 and older are required to vote in these elections (exceptions are those physically disabled, mentally incompetent, or incarcerated). This information, and all that in this posting, is from the 10/28/07 edition of the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín. The paper doesn't say what the penalty is for violation of this law.

Women as presidential candidates is not something new in South America. When I was in Chile in April 2005 there was a hot debate in the primary elections between two women candidates; one of them, Michelle Bachelet, was ultimately elected as president later that year.

Whom to root for in the World Series

Normally, in the 2007 World Series I would withhout stint or cause root for the Red Sox because:

1. Being nostalgic, I tend to root for a team that was one of the original 16 teams for many years in the two Major Leagues (until the Boston Braves left Boston in 1952 and started a mass movement of teams from their homes bases, plus establishment of new franchises). However that may be, I also recognize the need for evolution in baseball, like everything else in life.

2. I have long been a New England-phile: I love the fall foliage in Vermont and New Hampshire, where my family and I have traveled numerous times on vacation.

3. I have a passion for the New England intellectuals of the past: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, and others.

So, why do I hesitate to root for the Red Sox this year? Simple: the disgusting behavior of their manager, Terry Francona, with his incessant chewing and spitting while on TV camera throughout a game. It is almost as disgusting as if he were to urinate in front of the dugout in plain view of the camera. (There are several Red Sox players who also chew and spit, but Francona sets a bad example for all of his players.) On the contrary, I have never seen the following managers spit: Tony LaRussa, of the St. Louis Cardinals; Joe Torre, of the New York Yankees; Jim Leyland, of the Detroit Tigers; or Eric Wedge, of the Cleveland Indians. Likewise, I have seen numerous players in both Major Leagues who don't chew or spit.

Defenders of chewers and spitters like Terry Francona, might say, "He has a highly stressful job and he gets results, so why criticize him? My answer: Many leaders in our society have stressful jobs and get results--physicians, mayors, governors, Congressmen, business executives, educators, and others--yet they don't have to chew and spit in public to do their jobs.

As I have said in a previous posting, I would like to see a high-ranking elected official (preferably a U.S. president) undertake to persuade those in baseball (owners, managers, players, TV telecasters) to order those on camera during a game to desist from their disgusting chewing and spitting.

Attention: All Philo Vance fans

This is to let all amateur detective Philo Vance fans (all three or four of them) know that I have added considerable additional content to an existing Wikipedia article on the whole Vance scene. It is accessible at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Vance .

A foolish resolution in Congress

The resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives labelling as "genocide" the killing of over 1 million Armenians by the Turkish military during 1915-17 (House Resolution 106) is, in my opinion, foolish. Certainly it was a terrible event in history, but what is the point of the U.S. Congress taking it up now? Virtually no one involved, as a perpetrator or as a victim, is alive today and, furthermore, it is crassly political. Why needlessly antagonize a friendly nation, Turkey?

Has any resolution been offered in either house of Congress officially designating the Nazi murders or those of the Japanese in China during the 1930's as genocide? I don't know the answer--perhaps such resolutions have been offered and passed; but what is the point? Everyone knows that they were terrible atrocities; we don't need an act of Congress to so define them.

Why stop with the massacre of Armenians? Why not a resolution to deplore the sack of Rome and the attendant raping and killing by the Goths in 410 A.D.?

Or the invasion of Iraq by the Mongols about 1256? (According to The Columbia History of the World, "The Mongols...poured into Iraq and, as they drove toward Baghdad, plundered or destroyed everything in their path..." (p. 278) Sound familiar?)

Or the invasion of Ghana by the Almoravids in 1076? (The Columbia History of the World describes the invaders as "young zealots, the Almoravids...in holy war against all who refused to heed the call to orthodox Islam...(who) overwhelmed Ghana and sacked its capital" (p. 302))

Aren't there more pressing needs for Congress to give attention to?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "A foolish resolution in Congress": Here, Here Mycroft. I could not agree more. Of course would you actually expect more from Nancy Pelosi's "Do Nothing Congress"? I would describe Congress as inept as you would describe the Bush Administration. Unfortunately at the highest levels of American government, our elected officials (on BOTH sides of the aisle) are more interested in pointing fingers, assigning blame and launching probes and investigations into the other's party than actually stepping up to the podium with valid input, ideas and solutions to fix what truly needs fixing. I don't need to know that we now officially recognize an event that took place 100 years ago as genocide any more than I need the government to protect me from trans fats.

Well said, Anonymous.
Mycroft

Football-wise a mixed weekend

Another week, another big upset. Syracuse's 38-35 win over Louisville (number 18 in the country) on 9/22, while not quite as stunning as the Appalachian State defeat of Michigan a few weeks ago, certainly isn't far behind. Syracuse (my wife's alma mater), a three-time loser until last Saturday--12-42 against Washington, 0-35 against Iowa, and 20-41 against Illinois--caught fire in the Louisville game. Their 38 points in that game were more than the total of their scores in their three preceding games.

Some of the total points by both teams in Saturday's games looked like basketball scores, with many in the 70's and 80's. Two exceeded 100 points: Hampden-Sydney 56, Guilford 49 and North Dakota 63, W. Washington 42. At the other extreme, Monmouth 6, Carroll 3 registered only 9 total points.

Otherwise, a bleak Saturday 9/22. Almost all of my favorite teams lost: North Carolina, North Carolina State, Towson, and Maryland; the only consolation was Columbia's beating Marist 31-7. While Columbia beating anybody is a cause for joy, only so much pride can come from beating up a little team with not much more power than that of a prep school.

The Baltimore Ravens almost blew a 20-3 lead over the Arizona Cardinals yesterday--they had to get a field goal with zero minutes left to win 26-23. Coach Billick and his assistants must have a lot of horseshoes, rabbits' feet, and four-leaf clovers to have the luck they have had in their last two games--against the New York Jets on 9/16 and again yesterday against the Cardinals, pass receivers on those teams dropped catchable passes at crucial points which, if caught, could have brought defeat to the Ravens.

"When constabulary duty's to be done, a (restroom) policeman's lot is not a happy one"

That old Gilbert and Sullivan ditty might well apply to the undercover cop in the men's room at the Minneapolis airport, who has become a figure in the news.

I wonder how he got the assignment. Perhaps he was promoted by his superiors to the head of the class.

He has a good chance to do a lot of reading. He could probably finish War and Peace while on duty.

During his workday he probably has to really use the bathroom. If he gets a shoe tap and a hand signal from the next stall while doing that, how does he handle it?

He would have been perfect for those old black-and-white quiz shows of the early days of television, To Tell the Truth and What's My Line?

In To Tell the Truth, three individuals with somewhat similar appearance would say something like "My name is Joe Blow and I am the head pots and pans scrubber at the White House." One would be the real guy and the other two fakes. By asking questions of the individuals, the panelists (usually three or four well-known individuals) would each vote on his/her choice as the real Joe Blow, following which the real Joe Blow would stand up and the two fakes would each give his/her real name and occupation.

In What's My Line?, an individual would appear with the host, John Daly, and give his/her name--like Joe Blow--and, as I recall, say where he/she lived and some other minor detail, like he/she was a Yankees fan. The TV audience (but not the panelists) would then be told that Blow was the head pots and pans scrubber at the White House. The panel, usually consisting of Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Bennet Cerf, would pose all kinds of questions--like "Do you make a product or provide a service?"; if a service,"Do you touch the people you provide the service for?; if a product, "Is the product smaller than a basketball?" The panelists would then each make his/her guess about Blow's occupation.

I can see now three young men (the cop is reported to be age 29) on To Tell the Truth standing up and saying, "I am X, undercover police officer at the Minneapolis airport...." Or on What's My Line? and the TV audience being told who the guy is and the panelists probing him with questions.

I wonder if he takes a laptop computer with him while on duty to keep up with his e-mail, maybe to take notes for a duty report to his superiors, or whatever. I bet he could get a deal with Readers' Digest for an article titled something like "My Beat in the Men's Room", which he could write while actually on the beat.

I read somewhere that he has a master's degree from college. I suppose some of the courses he took were "Restroom Surveillance 302", or "Cruise Control 405", or "Foot Signaling 206."

When he gets home from work and his wife asks, "How did your day go, Honey?", I guess he might say, "Well, I collared a clergyman, a banker, and a doctor. The clergyman offered to pray for me to get a promotion from this crappy job, the banker offered me a job as chief security officer at his bank, and the doctor offered to treat me free-of-charge if I ever get claps from sitting on these toilet seats. I busted all three, they were a shoe-in."

Small-school football prostitutes

For many years small-college football teams have been like prostitutes--letting themselves get beaten up by powerhouse teams from the big schools, all for money. This usually happens at the beginning of the football season, with the games played at the homes of the big schools. The big schools get to warm up (and send in the scrubs, to give them a chance to play, after the first teams have run up a big score); the small schools, as compensation for their beatings, get to take home handsome revenues from the game, their share of the revenues from ticket sales and TV contracts. These revenues often go a long way toward funding all sports programs--football, basketball, baseball, and the minor sports (for male and female students)--for the small schools. They go home bloody but richer.

Some outcomes of these contests on September 1st this year were: Louisiana State 45, Mississippi State 0; Boise State 56, Weber State 7; Cincinnati 59, Southeast Missouri State 3; Penn State 59, Florida International 0; Louisville 73, Murray State 10; Florida 49, Western Kentucky 3; Oklahoma 79, North Texas 10; and Alabama 52, Western Carolina 6.

But once in a blue moon the prostitutes beat up their johns. This happened on September 1st this year when little Appalachian State University, from its mountain stronghold in tiny Boone, North Carolina, went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to take on mighty Michigan, rated number 5 in the nation last year. (Michigan is in the I-A division of the college teams--the major schools--while Appalachian is in the I-AA division--the smaller schools.) As usual, Michigan was supposed to thrash little Appalachian and send them home bruised and bloody.

BUT APPALACHIAN HADN'T LEARNED ITS ROLE: IT RAN AWAY WITH A 34-32 VICTORY. The way it drove 69 yards with 1 minute, 11 seconds left in the game (and no more time-outs to use) to get into position to score a field goal, and then block an attempted field goal by Michigan in the closing seconds, made it one of the most exciting games in football history. Sports writers all over the country have let the prose fly in describing the game as the greatest upset in football history--which is certainly a reasonable claim. I was drinking a margarita while watching other football games on TV when I suddenly saw Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32 stream across the screen along with other scores. I couldn't believe it; I thought the tequila in that drink must have been stronger than I realized. Then it came across again with a breathless announcer saying it had really happened.

Although I didn't watch the game because it wasn't televised in my part of the country, I am sure, had I watched it in progress, I would have thought it would have been the most exciting football game I had ever watched. (I would have been pulling strongly for Appalachian.) I have learned over the years never to say "I will never see another game this exciting!" I said that after the Baltimore Colts 23-17 victory over the New York Giants in the National Football League championship game in December 1958 (the first time in professional football that there was a sudden-death overtime to break a tie). That game has been frequently referred to as "the greatest game of football ever played." Even though I was a young man in excellent health at the time, in the closing two minutes of the game, with the Colts behind 17-20, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, an emotional breakdown, or both if the Colts couldn't score to win. They did, and I was drained of energy for several minutes after it was over. I went through much the same excitement when North Carolina State (for whom I was heavily rooting) came within a hair of winning in the closing seconds of their game with Ohio State in September 2003. NC State was behind 38-44 with the ball first and goal on about the Ohio State two-yard line, with enough time to score, but couldn't get the ball across. Again, as in 1958, when the game ended I was limp from yelling and screaming, and said that this game was about as exciting as the Colts-Giants one. Of course, the team I was rooting for didn't win in 2003; also, it was not a championship game, as the 1958 one was, but it was as exciting. Now, I am saying that, had I been able to watch the Appalachian-Michigan game in progress, I would probably have said that it was the most exciting one I had ever seen.

So, I repeat: never say never.

This year, 2007, has seen not only the Appalachian State upset of Michigan, but also the Texas Rangers beat the Baltimore Orioles by 30-3 in August--the first time in 110 years that a major league baseball team has scored as many as 30 runs in a game.

Exeunt Turdblossom, exeunt Alberto

There was once a smart young fellow, Turdblossom,
whose sway over the Chief was awesome.
There was never an adviser
more brilliant, sagacious, or wiser.
His words of wisdom put into the ear of the Chief
made things happen beyond belief.
Those in Washington in the know
said Turdblossom would always have the bon mot
to create victories for which the Chief could crow.

Yes, Turdblossom was a very smart young fellow,
fearless, savvy, and stellar.
Whenever the Chief was in a tight spot,
he could turn to Turdblossom, that young snot,
who would scheme and plot
to come up with a plan, whether cricket or not.

But, alas and alack, after all his capers,
eventually Turdblossom got his walking papers.
After pulling so many strings
and taking care of so many things,
and giving so many speeches,
he had gotten too big for his breeches.

_________________________________

That poor fellow, the late AG,
tried too often to be cagey.
Admiration among Senators he did not inspire,
and of him his underlings did tire
(especially those prosecutors he did fire).
So, Alberto got the old heave-ho.
He was shown the door
and will not be heard of any more.

Medical care outside of the USA

My reading an editorial today in the New York Times which lamented the poor standing of the United States as to availability of health care, compared to other industrialized countries, reminded me of two times that I needed medical care in other countries.

In 1953, while living in Dakar, Senegal (in what was then French West Africa) and working for the international oil company Texaco, I got a bad cut on one of my feet by stepping on some broken glass while barefooted. I was taken to a nearby hospital by friends, where my wound was stitched up and bandaged. I never was asked to pay anything for this service (which included a follow-up visit to remove the stitches and the dressing). This was many years before I had any medical insurance. Upon phoning the hospital to see if they might have sent me a bill that could have gone astray, I learned that there was no charge. Being quite naive at that time, I felt that I should have paid something, so I mailed a check to the hospital--I don't remember the exact amount but I believe it was, in francs, the equivalent of about $15.

In 1993, my wife and I did a home exchange with a couple who lived in a rural area of Buckinghamshire in England for three weeks. I developed a headache during the flight over which stayed with me for two or three more days. So, early on a Monday morning, I phoned a number to reach a doctor that our exchange partners had left at the house. The number reached was some kind of doctor referral service, where I was told to go to a medical practice in a tiny town called Wing, about a 20-minute drive from the house we were occupying. The practice was in a large old clapboard house, and it was clearly a family practice because there were parents with small children and an assortment of other patients in the waiting room (which had obviously been the living room of a family in years past). Seeing the number of patients waiting, I anticipated a long wait to see a doctor. But, to my surprise and delight, in about 25 minutes I was told to take stairs up to the next floor where Dr. Jones would see me. There I was greeted by Dr. Jones (her real name, I'm not using a fictitious name), a very attractive fortyish woman.

After examining me, she told me that my headache was nothing more than tension, and that she would give me a prescription for some medication that I could pick up at her dispensary downstairs. Then, she told me that, because I was neither British nor from a European Union country, I would have to pay for her services and the prescription--there would have been no charge had I been British, French, Spanish, etc. because it would have been covered by the U.K. national health service. She was almost apologetic when she told me this; I told her that would be no problem, especially since she had seen me after such a short wait on a busy Monday morning.

I then went back downstairs, where I picked up the medication at her dispensary in one of the rooms of the house--no going to a drugstore and waiting for the prescription to be filled, as in the U.S.--and paid the bill. The bill for everything, the doctor's services and the prescription, was £6, the equivalent of about $9. I have rarely gotten such a bargain.

Will we ever see such health care service in the U.S. as I did in the French colony in 1953 and in England in 1993?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Medical care outside of the USA": NEVER!

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Medical care outside of the USA": You will if you really push for it and elect a party that's most likely to be interested in providing good health services for all US citizens.

Anonymous and Anonymous: Thanks for your comments. According to you both, the answer is somewhere between "if" and "never."

Mycroft

The noun gender thing again

No sooner had I done a posting on the gender of nouns in Spanish and French (This and that on 7/20/07) than I received an e-mail from Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the French presidential elections earlier this year (when she was trounced by Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-off). This e-mail was one of many that I have received from her in her series entitled La lettre de Désirs d'avenir ("The letter of Hope for the future") since I got on her e-mail list prior to the elections (the first on April 22nd and the run-off on May 6th).

This most recent e-mail from Mme. Royal was an invitation to un grand pique-nique (no translation needed) to be held on August 25th by and for the party faithful and to attract sympathizers of all sorts. She signed off Amitiés à toutes et à tous ("Friendly greetings to all (females) and to all (males).") This is just another example of how noun genders in other languages can complicate things--in English she would only have to had said "Friendly greetings to all."

This sign-off is another of the many used in written communication which I wrote about in my posting Parting is such sweet sorrow on 7/11/07.

In my May 1st posting The French presidential election (redux), just prior to the May 6th run-off, I told of the inundation of e-mails I was receiving from Mme. Royal after I had signed up on her website. In that posting I posed the question "...whoever wins, will I ever hear from Ségolène again? I don't have high expectations." Was I ever wrong--I still get her e-mails. They are no longer numbered, as they were before the run-off (the last of the numbered ones was 95).

This and that

In English we have two pronouns with which to designate a noun (sometimes joined with an adjective): "this" and "that", e.g., this large book and that crazy man.

The Spanish have three: "este" (this one close by), "ese" (that one over there), and "aquel" (that one far away).

But the French have only one: "ce." To distinguish between distance, they say "ce (whatever) ci", this (whatever) close by and "ce (whatever) la", that (whatever) over there, "over there" being almost any distance from a few feet to thousands of miles).

The above Spanish and French examples are just applicable to a single masculine noun. The variations are shown below.

Since English doesn't have gender for nouns, "this" and "that" can apply to any single noun. Of course, we do have "these" and "those" for plural nouns. That's it, no further variations.

Ah, but in Spanish and French there are numerous variations:

If the Spanish single noun is feminine, it's "esta", "esa", and "aquella". If it's plural, it's "estas", "esas", and "aquellas". If it's a plural masculine noun, it's "estos", "esos", and "aquellos". Also, the Spanish have a word for "this" and "that" in a very general sense: "esto" (¿Qué es esto?) What is this?; plural it's "estos" (¿A quien pertenecen estos?) To whom do they belong?

If the noun in French is feminine (and also singular), then the "ce" becomes "cette" (cette table ci, this table here, cette voiture la, that car over there). Also, even when a noun is masculine, but begins with a vowel (including the letter "h", which is mute except when preceded by "c"), the "ce" becomes "cet": cet outil ci, this tool here, cet homme la, that man over there). All plurals, masculine and feminine, are "ces": ces livres ci, these books here (livre is masculine), ces lunettes la, those eyeglasses there (lunettes is feminine).

Also, the French have pronouns when the noun is omitted because it has already been specified: ceci or celui-ci this one here (for a single masculine noun), celle-ci, this one here (for a single feminine noun). For plurals, it's ceux-ci and celles-ci (or ceux-la and celles-la respectively).

Parting is such sweet sorrow

How many ways do you end a conversation with someone--in person, on the phone, by e-mail, by letter delivered by the post office (does anybody mail letters anymore?)?

You might just say "goodbye," that's the simplest and most sincere way. You are saying "God be with you." Of course, you can't order God to be with your friend: you don't give orders to God. What you are really saying is that you hope that God will be with him. But that thought is ambiguous. First, what does God being with someone mean? If there is a God, isn't he always with everyone all the time throughout history? (Maybe it's like Jesus being with George Bush in each of the 21 photographs in that wonderful spoof on Bush, Destined For Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush, reviewed in my previous posting Satire is mightier than the sword.) Second, you imply to your friend that maybe God has not been with him for some particular reason--maybe he sinned and fell out of favor with God--and you are hoping that he will behave better and get back in God's grace. Hardly a pleasant thought to convey to your friend.

OK, so much for the philosophising. Back to the original question: How many ways are there to end a conversation? Following are just a few.

I beg to remain, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant. Yes, that was a very common signoff for business letters in the 19th Century. Sometimes the "I beg to remain" was omitted and just the "humble and obedient" was used. Also, sometimes an abbreviation was used: Yr humble and obt svt.

During modern times (at least until e-mails came into being) Yours truly and Sincerely have been in use in the USA. (I still frequently use the latter in business e-mails or faxes, but may well give it up for something less yesteryear.) The British equivalent is Faithfully yours.

The French go way out: Agréez, Monsieur, nos salutations distinguées. (Be aware, Sir, of our distinguished salutations.) They have several other versions, among which is notre parfaite consideration (our perfect consideration)--it's been some time since I've seen that one, but, as I recall, it goes: Assurez vous, Monsieur, de notre parfaite consideration (Be assured, Sir, of our perfect consideration). Whereas the foregoing are more formal business usages, more informal signoffs among acquaintances are often Bien à vous (Well to you), or Bien à toi, (Well to thee) when the familiar form of "you" (the tutoiement) is used.

The Spanish frequently use sin otra cosa, lo saludo atentamente (without anything else (to say), I salute you attentively). If it is a female who is being saluted, it will be la saludo atentamente.

The e-mail has brought about new greetings and signoffs: Hi Joe, blah blah blah. Regards, Harry.

In oral communication (personal or on the phone), I find myself increasingly using the very modern signoffs: "stay cool" and "take care." I used to use "so long" but that is so 20th Century.

The one thing that ties all of the above signoffs together is that they are mostly insincere. It's not that we are being deliberately deceitful when we use them, it's just that it seems cold to suddenly end the conversation or the letter or the e-mail without some sort of pleasantry. So we adhere to custom and say something pleasant as we take leave of the other person.

To put the cart before the horse, a word about greetings in written communication. The "Dear Mr. X" in a business letter (and in most personal letters) is obviously insincere: how can we feel that someone we don't even know is "dear?" "Gentlemen" used to be the preferred form in business letters when one didn't like the "Dear Sirs," but even that form has to give way to modern times. Chances are that at least as many women as men will see the correspondence in question; for that reason I have begun to use "Ladies/Gentlemen." Even then, I am probably being duplicitous in that I don't really know that all of the recipients of my correspondence are, in fact, ladies and/or gentlemen, since I usually don't even know them.

The French, with the most effusive signoffs mentioned above, are the most direct with their greetings in business correspondence: usually simply Monsieur (or Madame). However, politicians or people trying to sell something to the recipient of their correspondence often start off with Cher Monsieur X or Chère Madame Y. (Dear Mr. X or Dear Ms. Y.)

The Spanish often use the greeting Muy señor mío or Muy señora mía ("Very my sir" or "Very my lady," neither of which makes any sense.)

Well, sin otra cosa, Agréez, Dear Readers, my distinguished salutations. Cheers. Stay cool.

Satire is mightier than the sword

All of the ink used by numerous commentators in deploring George Bush's presidency--including my own*--has probably wounded him less than the book Destined For Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush. When I first spotted the book at my local public library, I wondered how an autobiography could be unauthorized; but, as I glanced through the book, it didn't take me long to realize it was a spoof. It is cleverly put together by Scott Dikkers, editor of The Onion, the satirical newspaper, and Peter Hilleren, a producer of radio and TV shows.

* My most recent postings about Bush have been My apologies to Presidents Coolidge and Hoover, posted 3/25/07; One man out of our 300 million has brought this on us, 1/29/07; and The tragedy of the George Bush presidency, 12/18/06.

Selecting excerpts from the book is exceptionally difficult because I find myself wanting to quote everything--the book is so humorous from beginning to end. It is dedicated to "the faith-havers."

In an "Introduction" by Dick Cheney, the VP says "I advised the President that this was not the appropriate time to release a book containing highly classified information which may compromise our nation's security...This was my view based on the evidence, and had nothing to do with the fact that the President had still not given me an autographed copy of the book, for which my feelings were deeply hurt." Later he describes Bush as "...the finest President who has ever occupied the White House. His fortitude in the face of evil has been, frankly, kick-ass." Cheney ends the "Introduction" saying: "Now I must conclude my remarks, and turn my attention back to my official responsibilities here in the underground bunker...I am working diligently to perpetuate the permanent state of war...Now, please go fuck yourself."

In the first chapter, entitled "Like 'Roots' Only White," Bush includes in a description of his ancestry: "My father met my mother at a debutante party when she was 30. He was immediately enchanted by her horse-like beauty, her forceful nature, and her immense stature. She loved his gangly limbs, and his rugged upper-crust Connecticut standing."

Following his birth, an announcement was sent out which read:

Join us in our Joy as we celebrate the blessed birth of our son
GEORGE WALKER BUSH, born July 6, 1946.
Date: August 17th, 1946
LOCATION: The Dallas Marriott Ballroom
Cost: $1000/plate
RSVP
CHOICE OF ENTREE: Sirloin___ Spare Rib_____ T-Bone_____
All proceeds to go into the Bush Election Campaign Fund

A "Third-grade report card from Midland Elementary School," dated May 26, 1954, is pictured. it shows letter grades put in by the teacher having been doctored by the young Bush: a C- in Arithmetic has the "-" converted to C+ by a downstroke over it, a D- in Civics changed to an A+ by writing over the D and making it into the A and putting the downstroke through the "-" as before, and several others.

In a chapter entitled "The Clown-Faced Zombie I Call My Wife" Bush tells of the reception following their wedding:

During our first dance, Laura looked at me with her empty red eyes, and reminded me of my promises to her. She whispered tenderly into my ear "I will eat your soul." I smiled at her and said, "You are my clown-faced zombie, now and forever." And our covenant of love was sealed.

In the chapter "My Name Is George W. Bush and I Am Not an Alcoholic" he writes of his youthful boozing:

During one memorable incident when I was in high school, I drank some Texas Firewater straight from a bootleg still operated by a classmate...In another instance I awoke in the bed of a pickup truck somewhere and did not know where I was...But after forty years of this kind of good cheer, and an inclination to toast in times of triumph, it was time to face the hard truth: I did not have a drinking problem...The day I realized that I was not an alcoholic changed my life.

Probably the funniest of the funny is in the chapter "The Greatest Love of My Life: Jesus." He got started on the path toward his born-again-in-Christ epiphany by "the celebrated prophet Billy Graham...He looked like a frank-incensed Wise Man...His piercing eyes had the effect of searing right through a person like holy lasers." Bush then began attending a men's Bible study group at the Houston Hyatt hotel, where he discovered Jesus:

He was standing there, on the other side of the crowded room, smiling at me...I felt my heart skip a beat, as they say. I examined Him closely. He wore a tattered rag-like robe. His skin was a slightly darker hue, like that of the East Indian or the mulatto. And He had a face like that of the movie star Mel Gibson, but more Jewishy...Jesus then stood and walked over to me, and He said, "Give all you have to the poor and follow me."

For an instant, Bush thought of calling hotel security because "I did not know, in those days, if Jews were permitted in the Houston Hyatt." But, as he talked with Jesus, he realized:

From that day forward, I have had Jesus in my heart. I especially agreed about the part about eternal life. If you simply accept Jesus as your personal savior, all sins are wiped clean. It is all automatic. There is no memorization. No forms to sign. No outlay of capital. You just say "Jesus, come into my heart," and He takes you. It is that simple.

There is a centerfold section of 21 black-and-white photographs of Bush at various times in his life, with Jesus in each picture. He is like the Biblical pictures of Jesus--long hair and beard, flowing robe, and a wreath around his head. He holds the 8-month-old baby Bush, he is with him in his Yale baseball uniform, as he holds his twin daughters at the moment of their birth, as he is sworn in as president in January 2001, in the Oval Office, giving his famous "Mission Accomplished" speech on an aircraft carrier in 2003. .

Jesus was very helpful during Bush's campaign for the presidency in 2000. "In my daily bullpen sessions with Jesus, we would strategify about the day's events and how best to get the message across. Jesus would give me strength during those stressful times. He would remind me of my purpose, telling me that I was God's puppet on earth..."

When Bush had to select a running mate for the nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in 2000. His father had told him "to choose someone who seems less qualified than yourself. Someone who, by comparison, makes you appear to be a seasoned and wise leader."

I then turned to Dick Cheney...I asked him to search the land to find the imagined prince my father had described, the great second-in-command of my destiny. Dick Cheney conducted a thorough search, and found only one worthy candidate: himself. I happily accepted, because I trusted his impartial judgment.

Following his election to the presidency in 2000:

God had made me His instrument on Earth...I knew He would help. He would surround me with the wisest men in the land...The Lord would send Heavenly helpers in the form of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfield, Scott McClellan, and John Ashcroft. These were the Angels who were sheperded by the Lord to serve in my administration.

He says of the Abu Ghraib prison situation in Iraq:

America does not torture. Therefore, military justice was handed down swiftly against these wrongful torturers. We started at the bottom and worked up the chain of command, all the way to the top. The highest-ranking official in the promotion of torture was Private first Class Lynndie England. A court of military justice found that she was solely responsible for the shameful abuse of these prisoners. She was found guilty and is currently serving her prison sentence.

Criticism of the Commander in Chief is not to be tolerated:

Criticism of the Commander in Chief is the greatest security threat we face in the 21st century. This is one of the vital lessons we learned after 9-11. Such open questions brought comfort to our enemies abroad, who hate us and want to destroy our democratic values.

Could any straightforward denunciation of Bush's policies and his actions have more effect than the satire in this book? I doubt it. There is no better way to take down anyone, any group, or any opinion than satirizing them. There is no defense against satire.

"Quick catalysts" or "organic growth" in the stock market

Commentary by a columnist at Barron's, the weekly financial newspaper, is worth noting. It is by Michael Santoli and on page 8 of the 6/11/07 issue.

In the easy-money, deal-a-minute ethos of the present (stock) market, outsized attention is being paid to quick catalysts that create an instant one-time step increase in values--LBO's, leveraged recapitalizations, corporate split-ups, huge stock buybacks.

Ignored, by contrast, are genuine organic-growth stories, companies that seem able to keep increasing earnings even as the profit cycle matures and slows.

Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) are the two biggest exception to this rule. All the growth seekers are crowded into these two cult names and a few others.

The "quick catalysts" that he refers to:

"LBO's" (leverage buyouts): When private investment groups buy out previously publicly-traded companies and, subsequently, own them privately. The "leveraged" means that these private groups use large amounts of newly-created debt--bank loans and other forms of debt--to raise the funds to buy the companies. The catalyst here is that speculation that certain publicly-traded companies might be ripe for picking by these private investors may increase the market price of their stock.

"Leveraged recapitalizations" are similar to LBO's in that such recapitalizations usually retire sizable amounts of the common stock of the publicly-traded companies involved by buying it in the in the open market and replacing it with newly-issued debt. Unlike companies involved in LBO's, these companies' stock remains publicly-traded--but, again, speculation that XYZ Co. is going to do such a recapitalization will tend to increase the market price of its stock.

"Corporate split-ups": When companies divest part of their structure by giving such parts outright to the original companies' shareholders or selling the parts to other parties. Again, speculation of such deals will tend to drive up the stock price of those companies. There have been many split-ups in recent years.

"Huge stock buybacks": Many companies have been for years buying back their own publicly-traded shares on the open market. Of course, this buy-back activity tends to increase the market value of the stock by increasing the demand of the companies themselves for it. There can be many reasons for buybacks: fewer shares outstanding will decrease the supply and, thus, tend to increase their market value (often making stock options of the companies' executives more valuable); if the companies pay dividends, there will be fewer shares outstanding in the future on which to pay them; the companies may not have plans to make large capital investments in the foreseeable future--construction of new plant, adding new product lines, acquiring other companies, etc.--buying back their stock is preferable to sitting on large amounts of funds above their needs. Frequently, some combination of these reasons lead to the buybacks.

The reference to Google as a "cult name" is because of its enormous success with its Internet search engine and related products. It only started up in September 1998 and had its IPO (initial public offering) in 2004--several years after many of its competitors were in operation. Yet, it leads the pack in revenues. I guess the Barron's columnist also includes Apple as a "cult name" because of its success in competing with Microsoft and other giants in the intelligence technology industry with its computer and its Ipod, and also because its new I-phone seems to have promise.

Following is some clarification as to the distinction between "quick catalysts" and "organic growth."

The former means that the price of a particular company's stock may rise in the stock market, not because of any increase in the intrinsic value of the company, but because of the actions taken by company management described above (the LBO's, leveraged recapitalizations, split-ups, and stock buybacks). Such activities often cause froth in the company's stock price temporarily.

Conversely, organic growth is genuine increasing of a company's value, as reflected in its stock price, from increasing profits and net worth from successful results of its operations.

However, it needs to be said that there are not always clear distinctions as to which of the two concepts might be causing a runup in the price of a company's stock at a certain time. Some observers might say that a catalyst from a particular action taken by a company--say a spin-off of a segment of the company that was not a good match with the rest of the company--is actually promoting future organic growth of the company.

Conversely, some skeptics might say that healthier earnings per-share increases of a company's stock are due just to buybacks--which have reduced the number of shares outstanding and, thus, automatically increased earnings per-share. Yet others may say that the buybacks are contributing to organic growth because they have reduced what was excessive equity capital, making the company leaner and meaner.

I take exception to the columnist's comment that there are only a "few other" companies achieving organic growth other than the two "cult figures" he names. There is a considerable number of companies around the world that, through skill in developing new or better products and services, producing them more efficiently, marketing them better, expanding profitable operations through acquisitions or through new startups (or perhaps through some combination of all these efforts), are increasing their value.

"Touching up" the news

Reading a New York Times columnist's piece today on the subject of Lou Dobbs, the pontifical CNN commentator, reminds me of a story I heard while working on the Chicago Tribune. The Times columnist, David Leonhardt, in his column headlined "Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs" accuses Dobbs, of purveying false information on various topics on his TV show.

The story that I heard while working on the Tribune during the summer between my junior and senior years in college goes like this:

A cub reporter on the Tribune, who has been on the job only a few days, is called to the city editor's desk and told that a huge fire is on going on at the corner of two streets he names (let's say at X and Y streets) and to get there and cover it. The young reporter, being from some other place and knowing very little about locations in Chicago, goes out and asks a policeman how to get to the corner of X and Y streets. The cop tells the young man that there is no such corner--that X and Y streets are parallel to each other.

A few hours later, the reporter turns in a story about a 12-alarm blaze that brought out dozens of pieces of equipment and hundreds of firefighters, about people jumping from windows in upper stories into safety nets set up on the ground below and of others being brought down ladders by firemen, about spectators saying that this was the biggest fire ever in that section of the city, and so on.

But, after turning in the story, the cub reporter has second thoughts. He asks himself, "Why did I have to be such a wiseguy? Why didn't I just realize that the editor was playing a trick on me, and say 'Good joke, sir'?" And he worries, "I'm going to get the axe for this." The longer he waits to be called in by the editor, the more panicky he becomes.

Finally, he is called in, shaking as he goes. As he enters, the editor continues looking at the cub's story for several seconds, then looks up and says, "Pretty good story, young man. It's OK to touch up a story a little bit to make it more interesting to the reader."

With so many news sources and so much spinning of the news today, we, the public, have to constantly be alert to such "touching up." Checking in with the website FactCheck at http://www.factcheck.org/ is one way to be alert.

Quiz question of the week

One 5-letter word can be changed as follows to create three homophones--words that are pronounced exactly the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings:

No. 1 The word itself
No. 2 Remove just the first letter of the word
No. 3 Remove just the second letter of the word

The question is courtesy of National Public Radio's "Car Talk."

Answer next week.

Comment

Anonymous said...

Mycroft,

My guess would be the word "scent".1. Scent2. Cent3.
Tustin, CA

Dear Anonymous,

Excellent. Congratulations. You must be homophonic.
I don't have to give the answer next week; you have already given it. But I'll publish some more homophones in the future.

Mycroft

Wikipedia, everybody's encyclopedia

"What hath God wrought?" That was the message sent by the inventor Samuel Morse over the first telegraph line in the United States; it was sent from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland in 1844. One could almost enthuse as much over the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, a wonderful source where one can both find information and provide it to share with the whole world. Following are extracts from its website which tell about it.

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Wikipedia...is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. With rare exceptions, its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites on the Internet.
In every article, links will guide you to associated articles, often with additional information. Anyone is welcome to add further information, cross-references, or citations, so long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. One need not fear accidentally damaging Wikipedia when adding or improving information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, if needed, and the Wikipedia encyclopedia software, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Its website lists 24 languages in which it is available.

I have used it as a reference source almost since its inception. But I just recently took to contributing text to its articles--a practice which I find very rewarding (and addictive). My contributions have been quite diverse: my first was in the existing article "Preferred Stocks," which I adapted from a posting on my blog entitled Beware of Preferred Stocks published on 4/19/06 in which I explained why individuals (as distinct from corporations) should never invest in straight (as distinct from convertible) preferred stocks.

As soon as I posted my insertion into the existing article, I received messages from two "administrators" (individuals who have authority to contact anyone who makes a posting onto Wikipedia to guide them into making their postings acceptable--and more informative--under the encyclopedia's rules and guidelines). The messages pointed out, among other things, that opinions can't be included in articles, however well-founded they might be; thus, the admonition in my blog posting that individuals should never buy straight preferred stocks was revised to: Some argue that a straight preferred stock, being a hybrid between a bond and a stock, bears the disadvantages of each of those types of securities without enjoying the advantages of either. (However, opinions can be expressed in the "Discussions" link at the top of the first page of each article.)

There were several back-and-forths between the administrators and me--I gave in on a few issues but refused to delete one part of the text which I maintained was essential (I said I would withdraw my contribution in its entirety if they wouldn't allow the part at issue, following which they agreed with me). One of them suggested my contribution might be "less Anglo-Saxon," about which I told him I was was totally baffled and which he didn't press. All of the correspondence with them was quite amicable. My contribution can be accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stocks, beginning with: In the United States there are two types of preferred stocks... and ending with: Advantages of straight preferreds posited by some advisers...

My second contribution was to an existing article entitled "Chaffin's Bluff"--the site of a battle in Virginia during the Civil War. It included excerpts from letters by my great-grandfather who was a surgeon in the Confederate army to his daughter (later my grandmother) in which he described the heavy fighting going on around him and his heavy load of work tending to wounded men from both sides. This contribution was adapted from my blog Surfing Through American History with Great Grandpa posted on 2/23/06. I didn't hear from any administrators about it. It can be accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaffin.

My third contribution was to write a review of a book Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy Tyson (published in 2005), about a race riot that took place in 1970 in the small North Carolina town in which I was born and grew up. The disturbance followed the acquittal at trial of a white man who brutally killed a black man. I posted the review in the "Discussion" link of the article about the book, which, as I note above, is the place for opinion. (I didn't hear from any administrators about it.) I e-mailed my review to the author of the book and received back a scathing rebuke in which he called me an "idiot" and a "knee-crawling son of a bitch" and so maligned me in a few other ways. That review, the author's comments on it, and comments by another individual can be accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Done_Sign_My_Name and clicking on the "Discussion" link at the top of the article.

I have become addicted to making contributions to Wikipedia. Each time I read or think about some historical event, some current topic of interest, read some fiction, or whatever, I am drawn toward doing a posting about it in Wikipedia. (One isn't restricted to just making contributions to exisiting articles--as I did in my three to date--he can start a new article, subject to maybe having to deal with administrators.) At present, I intend postings on Sherlock Holmes, Thomas Paine, and a few other subjects.

I believe anyone who contributes to Wikipedia is making a genuine contribution to society, both present and future. It is truly an encyclopedia of the people in the sense that it is an accumulation of massive knowledge, rather than of a relatively few select experts on various topics, as is the case with traditional encyclopedias. Of course, with anybody and everybody able to contribute to it, Wikipedia is bound to contain erroneous or misleading information from time to time. But the process allows for self-correction: someone spots something wrong and corrects it. I have just spotted a substantial error on the article on Thomas Paine and plan to correct it, as well as add more information about him.

Comment

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Pinnix,Growing up with parents from the South (Dad - Louisiana, Mom - Mississippi) I was raised in a home that separated whites and blacks. I've spent my entire life trying to do the opposite. I read, with interest, your review and the author's response; I stand on your side. You knew your facts, whether you live in Baltimore now or not, and grew up in Oxford therefore seeing first-hand many of the events he spoke of. His response seemed more to bust your knowledge than to address his shortcomings as an author. I will continue to be amazed at your knowledge...much like I am of your son.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 8:05:00 PM

Dear Anonymous,

Many thanks for your thoughtful message.

Mycroft

The French presidential election (redux)

When, some time ago, I innocently sent an e-mail to Ségolène Royal's campaign to get on her mailing list, little did I expect such a bombardment. Almost daily I receive an e-mail entitled La lettre de Désirs d'avenir ("The letter of Hope for the future"); each letter is numbered, today's was no. 95. Each has the text of every speech she has given, every interview with the media, and video clips of those same events, and more. I could spend two hours reading and watching each.

Well, Sunday May 6th will be the run-off vote between her and Nicolas Sarkozy (le second tour). After that, whoever wins, will I ever hear from Ségolène again? I don't have high expectations..

About the French

In response to my 4/19/07 posting on The French presidential election, I have received comments from two sources:

One was from a family member:

My recent trip to England for an International Sales Meeting was quite eye opening. While most of my counterparts around the globe had questions about President Bush and his policies (which you will be happy to know I addressed to their satisfaction), the ONLY UNQUESTIONED COMMON THEME worldwide was that EVERYBODY had a mutual hatred for the French. I found that amusing. Who cares who their president is? On the world stage, I've learned that France is irrelevant (at least by popular opinion)

Another was from a long-time friend and a fellow Sherlockian:

I see that you have comments about the deplorable fact that France is in imminent danger of suffering their first woman president ... but then ... who deserves that indignity more than the French?

Why all this animosity toward the French?

I have heard a number of people (Americans) complain about rudeness of French people whom they encountered while traveling in France, especially when they (the Americans) tried to use English to converse with them. With one minor exception, I have never had that problem when traveling in metropolitan France or in the following DOMTOM (départements d'outre-mer, territoires d'outre-mer: overseas departments, overseas territories): Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and St. Pierre & Miquelon. In fact, I have found most people that I have encountered in those travels to be very nice (just as I have found people everywhere I have traveled).

Part of the reason is probably because I speak French, and, thus, don't get into any language problems. However, when I first went to Dakar, Senegal (then part of French West Africa) in 1953 to work for the international oil company, Texaco, I knew only a little French, so for awhile, as I was improving my ability, I had to use English with the few French people with whom I came in contact who could speak it. I never experienced any unpleasantness from those people. (Hearing French spoken around me and seeing it in print every day--and also being in a sink-or-swim situation--I learned it quickly.)

I suppose some of the Americans who experience rudeness in France do so because they unconsciously carry a chip on their shoulders and, thus, get what they expect. The French have the habit of showing courtesies when approaching someone, such as saying the equivalent of "good morning," "excuse me," "if you please" before engaging them in any further conversation, whereas Americans are apt to just ask a simple question--"How do I get to Main St.?" or "Where can I find...?"--outright, without any preliminary pleasantry.

One thing Americans (and any others) who dislike the French might consider is that the French have been ahead of us in providing some amenities of everyday life.

--Direct deposit to bank accounts. When in Dakar in 1953-54, we paid our European (white) staff by direct deposit to their bank accounts; likewise, we paid most bills from vendors by such direct deposits, rather than by mailing checks. These transactions were handled by the local branch of our French bank years before there were computers--they used manual procedures and mechanical office machines to do it. Direct deposit only came to the United States many years later. Also, our French bank paid interest on checking accounts--again before there were computers--something which some US banks have only recently begun to do.

--Unlimited subway trip tickets over a certain number of days. The Paris metro has had such tickets for many years (and also the London underground), but it was many years later before they were available on the New York subway.

--Paying highway tolls with credit cards. In 1993, when my wife and I were about to return a rented car in France, I used all my French francs to fill it with gas (we were leaving France and I didn't want to keep any francs). Just as I started to drive away, I remembered that I had a toll to pay ahead, so I went back to the office at the gas station to ask if I could get my francs back and pay for the gas with a credit card. The people there told me I had no problem--that I could use my credit card to pay the toll. Voilà! The toll collector swipes your card, prints and hands you a receipt, says merci, and you're on your way. The whole procedure takes about 10 seconds. Even today, I'm not aware of any toll roads in the US where this can happen ("EZ passes" are the closest that I know of).

--Development of the "hyperstore". A "hyperstore" is a store under one roof that offers such diverse merchandise as food, hardware, building materials, electronics, and various items typically carried in a department store. The huge French department store chain Carrefour, which began operations in France in 1957, and which opened its first "hyperstore" in 1962, according to Wikipedia, now operates numerous of these stores around the world: 535 in Europe, 169 in Latin America, 181 in Asia, and 5 in Africa.

How much of an amenity "hyperstores" are can be debated; the same arguments against them are those made against Wal-Mart (they drive traditional, established stores out of business, exploit workers, exert unfair pressure on vendors of their merchandise, etc.). I have been to Carrefour stores in France but never to one of their "hyperstores" there, but I did go to one in a suburb of Madrid, Spain in 1988 (where Carrefour operates under the name "Pryca"--Precio y Calidad: "Price and Quality"). I was amazed at its vast capacity--it was like a Safeway, Target, Home Depot, and Best Buy all rolled into one.

Chew on those thoughts a bit, you French haters.

The French presidential election

Va, Ségolène, je te soutiens! (Go, Ségolène, I support you!)

The first round (le premier tour) of the French presidential election will be held on Sunday, April 22nd. Unless one of the several candidates wins a majority in the first round (which isn't likely to happen this time), there will be a second run-off between the two top candidates on May 6th.

Why do I support Ségolène Royal, the Socialist (female) candidate? I am not a socialist. I support her for an irrational reason (just as my wife, and many other women, like or dislike people in the news).

First, because she was born at a French army base in Ouakam, outside of Dakar, Sénégal, in what was then French West Africa, on September 22, 1953. I was living and working in Dakar at the time--I worked there for Texaco, the international oil company, from January 1953 to October 1954 (part of which time I lived at Kilomètre 5, route de Ouakam).

Second, she has a really cool website http://www.desirsdavenir.org/index.php , in which she uses the informal "thou" and "thee" (tutoiement) with the voters she is trying to win. I have mixed feelings about such use in languages other than English (see my 4/25/06 posting No "thou" and "thee" in English), but I like it from her.

Imagine, Madame la Présidente, the first woman president of France.

The Virginia Tech tragedy

The tragic killing on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16th made me think back to my college days. The event brought an irony to mind: Even with a campus police force at Virginia Tech (which all colleges have these days), the horrible killing rampage took place; however, during my years at the University of North Carolina in the 1940's, there was no campus police force there. Any need for police services on the campus was provided by local police; I think the same was true on most college campuses of that era (in 1949-50 I lived near the Columbia University campus in New York City, and don't remember seeing any police force there).

One can perceive that life in general is more dangerous today than in times past--but one who has been around for awhile can also reflect on the vast changes that have taken place during his life span. The evolution from no campus police to professionally-administered campus police forces is just one of those changes. Another reflection: during the time I lived in New York close to Columbia, I would walk back and forth through Morningside Park alone at night to the 125th Street subway station in Harlem. Not only did I do that, but a girlfriend at the time did the same thing. I wouldn't do that today even in daylight.

As I have commented in earlier postings, the widespread availability and use of drugs in recent times, versus a virtual absence of them in most communities in past years, seems to be a principal reason for greater danger today. I can't come up with any reason for this dreadful change in our society, especially when that society was far worse off in the 1930's (when it went through the terrible depression) and the 1940's (when World War II affected everyone's life), and when black people had far fewer opportunities in their lives.

However, there also have been changes for the better during my lifetime. For example, during my entire school years, kindergarten through college, there was racial segregation in North Carolina--I never attended school with a black person until I took some courses at Towson Univerity, in Towson, Maryland, during the 1990's. When I occasionally visit my hometown in North Carolina I have black people eating in restaurants around me, something that never happened when I was growing up there.

Easing young teenagers into romance

It was ever thus, but with a difference.

Today I saw an ad in the Baltimore Sun by Macy's, the long-time department store of the common folk, that promoted a wonderful product to ease young teenagers into romance. Here is the scene (on an almost full-page ad in color):

Hope Springs Eternal.
Spring 2007 inspires the scents that matter most.
Experience a fragrance defined
by the spirit of a new generation.

Below that introductory heading is a photo of two young teenagers, a boy with almost no facial hair (but cute little locks of his hair falling over his right temple) and a girl with long hair and lips half-open (seeming to say, "Give it to me, boy."). They are both in an embrace, wearing blue jeans (naturally); his belt is unbuckled (making it much more easy to pull down his jeans) and her jeans have no belt; not only that, but her jeans are pulled down about two inches below her navel and about a half-inch of her underpants is showing. There can be little doubt as to what is about to come (sorry, no pun intended).

But, what is this all about? It's about CKIN2U. What on earth is CKIN2U? Clearly, a pun (or, more correctly, a double entendre) is intended by the advertiser. Anyway, here is what the ad says it is:

CKIN2U, new from Calvin Klein
For the first time from ck, new fragrance, one for him, one for her.
Fresh but warm; a tension that creates sexiness.

Rewind back 65 years: Life for teenagers was tough. I had to do without fragrances in my early amorous exploits. But, that's life, modernity moves on.

P.S. The "Eau de Toilette spray" has a fancy price: for "him" and for "her," the 3.4 oz. bottle is $50.00 each. When I was 15, that price would have been like a cold shower on my amorous adventures: I made $20.40 working a 40-hour week to cut undergrowth with a bush axe in preparation to build an army camp six months after Pearl Harbor. But I managed OK without a fragrance.

Fancy job descriptions

I thought I had heard all the euphemisms for job descriptions--just a few are:"ingress/egress engineer" for a doorman, "roofing technician" for a guy who replaces shingles, "transportation director" for a person who waves taxicabs forward in a cab rank and puts waiting passengers in them, "cosmetic counselor" for a person (usually a woman) who works in the cosmetics section of a department store. But I recently learned of another one.

For some time, as a volunteer, I have been tutoring men at the Helping Up Mission in Baltimore. I tutor some one-on-one and others in a group; they are all men who have been addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and are in the Mission's recovery program. I tutor them in the "three R's"; some want to become able to pass the GED tests to get a high school diploma, while others just want to improve their life skills in order to get more out of life and to improve their job prospects.

One man with whom I am working told me that he is job hunting. He showed me one lead that he was working on: it was described in a bulletin from an employment agency as openings for "floor technicians" in local hospitals and government buildings. When I asked him what "floor technicians" do, he told me that they clean the floors, empty trash, and clean bathrooms. Didn't we used to call them "janitors?"

My apologies to Presidents Coolidge and Hoover

Recently during a conversation with a man probably 15-20 years my junior, that gentleman commented, "George Bush is the worst president in my lifetime," whereupon I responded, "The same for me." But then I remembered that, during the first two years of my life, Calvin Cooolidge was president and, over the next four years, it was Herbert Hoover; history has generally characterized those two men as less than great presidents. So, I added, "But maybe Bush is not as bad as those two."

Somewhat later, I checked Presidential Leadership*, a book which contains a review of each of the 42 presidents who preceded George Bush by one of a selected university professor in the fields of political science, history, and law; in addition to these reviews, 78 individuals in those fields rated each president, from best to worst. (George Bush was reviewed based on his accomplishments during the first three years of his presidency, shortly after which time the book was published, but was not rated because of the lack of his full tenure at that time. Likewise, two of the presidents who died shortly after taking office were not rated: William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, exactly one month after taking office, and James Abram Garfield was assassinated on September 19, 1881, after just six months in office. Thus, 39 of the presidents were rated.)

* published by Dow Jones & Co., New York 2004, edited by James Taranto, of The Wall Street Journal, and and Leonard Leo, of The Federalist Society, 291 pages.

In reading the review of Coolidge by John O. McGinnis, a professor of law at Northwestern University, I found the the following comments:

Historical evaluations of presidents consistently underrate Calvin Coolidge...The reason for such slights is wholly ideological: Coolidge provided (at least until Ronald Reagan) the most effective presidential defense of limited government in the twentieth century.

The harsh ideological judgment of Coolidge has also relied on a false stereotype of his political views and ignored his many virtues that transcend partisan politics.

Coolidge provides a model for the kind of leader needed in a republic: honest, modest, and shrewd.

Coolidge was ranked 25th from the top of the 39 who were rated.

Likewise, Hoover was also spoken of kindly by Robert H. Ferrell, history professor at Indiana University. Some of that reviewer's comments are:

We should expect Herbert Hoover to get a heavy amount of criticism. After all, the Great Depression started on his watch...President Hoover deserves better. Consider his philosophy of government, which is largely accepted today...Alas, most scholars of the presidency have chosen to remember the gibes about Hoover, who was in fact a great public servant whose service spanned five decades. He deserves better from history.

Hoover was ranked 29th of the 39.

I have a faint recollection of "Hoover carts." That name was applied to automobiles which had been converted into mule-drawn vehicles by their owners who were supposedly so destitute during the Great Depression of the 1930s that they were unable to buy gasoline for them or to maintain them. I don't recall exactly how the conversion took place--did the owners just hook up a mule to the front bumper, or was some kind of surgery done to the hood? I don't remember, but I do remember a "Hoover cart" parade passing my house in the small North Carolina town where I grew up. That event was probably during the 1932 presidential campaign and was likely the effort of Democratic strategists in support of Franklin Roosevelt. I imagine the "Hoover cart" term itself was dreamed up by those political operatives.

So, after reading the reviews of Presidents Coolidge and Hoover--even though realizing that each represented the opinion of just one individual reviewer--I feel that I do owe an apology to the memory of those two men in thinking that they might have been worse than George Bush.

The three highest-rated presidents were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, in that order. The three lowest were Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding, tied for 37-38, and James Buchanan, the worst at 39th.

If the book Presidential Leadership is updated some time after January 20, 2009, it will be interesting to see whether James Buchanan or George W. Bush gets the 40th spot.

However, a higher power will eventually have to rank Bush. I quote from my blog posting "The Worst President in History?" of 5/20/06, in which I wrote about a magazine article with that title, written by a Princeton professor. I added the following comment in that posting.

Since he professes to be a faithful believer in the Divinity, when he passes on to meet his Maker, Bush had better be prepared to explain away his personal responsibility for the tens of thousands of American military personnel and Iraqi civilians killed and gravely wounded, as well as the thousands more of ordinary Iraqis whose lives have been made miserable during the war and its aftermath.

Something gets lost in translation

Below are three translations of a paragraph from a front-page story in the 3/25/07 issue of The New York Times–one translation each by"Systran," "GoogleTranslate," (http://translate.google.com/translate) and "Free2Professional Translation" (http://www.freetranslation.com) ( In each, I translated first from the English text to French, and then from that French translation back into English. ("Systran" is a program which I bought–it sits in my browser and translates,upon command, any text that I have on the monitor screen from a newspaper, magazine, or other source that I have accessed on the Internet from one designated language to another; the other two are free programs in which the user copies and pastes whatever is on his screen and then designates another language that he wants it translated into.)

Something indeed did get lost in each translation.

The original text

An international regulatory system created after the war has prevented diamonds from fueling conflicts and financing terrorist networks. Even so, diamond mining in Sierra Leone remains a grim business that brings the government far too little revenue to right the devastated country, yet feeds off the desperation of some of the world’s poorest people. "The process is more to sanitize the industry from the market side rather than the supply side," said John Kanu, a policy adviser to the Integrated Diamond Management Program, a United States-backed effort to improve the government’s handling of diamond money. "To make it so people could go to buy a diamond ring and to say, ‘Yes, because of this system, there are no longer any blood diamonds. So my love, and my conscience, can sleep easily.’’’

So that anyone who knows French can see the translation from the English into the French, I am reproducing below that from "GoogleTranslate." (The repetition of the accented vowels wasn’t in the translation itself, but it only happened when I pasted it below.) The other two translations were approximately the same.

Un systèème de normalisation international créééé aprèès que la guerre ait empêêchéé des diamants de remplir de combustible des conflits et de financer des rééseaux de terroriste. Nééanmoins, le diamant extrayant en Sierra Leone reste des affaires sinistres qui apportent au gouvernement loin trop peu de revenu vers la droite le pays déévastéé, pourtant alimente outre du déésespoir de certaines des plus pauvres personnes du monde. «« Le processus est plus pour aseptiser l'industrie du côôtéé du marchéé plutôôt que le côôtéé de l'offre, »» a dit John Kanu, un conseiller de politique au programme intéégréé de gestion de diamant, un effort ÉÉtat-soutenu uni d'amééliorer la manipulation du gouvernement de l'argent de diamant. «« Lui faire ainsi des personnes pourrait aller acheter un anneau de diamant et pour dire, le `oui, en raison de ce systèème, làà ne sont plus aucun diamant de sang. Ainsi mon amour, et ma conscience, peuvent dormir facilement. '''

Just look at the screwups above in the French translation:

–"fueling conflicts" gets translated as combustible, the kind of fuel that you put in your car or in your furnace at home.

–"to right the devastated country" gets translated as vers la droite le pays dévasté, "toward the right (the right-hand side) the devastated country."

–"feeds off the desperation..." gets translated as alimente outre du..., "feeds besides..."

–"a United States-backed effort" gets translated as État-soutenu uni, "State-supported united."

Translation by "Google Translate."

An international system of standardization created after the war prevented diamonds from filling of fuel of the conflicts and to finance networks of terrorist. Nevertheless, diamond extracting in Sierra Leone however remains sinister businesses which bring to the government far not enough income towards the line the devastated country, feeds in addition to despair of some of the poorest people of the world. ""The process is more to asepticize the industry on the side of the market rather than the side of the offer,"" said John Kanu, an adviser of policy to the integrated programme of diamond management, a plain State-constant effort to improve handling of the government of the diamond money. ""To make Him people thus could go to buy a ring of diamond and for saying, the `yes, because of this system, there are not any more any diamond of blood. Thus my love, and my conscience, can sleep easily. '''

Translation by "Systran"

International year regulatory system created after the war has prevented diamonds from fueling conflicts and financing terrorist networks. Even so, diamond mining in Sierra Leone remains has grim business that brings the government far too little returned to right the devastated country, yet feeds off the desperation off nap off the world' S poorest people. ""The process is more to sanitize the industry from the market side rather than the supply side,"" said John Kanu, has policy adviser to the Integrated Diamond Management Program, has United States-backed effort to improve the government' S handling off diamond money. ""To make it so people could go to buy has diamond boxing ring and to say, ""Yes, because off this system, there are No to skirt any blood diamonds. So my coils, and my conscience, edge sleep easily.""

Translation by "Free2Profesioinal Translation."

A regulating international created system after the war prevented from diamonds of supplies conflicts and financing terrorist networks. Even if, the diamond extracts in Sierra leone remains a threatening matters that brings the government returned it far too small to the right the devastated country, nourishes nevertheless despair of certain ones of the people of the poorest world. "The procedure is more to disinfect the industry of the side of the market instead of the provision side," John Kanu says, a counselor of political one to the Direction Program of Integrated Diamond, an United States Supported the effort to improve the government checks diamond money. "To do it if the people could go to buy a diamond ring and say, 'Yes, because of this system, there is longer more any blood diamonds. Therefore my love, and my conscience, can sleep easily'.

With the amazing progress that has been made in synthesized voice and other digitized communication tools, it would not be surprising one day to see idiomatic translations between languages by websites such as those above, just as those made by human interpreters. But that day is not yet here.

It's Rudy again

Back in 2000 I received a message from Rudy Giuliani, mailed to my home in Maryland, urging me to contribute money to his planned campaign against Hillary Clinton for a Senate seat from New York state. That campaign never happened because he later found that he had prostate cancer, which forced him to abandon it.

At the time, I wondered why he would think that I might so contribute since I was not a resident of New York state. I also wondered how his campaign workers got my name; I guessed that they got it from the registry of a hotel in the Wall Street area of New York city, where I stayed numerous times when I was working as a consultant for a client in the area. They must have figured that anyone staying at that hotel must have been both a moneybags and a staunch Republican, who would gladly contribute to Giuliani's campaign fund even though they couldn't vote for him.

Now Rudy's at it again--this time in his campaign for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential election. I just received the following e-mail from him.

Dear Friend,

Click Here tojoin Team Rudy today.
I am running for President because when I look to the future, I see a country where Americans are confident our nation is in control of its destiny. I believe in solving problems through strength, not weakness – from optimism, not pessimism. I am passionate about seizing our opportunity and sharing a vision of how America can be better. I'm emailing you because you are someone who makes up your mind early. You are influential in your community, and it would mean so much to have you join my team as one of its founding members.

Pictured here is your First Edition Team Rudy Member Card. I'd be honored if you'd activate it and help me run a strong campaign with your gift.

Blah, blah, blah.

I don't know, Rudy, I'll have to think about voting for you--but forget the gift to your campaign.

Regards,

Moneybags

It's OK

How many times a day does one in the United States say "OK"? Probably many more times than one would imagine. The British use it too, but I have never heard it as widely used there as it is in the U.S. In the U.S we say "OK" when we mean, "All right. I'm ready to go" or "Good, that's enough" or "Go ahead, you have my permission..." or "I agree." The "OK's" in those instances (and many others) are interjections--things that we say almost reflexively in everyday circumstances. Then, we sometimes use "OK" as a verb: "The boss will have to OK it", or as a noun: "We got the boss's OK to go ahead", or as an adjective: "It's OK to use that pan for baking." And also, we have buttons on our computers that say "OK", by which we tell them to go ahead with the settings we have chosen.

Languages other than English also have equivalents of "OK": in Spanish they say está bien ("it's well") and the French say d'accord ("of accord") and also ça va ("that goes"). However, having lived, worked, and traveled in countries where those languages are spoken, I have never heard any of them used as much as we use "OK". Usually they are used just as interjections: In Spanish: Está bien, eso es todo que necesito ("OK, that's all I need"); in French: D'accord, j'accepte votre prix ("OK, I accept your price") or Ça va, ça c'est tout dont j'ai besoin ("OK, that's all I need")

So, how did "OK" ever come to be? The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories says that it was trimmed down from "all correct." It goes on to say "...there was the abbreviation fad. Among the young and fashionable set in American cities in the late 1830's, the thing to do was to reduce phrases to initials...(also) there was the tradition of deliberate misspelling in humorous writing." It adds:

(OK) might well have passed into oblivion...had it not been for the presidential election of 1840. In that year the Tammany Democrats in New York created a Democratic O.K. Club. The O.K. in the name was derived from Old Kinderhook, after Kinderhook, New York, the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, the Democratic candidate...The campaign gave another boost to OK. A Whig journalist floated the story that OK was used by Andrew Jackson as standing for Ole Korrek (later oll korrect), which was supposed to be Jackson's spelling of all correct This was a reference to the presidential campaign of 1828 in which Jackson's bad spelling was a campaign issue.

Another reference source, the website Answers.com offers an explanation that "OK" originated from Andrew Jackson's liking a Choctaw Indian word, okeh ("it is so"). It goes on to say that, during the Battle of New Orleans against the British (in the War of 1812), Jackson asked Pushmataha, a leader of a Choctaw contingent that was fighting alongside the Americans, if the fight was going well for him, to which Jackson received the answer, "okeh." (The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories also mentions this possible origin.)

However it originated, "OK" is likely to be a linguistic workhorse in the U.S. for a long time.

A billionaire with a sense of humor

Whether or not one owns stock in Berkshire Hathaway, suggested reading is its CEO, Warren Buffett's, letter to shareholders. Buffett is, of course the second wealthiest individual in the U.S.--in the latest Forbes ranking, published last September, his net worth was reported to have been $46 billion, surpassed only by Bill Gates with $53 billion. (Buffett gave some $30 billion to the foundation of Gates and his wife last year, to be added to their funds for investment in do-good causes around the world.)

Along with all the large amount of factual material he puts into in his letters, Buffett includes much humor in them. One item that caught my eye in his letter in Berkshire Hathaway's 2006 annual report, which just came out a few days ago, was about an:

...older man who crashed his grocery cart into that of a much younger fellow while both were shopping. The elderly man explained apologetically that he had lost track of his wife and was preoccupied searching for her. His new acquaintance said that by coincidence his wife had also wandered off and suggested that it might be more efficient if they jointly looked for the two women. Agreeing, the older man asked his new companion what his wife looked like. "She’s a gorgeous blonde," the fellow answered, "with a body that would cause a bishop to go through a stained glass window, and she’s wearing tight white shorts. How about yours?" The senior citizen wasted no words: "Forget her, we’ll look for yours."

The relevance of the joke had to do with Buffett's commentary regarding looking for attractive stocks.

(Buffett's letters can be accessed at the company's website www.berkshirehathaway.com.)

There is a story that someone asked Buffett if he was ever going to retire (he is now 76), to which he answered, "Five years after I die."

George Washington, our first National Hero

Today, 2/19/07, being Presidents' Day, is a good time to look at some of our first president's, George Washington's, writings. I am using for that purpose selections from fifteen of his addresses and letters contained in A Library of American Literature, Charles Webster & Co, New York, 1892, vol. 3 (pp. 146-174). His actual birthday, of course, is February 22nd (in 1732) and, until 1970, used to be celebrated on that day; but, beginning in 1971, it has been joined with the celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday (February 12th) as Presidents' Day (on the third Monday of February).

George could be self-effacing at times. In an address to the Continental Congress on June 16, 1775, in response to his appointment as commander-in-chief of the Continental American army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, he declares:

I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.

In a letter to his wife Martha (whom he calls "Patsy") dated just two days later (June 18, 1775), he contends that:

I have used every endeavor to avoid it (his appointment), not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity...

Even in his "Farewell Address to the People of the United States of America" at the end of his presidency in 1797, he speaks of "the inferiority of my qualifications."

In a letter dated February 10, 1776 to a friend, Washington bemoans the condition of his army. He is particularly despondent over the loss of the American forces--which he did not command--to the British at the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought on June 17,1775, which the British won but at a heavy loss of their men killed.

I know the unhappy predicament I stand in; I know that much is expected of me; I know that without men, without arms, without ammunition, without anything fit for the accommodation of a soldier, little is to be done; and, what is mortifying, I know that I cannot stand justified to the world without exposing my own weakness and injuring the cause, by declaring my wants, which I am determined not to do...

Making him even more despondent is the shabby condition of his army.

So far from my having an army of twenty thousand men well armed, I have been here with less than one-half that number, including sick, furloughed, and on command, and those neither armed nor clothed, as they should be. In short, my situation has been such, that I have been obliged to use art to conceal it from my own officers.

Two years later, things have not gotten better. In a letter from Valley Forge, where he and his ragtag army have spent a miserable winter, he writes on April 21, 1778 of officers deserting:

The spirit of resigning commissions has long been at an alarming height, and increases daily...Not less than ninety have resigned to me.

In another book (The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison) it is told that he wrote to another friend, just prior to his inauguration as the first president of the new United States on April 30, 1789, of:

...an ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skills, abilities, and inclinations which is necessary to manage the helm.

Some seven months after the British were defeated at Yorktown, a colonel in the Continental army during the war, one Lewis Nicola, "acting on behalf of a group of like-minded Continental army officers, Nicola supposedly proposed to Washington that he use the army to effect a coup d'état against Congress and set himself up as a king of the United States" ("The Nicola Affair," by Robert F. Haggard, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, June 2002). Washington's response is scathing:

I must review (your proposal) with abhorrence and reprehend with severity...you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable...Let me conjure then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish those thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of a like nature.

In a letter dated April 4, 1784 to the wife of Lafayette, the French general who came to the aid of the Continental forces during the Revolution, Washington writes:

Freed from the clangor of arms and the bustle of a camp, from the cares of public employment and the responsibility of office, I am now enjoying domestic ease under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree; and in a small villa, with the implements of husbandry and lambkins around me, I expect to glide gently down the stream of life, till I am entombed in the mansion of my fathers.

However, he was not going to "glide gently down the stream of life." Four years later, he was nominated to be his country's first president. In a letter dated September 22, 1788 he writes:

Notwithstanding my advanced season of life, my increasing fondness for agricultural amusements, and my growing love of retirement (and) my decided predilection for the character of a private citizen...

he says that he will serve in that office.

In his "Farewell" address cited above, he states that:

The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism...With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits, and political Principles.

Given the partisan politics of today, we can only smile at Washington's aversion to political parties. Further in the "Farewell" address, he says:

Let me...warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party...It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

Still further, he states that:

Religion and morality are indispensable supports (to "political prosperity")...(They are the) great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.

Another of his exhortations which makes us smile today is that against foreign entanglements.

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful (he likes that word) foes of Republican Government.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little Political connections as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

After this farewell address, Washington did retire to Mount Vernon and "enjoy domestic ease under the shadow of his own vine." But for only two years. It is unfortunate that this great man was cheated out of seeing his country move into the 19th Century--he died just 18 days before that event on December 14, 1799.

Obama's poor judgment. Richardson my choice.

Until recently, Barack Obama seemed to me like an attractive new face on the political scene. Until his winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004, the vast majority of Americans had probably never heard of him. He came across to me as intelligent, articulate, and possessed of a sharp wit. In short, a man with a lot of potential for his future career.

But, lately, he seems less attractive to me. For one thing, I heard that he supported state legislatures passing laws requiring large corporations to spend a certain percentage of their payroll costs on health care for their employees (such as the law passed in Maryland in 2005). The targets of these types of legislation are companies like Wal-Mart. An argument can be made that legislation has long regulated employment practices as to child labor, workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, minimum wages, and others; so why not health care? A simple answer is that trying to solve our national health care crisis by loading more of the cost onto employers is not the way to go–instead, there is going to have to be a larger umbrella–at the national level–to deal with the problem, perhaps some form of "socialized medicine."

But more of a reason to feel that he lacks the stature of a serious candidate for the presidency is his questionable judgment. It seems that he has succumbed to the blandishments of his backers that he is, indeed, presidential material–which I believe will hurt his future opportunities. Had he decided to serve his term(s) in the Senate with distinction and/or serve an appointment to a high-level post in the Federal government, he might in ten or twelve years have earned such a stature. But, right now, his experience and background, with just two years in the Senate, doesn’t measure up as a serious candidate for the presidency.

The quip that Abraham Lincoln had only served two years in the U.S House of Representatives before coming president in 1860 (which I have heard a time or two from talking heads) has little merit as an analogy. A U.S. president today needs far greater capacity than one did 147 years ago, even considering Lincoln’s having the Civil War to deal with.

My favorite for the Democratic nomination to run for the presidency in 2008 is Bill Richardson. His resumé is very attractive: 15 years service in the U.S House of Representatives, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of Energy, and Governor of New Mexico. Additionally, his masters degree from the prestigious Tuft’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, his having grown up in Mexico City and his fluency in Spanish, his activities on the world scene in dealing with North Korea and the Darfur situation in Sudan, and his attractive personality make him an admirable candidate. However, I fear that he lacks a large enough financial war chest to come up with the 2008 nomination.

How did I ever live without an electric toothbrush?

How strange it is that I have lived four-score years and only found out this month that I need to use an electric toothbrush. Why isn’t an old-fahioned toothbrush that I have been using all these years (not the same one, of course, but many new ones of the same sort) no longer up to doing its job? Well, I got the warning from a periodontist who did her thing on me; she told me that, unless I started to use an electric brush, the plaque on my teeth would do me in. Actually, she said that my immune system was fighting hard to ward off the invasion of the bacteria from the plaque into my body.

It’s funny, I never knew that my teeth were miscreants who could do me deadly harm. I checked the periodontist’s diagnosis with my dentist–knowing very little about health matters myself, I always ask for a second opinion on such weighty matters–and was told that, yes, I should go for the electric brush.

Handily, the dentist had one in his office, in an unopened box, which I could buy for $90, which I did. But, I thought, I could probably find one at Wal-Mart or some other retailer for a lot less, in which case I would buy it and would return my $90 one for a refund. But, I went on the Internet and found this particular one (the Oral-B model 9450, which my dentist told me was superior to all others) priced at no less that $108 (plus S&H); so, I was fortunate to have paid only $90.

Although I had thought that electric toothbrushes were for the ultra-lazy, who didn’t want to expend the energy to push and pull an old-fashioned toothbrush around in their mouth, or for trendy faddists, I am now a convert.

It used to be that, when you bought an electrical appliance, you simply plugged it into an electrical outlet in the wall and, right away, started to use it. Not so any more. Anyone who has bought a TV set in recent years (other than a simple little job for less than $100) has gone through the experience of spending hours trying to set up all the software.

Although setting up the electric toothbrush wasn’t quite as complicated as doing so for a TV set, it took far more effort than removing a regular toothbrush from its package and starting to use it. First, I had to set up the "base station" that the brush handset (which looks like a small pipe bomb) sits in. Then, after setting up the base station, putting the brush handset into its proper place in the base station, removing the bottom of the base station to insert the "SmartPlug charger," and connecting it all into a wall electrical outlet, I was told I had to charge the contraption for 12 hours before using it. So, if you buy one, don’t throw away your old toothbrush until your new one is fully charged, and you know how to use it.

Don’t think I am trying to be funny when I say you have to know how to use the electric brush. There are 14 pages of instructions on how to use it in English (17 more in Spanish and French). According to the instructions, some of the procedures you have to master are:

"Personalizing" your brush: "Before getting started, you have to program your toothbrush so that it meets your specific needs." "Programming" a toothbrush? Good grief, what next?

"Brushing technique" and "Brushing modes." Never in my life had I ever thought that, one day, I would have to develop a "brushing mode."

For my use in all these "personalizing" procedures, "brushing techniques," and "brushing modes," there are four different attachments that I can put into my brush handset:

"Power tip," "Floss action," "Pro White," and another little unnamed gadget the use of which I will have to figure out.

I now see that I will have to allot extra time, after I arise in the morning, to figure out just how I am going to brush that day: Will I "Power tip" today? No, I think I did that yesterday, or was it two days ago? Maybe I should do "Floss action" today and plan to do "Pro White" tomorrow.

I can see that I will probably need to keep a diary as to how I brush each day, so that I will get each of those "brushing techniques" in their proper order. That reminds me of when I was in the fifth grade in school: our teacher required us to maintain a personal-hygiene diary, which I believe was called a "Lifebouy Health Chart" (put out for schoolchildren by the maker of Lifebouy soap). We had to enter each time we brushed our teeth, took a bath, washed out hair, drank milk, and did other healthful things. Once a week, our teacher would run down the list of things that we should have done–and, not wanting to force us to admit any shortcomings in front of the class–put us on the honor system to do those healthful things, in the future, for which we previously had been derelict.

I now shudder to think of how I might have to undergo that same ordeal, some 70 years later, when I next see my periodontist and dentist.

One man out of our 300 million population has brought this on us

A few days ago I posted a commentary entitled I s Cheney the crazy uncle in the attic? I have since come across the following bit by Hendrik Hertzberg in the 1/29/07 issue of The New Yorker. I think it sums up the sad situation that we, as a nation, are now in.

The day after the address, Vice-President Cheney—in an instantly notorious CNN interview in which he dismissed talk of blunders as “hogwash”—said, “The critics have not suggested a policy.” That is hogwash.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is in its fourth week of hearing such suggestions. The Iraq Study Group has a plan. Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb have a plan. The Center for American Progress has a plan. But what all their plans have in common is that they recognize that what remains is the search for the least bad of a bad bunch of options. Implicitly, they recognize that Bush’s policy—and, therefore, Bush—is a failure. And so, rather than looking for a policy that might be within our means and might mitigate the disaster, Bush is betting all his chips—all our chips—on the only choice that allows him the fantasy that in the end people will say: Bush was right. He is sending twenty thousand because twenty thousand is all he has. Next to nothing in the way of ground forces remains for other contingencies. His Presidency and his “legacy” are in ruins anyway, so he imagines he has nothing to lose. If only that were true of the rest of us.

I have long felt that tying down a major part of our military forces—not to mention the loss of life, the many wounded, and the draining of our financial resources--in this horribly mismanaged adventure in Iraq has left us with virtually no resources available to face off enemies that we may have to be fighting in any future unavoidable confrontation.

It is tragic that one individual—yes, just one man out of over 300 million of our population, our president, George Bush--is primarily responsible for bringing our nation to this demeaning condition.

Is Cheney the crazy uncle in the attic?

There is reason to think that Vice President Dick Cheney has drifted away from the Bush party line on Iraq and is wandering somewhere out in Dreamland. One can draw that conclusion from his remarks in an interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN on 1/24/07, the day after Bush’s State of the Union address to Congress. In his earlier televised address to the nation--in which he told of the "surge" of troops he plans to send into Iraq--Bush admitted that “mistakes have been made” (note the passive “have been made”), for which he has to be held ultimately accountable.

Notwithstanding Bush’s belated, grudging recognition of the disastrous situation in Iraq, Cheney says:

The reality on the ground is, we’ve made major progress…there’s been a lot of success.

In response to Blitzer’s comment “…some of your good Republican friends in the Senate and the House are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures.”

Cheney responded:

Wolf, Wolf, I simply don’t accept the premise of your question. I just think its hogwash.

Referring to these comments by Cheney, David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, called him “delusional” (on the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS on 1/26/07). It should be noted that Brooks is no “left wing liberal” but is usually around Center or a bit to the right of it.

Or an alternative conclusion about Cheney’s role might be that it is a clever ploy by the Bush administration (perhaps concocted by Karl Rove) to have him (Cheney) out there saying things that Bush would like to say, but knows that he would look even worse if he did so.

The minimum wage: then and now

Currently, a bill has been passed in the U.S. House of Representatives to increase, in three steps over 26 months, the minimum wage from its present $5.15 per hour to $7.25, and now is before the Senate.

The minimum wage is a floor for all workers in the USA; however, some states have even higher minimums. But it was not always so. In the summer of 1942, when I was in my teens, I worked for the Army Corps of Engineers on a labor crew clearing land of brush and small trees on which an army camp (Camp Butner) was being built in North Carolina, 15 miles from my hometown. (I fibbed about my age to get the job; the time was only seven months after we went to war following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and there was a big rush to get military installations built, so no one seemed to be very fussy about the age of needed workers.) The Federal minimum wage was then 40 cents per hour (with time-and-a-half over 40 hours a week), so, if I worked a full six-day week of 48 hours, I got $20.80 (before tax withholding). I couldn’t always get in 48 hours of work because of rain interruptions.

Apparently that 40 cents applied only to Federal workers (and possibly to large companies engaged in interstate commerce). So, when I went back to high school in the fall, I went to work in a J. C. Penney store, afternoons after school and on Saturdays, at 25 cents per hour; I later got a raise to 30 cents.

During the intervening years from that 25 cents an-hour job in 1942 to 2003 (my final year of doing part-time consulting work after I retired from full-time work in 1992) I did better: my hourly rate went to $115, a 45,900% increase, in nominal dollars, over the 25 cents.

Youthful deaths

Reading American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever, an interesting account of life of the literati (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and others) in Concord, Mass. during the 19th Century, brings to my mind the frequent deaths of young people during that era. The great majority of those deaths would probably have been avoided by today’s medical care.

Cheever tells that Ralph Waldo Emerson--the noted essayist, orator, and author--born in Boston in 1803, was the third of six boys born to his parents. Only he and a mentally handicapped brother survived past age 30: two died in childhood and two others died before age 30. Emerson himself knew early death when his first wife, Ellen Tucker, who was 18 when he married her, died of consumption two years later. Later, he married Lydia (Lidian) Jackson, who bore three children, one of whom, Waldo, died of scarlet fever at age 5.

Giuseppe Verdi—the world-renowned opera composer (La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, Il Trovatore, Nabucco, and many others)—born in Italy in 1813, lost the first of his children at age 17months in 1838 and the second a year later at 16 months; both deaths were from unknown causes. His wife, Margherita, then died a year later of encephalitis, at age 27. However, Verdi himself lived to the ripe age of 87, dying in 2001. (Following his first wife’s death, he lived for many years with, and later married, the Italian soprano Giuseppina Strepponi.)

Early deaths were also in my father’s family—of six children born to his parents, three died (during the years 1879-91) at ages ranging from 12 months to 7 years. His father died in 1897, at age 61, from pleurisy, an infection relating to the lungs. I had the same thing a few years ago—the symptoms of which were a pain in the ribs area—which was easily cleared up by an antibiotic.

However, not all families during the 19th Century were so unfortunate. My mother, who was born in 1885 and lived to age 87, was one of fourteen children born to her parents, only one of whom died at an early age.

Three Cheers for Charles Dickens

I have just finished watching an episode of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, a re-run of the series done several years ago by Masterpiece Theater on public television. Masterpiece Theater has done other Dickens novels that I can recall, among them David Copperfield and Martin Chuzzlewit. All were beautifully done. While Masterpiece Theater also deserves credit for presentations of modern fiction—I recall The Rector’s Wife, several years ago, as an excellent example—some of its nineteenth-century works, other than those of Dickens, I have found a bit trying.

However, I find the Dickens presentations by Masterpiece Theater entrancing: the framing of the 500-plus pages of the novels into a TV production, the casting of the multitude of characters in the novels, the filming of 19th Century London, the occasional music. When watching them, I am taken back to the days when I was around eight to ten years old and played a card game “The Game of Authors” with two of my uncles. The cards had suits of different American and British 19th Century authors, the object being, by discarding and drawing, to build four of a suit. That way, I became familiar with Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Makepeace Thackeray, and many others.

Among all the crap that TV offers, it is delightful to find an occasional jewel like the Masterpiece Theater productions of the Dickens novels.

Mycroft goes to court

One of my pastimes is attending criminal trials in courtrooms around the world. Although not a lawyer, I get my kicks from reading (fictional) murder mysteries and following (real-life) criminal trials in the media and sometimes in-person in the courtroom.

I have attended criminal trials in the following places.

USA
Oxford, NC
Granville County, NC
Durham, NC
Baltimore County, MD
Baltimore City, MD
Baltimore City, MD (Federal Courthouse)
New York City
New York City (Federal courthouse)
York, PA

Canada
Montreal, Quebec
St. Johns, Newfoundland

Europe
London, England (Old Bailey)
Paris, France
Laon, France
Madrid, Spain
Rhodes, Greece
Aylesbury, England
Edinburgh, Scotland
Reykjavik, Iceland (civil court only)

Caribbean
Fort-de-France, Martinique, French West Indies
Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, French West Indies
Roseau, Dominica, West Indies
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies
Willemstad, Curaçao, West Indies

South America
Cayenne, French Guiana
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Santiago, Chile
La Paz, Bolivia

Some of those places I have visited only once, others several or many times. Following are some recollections of my visits.

New York City (Federal court): In 1949, I visited the jury trial of eleven top leaders of the American Communist Party before Judge Harold Medina on charges of conspiring to violently overthrow the United States government. They were all found guilty and sentenced to prison by Judge Medina.

Old Bailey, London: During my many visits there, the ones that stick in my mind are:

In 1954, the crew of a Polish freighter had mutinied and taken the ship into British waters—six or eight of the leaders of the crew were on trial for mutiny. This event, which occurred during the height of the Cold War, gained worldwide public attention (it was covered by Time magazine, among other media). Sir Hartley Shawcross was the presiding judge at the non-jury trial (Sir Hartley had been a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals and had also been prosecutor in several British high-profile trials of the 1940’s and 1950’s).

There were interpreters of Polish to assist the defendants during the trial. My recollection is that the defendants were acquitted on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction by British courts in the matter.

In 1989, the trial of several men (six or eight, I believe) who were charged with savagely beating to death a boy in his early teens. The details of the crime testified to by police and other witnesses were gruesome.

The following year, 1990, the high-profile trial of a scientist for General Electric in Britain who was charged with violation of the Government Secrets Act by conveying certain classified information to agents of a foreign government.

In 2004, the trial of about six young Asian men (Pakistanis, I believe) for the killing of another Asian man in a robbery that turned into murder.

Not having followed the last three trials to their conclusion, I don’t know their outcome.

St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada: The trial that my wife and attended in 1994 was of a pimp who was recruiting underage girls for prostitution. Several years later, I saw a film which told the supposedly true story of a Catholic home for boys in which some of the priests sexually abused the boys. Years later, the priests were brought to trial, at which some of the boys (now men) testified against them. The filming of that trial was in the very same courtroom which we had visited.

Cayenne, French Guiana: There, in 2002, I walked right into the courtroom carrying a tote bag. There was no security to check me out; I could have easily been carrying a weapon in the bag. Yet, when about a dozen men were brought in for arraignment, all handcuffed together, there almost 20 cops in the room. No one to stop me (or anyone else) from entering the courtroom with a weapon, but 20 cops to guard 12 handcuffed men. Ah yes, the French have their own inscrutable ways--I learned that when I worked for an American-based imternational oil company in what, at the time (1953-54), was French West Africa.

Before the court proceeding began, I had an interesting conversation with the gendarmerie captain in charge of the court security. Among other things, he explained something I had observed all over France (metropolitan and overseas) and had long wondered about: the difference between the Police Nationale (who have that patch on their sleeves and wear particular headgear) and the gendarmes (who wear the Foreign Legion type caps). Essentially, according to him, the Police are just that: members of a national police force; the gendarmes, on the other hand, are part of the French army. In actual practice, they share law enforcement duties.

Durham, NC: In 2003, the trial of Michael Peterson for the murder of his wife. I first heard about the case when Katie Couric (then the co-anchor of the NBC morning show) talked to a Court TV reporter about it—due to several of its bizarre aspects, Couric commented that it sounded like an Agatha Christie whodunit.

Michael and Kathleen Peterson were a well-to-do couple, in their fifties, living in Durham. In December 2001 Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of a stairway in their upscale home, apparently having fallen down it; however, Michael was charged with murder based on the allegation that he had, first, bludgeoned her and the pushed her down the steps.

There were several attention-drawing aspects of the case which brought about continuing coverage of the trial by Court TV and the national media.

--The body of a female acquaintance of Michael Peterson who had died in a similar (falling down the steps) accident some years before was exhumed from its grave, with the result that a pathologist report stated that the cause of death was the result of having been struck on the head with a blunt instrument.

--The bi-sexual characteristic of Michael’s nature came to light when a male escort testified at the trial—over the strong objection of defense counsel—that Michael had contacted him for a “date” (which never actually took place).

--The extended family of the Petersons was violently divided: Michael’s adult son by a previous marriage and the two young adult daughters who had been adopted by Michael and Kathleen—and who were the biological daughters of the first woman to die falling down the steps—sat on one side of the courtroom and strongly supported Michael. On the other side of the courtroom sat Kathleen’s twenty-something daughter by a previous marriage and her father (Kathleen’s former husband), who were equally strongly opposed to Michael.

--The well-known forensic scientist Henry Lee (famous for his testimony in the O.J trial) testified.

Another noteworthy aspect was that the presiding judge was Orlando Hudson, a black man--something that would have been unimaginable in North Carolina forty or more years previously. I thought that the judge handled the case admirably.

The trial began in June and lasted until October 2003. Before going down to attend the trial, I read about it in the Durham Herald Sun and phoned that paper’s reporter to ask if, because of its notoriety, it would be difficult to get into the courtroom—to which he answered no. So, the first day that I attended, in mid-July, I made the reporter’s acquaintance and we had lunch together each day that I attended. I got a lot of interesting background on the case from him.

Back home, I followed the trial on Court TV and other media. I had all along guessed that the result would be like the OJ case: guilty but acquitted. I was very surprised when, on October 10, 2003, the jury returned a guilty verdict and Michael Peterson was sentenced right then by Judge Hudson to life without parole.

La Paz, Bolivia: I attended a court session there in May 2005. In addition to the three judges that are usual in non-Anglo Saxon courtrooms, there were two others identified by placards in front of them as being from other government departments.

In a highway robbery case, a police officer was called to testify. The chief judge asked the officer if he believed in God, to which he responded yes; next he was asked if he was Catholic, to which he again responded yes. At that point the judge read an oath—during which everyone stood up, the court officials and the audience; when the officer accepted the oath, everyone sat back down. The same procedure was repeated when a witness was called to testify.

Rhodes, Greece: When my wife and I were on a cruise of the Greek islands in 1997, I wandered around Rhodes on my own when I saw, among a block of government buildings, an open door with a crowd of people milling about inside and outside the building. I wandered in (again, like French Guiana, no security to stop me) and found a court in session. There were very animated exchanges between court officials and the man and woman in the dock and, also, between the judges themselves (of whom there were five or six).

Knowing virtually no Greek, I had no idea what the court procedure was all about. However, I asked a group of cops outside if any spoke English (I had learned how to ask that in Greek), to which one young officer said he did, whereupon I asked him what the charges against the defendant were. When he shrugged that he didn’t know the English term, I gave him my English-Greek dictionary and he pointed to the Greek word that translated to “theft/embezzlement.”

Later, as I was walking back to the ship, I saw at a fruit stand a man whom I had seen in the courtroom, whom I took to be a prosecutor. When I discovered that he spoke some English, I asked him what the trial was all about, to which he said with a heavy accent, “Much money.”

Military doctors: then and now

Today on C-SPAN an army doctor was describing his experience at army hospitals in Iraq. His descriptions of the pain and suffering and the severity of wounds of the American troops and Iraqi civilians were gruesome indeed; his describing how soldiers cope with life after losing two or three limbs from their battle wounds was extremely touching. His commentary brought two things to my mind:

My antipathy toward George Bush for having brought on this ill-conceived, ill-managed war, thus causing these horrible stories.

Mt great grandfather’s experiences as a military doctor during the Mexican War and the Civil War. (I included these experiences in a posting entitled Surfing American history through Great Grandpa on 2/23/06.)

During the Mexican War he was a physician in the U.S. Navy. In a letter to his fiancée (later my great grandmother), dated October 1, 1846, written on board the Navy frigate Potomac en route to Vera Cruz, and posted at Pensacola, he wrote:

Our sick list has greatly diminished. We are getting rid of the scurvy very fast. A few weeks more will free us entirely of it...In addition to an extraordinary heavy sick list on board ship, we have 40 odd cases of (yellow) fever to attend to in the Navy Yard.

He added in that letter that he, too, had been sick with a fever.

Later, after North Carolina seceded from the Union, he joined the Confederate army as a physician. He wrote several letters to his family back home from the field of battle near Richmond. In one, dated June 6, 1864, he wrote:

I have been worked down and there is no end of it–I have never seen so many wounded men together as I have seen in the Yankee Hospital–800 or more all desperately wounded. My hands have been in dreadful condition from wounds received in operating on them.

I can only guess what he meant by the “Yankee Hospital”—possibly he was treating captured Union troops who had been wounded in battle.

In another letter, dated August 17, 1864, he wrote:

The Yanks are very near here, have been fighting for two days–shot and shell flying all in sight of my hospital. It is possible I shall have to move out of the building tomorrow.

After hearing the military doctor describe the terrible ordeal of treating badly wounded soldiers in Iraq--terrible even with all the techniques of modern medicine—I think how much worse it must have been for my great grandfather, 142 years ago, who had only the techniques of that day to work with.

The randomness of life

Being on a current existentialism reading jag, I am reminded of the randomness of life.

When I came to Baltimore to live in 1955 I knew absolutely no one here; however, I began attending services at its historic First Unitarian Church (at which William Ellery Channing delivered his famous sermon defining Unitarianism in 1819), where I made some acquaintances. One of these invited me to attend a Great Books summer reading group—this group followed the national Great Books reading program during most of the year but went for more light stuff during the summer.

Being a young bachelor at the time, at the first meeting of this group that I attended I naturally took note of some of the young women who were present. Before the next meeting, I thought of two of these that I would like to get to know. For whatever reason that I can’t now recall, I decided that, of the two, Anne would be the one that I would approach—my pitch would be (please pardon the pun) an invitation to go to a Baltimore Orioles baseball game for which I already had two tickets.

So, at an informal get-together at the home of one of the members of the reading group following the next meeting, I planned to ask Anne for a date to go to the ball game; however, after we all had picked up some snack food and sodas and taken seats in the living room, there were others sitting on either side of Anne. But there was a seat available on one side of Sally, the other young woman of the two whom I had taken note of. The conversation with her went thus:

I: Do you like baseball?

Sally: I hate it.

I: I have two tickets to an Orioles game on (whatever date). Would you like to go?

Sally: I’d love to.

A few days later—a week or so before the game—thinking that it would be a good idea for Sally and me to get together to better know each other, I phoned her at the law office where she worked as a legal assistant and made a date. The next day we went for drinks to Marty’s Park Plaza, a popular spot at Baltimore’s lovely Mount Vernon Place. (Marty's is one of the few such places in Baltimore that still exists.)

Following that first date at Marty’s and the baseball game, one thing led to another and, two years later, we were married at the First Unitarian Church. (Some years later, our two children were dedicated there.)

And, as such stories end, “They lived happily ever after”—well, sort of. Fast-forward 49 years: in another ten months (in October 2007) we will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, and we have five grandchildren.

Suppose, as the random event could have had it, the available seat would have been next to Anne—what would have been the further course of her life, of Sally’s, of mine? Of course, we’ll never know. The thought reminds me of the song from Naughty Marietta “Ah, sweet mystery of life.”

Great minds thinking alike

In reading An Introduction to Existentialism by Robert G. Olson, I came across the following commentary by the author of the question that the French existentialist Gabriel Marcel posed of his own existence.

Why, he (Marcel) asks in extreme wonder, does he exist as an author at a particular point in the space-time of the modern world writing a book on philosophy? Why is he not rather a leper at a point of space-time in the medieval world ringing his warning bell as he approaches a walled city. (p. 41)

It reminded me that I posed the same question in my very first posting to this blog (on 1/16/06).

The biggest "Why"? The largest question for anyone is “Why was I born when I was, where I was, who I was?" For me, that is: Why was I born in 19__, in a small tobacco town in North Carolina, a white male?

Why not a black female in Senegal in the 1600's? Or a male in China in the fifth century BC?

It seems likely to me that I was born in the past as someone else, somewhere else–perhaps many times. And that it will happen again when I leave this life. Why? It’s difficult to explain a feeling, but I’ll try by saying that it doesn’t seem that the “I” that I know existed only one time in the infinite sweep of history.

Mr. Olson adds another voice to the question—that of Blaise Pascal.

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened. I am astonished at being here rather than there. Why now rather than then!

The tragedy of the George Bush presidency

The following commentary from the December 2006 issue of Current History (p. 403) is the most succinct description that I have seen of the terrible damage that the presidency of George Bush has done to our country and to the world. The tragedy is that actions taken in a short period of time—the almost six years of his tenure—will take decades, with striving and good fortune, to repair.

Voters delivered a ringing repudiation of the president in the November congressional elections. But his policies had already diminished America’s constitutional strength and moral authority. Instead of building on the spirit of national unity that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, the White House divided and weakened the country by converting the war on terror into an instrument for instilling fear, bashing opponents, smothering checks and balances, and seizing more power for the executive.

The cost to American values has been high…The damage extends not merely to the nation and its reputation but across the world, in part because the administration has also squandered America’s traditional role of global leadership. The United States has lost prestige and power at a time when the world needs US help to strengthen the capacity of international institutions to address complex and daunting problems…

Declining US legitimacy and swelling anti-Americanism compound the difficulty, too, of democratic reform within countries…And now America, hobbled and distracted, its moral beacon dimmed, has less ability to help or inspire.

College football: then and now

In my dusty attic I keep a stack of college football yearbooks, individual game programs, my personal football scrapbook (kept in 1939), and other similar paraphernalia dating mostly from the 1930’s and 1940’s. (This is the same dusty attic in which I found the Emily Post book Etiquette, which was the subject of my previous posting “Proper manners: then and now” on 11/16/06.)

Thumbing through the pages of Illustrated Football Annual for 1940 and the Street & Smith’s Football Yearbook for 1940, so many differences between college football then and now come to the eye.

Race/ethnicity of players. Each of these publications has numerous photographs of individual players as well as action photos of games from 1939. In the Illustrated Football Annual, with two possible exceptions, every player was white and none had ethnic names other than some denoting Polish ancestry. (The two possible exceptions as to all white players—their black-and-white photos weren’t conclusive—were one Lou Montgomery, a back at Boston College, and Jerry Courtney, a back at Syracuse.) The Street & Smith Yearbook did better: it pictured Jackie Robinson, who was a back at UCLA before he went on to fame as the first black to break the baseball color barrier in 1947 when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The latter publication also went on to mention a Kenny Washington, a halfback, also at UCLA, who had graduated after the 1939 season. It went on to refer to Washington as a “great Negro halfback whom Western critics agreed was a finer back than any other in the West,” and to Robinson as “another Negro star of 1939…” Also pictured was a black player, an Archie Harris, a back at Indiana, of whom it said that he “gets praise for defensive play.” Today, it appears from watching football on TV, that more than half the college and professional players are black.

The Street & Smith Yearbook also described a pictured player at Oklahoma as an American Indian, saying about him: “Palefaces took land from his forefathers, and winning it back, yard by yard, for the Oklahoma team is Jack Jacobs.” It is hard to imagine such a comment in today’s politically correct world.

Size and weight of players. I guess that the average lineman (offensive and defensive) on the NCAA-IA teams (the major schools) today weighs somewhere between 230-260 pounds; of course, this average includes the few scrawny ones who weigh around 215 along with the behemoths of well over 300 pounds. The backs probably average well over 200, probably 210-220.

Let’s look at the weights of the No. 2 and the no. 3 teams in the country in 1939 as ranked in the Illustrated Football Annual for 1940 (more about the ranking system below). I don’t know who the no. 1 team was because my copy of the publication has the last few pages missing—the alphabetical listing stops with Southern California--so the no. 1 team must have been somewhere between S and Z. No. 2 was Cornell, whose 16 lineman averaged 191 pounds (the heaviest was 222) and 12 backs averaged 182 (the heaviest 205). No. 3 was Southern California, who had 17 linemen at an average 199 (the heaviest 221) and 12 backs who averaged 184 (the heaviest 197). A tackle at Harvard was of such spectacular weight that he was described as “Gargantuan Vern Miller, 265 pounds of beef on the hoof…”

Endicott Peabody III, a former governor of Massachusetts, was an All-American guard at Harvard in 1941, at a hefty 185 pounds—in fact, he was given the nickname of “Chub.” During the Jimmy Carter administration in the late 1970’s he had an appointed post in Washington (I forget just what it was), at which time I chanced to be seated next to him at a luncheon there. I told him that I remembered his football career, and brought up the difference in the weight of college players during his time and those of the current time; he told me that his son had tried out for the Harvard team when he weighed about 200 pounds, but was cut because he was too light.

Uniforms. Helmets were less round back then, they were more like crowns, and had no face masks (except for the occasional player who had had a broken nose or other facial injury). Jerseys were long-sleeved, unlike the short sleeves of today, and rarely had any markings other than the player’s number on the front and back—there were no school names, no players' names, no numbers on the sleeves. There were no school initials or other adornments on the helmets. Players didn’t wear gloves. And players on a team wore the same socks, usually white anklets or, less often, knee-length socks along with the white anklets. But all of them on the team wore the same—unlike the sloppy mess today of some teams whose players wear short, ugly, black anklets that barely come over the shoe top, while others on the same team wear white or black knee-length socks without accompanying anklets.

Officials. In the old days there were four officials: referee, umpire, head linesman, and field judge—about the same basic positions as today, except that now there are also line, back, and side judges. The officials wore the same striped shirts back then but didn’t have numbers on them. Of course, there were no instant replays whereby the officials could review their calls.

Other differences. Back then there was no electronic real-time communication between the coach, an assistant coach in the upper stands to call plays, and the quarterback. In fact, at one time there was a penalty for “coaching from the sidelines.”

Before there was TV, radio broadcasts of games required more skillful announcers and imaginative listeners.

Football stadiums were often named after wealthy alumni who had financed their construction, or enlargement. There were no corporate-named fields.

Prior to World War II, there were just five bowl games: Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and Sun. The first post-WW II bowl was the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, which began on January 1, 1946 (two other bowls also opened that year but didn’t survive). There were no corporate-named bowl games, as there are today.

Teams in the 1930's and 1940's played from the wing formation (single wing right, single wing left, double wing). An exception was Stanford, who in 1940 started the "T" formation, with Frank Albert at quarterback. Around 1950 teams began to shift to the "T" and the shotgun.

Today a player on a team may be in any class from freshman to senior. Not so prior to World War II--then, freshmen at a college had their own team, which played a schedule against freshman teams at other schools; only when they became sophomores were they eligible for the varsity.

There was no two-point conversion back then.

Players didn't have tattoos.

Football teams weren't referred to as "programs."

Low scoring then, high scoring now. Many games during the 1930’s and 1940’s ended with low scores--14-7, 10-3, 7-6 were typical, especially among evenly matched teams; 20, 30, or more points by one team usually were in mismatches where that team was playing a weak opponent. There were even some 0-0 ties (those were the days before the tie-breaker rule). An example is the 7-3 victory of Southern California over Duke in the 1939 Rose Bowl.

Today scores are likely to be double-digit points on both sides—the 42-39 victory of Ohio State over Michigan, the no. 1 and no. 2 teams in the country respectively at the time of their meeting on Nov. 18, 2006 , had a lot of scoring even for today, but wasn’t unusual. Why, then, today’s higher scoring?

Higher scoring is usually indicative of more skilled players on the participating teams. It seems there are better players today because (1) there is a larger pool of high school players that colleges can recruit (just because the general population of the country is much larger); (2) every team today has three platoons—offense, defense, and special teams—whereas teams in earlier periods usually had an eleven-man first-team that played most of the entire sixty minutes of a game, while second and third-team players were used sparingly; and (3) in the earlier years there were almost no black players (except at black colleges), whereas today they are a majority of the team at just about every college in the country.

National Rankings. Today only the top 25 teams in the country are ranked as the season progresses—the rankings are by four different groups, of which the Associated Press rankings are the oldest and the most often referred to as the football season progresses. However, every team in the Illustrated Football Annual for 1940 was given a national ranking for the 1939 season, which was done by an “AZZIRATEM System,” a system about which no information was provided (since the system functioned long before there were computers, it must have required a tremendous amount of manual number-crunching).

As mentioned above, Cornell was no. 2 and Southern California no. 3 in 1939 (because of missing pages, I can’t find no. 1). Duke, which rarely wins a game today, was no. 5 in 1939. Today’s no. 1, Ohio State (as of this writing), was no. 16 in 1939; no. 2 today, Michigan, was no. 17; Southern California is no. 3 today and was the same in 1939; Notre Dame, no. 6 today was no. 8 in 1939.

Florida State was nowhere to be seen in the 1940 yearbooks. The reason, as I learned from the school's website, was that football there had been abandoned in 1905 and was not started up again until 1947.

The highest (worst) ranking in 1939 was Hartwick College’s 529, who lost 6 games and tied 1 (at 0-0) and went scoreless in 4 games and scored only 21 points all season; it has done a little better this year at 4-6. Second worst was Blue Ridge College’s 513, whose record was 2-6; it went scoreless in three of its games and only scored 36 points all season; the school went out of business in 1944. The third worst was N.Y. State University at Buffalo at 503; it hasn’t done much better this year, having won only two of its twelve games. Fourth worst was University of Rochester at 458, who lost all 7 of its games, going scoreless in 5 of them and scoring only 12 points all season; however, it has done considerably better this year, having won 7 of its 11 games. (As mentioned above, I am missing pages with part of the letter S through Z, so there could have been some worse rankings, but, if so, I would just as soon not know about them.)

Former teams that don’t exist today. The following schools fielded teams in 1940 but don’t now (their national ranking in 1939 is in parentheses): Bradley Tech (118), City College of N.Y, now City University of New York (468), Drexel Tech (380), Manhattan College (54), Marquette University (77), New York University (45), Niagara University (319), St. Bonaventure (265), Scranton University (80), University of San Francisco (99), University of Detroit (38), and the hapless Blue Ridge College referred to above. There are probably others that I didn’t catch.

It' good to see that Hartwick College played just as good back then as they do now. --Posted by Nominal Me to Rambling Musings of Mycroft Watson at 11/26/2006 08:56:39 AM

Hey, Nominal Me, Hartwick should be commended for its consistency. My alma mater, University of North Carolina, was 9 wins, 1 tie my senior year (1948 football season); this year they are 3-7. Mycroft

Proper manners: then and now

While rummaging among some dust-covered books in my attic recently, I came across Etiquette by Emily Post, which was originally published in 1922.Mrs. Post was well-known to most us of advanced years as the final word on manners, good and bad. Some of her pronouncements make good sense today, others seem quaint, and yet others appear affected, even for 1922.

Following are some of her choice pointers:

Proper dress for male college students. The best description of a college boy’s clothes would be that they were those which suit his type (she doesn’t provide any description of the “type” she has in mind). In its best expression it is merely the result of rather loosely fitted clothes that have a comfortably worn look, a collar not too high nor too tight, tie neither too thick nor too stiff, comfortable woolen socks and thick-soled shoes. (p. 734).

Proper dress for female college students. Here Mrs. Post talks of knit skirts with matching blouses, “two suits of tweed…and several sweater blouses of varying lengths.” And, of course there must be evening gowns for formal occasions and, also, “a dress or two to wear under a coat to church on Sundays or to town for lunch on Saturdays.”

One has to laugh at these dicta—a collar not too high, a necktie; knit skirts and matching blouses, sweater blouses--when one sees college students today. Most likely they are wearing blue jeans (with ripped-out holes around the knees) or shorts, along with Army surplus flack jackets, work shoes of the type worn by laborers or $120 name brand sneakers, and T-shirts with all manner of inscriptions on them. And, of course, baseball-type caps (often turned backwards).

When I was a college student back in the 1940’s the attire called for by Mrs. Post was pretty much the standard. Both by my recollection and by looking at my college yearbooks, men wore long trousers, button-up shirts (sometimes, incredibly, with a necktie) or T-shirts in warm weather with no inscriptions on them other than maybe the name of the college in small letters around the pocket (and perhaps the football team’s mascot). And, oh yes, they usually wore white buckskin shoes (loafers were a secondary choice).

College women most often wore skirts and sweaters and saddle Oxford shoes. Slacks were only worn for picnics and other very informal social occasions.

Hallmarks of a “gentleman.” Mrs. Post sets all manner of booby traps around the man who aspires to be a gentleman; he had best write them down and study them daily lest he inadvertently trip up one day and forfeit that distinction.

The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word and the incorruptibility of his principles; he is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice—or he is not a gentleman. (p. 616)

A very well-bred man intensely dislikes the mention of money and never speaks of it (out of business hours) if he can avoid it. (p. 616)

A man of honor never seeks publicly to divorce his wife…but for the protection of his own name, or that of the children, he allows her to get her freedom…the man who publicly besmirches his wife’s name, besmirches still more his own, and proves that he is not, was not, and never will be, a gentleman. (p. 617)

No gentleman goes to a lady’s house if he is affected by alcohol. (p. 617)

A gentleman does not bow to a lady from a club window; nor according to good form should ladies ever be discussed in a man’s club! (p. 617). Hey, I can get by on that one—I have never bowed to a lady from a club window. Nor have I discussed ladies in a club, mainly because I never knew anything titillating enough to interest anyone in a club (also because I have only belonged to two clubs, each for only a brief period of time).

Introduction of a gentleman to a lady. The genteel way for a gentleman who is visiting or moving to a city new to him, and wants to meet a lady in that city, is to obtain a letter of introduction from a mutual friend. However, there are strict rules to be followed:

A letter of introduction is handed you (the gentleman) unsealed, always. It is correct for you to seal it at once in the presence of its author…If you are a man and your introduction is to a lady, you go to her house as soon as you arrive in her city, and leave the letter with your card* at her door, without asking to see her. (This obviously means that she has a maid or some other servant who will answer the door.) She should—unless prevented by illness—at once invite you to tea or to lunch or to dinner or at least name an hour when she will receive you. ( p.20)

* According to Mrs. P., everyone older than a toddler must have a visiting card; she even prescribes their dimensions (one set of dimensions for a married woman and another for “very young girls”). “That very little children should have visiting cards is not so ‘silly’ as might at first thought be supposed,” she says. “Many mothers think it is good training in social personality for children to have their own cards, even though they are used only to send with gifts and upon very rare occasions.” (p. 115)

Highway etiquette. In addition to common sense actions while driving a car, such as avoiding impatient maneuvers or giving in to road rage, she lists the signals that drivers should give by sticking their left arm out the window: hand held flat (slowing down or stopping), finger pointing straight out (left turn), arm bent at the elbow with hand raised (right turn). I well remember those signals from the days when I first drove a car—there were no built-in turn signals or rear lights flashing as the brakes were applied.

On Mrs. Post. According to the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, she was born Emily Price into a high-society family in Baltimore in 1873. At age 19 she married Edwin Main Post, a society banker in New York, and had two sons by him; they were divorced in 1905 (when she was 32) “due to her husband’s infidelity.” She wrote books and magazine articles on various topics, but her Etiquette was by far her most successful work. She died in 1960 at age 86.

The latest edition of Etiquette (apparently its 18th, published in 2006) is available through on-line booksellers.

Less creativity in this year's elections mudslinging

Although the mudslinging during this year’s election season was as nasty as ever, it didn’t seem to be as creative. Consider the following zinger said to have been made by Senator Smathers of Florida fifty or so years ago when he was addressing an audience of rubes in a rural part of the state.

“I want you to know that my opponent is a thespian. And not only that, he engages in nepotism with his sister.”

I didn’t see or hear one this year to match that in creativity.

The agony caused by 537 votes

With the November 7th election results in—and with the closeness of some of the races—now is a good time to reflect on the agony that 537 votes has caused. Yes, FIVE-HUNDRED-THIRTY-SEVEN--not 537 thousand, just plain 537. One race this week was reported to be too close to call when there was a difference of about seven thousand, with a few ballots left to count (the Webb-Allen Senate race in Virginia).

Yes, just 537 votes was the total by which George Bush was finally reckoned to have beaten Al Gore in Florida in the 2000 presidential race (after a delay of 36 days as hanging chads, punched holes, and other eccentricities of the Florida ballots were dealt with). By winning Florida’s 25 electoral votes, Bush’s edge was a mere 5 electoral votes (271 to 266).

Note: According to History of American Presidential Elections 1789-2001 (vol. XI), edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Fred L. Israel, and William P. Hanson, Chelsea House Publishers, Bush received 2,912,790 votes in Florida to Gore's 2,912,253—a difference of 537.

It is hard to imagine that just 537 alleged voters were responsible for all the misery that the election of George Bush has inflicted on our country, and on Iraq. Of course, we will never know what Al Gore’s performance as president might have been, but I can’t conceive of his having caused more damage than Bush has done. (Anyone interested in the reasons for my disparagement of Bush’s presidency can find them in my 5/20/06 posting “The Worst President in History?” under the paragraph headed My charges against Bush.)

Recent readings: "What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat"

What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat by Louise Richardson, Random House, New York 2006, 312 pages

In her book Ms. Richardson makes a strong argument for not being carried away by fear and loathing of terrorists’ atrocities in the United States on 9/11 and in other countries around the world. She is a lecturer at Harvard and is dean of Harvard’s affiliate the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Rather, she says, we of the western world should make a genuine effort to understand the motivations of the terrorists and to devise rational ways to protect ourselves from them. She talks not only of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists but also of other terrorist organizations in other places and times: the Shining Path in Peru, the FARC in Colombia, the Basque ETA in Spain, the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, the Irish Republican Army, the Red Brigades in Italy, and others.

First, she makes the argument that terrorists are not greatly different emotionally from the rest of us.

...terrorists...are, by and large, not crazy at all...the one shared characteristic of terrorists is their normalcy, insofar as we understand the term...Some are introverted, some extroverted: some loud, some shy; some confident, some nervous...Terrorists see the world in Manichean, black-and-white terms; they identify with others and they desire revenge. They have a highly oversimplified view of the world in which good is pitted against evil and in which their adversaries are to blame for all their woes. (p. 41)

Most of the leaders of the Islamic militants are well educated, many with advanced university degrees. Three conditions are usually required for the making of an individual terrorist: dedication to a cause, an enabling structure (an organization for him to join), and an overarching ideology.

The author discusses the question of the extent to which states sponsor terrorist organizations–she argues that generally “terrorism is the behavior of substate groups”. But she does contend that some countries do, at certain times, sponsor terrorist groups; the Soviet Union and Cuba did so in the 1970's, Iran and Libya in the 1980's, and Iraq and Syria in the 1990's. And the USA would, in the opinion of those in the world who dislike us, also fall into that category given our support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the mujahedin in Afghanistan, those who would overthrow Castro in Cuba, and those who did overthrow Allende in Chile.

More and more impoverished people in the world resent the USA because of our wealth:

With global mass communications and American TV shows broadcasting American affluence around the world, it is not difficult to mobilize a sense of resentment of American wealth. Previously one compared oneself to others nearby, but the contrast between American wealth and Arab poverty is now being broadcast daily into people’s tiny homes. (p. 56)

In a chapter entitled “Why the War on Terror Can Never Be Won” the author comments:

When the history of the immediate post-9/11 years comes to be written, it will be seen as a period marked by two major mistakes and two major missed opportunities. The mistakes were a declaration of war against terrorism and the conflation of the threat from al-Qaeda with the threat from Saddam Hussein. The missed opportunities were the opportunities to educate the American public to the realities of terrorism and to the costs of our sole superpower status and the opportunity to mobilize the international community behind us in a transnational campaign against transnational terrorists. (p. 170)

Far from trying to educate the public, U.S. leaders played to their fears…Rather than attempting to put the terrible atrocity of 9/11 into perspective, it fanned the outrage. Rather than countenance the possibility that certain of its actions might have fueled resentment toward it, it divided the world into good and evil, and those who were not with the United States were with the terrorists. (p. 193)

In the concluding chapter “What Is to Be Done?” she sets out “Rules.” Rule 1 is “Have a Defensible and Achievable Goal.”

…had our government declared its goal on the evening of September 11 simply to be to capture those responsible for the attacks, it might very well have been successful. The goal would have required a different political and military strategy in Afghanistan and it would have kept us out of Iraq…The particular brand of terrorism that currently poses a threat to us is terrorism used by Islamic militants; therefore, our goal today should be to stop the spread of Islamic militancy. In order to contain the spread of Islamic militancy, we must isolate the terrorists and inoculate their potential recruits against them. (p. 204)

Other “Rules” are:

“Live by Your Principles.”
“Know Your Enemy”
“Separate the Terrorists from Their Communities”
“Engage Others in Countering Terrorists with You”
“Have Patience and Keep Your Perspective”

In considering U.S. counterterrorist policy since September 11, it is very clear that we have not followed these six rules. We set ourselves an unattainable goal, we have been seen to abandon many of the principles that have guided our democracy, the inadequacies of our intelligence have been exposed, our actions have served to strengthen ties between terrorists and the communities from which they come, we have failed to engage others in the campaign against terrorists, and we have failed to demonstrate either patience or a sense of perspective. (p. 234)

And she is outspoken about our misadventure in Iraq:

Whatever the virtue of the other arguments in favor of the war in Iraq, from the point of view of counterterrorism the invasion of Iraq was a calamitous mistake…the Iraq war, far from being an effective policy against terrorism, immeasurably strengthened the hand of our adversaries and weakened our own. We have alienated the international community and united our enemies against us. We have provided a training ground for our adversaries, spawned a new generation of terrorists convinced that we are at war with Islam, and failed to bring security to the country. The inadequacy of our postwar planning was grossly negligent. We appear never to have taken the time to challenge the assumptions on which we based our policy; instead, we simply assumed that the policy would be effective and never inquired as to the cost. (p. 236)

Ms. Richardson’s ideas for dealing with terrorists—trying to understand why they hate us (“know your enemy”), maintaining our own principles, working with others in the world to defend against terrorism, etc.—make sense if it can be assumed that those who oppose us are rational, people who will not want to harm us if they sense that we are fair and just in all that our government does that affects them. But she seems not to consider that there are times when madmen are at large and can only be dealt with by force--Neville Chamberlain and the world finally saw that with Hitler. It may be that, with all the hateful teaching in the Islamic madrassas and the hatred of the modern world preached to the masses by radical Moslem clerics, we will have to one day conclude that we face an implacable enemy who can only be dealt with by force.

Advice to grandparents

Advice to grandparents (especially grandfathers): Don’t play board or card games with your grandkids. I tried it here in Tustin, California, while visiting our son and his wife and four children, and was ignominiously skunked. We played a card game called “Thirteen”—at which my 17-year-old grandson consistently won, another game called “Junior Scrabble”—which my 7-year-old granddaughter won, and a board game called “Don’t Wake Daddy”—which my 5-year-old-grandson won. To make it a total win for the younger generation, my son consistently beat me at “Scrabble.”

So, to save some shred of my dignity, I decided to ward off any further challenges as follows, “Granddad, do you want to play ___ with me?” “Sweetheart, I would love to, but I hung up my medals a long time ago. Let's wait until you're a little older."

And then, I will hope that they will forget that “…when you’re older” stuff. If they don’t, when they’re older, I’ll say, “I would love to play with you, but my eyesight is really not good enough.”—although it will really be good enough to see a flyspeck on a piece of `paper.

Away from home with children and grandchildren

I am doing this posting from Tustin, California, where my wife and I are visiting our son and his family (wife, Carla, and their four children: Chad, almost 18; Melissa, 7; Zachary, 5, and Olivia, 2).This is our third visit to them. I am reminded of the comment of former Vice President Alben Barkley to the effect that grandchildren are wonderful, because the grandparents can love them, play with them, and then turn them back to their parents.

Tustin, and all of Orange County that I have seen, is modern and spotlessly maintained; there is no peeling paint on buildings, scruffy lawns, street signs of various sizes and shapes, litter, and other signs of neglect that one sees in many East Coast towns and cities.

The automobile is as much of a necessity here as clothing and shelter; driving on the freeways during rush hours is a nightmare.

The mixture of ethnic groups is interesting: aside from apparent Caucasians I see mostly Orientals, followed by Hispanics; I have seen few black people. Visiting our grandchildren’s elementary school is a good place to observe the diversity of people.

The weather is ideal for many people: usually sunny and temperatures in a moderate zone most of the year. But not for me—I learned years ago while living in tropical areas that I missed the four seasons. Although the weather in the Baltimore area, where I have lived for many years, is frequently uncomfortable—the high humidity accentuates the cold in winter and the heat in summer—I very much like its distinct seasons; I especially like some cold winter weather when we can huddle around burning logs in our fireplace.

Yet another how-long-you're going-to-live calculator

I had no sooner finished my posting Today is the first day of the rest of your life. How many more might there be? (Redux) than I came across yet another longevity test; this one is "The Original Death Calculator: Life-Expectancy Quiz" designed by one Dr. David J. Demko, described as a professor of gerontology (at what university not given), accessible at the website www.demko.com.

This calculator begins at age 79 and then lists 30 questions to obtain plus years to add and minus years to deduct. Many of the questions are similar to those in the Paris Match and the "Eons" calculators described in the (Redux) posting below: Longevity of grandparents, Family history of vascular disease, Healthy Diet, Smoking, etc. However, some others are unique among the three calculators: "Where is your ancestral home?" (ranging from minus 2 for the USA to plus 3 for Japan), "Do you volunteer on a weekly basis?" (plus 2 if you do, minus 1 if not), "Left-handed" (minus 1 if so, 0 if not), "Height over 5ft, 8 inches," for men only (minus 6 months for every inch). It also includes a question about owning pets (plus 2 if you do)–the lack of which in the other two surprised me, as I noted in (Redux); but it did not include one about being a parent–which also surprised me about the other two.

I did my calculation using the Demko calculator and came up amazingly close to my longevity according to the "Early Warning" and the "Eons" ones: the Demko one has me living to age 86, whereas the other two both said 87. The Demko website states that the 30-question calculator is a "sub-set" of the "Original Death Calculator," which contains 201 questions. This "original" calculator is available on a CD-ROM for $19.95 from www.amazon.com. I am thinking of ordering it; if I do, I’ll do a posting about it.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. How many more might there be? (Redux)

An earlier posting, Today is the first day of your life. How many more might there be? on February 9, 2006, provided a test one can take to get an idea of to what age he might live. It came from an article from the October 1996 issue of the French magazine Paris Match which included the test from an original source provided by two British life insurance actuaries. It can be accessed by keying in "paris match" in the "SEARCH THIS BLOG" box in the upper left corner of this screen.

I have recently come upon two other such tests: the "Early Warning Life Expectancy Calculator" and the "Eons Longevity Calculator", which can be accessed respectively at http://home.worldonline.dk/eskemj and www.livingto100.com.

In the first of these, one just types in his gender, the date of his birth (day, month, and year), the time of his birth, and the country in which he was born (only Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the USA are available). Following that, the calculator churns a bit and then displays the exact time of his death (day; month; year; time in hour, minutes, and seconds). I found that I was going to die at age 87 on June 16th of a certain year at 5:33 A.M. and 36 seconds. Obviously such a calculation with no data about the individual’s health condition, lifestyle, health history of his parents and siblings, etc. is not credible. However, strangely enough, the second of these calculators (which asked for much of one’s data) also said I would live to 87.

To do a comparison of the three calculations of my longevity I redid the one from Paris Match and found that I would live much longer–to age 96.7. In doing it I took a conservative approach, in that for any question for which the answer was doubtful I took the shorter life choice–example: I could have added two years to my life if I had answered that my father lived to age 80, but did not do so because he suddenly died of a heart attack six days before his 80th birthday.

A comparison of the questions asked by the two calculators that do delve into one’s health profile–the "Eons Longevity Calculator" and the one in Paris Match–is interesting. The former asks 40 questions and the latter 24. The former’s questions (said to be composed by a Thomas Perls, M.D.) get into more nitty gritty about worry and stress, personal hygiene, and diet (it asks "Do you floss your teeth?", "Do you use sun screen?", "How much tea and coffee do you drink?"), whereas the latter is more general in its questions. The Eons one also gives advice as to how to add years to one’s longevity–e.g., taking aspirin every day could add 1.0 years, cutting back sweets can add, 0.5 years, minimizing exposure to the sun can add 0.5 years.

I am surprised that neither of these calculators asks anything about raising children; certainly being a parent (and later a grandparent) enriches one's life and tends to add to its longevity--assuming, of course, that the children turn out to be decent adults. Likewise, the calculators ask nothing about owning pets--I am sure that my blood pressure goes down when I pet our four cats, and that the great pleasure that I have in their being around must go toward longer life for me.

Notwithstanding that two calculators say I will live only to age 87, I’m going with the one that says 96.7–those extra 10 years sound good.

The Paris Match put me at 86.2. Very generous. I'll take it!Am enjoying the Eons site. Thanks! --Posted by rapa to Rambling Musings of Mycroft Watson at 10/20/2006 10:27:46 PM

Congratulations, rapa. But you can do even better if you cut back on snack foods. I hope you do as well, or better, on the Demko calculator. Mycroft.

Merger & acquisition mania

Mergers and acquisitions (known as "M&A" in the financial world) have been going lickety-split for many years. This makes me think of the companies that I worked for during my 43 years of toiling (I also worked as a part-time consultant for several years after retiring from full-time work). I worked for seven companies, six of which were publicly-held and one was privately-owned; six of the seven publicly-held companies have merged or disappeared.

The thought of acquisitions is with me because of the announcement just a few days ago of the proposed takeover of Mercantile Bankshares--the holding company of Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co., in Baltimore--by PNC Financial Services Group, located in Pittsburgh. Mercantile is a blue-blood institution in Baltimore and the last independent major bank–the news of the takeover has reverberated throughout the city. As described below, I worked at Mercantile for 18 years.

My first employer was the public accounting firm Price Waterhouse. I worked for it as an intern in its New York office while still a senior at the University of North Carolina; after graduation, I went back to its permanent staff. Some years ago the firm merged with Coopers Lybrand to form what is now PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Next I went to work for Texaco, the international oil company (whose official name at the time was The Texas Company), as a trainee in its foreign accounting department at its headquarters in the Chrysler Building in New York City. After about 18 months, I was dispatched to a tour of duty at its office in Puerto Rico and, later, to another tour in Dakar, Senegal (Senegal was then a French colony in west Africa but has been independent since 1958). Texaco was acquired by the oil company Chevron in 2001 (Texaco still markets petroleum products under its own name).

Then I returned to the USA to work for Shell Oil Co. at its regional office in Baltimore. Shell is the only one of the six publicly-held companies that I worked for which has remained independent (it is part of the Royal Dutch Shell group of companies).

Next was Commercial Credit Co. in Baltimore; it was founded in 1902 in Baltimore and its stock was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange during my tenure there. In the late 1960's (1968, I believe) it was acquired in a shotgun wedding by Control Data, a computer company in Minnesota–the acquisition was done to stave off another unwanted suitor, a Hartford insurance company. It was later acquired and reacquired several times by different companies–and picked apart in the process--until remnants of it ended up in Citicorp.

My next employer (after having worked for the private company in Baltimore, following Commercial Credit) was Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co., in Baltimore, which was by far the largest trust company in the city at the time. I worked there for 18 years as a security analyst, analyzing stocks and bonds held in trust accounts. On October 9, 2006 the news of the proposed acquisition by PNC broke.

My last position was with Alexander & Alexander, the second largest insurance broker in the world during my time there. I worked at its Baltimore area financial center as a financial analyst in solvency assessment of insurance carriers used to place our clients’ coverage. (Solvency assessment is the analysis of insurance companies’ financial strength to avoid those which might not be around to pay future claims.) A&A was acquired in the late 1990's by Aon Corp., a rival insurance broker headquartered in Chicago, and merged into Aon, i.e., A&A no longer exists as an operating entity.

The Baltimore area has lost numerous companies over the years, either independent ones headquartered in the area or large operations of companies headquartered elsewhere. The following companies, which were in business when I came to live in the area in 1955 have disappeared or have been taken over by other companies from elsewhere. (I am just naming them off the top of my head; there are probably others.) Most of these companies completely shut down years ago; others, such as Bethlehem Steel and the insurance companies Fidelity & Deposit and Maryland Casualty, were taken over by other companies far from Baltimore and, as to size of their operations, are mere skeletons of their former selves.

Continental Can
American Can
Koppers Co.
Bethlehem Steel
Arrow Brewing Co.
Gunther Brewing Co.
Maryland Shipbuilding and Drydock
American Smelting & Refining
Crown Cork & Seal
Crosse & Blackwell
Exxon (operated a small refinery while still Esso)
Peterson, Howell & Heather
Noxema
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
Shell Oil Co. (split up its regional office, with some employees sent to New York and others to Atlanta)
General Motors (closed a large assembly plant two or three years ago)
Western Electric
Martin Marietta (I think it has a small operation in the area following the move of most of its activities to Florida and elsewhere).
Fidelity & Deposit
Maryland Casualty
New Amsterdam
United States Fidelity & Guaranty
Mount Vernon Mills
Schenuit Tire & Rubber
Three major department stores: Hutzlers, Hochschild Kohn, and Stewarts
Braeger Gutman, a discount department store
Upscale men's stores: Eddie Jacob (where I bought my wedding suit) and Hamburgers

1 Comment
Anonymous said...
Don't forget the Baltimore Colts....
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 7:50:29 PM

Good point, Anonymous. Mycroft

The Baltimore Colts were Baltimore’s National Football League team from 1953 through 1983. They won the NFL championship title twice, in 1958 and 1959, both times against the New York Giants. The 1958 game, which the Colts won by 23-17 in Yankee Stadium in New York on 12/28/58, has been called by numerous sportswriters as "the greatest game of football ever played" (for my first-hand experience of the game, see my 9/24/06 posting Football is in the air). They didn’t do so well in the 1964 championship game, losing 27-0 to the Cleveland Browns in Cleveland on 12/27/64; I remember the game well because I had been commuting to Cleveland on business every week around the time of the game, and had shot off my mouth to my Cleveland business colleagues about how bad the Colts were going to crush the Browns, so I had to eat crow when I faced those colleagues in Cleveland the next day after the game.

Those NFL championship games were before the Super Bowl started in 1967 to determine a champion; the Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys by 16-13 in Super Bowl V on 10/17/71 in the Orange Bowl in Miami.

After those 31 years in Baltimore, the team was spirited away to Indianapolis in the dead of night during a snowstorm in early 1984 to become the Indianapolis Colts. Thus, Baltimore was without a professional football team for 12 years until the Cleveland Browns franchise was moved by its owner to Baltimore in 1996, to become the Baltimore Ravens. (During part of those 12 years, a Canadian league team, the Baltimore Broncos, represented the city, playing by Canadian rules–which most Baltimore fans never caught on to.) The Ravens went to Super Bowl XXXV on 1/28/01 in Tampa and beat the New York Giants (again!) by 34-7 (the Ravens went as a wild-card team, meaning that they did not win their league’s championship but went into the playoffs to decide who would go to the Super Bowl as a third choice).

Fall, my favorite season

That wonderful season–fall–is here. Orange and red leaves on trees, brisk days (with a fire in the fireplace some days), football, the World Series of baseball, the beginning of the opera season, and recollections of aromas.

Aromas? Yes, nostalgic aromas of tobacco being brought to warehouses by farmers for sale at auction in the small North Carolina town where I was born and grew up. Beginning in mid-September and lasting into early November, as I would walk out the front door to go to school, I received a strong whiff of the tobacco. The odor was all over town. The farmers brought the tobacco in, tan in color (having turned from the original green in the fields by the curing in barns heated by fuel oil) and tied in bundles (six or eight leaves about twenty inches long tied together at the top with another leaf).

On my way to school on my bicycle, I would go by two of the six or so warehouses in town where the auctions took place. Often, men working for the warehouses, like carnival barkers standing in the street in front of their entrances, would wave to the farmers approaching in their trucks and shout, "Bring it here! Get the best prices!"

On the way home from school I would sometimes stop by one of the warehouses and watch an auction. The bundles of tobacco were stacked in layers, one on top of another, in flat baskets (about three feet wide on both sides) to a height of about four feet; the baskets were lined up in long rows. The auctioneer was followed by a retinue consisting of buyers from the major cigarette manufacturers, middle men (my town had three local companies that bought for export to foreign manufacturers), clerks to put tags on the stacks showing who bought the stack from what farmer, Federal government graders of each stack, and others. (Old-timers will remember the radio auctioneers who, after several seconds of their chanting, would shout, "Sold to American!", followed by the commercial pitch, "Lucky Strike means fine tobacco!")

Tobacco was the life blood of the community. When I was a young teen (about 14, I believe), I worked several days at a farm where with others I unloaded the tobacco leaves, having been cut and brought in from the fields by mule-drawn slides (with runners on them, like sleds), and put on a long table where other workers tied them into the bundles mentioned above and put them on sticks (about six feet long) to be hung from rafters in the curing barn. Tobacco leaves, freshly cut from the field, have a gum on them, which I held next to my bare chest when unloading the slides; when I finished for the day, my chest and stomach were black from the gum.

I was picked up at my house by the farmer’s wife about 6 A.M. and driven to my day’s work, and then driven back home about 3:30 P.M.; my pay was $1 per day (plus a huge midday meal that was called "dinner"). I suspect that the farmer was in violation of the child-labor law in having me do the work I did.

I have just learned that, for the first time in probably 150 years, there will be no tobacco auctions in that town this year. Since much of the entire world has adopted a no-smoking regimen, apparently there is not enough demand to warrant these auctions. I suppose that the few farmers there who still grow tobacco sell their crops directly to the cigarette manufacturers (much like tomatoes and other farm vegetables that are sold directly to food companies).

Fall foliage. We have some of the most beautiful maple and other foliage right around us in Baltimore County. Although we do occasionally go to New England for the mountains and fall foliage there, we don’t have to, since we have the foliage here and we can go to western Maryland for it and also for the mountains.

Football. I still have my boyhood excitement about college football. In fact, nostalgia plays a large part of my interest in sports. My father and his bachelor brother who lived with us were intense University of North Carolina football fans, their father and they having been students there, as I was later. Every year they went to the home games at Chapel Hill and to the game with Duke, whether at Chapel Hill or Durham (Duke was then a powerhouse, and the Carolina/Duke rivalry was like Harvard/Yale, Army/Navy, and other traditional pairings). My uncle was so passionate that he often went to the freshman* Carolina games on Friday afternoon and then back the next day if the varsity team was playing a home game; he also occasionally went to spring practice sessions of the varsity to get a bead on the outlook for the following fall season. He sometimes took me with him to those events.

* Prior to World War II, college freshman football players could only play on the school’s freshman team, which had its own schedule with other freshman teams. These teams had names such as "Tar Babies" (as related to the University of North Carolina’s "Tar Heels"), "Blue Imps" (for the Duke "Blue Devils"), and "Wolf Cubs" (for the North Carolina State "Wolfpack"). Only in their sophomore year were they eligible for the varsity. For whatever reason, that arrangement was abandoned shortly after the end of the war.

I often wish that, as an adult, I could do something that would give me the wonderful thrill that I experienced when going to Carolina football games with my family. They took me to the game with Duke when I was eleven; the next year they took me to all of the games. All during the week before, I would be thinking about the Saturday game; the Friday before the game I was barely able to keep my mind on school because I was so excited about the next day (especially when the next day’s game was with Duke).

My nostalgic memories of game day are picking up my father at the bank where he worked around 11 o’clock and beginning the 42 mile trip to Chapel Hill, getting into thick traffic over the last 12 miles between Durham and Chapel Hill, while walking through the woods surrounding Carolina’s Kenan Stadium, hearing the cheerleaders warming up the crowd, the deafening roar of the crowd as the Carolina team ran onto the field through a cordon of the student band playing its fight song ("I'm a Tar heel born, I'm a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I'll be a Tar Heel dead..."), the band later playing its alma mater ("Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices") and the students singing the words, and course, the game itself.

Also, the losses and the wins. In 1940, during the final minutes of the game with Tulane, with Carolina leading 13-7, a Tulane lineman blocked a Carolina punt around midfield and another lineman scooped up the ball and ran it for a touchdown; Tulane then converted the PAT and won 14-13. My family had long planned to stop off in Durham on the way home, have dinner, and then attend the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus there. Ordinarily I would have greatly enjoyed all of this, but I couldn’t because I was brooding over Carolina’s fluky loss. However, later that year Carolina beat a heavily-favored Duke 6-3; the winning touchdown was scored at our end of the field (we were sitting on about the 20 yard line). I hardly need to say that I was ecstatic for days after that win.

Later, I was able to attend the only Rose Bowl game ever played anywhere other than Pasadena, California. It was played on New Year’s Day 1942 in Durham, N.C., at Duke’s stadium, between Duke and Oregon State. The reason for this relocation was that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese the month before, beginning the U.S. involvement in World War II, which caused authorities to decide that it would be unsafe to have a large assembly of people on the U.S. west coast. Oregon State won 20-16. In addition to the excitement of being there for this historic event, I also got the autograph on my game program of Bill Stern, a well-known sports figure of the day who was broadcasting the game on the radio (there was no TV then); I also have this today as well as a pennant (with Oregon State’s name on it). During the game, I was reprimanded by a lady sitting in front of me for rooting for Oregon State, to which I reminded her about it being a free country.

Today, I eagerly anticipate the football season. I spend every Saturday watching the college games of the day on TV; some Saturdays I also attend the home games of Towson University, an NCAA II team whose stadium is a short distance from my home. I also watch the NFL Baltimore Ravens games on Sundays.

-----GO BALTIMORE RAVENS!

----------GO CAROLINA TAR HEELS!

---------------GO TOWSON TIGERS!

World Series. I still watch most of the games even though the Baltimore Orioles haven’t been there in 23 years. They played in the World Series six times, winning three and losing three: they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966, the Cincinnati Reds in 1970, and the Philadelphia Phillies in 1983; they lost to the New York Mets in 1969 and to the Pittsburgh Pirates both in 1971 and 1979. (I describe some of my World Series memories in my 6/1/06 posting It's June 1st--baseball is here for me.)

The Opera Season. The Baltimore Opera, to which I have been a season subscriber for over 20 years, begins its season in October. Its productions are mostly elegant: fine singers, imaginative props, and a great opera house (the Lyric). Also, radio broadcasts of New York's Metropolitan Opera Saturday afternoon performances begin in late November. (I describe some of my interest in opera in my 4/27/06 posting People dying today ain't never died before.)

Football is in the air

David vs. Goliath

The 2006 college football season seems to have had an unusually large number of "David and Goliath" games–major college football factories scheduling games against small schools not known as football power-houses. Unlike David in the Bible story, the small schools rarely beat their Goliath opponents.

Mismatches have been going on for decades–the major colleges have used patsies (usually at the beginning of the season to give the former additional practice or, later in the season, as "breathers" before tough games with traditional rivals the following week), but their imbalance seems to be greater and their number higher this year. Some examples from the Saturday, September 23rd games:

Pittsburgh 56, The Citadel 6
Auburn 38, Buffalo 7
Florida State 55, Rice 7
Tennessee 33, Marshall 7
Louisiana State 49, Tulane 7
Oklahoma 59, Middle Tennessee 0
Nebraska 56, Troy 0

How can a major college maintain its integrity when it beats up a small school so badly; how can it not see itself as a bully? How can these small colleges, knowing as they do the likely outcome when they schedule these contests, bear the humiliation of such thrashings?

There appear to be two reasons: (1) The football factories can use the small schools as punching bags early in the season to ready themselves for their games with their equals later in the season. (2) The small schools are willing to take the punishment and degradation in order to make big bucks for their athletic programs--the money coming from the sharing, with the big school, of ticket sales and TV advertising receipts.

As to (2), the New York Times had an article recently as to how these small schools can make enough money from just one football game with a major team to fund most of their athletic programs that don’t provide any revenues (soccer, field and track, baseball, field hockey, etc.) for a school year. (It should be noted that the only other college sport that attracts national attention and huge revenues from TV coverage and attendance admissions–basketball–likewise subsidizes all of these other minor sports.)

My son just pointed out to me that legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972, known as Title IX (which requires schools to provide equal opportunity to female students for access to sports programs available to male students), adds to funding requirements at the small schools--which can be met, at least in part, by the payoff from the shellacking their football teams take when they play against the power-houses.

Never say "never"

The 1958 professional National Football League championship game on December 28, 1958–the Baltimore Colts vs. the New York Giants (played at Yankee Stadium in New York)--has been described as the "Greatest Game of Football Ever Played" by numerous sports writers and others. To me , it was just that: with just two minutes left in the game, and the Colts deep down close to their own goal line and trailing on a 14-17 score, they pulled ahead to tie the game with a field goal at 17-all with less than 10 seconds left. Then, in sudden-death overtime (the first in NFL history), the Colts scored a touchdown and won the championship 23-17. (This game was some eight years before the Super Bowl, which began in January 1967.)

Although I was in my early thirties and in excellent health, I truly thought that, if the Colts couldn’t come through and win that game, I was going to have a heart attack, a nervous breakdown, or both. I was that excited! I said at the time (and have said many times later) that I never expected ever to see such an exciting game again.

But, never say "never." Since that time I have seen two college football games that were as exciting. One was the North Carolina State-Ohio State game on 9/13/03 (played in Columbus, Ohio). In it, N.C. State scored 17 points with 11 minutes left to tie the game 38-all in regulation play. In overtime, N.C. State trailing 38-44, drove to Ohio State’s one-foot line, but couldn’t score the tying touchdown (and perhaps winning an after-touchdown conversion). I was totally limp from yelling (for N.C. State) after that game, and sank motionless in my chair for several minutes.

Another such exciting game was just yesterday: Notre Dame overcame a 16-point deficit with just 8 minutes left to play to beat Michigan State 40-37. It was as exciting as the Colts’ 1958 win and the 2003 N.C. State almost-win, but it didn’t drain me as much as those games because I had no favorite in it.

Sources for college football fans

The website www.CSTV.com carries much detailed info about games still in progress or finished for free (one can view games on TV by subscribing for a fee). I just discovered it yesterday.

The College Football Encyclopedia published in 2005 by the sports TV network ESPN (cover price $49.95, but I got mine for considerably less by shopping among booksellers on the Internet) is a treasury of facts and stats on college football going back to the late 1800's. (It even lists the first game of American football: Princeton vs. Rutgers on November 6th , 1869, won 6-4 by Rutgers). The same two teams played again a week later on November 13th (won by Princeton 6-2). They also played again, once in 1870 and again in 1872, Rutgers the winner in each, 6-2 and 4-1 respectively (those were the only games played by Princeton during those years). How scores were tallied in those early games is not provided in the book–some of the scores would be highly unusual today: e.g., the 4-1 win by Rutgers could only happen if it scored two safeties and nothing else; the one point by Princeton could not happen today.

1 Comment

Anonymous said...
An excellent article! I must say that the two most memorable college football games I have ever seen are:2006 Rose Bowl. In the most remarkable performance I have ever seen by a college football player, Vince Young single-handedly carried Texas to a thrilling last second win over Southern Cal.1984 - Boston College vs. Miami. In his own "Young-like" performance, Doug Flutie threw a Hail Mary pass with no time on the clock to beat Miami in the Orange Bowl 47-45.

A (rare) accolade for Bush

Because I oppose President Bush on almost everything, when he does something worthy of approval, I hasten to take sides with him. His brave response to 9/11–which rallied not only the American people but also most of the rest of the world to the battle against terrorists–added tremendously to his stature. But, sadly, he frittered away this admiration and support with his bungling in Iraq and in numerous other ways. (For anyone interested in my assessment of the other ways, see my posting The Worst President in History? of 5/19/06.)

But I strongly support his plain-spoken position of sending in a United Nations military force to stop the brutal genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan (my previous postings on this horrible situation are: The shame of Darfur (4/9/06), The shame of Darfur (more) (4/17/06), and The shame of Darfur continues (5/18/06)). Perhaps he could do more, as the New York Times suggests in an editorial on 9/19/06: "Mr. Bush would begin (to take effective action) if he announced that ending the killing in Darfur was now a first-tier foreign policy concern...(and) if Mr. Bush said the U.S. would take the lead in soliciting troops for the U.N. and recommended making NATO planners available to help draw up contingency plans for a possible forced entry." But I believe that he is due credit for (belatedly) taking the first steps toward addressing the horrible situation.

The idea that the civilized world should defer armed intervention in Sudan to stop the human slaughter because of the lack of permission of the Sudanese government is ludicrous–it would be like, in the Second World War, the allied forces pleading, "Please, Mr. Hitler, grant us permission to bomb your cities and eventually occupy your country."

More on "false friends"; an interesting website discovered

In my Language idiosyncracies posting (8/26/06) I referred to faux amis (false friends): words in other languages which appear to be equivalents of English words but actually are not. Among several examples, I listed asistir in Spanish and assister in French, which seem to be the equivalent of "assist" in English but actually mean "attend" (as to attend a concert or a wedding).

Indirectly, due to that posting, I came across a long list of such false friends; it happened because someone visited my blog through a blog search engine using "false friends" as the search words. When anyone visits my blog through a search engine, I can go back through his search and pick up the hits that he got. Thus, I came across a long list of "false friends" at the website "All Experts" (http://experts.about.com) by doing a search at the home page for "false friends" and being taken to it.

The list is very long and has "false friend" pairings of many languages (French, Spanish, Romanian, German, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, and many others) with English.

Incidentally, the "All Experts" website has 36 subjects, beginning with "Arts/Humanities" and ending with "TV/Radio." Each subject has numerous subclassifications–I found the "false friends" list buried several links down from the subject "Cultures." Be warned, however, that many of the links are commercial, such as one would find in the Yellow Pages; but others are genuine encyclopedic entries similar to those in Wikipedia.

To be thankful for

I see by my calendar that Thanksgiving this year is still 73 days away, but there are things that we should be thankful for on any day of the year. (I feel particularly thankful this morning because I had the task before me of sowing grass seed and fertilizer on my lawn to enhance its beauty next spring, but it’s raining, so I can’t do it today.) Thus, in the spirit of thankfulness, I offer the following blessings for which we can be thankful.

Foremost is the fact that, on this fifth anniversary of 9/11, we haven't suffered a terroist attack on our homeland. May it be ever so!

George Bush has only 496 more days in office. Since many companies, large and small, offer early-retirement packages to their employees (or sometimes force them on them), why can’t we have the same for U.S. presidents and other politicians? (See more about that below.)

We will be free of any Olympics for 697 more days. That boring, over-hyped event won’t come up again until the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

The hapless Baltimore Orioles, who at the moment are 23 ½ games out of first place in the American League East, have only 20 more games left to play this year.

The Ford Motor Company has kicked out a member of the Ford family as its CEO and replaced him with an outsider; such a move has taken place before with unfavorable results, but could work out better this time. (I offer this reason to be thankful only to anyone who has been stupid enough to buy Ford stock or to anyone employed by the company or by a Ford dealer.)

Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach, who will become 82 years old later this year, is still doing his thing. He has been assistant coach or head coach there for 49 years. Some observers criticize him for not retiring a few years ago when Penn State was having good years (recent years have not been so good; they were whomped 41 to 17 by Notre Dame on September 9th). Yet he may yet come out on top since he shows no signs of slowing down.

Paterno is already in that league of legendary college football coaches who coached for many decades and lived to very ripe old ages. Lou Little coached at Columbia for 27 years (1930-1956) and died in 1978 at age 86. "Pop" Warner (born Glenn Scobey Warner) coached for 44 years; he was an itinerant who coached at Georgia, Carlisle Indians, Pitt, Stanford, and Temple. He died in 1954 at age 83. Amos Alonzo Stagg, however, topped them all: he was head coach at three colleges for 57 years (1890-1946), his longest tenure having been 41 years at the University of Chicago (1892-1932). As if that were not enough, Stagg was assistant coach to his son at Susquehanna for 12 more years (1947-1958). He died in 1965 at age 102.

We still have 24 days left before we have to start hearing about basketball, and we will have about five months free from it next year. the NBA’s pre-season games start October 9th, the regular games begin October 31st, and the playoffs start April 21, 2007; if they go the full seven games, it will be around May 1, 2007 when we will hear no more about basketball and the NBA until some time in October 2007–about five wonderful months.

No doubt you, Dear Reader, have other reasons to be thankful. If so, feel free to list them in the "Comments" box.

"If only" (Reasons for which I wish we could be thankful)

We had the mechanism that parliamentary democracies have by which a general election can be called at some close future date to keep, or fire, the head of state. A parliament might come up with a vote of "no confidence" in the current head of state (usually called the "prime minister"), or the prime minister might himself/herself foresee such a vote and call for a general election. In a general election the voters of the country vote for a party, not an individual, to be in power; that party then elects its leader as the prime minister. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has announced that he will resign within a year, at which time a general election will be held to either keep the Labour Party (Blair’s party) in power or to put the Conservative Party in power.

Of course, in the USA we have the impeachment procedure by which a sitting president can be removed from office for "high crimes or misdemeanors." But that involves a trial on specific charges held in the U.S. Senate, whereas a simple "no confidence" vote (or the anticipation of one) brings about a general election, with the public voting, in a parliamentary democracy.

We could go one week without seeing or hearing anything about Paris Hilton, Whitney Spears, Tom Cruse, Madonna, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, et al.

Jay Leno could go one night without telling a joke that included "sexual intercourse", "penis", or "masturbation."

We could go one week without seeing an interview with John McCain. I like the man for the most part–he is personable, bright, and plain-spoken. But he has that politician-cum-presidential-aspirant disease of overexposuritis. Whenever he comes within ten feet of a TV camera he seems to have to succumb to an interview.

I could one day see the Baltimore Orioles winning the World Series, as they did in 1966, 1970, and 1983, and not wake up and realize that it was all a dream.

How much math do we need to know?

Do young people really need to learn the four mathematical functions–addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division–in school? Perhaps they may not need this learning. Since it can all be done on a handheld calculator that can be bought for $5 or less, why bother with learning how it gets done?

This might, at first glance, seem anti-intellectual; don’t we want our schoolchildren to learn as much as we did? Well, maybe not. We had to learn these functions (those of us of around my age) because there were no calculators or computers to do them for us; but now we have these conveniences, so why worry about how they work?

I ask these questions because I tutor men in math and reading and writing at the Helping Up Mission in downtown Baltimore. This organization accepts men who have been brought down by drugs and/or alcohol and who are striving to recover themselves through a strict program of rehabilitation; the men whom I tutor are preparing to take the GED exam which, if passed, gives them a high-school diploma.

During this tutoring I am taken back to doing these math functions by longhand, something I haven’t done for years. I have to tell the men that they must learn the multiplication table by heart (something that I did in my early school years but have no recollection of doing) in order to perform these calculations in a straightforward way. (Some of them are clever enough to multiply 5 times 9 by writing the figure 9 five times and then adding 9 plus 9 equals 18, 18 plus 9 equals 27, etc. until they get to 45; others use their fingers to do the work.)

Another set of exercises that I help them with is adding or subtracting a series of fractions, such as 3 5/8 plus 6 2/5 plus 5 4/9; I had to stop and think how to do it–one finds a common denominator (in this case, 360) and proceeds to adjust the numerators, add them, and then reduce back to the least fraction. But, how often do most people have to do this exercise in their daily lives?

I recall when, as a teenager, I worked briefly in an A&P grocery store, where all of us who waited on customers would write the price of each item purchased on the brown paper bag that we put them in, and then add them up manually to get the total to collect from the customer; now supermarket cashiers scan the prices of each item.

It is at these times that I ask myself this question as to why anyone should have to go through this basic exercise when a calculator will do it for them. I pose the question in the realization that we all do many mundane things without knowing their inner workings. I have driven a car for over 60 years (skillfully, I think) without much knowledge of what goes on under the hood; I take pills prescribed by my doctors with almost no understanding of what is in them or how they work. (I have almost no understanding of what a Beta blocker is, or what an inhibitor inhibits, or what a corticosteroid is; I don’t take any of these, as far as I know, but I frequently see references to them.)

So, again, I ask the question, with considerable doubt as to the answer: should schoolchildren be put to the task of mastering the mathematical functions when their calculator will do it for them?

Language idiosyncracies

All languages have their idiosyncracies. Some are in such everyday use that native speakers take no special notice of them, but foreigners might consider them as odd. Other such terms may even strike native speakers as strange.

–A deceased person in English is referred to as "the late Mr. X". What was "late" about him? Was he habitually late for work, for appointments, etc.? Was he late dying–did he chain smoke, carouse, live as a couch potato and still live to be 95?

The French have an equally puzzling term for a deceased person: le feu monsieur X–the "fire Mr. X." Was he a fiery person–did he have a hair trigger temper, was he a rabble rouser, did he immolate himself?

--The British and those in Commonwealth countries say a that a person is "in hospital," while Americans say the he is "in the hospital." Why do we put the "the" in front of "hospital" when we don’t say that someone is "in the college," or goes to "the church" on Sundays, or is "in the law school.?" No reason, just the way our language has developed.

--The French have exactly the same word for "stepfather" as for "father-in-law": beau-père ("handsome father"), and the same for "stepmother" and "mother-in-law": belle-mère ("lovely mother"). How to tell the difference? By the context or by explicit explanation.

--The word hijo in Spanish means "son"; but Spanish-speaking people use the plural, hijos, for children of parents (regardless of gender). ¿Cuantos hijos tiene usted? is "How many children do you have?" I have heard Spanish speakers ask in English "How many sons do you have" when they clearly are asking about the number of children one has.

--French school children must snicker when they study English and run across for the first time the male name "Peter" or the noun "pet." The word péter (pronounced "pay-tay") in French is the verb "to fart" and pet (pronounced "pay") is "a fart."

English-speaking students studying German probably are similarly amused by the word fährt, which means a "drive" or a "trip" (it comes from the verb fahren meaning to "drive" or "travel").

--In English we say that we pull one’s leg when we kid him; Spanish speakers say that they take one’s hair ("tomar el pelo").

--In English a "ham" is a short-wave radio operator or a lousy actor; in Puerto Rican slang he is an unmarried man (jamón). However, I have to say that I haven’t heard that term anywhere else. But, jamona ( a female ham) I have heard in other places as a slang term for a buxom woman.

–There are words which seem to be equivalent to one another in English and other languages but actually aren’t--what the French call faux amis ("false friends").

acción (Spanish), action (French). Can mean the same as the noun "action" in English, but also can mean a share of stock in a corporation; accionista is a "stockholder" (male or female) in Spanish, actionnaire is the same in French.

actual (Spanish), actuel (French). Both look like they mean "actual" in English but in fact mean "current" or "present."

déception (French). Looks like "deception" in English but means "disappointment."

pretender (Spanish). Looks like "pretend" in English but means "intend" or "undertake."

habits (French). Doesn’t mean "habits" as in English but "clothes."

lecture (French), lectura (Spanish). Look like "lecture" in English but mean "reading" (the act of reading).

large (French), largo (Spanish). Both appear to mean "large" in English, but the former means "wide" and the latter "long."

assister (French), asistir (Spanish). These don’t mean "assist" in English but "attend" (attend a concert or a wedding).

–Forms in letter writing are paticularly interesting. Why do we open with "Dear" so-and-so in a letter to a person we hardly know or don’t even know at all? Why do we end with "Very truly yours" or "Sincerely" (or, as the British say "Faithfully yours")?–if we don’t, might the recipient think we are just joshing him, that we don’t really mean what we say in the letter?

The French are very blunt when they start off a letter: after the recipient’s name, on a separate line they simply say "Monsieur" or "Madame." (Occasionally they might star off with Cher Client ("Dear Customer") or a similar salutation, which usually happens when the letter writer is trying to sell something or promote something.) But they make up for the blunt salutation at the opening with a very effusive ending: Agréez, Monsieur (or Messieurs/Madame/Mesdames), nos salutations distinguées. "Accept, Sir, our distinguished salutations." Or, alternatively, they might use the term parfaite consideration–it’s been some time since I have seen that form but, as I recall, they say Nous vous assurons de notre parfaite consideration (We assure you of our perfect consideration).

Spanish speakers usually start off with Estimado señor X (or Estimada señora Y) "Esteemed Mr. X", which certainly makes more sense than the "Dear Mr. X" in English. (It is interesting to note that when they spell out señor or señora, the lower case "s" is used, but when abbreviated it is capitalized, thus: Sr. or Sra.)

The Spanish seem to have abandoned the opening salutation Muy señor mío ("Very sir of mine"), a senseless phrase which I haven't seen in many years.

Neither the Spanish nor the French have the equivalent of the English "Ms." for a woman; usually the married form Señora or Madame is used, unless it is known by the writer that Señorita or Mademoiselle should be used.

The Spanish frequently end their letters with lo saludo atentamente (la saludo atentamente for a woman)–"I salute you with respect." Sometimes they say something like con nuestros atentos saludos ("With our respectful salutations.") Sometimes, they will put just before the ending salutation Sin otra particular, lo saludo...("Without anything else, I salute you..." meaning "That’s all I have to say.")

When one stops to think about it, all of these opening and closing forms of a letter make no real sense–they are just meaningless forms that everybody uses because they always have. With e-mails now used so frequently, it seems possible that these antique forms may some day be dropped and more meaningful forms like "Hello, Mr. X" and "With best regards," as used in e-mails, may replace them.

There is some reason for hope that these antique forms may be so replaced, just as "Your humble and obedient servant"--a routine closing in business letters up through the 19th century--became obsolete during the 20th century.

Couscous--a delectable dish

Couscous is a wonderful dish–easy to prepare and delectable. Its geographic origin as an edible is North Africa; it is a product of wheat, finely ground, sometimes called semolina. I first tried it at a North African restaurant in Paris some years ago.

Buy it in any supermarket or grocery store (I buy the "Near East" brand which comes in 5.8 ounce packages, is available in several varieties as to ingredients, and is very inexpensive ). Prepare it as follows:

–Follow the directions for boiling the spice (which is contained in a separate envelope), then adding the grains, followed by letting the whole thing settle.

–Add for more flavor whatever turns you on. I mix in diced vegetables (green peppers, cucumbers, onions, radishes, and anything else I find in the vegetable drawer of my fridge).

–Add something to spice up the mix (which tends to be dry)–I prefer chili and cilantro, a hot product put out by a well-known Indian purveyor of spices, Patek . Then add something else to moisten the mix–I use Margarita mix for its limey flavor.

Do all of that and mix it well and you’ve got a great meal. After adding the above ingredients, the dish will be lukewarm, which is how I like it–but you can heat it up on the stove top if that is your preference.

A word I'll avoid with a cop in Spain

In 1988 I visited a family in Madrid, Spain whose teen-age son had spent some time the previous year living in our home in the Baltimore area as an international exchange student. His family had several times invited my wife and me to visit them, so after finishing a business trip in London, I took them up on their invitation and hopped over to Madrid.

The boy’s father took him and me for a spin around the city in his car. As we approached the Puerta del Sol (Madrid’s equivalent of New York’s Times Square), a traffic cop gave a rather ambiguous signal to the driver, upon which he turned off to the right; immediately, the cop blew his whistle and waved him back. My frustrated host shouted a word at the cop which I for a brief second thought might land us in jail. The word I had only known as a Spanish slang term for a part of the female anatomy.

Luckily, the cop was unruffled and waved us on straight ahead; I imagine that, had this happened during the Franco regime, we might have all been hauled off to jail. Afterward I consulted my Spanish-Spanish dictionary and found that two definitions of the word were provided: the first was the slang term with which I was familiar, but the second was an "exclamation of anger, amazement, annoyance, admiration, etc." (my translation from the original Spanish).

I have driven in Spain but never had any confrontation with a cop. If such should happen in the future, I don’t think I’ll use my host’s word but, rather, something less daring.

The best search engine yet

I have just discovered a search engine that beats them all: it is Vivísimo (a Spanish-type word, although it doesn’t appear in my Spanish-Spanish dictionary, which would mean something like "zesty"); its Internet address is http://vivisimo.com (note that it is not on "www").Earlier this year I discovered Webcrawler, which simultaneously searches Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and several others (see my Don’t just Google–cast a wider net posting of March 5, 2006). In doing a search, one should not stick to any one engine because any of them will occasionally pick up something that the others won’t. However, I find Vivísimo the best single one.

Vivísimo’s beauty is its "clustering": it instantaneously lists the word or words sought into categories, with the quantity of items in each category. As a test, I typed in my own name (in quotation marks) and found the following:

My name (14)
Books (6)
Handbook for Professionals (3)
My name, London (2)
University (2)
Other Topics (3)

The 14 items in the first category included 8 references to a book that I wrote in 1993 and was published by Lloyd’s of London Press–5 of the 8 were listings by on-line booksellers offering the book and 2 listed the book as useful for study by those taking professional examinations in the insurance industry. Another listing, which I had never seen before, was by an on-line bookseller for another book which I co-authored in 1989.

The 14 also included 2 listings which were a big surprise to me: One a letter which I wrote in 2003 to the Daily Tar Heel, the University of North Carolina student newspaper on the occasion of the death of Charlie Justice, a contemporary of mine at UNC and, in my opinion and also that of the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, the greatest Carolina football player of all time. The second was a listing in a history of the University of North Carolina published during the 1890's of my grandfather (after whom I was named) as a member of the Dialectic Society, a debate society, during the 1850's. (I belonged to the same society during my student days there.) I had never run across those two items at any other search engine.

The other five categories referred to my 1993 book in one way or another.

Vivísimo did miss one or two references to me in other search engines, one a reference to a presentation I made during the annual "Saturday with Sherlock Holmes" that local Sherlockians put on at Baltimore’s Pratt Library. Still, I think Vivísimo is the best single search engine.

By omitting my middle initial, I came up with several references to my son (named after me) as a regional manager of the company he works for in California. I am particularly proud of his being cited as the top regional manager in sales in the U.S. and Canada in 2005.

The disgusting baseball spitting

If only someone in authority would take action to stop that disgusting spitting by baseball players and managers. Seeing them chewing bubble gum like adolescents is bad enough, the spitting is totally beyond the pale (it’s almost as bad as if they were urinating on the field). Of course, it’s been going on for years–formerly they chewed tobacco and had to spit–but it wasn’t as noticeable as it has been since TV takes the home viewer of a game right up to the faces of the players and managers.

Since baseball players, like other professional athletes, are supposed to be models for young people, why can’t someone in baseball recognize the negative effect that the chewers and spitters have on these young people?

Those in other sports don’t do it, so why do baseball players and managers have to?

Although not alone, Terry Francona, the Boston Red Sox manager is one of the worst of the spitters. Indeed, there are so many of them, it is easier to note the ones who don’t chew and spit. Among this latter group are Jim Leyland, the Detroit Tigers manager (look how the Tigers have come to life under his management), Joe Torre, the New York Yankees manager (the Yankees have pulled well ahead of the Red Sox for first place in the American League East), and Mike Mussina, the New York Yankees (and former Oriole) pitcher. When I watch a game on TV and watch a pitcher start on the mound, or a batter step up to the plate–players that I don’t know much about–I pay close attention to whether they chew and spit (I can very soon tell). Those occasional ones that don’t I root for to do well, regardless of their team.

I just wish some prominent American--such as Senator John McCain, Tim Russert, the NBC "Meet the Press" host, any of the living former U.S. presidents (Clinton, Bush, Carter, Ford), Oprah Winfrey, or some of the many others–would take a stand against the repulsive chewing and spitting and use their influence to put an end to it.

Visit this blog's archives

The following postings from the past, and now in the Archives, may interest you. They may be accessed by clicking on the "SEARCH THIS BLOG" button just to the left at the top of the blog and scrolling down the dates (which are in descending date order) to find them. For some strange reason, which I can’t explain, the dates shown as you scroll down are not the correct dates, but clicking on the posting shown will take you there anyway.

Or, you may go to the "SEARCH THIS BLOG" button and type in just a few words of the title of the posting and you will be taken to those words, where you can click and get the full posting.

Alternatively, you may click on the "Archives" for the month shown at the bottom of the sidebar column to access the postings (the dates shown below in the present posting are the correct dates ).

"The Worst President in History?" (May 28, 2006) This is the title of an article in the 5/4/06 issue of the magazine Rolling Stone by Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University. In it he includes George W. Bush among the four worst presidents (the "Biggest Failures" he calls them)--the other three are James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Herbert Hoover. (Conversely, his "The Greatest Successes" are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.) I concur that, if not the absolute worst, Bush is certainly one of the worst and give my reasons for this opinion.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life... (Feb. 9, 2006). Uses info developed by life insurance actuaries. Beginning with your present age, you answer 24 questions about your family background, your physical condition, and your life style to predict to what age you might live.

What women in the throes of passion say in various countries. (March 15, 2006). Tells how they react in Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the USA.

Our English language. How difficult is English compared to other languages? (Jan. 17, 2006). First, the posting tells how simple English is in some ways; then it points out the perplexing difficulties in other respects for a foreigner trying to learn it.

Encounter of Pope John Paul with St. Peter. (Jan. 16, 2006). Tells of the pope’s difficulties in trying to get past St. Peter at the Golden Gates.

Islam: a "peaceful" religion or a dangerous one? (Feb. 19, 2006). Debates the issue.

Shame of Darfur... (April 9, 2006). Decries the savagery going on there with no action taken to stop it.

Everybody hates Wal-Mart... (March 28, 2006). Or do they?

How to tell you've grown old (January 16, 2006). I learned it when women (some near my age) offered me their seat in subway trains in Madrid, Spain, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile. Also, comments on subway systems that I have ridden in many cities of the world.

As you scroll down these postings, you may find others of interest.

The Poe vogue

There seems to be a current vogue for contemporary fiction that casts Edgar Allan Poe as a character in the story. One such was The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl, which I commented on in my "Recent readings " posting of 6/17/06. In that story, Poe was posthumously cast as a character: a young lawyer, who had attended Poe’s funeral in Baltimore, became intent on solving the mysterious circumstances of his death and went to Paris to find Auguste Dupin (Poe’s fictional detective) in his quest. I described the book in that posting as an "overly-contrived potboiler" and noted that I didn’t finish it.

I believe I have recently seen something about another such Poe-as-a-character work of fiction, but I can’t recall it.

Yet another one I have just finished reading: The Pale Blue Eye*. It has Poe as a "fourth-classman" (a plebe) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in the year 1831. (In real life, Poe did attend the Academy in 1831 but was expelled for neglect of duty before the year was out.) In this book the murder of a cadet has taken place on the Academy’s grounds for which the Academy’s superintendent calls in a former police detective from the New York City force, now retired and living in a small village near West Point, to find the killer. Not only was the cadet murdered by being hung from a tree, but his heart had been cut out and taken away. Two other murders under the same circumstances follow.

* The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard, Harper Collins, New York 2006, 414 pages

Because the young Poe is described in the novel as something of a weirdo given to scampish behavior, the detective, whose name is Gus Landor, soon makes his acquaintance and (with the reluctant acquiescence of the Academy’s superintendent) enlists him as a junior aide in solving the murders.

There is merit to much of the novel. Providing an authentic atmosphere to a special place at a time 175 years in the past–in this case, the Military Academy at West Point in 1831–by a present-day author is not easily done. Bayard does well in this respect. He also makes the detective Landor into an unflappable fellow–a trait which allows him to keep his cool when engaged with some of the military brass and their hidebound attitudes. (Likewise, as a widower, Landor has no trouble accepting the sexual favors of a buxom barmaid who lives nearby.) However, with Poe, the author is a bit less successful in projecting his character–he at times stretches too far in making him a roguish devil-may-care upstart.

But the book does have its shortcomings. The first is its length–in my opinion, 414 pages is far too long for detective fiction; I prefer no more than around 200 pages. There is a lot of filler (numerous encounters between various characters that add little to the flow of the story) that could better have been excised. However, scanning many of the pages to skip over the filler, but yet keep track of the story, was fairly easy.

Another fault was that the entire story consisted of written reports, letters, testaments, etc. by Landor and by Poe: "Last Testament of Gus Landor April 19th, 1831" (the opening chapter), "Narrative of Gus Landor November 1st to November 2nd", "Report of Edgar A. Poe to Augustus Landor November 16th" are examples. To have characters going through an entire story just writing such texts (although conversations are reported in the texts) strains the credulity of the reader.

The denouement comes in two parts. So as not to give away the endings, I can only say so much about them. The first part is very much third rate–it could have come from one of Edgar Wallace’s stories or from a Stephen King potboiler. The second part, however, is interesting. It is in the same style as one of Agatha Christie’s whodunits which was criticized by some critics but which I liked.

How can Ann Coulter stand herself?

Is Ann Coulter truly as outrageous as she appears to be? Or, is it an act for which she is well paid? She reminds me of Westbrook Pegler, the far-right zealot columnist for the Hearst newspapers during the 1940's and ‘50's. Pegler basked in the glory that he assumed he had from his rants. Coulter could be his progeny.

I have just scanned her latest screed, Godless, The Church of Liberalism. That’s the one that became famous for her referring to the New Jersey women left widows by the 9/11 attacks as "the Witches of East Brunswick," and going on to say, "These broads are millionaires...I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much...And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they’d better hurry up and appear in Playboy."

* Godless, The Church of Liberalism, by Ann Coulter, Crown Publishing Group, New York 2006

Her above comments are just a sampler of her foul mouth. In other venues, there was the one where she wished Timothy McVeigh had bombed the offices of the New York Times rather than the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Or, "Like the Democrats, Playboy just wants to liberate women to behave like pigs, have sex wothout consequences, prance about naked, and abort children." (from her book How to talk to a Liberal (If You Must)) Or, calling a student at Indiana University a "gay boy" when he asked during the Q&A following her speech there about her hatred of Democrats. (These last references came from the encyclopedia Wikipedia.)

Coulter does some little credit to herself by occasionally saying something in Godless that does make sense. An example is her coverage of the Willie Horton incident that figured in the 1988 presidential election. Horton, a convicted murderer, sentenced to life without parole and serving time in a Massachusetts prison, was one of a number of prisoners who were granted occasional week-end furloughs by Governor Michael Dukakis, who was the Democratic opponent of George H.W. Bush in the election. While on this furlough, Horton went to Maryland and raped a woman before he was captured and returned to his Massachusetts prison. Dukakis took much deserved flack for letting such a man be free on a furlough. According to Coulter, Dukakis was disdainful of such criticism and refused to meet with a sister of the man who was murdered by Horton, for which he was sent to prison, and also would not speak to the Maryland woman who was raped by Horton or her husband.

She also makes a sensible argument for capital punishment. Likewise, she viscerates a school district in Connecticut for allowing a sex education teacher to order a high school boy to handle a condom in front of his class.

But these few merits fall far short of offsetting her demerits.

I raise the question: does Coulter genuinely believe the outrageous bilge that she spews out? My guess is that, at the beginning of her career, she was inclined toward the far right, but as time went on she found how much richer going more and more in that direction would make her. So, if going more toward the lunatic fringe puts more money in my pocket, you’re damn right I’ll go for it, she thinks. It’s a bit like a stripper who takes off most of her costume–but as the applause grows louder, she takes off the pasties and then, with still more applause, off comes the bottom.

Although she still seems to be on a gravy train with her syndicated column, her books, and her public appearances, the ride may be slowing down. Following are comments by some of her non-admirers.

"We’ve decided that syndicated columnist Ann Coulter has worn out her welcome. Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives." David Stoeffler, editor and publisher of the Tucson, AZ Arizona Daily Star, 8/28/05, as the reason for dropping her column from that newspaper.

"Life is too short to read pages and pages of rant." From a review of her book Treason by Arnold Beichman in the Washington Times 8/2/03. And that newspaper generally leans toward the right!

"...Ms. Coulter is reviled because she is mean, malicious, the barbed-wire front woman for a cabal of bloviators, bully boys and blowhards (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage and others) who are pleased to regard themselves as the guardians of conservatism’s soul. Conservatism’s soul should sue for slander." (Leonard Pitts, Jr., columnist for The Miami Herald, as published in the Baltimore Sun.)

It appears that Coulter is unmarried (there is no mention of a marriage in her biog in Marquis Who’s Who). Small wonder. What man could live with her?

Zidane compared to Achilles

I expect this to be my last posting about l’affaire Zidane. In fact, I promise that it will be unless Zidane comes back into the news in some unforeseeable way. I am writing this one because I can’t resist talking about the comments of the noted French intellectual Bernard-Henry Lévy.*

The heading of his column is "Zidane, from Homer." He opens the column with:

Here is one of the greatest players of all time.

Here is a legend.

A worldly myth, and unanimously celebrated.

Here is the providential man, the savior...like Achilles bearing a grudge and enraged, brought about the defeat of his own (his own team).

Better still: here is a super-Achilles...

Later in the column he calls Zidane "the man more admired than the pope, the dalai-lama and Nelson Mandela all rolled together...an icon, a demigod, a hero, a legend." He even invokes Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky in describing Zidane.

After such a hagiography, Lévy goes on to chastise Zidane for his behavior by saying, "that incomprehensible act, insane,..the last recollection of him in the annals of football will be, not as having gone out in a blaze of glory, but having been sent to hell."

His final words are: "Achilles had his heel. Zidane will have had his...(which) has brought him down to the level of his human brothers."

* Lévy is a regular columnist for the French weekly magazine Le Point; this column appeared in its 7/17/06 issue. It is apparent that he wrote the column before Zidane gave his story in interviews on 7/12/06 as to the head-butting event in the World Cup championship match. The above translations from the original French are by me.

I don’t care for the over-used phrase "over the top," but it certainly applies to Lévy’s rhetoric.

Zidane, apologies but no regrets

Zizou speaks, the world (at least the French) listens. I watched the four-minute interview that he had on 7/12 with the French TV show Canal + Plus; it was available on his website www.zidane.fr. I also watched part of a longer interview that he gave the French TV network TF1 (available at its website http://tf1.lci.fr); it kept breaking up, so I didn’t watch the whole thing. (Both interviews were in French, of course).

Zinédine Zidane’s explanation of his behavior in head-butting the Italian player Marco Materazzi in the championship match of the 2006 World Cup was that he was provoked by insulting remarks made by Materazzi, about Zidane’s mother and sister. He said that Materazzi had been making such remarks during the match and that he (Zidane) finally reacted.

He apologized for the incident especially to the children who might have been watching and to his fans, but he said that he didn’t regret it because it was a reaction to the insultes très graves by Materazzi. He added, "Would I have done something unprovoked within the last ten minutes of my career as a player?"

There was a blizzard of comments by sports figures and the news media about his sentiments expressed in the interviews. BBC News published an interesting--and occasionally amusing--summary of the comments (posted on its website http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk). Some quotes from the BBC article:

It had the makings of an address to the nation from the head of state. Across the country, families gathered around TV sets; in bars they ordered extra drinks. The sports daily L’Equipe ran a cartoon of Zidane sitting behind an ornate desk, alongside a French flag–as if about to speak from the Elysee Palace (the residence of France’s president).

Zidane’s refusal to repeat the exact words (used by Materazzi) still has everyone guessing.

The article noted that most newspapers were "reverential" in their stories and editorials about Zidane and his interviews. However, one took a different tack–the left-wing Liberation commented that a similar situation occurred in the 1988 World Cup championship match when a leading player on the British team (which was playing Argentina), David Beckham, was redcarded, but, unlike Zidane, Beckham "was contrite, recognising that he had damaged his team." "‘Zidane did no such thing yesterday (in his interviews),’ says Liberation. ‘He did not have a word for his team-mates, whom he perhaps cost the World Cup.’"

So, now that the World Cup is over, and Zizou has told his story, and the French public and press have had their say about his story, perhaps the world will again turn on its axis.

The 2006 World Cup: Zidane, the head butter

The world press was agog over Zinedin Zidane, of the French team, butting Marco Materazzi, of the Italian team, in the chest with his head in the soccer World Cup championship game last Sunday in Berlin. The main question was: why did Zidane do it? Why, when this was to be his last game and he was about to retire in a blaze of glory? Instead, for his act he was ignominiously banished for the game with a red card and, arguably, a factor in the French team’s losing to Italy (had he stayed in, he would undoubtedly have been one of France’s kickers during the penalty kicks to break the 1-1 tie and, based on his prior kicking record, would probably have made his kick).

Commentary on the event wasn’t limited to the press–other notables and individuals had something to say:

French president Jacques Chirac: I don’t know what happened and for what reason he was disciplined. But I would like to tell of the esteem that I have for a man who has exemplified at the same time the beauty of sport, the greatest human qualities and who brought honor to French sport and great honor to France. (1)

Ehoud Olmert, Israeli prime minister: The match pit two friends together...I particularly admired the quality of the strikers. Unfortunately, there was the deplorable head blow by Zidane...I was touched by the joy of the Italians in Rome (after their victory). (1)

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria, who said he sent a personal letter to Zidane "to express my...friendship to Zidane and to give him some comfort" (Zidane was born in France of Algerian immigrant parents): He was a demi-god of the World Cup, but five minutes later he became something that sportsmen should shy away from.(The British newspaper The Independent 7/10/06)

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-president of the Green party in the European parliament and "a great football fan": Zidane certainly lost it from provocation..Those who say "at that level one must keep control of his nerves" are correct , but at the same time (football) is the entire life of this young man who came from a modest background and has fought all his life...For one for whom life has been one of combat there are moments when he loses it. (1)

Raymond Domenech, coach of the French team: When one "takes it" as he did for 1 hour and 20 minutes and the referee lets things go on, it (Zidane’s act) is understandable. It’s not excusable, but it’s understandable. (2) He’ll carry that weight for a long time. (3)

Marcello Lippi, coach of the Italian team: I am disappointed in Zidane because I have held him in high esteem. I told him so before the match...It’s a shame that he went out that way. Materazzi told me that he didn’t say anything. (2)

Marie-George Buffet, former French sports minister, said "Zidane’s aggressive act was unforgivable for its effect on children watching the game." (4)

Giuseppe Materazzi, father of Marco Materazzi: (H)e told me (in a telephone conversation) that he (Marco) had been provoked by the captain of the French team (Zidane). (2)

(1) Article "Tempête sur un crâne" (Tempest over a skull) from the French newspaper Le Figaro 7/10/06

(2) Article "Pourquoi Zinédine Zidane est-il sorti de ses gonds?" (Why did Zinédine Zidane become unhinged?") from the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur 7/10/06

(The above translations from the original text of the above French newspapers are mine.)

(3) Associated Press article "The Zidane Mystery: What Set Him Off?" from the Washington Post 7/10/06

(4) Paraphrasing of Mr. Buffet’s comment in the above Washington Post article

Sports writers and columnists around the world had their say:

His farewell match seemed set for a fairytale ending...(but) the fairytale transformed into one of horror as he wheeled around on Marco Materazzi after the Italian to say something to him and headbutted him in the chest. (The Times of India 7/10/06)

This morning, Zinedin, what do we tell our children, and all those for whom you were the living role model for all times? (The French sports daily L’Equipe, as reported in the Associated Press article cited above)

The red card brought an undistinguished end to Zidane’s glittering career but he has received much support in France. (The Independent, cited above)

Why did he do it? Speculation is all over the place.

The goofiest one I have seen was reported in the French newspaper Le Figaro on 7/10/06: It seems that the Brazilian TV station Globo reported that it engaged several experts in lip-reading to tell what Materazzi may have said to Zidane just prior to the incident; these experts said that he called Zidane’s sister a prostitute, and had done so previously. (Another "expert" said the remark was about his mother.) Brazilians reading the lips of a man on the field, presumably speaking in Italian, is indeed a wonder (TV close-ups of the men’s faces were only a few seconds).

Another version is that Materazzi called him a "terrorist." That was in the Associated Press article cited above, which was picked up by several Bristish and U.S. newspapers.

The "terrorist" epithet was assumed by a French organization SOS Racisme to have been what was said or, it added, it may have been "sale algérien" (dirty Algerian).

Materrazi was quoted in the Associated Press article as saying, "It is absolutely not true, I didn’t call him a terrorist. I don’t know anything about that."

Zidane’s agent, one Alain Migliaccio, was quoted by the BBC as saying that Zidane told him that Materazzi "said something very serious to him, but he wouldn’t tell me what."

It sounds a lot like the "trash talk" that U.S. National Football League linemen carry on with their opponents.

His agent is reported to have said that Zidane will tell what happened–he didn’t say when. "He (Zidane) was very disappointed and sad. He doesn’t want things to end that way," the agent added, to which Le Figaro added, Nous non plus (We don’t either.)

Even with his humiliation, Zidane was awarded the trophy as the best player of the 2006 World Cup. Also, it seems that French fans have not ben very harsh on him–he was seen on BBC television after the games were over waving and giving a "thumbs up" from a balcony of the Élysée (the residence of the French president) to a cheering crowd.

The Latest News

The latest news, just out today (7/12) is from the "ESPN Soccernet" website. It ran an article with the heading "Zidane: Materazzi insulted my mother and sister."

"I reacted badly and I would like to apologise for it," Zidane told Canal Plus. "I do apologise but I don’t regret my behaviour because regretting it would mean he (Materazzi) was right to say what he said."

Spiritual Benefit from Soccer

Well, even with all the contention over l’affaire Zidane there is a spiritual benefit from soccer. Or, so the website www.jesusandtheworldcup.com tells us:

The World Cup is the world's biggest event for the world's most popular sport. When your team wins, you can feel great; when your team loses, you can feel terrible. It's what makes soccer exciting -- some years your team does great, other years it may be a real struggle. If soccer is your source of happiness, then your life can go up and down.

There is just one source of peace and joy that doesn't change -- and that is God. Having a personal relationship with God can give you true peace no matter what happens on the soccer field. Here are 4 key steps you can take to begin a personal relationship with God.

The message goes on to list the four steps and provide commentary about them.

This week's quiz, last week's answers

This week's quiz: Dogs and cats.

1. An Alaskan sled dog.

2. An Australian wild dog.

3. "Herd" is to cattle as ____ is to cats.

4. A cat that lives mostly in trees in Central and South America.

Next week's quiz: Automobiles, past and present

Answers to last week's quiz: British and American writers.

1. This British author, as a boy, worked in a factory that made black shoe polish. Later he became a court stenographer.

Charles Dickens

2. This American author has a bridge in Boston named after him.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A bridge over the Charles River is named after him.

3. This British author began a novel with the words "It was a dark and stormy night..." for which there is a contest every year in the USA for an opening sentence worse than that one. He also coined the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword."

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

4. This American author had only one book, a novel, published to great acclaim; it was later made into a popular movie. The author died after being hit by a taxi.

Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind

A kind act remembered

Many years ago, when I was age 13, I had saved $3 with which to buy a baseball glove. A buddy and I rode our bicycles to the store in the little North Carolina town where I was born and grew up. I was dumbstruck when at the store I found the $3 missing–I had put the three $1 bills rolled together in my pants pocket, and they had obviously fallen out while bicycling to the store.

Stricken with disappointment and shame for not having been more careful with the money–$3 at that time to a 13-year-old boy was like hundreds of dollars today–my friend and I started looking under parked cars along the route we had taken, hoping that the bills might have blown under one of them and stuck there. No such luck! As we were doing this, a man who was walking by and knew us, Mr. Lonnie Breedlove, who owned a nearby grocery store, asked what was going on. We, of course, told him my sad story.

Some time later that day, Mr. Breedlove phoned my house to tell that his truck driver who delivered groceries to customers had found the lost money and that I should come by his store and pick it up! By his account, the driver had found it a long block away from our route to the store (he was said to have found it at an intersection on a street parallel to the one we took, the block between the two streets being maybe 200 yards long).

Although at the time I believed his story, as time passed I realized that it didn’t happen. How could three $1 bills have stuck together while being blown some 200 yards (it wasn’t a windy day to begin with)? Would a truck driver, upon finding money in the street–remember, it was a lot of money at that time–have told about it, and then voluntarily given it up to be returned to its rightful owner? Hardly. I realized that, out the kindness of his heart, Mr. Breedlove didn’t want to see a young boy so disappointed, so he concocted the story about it being found and gave me the $3 from his pocket.

Since the incident occurred well over 60 years ago, Mr. Breedlove must have passed away years ago. But I am sure that he built up some good karma for his next life by his kind act.

Recent readings

Kingdom Coming * is a polemic. As with any polemic, a reader who disagrees with the author will call it a screed, but one who is sympathetic to the author’s view will find it insightful and a forceful argument. I fall into the latter category

* Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, W. W. Norton, New York 2006, 242 pages

Ms. Goldberg’s theme is simple: the far-right, conservative Christians are a present danger insofar as their intent is not simply to win others to their convictions but, rather, to force their style of governance on the United States. The 31-year-old author describes herself as a "secular Jew" who is a contributing writer to the magazine Salon; she describes a tremendous amount of research that she put into the book, having interviewed a large number of the Christians she writes about and attended megachurch services and conferences of the faithful. She names not only the usual suspects (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Paul Weyrich, Ralph Reed) but many others that I had never heard of.

While I have no admiration of these conservative Christians, these "people of faith"–I could never be one of them–I have never felt threatened by them. However, if one gives credence to Ms. Goldberg’s testimony, they are a clear menace to our society. They not only want school prayer, the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments displayed publicly, and the other trappings of their faith, they also want elected government officials, teachers of our children, and everyone with influence on our lives to be of their ilk.

She talks about "Christian Reconstruction": "Reconstruction theory calls for a stealth strategy to Christianize politics and culture." She refers to one Gary North, "one of the movement’s key theorists, (who) wrote of the need for activists to penetrate secular institutions to ‘smooth the transition to Christian political leadership....Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure, and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.’ " (p. 14).

She quotes a variety of the far-right Christians, whose words point out the menace of their ideology.

"We must remove all humanists from public office and replace them with pro-moral political leaders." Tim LaHaye. (p. 39).

"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ–to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness...World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish" George Grant, identified as executive director of Coral Ridge Ministries, "a multimedia empire" headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (p. 41).

"The humanist West is our modern throne of iniquity, framing mischief by enacting laws. We must return to God’s law. We must work towards a true Christendom. Thy kingdom come, O Lord!" R. J. Rushdoony (now deceased), described as a leader of "Christian Reconstructionism." (p. 158).


"The overarching question we face today is: ‘Who is America’s sovereign?’ and ‘What is his law?’...The holy Bible makes clear that Jesus Christ is our sovereign...America’s founding fathers understood and acted on this Biblical truth." Howard Phillips, another Reconstructionist who has "called for the execution of abortionists, a crucial plank in the Reconstructionist agenda." (p. 167).

Further on the theme of the menace to America’s free society of the far-right Christians, Ms. Goldberg writes "If fascism’s rise is gradual and subtle, how does one spot it?" As an answer she quotes Robert O. Paxton, a history professor at Columbia University, "We know from tracing its path that fascism does not require a spectacular ‘march’ on some capital to take root...Fascists are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques..." (p. 179).

She adds, "Those who don’t want to live in the country the Christian nationalists would create have no choice but to fight...the threat will not simply fizzle out without a countermovement organized to defend pluralism, religious equality, reason, and personal freedom. If current trends continue, we will see ever increasing division and acrimony in our politics. That’s partly because, as Christian nationalism spreads, secularism is spreading as well, while moderate mainline Christianity is in decline." (p. 181).

Well said.

My response to "Anonymous's" comment that Ms. Goldberg would take offense at my referring to her as a "31-year-old." (See "Comments" below.) I went with the odds. I only knew that she was born some time in 1975 (that info was given at the front of the book), so on July 2nd (the date of my posting), the 183rd day of 2006, there was a 50.13709% chance that she had turned 31 (183/365).

Recent readings

I read relatively little fiction and, except for detective stories, even less contemporary fiction. But I was greatly rewarded by reading Philip Roth’s Everyman*. It is the story of the life of a man who feels that he is dying as he goes through the last twenty or so years of his life. He is Jewish, has gone through three marriages and divorces, and worked as an art director at a New York advertising agency. Funny thing: he is not given a name anywhere in the book–he is only described in third-person terms ("he", "his", "him"). He is Everyman.

* Everyman, by Philip Roth. Houghton Mifflin, New York 2006 (182 pages)

The story begins as his casket is lowered into a grave in a rundown Jewish cemetery in New Jersey, a cemetery founded by his grandfather in 1888. It contains the graves of his parents and those of many unrelated families. The mourners at the burial aren’t numerous–his second wife Phoebe and their daughter Nancy, in her mid-30's; his two sons by his first marriage, both in their late forties and clearly present only out of duty; his older brother Howie and his wife; a few former ad agency colleagues; and a few others who had known him at the Jersey shore retirement complex where he had been living. His death, at age 71, came when he was on the operating table undergoing a fifth operation for vascular problems.

The beauty of this novel is the way that Roth takes the reader through this man’s living, his thoughts, his fears without causing the reader to really like or dislike him. That sounds bland, but to me it was all the better.

He was reasonable and kindly, an amicable, moderate, industrious man, as everyone who knew him well would probably agree, except, of course, for the wife and two boys whose household he’d left and who, understandably, could not equate reasonableness and kindliness with his finally giving up on a failed marriage and looking elsewhere for the intimacy with a woman that he craved.

He had a soft manner with many people, such as the other elderly residents of his complex to whom he gave free art lessons. And especially with his daughter Nancy, a divorcee with twin daughters, who truly loved him notwithstanding his having left her and her mother for his third wife, a vacuous young thing about twenty years younger than he.

The story flows at an even pace, made all the more enjoyable by Roth’s fine word crafting. As Everyman contemplates the rest of his life--just a few years before it ended--he realizes:

Well, he was thrice divorced, a one-time serial husband distinguished no less by his devotion than by his misdeeds and mistakes, and he would have to continue to manage alone. From here on out he would have to manage everything alone.

There are two wonderful scenes near the end of the man’s life. One is when he reads an obituary of his former boss at the ad agency and phones the widow; his humanity comes through warmly in the conversation. At the same time he learns of two other colleagues who are hospitalized, one with depression and the other with prostate cancer. He phones them and has a very touching conversation with each.

For hours after the three consecutive calls–and after the predictable banality and futility of the pep talk, after the attempt to revive the old esprit by reviving memories of his colleagues’ lives, by trying to find things to say to buck up the hopeless and bring them back from the brink...he’d learned...the inevitable onslaught that is the end of life...Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.

The other scene is when he visits the cemetery, which he will soon inhabit, to be near his parents’ graves, he runs into a black man who is digging a grave. Their conversation is very mundane. Everyman asks the digger about the mechanics of digging a grave, hauling away most of the dirt but keeping just enough to cover the casket after it is lowered. (He finds that the digger had dug both of his parents’ graves.) The contrast, yet the closeness, of Everyman and the grave digger–two very different men--is displayed with grace.

"And you've been doing this work how long?" Everyman asks.

"Thirty-four years. A long time. It’s good work. It’s peaceful. Gives you time to think." is the digger’s response.

This was my first reading of Philip Roth’s work. I intend to read more.

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The Poe Shadow * I didn’t find very interesting; in fact, I didn’t finish it. It is a work of fiction, a period piece, in which a young lawyer in Baltimore, one Quentin Clark, attends Edgar Allan Poe’s funeral in that city (Poe died there in mysterious circumstances on October 7, 1849, at age 40). Afterward, Clark travels to Paris to look up C. Auguste Dupin, the father of all fictional private detectives, introduced to the world by Poe. Clark’s purpose for this visit is an attempt to put together the true story of Poe’s demise.

* The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl. Random House, 2006 (370 pages).

The book should have interested me because I have read much Poe, I like mystery stories, and much of it takes place in Baltimore (although around 1849), in a suburb of which I have lived for many years. But somehow it didn’t. For me, it was an overly-contrived potboiler.

This week's quiz, last week's answers

This week's quiz: British and American writers.

1. This British author, as a boy, worked in a factory that made black shoe polish. Later he became a court stenographer.

2. This American author has a bridge in Boston named after him.

3. This British author began a novel with the words "It was a dark and stormy night..." for which there is a contest every year in the USA for an opening sentence worse than that one. He also coined the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword."

4. This American author had only one book, a novel, published to great acclaim; it was later made into a popular movie. The author died after being hit by a taxi.

Next week's quiz: Dogs and cats

Answers to last week's quiz: Battles of history.

1. King Leonidas was the leader of his army in what battle?

The Battle of Thermopylae. Leonidas, the Spartan king, led a coalition of Greek city states against the invading Persians in 480 BC. The Persians won that battle and took over Athens, but were driven from Greece a year later in the Battle of Plataea.

2. A famous poem was inspired by a battle in the Crimean war. Name the poem and the poet.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The oft-quoted lines "Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die" are from the poem.

3. Mikhail Kutuzov commanded Russian forces in what battle?

The Battle of Borodino, fought in Russia against the invading French army of Napoleon in September 1812.. The French won this battle and moved on to seize Moscow.

4. In a war fought by American forces there were two battles fought in the same place, about a year apart. Name the war and the place.

The American Civil War. The First Battle of Bull Run began on July 21, 1861 in northern Virginia--it was the first engagement between the Union and the Confederate forces following the attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederates earlier that year. The second began on August 30, 1862. Both were won by the Confederates. These battles have also been referred to as the First and Second Battles of Manassas (Bull Run was a stream and Manassas was the small town in the proximity of the battles.)

World Cup doesn't interest Americans?

I read and hear that Americans have no interest in the World Cup of soccer (which the rest of the world calls "football"). Even Charlie Pierce, the Boston Globe columnist and commentator on National Public Radio, who seems to know everything about every sport, expresses his disdain for the World Cup.

My question: How can there be so much hype in the USA about the Olympics (to me, the most boring of events) every four years, with hours and hours of it on TV, and yet be told that Americans couldn’t care less about the World Cup (also played every four years)?

To be sure, soccer would be more exciting to watch if there were more scoring–a game ending in a score of 1-0 or a 0-0 tie isn’t nearly as exciting as it could be; there is too much kicking the ball up and down the field for nought in those matches. My recommendation for more scoring is to make the field smaller and/or the goal larger (which will happen when pigs fly).

But, as it is, soccer is exciting to watch and, with the World Cup teams representing many countries, adds the flavor of international competition. I plan to watch parts of many of the games on TV until the championship one on July 9th, for which I will be glued to my set.

Chacun à son gout.

It's June 1st--baseball is here for me

Although the major league baseball season begins in April, I just can’t get interested in it until the beginning of June. The season is too long–the regular schedule runs from the first week of April through the end of September; then there are the divisional playoffs (which have grown longer as expansion teams have been added to the list) and then the World Series, which can go into November (the 2005 one, which was shorter than most because the Chicago White Sox won four straight, went through October 26th).

I remember snow falling in Baltimore on the opening day of the 1979 World Series when the Orioles took on the Pittsburgh Pirates at home for the first game.

So, on June 1st my antenna goes up and I start to keep up with what is going on. What has been going on with the Baltimore Orioles at the beginning of June hasn’t been a pretty sight: right now they are seven games out of first place in their American League division. This is such a contrast to their earlier days when they went to six World Series in the 18 years 1966-1983 (winning three and losing three), but haven’t been there in the 22 succeeding years through 2005. Much of my interest in sports comes from nostalgia. Some of my nostalgia musings about baseball:

–Pickup sand lot baseball games when I was a kid in the 1930's and early 1940's. There were no organized little league-type sports during that era in the small North Carolina town where I grew up. But we had lots of pickup games after school and on weekends–anywhere from five or six to ten or twelve kids would go to one of the several open spaces in town (sometimes someone’s side yard at a street corner house, with the outfield out in the street) and make up two teams, and the game would begin.

I am glad that there are organized little league sports for kids today–our daughter played softball in one and our son baseball in another; these leagues play an important role in kids’ development. However, something can also be said for the way we played our games in my youth: we did it on our own without any adults running things for us. It helped us realize that we could be independent and do things on our own.

–Going to major league exhibition games as a kid. When the east coast teams traveled by train from spring training in Florida back to their home cities, they would often stop off in Durham or Raleigh, N.C. to play each other. Going to those games was a big thrill because in the 1930's and early 1940's there was no TV and no radio broadcasts of regular season baseball games in North Carolina, thus these exhibition games were the closest most people there could get to see a major league game.

–My first regular season major league game. In July 1946, when I was home from college for the summer, I volunteered as an older boy to accompany (along with several adults) a group of young school safety patrol boys from my home town on a trip to Washington. While there, I went to two Washington Senators games (against the Detroit Tigers) in the old Griffith Stadium. It was the last year of all-white players (Jackie Robinson made his appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers the following years to break the color line).

–Going to Cubs and White Sox games when I worked in Chicago on the Chicago Tribune newspaper the summer of 1948 before my senior year in college. I worked from 8 PM to 4 AM, so after work I could go to my rented room, get some sleep, have breakfast and get to nearby Wrigley Field by 1 o’clock to see the Cubs play (all of their games were day games then, lights only having been added many years later). I also went to a few White Sox games at Comiskey Park, which is on the south side of Chicago, a much longer trip for me.

–Going to Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers games in New York. My first job out of college was in New York, where I lived from 1949 through 1951. It was easy to take the subway to Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds to see the Yankees and the Giants play (I never went to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn but saw the Dodgers play the Giants many times at the Polo Grounds). Almost everyone in New York had one of those three teams as his favorite–mine was the Giants.

–Hearing the "shot heard around the world." That was the famous home run hit by the Giants’ Bobby Thomson to win the best two-of-three playoff against the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 3, 1951. The Giants had pulled themselves up from 13 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in the National League on August 11th to a tie just before the World Series was to start the first week of October, so there had to be the playoff to determine who would go against the Yankees of the American League in the World Series. With the Giants and the Dodgers having won one game each, the Giants were behind 4-2 in the final game with just two outs left in the bottom of the 9th inning; then Thomson came to bat and slammed the three-run homer that gave the Giants a 5-4 win and the sportswriters the event that they called the "shot heard around the world."

On that miraculous October 3rd I was working as a trainee in the Foreign Accounting Department of the oil company Texaco (now part of Chevron) at its home office in the Chrysler Building in New York. No work was being done that afternoon as every one of the 25 or 30 workers in that department was huddled around a radio listening to this crucial third game (there were no portable TV sets in those days). We were probably split right down the middle as to Giants fans and Dodgers fans. It being a mild day, the office windows were open (like most New York buildings at the time, the Chrysler Building wasn’t air conditioned), so that each time one or the other of the teams got a hit or scored a run loud cheering was heard, not only from our own department, but from those listening to the game in the tall buildings on all sides of the Chrysler Building.

I was standing with a group of three or four other fellows listening to the game through earphones on a small crystal set in a cigar box that one of the group had made (there were no transistor radios then). The earphones were passed around the group for each to listen for a few minutes. They were passed to me in the bottom of the ninth. THEN IT HAPPENED!Thomson hit the game-winning home run! I jumped up with the earphones still on and yanked them right out of the crystal set. This is certainly one of my two or three most enduring sports memories. (The Giants went on to lose the World Series to the Yankees by 4-2.)

–The New York Giants World series 4-0 win over the Cleveland Indians in 1954. I was then in Dakar, Senegal (at that time a French colony in west Africa) working for Texaco; we could get the games on short wave radio. I listened to them with several American expatriates, including a native of Cleveland who worked at the American consulate in Dakar and his wife, so there was much back-and-forth between us as the games were played.

–The only World Series game I ever attended. It was in October 1970, the Baltimore Orioles at home against the Cincinnati Reds (the only game the Orioles lost in their 4-1 sweep of the Reds). I had been in bed with the flu for several days before the game, but that particular day was sunny and mild so that I felt up to going to the game with my wife on two tickets that a business acquaintance had given me. My benefactor had also been equally generous to others in my company–including my boss, who was sitting right behind me. When I got there, he said, "I’m glad you’re feeling better." I explained that I had just gotten out of my sick bed for the occasion and was going right back to it. In fact, I stayed in bed several more days.

I'm ready. "Take me out to the ball game..."

Recent readings

American Theocracy The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, Kevin Phillips, Penguin Group, New York 2006, 462 pp.

This is the latest in a series of books by a disillusioned man. Phillips was a solid Republican for many years: He was, at age 27, a principal strategist in Richard Nixon’s 1968 election to the presidency; the following year he served for 12 months as Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General. Following Ronald Reagan’s election, Phillips again became active in Republican party politics. The Wall Street Journal described him in 1982 as "the leading conservative electoral analyst–the man who invented the Sun Belt, named the New Right..."

For several years he has been a commentator on National Public Radio–I have always found his comments cogent and well-presented, even when I disagreed with some of them. (I haven’t heard him recently; it seems as if he is on a sabbatical.)

If "disillusioned" is too strong a word for his present state of mind as gleaned form his recent books, yet he clearly exhibits a strong aversion to the antics of those on the Republican Far Right and much concern about the future of our country if our major problems aren’t successfully addressed.

Following is an excerpt from a recent review of American Theocracy by The New York Times.

He identifies three broad and related trends —— none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies —— that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt —— current and prospective —— that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

The following selections from the book provide a broad perspective of his thoughts.

This book is dedicated to the millions of Republicans, present and lapsed, who have opposed the Bush dynasty and the disenlightenment in the 2000 and 2004 elections. (front flyleaf)

...the attack (on Iraq), while at bottom about access to oil and U.S. global supremacy, had other intentions. One was to fold oil objectives into the global war against terror. A second was to cement the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic role in global oil sales–and thus in the world economy. A third was to keep the invasion’s purpose broad enough to allow the biblically minded Christian right to see it...as a destruction of the new Babylon, on the road to Armageddon and redemption. (p. 69)

The deceit-cloaked invasion of Iraq in 2003 may never command a full or satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, a near-final decision to invade seems to have been made in early 2001...Vice President Cheney, with his successive positions at the junction of the business and government pipelines connecting oil, national politics, and the Pentagon, must have played a pivotal role. Indeed, this triple expertise may explain the July 2000 decision to slate him as George W. Bush’s running mate. (p. 87)

Conversion on the part of adults–the deep personal experience of being "born again" in Christ–is...far more important in the United States (than in other countries), with its emphasis and personal experience, than elsewhere than elsewhere...George W. Bush’s own tale of coming to God struck a chord in the churchgoing United States that would have been impossible in less-observant Europe. Even in kindred Canada, supposedly no prime minister has ever claimed to be born again. (p. 106)

The president used the phrase "I believe" twelve times...and two of the references "were meant to justify his wars as holy. The first–‘I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century’–prompts a question: called by whom? The second helps answer that query: ‘I believe freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman.’" The man in the White House was becoming America’s preacher in chief. (p. 206)

It’s finally happened: Moving money around has surpassed making things as a share of the U.S. gross domestic product...the benign phrase "financial services" still dominates the discussion...the armchair detective can easily figure out that we are approaching a national transformation in economic vitality that past world powers allowed to their peril.

In official statistics the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector of the U.S. economy swelled to 20 percent of the gross domestic product in 2000, jumping ahead of manufacturing, which slipped to 14.5 percent (p.265)

Historically debt is constructive in emerging and adolescent nations but perilous in those beginning to age or contemplate retirement. Take, for example, Alexander Hamilton’s 1781 notion of a funded national debt as a fiscal boon–a "national blessing." For a new nation with commercial aspirations, it might well be. The Dutch in the early seventeenth century and the English in the 1690's had pioneered funded national debts and found them essential for borrowing at reasonable rates of interest during wartime. Many generations later, however, as their public debts bloated and their national trajectories turned downward, Dutchmen and Britons in turn staggered under their heritage of lending, borrowing, and cultivating reliance on finance and rentier cultures. (p. 271)

(Quoting Alan Greenspan): "Is it important for an economy to have manufacturing? There is a big dispute on this issue: What is important is that economies create value, and whether value is created by taking raw materials and fabricating them into something consumers want, or value is created by various services which consumers want, presumably should not make any difference so far as standards of living are concerned." (p. 306)

(He talks about the "rentier class"): The word "rentier"–(means) a person living off unearned income...Over the last four centuries...it was first Spain, then Holland and Great Britain, and now the United States that created the most notable rentier cultures. Each ultimately became vulnerable as a result. (p. 307)

History...tends to interrelate events, and events that necessarily have been discussed separately in this book show further signs of integration–oil and the debt-and-credit crunch; true-believing religion and the substitution of faith for science and national strategy. (p. 348)

(He expresses his disappointment): The Republican electoral, near and dear to me four decades ago...has become more like the exhausted, erring majorities of earlier failures: the militant southernized Democrats of the 1850's; the stock-market-dazzled and Elmer Gantry-ish GOP of the 1920's; and the imperials of the 1960's, with their Great Society social engineering, quagmire in Vietnam, and the New Economy skills expected to tame the business cycle. Now the Republicans are the miscreants. (p. 348)

But he is not without his detractors. The comments below are taken from an article "The Erring Republican Authority: Kevin Phillips is wrong about everything. Why is he taken so seriously?" by Jacob Weisberg posted on 3/29/06 on the Slate magazine website.

In the years since (his devotion to the Republican party), almost every aspect of (his thinking) has been turned around. Phillips long ago left behind both obscurity and conservatism, becoming one of our most ubiquitous political commentators and one of the most left-wing. His biennial books have become illogical, dizzying screeds. And his diagnoses, predictions, and advice to Democrats have been consistently, embarrassingly wrong...

Phillips’ argument is that oil dependency, Christian fundamentalism, and excessive debt are destroying the country. He is not wrong that these are dangers. But he wildly misunderstands, distorts and overstates all of them.

So, take your pick: Phillips, the wise man or Phillips, the writer of "illogical, dizzying screeds"?

This week's quiz, last week's answers

This week’s quiz: Battles of history.

1. King Leonidas was the leader of his army in what battle?

2. A famous poem was inspired by a battle in the Crimean war. Name the poem and the poet.

3. Mikhail Kutuzov commanded Russian forces in what battle?

4. In a war fought by American forces there were two battles fought in the same place, almost a year apart. Name the war and the place.

Next week's quiz: American and British writers.


Answers to last week’s quiz: European countries.

1. One country has four official languages. What is the country and what are the four languages?

Switzerland. French, German, Italian, and Romansch.

2. The languages of all but three countries are members of the Indo-European family (none of the Russian federation countries are considered here). What are the three exceptions and what is their family called?

Finland, Estonia, and Hungary. They are the Finno-Ugric family. Finnish and Estonian are similar enough that speakers of one can generally understand the other. However, Hungarian seems so different as to make it not understandable by Finns or Estonians, and vice-versa. I say that by comparing written texts.

3. Four countries have a female head of state. Name two of the countries and their heads of state.

Finland: Tarja Halonen
Ireland: Mary McAleese
Germany: Angela Merkel
Latvia: Vaira Vike-Freiberga

4. A department store operates in five countries, one of which is Russia. Name the store and two of the other four countries in which it operates.

Stockmann. Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, it has stores in Finland, Estonia, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I did some shopping at its flagship store in Helsinki during a trip there in 2004.

Competition is dandy

There’s nothing like competition for the consumer. I found that out recently when I had to have a window of my car replaced after it was broken into while parked near Baltimore’s (railroad) Penn Station. (Although I had a small amount of money in coins, a flashlight, and a few other things in plain sight in the car that might have been attractive to a thief, all he/she took was a handicap hanger, obtained a few years ago by my wife because of her arthritis. Apparently these hangers can be sold to inner-city residents who have a very limited number of places to park near their homes.)

Because I have a $500 deductible on my auto insurance policy, I knew I would have to pay for the replacement myself. However, I thought it would be a good idea to call the insurance company to get a referral to a repair shop that the company knew. I was given the name of one company that, I was told, the insurer knew well and would probably give me a good price if I told them that I had that insurer for my auto policy.

Ah yes, for me the price for replacement would be $175; two or three other companies that I called quoted $165 to $180. But another one quoted $155, so I took the car there and the job was done in an hour, as I waited, (the others said 1 ½ hours) in a thoroughly professional job (with all the small bits of glass from the break-in removed).

Anyone who has "Angie’s List" in his geographic area in the USA should take advantage of it. It is a website on which one can seek info about all kinds of service providers (good and bad); one can also post info from his own experience (good or bad) with any of these providers on the website–I intend to add a positive one about the company that did the work on my car.

Another case of the benefit of competition in the Baltimore area is the advent in April 2006 of the new newspaper The Baltimore Examiner. It is owned by a Denver publishing company which has similar papers in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.; it is a tabloid published Monday through Saturday and delivered free-of-charge to homes in certain sections of the Baltimore area.

When I first heard of the paper’s planned inception, I assumed that it would be like many small tabloids that specialize in local stuff–and are good at what they do–but have limited appeal to a reader. Not so with the Examiner: it gives the Baltimore Sun (the only daily newspaper in the Baltimore area for many years prior to this interloper) a run for its money. (One advertising industry trade publication, Adrants, commented the paper "is so much better than your average newspaper.")

I have seen several news items and commentary in the Examiner that the Sun either missed altogether or trailed the Examiner in reporting. One such incident was the arrest of a young (white) couple from Virginia who got lost trying to find their way out of Baltimore after attending an Orioles game–they inadvertently drove their car into a high crime area of the city and then stopped to ask a Baltimore police officer for directions. Instead of being helpful, the officer arrested them and their car was impounded. The Sun missed the original incident altogether and, a day or so later, came out with a follow-up.

I also remember an example of the benefit of competition some twenty years ago, when I was working as a financial analyst in the assessment of the financial strength of insurance companies. Up until about 1986, A.M. Best, a company headquartered in New Jersey, was the only game in town for the rating of insurance companies; it had been around since the 1890's. It published its manuals around July of each year–the manuals contained info and ratings for just about every insurance company in the USA, using a rating system ranging (at the time) from "A+" for the best on down. It rarely revised its ratings during the interim between one July and the next, so people in the insurance industry awaited the new ratings anxiously. Much of the info on a company was basic stuff about its operations, with data from the company’s financial statements provided, but very little explanation was provided as to the reason for its rating. I recall asking a Best executive in a phone conversation about the rationale for the rating of a particular insurance company and was told, "We don’t gild the lily; what you see is what you get."

But all of that changed when Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s in the mid-1980's got into the game of rating insurance companies. Those two companies had been around for many years as recognized providers of credit ratings for all kinds of companies, but the ratings of insurance companies which they began to publish–and which Best had done for years–were claims-paying ability ratings–that is, the assessment of their solvency, something different from a credit rating.

This competition from the old-line S&P and Moody’s (and two other lesser-known rivals that cropped up about the same time) put Best’s feet to the fire. They began to publish rating changes at any time (along with the rationale for the ratings) in their periodical news bulletins; furthermore, one could phone Best and discuss with one of their analysts their ratings for individual insurance companies.

Certainly, there can be exceptions where competition can be harmful. It is debatable as to whether deregulation of the airline industry during the Carter presidency in the 1970's, driving many airlines into bankruptcy from the cut-throat competition, has been beneficial or disadvantageous to the flying public. Likewise, deregulation of the electric utility industry may turn out to have been not in the best interest of consumers. But these cases involved a swing, over a short period of time, from heavily-regulated industies to sudden deregulation.

Yes indeed, whether it comes from Adam Smith’s "invisible hand" or from some other human striving, competition is usually just dandy.

Surprise at Google

I am passing this on just as it was sent to me.

1. Go to http://www.google.com/ 2. Type the word "Failure" 3. Press the "I'm feeling lucky" button (instead of the "Google Search"). 4. Laugh 5. Forward to others before the Google folks fix this.

"The Worst President in History?"

That is the title of an article in the 5/4/06 issue of the magazine Rolling Stone which assesses George W. Bush. The author, one Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, poses the question in a rhetorical sense: the reader of the article pretty well knows, from the beginning, what Wilentz’s answer is going to be. Following are some quotations from the article.

–Twelve percent of the historians polled (by the cable channel History News Network)–nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success–flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush’s role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.

–Since the commencement of reliable polling in the 1940's, only one twice-elected president has seen his ratings fall as low as Bush’s in his second term: Richard Nixon, during the months preceding his resignation in 1974.

–How does any president’s reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness...Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties–Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off.

–He has not only displayed a weakness among the greatest presidential failures–an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities.

–No other president–Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War–faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. but Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president’s own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies–including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil–suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president’s supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security.

–The wise men who counseled Bush’s father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, "There is a higher Father that I appeal to."

The author goes on to cite, in his opinion, the three worst and the three best presidents.

In the worst category ("The Biggest Failures" he calls them) he lists James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Herbert Hoover. Part of his commentary on each is:

Buchanan: "Like Bush, Buchanan left the country more divided and acrimonious."
Johnson: "Johnson’s efforts during Reconstruction were as disastrous as the rebuilding of Iraq."
Hoover: "The failure of Bush’s domestic agenda is unmatched since Hoover...(Hoover’s) upbeat insistence that 'prosperity is just around the corner' backfired, resulting in a landslide for FDR."

As the best ("The Greatest Successes") he cites George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Washington:"Unlike Bush, whose contested election divided the country, the greatest hero of the American Revolution was named the nation’s first president nearly by acclamation, which gave the new national government immediate credibility."
Lincoln: "Lincoln under pressure of daily combat on American soil, did not flout the law in secret, as Bush has. He welcomed rival voices in his own cabinet..."
Roosevelt: "While Bush adheres to a simplistic ideology in the face of changing realities, Roosevelt fought the Great Depression by engaging in relentless experimentation."

It is interesting to note that Wilentz’s choices of the worst and best presidents largely coincide with those from the book Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and Worst in the White House* His picks for the best are the same as the book’s--and in the same order: each of the 39** presidents is given a rating from 1 (worst) to 5 (best); Washington’s was the highest at 4.92. Those for the worst were slightly different: the book listed Buchanan (with the lowest rating of all the 39 at 1.33), and Andrew Johnson but did not include Hoover (instead Franklin Pierce and Warring Harding filled out the list). However, Wilentz’s descriptions of each of the six presidents seem to be original and in no way follow the descriptions in the book.

* Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and Worst in the White House, edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo, Free Press, New York 2004, 291 pages. Approximately 75 individuals (historians, political scientists, and law school professors) participated in the ratings of the presidents; there was a separate writer (from various professions, none from the rating participants) for each president.

** All presidents through Bill Clinton are included in the book with the exceptions of William Henry Harrison (who served only one month in office prior to his death) and George W. Bush (because he was still in his first term when the book was put together).

Buchanan’s pick as the worst president is of personal interest to me because he was the commencement speaker at my grandfather’s class’s graduation from the University of North Carolina in 1859. He is reported to have commented that "War clouds are gathering" in his address.

My take

Selecting the worst of 40 presidents in our 200+ year history poses the difficulty of judging a man in an era other than his own.

Would Buchanan have been the worst if he had been in office during the 1920's, when the first World War was over, the economy was humming (although with the problem of inflation), and the stock market couldn’t go anywhere but up (prior to October 1929)? Unlike Harding, who died in office after serving 2 ½ years in the early 1920's, Buchanan was not charged with any scandal.

Suppose Buchanan had been in office during the 1950's, when our country had recovered from the second World War and people were feeling good most of the time–the Cold War seemed distant, inflation was moderate, people could get jobs (especially those who went to college under the GI bill). Again, with no scandal charged to him (unlike Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams, who had to resign in the vicuña coat affair), Buchanan may have looked better in history.

So it is hard to say whether George W. Bush has been "The Worst President in History," but I have no difficulty in saying that he has certainly been one of the worst.

My charges against Bush:

His bullheadedness, combined with an arrogance that exacerbates his very moderate intellect, lead him to largely shut out those who disagree with him.

His courting the religious far right.

Iraq. About two months before the invasion of Iraq, my son asked me how I felt about Bush’s building up to the invasion. I recall saying that I was "conflicted." I had to believe his allegations of WMD’s and Hussein’s connection to Al Quida–I had nothing at my disposal to disprove those allegations. But I did say that, even if the allegations were true, I strongly disliked his swaggering attitude toward the rest of the world: "Those who aren’t with us are against us."

His father, as president, sent his secretary of state, Jim Baker, to consult with those countries who later became our allies in the first Gulf war; by doing so, he won the support of most of the world in driving Hussein out of Kuwait. George W. could have sent Colin Powell on the same mission or, even better, gone himself to do the job (as he, in fact, tried to do after the invasion of Iraq was well under way). No multilateral game for him: we’ll do it ourselves!

Now that his mendacity and all the poor planning for the invasion’s aftermath have come to light, Iraq is his albatross. We can hope that eventually history will show that the Iraq invasion did do some good by bringing something like democracy to the Middle East, but that is certainly a lot to hope for.

Since he professes to be a faithful believer in the Divinity, when he passes on to meet his Maker, Bush had better be prepared to explain away his personal responsibility for the tens of thousands of American military personnel and Iraqi civilians killed and gravely wounded, as well as the thousands more of ordinary Iraqis whose lives have been made miserable during the war and its aftermath.

His actions unrelated or indirectly related to the invasion of Iraq:

–Reneging on a planned meeting at his Texas ranch with Jean Chretien, the Canadian prime minister at the time, shortly after the invasion of Iraq because of his (Bush’s) pique over Canada’s not sending troops to join the invasion. Instead, he met with Spain’s president Asner, who did send troops; but Asner was voted out of office and replaced by Rodriguez Zapatero in 2004, who brought the Spanish troops back home.

–Setting a tariff on imported steel in 2003–a move clearly intended to win votes in the 2004 election from steel-making states (he had lost Pennsylvania, with its 23 electoral votes in 2000); he rescinded it some months later. While the tariff might have helped the steel companies and their workers for a time, the higher steel prices that resulted hurt many companies that fabricate products from steel and their workers (2003, with GDP growth of just 2.7%, was still in a recovery phase from an earlier slow economy).

–An income tax cut, that together with the cost of the Iraq war and other massive spending, has ballooned the deficit, after surpluses during the Clinton administration. One day, the rest of the world may stop buying our Treasury and Federal Agency notes, instead investing in Euro-denominated debt; if that happens, our country will suffer greatly. (I plan to do a future blog posting on this point.)

A more sure way of boosting the economy and putting more money in the pockets of low and middle-income workers would have been a holiday of several months from the payroll tax. That, of course, would have worked against the solvency of Social Security (including Medicare) but would still have been a better trade-off.

–Claiming to be a fiscal conservative but failing to veto farm and highway construction bills that were reported to be filled with pork. I have no expertise on those topics but I believe commentary by economists and others who cite the pork.

--Not allowing the USA to become a member of the International Court of Justice--the judiciary body which brings international war criminals to the bar of justice. One can speculate that Bush wouldn't have anything to do with this court out of a sense of PYOA (protect your own ass)--that is, because of his invasion of Iraq, he could conceivably be hauled before that body and charged as a war criminal.

–His disgusting behavior in the Terri Schiavo situation.

–His proposed Constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage.

–The Harriet Miers affair.

Should he be given credit for anything that he may have done right? Perhaps. The Medicare prescription drug bill may prove to have merit. His personal investment accounts idea, although now seemingly dead, might have been good for working people if many serious potential obstacles could somehow have been worked out. He might be on the right track in respect to the immigration issue; I like his viewpoint that Hispanic and other immigrants are a net benefit to our country.

But all that said, I stick by my opinion expressed in an earlier blog:

I believe if George Bush were my next-door neighbor, or the neighborhood hardware merchant, I would like him. He has some likable traits. I would probably like to have a beer with him–except he says he doesn’t drink.

But, as President I believe that he is a tragic misfit. I am afraid that, as a nation, we and our children will have to pay for his many misguided actions for a long time. ( "A nice guy in one role, a disaster in another" posted 3/15/06).

My response to "Anonymous's" comments (see them by clicking on "Comments" at the bottom of the posting (below) and then clicking on
the up arrow):

Thanks for your comments. I welcome all comments.

Watch your language, Anonymous, this is a family-oriented blog. Would you like your little ones to see your comments?

I would probably like to have a beer with Bush if he were my neighbor (and not our president) for the reason I gave: he has some likeable traits.

As to Yale vs. U. of Maryland: it's not the college, it's the student. I'll wager that you learned as much (and perhaps more) at U.of M. than Bush did at Yale. With a grandfather and father who were wealthy and influential politicians, I suspect that George W. was less than a brilliant student.

This week's quiz, last week's answers

This week's quiz: European countries

1. One country has four official languages. What is the country and what are the four languages?

2. The languages of all but three countries are members of the Indo-European family (none of the Russian federation countries are considered here). What are the three exceptions and what is their family called?

3. Four countries have a female head of state. Name two of the countries and their heads of state.

4. A department store operates in five countries, one of which is Russia. Name the store and two of the other four countries in which it operates.

Next week's quiz: Battles of history.

Answers to last week’s quiz: U.S. states

1. The University of ____ is located in Vermillion; _____ State University is in Brookings. Which is the state?

South Dakota

2. Only one state has a unicameral (just one chamber) legislature. Which is it?

Nebraska

3. Name any two of the 14th, 15th, and 16th states to enter the Union after the original 13 colonies.

Vermont 1791, Kentucky 1792, Tennessee 1796.

4. Fourteen presidents were previously governors of their states. Name seven (name and state).

Actually there were 16--I missed a couple:

Thomas Jefferson (Virginia). James Monroe (Virginia). Martin Van Buren (New York). John Tyler (Virginia). James K. Polk (Tennessee). Andrew Johnson (Tennessee). Grover Cleveland (New York). Theodore Roosevelt (New York). Woodrow Wilson (New Jersey). Warren G. Harding (Ohio). Calvin Coolidge (Massachusetts). Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York). Jimmy Carter (Georgia). Ronald Reagan (California). Bill Clinton (Arkansas). George W. Bush (Texas).

That wise guy/gal "Anonymous" in Tustin, CA got them right again. We'll trip him/her up eventually.

The shame of Darfur continues

“Dithering Through Death” is the title of Nicholas Kristof’s Op-Ed column in the 5/16/06 issue of The New York Times. He says:

For those of us who admire the United Nations, there is an uncomfortable reality to grapple with: The U.N. has put barely a speed bump in the path to genocide in Darfur. The U.N. has been just as ineffective there for the last three years as it was during the slaughter in Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia. Once again, it rolled over...The sad fact is that the U.N. is a wimp. It publishes fine reports and is terrific at handing out food and organizing vaccination campaigns, but the General Assembly and the Security Council routinely doze through crimes against humanity...the U.N. has regularly failed abysmally in situations like the one in Darfur, when military intervention is needed but a major power (in this case China) uses the threat of a veto to block action.

An article in the Times two days earlier (5/14/06) by reporter Lydia Polgreen describes the continuing rampage of the janjaweed thugs in Darfur–she recounts just one bloody incident:

Three men with machine guns stopped (a) truck on the road and fired into its cabin, shooting the driver and blowing out the tires...the raiders set upon the women, raping them in turn, witnesses said.

The reporter adds that one woman was killed, six villagers were wounded , and fifteen women were raped. She goes on:

These atrocities occur even when police and military personnel are nearby but rarely respond. ...protecting from the attacks of the militias (the janjaweed) is the job of the police, but they seldom respond...African Union troops occasionally patrol the area, but their narrow mandate calls for them to monitor, not enforce, the 2004 cease-fire.

All of this deplorable mayhem goes on while terms of another peace treaty between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the Darfur rebel groups are supposedly being worked out. It seems that Khartoum’s game is to make it appear that, by making small incremental movements, it is working toward a genuine end to the genocide; in fact, however, its real intent is to temporize so that it can continue the depredations in Darfur.

I attended the 4/30/06 rally at the National Mall in Washington to support stopping the Darfur genocide. One report said that over 50,000 people were there; a long mixed bag of speakers (clergy of all faiths, politicians, media people, victims of the Darfur atrocities, victims of the Jewish holocaust, and others) expressed their outrage at the situation.

The most pragmatic proposals were that military intervention is needed now. Dick Gregory, the black comedian, said he was going to fast until there was such action; the leader of a Jewish group said that his organization was going to call on most of the European and African embassies in Washington to urge their countries to participate in such action.

One can only regret that our government could invade Iraq on the pretext that it was to protect our national interest while, at the same time, only “dither” (to use Nicholas Kristof’s word) in regard to Darfur (dithering is about all that we can do with so much of our military force engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan). How about our moral interest?

I have done all that I know how to support action NOW to stop this horrible situation. Besides two previous postings on this blog about it and attending the Washington rally, my wife and I have sent letters to President Bush, our two U.S. senators from Maryland and to the congressman from our district urging such action. (Ironically, Senator Paul Sarbanes, who is to retire from the Senate at the end of his term this year, was the first to respond to our letter; Senator Barbara Mikulski, who still has time left on her term, was next; but Congressman Ben Cardin, who is running for the Senate this year (to replace Sarbanes) and who needs our support the most–and who has fewer constituents than the two senators, who represent the whole state of Maryland, has yet to respond.)

Introduction of Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2): be warned

The much-heralded Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2) version just became available from Microsoft a short time ago, at which time the company put out a promotion describing all of its desirable new features. So I downloaded it, which was very easy, taking only a few minutes. But, a day or two later, I found to my horror that I could no longer paste text from a Word Perfect page (by using "Edit" and "Copy") onto a page of a new e-mail (using Outlook Express) that I was creating. Other than very short ones, I always create e-mails that way (so I can edit and use Spell Check in Word Perfect before copying to the e-mail).

At first, I had no idea that my problem was caused by the downloading of IE7 because I didn’t know that there was any connection between Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. After much time spent, I learned that the downloading of IE7 was causing the problem. To uninstall it I had to contact tech service at Hewlett Packard (Windows XP had been installed at the factory on my computer) to remove it and go back to IE6, which cost me $45, my computer being out of warranty.

The situation was like taking a prescription drug that offers benefits in one way but has unacceptable side effects.

IE7 may be wonderful for anyone who doesn’t use my method of creating e-mails, but if you do, be warned.

Stop those loose statistics!

I get annoyed when I hear or read statistics cited that can’t possibly be verified. I recently read in Steve Chapman’s column in the Chicago Tribune that 72 % of third-generation Hispanics living in the USA speak only English at home. I generally admire Chapman but his tossing out that statistic did annoy me. He didn’t say "according to polls" or use some such qualifier; it is virtually impossible to know the actual percentage: no one is going to contact every single third-generation Hispanic and get a response.

There are many instances of such stats being thoughtlessly thrown around, usually based on someone's estimates (or better, "guesstimates"). We hear that x million children go to bed hungry every night, the drug trade in the USA puts y dollars in the pockets of dealers, people with only a high school education make z dollars less in a lifetime of work than those who finish college, etc., etc.

But the most patently foolish one to me is it being reported, as an unqualified fact, that a certain percent of blacks/ Hispanics/ married women over 25/ white men between 25 and 40/ Catholics, etc. voted for one candidate (or party) or another in a national election.

I have heard from several sources that 7% of black people voted for George Bush in 2000, but the number increased to 13% in 2004. Clearly, no one can possibly know this. One could take the votes from precincts where the population is heavily black, but how about the increasing numbers of blacks who live in mostly white areas? One could use exit poll numbers, which are such a small and unscientific sample that they would have little validity as a proxy for the nation. Or how about small southern towns of a few thousand population which are about 50/50 white/black? There are probably only one or two polling places in those towns, making it impossible to know the numbers of the black vote.

To anyone who might say I am being picky, I say: if those users of grandiose "facts" aren't called to task, they will continue to stretch in making them up.

Please, columnists, politicians, activists, and all you others who toss these stats around. Stop it!

The Star Spangled Banner in Spanish

It’s been much talked about lately that Hispanics in the USA have come up with a Spanish-language version of our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner (Nuestro himno, “Our anthem”). There are those who disapprove of having such a version of it, including (according to National Public Radio) the great-grandson of its composer, Francis Scott Key, and George Bush (“It should be sung in English,” he said).

Having heard it played and sung, I think it is in good taste. It is set to the same music as The Star Spangled Banner with just a bit of Latino flavor added. It is respectful of our anthem–certainly more so than many pop singers who jazz it up disgustingly at sports events and other public gatherings. I think we should be pleased that Hispanics living in the USA want to show by their Spanish version that they are proud of their adopted country. They even have a second verse similar to that of the English version (which almost no one who sings the English version knows).

Having the Spanish version doesn’t in any way detract from the English one; anyone can choose to sing one or the other, or both, on various occasions. Canada has both an English and French version of its national anthem Oh, Canada.

Following is are the words of Nuestro himno and an English translation (taken from National Public Radio’s website).

Amanece, lo veis?, a la luz de la aurora?
lo que tanto aclamamos la noche al caer?
sus estrellas sus franjas flotaban ayer
en el fiero combate
en señal de victoria,
fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertad.
Por la noche decían:
"Se va defendiendo!"
Oh decid! Despliega aún
Su hermosura estrellada
sobre tierra de libres,
la bandera sagrada?

English translation:

It's sunrise. Do you see by the light of the dawn
What we proudly hailed last nightfall?
Its stars, its stripes
yesterday streamed
above fierce combat
a symbol of victory
the glory of battle, the march toward liberty.
Throughout the night, they proclaimed: "We will defend it!"
Tell me! Does its starry beauty still wave
above the land of the free,
the sacred flag?

This week's quiz, last week's answers

Last week’s questions (U.S. presidents)

1. Who first lived in the White House?

2. Who skinny-dipped in the Potomac River?

3. Who served two non-consecutive terms?

4. Who said "Give me a one-armed economist?"

Last week's answers

1. John Adams, the second president, moved in in November 1800. The seat of government during the term of George Washington, the first president, was in New York City.

2. John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams. I read about the incident years ago, the source of which I can’t find. As I recall it, while Adams was in the water someone stole his clothes from where he had left them on the river bank; when he discovered them missing, he called to a young boy who was passing by to go to the White House and bring him some more clothes.

However, I did run across a somewhat different version of the story: A widow of an army veteran of the Revolutionary War, one Anne Royall, had been seeking a pension for her husband’s service by presenting her case to various government officials in Washington, without success; then, one day she happened on Adams doing his dip and sat by his clothes until he listened to her petition. Twenty-some years later, Congress passed a pension law under which a pension was granted for her late husband’s military service, but his family received most of it. Rather than being angered by her confrontation with him, Adams invited Mrs. Royall to the White house and introduced her to his wife. (Source: The Free Dictionary)

3. Grover Cleveland. A Democrat, he won the 1884 election and served from 1885-89. Seeking reelection in 1888, he beat his Republication candidate, Benjamin Harrison, in the popular vote by a mere 476 votes out of almost a total 11 million cast; however, he lost the electoral vote (as Samuel Tilden did in 1876 and Al Gore in 2000). But, four years later, running against the incumbent Harrison, he won the popular vote by 381,000 and also the electoral vote and served from 1893-97.

4. Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president who succeeded to the presidency following Roosevelt’s death in 1945 and then won a full term in 1948 and served from 1949-53. Having grown tired of hearing "on the one hand..., but on the other hand..." from his economic advisers, he made that famous comment.

Congratulations to Anonymous in Tustin, CA, who answered all four questions correctly. Good luck to him/her on future quizzes.

This week’s questions (African republics, former colonies)

1. Prior to the first World War, Germany had five colonies in Africa. Following her defeat in that war, those colonies were put under the mandate of either Britain or France (one of them was split geographically between those two countries) or South Africa. During the mid 20th Century all became independent republics.

Name two of those (for those who changed their names when they became independent, give either their colonial or their present names) and tell which European countries had them as colonies during the period following World War I until independence.

2. Ghana was the first former sub-Saharan colony to become independent (from Britain) in 1957, at which time it changed its name. What was its former name?

3. Two former French colonies, Senegal and French Soudan, both gained their independence in 1959 and joined together to form a republic to which they gave a new name. However, the marriage lasted only a few months, following which Senegal split and took back its former name. The former French Soudan kept the new name for itself and has it today. What was that new name?

4. Three European countries besides Britain and France had colonies in Africa until the independence movement swept that continent in the latter half of the 20th Century. Name two of the three European countries and name one of the colonies of each (using the colonial name).

Answers next week

Next week's questions (U.S. states)

People dying today ain't never died before

"There’s people dying today ain’t never died before." Those were supposedly the words of Gooch, an elderly black man in my hometown, upon hearing of the death of a local prominent citizen. Gooch was considered to be something of an unschooled philosopher (a sort of earlier-day Yogi Berra).

Several opera singers, who never died before (except on the opera stage), have passed away recently. Just last month I heard of the death of Anna Moffo at the age of 73. Ms. Moffo, a Pennsylvania native, sang many soprano roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York: she was particularly known as Violetta in La Traviata and as Turandot in that opera. I got her autograph, for my collection, during the 1980's when she was a judge at the auditions for young singers put on by the Baltimore Opera Company; my collection consists of three, the others being those of the soprano Licia Albanese (who also was a judge at one of the auditions) and the tenor Carlo Bergonzi, during a reception for him when he sang the role of Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore for the Baltimore Opera Company some years ago.

(Had I been prescient back in 1962 I could have also gotten the autograph of James Morris, now an internationally famous bass/baritone. In 1962, the year we moved into our house, our delivery boy for the Baltimore Sun newspaper was (you guessed it) James Morris, age 16 at the time; he grew up a short distance from us and attended the same junior high and high school that our two children did years later.)

Others who have died within the last 2 ½ years are:
Birgit Nilssson (2005)
Renata Tebaldi (2004)
Robert Merrill (2004)
Nicolai Ghiaurov (2004)
Franco Corelli (2003)

Some singers, for me, have "owned" particular roles--by which I mean that, when I think of certain operatic roles, a particular singer comes to mind. Jan Peerce is always Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata, Franco Corelli is Cavaradossi in Pucinni’s Tosca, Jon Vickers is Otello in Verdi’s Otello, Robert Merrill is Giorgio Germont in La Traviata, although I also very much like Sherrill Milnes in that role. (Corelli was known as a hotdog, frequently hamming it up with many exaggerations in his singing–such as holding a high note overly long--for which, I believe, he was liked by most people. Once when my son was young, he heard a recording of Corelli singing the aria "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca that I was playing and asked, "Why is that man crying?")

My interest in opera began in 1949 when I went to New York to work at my first job after college. At that time one could buy a ticket in the "Family Circle," the highest level from the stage at the Metropolitan Opera (at its old location at Broadway and 39th Street) for $2.50 Today, it is hard to believe a price that low; however, it is also hard to imagine that one could have lived in New York on a salary of $240 a month. One could, and did–that was my salary for the first eight months I was there; afterward I changed companies and got $260 a month. So, to attend the Met with a date, which I frequently did, cost the very significant sum of $5.40 (two tickets plus subway fare of $.40, four trips at a dime each), even if we never did anything else, such as have dinner before the performance or a drink afterward.

Another favorite venue was the New York City Opera, which was still new (it began in 1945); it was on West 55th street. Like the Met, it moved to the Lincoln Center in 1966.

One of the most memorable performances that I attended at the Met was La Traviata with Jan Peerce and Licia Albanese. Traviata has always been my favorite opera.

Peerce (born Jacob Pincus Perelmuth) died in 1984. He is my favor tenor as to operas that I have attended, although overall I slightly favor Nicolai Gedda, whom I have never seen perform. Peerce’s voice was "patrician," as one critic has put it. His rendition of "Un di felice" from Traviata turns me on today, as I listen to it on a recording, as it did the first time I heard it. After having only seen Peerce from far away in the Family Circle at the old Met, it was a wonderful experience to see him up very close at a recital he gave in 1970 at a gymnasium on the campus of the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Unlike some opera singers who mix a few opera arias with pop tunes during recitals, Peerce, accompanied by a pianist, sang one aria after another.

I regretted that Jan Peerce, a man whom I admired so much as an opera singer, I saw as a bigot when he virtually disinherited his son Larry upon his marriage to a Gentile. I understand that there was some reconciliation in later years that brought them closer together. (Larry Peerce was a freshman at the University of North Carolina my senior year there; after graduation, he became a documentary film producer.)

In 2005 I attended a performance of Verdi's I Lombardi at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of the world's best-known opera houses. It is expansive, finding my seat was quite an experience. The ticket price was the equivalent of $23, amazingly inexpensive for an American. (Currencies in South America are so cheap compared to the U.S. dollar that hotels, restaurants, and everything one purchases all seem like super bargains, especially to an American who has travelled to Europe and had sticker shock when the dollar has been weak against the euro.)

At the Teatro Colón I had the pleasure of chatting with two ladies, one on each side if me, during the intermissions. They told me many interesting things about the performances there--one was why the orchestra was dressed in casual street clothes (I had never seen orchestras other than in formal evening wear). The reason was a long-standing protest by the players against the management--I didn't get exactly what they were protesting, whether salaries, working conditions, or whatever.

I was amazed at the English translations in the printed program for the performance: while the main text was (naturally) in Spanish, there were sidebar English translations, which ranged from mildy bad to laughable. I wondered that such an institution as the Colón couldn't find a native English speaker to edit the translations.

No "thou" and "thee" in English

Fortunately, in English we only use the word "you" for everybody (don’t be cute and tell me about "youse" and "y’all"), whereas, in all other languages that I know anything about, there is a formal "you" and an informal one–"thou/thee/thy," etc. Of course, "thou/thee" was used in English centuries ago but has long since vanished from our normal vocabulary, and is used only in church ritual, poetry, certain types of music, and the like.

Although I said above that "thou/thee" is informal (i.e., used between family members and close friends), it is that but also a bit more: it is used to address individuals considered (by the addresser) to be on a lower level as to age or social standing. For example, young children are almost always addressed in the "thou/thee" form by adults, and also by other children; also that form is usually used by masters when speaking to their servants. The noun for this form is tutoiement in French, the verb for using it is tutoyer; in Spanish the terms are tuteamiento and tutear respectively.

I say it is fortunate that we don’t use the "thou/thee" because it avoids sometimes embarrassing situations or occasional undesirable communication between individuals. A few times I have had individuals address me that way in Spanish, individuals wanting to be chummy, but with whom I didn’t share the feeling. (During a plane trip to Mexico City on a consulting assignment some years ago, my seat mate in casual conversation learned that my assignment involved the property-casualty insurance field, whereupon he told me that his brother was an insurance agent there (using the tuteamiento with me). That same evening, as I was just getting settled in my hotel room, I got a phone call from his brother inviting me to visit him; I begged off, using a very tight schedule (which was true) as an excuse.)

I faced a more complex situation when I spent almost two years in the early 1950's working for the oil company Texaco (now part of Chevron) in Dakar, Senegal, in west Africa. At the time, Senegal was a French colony; it gained its independence in 1960. Soon after arriving there, I noted that the white French frequently used the tutoiement when speaking to the native black Africans (the indigénes). After being uncertain at first as to how I should handle this situation, I later concluded that I would tutoyer those Africans who wore the native dress--bou-bou’s (long cloth robes), Arabic-type sandals, and usually a fez or a helmet--but would use the f