Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Sticks and (Rolling) Stones

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SWMBO and I have agreed to split the chores around here. She, for example, mows the dooryard with the little rotary mower every four or five days when the weather is like it is now; I mow the rest of the lawn with the diesel tractor. She does the laundry; I rebuild the back porches. She complains to her friends about all the things I have to do; I blog.

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She can fire me if I don’t take care of my responsibilities. She prolly can’t fire me if I mutter under my breath but things may get a bit chilly.

Muttering is time honored. There has never been a time that a soldier — or a husband — didn’t sit around a campfire and complain about working conditions.

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Sometimes, “I find myself on the receiving end of little burst of off-the-record trash talk,” David Brooks wrote in the NYTimes when he took a former Vermonter to task for reporting about Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s kvetching.
Imagine that. A soldier might complain about the yo-yos in his or her chain of command. Why, I simply can’t conceive the conversations between Hannibal (the Grace of Baal)’s conscripts when they had elephant duty. Except I reckon the language would have been … salted peanuts in nature. Used salted peanuts.

“General McChrystal was excellent at his job,” Mr. Brooks wrote. “He had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond. He set up a superb decision-making apparatus that deftly used military and civilian expertise.”

Then he called the boss a poopyhead.

Liberals, afraid of most dangers in their minds and unaware of most dangers in real life, have this mantra:

Words and poems can break my bones
But IEDs can never hurt me.

“I welcome debate among my team, but I won’t tolerate division,” Barack Obama said, showing his pettiness, his despottery, and his complete lack of understanding of either military or family life, as he relieved Gen. McChrystal as commander of American forces in Afghanistan. As an aside, I don’t think Mr. Obama or Mr. Bush before him fired enough generals. Generals need to be nervous. Generals need to work miracles or they need to get out of the way.

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So far, Gen. McChrystal did seem to be doing a better job than Gen. Bluggett. Doesn’t matter. The words around the campfire haven’t changed much.

But they will. Our army (every army) does two things very, very well: eat and gripe.

Mr. Obama had the opportunity to treat the General’s campfire griping with grace. By not doing so, he put every soldier on notice that the chain of command will punish them the first time they get caught griping.

Scary stuff, that. Scary that the Despot in Chief doesn’t understand morale in the ranks.

Mr. Brooks thinks, “The culture of exposure has triumphed, with results for all to see.”

He’s only half right.

If we all got fired for kvetching, there wouldn’t be a marriage — or a soldier — left standing.

Agreement?

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I am not a lawyer. Nor do I play one on TV. On the other hand, I am uniquely qualified to offer this legal advice because I wrote a rental contract while in college that the landlord’s lawyer could not break. Sam the Landlord learned from that experience (he never signed a contract again that his own lawyer hadn’t written) and I learned how much fun teaching can be.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I are following in the footsteps of 60 Minutes’ Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick in paired blog articles. After reading this article, please go read title for the counterpoint argument.]

Over on the other blog, gekko was spurred by a Safari program called Reader.

Reader is really neat. It strips the page of all the advertisements, sidebars, and inconsequential stuff, and pops up just the text in a translucent overlay. That scares the advertisers who believe they have a contract with the viewers, readers, or users on the site; seeing all the ads is the price they charge us to see the content.

gekko thinks the contract is not between us readers and the fodder provider. The contract, she says, is only between the content provider and the advertiser.

Contract is an important legal term. A contract is actually “just” an agreement between thee and me to trade something I have for something you have. To be valid, the contract must be (1) enforceable by law and (2) equitable.

Trade? That sounds like business and it is. I might have a book you want. You might have a dollar I want. We can contract to trade my book for your dollar and both walk away happy. Even if our contract is no more than this conversation:

“Hey, you got that book?”

“Yup, Cost you a buck.”

That fulfills the basis for a legal contract.

<pedantic mode> Both of us must be old enough and not impaired to buy or sell that book and the contract must be neither trifling, indeterminate, impossible, or illegal.

As long as the good or service we trade is legal, our oral agreement can constitute a binding legal contract. In practical terms, written contracts are more enforceable because they list all the terms we decided on at the time we made the agreement.

Enforceable means that we each promise to do something for the other guy and that the other guy has specific legal remedies if we breach that promise. A “compensatory remedy” means the Sheriff will make me pay what I said I would and maybe more besides. An “equitable remedy” usually means the Sheriff will stand over me to make sure I perform what I agreed to do and reneged on.

Equitable means fair to both parties. A court would accept as equitable the sale of a used copy of Pocket Shakespear for a buck — both parties benefit more-or-less equally. A court ought not accept as equitable the sale of an original signed manuscript of Macbeth for a buck — here the seller takes it in the ear. </pedantic mode>

Back to the Safari Reader.

Reuters reports that “the Internet is [now] by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice for news ahead of television, newspapers and radio, according to a new poll in the United States.”

There are two contracts in play. In the first, the advertiser contracts with the Internet content provider (the fodder we want to read) to place the ads and other links on the content page so the viewer/user will see them. gekko contends that’s The One. In the second, the viewer/user agrees to view the ads and other links on the page in order to see the fodder we want to read. I maintain that’s The Other One.

In many ways, this is exactly the same model we have used for “free” radio and television broadcasts since 1920 when KDKA went on the air in Pittsburgh.

gekko believes the second contract does not exist, partly because we the viewer/user never agreed to it.

<pedantic mode> An implicit contract (A.K.A. an “implied-in-fact contract”) is one agreed by our conduct, rather than by the words we say. The U.S. Supreme Court defines it as an agreement “founded upon a meeting of minds, which, although not embodied in an express contract, is inferred, as a fact, from conduct of the parties showing, in the light of the surrounding circumstances, their tacit understanding.” </pedantic mode>

So. Does watching American Idol on Fox or reading the New York Times online mean we agree to watch or read the commercials that support it?

Yes.

TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch). The writers and publishers of the information we absorb so easily offer it in exactly the same way I sold you the book and for exactly the same reason you go to work each day. Paying the writer is at least as important as paying your mechanic to tighten the lug nuts when he changes a tire on your car.

I traded the book for a buck. You trade your hours at desk or workbench for, I hope, more than a buck. You may have no written contract with your employer but your boss offered you the position, salary, and appropriate working conditions in return for your appearance on time and performance of the assigned duties. That’s an implicit contract.

VCRs, DVRs, other recording devices, and now Safari’s Reader allow us to breach that contract with the broadcaster or website. The fact that we can breach the contract does not mean we should breach the contract any more than we should rob the gas station down the street just because the President did.

The contract hinges on enforceability but in this day of a Democratic President and Congress ignoring the law or changing it to fit their whims, I would not be a bit surprised to find the Library police reassigned to ad watch duty.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I have written paired blog articles. After reading this piece, please go read title for the counterpoint argument.]

I have no advertising on this page, so there is no implicit contract that you, dear reader, will pay for these words. OTOH, donations via the Tip Jar are always welcome.

Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters

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The networks made a big deal today of Tony Hayward sailing his yacht, Bob, in the clean waters of the English channel. There was one passing comment about President Obama playing golf. Yesterday the Prez visited a construction site in … OHIO.

“People here are not on their yachts today,” Senator Richard Shelby, R-AL, said. “I believe it’s the height of arrogance. He is the chief executive of BP, he was testifying in Washington and now he’s going out on his yacht in England.” Of course there were yachts sailing in the Gulf of Mexico today even if Sen. Shelby pretended not to know that.

Oddly, the networks didn’t show us a single image of Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Shepard Smith, or Brian Williams, all of whom were also enjoying a DAY OFF the job on a Saturday.

Mr. Obama called this the “biggest natural disaster” in the history of this country. Well, by golly, then he and Mr. Hayward should be out there personally scooping oil out of the water, shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t Ms. Couric, Ms. Sawyer, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Williams be out there, too?

I can understand that the people who live on or near the Gulf would get jacked up by the media with pictures of people relaxing on a day off. It really really irks me that the networks would send in their second team to stir up these troubled waters for no reason other than to sell toilet paper.

They all know better. And so, dear reader, do you.

What a Freaking Difference!

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“I missed fucking Asbestos Dust?” Rufus said. He was amazed. The rest of us about died.

For those just whooshed, Asbestos Dust is the nom-de-Net of a writer from Texas or Arkansas or maybe Alaska. I met him at a party in Pennsylvania to which Rufus was invited but did not attend.

Word choice makes a difference. Even word position makes a difference. “I fucking missed Asbestos Dust?” has a very different meaning than what Rufus actually said.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be,” Mark Twain wrote. Regular readers will realize that I use little profanity in real life and even less in my writings. I will not use any of the other seven dirty words here today; younger readers need not tune to a different channel.

On the other hand, I will take issue with how the anti-science crowd uses its words.

NPR’s Science Friday focused on new nuclear technologies in the episode broadcast March 5, 2010 . Guests included Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown, Scott Burnell, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission public affairs officer, John Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation, and Professor Richard Lester who heads the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at MIT.

“What is the future of nuclear power,” Mr. Brown asked himself. “It’s cost cost cost.”

Waste could kill nuclear power, he said. “Imagine if the billion dollar price tag [the per plant cost of the Yucca Mountain project] had been on the table when they were being considered, most of them would never have gotten off the ground.”

A billion dollar “extra” cost per plant sounds excessive, doesn’t it? It is exceptionally expensive if all you know is that one partial factoid.

“The volume of waste produced is very, very small,” Professor Lester said. A nuclear plant produces a couple of ounces of waste per person per year; a coal plant produces about 10 tons of waste per person per year. “We can afford to spend a lot of money on safely storing this material. The impact on the cost of nuclear electricity is actually very small.”

“Our cost … is just under 10 cents per KW-hour,” Mr. Deal said later. That includes the waste.

“What we have in this country, and that’s not going to help with the image of nuclear power, is the discovery that there are now 27 older plants with underground pipes that are leaking tritium, and tritium is a carcinogen,” Mr. Brown said. “In Vermont, as I recall, with the most recent instance occurring at Vermont Yankee.”

Tritium leaks sound pretty dangerous, don’t they? They are excruciatingly dangerous if all you know is one partial factoid.

The hydrogen isotope tritium is a by-product of modern nuclear reactor operations. It combines easily with oxygen to form “tritiated water” which can be ingested by drinking or eating organic foods. It is a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food, water, or absorbed through the skin but, since tritium is not much of a beta emitter, it is not dangerous when simply nearby. It has a 7 to 14 day half life in the human body. That means a single-incident ingestion is not usually dangerous and it precludes accumulating tritium from the environment in your body long-term.

“There have been 27 instances … [but] they are not all ongoing,” Mr. Burnell said. “In the case of Vermont Yankee … the contamination is not reaching any drinking water sources; it’s not reaching the nearby Connecticut River. So it is not presenting any public health issue and we, at the NRC, are closely watching how Vermont Yankee is evaluating the situation to discover where the leak is coming from. We will make sure that they do identify it properly, that they fix it properly, and that in every instance they are doing what is necessary to operate the plant safely and in accordance with our regulations.”

“I’m not a geologist or an engineer,” Mr. Brown said as he evaluated the complex dance of creating and running a nuclear power plant. Ya think?

Word choice — what we actually say — makes a difference in what listeners understand. Mr. Brown certainly knows that. This is a real example of choosing words to propagandize rather than choosing to disclose the facts.

So, did we fucking miss A.D. or did we miss fucking him?

“It’s been too long since I had a taste of the Dust,” Rufus said.

There is no hope.

Let Them Eat Dirt

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Want to know everything that is wrong with schools today?

Kids aren’t allowed to eat dirt.

About a century ago in news biz terms, on the Fifth of May of this year, Miguel Rodriguez, an assistant school principal at Live Oak High School in Santa Clara, CA, punished five sophomores for wearing the American flag on their t-shirts. He deemed their shirts conspicuously “incendiary” mostly because other students were wearing the red, white, and green of the Mexican flag that day.

Incendiary?

A lot longer ago than the Santa Clara wardrobe malfunction, the assistant principal of our local high school did the same thing to our daughter. We had taken our kids on their first trip to Key West shortly after we bought this house in South Puffin. The Half Shell Raw Bar is one of the favorite tourist stops there. It inhabits a building that was once a Key West shrimp packing building in the historic seaport.

The Half Shell sells t-shirts.

You know the story. “Our ‘rents went on vacation and all I got was this stupid shirt.”

[Image] Number One daughter really liked her shirt with its nubile, bikini-clad waitress, platter of oysters, and slogan. Particularly the slogan.

Naturally, her Assistant Principal went after that shirt with tar and bonfire. Number One daughter wasn’t even allowed to turn it inside out. That insidious, salacious message was still there, still capable of corrupting those innocent 1980s high schoolers. She had to call home, get a ride home, and change clothes. The school banned her from classes until she did.

Banned.

The holiday of Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May, is not, as Assistant Principal Rodriguez and many other people apparently think, Mexico’s Independence Day. South of the Border, Independence Day is September 16. Here’s the history: Mexico was a debtor nation when, in 1861, then-Mexican President Benito Juarez stopped paying the interest on the loans. France held a lot of the notes, so they sent in their debt collectors in the form of the French army to force payment of this debt. The regional holiday of Puebla commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle of Puebla in 1862.

So Live Oak High School wanted to punish five kids for not celebrating a battle over a loan default.

Never occurred to Assistant Principal Rodriguez (a professional educator) that the right principle would have been to let the kids duke it out, send them to separate corners, and use the whole experience as a teaching moment, eh?

Back to kids eating dirt.

The United States maintains a fiction that we want well educated kids. We bandy about buzz words like “experiential learning,” “critical thinking,” and “expanding horizons” while we isolate the kids from the ebb and flow of playground confrontation, intelligent decision making, or anything that might impact their self esteem. And gawd help us if we expose them to germs.

Ofttimes kids learn better when we let them be kids. That includes having the odd playground discussion over political values and eating a bit of dirt in the playground along the way.