Aggrieved By Prosperity

The New York Times can't help but acknowledge the zippy U.S. economy - which has defied hurricanes, overseas wars, and energy panics to come up big in terms of growth and consumer confidence. But nary a paragraph after using the word "booming" to describe the situation, newbie staff reporter Vikas Bajaj loosens his fly and takes aim at this sunny bowl of economic Cheerios . Read it to yourself in a serious Frontline baritone:

But as always with the United States economy, it is not quite that simple. For every encouraging sign, there is an explanation and concern for the future.

You see, there are reasons why the economy is booming, so don't get all excited or complacent with the folks in power. And besides, there are concerns for the future. Woo, boy. Don't let your anxiety down! We still got lotsa stuff to worry about.

Really, somebody should teach a class on writing like the New York Times. When their favorite political party is in power every scrap of bad news get buried in the A section. But when the other guys are in charge good news is fastidiously ignored in hopes that it will disappear. If it doesn't, it is presented in the darkest possible tone, with all caveats and "it's more complicated" modifiers. The formula is simple, but it takes a deft hand when it comes to execution. Welcome to the Gloom Squad, Vikas!

To the substance of the matter: Yes, it would seem like things are going swimmingly, given our recent run of hurricane luck. Lets see how this new Fed chairman pans out. And lets see how successful this administration is at making tax cuts permanent. And lets nip any potential energy problems in the bud before they blossom, and take a clue from Tony, and dust off the plans for building more nukes. (Hey, even former hippie and atomic refusenik Stuart Brand has recently gotten wise.)

Hostages to Pacifism

The Iraq war is strenuously opposed by the "wage peace" crowd. One might expect that pacifists would reserve an equal amount of disdain for everyone involved in armed conflict, be they US Marines or jihadists wearing explosive accessories. But the virtues of nonviolence are only preached towards participants on one side of the war, and conveniently, from within societies which already safeguard freedom, dissent, and domestic peace.

Millions are invested in smart bombs, and a phalanx of lawyers review each tactical military decision on the part of the U.S.-led coalition to make sure they will not run afoul of international law, injure civilians or otherwise inflict non-military harm. But there's no partial credit. This is wholly unacceptable to the advocates of peace. At the same time the islamo-fascists blow up school children and pizza parlors, but they are immune from the scolding critique of liberation theologists, college professors, and Sean Penn about the cycle of violence.

Perhaps this will turn around now that four peace activists have been kidnapped in Iraq. They are members of an organization that goes by the name Christian Peacemaker Teams. Well, here's your chance, guys! You try and talk the gentlemen with the rocket launchers and fetching scarves into the idea that their IEDs and truck bombs run contrary to the lessons of Gandhi and Thoreau. Instruct them in the ways of civil disobedience as a means to promote change, and teach them to eschew indiscriminate slaughter. Maybe it'll work!

And maybe it won't. To be more serious about it - those of us who are religious should pray that they are released. But we might also hope that they are eventually interviewed and asked a few pointed questions about how their pacifism matched with violent, insurgent reality. We've all seen the bumper sticker asking why we "use violence to teach violence is wrong" - but this deliberately mis-states the reason for warfare. We don't use violence to teach anything - primarily it's used to make the extremists really, really dead. Maybe the secondary effect is to teach any accidental extremist survivors that they will be made really dead too if they continue to assault democratic societies - but that's strictly a bonus.

Agree with it or don't. But let's be clear on how it works.

Home Decor Disorder

Now I realize that the good folks at Umbra contemporary furnishings corporation probably employ cheap overseas labor, and when you're a Malaysian pre-teen factory worker who has been recently caned by the union supervisor it's easy to become distracted and forget to put screw set A into the packaging for the "Padoga Espresso" curtain rod with the nice modern design that says "sure, we're not loaded but we spent a couple of bucks" to any potential home admirers.

And certainly the lack of screw set A in BOTH of the curtain rods I purchased yesterday from the home furnishing supercenter is a small matter. But to be honest, the challenges of quality control for a company forced to compete globally in the cut-throat home decor market seem opaque to me when I am balancing on a chair late at night, drill in one hand, unmountable bracket in the other, wife at a table nearby frantically picking through an incomplete set of mounting hardware and muttering "it's just ... not here" like a bomb-dazzled refugee wandering back through her obliterated village.

As an American I have been bred on convenience, so the absence of screw set A has unleashed a cascade of raw emotion at a time when home maintenance and improvement have driven the wife and I to exhaustion. One day these concerns will abate, and I will once again write to you dear reader about the issues of the day, and the children will no longer be fed gummi bears and bacon for breakfast because Daddy is in a rush after being up late last night staring in a really creepy way at the curtain rod, the drill, and the mounting hardware and trying to return to his peaceful, happy place.

Casa Del Pavos

It's snowing in Cincinnati, and tonight the wife and I are making the drive back East in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck for a holiday with the family.

With the move into a new (old) home I've been occupied with the finer points of home maintenance and furniture assembly. These activities are timesinks, and everything else is has become secondary - my relationships, career, weblog, even my half-assed fitness routine. Now I wander the house in search of a tiny plastic baggie that contained obscure, irreplaceable screws and bolts that are necessary to finish the Scandinavian-style bunk beds. The baggie cannot be found. The retailer has been contacted. The parts can be ordered but at great price. I imagine some fjord-side blacksmith in a frosty hut. He's cursing in Finnish and pounding out tiny scraps of metal while the International FedEx truck idles expensively outside.

In other news some neighborhood kids offered to rake my yard. They were about 10 or 12, one with a gigantic afro that added about a foot to his otherwise-smallish stature. They raked until they ran out of lawn bags, got paid, and disappeared. One small corner of my yard is still covered with leaves but I don't really mind. I'm always eager to encourage young capitalists and act neighborly. On my street we've also discovered theology professors, several families with different varieties of children, and, er, volleyball coaches. It's a natural diversity that isn't pre-ordained, and it's been the character of this neighborhood for many years. The bells ring at the Presbyterian church on one side and the Catholic church on the other.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you readers. Reflect, for a moment tomorrow, on the multitude who are in need.

Waiting for the Man

Posts will be few and far between while I wait for my Internet connection to be setup at my new house. I'm just biding my time, setting on the stoop, and waiting for old man broadband to come around the bend.

For a diehard weblogger like myself this is a peculiar feeling of disconnection. How can I survive without Google or my favorite cable news channels? I find myself listening to AM radio and peering through the window of streetside newsboxes at the latest headlines. When I needed to lookup a local business I discovered I don't even have the yellow pages anymore.

The new house is coming along slowly. The past few days have been a frenzy of moving, cleaning, and furniture arrangement. You never really know your spouse until you assemble a complicated set of bunkbeds together, fumbling with bolts and Allen wrenches while balancing slats and headboards in a madcap game of Twister. The fact that both of us have survived the challenges of recent days with our senses of humor intact and only a few bumps and bruises - this is nothing less than a true trumpets-and-angels type of miracle.

Scooter, Lew, George, and Abu

Bush is not flagging in the polls because of Scooter Libby and pre-war case that was made for WMD. Very few people care. Call it the Chris Matthews effect: It's the remarkable act of transference which occurs when blowhard media obsessives in Washington D.C. assume their pet issues fuel opinion polling. Right now the Muppet who throws boomerang fish has more name recognition than the characters in this overblown scandal. (His name is Lew Zealand, incidentally.)

Bush is flagging in the polls because the hurricanes damaged his credibility as a tough, reliable president. Like him or not many people had a simple degree of confidence that came from his actions in the wake of 9/11. (I'm talking about the middle here - not the conservatives who support him rain or shine, or the MoveOn liberals who would still loathe him if he gave his kidneys to the poor.) The guy might be a doofus, but he had git-r-done working in his favor until Katrina.

And then there is Iraq. I know my conservative friends feel like the president has made his case, and any discussion about wrapping up operations is equivalent to victory for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and crew. And certainly there is simplicity and comfort in saying that we'll keep on opening up can after can of American whoopass until the insurgents understand.

But even neocon foreign policy theorists admit that terrorism can't really be eliminated, just brought down to a lower level of risk. At what point does the administration hand things over to the Iraqis? There seems to be some obligation here for Bush to clarify the terms for our departure. He should forgo any defensiveness, ignore the craven, ongoing attacks from Capitol Hill and directly address the American public. He has successfully circumvented Beltway politics in the past. He should do so once again.

Space Cadets hoax out of this world | This is London

Another Normal American

Last Friday in a real estate office my wife and I signed a zillion pieces of paper that put us in debt to a mortgage company. Then they gave us the keys. We drove to our new home with our two little girls, opened a bottle of fizzy apple cider, made a toast, plugged in a CD player and danced through all of the empty rooms to the obvious song by Madness. At the end of the evening I told the wife I felt possessed by a primitive urge to mark my line around the property.

Now for the past several days I find myself in home improvement centers wandering the aisles, collecting equipment for home maintenance; brooms, rakes, paint, caulk, and various types of sealant that cause exotic forms of cancer in lab animals. I study the boilerplate warnings with great interest while the other dazed homeowners wander past me. Meanwhile David Byrne is yelling in my head: You may find yourself ...

This is another big milestone. My 20s and 30s have seen many reversals of fortune. And the default progression of events (college, wedding, house, kids, followed by some combination of ennui or divorce) - this chronology has been scrambled out of order. But my new winning streak started when Rachel foolishly consented to marry. Now our kids are playing upstairs, and I look out the window to the park next door and watch another young family try and launch a kite.

Cue the golden retriever carrying slippers.

Church and State

My Catholic parish is also my voting station. And on election day it always seems like the warm heart of our community, the locus of democracy. The heavyset ladies (black and white) make smalltalk while they look you up in the rolls, and the girls basketball team clomps around upstairs in the gym.

It's a long-standing tradition in America to use churches for elections. They are natural gathering spots and the centerpiece of most towns. And for those of us who are religious they are places where we are already in the habit of examining our values.

The mood at my church tonight was congenial; the pastor hurries by, to a meeting in the parish center. Meanwhile volunteers in support of rival candidates chat over coffee in Styrofoam cups and hand out flyers. It's so different from the smash-mouth politics of some local political sites. And I can't help but speculate that there are those, I'm sure, who are annoyed that churches and synagogues are used for elections. A staunch secular materialist might wonder at all of the friendly folks.

Check this web page for Cincinnati election results.

One Year Anniversary

One year ago this weblog launched. Those were the days following the 2004 elections, when it seemed like the country had surprised itself with the vote for George W. Bush. A fault line had yawned open between Blue and Red America, and it looked like a good opportunity to offer a few opinions on the subject, as an Internet-enabled means of torture for my friends and family.

The fact that I've earned a handful of extra readers along the way is still remarkable. But I've knocked out almost 100,000 words and well over 300 posts - everything from movie reviews, to reflective personal items to wisecracks about the news. Some of it works, some of it is pointless, and all of it has been self-edited according to the guidelines I set out for myself early in the process. A condensed version: Keep it short, strive to be original, don't parrot the opinions of others, never (categorically) talk about my employer, and keep an eye out for links between my personal life in Cincinnati, Ohio and national issues and trends.

Blogs offer a unique opportunity to participate directly in civic discourse, without advertisers, news corporations like Gannett, or intermediaries. I try to make reasoned decisions about what to write about - but this is, after all, a one man, independent show. And if I can get away with one sweeping pronouncement on this anniversary, here it is: Liberty and freedom don't seem to be short supply these days. But we need more bold, individual citizens who are comfortable with risk, who don't need cover and validation from political parties, corporations, or me-too groupies.

Now go vote. And thanks for reading Spacetropic.

Gendarmes et des Banlieues

Exiles in Red America

Careful observers of Red and Blue state demographics might note a recent article in the NYT that details the plight of young people forced to give up the golden state for (gasp) more affordable, Midwestern surroundings.

The idea of living in the middle of the desert in a prefab 1,200-square-foot home, stretching ourselves financially and driving three hours a day, wasn't appealing anymore," Mr. Cannon, 34, said.

Young families in the coastal centers of California are faced with the choice of either commuting from distant neighborhoods or somehow paying eye-popping prices for very small homes closer to town. More and more are choosing to give up the game and look for a job in quaint little places like Kansas City. The article explains this solely as a function of the real estate boom, and IRS and Census data confirm it's also happening in cities like Washington, New York and Boston.

And the article makes the obligatory comments about the lack of culture out here in fly-over country.

And once again I feel fairly convinced that the people who write articles for news outlets like the Times know little more about the cities between the coasts than the road between the airport and the closest four-star hotel. Certainly my town, Cincinnati, is a long way from Los Angeles in several respects. But right now they need translators for obscure dialects of Guatemalan in the downtown courthouse. Right now I've got both North and South Indian restaurants within 10 minutes of my house. These things are small examples of cultural variety, but they would have been unheard of when I first moved to town in 1990. Communication, transportation and technology have brought all kinds of people to the doorstep of the American Midwest, and even wayward Californians and other Blue State evacuees are welcome.

Eurabian Intifada Blues

How far can any economy go when the primary objectives are the preservation of a 35-hour work-week and an outlandish degree of protection towards a romanticized vision of farming? French socialism is immensely appealing after a couple of glasses of wine, a gasper, and a conversation with an attractive brunette, but as a means to maximize prosperity for large segments of the population it seems to be lacking, especially when globalization comes knocking. It doesn't take a Masters in economics to determine that the French situation is custom-designed to maximize unemployment.

But purely economic explanations for the riots don't cut the dijon either. Honest-to-goodness discrimination seems like a natural outcome when a prissy, moribund culture that can’t provide enough jobs runs up against a bona fide oppressive and sexist mindset that too often comes imported from the poorest segments of pan-Arabia. That rage, resentment and anger start simmering in this cauldron should be a surprise to no one. That a big pile of burned-out Renaults and Citroens should be the eventual outcome seems entirely plausible. Turns out the country that brought us liberté, egalité, and fraternité can't offer a better socialist prospect for some of the people in flight from unjust systems. How about more capitalist opportunité?

Cue predictable flap about how America isn't any better. Don't worry, if you adore the hobby of tearing down the American system and concocting reason why it's morally equivalent with socialism then the apologist cavalry is on it's way. Practice this helpful sneer: "So what, bombs are the answer?" (missing the point of the question about basic systems to create prosperity). Maybe the ass-swaggering, McDonald's American approach is "just as bad" as miserable socialism - but we have plenty of time to watch thing play out, don't we? Because it sure looks like things are going to get worse before they get better.

New Funless Entertainment

Recent articles in the Washington Post and Wired describe the growth of "serious games". These software simulators are used in the public sector as a tool for education or specialized training.

Incident Commander, for example, is intended to help prepare emergency officials for the type of large-scale disaster that can result in massive loss of life. You play a "first responder" tasked with managing resources like food or first aid after events like a biological weapons attack, a school hostage situation, or a hurricane. Since these incidents are somewhat rare and real-life practice excercises are expensive, there's a real value in computer simulation.

The game isn't avaialble for public download, but the gameplay possibilities are intriguing. Can you negotiate politically-adventageous no-bid contracts in the wake of devistation? Or - if the school hostage rescue gets a little sticky - is there a counseling icon? One idea for an "expansion pack" might be an add-on game where federal and local officials compete to shift blame to each other in the national media in the wake of bureaucratic ineptitude.

But I was able to get my hands on a copy of Food Force, produced on behalf of the UN World Food Programme. I clicked around a few minutes. The scenario is based on a famine on a fictional island where global climate change caused the loss of rich farmland. Now war has broken out, and your job is to do things like airdrop nutritionally-balanced meals to refugees while over-earnest graphical characters berate you with fact-packed sermons about world hunger. Needless to say it wasn't long before I tried to drop the palettes on the refugees, which is, I am sure, what the 5th grade boys will begin doing when their humorless social studies teachers attempt to inflict this game. (Note that it cannot be done.)

There's nothing wrong with a little edutainment, of course. But preachiness and platitudes shouldn't take the place of knowledge about the poltical circumstances that are generally the cause of prolonged famine. When, for example, your releif truck encounters a roadblock of men with bulging eyes and machine guns, you can either click "Go away!" or "We're with the WFP and our fight is against hunger!" Can you guess which answer is correct?

If you really want to know the score on the real-world disaster helpfulness game, check out the situation in the earthquake zone around Pakistan and Kashmir: The UN has 9 helicopters, and very little money. But the US military has 29 Chinhooks, and is building a forward base.