California scheming

Once again—with feeling

The California primary election is traditionally too late to make a significant difference in the outcome of presidential nomination contests. This year turned out to be yet another damp squib—except this time conspiracy theories have bloomed as never before. In the imaginations of Sen. Sanders' most enthusiastic supporters, dark powers have stolen their hero's “landslide victory.” A Bernie landslide in California? This is a startling conclusion to anyone who watched the election night returns. Clinton declared victory that evening and her edge of half a million votes was a compelling basis for her statement.

This is the point at which pearl-clutching hyperventilation took over. Facebook posts breathlessly insisted that two-thirds of the Sanders vote had been suppressed. Furthermore, a lawsuit had found two and a half million uncounted votes. This amazing discovery had apparently been made by cleverly looking at information posted on the California Secretary of State's public website—the same data the Secretary of State's office has been routinely posting since the year they acquired a website. Unprocessed votes are tracked on the Elections page labeled with Unprocessed ballots status, which is updated at the end of each business day. That's a pretty good level of transparency, which is old news for those of us who have observed several elections in a row, but shocking and head-exploding information for certain members of the Bernie brigade, who cannot come to terms with their candidate's loss.

With fifty-eight counties working individually through provisional and late mail-in ballots, the tallying process in California is reliably slow and tedious. They have thirty days to deliver their final counts to the Secretary of State, whose office posts partial returns as they come in. Quite naturally, therefore, questions have been raised over the practice of declaring a winner on election night. The Secretary of State doesn't ever do this. It's the news media. Well, what do you expect from them? They want a story and they're impatient to get one. In addition, the final vote tally never changes the election night results.

Never? Well, hardly ever. Clinton's election night lead of 472,000 votes made news networks confident about announcing that she had carried California, even if the uncounted votes could theoretically overturn the results. Sanders had been getting approximately 43% of the votes in the Democratic primary. He would need as much as 65% of the uncounted Democratic primary votes to overtake Clinton. The probability of that? Extremely close to zero. First of all, the 2.5 million uncounted ballots were statewide, comprising voters who participated in the Democratic primary, those who participated in the Republican primary, and those who participated in neither. Perhaps as many as 1.5 million were pertinent to the Clinton/Sanders contest. If Sanders got 1.0 million of those and Clinton got 0.5 million, the senator from Vermont would overtake the former senator from New York. Some handicappers think Clinton's margin will shrink from approximately 13 percentage points over Sanders to perhaps something as low as the high single digits, but no one is laying odds that the results of the Democratic primary will actually flip. Well, except for some of Sanders' die-hard supporters, who cannot let go of the impossible dream.

I mentioned that final tallies hardly ever reverse election results. There is one notable case from 2010. It was the race for state attorney general and was “too close to call” on election night. Nevertheless, the Republican nominee seized on his election night lead to declare victory and celebrate the results. The Democrat held her fire and cautioned her supporters to be patient. As the counting progressed, she overtook the Republican and the final count was in her favor, making Kamala Harris the new attorney general of California. I wrote a blog post on this contest before the definitive count was published, successfully predicting her victory based on the county trends. There's nothing similar about the Clinton/Sanders contest to suggest there could be a similar reversal. That race is over except for tweaks in the totals.

Postscript: This year Harris is on the ballot to become Barbara Boxer's successor in the U.S. Senate.

Perspective crash!

Looking too closely

The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, August 25, 2015, made it perfectly clear: The stock market had crashed. The headline “Plunging markets” was accompanied by an illustration that made the disaster graphically clear—provided you didn't read the fine print along the margin. The understated labeling of the vertical axis was, fortunately, reinforced by the actual numbers. The Dow Jones was merely down 588.40 from 16,459.75, a drop of 3.5748% (which the Chronicle over-rounded to 3.58%). Yes, that's a significant market correction in a market widely viewed to be overvalued. Not exactly an apocalyptic result. Nicely eye-catching headline, though.

A better perspective on the issue shows why the market chart would have been quite underwhelming if drawn to a scale that including the zero point. The grid lines representing 1000 points on a hard copy of the Chronicle were separated by 6 centimeters and ended at 15,500 along the bottom edge of the graph. To extend the chart down to its zero-line would have required an additional 93 centimeters (36.6 inches). That's right: It would have extended an additional yard below the printed chart and (since the newspaper isn't that long) more than two feet below the paper's bottom margin.

A fold-out extension would have attracted more attention to the front page, but ruined the message.

By way of comparison, a real economic disaster on the order of the notorious crash that ushered in the Great Depression involved a 13% drop on “Black Monday” (October 28, 1929) and another 12% drop on the immediately following “Black Tuesday.” The losses continued to accumulate and full recovery, as we know, took decades.

What about this week's “plunge”? The Business Insider published a report with an appropriate title: “After all that, the stock market finished the week higher.”

The UFO letter

The truth is way out there

Oh, look what I found in the archives! While rifling through a stack of old print-outs (yes, some of them even had perforated tractor-feed margins), I discovered one of my unpublished letters to the editor. We all know what happens to our unsolicited expressions of concern, outrage, agreement, etcetera: nothing, usually. As a rule, unless you're writing to a small local newspaper, your letter to the editor will vanish without a trace. Despite examples like that of one of my mentors, who actually got a letter published in the New York Times, writing to a newspaper is usually a waste of time (although the process of venting might be salubrious).

In this instance, however, my unpublished letter garnered a surprising response from the editor of the Letters section: “I really LOVE this letter. But I'm still not going to publish it. Sorry. We just don't have space for stuff like this.” I was charmed, of course, and regretfully but stoically set my missive aside.

The Internet, however, has plenty of room for “stuff like this”! Therefore today I share with you not only my previously unpublished letter, but the original letter to the editor to which it was a response. The year is 1998:

UFOs are real

Re “The reality of UFOs,” letters, March 1: It is amazing that we are still discussing whether UFOs exist. It has been more than 50 years since the UFO crash at Roswell, N.M., not to mention sightings over the past several hundred years. My own observations and interest go back to 1953, when, with several other skeptics, I co-founded one of the first “flying saucer” groups in the United States. Our club was called Civilian Saucer Intelligence and was based in New York City.

Whether the letter writers are part of the government disinformation coverup, I do not know. I do know, as do millions of others, that UFOs exist.

I recommend that doubters read “The Day After Roswell” by a former Pentagon official, Col. Philip Corso (Ret.). It contains a foreword by Sen. Strom Thurmond. It is doubtful that a man such as Thurmond would lend his name to any hoax.

G.E.H.F.
Sacramento

Upon first reading this letter, I naturally reacted to the writer's use of “skeptic” in a way I found original and amusing. In his mind, “skeptic” obviously meant someone who refused to accept the debunking of flying saucer stories and was ready to embrace the notion of aliens joy-riding their round spacecraft all over the earth. I sat down at my PC keyboard and banged out the following:

Dear Editor: Little suspecting the dramatic events about to transpire, I was minding my own business while reading the Letters to the Editor in Friday's paper (March 27). I found “UFOs are Real” especially fascinating, particularly his speculation that letter writers who scoff at flying saucers might be “part of the government disinformation coverup.” Naturally I was trying to figure out what government disinformation was being covered up.

Of course, I was somewhat distracted by the irritating noise of a helicopter flying overhead. I could tell from the sound that the chopper had those extra-wide blades that are quieter than most. These are great for stealthy night missions, especially when the helicopters are painted the right color.

It was a relief when the chopper noise stopped, but shortly afterward my doorbell rang. On the front porch I found a tall man wearing a dark suit. I couldn't see his eyes because he was wearing opaque sunglasses.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, very politely, in a clipped voice that reminded me a bit of that actor Tommy Lee Jones. “I see that you're reading the Letters section of today's paper. Would you mind if I point out some things about the letter about UFOs?”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, “I was just reading it. What an amazing coincidence!”

The man gave me a tight little smile. “How fortunate,” he said. “Did you notice where the writer referred to 'the' UFO crash at Roswell, even though there are presently three alleged crash locations? Doesn't this suggest that the evidence is a little bit questionable?”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “although you know people found metallized fabric unknown to modern science anywhere on this planet except among balloon manufacturers. That's pretty compelling evidence. And the descriptions of alien bodies match pretty closely the appearance of the test dummies that the Air Force was tossing out of planes in parachute experiments in those years. I think this proves the degree to which aliens are willing to disguise themselves to fool us into thinking they don't exist. And don't forget that millions of people believe in UFOs.”

“Interesting point,” said the man. “Of course, millions believe in Islam while millions of others believe in Christianity. At least one of these groups has to be wrong. And millions of people believe that The X-Files is a documentary. Facts aren't really subject to popularity contests.”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “but how about that book that the writer mentioned? It's by a retired colonel and was endorsed by Sen. Strom Thurmond. That's pretty impressive, you know, with an endorsement by an authority like Thurmond.”

“No disrespect intended, sir, but these days 95-year-old Sen. Thurmond isn't even much of an authority on what day of the week it is. Besides which, he has issued a retraction of his book blurb, which was written because of his acquaintance with the colonel, not because he approved the unseen contents of the book manuscript.”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “but I'm sure that your cool and reasoned explanations must have some flaw in them. It's not as if retired colonels or other UFO enthusiasts would make up stories, delude themselves, fake alien autopsies, or observe bogus anniversaries in Roswell just to make money, acquire fame, or spice up their humdrum lives. I'll have to think about it.”

“Please do,” the man said. “And don't forget to write a letter to present these explanations to the public. As a concerned citizen, it's the least you can do, right?”

“Of course,” I agreed, but when I started to say something more, I noticed that he was suddenly gone. Anyway, I've been thinking about what he said and I've concluded that the man in the dark suit must have been wrong. UFOs must be real, because “The truth is out there.” I know, because popular media, tabloid television, the National Enquirer, and David Duchovny tell me so.

Pandora's book

Things that you're liable to read in the Bible

Protestants often pride themselves on being “Bible-believing Christians” and excoriate Catholics for relying on clerical authority instead. There are two good reasons for regarding this Bible-centric position with skepticism. For one thing, Catholics are exposed to readings from the Old Testament and New Testament every time they go to mass. For another, despite the noisy evangelists who love to spout chapter and verse, Protestants are less familiar with the Bible than they think they are—or think they ought to be.

Some entertaining anecdotal evidence to this effect was presented in the Sacramento Bee in an article on Wednesday, April 16. One of the state capital's Lutheran churches has embarked on a program designed to guide its members through the entire Bible in three months' time. There have been surprises:

It’s been an eye-opener: The violence—the sheer level of bloodshed in the Old Testament—has taken many of them by surprise.

“Your Sunday school teachers didn’t tell you about that,” associate pastor Leslie Welton said to a recent class of almost two dozen people.

It's another example of Christians not being fully aware of what their holy book contains. Cherry-picking Christians can be shocked when they try to plow line-by-line through the text of scripture:

“How many of you are shocked by the blood and gore and carnage?” asked Welton.

There were nods of agreement around the room: Page by page, chapter by chapter, class members are deeply shocked. With its betrayals, infidelities and lessons stubbornly unlearned, its epic levels of carnage and vengeance, this wild ride through the Old Testament is not the Bible they expected.

What is a good apologist to do? The preferred approach seems to be “Look over there!”

The Old Testament also depicts a world in which God’s grace shines amid the violence

Really? That's the best you can do? God's grace shines amidst all of the God-induced violence?

Apparently the God of genocide (Deuteronomy 20:16-18; Joshua 10:40; 11:10-15, Hosea 13:16, 1 Samuel 15:2-3) gets a pass because he later cleans up his act by sending a merciful savior to bestow peace and redemption on humanity—that is, when the messiah isn't himself threatening war and dissension (Matthew 10:34, Luke 14:26).

Their leaders will do their best to put the Bible-readers at ease, but even in these first stages of the Bible-reading project we see how the Bible itself is one of the most effective cures for religiosity. Read the Bible! It's an excellent self-exposé.

It ain't necessarily so

Miraculous logic

Everyone keeps waiting for the Supreme Court to unburden itself of its ruling on California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008. Trembling with trepidation that their labors will have been for naught, the Catholic clergy and laymen who struggled so hard on Proposition 8's behalf have been sharing their fears via print and broadcast media.

On Sunday, June 16, the San Francisco Chronicle published Joe Garofoli's interview with Salvatore Cordileone, the current archbishop of the San Francisco diocese. According to the article, Cordileone struck an alliance with evangelical Protestants and the Mormon Church to promote Proposition 8, with the archbishop digging up $1.5 million to support the effort. That's a lot of collection baskets! (I'm guessing that most of that money came from sources other than the members of his local congregations. San Francisco is not a happy hunting ground for anti-gay contributions, even among its Catholics.)

The Catholic hierarchy appears to be stuck on the campaign theme that worked so well in the 2008 campaign, which I heard directly from my mother's mouth when she explained why she had to vote for Proposition 8: “It's to protect the children!” This was indeed Cordileone's theme as he pitched his position to the Chronicle reporter:

With piercing blue eyes and a propensity for speaking in complete sentences, Cordileone explains that his view of marriage is based on how he believes it affects children.

Legalizing gay marriage, he said, “would result in the law teaching that children do not need an institution that connects them” to their biological parents and their parents to each other.

“Too many children are being hurt by our culture's strange and increasing inability to appreciate how important it is to bring together mothers and fathers for children in one loving home,” he said.

Let that sink in for a minute. His Excellency the archbishop is arguing that permitting same-sex couples to wed would undermine the connection between children and their parents. Even more than that, it would “teach” children that they really don't need those connections.

Is Cordileone an idiot? Or just a liar? (Can't it be both?) The archbishop is laying down a thick layer of illogical crap, and he does it as smoothly as can be. Allowing same-sex couples to wed says nothing to anyone about the parental needs of children. It would do nothing to prevent opposite-sex couples to wed and instantiate the conventional ideal of the nuclear family. Gay marriage would merely (merely!) extend marriage rights to people who are currently denied them. Wouldn't Cordileone's supposedly pro-kid mission be better accomplished with a campaign to require mothers to marry the fathers of their children? That would connect them up, all right! He might even be able to get the Mormons on board with that, since it would necessitate a return to plural marriage. But it's for the children!

As I mentioned, this “think of the children!” blather appears to be the Church's official line on the horrors of same-sex marriage. On Monday, June 17, Immaculate Heart Radio broadcast an installment of “The Bishop's Radio Hour”, during which host Bob Dunning interviewed William B. May, the president of Catholics for the Common Good. Bill May was relentless in the repetition of his mantra, which decried the possible “elimination of the only institution that unites kids with moms and dads.” Yes, he really said this. Elimination!

On the marriage issue, we have to start asking people that question. Okay, you're for redefining marriage. That eliminates the only institution that unites kids with their moms and dads. How can you justify that? If you're proposing to do that you need to address that problem. How are we going to promote men and women marrying before having children if it becomes illegal to do so?

Illegal! This short excerpt cannot do justice to May's mindless repetition of his “elimination” claim. In a short ten-minute block of time, he repeated the absurdity five or six times (I can't be sure because the on-line archive clipped the final minute of the interview). Interviewer Bob Dunning, who is a legitimate newsman and reporter for all that he views the world through Vatican-tinted glasses, embarrassingly mumbled agreement with his guest throughout the entire segment. However, at one point Dunning offered an extremely pertinent observation that May had carefully avoided mentioning:

May: The voters of California have spoken clearly on this twice. There's no doubt where they stand.

Dunning: It tends to be an age demographic; that's what we're fighting.

Bob has it right. Time is not on your side, Bill. In 2000, California voters enacted marriage-defining Proposition 22 with the support of 61.4% of those casting ballots. In 2008, they added the one-man/one-woman definition to the state constitution when 52.5% of the voters supported Proposition 8. A simple straight-line projection shows that the “traditional marriage” gang loses more than one percentage point each year. By this measure, the projection for 2013 is 46.9% in favor of Proposition 8 and similar measures. The reality, however, is even worse for Cordileone and his allies. According to recent a Los Angeles Times poll, same-sex marriage opposition has fallen to 36%. Support has risen to 58%. Suck on that, Your Excellency.

Dunning sees the writing on the wall and is worried that quashing the tide in favor of same-sex marriage is a now-or-never crisis.

Here's a hint: it won't be “now.”

Custom-made shoes to fill

From time's deep abyss

It has been more than a quarter-century since I screwed my courage to the sticking point and resigned my sweet and secure civil-service position for a temporary academic appointment. Several people commented at the time that it was a “gutsy move,” and I admit that it certainly felt like one at the time. Fortunately for me, the temporary appointment eventually turned into a tenure-track position, leaving me to live happily ever after (mostly) as a full-time math professor.

My memories of this event were tickled recently while delving into the stacks of detritus that decorate my college office. The semester is over, grades have been filed, and no summer school assignment looms over me. Nevertheless, I have been on campus several days in a row because of a writers' colloquium being conducted by colleagues in the English department. During free intervals I have repaired to my office and sifted through the piles of papers and books, slowly sorting them into stacks destined to be filed, recycled, or shelved. This morning I stumbled across the job announcement that was issued when my state agency was seeking my replacement. It gave me a good chuckle.

The job announcement was drafted by the agency's executive secretary, the semi-competent and ill-tempered appointee who was extremely helpful in increasing the diligence of my job search. Until her advent, I had had a lot of job satisfaction in my position. She injected enough poison into the atmosphere to help me on my way toward the teaching position that I desired. The job announcement was a perfect illustration of the boss's myopia. She created it by simply listing every function I had accumulated in my years at the agency. In effect, she was advertising for someone who was my clone (although preferably without my subversive attitudes and tendencies toward insubordination).

Here are excerpts from that job announcement, shorn of the standard civil service boilerplate and thus reduced to the essentials of the position's duties. It brings a smile to my face when I peruse it:

Description: The Commission has a small, highly specialized staff whose basic missions are (1) to monitor the status of California's General Fund revenues, expenditures, and reserves; (2) to track the collection of federal taxes and receipt of federal expenditures by California and its counties; and (3) to issue regular reports concerning the State's short- and long-term fiscal situation and the impact of federal taxation and spending on the State for use by the Legislature, the Administration, and other interested parties.
The duties of this position are as follows: (1) providing technical advice and support to enhance the Commission's use of its computer systems; (2) being the lead editor of the Commission's publications and being principally responsible for preparing those publications for photo-reproduction; and (3) heading the Commission's legislative tracking system (including the preparation of articles for inclusion in Commission publications on the status of significant pending financial legislation).

Desirable Qualifications:This position provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate, expand, and apply expertise in the use of computer hardware and software. The position also showcases adroit writing skills, as well as providing the opportunity to identify, research, and describe key issues under consideration by the Legislature. Accordingly, the individual who fills it should:

• have a thorough working knowledge of the IBM AT and the Burroughs B-20/B-25 system used by the Commission. [Knowledge of Basic and Fortran programming languages is preferred, as is familiarity with the Microsoft Word, Lotus 1-2-3, Multiplan, and Ventura software packages.]
• write and edit well
• know how to track legislation, analyze its contents, and evaluate its financial implications.

Therefore, the ideal candidate would be a computer tech support person for multiple platforms who would also be the in-house editor and compositor of  publications (one job or two?), a prolific writer (a third job, or doesn't it count because there'd be much less editing on the employee's own documents?), and a legislative analyst (surely we're up to three by now).

I remember taking the job announcement to a state user group where I knew several members had the necessary computer expertise. Many of my fellow civil servants were unfazed by the necessity of supporting two incompatible computer systems, since many state offices had been infiltrated by personal computers in addition to proprietary networked systems. They nodded their heads when I read the first desideratum. They were less sanguine, however, when I tossed in the part about programming languages and desktop publishing. The writing component made several of them nervous because they knew of my background and did not relish comparisons. However, when I added legislative analysis to the package, groans were heard and questions were asked: “Is this supposed to be one job?” “Who is your boss kidding?” “Is she trying to ensure that the position stays vacant so that she has some salary savings to play around with?”

Of course, in a small state agency where the staff members wear several hats, multiple responsibilities are standard operating procedure. However, these job configurations develop with time and evolve to fit the capabilities of the people who occupy the positions. I certainly had not started mine with the same portfolio with which I ended it. My initial assignment was legislative tracking and analysis, mainly because I had just come over from the legislative staff. While serving in that capacity I acquired a home computer and developed skills that came in handy when PCs began to invade our office. Furthermore, it was during this period that I began to publish magazine articles in computer publications and math journals. This skill set of mine grew as I worked at the state agency and my job description grew with it. No one should expect many other people to stroll in with the exact same experiences and the exact same skill set. That, however, is what my boss was looking for.

The job opening was announced while I was serving out my final weeks on staff. My position remained vacant for a few months after my departure, until someone took a sharp pencil to the job description and made it a little more generic. At one point I met my successor, who was manifestly not doing the same job I had been doing. And neither was the boss, who had been sacked as the head of the agency.

Happy memories!

Rewrite!

Where is an editor when you need one?

Perusing the San Francisco Chronicle over breakfast this morning, I lit upon an article on the insistence of Tea Partiers that they had no intention of going away, reports of their death supposedly greatly exaggerated. It was amusing to see that astroturf specialist Sal Russo was quoted: “Of course, the brand has been hammered, but the ideas haven't been hammered—and that's why they will always come back.”

The unrepentant Russo is described by the Chronicle reporter as “the Sacramento GOP political consultant who founded Tea Party Express, a network that since it began in early 2009 has connected millions of conservative activists, raised millions of dollars, and used its clout to back once-unknown political figures such as Sarah Palin.” That's half right. Russo is indeed one of the political promoters who reaped a rich reward by running out in front of a horde of disgruntled anti-Obama right-wingers and became a “grassroots leader” willing to collect names and spam those people with incessant appeals for money to fight against the Kenyan-Marxist-Socialist threat in the White House. Whether you account him successful or not depends on your choice of metric. Fleecing the flock? Brilliant success! Defeating Obama? Miserable failure!

But I come neither to bury Russo nor to praise him. He is what he is and his political operation will undoubtedly continue to seek willing victims to feed its appetites. My theme is taken from journalist Alan Barth, who in a 1943 book review penned the phrase, “News is only the rough first draft of history.” (The catchy line was later taken up by Philip L. Graham and others.) If the San Francisco Chronicle's news article on the so-called Tea Party is a “rough first draft” of history, I think the emphasis must be on “rough.” Did you spot the same anachronism that I did?

Yeah. It's the bit about Sarah Palin: “used its clout to back once-unknown political figures such as Sarah Palin.” While Palinistas abound in the ranks of the various Tea Parties, carts and horses are getting pretty badly mixed up in the Chronicle reporter's notebook. Palin was a political unknown only until John McCain disqualified himself from the presidency by tapping her as his running mate in the summer of 2008. That's several months before Rick Santelli blew his stack and called on live television in February 2009 for a “Chicago Tea Party” from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Right-wing interests were quick to exploit the opportunity to create various Tea Party organizations (like Russo's Tea Party Express), aided and abetted by constant promotional exposure on Fox News.

Today the Tea Party ranks are full of broken-hearted activists who grudgingly backed Mitt Romney as the only viable vehicle to oppose Antichrist Obama. Many of them pine for Sarah Palin to return from her frozen exile to lead them on a crusade (where “crusade” is indeed le mot juste) to save the nation from various ill-defined fates worse than death. But the Tea Party, as such, postdates Palin's over-extended fifteen minutes of fame. It had nothing to do with turning her from a “once-unknown political figure” into the wet dream of deranged right-wingers.

Unfair and unbalanced

So what else is new?

In an especially egregious display of chutzpah, cartoonist Lisa Benson gives her cross-eyed view of California's budget plight. Our state has, of course, suffered from the Great Recession brought on by the feckless policies of the Bush administration (and a bolder Obama administration should have pushed a larger and more effective stimulus in its initial recovery effort). In addition, the Golden State has been saddled with a Republican minority in both houses of the state legislature that knows only the word “no.” They are essentially useless obstructionists (like their counterparts in Washington).

Benson, however, persists in presenting the Republican elephant as the steady representative of fiscal sanity. Look at how he sits there on the budget teeter-totter, a modest “No New Taxes” valise by his side. In shocking contrast, the profligate Democratic donkey has loaded up his end of the seesaw with a huge steamer trunk of “Spending.” (Benson is blissfully untouched by the reality that state spending is and has been flat since the Bush recession took hold: $90.9 billion in General Fund expenditures in 2008-2009 and maybe $92.6 billion in General Fund expenditures in 2012-2013—a less than two percent increase in four years.)

How can such an unbalanced seesaw remain level despite such evident Democratic irresponsibility? Benson hastens to inform us that the California state budget is being supported by “Gimmicks” and “Borrowing” and “Programs.” Wait a minute? Programs? I guess Benson ran out of clever labels for the baggage that is supposedly propping up the state budget. (I thought Programs were part of Spending. Silly me!) This entry sets a new standard for inane cartoon commentary on the California political scene. Pure propaganda. One almost has to admire its audacity.

But I don't.

Exorcism for fun and profit

It's not just for priests anymore!

There are two good ways to tell if a psychic is a fraud: (1) They all are. (2) They don't cringe at the name of Steve Rubenstein.

Who is this Steve Rubenstein, you ask? He writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. He has an engaging just-the-facts style that might seem out of sync with New Age woo, but his wonderfully deadpan reporting deflates all pretensions in a delightfully effective way. Have you heard the one about the swordsman whose blade was so sharp his opponent didn't realize he had been decapitated until he turned his head and the whole thing fell off? That's Rubenstein.

He sent some heads rolling in the July 6, 2011, edition of the Chronicle with an article titled “What's in your closet?” Read the whole thing on the Chronicle website (where its title was changed to “Cleaning houses with psychic Sheldon Norberg”). Below I present some choice excerpts for your delectation:

What's in your closet?

Steve Rubenstein
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

There had to be a reason why a perfectly nice $1.7 million Marin County house wasn't selling. Maybe it had something to do with ghosts.

If so, it couldn't hurt to call in an expert. And there is no greater expert in persuading stubborn and obstinate ghosts to leave a haunted house than Sheldon Norberg, 48, a slender man with a shaved head who has been driving demons, devils and negative energy from Bay Area houses for the past two decades, at $1,200 per dwelling.

“I'm not cheap,” Norberg said, sitting quietly in a lawn chair by the front door to get a feel for what he would soon be facing inside. “But selling a house is a million-dollar transaction. Why take a chance?”

How true! I mean, his remark about not being cheap. The $1200 fee seems really clever—not such a round number that it seems arbitrary. Sheldon put some thought into that!

He sat with his eyes closed, his palms upturned, to enhance reception. At last he declared that this particular three-bedroom house, on a shady corner on the banks of Lark Creek, was by no means hopeless. True, there was negative energy on the top floor and in the basement. But nothing he couldn't handle.

“We are vibrating entities,” he said. “Realtors don't like to deal with these things. They think it's all woo-woo stuff. But prospective buyers get a feeling the moment they walk into a house. If there is anger, or sadness, or unresolved feelings inside, you have to handle it.”

Please tell us, Sheldon: At what frequency do we vibrate? Is it best measured in Hertz or kilo-Hertz? Perhaps even mega? For some reason, they never tell us. The “woo-woo stuff” is apparently really hard to measure.

Although Norberg neglected to inform Rosenberg about any specific frequencies he might have detected, the self-proclaimed psychic was otherwise ready to demonstrate his powerful talents to the Chronicle reporter. The house in Marin, it turns out, was full of anger and sadness. What's more, Norberg knew where the anger and sadness were centered!

[The house] was being sold, Norberg said, because the owners were getting divorced. After two months on the market and no offers, it was time to find out why. He headed upstairs, to the master bedroom. There he closed his eyes once more and declared the room to have been the site of conflict and sadness.

Okay, folks. You have to give Sheldon this one. His awesome sixth sense has manifested its supernatural acuity. He could tell the divorced couple experienced anger and sadness in the master bedroom.

As a professional psychic, Sheldon knows enough to pretty things up a bit with some Eastern mumbo-jumbo while he's at it:

This could be, Norberg said, because of the feng shui of the room, and its orientation on the north-south axis, its proximity to the nearby creek, the lack of sunlight and the heavy crossbeam that ran across the middle of the ceiling, cleaving the energy flow.

Also there was the divorce. Perhaps that had something to do with it too, he said.

“There is anger here,” he said in a soft voice, calling on his store of psychic powers.

We scoffers must stand in awe of such a demonstration, faithfully and reverently documented by the Chronicle's ace reporter. Who can doubt Sheldon Norberg now?

The owner of the house, a young woman named Rosemary, pulled up in her Lexus to check on Norberg and see firsthand what she was getting for her $1,200. (She had already paid $10,000 to a real estate stager to make the house look nice, and that had bought her a few bowls of decorative seashells and plastic lemons, so another $1,200, she opined, was just the cost of doing business.)

“I never used a service like this before,” Rosemary said. “But if it works, it's not really that expensive.”

Oh, Jiminy Christmas! The “real estate stager” has an even better gimmick than the psychic. For a $10,000 fee I would have supplied real lemons! For an extra $5000, I'd even toss in a few limes!

Although Norberg had already demonstrated his skills were almost up to the level of the real-estate stager, he continued to strut his stuff. Rosemary was there to provide first-person validation of the psychic's amazing insights.

Norberg stood in the bedroom where Rosemary acknowledged that she and her husband had themselves some pointed misunderstandings, and the psychic announced that he was feeling chest constrictions, emotional sadness and compressed energy. Rosemary nodded. Then he descended into the basement, a dank windowless storage space with a lot of junk lying around, and said it was not the most cheerful room in the house, either.

Speaking just for myself, I have to admit that I have always regarded dank, windowless basements as cheerful places, but I guess that's because I'm not psychic. Sheldon's preternatural powers can penetrate mere façades.

To ensure that Rosemary could see that she was getting her money's worth, Sheldon banished the basement's oppressive miasma.

He proceeded to sit down and close his eyes. The psychic said he does his best work with his eyes closed. It concentrates the energy.

“I feel the Earth shifting with the relation to the rotational planes,” he said at last. “The magnetic field has changed.”

There will be scoffers, I know. Skeptics will demand to know what the heck “rotational planes” are supposed to be. People who are not entirely ignorant of science will point out that magnetic fields can be detected and measured. The absence of appropriate electronic gear suggests that Sheldon Norberg prefers not to document his psychic manifestations with hard data. It's probably because any trace of doubt is exceedingly harmful to psychic powers. I'll bet Rubenstein had to be on his absolutely best behavior.

Norberg sat motionless for three hours, until the psychic heavy lifting was done and the house, he said, was clear. Afterward, Rosemary said the house felt pretty much the same to her as it did before, but maybe that was because she was “not in touch with the major energy channels.”

Rosemary is an absolute jewel, isn't she?

I'll admit, though, that Sheldon is starting to impress me just a bit. While earning $400 per hour while sitting stock-still may sound easy, just give it a try. You'll get the fidgets within minutes. Sheldon is earning his fee. (I'll bet the entire time he was thinking about the advantages of going into real-estate staging instead.)

And now—quite obviously—it's time for the happy ending! No newspaper puff piece would be complete without it.

Two days later, her real estate agent threw open the doors to the public for an open house. Rosemary had high hopes. Seventeen couples toured the newly energized property.

“But nobody made an offer,” Rosemary said with a sigh.

I'll bet Rosemary forgot to bury a little plaster statue of St. Joseph on the grounds. You need to bury him upside-down, for some reason, but it always works. You can get one for just a few bucks from your local Catholic bookstore. (I suspect that many Catholic bookstores are surviving on the margin provided by hordes of superstitious real-estate agents.)

Well, if the story can't have a happy ending, could it at least have a twist? Rubenstein digs deep into the story behind the story and comes up with a precious nugget:

Perhaps her optimism in Norberg was misplaced, she acknowledged, and perhaps her optimism in the real estate market was, too. According to the comps, which is real estate lingo for please-get-your-head-out-of-the-clouds, the house was worth not $1.7 million but $1.4 million.

I am not a real-estate expert. Neither, probably, are you. However, I have it on good authority that it is difficult to sell a house that is overpriced by $300,000. Imagine that!

“Hiring Sheldon, I was just covering all the bases,” she said. “It's good to have the positive energy. But we might have to lower the price just a little, too.”

You think? (Evidently not.)

Cutting remarks

Cosmetic surgery?

Remember the episode of Seinfeld titled “The Bris”? Jerry gets quizzed by Elaine:

Elaine: Hey, Jerry, you ever seen one?
Jerry: Oh, you mean that wasn't ... uh?
Elaine: Yeah.
Jerry: No. Have you?
Elaine: Yeah.
Jerry: What'd you think?
Elaine: [wrinkles her nose] It had no face, no personality. It was like a Martian. But hey, you know, that's me.

I was reminded of this when Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle decided to have some fun with circumcision in her opinion column this morning:

The ballot measure bills itself as a ban on “forced genital cutting” and “mutilation.” Clearly the authors want to confuse voters by equating male circumcision to female genital mutilation, the barbaric, unsanitary butchering of a young girl's private parts in a procedure that has been known to leave girls severely infected and in pain.

Saunders is echoing the remarks of Rabbi Gil Leeds, who similarly complained that “mutilation” is a misnomer. I tend to disagree, since the permanent amputation of part of the penis should not be treated as a trivial matter, even if the results aren't on the same level as the brutality of so-called “female circumcision.”

Saunders tips her hand even while trying to be even-handed. She cites a pediatrician while ostensibly presenting both sides:

[Dr. Erica Goldman] informs parents of the pluses—reduced chances of urinary tract infection and sexually transmitted diseases—as well as the risks—it's a permanent cosmetic change.

Oy! The “risk” of circumcision is that it's a cosmetic change? It's not a direct quotation, so we can't simply blame Dr. Goldman for this conclusion. It's what Saunders picked out as the key item, ignoring all other factors. (Should we tell circumcised boys that the lack of a foreskin is why they need lube? Is Johnson & Johnson—manufacturers of K-Y Jelly—behind the push for more male circumcisions? This calls for an investigation!)

I snorted when I saw Saunders using the words “cosmetic change,” but I guffawed when I read her peroration. Like the dutiful right-wing columnist that she is, Debra has to complain about “nanny state” legislation and frame the anti-circumcision measure in those terms, slipping in an allusion to the city's ban on toy giveaways with unhealthy fast food. It's a poor fit:

A busybody law? Check. Does it address a problem most folks did not know existed? Check. Pun opportunities? Oh, yeah. First they came for the Chicken McNuggets, then they came for my son's ...

No, no, no, Debra. You're missing the point entirely. The ballot initiative says they have to leave your son's nuggets alone!

Lettered ladies

Always the gentleman

The other day I found myself in the unaccustomed position of defending Sarah Palin. It was, I admit, a very mild defense, but a defense nonetheless. A member of the Friday lunch bunch was castigating the former half-term governor of Alaska for having attended five colleges (University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College, University of Idaho, and Matanuska-Susitna College) on her way to a bachelor's degree in communications. Having attended and earned units at five different colleges myself, I did not consider persistence at a single institution to be a virtue in and of itself. (I did, however, complete degree requirements at four of them.)

The habitués of the Friday lunch bunch are mostly former journalists these days, the ink-stained wretches having supplanted the coterie of old legislative hands that used to frequent the TGIF observances. And “ink” is the right word, too. All of them served in the trenches when hot lead and metal plates and barrels of black goo were standard tools of the newspaper business. I don't go back quite that far, but I am accepted into this journalistic fraternity because I, too, have worked for a major metropolitan newspaper (but not for very long). Besides, I have seniority in the lunch bunch, being one of the last survivors of the original gang with state capitol experience.

We are a largely left-of-center group, naturally concerned that the president is not even close to being the extreme liberal of right-wing accusations, and cheerfully derogatory in our references to the various nut-case conservative cabals running Republican legislative caucuses throughout the nation and in entirely too many governors' mansions. Palin gets extra contempt from the Friday gang because of her journalistic pretensions and her slender résumé as a reporter (but not as slim as mine). It doesn't help her cause, of course, that even her prepared remarks come out as tossed word salads of right-wing talking points: blah, blah, blah ... American greatness ... blah, blah, blah ... Reagan ... blah, blah, blah ... God bless America ... blah, blah, blah ... war on terror ... blah, blah, blah. Jealousy is probably involved a little. Imagine pocketing $50,000 a pop for that kind of disjointed drivel, as Palin did at Stanislaus State University.

Despite her degree in communications (with an emphasis in journalism), Palin opted to hire a ghostwriter for her autobiography. She's apparently been too busy doing other things.

Like serving as a role model.

California has spawned a Palin camp follower who boasts that she is a “blogger extraordinaire” (that may be premature) with a master's degree in English on top of a bachelor's degree that included journalism coursework. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by a regular visitor to my blog (hi, Kathie!). She was puzzled by the prospect of an English major with a graduate degree who spews out this kind of breathless prose (spacing, spelling, and punctuation preserved from the original):

I'm a San Diego girl& patriotic American at heart!I graduated from San Diego State University in 2005 where I studied English & Journalism.I also have a Masters' Degree in English.I never thought I'd be setting up a blog,but feel I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to share with readers topics that are important to me & I hope to you as well.I will use this blog as a platform of sorts to promote not only conservative values,but strong,conservative female candidates.Sarah Palin is the epitome of this female.Strong,sincere,classy,intelligent & graceful.I have heard individuals describe her as a modern-day Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan.It is she who has inspired me to get involved politically.The mere mention of her name sends the main-stream media into a tizzy.It is also my hope this blog will become a platform for conservative females everywhere.(God knows we could use more representing us).And yes,I also hope to prove that,contrary to popular opinion,it CAN be cool to be a young conservative.You can also catch me from time to time as a guest on #1 AK Talk Radio Host Eddie Burke's show where I discuss Sarah and national issues.

Odd stuff. While the political sentiments are obviously contrary to mine, I am struck by what an admitted English major does to the language. That can't help but catch my attention, if only for the moment. Does San Diego State University offer a master's degree in English as a third language? Was writing part of the curriculum? Optional, perhaps?

At least we can rest assured that she does not suffer from a narcissistic obsession with her own prose.

And still counting...

Predicting the future

The 2010 general election is not yet over in California. The secretary of state's office in Sacramento continues to issue updates as it aggregates the returns trickling in from California's fifty-eight counties. As of the last report, time-stamped 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 19, twenty-six counties still had untallied ballots to count. By adding up the counties' estimates of vote-by-mail and provisional ballots, the secretary of state announced that approximately 629,634 votes remained to be processed.

It's not a moot point. While attorney general Jerry Brown trounced Meg Whitman in winning his third term as governor and Barbara Boxer convincingly defeated Carly Fiorina on her way back to the U.S. senate, one statewide race remains too close to call. The Democratic nominee to succeed Brown as attorney general currently has 4,291,854 votes to her Republican rival's 4,248,804, a margin of only 43,050. Taking into account a scattering of votes among minor party candidates, that breaks down to 46.0% to 45.5%.

Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Steve Cooley have swapped the lead back and forth a few times since the vote tallies began to be published after the November 2 election. Cooley actually declared victory election night (see the video below), but woke up the next morning to discover that Harris had edged ahead. When the vote count moved him back into the lead a few days later, he was smart enough not to make yet another premature victory speech. When Harris regained the lead, she prudently kept her own counsel.

My own opinion? For a couple of weeks now, I have been expecting a Harris victory. It's in the numbers.

I looked into the numbers because one of my friends, a retired journalist, was scoffing at the superficiality of the news articles on the election results in the attorney general's race. Except for striving heroically for different ways of saying “too close to call,” none of them offered any substantive analysis.

“It all depends of where the remaining votes are,” he said. “Instead of just paraphrasing the press releases from the candidates, the reporters ought to dig into the details. They should do some reporting.”

He prodded me into action. I downloaded the secretary of state's report on unprocessed ballots (well over two million at that time) and loaded it into a spreadsheet. Then I perused the secretary of state's report on the percentages accruing to each candidate in each county. By way of example, consider Tulare county, where California's most conservative voters gave Harris only 29.8% to Cooley's 62.4%. Tulare's county clerk estimated that 3,350 ballots remained to be processed. Applying the percentages to this number, I computed that Harris would get 998 more votes and Cooley would get 2,090. (I'm sure Mom & Dad's vote-by-mail ballots are in the latter batch.)

I applied this process to all of the counties with outstanding ballots, obtaining an estimate for the additional votes likely to be obtained by Harris and Cooley. Upon adding the estimates to the votes counted to date, I found myself looking at a razor-thin Harris victory. Every so often I would return to the secretary of state's website to tweak the percentages to reflect the completed count. Those numbers were very stable, seldom moving more than one-tenth of a percent. The predicted Harris margin varied, but never vanished.

My latest computation, based on yesterday's numbers, suggests that Kamala Harris will defeat Steve Cooley for the office of attorney general by 45,902 votes. I'm not sure about the 2, though.

If the numbers hold up, the Golden State will have handed the Democratic Party a clean sweep of every statewide office. May it make the most of its opportunity.

---

Note: I should give a tip of the hat to Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star. He had the same idea that I did and published his estimate on November 9 on his blog. In my opinion, however, Herdt pulled up just a bit short by confining his attention to the 21 counties with the most votes remaining to be processed. In so close a contest, it was unwise to scorn the little counties and risk that much round-off error. On the basis of his computations, Herdt figured that Cooley had an edge.

While I obviously think Herdt was wrong, my ex-journalist friend can be relieved to learn that at least one reporter is willing to go digging for news. It's not quite obsolete yet.

---

Judging a book by its author

Something I don't need to read

Nepotism poster child Tori Spelling is on a signing tour to promote her new book. The formerly reputable McClatchy Company is helping out with breathless little stories like an interview article in The Sacramento Bee:

There's an anecdote in it about you contacting the late Farrah Fawcett.

It was during a reading on the phone with (celebrity psychic) John Edward. We have the same publicist. I thought, “Oh, this'll be cool, maybe my dad will come through.” Instead, John said, “Farrah Fawcett's coming through.” He was really surprised, too. She wanted me to let her family know she's happy and OK. I wrote a letter to Ryan O'Neal, explaining the story. I said, “Please don't think I'm crazy, I'm simply passing on a message.”

Gosh, Tori? Think you're crazy? Never! Think you're gullible and maybe just a little bit stupid? From now till eternity!

Perhaps I am being too mean. After all, she shares a publicist with John Edward, famous for being “The Biggest Douche in the Universe.” It may be that Tori is just a good little trouper who cooperates with her p.r. person in trying to gin up some press coverage for a fellow celebrity from the same stable. I can't tell, though, if Tori is being cynically manipulated or just cynically playing along.

In a way, of course, it doesn't matter. The stupid is right there on the page for us to see.

Let's look the other way.

Fear of dead peeping Toms

Or Thomasinas

Sometimes I can't resist getting into the act. I see an advice column in my morning newspaper—for the Internet generation, be advised that a “newspaper” is a sheaf of large sheets of paper with printed news on them—and I want to rewrite the responses. Yesterday's Dear Abby is a case in point:

Woman Fears Being Watched by Ghosts of her Loved Ones

Dear Abby: I am in my 40s and have never lost anyone close to me. Unfortunately, my darling mother-in-law has terminal cancer. I am now preoccupied that people's spirits are near us after they die.

Please don't laugh, but it gives me the creeps. I don't want to think my mother-in-law will watch me making love with my husband, that my father will watch me in the bathroom, or that my mother will be critical of my spending more time with my kids than cleaning the house as she did.

Am I crazy to think I might not have any privacy after my loved ones die? — Spooked in Spokane

Dear Spooked: Calm down. The departed sometimes “visit” those with whom their souls were intertwined, but usually it's to offer strength, solace and reassurance during difficult times. If your mother-in-law's spirit visits you while you're intimate with her son, it will be only to wish you and her son many more years of closeness and happiness in your marriage.

As to your parents, when they travel to the hereafter, I am sure they'll have more pleasant things with which to occupy their time than spying on you. So hold a good thought and quit worrying.

Now doesn't that set your mind at ease? Abby sure is an expert on souls and what happens after you die. The afterlife will have too many distractions to make it likely that your dearly departed will hang around and watch you as you rut like bonobos with your love interest, or go to the bathroom, or pick your nose, or vote Republican. They won't spy on such shameful behaviors.

Good to know.

Of course, if I were to try my hand at replying to Spooked in Spokane, the response would have come out a bit different:

Dear Spooked: Calm down, Spooked. Being dead is a full-time occupation. The deceased lie mouldering in their graves, settling in their urns, blowing in the wind, or lost at sea. Whatever. Once they've passed on, they're just dead. Finished. Kaput. They lack senses and cognition and any trace of prurient curiosity. They're gone forever and can't bother you.

In the meantime, you're not dead yet, so consider getting a life and outgrowing the fantasy stories of youth and religion.

I guess I could offer my services to Dear Abby as a ghostwriter, but I don't want to spook her.

Ragging on the daily rag

Journamalism

Back when the Sacramento Bee prided itself on being the journal of record for the state capitol, the newspaper had a local news section that billed itself as “Superior California.” It was a dig that irritated many of the southern Californians who worked under the capitol's golden dome, since it implied that the lower part of the state was “inferior California.”

The Bee still covers the state capitol and still carries news of the Sacramento Valley region, but it has long since abandoned any pretense of superiority. In fact, it has in recent years abandoned any pretense of journalism. The Bee's lack of editorial integrity and journalistic judgment was in full display on page one of the edition for Tuesday, March 16, 2010. The day's top story was emblazoned with an eye-catching headline:

Speaker's top aide
gets $65,000 raise

The article had the undoubtedly desired effect: hundreds of people crowding into the Bee's website to post denunciations of the greedy profiteers in state government and a raft of furious letters to the editor. The Bee basks in the glow of cupidity revealed.

There is only one problem with this supposedly newsworthy story. It turns out that the Bee could have published the exact same article with the following headline instead:

New Speaker's top aide gets exactly
same salary as old Speaker's top aide

Of course, that would hardly be interesting, exciting, or rabble-rousing. Not front-page news. The Bee knows its job, but that job does not appear to be journalism.

The focus of the Bee's faux exposé is a woman who worked as chief of staff for John Pérez, who until last month was merely one of eighty members of the state assembly. Now, however, Pérez has been elevated to the position of speaker, the lower chamber's top job. He brought his office chief of staff into the speaker's office, appointing her to a brand-new job that now involves working with all eighty assembly members' offices at the same time.

Am I splitting hairs when I insist that it is misleading to describe her new salary as a pay raise in a newspaper headline? What she has is an entirely new job. She will be making significantly more money than before, but her responsibilities have taken a great leap upward. The Bee makes it sound as if her boss simply decided to capriciously give her a big fat pay raise.

One is welcome to debate whether the speaker's top staff assistant should earn more than he does (she'll make $190,000 while he earns $110,000—recently cut back from $134,000 because elected officials' salaries were reduced in consequence of the recession). That's a legitimate argument. What the Bee is doing, however, is a bastard form of journalism.

It's mere sensationalism.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Suburban superstition

Pacific Gas & Electric has been installing new meters throughout its service area. I've had one since last year. The PG&E meter reader no longer needs to bustle up to the side of my house to check on my electricity usage. Instead, my meter dutifully reports in wirelessly. No more hassles with locked gates, growling dogs, or other yard hazards.

No more meter readers, either, but I'm sure that workforce reduction was part of what PG&E was going for.

There were reportedly some initial problems when people started receiving ridiculously high utility bills. (No one complained about ridiculously low bills, so I assume there must have been none of those.) PG&E recalibrated or reprogrammed the new meters (or something like that) and the complaints faded away.

Time for new complaints!

The meters, you see, are trying to kill us.

Perhaps you thought the new complaints would be about the prospect of PG&E using the remote-control features to impose arbitrary and capricious black-outs and brown-outs during power shortages. (I think we're saving those concerns for the next round of complaints.) But, no, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the fearmongers have seized on the tiny, tiny emissions when the PG&E SmartMeters transmit their reports.

Some Sebastopol residents have questioned whether radio frequency radiation from the meters, which transmit their data to the utility via wireless communications, could threaten their health.

Their concerns grow from the heated debate over whether radiation from cell phones, Wi-Fi computers and other wireless devices can cause cancer or other ailments. They want a moratorium on installing the SmartMeters to measure electricity and gas use.

The meters are zapping us with electromagnetism! Arrggh!

There is solid science behind this concern, of course. Recall that microwaves from cell phones cause ear cancer. Or maybe not. A well-known Danish study followed a large cohort of cell-phone users for decades without finding any sign of increased incidence of cancer.

But absence of evidence is no reason to put off a panic attack. San Francisco is considering legislation to require a “radiation” warning on cell phones. Such a good idea. And, of course, concerned citizens want to stop the SmartMeters.

“We are being increasingly exposed to an exponential amount of radio frequency radiation,” said Sebastopol resident Sandi Maurer. “Now there are going to be two of these things in every home.”

Maurer is the founder of the EMF Safety Network, a clearinghouse for information on the possible dangers of electromagnetic fields. She and other residents persuaded the Sebastopol City Council this month to ask California energy regulators to stop SmartMeter installation while the possible health risks can be assessed.

Oh, good. An information “clearinghouse” is involved. Not surprisingly, the EMF Safety Network's website offers a plethora of advice and links about protecting oneself (and one's kids!) from EMF.

What we really need is a kind of early-alert system that warns concerned citizens whenever anyone installs any kind of transmission device anywhere.

We could use the radio!

"The Simpsons" did it

Where's the scoop?

The San Francisco Chronicle went berserk when Mark McGwire finally admitted to having used steroids to pump himself up during his baseball career. The weirdly wonderful Bay Area newspaper splashed a transcript of McGwire's remarks as its headline story, and accompanied it with an opinion piece by a sports columnist. On the front page!

Like I said, the Chronicle went berserk.

Normally this is the sort of story that would not hold my attention. My inclination is to snort in disgust and turn the page. If especially exercised, I might mutter, “Don't these idiots remember that they have a sports section?” (That's the part of the paper where game reports and box scores are conveniently sequestered so that I can conveniently dispense with them all by discarding that section of the newspaper.)

I put mendacious McGwire out of my mind and would probably have forgotten all about it except for a paragraph I encountered in John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History. Here it is, from page 253, where Ortved is discussing the celebrities who flocked to lend their voices to episodes of The Simpsons:

Of course, boys being boys, the real draw was always the sports figures.

Larry Doyle: The biggest hullabaloo was when Mark McGwire came in. That was when loads of people who didn't have any reason to be in the recording booth ended up there. All the girls and all the guys were there. He seems like a nice guy, but he looks like a monster. His arms are as big as your legs—that's not an exaggeration.

And I guess we now know why that was, don't we?

Rejection is such sweet sorrow

The art of the turn-down

Something weird happened last summer. I don't really have an explanation for it. Perhaps it's like what occurs to a super-saturated solution. Some seemingly imperceptible disturbance perturbs the solution and—zap!—it sudden crystallizes.

Anyway, something similar happened to me and—zap!—I became a novelist.

The notion had been kicking around in my head for years, goaded by various family members. We have dozens of stories in my extended clan. Happy stories, funny stories, sad stories, bizarre stories. All kinds of stories. (Some have appeared on this blog.) I'm sure this is true of all families, but my relatives are certain that our family's stories are more fascinating than most. Retellings of family legend and lore are often followed by a canonical couplet:

“Whoa! Someone really ought to write that down!”

“Yeah, but it would have to be as fiction! No one would believe it really happened!”

A seed was planted in my brain, watered regularly by family gatherings at which I'd hear that closing couplet after a raconteur's storytelling. A critical point of some sort was reached last summer and I wrote my family's story—with all of the names changed to protect the guilty. I became a novelist!

An unpublished one, that is.

After some dithering and some encouraging feedback from friends who read the manuscript, I shopped the novel around a little bit. I sent some sample pages to a big-time literary agent in San Francisco. After a few weeks, I got my first rejection notice. She doesn't want to represent me.

You might naturally assume that I was crushed upon reading the rejection notice. Actually, I was richly entertained.

Yes, I was disappointed. The disappointment, however, was mitigated by my enjoyment and appreciation of the rejection letter itself, which struck me as a masterpiece of its genre. Here's my favorite part:

[R]ejecting manuscripts that become successful books is a publishing tradition. Assume we are wrong. Persevere until your books reach the goals you set for them.

Isn't that splendid? I was breathless with appreciation. Surely she was talking to me and was admitting that my book was fated to be one of the successful books that she would someday rue having rejected!

I had not expected to laugh out loud at a rejection notice, but I did. Perhaps when I have the experience of more of them, I'll find that they are all similarly clever and the novelty will wear off.

And then I won't be special anymore.