On Cingular's Advertising

Everybody has those, "Duh," moments. Just had one and wanted to write about it.

As are supposedly 39,999,999 other people, I'm a Cingular customer. I've been watching these recent ads where they've been touting the fact that they have so many customers. And, that we can all call each other for free any time we want to.

Here's the "duh" moment: Why don't I know a single other Cingular customer besides my wife I can call?

The question then, is: Why doesn't Cingular post the names of their 40 million customers so we can all figure out how not to pay them to make a call?

The answer is: Because that would violate every privacy law in this country.

My response is: That saddens me. I checked the Cingular web site for two whole minutes and nowhere did I find a mention of "Hey, Cingular customer! Find anyone in our network and call them for free!"

That's a shame. 40 million people I could be calling for free (or they call me). But I can't do that. The onus of responsibility to find out who else I talk to on the Cingular network is up to me. That's foolish.

If you would be willing to be part of a change to the Cingular site that publishes your name only in a search engine so your fellow Cingular customers can find you, then I suggest you call or write Cingular an email or snail mail letter. I know I'm going to. That only moves us one step closer to knowing who else is on the network. You still have to find that person and get their number. Cingular certainly shouldn't hand it out. Unless I opt in...

If you wouldn't, don't. But I for one don't think that my name in a search engine on Cingular's site is any more an invasion of my privacy than the number of times my name pops up in those Google engine searches for the magazine articles I've written. Remember, I'm talking only about posting your name, not your cell number. You and I don't need any more wrong numbers or solicitations for garbage than we already get at home, even though we're on the no-call list.

If you have other reasons this can't happen, I want to know about it. Post and tell me. I'm itching to know.

Oh, and if you need to call me, I'm on Cingular. If you are too, it'll be free. But if you think I'm posting my number here, you must be crazy.

Danforth on Terri Schiavo, stem cell research, religion, Republicans

The following (between the title In the Name of Politics and Mr. Danforth's bio at the bottom for sake of documentation and source) is an editorial that ran in the New York Times op-ed section 3/30/05. My commentary follows his.

In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH

St. Louis ‹ BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed
our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of
this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to
ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen
embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to
keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.

Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the
Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone.
Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to
conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.

Christian activists, eager to take credit for recent electoral successes,
would not be likely to concede that Republican adoption of their political
agenda is merely the natural convergence of conservative religious and
political values. Correctly, they would see a causal relationship between
the activism of the churches and the responsiveness of Republican
politicians. In turn, pragmatic Republicans would agree that motivating
Christian conservatives has contributed to their successes.

High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo,
including departures from Republican principles like approving Congressional
involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal court to overrule
a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of
religious power blocs.

In my state, Missouri, Republicans in the General Assembly have advanced
legislation to criminalize even stem cell research in which the cells are
artificially produced in petri dishes and will never be transplanted into
the human uterus. They argue that such cells are human life that must be
protected, by threat of criminal prosecution, from promising research on
diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes.

It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to
identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and have always
been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a
petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into
statutory law.

I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted
the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God's call to political involvement.
Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious
liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against
nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to
try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It
is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it
has become the political extension of a religious movement.

When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it
raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence
of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification
with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their
own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is
to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion
can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For
politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose
the cause of another.

Take stem cell research. Criminalizing the work of scientists doing such
research would give strong support to one religious doctrine, and it would
punish people who believe it is their religious duty to use science to heal
the sick.

During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with
each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited
government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We
encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We
believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were
internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national
defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all
Republicans.

But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to
become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I
worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a
single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of
marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope
for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious
agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to
rediscover our roots.

John C. Danforth, a former United States senator from Missouri, resigned in
January as United States ambassador to the United Nations. He is an
Episcopal minister.

And now my comments:

Amen.

Baseball and the Steroid Issue

It's lunch time, so I'm going to while away some time with my ramblings about this whole baseball and steroids issue.

Steroids and their effects on the ability to play baseball

First off, I'm trying to reconcile what the real effect of steroids are (besides possibly long-term horrible side effects) on playing baseball. I played baseball through sophomore year of high school in summer leagues and with school sports teams. Heck, in odd numbered years I was a fantastic player; in even numbered years I stunk up the joint. (Isn't that odd?) Anyway, at no time did any of the guys I played with ever, ever, take some sort of ability-enhancing drug or supplement. We just had fun and played baseball.

If you've followed baseball much (or at all), you know that the early ball players were pretty much slugs. They played year round, they partied hard, and some of them had to get jobs in small towns around the country to keep playing and supplement the 47 cents they got to play ball. Those were the days when baseball was played for "the love of the game". The owners ran the joint, the players were indentured servants, and we still had segregated professional leagues. Then, in the 60s, the first player known to be a "lifter", Bill Allen, was called a freak by one of his teammates. The issue then, as now, was that lifting weights was going to kill the purity of the game. Of course, lifting weights did not kill the game, and my estimate of about 100% of players exercising for some purpose is probably right. Professional athletes just exercise because it's part of being a professional athlete. Look at the PGA golfers, for crying out loud. They've even started training regimens.

So where did steroids get mixed in here? Who really knows? All I can postulate is that steroid use got started somewhere, by one guy, who talked to another guy, who showed another guy how big it made him, etc.

Update: I found a fantastic article on the history of steroids, specifically the anabolic ones originally developed for weight lifters. Check it out if you to find out a lot more on why, when, and where. This is a great article and I think Slate does some very good reporting: http://slate.msn.com/id/2113752

And then it was off to the races. Do you remember a guy named Brady Anderson? Brady played for the Baltimore Orioles and in 1998 he hit 50 home runs. His previous high before 1998? 27. Did Brady look like The Incredible Hulk? Yes. Did anybody care about his physique? No. Did everyone love to see a leadoff hitter cranking out home runs? You bet. Do I think Brady was juiced? Do I care?

I believe that it might be proved that while getting stronger through steroid use can make you hit a round, stitched piece of leather with rubber core farther, they don't do a stinking thing to make you a better overall baseball player. I haven't done the research, but did these guys' batting averages drastically improve? How about their defense? Did they cause more errors in the field of play because they were juiced that led to runs scoring more than so than the runs they drove in? Can any of that be proved? Does it matter? And, if the pitchers did it, too, wouldn't this all be a moot point?

The biggest issue, to me, is defining "performance enhancing". That means that we must determine a set of statistics that prove these users are losers. And at this point, there's been no proof of that. Except...

Barry Bonds and other players, role models

Barry Bonds. If it weren't for Barry, all of this hubbub would be a footnote in baseball history. Why? Because Barry's on course to break Babe Ruth's home run total, which was, of course, eclipsed by Henry Aaron, whom Bonds is only 40 homers shy of, as well. So baseball's got an immediate black eye because the event that should bring baseball even more glory (outside of the accomplishments in the 90s like Ripken's consecutive game streak and that little race to 62 with McGwire and Sosa) is about to collapse under the weight of BALCO's attorney fees and testimony. Unfortunately for him, Barry can't keep his mouth shut about the issue, either. He's playing every card in his hand, including blaming the media for his latest knee surgery, which conspirators are saying he did on purpose so the 'roids can clear his system before he returns because he'd obviously be caught during some random testing. Poor Barry. Poor baseball.

This leads to the athlete as role model argument. "We need to ban this stuff because kids will start using it when they're 3 and on their first 3 on 3 soccer team." I don't get that argument at all. Just because we know these guys are juiced, we're all going to start taking the juice, especially those impressionable youth who are clamoring for their baseball scholarship? Where are the parents in all of this verbal hoopla? As disconnected as we're led to believe? When I was a kid, the Steelers and Cowboys won the Superbowl. A lot. Guess what I just read? Jim Haslett, who coaches the Saints and played during the 70s in the NFL, says the Steelers were the first team to push 'roids for competitive advantage. So it's okay for me to idolize Jack Hamm because I didn't know he was juiced? Thus, ignorance is bliss? Please. This is ridiculous. Athletes as role models is another way of avoiding the issue: parents are looking for ways to pass the buck of responsibility to someone other than themselves. Get over it.

Sports Darwinism

Here's the kicker: 'roid use is simply sports Darwinism. The athlete is simply using whatever means necessary to get a competitive edge because we reward them for that. Doesn't it seem odd that professional sports allow us, the public, to know every detail of their contractual agreements and salary? You wouldn't share that with your neighbor, but these people do it every day. This is one driver for becoming successful at any cost. If you knew John down the street was making $10K a year more than you for the same job at the same company with the same hours and 'roids could help you do your job better and make $20K more, you might do it. That and you'd probably resent John. A lot.

We should take a hard look at steroid usage and then adjust our sports because of them instead of banning them or pretending they don't exist. Guys hit the ball out of the park too much for our puritanical baseball statistics? Move the fences back 30 feet. But let's not stop there. Let's go back and re-write all the records for every sport where medical science or technology has had any effect. For example, let's take away Tiger Woods clubs and give him a hickory shaft and a feather ball. He's obviously cheating to win. (He probably works out, too.) Then, let's get rid of those shoulder pads and protective helmets and put football players back into leather straps and no shoulder pads. (Oh, and let's ban the forward pass. It's ruined the game.) And we must rule out every football record since cortisone was introduced by team doctors. If a guy could play hurt with a cortisone shot today and they couldn't 40 years ago, we've got to do something about that. Like asterisk every record. If a guy had a steel rod inserted into his ankle and recovered 6 weeks faster than he might have 20 years ago, he's cheating! For the ultimate extreme, let's put every Olympic athlete back in the outfit God intended: make 'em all naked. No more swimming body suits, no more carbon fiber sleds, no more superslick skis. Cheaters.

This is risk versus reward. Plain and simple. You take 'roids, you chance awful side effects without a guarantee of success. But you should know that before you do. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice...

Drugs are drugs. Professional athletes will take them. Let them. They've been doing it years before it became a big deal. To counter their effect, the games must change.

Congress

Congress has wasted our tax money. Period.

Do you honestly want your Congress asking Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, and others about their use of steroids? For what purpose? You've paid for this to happen. You also pay for these guys to take 'roids. When we buy a ticket, we condone their behavior, on and off the field, whether we know it or not.

But now Congress has its nose in it.

I feel a lot better now. I'm distracted from less interesting topics like Social Security, the war in Iraq, and gay marriage.

Thanks, Congress.

Quick Update Since I've Not Written in a Long Time

Welcome to anyone from the Shawnee Mission Northwest Class of 1985. With my 20th anniversary reunion coming up, I've updated my bio to include this 'blog. I can't say I'm all that comfortable with that choice, but hey, Danny Stratford inspired me. Thanks, Danny.

Here's a thought about 'blogging: It's great for those of us who expose ourselves to it. It's not about curing cancer. It's about putting a piece of yourself out there in cyberspace for all who have access to see. And that's fantastic.

'Blogging is also about putting yourself out there for critical, and not-so-critical, review. Your personality, beliefs, and other intimate information could be posted. That puts a cyberspace target on your back. But it also democratizes the entire process and the Internet itself. We should all be able to leverage a place that's available to us to post our viewpoints, our opinions, and our rationales.

So, in the spirit of what was intended, if you don't like what you're reading, quit and do something else. Post to your own 'blog or surf the 'Net somewhere else or wash the car or chase the dog. But don't post to my 'blog and tell me I can't have my point of view. That's not the spirit.

If my tangential musings entice you to post to debate in a thoughtful way, super. I welcome that. I'm especially interested in feedback regarding the Selfish Parent stuff.

I don't post often. And when I do, as a friend told me, I have a tendency to have a bit of an outline ready to go. I prefer to post when I think I've got something to document or say, not simply to document my day. But I understand this is very different than what people usually do with 'blogs. But there's nothing wrong with that, right?