A Paean to Our Grandmothers

I've been noticing lately a lot of appeals (by commercial interests) to images of our grandmothers. There's "Nonna's [grandmother in Italian] Minestrone Soup," Nonna's Pizza (right down the street from me). There's a TV commercial that includes an image of Yiayia (grandmother in Greek), though I think it says "Yiayia wouldn't approve." And there's the Jewish grandmother (the image is perhaps more common in the Eastern US), known as Bubbe in Yiddish. Whether you call her Nonna, Yiayia, Bubbe, Nanna, Nan, Gran, or some other name, I'm confident that grandmothers are much alike, largely regardless of their ethnicity.

The image of our grandmothers is very evocative. Some of the associations are love, nurturing, a big, soft breast that nearly smothered us when we were hugged.

For many Americans, our grandparents' was the immigrant generation; that might have some negative connotations: conservative, backward, unassimilated, maybe more foreign than American.

But the positive side of it all is that our grandmothers are our tie to our heritage, to the food (and of course more) of the "old country."

It's the food thing that's the most important. If Italian and Greek grandmothers are like my Jewish grandmother, grandmother is synonymous with food, with overabundant cooking and baking. I swear that my grandmother cooked and baked for 26 or 28 hours a day. The house always smelled of cooking and baking. At Thanksgiving, there were both beef and turkey; sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes; pie and cake.

Our grandmothers were great cooks, the custodians of age-old recipes that might or might not have been handed down to later generations. And our mothers, however good they were or are as cooks, simply don't put as much time and effort into cooking and baking as Grandma did.

And food is love. If you didn't eat something when you visited my grandparents', my grandmother would be hurt. Very hurt. (There are lots of jokes that embody that stereotype of the Jewish grandmother.) It would be an affront to her cooking, her hospitality, her grandmotherliness. In my particular case, as I wrote elsewhere, I was very thin, so in addition, getting me to eat something would be one brick in the edifice she wished to build of a beefier me; that was a project of hers.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

It's a Good Wind That Blows No Ill: The "Made in America" Campaign

Again I refer to the US television network called ABC and their "ABC World News" evening news program.

They have been carrying on a campaign that urges Americans to buy more American-made items as part of their Christmas gift shopping. The slogan is "Made in America." They have shown video clips of factories that have added workers because of increased sales of their manufactures--in turn, presumably, because of the demand for those products that has been stimulated by ABC.

The numbers of additional workers hired seem to be generally small: 3 here, maybe 10 or so there. I'd be curious to know what the total increased employment is, but that is not given and probably is not even known; but I don't think the impact is a really large one.

Still, I think this is a good thing. I am happy to see American workers rehired or new jobs being created. It's hard to argue with that, since it's good for all of America. Unemployment causes anxiety and suffering, even hunger--which no one in a prosperous land like the US should suffer.

And not only are there restored or newly created American jobs, but this has to be good for the economic statistic called balance of payments: When a country imports more than it exports, that is called a trade deficit and is supposed to be a bad thing--although the great amount of oil that the US imports, to fuel its enormous SUVs, is a big contributor to the US trade deficit.

Now, this is what is called a zero-sum game, meaning that if someone gains, someone else loses. If less imported merchandise is being bought, someone suffers. And it's easy to guess that the main loser in all this would be China.

I don't feel sorry for China if its factories are making fewer goods to be sent to America. In fact, it's not even totally a bad thing for China. Chinese peasants in very large numbers have been leaving the farm to move to the cities and work in factories. This causes at least some social disruption. It can't be totally a bad thing if more peasants remain in the rural areas and grow food.

On the other hand, the "Made in America" trend is not quite totally a good thing for America. If you pay attention to the transportation industry in America, you can't help but be aware that there is a very, very large amount of activity involving goods that come from China: shipping containers, very many of them carrying goods from China, are being moved by American trains and trucks. So that business might be hurt. Still, domestically-made goods have to be transported, too. Maybe some fuel with be saved by manufactures being moved shorter distances.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Why Study Old Stuff?

History is about dead people. Archeology is about dead people. So is art history. Even literature is mainly about dead people, unless you somehow confine your attention to living writers.

I've been interested in literature for a long time and studied it in college. If you're into some of the really old literature, I think you almost inevitably find yourself concerned with the history of the period as well, and in fact I did. And within the last few years I've acknowledged to myself an interest in archeology.

So, I'm interested in lots of old stuff, even antiques. And I find it disturbing to consider that a lot of people have no interest in the past. I'm sure that the course of study that a lot of people follow in post-secondary schools includes little or no study of the fields that have to do with old stuff or with dead people.

It's disturbing to me and I think it's unfortunate; but I understand it pretty well, I think. There is money to be made, livelihoods to be earned, if you study really new stuff, such as the newest computer hardware and software. By contrast, I might know a lot about Old English poetry, but who values that knowledge and will pay me for knowing it? Where can I put that knowledge to any use, let alone to profit?

So maybe the people who want to learn about some of these areas are not practical-minded, don't care enough about whether they're going to be equipped to make a living. And it's really only sensible to worry about having a field that will produce an income.

Wanting to study IT rather than history is not a new phenomenon. In the protest days of the 1960s and 1970s, students and others were not just protesting a war. Demonstrations on college campuses were protesting that college curricula were not "relevant." And curricula changed. A mark of so-called academic liberalism is that students might study Puerto Rican poets rather than Shakespeare. And while these poets may not be "classic" like Shakespeare, and maybe not as good as Shakespeare, they have the merit of being living. Let's study and worry about our world, and not dig up dusty old books where the language is funny and hard to understand.

The debate over what, if anything, the past has to teach us is ongoing and endless. I for one don't feel that the past has to prove its relevance. Some human concerns are timeless and unchanging. Twenty-first-century people—no matter how much our world seems to have changed in some respects—are not freed from the same life events, emotions, worries that have been aspects of the human condition for thousands of years.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Poor Little Republican Guy

Today I went to buy some food and, as I was loading my purchases into my car I was approached by a young man with a petition he wanted me to sign.

The young man was good-looking and clean-cut—virtually Mormon-missionary clean-cut. The petition, it seems, was to nominate delegates to a Republican nominating convention.

I pointed out that I did not live in that area and, what's more, I'm not a Republican, so I didn't think he wanted my signature.

Of course I could have left the matter there. He wasn't insistent or anything. But, as my bags were going into the car trunk, I felt compelled to express a wish about where, at least sort of generically, I wished Republicans would go, because "that's where they all belong, in my opinion."

Well, was it gratuitous of me to say that? Probably my comment was not in the interests of fostering civil discourse. But consider this: People live in homogeneous neighborhoods. They surround themselves with people who think as they do, and they get lulled into being unaware that real, flesh-and-blood people might hold opinions very divergent from theirs. They also need to see that those who hold views diametrically different from their own do not have horns and tails.

He didn't ask me why I thought that. I almost wish he had, because if he had, I would have said, "I am a gay man and as a gay man, Republicans are my enemies, and they have shown that they are, over and over and over."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Christmas Myths

Where to start?

Many people get a Christmas tree every year without giving any thought to the custom or its origins--although it's fairly widely known that the custom originally was a pagan Germanic custom.

Second, there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus was born on December 25, and again, of course, the conventional wisdom or custom is given little thought. The best idea on the subject is that at some point, the celebration of Christmas was moved to coincide with the celebration of the Roman festival called Saturnalia.

Then of course there's Santa Claus. A lot of the custom of Santa Claus in America--much the same figure is known in England where he is called Father Christmas--derives from the German festival of St. Nicholas, who was a fourth century saint. However, the feast day of St. Nicholas is December 6. (More directly, the lore of St. Nicholas comes to us via the Dutch and descendents of Dutch settlers in New York--notably Washington Irving (who depicted St. Nicholas in one of his books) and a painter named Weir.)

The image of Santa Claus as it now exists in America is a relatively recent development. It was influenced by the poem usually known as The Night before Christmas, which is actually called “A Visit from St. Nicholas," written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1822 or 1823 (my sources differ).

The association of Santa Claus with the North Pole also originated in the 1820s. A boost to the image and popularity of Santa Claus among children was given by the 1902 book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, who wrote the Wizard of Oz books. The idea that Santa keeps a list of children and whether they have been naughty or nice throughout the preceding year comes from the 1934 song, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

And then our picture of a fat and jolly Santa Claus, with a long beard and a red costume, basically originated with Coca-Cola advertisements in the 1930s.

Bottom line: The idea and image of Santa Claus, as widely prevalent in the US, is relatively modern and, you might say, manufactured, rather than being any ancient tradition that was an intrinsic part of the Christmas festival.

Updated December 16, 2011.
Update December 21, 2011: Only one of the four gospels (Matthew) mentions the "wise men" of the nativity story, and there they are simply called "kings of the East"--and not numbered as three. There is no mention of the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, nor that one of them was Black. All of those notions are "medieval accretions."
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

The Tea Party Should Be Called the Koch Party

I have previously stated my belief that the Tea Party is not a populist nor a grass-roots political movement, not truly the "common man" rebelling against excessive government and excessive taxes, as some of their demonstrations and sloganeering have tried to persuade us. I am happy to be able to say that I find the same idea expressed elsewhere. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the Tea Party:

Former ambassador Christopher Meyer writes in the Daily Mail that the Tea Party movement is a mix of "grassroots populism, professional conservative politics, and big money", the last supplied in part by Charles and David Koch.[134] Jane Mayer says that the Koch brothers' political involvement with the Tea Party has been so secretive that she labels it "covert".[135]

David Koch and his brother are billionaires. Their money allows them to be very powerful and influential. Their interest--not to say that they don't have other aims--is to keep taxes on the wealthy low. Again, on the role of David Koch and his brother in advancing conservative politics:

Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded by David H. Koch in 2003, and led by Tim Phillips. The group has over 1 million members in 500 local affiliates, and led protests against health care reform in 2009.[103]

One million members may sound like a lot but it represents only one-third of one percent of the American population.

And the Wikipedia article quotes others:

In an April 2009 New York Times opinion column, contributor Paul Krugman wrote that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grassroots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey.". . .The same month, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) stated "It's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class"[219][220]

Some have claimed that the Tea Party is racist. Going back at least to Ronald Reagan, conservatives have tried to play upon racism. If they were a little more blunt in how they state what they believe, we would more plainly see their unwillingness to pay taxes that, in their opinion, go for welfare paid to people who simply don't want to work. A poll (by the University of Washington?) showed that only 35% of Tea Party supporters believe that Blacks are hard working.

Updates December 17, 2011, December 18, 2011
The Koch brothers fund the Acton Institute and the Heartland Institute (among many other Right organizations), which are anti-environmental organizations which deny human-caused global warming. Many of the Kochs' organizations, like a lot of Right organizations, are interlocking in their funding, etc.
If there's anybody who didn't already know the power of money--the influence upon and control of our national affairs--he should just look at the Kochs.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Times Are Tough, Even for Dictators

Two gentlemen meet in a bar in—let's say—Casablanca. Let’s call them "A" and "B".

A: Hey.

B: Hey.

A: So how's the dictating business?

B (Looking around nervously): Shhhhhh!

A: Oh, sorry. What's wrong?

B: We don't call it that anymore.

A: Oh, sorry. . . . So what do you call it now?

B: Country Executive. Not . . . "dictator."

A: Oh, sorry. Well, so how's the country executive business?

B: What, you didn't hear that I got ousted?

A: Oh, sorry. That's tough.

B: Yeah, I had to flee the country. That's what I'm doing here, in this flee-bag joint. And, you know, Country Executive is not a recession-proof business. Been out of work for almost a year.

A: Any prospects?

B: I've sent out nearly 200 resumes, to every place from Saskatchewan to Vietnam.

A: And?

B: Nothing! The market for that line of work has definitely shrunk. We're going to be as obsolete as buggy whips.

A: Well, things have been a little slow in—you know, my line of business, too.

B: Really? I would have thought there would always be a market for smu—oops, sorry, excuse me.

A: Yeah, well no, no one has any money these days. Not even—my usual customers.

B: Well, I'll promise you this: If I ever get back in power, I'll buy from you. Okay?

A: I'll drink to that. (Clinks glasses.) Cheers!

B: Here's to dic—I mean, to country executiving!

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Why Hate Stephen Hawking?

A lot of the ideas the emanate from the political Right currently, such as denial of global warming, advocacy of Creationism (and creationism disguised with different names), opposition to evolution, etc., can be characterized as anti-science. They show a distrust of science and a lack of respect for science. A lack of understanding of how science works, what a scientific theory is, the nature of scientific evidence.

Recently there was an item on Huffington Post about Stephen Hawking, the British physicist, cosmologist, and former Cambridge University professor who has a neurological disease "related to" ALS (aka "Lou Gehrig's disease"), is confined to a wheel chair, and can "speak" only with the aid of an electronic device.

Now, Stephen Hawking is widely regarded as one of the leading thinkers of our time. I remember when I first became aware of him, in the 1970s. I was working with the astronomical community, and Hawking was then regarded as a very promising and rising young scholar. In the years since, he has received numerous awards and has written several books for a popular audience such as A Brief History of Time, which was a runaway best-seller.

Yet, to my very considerable surprise, the comments on the Huffington Post piece about him very largely blasted Hawking. I'm at a loss as to why he should have a negative image amongst the Joe Six-Packs. I can't understand what is political or controversial about his scientific ideas, which may not be very widely understood. It might have to do with comments he has made that appear to be anti-religion. (For example, he has said, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing.") And in this, the most religious of the Western, developed countries, that might not go down very well. I also suspect that this is part of the long-standing strain of animosity to science in America.

That might be viewed in part as a contemporary problem, lack of scientific literacy due in turn to failures of the American educational system. Or it can be viewed as a historical problem, only the latest manifestation of a strain of American thought that goes back a long ways.

Some of the "Founding Fathers" of this country, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, might be considered amateur scientists. Everybody knows of Franklin's famous experiment with the kite, by which he demonstrated that lightning is electrical in nature. And Jefferson did considerable experimentation in agriculture—among his wide intellectual interests.

On the other hand, a lot of American ideas and ideals—maybe I should say mythology—developed along with the settling of the West, the movement of pioneers to the frontier; an ideology arose which glorified the individual, the ordinary man, the humble man, the man with little formal education. According to Wikipedia, "Culturally, the ideal American was a self-made man whose knowledge derived from life-experience, not an intellectual man, whose knowledge derived from books, formal education, and academic study."

Also, religious movements that arose in America emphasized religion and religious experience over reason, rationality, learning, science. And even if some of these trains of thought arose 100 or 150 years ago, I think we still have their legacy, just as we still have a "Wild West" ideology that glorifies guns, aggression, and people shooting one another.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

I'm Sick and Tired of Homophobia

It seems that any time the Huffington Post (HuffPost) publishes any article online that relates, no matter how tangentially, to any gay issue (they do have a page called HuffPost Gay Voices, but sometimes gay-related things get posted elsewhere), for some reason all the homophobes come out of the woodwork, very happy to have a platform to express their anti-gay views.

So we hear (over, and over, and over again) that homosexuality is wrong, it's unnatural, it's perverted, it's against Nature and "God's law." So often religion is invoked. I've become firmly convinced that, as a gay man, religion is my enemy.

It makes me truly sad to have to think that homophobia is so widespread. One of these people touched on something very true when he or she said, "They just want to be accepted." I'd put a spin on that in a way that he or she probably did not intend and say, Yes, we gay people would very much like to be able to feel that we were not disliked (let alone hated), rejected, persecuted, discriminated against.

Let me tell you from personal experience that it is a tough row to hoe in life if you belong to any minority—and I belong to at least two or three.

I spend too much time reading and responding to many of those people. Here is what I wrote in reply to one:

There is an old American Indian proverb that says, "Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his moccasins." I only wish that you and others like you would have even a fraction of the humanity that is embodied in that saying.

I am getting very, very tired of you homophobes posting your ranting (and very, very tired) old, bigoted ideas any time there is anything posted on HuffPost that has anything to do with anything gay.

And, as to "abominations" named in the Bible, are you aware that Leviticus also says that you should not eat shellfish, you should not wear garments that have two fibers mixed, and that a woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night should be put to death?

Are we maybe just being a tad selective in what we do and don't point to in the Bible? It's not the Bible, it's just your bigotry.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Is Religion Schizophrenic? Part 2.

An interesting PBS TV was called Not in God's Name. It was about precisely an issue that I have blogged about: intolerance and conflict among religions.

The program focused on India. India has seven religions: Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, and Judaism. They all preach tolerance, brotherhood, peace—all the good things that certainly nearly everyone wishes would prevail in the world.

However, there seems to be a gap between these preachings and some of the actions that occur—and that is evidently an interest of Not in God's Name (an organization with a web site) and of mine.

Evidently—and this is a big part of the paradox—and as the program finds, the sacred scriptures of the main religions in India—the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism), the Old Testament, and the words of Jesus in the New Testament--can also be found to speak of conflict and war.

Either we have a paradox or things are changing. India has a 7,000-year-long tradition of multiple religions co-existing and usually tolerating one another pretty well. However, when India was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947, 1 million people migrated—Muslims leaving India for Pakistan and Hindus leaving Pakistan for India. And—sometimes literally along the way—some 2 million people were killed.

India and Pakistan have been hostile to one another and more recently have been developing missiles and atomic weapons (undoubtedly aimed at one another). Indian missiles are given the names of Hindu gods. The Pakistanis call their weapon "The Islamic Bomb." I can't help being reminded of the Old Testament which depicts, of course, its own age, which was a world of neighboring yet warring tribes, each with their own god. The victorious tribe was thought to be the one with the stronger god, so a war between tribes was a war that would determine who had the stronger—or the correct—god.

The program, and the organization that produced it, are as fascinated (or repulsed) as I am by this contradiction or paradox, and mostly spends its hour exploring it. I am not sure any definitive or satisfying answer was found; but some worthwhile ideas were that politics and territorial aggression can overtake the ideas of peace and brotherhood. One example: for years India and Pakistan have been warring continually if not continuously over the disputed border province of Kashmir.

One person who speaks on camera says that tolerance is not enough. More than that is needed. People may feel, "Okay, I will tolerate your ideas but basically you are wrong because my religion is superior, and/or we have the correct path to god." What is needed, the program says, is for people to recognize that every religion is a valid path to the divine and deserves not just a grudging tolerance but respect as equally worthy.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Movie Hunks of the Fifties: The Stuff of a Young Gay Boy's Fantasies

When I was young and a gay boy (as I might not have recognized at the time!), I saw many of the movies of the time. I know I used to go to Saturday afternoon matinees at the neighborhood movie theater, which cost 30 cents. I could go on about the presentation of movies at that time, because it differed in a number of ways from these days; but that's not my main subject here.

I really wanted to talk about my boyish crushes on some of the handsome movie hunks of the time, particularly the singing ones in the musical shows. I think I was as much impressed by rich, manly voices as I was by handsomeness or good physical builds.

Also, I was even smitten by one or more male comic-book characters. One such that I can remember the name of was called "Big Ben Bolt"; but in this piece I will concentrate on a few movie stars.

The first male star from the 1950s (when I would have been from 8 years old to my early teens) was Gordon MacRae. MacRae is best known for his singing and acting role in the movie version of the musical Oklahoma! which he made in 1955, when he was 34; and Carousel, another musical, the next year. I don't know what age he was when the photo above was taken.

Another is Howard Keel who appeared in the musical Annie Get Your Gun, made in 1950. Internet Movie Database (IMDB) says about him,

He was the Errol Flynn and Clark Gable of "golden age" movie musicals back in the 1950s. With a barrel-chested swagger and cocky, confident air, not to mention his lusty handsomeness and obvious athleticism, 6'4" brawny baritone Howard Keel had MGM's loveliest songbirds swooning helplessly for over a decade in what were some of the finest musical films ever produced. . . .

This one, at least, is a tall man. I don't know if it mattered to me at the time (I doubt it since I think I only realized I like tall men much later), but Gordon MacRae was only 5'8".

Besides Annie Get Your Gun, Keel was also in Show Boat (1951), Kiss Me Kate (1953), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). I think I saw at least the last two in their own day. (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I think--to digress a little bit--shows just how manly, and certainly energetic, men dancing can be.)

Another one was John Raitt, who co-starred with Doris Day in Pajama Game, 1957. (Incidentally, the great majority of the promo photos for this film feature Doris Day, probably because cheesecake was thought to sell much better than beefcake--showing that, in those days, producers and promoters of movies had little suspicion that gay men might comprise an important part of their audience and their fandom. But again that would be another subject.)
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Footnote: The block quotation and much of the factual data here are from Internet Movie Database.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Should You "Buy American"?

The television network ABC has been carrying on a year-long "Made in America" campaign, to point out to its viewers what products are made in America, with the idea that, if consumers are aware of what brand names are of American manufacture, they will (hopefully) prefer to buy those products.

In Seattle, a local organization tried to get a buy-American advertising campaign onto the sides of public buses; but the Seattle transit authority declined the ads, saying that they were espousing a politically and economically controversial position.

There was considerable outcry over this, and the transit authority reversed its position. In this instance I think I agree with the "buy American" organization and not the transit authority: I don't see anything particularly controversial about the advertising or its aims.

Nowadays, practically everything one buys in the US seems to be made in China; and to some degree—probably a considerable degree—that represents manufacturing jobs lost to American workers. And we currently have a rate of unemployment in the US that is unacceptably high.

Entire industries in the US have been pretty much destroyed—for example clothing manufacturing (as of quite a while ago) and more recently, shoe manufacturing.

Who is to blame? I want to look at several parties and maybe assign some blame to each.

First, China does not play fair. They keep the exchange rate for their currency relative to the dollar very low. Thus Chinese-made merchandise can be sold ridiculously cheaply—even after the wholesalers and retailers involved add on shipping and import duties to the items' cost. (It might surprise you that the shipping and duty really don't come to that much.) So American producers simply can't compete.

Second, look at merchandisers like Walmart. It's in the nature of capitalism that a retailer which can sell something more cheaply than its competitors has a competitive advantage. Chances are, the customer does not look to see where the item was made (which of course is what the campaigns are all about) but simply goes with the low price. And the cheaper item these days, is usually Chinese made.

So now, third, the consumer: A lot of consumers not only like to save money, they need to save money. This is the situation of some families, particularly lower income families with several children: if they can get their purchases more cheaply, that may mean that they can buy shoes or winter jackets for all of their children, instead of for only one or two. Even if they don't pay attention to where those items are made, and maybe don't care, I think they deserve some sympathy.

I think yet another party should get some of the blame. I'm pretty sure that a $60 or more Tommy Hilfiger or Polo Ralph Lauren shirt, which is made in a third-world country, does not have to be made in that third-world country to be profitable for Hilfiger or Polo--or for the retailer. When the item is on sale and its price is reduced to half, I promise you the store is still making a profit.

Now one exception to all this is cars. I had a neighbor who, when I was extolling the reliability of the Honda I owned at the time, said, "I think that if you're American, you should buy an American car." Well, nowadays, in this age of the global economy, it's not so simple. Did you realize that the price stickers on cars in the showroom are required to show the percentage of "domestic [parts] content"? I saw a Ford Taurus where the domestic content was only 65%. It's not too uncommon for an "American" car to have its major parts, like transmissions, made in Canada or Mexico or an Asian country.

And look at the cars with Japanese brands which are assembled in US plants. Assembly in the US means US workers have employment when you buy that vehicle. And the domestic content might actually be higher than that Ford Taurus: a lot of parts like windshields, headlights, batteries, tires, and power-window controllers probably come from domestic suppliers, and major components may be made at the assembly plant.

The same ABC network did a little study in which they tried to determine which car purchases would produce the most jobs for American workers; and they found that buying a Toyota Camry would actually produce more jobs than a certain car with an "American" nameplate.

So, if you want to "buy American" when you are car shopping, don't pay the main attention to the name: you can look at where the vehicle was assembled—that's on the sticker, too—or, more importantly, look at that "domestic content" number.

Update, July 4, 2012.
Here is an article on this subject from AOL Autos:
http://autos.aol.com/gallery/the-most-american-cars/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl7|sec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D175630

Update, June 8, 2013
An interesting little sidebar in the July, 2013 issue of Car and Driver:

Globalization means that even domestic automakers are importers, bringing Buicks from South Korea, Fords from Turkey, and all manner of Chrysler models from both north and south of the border. In fact, only one volume brand is solely American-made: Jeep. All Jeep vehicles are assembled in either Detroit; Toledo, Ohio; or Belvidere, Illinois.

Two comments on this: First, it is to be hoped that this news about Jeep does not impel lots of people to go buy Jeeps because recent news has it that Jeep has a serious design defect which makes the gas tank likely to explode in rear-end collisions, and the NHTSB has been pressuring Chrysler to recall Jeeps to fix the problem
Second, as I have often said, the people who are trying to "buy American" and go buy Fords, Chevrolets, and Buicks are misguided.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

American Engineering (May Still Be) Number One

Regular readers of this blog know that I have pointed out the many respects in which America is not, or is no longer, Number 1 in the world.

The world's tallest building does not have a nice American-sounding name like Sears Tower or Empire State Building. It's the Burj Khalifa, and if that does not sound very American, it's because it's not. The building is in the Middle East.

It's been a while since the tallest building was in America, although three of the 10 tallest are in the US and, in fact, are all here in Chicago.

However, the Burj Khalifa was designed by the American architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Consider that the design of very tall buildings is as much, or more, a matter of engineering than architecture; and America quite possibly still has the best engineers in the world.

Even during the period when American cars seemed to be sadly suffering in the quality area, I had no doubt that General Motors (or, to those partisan to other US car manufacturers, insert that name here if you like) employed some of the best engineers in the world. On the other hand, it must be admitted that many of the engineering features found very widely in modern cars were not American inventions or developments: things like the Macpherson suspension (now pretty much universal and invented by a Scotsman), fuel injection, disc brakes, and overhead camshaft engines.

I think one reason why these were mostly developed in Europe is one simple word: racing. Most of those engineering features in the list above were developed by car makers who had a racing program, and they first appeared in race cars. By contrast, with the exception of Ford, which has raced on and off, American car makers have not built cars for racing in modern times.

There is no doubt (at least in this mind) that many countries such as China and India have given the world many great scientists and musicians, not to mention the European countries which led the world for so long. Japan has been a leader in electronics. On the other hand, there has been concern that America's educational system has its failings, especially when it comes to science and mathematics. But I think that America still knows how to produce good engineers, or else why would an achievement like the world's tallest building ultimately come out of America?

Some people, I'm sure, have come to feel that I like to engage in America-bashing. I like to think I'm very fair-minded and dole out both praise and criticism where it is due.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Invented by Whom, Where, When?

The other day I happened to hear about the invention of the garbage disposal. Also at around the same time I heard about when the first automatic washer came on the market, and the first hermetically sealed refrigerator—these latter two a little before my time.

I was somewhat astonished to realize that I had never thought about when the garbage disposal was invented. It's one of those things that you take for granted.

Of course what you are aware of as an innovation within your own lifetime, and what you take for granted, depends on your age.

Children today—well, probably anyone under about 30—have always known computers, so they don't even think about a time when home computers didn't exist. And cell phones are only a bit more recent so kids take them for granted, too, and have no notion that they didn't always exist.

In my family, some fairly well-off relations got some gadgets at a time when they were not yet really common: the automatic washer, air conditioning, even TV. My own family was the third one on our block to get TV, in December 1950. My grandparents, aunt and uncle, and several of my friends already had it in their homes. Everyone wanted one—of course it was something of a status symbol—even though we had one channel, and there was no 24-hour broadcasting, so when there was no program we actually stared at the "test pattern" on the screen. I suppose it sounds like some third-world country but it really was just a smallish city in Pennsylvania.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Skinny: A Memoir

When I was an adolescent I was very slender. When I had to register for the draft—I think that was age 18—the weight that got put on my draft card was 127 pounds--at a height of about 5'10".

Maybe I was very thin even before my adolescence, because I remember that as a child I didn't seem to want to eat, and my parents pretty much had to cajole me into eating—"Take a bite for Grandma" or one for Uncle Willy; "eat this Brussels sprout named Agamemnon" (yes, really).

One of my older female relatives called me a lange luksh—Yiddish for "long noodle." My grandmother once said that she only wished that she would live to see me gain weight (I don't think she did).

My high school Biology teacher predicted that I would never be heavy because, as he put it, I don't have the frame to hang fat on.

Well, right now—pushing the age of 70—I'm hardly obese but I'm not really slim, either. Depending on what figures are taken for my height and weight, my BMI (body-mass index) is right at the edge of the overweight zone. I have gained about 50 pounds in 50 years—maybe a better record than many, in this age of epidemic obesity, but certainly taking me far from the skinny category.

Still, I am small-boned, and I hope that, since people of a certain age seem to tend to be very thin, I may yet again be slim, even as I once was.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Population Control, Conservatives, and Christianity

I have written about the problems of growing world population before. The current estimate of the number of people on Earth has reached 7 billion. The human species, compared to other species with which we share the planet, has been extremely successful in these last couple hundred years and human populations have exploded as medicine has reduced infant mortality, conquered many diseases, and lengthened life expectancy.

Through advances in agriculture (use of new strains of crops, use of fertilizers and pesticides, etc.), productivity of food crops has been increased miraculously, so that the population disaster that was predicted at the end of the eighteenth century has been staved off. But for how long can population growth continue without bringing on catastrophe? Short-term and local droughts and famines are already causing starvation in many places on Earth. And millions more are malnourished.

And the ability of the world to feed its booming population is by no means the only reason to be concerned about the growth in numbers of humans. More people means more demand not only for food but also for water, timber, fiber, and fuel. Destruction of rain forests to produce timber and to make new farmland accelerates global warming because it means fewer trees to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

The larger share of population growth has been in less-developed countries. But as living standards increase, these populaces have greater expectation of eating a Western-style, meat-heavy diet (and along with that, consuming more energy and producing more greenhouse gases). And the production of animals for meat uses more grain—several times as much, depending on the animal—than if that grain were consumed directly by people.

What needs to be done is to control fertility. The modern world can offer a number of tools for preventing pregnancy. But Republicans in Congress have shown opposition to (1) funding of birth control pills by health insurance, as will be provided by the recent health-care reform law when its provisions go into effect; and (2) funding of family planning in other countries by the US, directly and via the United Nations.

One columnist for The Washington Times was quoted in The Reporter, a publication of Population Connection:

Free birth control. . . is about consolidating the sexual revolution. The post-1960s left has been at war with Christianity. Its aim is to erect a utopian socialist state—one built on the rubble of Judeo-Christian civilization. In fact, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram. Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex.

So we learn from this that birth control is not only anti-Christian but anti-God. He uses the accusations "socialist," atheist, and even "pagan." It's hard to believe that even one person believes this.

For many such extreme conservatives and Religious Far-Right types, any ideas of stewardship of the planet—recycling and conserving resources, protection of wildlife habitat, avoiding overfishing, and so forth—are at best unnecessary because of their views that (1) the Bible says that God gave Adam the right to use (and presumably exploit to any degree whatsoever) the Earth and all its creatures; (2) we don't need to be so concerned about Earth because this is all a transient and transitory existence and we should focus on the next world.

Another reason is one I have suggested earlier: they are simply anti-sex and believe (this has been, as I see it, a strain in Christianity since very early times and, pending anyone correcting me on this, I ascribe it to St. Paul) that any sex is evil, and sex—and only in certain positions—is less bad only if performed within monogamous, heterosexual marriage.

Unfortunately this is not a new trend in American social and political life, and there were in fact laws making contraception illegal that were enacted in 1873 and overturned by the US Supreme Court only in 1965. Like Prohibition, these have been instances where an extreme strain of moralizing has been successful in passing laws that affect us all.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The New Fuel Economy Standards for Cars

An article on new federal fuel-economy standards for cars to take effect in 2025 appeared online, and it was interesting to read the comments.

Of course we have those who are decrying it as unneeded government intervention in our lives, and blasting Obama--conveniently forgetting that fuel economy standards were enacted by Congress in 1975, so I don't see that they come from Obama.

One argument against greater fuel economy is that the standards will cause cars to become smaller, and smaller cars are less safe. Yet light trucks are the vehicle class with the poorest safety,* and the US, with the biggest cars in the world, has the worst traffic fatality rate of any first-world nation.* Also, the standard, as applied starting in 2011, actually gives a break to larger vehicles.* There is a so-called "footprint" standard for calculating vehicle mileage, and it encourages production of larger vehicles.

Proponents of higher CAFE standards argue that it is the "Footprint" model of CAFE for trucks that encourages production of larger trucks with concomitant increases in vehicle weight disparities, and point out that some small cars such as the Mini Cooper and Toyota Matrix are four times safer than SUVs like the Chevy Blazer.[54] They argue that the quality of the engineering design is the prime determinant of vehicular safety, not the vehicle's mass. In a 1999 article based on a 1995 IIHS report, USA Today said that 56% of all deaths occurring in small cars were due to either single vehicle crashes or small cars impacting each other. The percentage of deaths attributed to those in small cars being hit by larger cars was one percent.[55] [Wikipedia, s.v. Corporate Average Fuel Economy]

So, once again, what we might call "popular opinion" is based on a lot of wrong ideas. Too often, opinion precedes being informed, rather than the other way around. Since the objecting ideas are clearly what we might consider conservative, I'd like to blame conservatives, but I have to concede that the Right has no monopoly on ill-informed opinions.
__________
* All these facts are from the Wikipedia article, "Corporate Average Fuel Economy."

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Not the Real Thing

I just saw a photo of a castle, and the teaser for the article said, "If you're thinking Disney, you're right." Well it's not Disney and that's not what I thought of. I thought of the original, or the real thing, if you will: Neuschwanstein, "Mad King Ludwig's" castle in Bavaria, Germany.

Similarly, I was watching a figure skating competition on TV. As one skating couple's performance started, the commentator identified the music as "2001 A Space Odyssey." Wrong! The music is Also Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss--though as it happens, that music was used in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And I guess that in the same vein, another bit of music, in people's minds, might be thought of as "The Lone Ranger," though hopefully more people might recognize that it's the William Tell Overture-- if for no other reason than that The Lone Ranger has not been a current TV show for a very long time, so maybe the music has sort of reverted to its original identity.

I wonder if people see a picture of the Eiffel Tower and think of Las Vegas instead of Paris. Or a picture of a pyramid and think of Memphis, Tennessee, instead of Egypt. We are getting so used to copies, reproductions, derivatives, and so forth that we ignore the real thing.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

War Creates a Climate Hostile to Liberals

In the last decade we've seen the "9/11" attack and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and possibly we can add Libya). The terrorist attacks and the wars have given a boost to a brand of conservative, hawkish patriotism that does not want to brook any criticism of America.

After 9/11 we saw lots of cars flying American flags. Where I live, and where we have many older people who tend to be conservative, you can still see cars flying American flags. Time was, any car flying the American flag was the President's car or the car of an American ambassador abroad.

So 9/11 stirred up a lot of patriotism. I think partly it was an expression of defiance to the terrorists but also perhaps sort of having a chip on America's collective shoulder. Just as my sister, living in Germany with her US Army husband around 1955, wore a Jewish star around her neck, sort of saying, "I dare you to discriminate against me—because I'm American, we whipped your Nazi, anti-Semitic ass, and now we're occupying your country."

As a bit of a digression: The wars we've been engaged in have produced a lot of "Support Our Troops" decals and bumper stickers on cars—and they're still there. I'd like to reply to the "support our troops" crowd that I support the troops by advocating bringing them home. Certainly they'd be safer that way and we'd save all the human suffering of war injuries and deaths. On the other hand, it's undoubtedly true that some soldiers want to be "over there." Some will say they want to defend their country--but my feeling is that that's based on incorrect ideas. It's not clear to me that the US invaded Iraq because our country was being threatened (remember, the "weapons of mass destruction" were never found).

Being engaged in a war calls up patriotism. This is fine except that, along with that patriotism there often can be an intolerance of criticism of the country. I remember during the Vietnam War I was told things like, "We don't need your kind in this country," and "Why don't you get out of the country if you don't like it?" People were saying, "My country, right or wrong"—which I thought was a well-nigh appalling idea. Quite recently, in response to a comment I wrote on Huffington Post, I was called "commie"--which if nothing else strikes me as a rather anachronistic term. I thought the McCarthy Era was long past and that we had stopped calling people "commie."

You can view the current climate in this post-9/11 US as an upsurge of patriotism. But it might be that America has moved to the Right. One of my professors used to be fond of saying that the prevailing philosophy is a pendulum that continually swings between liberal and conservative.

And now I learn of some of the things that were said by the Republican Presidential candidates in their most recent debate. They strike me as militaristic, chest-beating comments. (We used to hear the terms hawk and hawkish, in the Vietnam War era.) Mitt Romney mentioned that attacking Iran should not be out of the question, and Cain said he wants to bring back waterboarding of prisoners or detainees:

But Cain also provided one of the most striking moments when he argued in favor of the use of "enhanced interrogation" -- including the now-rejected technique of waterboarding -- in the fight against terrorism, a proposal that is likely to outrage many who thought the era of American-sponsored torture was over.

"I will trust the judgment of our military to determine what is torture and what is not torture," Cain said. Asked about waterboarding in particular, he replied, "I would return to that policy. I don't see it as torture, I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique." [HuffPost: Politics]

(To again digress: I have to comment on that term. My reply to Cain is that "enhanced interrogation technique" was an abominable euphemism coined by the Bush administration simply to call torture by some other name. Politicians know very well the power of words, the power of a name, that what you call something matters. When the United States was supporting anti-government fighters in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration, they were "freedom fighters." Whether people fighting against their government are "freedom fighters" or "rebels" simply depends on whether our government views them as on our side or not.)

I wish I could figure out why advocating cruel things like waterboarding and capital punishment seems to correlate with holding a number of other views. Is it a matter of very general personality type or world view? In an earlier post I mentioned a student who called himself a libertarian and was defending property rights to the degree that he favored punishing a man who stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. Extreme conservatives like that--in my view, at least--have no humanity, no empathy, or no imagination that would enable them to see themselves in the other person's shoes.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Is the Stock Market Stacked Against the Small Investor?

It's often said that only big investors can make money in the stock market, and that things are stacked against the little guy, the small investor.

While I don't think the first part of that is true, the second part is. More is possible for you if you are a big investor. Hedge funds and some mutual funds are only open to people who have a large sum to invest, such as a million dollars.

A stark example, which has stuck in my mind for many years: When Apple Computer was first going public--having its IPO (initial public offering of stock), in the jargon—I called my stockbroker and said I wanted to invest in it. He explained to me that he was allotted only a certain amount of stock that he could sell, and, he said, "It's going to my big customers—and I mean big, million-dollar accounts." The example really needs no comment.

Many fees, such as brokerage fees or account maintenance fees, are flat fees so that they are proportionately less (per share, for example, in the case of brokerage fees) for larger transactions or larger accounts.

Not to mention that, once you get into the really, really big money, really big investors can own a large enough proportion of a company's stock that they can influence the running of the company by getting themselves or their own candidates on the board of directors. Then, presumably, they look after their own interests, whatever they may perceive those interests to be.

And when it comes to taxes on their income, again the wealthy have an advantage. A lot of tax-advantaged investments, such as municipal bonds, are most beneficial for wealthy investors. And the very wealthy can get better tax advice and guidance by hiring very savvy tax attorneys, and thus they can largely or entirely avoid paying income tax.

Someone once said that it's easy to make a lot of money and hard to make a little money. I heard that a long time ago and I keep realizing, more and more, how true that is. But usually you need money to make money.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Evil Corporations, or Slacker Workers?

As of the middle of this year, corporate America was doing quite well. According to Brian Rogers, Chairman of the investment firm T. Rowe Price, America's corporations had earnings double those of a year earlier; they were rolling in cash; and they were buying back their own stock and increasing dividends—all signs that business was very good and these companies were quite profitable.

Yet the little American is not doing well. As everyone knows, we have a high rate of unemployment. People are struggling and are losing their homes. Poverty is at an all-time high rate. Food banks haven't got enough food on their shelves to feed all of the hungry.

So one has to think about the wide discrepancy between the health of corporate America and the financial well-being of millions of everyday American families. Or ask, If these companies have been doing well, why aren't they hiring back all the workers that they laid off during the recession?

Just to use a little logic, those companies evidently are getting along okay with fewer workers, or, as they might put it, with a leaner work force.

We could look at this in two ways. First, maybe the workers who are still there are being worked harder--and I am sure this is the case in some and perhaps many instances. In the terms of what would now be only a metaphor, the plant managers are running the mill (or assembly line) very fast and the workers are scrambling to keep up to where they are pretty much exhausting themselves.

This is doubtless true in some cases. Figures for productivity are up, meaning that there is indeed more output per worker. Workers are working harder.

On the other hand, there have been studies that show that the average American worker (in an office) is actively working only about half the time. Again to use an old metaphor, he or she spends too much time gossiping around the water cooler. In more modern terms, people sit at their desks making personal calls, surfing the Internet, texting, and so forth. We all know this is true, and 99.99% of workers have been guilty of this.

So it's true that more work could be gotten out of workers. I'd say that maybe in a few instances, the bosses have become evil slave drivers, cracking a whip over the poor gangs of workers. And workers in many sorts of jobs seldom or never would have an opportunity to goof off. But in other cases there was indeed some slack that could be squeezed out, and employers are merely getting more of a full day's work from their employees, and it's hard to blame them for that. It would not be realistic to expect that they are going to hire back workers if they have found that they simply don't need them.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The Penn State Scandal

Those who follow the news in the US surely have heard the ongoing news story concerning Penn State. A subordinate football coach named Sandusky is accused of sexually molesting at least eight boys; and, seemingly more important, Penn State's legendary head football coach, Joe Paterno, allegedly was told of this and did not make any report to law-enforcement authorities.

So—to paraphrase a sex-abuse lawyer in Minneapolis who commented on this case—it's a matter of a hierarchical structure trying to protect itself by silence, reminiscent of the sex-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. The news of the abuse gets reported up and/or down the hierarchy but not to the authorities; and the members of the hierarchy conspire among themselves to maintain silence. (To some, the silence may be the most reprehensible part.)

Were this is to be solely a matter of sports news, simply involving football coaches, it would not be within my purview. However, Penn State is my alma mater—it's one of several schools from which I have a degree—so I do have some thoughts about the affair.

I know that at Penn State football is a big deal. And Joe Paterno, because he has been a very successful coach, is viewed as a hero at Penn State. He's pretty much idolized. He has been at Penn State for 62 years, I believe, so he was there even way back when I was a very young Penn State undergrad—and that's how I originally knew the name.

So even though he is not the one accused of doing the molesting, he seems to be the bigger object of attention. He is a bigger fish, so to speak, and he seems to be guilty of silence which, according to the lawyer quoted above, could be criminal.

So he is under a cloud but he still receives a great deal of support. It's pretty certain he won't be criminally prosecuted, and it also seems that, rather than having to resign immediately, he may be allowed to coach "four more games" as he has requested to do.

I have no predisposition either to be in this man's corner nor the opposite. However, when even the president of Penn State may be pressured to resign, I'd say that Joe Paterno is definitely being given very special treatment.

Update, November 10, 2011
The news today was that Paterno was fired yesterday. Students at Penn State rioted in protest. Given that, as I said, Paterno was virtually idolized, that's not so surprising. On the other hand, the sentiments being expressed on Twitter or Facebook mainly seem to condemn Paterno and others at Penn State as complicitous in the sex abuse, and I'd agree with that view.

Update, November 16, 2011
The Penn State matter continues in the news. To my mind news stories so often go on and on, because, I think, the news media like to milk a story for all it's worth.
With two words, "Penn State," the story is a cover story on People magazine. As an alumnus I have to say that I'm starting to be sad and even a bit distressed that those two words, "Penn State," seem to have become synonymous with "sex abuse scandal" and "coverup." I am glad that I am past my working career so that I do not have to submit resumes with "Penn State" on them as my educational background. The very name of the school has acquired those connotations and it's going to be a long time before Penn State can hold its head high again.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Holiday Seasons Keep Getting Longer

A couple of days ago I noticed that there were suddenly a great many programs on TV about veterans and war. I wondered what was going on and then it occurred to me, "Veterans Day." But Veterans Day at the time was still six days off.

So evidently there is now a Veterans Day "season," shall we say, that lasts about a week.

Well, every holiday seems to have evolved into a whole season. Halloween--to judge from when you start to see decorations on homes and elsewhere, and horror movies being shown on TV--now lasts for the whole month of October.

This trend isn't anything new; it's been going on for many years. The Christmas season--defined as when businesses and institutions put up Christmas decorations, you begin hearing Christmas music, and you start seeing and hearing advertising for "holiday" and Christmas gift "ideas"—has been getting earlier and earlier for a very long time.

One of the reasons for this trend has to be because for marketers, Christmas--or any other season for which they can sell you something, be it Halloween costumes, home decorations tied to the season, gifts, etc.--is profitable, so of course they'd like to see the season last as long as possible. The more days when they can sell you their merchandise, the more profit for them. (That's simple and indisputable; when we hear forecasts for Christmas sales, they always take into account how long the Christmas selling season is, that is, the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.) Once upon a time, the Christmas season was said to start right after Thanksgiving. Now it's the beginning of November. It's gotten to where it can't get any earlier because it's bumped right into Halloween. But maybe I should not suppose that two holidays can't overlap; if they can, then the trend for the Christmas season to begin earlier and earlier might be able to go on. If the fact that a couple of holidays come in between doesn't matter, one day we'll see the Christmas stuff start right after the Fourth of July.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

How to Manage Your Credit Card and Maintain a High Credit Score

In a departure for this blog, I am going to offer some advice on management of personal finances. (In case your reaction to that is to wonder who I am to offer advice on that topic, well, besides being a general know-everything maven, I have worked for one of the credit-reporting bureaus and so I know what the criteria are that are used to evaluate your creditworthiness. Plus, I happen to have an enviable credit score myself.)

First, know at least roughly what the current balance is on your credit card account. It's easy to keep charging away and not know how big of a balance you're racking up. Depending on your credit card company, you may be able to check your account balance online or by sending a text-message request via your cell phone. Do this before you make a purchase that you'll later regret.

If you know how much in charges you already have on this month's account, you can try to keep your balance to an amount you can comfortably pay off. Many people have advised that it's best to pay off your credit card balance each month. That way, of course, you avoid finance charges.

People who don't pay the full balance on their accounts often find themselves locked into a cycle of paying only the minimum amount due each month, which covers little more than the finance charge due, and thus the balance gets paid off only very slowly. And that's only if you don't make any further charges. If you continue to charge, you have an ongoing balance on which you're paying finance charges—and you've gotten yourself into a cycle that's hard to get out of. You can even find yourself owing more just in finance charges than you can afford. It's a very deadly trap to fall into.

By the way, the government has actually done credit-card holders a favor by raising the minimum monthly payment due. That may sound contradictory, but the higher payment helps ensure that you're making a dent in that balance, rather than paying a monthly amount that only covers your finance charges and thus having pretty much a perpetual balance that would not get paid off in years-- even without any new charges.

To help keep your credit card account balance to what you can pay off, try deferring some purchases or other expenses charged to your credit card to the next month's billing cycle. That way you'll have much longer to pay for that new charge--maybe six or seven weeks, and hopefully you'll have income coming in all that time, giving you money to pay for that new purchase when the bill does come. To defer that purchase probably will not be difficult if your credit card billing cycle will be ending in a few days. If you don't know the "closing date" on your account, just call the credit card company and ask.

One secret to having a good credit score is to use your credit and pay off all your debts on time—but also to have more credit that you use. An evaluation of your creditworthiness looks at what's called "aggregate credit." This means the total of your available credit including your credit cards, charge accounts, and any line of credit such as a home-equity line of credit. It's good to have an aggregate credit amount of $20,000, $30,000 or even $50,000. So it's good to have two or three credit cards. There may be times when you want to use that second credit card: it can be a way to avoid putting too much on your main card. Use that "second" card for one or more charges you will be able to pay for in full when the bill comes due, and you'll avoid increasing the balance on the other card that you're paying finance charges on. Plus, many credit cards must be used occasionally or they'll be canceled.

On the other hand, don't accumulate a large number of credit accounts. Although it's good to have a large aggregate credit number, in fact every time you open a new charge account, that is considered an "inquiry" to your account--and a large number of inquiries actually hurts your creditworthiness. So, when you are in a store and they try to get you to take out their own credit card, say No. I always do that, and I believe that's one way I've maintained a high credit score.

Update, November 10, 2011
A couple of edits have been made to this posting since it was originally posted, but only additions, not corrections.

Some credit card issuers offer a "paydown calculator" on their web sites. (I know that mine does, and possibly they all do.) This lets you see how long it would take to pay off your balance with a certain assumed monthly payment amount, and you can look at at least three such scenarios. This might be helpful to those who carry a balance on their credit card accounts.

I'd welcome comments from anyone who has found this posting to be helpful or interesting.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Is Religion Schizophrenic?

Regular readers of this blog know that I have frequently been critical of organized religion and blame it for much of the conflict that mankind has endured throughout history: persecution, terrorism, war.

I recently learned of a so-called "peace camp," which brings together children of different religions so that they can get to know one another and learn about one another's religion. One premise is that Christians are very ignorant of Islam, Muslims are very ignorant of Christianity, and so forth. So the campers visit various houses of worship, learn about holidays and, presumably, religious texts and beliefs.

With such knowledge comes the discovery that the various religions have more in common than one might realize: all advocate peace, love, friendship, tolerance, and helping your fellow man.

The man who founded the camp says that when he looks at television, all he sees is religion depicted as motivating bombings. He wanted to counter that image. I'm sure he has a valid point.

But which is the correct view of religion? I don't want to say that either idea is totally false, even though they seem to be diametrically opposite. Well, how about this thought? Maybe religion is schizophrenic; you know, having a split personality, so that it can be both.

Maybe it depends on who is in charge, so to speak. Evidently the Koran both preaches love and tolerance, and also can be interpreted to favor violent strife against non-believers. The Judeo-Christian tradition may be similarly schizophrenic. Jesus (as I understand) advocated love, peace, forgiveness, helping the poor and disadvantaged; but the Old Testament which had been the basis for the Judaism out of which Christianity arose repeatedly contains violent images and the Old Testament god is a wrathful god who is always smiting his enemies.

Maybe it's all "in there," so to speak. Maybe it depends on what part of the text is being stressed or what a particular religious leader picks out to emphasize when he or she preaches. Sort of, who is in power right now.

To close with a little anecdote: I am reminded of a little episode from a drama I saw on TV some years ago, about a Jewish family of piano manufacturers, living in Germany in the 1930s just as the Nazis were coming to power. To reports of what was happening to the Jews, the wife says, "But how can this be happening? This is the country of Goethe, Lessing, Beethoven"--the idea being that those people represented enlightenment and tolerance.

Her husband replied, "Yes, but unfortunately they're not in power right now."

Copyright © 2011 Richard Stein

To-Do over Ben and Jerry's

There was a certain fracus about Ben and Jerry's (the ice cream company in Vermont) bringing out a new flavor called "Shweddy Balls." Some stores have refused to carry it; an organization of women--conservative women, as one might surmise-- has vowed to boycott Ben and Jerry's. And there was an online article about Ben and Jerry's "lewd" new flavor name.

So I have to weigh in with what I think. Ben and Jerry's, if they have any clue as to how vocal the conservative elements in America are, and how anti-sex they can be as well, certainly should have known that there would be some negative reaction. And assuming they did--and one almost has to ask, How could they not?--they deserve some credit for being daring and not risk-averse as so many businesses are. Though maybe their philosophy is like what Oscar Wilde once said: The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. So they are reaping lots of free publicity.

The sad truth is that America is pretty puritanical when it comes to sex. Some years ago I saw a debate on TV between two women, one conservative and one liberal. I think the topic was the banning of books. The woman from the conservative side was wearing a dress that buttoned high up to the neck. That her dress was not revealing was--well, revealing.

A few years ago, in Europe (I think it was in Vienna), I saw a advertisement on a sidewalk kiosk that showed an image of a couple of bare-breasted women, similar to those in a Gauguin painting. You don't--and wouldn't--see something like that in America. We're just too anti-sex and the-human-body-is-dirty-and-sinful in this country.

Have I bought the ice cream in question? No, but I might, depending on what it actually is. Ben and Jerry's makes yummy ice cream. But it's "super-premium" ice cream, high in fat content--and not for the weight-conscious or those who try to eat healthy, like me.

Update, December 24, 2011
With a little bit more to say about America's sexual puritanism I would make a new posting; but here are just two more examples:
1) When TV shows even an image (e.g. a painting or a statue--and note, NOT the real thing) of female breasts or buttocks, evidently the image has to be blurred out.
2) I learned that a Roman cup from around the time of the birth of Christ was not even allowed to be brought into the country in 1953 because it shows two pairs of male lovers.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Not Conservatives but Libertarians (Who Don't Believe in Paying Tax)

In an earlier blog posting, I talked about conservatives who believe that they should not have to pay any taxes. I confess to an error: people who believe that should be called libertarians. I am going to try to be fair in presenting their political philosophy as regards taxation.

The argument goes like this: A person owns his labor, because it is a part of his person, and he owns his person.

Therefore he owns the fruits of his labor, that is, his wealth. And they believe that a man's right of possession of his wealth is so absolute that the government does not have the right to confiscate it.

First of all, the US Constitution says that the government shall not seize a man's property without due process of law--and the qualification, in italics, is very important.

And, as far back in human history as the ancient Egyptians, rulers and governments of every type have levied taxes. In the early days of the United States, a Supreme Court decision established the right of the government to assess taxes to pay for high schools. Also for a very long time, there have been those who resisted this or that particular tax. Look at the various "tax rebellions" in American history, as an example.

However, I would like to ask the folks who argue against taxes how they expect the fire department to be paid for, or the police, or the army, or the building of roads.

I saw a very interesting program on TV. It seems that a Harvard law professor had been speaking before a very large audience of students on various political philosophies, including Libertarianism in, presumably, a modern incarnation. He then asked three students who identified as libertarians to come forward and deal with a few questions.

One of the questions was, Should a man be prosecuted for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family? At least one of the students said Yes, maintaining that the man's theft violated another man's property rights, so he should be punished. Apparently, to this man, the right of property is so absolute that there can be no mitigating circumstances. I can't help but be reminded of 19th-century (or maybe 18th-century) England, where the thief in question would definitely have gone to prison. Personally, I have to say, "That is not a nice young man. He has no humanity."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard

When Personal Is Really Nothing of the Sort

It all started more than 60 years ago, when television was beginning to enter a lot of American homes. The host of the show would break from the regular show content, turn to face the camera, hold up a pack of cigarettes, and start to extol the advantages of that particular brand of cigarettes (yes, they used to have cigarette commercials on TV, and yes, rather than "breaking" to have a well-demarcated commercial that was shot on another set, the host—say, Arthur Godfrey, for anyone old enough to remember him-- performed the commercial.

The brilliant idea of the people who made TV—or the sponsors who paid for it—was to make the commercial message "personal" by having it seem that the host was speaking directly and specially to you.

By now we are so used to these devices that we don't give them any thought. If we did, we'd find them pretty ridiculous. The other day I saw a commercial for a cough remedy. A guy in bed is talking to the camera to complain that the over-the-counter medication he took didn't help his cold symptoms. Who is he talking to? Me? The cameraman? Why doesn't he say, "Hey, who are you and what are you doing in my bedroom?" Is he used to strange people in his bedroom?

And a voice explains that what he took doesn't work for coughs. Hey, who the hell is that? Not only, presumably, yet another person in the guy's bedroom—since whoever owns that voice heard what the guy said—but someone we can't see. Why doesn't the guy in bed say, "Whoa, now I've got invisible people in my bedroom!"

One thing I hate, and don't quite grasp the reason for: At some point TV "spokespersons" who do commercials began the practice of talking for a good minute or two and only then saying, "Hi, I'm Ann Hoggis Torde." Why don't they start out saying Hi and introducing themselves?

Written things are personalized to or for us, also, in ways we don't give much thought to. It's been part of technology for a long time that not only can form letters addressed to us have our names and addresses in the same type as the rest of the letter (this is a feature called "mail merge" and goes back to the early days of word processing and even before, when there started to be sophisticated typewriters that could read name-and-address records from a paper tape—if I'm remembering this stuff correctly). A similar technology lets catalogs be printed with your address, and those form letters, again, have your first name in the middle, so that, supposedly, you feel they're written personally and especially to you. Of course we don't believe that at all, but maybe when these things were first used, the recipients really believed that.

Recently I joined a web site (for which you have to pay, or subscribe) that gives you ratings of home remodeling businesses, plumbers, professional services, and so forth. Then I got a mailing from them that says, "Welcome to A___ L__, we're ridiculously happy to have you." Not just happy, but "ridiculously" happy. Wow, they must think I'm really special, I guess.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Some Roots of the Conservative Mindset in America

Norway may be the classic example of what at one time in America was called the welfare state. The government provides for many human needs, including health care; and in turn, taxes are high.

A majority of the people in Norway—of course not everybody—think it's a good system and are happy with it.

This would never fly in America. I even think that if Social Security were up for a vote in our Congress right now, it would not pass.

There is a lot of anti-government feeling in America and even a conviction that the government cannot do things well because it is too bureaucratic and wasteful of taxpayers' money. Conservatives would like many things left to private enterprise and, for example, would like to privatize Social Security.

Okay, maybe you know all this. Let's look at sort of a history of ideas in America for a bit. I've blamed Ronald Reagan for boosting the idea that big government is a bad thing. But he didn't originate that way of thinking, it's a result of the history of this country. For a long time there's been an ethos in America that esteems personal independence and self-reliance. It's the vision of the pioneer on the frontier who might have had no one around to aid him. Maybe even the Army or Cavalry was not available, most of the time, to help him defend himself against hostile Indians.

So the noble American pioneer is the very picture of self-reliance. He does it all himself, building his house, plowing his fields, making most of what he needs, etc.

But this figure is pretty much obsolete. And why should not needing the government mean despising the government and saying that the government should not aid that guy over there? I'm not sure, but there seems to be a strong idea of "What I need and want (or don't want) should be okay for you, too."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

A Word for Conservatives

Ronald Reagan, when he was running for president, did a pretty good job of convincing a lot of Americans that "government is the problem," and we'd all be better off with less government regulation, smaller government bureaucracy, and so on. A lot of people believed what he said, and still, some 30 years later, it's common to hear people say that government is bad.

To these people I say, if you don't like government, let me make a suggestion for you. Move to Mississippi, where there are very low taxes. Also--just coincidentally--they have the worst education, the lowest literacy, the lowest life expectancy, the greatest rate of obesity. They rank at the bottom of almost every list. All because of very low government spending--which correlates with the low taxes they have.

At the other extreme might be a country like Norway, where taxes are very high but the government provides nearly everything everyone could want, pretty much cradle-to-grave.

Maybe, my imaginary anti-government friends, once you've abolished the government, you might find you need to try to get together with your neighbors to arrange for fires to be put out, criminals to be caught, roads to be built, traffic lights and stop signs to be put up--oh, and how about trying to ensure the safety of the food you eat, the medicines you take. . .

Sure, you could form some kind of association with your neighbors to do these things--but then you'd have a government!

By the way, I posted this (in pretty much these words) as a comment on an AOL/Daily Finance article on the Republican candidates--and a reply to my comment called me a "commie." Nice, reasonable refutation of my ideas.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Reading HuffPost: How Any Liberal and/or Gay Can Get Very Disheartened

I mentioned in an earlier posting that I have been spending time reading articles on AOL/HuffPost, reading other readers' comments, writing my own comments and replying to other comments.

I think I spend too much time doing this and I am resolving to stop doing it, not because of the time I'm spending but because it's too discouraging to read what other people think and say.

For one thing, there are so many conservatives who want to bash Obama and the "libs" (or, one time, "libbs"). They demonstrate the stereotypes and animosity they hold. Of course they are entitled to their opinion, and I must recognize that there are people out there—and even a great many people—who do not or would not agree with some of my ideas. But it's looking like America is getting to be very polarized; there could almost be another civil war, I sometimes think.

Secondly, any time there is an article relating in any way to homosexuality (and HuffPost has a subsection called "Gay Voices"), all the homophobes come out of the woodwork. They are quick to state their opinion that homosexuality is wrong, it's immoral, it's a sin (their Bible tells them that). One woman said thinking about it "makes her skin crawl."

It's a disease, a disorder, it's sick, it's unnatural, it's evil. We've heard all this before. We've been hearing it for many years. And all this anti-gay prejudice is one reason why being gay is still difficult (even though, supposedly, things have gotten better in the last 50 years), and why there is a much higher rate of suicide among gay teens than for non-gay young people in the same age group.

And people will chime in with their disbelief about climate change and their antipathy to illegal immigrants (as I said elsewhere, this usually boils down to "we hate Mexicans").

All in all, I see so much bigotry, ignorance, close-mindedness, belief in misconceptions and discredited ideas. (It is a sad characteristic of human beings that they are capable of believing things that are not so.) And, as I have said before, the rhetoric of the Right often includes asserting things which they even know to be incorrect. As an example, a Right-wing anti-abortion group was actually slapped with a lawsuit for incorrectly asserting that "Obamacare" (as they delight in calling it) includes taxpayer funding of abortion.

I wrote in another blog posting about my overall, philosophical view of humanity and its prospects. I think I have become more pessimistic: I don't think we're much further along than the days when people who were nonconforming or in some way odd were burned as witches.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Immigration Laws and Tomatoes in Alabama

We hear a lot about "immigration reform" in the US. As the term has been used by the White House, it has typically carried with it some sort of proposal as to how illegal immigrants currently in the US could gain legal status and some form of amnesty.

States, however, have been passing harsh anti-immigrant laws which target Spanish-speaking immigrants mainly from Mexico and Central American countries.

First we had one from Arizona. Alabama has an anti-immigrant law that recently went into effect.

I have heard some of the rhetoric from groups like the Minutemen who have advocated for these laws. They usually boil down to "We don't like Mexicans."

There have been periodic, recurrent waves of anti-immigrant sentiment (maybe I ought to say "fever") in the US. At one point there was huge anti-Chinese sentiment and laws were passed barring Chinese immigration. Chinese men who had entered the US were unable to bring their wives to this country until the law was repealed.

It's ironic that everyone seems to forget that, unless he happens to be a Native American, he and all of us stem from immigrants. So it's a matter of, once you are in, pull up the ladder so no one else can come in.

In the case of Alabama, it's becoming clear that the law is having some bad and probably unforeseen consequences. Without immigrant agricultural workers Alabama's tomato farmers haven't got the manpower to harvest their crops and tomatoes are too ripe on the vine to successfully ship, or they're falling to the ground and rotting. I'm not sure what percentage of Alabama's gross state product comes from raising tomatoes, but Alabama may have shot itself in the foot.

Frankly, if legislation motivated by bigotry, ignorance, short-sightedness, etc., backfires, I find it hard to be sympathetic.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The ABC's of Street Names and Car Names

There are a number of famous streets with names beginning with "B": Bourbon Street and Basin Street in New Orleans; Beale Street in Memphis (famous for bluegrass music, I believe); Broadway in New York City. And probably a few I can't think of at the moment.

When it comes to cars, Chevrolet has favored names beginning with "C": Corvette, Camaro, Corvair, Chevette, Cavalier, Cobalt, Caprice, Chevy II (several of those are forgotten models and probably justly so).

Ford Motor Company favors "E" for its SUVs: Explorer, Expedition, Escape, Edge. There was another one; was it Endeavor?

And many of Ford's sedan model names have begun with "F": Focus, Fiesta, Fusion. And long ago there were the Falcon and the Fairlane. Maybe Ford likes F-names because of the alliteration with "Ford." (Ford's Mercury division has built the Mercury Marquis, Mercury Mariner, Mystique, and Marauder--again, all alliterative names.)

And Ford's pickup trucks are F-150 and F-250, but maybe the "F" is just supposed to suggest "Ford." Since the initial is pronounced "eff" and therefore, when spoken, begins with a vowel, I can't say that that's alliteration.

On the other hand, there's a phenomenon recognized by scientists called "phonetic symbolism." This means that some words convey or connote something just by their sound. I can't say what words starting with "C" or "F" might connote, but it's easy to believe that the manufacturer wants names with certain sounds to be associated with the brand identity that they try so hard to build.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Modern Life Compared with Early Humans'

We often hear about the stresses of modern life, and how they lead to heart attacks and so forth. So I decided to give a little thought to what stresses or worries are present in modern life, and what stresses our early human ancestors had to cope with.

First, early humans had these risks to life and limb present in their world:

• Being made ill or killed by disease
• Being killed or maimed in war with other tribes
• Being killed or maimed by wild animals
• Fear of hunger or starvation if the hunt or the crop failed
  

Now let's look at modern, western life.

• Despite medical advances, we are still subject to diseases, many of which (cancer, heart disease, etc.) can kill us.
  
• We still have wars, and certainly, worldwide, thousands are still killed in wars each year.

So two of the four in the first list are still present, even after all these hundreds of thousands of years of human existence.

Now--in contrast to our ancestors--we are subject to little risk to life and limb from wild animals. (The risk definitely still exists for people in some parts of the earth.) But, for too many, modern life has added some new hazards such as being killed in an auto accident or in a shooting (hopefully the odds of dying due to being shot by some civilian's gun are not large).

As to the last item in the first list: in modern, western countries, fewer people rely on their own hunting or even farming for their sustenance, so they may not worry about starvation. (But people who do produce their own sustenance are still at some risk, and it's only 150 years ago that large numbers in Ireland died due to the massive failure of the potato crop.)

But, to the two items in my second bulleted list, we need to add some worries which, if not usually fatal, certainly add to the stresses that we moderns often live with:

• Financial worries such as lack of money due to unemployment.
• Worries about mortgage foreclosure, which can mean loss of one's home.

So I think I'd say that modern life still has some of the same stresses that humanity has faced for millennia--plus some worries that are part of the modern age and that our ancestors did not face. And we work harder. I read one time that the Bushmen in Africa--a hunter-gatherer society--spend about fifty percent of their time in finding their food, and the other fifty percent sitting around telling stories!

So, are we more or less stressed than our ancestors very long ago? It may be a wash. I somehow tend to think that the worries of modern life are more insidious.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Is This Progress?

This is about three instances of "progress" recently made in our rapidly evolving world—that don't look like progress to me at all.

Writing was invented a hundred years or so before 3000 BC. It took another thousand or two thousand years before someone had the clever idea to somehow mark where one word ended and another began, and/or where one sentence ended and another began. Before that, everything was run together. With the new invention of the separations, writing became easier to read.

Now, interestingly, in this age of the Internet we are back to where we were three or four thousand years ago. Web site addresses (URLs), email addresses, and screen names often run words together. This occasionally makes for interesting possibilities to misread, but it almost always means we're having to learn to read writing that once again doesn't use spaces—thus going back thousands of years in the history of writing.

I remember when I was very young. During World War II no cars were being manufactured, so shortly after the war my family still owned a pre-war car, a LaSalle. To start that car, you pressed a button. Then at some point, a car's starter was activated by turning the key. That seemed like a good advance. Now, however, cars once again are "featuring" a button to start them. I don't see that this is an advance and can't see a reason for this—other than to imitate the hybrid cars which have a start button.

Another interesting trend is that now a lot of men's underwear is made without flies.
Frankly, I think flies are a good thing. Maybe I need not, or should not, go into detail on this one. I'll just call it another instance of very dubious "progress."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Hank Williams, Jr., Gets in Trouble

It seems this guy called Hank Williams, Jr., has gotten himself in trouble for something he said and in fact lost his gig singing before football games or something like that.

Let me say at the outset that I have no bias in this man's favor. I hate country music--so naturally I never listen to it, and at the most I might sometimes know that Such-and-such is a country singer. In this case I didn't even know who this guy was and had to go look him up in Wikipedia. (Turns out I am familiar with some of the songs that his father, Hank Williams, Sr., wrote and which might get sung by Junior.)

Anyway, I have to say that I think that he has been misunderstood. He said that for John Boehner (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives) and Barack Obama to get together to talk—which in fact they did—would be like Hitler and Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister) getting together.

This is not, as was claimed, comparing Obama to Hitler. What was meant was that the relationship between Obama and Boehner is like the relationship between Hitler and Netanyahu (if they ever were anywhere near one another) in that they constitute a pair of adversaries. That is, both pairs similarly are adversaries. (People who have taken the SAT tests are familiar with this sort of "analogy," with this one being able to be paraphrased as "Obama is to Boehner as Hitler is to Netanyahu.)

I've seen in the past this kind of misunderstanding of something someone has said, and I think it's deliberate. I suspect it's someone on TV, maybe someone on Fox News who goes around gleefully saying "So-and-so said such-and such": "Hank Williams, Jr. compared Obama to Hitler!" This is not reporting, it's school-child tattling, and just as malicious. (I know, Williams said this on Fox, but who is responsible for quoting him and/or commenting on what he said and (mis)representing his intention?)

Again, what he said is not saying Obama is like Hitler, it's a comment only on the unlikeliness of a pair such as Obama and Boehner getting together to talk. Now, is the general American public smart enough to grasp this, or is it going to fall victim to the sensationalism of our media?

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein