When you’re working in a group, it’s hard to know what you truly think. We’re such social animals that we instinctively mimic others’ opinions, often without realizing we’re doing it. And when we do disagree consciously, we pay a psychic price. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that people who dissent from group wisdom show heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the sting of social rejection. Berns calls this the “pain of independence.”

Take the example of brainstorming sessions, which have been wildly popular in corporate America since the 1950s, when they were pioneered by a charismatic ad executive named Alex Osborn. Forty years of research shows that brainstorming in groups is a terrible way to produce creative ideas. The organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham puts it pretty bluntly: The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups. If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

This is not to say that we should abolish groupwork. But we should use it a lot more judiciously than we do today.

Author Susan Cain interview with Gareth Cook, Scientific American Jan 24, 2012

A while back, I did a post on politics over at the Defeatists (In full disclosure, I post my stuff several places at a time if it fits, and that’s my primary place. It’s also the easiest to throw in videos and such…so if you think there may have been tune-age that you missed, check it out.) One of my frustrations with blogging and one reason that I have cut back is the lack of feedback, by the way. Comments are welcome, good, bad or indifferent. Anyway, most of the comments over there seem to come from people who are trying to sell something like Gucci handbags but have been fascinated by some brilliant thing one of us said, either recently or a couple of years ago. We’re about due for the annual “How dare you say anything bad about boy bands, you misogynist bastards, especially you, Commandante!” which has some interesting semiotic undertext in it. However, this one was from a real human being who was interested in what I said and conflicted…I might be right, but what the hell…

Here’s the conversation. Any emphasis is mine…

Good post, good post…but what if the “middle” is, objectively moronic and absolutely wrong? The middle says:

“We need to invade Iraq and kill or displace a million people and turn the country over to the Shiite theocrats, but we will do so with properly audited spending and well-trained troops who will follow the letter of the rules”

The middle says: “Medical care funding in this country is broken so let’s require people to buy overpriced private insurance with their minimum wage jobs”.

Sometimes, to parpaphrase Jim Hightower, “the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines or dead armadillos”

And…do you really see any Democratic Party politicians with any position or any influence in the party (which means…Jesse Jackson does not really count) as being anywhere near as crazy as the current GOP? Really? Which ones? I can’t think of any…I’m a little younger than you but I remember Jimmy Carter and Dukakis and their ilk…and they are NOT Santorum or Gingrich, let alone Bachmann.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 10:48 AM

The middle is also gung ho about the upcoming hot war with Iran…either run driectly by the United States or by our good buddies in Israel. (Another nuclear power. Hmmmm….why is Israel “allowed” to have nuclear weapons?”

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 10:59 AM

Not sure where the middle is…you see it further off to the right than I do. Oddly, we could take either Eisenhower or Nixon and their social policies as a starting point for the middle, and we’d look pretty leftist today. Imagine the New Deal or the Fair Deal or the Great Society in swing today…but, of course, what we got is what we got and determines what we’re gonna get near term and possibly long term. What that doesn’t do is allow us to just give up. I remain convinced that the lesser of two evils is the better choice. By having Bush beat Gore, how did Nader make things better? Devolve for 8 years and here we go again? (Nader is not to blame completely for Bush — lots of things conspired to make things this bad.) However, the difference between John Kerry and George Bush can be summed up with two names — Samuel Alito and John Roberts as well as one Supreme Court Decision — Citizens United. A Democrat wins in 2000 or in 2004, even an uninspiring Democrat like Kerry, and money doesn’t equal speech. However, it’s probably time for my periodic Yeats post…

Posted by: Crusader AXE | 31 January 2012 at 11:47 AM

I guess I am gloomier than you.

I wished I believed things could be “reformed”. I think Chalmers Johnston nailed it. Even as things devolve and crash and burn, the people that benefit from the system still have plentiful opportunities for looting and rent seeking. And, the system promotes sociopaths (no…I am not saying everyone in government is a sociopath…but still, there are a lot of ‘em).

People like Obama merely provide a cover, a gloss, for the ongoing predation. Arguably, Obama has made things worse in that the “anti-war left” (a feeble force given America’s history as a violent culture based on conquest)) was lulled to sleep and ineffectiveness.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 02:04 PM

From a guy who calls himself “The High Arka”

You can refuse to play either of their terrible games. You can resist them. Most of all, you have the power to give up the deception that Barack Obama is a hero because he might murder “fewer” innocent people. The crucial difference between voting for Obama in the real world, and choosing to allow him to murder only 3 preschoolers in the example above, is that the example above describes a terrible choice being made one time only. The presidential farce is recurring. Imagine the preschool example, but this time imagine that it happens every day. Times ten or fifty or a hundred. Every day, you go by the preschool, and every day the madmen execute either 3 or 5 children–your choice. At what point do you stop choosing? At what point do you stop playing along and say, “Enough”? At some point, it must become apparent to you that the game is never going to end.

The children are going to keep dying–there will always be new madmen willing to take the hostages, make the speeches, and carry out the killings. Choose your decade. Choose your war. Choose your murders. Choose your “party.” How long can you justify this morbid farce? How long will you play the terrible game with the killer? Go back to Vietnam, if you like. Go back to Hiroshima and “choose” which rich, powerful national leader you want to press the button. Go back to the invasion of the Philippines. Go back to the Mexican American War. The fucking crusades, or the genocide of the neanderthals. Count the bodies. Is it ever going to end? Are you ever going to say, “Enough”?

Every day you walk by the school. Every day the madmen are there. When are you going to stop giving them what they want? When are you going to stop validating not only the deaths they cause, but their entire horrific game? It will never stop unless we stop it. If we keep supporting it, year after year, always justifying it as “a little less murder than we could otherwise commit,” it will never end. When you refuse to vote, or vote for someone else, you are a grain of sand. But at some point, change has to happen, and it will take individual people willing to refuse to support the killing. A few crazies, at first, who refuse to compromise by saying, “I guess it’s fine if Obama kills people, because he’ll kill fewer than Gingrich will.” (This is, essentially, what that haughty piece of shit George Clooney is saying as the televised 2012 contest approaches) A few crazies, and maybe someday, more. It’s as daunting a task as any, but it has to happen for the killing to stop: human individuals–without an automatic, reassuring group consensus–refusing to support killing any longer.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 04:31 PM

I’m guessing Brian isn’t the High Arka, but HA is definitely invited to the conversation…

This bothered me, and I was blogging about it. However, I was composing on Typepad, which my Defeatist brothers continually caution me against because a couple of times a year the Google or the Typepad Hobbits decide to fuck me over and eat everything I had written. I learn for a while, and then revert to form…so, I have brief moments of sanity, interspersing the Einsteinian standard insanity of doing something again and again and being surprised when it goes wrong. Terribly wrong. So, I dropped it for a while.

However, it’s still bugging me. I’m a lifelong Democrat who thinks that Jefferson, Jackson, both Roosevelts and Truman were among the great presidents, but the greatest was Lincoln. Lincoln would have serious problems in today’s Republican party of course. In fact, he’d probably either be a Democrat or possibly something further left. It’s fun to imagine him with David Boies, arguing Citizen’s United against some Koch brothers mercenary. Of course, as Jesus wouldn’t be allowed to preach in modern Christianity, Lincoln could never be admitted to the bar. Paul Tillich, the Existentialist Christian theologian and philosopher wrote in the introductory remarks to his most approachable work, The Dynamics of Faith, a series of lectures given at Cambridge in the 50s that “Today, faith is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternately skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender…”

One reason that I admire Lincoln is simple – he personifies human compassion. Lincoln wasn’t overtly religious publicly, but he was a man of deep spirituality and concern. Tillich contends that “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The dymanics of faith are the dynamics of ultimate concern…” Lincoln’s ultimate concern was justice which he saw as fairness, compassion, compromise and the acceptance of the other side’s humanity. He was generally disappointed, but he strove to achieve that world by doing what he could to maintain the union based on that idea of justice – not because the Union was itself just, but because he saw the potential for justice as lying in the Union, depending on it, deriving it’s future from it. And, in order to preserve it as source of ultimate good, he was willing to risk everything, including his soul and sanity and sense of self to preserve it. Had the South been victorious, would he have been treated like a hero by the North? He’d have been hung…he was risking his life, and the irony of his assassination lies in the reality that Wilkes egotistical madness created.

Today’s political world is based largely on something that goes back to the beginning – between those who are ALWAYS RIGHT and those who suspect quietly that they could have made a mistake. I don’t think Lincoln ever signed an execution order easily or without struggle; we know that George W. Bush had no such concerns, and that Rick Perry was almost gleeful about it at times. And, we know that the people who go to Republican debates cheer executions. Where would Lincoln have been on that? I suspect he’d have vomited…

I’ve been doing some reading about Afghanistan and our continued adventures there. Now, I have colleagues who are 9/11 Truthers, which I am not. I have colleagues who think Osama bin Laden was killed years ago and then dumped in the Ocean for a propaganda victory; I have colleagues that believe that Israel and the Mossad did 9/11 and got us into the various mid-eastern debacles. Well, if I were Israel I would probably have reacted to the news of 9/11 attacks with some restrained glee especially if I was concerned about the US cutting a separate deal that would be to Israel’s disadvantage. Churchill confessed to a feeling of relief and happiness when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Do we really think Churchill planned Pearl Harbor? I know that the Israelis and their various lobbies in this country really want Iran to go away – and, they’d like us to do it. However, as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued on Hardball on Friday we’re facing a reality. There is nothing that makes sense about backing an attack on Iran for us; lots to make it a really bad idea; and, exactly what does Israel get out of the attack? NBC’s chief “go get shot at” correspondent Richard Engle was in the same segment, and he indicated that the political leadership in Israel might be really excited by the possibility of an attack on Iran, but the actual soldiers and covert operators think it would be stupid, that their focus needs to be on Egypt and Jordan. Brzezinski argued that Iran may be crazy, but that particular empire in various incarnations has been around for 0ver 3000 years, and do we really think they’re suicidal? He also points out to those who say “Israel can’t live under the threat of nuclear attack” the degree of fatuous reasoning. We did it for over 40 years as did the Soviets and Western Europe. If Iran gets a bomb and uses it, do they expect to survive? Everybody in the neighborhood who counts, including Israel, has a credible nuclear deterrent, as well as delivery systems. The Iranians are depending in so far as they are on anything, on North Korean technology…what the hell. Let them spend themselves into oblivion, which was Reagan’s strategy in the 80s. It works…unless you screw up and spend yourself into oblivion.

This is relevant to Afghanistan for a number of reasons. I know that the administration has agreed to stop combat operations sooner than later, but I’m really wondering why not now! It really helps to have some historical awareness, and the only tactic that has worked with Afghanistan is the punitive raid. Get in, fuck up the bad guys and anybody in the vicinity, threaten worse if they do it again, unass the AO. Invade and try to make it better, and you’ll just make it a helluva lot worse, and you’ll suffer for it. By April of 2002, the Taliban is gone from power although still there; al Queida was severely damaged there; Pakistan is/was/will be totally fucked up; and we’re there because…we’re going to turn it into a Jeffersonian Democracy? As soon as the Taliban was defeated and Osama bin Laden et al were in Tora Bora, we should have declared victory, given them a check, possibly re-established the monarchy and gotten out. The Afghan people don’t want western culture; they don’t want women to have any rights; they don’t want to not kill each other. It’s that simple – we’re trying to impose an improvement on people who see no reason to change and regard the “improvements” as evil. NATO and the US would be further ahead to fund emigration to some reasonable location – Barstow, California for example – for those who want to live under something other than Sharia law. That’ll assuage some consciences. But whether we leave now or in five years or in ten years, it will be the same…only worse.

The piece from Susan Cain is very relevant here. We got into Iraq due to a rush to judgment and the influence of Ike’s military industrial complex combined with green, hubris and myopia. It’s interesting in comparing our Iraq-Afghanistan experience to the Soviet experience. Unlike the Soviets, we did have a reason for attacking within Afghanistan – they were harboring a threat, and we had a just reason for wanting to eliminate that threat. The Soviets had been dithering around with the Afghans for years and chose to invade because of the Brezhnev doctrine that once a Red Block Country always a Red Block combined with the belief that they could control matters. They sold themselves a bill of goods. The Soviet experience looks a lot like US experience in Vietnam – lots of people with good intentions and an absolute inability to see the consequences of their actions. I’ve been reading former British Ambassador to Moscow Rodric Braithwaite’s Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989 with a degree of déjà vu combined with a strong sense of WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING? Working from Russian sources and interviews, Braithwaite has a history of a cosmic comedy of errors that looks and smells a lot like Vietnam. Lousy policy, self-delusion, group-think run amuck, combined with inefficient tactics, lousy planning, and dumbfounding mismatches between outcomes, methods and resources. The good news for the Soviets was that Spetznaz was really well honed in Afghanistan. The bad news is that they failed to achieve any of their goals while turning the Red Block essentially into Cuba and North Korea. We achieved our initial goals, dithered and screwed around for the next 10 years and are still looking for a goal that we can achieve. Somebody in power needs to stop talking, listen to the record and the history and start focusing on ultimate concerns, desired outcomes – I define a desired outcome as something that can be achieved within the reasonable constraints of blood, time, treasure and lost opportunity. The most desirable outcome today is not to listen to the congressional storm or the media tumult but to listen to the inner voice of reason and make the sort of courageous decision that Lincoln made routinely. And, don’t wait for elections or consensus. Do what’s right, now…for Lincoln’s sake.

Braithwaite begins the third portion of his book, the Long Goodbye with a poem by one the Russian Afghan veterans, Igor Morozov. It reads, in part –

Down from the heights we once commanded/ with burning feet we descend to the ground/ bombarded with calumny, slander and lies/ we’re leaving, we’re leaving, we’re leaving.

Farewell you mountains you know best/ what prices paid while we were here/what foes unconquered still survive/what friends we had to leave behind…

I generally find Russian poems and song lyrics somewhat of a blend of overly didactic and overly romantic…peasant and soldier poetry. The Soviet Army and its soldiers deserved a better use; so did the British with Lord Elphinstone in 1820. The Soviets in many ways repeated the British experience. We repeat the Soviety experience…if history repeats itself with the first time as tragedy and the second as farce, what exactly is our experience going to be? Tragical farce? We deserve better, and if someone listens not to the crowd but to the inner voices or reason, creativity and common sense, we may get it. I remain pessimistically hopeful…

I never wanted to write an attack piece. As a satirist with a few TV appearance under my belt, I’ve always avoided the type of person-as-the-joke pseudo-commentary you can hear from smirking amateur comics in LA who say things like, “Hey guys, GLENN BECK! Haha!”

Legitimate commentary deconstructs politicians in order to make a point, rather than relying on shared prejudices to get a snicker. But despite my best attempts, the only real point I can think of to make about Newt Gingrich is that he actually is a joke, and he’s one that a shocking number of Americans don’t get.

This is my attempt to explain it to them.

His opinion is for sale.
Gingrich recently criticized Mitt Romney for his role in the buyout industry, saying that private equity work “is not venture capital.” But two years earlier, he had taken $40,000 to deliver a speech praising the private equity industry.

He told NPR’s Melissa Block that TARP was a “very, very bad idea.” He later voted for it. According to Bloomberg News, one of TARP’s primary beneficiaries, Freddie Mac, paid Gingrich’s consulting firm at least $1.6 million.

Gingrich’s career has been full of flip flops that would make for an interesting Gingrich vs. Gingrich debate made of actual quotes. 2011 Gingrich would claim that he “never favored cap and trade,” then 2007 Gingrich would counter that he’d “strongly support” a package with “mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system.”

He is a hypocrite.

Gingrich’s hypocrisy isn’t limited to flip-flopping when it’s convenient to his campaign. In an October debate, when discussing who should be jailed for the economic crash, he said, “Let’s look at the politicians who created the environment, the politicians who profited from the environment.” It seems this would include himself because of the $1.6 million Freddie Mac paid him.

Does this mean Gingrich thinks he should be jailed? Probably not. He’s used to making critical statements that apply to himself. For example, while on a speaking tour to promote family and religious values, Gingrich asked his ex-wife for an “open marriage,” then, when she refused, a divorce, according to her statement to ABC News.

Considering Gingrich’s personal affronts to what conservatives call the “sanctity of marriage,” which include cheating on his wife, getting a mistress, and getting divorced twice, it’s also difficult to take seriously his opposition to same-sex marriage, which the Christian Post reports that he called “a temporary aberration,” saying, “I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

And around the same time Gingrich was both cheating on his wife and loudly criticising Bill Clinton’s moral character, he also became the first Speaker of the House to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. Special Counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich had lied to the ethics panel, attempting to force the committee to dismiss its complaint, according to the Washington Post.

His excuse for cheating on his wife was that he’s passionate about America.
In an interview with CBN, Gingrich excused his infidelity by saying, “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

If this excuse is valid, perhaps we should start to question the level of patriotism among the candidates who haven’t cheated on their wives.

He looks like Dwight from “The Office.”

It’s true.

While this is obviously superficial, it could be important in a race against Obama. According to a study published by the Cambridge University Press, candidates who are rated as more attractive have an enormous advantage. The report refers to findings “that snap judgments by research subjects about candidate appearance—that is, perceptions formed by looking only briefly at images of candidates’ faces—correlate with candidates’ actual performance in real-world elections.”

His pants are on fire!
No one should be surprised that Gingrich, a politician, tends to lie a lot, but he has managed to produce some real gems. Of all his blatant lies documented on PolitiFact, my favorite is when he said, “No federal official at any level is currently allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas.’”

Below are some other gems.

• In New York City, “an entry level janitor gets paid twice as much as an entry level teacher.”
• With modern food stamps, “You get a credit card, and the credit card can be used for anything. We have people who take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii. They give food stamps now to millionaires…”
• “We spend less on defense today as % of GDP than at any time since Pearl Harbor.”
• “In fact, buried inside Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus package is anti-Christian legislation that will stop churches from using public schools for meeting on Sundays, as well as Boy Scouts and student Bible study groups.”

So what do we make of this?
I never really understood the “Anybody but X” presidential campaign slogan. Even the worst presidents, such as Jimmy Carter and George Bush, must have been better than someone. Surely, there was always some disingenuous, cheating, manipulative, immature, pathological hypocrite who is worse.

Perhaps that someone is Newt Gingrich.

This has been one of the bleakest winters ever for Met fans.  We lost Jose Reyes to free agency, a body blow though anyone could see it coming.  And our general manager acquired a few adequate relief pitchers while all our division rivals bulked up.  Meanwhile, the team continues to hang from a financial thread. But things are looking up: they recently signed Omar Quintanilla to a minor league contract.

Quintanilla is a baseball phenomenon. Thirty years old, and thus highly unlikely to improve, he managed just one hit in 22 at-bats last year for the Texas Rangers while striking out 9 times; and in 2,327 ccareer major league at bats, the equivalent of 4-5 full seasons, he compiled a  batting average of .213 with two homeruns and three stolen bases. It may be some sort of a record for non-achievement.

It’s not clear to me by what kind of alchemy the Mets will make gold from his dross. But then, I’m just a fan.

Meanwhile,  the owners have signed up another heavy hitter, CRG Partners, a financial advisory firm that specializes in bankruptcies among sports franchises. Like I said, skies are blue over Citi Field.

Met fans at this point have probably experienced more trauma over the past five seasons than any other fan base in the nation – maybe since Met fans of the early 1960s.  Don’t pass the pity, but I happen to belong to both classes.

It’s been downhill ever since The Pitch: that is, since the moment when Carlos Beltran, the Mets’ then-stellar centerfielder, took a called third strike on an unhittable curveball from Adam Wainwright to hand the St. Louis Cardinals the 2006 National League Pennant.

Shea Stadium was rocking that night – literally. I was sitting in the upper deck (I had an excellent long-distance view of Endy Chavez’s brilliant catch over the left field wall, robbing Scott Rolen of a homer) and several times during that crisp October evening I could actually feel the entire deck shaking. Not just vibrating or trembling; really shaking.  It was kind of scary.  It didn’t shake that way when Ron Swoboda made his diving catch in right field in ’69.  And then came that final pitch.

The shaking proved to be the onset of the earthquake that hit the team, bringing down the old ballpark and now threatening to take the franchise along with it.  It was brought on by incompetent front office leadership and (even more) by the owners’ affiliation with Bernard Madoff.  Money can cover up incompetence in the big leagues, but competence can’t cover up poverty.

Throughout the fall of 2010, the principal owner, Fred Wilpon, insisted the team was in good financial shape despite a spot of bother with Madoff. Meanwhile he had secretly borrowed millions of dollars from Major League Baseball.

 There seemed to be a single silver lining to this downward spiral when the team hired Sandy Alderson as their general manager. At least that was something to hang hope on; Alderson is considered among the better baseball minds.  But now comes Omar Quintanilla. Why do I feel like I’ve been vaulted back fifty years to 1962, when the rules governing the expansion draft guaranteed that the Mets would be awful?

 Now all we have left is the best broadcasting crew in baseball. That’s nice, but a good team would be even better. And there’s scant sign of that happening. Some talent is coming along, especially pitching talent; but this team is a long way from being competitive in its division because (just our luck) all the other teams are well-run and well-financed.

We Met fans may be professional sufferers (if it were just about winning we’d all simply root for the Yankees, Q.E.D.) but we aren’t stupid. We know that only one thing can save this franchise, the morally superior one in New York, and it isn’t a gaggle of $20 million vanity investors who might get to meet Mr. Met and throw out the occasional first pitch, but wouldn’t have any control over the team. (By the way, the luxury booth still costs extra.) The only thing that can save this team is its outright sale.

          If I were Bud Selig, Mario Cuomo, Michael R. Bloomberg, Sandy Koufax, or any of the other big shots with direct access to the Wilpons, I would insist on that outcome, and the sooner the better. There is no other way: it’s either sell to a deep-pocket investor  looking to turn something around – something big and troubled and unwieldy but with a big upside – or go the Quintanilla route, and Quintanilla (I’m speaking figuratively – it’s a minor league contract and one hopes that he doesn’t make the team) means continued huge losses (they lost $70 million last year, and owe some $440 million to banks and $25 million to MLB) in the nation’s biggest sports media market, and bankruptcy. It’s time for the Wilpons to face facts and get off the field.  Not share the field; not get farther off. All the way off.

WILL WRESTLE YOUR MOTHER IN LAW FOR A BUCK! –Unemployed beggar at truck stop in Southern California

So, the unemployment rate has dropped below 9% to 8.6%. Why am I less than  excited by this? The unemployment rate is based on the number of people who are  considered to be in the workforce, so if you eliminate people from the workforce who are unemployed, the percentage employed is skewed to the right. In other words,  So, most of the drop is due not to the imaginary job creators of Republican lore,  legend and myth, but due to people giving up after months of trying, running out of  unemployment benefits and falling off the grid and under the bus. In other words, a  historically low number of workers are doing less badly, while there’s an increase in  people who are literally just waiting to die.

American governments at all levels continued to bleed workers, for one.  And the decline in the unemployment rate had a down side: It fell partly  because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers  dropped out of the labor force. That left the share of Americans actively  participating in the work force at a historically depressed 64 percent,  down from 64.2 percent in October.Even excluding these hundreds of  thousands of dropouts, the country still had a backlog of more than 13  million unemployed workers, whose spells of unemployment averaged  an all-time high of 40.9 weeks. “They say businesses are refusing to look  at résumés from the unemployed,” said Esther Perry, 59, of Bedford,  Mass., who participated in a recent report on unemployed workers put  together by USAction, a liberal coalition. “What do you think my chances are? Once unemployment runs out, I don’t know what I will do.”

Do the Occupied folks stay in the Workforce? Probably not — while they’re doing their thing, exercising their constitutional rights and getting pepper sprayed and beaten and shot with rubber bullets and so on, they’re not looking for work or, conversely, they are working, just not getting paid. See how much fun this is? Statistics measure what you measure — basing policy decisions on them or making political decisions on them — THE PRESIDENT”S CHANCES FOR RE-ELECTION IMPROVE AS UNEMPLOYMENT DIPS! — without asking some structural, almost existential questions about what these things mean is really stupid, and I’m sure we’ll all work at being stupid soon, 24/7 on cable news, blogs like this one and talk radio.

So, here’s the test — who do you know who’s unemployed and you don’t understand why? When they get a job, assume that the unemployment rate may be going down. Whom do you know who hates their job — trick question, the stats that I have seen are pretty straight and seem confirmed by reality, just about everybody hates their job. However, pick someone who’s dramatically underpaid, overworked and unhappy…see when they get a raise. Or feel comfortable quitting their job to look for a new one. Then what’s happening is an actual increase in employment, as opposed to an artifical decline in a rate.

First, something for which I am less-than-thankful, this Thanksgiving … my annual plea to the media to please, please, PLEASE ignore the people waiting for hours-on-end outside the doors of some megamania superstore, jostling to be the first to glom onto some Black Friday bargain.

I know, I know … too late … especially now that Black Friday begins on Thursday, or even Wednesday … especially now that some people are going to greater lengths to get their fifteen minutes of fame … this last, perhaps, best exemplified by some mook in a ‘Tigger’ costume, camped out for Black Friday.

And, yes …  I realize I’m contributing to the very thing about which I’m complaining, by sharing/spreading the video,

To give CNN Headline News credit, though, at least they placed the report on that guy in a proper perspective by also airing reports on the steps being taken to place a holiday meal on the tables of mess halls in Afghanistan, for our men and women of the armed forces … and what soup kitchens are doing to provide a Thanksgiving meal to others who are camped out on the streets tonight (NOT because they want the biggest, best TV e-vah … but because they have no place else to go).

Sheesh, Jeff! Enough ranting already!

So, I will close with this … wherever you are, whoever you are … a happy, safe and blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Lately I’ve been chasing my father all over Hell – figuratively speaking. I don’t expect to catch him; he died seven years ago, taking with him some secrets I wish I could have asked him about, and others that I know I couldn’t have. He left behind some intriguing clues about himself, but remained something of a mystery to the end.

As a posthumous attempt at understanding, I’m writing an essay about his formative experience in World War II, when he was sent to the Pacific as a cryptanalyst for the US Army Signal Corps. He served aboard the USS Blue Ridge, a command and communication ship that took him to New Guinea and the Philippines. The Blue Ridge was the flagship for Rear Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, leading the VII Amphibious Force, during the invasion of Leyte Gulf, when American forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines. My father liked Admiral Barbey, an expert on amphibious warfare who planned and executed some 56 landings in New Guinea and the Philippines. When I was very small, one of his nicknames for me was ‘Admiral.’

     A few months ago, while exploring how my father’s war experience shaped his later life – and how his generation came out of World War II to produce mine – I came across an interesting book titled “Lost in Shangri-La” (2011) by Mitchell Zukoff. It describes an odd occurrence in New Guinea in May 1945, seven months after my father left. An American DC-3 carrying some two dozen soldiers and WACs crashed while on a sightseeing flight over the interior of the island. They were looking at a vast network of native villages, a primitive culture that had only been discovered by outsiders a decade or so earlier, and which had not invented the wheel.

The three survivors of the crash were ultimately rescued, but getting them out required a massive month-long effort. They had taken off from a base at Lake Sentani, Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters, where my father had stayed for a while in 1944. I can’t help wondering whether he knew any of the survivors or rescuers.

My father was lucky: he didn’t have to carry a rifle through hell. But he saw action between New Guinea and Leyte, and may have witnessed the first successful kamikaze attack, which struck the bridge of the HMAS Australia during the battle of Leyte Gulf.

He and I differed, but didn’t argue, about the atomic bomb. He thought it had been necessary to avoid an invasion of Japan, and that such an invasion might well have cost him his life. Based on what he knew in 1945, his reasoning wasn’t unsound.

But while researching my essay I learned something interesting about that subject as well. Operation Olympic, the planned US invasion of the Japanese home islands, had been secretly abandoned in the summer of 1945. Japanese radio intercepts at the time (not made public until the 1970s) showed a massive build-up of enemy forces on Kyushu, and the projected invasion became unthinkably costly. So, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, President Truman and his war planners scrapped it. The actual alternative to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was further bombardment and blockade, not invasion.

It goes to show.

I grew up in a very different and more divided America than my father. That’s the luck of the draw. He remained an enigma to the last, but a loving one. He taught me to laugh, and we practiced a lot together.

Digging into the past has a way of turning things up that don’t fit the puzzle, or hitting rock; it’s worth the effort, but only if you know when to stop. I’ve stopped trying to figure out my father. There will be no more digging. The essay is nearly finished – a son’s small gesture. and a last long salute.

As a counter to the GOP’s inquisition of climate scientists, let us remember that in the last year or so, UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and he was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee last spring, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data showed real change. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling truth to power: the temperature increase was real, and the scientists who had demonstrated climate was changing were right.⁹

This is the essence of the scientific method at its best. There may be biases in our perceptions, and we may want to find data that fits our preconceptions about the world, but if science is done properly, we get a real answer, often one we did not expect. That’s the true test of when science is giving us a reality check: when it tells us something we do not want to hear, but is inescapable if one follows the scientific method and analyzes the data honestly.

Thomas Henry Huxley said it best over 150 years ago: “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”–Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology, Occidental College and Cal-Tech

This month’s edition of E-Skeptic has a great article by Dr. Prothero about the interseces of faith, politics and science, and based on his discussion I’m kind of convinced that we have a fascinating problem — when the three collide, bet against whichever has the greatest value and truth. In the article, Denialist Demagogues and the Threat to Science, Prothero makes the point repeatedly, that there are whores amongst us who will sell out as well as dupes and those unwilling to accept science and the scientific method.  Rick Perry has famously commented that four semesters of biochemistry made a pilot out of him; thing is, even that  ”misunderestimates” his level of ignorance. It’s not that the man is stupid — he is willfully ignorant.

This seems to be par for the course for the right this cycle, and probably should be on the minds of most of us. When confronted by facts, theories, hyposthesis, evidence that they do not disagree, they proclaim along with the choirs of angels and saints that it’s a mystery and the Lord will provide. Since I know more than a few conservative atheists, that seems a bit disingenuous, so they proclaim a conspiracy which then, on examination, turns out to be a combination of right wing PR combined with whoreish behavior by a few and eye on the prize hypocrisy by others combined with a degree of malign, self-serving calculation.

Professor Prothero cites the following piece from Paul Krugman on what the current reality is and where the stakes lie. It is worth considering…

But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

Now, I am a middle-aged white man without children who doesn’t have severe upper respiratory symptoms. I don’t expect to live long enough to really suffer from client change. The only dog I have in this fight is that nurtured by my being a member of society and having a sense of ethical responsibility to my neighbors and to those who will come after me. For people who know better to blur the lines on this issue, and so many others, proves that not all self-interest is enlightened and that greed and ignorance can trump science and good will…if we let it.

Now, Jefferson felt that the need for a free press to ensure an informed electorate and thus gain a reasonable chance to get the best results from a democratically elected college was critical. The press today is not free — it costs a lot of money and as a result, since the cost of production outweighs by far the profit from the sales of copies and on-line subscriptions, whether it’s Gannett, McClatchey, Murdoch or the Schulzbergers have to be concerned about not pissing off their alien overlords, the people who buy the advertising.  Since the press includes TV, radio and blogs it gets even more complicated. Rachel Maddow, for example, had a mutually respectful and and rational conversation with two of McCain’s key staffers, Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace about a controversial topic — the Palinator.  However, the Maddow show  is a rare exception. (Frankly, I’m amazed that people like Wallace and Schmidt are still Republicans. It’s like people in Italy being tied to Soccer teams from birth…) People yell at each other, and only those able to outscream the other can be heard. You can decide who is actually speaking what they think based on some sort of objective reality as opposed to fantasy, greed or calculation by how quizzical and bemused their expression and the calmer their response, until they get frustrated and then either get funny or furious. Or both…If you can continue to not be overwhelmed by these bozos, you can be heard, but it can be hard. It seems to me at times that despite the best efforts of informed journalists, principled academics and commentators, and excellent thinkers who strive to be heard, our fate depends on the Till Eulenspeigel’s amongst us. That’s probably not the worst defender, but when satire is all that stands between the polity and the deranged, insane and barbaric things can get dicey quickly.

It would be nice if it was just hard science. It’s not. Economics, foreign policy, and so on — doesn’t matter. A rational person’s response to this really can only be “Are you fucking insane or are you fucking kidding me!” Or both…doesn’t matter. Budgets are not just about spending, they’re about what we plan to do with our country, not our money. Or your money…what do you have to pay to be part of the country after we figure out what it needs to be is a totally different question. Either money for the rich or schools, culture, infrastructure, national defense, keeping promises — you know, all those things that the Founders expected would happen as the union became more perfect. Instead, we have Rand Paul coming out in favor of letting pipelines explode; he’s already come out in favor of lets methane do it’s things and kill coal miners. Boehner and Kantor et al are starting to bear a striking resemblance to Ozimandias prior to the statuary phase of that Republican leaders’s career.  If I hear another right wing clown say that we need to reduce taxes and cut spending to reduce the deficit and not leave our children a mountain of debt, I think we take them on a tour of places where nobody bothered to do the right thing because it was politically expedient or violated their totalitarian faith — in Marx, or Hitler, or Caesar. We can leave your children — remember, I’m in this for the laughs — a reasonable debt and a functioning commonwealth, or we can leave them…Zimbabwe.

Oddly, let’s let Percy Bysshe Shelley have the last word.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Amen, brother.

I am a fairly laid-back, low-key person. It takes a lot to get me riled up. This attitude has generally served me well. It’s only on very rare occasions that I become angry; only twice in my adult life have I ever actually been angry enough to yell at someone (yelling at sporting events, rooting on my favorite athletic performers, does not count). Generally, if I’ve been wronged – and it does happen occasionally – I forget it pretty quickly and move on with my life.

It’s not something I spend a lot of time on, but I do concoct revenge scenarios.

Although it hasn’t happened yet, it’s possible that at some point someone will do something to me that will require my taking revenge against him. I pride myself on always being prepared, so it makes sense for me to have a reserve of revenge scenarios handy, which I can call upon if need be.

One problem with creating these revenge scenarios is that I can’t know the specifics of my targets – because they don’t yet exist! For this reason, the scenarios often contain what I will charitably call “gaps,” to be filled in later, once I learn the full details of person or persons who have wronged me. I’ll show you what I mean with one of my less elaborate scenarios, briefly outlined below:

First, I kidnap the child of the man who has wronged me (this scenario assumes the person against whom I’m exacting my revenge has at least one child, and at least one spouse). I’m afraid this part of the scenario doesn’t make me look particularly good, since the child’s only crime is being related to the person who wronged me. However, if someone has done something that requires I exact my revenge, then it must have been very egregious indeed, because I’m so laid-back, as I’ve already stated. The child of a person who would commit such a heinous act has already been irreparably harmed by the parents in question, so I doubt my kidnapping him will be too traumatic.

However, the parent can’t know this. He must believe his child is in danger. For that reason, when I kidnap the child, I will place him in a room specially prepared to create the highest level of stress possible. The room will be just large enough for the child to lie down in a fully prone position; however, held fast to the floor at odd intervals will be objects of varying geometric shapes, making it impossible for the child to sit down and relax. The walls will be painted a shade of green that I’ve found to induce stress in children. On the walls I will alternately project YouTube videos of apes drinking from their own urine stream, and clips of episodes of Rachel Maddow’s television program.

Once the child has been in this room for a few minutes (only long enough for him to become slightly agitated – I’m no monster, and as I’ve already said my real quarrel is with his parent, not him), I’ll call the revenge object and inform him that I have his son, and if he follows my instructions exactly, the child shall be returned to him in mint condition. If not… (At this point, I will let my voice trail off into ellipses, and let him imagine what might happen if he doesn’t follow my instructions – since I’m not going to actually do anything to harm the child, this saves me having to lie to him, even though he probably deserves to be lied to, for what he did to me. But I’m not going to sink to his level, and I won’t compromise my integrity.) Next, I’ll put his son on the phone, and the child’s frightened, halting voice will let the man know how serious the situation is.

Now that the man is sufficiently agitated and has agreed to do exactly as I say, I will lay my first set of instructions on him: Get $10,000 in unmarked, non-sequential, and small denomination bills. Place these bills in a valise, and bring that valise, along with his wife, to a high-traffic, high-crime corner of the downtown of the city in which he lives. I’ll also explain that in a trashcan on that corner there will be a cell phone I will call with further instructions. This will cause the stupid jerk to think this is a straightforward money-for-your-kid kidnapping, but boy will he be surprised when he finds out what I’ve really got in mind!

Next I’ll set up my surveillance equipment and a computer in an unrented room in a high rise in sight of the corner I’ve chosen. Because of the bad economy, I’ll have my pick of empty locations. I might have to assume a fake identity and pretend to be a potential renter to get past any real estate people (I’ll probably wear a fake mustache), but I’ll do anything to ensure my plan’s success. I’ll be watching the corner with my binoculars, and monitoring a special website on my computer.

When the man and his wife get to the corner, I’ll call the cell phone. The husband will have to dig through disgusting downtown trash to find the cell phone! When he answers, I’ll tell him to dig out the other cell phone I’ve also placed in the trashcan, and hand it to his wife. When he does this, I will call that cell phone and instruct her on how to adjust that phone’s settings so that it will automatically upload to the internet the video I’m going to have her shoot. “Aim it at your husband, and make sure you always get his full body in the frame, unless I specifically instruct you otherwise. If not…” I’ll again let my voice trail off into ellipses, menacingly.

Now I’ll check my own computer to ensure that video is uploading to that special website I mentioned two paragraphs ago. I’ll probably spare a few moments to savor the expression of confused fear on his face. This revenge will be so sweet, especially considering whatever it was that he did to me to deserve this!

Back to business: Don’t stop filming your husband no matter what. When I get the husband again on the other cell phone, I’ll tell him to place the valise on the sidewalk, open it up, and remove one of the bills. He’ll think it’s because I want to see the money, to make sure it’s real or something, even though I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was real or not from this far away, the stupid jerk, but that’s exactly what I want him to think. The money is just a red herring. A distraction. In the revenge scenario-plotting game we call this a “Putz’s Humbug.” When he takes one of the bills out of the valise, I hope he says something like, “Are you satisfied?” because then I can say, “ Not yet. But soon. Now, pull your pants down.”

Now he’ll be really confused and scared. “Why?” he’ll ask. I’ll say, “Don’t question my instructions. Remember, I still have your son…” and let my voice trail off into ellipses. (Really I’ll have dropped his son off at the funnest amusement park in the area, and given him free passes for all the best rides, and also a coupon for a free fountain drink, all as a reward for his part in my plot.) The stupid jerk will probably start to cry when he undoes his pants (maybe his pants will be damp from where he wet himself? well, I can hope, can’t I?) and lets them drop to his ankles. The video, streaming live on the internet, will be so hilarious! The expressions on his face, and the faces of the pedestrians going by, will fill me with such delight. Anyway, next I’ll tell him to pull down his underwear, and when he stopped sobbing his terrified tears I’d remind him about his son, and drop those ellipses on him again. When he pulled down his underwear I’d have his wife get a quick close up shot of his shriveled little wiener, then I’d tell him to stuff the bill all the way up his butt hole. And then I’d tell his wife to get a good shot of the bill going into his butt.

I’d probably be laughing so hard that tears would be running down my own face. It will be hard to maintain the menacing tone I’ve affected up until now! Anyway, once he’d stuffed the bill up his butt, I would then tell his wife to fish it out, and then eat it, and pretend that she thought it was delicious. In answer to her cries of protest I would tell her that Yes, she had to film herself eating it, and she had to lick her lips and talk about how savory it tastes, like a Food Network host. I might even have her borrow Guy Fieri’s phrase, “That is so money!”

I’m not sure if in this scenario the wife has actually wronged me or not. But even if she hasn’t, if she married this jerk, she deserves everything she gets.

I’d tell them to continue doing this until either (A) all the bills are gone, or (B) pedestrians rob them. Either way: Keep filming, and don’t tell anyone why you’re doing this, even if a police officer happens to walk by. Remember your son…

This scenario is a harmless little humiliation that won’t really hurt these people (even though they deserve it, for what they did to me), but it will make me feel a lot better. Now, all I need is for someone to really earn my ire.

I thought I might be the first  in the Coliseum to write about the University of Miami athletics scandal, until the talented Alan Spoll made it the subject of his weekly Good Sports Bad Sports piece. Alan did a bang up job of giving readers a snapshot of what is going down at the U. But being a former ‘Cane, I would like to give it all just a bit more perspective.

Last Tuesday Yahoo Sports broke the story, which vaguely confirmed allegations made by Ponzi schemer and Miami sports booster Nevin Shapiro. Most of the allegations were that he wined and dined student athletes while coaches and administrators turned a blind eye. Since then, over righteous sports pundits have been devouring the University of Miami image because doing so is what people want to hear.

The only thing more disturbing  than listening to the anti-Miami rhetoric on TV (even Fox News), was listening to a radio interview with Shapiro’s lawyer, in which she defended her slithery client’s behaviour. She said Shapiro felt betrayed that players, which he considered “family,” did not come to his aid when he was arrested or convicted for his felony. Obviously, when you reach out to college kids, they’re obligated to break you out of prison. This woman is more deplorable than her client.

At least I don’t have to hear moron announcers talk about what a great job Donna Shalala is doing in running a clean football program. They confused Miami’s academic success with discipline. This January, four Miami teams, including football, won public recognition for high scores in the Academic Progress Rate. Miami was one of only just a handful of schools in the entire country to improve it’s APR for seven consecutive years in baseball, football, and basketball. But while Shalala took pride in A’s, like others take pride in W’s, the basic theme of compromising your integrity to get something else was in effect. She looked the other way as long as the grades — and the donations — were there.

The reality of it — and you would only know this if you follow both the school and its athletics — is that Miami is not all that renegade. Miami was the first successful college football team to do end-zone dances, talk trash on the field, and wear fatigues and gold teeth. So from its early success in the 1980′s, people judged Miami’s book by its cover. In 1995 the book matched the cover when the Hurricane football program was put on probation for Pell Grant fraud, improper payments, and a failed drug policy. But the substantiated infractions were nothing as criminal as the rumors might have suggested. Since then, Miami has been basically squeaky clean, yet unable to shake its reputation. It’s because sports is just like any other social mass consciousness — the first impression is usually the last impression.

Because of this impression, Miami is singled out. I see FSU and UF fans on the blogs delighting in these allegations, when they have, what I would consider, a slightly more dubious record. According the Orlando Sun Sentinel, during Urban Myer’s 4 years as head coach, from 2005-2009, the University of Florida football program had 21 arrests and 9 felonies. During the same time Georgia had 30 arrests, Tennessee 21, Florida Sate 13, and Miami…2! Even my UConn buddies have the nerve to thumb their nose at Miami, failing to realize that UConn just got 3 years of probation for basically the same thing (rogue booster), just on a smaller scale (a basketball team has 12 players, as opposed to a football team which has nearly 100).

The NCAA President himself said that “the death penalty” (a periodic ban from football) would be on the table. Many in the media are calling for it. There is only one precedent for the death penalty, and that is when the NCAA banned SMU for competing in football for one year in the 1980′s. The ban was so crippling, that SMU has had only one winning season in the 20 years since. SMU officials knowingly and willingly paid their players up to $61,000 in one year, while on a 3 year probation, in which they promised the NCAA to clean up their program. Miami has not been on probation in years, and is not accused of such blatant institutional disregard for conduct. But do not be surprised if Miami still gets the death penalty.

The NCAA already has its snitches in line. The NCAA is a governing sports body with no obligation to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that UM is guilty. In the last 18 months, the NCAA has investigated or sanctioned USC, Ohio State, Oregon, Auburn, Michigan, and North Carolina. Yet the dysfunction continues. Now they see Miami as one last chance to prove they are in charge. But I think the NCAA would be foolish to give Miami the death penalty, given how fragile the conference based structure of college sports is right now. If they do it, the ACC might lose Florida State and Clemson to the SEC. And that would set off a chain reaction of realignment that could lead to a super-conference structure that secedes from the NCAA.

The bottom line is that Miami, though far from innocent, is no different than the other major programs around the country. However, Miami has 2 distinct disadvantages. The first is that it is Miami. Bobby Bowden said, in Tallahassee, all you have to do is check one or 2 bars and you know where your football team is. In a city like Miami that is impossible. The second is Nevin Shapiro.  This rogue booster, unlike the anonymous rogue boosters at other schools, got caught for something much bigger than college football, and has a chip on his shoulder the size of Dade County.

Now, as the NCAA investigation of the University of Miami football and basketball programs marches on, the U has to pull itself together. The scandal is still in the allegation stage. The first thing the university should do is fire Donna Shalala. After that put together a comprehensive committee and project plan, which first outlines a defense for the university, and then outlines a post-probation or death penalty program recovery plan, using SMU, the 1995 probation, and other cases as benchmarks.

During this investigation the U family needs to wear the U proud. Go to the games. Show the rest of the haters that it is still all about the U. And if there happens to be a Hurricane fan or two in the same cell block as Shapiro? Well, let’s just say, no one in Miami would be all to upset if you accidently bumped into him in the mess hall, with a sharpened spork in your hand.

I’m currently experiencing some bad customer service, courtesy of a sauna trout named Mark at the Austin Straubel Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Mark has possession of my wife’s wallet, which she inadvertently left in an Enterprise rental car. Mark has made retrieval of the wallet a difficult process.

Mark’s not alone, though — he’s had plenty of help from the twaddle-mongers at Federal Express.

So I’ve taken to combing the search engine at my favorite consumer-advocate blog, the Consumerist, to see what kind of dirt exists with regard to Enterprise and Federal Express. A quick scan reveals the following customer-service failures:

• Enterprise’s $300 phantom windshield crack;
• Enterprise’s divine uselessness and lies;
• Enterprise bonus dentures!
• Enterprise charges customer $129 after quoting him $38;
• Enterprise tells post-op patient to drive 400 miles on crappy tire; and
• Enterprise lures unsuspecting customers into its prepaid shit-crevasse

More Enterprise failures are available here. Some FedEx awfulness can be found here.