Intentional anonymity, or Un?

This post is not about the amusing/appalling mayor of Toronto, I swear; but for reasons you'll understand shortly, I have to open with a quote from a story about him in this week's Newsweek:

The defense proffered by Toronto mayor Rob Ford, caught in a video smoking crack, is astoundingly, bracingly forthright: "Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine.... Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago." Let the smoke settle on that one: He's seeking absolution for drug use by claiming annihilation by alcohol. The ancient Greeks might have called that hubris. I call it genius. 

I think the Toronto mayor - about whose politics I know almost nothing, other than that they manage to combine stupidity and dishonesty in ever-more original arrangements - has chosen the shrewdest defense available to him, calculating that his white constituents' fascination with crack cocaine makes him seem more like a cultural adventurer than a desperate fiend.

The icky conclusion I've come to is that Ford chose the perfect drug to abuse. 

Now, here is the most interesting question inspired by the quote above: exactly whose opinion is this, really? I don't mean, "Who are the people who share the author's view?" What I mean, simply, is "Who the hell is the author?"  Period.  Again, not, "Who does he or she think he or she is to hold or voice this opinion?" No. I mean, "What is his or her NAME?"  In the first three paragraphs, the author is right there with us no fewer than four times: "I call it . . . I think . . . I know . . . I've come to . . . ."  WHO ARE YOU?

I'm all about using the first-person in formal writing.  I've never taught my students to avoid it.  But it should be intentional.  It should serve a purpose.  That purpose is defeated if the author is anonymous, unless the purpose is merely to set an in-your-face tone.  If that's the purpose here, then, "Mission Accomplished!"  Coward.  Really.  If you're going to make a point of putting your face nose-to-nose with mine while you voice your opinion, then come out from under your burka, Bob, or Betty, or whoever you are.

Interestingly, I can ask this same question about any of the articles in this week's Newsweek (maybe all of them since January; heck, I haven't really been paying attention that closely).  It doesn't come out in print any more, just in case you missed that.  Since last January, it's digital only.  That trend (or the threat thereof) was actually one of the principle reasons I chose to ask for an iPad for Christmas last year rather than a new piece of skydiving gear.  And don't misunderstand my issue here--I like the digital version.  I like the bright images and the ability to link to video or audio or right on out of the magazine entirely.  But I digress.  My point is, when did this anonymity become a feature of a major news magazine?  Or am I wrong to still think of Newsweek in that way?  Is it now a rag?  Has its cachet plummeted so precipitously that the writers no longer care to be credited for their work?  Fascinating.

Just in case, if there's a way to see the byline on these articles, and I'm just so much of a Luddite that I'm missing it, feel free to clue me in, by all means. And, of course, I know (or hope) that the author isn't really a coward.  I know that someone way above him or her in the corporate food chain decided this was a good idea.  And I'm thankful to my own cousin, Barry, for trying to warn me years ago where we were headed.

Oh wait!  I think they just answered my question. Here is the first sentence from the lead story in this issue; thus, the first sentence in the issue:  "No one could ever accuse Newsweek of undcovering [sic] the Kennedy administration."  Unless they're attempting to coin a new word (move over Shakespeare), I think they meant undercovering. Carmax has better proofreaders.

Rag. Definitely. Digital rag. 

And they say I'm crazy . . .

I'm afraid of heights.  There.  I said it up front.

Yeah, I've summitted three Fourteeners, and I teach skydiving almost every weekend now, but that's different.  I'll crawl all over the outside of an aircraft as long as it's above 1,000 feet and I'm wearing a parachute.  Mountains?  Well, the first one I did, the north Maroon Bell, in Colorado, back in 1978, I was feeling pretty sick at the top.  "That's just altitude sickness," said the lead climber in our group.  "Yeah," I thought, "The kind of sickness you get in the top of a tree that you weren't all that sure you could make your way back down."  We finished that descent by moonlight, by the way.

Anyway, I said all that to say this:  These guys are crazy.  This looks fun under only one circumstance: wearing a B.A.S.E. rig the entire time.  Under that condition, sure, I'd do this.  But otherwise, unclipped, unrigged, unenclosed?  Not on your life.  Nuts.  Plain and simple.

So, without further ado, here's the video.  If you can start it and watch one minute and not watch the entire seven plus, then you're a better man (or woman) than I.  And that's all I have to say about that.

Bad Lieutenant

is a bad movie.

I want that two hours of my life back.

Really.

Tiger: The Price of Fame

Okay.  I should be above this, I know.  And I have to say that Tiger's public apology--while hardly worthy of monopolizing the evening news as it did--was as gracefully done as such a thing can be.

That said, this is still funny.

Aging Airframes in Perspective

A quick post, and then, likely, silence for a bit. I leave in the morning for two weeks of balancing bent space against aerodynamic resistance for about a minute at a time, as many times a day as I can pack and get back on the airplane.

And speaking of airplanes. I've said once or twice that a good way of understanding the age of our current USAF fleet is to imagine if say a WWII bomber had been flying as long. The KC-135 came into service in 1957 for instance. That would be the same as if there had still been operational squadrons of B-17s in 1994. Try to imagine that. And the 135 will be around for at least another decade yet. Imagine B-17s flying over Baghdad in 2003. Just try.

So, for what could be my last post for a bit, chew on this link.

To help put this aging airframe issue in perspective, we recently matched the various dates when aircraft from the Air Force fleet officially entered service (Initial Operating Capability) with the events that were occurring during those same respective years. On a first glance this comparison is amusing. However, upon a second look it is clear that we face a very serious situation and must do everything possible to address this critical issue. As one Air Force senior leader recently remarked, “It was kind of funny...in a nostalgic way...to fly the same jet as a 2-star that I flew as a butter bar. I'm finding it difficult to see the humor in my one-bar son flying it.”

79% John McCain

Because, Buck asked for it.

Hat tip: Barry (where you can find a link to check your own candidate affinity)

"Fore!"

My sister was telling me tonight that one of my nephews has a goose egg on his forehead "the size of a walnut! I've never seen anything like it." I don't think they were even able to determine definitively what bonked him. She knows when it happened--loud noise, short silence while child takes first deep breath, or two, or even three, then the really serious cry--but not the exact mechanics of it.

She's out there on the east coast, I'm here in the Rockies, but I know what that goose egg looks like. And not because I can remember the time my oldest daughter decided to spin in circles until she was giggling and dizzy, and then not giggling anymore after the face plant into the corner of the steel shower stall in her grandparents' bathroom. That's not why I know what the goose egg looks like. No. She looked like a Klingon. She dead centered the vertical edge of the shower stall on her own two- or three-year-old forehead and ended up, not with a goose egg, but with a ridge from her nose to her hairline. After we got over the guilt that every parent feels every time their child stubs a toe, we had a pretty good laugh. All we needed was a Star Trek convention and we'd have been set.

No, I know what that goose egg on my nephew's forehead looks like because, I kid you not, I thought I'd killed a man with a golf ball once.

Back around 1989, I was playing a course in the Central Valley of California (the Big Valley of TV fame) with several other guys from my office. For 16 holes there hadn't been a soul in front of us. Maybe it was one of those days when the fog was so thick that you'd hit the ball and then three guys watching would all shrug and say, "Not a clue," and the guy who hit it would say, "Felt like the middle of the fairway," and you'd just start walking into the fog and hope. But if it began that way, it was clear by the time we reached Number 17, about a 160-yard par four, water to the left, and vineyard and out-of-bounds to the right.

I was having a pretty good round, and having won the previous hole, I teed up first and cut loose with a solid 7-iron. It flew nice and high and felt like it would have about the right distance, but as soon as I looked up, I knew I'd pulled it enough left to miss the green. Then, all three of the other guys, at the same time, yelled "FORE!" "What?" I said. Remember, there had been no one in front of us all day, and I'd seen no one on the green when I teed up. But looking now to the area left of the green where I knew my ball was coming down, I saw a single man standing near a tree. "FORE!" I echoed.

At that point, that man did the unthinkable. He looked up. The ball hit him square in the head, knocking off a John Deere ball cap. I doubt he ever saw it coming. Probably the brim of the cap kept him from seeing it. I will never forget the sound--like striking a tree trunk with an axe handle. By the time the sound reached us, he'd already raised both arms over his head in precisely the move that might have protected him had he done it a few seconds sooner. As it turned out, the move wasn't entirely futile. A second later, he dropped straight down to both knees, then he pitched forward, face down, into the grass, falling into the elbows now sheltering his face. Then, he didn't move.

We were all running, covering the distance of that fairway in a chorus of "Oh shit"s and "F**k me to tears!" and "Jesus Christ Almighty"s. As we got there and formed a circle around him, he still hadn't moved. He lay face down in the grass, his face resting in the crooks of his elbows, the palms of his hands laying on the back of his head. Just as one of my partners was about to start the sprint to the clubhouse to call an ambulance, the man moaned, then began to draw up his knees and then to stand up, against all our protests.

"What happened?" he asked. "I remember somebody yelling 'Fore!' and I remember looking up and I heard the ball hit the tree and then everything went black."

"Mister, that wasn't the tree you heard the ball hit; that was your skull!" I said, fighting back nervous laughter. And as I said it, two other guys whistled simultaneously and the third simply said, his voice tinged with what could only be termed awe, "Holy shit! I've never seen a knot like that in my life!" More than three minutes couldn't have passed since the ball made contact with this 70-year-old's skull, yet, I swear to you, it looked as though some plastic surgeon had lifted the skin of his forehead, tucked a golf ball under it, then stretched everything back down leaving no obvious point of insertion. I wouldn't even have imagined that skin could stretch like that.

"Mister you'd better let us call you an ambulance, or at least let us call your family to come get you."

"I'm fine." He protested. "I just live right over here in the trailer park. I came over to putt some balls because nobody seemed to be playing today. I'll be fine. Somebody got my cap?"

Someone handed him the green and yellow cap and in a move that made all four of us cringe, he hooked the back of it behind his head and holding it by the bill, screwed the cap left and right as he worked to pull the front part down over that skin-covered golf ball like he didn't feel a thing. I was frankly surprised he could get the cap on.

"I'd feel a whole lot better if you'd let us call somebody," I said. But he was having none of it.

"Ya'll have a good day," he said. "I'll be fine. I just live right over here. Ya'll go on now." And with that, he walked off.

We walked back to the tee, played that hole and the next and went on with our lives. Mostly.

For the next week, I nervously checked the local news and obituaries every day, half dreading to read that some old guy in the trailer park had been taken delirious or worse from his trailer with a knot on his head the authorities couldn't explain.

So, knot the size of a walnut? Add a Titleist dimple pattern imprinted on the skin and I know exactly what that looks like.

Ron Jeremy Does Colorado College

I attended that debate tonight with a friend from our English department. We made a little bet earlier about what the demographics of the audience would be. He thought more men; I thought more women. The debate over porn is frequently cast as a women's issue, I figured. In the end, it was about even. The house was packed. I attended a talk by Michael Pollan in this same chapel back in February that had only half so large a crowd. Tonight's was overflowing. Chairs outside on the lawn and speakers to pipe the debate out to them. Folks all along the walls.

I've not enough time tonight to sum up the evening. Suffice it to say it was interesting. Instead, I'll offer the saddest thing I heard and the funniest. And I'll point out that, oddly, when the time came for questions, it was the men who thanked Craig Gross (whose anti-porn site is here) and took Ron Jeremy to task; and it was the women who thanked Ron Jeremy and took Craig Gross to task. That, I did not expect.

Saddest thing I heard: Ron Jeremy responding to whether he's ever been in an intimate relationship (meaning romantic). "I've made love five times in my life. I've had sex considerably more."

Funniest thing I heard: A female questioner wanting to know if Jeremy thought he could be in a long term relationship with just one person (i.e., monogamous). "Could you ever see yourself in a long term monotonous relationship." "No, and that's why."

He did qualify that though, to point out that there is such a thing as emotional monogamy, and that, he does believe in.

Pass the Clairol

This post may lose me a few readers who have come to expect seriousness here. But . . . . My youngest daughter dyed her blond hair very dark brown last night. I now understand why.

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

Add to My Profile More Videos

Spot of trouble on the commute

(Hi. Barry here. While Doc is on travel, I will be posting here occasionally. I'm kin to him, but please don't hold that against me.)

As I'm sure anyone within reach of the Intertubes already knows, there was a teensy spot of trouble near Grand Central Station last night... a massive steam pipe exploded, sending a geyser of live steam, "mud" (more on that in a second), rocks and miscellaneous debris twenty stories into the air and blasting a huge hole in Lexington Avenue.

I can't hope to add anything to the voluminous coverage of this incident, except to relate another incident that took place in my office last night. The explosion occurred just before 6PM, at the height of the evening rush hour, and shortly thereafter a number of us gathered in the Network Operations Center, where a local news channel was tuned in and patched through to the overhead projector.

The initial images were really startling - the steam-geyser was achieving some incredible heights, and it was evident that the steam pipes had taken out quite a bit of additional infrastructure with them when they blew, as there was an enormous amount of debris in the mix.

"Damn," one of our senior engineers observed. "Looks like it took out a sewer line, too."

One of the new guys objected.

"The news says that's mud."

The senior guy said, "Dude, I've worked in IT for over 20 years now. Don't you think I can recognize a fountain of shit when I see one?"

13 Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry: Number 4, BlackBerry Smoothie

Over at Enrevanche, (okay, so you can tell what blogs I visit regularly), Barry posted a link you have to see to believe (unless you know about this site).

So, after visiting, I made a suggestion:

We'll see what comes of it. Either way, I think this will stand as #4.

Who needs a seat warmer?

One of the most bizarre stories of the past week had to be that of Navy astronaut Lisa Nowak's diaper-clad drive to Florida. Personally, I had strong suspicions from the beginning that her choice of underwear wasn't driven so much by saving time as by denial of her request for an upgrade to a car with electric seat warmers. There was a tremendously cold air mass parked over most of the country that week, wasn't there. And any SCUBA diver whose spent time in the frigid waters around Monterey will tell you there is a way to warm up that wetsuit.

At any rate, for the curious, this Newsweek article will probably tell you more than you want to know about Lisa's seatwarmers. But you know you really want to know. >-)

Hat tip: Neo-neocon

State of the Union

And lest I be accused of being all too serious, here is truly the most interesting thing I found when I went to the PETA media center to see if they had anything to say for themselves regarding their dumpster-dumping, puppy-killer, perps.

An all-to-appropriate post to close the night, and perhaps a frightening harbinger of what at least one freshly announced candidate for president might one day employ as an "attention" step in some future SOTU address. Or, undress, as PETA would have it.