Ten Days That Shook The World

I am writing this very early in the morning. I've gotten up, leaving Martha in bed, and gone to read in the front room. It's something I do fairly often. My current book is John Reed's Ten Days That Shook The World—which, I am embarrassed to confess, I've never read before, and which (I think) I'll never read again.

It is a difficult book to read today, with all its hero worship and its enthusiasm. Reed, you see, was an American intellectual and an early visitor to Revolutionary Russia. And he was an eyewitness to the Bolshevik coup that put Lenin and his friends in power. (He'd die in the Soviet Union, eventually, and be buried in the Kremlin's Necropolis.)

But what is difficult about the book is that you know what he did not, i.e., that the great Soviet experiment would end horribly in the Gulag, in the artificial famine of Ukraine, in terror and war…with Stalin. Thus, to skim its pages is to become embarrassed for its author. Is it possible, one asks, that he could have so completely misinterpreted what he saw? That he could have been so willfully blind? Alas, of course, the answer is yes. He does not seem to notice the growing repression, the judicial murders, the suppression of other parties and other points of view…the slow drift toward first, dictatorship, and then, genuine totalitarianism.

Still, judge not lest, etc. There is evidence that Reed realized his error and, towards the end of his life, regretted the excesses of the Revolution he'd chronicled.

Second, if Reed misunderstood the nature of the Revolution around him, then he was not alone in that. Much of the world's intellectual class (if not its workers, who tend to be a hardheaded lot) bought into the Revolution, and defended it in print … occasionally in the streets…even as Stalin sent poets and filmmakers and tens of millions of others to die in Siberian winters.

Which is what disturbs me. I am, by some measures, myself an intellectual...in a small way, at least. And even if I weren't, I am a follower of greater intellectuals, a reader of their prose and a viewer of their independent productions. I listen to their wisdom and sign their petitions.

But what if…?

What if among their causes and their calls for action there are other hells? Unobserved? Awaiting birth? Midwived by those who most of all should stand guard against him?

That horned god, that hoofed fiend, that rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem.

Editors. Pink Elephants. Enivrez-Vous.

More thoughts about editors…

Involved with any text are three individuals, who are sometimes the same and sometimes very different: a writer, a reader, and an editor.

Each of the three has an equal but different claim upon the piece in question. The writer wants to express something unique to his or her own intellect. The reader wants to hear something which impacts directly on his or her experience of the world, or lack thereof.

The editor…and again, remember, I was one…is an equal partner of the other two, but the least honest of the three. The editor believes, or pretends to believe that he or she knows what the author should be saying and what the reader should want to hear, even though they may have quite different ideas about their preferences.

In fact, of course, this is a carefully planned exercise in self-delusion. The editor has no clearer idea of what ought be written or read than anyone else. But that is in no way to suggest that the editor is valueless. Quite the reverse. Delusion is vital to creation. It adds a note of chaos to a situation that might otherwise be crippled by its own perfection.

Thus the real purpose of the editor. Not to smooth but to roughen. Not to confirm but to confuse. Not to clarify but to intoxicate. To be, in other words, the White Rabbit. The Green Fairy. The Pink Elephant.

Enivrez-Vous.

Xcargo, editors, not editors

As I've noted here before, one of my current projects is the posting to the web of all (or at least many) of my old explosive-cargo ezine columns. It is a long process. I did at least one Xcargo column a week for several years. There are a lot of columns to process -- and it isn't always easy. When I started doing the thing, my default wordprocessor was Macwrite. Not Macwrite II. Macwrite. Pretty much nothing opens Macwrite files any more and I spend a lot of time trying to jury-rig ways around my technical limitations.

That said, it's been interesting to re-read my Xcargos. I'm surprised to find that at least some of them still give me a measure of satisfaction. Not all of course. Many are quite awful. But, there are a few…maybe more than a few…that seem readable even now. Even after a decade has somehow drifted past.

I will say, though, that the columns show both the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing (and nothing, not even a blog, is as self-published as an ezine). The upside is that you are working without an editor. The downside is…that you are working without an editor.

Without an editor —and, keep in mind, for many years I was one—you are free to write pretty much what you want. There is no one to say what you can and cannot say. What should be shortened and what should be made longer. What ought not to be said and what shouldn't be allowed to go without saying.

On the other hand, there is no upper limit on your verbosity. You may drivel on for ages. And I did. The average length of a late Xcargo column was nothing less than 1000 words. That's far, far too much for almost any purpose under heaven.

Thus the unfortunate contradiction. You are more likely to write something that really should be written. But, it is all too probable that you will write far too much of it.



(and where I'm posting it: explosive-cargo)

Q1Xcargo96

I've just finished posting most of the first quarter of explosive-cargo 1996 to my website. As always, I'm amazed how much stuff there is.

This particular batch includes:

My reactions to H.L. Mencken

And Pat Buchanan's run for the white house in '96

Gerbils in certain messy places (and those who should get them)

Greater Syria and Daniel Pipes

And a good deal else besides...

cheers
mjt

the Newt -- Take 2

Ah, the Newt…the Newt…

Gingrich is back. Improbably, almost impossibly, he is back. He is now, in fact, actually within some striking distance of the GOP nomination for President.

I don't much care for him. Though, I did write about him a lot back in the early 1990s. Nothing terribly flattering, I'm afraid.

Here, in fact, is some of what I said about him in my Xcargo ezine back in 1998, when I thought he was gone for good. I was too optimistic. And, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't said some of the hard things I said about the Democrats. (I had a few readers in those days who were conservatives, you see, and I was trying to cultivate them.)

But, otherwise, I find I'm almost pleased with this little piece, particularly the part that talks about the GOP and its Faustian bargain.

The price of which, I fear, all the rest of us have had to pay…





explosive-cargo

by Michael Jay Tucker


Not the UK: No Newt?

No.

No. No.

No. No. No.

NOOOOOO!

This can't be happening! This is horrible. This is terrible. This is ... well, what I hoped for several years.

Over the weekend, just after the U.S. Republican Party -- a.k.a, the GOP -- failed to sweep Congress, and in effect reelected President Clinton for two more years ...

Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker Of The House. He may even leave Congress.

I'm devastated.

No. Really and truly. I am. That's why I'm taking a short break from my current infamous multipart series (this on my recent trip to the UK), to write this brief Newt-note. Call it a Newt-letter. And you know what they say. No Newts is good Newts. Or something like that.

Anyway, I loved Newt. Oh, as a person of course, I thought he was probably a waste of protoplasm that would have been better spend constructing ring worms and intestinal parasites, but that wasn't the choice of the Creator, and who am I to question the ways of God? Inscrutable as they may be. In fact, down right incomprehensible. In fact, actually, might make you sort of question the sanity of the All Mighty. But we won't go into that.

But, I did love Newt. I mean, as a public figure to write about. I mean, that little square head! Looking sort of like a cinder block outhouse with a polar bear skin tossed over the top. I mean, couldn't have asked for better if you'd phoned ahead and ordered special. Comics, political cartoonists, and columnists are weeping in the aisles from one end of the country to the other. I'm thinking of organizing a support group. And a 12 step program.

And those wonderfully wretched books he'd write! And his seminars! And his taped "classes"! The ones where he'd go wandering off into some bizarre Peter-Drucker-Drivel Management Fad Buzzword New Speak Futurism where ... somehow ... in an alternative universe ... it all made sense. and, the Contract with America didn't sound like a subplot in the Godfather: Part XXXVI.

I may never smile again.

*
Actually, seriously (and this will surprise you), I think he's getting a bit of a bum deal. It really wasn't his fault that his party lost five seats in the Senate, rather than gaining the 14 he'd hoped.

No. THAT was the doing of the fanatics on the Right Wing of his party. That was the fault of the idiots who were running around making absolutely certain that Starr was on TV each and every night, with yet another grim set of hideous revelations about our Fearless Leader, Mr. Bill ("Can't Keep It In His Pants") Clinton, and thus rubbing John and Jane Q. Public's noses in the fact that yes, yes!, this WAS a Do-Nothing Congress that could see nothing outside the Belt Way.

And of course, they were talking Impeachment. Smart, that. Really brilliant. Americans are, by nature, a conservative people. And that means big sweeping changes, brought on all of a sudden without a good deal of time to argue it up, down and sideways ... well, it just makes them nervous. And, I think, with good reason.

But the Hard Right didn't listen to that. They were so busy closing in for the kill they didn't notice they were charging nose-first into a tar-pit. Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble ... you see.

*

But I think he's not getting a fair shake particularly because come right down to the nitty-gritty of it ... and say what you like about him being the spawn of the devil with 666 tattooed under that white hair of his ... but the simple fact of the matter is that if weren't for him, there would have been no GOP resurgence in the middle '90s.

'Twas he most of all, I think, who brought forty years of Democratic hegemony to an end. He realized that the Dems had held power that long only because it had the support three groups -- Organized Labor, Minorities, and Women. And it was he who saw that those three groups weren't what they used to be. Labor had been in decline since the 1960s and the de-Industrialization of the American economy. Minorities and women, meanwhile, were either themselves susceptible to a Conservative message, or else were
so involved with "Identity Politics" that they no longer spoke to each other ... much less the Liberal and Moderate White Males who could have been their allies.

And it was he who saw that you could build a revolution with the small business owners, and middle class suburbanites, and Southern regionalists, and general centrists who had found themselves before excluded from the decision-making process in Politically Correct America.

In short, he found the Republican Party a country club of the very rich, and left it a Revolutionary Rotary.

*

And, even though I'm a card carrying Democrat, on some level I can't even object to Newt's dethronement of the Dems. Forty years is a long time for anyone to run a country. Sometimes, you need a little shaking up. Even the home team can't win all the time, or you gotta start wondering who's paying off the ump.

But the thing which does worry me, and which may be the Newt's single most important accomplishment, is that while he was doing all of this ... he also was the one who signed in blood for the GOP's Faustian Bargain.

He, you see, was the one who saw that the Republicans could run the country via an alliance between the vaguely Libertarian New Right, and the finely honed theocracy of the Old.

It was he who saw that the Religious Right ... and in particular, the Christian Coalition ... could be to the GOP what Labor had been to the Democrats: the nearly fanatical political action committee that was Everywhere.

*

But, in the end, I wonder if that isn't also what brought him down. And I wonder too if it isn't an unhealthy legacy for Conservatism in this country.

For how can you be both a champion of the Individual and the servant of a Medieval concept of God ... a Moloch, who demands not merely your worship, but your annihilation? Your unconscious, uncritical, and mindless obedience?

*

But, that's neither here nor there.

The important thing is I'm crushed. No more Newt. Dear heaven. Whatever am I going to do?

Maybe he'll run for president.

Still, that's two years away. Two long years. Argh.

Oh well. Just as long as Jesse Helms doesn't go anywhere.

Onward and upward.

(c) Copyright 1998 by Michael Jay Tucker


You may see other vintage Xcargos at Explosive Cargo

UNIX quotes on twitter

Far freaking out. I was just quoted on twitter...


"UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -Michael Jay Tucker"

arrogance, life

Egotism, hubris, is among the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins. But let us not reject it entirely. Life, after all, requires more than a little arrogance. We begin with the assertion, held despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that we are worthy of existence.

the mothers in the cafe...

I am in a coffee shop (again) while I write this. A few moments back, a number of young mothers came into the cafe. It is a regular meeting place for them. I see them every morning…at least on those mornings that I am here.

They come in with their children…babies, mostly, in strollers and carriers. And, then, after having a coffee or two, they leave again. This morning, I watch them. The first mother pushes her stroller to the door. She fumbles with it. She tries to manage the carriage and her exit at the same time.

I am, of course, a southern boy. I was schooled to be a gentleman. So, even though I know what's coming, I leap to my feet and ask if I can hold the door for her and her baby.

And what I expect duly occurs. She snaps at me. Well, not exactly snaps. Her language is civil, even though her tone is not. "I can manage it myself." The stress is on the final syllable. I have, you see, insulted her by implying that she is not sufficient unto her own being. Alone, remote, distant, perfect.

Her friend, the mother with another carriage behind her, is perhaps embarrassed. She says to me, "I would have let you do it." I nod at her and return to my seat. The stream of mothers passes through the exit, each attempting to manage her child and the door at the same time, each not quite achieving that goal, each evidencing various degrees of discomfort.

They are gone.

So, let us summarize. The woman who spoke to me and refused my aid, what did she accomplish by her uncompromising assertion of self-sufficiency?

Well, she made it more difficult for her own child and her own self to leave the café. She made life slightly more uncomfortable at that moment for each of her friends—depriving them of the small but useful aid I would have given them at the door. By choosing (and it was a choice) to interpret my attempt at a civil gesture as an imposition, she made herself angry, which she did not have to be. And, as a lesser but still pertinent matter, she made me feel bad.

These were her accomplishments.

Sometimes I wonder. At what point does empowerment become self-destruction? Where does independence shade away into masochism?

Press Kits, inertia, history...

When I was young, I'd hear stories of grown children entering the homes of their deceased parents and finding there no end of, well, crap—fifty years of canceled checks, tax returns dating back two generations, sales receipts from purchases made at the corner store when the corner store had not yet been torn down for the filling station.

And I'd wonder how on earth it happened. The parents knew such things were worthless. Yet, they kept them. They kept them for decades.

Ah, but now…

As you know, I'm moving. I've mostly finished cleaning out my office. But, today I put my courage to the sticking place and went into the basement. Box upon box of papers awaited me. Most of these date to the twenty years or so that I was a trade press journalist.

It was astonishing stuff really—press releases, notes I'd taken, rough and second drafts of articles, photos of various computers, a couple of plaques I'd gotten when winning various awards from various press organizations.

As I hauled most of it to the dump (I completely filled the back of my little Ranger pickup with boxes and crates of paper), I asked myself why on earth I'd kept it all…or, indeed, even wanted it. Then, I remembered my motivations. Each time I'd leave a magazine I'd smuggle out my files. The idea was that I'd use the material, the contacts, the notes, the photos in articles I'd write for my new employer…or, if that employer did not prove lasting, for freelancing.

And, in a very, very few cases, that actually happened. But, most of the time, somehow, I never got around to it. I'd mean to take the files into the new office…but, there was the job to learn, there were new subjects to research, new deeds to do and promises to keep. I'd intend to open my notes for all those articles I was going to write freelance…but, there was the boy to raise, the marriage to maintain, a life to lead, and, well, nothing came of it. The boxes never got out of my basement.

Then I understood…the fifty years of canceled checks, the register tapes from 1942. It is human nature. For me to have actually made use of all those boxes of files, I would have had to expend considerable effort. I would have had to sort and organize, shift this and move that, find a place for something else. Easier, easier by far to simply let it sit there.

Thus inertia. It is like gravitation. Seemingly feeble, but given time and mass, irresistible, immovable…mighty beyond measure.


*

Actually, I rather enjoyed going through all the press kits and releases from decades past. It was strange but pleasant to travel there in my personal history, among the things which had seemed so exciting at the time.

All useless now, of course. The companies that mailed the releases and kits exist today only in the memories of former employees. The products they offered are obsolete, as dead as dinosaurs (more so, if you consider birds).

Yet just because it is useless does not mean it is meaningless. All that you do now…the computer in your lap, the phone in your pocket, the router which is your window to the Web … all that, every bit of it, was built upon what was done then. It was pioneering. It was adventure. It was the foundation of your electronic, digital, virtual world.

As such, it is vital. Without it, where would you stand?

addiction

As you know, I'm getting ready for our move to New Mexico. In the process of weeding out my all too copious possessions, I've been selling stuff on Ebay.

I've discovered, though, that there is a danger in online auction sites. They're addictive. I find myself compulsively checking every few minutes to see if I've gotten any new sales or, at least, if any of my auctions have gotten any new watchers. (In fact, upon completing that last sentence, I did exactly that. I checked Ebay. I was delighted to see that one of my sets of comics has been bid up all the way to $3.75. Ah, the free market system.)

I'm not sure what it is that makes the game so playable. I wonder, though, if the appeal isn't that Ebay is sort of like a puzzle to be solved. How do I list an item? What minimum bid should I set? How do I use Ebay to print out postage and a mailing label?

All things to be ascertained. Like the clues in MYST. Or the telltale signs of unrequited love.


*

The good news, as my son points out, is that if I have gotten hooked on auctions, at least it's in selling rather than buying.

*

The comic books are doing remarkably well on Ebay. Which is a good thing since I have several hundred of them, comics I mean, mostly dating back to the 1960s. Even then, it seems, I was addicted to ink.

So, Scrooge McDuck, Donald and the Boys, Grandma Duck ("and her farm friends"), Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Baby Huey, CARtoons, Hot Rod Cartoons, Chip and Dale, "Millie the Lovable Monster"…these and more I peddle to the world.

Does it reveal anything about me…anything disturbing…that my childhood reading centered on rodents, barnyard fowl, dragons with eyelashes, and very large internal combustion engines presented in precise, photo-realistic, almost loving detail?

*

Most of the comics I'm selling are between thirty and forty years old. But, for various reasons, I do have a few recent pubs. I've even got one — City of Tomorrow by Howard Chaykin (with Michelle Madsen)—that classifies as a "graphic novel."

Strangely, it's the City of Tomorrow that has attracted the least attention. I don't know why. It's got dirty bombs, terrorism, a corrupt American government, lots of high caliber firearms, tons of mostly gratuitous violence, and a sexy robot who dresses sort of like a dominatrix.

I mean, what's not to love?

Q3 Xcargo 1998 -- posted

Well, I got quarter 3 of vintage Xcargo 1998 posted to my site. This one covers Fascism, the British Union of Fascists, and my head exploding.

Xcargo Q3

CARtoons, fate

Still going through my possessions as I prepare to move. Weird the things you discover. I was a great fan of CARtoons magazine when I was a child. I had a stack of them, which my parents mailed me some years ago.

CARtoons were comics for gearheads. Yet, by the time I was actually old enough to drive, the interest had passed. I never learned a fix a car. It was a phase.

I wonder what else would have flowered if the soil had been slightly different. Would I have a been better person if my development had been delayed by about a decade? Or worse? Or would nothing have been different? Are we as fixed in our fates as the worker ant and the moon in its orbit?

Vada a bordo...!

I've learned a new expression today. It is Italian.

"Vada a bordo, cazzo!"

Google it.

I think it should be a new motto for us all...Italians, Americans, Europeans...all of us...

It is what we need to snarl at our supposed leaders...the men and women who have so often betrayed us for their own selfish gain...

1st Quarter of 1998 explosive-cargo

Tonight finished posting the first quarter of 1998's explosive-cargo. This lot's got: depth charges, exit lines, a rerun or two (including Frisky RIP)...

And the story of my son's broken arm when he was very young...

when you are no longer beautiful

I am in a coffee shop in downtown Boston. There is, of course, background music. In particular, what comes from the concealed speakers is a song by a jazz chanteuse—a woman of whom I'm actually a fan. In it, she sings of being intrigued by someone she's just met. She approaches him (her?) in the knowledge that she will not be refused.

This is, of course, a fantasy common to us all. Not one of us living and possessed of hormones has failed to have it. It is the conceit that we might be so perfect, so fair, so beautiful and strong that anyone and everyone will accept our attentions. Or, at least, not turn us away contemptuously.

As I say, it is a fantasy. It is never our actual condition. And, most of us know that. We understand in our heart of hearts that we shall never be so magnetic.

There are, I confess, exceptions to this rule. Some of us are so narcissistic, or so deluded, that we never quite realize that we aren't Adonis or Helen of Troy. But, that's not such a bad thing…for the narcissist. She or he is never vulnerable to enlightenment. And so goes on forever in happy ignorance.

The other exception is far less fortunate. This is the person genuinely born with the seven beauties. Who comes from the womb designed to fascinate and compel even the most recalcitrant stranger.

Ah, but there's the rub. Such beauty is a temporary condition. Eventually it must yield to age and wisdom. But if wisdom does not come…what then? What is the fate of the formerly blessed? When the stranger is no longer charmed and the friend suddenly fair-weather?

When neither, in fact, feels compelled to benevolence?

The death of my journals

Still working my way through my office…throwing away this, compressing that, packing something else.

Today I did something I never thought I would do—-I threw away nearly 30 years of my journals.

I've kept diaries of one form or another my whole life…well, so long as I could write. And I had a crate of them in my office. I mean that literally. You know those plastic storage crates that you can buy in office supplies stores? Roughly 10x15x13 inches? I had one full of notebooks. They dated back at least to my days as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. And rather than ship them across country, I took them to the dump and tossed them into the recycling bin. By this time next year, they'll be toilet paper and shopping bags.

A loss? Not really. Oh, yes, I struggled for a moment. Isn't this—-I asked—-a part of my history? Something to be preserved? And I weakened for a moment. But then I looked at them. Read a few pages.

I realized that I use my journals for therapy. They are where I put all the things that are dark and shadowy and disappointing and painful in my life. My movements of shame, embarrassment, failure, hatred, rage, fear…into my journals they go, forever to remain.

There was, in short, very little in that crate that I was eager to keep. And much that I'd rather no one ever knew. So, I will not miss them. Indeed, I will be glad that they are silent. I'd prefer that no heir of mine ever stumble across them.

And rest assured, once I am in New Mexico again, I will purchase another notebook and start another journal. It, too, will be therapy. The difference is that once I fill it, I will not keep it in a box for three decades. I will, instead, toss it quickly and quietly into the trash.

Such is the safest course. And fitting. Like Zen letters to the wind. They should flutter away. Indecipherable. Made harmless.

Last of 1997 -- vintage explosive cargo

Finished the last of 1997's Xcargos. This set includes how to know when you're about to be fired, explosive excrement, and, much more seriously, my time on a jury in a child abuse case.

finished off Q21997

So I finished posting the second quarter of vintage Xcargo 1997. That's a whole half year.

Oy. I had forgotten how much stuff I'd churned out. But, once a week, every week, even if you take a week or two off, that's up to 50 columns a year.

Ah well. This last batch includes Depth Charges and an extended essay or Prozac, Depression, and a mega fender bender...or, as they say it 'round these parts, Fenda-Benda.

Oh, and lest we forget, a science fiction ripoff of Poe's "Masque of the Red Death."

onward and upward.

more vintage Xcargo -- St. Louis

Today I managed to load my 1997 series on St. Louis onto my new Website. It is basically another of my attempts to write like Jan Morris -- i.e., a combination of history, travel writing, and personal experience.

You can see it here St.Louis

Cyprus 1997 -- vintage Xcargo

And here is a link to a group of Xcargos from 1997 -- among other things, it covers Cyprus...and Oxford...and me looking like an ass.

(I also try, and probably fail, to write like Jan Morris...combining history, travel writing, and personal experience.)


https://sites.google.com/site/explosivecargo/home/xcargo1997#TOC-Cyprus-the-Kingdom-of-Jerusalem-and

explosive-cargo: the classics ;-)

So here's my first posting of 2012! (Insert tune of Auld Lang Syne here.) And to celebrate the new-year, I'm going to take a plunge into the past!

To explain, you know that before I did explosive-cargo as a blog, I did it as an ezine -- which was a sort of precursor to social networking. It was a personal publication that went out to anyone who wanted it via email.

And, Explosive-Cargo, a.k.a. "Xcargo," was my ezine. It was sometimes comic, sometimes political, sometimes very personal. It was also relatively successful as ezines went. I had something like 1000 readers, not counting pass-along, by the time I stopped doing it.

But, recently, I decided to take my old Xcargo columns and make them available under the Creative Commons mark. That's partly because I had been asked by readers to do so. And partly because I had started seeing pieces of them appear on the Web, sometimes without attribution. Ergo, I thought I'd better make some effort to control where and how the material was reproduced.

So, I'm gathering the old Xcargos and putting them online on a dedicated site -- specifically at https://sites.google.com/site/explosivecargo/

I haven't got them all yet. Frankly, I haven't had the time or energy to put them in place. (And, sometimes, I have to do a lot of conversation from various obscure file formats. Unfortunately, when I began the thing, so long ago and far away, I was using Apple word processors that are no longer compatible with anything on the planet.)

To date, I've only got the first quarter and part of the second quarter of 1997 posted. You can see them at: https://sites.google.com/site/explosivecargo/home/xcargo1997

I'll be posting the others over time. Or, at least, most of them. Some I decided were so awful that they should never see the light of day again. Others were rather good, and I will be making them available in books that you can or will be able to find on my Amazon author's page at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KI3I6E .

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of these. As I say, they are under a Creative Commons mark, specifically the" Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND" license. This means you can send any of these columns far and wide, but please don't modify them or use them for commercial purposes, and please keep my name on the work.

Finally, if you wish to cite my material, I prefer the following form of attribution: "Michael Jay Tucker, Name of article, Explosive-Cargo, date, URL." However, so long as you get my name right, I'll probably be happy.

Onward and upward.

mjt

Bibliophila's reward

Hauled *another* load of books to the "used book superstore" (non-profit) up in Burlington today. When I say "load," I mean the back of my little Ford Ranger pickup was pretty well full.

This makes about eight such loads I've taken.

And it's just the tip of the iceberg. Before we head to New Mexico, I'll have several more such trips to make. And there will be an equal number of books with which we will not be able to part.

Bibliophilia given 30 years free rein is a terrifying thing.


*


And while we're on the subject, I've always loved this painting. I can relate ;-)

The Bookworm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Spitzweg_021.jpg#file

Bridge Of Sighs

I cannot imagine what world it is that she finds herself now—that place which is somehow beyond stroke. I know only that the therapists tell us if she is to return, we must somehow find ways around the damage. They, for example, suggest that the parts of brain that deal with music and emotion are unaffected and urge us to work with her accordingly.

So, every day, we have a session of, well, call it nursing home Karaoke. My father brings his recently purchased boom box and we play her everything from bluegrass to Vivaldi. I sit or sometimes kneel beside her bed and sing along, half aloud and half in whispers, songs of her youth or which she simply liked…Amazing Grace, Scarborough Fair, Frère Jacques, Silent Night, And Bingo Was His Name-O…

And thus we call her back, or try to, from that other place…with memory and mumbles, songs and snatches…across a gossamer bridge of hope.

Hope…unwarranted. Incandescent. Indestructible.

INFJ counselor

I hadn't given much attention to the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" tests until I took one and discovered that I am (supposedly) an "INFJ counselor." I am not quite sure what that is supposed to mean. However, I confess that on reading descriptions of the "type" I felt much that resonated with me, and rather powerfully at that.

My problem is that I am by nature a wary beast. I distrust ideas that are complete unto themselves, and so are easily digested, for fear they might be poison.

And so I wonder if the real underlying principle is not that we come in predefined types, and know so from our innate resonations, but rather that the human brain is built to find things with which to powerfully resound.

at the Shooting Star

So, once again I'm at the Shooting Star Café in Albuquerque, NM. Once again, the sky is a featureless gray. Once again, I'm just a wee bit exhausted. The only difference from yesterday is that today I'm here shortly after the local high school, Eldorado, has released its classes. I'm now surrounded by a great many teenagers who chatter and flirt, and regard me with an expression that says clearer than words that they suspect me of being an escapee from the nursing home at which I just spent several hours.

Not that I blame them. If I look a thing like I feel right now, the wonder is that someone hasn't tried to bury me.

On leaving Cambridge College

Just finished teaching what will probably be my last ever class at Cambridge College. I was surprised (and yet not surprised) by how sad that made me feel. To leave the building and know that I would probably never be in the place again was, well, rather a melancholy thing.

It is a good school and I've met good people there. I will miss them.

Still, there will be other classes. I will teach in other places. Or, so, at least, I trust.

I apologize to you and the universe… And to you FOR the universe.

As you know, I've been sorting through all my worldly goods in preparation for my move to New Mexico. This means going over a great number old papers, which, in turn, means reviewing many memories—not all of them pleasant. They include encounters with people who, for whatever reason, caused me genuine injury.

And I found myself doing what we all do in such situation, i.e., reviewing my wounds and taking that strange satisfaction which comes from considering exactly what extractible b*stards one's enemies truly are.

But that's a dangerous thing because, eventually, it leads you to consider what evils you, yourself, might have done and those people you, yourself, might have done them to.

It's unsettling to remember such individuals—people I've offended, by design or (worse) by accident…people I've yelled at in moments of depression or ill-temper…people I've failed…people to whom I've been rude…

So, on reflection, I've decided to apologize to them all…everyone I've ever offended for whatever reason. And since I've no idea who you are, you who read this, maybe that includes you. Maybe I've hurt you somehow, knowingly or not-knowingly, in ignorance or bliss.

Ergo, to everyone, whether I know you or not, please accept my apology for whatever I have done. It is heart-felt. I truly regret my transgressions.

But saying that has led me to another observation. To wit, we are all of us subject to insult and injury, to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and such is the nature of the cosmos that it does not feel concern for its offenses. Rather, it careens along, in its vast and chill indifference, leaving our mangled bodies in its wake.

Therefore, I decided to cover that one, too.

You will never receive an apology from the universe. Therefore, please accept one from me in its stead.

For all its sins, I'm heartily sorry.


Michael Jay Tucker
12/02/2011

Sorting paper....

To prepare for our move to New Mexico, I've been going through our old files to see what can be safely shredded and thrown away. (Answer: almost all of it.)

It is an exhausting process, but also humbling. Your triumphs you keep in full view. Your failures you quietly entomb in dead storage. Thus, while sorting through the check registers and credit card carbons (remember them?) from the middle 80s, I also find myself re-examining thirty years of rejected book proposals, unfinished business plans, notebooks filled with ideas that—in retrospect—seem at best laughable…

The good news is that I will rid my life of all this detritus. It is a kind of purge. I will haul box upon box of things that-just-didn't-work-out to the dump. They'll be pulped and recycled and made into new paper. Literally carte blanche.

And I will find myself somehow lighter. Somehow unburdened.

what is elite?

A friend challenged me to define what I meant when I said "elite." It was a fair question. So, here's my attempt at an answer.

Admittedly, "elite" is a pretty slippery term, and I understand the objections of those academics who say that it is simply not valid; that one can speak of influential groups, but not of any one elite (more on that in a moment). And I have read with considerable interest the arguments of those on the libertarian side of the spectrum who argue that the word unfairly demonizes the very individuals who are most responsible for economic progress, that is, the entrepreneurs who build new ventures and provide jobs.

That said, I respectfully disagree with both positions. While I have been accused (by people on the Right) of being politically Left …intellectually I am somewhat conservative. Or, perhaps, Old Fashioned is the term, I'm looking for. My conception of the world is derived from those theorists who argue that in almost any society one fairly small group tends to be predominate in decision-making. It will not monopolize all decision-making, but it will be predominant. (See #1 below).

Now, this decision making group is the "elite," that is, at small, highly interconnected circle which exists at the core of the society and which leverages far greater power than its numbers would suggest. It may draw that power from economics, from politics, from intellectual prowess, or from combinations of all these or more. It may define itself as Conservative, or Liberal, or Moderate. It may be based on millionaires or union leaders or tenured professors. It may include media barons, talk-show hosts, bloggers, film stars and (as in modern Italy) porn stars (2).

But, regardless of its make-up, it exists.

This may not be a comfortable political reality, but it does seem to be inevitable. Exactly 100 years ago, in 1911, the brilliant political theorist Robert Michels formulate what he called the "iron law of oligarchy," which states that no matter how democratic a nation may want to be, eventually power comes to reside in small band of administrators. In the century since Michels suggested his law, nothing has happened that (at least in my opinion) disproves him.

That said, elites are not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, when they are good, they are very, very good. For example, the American founding fathers (and mothers)—particularly Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and the Adams husband and wife team—were genuinely awe-inspiring. All the postmodern and New Left critiques cannot alter the fact that those men and women were utterly amazing. They changed the course of history.

But, the Founders were competent. They might battle among themselves, engage in the fiercest party politics imaginable, even kill one another (as when Burr shot Hamilton), but they knew how to run a country and an economy. And they did it very, very well.

When elites are not competent, then things are painfully different. When it forgets that it has a common destiny with the rest of society, or when it is so busy with internal struggles that it fails to notice external enemies, or when it is so lethargic that it cannot respond to natural disasters, or …well, when it fails in a hundred other ways, it is doomed. If the society is lucky, then the larger culture won't go down with it.

I believe, further, that you can actually trace the development and evolution of elites over time. In particularly, I think you can follow them in terms of their sources of power (which will change with time).

Let's take just the American example. Here, unlike Europe, political power usually grows out of economic power. And, so, our first elites based their wealth on international trade—they were either ship-owners, as in Salem (once the richest city in North America) or they produced goods for export to England or its colonies.

After about 1810, though, the elite shifted its focus. Increasingly, it based itself on the ownership of land. (Think of all the presidents who were gentlemen farmers from Virginia). Also, everyone was a lawyer.

Then, starting about 1840, American elites shifted to commerce and industry—a situation that would eventually lead to clash of elites that we call the Civil War. And I think that's where it stayed until very recently. Oh, it expanded to include Press Barons (like William Randolph Hearst, a.k.a. Citizen Kane), more and more bankers, and still more lawyers…but basically that's where things stayed…

Until the 1930s, when we get two new players—people who headed-up large, activist, government agencies (ranging from the WPA to the Army), and University professors who cycle in and out of administrative or consultative roles with the government depending on which President is in power. For the first time, private business has a real competitor for the elite's attention.

Then, once more, things settle down for a while. Again, new groups are added over the course of time—the Press Barons become Media Moguls, film stars and other celebrities take on overt political roles, and so on—but, on average, the American elite remains in industry, commerce, the law, and government…with universities and Think Tanks acting as a kind of waiting room for elite members whose party is out of power for the moment. Come a new election, and they swap places with the other party's intellectuals.

Okay, but, then everything changes after the 1960s. As the nation de-industrializes, outsources, off-shores, etc., the elites begin to exit industry. Manufacturing is no longer an American specialty.

Where do they go? A couple of places: the boardrooms of multinational corporations and Wall Street. We can see that from studies of who earns what. According to one such, nearly 40% of the richest Americans are managers of large companies (I mean really large companies) while another 18% is connected to Wall Street.(3) Of course, there are other billionaires from other places, like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, but on average it is in those segments, multinationals and finance, where we have our most powerful people.

Now, I submit that this elite has not shown itself to be particularly competent. They may not be as inept as some elites we've had in the past (during the Gilded Age, our elites were actually embarrassing), but underachieving all the same.

It is under the watch of these people that our economy has drifted dangerously close to disaster. They have allowed de-industrialization, which makes sense on paper but which is truly deadly in practice. They have shifted millions of jobs overseas. They have blundered into crisis after crisis—starting with the Savings and Loans scandals in the 1980s, then moving on from there to the current sub-prime mortgage mess. And, worst of all, they have allowed the transfer of more and more wealth from the middle classes to themselves.

None of this is good.

So, that is my definition of "elite." And it is why I think that elite needs to be reformed. It has ceased to be what elites are at their best, engines of creation, and become instead the very opposite.

And that is a condition which cannot long endure.


Footnotes

1) Technically, this is known as "elite theory" or "elite studies."
2) Italy's parliament has included porn star Ilona Staller.
3) Mike Konczal, Who are the 1% and What Do They Do for a Living?, New Deal 2.0, newdeal20.org/2011/10/14/who-are-the-1-and-what-do-they-do-for-a-living-61759/?author=101

The American Elite

My problem is that the American elite has proved itself stunningly inept. What has it managed in the last few decades? Well, let's see, it de-industrialized the country, shipped tons of jobs overseas, shifted trillions of dollars from the middle class to the one percent, plunged us into a Recession, and generally put the nation on the verge of collapse.

The thing is, on some level I'm a conservative. I know that societies will always have the leaders and the led and (alas) I'm never going to be in the White House or the Board Room.

But, come, let us face facts. If any corporation was run as badly as America has been, the stockholders would run the CEO out of town and sue the socks off the Board of directors.

adventures in cafe living

I'm writing this in Boston King Coffee, a great café in Woburn. I highly recommend it. But it took some little courage for me to come in here today. That's because my history with the place hasn't been exactly thrilling lately. You'll recall I've mentioned my adventures here a couple of times lately. First, I was in a while back and there was a robbery and shootout at a jewelry store directly upstairs. I spent the rest of the day behind yellow crime scene tape waiting to be interviewed by police. Then, second, last week, I went in again and got promptly balled out by a harpy-yuppie-bully-lady who was on a major psycho power trip and I happened to be handy. Great stuff if you want into verbal abuse. I'm not.

So, basically, hold your breath.

*

Twenty-four later. No bullets. No snotty aging yuppies with a Catherine The Great complex.

Three cheers.

more on ows and the media

watching a Daily Show re-run. In it, John Daily & Co. show a number of clips from various news and chat shows ... mostly on Fox, I assume...that basically trashed the Occupy Wall Street Movement as being somewhere between idiotic and treasonous, if not both.

Depressing. I am not sure which is worse. The misrepresentations of those who are blatantly lying, or dimness of those who fail to grasp what is happening.

OWS

I write for business publications now and then. I have, however, become concerned by some of them. Their coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests is, I think, blinkered to say the least. Originally, they paid them no heed. Then, they mocked them. Now, they present the protestors as anti-capitalists and a threat to free enterprise.

Yet, in fact, the story is enormously more complicated. Some of the protestors are, indeed, radicals. Yet, others are most certainly not. Many are as devoted to free enterprise as anyone else in the middle class. They protest not because they hate profit, but because they can no longer make one. Quite simply, so much wealth has been so unfairly been transferred to the very rich from the rest of us in the last few years that economic activity has been almost impossible.

Thus, the revolution is not against capitalism but to save it. Failing to understand that is the first sign that one does not understand the world. For that reason, I fear for my editors.

Zen?

Spent most of the morning rewriting a piece of short fiction. There is a sort of Zen quality to this activity. You know that it may, indeed, be published…somewhere, someday, by some small literary journal…but it will make you no fortune. No material good will come of it. Let us be frank, indeed, and confess that no one may ever read it. Not even the editors of the journal…other than, of course, for the cursory glance.

Yet, you turn to it anyway, with a passion. You do not complain, or at least do so quietly, without expectation of redress. Is there, then, something spiritual to be gained? Do you emerge the better for it? Is your soul more pure?

I doubt that very much. But perhaps that is the point of Zen, if Zen can be said to have a point. What is the use of belles-lettres? May haps the value is not in the answer but the act of query.

BoA

Like everyone else I've been watching the slow disintegration of Bank of America with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief. First the bank imposes new fees on its customers for the use of debit cards and then, when faced with an overt customer revolt, basically does nothing except have its CEO issue a statement to the effect that BoA will do in what is in BoA's best interests, thank you very much, and if the customers don't like it, well, tough darts.

What strikes me most forcefully, though, is that this does not say good things about the general competence of BoA's management. Let us walk through the situation: in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, when nearly 10 per cent of the American people are out of work; when depositors are already rolling pennies to buy food; when the public's general impression of bankers is that they're unprincipled scum …

What does BoA do?

It happily plunges into a PR disaster and never even seems to notice.

Interesting.

Let's just say I'm not buying any BoA stock in the near term.

din of us altogether

Strange. I am writing here as if in a private journal. I am saying things that I would never have said in the old e-zine version of Xcargo, which went out regularly to 1000 people I knew would get it.

Yet, I can't help but think that my privacy will be…alas…almost perfect. The reality is that there are so many blogs, so many pages, so many forums, so many confessions expressed on the web that no one would have time to read them all. And I am relatively obscure, not to say boring. Who would search me out among all those other, most interesting choices?

Thus I fear for our liberty. We are helpless before our elites. We are silenced by them. Not by the usual process of gags and censors. But by babble. No one can hear any one of us in the din of all of us together.

ragged claws

Still mildly depressed today. Partly because of the incident in the coffee shop, which shook me more than I knew. (She was so fantastically self-important. So certain of her own superiority. Why is that so many of the most aggressive bullies one meets these days are women? Is this what Feminism really envisioned?)

But also because I'm in the midst one of those regrettable periods we have in life when you wonder if any of your acts has significance. If anything you do will be accounted as an accomplishment. If both your good, and evil, and (the majority part of our souls) the mostly-in-between will be interred with your bones. It is that moment when you suspect that you are not even Mr. Prufrock's ragged claws. Rather, you are the sand at the rank bottom of the depths.

It is a mood that, happily, does not last long. If it did, none of us would live beyond thirty. Doubtless I'll be all smiles by morning.

Once More At Boston King...and I am ashamed

Odd day, so far. Uncomfortable. I'm embarrassed. And a little worried about, well, things than more important than I.

Here's my story: I'd gone to a local coffee shop, Boston King Coffee. You may remember that was the one I was in when the jewelry store was robbed, and there were bullets flying about, and I ended up squatting behind yellow "crime scene, do not pass" tape for a day.

I hadn't originally meant to go there. I'd originally meant to go to a Dunkin Donut shop, but it was crowded so I headed up the road to Boston King.

I bought an iced coffee and worked for a bit on my laptop. Then a man came in and set up shop at one the tables near mine. He was professional in dress, suit and tie. A little while later, a woman joined him, also dressed very professionally, very confident. They sat and carried on a conversation about a subject I'm interested in. Suffice to say it had to do with schooling and apprenticeships. Apparently they had something to do with a program involved with same.

As an aside, their conversation included a lot of union bashing. It seems that our state, Massachusetts, is heavily oriented to union-based apprenticeship programs, and this has led to some difficulties for them. But this aspect of their conversation didn't concern me particularly so I didn't pay much attention to it.

Then I made a mistake. And I confess that it WAS my mistake and I was at fault. There was a lull in their conversation. I was curious about the school they were involved with because, like I say, it is an interest of mine. So, I leaned toward them, apologized for listening to their conversation, and started to ask what the school's name might be.

But I never got the chance. The woman, in a very quiet, very controlled, but very emphatic way, reamed me out. "This is a business meeting," she said. "If you wish to ask questions, you may do so when we are finished." And there was a quite bit more to that effect, but I don't remember it all.

In any case, I pulled back (of course) and spent a very uncomfortable few minutes at my table before I left the place. As I went, they were still at their very, very important conversation.

Now, as I say, I'm embarrassed, even a little ashamed. Because, of course, she was absolutely right. I was not invited into their conversation. I was an intruder. And, if I'm wholly honest with myself, I suppose that my desire to talk to them was partly motivated by something other than my professional considerations. A small part of me wanted to talk to them because, well, I was a little lonely.

So, on some level, I'm ashamed.

And yet, there is another aspect of the story. Perhaps a more troubling one. For, you see, I can't help but feel that the real issue was not the fact that I interrupted them, but that I was…for lack of a better word…déclassé. I think her real message was "I am important. You are not. Don't forget that fact."

In other words, I suspect that the social interaction wasn't that of me, the clumsy oaf, being rebuked…or at least not only that…but rather simple, primitive, schoolyard bullying. Something not far removed from the middle school Queen Bee deciding who can and cannot talk to the cool kids.

Which would be bad enough, but, again, it is only the beginning. These are the people who head the non-profit educational institutions which I believe to be vital to our economic survival as a nation.

There is something distressing in that fact.

*

Oh, one last note. As I look back on the scene, I don't think I recall there being coffee cups or plates on their table. I think they came in and sat and had their "business meeting," but never once purchased anything from the café itself. In other words, I think they simply came in and squatted, without paying the fee in goods and services that a café owner should be able to request for taking up space and tables during a lunch hour.

I wish I had noticed that at the time. I wish I had mentioned it to them. It would have given me some, small consolation.

Alas, I did not.

On the postindustrial aged…

I've written that there is a growing disconnect between the needs of the Powers That Be of the postindustrial age and the rest of us. If you'd like to test that, perform the following little experiment. Gather together fifty or so people over sixty five (preferably older) and ask them about their medical care.

You won't have to wait long before you get stories about how they have been denied important medical treatments…because of their age. And I'm not talking heroic measures here—not say, face transplants or radical new therapies that come with zillion dollar price tags. I mean fairly normal, fairly inexpensive things…like some forms of chemotherapy or even physical therapy. Yet, you will hear that these people were denied because, after all, "you're old" and don't have that much time left anyway, even if you're only in your sixties and have at least a good twenty years of productive life to come.

If one were paranoid, one would suggest that such behaviors were part of a deliberate policy of, shall we shall? Thinning out the herd a little. I'm not (I think) quite on that level of suspicion, but, really, it doesn't matter. You don't need to propose a sinister plot to observe the effect. Simple economics—postindustrial economics, which do not love people—are quite enough to explain the seeming inhumanity of our era.

A community of interest

There will be a curious community of interest between the great corporations and we who are no longer of value to them. They want to be rid of us. We need to find a way to survive without them. It will, then, be in the interest of the great economic powers to assist us in the creation of alternative economic structures—what I call the deuxiéme economy—by which we can support ourselves. These alternatives will be much cheaper than welfare, and much, much, much less expensive than dealing with the consequences of mass destitution and its attendant violence.

The deuxième economy

The thing to remember about the so-called "postindustrial" economy is that it isn't just post-industry, it is actually post-human—and I don't mean that in the positive sense that the "Transhuamanists" use the term, i.e., for super-intelligence and 2001-style Star Children. Rather, I mean that the new economy is actually post-people. It doesn’t like people, or, really, need them.

Increasingly, it doesn't want them as workers. Labor is ever more performed by machines, or by contractors in China. And, increasingly, it doesn't want them as customers. More and more, large businesses do business with other businesses—B2B, as it's called.

In a very real sense, then, the traditional drivers of the economy, the great corporations, have ascended into a higher order of existence, leaving us behind. The most pressing issue for the nation -- and, indeed, for the whole of the West -- is what to do about that.

My suspicion is that we shall create a second level of economic activity, one that is "below" that of the big corporations. This other, second level — I call it "la deuxième" in an attempt to remove the nuance of lesser importance—will be what provides employment, services, health care, education, products, and just about everything else to those of us who are not in the favored 1% of the population that controls so much of the world's wealth.

And what will the deuxième be like? I'm guessing it will be a welter of smaller economic entities, limited in scope, local in effect, and coming in a thousand different flavors of ownership—partnerships, family businesses, sole proprietorships, co-operatives, non-profits, communes, corporations of the sort that the British call "Community Service Corporations" and Americans call "Low-profit Limited Liability Corporations," and many others as well.

And, yes, as you've already guessed, there is nothing radical in this proposal. It is precisely what people have done whenever large businesses found them to be unprofitable. It was to Co-ops that farmers turned in the Middle West during the Gilded Age. It was to Credit Unions and Savings and Loans (before S&Ls were demolished during the Reagan Years) that ordinary men and women went for mortgages and home loans.

Indeed, in a strange way, it may be that the deuxième economy will be the most conservative of all economic developments. It is a return to the small-scale enterprise of a hundred years ago.

demented perry?

Is it just me or does Perry look kinda demented in this picture?

and the cover of an invisible island

and yet another addition to my amazon.com page

Like it says, something new on my Amazon.com page, An Island Otherwise Invisible. This one is a collection of short fiction and prose poems.


On An Island Otherwise Invisible

and married

married 29 years this week.

wow. some countries don't last that long.

more Amazon stuff

Still working on getting my material, both past and present, on Amazon.

Should have a new listing shortly. I'll let you know.

Meet Brian Eames

Hello, everyone,

As you know, I'm a writer. And, as you also know, several of my friends are writers. And, finally, it'll come as no great shock to you that I do my level best to promote them. It's the code of the west…

Anyway, one of the writers I'm pushing at the moment is Brian Eames. He's got a new young adult reader out, The Dagger Quick, a fabulous throwback to old time adventure stories about quick witted lads doing battle with pirates in the days of wooden ships and iron men. (For more details on the book go here: http://thedaggerquick.com/ or here: http://www.amazon.com/Dagger-Quick-Paula-Wiseman-Books/dp/1442423110/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312819569&sr=8-1)

I interviewed Brian a while back, mostly in dribs and drabs via email (though there was a Skype session involved, somewhere along the line. Ah, the joys of virtual living). He's an intriguing fellow and I thought I might share a bit of his story.

And, besides, I think his book is kind of important. I'll explain why in a minute. But, right now, let's stick with Brian himself.

"I was born in Greenwich" he says, "No, not England. Connecticut." He grew up in Rome, NY, Virginia Beach, VA, and Atlanta, GA. From there he went to Cornell for an undergraduate degree, and to Emory for a Masters of Arts in Teaching. Somewhere along the line he had time to start a family. "I married my high school sweetheart," he says, "and now teach at the school where we met." Which, you must confess, is rather sweet. And, finally, he has three sons.

I asked him why he'd decided to do young adult readers. His answer was interesting in that it says much (none of it good) about how we do or don't teach reading in this country. He teaches fifth and sixth grade, and as a teacher, he often found it extremely difficult to get some students (what he calls "reluctant readers") to crack a book, much less study it from end to end. (Hint: for those with a literary turn of mind, you've just had a bit o' foreshadowing.)

So, he set out to produce a book or books that would actually drag that reluctant reader away from the video game. And how to do that? Why, send in the pirates, of course.

I'm not going to say much about Dagger Quick. I'm willing to spoil a hell of a lot of things, but not books. However, I don't suppose I'll give away any secrets if I say that the story is that of Master Christopher ("Kitto") Quick, the twelve-year-old son of a British cooper in c. 1678. He's got a clubfoot, few friends, a dull-as-dishwater life, and no prospect of anything getting better.

Except, natch', that's when the you-know-what hits the proverbial fan. And splatters. Big time. He finds out his father used to be a pirate, that his uncle still is, and that he's got some sort of weird family connection to the lost treasure of Captain Morgan. Not the cheery guy in the booze commercials. The real one. Who had the habit of looting and burning and killing. A lot.

Then things go from bad to just perfectly horrible. Kitto's father is murdered, his stepmother and brother are kidnapped, and he has exactly zero options except to join up with his uncle and go off in an attempt to avenge Dad and rescue the rest of the family.

Which is all I'm going to tell you. Well, that, and the fact that Brian tells me there's more Kitto adventure coming in future tomes.

Okay, so that's who Brian Eames is. Now, why am I making a big deal about it? Other than trying to push a fellow writer's Amazon numbers up a few points?

Because I think Dagger Quick is important.

Here's why: you remember I said that it was written for "reluctant readers"? Well, who is that person? It is, usually, a boy…though sometimes a girl…who is having trouble in school. He, or she, may be (probably is) really bright, but he doesn't DO school real well. He has trouble sitting still for long periods of time and taking orders without question.His form of intelligence (and there are many kinds) has very little to do with taking tests and regurgitating facts on command.

As a result, he, or she, has had poor grades for most of the time he's been in school. Which means, in turn, that he has been frequently told more or less openly that he's stupid. He has learned to hate and fear the classroom and regard educators as the enemy.

As for reading…

Well, let's say you're that boy. You're frustrated. You're bored. You want to be anywhere but in that dim little room where you can't run, you can't play, and you can't even talk out loud…

And then, someone hands you a book. It is a book on something catchy like Growing Toe Nail Fungus To Save The Environment, Empower Girls, Attract Sexy Vampires, Balance the Budget, and Oh-By-The-Way, 9-11 Was All Our Fault.

Are you going to finish reading that book?

Didn't think so.

My point is that books like Dagger Quick are good in that they can be a lifeline to "reluctant readers." They can provide that taste of adventure, daring, and heroism that such students crave…and don't get from all too much assigned reading.

So, three cheers for pirates…and boy wizards…and girl detectives (long live Nancy Drew) …and all the rest of the daring, dashing, juvenile breed.

They may just save literacy yet.

sorry I've been among the missing...

Like it says, sorry I've been out of touch. BUT...I have an excuse. Check out my author's page at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KI3I6E

and now something else new...

And yet another book on Amazon.


Cities of Light, Cities of Stone

excargo in epub book form

And now, I'm happy to introduce to you, Explosive-Cargo 94: The Best of the Beginning...a book in the epub format.

where I've been

So, I've been silent for the last few weeks. Where have I been? Working my ...er,ah...you know what off.

I'm converting my old explosive-cargo column into book form. This is harder than it sounds. (Heck of a lot file converting.)

I'm happy to report that I'm making some progress, though. I'll shortly post the place on the Web where you can see the result.

mjt

Prolifers...people wasted (from 1994)

If the Anti-Abortion Movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make the world a'shine.

NOTE, I've seen this reproduced as "...could make the world shine."

mjt

Religious Right...from 1994

The fundamental guiding principle of the Religious Right in America is that God ... the Omnipotent and Supreme Being who Created the Universe, whose Will is Cosmic Law and Whose all-powerful hand set the stars and galaxies themselves into their places ... needs to be protected from people who wear organic fibers and eat Brie on whole wheat crackers.

I'm getting ready...

I'm getting ready to collect some of my old Xcargos (from way back in the days when it was an ezine). This means I'm going through files that date back to the early 1990s or before.

Still, I'm surprised to find that some of the material still works. Well, sorta. Sometimes. Kinda. If you close one eye and look the other way.

Anyhoo, I'll be posting bits and pieces of what I find here. You might find them amusing.

More on Machines that Think, and What We Need to Do About Them

Hi, everyone,

Well, as you’ll recall, I’m doing one of my infamous series, this one on machines like Watson (the famous IBM computer that was on Jeopardy a while back) and the effect they’re going to have on the world of work. I’ve been arguing that such systems and software are going to put a lot of white-collar workers out of work. The professions, which have so long defined success in America, are going to become ever more sparse in terms of jobs.

I’ve also argued that the only thing we can do about it is to stress what we humans do well, and what machines do badly. We need, I suggest, to stress our capacity for creativity and invention.

However, I’m going to conclude my little series by saying that we’ve got a serious problem on our hands. To wit, we’ve got to learn to be creative. (And when I say “we” I mean our children. They are the ones who will rise or fail in the world that Watson made.) Ah, but there’s the rub. Right now our educational system is not geared up to produce creative people.

If anything, it is meant to stamp out creativity.

*

I’m quite serious about that. If you have children, think about the number of worksheets…all basically identical…that your son or daughter brings home in their bulging backpack every evening. Think of the endless exercises they are required to perform—again, all basically identical, all requiring the mastery of one or two basic rules (when this do that…divide by two…pick a verb). Think about the underlying assumption about work that is to be found in those exercises. And, consider, too, that the real lesson being taught here. It has nothing to do with numbers or words. It is rather that success comes from servility and passivity.

And we train them that way because that’s the skill you need to perform most white-collar jobs—i.e., you need to be able to sit down and perform certain prescribed tasks according to a limited number of fixed rules on an enormous number of data points.

But, as I’ve already said, Watson does that better than we can. And Watsons are going to be everywhere. So, for us to train our children to be Watson-esque is like training them in the arts of buffalo hunting and buggy whip manufacture.


*

What all this means is that our educational system has to change. And soon.

We need to teach our children to be creators. We need them to be innovators. We need them to be pioneering scientists, engineers, and technologists who don’t just apply the rules and turn the crank, but rather defamiliarize the obvious, and discover the obscure. We need them to be artists, musicians, actors and playwrights, filmmakers, and writers who ask uncomfortable questions, and perceive unexpected realities. We need them to be business entrepreneurs. Yes, entrepreneurship, too, is one of the creative arts. Perhaps, indeed, it is the most demanding of them all…the most requiring of invention and wisdom.

And, happily for us, we know how to do this. We know how to train children to be creators. There are no mysteries here. Maria Montessori and John Dewey explained it all a century ago. John Henry Newman, in his _ The Idea of a University _, did the same earlier still. You give children science, mathematics, literature, art, and philosophy as their toys.

You let them play.


*

Mind you, I’m not being “liberal” or idealistic, or utopian. This is not the chaotic classroom that some people blame for the decline of American education. It is a form of discipline…an unstructured discipline, perhaps, but discipline all the same. It is a system in which the teacher has authority, but an authority that leads rather than forces the way into learning. And it is ancient. It is the ultimate “back to basics.” It is the way of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato…and the Prophets, and Christ, and the Buddha. It is the way of the sage.

And, besides, we have no choice.

The reality is that Watson and his successors will reshape the workplace utterly. If we continue as we have in the past, our children will fail. They will be outclassed by the machine’s brute force. And, not just them, but our culture may perish utterly.


*


This is my argument. This is what I believe about Watson.

In fact, I’ve written an op-ed piece to this effect. I’m sending it about to magazines and newspapers.

Will it ever be published? I sort of doubt it.

There is a lesser and a greater reason for that. The lesser is that Watson is now old news. In an age of high-speed journalism, and higher speed opinions, he has already been discussed and judged by all the People Who Know Best. They have long ago moved on to other things.

The greater is I’m sending it to people who are editors and journalists — that is, people who have succeeded in the current system, people who are the products of J-schools and professional development seminars

Such individuals will not find my ideas particularly appealing.

But, even so…

Even if my manuscript lingers long upon the shelf until it eventually drops from view… I’m right.

And, in the end, Watson will prove it.

Time… and machines… are on my side.


*

Onward and upward.








Copyright © 2011 Michael Jay Tucker

Watson 2: More on Machines That Think

Okay, you’ll recall that I’m in the middle of one of my infamous series—this one on the impact of our increasingly sophisticated machines on the white-collar professions. Last time I talked about Watson, the IBM computer that competed on Jeopardy a while back…competed, and won.

And, also last time, I argued that Watson and Watson-like devices will never threaten the human race. They are impressive, but they don’t genuinely think. They can and do sort a lot of data in a hurry, but, at least as yet, they can’t do what comes easily to any child, like being creative or innovative. They are not self-aware nor are they sentient, and so remain simply tools.

But, tools are mighty things in their own right. Last time I also argued that Watson-class systems and software will remake our economy and society. That’s because a single executive with access to such machines will be able to do the work of a hundred people. Which means that corporations, law firms, government agencies, universities, and even hospitals will employ far, far fewer MBAs, lawyers, administrators, specialists and other highly-trained white collar professionals.

Or, to put it all another way, we’re in for a cultural revolution. For the last century we have assumed that the way to wealth, well being, self-respect, status, and all the other aspects of a full life would come from being a “professional”—a doctor, a lawyer, a manager, and preferably a manager who did not soil his/her hands with anything vulgar like actually going into the field and touching things.

But, now…that’s not so true anymore. And our society is going to change to reflect with that.

How much will it change? Well, let me tell you a couple of stories. The first: there’s a man in my town who was a vice president at a large corporation. He had a seven figure salary, at least. He owns a huge house in an elite neighborhood, and sent his kids to private school and an Ivy League college. He was respected and admired, not to say envied by many of us in the area.

The kicker? Last year, his company was purchased by another. The new corporation then rationalized and downsized. It already had a marketing department. It didn’t need another one.

So, he was laid-off.

He got a very generous severance package. But, let’s face it, he’s probably never going to find a similar position. He’s middle aged. The corporate culture, like the corporation, into which he fit, is gone. The very industry in which he participated is changing beyond recognition. There is no room for him anymore.

Okay, now let me tell you my second story. It, too, is about a man in my town. But this is very different man. He will not in his entire life earn what the vice president was paid in a single year. He works down at the grocery store. He is a bagger. He suffers from a variety of physical problems, including violent and debilitating epileptic seizures. He has to wear a helmet at all times, so that if he falls his head will be protected.

His life is probably Spartan. Yet, he is intelligent. In fact, he is a talented potter. I see him and his wares at craft fairs around the area. I suspect he gets health insurance through the store, and then makes money on the side through his ceramics. His income may be low, but his wants are few.

Now, consider these two…

The second man is never out of work. If the store that employs him now should vanish, he could find another spot in an hour. Indeed, if he wished, he could go anywhere in the country and get a job.

The first man, though, the VP…he confronts the reality that he may never work again. He is too expensive, too specialized, and (though he is only in his 50s) too old for the corporations to hire again.

I submit that of these two men it is the second, the bagger, who is economically viable. The first man, the vice president, is not.

That is a fascinating and a terrifying thing.





We need to prepare for what is coming. We are going to have to come up with new ways for people to make their livings. And we’re going to have to learn to value different skills than we did before. We’ll have to figure out what we, as human beings, can offer the world that Watson and his children cannot.

And what’s that? What can we do that machines will never be able to do?

We can be inventive, empathetic and creative. We can have vision and purpose. We can understand the needs, wants, and motivations of our cohorts and customers. We can produce things which have never existed before.

We can be the anti-Watsons of the world.



But more on that, and how we’ll train our children for it, next time.

Onward and upward.


Copyright © 2011
Michael Jay Tucker

WWII

Another of my little video lectures for my class in basic American history.

cheers
mjt

Watson 1: Thinking About Machines That Think

Okay, a while back I posted a link to a story on the New York Times webpage, “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software,” by John Markoff. I said that it was very important.

You may have wondered why. I meant to explain myself quite a while back, but then, Gadhafi and Japan intruded. They were so much more important than any thoughts of mine.

But, now, I’ll get back to my point.

The software that is replacing legions of lawyers is a part of a much, much larger trend—that is, the development and application of technology which can largely automate certain aspects of white-collar work. The products mentioned in the piece allow one lawyer to do the work of many.

And it’s just beginning. Did you watch IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy? That machine’s performance was very much a sign of things to come.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Watson isn’t going to take over the world. He’s harmless.

That’s because Watson isn’t really intelligent in a human sense. Watson’s showing was impressive. His ability to understand human speech was a technical triumph, and his capacity for seeking commonalities in huge collections of data was astonishing. But, I am not at all certain that he really understood his answers.

For instance, in one particularly amazing exercise (later highlighted on PBS’s NOVA), he was able to answer a question about Keanu Reeves and the movie, The Matrix. The way he did it was to identify “Reeves” as a noun and “movies” (or, actually, “flick”) as a category. He was then able to scan the Internet Movie Database in all its vastness for combinations of “Reeves” and some other qualifiers from the question.

As I say, impressive. But, ultimately, his answer wasn’t complete. I’m not sure he knows what a “movie” is. And I’m certain that his conception of a movie, should he have one, is not in any way human. He knows a “movie” is a “flick,” and that The Matrix is both of those…but he has no conception of what it’s like to see a film. He has no image of being in the warmth of a darkened theater, the air redolent with the scent of popcorn and butter, while your young son and his friends are in the row before yours, and you watch them tense and leap and cheer as villains are defeated and heroes triumph.

So that, I think, should be reassuring to anyone who fears that intelligent machines are taking over the world. Watson is amazing, but he cannot genuinely understand the human experience. It will be many long years before machines can do those things, if they ever do. (Sorry, gang, Skynet and Robby the Robot remain as distant as ever).

That’s the good news.

Now, the bad news. Watson and similar technology will engender a revolution in the workplace.

Let’s look at what Watson does really, really well. He—like all computers—excels at performing a number of small, tedious tasks over, and over, and over again. And, he is really good at shifting oceans of data in search of details and connections, no matter how trivial. And, finally, he obeys rules, inflexibly and tirelessly.

That was why he was so good at answering questions. He looked at millions upon millions of records in a thousand different databases, checking each and every one of them for certain qualities, and doing it all in nanoseconds. A human could never dream of doing the same, nor would any of us want to. It would be exhausting, and, bluntly, boring as hell.

But here’s where things get sticky. Consider what most high-powered, high-paying “professional” jobs entail. Sure, there are moments of insight and creation, but, let’s face it, most of what lawyers, business professionals, research-oriented academics, and even doctors do is pretty much what Watson does. They look at a lot of information and seek connections within an ocean of small, possibly relevant details. They do it according to a fairly limited set of rules. They do it as quickly as they can, and, if possible, do it 24/7 because that means they’re being more “productive.”

In other words, most of our white-collar professions, the jobs we value the most, are made up rote tasks.

And there’s the rub. Watson is far better at rote tasks than we can ever dream of being. His software and circuits are tireless. He is never bored or depressed. No operation is too mundane to excite him. No amount of data is overwhelming.

And better still, he is a perfect employee. He is without ego and need. He will happily work around the clock and back again. He is never on vacation. He never requires a sick day. He has no family to distract him from his tasks. He does not ask for a raise or a bonus. When the time comes to retire him, he demands no pension. You simply toss the body into a dumpster.

No, I’m not saying that Watson’s heirs will take over the corporation. Bill Gates and Tina Brown will not be replaced by a Terminator in the corner office. (At least not yet.) But the inescapable fact of the matter is that Mr. Gates and Ms. Brown will need fewer and fewer people to carry out their commands. A single executive, armed with one Watson, can do the work of a hundred MBAs.

And make no mistake, the world’s corporations know that. Watson is unique today, but he’ll be ubiquitous tomorrow. Even if he never sits on your desk like a PC or Mac, he’ll be available by subscription through the ‘Net. (And isn’t that what Google’s search engines are actually evolving toward?)

Which means that the white-collar professions (including the service professions which were supposed to save us in the postindustrial age) are going to employ fewer and fewer people. Just as the tractor removed the need for legions of field hands, and the industrial robot replaced a million men on assembly lines, so too will Watson and his children allow corporations, government agencies, and just about every other sort of organization to shed thousands of all too human professionals.

That, in turn, means that things are going to change. And big time.

But more about that next time.

Onward and upward.

Gadhafi...and Frantz Fanon

Right now, I’m reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. If you don’t know who he was, don’t worry. A lot of people don’t anymore. I’m not sure that’s a good thing or a bad.

Anyway, Fanon was a French psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary. He was of mixed race (he was born on Martinique) and had experienced racism at its worst. He then worked for a time in Algeria while France was fighting its war there. He became radically anti-colonialist, joined the Algerian nationalists, and, wrote a series of books advocating the violent overthrow of European imperialism. He died young (1961, still in his 30s), but his books lived after him. He was read all through Africa and the Arab world, and young radicals quoted him as often as they did Mao or Lenin.

When I was a boy, even we read him…Americans, I mean…partly because Sartre promoted him, and partly because the Viet Cong also read him.

But, now, all these years later, I look at his works and I wonder what he would have thought about what’s going on today in the Arab world. I wonder if it would have confused him. It certainly doesn’t fall into his neat models of revolutions. The Egyptians, the Tunisians, the Libyans are not his “wretched of the earth,” i.e, the oppressed “natives” exploited by imperialism and white settlers, but rather local militants at war with local tyrants.

I suspect that, in the end, the present age would have proved beyond him. He was, in spite of his antagonism toward West, very much part of the Western tradition. He was a romantic, far more at home with Goethe or the European revolutionaries of the 19th century than he was with the Third World peoples he idealized.

And I suspect, too, that his Romantic’s soul would have found today’s revolutions incomprehensible, perhaps even repellent, for there is little place within them for his cult of violence, his loathing of the West which had humiliated him, and his love of the “People”—always with that upper case “P,” always an abstraction, never quite subject to analysis.

Most of all, I think, he would have been pained by the fact that this revolution contains no utopia. The People Power activists hope for better things, but I believe they lack the illusion that their actions will create heaven on earth.

Which would have hurt him. Quite a lot. For, surely, nothing is more agonizing than to be reminded, once more, that the gates of paradise remain firmly shut, and cannot be forced…

Not even with National Consciousness and high explosives.

Gadhafi...and once more I make a guess

I keep watching the situation with Gadhafi. I’m no expert, obviously. And every time I’ve made a prediction about him for the last few weeks I’ve proved wrong. At least in the short run.

But because I’m not too bright and I don’t learn from my mistakes, I’m going to make another guess at his future. This particular stab in the dark is that he is, in the long run, doomed. I suspect that the Europeans and Americans will eventually take him out of the game. They’re in so deep now…they’ve already sent in the fighters and the missiles, that I don’t think they could get out again if Gadhafi were still on his throne.

For one thing, this is the chap who gave us Lockerbie Bombing. Can you imagine what he’d do if were back in full control of Libya, and lusting for a little revenge on the Western Nations who opposed him?

Gadhafi Again, and once more I am humbled

Once again I return to Gadhafi. And once more I am made humble.

A few weeks back I confidently predicted that he would fall. (At least I wasn’t alone in that. Half the world seems to have assumed it.)

But, now, he may be winning. Those Who Know Best in political science departments, embassies, and European capitals are beginning to rethink their projections. China and Iran breathe a little easier. People Power is not, after all, invincible. If you are willing to bomb and strafe, and use mercenaries, and leave bodies in the streets...you can remain on the throne, no matter how despised you may be.

So, I am humbled. My predictions are shown to be nonsense. My only defense is that it never occurred to me that the West would not support (at least passively) the rebellion. I never considered the vast resources that oil had made available to the Gadhafi family over the last few decades. It never occurred to me that they would use those resources to pay for an army of foreigners to slaughter their own people.

And, maybe most of all, I never dreamed that something like the Japanese earthquake and tsunami would occur. The world, you see, is finite and interlinked. When something of this magnitude occurs, we focus our attention on it. Which is good, and speaks well for our humanity…but it also means that other actors are now free to do as they like without scrutiny. The cat is away, and the rat, as they say, well, you finish the sentence.

So, it may be that I was abjectly wrong and Gadhafi will win his war on Libya.

Yet, I will argue still that, on one level, I will be vindicated, and Gadhafi’s triumph will, in fact, be pyrrhic.

You see, here’s the thing: he may “win,” but only through massacre. And he will have expended much in the way of time, effort, money, and political capital in his struggle. It could be that eventually another rebellion, another crisis, will strike, and this time he (or his heirs) may not have the wherewithal to respond.

More...he is now revealed.

He came to power, and kept it, as a Man Of The People. He was a populist revolutionary. Like Nasser, and Peron, he was the man of action who took power in the name of the common folk, who would protect them from foreign imperialists and homegrown elites. He was tolerated because of that. Yes, the world said, he was a little strange, a little bloody-minded, and he funded terrorists…but, well, his heart was in the right place.

But, now, that’s gone. The world sees him as he really is: a tyrant, ruling with naked force over a seething people who would destroy him if that were possible. And, if he is remembered at all by history, it will be as that, illegitimate and foul, united in spirit with the Greek colonels, and the Argentine Junta, and Mobutu with his private Zaire…like them ruling exclusively for personal gain, like them kleptocrats, like them brutal and crude, like them kept in place only by the gun, the bullet, and the whip.

And, in the long run, that perception will matter. It will matter more than bombs and mercenaries. It will matter more than his “victory,” should that occur.

For, you see, truth is invincible. And once unleashed, as it is now unleashed, it can be deadly. At least to those who live by falsehood.

And this, Gadhafi and his heirs will discover. This they will learn, too late, as it twists and disfigures them...as it destroys them… as truth, for them, proves more toxic than poison, more fatal than plague.

Progressivism

Just posted another of my history lectures to Youtube. Honestly not sure how much my class uses or wants them. But, what the heck? It keeps me off the streets.

We are so small...

And let us always keep in mind…always recall…our aims, our goals, our struggles for dominance…nation versus nation, faith against faith, man against man, or woman…

All these are revealed to be so small, so tiny, compared to the forces that may be unleashed upon us at any moment.

We must, therefore, remember to stand together.

For all too clearly, the alternative, is that we will not stand at all.

Prayer...

I have met believers whose prayer is, at the moment, “God grant me understanding of this tragedy, and the ability to accept Your works.”

I do not join the prayer. It isn’t that I doubt its wisdom. My motivation is that I am, alas, too human. I do not want to understand. I do not want to accept these works of the ineffable and the unfathomable.

I want instead to stare in horror and mute incomprehension. I am not ready for serenity. Sainthood elutes me. But, at least, a small thing: mere humanity is fallible, but it possesses the power of empathy. Some saints, it seems to me, do not.

memento

Like everyone else, I am watching the news as the full extent of the destruction becomes clear. As of this morning, they are saying that at least 10,000 people have died. At least. They still have not found four trains…four whole trains…of commuters that simply vanished.

It is the power of it all that amazes me. The sea, the earth, they reached out, scattered our works like litter, broke bodies, possessed no concept of remorse. It was force incarnate. Strength incarnate. As vast and merciless as ancient gods.

We must remember, now, why once we feared the storm, the sea, the mysteries of caverns and the dark.

Or, to put it all another way…

Memento mori.

Japan...where to go to help

Where to go to help…

Yahoo has done the world a great service by posting a list of agencies and organizations providing aid to the survivors. You can even donate online. If you haven’t already seen it, go here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsroom/20110311/wl_yblog_newsroom/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-how-to-help

Japan...

Oh, the horror of what has happened in Japan…

It reminds us. We think we rule the world. We humans…masters of the universe.

And, then, in a flash, the universe reminds us.

How delicate, how vulnerable, how easily crushed…we are.

Found Photo

The following is based on my piece, "Found Photo." It was published in the October 2009 issue of Shoots and Vines.

You may see the original here:

http://issuu.com/shootsandvines/docs/shootsandvines4

(dedicated to a friend and former student…the daughter whose devotion the parent did not merit.)

another story in print

Just had another story in print -- Heliogabalopolis, at 5923 Quarterly. You can see it here:

Heliogabalopolis

The shape of things to come

This is pretty important. More to come on this subject shortly....


Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software

unlisting a video

Just "unlisted" one of my experimental videos from Youtube. It scared small children and large dogs.

Me, too, actually.

More on Gadhafi’s Children

I’m really quite fascinated by how “western” and familiar the Colonel’s children really are. They could show up at any party of Charlie Sheen’s and no one would notice the difference.

And it is amazing how common it is among the children of the mighty. Consider the sons of Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein. (One of the former, Kim Jong-nam, famously lost his father’s favor by sneaking into Japan to visit Tokyo Disneyland. They say that when he was stopped by the Japanese authorities, he was dressed in universal-world-kid fashion, with a gold chain and black slacks.)

One wonders if it isn’t inevitable. Given the temptations of the world, we succumb. Or, to put it another way, Baron Acton was right, but incomplete. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But consumer goods… those too have power, and those too can be corrupting. And just as absolutely.