questions Archives - Page 6 of 9 - Ramblin' with Roger

How Far Have You Traveled?

I was surprised to discover that San Diego is farther away from Albany than Barbados, which is practically in South America.

Our recent excursion around Lake Ontario over the past two weeks was about 1074 miles (1729 km). I haven’t traveled all that much: 30 US states, 2 Canadian provinces, a little bit of Mexico, and Barbados.

Using Mapquest, I’ve ascertained the farthest I’ve traveled by various modes of transportation.

By car: 1108 miles (1783 km) from Binghamton, NY to Memphis, TN when I was in high school. Among other things, saw the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
By bus: 768 miles (1236 km) from Albany, NY to Charlotte, NC in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I do not recommend this.
By train: Albany to Charlotte, which is much more civilized.
By plane: 2884 miles (4642 km) from Albany to San Diego, CA.

I was surprised to discover that San Diego is farther away from Albany than Barbados, which is practically in South America. According to this site, San Diego is 2445 miles (3934 km) away, while Barbados is a mere 2206 miles (3550 km) – road miles and air miles will differ.

What is the farthest you’ve traveled by various modes of transportation? My wife’s been to Ukraine (by air, of course) in 2002.

Rear View Mirror QUESTIONS

What new technologies have you embraced? For which do you decide, “I prefer the old-fashioned way?”

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote an essay called Clinging to the rearview mirror. He quotes Marshall McLuhan:

Most people…still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.

Ebert notes, among other things:

He doesn’t like video games, 3D movies, or reading books on the Kindle.
When he owned LPs, he “possessed something tangible. When I download an album from iTunes, I can listen to it, but I possess nothing I can touch.”
*”When I enter a theater and see a movie, I experience it differently than when I watch a video.”

These new things aren’t worse, or better; they are just different.

I too am an analog man. While I bought CDs, eventually, my first love is the LP.
I haven’t really played video games since the 1980s.
I HATE 3D movies and think they are a scam.
Video is definitely secondary to seeing a film in a theater.
I have a cellphone, but I don’t give out the number, because I don’t want to be available 24/7. I use it to call work or home when I’ll be late when I’m out of town, and for emergencies.

What new technologies have you embraced? For which do you decide, “I prefer the old-fashioned way?”?

Does the Casey Anthony Trial Matter?

Do Americans not understand the difference between “innocent” and “not guilty” in US jurisprudence?

For those of you who were very fortunate enough to miss it, there was a trial of a young mother in Florida named Casey Anthony, accused of the murder of her two-year-old daughter three years ago. It was a lurid affair, with the defendant accusing her father and brother, in open court, of sexually abusing her, which somehow was the explanation why it took a month before little Caylee was reported missing.

Considering the fact that I was blissfully oblivious to the case before the trial, I know a great deal (more than I want to) about it. Literally, fights broke out in the lines among the spectators wanting to see the event.

Then lo and behold, Casey Anthony was found “not guilty” of the most serious accusations against her. And people, including virtually all of the media, were SHOCKED by the outcome. ABC News did a prime time hour on the SHOCKING results.

#SHOCKING was the hashtag on Twitter the day of the verdict. One of the morning news shows (The Today Show on NBC?) had mothers explaining why Caylee Anthony’s failure to receive “justice” was an affront to motherhood or something; I saw the tease and changed the channel. And people outside the courthouse looked ready to lynch Casey Anthony. Her parents have received death threats, not just from social media.

So does any of this matter, other than to the little victim? I contend it does, for these reasons:

One needs to ask how do some legal cases become national news, while others do not. There have been other incidents of children murdered, killed by their parent, even by their mother, which didn’t warrant more than a mention on the AP wire, if that. What role did the victim’s age, race, gender play in this story, and other situations of abductions and murders, becoming international news?

What part did the news media play in creating the expectation that this woman would be found guilty? This was a death-penalty case, and without getting too complicated, there were two paths, it was heavily reported, by which she could be executed. Surely, this left the impression that the jury would SURELY choose one or the other.

Did the news organizations pay for access to the participants? ABC News, for one, had family photos and videos, “licensed” for use. And guess what? The family members were available for “exclusive interviews”, which reeks of checkbook journalism. They also used HLN’s Nancy Grace as an “analyst” on Good Morning America, a person so buffoonish that she had been caricatured on the former ABC drama Boston Legal years ago.

Finally, the jury felt there was “reasonable doubt”, that she was “not guilty”, not necessarily “innocent”. Do Americans not understand the difference in US jurisprudence? Didn’t they watch Law & Order or LA Law or Perry Mason or countless other law fictions? (Although MAD magazine had a humorous take on this.) I believe there is something called “guilt not proven” in other countries. Maybe we need something like that here.

What are your thoughts?

American Exceptionalism QUESTION

What do YOU think American exceptionalism is?

As you may know, I get information from entities of many political stripes. I think it’s healthy to get multiple points of view. Every once in a while, I might even agree with an unlikely source. Don’t remember the particulars anymore, but Mike Huckabee said something in the populist/”COMPASSIONATE conservative” bent during the 2008 campaign that I didn’t dispute.

Anyway, I got this thing from Newt Gingrich, and it reads as follows:

The most important question in American politics today is whether America is an exceptional nation. This is the core question behind every debate we are having about how to solve our country’s most pressing challenges.
If America is a unique nation founded upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, then that belief imposes inherent limits on the size and scope of government.
If, however, America is a normal country, no different than our European cousins, then big government socialism that takes power from citizens and gives it to bureaucrats is acceptable.
We believe in American Exceptionalism – in creator endowed rights, limited government, and a responsible, self-sufficient American people. That’s why we have undertaken a major investment of time and effort in focusing every American on our history and our remarkable culture.

In another e-mail, Gingrich says that his “inspirational new book, A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters,” in which “Gingrich lays out a powerful defense for America as the Founders intended it” and “explains exactly what American Exceptionalism is (a set of core values reflected in our Declaration of Independence) and what it is not (nationalist hubris).”

Meanwhile, a recent Pew poll suggests that more Americans think that the U.S. is one of the greatest countries in the world than say it stands above all other countries.

So I ask you:

What do YOU think American exceptionalism is? Is it our founding declaration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Is it that America, alone among the nations, is beloved of God? Is it the experiment that created a Bill of Rights? Is it the vast natural resources of a country this large? Is it jingoism? Is it “the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation,” as Reagan put it?

I ask because I don’t know. The term has become so fraught with political intrigue that it’s muddied the waters for me.

I once joked that American exceptionalism meant that we could take exception to soccer, the metric system, and single-payer health care.

All insights are welcome, from within and without the country.

A Solstice Sensation: ASK ROGER ANYTHING

I know this is a tremendous responsibility, but you CAN do it. I have faith.

Because I have no idea what I should be writing about that I’m not writing about – my psychic powers have been gravely diminished by global warming – periodically, I request that you fine folks Ask Roger Anything. That’s A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. And I have to answer. Honestly.

Now, I might try to obfuscate, but as anyone who lived through Watergate knows, “It isn’t the crime that’ll get you, it’s the coverup.” Now what that has to do with the price of caviar, I do not know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe the fatigue has made me goofy – or there really IS music playing in my head – and only your questions can put me back on the straight and/or narrow.

I know this is a tremendous responsibility, but you CAN do it. I have faith.