Friend: Hey, Yogi, I think we’re lost.
Yogi Berra: Yeah, but we’re making great time! 

It’s probably clear to anybody who pays attention that I’m a rock & roll guy. But I was raised by my grandparents, two country folks who were born in 1913 and 1914 respectively and grew up through the Great Depression. There were two kinds of music in my house, country and gospel, and those aesthetics – the melodies and harmonies, the minor chord dips and the aching they signify, the constant battle between ignorant hope and blunt despair – they shaped my relationship with music in ways that will accompany me to my grave.

We listened to gospel quartets on Channel 12 Sunday mornings. The rest of the time, if there was music in the house, it was the likes of Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Roy Acuff & the Smoky Mountain Boys or Cowboy Copas. Granddaddy and Grandmother liked to watch The Porter Wagoner Show (with Dolly Parton, of course) and Saturday nights meant Hee Haw, with Buck Owens, Roy Clark and some of Nashville’s greatest stars. Full story »

The prevailing argument among our brilliant crew of writers here  at S&R lately over our public discourses v. those of our opponents goes something like this: some of us want to take the high road in public discussion of the issues; some of us want to go into the same attack dog mode that our opponents use; and some of us, as Sam Smith so eloquently notes in his post on the matter:

… some of us watch the debate with a good measure of conflict in our souls. We think about it, we test the implications, we agonize over it, all because we appreciate the complexities of politics and culture and we understand the human, emotional and spiritual costs as well as we do the collective, physical, economic ones.

Today Scholars & Rogues honors our 50^th masthead scrogue, Samuel L. Clemens of Hannibal, MO, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain – arguably (though I don’t think there can be much argument) America’s greatest writer. Full story »

Earlier this morning Chris offered up a post entitled “Why are environmentalists missing a mild-weather opportunity?” It raises a pragmatic point about how the climate “debate” plays out in the public sphere and is well worth a read. Go ahead – I’ll wait.

Predictably – and by “predictably,” I mean that last night I e-mailed our climate guru, Brian Angliss, and said “when Chris’s post lands, here’s what’s going to happen,” and it has played out as though I had scripted it; the denialists have jumped on the post in an attempt to cast Chris and the rest of the S&R staff as “hypocrites.” One prominent anti-science type wants you to believe that the message is “we know weather isn’t climate, but let’s lie to people anyway!”

Like I say, as predicted.

The truth is that Chris’s post is part of a larger context. Full story »

by Chip Ainsworth

My first memory of watching a Grapefruit League game is when I was 10 years old in Pompano Beach with my father. The Washington Senators were playing a team at a ballpark so nondescript it was the home of the local high school team. We sat on metal benches next to a pitcher named Jim Duckworth and the game was tied after nine frames. “No charge for extra innings,” said the PA announcer.

Today spring training is big business. At Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, fans pay the same prices for hot dogs and beer they do at big league parks. A lower box seat for a premium game against the Red Sox cost $36. Throw in all the other costs — food, beverages, parking and a program — and the price tag tops out at about $100.

Travel writer John Gunther once wrote how to see Europe on five dollars a day; here’s how to see baseball in Jupiter for fifteen dollars a game. Full story »

I feel like I lived Steven Church’s The Day After the Day After: My Atomic Angst, even if I didn’t grow up in Kansas. Church manages to capture the nuclear angst that overshadowed my own Cold War-childhood. I was too old for “duck and cover,” but Reagan had the arms race in full swing, so the threat of Armageddon loomed over all. “I was afraid of the future,” Church wrote, “more comfortable with the fantastical….”

Yep.

Church grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, the town featured in the 1983 television movie, which was also filmed there. The overlap had a profound impact on Church because “[t]his synchronicity between fiction and reality was not an unusual experience” for him. “This was the sort of boundary-blurring experience that defined my childhood,” he says.

In the same way, I lived just a few miles to the east—downwind—of Three Mile Island when it nearly melted down almost simultaneously with The China Syndrome. What’s real and what’s imaginary and how do the two play off each other? What memories result, and how do we understand those memories? Full story »

Fair warning: On my refrigerator I have a large magnet with a picture of Sarah Palin and the letters “WTF?”

So I tuned into the controversial HBO movie Game Changer much as Antony showed up at Caesar’s funeral, not to praise but to bury. To be more precise, I had formed a view of Sarah Palin as dumb, vacuous, ignorant, inept in matters of government, manipulative, avaricious and flighty. And of course a liar. As it turns out, at least according to the movie, that list was pretty much spot on as far as it went.

But it also added a few other words to that list: wonderful ( as in mother and wife,) caring, naive, loyal, principled, and most importantly used, abused, betrayed and discarded. I came away almost liking Sarah. Full story »

I have to ask – what mathematical ignoramus came up with the term “partial zero emission vehicle?” Partial means a fraction, and you can’t divide zero by anything without getting zero again. Divide zero in half? You get… zero. How about 10% of zero? Yup, still zero. Divide zero by a million and – it’s a shocker, I know – you still get zero. Divide zero by any number you can think of except zero*, and the answer is zero.

I get that the “Partial Zero Emission Vehicle” is a class of low emission vehicles defined by the state of California. I get that. But that just makes this even scarier. Full story »

Following up on yesterday’s post about how unfair it is when progressives fight fire with fire…

One of the architects of the modern conservative boycott movement back in the day was the now-deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the “Moral Majority.” His strategy was simple. Identify those television and radio stations whose programming “promoted” a “liberal agenda” or “secular humanist” values, then leverage the purchasing power of the congregation to bully offenders into changing their programming. Sadly, this brand of thuggery (remember, this is generally the same crowd screeching right now about how “liberals” are “censoring” the “free speech rights” of the richest, most successful, most widely heard man in political talk radio) proved effective enough that it has now become a go-to weapon in the arsenals of interest groups across the partisan spectrum. Full story »

Five months and five days after it killed a notorious American jihadist without due process of law, the Obama administration has offered an explanation of its actions in the death of al-Qaeda provocateur Anwar al-Awlaki.

In September, a Hellfire missile fired from a drone aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency struck ground in Yemen. It killed not one but two American citizens. One was New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, 40; the other was Samir Khan, 25, who published media for Al Qaeda promoting terrorism. Al-Awlaki was the intended target; Khan, apparently, was just gravy.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday the government used a three-part test for determining the legality of killing an American citizen beyond immediate reach of U.S. courts. Reported the Associated Press:

[Holder] said the government must determine after careful review that the citizen poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the U.S., capture is not feasible and the killing would be consistent with laws of war.

After careful review? What constitutes review? Who determines how careful it is? Based on what legal standards? What policy underwrote the killing?
Full story »

by Chip Ainsworth

Where’s Waldo? Ask Brad Scudder, and the 29-year-old Conway resident will pinpoint it on Google Earth. The hamlet of 821 residents in northern Florida was named for Dr. Benjamin Waldo, a physician from nearby Ocala. A long-ago plantation village, Waldo is onRoute 301 and is 12 miles south of the Florida State Prison in Starke. There, 72 inmates have been executed since 1979, done in by a private citizen who’s paid $150 to perform the grisly task.

It’s where Scudder and his business partner, Rob Dickens, were prepping for last Saturday’s Rugged Maniac 5K, an obstacle race that involves mud, music, and beer. Lots of beer. Scudder relied on a work crew comprised of his parents, Kim and Dean, girlfriend Christin Young and hometown friends — Christopher and Christian Melnik, Kip Komosa and my son Mat. “An amazing crew,” said Kim. “How lucky to work with all your buddies.”

Scudder and the gang flew into Jacksonville seven days before the race, holed up in a Gainesville motel and worked from sunrise until nightfall, transforming a motocross track into mud-strewn labyrinths of underground tunnels, cargo nets, eight-foot walls, fire jumps, water slides, a murky pond “filled with some pretty weird fish,” and other obstacles meant to impede the progress of 2,500 contestants who would be lured by the prospect of beer, music and camaraderie. Full story »

Caveat emptor: you may find what follows heretical.

As you are likely aware, there is (and has long been) a strident outcry from certain quarters in Christianity against homosexuality as a behavior and, in the worst cases, against homosexual men and women (pick/choose/mix liberally, as you will) themselves. To my chagrin, the religious voices from those quarters make a great many references to the Old Testament of their holy book and generally opt to leave out references to the New Testament. When they do choose to include the New Testament as part of their attack ideology, they keep flipping right past the Gospels, right past Acts, and on to Paul. That’s interesting to me, because as I understand the Bible, Paul wasn’t the one born of Mary. Full story »

by Anonymous

The situation is Chardon is all too familiar: a bullied outcast with a troubled home life snaps. If TJ Lane had broken in the usual manner, he might have committed suicide. But TJ snapped differently and took a gun to his tormenters. In an instant, any sympathy for his situation is gone and he’s just a thug, maybe a psycho, and the words “Columbine,” “Goth,” and “Dark Side” start getting thrown around.

Bullying has always been a fact of life in the US–now it’s commercialized and glorified as entertainment. A lot of people turn in to American Idol and other reality shows not for the great performances, but for the truly dreadful ones and the cruelty that follows. The losers tuck their tails between their legs, cry for the camera and their supporters and go home to face down the humiliation.

That’s what the victims of bullying are supposed to do: suck it up.

But victims fall into three categories: the A Victims, those who put up with it until they can get away from it; the B Victims, those who break and turn on themselves; and the C Victims, those who go all Carrie on the world. Full story »

Recently, a left-wing colleague described his vision of where America is headed over the next forty years–breakdown of government, mass starvation, roving bands of marauders, etc. It’s interesting that this is exactly the same vision shared by those on the far right who star in the new TV show Doomsday Preppers, about people who are stockpiling cases of beans in their suburban basements, while asking themselves, “What load would Jesus shoot?” Maybe the visions of both left and right are so similar because that future has been portrayed so many times in movies.

Of course, we could end up like that. But we probably won’t.

Full story »

by Bryan Clark

On Jan. 27, 1991, Whitney Houston sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Super Bowl XXV. As news of her death spread, many people remember the performance as one of her career highlights and one of the best renditions of America’s national anthem.

Songs and sports often combine. Full story »

by Chip Ainsworth

Boat captain Scott Alvarez guided the 40-foot pontoon over the brackish waters of the Loxahatchee River and away from Trapper Nelson’s campground, the twin outboards aided by the pull of an outgoing tide.

Alvarez was born and raised in Florida when “there was only one stoplight in Delray Beach” and today gives guided tour rides to Nelson’s campground in Jonathon Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound. The restored site was inhabited from the early 1930s until the late 1960s. Nelson came to Florida from Trenton, N.J., to trap, hunt and fish. For him it wasn’t a journey into Conrad’s Heart of Darkness but the siren call of nature away from civilization.
Full story »

The more I watch modern politics (and economics and the culture wars and science “debates”) the more it all reminds me of pro wrestling. You know how it goes. Tough match, back and forth, both the good guy (the “face”) and the bad guy (the “heel”) getting their licks in, and then at the decisive moment either the heel “accidentally” knocks the ref down or his manager distracts the ref or something. While the zebra is looking the other way, the black hat clocks the crowd favorite with a steel chair. Ref turns around. 1…2…3…and we have a new champion! Lather, rinse, repeat.

Which brings us to the breaking story surrounding The Heartland Institute and the revelation of all kinds of incriminating internal documents that, in a nutshell, prove that everything climate scientists have been saying about them is true. Full story »

“I will be with you on your wedding-night.” – Frankenstein’s Monster

Well, it looks like Romney has caught up with Santorum in one way.

The website www.spreadingromney.com is working to introduce a new word into the language. Just as Santorum in now best known as the frothy fecal matter accompanying anal sex (or something like that), this group is now proposing the following definition:

romney (rom-ney) v.1. To defecate in terror.

One part of me hopes this doesn’t take (the part that predicted Romney would win the nomination. The other part doesn’t give a santorum.) It’s hard to feel sorry for Romney, even though we have a mutual friend who swears he’s a great guy and would make a great president, because he deserves some punishment for the deliberate distortions and outright fibs he’s told trying to cozy up to the Base. But today the AG of Ohio switched his endorsement from Romney to Santorum, which could be nothing or it could be the first rat running down the hawser. Full story »

It had to happen. I’ve been expecting it. Today I read a column that said Jeremy Lin is “just like Tim Tebow.”

Sigh. No, he’s not.

Yes, he’s six foot three and young.

Yes, he’s a devout Christian. But he’s quiet about it. He mentions his faith in interviews, but almost as an aside and usually to deflect praise from himself. He closes his eyes and prays before the tip off, but he doesn’t seek out cameras and kneel dramatically in front of them. In other words, for Jeremy, the Christian thing appears to be part of who he is, not a marketing strategy. (To be fair, Tebow’s parents are evangelists, so to some extent Christianity is the family business. It puts bread on the table.)

Full story »