Thursday, February 24, 2011

#12: The Fair Tax Book by Neal Boortz

As one may expect, any book by an author with the surname "Boortz" is suspect. The last time I saw that, it was Mark Bortz, the Pro-Bowl offensive lineman, spelled with one "O". While that Bortz opened holes for Walter Payton (Sweetness, the Best Running Back of All Time. Period) This one shills for bull shit causes, such as a euphemism called the "Fair Tax".

Well, the Fair Tax is this: a straight 22% tax on everything you buy. This would replace the Income Tax, Social Security tax and Medicare Tax. Not only is this pie-in-the-sky BS, it is also dangerous. Think of the following:

1. The authors use "conservative" and "liberal" to describe Republicans and Democrats in the early 1900s. If you Freeze Dried Teddy Roosevelt (BULLY!) and dropped him (or 300 lb Taft, for that matter) in the present day, he would come up as more left than Nancy Pelosi, the great Right Wing Bogeywoman. Except that Taft and Roosevelt were not in bed with Big Business like Pelosi is. Most Liberals these days would shit the proverbial brick if confronted with a real Progressive. The authors here commit the sin of Presentism, forcing their narrow understandings on past political figures. What do you expect from a "talk show host"? What do you expect from "Limousine Liberals"?

2. From this, they claim that the poor would not be penalized under this arrangement. On page 113, they point out that there are three arenas from which opposition to their great idea will come:
a.a tax on consumption will lead to a black market
b.transition costs (never enumerated) would be unbearable
c.FairTax is "regressive" and will hurt the poor.

The authors mentally masturbate to answer the first two charges and sidestep the third. This is simply Steve Forbes' (once called a "toothy flake" by Pat Robertson) Flat Tax. Of COURSE the fucking tax is regressive. Using anecdotal evidence and selections from the Cato Institute, the authors sound like they know what they are talking about. Do you honestly think that corporations will voluntarily lower prices because their tax burdens are low?

3. They will not because of the bull shit argument that the authors make. Corporations are owned by shareholders, which the authors are nice enough to point out bear the tax burden for the rest of us. As Bender said, "B-O-O-H-O-O". Will corporations not try to increase profits to benefit the same shareholders? Of course they will. These guys are the usual right wing bull shit artists, where individuals are king and corporations are your friend. Tell that to people in the Gulf who are fighting with BP right now. These fuckers care little about individuals and care only about cash. I can appreciate that but I do not like it.

4. The authors claim "Only Individuals create wealth" (34). It is the height of naivete to think that businesses of any stripe will not take steps to maximize profits.According to the US Supreme Court, corporations are individuals. According to Ambrose Bierce, a corporation exists to "relieve the individual of responsibility". Look at the BP oil spill; who is to blame? Or the explosion of a pipeline in San Bruno, CA last year. The company demands that the taxpayers foot some of the bill. And we will, even though it is not our fault. The authors of this text believe that corporate interest and individuals will act for the good of the whole.

This is a fundamental misreading of Adam Smith. Human beings are selfish and we will act for our own benefit. On the whole, we could not give two rats asses about the state of the country. We will look for ourselves. Of course, the authors of this text tip their hand on page 1 by saying  that "of the 10 things that Marx (BOO!) wanted, #2 is the graduated income tax." Of course, #10 is free public education, the same system these jack asses have done their level best to destroy.

If you want to take the US back to the 1890s, this is the book for you. But, for your own good, read a few books about the 1890s and 1880s before you whiff this steamy pile of fresh shit. You will have done better than the authors, who have no sense of history or decency.


#11: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Mary Roach is, in a word, outstanding. I read Spook over a year ago and found that discussion of ghosts, reincarnation and what not as gut-bustingly funny but oddly touching. Packing For Mars is no different.

This book will not teach you a lot about the history of NASA, but that is not the point. We all see the liftoffs, astronauts on TV, bouncing off of walls and floating around. This book is about the grimy and sometimes shitty underbelly. Roach begins by addressing what at first seems a strange task employed by the Japanese Space Agency when testing astronaut candidates: origami. What the hell do cranes have to do with spaceflight? As Roach's chapter title (He's smart but his birds are sloppy) implies, spaceflight is more about routine than anything else. It seems much more about making second nature things that should never be done in the first place. Like being weightless, reacting to leaks, bumps, floating turds, turds in bags, your commander saying in a discussion "They told us that--here's another god damn turd." Thank you, Gene Cernan, for allowing me to know that astronauts orbiting the fucking moon say "turd". (273)

The chapters titled "Houston we have a fungus", "Discomfort Food" and "Eating your Pants" would stand on their own as top flight essays about space flight. Men not showering for two weeks just to see what would happen...or changing clothes for that matter. It seems the clothes are the real problem. Food in tubes...because a nice corned beef sandwich falls apart in space, covering the capsule with floating bits of bread, blobs of mustard and chunks of beef. We know this because John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich on board the Gemini 3 flight; commander Gus Grissom took it away before it could fall apart. NASA, in prepping for Mars, is pushing the envelope of waste management and using recycled urine. You can have some up the road at the Ames Research Center in the cafeteria.

Space food is in one way the star of the book. I had no idea that most of the dietitians who worked for NASA in the 1950s and 1960s were actually veterinarians. So, liquid diets, astronaut pellets and food-in-a-tube were the norm. Disgusting. One Cal-Berkeley professor surmised that NASA should employ fat astronauts who would fast and save on food (298). Sheesh. Roach also mentions a 42 day milshake diet tested in the 1960s. It led to "daily mass (sorry, Father) increasing." (299) That's just poopy. 

Roach points out that in all of the technological wonder, it is the human element of spaceflight that draws most people. With all of our needs for food, water, changes of clothes and everything else that makes human spaceflight so monumentally expensive when compared to unmanned vehicles, it is the abilities for humans to experience the awesomeness of space that makes us different and valuable. Roach reaches the end of her book by asking "Is Mars worth it?" Do yourself a favor and find out her answer.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

#10: Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders by Rob Neyer

I love the baseball. I agree with Robert Creamer in that "I don't think that there is anything magical in it, it's just fun."

Rob Neyer is an excellent baseball writer, and I own four of his books. This particular tome details what Neyer believes to be the greatest blunders in the greatest of sports. Segregation is NOT one of them, and I agree that it should not be. Between 1884 (Moses Fleetwood Walker and Welday Walker) and 1947 (Jackie Robinson) no African American player appeared in major league baseball. As Neyer says, "That's not a blunder. That's a crime."

A blunder is a cold night in October of 1986, when John McNamara does not replace Bill Buckner at first base with Dave Stapleton. A poor outing by Calvin Schiraldi leads to Buckner and his shitty ankles making an error at first. What makes Neyer great is that he rewinds the game to the 8th inning, where McNamara could have pinch hit for Buckner with two men on base. Mets manager Davey Johnson brings in Jesse Orosco (a poster man for having any child of yours who is left-handed learn how to pitch; the man pitched in the majors during the Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations) to pitch to the lefty Buckner. Can McNamara pinch hit for him? Does he have a right handed hitter on the bench? Only Don Baylor who hit 31 home runs that year. McNamara doesn't pull the trigger, which is arguably where the game was really lost.

Or the Cleveland Indians having a 10 cent beer night on June 4, 1974. That is, 10 cent beer night....with no limit on beer purchases! Jesus Christ! Fucking Billy Martin was the manager of the opposing team! And what happened? After two fights, fans charging the field and stealing the hat off the head of Ranger left fielder Jeff Burroughs, Martin leading his team on the field wielding bats like scab-busting Teamsters, the umps call the game a forfeit.

It should be noted that my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Pirates (consecutive losing seasons: 18 and counting) make only one appearance in the blunders book: trading some bozo named Hazen Cuyler (called Kiki by his friends in the Hall of Fame) for a couple of warm bodies and selling some other ass named Joe Cronin (Yep. He's in the Hall of Fame) in the space of 5 months. Two hall of fame players sold or traded in five months. What did they get?

1.Roughly $5000 for Cronin
2.Sparky Adams and Pete Scott for Cuyler.Cuyler out homered those two jack asses 17-5 in 1927.

Might I add that the Pirates are heading in the right direction. Yes, yes, I know that last season they lost more games than any Pirate club since 1952. But, like than (Dick Groat, Bob Friend, Elroy Face) there is young talent now (Pedro Alvarez, Andrew McCutcheon, Jose Tabata). The 2010 team was also the youngest since 1988. Who was on the 1988 club? Ohh, Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, Doug Drabek. You know, the guys that won three consecutive NL East titles from 1990-92?

Check out Neyer's book if you like the game.

#9: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda by Gretchen Peters

In 2000, Afghanistan provided 75% of the world supply of poppies for opium production. By the time of the September 11th attacks, one UN source said that the production was cut to roughly 17 hectares of cultivation in the entirety of the country.  In 2008, Hilmand province alone had 103,560 hectares of poppy under cultivation.This has since been used by lefties to denounce the military action in Afghanistan as proof that the US government is in bed with the same drug dealers that the Taliban forced out of the country.

Gretchen Peters takes this to task in a logical way; she is not the first author to do this, but the myth persists. The much quoted fatwah on cultivation was, according to Peters, a way to drive up the price of the crop to increase funding for the Taliban and al Qaeda. This system is a leftover from the 1980s, in which farmers would grow poppy, hire Mujaheddin to protect the fields, pay them with drug money, which would then be used to buy material for fighting the Soviets. According to Peters, this same system is in place now and is being run by the resurgent Taliban. In 2000, CIA director George Tennant pointed to the increase in heroin prices as an "increased revenue stream for al Qaeda". (Peters, 18) The Taliban was extremely hard on drug users before the fatwah on cultivation, but did nothing to discourage the growth of poppy. (Peters, 67-70)

But these are not the Taliban we know. Most of the leadership has been chased into the tribal areas of Pakistan; the farmers in SW Afghanistan point out to most Western journalists that the current Taliban "are not interested in religion...they are drug dealers." (Peters, 90-95). Of course, there is the obligatory bashing of the Pakistani government for supporting these jack-asses for most of the last 20 years. Peters also pulls no punches when talking about President Mohammad Karzai's brother; he emerges from the pages of this text with little credibility but quite a lot of drug money.

The key part of the book, and a call to action that is needed, is the conclusion that Peters draws. In her words, "the Bush administration rejected nation building. What is called for is nation building." (Peters, 218). Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the army maintained that fighting the drug aspects of the War on Terror in Afghanistan was "mission creep" to be avoided, or best handled by the DEA and Intelligence services. This was (and remains) misguided, and this text does a commendable job at shedding light on the problem. Peters also (rightly) advocates livelihood before eradication. It isn't going to do a lot of good to destroy poppy if the farmer then starves because he cannot afford food; better to gradually work him off the poppy, setting up markets and the ability to cultivate wheat. This can be done; look at Afghanistan in 2000. Those farmers grew other things.

I had never thought of Afghanistan as a "narco-state", and this shows my limited understanding of the topic. Peters draws heavy parallels between the current manifestation of the Taliban and the FARC in Colombia. Both are gangsterish, involved in drug trafficking to finance military actions and feared by the general populace. This book is excellent, and the author's opinions wise. When teamed with the excellent documentary "Restrepo", one can see a policy that has not worked side by side with a policy that may work.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

#8 A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision by Simon Ings

This is a book in two halves. The first half covers the evolution and development of the eye. The second covers how it is the eye functions and how animals see. I found the first half utterly fascinating from the beginning. The prologue covers the development in the womb of his unborn daughters eyes and vision, followed by a short description of how the eye ages. According to the author, when we hit 70 to 80 years of age we will have vision much like that of a 3-4 year old: blocky, fuzzy. That is if we do not fall victim to macular degeneration. The last 1/3 of the book did not hold my interest.

The book is full of fascinating tidbits. Here are the ones I thought most interesting
1. Rates of myopia (short-sightedness) are increasing in the developed world, because of the environment. Glasses have been in use since the 1280s. We use microscopes and telescopes. In 1996, 60% of people 23-34 in the US (this reporter just made the low end of that scale) were shortsighted.

2. Those "compound eyes" that bugs have got, what freak us out in bad B movies, are actually far inferior in design to ours. If humans had compound eyes, they would have to be roughly 3-4 feet tall. "If the eyes of a honeybee were much bigger, it would be too heavy to fly." So take that, you freakshows. However, insect eyes are optimized for flight.

3. The bloated sacks of 8-eyed ugly damnation that are spiders are greedy little beasts. Four of their eyes are high resolution orbs "that see as well as small rodents". This thought will keep me up for several weeks. The others "scan for movement on the sides." So this is why those little fuckers scuttle when you move. They are scared! Take that, you freakshows. Spiders can't fly (I hope they can't. Now that is going to keep me up for weeks) so they evolved non-compound eyes. Smart little buggers.

4. "Being human is a skill that is taught, and we do it first through our eyes." A baby spends more time looking at the eyes of their mother than any other part of the face. We learn to read other people's emotions (and manipulate them) through glances, looks and stares. Baboons do this as well; they are the masters of the old look-over-the-shoulder trick to make someone thing that something is behind them. Eyes are needed to express complex emotions.

5. We humans are pack animals, and this is why the eye is so expressive. "Primates watch each other all the time...and pick up visual cues from the dominant individuals." What makes a dominant individual? They are simply attention hogs. So, we primates have spent millions of years living in terror of what the dominant individuals are thinking. Terror keeps our eyes moving and our brains working.

What this means is that there is a bald, bespectacled professor living in 1770s Virginia who is quite happy in his schoolhouse where he can do his job and not be bothered. But, when the head of the school walks in, it is "yes sir" and "no sir" and "right away sir" or overdone laughter at bad jokes. Shit hasn't changed in 230 years. If Homo Habilis had glasses and was bald, he'd be a Homo Erectus. I was probably scared of my boss then, too. "How many rocks did we pick up today?... "We see you didn't make many flakes. Everything all right?"

Simon Ings is a technology writer, and admits he is not interested in "the consciousness of seeing". I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to know whether or not my cat actually "appreciates" looking out the window at small birds. What do cats think? I don't know. Neither does anybody else, which is good.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

#7: The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America by Sally Denton and Roger Morris

The rationale behind this text is expressed in full on page 12: "In an America so widely dominated by corporate and individual wealth, the Strip's once disreputable Mob ethic of exploitation and greed has become in large measure a national ethic."

This ethic is not limited to the Mob. Ask a slave on a plantation in 1840s Alabama if he or she is being exploited. Ask a breaker boy at a coal field in West Virginia in 1895 if he was being exploited. Exploitation has always been present in the U.S. The crucial difference is, as my late brother would say, "In Vegas, money spends no matter who brought it. If you can afford it, you can have it." In the 1950s and 1960s, this was not true in Vegas as black entertainers and gamblers were not welcome to stay at the mob-owned business like the Tropicana and the Frontier. In Glitter Gulch downtown, they would be thrown out by bouncers. I learned more about the mob roots of Vegas from this text than any other source, and found it utterly captivating. By and large, the following rules apply:
1. Money talks, Bullshit walks
2. It's not what you know, it's who you know
3. Those who don't know speak, those who know keep their mouths shut.

These three items seem to be the unifying theme of the text. Examine the Kennedys, for example. According to Denton and Morris, Old Man Kennedy had ties to Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel through the Cal-Neva resort in Tahoe. Joe K's company became the largest importer of Scotch whisky in the U.S. following prohibition through ties he made in the Mob. Joe K had money and lots of it. He also had sons (and lots of them as well). JFK moved into the driver's seat following the death of his older brother in Europe during World War II. The relationship between Frank Sinatra, JFK and Sam Giancana are well known. Giancana was a heavy investor in at least three Vegas casinos, gaming halls in Havana, and the head of the Chicago crime syndicate. JFK was also banging his mistress. A month before he was killed in Vegas, the authors of this text report that JFK was having a threesome in Vegas with prostitutes provided by known mobster Johnny Rosselli. After JFK was killed, Bobby never went after the syndicate. He in fact kept his mouth shut.

One cryptic comment RFK made in conjunction with his brother's murder was this: "I found out something I never knew...I found out my world was not the real world." (255). Of course it wasn't and isn't. Old Man Kennedy knew that. Nixon knew that. Reagan knew that. LBJ knew that. The Kennedy's did not know, and that is why they were gunned down. I think in many ways they wanted to change the relationship between organized crime, politics and corporate interest in a way that frosted the balls of all three groups. Tax crime, limit political donations and cut support for corporate interests. Our world is dominated by people we do not see. Don't worry, I am not dumb enough to think government bureaucrats run the world. That idea is for people who pay attention to Sarah Palin.

The people who run the world are the people behind the blithering Mama Grizzlies like Palin. How do people with the brain wattage of Palin, Romney, Biden, O'Connell, Kerry and the like continue to get elected? Money. As Pete Seeger once sang, "Are leaders are the finest men, and we elect them again and again". What is not so much frightening as "matter of fact" about this text is that the mob and the rich fuckers that own most of the resorts in Vegas literally own politicians. That ownership is not limited to Vegas; in this respect, the "Godfather Part II" is not far off. Politicians need the money to get elected; the people who have the money have needs. Promise to see to those needs, and you get the office.

I do not feel bad in saying this, and do not throw it out in a Marxist fashion. It is simply an extension of money talks and bullshit walks. Both parties are culpable, and it is simply mental masturbation to argue over which is more to blame. My point here is that the evidence collected and put forth in these pages solidified my already rock-solid cynicism of the electoral process and the media in general. Randy Newman wrote in the 1980s "It's Money that Matters." The trade off is power. "In any fair system, they would flourish and thrive." If money does not matter to you, there are plenty of trades for you (teacher, priest, social work, librarian, nurse) that are fulfilling if filled with a soft, warm center of bull shit.

But, we make no money. Hence, we have no entree into the political arena besides bullshit awards, feel good back slaps and "Ohhhh, teachers should make so much more than they do." If you want to know a little bit about what is important in America, read this book.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

#6: Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride by Michael Wallis

Whenever I see "Billy the Kid" I think of two things:

1. Twinkie the Kid
2. Emilio Estevez. 

The author's intent in this book is to separate the myth of The Kid from the reality, and Mr. Wallis succeeds admirably in dispelling many notions about Bonney and his time and the books makes an excellent read. I am not going to be one of those people that say "Wow! This read like a novel!" Soooooo, what novel? "The Pelican Brief" or "Moby Dick"? Wallis is an excellent writer and does not skimp on the research, which makes the book good history. What he brings forth is what is most missed about Billy The Kid, the fact in plain sight: he was A Kid. He sang, danced, liked the ladies, ladies liked him. He did not drink too much or too often and was much more at home with the Mexican population of the American Southwest than the Anglo population. 

But more about Twinkie the Kid. The golden cake filled with awesomeness acquired this mascot in 1947; while this cream-filled rustler is unique, Billy The Kid was not alone in being called "the Kid" or getting caught up in range wars. Wait a minute, isn't there a "Tobasco Kid?" Yep, Kid Elberfeld who played for the Tigers back in the 1900s-1910s was called that for a "fiery disposition", a euphemism for being willing to spike the crap out of people. Twinkie the Kid is uniformly non violent. He doesn't even have guns:

The Tobasco Kid liked to get into fights. Billy the Kid emerges in this text as someone deeply and negatively affected by the death of his mother when he was 14; his step father lit off for the silver mines, leaving Henry Antrium to throw rocks at chinese laborers and raise hell generally. There is an impending dread in this book, knowing what is going to happen to this somewhat likable killer. That dread is mirrored in the film Young Guns starring Emilio Estevez. The difference is that the film takes far too long to kill off the Regulators; you actually want Billy to get it in the end. Lousy Hollywood. 

Who do we have to thank for the myth of The Kid? Governor Lew Wallace, more famous for
1. Being a slightly incompetent Union general in the Civil War
2 Writing the book Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, starring Chuck Heston. 
Wallace put a price on Billy the Kid's head, who promptly jumped in a chariot and lit out for Arizona, where Heston lobbied for weaker gun laws. Also, Billy's stepfather was there. Of course, when Billy took off, Wallace shrugged his shoulders and disappeared to write his masterpiece. Heston spent most of his career, in his words, "not wearing trousers" while Billy was hunted down and killed by Pat Garrett, no relation to Lief Garrett who recorded "Made for Dancing". Billy loved to dance; in other words, the myth is human. Always was, always will be. Except for Twinkie the Kid, who is a cake with no expiration date.