When The Arnold Comes To Town

It’s the weekend of the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio. Those of us who live in Columbus love the Arnold. It brings huge numbers of huge people to our town, where they spend money, have a fine time, and block out the sun whenever they walk past you.

The realization that this year’s Arnold is upon us moved me to verse:

The Arnold’s here! The Arnold’s here!
The event for which we’re down
We’re always happy in C-bus
When the Arnold comes to town.

In hotels, restaurants and gyms
You’ll see nary a frown
Our businesses love the weekend
When the Arnold comes to town.

The beefy guys and cut-up gals
Use so much oil they could drown
They’re orange and lubed and bulging
When the Arnold comes to town.

Then there’s the stud for whom it’s named
A man of great renown
He’s like our city’s mayor
When the Arnold comes to town.

And when it ends, in every sport,
A winner wears a crown
But we’re the real winner
When the Arnold comes to town.

Good luck to all of the Arnold contestants and their families. We’re glad you’re here, we know you’ll have a wonderful time, and we hope you’ll come back next year.

Fraud From The Boiler Room

This week a police operation in Great Britain and the EU resulted in arrests of more than 100 people who allegedly were involved in “boiler room” operations, where callers solicit investments in fraudulent financial schemes or sell stock that doesn’t exist. The SEC, too, routinely prosecutes people who are determined to be involved in boiler room schemes to swindle investors. Often these schemes bilk hapless seniors of their retirement funds.

I’ve received “boiler room” type calls. Typically the caller talks very fast with a New York accent (I’ve always assumed the accent is part of the job training, just like being an airline pilot requires that you speak with a certain folksiness), explains they are with an investment outfit you’ve never heard of, and then says they’ve got just one opportunity they want you to consider. There’s always some hook that makes the investment sound plausible and can be described in 30 seconds — development of oil sands, a company that’s about to be awarded a development contract in Qatar — and then the ask that you give them this one chance to show that they can make a huge return for you.

I always listen politely, because I watched Glengarry Glen Ross and felt sorry for the Jack Lemmon character, and then decline. If they start to get especially pushy and belligerent — and that’s not unusual — I just hang up. They’re wasting their time with me, because I would never dream of giving any of my hard-earned money to a complete stranger who calls out of the blue. However, some people do invest, to their eventual regret, which is why boiler room operations have been a staple of the fraudster arsenal for decades.

Many of the victims are senior citizens. Why are so many older people easier to scam? Research suggests that the elderly are more likely to open junk mail about get-rich-quick schemes and interact with cold callers, and that the aging brain is less able to appreciate risk. In short, they put themselves in a position to be hoodwinked, react positively to the promises of outlandish returns on their money, and lack the filters that would allow them to recognize the downside risk and danger that they are being defrauded.

If you’ve ever known an anguished and humiliated senior citizen who was taken advantage of by a boiler room operation, you know that there is a special level of hell reserved for crooks who prey on the elderly, rob them of their life savings, and leave them facing an impoverished retirement.

The Penny Chronicles

My name is Penny.

There is one thing I hate more than any other. It isn’t that stupid cat that comes right up to our front door. It isn’t the mean dog that growls at me when I walk past, either.

It’s this white thing. Boy, I hate this thing. Sometimes the Leader sticks it in my ear, and it squirts. It feels so weird in there! I just hate it, hate it, hate it.

So, I watch to see when the Leader brings out the white thing. Sometimes, when I am trying to get her to feed me early because I am hungry, or when the Leader isn’t paying attention to me and I am jumping up on her, the Leader will get the white thing. When she does, I head in the opposite direction. I’d rather wait to eat than have to feel the white squirty thing in my ear.

Sorry, Leader! You have to get up pretty early to outsmart Penny.

Scrutinizing The Habitable Zone

This week the NASA Kepler telescope team announced the discovery of another 715 “exoplanets” outside our solar system — all of which are in their own multi-planet solar systems. The announcement represents another giant leap forward in our understanding of other solar systems, and how commonplace multi-planet systems are.

The Kepler space telescope was focused on finding instances of “transits,” when light from a faraway sun drops slightly in brightness because a planet has crossed in front of the sun. The size of the variation in light allows scientists to calculate the size of the planet moving across the face of the sun. Most of the newly discovered planets — about 95 percent — are smaller than Neptune, which is four times the size of Earth. The size of the planets is of interest to scientists because it is believed that life is more likely on smaller planets than on Jupiter- and Saturn-like gas giants, with their enormous storms and atmospheres that feature crushing pressures.

Four of the newfound planets are less than 2.5 times the radius of Earth and orbit their suns in the so-called “habitable zone,” where water could be free flowing without being boiled away or frozen forever. The term “habitable zone” may be a misnomer, because we just don’t know yet whether life of some kind exists on, say, Jupiter’s moon Europa — and we won’t know for sure without actually exploring there. We do know, however, that life exists in the “habitable zone” in our solar system, and therefore it makes sense to try to determine whether life might exist in a planet in a similar position in its solar system. All of this effort, of course, is ultimately geared toward trying to make a truly game-changing discovery of some other intelligent life form in the universe.

If you grow weary of the tribal mire of domestic and global human affairs, where progress is rare and and halting and the same disputes and controversies will seemingly never end, you would do well to consider the extraordinary advances in science and technology that we have witnessed in the last few decades. The discoveries of the Kepler telescope team say a lot — all of it good — about what humans are capable of achieving.

Holocaust Survivors

Richard has a fine story in the Post-Gazette about a meeting of Pittsburgh-area survivors of the Holocaust. We can’t imagine what they’ve been through, but it’s heartwarming to know that they meet, remember, and worry about whether that especially unforgivable, murderous chapter in the sordid history of the human race can happen again.

Reading Richard’s story reminded me of the first time I focused on the fact that I met a Holocaust survivor. I was traveling through Europe and encountered a vivacious older woman, probably in her 50s, with flaming red hair and an outgoing personality. We were talking, she shifted in her seat and moved her arms, and a crude numerical tattoo that I hadn’t noticed before was exposed. I looked at it and realized what it was, and she saw that I had seen it and decided to tell her story.

Her name was Bella and she was from Poland, she said. When she was young, the Nazis came and took her family away. She never saw her father and brothers again. She was separated from her mother, and she and her sister lived in one of the Nazi death camps. Her sister died, but somehow she survived. When the war ended and she was miraculously freed, she found that her entire family had been killed — but she felt it was essential that she live on. She related her story in a flat voice, and you could tell that she lived with those horrible ghosts and memories, but there was a definite steeliness to this woman who had endured so much.

Talking to her, I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be a member of the race that could commit such a monstrous act. I also was uplifted, however, by her positive attitude and by her view that, by surviving and going on, she was spitting in the eye of Hitler and the Nazis and their idiotic notions of an Aryan “master race.” There is still much to be learned from victims of the Holocaust.

How Fat Are Our Kids?

This week a federal study reported that the obesity rate for American kids between 2 and 5 years of age fell 43% in a decade. The study, undertaken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates that obesity during that age group has declined from 14 percent in 2004 to 8 percent in 2012.

Not surprisingly, there’s disagreement about what might have caused the decline. Some argue that federal programs, including the availability of food stamps and the women, infants, and children assistance program and federal nutrition guidelines, other national efforts such as First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative, and pressure on food companies to stop targeting ads to young children are responsible for the decline. Others question whether there really was an “obesity epidemic” in the first place and are skeptical that federal programs had anything to do with the decline reflected in the CDC study.

I don’t have a dog in that fight. My question is more fundamental — why are people celebrating the finding that “only” 8 percent of little kids are obese? That seems like a pretty damning figure to me. How does a two-or three-year-old become obese, except by the inattention of their parents? Most two- and three-year-olds I know aren’t out shopping for themselves. Don’t their parents know how to say no?

The Fireballs And Their Trophy

When I was a kid UJ and I bowled in a youth league at Riviera Lanes in Akron, Ohio. It was a 16-team league of 12 and 13-year-old boys. Our team was called the Fireballs, which we thought was a pretty cool name. It was a more innocent time then, and we were oblivious to the connotations that more mature people might assign to our team’s moniker.

It was a handicap league that bowled on Saturday mornings during the school year. Every week you bowled a three-game set against another team and earned points for each team victory in each game. It was fun, but we were, at bottom, competitive adolescent boys who really wanted to win. We would follow our team in the standings and watch our individual handicaps move up and down based on each week’s performance.

To our mild surprise, our team was pretty good. We weren’t the best team by a long shot, but we soon were among the top five teams in the league and we stayed there as the season wore on. Winning a trophy at the end of the season became a realistic possibility. In those days, trophies weren’t simply handed out to every participant. You had to earn them, and in our league only the top three teams got one. Ending up in at least third place became our goal.

Finally, we got to the match that would decide whether we would get that coveted trophy. I felt pressure like I’d never felt it before — not in a spelling bee, not in a school play, not messing around playing baseball in our neighborhood. A real trophy was on the line! And bowlers are up there all by themselves, with no referees or teammates to blame. I remember standing in the approach area, hoping desperately that I wouldn’t throw a gutter ball, miss an easy spare, or trip and do a humiliating face plant. We all felt that pressure, yet we were somehow able to get up there, win the match, and finish in third place.

It made us feel good about ourselves, and when we received our trophies — small pedestals less than a foot high, with a gold bowler on top and a third-place plaque at the bottom — it was sweet. I took it home and put it in a prominent place on the dresser in the room UJ and I shared.

Being On Time

Recently I had an appointment at a designated time. I was there early. The designated time came and went. About ten minutes late, things finally got underway.

I tried not to let this bug me, but deep down it did.

Growing up, I was taught that it is rude to be late. If you say you will be somewhere at a particular time, you should be there. My grandparents were famous for never being late. They drilled their punctuality habits into UJ and me — and old habits die hard.

I recognize that a few minutes isn’t a big deal, but I’ll always believe that not being on time shows disrespect. The tardy person clearly doesn’t value the on-time person’s time. I think it also shows other things. If you can’t organize your schedule to make your appointments, what else are you failing to manage or account for properly?

Some examples of self-centered tardiness are worse than others. The most egregious example I experienced occurred when a guy I was meeting was 25 minutes late, then showed up with his gym bag and breezily said he’d been working out. Seriously? I readily concluded that the guy was a selfish jerk, and I’ve never changed my mind.

If you want to make a good impression on me, please be on time! If you want to start out with two strikes against you, be late. And if you want to be on my shit list forever, bring along your gym bag, too.

A Permanent Governing Class

A few days ago John Dingell, 87, the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, announced that he was retiring after the longest congressional career in history. Now sources are saying that his 60-year-old wife will run for his seat and is expected to be elected.

Dingell has served in Congress, representing the same district in southeastern Michigan, since 1955. That was one year after Elvis Presley released his first single and 11 Presidents ago. And here’s the kicker — Dingell succeeded his father as Congressman for the district. If his wife wins the seat, there will have been three Dingells in succession, over a period of seven different decades.

In my view, there’s just something weird and wrong about the same family holding the same congressional seat for such a long period of time. It smacks too much of a permanent governing class for my democratic tastes. I think members of the House and the Senate will be a lot more mindful of their constituents, and a lot less lordly in their behavior, if they actually have a meaningful risk of losing an election.

Isn’t there someone not named Dingell who could capably represent the district?

In Defense, Recognizing “Fiscal Reality”; In Domestic Spending, Not So Much

Yesterday Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled plans to reduce the size of the U.S. military. The plans were motivated, Hagel said, by the need to recognize “the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges.”

Hagel’s plan includes cutting the size of active duty forces, changing pay structures, benefits, and housing allowances, eliminating certain weapons programs, and potentially closing military bases. Obviously, the proposals will need to be carefully considered to ensure that we are fair to the women and men who have served so capably in our military, but I have no problem with the concept of reducing the footprint of our military and modifying its focus. The world has changed since our forces were actively fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan; those changes inevitably will affect our defense planning. If bases or weapons programs are no longer needed, they should be ended, and our focus should be concentrated on the weapons programs and forces we truly need to respond to the threats posed by the current, fractured, dangerous world.

I am struck, however, by the difference between our approach to defense spending and our approach to other parts of the federal budget. The “reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges” obviously doesn’t exist just with respect to the military budget, it exists with respect to every dollar spent by the federal government. Where is the careful evaluation of whether other federal programs are no longer needed, as the Pentagon apparently has decided with respect to the U-2 spy plane? If we are willing to cut 80,000 active duty personnel from the military rolls — about 15 percent — why should we hesitate to cut a similar percentage from the non-military federal government payroll? If we are willing to close military bases, why shouldn’t we end federal programs, like those that fund advertisements to use your seat belt, that have long since served their purpose? Of course, there has been no such reevaluation of the true need for the morass of seemingly permanent federal programs and federal employees in the non-defense area.

During his campaigns and during his presidency, President Obama has talked a good game about fiscal prudence, but the actual evidence of his commitment to rational federal spending and deficit control has been lacking. Now his Defense Secretary has recognized the “reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges” and has used that reality to justify proposed reductions to the arm of the federal government that protects us from peril. If President Obama doesn’t use the “reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges” to make similarly significant reductions in domestic spending, he will lose whatever remaining credibility he may possess on budget control issues.

You can’t cut the jobs of soldiers and sailors, but continue to spend like a drunken sailor on every federal program we’ve inherited from the New Deal onward.

When A Letter-Writing Campaign Goes Terribly Wrong

Sometimes you wonder about what kind of schooling American kids are getting.

Here’s a recent example. The New York Post wrote an article about a high school — the Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers — in which the curriculum appeared to be less than rigorous. The school, miffed by the unflattering article, encouraged students to write letters to the Post to complain about the piece.

Unfortunately for the school, some students did — and their letters confirm that they apparently have only the most dim comprehension of grammar, spelling, and other basics of the English language.

I know there are large, looming issues about public schools, and private schools, and charter schools, and how we can best prepare our young people for the future in a hyper-competitive global economy. It’s incredibly sad, however, that high school students not only would write letters that are so filled with errors, but also that they lack the basic self-awareness to understand that they are bordering on functional illiteracy and are exposing that fact whenever they put pen to paper. We are failing these kids.

Egon Sadly Gone

I was very saddened today to read of the death of Harold Ramis.

Ramis was a titanic yet nevertheless underappreciated cultural figure who played a large role in many hugely popular, clever, often brilliant movies — like Animal House, Groundhog Day, Stripes, and Caddyshack — and who dazzled in some small roles that helped to make good films, like As Good as It Gets and Knocked Up, even better. Anyone who could write Animal House, direct Groundhog Day, and bring a poignancy and warmth to the role of Ben’s Dad in Knocked Up has more talent that most people could even fathom.

I’d like to focus specifically, though, on Ramis’ depiction of Egon Spengler, the genius who created the hard-scientific core of the spirit-catching team in Ghostbusters. Egon Spengler is arguably the greatest depiction of a true scientific nerd ever to grace the silver screen. Ramis captured every element of the character, from the Eraserhead-like hairdo to the lack of awareness of normal social behavior to the immediate knowledge of every page of obscure spirit guides and ghostly treatises to the willingness to create catastrophically dangerous ghost-catching devices without a second thought. We knew the Bill Murray was the clown and Dan Aykroyd was the rumpled everyman, but Egon Spengler and his protonic inventions is the one who allowed the Ghostbusters to match up with Gozer and could explain the extraordinary danger in it all by using a Twinkie as a illustration.

Ghostbusters is a great movie — one of the first “high-concept” blockbusters, where the gist of the plot could be captured in a single sentence — and Egon Spengler is what really made the movie work. The Spengler character made the Ghostbusters concept plausible, and Ramis had to sell that brainy, socially oblivious character as someone who could design ghost-catching traps and understand cross-dimensional portals. He did it brilliantly and hilariously . . . and, equally important for the nerds among us, in the process he somehow made being the nerdy scientific geek kind of cool.

You’d be hard-pressed to find many other modern figures who had the impact on popular culture of Harold Ramis. He was only 69, and these days you can fairly say that people who die at 69 die much too young. He will be missed.

Dogs, And Human Rights

Recently I stumbled across an interesting article, now several months old, about dogs and efforts to determine how their brains work. The article summarized the research and reached a provocative conclusion.

Determining how dogs think is not an easy task. (Insert joke here.) The problem, of course, is that they cannot communicate in the conventional sense.

The research involved training dogs to sit quietly so that their brain activity could be evaluated through operation of an MRI. The results focused an area of the brain called the caudate nucleus, which is found in both dogs and humans. In humans, the caudate nucleus shows activity https://webnerhouse.wordpress.com/?p=31933&preview=truewhen people are exposed to things they enjoy, like food, music, and love. The MRI testing showed caudate activity in dogs when dogs smelled their human companions or saw signals indicating that food was on the way.

The researchers think this indicates that dogs have emotions. It’s hard to imagine that research is needed to confirm that fact, which is pretty obvious to any dog lover. We know that our dogs can experience emotions — we see it in their eyes, in their wagging tails, and in their happy behavior when a loved one returns home. Come over to our house to see the reception Kish gets from Penny and Kasey if you don’t believe me.

The provocative conclusion of the author of the article is that, from a legal standpoint, dogs or any other creature that shows “neurobiological evidence of positive emotions” should be treated like people rather than property. Laws against abuse of animals isn’t enough; “limited personhood,” the author reasons, would better protect dogs from exploitation in puppy mills, dog racing, and other activities that interfere with the right of self-determination.

I’m as troubled by anyone by the mistreatment of dogs, and I think people who are cruel and abusive to dogs should be punished. But conferring “limited personhood” rights on dogs — and other animals that display emotions — starts us down a slippery slope where line-drawing becomes extremely difficult. How do you deal with the difficult decisions when a dog reaches the end of life? Would society be obligated to provide shelter and food for dogs that have none? Would dogs need to give consent before they could be neutered?

Penny and Kasey are part of our family and are treated as such — but they aren’t people.

To Every Thing There Is A (Reality TV) Season

Have you ever stopped to think about reality TV shows that have come and gone — shows that once were the subject of a tremendous buzz but then dropped off the cultural radar screen, if not off TV altogether? Kish and I don’t watch much TV, but there have been a few shows that captured our imagination, briefly, and now are no more.

One of them was Man vs. Food. We enjoyed watching jovial everyman Adam Richman tackle every food challenge thrown his way, no matter how daunting. Admittedly, our interest was primarily motivated by curiosity as to what ridiculous food consumption dare he would accept, and then watching him pound his fist on the table as he tried to eat more gut-burning habanero wings or five pounds of pancakes. We thought he was an interesting and engaging host, as well as a willing human guinea pig. After a few years Richman shifted to a format where he coached other people in competitive eating endeavors, but the show just wasn’t the same. The show’s run ended, and now Richman hosts other shows and has lost a lot of weight. Good for him! We always thought the Man vs. Food lifestyle couldn’t have been a very healthy one.

Before Man vs. Food, we watched American Chopper. I’m not sure why, because neither of us has ever ridden a motorcycle or has any kind of mechanical aptitude. But the show gave us a peek into a curious family and an even more curious line of work. People who are adept with tools and metal fabrication and design fascinate me, and the process of coming up with a working machine that also is a unique creative statement was interesting. The disputes between Teutul father and sons, and the fallout for the other people who worked at their business, was just icing on the cake. After a while, though, the incessant battles of the Teutuls got old, and the show seemed to be going through the motions, so we moved on. American Chopper ended its run in 2012.

The earliest reality show I remember watching was Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which a team of five gay men tried to help some hapless hetero become a little bit more interesting. Each episode the team would help the straight guy with his clothing, haircut, furniture, food, and general behavior. The show was interesting because the “Fab Five” were talented and engaging in their own right, and their interactions with clueless guys who couldn’t dance or wouldn’t change their sweatshirt-dominated wardrobes were priceless. As a similarly fashion- and culture-challenged guy, I found the Fab Five’s tips pretty useful. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy ended in 2007, although the Fab Five reunited for 10-year anniversary show in 2013.

Reality TV is like cultural cotton candy and seemingly vanishes as soon as it is consumed. Some shows, though, break through the clutter and become part of the national zeitgeist.

A Weirdly Desperate Ad Campaign

Yesterday I was minding my own business, driving north on Route 315, when I saw this billboard. It stopped my in my tracks, and reminded me — as if I or any Browns Backer needed reminding — of just how lost and pathetic the Cleveland Browns franchise seems to be right now.

What are the Browns trying to accomplish with this ad campaign? It’s February, months away from the start of NFL training camps. No one in Columbus knows Mike Pettine, so why would we trust any assurance he provided? It would be another thing if the Browns had decided to hire Jim Tressel and were running ads featuring him, and it might even be different if the Browns hadn’t changed head coaches as often as Miley Cyrus changes into another raunchy outfit. But neither of those things is true, and a picture of a random guy with a shaved head and beard looking like a hard ass isn’t going to change that.

I also don’t remember anyone questioning the Browns’ toughness. Instead, it was all about talent — which the Browns sorely lack. Get some good players in free agency, have a high-quality draft, and tell me I won’t ever again have to watch Brandon Weedon on a football field wearing a Browns uniform, and maybe I’ll pay attention.

I’m guessing that the Browns are worried that their frustrated and embarrassed fans won’t renew their season tickets, and they are trying to build a little positive momentum. They’re as a needy and desperate as a high school geek searching desperately for someone, anyone, who will go to the prom with him.