Doctor Doctor

I tried to comment on a blog post at New English Review, but can't see the reply. I don't want to lose it, so here it is:

In Westport, Connecticut works a physician named Doctor. He is Dr. Doctor. His wife is a doctor. Together they are the Doctors Doctor. The physicians who treat them when they are ill are the Doctors Doctor's doctors. Not exactly "onions, onions, onions", but factual.

Conan Doyle chose Watson to be a doctor. It convinces because we know some doctors to be clear and precise.

James Michener described his success as being able to get people to read to the end of the page. Not a fan myself, but his popularity and the heft of his tomes suggests that he had found the knack.

Are clarity and precision essential in getting people to read to the end of the page? Usually, I would say, even when seeming to write about nothing. The writing may be desultory, or have no main topic whatsoever, may have no point or direction, yet capture and hold the reader's attention. Still, on that random walk, one expects clear and precise narration.

Exceptions abound. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" comes to mind. Wonderful, but in part because of what is left unreported and unclear. "A pair of ragged claws" is imprecise, but effective.

Drill and conserve

Obama claims that we who support drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS) are ignorant and that we are proud of being ignorant. Why? He claims (wrongly) that Americans could save as much oil by properly inflating their tires as could be produced by drilling for it offshore. He claims that to deny this is ignorance and to flout one's denial is to be proud of being ignorant.

He implies that those of us who support offshore drilling oppose proper tire inflation. As McCain said about inflating tires (and conservation in general), "Do that. But also drill". Obama assumes we are too stupid to realize that we can do both.

I guess his argument works with some people. It's very simple to contradict:

Consider what a child would do. Tell the child you've hidden a candy bar in the kitchen and a candy bar in the bedroom. Which will he search for? Well, some children would search in the kitchen. Some would search in the bedroom. But 99.999% of the children would search both rooms and get both candy bars. Because even little children know that if some is good, more is better.

Can Obama show one good reason why drilling offshore would prevent us from also properly inflating our tires (or vice versa)? If not, he is presenting us with a false choice.

You'd have to be ignorant to fall for that false choice. Obama assumes we are.

The Tautology of Hope

Inspiration for Obama's campaign

Fascinating how some patterns keep recurring.

Free Our Oil

Editorial in today's WSJ: Free Our Oil

In Alaska, the citizens get cash payments from the royalties derived from Alaskan oil drilling. Wouldn't it be nice if we had some offshore royalties coming in to shore up sagging Florida state gov't revenues? Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Taxpayer Bill of Rights that limited growth in state spending -- and the offshore oil royalties were pouring in? Wouldn't it be nice if Florida had to send out royalty checks to its citizens -- per capita checks benefiting rich and poor, young and old, black and white, English-speaking and Spanish-speaking alike?

The only thing standing between us and those checks are the Dems in Congress. Does anybody doubt that, if the Republicans still formed a majority in Congress, the offshore oil ban would be history? If Newt were Speaker instead of Nancy, Congress would have presented a repeal of that ban for the President to sign on the same day he lifted the Executive moratorium.

And oil dropped by the biggest one-day percentage in some 16 years -- second big drop this week. This on the day after the President ended the moratorium. But we're told lifting the ban would not affect oil prices for years to come.

If Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramhoff and Mark Foley could sink the Republican majority in 2006, this issue -- Democratic obstinacy on offshore drilling -- could sink the Democratic majority. Did any of you see the electoral disaster for Republicans at this point in the summer of 2006? A steady drumbeat of criticism could do in the Congress who has overseen the doubling of oil prices and refused to respond.

Interesting lectures at Mises.org

I just listened to a very interesting lecture called Rothbard as Historian that derided the use of GDP alone to gauge the health of the economy. You can hear it in the podcast available from Mises.org.

The relevant comments come about 25 minutes into the lecture. The issue is that much of GDP is gov't spending and gov't spending is a net drag on the economy (given that its revenue subtracts from economy in nearly equal amount as it spends). What Rothbard suggested is that we measure Private Product Remaining (which the gov't does not measure) which is GDP minus what the gov't takes out.

The lecturer, Thomas Woods, uses 1946 as an example. It supposedly was a bad year looking only at GDP figures. GDP dropped because wartime spending ended. GDP would lead you to believe the previous years were better, but in fact WW2 was not a time of great prosperity. True, unemployment was low (11 million people were in the military and some of them died -- this was not an ideal situation). In fact, lots of goods were rationed during the war. People were scraping by -- they had money, but nothing to buy. In 1946 soldiers came back, re-took their old jobs when they could (9 million of them) and replaced the less productive, less skilled people who had been doing this job (women, young and the very old). Is it reasonable to believe that productivity shrank by 22% in that year as GDP would indicate?

Rothbard claims that the only spending decisions that help when measuring the economy are voluntary transactions (rather than gov't controlled spending) because these are the only ones we can be reasonably sure are made to increase the individual's well-being. Private output increased by 30% in 1946 -- we've never had a year over year improvement as good as that. And, people living in 1946 will tell you that the American economy did very well that year, even though the standard economic measurements would have you believe it was catastrophic.

Mises.org is an extraordinary online resource. The lectures are quite Libertarian, so you'll hear about Rand, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, etc. They like to take swipes (and outright attacks) against the Iraq War. I part company with them concerning foreign policy, but the economic thought is compelling.

You can find there a lecture entitled Senior Economics Seminar by Mark Thornton which examines the fallacies of alcohol and drug prohibition. It got me thinking. My son used a product which was adulterated and it killed him. He used it properly. If this were a legal product sold at Wal-Mart, his mother would be able to sue the manufacturer and probably Wal-Mart and definitely whoever it was who mishandled the product for wrongful death. Who is going to support her in her old age now that her only child has died? But because the product was an illegal narcotic and because it was sold only in an illegal market, none of the normal legal protections are available. In all likelihood, if narcotics were openly sold at a profit-making store (maybe not Wal-Mart), the capitalists who maintained that market would make sure the product was safe when used properly, lest they lose their profits through product liability lawsuits.

McCain on SNL

On Weekend Update




Fake McCain 2008 Commerical

A defense of polygamy

In an article criticizing polygamy, Rich Lowry of National Review states:

Polygamy is fundamentally inconsistent with our values as a society...

Here is my response:

Lowry's thesis is that polygamy is inherently anti-democratic, but not all polygamy is coercive. There are remedies to the faults he lists (e.g. require that all wives after the first be over a certain age, or that in plural marriages the man cannot be more than 10 years older than his wife if she is under a certain age), as well as some he missed (i.e. the chief problem with bigamy is that one or both of the cuckolded spouses is usually not aware of the other marriage -- require consent of all spouses before approving a subsequent marriage and you have truly democratized polygamy).

In other words, the institution could be reformed in such a way as to increase women's choices. But Lowry does not want to reform it, he wants to abolish it. His aim is not really to condemn it for cause, but to condemn it as offensive to his tradition and to look for cause to justify his bias.

I have no truck with polygamy (more correctly, polygyny -- polyandry, the other form of polygamy, empowers women). I can barely serve one wife, much less take on another (and as any devoted spouse knows, marriage is mutual servitude). But I know that some women who would otherwise go manless in a monogamous society would get married if polygyny were legal. I also know that some women prefer the company of their husband's other wives (lots of available babysitters). Polygamy does not have to take on the bizarre forms that it does when society shuns it and shoves its practitioners into the shadows.

In short, I think Lowry's case against polygyny is intellectually wanting. It reminds me of the case against gay marriage, which is said to weaken real marriage. From what I can see, it merely redefines the word "marriage" in an objectionable way. There is nothing about long-term loving gay relationships that anyone despises -- anyone accept those who despise gay sex first and foremost. Most people would accept the desire of gay couples to formalize their relationships through something like marriage, even if they dislike having the word co-opted.

So to say that such relationships damage other relationships fails for lack of a causal connection. There's a stronger case that heterosexual plural marriages put heterosexual single marriages at risk, for the reason Lowry mentions in his essay: men compete for available women. But this reason founders on the problem of the great abundance of available women (and men).

Close to 40% of American adults are not married. Moreover, nearly 90% of the population age 45 and older has been married at least once. By age 55, that ratio rises to 95%. That tells me that many of those who are not married, wish to do so, but choose not to. Those who choose not to be married do not do so because of a shortage of available partners. Perhaps there is a lack of desirable partners or perhaps they have better things to do.

And the fact is, legalized polygamy would increase the number of available partners. Men and women would be free to join an existing marriage.

Finally, I think we fool ourselves if we think that people forgo their urge for multiple partners by consenting to society's monogamous fiat. People commit adultery and this leads to divorce. In at least some of those cases, polygamy could keep the original marriage intact, and that would, in my opinion, be an improvement over divorce.

Lowry claims that polygamy undermines free choice. In fact, it is the prohibition of polygamy that constrains free choice.

Dick Cavett vs General Petraeus

I think Dick Cavett went too far by criticizing General Petraeus for not displaying a sense of humor while testifying before Congress. He also made fun of the General's medals, believe it or not.

Cavett is not wrong about the General's gravitas and stilted language, but once again we see a man of the Left valuing style over substance. He takes issue with the General's choice of words, ignoring the content for the most part (except to say that he disagrees with the General's mission in Iraq -- which is really a beef with the Commander in Chief, not the commander in Iraq).

I think Cavett is wrong about the war, too. I am always astonished to hear people complain about the allegedly large cost of the liberation of Iraq. It is small in comparison to the cost of the liberation of France or even Belgium. But people can disagree on that point without making fun of an honorable soldier (and, by extension, the military in general).

Cavett was gracious when remembering the late WFB. What a shame to see him disgrace himself writing about General Petraeus.

Remembering Ben

It was a year ago tomorrow that my son took his life through an accidental drug overdose. You can read my eulogy of him here. In that eulogy, I quoted the following poem:

Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Sonnet II

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Today, by coincidence, the police called my house to tell my wife that someone by my name was injured in Daytona and that they thought he might be from Tampa. My wife called me at my desk, but I was in a meeting. She called my cell phone twice, but I silenced the ring while I was in the meeting. When I finally called her back she was, of course, quite relieved. What an awful phone call to get this time of year. You can imagine how worried she was.

It's been a horrible year. I will be glad to be done with it.

It's a terrible thing to lose a child. One can never be fully happy again, because, lurking in the back at all times, is the saddest of memories. It taints every feeling.

Super Atom Kim (German cartoon)

"Broadcast News" from Odessa

Pardon me for blasting this long Odessa report, but the internet here is terribly slow and I don't want to wait another 15 minutes for a separate form to appear. I have typed out the diary entry using Notepad. I only hope that the message goes through. And of course, there's no editing. Just my stream of consciousness, so pardon the mistakes.

This is my fourth trip to Ukraine. Each time, I have managed to find someplace to access the internet for email and browsing. This time, however, the only access I have is ridiculously slow.

I am getting DNS errors on yahoo.com. When the browser cannot even get a DNS resolution, that's pretty sad.

Still, one aspect of Ukraine never fails to satisfy: the plethora of pulchritude. It's amazing. Eight years ago the fashion was for young girls to wear short skirts and short shorts. These, I am happy to say are still in fashion. Mmm. I don't flatter myself that any of these girls are interested in me. That really doesn't matter since I cannot speak their language even if I wanted to talk to them. And I don't really want to talk to them. It just never stops being fun to look.

Needless to say, the beach was a special treat.

We went downtown with the kids. Odessa has changed a lot in the last five years. They have an area down by Deribosovskaya Street that is meant to attract tourists. They have spruced up that area quite a bit. When I first came here eight years ago, it was kind of sad, really. They have made big progress.

And yet, they have a long way to go. They have no idea how to route automobile traffic effectively, so traveling by car is crazy. It has always been this way, but now there are a lot more cars. You can tell that some people here are richer than most Odessans by the cars they drive. Also, they've made the tourist area more attractive, but there is still a lot of building to be done and no public restrooms -- just an awful latrine behind city hall.

I suppose five years from now they'll have made these improvements and that will all be for the better. But I find myself nostalgic for the primitive and somewhat innocent Odessa I found in 1999 as it was emerging from Communism and utter poverty and all things Cyrillic, Ukrainian or Russian seemed new and strange to me.

We went to a shopping mall that sits on top of a parking garage. One can even park one's car in front of the supermarket there and take the shopping cart out of the store to load up the car. No more lugging bundles all the way back to the apartment. This is a big innovation in Odessa. In 1999, the site of this mall was a boarded up vacant lot. I recall seeing a homeless bitch there nursing her mangy pups in the dirt. I was delighted with the improvement. Just think of all the jobs this very compact shopping mall has created.



Inside, the shopkeepers have learned the lessons of corrupt Western capitalists. Everything is ON SALE! 30%-50% OFF. These signs are in English, by the way. The Levi's store even had a sign that said, in big bold white letters on a red background


SALE.

Yahoo *


And then in tiny letters at the bottom of the poster, they had a footnote with the Ukrainian translation. They translated Yahoo as Uuu-AUU, which is really more of a transliteration of Wow. [What kind of language does not have letters for the W, H or Th sounds? Russian is absurd.]

It's clear that they aren't trying to appeal to the English speakers but rather to borrow the cachet associated with rich Americans. If only they knew that most real Americans are nothing like the supertoned, chic models they see on TV. If you want to see beautiful people, come to Odessa.

I get the impression that the window is closing for fat American men like me who want to pick up a beautiful Ukrainian bride. In five years, what will America have to offer that Ukraine won't have? Considerably faster internet service, that's for sure.

America has a great quality of life compared to here in too many ways to enumerate in this letter. Mundane things like car insurance and smooth roads. Important things like superb medical care. But is that enough to lure someone away from a land where your family lives and everybody speaks your language and opportunity is blossoming? It's going to be a much harder sell.

On the bus back from downtown, another passenger started an argument with Oxana. He tried to start it with me, but I was congenial and did not take the bait. He chided Polina for "shouting", even though she was just talking too loud. I agreed with him and promised that we would keep our voices down. This was not enough for him. He kept going on and on as though he were looking out for the interests of the other passengers. He could understand that Polina was speaking English, but those poor other
passengers could not. What significance this has, I cannot tell you. We were all lucky that Nastya, my three-year-old, was not throwing one of her screaming tantrums. They are language-neutral.

The fact is, he was drunk -- and persistent. Eventually, Oxana had had enough of it and started giving him a hard time. "What is your problem? Leave us alone." This just got him going all the more. Then he dropped the F-bomb. Odd thing to do for one claiming to be defending bus passenger protocol. "Fuck you twice!", was Oxana's response. She refrained from answering him in Russian and really telling him what she thought because she did not want to upset the other passengers and worsen the scene.

He made some drunken babble in broken English about how he could pleasure Oxana and that he did not need her because he had a wife to take care of him. He advised me to teach my wife to be more respectful. The F-bomb is not usually, and certainly not in this case, about actual fucking. It's just a gesture of contempt. I am amazed when people get bent out of shape over this word.

Some people will show tremendous disrespect and contempt to others (for example, offering unsolicited, non-constructive criticism, e.g. "What ever made you think you could wear that?"), but then gasp in horror when you reflect that disrespect with a blunt, "Fuck You!". They seem oblivious to their own disrespectful behavior that precipitated the swearing. Or perhaps they are perfectly aware of what they are doing and get away with it most of the time simply because they maintain a fig leaf of courtesy. That's why I was delighted when it was reported that Dick Cheney, in a private conversation, told Vermont Senator Pat Leahy to "Go fuck yourself". I feel certain Leahy deserved it (or worse).

In any case, I motioned for Oxana to calm down and assured the drunk bus passenger that he was entirely in the right and that we would talk more quietly. I shook his hand and kept nodding and smiling agreement. He retreated from where we were sitting, but even though he was getting ready to go, he kept trying to catch Oxana's eye so as to re-engage the argument. This was impossible as Oxana had had enough of him. Shortly before disembarking, he admonished Oxana to "Love your husband", advice I am happy to report that she really does not need. But, of course, this will now be a private joke between us as, whenever she disagrees with me, I can wag my finger at her and say, "Love your husband".

I was glad he finally left the bus, as were the other passengers, I presume, although, no one said a peep. Somehow I think that passengers on an American bus would have told him to shut up. Maybe not. It's hard to know what to do with drunks. I felt sorry for him. He was so drunk he weaved around as he stood. I wager he did not know we could tell he was drunk, that he thought he was holding himself together pretty well.

The fact is, I disagreed with him about Polina's talking, but I was not going to let on to him. Sometimes people do talk on the bus. On the way home from the beach the next day, the passengers were talking a lot, because we were mostly families. On this particular night, however, Polina was the only one talking, probably because we were the only family on the bus -- everyone else had but their own self for company. So why shouldn't my daughter play and talk with her father? True, she was not using her "inside voice", but she's six years old. A simple finger to the lips and a "shoosh" would have sufficed.

Coming home from the beach, we let the first bus fill up and waited for the next so that we could be first in line and have our pick of seats (an important consideration when you have two kids and a stroller to arrange).

A group of pre-teen boys came up behind us and one of them asked me a question. I said, "Ya nye gavaryu po Russki" -- a good phrase to memorize meaning "I do not speak Russian." I motioned for them to ask Oxana. They wanted to know if we were getting on the approaching bus (we were). Once we were settled in our seats, the boys passed us as they boarded the bus. Oxana tells me that they said (in Russian), "I don't see what the problem is. I speak English." Then he struck some rap poses and offered a sampling of his English, "What's up, muhthehfuckuh! What's up, muhthehfuckuh!". I'm sure his "muhtheh" would be proud.

People wear a lot of English phrases on their T-shirts. Some of them make absolutely no sense. Hell, back in the 80's I wore a tie that said "Kamikaze" in Japanese, or so I was told. It could have said "Suzie's Sushi bar", how would I know. If you have to ask why I would wear a tie with Japanese writing on it, you probably missed the 1980's. We saw one kid downtown with a shirt that said, "I'll fuck anything". At least it was worn by a boy.

Then at the beach Oxana saw one that read, "Born to fuck" (well, who isn't, I'd like to know -- why not just wear a shirt saying, "Desperately horny with no prospects in sight"). Again, there's some comfort that this shirt, too, was worn by a male.

Oxana said that she saw a girl at the beach baring her breasts for a couple of men who were old enough to be her father. One was Georgian -- one of the men, that is, not one of her breasts. I am not sure why the man's country of origin factored into the situation, but Oxana somehow deduced it and felt it was a necessary detail, probably to emphasize that neither of the two breasts being shown were from there. As father of two girls, I would be aghast to find them soliciting attention as this girl was. And yet, the prospect of having a pretty, teenage girl flirt with me, even if I had to pay for it, does have some appeal. How could it not? I am born to fuck, after all.

My girls were topless as well, but at three and six it's not an issue. One woman was sitting right at the edge of the water baring her beautiful and ample breasts for all to see. As luck would have it, Nastya insisted on gathering rocks at that very spot on the beach. I tried not to stare, but I certainly stole several (hundred) glances. Oxana was mildly disgusted. Personally, I think she was setting a good example. One I wish several dozen others would have followed.

The fact is, the bathing suits don't hide much, and as an irredeemable "ass man", I was in heaven. If I were a younger man, and not married, I would spend every day at the beach.

I am glad that my daughters like the beach, but I am constantly on the edge of panic if either of them strays out of sight, which Polina inevitably does, much to my consternation. Nastya, too, is quite willing to go walking right through the crowd of people, across their towels and over their bodies. She has no idea where she is going, she just occasionally takes off. The vigil really distracts from the plentiful eye candy.

Nastya was wearing her "pampers" at the beach (that's what they call disposable diapers over here). Several old ladies came over and talked to me about that. I pretended to understand them, but gave no reply, of course, just shrugged my shoulders. I presume they were giving the same advice Oxana got -- that we should just remove the "pampers". Oxana was convinced that the diaper was somehow protecting Nastya from the various dread diseases that lurk in the Black Sea. More likely, it just held the water in place so the germs could grab ahold. Eventually, Oxana saw fit to remove the diaper and Nastya was the only totally nude girl on the beach -- an example I was hoping several other girls would follow, but no dice.

The weirdest thing of all, however, happened after we left the beach. We walked the "boardwalk" of beverage, souvenir and food vendors. We bought shuarmas -- a cross between a burrito and a gyro -- a very large, soft tortilla stuffed with spicy lamb, cabbage, spicy shredded carrot and cucumber, garnished with (ugh) ketchup and mayo. I much prefer the shuarmas in Amsterdam that were made with what I presume are more traditional Turkish spices. The Ukrainians seem to like mayonnaise on everything. (ugh)

That's not the weird part. After eating, we walked the rest of the boardwalk and took in the seaview. There's a slightly more isolated area of the road that is not populated with many vendor booths. Families make picnics in the grass there and cook shashliks (meat kabobs). Oxana had to pee, so she took Polina off to find a suitably inconspicuous bush. Polina did not have to go, but Oxana figured that, if by chance there were onlookers, they might feel more sympathetic toward a little girl.

As it turns out, up the hill from the spot she chose, there was a yellow concrete building that housed two latrines, one for men and one for women. Each room was labeled -- Zhe for Zhenshina (Women) and M for, well, whatever the Russian word for Men is. The men's latrine was disgusting. It's hard to imagine a room for shitholes that is not disgusting, but these were extraordinarily bad. Outhouses have seats, at least, which not only aids in directing the effluent into the target hole, but also eliminates the need to put your feet close to said hole, where, by the way, some previous users happened to have missed the target.

Oxana and Polina had scrambled up the hillside and entered the latrine by themselves. With Nastya in the stroller, I had to take the long route to the bend where the low road meets the high road. That U-turn was about 100 meters long, so for a while Oxana an Polina were on their own. A teenage boy, I'd guess around 16 years old, decided to watch Oxana do her business. He just walked in after Oxana had dropped her drawers and stood looking at her. She yelled at him and threatened to call the police. But this nervy kid just stood his ground. Even after my girls emerged from the latrine, he continued to hang around. He finally took off after I arrived, but not because I scared him. I think he finally felt ashamed. I looked at him with a mixture of bemusement and pity. I remember what it was like to be so full of hormones and have no outlet for it. Nature is quite cruel in that respect. Needless to say, Oxana was a little freaked out by him.

There's more to write, but it's late. They baptized Nastya yesterday. She threw one of her screaming fits most of the time. She briefly stopped when she noticed a ring of candles in a brass candleholder surrounding an icon (one of dozens in the chapel). "Birthday cake!", she shouted. At another point, I managed to get her to play a word game.

"What about a tiger?", I whispered.

"What about a ELL-PHANT!", she shouted.

"What about a goat?"

"What about a SHEEP!"

This went on for two blissful, scream-free minutes until we exhausted all the truly interesting animals and started repeating.

It was ludicrous, but then any Orthodox ritual is ridiculous. At one point, the godmothers and godfathers (it was a dual-baptism with her cousin's baby boy) were required to follow the priest in a parade around the altar. Well, forget that! Nastya was not going to let anybody but her mother or me hold her. And yet, the parade must go on -- it's part of the ritual -- can't be fully baptized without the parade. So I had to join the parade, patting Nastya on the leg as her godmother held her and her godfather brought up the rear. I just hope none of the magic rubbed off on me instead of going to the intended recipients.

Afterward I apologized to all for Nastya's nearly incessant screaming. Apparently, she's an atheist. We should have asked. Well, now she's a baptized atheist.

[I'm reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". It's a tedious defense of atheism. At least, I find it tedious and I'm an atheist. I think I'll move on to Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". What I really wanted to read was "God is Not Great" by Chistopher Hitchens, but that was oversubscribed at the library. One point that Dawkins makes is that we pay far too much deference to people on account of religion. With politics, we feel free to argue each point, but with religion we throw up our hands and say, "Well, that's his religious point of view". If he said, "2+2=5, according to my religion", would we still be silent? How about "genital mutilation is just a part of my religion"?]

After the "Christos" (baptismal ceremony), we went to grandma Tanya's place where she had laid out a big spread. Lots of tasty stuff, all fixed without onions for my benefit, so I ate a little of everything. Polina, of course, ate only the cheese. No strange food will cross those lips. Grandma poured me three double shots of vodka. I was hung over all afternoon. I've had enough vodka for a year (and we've still a week to go).

Bad news on Wall Street yesterday. Not a good time to be cut off from the internet, I suppose. I don't trust any of the computers I use over here (possible keystroke monitoring password sniffers), so no banking or brokerage business until Aug 20. I hope I still have some assets by then.

..Bob.

The Message Game

I have been working a lot lately. This, of course, cuts into the time I spend with my wife and daughters. I was lucky enough to get home last night in time to kiss my older daughter good night and sing her a bedtime song. It is the parental equivalent of eating the icing off the cake -- enjoying the sweetest part, forgetting how good the rest is. Well, I can't say I have forgotten how good the rest is, but I am leaving it on the plate for now.

Before we went to bed, we played "The Message Game", which is what my daughter calls Yahoo Instant Messenger (YIM). I am proud to report that her hunt-and-peck typing is faster than that of my boss. Her spelling is better, as well, but I wouldn't want her running the business.

Her favorite part of the game is playing with her papa. It's nice that we can do this even when I am at work. She contacts me when she gets home from school and we sometimes play her second favorite part. We play checkers together. It will not stun you to learn that in all of the dozens of games we have played I have yet to win. The fact is, she very much enjoys winning. She tells me this every time. "I am good at checkers," she announces, "I always win. Super Red!"

Indeed she does. This serves my purpose in two ways. It allows me the opportunity to build her confidence, if not her checkers playing skill. She does not ask herself, as indeed I have not asked until today, where the name checkers came from. She does not question why she always wins, nor imagine that there is any strategy that might help to extend her winning streak. I know that such checkers strategy exists. I seem to recall that Boris Spassky, chess grandmaster of the 1970s, had a sister Irina who was a checkers champion.

In my daughter's mind, however, she wins because she is lucky, and because she has an innate talent for checkers. It will not stun you to learn that she has the same talent for tic-tac-toe, as we discovered at an Italian restaurant the other night while waiting for the food.

The other purpose for letting her win is that it shortens the game considerably. This is not because I dislike spending time with my daughter. It's just that she generally takes a good long time between moves. Hence, I leave very little to make up for that. In a timed game, I'd whip her ass. Don't for a second imagine that she is spending this time considering her next move. She is merely distracted by a dozen other things.

I see her on the webcam I mounted over the monitor at home. It has full view of the TV room. After she moves, I watch her rise and hop over to where she can view the screen. She watches Spongebob or whatever for a few minutes, then climbs up on the sofa and makes her way back to the PC by walking across the top of the sofa back. My wife deplores this, but to Polina it is as much an adventure as finding a land route to Asia (and sometimes seems to take as long).

When I think about Marco Polo, I cannot help but wonder:

• Did he set out for profit or adventure?
• Had anyone else gone there and back? Why did his deeds matter? Was it because he blogged about it (well, kept and later published a journal, the blog equivalent in his day)?
• Surely there were others who tried and failed, died along the way, no?
• What were his special talents that helped him avoid the spear and the cookpot along the way?
• Did his father let him win at checkers?
• Having discovered something that altered the lives of most of the rest of the planet, did he spend his later life happy to have advanced civilization and commerce, or did he die regretting that he had not fully exploited his adventure for personal gain?
• Did he worry that by opening up trade routes that would bring species from one biological niche into another, certain species would perish? Did he not value the biological status quo?
  
• Are the founders of the internet and web happy to helped most of the rest of the planet, are do they rue that others have become far wealthier than they?
• Do the founders ever worry that by opening up new avenues of commerce certain species of business would perish? Do they not value the commercial status quo? Have they no mom? Have they no pop?
  

Hold on. It is my turn.

It is now her turn again. She gets a king, or, as this child of the 1970s tells her, a queen. One advantage of playing checkers on Yahoo Instant Messenger is that it enforces all the rules. If you have a jump, it is the only move it allows you to make. All other checkers are frozen in place. It also marks a checker that has made it to her opponent's home row with a crown icon. In regular checkers, of course, we would proudly say, "King me." It is a gentle humiliation of one's opponent to command him to relinquish one of the checkers he has captured.

Since YIM performs this service silently, I type a message to my daughter, "Queen!", or on those rare occasions when I reach the crownhead, "King me!".

I suppose someday someone will try to explain to my daughter that her checkers do not become queens, but rather kings. My daughter will confidently correct them. She knows that girl checkers can only become queens. Only boy checkers can be kings. She will say this with certainty. It will be impossible to dissuade her.

If I were to raise her a full feminist, I suppose, I would have to avoid any and all attributions of gender to the game token. Royal Checker. Elevated Token. Oppressor. "Oh, honey! How lucky for you. Now you get to be an oppressor".

Wait, it's my turn. Imagine that, I just lost a piece.

Thinking back on my college years, I recall how the fullest of the full feminists had a penchant for socialism and its ridiculous aim of producing an equality of outcome in a society where talent and luck are not equally distributed. I suppose they might have me teach my daughter that all checkers are inherently equal, and that no one checker should have more power than another. If one checker can move bi-directionally, then all must be allowed to.

In short, the full feminists would have me teach my daughter rules that have no relation to real life. They would raise her not to be someone who helps the rest of the planet with her special skills. They would consider such truck evil, capitalistic selfishness. In the name of empowerment, they would teach her she was a victim, and sap her of her confidence and special skills, for that is their special skill. They would destine her for the cookpot. They would scare the sense of adventure right out of her.

But as I said, she is a lucky girl. Her papa knows better.