Islamic Terrorism, Oregon Style - David Loftus

For once, Oregon’s national (and potentially international) news story this weekend is not football or the latest domestic nutjob in a long line from the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to Tonya Harding. Surprisingly, it’s a Muslim terrorism story . . . at least, ostensibly.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old boy born in Somalia and until recently a student at Oregon State University (sorry about that Stanford game, boys), was arrested by Portland City Police and the FBI after trying to detonate what he thought was a bomb in a van parked next to the city’s “downtown living room,” Pioneer Courthouse Square, as the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, attended by thousands, was about to begin.

Pioneer Square is five blocks from my apartment, as the crow flies; eight if you walk the blocks properly. I was probably at home at the time. I’ve never gone to the tree lighting ceremony, though I’ve attended dozens of other events at the square over the years, including the Millennium party of New Year’s, 1999-2000.

Frankly, I don’t feel any more or less safe than I did two days ago. So far, I haven’t seen any sign that this kid posed a real threat, despite all the noise the feds and the media are making about his grandiose notions. The New York Times reported that in 2009 Mohamud made e-mail contact with a man believed to be a recruiter for terrorism. The man had returned to the Middle East from the U.S. -- first to Yemen, then to northwest Pakistan --but apparently he did not continue to respond Mohamud’s communications, let alone offer him assistance. The Oregonian reports that the “terrorist recruiter” referred Mohamud to another contact, but that person never responded to the boy’s messages.

Since then, the suspect’s only contacts have been with an undercover FBI agent posing as a terrorist contact. Now, I wouldn’t defend the kid on the basis of entrapment. It’s clear he meant business: he chose the Christmas holiday, he chose the event, and he wanted a bomb that would kill a lot of people. It’s just not clear, thus far, that he would ever have acquired the know-how or wherewithal to go through with his plan without advice and support from somebody. Actual terrorists never offered it; only the FBI did. I’ve pored over the news stories that have come out since, and though it's a little hard to read between the lines this early in the game, so far I haven’t seen anything that says the critical pieces of the puzzle -- the bomb components, real or fake -- were obtained by Mohamud from anyone but U.S. government employees.

Let’s retain a little perspective, folks. You’re still more likely to be killed by a drunk driver this holiday season than an act of terrorism. The authorities should have scotched this loser quietly. But that would have destroyed a golden opportunity to throw a new scare into the American public and justify the billions of dollars we’ve thrown at the Department of Homeland Security the past seven years, as well as other federal enforcement bodies.

They needed this kind of story badly, given the bad press the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had been getting the past few weeks for its new airport screening measures. Never mind that the TSA would have done nothing to stop this kind of threat; simple-minded Americans who still think invading Iraq was a rational response to 9/11 will probably feel better about being groped by their fellow citizens this December.

The problem I see with these noisy stories about “the success of the government’s war on terrorism” is that it mainly provides lessons for future nutjobs on how to avoid making similarly stupid mistakes. Real, committed terrorists are going to succeed now and then, no matter what anyone does; I don’t see that there’s much we can do about them.

If the U.S. government is in fact tracking and catching those types, more power to ’em; but it should go about it quietly, because that’s the way to keep real terrorists and harmless nutjobs off balance. Terrorizing the American public over relatively harmless religious fanatics like Mohamud or screwups like Richard Reid (remember the “tennis-shoe bomber”?) is, in my opinion, counterproductive and unprofessional.

Black Friday Shopping - Jeff Weiss

Last year I wrote about the scene at my local mall on Black Friday.  The mall opened at midnight again this year, and I was there.  But, I also checked out a few other spots. I was curious if the slowly improving economy would trickle down to my local retail outlets, bringing more shoppers than in 2009.

My first stop was the mall.  I was there by 11:50pm and I found a line of about two hundred people waiting at the main entrance.  There were fewer people lined up at other mall entrances, but security guards were going to each entrance to inform shoppers that the only doors opening at midnight were the ones at the main entrance.  I asked a few people how long they had been in line and no one - not even people toward the front of the line - said they had been there for longer than an hour.  The weather forecast had brought predictions of a chilly and rainy Thanksgiving Day that would continue into Friday, but rain gave way to clouds early Thursday afternoon and by 11:55pm the temperate was a comfortable 53 degrees.  As I was checking the weather on my cellphone, the doors to the mall opened and people began to rush inside.

11:50 pm: Shoppers wait in line to get into the mall.

 The crowd this year was not as frenzied as last year.  Again, shoppers voiced their disappointment upon entering to find very few stores had opened at midnight.  Just as was the case last year, not one of the "anchor" department stores had opened early.  Even some of the old Black Friday standbys such as Radio Shack had their gates pulled shut. The midnight opening was for "select" stores. Others would open at 2am, and the entire mall would be open by 4am. At midnight, GameStop was a popular destination, but the shoe store only had a few people browsing.  The candle store was completely empty, but I don't know many people who'd venture out at midnight to buy a candle.  Most of the people in the mall were around the booth set up by a local radio station, where disc jockeys were broadcasting live as they gave away prizes to mall customers who correctly answered trivia questions. While there were more people in the mall this year compared to last, there didn't seem to be as many shoppers.  This year the mall seemed to be populated mostly by teenagers who were congregating near the entrance or the food court, but none of them were carrying shopping bags.  Maybe they were waiting for the candle store to start slashing prices.  I started to wonder were the real crowds were.

12:15 am: Lots of people, but not a lot of shopping at the mall.

 After a short drive across the street, I found those crowds - at WalMart.  The parking lot was packed, which was to be expected.  My local WalMart never closed on Thursday, but instead stayed open and started some of their Black Friday sales at midnight.  The scene outside was hectic.  The line stretched down so far I could not see where it ended.  Police stood by metal stanchions as a female WalMart employee stood in the bucket of a crane (yes, a crane) and counted the number of people leaving the store.  As people left, she shouted out the number of people exiting so the police could allow that same number of people into the store.  Oddly enough, the people leaving the store weren't pushing shopping carts overflowing with purchases, but instead were only carrying one or two items out of the store.  One woman left with only a blender. I hope she likes it, because I doubt I would have waited in line to have a woman in a crane tell me I can go inside a WalMart just to buy a blender.  I snapped a photograph of the line then tried to get a picture of the crane and stanchions, but a friendly police officer suggested that I "get in line or get out."  I chose to get out.

12:35 am: WalMart looking more like a crime scene than a shopping destination.

 Toys R Us is located in the same shopping center as WalMart, but there were so many cars trying to park in their lot, I gave up trying to see what was going on over there.  Instead, I drove around the block to another shopping center that has a Target and a Best Buy.  Because of the parking lot structure in that shopping center, I wasn't able to get any photos, but I saw about 75 people waiting for Target to open (this was at 12:45 am and the store wouldn't open for another three hours and fifteen minutes), many of them bundled up and sitting on lawn chairs.  The scene at Best Buy was similar, but there were about 150-200 people lined up to get into the big box retailer.  Again, many of them in lawn chairs - some were even in tents. 

By 1am I was ready to go home.  I hadn't bought a thing, but I observed that while more people appeared to have ventured out this year, fewer of them seemed to be buying anything.

Happy Thanksgiving

Last year, Nikki shared with us some of her favorite Thanksgiving memories.  A lot has changed over the last twelve months, and we thought it would be nice to reprint Nikki's article from last year.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a time where family and friends get together to gorge out on food. Usually in my house, its just me and my immediate family getting together. But, one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories happened about four years ago. Earlier that year I had started going to a church in my neighborhood and I got really plugged into their young adults group. Every other Friday, they had a girls bible study. I became friends with all of them, and I was happy because I finally found some decent friends. So, at the beginning of the month, I got a crazy idea: have a potluck dinner at my house and invite all the girls. All 20-plus girls fit into my parents 4 bedroom, 2 story, middle class suburban home which has never seated (or was built to seat) 20 people in one room at once to eat a meal together.

I bought the turkey, all 25 pounds of it. Mind you, this was the first turkey I was making on my own, and during my then 23 years on the earth, never once watched my dad prepare the turkey. And, being cheap, I bought a cheap pan. Needless to say, there was turkey grease in my oven and I was out more money to buy another pan. I was cursing the dollar store pan, especially when I was strolling into the supermarket fighting with the lines. Then my friends started coming. And coming with all with their food. I don’t think I've ever seen that many pies in my life. The kitchen was getting over run with food, and it was starting to spill over into our dining room, which was already jam packed. The table that we had in our kitchen disappeared into the dinning room in between our dining room table with 3 folding tables being circled by a hodgepodge of chairs which even included heavy metal patio chairs. The food was great, and the turkey turned out well, despite me being overthrown of carving duty (being Italian and talking with both my mouth AND my hands- with a hug knife- not a good combo).

The best was when we were all able to sit around and actually tell each other what we were thankful for that year. It was more that just the food (which is a GREAT bonus), but it was more to see all of the good that was happening in our lives - to actually think of what we are thankful for. And at the end of the night, all 25 pounds of turkey were devoured, we had minimum left overs, I had plenty of help cleaning up, and I had proof that more than 20 girls can get together for a night and get along. I had a few get-togethers at my house since then. I've had barbecues, Christmas parties, and random get-togethers, but something about shoving all those people in one room makes people still talk. Even this weekend, my friends and I were talking about it when we got together and drug in furniture from my backyard. I know for some people this will be the norm today, and if that is the case, that is absolutely wonderful- and I mean that. There is something about surrounding yourself with people that you care about and being thankful for what you have. So no matter how many people you are meeting with, and even if you are sitting in lawn furniture in your dining room, try and make a memory of it. It’ll be worth it when you are still talking about it in years to come. 

Nikki's Journey Continues

I officially ended my second week of Weight Watchers. How has it been? I want to say it has gotten easier. Well, in one aspect it has gotten easier: me adjusting to eating less has gotten easier.

 

However, this is the week that I just didn't want to care. I didn't want to care that I shoved my face with a box of mac and cheese and a pack of Tasty Kake cupcakes (but I resisted, only had a cup of mac and cheese and no cupcakes). I also went to Friendly's, had a mint cookie crunch sundae, and didn't realize how bad it was. I mean, I knew sundaes were bad, I just didn't realize how bad. I'm just glad I didn't eat the whole thing.

 

Then I got sick. I ended up getting laryngitis and rested as much as I could. That ruled out me doing my exercise routine: going on a walk that lasts about 60 min. I was just plain ol' lazy. After getting used to walking, I kind of missed being so active and missed getting out of my routine.

 

So far, I am realizing that it is actually pretty easy to start a habit like this. Sure, it is really, really easy to break a habit. To start a habit, sure, it can be hard, but when you know you have a goal to reach, I am pretty sure that helps you jump start it. It also helps knowing that you are actually spending money to help you get on the right track.

 

Weight lost this week: 4 lbs

Overall weight lost: 14 lbs

Weight left to loose: 41 lbs

Starting a New Journey - Nikki Lorenzini

Last Tuesday I joined Weight Watchers. Yes, I joined the many people who have vowed to lose weight. However, I am not one of the normal ones, at least I don’t think. I actually joined the day after I came back from my cousins wedding in New Orleans, and I was one of the bridesmaids (don’t most people want to lose it before?). I also made a point to sign up before the holidays. My reasoning being, if I can do it during, then I can definitely do it after.

My goal: to lose 55 pounds. Crazy you might say. As you look at my picture, you might not think I don’t need to lose that much. If I can be so honest, my one pet peeve is people saying, “You don’t need to lose that much weight,” or, “You’re not that heavy.”  Yes, you might not think that, but I wear clothes to hide the extra pudge. However, you are not the one walking around with an extra 55 pounds, and being out of breath when you walk up a flight of stairs, with your legs feeling like jello. These 55 pounds might not seem too much in the sphere of things, but it is a lot to me. I am 27 years old. Young compared to most, old when I’m talking to my Sunday school kids. I would like to say that I want to lose this weight for vanity sake, but I am confident in the way I look. I also haven’t dated in 4 years, so the hope of picking up a man with my new, skinny looks isn’t my top priority.

So vanity aside, I need to do this for my health. 

However, being only 27 years old, I know that I need to get this weight problem kicked. It might only be 55 pounds, but I don’t want it to eventually be a 100+ pounds. I remember being in grade school and shocked when I got in the 100+ range. I really don’t want to go in the 200+ pound range. I am only 5’1”, so imagine that on my tiny frame. I know that in the years to come, it will get increasingly hard to lose this weight. Well, that is what I have everyone who is older than me telling me. I know the side effects: diabetes, problems conceiving, high blood pressure, etc. I definitely do not want my future plagued with medicine.

This is coming from the person who absolutely loves eating, cooking, and baking, and also forgetting I have a gym membership. I always thought that the people who were in the gym for hours (or at least seemed for hours), were crazy muscle heads. I’m realizing that I don’t have to spend hours on end in the gym. I live in the suburbs where I can easily go for a walk, or go to the park and talk a walk.  Start with the minimal and work myself up to something more, like running. Well, I hope to start running one day. 

Every week I hope to have an updated blog with how I am doing. So far to date, in the week I have been doing it, I have lost 10 pounds. Not too bad for someone who loves food. 

My Year of Proust, part 2 - David Loftus

No question, the word for À la recherche du temps perdu is monumental.

Unlike other sprawling works that intimidate readers (say, Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow), Proust’s masterpiece does not range across vast fields of knowledge. You won’t encounter tons of geography, history, or the sciences (although there’s a bit about music, literature, and medicine, since Proust’s father was a renowned physician). The author’s not putting that kind of erudition on display.

Rather, Proust takes a microscope, in effect, to a particular era and place (Paris and the northwest coast of France -- Normandy, mostly) in the last few decades of the 19th century, and the mores and inner lives of mostly upper-middle-class and aristocratic folks in that milieu. He also gives us a vivid, specific, and detailed peek into the thoughts, judgments, fears, notions, and insecurities of his narrator -- a person very much like the author but not exactly him.

The narrator will take pages and pages to describe the delicate sparring of attendees at a cocktail party; his goofy relatives of a still earlier era; the time it takes him to make this or that decision, and all the thought processes that went into it; and above all, the excruciating jealousy he feels about the behavior of his lower-class mistress (and similarly painful affairs between other men and women -- and some men and men -- of his acquaintance). Proust takes you deeply into a different world, peopled by folks who nevertheless make the same mistakes of love, judgment, gossip, self-contradiction, and social insecurity that you do.

But you have to adjust to a different pace of reading: rich, luxuriant, and leisurely. It is as if Wagner’s Ring Cycle had been composed by Debussy. Even a reader like myself, who has never cracked a Tom Clancy, Danielle Steele, Dan Brown, or Twilight novel, can find his mind wandering if he doesn’t concentrate steadily on Proust’s complicated, meandering, digressive sentences.

I often catch myself having to back up to reread a long sentence, paragraph, even a whole page -- more than once. (Just so you know what you’re up against, I counted the words and punctuation marks in a sample sentence in vol. 3: with the help of 15 commas, 4 em-dashes, 1 semicolon, 1 colon, and 1 parenthetical, Proust rattles out a 338-word sentence … in English translation, of course, but I assume the translating team mimicked his style.)

Every once in a while, something crackles. It may be an Oscar Wilde- or Mark Twain-like maxim:

·      … the regularity of a habit is often in direct proportion to its absurdity.

·      Like everyone who is not in love, he imagined that one chooses the person that one loves after endless deliberation and on the strength of diverse qualities and advantages.

·      There is a special kind of look, apparently of recognition, which a young man receives from certain women—and from certain men—only until the day on which they have made his acquaintance and have learned that he is the friend of people with whom they too are intimate.

·      Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.

·      It would be untrue to say that she was a fool; she overflowed with a kind of intelligence that I had no use for.

·      One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.

·      Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art.

·      We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

·      … theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.

·      … in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice: I preferred not to see them… .

·      “Love?” she had once replied to a pretentious lady who had asked for her views on love, “I make it often but I never talk about it.”

·      We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.

Or it may be an extended passage that reminds me of a deeply emotional experience, or complex thought or desire, that I’ve had in my own life. The other day, I read a passage where the narrator says that once he suspected his lover had been physically intimate with a notorious lesbian, “I should have liked, not to tear off her dress to see her body, but through her body to see and read the whole diary of her memories and her future passionate assignations.”

Somehow, this reminded me of a similarly impossible wish; what might qualify as a Proustian desire: to go back and relive my first meeting with my future wife and the memorable women before her. Not to live in that time, but just to re-experience what I could not have known then was a momentous encounter in my life, and, this time, see what I can see in it, knowing what I would come to know and feel later. Could I perceive how vital this particular woman would come to be for me in time? Would I recognize certain deeply cherished tics in her (or in me) when things were still so casual and tentative? I think it would feel a little like the anticipatory joy one experiences when rereading the opening pages of a favorite book, or watching the first scenes of a beloved movie one has already seen many times.

I was also a little surprised, given my expectation that I would read about effete parties and passionate affairs and the behavior and furnishings of a distant time … how honestly and regularly Proust brings it all back to why he sought for decades to recapture the past, in memory and on the page: because he feared death, just as I do, and just as anyone who has any self-awareness should, in order to guide one’s choices during the brief time we are alive. Love, beauty, and memory make it almost bearable.

That’s what it’s all about, really.

See part 1, In Search of Proust Time

In Search of Proust Time - David Loftus

I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna finish Proust this year.

Last night I started “The Captive,” volume 5 of the 7 volumes of what has long been known in English as Remembrance of Things Past. For those of you who did not major in either English lit or French, the more literal translation of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu, is In Search of Lost Time, but the first English translator, a Scot named Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, cribbed a phrase from the second line of Shakespeare’s sonnet 30 for the title of his version in the 1920s. There was no other English edition (or corrected title) for nearly 60 years.

The work is 3,200 pages long (4,300 in the Modern Library version I’m reading) and contains more than 2,000 characters. Proust labored over it for most of the final 13 years of his life. Graham Greene called Proust “the greatest novelist of the twentieth century, just as Tolstoy was in the nineteenth,” and Maugham called this book “the greatest fiction to date.” Given that his health had not been good since childhood (he was a severe asthmatic) Proust may have been lucky to get even three of the seven volumes published before he died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in 1922, at the age of 51 (my age, in fact!).

Many of my friends have expressed admiration that I have tackled the thing -- more than one has called me brave -- but it’s been a long time coming. (And I know people who have read it multiple times, some even in the original French, which is far beyond me . . . * sigh *.) I think I first attempted to read Proust the summer after high school graduation, and didn’t get much beyond the first volume. Several years later, I got through two or three books. I didn’t finish because I had to return them to the library in Coos Bay, Oregon because the summer was over and I had to get back to college. As recently as three or four years ago, I had another bash, with the comfort of having purchased paperback copies of the first three volumes and therefore fearing no time pressures. I raced through “Swann’s Way” (the first volume) for the third or fourth time, and then wandered off again.

2010 would be it, I told myself toward the end of last year. I got a running start by opening “Swann’s Way” a couple days before Dec. 31, and managed to whip through the first three books in January and early February. But things got especially slow in the middle of volume 4 (despite the racy title on that one, “Sodom and Gomorrah”), and it didn’t help that I was memorizing lines and rehearsing for a production of “King Lear.” I wandered off (literarily speaking -- I was still reading dozens of other books) yet again.

But with the calendar ticking away, I figured I’d better get moving again or fail yet again. So a week ago I picked up volume 4 (the bookmark was still tucked where I’d stopped) and was off to the races. Tomorrow, I’ll describe a little of my experience of Proust, so far.

Go to part 2, My Year of Proust

It Was a Very Wordy Year - David Loftus

A year ago today, I posted my first commentary to “American Currents.” It was a piece about a proposal to change Halloween to a floating holiday. Instead of always being on the 31st, “All Hallows’ Eve” would be pinned to the final Saturday of October every year, for the convenience of retailers. It’s been a long and interesting 365 days ever since; I’m taking the anniversary as an opportunity to look back.

On October 9, 2009 I responded to a Craigslist ad titled “Seeking Bloggers.” The poster, Jeff Weiss, replied immediately and explained that he envisioned a blog staffed by a team of about five writers from different parts of the country, who would post daily commentaries on topics of social, political, economic, and cultural import in the U.S. on a rotating basis. He suggested that each of us commit to doing three essays a week.

I suspected that most of the eventual participants would be young and liberal, and I strongly urged Jeff to find at least one conservative commentator to foster a lively exchange and a potentially broader array of readers. I also came up with the name “American Currents” and volunteered to proof and edit the other writers’ copy, so Jeff honored me with the title of “supervising editor.”

Privately, I doubted the thing would last long -- most probably it would end up being little more than a vanity project for the writers and its founder -- but the opportunity for “ten-finger calisthenics” appealed to me. Apart from the discipline of having to research and write brief reactions to breaking news topics assigned to me, I constantly had ideas flitting through my brain with no suitable place to put them.

For nearly six months, we made a decent go of it. The other folks stuck to their two or three pieces a week, but I tried to write more often, and often did -- sometimes having to hammer something out between midnight and one in the morning. Among many other things, we wrote about:

·      the Amanda Knox verdict

·      the sexting suicide of Jessica Logan

·      a proposal to move Guantanamo terror suspects stateside

·      health care reform introduced to Congress

·      the New Mexico funeral home horror

·      the National Enquirer’s hope for a Pulitzer for breaking the story of John Edwards’s affair

·      the scientific validity of global warming

·      the tragic death of a trainer in the jaws of a killer whale at Sea World

·      the Louisiana lebians-at-the-prom flap

·      the Westboro Baptist Church crazies and the First Amendment

and many other topics. We even wrote several times about Obama and the Super Bowl.

[I have provided links only to my particular commentaries; the site is not easy to get around, so if you want to see what other people wrote, or the questions as Jeff put them to us, you’ll have to go to the Home page and click on “Prev” at the bottom of each page to work your way back to the relevant dates.]

Several personalities offered (or forced) opportunities for multiple visitations: Sarah Palin’s Newsweek cover, the so-called “Visor-gate,” her demurral that she’s not a candidate for President in 2012, her mini spat with “Family Guy,” the source of her mysteriously enduring popularity, and whether Palin and her conservative cohorts are seditious; and Tiger Woods’s Thanksgiving weekend embarrassment, and his decision to take a time-out from golf. By the time his televised apology rolled around, I was so uninspired to write about Woods that I treated it as a Winter Olympics sport, which made it more fun.

Cultural events such as the movies “2012” and “Avatar” offered the chance to talk about larger issues. Often, Jeff asked us to address events and personalities I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, such as Meredith Baxter’s coming out, the New York City EMT controversy, the teacher’s aide fired after nude photos were circulated from her lost cell phone, John Mayer’s Playboy interview, Rielle Hunter’s GQ “revelations” about her affair with John Edwards, and the Minnesota man indicted for encouraging suicides over the Internet. Occasionally I grabbed the chance to write about topics of my own choosing, including atheism in America.

At the end of April, Jeff said he was giving up the blog. It was too much work coming up with a topic of the day, every day, with a graphic and getting us to respond. The hit numbers weren’t climbing as high as he’d hoped. After a week or two, I decided I’d continue to write for “American Currents,” and invited the other commentators to contribute on a looser, more personal basis.

Again, as I suspected, output from the others dropped considerably, and “American Currents” has all but become my personal blog. I’ve written series about recycling redeemable cans and bottles in my apartment building, and my experiences as an actor in 48-Hour Film Festival contests (both series technically unfinished), as well as bigger local and national news stories like the disappearance of Kyron Horman, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the WikiLeaks release of Afghanistan war documents, the national bed bug infestation, and the Veterans for Peace “obscene” protest of the wars on October 3 (a three-parter). There have also been very personal accounts of my thoughts while walking, an attack on canned music, and the description of an incident in which I called out the police on a girl I saw on the street.

Now that a year has passed, I’m surprised to find I pounded out more than 64,000 words in nearly 150 short essays. They’ve gotten fewer but longer and more personal as we moved beyond the original format designed by Jeff: when you choose want you want to talk about, there’s less chance of having almost nothing to say, as happened, for instance, with Super Bowl ads and Toyota’s massive car recall, which merited just 59 and 57 words, respectively, from me.

I look forward to another interesting and thought-provoking year.

The Great American Circus - David Loftus

I don’t watch much television news anymore (never mind television in general), but searching for election coverage earlier this week I happened to catch a disturbing local story.

Four adults (I use the term advisedly) were arraigned in McMinnville, a town of 32,000 about 35 miles southwest of Portland, on a variety of criminal charges that stem from an incident in which they apparently urged a pair of 9-year-old boys into a violent fight in front of a video camera.

They uploaded the result onto Facebook. Someone in Pennsylvania saw the clip and phoned the McMinnville Police Department, which resulted in arrests on charges of criminal mistreatment, assault, reckless endangering, endangering the welfare of a child, and strangulation. Some of these charges resulted from a search of the two apartments where the children lived, which authorities described as “extremely filthy,” with rotten and insufficient food, and drug paraphernalia. The accused, two men and two women, were not teenagers; three are in their 30s and the last is 22.

I saw a brief clip on the TV report of two little boys punching and kicking each other while adult voices could be heard egging them on. Though taken into protective custody by social workers, the children were said not to be seriously hurt. But this incident appears symptomatic of larger, unhealthy changes in how many Americans see themselves and the world around them. These grownups (again, a relative term) regarded their kids as tools for entertaining themselves and others (much the way Michael Vick treated pit bull dogs before his conviction) -- for gaining attention from the great wide world out there. And they sought to reproduce the sort of violent thrills they probably derive from television, movies, and video games. The problem is that they were using vulnerable, dependent, and growing human beings entrusted by law to their care and training as tools.

Humans have always had a problem distinguishing between fiction and truth … art and reality … entertainment and news. Over the years I’ve enjoyed collecting stories about such confusion. A woman who visited Modigliani’s studio roughly a century ago noticed a work in progress on an easel and commented, “But surely this woman’s arm is too long?” The artist replied: “Excuse me, madame; that is not a woman, that is a painting.” Magritte made the same point with his painting “The Treachery of Images” -- you know, the one that pictures a smoking pipe with the legend below: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Similarly, a man verbally attacked Picasso because, like too many other artists of the time, he did not paint things “the way they really are.” The complainer took a photo of his daughter out of his wallet and showed it to the artist, saying, see -- this looks just like her; why can’t you do that? Picasso gazed at the photo for a moment and remarked, “Small, isn’t she?”

More recently, in the late 1980s, I heard a story on National Public Radio about a man who went stomping into a sheriff’s office in Pennsylvania to complain that an Amish farmer had refused to pose for the tourist’s camera with his wife and kids. The deputy on duty patiently explained that the farmer was a member of a spiritual community that chooses to live their lives in a certain simple way, free of modern technologies, and he was under no obligation to do as a passerby demanded. The tourist was flabbergasted; he said: “You mean, they aren’t PAID to do this?”

It is as if he, like many other Americans, regarded anything outside the cocoon of his home as one big Disneyland. And why shouldn’t he? That’s the message from the news (which shamelessly conflates stories about local shootings and fires with “reports” about the latest developments among the network’s hit shows and stars), to advertising (“These burgers/coffee drinks/vacations/homes/furniture/babes, etc., etc. are ALL MADE OR EXIST JUST FOR YOU!!!”), to movies (“there are millions of threats out there just itching to GET you, from vampires and terrorists and aliens and evil politicians to global warming, but our handsome leading guy and gal will deal with them in less 2 hours, so you don’t have to worry or do a thing -- just enjoy your fears!”). Through all these avenues, corporate America is teaching Americans to be passive slug consumers who are responsible for nothing and entitled to everything.

How does this relate to our losers in McMinnville? They couldn’t let entertainment stay where it was: a product manufactured by experts. They wanted in on the action. And as long as a video of their kids hurting each other got attention from thousands, possibly even millions, of fellow American viewers, that made the bruises and blood no more real or hurtful than the vivid violence on their computer and plasma screens. Converting real life into entertainment both validates and objectifies it into something more -- and less -- than real.

Because real just isn’t good enough. Or magic enough. Or interesting enough.

Stalking a Stranger - David Loftus

I first saw her when I was waiting for the crosswalk light and she started across the street toward me -- against the light and in front of the cross traffic that had just gotten the green. The cars paused for her to totter to the far side. I looked back a few times before stopping to observe her progress. She was young, and she was weaving.

I don’t think I saw her fall, but I did see her briefly crumpled in the gutter before she got up and continued down the block. I started to follow and watched another couple stop to talk with her briefly before they continued on. She must have told them she was okay, but I didn’t think she was. I was afraid she was going to get hit by a bus, car, or light-rail train, all of which were passing by either next to her curb, across her path, or within a block. Or perhaps a less scrupulous person might take advantage of her in her vulnerable state.

So I continued to backtrack, and caught up with her on the second block where she had stopped to lean against a wall. It’s cold and rainy today, and she was not exactly dressed for the weather: leg warmers on her calves, sure, but a short skirt above her knees, and a thin blouse or tee. She was not wearing her cheap pink imitation fleece jacket against the cold, but had it draped over her head against the rain, and she was lugging a backpack and a shopping bag. I seem to remember a hole in a stocking.

I leaned against the wall next to her and said, can I help you get where you’re going? “I’m fine,” she said, “I’m just resting.” That’s all she ever said. You don’t look like you’re resting, I said, which was not exactly true, but she was so much more. You look like you’re in danger of hurting yourself, I continued, and I’m worried about that, so I’d like to accompany you to a safe place, wherever that may be, but I don’t know where you’re headed. She didn’t say anything or move, so I just continued to stand next to her. Passersby looked at us, perhaps thinking we were together, perhaps even thinking I was bothering this young woman hidden under a pink jacket, but there was no contact between us and no noise of distress from her, so nobody stopped. An older black man was on the other side, almost as close to her as I was and talking on his cell phone, so I kept an eye on him in case he made any sort of move toward her.

She needed a more professional examination. I called home, thinking that Carole would know what to do -- whom to call to get her the proper attention -- but there was no answer. (My wife was out walking the dog, it turned out.) After another moment, I decided to dial 9-1-1. Once she heard me talking and trying to bring more attention, the girl started to move … and I moved with her, keeping the emergency dispatcher apprised of our location for the next 6-1/2 blocks (a right turn, two blocks; a left turn, three blocks; and another left, crossing all the streets in between).

I had a sense of unreality, strolling alongside her, giving a detailed description (dark olive skirt, black blouse, pink jacket, about 5'4", late teens/early 20s, slight build, apparently intoxicated, weaving and walking into traffic, trying to get away from me) on my mobile phone and occasionally moving to block her way and stay between her and the curb.

She walked right into a sidewalk sandwich board on the first block, and would have proceeded into traffic against the light at least once again if I hadn’t stood in her way. At one point I apologized to her, and said I only wanted her to be safe. I remember looking into her eyes and thinking they might be dilated, but I didn't know enough to be sure. I kept expecting her to grab me, shove me, shout at me to leave her alone, but she never did any of those things. She just kept passively moving, weaving, trying to get away from me and whatever else lay behind her.

Finally two police cars pulled up to us and three officers got out to talk to her. I started to walk away, thinking my task was done, then decided I’d better stick around to see what followed, keeping a discreet distance from them, out of hearing range. One of the officers looked over at me, miming a phone call, and I nodded. He came over to note down my name, phone number, and a basic description of why I had called. He instructed me to keep my phone on in case they needed to take her into some sort of protective custody and would require more details. That was two hours ago. They have not called.

I think I did the right thing. Perhaps I’ll phone the police station tomorrow to find out what happened. It’s a hard thing to intervene in a stranger’s life, even a scary one. But what would you have done?

Take Nikki Out to the Ballpark - Nikki Lorenzini

I am currently sitting in my room watching the Phillies getting killed by the Giants. Okay, it is only the fourth inning, but the score is 2-0. I look on Facebook and see people’s status updates on their teams, talk to co-workers and hear how Phillies fans hate Ross, how much they are in love with the Phil’s, how they dress their babies up in the gear in hopes to raise a lifetime fan. I am no different. I posted on Facebook saying how I’ll have to be put on heart meds because of the way that Phil’s work on my heart. 

It makes me think why there are so many die heard sports fans. I understand getting involved in a TV show, a book, a movie. It’s more easy to relate to. But sports? With sports, there is so much drama. If you’re a fair weather fan, you’ll love “your” team when they’re doing well and hate them when they’re doing badly. For the die-hard fans, you’ll show up for the games despite what’s going on around (I’ve been to my fair share of games in the rain, including thunderstorms underneath metal). We have promoted sports players on a special level, almost like mini-gods. We go to sporting events early to tailgate, spend $7 on a beer, $5 on a hot dog, $25 on the cheapest ticket possible. Then we complain that everything is so expensive, and wonder why they are getting paid that much, yet we still come out.

But what is the special love affair with sports? Is it because we only wish we could play like them? Or is it because we’re in a day and age that is obsessed with fitness and being active that we are amazed with the people who almost embody that? Up until recently, it only seems that we only started getting involved with sports player’s lives, with the help on Tiger Woods. Is it because sports are relatively drama free we get so involved with them? 

While I ponder this, I’ll be sitting on the edge of my bed, fingers crossed, that the Phils make it to the World Series for the third year in a row. 

Early to rise not necessarily wise - David Loftus

For the past few weeks, news sources have reported on a study that suggests people may live longer lives on less sleep than has previously been thought most healthy. I first read about it in my local paper on Wednesday, but a Google News search turned up stories that were nearly two weeks old. However, as many news reports or their headlines about scientific studies can so often be, some of them may be misleading at best, and at worst utterly wrong.

“Sleeping as little as 5 hours a night might be good for you,” reads a representative Oct. 2 headline on the Web site for a Fox News station in New York City, myfoxny. According to the story, an article in the journal Sleep Medicine by Dr. Daniel F. Kripke and a team at the University of California at San Diego did a follow-up on a study of 459 women who participated in a sleep and mortality study 14 years ago. At the time, they were between the ages of 50 and 81. This year, researchers found that survivors were much more likely to have been getting less than the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep -- considerably less. Women who got less than five hours of sleep a night and women who got more than six-and-a-half had two to four times the mortality rate of women in between … the ones who slept from five to six-and-a-half hours per night.

Those are the bare, factual findings. In some places, though, they were sloppily reported. Few newspaper reporters or editors have been trained in the sciences, or in proper interpretation of statistics (even a decent course of logic would help), so what they write about scientific studies often goes overboard. I recall one twenty years ago, that found a correlation between coffee drinking and frequency of sex, which gave rise to lots of jokes and commentary that we should all drink more coffee.

That this study may have found a correlation between less than eight or seven hours of sleep a night and the longevity of some people does not mean everyone should automatically switch to sleeping fewer hours. One of the mantras of science students is (or should be) CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. In other words, just because two phenomena happen to coincide or coexist, it does not follow that one causes the other, or that there’s any meaningful relationship between them at all. By that logic, if I notice that over the past few weeks the sun has risen shortly after my alarm clock has rung, that does not mean I can reset my alarm an hour ahead and expect the sun to rise an hour earlier.

In this case, the women who sleep only five to six-and-a-half hours may also be inherently more sturdy (genetics) or lead generally more healthy lifestyles (no smoking, lots of exercise, etc.) than the women who get what has traditionally been regarded as the healthiest eight hours. Perhaps the women who have been getting eight hours of sleep a night find it hard to get out of bed because they’re exhausted from stress.

The report in my local paper was more careful than Fox News NY: “Longer lives linked with getting 5-6½ hours of sleep” the headline reads, and the text included the critical caveat “Kripke says more study is needed, especially to find whether deliberately sleeping less might help you live longer.” The phrase “more study is needed” is always a good thing for a researcher to say, and in this case it’s especially true, since nobody has any idea why the mid-level sleepers showed a surprising longevity. The best (and most) that many scientific studies find, when they establish a possible correlation, is where further study should be focused.

Unfortunately, the Fox News NY story not only omits that caveat but ends with a more dicey proposition, supposedly from the scientific report itself: “The study concluded, ‘People who sleep five or six hours may be reassured.’ ” And in fact, I saw at least one of my Facebook friends say as much yesterday after reading the story in the local paper. But the crucial word there is may, because there’s no reassurance to be had if you’re getting less sleep due to an overstressed lifestyle and you fail to achieve balance with good nutrition and exercise.

Misinterpretation of scientific studies can occur at any level: a simple-minded reporter may overinterpret the results; or the reporter may get it right, but an editor may slap on a simplified headline that is misleading; or readers may misinterpret accurately reported stories and heads. The last is probably the most common, since it is not difficult to find misreadings and overblown interpretations in the electronic comments that follow news stories online.

It’s important to read everything in the news with a critical eye, not with your prejudices and hopes intact.