Tear Down This Wall - 25th

This happened a few days ago, but it's still worth noting. A few days ago was the 25th anniversary of Reagan's Tear Down This Wall speech at the Brandenburg gate. Let me excerpt from something the writer of that speech wrote:

In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the Brandenburg Gate address, I spent a day in Berlin with the White House advance team, the logistical experts, Secret Service agents, and press officials who went to the site of every presidential visit to make arrangements. In the evening, I broke away from the advance team to join a dozen Berliners for dinner. Our hosts were Dieter and Ingeborg Elz, who, after Dieter completed his career at the World Bank in Washington, had retired to Berlin. Although we had never met, we had friends in common, and the Elzes had offered to put on this dinner party to give me a feel for their city. They had invited Berliners of different walks of life and political outlooks–businessmen, academics, students, homemakers.

We chatted for awhile. Then I explained that, earlier in the day, the ranking American diplomat in West Berlin had told me that over the years Berliners had made a kind of accommodation with the wall. “Is it true?” I asked. “Have you gotten used to it?”

The Elzes and their guests glanced at each other uneasily. Then one man raised an arm and pointed. “My sister lives twenty miles in that direction,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in more than two decades. Do you think I can get used to that?” Another man spoke. As he walked to work each morning, he explained, a soldier in a guard tower peered down at him through binoculars. “That soldier and I speak the same language. We share the same history. But one of us is a zookeeper and the other is an animal, and I am never certain which is which.”

Our hostess broke in. A gracious woman, Ingeborg Elz had suddenly grown angry. Her face was red. She made a fist with one hand and pounded it into the palm of the other. “If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of glasnost and perestroika,” she said, “he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall.”

A few things I've read recently about WWII and the fall of the USSR has made mention that it's worth remembering that the outcomes of both events was in doubt for a long time. It wasn't clear for a long time that the Allied forces would defeat Hitler, and for many years it was not clear that the USSR would ever go away.

Reagan was one of the few people who recognized the challenge that the Soviet Union presented for the US, and probably the only one who actually believed that if the US took them head on, they would not last. 

When you read about what it was like for the people of East and West Germany from the excerpt above, how can you not appreciate the Reagan's boldness in making that statement. He didn't write it, but he said those words against the opinions of all of his most trusted advisors who attempted many times to soften the message that he felt he needed to deliver.

And to think that Gorbachev was given the Nobel Peace Prize, as if he had any choice in the outcome of the Cold War, what a joke.

Thank heavens for President Reagan.

Marathon As a Metaphor

This past Saturday I ran the Utah Valley Marathon. That is marathon number five for all of you who are counting out there. Leading up to this race, I thought I was feeling pretty good. I did a moderate amount of training, had incorporated more strength training, and had a few good long runs in preparation up to the marathon.

***If you want to skip race specifics, then skip down to the next set of asterisks.

For some reason I kind of took the last few weeks off during the taper. Part of it was our trip up to Vancouver over Memorial day weekend. Most of it was probably me just wanting to be done with the schedule. I just had had enough with the rigors of always feeling like I had to work out and do more.

So as the last week arrived before the marathon, I, of course, wanted to partly make-up for the lost fitness, so I went back to my normal Monday work-out, although I did cut-down on the weights and reps I was doing, and the length and intensity of the run following. But even that proved too much. I kind of shredded my calves and they ended up being sore the next 5 days, and sore enough on the day of the marathon that I knew within the first ten minutes of running that race that I would not be having a PR kind of day.

The Utah Valley Marathon is a really good race. It's well-organized. The expo was small, but seemed to have some nice booths as I quickly passed through it while picking up my packet. The parking was easy for the shuttle buses up to the start. The major downside was that they were leaving at about 3:30 AM. Yikes. I knew I would have a tough time sleeping, but this made what little rest I got even shorter than what I would have liked.

I got in bed just before midnight, but laid there until at least 1 AM before I ever fell asleep, then woke up at 2:11 AM, only to fall asleep intermittently until about 3 when I just decided it was time to get up.

The temperature for the race was pretty close to perfect, about 70 degrees or so. The only thing I didn't like was the strong headwind while running through the canyon, which is about 9 miles in the middle of the race.

The course, however, was beautiful. The start is up past Wallsberg, UT, which is beyond the Deer Creek Reservoir. We started at six and ran with the sunrise peaking over the rolling hills. The course is mostly downhill, but not as steep as Deseret News, so that was really nice.

I was running pretty well in the beginning. I had a 7:30 min/mi pace for the first 8 or so miles, and then started to slow down as I started to approach Provo Canyon. My left knee started feeling pretty tender, which has never been a problem for me, so I thought it might be a result of my shifting my running because of the soreness in my calves. I think my running mechanics shifted a bit to compensate, and I feel confirmed in that thought because the knee doesn't hurt at all.

By mile 18 or so, I was feeling very fatigued, my legs just worn out completely. It didn't feel like a fueling problem. It just felt like a pure fatigue problem. My first half marathon split was 1:48, which was only 2 minutes off of my St. George pace, which was also my best marathon. The big difference being that my second half of St. George was actually four minutes faster than the first half, while this second half was 20 minutes longer than the first. Fatigue.

***Marathons always have a way of making me feel grateful. I went on at length about my experience in my first marathon in Chicago, and how grateful I just felt for Dave and Caitlin that came to support, random people who cheer along the course, and all of the wonderful volunteers who help out.

This time around, I was really feeling it for my wife, Amy. I first saw her at around mile 13, and she made the effort to drive down the canyon and meet me several more times along the way to cheer me on. I saw my sister-in-law Elisha running back along the course to support her friend and run with her to the end, and I saw Amy at the end with her brother Scott.

Marathons are hard. They're long, and they take months of preparation, and even then, sometimes you're still not entirely ready. It turns out marathons are really, really long. Dumb things can mess up a race. Last year it was just a super steep drop in elevation, and this year it was probably just working out a little too hard, too late in my preparation for the marathon. I ended up running just barely under 4 hours. I walked a lot at the end.

From the very start of the race I had a really hard time not thinking negative thoughts about how I was feeling. Part of me wanted to quit, and in these last two marathons in particular, it's taken a lot for me to not just want to give up. The novelty of getting through a race is lost on me now. I've run five of these. I'm getting to be kind of a vet with these things, so it turns out that isn't any kind of motivation for me to do these anymore.

The thing that has gotten me through these last couple of races, however, is just the thought that I know my wife wants to see me finish. I know that she will always support me, even 6 months pregnant, by herself, and at early hours on a Saturday morning, to drive along canyon and yell for me encourage me to go on. I can hear the emotion in her voice every time she yells for me, and that becomes enough fuel for me to finish even when it feels impossible to pick-up my leaden thighs and trudge another step towards the finish line.

And that's the difference now. I'm married to the sweetest person I know, and she will always cheer me on and want me to succeed, even if I no longer want to do it for myself, because the luster of just finishing for my own purposes is no longer as vibrant, but if it's her expectation that I make it, well, then I guess that's just what I'll do. Sometimes that means finishing another mile when you've already run 25.2 of them.

I went into this race thinking that I would take a long break from marathon running, but not even a day later, I started thinking about other races that I would like to run. I'll probably take this next year off from doing another marathon, but I know I'll be back. Not even three days later and I think I can run again already. And I'm actually even excited about it. We'll see.

Ray Bradbury

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

-from Dandelion Wine

You may have heard, but author Ray Bradbury passed away yesterday at the age of 91. Back as an undergrad, Dave took a class on literature and film and some of the things that they studied about Farenheit 451 sparked my interest in Bradbury's work. I read it and just loved it. Very prophetic. Some time later I ended up reading Something Wicked This Way Comes and I think I may even like that one most of all. Amy loved Dandelion Wine when she read it as a youth, and I read it a few summers ago.

He really has a way of capturing human experience, and of dressing it up with so much eloquence. I think what I liked so much about Something Wicked was all the discussion it has about good and evil, and the flawed characters that rise above themselves to combat the evil.

Anyway, it's worth everyone's time to become acquainted with his work.

Orson Scott Card had this to say about him:

Now, though, I realized that it wasn’t just on stage that the flow and music of language counted. Bradbury used it in his fiction; he used it all the time.

You never had to stumble or pause when reading Bradbury. It wasn’t just the smoothness of his language — it was the way he used repetition, fragmentation, breathless run-on sentences to sweep you through the tale.
His language made even the quotidian narrative sections emotional, so when the story reached for deeper feelings, they were within easy reach.

And now let me give you some examples of his craft:

• "It won't work," Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. "No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen."

• “A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.”

• “Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes in the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and once again shared experience.”

• "We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

• "I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly." (Bradbury in Farenheit 451 talking about the value of reading.)

 And then this is from Something Wicked This Way Comes when Will asks his father about the evil carnival:

“Dad, will they ever come back?"

"No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road."

"Oh, no," said Will.

"Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun."

They moved around the carousel slowly.

"What will they look like? How will we know them?"

"Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here."

Both boys looked around swiftly.

But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.

Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad.

Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole.

Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will.

Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders.

The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night.

Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey.

Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy.

Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway. Lord.

Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes.

How easy, thought Will.

Just this once, thought Jim.

But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally...

The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment.

...finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks...

proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows....

Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here.”

Love it. 

So Awesome

Have you seen this already? It's probably the coolest, sweetest thing I've seen in a long time. And I don't even feel like it's been that long since I've seen some great things too.

I love that camera view showing her. Getting married is just the happiest thing in the world. Some friends of ours just recently got engaged and we're just so excited for them, and of course, it makes me think about my own wedding day and how wonderful that was. I'm so glad I married one of the happiest people I've ever met. It just makes every day so much brighter.

Camera Work

So I never saw Hugo, but I guess this is a shot of the opening scene. What's really cool about this video is that it's shot with a GoPro on top of the steadicam as it goes through these different scenes, and you really get a good feel for just how much work it is to have everything so perfectly choreographed and synced so that everything looks so smooth and perfect. I especially liked the part where it circles around the girl and they actually pull the dresser out and have a moveable wall in place so that it can circle around her as she sits in the corner. Very cool stuff. It's seeing stuff like this and then reading about The Artist and all the details involved that really helps me to appreciate how artistic and deliberate directors must be in their films. Just thought this was kind of cool.

And Done

Yesterday I finished my last long (and worst) long run for the marathon training season. I guess worst, only in the sense that I hate doing it. I'm thinking that this will be a good place to take a break for awhile with marathons. It really takes up so much time and requires so much planning, but I think I'd like to continue doing half-marathons and other kinds of races. I was realizing this yesterday as I took about 3 hours and 20 minutes to do the run itself, laid in pain for a good chunk of time, and then just had to lie down and rest for a few hours, and once all that time had passed, it was just after 3pm. It basically took up my whole day to go through that ordeal. Time to move on to something else, no?

The highlight of my run was around mile 9 when I was at the mouth of the canyon and I saw this other lady running towards me, and she got this big grin on her face, put up her hand, and we high-fived. That was my first time high-fiving a stranger on a run, although that's not uncommon in marathons. Totally made my day though. People will almost always reciprocate your behavior, you just have to be okay with leading out, and possibly getting rejected. I just loved that though.

Running in Provo Canyon is just one of my favorite things in the whole world, especially at this time of year. I guess Fall is pretty great too, but right now everything is so lush and green. It's breathtaking.

Everything is feeling good though. I have some slight soreness in my left hip flexor, but the knee pain I was experiencing at the start of all this training is only just barely recognizable. Joints are in good shape. Everything is good.

I'm ready to go. June 9th, here I come.

Disco Dayz

I have had a number of phases with music. I don't know where it came from because nobody in my family is really an audiophile, but I've just always gotten into different kinds of bands, music, etc.

My junior year of high school Dave and I started hanging out with these two girls and somehow I just got sucked into Disco Saturday nights, then that evolved into my picking up various disco classics.Yvonne Elliman is still at the top of my list for all things disco, but today Donna Summer passed away after her fight with cancer. The cancer won.

She was pretty great in her heyday.




Anyway, that got me thinking of SYTYCD and then I got all kinds of excited about it. You what else? I actually ran into Orem native Ryan Dilello at the gym a few weeks ago. Small world.

Bits and Pieces

I've been reading lately, a lot. I guess I have a lot of time on my hands, and I wish I could be cranking away at my thesis, but unfortunately, the feedback and next steps of the whole process don't seem to coincide with my calendar as well as I'd like. Anyway, all of this is a preface to my wanting to post several items that I think are incredibly interesting.

The Gay Divorcees:  This was actually an article that I wanted to post on Facebook because I know there are several people who would appreciate it, but I'd like to refrain from using that network as a place to sound off on my views that I know don't sit well with many friends of mine. That's what this blog is for. There are certain things, innocuous ones, that are easy to post because everyone can appreciate them, and then there are others that make my teeth grind. I've learned more and more that I don't want to inflict my worldviews on others where they're not seeking it out, but you have no such luxury. You found your way here and, thus, are subject to my musings. With that, here's an excerpt from this one:

Announcing the results of his long-term “evolution” on the subject last week, President Obama revived the debate over gay marriage. In the widespread discussion, however, there is one question that’s rarely asked: How interested are gay couples in getting married?

Heretofore at least, the answer seems to be “not really.” Since 1997, when Hawaii became the first state in the union to allow reciprocal-beneficiary registration for same-sex couples, 19 states and the District of Columbia have granted some form of legal recognition to the relationships of same-sex couples. These variants include marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships, and reciprocal-beneficiary relationships; and the most recent U.S. Census data reveal that, in the last 15 years, only 150,000 same-sex couples have elected to take advantage of them — equivalent to around one in five of the self-identified same-sex couples in the United States. This number does not appear to be low because of the fact that only a few states have allowed full “marriage”; indeed, in the first four years when gay marriage was an option in trailblazing Massachusetts, there were an average of only about 3,000 per year, and that number included many who came from out of state.

...Controlling for the ratio of homosexuals to heterosexuals does little to explain the enthusiasm gap. For rates to be similar, we would have to pretend that only 0.5 percent of the population of Sweden, 0.7 percent of the population of Norway, and less than 2 percent of the population of Holland is gay. In fact, the numbers tend closer to an average of 4 percent, which suggests that heterosexual couples are up to eight times more interested in registering their relationships than homosexual couples. It is, of course, possible that the estimated number of homosexuals is wrong, but, if anything, gay-rights groups tend to argue that the projected numbers are too low, and statistics show that the numbers of self-identified gay citizens are going up in every Western country.

...In Norway, male same-sex marriages are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual marriages, and female same-sex marriages are an astonishing 167 percent more likely to be dissolved. In Sweden, the divorce risk for male-male partnerships is 50 percent higher than for heterosexual marriages, and the divorce risk for female partnerships is nearly double that for men. This should not be surprising: In the United States, women request approximately two-thirds of divorces in all forms of relationships — and have done so since the start of the 19th century — so it reasonably follows that relationships in which both partners are women are more likely to include someone who wishes to exit.

Interesting, right? I could have guessed that women are more likely to ask for divorces, but I would have assumed that would have been because men tend toward abuse or violence more, but in cases where it's two women in a marriage, divorce actually increases, so that's not the cause at all. Now that I think about, I do know that women are just as abusive as men, just not in the same ways.

And another woe is California article:

California’s present condition is the direct result of welfare-state governance in its full maturity. Intransigent public-employee unions use the collective-bargaining process to maintain their inflated compensation packages, while poorly administered programs for the elderly and indigent have produced a permanent dependent class with attendant expenses that are difficult or impossible to reduce: When Governor Jerry Brown attempted to impose co-pays on some recipients of medical benefits, the Obama administration blocked him. Governor Brown’s attempts to cut spending on health care by lowering some physicians’ reimbursements and subsidies for low-income Californians were blocked by the federal courts. Governor Brown has demonstrated very little that might be called fiscal responsibility, but such attempts as he has made at spending discipline have been blocked by federal authorities when they have not been blocked by Democrats in the state legislature. Those who suspect that Obamacare may turn out to be more expensive and less effective at controlling costs than its admirers have claimed should take a good long look at California to appreciate the difficulty of rationalizing out-of-control health-care spending in a single state. (And multiply by 50.)

California’s finances will not be meaningfully reformed until its public sector is reduced and disempowered, and its health-care spending is made sensible. There are significant legal roadblocks to achieving either end, which is why California’s debt-service costs are pulling away from those of the rest of the United States and heading in a distinctly Spanish direction.

Governor Brown has, in the conventional Democratic fashion, proposed raising taxes on certain high-income Californians to try to close that $16 billion deficit. California, like the nation at large, already relies disproportionately on the high-income for its tax revenue, a situation that produces inherent instability: When less than a tenth of taxpayers provide the great majority of tax income, receipts are likely to be volatile in the best of circumstances. Add to that the fact that the very wealthy — especially Silicon Valley’s cosmopolitan entrepreneurial class — have options about when, how, and where to get paid. California expects to raise $1.5 billion in taxes from a single firm, Facebook, as employees and investors realize capital gains from the company’s initial public offering of stock. But such expectations are far from assured: The Brazilian-born Eduardo Saverin, Facebook’s cofounder, has renounced his U.S. citizenship and taken up residence in Singapore, probably not for the city-state’s rich cultural milieu but because it does not tax capital gains. Others will not go so far as to cross the Pacific; for many, getting out of California will be sufficient. As California has just demonstrated, raising tax rates is not the same thing as raising tax revenue. Capital is fungible, and people are mobile.

The indispensable Thomas Sowell has an article today on The Censored Race War:

When two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks — beaten so badly that they had to take a week off from work — that might sound like news that should have been reported, at least by their own newspaper. But it wasn’t.

The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel was the first major television program to report this incident. Yet this story is not just a Norfolk story, either in what happened or in how the media and the authorities have tried to sweep it under the rug.

Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls, or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles, and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug.

In Milwaukee, for example, an attack on whites at a public park a few years ago left many of the victims battered to the ground and bloody. But when the police arrived on the scene, it became clear that the authorities wanted to keep this quiet.

One 22-year-old woman, who had been robbed of her cell phone and debit card, and had blood streaming down her face, said, “About 20 of us stayed to give statements and make sure everyone was accounted for. The police wouldn’t listen to us, they wouldn’t take our names or statements. They told us to leave. It was completely infuriating.”

...A wave of such attacks in Chicago were reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal-justice system.

What the authorities and the media seem determined to suppress is that the hoodlum elements in many ghettoes launch coordinated attacks on whites in public places. If there is anything worse than a one-sided race war, it is a two-sided race war, especially when one of the races outnumbers the other several times over.

Trying to keep the lid on is understandable. But a lot of pressure can build up under that lid. If and when that pressure leads to an explosion of white backlash, things could be a lot worse than if the truth had come out earlier, and steps taken by both black and white leaders to deal with the hoodlums and with those who inflame them.

These latter would include not only race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson but also lesser-known people in the media, in educational institutions, and elsewhere who hype grievances and make all the problems of blacks the fault of whites. Some of these people may think that they are doing blacks a favor. But it is no favor to anyone who lags behind to turn their energies from the task of improving and advancing themselves to the task of lashing out at others.

These others extend beyond whites. Asian-American schoolchildren in New York and Philadelphia have for years been beaten up by their black classmates. But people in the mainstream media who go ballistic if some kid says something unkind on the Internet about a homosexual classmate nevertheless hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil when Asian-American youngsters are victims of violence.

All of it very interesting, and important.

Birch Hollow

This last weekend we went down with some friends to Zion and did Birch Hollow Canyon. The canyon was perfect for this group since several of our people had never been canyoneering before, but the canyon is still interesting enough that anyone can enjoy it. It includes about 10 rappels, ranging from 20-120 feet, and it's a dry canyon, so just one less piece of equipment to worry about, but the best part is that it's actually just outside of Zion so no permit is necessary for this one, so you can go whenever you like.

Some people from our group were worried about my little wifey and her 22 week pregnant belly, but I knew she'd do great. She just loves this stuff too much to let anything like being a little pregnant get in her way. And she actually did just as well or better than any of the other girls with all of the hiking and rappels and what not. I'm just proud of my little lady, and everyone in the group. We met some new people and made some new friends, and everyone did really great with the rappels even though several had never been down anything that big before. The scariest moment of the day actually was on the first rappel, which was also the longest, because the cliff face is made up of a lot of loose rock. Some pretty big chunks ended up falling down and caused some havoc for those below, but thankfully no one really got hurt.

I didn't think I really got enough interesting footage to do a video, but it actually worked out okay, so I whipped this up the last couple nights and now you can see our little adventure:

My Name Is MCA, I've Got a License to Kill

I know I'm a little late to this story, but I still wanted to say something about it.

Like a lot of other guys who grew up in the 80s and 90s, the Beastie Boys provided the soundtrack to much of my formative years. My earliest recollection of any Beastie Boy song is Fight For Your Right as it played during a scene in the Bobcat Goldthwait movie Hot to Trot, and the horse's party, Don, gets out of control and all of the animals are tearing the apartment apart. I remember my brother had the CD single of So Whatcha Want and listening to that pretty intensely in the early 90s. I've still got both of the CDs for Licensed to Ill and Ill Communication. Intergalactic was a huge hit the summer after my senior year in high school. They were never my favorite band, but I really do love a lot of their music. Great music videos. Catchy rhymes and good beats. I was saddened to hear of Adam "MCA" Yauch's passing last week.

One of my favorites:

Euro Crisis: Do I Have to Care?

On my long run last week I ended up listening to a This American Life episode about the European financial crisis, titled The Continental Breakdown. They started off the episode asking the question regarding the crisis, "do I have to care about this?" And what follows is a really great breakdown and analysis of all the things that have been going wrong in Europe lately, and what binds everything together.

The crisis is basically this: For many years, people in Europe have been clamoring for a United State of Europe type venture that would bring together all the countries of Europe. Victor Hugo pleaded for this many years ago, and apparently this is something that many people in Europe have been wanting for a long time. There are a number of things that keep Europeans separate from each other, but there was a major development in the last 10 years that made it so that they did become united in a very significant way - the Euro.

And herein lies the problem with the Euro. Although all of the countries now share that common currency, the economies of Europe push and pull on the value of the Euro while their financial markets remain in flux as well. It's really interesting.

But...as for the main question of this post, do I have to care? The answer, obviously, is yes, because it whatever instability is experienced across the Atlantic is also going to be felt here. That's one of the things that I find most interesting about all of these developments. Because Greece is floundering, major financial players move their money away from the country, and without that liquidity, the Greeks can't maintain their system, and if they can't, then that puts into question other countries in Europe, including Spain, Portugal, and even Italy.

Now there's a question if the Euro is sustainable, and will other major players follow suit with other countries and default on their debts, or will they reign in spending. Some writers here contend that the European governments that have slashed spending have not seen any improvement in their financial lots, but there are major questions about whether that is true or not, mainly if they have actually cut their spending.

In any case, I bring all of this up because France just elected a socialist as their newest President, and it seems that he will only increase government spending. So whatever unrest France has seen in the last few years, will probably be dwarfed by what will come in the next few.

Anyway, others, smarter than myself, have written on this subject. At Powerline in this post, they had this to say:

In France and Greece, voters have rejected “austerity”–the idea that European governments should live within their means. In Italy, too, anti-austerity candidates are currently leading in the polls. French Socialist François Hollande vows to continue running huge deficits so that he can hire more public sector workers; in a burst of stupidity, he announced that “My real enemy is the world of Finance.” I suppose there could be a surer way to impoverish your country than to declare war on the flow of capital, but I can’t think of one offhand.

What does it all mean? Two things, in my opinion. First, Southern European voters are determined to go over the waterfall in a canoe as long as there are politicians who will promise to keep paddling. One might think it obvious that no country can live beyond its means forever by borrowing money which it can’t possibly pay back. But voters in countries like Greece and France apparently think: it has worked so far, why not keep it up?

Realistically, it will work until creditors–Germany, mostly–decide to pull the plug. Then there will be default, some form of bankruptcy, some degree of chaos. That evidently is what many European voters want. In one sense, you can’t blame them: why not live on someone else’s money as long as you can?

But something more profound is going on, too. As I have written here more than once, the fundamental question raised by the current economic crisis is whether Europe is a country. If Europe is a country, it is not so unreasonable for profligate Southern Europeans to expect their more responsible fellow-citizens in Germany, and to a lesser extent Great Britain, to bail them out. But the fact is that Europe is not a country, despite the imaginings of its political class. Germans and Englishmen will not forever support Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, and now perhaps Frenchmen. At some point–and I think that point is drawing very near–they will go their own way, and the European Union, most probably, will collapse.

And the editors at NRO had this to say in their piece about the French election:

François Hollande has become the newly elected president of France more by luck than by any quality he might possess. Almost anonymous, he has no ministerial experience. His platform nonetheless raised expectations mightily that he would be able to find employment and entitlements where Nicolas Sarkozy had failed to do so. Voters could conclude that there are jobs for all and everyone richer than them will pay more taxes. He likes to promise that France is not doomed to austerity, because he still believes that socialism is the magic formula for growth, and can simply be ordered up.

...

Poor and insincere as Sarkozy’s campaign was, in reality the Euro-crisis left him without a chance. No present head of government can hope to win an election in a Europe irrevocably tied to the single currency and the political structure erected in Brussels to enforce it. In the gathering climate of economic and political disaster, Sarkozy is the eleventh in a succession of office-holders in one nation after another to go down in electoral defeat.

Germany sets the terms for Europe, and François Hollande now has to discover whether Chancellor Angela Merkel, the architect of austerity, is willing to permit a forlorn attempt at socialist-induced growth. She had let it be known that she wanted the like-minded Sarkozy to win. But then she herself has already lost regional elections, and until and unless something changes with Brussels and the euro, she too is likely to join the lengthening list of rejected European office-holders.

And then in this piece found in the UK's The Spectator, the author writes about the one country who did actually manage to slash spending and what resulted of that:

When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

All this has taken Borg from curiosity to celebrity. The Financial Times recently declared him the most effective finance minister in Europe. When we meet in his Stockholm office on a Friday afternoon (he and his aide seem to be the only two left in the building) he says he is just carrying on 20 years of reform. ‘Sweden was a textbook case of European economic sclerosis. Very high taxes and huge regulatory burden.’ An economic crisis in the early 1990s forced Sweden on the road to balanced budgets, and Borg was determined the 2007 crash would not stop him cutting the size of government.

‘Everybody was told “stimulus, stimulus, stimulus”,’ he says — referring to the EU, IMF and the alphabet soup of agencies urging a global, debt-fuelled spending splurge. Borg, an economist, couldn’t work out how this would help. ‘It was surprising that Europe, given what we experienced in the 1970s and 80s with structural unemployment, believed that short-term Keynesianism could solve the problem.’ Non-economists, he says, ‘might have a tendency to fall for those kinds of messages’.
He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. The last bit was the most unpopular, but for Borg, economic recovery starts with entrepreneurs. If cutting taxes for the rich encouraged risk-taking, then it had to be done. ‘In most cases, the company would not have been created without the owner,’ he says. ‘There would be no Ikea without [Ingvar] Kamprad. We would not have Tetra-Pak without [Ruben] Rausing. They are probably the foremost entrepreneurs we have had in the last few decades, and both moved out of Sweden.’

But they were not rich, I say, when they were starting out. ‘No, but they were becoming rich. If you have a high wealth tax and an inheritance tax, people emigrate because it becomes too costly to own a company. Ownership is a production factor. Entrepreneurs are a production factor. Yes, these people are rich and you can obviously argue that we want to encourage social cohesion. But it is also problematic if you drive out entrepreneurs from your country, because they are the source of job creation.’

It's a lot of reading, but it's worthwhile. 

Love Me Some Mason Jennings

Mike and I had a date night last Saturday to go see Mason Jennings play at The State Room. I had never even noticed the place before even though I had been to Decades right across the street from it several times. Heck, I had never even heard of the place, but it was great.

The venue was different than what I'm used to. Church pews lined the back half of the event room, and metal chairs lined the front. His concerts are already pretty chill, but having everyone seated and just watching made it feel even more relaxed.

The thing I'm always impressed with is how all these people can show up and pay to watch one person perform for an entire evening. Sometimes I feel like I have a hard time just keeping one person engaged, let alone a big room full of complete strangers, but that's what Mason did on Saturday night. He played an all-acoustic set with just his guitar, harmonic, and occasional song on the keyboard.

I just love the guy. I love his song writing. They're thoughtful and artistic. Somehow they strike me as being more sophisticated than someone repeating "we found love in a hopeless place" over and over. Some of my favorite lines is from Sorry Signs On Cash Machines when he sings:

Oh, my heart is a thoroughbred
I can't sleep in my bed
Everything is burning up inside me
I need something I can feel
Cigarettes and a driving wheel and
Oh, my god, when you cross your legs beside me
I know true love don't love like anybody else
I know your heart don't beat like anybody else

I was afraid he would play a lot of stuff from his newer albums, but he played a great mix of old and new, and I just loved one song that he debuted that night.

Man, I just love live music. It took me a long time to come around, but I really do love me some Mason Jennings too.

This and That

A lot of times I end up saving articles in my inbox, or my blog reader, or in other places, for the purposes of posting them on here later, or sending them to someone, or what have you. I probably only end up posting/sending/whatever-ing the stuff I save like a quarter of the time, and then eventually I delete it wherever it's stored because it's so long after the fact. Today, I'm just going to link/excerpt everything that came in the last few days that is currently in my online digital storage. So here goes...

How to buy a new car:



Here are the basics if you don't want to watch the video:

So let me lay out how to buy a car. It’s very easy. Decide exactly what car you want to buy, make, color if it matters to you, options and so forth. Then do not go to a dealership. Let your fingers do the walking. Telephone all of the dealers who sell the vehicle you’re interested in who are, say, within a 50 mile radius, a 25 mile radius, 75, however far you’re willing to go.

To each of them make the same statement: “Hi, my name is so and so. I plan to buy such and such a car today at 5pm. I’m going to buy it from the dealer who gives me the best price. What is your best price?” 

The economists over at Cafe Hayek had this to say about central planning:

My eye recently caught on t.v., in passing, an old film clip of someone trying to fly like a bird.  This would-be aviator had wing-like things strapped to his arms.  Of course, no amount of flapping would get this human being to take flight like the birds he sought to imitate.  One important reason, of course, is that we humans – as smart and clever as we are – can observe only a tiny fraction of the details of what enables birds to fly.  We can observe a handful of large details (“bird flaps limbs that extend kinda, sorta from bird’s shoulder”; “bird’s flapping limbs are made of lightweight things that we call ‘feathers’,” and so on).  But the amount of detail that we don’t – can’t – observe with the naked eye (even with a naked eye as careful as that of Leonardo) is overwhelming.  The bird’s musculature; cardiovascular system; weight and position and minuscule maneuverings of its tail – these and countless other relevant details aren’t observed.

The human being observes a bird in flight and then analogizes his – the human’s – limbs and muscle movements to what he supposes, from his observations, are those of the bird.  But the human is too easily misled into thinking that he can easily-enough mimic the bird’s body and movements and, thereby, achieve flight.

Obviously, no human can do so.  Such attempts as there have been by man to strap on wings, flap, and fly invariably failed – sometimes catastrophically for the pretend Icaruses.

….

Attempts to centrally plan economies are very much like attempts to fly by dressing like and flapping like a bird: utterly futile because the most that can be observed of any successful economy are a handful of large details (“assembly lines,” “retail outlets”…..).  The vast majority (99.99999999999…9 percent) of the details that must work reasonably well aren’t observed by the would-be central planner.  What Hayek called “knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place” – knowledge of details spread today across the globe and across billions of different human minds – is not incidental to the successful operation of a modern economy.  Utilizing that knowledge – vast, deep, changing, incredibly fine-grained detailed knowledge – is the very key to a successful market economy.

Central planning is as futile as trying to strap on wings and fly like a bird – and potentially as calamitous.

Of course, few people today advocate full-scale central planning of economies.  But smaller-scale interventions suffer the same problems as do attempts at central planning: inevitably inadequate knowledge of how to intervene.  Asserting, for example, that the key to economic recovery is to “increase aggregate demand” is a fiction borne from observing a true, but only large and inadequate, fact about successful economies: most producers, at any given time, are able to sell most of what they plan to sell.  But to leap from this observation to the conclusion that “therefore, government can stimulate economic recovery by increasing aggregate demand” is akin to a human being costumed-up as a bird and leaping off of a mountaintop, flapping away, hoping, hoping, hoping to fly.

And then I thought this post was pretty interesting. It's called the Curley Effect, which is when a politician increases his political power by driving away opponents through some kind of radical or distortionary policies. One example is Detroit. Guess the other example...right...California....sigh...

In their paper, Glaeser and Shleifer write:

We call this strategy--increasing the relative size of one's political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies--the Curley effect. But it is hardly unique to Curley. Other American mayors, but also politicians around the world, pursued policies that encouraged emigration of their political enemies, raising poverty but gaining political advantage. In his 24 years as mayor, Detroit's Coleman Young drove white residents and businesses out of the city. "Under Young, Detroit has become not merely an American city that happens to have a black majority, but a black metropolis, the first major Third World city in the United States. The trappings are all there--showcase projects, black-fisted symbols, an external enemy, and the cult of personality" (Chafets 1990, p. 177). Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe abused the white farmers after his country's independence, openly encouraging their emigration even at a huge cost to the economy.

I think something similar is happening in California. California has become a heavily Democratic state. The majority Democrats in the legislature and the Democratic governor are pursuing highly wasteful projects: a "high-speed" rail that probably won't be high-speed but will surely be high-cost, and higher marginal income tax rates (already among the highest in the United States) on the highest-income people, to name two. They don't seem to be restrained by the worry that many of the most-productive people will leave and are leaving the state. You can attribute this simply to ideology, and I'm sure that's an element. But I also think one of the Democrats' goals is to reduce the population of potential anti-Democrat voters so that their majority is assured.

Will that hurt many of the people who vote for them? Sure. But we need to distinguish between the fortunes of those who vote Democrat and the fortunes of the Democratic politicians. The California state government pays legislators pretty well in pay and perks when you consider the opportunity costs of many of them. And the state government is larded with high-paying sinecures for those few who ever lose an election or get redistricted out.

Distance

Someone I know used to make a connection between the growing size of a couple's bed (full-queen-king-California King) was a parallel to how couple's seem to be growing emotionally distant from one another as well.

I was reading the other day about how the average size of an American's home has steadily increased over the past century. In 1950 the average size of a new single family home was just under 1000 sq ft, and now it is just over 2400 sq ft.

While I was running earlier this week I was thinking about distance, broadly, probably because I think a lot about how much I'd just like to be done running whatever length it is that I happen to be running that day. I just think it's kind of interesting how our homes are bigger than they have ever been, but we're also more densely packed than we've ever been in terms of houses per squared units.

It's just interesting to think how certain distances have been greater shortened (distance between houses), while others have grown (distances within households, physically, and even in one's own bed between partners).

Anyway, all of this leads me to still another article that talks about how Facebook is potentially making us more lonely. We are more connected digitally, and have more access through social media like Facebook and Twitter and blogs and such, but in many ways we are more distant than ever, and it's causing many people to feel very isolated. Kind of similar to how someone can feel completely isolated when at a party that is wall-to-wall with people.

The article leads with this story:

Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate and B-movie star, best known for her role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, would have been 83 last August, but nobody knows exactly how old she was when she died. According to the Los Angeles coroner’s report, she lay dead for the better part of a year before a neighbor and fellow actress, a woman named Susan Savage, noticed cobwebs and yellowing letters in her mailbox, reached through a broken window to unlock the door, and pushed her way through the piles of junk mail and mounds of clothing that barricaded the house. Upstairs, she found Vickers’s body, mummified, near a heater that was still running. Her computer was on too, its glow permeating the empty space. 

The article is incredibly interesting and very well written, written by a novelist actually:

Facebook arrived in the middle of a dramatic increase in the quantity and intensity of human loneliness, a rise that initially made the site’s promise of greater connection seem deeply attractive. Americans are more solitary than ever before. In 1950, less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person. By 2010, nearly 27 percent of households had just one person. Solitary living does not guarantee a life of unhappiness, of course. In his recent book about the trend toward living alone, Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at NYU, writes: “Reams of published research show that it’s the quality, not the quantity of social interaction, that best predicts loneliness.” True. But before we begin the fantasies of happily eccentric singledom, of divorcées dropping by their knitting circles after work for glasses of Drew Barrymore pinot grigio, or recent college graduates with perfectly articulated, Steampunk-themed, 300-square-foot apartments organizing croquet matches with their book clubs, we should recognize that it is not just isolation that is rising sharply. It’s loneliness, too. And loneliness makes us miserable.

We know intuitively that loneliness and being alone are not the same thing. Solitude can be lovely. Crowded parties can be agony. We also know, thanks to a growing body of research on the topic, that loneliness is not a matter of external conditions; it is a psychological state. A 2005 analysis of data from a longitudinal study of Dutch twins showed that the tendency toward loneliness has roughly the same genetic component as other psychological problems such as neuroticism or anxiety. 

But I thought this excerpt mentions an especially interesting point:

But it is clear that social interaction matters. Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years. In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.

In the face of this social disintegration, we have essentially hired an army of replacement confidants, an entire class of professional carers. As Ronald Dworkin pointed out in a 2010 paper for the Hoover Institution, in the late ’40s, the United States was home to 2,500 clinical psychologists, 30,000 social workers, and fewer than 500 marriage and family therapists. As of 2010, the country had 77,000 clinical psychologists, 192,000 clinical social workers, 400,000 nonclinical social workers, 50,000 marriage and family therapists, 105,000 mental-health counselors, 220,000 substance-abuse counselors, 17,000 nurse psychotherapists, and 30,000 life coaches. The majority of patients in therapy do not warrant a psychiatric diagnosis. This raft of psychic servants is helping us through what used to be called regular problems. We have outsourced the work of everyday caring.

We need professional carers more and more, because the threat of societal breakdown, once principally a matter of nostalgic lament, has morphed into an issue of public health. Being lonely is extremely bad for your health. If you’re lonely, you’re more likely to be put in a geriatric home at an earlier age than a similar person who isn’t lonely. You’re less likely to exercise. You’re more likely to be obese. You’re less likely to survive a serious operation and more likely to have hormonal imbalances. You are at greater risk of inflammation. Your memory may be worse. You are more likely to be depressed, to sleep badly, and to suffer dementia and general cognitive decline. Loneliness may not have killed Yvette Vickers, but it has been linked to a greater probability of having the kind of heart condition that did kill her.

And yet, despite its deleterious effect on health, loneliness is one of the first things ordinary Americans spend their money achieving. With money, you flee the cramped city to a house in the suburbs or, if you can afford it, a McMansion in the exurbs, inevitably spending more time in your car. Loneliness is at the American core, a by-product of a long-standing national appetite for independence: The Pilgrims who left Europe willingly abandoned the bonds and strictures of a society that could not accept their right to be different. They did not seek out loneliness, but they accepted it as the price of their autonomy. The cowboys who set off to explore a seemingly endless frontier likewise traded away personal ties in favor of pride and self-respect. The ultimate American icon is the astronaut: Who is more heroic, or more alone? The price of self-determination and self-reliance has often been loneliness. But Americans have always been willing to pay that price. 

The emphasis in that is my own.

One thing that I worry about with a child on the horizon is how I can encourage my kid(s) to engage socially, to make sure that they are functional adults, able to function normally and to be emotionally and socially intelligent. I think a lot of is simply trial and error. It's constant opportunities for interaction with others, but in a way where the child feels confident enough to venture and explore on his or her own.

I don't know. It's a lot to think about.

The Verdict Is In....

This was appointment was probably the coolest part about the whole pregnancy so far. When Amy missed her period and she took the test and we found out she was pregnant, that was pretty cool, but still not real. The stick has a + or - and that's it. Then you see the doctor and he confirms it. You hear the heartbeat, but it's still foreign sounding.

For us, pregnancy has had that much of an effect. Amy has luckily avoided most of the normal and not so awesome signs of pregnancy - morning sickness, and the like.

But today felt very different. We went to the ultrasound room, the doctor rubbed the jelly on her belly, and just about everything we saw on the screen was immediately obvious. You could see the body, the hands and feet, legs, heartbeat, even brain formation. You could see the chambers of the heart, and the one thing my neurophysiology imparted unto me from last year was some knowledge of brain anatomy, so I was able to recognize ventricles and the cerebellum and other various parts from CT scans that I studied last year.

The doctor measured the head, the femur, and other parts, and everything is looking great. The baby is measuring to within two days of Amy's due date, so everything is right on track. Once he got down into the genital area the doctor was taking a noticeably long time determining parts down there. It was pretty apparent to Amy and I that the genitalia was an inny and not an outty, from not only the pictures, but how the doctor was looking for sure signs of what sex of child we were looking at.

It's a girl. We couldn't be happier. The first thing I thought was that we could have our own Lisa Johnson leading our family of children like in Amy's family, or have our own Katie that would be Amy's little clone, like she is to Lisa. It's awesome. It's fun just to know what our kid is going to be, and that everything is going so well.

It's also great because this means that the arranged marriage between ours and Dave and Caitlin's family is a "go" and it won't have to be delayed at all.

Romney Rising

This piece here by Jim Geraghty over at NRO details how the Romney camp has been so quick to respond to the distractions that the President's campaign has been trying to drum up. This is in reference to the charge about how the Romney's transported their dog on top of the car back in 1983, and then also all the uproar over how Ann Romney supposedly never worked a day in her life.

Romney has been very, very impressive the last several weeks. And I'm really pleased with how the GOP has been lining up behind him recently as well. This week he picked up Rick Perry's endorsement, and Santorum has been said to be following suit soon as well. In spite of however much vitriol was spewed from these other candidates, they realize that there is a lot at stake with this Presidential election and they have been getting on board with what needs to happen if there will be any hope of unseating the incumbent.

That Geraghty piece is interesting because it goes into some of the tactics employed by the McCain campaign back in 2008 and how they utterly refused to engage in any of the back and forth with the Obama campaign.

2008 was just a bad year. There was a very unpopular president, with an economy on the decline, and an up-and-comer, and even if the perfect candidate had been nominated, I don't think it would have amounted to much against the tide that had been formed at that time. This year, however, the tide seems to be ebbing and I think this a great opportunity to get someone who can be really good as the next President.

I know that I have been really hesitant about Romney, but I think he has just been shining lately. His wife is a star, and he seems so much more polished and capable now. 2008 sharpened him, but so has the primary season. I'm excited about him and think he has a real chance at winning this thing.

Anyway, here's another post about Romney, following his sweep this past Tuesday.  This excerpt comes from his speech:

We launched this campaign not far from here on a beautiful June day. It has been long and extraordinarily rewarding.

Americans have always been eternal optimists. But over the last three and a half years, we have seen hopes and dreams diminished by false promises and weak leadership. Everywhere I go, Americans are tired of being tired, and many of those who are fortunate enough to have a job are working harder for less.

For every single mom who feels heartbroken when she has to explain to her kids that she needs to take a second job … for every grandparent who can’t afford the gas to visit his or her grandchildren … for the mom and dad who never thought they’d be on food stamps … for the small business owner desperately cutting back just to keep the doors open one more month – to all of the thousands of good and decent Americans I’ve met who want nothing more than a better chance, a fighting chance, to all of you, I have a simple message: Hold on a little longer. A better America begins tonight.
…
Four years ago Barack Obama dazzled us in front of Greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change. But after we came down to earth, after the celebration and parades, what do we have to show for three and a half years of President Obama?

Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one? Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Do you pay less at the pump?

If the answer were “yes” to those questions, then President Obama would be running for re-election based on his achievements–and rightly so. But because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions. That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time. But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy…and we’re not stupid.

And then an excerpt from the post I linked to:

As I watch Mitt Romney, this thought also occurs to me: Romney is sometimes criticized as “inauthentic,” but this is radically incorrect. As a politician, he has had to tack with the winds from time to time, like anyone else. But as a person, Romney is hugely authentic. His persona is no mystery: he is a Dad. We have all known men like Mitt Romney. We may think they are square and out of date; we may roll our eyes if they are occasionally goofy. But when times are tough, in moments of crisis, everyone knows where to turn: we look to leaders of character, competence and decency, like Mitt Romney. I am increasingly confident that in November, Americans will see Mitt Romney as just what we need after four years of Barack Obama’s incompetence.

Growing Up

On the radio this afternoon I was listening to some talk radio, and one host, the older one, was giving the younger one a hard time about turning 30. He also said, "you turn 30, turn around once, and then all of a sudden you're double that age." And I'm sure most people reading this would probably agree.

On my birthday a week ago, my friend texted wishing me a happy day, and said something like, shouldn't we still be 18? I can't believe that I first met her when I was actually 18. Can't believe that's 14 years ago.

It's actually happening. The getting older thing. You know how I can tell? The subject of my conversations lately. Today I was talking to my bestie, and we got through the usual stuff about work and school stuff, family things, but then we started talking about kids, and I was telling him about the Go Crib that a friend of ours was telling us about last night, and then all of a sudden I'm realizing, holy mackerel, I'm in such a different position than I was in just 2 years ago.

When you're single, all you talk about is dating - who you're interested in, why things are so awesome, or the opposite of all that, why things stink, why is so and so making it so difficult. You talk about friends, or what you're doing for the summer.

You get married, you get a little older, and then you're talking kids, parenting, career and really important things.

The funny thing is, I wouldn't trade 32 for 30 or 25, or 18 or almost any other age. (Although I might trade it for 14 because what's better than playing roller hockey and soccer all day everyday like I did at that age, right?) Honestly, though, I don't think there could be a more exciting time. Amy and I are going to have a baby, and I'm about to start a program wherein the current students who are complete strangers to me light up when talking about it. That's great sign, right?

It really is that way, though. All the things that you worry about seem to take so long while going through them, but then you turn around, and all of a sudden more things change than you ever thought possible. It's crazy how that happens.

Same Old Formula

There are several shows that I watch regularly. I watch the NBC Thursday lineup which includes Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Up All Night, and Parks and Recreation. A few of these shows have been switching out for a time while another steps in its place. 30 Rock was on hiatus to start the TV season, then Community, then Parks and Rec, and when they returned they pretty much all delivered. I also watch Modern Family, Psych, and White Collar. There used to be some others in the rotation, and then I'll lose interest. Lately we've also been watching the dramas Awake, along with Alcatraz before it finished up.

There's something about a couple of these shows that I'm just getting bored of lately. One thing in particular. It's the constant make-you-so-uncomfortable-that-you-can-barely-stand-to-sit-still-while-beginning-to-physically-and-mentally-curl-up kind of humor that is really old to me. The Office did this wonderfully for awhile with Michael Scott, and now they do it with Andy, mostly, but they'll rotate it among some of the other characters. It especially bothers me when it happens to Jim because he was the one guy on there who was obviously the cool, most normal person that you could relate to, but now that everyone is free game, it's just kind of old. Where it's really bothering me is that now Modern Family is resorting to it, and it just feels like such a cop-out to me.

(Another thing is the addressing the camera as if its another person, but only part of the time. I'm not actually tired of it yet, but it's been recycled a lot.)

But let me say, for the record, I've never had a big affinity for this kind of humor. There are plenty of these kinds of guys out there, and everyone has run into them at some point in time. They're the ones that think it's the funniest thing in the world to make everyone else so uncomfortable that they can barely stomach it. They'll purposefully ask awkward questions. They think it's funny when other people recoil. I've never really thought much of that kind of humor. I mean, I can appreciate it when it's well done, and it's one of those things where it takes real guts to ask something so dumb/inappropriate that you just kind of stand there slack-jawed, hardly believing what you're witnessing. But it's definitely one of those things that gets butchered or overplayed when used by the wrong person.

I realize that in some ways, I'm totally snotty when it comes to my TV show humor. I want clever, and I think that what I laugh at tends to be smarter and more sophisticated than a lot of what's out there. And while I openly say that I think my humor is more sophisticated, I still laugh at a lot of things that are silly and goofy, but I just want it to be done in a skillful way. Let me give you an example.

First of all, this is totally dumb, but this video that got passed around a little bit last week by some friends of mine on some of the social media things was the funniest thing in the world to me. I was in tears
.

It obviously kills some of the humor to have to explain a joke, but let me do it anyway: The genius behind this is not just how ridiculously bad the cover is. It's all about the presentation. You have one of the most climactic moments in the movie, a time when the dinosaurs are finally unveiled to the researchers who spent their whole lives in their study of these extinct animals, and the scene is backed up by a musical score that now everyone in the whole world knows as another awesome John Williams piece to another great movie in Jurassic Park, to have it cut in with some idiot's terrible rendition that is barely recognizable, but only because you know both the movie and the music so well. Genius, right? That's what gets me going.

But Modern Family is taking a big hit right now. And The Office keeps on repeating this same mistake. It's the kind of thing where the characters act so idiotically that I wonder aloud, who in the world would ever do that? It works on something like Seinfeld because the characters never stop being absurd, but I just have a hard time buying it when it seems inconsistent with what I thought was developed with the character.

And I guess that's why I love Community. I totally recognize that it's not for everyone. A lot of people won't connect to it, and may even have the same kind of complaints about that show that I have of these other ones, but I think it's the most creative show because it doesn't have any boundaries. The show takes shots at other shows without pulling any punches (Glee, for instance), and do things like a documentary style pillow fight civil war. Not every episode is a hit, but it delivers far more often than it misses.

I think that's what made people appreciate Arrested Development. It's not conventional, and it makes you feel like you're getting something more than the same old song and dance that you see in so many other shows. Is that too much to ask for?

The Count Goes On

Man, running lately has been awesome. I think the biggest difference between training this year and last year is that I'm not at all burned out on running. By the end of my training last summer, I had a couple of bad runs, and I was just done. I didn't care. My last run was just awful. I had these weird numb moments and I could not force myself to run the last mile or two.

Tomorrow I run 18, and then I am planning on two more hard weeks with 20+ miles and then that's it. I only have two tough weeks of training after this one and then I'm ready for Utah Valley.

What's been great too is that my pacing has been good. I feel stronger than I ever have. I have been doing strength training in conjunction with my running, working out my core, my back, my legs. I finish my long runs, my more up-tempo runs, and I'm never sore. I'm fatigued, sure, but I always finish strong.

Yesterday I ran 9 miles after having had Tucano's for a birthday lunch, and although I felt heavy and sluggish, I ran a good portion of it on an incline, and I still came out with an 8:03 a mile pace. It just feels awesome to be feeling so strong.

And I'm way slow to get on board with any of the new running technology, but I just recently got a new Ipod Nano for my birthday, and I was finally able to use the Nike+ accessory Amy won in her work raffle from Christmas. I just loved it. I listened to my podcasts, the electronic lady told me my mileage, my pacing so that I didn't even have to bother looking up that stuff myself. I just love it. It makes just going out and running even easier since I don't really have to pre-plan my route or calculate minutes per mile, etc. Awesome.

Political Experiments

Here's another article talking about the differences between California and Texas. I'm not going to post much from that article, except for this one point:

My point was simple: California is often a trendsetter in the realm of left-wing policymaking, while Texas legislators keep their government small. The results speak for themselves. But for those who didn’t find the article convincing, here’s another way of looking at the issue.

During my six years of service in the California state assembly, I was on the budget committee and the revenue and taxation committee. I’m a numbers guy. Numbers say everything about a government and its values. Follow the money and you can figure out whether elected officials view themselves as the center of the universe, or whether they think the government exists to protect liberty.

The way states run themselves is a good way of seeing how the liberalism v. capitalism experiment is working out. California is the most extreme end of that liberalism in how the government is run, and the results are quite telling.

I think it's interesting to note how other states are faring in these political experiments. Texas is the most fitting example of conservative politics. Others that were once more liberal that are now swinging back toward more conservative principles provide very promising examples of the benefits of a conservative bent in ideology. I was just reading this morning about Louisiana and its education reforms, but I've also read a lot recently on Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Jersey, and all of these examples speak volumes to how effective conservative politics helps stimulate economies and general well-being.

Feeling Grateful

We had stake conference this last weekend and the Saturday evening session was dedicated almost exclusively to gratitude. It was great.

 It also happens to be something that I've been feeling a lot of lately.

On Friday I found out that I had been officially admitted to the MBA program, and although I had been kind of expecting it following the last time I took the GMAT, it was still a comfort to know that this is now a path that is set in stone. It's one thing to plan on applying, hoping for the best, sometimes even assuming it'll work out, but it's another once you've gone through the process, you've gotten letters and emails and everything is set in motion for that path to actually be trod upon.

Today I got notice that I'll also be getting some financial aid from the university, and though that's the case with many, maybe even most, admitted applicants, it just adds to the big pit of gratitude and debt that I owe to God and this university that I'll never be able to pay back.

Yesterday was my birthday, the 32nd such celebration. I got calls and texts, and normally I don't care much for them, but even the Facebook posts were nice. It's just nice to be remembered, and it is nice to hang out with people I appreciate, and will get to see again because Amy's birthday is also just a week away from today.

Anyway, I just can't believe the multitude of blessings in my life. I can't believe that I have been given so many opportunities to succeed. Not everyone has as many as I have been given, and I can't say enough about how much I appreciate all of it, to have such a supportive wife, and to have a baby on the way to boot. I am in great physical health, all of my family is doing great, and I have many people that I care about and who I feel like care about me.

What else could I ever want? It's amazing.

The Romneys

A couple days ago, a political aide to the White House Staff commented that Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life. That, of course, sparked a good amount of outrage, and Hilary Rosen has been on damage control since she made that statement. Here is her apology:

Let’s put the faux “war against stay at home moms” to rest once and for all. As a mom I know that raising children is the hardest job there is. As a pundit, I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen. In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his lack of a record on the plight of women’s financial struggles. Here is my more fulsome view of the issues. As a partner in a firm full of women who work outside of the home as well as stay at home mothers, all with plenty of children, gender equality is not a talking point for me. It is an issue I live every day. I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.

Very heartfelt, no? Feels like one of those, I'm-sorry-you-decided-to-get-so-upset kind of apologies.

One writer took the time to enumerate the genius behind her decision to be a stay at home mom in this piece here. And here's an excerpt:

According to one estimate from a hostile party, Mr. Romney earned about $6,400 an hour at Bain Capital. The Romneys’ personal net worth is somewhere between $190 million and $250 million, but that understates things a bit: The Romneys set up a trust for their grandchildren worth an additional $100 million or so.

Assuming a 2,000-hour work year, Mrs. Romney as a higher-end CFO would have earned about $132.94 an hour, or about 2 percent of her husband’s hourly wage. A 40-year career at $265,882 would have given Mrs. Romney lifetime earnings equal to about 3.5 percent of the family’s net worth.

The Romneys, who are notably charitable people, have given away far more money than Mrs. Romney probably would have earned in a career that would be considered by most of us wildly successful and highly paid.

Conclusion: Ann Romney is economically a hell of a lot smarter than Hilary Rosen.

The marginal value of the wages earned in a typical C-level career would have been almost nothing to the Romneys. But there is that other scarce resource: parental time.

It is difficult to put a dollar value on parental time, but it is clear that to the Romneys one hour of Mrs. Romney’s time at home with the family was worth far more than one hour in C-level wages; further, a 2,000-hour annual block of time invested in earning C-level wages would have fundamentally changed the character of the Romney household for the worse, while providing negligible economic benefit. Instead, she provided the family with a critical good that Mr. Romney, for all his riches, could not acquire without her cooperation. If we think of the household as a household, Ann Romney’s decision to stay at home makes perfect economic sense: Her decision to be a full-time mother enormously improved the quality of life for Mr. Romney, for the couple’s five sons, and — let’s not overlook this critical factor — for Mrs. Romney herself.

Mrs. Romney’s personal investment model — marry a man who turns out to be wildly successful in business and politics, escape the tedium of what is sometimes described romantically as “a career,” have five children and the pleasure of raising them — is not open to everybody, of course: The supply of future centimillionaires is limited, and they are not easy to identify. But making intelligent decisions about forming a household and about the division of labor within that household is an option open to many of us, though unhappily not to all of us, given the state of the family.

Ms. Rosen’s remarks were criticized as being snide; the real problem is that they were stupid.

In another article that I already posted on Facebook, Kevin Williamson makes note of the challenges that Romney faces in the general election regarding his religion. You can find the full article here. From the article:

Mormons and Catholics are alike in that they matter. Everybody knows who the pope is, and when there’s a papal vacancy the drama of the election leads practically every newspaper in the world, and all of Europe holds its breath. Very few Americans could pick Bryant Wright out of a police lineup or tell you that he is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. What the Catholic Magisterium teaches influences public policy — and life — around the world. Mormons, likewise, have a kind of cultural electricity about them: There is no Broadway musical assembled to lampoon the beliefs of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, but The Book of Mormon keeps selling out. There are few if any websites dedicated to “unmasking” the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., but there are dozens dedicated to Mormons. The Catholic Church matters in part because it is global, and in some quarters it is still held in suspicion for that reason. The Mormons represent precisely the opposite condition: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only major worldwide religion bearing a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. Forget apple pie: With its buttoned-down aesthetic, entrepreneurial structure, bland goodwill, and polished professionalism, it is as American as IBM.

Also, it drives people crazy.

“A Mormon One-World-Theocracy Brought to You by Mitt Romney?” Apparently, Romney has a 59-point plan for that, too, if you believe the more hysterical anti-Mormons, the doyenne of whom, quoted above, is Tricia Erickson, a Mormon apostate and professional opponent of all things Latter-day Saintly. She is the author of, among other works, Can Mitt Romney Serve Two Masters? The Mormon Church Versus the Office of the Presidency of the United States of America. (She also is fond, as you can see, of rhetorical questions.) She believes that the fact of belief in the Mormon faith is in and of itself disqualifying for an aspiring president.

She is hardly alone in that belief. One in five Americans declare that they would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate — even if that candidate were a member of their own party. There is no other religious group that comes close to inspiring that kind of widespread hostility in U.S. voters. Seven percent of Americans say they would not vote for a Catholic, 9 percent would oppose a Jew. Five percent would oppose a black candidate, 6 percent a female candidate. Twenty-two percent would oppose a Mormon. The only groups with higher negatives are homosexuals and atheists, and their numbers are improving. Anti-Mormon hostility has been more or less constant since Gallup added the question to its survey in 1967, an innovation occasioned by the presidential campaign of a moderate Mormon ex-governor and millionaire business executive by the name of Romney. George Romney’s candidacy was hobbled by his infelicitous use of the word “brainwashing” to describe his experience on a Department of Defense–organized tour of Vietnam (“A light rinse would have been sufficient,” quipped Eugene McCarthy) and by the New Hampshire machinations of Nelson Rockefeller, who saw to it that Romney’s 1968 campaign was over before it began. For his ineptitude, Romney pere was rewarded with the secretary’s chair at Richard Nixon’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, a career-ending appointment that prevented the country from answering in 1972 or 1976 the question that went unanswered in 1968: How big a problem is religion for a Mormon presidential candidate?

There's much more to that article that's worth reading. Interesting stuff.

I took a PEW quiz about political knowledge, and this quiz just asked which party - Democratic or Republican - has this person as a member, or supports which issue, etc. It got me thinking a lot about freedoms, and who supports liberty, and that got me thinking about the expansion of the federal government and how in many ways that is actually restricting our freedoms in many ways. One example is how the deficit is becoming so unsustainable that at some point, it's going to require a drastic reduction and cutbacks in major services that will really dampen the lives of many Americans. Another article I read was talking about how Democrats are intending to create a government dependent society so that people become entrenched in power. Then I was reading about North Korea and how the Kim family has been able to maintain control over their people for so long through creating dependency and its manipulation of its people. It's a story that continues to repeat itself over and over: some support the cause of liberty, but others seek to suppress it. (You can probably guess where my loyalties lie in this one.)

Sometimes it happens in very egregious forms like when a government mutes the press and forces particular way of thinking, as was the case with the various forms of communist governments. And other times it's as simple as coaxing someone to eat a piece of fruit.

Come Thou

I hate that I'm totally unoriginal and I totally love the same hymn that everyone else does. I remember the first time I heard this hymn. I was in the MTC and it was shown in the video of a large group meeting, back when they still had those. I totally broke down and it just melted my heart. Loved those words, "prone to wander...here's my heart, oh, take and seal it."

This last week I've been watching General Conference talks while I eat breakfast and it really has been pretty great covering those again. Sort of. Some, or all, may be more like the first time because for some reason I was pretty sleepy during a number of talks. Thank goodness for DVR, right? Anyway, one of those also happened to be President Monson's Sunday morning address, which was wonderful, obviously, but then it was followed up by the MoTab's latest performance of the hymn.

I don't know what it was about it, but it just got to me again. I got very emotional, laying on the couch tucked under a blanket while Amy was still using the bathroom. With my feet stretched out over the length of the couch, what little my body covers anyway, and my head leaning on the arm of the couch, I quietly sniffled through the duration of the song, and even into my shower.

There's a lot of legend about the song. It was written by Robert Robinson, and the story goes that he was a rowdy teen, given to drinking and causing trouble, but was then convicted by the gospel and that he needed to change. Some stories have it that he and his friends were attacking a gypsy fortune teller, who told him that he'd live to see his children and grandchildren to be born, only to realize that he did not want them to see him as the person he currently was. Other stories have it that he never was able to give up his drinking, and that he died never having fully overcome his vices.

The thing that strikes me most about this song is that it must have come from a very deep and very personal place, one that everyone has felt to some degree at one time or another. Regardless of how it came about, Robinson penned some amazing words that just about any can relate to. Everyone has experienced that loneliness and longing for some greater power to rescue them, and every member has felt that guilt born of weakness that causes both the author and hearer to exclaim "prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love."

Just so beautiful. The part that really got to me in that performance was when the men begin the verse singing "Here I raise my Ebeneezer." The clarity of that choir and their voices, the words, it's all very good.

Anyway, here is another version of it. I just happen to like the full orchestra and not just the organ accompaniment.

Opening Day!

Well, the only one that actually matters...Angels open up against the Royals tonight. Pujols debut. Morales returns. Fireworks.

Man, I wish I could be there.

I can't believe how much I love baseball. I was a heavy baseball card collector. For three complete summers I played it every day in the green belt over by my house with my then best friend, Ryan McCoy. It really is just so summer to me. And home. It's part of the perks of home and I miss it. I'm so excited for this season. They look awesome. Play ball. Go Angels.

Romney Rising

It now looks pretty inevitable, right? He swept Maryland, DC, and Wisconsin on Tuesday. Wisconsin is huge because it's such a swing state. He's getting key endorsements all over the place now. I really like what the Republican party is doing, lining up behind him, making it known that it's time to start putting together a strong message against the incumbent. I'm very curious to see what will happen with the VP nomination. Polls suggest that most people want two of the rising GOP stars to get the nod - Marco Rubio or Chris Christie, but I think both have publicly declared that they are not interested in the position. No one saw the Palin VP bid, but that's what happened in the last go-around, I think this one could be similar.

I know you'll be so disappointed to hear this, but I had such a great post put together yesterday about gas, how gas prices fluctuate, how prices range from regions, how the President is largely responsible for high gas prices, etc, and when I published it, all but the very beginning part disappeared. I lost all interest after that. Kind of disheartening. You'll just have to trust me when I say that the President can have a huge effect on gas prices, the US has more oil in reserves than the rest of the world, and the presidential election is our chance to voice displeasure with the current state.

Back to Romney though. I thought his speech following his Tuesday victories was really impressive. He's no longer worried about his GOP opponents, but now crafting his message for the general election. I love that. I was very reserved in my opinion of Romney before, but he's really become much more polished with his campaigning and I think all credit for that should go to the primary season and how that has forced him to improve. He's come very far since 2008, and very far even since the fall. He's looking good and I like his prospects come November. 

Changing Direction

It does, it takes faith to change directions. The first significant direction changes seem to happen in college as people are deciding on their majors. That one is kind of interesting because for a lot of college grads, several years following graduation, it really doesn't matter what it was that they ended up deciding on while they were in college to where they are now. They would have gotten to that place had they majored in English, marketing, communications, family life whatever and it wouldn't have really mattered, but if you would have asked them back when they were making those decisions, it seemed to mean the whole world.

Sometimes I wonder a little bit what it was like for my parents to decide that they should move to the United States before I was born. Did everyone in a third world country think that way back then? What would that be like to feel that your best chance at happiness consists of moving away from your home and family to a new country where they speak a language that you don't even know? That's what my parents did.

My dad made a couple of reconnaissance trips to the US before deciding to move to lovely Orange Country. It's kind of amazing what he did, saving up $10,000 in Brazil to come out to visit one brother in San Francisco, then another brother down in Laguna Hills. He saved that money back in the 70s when there was a worse global recession than we've seen this century and in a third world country that was far from the economic upturn it would experience in these recent years. It's amazing to me that he did it. And he just came over to the US, moved his family, learned English, and created a successful business all at the same time. Crazy, right? Making that kind of decision to move would require enormous faith and he made it work. It came with some costs, but in the end, neither of my parents have ever looked back and never plan on going back to Brazil, so content they are with their lives in this country, even if they have had some rough patches.

So for me, I guess it's not anything close to the same magnitude to decide that applying to business school was a better option than finishing out my Phd program. It adds another year, will add some debt, but after talking with some people in that program and that have also graduated from it, it sounds like a really great opportunity, not only for what the program itself is like, but for what types of jobs are available post-graduation. So we'll see what happens with that.

And I guess even a few years earlier, it was a pretty big move for me to leave my job, go back to school, and leave the comfort of California to come back out to Utah, a place that was familiar to me at one time, but wholly new in other important ways. It took some time to start up my new life out here, but obviously that was one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

I wonder what keeps certain people in their holding patterns. I know one person who is in a job that she has already outgrown and offers no future career prospects, living in a place where she feels like she hasn't met anybody new, but still can't seem to steer herself into a new direction in any capacity. Everyone outside of her has been encouraging her to move, to do something different, and Amy even forwarded her a job position that seemed to be a great fit, only to have her turn all of it down for the status quo, which in her more honest moments, she'll admit that she's far from content.

Sometimes major upheaval is necessary. It's interesting to think about the times when I've grown the most have always coincided with when I've had the most significant changes. Sometimes it means a makeover. Buy new clothes. Get a new job. Move somewhere. Get a new haircut. Go back to school.

The great thing is that the gospel invites and encourages change all the time. The invitation is always there to reorient ourselves and point ourselves back to the Lord, and sometimes that means just giving ourselves a new perspective so that we can see him better.