questions Archives - Page 21 of 24

Who You Callin’ A…. QUESTION

Ebony magazine has a July 2007 cover story, stories, actually, in which it proclaims that it “engages Black America in an honest examination of race, language and the culture of disrespect.” It’s interesting, because in the time I’ve been reading Ebony, and it’s been, off and on, since I was a kid, this is the first time in a very long time that the magazine has provided multiple stories on one topic. Throughout, there was a timeline of race and language, then a series of articles. Worth reading, at least in the library.

The one piece that intrigued me the most is the one that suggests that there are thinks a member of the tribe can say that an outsider (say, a white male like Don Imus talking about black women) cannot. There’s a guy of Polish descent who I’ve played racquetball with, and he has occasionally provided himself with an ethnic slur that I would never say myself. This is an obvious notion that reminds me of a story from my childhood:
My sister Leslie was teasing our sister Marcia on the school playground; it wasn’t very nice. But when one of Leslie’s male friends started teasing Marcia with the same words, Leslie slugged him.

So my question is this: What do you say in your tribe or tribes, however you define it (ethnicity, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, fraternity, sorority, family) that is verboten when it comes from the outside? I’m really curious about this, because, except for very good friends, who I can tell when they’ve done an air-headed thing, I’ve never been all that comfortable with that kind of talk.
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A couple things other people I read have discovered that interested me greatly.
1. From the U.K.’s Chris Black wonders whether attacks on Barack Obama as not black enough from some black groups might not make him even more attractive to some white voters. For a pol from across the pond, I think Mr. Black is pretty astute about American politics. “Not black enough” always reminds me of a Joan Armatrading lyric (from the title cut of an A&M EP, “How Cruel”)
“I had somebody say once my black was way too black,
And someone answer she’s not black enough for me.”
(I guess I’m not the only one who came to that conclusion. There’s a slow-loading Blogspot blog, Seattle for Barack Obama, that used that very quote.) I’m not sold on Senator Obama, but these kinds of attacks make him more sympathetic, I think.
2. The guy in the overalls found this citation to a 1970 DC Comics survey, conducted by a groovy Flash and a Superman we can dig, asking their readers to rap about what they’re interested in reading about. (Rap meant something different in 1970.) Right there between “pollution” and “space flights” is “black people”. I think that in 1970, I probably would have been offended, but now, it’s just hysterical.

ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, Eddie and Nik

Nik is a relative stranger in a strange, kiwi-infested land.

Who is your favorite historical figure?
Oh, I have no idea; it changes all the time. Right now, I’m rather keen on Thurgood Marshall, who was counsel for the NAACP in the Brown vs. Board of Education case before he ended up on the Supreme Court.

What one country have you always wanted to visit?
There are so many. I’ll pick Japan because it intrigues me the most.

What’s your favorite kind of candy bar?
Mounds. Mmmm, coconut.

Do you like my new haircut?
You’ve never looked better.

I tend to give Eddie a difficult time for the sometimes large chunks of time between posts, yet he asks me questions anyway:

Aside from Paula Abdul, what other dark musical secrets does your collection hide? Milli Vanilli? David Lee Roth? Ratt? Hanson? Mariah Carey?
I don’t really know what constitutes “dark musical secrets”. Of the ones listed: no; one with Van Halen; no; 1 song on a compilation disc; yes-a greatest hits CD.

Has Lydia picked up any habits at school that you and Carol don’t approve of? How do you handle it?
Not really. We’re trying to make sure she’s being assertive enough. There was a brief time a while ago when a boy in her class was trying to bully her, and she was too acquiescent, but that seems to have passed. She does say, “Eeew, gross!”, which I figure she got from another student.

What are you reading right now? (That’s my favorite question to ask people.)
Shrub by the late Molly Ivins.

And speaking of Bush, let me pose a question to you all. In Salon magazine Glenn Greenwald, in an excerpt of his new book, “A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency,” says: “One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness — who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil — is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it.” So the question is: Has the President been corrupted to do evil while trying to good, or as a friend posits:
“Call me cynical, or whatever, but I don’t believe for one nanosecond that Bush and his handlers believe in good and/or evil. They want power and control and empire. The only good they believe in is what’s good for them. As far as I can see, they have achieved the degree of power that they have because so few people recognize just how base are their motives.”
I actually know one of the 26% or 28% who support GWB, and it’s because he’s “a Christian man.” I swear to Rudy. So, since he’s “a Christian man,” the things he does, from the war to stem cell restrictions, are “Christian” position. If you’ve read this blog before, you know: 1) I’m a Christian, and 2) this logic REALLY hurts my head.

Nik Experiences the New Zealand Winter

One of the great things about knowing people who live in other places is that you get perspectives from those other people. For instance, I’d be inclined to say, today is the first day of summer. Or not. But Nik, who I should note I’ve never met personally, only through his writings, is an expat American about to experience winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

Which is a roundabout way of saying: it’s time for my summer/winter solstice edition of (drum roll, please)… Ask Roger Anything, in which you can, well, query myself, er, about any topic. Ask me about the two times I got to shake Nelson Rockefeller’s hand or how many Supreme Court justices I’ve met, or anything about sports or race or politics or religion or music or television or being a librarian. Well, anything except the Dewey Decimal System; that’s as deep dark secret.

You may ask a maximum of 16 questions apiece, except for Gordon, who can ask as many as he wants; bring ’em on, Piscean!

But DON’T ask me bizarro trivia questions, such as the one I saw on Ken Jennings’ blog this month:

Consider the universe of baseball statistics. Forget about ones that are averages, and thus a player’s score can go up or down over time — batting average, ERA, slugging percentage, and the like. Focus on the ones that accumulate. Also, forget about statistics that nobody tracks, like ground rule doubles in extra innings under a full moon on astroturf. Stay with statistics that people have actually heard of.

Now consider that among such statistics there’s the concept of one category being a special case of another. If you do one, you necessarily do the other, but not vice versa (otherwise two statistics would be called “synonyms”). A perfect game is a special case of a no-hitter. A double is a special case of a hit. An at-bat is a special case of a plate appearance. A save is a special case of a game played, but a hit is not because you can have any number of hits in a game.

At last, the question. There are two statistics, one of which is a special case of the other. The career leaders in the two categories — the guys who did each the most times — are different men with the same first and middle names. Who are they?

Oy. I barely understood the QUESTION, let alone had any idea what the answer was.

Anyway,

the

answer

is

Henry Louis (Hank) Aaron holds the record for career home runs (755) and Henry Louis (Lou) Gehrig holds the record for career grand slam home runs (23).

Of course, Barry Bonds is in a well-publicized pursuit of Aaron’s record (currently at 748), and Manny Ramirez, last I checked, stood at 20 Grand Slams. Bonds, BTW, is the career leader of a statistic with his initials: Bases on Balls.

So don’t ask me questions like that.

Immigration Questions

Back in the old days, i.e., even as recently as the 1980s, legislators from both sides of the political aisle would come together for the country’s greater good and agree on some bipartisan legislation. I felt that was true with the recent immigration bill, with GWB, McCain, Kennedy and others on the left and right aboard. It’s all but dead now, though the President continues his irrational optimism about it.

I’m not at all sure what immigration legislation can pass now, but I’m no fan of Peggy Noonan, who writes:
We should close our borders. We should do whatever it takes to close them tight and solid. Will that take the Army? Then send the Army. Does it mean building a wall? Then build a wall, but the wall must have doors, which can be opened a little or a lot down the road once we know where we are. Should all legal immigration stop? No. We should make a list of what our nation needs, such as engineers and nurses, and then admit a lot of engineers and nurses. We should take in what we need to survive and flourish.

I oppose this because it just isn’t the identifiable groups, such as engineers and nurses, this country needs, it’s the wide diversity of skills and dreams that comes from peoples from all over the world, the entrepreneurs and innovators that we risk leaving outside our doors.

So, the questions:
1) What kind of immigration policy should the country have?
2) How best should we deal with the undocumented immigrants already here?
3) Can this Congress ever pass any substantive legislation to address the issue?
***
Hasn’t happened yet as of this writing, but expect Fred Hembeck, sometime today, to wax poetic about the Mets beating the Yankees last night, 2-0.

ROG

A Potpourri of Questions

Please answer any that strike your fancy.

1. Mr. Burgas found this article about a library dropping the Dewey Decimal System in favor of shelving “by topic, similar to the way bookstores arrange books”. This hurts my head, not because I’m married to Dewey – my library actually uses Library of Congress – but because shelving by DDC or LoC IS arranging by topic. But maybe I’m missing something here.
a. How are the books, etc., in the libraries you use arranged?
b. How would you prefer they be arranged?

2. Several folks have linked to the story about e-mail bankruptcy, i.e., to say, “My e-mail’s overwhelmed me. I give up. Let’s start over.”
a. On average, how many e-mails do you get a day at work? At home? How many sit in that limbo-land at any given time, waiting for some sort of action? For me it’s about 150 at work, 30 at home. Occasionally, I’ll get rid of work e-mail at home. At any given time, I have between 60-150 work e-mails and 10 home e-mails waiting for me to do SOMETHING. Sometimes, it’s posting on a blog. The solutions in the article, phone calls and Instant Messaging would not work for me AT ALL; they’d be too distracting. How about for you? And how’s your spam content? The so-called king of spam was arrested this week. About 2% of my work e-mail and 10% of my personal e-mail is spam in a given week.

3. The Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez ticked off some people when as a runner, he misled an opposing fielder, noted here. Was this OK, or out of bounds? Deception has always been a part of the game. A pitcher’s pickoff move. Hidden ball tricks. An outfielder pretending to catch a ball to keep runners at bay. Phantom double plays, where the middle infielder’s foot is in the general vicinity of second base. The A-Rod incident didn’t bother me at all.
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Prove the world is flat. Win $5,000!

ROG