Stuck In Traffic #6 ÿ by Calvin Stacy Powers ===================================== Reacting to the Oklahoma City Bombing April 30th Even before the dust had settled from the Oklahoma City bombing, even while we were still trying to identify the victims' bodies in the rubble, public policy makers were telling us what should be done about it. Politicians, interest groups and government agencies have reacted almost instantly, as if there is some unwritten assumption that whoever can react to the news fastest will have a competitive advantage in selling their proposals to the public. It's one of the tragedies of electoral democracy in the information age; public policy makers react to the "what" without understanding or even caring about the "why." No one yet knows why the Oklahoma City bombing happened. We only know that it happened. In fact we don't even know who did it yet. Of the two suspects so far in the case, only one is in custody and he hasn't made any statements to date. And the suspect is still just that, only a suspect. So any proposals on what should be done about the Oklahoma City bombing are strictly reactionary and premature. No one would go to a doctor and allow him to start prescribing medicines and treatments until the doctor had diagnosed the cause of our illness. Any treatments the doctor would prescribe could only treat the symptoms, not the real cause of the illness. Any doctor that practiced medicine this way would lose his license. No one would let a mechanic tell us what needs to be done to our car before he even popped the hood and figured out what was wrong. Any mechanic doing this would immediately become suspect. Is he trying to sell us parts and services we don't really need? How can the mechanic possibly know? Is he trying to push something on us? Is he trying to make a fast buck? But for some reason this reactionary mode of action is tolerated among politicians and public policy makers. In fact, the age of instant news encourages it. We haven't even buried the dead and the various political factions and interest groups are already trying to pin the blame on each other. Witness the Clinton administration's attempt to link the bombing with `right-wing' radio talk shows. Witness fringe elements of the right trying to link the bombing to the government's assault on the Branch Davidians. Witness gun- control lobbyists trying to pin blame for the bombings on the National Rifle Association despite that fact that, as far as we know, no guns were involved in this tragedy. To date, no motive has been established for the bombing. We don't know if this bombing was product of a deranged lunatic or if it is part of an organized conspiracy from a terrorist group. But government law enforcement agencies like the FBI, the BATF, and the DEA are already telling us how they need more police state powers to prevent this sort of terrorism from happening again. They want more power to spy on citizens, more power to infiltrate organizations, more power to restrict the activities of peaceful citizens. There is even talk of using the United States military on domestic law enforcement issues. When we know why the Oklahoma City bombing was committed, it will be time to discuss how it happened and what can be done to prevent similar incidents in the future. It will be time to take a hard look at the state of the country and where it is heading. When we know what motivated the bombings, it will be time to pass judgement on who is to blame. Until then, the appropriate action is to focus on cleaning up the mess and helping the victims families put their lives back together. It's encouraging to note that the vast majority of people in America, those without an agenda or personal axe to grind, are doing just that. People from all over the country are donating money, food, blood, and time to the relief effort, helping out in whatever way they can. Politicians worthy of our respect will be doing likewise, personally helping out on the relief effort. It's time for Americans to take note of the politicians, interest groups and government agencies that are trying to capitalize on the Oklahoma City bombing to promote their own agendas and give them all the same respect due to a doctor who prescribes medicines with out diagnosing the illness and all the respect due a mechanic trying to sell us parts and services we don't need, which is no respect at all. ============================ "The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there." --Robert M. Pirsig ========= Hot Times It was a little later than usual this year, but summer has finally made it into the Carolinas and I like it. It's been sunny and bright. We had our first 90 degree day last week. Now, I'm not exactly the outdoors-type. It's not that I'm into the summer sports. It's highly unlikely you'll ever catch me water-skiing, or surfing or mountain climbing. I'll never be asked to be in one of those beer commercials that show all these happy people enthusiastically exhausting them selves in a tropical paradise. I can appreciate these things, but I don't seek them out. Summer, for me, is not great because it's an opportunity to pursue summertime activities. I like summer for the heat. Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, humidity sucks. But summer is great because it's not Winter. To me winter is a huddle around the fire and try to survive time. But summer is a supercharged with life kind of time. Everything is suddenly supercharged with energy. The sun beats down on everything like a cosmic battery. All the creepy crawly things come out and creep and crawl as if they're in some weird energizer bunny commercial. The neighborhood wildlife, the squirrels, the occasional rabbit, and even a deer on occasion are out in force. Doing whatever it is they do. And people are out and about too, doing what ever it is people do. Here in Cary, the model suburban community, people are working in their yards, holding garage sales, riding their bikes, taking walks with their families, playing various types of ball, mostly softball these days. The summer heat, to my mind at least, is more energizing than it is oppressive. Of course it's totally legitimate to argue just the opposite, that Winter is a much better time than summer. There are winter people and there are summer people. To each his own. I don't bring this up merely to extol the virtues of Summer or to convert Winter People to be Summer People. I bring this up in order to preface an admission from me about one of my strange habits, a peculiarity of mine, so that you might understand it a little. Or at least I hope you won't think I'm totally bonkers. Now don't jump to conclusions. It's not _that_ weird. A mere eccentricity. There no need to call 911. I discovered this affinity in college. I went to school at Texas A&M University, which is, literally "deep in the heart" of Texas. If you were to look at an outline of the state of Texas and were asked to draw an x "deep in the heart" of Texas, chances are you'd draw it real close to where I went to school. Texas A&M is located in a town called College Station, so named because the principal way you used to get to it was by train, and you got off the train at the station where the college was. But geographically speaking, the surrounding area is known as the Brazos Valley. Valley? They have valleys in Texas? Well, you have to understand that Texans get rather optimistic when describing their landscape. They have to. In Texas, any running water that is too wide to straddle with both legs is called a River, Even if the so-called river is just a muddy puddle of water for several months of the year. So the Brazos Valley isn't exactly a Valley, per se. It's not like you can see raised land surrounding the area. And certainly the area isn't surrounded by mountains, as one would expect from a more traditional valley. The Brazos Valley is just another big wide plain that isn't quite flat, it has vaguely rolling hills. But if you look at the area on a larger scale, it is true that it is in something of a depression. It's slightly lower than the surrounding areas. But you have to be a pretty astute geologist to notice. But the geography does have an affect on the local whether. Unlike the flat plains in the panhandle region of Texas, there isn't a lot of wind in the Brazos Valley. And weather systems tend sort of ooze into the Brazos Valley and just sit there for a while. This is especially true in the summer. Hot humid air just settles into the region and stays for weeks on end. A walk across the street in College Station in the middle of August is enough to get yourself drenched with sweat. Now, A&M is in many respects a fairly typical college campus, with one notable exception. It's big. I mean really big. When I was there, the average enrollment each year was in the neighborhood of 30,000 students. In terms of sheer acreage, A&M has the largest campus in the United States. The savvy student always scheduled at least 30 minutes between classes because when you registered for classes you couldn't always tell which building your classes were going to be in and sometimes you really did need 30 minutes to get from one building to another. And as is typical for many college campuses, parking was a problem, to say the least. For the most part, if you lived off-campus like I did, you rode your bike to school or rode the bus. Parking on campus simply wasn't much of an option. Except if you were in the Engineering college, like I was. (An interesting historical note for computer geeks: At A&M, until recently, the computer science was actually considered a branch of industrial engineering.) But I digress. The main building where the Engineering classes were was called the Zachary Engineering Building and it was located on the edge of campus. Not a very convenient location, relative to the other buildings on campus but was right next to one of the few parking lots reserved for students. Let me tell you about this parking lot. It is huge. Huge doesn't even begin to describe it. Think of your average shopping mall and think of the entire parking lot for that mall. Now imagine the mall removed and paved over with a parking lot. Now you're getting close to imagining the size of this parking lot. But as big as it was, the Zachary parking lot filled up fast. I used to get to campus by about 8:00 in the morning and the lot would already be half full, so I basically had to park smack dab in the middle of it. One quickly learned to count the number of rows you passed on your way to the Zachary building so you knew which row you had parked on. Otherwise, you might not ever find your car again. The first year I attended Summer session at A&M, I had two or three classes in the morning and finished up around 2 in the afternoon, at which point I would head back to my apartment. OK, now I've set the stage enough I think. Imagine. Brazos Valley Texas. In the middle of a typically hot, sticky August Day. The temperature is easily in into triple digits. The humidity is close to triple digits despite it being a perfectly sunny day. There is little to no breeze. My car has been sitting in the dead middle of the mother of all parking lots. Locked. The windows rolled up. It's time to get in it and go back home. Imagine. Imagine the inside of that car. I loved it. I used to unlock the door and hop inside and just sit there for a few minutes. I didn't roll down the windows or anything. You didn't notice anything for about 5 seconds and then the heat started searing through your clothes and sinking into your flesh like some specially designed chemical. Your outer skin turns to water. Your clothes get soaked. And when the heat sinks into your chest, your heart starts beating faster. Your eyes start to water. And the really bizarre thing is that your tears actually feel cool around the corner of your eyes despite the fact that there is no breeze to fan them. And when your heart starts beating fast like that you start breathing faster. It's not like you're gasping for breath or anything. Breathing is not any trouble. It's just that your lungs have to all of a sudden keep up with your heart or something. Unless someone was waiting for me to leave so they could get my parking spot, I would sit in my car, with the windows rolled up for 4 or 5 minutes, just revelling in the heat. I have no idea what the actual temperature was in there. I never measured. But I can tell you that I experienced heat and I liked it. =========================== Life's Little Mysteries #47 Why is it that the sound of chirping crickets, outside, late at night is soothing and relaxing, but the sound of a single chirping cricket in your bedroom can keep you up all night? ================================ Chiliholic Poster Child: Sassy! (From a news wire report circulated on the Internet) Sassy, the 2-ton elephant, queen of the Spalding Brothers Tent Circus, suffered a bout with gas that nearly killed her trainer, and blasted several holes in the striped tent where she was practicing her prancing. Now dubbed Sassy the Gassy Pachyderm, the 14-year-old beast snorted approximately 15 gallons of red-hot Tex-Mex chili cooking outside the tent for a Rotary fund raiser. Sassy developed a taste for chili as a mere 500-pound babe when she lived with a herd of cows near El Paso, Texas. The rancher held regular cook-outs, and let Sassy lick the Chili pot after the guests had gone. "The hotter the better," recalls rancher Antonio Guayabera. "She'd poke her little fuzzy trunk in there and slurp 'til it was clean as a whistle. "I'd notice the next day, though, the cows would stick to one end of the field and Sassy would be all by herself at the other. "I always thought someone was burning garbage, but I finally realized it was Sassy and cut off her bean supply. It was making the cows' milk sour." Antonio, who got the baby elephant as a gag gift from an oilman friend of his, sold Sassy to the circus and trainer Fritz Hildebrand made her queen of the center ring. "I discovered the first month I had Sassy that she loved chili, but it didn't love her," says Fritz. "We had to keep the roustabouts with their open cook- stoves away, because she would smell those beans simmering and start hooting and hollering to get it. "We only let her have her way once," Fritz says, shaking his head. "We had to walk her a mile away and leave her penned there a whole day." Human memories dim, but elephants never forget, and with chili pots bubbling it was just a matter of time before Sassy slipped her trunk through a hole in the tent and started gobbling. "I knew I had to get her out of there - and fast," says Fritz from his hospital bed. "But I wasn't fast enough. As I led her away, the gas attack started. I should have known better than to stand too close, but the first blast blew me right through the tent and into a trailer parked outside." Fritz suffered 15 broken bones, including one arm, one leg, his collarbone, several ribs and fingers. Subsequent blasts ripped through the big top before Sassy was banished to a distant field. "I know she feels bad," concludes the forgiving trainer. "Sassy's a chiliholic, and she just can't help herself." ========================== "The problem with computers is there's not enough Africa in them." --Brian Eno =========================== Helms Steps In It (Reprise) Junto readers may recall a couple of issues back I wrote of the flap surrounding Senator Jesse Helms's comment that Clinton shouldn't visit our state's military bases without a body guard. In "Helms Steps In It!" I commented on the fact that other politicians have made similarly outrageous comments with out touching off the same firestorm. In "Helms Steps In It?" I posed the possibility that Helms remarks may have been a well calculated publicity stunt, noting that his comments were made directly to reporters whom he knew to be unsympathetic to him, and noting that Helms seems to know how to play to the media to get his message out to conservative voters. Now, in this month's Liberty Magazine, Chester Alan Arthur notes that on May 20th, the road running in front of the White House was closed to vehicular traffic in order better protect the President from intruders. ============== Safety Buckets Contructive advice from the federal government as reported by the Detroit News: "After researching ways to redesign 5 gallon buckets to prevent infinats from climbing into them and drowning, the Consumer Product Safety Commission recommended that the manufacturers produce buckets that leak." (From Libery magazine) ====================== He that to what he sees, adds observation, and to what he reads, reflection, is in the right road to knowledge, provided that in scrutinizing the hearts of others, he neglects not his own." --Caleb Colton ====================== Whether he likes it or not, man is the instrument of nature; it forces on him its character and appearance." --Picasso ================================================================== Stuck In Traffic is a bi-monthly e-zine edited by, and mostly written by Calvin Stacy Powers. Copyrights of individual articles are held by their respective authors. All unsigned work is authored by Calvin Stacy Powers, who holds all copyrights. Permission is granted to redistribute Stuck In Traffic provided that it is redistributed in its entirety (including this copyright notice), and that no fee is charged. 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