‘04 Election: What do “flip flops” have to do with anything?

Throughout this campaign, Republicans have sought to label Kerry as a “wishy-washy flip-flopper,” and for the most part they have succeeded, even though many people who say Kerry flip-flops can’t name three issues where he’s done so. It’s one of those things that people hear so many times that they just start to take it as fact without actually knowing why, just like low-carb diets being healthy or urban legends.

Unfortunately, for Bush to criticize Kerry for changing his mind to suit the public mood is to point out the speck in his neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in his own. Even the most serious issues Kerry has been accused of changing his mind on pale in comparison to what Bush has done with the War on Iraq. Bush constantly changes his justification for the war whenever his previous reason was proved false. “We are in Iraq because Saddam is providing WMDs to al-Qaeda.” When that was proved false, the new rationale for the war was “Saddam has WMDs.” When the final reports concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever, the rationale is now “We’re spreading democracy in the Middle East and Saddam was an evil leader.” That’s flip-flopping, folks, and that’s far more serious than anything Kerry has been accused of.

Now this isn’t to say that a President Kerry wouldn’t do a similar thing; in fact, every politician successful enough to be a president is an expert at spinning or reinterpreting events to their own benefit. But you don’t see the Kerry team accusing Bush of being a weak leader because of it. Meanwhile, the Republicans are milking Kerry’s flip-flops for all they’re worth, which is an appalling hypocrisy given Bush’s guilt on a far grander scale. If Bush really had the moral character his handlers paint him to be, he would have acknowledged “The war in Iraq was based on intelligence that later turned out to be false, and we entered on mistaken premises.” (If he wanted to be really honest he could add something about strengthening American hegemony in the Middle East.) He could still add “But we’re there, and we need to see it out” and that would be a respectable position. Now I agree that that would be political suicide, but isn’t the Republican point supposed to be that a good leader puts telling the truth over political
gain, and one should not change positions based on public mood? In the end, we’ve got two parties guilty of the same sin, but for some reason Republicans feel justified in condemning Democrats of it.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is what Republicans mean by “wishy-washy.” It is important to keep in mind the differences in how Kerry and Bush make decisions. A recent USA Today op-ed describes the difference thusly: “Bush acts on instinct, core beliefs and the counsel of his most trusted advisers.” Kerry, on the other hand, is described as having a “more intellectual approach” with “depth of knowledge” and “caution.” When Kerry makes a decision, he studies it in great depth and looks at all sides and relevant issues… as a result, his final conclusions are more nuanced and subtle than Bush’s, because the president’s decision making style leads to very strong, one-sided positions. One must be careful not to mistake thinking out a position for being wishy-washy, even though it can be easy to confuse the two since thinking out a position may lead one to take some aspects of both sides into making a
final decision.

It’s also important to realize that a good leader can and should change his or her mind at certain times. Realizing that one is wrong and that a different course should be taken is entirely different than changing your mind from weak will. As a classic analogy, assume that a tour guide is driving a busload of tourists around Paris, and they’re trying to get to the Louvre. If the bus driver realizes that they got on the freeway by mistake and they’re now headed to the airport, the only reasonable decision is to turn around and figure out how to get to the Louvre. Sticking to your guns and being insistent that “this really is the right way to the Louvre” does nobody any good at all, even though it may give the illusion of strong leadership. Obviously this is a very
simple example with an obvious course of action, but the same principle applies anywhere: if you are going in the wrong direction, the worst thing you can do is to continue going that way. A strong leader is one who can acknowledge the mistake, and can come up with the right thing to do given that the mistake has already been made. It is the weak leader who is unable to deal with or acknowledge mistakes. And really, why is it that a person who sticks to a position regardless of contradicting information is called a strong leader if they’re president, but a stubborn, ignorant fool if it’s your boss? For example, some people criticize Kerry for fighting in Vietnam when it was popular, and protesting against it when it turned unpopular. Actually, since Kerry actually fought there, he had more of a right to protest the war than most of the other protestors. How is it morally weak to experience something first-hand, and realize that it was different than what you thought it to be? Coming to a new conclusion based on experience isn’t being indecisive. That’s called learning. That’s called maturity.

Now, let’s shift gears for a moment and pretend that Kerry really is an indecisive leader. Is this really such a bad thing? It’s clear that Bush chooses a direction for the nation to head in, and goes that way regardless of criticism or bumps along the way. An indecisive Kerry would mean that the president would not steer the nation in any direction for very long, and in the end not too much would happen. While many people think the first choice is automatically better, that just isn’t true. It’s far better to accomplish nothing than to do the wrong thing, or to head in the wrong direction. Going back to the bus driver analogy, pulling off the road and stopping is better than continuing to drive to the airport. Even though it doesn’t get much done, it’s better than continuing to drive on the freeway, where you only get farther and farther away from your destination. (Of course, stopping and figuring out the right way to go is the best
choice, but surely stopping and doing nothing isn’t any worse than continuing to drive out of the city without trying to pick a new course).

And besides, think about what the presidency was supposed to be from a historical
perspective. The Founding Fathers feared a strong federal government, so they created a system of divided power and checks and balances among the three branches of government.
Over time, and especially in the twentieth century, the executive branch has gathered more and more power to itself at the expense of the others. This often happens after crises. For instance, since 9/11, we see the executive branch trying to deprive citizens and detainees of rights that the judicial branch insists they have, and bypassing Congressional approval of government actions. The Bush administration in particular has been very bad about respecting the checks and balances needed to prevent any branch of government from being dominant. Would it really be that bad to return to a more balanced distribution of power among the government branches? An indecisive president might accomplish that unintentionally. Conservatives often complain about activist judges reinterpreting the constitution, but perhaps we should be more worried about an activist executive branch that seizes power from the others.

I guess the points I’m trying to make are that (a) many of Kerry’s so-called flip-flops are really the result of experience or thought out decisions, (b) it’s extremely hypocritical for Republicans to accuse Democrats of flip-flopping; at least you don’t see Kerry accusing Bush of something of which they’re both guilty, and (c) even if Kerry is as bad as Republicans say he is, that could usher in a more equal balance of power among government branches, and that even doing nothing can’t be as bad as continuing to go in the wrong direction, as Bush would do.

‘04 Election: Domestic and Foreign Policy

Today’s topic in the pre-election countdown concerns actual policy issues. This entry will probably be unique in that neither Kerry nor Bush is particularly impressive in this department, but I’ll go over some of the relevant issues nonetheless:

Foreign policy: No doubt the War on Terror and the war in Iraq (yes, those are two different things) are prominent in everyone’s mind this time of year. The trouble is that neither candidate has the right solution to the problem. The problem is that America can never win in the Middle East, for the simple reason that our country isn’t patient enough. In the Middle Eastern culture, once a grudge is made, it lasts for generations. It isn’t like America where after you argue with someone, you go have a beer and everything is OK. What this means is that we must tread extremely carefully, since anything we do will be remembered for decades or centuries to come. It doesn’t matter that America has an enormous military and economic advantage, for without the will to fight a war cannot be won, and our patience, will, and fervor doesn’t hold a
candle to that of radical Islam. So what is to be done in such a situation?

Violence and warfare is the worst thing that can be done. No war stops terror. Look at Israel — for more than fifty years they’ve responded to terrorism in kind, with military strikes and assassinations. But their problem with terrorism has only gotten worse. The problem is that fighting terrorism with as blunt an instrument as violence only makes the problem worse. The root cause of terrorism isn’t barbarism, it’s frustration borne of economic and political injustice. So not only does violence fail to address the underlying cause of terror, it actually creates more injustice, at least in the eyes of potential terror recruits. It’s been said that a Soviet general knew that their war in Afghanistan in the 80’s could not be won when he learned that a village
had been bombed by mistake, since now every resident of that village, and all of their friends and relatives, were now a bitter enemy of the Soviet Union regardless of their position before. Kill one terrorist, and now every one of his friends and family begins to hate America and becomes a very lucrative recruit for terrorist groups.

Negotiation doesn’t work well either, since it grants some legitimacy to terrorism as a tool of diplomacy. Blow up enough people, and we’ll now take you seriously enough to try to form a compromise or grant some concessions.

The only way to win the war on terror is to remove American influence from the Middle East. Much of the percieved injustice that leads to terrorism in the Middle East is due to American support of Israel. Israel receieves an obscene amount of aid from the United States, has a human rights record just as black as that of Iraq under Saddam, and is easily the most powerful nation in the region. So why does America continue to support it? It made sense during the Cold War, but now there’s no need to continue granting huge amounts of aid to one of the most well-off and most powerful countries in the region. Because America does not think in the long term, no good can come from involvement in the Middle East. In fact, the only reason America has to be in the Middle East is control of oil. As a result, this is my prescription for winning the war on terror: decrease American reliance on oil through conservation and development of alternative fuels. This is the only way we can hope to withdraw completely from Middle Eastern politics, which is what we need to do to stop terrorism — any other
action will anger at least some people, who will hold a grudge for generations to come. That’s not what we need, especially in a country where the policy will probably change every four to eight years with a new president, who will change a policy and make permanent enemies of another group of people.

Unfortunately, neither candidate can espouse this view, because it’s not what Americans want to hear. We don’t want to hear that we don’t have the stamina to wear down our enemies in the Middle East. We don’t want to hear that the only real solution involves living a less decadent lifestyle and sacrificing cheap energy for a longer-lasting source that secures American energy independence and is better for the environment to boot. We want to hear that waving flags and slapping “United We Stand” stickers on our H2 Hummers is enough to win the war on terror. We want to hear that we can continue to enjoy cheap oil into the indefinite future, that inexpensive fuel is a right that can be secured by a little hegemony from time to time. Were it only so easy.

Domestic policy: This part of the discussion will be focused specifically on legislating Christian morality into law (abortion, gay marriage, censorship, etc.) because in recent years the Culture Wars of the 1990’s have been coming to a head, and this lies at the root of the election. Long story short, it is wrong to try to wed Christian principles with the law.

American law is not Christian law, nor should it be. The belief that American law is based on Christian morals is a common, but fallacious notion. The Founding Fathers were Deists who believed in a god who created the world, and then removed Himself from it completely, not the Christian God who has acted and continues to act in it, through the saving work of Christ, through answered prayer, through the continuin work of the Holy Spirit. The courts have ruled that the word “God” in “In God We Trust” has no religious or theological value. “Under God” was never part of the original Pledge of Allegiance, but was added in the 1950’s under radical McCarthyism. What American law has in common with Old Testament (OT) law is also common to most other sources of morality from the ancient world. Many OT laws do not exist in American laws — in America, it is legal to obtain a divorce and there is no law that one must honor God above all else. Many American laws do not exist in the OT — there are no trials by jury in the Old Testament. Although Christians have been very present throughout American history, and
have contributed much to American culture, it is completely wrong to say that American
law has ever been based on Christianity in particular. The First Amendment is the nail in the coffin that should put to rest any doubts of what the Founding Fathers’ intent was.

Religious law should be separate from secular law, and indeed it is. For example, the
Christian view of marriage is different from the legal view. Christians hold marriage to a higher standard than what the law implies, since in many places there are no laws against adultery, and divorce is easily obtained. In debates on gay marriage, this distinction between religious and legal marriage is often ignored. Changing the legal definition of marriage has no bearing whatsoever on the Christian definition of it. Now, I’m not sure if I’m ready to call homosexual unions “marriage” or not, but the concept of civil unions or another legal construct that allows for nontraditional relationships is perfectly fine by me, and in no way threatens “the institution of marriage.” (Never mind that if Christians were truly concerned about the sanctity of marriage and preserving it as a holy institution, the church needs to clean its own house first.
Shamefully, the divorce rate among Christians is just as high as it is among non-Christians. Isn’t this a much bigger threat to the institution of marriage than allowing civil unions?)

Another key thing to remember is that putting uniquely Christian values into law does nothing to solve moral decay or other such problems. The real problem isn’t the sins people commit, it’s the sinful nature that leads them to do so. The law provides punishment for the former, but only God can deal with the latter. Adding Christian principles to law doesn’t bring a nation closer to God, because our standing before God isn’t based on our works, but on the attitude of our heart. The law can’t do that. Christians that fall into this trap need to re-read Paul’s letter to the Romans, specifically chapter seven, where Paul laments that even the perfect law of God can be
twisted by the sinful nature, so that “the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.” How much more is the imperfect law of man vulnerable to such distortion! The purpose of Old Testament law wasn’t to save the people of Israel, but to reveal their need of God. The law cannot solve any underlying moral deficiencies that a person or nation has. Patching holes in the morality of a culture is the role of the church, not the state.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that legislating Christian morality is both unconstitutional and counterproductive. The Republican party is guilty of this far more than the Democrats, so chalk this up as one more reason to vote Democrat.

The economy: This is a tough one, because both Bush and Kerry are wrong. While
Republicans often label Democrats as “tax-and-spend” liberals out to rob hardworking Americans of their income to waste in inefficient bureaucracy, the Bush administration has a “reduce-taxes-but-spend-more” a policy which returns money to workers but also spends more money on misguided neo-conservative crusades in the Middle East. Regardless of what you think about government spending, simultaneous tax cuts and increased spending cannot be sustained forever. Keynesian economics allows for this during a recession to stimulate the economy, but Bush promising to make his tax cuts permanent, and engaging in long-term spending projects like the war on terrorism, falls outside the domain of Keynesian stimulation, and is more in the realm of foolish, pie-in-the-sky idealism. Bush thinks you can have your cake and eat it too, and as a result the hard work of Clinton’s administration and the Congress that reversed the budget deficits has been for naught. Bush has turned the first surplus in decades into its largest deficit ever.

But Kerry’s solution isn’t much better, since it is grounded in protectionism and opposition to globalization, which is the best solution not only for the American economy, but for the world’s as well. (Bush claims not to be a protectionist, but a quick look at his statements during some steel tarriff issues last year shows the truth. So really neither candidate is ideal here.) If American jobs are being outsourced, it’s because American workers are demanding too much compared to their counterparts in developing nations. And shifting the blame for the recession onto foreign nations is a popular, but entirely wrong, excuse — the fact is that Americans were dumb enough to keep blowing air into the tech bubble long after anyone with a hint of sense knew it was
going to pop.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough for tonight. Basically my point is that I’m not too impressed with the platforms of either candidate. My vote for Kerry is not so much for his platform as for his way of thinking (see previous political blog entries). I think I’m going to combine tomorrow’s essay with Sunday’s since they really go hand in hand — I’ll be talking about Kerry’s “flip-flops” and the role of the executive branch. I’ll post them both on Sunday.

‘04 Election: Why, as a Christian, I cannot vote for Bush

With five days left until the election, I’ll post a political blog entry each day. Taken together, they should summarize why I’m voting for Kerry, or perhaps better put, why I’m not voting for Bush. Today’s entry focuses on the two taboo subjects in polite company: religion and politics. Let me preface this by saying that this entry is coming from my perspective as a Christian, so
don’t be thrown for a loop by references to Scripture or God.

It probably isn’t going too far to say that George W. Bush is one of the most overtly religious American presidents in recent history. He never hesitates to remind the public that he is a practicing, born-again evangelical Methodist. And since I’m a Christian myself, a Christian with fairly orthodox beliefs no less, that should make Bush a shoe-in for my vote, right?

Wrong. The first, and deepest problem is that the Republican party has a number of beliefs that are at odds with Biblical teaching, regardless of what many conservatives would have you think. The conservative mindset is focused on the individual — individual rights, individual responsibilities, individual consequences. I’ve heard several talk about people reaping what they sow, that the wealthy deserve their riches and that the poor deserve their plight. Lassiez-faire capitalism, which relies on human greed, is never questioned. This is in stark contrast to the Scriptures, which teach that people should live lives of service and self-sacrifice. In the Bible, it is the wealthy who are condemned, and the poor who are declared blessed. The heart of Biblical
instruction is a focus on a collective good, not individual good. One can find dozens of teachings on serving others, both spiritually and physically; one would be hard pressed to find passages that praise individual or personal gain in a material sense, and in fact there are many passages that directly oppose that. (The Prayer of Jabez doesn’t count. It’s a faddish, theologically unsound conceit based on one verse stripped away from the context of the rest of Scripture.) As far as economic systems go, the apostolic community was closer to communist than anything else (read the book of Acts). And although communism cannot work apart from the grace of the Holy Spirit because it relies on human perfection, capitalism is no better from a spiritual perspective because its basis is the exploitation and idolization of human imperfection, where the one who wins is the one who is greediest and most selfish. Although conservative teaching claims to be in line with Christian doctrine on specific issues of abortion or gay marriage (never mind that the Christian church is far from united on these issues), when it comes to the broader, overarching themes that run all through Scripture, the Republican party falls far short in many places.

More specific to Bush, in a number of ways his life does not square up to the Christian life he professes. Aggressive, militaristic foreign policy is the first example that comes to mind. Although the Bible does not totally condemn the use of force, the New Testament is extroardinarily clear that it should only be used as a last resort. Read Romans 12:14-21, or the Sermon on the Mount, and tell me how that is reconciled with neo-conservative foreign policy. “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Yes, there is an “as far as it depends on you” that allows for use of force when absolutely necessary. But invading Iraq on shady and constantly shifting reasons that have all been proven wrong, ignoring world opinion, and surrounding onesself with hawkish warmongers
(Cheney and Rumsfeld in particular) really doesn’t say “as far as it depends on you.”

It’s also important that the leaders of the Methodist church, which Bush is a member
of, have repeatedly condemned his warlike actions for the reasons stated above. Now the Methodist church is not the Catholic church, so members have no obligation to obey its leaders. But the Bible is clear that one very important role of the church is to keep its members from going astray, to warn its members if their conduct is straying from sound teaching. The advice of the church, and its spiritual leaders, is not to be taken lightly… yet Bush repeatedly ignores their position.

Of course, the message in the above two paragraphs should not be taken too far, since no person can live a perfect life, and the message underlying all of Christian teaching is that salvation only comes through acknowledging our inability to live a life without sin. One cannot fault Bush for failing to live up to the Christian standard, since nobody else could maintain a perfect Christian life either. But at the same time, Bush is no stranger to the Biblical opposition to carefree warfare or his church’s position. Over the last three years countless Christians have written letters to him expressing their belief that his foreign policy runs afoul of Scripture. The Methodist church has passed many resolutions to the same effect. This isn’t a situation of a man struggling with one-time temptation and failing. This is a situation of a man who consistently
and repeatedly is faced with the truth of Scripture and the error of his policies, and who consistently and repeatedly turns away from truth to the altars of politics, power, and imperialism.

What disturbs me more is how Bush continues to market himself as the morally superior
candidate. The more mature a Christian is, the more he or she realizes how unworthy he
or she is to receive God’s favor. A mature Christian should never take pride in one’s moral strength, since without the grace of God all fall short of the real standard. Christians are to compare their lives with the real standard — that of God as shown in Jesus — not with each other’s, for the former leads to piety, and the latter to wrongful pride. For Bush to portray himself as the candidate with stronger morals is to fall victim to pride, the sin at the root of all others. Please, don’t give me any pandering nonsense about Bush never specifically saying he is the candidate with the best character. He knows how his campaign is marketing him, and he has done nothing to stop it.

Now, this isn’t to say that Kerry is necessarily better or worse in this regard, for he keeps his religious beliefs far quieter than Bush does. This entry is not so much a statement in support of Kerry as a deconstruction of a commonly held belief about Bush. Considering the above, Bush’s claims of piety seem more to be for politics than as a reflection of Christian morality, especially since that same morality does not accept a person claiming to be more righteous than another. I’ll take a man who quietly lives out his faith any day over another who exploits his for political gain.

Next time I’ll be briefly discussing major issues in the election, including foreign and domestic policy. I’ll also cover another area in religion and politics — the issue of legislating Christian values — which fits better under that category.

Fools! You have no perception…

I’m back from Denver now. For those interested in my thoughts on the weekend, check my travelogue (no pictures), which is more my reflections on the weekend than a discussion of the academic knowledge I picked up.

I also saw Jesus Christ Superstar tonight at the performing arts center on campus. Pretty well done, although the microphones made the diction a little spotty and the Pharisees looked rather Satanic. Nevertheless the sets were done quite well and I found it hard not to sing along to parts of it.

One note regarding the performance: If you are a parent and your kids are not old enough to sit still and be quiet throughout a performance, DON’T BRING THEM. Really, it’s incredibly annoying to have little kids talking and making a lot of noise eating their snacks all the time. Bringing noisy kids to a performance is worse than forgetting to turn your cell phone off, because someone can just be absentminded and forget to turn their phone off. You don’t bring kids to a performance because you forgot not to, that’s a fully intentional decision. It’s incredibly rude. Don’t do it.

‘04 Election: Instinct and Ignorance

Only planned on one update today, but I ran across an article that I liked so much that I’ll make some brief comments on it now. It’s from the New York Times (linked to below, although registration is required. Although I highly recommend registering for the NY Times because it’s free, I’ve never receieved any spam from them, and it’s such a good paper that it’s well worth it,
for those of you who don’t like registering for websites, I’ve copied the article text here.)

The main point of it is to criticize Bush’s instinctive (or even ignorant, as the article might have you believe) decision-making process and his decision to surround himself only with people who agree with him. If you are a faithful reader you know that this is the reason why I really don’t want four more years of Bush. Anyway, the article traces this tendency back to his fundamentalist roots and the placing of faith over reason that stems from that. As a Christian, I’ve got a good deal to say on that issue, but my rant on that will have to wait since I’m getting tired tonight.

Source: New York Times

Baseball sucks

Sorry for not updating for a while. Eventually I may get around to posting commentary on the rest of the debates, but the vice-presidential debate didn’t spark any insightful commentary from me, and I still haven’t read the transcripts from the second and third presidential debates, although I may not get around to it since they really aren’t going to change who I’m voting for. Anyway, today’s entry has nothing to do with politics, and is just another rant based on current events. Maybe I should change the title of this blog.

Tonight we stand in the middle of another hype-filled, “exciting” playoff season in baseball as both the ALCS and NCLS are going to a seventh game, and the Red Sox are about to pull off (update: have pulled off) a historic upset against the Yankees. And in the midst of all this hoopla, I’m ready to throw my hands up in frustration and announce that there is no reason for baseball to be as popular is it is. Baseball is a horrible sport.

So, from my unashamedly biased position, I’ll set up some straw men and knock them right down:

“Baseball is exciting.” No, it’s not. It’s incredibly slow.

“Well sure, it is boring to watch, but it’s exciting to play.” No, it’s not. Unless you’re pitching, you spend almost the entire game just waiting for something to happen. If your team is up to bat, first you wait until it’s your turn, then you wait until you think you’re getting a good pitch, and if you’re lucky you make a hit and get on base (and if you aren’t lucky, you go back and wait some more). Once you’re on base, you wait until someone else gets a hit and hopefully you can make it to another base and wait some more. If you’re lucky you score a run, in which case, you have to wait some more. If you aren’t lucky, you’re out, and you have to wait some more. After three outs, you switch sides, and now you’re on base or in the outfield, waiting for the ball to come to you. If it never comes to you, you guessed it, you just wait around until you switch sides and you’re up to bat again. Pitchers are the only players who spend most of their playing time do anything besides waiting, and in their case they just stand around a throw a ball over and over and over again. Sorry, I’ll take a sport like tennis over that any day, where you actually spend most of your playing time playing the game.

“You’re missing the point. Baseball is a game of strategy. It’s like chess.” Yes, I have heard that exact comment before. And no, baseball is not like chess. Let’s see where strategy could possibly come into the picture, i.e. the decisions the players have to make: the biggest is at the moment of the pitch — the pitcher has to decide what to throw, and the batter has to predict what will be thrown, and whether or not to swing. But you see, there’s no real basis to make a decision on except for intuition, hunches, and gut feelings, and there’s a fairly limited set of possibilities. I’m sorry, but this is rock-paper-scissors, not chess. In chess there is no luck, because you have full information about every possible move, and any mistake you make is completely your fault. In baseball, or rock-paper-scissors, much of the time you simply make a bad guess about what your opponent is going to do, and there was nothing you could do to improve it. That’s not strategy.

Moving on in the game, after a player makes a hit, the outfielders, basemen, etc. have to decide how to play the ball correctly. But this isn’t “real” strategy, either, since if you’re paying attention it isn’t too hard to say where the ball should be thrown. There’s only so many different possibilities here, and in most situation it’s obvious what the correct play is. Again, this isn’t chess. This is tic-tac-toe. If a player makes it on base, the decision of whether or not to try to steal a base is another rock-paper-scissors decision, not a strategic one. If you want to compare the decisions made in baseball to other games, then it’s much more like tic-tac-toe and rock-paper-scissors than it is to a game of real strategy, like chess.

If you want a game that’s more like chess, then watch football. Even though there’s still a heavy rochambeau aspect to it, there are way more possible outcomes from play selection in football than from anything in baseball.

“But Steve, baseball is an American tradition!” Well, that doesn’t make it good. Slavery used to be an American tradition too. Why not have traditions that actually make sense? If baseball is the best that the cultural heritage of America has to offer, I’m heading for England.

Seriously, there is nothing about baseball that is better than any other sport, unless you count the ability to get up and clean your house or cook dinner while watching a game and not miss anything exciting, because there isn’t anything exciting to miss. If you like shows of pure strength or endurance, watch track and field, or distance running, or swimming. If you like shows of athletic talent mixed with strength and endurance, watch soccer, or basketball, or tennis, or another game that requires finely honed skills in combination with incredible endurance. If you like the strategy and psychological aspects of making decisions, football has far more complicated decisions that need to be made regarding play selection than baseball can ever offer. If you like games where the players actually spend most of their time playing instead of waiting for something to happen, then you should watch any sport except for baseball. Baseball is like taking the worst of all sports and mixing them together.

The only good thing about the World Series is that it means no more major league baseball until the spring.

Auf nach Denver

The meal I cooked on Sunday turned out pretty well. I should have trusted my instincts more on the risotto (after taste-testing halfway through I thought it needed more seasoning so I added some more chicken bouillon to the mix, but it ended up being too salty in the end). Also, Tuesday was my birthday. Not much unusual happened (our performance at trivia was remarkably unimpressive), although it was really nice to get a call from Brian and chat with him, and Lauren and Shelley from church took me to lunch and entertained me with some great stories, including a tale of being put on probation at Six Flags that really is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

As far as new things this week, I’ll be pretty busy since I’ll be gone in Denver most of next week for the INFORMS conference. So I have to do a lot of homework before I leave. Oh well, I’m looking forward to the conference since it’s my first funded travel experience as a grad student, plus all of the presentations sound very interesting.

Methodist club!

This morning I went shopping for the dinner I’ll be cooking for Methodist Club tomorrow night, and I had forgotten how fun it is to shop for 30-35 people. I’m serious, I really think it is fun to push a shopping cart around with huge quantities of a few items of food. To give you an idea, here’s a picture of my fridge after shopping:

On the bottom shelf is sixteen pounds of chicken. In the shelves above that you should see a very large amount of spinach. Mixed in with all that is a very large amount of strawberries. It’s also noteworthy that I bought out H.E.B. of all of their store-brand pre-washed spinach and arborio rice. Hopefully they restocked before anyone came by wanting either of those. Oh well.

I also saw Team America: World Police today. Hilarious movie. If you think South Park is at all funny, you’ll enjoy it. Nick had some people over to his house in the evening for poker, which was all right, even though I don’t care for Texas Hold ‘em that much (I like 7-card stud way better, but that’s just me).

2 Quantum 2 Cheesy

What is it with QUANTUM as a marketing buzz-word? Following on the footsteps of the QUANTUM MEMORY POWER system (see Monday’s entry), a few days ago I saw a link to the following website: The Quantum Sleeper. Yes, that’s right, the Quantum Sleeper. The ingenuity and weirdness of people never ceases to amaze me.

I also had to give my first “real” presentation as a grad student today, for the toll roads project. It wasn’t too high-pressure (a fairly informal meeting with some other grad students and one of the consultants working at CTR) but I was still kinda nervous, especially since Satish (the Ph.D. student who actually knows what’s going on since he’s been around a few years) was at a conference in Arizona for most of this week and I had to run the program and make the presentation myself. Good experience, I suppose, since it forced me to learn how to do things instead of relying on him. Anyway, the presentation went so-so, it wasn’t the best presentation I’ve given but I think it was OK.

Hip hip hooray, it’s Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day, in case you didn’t know. I didn’t know until I walked to the post office and found it was closed, which is kind of annoying since I need to pick up a package. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I blogged about having a tough time keeping my schedule straight. Well, I may have found the solution, for earlier today, in the ECJ stairwell I found a flier advertising the… wait for it… QUANTUM MEMORY POWER system. I kid you not. I laughed so much that I had to take the flier with me so I could laugh at it later. The guy who’s promoting this thing apparently has the amazing ability to memorize “2079 binary numbers in 30 minutes.” There’s a picture of a flustered-looking woman trying to study at the top. And QUANTUM MEMORY POWER. The tagline is “Stop wasting your time in college … different colored highlighters, rewriting notes and study groups aren’t the answer. The answer is developing your Quantum Memory Power.” Wow, I can’t wait to memorize 2079 binary numbers in 30 minutes. Seriously, where do people get this stuff from? I couldn’t make it up if I tried.

By the way, if you are like me and think informercials are hilarious, check out Ridiculous Infomercial Reviews. It’s really funny.