August Tweets (or, the mind that never shuts up)

Too busy writing and working to write a blog post ... so, here's something to prove blog activity - a smattering of the tweets from August.

Good @ programming but bad @ marketing. His database for children's doctors was a flop. And he'd had such high hopes for pedo-file

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Band name idea: cognitive dissonance. And to make the point, it should be a string quartet.

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At some point, being advanced works against you. Good: he's 8 but reads at a 12 year old level. Bad: he's 60 but walks like he's 90.

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From what I can tell, the difference between hipsters and country folk is not what they wear but whether they wear it w/ a sense of irony.

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Idea for children's book from visit to Zoo: "the bear isn't there & there is no otter in that water: learning to cope w/ disappointment"

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Got the multivitamins. Now all I need is roughage and calories, right? I'm thinking sugar cane.

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Glen Beck's "Rally to Restore Honor." will be followed by the "NASCAR Rally to Restore Old Chevy's." Toby Keith will perform.

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So excited about prospect of being on next season's dancing w/ stars. I wonder, tho, if I'm the only candidate they've yet to contact at all

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Gulf spill reveals previously unknown oil-eating bacteria is now flourishing. Now to find the oil-pooping bacteria.

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People always tell me to "travel safe." I already stay out of the cockpit. I'm not sure what more they want me to do.

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Media distortion bumps ratings twice: once to hype the proapects of the tea party candidate and then again to hype McCain's "surprising" victory.

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Guys @ table in Japanese restaurant inexplicably rotated their table 90 degrees. Then I felt the instant change in the the feng shui.

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Man, shot in head, notices five years later: http://yhoo.it/doZ2ZI Well, to be fair, it was the BACK of his head.

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The ban of the mosque near ground zero doesn't go far enough: we should ban construction of all buildings by religions we know are wrong.

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Little known clause in Tiger's divorce settlement: he has to now go by his given name, Eldrick .

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Lou Piniella retired. I think he should stay on somewhere, pioneering the new role of designated call protestor.

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News from the future: WW3 started weeks after North Korea joined facebook and misinterpreted France's poke.

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Band name idea: "head butting the hornet's nest."

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It's always the middle of the story. Even history has a history.

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In Google, type "Find Chuck Norris" and then hit, "I am feeling lucky" button.

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Just after Byrne sold 19 million copies of her positive thinking book The Secret, the economy collapsed. I wonder what her new book will do.

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I'm nearly positive that the BBC was reporting on alms trafficking. That concept so intrigues me.

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Plato's cave allegory becomes the online allegory. "And they turned from their monitors and said, 'that can't be the real world!'"

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I think that soon the televangelist will become the twittavangelist. Just send money if you support this idea.

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RT @leawoodward: Will any of these be yours? ~ The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying http://bit.ly/bFqdpZ

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A growing % of Americans think that Obama is Muslim. Less reported is the sudden surge in % who suspect that Mitt Romney is Unitarian.

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I wonder if it is a sign of progress or decadence that 7-11 now serves sushi.

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Shopping at Costco is like a Vegas wedding. You wake up the next morning wondering about long-term commitments you’ve made.

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Children should be heard but not obscene.

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RT @nprscottsimon: "Toilet owned by JD Salinger being auctioned for $1 mil. " Wonder if this shows little or great respect for literature?

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Saw a guy with a "Chargers for Life" t-shirt. I wonder what he did to deserve that kind of sentence.

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In retrospect, they had made their plan to ensnare the population's attention no secret. They had, after all, called it the world wide web.

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Karate shares etymology with Karaoke. It means "to gesture loudly." Sadly, people misunderstood early practitioners and responded violently.

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Good idea: comic strip. Bad idea: comedians strip.

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Biz idea: phone plan that includes occasional texts from people like Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Pryor.

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After BP spills oil in2 the ocean, ice island 4X size of Manhattan breaks loose & is on path 2 destroy oil platforms. Probably coincidence.

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I wonder if Billy Idol referred to his dad as "Pop."

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Biz idea: Barnes & Noodles. Yaki soba and non-fiction. "You'll find our Italian noodle section just behind the self-help aisle."

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I think it is so cool that California has HOV lanes. Sadly, tho, I did not see any actual Hovercraft on the trip home.

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Wonder if some guy in Asia has a cryptic tattoo in English no one can read. Read, "Don't forget the milk." Everyone assumes it is profound.

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Venice Boardwalk - where the audience is the show.

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A week ago in Indy. Today in Venice Beach. They're different.

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Simple rule: if it costs 6 cents to make something worth one, stop making them. My deficit reduction plan? Stop making pennies.

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Girls that grew up w/ Barbie financed cosmetic surgery industry. Boys that grew up w/ Buck Rogers put billions into Star Wars defense.

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.... didn't know the difference between caring about other people and caring about what other people thought.

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Society is a consensus trance, like a person hypnotizing himself in the mirror and then walking away & forgetting that he’s under hypnosis

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biz idea: open a restaurant named "lunch." When people say, "let's go to lunch," it'd be the default. "When all you know is you want lunch."

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Like the 5th annual going out of business sale ... Favre announces that he's retiring.

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Denver International Airport is DIA. I wonder how they refer to their Expressway?

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A-Rod's quest for 600 home runs approaches 2 weeks. Just to put that in perspective, the rest of the planet's quest is approaching infinity.

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Ambush pedagogy: early release 4 inmates willing 2 do community service jumping from behind trees 2 frighten children w/ memorable facts.

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Oh, now that we see the potential, we'll take that from you

I am a little ticked off. I had a stock taken forcefully from me and I a offended that such a thing is legal.

I am convinced that great stock opportunities come along at best a few times a year. On occasion, you encounter a company that Wall Street doesn't really know about and that has not yet generated any numbers to prove its potential.

Oh, and I really like fish tacos. It's a San Diego thing but you know, there was a time when pizza was just an Italian thing. If something tastes good, it'll take off.

Rubio's is a local restaurant chain that helped to popularize the fish taco this side of the border and on top of that, they offer relatively healthy Mexican food.

For all these reasons, I bought stock in the company. McDonald's market cap is about $78 billion. When I bought Rubio's stock, their market cap was about $50 million. If Rubio's had 1% of the value of McDonald's, the stock would rise 10X. It seemed to me a reasonable bet.

About two days ago, my Yahoo portfolio says, "No such symbol RUBO." I didn't have time to look into it until today. As it turns out, a company has taken Rubio's private. The good news is that they paid me about 75% more than I had paid. The bad news is that this is nowhere close to the 10X I thought possible. And, I was not even given the option to say no to their offer of $8.70 a share. This was, from my perspective, a forced sale.

So, on top of all the other problems with stock market investing, whenever a really good opportunity does come along, someone can force it from you? Really? That just seems wrong. And I'm a little ticked off. I might just go somewhere different for Mexican food this weekend.

Time to Run & Scream! (or not)

The Hindenburg Omen IS Scary (read here)

I'm sorry. I should take this seriously. My portfolio is again lying on the tracks while a train may - or may not - be coming. But I have to confess that I find this kind of thing so many degrees of amusing.

"Charlie!! Look!! The Hindenburg Omen is flashing!!"
"Oh! No!" Pause. "What is that?"
"It's a predictor."
"Of what?"
"Well, as it turns out, 25% of the time that it flashes, we run and scream like little girls."
"We do?" Pause. "Why?"
"Because the Hindenburg Omen is flashing!"
"So it flashes to warn us what we are about to do?"
"Yes!"
"Why would we run and scream like little girls?"
"Because the Hindenburg Indicator is flashing!"

And so it goes. Market indicators tell players in the market that they are about to buy or sell and ... ta da! ... accurately predict this behavior every time everyone takes them seriously.

I feel inclined to run and scream just knowing that such convoluted "predictors" exist.

The Move Towards Infinite Inventory

Today we tried a new place for lunch - CBW. I ordered the fajita bowl and thought that my ordering was done. The following ensued:

Cashier: Do you want beef, chicken, or tofu?
Me: Chicken.
C: Breast meat, dark meat or crispy chicken?
M: Crispy.
C: For grain do you want white rice, brown rice, noodles or quinoa?
M: Quinoa.
C: Would you like chips or a tortilla with that?
M: Tortilla.
C: Flour, Wheat, Spinach, or Tomato tortilla?
M: [by this point dizzy with the options] Just the flour.

If I calculated correctly, I was heading down a decision tree with 288 options. (Assuming, I guess, that there were as many options down the tofu or beef and the chips trail.) Not only that, but this fajita bowl was one of probably 30 items on the menu. If they all offered as many possible combinations, it means that I could eat 8,640 different, unique meals at this one fast food place. That is, I could dine there for lunch more than 20 years and never have the exact same meal twice. And after I ordered, I could walk over to the "flavor" bar to choose between the six (or was it eight?) different sauces ... which meant that I actually would have more than a century's worth of unique lunches at this one place.

Economists are now talking about biflation. By this they mean that commodity prices appear to be rising (inflation) and prices of goods appear to be dropping (deflation). This little experience might explain why: with so many varieties, the competition for meals would bid prices down. With the need to stock so many options, this would bid the prices of commodities up. Maybe.

I just know that next time I'll simply ask the cashier if I can just have the #1.

Litany - as Recited by a 3 Year Old

Happy Friday



Or ...

Litany

BY BILLY COLLINS

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

Little Feat Obit

This week, Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward died. There is still, for my dime, no band that better realized the potential of a blues / rock / country / disco / jazz fusion band. "Fat Man in the Bathtub" gives you a window into how much was going on in just their rhythm section.

And the Cow Flew Over the Moon - Newton Counters Centrifugal Force

The leading Renaissance thinkers were willing to adapt their minds to the facts but weren’t sure how to fully explain them. Although it took decades for most scientists to accept Copernicus’s revolutionary claims, those scientists were not stupid. In addition to scripture and their own senses – it was obvious even to the casual observer that the sun rose and the earth was stationary – they had a fairly reasonable, scientific objection. Copernicus could accept facts as he observed them, but didn’t really have a cogent explanation of why the solar system worked as it did.

Imagine this conversation.

Copernicus’s debate opponent says, “So, Nicoli, let me grant you your silly premise for a moment. Let’s assume that we do, indeed, circle the sun. You claim that we’re spinning through space and traveling at thousands of miles per hour. Okay. What about centrifugal force? Spin a rock at the end of a string and see how many seconds it takes the ant on that rock to fly into space. Why doesn’t this happen to us? Why don’t cows slip out of the grip of milk maids and fly over the moon?”

“I don’t know,” says our hero Copernicus. “I just know what the data suggests. We are orbiting around the sun. I can’t explain it. I just know it is so.”

“So,” continues his opponent, “you have no explanation? You make no attempt to account for the simple fact of centrifugal force? You just want us to believe something that even you don’t understand?”

“Yes.”

Not much of a debate. On the one hand we have ants without opposable thumbs obviously unable to keep their grip on a rock in orbit, a phenomenon that would suggest that we should be observing panicked cows floating off into space if Copernicus was right. And on the other hand we have someone arguing that the data on the movement of planets fits better if we assume that it is the sun and the not the earth that is stationary, if we assume that we’re hurtling through space at about a thousand miles an hour. Preposterous.

It took an Enlightenment thinker – the Enlightenment thinker – to explain why. Isaac Newton solved two problems with one universal law. It is tempting to think – reasonable to suspect – that the explanation for our circling the sun would be different from the explanation of why it is not impossible to find our car in the morning, uncertain as to where it has spun off through centrifugal force. Newton sees a falling apple and realizes that it is pulled by the same force as the earth. Gravity is the universal force that explains why cows don’t fly and the earth does. Newton added laws – a theory – to observations and facts.

Newton gave the lovers of facts a set of laws that made sense of their facts.

Love is Ridiculous

This is an excerpt of a toast I gave yesterday. (Or, more accurately, what I thought I might have said.)

No one likes to admit this - particularly at weddings - but love is ridiculous. It is inconvenient. It is demanding. It makes you lose sleep and makes you think it is a privilege to do freely what no stranger could ever convince you to do for cash.

Love will end badly. That’s a given. And it does end. Even if you make it to the death do us part, one person has to … well, there is no graceful exit from love. You’d have to be a fool to say yes to love when it shows up at your door.

Actually, it doesn’t really show up at your door, like a package from UPS. It’s more like a baby crying in the middle of the night that you suddenly have to get up to tend. And one way it is like a crying baby is that you don’t respond because you think it’s convenient; you respond because not responding to love and all its consequent complications is to choose to be less human. You have to be foolish to answer love's cry but you have to be inhuman not to.

People have this belief that love makes you happier. They are not mistaken. It’s true, but it is only part of the story. Love doesn’t just make you more happy – it makes you more sad. It does make you more content but it also makes you more frustrated. Love is just like life only more so. Sure we choose love partly because it makes us happier. Mostly, though, we choose love because it makes us feel more alive.

Simply to be alive is to be inconvenienced. Think how much time we spend getting places, eating, sleeping, cleaning up … So, it sort of follows that if you are going to be more alive, you are going to be more inconvenienced. Love is ridiculous, demanding, inconvenient, unreasonable, and absurd. Which is to say, love is like life only more so.

It's also true that love is something that both happens to you and that you create. It is universal and also incredibly unique.

What is Stendhal’s line? "Heloise speaks to you of love and some ass speaks to you of his love, don’t you sense that these two things have nothing but the word in common?"

Two people can pretty quickly agree that they’re in love. It takes the rest of the relationship to define just what they both meant by that.

I think that when people fall in love, what they fall into is universal – the obsession, the delight, the stalking. But from there, what each couple creates is unique. And I think it mostly comes out of a dialogue. “Sure, you said that we were in love. But what did you mean by that,” is something we continually find ourselves asking when our mate does or says something unexpected. And it’s not a bad thing that we’re surprised. It just means that forgetting to engage in dialogue does to love what forgetting to water does to plants. Keep talking.

Curious

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
-Walt Whitman

Resolution stops the creative process so it is probably a good thing that we are forced to play referee over the contradictions that we are.

We're a curious amalgam of bowels and brains, soul and scrotum, a spiritual being continually reminded that we're really just animals and vice versa. (Hm. It just occurs to me that the vice might actually be vice and the versa might be scripture. More creative tension.)

Humor seems the only resolution to living our life managing the war between such odd and contradictory roommates as we house within us.

The Use of Bad Language & Nation-Building

"Wisdom begins with a definition of terms."
- Socrates

Joe Biden got a lot of flack awhile ago for using some coarse language that was picked up by the mic. In one way, however, he avoids the bad language that seems to pervade our media and politics.

Our single biggest policy mistake in the last decade has seemed to stem from a confusion of nation-building (which we always say we're doing) and state-building (which is what we're attempting in Iraq and Afghanistan).

We had some success helping to re-build states within nations after WWII (in Germany and Japan) and let that give us confidence that we could build nations within states after 9-11. Biden seems to me the person most clear that those two are distinctly different missions with timelines that differ by orders of magnitude.

Article here.

Well This is Just Random

I might have the start of a new rap song: Al Gore got rhythm like an algorithm. The chorus would just have to have a line like, "The man's so hot that the planet's heating up," and "Put your hands in the air / there's carbon up there!" Obviously, the robot dance will be featured prominently. If you know a good Al Gore look alike (or Al Gore) and a person with a drum machine and a person who can play bass and a person who can rap and a person who can write lyrics and music ... well, I would appreciate you pointing them in my direction.

Channel surfing here in hotel, it becomes obvious that there is, at best, only a loose correlation between the a show's ability to get your attention and then do anything with it.

Curiously, entertaining TV can be educational and vice versa. CNN show with Anderson Cooper featured a debate with some guy who was arguing that a constitutional amendment was "unconstitutional." I'm sorry but that just seems to prove the point that you can be so dumb that you you've gone full cycle and are actually brilliant.

So today the market jumps. Last week it skipped. Before that it fell. My retirement is being entrusted to an entity that seems about serious as a 1st grader on the playground. I can imagine the conversation when I'm in my 60s.
Me: Where's my retirement money?
The market, fidgeting and playing with its gum: I don't know.
Me, incredulous: You don't know?
The market, looking over its shoulder, obviously distracted: No.
Me: Weren't you supposed to be watching it?
The market, now running off to play, hollering over its shoulder: I don't know.

Women Priest Wandering Around Right Here in San Diego

Few people know that the Bible is full of transcription errors. Christians don't believe it and non-Christians don't care, but through the centuries in which completing a copy of the Bible meant a monk's career was finally over, errors did get perpetuated.

Scholars can compare the earliest known copies of various books in the Bible to determine what changed. One curious thing that they've found is that Paul's very clear instruction for a woman to remain quiet in church (presumably the real basis for opposition to female priests) was inserted sometime in the 4th or 5th century. Earlier versions do not have this. The Church decided to silence women but they can't blame it - directly - on Paul.

Last month, the Catholic Church listed the ordination of females along with pedophilia as "grave crimes," revealing one possible reason that they've had such trouble cooperating with local police in past matters of priestly "misconduct." One would have to think that this would make pedophiles feel pretty good about themselves.

Yesterday, here in San Diego county, local Catholics ordained a female priest. Read about it here. And, excerpt:

Congregation ordains Catholic female pastor

Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community ordained a female pastor Saturday, risking excommunication despite assertions that it represents the true roots of Roman Catholicism.

Nancy Corran was ordained by roughly 150 parishioners rather than a bishop. The ceremony at a rented church in Serra Mesa hearkened back to ancient communities that called forth and ordained women, some religious scholars said.

Associate Pastor the Rev. Rod Stephens opened the evening with a warning: Any woman attempting to be ordained, or anyone who ordains a woman is automatically excommunicated. “Right on!” one woman cried out.

The ordination of Corran, 37, dramatically revealed the state of moral disorder in the Vatican, Pastor Rev. Jane Via said.

“Tonight, we claim the priesthood of believers for all the baptized,” said Via, the county’s first female priest. “We claim the ability and authority to govern ourselves on behalf of the whole church.”

No matter how badly your week has gone, you can take consolation in this: you were born onto a fascinating planet.

Why the US Hasn't Caught Soccer Fever

The recent World Cup revealed a number of reasons that soccer is unlikely to ever catch on in the US.

Perhaps the most obvious reason soccer will have trouble winning the hearts of American sports fans is that it is a constant challenge to how Americans make sense of the world. We know that we are the reason that we are the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Just as the Germans, British, Dutch, Spanish, and Italians before us, we misconstrue our fortune of having been born into such privilege with the fact of our actually being special. American exceptionalism means, of course, that we Americans are exceptional. Regularly unable to beat teams from countries 1% our size, we are reminded that this simply is not so. Fans simply want to cheer. They don't want cognitive dissonance with their color commentary.

Another thing about the game that offends any reasonable American is its inefficiency. You can't use your hands? What are you supposed to do with that half of your body? Given their hands are free, you might expect that the players would at least be texting.

Any self-respecting American is clear that a person needs a goal. Without goals, one's life just meanders from place to place ... like the ball on a soccer field. Everyone should have a goal but apparently no one has told soccer fans. They seem perfectly content to watch 90 minutes of a game that is played, uninterrupted by a single goal.

Finally, one has only to watch a single game to realize why so many of the countries that love soccer are poor. This game never pauses. There is no opportunity for ads that remind fans that after the game they could go shopping. Compare that with any American sport. Even if there is not a single change in pitchers, baseball is good for at least 18 commercial interruptions. The last "five" minutes of football can take 50. Consumers drive the American economy and if we were to become soccer fans, our economy would likely collapse to the level of Argentina's or Cameroon's. It seems to me that the single simplest stimulus to economic growth that these soccer-crazed countries could undertake would be to change the rules so that commercial breaks are taken every 4 to 5 minutes rather than every 45 minutes. Until that happens, we Americans don't just have a right but actually have an obligation to show tepid interest in soccer.

Europe's Great Un-Learning

There are only two states of mind that precede learning, and neither is particularly pleasant. Before you learn something, you are either ignorant or confused; or, put differently, before you get answers you have to question what you know. There were two huge events in the first two centuries of the first economy that created mass confusion and revealed great ignorance, two events that made Europeans question what they knew and opened them up to the Renaissance.

The Black Death, which began in 1348, and the discovery of America created tragedy, hope and cognitive dissonance. Try for a moment to imagine the incessant, near apocalyptic coverage today’s media would give to the discovery of a “new world” populated with people with many of the same social structures as us and yet very different rituals and behaviors, much less a pandemic that killed nearly a third of the population. Imagine what absurd speculation we’d hear on talk shows, the banter between “experts” whose expertise in no way prepared them for this, and the callers who began to question everything. These two events were like gales of destructive creation, destroying so much of what Europeans believed and opening them up to the new.

Saul Alinsky writes that someone pushing for social change will rarely have a majority on his side. Change is too uncertain and people are busy with their own lives. The best one can do is to get the majority feeling like the status quo is so bad that they won’t work to defend it. When that happens, you can make changes. In a sense, the Black Death did at least that, probably not just making Europeans feel ambivalent about the status quo but actually making them ready to actively change it.

The Importance of Pepper

To find a good reason why the waiter might think it would impress your date to offer her freshly ground pepper from what appears to be a small table leg, you’d have to go back centuries to Medieval Europe. (Of course, Freud might have as much to say about what this conveys as any historian. Lasting rituals rarely make sense at only one level.) In medieval times, pepper and other spices were status symbols, highly coveted, exotic, and expensive. So much so that its special place in our diet has carried over into today’s fine restaurants.

Spices were ideal for trade. They didn’t spoil and were light in weight. Essentially, foreign trade meant spice trade and the foreign lands from which the spices came were so remote as to be shrouded in mystery. By at least one estimate the average European never traveled more than 5 miles from home during his entire life (although given the lack of pedometers this would have to be considered a very rough estimate) and places as remote as Asia were idealized. To medieval Europeans, America was unknown but Atlantis was real, as was Paradise. And yes, by Paradise they meant the Garden of Eden. Spices were so aromatic, so rare, and so special that they were thought to come from there. (It seems reasonable to assume that trader who were happy to enhance demand for their product would make little effort to clarify that pepper actually came from India and the Maluku Islands in Indonesia.) Medieval Europeans believed that “pepper … grew on a plain near Paradise [and that] ginger and cinnamon” had been carried by the Nile straight from Paradise.

European food had yet to be infused with so many of the exotics to come from later stages of world trade, and spices were coveted for the simple fact that they enhanced the taste of food. Given the trade route was so long, spice prices were high and the products were essentially reserved for the elites. “In fact, pepper frequently took the place of gold as a means of payment.” And as with any highly priced item, spices conveyed status, a literal display of good taste.

But in the 1400s, the long trade routes were getting hit with tariffs by new rulers, and growing wealth among Europeans meant increased demand. As a result, spice prices went up 30x. If a person could find better trade routes to India, a way to avoid the tariffs levied in the Middle East, he would be rich. A taste for spices drove explorers to find a new continent. Columbus, who ventured out into unknown seas in search of it, would have known that America was truly a land of great wealth if he knew that it was a place where waiters came to your table and offered you as much fresh ground pepper as you wanted.

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Mostly drawn from Wolfgang Schivelbusch, translated from German by David Jacobson, Tastes of Paradise: A social history of stimulants, and intoxicants [Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1993]

When the American Discovered Europe

Europeans discovered America but Americans also discovered Europe, a rarely mentioned story.

Pocahontas’s father sent one of his tribe back to England with the Pilgrims and gave him a stick, telling him to put a notch in the stick each time he saw a new Englishmen. The chief wanted to know what he was dealing with.

When the poor Indian pulled into the harbor he was flabbergasted by the crowds of people around the docks. He took one look at the crowds, looked down at his stick, looked back at the crowds and then simply threw his stick into the water.

2010: The Year of the Slacker?

Tomorrow's world cup final pits Spain against the Netherlands. Institutionalized siestas vs. legalized marijuana, which should make 2010 the year of the slacker. Maybe the lesson for the rest of us is that if we want to succeed it wouldn't hurt to relax a little.

Now that I've written this long post, I think I'll go take a nap.

NBA News! (Just like ESPN)

I get so many requests for more sports coverage here at R World. I try to be responsive to my reader, so here goes.

Business idea: little green hat labeled, "NBA Salary Cap." The optional t-shirt could read, "Doing my bit to support the home team: I kept my salary under $20 million this year."

I'm shopping a book on this topic now, but few people realize how close Obama came to making a package deal of the Russian - American spy for spy swap and simply trading LeBron James and Chris Bosh to Brazil for soccer players Kaka and Fabiano to raise our world standing.

LeBron James will get about $240,000 per game (or more than $8,000 per point at the rate he scores.) If he played just one game per year, his income would put him in the top 2% of Americans.

It's a pity that James did not sign with the Houston Rockets. He missed a major marketing opportunity there. It's hard to believe that anyone could have a cooler nickname than VonBron James.

Shaq is still active? I find this sort of amazing and mostly heartening. He must be in his 50s by now and the thought of him still playing at that age inspires me. It's amazing that a guy over 300 pounds who runs and jumps could have a career last longer than 98% of the rappers from his era.

I just love the fact that a guy whose nickname is King James took one hour to announce that he was playing for the Heat. He must use really old English to take that long to express something so simple. I could understand it taking an hour to tell his grandmother, for instance, but not to tell basketball fans.
"Grandma, I'm going to play for the Heat."
"What?"
"I've decided to play for the Heat."
"You've decided to play in the heat?"
"The team. The team is the heat."
"Why is it that every generation thinks they gotta make up new slang? Your grandpa would say, 'The team is so cool.' You say 'heat.' Well at least you are not as crude as your daddy and his friends. They'd have said, 'the team is the s**t.' There is no excuse for that."
"No. Grandma. I'm going to play for the Miami Heat."
"When you get to be my age, son, the Miami heat is reason enough NOT to play. A boy from Cleveland, like you, is likely to melt down there."
And on goes the conversation ...

Demetri Martin: “I used to like to watch sports a lot, but not as much anymore, ‘cause I’m always disappointed. I’d always rather see the actual animals fighting than the teams with those names. Colts vs Bears — yeah! Wizards vs Heat — freaking awesome! Magic vs Jazz — that’s a little too gay for me, I’m gonna pass on that one.”

Stay tuned for when LeBron takes on Harry Potter. Maybe Demetri Martin will do the color commentary.

The Slow Spread of Democracy (say, aren’t those peasants armed with voter pamphlets?)

The American Revolution didn't just happen once. In fact, it is still happening.

In 1689, England's Glorious Revolution shifted authority from crown to constitution. British Parliament essentially hired monarchs (William & Mary) and told them that they could have subjects but would - like everyone else - be themselves subject to the constitution.

About a hundred years later the Americans decided that if they had a constitution they wouldn't even need a monarch. It's worth remembering that George Washington was the first president in the history of the world. But of course it never occurred to the founding fathers, who thought that all men were created equal, that anyone other than white, property-owning, Protestant males should be able to vote.

The Revolution of 1776 was a beautiful thing but it didn't really change the the rights of most Americans. It took 34 more years before people (well, property-owning white males) of any religion could vote. It took 74 years before even white males who didn't own property could vote. 144 years before women could vote and 148 years before Native Americans were considered real Americans and also able to vote. 189 years later, minorities' voting rights were ensured. And it took nearly 200 years before the 18 year olds considered old enough to die for their country were considered old enough to vote for their leaders. (And it is probably no coincidence that since then we've not had a draft.)

The real limit to change is always the collective imagination. For all of their vision, it is not the least obvious that our founding fathers could conceive of an 18 year old black female casting the vote that might elect the next president.

Social progress is often a bet on the person who has yet to prove himself. By definition it almost has to be. Before 1920, women could not prove that their vote mattered for the simple reason that it did not.

A couple of centuries later, democracy is still spreading. Right here within our borders. Now that's a revolution.

A little Bukowski for Your Morning

about the PEN conference

take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning.

- Charles Bukowski