Facebook in the Disinformation Age

I have a personal stake in Facebook.  My son works on the management team and I have stock in the company.  It's been a lot of fun!  So what's going on with Facebook?  Frankly I don't really use the site that much except to occasionally look at pictures of my grandchildren.  I don't understand how to use it very well and I always find myself getting caught up in a million interesting posts which, quite frankly, makes me feel like I've wasted a lot of time.  I also don't particularly enjoy sharing my thoughts about everything under the sun with everyone on my Facebook page, most of whom I haven't spoken to in 40 years.  But every once in a while I like to write this blog to clarify things in my own mind and then share it on FB.
Recently FB has come under an artillery barrage of criticism over the "hack" of about 50 million(!) accounts and unauthorized use of this private information by Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign.  I don't get it.  It appears to me from reading the news stories that the "data" consisted of user profiles, locations and "likes."  That is a far cry from the the hack of names, addresses, driver's license numbers and social security numbers of 145 million people from Equifax in July 2017.  In 2015 the US government Office of Personnel Management had 21.5 million employee records stolen including social security numbers.  But maybe that's different because the government called it a "data breach."  In 2013 every one of Yahoo's account holders was hacked.   That's 3 billion (!) users.  And what about our most important secrets?  The one's our government develops to snoop on unsuspecting spies and terrorists.  Well, oops, in April 2017 those tools were stolen.  So when more than 300,000 companies, including hospitals, were hit with ransomware viruses like WannaCry that locked down computers until the ransoms were payed, who was responsible?
The point of all this is that computers are vulnerable and if the NSA couldn't protect their own deepest secrets, should we be surprised when private company data is compromised?  But let's also draw a distinction here.  Addresses and social security numbers are one thing.  "Likes" and buying habits are an entirely different realm.  Advertising companies have been collecting that data for 100 years to influence the public.  So what?  Someone just found a shortcut to sending out a million questionnaires, except now they call it "psychometrics."  They found out that if you like Lady Gaga you were an extrovert.  Oh my God.  That's why Trump was elected.
 I think it's important to protect data on Facebook.  They should be doing everything they can to protect our information from being used by anyone we don't expressly give permission to.   But hey, let's get real.  The reason Facebook has been so successful is that we all want a lot of people to see what we like and dislike.  That's a human character trait the Mark Zuckerberg learned how to exploit.  We love that FB allows us to filter  advertisements to those that interest us and that totalitarian dictatorships are brought down by social movements on Facebook.  And then we rave and rant when that same technology allows people to influence us in ways we feel tricked by.  So Cambridge Analytica used this data to try and influence us.  The more important point is that Donald Trump's team used a company started by Steve Bannon that specifically touted it's ability to influence people's behavior through its sophisticated understanding of human psychology and it's ability to target and persuade people of it's clients preferred message.  As far as I'm concerned that's just a convenient way of explaining why so many people were duped by Trump.    
And it's only going to get worse.  Pundits are saying Facebook is not a "social network" as much as it is a "media company."  And yet those same people are critical of Facebook for allowing the dissemination of "fake" news.  Probably half of the country thinks that the news on MSNBC is fake and the other half feels the same about Fox.  But Mark Zuckerberg got it right when he said the problem is that people using FB should be held to the same "truth in advertising" standards as every other advertiser.  That probably includes all of us.  If you write a lie and post it, you should be as liable as anyone "posting" on radio or television, even though half of the country thinks the other half is lying.
I propose that FB is doing everything right.  They're trying honestly to plug a hole in the dike that probably is unpluggable.  You think fake news and psychometrics are a problem now.  Wait until existing programs that permit computers to alter video undetectably are common place.  Any movie can be altered so that someone can be seen doing something they're not.  Then what's real?  If Stormy Daniels is altered to be Donald Trump will that make him ineligible to serve in the military?
  

It is a Brave New World

The Supreme Court of the United States has recently nailed one more very important nail into the coffin of the experiment in human democracy.  The court's decision to further weaken campaign finance laws may very well be the tipping point for this very shaky edifice.   Frankly, this wonderful endeavor of participatory governing was never destined to work forever.  The forces aligned against it are just too strong, namely materialism, greed,  selfishness, cruelty and the intoxication of power.  Every once in a rare while, the nature of humans has been outdistanced by their intellect and we are presented with a magnificent experiment in humility and self-sacrifice.  That's why the Constitution of the United States is such an extraordinary document and why our political scientists have marveled at it for so long.  It codifies self-denial against our human nature.  But the experiment is reaching it’s long expected end and so to with it, I am afraid, the end of civilization as we know it.  I don’t presume to see clearly how it all ends, but I see so clearly that it is ending.  
The corporatocracy in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, “The World State”, may seem far more Machiavellian than our own corporatocracy, but it is probably only a matter of time.  After all, as the rich begin to take over this country (and many others), their first order of business is to consolidate their gains with gerrymandering and voter protection (actually disenfanchisement) laws including the one I am referring to.  As the income gap increases, poor people who would be expected to vote against the rich are relegated to serpiginous voting districts designed to negate their influence, blocked from voting altogether by draconian registration and identification requirements, and inundated with advertising that makes them believe that voting for representatives who support their interests would result in the loss of everything they’ve gained.  The dissemination of fear, which is what the Supreme Court has just encouraged and enabled, is what keeps the rich in power.  

But greed is an ugly and paradoxical addiction.  There is never enough power and money.  The rich and powerful will convince you their factories are not changing the world.  The need for clean air and pure water is a myth.  Climate change is a figment of the liberal imagination and as long as you work for your pennies an hour, the world is your oyster.

Unfortunately the joke is on them.  The water we drink may come in bottles that are more and more expensive, but so far, the air we breathe is shared by all, and as it disappears so to will we.  They may convince the disenfranchised of this world that less taxes are good, that lower incomes are noble, that their garbage is better in your back yard, but in the end, for surely it must end, their oil and gas, their water and air, and their lives will end along with ours and there is no magical space ship, no matter how much money they make, that will take them to a better place.

Of course....but maybe

Louis CK, the well-known comedian has recently developed a skit which is fast becoming viral, called “Of course....but maybe.”  He uses some rather twisted examples, like peanuts.  “Of course,” his schtick goes.  “Peanut allergies are potentially lethal and we should make sure that children who are sensitive should be protected.  Peanuts should be kept out of all public places, airplanes, schools etc. etc.”

“Of course we have to protect our children...but maybe if we didn’t do that, peanut allergies would be non-existent in a generation.”

A rather dark image, but like all good humor, with a kernel of truth.

In looking at the current political situation I have some similar thoughts.

“Of course our politicians are in congress to represent their constituents, to do what they believe is right and just.  That’s what a democracy is after all, an imperfect way to bring different ideas together in smaller referendums.  Naturally a congress of 435 representatives should be able to come to a consensus and compromise on issues.”

“But maybe....maybe each and every one of them is out for their own personal gain...more power...more prestige...more money.  And even if they spout platitudes about wanting what’s right for the country, ultimately they really want what’s right for them.

I don’t deny the fact that part of them truly believes their doing right....”But maybe.”

Actually, I think, most politicians start out somewhere back in their past with an ideology, but it doesn’t take long before the game of politics overwhelms the philosophy and back room deals become more important than votes.  Unfortunately, politics conforms to a variation on the ‘Peter’ principle (incompetency rises) that I will call for lack of a better term...the ‘Paul’ principle.  Sneakiness, dishonesty and hubris rise to the top.  That doesn’t mean that all the most influential politicians are necessarily the worst people....”but maybe.”

In the midst of this crisis, four American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and due to the government shutdown, their death benefits weren’t payed.  Outrageous!  The media went nuts and congress voted unanimously (one of the few times, unless they’re voting to give themselves a raise or go into recess) to reinstate death benefits.  “Of course” the media was reporting on just one of the most egregious wrongs among many personal tragedies caused by the government shut-down.  “Of course” it was shameful and all they wanted to do was shed light on why the shut-down was so devastating.

 ”But maybe”.... they really didn’t care so much about the deaths of those young people as much as they did about the story and subsequent firestorm they could inflame.  Their righteous indignation, interviewing loved ones just days after their sons and daughters and husbands and wives were killed couldn’t have anything to do with their desire to sway the debate and get congress off their collective asses, could it?   “And maybe” ...they really just wanted to bump their ratings and get more air time.

President Obama has told congress and the American people that you can’t run government by holding the process hostage to a small minority of fanatics.   You can’t turn around after negotiating through normal political channels and say “I don’t like the results.”  You can’t just throw a temper tantrum when you don’t get your way and filibuster or threaten to blow up the whole system just because you, representing a measly small percentage of the entire country, don’t like something.  Of course, I obviously agree.  And “Of course” President Obama is thinking of the country and of the future, where this type of crisis could occur every six months and if it’s not affordable care, then next time it might be abortion and even...heaven forbid...in a future with a republican president it could even be gun control demanded by a democratic minority.   Government should be elected not taken hostage and threatened with annihilation.

“But maybe”....president Obama is more interested in his legacy than in actually protecting the legislative process.  And maybe, playing brinksmanship with the world economy at stake is more about getting his way because he’s just not a good enough politician (or bad from the ‘Paul’ principle perspective) to bring people together.

The republican party has been criticized by liberal media and democrats for many things in the past decade.  We invaded Iraq for reasons that were manufactured, costing thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and over 2 trillion dollars.  The economy was in billion dollar surplus territory when Bush took over and was on the verge of calamitous collapse when he left.  “Of course our leaders were patriotic men who truly believed that Sadam Hussein was evil, bad for his people and 

needed to be “removed” to make the middle east a safer place.”

“But maybe...these men were part of the so-called “military industrial complex” with personal agendas of increased influence, power and money.  After all Dick Cheney had been Chairman and CEO of Halliburtan, the parent company of KBR which was the number one recipient of over $138 billion dollars in taxpayer money given to private contractors in that war.  And the other architects of war were subsequently promoted to even more powerful positions, (Paul Wolfowitz promoted to head of the world bank, Stephen Hadley promoted to national security advisor, Stephen Luti promoted to special assistant to the president etc. etc)

“And maybe they were just trying to distract the country from their failure in preventing 9/11.”

And now the republican tea party is demanding that if democrats want them to pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling they’re just going to have to dismantle a law the republicans don’t like.  It doesn’t matter that a small minority is forcing an issue that is having devastating effects on people all over the country and soon potentially all over the globe.  “Of course....it’s the principle of the matter.  Affordable care is another entitlement and is shoving us down the road to socialism.  And even if the American people can’t see that, these republicans can and they’ll save us, like it or not.”

They’re the new McCarthys...the new overseers of unamerican activities. 

“And just maybe....they think that president Obama is slowly getting too many positive results in the economic recovery.  Just maybe they’re not happy that wall street is booming, the housing market is recovering and people are going back to work.  Just maybe they can’t stand that the first black president of our country, who they claimed was not an American and should go back to Kenya, is digging us out of a hole dug for us by the white royalty of American politics (success due in large part to the Paul principle.)  Just maybe they want the economy to tank so that in one year they can point out how useless Obama was.  Just maybe they are so Machiavellian that nothing else matters but their power.”

“of course....but maybe.”  

Our Future

Our Future

Here’s what I remember.  A time when I could run to a plane five minutes before it took off, disembark onto a Florida tarmac under balmy skies and waving palms to pick my bags off an outdoor carousel with no one watching.  Entebbe changed that.  I’ve learned to deal with taking off my shoes and throwing out my 4 ml bottles at security, standing in front of a machine to be body searched and standing in line, sometimes for hours to have my ID inspected. 

Here’s what I remember.  Going to Washington DC and visiting the White House, the Capitol, the museums and memorials without walking through metal detectors or standing behind barricades hundreds of yards away.  911 changed that.

Here’s what I remember.  Watching Sesame street and Mr. Rogers (actually I never liked him) or Howdy Doody (yeah really.)  My violent show was Rin Tin Tin who was so cute you couldn’t really hate when he bit somebody.  Now I visit my grandchildren to find them spending multiple hours a day with their friends from all over the country, engaging in social network war games where they kill the enemy and splatter his brains and guts all over the tv screen with as much emotion as they would swat a fly.  Sandy Hook will change that.  

This is the choice.  If we don’t step up and control our guns, we will do something.  William Bennet, conservative former secretary of Education suggested that it might be appropriate to have an armed guard in our schools.  That won’t be enough.  We’ll need barricades too, metal detectors, and preferably towers at each corner with machine gun nests to keep watch on all incoming traffic.  Our children won’t be able to carry back packs.  They’ll take their shoes off and God forbid they forget their ID.  They’ll enter school having transmitted their homework over secure networks, (hopefully no child pornography hackers will get a hold of that) ready to sit down and concentrate on the wonderful world of learning, trying not to look at the guard towers.  We as a country will be secure in knowing that our children will be better equipped to form “well regulated militias’ than our founding fathers ever would have imagined.  And if a bad guy enters their school and gets past the guards they’ll be right there to blow him away with their own guns.  Because, by then you know there will be plastic guns that they can get through any metal detectors anyway.

Gun Control

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre we had best wake up from our collective coma or we will surely perish from it.  It is time for thinking people to acknowledge the peril we face from the unchecked viral proliferation of mass killing machines.  Guns have become our e-bola virus, highly contagious with a 90% mortality rate.  (Only one victim out of 27 survived the Sandy Hook shooting.)  E-bola wipes out families and villages and if, God-forbid, it breaks out into the mainstream, it would be like the opening of Pandora's proverbial box.  But guns have gone viral, and they are killing our society.  There are so many arguments and arguers against gun control that it seems impossible we will ever agree on limiting them.  But I would like to address the ones I've seen and then make a proposal.
1)  To limit the ownership of guns in any way is a basic infringement of our second amendment rights.
              Let's look at the second amendment.
      A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
              What is a well regulated militia today?  Is it the United States Army Reserve, an organization set up to perform only part-time duties, but that has been a mainstay of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan during the longest uninterrupted period of war in our history?  That militia is armed by our government.  Or is it the Aryan Nation that claims no allegiance to the United States and arms themselves?  The concept of private citizens protecting themselves from our own military with their own weapons as a guarantee of a secure free state is ludicrous.  Will our assault rifles secure us against drones and tanks?  Or maybe we should be allowed to own those too.  The founding fathers bought and sold slaves and wrote that into their Constitution.  Times have changed.

2)  Guns don't kill people.  People kill people.
               Wrong.  Guns do kill people.  It has been shown that the animal kingdom is divided into two broad categories of "predator" and "prey." (On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz.)  Predators are aggressors with natural weapons of sharp teeth, talons and muscles.  When predators fight within their own species the fight to a ritual death, (a dog clamps his fangs around the jugular vein of his opponent, but the fight stops there.)  There is an innate neurological tabu against killing a member of its own species.  That makes sense.  Predators are skilled at killing and prey are skilled at escaping.   If predators had no innate mechanism to stop them from annihilating their brothers, it would portend the end of that species.  Prey are not so prone to those same inhibitions.  Their skills are defensive and so they have not developed those biological fail-safe stop gaps to the same degree.  Humans are prey.  We have no natural weapons.  Our teeth are vegetarian choppers.  Our eyes are relatively weak.  Our nails are short and we aren't very strong or quick.  We've survived because we have a brain that presumably is more ingenious than our predator foes.  We can think and evade.  We still do have an inborn resistance to killing our own kind, but it is relatively weak.  When confronted with the option of killing another human being face to face, one on one, or running away, most of us would do the latter.  (The peer pressure of an army is enough to change that equation for most human beings.)  But as the killing distance between us increases, the biological imperative becomes weaker, and killing becomes easier.  Guns allow that distance to exceed our genetic balance, to say nothing of bombs and drones.  So yes, people kill people.  But they kill far more with guns than they ever would with fists or knives.

3)  We need guns to protect ourselves from the bad people out there.
                 Yes, there are bad people out there.  There are angry people, violent psychotic people, violent depressed people and psychopaths.  What would save more lives, arming everyone to the teeth (as we are now,) or removing the vast majority of those weapons from our society.  In 2008 and 2009, 5,740 children and teenagers were killed by guns and 34,387 were wounded.  Those are just the children!   If we live in a world where every single person needs a gun to protect his life from someone else with a gun, then it is a psychotic world we live in.  In the 30 years since statistics were first gathered in 1979, 116,384 children and teenagers were killed by guns, 42.7 times the number in a group of other high income countries!!!  What is wrong with us.?

4)  Gun control wouldn't stop the problem.
                  There is no rational argument for automatic weapons at all.  Self protection, hunting and target shooting, the three reasons that gun advocates have for owning weapons, can all be satisfied with revolver pistols and bolt action rifles.  The only reason to own an automatic, or semi-automatic gun is because "it's fun" or because it kills easier.  Well excuse me, but shooting a rocket propelled grenade may also be fun, but too bad, you can't do it legally.  Buy a Wii.
                    And isn't it a little nuts that you can't drive a car without passing a written test and a driving test, but a 5 year old can use an assault rifle if his parent lets him.

So, what do we do?  There are enough guns in the United States to arm every man, woman and child!  And anyone can get them.  Let's make them illegal.  It might take years.  It may take decades to save 10,000 children.  But what if one of those children were yours?

Please sign my petition and pass it on.  Maybe there is a silent, sleeping majority out there that is as outraged as I am.  Maybe it just takes one voice to wake it up and make it go viral.  And maybe that virus will defeat our e-bola.

Petition by iPetitions

Gun, guns, guns...our we out of our F**King minds?!

Is it possible that we are all just crazy?  Can there be a sane person in this country that doesn't think it madness that any insane or evil person, terrorist or murderer, can lay hands on an automatic weapon as easily as he does a bottle of water?  Can anyone possibly believe that the second amendment continues to give each citizen the right to arm himself with a modern day gun?  Where does it stop?  Should we all carry bazookas, or maybe rocket propelled grenades?  By God, the founding fathers would have insisted that we be permitted to each own a ground to air missile in order to protect ourselves from the tyranny of government, wouldn't they?  What makes us think that home of the free and land of the brave means killing our children with 50 clip magazines?  Why should anyone be permitted to purchase a killing machine with less paper work than it takes to get a park permit?  Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that includes delusions (false beliefs about what is taking place) or hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren't there.)  What is it called when an entire country has lost contact with reality and the people believe they need to arm themselves against a government trying to enslave them?  (Maybe it's called the United States of America.)  It's not guns that kill, it's people, right?  We need to arm ourselves for protection against the crazies.  Well then let's give a handgun to each of our children for his or her fifth birthday, because it looks like they're going to need it. 

Politics as usual

Does it seem as ridiculous to everyone else as it does to me, that our presidential candidates are embroiled over the question of when President Obama declared that our Libyan ambassador was killed by terrorists or by an angry mob?  I was going to ask "who cares?" but obviously there seem to be a lot of people that do.  But why should we care?  Is it really important that we called the killers terrorists?  And what if, in fact, the government messed up with security arrangements in Benghazi?  Someone obviously did, but then again, someone caught a young terrorist (or was he just a crazy madman?) about to blow up the federal reserve in New York, before he did it.  Do we assign blame for everything that goes wrong to the President of the United States but ignore his obvious non-participation in an operation that is successful.  There are at least twenty layers of individuals and divisions at work before any plan actually gets seen by the President.  Probably 90% of those get signed off on before they ever get to him.  Of course he's in charge of the ship and responsible for putting in place the directives for those people, but who in their right mind can believe that every thing will always go perfectly?  There will inevitably be failures, and they will end up, by virtue of their violence, getting all the attention.  But there will hopefully be many more successes, most of which, we will probably never get wind of, no matter who is President of the country.  It is a very short sighted policy to criticize the President for not plugging the security holes in advance, because it is highly unlikely that any President will see out one term without occasional failures of his system.  Someone, well below his pay grade, will ok some stupid plan, like selling guns to Mexico to trace where they go, and have them end up killing Americans.  By the way, who ok'd giving weapons to Osama bin Laden to fight Russia in Afghanistan?  And why is Mr. Romney suggesting giving weapons to rebels in Syria when we're not sure where or to whom they would really be going?  So much rhetoric to convince people there is an easy solution to a nearly impossible problem.  All that we can do is try our best, and expect the worst, for someday it will surely happen somewhere.

God plays dice

     A friend of mine died this week.  He wasn't a close friend, but I knew him for 32 years and I wish we were closer.  He was a pretty incredible person and it would have been nice to know him better.  Besides being incredibly talented he was just a really nice person.  My first memory of him was when my son was joining his little league baseball team right after we moved to Florida.  He had no friends and Mark introduced him to his son, another incredibly nice and talented person.  The two of them took my son under their wing and he was immediately incorporated into their community.  For all the great talents he had, I am most enamored by his generosity of spirit.  I think your children are a reflection of what kind of person you are and he has four wonderful children who are medals on his wall of achievement.
     At the funeral his dearest friend and constant companion Jack, gave a moving and inspirational eulogy for Mark.  He noted how everyone's first thought when describing him was "renaissance man".  It's true.  He was a scientist, a writer, a musician and on and on.  He went on to recite two quotations from one of Mark's books, "God doesn't play dice with the lives of men," (Albert Einstein) and "I am what I am," (Popeye the sailor man.)
     But sitting in church and reflecting on life I had to disagree with Mark (and Al Einstein.)  God does play dice with the lives of men and with every molecule and muon in the universe.  People were looking for a reason at that funeral...a reason Mark had died two weeks shy of his 65th birthday...a reason why they wouldn't.  I looked at the stained glass windows around me depicting Christ's stations of the cross, and realized that all religion exists because people want to believe that God doesn't play dice.  But what's so wrong with believing there is no reason, that it is all just chance?  Jack related that Mark's son picked up his car from the hospital after he died and drove it back to his home.  As he parked the car he noted the odometer said 100,000 miles...exactly.  And Jack said...'there are no coincidences.'  But there are... precisely because we don't notice the hundred thousand times the odometer was off.  So what?  So what if there is no greater reason to live than to live the life Mark did, to create and to procreate.  I may disagree with Mark about God and dice, but I definitely think Popeye got it right.  We are what we are and whether we choose to make the most of it or to believe there is some higher reason, some greater reward is a very profound choice.
     It is the very reason for what I think ails our society...our world.  When mankind was young and knew nothing about the world it lived in, it is understandable that they invented gods and myths to explain it all.  And when science emerged about 500 BC and we began to learn, it is also understandable that those gods were rejected as useless crutches.  It is not surprising when mankind began to unravel the mysteries of the universe but was still fearful of death that one myth prevailed, the dream of eternal life.  But that fear and that dream have resulted in terrible things.  That fear has resulted in the dark ages, in crusades and war, in killing, in persecution, in bigotry, in hatred, in all the things religion claims to disclaim. 
    As I sat in that church I admitted (for the zillionth time) that I am frightened too, and I am jealous of those who put their faith in a higher being and feel so comforted.  But so what?  I am what I am and isn't it better to face that fear than to hide from it?  Wouldn't the world be so much better if we weren't trying to tell each other how to live, what to believe and trying to build bigger and better bombs to kill each other?  The bible did get it right.  We just don't listen.  Now that mankind has unlocked the keys of the universe it is time we let go of the myth of fear.  "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."
    Mark had it right.  He was what he was.  I don't think it's so bad to live every day as if there were no tomorrow, every moment as if it were your 100,000th.  Goodbye my friend.  Even though I hardly knew you, I will miss you.

Words matter

This past week Osama bin Laden was killed.  He was a symbol for an enemy unlike any we've ever known in the United States of America, unlike any we've ever known in the so-called "civilized world."  Death in war is a frightening concept, but when it's played "according to the rules" we can somehow depersonalize it, imagine that it only happens to soldiers, those people we don't know (unless we do,) people who signed up for the killing, knew what they were getting into, even got paid for it.  But the death of "innocent civilians" is an atrocity we can't comprehend.  Or maybe we can, if we call it "collateral damage."  Words matter, and even the few I've written will incense victims of 911, a symbol for that different enemy, the "terrorist" who kills even "civilians."  He is the inhuman monster that does not care who he murders, whether they are "soldiers" or babies.  I do not mean to say anything that would make the deaths of those 2752 civilians any less tragic or meaningful.  I am horrified by the killing of innocent men, women and children, as I am horrified by the holocaust, as I am horrified by the genocide in Rowanda...as I am horrified by Dresden, and Hiroshima and the deaths of 109,990 innocent Iraqis.  The United States of America responded to Osama bin Laden by lashing out.  We were enraged by this enemy we could not see, who wore no uniform, who did not play according to Queensberry rules.  So we invaded the country where he was, and for good measure, the country where he wasn't.  We kicked him out and we killed the dictator in Iraq, and by the way we only lost 109,990 people to collateral damage in Iraq and about 10,000 (give or take a few people) in Afghanistan.  But we won.  We killed Osama bin Laden.
What bothers me so much, is not that we as a country are so happy he's dead.  Surely, had I been of age,  I would have celebrated the assassination of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.  And I think it is justified to murder bin Laden, even according to Queensberry rules.  But it's the words we use that bother me.  He was our enemy, a man who felt we were collateral damage.  The civilians of the United States were his Hiroshima and Nagisaki.  All I am asking is that we recognize it as such.  We can celebrate the winning of a battle as long as we understand the cost of the fight.  It demeans our humanity...it demeans humanity...to think we are no less guilty of murder for killing one man, than we are for killing thousands or millions.
Martin Luther King said "Returning hate, multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness:  only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate:  only love can do that."
So the country is celebrating.  People are out in the street shouting hurrays.  College students who were babies in 2011 are cheering and partying in revelry over the killing of Osama bin Laden.  Our president, who is hated by almost half the country because their names sound alike, is taking credit for, and making political hay out of the United States of America murdering one kidney-failing terrorist.  I have yet to hear one journalist, including those from the far left, finding fault with this.  It appears to be the only issue that brings our country together, and maybe that was its purpose, not only its unintended result.
But words matter.  Let's face it.  Might makes right and history is written by the victors.  There is no text on the founding of America written by an Apache or a Navaho.  There is no one in New Mexico who thinks they are living in occupied territory.  And so if we want to preserve our way of life, we need to fight, and unfortunately slay our enemy.  But we do not need to demean what that does to us as a country and as individuals.  We pay a price for that murder, each and every one of us.  It would be humane to acknowledge that.  Words matter.  

Rambling prose: Children as art

Rambling prose: Children as art

Children as art

My father turned 100 today.  I miss him though I'm not sure he knows it.  I took him for granted when he was alive and I'm sorry about that.  Towards the end of his life I began to question mine, and, I think inevitably, my mother and he took the blame for what I didn't like.  During that period they were kind and generous enough (I hope it wasn't naivety) to gather up and give me all our correspondence that they had collected from when I went to summer camps.  It was damning!  When I complained that my camp councilor was bullying me, my mother told me my father had worked himself to the bone so I could enjoy a summer in the sun, and that if I didn't have anything nice to report, to make it up!  I've told that story a hundred times to show how insensitive they were, but the truth is that sometimes I feel the same way about my own children.  I seem so spoiled and so ungrateful for what I've had, so I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to my parents.  They weren't all that bad.  In fact, they were pretty darn good!  They fed me and housed me and loved me.  That's all we can or should expect...the rest is up to us.
But there is an art to rearing children, one that is undervalued and to my mind, poorly understood.  When my children were young my parents told me that parenting was a matter of good instincts and that I didn't have them...that if I gave them my son and two daughters for just two years they could really do something with them.  My wife had convinced me several years earlier that we should take parenting lessons, and after harumphing for an appropriated time I finally consented.  We studied the theories of Haim Ginott and I was a thorough convert.  I read all his books and more.  I was completely convinced that we needed to learn how to be good parents, that it didn't just come naturally, and that my mother and father were a perfect example of that.
Now my children are grown, (and quite successful, thank you very much.)  Today my father would have turned 100 and I'm not as sure as I was when he was alive and here to criticize.  He certainly didn't do what Haim Ginott would have done, but today his three sons spent an hour on the phone together reminiscing.  My father was an accountant but he really wanted to be a teacher.  We hated him for trying to teach us and refused to listen, but in the end we really did.  And though we've spent the better part of our adult lives trying to figure out how he screwed us up so badly, we're really not that bad.  We all have good lives with our first wives and with good children and grandchildren who all love each other.  So it's not about instinct or knowledge, it's about love and respect.  My father was a good man who loved and respected us and that's the art of being a good parent.
Happy birthday Dad.     

Valentine Poem to Marlene

Februaries ride in on winter storms that chill my soul

They dull me with the dreary sense of never ending cold

It is a time when I can feel alone and over-suffer ills

When life seems burdened with remedies and pills

But there is beauty in the harshness of February snowing

The joy that comes each year; that comes with knowing

There is someone here sharing frigid days and rainy nights

Who softens burdens making darkness fill with lights

That there is someone here who knows my ways

Who’s lived with me through seasons filled with Mays

When life and love abound in all the blooming flowers

When it is clear to see what gifts and joys are ours

It makes me look again at sheets of February ice

Beneath the drifts and flows that others find so nice

To see that dormant times may not portend an end

But rather be the start of some exciting trend

So let us take a trip of dreams into the months of spring

Where trees will bud and birds will sing

When life will blossom with the mien of something new

When all that’s good is there because of you

Rambling prose: Can Facebook save us?

Rambling prose: Can Facebook save us?

Can Facebook save us?

We, as a people, have deceived ourselves.  We’re convinced that because we can send men into outer space, tame rivers, build skyscrapers, split the atom, talk with each other from thousands of miles away through a gadget smaller than our hand and even watch television on it, that we have evolved beyond 'Homo erectus.'  I’m of the opinion that we have devolved into a viral plague, and like a virus we invade our host and destroy it from within.  I am a true believer in science.  I have always believed that it represents the highest and purest manifestation of the one characteristic that sets us apart from all other life as we know it, sentience.  Self awareness, that state of being that allows 'Homo sapiens' to look into the heavens and understand that it is not eternity, not God, but only our imperfect perception of the laws of physics.  It is also what allows me to look into myself and write this essay.  But I am beginning to see science as no different from religion, just tools of this virus, not much different from the protein and nucleic acids of all viruses.   They fool the superorganism, this world we live in, into thinking we are just one of its own cells.  But when we gain entry they take over the host’s own machinery to make more virus, eventually destroying it from within.  Religion and science are our tools of viral insinuation, replication and destruction.

I don’t know when it began, how this 'Homo virus' evolved from 'Homo sapiens.'  We were always a violent species.  It is possible the fault, if there is such a concept in evolution, lies in our limbic system, that ancient part of our brain which controls our emotions and our survival mechanisms.  Konrad Lorenz said it 50 years ago:

"All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding
of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical
progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering... tends instead

to favor humanity's destruction"  

We are lions in sheep’s clothing.  Our bodies, designed like those of peaceful herbivores, have no fangs like the sabretooth tigers, no speed like the cheetah, or stealth like the cobra.  From the neck down, we are lumbering sloths and should have become extinct long before now.  Something in our limbic system got programmed to make us hunters and a hunter with no weapon is sure to be killed.  That could have been the end of this story right there.  Evolution has made many wrong turns but we rarely learn the results because there are none.  A limbic system designed for a lion in the body of a lamb.  What a joke.  But in one evolutionary ‘Hail Mary’, we survived.  We learned to use tools.  That moment, for surely it was a moment, maybe no different from a child taking its first step, but one that had not been taken by the species for thousands of years until then, saved us.  That one defining moment is most wonderfully captured by Stanly Kubrik in the movie “2001: A space odyssey.”  In this scene a group of apes are vying for access to a small watering hole.  They behave like any group of apes behave when trying to be aggressive.  They make threatening sounds and hand gestures.  But that’s all they can do until one group gets tired or intimidated and leaves.  That is, until one ape picks up the leg bone of a dead animal and slaps it into his hand.  In that moment he understands that he is not limited to grunts and gestures.  That that bone can break other bones, smash heads and kill animals.  The leap may have taken thousands of years, with baby steps along the way.  But slowly, our ancestors learned they could survive with tools and weapons.  The evolutionary step that prevented our extinction became the means of our own future destruction, and unfortunately that of many more living beings besides ourselves.

But though our limbus may have made us hunters, it is religion and science that are our weapons.  Hunters are biologically programmed to kill prey but not themselves.  Predatory behavior towards other species is crucial to survival but intraspecies combativeness rarely leads to death.  There is a switch, especially in animals equipped to kill easily, that stops the aggressor from delivering the ‘coup de grace’.  Bared teeth around a jugular vein signal the end of the fight, establishing a winner and a loser left alive to fight another day. (Don't get me started on animals bred specifically to kill each other for sport by their human trainers.)  But that impulse for self preservation is less ingrained in more peaceful species, those animals not dependent on killing for their food.  And so it is that humans have less inhibitions toward killing each other than any predatory animal should.  That is where religion and science take over.  With our teeth around the jugular vein of our enemy, religion fools our brain into thinking different people with different beliefs are really different species.  But it is science that gives us the tools to accomplish mass murder, extinctions of entire species of beings and eventually ourselves.

The process that has led us here to this time and this place, possibly the ultimate time and place, has been in the works for thousands of years.  It may be our privilege and our curse that we get to say we were the last of our species.  But whether it is now, next year, next generation or ten generations from then, we are sliding inevitably towards the abyss.  Our cerebral cortex, that wonder of evolutionary adaptation, that mutation which serendipitously saved our skin, has taken over and will be our deathnell in the end. 

If there is a positive note in all this it may come from our cerebral cortex.  I used to believe humans could work out any problem with technology.  If we could send a man to the moon or increase food production by a factor of a thousand, then with enough cooperation we could repair the ozone hole or solve the energy problem.  But our limbus keeps getting in the way.  Agression trumps innovation.  Thus my cynicism.

Now my hope.  Stuart Kauffman has proposed a theory of life.  In short he suggested that there is a realm in any complex system between order and chaos.  Start with a few light bulbs and connect two of them with wire.  Repeat the process and eventually you will end up connecting three and then these will connect with three more and so on.  Eventually the result is a vast network of randomly connected light bulbs.  Turn on the juice and some interesting things can happen.  With no regulation on how the juice flows there is just chaos.  With too many rules there is just repetitive blinking.  But tweak the system just a little, put in some loose controls and gradually, in some bizarre way, we begin to see order emerge just at the edge of chaos.  This may be how life began on earth, how the cerebral cortex developed sentience and how we may dig ourselves out of the mess we have wrought.

Facebook has created a network with over 500,000,000 nodes, each humming along with its own random input.  Maybe, just maybe, as long as we leave it alone, there will someday occur a unifying factor,  an organizing rule, say a movement to foster peace, or to save the environment, or to feed the hungry.  It might not take too much to make this superorganism develop a superconsciousness just at the edge of chaos that will keep us from sliding down the slippery slope to an otherwise inevitable puddle of ‘gray goo.’       

The earth is bleeding

Is it possible that in the grand scheme of things the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a good thing?  Sometimes we need to be hit over the head to wake up.  This oil spill, as awful as it is, and I think it's the worst thing to happen to North America in my lifetime, still represents only a fraction of the destruction of our environment perpetrated by oil companies.  They have been destroying the earth by bits and pieces for 75 years, drilling in places where the indigenous people have no say in what happens, no voice to cry out when their lives are destroyed by pollution and loss of their livelihood.  The Nigerian delta, once one of the most biodiverse regions on earth is now a tar pit.  Fishing is gone, disease is rampant and the oil companies are in partnership with a corrupt dictatorship that sells the birthrights of its people to feed themselves.  Will we wake up now?  Now that they have dirtied our own back yard, polluted our own fishing grounds.  Will we begin to realize what has been happening in South America for decades?  Oil is the root of all modern evil.  It spawns multinational companies that hide behind free enterprise to mask a total lack of conscience about the raping of our planet.  They are responsible for the destruction of our rain forests, where we lose areas the size of Connecticut each year.  They construct roads into the forests to gain access to areas they know will yield only meager amounts of oil but will attract multitudes of poor people eager for farming land, clearing the trees like army ants devouring everything in their wake.  They conspire with corrupt politicians to thwart populist uprisings that might inhibit their lust for more and sometimes they are complicit in crimes including murder to further their goals.  In 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa, a vocal and popular environmentalist was executed in Nigeria for speaking out against the raping and devastation of his homeland.  There are serious allegations that some oil companies, specifically Chevron and Shell, were complicit in helping the corrupt government to quell uprisings and execute Saro-Wiwa.
So is our oil spill a good thing?  British Petrolium may go bankrupt.  It's stock is falling like a shooting star and if it get's hit with enough penalties, even this multibillion dollar blood-sucker may go bust.  But what then?  Will they no longer be responsible for paying their debts?  Will the executives exercise golden parachutes and slink away into the ether while BP assets get bought up by Chevron and Shell for pennies on the dollar?  And then who will clean up the mess.
Oil is a curse.  Those who were screaming "drill, baby drill," only a year ago are now screaming at the government for "letting this happen."  They let it happen.  They caused it to happen.  They enable these blood thirsty corporations to feed on us and to destroy things in weeks that took millenia to create.  I fear that oil will spawn war as it diminishes in availability.  China will want their share and one day their government will trade weapons for oil to governments that just want to kill.  The west will want it's share and their people will not tolerate higher prices, inflation and long lines.  They will encourage more drilling, more imperialism and rape of underdeveloped countries.
There really is only one answer.  We MUST find a way to replace oil as our source of energy.  It is a human imperative if our species is to survive.  As I see it, the only answer is to develop 'fusion energy' as impossible as that may seem.  We should create a multinational consortium of scientists, fund it with a %10 oil tax on every oil company in the world, and develop an alternative.  If we don't, as the oil runs out, so will our societies and our cultures and our humanity.   

Do the right thing

Why is it so difficult for us to do the right thing?  When I was young I once went to a store to buy some plants and when I came out I realized that the teller had failed to charge me for one of the items.  I started to go back to pay for it, $3,  and the person with me couldn't believe I would do that.  I'd gotten away without paying and it was a big store anyway so why not take the money and run?  How many times have we all done something like that?  Myself included.  It's so easy to take the money and run, and so hard to do the right right thing.  It starts young and it pervades our lives.  My daughter told me that she recently went to a community pool with one of her children.  The other two boys were playing ball at the adjacent field and when they were done she opened the back gate to let them in.  My grandson said "mommy, we didn't pay" and she went out and did, thank God (or maybe me.)  She told me her first reaction was to say  "Shh, nobody will know."  That's what they said at Enron.  That's what they said at Goldmann Sachs.  That's what Nixon said.  That's what we say to ourselves when we cheat on our taxes.  Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young once wrote "Teach your children well..."  And so we must, or sneaking in back doors will enable them to sneak through life without taking responsibility for having integrity.  
Why is it so difficult to do the right thing?  Businessmen with more money than they know how to spend commit fraud and abuse to further their business.  And even when it's not abuse they make decisions based on money instead of doing the right thing.  Politicians who've reached the pinnacle of their careers still take money from lobbyists and vote against their conscience or lose their conscience all together.  They've just forgotten how to do the right thing.
We have recently witnessed the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, a disaster of unsurpassed proportion (the subject of a future blog.)  It is not so terribly surprising to me.  The incentive to make more money forces us to increasingly push the bubble in every endeavor we undertake, without the proper safeguards.  It would serve everyone well to constantly remember that a history of past performance does not insure future rewards.  So now everyone is screaming that drilling 1 mile under the ocean requires more oversight and this terrible environmental disaster should have been foreseen and prevented.  And yet, many of those people screaming the loudest were shouting "Drill, baby, drill" only a few months ago.  More importantly, oil companies know that they continually pollute our environment in rain forests and in oceans.  They know that what they do is bad but are incapable of doing the right thing.  Maybe we should begin to look at preventative measures before the disaster.  Maybe we should look at existing nuclear reactors to see if they're safe enough, or the food industry or coal mining or...You get the point.  It would take more money, drive profits down but it would be the right thing to do.    For whatever reason we have no integrity as a human race.  Let's wake up and understand that doing the right thing is a must.  If we don't teach our children to pay for the $1 toy instead of stealing it, we will never stop the abuse in government and business, the pollution of our planet the murder of innocent victims in third world countries...the very end of the human race.     

Hubris and humility

Hubris and humility.  I've always loved the sound of those two words.  They come from deep inside you, on the back of a breath, as if you were exhaling them from your soul.  And maybe they represent, each in its own way, the essence of who we are.  But they are so different, so antithetical, that if in fact they describe us, then we must choose sides, choose how we wish to be known.  Hubris, the unquestionable belief in our rightness, is often a characteristic of our greatest heroes.  How else would we have become a country, if not for the hubris of John Adams or Ben Franklin?  Where would we be if Christopher Columbus began to question his belief that India was just around the corner?  Isn't that what has driven us to ever greater heights, the confidence of our convictions, the courage to charge on, whether what we did was popular or not?  The greatest athletes believe they're great, that they can win, that they will win, and it is within their power to turn the tide and garner victory from defeat.  So what is it that makes hubris so distasteful?  Why do we dislike arrogance so much?  Is it based on a false belief that we could do what they do...if only?  Maybe some people are just better than the rest of us and deserve to think of themselves that way.  Maybe.  But here's the rub.  Arrogance breeds discord.  Two people on opposite sides of an issue cannot believe themselves absolutely right and not feel the urge to fight.  Righteousness is the mother of contention and the father of war.
In my view the world would be a better place if humans valued humility above hubris.  We would be a better place inhabited by Buddhist monks than Chinese warlords.  We would be better to believe that man is not the brainchild of God, but only a curious development in the vast bush of life.
I have noticed that there are people I have known who seem incapable of having enemies.  People who I can tell are "nice" after five minutes of conversation.  They are soft and gentle and though I don't know what resides in their private mind, I know they are never arrogant and usually humble.  In general women have less hubris then men so I wonder if there is a gene for humility that we lack.  I would like to say that if women ruled the world, there would be no war.  But women who rise to high levels of power seem as corruptable by hubris as their genetic partners, sometimes more-so.  I like to think I am a humble man, but I have this need to project my disdain for poor workmanship as well as arrogant people.  So where does that leave me.  I feel like a snake swallowing its tail, round and round, inside and out.  Bottom line is that hubris beats humility, and the human race (another soulful sound) is destined eventually to be hoist on its own petard of arrogance unless we teach humility to all our children.      

The last bastion of ethics in an unethical world

Tiger Woods cheated on his wife. Why are we so appalled? It could have been worse.

It has become a matter of mundane observation that seemingly every group in modern society is rife with unethical behavior. Whether it is priests molesting children, doctors ripping off Medicare or lawyers chasing ambulances, the news of our day is most often about the wayward nature of our institutions and professions. To be sure there are always the standout heroes, the caregivers, the volunteers, the philanthropes, but they seem to garner our attention for their uniqueness rather than their representation of the whole. Historical perspective seems to give us a sense of “better times” when people played fair, when Platonic ideals were the rule of the day and not the “dog-eat-dog” philosophy we seem to live by. Admittedly every age has had its scandals, from Teapot Dome to Boss Tweed, from Piltdown Man to the frontal lobotomy. Politicians, scientists, businessmen and teachers, builders and reporters, almost every group imaginable seem to have succumbed to the basest instincts of our nature to cheat and lie. But it does seem the past was simpler, slower, less frenetic and fraught with danger. Even I remember the days when my neighbors left their doors open, when I could stroll to my elementary school alone and my mother didn’t worry about me being molested and murdered. Those times, alas, seem to be gone and it will be a Herculean task to prevent them being gone forever.

The answer will not come in the form of more preaching or more legislation. That has clearly not worked. When government tries to incentivize ethics it inevitably foments fraud. Medicare rip-offs are estimated to be on the order of 60 billion dollars a year! But lest we blame doctors for leading the way down this path of corruption, let us not forget the lawyers, who codify kickbacks by calling them referral fees, or politicians who excuse their golf junkets as fund-raisers and rail against sinners while they themselves are the most egregious examples of sin.

In 1998 the biggest story of the day was not war, or famine or genocide. The world was relatively peaceful and the government had a 2 billion dollar surplus. But it was discovered that our president had had extramarital sex with a younger woman. Congress was ready to impeach for high crimes and misdemeanors, and half the country was incensed at his behavior. Never mind that extramarital sex in the White House from Roosevelt to Kennedy, among others, was common knowledge even to school children. Interestingly, the republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, a leader of the impeachment proceedings had been overwhelmingly sanctioned by the House just two years earlier on ethics violations. And representative Bob Livingston who succeeded Gingrich as Speaker-designate to lead the charge, stepped down when he was discovered himself to be having an extramarital affair. A new political sex scandal seems to crop up every year, sometimes every month.

And don’t look to our clergy or our press. The ‘holier than thous’ became the ‘hornier than thees’ and stole the innocence of generations. Not so surprising when organized religion has been responsible for more death and torture in the holy name of salvation than Genghis Kahn, Atilla the Hun, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung all rolled into one. And when the muckrakers got down into the dirt to bring revelation to the masses it merely spawned the yellow journalists who traffic in rumor, scandal, sensationalism and lies.

Is there any group that is exempt from this pattern? Are accountants so corruptible? Ask the employees and shareholders of Enron and Arthur Anderson. How about engineers? Ask the project managers for the space shuttle Challenger. And what of the soldiers? Each side in every conflict will point to a whole segment of society guilty of the crime of being wrong. Is there an ethical ideal to which they hold other than the great cop out of doing what they’re told?

Well what of sport? That has to be pure. It is the embodiment of the human ideal, the pursuit of excellence and the use of nonviolent competition to satisfy our inherent desire for combat. Yet, no one is unaware of the abuse of enhancement performing drugs in all of sport, from professional football to Olympic swimming. Baseball, the ‘American past-time’, the enjoyment of which is in large part predicated on the comparison to past greats, must now put asterisks next to its players names. Records are no longer really records, just performance enhanced numbers.

And that brings me to the subject of my rantings, because there is yet one true bastion of ethical behavior in our society. In 1925, while competing for the U.S. Open, Bobby Jones called a penalty on himself when his ball moved ‘ever so slightly’, unnoticed by anyone but himself. He went on to lose the tournament in a playoff. When complimented for his sportsmanship he said ‘You might as well praise me for not robbing banks.’ In 2007 Mark Wilson was competing for his first win as a PGA professional. His caddy inadvertently called out the loft of his club on a par 3 and Wilson realized, as they walked to the green, that he may have been in violation of rule 8-1, ‘giving advice to another player.’ He called over a rules official, was awarded a two stroke penalty and lost the outright lead. He prevailed in a sudden death playoff. It is hard to find a single instance of cheating in professional golf and yet the tale is replete with accounts of self- imposed penalties. In 1983 Hale Irwin wiffed a 3 inch putt in the final round of the British Open. It wasn’t a penalty, and could have been excused as a practice stroke but he counted it and missed out of the finals by one shot. The number of stories of self imposed punishments that meant the difference between winning and losing, fame and obscurity, fortune and hardship in the annals of amateur and professional golf would fill many books. In 1986 Ray Floyd lost the lead in the second round of a tournament when he told his playing competitor that his ball had moved right before his putt, and to give him a 5 for the hole.

For sure there are the cheaters who don’t count their strokes, inflate their handicap for the member guest tournament, take mulligans and replace lost balls like police throwing down unmarked weapons at a crime scene. But there has been something existentially pure and moral about the upper echelons of competitive golf. And I, for one, choose to believe it defines the sport itself, or maybe it’s the other way around. Golf won’t make you more ethical if you’re not and if you don’t cheat at golf it doesn’t necessarily hold you’ll be an honest doctor or a faithful husband. But we will only ever regain our innocence and our ideals by teaching our young ones to ‘play nice. And there is no greater landscape to do that on than a beautiful stretch of green grass, pockmarked with pitfalls of quicksand and bottomless wells, to teach us that life may not always be fair but it is best played fairly.

Go ahead and pass new laws to help the sick and the poor, to put restraints on the greedy on Wall Street, to watch over our police lest they go too far in their pursuit of the bad guy, and to monitor the monogamy of our civic leaders. But we will only persevere in regaining the moral high ground if we resolve to reestablish our ethical compass. Instead of teaching business management to new doctors, we would be better off teaching them to memorize the Hippocratic oath. Instead of turning out more lawyers to sue each other, we would be better off making referral fees a violation of ethics. Instead of congressmen making speeches about why they support a bill that benefits their constituents, let them make lobbying illegal. Or let us take our toddlers to the park and teach them the rules of golf.

So Tiger cheated on his wife. Welcome to the world where 50% of us cheat on our spouse and to the world of the rich and famous where that number is probably 80% or higher. (Fame, like extramarital sex…be careful what you wish for.) It’s not an excuse and though there may be an explanation, it’s the equivalent of moving your ball in the rough. You just shouldn’t do it. But it could have been worse. He could have cheated at golf. And though he has confessed his marital sins let us hope and pray that we never see a day when a Mark McGwire or an Alex Rogriquez of golf gets up to say he’s sorry he ever used drugs. Golf will recover from Tiger’s infidelity but, at least for now, it remains the last bastion of ethics in an unethical world.