Hahahaha! Batter takes a swipe at intentional walk pitch!

Okay, I've always wondered what would happen if a batter didn't want to be intentionally walked. Well, here you go. Better get that pitch way outside, there, and remember, kids, it ain't a walk until you throw all 4 balls.

Best exercise ever

Stop doing aerobics, put away your step, get rid of the exercise machines and stop paying for Pilates (are those Pontius Pilates?). Get yourself a six-year-old kid and take her to the local school playfield and spend an hour or so running around and kicking the soccer ball with them. I'm pretty sure I expended more energy in that hour than I do in a two-and-a-half hour bike ride on the flat. The kid ran my ass off (and her mother's ass as well). We had fun, and I'll bet she'll sleep tonight. (I mean Monkey) (Though, I bet Barb sleeps pretty good, too, now that I think of it) Anyway, I cannot recommend this highly enough. If you don't have your own six-year-old, Monkey's available for the low low rate of $43.95 per hour. :)

Wise sayings

In the vein of my previous post, I offer these for your consideration. Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. - Mahatma Gandhi If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. - the Dalai Lama At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love. - Martin Luther King, Jr. It isn't enough to talk about peace, one must believe it. And it isn't enough to believe in it, one must work for it. - Eleanor Roosevelt Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves. - William Hazlett He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the world. - Marcus Aurelius Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. Soldiers usually win battles and generals get the credit for them. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. - Napolean Bonaparte Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. - Albert Einstein Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. - Isaiah 2:4 Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. - Jesus Christ Peace be with you.

Why the right never gets it right

In the history of the human race, the right has never gotten it right. They're not getting it right now, and show no signs of getting it right in the future. They need to find another label, because "right" is misleading. I've had a recent epiphany concerning how one (or one's government) goes about shaping the world around them. There are pretty much two options. One is rooted in force, and the other, well, isn't. I was listening to a radio talk show the other day, and the topic of discussion was the "War on Drugs", and it occurred to me that our whole political metaphor in the United States is rooted in this word "war". We're always engaging in a war on something, whether it be drugs, terrorism, or poverty. (These days, it's always a war on some concept or idea; never a war with InsertProperNoun; even the Iraq thing is "the war in Iraq", but that's another topic for another time.) This got me to thinking about how the government shapes policy in this country, and how it attempts to shape policy throughout the world, and I came to the conclusion that the right apparently believes it can use force to solve any perceived policy problem. It boils down to the hammer problem. The only tool they have is a hammer, so everything had better be a nail. Force can take many forms. The obvious one, of course, is raw military force. This is the United States' comfort zone. We're very good at deploying our military, and it makes us feel like we're doing something. But there's also coercion, extortion, and other less-forcy-seeming, but equally forceful means of bringing about an end. There are two problems with using force as a means to an end:

• It's rooted in wishful thinking
• It doesn't actually solve anything

I'll take the second one first, and then explain what I mean by the first bullet point. In looking back through history, the use of force has never ever solved anything. The human race has been engaging in an eternal game of Whack-a-Mole. Nothing accomplished by force or violence is enduring. The "winner" may see short term gains, but in the long run, the "winner" loses, and so does everyone else. Seriously, think back. What did the "great wars" of the past solve? Did the Civil War solve anything? (No. see "Civil Rights Movement") The Great War? (Nope. Caused Hitler, though.) World War II? (Nuh uh. Cold war, anyone?) What we did in Korea and in Vietnam appear to have made many things worse. What we're doing in Iraq right now isn't helping anything, and what we did in Afghanistan hasn't had any lasting impact. That's right, the Taliban is back, and the government we installed is corrupt.

Look, I can't actually examine every act of violence in history, so I can't provide a rigorous proof that "violence never solves anything". But, I can see patterns in how things turn out, and I think it's reasonable to say "violence rarely solves anything". I assert that this is the case.

The use of force is rooted in wishful thinking, based on the belief that one can impose one's own view of how reality "ought to be" at gunpoint. The right actually believes that it can make the "drug problem" go away by wanting to really badly and by incarcerating anybody who doesn't conform. It's not working, and it's never going to.

What's the alternative? The alternative is cooperation based on compassion and understanding. Find your inner empath. If you want to solve "the drug problem", call off the War on Drugs and apply those resources to educating the populace, treating those who want treatment. Stop using scare tactics and coercion and actually educate kids about these substances in a value-neutral manner. Kids are smart, they know when they're being lied to, so when you say "If you smoke marijuana, YOU WILL DIE!", they know it's crap. But, if you tell them how and why certain chemicals act on human physiology, they'll absorb it and be able to make better-informed decisions in the future.

This works as long as your definition of "the drug problem" is not "drugs are bad, m'kay". Look at the effects of drug abuse on society, and then look at the effects of the War on Drugs on society, and do your cost-benefit analysis. Which is worse? I say the particularly violent black market perpetuated by the War on Drugs is far more costly to society than what it's attempting to solve.

I've moved far afield here without intending to. I say that approaching problems and policy decisions with empathy, compassion and understanding is far more constructive than grabbing the hammer. I find it ironic that the (supposedly) most important person in the lives of the very people who are perpetuating the use of force made his second great commandment "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

Republicans must really have a lot of self-loathing.

New beginnings

So, I have a LiveJournal account and everything, but I don't use it for much. I made this blog account here so I could comment on somebody else's blogspot blog, and ignored it for a while. Well, I finally thought of a title for this damn thing, so maybe I'll start using it some. I'm seriously considering discontinuing the LiveJournal one and just moving here. Anyway, here I am.