Commuter Olympics
NYC is in the running for the 2012 Olympics, so that’s an issue with quite a bit of visibility to The City. (FYI for those not from NYC, people from here don’t typically call it “New York” or “NYC.” They’ll say “how long have you been in The City” or “I’m going into The City tomorrow.” For those who are thinking that this comes across as acting like NYC is the center of the universe, my answer would be “nailed it!” Anyway, with Olympics on our minds around here, and me being in a TGIF frame of mind and all (as I sit here under the Hudson River waiting for the train to start moving again), let me offer a suggestion for the Olympic Movement at large: Enough with the Ancient Greeks! Most of us live in metro areas now, so we need games one can imagine doing in cities. Just look at track and field. Maybe in Ancient Greece you could walk out of your villa and throw a javelin or discus, but try doing that in Times Square! I propose a greater focus on applying the games to modern life, and in that spirit I humbly offer the following for consideration: the Urban Steeplechase. The classic steeplechase has runners (human or equine) going cross country, negotiating lots of disagreeable impediments like mud and fences. The Urban steeplechase practiced by hundreds of thousands of NYC commuters every weekday is every much as challenging as it is unheralded. The Olympics coming to NYC would be the best opportunity we’ll ever have to rectify that! Here’s how I picture it. The race starts in the bowels of Penn Station (the only station in the civilized world that is nothing BUT bowels!) All the racers pack into the trains, and when the little red light comes on and the doors open, they’re off! The first strategic decision is getting to ground level. Do you hold out for the escalator and maybe be able to walk up the left (thus getting the power boost) or, for fear of being stuck behind a stander, go for the more lightly traveled stairs. Or really take a flyer and go for the elevator. Once the decision is made, the next obstacle is the Swinging Backpack in the Face Dodge. Many a racer is knocked out of contention by poor timing! Next is the Subway Fork. Do you stay underground for the 1, 2, 3, or 9 trains (in local and express flavors), changing trains in Time Square or do you try to get through the shortest walk signal in the universe (about 5 seconds) and do the power walk down to the N, R, or W in Herald Square, which give a straight shot? (But don’t be distracted by the worthless Q train, which only goes to 57th!). Next is the Metrocard Swipe, an event similar to the biathlon (with its running and shooting) in that you can get big penalties trying to go too fast. To get through without even a bit of slowing, you need to have the card in a very precise bow, a configuration difficult to achieve if you’re too winded. Many an urban competitor is stopped dead by the “Swipe Again,” not to mention that nasty whack to the front of the leg. Then there’s the Worst Case Scenario, the outcome that makes grown men cry, the dreaded “Swipe Again At This Turnstile.” When you see it, that’s all she wrote. Then, having jumped onto the subway car, which side and which door to wait for the opening? The wrong choice costs a fifteen second wait while the crowd slowly crawls out of the train and up the steps. Be the first one out and you’re home free! The home stretch is the Intersection Dilemma. You have five short blocks and three long blocks. Strategy is paramount – you can’t afford to be stuck on the corner with cars whizzing by and nowhere to go. Note I didn’t say “stuck with a no walk sign.” New Yorkers, in contrast to most cities in the US, treat the red no walk hand as a helpful suggestion, not as anything with force of law. The only forces of law New Yorkers care about are the forces dictated by the laws of physics! While the gold medalist in the decathlon my claim the title “world’s greatest athlete, I’m thinking that “worlds fastest commuter,” or, colloquially, the “global rat racer” is the real athletic title for our age!
04.09.05 @ 09:26 PM EDT [link]

Feature of the Week: Contact Sher
We’ve revamped the Contact Sher page to make it easier to send emails. There’s now a link you can click to bring up your regular write email window. All you have to do is type what you see in the picture into the email address box. We love to hear from readers so don’t be bashful! BTW, your confidentiality is assured – scout’s honor.

04.08.05 @ 11:00 PM EDT [link]

DeLay Forever!
Some years ago the New York Times ran an editorial saying that the country needed to “lighten up and learn how to laugh again.” A responding Letter to the Editor was right on target. It said “a newspaper without a comics section had no business lecturing about laughter!” The Times still doesn’t have a comics section, but I’m coming to think of the front page as more than sufficing, but only on the days they run a piece on DeLay’s latest ethical shenanigans. This seems lately to be pretty much every day! Today’s was pure, unadulterated DeLay, all the way from the outrageous DeLay conduct triggering the story to humorous and increasingly colorful DeLay accusations of vendetta on part of the Liberal Media (LM) for printing it. The most recent examples of outrageous, prima facie (and in your facie) ethical lapses are: 1) his trip to Russia paid for by agents of the Russian government, and (this is REALLY good), HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER GETTING PAID HALF A MILLION DOLLARS BY THE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE HE OVERSEES! Just for clarification, a Political Action Committee is a group of contributors who seek to make financial contributions that enable the PAC to make outlays that aid the achievement of a particular political policy result. The only political outcome that results from paying Mrs. and Miss DeLay this much is to push the DeLay household into a high earning tier. In other words, those salary payments turned contributions into bribes. If there’s a difference between a bribe and a contribution that fattens a politician’s household bank account, I sure don’t see what it could be! If it’s legal, it must mean that bribery is legal as long as you adhere to contribution limits! Maybe a helpful volunteer from the legions of right wing bloggers could clarify this for SherWright.com’s readers. The other half of the story – DeLay’s reaction – is, unbelievably enough, even MORE entertaining: “No member can be responsible for going into the bowels of researching” the non-profit group that financed the trip or “how it's funded.” Since DeLay is speaking in native Dittohead, SherWright.com helpfully offers the following translation: “I needed to go to Russia to represent the interests of the good people of Sugar Land, my congressional district, but the trip exceeded my office’s budget (given the deficit and all). Then, magically, I had my plane and hotel tickets! How can I be expected to keep up with trivial matters like WHO’S PAYING THE FREIGHT!? (emphasis added to highlight the triviality of this detail, and thus the inappropriate zeal the LM are exhibiting with their bowel-crawling). Then consider the reaction from DeLay’s office about the extra half-mill going into the DeLay coffers from his PAC: “both family members play central roles in his fundraising efforts.” To put this all in perspective, it’s like a bank robber who, when caught in the act, whines about the personal vendetta that the cops are displaying by having the effrontery to arrest him. All of this raises a very serious concern. DeLay might actually be forced out of his title as House Majority Leader. What a tragedy that would be for bloggers like yours truly! Coming up with punchy, amusing content every day of the year is hard work. DeLay makes it so much easier! So here’s an open message to Tom from SherWright.com: “Hang in there, buddy! Don’t let the vicious bowel-crawling Liberal Media grind you down! DeLay Forever!”
04.07.05 @ 07:56 PM EDT [link]

By the Numbers, Why Bush’s Social Security Plan is Tanking
Karl Rove recently came out saying that only Social Security reform proposals including privatized accounts can be considered. This, accompanied by Bush’s recent threats against those opposing his plans, strikes me in two ways: 1) they’re painting themselves into a corner and 2) they’re so wrapped up in themselves that they believe the very act of showing their unalterable commitment will cause the waters to part. I have two observations to make on this: 1) They haven’t properly considered that tax cuts and entertaining patriotic invasions are a whole lot easier to sell than radical restructuring of established bread and butter programs and 2) They haven’t worked out the basic logic of their Social Security story. By the numbers, here’s that logic: 1) Social Security needs to change because, as is, it will impose too great a burden on the upcoming generation. 2) Privatization is the only solution. 3) Privatization would require extra trillions of dollars in borrowing, adding to a national debt already in the trillions. 4) The current trillions of dollars in debt are already a burden on the upcoming generation, so debt larger by two trillion more will be even MORE of a burden. QED: Social Security Privatization makes no sense as a means of addressing Social Security’s burdens on the upcoming generation (as opposed scratching the extreme right wing’s itch to privatize everything in sight). Given that the Bush Administration is still pushing the privatization idea, one can only draw three further conclusions: 1) they’re totally divorced from reality 2) they haven’t figured out that American voters are smarter than they give them credit for and 2) they may well be in for a surprise at midterm elections!
04.06.05 @ 08:17 PM EDT [link]

Society’s Inheritance
The right wing is obsessed with wills. I’m talking about every meaning of will: the will to power, George the right wing columnist, and, for today, the legal document of inheritance. For individuals, wills dictate how estates are passed on. That inheritance is a big deal to Cons is pretty obvious. Look at the energy they’re putting into final elimination of what they call the “death tax” (and what this journal has called the “unearned windfall tax”) The one positive aspect of their obsession is that it opens to door to looking at other aspects of inheritance. Readers of this journal know of its obsession with the need for each generation of Americans to meet their obligations to posterity. And what is inheritance if not a concern that the fruits of one’s labors are passed down to the next generation? So if passing down individual inheritance is a worthy topic of obsession, shouldn’t this obsession also encompass the proper passing down of the larger wealth of society? The wealth of society is more than the sum of the wealth of its individuals. Much more. It encompasses the wealth of knowledge and culture, wealth whose promulgation to posterity is too important to civilization to be left to individual volition. Neither do companies have much of a role here. Capitalism’s focus is on shareholders, who have at best only a very indirect interest in posterity. This is appropriate. It is really Government’s role to oversee the transfer knowledge and cultural wealth to our heirs. It is really Government’s role to ensure that the legacy from prior generations is maintained. The Right wing is focused only on individual inheritance, about preserving the wealth of individuals as it is passed between generations. Their hatred of government impedes the preservation and transfer of our most valuable treasure of wealth as it moves between generations, and their current political power represents to posterity a threat of disinheritance!
04.05.05 @ 09:10 PM EDT [link]

Out for Fifteen
The passing of Pope John Paul II has called to mind how active and significant his papacy was. We’re hearing one story after another of his charisma and influence. But what if there had been no John Paul II over the last several decades, in fact no pope at all? Could this have happened? What if the Pope had become mentally injured but with internal organs otherwise functioning, in the manner of Terri Schiavo? For example, what if the aim of his would-be assassin had in 1981 been just slightly different so that the bullet caused enough of a loss of blood to the brain to trigger Schiavo’s condition? It’s certainly possible to imagine that this could have happened. Indeed, the juxtaposition of these two events – the passing of both within days of each other – has certainly caused many people of faith to wonder about the coincidence. This confluence of events shows the danger of applying absolutist positions to real life situations. That is certainly the lesson I’ve taken from of reading letter after letter to the editor from religious absolutists comparing the cessation of force-feeding to cold blooded murder. Sorry, but cold blooded murder is shooting the witnesses to a robbery. Murder is locking someone in a room so they can’t walk down the street for a Big Mac (something that Schiavo was free to do had she a mind to). Murder is not discontinuing a procedure only a medical professional using special medical equipment and prescription nutrient formulations is qualified to do, a procedure applied to a patient with zero measured EEG function for fifteen years with no improvement. Some might argue that the situation with a Florida homemaker can’t be compared to the spiritual leader of a billion people, but morality is a great leveler. John Paul II, as much as any moral leader, would have doubtless affirmed that what’s moral for the humble must also be moral for the great. That being said, would the Vatican’s recent absolutist pronouncement on the requirement for long-term force-feeding of the brain-dead have occurred had the Church collectively experienced the same pain as has the Schiavo family over the last fifteen years?
04.04.05 @ 07:59 PM EDT [link]

Too Bad We Can’t All Go Off-Budget!
Future historians will doubtless list one of the most significant developments of the Twentieth Century as the concept of “off budget accounting,” the ability of Congress to spend money without this money being “budgeted.” While it might seem to some that accounting techniques could hardly qualify as a significant societal development, this journal has already pointed out how the invention of double-entry bookkeeping was a significant advance in civilization. In the same way, the development of off budget spending also says something about civilization. What it says is that the great arc of societal advance that began with the renaissance might well have begun receding. Can there be any other conclusion? What can be so basic as the notion that budgets need to accurately reflect what’s coming in and going out. If you’re not doing that, why bother even calling it a budget? That’s exactly what happened with the CEOs currently doing perp walks at courthouses around the country. Their failure, now exposed to all, was is in perverting the accounting process from accurate reporting of receipts and expenditures to the dubious accentuation of positive flows and the hiding of negative flows. In other words, exactly what the Bush Administration has been doing with its enthusiasm for off budget accounting!
04.03.05 @ 07:48 PM EDT [link]