Nuclear Wasps or Stimulus Sting?

The Associated Press reported today that some routine maintenance performed at the dormant Hanford Nuclear Site in 2003 is having some glowing side effects:

Radioactive wasps.

Yuck.

Apparently, the maintenance crew was watering down some dust 6 years ago and the mud created by the dousing attracted wasps. So now, SIX years later we are hiring some people to go out and dig up--get this--six to twelve inches of topsoil from SIX acres! What the...?

Anyone thinking what I'm thinking? Why are we doing this now? Six years is a long time. And according to the "spokesman" (The AP report never says exactly who he is a spokesman for) the wasp nests that accrued there are "fairly highly radioactive". Fairly highly? If that's the case what possibly could have been the hold up on cleaning this mess up before? What possible "change" could have occurred to make the clean up necessary or even possible now?

One word: Stimulus. Or if you prefer the real word: Farce.

The AP report never asks where the funds for the clean up were coming from, never asks how long the clean up will take, never once asks why the clean-up hadn't happened before and more to the point along our current unemployment trend: how many jobs did these glowing little buzzers just create?

Feeling stimulated yet? Feeling…stung?

We aren't allowed on that site to investigate this supposed bee eradication. We don't need to go anyway. We'd go out there looking for some wasps only to end up smelling a rat.

Here's the story on KATU

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a congressman to call.


Lostaglia House

Libertarianism: A non-sequitor in and of itself...but that's a good thing!

So, we automatically think of non-sequitors as being sort of idiotic, right? I mean, literally the term means something like "it does not follow". Well, not following, in the Libertarian sense, is actually a benefit. Groups are abstractions. There really isn't any such thing as a group. Show me a group. You can't. You can only show me a group of X. And therefore you are showing me X in repetition. Furthermore, every X in any given machination is different. All things are individualized and perceived as such...otherwise we would all go crazy looking at the vast infinitude of the universe all at once. Whoa.

Let's see who recognizes these words:

Ok, that's too easy. I think we all know what parchment this is we're looking at. Right? Um...right?? Yeah, I'm cheating, I'm the guy that posted it, of course I know. Here's what that little piece of paper has to say:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Of course, we all know the last little part "the pursuit of Happiness" was a curiously strange diversion from the prominent liberal thinking of the day. John Locke, to whom the phrase "Life, Health, Liberty, etc" is accredited, did not directly state the importance of "happiness", he instead used "possession" or, some cases, "property" in the stead of happiness. Curious. So what exactly does this have to do with anything? I mean, that stinky old parchment, no one cares about that anymore. We've got our Facebooks and Blackberries to tend to. No one has time to worry about that stupid ol' Declaration of Whatever Blah Blah Blah thing anymore.

Wait a second. If we don't have to worry about that document anymore, that must mean we usurped the whole of Maslow's Hierarchy right? I mean sheesh, if we have conquered things like say, food and shelter and transport and all that, certainly the use of our fun little toys like the one you're using right now to read this must certainly constitute happiness.

What you do individually, you do for self-stimulation. Think about that the next time you sit down at your computer or pick up your cell phone. My life is good!

Well, the question is: How good is it? Can it really be true that we are so satisfied with ourselves, so...what's the word...um...liberated...that we can sit in front of our Wii for two hours trying to re-sink that virtual hole-in-one? (No I don't own a Wii, but I've got many other vices). Hmm...Maslow, he woulda been a Pong guy I bet.

It's interesting that self actualization is the pinnacle of this whole enchilada:

We: the dudes in wigs writing the paper (That would be John Adams and Tommy Jefferson)
hold these truths: wait for it...
to be self evident: Aha! That means, you, the reader of this little colonial temper tantrum have no choice but to agree to the following...
that all men are created equal: so out of the gate we are all individually equal...hmmm...
that they are endowed by their Creator: Yes, that's a capital "C", no, this is not a typo...err...quillo...That Creator guy? Yeah, that's God, or the higher being, or whatever idiotic multi-cultural, non-offensive titular disrespect we're applying to Him these days.
with certain (in)unalienable rights: that means they can't be stripped from you, the individual, by any means, it's impossible to do.
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happineff: I just like the f's for s's thing in colonial English, fo fexy.

The Declaration of Independence is, more than being a mere temper tantrum, a philosophical document. Hence the reliance on John Locke. The portion we're dealing with here is a fundamental, mimetic device. The fact that Life, Liberty, etc are revered (hence the capitalization) means they are the true forms of the abstract. Not carbon copies. When John Adams says Life, he means, in the Aristotelian sense, the highest possible "ideal" of life. God-given and nothing less. The same goes with Liberty and Happiness, or if you prefer, Property, for all the people that think John Locke got robbed on this one. (Incidentally, I think slave ownership (property) may have been a good reason why this word was stricken, and have heard others suggest this as well...but I have no proof)

Yeah, yeah, now's when all the over-educated English professors get to stop lurking in the shadows and point out that other words are capitalized in the document too. We're not getting into that here, but anyone who wants me to kick their academic booty into verbal oblivion can e-mail me for a lambasting on the subject of majuscules and language orthographies in colonial English. Don't step. Don't do it.

That said, we seriously need to re-evaluate individualism...and what God has to do with it...according to our forefathers. (Incidentally, I'm a 2nd gen American...so I guess they weren't technically my forefathers...) What if I don't believe in God? What does that mean? If God endows these rights, according to this philosophy, and I don't believe in God, does that mean I don't have these rights? Maybe I just have to disagree with the founders of this nation on how I obtain these rights? If I disagree with the founding fathers, what does that make me? Unamerican? If I'm unamerican and yet, for some reason, like living here, what do I have to do to erase this little hiccup? If I erase this little hiccup, don't I have to, in essence, delete everything that comes after it? After all, the entire document, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers all hinge on these Truths (capital T) being self-evident and inalienable. Can I pick and choose which parts of the Constitution I like?

I got bad news for you if you're this person. Whether God exists or not is not the question. The philosophy of this nation hinges on our individual inalienable rights. Those rights are gifts from God. The only way to obtain these individual rights which cannot be stripped, is from the Creator. There is no argument in Naturalism which grants you these rights. Socialism's goal is to make sure you don't have access to these rights. Socialism is collectivism. Collectivism ignores the minority, it is one step removed from the mob-rule which is democracy. Democracy is an abstraction which can't preserve your rights. If the mob (majority)decides it is within their interest to take your rights, they will do so. Democracy is an evil, evil thing which punishes minorities. This is a Republic (Latin: Things of the State...or Law), we are a country of Law. And the first law is: the greatest example of the minority is the individual. That's right, it's you, no matter who you are. Once you join a group, you've sacrificed a part of your individual liberty. This is why Libertarianism is a non-sequitor. A group of people preaching individualism? It just doesn't follow. And thank God it doesn't. Because, if we were all able to agree on the sovereignty of each other, a greater esteem for our neighbor would emerge and a greater respect for opposition just might prevent crime, war, poverty, etc. Would it be some lilly-laden Utopia? Absolutely not. Utopia's suck and inevitably breed oligarchy...just like all other forms of government have in the past...including Republicanism.

We don't need some fake mockery of collective utopia. What we need we already have, it is inalienable. But that doesn't mean some won't try to rob you of it.

Now put down your Blackberry and get back to pursuing Hapineff.

Down the River...Again

Ok, Mr. Underhill, this is gonna get political. So, if you don't like that, turn around now, go bury your head in the sand and pretend the shadow of Mordor isn't creeping in on your Shire.

So today I got an e-mail from James Carville...you know, the barking dog of the Clintonistas. I guess now that Karl Rove is outta town, this guy wants to flash his rosey-cheeked, Botox injected face all over the place:


Anyway, he came knockin on my electronic door begging for a handout...in the middle of a recession...depression...whatever it is we are in. I love Democrats, here's his limp-noodle pitch (my preciousssss):

"You've got to hand it to the Republicans: they may have wrecked our economy, trampled on our Constitution, and trashed our country's reputation -- but they're always good for a chuckle.

Take Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who recently declared himself "a middle-class guy," despite pulling down $10 million a year and never missing an opportunity to defend his fellow fat cats -- kind of like a cottonmouth calling itself a kitten. O'Reilly must get his "middle-class" sensibilities from hanging around out-of-touch Republicans like Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who last week filed a purely ideological lawsuit to block his own state from accepting $700 million in federal stimulus funds that would prevent ruinous cuts in public education.

Republican governors like Sanford are selling their states down the river to suck up to the likes of O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. And now the GOP is gunning to win enough governorships to hijack the congressional redistricting process that will follow the 2010 census -- to derail President Obama's agenda for change and spread Sanford's brand of so-called "compassionate conservatism" across our entire country.

To jam a stick in their spokes, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) needs your immediate help to meet its $50,000 May fundraising goal. And if you contribute by midnight tomorrow, your gift will be matched by a leading DGA supporter -- doubling the impact of your support."

I'm not even going to respond to the absurdity of me giving money to any party that signs off billions of dollars on a whim, I'll let the esteemed MEP from across the way tell our yippity-yip Mr. Carville how much his barking sucks:



Notice the key phrases:

"...You cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit." --Daniel Hannan

"You cannot spend your way out of recession, or borrow your way out of debt." --Daniel Hannan

As for Mr. Carville's "down the river" comment. Let me just say this. If you haven't read Puddinhead Wilson, by our nation's greatest author to-date, please do. Puddinhead Wilson is a story of two brothers switched at birth, one is white, one is black. Don't ask me how that works, go read the book. The irony of Twain's story here is that the "white" brother gets "sold down the river" into slavery in the end and the "black" brother is emancipated/exonerated. We find ourselves laughing at the fact that Tom, the mean, white brother, a guy who sold his own mother into slavery, is being sold down the river in the end. Until we release that we've just celebrated the enslavement of a person...irony...then we kinda bow our heads and wonder if our hypocrisy will ever end.

Carville rips O'Reilly for defending his fellow fat cats--and then uses this opportunity to defend and support HIS fat cat friends in power...Hypocrite.

Carville expects us to believe that Republicans are responsible for a trashed economy when we all know that every minute of every day after the tech bubble, after 9-11, after Enron, after WorldComm, after continued increase in governments on EVERY level over the last twenty-five years this depression was a possibility...maybe even an inevitability. Hypocrite.

Carville knows the stimulous package is not stimulating--cannot stimulate. Is Chrysler going to file? Is G.M.? Where is Time Warner? What's happening to newspapers all across America? Where do we realize that shoving money at the private sector's problems is simply a failed policy? Aren't the Democrats the party of Europhiliacs? Shouldn't we then be listening to the French and British parlimentarians on this one? Give back that stimulus money! We don't want your fake dollar, based on fake interest, based on fake consumer confidence! WE HAVE NO CONFIDENCE IN YOU, YOU HYPOCRITE.

Mr. Carville wants us to send him our money? I'll send him a song instead. Here's my contribution to the Church of Barrack, because the Church of Barrack is the Church of the Suicidal.



That's right, I want you to make it hurt!

And when the Republicans come around asking for a hand-out, they'll get the same damned song.

Oh, and if you're confused about all the Tolkien references above, check this out, You gotta wait till the end, just skip what you saw already, I couldn't use this to begin with because MSNBC cut out some of his most poignant points. I love this guy:

Shakespeare vs. Seuss

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." Dr. Seuss

So, time fastly flies, this really is true. And to stress that point, I'd like to point out that the first sentence is written in iambic pentameter. Now I'm Shakespeare and you have no choice but to read the rest of this.

I have a one year-old daughter. Actually, she's twenty months, which makes her nearly two years old. Tempus fugit. She's not quite old enough to wheel the red wagon around the back yard and fill it up with flowers, like my older daughter did when she was young, but I know that soon she will, and I know that soon I'll be looking back on that memory just as I look back on the memory of my oldest daughter dragging that squeaking wagon around, spilling flowers all about. The good thing about having a young child in my life is that I get to watch Sesame Street and Barney and Reading Rainbow again...yeah a 'good' thing. Well, the Reading Rainbow we never really have to watch, she's not interested in it really, it's kind of on in the background providing a beat while we do other things around the house or in the back yard. But she can stare at Barney for thirty minutes, that big, dopey...purple...thing. But Reading Rainbow is just good for the short little ditties. It's been nine years since my older daughter watched these kind of shows.
Flies, I say.

Now I find myself mixing memories. Memories from my older daughter, Sara, on mornings with dad and those I am having with Bella, my baby. It's almost like I have had two lives and the bifurcated memories from each come together in some flowering mass. I call it "The Lazarus Effect". I have to wonder if his (the resurrected ones) memories of his prior life haunted him, like mine haunt me...echoes of a former self. Then we get to wonder about anything that is "born again". Like, my purple sage in the garden. A few months ago it was a wilting, pitiful...brown...thing. You should see it now, now it's something Zane Grey would be proud of, in all its majesty. I don't really understand the cycle of rebirth thing. To me it is both tragedy and romance.

"O Proserpina,/For the flow'rs now that, frighted, thou let'st fall /From Dis's wagon!" (The Winter's Tale, 4.4.116-18)

Well, I don't let the flowers fall. They just do. But they come back. As time flies, they come back as something new, something...grander. A mixture of the old and the new. A little of the old life is always left behind, somewhere in the gray mists of winter--or trampled by Dis's wagon--but some remains and becomes a shadowy core in the rising, majestic life of the new radiating flower.

I hate Barney. I really do. Life is really sad when you find yourself looking forward to Antique Road Show. People my mother's age watch that show. I should not be looking forward to it. Such is the effect of the purple beast on me. Speaking of antiques, today on Reading Rainbow they took a break from cultural awareness for five minutes and read some Dr. Seuss. Now, Seuss, there's someone I can get into. Simple genius. Simple genius is something great, so invaluable, yet so overlooked. Like, say, a can opener...or hell, a can. Simple genius never really invents things, they just use the goodness of old wisdom to make new things...mmm...gooder.

I guess we could say the popularity of Dr. Seuss had recessed into its own shady winter. But maybe that's only due to my not having a small child around...until now. But really, I've been seeing him all over the place lately. If the cult of Seuss was dead, he certainly seems to be experiencing some sort of rebirth.

Shakespeare never seems to die. People (like myself) who really know nothing about him are constantly using lines from Shakespeare to prove a point. He is, afterall, the second most written about person in history behind Christ--the ultimate in resurrection icons. The grandness of Shakespeare never goes away because we don't quite get it. Maybe the simple genius of Shakespeare is what gets lost. Maybe it's hidden in someones attic and one day they'll pull it out like some long, lost, obscure Hudson River School painting on Antique Road show. That would be cool. Well, actually, guess what? I was going through some old books, looking for some Seuss to read to my daughter and just happened to find this:

Green Eggs and Ham by Wm. Shakespeare
I liketh them not Sam I am
A pox upon green eggs and ham!
Thou wouldst like them in a hamlet?
Nay, t'would not in a hamlet
Mayhap pref'rest them with a shrew?
Nay less compny'd by witless shrew.
Alas! On boat I would attest it!
Nay, a boat would bid a tempest.
Thou may taste them in Verona?
Not Verona, not Bologna!
Verily, if thou dost try them
Thou mayest bechanced to like them.
Sam, if behind me thou wilt get,
I may feign try them even yet.
Try them, do try them, thou wilt see
thou wilt mind them such as me!
Sam o Sam! What glor'ious fortune favor'd me!
The succulence of't fills with glee!
As fortold, they have pleaseth'd thee?
Thou hast tasted, now can see!
Tell me where is fancy egg!
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Oh! Let heav'ns rend asunder
And bolts of rabid thunder
Smite the foolish dotardly man
That liketh not green eggs and ham!

Sweet! Now we're rich! Call the Antique Road Show! Alright maybe not. I obviously just made that crude little poem up. But what is this really that we've found? It's just simple genius. That what Seuss was. You see, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter and Seuss's octameter are intersectory, Seuss knew that, more importantly, he did that. Two lives, two forms: one old, one new, mixed together, like my many memories coming together in some harmonic convergence backed by a universal beat. It's a simple beat, but one that lasts forever through rebirth. So let time fly, let the flowers fall, let the wagon roll.

The New York Mets--My Fondest Memory

Well, I feel a little naked going into this with little to no experience. But I figure it's only proper that my first post should be about the Mets, since they are a huge passion of mine and easily accesible. Sure, sure, I'll write about politics, philosophy, God and family as well, but this is a safe place to start. Dontcha think?

Here I present to you one of the happiest solitary moments of my existence. Being a huge Mets fan from way back (I'm told I hollered out "Let's go Mets" and the ripe ol' age of three). As I remember this game dragged on and on. I was at my in-laws house and they were kind of standing around waiting for the game to end (they are Cubs fans and had little interest in this game). The game was rainy and long. Eventually the whole family went out to eat dinner in the dining room, leaving me to my Mets in solitude. Not five minutes after the family had left the room, Robin Ventura (#4 in the picture above) wins the game with a Grand Slam, but since he was jumped on by his teammates on the way to 2nd base, he was credited with an RBI single only. Who cares? They won. I'll never forget the feeling of my heart fluttering into my gut. I was so strapped for air I could barely yell "Grand Slam!".

Here's the video. So good.



I saw game 6 of the World Series in 1986, and as that was exciting as well, I remember the events at the end were confusing to me, with the ball through Buckner's legs and all that dancing on home plate (Ray Knight...bahlee dat) so the sense of elation was stifled. So this, this truly Amazin' feat will always be my #1 moment in baseball memories. Of course, I would be remiss if I were to suggest that this is Robin Ventura's "shining moment" and I know my brother Jay would find it necessary to instantaneously remind me of exactly what that moment was...so I'll beat him to the punch, so to speak:

Robin: "Ouch!"
Nolan: "That's right sonny, you're getting pummeled by grandpa Ryan!"
Robin: "Owwie!"
Nolan: "Oh, stop whining, this is just my uppercut, wait till you see my left hook!"
Robin: "Is that Old Spice I smell?"
Nolan: "That's right, kid, goes on smooth, lasts all day, just like this ass whoopin'"

Of course, we can laugh at that. If Robbie were a Met then, he would smacked that Geritol poppin', John Wayne wannabe into the dust. Mets are tough, seriously. Mets fans are even tougher. And since this is a time for firsts, and to make me feel a bit better about feeling so naked on my virgin voyage into the blogosphere, I thought I'd link to a first of a (ahem) different variety. Viewer Beware!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH9Al4K9mE8



Thanks for coming along for the ride!

CT Lostaglia