I don't drink. There's no particular reason; I simply never got into it. The taste of most alcohols simply doesn't appeal to me, although I will cop to occasionally enjoying a milkshake made with Irish Cream and coffee flavored Haagen-Dasz. Several of my favorite recipes call for cooking with alcohol (take a look at the recipes I've posted, like Jambalaya, for a tasty example). But that said, drinking isn't my thing.

The fact that I don't drink is somewhat unexpected, given my Irish heritage. Here's how Irish my heritage is: my grandparent whose surname at birth was McMahon died of liver failure, resulting partly from her penchant for beer. No kidding.

When my cousins and sister and I were kids, the biggest honor we could imagine during those summer weekends at our grandparents' cottage was to be allowed to carry the beer pitcher from the tap to where the adults were sitting in the yard.

[For long-time readers of my blog, I'll point out that these grandparents are not the ones who were Methodist ministers. Here's how NOT-Irish my other grandparents were: when administering communion, they used grape juice instead of wine. No kidding. ]

This is what it means to grow up as part of an Irish family: the tap I mentioned above jutted out from the side of a refrigerator that resided on the front porch of the cottage, with a keg inside. The fridge contained nothing else. I'm not making this up. The aforementioned cottage was in Canada, where the national bird is the Molson Golden. Okay, I made up the bit about the national bird, but really, what else has Canada contributed to American culture but hockey, beer, William Shatner, and beer?

The extended family that populated my summer visits to Canada were consummate story-tellers and avid card players, and beer was ever present in the background, no doubt helping to facilitate both. Given that I soaked up all the story telling and card playing, I find it an interesting quirk that I never had any interest whatsoever in appreciating so-called adult beverages.

[I will also acknowledge that another aspect of my Irish heritage involved being exposed to Irish cuisine, which consists of boiling "food" until it has no flavor and no nutritional value. Salt to taste. "Food" consists of some combination of potatoes, cabbage, and meat. I have also sidestepped that aspect of my Irish heritage.]

Later, in my grad school days, I made it a point to learn what wines go best with the meals I would prepare for my paramour at the time. She came from a family that had some means, and I occasionally felt like my blue-collar background colored (unfavorably) their opinion of me. On occasions when I was not feeling particularly charitable about an upcoming visit with her family, I'd contemplate asking them what meal they would be preparing so that I would know what kind of beer to bring.

But for all that I was steeped in the couture of wine and the culture of beer -- ha! "Steeped!" There's another drink I don't drink: tea -- I've simply never acquired the taste.

A few years ago, I tried explaining to someone that I never could get into the taste, and she pointed out, "Allan, people don't start drinking for the taste." [This someone has, in the ensuing years, become quite the wine snob, so she might or might not give the same response in her older, wiser frame of mind.] While I know that this is not necessarily true, it does bring up the valid point that some people don't drink for the flavor, but for the effects.

I have long suspected that my lack of interest in drinking might be related to my innate desire to maintain self-control. But I have added a few data points in recent years that make me wonder about another possibility.

As I mentioned a few years ago when it happened, I required oral surgery that involved reconstructing my gum line -- a gingiva graft. During one of the procedures, I was offered nitrous oxide to augment the anesthetic, and I decided to try it. As soon as they started, I had to wave them off to tell them to stop.

"This feels terrible. I'm all light-headed, and I feel like I might throw up."

"We told you it would make you feel a little like you've been drinking." For a second, I was afraid they wouldn't turn it off; the person controlling the gas seemed genuinely surprised that anyone would not want to feel that way. This was a truly frightening moment for me. Then she eased up on the gas, and the terrible feeling evaporated with it.

As I may or may not have mentioned in my posts about my oral surgeries, I was prescribed a small amount of Vicodin/hydrocodone to use as a pain killer. This drug did absolutely nothing for me. Nothing. I have long wondered why something so useless could be such a hot commodity. My painkiller of choice remained Advil, even though it presumably has more serious side-effects (stomach bleeding, anyone?).

Which brings us to a few days ago. I've been recovering from an ear infection these past few days, and saw my doctor on Wednesday to have him check on my progress and to discuss pain management. My approach as been: when it hurts, take lots and lots of Advil. Alternate with Tylenol. Repeat as necessary.

Talking to your doctor can sometimes be a good thing. He pointed out that I was taking a toxic amount of Tylenol (notorious for potential liver damage), and a prescription-level's worth of Advil. He recommended a short course of Vicodin to help manage the pain, "Which should go away in a few days anyway," and would do less damage to my body in the meantime.

So I filled the prescription. I noticed immediately something different: unlike the other times I'd been given hydrocodone (the generic equivalent), these pills were large enough for a horse. Insofar as this medicine had never had an effect on me before, I took one right away (this was during a break at work) with lunch, unconcerned that I'd be driving a few hours later.

Horse tranquilizers.

An hour or three later, I noticed that I was sleeeepy. Then I made the connection: bigger pill might mean an actual effect. Then I noticed: my ear still hurt! When I'd had my oral surgery, the doctor who prescribed the Vicodin said that I'd probably still feel pain, but I just wouldn't care. I thought about that. Did I care that I was still in pain?

$%*!, yes, I cared! Ouch!

So, there I was, sleepy but still in pain. *And* I had some driving to do. And, come to think of it... I was just as uncomfortable as I'd been when I'd briefly tried that nitrous oxide.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up caffeine.

Twenty ounces of Dr Pepper (have you ever noticed that there's no period in the "Dr" part of Dr Pepper?) and four Advil later, and the effects of the hydrocodone were again rendered moot. I had been worried it would take longer for the hydrocodone to wear off (unlike the nitrous oxide, where the effects disappeared immediately), but I guess my body just didn't have much use for it.

So, what have I learned from all this? Well, for starters, I won't be taking Vicodin / hydrocodone ever again. It just plain doesn't work for me, and makes me feel anxious and sleepy, to boot.

I've learned (or, perhaps, reaffirmed) that it's very, very difficult to give up Dr Pepper.

...and I'm wondering if maybe, just maybe, one of the reasons I've never developed any interest in alcohol has something to do with my body already sensing that it simply has no use for depressants. I realize that narcotics and alcohol are chemically different, so it's possible that I'm over-generalizing with this guess. Then again, nitrous oxide is a depressant, and it is neither an opiate nor an alcohol.

Whether my aversion to alcohol and other depressants is psychological, physical, or both, I do know this: it has nothing to do with virtue, and it has nothing to do with fear. The concept of temptation holds no meaning when one is not even interested.

True to my Irish roots, I may die of liver failure. However, it would be the results of my accidental overdose of Tylenol, and not because of beer.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I suffered a bit of downtime last week with a gastrointestinal bug that, well... let's just say it forced much more stuff out of my system than it was allowing in. I lost four pounds in the course of one day, and I'm still not fully recovered.

(That said, I've tightened my belt a notch and haven't had to let it back out again in the week since this all happened. Even this nasty cloud had a silver lining.)

Does the fact that I was a victim of a GI virus qualify me as an expert on GI infections? Seriously. Does my experience now make me an expert on maladies of the gastrointestinal tract? The mere fact that I know it's a GI issue instead of the flu (did you know that nausea is not a symptom of the flu?) certainly must count for something, right? The fact that I listen to a science/medicine podcast only adds to my knowledge of such matters. Combine that with my first hand experience, and I'm an expert... right?

No?

You wouldn't consult with me regarding matters of GI infections? You wouldn't trust me to advise public policy on the treatment of GI viruses?

Of course you wouldn't. Being a victim doesn't qualify me as an expert. Having seen the virus attack both of my sons before it hit me also doesn't make me an expert. I don't even qualify as an expert on how my body reacts to that kind of a virus; I'm only an expert on how *I think* my body *reacted*.

A close relative of mine got into a nasty car accident a few years ago and was killed. Does that make me an expert on automobile safety? The fact that I'm now well read on statistics regarding auto fatalities... am I now competent to advise public policy on highway design or automobile design or DUI laws? Well, perhaps more so than your average bear, but certainly less so than a qualified expert -- for example, someone with a degree and a career in mechanical engineering or physics or civil engineering or, for that matter, law or public policy.

While I was out of town recently, I was annoyed to see this headline in my complimentary nation-wide newspaper: Families skeptical of Va. Tech panel. The lead paragraph read:

Relatives of Virginia Tech University shooting victims challenged the credibility of a state panel investigating the massacre on Monday, demanding that a family representative be appointed to join the eight-member committee.

The author of the USA Today article, Kevin Johnson, notes that a spokesman for Virginia Governor Tim Kaine said that each of the members of the panel were appointed for their special expertise... and he put the words "special expertise" in quotes. As if there's something dubious about their qualifications, or something suspect about being an expert.

The purpose of the panel, as the governor's spokesman is quoted, is to (and I'm quoting the article again here) "help determine what went wrong and how to prevent a future tragedy."

So, then: how does being the family member of a shooting victim qualify one to be an expert in the prevention of similar tragedies? How are they competent to help determine what went wrong? What qualifications do the family members have that will help them to make sure the committee doesn't reach conclusions "that may not be accurate?"

Please don't get me wrong. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in this tragedy. To whatever extent our society can reasonably move to prevent future incidents like this, however, I'm going to have to put more faith in the counsel of individuals with "special expertise" than in individuals whose primary qualification is that they've been harmed.

By all means, let the families of victims consult on the best way to memorialize their loved ones. But do not allow sympathy for the victim's families to cloud better judgment when it comes to improving public safety.

Confidentiality is not just a problem at the highest reaches of the government. It seems to me that once any modicum of fame is involved, the entire concept of confidentiality goes right out the window.

During the course of my professional career(s), I have held a few different positions at a few different companies. In most cases, when I left one position at one company to take another position at a different company, I entered into a "confidentiality agreement" with my former employer(s). The essentials of these agreements boil down to a simple arrangement: I won't tell anybody the nature of my departure from company X (nor divulge any company trade secrets) and, in exchange, the company will also not tell anybody the nature of my departure from the company (nor divulge any other personnel-related information about me).

This is Standard Operating Procedure for most organizations, especially larger ones, and it stands to reason: it protects the company as well as the individual from a number of possible problems down the line. It protects the individual because it establishes what is essentially company policy: the company will never say anything bad about you to potential future employers who choose to check your references. A potential future employer can confirm that you once worked for company X, but not what your salary was, or why you left, or whether anybody at company X had problems working with you. There's nothing left to interpretation. They can't say *anything* about you (other than to confirm that you once worked there), so there's nothing they can say that could possibly be misconstrued (or, for that matter, correctly construed) as a reason for the potential new employer to not take you on.

It also protects the company. You agree not to say anything derogatory about your former employer, or to otherwise give potential job applicants, stock analysts, or other industry professionals any reason to be concerned with how things are going at company X. More importantly, if there was any kind of a severance or other financial arrangement that was part of the deal, current employees should not hear from you what the terms of those arrangements were. For obvious reasons, your former employer wouldn't want everyone to know how much you were getting paid, if anything, as part of your separation arrangement.

As a former manager, I can assure you that there are often financial components involved in separation arrangements. And no, I won't give you specifics.

The heart of the matter is this: when employer and employee part ways, both agree not to bad-mouth the other. This is a contract. A binding, legal commitment. And yet, we read examples of confidentialities being betrayed seemingly every day.

I'll skip the obvious examples of how this happens in the higher levels of the government. The Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, et al, administrations seemed to be plagued with bigger leaks than the Titanic. One such leak killed the Nixon presidency, and another has caused some harm to the current administration.

However, the problem plagues the civilian ranks, as well. The best (most public) example I can think of in recent memory is the departure of corporate executive turned television star, Carolyn Kepcher. She's got good looks, brains, a book deal, a well-defined public persona, and she and her former employer parted ways. So what happens? A "person close to the situation" told the New York Post that she was fired because she wasn't taking her job with the Trump organization seriously.

Further, according to the Associate Press article linked above, this sentiment was "echoed for The Associated Press by a person close to the situation. The person insisted on anonymity because it was a personnel matter."

That's right! It's a personnel matter! That means they are not allowed to talk about it. There's confidentiality involved. These individuals are betraying a very real, very important confidence. The Trump organization could lose a lot of money if Ms. Kepcher were to choose to sue over this (assuming, of course, that the betrayal came from within their ranks rather than from hers.) Since confidentiality and integrity actually matter to me, I'd like to see the Trump organization either find the source of the leak and fire that person; or, if the leak can't be found, fire everyone in the department who *could* have been a source of the leak.

(I've often felt the same way about leaks from within Presidential administrations. How ironic -- and pathetic -- if one of those leaks should have actually be approved of by the President himself. I'm not just talking about the current administration, by the way, with regard to the Plame Game. The leak of the Stealth bomber project under Carter's administration comes to mind, among many, many others....)

I realize that this particular example may not elicit a great deal of sympathy. There is a general preconception that the rich and powerful play by different rules (read: dirty), and therefore when they break their promises to each other (even if it's a lowly minion who is casting the stones without the approval of his or her boss), the only people being harmed are, well, rich and powerful and therefore they can handle it.

Bullshit. Integrity matters, whether you're the boss or the employee, the elected or the appointed or the electorate, the wealthy or the aspiring.

In the voting district where I used to live, a candidate for State Representative had previously left the employ of a large, local company (where I, too, had formerly been employed) in order to run for office. Word got out that her performance at said employer was not quite up to par. This, from a source "close to the situation."

As a former News Director at a commercial radio station, I recognize that sources must occasionally be protected. But these cases, like so many that we read about on a regular basis, involve sources very clearly breaking the law and/or violating confidentiality in order to share information that is not only not theirs to share, but is also not in the public's interest to have that confidentiality breached. By news organizations coddling such sources, and corporations (or government organizations) not acting to cauterize such leaks, our society as a whole infers the message that confidentiality agreements will neither protect you nor are they binding upon you.

This is a shame because confidentiality, like any social convention, is part of the glue that helps hold our society together. We erode it at our own peril.

Subtitle: Do People Change? Part I

It's that time of year again. The time of year often referred to as "Dads and Grads" -- when Father's Day and Graduation Day collide. What better time of year for me to trot out the Worst Valedictorian Speech Ever?

There are a number of reasons that this should come up right now; several different conversations between and among colleagues of mine, past and present, converged upon my recent discovery of a copy of the Bennett High School (Buffalo, NY) valedictorian speech for 1986. It is a crude document, and I don't even know if this copy is a first draft or the piece as it was delivered. I do know that starting the following year, Bennett's valedictorians had to run their speeches by the principal before they were to be delivered.

By way of background, I'll tell you how my thinking led up to this particular speech. [I'd considered posting this speech anonymously, but I'll cop to it. I wrote it. I'm embarrassed by it now, but I wrote it.]

Valedictorian addresses tend to be 1) long, 2) boring, 3) filled with homilies about how "we are the future" and all that nonsense, and 4) otherwise devoid of a point. I therefore set out to write a speech that was: 1) short, 2) not boring, and 3) offered no pat epigraphs nor advice for the future and 4) made a point.

That said, I could have gone the comedy/humor route and accomplished those goals, but I since the point I wanted to make was not funny, I ended up going down the crabby route instead.

Also by way of background: the teachers and the administration were actively and openly fighting each other during my last two years at the school, which had some very direct and very personal consequences for a few of my classmates.

I am not proud at all of this speech or my choices in making it. But it is what it is, and I was who I was at the time. I can be every bit as crabby these days as I was back then (although, to be fair, I'm not *always* crabby), but I'd like to think that I have a more delicate touch these days, when I choose to use it.

Allow me to set the scene: it's 1986. Summer in Buffalo. Hot. Sticky. The graduating class of 300 or so adolescents is rowdy. Each grad having been allowed up to four guests (and many finding a way to sneak in more than that), the auditorium is packed. I took the stage. I waited for everyone to quiet down. After I stood there for a few moments, they did quiet down. Silence. Then I read a short note that went something like this:

So ends four years of high school.

What can I say? There are many things I'd like to say, but I don't know where to begin. Some people have said they think my speech should be positive while others think I should talk about the negative side of Bennett. The fact is that there are both positive and negative aspects that we should consider . . . about Bennett, and about leaving Bennett.

When I decided to come to Bennett, I though that high school would be a place where administrators and teachers worked together to raise the level of education of the students . . . an institution where creative thought was fostered and intellectual and athletic pursuits were encouraged. Well, I didn't find quite that here at Bennett, but I did find several experiences which will serve me well in my future endeavors. None of us are leaving Bennett without an education, although much of that education was received outside the classroom. In fact, most of the knowledge we have gained here is based upon our experiences with the politics of a high school culture. It has become clear to me that the students who pursued knowledge were able to find it. Keep in mind that even though we are graduating, we should still pursue an education.

To my fellow graduating students, I wish you farewell. There is no warning I can give you that you haven't already heard; no advice that hasn't already been offered; no profound thought that would make a difference at this time. I have come to know some of you and found friendship with a few of you.

And so, here I am, with a great opportunity to say all of the things I've been wanting to say, but I'm leaving most of it unsaid. I am concerned about too many things. If I told you everything that bothered me, nothing positive would be accomplished and it would give you an inaccurate view of my opinions of Bennett. If I talked about Peace, Love, and Kindness, it would no doubt make you throw up in those silly little hats they make us wear at these ceremonies. Yes, I'm leaving a lot of things unsaid.

So ends four years of high school.

When I finished, you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. I don't recall there being any applause. A teacher later mentioned to me that after I left the stage, she leaned over to a colleague and said, "If I ever hold a parade, remind me to invite Allan over to rain on it." Or words to that effect.

Did I really say "throw up in those silly little hats they make us wear?" I shudder to think that I may have.

But if I was bitter at the time, I will note that history vindicated my displeasure. At the time I entered BHS, it had only recently been the spawning grounds of the City Honors school. After a few years under the reign of Principal W., it became one of the worst rated schools academically in the state of New York -- a dubious distinction that it continues to maintain, despite the departure of the aforementioned principal a couple of years ago.

BTW, I like Ms. W. as a person. She was kind and supportive of me, and certainly presented a laudable attitude toward the school. I just thought at the time (and still think) that her priorities for running the school were contrary to providing a sound education.

As another side-note, I will also mention that my dearest friend and academic rival from my high school class has offered a credible claim that a math error in calculating our class standings falsely reversed her (salutatorian) and my positions within the ranks. In other words, she has a compelling case that she deserved the valedictorian position and I the salutatorian. [Our respective GPAs, adjusted for giving honors classes a stronger weight, were a statistical tie, with naught but a sliver of a sliver of a percentage point separating us. It could easily have gone either way. The official results gave me the edge. My friend's contention is that the official results are based upon an ever-so-slight math error in the calculation of her adjusted GPA.]

If her argument is true (and I suspect that it is), it throws my acceptance into Cornell (and later, UPenn for grad school) into doubt, not to mention any subsequent edge I may have enjoyed in employment opportunities because of my degree(s), cascading into a domino effect that could mean that I *should* be a very different person today than I am. [How do you like that lead-in to my "Do people change?" subtitle?]

I am certain that my high school rival's speech, had she the opportunity to have written one, would have been far more eloquent than mine. BUT... would she have had the guts to rain quite so hard on our graduation parade?

Look for more thoughts on these and other questions in an upcoming post...

As regular readers of my journal will note, I do tend to visit the recurring theme of "unintended consequences." In a recent post, I noted the irony of how well-intentioned rules can, in many systems, occasionally thwart the very people that the system is theoretically supposed to help.

We have yet another example today from the headlines, this time involving criminal justice.

I have noticed that when it comes to the cases reported in the national media, statutory rape committed by male teachers (in secondary school) against female students tend to result in the male teacher being prosecuted vigorously, found guilty, and thrown in jail for a very long time. This is as it should be.

I have also noticed that when it comes to the cases reported in the national media, statutory rape committed by female teachers (in secondary school) against their male students tend to result in the female teacher being slapped on the wrist and told not to do it again.

These are trends in what I've observed and, the national media being what it is and my time & attention being otherwise directed, I don't really know whether these reports represent the majority of cases where teachers get caught flagrante delicto with one or more of their students.

Each case is special, and the reasons given by the respective sentencing judges vary, but the trends reported in the mainstream press seem rather clear. Male teacher? Monster who must be punished. Female teacher? Well, typically, we find that the woman is misguided, confused, disturbed, a victim, or has some other extenuating circumstance that mitigates her offense. Convicted? Typically, yes. Punished? Well, maybe not so much.

In the case of Debra Lafave, as reported by the Associate Press and elsewhere, the judge rejected a plea deal because he was horrified that the plea deal did not include jail time. Go, judge! But without the plea deal, the case would have to go to court, and the 14-year-old student victim did not want to testify. A psychiatrist told the court that the child suffered from anxiety as a result of the media attention. The state attorney's office dropped the charges, saying that it was unwilling to jeopardize the well-being of the victim in order to prosecute the case.

It is certainly understandable that a prosecuting attorney would not want to further harm a victim in such a sensitive case. But, was the best plea deal he could come up with one with zero jail time? I'm guessing so, since prosecution in another county led to a plea deal for the same defendant that also included zero jail time. Three years of house arrest was pretty much it. Inconvenient, sure, but it's hard to imagine a similarly light sentence for a man convicted under otherwise similar circumstances.

The media reports that the accused is being treated for bi-polar disorder. Are such mitigating circumstances reasonable to entertain if the perpetrator is a man? Oh, and by the way, this young woman is almost as photogenic as Mary Kay Latourneau, and I think that's a point worth noting. (Seattle media *love* to show the former Mrs. Latourneau's pics whenever they can. She's just *scrumptious*.)

Is there a double standard when it comes to statutory rape cases perpetrated by men as opposed to those perpetrated by women? A quick search through recent news articles reveals:

• Nicole Long in Ayersville, OH (who is referred to as "Melissa Long" in some news reports), was convicted of having sex with a student. She could have been given five years in prison, but instead, she learned in court this past Monday that she was sentenced to 90 days.

• Alas, Toni Woods, who is not so photogenic, pleaded guilty to several counts rather than pursuing a deal. She's going to jail for a minimum of four years and could possibly remain there for a full twenty.

• Last week in Philadelphia, Sara Singley served two days of her supposedly 30-day minimum sentence for her conviction of having sex with an underage student. [Note: the linked story indicates that the student is male, but other stories reference a female victim. See comments for additional discussion.] She was to serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest, because she'd had no prior record.

• ABCNEWS.com reports that Dang Van Dinh of Lafave's home state, Florida, was sentenced earlier this month to five years in prison for having sex with one of his underage female students.

• Last week, Stephen Sherman didn't get quite as good a plea deal offer as the above-mentioned Lafave. In exchange for pleading guilty, the prosecuting attorney in Brown County, WI, will recommend to the judge a mere 15-year prison term. Oh, and the judge isn't bound by this plea deal! He can sentence Mr. Sherman to up to 91 years in prison, if he so chooses. Stephen Sherman is 29 years old, by the way. Debra Lafave is 25, which pretty much makes them age-peers. Like Lafave, Sherman is being charged in two counties (and the other county hasn't weighed in yet for Sherman). Unlike Lafave, Sherman's life is pretty much done.

• In Nashville, local media look at how bail is set in such a way as to indicate a possible gender bias. (In the two cases that were compared, the man's trial has yet to conclude, so the cases can't be compared by their ultimate outcome just yet. That said, the woman's bail was set very low -- she pleaded guilty, but then was released after the first year of her eight year sentence -- while the man's bail was set substantially higher, even though he had fewer counts brought against him.)

• Here's an interesting one from Washington State. Robert Swalstad married his then 15-year-old student after getting her pregnant. The family of the child bride initially did not cooperate with prosecuters, but prosecutors did not give up the case (unlike what just happened in Florida). They eventually did convict him, and he was sentenced to six months in jail. The community petitioned to have him given a harsher punishment. (Since the charges were dropped in the Lafave case, I don't know what form community outcry could take, if there will even be any.) Teacher and bride have relocated their residence out of state, although Swalstad *is* currently sitting in jail.

I couldn't easily find many recent convictions of male teachers having sex with their students. Then again, what *is* the ratio of men to women in the teaching community? (You'd think that as a former teacher myself, I'd know; but my experience was both brief and very local to one specific school.) This ratio would have to be taken into account in any serious study of conviction rates and sentencing of sex offenders by gender.

Are the Lafave and Sherman cases truly comparable? I don't know. The victim won't testify against Lafave, but the victim in Sherman's case plus another, previous victim *were* willing to testify. The prosecutor had little else to go on in Lafave's case; Sherman, on the other hand, was dumb enough to videotape his crimes. The victims were the same age in both cases (14 years old), but then again: Lafave preyed on a boy, while Sherman preyed on two girls -- and there may be just as much of a bias about the gender of the victim as the gender of the perp. Lafave had a well-groomed legal team to defend her; Sherman can't even post $20,000 bail.

And what if, when all of the evidence is collected and compared, it turns that there *is* a gender bias when it comes to teachers having sex with their students? Is that appropriate? Apologists for unequal treatment will point out that female victims could get pregnant, while male victims are exposed to fewer life-altering risks. That women like Latourneau and Lafave are just confused or unbalanced women misguidedly looking for love (Latourneau was married when she committed her crime, by the way), while men like Sherman and Van Dinh are depraved perverts defiling the innocent flowers under their care. That women and men should be treated differently under the law because women and men are different by nature.

I strongly suspect there is a double standard, that the double standard is not entirely fair or reasonable, but that the double standard is also not entirely unjustified.

There was a judge in Florida who rejected such a notion. He said, in fact, that he was appalled by the notion that a woman should be able to plead guilty and yet serve zero time for such a serious crime. That a grown-up teacher having sex with a child under their care is a crime, regardless of the teacher's or the victim's gender.

Thus the law of unintended consequences was called into play once more.

There is power, I believe, in recognizing reality, even if one does not have the power to change it. There's a saying that "you can't change the wind, but you can adjust your sails."

This is the rationalization I shall adopt in making the observation below, knowing full well that there is no perfect world in which certain unbalances can ever be redressed.

Today's observation is this: that those who need help will be punished, and those who don't, won't. And as Roxie Hart noted, "That's showbiz, kid."

I've been babbling a bit of late on the subject of free speech versus censorship versus discretion. One of the many reasons this suite of topics is ever-present on my mind these days is because I've found myself so often refraining from talking here (on this website) about what is uppermost on my mind. Discretion always demands that one consider carefully before making a potentially adverse observation about a former employer (and one would never, ever comment on a current employer in any but the most glowing of terms), or expressing too many concerns about the demands on one's time, or openly disagreeing with the prevailing decisions within the political party of which one is an active member, or about the interesting choices that various friends are making in their business or love lives.

A friend of mine, when faced with a similar dilemma of not feeling able to speak freely on a public blog, chose to go the "subscription" route. He sends out his weekly missives via a private listserv, over which he controls membership. This has given him the freedom to say what he wants to, knowing he is among like-minded (or even respectfully disagreeing, but nonetheless supportive) friends.

I have long admired the candor with which he addresses topics in his journal that we might feel free to talk about on a one-on-one basis, but would tend not to broadcast to the world. Like when he admitted that depression was setting in even though everything seemed to be going well. Like the trials and joys of relocating for the sake of a job.

The fact is, one is generally not well advised to talk openly about being depressed. [Sidenote here: I began writing this missive shortly after having come out of a rather profound stretch of unhappiness, but was not at the time, nor am I now, feeling blue. I find it safer not to bring up such topics if I'm feeling down, at least in public, just as I don't comment on being out of town until I've returned.] This could lead co-workers or bosses or friends to be wary of trusting you. Likewise, one should not be too glib about how one's employer, generally speaking, *has* to put up with your eccentric choices because, hey, you *are* the best person for the job by a far sight. It may be true [although, I'm not sure it ever has been so in my own case], and all parties might agree that it's true, but you still don't necessarily want to be glib about it in public.

But it's the depression thing that has resonated the most. I've known a great many people who have suffered from various kinds of depression and/or mood swings, but they have always had to be careful about how and with whom they broach the subject. The irony of it being that, in many cases, they'd feel better if they could just *talk* about it.

...to someone other than a $150 per hour pair of ears. (Or however much therapists charge these days.)

This brings me to the topic of today's missive: how those who need help and ask for it must be punished, and those who need help but struggle silently with their burdens get to punish themselves. Blessed are the needy, for they shall be punished.

I love irony. If that hasn't become obvious to anyone reading these pages for more than a few entries, let me state it here now: I love irony. And so, I embrace the notion that the very systems we have set up to help us (medical insurance, for example, or financial credit and loans) are actually designed to punish us when we need the help they are designed to provide.

When do you get the big credit card offers? When you don't need to borrow money, of course. If you need to borrow money, you are de facto a bad risk. When I apply for mortgage re-fies (re-fi's? re-fis? REE-fies?), and if my income is high enough, they don't need to see proof that my income is high enough.

Huh?

But if my income is below a certain level, the lender wants to see my most recent pay stubs and bank statements. So, the more I need the money, the more I have to prove I need it. If I don't need to borrow it, the more they want to lend it to me.

Go ahead, go see a doctor and ask to be tested for Fragile X or some other genetic disease. See if you can ever get appropriate health insurance (or life insurance) after that.

True story: I have a friend who's mother is suffering from some mental and physical deterioration that is known to be passed down genetically. The disease usually manifests itself sometime in late middle-age, if I understand correctly, and things from that point only get worse, never improve. No, I don't recall the name of this ailment, but it sounds most unfortunate. And my friend dares not get tested to see if he/she has it. Sure, this would enable him/her to make preparations now, if need be, for what the future may hold in store. But if he/she gets tested, and it turns out that he/she has the disease lying in wait, then it becomes a "preexisting condition" and switching to a better health insurance plan will never be an option again. Nor would be increasing his/her health insurance coverage. Ergo, the health insurance programs would punish him/her for trying to determine the current (and possibly future) state of his/her health.

I've been told by non-married-yet-non-celibate friends of mine that the prudent course of action for them is to occasionally get tested for particular STDs, especially AIDS, but that they don't dare do this through their health coverage because doing so automatically results in premiums going up and/or coverage being cancelled altogether. The system encourages risky behavior when that is exactly the opposite of what it should encourage.

And as for mental health... ignore the fact that, as with AIDs tests, you don't want to raise that red flag on your health insurance. *Especially* employer-provided health insurance. But, here's another true story: someone I know was feeling down and went to see a licensed therapist about it. The psychologist (or psychiatrist or social worker or whatever they were) told the person right up front something along the lines of "if you tell me that you feel self-destructive or that you might be destructive to others, I'm required to inform the state." How's that for encouraging an open dialog?

It's like: "If you need help with feelings so bad and so desperate that you might even consider hurting yourself, don't come to a professional about it, because then it will go on your Permanent Record... and we might have to lock you up." Who goes to see a professional for just a mild case of the blues? (Outside of New York City, I mean.)

These are but a few examples, but there are many, many systems that are set up to punish the people who need them the most. I know that these are not the intended consequences of these systems. I understand that these are the unfortunate side-effects of regrettably necessary policies.

We do this on a personal level, as well. It's not just big systems and big institutions that short circuit themselves with this kind of irony. But that's a topic for another day.

In the meantime, let the healthy have health insurance, the mentally stable have therapists, and the wealthy have big loans. Let the Eskimos have refrigerators and the Southern Californians have fires. As for those who need: the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. I don't have much time to read the news these days, so all of my information comes to me via intermediaries of intermediaries. So when I heard this, I doubted it could be true.

Some guy wrote a novel that is loosely based upon, among other things, exaggerated stories from his own life. His publisher agrees to buy his book and sell it as a memoir instead of selling it as fiction. It becomes a bestseller as a memoir, one of the very top sellers of 2005 thanks to an endorsement from a certain famous book club persona and talk show host. Then a website dedicated to uncovering such things publishes their evidence that the memoir is, in fact, a work of fiction. Pandemonium ensues.

Do I have the gist of that right?

The book club persona/talk show host as well as the publisher have defended the book in question, saying that if it is not, strictly speaking, true in any real sense of the word, it is nonetheless emotionally true.

In doing research for a novel I am working on, I have read a great many books on certain New Age topics (both defending and deflating). One such book defended its subject matter in the face of contrary evidence as being nonetheless "emotionally true". The subject in question was past life regression -- I don't want to get too into that topic on this site, since it's relevant to my work-of-fiction-in-progress (and, I've learned from my Do Over project what a bad idea it can be to publicly discuss works-in-progress). But... if past life regression's "emotional truth" helps in therapy to resolve real patients' real issues, then that's great. If, on the other hand, it is being presented as an actual truth as opposed to a mental construct, then it must hold up to certain standards for establishing what is real and what is not.

Since readers of this site are generally well read and above average intelligence (and, may I say, damn good looking, as well), I probably don't have to go into the rules of evidence and scientific method that should be employed to establish that which is real/true and that which is not real/not true.

The New York Times opined that the book in question should have been advertised as Fiction rather than Non Fiction. While I agree, them's still mighty strong words coming from the Times, which is becoming increasingly notorious as peddlers of Fiction in the guise of News.

But what of it? Why doesn't the Times use this as their Get Out of Jail Free Card (tm) and tell the world that Judith Miller's and Jayson Blair's fabrications and misinformations were "Emotionally True", which is why they didn't bother -- nor need to bother -- with anything so mundane as "facts." (Those pesky facts again.)

For that matter, the current Presidential administration has been operating under an Emotionally True doctrine ever since taking office in 2001. That Al Queda was based in Afghanistan was not only emotionally true, but also actually true. Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, on the other hand... well, maybe that wasn't so much factually as it was emotionally true. Likewise, North Korea's nutcase leadership rushing headlong into a nuclear confrontation with the US -- factually true, but it doesn't have the emotional resonance, so let's ignore it and maybe it'll go away.

In fact, isn't that the whole problem with Kim Jong-Il? He's not feewing the wuv, so maybe a big ol' nuclear tantrum will get some attention.

If "Emotional Truth" is enough of a justification to absolve fraud (and, after all, isn't deliberately mislabeling fiction as "non-fiction" and "news" exactly that?), then by all means let's embrace this New World Order. Let's embrace the teaching of Intelligent Design as "science" and the idea that States' Rights trump the Feds (except where the States disagree with the Right). Let us further embrace the idea that all criminals are victims, all victims are righteous, and whenever something goes wrong, it must be the government's responsibility.

Let us embrace the notion that we all deserve more pay, but that prices should never rise. That Walmart is pure evil, except when we find a really good deal on a plasma screen TV there. That the millionaire ball players (and managers and owners) of the Boston Redsox were "cursed" until they won the World Series. That it's wrong for male teachers to take advantage of their female students, but it's okay for female teachers to fuck their male students.

If it appeals to us emotionally, let's embrace it. If it rings true, let's believe it. Life is too short to bother with the real truth. As with aspartame and other substitutes: Emotional Truth now; consequences later.

So, my wife and I bought the TV show "24 - Season Two" on DVD and spent a couple of weeks watching an episode or three each evening after the kids were put to bed. Having now seen the first two seasons this way, I must heartily recommend "24". Wonderful fun, with an emphasis on plot reversals:

In a "reversal", the plot or action suddenly veers off in another direction from what was expected. The reversal can be good *or* bad. It doesn't always have to be bad. A really good reversal changes the goals/questions for the characters involved.

If you are a writer or an aspiring writer, you could do worse than to take in how 24 approaches plot reversals (regardless of how you evaluate the plot holes).

As a friend of mine commented recently, watching a couple of seasons of 24 back-to-back can give one an acute attack of paranoia. These episodes are all about conspiracies within conspiracies, and they can make you a bit jumpy.

Inspired by the gleeful paranoia-euphoria of being fresh off of season two of "24", and thinking of a couple of very dear friends of mine who live their lives in such a state, I pounded out my little tidbit, "Choose Your Own Conspiracy". It was a lark, intending to mock how quickly and irrationally we can sometimes resort to blaming conspiracies when simpler, more credible forces are more likely at work.

One such friend (ie, one of my friends who sees conspiracies within conspiracies as being rather pervasive) posted a response chiding me for being naive. I'm going to repeat her comment here because it deserves some elucidation:

Much like a child who is completely unaware that he is, in fact, the reason why his parents got divorced, you are happily clueless.

You are blissfully unaware of what is going on around you and your own culpability therein.

You won't even acknowledge a conspiracy that was so clearly pointed at you!

It is arguably amusing, but very, very costly.

Now, this sounded to a couple of other faithful readers like an "insane" slam from "the angry left". At first blush, it certainly seems nasty.

It was none of these.

Like many shouting matches that pretend to be reasoned debate on the talking head news shows, the conversation here is falling apart due to lack of context. Let's back up a little bit and provide that context.

Jehan and I used to work together for a well known national brand that she occasionally refers to as "thatplace.com". She and I have spoken often and at great length about the different kinds of conspiracies that may or may not be plausible in the realms of politics, racial profiling, and the day-to-day grind on the job.

I've never been public about my reasons for leaving thatplace.com except in the vaguest of terms -- and I intend to keep it that way -- but it is not perhaps much of a secret that before I left, my successful team was reorganized out of existence, much to the dismay of my team and myself.

Jehan was a member of that team, and remains one of the most talented devs I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Like most of my former team (and myself), she eventually left thatplace for much the same reasons that the rest of us did. She and other members of my former team showed an amazing amount of loyalty to me and to each other, for which I will always be profoundly grateful.

Jehan's and my on-going conversation has included reflections upon things that happened to me during my last few months at thatplace. It has always seemed to me that those things were obviously part of the larger reorg (and aftermath) that engulfed our entire division of the company. There were, it seemed to me, sound business decisions behind the reorg, however much I may not have agreed with them.

My friend and former co-worker believes otherwise. She believes that the events that unfolded were designed not for business reasons, but for personal and political reasons. To be blunt, she believes that I and my team were not collateral damage, but deliberate targets.

Our (hers and mine) long-running conversation on the subject gets further complicated by two things: my position is reasonable and requires no evidence, whereas her position is less reasonable, requires evidence, and yet she nonetheless has enough evidence to make a compelling case.

Now, re-read her comment above. See how context changes everything? She's not raving about vast right-wing conspiracies (which is what I believe some readers have come to think). She is mocking me for mocking conspiracy theorists. Here, I was mocking those who would be so paranoid that they would see a conspiracy in the destruction following a hurricane. She counters that I would be so blind as to deny an obvious conspiracy that targeted me directly and personally... insofar as she believes this is exactly the case.

Did this clear anything up? I hope so. Now, let's get down to business.

One of my faithful readers is another friend whom I met in a completely different context, named Allen. Since very, very few readers of my blog could know the circumstances to which Jehan is alluding, it is only reasonable that her remarks should be misinterpreted by many of my readers. But Allen went so far as to label her response as being from "the angry left".

Allen, you're a good man and I love you like a brother. (You know, the brother who moved away to Canada like some commie-symp blue-stater, so we don't talk about him so much at the dinner table; that kind of brother.) But just as the "angry left" was being ridiculous to keep crying about some phantom "vast right-wing conspiracy", so too is it ridiculous to cry about some phantom "angry left".

Not all who oppose us are necessarily part of a unified enemy. Sometimes, we are opposed by our dearest allies. Not all who disagree with us oppose us. Intelligent people will disagree about the best way to accomplish common goals.

It's true that Jehan's remarks did read a little harsh, and I appreciate your standing up to defend me. But, well, your remarks were a little harsh, too.

Can't we all just get along?

The economy, as it works in the Western World in the early 21st Century, is pretty much a pyramid scheme. I have no doubt that this is the logical, albeit unintentional, result of the convergence of various financial instruments and institutions with mass culture.

Naturally, if you understand how the pyramid scheme works, you have a chance to protect yourself somewhat... although the best protection from a pyramid scheme is to avoid it altogether, and it would be difficult in this day and age to successfully avoid the economy.

Here's how it works:

Take any major economic market of your choice. The stock market and the housing market are excellent examples.

What determines the value of an item in that market? Economic value is determined where the price someone is willing to pay for the item meets the price someone else is willing to sell that item for. If supply of the given item is smaller than the demand for that item, then that price point will necessarily rise.

An interesting phenomenon creeps into any market system when the supply and demand are influenced primarily not by need or desire for the item as such, but by the perception of how much *others* need or want that item. For example, if you buy a house not because you need or want a house, but because you see that the value of houses is going up and you want to buy now and then sell later simply to cash in on the anticipated rise in value, then you are contributing to the prices going up because you are adding to the level of demand.

Likewise, if housing values are falling, you might want to sell now so that you can get out of your house before it loses any more value, and you thereby contribute to the falling prices because you've added to the available supply.

This phenomenon is an economic feedback loop, and it distorts the actual value of the item in question.

A pyramid scheme requires new money to keep coming into the system in order to sustain its growth. Thus, if Farmer Bob owns a share in a pyramid scheme, he can only make money if new people come into the system after him and throw their money into the scheme.

When the economic feedback loop I described above influences a major market, it turns that market into a kind of pyramid scheme. Farmer Bob sees that stock prices are rising faster than inflation, so he buys stock (and thereby drives the prices a little bit higher, himself). Once he has purchased that stock, though, the only way the value of his stock can go up is if someone else comes into the system after him to put even more money into propping up the stock prices.

Before you argue, "But a pyramid scheme involves the selling of something that has no intrinsic value," let me remind you that in the feedback loop I've described, there is a disconnect between actual value of the item in question and the economic value people are willing to pay.

Examples abound: the high tech stock race in the late 1990's involved people buying "shares" in "companies" that produced nothing but debt, and were therefore useless. The housing market in southern California now, likewise, involves people paying millions of dollars for houses that are arguably worth only a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of materials and labor on land that is in imminent danger from landslides, sinkholes, and earthquakes. The intrinsic value of the house has nothing to do with the prices people are willing to pay. And many people are buying simply because they reason they can turn around and sell for even more, thereby driving up prices even further. These "investment properties" make the bubble ever larger.

A pyramid scheme collapses when The Last Guy has put in his money, and there's nobody behind him to do the same. With no more cash flowing in, the value evaporates.

Likewise, in a major market, the bubble that was fueled by the economic feedback loop bursts when The Last Guy puts his money down and nobody stands behind him to do the same. With no more money coming in, values level off. With values being level, there's no point for investors to continue keeping their money in the system (and, in the case of a market like housing, there's real cost in the form of mortgage payments that are even more discouraging), so they start to sell. Demand drops, available supply increases, and the feedback loop now feeds itself in reverse. Prices plummet, and so on.

The difference between the stock market and the housing market and other economic markets versus a typical pyramid scheme is that they do, ultimately, represent items that have *some* intrinsic value. Stocks with no intrinsic value, of course, must necessarily disappear with the wind during a downturn in the market, but stocks that are backed by real companies that produce real value survive. Houses, of course, remain houses, even after the housing bubble bursts.

And how does that happen? Well, in the frenzy of everybody selling at a loss in order to not lose any more, someone eventually realizes, "Hey, that house [or company, or whatever] still has actual value, and I can buy it at these cheap, cheap prices now because the prices are currently below that intrinsic value."

Then The Last Guy, who has held on to his stocks or investment properties or whatever in the hopes that things would turn around, finally sells his investment because he reasons that the situation can never be salvaged. When the Last Guy finally sells, available supply is no longer a glut. Prices level off. The recovery begins, and the feedback loop renews (slowly, at first) its uphill climb.

I first explained my Theory of The Last Guy to a friend of mine in the late '90's when he explained to me that the high tech stock bubble was going to have to burst imminently (like, within days). I told him that I didn't agree, because I still knew people who were reluctant investors who were just then deciding that maybe they should get into the frenzy. Until they actually put their money in, I reasoned, The Last Guy hadn't spoken. And until The Last Guy puts his money down, the market continues in its up or down hill trajectory.

Sure enough, however, about a year and a half later, The Last Guy finally ponied up, and then the high tech stock bubble burst. My friend and I have joked since then that we know The Last Guy, because we actually know a few people who put their money in just *one day* before their stocks began to plummet.

So why am I telling you this now?

I'm seeing more and more articles in the newspaper talking about the housing market bubble in parts of the country, and there can be no doubt that such a bubble exists. But the very fact that newspapers are cautioning us about the nature of this bubble means that the Last Guy hasn't spoken. The Last Guy is the most reluctant investor. He doesn't put his money down until the market continues to surprise his expectations by continuing to go up, up, up, up. The Last Guy has money to invest, but is playing it safe until, finally, all indications are that this isn't actually a bubble, this is a permanent state of affairs, and he may as well get in on the game.

When he does, of course, the jig is up.

That's why the time to worry about the economy is when the economists all agree that, well, they were wrong before that the economy had to eventually slow down, so it must all be up, up, up, up for the foreseeable future. When they all agree that things are only going to get better and better, that's when the Last Guy gets in on the action, and that's when all hell breaks loose.

We haven't reached that point yet. But it's coming. The next economic shockwave that will rattle America will come from the housing market. It must happen soon (within the next couple of years). But not until The Last Guy puts his chips on the table.

So, what do you do with this helpful piece of information? First, you keep your eye on the Last Guy. If you *are* buying a house, buy it for its intrinsic value to you (my wife and I, for example, bought our house because we needed a bigger house, and not for investment concerns). This is the most dangerous time to get into the game. Don't invest in real estate right now.

But when The Last Guy who bought at the top of the market starts whining that it's time for him to sell that investment property, THEN is when you take a serious look at investing in real estate again.

The Last Guy always buys high and sells low. Study what he does, and then bet the other way.

For a very long time -- since high school at the very least -- I've thought of the human brain as a rather sophisticated pattern recognition engine. Wherever possible, we seek to establish direct causal relationships among events. When that's not possible, we infer more subtle relationships at work. This enables us to make connections that are not at first obvious but which nonetheless help us to survive.

Example of the obvious: Me throw sharp stick at charging lion. Charging lion fall down, bleed out eyeballs, stop bothering me. Me survive to throw another sharp stick another day.

More sophisticated: Sun come up over here. Sun go down over there. Sun must be circling around Earth to come up again over here tomorrow. Me get cave facing over there so that me sleep in tomorrow morning.

Of course, the more subtle models where we make connections with limited information may prove to be incorrect down the road, but they are sufficient for the time being and thereby enable us to get along. Once they no longer work, we adopt even more sophisticated models. For example, we figure out that in order to explain the way stars and planets move across the sky over time, the sun couldn't possibly be going around the Earth, but perhaps the Earth goes around the sun. Etc.

During my high school days, this was my theory for explaining away the concept of intuition/precognition and the practice of religious belief. I figured that the experience of intuition (a preferable word, for me, to 'precognition' or 'premonition' or 'clairvoyance', which imply new age cosmic woo-woo) was simply a sophisticated pattern recognition model that generated correct answers on the basis of incomplete information. When somebody gets a strong hunch that a certain event is going to happen, and then it doesn't happen, they shrug it off as a bad guess. When that strong hunch pays off, they call it premonition. Someone who is able to consistently experience good hunches on the basis of limited information could be considered 'intuitive' or 'psychic', depending upon your preferences, but it all came down (as far as I was concerned) to having some good pattern recognition going on somewhere in your brain.

Likewise, when we have incomplete information about how or why things happen the way they do, our brain finds comfort in (or actually develops and enhances belief in) the subtle and sophisticated models of that we call religion: a belief system that explains the otherwise inexplicable connections among objects and events. Before we can explain rainbows scientifically, we ascribe them to an invisible Being that paints the sky with colors to remind us of a promise (as in the story of Noah in the Judeo-Christian religions). Later, when we figure out that raindrops can form prisms that separate out the colors of sunlight, we no longer need religion to explain rainbows. (And, importantly, some of us choose to keep the religious explanation, while others write off the religious explanation as fanciful stories.)

The story of Noah is more charming than the story of raindrops acting as prisms that separate out the colors of sunlight. But understanding how light works enables us to create CD players and computers, which in turn allow me to write goofy essays and beam them to you on something called a 'web site'. The story of Noah does not allow us to manipulate the physical world thusly. The story of Noah *does* allow us to convey social memes and to disseminate ethical ideologies. But the pattern explained by the story of Noah is simply not sophisticated enough to build televisions, and so we move on.

This, as I said above, was my interpretation of the world at the age of 16 or thereabouts. I was struggling to explain events that had occurred in my life, without sacrificing my emerging sense of *reason*. If you've read the essay that immediately precedes this one (Pattern Recognition, Part I) -- the one I wrote five years ago or so -- you've no doubt noticed that I'm still fascinated by the concept of brain-as-pattern-recognition-engine.

So while I was visiting a friend's house recently, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a book called something like Why People Believe Weird Things. In it, the author (editor of Skeptic Magazine, or something along those lines) asserts his own similar views about the brain-as-pattern-recognition-engine concept, and uses it to explain why people believe in astrology (a subject for another essay of mine, I expect), UFOs, the Green Party, and other flights of fancy. (Okay, just kidding about that last one. Nobody believes in the Green Party.)

The author includes a chapter on near death experiences and comes to the conclusion that, well, there is no conclusion. The scientific evidence is simply not there, one way or the other, to sufficiently (for the author, at least) explain why so many people seem to experience so many common events as part of the dying process. The author manages to successfully debunk both the common scientific explanations as well as the common woo-woo new age ga-ga explanations, leaving the question of life after death and the status of the immortal soul open. Of course, since it isn't explained one way or the other by science, this remains in the realm of religion for most people. We are then left with the agnostics' dilemma (which the author acknowledges): if we don't have a basis for believing in the certainty of life after death, and by extension the immortal soul, then how to we find comfort in living what may well be, by extension, a meaningless life?

He offered an answer that I found interesting... until I gave it some serious consideration. His answer may be paraphrased like this:

History is a long, long continuum of events that impact other events. We know this as a fact. We also know that one small event at one point in the continuum can have very powerful repercussions farther down the line. We know this, too. There are innumerable examples of people who died in seeming obscurity but who later became famous because something they did ended up having a huge impact on society down the line. Since we do not know at what point of the continuum our lives are played out, it is entirely possible that there is still a great deal of history yet to be written, and we may very well end up making that small difference now that could have a huge impact in the future. Ergo, we should take comfort in the fact that even if we don't know it now, what we do with our lives may prove to be extremely important / influential in the years that follow us.

So went the author's reasoning, and I found it to be a comforting thought at first. But then I gave it more consideration, and realized that it suffers a bit of a fatal flaw:

The author says that the person who does not know whether to believe in a life after death can find meaning in the idea that we may, for all we know, end up leading an influential life anyway.

"Wait a minute," my brain says. "In other words, that means if we can't find comfort because we don't know our place in the cosmos, then we should find comfort in the fact that we don't know our place in history."

Now THAT doesn't make any sense at all. What the author presents as the agnostics' solution is really just restating the agnostics' problem: "Sure, you don't know if you matter; but at least you don't know if you matter."

So I see a pattern in the problem of the pattern-recognition-engine. Recognizing patterns can be a source of comfort because, in general, it is recognizing patterns (correctly, usually) that helps us to survive. But when we reach the limit of our ability to recognize the patterns, we are left with... what? Filling in the blanks with "To be determined?" Or filling in the blanks with a leap of faith that the religion you've picked (or that has picked you) will have the best answers? Neither option is intellectually satisfying. (And, perhaps, we have more options available than just these two....)

That said, the question of which to choose comes down to this: which option helps you to move forward? Which option helps you to answer the questions that need to be answered in order for you to make progress? When a person has hit the limits of his or her ability to solve the puzzle at hand, is it better to keep banging away at it until you've revealed enough information to guess at the pattern, or is it better to simply leap, and have faith that the net will appear?

I originally posted the essay below to this site on November 18, 1999 -- roughly a year before I went to a content engine, which is why it does not appear in the archives. I am repeating it here because it leads into another essay I'm about to write, regarding pattern recognition and how the brain works.

This essay was originally published as ""Why a Little Insomnia is a Dangerous Thing":

I bought some more cool decks of cards last night. This time, they were special "Bicycle" versions of Canasta and Pinochle decks. You know, it seems to me that Pinochle decks used to be almost as common as poker decks at the check-out counter of any grocery store; but, now, I don't think I've seen them for years. I also picked up a Mille Borne deck, last night; I've been looking for that for a while.

What is it with me and playing cards?

When I was in my teens, my compulsion of choice was books. I had to "complete the set" of certain authors -- Heinlein, Bradbury, Ian Flemming, Stephen King -- and I even went so far as to buy "collector's editions" of early paperbacks of these authors. This meant I sometimes ended up picking up several copies of the same book, if only to get ever closer to that "First Time in Paperback!" copy.

I don't do that quite so much, anymore, although I still pick up each new James Bond or Stephen King book as they come out. The days of trolling around for old paperbacks have gone, however.

In college, music was my vice. If I heard a song and liked it, I had to get the album. Certain artists also required "complete the set" action: Dire Straits or Pink Floyd (which i never actually did finish, come to think of it) or Billy Joel, for example. Other particular faves -- Concrete Blonde and Suzanne Vega -- I tracked from the beginning, snapping up each EP single as well as each new album as they were released.

I don't listen to the music quite as intently as I used to. I still buy lots of new releases, but I don't listen to them as much, and I've recently discovered just how much I miss that. I'd like to return to some kind of work environment where music is a part of it. (Note: I used to work at a radio station.)

While none of these -- and other, similar -- compulsions have completely died away, they've certainly abated. In the meantime, one of my lesser hobbies has grown: my fascination with playing cards.

The cards thing, like most "collect-the-whole-set compulsions," started when I was a kid. As a kid, when you go places, your adult companions want to buy you souvenirs. Very gradually, whether by my choice or by the accident of what other people chose for me, a trend emerged where I ended up selecting souvenir playing cards more than any of the other common items.

Keep in mind, adults who would go on vacation would also pick up souvenirs for the kids. Somehow, as a preference evolves, people pick up on it and use that to make their souvenir purchase decisions easier. "Oh, Billy likes 3-D Viewmaster slides, and Janey likes little license plates with her name on them." Next thing you know, they are reinforcing the preference, and so on.

For my mom and my maternal grandmother, the collectible of choice was and is souvenir spoons. My mom even has a souvenir spoon from the European city where I was born, with my birth date etched into the back. Both my mom and grandmother have racks upon racks of various collectible spoons.

For my sister, the collectible of choice is shot glasses. And, of course, for me, the souvenir of choice is playing cards.

However, I've since developed a deeper interest in "igralniye kartiy". The beauty of everyday playing cards from Soviet Russia encouraged me to look beyond just the standard souvenir backs. Since being exposed to those wonderful decks, I've developed a keener sense of the aesthetics of playing cards in general.

(Author's note: this is going somewhere. Trust me.)

Independently of my aesthetic appreciation, I became more involved in actually playing card games. I began to sit as an alternate at a friend's poker table many years ago; eventually becoming a regular. Another friend of mine and I created our own table, as well, in Boston. Since then, I've joined a few tables and made a stab at starting a few other new ones of my own. I've even played poker in Reno (and, held my own, I might add). I'm not a great player, by any stretch. I enjoy playing, nonetheless.

One thing I've been coming to recognize with all of this card playing is something that applies throughout all areas of my life: all of my life has been centered around pattern recognition. In this way, I'm not so sure that my life is any different from anyone else's, but it's becoming clear just how pervasive this is for me. Most of my introspection revolves around identifying patterns.

In many games I enjoy, mastery comes with pattern recognition. Chess, poker, cribbage -- all start with basic rules, then moves, groups of moves (gambits), then series of gambits, series of games, and so on. Trends, and trends of trends.

A deck of cards is loaded with patterns. There are patterns of face value (suits and ranks) and patterns of design (where pips are placed; the drawings of the face cards, design of the backs, the fact that backs within are uniform while faces are unique, etc.). Most magic tricks, incidentally, rely upon recognition and then violation of these patterns. (And, yes, I've picked up a few magic tricks along the way, too.)

Sets of decks have patterns, too. Given decks may have a different back from each other, but they maintain that one back design throughout the entire deck. Each may place pips of different sizes and shadings, but there's always a pip in the upper left-hand and lower right-hand corder of each card -- even if some decks have additional pips in the other two corners or along the sides (like the decks I just bought). The four suits are always hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades -- the first two being reddish in color, the last two being black or another very dark color. Face cards are drawn with different styles from deck to deck, but the queens inevitably hold flowers while certain jacks and kings carry weapons.

Sets of sets of decks have patterns, as well. Trends among US Playing Cards brands (Bicycle, Aviator, Bee, Aristocrat) are distinct from the trends found in Hoyle brands (Hoyle, Maverick), or Gemaco or Liberty, ad infinitum. There are even greater "meta" trends. US manufacturers vs. European, Eastern Block, and Asian manufacturers.

Then, there's playing cards vs. Tarot cards vs. other game cards (like Mille Borne, Pit, Uno, Wizard, Rook, etc.).

There's cards as games vs. "stone games" (backgammon, mah jong, chess) vs. ball games (from billiards to baseball) vs. board games (Monopoly, Scrabble, and so on).

And, there's cards as introspective or forecasting tools vs. astrology vs. palm reading.

There's even cards as building materials vs. match sticks vs. toothpicks vs. Lincoln Logs vs. Legos.

Lest we forget: cards as noise-makers (putting them in your bicycle spokes) vs. bike horns vs. bicycle bells.

There are cards as promotional products or souvenirs vs. spoons vs. pens vs. shot glasses vs. key chains vs. t-shirts.

All sorts of patterns, and patterns of patterns, and different ways to classify and re-group. This isn't just a statement about cards, of course. The same "patterness" is found among foods, cars, houses, clothes, relationships, political systems, biological systems, religions, music, literature, languages, etc.

All life is pattern recognition.

The late, great Canadian comedy troupe "The Frantics" have a great sketch that asks: "Is the idea of this game show to find out the idea of this game show?" We are posed with the same question here: is the meaning of life to find out the meaning of life?

The answer is in the cards.

I am confident that the answer is a resounding "Yes." The problem, as has been pointed out in Douglas Adams' book Life, the Universe, and Everything, is not with understanding the answer. The problem is with understanding the question.

Below is a slightly modified version of an essay first posted to my site August 6, 1999:

I am blessed to have friends and family who manage to travel along all walks of life. One of my dearest friends is a noted journalist/activist who has written some of the best work you'll ever read about the destruction of the environment in Upstate New York; he's had stories of his own appear in many of the major papers, and has even been the subject of a few of them, himself. (The New York Times, in particular, comes to mind.) In fact, he was the E-n-C of Generation when I first started there. That's where I had my first real taste of the finer points of journalism-on-a-deadline.

Like many of my friends, Eric is about as multi-talented as you can get. One of his many current careers though is that of professional astrologer.

I happened to have a chance to get together with him a couple of weeks ago in Manhattan. Although he and I have been working on a few things together here and there for the past couple of years, it had been seven years or so since the last time we'd actually seen each other in person. Ah, the wonders of the Internet!

Spending some quality time with Eric (insofar as eating at the Stage Diner can be considered "quality time") led me to think about some cold, hard realities... and some not-necessarily-realities. Such as, for instance, astrology.

What if Astrology was the real deal, and my skepticism was ill-founded? What if, someday, the results of the double-blind studies came in, and Astrology won out as being a valid indicator of personality, behavior, and destiny?

I'd like to present for you the year 2020, if Astrology were proven to be a valid science:

• Colleges would, naturally, use the birth dates of applicants to determine not only whether they should be accepted for admittance, but what majors they'd be allowed to choose.
  
• Presidents of the United States of America would be required to be 35 years of age, and a Leo. Secretaries of State, likewise, would be Aries. Voters would tend to choose Pisces for legislative positions, just to get them out of the food service industries.
  
• Police would only require a breathalizer test of non-Geminis. Geminis, themselves, would be presumed guilty automatically.
  
• "The stars told me to do it," would become a legally justifiable excuse for misdemeanors. For felonies, the plea "Not Guilty by Reason of Astrology" could be entered, but each side in the case would inevitably bring in fifteen Astrologers each to argue the true meaning of having been born at 10:15am GMT on some particular date.
  
• Pop Astrology would take up the debate about whether consumer products (like cars or software) were "born" the day they were released to manufacturing, or the day they first went on sale.
  
• "You must be this tall and a Libra to ride this roller coaster."
  
• The legal drinking age would be 21, except for Aquarians, for whom the drinking age would be 19.
  
• Budweiser would stop using "Born On Dating" on their cans and bottles after they discovered that many batches couldn't be sold because they were "born under a bad sign".
  
• OJ Simpson would *still* be looking for the real killers.

When you get right down to it, is the world I just described any less scary than the one in which we currently live?

Constitutional amendments aside, here is how best to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

-- Insofar as "sanctity" means to be held sacred or holy, the major faiths must resume treating marriage as if it were, well, important. This means that getting married must again require some amount of effort on behalf of those who are getting married: going through the various rituals and/or training that used to be required in some churches/religions, paying dowries, and so on. And, of course, honoring the tradition of having marriages pre-arranged by a morally upright, disinterested third-party whose job it is to bring together two people who have never met before. Hey, it worked for our great great grandparents, right?

-- It also means that getting out of a marriage must be, well, difficult. To make divorce an exception rather than a rule, make the cost of divorce high. Excommunication from the church used to be a big deal. But civil penalties can be imposed, as well. You need very special legal grounds, argued in a court of law. No quickies. Divorcees lose certain legal privileges, like the right to vote or otherwise take part in government, since we wouldn't want people who violate a sacred trust to be in any way entrusted with the affairs of state. Oh, and divorce would be heavily taxed.

-- The penalties for violating the oaths of marriage would also have to be severe. Infidelity by either partner? Stoning. To death. I'd also suggest similarly harsh penalties for spousal abuse, even though there's not much of a tradition of punishing spousal abuse.

Ah, but if we want sanctity for marriage, we need more than to make it costly to get into and out of. We also need to provide some holy benefit. Some religions, like the Mormons, allow women into heaven if they get married (as part of a family deal -- if the husband ain't going, neither is the wife). But what incentive is there for the men? Can someone familiar with the world's major religions help me out here? What are the blessings accorded to married people that makes marriage better than singlehood (or non-married couplehood, or non-married polygamy, etc., etc.)? Once I know that, then perhaps I can make suggestions for changes to our civil policies to incentivize marriage, as well.

But, in the meantime, let's bring back arranged marriages and stoning for breaking the vows. That should go a long way toward restoring the former glory of marriage.

So, I guess the mayor of San Francisco decided that he (or the city he manages) was above state law and decreed that the city would recognize gay marriages. I don't follow the news as much as I used to, so I'm a bit hazy on the details, but that's about the gist of it, right? And the state of California said, "No, buddy, a marriage is defined as a civil union between one man and one woman, so there's no such thing as a gay marriage." Am I following the story so far, even if only in general terms?

As a result of all of this, the U.S. President says he wants an amendment to the Constitution to codify what the Congress has already legislated, and what the states have already legislated, defining marriage as a one man, one woman arrangement. The Defensive Marriage Amendment or something like that, right?

Now, I'm not sure why a constitutional amendment is needed, insofar as the laws are already on the books, unless one is worried about the laws being overturned by the Supreme Court. But, that said, the rationale I'm hearing for such an amendment is this: that we need to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

Of course, given that there is *supposed* to be a separation of church and state in this country, it seems rather odd to me that the government should be in the business of preserving the sanctity of anything. It's up to the various religions to determine was is sanctified and what is not, right?

Now, before I go too far down that road, let me also acknowledge that yes, this country was founded upon Christian ideals and that, additionally, the government does have legitimate reasons to regulate the legal status of marriage, a civil union with peculiar property rights issues and child guardianship matters and which is much more than merely a public proclamation before the church and any God or Gods concerned.

It stands to reason that our nation would regulate the legal status of marriage in accordance with the Christian traditions that have informed so much of our nation's governing principles. Still, to do so in the name of preserving sanctity is a dubious claim, especially when sanctity is a church issue, and some churches define marriage (and divorce and annulment and so on) so differently from others.

But whether you agree that the government should or should not get into the sanctity business, and whether you agree that the default concept of sanctity should or should not be based upon the traditional Presbyterian (or other Protestant, non-Morman* church of your choice) definitions of marriage, I am struck by the idea that the gravest threat to the "sanctity of marriage" is the idea that women want to "marry" women and men want to "marry" men.

The alleged sanctity of marriage has already been completely and utterly undermined by the trend of men not wanting to stay married to women and women not wanting to stay married to men. In practice, the notion of "Until Death Do Us Part" has been replaced by "Until I Don't Feel Like It Anymore." According to a February 2002 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, 50% of first marriages in the United States are likely to end in divorce. According to this report, as of 1996, a mere 55.9% of first marriages that began in the early 1970's even made it to their 20th anniversaries.

One of the hallmarks of marriage is supposed to be commitment. It is exactly that commitment that is lacking in the modern American definition of marriage, while it is exactly that commitment that gays and lesbians say they desire for themselves. And thus, we arrive at the irony of preserving the sanctity of marriage: that we don't honor our own commitments while at the same time we refuse to recognize the commitments that others (gays & lesbians, polygamists, etc.) would like to make to each other.

Allowing gay and lesbian civil unions, by whatever term you wish to call them, does not cheapen monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Divorce, infidelity, jealousy, annulment, and spousal abuse cheapen marriage.

Protestant Christian America has left marriage in a ditch along the highway of history, nearly road-kill and barely clinging onto its life. How does only allowing straight, allegedly monogomous men and women to degrade it do anything toward preserving its sanctity?

In my next post, I'll describe the most effective way to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

As many of my faithful readers know, I'm not very good at remembering names or dates -- which makes my choice of being a history major in college something of a mystery even to me.

So I can't remember if it was Attorney General Edwin Meese or Senator Jesse Helms, but *someone* up there in the federal government during the 1980's, when unable to actually define what constitutes pornography, uttered the famous words: "I know it when I see it."

The Supreme Court, equally decisive in condemning offensive material and vague in defining exactly what constitutes the same, favored the notion of relying upon "community standards" to determine what is, and what is not, offensive.

The FCC at the time was less vague. I worked in broadcast commercial radio at the time, and we had very clear guidelines on what was acceptable. The "seven dirty words" (as memorialized in George Carlin's comedy routine about an earlier Supreme Court decision banning seven specific words from the public airwaves) were never appropriate. Innuendo was fine any time of day, but any overt sexuality (such as the Dr. Ruth show) was to be saved for after 10pm.

For a couple of years, I ran a two-hour comedy show each week on Sunday nights at 11pm. We set and followed our own guidelines, whereby material we deemed to be risque would be held until after midnight.

Certainly, accidents happened, both at the station as a whole and during my comedy show in particular. These mistakes could take the form of a miscued bleep of one of the aforementioned dirty words, or somebody making an error and swearing while his or her microphone was accidentally left on. One idiot at our station referred to Aretha Franklin as "Urethra Franklin" on air by mistake because he'd gotten into the habit of doing so off the air.

There was a procedure for handling these kinds of situations. We'd log what happened in our daily FCC log, and we'd prepare to face the music if anyone ever complained to the FCC.

As it so happens, no one in Ithaca, New York ever complained about such mistakes, which were not common but not unheard of.

Flash forward fifteen years or so. Half-time acts during the Super Bowl regularly make a spectacle out of themselves by grabbing their crotches and undulating on stage, draping flags around themselves and singing about punching out cops and bonking their fuck-buddies. This has been going on for several years, and I guess the lines have been getting blurry. With an apparent lack of guidelines as to what is and is not appropriate for the public airwaves, the ambiguity of "community standards" when talking about a national audience, and the problem of who knows what when they see what, the lines have gotten so blurred that the notion of offensive material was almost forgotten by those waltzing along the lines.

Then, this year, Janet Jackson flashed a pasty (pastie?) covered boob in a choreographed routine that positively exuded sex with a hint of violence, and someone at the FCC jumped up and said, "That's it! I see it! I knew I'd know it when I saw it! That's offensive!"

I'm not making this up: I actually heard a sound clip of the FCC chariman refer to the Super Bowl halftime show as a "sacred moment", the enjoyment of which was permanently soured when his family was so unexpectedly exposed to this . . . this . . . boob.

So, like, Mr. FCC Man: what freaking planet are you living on? The Super Bowl is a popular sporting event. It is not sacred. Get over it.

And where were you during all the crotch grabbing?

Where were you when Kid Rock danced on the stage wearing an American flag that had been torn in the middle and turned into a poncho?

Where were you during the songs about punching out cops?

And why was any of the sexual suggestivity on the stage any more suggestive than the freaking *cheerleaders* who shake their groove thang in front of the cameras going into every single commercial break? Mr. FCC Guy: how did you explain cheerleaders to your young and impressionable progeny?

Why are you more afraid of a boob than you are of rows and rows of heavy thugs lining up time after time on opposite sides of a pig-skin with the singular purpose of pummeling each other into the ground?

Americans are more afraid of sex than of violence. I acknowledge this fact intellectually, even though I don't understand it. (As a history major, I can give you all kinds of reasons, stemming from our Puritan roots. It's still insane.)

Let me go on record as saying that I prefer sex to violence, and I'd rather see a shapely breast than a boxing match. (And, let me also concede that, having said this, I was watching the Super Bowl nonetheless with the expectation of seeing a football game rather than a peep show.)

Janet and her buddy Justin, though, combined sex with implied violence, which I guess makes it a little worse than even just sex.

So the American public was all atwitter about what happened during the Super Bowl, and the media couldn't stop talking about it for weeks. Nor could the rest of us. Often I'd go out to various meetings, only to have the issue come up. Some folks thought Janet's performance was obscene. Some thought the rest of the halftime show was obscene. Others thought football was obscene. Still others thought there wasn't a problem at all.

Janet revealed more than a little bit of skin that afternoon. She revealed that community standards are not. She revealed that while while all "know it when we see it," we all see it differently.

Obscenity is in the mind of the beholder.

I'm not the first to make this observation. Even in Genesis, Adam and Eve's reaction to nudity was all in their minds. Before they became "enlightened", nudity was no problem. But after eating from the tree of knowledge, boy did they become uptight. Get me a fig leaf, quick!

Okay. So obscenity is all in the mind, and we all have different minds, so we are all offended by different things. Are we all on the same page?

Janet has been forgotten. But the FCC has not. The FCC is on the prowl. It feels it has let the American public down (and, in many ways, it has), and it wants to atone. So it's going after that most dreaded den of obscenity: talk radio.

Congress has not adequately defined obscenity. The Supreme Court has dodged behind community standards. But the FCC sure knows it when they see it. Or hear it. So, they are fining stations that carry talk radio shows that say things that they (the FCC) find offensive. But they (the FCC) have not issued guidelines as to what counts as offensive and what doesn't.

It's an effective strategy. The government won't define it, but it *will* take violators of the unwritten rules to court. And the government *will* fine violators of these unwritten rules. The result? Terror. Radio stations are muzzling their talk show hosts, telling them to lay low for a while while they try to figure out what kind of policies they should follow in order to best avoid getting fined.

As a tactic for keeping broadcasters on their heels, it's brilliant. Of course, it doesn't produce better (or even, necessarily, less offensive) programming. But it *does* produce *nervous* broadcasting.

Long before we bestowed the term "terrorist" upon rogue elements who sought to earn sympathy for their political causes by murdering people (a stretch of logic I still don't quite understand), historians singled out a particular kind of government tactic as rule of terror. Here's how it works:

First, ban some behavior using vague terms.

Next, enforce this ban haphazardly, seemingly on a whim, and make the punishment excessively punitive.

The result? A scared, scared population.

This is exactly the road down which broadcast radio and television are currently heading.

There is a great deal to be said in favor of regulating standards of conduct among public broadcast frequencies. (Private broadcasting mechanisms, such as cable television, is another matter and one for another discussion.)

But what Janet revealed is that those standards need to be specific and well-defined. They must not be left up to the whim of whomever happens to be watching from the FCC that particular day. They must not be left up to the whim of what a given judge in a given court finds offensive on a given day.

This is partially a question of favoring rule of law over rule of terror . . . I, for one, prefer that the United States not slide down that slippery slope that has engulfed so many other democracies which have relied upon rule of terror instead of the rule of law.

But it's also a question of accomplishing your stated goals in the first place. The best way to make sure that standards are adhered to is to publicize exactly what those standards are and enforce them consistently. Don't leave it up to "you'll know it when you see it." The producers at MTV have different standards from the producers of PAX. (And quite frankly, I find both offensive, but for different reasons.)

If *I* set the standards, Beyonce Knowles would have had the center stage for the entire halftime show (she did an amazing rendition of the national anthem at the start of the game, don't you agree?), there would be none of those fireworks or laser light shows or any of that nonsense, and the cheerleaders would have been allowed to perform topless during the game. But only if they wanted to.

--Allan

PS: if you want to read a funny story from the point of view of a cheerleader, check out this story by my friend Joseph Paul Haines.

One of my character traits that has been dogging me for years is that of tending toward overcommitment. I'm not what some people refer to as a "joiner" -- I don't go around joining clubs just so that I'll be a member of a lot of clubs. Rather, I'll commit myself to performing various tasks or roles to the point where I don't have the time to do them all.

[In case any of my new co-workers are reading this: this negative trait of mine is only in my personal life, and it doesn't apply to my work habits. At work I'm very careful not to overextend mysel-- wait a minute. That doesn't sound too good, either. Hmmmm.]

Overcommitment a different kind of insanity from being a joiner, but not by much. These days, I've got a monthly open mike (open mic?) night at a local coffee shop that I emcee, I'm on my homeowners' association board, I'm webmaster for a couple of non-profits, there's writing workshops and critique groups, trying to be active in my local political party of choice, and never mind regular (and firm) commitments with Alexander (doctor's visits, lessons, playgroups) and the daily commitment to my employer.

Additionally, I have writing goals I'm trying to make and chores around the house that require regular attention. And so on, and so on.

Some of these commitments come about out of necessity, but many come about either because I'm passionate about it (writing; public performance) or because I have some sense of "should" about it (civic participation, and taking a shower *at least* once a week).

Then there's watching ER on Thursday nights, which isn't a formal commitment, but it just works out that way.

I frequently entertain the (false) notion that I used to not be overcommitted -- that I used to live up to all of my obligations. If I were to be honest with myself (it happens, but only rarely), I'd acknowledge that I've been overcommitted since at least elementary school. Cello practice? Who has the time!? Yearbook staff meeting? I'm too busy to make it!

I used to think that I wanted to "be a writer", until I finally wised up to the fact that what I really wanted was to have written. I didn't want to write a novel; I wanted to have written one. Well, I wised up, and decided to become a writer, and then I wrote a novel.

A lot of my commitments are going south because many of them are things I want to have accomplished, rather than because they are things I want to do. Worse, there are a number of things I *should* accomplish that I'm not doing because I'm spending so much time on commitments that I neither should nor want to do anymore. I have stuck out of a sense of duty rather than out of any real need or desire.

If I learn how to quit some of these commitments -- just walk away from them -- then I can take the newfound free time and... blow off my other commitments with less anxiety.

A few months ago, in a rare moment of insight (and free time), I wrote in my private journal that I needed to quit a few of my commitments. I chanced to pick up my journal again recently, and noticed that from that long list of expendable commitments, I'd released myself from exactly one of them. How pathetic.

Clearly, I'm not committed to quitting my commitments.

So, what do I do? When I commit myself to quitting, the first commitment I quit is the commitment to quit commitments. Ack!

I believe there's some organization like a "joiners anonymous." Although, by its very nature, wouldn't all the members really just be posers? I mean, by joining such an organization, aren't you defeating the whole point of getting that joining monkey off your back? So, by extension, there's probably no *valid* sort of "overcommitters anonymous", because the very idea of going to meetings regularly would defeat the purpose of trying not to commit any more.

[sigh.]

I should just be committed.

For the past year or so, I've been posting rather infrequently to this here website, which is funny (not funny ha-ha, but funny weird funny) because traffic to my site goes up every month. I guess the less I write, the more popular I become. Or something.

But whereas I had only the lame excuse of "gee, I'm busy" to keep me from posting here, I now have a more coherent reason for my relative silence. I've started work at a new employer.

When I was first getting to know him, a friend of mine named Allen claimed to be so bored one day that he read through my entire website. He found it odd and interesting that he had to read an awful lot before discovering any mention of my wife (let alone her name), and he was also curious as to whether I was still working for my previous employer (I was not) because my blog has generally only hinted at my employment situation, as well.

I wrote an essay a while back about the conflicting interests that surround freedom of speech. My contention was (and still is) that, while we enjoy the freedom to say what we will, we also are obliged to deal with any consequences that may result -- and that there are often consequences.

My primary concern in that essay was about the annoying (to me) error of referring to consequences as censorship, or even more strongly put, McCarthyism. The Dixie Chicks certainly have a right to say they don't like the current President of the United States. Radio stations in the Bible Belt, likewise, have a right to not play Dixie Chicks records. Both the Chicks and the radio stations are making a point about what they believe or what they are against. But the radio stations are not censoring the Chicks. They are, rather, selecting their own messages just as carefully as the Chicks did.

In a more recent example, Janet Jackson's choices regarding her freedom of expression (which, while not Constitutionally guaranteed, is considered by the Supreme Court to be Constitutionally implied) have led to her being uninvited to be a presenter at the Grammy Awards later this year. Is CBS censoring her? Or are they choosing, instead, to select performers with a public image that is more copacetic for their intended audience?

On the other hand, is the FCC censoring CBS and/or Miss Jackson by threatening and/or imposing fines for what happened during the Super Bowl half-time show this year? Arguably, yes, they are. Censorship is pressure brought to bear by the government regarding what one says or how one expresses it.

Now, then, what does this have to do with me having a wife or changing employers?

Quite a bit.

Paulette, my wife, has a life and a set of interests of her own. She tends to not be as public with her stories as I tend to be with mine. I believe she prefers I not say too much about her in such a public forum as my web site, for fear that I might say something that she'd be uncomfortable having broadcast.

I have a choice, of course. I can put everything out there for the world to view, or I can just shut up about anything that concerns Paulette. Or I can walk a tightrope somewhere in between. Alas, since we are married, and our lives are so interconnected, there are very few things that are a part of my life that aren't also a part of hers.

Is this a case of censorship? Hardly. But anything I say can and will be used against me.

It's reasonable for Paulette to want her privacy. It's reasonable for me to want to share my stories with the world. It's also reasonable for me to respect her privacy. So I do what I can to say what I want to say without pulling her out on display with me too much.

Our son, Alexander, is another matter. My preference is to say enough to tantalize those parties who are interested -- maybe even give a photo or two -- but not say so much as to have Child Protective Services pay us a visit for being bad parents.

Likewise, there has rarely been much for me to say, nor any benefit in saying it, about changes in my employment situation. Usually, all the interesting stuff happens during one's employment, not afterward. (Your mileage may vary, of course.)

Shortly, I'll be posting the story of how I came to get my current job -- it was most unusual, even by my standards -- but, for the time bei