The new no-cell-phone-while-driving law is in effect in California, and from the way in which it has been touted, it should solve a wide range of social ills, including slow sales in hands-free cell devices and accessories.
The problem with this law is that it goes after the visible effects of cell phone use in a car. Things like holding a cell phone, dialing a cell phone and dropping a cell phone on the floorboard in heavy traffic all become conspicuous, and suspicious, actions.
While diving down to the floor to search for a dropped phone while trying maintain control of a car is a stupid and dangerous thing to do, the other two simply are dexterous activities, much like the act of driving a car. It's true that hands should be on the wheel, but oftentimes they are pulled away from their duties to shift gears, change radio stations, and adjust the cabin temperature. In other words, hands were moving around from their appointed post long before cell phones.
This law does not go after what is at the true heart of the distraction: the engagement in a two-way conversation with one person not present. Phone conversations have a zone-out effect on people, an effect that does not seem happen in face-to-face interactions. This effect is not limited by hands-free devices, which do nothing to limit the distraction of the one-person-present-two-way conversation.
Rather than encourage drivers to put down the phone all together while driving, we have enacted a law that gives law enforcement another ticket into our cars. Not to say that this is what they wanted because that would be overtly cynical, but this law will benefit them much more than us. This law will be another crow bar law, prying the door open to escalating offenses.
If we really are looking to make a difference, I suggest police go after bad drivers in general and not drivers holding a phone to their heads. Much like the distractions that have kept our hands busy while driving long before cell phones, bad driving didn't start as soon as cell phones arrived to allow us to communicate any pointless thought with rampant immediacy. Again, it seems like we're "solving" the wrong problem with this law.
Congratulations California: We lead the nation in minor bull-shit laws that an infraction of can end in a major headache.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Mission accomplished, for real this time
The New York Times ran a story on June 19 about the expected awarding of no-bid contracts by Iraqi officials to western oil companies. While this should come as no surprise to the war's many critics, it is nice to see a report on the spoils of war and how this will shape up.
The article reports that the contracts would "lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies [Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron] in Iraq since the American invasion," which is good since apparently oil has become so scarce that the price of gasoline has steadily increased almost without fail each week for more than a year.
The article addresses what many have long suspected, that securing the oil concession was the reason for the war in the first place. "There was suspicion ... among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,"the article reports.
While it feels good to hear all this, it is not so wise to think that this is some great revelation or that there will be an act of contrition on the part of the Bush administration.
Bush and his clique would never see this war as a blood-for-oil campaign, which is exactly how many on the left (myself included) have reasoned out this brutal nonsense. For all the spin rhetoric that we have become accustomed to in the past seven or so years, there has never been a flat denial that U.S. oil companies would eventually profit from this war. Any denial we did hear centered on refuting the claim that the war's purpose was strictly blood for oil.
Try to view this war through the eyes of a warmonger. A warmonger views a conflict in terms of its specific goal and the inevitable spoils of that goal. To Bush, his mission was righteous: the elimination of an enemy nation within the borders of a tyrannical state. Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here; in Bush's mind, this made (and makes) perfect sense. Indeed, the article asserts the "administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism," and obviously the administration is not going to change its story.
Opponents of this war never understood Bush's logic nor his stated reasons for going to war. The whole conflict has reeked of deception, refocused objectives and flimsy reasoning from the beginning. But this was a war with a stated, undoubtedly flawed, purpose and the reward for supposedly accomplishing this goal would be the vast oil fields of Iraq. This war was always going to have spoils, and it was easy for the administration to deny the blood-for-oil allegations since questions suggesting such were flawed in their query. I don't recall a specific question directed toward the president that asked him what the real expected monetary returns of this war were going to be.
Much like the globalizing mission of Christianity more than 100 years ago, the reasons for embarking on the campaign are mired in a savior-based mentality. There is no way to shake the indelible markings in the mind of Bush and his people that what they were doing was right, that it was our job as a country to fight this war in Iraq, and to draw the lines of what is right and wrong for the world.
It is this poor mindset, rooted far in the past, that makes this war so frustrating. Clearly, the conservative ethos are living up to their expectations and in the end, occupying a foreign country while forcing an ideology on its people will work out as well as it did for all the European powers who did the same. Many of us know how this will turn out and that's what is so maddening.
So mission accomplished once again, Mr. President. Like so many things tied to this administration, your globalizing mission against terrorism has lead us back to the trail head, and we have a long hike ahead of us. There is little argument that we will be paying for your spoiled war for the rest of our lives.
The article reports that the contracts would "lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies [Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron] in Iraq since the American invasion," which is good since apparently oil has become so scarce that the price of gasoline has steadily increased almost without fail each week for more than a year.
The article addresses what many have long suspected, that securing the oil concession was the reason for the war in the first place. "There was suspicion ... among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,"the article reports.
While it feels good to hear all this, it is not so wise to think that this is some great revelation or that there will be an act of contrition on the part of the Bush administration.
Bush and his clique would never see this war as a blood-for-oil campaign, which is exactly how many on the left (myself included) have reasoned out this brutal nonsense. For all the spin rhetoric that we have become accustomed to in the past seven or so years, there has never been a flat denial that U.S. oil companies would eventually profit from this war. Any denial we did hear centered on refuting the claim that the war's purpose was strictly blood for oil.
Try to view this war through the eyes of a warmonger. A warmonger views a conflict in terms of its specific goal and the inevitable spoils of that goal. To Bush, his mission was righteous: the elimination of an enemy nation within the borders of a tyrannical state. Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here; in Bush's mind, this made (and makes) perfect sense. Indeed, the article asserts the "administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism," and obviously the administration is not going to change its story.
Opponents of this war never understood Bush's logic nor his stated reasons for going to war. The whole conflict has reeked of deception, refocused objectives and flimsy reasoning from the beginning. But this was a war with a stated, undoubtedly flawed, purpose and the reward for supposedly accomplishing this goal would be the vast oil fields of Iraq. This war was always going to have spoils, and it was easy for the administration to deny the blood-for-oil allegations since questions suggesting such were flawed in their query. I don't recall a specific question directed toward the president that asked him what the real expected monetary returns of this war were going to be.
Much like the globalizing mission of Christianity more than 100 years ago, the reasons for embarking on the campaign are mired in a savior-based mentality. There is no way to shake the indelible markings in the mind of Bush and his people that what they were doing was right, that it was our job as a country to fight this war in Iraq, and to draw the lines of what is right and wrong for the world.
It is this poor mindset, rooted far in the past, that makes this war so frustrating. Clearly, the conservative ethos are living up to their expectations and in the end, occupying a foreign country while forcing an ideology on its people will work out as well as it did for all the European powers who did the same. Many of us know how this will turn out and that's what is so maddening.
So mission accomplished once again, Mr. President. Like so many things tied to this administration, your globalizing mission against terrorism has lead us back to the trail head, and we have a long hike ahead of us. There is little argument that we will be paying for your spoiled war for the rest of our lives.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Farewell to a king
Tim Russert died this past Friday and the scary part is that not only did we lose a good man and an excellent journalist, but we might have finally lost the whole concept of journalism as we have known it.
In a day and age when journalism has been lost in the binary opposition of Fox News and CNN, Russert was a breath of fresh air. He was a tenacious interviewer whose political allegiance was not obvious or even an issue: the definition of a true journalist removed from the issue at hand and aggressively digging for the truth.
Russert would ask questions that focused on the interviewee's accountability to the decisions he or she had made. That is the most important revelation that can be exposed in the political sphere. Russert asked questions, and demanded answers, that removed the political rhetoric and got to the true heart of the matter and looked at the people who make decisions that affect all of us.
Much like Hunter S. Thompson's suicide a few years back, Russert's death was a shock. And just as the bullet that coursed through Thompson's brain had no idea what magic it was destroying, Russert's heart had no clue as to what it was doing when it failed on Friday.
Journalism already was at a crossroads before Russert's death. Beyond the left/right issue of reporting, advertisement-dictated reporting, advertorial and the rise of citizen journalism all have caused to the public both to question the validity of the reporting and to wonder about its worth. This industry has long insisted that it was the path to truth and the torch bearer guiding the way through the confusing quagmire of political, corporate and special interests. This is no longer the case and frankly, it is not needed anymore.
There are multiple paths to the "truth," and there are multiple truths, unique to each individual and free of binding set of criteria. What is the truth for one person may not be the truth for another, and even that first person might change his or her mind before too long. Dealing with this new way to observe the world around us, journalism has lost its way; it may not recover to any recognizable point and it has proven that it has a hard time deciding on how to re-invent itself.
Journalism will continue in some form, I'm sure, but it is disheartening to see a true journalist go before his or her time whether from his own hand (Thompson), nature (Russert) or by the hand of someone else (Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who dug too deep into Vladimir Putin's regime).
In a industry that is gripping to find heroes, it's tough to lose one from the top.
In a day and age when journalism has been lost in the binary opposition of Fox News and CNN, Russert was a breath of fresh air. He was a tenacious interviewer whose political allegiance was not obvious or even an issue: the definition of a true journalist removed from the issue at hand and aggressively digging for the truth.
Russert would ask questions that focused on the interviewee's accountability to the decisions he or she had made. That is the most important revelation that can be exposed in the political sphere. Russert asked questions, and demanded answers, that removed the political rhetoric and got to the true heart of the matter and looked at the people who make decisions that affect all of us.
Much like Hunter S. Thompson's suicide a few years back, Russert's death was a shock. And just as the bullet that coursed through Thompson's brain had no idea what magic it was destroying, Russert's heart had no clue as to what it was doing when it failed on Friday.
Journalism already was at a crossroads before Russert's death. Beyond the left/right issue of reporting, advertisement-dictated reporting, advertorial and the rise of citizen journalism all have caused to the public both to question the validity of the reporting and to wonder about its worth. This industry has long insisted that it was the path to truth and the torch bearer guiding the way through the confusing quagmire of political, corporate and special interests. This is no longer the case and frankly, it is not needed anymore.
There are multiple paths to the "truth," and there are multiple truths, unique to each individual and free of binding set of criteria. What is the truth for one person may not be the truth for another, and even that first person might change his or her mind before too long. Dealing with this new way to observe the world around us, journalism has lost its way; it may not recover to any recognizable point and it has proven that it has a hard time deciding on how to re-invent itself.
Journalism will continue in some form, I'm sure, but it is disheartening to see a true journalist go before his or her time whether from his own hand (Thompson), nature (Russert) or by the hand of someone else (Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who dug too deep into Vladimir Putin's regime).
In a industry that is gripping to find heroes, it's tough to lose one from the top.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A shaky start
I'm finally up and running, though it took me a little while to get going here. It's been three months actually since the time I made my account to the time of my first blog. There was a series of problems, unforeseen mostly, and therefore unplanned for, that can fit squarely into the cross hairs of blame.
The main reason for the delay can be traced back to my own sense of feigned accomplishment after finishing the tedium of launching my blog. I created the account in March and rather that posting immediately, I felt like patting myself on the back for a job well-done and figured I could post something the next morning. That didn't work exactly how I thought it would since my blog was flagged as a spam blog. It makes sense, in hindsight, that an account created with no content should standout as a potential problem.
What I hadn't anticipated was how complicated it would be to correct this problem. I had to e-mail tech support and had to wait for review. I had to do that twice before I figured out that it had worked. In the meantime, I became disinterested in my blog and with school exponentially growing in intensity in April and May, I really had no inclination to start blogging with a bogged-down brain.
But now my blog is up and I have learned another valuable life lesson: Don't put off to tomorrow blogs you want to post today. So here it is ...
The main reason for the delay can be traced back to my own sense of feigned accomplishment after finishing the tedium of launching my blog. I created the account in March and rather that posting immediately, I felt like patting myself on the back for a job well-done and figured I could post something the next morning. That didn't work exactly how I thought it would since my blog was flagged as a spam blog. It makes sense, in hindsight, that an account created with no content should standout as a potential problem.
What I hadn't anticipated was how complicated it would be to correct this problem. I had to e-mail tech support and had to wait for review. I had to do that twice before I figured out that it had worked. In the meantime, I became disinterested in my blog and with school exponentially growing in intensity in April and May, I really had no inclination to start blogging with a bogged-down brain.
But now my blog is up and I have learned another valuable life lesson: Don't put off to tomorrow blogs you want to post today. So here it is ...
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