Shadow Flutter

We spend too much time worshiping (or damning) our president.  Not just this president, but all presidents.  We worship him because the national media covers him around the clock.   The national media covers him 24X7, because if they can make him important and ubiquitous, they make themselves indispensable and almost as important.  Everything the president says, no matter how mundane and irrelevant, is televised and reported.  He burps -- news flash -- “President burps.  Details at 11.”  He is portrayed as constantly under siege or victorious -- his every thought dramatic, his every decision apocalyptic.  We are taught to wait on his every word.  Like in the old commercial where everyone shushes everyone else to hear E.F. Hutton speak, the media forces the president’s every utterance upon us, no matter how irrelevant the utterance might be.     The reality is we live out lives locally.  What happens to our famili...

A year late, but what the heck. We could talk all day about why and how Romney lost the election.  He hemmed and hawed over releasing his tax returns, his foreign policy was an extension of Bush’s, he accused 40% of the population of preferring to live off the other 60%, and he couldn’t attack Obamacare because Obamacare was Romneycare with a makeover.  But the real reason, I think, most people didn’t vote for him is they didn’t feel comfortable with him.  You can agree all day on policy, the Middle East, global strategic maneuvering, the economy, and health care.  In the end, you have to feel comfortable with the person you are bestowing so much power on, and Romney was never that person.  Just something about him.  People don’t mention it, but I think the dog affair hurt him a lot.  I know I it hurt him with me.  He placed the family dog in an animal cage and then tied the cage to the top of his car.  The poor dog stayed in that cage for th...

Comes now from the Universities of Toronto and Milan a new study that shows diets rich in bread after menopause raise the risk of developing breast cancer among 55 -- 64 year-olds by 60%, while those diets rich in pasta don’t.  The researchers work with the World Health Organization, a fact that boosts their credentials, while having absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the study or the accuracy of its results.  The media are always reporting such “scientific results.”  Morning shows are the worst offenders, being almost singularly responsible for promoting pop-science and quackery.  If you eat the right things, wear the right clothes, and organize your life the right way, you can live a fulfilling and healthy life. So what is one to make of studies like this?  The Economist reports that less than half the results of research reported in peer-review magazines can be replicated.  That’s a sad state of affairs that says much about the general shoddine...

Artillery (1911) Roger de La Fresnaye  I don't like cubism, but I like this geometric art form.  Note the horses pulling field cannons.   Captures a military in technological transition. de La Fresnaye was the son of a military officer. The Conquest of the Air (1916) Roger de La Fresnaye Another de La Fresnaye work,this one with a provocative title.  Not sure of the meaning, but the title again suggests a world in the midst of technological change.  Something about de La Fresnaye's art -- so simple yet unique.  What a shame he died at the age of 40 (1885 - 1925).  Time Smoking A Picture (1761) William Hogarth Time's smoke dulls the paint of the picture, while his scythe pieces the painting destroying it.  Time is the enemy of paintings, not art.

Watching this morning’s House hearing on the lackluster debut of the Obamacare web site, I am left wondering why we bother having these hearings, at least on TV.  The spectacle seems designed to give the committee maximum exposure and the truth minimum exposure.  Each panel member is allotted 5 minutes to ask questions, then the next panel member asks hers.  This is repeated until every member exhausts his 5 minutes of fame.  Then they go around again.  This circle jerk provides abundant time to start many lines of inquiry but explore none of them in depth. You watch.  You learn nothing. Since no member has time to explore his line of inquiry to its fruitful end, as often as not he spends his precious minutes pontificating on the pros or cons of some program -- in this case Obamacare -- or skewering either a fellow congressman for having the audacity to belong to the other side or the summoned witness for being a subhuman varmint, who doesn’t bath but feeds...

I just finished reading a speech Neil Gaiman, the fantasy writer, gave to the Reading Agency in London, England.  It’s about the importance of using our imagination to solve problems, and the need to read, especially fiction, to spark that imagination.  He also speaks to the importance of libraries for children.   I strongly encourage everyone to read his speech. You can feel his passion for reading and writing in every word he speaks.  I have placed an excerpt below the link. http://tinyurl.com/l42wz7g “And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.” “If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, wit...

I wanted to share with you a book I just finished reading: "Stoner," by John Willims. The author, John Williams, was born in Texas, but earned his Ph.D. at the University of Denver, where he spent the rest of his life as professor and director of creative writing.  He published his first two novels while earning his Masters at the University of Missouri.  William Stoner, the main character, was born on a farm but went to school at the University of Missouri, where he spent the rest of his life teaching.

  Williams won the the National Book Award for "Augustus," his historical novel about the great Caesar.  He should have won it, and a few other prizes, for "Stoner."  Williams died in 1994.  He did not leave us nearly enough to read. I came across "Stoner" while perusing the New York Review of Books list of classics.  Something about the description caught my eye.  I have a good eye.  Stoner is more popular in Europe than here in the U.S....

The relationship between the truth and politicians is a lot like two genitals bumping in the night.  Despite the appearance there is nothing intimate about the relationship.  The latest example of this truism comes to us via the refusal of our government to pay death benefits to the families of fallen soldiers.  A charity will do what our government won’t.  This is a national disgrace, and our leaders should bow their heads in shame, as should we all for permitting them to do this.  While the government shuts down, and politicians form endless lines outside cable news studios to blame everyone but themselves, soldiers are ordered to continue fighting.  But if they die their families must rely on charity because the government that demands they fight will not pay.  I blame the republicans and the administration (and democrats by association) for this. I blame the republicans for shutting down the government, and I blame this administration for taking a ...

I’m sitting here holding “Solomon’s Ring,” by Konrad Lorenz in hand remembering reading it as a college sophomore in an Animal Behavior course, but not remembering what it was about.  Oh, it has something to do with animal behavior and geese, but I don’t remember Lorenz’s thesis, or any of the details.  So I’m reading it again. By the way, my Animal Behavior professor had an aquarium inhabited by a single lobster.  He wanted to observe and document a particular behavior of the lobster.  But the lobster had ensconced himself between rock and tank rear wall, where he remained night and day.  A normal lobster would scurry along the ocean floor looking for food, courting mates, and defending territory against all challenges.  But not this lobster.  This lobster never went for a walk;  never hunted for food, because food would plop down in front of him; never defended his territory, because there were no challengers to defend it agains; and never court...

Pundits, columnists, and party strategists.  Aren't we blessed?  They are experts on everything.  They must be, because they speak and write with such authority and command.  One day they tell us we can save our planet by turning Green, and the very next day they explain the pathway to eternal peace in the Middle-East.  What we don't see is they are all reading from the same fax. Watch a cable news show, and there is almost always a pundit, a columnist, and a strategist from each party in attendance.  Who are they?  Some look to be 18 years old.  What can they possibly know that justifies taking up precious bandwidth?  I could be watching puppies play.  Are these cable stations trolling high schools looking for talent? How can there be unemployment?  Everyone can be a party strategist.  Call the local cable station, tell them you are a strategist, and then say the stupidest things on TV . . . and get paid for it.  D...

We’re crazy in love with time.  Other than our relationships with significant others, there is no relationship more intimate than the one we have with time.  We are obsessed with time.  It started in the beginning.  I mean the very beginning.  in Genesis when God separated the light from the dark, he created daytime and nighttime.  Since then we have invented sun dials, water clocks, church bells, clock towers, wristwatches, and wall-mounted clocks all in an effort to capture, measure, and control time.  Even our phones keep time.  When the power comes on after an outage, we scurry about the house resetting clocks on all manner of electronic devices: the  DVR, the stove, the TV, the radio, the microwave oven, etc.  After a massive outage, would an astronaut from space see the entire U.S. Northeast blinking until everyone reset their clocks?  Do we really need all those clocks? Obviously time matters to us . . . a lot.  But why?...

Every now and then I get myself into a jam.  This is one of those times.  As of right now, I have 6 books in various stages of incompleteness.     Jonathan Strange, by Susanna Clarke The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy Bleak House, by Charles Dickens Middlemarch, by George Eliot Stoner, by John Williams Demimonde: Winter, by Rod Rees And now I am about to start reading three more. Swan Song, by Robert R. McCammon Keeping Watch: A History of American Time, by Mike O’Malley A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I think this is a personality flaw and possibly an addiction.  My strengths have never included cold mental discipline; my frontal lobe has never mastered an impetuousness born out of my child-like desire for immediate gratification.  This flaw is all the greater because I can’t parallel process well.  I’m one of those people who can summon his intellect to focus on one task at a time: bear down on it, learn it, master it, ...

I have no intention of commenting on the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case.  I want to remain the only person who has refrained for commenting about it.  However, there was something that occurred during the trial that occurs all to frequently and seems wrong to me.    Zimmerman was charged and tried on 2nd degree murder.  After all the evidence was presented, all the witnesses questioned, and the defense and prosecution rested their cases, but before final arguments were given to the jury, the judge permitted the prosecution to add the “lesser included” offense of manslaughter to the list of charges the jury would consider, even though the defense objected.  Both sides then addressed 2nd degree murder and manslaughter in their closing arguments. Should the state be permitted to pile on charges after the defense and prosecution have rested their cases?  I don’t think so for several reasons. First, if the state is permitted to add lesser charges...

When I was a kid grandma owned a house on the beach, and every summer I would stay with her.  This is partly because the beach and teenagers make a perfect match, but it was also because my mom insisted.  This was when Polio terrorized the country, before the vaccines, and my mom had it in her head that I would escape Polio if I spent my summer vacations at the beach instead of in the hot and stuffy suburbs.  I was never convinced of this theory, myself, given that it is a teenager’s wont to spend the daylight hours on the beach where everyone else from the suburbs and the city has gone.  There are probably more people inhabiting a beach during summer than any other place on earth, and I figured polio went where the people went.  But that was her thinking, and who was I to argue.  Besides, I got to live on the beach, and I’m a surfer and a teenager.  So, once school shut down for the summer, mom hustled me off to grandma’s house. The daylight hours wer...

"Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic.  At its core is a flawed assumption -- that an alien race would be psychologically human." -- Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky "Only the devil loves humans for what they are and rejoices in their cunning schemes against themselves, their shameless curiosity, their lack of self-control, their impulse to break a rule as soon as they hear tell of it, their willingness to forsake their immortal soul for nookie.  The devil knows that only those with the courage to risk their soul for love are entitled to have a soul, even if God does not."  -- Horns, by Joe Hill "Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light.  He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind.  It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth . . ." -- Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.

On the drive up here I thought about how miserable this was going to be. I always enjoyed going to Grandma's house, meeting my cousins, sitting around the dining room table eating dinner with the family, sharing exaggerated stories about all the things that had happened to one another since last we met. This time was different. When we arrived, my aunt and uncle greeted mom and dad and walked together into the house. I lingered, remembering all the times as a child I would jump from the car, run up the front porch stairs, and shout, "Grandma! Grandma! We're here." The chestnut trees still litter the ground with their autumn harvest. When I was young, I would try roasting them in the fireplace like Nat King Cole told us to. Each Christmas they found their way into the house onto strings decorating the walls wishing good tidings to all who entered. The ivy, still covering the front yard, weaves its lush, emerald carpet along the ground up the latticework onto the fron...