Andre Agassi Hates Tennis

Does being made to start playing tennis at age 3 and being forced by his father to continue when he hated it make Andre Agassi an abused child?

Anyone who has ever seen a bio-pic of retired tennis great Andre Agassi has seen video clips of a tiny boy playing tennis like an adult. Every time I saw those clips I wondered if Agassi really wanted to be out there training like a pro and giving exhibitions when he was 7 years old. Now I know. He hated it. Even so, he kept on playing, became the number one player in tennis, fell to 141 in the rankings, then came back and completed a career Grand Slam and won 8 major titles. Now Agassi is retired and has published a tell-all book. He hated tennis. When his career fell apart he took drugs. Even after he made a comeback and became one of the elder statemen of tennis, he still hated it.

You can't help asking yourself: Why did Agassi continue to play tennis all those years? After he had made a few million dollars, why didn't he tell his father to take a hike and quit the sport once and for all? Many tennis players begin playing as very young children, and many have parents who push them to excel. We have heard the stories of Jennifer Capriati and Mary Pierce, who certainly were emotionally abused by their fathers, if not physically. But Andre Agassi? Here is a man who didn't retire from professional tennis until he was 36 years old, and then it took a severe back injury to force him out of the sport. What was he doing all those years he was playing a sport he hated? What was he thinking?

Andre Agassi's incredible return game and powerful groundstrokes did much to change the style of tennis. Being incredibly fit, playing from the baseline and running other players around, having the stamina to play on with ease after he had worn out his opponent--this is how the game is played today by most of its top stars. Yet it's hard to reconcile all that with hating tennis. Maybe a man who dropped out of school after the 9th grade didn't think he had alternatives. Maybe the money and celebrity balanced his hatred of the sport. Or maybe he is just spinning another myth around himself. After all, this is the guy who never quite escaped his early statement (in a commercial) "Image is everything." Maybe this is the new Agassi image?

What to do in Afghanistan?

U.S. soldiers under attack in Afghanistan

On Fareed Zakaria GPS this week (10/18), Afghan War expert Thomas Ricks gave the opinion that the United States should remain in Afghanistan and pursue two strategies. He recommended that the U.S. withdraw most of its forces from the country side and concentrate on protecting and cooperating with the bulk of the Afghan population, located in Kabul, Kandahar, and a few other population centers, while using Special Forces and airstrikes to keep the Taliban and its allies, including Al Qaeda, from moving from Pakistan into Afghanistan as the Pakistani army expands its fight against them. In short, Ricks advocated “the Biden strategy” for the borders of Afghanistan and “the Petraeus strategy” for the population centers of Afghanistan. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach to me, but will it satisfy anybody back home?


Actually, the divide between public opinion and political opinions on the matter is much the same as with healthcare reform. Polls taken in September 2009 show that support for the war in Afghanistan among Americans is declining steeply, with only 39% favoring the war in a TIME/CNN poll, while 58% want to withdraw U.S. forces from the country. In Congress, the progressives want to withdraw, while the conservatives want to increase troop levels. Personally, if John McCain thinks increasing troop levels is a good idea, I’m against it, but what will President Obama do? Will he listen to Vice President Joe Biden or General Stanley McChrystal? Or can he blend the two approaches, as Thomas Ricks suggested? Stay tuned, and we’ll see, but as long as the American body count rises, public support for what no longer seems like a “war of necessity” is likely to decline even further. But then, who pays attention to what the citizens think? If it were left to the majority of citizens, healthcare reform would include a public option, but we have already seen how allergic to that Congress seems to be. Go figure.

A Plea for a Longer Grass-Court Tennis Season

Tim Henman stretches for a volley.

Rafael Nadal, the number-one tennis player in the world, thinks that the tournament seasons on clay and grass should be lengthened and the time spent playing on hard courts should be shortened. Clay and grass surfaces are more forgiving on the players' bodies, he says, and tennis would benefit from it. Nadal is currently suffering from severe tendonitis in both knees and had to pull out of the Queen's Club tournament in London, the major tune-up event before the championships at Wimbledon. At the present time, Nadal's participation at Wimbledon, where he is the title-holder, remains in doubt.

Actually, I think the number of events played on clay during the 11-month tennis season is ample, although I wouldn't object to more. However, I agree wholeheartedly that the grass-court tennis season should be longer. This year, it spans only 5 weeks, and two of those are Wimbledon. Why should that be? Why not start at the end of Roland Garros with something like the following: Week #1: Halle (Gerry Weber Open); Week#2: London/Queen's Club (Aegon Championships); Weeks #3 and 4: Wimbledon Championships; Week #5: Eastbourne (Aegon Open) and a clay court event (Bastad? Stuttgart?); Week 6: S'Hertogenbosch (Ordina Open) and a clay court event (Bastad? Stuttgart?); Week #7: Newport (Campbell's Hall of Fame Championships) and plus whatever hardcourt event is scheduled; and Week #8: Another grass court event in the USA plus whatever hardcourt event is scheduled. Surely there is a tennis club on Long Island somewhere with enough grass courts for an ATP tournament?

Even an 8-week grass-court season overlapping clay and hardcourt events is not much, considering that 3 of the 4 Grand Slams used to be played on grass. Of course, who knows if sponsors could be found, but that's not my department. However, I'm not sure that Rafael Nadal would enjoy my grass-court tennis season, because I want to return to the old days of fast courts with low bounces and tricky hops and players rushing the net. Come on, what's 8 weeks out of an 11-month season? But it would certainly make it more interesting to force the true contenders among tennis players to master a really different surface instead of being able to bang away from the baseline as they do now for the entire year. In today's tennis, to quote Fred Stolle, winning players on grass don't have to come to the net until it's time to shake hands. In my grass court season, those guys wouldn't make it past the first round.

Playing Mafia Wars is better than a Rohrschach test!

The image says it all: Guns and money, baby!

There are all sorts of pitfalls associated with Facebook and other social networking sites. You want to waste time chatting with your friends and taking all sorts of dumb quizzes? Facebook is the place to be. But I never imagined what could happen if you got caught up in playing Mafia Wars. Now I know.

The best way I know to describe Mafia Wars is to compare it to playing Monopoly with weapons. You have a mafia family. How big that family is depends on how many of your friends you can persuade (or coerce) into joining the game or how many new friends you can find on Facebook who will play with you. You join their mafia family and they join yours. You get a nice mafia name (I am Don Carmelo Sgroi) and start out at the most basic level as a Street Thug. You have all sorts of needs: Health, Energy, Stamina, Skills, and Experience. You begin at the bottom (mugging is the first job on the first level) and work your way up. You always need more health, energy, stamina, etc., and that costs money. So you do jobs and attack other mafias to get money. But to do jobs and attack other mafias you need weapons and vehicles and other items. In the beginning you scurry around trying to piece together enough resources to survive and progress. It's a criminal version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: If you want respect, you need money and guns. And belonging-- well, that's the name of the game. The bigger your mafia family, the more potential power you have, but you have to arm and equip your mafia members, and that takes money. And you have an ever-growing overhead, so you need to increase your income, which means buying property, doing more jobs, stealing more money. Does this sound familiar? It's life, except that in my real life I don't use a gun to get what I want. In Mafia Wars, however, you have to have guns and cars to get ahead.

When I started playing the game I had no idea what I was doing. I did the jobs, then ran out of energy. When I had an opportunity to enhance my resources, I didn't know how to prioritize. If I got any money, someone always seemed to appear at the wrong moment to steal it. What to do? I turned to Google, of course. There are lots of Mafia Wars strategy pages, and I slowly learned the basics. Now I am making progress. My mafia family numbers 104, and I am a level-43 Enforcer. I have no idea how many levels there are, and somehow I doubt if I will ever find out, but some of my mafia family members are on levels in the 200s, so there is a way to go. The maximum size of a mafia family is 501 members, by the way. I don't aspire to that. I also don't aspire to be a hitman or buy myself a fancy name. You can do all that and more in Mafia Wars.

The thing I find most entertaining about playing Mafia Wars is what it reveals about my personality, not to mention other people's personalities. A few evenings ago, a priest put out a contract on me. I don't like being snuffed by anyone, so I took out a hit on him. I wouldn't have cared if he were the pope; he was going to get whacked. As in my real life, I have big security needs in Mafia Wars. I started out with an income of $350 per hour. That was hardly enough. I literally begged, borrowed and stole to get more. At the moment I have a net income of $1,966,400 per hour. Obviously, I have progressed. In the beginning stages of the game, I was obsessed with the fear of being robbed. It was very helpful to discover that you could keep your money secure by putting it into the bank. For a 10% laundering fee, I might add. As it turns out, it's worth it to pay the game 10% to protect your money, but what about when you're asleep? Money is coming in every hour, and you are not there to protect it. This can keep you up nights, I'm telling you! And people can damage your property, so you have to get insurance, which costs more money. Mamma mia!

Now that I have a certain amount of money and lots of guns, cars, armor, and other loot, I don't mind it when people attack me. If they get some money, fine. There will be more money in an hour, and I have money in the bank. But if someone kills me (you can always come back to life, for a price) or damages my property, I retaliate. I don't know how many hits I have contracted for. Not a huge number, but enough. The priest isn't the only one I have sent to sleep with the fishes. But I don't overdo it. Everyone has their own style of playing the game. I don't buy more weapons and vehicles than I need to equip my family and protect myself from attackers, but there are people out there who have bought 500 town cars. You get a certificate of merit for buying 500 town cars. I think anyone who buys 500 town cars is certifiable, unless it turns out that you need them to do a job at some point, in which case I, too, will acquire 500 town cars. At the moment I own 65 town cars, which seems adequate for my needs.

All of this is a clever way to keep people tied to Facebook. I realize that. I don't mind, as long as I am amused. You can't play Scrabble all of the time, and I am a lousy chess player. If I don't have a decent book to read, what am I supposed to do? I mean, television is totally boring, but arming the Russian mafia or wiretapping a police detective, especially when you get paid $1 million to do it? That's fun. For now anyway. Soon I'll be on to something else.

Housing Guantanamo Detainees in the United States

This is the way we imagine prison cells, but in a supermax facility, there would be a solid door with just a small window.

Just recently, the United States Senate turned down President Obama's request for funding to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by a resounding margin (90-6). The ostensible reason was that the president had not yet presented a detailed plan for what to do with the remaining detainees, but there was also a lot of NIMBY (not in my back yard) feeling expressed in the Senate. No one seems to want dangerous terrorists housed in prisons in their state. As President Obama commented in a speech today, there would not be a reason to be looking to house detainees in the United States now if the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had not been opened in the first place, and it would not be necessary to put some prisoners in preventive detention (that is, hold them indefinitely without trial) if the detainees had not been tortured and otherwise mistreated to obtain evidence. Another thing the president has said on several occasions is that no one has ever escaped from a so-called supermax prison in the United States, even though those prisons do include some convicted terrorists in their population. If that is the case, is it really true that no state would accept Guantanamo detainees into a supermax facility?

A "supermax" prison is a highly secure detention facility in which especially dangerous prisoners are held in virtually solitary confinement under the strictest safety precautions. At the present time, there is only one supermax prison in the federal system, which is located at Florence, Colorado. Many so-called supermax prisons or prison units have been cited for all sorts of human rights abuses connected with the level of control believed to be necessary to secure the inmates. Many politicians seem to be afraid that a prison housing terror suspects relocated from Guantanamo Bay would be the focus of efforts by Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations to release the prisoners. That might be true, although based on history to date, it seems improbable. In any case, especially in the current economic climate, there seems no reason to believe that some states would not accept small supermax facilities or units to house Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

Maybe I believe this mainly because prisons are a popular industry in upstate New York, not that far from where I live, and there was a great outcry in some towns when Governor Paterson proposed closing some underutilized prison facilities upstate. I can't believe that, given enough money, some town in upstate New York would not agree to "host" a supermax facility, no matter who the inmates were going to be. And if New York state is like this, there must be other states with similar circumstances.

Whatever happens, there needs to be a careful and rigorous examination of how many prisoners left at Guantanamo need to be detained in the future. We need to accept a few of the detainees ourselves, assuming there are any who would accept living in a country that has treated them so badly, and we need to lean on other countries to accept some of them, as well. There must be a reasonably fair trial process for the dangerous or incorrigible ones, and then they need to be sent to supermax prisons in the USA. I say "reasonably fair" because, given the deplorable actions taken during the Bush administration, some of the worst offenders could not be convicted in a normal criminal trial under U.S. law. After all, how many times was Khalid Sheik Mohammad waterboarded? There may also have to be preventive detention legislation enacted by the U.S. Congress to justify holding the prisoners who simply cannot be tried and convicted. And while all that is going on, it's time to offer supermax facilities to states that are willing to take them.

So let's imagine that a supermax prison or prison unit were constructed in upstate New York to house some of the most dangerous Guantanamo detainees. Given all the security precautions that must be taken, no such prison is going to be pleasant to live in. That said, one could attempt to construct a facility that provided humane conditions for long-term detainees. The rooms, in which the prisoners might spend 23 of 24 hours each day, must be large enough for people to move around comfortably and contain whatever furniture is safe for a prisoner to have. That means things that the prisoner can't use to injure himself or a guard or another inmate. The inmates must have an opportunity to exercise, preferably outside whenever possible, be given decent food that complies with any religion-based dietary restrictions, and whatever medical care is necessary, including mental health treatment.

The prisoners must have the chance to worship, to watch television, and to read whatever they want. There should be no physical or psychological abuse of any kind, and no control based on drugs. Every cell must have a good-sized window with bulletproof glass that looks out onto a pleasant landscape, such as a garden or a park. If there is a way for the inmates to socialize on a limited basis, they should be permitted to do so. Anything that can be done within the realm of safety to stimulate their minds and provide exercise for their bodies should be done.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: Such a prison would be incredibly expensive. Too bad. If we had not created this situation, we wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of it now. It's our responsibility, and we have to assume the burden, whether we like it or not.

Lilac Time

I can't think of a more magical time in my neighborhood than the end of May, when the scent of lilacs permeates the air. I took my dog for a walk this afternoon and came home high on lilacs. You can have your drug of choice, but I'll take lilacs every time.

Here, where spring comes late, if it comes at all, there is an established progression among the flowering trees and shrubs. The forsythia comes first, followed by the cherries and magnolias, then the apples, crab apples, quince and redbud trees, then finally the lilacs. I love them all, but in my book, the lilacs are the best.

When I was a kid, people around here brought lilacs to the cemeteries for Memorial Day. There was a special holder for them, a cone-shaped green metal thing with two prongs at the bottom. You stuck it in the ground by means of the prongs, poured in water, then put the cut lilacs in the container. When you visited the cemetery, no matter what other pots of flowers or wreaths you might see, there were always bouquets of lilacs all around. After a while, the people who ran the cemeteries didn't want the lilacs in their metal containers, but some people continued to bring them for years. I don't know if they sell those metal containers anymore. Maybe people used to bring them home and reuse them. They looked fine, much better than coffee cans wrapped in aluminum foil, which you also saw in those days.

Back then, you mostly saw the common blue lilacs, which grow into trees after a while. They are everywhere in my neighborhood, but they seem to be challenged now by white, pink, and even deep purple varieties, which are eye-catching and beautiful. None of them has the intoxicating scent of the blue lilacs, however, and those are my favorites. The scent of lilacs is amazing. I don't mean that air freshener smell or the perfumed candle smell that is supposed to be lilac. No, I mean the scent of real lilacs outside in the fresh air on a cool but sunny day in May. Superb, and more or less free, thanks to my neighbors who planted them.

And the best thing about lilac time in Oswego is that it lasts for quite a while. Even when the flowers begin to fade, the scent lingers and the colors take on a new cast and continue to adorn the neighborhood. And when lilac time is over, it's time for the bridal wreath spireas to bloom. No scent, but lovely all the same. How lucky we are to live here!

Redefining the American Dream

A recent article in the New York Times reports on the results of a poll administered by the Times and CBS last month. In the poll, people were asked "What does the American Dream mean to you?" They were also asked if they thought they had or would achieve it.

Given the current recession, it's no suprise that people's responses about having achieved the American Dream, or their prospects for doing so, were more pessimistic than they once were. Many people did not think they would have more and live better than their parents. But the survey also found that people were redefining their dream away from material success toward more abstract values. Concepts like freedom, equality, and opportunity were mentioned as the "real" American dream by an increasing number of people.

Obviously, this says something about people's optimism in difficult times. It also signals a welcome, if temporary, departure from measuring success in terms of how much "stuff" one can acquire. I think this trend should be encouraged, and I herewith state my New American Dream and hope that others will share it:

1. That we in the USA stop polluting the planet and do what needs to be done to reverse the damage, even if it means our standard of living declines somewhat.

2. That everyone in the USA has sufficient food, clothing, and shelter.

3. That everyone in the USA has adequate health care coverage that is not tied to employment.

4. That we in the USA take proper care of children and the elderly.

5. That we in the USA stop discriminating against one another on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or any similar factor.

6. That the USA be responsible for providing meaningful work for its population that doesn't involve only providing consumer items for everyone else.

7. That the USA develop and administer an education policy that is inclusive and effective and focuses more on learning and thinking than on self-esteem building.

8. That rich people and corporations in the USA accept that they have to pay a fair amount of taxes to support the country and its people.

9. That the government of the USA stop sending its citizens to die in irrelevant wars and instead concentrate on helping people who need it.

10. That everyone in the USA stop waving guns and flags around and concentrate instead on items 1-9.

And that's it, folks.

Time to Consider Plan B

Remember those college loans? Time to pay up, sucker!

Brennan Jackson , a high school student in Los Angeles, is desperately trying to patch together enough scholarships to enable him to attend the University of California at Berkeley next year. He is an A- student and he wants to go to a good college, but with his father out of work and another college-age sibling right behind him, money is tight. And, Brennan is finding, financial aid is tight, too.

There's an old song that says "You don't always get what you want," and I think Brennan should be listening to that wisdom. Forget about Berkeley for now, kid, and go to whatever two-year or four-year public college is within commuting distance.

In an age when nearly half the high-school population is expecting to go to college and the quality of public primary and secondary education is declining, the bachelor's degree is rapidly becoming the new high school diploma. Would you go into debt to pay for the "new high school diploma" for your child? Maybe, if the child is smart and willing to work hard and there is no way to pay for a basic college degree without borrowing some money, but as little as possible, please, or you're a dope.

At the present time, well-regarded public colleges are seeing a surge in interest. Another possibility that cash-strapped parents and students are exploring is starting the college education at a two-year public college and then transferring. In New York State, at least, the standard of education at public two-year colleges is not different from the four-year colleges, at least in the liberal arts or Associate in Arts (AA) degree programs. A student from the Syracuse area who got an AA degree from Onondaga Community College and got good grades could expect to transfer to a four-year college without any difficulty.

In the grocery store, "name" brands may sometimes be better than store brands or "off-label" brands. And Harvard is still Harvard, in part because Harvard has a lot of money to spend on faculty and facilities (although not as much as they used to), and in part because it can be much more selective in admissions than less celebrated institutions. But not all private colleges are Harvard, and borrowing money to send a kid to a Brand X private college is basically a waste of money. Bragging rights are nice, but bankruptcy isn't, and starting out on a career with a huge student-loan debt is crazy.

Roger Federer's Crisis of Confidence

Roger Federer tosses away the racket he smashed in his loss to Novak Djokovic in Miami

The Gillette Company is currently running an advertisement in the US with its Terrific Threesome, Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federer. In the spot, Jeter and Woods, both wearing "cool shoes," strut down a New York City street to the strains of the disco tune "Staying Alive." When they encounter Roger Federer decked out in silver high-heeled platform shoes with a gaudy gold chain around his neck, they give him looks of scorn. Federer just smiles back. The statement "Here's to Confidence," flashes on the screen.

The timing is unfortunate, to say the least. In fact, it is somewhat reminiscent of the American Express Company's "Where's Andy's Mojo?" ad campaign that self-destructed when Andy Roddick lost to a nobody in the first round of the U.S. Open in 2005. It's bad enough that Federer smashed his racket in frustration during his 3-set semifinal loss to Novak Djokovic at the ATP Masters Series event in Miami on April 3rd. Worse is the fact that, after taking a wild card into the ATP Masters Series event in Monte Carlo, he went out tamely in straight sets to his countryman Stanislas Wawrinka in just the third round (April 17th). Last year, Federer was a finalist in Monte Carlo, where he lost to Rafael Nadal. A loss to Nadal is not an embarassment on any surface, but a loss to Stan Wawrinka? True, clay is Wawrinka's best surface, but Federer normally eats him for breakfast. The fact is, Roger Federer has not exactly looked confident in his last two matches.

To tell the truth, Federer's confidence has been almost as damaged as that smashed racket since his loss to Rafael Nadal in the final match of the Wimbledon Championship last year. He made a comeback to win his 13th Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open in September of 2008, but then melted down again against Nadal in the final of the Australian Open this year. So far, Federer has not won a title in 2009. It's early yet, of course, and Roger got a late start last year, too, before coming on strong in the later part of the year, but the clock is ticking. Will he equal or exceed Pete Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slam titles or stall out at a not-so-lucky 13? Federer will turn 28 in August, and most people don't win Grand Slam titles at that age.

It doesn't help that Federer, newly married to his longtime girlfriend Mirka Vavrinec, is expecting to become a father sometime soon. First-time parenthood has to be a major distraction, to say the least. But there seems to be more than that going on. For one thing, Rafael Nadal is at the peak of his powers at age 22, and 20-year-old Andy Murray is hotter than anyone except Nadal this year. (They have both won 3 titles so far this year, but Nadal got his 6th Grand Slam title in Melbourne in January.) Roger Federer appears to have slowed down a bit, which has affected the timing on his groundstrokes, causing many more unforced errors, and his serve is not as reliable as it once was. Against most players, he is still a dominating force, but the young guns, including 21-year old Novak Djokovic, the world's number three player, are a different challenge than they posed a couple of years ago.

As Federer plays on the downhill side of a magnificent career, there are definitely questions to be answered, questions that probably underlie his fragile confidence. Can he still win a Grand Slam title? Can he find a way to be effective against Nadal and Murray, who stand squarely in the path of his record-breaking, or at least record-tying ambitions? Is there a way for a prodigiously talented, yet aging player, to get better at a difficult time in his career? Can he find a coach who can really help him, and will he listen to that coach if he finds him?

The fans on the sidelines have their own answers to these questions of course. A string of wins is all Roger Federer needs to rebuild his confidence. But how to get those wins? My recipe for success would be improved fitness and more aggressive play. After a year and more of mononucleosis and a nagging back injury, Federer has to get into the best phsyical shape possible, which might include building up his shoulders, arms and legs, while still shaving off a little weight overall. He doesn't need to go around flexing his biceps for the crowd like Andy Murray, but it wouldn't hurt for the biceps to get a little bigger. Andy Roddick was sure that he could not lose weight and be effective, but his new coach, Larry Stefanki, showed him that wasn't the case.

In my opinion, a new coach and more aggressive play go hand in hand. Federer, who played his best seasons without a coach, is notoriously difficult to coach. Whoever takes on the job must be someone Federer respects and will listen to, who will encourage him in a net-rushing style of play that he knows is effective, but up until now has been unwilling to play consistently. Darren Cahill turned Roger down recently, for reasons of his own. John McEnroe has volunteered for the job, but doesn't seem like a good choice to me. If I were Roger Federer, I would be knocking on the door of someone like Boris Becker, one of his youthful idols. Big, strong, aggressive, tough minded, if Becker can't do a confidence transplant for Roger Federer, I don't know who can. He would certainly be my choice, if he is available and willing.

Will Roger Federer get his mojo (oops! confidence) back? The season is still young. We'll just have to wait and see.

John Madden Leaves the Field

Football commentator John Madden has recently announced that he is retiring. His last broadcast was the Superbowl game in February, 2009. Madden, 73, filled the role of "color man," and colorful is the most fitting word to describe him and what he did.

Before he went to TV, Madden was a football coach. He was an award-winning college football player who earned a B.S. and M.A. in Education and then began coaching. Al Davis hired him as a linebacker coach with the Oakland Raiders in 1967, and he subsequently became the Raiders' head coach in 1967. At age 33, he was then the youngest head coach in professional football. After many close calls and near misses, Madden's Raiders finally won a Super Bowl title in January, 1977. Once the Super Bowl title was achieved, John Madden retired from coaching. He did football commentary for CBS, Fox, and ABC, then moved to NBC in 2005. On April 16, 2009, John Madden announced his retirement, saying simply, "It's time."

John Madden is an educated man with a profound knowledge of football, but he made his mark as a color commentator by stating the obvious in a discursive style. He loved football because it was a down-to-earth game. People get dirty playing football, and in John Madden's mind, you can tell good players by how dirty they get. He was not impressed by flash. Work ethic was what counted. He used to pick an "All-Madden Team" every year, and the guys who made the All-Madden team were mainly linemen and defensive players of all kinds. Madden enthused about the players who made the blocks that allowed the quarterbacks, running backs, and receivers to make the big plays.

He had a great love for good tackles. "Boom!" he would say when a 275-pound defensive player ran full-tilt into a 190-pound running back and laid him out flat. "Boom!" was John Madden's trademark word, and it expressed his absolute joy in good, solid defensive play. In John Madden's book, "dirty players" were the guys who got the job done, and that was the aspect of football that he loved the most and was best at describing.

Thanks to EA Sports, John Madden also became a video game icon. I suspect that more people know him from the video game world than because he is a member of the Football Hall of Fame. For those who knew him as a coach and a color commentator, an era is coming to an end. When Madden left ABC, it took two men (Cris Collingsworth and Troy Aikman) to replace him. The fact is, you can't really replace John Madden, so he will certainly be missed.

I Bought a Tree!

In a year or two, I'll be seeing something like this from my kitchen window.

Yesterday I went to Ontario Orchards in Oswego, NY and bought a tree for my backyard. I had some particular needs in mind, and after hours of web-searching I had a pretty good idea of what would be appropriate, but it is different when you are walking through a nursery full of beautiful trees.

I stopped to look longingly at some Japanese maples. I think they are so graceful, and I love their red foliage. Unfortunately, they are slow-growing trees, and one of my needs was reasonably fast growth. As I explained to the friendly man at the nursery, I will probably only be living where I am for about six more years. I don't see any point in buying a tree that is 3 feet tall and having it be 4 feet tall when I am packing to leave. And large slow-growing trees are expensive to buy. It stands to reason: If a tree grows slowly, it takes a long time to get it to a reasonable size, which means the grower has had to take care of it for a long time. Time equals money. Still, I looked at a Japanese maple that was about 15 feet tall. $400, the tag said. That's a lot, and then I would have to pay to have it planted. No, better look at something a little more in my line.

Actually, I had more or less decided ahead of time that I would buy a flowering crabapple tree. They are not really big trees, but they grow reasonably quickly. They have lovely flowers in the spring and fruit that attracts birds. I could afford a flowering crabapple, and it would be pretty. I had considering buying a white birch. They don't have showy flowers, but the bark is beautiful, and they are quite fast growers. There are two things I don't like about birches, however. The first is that they often have multiple trunks, and the second is that they are pretty fragile. In our climate, with all the snow and ice, I could foresee broken limbs or the whole tree coming down in an ice storm. No, a flowering crabapple would be better.

As I wandered through the nursery, I saw many trees of varying sizes. My eye was drawn repeatedly to quite a big tree among the flowering trees for sale. It was an ornamental cherry tree with, so the tag said, pink flowers. It was more than 15 feet high, with quite a thick trunk and lower branches, and it cost $250. Cherry trees belong to the genus prunus, which also includes plums, peaches, and apricots. They are quite fast growers, and they have lovely white or pink flowers in the spring. Birds eat the fruit, of course, which is a plus. (Cherry bird poop on the porch and the driveway will be a minus, but I'll live with that.) Everyone has heard of cherry blossom time in Japan. What could be more beautiful than that?

I was convinced. This tree had size, speed of growth, beauty, and a reasonable price. "I'll buy it," I told the nursery man, and he made out the invoice. I did buy it, and in a few weeks they will come to plant it in my backyard. I can hardly wait!

The Agony of Defeat

What, me frustrated? What makes you think that?

Every year, I look forward to playing fantasy tennis. For the past three years, I played on the ATP Tour website, but it looks as if that game is inoperative this year, most likely because the Stanford Group, which sponsored it, is in financial trouble. So I went looking for another site, and it turned out not to be easy. I found a fantasy tennis league at http://www.tennis-pool.com/ and signed up.

The set-up is different. For one thing, you choose teams for both men's tennis and women's tennis. That's a challenge for me, because what I don't know about women's tennis would fill volumes. The reason for that is that I am not interested in women's tennis, but what the heck, I thought I'd give it a try. But wait; there's more. You choose a 10-player team for the WTA and the ATP. For each team, you have $15 million to spend, and each player has a dollar amount attached. The higher-ranked the player, the more he or she costs. That's logical, and I have no complaints. The catch is that you can only trade three players for each tournament. That doesn't work very well, and this week I crashed and burned on the ATP side, at least, before the second round had been completed.

Now that the European clay court season is underway, I wanted to add Rafael Nadal to my team. They don't call him the King of Clay for nothing, and if one of your players wins the tournament, it doesn't hurt so much if all your other players lose early. Unfortunately, Nadal costs about $750,000, and you can only trade three players, so I couldn't add him without exceeding the salary cap. Believe me, I tried six ways to Sunday to do it, but it just didn't work. Up until this week, Andy Murray had led my team, but I was afraid he wouldn't do well on clay, so I wanted someone with a better clay court record. Roger Federer took a last-minute wild card entry into the ATP Masters Series tournament at Monte Carlo, so I chose him and, after much pain, reconfigured my team to accommodate him using only three trades.

The first problem was that two of my players, Steve Darcis and Nicolas Lapentti, had to qualify for the tournament. That was a new experience, because I don't usually pay attention to the qualifying rounds. Lapentti made it, but Darcis did not. Now I was down to 9 players, and the tournament proper had not yet begun. But I took heart, because I had some good clay court players on my team, like Tommy Robredo, Nicolas Almagro, and Igor Andreev, and I figured most of my players were worth one or two wins, even if they didn't go very far into the tournament. Not!

By the end of the first round, I had lost 7 of my 9 players. Roger Federer, seeded number 2 in the tournament, had beaten Andreas Seppi, and Nicolas Lapentti beat Radek Stepanek, seeded number 15 in the tournament, a good win. Then came the second round, in which Federer lost to his countryman Stan Wawrinka in straight sets. Only Lapentti, the qualifier, survived, defeating Russian Marat Safin. Okay, I'm down to one player with three rounds left to play. And who does Nicolas Lapentti face in round 3? Rafael Nadal. Want to bet who will win that match?

As it happens, I'm doing a little better on the WTA side of the ledger, but I am just not interested, even though I will take all the points I can get. But it's the men's side that interests me, and before tomorrow is over I'll be wiped out. And by the way, Andy Murray is doing just fine, thank you very much. Oh, the agony of defeat! (But next week I'll squeeze Nadal onto my team. You can bet on that.)

No More Cable News for Me

Does this caption look like it came from a tabloid? That's what I think, too.

Okay, I've had it. I am through watching news on the cable news channels. All of their so-called virtues are vices in my book. Their highly-touted "raw, honest reporting" means sloppy, raucous drivel a good deal of the time. Honest is good, if it means factual and sincere, but I have my doubts whether anyone at CNN, MSNBC or Fox News Channel remembers what factual and sincere are about. And what's so good about raw? Thoughtful, insightful, well-considered reporting is what I'm looking for, and I have finally concluded that I will never find it on a 24-hour cable news network.

You may be asking yourself why it has taken me so long to reach this conclusion. The answer is that I am dumb, stubborn, and suffer from self-delusion. Even so, I have my limits, and the limits have been exceeded. No more crackpots like Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity. No more blowhards like Chris Matthews. No more breathless, fast-talking twerps like Anderson Cooper. No more smarmy, self-important anchors like Wolf Blitzer. No more talking heads shouting each other down. Even on Fareed Zakaria GPS the guests yell at each other and drown each other out. I thought Fareed Zakaria had more brains than that. No more yelping silliness from Keith Olbermann, the most sophomoric so-called newsman in the world! No more pundits of any kind. No more shouts of: "Breaking news! This just in!" I can't take it anymore, and I have exercised my right to change the station once and for all.

So what finally pushed me over the edge? Well, it was a variety of things. I'm tired of being shouted at and hectored by news anchors and overzealous journalists and pundits. I'm tired of having my intelligence insulted by people who are desperately trying to keep me on the hook for just one more segment. I'm tired of Jack Cafferty reading out the silly answers to his silly questions and his blatant self-promotion. I'm tired of journalists interviewing journalists as if they were important people. I'm tired of "balanced" meaning one talking head from Column A and one from Column B and giving them a very short time to slug it out and see who can talk the fastest and the loudest. I'm sick to death of Wolf Blitzer cutting off an interviewee just as he or she starts to say something interesting that deviates from the script. I'm even sicker to death of Chris Matthews calling abusive monologues interviews.

And if that isn't enough, I'm tired of the ads for Flomax and Cialis, big ugly trucks and SUVs, and online banks, insurance companies, and stockbrokers. And even more, I'm sick of ads for gadgets, debt-reduction companies, cash for your gold jewelry, and all the other advertisements that look like they came out of the back pages of the trashy magazines I remember from my youth. In fact, it finally dawned on me that 24-hour news networks are tabloids, and I don't like it.

Fine, now that we have all that taken care of, what am I going to do for news? First, I'm going to continue to read the New York Times online. They have their share of annoying articles, but they don't shout at you, and you don't have to read anything you don't want to. There may be ads, but they are easier to ignore. Second, when I want TV news, I am going to watch The News Hour With Jim Lehrer on PBS. No more "raw" news for me. On the News Hour, people with brains have already reviewed the news stories of the day, made a choice about what is important to cover, and examined it in depth. It's moderate and low-key, and the pundits (there is no escaping pundits) don't shout at each other. And I may watch Washington Week in Review on PBS, as well. Gwen Iffel sits down with four journalists with expertise in certain areas and reviews the week's news for one half hour every week. Quietly, politely, with no shouting. I like that, and that's what I'm going with from now on.

Of course, if there really is a crisis of the kind that has you hanging on the TV and waiting for any and every bit of information that comes along, I may have to watch CNN, but I'm hoping it doesn't happen anytime soon. And even then, I'm going to impose a quota. As Walter Cronkite used to say, "And that's the way it is."

Foodspeak: Words You Didn’t Know You Had to Know

Cooking meat sous vide. You can cook anything sous vide, except ice cream maybe. For that you use liquid nitrogen.

In the United States, pretty nearly everything and everyone came originally from somewhere else. Even our indigenous peoples trekked in from elsewhere in long-ago times. In cooking, the foods, the techniques, and the presentations often come wrapped in foreign terms. Thanks to Julia Child and others of her generation and subsequent generations, many of these words have become familiar to American diners, but there always seem to be new ones.

It doesn’t help that the foreign words are frequently mispronounced by the American TV foodies and chefs who use them. Nevertheless, with time some of the words find their way into fairly common usage. These days, everyone talks about things prepared as confit, for example. Most people who are seriously interested in food and its preparation would recognize the term mise en place. But food and cooking are so international these days that there are always words you haven't heard before, even if you discover that you have already seen the technique in practice.

My foodie word of the day is sous vide. When this term cropped up repeatedly in a New York Times article about the foodie pig du jour, the curly-haired, high-fat Mangalitsa pig of Hungary, I felt I needed to educated myself. I discovered that sous vide is a French (what else?) technique for sealing food in a vacuum-packed plastic pouch and cooking it slowly in water just below the boiling point. This way the food keeps its shape but becomes incredibly tender, moist, and imbued with whatever flavorings the chef used. Apparently, that's the thing to do with this rare and high-priced pork. It turns out that I had seen this technique used on Iron Chef America, but I don't recall ever hearing the term sous vide. On TV they called it "immersion cooking" No surprise, really. It's a lot easier to pronouce than sous vide. In fact, on Iron Chef America they cook all sorts of things sous vide, just because they can. It's the new confit.

It's a technology thing, of course. Some high-end cooking has gotten very technical indeed. It is called molecular gastronomy by the in-the-know crowd. Did you know that you can wrap food in an edible paper that has a picture printed on it? I don't know why you would, but it can be done, and I'm sure you would have to pay top dollar for it. And then there is lecithin, an emulsifier that is used to make foam to use as a garnish. Foams have become so familiar that cutting-edge cooks probably don't use them anymore. It's just so yesterday. Or you could mix some tasty fluid with sodium alginate and drip it into a bath of calcium chloride, which produces little spheres that are often called "caviar." Halibut steaks cooked sous vide garnished with wasabi foam and carrot caviar-- doesn't that sound toothsome? Another mad science cooking technique involves the use of liquid nitrogen, but you'd better know what you're doing, because it can be dangerous. For example, you can put pureed fruit (a coulis, to those in the know) in a balloon, then bathe the balloon carefully in liquid nitrogen, which freezes the contents. When you peel off the balloon, you have a frozen fruit sphere. Of course, you could probably freeze the stuff in your freezer in some sort of mold, but that wouldn't be as dramatic.

But I digress. If you can afford pork from a Mangalitsa pig, you can cook it sous vide and end up with something very delicious, although you can probably roast this high-end pork in the oven and get something very delicious, too. Or if you can't find the pork, which you probably can't, you can cook eggs sous vide, which is supposed to be a very basic application of the technique. It makes the neatest looking poached eggs you ever did see, although it is a bit expensive. Bon appetit!

Longing for Spring

Trilliums in spring

For a couple of weeks now, it has been light when I awaken in the morning. It is still light when I close the blinds after 5 pm. Even though it is still early in March, somewhere, somehow, winter is ending.

For some people, the anticipation of spring starts with the arrival of seed catalogs. I have been thinking about gardening in my back yard Do I want raised beds? Will I rent a rototiller? What kind of tree will I buy to replace the ungainly mulberry that I had cut down last year? Right now, I want spring to come so much it hurts.

This is a dangerous time in my part of the world. Winter may be ending on the calendar, but in Oswego, NY it can easily snow in late April. At the end of May, when people take flowers to the cemetery for Memorial Day, it is usually cold and rainy. It is not unusual for hopeful gardeners, seduced by the displays in the catalogs and at the garden centers, to set out plants too early. What can you expect when winter has been around since last October?

Around here, we like to say we have four seasons, but the four seasons situation is pretty precarious. Winter rules, followed by a summer that may be hot and dry or hot and humid, and we generally have a reasonable sort of autumn (but not last year). Spring, when we have it, doesn't seem to last long, which is a shame because it is such a beautiful time.

I can't think of anything more beautiful than the soft green of new leaves on the trees, unless it's the scent of lilacs. What is more moving than a forsythia in full bloom or a great drift of daffodils in new grass? Just don't blink, because the only thing more overwhelming than the beauty of spring is the speed with which it disappears.

One of these days I am going to plant some spring flowering bulbs. At least, I am going to plant some daffodils and crocuses, and maybe even some hyacinths. I don't plant tulip bulbs anymore. Why pay out good money to feed the squirrels? I had some overgrown lilacs cut down to the ground last year, and I am curious to see what, if anything, sprouts from their stumps. I already know that after the two peonies in the back yard bloom this year, my friend Michele is going to come and dig them out. She loves peonies, but for me, they are always a disappointment. Last year they were loaded with blooms that collapsed a day later when it rained. When they're gone, I'm going to plant hydrangeas.

At this time of year, a lot of my thoughts start with the words I'm going to. Not all my plans come to fruition, but the plans themselves do much to sustain me.

Exotic Foods (3): Buddha's Hand

Not your Grandma's citrus. Strange to look at, challenging to use.

If you have ever watched the current opening sequence of Iron Chef America, you have probably seen a chef grating a strange looking object, a yellow thing with a narrow base and yellow fingerlike projections. It turns out that the strange-looking critter is a Buddha's Hand fruit.

According to one food blogger, the Buddha's Hand is "a lemon that's all rind" Another article calls it "a fragrant curiosity." Apparently, in Asia people hang it up and use it as an air freshener. In fact, it is given as a house-warming gift.

As far as cooking is concerned, it is mainly used as a flavoring. For example, I found a great illustrated recipe for using it to flavor vodka. You can do it yourself, or buy a buddha's hand vodka, such as that made by Hangar One distillery in California. Similarly, you can use the fruit to make the italian liqueur limoncello. Other people use it to flavor tea. Not surprisingly, you can also use it to flavor ice cream.

There is also a recipe that involves slicing the fingers thinly on a mandolin, blanching them, then cooking them in a sugar syrup. Obviously, this won't work with fruits that basically don't have anything inside, that is, are all rind and no pulp. You can also make candied fruit (or more accurately, fruit rind) with it. As far as I can tell, you can use Buddha's hand citron in place of lemon zest in practically anything. "All rind, no juice" seems to be the prevailing rule of thumb as far as using it as concerned.

Most people who write about it say that the intense, floral aroma is its greatest characteristic. So you can cook with it, or you can use it instead of Glade. Enjoy!

When Saying You're Sorry Isn't Enough

Former British resident Binyam Mohammad deplanes in London after being released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the U.S. is a nation of cowards for not facing up to racism in America. I dare say he's right, but for the time being, my conscience is too occupied with the apparently innocent victims who are gradually being released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

How do you say to these people, "I'm really sorry for what was done to you in our name"? And what good does that do anyway? How do you give restitution to them for 6 or 7 years stolen from their lives? How do you make up for the torture many of them were subjected to? Apology is where it starts, I suppose, but surely more is needed. No doubt, someone will offer the victims money, and they should think twice about refusing it. Although totally inadequate, monetary compensation may be useful when it comes to putting their lives back together. But it can't end there.

In South Africa, after the end of apartheid, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to help damaged people, both victims and perpetrators, heal and get on with their lives. I think we should do the same thing with the released detainees from Guantanamo Bay and any other secret prisons that we ran after 9/11. Of course, it would help to have counterparts of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to make things work. It's hard for me to imagine who they would be. Can you think of anyone in the USA with the moral authority to oversee a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Jimmy Carter, perhaps? But he would be condemned by many as partisan.

And then, you have to wonder if those responsible for the crimes and abuses would hear what was being said to them and recognize their deeds for what they are. If Binyam Mohammad could sit face to face with former President George W. Bush and tell him how he was treated as a result of Bush's policies, I actually think Bush would hear and be ashamed. But people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales? I don't think so. But at a minimum, they should have to sit in a room and be confronted by their accusers, and I don't mean a courtroom, because it's too easy to manage what will be said there. No, I mean a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where people can point a finger and say, "You destroyed my life. Why did you do it?"

The sooner the better.

Academic Freedom: Easy Cases Make Lousy Law

Stanley Fish is at it again in The New York Times, telling the rest of us what academic freedom ought to mean (not much, I think). Leaving aside the fact that Stanley Fish is a big shot who doesn't need to worry about academic freedom, his latest opinion piece starts with what seems to be an absurd example. Apparently, one Denis Rancourt, soon to be late of the University of Ottawa, is in the midst of a dismissal proceeding because he gave the students in his physics course A grades on the first day of class (because he doesn't believe in that students should be graded) and used the course as a platform for airing his views on political activism instead of teaching physics. Well, duh! Yeah, people are likely to get fired for doing that, but is that what academic freedom is about for most university faculty? If so, fire everybody and rebuild the university from the ground up.

I think it is important in research universities that faculty be protected from being fired when they do research and teach about controversial subjects. I think faculty in all colleges and universities should be protected from being fired because they cover what may be sensitive or unpopular topics as part of their courses. But I don't think that college faculty should be able to write or say anything they please, whether it is connected to their academic subject or not, whether it is uttered in a classroom or a scholarly journal or not, and be protected by academic freedom. If you are teaching economics, you should be able to be critical of the economic policies of whoever is in power without fear of being fired. If you are teaching a course in which the subject is relevant to the course material, you should be able to discuss abortion, global warming, evolution, assisted suicide, or whatever it is without being canned because a student, administrator, parent, or third party finds the subject unpleasant or distasteful. If you are teaching a course about community activism, getting students engaged in community activism should not be grounds for being fired. But if you are teaching basic physics, for example, that's what you should teach, and you should keep your discussion focused on the syllabus and not go running all around Robin Hood's barn talking about whatever interests you or makes you angry at that moment.

I think the hardest thing about giving some form and limits to academic freedom is that there is no consensus about what a university education consists of and what the goals of such an education are. There is little agreement about what the content of individual courses should be. And what standards exist are often established by academic professional associations that have their own agendas. Even so, one should probably be able to arrive at some basic notion of what the content of "Introduction to Biology" is and agree that calling Rush Limbaugh a fascist pig in class is not relevant and not protected by academic freedom.

At least, so I think. Academic freedom should not be the absolute protection from the consequences of the real world that some academics would like it to be, but I do think some protection of specifically academic speech, in class and in publications, is needed. Students don't benefit from having their instructor complain about his divorce when they are supposed to be studying "Paradise Lost" (haha, that's a joke), and they also don't benefit from not having their ideas about religion, politics, social order, ethics, race, or whatever challenged when it is relevant to the subject being taught. Many of the students I teach have religion-based problems with the idea of assisted suicide. I don't think I should be fired for teaching about something that disturbs a student's comfort level if it is part of the course.

However, if I am teaching a course in criminal law and go off on a rant about why Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank are impeding peace in the Middle East, should that be protected? I don't think so. But unless Big Brother is going to monitor everything one says and does in the classroom, how will anyone know? And if a student "informs" on a faculty member for straying from the subject of the course, how is one to protect oneself? I don't know that either. Life is certainly less stressful when one can shelter under an absolute cloak of academic freedom. But how far can academic freedom and autonomy go? Beats me.

What is a Green Job?

This offshore windfarm is in Denmark, but it could easily be in Lake Ontario. How green can you get?

Every time I turn on the TV, some politician (often President Obama) is talking about creating green jobs. What is a green job? I mean, sometimes it is a no-brainer: Someone whose work is creating non-polluting, renewable energy is doing a green job. Yes? Okay, but even if that's accurate, what other green jobs are there? And what other green jobs could there be?

During the election campaign, Mr. Obama painted a very rosy picture of green employment: "Jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators." California (which is presently staggering under the burden of something exceeding $45 billion of debt) is supposed to be the green capital of the United States. They have very high emissions standards for cars, for example, to reduce pollution. So, it seems like building low-emissions cars that reduce pollution would involve green jobs. By that logic, building energy efficient appliances and energy efficient houses must involve green jobs, too. And building hybrid cars that use less gasoline must be a green occupation. Does any of this make sense?

The thing is, you can get into difficulties in defining green activities pretty quickly. Suppose I hire someone to put more insulation into my house so I will use less energy? That sounds green to me. But if the person or persons who do this work drive gas-guzzling trucks and use materials that are bad for the environment, the job just got a lot less green. Right? So, is it a light green job?

Building or extending mass transit systems is obviously green in one way, but how much pollution does the construction activity itself entail? Centro, the bus company that services our region, operates both hybrid-diesel and compressed natural gas vehicles. That's good, although at this point a good many of their buses do not yet use a green technology. The more of these vehicles they buy, the less pollution they create, the less non-renewable fuel they use, and, I assume, the more they contribute to the creation of green jobs.

Organic farming must be a green activity. Would hazardous materials cleanup be a green occupation? But what do they do with the hazardous materials? Recycling seems like a green activity, but I have read that some of the paper, glass, and plastic that is collected ends up in landfills, not recycling plants. New York State is trying to pass a "bigger, better bottle bill," that would require people to pay a 5 cent deposit on cans and bottles of water and non-soda beverages. That seems like it must be a green activity, because it would expand recycling by encouraging people to collect and turn in those beverage containers that I see littering the streets all the time right now. As long as those containers don't end up in a landfill afterwards. Right?

My head is beginning to ache. I believe in cleaning up our environment and reducing greenhouse gases and reducing our carbon footprint and all of that stuff. I will pay taxes to support it, and I will learn to do things differently to encourage it. But somehow, I am sceptical about where all this green activity is going to come from and whether it is for real or just a scam. For example, did you know that Senator Edward Kennedy opposes the construction of a windfarm in Nantucket Sound five miles off Cape Cod? Yes, indeed he does, because it might spoil his view. Green is nice, but not in my backyard, pal!

Yes, green is good, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Are Government Spending Programs a Waste? Who Cares?

FDR's Works Progress Administration employed a lot of artists, so why not give a chunk of money to the National Endowment for the Arts?

While President Obama and all the members of Congress make themselves look foolish wrangling over the "stimulus package," and executives in the banking and financial industry keep giving their employees bonuses and riding around in corporate jets, and while Rush Limbaugh, the Loser-in-Chief, keeps braying that he hopes the Obama administration is a failure, you still can't help asking yourself whether most government spending programs are indeed a waste.

At least, I can't help asking myself that question, and my worries got a major boost this week as I listened to a presentation by a person who worked in a particular state educational program. I don't want to say anything bad about this person, so let's just say it was one of those situations where the state government had recognized that not enough students majored in certain important academic disciplines. The point of the program, as far as I can make out, is to get more people to study these subjects and give both emotional and material support to students who do. The problem is that not enough students have materialized to take advantage of the program. What does one do then? Well, one could re-assess the goal and decide it was bad. Or one could re-assess the program and decide it was faulty. If the goal is worthy but the program has flaws, one could work to fix those flaws so the program would work better. Right?

Not exactly, because there is another choice, a very common "Plan B" for government programs, which is to keep the program as it is and just reinterpret who it applies to, so you have enough people enrolled to keep the program going and spend the money allocated to it. And that is what the education program in question was obviously doing. This happens so often that it makes me want to tear my hair out, or at least tear somebody's hair out. Why is it that failing programs are not assessed and, if needed, corrected or eliminated?

I hope you don't expect me to have an answer to this question, other than to say that our government doesn't operate in a rational way. Maybe it's inertia-- once you set the old ball rolling, it continues to roll. In this example, it even rolls uphill. If I were in charge of it, something would have changed already, but I'm not sure anyone knows what happens to a lot of the taxpayer money that is spent by various governments every year.

I'm also not sure how to determine which spending is "good" spending and which isn't. If you are a Republican, any spending that doesn't benefit the rich or "the base" is bad spending. If you are a Democrat, nearly all spending is good spending, but spending on the so-called "liberal agenda" is the best spending. Honestly, I don't care if Congress gives the National Endowment for the Arts $50 million in the stimulus package. It probably won't be used any more wastefully than any other money that is included in the bill. But I really don't understand why one would cut out the $16 billion for K-12 school construction. Hey, we've got some of those "shovel-ready" school projects here in Oswego County, and we could use both the jobs and the schools. And even though the states are wasteful, they need that $40 billion that the Senate cut out of the stimulus package to help keep from going bankrupt. Yes, a lot of it will be wasted, but some of it will help, so keep it in.

Of course, you have already seen where my twisted logic is taking me. Yes, government spending programs tend to be wasteful, and yes, once they come into being they never seem to be fixed or eliminated, no matter how flawed they are. Yes, indeed. But guess what? The members of Congress may expect applause for proposing to forgo their next scheduled pay raise, but it won't help anybody, and nobody is going to applaud. Just get off the dime and spend the goddamn money already, and let's cross our fingers and hope that some of it does some good.

Tarnished Icons: The Ups and Downs of the Wheaties Box

Everybody out of the pool! Michael Phelps takes a miss on Wheaties box immortality in 2009. This picture was on a box in 2004.

Wheaties is a breakfast cereal consisting of wheat and bran flakes that turn into wallpaper paste when milk is poured on them. They are manufactured by General Mills, the successor to the Washburn Crosby Company, which first marketed the cereal in 1924 under the name of Washburn's Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes. The cereal was a health food item that ended up a commercial success and, in some people's opinion, goes a long way toward proving that nothing that is good for you tastes good. Not long afterward, the cereal became known as Wheaties (the name was chosen by means of a contest). Wheaties started sponsoring baseball games on the radio in 1933. The association with sports earned the cereal its famous description as "the breakfast of champions," and a year later came the first depiction of a real-life athlete on the box. This was preceded by the picture of Jack Armstrong, a character in a popular radio serial.

Swimmer Michael Phelps, who won 8 gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is not going to have his picture on a Wheaties box this year. You see, Michael, who was feeling a little stressed because of the weight of celebrity, was recently photographed smoking marijuana at a party. Michael Phelps is indeed a celebrity, and he is also 22 years old. He has been training as a swimmer since the age of 7, and despite all his media exposure, he appears to be very immature. He won't be the first famous athlete to miss adorning a box of Wheaties, of course. In fact, most athletes never have that honor, if that's what it is. Athletes who get their pictures on the Wheaties box are supposed to be role models, and a pot-smoking Michael Phelps doesn't fit the bill. (He has already been on a Wheaties box, however, in 2004, but he hadn't been caught smoking pot then.) If you want to be on a Wheaties box, don't be openly gay, don't be political, don't do drugs, don't gamble on sports. Or at least don't be caught doing it until it's too late. Would Mickey Mantle have been on a Wheaties box if it had been known how much he drank?

To get the facts straight, the first athlete whose image appeared on the front of a box of Wheaties cereal was baseball great Lou Gehrig. This happened in 1934. Since then, dozens of athletes have graced the Wheaties box, including Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Chris Evert, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Pete Sampras, and Tiger Woods. In fact, so many great athletes have had the honor that you can't even list the most important ones. How about Babe Ruth, Arnold Palmer, Willie Mays, Jack Dempsey, Don Budge, Joe Montana, and Johnny Unitas? The entire Boston Red Sox baseball team got a Wheaties box in 2004 for finally winning a World Series. David Cone and David Wells each pitched a perfect game and got a Wheaties box. Some athletes have a moment of Olympic glory and end up on a Wheaties box, like Johnny Weismuller, Bruce Jenner, Mark Spitz, and Mary Lou Retton. Ken Griffey, Jr. has been pictured more than half a dozen times. Why?

Some athletes who have been enshrined, such as Lance Armstrong, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds, have later had their images tarnished, and some form of drugging, whether professional or recreational has been involved. And then there is Pete Rose, who was banished from baseball for betting on games, or Magic Johnson, who ended up HIV-positive as a result of his hundreds (thousands) of sexual adventures. And there are athletes who did get a box, and it seems that somebody forgot about the role model thing, such as heavily tattooed, cross-dressing basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman or the incredibly highly-paid Mr. Choke-in-the-Playoffs, otherwise known as Alex Rodgriguez.

Why doesn't Jack Nicklaus have a Wheaties box of his own (there is a special edition box with a picture of Nicklaus and Tiger Woods)? I have no idea. Did you know that the real Mr. October, Reggie Jackson, never had his picture on a Wheaties box? Neither did football great Jim Brown. Too controversial? I wouldn't be surprised. And neither did basketball's Charles Barkley. It may have been the gambling and the barfights. John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, both legendary tennis players, never made it to Wheaties fame. Was it something they said, perhaps? Wheaties paid tribute to Esther Williams, Ted Williams, and Bernie Williams, but what about Venus Williams and Serena Williams? Nope. Of course, you can guess why there is no Billie Jean King box, or Martina Navratilova or Greg Louganis.

The best way to get on a Wheaties box is to play baseball or football. Basketball does pretty well. Tennis and soccer are not so good. There are very few hockey players, but Wayne Gretzky made it. Many Olympic champions have been on Wheaties boxes, starting with pole vaulter Bob Richards in 1952. Dale Earnhardt from Nascar got a box, and so did A.J. Foyt, but football and baseball are best, even if you are forgotten soon afterward. Do you remember Johnny Allen or Beau Bell? How about Zeke Bonura or Tommy Bridges? Surely you remember Gabby Hartnett? No? All baseball players, all on a Wheaties box.

Maybe General Mills should forget about putting athletes on the Wheaties box and try honoring some real role models, like Jimmy Carter or Desmond Tutu. Or Mother Teresa, perhaps? It wouldn't hurt. Or how about Bill Clinton? Oops! Disqualified.

Individual Interest vs. Public Interest: Playing by the Rules

"Only little people pay taxes," Leona Helmsley said once upon a time. Has anything changed since then? No!

I hate politics. To me, politics is about taking care of your own interests (or those of your particular group) at the expense of the public interest. In my view, political behavior and self-interested behavior are the same thing. Whether it is the Republicans in the House of Representatives voting unanimously against the recent economic stimulus legislation so that the Democrats will have to take all the blame for it if it fails or the several nominees to top jobs in the Obama administration who have had to admit (after being caught) that they had not paid their full share of taxes, politicians are greedy, self-serving SOBs.

So are the bankers and the others in the financial industry who accepted taxpayer-supported bailouts and then distributed the money to their executives as bonuses. After all, those guys did such a great job, didn't they? And then there are the auto industry executives who ran their companies into the ground, the financial advisors like Bernie Madoff who bilked investors out of billions of dollars, and the oil companies who love to rip off consumers, etc. When I think of it, I wonder why I bother to complain so loudly about politicians.

Of course, we won't even talk about the news media, which try to keep the nation in a constant state of turmoil to satisy the 24/7 news cycle and rejoice (as unobstrusively as they can manage) when they have a disaster to report on. And if they don't have a real disaster to talk about, they always seem to be able to invent one: "Does the Obama family use enough dental floss? Are they at risk of periodontal disease? Should we be worried about this? We'll have more on this emerging story in the next half-hour."

And while we're at it, I am angry with all the greedy people in this country who just couldn't buy enough, spend enough, and borrow enough to keep up with their neighbors and are now alternately whining about how much they're suffering and patting themselves on the back for every small step they take toward acting the way financially responsible people have done all along.

On the other hand, I do have some sympathy for the people who sell space bags and self-storage units. They have been fulfilling a genuine need to provide storage options for people with too much stuff, and now they are probably going broke. In fact, companies that rent self-storage units to the public have all sorts of difficulties, ranging from finding units filled with fertilizer (stinky!) to others filled with illegal drugs. But it can get worse. One woman found a mummified baby in a self-storage unit, and others have contained cremation urns with the ashes of someone's dear departed. And then there are the people who try to live in their self-storage units. What's so strange about that? Self storage. Get it?

Okay, let's be serious. It seems to be human nature to not want to live by the rules that "regular" people live by, and it seems to be an equally human trait to deplore other people's greed and lack of responsibility. Who didn't wince when Leona Helmsley allegedly drew a distinction between herself and the "little people," who had to live by the rules and pay their taxes? But isn't that what people like Timothy Geithner, Nancy Killefer, and Tom Daschle must think, too? (Maybe we just won't mention Bill Richardson and his corruption investigation.) And Geithner got away with it! Those financial guys can get away with anything!