High Anxiety in Pictures

You know, of course, that it's difficult to conceal the fact that you're really nervous. Agnes and Ben used to poke fun of me before we'd take the floor at dance competitions because I was so obviously nervous. I think it was the rivers of sweat pouring out from under the tux that gave me away...either that or the tuck-the-head-under-the-left-arm-like-a-chicken reflex. Or maybe it was the sixteen bathroom visits per hour thing. Who knows? The anxiety continued once we made it onto the floor, as in this classic photo, which shows me desperately trying to remember what I'm supposed to do next as we zip through a routine...

I got to thinking about this the other day when this photo gallery featuring Nervous Nellies appeared on the Slate.com website. All of the photos are great, but my favorite was this one of a nervous contestant waiting for the results at a dog show:

A close second is this one that someone, somehow, managed to take of me at the office...

How do you handle anxiety? I've tried screaming and running in circles, but it doesn't seem to help and usually attracts undesirable attention. Drugs are out of the question. Gin and tonic is not always available (sadly, because I think I actually dance better after a G&T or two).

Any suggestions?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Television as Birth Control?

India has a problem - too many people. This is what tends to happen when people have sex too often. Unfortunately, people tend to have sex frequently because (1) it's usually pleasurable, (2) it doesn't require the sort of specialized equipment needed for most sports (unless you count the mirrors and the trapeeze), and (3) they don't have anything else to do. And there are other reasons: 80 year-old Omar Mohammed has 24 children - 13 boys and 11 girls - and says it's God's will ("This is His command. It's not my doing, it's His doing").

According to this article I spotted a few weeks ago (the source of the little vignette on studly octogenarian Omar Mohammed cited above), on the occasion of World Population Day, the Indian Minister of Health and Welfare offered a novel plan to help cut down on sex and, thus, on the burgeoning population: Bring electricity to every Indian village so that people will watch television until late at night and, thus, be too tired to make babies.

Well...

It's a novel plan, but I'm not sure it will work as advertised. For one thing, you'd have to make sure that the TV sets aren't located in the bedroom, to prevent people from having sex during commercials. You'd have to be sure that the cable or satellite TV channels available to those sets didn't include things like Playboy TV, Spice Channel, or other channels bringing hard- or soft-core pornography (which would sort of defeat the purpose). You'd have to make sure that the sets featured really good sleep-inducing channels instead - like the Golf Channel, the Bowling Channel, and anything featuring Oprah Winfrey. And you'd have to be sure that the Food Network ... uh ... never mind.

If the goal is really to reduce population by cutting down on sex, it seems to me that there are easier, cheaper ways to do it than by going to the expense of bringing television to remote Indian villages. One might be by encouraging marriage, as anecdotal information indicates that married couples have sex far less frequently after the first month (okay, first week). Another might be by providing other distractions, like bars and golf courses (for the men) and shoe stores and evening Tupperware parties (for the women). Viagra-shaped placebos could be widely distributed. Etc.

All I know is that, at my age, I'm not worried about cutting down on sex...I'm trying to remember why I was interested in it in the first place.

What was I talking about, again?

Have a good day. Watch more TV.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander

Yesterday I found this amazing article in the Washington Post: Abundant Faith, Shrinking Space: Mosques in Virginia Turn to Synagogues, Ballrooms to Accommodate Growing Membership. Yes, you read this correctly - in order to accommodate the needs of growing numbers of worshipers, local Muslim imams are renting space for their services from local synagogues, among other locations.

Think about this for a moment.

Can you imagine, in your most fevered imagination, that a mosque in Saudi Arabia would rent space to a Jewish or Christian congregation in need of additional room? Saudi Arabia, where it is a crime to openly profess any faith other than Islam? Where non-Muslims are actually forbidden from setting foot in the holy city of Mecca?

It's clear that not all Muslims are as blindly bigoted as those who belong to the Wahhabi and Deobandi schools of the faith. Nevertheless, they all profess a faith which demonizes other religions and honors those who commit suicide in the act of murdering others. The shameful display in Libya this past week when a freed mass murderer was greeted by a cheering crowd only underscores the dichotomy of a religion which professes mercy and compassion while encouraging subjugation and death to those who worship in other faiths.

The Rabbi at one of the synagogues which had provided space to the Muslim congregations was quoted as saying, "The prophet Isaiah said our houses would be houses of prayer for all people ... Now, I don't know if Isaiah could have imagined us hosting Ramadan in the synagogue, but the basic idea is there." This, to me, reflects concepts of inclusivity, mercy, and compassion utterly lacking in much of the Islamic world.

The Post article goes on to note that "The arrangement has led to the unexpected benefit of cultural exchange. There have been pulpit swaps, with the imam and rabbi preaching to each other's congregation and interfaith visits as well." This is a wonderful thing if it truly leads to more open minds on the part of the Muslim congregations; nevertheless, I have my doubts.

When I see Muslims reaching out to accommodate Christians and Jews as these local Jewish congregations have done to the Muslims, there will be room for real rejoicing.

Sadly, as in most issues dealing with relations between Islam and the rest of the world, I'm not holding my breath.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Convicted Lockerbie mass murderer Abd el Basset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, released by the Scottish Minister of Justice on "compassionate" grounds, has received a hero's welcome in Libya; a 59 year-old Vietnam veteran who volunteered to return to the Army to serve in Afghanistan has become the oldest soldier killed in the war; Texas-based Guaranty Bank has become the 81st, and the third-largest, bank to fail this year; Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has nominated as his Minister of Defense a man wanted by Interpol in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires; and suicide bombers have killed four police officers in an attack in Chechnya.

Boy, do we need Cartoon Saturday!

Economists claim that the recession is nearing its end and the economy is improving. This is clearly news to many real people...

We remodeled our kitchen a few years ago. Sadly, I missed out on this nifty accessory...

These two cartoons follow up on the one I posted in last week's Cartoon Saturday about getting ready to go out...most of you husbands can probably relate...

and...

This is a great riff on the theme of reserved parking spaces...

And since people can never understand the logic of airline ticket pricing, and are always looking for ways to economize on travel, can this be too far in the future...?

It looks like it's going to be a miserable, rainy weekend, enlivened only by our youngest granddaughter's second birthday party. I'll feel old, but I'll be happy. Hope your weekend is a good one.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

DUMBCON 1, Revisited in Scotland

Most of you will recall that, back on July 24th, I proposed the establishment of a national Stupidity Condition - the DUMBCON - based on the military concept of Defense Conditions, Readiness Conditions, Threat Conditions, Force Protection Conditions, etc, etc, etc. You may want to take a moment to review the concept at the original post before reading on. Go ahead, I'll wait.

You don't have to be Albert Einstein to know that the world is getting stupider by the day. The outrageous hogwash and balderdash trumpeted every day by the extreme right, the extreme left, and the unthinking center make one wonder if brain evolution is working in reverse. Most days I don't know why I thought we needed a DUMBCON structure with a level less than 1.

But we really nailed the need for something beyond DUMBCON 1 yesterday, when Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill decided to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted and sentenced to prison for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in which 270 people were brutally murdered over and in the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Mr MacAskill described his action as an act of mercy for al-Megrahi, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. In defending his widely-unpopular decision, he said that "humanity was a defining characteristic of the Scottish people and that 'our belief dictates that justice be served but mercy be shown.'" He went on to say that al-Megrahi "...did not show his victims any comfort or compassion. They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them. But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days."

Well, I disagree.

Mercy is indeed a defining characteristic of a moral and compassionate society. But I would argue that this unfortunate and misguided action has not been viewed as merciful in Libya (where this foul, unrepentant mass murderer was welcomed as a hero) and across the Middle East, where moral and compassionate societies are in short supply. The quality of mercy, to misquote Shakespeare, is strained far beyond the breaking point in cultures where it is viewed not as compassion, but as decadent weakness in the face of strength.

It is said that Mr al-Megrahi has only three months to live. This may be so. But he should have spent those last months of his life in prison, knowing that 270 murdered souls are waiting to cheer his arrival in Hell - a far more appropriate welcome than he received from fools in Libya.

The Scottish Ministry of Justice has achieved a DUMBCON rating of 0.5 for this dreadful miscarriage of justice. Its long-term cost in terms of heartening those who would commit such terrible crimes can only be imagined.

Have a good day. Tomorrow is Cartoon Saturday...I think we'll all need it.

Bilbo

Numbered Lists

There seems to be a generic human thing about making numbered lists. There's the Dave Letterman Top 10 list (you can see Britney Spears deliver it in a bikini here), and a whole series of books on the theme of "1001 Things to (See/Do/Experience/etc) Before You Die." Bloggers inundate each other with memes asking for things like "13 True Things About You" or "10 Things I Like/Hate." And so on.

Nobody does numbered lists like the Chinese, though. There are so many numbered lists of Chinese government policies that Wikipedia even has an entry devoted to listing all of them. Perhaps Amanda can shed some light on why this is (and, by the way, her post for today contains this list: 13 Reasons Why I Don't Like Air Asia's Palembang-Kuala Lumpur Flights). Coincidence?

Here are a few examples of Chinese "numbered policy" lists, culled from the Wikipedia list:

The One-Child Policy: The official population control policy of the People's Republic of China.

The Two Whatevers: "We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave."

The Three Noes: "No contact, no compromise, and no negotiation” (Former Taiwanese president President Chiang Ching-kuo's position on relations with the Chinese Communists).

The Four Old Things: "Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas." These were the four things the Cultural Revolution was supposed to eliminate.

The Five Black Categories: Things you didn't want to be during the Cultural Revolution: "Landlords, Rich Farmers, Anti-Revolutionists, Bad Influencers, and Right-Wingers."

The Six Assurances: Given to the PRC government as guidelines for relations between the US and the PRC:

1. The United States would not set a date for ending arms sales to the Republic of China (ROC);
2. The United States would not hold prior consultations with the People's Republic of China regarding arms sales to the ROC;
3. The United States Would not play a mediation role between the PRC and the ROC;
4. The United States would not revise the Taiwan Relations Act;
5. The United States would not alter its position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan (i.e. "The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position"); and,
6. The United States would not exert pressure on the ROC to enter into negotiations with the PRC.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Other people care a lot about numbers and numbered lists, too. Today, Mike held forth on the number 8, noting that it could be your lucky day if you were Chinese. It would be nice if it were my lucky day, too, as I'm heavily invested in PowerBall and MegaMillions lottery tickets and the jackpots are immense.

But though the jackpots are immense, the odds are long and the table begs for food to be placed upon it and the mortgage to be paid...thus, sadly, I must get ready to go to work and generate the numbers that will, hopefully, show up on my next paycheck.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

More Odds and Ends

The Blog Fodder file is overflowing and my brain can only work so hard and fast to keep up with it all. And so, in the grand tradition of Gilahi and others, here are a few items that could, perhaps, rate full posts ... but which are being addressed in the Readers' Digest tradition. By the way, Readers' Digest has filed for bankruptcy. Sigh.

The other day, I posted about our TV and radio transmissions which are now reaching nearby stars. Yesterday, one of my coworkers sent me this cartoon from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal which suggests a possible outcome. I wish I'd seen this when I did the original post...


I've often felt that way after watching an evening of television.

I'm starting to see a few really good articles that address the nearly unbelievable level of lunacy surrounding the debate over health care reform. I liked this one by Farhad Manjoo that discussed how to squelch the stupid rumors about "death panels": just quit repeating them. Farhad Manjoo is the author of the wonderful book I blogged about some time ago, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, which is very much worth reading ... especially now.

The current issue (August 24 & 31) of Newsweek Magazine has an interesting single-page graphic titled "Did Britain Wreck the World?" You can read it online here, but without the clever used-tea-bag illustrations included in the print version. It summarizes how the colonial and post-colonial activities of the British government contributed to the current colossal messes in Iraq, Sri Lanka, India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, and several other places. Thanks, Your Majesty.

The lineup of "stars" for the next season of "Dancing with the Stars" has been announced, and I'm generally underwhelmed. The only two standouts appear to be model/businesswoman Kathy Ireland (woo-hoo!!) and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay? The Tom DeLay who resigned from office when accused of campaign finance irregularities? This I've got to see. But Kathy Ireland will look much better in fringe and glitter.

Speaking of "dancing," I have finally recovered my vision and added my comments to the ... uh ... interesting dance videos posted the other day by Mike. I wonder where he finds these things. I also wonder that Claudia allows him to watch it.

Okay, that's all for the moment. I promise to have a real, coherent post tomorrow.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Making the Grade...or Not

Cheating in school has come a long way since the days when we simply tried to find a seat near someone smarter than we were, so we could sneak glances at their papers and copy the answers. You know what I mean. We went from those surreptitious glances to the tiny notes carefully inked onto our arms under the sleeves (and, of course, the ink always ran), to the little crib notes tucked into the folds of our clothing.

Technology marched on, and soon we saw ads in newspapers and magazines for "research services" in which "experts writing in their fields of study" would "help" you with your term papers. We snuck calculators into math tests. Then came cell phones with text messaging that allowed us to share answers with each other, and the "research services" migrated to the internet, where we could now download entire completed term papers for a suitable fee.

Of course, the teachers weren't blind to all this. They soon learned all of our tricks and developed ways to counter them. And when it got to be too difficult to counter the tricks, they adapted.

Yesterday I found this interesting article online: "Simon Fraser U(niversity) in British Columbia Introduces New Grade to Curb Academic Dishonesty."

We're all familiar with the traditional grading scale of "A" (excellent), "B" (good), "C" (average), "D" (yucky) and "F" (failure). The new grade introduced by Simon Fraser University is "FD," or Failed for Academic Dishonesty. A university spokesman said that the grade would be used mainly for repeat or flagrant offenders, would depend on the "severity of the offense," and that faculty members should generally discuss the case with their superiors before awarding the FD grade.

It's kind of sad that a university had such a problem with academic dishonesty that it was found necessary to establish a separate grade to identify those guilty of it. Not that most of us haven't (be honest, now) cheated at one time or another, but it's disheartening that the problem has grown to such a degree that the FD grade was deemed necessary and appropriate. We didn't need an FD grade when I was in grade school...that was back when the nuns would smack you with wooden pointers and rulers, or send you to the office for a good spanking if you were caught cheating...and our parents thought it was just fine, thank you very much.

Of course, this leads to some interesting speculation of how we might use specific grading systems in other than academic areas.

For example, the National Rifle Association is notorious for working to oppose lawmakers it suspects of wishing to limit gun ownership rights. Perhaps the NRA could give such persons a grade of "GU" (Gun Unfriendly). Various militant Islamist sects and factions who routinely (and frequently violently) accuse each other of apostasy could issue the grade of "II" (Insufficiently Islamic). Former DC mayor Marion Barry and Professor Henry Louis Gates might give their local police the grade of "DR" (D***ed Racist).

The possibilities are endless. John could get the grade of "NWR" (Not Well-Rested), Fiona could look at her report card and find a "PB" (Pendulous ... uh ... never mind) grade, and Mike could be graded "KOR" (Keep Off Roofs). As for me, well, I'll let you take your own pot shots. Be gentle.

Have a good day. Make the grade. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Preexisting Conditions

The level of hysteria and stupidity surrounding significant (and not-so-significant) national events here in the USA is reaching levels unheard of in my experience. Not a day goes by that I don't shake my head in amazement at the utter lack of common sense, ordinary thought, and simple civility reflected in the actions of otherwise normal people who become hysterical lunatics over topics great and small. I refer, of course, to topics like:

1. President Obama's birth certificate;

2. Health care reform; and,

3. The economy.

I've written before about the lack of civility and about the failure of some people to engage their brains before speaking, but it's a topic that just keeps on inviting comment. I'm not the only one who sees it, either. In yesterday's Washington Post, columnist Rick Perlstein penned a great piece titled, "In America, Crazy is a Preexisting Condition: Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers, and the Return of Right-Wing Rage."

The article isn't too long, and is worth reading for its historical perspective on the lunatic behavior we're seeing now. In short, Mr Perlstein points out that America combines distrust of government, deep conservatism, and short attention span in a toxic stew that tends to boil out of the pot during those periods when more liberal administrations are in power. After illustrating his point with several historical references, Mr Perlstein writes,

"...crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny. When Adlai Stevenson spoke at a 1963 United Nations Day observance in Dallas, the Indignation forces thronged the hall, sweating and furious, shrieking down the speaker for the television cameras. Then, when Stevenson was walked to his limousine, a grimacing and wild-eyed lady thwacked him with a picket sign. Stevenson was baffled. 'What's the matter, madam?' he asked. 'What can I do for you?' The woman responded with self-righteous fury: 'Well, if you don't know I can't help you.'"

If you don't know, I can't help you. This seems to me to sum up the problem we face. People are enraged because of things they don't fully understand and don't want to take the time to learn...it's easier to echo the rantings and writings of right- (and left-) wing demagogues than to tax the mind to learn the facts...or to learn that the "facts" in which one has fervently believed actually aren't true at all. The nearest analogy is the one every married man knows: your wife is mad at you, you don't know why, you ask her what's wrong, and the answer is if you really loved me, you'd know.

For the record, I flunked mind-reading in college, along with integral calculus.

If you are interested in the topic of why people act so crazy, I can recommend two excellent books: Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, and Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. Both are superb analyses of the topic, with Shermer focusing on specific issues (like Holocaust denial, alien abduction, and creationism) and Hoffer looking more at the larger forces that push people into following mass movements, whether religious or political.

Have a good day. Think, rather than parroting what you've heard. The rest of us will thank you. Well, most of us, anyhow.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Images We Present

Since coming back from vacation, I've been spending many of my odd free moments (and yes, they tend to be very odd indeed) catching up on a lot of the blogs I enjoy, but don't have the time to read every day. One of those is Strange Maps, to which you can link from my list of recommended blogs at the left.

The July 23rd post on Strange Maps is titled, "What's on Earth Tonight?," presents a fascinating map that shows which television broadcasts from earth are reaching what points in the universe right now. Regular television broadcasting began roughly 65 years ago, and those signals are now about 65 light-years away, nearing the region of the star Aldebaran and any planets it may have.

If anyone is living in the neighborhood of Aldebaran, what are they learning from the TV signals they may receive from earth? Among other things, they're seeing the first televised presidential speech (by FDR) and the first televised baseball game. To get to the really good stuff, like episodes of Lost, Hill Street Blues, and The Twilight Zone, they'll have to wait a few more years.

But the larger question is, of course, what conclusions would scientists on Aldebaran draw about earth culture from the television signals they might intercept? Well, it sort of depends. If the signals they picked up were from The History Channel ("all World War II, all the time," in the words of one of my acquaintances who is getting her Masters degree in history), they might believe we are constantly at war...which isn't actually all that far from the truth. If they catch normal network TV broadcasts, they might think life on earth consists of nothing but high-speed car chases and wild shootouts between police and criminals, interspersed with lowbrow comedy. The Food Network? That we're obsessed with eating, if not with nutrition. The Golf Channel? They wouldn't learn anything, because it would probably put them to sleep. The Comedy Channel? I don't even want to think about it.

Alternative history writer Harry Turtledove used a variation on this idea to write a great reimagining of World War II ... in his story, aliens from deep space decided to invade the earth based on images they received from a probe which showed a warrior from the Arabian desert in the year 600. They arrived and launched their invasion in 1944 - right in the middle of World War II and facing weapons much more advanced than those they'd expected.

No particular deep thought or message today...just some reflections on an interesting topic: what would a culture that knew nothing of earth learn from watching our TV programs?

God forbid they should first see Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo