Author: admin

Day 2: Groundhogs in China

It’s a rotten calendar that makes Jan. 2 the second day of the year. In the old days, putting down the Emperor’s calendar could get you locked up & even sent to the lions. Render unto Uncle Julius, Augustus, Juno & Mayo their due. (March madness is its own matter.)

Despite various “reforms,” one losing more than a week of days that never existed, the still pre-modern Gregorian calendar in dominant use has gotten even more confused & out of whack with the events & bodies that make up the timed year, so we not only sometimes get two full moons in a single month, but the 7th month (September) comes 9th, the 8th (October) comes 10th, all the way to the 10th (December)  coming12th. Who thunk that up?

The confusion was compounded whenever the seasonal borders got conceptually shifted from midway between the solstices & equinoxes, where they naturally belong, to the solstices & equinoxes themselves, which more naturally represent the peaks of their respective seasons. Midsummer night is more or less June 21-22, the longest daylight in the northern hemisphere. Midwinter night belongs on or near its solstice. The equinoxes are equally mid-points, early & late seasonal halves in balance.
Some of the old seasonal division points are still there, celebrated indirectly, without conscious or explicit reference to seasonal shift, as in Halloween & Groundhog day. The shift in borders was entirely conceptual, and whenever it was, it seems rather recent, as suggested by the location of “midsummer night.” Meanwhile we can count on weather reporters to comment on pre-solstice storms things like “and it’s not even winter yet!” and do the same for pre-equinox spring & pre-midsummer summer events.  
It’s not a complicated argument. If winter is cosmologically aligned with shortness of daylight, the solstice is its peak, or trough if you’re down under. The solstices and equinoxes signify the border between early in that season & late. In the case of the solstices, the difference in which half represents that between waxing & waning, the daily increase & decrease in daylight (with an equivalent rising & lowering in the sun’s angle of arc).
This highly dislocated conceptual calendar framework is far from universally followed, even by people who use it daily. Its flaws are deep, and its history murky. It would hardly rank in a rational process for choosing a global standard. Its dominance in official use can be considered an accident of commerce & conquest, whether imposed by imperial administrators or adopted for convenience without entirely leaving other calendars behind.  So Jews, Muslims, and countless other cultures have retained their own even while doing business with Pope Gregory’s.
Probably the most widely known of these alternatives is represented by so-called “Chinese New Year,” which assumes the year begins more or less mid-way between the winter solstice & the spring equinox. This was Basho’s calendar, too, extremely widespread and functional still. It is based on a lunisolar calendar, in synch with both moon & sun. Technically, the year begins a certain number of new moons after the moon with the winter solstice, putting it near midway to the equinox. Each month begins with the new moon, which is full on the 15th.    
Groundhog shadows aside, weather obeys no conceptual boundaries, so traditionally we get freezes here in northern New Mexico into May, sometimes even snow, with some toasty February days, too, with 50-degree (F) spreads night to noon. No longer deep winter, even in the passing freeze, we have indeed turned a corner in the annual orbit–something we can say on 2/2, as well as day 1/1 & 1/2….
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[Post crypt: A recent book (on the debate between Burke & Paine) claimed the essence of conservatism was recognition of value in the established order, considering how much worse things could get without it, whereas the essence of radicalism (possibly he means progressivism) is the recognition of injustice & commitment to making things better. How varied & complex these forces can be in relation with each other may have been well illustrated by events following the so-called Arab spring. 
Applied to the calendar issue, a conservative might point to the chaos inevitable in any major changeover. (“You think Y2K was a challenge!”) A radical might point to how disconnected we seem to have grown from the natural forces that ultimately sustain us, even as our impact escalates at a potentially exponential (& unsustainable) rate. Being more in tune with the nature of time & the seasons might be more significant than realized, however we do it.
In fact, the bulk of the difficulty is simply conceptual–e.g., in where we “think” the seasons are in our relations with heavenly bodies; the loss of connection between month names & sequence in the year. December is December, whatever its sequence & root-meaning. The same for January, which reminds me of friends named Jan, Jane, etc., as well as April, May & June.  even July & August have their own panache. 
Meanwhile, we live with multiple calendars woven more or less seamlessly together in the cord of every year, the historical calendar (4th of July),  folkloric (e.g., Halloween), cultural (thanksgiving), religious (Christmas, Yom Kippur), & honorific (Mother’s Day), with birthdays in each category. There are also astronomical, botanical, ecological calendars, etc., e.g., annual meteor showers, blooming times, and wildlife events, each with  source, connections & dynamics rooted in a nature based fundamentally on cosmological-planetary relations.
These natural cycles don’t stop with the earth year, of course, but scale up with longer term moon & sun rhythms, as reflected in some human calendars, like that used in classic Maya & Vedic astronomy, two of the most elegant…..     
 

New Year’s Day 2014

Time, time, relentless time.
In for a dollar, out on a dime.
–Ricardo Bods

Does one year really end & another begin? Does getting a few hundred million fools to shout, kiss & blow noisemakers in time-zone bursts make it so? As if we could kiss the past behind & start again so easily. Still, here we stand at the threshold, starting a new page, in a new file, dragging the old life along like a streamer at the back end of a kite.

The self is not the kite, let alone its tail. It’s hard to say what it is—lose the wind or break the string, & it’s not a kite anymore. Shred the kite, warp its form or let the string go, & there’s no life left in it, no tugging self coming alive along the string’s pull, that center of ungravity derived from the draw upward, wind in kite (in the box, paper, whatever form, substance & materials made of at the time). Oh by the by…sang e. e. cummings.

The writer keeps on trying to say a single real thing for a change. Between dream & abstraction, there the crotch is, plus the solar plexus, heart’s breath, throat’s mouth, the analytical nose, the dome of the mind in the rock, all ears just listening. “It is what it is,” said one thought wise, pointing. Like dogs, we try to use such cues to guess where the ball went. What ball?

I was precocious in one thing—besides bawling, beach-balls & dreaming—this being sense of how little I knew about anything, just staring in awe, gawking, not knowing the first thing about what knowing was, or understanding. Eventually, I kissed my mama goodbye & set out to see what I might from worlds “out there,” snagging hot ground balls, fly balls picked up on the run (sometimes temporarily disappearing), line drives on a leap, pop ups raining on a dizzy head. If I’d been a more gifted athlete, or natural standout at anything, I’d’ve followed a different path.

First we have to sort out our priorities. Priority #1, Get our priorities straight. Priority #1: want (& not want–yechh), with satisfaction in between, first from the pleasures of sucking, cantilation, little sucking songs, murmurs, daydreams, the transports of imagination in pictures & songs, nursery rhymes & dancing games, from mum’s lap to play-worlds spun from bits of paper; finding worlds in books, later heading outward–into the forest following animal trails, rowing stealthily along the lakeshore into secluded coves, later still far-off cities & also where no trails ran….

Ring around the rosy…we all fall down…/ Riding to Boston, riding to town…New York, L.A., San Francisco; Paris, Malaga, Tangiers; Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Pondicherry; Tokyo,   Seattle, Reno; & more , the places between, with little known names (some never learned), more at home off the beaten track, in a quiet backwater out of the mainstream, in the far back office, sun through the high window on my cheek briefly–the multi-tasking mind writing this while listening to birds chattering as if on the first day of creation, at least a young new year, as if spring had arrived early—after the pre-solstice deep freeze, with storm band after storm band .We’ have  seen such feints before. Still, we celebrate a one- day thaw, imagining spring–& the world as young as some of these birds feel, rather than as our crazy, mixed up calendar suggests?

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Our Neanderthal Ancestry

A recent question Jeopardy got very wrong: the species recently gene sequenced proving it interbred with us (or ours)? (A: What is Neanderthal.)

The answer is right, but the question not. How can one say “they” interbred with “us” when the proof is having identified Neanderthal DNA as part of “ours”? We are presumably some mix, in other words, part this, part that, more this, less  that, perhaps, but with at least some us-ness from each.

There are two problems with getting something like that so blatantly wrong.  One is just plain sloppy thinking, sooner or later bound to be seriously misleading. The other is a falsely constructed sense of who we think “we” are, with implications for how  the “other” ends up getting treated.

“Never mind there but for the grace of Claude go I, but there go I also.”
–Ricardo Bods, The Unauthorized Posthumous Autobiography, serialized in advance in The M T Mirror Times Mirror’s literary review, Shattered.

This is just one of many examples of DNA hokum….

Sloppy Thinking

Social reliance on mass media for information on political choices conveys some responsibility, so important to note how widespread sloppy thinking seems to be, calling the would-be professionals to task. A glaring current example can be found in the coverage by every major Albuquerque tv station news departments of an imminent local special election.

First, seemingly to their credit, they all reported accurately that early voters were having an extremely difficult time with the complicated ballot, with the major proposal containing multiple clauses, sub-clauses, paragraphs & sub-paragraphs, to a total of over 1500 words, by the end of which many voters no longer knew what “For” or “Against,” the two choices, meant.

Indeed, that would seem to be a serious problem for any ballot proposal, regardless of its subject, or how it might have been sold. As any judge or lawyer will point out, how a statute is actually worded ultimately makes a difference. In this case, when the stations inquired, the county clerk pointed out that officials had no legal alternative but to present the wording exactly as received on the citizen petition that required the proposal be put to the people for a vote.

You might think that any proposed law confusing enough that voters had trouble understanding what it meant, did and implied in outcomes would speak for itself. One might even assume that sooner rather than later, the courts will have to address the implied confusions, potentially reducing the entire exercise to one in citizen futility, everyone’s complete waste of time and public resources.

Here is where, rather incredibly, each of the stations got it backwards, and wrong, thanks to a sloppy thinking that totally ignored everything mentioned above, including their own reporting, to advise viewers: “If you’re for a  ban on late-term abortions over 20 weeks, you should vote “For” the proposal; if you’re against a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, you should vote “Against.”

Not a single one suggested, “If you’re in favor of confusing & complicated proposals wasting public resources, where nobody really knows what they will end up meaning, you should vote ‘For.’ The same if you’re in favor of laws you really don’t understand & have no real sense of what effects passage will have on the ground, like a big waste time & public resources for which real needs exist. Otherwise, vote ‘Against.'”

Missing this point entirely does a disservice to the community & mis-advises readers by offering a patently false “translation” of what the proposal states. It muddies the waters while pretending to clarify, spreading a confused perspective. There really is a difference.

Why the Series, Calls & Sport Matter

III. Why it does & doesn’t matter

On one level, perhaps it turned out the questionable obstruction call didn’t matter, or mattered in the opposite direction from what we might more naively have expected, sapping something from the game-winner’s spirit by the nature of the “win,” while juicing the loser’s determination. As of last night, after all, we know the Red Sox won every subsequent game to take the series, rendering the obstruction call a box-score footnote.

And the win was beautiful to behold–Big Papi, young Bogaerts, Gomes in left, Victorino at the plate, Uehara on the mound to close out each 9th….The artistry of pitchers on both sides was a wonder, as was the ability of some batters to adapt. In Big Papi’s case, David Ortiz provoked the opposition to capitulate, being intentionally walked each of his last three at bats, tying the record. He finished the six-game series batting well over .600, on base almost 80% of the time. His heart & spirit seemed even bigger than his bat, however, having swelled at least partly in response to children injured in the Boston Marathon bombing.

After the game, Uehara’s haiku was apparently lost in translation, but his 5-year-old son’s was not: “Good. Strong,” he said to the mike in his face in response to two questions. The manager was eloquent in an elegantly understated way, concise, with respect for the worthy opposition. The general manager was grateful to “have been along for the ride.” Everyone credited everyone else, glad just to have helped.

Papi, his son by his side, went on a bit as MVP, however, unhurried, pure poetry rising between pauses mostly independent of the words, honoring his organization, his teammates, the fans, the city, while doing baseball & humanity both proud in a uniquely humble, open & heroic way. It was a high moment in baseball history, showing why baseball matters, why sport matters.

He had become for awhile, & now for all time, not just the perfect embodiment of a legendary “slugger,” but playing for something bigger than himself, a mythic presence on the base path heading home, thoroughly a team man & part of the whole. A fierce competitor, he nevertheless radiated good will to all, even players & coaches on the other side, setting a wonderful example partly by being so thoroughly just himself.

Then again the team set an even better example as a whole, with its diverse individuals working so well together. It reminded me of two impressions from my boyhood north of Boston. One was of ethnically territorial gangs, in conflict at the borders & in raids elsewhere. The other was baseball, where to a kid near the mid-1950s, ethnicities only enhanced a team by falling away, teams made that much more beautiful by diversities working well together.

With its various positions & diverse set of skills, baseball has a unique capacity to forge unity out of diversity, teamwork out of individual performance, doing so not by making participants the same, but by each player responding at once  individually & all together to each situation. Teamwork includes how players  react to each other’s errors or other failures also, which in most cases will be more than 2/3 of the time at the plate, while even golden glovers will bobble a ball once in a while. Perfection isn’t a realistic expectation, only trying one’s best, with hustle, focus & attention.

The manager’s job is no different, yet goes beyond to include choosing who to delegate what responsibilities to & directing tactical moves as the game develops. At the professional level, many manager styles are possible, though even the differences may vary tremendously in how they expressed in different situations. Nor will the manager always guess right in when to switch pitchers, or any other tactical aspect, being simply another player doing his best.

There are two schools of thought about “winning” & “playing the game” that actually work best as complements, & worst as opposites. The idea that “winning is all” degrades the game, stripping it of both aesthetic & ethical dimensions. The idea that “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” ought not ignore the fact that a good part of how one plays the game is “with maximum effort to win,” a complement to playing with excellence.

Excellence wears many faces & takes many forms, including individual performance at the margin of the possible, grace under pressure, the spirit of comradeship within & across teams, love of the game. The game has its own aesthetics as well, including the framework provided by “organized baseball,” with responsibility for caretaking the evolving rules. Where flaws appear, it becomes necessary to tweak (but preferably not to jerk & twerk) the rules.

MLB did that a few years ago after an All-Star game ended in an unprecedented “draw,” when it became clear that the game needed to have some meaning, a consequence to winning or losig, and MLB responded by having the outcome determine which league would have the home team advantage in 4 of the 7-game inter-league world series (2 at home, 3 away, 2 at home until one team makes 4 wins). That was an aesthetically & ethically pleasing addition to the game as a whole, setting the stage for this year’s finish in iconic Fenway, with its green monster & other idiosyncratic quirks.

The series took on all the more meaning from the aftermath of the marathon bombing & subsequent community response. There may be a larger lesson here for policy makers & senior strategists, sometimes distorted by would-be provocateurs. The fact is that short of campaigns of total destruction, many, if not most, otherwise seemingly successful attacks do more to strengthen than to weaken the adversary. They can help create a unity & higher level of working together out of what had been otherwise conflicting elements, for example.

The more powerfully unsymmetrical, bullyish, unjust or cravenly terrorist the attack is perceived to have been, the more resolve to resist tends to be generated, the very opposite of capitulation. The “breaking point” may require not just overwhelming force, but its exercise for longer than all but the most locally committed tend to manage.

The body offers two obvious illustrations of how deeply such principles of resistance may be rooted. One is that toughening that takes place with repeated exercise, e.g., building a karate-punching edge. The other is the immune system reacting in response to a threat, turning the host hostile to that which has attacked it. The attack of a perceived invader can radically change the responsive host, in other words, soon strengthening what first seemed  weakened. The more virulent the attack, the sooner the attacker is either wiped out in the immune system’s counter-attack or loses its host by destroying it, presumably some inherent disadvantage to the organisms.

We are roaming far beyond sports here, into geopolitical & physiological dynamics, but that just emphasizes all the more how connected things are in a total ecology within which networks of all sorts are inherently symbiotic.

WHY OBSTRUCTION CALL WAS BLOWN

Most baseball fans (at least outside of St. Louis) knew something was wrong with the historic “obstruction” call that ended game 3 of this year’s world series by advancing the winning run to the plate, where the runner had otherwise been thrown out. Even the game announcers, committed to even-handedness, seemed shocked by the seemingly unprecedented ruling that ended the game on an umpire’s “gimmee.”

Ironically, the umpire who made the call, Jim Joyce (no relation to the Irish novelist), was, until this game, most famous for another botched call in an earlier series, calling a runner safe at first base when replays clearly showed he’d been beaten by the throw, ruining a pitcher’s “perfect game” in the process. In that case, he eventually admitted the error publicly, said he needed to “man up,” even co-writing  book on the episode with the pitcher whose achievement in the record books he’d blown.

Even more ironically, some may feel, MLB (major league baseball) was already planning to introduce new replay & appeal procedures for next year’s season. More ironically still, perhaps, was that Joyce’s botched call at third followed an earlier series game in which an umpire at second had glaringly botched a call (calling the runner out though the second baseman hadn’t caught the toss), with that call “unanimously” over-turned after an all-umpire conference during which Joyce had reported being “100% certain” the call had been wrong.

As you’ll see, his “obstruction” call could be called equally wrong & also should have been over-turned–not just to avoid the grossly unfair outcome the ruling produced, the wrong way to end the hard-fought contest, but even following the technical letter of the rule. The seemingly obvious unfairness stemmed from the impression that there had been no intent to obstruct. When commentators reported (not entirely accurately, it seems to me on a close reading) that the current wording of the rule makes intent irrelevant, they (along with many others) seemed to conclude that it was the rule, not the ruling that was at fault. It was shortly announced that the LB rules committee would visit this rule before the next season.

Joyce himself seemed convinced he had ruled correctly, given the specific wording of the rule, in that the runner’s path had indeed been obstructed in the tangle the two players got into, however unintentionally for both, thus entitled to be advanced a base. On the basis of the following facts, however, the ruling was almost certainly incorrect–botched from a technical standpoint, as well as in its implication. And here’s why.

When the third baseman dove to his left for the bad throw from the catcher, he landed stretched out on the ground with his feet toward third & his head straight on towards short & second. He is in the base path between 2nd & 3rd, not between 3rd & home. If there’s an obstruction, the runner would be advanced to third, but he got there on his own, whether diving or sliding. Nor was there obstruction at that time since the 3rd baseman was in the act of trying to field the ball. (For the same reason, the baserunner who is just trying to reach 3rd can’t be called for interference, even though his contact may have impeded the 3rd baseman’s chance of reaching the errant throw.)

Had the runner, Craig, simply stood straight up & run from third to home along that base path, he would not have tripped. He tripped only because he went up from third in the previous base path’s direction, the second base side of the bag, where the 3rd baseman was still sprawled after lunging towards second or the throw. The path between third, which he had reached, and home was clear, relatively unobstructed.

There is a little ambiguity here, in whether or not Middlebrook’s feet extend a little on the home plate side of third, which ay partly explain his initial raising of the feet, as if to get them out of the way. The runner rose coming further towards second, however, and tripped not on the third basemen’s feet, but higher up on the body, well out of the homeward path. The fact that the runner, Craig, was already operating with a foot injury complicates the matter further.

The final call was made by the home plate umpire, who ruled the clearly tagged runner safe at the plate on the basis of Joyce’s “obstruction” call at third, not on the basis of the actual tag. In fact, that final call should have been held in abeyance while the obstruction call itself was questioned in an all-umpire conference with the level of critical attention the context deserved.

The irony is that they might still have gotten it wrong. Someone needed to point out that the relevant base path remained essentially unobstructed, while the “obstruction” remained only on the second base side of third, where the inadvertent tangle had taken place in the course of trying to field & reach third, neither a rule infraction. Then there were two possible outcomes that might be considered fair.

The first, following both the technical reading of the rule & its historical implications, is that no obstruction had taken [place, so the runner was out at the plate. The technical basis for this is supported by there having been a sufficiently unobstructed base path from third to home had the runner untangled & gone straight before proceeding. Historical implication, meanwhile, suggests that the rule, with its own commentary, does NOT make intent irrelevant, just insufficient in itself, part of the total picture. Simply because professional baseball no longer includes reference to a “flagrant” effort to impede (while not in possession of the ball or pursuit of it) doesn’t mean intent of the agent isn’t part of the understood equation even so.

Comments to the rule make clear that it should only rarely be called, and only where the extreme circumstances warrant–for example, in a run-down, where the player without the ball stands in the runner’s way of running back. Otherwise, since contact is not a pre-requisite, a third baseman’s bluff that he was about to field a throw to encourage a runner to stay on second might be considered obstruction, simply by “impeding” the runner’s progress on the path. Where a fielder & runner have gotten entangled while both were within the rules, as these did on the play from second to third, the rule can’t subsequently blame the fellow who ended up on the bottom for the clumsy choice of how & where the fellow on top gets up & tries to proceed without proper footing, arguably not yet even on the home plate base path. From there, he was out because he was out, not from obstruction so much as from his diminished speed, playing with a prior injury.

Given the proper authority, a fairer & more aesthetically pleasing alternative outcome might have been agreeable to all, including the fans, giving standing to both arguments–that there had & hadn’t been a technical obstruction. (No one claimed an intentional obstruction.) This would have called the tag at the plate moot, but not advanced the runner before the last base reached safely. It would have left Craig on third, yet given the Cardinals back his out. They’d have had a fair chance to bring him home, while the Red Sox would have had a fair chance to end the inning still tied.

The play, not the iffy, technically justified, technically questionable, judgment of umpires would have determined the outcome. It may be that the same level of chance exists where such judgment makes the difference as it does in the play itself, which is why baseball is sometimes called a “game of inches.” Less, if you consider the dynamics by which swung bat & pitched ball meet, where a fraction of an inch this way or that ultimately makes most of the difference.

Any given game will have a number of just-barely-made plays that singly &/or collectively determine the outcome, fair or foul, called strike or ball, in a gap or not, surprise hop & skip or leap & incredible snag–like Beltan’s rib-injuring gymnastic grab of what was otherwise another Ortiz homer. These last are the plays fans & players alike live for–not the chance element, but the heroic.

The umpires are there to facilitate the play, calling the close ones, according to the rules, otherwise not getting themselves in the way–as they did in this game by over-ruling the outcome on the field of play on the basis of a highly unusual (& technically highly questionable) interpretation of technicalities. The game deserves better.

It’s one thing to miss a half dozen balls & strikes from behind the plate, only to be expected given the number of pitches in a game & the artistry of deception with which these are delivered. You’d expect both catcher & umpire to get fooled once in awhile, as well as the batters, without malice or a better alternative. Replays will show that most of the questionable calls were actually in the marginal area where either might be justified, whether a seam caught a corner or not, or was or wasn’t between the knees & letters of a moving batter’s strike zone. It’s still better to consider each call as final, & close enough to qualify, than to waste energy over the hair’s breadth.

The same isn’t so for most other calls, however. These should always be “right.” Chance may be chance, and in that, fair for all. But there’s no legitimate reason or excuse for getting other calls wrong–out or safe, for example, where the brilliant rule itself gives “ties” to the runner. Given the ability of media to focus on the fact itself, to show it from multiple angles & in slow motion, there’s no excuse for not getting the rare close plays that are made clear on replay as right as possible. That puts the facts first, not the split-second impression of one individual, no matter how well trained.

Putting facts first is another way of keeping the play first, with the umpires facilitators, not independent determiners. The first step in this is to empower the umpires as a group, with a role for the managers within a process for appealing an initial call. Even the umpire making that call ought to have more attachment to the call being made or rendered right than to his own image for having been right or wrong in the split or initial moment.

Perhaps, for important games, a “superior” umpire with some deep expertise in the rule-book would be available for the final ruling, with consideration of replays, arguments, etc. As in the legal system at large, it’s naïve to think all umpires would have the same insight and higher judgment of the existing rules. At the major league level, all presumably know what the statutes & rules say, but not all should be expected to have the same informed level of interpretive judgment. Important games deserve someone with that level having the final responsibility, however, quite a different skill set than having a keen eye for the strike-zone & ear for ball-in-glove, runner’s foot hitting the bag.

II. Putting the Judges First

In organized baseball, the umpires are important, but, despite some popular rhetoric, not generally first. They are third, at best. The other two, in whatever order you choose, are the player-teams & the rule-making body that determines (& tweaks) the regulations under which all participants agree to operate. The umpires only carry out these rules, according to instructions, being hirelings of the rule-setting organization. The players are hirelings, too, subject to the set rules & subsequent rulings.

Things get considerably trickier in sports that require a more dominant & determinative role for evaluative judgment of elements, as in figure skating. Something is invariably lost in the aesthetic realm trying to conform more & more precisely to a pre-set configuration of evaluative conventions stipulated by the judges, aside from more flagrant examples of things like point-trading.

To my taste, something is lost in the aesthetics of basketball from the importance of referees in the highly variable calling of fouls & charges. There’s already plenty of chance in the bounce of the ball on the rim & backboard, enough to make the difference in many contests. It’s all the worse, however, when that same level of chance shows up in referee judgments with an equal or greater effect on outcomes. There may not be a better way, given the nature of the sport, but it takes away from the artistic pleasure we get from sports when too many big games are decided by calls that are questionable or worse.

At first glance, an interest in keeping the play as the primary determiner of outcomes, not the umpires, may seem in keeping with the judicial view that judges should apply the laws, not make them. Although in many cases this is necessarily the judge’s job, to apply the laws to the circumstances at hand, in other cases, the laws themselves require interpretation. You can’t apply what you don’t understand, and understanding, by its very nature, is subject to being held at various levels or depths.

In addition, the higher you go in the system, the more issues center on the rules themselves, not on the circumstances. The lower courts establish matters of fact, in other words, whereas the higher courts consider things like the constitutionality of the laws as applied. In this case, there is a flaw in the existing law or its current interpretation, that needs a higher judgment than that which umpires on the field could render on the spur of the moment. Not only should the rule be clarified, but the appeal process on the spot.

III. [See top of page for newest post]

DUELING MARRIAGES

The New Mexico Supreme Court is hearing the case of same-gender marriages today, to determine a standard for the state as a whole. Currently, seven counties have interpreted the law & state constitution as mandating same-gender licenses on the same grounds as bi-gender ones. Almost certainly, the court will rule in favor of their interpretation. Given the federal judgments, there is little else they can do. And given the prior decisions of states like New York, which legalized such marriages for their own citizens, there was no alternative for the federal Supreme Court but to treat those legally married within their own states equally.

If there is anything surprising in the matter, it is how slow some people & regions have been to understand what the question is, and what the issue is about. It is NOT about one’s views on marriage, even less about one’s views on sex. Nor is it an issue of “gay versus straight,” or of how one feels about homosexuality (if anything)–attracted, repelled or neither. Nor is about one’s religious views, no matter how passionately embraced. Religious freedom & freedom of thought, belief & expression guarantees you the right to believe, think & (up to a point) say whatever you choose.

Of course, these freedoms come at a price, a set of conditions, the most basic part of which is that everyone else has the same rights for themselves, and we can’t tell them what they or their religions must believe, think, or say. That’s the most basic part of our covenant, which protects us from our worst potential, the oppression of one group’s belief & thought on others. We say, each has the same freedom, and where they disagree, government must remain totally neutral, even when its agents & executives may have personal views & preferences. They may practice their beliefs as persons, but not as agents of the government.

Although often sloppily confused for one another, there are three quite distinct aspects to the marriage question–language, law, & religious belief. Individuals, within the law, have the entire freedom to choose their own religious beliefs &, within limits, their own use of language. These “limits” are imposed by public safety (e.g., not falsely yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater to panic the crowd) & laws against forms of fraud & misrepresentation (where definable damages affect not just the individuals, but also the integrity & trustworthiness of the marketplace).

The question of language use first came to popular consciousness over the distinction between “marriage” & “civil union.” It might have made sense to use the former for the religious sacrament & the latter for the civil record, had there not already been such wide use of the former for the latter–as in the very term “Marriage License.” The state has no business saying one definition of the sacrament is “marriage” but another isn’t,  within the parameters of two partners acting with informed consent. Either all marriages were, from the state’s perspective, “civil unions,” or all were marriages.

Just as the state has no business sticking its nose in people’s religious views (or lack thereof), it has no business in the sexual area either, within the same limits. It cannot say, married couples must engage in one kind of sex or another to qualify. If two best buds, whether two old comrades or two “Boston Biddies,” want to make it a living partnership, whose business is it whether sexuality is involved? Whatever one’s own inclinations or views on sexual (as on religious) matters is not at issue.

The question of what you “believe” is really irrelevant, if you believe in the covenant that says you have the right to your belief–& so does your neighbor to his &/or hers. That’s all that’s at play here. Similarly, in the case of language, you may use terms like “marriage” any way you see fit in your personal use–but not in your civic duties, in that all share the responsibility to respect the equal rights others have to their own use. The law cannot discriminate, so its definition of “marriage” must accommodate the variety of views held by its citizens, not discriminating on a personal or religious basis.

It’s really that simple, and has nothing to do with how you’d answer the question of what your views on marriage are.

 

 

 

Zen that isn’t

The zen that is written of is not the real zen.
–Bao Lo, Half-baked & Loaded

Zen that isn’t isn’t necessarily either.
–Nozen, By the Dozen

Every stick has at least one end.
–Mullah Murray, Mule Tales

Every end has at least one fork.
–John Dunne, Bridge Tolls for thee 

A licked fork is reward enough. A licked finger is the cook’s gravy.
–Betty Crocked, The Doll House Cookies Cookook

No MSG.
–Bali Hai, Miss Fortune 8

*

Timeless, Lifeless & Broke.
–Hank Loose, Skank Publishing

Where speech is free, ads are cheap.
—The Periphery Center Post Date Record Telegram

*

Coming Soon, from Be Bop Now Here Press:

From Tinkers to Evers to Chance to Stinkers to Whenever to Probability Wave Theory…
role of the sock hop, skip, trip, & jump in the evolution of cooperation in sports science

From Nothing Appearing, to Nowhere Heading…

Pot-holed roads, rice-paper highways…

Alice’s Zafu Adventures…

Up Clementine’s Mountain….    

Government Shutdown I+II

“The Office of Government Openness–closed until further notice.”

“Sixteen days, and what do you get?
Another four months & deeper in debt.” –Tennessee Ernie Yugo

On this auspicious day in Dang, the two branches of congress got into a hissy-fit & piss-off &, largely thanks to an obstreperous P-party faction effectively leveraging its minority status to prevent funding the continuing operation of the government they supposedly served. Initially, pundits predicted they were “just making a point” (namely that they could sabotage the process if they really tried), but wouldn’t. Then, in the lead up to the deadline, it seemed the obstreperous faction was starting to enjoy their leveraged power so much, the pundits changed their tune, deciding the only way P-party members could really prove they could was to show they would. And they did.

At first, people thought it would last “just a few days,” but no one, least of all the majority of the senators & representatives, imagined what would happen next. Not that they hadn’t tried. At least they thought they had, having funded the military (& secretly, the security & emergency services) beforehand. The midnight deadline came, and the non-legislators went home to sleep. They hadn’t counted on inability to get back in the next day, so long as the government was closed.

Historians disagree on exactly who first gave what orders, but agree that those who showed up at the Dumdome (where legislative sausage was made), as well as at parks, monuments & national lavatories, found doors locked, gates shut & the way blocked by military guards. “The government has closed,” was all the guards would (or could) say.

Nor was there an initially obvious way for the ex-legislators to remedy the situation, having defunded their own roles, positions & facilities. They were no longer in business, though with healthy benefits & rich friends, few faced the difficulties of lower-paid government servants or of those would-be beneficiaries of the services no longer provided. These could be considered “collateral damage,” sacrifices to make the political point.

Contrary to mass media hype & public expectation, the well-being of the country & even its markets at first seemed to improve, at least according to the RSE Index, named for Richter-Sphincter & Evans–who merged the Richter & Sphincter scales with “Evans’ Even-handed Happiness Measure” (as expressed in the enthusiasm of both hands clapping).  Even shares in large defense companies deriving most of their cash-flow from government contracts rose, along with the role of the military.

By squabbling themselves out of a job, the “anti-government” faction in government had (wittingly &/or unwittingly) escalated the importance of both the military & other federal emergency structures under executive control, necessarily expanding the emergency powers of the president, as Commander In Chief.

It was all the more ironic that this had not come about from a right-wing military coup or dictatorial usurpation by an over-reaching head of state allegedly acting out of their duty to save the country from some real or presumed internal threats. (Whether these threats came from radical progressive free-thinkers on the left, flaming sword religious fanatics on the right or congressional zealots on the zig zag might seem secondary.)

It was not uncommon for military & security officials (or corporate big-wigs for that matter) to use the threat of their power to restrain reform-minded civilian officials who might otherwise be inclined to hold them  accountable after a period of “unfortunate excess” under a more encouraging administration. They were only doing what was wanted, what was asked of them. “You don’t like it, don’t ask. We’re here to serve. (But if you try to punish us, you’ll be sorry, too.)”

The irony is that this time the role was forced on both military & head of state by the congressional abdication, however inadvertent. Whether intentionally sabotaged or an implication of their “unenlightened ways,” they had locked themselves out of a closed government, leaving only the military (& its civilian “commander in cheap,” as he put it privately) to pick up the slack, exercising emergency powers made all the more powerful, it turned out, by hardly known secret provisions of earlier laws the president’s team “re-discovered.”

The ironies pile on top of each other. One was that those most responsible for the shutdown billed themselves as “penny pinchers” committed to putting a lid on runaway federal spending, yet the shutdown cost the country dearly, in added expenses, extra costs, lost work, investor anxiety, & pure waste. “It is hard to put a figure on it, or even to get one’s mind around the negative productivity, except in comparison to the tax system,” explained one economist, recently audited, who was “not at all sure” what the P-party motives were.

“Although they talk as if they above all others want a less wasteful system than the current tax code & large government represent, there is also the possibility they think the quickest way to bring down what they don’t like is first to make it worse, so bad that everyone else will start to feel like them. This is not such an uncommon approach, however  backward, often employed by provocateurs who want the general public to experience a government’s capacity for cruelty & injustice,” he added.

If those who supposedly wanted less government intrusion into our lives & attention, along with more fiscal responsibility, were responsible for a surge in both pure waste & the executive branch’s emergency powers, it was not the best of worlds for many progressives either. As much as they blamed the P-party penny pinchers, they were not tickled pink to be ruled (including on issues of taxes, budgets & free expression) by a  militarized federal structure, even one that seemed benign, hadn’t sought the power in the first place, & pledged to use its new powers responsibly for the benefit of the many, “& only as long as necessary.”{}

A sense of responsibility prevented NEAT/ the National Emergency Action Task-force from giving a congress that had proven itself self-destructive power back to do more damage, at least until the people had had a chance to throw out the saboteurs & start over. Until then, NEAT was given authority for all executive, legislative & judicial planning to  maintain all essential civil functions & bring essential services back in gear (starting with a “Continuing Resolution” to maintain prior levels in most, but not all, agencies).

All federal offices & office holders were given 48 hours to submit a Relative-Emergency-Likely Importance-&-Economics-Evaluation Form (RELIEF), which the NEAT-force folks used to calculate funding levels (if any). Only agencies, offices & branches of government which could establish output worth more than input qualified for emergency funding. It was not surprising that the former carping, whining, & monkey-wrenching legislators fell very near the bottom of NEAT’s “objective-importance-priority list,” quite far under the Parks, Memorials & Recreational Facilities, which themselves fell rather far below Lavatory & Custodial Facilities, all these adding some “emergency relief” value.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame all the legislators equally, nor to blame some at all, but the institutional organization as a whole had “failed to pass the mustard.” Thanks to the efforts of the factional saboteurs, even citizens who had distrusted the military beforehand generally approved of the improvement, however reluctant to express that view publicly–& tentative, reserving final judgment for the transitional return to popular elections, starting over with a more enlightened bunch.

At least that was the hope–that no future congress would sabotage itself so readily ever again, at least in the immediate future–“even in the national interest,” said some; “except in the national interest,” said others. “So what else is new?” asked still others, forged in irony.

[Historians now know the first thing the “new & improved” legislature did when fresh elections were held, as promised, was to exempt itself from future government shutdowns, passing what was called “the unlocked legislature loophole special account provision” slipped in as a footnote to the “Emergency Stress Reduction Act”–over the president’s veto. Henceforth they’d not only keep full funding for their offices, staffs, & spa, with a raise & bonus for the extra pressure, but also insure  certain committee chairs a place at the table on the next NEAT….

Moral of the story: Never underestimate the human potential for learning from prior mistakes, even if only in order to make the same mistakes more effectively the next time.]

———————————————————————————————

II. A few highlights of the Dang shutdown, clipped from UPPS (Unedited Press Post Service) dispatches:

“The Stopped Clock–with no one to wind it.” The National Time Bank may go bust as a result of the government shutdown, according to financial experts in investments involving duration, thanks to the fact that no one was there to wind the standard operating clock mechanism, the first time since the bank was founded….

Witchful Thinking, the organization that turns tricks to treats, has closed its government-funded Halloween Foundation & trimmed staff at its Haunted House Hotel chain to a skeleton crew in anticipation of horrors & doom…..

The National Zoo is closing, leaving the question still uncertain whether this means the staff will lock all the gates & walk away, or open all the gates & run. “Who needs a zoo when you have a congress like this?” asked one observer.

CSiii, the Center for the Study of Ignorance, Injustice & Insanity, the country’s leading experimental clearing house for intra-governmental research, has been forced to suspend all government-funded projects at exactly 11:47 A.M. yesterday, under orders to immediately stop whatever they were doing at that moment, leaving everything just as it was, “& walk away. Those lingering to tend to equipment, volunteers or human subjects in mid examination may be cited, fined, & imprisoned.”

UPPS PS’s (Unedited Press Post Service Post Scripts)

1. Ignorance, Injustice & Insanity are not restricted to our government, nor is the Center’s funding, so some projects continue, including some funded by hostile governments, mad venture capitalists & non-governmental organizations that thrive on mass chaos & failure. Some believe this offered those studying the three i’s in government a golden opportunity that was totally wasted by having the funding for such projects cut off by the shutdown. Others claim this is “business as usual,” just more visible & attention-distracting than average.

2. One high & previously respected expert in the organization suggested that CSiii should use the opportunity to study itself, since “ignorance often begins at home (never mind insanity).” He was then reportedly dismissed without pay, charged with various  crimes (e.g., disloyalty,  reputational sabotage, divulging of secrets), & incarcerated in a mental facility beyond the reach of relatives, the Red Double Cross & other independent observers, but “with a golden opportunity to study the injustice he brought upon himself.”

3. In the belief that ” stopped clock is exactly right twice a day,” the National Stopped Clock Museum was founded & now draws countless visitors every day, many of whom pay extra for souvenirs, including replicas. Among the centerpieces of the museum’s collection are the clock that stopped during the Dang shutdown, remnants of the country’s first two atomic clocks smashed into each other “to see what would happen,” & an experimental black-hole simulator in which clocks are not the only things stopped.

4. There is also a “Tardish,” modeled on the archaic British telephone booth used by the alleged time-lord/ charlatan (take your pick) operating under the name Dr. Whom, sued by Britty Telecom who claimed their booths were not designed for examinations, let alone Dr. Whom’s operations. They claimed the misrepresentation made people angry at the company when they found the actual telephone booths did not have more room inside than they looked, nor could they flip the bird at time-space constraints except as fiber optic lines, satellite bouncebacks & recording machines made possible.

5. Secretly telecom experts were pleased as punch cartoons made them out to be at the extra attention the show & their lawsuit brought to their booths, as later confessions made clear–just as booths were about to disappear, or morph into something else (like a cellphone in your pocket or a bug in your ear). Starting with the 1st miniaturized portable telephone boothlet you could take with you wherever you went, & finishing with every head containing its own connection to the cosmic web, the iTard now comes with aps for examining, operating & traveling through time, space & other dimensions.

6. iWitch, uWitch, oui-allWitch for goodWitch 4 gr8 Itch–are all rumored to be in one pipeline or another. The iWitch will supposedly not only cater to your every wish, but find water. (An advanced model may turn pumpkins into carriages.) The oui-all sounds like it’s from the French south. The goodWitch4 is supposed to be a 4th generation iWitch, whereas the gr8 Itch represents “a revolution in smart product design.” Said to come with its own marketing, gr8 Itch may also sport a service contract to radically expand the company’s scratch potential.

7. Skeptics have questioned the newness of such offerings, pointing out the various itches said to have been released from Pandora’s box, as well as the many alleged witches sold in bottles, lamps, & other rubbables over time. Nor were the two only recently conjoined. The witch’s itch, although variously expressed & interpreted in folklore & psychology labs, seems to trace back to a time before memory. (See “Call Me Hazel,” in the Witch-is-Witch Apothecary, if you can get your hands on one, for the history of itch unguents & scratching powders.)

8. “Of all the numbers one through ten, odd & even back again,
of those that I expect to rate, the juiciest is probably 8.
Two may spit & ten come late, the hungriest is probably 8.
One may hold its finger high, invite another in the eye,
stick a thumb in pumpkin pie, cross your thighs & hope to sigh.
Three’s a crowd & four’s still more, cornerstones for floor & door,
five’s a hand (whether in fingers or poker),
with six & nine & seven jokers.
Still when it comes right down to choose a mate,
.                  nothing beats an 88.”

–from “Eat What You Love, Love Whom You 8: the cannibal’s cannabis  cookbook,” Dr. Whosits Whatsits, Tardy Press: any day now*

* In which the not necessarily good Dr. traces the love-8 relationship from the predator’s “prey, eat, love” to modern dating practices in which  prospective mates are offered dinner & drinks as part of “the hunt.”**

** See The Hunt for What: in search of the elusive,” if you ever get the chance.  Extremely difficult to find, let alone identify & describe, some believe it contains an account of “what they were really thinking” when trying to figure out what possible rationale was behind many policy decisions supposedly in response to vital national interests. Others think it contains more erotically inclined material, e.g., an account of “the search for & ultimate discovery of the elusive G-spot, famed among mariners & submariners alike.”

*** Although it was no Shakespeare who wrote “the quality of elusiveness is not strained,” it could have been someone almost as eloquent & articulate working for a modern advertising megafirm. If so, the credit probably went to his boss, who went on to win many industry awards as “the man who bottled elusiveness,” “the expert who made absence the essence of presence, pre-scents & presents”–“the genius who left his stamp on various absinthes, his touch on countless seductions, & his strain on puree of carrots.”

**** “Who was that masked man?” The man who liked to be called “Mr. Elusive” had a genius for attracting attention, even in a crowd, where he was usually the only one masked. (If other masked men arrived, it was said he either slipped away or took off his mask & went unrecognized.) It is believed he may have been the first person to use the name Alias as a first name, before it became almost as generic for Pseudonym as Anonymous or for a Pen Name as Red Ink, after which it was seen (like the mask) as calling too much attention to itself.

***** In “The True Elusive–the ghost within,” written for, by &/or about the founder of Ghostwriters Anonymous &/or its main competitor, Ghostwriters in the Sky, the former Dean of Day & Night Students in Absentia at UGS–the Unfamous Ghostwriters School–says “The famous elusive is not the true elusive. The true elusive is neither particularly proud, nor unusually shy, but mainly humble as dirt, easily blending in.”

****** By contrast, there was the famous photographer who had only himself as a subject, including, among his many self-portraits, a rather large collection of thumbs, although many more of flashes in mirrors, & others without flash of a body with a camera in front of where a face might once have been.