Wednesday, August 23, 2000
IS THERE NO JUSTICE?
What do you mean Richard won? Is there no justice…no truth…no humanity….will the sharks inherit the earth?
Oh, wait…it was just a stupid television game…they were working us from the first minute…the only winners were CBS and Mark Burnett, the Producer of the series. Hey, this was commercial television. It is not the bastion of social conscience. It is $600,000 for a thirty second commercial. All they ever cared about was ratings. As for the contestants, why not play to win?
You see the way to get even is to boycott the next series. Don't watch. Show your moral indignation. Watch some other pabulum of the mass media.
Yeah, right…like were going to be bright enough to do that!!
.
Tuesday, August 22, 2000
MY MONEY IS ON RUDY
Tomorrow night will be the end of our summer obsession, Survivor. Along with my daughter, I have made it through all of the episodes. I thought after the first one that the show was impossibly stupid and I would never watch another episode. I reluctantly watched the second episode to see if my initial negative impression was right and something awful happened, I became hooked.
At first it was a kind of fascination with the shallowness of the contestants and the silliness of the fake rituals. The contestants seemed so self indulgent that I was pleasurably shocked by their insipid behavior. Perhaps it gave me a feeling of superiority.
Gradually, however, I came to dislike several of the characters, particularly the infamous Richard. It was something like a melodrama where you go not to like the actors but to especially dislike the villain. Then there became the mystery factor; who would be the next to go.
So we are at the final four and by the end of tomorrow evening we will all know the best kept secret since the breaking of the Nazi code in World War II, who will be the final Survivor.
At least he or she (my money is on Rudy) will walk away with a million dollars for their adventure in stupidity. I will be out a few hours of my life from watching the thing with no monetary reward at all. Oh well, at least I didn't have to eat any rats, grubs or see Richard running around in the nude.
Monday, August 21, 2000
AGING STARS SHOULD BE BANNED FROM THE SCREEN
There is a new movie coming out that features Burt Reynolds as a retired Mafia chieftain. Burt was born in 1936 so that makes him 64 this year. This is very disconcerting as I remember him as a young man in his first movies and television series going back to the 60s. Watching him age in ever more mature roles can mean only one thing, I am getting older too.
Now, I maintain this is unfair to the general public. It is bad enough to see and feel the aging process in ones own body, let alone being reminded of it as we see our media stars aging too. It is like a giant public mirror, reflecting our own wrinkles in the faces of movie stars.
I noticed Tom Cruise in "Eyes Wide Shut" is beginning to look like his 38 years. That lovely, boyish face we have known for so long now has bags under its eyes. Terrible; he can afford all the best care for aging in the world and it is not holding back his sagging face. Imagine how I must look.
No, there needs to be some sort of rule that an actor cannot be seen continuously by the public for more than say 10 years. No decades of aging in front of our eyes would be allowed. There could be some exceptions for actors like Clint Eastwood who never looked that young anyway, but as a general rule they would not be allowed to make us feel older because they are getting older.
Friday, August 18, 2000
LOADING UP THE CAMEL
~There will be no logs this weekend. It is time to load the camel up and take my daughter back to college. At least she does not seem to have acquired anything new this summer so one camel load should still do the trick. The weather also promises to be cool and both she and I know where we are going this time. Also, she will be living off campus this year and I will not have to fight the crowds of confused new students and their parents. I will miss her.
~Last night my daughter was upset that we were not planning to go down for Parent's weekend. She actually wanted us there even though we were planning to go to see her a couple of weeks later and take in a touring company of a Broadway show. We will now go for both. You have to take advantage of the times when your children actually want to see you.
~I saw all of Gore's acceptance speech last night. Not a great speech but he seemed relaxed and ready to go. I guess the fact that I was able to watch (make that stand to watch) at least some of the Democratic convention makes me a true Democrat. I could not take more than a few minutes of the Republican Convention. My paternal grandmother would be very proud. My mother would not.
~Have a great weekend and I will report in again on Monday.
Thursday, August 17, 2000
THE RUSSIAN SUB
The events surrounding the Russian submarine that has gone down are truly remarkable. There are definite signs that the Cold War is truly over.
First of all, it is remarkable that we have had so much information on the accident. The whole world seems to be holding its breath, hoping that the crew will be rescued. Understand that this is a submarine that was designed to deliver nuclear warheads to destroy American cities. Now it seems like a relic of a time of danger now pretty much over and our sympathies are with the crew of the sub and their families, much as if it were a benign merchant ship.
Twenty years ago, we would have probably not heard a thing about the whole affair. Ten years ago, the Russians surely would not have accepted outside help in an attempt to rescue the crew. Imagine if the situation were reversed. Would the US now accept help from Russia if one of our nuclear subs were in trouble and they had some unique piece of equipment that might help?
It makes one wonder how much longer we need to keep our full nuclear sub fleet going. Clearly the threat they were designed to counter has largely gone away. Also, unlike aircraft carriers, they are of little use in the type of regional conflicts we have become involved in the last decade.
As for the Russian sub, I think we all hope that somehow the crew will be miraculously rescued and return safely to their families. We can all be grateful that our concern for the crew is now much greater than our dread of the weapon they operate.
Wednesday, August 16, 2000
CARS
When I was in my early adolescence, there was only one thing on my mind, CARS. Sex would come a bit later but to my friends and I they were the same thing anyway. I bought several car magazines each month and along with my fellow car lovers, I built countless models from the then ever present model car kits.
It was a total measure of one's manhood to know all of the latest facts about the new cars. The engine size, horsepower, time from zero to 60 of any given model, they were all bits of precious knowledge that proved one was a card carrying American male.
Each fall was a time of celebration. That was when all of the manufacturers released their latest models en masse. Huge searchlights filled the sky to point the way to the dealerships displaying the newly born of the big 3 automakers, like some automotive star of Bethlehem. The first in the crowd to sit in one was revered like one of the Wise Men who had actually seen the holy child.
None of us actually wanted to own one particularly (we were not old enough to drive anyway) but if one of our parents were to actually buy one he was given special reverence for that year. Sucking up to the kid whose father was a matter of routine in the fond hope that you might actually be invited for a ride in the newest temple of automotive design.
What the car looked like was not too important. The cars of the time were mostly excesses of tail fins and chrome anyway. No, what was really important was what was under the hood. After all the sole of the revered object was not its exterior skin, but its engine. The first thing you did was open the hood. Hopefully underneath you would find that most potent of powerplants, the V8. A six cylinder needed to be viewed only once, there were after all only utilitarian purchased by the parsimonious. One of the few four cylinder engines of the time (almost exclusively in "foreign cars") might be worth a second look because of its uniqueness. But, it was the V8 that was the god of motors.
We all knew how the engines worked. Your father or your favorite uncle would let you watch as he took off the air cleaner or the distributor cap to reveal the workings of the magnificent machine. You might even get to hold a wrench or screwdriver as the proud owner endlessly messed with its delicate adjustments, seeking some perfect state of power or tune (mostly needlessly and to little effect).
Once in a great while you were invited to the disassembly of an actual engine. Pulling the beast from the car, it was meticulously disassembled and then somehow magically reassembled with its endless sets of bolts and nuts into a living thing once again. Of course, this was not done with new engines, only old, worn out ones but an old god is still a god.
Now of course, all of the romance is gone. I doubt that the average fourteen-year-old even knows how an engine works. Few people even change their own oil anymore and our computer controlled, multicam, fuel injected powerplants are anonymous to their owners. Only a priestly class of mechanics at a dealership is allowed to touch one.
It is too bad in some ways. The automobile has become an efficient but colorless conveyance. It is not the stuff of myths for fourteen-year-old boys raised in a four-cylinder world. God forbid, the colorless and once dreaded six is now the choice of the powerful. No wonder there is so much adolescent preoccupation with sex in our society. There are no glorious automobiles to displace it.
Tuesday, August 15, 2000
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
I wonder just how powerful computers need to get. With the announcement this morning that IBM had developed a "quantum" computer that uses only five atoms to process and store basic bits of information, we are way down the road to a whole new generation of super, super, super computers.
Now, I can understand how scientists and engineers might need ever more powerful computers to simulate things like the human genome and atomic blasts, but I wonder if there is not some practical outer limit to how much speed and power everyday computer users really need.
In the fifties and sixties there was a horsepower race for engines powering private vehicles. There were actually family cars with more than 300 horsepower (measured by the old standard) running around on ordinary streets. Since even a very large passenger car of say 4000 pounds needs only about 30-50 horsepower to sustain highway speeds, the extra power was only used for tire squealing starts or incredibly quick passing maneuvers. As gas prices increased and automobiles got lighter and more aerodynamic, the horsepower race finally ended. Now it is rare that any family sedan has more than 200 horsepower (by the new standard, equivalent to much more if the old standard were used). I simply does not do you much good and since most drivers are happy with whatever they "feel" is enough for the way they drive, they will not pay more in initial cost and fuel consumption for more.
There must be an equivalent in computing power. How much do I really want to do with any given computer and how fast do I want it to perform? There simply is a point of diminishing returns. Office suites are very powerful now. I might want voice recognition or full motion video for teleconferencing, but at some point I have enough for what I want to do. And speed beyond a certain point is meaningless. A computer that does something in one second rather than five is useful, but does a computer that will do the same thing in half a second have any real utility?
So, I guess at some point I will trade in my 350-megahertz computer for a 1 gig, but beyond that, I wonder? There must be product planners deep in the bowels of the computer manufacturers who are worried that at some point enough speed is enough speed and that consumers will stop buying ever-faster machines.
Monday, August 14, 2000
A PHONE CALL AWAY
I received two messages from my daughter during her long weekend trip. Or, at least, I received two messages from the parent of one of her traveling companions. She will be home this evening so I can turn the worry machine off.
It is difficult to imagine what it was like before the communications revolution of the last century. It took weeks or even months to get information back and forth-even for governments. Immigrants to the US may never have heard again from the families they left behind. Settlers must have come West and virtually left all of their contacts behind, unreachable over the great distances.
I remember during the Watergate hearings and the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon we kept the radio on for hourly bulletins and all stopped to watch the infamous scene where Nixon and his family boarded the helicopter to leave Washington after his resignation. Similarly, when John Kennedy was assassinated, we all hugged our television sets to keep up with the rapidly changing information.
The Gulf War of course was practically fought in front of our eyes on television. Live video from Baghdad and the military videos of bombs blowing up bridges made all of us virtual participants.
Now we have the Internet. If you follow the news services through your browser, you will see stories being continuously updated. Perhaps the next great conflict will be fought in a kind of virtual reality over the Web.
We have become information freaks, thirsty for news of even the smallest events. I would take a lot of adjustment if we were suddenly deprived of our instant information world.
Friday, August 11, 2000
JUNGLES, SNAKES AND CONSTANT WORRY
~My company is having a video made of our operations. Camera crews are roaming around the building today and the place looks like a greenhouse with all of the plants they have put around to spruce things up. The lobby is a veritable jungle of ficus trees. I half expect a giant snake to pop out of the undergrowth at any moment.
~My daughter is off with two friends on a short vacation before she returns to college. My wife and I are in our worry mode. Of course she will be perfectly safe but it is a parent's duty to worry anyway. I don't think there is an outer limit for parental concern. No matter how old you get or how mature your children get, you still worry when they are traveling. My mother died last year at the age of 82. She never stopped worrying about me if she knew I was traveling. I used to worry about her too, particularly in later years when she was in poor health. If I could not reach her by phone I would call her repeatedly until I got her. Usually she was just out shopping or something and my concern was unfounded.
~One time my mother was robbed in the parking lot of a grocery store. It was fortunately a friendly, non-violent thief who asked politely for her cash and once she had given it to him he ran off immediately. She was not hurt and went on into the store and did her shopping. She told me about it in a rather matter of fact manner the next week. I immediately went into a tizzy asking her why she had not phoned me immediately. Her answer was that she was not hurt, there was nothing I could do and that I would have worried about her every time she went out to shop in the future. She was right and after that I did often worry about my mother out there in the wild, dangerous world. I guess worry is just a part of the parent child relationship.
~I should have told my daughter not to get near any ficus trees in hotel lobbies. There might be snakes in them. Now I am worried.
Thursday, August 10, 2000
A GREAT BIRTHDAY PRESENT
It is a time to be grateful for what we have. The wife of a coworker was four months pregnant and has lost the baby. They have one child; a healthy four-year-old daughter but it still must be very difficult.
It is impossible for a man to know what a woman goes through when she loses a child. It is part of her in a way that a man can never know.
When my daughter was born, strong and healthy (19 years ago next week) we were thrilled and relieved. My wife had a couple of problems during the pregnancy and we were concerned. The fates spared us and we were gifted with a great person who has grown up with almost no health problems. She is bright, has many friends and doing well in college, both a scholar and an athlete. My daughter and I have a great relationship and I enjoy just being around her.
I will be especially grateful for my gift on her birthday.
Tuesday, August 8, 2000
YES, IT IS INDEED HOT. AND YOUR POINT IS?
It is hot. Too darned hot. In the Midwest, we have a penchant for overstating the obvious about the extremes of our weather. When it is nearly a hundred degrees outside and the humidity is high, we all comment that it is "too hot". Yes, it is August in Nebraska, and typically, very ordinarily, it is hot. Too hot. Hotter than we would like it. Six months from now it will be January. If it is a typical January, it will be cold. Colder than we like it. We will all go out into the cold and declare that it is "too cold". It is as if the expected icebergs of summer ("it's too hot") had just arrived and now it is ("too cold").
In an effort to cool all of us off a bit, I offer a poem by (please forgive the irony) Robert Frost
DUST OF SNOW
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Monday, August 7, 2000
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (EXCEPT FOR THE MUSIC)
Had a quiet weekend. Saturday was way too hot and humid to do anything but stay in and hug the air conditioner. So far we have not had any power emergencies in the Midwest this summer. We are not too thrilled about power deregulation here in Nebraska. We have an excellent public power system that seems to manage to keep up and keep the prices of electricity in control.
Saturday night my wife and I went to a Community Theatre production of Grease. A little ambitious for the size of the stage but the performers had great voices. Unfortunately, the new sound system was in place and working full blast. I frequently had to cover my ears for the more shrill numbers. My old ears cannot stand both loud and shrill.
Yesterday I painted again. Bet you were waiting breathlessly for my further adventures with the summer paint brush. I painted the front door. Back to a dull gray from its bright blue. My wife and daughter like it. I don't.
It will be a slow week this week. Summer lull for clients too. Friday we are to be taped for a FOX Network piece on small businesses. No casual Friday this week. We will all have to look shiny and professional. Guess my new sandal fashion statement (black socks with sandals) will be forbidden. Haven't a clue as to what they will tape. Most of us just sit in front of computer screens all day. Not exactly exciting TV fare.
