The big news here is the weather. We have a tornado watch in effect until late tonight. Rain has been falling all day and streets everywhere are flooded. The airport is closed because of the rain. The weather guy on TV says the worst is yet to come because the snow level is rising. Up in Prescott and Flagstaff it's turning to rain which means more flooding down here. The Barrett-Jackson car auction is a mess because the parking areas are fields that now look more like lakes. The winds are starting to increase with gusts of up to 50 mph expected, not a good thing if you run an auction in a giant tent.
"You pay me for Monday through Saturday. Sunday you get for free." - Ray Lewis (NFL)
When I heard that quote today I thought of how preachers feel - at least this one. By the time I get to Sunday I'm so eager to preach you couldn't keep me in my seat.
Former Senator and Presidential candidate John Edwards shocked us all by admitting today that the 2-year old daughter of his former mistress is indeed his child. Well, he didn't actually admit it. His lawyers and spokesperson told us he is acknowledging it. Edwards himself is in Haiti helping with the relief effort. How inconvenient that he's out of the country when this is made public.
Pond scum.
In a connection you can make for yourself, here's a flash game you might enjoy:
Tiger's Transgressions
Here's a web cam from Minnesota. It's inside the den of a black bear that is about to give birth.
Bear cam
You've heard of The Peter Principle ("promoted to the level of his incompetence") and Murphy's Law ("if anything can go wrong it will go wrong"). I'm introducing a new axiom, The Pendulum Principle. Any issue which offers two opposing positions will result in moving advocates to one of the two extremes. And in contrast to the Law of Entropy (all things seek equalization) the dynamics of The Pendulum Principle drive the advocates to ever more extreme positions until all logic and reasonableness have disappeared.
The Pendulum Principle can be seen at work in several different areas, none more obvious than politics. Take the economic crisis as an example. The administration's approach has been to use every means available to the govt. to stabilize the economy, reverse unemployment trends and save the largest manufacturing and banking firms. It's an approach that could be described by words like intervention and activism.
Republicans respond to this approach with shouts of protest, arguing that in a free market system the market dynamics should be allowed to work. The economy is a self-correcting organism and messing with it only makes things worse. The govt. should keep their dirty hands off of private enterprise. Capitalism only works when unmolested.
The Pendulum Principle pushes people to overstate their position and to ever increasing extremes, when in fact the reality is more nuanced and found somewhere in between the two.
The free market is not free. Capitalism has, since the 30's, operated within certain govt. restrictions. Monopolies are prohibited. The govt. controls the monetary supply. Worker and consumer protections keep us safe from unprincipled corporations. Yes (!) these laws and others have been overwritten and over applied. Welcome to life in the real world. But the complete absence of these kinds of laws allowed the conditions that resulted in the Great Depression.
It's too easy to let the Pendulum Principle lead us to extremes and overstatement. And, hey, it works especially well if you're intellectually lazy. No need to do real thinking; just paint your opponents as all wrong in every area and make sure you shout louder. Simple answers are always best, right?
FWIW
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