12/14/2006

The Toothpaste Smuggler

I’ll admit it; I’m a criminal of the modern age, a subversive in the Global War on Terror. I smuggle toothpaste.

My work requires me to fly every five or six weeks. After last summer’s “liquid bomb scare” in the UK, travelers have been prohibited from carrying any but the smallest amounts of liquids and gels through airport security. The amounts – three ounces or less – we do carry must be sequestered in a one-quart plastic bag which must be displayed for security screeners.

Toothpaste, as the name implies, is neither liquid nor gel. It’s paste. So why is it on the list? I’m no expert, but I’ve never heard of a bomb being made with toothpaste. I suppose some vile substance might be substituted, but I’ll refer you to the old saying about the difficulty of getting spent toothpaste back in the tube. I think it’s only on the list because the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) started rummaging through people’s toiletry bags and decided to make a clean sweep.

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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
12/07/2006

My Mother’s Data Set

On a December Saturday in the mid-60s – I must have been five or six – my parents took my brother and me for a walk in Seneca Park in Rochester, New York. Due to a freak warm spell, the weather was in the 70s and we were all wearing shorts. “Remember this,” my mother said. “You’ll never wear shorts in December again.”

I did as she asked. Recently, I pulled the memory out for examination. My mom’s prediction was reasonable, given the data she – or anyone else – had to go on in the 1960s. We’ve learned much since. The five warmest years in recorded history have all occurred since 1998. The record was held by ’98 until 2005; which held the record until, probably, three weeks from now. The Washington Post reported last week that January-June 2006 were the warmest six months on record. Local papers report that November 2006 had less snow than any November on record.

Since 2002, George W. Bush has directed national policy to reduce the “intensity” of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. This reduction in “greenhouse gas intensity” is a creation of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (it’s director, James Connaughton, is former lobbyist for oil and mining interests). The intensity it refers to is a ratio between greenhouse gas emissions and gross national product. Although the overall goal is reduction in emissions, the short-term idea is to reduce emissions per unit of gross national product. Sound odd? It is, if by odd one means that the CEQ is the only body in the world that employs “greenhouse gas intensity” as a metric. It was definitely one standard of measurement my mom didn’t have access to that afternoon in Seneca Park.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/30/2006

Borat: Not Funny

Last weekend, despite misgivings, I shelled out $7.75 and saw “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” A mockumentary, the film purports to follow Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev as he travels across the U.S., hoping to learn enough to propel Kazakhstan from second to first world status.

Reviews, both published and word-of-mouth, hail the film as a comic masterpiece of “squirm humor,” the kind made popular by television shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Office.” The Borat character, conceived and performed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, is a naïve boor – sexist, homophobic and wildly anti-Semitic. As he travels America displaying his prejudices, he is met with either revulsion of expressions of bigotry similar to his own. Some reviews claim the film’s genius lies in that Mr. Baron Cohen has created a character that serves as a mirror to reflect some of America’s uglier tendencies.

I’ll admit I laughed; Mr. Baron Cohen is an accomplished comedian. I’ll also admit I have no sympathy for the jackasses who fell into Borat’s trap and stood there with a camera running and recommended guns or vehicles suitable for killing Jews. They’re idiots and deserve the contumely heaped on them.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (3)
11/23/2006

Thanks/No, Thanks

It’s time to bow our heads and give thanks for the good things we’ve received in 2006 and in anticipation of good things to come in 2007. Gratitude is an underused muscle in my psychological anatomy, but I’ve come to understand there is no blessing without burden and (gratefully) the same holds true in reverse.

It reminds me of the recurring George Lindsey sketch on Hee Haw, where he sits in the barber’s chair and begins spinning a yarn. When the barber would respond to a piece of news by saying, “That’s good,” Mr. Lindsey would point out, no the seeming good development was actually bad. The barber would say, “That’s bad” and Mr. Lindsey would then point out why the bad was actually good. It was 1970s hillbilly comedy, but there was some truth in it.

Thanks. I live in one of the most beautiful corners of America. When I’m out with Adrienne and we turn a corner at the top of the hill and look out across Lake Champlain to the Adirondack Mountains beyond, she invariably says, “Look where we live!”

No, thanks. Living in such a beautiful place comes with hazards, as our friend Peggy learned last week when she struck a deer with her car.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/16/2006

Breathing Easier

Nothing brings back the past as powerfully as the scents we inhale. This is not a new idea; Marcel Proust hammered it home in seven volumes. Walking along a darkening street in the late afternoon with the aroma of dry leaves in the cold air adjusts my metaphysical clock as surely as “falling back” to standard time every autumn causes me to adjust the actual clocks.

These are the days when the evening kitchen smells of soup and the house smells of the dust kicked into the air by radiators returning to life for the first time in five and a half months.

Some aromas are personal, like the dry, desiccated odor of wicker furniture that always reminds me of my Uncle John’s cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario. The odor of mothballs, on the other hand, reminds me of my German grandmother’s ongoing, victorious battle against dirt and disorder in her house.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/09/2006

Cut and Rumsfeld

First and most important – thank you. Thank you to all the citizens who voted Tuesday to begin to take our country back from those who would turn America into a totalitarian state. I not only had the pleasure of voting at the electric company in my Burlington neighborhood in the morning but later watched my friend Kenny vote at a public school in Brooklyn at 7 in the evening. I woke on Wednesday eager – for the first time in many months – to find what the news would bring.

The news got better as the day went on. More seats in both the House and Senate fell to the Democrats, with Virginia Republican George “Macaca” Allen finally falling apart at 9 p.m. The most satisfying news of the day was, of course, the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

All through the campaign, George Bush taunted the Democrats for being weak and indecisive, but how weak can Democrats be if, two months before they actually take control of Congress, the toughest of Mr. Bush’s tough guys turns tail and runs rather than contemplate having to answer their questions? Donald Rumsfeld is a bully and like a bully, when he realized that a Democratic-controlled Congress would challenge him the way the lapdog Republicans never did, he didn’t stand and fight, he wet himself and left the room. If the Dems are this good at intimidating their foes, perhaps Osama will surrender by the end of the year.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/02/2006

The Other Condition

We now know a Congressional bill’s name often has little to do with its content. Often, there’s an inverse relationship between a bill’s name and its intended effect. The Patriot Act and the Help America Vote Act are two recent examples. Fraudulent as those bills were, at least their passage attracted some attention and well-read citizens had a chance of knowing what they were really about. Sometimes we’re not so lucky.

On October 17th, George Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. As the name implies, the bill – for the most part – deals with appropriating funds for the armed services. But that’s not all.

When the bill was in conference committee – the body tasked with resolving differences between versions of legislation passed by the House and Senate – a rider was added which would give the president the power to declare martial law. A rider is an addition or amendment to a law. Riders were originally intended as a method to fix technical problems with bills. Like everything else in Washington, they have become subject to outrageous abuse of late. This is the most outrageous abuse I’ve heard of yet.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (1)