Paxman vs Brand - full interview - BBC News

Russell Brand has become a rare, gracious and lucid voice of  reason in our society.  (Exclamation points.)

Isn't it a bit surprising, a bit of a shock, and yes, a bit of a shame, that we should have to wait for a mere "comedian" to take up this mantle?  A shame, isn't it, that we should have to wait for Russell Fucking Brand to speak the truth so directly and effectively to the abuse of power that is drowning us?  

Well, I'm just grateful.  Thanks Russell!  I hope that people listen.  It's sad that a clown has to step forward as a statesman while all of the statesmen are busy turning themselves into clowns. 

Should Presidents Have Prior Military Service?

This would never occur to me as an important consideration, but I saw something recently on Facebook.  There are hundreds of snarky, disrespectful things being posted these days about President Obama.  They run from the truly offensive (Witch Doctor photoshops) to mere attempts to be clever with innuendos about his supposed lack of credentials.  Among the later was a picture with the question:  Should we require our presidents to have prior military service?

This is, of course, a dig at Presidents Obama and Clinton, not coincidentally both Democrats.  It is a short sighted hit-piece that has obviously not been thought through.

For one thing, many presidents in recent memory have not had any military experience at all, prior or otherwise.  Of Democrats, besides Obama and Clinton, there's FDR and Woodrow Wilson.  Would anyone say that they were poorly prepared to be president?  Well yes, lots of people would, actually.  They were Democrats, and for a hundred years now Democrats have received the treatment.  FDR and Wilson are, in spite of everything, justifiably revered for their performance in office.  Of Republicans, there's Hoover, Coolidge and Harding.  Maybe those three could have used the extra training and discipline, but that's just me.

But how about mediocre service?  Would mediocre service help at all to prepare somebody to be president?  After all, they can't all be Eisenhowers.  President Eisenhower was the greatest West Point graduate of the century, eminently successful in matters military and political.  Importantly, his military experience was at the highest level of command, but how many can say that?  None of the others, it turns out.

Take George W. Bush, please.  He juiced his way into the Texas Air National Guard in a naked attempt by a rich, powerful family to protect him from the dangers of Vietnam.  His service was thoroughly mediocre, and that's putting it politely.  The skylarking, the long periods of being AWOL, not a distinguished period of service.  He was a mediocre president too, and that's being generous.

How about Ronald Reagan, a great hero to some.  Reagan took a home-study Army Extension course in 1937 and it got him a commission in the Army Reserve.  He was activated in 1942, albeit on limited service due to eyesight issues.  He was assigned to the 1st Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, and later worked for the War Loan Drive.  Less than heroic, with no command responsibilities.  No distinguished service, and no relevant experience to be the president.

Nixon?  Anybody remember Nixon?  He was a supply officer in the Pacific and worked at mundane tasks on islands far behind the point of the spear.  Mediocre. 

JFK's wartime experience was actually heroic, there was nothing mediocre about it.  But it was short on command experience.  He captained a PT boat and saw a lot of action.  Ditto, George H.W. Bush, heroic and exceptional.  He piloted a Grumman Avenger and captained a flight crew of three.  He also saw a lot of action, the dangerous kind, and both he and JFK came close to death when they were sunk/shot down, and both lost crew members to death.  Maybe the experiences shaped their "commander in chief" style, and maybe in a good way, but not so you'd want to require men to have done such things.

Gerald Ford could have skated on combat.  He was a lawyer already when the war started.  Rather than wait to be drafted into the rear-echelon officer corps he joined the Navy.  After a couple of years as a training officer he requested sea duty and spent the last two years of the war as a gunnery officer on an aircraft carrier that saw considerable combat service.  Admirable, and almost heroic, but . . . 

Jimmy Carter was a Naval officer, and he actually had command responsibilities as the XO and engineering officer of nuclear submarines.  I think that's pretty heroic even in peace time.  Probably didn't help him as president.  The engineering part might even have held him back.  Engineers like logical solutions that are susceptible to  proof, and those are rarely available to a president.

Carter and Ford had very creditable service with some command responsibilities in semi-heroic situations.  Neither is anyone's favorite president, let's face it.  

Here's a good one:  would anyone suggest that George Patton would have made a good president?  That would be a stretch, wouldn't it? 

So what would be the point of requiring prior military service for our presidents?  None at all, except as pointed barbs to be aimed at Obama and Clinton.  Both men have done a fine job as president without it.  (I can hear the screaming from here!  Nine to twelve time zones away!  Oh, the agony of giving any credit at all to these fine, if imperfect, men!)  There would be arguments about their successes, but the lie to those arguments would come into sharp focus if the arguments were extended to include FDR and Wilson.  And they would be extended.  All four could be painted with the "progressive" brush, and that's a curse these days among so-called conservatives. 

It would be an almost impossible thing to require anyway.  Wouldn't it require a constitutional amendment?  That's not going to happen.  It's just the right-wing echo chamber getting their snark on.  As distasteful as that is, we should be used to it by now. 

The Vocabulary Of Baseball

I'll bet that most of my Farang friends are watching the World Series.  Of my Thai friends, I'd be surprised if any were watching at all.

For the uninitiated, if you've only seen baseball on television you may miss the fact that the field is very big, and there are big spaces in between the players.  TV tends to compress all of the images.  As a great man once said, the object of baseball is to "hit it where they ain't."

A ball hit to the outfield may be a mere "fly ball;" it may be a "line drive;" it may be a "blooper;" or a "Texas leaguer;" or a "floater."  A line drive may be a "frozen rope;" a fly ball may be a "dying quail."  A line drive may go up a "power alley," and travel all the way to the wall. 

A ball to the outfield may "fall in" or be "run down."  It may go down the line or into the corner, or it may be hit into "the gap."  If three fielders are closing for the catch but they all miss it, the ball falls into the "Bermuda triangle."  (A new one on me.) 

A ball hit to the infield is usually just a "ground ball," but it may be a "dribbler;" or a "chopper;" or a "bunt."  They may be down the line, some even traveling "over the bag;" they may be "in the hole," or "up the middle."  They may even be said to "have eyes."  Balls hit in the air in the infield are generally either "pop ups" or "floaters."

If the batter strikes the ball but it doesn't go into fair territory, the ball may be "fouled back;" or "fouled off;" or "fouled out of play."  Or it may just be "foul tipped."

If you've never played baseball, you may be forgiven to think that there's not much going on.  But believe me, for a baseball fan, the whole thing can be quite exciting.  

Space, The Final Frontier!

“Interstellar” is coming out soon.  The story includes interstellar travel, and, I think, intergalactic travel as well.  My question is this:  why is this kind of enterprise only conceivable in a fictional setting? 

I see scientists on TV frequently talking about space travel, but it all has to do with how much fuel, or what propulsion systems, and how many thousands of years at the speed of light would it take to get anywhere.  They are much more comfortable speaking about travel around our own solar system.   I wonder why they limit their imaginations so? 

Probably it’s because they want to be taken seriously in their own academic communities.  They don’t want to sound like kooks.  Plus, they must speak in the language of their academic communities.  They limit their speculations to linear travel in conventionally propelled vehicles because to do otherwise would require them to resort to the language of science fiction, like warp drives, hyperspace, the folding of space and so forth.  They’re afraid that it would make them sound like game-boys, or a bit deranged.  They are right to worry, I think.  Scientific academia is very unforgiving of eccentricity. 

There are, however, reasonable things to be said about the prospects of intergalactic travel that would not require millennia to get anywhere.

The most important point is that intergalactic travel will finally be achieved by a mechanism that we now know little or nothing about.  Of the two, I think that “nothing” has a better shot of being true.

But maybe it’s more like the stick that we are playing with idly in our cage before the little light goes on:  oh!  I can use this stick to reach that piece of fruit over there! 

Consider the problem of lighting our domiciles.  Up to the Eighteenth Century this was a real challenge.  They don’t call it “midnight” for nothing.  Most people were asleep by eight o’clock and up again at four because they went to bed when it got dark, or shortly thereafter.  Candles were expensive.  It only got a little bit better with gas lighting in what, the Nineteenth Century?  I should look that up.  If you had suggested to anyone at the time that very soon it would be possible to light up every domicile in the world like a Christmas tree for as many hours per day as you chose to do so, they would have thought that you were crazy.  “Impossible!” they’d say, “there’s not enough wax and tallow and whale oil in the world!”  It didn’t require more bees working harder or more whales suddenly becoming available.  All that was required was one Thomas Edison. 

Our Thomas Edison of the infinite void will reveal himself to us in time, if we are still here to receive him.  If science and human society are permitted the luxury of continuing at an even keel for a few more centuries we should have the time to get there.  Whether we will enjoy that luxury appears to be in some doubt these days, but look for the good!  History is as full of bad times, catastrophes and sheer, unadulterated stupidity as the ocean is full of salt water.  We’re still here, aren’t we?  So there’s hope.  

Happy Birthday, Universe!

Back in the mid-Seventeenth Century there was a fellow named Bishop Ussher who was quite the little thinker.  By a close study of the revealed literature of Judaism and other religions, plus secular sources that were earlier, he calculated that the moment of creation happened at 9:00 a.m. on October 27^th, in the year 4004 BC.  Many people actually took him seriously.

Happy 6,018th Birthday to all that exists!  

The good bishop, and others, tinkered with this calculation over the immediately following years.  So now you will find that date variously reported as the 26^th of October; the 23^rd of October; “the night immediately preceding October 23^rd;" and even “sunset in Jerusalem on October 22^nd.”  Martin Luther felt like a little bit of precision would go a long way in this matter, so he just ballparked it as “the year 4000 BC.” 

Before you think that all of this should seem ridiculous to us in the modern world, recall that America is currently awash in “Young Earth Creationists” who take the good bishop at his word. 

Science, of course, has something to say about all of this.  The light, they say, that can now be seen coming from the edge of the universe has taken some thirteen billion years and change to reach us, so the universe must be at least that old.  The believers are having none of it. 

In their favor, they do believe in a God that is omnipotent, and omnipresent, and all-knowing and all the rest.  So this God could easily have made the entire thing to only seem to be thirteen billion years old.  That would be an interesting trick, but I have never read of the reasons for God doing such a thing being addressed.   

It would reinforce the greatness of their God if it were true, because only a lavishly omnipotent God could create a universe that so perfectly mimicked having existed for thirteen billion years.  It would speak to the mind of God too, because to pull that wool so far over the eyes of the world’s scientists such a creator-God would need to be not only supremely powerful, but also extremely clever and very mischievous.  Those scientists are pretty clever themselves. 

Bishop Ussher lived in a world that did not know the age of things, so six thousand years could seem reasonable to them.  Six thousand years was a long time to them, it represented a time before history as they understood it.  They knew something of the scale of the heavens, but they still believed that the earth was located at the center.  They knew the approximate age of the pyramids, but of things older than the pyramids they were in the dark.  Things like Gobekli Tepli, and the cave paintings, and dinosaurs, were either not known or were improperly understood.  So they could have calculated the date of creation without considering the mind of God.  We no longer have that luxury.  We know that if God created the universe to appear older than it is, God’s reasons for doing so must be considered. 

I was convinced as a teenager that it was a mistake to speculate about the mind of God.  I still feel that way, and I would add that it is a waste of time too.  If God is merely mischievous, you’ll get away with it, but if God still has that vengeful, proud streak, you’re just asking for trouble.  It may be an affront to God. 

Science is a useful pursuit, but even religion may have a place in our earthly lives.  Better though, if we just let God be God, with a smile and full respect for the mystery, and concentrate on making life on earth a less terrible thing than we found it.  

What Mark Upon This World?

What mark will we make, we bloggers, upon this world?  What stain will we leave to prove that we were ever here at all?

There was a highly entertaining blogger named Riley, up until his sudden exit from this and any other scenes in July, 2013.  The blog can still be found at:

doghouseriley.blogspot.com

Boy, that was one mighty entertaining blog right there.  I, and lots of other people, really enjoyed the hijinks over there.  Mr. Riley, aka James Riley, aka J.B.S. Riley, was a real hoot, in life, and here's the good news:  he's still a real hoot after all this time, and it seems like Google's policy will be to allow him to remain a hoot indefinitely.   I just checked the site and it's unchanged since the last post on July 24, 2013.  It's possible that Google will allow it to remain, unchanged, in its entirety, for all time.  You should go over and start reading.  Read a hundred thousand words!  It will all repay the effort.  Riley was good. 

What evidence do I have that such an eternal presence is possible?  Check out the Blogspot blogs.  There are thousands of blogs, perhaps millions, that were set up a long time ago and then allowed to lapse.  This blog right here has been nurtured with love since 2007, but some are not so lucky.  Some blogs are abandoned after a few months of halfhearted posting, some after one single solitary post.  They  remain there, sorry things, and if you want to take the name for a new blog of your own you will be disappointed.  They will remain there, poor stunted, moribund things, probably forever, taking up space, and some very catchy names by the way.

This is probably a function of the huge, luxurious excess of "cloud" storage space that now exists.  My blog, how many thousands of posts are there?  But how many bits or bytes is that?  Enough to worry about?  It's just text, most of it.  The pictures and vid's are elsewhere, aren't they?  Text requires almost no space at all!  Why not leave it there when I die!  Forever!  Perhaps posterity will discover some value in it that Google can monetize!  One never knows.

So maybe I will be appreciated for having written this blog.  Some day!  Perhaps a hundred, or two hundred, or a thousand years from now.  Appreciated for some clever turn of phrase, or for my socially progressive attitude, or maybe for my wonderful musical suggestions.  But I'll tell you right now, if people in the future are still paying attention to old school blogs from these Dark Ages of ours, they'll be paying attention to the Doghouse Riley's of our benighted and dimwitted world, and not to me.  Riley will be searchable.  Riley got some serious hit counts, lots of re-posts, and lots of mentions up there where it counts.  Those will be the mechanics of the future searches.  That's how they'll find "the good stuff." And don't worry, I'm not bitter.  He really was better than me in every way.  I'd rather read him than me, myself. 

So if you are a visitor from the future, thanks for stopping by.  I hope that you pass a good time, I really do.  If you get bored, try stopping by over at doghouseriley.blogspot.com.  That Riley, he's a real hoot. 

On Pupils And Students

I had thought that the words pupil and student were more or less interchangeable.  My feeling, maybe it was just a feeling? was that a pupil was someone who went to school, while a student was someone who studied.  But, meaning more or less the same thing.

I recall joking while I was in high school that I was more of a pupil than a student, because I did, indeed, go to school, but I never actually studied.

It is possible that I was correct in the American sense of the terms.  The English, however, seem to see more of a distinction, based on etymology.  My Oxford Concise defines a pupil as "one who is taught by another," and a student as "one who studies at secondary or higher education."  So there are elementary school pupils and high school and university students.  This because pupil is based in words that describe children.

There would be a certain rhythm to that.

The question was posed to me directly by a Thai friend.  They are full of questions like this.  "What is the difference between a pupil and a student?"

The two equivalent words in Thai are used in a more clear cut manner.  A "nak-rien" attends elementary school or high school, while a "nak-suksa" attends university.  "Rien" is the verb meaning to study; "suksa" has the broader meaning of learning, which implies more understanding.

I really learn a lot when I consider these sincere, relevant questions.  Thanks, guys! 

Archie Sheep - Rufus (Swung His Face At Last To The Wind, Then His Neck ...

Usually my jazz favorites lists are filled with more melodic stuff, but I can get with the free sometimes.  About twenty years ago, almost twenty years, I bought a double record set of jazz sax cuts (used), a real mixed bag of tricks.  This was on there, and somehow it really connected for me.  I still love it.

When people ask me, "what kind of music do you like?" I really don't know what to tell them.  I'm all over the place.  So to provide an answer that is comforting and understandable I usually say something like, "if they had fun playing it, I have fun listening to it." 

I think that they had fun playing this.  Don't you agree? 

Happy Birthday U. S. Navy!

I just discovered on the Facebook that it's the birthday of the United States Navy.  Well congratulations!  That's a great outfit.

I joined the Navy myself, during an actual war I might add, although I cannot claim to have made any success of my involvement.  I did get an Honorable Discharge at the end of my service, of which I am justifiably proud.

The Navy, people don't really understand what the Navy does.  Isn't it all so romantic and relatively easy?  Not always.

Did you know that twice as many sailors died at Guadalcanal than did Marines and Army soldiers combined?  There were four or five naval battles in the surrounding waters while the battle was going on, and push came to fucking shove too.  Many ships were blown up and sunk, many of our ships, and many ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy too.  That was a good outfit.  It was kind of a scandal that the Japanese did so well, but the reason was that they were very good.  The U.S. Navy did better as time wore on, and came out ahead at the end, but in the meantime something like 4,500 bluejackets got killed, just in those naval battles off Guadalcanal, and a lot of good ships went down.  

Here's a great story:  on D-Day in Normandy, a sailor off a destroyed landing craft, carrying an M-1, approaches an army general and asks him how to work the thing.  The general shows him how.  The sailor walks off to join an impromptu fighting group.  "You know," he says, "I joined the Navy so I wouldn't have to do this sort of thing."

I joined the Navy for just that reason myself.  But . . . et in Arcadia, ego. 

North Korean Spelling Etiquette

I've been getting the spelling of North Korean names all wrong.  It's got a unique rhythm to it.

It's actually "Kim Jong-un."  And then there's his full sister, "Kim Yo-jong."  He has a full brother too, "Kim Jong-chul." 

So wherever I have referred to Kim Jong Un, please read, "Kim Jong-un."

How typical is that?  I learn to adequately print the man's name only after he's probably dead. 

Best wishes to the next Kim!  Best of luck looking at things!  I hope it's the sister myself.  I hear that she's as svelte as the "current" Kim is chunky.   Looking at pictures of her looking at things would be funny and it might be, well, otherwise entertaining. 

Walk On By by Laura Nyro

Things change over time, our minds change, our capabilities change.  Recall that 2,500 years ago some talented people routinely memorized the Iliad.  Try that today, I dare you. 

What has changed over the last thirty or forty years?  I don't know.  But everybody having a complete library in their pockets at all times, and access to the entire history of music at finger-tip level, I don't know, don't you think that it changes the game plan?  How different are these Millenniums anyway?  And in what ways?  

One woman and a piano forte, singing a very commercial pop song that she didn't even write.  I don't know, is it just me?  I'm impressed. 

Laura Nyro Sings "Save The Country"

Really, I make a considerable effort to avoid the kind of "my generation's music blows the fucking doors off your generation's music" bragging that I see too much of already.  I don't need to add to it. 

BUT . . . something like this cut, and Laura wrote and performed so many at this level or higher, from serendipity to pop hits to deep melodrama, doesn't it make you wonder where all of the WONDER has gone?  I feel the same about 'Trane, of course, where did the magic go?  There is a ton of great music around today, but where's the transcendence? 

And really, let's face it, my generation's music totally kicks your generation's music's ass. 

("Talkin' 'bout my generation!") 

The Jesus Cult

For the record, I am not without love and respect for Mr. Jesus.  He was, to me, one of the great teachers.  His ideas had a large and progressive social justice component, and they were a great contribution to the development of peoples’ interior lives and their sense of themselves.   I love and respect him whether he was an individual or whether all that was done in his name was accomplished by committee.  It’s conceivable, you know, that he was the “Kodak” of prophets, a brand of sorts, a group effort.   Anyway, no disrespect to religious believers in general. 

I’m talking about a certain dark corner of Christianity.  We wonder a lot these days about a certain element in our electorate, the extreme element in the right-of-center of our politics.  It’s the Tea Partiers, the small government crowd, the anti-everythings.  It is said, and it sometimes seems, that there is a religious component to their attitudes. 

They do talk about God a lot, but the religion in them bears little resemblance to religion as it was known until recently. 

Theirs is the religion of the old tent revivals, the washed-in-the-blood-of-the-Lamb evangelical Christianity that was, and remains, largely non-sectarian and that has little or no actual theology and no real social justice component.  We all laughed at them up until 1970 or so, even members of more traditional Christian churches laughed at them.  They came across as a bunch of snake handling Hillbillies that failed to understand that there was more to religion than praising Jesus and speaking in tongues. 

Since 1970 they have somehow become respectable.  Government officials speak generously of them and repeat their catch phrases.  The media is afraid to offend their very delicate sensibilities.  Their professed “religion,” however, remains as ridiculous as it ever was.  Their version of Christianity consists entirely of having a “personal relationship with Jesus,” and tithing.  They are still led by the same kind of Elmer Gantry style Hell and Brimstone preachers that we can hear in the oldest radio and newsreel recordings.  Now though, the preachers are controlled by political puppet masters.  Now they are important because they vote, and because they are easily led. 

This is the Jesus Cult.  To call it a religion at all is a slander on all of the world’s genuine religions.  One must only “accept Jesus as (one’s) personal savior,” and tithe.  Even good deeds are eschewed, they are discounted to zero.  One must only praise Jesus and pay.  The attraction of this scam is that it greatly simplifies life.  It offers relief from the fear of death in particular, and from the confusion of reality in general.  Just pray, and pay, and you can spend eternity in heaven with Jesus. 

This cult is antithetical to science, intellectualism, progress, the truth, and even to religion itself.  It is a cult of hate and mischief.  The objects of hatred include academia, Islam, big cities, immigrants, evolution, various theories of the universe that they don't like, homosexuals, President Obama, women who get abortions or use contraceptives, minorities,  the New Deal, welfare, free thinking women, any free thinking person at all in fact, anyone who represents “the other,” and especially the government in Washington.  They are resolutely anti modern and totally reactionary; they are America’s Khmer Rouge. 

The mischief has spread like wildfire through Christian education, media coverage, and the encouragement of hypocritical politicians looking for votes. 

Look at polls that ask about evolution, the age of the earth, the existence of angels and the afterlife and the like, and you will see that many people answer the questions as though they were simple believers in biblical Christianity.  I say, “as though . . .” because I don’t think they really believe it, they just want to sound like “real Americans.”  I don’t blame them, sailing with the wind is easier than sailing against it.  But actually none of them, not even the zealots, believe the bible to the degree that they would actually conduct themselves on earth according to those principles and rules found in the Old Testament.  It’s a cliché to notice it at all, but very few of them have beards and they all eat shrimp.  There are vast lists of rules in the bible, in the Book of Leviticus and elsewhere.  The so-called Ten Commandments are actually only the beginning of a much longer list, and there are many such lists in the bible.  Never having read the bible themselves, they are told, and believe, that there is a code of Christian values in the bible, and they are told that they are following it.  It’s all about Jesus and the bible, we’re heaven bound!  And when you fall off the wagon, when you fornicate, when you break any of the many rules, there’s always Christian forgiveness.  Jesus loves you! 

That seems only to apply to cult members in good standing though.  The rest of us are going straight to Hell. Just ask anybody.  

This anachronistic pseudo-religion is a danger to social justice and to America itself.  Many Americans know that this is true; some even talk about it.  My voice is small, but I offer it here.  

The U.S.S. George H. W. Bush

Here's a nice picture of the U.S.S. George H. W. Bush, turning hard to port in a high-speed drill.  Isn't she a beauty?  I humbly submit that they should have christened the ship the "U.S.S. George Herbert Walker Bush."

President Bush Sr., to his enormous credit, joined the U.S. Navy at the age of seventeen, right out of prep school and during a major war.  With his family connections, he could easily have proceeded directly to Yale and missed the war entirely.  He became a Navy pilot, albeit a TBF Avenger pilot, flying off of escort carriers.  This was a very dangerous, unglamorous job.  The Avenger was an ungainly plane that delivered bombs or torpedoes; the escort carriers were small and uncomfortable for everybody.  The hipsters were flying Hellcats from Essex Class carriers.  So his juice only got him so far.

He served with considerable competence and dedication.

There's a funny story about his arrival on the ship.  Imagine the eighteen year old Bush coming on board and approaching a group of pilots to introduce himself.  "Hello!" he says, "I'm George Herbert Walker Bush!"

So of course, for the rest of his time on the boat, the other pilots addressed him on all occasions as George Herbert Walker Bush.  "Good morning George Herbert Walker Bush!"

So I believe that they should have named the new carrier in the same way, to honor the tradition, so to speak.

The new ship  . . . isn't she a beauty?

When Flushing Became Chinese

Flushing is part of the Borough and County of Queens in the city of New York.  It is an ancient settlement by the standards of the United States.  It was founded in 1645 by the Dutch, who named it Vlissingen after a city in the Netherlands, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company.  There were already enough Englishmen around that the anglicized version of the name, Flushing, had some currency.

In 1657, a local bigwig names John Bowne presented a document called the Flushing Remonstrance to the authorities in New Amsterdam in what is now called Manhattan.  Its purpose was to persuade the Dutch to allow greater freedom of worship for Quakers and other religious dissenters, and it succeeded.  It is considered to have been the beginning of the search for greater personal freedoms in the new world. 

There was not a great deal of diversity in Flushing when I was growing up in neighboring College Point.  There were very small populations of black and Puerto Rican Americans, and an even smaller population of Chinese Americans.  That was the White New York in those days.  There was a great diversity of white people, many different languages, religions and countries of origin, but almost everybody was white.  In the 1970’s that began to radically change. 

You could say that lots of everybody started to arrive in Flushing, more immigrants, more Puerto Ricans, and more blacks, but the biggest influx was new immigrants from China, with the greatest number coming from Taiwan.  By 1990, the core area of Flushing was 41% Mandarin speaking Chinese. 

Most of my acquaintances who still live in the area are not pleased with this new population reality.  I have heard them refer to Flushing as “Foo-Shing” many times.  This seems to fall somewhere in between a joke and a criticism.  They are closer to the reality of it than they know.

There is actually a very similar word in Mandarin:  fuxing.  (Don’t ask me what the tones are, I’m sure that if I said the word out loud it would cause great laughter among the initiated.)  “Fuxing” means rejuvenation, and that is exactly what the new Chinese residents have brought to the area.  

When I was a boy, and up to at least 1975 when I left New York for greener pastures, the central shopping area and transportation hub of Flushing was very down-in-heel.  It had obviously seen better days.  Now all that has changed.  Where there were no hotels, there are now six or eight, some of which are upscale.  Where there were mostly family style restaurants, there are now a great many excellent restaurants.  On any recent list of the best Chinese restaurants in New York City, half will be in Flushing.  There are a great number of new, large buildings in all categories, and the central area has become rather vibrant and glossy. 

So Flushing, “Foo-Shing,”  has undergone a rejuvenation, a “fuxing.”  That puts it into its proper perspective.  What had been derogatory becomes apt. 

Isn’t language great?  Always full of surprises. 

(Thanks to the Wiki, and others, for some of the details.)  

Family Ties Theme Song

Here's the version that is most memorable.  Performed by Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams. 

The song itself is by Jeff Barry and Tom Scott, both very successful songwriters back in the day.  It's a great song, and it must be one of the best TV theme songs of all time. 

The interesting thing to me is that I've always thought that it was Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, and written by them too.  I don't know where I got that idea, but it stuck.  I've given them credit for it for over thirty years.  I've probably posted it here and given them credit.  Mea culpa.

This whole library-at-your-fingertips thing is interesting.  You can live with your old misapprehensions, or not.  It's up to you.  But be careful, don't always trust what you find.  Professor Google can be wrong too, sometimes! 

Family Ties Theme

From the first season, and only ten episodes at that.  This version is sung ty Dennis Tuffano and Mindy Sterling. 

2010 Asian Games - Kabaddi / Men's Semifinal / Pakistan vs Iran 1/3

Ooops!  Missed the video share on the post below.

Kabaddi Explained

(The accompanying video failed to share properly.  To view it, you'll have to visit the blog.  It's directly above this post.)  

This is a game from 2010, between Pakistan and Iran.  They get started at about minute three of the video.

I saw this game/sport for the first time years ago on Thai TV with the announcing in Thai.  With no explanation to help me I was completely at a loss as to the nature of the game.  What were they doing?

At that time I didn't even catch the name of the game, so I was left for years with only the vague memory of the strangeness of it.  I watched a game this week as part of the Asian Games that are now taking place in Korea.  So, it's Kabaddi.  Having the name enabled me to ask Professor Google to explain it all to me.

One "raider" approaches the other team with the goal of touching a player and then retreating across the middle line before they can tackle him.  To complicate matters, the raider must hold his breath until he returns to his own side.  This explained the weirdest thing about first viewing the game.  The raider will most often simply relax and walk back to his own side, without apparently having done anything.  He ran out of breath!  To insure that the raider hold his breath, he must continuously mumble "kabaddi, kabaddi . . ."

The actual scoring is a bit obscure, and I'll leave you to explore the subject on your own. 

Kabaddi is very popular in South Asia and has spread to Southeast Asia.  Note that it requires no equipment whatsoever, and no special surface or markings.  Lines drawn in the dirt would be fine.  I'm sure that this lack of expense contributed to its popularity.  It's like a glorified game of tag.

So, Kabaddi. 

Strange Stats

I look at my stats and try to figure out what people like.  Then I'm driven to wonder why.  I aim to please in this enterprise, so I make an effort to understand these things.

Sometimes a stat just jumps out and bangs the weird-gong.  Why would twenty five people suddenly find a post called "Wolken Cuck-Cucks Heim," from 2011, no less? 

It's a good read, and I'm certainly glad someone is reading it.  But why now?  The word in German is compound, "Wolkencuckcucksheim."  Did it suddenly appear in the news in another context, driving people to Google it?  I should check Google and see if the post comes in near the top. 

Studying the stats page remains mysterious to me.