Beyond Opinion

I have heard of many usages of English words as of late with irk me because the person using them are using them for other than the traditional meaning. To me, a word is used to convey a certain meaning. It is not supposed to have any side effects, and above all, the word is not the object; it is only a symbol for the object, and if we use such a symbol to refer to a different object, then we are not all playing from the same sheet of music.

Here are some examples:

President Bush says we are fighting a "War on Terrorism". This is not the usual definition of war. In fact, Bush has made a rather sinister misappropriation of the word, expanding its meaning to include certain actions vital to the functioning of a society, such as police actions. The traditional or dictionary definition of war is that it is an armed conflict between or among nations. If by "War on Terror" he means taking action against al Qaeda, then he just elevated al Qaeda to the status of nationhood. None of us want that.

Some groups of black people in this country object to naturalized citizens of the United States who were born in Africa, or Americans descended recently from places like Jamaica and Africa, calling themselves "African-Americans". I know that the ancestors of many blacks in this country suffered greatly under the slavery regime, but that does not change the definition of a word. There is absolutely nothing in either African or American that says anything about mistreatment of slaves. An African-American is a US citizen some of whose ancestors came from Africa, and Colin Powell, Barack Obama, and even Teresa Heinz Kerry all qualify as African-Americans, slavery or no. What these black groups really mean is "descendents of slaves", not "African-Americans".

I heard of an incident wherein a mathematics professor was teaching a group of high-school students. He explained that a square is defined as a rectangle with four equal sides. Indeed, this is one of the usual definitions of rectangle given in geometry texts. The principal of the school was listening, and he criticized the professor because everyone knows that a square is not a rectangle. This is an example of a class of objects with a distinguished subclass. Quite often, then, we use the name of the overall class to refer to an object that is in the class but not the subclass. However, this is confusing, to say the least. In mathematics, we define a term to make it clear what we mean by it.

A member of Toastmasters International referred to a web display as the "Tri-City Toastmasters Club Web Page". However, she was not referring to that page. She was instead referring to the overall Toastmasters International web page, and in particular, to the information that turns up when you search that site for "Tri-City". When you refer to a web page as the "Tri-City Web Page", you mean that the page was authored by the Tri-City club and not by Toastmasters International.

And finally, a misuse of the word f*ck; I will not spell the entire word out for fear of getting filtered out. The word is used by Jim Kunstler, a proponent of the peak oil theory, out of concern for the future running out of cheap oil, and the great economic setbacks that this will cause. He calls his site the "Clusterf*ck Nation". Indeed, I believe sooner or later, peak oil will come, and it is good to make people aware of this issue. But in so doing, Kunstler misused the word f*ck. The word means sex or it means to have sex with, and there is absolutely nothing about a shortage of oil or of high oil prices that makes me want to have sex with anyone. Mr. Kunstler should continue to speak out on this important topic, but he needs to stop calling the issue "clusterf*ck".

Did I hear right? I heard of this Newsweek report today about a speech Bush made on 2004 June 17:

NEWSWEEK reports that President Bush, appearing before a right-to-life rally in Tampa, Florida on June 17, stated: "We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces. A feces is a living being in the eyes of God, who has endowed that feces with all of the rights and God-given blessings of any other human being."

I knew that Bush had a tendency to substitute one word for another, as Slovakia for Slovenia, for instance. But this should have caused a rip-roaring laughter in the crowd and an almost certain news report. After all, when candidate Bush called a New York Times reporter a Major League sshole, it was blabbed all over the place in the hypermedia. I found out tonight that the report is false. Bush makes many errors in his speech, but this isn't one of them.

And the Olympic Marathon. Did I hear this one right? Lead runner (by three minutes) Vanderlei de Lima got bumped off the run by some crazy dude named Neil Horan. Horan was quickly subdued by fans but Vanderlei lost valuable time and energy on this incident, and two other runners passed him up so he wound up with a bronze medal and a sportsmanlike conduct award. This is an injustice if I ever saw it. As Vanderlei put it: "I'm sure I would have won the gold were it not for this crazy idiot." Since when are idiots allowed to determine Olympic running results? I think Vanderlei should also get the gold medal, and he has every right to sue Greece and the Olympic Committee for failure to provide adequate security. I wish him luck.

The Olympics have started! And this year, one of the most popular sports is women's beach volleyball. This is because women wear skimpy bikinis when playing the game. I can see their point. Volleyball requires quite a bit of motion, and one gets sweaty with it. So the less clothing, the better. Why just a bikini, then? Maybe it is because of the sand, or maybe simply because the beach is nearby, and one puts on a swimsuit to go to the beach anyway. Then to top it off, there are cheerleaders for this event. And they are also women! One would think they would be men. And they are just as scantily clad. The players think it is "offensive" in the words of one.

Actually, in many sports, the less clothing, the better. Swimming is the primary example, but running is that way, too. You sweat when running, so when you wear clothes, they get dirty, and they get wet and feel grungy on you. That is why many male runners, including myself, run shirtless during the summer. Besides, no shirt is cooler than a shirt. Unfortunately the trend seems to be to these baggy shorts, whereas brief shorts would work a lot better. Other sports where the less clothing the better include diving, gymnastics, basketball, and track and field.

The women have the right idea on the track, field, and running. They now wear brief clothing, similar to the beach volleyball players. The men don't have the right idea. Male competition runners and beach volleyball players wear these baggy shorts, and the runners wear a shirt as well. Instead, they ogle the women when they dress brief. Some women complain about that.

The best way to do something about that is for female beach volleyball players to put on tops and shorts when they play and say they are going to play like that until the men wear skimpy bathing suits too when they play. Furthermore, the women runners could go back to the old-fashioned top and shorts with no bare midriffs until they allow men to run shirtless in running events, and the men actually do so. This would not only level the field, it would also promote more functional clothing wear at athletic events.

One of the songs I heard at SUUSI this year was johnsmith's "Don't Put Me in a Box". In the song, John urges us not to put him in a box. He says don't put me in a blue box, don't put me in a red box, a white box, a black box, a straight box, a gay box, and so forth. I can see the reason for this. If I say someone is a black, or that he is an INTJ, or that he is gay, than that will affect my and other people's behavior toward them. For example, people will believe that the INTJ can solve any problem, and that the gay man cannot possibly be attracted to a woman.

But I remember when I took the class with him that one other attendee was Sharon Robles, a South Carolina singer. How can I tell that my leader is johnsmith, and not Sharon Robles? Well, he is male, for one thing. OK, there I go. I just put him in a male box. (no postage or pun intended) Unless I can put people in boxes, and things in boxes, how can I tell things apart? If everyone's the same, then there are no different people. There is no way to tell apart Mae West from Dick Cheney, and that would be a sad world indeed. Having everyone be treated the same is OK only so far, until everything becomes a muddle. It is actually people's uniqueness that makes them interesting.

So bring back the boxes. Only don't disadvantage or disfavor people because of these boxes. Everyone is to be celebrated, and everyone is unique.

I heard tonight on CNN that Kerry leads in numerous polls, and that he is ahead in many battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. They also say "This election is Kerry's to lose." and "Bush is in trouble." It certainly seems that way. One electoral college poll shows Kerry with 320 electoral votes to 197 or so for Bush. Indeed, Bush may be in a weaker position than before but the Lichtman keys still say Bush will be elected.

Polls are just the thing that are misleading in Presidential elections, says Allan Lichtman. Prof. Lichtman prefers to look at fundamentals, as encoded in his 13 keys. A review of them shows that Bush has lost the Foreign or Military Failure Key (#10) because of 9/11; the Policy Key (#7) because he has not done much domestically; I guess the Department of Homeland Security does not count; the Incumbent Charisma key (#12), Bush isn't; and the Long Term Economy Key (#6), because of the Dot-Com Bust. I now believe that Bush has lost the Short Term Economy Key (#5). That is because the price of crude oil keeps rising and rising, and there seems to be no stop to it, and because stocks and the economy will go down when crude goes up. Further, employment remains a sore spot in this country, no matter what the official figures say. The people feel the economy is bad, and that is what counts.

But that is still only five keys. He needs to lose one more key to lose the election, and so far, I have not seen that key. There are opportunities for him to lose that key, however. This Iraq thing is not going well, and just today a Republican senator says it was a mistake. If Democrats say the war was wrong, then that's a partisan debate and Bush is unaffected. If Republicans say it was a mistake, then Bush is in trouble. But it will take more than just one senator. If a whole bunch of Congressional Republicans say that Bush made a mistake, that will put Bush in trouble for sure. He would lose the Foreign and Military Success Key (#11), which he has right now because he toppled the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. If the clamor gets loud enough, he may lose the Scandal Key (#9) as well.

But first these things need to happen. Else Bush will take the popular vote come Election Day. Kerry may still squeak by in the Electoral College by winning several large battleground states by slim margins, in which case the score with 2000 is even. But if not, then it is four more years of him. At least that is what it seems like right now.

Blogger is acting weird tonight. I try to post something to my sister blog Blogtrek, and it throws up errors in my face. It offers a "try again" button, as well as "publish index only" and "publish entire blog". I don't want to publish just the index; I want my current entire blog published. I certainly don't want to publish the entire blog. So I press the red button "try again". This time it takes a long time to process. I think it is republishing my entire blog, even though I explicitly pressed a different button.

This is not the only time that Blogger has acted up. Earlier it was throwing up Error 503s, and then acting like nothing has happened. Blogger has some good things, but there are times when it acts strange.

I am wondering if we are finally hitting the Peak Oil that many geologists have been predicting for some time: the time that production of oil peaks and then declines as the world uses up its finite supply of oil. I am wondering if the escalation of crude and gasoline prices have something to do with that. But I can't be sure, because this entire thing is turning into Alice in Wonderland. The price of crude oil is up but that of gasoline is down. Huhh?? Go figure. How does this happen?

Someone says that we have plenty of refinery capability to make the gasoline, so that is why gasoline prices have dropped. But whaaa?? Until now they have been saying the reverse - that there was an acute refinery shortage in this country. So that's why gasoline prices are going up. But shouldn't that make crude oil go down? If I have crude and can't find a refinery for it, I can't put it in my gasoline tank. It becomes worthless. Now they are saying there is plenty of refinery capacity. In fact, we now have 208 million barrels of gasoline in this country, or 10% more than last year. So which is it? I think we may be being lied to.

One problem with assessing the severity of this oil shortage is sorting out the truth from the fiction in the media.

Yesterday I got in the mail a DVD I ordered called The End of Suburbia and looked at it on my home theater. To me this is the most important movie of the year. It is even more important than Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It is a movie about the upcoming oil shortage. According to the movie, it will threaten life in the suburbs, causing housing values to collapse in the suburbs and forcing people to live in the city. It may even affect our food production. The film then gives us a possible solution. This solution is not in terms of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen; instead it says that most hydrogen in the world comes from fossil fuels and so is really part of the problem. (I do think that hydrogen may work if it is obtained by electrolysis by solar energy.) Instead, the movie says that we will have to do things more locally, and mentioned an urban design of a combined shopping area and living place, featuring 3-5 story townhouse like habitats. If people group together and agree to buy such a place, they will bring to the "town" a feeling of belongingness that is lacking in the suburbs, where people don't care for each other at all. The movie also emphasizes simplicity and implies that we may have to grow some of our own food. It is an interesting film, and one that I think people should look at, for the media is hardly at all covering this forthcoming shortage. Indeed, when Anne told people where she was about it today, they acted surprised. But something will happen soon, because already Saudi Arabia is saying that it is pumping the best it can but many doubt it can meet demand, suggesting that we may have hit the peak. Please buy the DVD and play it for your friends, church, and civic groups, for this is by far the most important movie of the year. It can be obtained from Post Carbon Books.

Now it is Lori Hacking. I know this is a distressing situation for her family and those concerned about her, but she is only one person. It certainly is a local, Salt Lake City story, but it is not a national story. The media, however, is trying to make it into one, just as they have done with Laci Peterson, giving her so much attention that it pushes aside more important news stories, and being inconsistent by ignoring April Greer of North Carolina, which is the same type of case. But now they have gone too far. This time their harping on Lori Hacking threatens computer security. The reason why is that hackers are a serious problem in the computer world. These people can take over your PC, get your sensitive information, and use it to cause all kinds of havoc. So it is important to know about how to deal with hackers and hacking. But Google and other search engine searches on "hacking" now will bring up a slew of stories about this strictly local story and will hamper obtaining information on computer hackers and hacking, by forcing people to wade through the Lori stuff. I therefore call upon the media to stop harping on Lori Hacking and restrict coverage of the story to the Salt Lake City area. If they don't, they threaten computer security.

I heard today that the Statue of Liberty has been reopened. It took nearly three years to do it ever since they closed it after 9/11. The statue does nothing practical, so its only value is symbolic, and boy did the Powers that Be tell a rude message when they closed it! They were saying that Liberty and Freedom themselves will be shut down the next few years. In other words, the US will become a dictatorship. That is not the message we want to send to the world. I am glad to see it open now; they should open it all the way to the torch. But it never should have been closed to begin with. It should have opened a few days after 9/11 to tell the world that the mean action of a few hijackers will never take away our liberty and freedom.

This weekend we had to get gasoline for both of our cars. We tried to get gas for our Corolla on Friday evening, 2004 July 30. The first place we went to was full to the hilt with people - four pumps, four cars. So we bypassed that and went to a Wawa on the route to our destination with about 20 pumps. All were being used! So we went to a 7-11 further up the road, and we finally got gasoline there. The next day I tried to get gasoline for our Plymouth minivan. I stopped at another Wawa and found all the pumps full. So I went on home and came to the first station that I was speaking of. Again loaded to the hilt. So I waited until today to get gasoline for the van. This time when I stopped at the nearby mart, there was room, but all of the regular 87-octane pumps were plasticbagged over. Apparently they had none. So I went to a 7-11, not the same as before, and was able to get it there. That is 5 stops out of 7 that we could not get gasoline.

Is there a gasoline shortage in the Richmond area that no one seems fit to talk about? If not, how else to expect the crowds at the pumps or the plasticking at one of the pumps? If there is such a gasoline shortage, we need to know. And are we hitting the point where this upcoming oil shortage will cause gasoline high prices and maybe shortages? The weird thing about the entire deal is that gasoline prices are actually falling , from $1.73 a gallon a little while ago to $1.69 now at the cheapest pumps.