Pats On The Back

First of all, I would like to catch up to the rest of the world by commending law enforcement officials in Great Britain and Pakistan for foiling the terrorism plot to blow up American and British airliners.

Well done! *applause* Bravo!

And I would like to note, none of this was accomplished by unwarranted phone surveillance or provisions of the Patriot Act, but by solid intelligence and police work. Perhaps Mr. Bush & Co. should take a lesson from these agencies on how to really stop terrorism.

Perhaps this is the wrong moment to bring this up, but I’ve heard a lot of people in the last couple days say “I just don’t understand how anyone could think like this, just wanting to kill innocent people.” as if there was something wrong with all Muslims. Folks, it’s not like we haven’t had this in our own country. There was a lot of "terrorist violence" during the Civil Rights movement. Then there is the Okalahoma City bombing. And then there is homophobic violence.

It’s not like this kind of behavior is in our distant past. We have recent events of random violence done in the name of a cause among our own people within this very year. How do they think like they do? Most obviously hate and the only way to breed hate is to dehumanize those that are different, “the other”, be they a different culture, religion, color, gender or sexual orientation. Americans do it all the time, we dehumanize Gays, Latinos, Women. Look at the frequency of rape in this country and ask yourself if we really are so much more “evolved” as a culture. And now Bush wants us to dehumanize Muslims. “We are at war against Islamic Fascists”. Wasn’t Civil Rights referred to as a “war” by both sides?

This is a human problem. It is running particularly high in the Middle East at the moment, but it is not utterly foreign to us. I’m not excusing terrorists or asking for sympathy for them in any way. In my mind, terrorists are nothing more than murderous thugs and deserve no more respect or fear than that. But perhaps if we viewed this kind of behavior as a human problem rather than saying “The other is so different than us that they have this problem”, maybe then we can start to make steps to end the problem once and for all by stopping it at the source as well as making arrests.

On a similar note, here is an article from Time magazine on the steps that Logan Airport has taken in recent years to combat terrorism.

Also well done. I am interested in hearing more about the behavior profiling especially. It would seem to me to be basic police work to note people who are acting suspiciously, I’m surprised it hasn’t be more of an S.O.P until now. It seems to make a hell of a lot more sense than ethnic/”racial” profiling, especially given the diversity of people in all religions now. Though I have to differ with the “Nothing” comment at the end of the article. Until airlines start showing good movies in flight, I want to at least be able to take a good book. There is a certain amount of risk in all life. People like Sgt. Thompson’s job is to be scared and think of possibilities, but that in and of itself makes him something of an extremist that must be moderated against those of us who live in the more mundane everyday world. Don’t be blasé about safety by any means, but don’t be an “airline Nazi” either.

I am really, can you imagine kids on a cross county flight without handheld video games? *chuckle*

NASCAR and The Media.

An editorial in this weeks NASCAR Scene by Bob Pockrass caught my eye. “Thanks To Some Poor Decisions, This is Turning Into a Disappointing Season”. First of all, the title had nothing to do with the main thrust of the article, which was to deride certain people for how they handled the Media...among other things. Elliott Sadler was slammed for bluffing the media when it came to his future plans, Ray Evernham for dumping Jeremy Mayfield for “speaking his mind” and Tony Stewart for…well, just for being Tony, I guess.

Now I confess, I was at California last year when Elliott scribbled his name in the cement and then told his crowd of fans that “the car is great!”, a bold faced lie that irked me but I understood. Being a Leader sometimes means wearing a smile in the face of crushing defeat. It’s called morale and keeping upbeat and positive in the press helps keep one’s team moral up. Just look at Jerry Springer style free-for all in the press between Dale Jr. and the Eury’s in 2003 and 2004 (something that has improved vastly since their reunion this season.) Yes, it made for good copy, but can you imagine the tension working at DEI and in the #8 pit while it was going on? There is a saying in the military: “Praise in public, dress down in private”. Tony often “tells it like it is”, but he’ll “tell it like it is” about other drivers, Mike Helton, NASCAR, auto-racing in general and pretty much anything but his team and Joe Gibbs racing. On that matter he closes ranks with Zippy and his guys and “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves”. (Smoke’s Team Flag) How would Elliott's team have reacted to having a driver that was spending the last three months saying, "Gee, I don't know if I'm going to be here next year..." pubically? Doesn't exactly inspire someone to give one's all for the team...

No matter how right his perception of the situation at Evernham Motorsports may have been, unless Mayfield had approached Evernham privately on this matter first and was brushed off, making a snarky comment about his boss’s love life in the press was a very bad idea. Yeah, it reads like a daytime talk show *yum, yum, yum* but it didn’t do the working environment at the company any good.

Though in turn I do think Evernham's reaction was a bit...excessive.

So the NASCAR journalists have just got to learn to deal when it comes to not getting the scoop on a team's internal workings. Racers are not obliged to open up their innermost thoughts on anything and everything to the press and there are certain times when they should keep their own counsel. As annoying as the dishonesty is, Elliott did the right thing by throwing out red herrings (that is if they were red herrings and not a simple case of someone changing their mind) to keep the media out of his decision-making process for his next step. That was between himself and the Yates and no one had to know about it until a decision had been made.

The World's Most Sucessful Pick-Up Line

“Excuse me, but does this rag smell like chloroform to you?”

Good Luck to everyone at Watkins Glen tomorrow!