Tomser's Blog

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over a year old. The last few months have seen heavy fighting in the Ukrainian southeast provinces that Russia has claimed for its own. Russia launched a major offensive in this area that has, by all accounts, gone nowhere. The Ukraine is poised to launch a counter-offensive designed to regain sovereignty of the territories that Russia now controls.

In the meantime, Russian assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure have continued. In particular, Russia has targeted facilities generating power. Presumably these attacks were to inflict maximum discomfort on the Ukrainian people over the winter months. As with the Russian offensive, these assaults seem to have little impact on the Ukrainian will to resist, though it would be wrong to fully discount the damage and hardship engendered.

While Ukraine is publicly optimistic about its military position, it is hard to envision their counter-offensive driving Russian troops out of the disputed areas. As weakened as the Russian military may be, Putin will certainly use all of his resources to avoid withdrawal. He has too much personally at stake to allow that to happen.

There have also been some attacks within Russia, though they have been few and far between. Responsibility for these attacks have been disputed, though what is clear is that the Ukraine doesn’t have the capacity to bring the war to Russia. (Side note – It is almost laughable to see the indignation of Russia whenever these attacks occur. As if they cannot fathom why someone would want to harm “Little Ol’ Me”).

There was some thought that international pressure would force Russia to backdown. There always has been little chance of that as long as Putin is in power, but any spark of hope died when China declared its “neutrality”. China, supposedly, will not provide weapons to either Russia or the Ukraine, but neither will they condemn the Russian invasion. Even if it is true that they will not sell weapons to Russia (which I doubt) it would take a fully united international response to get Russia to even consider a change in position, and China has made that impossible.            

There have also been calls for negotiations, but it is hard to see a basis for compromise. The Ukraine certainly would want Russia to withdraw from all disputed territories, and, as noted above, Putin will not let that happen. Nor is the Ukraine going to be inclined to cede those provinces to Russia, especially when Russia has been unable to establish a firm foothold there through military means. A plebiscite of the inhabitants’ desires is theoretically possible, but it is hard to see how agreement could be reached on the details of such a vote. Bleeeding Kansas is a more likely precedent than Schleswig.

What is inevitable is that the end of this war will be messy. They always are. As much as historians like to focus on how wars start, how they end often has longer lasting consequences. The classic case is the Treaty of Versailles, a victor’s peace that imposed conditions on Germany that made WWII if not inevitable, much more probable. The end of WWII saw the rise of the “iron curtain” which killed democratic movements in eastern Europe, and led to a cold war that instigated an arms race we are still in the midst of today.

Recent United States experience proves the same. The first Iraqi war was relatively easy from a purely military perspective. It was not hard to drive Hussein out of Kuwait. However, the battles bled into sanctions which only increased the Iraqi government’s repression of dissident sects (the Shias and the Kurds). Eventually this provided an excuse for the second Iraqi war, in which militarily objectives were quickly attained. But the subsequent Sunni insurrections and the rise of ISIS resulted in significantly greater losses than the war itself.

The chaos surrounding the withdrawal of Russia and the United States from their respective wars in Afghanistan also highlight wars ending badly. Both countries hoped to install a government favorable to their interests. Both failed miserably. The result is a despotic regime impervious to international influence, devoted to taking the country back to the Islamic Middle Ages. There is no end in sight to the suffering of the Afghan people (especially women).

Which brings us back to the Ukraine. What now? We can hope for a miracle like the removal of Putin, or Ukrainian exhaustion leading to the cession of territory, but, contrary to popular opinion, miracles are very rare in times of war. We can also conjure up scenarios where either Russia or the Ukraine score decisive military victories which decide the issue. However, there is no evidence such a breakthrough is on the horizon.

What is probable is a stalemate for the foreseeable future. The Ukrainian counter-offensive may dent Russian positions, but it’s hard to envision them fully driving Russia back across the border. After the failure of the winter offensive, I don’t foresee Russia launching another for some time. They are more likely to dig into defensive positions and continue to declare their shaky hold on the disputed territory a victory.

To the extent there is a solidification of positions, less conventional warfare is sure to follow. Ukraine will want to try and bring the war to Russia proper but can only do so through covert action. Russia will continue to bomb and is likely to get less discriminant in its targets. Any way you look at it, more death and destruction will follow.

The international community will also be dragged further into this, but not as peacemakers. As the Russian bombing continues, Ukraine will call for more and more sophisticated weapons. They are likely to get them. That may spark China to drop its “neutrality” and supply Russia with whatever it needs to continue its aggression. Not a pretty picture.

I wish I could engender some optimism about this situation, but I can’t. This is just another predictably bloody wormhole arising out of an idiotic, meaningless war. We never learn. I am afraid that we never will.  

I was listening to a Spotify playlist the other day and the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood” came on. I have heard this song hundreds of times but was still drawn to listen for the sitar that makes it so distinctive. However, the song begins with a few bars of a beautiful acoustic guitar and this threw me. I momentarily wondered whether I was hearing a cover version. Then the sitar began and all was again well with the world.

This brief episode led me down one of those proverbial rabbit holes. It dawned on me that when this song first aired in 1965 the vast majority of people listening to it not only had never heard a sitar used in a pop song, they had never heard a sitar, period. In fact, most probably did not even know that such an instrument existed. I wondered what it must have been like to hear this “strange” sound with no frame of reference as to its origin.

This led me into considering those innovations that come so out of the blue there was no prior context to categorize them. Most inventions evolve from something familiar. Gutenberg’s printing press may have been a deviation of cataclysmic proportions, but what came out was still a book, and people knew what a book was. The first transatlantic flight was an incredible achievement, but the real shock must have been when people first looked up into the sky and saw a man-made machine passing overhead.

The most famous reaction to an innovation in modern times might be the projection of moving pictures onto a large screen. Legend has it that when the Lumiere brothers first exhibited their film showing a locomotive coming straight toward the camera as it pulled into the La Ciotat Station in 1895 people were so startled that they screamed and ran to the back of the room. Film historians have noted that the closest technique prior to that time producing a naturalistic moving image was the camera obscura, and that would have been no equivalent to what the Lumiere’s were presenting.

There is a similar sense when you hear Boomer’s wax poetic about Pong, a simple game with two “paddles” on either side of the screen batting an imaginary ball back and forth at incredibly slow speeds. When this game first hit bars and arcades it was a wonder. This was nothing like the pinball machines which dominated prior to then. While it was quickly eclipsed, Pong still holds a special place in the hearts of many.

Of more import was the invention of the microscope. The telescope may have brought objects closer, but people knew that the heavens were full of wonders. The microscope, on the other hand, reveals an unknown world that totally engulfs us, and what a bizarre world it is. It wasn’t just that we were seeing everyday objects close up, we were seeing other living organisms on our clothes, on our bed sheets, on our skin!!! It had to have been a shock, to say the least.

Similarly, the discovery of the X-Ray at the turn of the 20^th Century must have been mind-boggling. The was no precedent for being able to see through something seemingly solid. Could such superpowers even be imagined prior to that discovery? Those shown an early X-Ray and being told that they were looking at the inside of their own body must have been incredulous.

Probably those most amazed by innovation were our stone age ancestors. The invention of the wheel, or the transformation of rocks into tools must have been awe-inspiring. Not surprisingly, Gary Larson has captured the likely tenor of those times in the cartoon below.

 J. Krishnamurti understood the power of this unadulterated mindset better than anyone else I have encountered. He put it in terms of stopping the internal monologue which moderates experience. He used the example of a person who witnesses an incredible sunset and then returns the next night to experience the same. However, the mind will inevitably make comparisons, dulling the impact regardless of the reality.  

I think that one of the reasons little children can be so fascinating is because they do not have that filter. For young kids so many things are innovations without context. We can watch their amazement at the everyday and be entranced by it. We may chuckle, for example, at their astonishment (or fear) of fireworks, but we all secretly wish we could experience that same sense of the unprecedented.

A favorite mind game has always been the question if you could go back in time to witness one historical event, what would it be. Some will say Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address or the Signing of the Declaration of Independence or an original Shakespeare play being performed at the Globe. However, I fear that they all would be somewhat disappointing, knowing what we now know.

On the other hand, if we could erase our memories of things to come and experience the first phonograph record, or the first photograph, that would be something. A new way of experiencing the world that most of us could not have conceived of before that moment. That would be a time trip worth taking.

Alas, you cannot erase what you know. As much as I revere Krishnamurti, I cannot turn off the internal monologue. It is constantly babbling away, interposing itself on experiences. Still, with the rate of technological change, I have little doubt that we are in for surprises that few of us can contemplate. The trick will be to enjoy that when it happens.

From The Beatles to Krishnamurti. As far as rabbit holes go, not too shabby.     

Free speech is an easy concept to rally around. We are ‘Mericans. We have the right to say any damn thing we want, any damn time we want, any damn where we want. Left or right, we are all wary of proposals that limit free speech, aren’t we?

And yet, we are uncomfortable with unfettered speech. We know how damaging mere words can be. We know that the phrase, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me” is hopelessly naïve. “Names” can leave scars, often deeper and harder to mend than broken bones. We also know that speech can quickly lead to action, and that action can be very damaging indeed.

Knowing this, we accept limits on our speech. We don’t countenance those who barge into any setting shouting whatever nasty epitaphs might be running through our minds (unless they’re in Congress).  We know that our place of work is not a free speech zone. Spouting off around the proverbial water cooler, or even worse, on social media, about what idiots your bosses are or how worthless your company’s products are, will get you fired, and we accept that.

These rules get a lot trickier when you are dealing with the efforts by the government, or even entities funded by the government, to curb speech. The First Amendment was directed at the government for good reason. Censorship has been the cornerstone of authoritarian regimes since time immemorial. Control what is said, and how information is disseminated, and you go a long way towards controlling the populace.

These days the tension between concerns about governmental regulation of speech and the recognition that there are limits to free speech is being played out in classrooms nationwide. Most of the focus has been on limiting topics to be covered in K-12 schools, or what books are acceptable in school libraries, but these tensions have spilled over to the university level as well, where notions of academic freedom make boundaries much harder to negotiate.

In 2022 Florida (where else) passed a statute that establishes a new post-tenure, five-year review cycle for professors at the state’s public institutions. Governor DeSantis was not shy about his reasons for signing this bill (is he ever?). He was quoted as saying that the bill would keep faculty and curriculum in line with what he calls the state’s priorities, which, of course, means his priorities. Considering the nature of politics in the United States, no doubt similar bills will soon crop up in other states around the country.

 It will be interesting to see how this law is enforced. At first blush, tenure or no, it is hard to see how the firing of a professor for statements that angered the powers that be can pass constitutional muster. In fact, such a firing would go to the very heart of the of the First Amendment. My guess is that Florida really doesn’t care about constitutionality and is more concerned with the optics of such a bill and the angst it will bring.

Another side of this coin is presented by the case of Kareem Tannous, a non-tenured business professor at Cabrini college. Tannous was recently fired after a series of personal tweets became public criticizing Israel in harsh terms. Among the tweets was one saying that “Israel and Ukraine [elsewhere called Zionazi Ukraine] are societal cancers and must be eradicated”. Another urged that we “dismantle #AparthiedIsrael by any means necessary”.

Tannous is one in a growing list of academics disciplined, or fired, for expressing incendiary opinions. Some have successfully sued for damages or reinstatement. Others have weathered the storm and continued to teach. Tannous claims that he is now blacklisted and has sued Cabrini arguing that, as an institute that receives state and federal support, it violated his First Amendment rights.

In attacking Israel, Tannous targeted one of the few issues on which both left and right kind of agree. While the left (I realize that I am shamelessly generalizing here) is often uncomfortable with the machinations of the Israeli government, especially under Netanyahu, there is still widespread support for our most reliable ally in the Middle East. The right, with visions of Armageddon dancing in their heads, is even more hawkish in its embrace of Israel.

Yet, few would countenance the firing of Tannous if his criticism stopped at lambasting Israeli policy, especially since it was done outside the classroom. We recognize the need to allow debate, even where views expressed may be unpopular. In fact, many of us welcome those who speak at the edges of consensus, reminding us that none of these issues are so black and white that all sides shouldn’t be aired.

The question becomes trickier when the speaker goes beyond criticism to an incitement to action. In exhorting his readers to eradicate Israel “by any means necessary” Tannous is clearly endorsing violence. “By any means necessary” embraces war, terrorism, bio-chemical attacks and any other nasty iteration of mayhem that mankind can envision. It takes this from impassioned criticism to exhortation of the worst kind.

Tannous denies his comments are ant-Semitic, but if he wants to eradicate Israel, what does he propose to do with the seven million Jews that live there? Considering the history of violence against Jews, and the on-going and seemingly intractable anti-Semitism that continues to pollute our world, it is hard to imagine that Tannous just wants to wipe the state of Israel off the world map and leave the populus there. Is there any doubt that if he has us eradicate the state, he would have us eradicate the people there as well?

To all of this he would probably respond that he is just a nobody who has no following and no ability to carry through on his unrestrained fantasies. All of that is probably true. But, on the other hand, he is a teacher. And one of the things that we expect from teachers is that they will not judge their students by any criteria other than their performance. In Tannous defense, there is no evidence that he has discriminated against his students because of their ethnicity but could a Jewish student in his class feel comfortable knowing his views on “eradication”?

 A similar issue arose with respect to Penn Law Professor Amy Wax who declared that the country would be “better off with fewer Asians” and that “on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites.” Wax is till teaching. Unlike Tannous, she did not advocate violence, but you still have to wonder how she can possibly be fair and impartial to Black and Asian students in her class while holding these views. I know that if I was of those ethnicities I would avoid her classes like the plague, even if it meant missing a class I would otherwise like to take.

There is no doubt that this is a slippery slope. If we advocate for the removal of Wax and Tannous we open the door for the Floridians who would remove any teacher who says something they do not like. And, for that reason, maybe it is a door that must stay firmly shut. But if you’re going to take that position have the guts to look a Black or Asian or Jewish student in the eye and tell them this yahoo is who their stuck with.   

For years, Major League Baseball has been taking hits for the way its games dragged on. It has been losing viewers by the droves, even for marque events, like the World Series. While it has been easy to throw baby boomer rants about youngsters with miniscule attention spans, the truth was that fans of all ages were turning off the games. It was time for change. All that was needed was someone to push through those changes, and that person was Theo Epstein.

Epstein’s problem was that baseball has one of the most conservative fan bases imaginable. The rules are sacrosanct. Any change disrupts time-honored traditions that will destroy our venerable national pastime. He also had to convince the players. How could they adjust their batting gloves for the 10^th time, or meander around the mound, if they had to be ready to bat or pitch in 15 measly seconds?

But push through the changes he did. A clock now determines when the batter must be in the box, and when the pitcher must deliver to the plate. Violations result in a ball or strike. Some said it would never work. One player predicted the clock would have to be abandoned within two weeks. But here we are into the first week of the season, and the clock is going nowhere. The games are quicker and more enjoyable to watch.

Epstein might have been the prefect catalyst for altering the rules. He was the wunderkind General Manager who led the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, two teams desperate for post-season success, to World Series wins. He epitomized a youth movement in the sport and had overseen drastic changes in how games are managed, and players evaluated. As a consultant to the Major Leagues in respect of on field matters, he had the power. If anyone could convince the hidebound to move it was him.

Baseball is not alone in being resistant to change. If, as Albert Einstein said, “[t]he measure of intelligence is the ability to change”, most come up short. That is true for huge enterprises like Major League Baseball, companies, both big and small, as well as us puny individuals. Even Al didn’t quite measure up, spending over 30 years of his life fruitlessly searching for a unified theory in physics.

At least MLB did something. The corporate graveyard is filled with companies that were on top and then tanked because they could not alter what they were doing to meet new challenges. It wasn’t long ago that Blockbuster was the go-to source for films to watch at home. Had they been better run they would have seen that the days of physical DVD’s were numbered and used their name recognition to usher in the streaming world, but it didn’t happen.

As much as CEO’s like to paint themselves as visionaries, and are paid as if they are, most are sloggers who have climbed through the ranks via their management skills, not their foresight. Making fundamental changes to business operations is not only a professional risk, but a personal one as well. It is the type of risk that few of these multi-millionaires are willing to take.

Those that do take the risk tend to drag the rest of the business world with them. As annoying as Jeff Bezos is, and as maddening as Amazon can be, they have forced all other retailers, both big and small, to rethink how they get their products to the public. Vendors can no longer rely on a prime spot in a megamall to capture customers. They must adapt to the technology, and re-envision how, and if, those stores can compete in a digital world. There is no longer a choice.

A catalyst can also be an antagonist. It is difficult to imagine the achievements of the American space program without the Soviets. The threat of the USSR advancing in the exploration of space prompted the investment of time and money that led to the July 1969 landing on the moon. I doubt if the United States would have made that commitment otherwise, even though advances in propulsion technology made the timing right. We needed that catalyst.   

It’s not just businesses, or governments. Most of us have trouble identifying when it is time for a change in habits. It’s one thing to have change forced upon you. It’s another to admit that the way in which you have been doing something for years has passed its expiration date. Most of us are creatures of habit who dread breaking with the familiar and comfortable, even when we know that it no longer works.

The list of changes that we know we should make, but don’t, are legion. There is always weight and fitness. There is all that time wasted in front of the TV. There is the general inertia that stops us from engaging in the world as we should, whether it’s keeping in contact with friends, or volunteering our time to help others.

As with CEO’s, very few of us are seers. We are stuck with suppositions about what the future will hold and what that will mean to us. We know there are alterations that should be made, but that makes it no less complicated.  It is very easy to talk yourself out of changes that, in retrospect, were obvious.

That is why a catalyst is often needed. Maybe it’s someone like Theo Epstein. A person who speaks with authority, either personal or professional. Doctors can certainly get your attention, but so can friends, even if it only by example. Seeing someone you know and respect take control of their life can be a spark to act similarly.

These may be obvious truths, but they are ones that I have to keep repeating to myself again and again. Change involves risk, and I can be very risk averse. The drive to inertia runs deep. As bizarre as it seems, seeing citadels of orthodoxy like Major League Baseball move forward helps spark action. In fact, I think I will lay down on the couch, put on the Phillies game, and contemplate where to go next. Sounds like a plan.     

I recently saw two different productions looking to bring new insights to well-known historical narratives. One was a revival of the 1969 musical “1776”, with a racially diverse cast of women, nonbinary and trans actors playing the founding fathers. The other was the movie “Elvis”, which focused primarily on the singer’s relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Both highlighted the never-ending attempts to reinterpret events, and the difficulty in doing so.  

1776 deals with the debate among Continental Congress delegates in the months leading up to the issuance of the Declaration of Independence. There is no verbatim record of that debate, so the writers were free to shape the arguments, as well the relationships between the various representatives. The play’s goal is to highlight the issues that separated the states, including the elephant in the room, slavery, while having Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, et al., croon largely forgettable tunes.

The Director behind this revival said that she decided to stage the play with this diverse cast “to hold history as a predicament, rather than an affirming myth”. I take that to mean that she wants the audience to appreciate the compromises the Philadelphia delegates had to make to unify around a Declaration. There is also no doubt that she wanted to stress the irony of white men seeking freedom and equality, while at the same time reaffirming their commitment to holding many in bondage and excluding those represented by this cast.

The problem is that the casting ends up undermining the irony. It is the fact that it is a bunch of white men, many of them slaveholders, spouting these high ideals, that makes you cringe. Watching others express those views somehow makes them more acceptable, though I am sure was not the intent. The only part of the play where the alternate casting did add was at the beginning and end when the actors slip into, or out of, the colonial accoutrements they wear through most of the show. That was a subtle and effective reminder that the outcome of the debates in 1776 still resonate with us today. 

That being said, it is hard to imagine the play being presented with traditional casting. The dilemmas being dramatized, and the aftermath of the decisions made, are too well known to enjoy watching white men alternate between rousing speech making and clever show tunes. The excellent mixed cast made that palatable, if not enlightening.

The stakes in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis are not near as weighty, but it is still the depiction of a story that may be better known than that of the Continental Congress. How do you bring fresh insights into the rags to riches tale of the boy that made rock and roll the dominant musical genre? Can you make the audience understand what the pressures must have been must in the eye of that hurricane?

Luhrmann takes the odd tack of telling the story through the lens of Colonel Parker. It keeps us at a distance from the main character, the only one we care a whit about. We sense the push and pull of Elvis’ devotion to his music and his love of family, but it as if we are viewing it from the rafters. We want to know how Elvis reacted to being revived so he could appear on stage, or be on board Elvis’ plane, the Lisa Marie, when he realizes that his career is, and has been, conscripted, but we’re not allowed those pleasures.

Even though neither of these historical retellings was satisfying, I appreciate the effort. It is essential that we constantly reexamine and reevaluate the historical record. It is naïve to assume that any version of historical events is sacrosanct, or that there is easy path of cause and effect that can explain why something occurred.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence is a great example. The official story may be that it was pushed through by a group of like-minded great men with high ideals, pushed to the brink by British perfidy. Or was it a move by aristocrats consumed with their own business interests, calculating that a break with the British empire would free them unwanted economic strictures? Or was the movement towards revolution more grassroots, with ordinary citizens from all walks of life willing to take up guns and fight the British? Does causation differ if we look at Boston merchants, firebrands like Thomas Paine or South Carolina slaveholders?

The Elvis story engenders its own perplexities. What was it that caused Elvis to be such a phenomenon, and what sparked the violent backlash against him? Was it the undoubted sexual vibe that Elvis projected? Was it the black music that he drew from? Was it tied to the conformity of the 1950’s? Was he shacked by the Colonel, or was it as much his own choice?

Part of the on-going response to “woke” culture is an attempt to put our history into a box, especially when it comes to teaching in schools. Following the examples of authoritarian regimes, history is to be viewed as a propaganda tool to instill patriotic fervor. Facts and interpretations that undermine that goal, especially if they are uncomfortable, are to be minimized, or weeded out.

Any such effort to propagandize history will certainly kill it, and maybe that’s the goal. Nothing is more boring than a straight recitation of historical events. History only comes alive when it can be debated. When you try and determine cause and effect. When events are not just facts, but gateways to a broader understanding of where we have been, and how it impacts what we are today.

I don’t remember much about my high school courses, but I do vividly recall Mr. Jay’s 11^th grade history class. He taught history as an on-going discussion to be consistently reevaluated. I recall one assignment in particular when he divided the class into groups and gave each a possible reason for American entry into WWI to support. A bunch of 16-year-olds screaming at each other about whether it was submarine warfare, the Zimmerman telegram or economic interests that led us into war sticks with you, and makes you want to dig deeper.

History is complex, both factually and emotionally. Arguments about what we humans did and why can get heated. Uncomfortable truths about what occurred years ago can lead to demands for action now.* But attempts to shove the past under the carpet are both wrong-headed and ineffectual. So, for all their flaws, bring on more in the spirit of “1776” and “Elvis”. We need it.             

*Shamelessly stolen from George Orwell’s 1984. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

*See Ta-Nehisi Coates incredible essay, “The Case for Reparations”.          

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake remains one of the most devastating in recorded history more than 250 years after it wreaked havoc on Portugal. According to Wikipedia, the death toll from that quake has been estimated at around 50,000. The city of Lisbon was basically flattened, as was the surrounding countryside and much of northern Morocco. Innumerable irreplaceable works of art, book collections and historic documents were consumed in the fires that followed.

I thought of the Lisbon quake while reading the news about the earthquake that recently hit Turkey and Syria. Last I read, the death toll from that quake exceeds 45,000, and will no doubt go higher. As with the Lisbon quake, the property damage is extensive, taking in such major locales as the Gaziantep and Kahramanmaraş Provinces in Turkey (home to approximately 3.4 million people). Historic buildings were leveled, and ancient artifacts destroyed. *

The level of the destruction caused by the Turkey earthquake was not what suggested the Lisbon quake. That came when I read a report about the Turkish rescue workers yelling “Allah Akbar”, generally translated as God is Great, whenever they pulled a survivor out of the rubble. Immediately my cynical western mind began to wonder whether those being rescued felt the same. While I sure they were happy to be alive, they were likely facing the loss of family and friends, not to mention most of their possessions. They may agree that God is “great”, as in powerful, but would they think God is “good” considering those losses?

The Lisbon quake sparked that very question. It has been cited as a catalyst for the enlightenment, especially it’s reevaluation of religious beliefs. Voltaire in particular was moved by the devastation of the quake to dispute accepted notions of God’s goodness. His searing satire, Candide, mercilessly skewered the notion that God was a benevolent creator who must have made this “the best of all possible worlds”, as posited by Gottfried Leibniz. He was branded an atheist and a heretic, but the question remained.

This question was dramatized in the 2008 movie “God on Trial”, based on an Elie Wiesel play. In that film internees at Auschwitz debate whether God has broken his covenant with the Jewish people in allowing the Germans to commit genocide. They first pose the generally accepted answer that God must allow people to choose actions that lead to horrible results because of the importance of human freedom of will, but ultimately reject that platitude as unsatisfactory. They continue the debate, ultimately concluding that no, God is not good. Faced with that conclusion, and the question of what to do next, they begin to pray. It is a powerful moment.   

More recently, the Oscar nominated movie “Women Talking”, raised the same issue. In this film, women in a Mennonite-like community have been subjected to horrendous sexual abuse from the men of the commune. They have been instructed by the male leaders that it is their religious duty to forgive the seemingly unforgivable. They debate whether to submit or leave. Though it is not stated as starkly as in God on Trial, underlying the entire discussion is the question of how this could happen in a supposed God-centered community. They are debating not only a pragmatic choice, but the core of their religious beliefs, and their concepts of God.

The ultimate discussion of this question is in the biblical book of Job, arguably the most powerful book in the Jewish and Christian canon. What distinguishes Job is that here God actually responds to the charges. Job is a prosperous farmer known for his piety. “The Adversary”, often translated as Satan, suggests that Job is pious only because he has significant material and personal assets. God gives Satan permission to strip away everything that Job has (family, wealth, health) to see if he still retains his faith.

Job’s neighbors suggest that Job must have done something to deserve the misery that God inflicted upon him, but Job will have none of that. He proclaims his innocence and piety, and we know from the earlier discussion between God and the Adversary that he speaks the truth. It is therefore left for God to speak in his own defense.

God’s answer to Job goes on for over 125 verses. It is hard to read without thinking that the deity doth protest too much. The diatribe is a testament to God’s power, which has not been questioned. It is not, however, a justification of the use of that power to injure an innocent man, unless you buy that might makes right.

Soren Kierkegaard tackled this dilemma by proclaiming the gap between the religious and ethical as a paradox. There is no rational reason that can bridge the gap. It is an absurdity that cannot be reconciled except by a leap of faith. Any search for an explanation is a waste of time, missing the point.    

Job certainly takes this leap of faith. In response to God’s litany Job repents, though it is unclear what he is repenting of, and returns to unquestioningly worshiping God**. This is, to some extent, also the response in “God on Trial” and “Women Talking”. The Jewish internees return to prayer, and the women continue to praise God, even though neither group can reconcile what has happened to them.

I think this attitude explains to a large extent the exultant cry of the Turkish rescuers. They may well understand the religious conundrum they face, just as Job did. However, they have elected to retain faith despite questions that cannot be answered. Most likely many of those pulled from the rubble adopted this same attitude and rejected the Voltairean cynicism as well.

As a child of the enlightenment, it is not so easy for me. The rational predominates. If I cannot explain it, I cannot accept it. I struggle to reconcile the response of Job. I struggle to see any greatness or goodness in these earthquakes, the holocaust or the fate of the women in “Women Talking”. And yet, I appreciate those who maintain a faith that can withstand the worst that can be thrown at them. I respect their steadfastness; I just don’t understand it.

This is just one of those never-ending questions that will plague man forever. There is no right answer, or right response. Maybe you react like the Jewish internees and continue to pray. Or maybe, like Voltaire, you deride the entire notion of goodness in the world. Each of us must decide on our own. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you”.

*Some accounts suggested that part of the reason that the devastation in Turkey was so extensive was because of Turkey’s notoriously lax building code enforcement. Just saying.

**Job’s wealth and family is restored in a way that seems to suggest that spouses (or at least wives) and children are as fungible as camels and sheep. Somewhat cringeworthy in my book.

Those dirty Commie bastards. They finally did it. They showed their true colors by launching an outrageous spy operation, violating our sacred space. What was surprising is how old school the operation was. Or maybe not. After all, Chairman Mao did say in his Little Red Book, Chapter 8, Quotation 6, “There’s no school like old school” (admittedly a loose translation).

The first Chinese spy balloon was first cited floating over Montana. Who knows what information it had gathered by the time it was spotted. The pinkos probably know the status of the new strip mall going up in Bozeman at West Oak Street and N. 7^th Avenue, near the Walmart Supercenter. They certainly would have seen the new well being dug at the Tail Waggin’ Ranch, just north of Holland. I wouldn’t even put it past them to have jettisoned something to poison that well (bye, bye Toto).

The sad thing is that this is certainly just the tip of the iceberg, not that we’ll hear anything about it from the lamestream media. For example, you probably did not know that the Three Percenters militia (named for the portion of their brains they use) captured banditos crossing the Mexican border while carting ten crates of Junior Birdmen decoder rings. The border guard dismissed it as a harmless prank, but we know better.

And then there was the shipment of disappearing ink that showed up at the Leon Trotsky Elementary School in Pocahontas, Arkansas. The ink was cleverly used to mask the 4^th grade writing assignment on the efficacy of critical race theory, wiping out all trace of this attack on American goodness before it could be revealed. Luckily, Governor Huckabee is on the case. You go girl!!!

It’s not just technology that has infiltrated our borders. Because what would technology be without the humans to operate it? Here too we have inconvertible proof. Strange characters have been seen in multiple locales (Zolfo Springs, Florida and Sulphur, Oklahoma, just to name a few) employing highly sophisticated communication devices. Deny these pictures, if you can.

OK, maybe I am dismissing this all too lightly. As of now, four floating aircraft have been shot down. I like to think that there is a real reason for this, and we are not just overreacting because we don’t want to seem weak (as if deflating a balloon with an F-22 jet is somehow a show of strength). It is just hard to imagine what vital information can be gathered in this quaint fashion.

Even if I could get over the innate silliness of this whole affair, it would strike me that, once again, we are focusing on the wrong things. On February 6, the FBI arrested two white supremacists, one of whom had started the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, and accused them of plotting to attack multiple energy substations. According to the news reports, their goal was to inflict “maximum harm” on the power grid, so as to “completely destroy” Baltimore. That arrest barely caused a blip. Maybe if they had planned to attack with a catapult, we would have paid attention.  

Attacks on vulnerable power sources has apparently become a strategy adopted by radical groups in the United States. In December, shots fired at a substation caused 45,000 North Carolinians to lose power for several days. Power grids were also targeted in Oregon and Washington. These attacks go far beyond information gathering to very real attempts to inflict significant harm to people and property.

The threat of cyber-attacks is even more troubling. Unfortunately, the political wrangling over the 2016 election seems to have prevented any real response to the Russian cyber terrorists who hacked into Democratic National Committee systems, accessing e-mails and other private data. So, it wasn’t surprising that in 2020 the State Department, Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, and Pentagon were among the governmental entities breached. Per usual, we were so focused on laying, or avoiding, blame that there was little public furor, or clear organized effort to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Maybe it’s a function of the social media driven world we live in. These serious threats just don’t have visual allure of balloons. Try creating a funny meme out of an attack on a sub-station, or the theft of data. It can’t be done. Yet, the consequences of these attacks are potentially so much more profound. 

Of course, I am as guilty as anyone. You didn’t see a blog post on the substation arrests, or the cyber-attacks, did you? I waited until the balloon presented me with the chance to crack some goofy jokes and reference one of my all-time favorite TV shows, before I gave any real thought to the nature of the threats that exist.

You hope that those in the government agencies responsible for homeland security are looking at a broader picture. I like to think that there are directives flowing out of the oval office to employ any 16-year-old computer whiz kid able to hack Target to develop systems countering cyber-attacks. I like to think that there are plans being hurriedly drafted to protect our power supply. Sorry to say, I just don’t have the confidence that’s happening to the extent it should. It’s just not as cool as sending out jets to decimate the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. After all, that would be a great meme!!!

After the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl in 2009, sports pundits fell all over themselves to claim that this victory helped the New Orleans community heal from Hurricane Katrina, which occurred in August of 2005. The devastation from Katrina was such that even 2.5 years later many were dispossessed, neighborhoods were a shell of their pre-Katrina vibrancy and rebuilding had just started. Yet, all the city needed was a football win and it was back, baby.

Not surprisingly, politicos lined up to echo this scenario. They were happy to have residents, and the rest of the country, focus on the positive vibes of the Saints’ triumph rather than the slow response to the tragedy. Voices that pointed this out were drowned by the feel-good story of the Saints. People were once again dancing on Bourbon Street, and what else really mattered.

This was a quintessential example of sports claiming more than it can offer. The sports world is always trying to justify its existence beyond the playing fields by citing the business it generates, the good will it engenders and the role it plays as an integral part of a community. Something like the Saints win becomes a cure for all evil, and a tonic for civic pride.

It is no great revelation to say that pro sports is the epitome of hypocrisy. Listening to league execs, you would think that the fans are the most important item on their agenda. And yet, every decision is designed to enhance revenue, even if it is at the expense (literally) of the fans. The cost of tickets goes up. Legalized scalping (also known as Stub Hub) increases the expense even more. You can stay home and watch the game on TV, but television deals are cut to maximize commercials, making viewing interminable.

Players are no better. They love the fans when the cheers are pouring down. Who wouldn’t? But when bad play causes the fans turn on them, it’s another story. Time and again players react to fan displeasure through a universal one-finger symbol of disgust, if not worse. To many, the fans are there to idolize them, no matter what. All I can say is that those players better avoid Philly.

The odd thing is that despite all of that there is some truth to the hyperbole. There is an undeniable jolt of energy that passes through a community going through sports success. We are seeing it now here in Philly. It started with the Phillies improbable trip to the World Series and continued straight into Eagles run to the Super Bowl. It is invigorating to walk through the streets and see waves of Phillies red, or Eagles green.

The fan base exists in a world separate and apart from the execs and the players. They have seen ownership change, bonehead coaching, stars come and go, bad trades and bust draft picks. And still fans power on. Fans may say they have had enough, but they are one upset win or mega-signing from being back aboard the train they never really left.

Playoff runs are the payoff for that loyalty. It’s a validation for all of those wasted Sunday’s watching anther dispiriting loss to a hated rival. It makes worthwhile all those September nights watching your team blow a five-run lead and slide into oblivion. It rekindles the unbridled joy you felt as a kid watching your favorite player take the ball the length of the floor and dunk over some bum you can’t stand because of the uniform they wear. (You know who you are Larry Bird).

And yes, that joy is contagious. It pulls in people who could generally care less about sports. A green jersey, or a red hat (not MAGA) gets you a smile. Casual conversations with a stranger in line about the upcoming big game are the norm. The generally meaningless chatter with Lyft drivers become spirited debate about the keys to victory.

This era of good feelings doesn’t last long. Sports is too cyclical. Two years after winning a Super Bowl a team can struggle to go 8-9, and back into the playoffs because of others ineptitude, only to be blown out by a second-rate opponent (right Tom Brady?). But while it is going on it is really a breath of fresh air.

I must admit that I am not sure I would have it any other way. As fantastic as it is to win, I would not want to be robbed of the equally enjoyable ability to second-guess a Manager or boo an over-hyped athlete. And while the enthusiasm is fun, there is part of you that disdains all those jumping on the bandwagon. It’s all part of the long haul for the sports fan.

But for now, all that is put aside. The big game nears, and I am nervous. I want the reassurance of all those fair-weather fans. I want to bask in the green glow of the city’s buildings. I want to join into spontaneous outbursts of the Eagles fight song. I want to enjoy this while it lasts. So, I will bury the cynicism, ignore the naysayers, embrace the throngs and unite with my fellow Philadelphians in a loud “E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!!”           

David Crosby is dead.

I never had any great love for Crosby as a person. By his own admission, he was often arrogant, abrasive and self-indulgent. He admitted that his former bandmates not only didn’t want to work with him anymore, they did not want anything to do with him. And yet there was that voice. Whether it was with CS&N, the Byrds or in his solo works, Crosby sang with an ethereal beauty that was both unique and unmistakable. Plus, oddly for someone who alienated those he worked with, his voice blended perfectly with his compatriots, generating a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.

But David Crosby was something more than his talent. He was also one of the last throwbacks to a lost era, the Sixties. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Crosby never seemed to change. He continued to let his freak flag fly long after he wrote Almost Cut My Hair in 1970. He was still the long-haired hippie freak at 80 that he was at 25. Even in his last interviews he brought to mind those days of rebellion and protest.

The term hippies came into use in the mid-1960’s. By 1967 it was a ubiquitous moniker for all that was white counterculture. It conjured up a longhaired boy, with ratty mismatched clothes, a headband and flowing beads, or a Twiggy like girl in bellbottoms with flowers in her hair. There was a chilled vibe to the hippie clan, ostensibly induced by significant drug use. An entire vocabulary came with the territory, with such phrases as “Far Out” and “Groovy” becoming hippie cliches. Woodstock, the event and the song, captured it all.

Almost from the start hippies were the subject of parody and caricature. The epitome of that ridicule was rendered by Dick Shawn as Lorenzo Saint DuBois (LSD to his friends) in the 1967 movie “The Producers”. LSD’s addlebrained rendition of Love Power at his audition for “Springtime for Hitler” captured perfectly the inane utopianism that was associated with hippies. They were out of touch dreamers who worshiped drugs, sex and rock and roll. Riding the Marrakesh Express, they weren’t to be taken seriously.

For me, growing up in the late 1960’s, hippies were a go to Halloween costume (along with Zorro). Just cut a hole in a blanket to wear like a poncho, put on a goofy wig, grab some flowers and you had an unbeatable disguise. Give me some candy, and I’ll flash you the peace sign.

Hippies were a convenient target for the silent majority backlash of the Nixon years. Reactionaries like Vice President Spiro Agnew could conveniently slander the lazy, smelly, atheistic, over privileged leaches-on-society who wanted nothing more than to lay on the grass in the park, floating Eight Miles High. They were a visible affront to all the God-fearing, hard-working Americans who pursued the American dream of a steady 9-to-5 job, a ranch home with a two-car garage and 3.2 kids playing in the yard.

Despite all the ridicule and the rhetoric, for many that came of age in the mid-1970’s, especially those of us with older siblings, the 60’s, and the hippie culture loomed large. There was so much change in that decade that it seemed to dwarf our middling time. The civil rights movement came to fruition and there was mass mobilization against the Vietnam war. More than that, there was a feeling that you could board Wooden Ships, throw off the strictures of a conforming society and develop your own personal style. It was a hard legacy to live up to.

Though a Long Time Gone, the sense that you do not have to accept society as given remains the legacy of the Sixties. The ubiquitous generational clashes often centered around the virtues of a steady job and a home centered existence. The hippies (and I am using that term broadly) demanded more. They wanted meaning more than they wanted stability. A regular income was not enough. You see this today in the current generation’s demand for work/life balance, and willingness to leave a job if they don’t think it can give them that.

The preeminence of youth remains with us as well. Advertising is either geared towards youth, or towards making us feel as if products can keep us young. Even many of the drug commercials, hawking some remedy for an age-related illness, will use young actors to convey the message that this miracle drug will not only is a cure, but a fountain of youth (as they spout off the litany of horrendous possible side effects).

Fashions also seem to recycle hippie chic. A sense of Déjà Vu, if you will. I laugh when I see someone heading into a club wearing jeans artfully ripped at the knees. More importantly, our entire notion of what is appropriate to wear when has changed. My mother would never have even thought of going to a restaurant without a nice dress, and my father always was in a coat and tie. Now, you are liable to see anything from hoodies to sports jerseys at any restaurant, and no one bats an eye.    

The social engagement of the young is also a legacy of the sixties. Aging hippies used to complain that today’s whippersnappers did not have the sense of protest they used to have (OK Boomer). That did seem to be the case through the 80’s and 90’s, but there were not prominent issues to coalesce around. Once those issues emerged, it was clear that the Sixties generation had made sure to Teach Your Children well. Whether it be abortion rights or police brutality, today’s youth are ready and willing to take to the streets. More importantly, they think it is their prerogative and obligation to do so.

Agitation by groups for civil rights has become prolific. Most notably the women’s rights and gay rights movements drew inspiration and power from the Afro-American struggles and have significantly changed the way our society views these groups. As much as some people want to roll back what these groups have secured, they are fighting against a tide that may briefly ebb but will come back stronger than ever. Mainly because the majority of today’s young people already see these rights as a given.

David Crosby was somehow able to encapsulate the feeling of the Sixties in his songs and in his public persona. While his death robs us of one of the most visible icons of that era, the impact of the Sixties will continue indefinitely. My guess is that will be true until someone can answer a question posed by Elvis Costello. “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding”? 

I know that I should shrug it off as another meaningless study, but the INRIX 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 12, 2023, annoys me. Initially it was the article, which accepted this tally of congestion without any analysis of assumptions or methodology. Then I looked up the study on the INRIX website and found that they too gave short shrift to the means by which they reached their startling conclusions. Only by further research could I divine the approach taken, and that is when I really got miffed, realizing that this was another misleading use of statistics.

The Inquirer article told us that Philadelphia was “captive” to the fourth-worst traffic congestion among urban centers in the United States and sits eighth among the world’s cities (OMG, worse than Los Angeles!!!!). Citing the INRIX report, the Inquirer stated that a “typical Philadelphia driver” spent 114 hours stuck in traffic during 2022. That would mean that an average Philadelphia driver sat in their car waiting for traffic to clear for almost 5 days over the last year. Outrageous, if true.

These results “are based on millions of anonymized data points collected from smartphones, GPS systems in cars and trucks, and cities’ own reporting of crashes, incidents, and congestion. Over time, INRIX identified and mapped the most common trip corridors in each urban area…. Tracking travel times on these corridors gives a clear picture of travel times and congestion” according to INRIX. The study goes on to say that the cost of this congestion to travelers is almost $20 per hour for each car.

The questions about this study are legion, though the Inquirer asked none of them. The first is, what is a “typical Philadelphia driver”? Does this only refer to commuters during peak hours? Did they include my 10:30 pm trip to Trenton a to pick up my kids at the train station when there were no traffic delays? Is my wife a typical Philadelphia driver when she’s commuting to Germantown in the morning, but not when she stays late, and heads back into the city around 9:00?

And what is meant by congestion? Do they count every time a car stops for a red light? If you’re travelling the Schuylkill at 45 mph, which would delight any Philly driver, is that congested driving? Is that offset by the rare times when you can zip along at 70? And how do they account for the nut driving down the shoulder at 60 while the rest of us are stopped? 

An article on StreetsBlogUSA did answer some of these questions. Apparently, INRIX segmented their data by time of day and trip characteristics, so presumably we are talking about commuters. Congestion is whenever traffic falls below “free-flow” speeds, which INRIX says it developed using actual traffic data. That would mean a steady 45 on the Schuylkill is congestion. The cost was computed using a $12.81 wage rate, multiplied by 1.13 occupants per vehicle multiplied by 1.37 to reflect the aggravation of sitting in your car, as if aggravation is measurable. If these were the type of assumptions INRIX made, it’s no wonder they don’t highlight them.

More importantly, the Study says nothing about why the congestion occurs. All it does is create an insignificant ranking that generates inconsequential headlines. Actually, that’s probably for the best. The last thing we need are more major road renovations that will take years to complete at incredible cost overruns, slowing traffic even more. The flip side is that if we did that, we could move up to number 6 on the rankings, or even higher (Philly strong)!!!

I know that I have overacted to this drop in the bucket of life. Yet we are inundated with statistics that are similarly suspect, and it is so easy to just accept them as valid. Take something as simple as wind chill factor. Throughout the winter we hear weather prognosticators say, “The temperature is 30, but it’s going to feel like 10 because of the wind.” NO, IT’S NOT. Wind is not a constant. It gusts. It may feel like 10 or below when you’re walking through a center city wind tunnel, but it won’t feel that way if the gusts calm, and you’re walking in the sun.

The pandemic was prime time for statistics. We would routinely hear that COVID rates had doubled in an area over the last week but were never sure if that meant that they went from 2 to 4, or 1000 to 2000. It often depended on who was promulgating the statistics, and what they wanted to accomplish. Sifting through the mass of data is impossible, which means you have to rely on the good faith of those that do, and that can be problematic, to say the least.

The malleability of statistics is a big reason why so many discussions on crucial topics like climate change come to a scratching halt. Statistics about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or the rise in sea levels are thrown around like nerf balls, bouncing harmlessly off readers’ noggins. Whatever those statistics say, someone will conflate them into an immanent world collapse, or deflate them into a meaningless blip.

The problem is that it takes overstatements to get most people’s attention. A nuanced approach may work well on some late-night talk show (back when we had such shows), but if you want newspaper headlines, or shared Facebook posts, you better be controversial and extreme. In the end all this does is provide fodder for dissension, not consensus.

So, what can we do? One thing is to discern when statistics help explain something and when they don’t. Some trumped up congestion rate adds nothing to our understanding of traffic flow. We know that traffic can be bad during rush hour, and at any other time if you are unlucky enough to hit an accident or road construction. Putting a number on it is meaningless. Just like you know that you better bundle up if the wind is blowing in the middle of January without a wind chill factor.

Also, look at the source. When the CDC gives you trends during a pandemic, best to pay attention. When it’s a friend from high school passing along climate change information issued by the American Petroleum Institute, be skeptical. Sometimes that takes some searching, because the API is probably issuing those statistics through Americans for a Cleaner Tomorrow, but it’s worth the effort.

Finally, look at methodology. If those issuing the statistics make you look hard for their assumptions, like INRIX, they probably are not a good source. Those above board will proudly highlight how they reached their conclusions and provide guidance on what you can do in response.

I know I jumped on my soapbox here, but the flood of worthless stats we see is one of the those burrs in my side that I just can’t shake. It’s just so easy to be misled. I know that I have, many times. Oh, the glories of the modern world.