By Bob Gaydos

And the beat goes on.

Apparently, thinking about thinkers is contagious, or at least a welcome diversion from thinking about how Bristol Palin is so much her mother’s daughter.

In case you somehow managed to avoid the news, the unmarried 19-year-old daughter of the former governor of Alaska and former vice presidential candidate, recently, in rapid succession, reunited with the father of her 18-month-old son, getting a hefty fee to announce it on the cover of People magazine, broke up with the scoundrel when he apparently told her he had gotten another woman pregnant, also rejecting his offer to be on a family reality show (“He’s just obsessed with the limelight and I got played.”) and announced she would appear on TV‘s “Dancing with the Stars,’ wearing “modest” lace and fringe outfits. Charming.

She’s also been ordered by Mom to move back home, apparently to obtain the continued benefits of her responsible adult supervision. Which is all a kind of cheesy, roundabout way to sheepishly admit I had somehow left off The List the names of the guys whose thinking broke the code on DNA.

The omission was brought to my attention in a humbling e-mail:

“How can you not include those whose thoughts led to the genomic era?  At the very least, Watson & Crick (Nobel laureates for their work on DNA) should be on your list. Genomics has revolutionized medicine and deepened our understanding of evolution, genetic susceptibility to disease, etc.”

Toby G. Rossman, Ph.D.

Professor of Environmental Medicine

NYU Langone School of Medicine

Before I get to Watson and Crick, let me say I am thrilled that a seriously heavy thinker is reading and commenting on this blog. This is not to suggest that the rest of you are not legit thinkers, but I Googled Dr. Rossman and she’s the real thing. Plus she’s local and is actively involved in the Science Café, which is, oddly enough, exactly what it sounds like — a bunch of scientists sitting around drinking coffee or wine and talking about the kind of topics that switched my major from engineering to writing.

So welcome, Dr. Rossman, and thanks for the double helix duo, unarguably two of the most influential thinkers of the past 110 years. Not that I’m too thrilled with some of the other stuff that came out of Watson’s mind … and mouth. You know, how genetic screening and engineering could be useful I curing the “really stupid” 10 percent of the people and turning out lots of pretty girls. Or letting a woman abort a child if she didn’t want is to be homosexual or heterosexual. Or his infamous “[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

The profoundly positive significance of DNA science would seem to overwhelm Watson’s other thinking and Crick, his fellow Nobel scientist, had no such socially dubious baggage.

Moving on, Valerie Lucznikowska had some thoughts on Nikola Tesla, the focus of my previous column: “Tesla should be there at or near the top. He also invented sonar during WWI, and when he died, at the beginning of WWII, the U.S. government whisked his papers away, and to the best of my knowledge, still have them under lock and key. In his studio in NYC he had lamps with no electric cords, and he played with others, tossing a ball of light back and forth; that has never been reproduced. Yes, he was very sensitive, strange and a compulsive, counting the spoonfuls of soup he ate. But his unusual love of a white pigeon whom he fed at his window reminds me that years later, pigeons were found to have internal magnetic sensors that locate them and point their way home. Did he know or sense something there?”

Gotta love the guy.

The other suggestions continued to attest to the wide range of interests of our readers:

• Jeffrey Page (fellow Zester): Groucho? (Love him.) Clarence Darrow? John Ford?
• Carrie Jacobson: Ted Williams? (Huh?) Al Gore? (Hmm.).
• Michael Kaufman: “Glad you included Dorothy Day. I saw her speak a couple of times in Union Square on May Day. I don’t know why you didn’t go with Charlie Parker, considering his influence on jazz musicians to this day, but how about Louis Armstrong? As Miles Davis said, “You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him…” And/or Duke Ellington, of whom Miles said, “At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.” (OK, but how influential was jazz in the big scheme of things?)
• Christine Young: Jon Stewart. Ah. A woman after my own heart.

Here’s my original List of 29: Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (they count for one), Thomas Edison, Picasso, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

I can keep going as long as you can.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

“Nikola Tesla,” my friend Ernie said. “He should be on the list. He invented electricity and radio; he just did not get credit because he was a terrible businessman and would not promote himself.”

All true, and to which I might add, he had the good sense to be friends with Mark Twain, whom Beth Quinn says definitely belongs on the list.

The List, as I will henceforth call it, giving it capitalization for added prestige, is a collection of the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th century and beyond. As I wrote previously, a couple of friends of mine had been talking about such a list and asked me who would be on mine. Given the choice of writing about fracking or why we are such a nation of hypocritical, self-important, narrow-minded bigots, I preferred to think about thinkers. I stopped my list at 29 and asked for other suggestions. Hence, Tesla and Twain, both of whom I would agree have merit.

To be accurate, Tesla gave us the alternating current system, which makes all of this possible today. Edison, (also on the list) preferred direct current. He was also a master of self-promotion, which is not necessarily bad thing. For example, Tesla sold his AC design on the cheap to Westinghouse, who got rich on it, while Tesla eventually wound up impoverished and, some said, a little nutty. His critics pointed to the Tesla “death ray” as evidence of his instability. But Tesla, a militant pacifist, called it a “peace ray.” Unveiled in July of 1934, The New York Times reported that the new invention “will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles…” Tesla stated that the death beam would make war impossible by offering every country an “invisible Chinese wall.”

The idea was that no nation would think of attacking another one defended by a ring of particle beams. Sound familiar? He could not find any financial backers or interested countries and it seems no prototype or plans for the death ray were found after his death. But science fiction has prospered on the concept and the idea of preserving peace through overpowering defensive weaponry continue to challenge scientists.

As for Twain, no less than Hemingway and Faulkner called him the “father,” as it were, of modern American literature, the man who gave voice to a nation and challenged it to deal with its prejudices. All with great humor. So yes, Beth, English teacher that you are, even though he died in 1910, his thinking had a profound influence after his death (earlier reports of which were “greatly exaggerated”) and continues to do so.

Some other suggestions from readers:

That is all for now in Social Studies 2010. I have not begun to whittle The List to 20 and I welcome new suggestions or comments on what we have (original list below). I have noticed that I have no presidents or military leaders on my list, perhaps because, while they may have been influential, it was not necessarily their own thinking that made them so. This effort has proven to be somewhat interesting and educational for me and, since I cannot figure out the stock market, I will not give it up yet. However, to maintain touch with reality I will also continue reading the autobiography of Jim Murray, one of the great (and influential sports writers) of the 20th century.

Here is my original List of 29: Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (they count for one), Thomas Edison, Picasso, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

I already see some candidates for Triple A ball.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

 By Bob Gaydos

A couple of friends of mine, who clearly have too much time on their hands, recently asked me a question that was guaranteed to provoke feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and insecurity: Who are the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th century and beyond?
 
 My inner voice immediately screamed out (in?), “How the hell should I know? I know baseball and politics, a few writers, some movie directors, and enough philosophy to be decent at Jeopardy. That’s it.”
 
 The truth is, something inside me recoils at the challenge to come up with my list of the “best” or “most influential” or “most important” or “my favorite” of anything. I haven’t figured out why. Then I thought, “Well, that’s just an excuse to avoid thinking a bit beyond the normal exertion and, being retired, I have no legitimate excuse for that, so why not give it a try. Besides, it will give me something to post on my Facebook page.
 
 The trick, for me, in compiling such lists is getting past the obvious names, the ones that go on the list automatically and, if anyone challenges them, their name goes on another list. So I have to have Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (they count for one), Thomas Edison and Picasso. Already, it’s getting tough.
 
 Off the top of my head and with just the briefest scanning of the web to remove the cobwebs, I also came up with Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.
 
 That’s 29 names in all and I don’t think I’m done. Even my cursory Internet refresher suggests to me that Martin Heidegger was a great 20th century philosopher, if just because all the other philosophers seem to think he was. (Personal confession: Reading philosophical writings often demands the kind of attention to minute detail for which I have seldom had the patience, even in college when I wanted to get a decent grade. This is one of my character defects with which I have learned to live. It’s also probably why I got into journalism. Truthfully, when Bill Clinton said he wasn’t sure what the meaning of the word “is’’ is, I got a headache even though I knew what he was trying to do.)
 
 But this list, say my friends, is for influential thinkers, not just philosophers, and Heidegger happened to be a genuine Nazi, to which I can only ask, “What was he thinking?” And since this is a personal list, even though he had wide influence I will leave him — and Adolf Hitler — off my list since their core idea was soundly rejected.
 
 I’m going to stop here before I start including Knute Rockne because he popularized the forward pass or Miller Huggins for making Babe Ruth a fulltime outfielder. Those thoughts were pure genius.
   

*  *  *
 

No, I’m not going to leave it there. I’m sure someone thinks I’m an idiot for names I included or excluded. Or maybe you’re just nice and want to share your own names. Send them along and we’ll compare notes. It’s bound to be more satisfying than following the ramblings of the tea partiers.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

• March 23: In Nanping City, Fujian Province, a man waited outside a school gate with a knife and killed eight students and injured five.
•  April 12: Not far from the Xizhen Elementary School of Hepu County, Guangxi Province, an eight-year-old student and an elderly woman were found dead, and another five were injured, including two students, a toddler, and a middle-aged couple.
• April 28: A man ran into an elementary school in Leizhou City of Guangdong Province with a knife and injured 18 students and a teacher. The resulting investigation showed that the 33-year-old suspect was a teacher at another public school in Leizhou City, on “sick leave” since February 2006.
• April 29: A man broke into a kindergarten affiliated with Taixing Township of Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province, stabbing and killing 32 people.
• April 30: A 45-year-old man of Shangzhuang Village of Weifang City, Shandong Province, forcibly entered Shanzhuang Elementary School on a motorcycle, carrying a hammer and gasoline. He wounded five preschoolers with the hammer and then killed himself via self-immolation using the gasoline.
• May 12: A cleaver-wielding man broke into a kindergarten in China’s Shaanxi Province, killing nine, including seven children, and injuring 11 before returning home to commit suicide.

  In what appears to be a related attack, on Monday a young man in his 20s attacked six young women with a meat cleaver at a market in Foshan, in southern China, before jumping to his death off a three-story building. (Note: China bans handguns for civilians.)

Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t it be illegal for American investment banks to conspire against their own country by handing out a bunch of lousy mortgages then bundling them together and selling them to some poor sap who thinks they’re good and then betting that those loans will fail? Isn’t that pretty much a sure thing? When your country is in the midst of a precipitous financial crisis brought about by thousands of bad mortgage loans, isn’t what Goldman Sachs did the equivalent of economic treason? Don’t the officers and board members responsible for this cynical, self-serving ploy deserve prison time? Watch the hearings. They don’t get it. They are smugly superior. Well, yeah, a bunch of people may have lost their home and jobs, but look how much money we made. That‘s why we deserve those big bonuses. If Congress can’t find room for bipartisan agreement on regulating and punishing these blood suckers, then we have truly lost our way.

Speaking of which, maybe it’s just me, but does anyone believe the pope and members of the Vatican hierarchy when they say they plan to get serious about rooting child molesters from the ranks of their priests? This molestation scandal has been going on for decades and has now spread from the United States across Europe. Can South America be far behind? Thousands of faithful have left the flock and tens of millions of dollars have been paid to families of victims in hush money and yet every time a new scandal is revealed, the pattern is the same: Priest (or bishop) molests a number of young boys over a period of time, is eventually found out, is sent somewhere for “rehabilitation” and eventually winds up working in contact with children again. No one ever calls the cops. Now, we have high-ranking cardinals attributing the molestation problem to homosexuals, following in the Church pattern of ignoring science in favor of self-preservation. They also divert attention from the more serious matter that church leaders have allowed this sin to go on by covering it up at almost every opportunity and by stubbornly refusing to find any place in the church for women, except in the pews. A Catholic Church with married priests (who have children) and women priests and altar girls would have dealt with the molesters swiftly and surely a long time ago.

On a less serious note, I have always thought Jim Carrey was a moron. Now I have proof. The actor of a thousand faces and one emotion ended his long (for Hollywood) relationship with Jenny McCarthy via Twitter. First: Jenny McCarthy! Second: Twitter! Third: Jenny McCarthy! Oh, and for good measure, he tweets (Is that really a word?) that Tiger Woods’ wife was complicit in his behavior. Carey is a moron.

Speaking of which, maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t officials of Cal State Stanislaus, a public university, have revealed all the details of the contract they signed with Sarah Palin for a June speaking engagement there? It seems to me, students shouldn‘t have had to go dumpster-diving to find out that Palin insisted on having pre-screened questions, bottled water, bendable straws and a first-class hotel reservation for her visit. As for the fee, that’s still anybody’s guess. Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t boards of trustees represent the best interests of the public university?

And really, Michael, whatever happened to baseball players knowing the basic rules of the game. Exhibit’s A,B,C and D: Angel Pagan and Jose Reyes of the New York Mets and Brian McCann and Eric Hinske of the Atlanta Braves. During a recent game, Reyes hit a popup to the infield with runners on first and second and less than two outs. This initiates the much-maligned infield fly rule, which is simple: Batter is automatically out, runners go at their own risk. Here’s how it played out: Reyes’s popup was dropped, (but he was out as soon as he hit it). He ran to first anyway and stood there. McCann, who picked up the ball, threw it to first where Hinske tagged Reyes and the bag (both redundant). Meanwhile, Pagan who was on second, ran when the ball was dropped and kept running while the Braves threw the ball around and scored on a headfirst dive. Bravo, Pagan, right? Not quite. After the game, Pagan said, “I’m sure a lot of people don’t know all of the rules. (Yes, they’re called non-players.) You can’t know every one.(How about the ones that come into play almost every day?) But we talked about this in spring training. (Way to go, coaches.) I knew the batter was out (good), but I didn’t know you could run. I’m glad I learned that. (Again, way to go coaches.)”

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I’d bet everyone of those players played Little League ball and, trust me, as a former coach, Little Leaguers are taught repeatedly about the infield fly rule — both parts. When you’re making millions, you should know this basic stuff, it seems to me. Fines all around if I had my way.

And finally, doesn’t the new Arizona law letting police ask anyone for proof they are in this country legally stir memories of those old World War II movies? Pappers plizz! Ah, maybe it’s just me. 

I’m through griping for now.

By Bob Gaydos

Well, it’s been nearly a week now and I still haven’t heard about any smug, condescending reply from Fox News to Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn’s comments at  a town hall meeting. If, like me, you avoid Fox like the plague, let me tell you that Coburn, a Republican whose arch-conservative bonafides include attempting to stop an extension of unemployment benefits and trying to kill the health reform bill, cautioned the hometown crowd not to depend on Fox News for the facts of any story and actually had the guts to call House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — Beelzebub incarnate in female form to Fox and its far-right followers — “nice.”

Nice. As in just a hard-working family woman who happens to be two heartbeats away from the presidency.

Coburn, a doctor, dropped the “N” word on the crowd as he was discussing his differences with the speaker over the health reform bill. Thus brought boos and hisses. “Come on now,” Coburn said, “she is nice – how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person. Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re not a good person. I’ve been in the Senate for five years and I’ve taken a lot of that, because I’ve been on the small side –- both in the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.”

In addition to his lecture on civility, Coburn actually corrected a woman who said she might actually be thrown in prison for refusing to acquire insurance under the new health reform law. “The intention is not to put any one in jail,” he said. “That makes for good TV news on Fox, but that isn’t the intention.”

Wow. This is virtually unheard of today in the Republican Party, where all members seemingly must pay total obedience to whatever inane utterances or lies emanate from Fox News or fear a verbal onslaught from its staffers and questions from Tea Partiers about their patriotism. For proof one only has to look at the shell of a candidate Sen. John McCain has become as he seeks re-election in Arizona by walking a few steps behind Sarah Palin’s leather jacket coattails.

McCain may have finished near the bottom of the pack at the Naval Academy, but he knows what he knows and what Palin doesn’t know and yet he puppy dogged around her in hopes her conservative glamour aura — a phenomenon which he unleashed on the planet — would translate into another term for him. In the process he has disavowed every principled position he ever took in the Senate, positions that were often at odds with fellow Republicans, and actually said he never considered himself a maverick. What was all that stuff about then, John?

This was the presidential candidate of the GOP two years ago, a war hero, the de facto leader of the party, which today has none, the party which today takes its lead from the blabbering heads of Fox News, who reap ratings and money from their distortions and fear-mongering without having to worry about running for election.

Spake Coburn: “What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what’s going on and make a determination yourself. So don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good. The people in Washington are good. They just don’t know what they don’t know.”

Coburn told the audience to “stay informed on the issues.” Don’t “just watch Fox News or CNN — watch ‘em both.” He said, “I do a lot of reading every day (The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal)” to “get a perspective” and “know what other people’s thoughts are — not just what I hear through a pipe channel. I’m disturbed that we get things like what this lady said and what others have said on other issues, that are so disconnected to what I know to be the facts. And that comes from somebody that has an agenda that’s other than the best interests of our country.”

Coburn happens to be friendly with President Obama, from their shared days in the Senate, despite having starkly different political philosophies. Once upon a time, this was normal in Congress, where disagreements over policy did not have to descend to character assassination. The Just Say No Crowd has made it difficult for politicians of character to stand up and speak the truth, at least in the GOP. They’ve hammered this message home on Fox for two years now, or ever since Obama, the champion of bipartisan governing, became a serious candidate for president. There’s no drama in his approach, nothing on which Fox can exaggerate and profit. Only news it can report, if it so chooses, which it does not.

Coburn called them on it and, so far, Fox hasn’t called him a socialist, commie-sympathizer or anything else. (If you’ve heard or read otherwise, please let me know because, as I said, I don’t watch Fox News. Meanwhile, I’ll be on the lookout for any other Republican with the guts to speak the truth about the emperor’s clothes.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

Since writing in January about how much I miss Bill Safire writing the On Language column in The New York Times Magazine and what a waste I thought it was to spend an entire page in the magazine on the word “inchoate,” as was the case on that occasion, I haven’t had the energy to venture back into that space. Until last weekend.
 
Big mistake.

The column was written by Ammon Shea, who is described as “a consulting editor of American dictionaries for Oxford University Press.” A dictionary guy, which is really not the same thing as a language guy. Shea spends the whole column telling us that — despite what educators, research and experience tell us — the size of one’s vocabulary is not necessarily as important to a successful life as .. ta da! … how one uses all the words one knows.

Now he tells us.

But wait. Shea, the dictionary guy, then goes on to posit (a word he would probably like) that most of us underestimate the pure joy of learning arcane, obscure, unpronounceable words we will never, ever use. He particularly likes groak. He also tossed in catillate, vitulate and brochity. Don’t bother, you’ll never use them.

Anyway, as I once again rued the day the On Language column became a column about words people never use, which, in effect, makes it a waste of time, I remembered that I had asked our literate  Zest readers for their own pet language peeves. And so, with apologies and appreciation, I offer them now.

*  *  *

Lee Luce of Warwick was especially worked up: “We, too, read the NY Times Magazine and often rue the passing of Bill Safire. So you want pet peeves? I have the normal ones – “diametrically opposed,“ “Bill and me went …”, “my cohorts and I.”

“But my current grammatical pet peeve is the increasing use of the word it. My first English college professor hated when anybody used the word  and I suppose it stuck. Her thesis was that over-use of the word it asks the reader to work and decipher what it stands for in the sentence. Why not just write what you mean without asking the reader to decipher your code? She even went so far as to say that a writer was better off using more words in place of the word it than were necessary in order to make the meaning clear. Worse than using the word in a sentence was to start a sentence with the word It.

“Some quick examples from the January 11 issue of Time magazine:

• ‘The Interview Issue: How They See It” (What is it?)’
• Perhaps it was the economy, or maybe it was our mindlessly divided’ … political climate.’ (What is it?)’
• ‘It turned out to be a fortuitous coincidence…’ (What is it?)’
• ‘It may seem like this vast nation…’ (What is it?)’

“All examples are within the first seven pages of the magazine. I’m ready to cancel my subscription. Now I must confess my husband, an excellent writer, does not agree with my rantings on the use of the word it. And I’ve never seen anything written, except for the venerable team of Strunk & White, to support my visceral reaction to use of the word when not necessary. Maybe I’m just a lone grammatical voice crying in the wilderness.”

Bigsky offered this: “I realize that this column isn’t choate, so I look forward to the next one. Kindly address flammable and inflammable next time.” (Well, yes, they do mean the same thing, making one unnecessary.)

Fellow Zester Michael Kaufman wrote: I think the one that annoys me most is the way people write “loose” when they mean “lose,” as in, “I think I may loose my job.” One of the worst editors I ever had told me he didn’t appreciate my insouciance. After reading your post I checked: There is no such word as souciance.

LeeAgain wrote: “I joiced mightily at your choice of subject this week.”

From Carrie Jacobson, zest artist/writer: All those snoots who use “choate” probably went to Choate. My current peeve is “gentleman,” as in “the gentleman in handcuffs has been charged with murder.” A man is not necessarily a gentleman. In fact, I’d say, in this day and age, a man is almost never a gentleman! (Except for you.)

From jacquesdebauche: “My pet peeve is the use of “issue” when what is really meant is “problem.” In the relevant sense, an issue is a matter of dispute, while a problem is a source of perplexity. For example, if you come out of the house in the morning and discover that your car has a flat tire, that’s a problem. If you want to borrow your wife’s car to get to work, that could be an issue. I suspect this (mis)usage grew from the same M.B.A. thinking that, twenty years ago, replaced “problems” with “opportunities.”

Ernie Miller: “My particular peeve is the use of the word decimate to say something has been 100% percent annihilated. The Romans would decimate; they would take 1/10th of something. I suspect few people took Latin as I did, though for a year only. When one thinks about it, it is a pretty strong punishment to remove 10 percent of something be it a population, cattle, or wenches. (Oops, that sounds like a pirate.) Every time I hear decimate to represent total annihilation, I cringe. Thinking about it, with inchoate meaning incomplete, decimate is also an incomplete action/event. Both words are then used wrong or bastardized to mean complete? Complete what?”

And Fred Madeo of Ithaca: “Enjoyed your piece on William Safire and language and usage. I climb the wall whenever I hear the following: ‘Having said that, saying that, that having been said, that said,’ and ad infinitum. It is what I call a ‘language virus‘ that catches on like one catches a cold. That said, I shall sign off.”

Me too. Well said, all. And thanks until next time.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

I blame it all on the earthquake in Chile. Since it happened, everything seems to be out of whack. The temblor (I love that word) registered 8.8 on the Richter scale and caused tremendous damage and loss of life. I in no way mean to minimize the enormous pain it has caused. But the quake actually shortened the length of days on the planet and, never mind shaking the earth, it actually moved it. That’s got to have far-reaching ripple effects.

Scientists at NASA say the earthquake nudged the earth over 3 inches on its figure axis. That’s not the north-south one that spins us around and gives us our days and nights. It’s the one the planet’s mass is balanced around. Apparently it is off-balanced from the north-south axis by 33 feet, which I take to mean that one side is a bit denser than the other. Suddenly, Jim Bunning makes sense.

He had to equalize the earth’s density axis again by objecting over and over again in the U.S. Senate to a bill extending unemployment benefits to hundreds of thousands of Americans who are out of work, through no fault of their own. Such is the Senate these days that one person can tie up billions of dollars in legislation. When the Earth’s density equalized, Bunning relented, but not before giving America a first-hand look at what Congress would be like if the Tea Partiers took over. And make no mistake, the Republican moron from Kentucky has his supporters.

One blogger wrote: “Bunning will be remembered as a hero for this stand – he stood up to protect America from the uncontrolled spending of the socialists now running Washington, DC. As Europe collapses on itself with its socialist health plans and benefits, Obama and his cronies try to push America into the same failed model. The Mid-term elections can’t come quick enough.”

This supporter, like all others, ignored the fact that Bunning’s “stand” was a sham. While he repeatedly said, given the huge federal deficit, Congress should pay for any new spending, Bunning (and all other Republicans) had voted against a bill that would require just that. Instead, he chose to make his point on spending that would reduce the pain of ordinary Americans, which Congress contributed to with its unchecked spending and homage to corporate America.

In reality, it was just a crass political ploy to get back and Senate GOP leader, and fellow Kentuckian, Mitch McConnell, who led an effort to convince Bunning not to seek re-election, in part because he is prone to unpredictability. Last February, for example, he predicted Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months. Smooth, Jim.

But I linger too long on the Bunning ripple. The Chile quake has also thrown the entire political scene in New York into turmoil. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., has stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee because he neglected some tax laws he may well have written. Gov. David Paterson has abandoned his campaign for governor on the heels of yet another abuse of power scandal that  has tarnished the state police. Some guy named Steve Levy, who is Suffolk County executive, says he’s thinking of running and a lot of Democrats are still trying to get Paterson to resign, which would make Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch (Did you know that?), the smartest man in Albany because he doesn’t want the job, our next accidental governor.

On the other hand, Harold Ford Jr., a former Democratic Tennessee congressman and current Merrill Lynch VP, says he’s not running for the Senate here against Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand because he doesn’t think they can conduct a civil contest. And Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman, who supposedly got Ford to drop out of the Senate race, dropped out himself, because, apparently, he sees a brighter future in journalism than politics and what planet is he on?. All of this seems to leave only Orange County exec Eddie Diana as a possible opponent for Gillibrand. Now that’s some ripple effect.

And it goes beyond politics. Disney has taken off the kid-friendly gloves to get into a fight with ABC-TV over money, money, money. Greece, of all countries, almost killed the euro and plunged all of Europe into bankruptcy. The Oscar bigwigs got all uppity and banned a producer of “The Hurt Locker” from the awards ceremony because he dared to send e-mails to voters asking for their support (like everyone else does). A guy in England lost his driver’s license for walking his dog, from the driver’s seat of his car. Some poor-shooting rookie beat NBA legend Michael Jordan in a game of H-O-R-S-E.  Supermodel Naomi Campbell, who hadn’t assaulted anyone in weeks, felt the need to attack her driver. And Sarah Palin did a standup routine on The Tonight Show that got better reviews than her political speeches.

… Come to think of it, that last one is probably a sign that the earth has finally settled on its new axis. Whew.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

 Let’s talk about war. We don’t do that much in this country. Not really, when you consider that we have been fighting two wars in Asia for nearly a decade and all we seem to be preoccupied with at home is a recession born of greed. We talk about mortgage foreclosures ( but not so much about the foolish loans that led to the foreclosures), about huge Wall Street bonuses at banks bailed out by taxpayers, about people needing jobs, the price of gasoline, politicians who lie through their teeth to get elected then sell their souls to lobbyists to get re-elected, about taxes (which are always too high), about public services (which are always inadequate), about the cost of health care, the newest best deal on a cell phone, about Ipods and steroids and the Super Bowl and tuition and 401Ks and chicken wings and “American Idol” and the Oscars, the Grammies, the Emmys and, for sure, about the weather.

 But we don’t talk about war. Not really. When’s the last time you had a real conversation with someone about either the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan, beyond the question of whether George W. Bush should have started either one? World War II defined the lives of a generation, brought home in weekly newsreels. Korea was not a backburner topic. Vietnam was a nightly visitor in our living rooms.

 Yet, while we have borrowed our way into economic near-Armageddon Iraq has dragged on forever. And now, with the end in sight — President Obama has pledged American troops will be leaving this summer — the messy question about whether or not Iraqis can put together a government that will last and resemble the democracy Bush said he wanted to create there doesn’t come up much around water coolers. Odd, since some would say that is the only way to determine the ultimate “success” of the U.S. invasion.

 But that’s not war talk. Not really. War talk is a headline reporting that a dozen  civilians were killed in a rocket attack on Marjah, a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. The civilian deaths were described in news stories as a blow to efforts by NATO and the Afghan government to gain support among local residents. Almost lost in the newspaper and TV reports on the U.S. Marine-led assault on Marjah was the fact that it was a major military success, cutting  off logistical support for the Taliban and the opium money that keeps them operating.

 It was the largest ground offensive of a war begun eight years ago to destroy the Al Qaida terrorist group that was hiding in Afghanistan with the blessing and protection of the then-ruling Taliban government. In other words, it was a serious moment in a war which has not been taken nearly as seriously as one would think by politicians and a populace who routinely proclaim their commitment to destroying the people responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

 The military term for the unintended deaths of civilians is “collateral damage.” Not particularly compassionate. But then, war has little room for sentiment. It is about territory and killing. Military people are the ones who are most aware of this when the war talk begins. It is U.S. Marines who are going door to door in Marjah today, seeking insurgents and looking out for booby traps and explosives with every step, their lives on the line. Their lives are more on the line because two rockets — described as “sophisticated” weapons — went off course and struck a home instead of their intended target. The U.S. general in charge immediately apologized to the Afghans and suspended use of the rockets. He said the best way to ensure that such accidents don’t happen is to use more “boots on the ground.”
 
 That certainly makes the war more personal. Which is the harder decision — putting a few thousands U.S. troops in harm’s way or firing off some “sophisticated” rockets to do the job? More than a few “smart missiles” missed their mark in Iraq as I recall, but there was so much devastation no one seemed to care much after awhile. Except maybe the Iraqis.
 
 The point is there will inevitably be unintended deaths in war. They are tragic and the warring parties should do all they can to avoid them. Unfortunately, in the kind of wars we are fighting today, the enemy doesn’t much care about rules of engagement or whom he kills. Innocent bystanders are terrorists’ primary weapon. That’s why the United States and its allies must remind Afghan civilians, a war-weary people if ever there was one, that we are different. We are not the Taliban. We are not Al Qaida.

 But we are, finally, fighting a war to defeat those two forces in Afghanistan, with more American boots on the ground, as per Obama’s order. It’s a war that seemed necessary and just to most Americans when Bush sent our troops to fight it. But at some point we stopped talking about it back home and became obsessed with Blackberries and McMansions and SUVs. Not those with loved ones serving in the military. They have those conversations every day. But most of the rest of us want to know why they can’t get the damn weather forecast right and how so many people can take Sarah Palin seriously.

 There’s something wrong with that. When war is an after thought, when there is no sense of shared risk or sacrifice, it is dehumanized. Life is devalued. “Smart” weapons seduce us into thinking there will be no “collateral damage.” In and out. Neat and clean. Boots on the ground remind us that war is about capturing a snowy hilltop or a city built of mud, one careful step at a time. It is about facing death as much as it is about obtaining justice or retribution or whatever word is used to justify it.          

 War is not neat and clean and it is certainly worth talking about.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

(Editor’s note: In the interests of full disclosure, let it be known that the following was written by me for the TH-R in my capacity as fill-in editorial writer when the new guy is on vacation. It turns out they didn’t use it because he wrote on the same subject for the same day. So it shouldn’t be a total loss, I figured I’d share it with Zest readers.) 

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he’s going to meet his maker, He will be brought to justice and he’s likely to be executed for the heinous crimes that he committed in killing and masterminding the killing of 3,000 Americans. That you can be sure of.”
 – Robert Gibbs, President Barack Obama’s press secretary

That’s apparently all we can be sure of at this time. Where, when and how Mohammed will “meet justice” is apparently anybody’s guess as the Obama administration has hemmed, hawed, stumbled and bumbled its way through the process of getting the confessed 9/11 mastermind out of prison at Guantanamo Bay and into a United States courtroom.

With dazzling suddenness, the administration’s plan to try Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators at the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, not far from the scene of the infamous act, fell apart over the weekend. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who at first supported the plan, changed his mind, he said, when he saw the scope of security plans Police Chief Raymond Kelly drew up for the trials. They called for closing off  large portions of the financial district and Chinatown with roadblocks and checkpoints and putting snipers on rooftops. Bloomberg said this would cost the city more than $200 million a year for several years. “It will also impact traffic and commerce and people’s lifestyles downtown,” Bloomberg said.

He said the price was too high, even for a chance to bring the accused terrorists to justice face-to-face. When Bloomberg flipped, Sen. Charles Schumer followed, as did many others.

Simultaneously, the call went out to find other suitable trial sites within the federal Southern District jurisdiction, including a few in Orange County. West Point, the Air Force National Guard base at Stewart International Airport and the federal Correctional Institution at Otisville were named as possible alternatives. One at a time. West Point: Out of the question. It’s an educational institutional housing future officers. Highland Falls would be overwhelmed. Stewart: It’s still an airport and it has no courtroom or lockup facility. Otisville: The most secure and remote. Would need a courtroom. And Otisville would need all of that $200 million the president has pledged to pay for the cost of the trials.

A fourth, unsolicited, suggestion came from Newburgh Mayor Nicholas Valentine, who said his city could handle the trial in the new courthouse across the street from his tailor shop. Unlike, Bloomberg, Valentine says the trials would be an economic and public relations boon for his city. That’s probably true, but the goal is to provide fair trials within the U.S. justice system for five accused terrorists, not to rescue a city that has had difficulty handling its own problems, which include a recent rash of street violence.

The White House never conferred with New York City officials before deciding to try Mohammed there. Big mistake. Before making another one, the president needs to meet with Justice Department and national security advisors to decide on the best approach. Resistance from local communities should not drive his decision, but should at least be considered. Nor should expediency rule the day. If, as has been suggested, Obama is again considering military rather than civilian trials, these at a minimum need to be conducted under U.S. trial laws, which do not allow hearsay or coerced testimony, but do allow the accused to see the evidence against them.

Anything less would be a capitulation to fear and would represent a final victory for Mohammed and his ilk, regardless of the verdicts.

Bob@zestof orange.com