2011 Science

This morning's newpaper contained an article on making a success of New Year's resolutions.  It had helpful hints about setting reasonable goals, establishing schedules and other logical means to achieve a desired end. 

The article went on to explain that approximately 60 percent of New Year's resolutions die a quick death before the calendar reaches February, and that fewer than one-fifth of such attempts even remotely hit the mark.

That's a better average than I expected.

The problem with resolutions made at the new year or any other time is that they are very often quite difficult to accomplish and go against our own natures.

Like losing weight.

How easy could it possibly be for me to lose weight in 2011 when I have spent every year since 1952 consistently gaining weight? 

Scientists can explain scientifically how difficult it is to stop the momentum of an object in motion.  Mr. Hahn taught me this in high school physics with the simple equation, momentum (p) equals mass (m) times velocity (v).

P = mv.

In other words, if one has already achieved a significant mass and has been doing so at a relatively high speed, it is difficult or even impossible to reverse the momentum. 

It's why fat kids are popular in the game of Red Rover but not in dodge ball, and why Oprah Winfrey now has her own TV network.

While this is a mechanical theory, I believe it may also be applied to human action, which explains why most New Year's resolutions fail. 

Momentum cannot be changed by the object that is already in motion.  Only a separate outside force applied to the object can cause the change.

In other words, a behavior with momentum is almost impossible to overcome by an internal force of will. 

Worst of all, as mass increases equal momentum can be maintained even if the velocity begins to slow. 

The fatter I get, the fatter I get without even trying!

For many, all that is needed is a small course correction.  A little force applied here, a slight push there and we can be headed in the new direction.

But for those of us who need to make a full U-turn, it might be easier to repeal the laws of physics.

Iowa's Baseball Legend

In case you didn't know, Iowa is famous for its baseball.

Back in the days when American professional baseball players were mostly Americans, Iowa's little leagues, high schools and semi-pro city teams produced some amazing players.

None was more renowned than Bob Feller, who passed away 10 days before Christmas at age 92.

"Rapid Robert," as he was known for his high-speed pitching, was an all-American Iowa farm boy who became the youngest player in the history of the major leagues. His "Van Meter heater" fast ball, named for his home town, crossed home plate like lightning, which brought him to the attention of the Cleveland Indians organization while he was still in high school.

Bob credited his amazing pitching strength to milking cows, picking corn and baling hay.

Feller pitched his first major league game before his was 18 years old. In his inaugural outing he struck out 15 St. Louis Browns batters. He set the 17 strikeout American League record later that season.

He never looked back. His entire career was spent with the Indians, to whom he remained a loyal supporter all of his life.

The remaining details of his baseball history are summed up in this: Feller was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, the first year in which he was eligible for the honor.

Of course, there is a footnote.

Although Feller was at the pinnacle of American sports, his performance on the field was not the only thing that endeared him to millions of Americans.

On December 8, 1941, while at the peak of his career, Feller traded his Cleveland jersey for a Navy uniform. Incensed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day, Feller enlisted immediately. He was the first major league player to do so. During the war he served as a gun captain on the USS Alabama, earning several battle commendations and medals.

When WW2 ended, Feller returned to the Cleveland Indians with low fan expectations. True to form, he pitched his best season ever in 1946. Although his career was interrupted for more than four years by military service, Feller remains the record holder for the most wins by a Cleveland pitcher.

I met Bob Feller twice and I own an official American league baseball that he autographed for me on one of those occasions.

Bob Feller's personality and opinions were as strong as his pitching. He had a booming voice that stung the ear as easily as his fastball stung a catcher's mitt. He willingly shared his opinions when asked, and sometimes when he wasn't.

While he never stopped loving baseball, Feller had little enthusiasm for today's multi-million dollar playboy players. His distaste was even worse for those who sullied the sport through gambling or illegal drug use.

It would be tempting to portray Bob Feller as a shy, cob-rolling, quiet type from rural Iowa, but this was not the case. He was outspoken and demanding, both of himself and of others.

And he was fiercely loyal. Feller never stopped being a Cleveland Indian long after he stopped wearing the uniform. He was just as loyal to his country.

And Iowa will always remain loyal to Rapid Robert.

The Husband's Christmas Dilemma

The other day I was drinking coffee with a group of farmers at a local coop when the subject turned to buying Christmas gifts for our wives.

It is a subject that I have often considered privately but had never actually discussed in public. 

Shopping for a wife's Christmas gift is an activity so frought with guilt and anxiety that men rarely mention it without the aid of alcohol and the cloak of a dimly lit bar.

But here we were in the bright light of day and nothing stronger to sip than some luke warm coffee.  We nervously grabbed handfuls of peanuts in the shell from the large gunny sack nearby to occupy our shaking hands as we built up the nerve to share our stories.

One fellow, who had just arrived in the Christmas present he had purchased for himself that week - a brand new candy apple red Chevy pickup -  offered only one piece of advice.

"Never buy her pants.  One year my wife said she needed pants, so I bought her a pair of pants. Never buy pants."

"Why not?" I asked.

"If the size is too big she thinks you believe she is fat.  If they are too small, she'll know she's fat. Never buy pants."

Peanut shells were flying.

"Just don't buy her any clothing at all," said another farmer. "I stick to gift cards."

"What's a gift card?" asked the old guy at the end of the counter.

Over the years my own gift giving has wavered between romantic and utilitarian, depending on my mood on December 24th and what store I happened to be in as closing time was approaching.

My gifts also tend to reflect each year's financial condition.  Last year was jewelry, but 2010 is shaping up to be kitchen utensils.

I suppose my father had some influence on my early ideas about Christmas shopping for my wife. 

From as early as I can remember my brother and I were in charge of getting Dad's present for Mom.  So when I was 11 she received an electric knife. I can't remember most of the other gifts, so this must have been the best of the bunch.

Then one year Dad actually bought a gift on his own.  On an afternoon just before Christmas I came home from school to find Mom's Christmas present sitting on the front porch - a brand new used deep freeze with a small dent in the side and a big red ribbon stuck on the lid. 

It turned out Dad had attended a farm auction that morning and the freezer was too good of a deal to pass up.  Only fifteen dollars.

Thus was born my view of spousal gift giving.  The lights turned low, Christmas music playing in the background, a fire burning in the fireplace and a brand new deep freeze in the basement. 

What could be better?

A man's view of gifts, I discovered, can be shocking to women. 

A number  of years ago I went to a local hardware store to purchase a new broom to replace one that had  worn out.  I found what I was looking for and headed to the checkout line, which was busy with holiday shoppers.

"Did you find everything you needed today?" asked the bubbly check-out girl.

"Yes, I did," I replied.  "I picked out the best broom you have. It's an O'Cedar!"

"Is it for you or for your wife?" she asked, jokingly.

"Oh, it's for my wife." I said.  "It's her Christmas present."

Here bubbly countenance disappeared. 

"You're buying her a broom?" she asked in a loud condescending tone that got the attention of others in line. 

At that point I had to decide whether to tell the truth or play along.

"Yes, I am. Do you gift wrap?"

"At least you didn't buy her pants!" exclaimed the guy with the red pickup.

Knowledgology

Today while I was working it dawned on me that my success in doing things is completely dependent on my success in knowing things.  How can I be competent at doing if I am not fully competent at knowing?

The problem is, I don't know what I don't know.  I only know what I know.

Determining what I don't know could be exceedingly helpful in increasing the amount of stuff that I actually know.  But how do I find out what I don't know so that I can then know it?

This opens a whole new realm of study that I have chosen to call knowledgology.

I am the world's first knowledgologist - the first to fully focus my creative efforts on what I don't know. 

During my first few hours of knowledgology I discovered how easy it is to become distracted by remembering the things I already know instead of dwelling on the things that I don't already know.  It is such an encumbrance that I have concluded that the best way to study what I don't know is to try to forget everything I already know.

This is harder than it sounds.  In fact, it seems that fogetting something permanently is more difficult than learning it it the first place. 

Knowing is easier than unknowing.

I have successfully, permanently forgotten a handful of facts, proving that unknowing something is possible.  But this is not exactly the same as knowing what I don't know.  It is working in reverse.

By reducing the amount of stuff that I know, I am actually increasing my workload in determining what I don't know.  Such a vicious circle.

But with enough effort, and a government grant, I firmly believe that there is much to know about what we don't know. And I plan to be the first to document it.

Justice Served

Liberals across the nation have reacted in shock to Iowa voters’ decision to dismiss three state supreme court justices over their participation in a decision granting marriage rights to homosexual couples.

Their dismay is understandable. Iowa gave them Barak Obama. Launched by the Iowa Democratic Party caucuses, he became the most liberal president ever elected. How could these same Iowans hold such outmoded views regarding marriage and judges?

Their arguments uniformly decry this month’s vote based on the need for an independent judiciary unaffected by the whims of political or moral circumstance. After all, they say, the federal and state constitutions were written, in part, to protect the rights of the minority from the excesses of the majority. And in this point, they are correct.

But in this case Iowans voted to protect the majority from the excesses of the minority.

Prior to the court’s ruling, civil marriage had always been a privilege granted by the state to couples who qualify. The state reserves the right to deny marriage to minors and to others for whom marriage is deemed inappropriate. While restrictions were few, marriage has never been a legal right.

By reversing Iowa’s law limiting marriage to heterosexual partners, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that marriage is now a right and no longer a privilege. In stating that bans on homosexual marriage restrict some people’s pursuit of happiness, and therefore discriminates, the justices opened a broad door that will be difficult to close.

This is a perilous road. At some point marriage will become meaningless to society. In fact, we are closer to that day than one might imagine.

What would put a stop to this craziness? Here is one idea that is sure to get someone’s attention.

John is 85 years old and owns farm land worth $6 million. When John dies his son Robert will inherit his estate. But under current law Robert will owe a mountain of inheritance taxes which will necessitate selling some of the land. To avoid this problem John and Robert decide to be united in marriage. John keeps his holdings in one piece., Robert inherits the estate as a surviving spouse and the government misses out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in inheritance taxes.

That’s one loophole that is bound to be sewn shut.

Back to the issue at hand.

The rejection of the concepts of right and wrong in favor of situational ethics by current society leads us down a road of continuous uncertainty and grasping for purpose.

Thus a body of judges has overturned millennia of wise tradition in order to accommodate the views of a vocal political minority.

I have come to believe that many judges lose all sense of history and wisdom for the future when they take the bench. If this were not so, such grotesque and myopic rulings would never occur.

It is important to understand that Iowans do not elect judges. Justices from the state supreme court on down are proposed by an “independent” nominating commission selected by the governor upon recommendation from – you guessed it – the legal establishment. So the state’s lawyers, an overwhelmingly liberal bunch, get the first crack at naming justices. This is followed by a narrowing of candidates by a politically appointed nominating commission. The nominating commission has been dominated by liberal Democrats for decades.

This is why it is disingenuous to decry the justices’ dismissal by noting that at least one of them was nominated by a Republican governor.

Unlike presidential nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, Iowa's governor has little latitude in judicial nominations. It is impossible for an elected politician to stack the courts. But the judicial nominating commission can thoroughly do so.

Iowa voters have the right to remove judges by majority vote – period! While it was presumed by the legal establishment that removal would occur only as a result of malfeasance or outright criminality, there is no such requirement in Iowa law.

A justice can be removed simply for being ugly if that is the will of the voters.

This presents an interesting conundrum for judges and the judicial gene pool – lawyers and their activist organizations.

Their first inclination certainly must be to challenge the Iowa law allowing voters the right to retain or remove judges. But such legal maneuvering would be seen for what it would be – an attempt to remove Iowans’ ability to effect change when the judicial system has run amok.

The more palatable move will be an attempt to rewrite the code to more closely limit the circumstances under which a justice may be removed. But given the outcome of the recent vote, this too would be a difficult step.

My advice to the lawyers and judges of Iowa is simple. You have worked for decades to remove black and white from the law and replace them with varying shades of gray. You strive to make nothing actually wrong and nothing completely right.

You wrote the rules and you lost anyway.

Live with it!

A Brand New Word

This evening I had some time on my hands. Sitting in my room at the Super 8, where I have free wireless internet access, I decided to amuse myself with a game of Stump The Google.

The idea is to think of a question to which Google cannot supply a sufficiently reliable answer within its first five entries.

I know, this sounds horribly boring. But you must realize that as children, for fun, my brother and I would spend cold winter evenings huddled in the living room reading encyclopedias.  World Book was our Wii.  Playing Stump The Google is merely a modernized version of our childhood encyclofrolics.

Here is an example of how it is played.

#1. Me: In mythology, who was the father of Zeus? Google: The parents of Zeus were Cronus and Rhea. First time, every time, right on time.  Good old Cronus. 

#2 Me: What is the diameter of a human hair? Google: The diameter of human hair ranges from 17 µm to 181µm.

#3 Me: What is a µm? Google: A µm is a micron.

#4 Me: What is the definition of encyclofrolic?  Google:  NO ANSWER!!

I have stumped Google and inadvertently invented a new word.

Add this to your dictionary and vocabulary. Astound your friends.  Throw away supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.  You now have encyclofrolic.

Encyclofrolic - n. a period of enjoyment or excitement derived from reading encyclopedias on cold winter evenings. Example:  Everyone grab your Brittanicas and we'll have an encyclofrolic!

This is not be be confused with encycloholic, which is a person who cannot stop reading encyclopedias even though they are no longer useful and contain outdated information.

The Clash Of Ideas

I am going to quit reading letters to the editor.

My local newspaper, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, publishes such letters seven days a week.

Occasionally one stumbles across an opinion that is well-reasoned, concise and persuasive. It might even make me reexamine my own opinion on the issue.

Then there are the other 98 percent.

The worst ones deal with politics.  These letters commonly are botched attempts to repeat a politcal party's daily talking points that the writer only partially grasped while watching MSNBC or Fox News.  Thus informed, he tries to make me think that the idea originated with him while I know that the letter is nothing more than a vain attempt to solicit validation for himself and his misbegotten viewpoint.

Most people writing political letters to the editor are crackpots in the very worst sense of the word.

Then there are the letters dealing with the economy.  I am always amazed that a person is willing to sign his or her name to a document that reveals such vast ignorance about such an important topic.  The good thing about letters regarding the economy, if there can be such a thing, is that people seem equally ignorant regardless of age, education or professional background.  Lawyers and teachers are just as far removed from understanding economic reality as the average retail clerk or union plumber. 

I am especially intrigued by the letters written by people who attempt to persuade me by their professional title.  One such fellow who, by his editorial contributions believes he has a better grasp of how to handle our military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq than any general in theater, signs his letters "USMC, Retired."   Gomer Pyle knows how to type!

And I will never understand why a newspaper will publish letters regarding religion.  Certainly religion influences one's position on social issues, but a letter to the editor is hardly an effective tool of proselitization.

I have written letters to the editor twice in my life. The second, four years ago, was in support of a particular candidate for state-level office.  As you would expect it was well written and thought provoking. 

My first attempt was over 30 years ago when I submitted a letter to my hometown newspaper regarding a pending school bond referendum.  It was a massive proposal that deserved scrutiny prior to the vote.  But my letter had no influence on the decision because it was never published.

In order to write a persuasive letter I did much research on the school system tax base, the long term property tax implications for the region and a breakdown of the cost burden on a per-payer basis.  These were all the types of items one would have expected to be included in a news story, but the newpaper had foregone that responsiblity in favor of cheerleading for the bond referendum.

The editor returned my letter with a note indicating it would be "irresponsible" to publish it.  In other words, it disagreed with the newspaper's own position on the issue.

For a professional journalist, it was a hard pill to swallow. 

But it was just another reminder that opinions are like rectums.  Everybody has one.