The other day, I overheard a news story extolling the virtues of yoga in combating stress.  That was fine.  Yoga has proved to be of great value for people in high stress conditions. What absolutely floored me was the section on elementary and secondary schoolchildren.  This is far from the first time I’ve run across the issue of stress in schools.  In fact, most of the college students at my wife’s university complain about how stressed they are.  One of the most common phrases is:  “I’m so stressed out.”

What I want to know is why they think their lives are so stressful. Are their lives really filled with that much stress?  Have they created that stress themselves because they’ve filled so much of their lives with the time-consuming trivialities, such as texting, Facebook, and video games, that they’ve left no time for the necessary?  Or have they been so coddled that any pressure on them to perform and meet any type of reasonable standards creates stress?

I know I’ll sound like an old fogy, but… the generation represented by their great grandparents faced the worst economic conditions in more than a century and the largest world-wide conflict in human history. The generations before that faced the First World War and, before that, the Civil War, the bloodiest war in U.S. history. In all these cases, most young men faced the pressure of being drafted and dying in battle.  Their grandparents faced the Vietnam conflict, largely fought by conscripted forces, plus wide-spread civil unrest with bloody riots across the nation… and far wider racial and cultural discrimination, not to mention gender/sexual discrimination,  than any of today’s young people can possibly imagine. 

In the past, although the youngsters of today don’t believe it or understand it, academic standards were either far more rigorous… or the local schools were truly terrible.  Until the 1950s, polio was an ever-present threat, and I still recall contemporaries of mine in wheelchairs and braces. Academic curricula were rigid and unyielding, and woe betide the student who was different, or ADHD, or developmentally challenged.  First year students in college faced opening assemblies where they were told that a large percentage of entering students would fail academically within a year.

Today’s students are told how wonderful they are.  They have extraordinarily high grade point averages, and almost none of them are failed.  College students today spend less than half the time studying  as students of their parents’ generation did, but there are more scholarships and far more financial aid than was available a generation earlier. Even if they drop out of school, they don’t face being drafted into a war where tens of thousands of conscripts die.   And yet… huge numbers of them have little motivation and no goals.  

And  they’re stressed out.

 Stress is and has always been the human condition.  Welcome to the real world.

Perhaps because I was always the boy who had trouble convincing anyone of anything, even when facts and events proved I was right, I’ve always been skeptical of the glib, polished, and oh-so-convincing fast talkers who also seemed so earnest.  Then, it might be because I lost more than one girl-friend to the type… or because I saw so many of them in politics over the twenty years I spent in Washington.

I’d be among the first to admit that Mitt Romney was smooth, polished, carefully passionate, and superficially convincing… and he scared the hell out of me.  President Obama showed the not-quite-controlled frustration of a man who understands that absolutely nothing under discussion was as simple as Romney made it sound, a man who knows that trying to point out the details that would undermine Romney would merely make Obama himself seem like a quibbler, especially given the insatiable American appetite for the easy and simplistic.

The problem with really good politicians – and psychopaths – is that they have no problem shedding inconvenient facts or even saying that they didn’t say what they did, and doing it so convincingly that most people believe them.  This first Presidential debate showed that Romney is a master of this, and Obama is not.  Obama can shade the truth with the best of them, but it’s clear that he’s uneasy in totally denying it.  Romney shows no such hesitation.

Before this debate, I gave Mitt the benefit of the doubt.  I thought that, even if I didn’t agree with him, he honestly believed in what he was saying, but when a man who has spent months pushing a five trillion dollar tax cut and cutting tax rates for everyone blatantly denies having done so on national television, he certainly disabused me of the notion that he was a true believer in magic tax cuts.  Then, yesterday, he denied what he said about the 47% of Americans, which, while unpopular, actually had some truth in it… and people are buying everything he says now, because, all of a sudden, he “looks and sounds Presidential.”   All this tells me that Mitt’s just like all the smooth talkers I’ve encountered over the years, and it’s pretty clear that the only true belief he has is that he’s so fitted for the job of President that he’ll say anything that will convince anyone.

Is Obama any better?  All I can say is that he was trying harder to stick closer to the truth, and that’s also what all the political fact-checkers have been saying and writing.

As for me… I still have trouble with those oh-so-earnest types who are so convincing… and care so little for the facts… all the facts, and not just those that support their view of the world.

What is it with young American men… or maybe with young men across the world? Everywhere I look – from on the street, to some businesses, to glimpses of television shows and movies, since I’ve been traveling recently – I see young men with what amounts to a two-to-three-day scruffy shadow beard.  I don’t have anything against mustaches or beards, especially if they’re sported by men on whom they look good, but facial hair on men is like extraordinarily long hair on women, and neither looks good on most members of both genders. And I do know, because I once had a handlebar mustache that, in pictures and in retrospect, looked truly awful. Still,,, if that’s what people want, that’s their choice.  

 But the scruffy look… what’s the point?  It’s not a beard.  It’s not a mustache, and on 99% of all men it just looks dirty.  Is it to prove that you’re a he-man?  Or that you don’t have to conform to social norms, or that you’re following the trends?  Or is it because you have sensitive skin and are too cheap to buy sensitive skin aftershave balm?

 Or is it a subconscious desire to be sort-of Middle East macho, but clean-shaven enough to still be identified as western? Or are you too lazy to shave regularly, but not willing to go for a full beard?  Or could it be that a beard wouldn’t look good on you, but you want the world to know that you actually could grow one?

 Or maybe I’m all wet and just missing the fact that three-day beards are irresistible aphrodesiacs?

Several days ago, poor Mitt Romney committed the unforgivable. He said something so obvious, so accurate, and so to the point that people, especially Obama and the leftists, are jumping all over him.  Now… as must be clear to most of my readers, I’m generally appalled at the Republican positions on many issues, but what I find ironic is when someone whose positions I dislike says something that is absolutely obvious… and gets roundly criticized.  I fully admit that I supported Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter, but I applauded when Carter made the obvious statement that, “Life is not fair,” for which the media and everyone condemned him.

What was it that Mitt said?  In effect, he was saying that he was never going to reach 47% of the population because they were getting benefits from the government for which they weren’t paying.  And he’s absolutely right.  When only 53% of Americans pay federal income taxes, then the 47% who don’t are getting all the federal programs paid for by those taxes for nothing.  Should they get such benefits?  Of course, some certainly should – such as the truly deserving poor, hungry children, and others that have a true need.

Some of the liberals have made the point that many of the “47%” do pay taxes, such as Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes, and they’re right. Many do pay those taxes.  But what the left wing ignores is that those taxes do not fund most government programs, and for all the hullabaloo about deficits, Medicare and Social Security are not yet contributing to those deficits.  The deficits are caused by outlays in programs funded by federal income taxes.

But the larger questions raised by Mitt’s offhand, if honest, comment, go beyond that. As some courageous Republicans and many Democrats have noted, Americans now pay the lowest percentage of their income in federal taxes in more than 70 years… and yet the Republicans, the Tea Party, and the Libertarians are all demanding that taxes be lowered more.  Given the current deficit, this isn’t possible without literally eliminating not only a wide range of existing federal programs, but also ALL tax deductions, and that includes the cherished mortgage interest tax deduction, the earned income tax credit, credit for college and education expenses, and certainly various subsidies and business tax deductions.

All that isn’t going to happen, not in the current political climate of “I deserve it and someone else should pay for it.”  Why not?  Because it would destroy too many people.  For example, although “only” about a quarter of U.S. homeowner mortgages are technically underwater [owing more than the house is worth], close to 50% are realistically underwater and unsalable in the current market because of the other additional costs required in selling a house and moving.  If Congress were to remove the mortgage interest tax break, that would make the situation even worse, because the vast majority of homeowners would have even less income to make mortgage payments.  Similar problems would arise with the elimination of the earned income credit, and others… and what politician is really going to have the nerve to eliminate deductions that will make things worse for their constituents… and the immediate economy, regardless of the possible long-term impact?

How did it come to this? That’s a chicken and egg question, but one thing is very clear.  Americans, both rich and poor, have a lot more “things” than they did sixty years ago. The average new house being built is almost three times the size of those built in 1950, even while family size has declined since the 1960s.  In 1950, the average family had one car; by 1995, the average family had more than two cars… again with a smaller number of people in the family.  Almost every statistic – except for food consumed at home – dealing with personal consumption shows a significant real increase over the last 60 years – at all levels of income.  Likewise, government programs have grown enormously since 1950.  The one thing that hasn’t kept pace on a per capita or per family basis is the amount of federal tax revenue, and, as I’ve pointed out time and time again, while the taxes of the wealthiest individuals – and to a lesser degree those of the working poor – have decreased proportionately far more than those of other groups, even massive increases in taxes on the wealthy won’t close that revenue gap.  And, remember, that “wealth” isn’t the same as income, so that under our current income tax system, income taxes can’t reach the huge amount of assets already held by the extraordinarily wealthy.

In essence, Americans as a whole have come to expect a combination of personal and government benefits greater that we are willing to pay for, and many of those increased personal benefits have come through deficit spending at the cost of more money in our pockets and less going to government. Even though most people will protest violently that this isn’t so… it is, and simple arithmetic proves it time after time.

So… whether I like Mitt Romney and his proposed policies or not, he was right about who’s paying for what [even if I disagree, which I do, with how much who should pay]… and especially who’s not.

But then, regardless of political party, no one likes embarrassing accurate facts.

What just about everyone loves about the Internet is its speed and convenience, and what’s not to like about instant messaging, near-instant email, Tweets and Twitter, and instant on-line shopping?  Yet there is a high and hidden cost… one far greater than most people realize or consider – and a number of these costs were detailed in a front-page story in The New York Times on September 23^rd, which outlined the results of a year-long study.

For example, on a world-wide basis, internet data centers, now numbering more than three million world-wide, “use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants.”   The United States alone accounts for about thirty percent of that.  One of the most staggering figures revealed by the study was that actual computer/server computations and data processing only took six to twelve percent of that electrical load.  The rest was merely to keep all systems “on alert” to handle intermittent peak loads and information surges.

It’s not that the technology to make data centers more efficient doesn’t exist.  It does.  The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center has refined its systems to achieve more than 90% efficiency, and a company called Power Assure markets a technology that enables commercial data centers to safely power down servers in off-peak periods.  Yet Silicon Valley Power – the utility that serves Santa Clara and Silicon Valley – has not been able to entice a single data center to adopt such energy saving programs.

Not only is the internet energy wasteful, but these data centers are significant sources of air pollution. In just the states of Virginia and Illinois more than a dozen data centers have been cited for violations of air quality standings.  In northern Virginia alone, Amazon – one of the larger operators of data centers – was cited with 24 violations over three years, including running diesel generators without a permit, and was fined over a quarter of a million dollars.

So why is there so much waste and unnecessary pollution caused by internet data centers?

One reason is that companies that live by the “instant” fear that failure to always have instant access will have an adverse impact on sales.  A corollary of that is that data center managers aren’t rewarded for saving on the electrical bill or reducing air pollution.  They’re rewarded for having data centers on-line and able to handle anything 99.999% of the time.  That’s another reason why Northern Virginia’s data centers together have back-up diesel generators with a combined output almost equal to a standard nuclear power plant… with air emissions far greater than most conventional power plants.

Another aspect of the problem, and one not touched by the Times’ investigation, is that this increasing electrical usage created by the internet puts additional strain on the national and regional power grids, an infrastructure that is already overstrained in many areas… and this is getting worse. For example, data centers in Northern Virginia now draw over 500 million watts of electricity and plans on the drawing boards suggest that load will double in five years.

Instant access… it’s wonderful… but can we really keep this up?

The other day, the local newspaper had a front page story announcing a new local, college-based reality television show – entitled “Cheapster.” The idea behind the show is for college students to come up with innovative ways to show their frugality… and the winner will receive $10,000.

While I’m certainly for wise spending, the whole concept of “cheapster” I find appalling, especially the title. Everywhere I look, there’s another facet of the “cheaper is better”  belief, from Amazon and WalMart to so many “sales” that a recent survey revealed that many consumers won’t buy anything unless it’s on sale. Part of this emphasis and concern about price is doubtless a result of the long recession and the slow rate of recovery, especially in better-paying jobs, but I think the emphasis goes beyond that… and the implications certainly do.

When we as a society emphasize “cheap,” we’re also inducing, if not forcing, manufacturers and retailers to produce goods in the cheapest way possible, even if that means outsourcing production to third-world sweatshops and child labor.  It’s also an inducement to deception, as in the case of the book industry, as I’ve pointed out, where the “cheapest” prices for bestsellers doesn’t necessarily translate into overall lower prices… and where the reduction in book outlets where people can browse has greatly contributed to a decline [in real dollar terms] in sales and certainly in the diversity of books provided by publishing firms, thereby effectively reducing choice.  Yes, I know that self-publishing ebooks has taken off, but most people don’t have the time to peruse all those titles… and that’s another facet of reducing choice in a realistic way.

Then there’s telecommunications industry where, despite all the claims to the contrary, overall people are spending far more on communications than ever before and where “basic” service is more expensive now, even for cellphones, than it was in the time of the great Bell monopoly.  This tends to be forgotten because long distance calling is “cheap,” if not close to “free.”

“Cheap” airline fares aren’t really, not with all the extra charges, and travelers pay more in the way of inconvenience because the cabins are jammed with luggage to avoid checked bag fees, and that means that flights take longer because it takes longer to load the aircraft… and that, in turn, increases operating costs and overall travel time.

Beyond the myriad deceptions of cheapness is also a larger question. What ever happened to other virtues, such as quality or reliability?  And what happened to the idea that price reflects value?

But does all that matter, so long as it’s “cheap”?

A week or so ago, a U.S. District Court approved the e-book settlement between Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins and the Department of Justice, a settlement that opens the way for Amazon to sell ebooks from those publishers at any price Amazon chooses.  The Justice Department, of course, hails the settlement as a groundbreaking and anti-monopolistic agreement that will provide cheaper books to consumers. In thinking this all over, I realized that the entire structure and operation of monopoly has changed in the last twenty years, while the definition has not, so much so that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, designed to prevent the harmful effects of monopoly has, in the case of the publishing settlement, become an instrument to support monopoly – and no one seems to realize this.  How did this happen?

A century ago, the operation of a monopoly was clearly defined.  A company, such as Standard Oil, bought up all the competition, or the majority of it, sometimes used low prices as a temporary measure to bankrupt competitors or drive them out, then took control of the market and raised prices to make a greater profit.  Today, companies like WalMart and Amazon have developed a very different monopolistic approach. They begin with selectively low prices and equally low wages for employees.  The low prices of highly visible selected goods attract more customers, and few people notice that other goods aren’t any cheaper, and in some cases, are even more expensive. WalMart gets around this by allowing customers to show competitors’ prices and then matching those prices… but most customers can’t and won’t do that for the majority of goods.  In the case of Amazon, Jeff Bezos lost money for years building that bookselling customer base.

Then, once the new monopolists have that customer base, they exert pressure on suppliers to provide goods for lower and lower prices.  Both WalMart and Amazon are excellent at this.  Amazon provides its marketplace for online retailers, then scans their sales, discovers what items are selling well and in large quantities, and either pressures the supplier to sell to Amazon directly for less, thus undercutting the Amazon affiliate, or finds another supplier to do so more cheaply. Recently, reports have surfaced that Amazon is using similar tactics with small and independent publishers, who don’t have the clout or the nerve that some of the larger publishers have.  Thus, in the end, the new monopolists aren’t gouging the consumer, but using excessive market power to gouge the suppliers and their own employees.  All the while they can claim that they’re not monopolists because people are getting goods for lower prices.

What the Department of Justice and the legal scholars seem to be overlooking is that such behavior is still restraint of trade – it’s just restraint of trade from the suppliers and through low employee wages rather than price-fixing from the retailer… and it has a definite negative impact on both local economies and the national economy, most obviously in the outcome that lower paid employees can’t live as well, don’t buy as much of other goods, and pay less in taxes.

In fact, Jeff Bezos even declared that his goal was to destroy the traditional paper-based publishing industry and take over the information marketplace. If that isn’t a declared intent to monopolize an industry, I don’t know what is. The new monopoly structure also may well be a far more deadly form of monopoly than the old one because it impacts the entire supply chain and effectively reduces incomes and the standard of living of tens of millions of Americans, both directly and indirectly. As I’ve noted before, already the publishing marketplace has changed, in that there’s less diversity in what’s published by major publishers, and more and more former midlist authors are having trouble getting published… or have already been dropped.

While Borders Books had its management problems, the final straw that pushed the company out of business was likely Amazon’s predatory pricing. In the years before its final collapse, Borders annual sales were around $4 billion, and it operated close to 400 brick and mortar stores with approximately 11,000 employees.  Those sales, and payrolls, not to mention the store rental costs, likely generated a positive economic impact of anywhere from $40 to $70 billion. While some of those sales have gone to Barnes & Noble or Amazon, most have not, and the operating expenses and payrolls paid by Borders are almost entirely an economic loss, since Amazon and Barnes & Noble didn’t add many new employees or, in the case of B&N, open new stores.  Books-A-Million did open some new stores, but only a handful.

Amazon’s policies have also resulted in lost revenue for independent bookstores, as well as closure of a number of stores of smaller regional bookstore chains, just as WalMart’s policies have adversely affected local and regional retailers. Yet the Department of Justice claims a victory in a settlement that reinforces the practices of the new monopolists where, apparently, the only determining factor is how cheaply consumers can obtain a carefully selected range of ebooks.

All hail the monopolists of “cheap” and “cheaper.”

A film that most Americans had never heard of or considered appears on U-Tube, and anti-American riots break out in Egypt and Libya, during which four Americans are killed, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. While recent information suggests that the demonstration was planned as a cover for the assassination, the fact remains that there was a demonstration in Egypt and the Libyan plotters had no trouble in rounding up plenty of outraged Muslims, and additional protests have since occurred in Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Yemen. Some might dismiss this as a one-time occurrence.  Unfortunately, it’s not.  Several years ago, a Danish newspaper published some satirical cartoons of Mohammed, and that caused violence and uproar.  When the novelist Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers, forcing Rushdie into seclusion for years.

Some people might declare that things are different in the United States… and they are, in the sense that our population doesn’t have so many “true believers” who are willing to kill those who offend their religious beliefs or so-called religious sensibilities, but we do have people like that, just not so many.  After all, what is the difference between fanatical anti-abortionists who kill doctors who perform legal abortions and fanatical believers in Islam who kill anyone who goes against what they believe? Is there that much difference in principle between Muslims who want Islamic law to replace secular law and fundamentalist Christians who want secular law to reflect their particular beliefs?  While there’s currently a difference in degree, five hundred years ago there certainly wasn’t even that.

What’s overlooked in all of the conflict between religious beliefs and secular law is the fundamental difference that, for the most part, secular law is concerned with punishing acts that inflict physical or financial harm on others, in hopes of deterring such actions, while religious law is aimed at requiring a specific code of conduct based on particular religious practices of a single belief. The entire history of the evolution of law reflects a struggle between blind adherence to a narrow set of beliefs and an effort to remove the codes that govern human behavior from any one set of beliefs and to base law on a secular basis, reflecting the basics common to all beliefs. Historically, most religious authorities have resisted this change, not surprisingly, because it reduced their power and influence.

Thus, cartoons of Mohammed or satirical movies do not cause physical harm, but they are seen to threaten the belief structure.  Allowing women full control of their bodies likewise threatens the belief structure that places the life or potential life of an unborn child above that of the mother.  When blind faith rules supreme and becomes the law of any land, no questions to that law are acceptable.

When a specific belief structure dominates a culture or subculture, the lack of questioning tends to permeate all aspects of that society.  To me, it’s absolutely no surprise that there’s a higher rate of denial of scientific findings, such as evolution and global warming, among Christian fundamentalists because true science is based on questioning and true belief is based on suppressing anything that raises questions… and such societal suppression is the greatest danger of all from blind faith, whether that faith is Islam, LDS, Christianity, or even a “political” faith, such as Fascism, Nazism, or Communism.

Some twenty years ago, at the Republican convention that nominated George H.W. Bush for his second term, Pat Buchanan made a speech essentially claiming that what he stood for was the beginning of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party.   That struggle has persisted for twenty years, and now the Republican Party platform seems largely in conformity to what Buchanan outlined.  Paradoxically, some opponents of Republican policies might claim that platform proves that the Party has no soul, but I don’t see anyone raising the larger question:  Should a political party aim to have “a soul”?

Over the more than two centuries since the U.S. Constitution was adopted, there have been more than a few disputes and scores of court cases involving the respective roles of religion and government in American society, the idea of separation of  church and state notwithstanding.  Yet doesn’t anyone else find it strange that, in a society that theoretically does not want government dictating what its people should believe, and in a land created to avoid just that, one of the major political parties has been striving to find its soul, when the very idea of a soul is a highly religious symbol?

Not only that, but the closer the Republican Party has come to adopting Buchanan’s positions, the more the partisans of this “soulful” party have attempted to force government to adhere to positions based on highly religious views – many of which are not shared by the majority of Americans.  And requiring a secular state, which the United States is, despite the “under God” phraseology, to require conduct based on religious views is diametrically opposed to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Part of the reason for the growing push to embody “religious” ideas in statute is likely the fact that the United States has become more diverse, and many feel that the nation does not follow the “traditional” values and have reacted by attempting to prohibit any government program that they see as opposing or not supporting such traditional values. There have always been those who did not fully embrace such values, including such Founding Fathers as Thomas Jefferson, but the idea of using government to insist on such values in law, as opposed to defining acceptable conduct in secular terms, has continued to increase, particularly in the past twenty years.

Even if the United States continues to diversify, I suspect that the founders of this nation, who were largely skeptical of political parties, would be even more skeptical about fighting for the “soul” of a political party.

According to the September issue of The Atlantic, one in four Americans believe that President Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States, while half of all Republicans believe this.  Given the latest political identification as indicated by the Rasmussen Report of June 2012, and the number of registered voters in the United States, that means that even twenty percent of Democrats and independents hold to this belief, still a considerable number.

The U.S. Constitution only specifies that, to be President, a person must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States, but does not define that term.  Over the time since the Constitution was adopted, the courts have defined “natural-born citizen as a person who was born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; or was born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents, either in the United States or elsewhere; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship at birth.

At least three court suits have been filed on the question of Obama’s citizenship, all in different states, and the determinations in all cases have affirmed that he is a “natural-born” citizen.  He was, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, born in a U.S. state of an American citizen.

So why do so many people, Republicans, in particular, believe he isn’t a “natural-born” citizen?

Yes, his mother divorced his father and then married an Indonesian and moved to Indonesia for a time, but the courts have previously ruled in other cases that similar acts, including the case of a woman born in the United States [with only her mother as a U.S. citizen, as was the case with Obama] who lived in a foreign country from the age of three until she was twenty-one was still a natural born citizen.

And why do so many Americans believe that he is a Muslim, when the man has attended Christian churches for so many years?

Or are these convenient beliefs merely a cover for the fact that Obama is black, and many voters, obviously including a significant proportion of Republicans, simply don’t want to admit publicly that they don’t like and don’t want a black President?  Instead, they claim that his mother was too young when she married his father [using convoluted legal rhetoric to claim that because she was so young, the rules for a child being a citizen when only one parent is a citizen don’t apply, that is, if Obama didn’t happen to have been born in a U.S. state, ignoring the fact that he was] or that his birth certificate was forged, or that he was really born in Kenya.

It’s one thing to oppose a politician for what he stands for; it’s another to invent reasons to oppose him to avoid facing personal prejudices… and it’s a shame so many Americans have to go to such lengths to avoid admitting those prejudices.  And it certainly doesn’t speak well of the United States that so many Americans accept such arguments as having any validity at all.

College professors are faced with a new generation of students, one filled with students termed “teacups,” students who literally break or go to pieces when faced with failure of any sort.  They’ve been protected, nurtured, and coddled from their first pre-school until they’ve sent off to college.  Their upbringing has been so carefully managed that all too many of them have never faced major disappointments or setbacks. Their parents have successfully terrorized public school teachers into massive grade inflation and a lack of rigor – except at select schools and some advanced placement classes where the pressure is so great that many of the graduates of those schools come to college as jaded products of early forced success, also known as “crispies” – already burned out.

Neither “regime” of “success” is good for young people. As I’ve noted before, the world is a competitive place, and getting more so.  Not everyone can be President, or CEO, or a Nobel Prize-winning author or scientist.  Some do not have the abilities even for the few middle management jobs available, and many who do have the abilities will not achieve their potential because there are more people with ability than places for them.

Even more important is the fact that most successful individuals have had more failures in life than is ever widely known, at least until after they’ve been successful. Before he became President Abraham Lincoln had a most mixed record. Among other things, he failed as a storekeeper, as a farmer, in his first attempt to obtain political office, his first attempt to go to Congress, in trying to get an appointment to the United States Land Office, in running for the United States Senate, and in seeking the nomination for the vice-presidency in 1856.  Thomas Edison made 1,000 attempts before he created a successful light bulb. Henry Ford went broke five times before he succeeded.

For the most part, people learn more from their failures than their successes.  More often than not, most people who are early successes, without failure somewhere along the line, never really fulfill their potential.  Even Steve Jobs, thought of as an early success, failed several times before he could launch Apple, and then the management of the company that he founded threw him out… before he returned to revitalize Apple.

Yet these young college students are so terrified of failing that many of them will not attempt anything they see as risky or where a possibility of failure exists.  Yet, paradoxically, many will attempt something they have no business trying or something well beyond their ability because they have been told how wonderful they are all their lives – and they become bitter and angry at everyone else when they fail, because they have no experience with failing… and no understanding that everyone fails at something sometime, and that it’s a learning experience.

Instead, they blame the professor for courses that are too difficult or that they were overstressed or overworked… or something else, rather than facing the real reasons why they failed.

Failure is a learning experience, one that teaches one his or her shortcomings and lacks, and sometimes a great deal about other people as well.  The only failure with failure is failing to understand this and to get on with the business of life… and learning where and at what you can succeed.

Over the past month, the Republican campaign has concentrated on the importance of economic issues, clearly trying to minimize its stance on so-called “social issues.”  This isn’t exactly surprising, and, based on polling numbers, this emphasis has clearly had an effect. But what I find surprising is that the Democrats haven’t seized on the underlying meaning of this emphasis… and what’s been lost in the attacks on Obama’s economic record.

A former executive  vice president one of largest U.S. companies once observed that what you pay for something reflects how much you value it.  Or as the old saying goes, “Money is power.” This is very much reflected in the economics behind the “social issues.”

For example, what exactly does it mean when women make only 67% of what men do? If money is indeed power, and it is, then they have a third less power than men.  But this discrepancy pervades the most intimate parts of human relationships, whether we’ll admit it or not.  For example, most health insurance plans will pay for Viagra/Cialis, but not for birth control pills.  Translation:  Those with money value male pleasure over women having control over their bodies.

If a woman gets pregnant, and abortion is not allowed, as the Republican Party platform would have it, she’s responsible for that child – but I don’t notice any legislation requiring the responsible male being required to post a quarter-million dollar bond for his half of the cost of raising that child to adulthood.  Right now, he can essentially walk away.  Oh, yes, she can file a lawsuit – except that takes money, lots of it, and most women don’t have it, and for the few that do, there’s little chance of collecting. So, when you get right down to it, abortion is also an economic issue, and the economics are stacked against the woman.

But it goes beyond abortion.  The rhetoric is all about a right to life, but the word life extends beyond birth.  Right now, the way the Republican platform and policies are, they’re talking about government guaranteeing a right-to-birth, but avoiding the hard issues of what happens after birth. They’re not alone, because most Americans are ignoring this aspect of the issue as well, including the economic burden that ends up on society as a result of children that need support their mothers cannot provide.

Now… the Republicans have pushed for a huge assault on “voter fraud,” with a requirement for a picture ID.  Despite study after study showing that voter fraud is minimal, the push goes on.  Why?  Might it just be because those who lack picture IDs are almost invariably those lowest on the economic totem pole – the poor, elderly, and minorities? And isn’t it interesting that the picture ID requirement would impose an economic cost on the poorest segments of society, who are, just incidentally, those most likely to vote for Democrats?

The Republicans talk about the need for economic growth, and I agree.  We need economic growth, but where are the policies that would improve our highway systems, our aging power grid, our antiquated air traffic control system, and inadequate water and sewer systems?  Those are necessary government oversight/support functions that are vital to economic growth – and they’re definitely not welfare or even “social” programs… and the Republicans have volunteered nothing. Just less restraints on big and small business and tax cuts, none of which address infrastructure, and, oh, yes, lots more defense spending.

As the old saying goes, they’ve put their money where their mouth is – and it’s for corporate America, male dominance, and the wealthy… and against women and the poor.  And no one seems to see this side of the economics of their policies… or the cost to society as a whole.

The Republican Party’s platform Committee has adopted a plank that that calls for legislation recognizing the rights of unborn children under the 14th Amendment and states that an “unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life that cannot be infringed.” Yet at the same time, a wide range of Republican leaders and national politicians have pressured Representative Todd Akin of Missouri to abandon his campaign for a Senate seat because he said that he was opposed to abortion even in the cases of rape or incest and claimed that women who were truly raped could not become pregnant.  Exactly what is going on here?  Party leaders don’t want a candidate who is following the GOP platform?  Or is it that they don’t want national attention called to their stance on abortion?

I have more than a little trouble with the Republican agenda these days, as some may have noticed, but what amazes me is that more people don’t have the same problem.  Let’s look at some basics.  On the issue of abortion, what the Republican agenda states, quite clearly, is that the government controls a woman’s body if she ever gets pregnant.  It doesn’t matter if she was forced or raped; she will have that child if Republicans get their way.  Now, some women with resources may, with luck, find a doctor who will provide an abortion… maybe, if the pro-life vigilantes haven’t terrorized the medical community to the point where very few doctors will provide abortions. Republicans continually rail against big government and big brother, but their stance on abortion is a perfect example of big government – government will decide, not the woman.  Another example of hypocrisy, perhaps?

Compare the Republican position on abortion and women with the positions regarding big business.  Republicans trumpet the need for less regulation and more freedom, but with regard to women, and their bodies, they want more regulation.  Let me get this straight.  The Republicans trust the people who created the biggest financial mess in the last half century more than they trust women?

Now…the Republican stance is disguised by a lot of rhetoric about being pro-life, but the problem with this rhetoric is that it’s only empty words, because the rest of the agenda wants to cut program after program for disadvantaged children.  Or are the Republicans only pro-life until a child is born… and after that the child, no matter how disadvantaged or poor, is on his or her own?  Not only that, but the Republicans have also mounted a campaign against using federal funds for family planning and birth control… which is bound to result in more unplanned children… and who’s going to pay for them?

If they’re not raised properly and educated, we all will, with unproductive adults in 16-20 years or more criminals or more welfare recipients or more social unrest… or all three.  And if we want to avoid that, we’ll need to spend more money… which Republicans don’t want to do, either.  The vaunted private sector is not going to step up and provide that support and education, and it certainly isn’t going to provide jobs for uneducated or undereducated adults.  So merely saying no to abortion and family planning doesn’t exactly address the problem.

Ah… but human life is sacred, or so the rhetoric goes.  Really?  When deity after deity at some point in history demanded human sacrifices [and that includes the Old Testament Christian God]?  When there are more than six billion human beings on the planet and maybe a thousand tigers left?  According to the god of economics worshipped by the Republicans, scarcity determines value – and that means the remaining tigers are more valuable than people.  And so, by the way, by that token, are the endangered Utah prairie dogs.

Economics doesn’t apply to people, then?  Or maybe it does.  Maybe the whole idea is to increase a workforce that already doesn’t have enough jobs to go around so that employers and big business can keep wages in the already low-paying service industries even lower… and that means that all those employees will have to limit their purchases to WalMart… and their entertainment to pirated movies and ebooks… no… not ebooks, because most of them won’t have the time to read, not holding down three part-time minimum wage jobs to make ends meet.

That really couldn’t be… could it?

The other day my wife made the observation that almost everything seemed to be “rated” these days.  Rate your stay at the hotel or motel.  Rate your purchase. Rate the service and food at the restaurant.  Rate this book.  Rate this movie.  Rate your car.  Rate the teacher.  Rate the doctor. Rate the professor.

When I was in college, too many years ago, about the only things that were rated were a handful of very high-end restaurants… and they were rated by anonymous experts. Now, almost everyone can rate almost anything.  But for all those ratings… have matters changed all that much? Even as millions have rushed to rate, exactly how much do those ratings mean?  And is their effect more in what is bought or sold or more in boosting the companies offering the ratings?  In the case of Amazon, the ratings definitely boosted sales, and probably affect to some degree what is bought, but, as I’ve discussed before, the ratings certainly don’t measure excellence, only popularity.  As for other companies in other fields, the results are at best mixed.

There’s definitely an effect in areas where millions pile on, so to speak, if only because the amount of ratings suggest a certain popular appeal… but, again, that doesn’t reflect excellence necessarily, just popularity, a fact that’s particularly overlooked in such spectacles as “American Idol” or “America’s Got Talent.”

What also tends to get overlooked is that the more things are rated, the less respect there is for the area being rated.  The idea of rating Einstein on a scale of one to ten, or one to five, seems ludicrous now, but how long before we get to the point of “Rate the Scientists”?

Even at Amazon, the ratings game can be absurd.  How does one make a meaningful comparison between Pride and Prejudice and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies without disrespecting the original?  And some comparative “ratings” clearly point out the absurdities, as when Americans give Congress approval ratings of something like 18% while a majority of voters in most congressional districts approve of what their representative has done.

And, once more, as I’ve pointed out, the idea of 18 year olds having any idea of what they’re doing in rating college professors is absurd.  They’re “excellent” in picking popular teachers, but the only meaningful correlation is that the professors with the highest student evaluations, in 90% of the cases, are those who give the highest grades… not the ones who demand the most of their students.

So… on a scale of one to five, I’d give most ratings a negative grade, not that what I say will do a damned thing to change or even slow the ratings madness.

The simple reason for this is that a significant percentage of Americans are either depressed, discouraged, or angry – if not all three.  And most people want either a quick and easy solution or someone to blame, if not both. Easy solutions are not possible, and no solution is possible without compromise, as I’ve noted before, and the media is a large factor in making compromise politically infeasible.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only problem. The Republicans have spent most of the past four years attacking Obama and the Democrats, and making political gains from those attacks.  The Democrats have finally realized two things.  You can’t prove a negative [which philosophers have known for thousands of years], and urging people to be reasonable doesn’t work when we you’re under violent attack.  The negative that they can’t prove is that matters would be much worse without the steps taken by both the last Bush Administration and the Obama Administration to bail out the financial community.  Yes, I know – the financial types didn’t deserve it, and they’ve continued to behave as irresponsibility as the government will allow them to be.  But the plain fact is, like or not, without the highly unpopular bailout, the entire world financial system would have collapsed – except you can’t prove that unless you let it happen.  So there’s no way to prove that without unacceptable results, and after four years, the Obama Administration is stuck with the “responsibility” for something it didn’t cause and a solution begun and initially implemented by Republicans [and now denied by them]. And people don’t care about those facts.  They just want things fixed.

People are angry, and many are afraid.  Angry fearful people don’t listen to reason.  They listen to the loudest and simplest voice that addresses their concerns, and the Democrats have finally begun to realize that, in order to have any chance of holding onto power in the Senate, stopping the surge of Republicans in the House, and re-electing President Obama, they’re going to have to shout just as simply, just as loudly, and just as nastily as the Republicans have been doing all along.

The Republicans don’t like this realization. That’s clear enough from recent comments from Romney and even John McCain.  But what exactly do they expect?  They’ve spent four years attacking and misrepresenting matters and seen that tactic work.  Now that their opponents have responded in kind, they’re claiming that the Democrats are to blame for politics becoming nastier.

Nonsense.  This is one area that’s becoming totally “bipartisan,” and will get even more so in the weeks and months ahead.  The attack ads will proliferate.  The charges and countercharges will escalate, and by the time the election arrives, we’ll still be polarized as a nation, if not more so, and feelings will be running higher than ever… all because it’s clear that fear-mongering beats reason in getting elected, and getting elected is more important for almost all politicians than dealing with complex societal and political problems.

Harry Harrison died earlier this week, and the F&SF press and blogosphere is now filled with incredible praise for his work, much of which was truly ground-breaking and ahead of the time in which it was published. Rather belatedly, Harrison was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame in 2004, and received the SFWA Grand Master Award in 2009 – when he was 84, and already in ill health.

All the current praise is deserved, but its timing frankly once again raises some questions that are continually swept under the metaphorical carpet.

Where the hell was most of this praise when Harry really could have used it and had time to enjoy it?  Or for that matter, where was it for many other ground-breaking and influential writers [such as Fred Saberhagen] who sometimes were never fully recognized? And why do some many readers vote for awards for whatever the current literary or genre “flavor de jour” happens to be?

Harry’s death was noted by the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and innumerable other news outlets, and yet, in a writing career that spanned more than five decades, he never won a Hugo, although he was nominated twice, and shared in only a single Nebula (and that was for the movie Soylent Green, adapted from his book Make Room!  Make Room!).

Interestingly enough, now that George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series has become a popular HBO miniseries, his latest book – A Dance with Dragons – is now a Hugo and World Fantasy nominee for best novel, and Martin was just named a lifetime award winner by the World Fantasy Convention, at the comparatively young age of 63.  And pretty much all the other novel award nominees for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards have some or all of the following – strong and active PR, fanatical fan bases, extensive insider connections, and internet presences.

Harry, by comparison, just had his books and ideas behind him, and he was never a “flavor de jour.”  My salute to him and his books!

As some long-time readers of this blog may know, some forty years ago, I served briefly as a legislative director to a Congressman.  One of my duties was to handle the staff work for one of his subcommittees – the one dealing with appropriations for the U.S. Post Office [before it was theoretically made an independent agency].  Way back then I raised the issue as to why the Post Office was basing its revenue on first class mail rates and treating bulk mail as a marginal cost. Over the years, I’ve raised this issue, and to this day, no one seems to want to deal with it.

Last quarter, the Postal Service lost $5 billion, and those concerned in the USPS and Congress keep talking about raising first class rates, closing post offices, and eliminating Saturday delivery.  None of these steps will address the problem.

The vast majority of my mail – measured by weight, not rate class – is either bulk advertising mail, reduced rate charitable solicitations, or periodical reduced rate mail.  I’ve asked a number of people with various Postal Service profiles, and that seems to be true of all of them as well.  As first class rates have soared, first class volume has declined, and periodical and bulk [junk] mail make up as greater and greater percentage of Postal Service deliveries, again by weight.  But weight is what counts!  Ask FedEx and UPS.  They charge by a combination of weight and speed of delivery.

The problem is that USPS “bulk,” periodical, and “non-profit” rates aren’t literally carrying their weight… or paying their freight.  But neither the USPS management nor the Congress has wanted to face the fact that these rates are too low, because, in effect, the USPS inherited built-in subsidies adopted for political purposes.  Some of those purposes are still political. For example, all members of Congress have a “franking” privilege that allows them to send letters to their constituents over their signature on the envelope for literally pennies.  The direct mail industry is being subsidized as well, as are non-profit organizations and periodicals. If I’ve read the rate charts correctly, advertising mail and periodicals are charged at slightly over twenty cents a pound[ or in some cases twenty-one cents for the first three ounces], while first class letters are now forty-five cents an ounce.

If Congress wants those subsidies to continue, then it should fund the USPS deficit… but in this time of fiscal difficulty, it won’t do that, and it won’t force the USPS management to adopt a realistic and practical rate structure, because churches, political organizations, direct mailers, and Congress itself would all have to pay more.  Instead, the everyday Americans who don’t like all the junk mail and political and endless charitable solicitations are faced with poorer service and higher prices for personal communications – and not all of us can or want to pay our bills electronically. Nor can we, since  it’s not possible for all businesses or for all individuals. Nor should we have to when those higher postal rates are subsidizing the unrealistically low rates paid by other classes of mail.

It may well be that lower postal rates for periodicals and non-profits serve a greater social purpose, but, if that is so, then Congress should subsidize those rates with public funding.  But, as usual, Congress doesn’t want to pay for its privileges [the franking privilege] and doesn’t want to admit the degree to which it wants everyone else to subsidize bulk mail for business, charities, non-profits, and political organizations, all of which apparently have more political clout than the citizenry as a whole.

Not that any of this is surprising, but I have yet to see any public discussion of this aspect of the Postal Service cost structure, not in more than forty years – except for my own comments.

Last week, the American gymnast Ali Raisman tied for third place at the Olympics in the all-around competition… and lost the tie-breaker because she was a more consistent performer than the Russian gymnast with whom she was tied.  Yes… that’s correct.  The more consistent performer lost in a competition designed to reward the most consistent   I doubt that was what the gymnastics federation had in mind when they drew up the tie-breaker rule, but that sort of result was absolutely and mathematically inevitable because of the rule, which provided that, in the event of a tie, the lowest score each of the two gymnasts had, out of the four events, would be thrown out, and the one with the highest remaining score would be declared the winner.  The result mathematically is that when two gymnasts are tied, if one has a particularly bad single event, the winner will always be that one.

This is an excellent example of how what seems, on the surface, to be a perfectly logical “solution” created a result totally at odds with the goal of the competition.  Unhappily, this doesn’t just happen in Olympic gymnastics, but in all too many areas of society, business, and government. It occurs because too many decision-makers, from politicians to business CEOs, don’t think through the implications and ramifications of their decisions.  Sometimes, that occurs because they don’t think events will ever require contingency plans – as in the case of safety requirements at Japanese nuclear facilities.  After all, who could have predicted the freakish combination of earthquake and tsunami? And in gymnastics, what was the probability of a tie with that many judges and four events with scores measured in thousandths of a point?

Results at variance with what one might call common sense also occur when situations change and the rules or procedures don’t. Or they occur because everyone is so concerned about the moment that something totally predictable that occurs periodically, but at long intervals, is totally overlooked, as in the case of Delta Airlines forgetting to renew their online security certification at a time when they had cut commissions to travel agents and increased the fees required for telephone booking, thus increasing the percentage of reservations and payments made online.

All of these situations are the result of failure, in some way, to consider the implications of either certain actions or of failing to act… and all are preventable… but, given human nature, few will be.

Several days ago, a former student of my wife called, frantically trying to locate an original copy of music he needed – by the next day.  Last week, her department chair informed her that a special grant was available for her opera program, if she could submit the paperwork by Monday.  Now… he had been informed that she was leaving for a singing appearance the next day and would not be returning until Monday evening… and he’d had the information about the grant for almost a month.  And more than once I’ve had editors of periodicals [not my regular editor; he knows better] request corrections to proofs in a day or two.

What gives with people these days?  Now that we have instant messaging and email and networks, etc., it’s as though half the population, if not more, believes that everything can be done instantly… and that everyone is instantly available all the time.  Yet often these demands and requests involve material objects that can’t be produced or located instantly.  Electronic instantaneousness doesn’t translate automatically to instant physical production, especially of objects involving more than text, a fact that is increasingly lost on many superiors.  Nor is everyone always physically located where they can comply with such requests and demands.  Yet the creation of near-instant communications has created the illusion for many that everything is instant.

Even when someone is present and ready, these last-minute requests and demands create the danger of fast and shoddy work, often with little or no oversight and review. For the most part, speed is dangerous.  This fact is certainly recognized in areas such as aviation and various racing sports, where great attention to detail is the hallmark of those who are successful. There’s all too much truth to the truism that “speed kills.” But the dangers of speed appear far less well-recognized in business or education, or finance, despite such mishaps as the flash crash of the stock market several years ago, or the more recent mishaps dealing with a portfolio of stocks handled by a large market-maker, caused, incidentally, by the adoption of new trading software designed in part to speed trades.  And the use of fast electronic processing by shoddy mortgage firms has doomed many homeowners to unnecessary financial ruin.

There’s a huge difference between planned and careful use of speed and laziness, incompetence, and procrastination enabled by rapid communications… and it’s well past time that individuals, not to mention organizations and their leaders, recognized that difference.

Mozart was a genius.  That’s something on which almost all professionals in classical music agree.  Outside of music, however, his acts, language, and behavior left, shall we say, something to be desired.  The same was also true of Richard Wagner.  Because my wife is a professional singer, as well as a professor of voice and opera, over the years, I’ve met a few renowned figures in the field.  Several, often described as outstanding or geniuses, have come across as boors, bitches, and self-absorbed bastards [no..I won’t name names].  In my years in politics, I went through the same experience, except that occurred in the back rooms, so to speak, because any competent politician, in general, is warm and caring in public… or at least careful in dealing with anyone who can vote or contribute or give good media coverage. 

Now… not all geniuses are uncaring, self-centered egotists, but from what I’ve seen, a disproportionate number are – especially in private or when they think they can get away with such behavior.  What is it about so many people who have great talent that makes them so indifferent to the feelings of others and so willing to tromp over others – even when it gains them nothing and often costs them far more than they realize? That might just be a reason why the career of pop music phenoms average 18 months.

Some have claimed that such egotistic behavior is one of the costs of or prices for genius.  I don’t buy that.  I suspect that people tend to excuse behaviors by those with great talent, wealth, or power that they would not tolerate in others.  I understand [but still find repulsive] such excuses when people feel they must ignore or excuse bad behavior by those with great power, as in the case of corporate subordinates of egocentric CEOs, because calling your boss on bad behavior is usually a career-limiting move.  And I have to admit that I’ve never understood the appeal of rock stars or popular musicians whose popularity seems to be enhanced by bad behavior.  That might possibly be because fans wish they could do the same and identify with it, but, elitist that I am, I much prefer quiet class to the openly displayed arrogance of power.

As I’ve noted before, in the corporate area, competent and quiet CEOs almost always outperform the egocentric ones, but both the public and the media seem all too willing to praise the egotists, at least until they fail… and most do.  As for Mozart, while his music lives on, he was buried almost without mourners in an unmarked grave.  Maybe that fact ought to be trumpeted a bit more.