The Duality Principle of American Politics

Every once in a while you hear something that crystallizes a complex concept so well that you sit back for a moment in awe of the effort and intellect behind it. The other day, while driving into work (something I rarely do, given the convenience of our local mass transit system), I heard just such a thing on our local NPR station's listener segment called "Perspective." The contributor was Paul Staley. Here is what he said:

"Some counter-intuitive scientific explanations are easier for me to accept than others. For example, although it certainly looks like the opposite is happening, I "get it" that the Earth is rotating around the sun. Others, such as the wave particle duality principle of quantum physics that states that matter and light exhibit the behavior of both waves and particles, present more of a challenge. I'll take the word of the physicists on this one.

"But even if I can't visualize what is going on at a subatomic level, I still sense the truth of this concept because I know that this duality of particle and wave occurs on a much larger scale, since it is the essence of our political lives. We are all both particle and wave. We are, each of us, individuals with rights and at the same time members of various communities. We have freedoms that must be protected. But we have not only responsibilities but also the obligation to recognize that our actions affect others. We are always, simultaneously ourselves, and part of something bigger.

"The polarized political dialogue in this country is an argument between sides that choose to see us as having only one of these characteristics. As a result neither side gets it right. It is an article of faith on the left that we need to strengthen our communities when the path to success in this country is found in communities that build strong individuals. And on the other side of the spectrum, individual success is championed as if it happens independently of a social and public infrastructure.

"Devotion to principle may make people feel that they have clarity but it doesn't mean that they are seeing the whole picture. If even the smallest components of everything in the world around us have this dual characteristic, why would our political reality be any different? Viewed from this perspective, the anger in our current political climate is not merely the result of economic hardship or a reaction to ineffective leadership. It also arises from the frustration of living in a world whose inherent reality will never conform to a simplified one-sided view of it."

Thinking like this gives me a glimmer of hope for our country. If I Were King, I would have every Tea Bagger and every ultra-liberal in the country read this and then explain how one argument they hold dear is not as simple and immutable as they might believe.

Airline travel doesn't have to suck so much

Used to be that airline travel was a big deal. People got dressed up. They behaved as if they were in any other public space where manners mattered a bit more than at home or at the local bar. Today, flying is nothing more than a bus trip with a higher penalty for error. As the airlines squeeze more people onto planes in ways that bear close resemblance to a cattle drive, it seems the passengers have reacted like, well, cattle.

But that seems to excuse people's behavior and that is not my intent. I am appalled at the erosion of basic courtesy throughout the land and plane travel seems to concentrate the problem.

If I Were King, I would require all first-time flyers to take a one-hour online course in basic flight etiquette. It would include this top ten list:

1. You are not the only person on the plane. Those other blobs of protoplasm in the other seats? They are real people. With ears, eyes, noses and a seat they bought with real money (or miles, which equates to many, many hours sitting near people like you).
   
2. Shower before you fly.
3. If you are carrying a shoulder bag when you walk down the aisle, pay attention to the space it consumes. Don't swing wildly around. You may be too self-absorbed to notice, but that head your bag is bashing is mine.
4. When you get to your seat, try to get out of the aisle as soon as humanly possible. There are 187 other people waiting for you. Plan ahead -- scope the spot to put your bag overhead ahead of time, get it up there and step into to the space between seats, even if you've got some clothing adjustments, equipment adjustments or spousal adjustments to make.
   
5. Converse with your neighbor as you would in a theater before a performance. Use low tones that don't carry much beyond your neighbor's nearest ear. This goes double if you're talking on your cell phone.
   
6. When the doors close and the flight attendant tells you to turn off your cell phone, turn off your fucking cell phone. Not in a minute; not when you finish your thought; not when it's convenient for you -- now. Better yet, prepare for the closing of the door and wrap up your conversation beforehand. You're really not that important and neither is that call.
7. The seat in front of you is not your seat. The only part of that seat that belongs to you is the tray table and the seat pocket. Use each as you would a borrowed crystal wine glass: gently and with the knowledge that sharp shocks will yield unfortunate results. Do not grab onto the top of the seat in front of you to use as a lever when standing up or sitting down. I was sleeping and now have been jerked completely awake by a jerk.
   
8. If you are too fat to fit COMPLETELY within the arms of the seat you have purchased, either: 1) purchase a bigger seat (Biz class, first class); 2) purchase two seats; 3) lose some weight; 4) don't fly. I'm not a "fatist;" I paid for my seat and have a right to all of it and to not have to share some percentage with your rolls of flab.
9. If you must impress us all by doing your email on your laptop, do not bang on the keys with such anger that I wonder if you'll be the focus of the next news bulletin flashing "disgruntled employee kills 8, then self."
10. The space under your seat is for the person behind you to put their stuff or their feet -- it's their choice. If they don't have stuff, that doesn't mean you can put your stuff there. Yours goes in front of you. If you're in the bulkhead row (no seats in front of you to put your stuff), then put your stuff overhead and not on top of my feet.
    

My loathing for vuvuzelas is color blind

By now, anyone who has watched more than 3 minutes of a World Cup game in one of the South African venues, or even been within, say, a hundred meters of a house with a game on, knows what a vuvuzela is and hates it. If they don't, they're either stone deaf or have copious stock interest in the manufacturer of this small plastic horn-like device. I can't call it a horn or a trumpet because the single note it plays is not on any musical scale, not major, minor, diatonic, chromatic, or even Phrygian. When a herd of these hornish horrors is in full throat inside a soccer stadium the sound most closely approximates a mass of Bombus terrestris, who have just been informed that pollination has been forbidden by their queen.

The amount of rhetoric flying around the media about vuvuzelas is not surprising given how obnoxious these things are. Someone even determined how to banish the vuvuzela from his World Cup audio by selectively muting four frequencies on his equalizer.

What is surprising is the number of defenders of this undefendable annoyance. And the most common argument in their favor is based on the color of skin of blower. Blog comments like "I'll make a broad assumption: you probably wouldn't have an issue if the people blowing the horns were of a lighter hue would you?" are all over the blogosphere.

Let me be clear. I would have an issue with these things even if my son was blowing into one. These horns are terrible and are ruining the World Cup for television viewers. If I were king, they would have been banned on day one. And jeeze can we leave the race card out of this? Obnoxious knows no color.

What the roads of Italy can teach us about socialism

Before my wife and I traveled to Italy in 2007, quite a few friends were horrified to hear that we were planning to rent a car. "The roads are terrible! They all drive like crazy people," were common comments we heard. Graphic details followed about narrow roads and wild, untamed drivers who passed in all manner of ill-advised places. We were suitably concerned when, after four days in Florence on foot, we drove out of the rental car lot and headed into the Ligurian countryside.

To be sure, for the first couple of days it took all of our combined skills to get to the first few destinations -- my wife as navigator with the big maps and "Glenda", our rented GPS (complete with British accent), and me at the wheel trying to read unfamiliar signs and listen to directions. In those early days, we experienced everything from the big Autostrada to the smallest, windy mountain roads in the hills above Genoa. We noticed that even fairly 'major' secondary roads often didn't have a center line and people did, in fact, drive very differently than back home. But soon we became familiar with the basic road signage and the variety of vehicles we would encounter, from Vespas to the standard small Fiats and Fords, to BMWs that felt enormous (but would have been 'mid-sized' in America), and the variety of ubiquitous tiny 3-wheel conveyances that seemed to be the transportation backbone of the country and could not muster more than 30 kilometers an hour. Mix in bicycles and road workers and pedestrians and the occasional goat and you’ve got a fairly complete picture.

After about a week of studying how other people drove in all manner of situations and roads, I began to notice something: Italian drivers weren't crazy at all. They weren't wild and lawless or indiscriminate in their driving tactics. Quite to the contrary, Italian drivers were quite considerate, far more so than their American counterparts. They yielded, they accommodated, they watched what others did and reacted accordingly. As a country, their approach to navigating their country’s roads could be best described as being in complete alignment with their approach to life and society: theirs is a socialistic model of driving and I quickly grew to love it – especially when compared to back home in the It’s-All-About-Me world of California driving.

Indeed, an Italian’s behavior on the road is founded on a core principle of accommodating others. Every decision is based on what will allow everyone to get along best. If one approaches a three-wheeled farm truck (that would fit in the back of an Escalade) carrying two tons of hay, four sheep and a black-clad matriarch shaped like a blob of polenta, going 15 miles an hour, and there is oncoming traffic, one can pass, knowing that the other cars will simply slide over a few feet to allow this to happen. No honking of horns or waving of digits. No road rage. By accommodating the passing car, everyone wins. Perhaps next time you'll be the one needing to pass.

So much of our experience was like this. The Autostrada in particular was a delight. You NEVER went into the left lane unless you were passing. It was actually the ‘passing’ lane! Not the ‘fast’ lane, or the ‘I’ll stay in this lane because I can’t be bothered to pay attention enough to pass when I need to’ lane. The payoff for having to make the effort to change lanes and pass slower cars, was: 1) you got to go a reasonably consistent speed and, 2) you never sat in the ‘fast’ lane and fumed because it was gummed up with an endless line of cars trying to going 17 different speeds.

The delicate ballet of social driving is perhaps best exemplified by what happens on the Autostrada when one car is passing a slower car and a third car – going much faster (say, one of those BMWs) – comes up behind. The BMW will gauge how the timing is unfolding. If the BMW judges that the passing car can pull back in behind the slower car without the passing car having to jam on their brakes to avoid rear-ending the slow car, then the BMW will blink their lights, indicating the passing car should pull in. If the BMW observes that if they slow down a tad it will allow enough time for the passing car to finish passing, they will simply slow down a tad and (gasp) wait.

It’s not about the me, it’s about the we.

People in Italy pay attention to other people and make decisions that are best for the collective.

If I Were King, I would love to make these the norms of the road here. But sadly, I believe this condition is not the result of any laws or rules, but rather is simply the result of the broader socialist (small ‘s’) mindset of Italy. I’m no expert on Socialism (big ‘S’) and am both amazed and dismayed with the way it is used as a club in current political discussions, but it seems what has been lost is a gentle consideration of the merits of individual behavior based on what is good for all, rather than merely what is good for the individual.

I have lots more to say about this foundational notion and the inherent arrogance entwined in the roots of capitalism and democracy that at this very moment may be rotting away our very lifeblood.

Permit? I ain't got to show you no stinkin' permit.

By sheer coincidence, we decided we would rent kayaks and paddle across Kealakekua Bay to snorkel off the monument at Captain Cook Cove on February 23rd, 2010, the first day new permit rules went into effect that severely curtail landing or mooring a kayak at the Monument. Or should I say any permit rules, given that prior to the 23rd, for as long as people have pulled on masks and fins, there have been no controls on snorkeling in this well-protected bay on the west side of Hawaii, widely considered the best snorkeling spot in all the Islands. Large catamarans full of oiled-up tourists come down every day from Kailua-Kona, just to the north, while others come on Zodiacs and still others hike the two miles down from the highway, a drop of over 1300 feet to the sea on a difficult road through elephant grass well over head. The hike down is long and hot, but the hike out is five times harder. My brother and I made that hike in 1979, before the now-popular sit-on-top plastic ocean kayaks existed allowing even the water-wary to paddle the one-mile across the bay from Napo'opo'o Beach Park. In 1979, we were the only ones there until the first catamaran pulled in about 11 am.

On the 23rd, we were told, we would need a permit to land or moor our kayak. On the 22nd, when we dropped by Pineapple Kayak rentals up the hill in the town of Captain Cook, the proprietor, an intense middle-aged Korean woman, was in full lather about the arbitrariness of the new rules, which in her view were designed to punish the low-life scum who hung out at the put-in, a decaying concrete quay at the end of Napoopoo Rd."I pay my taxes," she said. They are sweeping me up with those bums. Her concern for her livlihood was evident. The new rules seemed to unfairly benefit the big companies with boats that come down to the bay, companies that already have mooring arrangements with the State.

What was also evident was that she really didn't know much about the new permit process or how a potential client would go about getting one. I showed her the State's website, where the Department of Land and Natural Resources had a .pdf of the permit application you could download. The form only asked for some basic info -- name, address, when you wanted to go -- but didn't tell you the process to get the signature at the bottom, ominously labeled "Hawaii District Superintendent." That sounded like a hard signature to get, especially in the Land of Aloha. Other than Hilo, a two and half hour drive around the island, I didn't even know where a DLNR office was. The proprietor pointed one out just a mile south on Queen K Highway, so I had her print a copy of the form with the agreement that we would check out the process and get back to her.

The DLNR office looked like the custodian's closet at a 1960's elementary school. And the door was locked tight, despite being 2 pm on a Monday. A chalk board on the outside had a phone number. We called it. We called the number the grumpy person who answered said we should call. The only-slightly-less-grumpy person who answered that call told us to fax the form in and the District Superintendent would review the application and if he found it worthy would sign it and fax it back. Five-day turnaround time. We mentioned that this seemed to preclude anyone coming to the island for a week-long visit from actually visiting Captain Cook by kayak. She seemed to either not comprehend the implication of this to tourism or simply didn't care.

Now I understand the need to control access to delicate ecosystems. I understand the desire to shut down illegal cash businesses that don't pay taxes, especially when run by bums on welfare (the words of a Hawaiian native acquaintance who runs a large Kona coffee company, weighing in on the subject a few days later). But If I Were King, the permit process would be different. First off, the actual instructions would be on the .pdf and on the web page, indicating the actual process you need to follow to get an actual permit. Next, for those who don't learn about the need for a permit until they're in town on holiday, I would have an actual human at the office in town. Charge $25 for the permit and allow only twenty or so a day. The five hundred bucks a day it would generate would pay for the body in the office for few hours, or at the quay, informing people of the rules and how to protect the bay and its spinner dolphins, plus a lot more.

Like maybe enforcement. Because we ended up renting a kayak the next day, February 23rd, paddling over and pulling our boat onto the rocks just like it was, well, February 22nd, when the permit had not yet gone into effect. No one showed up from the State of Hawaii and we ended up having a delightful morning of snorkeling and exploring.

Two obvious locals did paddle up at one point while we were eating lunch. One asked in a loud and serious voice "OK, I want to see your permits." But he failed to hold the expression for longer than a moment and broke out laughing.

What is a 'sport'?

With the Winter Olympics upon us once again, I just listened to Dick Button, the former figure skating star and 40+year commentator get all enraged about people not considering figure skating a sport. In a laughable self-contradiction, he cited the athleticism of the skaters and the need to successfully complete the difficult jumps as his reasoning, then seconds later, in a response to Bob Costas’ query about whether the new scoring had made the judging “all about the jumps,” Button replied that ‘artistry’ was the defining difference between top skaters. Doh. ‘Artistry’? Did New Orleans beat Indy in the Super Bowl because Drew Brees’ artistry at QB was superior to that of Payton Manning?

Let’s cut to the chase. If I Were King, a sport would be defined as “any athletic competition involving an individual or group as the primary agent, in which the outcome is determined by 1) an objective measure of supremacy, either head-to-head or against some metric, e.g. time, height or distance; 2) competition on a field of play with a set of rules, the application of which is minimally subjective.

There are two keys to this: the words ‘primary agent’ and ‘minimally subjective.’

But let’s start with easy stuff: for the first part of the definition, there shouldn’t be a lot of argument. High-jump is a sport; measured by height. 100-meter dash – ditto; measure by the clock (or head-to-head). Shot put – of course; measured by distance. Swimming, running, jumping, throwing stuff, skiing or skating a course or track – anything measured objectively, no problemo.

Sports have rules though and not all those rules can be objectively applied. On the one hand, missing a gate in skiing is pretty objective. Judges can see and make a call. However, some calls are more subjective – interference between short-track speed skaters for instance, but the competition is still overwhelmingly about beating the other person to a clearly-defined finish line, not about the judge making the interference call. Baseball has an umpire calling balls and strikes as well as other calls, but the game is ultimately about scoring the most runs – an objective measure of supremacy. These are all sports.

But when a judge makes the primary or entire determination of a winner, then this is not a sport. It is a competition, but not a sport. So figure skating: not a sport. Anything with judges – diving, snowboard halfpipe, ALL gymnastics – not sports. Then there are the fringe cases, like freestyle moguls in the Winter Olympics. Sorry Johnny Mosley, love to watch the competition, but it’s not a sport – 75% of the scoring is judges' opinions of how well you skied the bumps and how well you did the two tricks. Only 25% is the speed at which you completed the course. Not enough. Why? Because I am King and I so decree it.

An then finally, in a decision to surely piss off all those Nascar fans, motor racing of any kind: not a sport. Why? Because the driver is not the primary agent of the competition, the car is. It is the car moving around the track, the driver may be guiding it, but the car is the conveyance. One may argue that most sports have tools or agents, like cars, but the key is in the word 'primary.' And as King, I get to decide which sports fall on which side of the line.

Here’s a few more:

• Golf: sport
• Sailing: not a sport (agent issue)
• Bowling: sport
• Boxing: not a sport (would be if always determined by one person being KO’d or quitting)
• Archery: sport
• “Pro” Wrestling: come on, do you even have to ask? Not a sport. Not even a competition. Just a show.
• Wrestling: OK, this one’s tough. All scoring in wrestling is done by a referee who subjectively decides if there is a take down, a reversal, an escape, etc. Because in many cases, the action that ‘scores’ in wrestling is quite clear, similar to the action of a baseball player catching a fly ball (where it’s not an ‘out’ until the umpire calls it one), the cases where the wrestling judge may be making a more subjective call are far less than 50%. So: sport.

Comcast should be blocked

Comcast recently asked for approval to buy NBC. If I Were King, I would block the transaction and go another step: requiring Comcast to divest all programming sources. To me this is a classic vertical monopoly, no different than the Standard Oil of the 1930s that was broken up by anti-trust action. In that case, if I remember my history well, Standard Oil owned oil wells, refineries, distribution and gas stations, the entire vertical supply chain, and thus could unfairly manipulate prices.

In this case, Comcast owns, for instance, Versus and has jacked DirecTV -- a competing distributor of entertainment -- for such high rates on Versus that DirecTV dropped the channel, depriving millions of subscribers the option to get it.

Unfortunately, Congress has become toothless on issues of monopoly and trust and as a result we have a significantly anti-consumer pro-big-business environment.

Comcast should be forced to divest all its programming sources and not be allowed to purchase NBC.

Jury by Peer has outlived its usefulness

Anyone who has sat on a jury knows that the jury-by-peer concept is worn out. Never mind the high-profile debacles like the OJ Simpson murder trial, there are other more important (to everyone but the Brown family) reasons to do away with trial by a jury of peers:

• many trials contain complex technical, financial or other information, making finding "peers" difficult.
• the process of managing groups of people through the process that eventually produces an actual jury for an actual trial is clunky, expensive and extremely disruptive to people's lives.
• many good jury candidates are flushed from the process, while others, who shouldn't be allowed to change a light bulb, skate through (been there, seen it).

So If I Were King, we would immediately hire professional jurors -- at all levels, Municpal, State, Federal. They can be part-time or full-time, semi-retirees or any other person, but they will be managed as a professional group, including:

• be paid a reasonable salary.
• be required to complete some level of basic education in jurisprudence, probably through the local community colleges; this should include some basics in how to avoid being influenced by legal techniques that have nothing to do with the merits of a case.
• be required to pass certain basic tests in literacy.

In addition, jurors would be required to develop one or more specialities, such as in technology, biotech, finance, real estate, etc, so that particularly devious criminals can't get off because their crimes are too complex to understand.

Jurors for a specific case would be chosen by lottery -- the spinning-balls-in-a-cage approach is a nice low-tech touch. Attorneys would get one or two immediate dismissals and that's it. It would all happen in a few minutes and the trial could begin.

Jurors' performance would be assessed by how often they voted with the majority on a case. All cases would be tracked by software that would identify chronic outliers who would get remedial training or be let go if their performance doesn't improve. This is different than saying that jurors would be punished for being in the minority on any one case -- the assessment would only be over the big arc of their cases and take into account that some cases will result in honest disagreement between honest (professional!) jurors.

In the end, fewer cases would probably go to trial (more would plead out in the face of lower probability of getting a "sympathetic jury") and those trials would start and be completed more quickly. Fewer people would be convicted wrongly; fewer would get off due to the many flavors of jury incompetence (stupidity, sloth, reckless bias). Judges could dispense with complex jury instructions and any admonition to "disregard" some tactic by either side would be taken seriously.

Professional jurors: it would save a bundle -- If I Were King.

Crowned

If I had a dollar for every time I've begun a statement with "If I were king . . . " I could afford to buy a kingdom. I believe I am not alone in thinking that some things are just no-brainers if only that pesky democracy we struggle under would just turn the decision over to . . . well, me. Perhaps I think it more frequently than others, but I chalk that up to simply being more opinionated than average.

So the other day, when riding bikes with a group of friends and I rattled off about five "If I Were King" items, I decided since blogs are about broadcasting one's opinions, well, let's put them down and see if there are enough people out there who agree that maybe you'll make me king.

Somehow, I doubt it. And therein lies the problem.

Let's get started!