What is cool?

Back in 1973, the Mid-America Music Association sponsored its Seventeenth Annual Music Festival at the Omaha Hilton Hotel on August 3-5 (MAMA still exists). I was a 17-year old guitar teacher back then, and I participated in the contest as a "Virtuoso" (I was not really any sort of virtuoso, but there's nothing like a label to appeal to one's ego). About six of my students also participated. It all seems so long ago and hazy to me now, but it seemed like a big deal back then. I do know, however, that in addition to the guitarists, many accordion players participated in their own accordion contests. Hence, in the program that was handed out, one could spot many advertisements geared to accordion players, making it clear that it was "cool" to play the accordion. I didn't think so--I always thought that kids from the Midwest who liked the accordion were a bit odd. But the ads pushed the opposite message. Here's a sample (click for enlargement). accordian-advertisement-lo-res I'm in no way impugning the talents of these players. Many accordion players were extraordinarily talented. I find this ad interesting in that it made it clear that accordion playing was cool, yet here we are, 35 years later, and I would think that it would be extremely difficult to find music studios that even offer accordion lessons. Which brings me to this question. What is obviously an in-thing to do today--what is "cool"--that will be chuckled at 35 years from now? Will it be that we walk around with iPods plugged into our ears? Will it be that so many of us were obese? Will it be that people thought they could consider their online network members to be "friends"? Will it be that we dress up with corporate logos on our clothing? Will it be that we worked so hard to get jobs for the money rather than because the work was meaningful? Will it be the type of music was thought was impressive? Will it be that the average American watched more than four hours of television? Will it be that the citizens walked around, apathetic to the rampant corruption in their national government? In what ways will people 35 years from now shake their heads and chuckle at us?

Continue ReadingWhat is cool?

Hotels to guests: Go to sleep

In light of the importance of sleep, some hotels are telling their guests to stop the noise, stop the partying and go to sleep. It's about time, especially for those of us who check into hotels with the need to get some sleep in preparation for a meeting the next morning. The blaringly loud TV next door is my biggest nemesis.

Continue ReadingHotels to guests: Go to sleep

Obama carrying out Osama’s plan to bankrupt the U.S.

Alan Grayson reminds us that Osama Bin Laden had an overall plan to ruin the United States. All he needed were a couple of presidents to help him carry out the plan. George W. Bush was more than willing. Then along came Barrack Obama, who surprised his followers and decided to do his part to bankrupt the United States. Grayson explains:

Today, the war in Afghanistan becomes America's longest war. Longer than the war in Vietnam. Longer than the Korean War. . . . Bin Laden's strategy was -- and is -- painfully simple: to repeat his victory in Afghanistan against Russia, by driving us into bankruptcy. As he put it, he wanted to use his "experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat." In other words, he just wants to go two-for-two. And, as Bin Laden noted, it is equally simple to get us into that trap.
If you are dismayed that President Obama (and Congress) are eagerly following Bin Laden's plan to bankrupt the United States, consider signing Grayson's petition to support "The War is Making You Poor Act."
This bill would eliminate the separate funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminate federal income taxes for everyone's first $35,000 of income (or $70,000 for couples) each year. And it would help pay down our national debt.

Continue ReadingObama carrying out Osama’s plan to bankrupt the U.S.

What’s going on with Barack Obama?

I much preferred Barack Obama to be President over John McCain. Obama now has a track record, and I find it highly disappointing. Frank Rich is also disappointed:

It’s this misplaced trust in elites both outside the White House and within it that seems to prevent Obama from realizing the moment that history has handed to him. Americans are still seething at the bonus-grabbing titans of the bubble and at the public and private institutions that failed to police them. But rather than embrace a unifying vision that could ignite his presidency, Obama shies away from connecting the dots as forcefully and relentlessly as the facts and Americans’ anger demand.
I think Frank Rich is being naive, however. I think that many of us who put so much effort into seeing Obama elected are naive. It's not that Obama is still feeling his way. It's not that he's trying to figure out what should be done about health care insurers, Wall Street or BP. When I see Obama these days, I see a President whose failures to speak up and rail at injustice are conspicuous by their absence, over and over. Truly, how long does it take to get angry about the way our military has treated highly competent gay soldiers? Where is any meaningful cost control component to health care reform (supposedly the main reason for health care reform)? Why isn't he forcefully arguing against too-big-to-fail banks and promoting the reenactment of Glass-Steagall? Why isn't he livid when Congress carves payday lenders out of the financial reform bills? When the financial sector floods Congress with 2,000 lobbyists, or when "78 former government employees registered as Comcast lobbyists in the final quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010" to push through it's proposed merger with MSNBC, why isn't President Obama visibly and audibly outraged? When I watch Barack Obama, I am watching a President who is not willing to stand up for the rights and needs of regular folks when those rights and needs conflict with the greed of huge well-monied corporations. He has shown us that he'd rather not take the bully pulpit and deliver a sustained message of condemnation, even when the need for such a tirade is palpable. Obama's absence of outrage demonstrates either that he has succumbed to the power of money to get himself re-elected (or to get his fellow-democrats re-elected), or he's being physically threatened. There's no other way to explain the sharp conflict between Obama's pre-election speeches and his post-election malaise. To the extent that there is yet any "Hope" to turn this Presidency around, Obama needs to make it his mission to tell the American People in every way possible, using every rhetorical skill he has, that our Democracy is utterly corrupted, and there is no use trying to govern this country until we take private money out of politics. Until then, we cannot have any honest debate on any issue and all "fixes" of any problem will be illusory.

Continue ReadingWhat’s going on with Barack Obama?

The things we don’t know about climate science

Perhaps a lot of climate deniers are frustrated by scientists because they think the scientists claim to be know-it-alls. This is far from true. It is true that scientists almost uniformly agree that humans are warming the climate and that they base this conclusion upon "the extreme rate of the 20th century temperature changes and the inability of climate models to simulate such warming without including the role of greenhouse gas pollution." These are things that climate scientists do know, according to Quirin Schiermeier, author of "The Real Holes in Climate Science," published in the January 21, 2010 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers). What don't we know? Schiermeier presents four major categories. The first is "Regional climate prediction rate." Schiermeier begins the section with this: "The sad truth of climate science is that the most crucial information is the least reliable." He indicates that researchers are struggling to develop tools to more accurately forecast regional changes in climate. People are concerned about overall heating of the planet, of course. What they are more concerned about, though is how climate change is going to affect their particular region. Unfortunately, science does not yet have the tools to make precise conclusions regarding regions or countries. This is especially true when "dealing in regions with complex typography, such as where mountains form a wall between two climatically different plains. Precipitation. Schiermeier indicates that rising global temperatures "are likely to increase evaporation and accelerate the global hydrological cycle--a change that will drive subtropical areas and increased precipitation at higher latitudes." Unfortunately, predicting precipitation is extremely difficult, especially winter precipitation. In fact, today's climate models underestimate how much precipitation has already changed. Scientists are working to improve precipitation prediction by considering additional climate variables, and including high-resolution satellite observations to check their theoretical models. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingThe things we don’t know about climate science