Monthly Archives: July 2016

A Good Year for the Roses

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George Jones with LoveI believe it was The Atlantic magazine that carried a one page short story on its last page. And in its writer’s guidelines, it said it was looking for stories with the impact of a whole novel. The one story I remember was amazing. It was about a man whose wife had just died. And going through her things, he found a collection of illustrations of their son who had been killed in an accident when he was quite young. Apparently, every year, she went to a forensic artist to get an update on what he would look like. She told the artist that he had been kidnapped. It’s a heartbreaking story — not just that she never got over the loss but that she hid it from her husband for years.

There are songs that have a similar power. One of those is Jerry Chesnut’s country classic, “A Good Year for the Roses.” It’s so evocative. What’s especially great is the use of lipstick traces. First, it’s on the cigarettes in the ashtray. And then we get this beautiful mixture of pathos and bitterness:

And the lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee
That you poured and didn’t drink
But at least you thought you wanted it,
That’s so much more than I can say for me.

The other aspect that maybe is specific to me: the chorus about only being able to talk about trivialities when you want to talk about something deep. I know everyone has had that experience. But it has long been a painful irony that I can write but not really talk. Of course, in “A Good Year for the Roses,” Chesnut makes the obvious truth concrete in the second verse, “I guess the reason we’re not talking — there’s so little left to say we haven’t said.” By the time it reaches that point, talking is worthless.

But “A Good Year for the Roses” really is a novel in a song. You can listen to Chesnut do part of the song, but here is the whole original by George Jones:

Afterword

Yes, I know that Elvis Costello did this song on Almost Blue. And I love his version and that album. But even the biggest Costello fan has to admit that he didn’t do much with any of those covers. The production and performance are often identical — which I believe was the point. Regardless, I think it is far more likely that readers of Frankly Curious are familiar with his version than Jones’ version, much less Chesnut’s.

George Jones with Love cover licensed under Fair use, via Wikimedia.

Yanosuke Hirai and the Heroism of Unreasonableness

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Yanosuke Hirai

You may be thinking, “But it wasn’t the earthquake that caused plant failure, it was the tsunami!” You are a clever soul. Nuclear power plants are designed to shut down in the event of an emergency, and Fukushima did. However the fuel in a nuclear reactor does not stop emitting radiation after a reactor is shut down. They need coolant to prevent a chain reaction which can result in great damage.

Cooling Nuclear Plants

This coolant is usually water, which is why nuclear plants are usually near a major water source (ocean, lake, river.) The coolant needs to circulate through the fuel, and it does so through electric-powered pumps. Should electricity fail, the pumps stop working.

Of course, power plants have backup systems for this, and so did Fukushima. When the severe earthquake interrupted power service, backup generators kicked into operation. They would have been sufficient to keep coolant flowing. But the tsunami which followed, ruined most of these backup generators.

The plant had a seawall, which was at the legal height mandated by Japanese regulatory agencies. And the tsunami completely overran the wall. The power company was eventually found liable for insufficient emergency protocols. However, a tsunami wave higher than ever seen before can’t be predicted, right?

Wrong.

Yanosuke Hirai

North of Fukushima (closer to the quake’s epicenter) was the Oanagawa nuclear plant, operated by a different power company. It faced a similar tsunami wave; its sea walls held, and the plant was not dangerously harmed. In fact, several nearby residents whose homes had been destroyed by the tsunami stayed at the plant site as a refugee center.

The hero who saved that plant was a long-dead man named Yanosuke Hirai.

Hirai was a senior engineer with the power company. As a boy, he visited the town of his birth, and in this town was an ancient Shinto shrine. Legend had it that the shrine was affected by tsunami flooding in a terrifying 869 CE earthquake. Supposedly, Yanosuke Hirai never stopped thinking about that visit.

Demanding More Than the Minimum

When the Oanagawa plant was built, Yanosuke Hirai insisted on a higher elevation and higher seawall than other engineers thought necessary. The design team at Fukushima actually lowered the plant’s elevation during construction, for the logical reason that closer to the ocean meant less cost pumping the water uphill.

“Corporate compliance is different from compliance. Just being ‘not guilty’ is not enough.” —Tatsuji Oshima

After the 2011 disaster, a Portland Oregonian reporter who’d lived in Japan for years, read about the Oanagawa plant, and tracked down Tatsuji Oshima, Yanosuke Hirai’s former underling. Oshima said Hirai’s obsession with safety was always a huge battle he fought against institutional inertia, and Hirai considered bureaucrats to be “human trash.”

The reporter, Richard Read, wrote that this would be almost unheard-of in Japan, a “society known for pounding the nail that sticks up.” And Read has lived among our friends on those lovely islands, so I defer to his judgement.

But I’d be surprised if it’s a Japanese issue. As Oshima said to Read, “In your country, too, there are probably bureaucrats or officials who never take final responsibility.” What a gentleman! “Probably” is quite the polite understatement.

Going Along, Getting Along, Catastrophe

Humans are tribal, and I believe it to be a flaw of confirmation bias. We are learning creatures by nature. When an infant finds that some shiny thing hurts (a candle flame), they try it another time or two, then tell themselves a story: “candles hurt.” These stories, by which we identify patterns and try to rationalize them, are how we avoid unpleasant experiences in the future. And some patterns are well worth identifying. (This is how science works.)

But it can lead us into confirmation bias. We tell ourselves a story about what we experienced — a unexpectedly rude stranger, a bad coworker, a toxic relationship, whatever. And we look for a pattern which confirms our story about why that experience happened. When you look for examples that confirm your suspicions, you will find them!

Perhaps the oldest trick in magic is the “cups and balls” routine. Most magicians do it and everyone has their own version. Penn & Teller’s version involves doing the trick “straight” and then using clear plastic cups and having Penn explain exactly what they are doing as they are doing it. The trick still works because we look where it is natural to look. We look at the big man juggling the little balls, not the the little man placing a big ball under a cup.

People see what they expect to see.

Dangers of Confirmation Bias

In institutions, confirmation bias tends to create environments where the “right sort” of people are welcomed and given enormous leeway. The “wrong sort” are seen as untrustworthy, scrutinized for examples of “not being a good fit.” Which naturally confirms the bias! The “wrong sort” leave that unpleasant work environment, the “right sort” stay where they’ve found a place. This is largely why a problematic institution — say, a hospital with a history of patient neglect, or an energy company that pooh-poohs safety concerns — can be exceedingly difficult to change.

Clearly, Yanosuke Hirai was the “wrong sort.” He was unquestionably brilliant, but a pain in everyone’s neck. He was not a “team player.” And yet the company hiring him got someone who would ultimately save them billions of dollars. And the company without him is now liable for billions in damages.

There’s an inherent problem with capitalism here. The company which tolerated Yanosuke Hirai’s squeaky wheel didn’t see benefit from the decision until decades after his death. And I don’t know how to solve that problem. Companies always claim to want “outside the box” thinking, currently fashionable corporate gibberish. What they want is someone who’s creative, without being really creative — disruptive without actually disrupting anything.

So let’s salute a man who never quite belonged, who considered the closed-minded to be “human trash,” and who took heroic stands ultimately benefiting thousands of lives. Thank you, Yanosuke Hirai!

Image of Yanosuke Hirai by Zsefvgyj (own work), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikipedia.

No, Jefferson Didn’t Want to End Slavery in the Declaration of Independence

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XXXPaul FinkelmanIn his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the Crown in more forceful language, asserting that the king had “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty” by perpetuating the African slave trade. Calling it “piratical warfare,” Jefferson asserted that “a CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain” was so “Determined to keep open a market where MEN” were bought and sold that he used his “negative” to suppress “every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.”

The Continental Congress removed Jefferson’s tirade from the Declaration, in part because it simply did not ring true. The colonists, for the most part, had been willing and eager purchasers of slaves. Nor is there any evidence that either Jefferson or any of the other leaders of Virginia had any interest in actually ending slavery. Virginia’s attempt to ban the trade was purely economic, and not based on any moral opposition to slavery. Similarly, the Crown’s refusal to allow them to limit or end the trade was economic.

—Paul Finkelman
The Abolition of the Slave Trade

Image of Paul Finkelman cropped from a frame in the video Agenda Plus: Paul Finkelman, licensed under Fair Use.

4th of July: Peace, Love, and Understanding

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Nick Lowe - Peace, Love, and UnderstandingIn 1978, Elvis Costello recorded the best known version of “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding.” It’s a great version, there’s no question of that. But a lot of people are surprised to learn that he didn’t write it. This is because his version seems sarcastic. The song was written by Nick Lowe, a man certainly capable of great cynicism. But I think this song is really a self-indictment. It’s an honest question, “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?”

When I was in graduate school, I lived with two Brits. I liked them both very much. I still do. They were fun people. But they had a very cynical view of the world and considered themselves very cool. In some ways, I thrived around them. It was knowing them and their incredible self-assuredness that got me to start my first underground newspaper and eventually led to me being a professional writer. But it also brought out a lot of bad things in me, especially being over-conscious of how people viewed me.

As any teenager can tell you, the easiest way to feel un-judged is to be cynical and to pretend that nothing really matters. And I think Nick Lowe suffered from that same thing as many creatively minded people do. So the song is kind of him slapping himself in the face. I know how that goes. I remember writing a song once told from one perspective and thinking that it was so unfair. So I wrote a song from the other perspective. The second song was better, because it was more thoughtful.

I think that America suffers from the same kind of insecurity. This is why we take up 48% of the world’s military spending. We just aren’t right with us. What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding? Everything! It’s for weak people, suckers, or as Donald Trump would say, losers. But I want all the peace, love, and understanding that I can get.

The 4th of July always strikes me as the opposite of peace, love, and understanding. When I was kid, I liked the fireworks. They were colorful. But now they are all illegal. So people get illegal “fireworks” that are not pretty. They are just bombs — loud. And I hate loud sounds. They are the sounds of conflict, hatred, and intolerance. And that is what America is for me to a large extent. If Donald Trump becomes president, it will be a catastrophe, but it will also be fitting.

But on this 4th of July, I want to offer the hope that we can be better — that we won’t laugh at those who are kind. That being an “easy mark” is a sign of greatness, not stupidity. What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding? Not a damned thing.

Nick Lowe image by JUAN GONZALEZ ANDRES, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikipedia.

Morning Music: I Felt Like a Gringo

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I Felt Like a GringoThe Fourth of July always makes me think of the Minutemen’s song “I Felt Like a Gringo.” It tells the (true) story of the band taking a day trip down to Mexico on 4 July 1982. It ends with the line, “Why’d I spend the fourth in someone else’s country?”

I guess that’s why I don’t much go in for this holiday. I feel like an outsider. I think that’s a lot of my desire to live in Mexico: if I must feel like an outsider, I might as well be one.

Anyway, “I Felt Like a Gringo” was first released on the EP, Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat. It was the first Minutemen album I bought. Less than three years later, D Boon would be dead in a tragic car accident, and one of the best bands ever was finished.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Got a ton of white boy guilt, that’s my problem,
Obstacle of joy, one reason to use some drugs.
Slept on a Mexican beach — slept in trash
American trash — thinking too much can ruin a good time.

I asked a Mexican who ran a bar for Americans
“Who won,” I said, “The election?”
He laughed, I felt like a gringo.
They played a song and they had some fun with us.

Why can’t you buy a good time?
Why are there soldiers in the street?

Why’d I spend the fourth in someone else’s country?

Album cover licensed under Fair use, via Wikimedia.

Clara Shortridge Foltz’s Smack Down

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Clara Shortridge FoltzCounsel tells you that I am a woman. I wonder that the planets did not stand still in their course and rivers cease to run to the sea at the announcement of this startling discovery. I am amazed that His Honor did not faint upon the bench and that you gentlemen of the jury have survived this awful shock to your nervous systems.

Let me kindly admonish the learned counsel that in a matter of great pith and moment like this he should break the news gently and not plunge such an original thought upon an unprepared jury. A few more such thoughtless revelations and your nervous forces will be destroyed and your reason dethroned. Counsel should beware how he heedlessly enlightens an unprepared jury on such a vital topic.

Again he tells you that I am a woman. By a natural antithesis I presume he would have you infer that he is not. I suppose he wants me to tell you that he is a man and he takes this hurried opportunity and adroit method of testifying to the fact. Though nobody has yet denied it, he seems to be in a fever of anxiety to emphasize that he is a man. I don’t know why he should make such unseemly haste in announcing it…

I am that formidable and terrifying object known as a woman — while he is only a poor, helpless, defenseless man, and he wants you to take pity on him and give him a verdict in this case. I sympathize with counsel in his unhappy condition. True, the world is open to him. He is the peer of all men — he can aspire to the highest offices, he can carry a torch over our streets during a political campaign and sell his vote for a dollar and half on election day, and yet he isn’t satisfied. Like Alexander, who wanted more worlds to conquer, he wants verdicts, and in order to awaken your sympathy for him, he tells you that I am a woman and he is only a man.

—Clara Shortridge Foltz, 1890
(Quote is in response to attorney Thetas Stonehill noting that she was a woman.)
On The Art of The Smack-Down

Image of Clara Shortridge Foltz is in the public domain.

A Message to Us All: 2016 Democratic Party Platform

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2016 Democratic Party PlatformFriday brought exciting news! The 2016 Democratic Party Platform (PDF) was released to the collective yawn of everyone not obsessed with these kinds of things. So naturally, Frank told me to write about it because “it would be interesting.” The wreckage of my eyes due to the draft watermark was a special bonus just for me.

There has been quite a bit of ranting in the press over the supposed two sides (Clinton and Sanders) and the disagreements on various parts of the platform. But I don’t want to get into those kinds of fights on this blog as it is an oasis of calm compared to the rest of the internet. So I will just go over the highlights of the document.

Issue Number One: Economics

The primacy of economics is crystal clear in the 2016 Democratic Party Platform. The first two sections (after the standard preamble, “this is who we are” opening) were dedicated to economics. Although even that understates its importance, because the following two sections are also primarily interested in economics.

The section on the minimum wage and unions was artfully done, in my opinion. It blended the need for people to make a better wage ($15 an hour) with the right to organize and collectively bargain. These two issues alone would fix many of the biggest problems we face.

Economic Fairness

After dealing with improving the economy and creating good jobs, the platform transitions into issues of economic fairness. These often ignored issues greatly impact women and their families. They include: lack of equal pay, paid leave, and proper wages for caregivers. This is actually a big deal.

Unfortunately it did not include specific language that covers what is needed to achieve equal pay: transparency in wages. This, along with vigorous backing of those who bring up pay disparities, is crucial. It is a very real and important issue.

I like that paid leave has become a major issue. And just as important is the treatment of caregivers. They need to be rewarded in the one way we seem to use to measure respect in this country: more money. If you don’t like income inequality, this is one of the ways to fight it.

Wall Street and Trade

The Democratic Party Platform includes a lot of details on how to reign in Wall Street. But it is clearly a very careful effort to balance the divergent views on how to handle the problem that is Wall Street.

And that isn’t the only place that acknowledges that there are some major disagreements on policy. Trade policy is another. The TPP is mention only once and very carefully. The word is that Obama didn’t want the platform to come out against it. It is important to acknowledge dissenters even if their exact wording isn’t adopted.

Social Security

There is language to strengthen Social Security. It discusses making high income earners pay more, but it doesn’t seem to be referring to the payroll tax cap. Instead, it states, “And we will make sure Social Security’s guaranteed benefits continue for generations to come by asking those at the top to pay more, and will achieve this goal by taxing some of the income of people above $250,000.” (The current cap on payroll taxes is less than half of that.) I give it a pass, however, since I think that is something that needs to be legislatively worked out and they do mention making the wealthy pay more.

What’s most interesting about this section of the Democratic Party Platform is how clear it is about maintaining Social Security. When Republicans talk about making the program stronger, they almost always mean that they want to cut benefits. They don’t put it that way. They say they want to cut cost-of-living adjustments. The Democrats explicitly say no. The Republicans want to raise the retirement age. The Democrats explicitly say no. Most important, the Democrats explicitly say that strengthening Social Security requires investing in it — not cutting it until it is a useless program.

Miscellaneous

Since 2006, the Republicans have been on a mission to kill the Constitutionally mandated US Postal Service. So it was very nice to see that the Democratic Party Platform included proposed language to turn a portion of the USPS into a community bank.

The platform has multiple planks detailing how to improve and repair our current failing infrastructure. It calls for a “major federal jobs program” to address this problem. It also calls for a “national infrastructure bank” to pay for “critical infrastructure improvements.” These are exceptionally good ideas.

Death Penalty

For the first time (as far as I can tell) the Democratic Party Platform staunchly opposes the death penalty. The last platform barely mentioned criminal justice and didn’t say much other than more care should be taken for the imposition of the death penalty. This is a pretty big deal since it is stating something that a lot of the members have believed for a long time.

Final Thoughts on the 2016 Democratic Party Platform

One thing I noticed early on is that it entirely ignores the Republican Party. Usually these things are filled with language like, “And this is how we are different from our main opponents.” This time, it only mentions Donald Trump as if the Republicans are completely irrelevant. Considering the current mess of the party? That might be true.

The Democratic Party Platform is long — almost 40 pages. Almost every issue that Democrats care about is addressed in it. As a result, I haven’t gone over every detail and make this long post even longer. But it’s worth reading in whole — or at least skimming for issues you care about. And enjoy the fact that no matter what, it will be better than Trump’s the Republican’s.

Cropped image of 2016 Democratic Party Platform DRAFT July 1, 2016 licensed under Fair Use.

Glenn Greenwald on the Brazil Coup

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Glenn GreenwaldJust think about what has happened when it comes to control over the world’s fifth most populous (and very oil-rich) country [Brazil]. The democratically elected president was impeached despite no allegations of personal corruption — by politicians who are knee-deep in bribery and kickback scandals. The primary pretext used to impeach her has just been debunked by the Senate’s own independent expert report. The corruption-plagued man they installed in her place — who currently has a 70 percent disapproval rating, and whom 60 percent of the country wants impeached — is now secretly meeting with the very judges whose supposed independence, credibility, and integrity were the prime argument against calling this a “coup,” all while he plots to save his bribery-enriched fellow party member. And while all this happens, they are blithely proceeding to impose a right-wing agenda of austerity and privatization that democracy would never allow.

—Glenn Greenwald
Major New Brazil Events Expose the Fraud of Dilma’s Impeachment

Publicity photo of Glenn Greenwald licensed under Fair Use.

Why Donald Trump Will Be the Republican Nominee

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Donald Trump: Republican NomineeScott Lemieux wrote a laugh-out-loud funny article, #NeverTrump: Never Stop #NeverTrumping. It’s about the newest anti-Trump effort. But unlike those loser attempts that came before, this one is really going to work because a lot of people you’ve heard of but who don’t actually have any power are involved in it. But I thought it might be a good time to discuss why Trump absolutely, positively will be the Republican nominee for president.

The truth is, the party can do whatever it wants to do. It can make anyone at all the Republican nominee. It can change the nomination rules to say that anyone is eligible except Donald Trump. And it could do a lot of other more subtle things that would accomplish the same thing. But the party won’t do that because the party would be crazy to do that.

Why Elites Don’t Want Trump as Republican Nominee

Don’t be fooled. The biggest thing against Trump that the Republican establishment has is that he’s going to lose. Him being on the ballot will cause some percentage of Republican voters to not even show up to vote. And that means they not only lose the White House, but a number of down-ballot races that they would otherwise have won. That’s a problem — no doubt about it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that a big loss for Donald Trump will fix the Republican Party. The base will just say that the party didn’t back him. And the elites will just say that you’ve got to keep the bigotry as subtext.

But imagine if the Republican elite come in and say, “You silly Republicans don’t know what you’re doing; so here’s Paul Ryan to run for president!” Now, instead of “some percentage” of Republican voters not showing up to vote, you have a movement. they might show up to vote, just to write-in “Donald Trump.” And then they’ll leave without even looking at the down-ballot Republicans, because they are just part of a corrupt and anti-democratic system.

This is why Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. I can imagine what it must be like for long-time Republicans like Bill Kristol. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. He must have known all this time that the people who were voting for his side weren’t doing it for the same reason. But still, what a shock to have that cognitive dissonance destroyed — and in such a public way! No, they didn’t care about your crazy notions of tax cuts for the rich or rebuilding the Middle East into a libertarian utopia. They just cared about sticking it to black, brown, and poor people.

What the Republican Party Really Is

But like it or not, that is the Republican Party. If it had to depend upon the “reasonable” Republicans like Bill Kristol, the party would get maybe 5% of the vote. The power of Republicanism is the power of hatred. Trump is great because he is the latest and greatest and most obvious example of this. Sure, Ronald Reagan was a bigot who started his campaign as the Republican nominee near where Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered with a speech about states’ rights.

Wink!

Wink!

Wink!

But Trump would never be so subtle. Those civil rights advocates came down to Mississippi to make trouble and they got what they deserved! (Of course, Trump wouldn’t say that today; hating blacks explicitly just isn’t what you do; you hate Mexicans and Muslims instead.) And the people who find that kind of thing appealing are critical to the Republican Party.

Without Bigotry, the GOP Is a Regional Party

Even if you want to be really generous to the Republican Party and say that such people are only a third of the party (and I think it’s more like 80%), that would still make the Republicans a regional party — only competitive in the deepest of red states. And note: I said “competitive” not “dominant.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that a big loss for Donald Trump will fix the Republican Party. The base will just say that the party didn’t back him. And the elites will just say that you’ve got to keep the bigotry as subtext. Nothing’s going to change in the Republican Party. If old school Republicans didn’t leave the party a decade ago, they aren’t going to leave it now.

But Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate. I am as certain of that as I am about what I had for breakfast this morning. And for the record: as usual, I had nothing for breakfast.

“Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Short Film Inside 500 Days of Summer

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500 Days of SummerI’ve never seen the film 500 Days of Summer. And I’m not inclined to. It is directed by Marc Webb, who directed the 2012 version of The Amazing Spider-Man, which I wrote about at the time, The Not So Amazing Spider-Man Writers. As you can tell from the title, my problem was with the writers, not the director. But the director is generally the guy who says, “Yes, this screenplay is ready; let’s shoot!” And look: if the guy were an artist, would he be directing such dreck?

But the other day, I came upon this one sequence in the film that is shot in split screen. It is “Expectations vs Reality.” The principle character is coming to the birthday party of his ex-lover. He imagines that they are going to get back together. So on the left side of the screen, we see his expectations for the party, and on the right, we see the reality. In general, I’m not a fan of the split screen. In fact, I even wrote that I did not see a narrative reason to ever use it. Well, I think I was wrong. This is just marvelous:

I did hop over to Wikipedia to see if the whole of 500 Days of Summer might be worth checking out. But it turns out the whole film is more or less what you would expect from the director of The Amazing Spider-Man: boy falls in love with the wrong girl, eventually realizes it, finds the right girl. But this three minutes of film is great.

Afterword

If you get rid of the whole love-interest aspect of the reality part of the story, that’s pretty much every party that I’ve ever been to. It’s also why I don’t like going to parties — and why I always bring a book.

The Speed of Life

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Hamster on Spinning Wheel - This is lifeI know you must all get tired of these articles where I whine about my life. But I think this one is a bit different and more interesting. It occurred to me today that what I most hate about my life is the speed of it. What is the point of it all? I understand that everyone has to work. But we all run around doing mostly pointless things. We do bad work — quickly.

For a month now, I’ve been wanting to write about two translations of Don Quixote. The first is by the painter Charles Jarvis and the second is by the novelist Tobias Smollett. The latter is the better known of the two, and is still published. In fact, the Barnes & Noble Classics edition uses the Smollett translation. The problem is, it is almost certainly not a translation. He seems to have just taken Jarvis’ translation and rewritten it.

To write about that properly would take days — many days. There are certainly at least a few PhD dissertations in it. I’m sure I could get a very long article just comparing one chapter. And that would be a worthy use of my time, even though very few people would be interested in reading it. It’s not like the “Smollett ripped off Jarvis” fact hasn’t been well established. Indeed, in 1949, Samuel Putnam wrote, “The version published by T G Smollett in 1755 merits little consideration as it is merely a working over of Jarvis.” But there is much to be said for doing something worthy at a leisurely pace.

A Sudden Opportunity

The funny thing is that after thinking this all day, I got the opportunity last night when the power for the entire neighborhood died. At first, I was frantic. But once I found the candles, I realized it was quite a blessing. I got one of my Jarvis copies out and started to read, laying on my couch. It’s hard to read by candle light, but that made it even better. It forces you to read slower and you can savor every word. And just as I was really getting into it — Ta da! — the power came back on.

And the world went back to its normal frenetic pace. I had to finish an article for work that had to be done fast. (If I’m writing it, it’s because it has to be done right away; about the best turn-around time is three days for a freelancer for reason that really have nothing to do with them.) And there were several other things. Plus, there was Frankly Curious, but you know: nothing really good or anything. This, as a matter of fact.

Pointless Speed

It wouldn’t matter if we were at war. Or working at a hospital. In fact, I tell my writers that when they screw up, “We run a website, not an ER.” But that really is the problem with the modern world: we treat everything like it’s life or death. I have a friend who works for ComCast — or whatever they call themselves now. And he works enormous numbers of hours. And when there is a big launch, he works even more hours.

And why? Really! I want to know. It isn’t life or death. It isn’t even profit or loss. It’s more or less profit. We have the technology to allow everyone to live meaningful, fulfilling lives. But instead, we all run around like some kind of bizarre organic perpetual motion machine. It’s not a machine that does anything of much value. It’s more like a hamster on a spinning wheel.

We’re crazy. We are all crazy.

Hamster on spinning wheel by Doenertier82 at the German language Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia.