Dealing with My Lack of Outrage.

It is difficult for me to get indignant anymore.

I'm not sure why. I think I have eco-global-9/11 overload. Nothing bothers me.

• Landfills full? Who cares.

• New war in Iran/q/Korea? Yaaaawn.

• Melting glaciers? Call me when the water rises.
  

The probable cause of this burnout? Too damn much news. Too many cable news networks with too many "rise up, the sky is falling stories."

When I was a kid, yea, every once in a while a Cuban missile crisis would come along, we'd build a couple of fall out shelters and practice crouching under our desks, or march single file into the school basement. No biggee. Just a nuke or two from Khrushchev. Piece a cake.

Now, with the 24/7/365 news cycle we get a new indignator every day -- and I for one have had it.

So, listen up fear mongers. You pitchmen of panic.

I'm off to the beach. With no TV.
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Why We Like This President.

<--- I am not the white guy playing the President.

It will surprise many of you that I like this President. I do. Not that my disposition matters, but when you get enough of dispositions like mine you get an approval rating in the mid-sixties, which he has, and you get things done, which he does.

Not that I like what he is getting done. I don't. But that's not the point.

This President has high approval ratings because he is liked. A few occurences last week illustrate why:

First is the fly swatting incident. President Obama killed a fly that had been swarming him and had landed on his arm. Swat. During a White House interview. Cameras rolling. If you haven't seen it, it is pretty impressive. It is something every guy has done or has tried to do and to be quick enough to get the fly gets points from me. Then there was the Father's Day address. He talked about the necessity and obligation of fathers to their children. I like that, too. Pretty basic stuff. Swatting a fly and talking about family. But that is, in essence, why he is given the okay sign from the average guy or girl . The fact that I disagree with him shouldn't keep me from treating him like anyone else I like.

President Obama's political ideology is a rebirth of Democratic party ideas that, I think, do us far more harm than good. Some of them are just flat wrong. But my disagreements notwithstanding, the President is a deservedly likable fellow, and he will have my respect and prayers while he holds the Presidential Office.

Elected officials do not establish the kind of people we are, the opposite is true, elected officials are the effect of the public disposition. They are a reflection. If you don't like them, change yourself.

I do wonder, though, can I get in on that game of one-on-one?

The Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington

Have you been?

The Star Telegram ran an article yesterday with this title:
New stadium is expected to become a tourist spot, even when idle.

No surprise there. A 1 billion dollar building of any kind is going to attract attention, add the Dallas Cowboys name to it and you have a mega-magnet. In Arlington. I will be one of those tourists at some point.

My daughter and I got a tour of the Omni Hotel a few weeks ago and it is pretty impressive, especially the out-of-doors bar on the south end of the hotel. I think the Omni was around 125 million to build. Multiply that by 8 and the Dallas Cowboys have one helluva building. How many billion dollar buildings get built anywhere?

Now the Cowboys need to bring a winning team to this building. Fans love the new stadiums but if they had a choice between new buildings and winning teams they will take the latter.

I am still shocked that the City of Dallas let the Cowboys of Dallas out of their reach, but they did. And I believe they will regret it until the day this stadium gets too old and another needs to be built . . . say in 2050.

The tours start today and tickets are $15.

Editor's note: actually $3 until everything is completed, see comments.

Donuts and Data.

Each morning, around 8:45, I walk downstairs to Dunkin' Donuts and join one of the three donuts-and-coffee lines. I choose the same line everyday because the girl at the counter knows me and has my coffee ready at my turn. Normally, I give her $2. The cost is $1.50, she keeps the 50 cent tip.

This morning I had a 5 dollar bill in my pocket. She had the coffee ready, I handed her the five and waggled three fingers at her. My non-verbal communication meant: give me the $3 dollars and keep the change. For a split second she wondered if I meant three coffees, occasionally I do get more than one, but she quickly realized my intent, then smiled and gave me the three dollars. As I walked away I considered some of the calculations she made in that split second, to wit:

• the meaning: three fingers = ?
  
• the expression on my face meant ?
  
• the denomination of the bill = $5.
• my purchase history
• the change is usually a tip.
• the frequency in which I had ordered more than one coffee.
• the other sounds and images in our proximity filtered out.

In addition, she had the pressure of needing to resolve the statement I was making in the finger waggling because of the long line behind me. All of this, and a decision, in about 1 second.

Bear with me, usually (but not always) I get around to a point. It is this:

I keenly dislike the prevailing metaphor of man in our era, i.e, "man as machine." And more particularly, the metaphor of brain and mind as hard-drive or RAM.

It is convenient but inadequate.

What about the source of life itself and the anomalies of the person? What of beauty, courage, selflessness, or of sloth and despair, or romance, where is romance without man "qua" man? What of the unseeable source that enlivens everything? That makes a dead seed "alive." It's not that science has no answers, it is that it has rejected the possibility of the existence of certain knowledge outside of the material. In my view, a mistake of grand proportion.

My three finger message to the girl at the Dunkin' Donuts counter was all that I needed to get the correct result. It was an everyday decision that the mind of a person makes in the midst of everything else that is going on, including all the involuntary actions of breathing, heart rate, etc., and it is fascinating to me.

But, that she said thank you with her smile; that is something only a person can do.

On the Virtue of Tilting

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For some reason I have been been thinking about Don Quixote:

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire,
"Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."
"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.
"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."
"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."

Everyone is understandably concerned about employment, jobs and from where they will come. But let us not forget that the good jobs, the ones we worry about losing today have their origins in the quixotic activity of yesterday's garage and dorm-room inventors. Young men who were told to get a real job, to give up the pipe dream, to accept the status-quo. But they are the guys who founded: Dell, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, not to mention the corporations from the old days, like Hewlitt/Packard, Ford, and GE whose origins are just as humble.

So, if we really want to develop more jobs, I conclude that we need fewer business schools, and more schools with a course on Don Quixote.

"your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions."
Joel