A young man at college today has unprecedented sexual opportunities. Unlike his father or grandfather, he is likely attending a school where men are outnumbered by women. Even boys who are not the best-looking or particularly popular now have an excellent chance of finding a woman to date. Nevertheless, as the New York Times reported in a front-page story, college administrators are reporting that more and more young men show no interest in meeting young women (or meeting other men for that matter). They don’t want to meet anybody. They just want “to stay in their rooms, talk to no one, [and] play video games into the wee hours…. [They] miss classes until they withdraw or flunk out.” p. 71

From Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Via Zen Pencils…

Previously…

All West Virginians know exactly when by and by is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.

My Hess line moved to Palantine, Virginia (now Fairmont, West Virginia) in 1723. My father and his parents moved to Marietta, Ohio during World War II. My dad is fond of joking that he raised the average intelligence in both states when he moved.

Mano Singham writes:

After watching the 30-minute interview I can understand why the US government is freaking out. Snowden comes across as a thoughtful, calm, intelligent, and articulate person who chooses his words very carefully and makes the case for why what he did was right in a very compelling way. Put this guy up alone in a debate against president Obama, James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Diane Feinstein, Mike Rogers, and all the other shifty liars who try to defend the NSA and it is absolutely no contest.

The first step of Right Diligence is to be attentive and skillful enough not to allow unbeneficial seeds to manifest. p. 92

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The past is so instructive. But memories fade so soon. If we could only remember. It might make a difference.

The people who are supposed to keep the historic record – the news media led by our only newspaper – are so negligent that each copy should carry a banner saying, “Dangerous to your mind’s health.”

As you who are reading understand I’m trying to lay the track back to tell what the track ahead will be. Just read the past couple of months of columns.

This one, I think, is rather rich.

I go back to April of 1990, just before the first 15-year sin tax was voted and passed to build a baseball stadium and an arena (even though the State of Ohio was paying to build what would become CSU’s Wolstein Center, built with just few seats as not to be worthy of the Cleveland Cavaliers.) So two had to be built at public expense.

The city still owned the Cleveland Stadium where Art Modell’s Browns played and had Dick Jacobs’s Indians as a tenant.

A brief side story. Prior to this, Jacob wanted another deal from the city – $122 million in tax abatement for a Public Square building. He came before City Council. Council was a bit sheepish about giving him this second $100 million gift. So Council begged for a pittance of neighborhood help from the big shot developer – some $6 million.

Not much. Not right away either but over 20 years. Like pennies for dollars.

Jacobs sat at the table, as I wrote, “face screwed up… reddened” Continue Reading »

From The Best of 2013…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

You would have thought that the Plain Dealer might have at least gone through some motions to indicate that the editorial board knew what it was doing when it endorsed the sin tax.

The same goes for the useless Cuyahoga County Commissioners, who voted unanimously to put the sin tax on the ballot in May. They folded like a cheap beach chair.

And County Executive Ed Fitzgerald made it unanimous with as weak-knee response as you might expect, calling the sin tax “flawed” but favored. What a trick.

Nice to be for the flawed instead of trying to change it.

“As flawed as the sin tax may be, at least the revenue from the sin tax is not where we are cutting human services to fund the upkeep of these stadiums,” he told the Pee Dee.

Who said the choice was between giving billionaires what they want and helping people in need? Oh, Fitzgerald did. And he wants to be Governor.

Just what are the Pee Dee, the County Council and Fitzgerald promising Dan Gilbert and Larry Dolan and Jimmy Haslam?

I don’t know and neither do they. Problem is they don’t care.

I asked Tim Offtermatt, chairman of Gateway, for the list of desires of his tenants, the Indians and Cavaliers. He sent the list that was passed out by these sports moguls and the Greater Cleveland Partnership (Ever think the Pee Dee will tell the public just what the GCP is and who it represents – and come to think of it – how much the Pee Dee contributes financially to it annually? We know Continue Reading »

I understand Derf’s frustration, my own reaction upon reading this bit of obscenity in the news was similar, but we make an error when we pretend that just because the people holding the money didn’t actually earn the money, they must be idiots.

That may be the case, as it was with a few monarchs and aristocrats in centuries past, but generally speaking, I attribute bad behavior to sociopathy, not stupidity. I offer the example of the lotto winner in America. Consider how many winners of millions of dollars, flush with ill-advised lump-sum settlements, are destitute five years after the fact. If present wealth guaranteed future wealth then we would have a growing cadre of lotto winners joining the one percent, but that is not the case.

As much as the reality gets our panties in a bunch, inheritance is not the problem. Our complacency is.

My dad wanted to make sure I was safe, so he forwarded the message below to me this morning:

The state highway department has issued a travel warning due to snow storms and bad road conditions.

They suggest that anyone traveling in the current icy conditions should ensure that they have the following:

– Shovel
– Blankets or sleeping bag
– Extra winter clothing including coats, hat and gloves
– Water
– 24 hours worth of food
– Deicer
– Rock salt
– Flashlight with spare batteries
– Road flares or reflective triangles
– 5-gallon gas can
– First aid kit
– Booster cables

I looked like an idiot when I got on the bus this morning.

I’m glad I’m staying in warm and snug.

From my hometown newspaper this morning:

As revenue continues to drop at Ohio casinos and horse race tracks, beware of how the state legislature responds. And look no further than West Virginia for a preview.

Gambling proprietors in West Virginia are beneficiaries of enormous gifts bestowed upon them by politicians. Voters never had a say in the matter. With fewer gamblers going to the casino/racetracks because of competition in other states, it is likely the gambling interests will be going to state legislatures for more help.

Legalized gambling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Indiana and West Virginia have hurt each other. That has reduced the states’ share of their profits. The subject was addressed earlier this month before a gathering of journalists in South Charleston, W.Va.

Among those participating in a panel discussion on the topic was John Cavacini, president of the West Virginia Racing Association. To continue attracting gamblers, the casino/racetracks will have to keep upgrading their facilities and offering amenities to visitors, he said. One key is up-to-date slot machines, he noted.

Look for the casino operators to seek new subsidies from the state to accomplish that – though they already benefit from a 10-year, $100 million tax break helping them to acquire new slot machines.

Also, expect the horse- and dog-racing industries to insist that without them, many gamblers would stay away from the casino/racetracks. That is not true.

Entirely aside from the help West Virginia gives the casino/racetracks themselves, it pumps millions of dollars into subsidies for the horse- and dog-racing industries.

While they were at it, officials in Ohio and elsewhere granted the casinos a virtual monopoly, giving them exclusive rights to offer gambling. No other business enjoys that government-mandated exclusivity in these states. No other business exists almost entirely through subsidies such as those paid to the horse- and dog-racing interests in some of these states. No other business has the audacity to take the gifts legislators already have handed out – and ask for more.

Had voters been asked about all of this, it is quite likely their answer would have been “no.”

Rather than bowing to demands for more help for the gambling and racing industries, legislators in these states should just say “no.”

First a new sin tax and then, mark my words, casino-owners’ hands will come demanding help to save jobs profits, theirs.

From The New York Times…

Every investigator [Sax’s endnote at this point, No. 16, page 237, cites five studies and provides links to The Guardian and the original government report (which is now decommissioned but may be accessible in an archive). JH] who has correlated the amount of time that a child or adolescent or young adult spends playing video games with that student’s academic performance has found a negative correlation. p. 63

From Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

You didn’t expect the Plain Dealer editorial board to endorse differently, did you?

You didn’t expect the editorial board to take its time, to examine facts or even know the history of the lavish spending done at Gateway’s baseball stadium and arena did you?

In years of following the peddlers of profit-making sports owners at countless meetings I don’t believe I ever have even seen one of the Pee Dee editorial board members at a meeting.

They endorse in ignorance. [See my comment below. JH]

So you don’t think this big city newspaper made an endorsement that will cost taxpayers more than $300 million on the basis of knowledge or common sense, do you?

There is no such thing, at this date, of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press… The business of the journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon…

You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

That was said by John Swinton, the former chief of staff at the New York Times at his farewell remarks in 1953. Fifty years later Continue Reading »

We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, “Ram! Ram! Ram!” never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number — fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries — each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!

Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. “Chalo!” he shouted almost fiercely.

There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner’s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone. –from A Hanging

From Collected Essays Of George Orwell.

And a nod to David Bowie…

From The Best of 2013…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The County Commission hearing on the sin tax this week was typical of the OLD brand that goes through the ritual of a pretend public hearing. On automatic pilot.

The agenda called for the public to speak before the proponents presented their pitch. No use having a testy argument over some $300 million.

Chairwoman Ellen Connally was presiding. She had all the warmth of the weather that day. It was brutally frigid walking from the city hall parking lot to the Justice Center where the council meets in temporary quarters. (Had to give up the regular offices for an Ed Fitzgerald hotel that will lose money by the ton.)

Connally, a former judge showing she hasn’t quite come off the bench yet, announced that a little tingling bell would signal the end of the time a person had to address the County Commission. It would ring at the three minute mark.

When I addressed the board I thanked members for the “generosity” of giving the public all of three minutes to speak. Such respect for constituents. There wasn’t even a stir from the 11 members.

I could keep to that short time. I didn’t expect anything from my public representatives anyway. Been to too many of these kind of pro forma Continue Reading »

Even West Virginian babies know that Gimme some sugar is not a request for the white, granular, sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.

My Hess line moved to Palantine, Virginia (now Fairmont, West Virginia) in 1723. My father and his parents moved to Marietta, Ohio during World War II. My dad is fond of joking that he raised the average intelligence in both states when he moved.

Consuming in mindfulness is also Right Action. p. 89

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

…the agony of defeat is lessened by the comforting knowledge that [the boy] can just hit “Restart” and play [the game] all over again… and again.

Today, any boy with a high-speed Internet connection can play in real time against another gamer across town or on the other side of the planet. Sophisticated headsets allow boys to engage in simulated combat in teams, arranging coordinated ambushes of enemy fighters using high-tech virtual weaponry. After your son has spent two hours leading a squad of fighters in a raid on terrorist headquarters, issuing commands through his headset-mounted microphone [just like Ender Wiggins, JH] to his online comrades, and raced through a hail of bullets to destroy the enemy power generator, well studying Spanish grammar from a textbook can seem hopelessly dull. The virtual world is fast-moving, interactive, collaborative and fun. The real world of homework, and textbooks, can’t compete—not, at least, for the boy who is motivated by [Friend Nietzsche’s ] will to power. p. 60

From Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.