Nobody 756

Sunday, February 15, 2009
Nobody # 756

Nobody Asked Me But:

The miracle of Tucson – I found this perfect bunny image in a loaf we bought in Tucson. It was truly Beyond Bread.<<<

I entered a Twelve-step program this week. My first words – I am an addict. Or didn’t you know that the latest research shows that being in love is an addiction – at home in the same brain spot as other addictions.

And why no teardrop-shaped boxes of candy? After all, that is the shape of the VTA, the brain cells that light up when people are shown pictures of their beloved.<<<

You can go home again. I hadn’t been to the Tommy’s on Roscoe for at least a dozen years. They’ve changed the place a bit. There is no longer a counter along the wall to stand by as you eat. They have tables now. But the Chiliburger, with pickles and tomatoes, is as gooey and messy as ever, and as delicious.

Next time I’ll have a triple.<<<

When I was teaching, I told my students that confusion is the door to knowledge, as I challenged them to fight through the morass of conflicting information and opinion towards something approaching truth. At the time, I did not realize that a faculty committee at Harvard was espousing the same philosophy. Their statement about the purpose of education went like this:

“The aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

David Brooks sees it differently. Praising a recent book on the subject, “On Thinking Institutionally” by the political scientist Hugh Heclo, Brooks thinks that we are institutional creatures and schools are at their best when they educate to strengthen our traditions and traditional institutions - first family and school, then society, country and the institutions of a profession or a craft.

I don’t see why there has to be the dichotomy. Do we want anarchists or automatons? Nether I hope. I think the first goal is to produce individuals. The second, to encourage those individuals to see and support the best in traditions and institutions and reject the parts that don’t work, or don’t work as well as they should.<<<

“It’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they presided over a doubling of the national debt, I’m not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.” President Obama

VAUGELY DISCONTENTED - (see lyrics below)

With the following in the stimulus bill:

I THINK IT WAS TOO LITTLE, TOO SOON. To have the desired effect, it needed to be at least one and one-half trillion. And it should have been more carefully constructed to focus on the areas of greatest need and fastest turn-around.

I THINK THERE WAS TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON BIPARTISANSHIP. It was evident early on that the Republicans were going to play the obstructionist role, so Obama should have used the bully pulpit earlier to damn the obstruction and pushed for HIS plan.

THE BILL IS NOT BOLD ENOUGH. The Great Depression demanded new ideas and new directions and gave birth to the New Deal. The current crisis demands the same, but the stimulus bill pretty much recycles the old. Surely a “change president” could have tapped a bolder brain trust. After all, he is the one who said – “I would rather do the right thing and have one term than be mediocre and have two.”<<<

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “Americans are wondering how we’re going to pay for all this.” Since when does a Senator from a party that just lost big speak for “Americans?”

He is probably just whinging. No that’s not a spelling or editing error. (My editor doesn’t make errors.) Whinge - to complain or protest in an annoying persistent manner.

I know that Nancy Pelosi is an old school Democrat, but shouldn’t school be out for the recession?<<<

This just in: The House approved the stimulus package with all 183 Republicans voting against it. First it was the dinosaurs, then the California Republicans and now the national Republicans. Or as John Boehnar says, “We owe it to the people to get this bill Right.”

And some people still don’t believe in natural selection?<<<

But am I being too tough on Boehnar? After all, the President claims that the package will create 3.6 million jobs while the Ohio Congressman says it will only create 3.46M.<<<

I thought Obama’s press conference was a joy, but I have one tip for him. Start with a short, direct answer to each question and then expand on it. Monday night you did just the opposite.<<<

VAGUELY DISCONTENTED

With Bud Selig. Don’t misunderstand me! I think A-Rod was wrong and stupid to use steroids. But for Selig to say he disgraced baseball is hypocritical. After all, Bud spent some double-dipping, conflict of interest time in his dual role of Baseball commissioner AND President of the Milwaukee Braves.

To Be or Not To Be – a Catholic:

To Be – I could sin six days a week and have it all washed away by confessing on the seventh.

Not To Be – I would have to put up with Pope Benedict XVI, who makes room in the fold for far-right, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying priests.<<<

"We are going to amass the largest debt in the history of this country, and we are going to ask our kids and grandkids to pay for it," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “And that is not the Republican way –-- unless we are in power.”<<<

Here is Charles de Gaulle (from the grave) on a couple of Obama’s appointments - “The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”<<<

Very interesting: At one point the other night, in the Laker/Thunder game, 4 of the 10 players on the court were ex-Bruins.

And while on the subject of the Bruins,

Too bad the four weren’t playing for UCLA yesterday. Perhaps they could have rewritten Chapter Two of "Disaster in the Desert" – a novel of pain with no redemption in sight.<<<

I’m as restless as a willow in a windstorm,
I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string,
I’d say that I had spring fever,
But I know it isn’t spring.

I am as starry eyed and gravely discontented,
Like a nightingale without a song to sing.
Oh, why should I have spring fever,
When it isn’t even spring?

I keep wishing I were somewhere else,
Walking down a strange new street,--

The music is Richard Rogers, the lyrics Oscar Hammerstein II, the movie is State Fair, the sentiment, mine. I need a get-away, even a three-day vacation will do. Hell, I’ll even settle for MaDonald’s – as long as it’s a new one.<<<