Rantle

by Eric Anschutz

For Christmas, I was given many many books (this happens every year, to my great pleasure!), one of which is Kurt Vonnegut’s brand new release, called “A Man Without a Country.” It’s a short book, I read it in just a couple of hours after the kids left on Christmas Eve. On the cover, Studs Terkel describes the book as a “wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs…” My sentiments, exactly. I want to share a few short Vonnegutisms with the Rantle faithful. I hope you enjoy them as I did:

1. I had a good uncle…his principal complaint about other human beings was that they seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” So I do the same now…please notice when you are happy and exclaim or murmer at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
2. Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
3. Where are Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln now when we need them?
4. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to…(Men want) a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get mad at them…It used to be (when we all had extended families, living nearby) that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to…The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to…(very few Americans now) “have extended families. The Navahoes, the Kennedy’s. But most of us…are just one more person for the other person….When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying… is “You are not enough people.” A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.”

by Eric Anschutz

I know next to nothing of the technical aspects of the charges against Saddam, or of his defense against them. From what we know, his crimes were of such enormity, and are so well documented that a verdict of guilty seems a certain outcome. I worry, however, that Saddam (a Sunni) will use the trial to make himself look good by proclaiming “See, I told you the only way to hold Iraq together and to maintain internal order was to be tough on the Shia and Kurd protesters.” He could succeed, if the trial becomes a mockery, in arousing among many Iraqi’s a wish for what might increasingly seem like the good old days. Our clown, former Attorney General Ramsy Clark, isn’t helping matters. My guess is that Sunni’s will rally to Saddam’s defense – and insurgents will gain strength as this thing gets into details and gives that madman a continuing platform from which to rally his old crowd. Too late for this – but it would seem to have been better for Saddam to have been tried by the world court in the Hague – ala Milosovitch. At a minimum, I hope those in charge of these matters will see fit to stop televising the trial.

by Eric Anschutz

Our country is beset with problems: the war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism, runaway national debt, a grossly negative balance of payments, the need to rebuild New Orleans, dependence on oil – most of which comes from unfriendly and unstable Islamic countries, global warming, outsourcing of jobs, low quality of our education system, excessive costs of a health care system that remains unavailable to many of our citizens, and the accelerating decline of our major manufacturing enterprises. A responsible and intelligent government should be deeply involved in study of these many problems and devising policy alternatives to address them, and our media should be raising questions, reporting on and evaluating the work of policy experts, and seeking best practice ideas from around the world. But, amazingly, none of this is happening. Instead, we focus our attention on the agenda of religious extremists: abortion, same sex marriage, the use of embryos in stem cell research, and whether intelligent design should be taught side by side with evolution. While none of these “family values” concerns have anything to do with the well-being of the nation, they occupy center stage in our national debate. Nero continues to fiddle while Rome burns.

By Eric Anschutz

Fifty years ago, conservatives claimed the mantra of balanced budgets, limited foreign intervention and involvement, and above all freedom of citizens from governmental encroachment into our lives. People who believe these things today are called liberals. Conservatives of yesteryear respected the sovereignty of other states, eschewed cross-border interference, and left harassment of dissidents and torture of prisoners to fascists and communists. Today, those proclaiming such policies are deemed soft on terror and unwitting allies of non-democratic regimes.

A joke circulating at MIT
This was sent to me by my son, Chris; I would add only that the same joke about corporate inefficiency could be made about many large private sector organizations. General Motors comes to mind!

Governmentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called ‘morons’ which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called ‘peons.’ Since Gv has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected,
because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Gv causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second!

Gv has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay; but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to
become neutrons, forming ‘isodopes.’ This characteristic of moron promotion leads most scientists to believe that Gv is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as ‘Critical Morass.’

When catalyzed with money, Gv becomes “Administratium’ (Am) – an element which radiates just as much energy as Gv, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.