Brother, Can You Spare a Vote?

It was an unseasonably warm day about a week ago and I was sitting outside at some coffee place in downtown Seattle. Across from me was a woman wearing a Howard Dean t-shirt. A vagabond or homeless-looking guy came by and told the woman that he was a Republican and that he was voting for Bush. The woman commented that her son was working for Dean. The exchange was friendly and casual. To the untrained eye this was a thoroughly meaningless event but to an astute observer of politics, like me, it is easy to see a metaphor. Either a metaphor or a parable. Either a metaphor or a parable or something. Then again maybe it was nothing.

To me the homeless guy represents everyone who makes under $500,000 a year who is foolish enough to think the Republicans give two shits about anyone in their lousy little income bracket. Ronald Reagan said before he was president that he still believed America was a place where a guy could become a millionaire. What a stupid vision! That homeless guy probably spends his imaginary millions in his mind every time he scratches off a lotto ticket.

If just because you graduated from college, and you wear a tie to work, you think you are in the Republican inner circle, you are a fool and you need to turn off the TV and start getting some news. A lot of lower-middle class people vote for Republicans because they want to outlaw abortion for poor people (rich people have always had access to abortion, always will), this makes Republicans more moral. You can bask in the morality of the right as you look for a job after the Republicans sent yours packing to China.

The Oshkosh plant in Tennessee shut down leaving 1,500 people without jobs. The average income in the town dropped to $13,000 a year yet I’m sure a good percentage of those miserable wretches will vote Republican because they’re afraid the Democrats will take away their guns. You can keep your guns because the only decent jobs your kids will be able to find will be in the U.S. Army which seems to be accepting only economic conscripts.

Heart Attack

One of the main indicators that a person is no longer among the living is the absence of a heart beat. Heart disease is one of the biggest killers among adult males. A healthy heart is not going to let you live forever. I’m not interested in living forever, or even for any longer than what is in the cards. I just want to live on my terms as long as my heart is beating and my terms are pretty demanding on the heart.

Studies indicate that leg strength is a factor in cardio-vascular fitness. The heart doesn’t drive the legs; the legs drive the heart. Cyclists have a jump on a lot of athletes in the area of heart fitness because cycling demands a lot of leg strength and it stresses the heart at a high level for a longer period of time than, say, running

I have been using my heart rate monitor in my semi-annual neurotic quest to do something different and demanding in my work-out regimen. A valuable tool in cardio-vascular training is measuring your maximum heart rate. This is the maximum beats per minute that your heart is capable of performing. The standard formula of calculating your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, so someone twenty years old would have a maximum heart rate of 200 beats per minute. This formula is fairly flawed so the best way to calculate your maximum heart rate is to rev up your heart as high as it can go.

Often when I am bike riding I am riding at a speed that is completely taxing my heart but I don’t wear my heart rate monitor very often. I did interval training yesterday at my gym on an exercise bike. Interval training entails maintaining a level of almost complete intensity for a brief period, resting briefly, and then repeating this for several sets. This isn’t the best way to hit your maximum heart rate (MHR) because fatigue sets in quickly and your heart will not be able to rise to its maximum level if it has been under a lot of stress. To ideally calculate MHR you begin slowly, build higher resistance over about ten minutes and then pour it on for about two minutes.

On my third interval yesterday I got my heart up to 188 bpm, which, although high, I don’t feel is my maximum. Even so, this rate is ridiculously above the 220 minus age formula. Supposedly, MHR is not a function of your fitness level but simply one of age and your genetic make-up. I’m out to do my own personal research into this matter and this is the beginning of my inquiry.

Another fitness tool is assessing your resting heart rate (RHR). To do this you simply check your pulse the first thing when you wake up, before you get out of bed. A lower RHR is generally a good indication of your level of fitness—the lower your RHR the better. I haven’t done this calculation recently because I keep forgetting or I haven’t slept well enough or long enough the night before to get an accurate reading.

Inefficiency: Myths, Lies, and the Right

We have been holding on to so many myths about economics. The greatest fallacy in the pseudo-science of economics is the widely-held misconception (especially widely-held by those on the right) that private industry is more efficient than the public sector. I had this point pounded so far in to my skull as an economics undergraduate that it practically took surgery to make me see otherwise. What made me see otherwise was history and the truth.

The misconception that all government is horribly inefficient and that all of the private sector is a paragon of economic virtue has been the driving force behind a lot of destructive anti-tax legislation in the past 25 years. The “government is bad and wasteful” commandment brought to us by the Moses of the Chicago School of Economics is the biggest reason America’s health care system is a complete mess and excludes some 40 million of its citizens. How can a private system be efficient if it doesn’t reach 40 million people? Under the current health care system we spend billions of dollars annually on insurance. No one has ever recovered from any illness because of an insurance company. Insurance is a waste of money and an inefficient middle-man.

There is talk of privatizing sector after sector of our economy: social security, public education, and more and more elements of our military. Those proposing these changes argue that private industry is more efficient. The problem is that the private sector is, by the definition of free market capitalism, subject to the risk of failure. I realize that failure has been a pretty successful business model over the past 25 years for the private sector--just ask the fat cats who made out like bandits on the savings and loan bailout of the 80’s, just ask the CEO’s of most of the failed dotcom’s, just look at how Enron’s stock went into the toilet yet its managers made a killing--but failure has no business in a lot of the busniess of government.

I defy anyone to point to a government agency in this country that comes anywhere near the incompetence of Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, et al. I challenge anyone to point to a U.S. government official who has stolen as much cash as the pirates masquerading as CEO’sof failed corporations.

There are still people who propose we privatize our social security system and put the money in the stock market. Are you people fucking kidding? Why don’t we just go to Las Vegas and put it all down on black at the roulette table? There are certain sectors of the economy, like health care, police, fire protection, social security, and education where failure is not an option in the business plan. Why should we leave such issues at the capricious disposal of the private sector?

Why We so Stupid?

If you look at TV for more than about five minutes it becomes apparent that its primary function is to sell stuff. That’s no big revelation; I think we can all agree. How does it sell stuff? One of TV’s most relentless sales techniques is making us all feel incredibly insecure about how we look and about how we live. The job of advertising is to make someone feel inadequate because they don’t have the product they are selling. We aren’t skinny enough, we aren’t tall enough, our hair is all wrong, our boobs are too small, our thing-a-ma-bobs are too dinky, and our car doesn’t have four wheel drive. We need to go shopping.

As much effort as the media people put into making us feel insecure and inadequate about everything else, they never chide us for not being smart enough. In fact, TV does a pretty good job of reassuring us that it’s OK to be illiterate. They don’t want to encourage things like reading which might interfere with your valuable TV viewing time.

I always ask people to name a single protagonist in a movie who is intellectual. The examples don’t come easily. On the flip side, it is easy to name movie heroes who are simple-mined, mentally retarded, or flat out anti-intellectual (every Adam Sandler movie comes to mind as an example of all three of those adjectives). Any actor who takes on the role of a mentally retarded person is almost a shoe-in for an Academy Award nomination. I think it would be more of an acting challenge, more of a stretch, for the current crop of Hollywood movie stars to portray intellectuals.

There isn’t much calling for actors who can play smart folks. We like our heroes nice and dumb and intellectually unthreatening—at least that is what Hollywood has been telling us. The one insecurity that TV and movies don’t prey upon is our lack of education. Could you imagine the sort of world we would be living in if people were as concerned for their intellect as they are about their thighs? Goodbye Joe Millionaire hello America’s Favorite Calculus Problems. I would think that watching a math professor scribble out an equation on a blackboard is at least as entertaining as what we now call reality TV.

We are only interested in the surface. It would take too much time getting to know something about a person before we would be able to judge them on their intelligence and erudition. It is so much easier to dismiss someone because they have the wrong kind of cell phone or because their jacket doesn’t say North Face®. It would be too hard for us all to monitor those people who have slacked-off on translating Homer from the original Greek. Instead of the current easy system of making a snap judgment about your fellow man simply by looking at the car he drives we would be mired in a quagmire of having to pay attention to things that actually matter. There also isn’t any money to be made in intellectual pursuits unless you are a cello instructor, or a playwright, or a mathematician, or a novelist, or a scientist, or an artist…OK, so there is a shitload of money to be made but it would be too hard to market.

TOO GOOD FOR THE COMMENTS BOX

#1 Jan 20 2004, 06:42 pm

Aye, some good points.
Y'know I was just thinking about how that Hollywood sign says a lot about the character of what it stands for.
It's cheap-looking, there's nothing behind it (just a surface), it's crooked and makeshift.
yak sox

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#2 Jan 20 2004, 06:59 pm

My girlfriend, Sarah, has a degree in communications, and has spent her post-university time employed in advertising and marketing. Specifically, she has worked and a media buyer, and product marketing manager. So I have heard a lot of the ‘marketing speak’ and ‘ad lingo.’ Not unlike other professions, advertisers and marketers have developed their own vernacular to make the profession sound scientific. {Just so you know, I studied political science and work in IS/IT. Thus, I am well aware of language vagaries in these fields too}. While I have been critical of television (and advertising) much like Leftbanker here, I regularly critique the stupidity of TV and inanity of advertising—in front of Sarah. For both of us, it has become sport, not unlike MST3000 was to B-movies. Sarah takes most of my biting criticism with good humor, but sometimes it bothers her, especially as her profession is being ridiculed. Recently while decorating our living room she said, “We need a red accent chair in here.” Leaving the want verses need argument aside I said, “Red accent chair? Why red?” After some more discussion, where she attempted to defend her statement, I picked up one of several magazines lying on the coffee table and began to leaf through it. I found 3-4 pictures (advertisements) of living rooms displayed with red accent chairs. I then said, “Now please explain to me again—why do you think you need a red chair? Is it because it has been suggested to you over and over again!” For weeks after that, I pointed out every red accent chair I saw—on TV, in magazines, in restaurants and in stores. Finally she yelled, “Enough!” and I stopped. This is the power of TV (and of advertising) that I detest. That some of us—all of us—at one time or another cannot even discern the genesis of our own thoughts in the midst of the incessant noise.
Farmer Ned

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#3 Jan 21 2004, 07:54 am

...
cannot even discern the genesis of our own thoughts in the midst of the incessant noise.

Well said, Farmer Ned!
kevin m.
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#4 Jan 21 2004, 08:37 am

I dunno why, but I, a perfectly potent male who does not have "size problems,", find myself wanting a fistful of viagra and a penis enlarger. A curious and strange feeling...

That goddamn SPAM--how insidious. Since I don't watch tv except for sporting events, the dark lords of marketing have found other avenues and pathways to infect my mind.

Next thing you know I'll be driving an Escalade, wearing Dockers, drinking Bud Lite, and playing golf at the country club with my other SUV-driving, Dockers-clad, shitty-beer-drinking "buddies."

If that happens, please, please, please shoot me. I mean it.
Mat

Studying Up for a Vacation

I made my first Spanish tortilla the other night, a dish that is hearty and simple, a peasant dish that is probably one of the most defining dishes of Spanish cuisine. Potatoes, eggs, and olive oil are all you need to make this potato omelet. I have been studying up on Iberia in anticipation of my trip there in less than three weeks. Although I have been to Spain twice before, it has been a while. How time flies! I barely even remember my travels on the peninsula but my Spanish is much, much better than the last time I was there. Memories fade but language skills sharpen with continued use.

One thing that I do remember about Spain is the nightly frenzy of the tapas hour. In the pre-dinner hours (Spaniards eat very late, like 10pm) people practically run from bar to bar, drinking beer or wine, and eating small appetizers. People say that the way to judge a good tapas bar is by the quantity of garbage on the floor—the more the better. The tapas hour ends as abruptly as it begins when people move on to a very leisurely dinner. I think I can remember how to do that.

I have also been given a great little guide and glossary of Madrid tapas-speak. Ir a tapas or salir de tapear is how you would say you are going to go out and have a glass of wine and a little something to eat to hold you over until your late dinner. The guide recommends that you ir a tapas with between three and four people, that you have no more than two items before moving to another bar, and that all tapas activity should be done standing up. It provides the correct etiquette for paying (each person pays a round), and descriptions of Madrid’s favorite appetizers.

My mother bought me a wonderful cookbook when she traveled to Spain a few years ago, Cooking in Spain by Janet Mendel. I didn’t pay the book much attention at the time. It was just one of the many books in my kitchen, always behind my French and Mexican cookbooks. I have recently opened it up and I now see what a great resource it is, not only on Spanish cooking but on the Spanish vocabulary for food.

Spain is not exactly renowned for its cuisine but I remember the simple dishes I had there being the best: beans, bread, country sausages, hams, and olives. Along with a local wine, olives are the perfect appetizer. My cookbook even has instructions on how to cure olives two different ways. As anyone from the Mediterranean region knows, olives must first be cured in a solution of water and soda-lye before they can be eaten.