Miles's blog

I am joining a new group—the Skeptics Society.  A lot of people have called me a skeptic over the years, but they probably meant that I was a cynic; which I am.  Cynicism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives.  That is certainly me, and if it wasn’t 30 years ago (and I think it was), my experience as a prosecutor made me one.  But that is not what I am talking about. 

I came across a talk on Ted by the president of the Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer.  It was entitled “The Pattern Behind Self Deception.”  In it he briefly explains the basis of how people can come to believe in UFOs, crop circles, satanic lyrics in songs played backwards and the like.  Intrigued, I went to the society’s website.  Here is their introduction:

THE SKEPTICS SOCIETY is a scientific and educational organization of leading scientists, scholars, investigative journalists, historians, professors and teachers. Our mission is to investigate and provide a sound scientific viewpoint on claims of the paranormal, pseudoscience, fringe groups, cults and claims between: science, pseudoscience, junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non science and plain old nonsense.

They have given lectures and printed papers on things like support for evolution, global warming and people’s role in it, alternative medicine, and similar topics.  This is great.  I love the idea that people are rigorously examining the crap that circulates through society (formerly in discredited publications like The National Enquirer and now over the internet) and issuing scholarly reasons why this stuff is junk.  For so long I have sat in the corner trying to call “bullshit” on things like UFOs but without a cogent argument to back it up.  The best I could do previously was see if Snopes.com had anything.  But the Skeptics Society is like Snopes on steroids.  These people are seriously smart.

Read some of their stuff or listen to their lectures.  There is an excellent article on the collapse of the World Trade Center responding to some of the conspiracy theorists.   There is some stuff about alternative medicine.  I plan to join and subscribe to their magazine.  

It is brutally hot here in the northeast.  As I write this at 11:30 a.m. it is already 90 degrees.  The humidity is 45 percent.  The predicted high is 95.  I am going to forego taking a walk.  I am debating whether I should go to a movie or go to the beach.  The beach here is mostly shells and not sand so the movie idea is winning.  The problem there is the movies out now do not appeal to me.  So I am stuck here at home and kind of bored and out of ideas for a blog (since I said I would reduce writing about politics and stuff).  I decided I would return to a theme from an old blog: stuff for sale on the internet that I would buy if I had the money; or maybe not that I would buy but that I think is amusing, different, weird, or perhaps just entertaining. 

Star Trek engagement ring:  I love this.  It has a sort of vaguely-Star Trek kind of symbol with a diamond. If you spring this on her when you propose and she accepts anyway, you have a keeper.  If not, however, get a life.  (A statement coined by William Shatner.)

Han Solo Frozen iPhone case:  Continuing in the science fiction theme, if you love Star Wars carry around one of the iconic images.  Han was, of course, rescued by Luke Skywalker from Jabba the Hut, with the nice added bonus that he got to scoop up the barely-dressed Princess Leia.

Royal Toilet Throne:  Furnishings should fit the home, don’t you think.  And yet when you tour expensive houses their toilets are just like yours and mine (except perhaps they have a heated seat or something.  But this is fit for a mansion.  A $12,000 toilet, that is conspicuous consumption.

Baby carrying jacket: This picture freaked me out.  I thought it was one of those horror flicks where the guys Siamese twin brother was poking out of his chest.  But when I looked carefully at what it really is I thought it was even creepier.  Restrain your baby by strapping him to your chest in some sort of papoose kind of thing so he gets used to being completely restrained all the time, allowing you to go about your business without the nuisance of actually having to deal with having a baby.

Human fetus soap bar:  This is just too sick for words.

Glow in the dark crowbar:  Who makes this, Felons, Inc?  I mean under what theory would you have a legitimate use for this?

USB Typewriter:  I need this.  I grew up with manual typewriters, the kind you really had to punch the key (which explains why I use only two fingers on each hand to type) and which rang a bell when you got to the end of the line.  Modern keyboards do not have that same kind of satisfaction.  This is so great. I am going to get one for Meg for her birthday. (I am safe to put that here as she has stopped reading my blogs.  Can’t blame her.)

Remote control tarantula:  I hope nobody ever gets one of these things near me, unless they also buy the Physio Control Lifepak Express defibrillator.

Kevlar socks:  To keep you from shooting yourself in the foot, obviously.

Hair-growing helmet:  I hate to admit I need this thing, but I am willing to turn to modern science in the never-ending effort to retain my youthful, vibrant appearance.  (Again, safe from being ridiculed by Meg.)

The United States Senate cannot seem to pass legislation to address the upcoming expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts.  It allows judicial and other nominations to sit in limbo for months.  Congress has become synonymous with inaction and failure.  But despite their inability to pass legislation to help all Americans and address major problems, the Senate wants to take up the problems of a small number of oppressed Americans—prisoners in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement, according to civil libertarians and the ACLU, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.  The idiocy of this assertion can be seen in this passage from the article describing the Senate hearing.

The hearing, held before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, represents the first time lawmakers on Capitol Hill have taken up the issue of solitary confinement, a form of imprisonment that many human rights advocates believe violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” and that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months in the United States and internationally.

The practice, which is widespread in American prisons, has also been the target of a growing number of lawsuits, including a class-action suit filed on Monday on behalf of mentally ill inmates held in solitary at ADX, the federal super-maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

Apparently, the common meaning of the word “unusual” is lost on those who worry about the effect of solitary confinement on prisoners.  A “widespread practice” cannot be unusual.  This phrase is important in constitutional analysis because it allows for this area of the law to be flexible and reflective of modern thought.  By definition, the word “unusual” relates to activities which are common and accepted at any point of time.  Otherwise, as we know from cases like Crawford and Blakely, constitutional analysis is frozen in time at the point when the Bill of Rights were adopted.  Without “unusual” pertaining to current practice the question would be whether the founding fathers thought solitary confinement was cruel and unusual punishment.  And heck, they thought putting someone in the stocks and throwing stones at them was ok.)

But like many people, Senators can be bleeding hearts for the poor, oppressed prisoners forced to spend virtually every waking hour locked alone in a cell.  To show how out of touch they are listen to this line of questioning.

But the hearing also included a testy exchange between Mr. Durbin and Charles E. Samuels Jr., director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who defended the use of solitary confinement for inmates who pose a threat to the safety of staff members or other inmates.

“Do you believe you could live in a box like that 23 hours a day, a person who goes in normal, and it wouldn’t have any negative impact on you?” Mr. Durbin asked, pointing to a life-size replica of a solitary confinement cell that had been set up in the hearing room.

Durbin is Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.  Apparently he has been swayed in his opinions because his state has been governed by criminals and imprisoned the innocent.  Examination of his question shows his premise is faulty.  Most of the prisoners in solitary confinement are not “normal” in any way.  Is he sympathetic toward the Unabomber, or those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993? How about Timothy McVeigh?  Which of these prisoners would he describe as “normal?”

This misplaced sympathy for sociopaths apparently has extended to the state level.  Nathan Dunlap, one of two people on death row in Colorado who was convicted of murdering four people, has been moved out of solitary confinement at Colorado’s highest security prison in response to his lawsuit alleging such confinement was unconstitutional.  Dunlap now spends his time awaiting execution (which he has been doing for about 18 years) in the Sterling Correctional Facility which allows him to get more exercise.

Most of those serving in solitary do not have to worry about whether such confinement will hinder their reintegration into society—they will never get out of prison, and thankfully so.  Does the Senate really have nothing better to do than worry about these substrata of human beings who constitute legitimate threats to everyone?

We continue to hear this drumbeat that our penal system, indeed our entire criminal justice system, lags behind the rest of the world—that we imprison too many, for too long, and in too harsh conditions; and that we impose the death penalty when the rest of the civilized world has stopped.  Of course the countries that decry our system don’t allow defendants the presumption of innocence, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, an extensive appeal process, and unlimited discovery.  Many don’t allow jury trials.  Most of the nations are homogeneous societies of people with similar backgrounds which restrict gun ownership and immigration.  Many allow for lengthy detentions without filing charges, and most have social structures where criminal convictions result in significant shame.  Their crime problems are very different than ours, and their solutions cannot necessarily be ours.  (Much of Europe is now facing changes in their social structure and is finding their level of crime, especially violent crime, has increased.  Let’s see how they handle that.)

I understand that extensive time in solitary confinement will certainly result in negative impact on people.  That is part of the deterrent prisons need to control difficult populations.  Like anything, use of this kind of punishment can be abused.  But for the United States Senate to champion the causes of criminals is offensive when one would think they have better things to do.

This is a bad time for U.S Attorneys.  Roger Clemens was acquitted yesterday following a prosecution which seemed to totter between incompetent and comical.  From the first mistrial to the ultimate not guilty verdicts, the entire case came across as a desperate attempt to vindicate the decision to elevate outrage at a seeming falsity in a congressional hearing to a federal offense.  Maybe Clemens lied and maybe he didn’t, but the zealousness with which the Justice Department brought this case has called into question the competence of those making decisions.  Certainly it appears from news reports (and, of course one can never be too sure of what one reads in descriptions of court proceedings) that the trial skills of the prosecutors was sorely lacking.  Their stunning ineptitude in creating a mistrial in the first attempt made me wonder what is wrong.

Of course, this is merely the latest gaffe on the part of the feds.  John Edwards was as good as acquitted.  In a trial which made you squirm to read about (I mean, really, was it necessary to hear that Elizabeth Edwards bared herself from the waist up to get her philandering husband’s attention?), the government seemed to feel disgracing Edwards was the path to conviction.  Sure he used the money to hide his extramarital affair, but a campaign violation? 

In both cases the government hitched their wagons to questionable star witnesses, who they believed (and I tend to believe too) but whom they could not find a way to make credible.  This is an age-old problem in prosecution, leading to the common closing argument theme of “conspiracies devised in hell do not have angels for witnesses,” but which the prosecutors in these cases failed to properly overcome.  Part of the problem, I think, was the type of crime.  It is one thing to use a slimeball like Brian McNamee or an opportunist like Andrew Young to convict a murderer, but it is quite another when all you are trying to vindicate is the necessity of keeping Congress away from lying witnesses (I mean, talk about coals to Newcastle) or to regulate the obscene funds used in political campaigns.  The jury was probably grateful that Bunny Mellon’s (you could not make up a name like that) money was spent to hide Rielle Hunter rather than on more obnoxious commercials during South Carolina football games.

These acquittals follow the hollow victory of the government over Barry Bonds, another situation where the Justice Department seemed to lose perspective.  Yeah, Barry Bonds is a lying, cheating, narcissist, whose place is baseball history will rank closer to Shoeless Joe Jackson than Babe Ruth.  But to use a federal grand jury’s time in order to ferret out his steroid use, then spend years to secure a minor conviction brought shame to the prosecution. 

However, nothing has brought as much shame and disgrace on the Justice Department than their handling of the Sen. Ted Stevens case from several years ago.  Stevens was the king of pork barrel spending and the man responsible for the bridge to nowhere.  I have no doubt he was a crook.  A jury thought so, too and convicted the man.  However, prior to sentencing the prosecution’s inexplicable failure to comply with discovery disclosures resulted in the case being dismissed.  Ethical violations were upheld against prosecutors, and negligence in oversight has been documented. 

These setbacks are shocking to me.  Throughout my career federal prosecutors have always been held in high regard for their trial skills, ethics, and legal knowledge.  While their arrogance, condescension, and lack of teamwork were barriers at times to strong state/federal cooperation, I always respected the U.S. Attorney’s office.  Working with seemingly unlimited resources and somewhat more favorable appellate rulings, the feds always seemed to garner convictions and long sentences.  To read day after day of their struggles makes me wonder what has changed.  I sincerely hope these verdicts are basically anomalies in areas of law outside normal grounds of prosecution.  I assume the feds still are convicting drug dealers, organized crime figures, purveyors of child porn, and terrorists.  I think perhaps they should stick to that, and leave sports and politics to the news media.

Maureen Dowd wrote an opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times which really hit home with me.  She wrote it in the context of the high-profile sexual assaults which have filled the media recently, but I think her point has greater import in a broader context.

Although written somewhat obtusely, Dowd wanted to spotlight our society’s moral breakdown in terms of character.  She quoted a professor who I thought really distilled the issue.

“Inundated by instantaneous information and gossip, do we simply know more about the seamy side? Do greater opportunities and higher stakes cause more instances of unethical behavior? Have our materialism, narcissism and cynicism about the institutions knitting society — schools, sports, religion, politics, banking — dulled our sense of right and wrong?

“Most Americans continue to think of their lives in moral terms; they want to live good lives,” said James Davison Hunter, a professor of religion, culture and social theory at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Death of Character.” “But they are more uncertain about what the nature of the good is. We know more, and as a consequence, we no longer trust the authority of traditional institutions who used to be carriers of moral ideals.

“We used to experience morality as imperatives. The consequences of not doing the right thing were not only social, but deeply emotional and psychological. We couldn’t bear to live with ourselves. Now we experience morality more as a choice that we can always change as circumstances call for it. We tend to personalize our ideals. And what you end up with is a nation of ethical free agents.

“We’ve moved from a culture of character to a culture of personality. The etymology of the word character is that it’s deeply etched, not changeable in all sorts of circumstances. We don’t want to think of ourselves as transgressive or bad, but we tend to personalize our understanding of the good.””

This relative morality troubles me.  So often people see justification for illegal behavior.  People today are willing to be dismissive, even contemptuous, of enforcement of the law if the lawbreaker offers some sort of sympathetic justification.  I am not talking about acts of necessity like self-defense, I mean actions which in a prior era would be held to be clearly wrong, but which modern society sees a somehow justified.  Violent protestors deem their actions acceptable responses to what they perceive to be the greater ills of a dysfunctional society. Assaults are defended on the ground that the victim had it coming.

The problem, of course, with a society of “ethical free agents” is that there are no rules.  Without an acceptance of the importance of following the law and general ethics, everyone is free to act as they see fit.  So many dog owners, for example, feel leash laws are wrong and unnecessary.  They believe their dog has the right to roam free, while they insist their beast would never hurt anyone.  Internally, they have justified their knowingly illegal actions. 

The scale, of course, does not stop there.  While you might like to let your dog run free, I might like not to have your dog running willy-nilly in the park.  But while you would never allow your dog to run completely without supervision, the next guy believes his dog should have the right to just run out the door and explore the neighborhood, and the guy behind him thinks his pit bull should be able to race around perhaps biting people. 

It would be comforting to believe there are limits to this kind of moral smorgasboard, but 30 years of prosecution experience has taught me there are none.  Each person certainly has places he or she will not go, but for some there is no boundary they will not cross.  And while we can hope that should those individuals be called to task for their transgression that the majority would condemn them, I am losing confidence in that.

As I have said before, there appears to be no shame in America, and I think in part that is because there is no consistent moral compass.  Michael Milken is feted by Major League Baseball for creating a prostate cancer fundraiser, while his 10-year prison sentence is ignored.  Martha Stewart went from prison right back to cable television.  Their crimes were of a type that reflected violations of government regulations, a prosecution that most people shrug their shoulders as. 

Professor Hunter is right, institutions have broken down.  Decades of media sensationalism and societal displeasure have led a majority of Americans to believe corporations, religious organizations, even civic groups are not to be trusted.  Vast numbers of Americans not only distrust their government, they actively decry it.  Millions of people want to occupy Wall Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, or even Main Street to show they are mad as hell and they won’t take it anymore.  They want to have their civil disobedience and eat it too.  Gandhi, Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi were willing to go to prison to support their acts of defiance, but today’s protestors seek to either raise defenses of justification or out and out jury nullification.  Blocking the Brooklyn Bridge is acceptable if banks foreclose too many delinquent mortgage holders, they claim. 

In an era of relative morality this strikes a chord with many people.  Unfortunately, this gives the rest of us little ability to enforce our counter beliefs.  I am not going to march to support the rights of banks to collect on mortgages from people who bought too big a house for too much money and filled it with too many gadgets.  Our modern media sees rebellion and resistance to institutions as laudable and acceptance of government power as weakness.

For law enforcement this kind of morality is problematic.  They are sworn (I almost put this in the first person.  Geez, old habits die hard.) to uphold the law as written, and while flexibility in its enforcement has always been part of the evaluation, application of how flexible was always the toughest part.  I fear if Dowd is correct, that is only going to get tougher.

Amelia Earhart has been part of the national conversation since she sprung on the scene in the 1930s.  Pretty much everyone knows the story of how she and her navigator disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while trying to fly around the world.  Because a massive search turned up nothing it has always been assumed that their plane went down in the ocean.  New evidence, however, supports proof that the actually landed the plane on a desert island, or just offshore, and survived for days.  A group is going to that island in July to look for more evidence, including conducting an underwater search for plane wreckage.

This is amazing.  That Earhart went down into the vast expanse of the Pacific was something we thought we knew.  For whatever reason, the search in 1937 found nothing so they wrote off her distress calls as some sort of hoax.  Through the years searches were made, evidence recovered (including some bones from a human skeleton), and photos taken.  All of these pointed to Earhart’s and her navigator Fred Noonan’s survival, but no one did a good job of putting the pieces together.  Solving this mystery now is both tragic and compelling.   The idea that Earhart and Noonan starved to death or died of thirst or met some other untoward fate (although short of drowning it is hard to imagine what that could be), is so sad.  I am sure they had confidence that a massive search was being undertaken which would find them.  Why it didn’t is perplexing.

At any rate, this kind of discovery is fascinating.  This sort of thing seems to happen all the time.  Apparently there is some, albeit scant, evidence that one of the escapes from Alcatraz may have been successful.  A new review of the facts revealed that some footprints were found in the sand walking away from where the raincoat raft was found on a nearby island, and, although at the time denied by officials, a car was stolen nearby.  Tantalizing clues.  Personally, I am not buying.  I don’t believe that these three career criminals escaped from Alcatraz and then managed to stay away from being arrested ever again.   But in that era identification was harder to do, and melting away was easier.  Heck even in our era a murderer like Whitely Bulger can be on the run for more than a decade. 

I am hoping history sleuths are working on some more mysteries.  Maybe they will turn up Jimma Hoffa’s body, or find out what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke.  Perhaps they can figure out who put those statues on Easter Island or determine the fate of the people on the Mary Celeste.  I would like to see them examine the following:

·        Did Babe Ruth really call his shot or not?  Most people think he didn’t point to the bleachers but that he was jawing with the Cubs bench.  There is no conclusive proof, but the general consensus is that he didn’t.

·        Whatever happened to that kid from “The Sixth Sense?”  He got nominated for an Academy Award.  Then he made some movie about lions and old men, and now I have no idea where he is.

·        What really did start the Great Chicago fire? I mean the old lady’s cow has taken the rap all these years, but she is probably innocent.

·        Who was D.B. Cooper and whatever happened after he jumped out of that plane?

·        What really are the secret ingredients of Kentucky Fried Chicken?\

Sometimes new technology really impresses me.  The whole idea of having a computer write you speak has been around since the invention of computers, but now they seem to have really perfected it.

I recently bought a new iPad.  One of the nice features is a microphone button on the keyboard that can record what you say and fill in the field.  For example, I can punch the mic while using the map feature and say “chipotle” and the iPad will understand me, and plot all the Chipotle. (None will be in Stamford, as the closest Chipotle is in Darien.  This has made Chipotle, the staple of so many lunches while I was at the D.A.s office, somewhat of a treat which I indulge in when I go to New York.)  I love this.  I am not the greatest typist in the world and typing on the iPad keyboard is not the easiest thing.  Now I can just talk.

I try to speak clearly and slowly and enunciate, just like when I used to go to court.  Or what I aspired to when I used to go to court.  I used to write a big reminder on top of my pad of paper with my closing argument notes—“Slowly”— to remind myself.  This did not always work, as legions of court reporters (Sherry, primarily) would remind me.  I always liked court reporters but the feeling was not mutual.  You know those pads of paper they use, which are packaged kind of like bricks?  Yeah, the edges are sharp and they hurt.  I learned this painful lesson from experience.

This “talk to your device” technology is central to the iPhone4S use of the assistant “Siri.”  I have not bought a new phone, but I love the commercials. I am reluctant to believe Siri functions as well in practice because every time I have gone to the Apple store and tried to use Siri it either fails to understand me or ignores me.  Very similar to all those court reporters.

I noticed while doing a Google search the other day that in the search bar there is a small microphone.  I pressed it and sure enough it opens a window that says “speak now.”  You can then speak your search request.  Unlike the iPad mic which you have to press the button to indicate you are finished, the Google version stops after a few second of silence. 

Neither of these works simultaneously while you are talking.  They both record what you are saying and then fill in what you said.  The Google search will always be short, of course, just a few words, but I tried the iPad one for a lot longer.  It allowed me to get out about half of the Gettysburg Address.  Perhaps a minute or so.  The dictation will fill in commas and periods if you say them.  It will capitalize a line after a period.  It did not make a paragraph where I said to, but did put in the word “paragraph.”  I am impressed.

So I thought I would test them out.  Google got my name right except it spelled my last name “Madoran.”  Pretty close.  The iPad got it right.  The iPad correctly spelled “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”  Google couldn’t handle that and broke it down into four words.  IPad could not handle “antidisestablishmentarianism” (that is a real word, you can look it up) but Google could.  IPad had “Anti-disestablisment carry Nessim.”  I don’t know who Nessim is, but I like the sentence.

Neither one handles Latin so well.  I tried “res ipsa loquitur” which Google fills in nicely when you are typing.  However, trying to talk to the Google search I got “Race it’s a lot better.”  IPad came up with “Race it’s a lot quicker.”  I did not try “ejusdem generis” because I have no idea how to pronounce it.

IPad had no problem with Kofi Annan, but Google came up with “coffee I’m on” which I liked but would be of no help trying to find articles about what is happening in Syria.

Amazingly they do well with homophones.  I said “I led the leader to the lead mine” to the iPad and it got it right.  Google had two choices, the second was correct, the first was “I read the leader to the lead mine.”  When I tried “I read the child the red book” Google got it right and iPad put “I read the child the Redbook,” which is accurate, but perhaps not good parenting.

I will have to be careful using it. I used the talking keyboard for an email to Noel.  It wrote his name as “knoll.”  Fill in your own joke here.

The best thing about being near New York (aside from being close to Meg) is the opportunity to see Broadway shows.  Live theater at the highest level is exciting and thrilling.  I had never seen a show on Broadway until Meg and I went to Lion King in 2000, but since then, thanks to Meg’s residence in New York, I have been to many.  This year, of course, I have made it a point to see shows on a regular basis, and I have been rewarded by seeing many fine performances.  Sunday’s Tony awards demonstrated how fortunate I have been.

Seeing one of two shows a year allowed me to only see a small number of Tony-award-winning performances. I think prior to this year I had seen ten.  The best, I thought, was David Hyde Pierce in a fairly short-lived musical called Curtains.  He was funny and charming, and actually a pretty good singer.  Equally good was Sutton Foster, an incredibly charismatic performer who I loved in Anything Goes.  If you want to get an idea of how great she was, go to YouTube and search for her and this show.  You will find their Tony Awards presentation, which is great, but nowhere near as good as that number was in person.  I was blown away.  I would go back and see Anything Goes again, but Foster has run off to Hollywood to star in a show on the ABC Family network which goes to show that the money for tv must be really good.  (Also starring in this show, Bunheads, is Kelly Bishop, a Tony winner in her own right for A Chorus Line, in my mind the greatest Broadway musical of them all.)

Sunday night raised my total of Tony-winning performances I have seen to 15.  Two of them came from a single show, Nice Work if You Can Get It.  Both the Featured Actor and Actress in a Musical awards performed in this production.  (Featured Actor means not the star, what the Oscars call a Supporting Actor.)  I did not like the show that much.  It stars Matthew Broderick who not only can’t sing and can’t dance, but he is aging not-too-gracefully.  The songs are all classic Gershwin tunes, but they, by and large, are not staged very creatively.  The book of the show is boring and pretty stupid.  However, the two Tony winnders, Michael McGrath and Judy Kaye are talented veterans.  I doubt I will long remember these performances, but certainly they were excellent. 

Judith Light won a Tony for her work in Other Desert Cities, a drawn-out play, which tested my patience waiting for the surprising climax (which I had trouble enjoying because some morons cell phone went off).  Light, yes the boss from Who’s the Boss, was certainly dramatic, if perhaps a little too dramatic for my tastes, as the boozy aunt. 

I was much happier to see that two of my favorite actors in my favorite shows took home Tonys.  Based on a recommendation from my sister, I saw two great plays—One Man, Two Guvnors, and Venus in Fur.  While neither won for best play, the two lead performers won for very different kinds of roles.

One Man, Two Guvnors is an import from England.  The plot is difficult to describe, but basically it is a slapstick comedy with mistaken identities, hidden secrets, and the kind of coincidences you only find in fiction.  The star is James Corden, who is about the funniest performer I have ever seen.  The play is hilarious, based in part on Corden’s improvisation with members of the audience.  At one point he brings two audience members onstage, and uses them to help him move a heavy trunk.  I saw one of the men at intermission and he said he had no idea that was going to happen.  Later, when Corden’s character is starving and calls out for a sandwich, someone in the audience waved a Subway bag over his head and offered that h had one.  This was not part of the show, but Corden treated it with such wit and class that everyone in the audience was laughing hysterically.  So was he.  I definitely want to see this one again.  Corden beat out, get this, James Earl Jones, Frank Langella, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and John Lithgow.  I think even he was surprised.

The other Tony winner I was happy to see win was Nina Arianda for Venus in Fur.  This is an exceptionally clever play about an actress auditioning for a part with the writer/director.  For an hour and a half it is just the two of them onstage, I was enraptured.  Arianda, along with Hugh Dancy who was not nominated (after all he was up against Jones, Langella, Hoffman, and Lithgow) are required to jump back and forth between their characters and those in the underlying play, set in 1870 Vienna.  Arianda spends much of the play dressed in a bustier and boots, and although she is pretty, it is not her looks which commands attention.  As the show unfolds each of them flirts, teases, controls, and breaks down.  I saw it twice and loved it both times. 

I am going to try to see some more shows before I leave.  I need to add more Tony winners to my collection.

If you want an illustration of the fruitlessness of fighting the war on drugs through interdiction, read two recent New York Times articles on the abuse of prescription drugs.

The first article described a dramatic increase in the deaths from prescription drug overdoses in New Mexico in the past ten years.  As you might expect, most of the drugs were painkillers like oxycodone.  Most were prescribed lawfully, at least at first.  Many prescription drug addicts went on to harder street drugs like heroin, when the effects of the medication grew insufficient.  One drug counselor said all of the heroin addicts he treats started first abused prescription drugs.

Yesterday, the Times published an article which was perhaps more chilling.  It presented a picture of high school students relying upon prescription medications designed to help those with attention deficit disorder to gain focus while taking tests.  According to the article, a large percentage of high-achieving students are using this medication, whether their own or pills they secure from other students.  The pills seem to work amazingly well, according to the students interviewed, allowing users to raise grades and enhance test scores.  The drugs are frighteningly easy to procure.  Some students merely told psychiatrists the stories they knew would result in prescriptions; other purchased the drugs from those with prescriptions.

Obviously, prescription drug abuse has been around as long as there have been prescription drugs, but today’s culture makes it far more prevalent.  Doctors, perhaps afraid of being sued, wield their prescription pads like gunslingers, ready to prescribe with the smallest provocation.  ADD (and ADHD), unheard of a generation ago, now rules the schools.  Every kid caught staring out the window or procrastinating doing his homework is whisked away to a pill-dispensing doctor. 

I do not mean to denigrate ADD diagnoses and treatment.  The affliction is real and the medication helps.  I do mean to bring up the point that the billions of dollars we pay for Columbian military troops to attack coca growers and for Mexican police officers to go after millionaire drug lords do not address these problems.  Prescription drug abuse is a growing problem because prescription drug use has increased so dramatically.  New medications, aging populations, and diminished social stigma to drug usage in general has brought America into an age where huge numbers of people feel drug usage is an acceptable response to what they view as the stress in their lives.  Whether the drugs are legitimately-procured or not has grown increasingly irrelevant.

Many of the high school students quoted in the article reeled off a list of stressors, from grades to extracurricular activities to worries about college admissions.  (They may have answered these questions while texting from their cars.)  Most of these kids seem to come from privileged homes with parents who have tried to fill every need while making their children happy.  The kids say they need good grades to satisfy their parents. 

How many of these parents do you think use prescription medication themselves, and I don’t mean for a thyroid condition?  In what percentage of homes is marijuana either openly used or tacitly allowed?  After all, it was the parents who brought their child to the psychiatrist to diagnose ADD in the first place.

We have come to see modern medicine as having the capacity to solve every problem.  Cancer is no longer a death sentence, AIDS seems to be a treatable disease, people rise up out of wheelchairs.  Most of us, including me, think a medical doctor and a prescription will solve everything.  If we are in pain, there is a ladder of pain medication which will take it away.  All of this serves to make prescription medication part of our daily lives.  As such it is readily available, socially acceptable, and in large measure unregulated.  (Putting marijuana into this category, as many states have already done, plays into this problem.)  This makes prescription drug abuse very, very difficult to prevent.

One can weigh, I suppose the harm caused by prescription drugs against the evils of street drugs of abuse and decide that cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin are the greater society ills.  This might justify using resources to reduce their availability.  But I question the effectiveness of that policy.  Street drugs of abuse are still present while prescription abuse rises.  Better, in my mind, to attack drug abuse at the source. 

Every article I read carries quotes from experts in the treatment community.  Generally they describe how difficult it is to rehabilitate someone from drug use.  If only more of the treatment resources were devoted to prevention.  Ways moght be found to keep legitimate users of medication from developing addictions, and high schoolers could be convinced drugs, prescription or otherwise, are not the answers to their problems.  (Unfortunately, right now the answer seems to be that drugs ARE the answer.  They get into a better college and use the drugs to keep up good grades there.  I assume they will continue to use the drugs when they get jobs.  I have no idea what the effect of long-term use of these drugs will be.)

I realize that modern America views drug usage as a benign circumstance.  I recently went to an excellent play where one of the key scenes involved a grandmother and her grown grandson bonding over some marijuana.  The pot loosened their conversation, allowing each to see the other in new and more comfortable ways.  The audience enjoyed this scene, laughing loudly as it became apparent that grandma was stoned.  Drugs, including prescription medication, marijuana, and alcohol, have become ingrained in our society.  We need to work to prevent abuse and control their use.  Burning fields of poppies in Afghanistan will do little to solve the drug problem.

I’ve been watching the mini-series “Hatfields & McCoys” on the History Channel and I think it is pretty good.  I don’t know how accurate it is, but I read some articles online which are consistent with the story they are telling.  I love this sort of program—living history.  I have always thought the problems with history education is that teachers spend way too much time on the dates, etc. and not enough on the stories of the people involved. 

The Hatfield/McCoy feud had murders, kidnappings, illicit liaisons and out-of-wedlock children, war, theft, honor and institutional failure.  Sounds like a soap opera.  But this is how history is because people, by and large, have not changed in millennia.  The same motives that drive people’s actions today have always been present.  I hope the History Channel does more shows like this. I would like to make a suggestions for another historic incident which I have thought for a long time would make good television or a movie.  Here is a summary from Wikipedia.

In June 1892, a steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania owned by Andrew Carnegie became the focus of national attention when talks between the Carnegie Steel Company and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) broke down. The factory's manager was Henry Clay Frick, a fierce opponent of the union. When a final round of talks failed at the end of June, management closed the plant and locked out the workers, who immediately went on strike. Strikebreakers were brought in and the company hired Pinkerton guards to protect them. On July 6, a fight broke out between three hundred Pinkerton guards and a crowd of armed union workers. During the twelve-hour gunfight, seven guards and nine strikers were killed.

Emma Goldman and her lover Alexander Berkman resolved to assassinate Frick, an action they expected would inspire the workers to revolt against the capitalist system. Berkman chose to carry out the assassination, and ordered Goldman to stay behind in order to explain his motives after he went to jail. Berkman tried and failed to make a bomb, then set off for Pittsburgh to buy a gun and a suit of decent clothes. Goldman, meanwhile, decided to help fund the scheme through prostitution. Remembering the character of Sonya in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (1866), she mused: "She had become a prostitute in order to support her little brothers and sisters.... Sensitive Sonya could sell her body; why not I?" Once on the street, she caught the eye of a man who took her into a saloon, bought her a beer, gave her ten dollars, informed her she did not have "the knack", and told her to quit the business. She was "too astounded for speech". 

On July 23, Berkman gained access to Frick's office with a concealed handgun and shot Frick three times, then stabbed him in the leg. A group of workers—far from joining in his attempt—beat Berkman unconscious, and he was carried away by the police. Berkman was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to twenty-two years in prison; his absence from her life was very difficult for Goldman. Convinced Goldman was involved in the plot, police raided her apartment and—finding no evidence—pressured her landlord into evicting her. Worse, the attempt had failed to rouse the masses: workers and anarchists alike condemned Berkman's action. Johann Most, their former mentor, lashed out at Berkman and the assassination attempt. Furious at these attacks, Goldman brought a toy horsewhip to a public lecture and demanded, onstage, that Most explain his betrayal. He dismissed her, whereupon she struck him with the whip, broke it on her knee, and hurled the pieces at him. She later regretted her assault, confiding to a friend: "At the age of twenty-three, one does not reason."

How great a story is that?  Tow anarchists decide to assassinate a leader of industry and actually one of them gets close enough to pull the trigger while his girlfriend decides to prostitute herself to raise money?  That would make a terrific movie if done right. 

The union-busting governor of Wisconsin survived his recall vote, and taxpayers in two California cities have decimated the pensions of their municipal workers.  The import of these voted, and their associated rhetoric is clear: government employees will be ostracized as the scapegoats of government spending.

Governor Scott Walker not only hailed his triumph as the best way to effectuate cost savings for Wisconsin taxpayers, but he again pulled out the right-wing banner that those taxpayers want smaller government.  How much one pays your workers and how they bargain for their remuneration does not seem to be directly connected to how many workers you employ, but I guess those who donated something like $35 million to his effort choose to conflate the two. 

Californians, along those same lines, chose to break their promises to employees and cut their promised pension benefits to those who are currently working for the cities.  (I don’t know if they cut the payout to those who have retired and are collecting.)  I sincerely doubt those same voters would have supported a plan whereby their employers could have reneged on promised benefits after years or even decades of work.  Most of these employees have not been paying into social security so their pension is all they had. It stood in place of social security.  Can you imagine if the federal government proposed a law to immediately cut promised social security benefits?  The outcry would deafen Martians.  But faced with having to raise taxes, most people chose to save their right to buy another video game or extra case of beer every year rather than support their police, firefighters, etc.

Obviously underlying these votes, and undoubtedly more to come, is outright jealousy at the generosity of government pension plans.  Certainly I have heard a great deal about the benefits of PERA, and of course I am the beneficiary of an ill-managed and underfunded pension program.  I realize that perhaps I am not the greatest spokesman for government pensioners, but there is nothing being said on our behalf so I will choose to write about it. (Oh hell, only about 10 people read these things anyway.)

When I was at CDAC we fought hard to get the right for DA employees to become eligible for PERA, and Pete Weir accomplished that at great political effort.  Very many legislators either disdain public employment altogether or expressed contempt for PERA’s expansive benefits.  (I found this somewhat disingenuous as the legislators themselves took salary and other compensation and made themselves eligible for PERA.)  Pete’s effort has reaped little benefit for local DA employees as only a few districts were able to convince their funding bodies to implement PERA, one of which was Boulder when all county employees joined PERA.

Pension benefits are perhaps one of the main reasons that public employees choose to stay at their jobs.  The pay is lower, generally, than that in the private sector, and the working conditions with the current budget cuts can be very difficult.  Would you like to work at the DMV?  Long ago government officials realized that hiring and retaining quality employees was a difficult proposition.  Because unlike a private business government cannot increase wages based upon success, governmental entities created pension plans which exceeded the benefits available under social security.  They never joined social security, leaving public employees retirement years solely at the mercy of the pensions.  Unfortunately, many factors coincided with the increased costs of these plans at exactly the same time private industry was leaving the defined benefit model in favor of 401(k)s, but also including their workers in social security. 

Now that people are living longer and needing expensive medical benefits after retirement, the pension plans constitute a significant expenditure for local governments.  With most people having defined benefits unavailable, seeing the generous benefits received by a few government pensions, and loathe to pay a penny more in tax, there is strong public sentiment to gut the benefits their public employees have been promised. 

Unfortunately, the argument in favor of keeping these plans has not been well made or well received.  People today are very anti-government, hostile to the police, and frustrated with what they perceive to be reduced and substandard services.  The occasional, but inevitable, discovery of waste only exacerbates taxpayer apoplexy at government remuneration.  The answer, reduce benefits.

I fear that this short-sighted policy will result in even more frustration with government services.  San Diego police officers start at about $46,000 a year.  Not poverty wages, but not very much for being asked to risk your life every day.  Working for the police for 20 or more years will not yield a substantial amount of money, while every day facing the possibility that some untoward act, even things as mundane as a traffic accident, will severely compromise your ability to enjoy your retirement.   The promise of sustained income was a major incentive to keep working.  I realize that many police departments long ago went away from defined benefit plans and yet they continue to hire, but I have no doubt that process gets more difficult.

There will become a point where government compensation is just too low to induce dedicated, hard working and intelligent people to put up with the enmity of their fellow citizens.  Too often we hear people criticize the work of government employees.  But without high enough wages and attractive pension benefits what do they expect?  

A column in the Times yesterday epitomizes for me the problems with modern American sports fans.  This sportswriter took his kids to the Mets game where Johann Santana threw the first no-hitter in Mets history.  Even though his kids are 10 and 7, he said they did not know what a no-hitter was, why it was important, or that one was happening.  I guarantee you my daughter by age 10 knew well what a no-hitter was.  He said he spent three innings standing in line for the Shake Shack which makes me think he really didn’t go there to watch the game.  And most infuriating he was proud to have gone because now he and his kids can say they were there.  He seemed very pleased about what watching a no-hitter did for his ego and image, and he seemed completely unconcerned about Santana’s achievement or the drama of watching it unfold.  He said that without an announcer to tell him what he was seeing, like he would have on tv, he didn’t even realize he was watching a no-hitter until the seventh inning. 

This guy is a sportswriter?  This demonstrates how low sportwriting has sunk.  I doubt Red Smith or Jim Murray or Heywood Hale Broun would ever have written this crap which belongs more in the acrid cesspool which constitutes the blogosphere than the front page of the New York Times sports section.  I am disgusted.  

This guy apparently appreciates nothing about the game of baseball.  Watching a no-hitter is extremely dramatic and this one highlighted by the fact that no New York Met had done so in the 50 years the team had been in existence.  Santana missed all of last season with an arm injury and was not supposed to pitch too deep into a game.  So anyone with even passing knowledge of the Mets should have been fully swept up in the moment, and not wondering how long it would take to supply his children with extremely fattening and unhealthy treats at a time when they probably should have been getting ready for bed.  (The game started at 7, ended around 10.)

But now he gets to crow that he was there for Santana's no hitter.  The joy of this kind of self-promotion is to express how you got to enjoy one of the greatest moments in New York baseball history, how you hung on every pitch while the drama grew and the fans sensed they were witnesses to something special. All he can do is pull out his ticket stub (which he was so proud of himself for not giving away) and pound his chest.  I guess he did watch the ninth inning, which for someone who fails to appreciate the ebb and flow of a ballgame and the wonder of watching a pitcher spin a masterpiece, is enough.  

Meg and I watched Santana's previous outing where he allowed only three hits.  Unlike this joker, I sat in my seat the entire time, and enjoyed watching Santana put on a pitching clinic.  I saw no no-hitter, but I reveled in the experience.  (Meg did miss some time standing in line for Italian Ice, including one for me.  Apparently long lines and slow service are a problem at Citi Field.)  I wonder how much this guy and his kids will remember.  I bet it will be more milk shake than history.