Yikes

Dear middle-aged woman behind the Dunkin' Donuts counter,

I am legitimately concerned for your well-being. Do you have someone to take care of you?

This morning I asked you for a medium mocha Coolata with no whip cream. You nodded confidently and went off to work. Moments later you returned with a cup of dark brown sludge and asked if I would like anything else. Now, I don't like to tell other people how to do their jobs, but I wasn't about to buy that, so I told you that it didn't look right to me. In hindsight, I should have tried to explain that a mocha Coolata contains both syrup and coffee. I was hoping you would ask one of your colleagues for direction. Anyway I wouldn't know how to tell you the exact recipe. That's not my job.

You mumbled something about me not wanting syrup, and then hurried off again. I figured you might be able to make a regular Coolata, so I let it go. Disturbingly, your next attempt was clear. Do you even realize that you just tried to sell me a cup of ice? I said that definitely doesn't look right, and suggested that I would just get an orange juice instead. You wouldn't hear of it and, determined to get my order right, hurried off again.

One of these things
just doesn't belong here...

At this point I thought you must realize that you have no idea how to make a Coolata, and would ask someone for help. And I did see you speak to someone else behind the counter. Then I watched you place a cup under the spout of the coffee machine, push a button, and wait for something to happen. When nothing did, to my utter amazement you continued on to the syrup dispenser as if everything were right as rain. You then made your way back to me with a cup of sludge even blacker than the first. I mean this was black hole black. Would you drink that?

So in closing, thank you for the donuts and orange juice, and seriously, good luck!

Your tax dollars at work

Back in February I wondered about the efficacy of these "above the influence" ads.



If You Can't Get Them to Stop Using Drugs, at Least You Can Get Them to Make Fun of You

A Government Accountability Office report on research tracking the impact of the federal government's $1.2 billion anti-drug ad campaign concludes that "the evaluation provides credible evidence that the campaign was not effective in reducing youth drug use...."

In fact, during some periods and for some subgroups, exposure to the ads was significantly associated with an increased tendency to smoke pot.

With the Bush Administration focused on the war on terror, it's good to see they haven't forgotten about financing the war on drugs.

Tribute in Light

Any questions (no questions)?

I was recently sent a link to this article on the war in Iraq. The author makes some intelligent, reasonable arguments, and I don't necessarily disagree with any of his specific points. But the overall position of the paper seems to be that if you are not totally on board with the war on terrorism then you are part of the problem.

And our politicians have never seen a difficult issue they can't run away from. Thank God we didn't have a lot of these guys around when we were fighting the Germans and the Japanese. At the first sign of pain we would have negotiated away Hawaii and given Hitler time to develop his own A-bomb.

In fact, the sentiment I hear most frequently from responsible politicians in Washington is that the Bush Administration has gotten us into a bad situation and now we're stuck. Pulling out of Iraq too soon would only make things worse. But are we doing everything we can to make the best of a bad situation?

It isn't pretty for the troops. The enemy knows we are losing our resolve. This encourages them to be even more aggressive and to do even more to disrupt things. And the guys on the ground in Iraq try not to get killed while all the deep thinkers back in the States decide where we go from here.

In truth it is the current administration which has repeatedly failed our troops, by sending them into harm's way with inadequate training, shabby armor, and sporadic air support. As I recently pointed out, we've already spent over $300 billion on the war in Iraq. I wonder where all that money is going?

The one clear message you can take out of all of this is that our country is no longer ready or willing to fight a long war anywhere or for any reason. Instead of determined survivors, we have now evolved into a nation of fearful watchers who can't even be relied upon to support each other.

It's really frightening to me that so many Americans have been brainwashed into believing that questioning our goverment's policies is unpatriotic. If you disagree with how the war is being prosecuted, then you don't support our troops. If you question the motives of our leaders, then you hate freedom.

I keep coming back to an essay by Paul Graham entitled What You Can't Say.

I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.

Most struggles, whatever they're really about, will be cast as struggles between competing ideas. The English Reformation was at bottom a struggle for wealth and power, but it ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting influence of Rome. It's easier to get people to fight for an idea. And whichever side wins, their ideas will also be considered to have triumphed, as if God wanted to signal his agreement by selecting that side as the victor.

It seems obvious to me there are certain questions that the Bush Administration doesn't want to answer, so they endeavor to make those questions taboo.

Al Gore cautions that our own democracy may be threatened by the increasing corporatization of American media. The press is partly to blame, but ultimately the responsibility rests on each of us.

Be patriotic. Support our troops. Keep asking questions.

United 93, again

I just watched United 93 again in recognition of the five-year anniversary, or something. It doesn't get any easier. If anything I felt it even more intensely this time. I also paid more attention to some of the details.

I've already said my piece on the consipiracy theory aspect of this story. In that post, I stressed that it is important to keep in mind that this is one man's interpretation of what happened. But I think we can assume that most of the key elements of the timeline are represented accurately, as they have been corroborated by multiple sources.

So today I'd like to talk about the military's role in the events of that day, as depicted in the film. As soon as the NORAD commander confirms that hijackers are flying commercial airliners into buildings in Manhattan, he gives the order to scramble fighters from Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod. Some time later we hear him complaining that he can't protect the whole Eastern Seaboard with four planes. When it becomes apparent that Washington DC is also a target, he wastes no time in scrambling fighters from Langley AFB in Virginia. Soon after he is told that Langley was only able to scramble two fighters, and they are unarmed.

So here we are. The US spends almost as much money on its military as all other countries in the world combined (see Why We Fight). It's called the Department of Defense. Where's the defense? Our nation's capital is under attack, and the best we can come up with is two unarmed planes? Following 9/11 the general feeling was that we should cut the military some slack because this was a totally unprecedented attack and the hijackers were using our own domestic flights as cruise missiles. Well, that's all true.

Nevertheless, some sort of air attack on the continental US is not beyond the realm of possibility. Certainly it is something for which we should be prepared, if in fact we have any intention of being reasonably prepared to defend our homeland.

Since 9/11 we've allocated over $300 billion just for the war in Iraq.

I wonder how much we've spent on defense?