Thursday, August 25, 2011
What's Good For The Crooks is Good For the Cops...
Gettin' a little late here, but the neighborhood is quiet. Hope that's not deceiving. A couple of streets away, sometimes within 600 feet so at the end of our block, bad things are going on...assaults, home burglaries, stuff with cars, etc. All started about 5 or 6 months ago. I'm thinking a new family moved into the area. Most of us have been here for years. Never had that stuff before.
Except for once...couple of guys stole the back wheel off my car, which was parked on the street in front of the house. Little did they know that the neighbor across the street in front and another neighbor across the side street were both armed and watching the whole thing. One of them got the thieves' license number. Both were prepared to act if either of the thieves headed toward our house.
So of course we phoned the police and they came and took information from all of us. Now I consider the San Diego police force to be the best and most decent in the entire USA...and they can also be hilarious.
Next day came a knock on the door. I answered and there stood 2 policemen and my wheel. I asked how they got it back...and they grinned from ear to ear and one said, "The same way the crooks got it." :)))
They'd actually gone out that night and stole it right off the crooks' car. Just tickled themselves. And I just cracked up laughing. :))
Wrap...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Thinking vs Believing....
That Undying Symbol
by
Keith Taylor
It is a simple design, useful in the construction of grand buildings, or as a small platform from which to hang trouble makers. It has also become the world's most recognizable religious symbol.
In its most utilitarian usage, it is part of the framework of building
It is so impressive, we need be reminded it is utilitarian, not miraculous. Despite its inspiring design, it failed along with the rest of the framework, to stop religious zealots from destroying two of our largest buildings plus themselves in their effort to prove their god was better than our god.
Somewhere in there lies an inspiring religious message. It must be so because when our buildings fell and 2700 people died, people in many foreign countries, those with the other god celebrated. Death and the celebration of it are big deals in religions.
The cross, called the symbol of peace, is more often associated with mass killing and cruelty. Spanish conquistadors brandished flags decorated with crosses as they killed countless native Americans in their search for gold and other riches. Pious Christians, crosses on their vestments and shields, journeyed from Europe to the Holy Land to kill, plunder, and secure land they deemed sacred because a man/god had been crucified there.
It was the very symbol of the Spanish Inquisition. Countless heretics were killed because they committed one of the prime sins: questioning unproven claims. Today the word "inquisition" conjures up a vision of cruel men wearing crosses causing unbearable pain to folks who merely asked the most basic sentence in science "why?"
Reminders of the sacred icon are everywhere, and defended zealously. Defying the Constitution, a court order, and affirmation of that order by an appeals court, a cross still stands on public property on a mountain overlooking La Jolla, California.
Others have not been so prominently displayed. A piece of the framework in the shape of a cross was found in the wreckage of the twin towers. This was the symbol, many felt, to inspire us to . . . uh, to adorn a new, replacement building.
A photo shows a priest and the former mayor of our greatest city adding a blessing to the symbol pulled from the wreckage of the twin towers felled on 9/11. Some object to this use of a religious symbol, sometimes citing it's long and poignant history of violence and killing.
But to the adherents of our god, history is ignored. After all, they claim, believers are enjoined to never question God or his works. You can find it in every catechism or Sunday school tract.
So, should we object to yet another religious symbol? After all those of us who don't share this zealous feeling that comes from belief in things not proved are shunned, often considered eccentric. More than half the electorate would not vote for someone who does not acknowledge a belief in a supreme being, and the cross does represent just such a thing. Who knows how bad it will get if we object to a sacred symbol?
Let's leave it be. Agree it will stay there, but as a reminder of what we lose when we substitute faith for reason in trying to determine what is happening on our earth. When a non-believer views the symbol which inspires so many believers he might take off his hat and stand quietly while contemplating what the world would be like if we started thinking rather than believing.
Thinking will not produce miracles but it may help us understand those who believe in them.
-0-
//Keith Taylor is a retired Navy officer living in Chula Vista, Ca. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com //
Wrap...
Law Enforcement Officer...From the Inside....
http://richardcraiganderson.com/
For some fascinating reading, go to Rick's blog. URL above. Rick is a former Maryland State trooper. Moved to Florida and became a FAM...Federal Air Marshall. Their motto:
"We don't miss". Better not, since they're the guy in the plane with you, there to take out the bad guy, and they really don't want to shoot a hole in the plane rather than a hole in the bad guy.
Just fascinating. Latest post from Rick is on the matter of confidential informants. A good police officer...and every other law enforcement officer...has those crucial people.
It's one thing to know about these things and, believe me, another to learn about them from inside the game...which you will if you read Rick's posts. Enjoy!
Wrap...
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Huntsman for President!!!
So now Rick Perry from Texas is joining the run for Prez. W.Bush was better than this guy would be. I can just see Perry keeping religion separate. Not a chance.
Have not changed my mind one bit...Jon Huntsman is my choice. He may be a Repub, but he is an INDEPENDENT Repub. And that gives the other people and the media fits. The media invariably leaves the Independent out. More, he's no liar.
It's plain to see he qualifies, having been Gov of Utah and diplomat to China. But he continually gets ignored because he's not flashy like the other Repubs running. He just does the job.
Wrap...
Have not changed my mind one bit...Jon Huntsman is my choice. He may be a Repub, but he is an INDEPENDENT Repub. And that gives the other people and the media fits. The media invariably leaves the Independent out. More, he's no liar.
It's plain to see he qualifies, having been Gov of Utah and diplomat to China. But he continually gets ignored because he's not flashy like the other Repubs running. He just does the job.
Wrap...
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Take It On Faith...Or Else.....
This was to be the first chapter in a book I intended to call Epiphany of an Atheist. Sadly I don't have the stamina to fight the battle of self publishing, and not many publishers are interested in the musings of someone without high profile.
How I Became a True Believer . .. . With a Few Doubts
by
Keith Taylor
One night sixty-one years ago, a young lass and I were – as they say today – making out. We were parked in the shadow of a tree on a Naval station near Seattle. She had let me get to second base. My hand was under her blouse. Only her thin bra stood between my fingers and a real life titty.
Surely it was about to happen; my 20-year virginity would come to an end right there in the back seat. I had read Forever Amber and Duchess Hotspur. It was all there – the passionate kissing, the heavy breathing, the tight embrace.
I pleaded, “Can we do it? You know, go all the way?”
She stopped me with, “Oh God, I want to, but I can’t, not unless we’re married.”
“Let's get married tonight, maybe drive to Canada or something?”
“No, it has to be by a priest, and I can’t even do that unless you are a Catholic.”
The next morning I hied myself down to Saint Cecilia’s, found the parish priest, and asked him how I could become a Catholic. He told me I would have to take instructions. That was easy. Hell, I was a sailor and folks gave me instructions all day long. I couldn't even clean the head without a boatswain's mate telling me how to clean up the turd tracks.
But instructions on how to find God defied logic. Father Murphy explained that people didn’t really have to believe that a woman talked to a snake, but they had to be baptized to excise the damage done by that conversation anyhow. He also taught me that the passion that led me to St. Cecilia’s was itself a sin. I would have to sincerely repent the heavy breathing as well as the indecent touching that caused it.
Also I would have to firmly resolve that it wouldn’t happen again. How disappointing! That girl taught me how to French kiss and I liked it so much I was sure we would do it again even before holy words sanctified the consummation of our lust.
She went back home to Illinois. The Navy kept me in the Seattle area. All the while I practiced the repenting and firmly-resolving business, but those prurient sinful thoughts popped up again and again. Self-abuse was immediately followed by prayers begging forgiveness for doing it. This religious business took all the fun out of it.
Although I’d always been one of those who felt “something must be out there” the instructions taught by Father Murphy revealed a religion not filled with hope and answers, but one filled with conundrums. Some had been with the church from the beginning; others were added, seemingly willy-nilly, over 2000 years. Father Murphy’s answer to my questions was that each had a special purpose and must be taken on faith.
The Father Murphys of the world were allowed to make their claims with little interference, even from outside the church. The rare dissenting voices were shushed with "oh it's their right to believe what they want." Any doubts I might have had were simply to be subjected the one great truth and immune from critical thought, as were claims proclaimed by a thousand different interpretations by thousands of other religions.
A parishioner had to take all sorts of things on faith. Furthermore that faith must not be questioned, especially by reading. The Catholic Church of the 1950s dutifully provided “The Index of Forbidden Books” – a compilation of books, plays, songs, and other heretical tracts deemed dangerous to people’s faith. The list, running into the thousands, forbad a Catholic’s reading some or all of the works of many of the most respected writers in history.
After I thwarted the devil by having water dumped on my head, I could no longer read things by Anatole France, René Descartes, Emile Zola and, it seems, some versions of God’s book itself. The King James version of the holy book was not only off limits for reading, in 1950, a Catholic could not have one in his house!
While all this was going on, the girl who caused my conversion sent me a “Dear John.” She had gone back home to Elgin, Illinois and left me to marry a Marine. Undeterred I went on with my conversion. The priest said things in Latin as he poured water over my head. I tried but didn’t feel the ecstasy associated with the possibility of now living forever in bliss.
I was a Catholic, the only one from Sevastopol, Indiana. My conversion lasted about ten years.
Wrap...
How I Became a True Believer . .. . With a Few Doubts
by
Keith Taylor
One night sixty-one years ago, a young lass and I were – as they say today – making out. We were parked in the shadow of a tree on a Naval station near Seattle. She had let me get to second base. My hand was under her blouse. Only her thin bra stood between my fingers and a real life titty.
Surely it was about to happen; my 20-year virginity would come to an end right there in the back seat. I had read Forever Amber and Duchess Hotspur. It was all there – the passionate kissing, the heavy breathing, the tight embrace.
I pleaded, “Can we do it? You know, go all the way?”
She stopped me with, “Oh God, I want to, but I can’t, not unless we’re married.”
“Let's get married tonight, maybe drive to Canada or something?”
“No, it has to be by a priest, and I can’t even do that unless you are a Catholic.”
The next morning I hied myself down to Saint Cecilia’s, found the parish priest, and asked him how I could become a Catholic. He told me I would have to take instructions. That was easy. Hell, I was a sailor and folks gave me instructions all day long. I couldn't even clean the head without a boatswain's mate telling me how to clean up the turd tracks.
But instructions on how to find God defied logic. Father Murphy explained that people didn’t really have to believe that a woman talked to a snake, but they had to be baptized to excise the damage done by that conversation anyhow. He also taught me that the passion that led me to St. Cecilia’s was itself a sin. I would have to sincerely repent the heavy breathing as well as the indecent touching that caused it.
Also I would have to firmly resolve that it wouldn’t happen again. How disappointing! That girl taught me how to French kiss and I liked it so much I was sure we would do it again even before holy words sanctified the consummation of our lust.
She went back home to Illinois. The Navy kept me in the Seattle area. All the while I practiced the repenting and firmly-resolving business, but those prurient sinful thoughts popped up again and again. Self-abuse was immediately followed by prayers begging forgiveness for doing it. This religious business took all the fun out of it.
Although I’d always been one of those who felt “something must be out there” the instructions taught by Father Murphy revealed a religion not filled with hope and answers, but one filled with conundrums. Some had been with the church from the beginning; others were added, seemingly willy-nilly, over 2000 years. Father Murphy’s answer to my questions was that each had a special purpose and must be taken on faith.
The Father Murphys of the world were allowed to make their claims with little interference, even from outside the church. The rare dissenting voices were shushed with "oh it's their right to believe what they want." Any doubts I might have had were simply to be subjected the one great truth and immune from critical thought, as were claims proclaimed by a thousand different interpretations by thousands of other religions.
A parishioner had to take all sorts of things on faith. Furthermore that faith must not be questioned, especially by reading. The Catholic Church of the 1950s dutifully provided “The Index of Forbidden Books” – a compilation of books, plays, songs, and other heretical tracts deemed dangerous to people’s faith. The list, running into the thousands, forbad a Catholic’s reading some or all of the works of many of the most respected writers in history.
After I thwarted the devil by having water dumped on my head, I could no longer read things by Anatole France, René Descartes, Emile Zola and, it seems, some versions of God’s book itself. The King James version of the holy book was not only off limits for reading, in 1950, a Catholic could not have one in his house!
While all this was going on, the girl who caused my conversion sent me a “Dear John.” She had gone back home to Elgin, Illinois and left me to marry a Marine. Undeterred I went on with my conversion. The priest said things in Latin as he poured water over my head. I tried but didn’t feel the ecstasy associated with the possibility of now living forever in bliss.
I was a Catholic, the only one from Sevastopol, Indiana. My conversion lasted about ten years.
Wrap...
Sunday, July 24, 2011
From Presidential Candidates to ComicCon....
So be it. Jon Huntsman, Republican running for Prez of the USA...just happens to be the only decent, honest candidate I have seen. Therefore, he's my choice for Prez, no matter that I have never voted Repub before. So that's settled.
Then there's the Oslo killer. Pay attention here: he is NOT a Muslim. What he is is a CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST. You sure wouldn't know it from most of the media reports. We have a whole bunch of those people on the Repub Right. Especially in the Southern US states. Now, who do you think we'd best keep an eye on?
It's hotter than hell in almost every state in the USA. Only civilized weather is in Alaska, and the West Coast states...along the beaches only.
Don't you just admire the new labels on cigarettes? GAWD! But don't try and convince me that drinking doesn't kill more people...especially drinking and driving. I have yet to see a single person, upon getting a whiff of someone's cigarette smoke, just keel over dead...but a clip from a drinking or texting driver on any road in the country can make people dead a whole lot faster...and does, every hour of every day.
Somehow, some way, the scientists MUST find a way to cure or eliminate cancer. One out of every five men is cursed with prostate cancer. Our daughter died when her second brain cancer developed and attached to her brain stem. A horrible way to go. Moments before her death, her facial muscles just melted away and her face below her eyes simply flowed down toward her right ear. She'd been beautiful and was a former model. Never mind new weapons...CURE CANCER.
Some good news...ComicCon, with somewhere around 130,000 attendees at the San Diego Convention Center, has been a tremendous success. Yesterday afternoon, strolling through the lobby and stopping to chat with people, was Johnny Depp...star of Pirates of the Carribean. Not going to see stars doing that very often, but attend ComicCon and you will. Keep in mind though that Security Guards from all over the city and those who work there were keeping Conv.Center safe. Not that they had anything much to do since the attendees were all happy souls and behaving wonderfully well as usual. And the media were definitely in attendence. One of their groups asked permission of the Conv Ctrs' #1 Doorman to photo and interview him. His reply was that it was fine with him, but they'd have to get an okay from his bosses to do that. But no, the media did not have time. Too much else needed to be covered.
A pity. That doorman has worked there for 21 years and has been at the door for every ComicCon that has been held there...and so knows all the guys who originated the convention.
And that's all for now...
Wrap...
Then there's the Oslo killer. Pay attention here: he is NOT a Muslim. What he is is a CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST. You sure wouldn't know it from most of the media reports. We have a whole bunch of those people on the Repub Right. Especially in the Southern US states. Now, who do you think we'd best keep an eye on?
It's hotter than hell in almost every state in the USA. Only civilized weather is in Alaska, and the West Coast states...along the beaches only.
Don't you just admire the new labels on cigarettes? GAWD! But don't try and convince me that drinking doesn't kill more people...especially drinking and driving. I have yet to see a single person, upon getting a whiff of someone's cigarette smoke, just keel over dead...but a clip from a drinking or texting driver on any road in the country can make people dead a whole lot faster...and does, every hour of every day.
Somehow, some way, the scientists MUST find a way to cure or eliminate cancer. One out of every five men is cursed with prostate cancer. Our daughter died when her second brain cancer developed and attached to her brain stem. A horrible way to go. Moments before her death, her facial muscles just melted away and her face below her eyes simply flowed down toward her right ear. She'd been beautiful and was a former model. Never mind new weapons...CURE CANCER.
Some good news...ComicCon, with somewhere around 130,000 attendees at the San Diego Convention Center, has been a tremendous success. Yesterday afternoon, strolling through the lobby and stopping to chat with people, was Johnny Depp...star of Pirates of the Carribean. Not going to see stars doing that very often, but attend ComicCon and you will. Keep in mind though that Security Guards from all over the city and those who work there were keeping Conv.Center safe. Not that they had anything much to do since the attendees were all happy souls and behaving wonderfully well as usual. And the media were definitely in attendence. One of their groups asked permission of the Conv Ctrs' #1 Doorman to photo and interview him. His reply was that it was fine with him, but they'd have to get an okay from his bosses to do that. But no, the media did not have time. Too much else needed to be covered.
A pity. That doorman has worked there for 21 years and has been at the door for every ComicCon that has been held there...and so knows all the guys who originated the convention.
And that's all for now...
Wrap...
Monday, July 11, 2011
Science? Deliberate Ignorance? Choose...
This appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine dedicated to rational and critical thought and to using science, not dogma or superstition to find answers. It is available at some newstands. Individual copies can also be bought at www.csicop.org
DELIBERATE IGNORANCE
by
Keith Taylor
Perhaps fearful that even a small amount of it is a dangerous thing, knowledge is held in disdain by many Americans. Yet the same people accept ridiculous claims as long as they are they want to hear. And legislators know what that is!
Turn on C-SPAN and the chances are good you'll see a member of Congress leading a blind charge into the land of make believe.
Climate change? Some time back, the chair of the Senate Science Climate Change Committee invited a science fiction author, not a scientist, and certainly not a climatologist, to testify. Then, having heard what he wanted to hear, the Senator joined the author in declaring that the scientists' concern over the looming disaster was a myth.
That year was the hottest on record. So was the next and the next. The pattern continues, but thanks in part to the senator, the myth about a myth persists.
Science can be touted, but only if it reflects what a legislator thinks the majority of his constituents want to hear. One from the Midwest regularly holds forth on the virtues of ethanol to protect us from the climate change he doesn't believe in. I've never heard him own up to the scientifically tested and vetted fact that ethanol made from corn or soy beans gives a us net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere while decreasing the world food supply.
Deliberate ignorance along with jingoism and dogmatic stubbornness shapes too much of America's intellect. During the cold war we simply would not be beat or outdone by the Soviets, not even in silly things. In the late sixties someone in our intelligence services suspected the commies were keeping tabs on us with remote viewing. Not to be outdone in dumb ideas our army set up a program headed by the Stanford Research Institute -- no direct connection to the university.
By 1985 no useful information was gleaned by folks sitting around thinking real hard, so the Army ceased funding it. Still when an idea, no matter how wacko, gets the attention of Congress it's life is extended and the money keeps coming in.
Operation Stargate, as it was sometimes called, was kept alive. It only cost 20 million dollars and had some interesting results which couldn't be denied because they were never tested. In 1996 the Science Applications International Corp, a San Diego Based think tank had conducted some of the experiments. When I checked on it for a story, they admitted they participated in the program but all results are classified. I called the FBI and a PR guy also told me told they couldn't comment because it was classified.
The best I got was from a less reticent source, the grapevine. There I "learned" one remote viewer got a peek inside a Rusky submarine but wasn't able see anything classified. Nor was she able to determine which ocean the U-boat was in, but it was somewhere! As a retired Navy cryptologist I was amazed at the ability of an outfit to spend so much for information which could be gleaned by just thinking.
Thomas Jefferson warned us, "An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic." You have to wonder what ol' Tom would have to say about the citizenry which elected today's leaders.
Where do we get our wacko ideas? Try the information highway. The brightest scholars in history would envy today's Americans with who have so much valid scientific information available on the web. But today's Americans also have even more claims of things they want to believe, verification be damned!
Then they vote.
Is there help in stemming this tide of deliberate ignorance? Not from Texas it seems. In May, the Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum which undermined much of what we know about science and our past. Tom Jefferson who worried about such credulity was himself was downgraded, perhaps to make room for Jefferson Davis who was President of the Confederacy.
Because Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks, credulous ideas will be taught as fact to children across our nation. The pious Texans want us to understand that we were founded as a Christian nation, which might have surprised one of the founders. John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which emphatically said America was in no sense a Christian nation. That treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate and has never been withdrawn.
The Constitution's only mention of religion is to restrict it.
But today. America is galloping blithely down the road to blind faith in nonsense. Their race into credulous thinking is supported by the vested interests of those who want their next quarter's interests protected whether an interminably long summer bodes ill for our grandchildren or not.
We hear "oh scientists don't know everything" so often it ought to be a warning to every skeptic. We who believe in science are also dismissed with the canard that we are merely eccentric. After all deliberate ignorance works wonders for the deliberately ignorant. To those of us who want our history untainted and our findings of science tested it will be a disaster.
Can this disaster be avoided or averted? Sure, but it will take a massive effort backed by a knowledgeable populace.
Will it? Probably not unless more of the populace start looking for real answers That won't be easy when faced with relentless barrage of sophistic answers from deniers of hard facts. The ultimate refuge for deniers of hard facts is religion; every congressman except Pete Stark of Oakland claims a belief in a supreme being. , and only Pete Stark in Oakland will admit he didn't believe.
I hate to be contrary, but was anybody except me frightened when, at a political debate of would-be presidents, three viable candidates admitted they admitted they do not believe in evolution. And how much different are they from the rest of the candidates who will grudgingly admit they do believe in the most tested scientific theory of all time, but refuse to support it?
Science can't compete with charisma except in the real world.
And don't forget the money! A recent headline blared: OIL BILLIONAIRES BACKING PROP. 23 -- a California effort to curb global warming. Yup, and that included a million from Koch Industries, ranked by Forbes as the second largest private company in the U.S.A. It is also among the top ten polluters. I'm proud to say my state rejected the self-serving proposition.
We're in a world of hurt here folks and you can take that from a very worried but eccentric curmudgeon.
//Keith Taylor is a former president and current program chair of the San Diego Association for Rational Inquiry living in Chula Vista, Ca. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com//
Wrap...
DELIBERATE IGNORANCE
by
Keith Taylor
Perhaps fearful that even a small amount of it is a dangerous thing, knowledge is held in disdain by many Americans. Yet the same people accept ridiculous claims as long as they are they want to hear. And legislators know what that is!
Turn on C-SPAN and the chances are good you'll see a member of Congress leading a blind charge into the land of make believe.
Climate change? Some time back, the chair of the Senate Science Climate Change Committee invited a science fiction author, not a scientist, and certainly not a climatologist, to testify. Then, having heard what he wanted to hear, the Senator joined the author in declaring that the scientists' concern over the looming disaster was a myth.
That year was the hottest on record. So was the next and the next. The pattern continues, but thanks in part to the senator, the myth about a myth persists.
Science can be touted, but only if it reflects what a legislator thinks the majority of his constituents want to hear. One from the Midwest regularly holds forth on the virtues of ethanol to protect us from the climate change he doesn't believe in. I've never heard him own up to the scientifically tested and vetted fact that ethanol made from corn or soy beans gives a us net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere while decreasing the world food supply.
Deliberate ignorance along with jingoism and dogmatic stubbornness shapes too much of America's intellect. During the cold war we simply would not be beat or outdone by the Soviets, not even in silly things. In the late sixties someone in our intelligence services suspected the commies were keeping tabs on us with remote viewing. Not to be outdone in dumb ideas our army set up a program headed by the Stanford Research Institute -- no direct connection to the university.
By 1985 no useful information was gleaned by folks sitting around thinking real hard, so the Army ceased funding it. Still when an idea, no matter how wacko, gets the attention of Congress it's life is extended and the money keeps coming in.
Operation Stargate, as it was sometimes called, was kept alive. It only cost 20 million dollars and had some interesting results which couldn't be denied because they were never tested. In 1996 the Science Applications International Corp, a San Diego Based think tank had conducted some of the experiments. When I checked on it for a story, they admitted they participated in the program but all results are classified. I called the FBI and a PR guy also told me told they couldn't comment because it was classified.
The best I got was from a less reticent source, the grapevine. There I "learned" one remote viewer got a peek inside a Rusky submarine but wasn't able see anything classified. Nor was she able to determine which ocean the U-boat was in, but it was somewhere! As a retired Navy cryptologist I was amazed at the ability of an outfit to spend so much for information which could be gleaned by just thinking.
Thomas Jefferson warned us, "An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic." You have to wonder what ol' Tom would have to say about the citizenry which elected today's leaders.
Where do we get our wacko ideas? Try the information highway. The brightest scholars in history would envy today's Americans with who have so much valid scientific information available on the web. But today's Americans also have even more claims of things they want to believe, verification be damned!
Then they vote.
Is there help in stemming this tide of deliberate ignorance? Not from Texas it seems. In May, the Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum which undermined much of what we know about science and our past. Tom Jefferson who worried about such credulity was himself was downgraded, perhaps to make room for Jefferson Davis who was President of the Confederacy.
Because Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks, credulous ideas will be taught as fact to children across our nation. The pious Texans want us to understand that we were founded as a Christian nation, which might have surprised one of the founders. John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which emphatically said America was in no sense a Christian nation. That treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate and has never been withdrawn.
The Constitution's only mention of religion is to restrict it.
But today. America is galloping blithely down the road to blind faith in nonsense. Their race into credulous thinking is supported by the vested interests of those who want their next quarter's interests protected whether an interminably long summer bodes ill for our grandchildren or not.
We hear "oh scientists don't know everything" so often it ought to be a warning to every skeptic. We who believe in science are also dismissed with the canard that we are merely eccentric. After all deliberate ignorance works wonders for the deliberately ignorant. To those of us who want our history untainted and our findings of science tested it will be a disaster.
Can this disaster be avoided or averted? Sure, but it will take a massive effort backed by a knowledgeable populace.
Will it? Probably not unless more of the populace start looking for real answers That won't be easy when faced with relentless barrage of sophistic answers from deniers of hard facts. The ultimate refuge for deniers of hard facts is religion; every congressman except Pete Stark of Oakland claims a belief in a supreme being. , and only Pete Stark in Oakland will admit he didn't believe.
I hate to be contrary, but was anybody except me frightened when, at a political debate of would-be presidents, three viable candidates admitted they admitted they do not believe in evolution. And how much different are they from the rest of the candidates who will grudgingly admit they do believe in the most tested scientific theory of all time, but refuse to support it?
Science can't compete with charisma except in the real world.
And don't forget the money! A recent headline blared: OIL BILLIONAIRES BACKING PROP. 23 -- a California effort to curb global warming. Yup, and that included a million from Koch Industries, ranked by Forbes as the second largest private company in the U.S.A. It is also among the top ten polluters. I'm proud to say my state rejected the self-serving proposition.
We're in a world of hurt here folks and you can take that from a very worried but eccentric curmudgeon.
//Keith Taylor is a former president and current program chair of the San Diego Association for Rational Inquiry living in Chula Vista, Ca. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com//
Wrap...
Monday, July 04, 2011
Trying Honesty...
Let's Try Honesty
by
Keith Taylor
Loch David Crane just sent a letter announcing his intention to run for mayor of San Diego. He has no chance, but he's got my support. San Diego would be better off with a mayor of his stature and imagination. This is an open letter to my hero:
Dear Loch: Sorry I cannot give you more encouragement, but you aren't going to be elected. Mayors of cities the size of San Diego are bought by the folks who own the country -- the corporations. They aren't about to open their pockets to a man so honest he won't claim supernatural powers to pull rabbits out of a hat.
Of course that doesn't mean your effort has to be in vain. Richard Rider, who could be your inspiration in losing elections, pointed out that in 1940 Socialist perennial presidential candidate Norman Thomas was asked if he'd run for a seventh time. Thomas remarked that he didn't need to. Everything the Socialists had fought for in 1916 had been enacted by Republicans and Democrats by 1940.
And of course it's true. We can't always effect change but we can sit quietly by as it evolves. Uh, don't use the word "evolve" in your campaign. Let God take credit for it all. Then folks will admire your sagacity.
In your campaign you ought not have any problem getting plenty of attention from the media. They love the flamboyant over the mundane. Be sure to use your startrike, USS Enterprise, the one connoting the starship not CVN-69.
I remember you got some great publicity when you used the contraption to give a lift to Mike Aguirre. He needed a ride so he could make his commitment to both the Rock and Roll Marathon and his engagement to speak at the graduation ceremony of the Thomas Jefferson Law School.
Perhaps some sort of reenactment of that would be appropriate. The publicity might be even more effective if you took Mike off somewhere, say in Oklahoma, and left him there. Mike has little political capital. His record didn't inspire voters in his own run for mayor. I'm telling ya being honest just isn't going to do much for you on election day.
First you're gonna need a platform. No, don't promise to fix the impressive debt racked up by your predecessors. That can't be done unless we get more money and that means taxes, and taxes are more deadly than cuss words at a Mormon prayer meeting. Also don't promise a commitment to the new library. That's only of interest to folks who actually read, a rapidly shrinking part of our population.
One issue will ensure the inevitable, your defeat. It will also ensure all sorts of attention which can be used after honesty comes back into vogue.
Come out in support of the Constitution. Demand the city obey the law and take down the cross from Mt. Soledad. While it is true that most San Diegans are Christians, a significant minority are not. Furthermore they're getting restless at listening to talk show hosts shoving a decidedly sectarian symbol in their faces then claiming the symbol as a reason to make decisions based on belief not rational thought.
Just think of the wacko things we've done in the name of God. Then when someone objects, pseudo pious leaders claim symbols as validation for whatever they choose to believe and do.
Suck it up Loch and take a giant stand for the minority of us who don't believe. Be the leader who makes his decisions based on science and facts rather than obeisance to a being who hasn't shown up for two thousand years.
You won't ride that idea into the mayor's mansion (do we have one?) but you aren't going to win anyhow. Let's use your candidacy to help advance ideas not superstition. Believe me you won't have much competition.
The cross issue is an open and shut case. It was placed atop the mountain on Easter Sunday 1954 and dedicated to "our lord and savior, Jesus Christ." Each Easter thereafter an Easter sunrise service was held atop the mountain.
Then in 1989 my good friend Phil Paulson and his co-litigant Howard Kristner sued to have it removed from public property. In 1993 the decision in favor of the plaintiffs was handed down by Gordon Thompson, a judge for the United States District Court. Suddenly -- almost supernaturally -- plaques started appearing on the base of the cross.
We had us a retroactive war memorial. History and truth be damned! The cross is still there, still mocking those of us who don't accept a symbol which also has been used to as a reason for 2000 years of crusades, wars, inquisitions, book burning, slavery and other misdemeanors.
But in the eyes of the courts the case has been settled. The thing left to do is lead a charge to get San Diego to obey the law.
Naturally there will be a last ditch stand by those who insist we shun critical thinking and embrace dogma. Leading the charge are Maureen O'Connor and Roger Hedgecock, two former mayors who have pledged to defend the symbol from destruction by lying down in front of the bulldozers.
That alone would be worth the effort. Just think of Maureen and Roger lying down together. In a moment of passion they might do to each other what they did to the city while in office.
Wrap...
by
Keith Taylor
Loch David Crane just sent a letter announcing his intention to run for mayor of San Diego. He has no chance, but he's got my support. San Diego would be better off with a mayor of his stature and imagination. This is an open letter to my hero:
Dear Loch: Sorry I cannot give you more encouragement, but you aren't going to be elected. Mayors of cities the size of San Diego are bought by the folks who own the country -- the corporations. They aren't about to open their pockets to a man so honest he won't claim supernatural powers to pull rabbits out of a hat.
Of course that doesn't mean your effort has to be in vain. Richard Rider, who could be your inspiration in losing elections, pointed out that in 1940 Socialist perennial presidential candidate Norman Thomas was asked if he'd run for a seventh time. Thomas remarked that he didn't need to. Everything the Socialists had fought for in 1916 had been enacted by Republicans and Democrats by 1940.
And of course it's true. We can't always effect change but we can sit quietly by as it evolves. Uh, don't use the word "evolve" in your campaign. Let God take credit for it all. Then folks will admire your sagacity.
In your campaign you ought not have any problem getting plenty of attention from the media. They love the flamboyant over the mundane. Be sure to use your startrike, USS Enterprise, the one connoting the starship not CVN-69.
I remember you got some great publicity when you used the contraption to give a lift to Mike Aguirre. He needed a ride so he could make his commitment to both the Rock and Roll Marathon and his engagement to speak at the graduation ceremony of the Thomas Jefferson Law School.
Perhaps some sort of reenactment of that would be appropriate. The publicity might be even more effective if you took Mike off somewhere, say in Oklahoma, and left him there. Mike has little political capital. His record didn't inspire voters in his own run for mayor. I'm telling ya being honest just isn't going to do much for you on election day.
First you're gonna need a platform. No, don't promise to fix the impressive debt racked up by your predecessors. That can't be done unless we get more money and that means taxes, and taxes are more deadly than cuss words at a Mormon prayer meeting. Also don't promise a commitment to the new library. That's only of interest to folks who actually read, a rapidly shrinking part of our population.
One issue will ensure the inevitable, your defeat. It will also ensure all sorts of attention which can be used after honesty comes back into vogue.
Come out in support of the Constitution. Demand the city obey the law and take down the cross from Mt. Soledad. While it is true that most San Diegans are Christians, a significant minority are not. Furthermore they're getting restless at listening to talk show hosts shoving a decidedly sectarian symbol in their faces then claiming the symbol as a reason to make decisions based on belief not rational thought.
Just think of the wacko things we've done in the name of God. Then when someone objects, pseudo pious leaders claim symbols as validation for whatever they choose to believe and do.
Suck it up Loch and take a giant stand for the minority of us who don't believe. Be the leader who makes his decisions based on science and facts rather than obeisance to a being who hasn't shown up for two thousand years.
You won't ride that idea into the mayor's mansion (do we have one?) but you aren't going to win anyhow. Let's use your candidacy to help advance ideas not superstition. Believe me you won't have much competition.
The cross issue is an open and shut case. It was placed atop the mountain on Easter Sunday 1954 and dedicated to "our lord and savior, Jesus Christ." Each Easter thereafter an Easter sunrise service was held atop the mountain.
Then in 1989 my good friend Phil Paulson and his co-litigant Howard Kristner sued to have it removed from public property. In 1993 the decision in favor of the plaintiffs was handed down by Gordon Thompson, a judge for the United States District Court. Suddenly -- almost supernaturally -- plaques started appearing on the base of the cross.
We had us a retroactive war memorial. History and truth be damned! The cross is still there, still mocking those of us who don't accept a symbol which also has been used to as a reason for 2000 years of crusades, wars, inquisitions, book burning, slavery and other misdemeanors.
But in the eyes of the courts the case has been settled. The thing left to do is lead a charge to get San Diego to obey the law.
Naturally there will be a last ditch stand by those who insist we shun critical thinking and embrace dogma. Leading the charge are Maureen O'Connor and Roger Hedgecock, two former mayors who have pledged to defend the symbol from destruction by lying down in front of the bulldozers.
That alone would be worth the effort. Just think of Maureen and Roger lying down together. In a moment of passion they might do to each other what they did to the city while in office.
Wrap...
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Jon Huntsman is my candidate...
Finally somebody has entered the race for Prez that I feel fine about voting for: Jon Huntsman. Former Gov of Utah, former Ambassador to China, all around decent guy. He is a moderate/liberal Repub. Has a terrific reputation. Nice family. And decent stands on issues. I see no downsides. And no, he is not beholden to Wall Street or any other outfit or individual. Sure is nice to not have to compromise.
Wrap...
Wrap...
Saturday, June 18, 2011
This is Bull....
From Secrecy News...
GOVT OPPOSES ATTORNEYS' FREE USE OF WIKILEAKS DOCS
The government yesterday filed a formal response (pdf) in federal court in opposition to the public use of WikiLeaks documents by a habeas attorney who represents a client in U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay. Those documents are or may be classified, the government insisted, and must continue to be treated as such.
In an April 27 motion (pdf), attorney David Remes had asked the Court to authorize "full and unfettered access" to WikiLeaks documents pertaining to his client, and to affirm that he "may publicly view, download, print, copy, disseminate, and discuss the documents and their contents, without fear of any sanctions."
"Any member of the general public can view these files, download them, print them, circulate them, and comment on them," Mr. Remes wrote. "Undersigned counsel, however, fears that he will face potential sanctions, legal or otherwise, if he does exactly the same things without express government permission."
In its response yesterday, the government said that Mr. Remes (and other habeas attorneys) may "view" the documents on a non-governmental computer, but may not "download, print, copy, disseminate, [or] discuss these documents" in public.
To justify its position, the government argued that it had not confirmed the authenticity of any particular WikiLeaks document, and that the restrictions on attorneys' use of the documents serve to maintain the possibility that one or more of the documents is not genuine.
"Although the Government has confirmed that purported detainee assessments were leaked to WikiLeaks, the Government has neither confirmed nor denied that any particular individual report appearing on the WikiLeaks website is an official government document," the government attorneys wrote.
"The Government must refrain from confirming whether any particular reports disseminated by WikiLeaks are genuine detainee assessments or not, to avoid the risk of even greater harm to national security than may have already been caused by WikiLeaks' disclosures."
This argument seems weakened, however, by the fact that the Government has not identified even one document among the many thousands released by WikiLeaks that is not genuine or is not what it appears to be. In the absence of even a single such case of falsification, the documents may be understood to be presumptively authentic even if government officials will not deign to say so.
It will be up to the Court to decide which party's perspective is legally compelling.
Wrap...
GOVT OPPOSES ATTORNEYS' FREE USE OF WIKILEAKS DOCS
The government yesterday filed a formal response (pdf) in federal court in opposition to the public use of WikiLeaks documents by a habeas attorney who represents a client in U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay. Those documents are or may be classified, the government insisted, and must continue to be treated as such.
In an April 27 motion (pdf), attorney David Remes had asked the Court to authorize "full and unfettered access" to WikiLeaks documents pertaining to his client, and to affirm that he "may publicly view, download, print, copy, disseminate, and discuss the documents and their contents, without fear of any sanctions."
"Any member of the general public can view these files, download them, print them, circulate them, and comment on them," Mr. Remes wrote. "Undersigned counsel, however, fears that he will face potential sanctions, legal or otherwise, if he does exactly the same things without express government permission."
In its response yesterday, the government said that Mr. Remes (and other habeas attorneys) may "view" the documents on a non-governmental computer, but may not "download, print, copy, disseminate, [or] discuss these documents" in public.
To justify its position, the government argued that it had not confirmed the authenticity of any particular WikiLeaks document, and that the restrictions on attorneys' use of the documents serve to maintain the possibility that one or more of the documents is not genuine.
"Although the Government has confirmed that purported detainee assessments were leaked to WikiLeaks, the Government has neither confirmed nor denied that any particular individual report appearing on the WikiLeaks website is an official government document," the government attorneys wrote.
"The Government must refrain from confirming whether any particular reports disseminated by WikiLeaks are genuine detainee assessments or not, to avoid the risk of even greater harm to national security than may have already been caused by WikiLeaks' disclosures."
This argument seems weakened, however, by the fact that the Government has not identified even one document among the many thousands released by WikiLeaks that is not genuine or is not what it appears to be. In the absence of even a single such case of falsification, the documents may be understood to be presumptively authentic even if government officials will not deign to say so.
It will be up to the Court to decide which party's perspective is legally compelling.
Wrap...
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Still learning...
Well, hell! Just found out I need to moderate comments here. I've been so interested in the political news...and the news, sparse as it is...on our guys in Afghanistan that I just neglected to "take care of business". My apologies. Also, thanks to you guys who "follow" this blog. Just now learned about you all.
Wondering if any of you have any idea who you'll vote for for Prez come 2012. I sure am not a bit happy with any of the candidates, Repub or Dem. Have a writer friend who swears she's not even gonna bother to vote at all. Not happy with the state of the United States either. Oh no.
Have just finished reading Wasdin's book on his 12 years in SEAL Team 6. Learned about a whole lot of interesting things like examining natural things like leaves to gauge wind speed. Title of book: "SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL sniper." What that guy had to learn and do to become a sniper, much less a SEAL, is just incredible. There will never ever be females in that outfit.
Our San Diego Convention Center had two events going today. Arianna Huffington was keynote speaker at one of them. Would have enjoyed hearing her. Heard her speak at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and enjoyed every moment.
Wrap...
Wondering if any of you have any idea who you'll vote for for Prez come 2012. I sure am not a bit happy with any of the candidates, Repub or Dem. Have a writer friend who swears she's not even gonna bother to vote at all. Not happy with the state of the United States either. Oh no.
Have just finished reading Wasdin's book on his 12 years in SEAL Team 6. Learned about a whole lot of interesting things like examining natural things like leaves to gauge wind speed. Title of book: "SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL sniper." What that guy had to learn and do to become a sniper, much less a SEAL, is just incredible. There will never ever be females in that outfit.
Our San Diego Convention Center had two events going today. Arianna Huffington was keynote speaker at one of them. Would have enjoyed hearing her. Heard her speak at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and enjoyed every moment.
Wrap...
Sunday, June 12, 2011
And It's One, Two, Three Strikes and....
THAT’S BASEBALL
by
Keith Taylor
George Herman McClusky and his grandson, Joe, loved baseball. George tried out for every navy softball or baseball team on every ship or station but could only make the lineup as a right fielder on pickup games when only eight others showed up.
His grandson had a better shot. Mike, his dad managed the Reds, a Little League team. Joe was a fair to middling player who pitched and played other positions as well.
The three of them even made it to a World Series game in person. A few days after the World Series, Joe was playing in his own game in an off season practice league. Unlike at A T & T park in San Francisco the crowd the gathering at Sweetwater Little League field was shy of a sellout and would have been if capacity had been a couple dozen.
The big leaguers played nearly flawless ball. The Little League Reds and Pirates weren’t quite as perfect. The six umpires at the World Series game were highly paid professionals. The sole umpire at the Little League game was an amateur. The professional’s job was made easy by major league players. Big leaguers never run the wrong direction on the bases, nor do they stop playing to stare at airplanes flying over.
George Herman was the sole umpire at the little league game where watching airplanes was just as important was watching the ball, and a kid might head back to first from second if he left his hat behind, or if he just felt like it.
George Herman’s son, Mike, had cajoled him into officiating in a post-season practice league game. What’s more, he had to do his umpiring forty-six feet from the plate. Someone forgot to bring the face mask so he made his calls standing on the pitcher’s mound. Still the old man would give it his best. He had too much respect for the tradition of baseball to do anything else.
He had a couple things going for him. First was the unofficial rule was that nobody argued with the umpire. That rule was obeyed stringently by the coaches, and sometimes by the kids themselves. Also George Herman remembered an umpire from his own youth, George Magerkurth. Magerkurth was bigger than most players and tried with some success to cow them into silence with his size and wild histrionics.
George Herman, himself about the old umpire’s size, added his own histrionics for a good reason. It would take a brave kid to challenge a guy that big, especially if the big guy was making all that noise while jumping around like a cartoon character.
It was game time, and the pitcher warmed up, and warmed up, and warmed up. Finally the ersatz Magerkurth asked the kid if he was ready. The kid stared back and didn’t answer.
“Hey, kid. You loose?”
The youngster stared some more, then threw to the catcher again.
“Look, we don’t have all day. You about ready?” Again, another stare, then he chucked it to the catcher again.
This was getting silly. The ump shouted to his son sitting on the bench.“ Hey, Mike Your pitcher about ready? He won’t talk to me.”
“Oh, he doesn’t speak English. He just moved here from Japan. Take the ball from him and don’t give it back or he’ll keep playing catch all day. He loves to play catch.”
The Reds, Joe’s team, had won practically every game in the short season, and they didn’t want to get beat by the Pirates who hadn’t won a single one. A victory by the Pirates would make the season a success, at least for the day. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
Finally they got underway and the game bumped along, inning by inning.
Both managers had promised each player he could pitch to a batter or so. One kid couldn’t get past the warm-up stage. His best pitch missed home plate by a couple feet. The harder he tried, the worse he got. Then, the young fellow remembered he had a serious stomach ache and said he’d feel better if he was in right field.
Not long after that the ump had one of those challenges a guy loves when things are going right. The batter lofted a high one down the right field line. As befits a good ump, George Herman hustled over to get a good look at it. It didn’t help. The chalk mark must have been laid down by one of the kids while he was watching an airplane. The line skewed towards center field, then petered out. The ball landed in no-man’s land. It was either fail, foul, or too close to call.
According to tradition, the umpire is only supposed to make a verbal call if the ball is foul, but with kids if he doesn’t say something they will all stop and wait. In his best Magerkurth voice he made the call. “FAIR BALL!” The right fielder who couldn’t find home plate a little earlier grabbed the thing and made the best throw of the game, right to the second baseman. The infielder tagged the batter, and held on.
“YER OUT,” bellowed the ump. Then he whirled to see the other runner almost, but not quite, at home plate. He ran towards home and shouted “THIS RUN DOESN’T COUNT!” Twas a critical call because that run would have made it 14 to 4, Pirates.
That call also earned George Herman his only sign of approval the entire game. Mike gave his dad a little smile and almost nodded his head. The umpire remained stoic. Umpires don’t smile. They do stick their tongues out now and then though. An inning or so later he called a close--but correct he was pretty sure--third strike on his grandson. Joe gave his grandfather a scowl and looked like he was going to break rule number one. George Herman gave the kid the tongue. Joe returned the salute, but followed it with a smile. Hey, they were going for a bike ride after the game.
Even easy calls aren’t easy in Little League practice games. A batter socked one high over the fence. It was, as they say nowadays, a no-doubter. The ball cleared the fence by ten feet, hit a tree, and bounced back onto the field. George Herman had a call nobody could blow. He gave the traditional signal by pointing skyward and making a circle with his finger.
As usual, he should have shouted. In the absence of any verbal direction, the left fielder invoked his own rule. He’d play any ball that got into his territory, no matter how it got there. The kid grabbed it and fired a strike to the shortstop who had wandered out to the cutoff position merely to watch the home run.
The shortstop, not quite sure what to do, whirled and pegged the ball right to the catcher who chased the runner back towards third. The kid on third, who would have been heading for home himself except that he had stopped to watch an airplane, headed back towards second.
Confusion set in. Kids ran the bases counterclockwise then clockwise. The ball was thrown willy-nilly. George Herman thought one of the runners passed another, but he figured
nobody else knew for sure. To settle things once and for all he got hold of the ball, put it in his pocket, lined up the runners and marched them across home plate.
Then he found the kid who had hit his first ever homer and gave him the ball, or one about like it anyhow.
Finally the game came down to the final at bat. Thanks in part to the homer the Reds had fought back and were within one big swing of yet another win, thus relegating the Pirates to a winless season. The overdogs were down one run with two ducks on the pond, two outs, and two strikes on their batter.
The umpire didn’t want a tough call at this point, but easy calls are for the Major Leagues. The Little League pitcher could have passed for a miniature version of 1940’s Rip Sewell. The one-time Pirate pitcher threw what he called an eephus pitch. It was a lob that went high in the air and came down, almost vertically, across the strike zone. Unfortunately Sewell’s most notable eephus pitch was one served to Ted Williams in an all-star game. Williams knocked it out of sight.
George Herman cast a quick glace toward the sky, ignored a passing plane, and pleaded with the baseball gods to help the pitcher put one right down the middle. Likely that’s what the pitcher tried to do, but it had all the zip of a eephus ball tacking into the wind. The dying quail tailed away to catch the corner, or pretty close anyhow. He heard somebody shout, “STEEERIKE THREE, YER OUT!”
It was him. The game was over.
The Pirates poured out of the dugout to celebrate their only victory. The Reds made do with that “TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT, WHO DO WE APPRECIATE” thing.
The parents hugged their kids and told them they were proud of them.
The managers congratulated each other.
The umpire walked to his car all alone. Nobody said a word to him.
That’s baseball.
-30-
Wrap...
by
Keith Taylor
George Herman McClusky and his grandson, Joe, loved baseball. George tried out for every navy softball or baseball team on every ship or station but could only make the lineup as a right fielder on pickup games when only eight others showed up.
His grandson had a better shot. Mike, his dad managed the Reds, a Little League team. Joe was a fair to middling player who pitched and played other positions as well.
The three of them even made it to a World Series game in person. A few days after the World Series, Joe was playing in his own game in an off season practice league. Unlike at A T & T park in San Francisco the crowd the gathering at Sweetwater Little League field was shy of a sellout and would have been if capacity had been a couple dozen.
The big leaguers played nearly flawless ball. The Little League Reds and Pirates weren’t quite as perfect. The six umpires at the World Series game were highly paid professionals. The sole umpire at the Little League game was an amateur. The professional’s job was made easy by major league players. Big leaguers never run the wrong direction on the bases, nor do they stop playing to stare at airplanes flying over.
George Herman was the sole umpire at the little league game where watching airplanes was just as important was watching the ball, and a kid might head back to first from second if he left his hat behind, or if he just felt like it.
George Herman’s son, Mike, had cajoled him into officiating in a post-season practice league game. What’s more, he had to do his umpiring forty-six feet from the plate. Someone forgot to bring the face mask so he made his calls standing on the pitcher’s mound. Still the old man would give it his best. He had too much respect for the tradition of baseball to do anything else.
He had a couple things going for him. First was the unofficial rule was that nobody argued with the umpire. That rule was obeyed stringently by the coaches, and sometimes by the kids themselves. Also George Herman remembered an umpire from his own youth, George Magerkurth. Magerkurth was bigger than most players and tried with some success to cow them into silence with his size and wild histrionics.
George Herman, himself about the old umpire’s size, added his own histrionics for a good reason. It would take a brave kid to challenge a guy that big, especially if the big guy was making all that noise while jumping around like a cartoon character.
It was game time, and the pitcher warmed up, and warmed up, and warmed up. Finally the ersatz Magerkurth asked the kid if he was ready. The kid stared back and didn’t answer.
“Hey, kid. You loose?”
The youngster stared some more, then threw to the catcher again.
“Look, we don’t have all day. You about ready?” Again, another stare, then he chucked it to the catcher again.
This was getting silly. The ump shouted to his son sitting on the bench.“ Hey, Mike Your pitcher about ready? He won’t talk to me.”
“Oh, he doesn’t speak English. He just moved here from Japan. Take the ball from him and don’t give it back or he’ll keep playing catch all day. He loves to play catch.”
The Reds, Joe’s team, had won practically every game in the short season, and they didn’t want to get beat by the Pirates who hadn’t won a single one. A victory by the Pirates would make the season a success, at least for the day. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
Finally they got underway and the game bumped along, inning by inning.
Both managers had promised each player he could pitch to a batter or so. One kid couldn’t get past the warm-up stage. His best pitch missed home plate by a couple feet. The harder he tried, the worse he got. Then, the young fellow remembered he had a serious stomach ache and said he’d feel better if he was in right field.
Not long after that the ump had one of those challenges a guy loves when things are going right. The batter lofted a high one down the right field line. As befits a good ump, George Herman hustled over to get a good look at it. It didn’t help. The chalk mark must have been laid down by one of the kids while he was watching an airplane. The line skewed towards center field, then petered out. The ball landed in no-man’s land. It was either fail, foul, or too close to call.
According to tradition, the umpire is only supposed to make a verbal call if the ball is foul, but with kids if he doesn’t say something they will all stop and wait. In his best Magerkurth voice he made the call. “FAIR BALL!” The right fielder who couldn’t find home plate a little earlier grabbed the thing and made the best throw of the game, right to the second baseman. The infielder tagged the batter, and held on.
“YER OUT,” bellowed the ump. Then he whirled to see the other runner almost, but not quite, at home plate. He ran towards home and shouted “THIS RUN DOESN’T COUNT!” Twas a critical call because that run would have made it 14 to 4, Pirates.
That call also earned George Herman his only sign of approval the entire game. Mike gave his dad a little smile and almost nodded his head. The umpire remained stoic. Umpires don’t smile. They do stick their tongues out now and then though. An inning or so later he called a close--but correct he was pretty sure--third strike on his grandson. Joe gave his grandfather a scowl and looked like he was going to break rule number one. George Herman gave the kid the tongue. Joe returned the salute, but followed it with a smile. Hey, they were going for a bike ride after the game.
Even easy calls aren’t easy in Little League practice games. A batter socked one high over the fence. It was, as they say nowadays, a no-doubter. The ball cleared the fence by ten feet, hit a tree, and bounced back onto the field. George Herman had a call nobody could blow. He gave the traditional signal by pointing skyward and making a circle with his finger.
As usual, he should have shouted. In the absence of any verbal direction, the left fielder invoked his own rule. He’d play any ball that got into his territory, no matter how it got there. The kid grabbed it and fired a strike to the shortstop who had wandered out to the cutoff position merely to watch the home run.
The shortstop, not quite sure what to do, whirled and pegged the ball right to the catcher who chased the runner back towards third. The kid on third, who would have been heading for home himself except that he had stopped to watch an airplane, headed back towards second.
Confusion set in. Kids ran the bases counterclockwise then clockwise. The ball was thrown willy-nilly. George Herman thought one of the runners passed another, but he figured
nobody else knew for sure. To settle things once and for all he got hold of the ball, put it in his pocket, lined up the runners and marched them across home plate.
Then he found the kid who had hit his first ever homer and gave him the ball, or one about like it anyhow.
Finally the game came down to the final at bat. Thanks in part to the homer the Reds had fought back and were within one big swing of yet another win, thus relegating the Pirates to a winless season. The overdogs were down one run with two ducks on the pond, two outs, and two strikes on their batter.
The umpire didn’t want a tough call at this point, but easy calls are for the Major Leagues. The Little League pitcher could have passed for a miniature version of 1940’s Rip Sewell. The one-time Pirate pitcher threw what he called an eephus pitch. It was a lob that went high in the air and came down, almost vertically, across the strike zone. Unfortunately Sewell’s most notable eephus pitch was one served to Ted Williams in an all-star game. Williams knocked it out of sight.
George Herman cast a quick glace toward the sky, ignored a passing plane, and pleaded with the baseball gods to help the pitcher put one right down the middle. Likely that’s what the pitcher tried to do, but it had all the zip of a eephus ball tacking into the wind. The dying quail tailed away to catch the corner, or pretty close anyhow. He heard somebody shout, “STEEERIKE THREE, YER OUT!”
It was him. The game was over.
The Pirates poured out of the dugout to celebrate their only victory. The Reds made do with that “TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT, WHO DO WE APPRECIATE” thing.
The parents hugged their kids and told them they were proud of them.
The managers congratulated each other.
The umpire walked to his car all alone. Nobody said a word to him.
That’s baseball.
-30-
Wrap...
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Santorum...UGH!
The Nation
Richard Kim
June 6, 2011
|
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is ardently anti-gay and has an acute talent for tapping into the homophobic imagination of social conservatives. “Man on child,” “man on dog,” incest, “priests with 3-year-olds,” polygamy, the welfare of children, the decline of Western civilization—if it’s in the vocabulary of anti-gay hysteria, Santorum has been there, done that. As a result, he’s become the target of a Google bomb, led by gay columnist Dan Savage, that successfully redefined “santorum” as a substance most straight people probably didn’t know existed and most gay men never thought to name, especially not in honor of a Republican US senator. But hey, shit happens—and now Santorum is widely considered a joke. The launch of his presidential campaign today was greeted with a chorus of knowing sneers.
augh away—for now he has the support of just two percent of Republican voters—but remember, Santorum wasn’t always just for shits and giggles. Before he crashed and burned in his race for a third Senate term, Santorum was considered a golden boy of the GOP. He had won four elections in a row in a swing state against well-financed Democrats. He was the youngest member of the GOP Senate leadership and, for much of the early 2000s, one of its most frequent TV spokesmen.
Most importantly, Santorum was the baby face of compassionate conservatism and an important architect of its signature pieces of legislation. As head of the House GOP Task Force on Welfare Reform, Santorum wrote key parts of what became the landmark 1996 welfare reform bill signed by Bill Clinton. He championed No Child Left Behind and proposed the Santorum Amendment to it, which attempted to insert teaching on the theory of intelligent design. Along with Democrat Dick Durbin, Santorum crusaded for increasing US spending on the global fight against HIV/AIDS, especially if it went to church groups and controversial abstinence-only programs. He considered enlarging the US role in fighting AIDS integral to "American exceptionalism," and he earned the praise of Bono, among others, for his advocacy. Throughout it all, he worked behind the scenes to increase government funding for faith-based social services.
As conservative pundit Kathleen Parker lamented in September 2006, when it was clear that Santorum would go down to Bob Casey, “Santorum has been the conservatives’ point man for the world’s disenfranchised—the poor, the sick and the meek. If he loses, the face of compassionate conservatism will be gone.”
Parker was right. Nobody on the right talks of compassionate conservatism anymore, especially now that the Tea Party is running the show. In part that’s because it collapsed on its own internal contradictions. As an ideology, compassionate conservatism championed state support for social justice —to fight poverty, illiteracy or disease, for example—but it opposed the state doing that work itself. In practice, that meant turning the state into a giant, heavily politicized pass-through mechanism that redistributed tax-payer dollars to private charities and corporations without meaningful accountability. Because compassionate conservatism is rooted in Christian missionary zealotry, it inevitably engaged in social engineering—abstinence-only sex education and discrimination against gays and lesbians, for example. And most importantly for the Tea Party right, it ran up the deficit. Along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, for Tea Party conservatives, it is the most visible symbol of how Bush went wrong, corrupting real conservatism with profligate cronyism.
That’s the real reason why Santorum’s candidacy seems so laughable now. He’s a relic from another time, one marked by plentitude and optimism, when conservatives embraced a global role for the United States, attempted to hijack American progressivism and above all, needed a new brand to bring them back from the mean years of straight-up bashing welfare queens and fags with AIDS (see Jesse Helms). Santorum fulfilled that role, speaking of America’s great and charitable mission to aid the poor while retaining enough smiling hatred to stoke the old base. It didn’t really make sense then. It really doesn’t make sense now.
Wrap....
Richard Kim
June 6, 2011
|
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is ardently anti-gay and has an acute talent for tapping into the homophobic imagination of social conservatives. “Man on child,” “man on dog,” incest, “priests with 3-year-olds,” polygamy, the welfare of children, the decline of Western civilization—if it’s in the vocabulary of anti-gay hysteria, Santorum has been there, done that. As a result, he’s become the target of a Google bomb, led by gay columnist Dan Savage, that successfully redefined “santorum” as a substance most straight people probably didn’t know existed and most gay men never thought to name, especially not in honor of a Republican US senator. But hey, shit happens—and now Santorum is widely considered a joke. The launch of his presidential campaign today was greeted with a chorus of knowing sneers.
augh away—for now he has the support of just two percent of Republican voters—but remember, Santorum wasn’t always just for shits and giggles. Before he crashed and burned in his race for a third Senate term, Santorum was considered a golden boy of the GOP. He had won four elections in a row in a swing state against well-financed Democrats. He was the youngest member of the GOP Senate leadership and, for much of the early 2000s, one of its most frequent TV spokesmen.
Most importantly, Santorum was the baby face of compassionate conservatism and an important architect of its signature pieces of legislation. As head of the House GOP Task Force on Welfare Reform, Santorum wrote key parts of what became the landmark 1996 welfare reform bill signed by Bill Clinton. He championed No Child Left Behind and proposed the Santorum Amendment to it, which attempted to insert teaching on the theory of intelligent design. Along with Democrat Dick Durbin, Santorum crusaded for increasing US spending on the global fight against HIV/AIDS, especially if it went to church groups and controversial abstinence-only programs. He considered enlarging the US role in fighting AIDS integral to "American exceptionalism," and he earned the praise of Bono, among others, for his advocacy. Throughout it all, he worked behind the scenes to increase government funding for faith-based social services.
As conservative pundit Kathleen Parker lamented in September 2006, when it was clear that Santorum would go down to Bob Casey, “Santorum has been the conservatives’ point man for the world’s disenfranchised—the poor, the sick and the meek. If he loses, the face of compassionate conservatism will be gone.”
Parker was right. Nobody on the right talks of compassionate conservatism anymore, especially now that the Tea Party is running the show. In part that’s because it collapsed on its own internal contradictions. As an ideology, compassionate conservatism championed state support for social justice —to fight poverty, illiteracy or disease, for example—but it opposed the state doing that work itself. In practice, that meant turning the state into a giant, heavily politicized pass-through mechanism that redistributed tax-payer dollars to private charities and corporations without meaningful accountability. Because compassionate conservatism is rooted in Christian missionary zealotry, it inevitably engaged in social engineering—abstinence-only sex education and discrimination against gays and lesbians, for example. And most importantly for the Tea Party right, it ran up the deficit. Along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, for Tea Party conservatives, it is the most visible symbol of how Bush went wrong, corrupting real conservatism with profligate cronyism.
That’s the real reason why Santorum’s candidacy seems so laughable now. He’s a relic from another time, one marked by plentitude and optimism, when conservatives embraced a global role for the United States, attempted to hijack American progressivism and above all, needed a new brand to bring them back from the mean years of straight-up bashing welfare queens and fags with AIDS (see Jesse Helms). Santorum fulfilled that role, speaking of America’s great and charitable mission to aid the poor while retaining enough smiling hatred to stoke the old base. It didn’t really make sense then. It really doesn’t make sense now.
Wrap....
Just Shut Your Mouth.....
Pecadilloes and Penises
by
Keith Taylor
Here we go again! A congress member violated the modern bugaboo of political correctness. No, he didn't take or misuse public money. He didn't vote to start an unnecessary war. He didn't do something against the wishes of most of his constituents. He got carried away in a private conversation and it involved sex.
Now he's on the skids and his life is on the verge of being ruined. When a righteous blogger posted a story of Congressman Anthony Weiner's Internet peccadilloes Weiner made the expected response. He lied about it, and very poorly.
He would have saved himself a lot of trouble if he'd simply shut the hell up and let it ride. After all, how many people were really shocked at what looked like the outline of a modest sized boner in his skivvies? Indeed no laws were broken, at least no man-made laws. But what about those laws not of this kingdom?
We're talking religion here and that brings into play an entirely new set of laws, those believed to have been laid down by the creator of a universe now known said by scientists to be thirteen billion years old. across.
But according to the adherents of most Western religions, some ten thousand years ago that creator not only gave us the universe he also laid down laws governing everybody in it. Those laws include their innermost thoughts. And the penalty for breaking those laws is severe.
Thanks to the astute founding fathers of our nation and a succession of court rulings, laws governing based merely on a belief on unseen beings are unconstitutional. Hence those of us who choose to think, not merely to believe, are protected from this idea that flights of fancy are punishable by temporal law.
Sadly there is no protection against someone's throwing a fit about a violation of what they think is immoral, such as thinking about anything. And even more sadly those people vote.
So, unless Anthony Weiner keeps his mouth shut long enough for the titillation over his modest boner wears off, he's a goner, and there's no telling what the hypocrite who replaces him will be like. The only thing for sure is he'll will assure us he doesn't impure thoughts.
I worry about my country.
Wrap...
by
Keith Taylor
Here we go again! A congress member violated the modern bugaboo of political correctness. No, he didn't take or misuse public money. He didn't vote to start an unnecessary war. He didn't do something against the wishes of most of his constituents. He got carried away in a private conversation and it involved sex.
Now he's on the skids and his life is on the verge of being ruined. When a righteous blogger posted a story of Congressman Anthony Weiner's Internet peccadilloes Weiner made the expected response. He lied about it, and very poorly.
He would have saved himself a lot of trouble if he'd simply shut the hell up and let it ride. After all, how many people were really shocked at what looked like the outline of a modest sized boner in his skivvies? Indeed no laws were broken, at least no man-made laws. But what about those laws not of this kingdom?
We're talking religion here and that brings into play an entirely new set of laws, those believed to have been laid down by the creator of a universe now known said by scientists to be thirteen billion years old. across.
But according to the adherents of most Western religions, some ten thousand years ago that creator not only gave us the universe he also laid down laws governing everybody in it. Those laws include their innermost thoughts. And the penalty for breaking those laws is severe.
Thanks to the astute founding fathers of our nation and a succession of court rulings, laws governing based merely on a belief on unseen beings are unconstitutional. Hence those of us who choose to think, not merely to believe, are protected from this idea that flights of fancy are punishable by temporal law.
Sadly there is no protection against someone's throwing a fit about a violation of what they think is immoral, such as thinking about anything. And even more sadly those people vote.
So, unless Anthony Weiner keeps his mouth shut long enough for the titillation over his modest boner wears off, he's a goner, and there's no telling what the hypocrite who replaces him will be like. The only thing for sure is he'll will assure us he doesn't impure thoughts.
I worry about my country.
Wrap...
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Books and More Books...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly....
FICTION
Mystery/Crime
David Mark's crime debut THE DARK WINTER, to David Rosenthal at Blue Rider Press, in a two-book deal, for publication starting in Summer 2012, by Oliver Munson at the Blake Friedmann (US & Canada).
Ullstein and Mondadori pre-empted German and Italian rights.
Thriller
Writing as J.I. Baker, debut novelist James Ireland Baker's THE EMPTY GLASS, a riveting, paranoiac thriller told by the young L.A. coroner who is among the first on the scene at Marilyn Monroe's bungalow the morning she is found dead, about the secret diary he discovers and the conspiracy he unravels in the following days, to Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (World English).
Women's/Romance
NYT bestselling author Gena Showalter's next four HQN novels, including books to continue her Lords of the Underworld series, as well as titles in a brand new series, to Margo Lipschultz at Harlequin, by Deidre Knight at The Knight Agency (world).
British historian Hallie Rubenhold's MISTRESS OF MY FATE and THE FRENCH LESSON, the first two installments in a new series, recounting the adventures of a seventeen-year old aristocrat; torn from her home, she is thrown into the world and must learn to wear many masks -- courtesan, spy, actress, artist, forger, cardsharp -- as she wends her way through Europe in the midst of revolution and turmoil in pursuit of her true love, to Deb Futter at Grand Central, by Tina Bennett at Janklow & Nesbit on behalf of Claire Paterson at Janklow & Nesbit UK (NA).
Transworld will publish in the UK starting in July 2012.
Children's: Middle grade
The eighth and final installment of Eoin Colfer's ARTEMIS FOWL series THE LAST GUARDIAN, for publication in summer 2012, plus two books in a new W.A.R.P. series, beginning with The Reluctant Assassin for publication in Winter 2013, about young Riley, who has fallen into the FBI's Witness Anonymous Relocation Program, after a murderous escapade with a Victorian illusionist -- who he tries to keep from returning to Victorian times, where, with his new knowledge of all things scientific and technological, he could literally change the world, again to Stephanie Owens Lurie at Disney-Hyperion, by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor Ltd.
NYT bestsellers K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr's THE BLACKWELL PAGES, a trilogy about three 12-year olds descended from Norse Gods who have to stop the impending apocalypse, to Megan Tingley at Little, Brown, in a pre-empt, with Kate Sullivan editing, for publication in Spring 2013, by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House on behalf of Marr and Sarah Heller at Helen Heller Agency on behalf of Armstrong (NA).
Author of Newbery Honor book THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE Jacqueline Kelly's WIND IN THE WILLOWS REDUX, a sequel to the beloved classic, to be illustrated by Clint G. Young, creator of the forthcoming picture book THE WISH COLLECTOR, to Laura Godwin at Holt Children's, for publication in Fall 2012, by Marcy Posner of Folio Literary Management (Kelly) and Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (Young).
Children's: Picture book
David Milgrim's GOODNIGHT iPAD: A 2-G PARODY, written under the pseudonym Ann Droyd, for parents and children alike about how to say goodnight to electronics before bedtime, to David Rosenthal and Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, by Brenda Bowen at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (World).
NONFICTION
Biography
Jonathan Reggio's HANGING MAN: AI WEIWEI, a biography of the celebrated artist and an original perspective on the contemporary political power in China, to Eric Chinski at Farrar, Straus, in a nice deal, and to Ambo/Anthos in the Netherlands and to Saggiatore in Italy, by Lisa Baker at Faber and Faber (NA).
Cooking
Bestselling author, Food Network star, and lifestyle expert Sandra Lee's two cookbooks focusing on healthful, quick-scratch meals; an entertaining/lifestyle book; and two novels, for publication starting in Fall 2011 in tandem with the re-launch of Lee's "Sandra's Money Saving Meals" television show, to Ellen Archer at Hyperion (World).
The deal includes plans by Disney Interactive Media Group to develop a web platform and 15-episode online cooking series.
Owners of Cakelava in Kailua, Hawaii, Rick Reichart, of TLC's Cake Crew, and Sasha Reichart's EXTREME CAKEOVERS, a cake decorating cookbook with 40 projects for easily transforming ho-hum supermarket sheet cakes and other common store-bought ingredients, including candies and doughnuts, into spectacular cakes that look like they came out of a specialty bakery, with stunning before and after photos, to Rica Allannic and Ashley Phillips at Clarkson Potter, at auction, by Holly Schmidt and Allan Penn at Hollan Publishing (World).
History/Politics/Current Affairs
Donald Trump's vision for bringing America back to "number one," to Regnery, for publication in fall 2011.
Former Senate Select Committee on Intelligence professional staff member and current Harvard Kennedy School of Government instructor on national security policy Eric Rosenbach and former CIA Counterterrorism Center analyst Aki Peritz's THE HUNT: Inside America's Find-Fix-Finish Campaigns and Winning the War on Terror, on how the U.S. is much safer today because of the radical counterterrorism strategies developed and refined since 9/11 and culminating in the killing of Osama bin Laden, to Clive Priddle at Public Affairs, for publication in early 2012, by Matthew Carnicelli at Carnicelli Literary Management (World).
Memoir
30-year Navy SEAL and SEAL Team 6 veteran, Don Mann's memoir, co-witten by Ralph Pezzulo, author of bestselling JAWBREAKER, to Geoff Shandler and John Parsley at Little, Brown, for publication in Fall 2011, by Heather Mitchell at Gelfman Schneider.
New York Times contributor, artist and author Leanne Shapton's SWIMMING STORIES, an illustrated collection of autobiographical stories about Shapton's life as a swimmer, exploring her training as a teenager for the 1988 and '92 Olympic trials, the competitive pressures and meditative calm found in the sport and the pastime, to Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, in a two-book deal, by Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency (NA). Shapton's most recent book, IMPORTANT ARTIFACTS, is currently under option to Plan B/Paramount Pictures, with Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman attached to star in the lead roles.
Narrative
A reissue of Susan Orlean's SATURDAY NIGHT, a guided tour of Saturday night in America, updated by the author, to Jofie Ferrari-Adler at Simon & Schuster, for release in October to coincide with publication of RIN TIN TIN, by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management.
Julian Guthrie's THE BILLIONAIRE AND THE MECHANIC, the behind-the-scenes story of the unlikely partnership forged between software billionaire Larry Ellison and a blue-collar mechanic during their audacious bid to win the America's Cup, featuring sailing lore, technological wonder, and an inside look into the competition and camaraderie of the world's top yacht clubs, to Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic, for publication in Spring 2013, by Joe Veltre at Gersh Agency (NA).
Sports
NYT columnist Harvey Araton's DRIVING MR. YOGI, a poignant and inspiring portrait of one of baseball's most unique kinships, between Ron Guidry, the Cy Young Award-winning former Yankees pitcher and Hall of Fame catcher turned national treasure, Yogi Berra, as revisited every spring at spring training; Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry are participating in the project, to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, at auction, for publication in Spring 2012, by Andrew Blauner of Blauner Books Literary Agency (world).
UK
Asia Bibi's BLASPHEMY, sentenced to death over a glass of water, falsely accused of blasphemy, the author sends a call for help from behind prison walls; two men have tried to come to her aid: the governor of Punjab and the Pakistani Minister for Minorities; both have been violently assassinated, to Lennie Goodings at Virago; Francesco Anzelmo at Mondadori in Italy; Hans-Peter Ubleis at Droemer-Knaur in Germany, by Andrea Field at Oh! Editions.
afield@xoeditions.com
Canada
Michael Vlessides's THE ICE PILOTS: Flying with the Mavericks of the Great White North, tie-in to the TV show, following the adventures of the most unorthodox flyboys on Earth; renegade Arctic airline Buffalo Airways defies the cold and the competition by using WWII-era propeller planes to haul vital fuel, supplies, and passengers to remote outposts across the world's last great wilderness, to Trena White at Douglas & McIntyre.
Wrap...
FICTION
Mystery/Crime
David Mark's crime debut THE DARK WINTER, to David Rosenthal at Blue Rider Press, in a two-book deal, for publication starting in Summer 2012, by Oliver Munson at the Blake Friedmann (US & Canada).
Ullstein and Mondadori pre-empted German and Italian rights.
Thriller
Writing as J.I. Baker, debut novelist James Ireland Baker's THE EMPTY GLASS, a riveting, paranoiac thriller told by the young L.A. coroner who is among the first on the scene at Marilyn Monroe's bungalow the morning she is found dead, about the secret diary he discovers and the conspiracy he unravels in the following days, to Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (World English).
Women's/Romance
NYT bestselling author Gena Showalter's next four HQN novels, including books to continue her Lords of the Underworld series, as well as titles in a brand new series, to Margo Lipschultz at Harlequin, by Deidre Knight at The Knight Agency (world).
British historian Hallie Rubenhold's MISTRESS OF MY FATE and THE FRENCH LESSON, the first two installments in a new series, recounting the adventures of a seventeen-year old aristocrat; torn from her home, she is thrown into the world and must learn to wear many masks -- courtesan, spy, actress, artist, forger, cardsharp -- as she wends her way through Europe in the midst of revolution and turmoil in pursuit of her true love, to Deb Futter at Grand Central, by Tina Bennett at Janklow & Nesbit on behalf of Claire Paterson at Janklow & Nesbit UK (NA).
Transworld will publish in the UK starting in July 2012.
Children's: Middle grade
The eighth and final installment of Eoin Colfer's ARTEMIS FOWL series THE LAST GUARDIAN, for publication in summer 2012, plus two books in a new W.A.R.P. series, beginning with The Reluctant Assassin for publication in Winter 2013, about young Riley, who has fallen into the FBI's Witness Anonymous Relocation Program, after a murderous escapade with a Victorian illusionist -- who he tries to keep from returning to Victorian times, where, with his new knowledge of all things scientific and technological, he could literally change the world, again to Stephanie Owens Lurie at Disney-Hyperion, by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor Ltd.
NYT bestsellers K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr's THE BLACKWELL PAGES, a trilogy about three 12-year olds descended from Norse Gods who have to stop the impending apocalypse, to Megan Tingley at Little, Brown, in a pre-empt, with Kate Sullivan editing, for publication in Spring 2013, by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House on behalf of Marr and Sarah Heller at Helen Heller Agency on behalf of Armstrong (NA).
Author of Newbery Honor book THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE Jacqueline Kelly's WIND IN THE WILLOWS REDUX, a sequel to the beloved classic, to be illustrated by Clint G. Young, creator of the forthcoming picture book THE WISH COLLECTOR, to Laura Godwin at Holt Children's, for publication in Fall 2012, by Marcy Posner of Folio Literary Management (Kelly) and Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (Young).
Children's: Picture book
David Milgrim's GOODNIGHT iPAD: A 2-G PARODY, written under the pseudonym Ann Droyd, for parents and children alike about how to say goodnight to electronics before bedtime, to David Rosenthal and Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, by Brenda Bowen at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (World).
NONFICTION
Biography
Jonathan Reggio's HANGING MAN: AI WEIWEI, a biography of the celebrated artist and an original perspective on the contemporary political power in China, to Eric Chinski at Farrar, Straus, in a nice deal, and to Ambo/Anthos in the Netherlands and to Saggiatore in Italy, by Lisa Baker at Faber and Faber (NA).
Cooking
Bestselling author, Food Network star, and lifestyle expert Sandra Lee's two cookbooks focusing on healthful, quick-scratch meals; an entertaining/lifestyle book; and two novels, for publication starting in Fall 2011 in tandem with the re-launch of Lee's "Sandra's Money Saving Meals" television show, to Ellen Archer at Hyperion (World).
The deal includes plans by Disney Interactive Media Group to develop a web platform and 15-episode online cooking series.
Owners of Cakelava in Kailua, Hawaii, Rick Reichart, of TLC's Cake Crew, and Sasha Reichart's EXTREME CAKEOVERS, a cake decorating cookbook with 40 projects for easily transforming ho-hum supermarket sheet cakes and other common store-bought ingredients, including candies and doughnuts, into spectacular cakes that look like they came out of a specialty bakery, with stunning before and after photos, to Rica Allannic and Ashley Phillips at Clarkson Potter, at auction, by Holly Schmidt and Allan Penn at Hollan Publishing (World).
History/Politics/Current Affairs
Donald Trump's vision for bringing America back to "number one," to Regnery, for publication in fall 2011.
Former Senate Select Committee on Intelligence professional staff member and current Harvard Kennedy School of Government instructor on national security policy Eric Rosenbach and former CIA Counterterrorism Center analyst Aki Peritz's THE HUNT: Inside America's Find-Fix-Finish Campaigns and Winning the War on Terror, on how the U.S. is much safer today because of the radical counterterrorism strategies developed and refined since 9/11 and culminating in the killing of Osama bin Laden, to Clive Priddle at Public Affairs, for publication in early 2012, by Matthew Carnicelli at Carnicelli Literary Management (World).
Memoir
30-year Navy SEAL and SEAL Team 6 veteran, Don Mann's memoir, co-witten by Ralph Pezzulo, author of bestselling JAWBREAKER, to Geoff Shandler and John Parsley at Little, Brown, for publication in Fall 2011, by Heather Mitchell at Gelfman Schneider.
New York Times contributor, artist and author Leanne Shapton's SWIMMING STORIES, an illustrated collection of autobiographical stories about Shapton's life as a swimmer, exploring her training as a teenager for the 1988 and '92 Olympic trials, the competitive pressures and meditative calm found in the sport and the pastime, to Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, in a two-book deal, by Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency (NA). Shapton's most recent book, IMPORTANT ARTIFACTS, is currently under option to Plan B/Paramount Pictures, with Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman attached to star in the lead roles.
Narrative
A reissue of Susan Orlean's SATURDAY NIGHT, a guided tour of Saturday night in America, updated by the author, to Jofie Ferrari-Adler at Simon & Schuster, for release in October to coincide with publication of RIN TIN TIN, by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management.
Julian Guthrie's THE BILLIONAIRE AND THE MECHANIC, the behind-the-scenes story of the unlikely partnership forged between software billionaire Larry Ellison and a blue-collar mechanic during their audacious bid to win the America's Cup, featuring sailing lore, technological wonder, and an inside look into the competition and camaraderie of the world's top yacht clubs, to Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic, for publication in Spring 2013, by Joe Veltre at Gersh Agency (NA).
Sports
NYT columnist Harvey Araton's DRIVING MR. YOGI, a poignant and inspiring portrait of one of baseball's most unique kinships, between Ron Guidry, the Cy Young Award-winning former Yankees pitcher and Hall of Fame catcher turned national treasure, Yogi Berra, as revisited every spring at spring training; Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry are participating in the project, to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, at auction, for publication in Spring 2012, by Andrew Blauner of Blauner Books Literary Agency (world).
UK
Asia Bibi's BLASPHEMY, sentenced to death over a glass of water, falsely accused of blasphemy, the author sends a call for help from behind prison walls; two men have tried to come to her aid: the governor of Punjab and the Pakistani Minister for Minorities; both have been violently assassinated, to Lennie Goodings at Virago; Francesco Anzelmo at Mondadori in Italy; Hans-Peter Ubleis at Droemer-Knaur in Germany, by Andrea Field at Oh! Editions.
afield@xoeditions.com
Canada
Michael Vlessides's THE ICE PILOTS: Flying with the Mavericks of the Great White North, tie-in to the TV show, following the adventures of the most unorthodox flyboys on Earth; renegade Arctic airline Buffalo Airways defies the cold and the competition by using WWII-era propeller planes to haul vital fuel, supplies, and passengers to remote outposts across the world's last great wilderness, to Trena White at Douglas & McIntyre.
Wrap...
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Patriot Act Stinks....
From Secrecy News:
SEN. WYDEN DECRIES "SECRET LAW" ON PATRIOT ACT
An amendment offered on May 24 by Sen. Ron Wyden would have challenged the Administration's reliance on what he called "secret law" and required the Attorney General to explain the legal basis for its intelligence collection activities under the USA PATRIOT Act. But that and other proposed amendments to the PATRIOT Act have been blocked in the Senate.
"The public will be surprised... when they learn about some of the interpretations of the PATRIOT Act," Sen. Wyden said, based on his access to classified correspondence between the Justice Department and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"U.S. Government officials should not secretly reinterpret public laws and statutes in a manner that is inconsistent with the public's understanding of these laws or describe the execution of these laws in a way that misinforms or misleads the public."
"We can have honest and legitimate disagreements about exactly how broad intelligence collection authorities ought to be, and members of the public do not expect to know all of the details about how those authorities are used," Sen. Wyden said. "But I hope each Senator would agree that the law itself should not be kept secret and that the government should always be open and honest with the American people about what the law means."
But the Senate moved toward cloture on reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions and the Wyden amendment, which was co-sponsored by several Senate colleagues, was not permitted to be offered or to be voted upon.
The House Judiciary Committee issued a report last week on the reauthorization of surveillance provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act, with a lengthy dissent from the minority members of the Committee. See "FISA Sunsets Reauthorization Act of 2011," House Report 112-79, part 1, May 18, 2011.
In 2008, then-Sen. Russ Feingold chaired a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government."
Wrap...
SEN. WYDEN DECRIES "SECRET LAW" ON PATRIOT ACT
An amendment offered on May 24 by Sen. Ron Wyden would have challenged the Administration's reliance on what he called "secret law" and required the Attorney General to explain the legal basis for its intelligence collection activities under the USA PATRIOT Act. But that and other proposed amendments to the PATRIOT Act have been blocked in the Senate.
"The public will be surprised... when they learn about some of the interpretations of the PATRIOT Act," Sen. Wyden said, based on his access to classified correspondence between the Justice Department and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"U.S. Government officials should not secretly reinterpret public laws and statutes in a manner that is inconsistent with the public's understanding of these laws or describe the execution of these laws in a way that misinforms or misleads the public."
"We can have honest and legitimate disagreements about exactly how broad intelligence collection authorities ought to be, and members of the public do not expect to know all of the details about how those authorities are used," Sen. Wyden said. "But I hope each Senator would agree that the law itself should not be kept secret and that the government should always be open and honest with the American people about what the law means."
But the Senate moved toward cloture on reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions and the Wyden amendment, which was co-sponsored by several Senate colleagues, was not permitted to be offered or to be voted upon.
The House Judiciary Committee issued a report last week on the reauthorization of surveillance provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act, with a lengthy dissent from the minority members of the Committee. See "FISA Sunsets Reauthorization Act of 2011," House Report 112-79, part 1, May 18, 2011.
In 2008, then-Sen. Russ Feingold chaired a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government."
Wrap...
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Voting For Prez in 2012....
Tell you what...I'm having a hell of a frustrating time trying to figure out who, if anyone, I'm gonna vote for in 2012. And I'm not the only one. At least one of my writer friends says she may not vote at all, given the lousy choices. More...we're both Dems. Or at least, we always have been in the past.
So this set of choices just stinks. Wish there were a viable 3rd party. Wonder why the Greens aren't really publicizing their candidate. Or are they? I have no idea.
Just really don't like being in this situation.
Wrap...
So this set of choices just stinks. Wish there were a viable 3rd party. Wonder why the Greens aren't really publicizing their candidate. Or are they? I have no idea.
Just really don't like being in this situation.
Wrap...
Friday, May 13, 2011
Paul Krugman Tells All....
Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column on "Seniors, Guns, and Money", starts out:
"This has to be one of the funniest political stories of recent weeks: On Tuesday, 42 freshmen Republican members of Congress sent a letter urging President Obama to stop Democrats from engaging in “Mediscare” tactics — that is, to stop saying that the Republican budget plan released early last month, which would end Medicare as we know it, is a plan to end Medicare as we know it."
Read it at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/opinion/13krugman.html
Wrap...
"This has to be one of the funniest political stories of recent weeks: On Tuesday, 42 freshmen Republican members of Congress sent a letter urging President Obama to stop Democrats from engaging in “Mediscare” tactics — that is, to stop saying that the Republican budget plan released early last month, which would end Medicare as we know it, is a plan to end Medicare as we know it."
Read it at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/opinion/13krugman.html
Wrap...
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Education...Begging For Mercy....
Reading,'Riting and Revenues
by Gail Collins
May 11, 2011
American education is going to be reformed until it rolls over and begs for mercy. Vouchers! Guns on campus! Just the other day, the Florida State Legislature took a giant step toward ending the scourge of droopy drawers in high school by upping the penalties for underwear-exposing pants.
Today, let’s take a look at the privatization craze and the conviction that there is nothing about molding young minds that can’t be improved by the profit motive.
Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost two million, propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12 schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies. Last week, in Ohio, the State House went for the whole hog and approved legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own taxpayer-financed charter schools.
“It takes the public out of public education,” complained Bill Sims of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
This exciting new plan, which seemed to have been inserted into the state budget bill by a magical invisible hand, would also reduce oversight. It got a rave review in The Columbus Dispatch from an op-ed contributor named Thomas Needles, who cheered legislators for trying to end the “drip-drop of wrongheaded regulation” of charter schools.
Needles is a consultant for White Hat Management, the largest company currently managing charter schools in Ohio — and with none too great a record, according to the National Education Policy Center, which said that only 2 percent of the schools White Hat runs have scored well on yearly progress tests. The owner of White Hat is a gynormous donor to the state Republican Party. Not that that would make any difference. Just saying.
So that’s the pathbreaking privatization news in Ohio. Now let’s take a look at Texas, which has been leading the way in putting for-profit companies in charge of certifying teachers.
“Very interesting and very disturbing,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford who studies teacher certification issues. Darling-Hammond says that when the federal government began demanding certified teachers in every classroom, Texas was among the states that responded by creating alternative certification programs, some of which have requirements slightly less rigorous than those for the trainers at neighborhood gyms. Most of the new teachers in Texas — particularly at schools in poor neighborhoods — come from alternative certification programs.
Then, the Legislature invited for-profit businesses into the game. “Ever since then, the innovation and competition has been phenomenal,” claimed Vernon Reaser, the president of Texas Teachers, the largest of the state’s alt-cert companies.
Here is one indicator of how innovative things are getting. Texas is currently considering — although not with any great intensity — a bill that would require that people who go through these programs spend a couple of days practice teaching before they are turned loose in their own classrooms.
The sponsor is Representative Mike Villarreal of San Antonio. Villarreal first came to my attention as the legislator who proposed requiring that the course content in public school sex education classes be medically accurate. The man has a positive genius for coming up with bills to make the Texas education system do something we really had assumed it had been doing all along. None of which make it out of committee.
At a public hearing on Villarreal’s bill, Reaser vigorously denounced the idea of requiring would-be teachers to actually get classroom experience as part of their training: “Practice teachers in front of kids that aren’t practice learning!”
To get an alternative teaching certificate in Texas you need to take coursework and have 30 hours of “field-based” experience, 15 of which can be spent watching videos. Villarreal says some programs fill up the other 15 with things like chaperoning field trips.
It’s not clear how many people get hired as full-time teachers without ever having stood in front of a classroom for a single hour. The $4,195 Texas Teachers program (its ubiquitous billboards read: “Want to Teach? When Can You Start?”) is a little opaque. For instance, Reaser assured me in a phone conversation that his students were required to have a variety of in-person interactions with their instructors even though the Web site says you can opt for “fully online instruction.”
“On our Web site, we intentionally don’t say everything,” Reaser explained. “It’s basically to get you to call us and ask us.”
When we all started clamoring for more investment in education, I don’t think we envisioned it going into corporate profits. We have seen the future, and the good news is that the kids in Florida will be wearing belts.
Wrap...
by Gail Collins
May 11, 2011
American education is going to be reformed until it rolls over and begs for mercy. Vouchers! Guns on campus! Just the other day, the Florida State Legislature took a giant step toward ending the scourge of droopy drawers in high school by upping the penalties for underwear-exposing pants.
Today, let’s take a look at the privatization craze and the conviction that there is nothing about molding young minds that can’t be improved by the profit motive.
Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost two million, propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12 schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies. Last week, in Ohio, the State House went for the whole hog and approved legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own taxpayer-financed charter schools.
“It takes the public out of public education,” complained Bill Sims of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
This exciting new plan, which seemed to have been inserted into the state budget bill by a magical invisible hand, would also reduce oversight. It got a rave review in The Columbus Dispatch from an op-ed contributor named Thomas Needles, who cheered legislators for trying to end the “drip-drop of wrongheaded regulation” of charter schools.
Needles is a consultant for White Hat Management, the largest company currently managing charter schools in Ohio — and with none too great a record, according to the National Education Policy Center, which said that only 2 percent of the schools White Hat runs have scored well on yearly progress tests. The owner of White Hat is a gynormous donor to the state Republican Party. Not that that would make any difference. Just saying.
So that’s the pathbreaking privatization news in Ohio. Now let’s take a look at Texas, which has been leading the way in putting for-profit companies in charge of certifying teachers.
“Very interesting and very disturbing,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford who studies teacher certification issues. Darling-Hammond says that when the federal government began demanding certified teachers in every classroom, Texas was among the states that responded by creating alternative certification programs, some of which have requirements slightly less rigorous than those for the trainers at neighborhood gyms. Most of the new teachers in Texas — particularly at schools in poor neighborhoods — come from alternative certification programs.
Then, the Legislature invited for-profit businesses into the game. “Ever since then, the innovation and competition has been phenomenal,” claimed Vernon Reaser, the president of Texas Teachers, the largest of the state’s alt-cert companies.
Here is one indicator of how innovative things are getting. Texas is currently considering — although not with any great intensity — a bill that would require that people who go through these programs spend a couple of days practice teaching before they are turned loose in their own classrooms.
The sponsor is Representative Mike Villarreal of San Antonio. Villarreal first came to my attention as the legislator who proposed requiring that the course content in public school sex education classes be medically accurate. The man has a positive genius for coming up with bills to make the Texas education system do something we really had assumed it had been doing all along. None of which make it out of committee.
At a public hearing on Villarreal’s bill, Reaser vigorously denounced the idea of requiring would-be teachers to actually get classroom experience as part of their training: “Practice teachers in front of kids that aren’t practice learning!”
To get an alternative teaching certificate in Texas you need to take coursework and have 30 hours of “field-based” experience, 15 of which can be spent watching videos. Villarreal says some programs fill up the other 15 with things like chaperoning field trips.
It’s not clear how many people get hired as full-time teachers without ever having stood in front of a classroom for a single hour. The $4,195 Texas Teachers program (its ubiquitous billboards read: “Want to Teach? When Can You Start?”) is a little opaque. For instance, Reaser assured me in a phone conversation that his students were required to have a variety of in-person interactions with their instructors even though the Web site says you can opt for “fully online instruction.”
“On our Web site, we intentionally don’t say everything,” Reaser explained. “It’s basically to get you to call us and ask us.”
When we all started clamoring for more investment in education, I don’t think we envisioned it going into corporate profits. We have seen the future, and the good news is that the kids in Florida will be wearing belts.
Wrap...
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Asking & Telling...Navy Style....
Marching into Trouble
by
Keith Taylor
Late this month the graduating midshipmen will march into the Naval Academy's Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Their college days over, they will now start their education. The new ensigns will have a lot to learn from those who have "Been there. Done that." And they better pay attention.
Something's wrong afloat. You could get the admirals confused with reality talk show hosts the way they're firing their captains. So far ten skippers have been relieved for cause.
It's baffling to this old sailor. Starting in 1947, I served 22 years, nine months, and 11 days, more or less. They called it a man's navy in those days. Today, thirty percent of our sailors, officer and enlisted, are women. The women aren't meek, compliant ones either. One recently lost her job as skipper of a cruiser because she was a foul-mouthed martinet.
This un-meek lady punctuated her orders with the same cuss words I used in boot camp. She threw coffee cups. She threatened to throttle a junior officer, and demonstrated how it would be done by grasping his throat with her hands. She ran over a whale.
One would expect that most of the firings would be for mistakes in ship handling or for abuse of power. But no. Most were for the very human failure of personal misconduct, usually involving sex or liquor. That's not surprising because lots of guys sign on because of sex or liquor, usually both.
And they love going where it is. Ask any old salt to name his favorite liberty port. Don't be surprised to learn Adak isn't on the list.
Their alleged acts in several "good" ports in the Mediterranean included drunkenness, inappropriate dancing, fighting between chief petty officers, and fraternization up and down the pay grades -- Sounded about like what we called one helluva liberty. The commanding officer, command master chief, six other chiefs, one junior officer and one petty officer were removed from the ship as of March 1.
The commander of a aviation patrol squadron near Seattle, did what an officer is expected to do after he'd screwed up and got caught doing what he wasn't supposed to do. When a cop arrested him for driving drunk he was assured no report would be made to his superiors. Regulations stipulated that personnel arrested for DWI be reported to his command. He reported himself and got fired. Our Navy lost another good officer. Navy Times reported last year he was a finalist for the 2010 Vice Adm. James Stockdale leadership award. I hope his fitness report mentions his honesty and courage for doing what he was expected to do.
The executive officer, and presumptive captain of the USS Enterprise was rated by two of his former commanding officers as being perfect. From his fitness reports we would assume if there had been a category "better than perfect," he'd have been marked up to that status.
Perfect wasn't good enough, not when he did was what sailors of all ranks have done after their ships slip over the horizon and out of sight of land. He entertained his shipmates with bawdy jokes and by filming skits which crossed that ephemeral line of propriety.
Was he guilty? Sure. Was it offensive? Yeah, most skits of this sort are. Did he have permission? No. but others above him sat in on the skits and laughed along with the crew. He was fired.
But, is it as bad as all that? Yes. In spite of automatic responses about a small percent of a bad apples, it is a fetid mess when Navy Times blares "five firings in ten days" from the front page. Something is wrong here that cannot be cured by bromides. The command structure that has allowed the mess to grow was put together by nabobs who were once ensigns. Today's new ensigns will find themselves caught up in a frenzy to fix a broken system.
So is there a lesson in all this for those brand new ensigns? Yeah. the sailors down in the crew's quarters know what it is -- Cover your derriere. Some of the sailors might not use those exact words though.
Have a fair wind and a following sea maties.
************************************
//Keith Taylor retired from the navy as a junior officer some forty years ago. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com
Wrap...
by
Keith Taylor
Late this month the graduating midshipmen will march into the Naval Academy's Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Their college days over, they will now start their education. The new ensigns will have a lot to learn from those who have "Been there. Done that." And they better pay attention.
Something's wrong afloat. You could get the admirals confused with reality talk show hosts the way they're firing their captains. So far ten skippers have been relieved for cause.
It's baffling to this old sailor. Starting in 1947, I served 22 years, nine months, and 11 days, more or less. They called it a man's navy in those days. Today, thirty percent of our sailors, officer and enlisted, are women. The women aren't meek, compliant ones either. One recently lost her job as skipper of a cruiser because she was a foul-mouthed martinet.
This un-meek lady punctuated her orders with the same cuss words I used in boot camp. She threw coffee cups. She threatened to throttle a junior officer, and demonstrated how it would be done by grasping his throat with her hands. She ran over a whale.
One would expect that most of the firings would be for mistakes in ship handling or for abuse of power. But no. Most were for the very human failure of personal misconduct, usually involving sex or liquor. That's not surprising because lots of guys sign on because of sex or liquor, usually both.
And they love going where it is. Ask any old salt to name his favorite liberty port. Don't be surprised to learn Adak isn't on the list.
Their alleged acts in several "good" ports in the Mediterranean included drunkenness, inappropriate dancing, fighting between chief petty officers, and fraternization up and down the pay grades -- Sounded about like what we called one helluva liberty. The commanding officer, command master chief, six other chiefs, one junior officer and one petty officer were removed from the ship as of March 1.
The commander of a aviation patrol squadron near Seattle, did what an officer is expected to do after he'd screwed up and got caught doing what he wasn't supposed to do. When a cop arrested him for driving drunk he was assured no report would be made to his superiors. Regulations stipulated that personnel arrested for DWI be reported to his command. He reported himself and got fired. Our Navy lost another good officer. Navy Times reported last year he was a finalist for the 2010 Vice Adm. James Stockdale leadership award. I hope his fitness report mentions his honesty and courage for doing what he was expected to do.
The executive officer, and presumptive captain of the USS Enterprise was rated by two of his former commanding officers as being perfect. From his fitness reports we would assume if there had been a category "better than perfect," he'd have been marked up to that status.
Perfect wasn't good enough, not when he did was what sailors of all ranks have done after their ships slip over the horizon and out of sight of land. He entertained his shipmates with bawdy jokes and by filming skits which crossed that ephemeral line of propriety.
Was he guilty? Sure. Was it offensive? Yeah, most skits of this sort are. Did he have permission? No. but others above him sat in on the skits and laughed along with the crew. He was fired.
But, is it as bad as all that? Yes. In spite of automatic responses about a small percent of a bad apples, it is a fetid mess when Navy Times blares "five firings in ten days" from the front page. Something is wrong here that cannot be cured by bromides. The command structure that has allowed the mess to grow was put together by nabobs who were once ensigns. Today's new ensigns will find themselves caught up in a frenzy to fix a broken system.
So is there a lesson in all this for those brand new ensigns? Yeah. the sailors down in the crew's quarters know what it is -- Cover your derriere. Some of the sailors might not use those exact words though.
Have a fair wind and a following sea maties.
************************************
//Keith Taylor retired from the navy as a junior officer some forty years ago. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com
Wrap...
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