Looking ahead to the past

Who's the boss ???

2012-01-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

It’s too bad we cannot control the technology that is supposed to be “improving” our lives. Instead, we are letting it control us, much to our detriment.

One of the most-puzzling, at least initially, changes over the last few years has been the abandonment by drivers of using their turn signals to let other drivers know what to expect. This trend started becoming apparent several years ago and seems to have an exponential growth to it.

Twice within the last few weeks I have personally seen near-accidents that were caused by a turn signal not being used.

At first, the reason did not seem apparent to me, but now I think I know. Most people are using their cell phones while driving. A simple glance around confirms this. In fact, talking or texting while driving has become more important than driving itself. So if the choice becomes one between attending to your phone or turning on your signal indicator, guess which one gets ignored?

At least, that is all that I can figure to explain it.

There is much good that comes from today’s ubiquity of cell phones. They obviously reduce the distance that once left people stranded, often in isolation, with no means to call for help. They also, however, have prompted a lot of unnecessary conversation that, over time and repetition, has made us act a bit less intelligent.

The trueness of this was shown to me while I was in line at a sandwich shop. The person in front of me was on the phone. From what could be heard, the conversation was not of utmost importance.

“Nothing. Just getting a sandwich,” was the first clue. What was important was that the person behind the counter was forced to continually interrupt the “conversation” to ask if certain items were wanted on the sandwich. It continued for each item as the person returned to his phone call following each answer he gave.

Instead of picking up on the fact that he needed to stay off the phone for a moment, at least until his order was completed, he continued to prioritize his attention to the phone. “Whatever.” “I don’t know.” “Whatever you want to do.” Those were the comments he was uttering.

It went on through his entire stroll down the counter, and it became quit annoying. Enough that the personal thoughts in my mind implored the moron to get off the phone and order his sandwich. Once he had done that, he could talk senselessly on the phone all he wanted.

Common sense and consideration towards others has become the biggest casualty of the ubiquitous use of cell phones. Dating back to the first “Walkman” cassette player, and continuing since, we have come to think of ourselves as egocentric entities around which the entire world operates, rather than the other way around.

As such, we worry more about our own priorities, and less about being empathetic towards others. It is a shame that we have allowed something than can help us in so many ways to erode our personal characters.

Newt Lightyear

2012-01-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich has always displayed, throughout his political career, a fascination with space that lingers on obsession. As far as that goes, he is allowed. After all, each of us has something that lives inside us, and for Newt, it happens to be a fascination with space and its exploration.

There comes a time, however, when that obsession has to be placed aside in deference to reality. Interestingly, the two factors have combined to raise serious questions about Newt, his judgment, and his ability to understand the “common” American.

Newt came to Florida this week as the possible front-runner in his battle with Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. His desire to secure the nod has led to behavior that is in keeping with that desire, while at the same time, possibly destroying it.

Gingrich was at Brevard Community College as part of a roundtable discussion concerning the space program. The audience, obviously, contained many members whose economic well-being has declined in accordance with dwindling funding of the space program.

In an attempt to win their votes – in other words, pander to them – Newt made promises to them, without realizing that, to the rest of America, he was sticking his foot into his mouth. Perhaps he has become too accustomed to the latter to notice.

Newt literally promised the moon. He wants to establish a colony there, with a tourism trade to follow, buttressed by more than five daily launches from earth. To the moon and beyond, promises Newt, who also raised the hope of using the moon base as a launch pad to Mars.

It will all happen within the scope of a Gingrich presidency, meaning 2020 would be the outside date for achievement.

Gingrich is clearly trying to accomplish here what John Kennedy promised in his 1961 pledge to achieve a moon landing by the end of that decade. The only problem, which Gingrich seems to be missing, is that the world is in a totally different place today. Physically, it may be the same distance from the moon, but in all other aspects, it is light-years away.

The America of 1961 differs greatly from the America of today. At that time, our nation was in the throes of its greatest days ever, and expansion was presumed in all directions, including towards the moon.

Today, contraction is more the rule than expansion, with average Americans worrying more about a trip to the grocery store or gasoline station than one to the moon or beyond.

All of which brings into question concerns over Gingrich’s ability to understand things as they are in everyday life rather than the privileged world in which he lives. The charm from a doddering old man fantasizing about space travel is trumped by people worrying about how to pay their bills.

Gingrich came into Florida riding the crest of a wave that appealed to worried voters. All he needed was to not say something stupid to undermine it. That was apparently too much to be asked.

Time with friends . . . really ???

2012-01-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

It was enough to make you wonder what “The Last Supper” would have looked like had it depicted a scene from modern times. Perhaps all the disciples would have been looking at their cell phones, reading a text message portending an act of betrayal being committed by one of them.

What was actually occurring was the celebration of a friend’s birthday. More than 30 people were attending the event at a local restaurant.

It was reminiscent of several such events from the past, dating back to the time of my childhood. Most memorable from those was the sense of camaraderie and cheer that was truly shared by everyone. That is why I was not ready upon my arrival for what was occurring.

Upon entering the room for the party, there were a number of people seated at several tables. But none of them were talking to each other. Instead, they all had their heads down, staring at their cell phones. Some of them were obviously engaged in texting because their fingers were moving frantically.

The few persons not involved in texting, sending or receiving, were sitting there in abject silence.

Nobody was conversing.

The first thought that came to mind was wondering whether any of them were texting one another. The idea seems absurd at first, but not when compared to something I saw in the workplace about ten years ago. A front-line supervisor attempted to verbally tell his manager something. The manager, however, insisted it be relayed through an email.

The supervisor was older in age, and not accustomed to using email. That is why, two hours after the initial conversation, he was still sitting at his desk, attempting to complete typing of the message so it could be sent. The manager was sitting at his desk – several feet away – the entire time this was happening. Whatever it was that he needed to be told, he hadn’t been yet.

So it did not seem so absurd to think the party attendees could be texting each other, as improbable as it was. They certainly were not speaking to one another, and that seemed rather sad. After all, the whole idea of a party or celebration is to bring people together, with the hope that their interactions with one another bring a shared happiness.

Such joy seemed to be missing from this event. Not because it was not necessarily being felt by each person, but because it was not being shared. The entire evening maintained the same pattern. There was some small talk, but attention to each other was largely subdued. The attention to the cell phones was not.

It is an absurd irony that texting makes it easier to communicate while simultaneously making it more difficult.

On the way home that evening, I could not help but imagine all the Facebook and Twitter posts that would likely follow. Undoubtedly, most would be to the effect of, “I had a great time tonight. Spent it with more than 30 friends.”

Look THAT up on your Internet

2012-01-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

My mother-in-law, now deceased, had a line that used to give my wife and me an occasional chuckle. Whenever something spiked her interest, or she was trying to remember something, she would say, “Look it up on your Internet.”

That line always brought smiles. It seemed, for lack of a better term, “cute,” in that my mother-in-law did not really grasp what the Internet was all about, but she knew that was some benefit in using it. We never determined if she really thought it to be “our” Internet, or if that was just a figure of speech she employed, but it tickled us nonetheless.

Remembering her words now, I think back several decades, when my father expressed puzzlement as to who a certain entertainment figure was. I cannot recall the figure specifically, remembering only that when my father said he had never heard of them, I could not believe it.

“How could you not know who that is?” I remember saying to myself. Yes, it was not a figure from my dad’s generation. Yes, my dad was not really “in touch” with things anymore. But whoever it might have been, had been in the news constantly. He was an icon to the younger generation.

I just couldn’t understand how my dad could not know who it was.

Fast forward twenty years, to the present, and I realize I have now become my father. I am sure it has been said thousands of times before, by thousands of people. But, as they also likely have said, I never thought it would happen to me.

But it has. Perhaps one of the most common lines I say to my wife is, “Who is that?” I utter it while we are watching television, especially during awards shows, when the camera focuses on a string of celebrities. All of them, male or female but usually less than 30 years old, age are complete strangers to me.

I have now become my father. It has happened in ways other than recognizing “celebrities.” I also remember having puzzlement, when I was a teen, that my father showed indifference to many sporting events, especially All-Star games.

I was fanatical about them. My dad could not care less, and showed it. “How can he not care?” I asked myself. “This is like a major point of the season.”

Today, an all-star game, no matter what sport, holds little interest to me. All that I can figure is that it is a matter of perspective, and that perspective determines the relevance. There are simply more important things about which to worry.

The economy is a constant challenge, as is trying to stay one step ahead of it. Presently, it has become a task that many find daunting as high unemployment rates persist and major economic shifts are being experienced. Place that against the backdrop of an all-star game and the latter does not seem to matter.

As for the entertainment side, it seems a matter of what you are used to. And even that, in the long run, really does not seem to matter at all.

Reminiscing

2012-01-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

That's the way it began, we were hand in hand

Glenn Miller's Band was better than before

We yelled and screamed for more

And the Porter tunes (Night and Day)

Made us dance across the room

It ended all too soon
And on the way back home I promised you'd never be alone

Hurry, don't be late, I can hardly wait
I said to myself when we're old
We'll go dancing in the dark
Walking through the park and reminiscing

I was eighteen years old when that song – “Reminiscing” by The Little River Band – was a hit in 1978. Even though it spoke of things I had not experienced firsthand, such as the Glenn Miller Band and the Porter tunes, it still spoke directly to me.

I knew of the Glenn Miller Band and the Porter tunes remembrances of my parents. What I knew most of all was that “Reminiscing” always shrouded me in nostalgia, without fail, each time I heard it.

It seems a greatly different world now from 1978. The world of my parents was not, in everyday life, largely different from the world of my childhood. The home telephone, and its one line, was the primary source of communication. We often waited anxiously for the newspaper to be delivered each morning, likely with the hope that our favorites sports team had won the night before.

Microwaves and personal computers had not yet made their ubiquitous presence known. Let alone cell and smart phones, at a frequency of one per person rather than family.

There were still only three television networks. If the President had made a speech the night before, chances were that a kid was pretty upset because there had been nothing to watch for most of that night. Instead, it was the pre-analysis, the speech itself, and then the post-wrap, all of which seemed to go on interminably.

Baseball was aired once each week, and that’s why the national Game of the Week was so important. Without it, live baseball on TV was something you only heard about from the big-city folk.

Now, 34 years has once again lapsed, and it’s 2012 instead of 1978. Despite being the same in number, those 34 years differ greatly qualitatively. The world of my generation seems greatly different from that of the younger sect. Nothing then was available on demand, whether news or entertainment. If you missed the start of a TV show, it was gone forever, or at least until some months later when reruns finally allowed another chance to see it.

Now, you simply go online to watch the video, if you haven’t DVR’d the program. Sports scores are available instantaneously, and you may not even need them if you are watching the games live on your PC or smart phone, as I do with major league baseball, which also provides archives of any games you may have missed.

Control is now largely in the hands, literally, of the recipient. In many ways, that truly is advancement. Yet, despite all that, in the minds of some of us, it is quite common to be walking through the park and reminiscing.

Changing paradigms

2012-01-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

The world is greatly different today than the one of my childhood more than four decades ago. There is evidence of that all around me. Microwave ovens. DVR’s. Cell phones. GPS. The list seems endless. Things that did not exist, when I was a child in the 1960’s, are now ubiquitous and taken for granted by children of the 21st century.

In a physical and technological sense, the changes are apparent and widely accepted. Yet in other less-tangible ways, they are not so obvious. That seems to be the basis for the recent brouhaha over Mitt Romney’s business experience.

Rival GOP candidate Rick Perry sought to gain traction when he called Romney a “vulture” rather than a “venture” capitalist. Forty years ago, his attempt might have worked. But in the current world, it did not resonate as it once may have with the general populace.

In decades past, it was expected that the path to riches was one built on venture capitalism. You designed a product, put people to work building or making that product, sold it to a public that needed that product, and made a profit while simultaneously providing “good” jobs and benefits to your employees.

All was good, and that is why the 1950s and 1960s were the halcyon days of America. But things were to change in an ironic way. All the while that we were enjoying the good life as Americans, we were also railing against other non-democratic countries of the world, especially those Communists, insisting they should adopt our way of life.

We felt a compulsion to export democracy and, concomitantly, free-market capitalism. Ironically, our success achieving the latter has now eroded our ability to support a middle class.

There no longer is a manufacturing base for our economy. Now, people devoid of exceptional abilities can no longer compensate by working hard for an hourly wage. Instead, we look to other nations to do the manufacturing for us. They now have those jobs, rather than us.

As for our money, we now seek to grow it through, in Perry’s words, vulture rather than venture capitalism. It makes necessary people such as Mitt Romney.

This is not an endorsement of what has developed. Instead, it is merely an explanation of why we have arrived at where we are. It is also why Barack Obama has had no success, to any notable degree, in putting people back to work.

We still want an economy in which a large middle-class can survive and prosper. We still want good jobs and good benefits for the masses. The desire is there. All that we are lacking is the means to do it.

So those with the “smarts” to do it mentally are still able to thrive. But those who lack such mental prowess are left to flounder. Ironically, our own success at exporting our way of life, combined with advances in technology, is contributing to our demise.

Never the twain shall meet

2012-01-17T07:11:00.000-08:00

It was a fleeting comment made several years ago during a discussion. “Political parties should no longer be separated as being liberal and conservative,” I said to my fellow conversant. “Instead, they should be organized into the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’”

The comment was largely ignored and drew no response. The other person was interested in asserting their side of the traditional partisan political argument, and did not want to be sidetracked by any random thoughts.

That comment had been forgotten until recently. It came back to mind when thinking about the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, which, despite traditionally being viewed as being at opposite ends of the political spectrum, are joined at their core by a similarity of beliefs.

Both movements are comprised of people who feel as if they are bearing the brunt of society’s disregard for their situations. They draw from different segments of society. Because of that, they are seen as rival movements. Tea Party supporters are viewed as more rural and conservative, while their Occupy Wall Street cohorts are seen as more urbane and formally-educated.

Yet they share a core belief. In fact, the same belief drives both movements. They see government and big business running amok, using dollars derived from the masses to fill the pockets of business and governmental leaders who, in the end, are truly acting only for themselves.

Perhaps it is the business/government divide in focus that also divides the two movements. Tea Parties decry the government that Occupy Wall Street adores, and Occupy Wall Street decries business, with which the Tea Party has no problem. To them, business is private and should remain that way.

The truth is that there is a melding of the two, especially as far as the United States is concerned.

Business and government, regardless of party, have entered into a symbiotic relationship. It benefits both sides, to the detriment of the general population, which is footing the bill on both counts.

Taxpayers are being taxed, often to their wonderment as to why, and consumers are being charged for virtually every service they seek, including ones that once were absorbed by companies as a routine cost of “doing business.”

In the end, it matters not which entity is exacting the cost. Whether it is government or business, the average American is paying the bill. Worst of all, the cost is now often being paid to both, exacting more of a total cost than in the past.

An acceptance of justified cost has been shown, over the years, as a bill the American public has been willing to pay. Now, however, the cost is often seen as unjustified. Whether the protest comes from a Tea Partier or an Occupy Wall Street supporter, the complaint is actually the same.

As long as the two movements are kept fragmented, little progress will be made by either. If they ever join together, however, there stands a chance of true changes someday being achieved.

A private act - even when done publicly

2012-01-16T06:26:00.000-08:00

Tim Tebow. You either love him or hate him. There is no in-between. Most amazingly of all, his football ability often seems the least important factor in the decision.

Instead, it is because he publicly demonstrates his faith in God. People with similar beliefs love him because of their agreement. Those who do not share his faith often despise him. In the long run, none of it really makes any sense.

That conclusion comes from someone who is dubious of Tebow’s faith. In the overall scheme of things, it does not make much sense, at least not in my view. But in Tebow’s view, it does, and if he wants to publicly bow to Jesus and utter a private prayer while doing so, that is his business.

The problem is that everyone else thinks it is theirs. Fellow believers with Tebow think it is their position to proclaim Tebow to the world, much as they do Jesus. And non-believers think it is their position to decry him. In reality, they should both be leaving it between Tebow and his God.

The bigger, and more important in my view, question is whether he has what it takes to become a top-notch quarterback in the NFL. Right now, the answer to that question is still undecided. At this stage, he seems too erratic, but he has also been a starter for less than one full season.

When his numbers are compared, in terms of won-lost percentage as a starter, to other quarterbacks who are now considered stellar, he does not fare too badly. In fact, he trails only Tom Brady in that category, leading others such as Drew Brees, Eli Manning and Aaron Rodgers. All in all, he is not at a bad place to be.

All of that gets lost, however, in the swirl caused by his religion. Honestly, the logic has always escaped me when athletes look to the heavens after hitting a run-scoring double, but do not do the same when striking out with the bases loaded. Or, to put it in Tebow terms, throwing a game-winning touchdown versus a game-ending interception.

Logic, however, needs to be put aside. That is, after all, why they call it “faith.” Regardless of the cause, there is something amazing about the manner in which Tebow repeatedly led his team to victory this past season after they were trailing for most of the game.

As a football fan, it was fun to watch. The question of whether it was because of his belief in God is beyond the ability to answer. To Tebow, however, it was, and therefore he should have been allowed to respect that in the manner he thought to be appropriate, such as publicly bowing to Jesus.

Those who disagree with him do not need to publicize their feelings. Nor do those who agree with him. The matter is one of faith, and although he feels the need to publicly demonstrate it, it is still, in the end, a gesture that is private to him.