Rock Paper Scissors

Many years ago (either thousands or millions or something like that) the only known method of food preparation commonly put into practice around the globe was basically one of two methods:

1) Whack or stab something until it died and put it in your mouth, or,

B) Pull something that doesn't appear poisonous out of the ground and put it in your mouth.

Over time, people (and by people I'm guessing women) figured out that if you use the fire that men invented you could transform raw food materials into something that was actually pleasurable to consume. Before long, some genius Neolithic chemist invented leavened bread. Bam!! The world was now a place full of culinary concoctions that would baffle the human imagination. Ten minutes later, an even greater genius figured out how to ferment it. The world had its first real vice.

The Greeks (or Spartans) first started enjoying the squishing of grapes through their toes and the taste of wine around 4500BC. The Persians first started brewing beer (good beer, not like Coors) somewhere around 3500 BC. By the middle ages, when most of Europe had decided it was fashionable to live in huge cities with no sanitation systems, and basically advanced to an unlivable cesspool, fermented beverages had become pretty much the only liquid someone could consume without it killing them. By about 1100, monks in Ireland and Scotland figured out how to produce whiskey, and at the same time destroy any chance of either culture leveling up past bar-room drunk. Fast forward a few hundred years and the vice that was booze was pretty much the favored libation in some form or another in every household, palace, mud hut, or wigwam around the globe.

When Europeans gallantly discovered the already discovered and inhabited lands of North America, the Indians not from India that lived there knew that, due to a vast technological delta in weaponry, there was only one shot at killing off the English squatters: They introduced them to tobacco. (That whole peace pipe thing was just a joke, Powhatan was trying to give John Smith cancer.) Smoking tobacco was an instant success in European court and became the overnight designer drug of the 1700s. It was so popular that even in the 1950's one would not find it uncommon to come across advertisements touting doctor recommended cigarettes.

Now, this may not be news to a few of people, but all of these things have something in common: They are bad for you and they are all a drug. We all know they are bad for you depending on how much you consume, blah blah blah. Alcohol was temporarily and laughing sort of halted in America after the Volstead Act of 1919, but after a few years, and backed by overwhelming popular demand, was back on the menu. The people had spoken; we like our vices, and that's final.

But something is missing from this list. Sneaking along in hit or miss popular use since about 2500BC was a little fast growing plant called cannabis. Various cultures from China to South America and everywhere in between had been smoking this stuff, either connected with some sort of ritual to celebrate something cool no one could remember, or just as an inspiration for Thracian Taco Bell throughout most of recorded history. And like the other drugs I've already mentioned, it's...brace yourself...bad for you. That's why it's illegal. Wait, what?

Why is Mary Jane illegal while booze, smokes, bacon fat, Twinkies, and Woopi Goldberg are not? It must be worse. Yeah that's it. If you smoke cigarettes you could get cancer, but if you smoke pot you'll grow a third eye in your ass (think about that...and how bad that would really, really be). Nope, that's not it. It's not as bad for you as too much sugar. Maybe it leads to violence and crime. We wouldn't want that on the streets right? Oh wait, we already have booze. The truth is that Marijuana is not illegal for any real moral or health reason. It's illegal because of Nylon.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 made possession and transfer of cannabis illegal. The act was heavily supported by the newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was in bed with Andrew Mellon (Secretary of the Treasury and richest man in the world), and the Du Pont Family. Mellon was heavily invested in the Du Pont's new synthetic fiber, Nylon, and Hearst, in addition to newspapers, was a timber mogul. Their collective target was the hemp plant, which produces excellent natural fibers, is renewable, and grows faster than timber. But no one in their right mind is going to pass a law against super-paper. They needed to make America afraid of something...and fast.

Hearst's newspapers began running many articles vilifying cannabis as a scourge on society and specifically emphasized marijuana’s connection to violent crime. Yeah, they actually managed to convince the general public that a drug that could sedate Genghis Khan was leading people to rape, murder and attack midgets. Popular opinion swayed...check, congressman lobbied, check, point, set, match. Marijuana is evil, it will kill us all. So, grab your pitchforks, believe everything you read, run to the polls. The drug and it's bitch of sister, hemp, were duly criminalized so all the children would be safe from sleepy-eyed pot heads looking for a snack.

In the end Hearst was kind of right, he just didn't know it. Marijuana actually is connected to violent crime. It started when Hearst and his fiber-rich colleagues managed to criminalize it, and the war on drugs became mainstream news...which Hearst could report in his newspapers. Since 1937, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and billions of dollars have been wasted in and against the trafficking of one of the slightest threats to civilization in recorded history. The war on marijuana has to be the dumbest undertaking since Hadrian tried to keep the Romans out of Scotland by building a 3-foot wall.

Never doubt the power of the media to galvanize the sheep against the goats.

© Raymond Smith 2011

Did You Have the Fish?

The really hot news anchor lady looks at me dead in the eye during the 30 second news teaser that precedes my show about dueling barbers and says, “Is our air traffic control system truly safe?  Before you get on another plane; what you need to know at 10!”  It was just one of many reactions in the media and elsewhere that have popped up like some sort of spastic whack-a-mole to the recent reports of ATC employees neglecting their duties by either sleeping, or watching a movie, or doing needle point (or whatever ATC dudes do).  Be afraid, citizens!  Your thinking talking heads have spoken! Now: Everybody panic.

Okay, I get it.  Sensationalism sells news.  That’s not new, but a modicum of journalistic integrity wouldn’t be a complete disservice to the boob-tube adhesed proletariat.  Do the writers down at the local Baltimore station really believe that our nation’s air traffic control system is so fatally flawed that I am risk for even thinking of striding down the birth-canal of rapid transit that is the jet-way at my local terminal?  Of course they don’t think that, but they make a lot of people who believe the ATC system is populated by a collection of magic fairies think it’s true. 

The problem is that the going public doesn’t really just stop going.  That would actually make some sense in the realm of respect for causality.  Instead, the angry mob that still wants to be able to go from Upper Sandusky, OH to San Francisco for less money than a tank of gas for a Hummer H2 in 4 hours without the slightest of inconvenience (if only the Donner party were still alive to see us today) demands that anyone and everyone who was within 6 miles of the offending ATC facility be fired, drummed out of service, tarred and feathered, and drawn and quartered.  I think people should embrace a little perspective here.  Here we go.

Just last week, two Cleveland Center controllers who were working the graveyard shift were suspended for watching a DVD movie.  Granted, it’s dumb and they shouldn’t have been doing it.  A couple of weeks before that there were several incidents reported involving late-night tower controllers having been asleep at their posts.  Wrong? Yeah…cataclysmic?  Hardly.  Everyone and their brother jumped up and vilified these people for dozing off at nearly 3 a.m. at a tower where no planes were doing anything…at all…for hours.  So who is it that’s crying foul?

I would venture a guess that at least 90 percent of my dear friends on Facebook have fallen asleep at their desk (or work-equivalent for those who are fortunate enough not to have to have a desk) at least once in their career.  I know that most of them have spent time during their duty cycle playing a game on their computer, watching videos of people falling off skateboards, or any hundred of a thousand different interweb time-wasters.  But, oh, that’s right, that’s not a big deal because these guys hold the lives of thousands of people in their hands with each deft motion of their lips at that microphone.  Actually…not so much.

The VAST majority of airports in this and every other country do not have a control tower.    Of the ones that do, there are hundreds of commercial airports, supporting big fat airplanes that shut down their towers at night.  And get a load of this:  There are procedures that every pilot knows for landing at uncontrolled (non-towered) airports.   What?  How can it be possible for an airplane to land on a runway, all by itself, without being talked down like the Apollo 11 Moon lander?  Well, for starters, the pilot can see.  That helps.  Also he knows how to land a plane, definitely a bonus, oh…and check this out…this is the best part:  The pilot of an airliner has a gajillion dollars-worth of equipment on his plane to de-conflict him with other airplanes and help him land it all nice and smoothy-like!  In reality, it’s probably safer to just leave it to the pilots than involve the controllers.

As for the center controllers; do you even know what they do? They spend most of their time simply keeping IFR aircraft talking on the right frequencies.  Those planes they are controlling are in lanes and separated out by altitude blocks corresponding to direction of travel.  The planes are equipped with devices that broadcast their position to other airplanes (The equipment is required).  They have lights.  They are big.  They are shiny, the make big white streams of cloud behind them.   Oh, and did I mention pilots aren’t typically clinically blind?  Basically, it’s really hard at 35,000 feet to hit an airplane with another airplane.

I would never postulate that ATC controllers at centers and towers don’t provide a critical function for public safety.  It’s just not that big a deal if one of them loses focus for a bit in the wee hours of the morning.  Think about this; most of you will text while driving after reading this and still cast aspersions on decent ATC workers who lost their jobs for the same kind of thing most Americans do at work every day.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a report that’s due but there’s a video of a roller-skating pig over at The Chive.com I need to check out. 

Safe travels my friends…chances are…they will be.

© Raymond Smith 2011

Support the Family of a Fallen Hero

MSgt John Benner--Friend, husband, father, brother in arms--lost a long running battle with pancreatic cancer on 15 Feb 2011.  He is survived by his loving wife Debbie and children Zach and Lilly.  Please show your support and make a donation to help them in this extremely difficult time.

Saturn May Have Been Onto Something

What seems like 300 years ago when I met Big D, I was working construction and living in an apartment with my brother.  I made $8/hour and spent pretty much the bulk of that on rent, bills, pizza and beer.  Well, you could call it beer--Keystone light was the beer substitute I could afford in any measurable quantity.  When D and I got married and joined the service, we started out in a one-bedroom apartment.  We had her 14 year-old car that she had paid cash for with money she’d made waiting tables after high school.  (You’ll have to ask my sister what happened to my car)  Alexis’ crib was under the dinning area light next to the kitchen.  We had a bed, a card table, some handed down pots/pans, etc., and …well that’s about it.  Our disposable income after bills, gas, and food was about $30/month which we would use to rent the occasional movie.  And we were happier than a fat kid with a spoon and a jar of paste. (No offense Josh)

Now this isn’t intended to be some “up hill both ways” post.  We were also not alone in our situation…all our friends were in the same boat.  It’s just how it was; it was how you started out.  “Starting out” being the key phrase here.  You left home under whatever circumstances, maybe you had a little parental starter kit, but for the most part were on your own to scrape and scratch together a living.  The best thing about it was that there was nowhere to go but up, and having basically nothing was the greatest incentive in the world to work hard, get promoted, get educated, and make it better.  The current generation of young people starting out seems to have an entirely different set of expectations.

18-20 year-old kids today want it all, and they think they’re supposed to have it walking out the door.  The entitlement mentality issued to them by the boob-tube has them thinking that you are required to have a six-figure income, fancy car, omni-tron T.V., a bustling social ’lifestyle’, and all the responsibilities of a s 6-year-old hedge hog.  So, what follows is a few tips and pointers for all the young people just getting their first taste of that freedom from their evil parents they’ve been longing for.

• Do this first.  Walk around your parent’s house.  Notice I said ’parent’s’ house because as much as you may believe that everything around you is your personal field of green to use and abuse with impunity, I assure you it isn’t.   You will notice a lot of nice things.  There’s likely a nice T.V., nice furniture, a reasonably spacious accommodation,  cable entertainment and internet, etc.  Outside a few exceptions to the rule, all of this stuff did not well-up from a magic hole in the ground so your parent’s could pluck it like Manna from heaven when they were 22.  They accumulated all of it over the course of your life by working very hard for years and years and years.  And none of it is yours, so maybe you should start appreciating it.
• Assess your job skills.  You don’t have any.  In case you are wondering why the saint of an employer who agreed to take a risk by paying you to be a productive cog in his/her machine of his/her dreams isn’t willing to pay you $45/hour to take the trash out and mop floors, this is why.   The only reason they are paying you minimum wage is that they have to.  Your contributions to their evil corporate empire are likely to be worth about half of that…if you’re lucky.
• Understand that your social life is not the center of anyone’s world but yours.  It’s in everyone else’s way.  Your parents tolerate the narcissistic emotional mean attraction that is your life-consuming gregariousness with more patience than a Cambodian landmine waiting for a goat.  Your budding romance is annoying.
• Your high school education makes you smarter than a lot of people.  You already know this.  What you don’t know is the actual demographic--I will help you.  Your HS diploma is a certification that you are smarter than: A) Everyone who doesn’t have one. B) No one else.  Contrary to what you’ve allowed yourself to believe because your teacher lauded you for your last writing assignment, or by that debate you won with arguments you  Googled, you actually…truly…I mean really really really really…don’t know shit.
• Moving out of your parent’s house is not going to be a sweet release into nirvana.  (And yes, nirvana is a word that actually means something, it’s not just a bad band from the 90’s).  If you think the world of your parent’s making is ‘oppressing your free expression’ and ‘smothering you with rules’, wait until you get out of it and into your own world.  It will wrinkle your mind!   All that time you thought you were going to have for heavy petting and kanoodeling with your heart-throb romantic interest--yeah there isn’t going to be any.  If you’re going to college, you will be spending every waking second either working, studying, or taking care of your apartment so that your roommates don’t evict you.  And yes, you will have roommates because otherwise you will starve to death.  Oh, and roommates could give two shits about your social life either…they just want you to pay your bills and do your share of the house work. 
• Life experience:  You don’t have any of that either.  All that stuff your parent’s tell you that you think is unreasonable, stupid, and just because they just ‘don’t understand you’, is actually real knowledge that they picked up over many years by making choices--some good, some bad, but they learned something over the years and they’re trying to help you cut that corner.  There is only one thing your parent’s haven’t learned:  Trying to help you won’t work because you’re arrogant and all-knowing and insist upon learning hard lessons the hard way.  So…knock yourself out.  But in a few years (hopefully you’re not in jail, dead, or a single parent), you’ll realize that they actually knew what they were talking about.

Of the few people who read this, some will agree with me and others will lambaste me as a complete fool.  Those people fall in to two categories respectively: Old bastards like me who know stuff, and under 20’s that will think I’m full of shit because they already know everything.  So I guess I probably should have just spent my morning eating pie instead of writing this because it won’t make a lick of difference.

© Raymond Smith 2010