Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Thursday, September 25, 2008

I have been digging on the music of U2 over the last couple of weeks. It all started, at least in it's most recent manifestation, with hearing about a Bible study someone did using the music of the Dublin band as the lead in to talking about faith in a post-modern era. I thought, "What a cool topic," so I broke out some of my old albums and got some books on the topic from Amazon. As one thing led to another I've gotten more and more into both the music and the message.

As a guy in his early 40's I got into the band about the same time everyone else my age did in the early 80's after hearing Sunday Bloody Sunday and seeing the Live at Red Rocks video of the song on MTV (back when MTV was worth a damn and actually changed the world). Al the geezers who read this will know what I'm talking about. Like a lot of teenagers, I was really only interested in what got airplay and so I didn't listen to much of Unforgettable Fire outside of Pride (In the Name of Love). It was my first exposure to Martin Luther King Jr. because out in rural Oregon the race troubles in the South were something that might as well have happened in a foreign land. I had never thought of King's life in the terms the song presented and it changed me to some degree.

I was a sophomore in college when the Joshua Tree album came out and it was one of three great albums of the time; the other two being Paul Simon's Graceland and and Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles. The first three songs on the album, With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Where the Streets Have No Name, may be the best three song album set ever (and Joshua Tree may be the best rock album ever). I couldn't have told you why at the time but I Still Haven't Found... was maybe the best three minute song I had ever heard. I was hooked on the band and when the Rattle and Hum movie and album were released I was first in line. I still think it's the best album the band has ever done or maybe back in the day it would have been the second LP in a two LP set like those old 70's bands used to do. I remember that I used to sing Angel of Harlem and When Love Comes to Town in the shower. Blues was undergoing it's subculture rebirth at the time and seeing U2 perform with B. B. King, who I had recently discovered, was fantastic. The perfect song in the movie was the gospel version of Still Haven't Found. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it now but I cried in the theater when the gospel choir came in the first time on the song in the movie because it was so perfect. It has taken me 20 years to figure out why but the song is so true.

In grad school came Achtung Baby and that was not exactly what I expected. It was a lot harder and edgier than I was wanting, though that was mostly because I was still thinking that bands should do the same thing they had done before. Still there were a couple of the best songs U2 had ever done: Mysterious Ways and One. The first has a groove that rivals just about anything and the second just reveals such a deep hurt. I wish I had remembered the second tune later in my life when I felt like the Catholic church rejected my marriage because it hadn't been performed by a priest. The words of the song perfectly express how I felt and wish I could have given it to my wife to explain what I was feeling inside when I couldn't say the words.

After Achtung Baby U2 took it's foray into electronic music and parted ways then. I sort of got the parody of rock star culture the band was doing on Zooropa and PopMart and I thought it was cool and all but I just didn't dig this kind of music. So for about 8 years I didn't listen to the band much unless I was pulling out "the good old stuff". Then All That You Can't Leave Behind came out and it was like the old U2 was back but with cooler lyrics. It was as if something had come unfettered in the band and they were expressing themselves as truly as they knew how. The song Elevation is a great example of this with a funky tune and elliptical lines that could be taken more than one way but that somehow led to something so much deeper than just the stuff of typical rock tunes.

The truth is that the lyrics weren't cooler but I had grown up a lot. More importantly I had decided to really follow and investigate my Christian faith and all of the sudden I found this well-spring of Christian thought and expression that was a thousand times more authentic than the stuff Word and Sparrow and Integrity and all the rest were spoon-feeding the contemporary Christian subculture. I found this band that was Christian but that sang about sadness and anger and lament and joy and love and all of the rest of the human conditions that connected it all to a holy God who loved His broken creation. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb has just continued this and made it all the more obvious.

Now when I listen to Still Haven't Found I don't just hear a modified 12 bar blues but a Biblical lament worthy of King David and Psalms. When the New Voices of Freedom sing "I Still Haven't Found..." I just connect with the old black spiritual sense of searching for God and finding Him but not finding Him; of loss and hope, of triumph and tribulation. To me it's the best piece of Christian rock ever recorded and maybe the most authentic. Listen to the lyrics and tell me you haven't been there; that you haven't searched and serched for the answered and not been satisfied. Tell me you haven't looked in passionate relationships and emotionally based religion and come up feeling empty. And then you find that something more and you know the Truth and that "All the colors are leading to water". You believe it but like the man with the demon possessed boy at the foot of Mt. Tabor you find yourself at the foot of the One saying, "Lord, I believe...but please, God, help me with my lack of faith."

"But I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Grace and Peace.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

OK, so the Prez is concerned enough about the "public who elected him"'s reaction to the huge bailout plan he and his appointees at the Fed and Treasury have put together that he decided to address that same public on national TV. Here are a few of my thoughts about his statement:

(1) We've seen this song and dance before. I can't speak for anyone else but I know I'm dubious. Is this just another theatrical exercise of political spin? I can't help feeling that our President is about as clueless as a guy can be. His speech was not reassuring but seemed broken and halting.

(2) No new regulation for financial institutions who got us into this in the bailout legislation? Are you kidding me? We're expected to pull these guys' asses out of the fire and we don't get to tell them how they're going to use our money? Incredible.

(3) Did he blame this on foreign financial institutions? Somehow I don't think those foreign institutions wrote all those mortgages after our government deregulated the lending market. As far as I can tell, Countrywide was an American company. Another sign that our government is no longer capable of taking responsibility for it's failings. What was a campaign strategy has now become policy.

(4) I don't feel better and I don't feel like our leaders have a handle on this thing. Bernanke and Paulson have told us too many times that the latest government intervention will work. Why should I believe them now? These are guys are supposed to be smart guys but I don't see it. I can't help but think that they're just anther bunch of dupes that really work for the huge financial companies and not the American people. It's kind of like Cheney cutting the energy deal with the oil companies a few years back or the intelligence industry who were supposed to warn us about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction but who convinced the President to lose focus on the war in Afghanistan in order to get bogged in Iraq.

I know we have to intervene in order to avoid a depression (not a "long, painful recession" like Bush suggested; yet another sign of denial) but if it's my money then I want strong regulation now that can be reworked later. I want independent oversight from a body that has no vested interest in the success of the institutions and no political hay to made made. I want the executives who made the investment decisions removed from their positions of power (with no "golden parachutes") and I want the boards of directors of the companies dissolved for one year as they are brought under independent, non-partisan oversight. In one year the boards will be reconstituted after new regulations have been crafted and then CEO's can be hired.

That's what it'll take to restore confidence in the system for me and I think that's what it will take to restore the confidence of those who are going to have to buy the Treasury bonds to make the $700 billion rescue package happen. I certainly don't have confidence in the all the President's men.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, September 21, 2008

So...here's some random thoughts from commercials I've seen...

When a car commercial says their new model is the "roomiest ever" does that mean the car has three rooms now? What would the new rooms be? I mean, there's obviously a driving room but what are the others? Maybe there's a TV room where the DVD player and iPod ports are. What else? Perhaps a powder room for those nights out on the town. What about a kitchen for a little snack on a long trip? Hmmm...what rooms you you like to come as standard equipment on your next car?

Are all creepy hotel desk clerks required to have Northeastern accents? Maybe they're the New England version of a redneck but with an Oxford shirt and sweater instead of a stained "wifebeater" shirt like we have down here in the South.

Is StubHub legalized scalping? And the kid who gets the Viking helmet...is he really a man now? I mean, the ability to control the DirecTV remote is a skill that does separate us from the primates but are we really expected to believe that this kid could heft a broadsword and a round shield and take his place aboard the clan's longship bound for parts here-to-fore unpillaged just because dad gives him a hat with horns? I don't think so.

Did Dan Patrick just say that the kid in the stands on the highlights would need a dose of laxatives after consuming too many Twizzlers during the game? And they pay this guy?

I'm stunned that the banks/brokerage houses are still running commercials. Do they still have any money left? I mean, didn't the US government and we the taxpayers just buy them? If we did I'd like to see less cliche commercials. I mean, honestly, wouldn't you like to see some guy like Sam Waterson get up on you're High-Def and say, "Our core values are greed and rampant stupidity. Our investment advisors thought it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of low grade securities built on mortgages for houses they'd never seen written by guys who attended a one afternoon seminar with an open bar. Our solution...we're flogging those guys in a back room right now and if you open an account with us we'll give you online trading tools and the right to come down to the local office and get a couple of good lashes in. Cruelty, that's our policy."

Once again Microsoft has stolen stuff from Apple. "I'm a PC"? Seriously? First the company thinks we'd be swayed by having Jerry Sienfeld hang out with that laugh a minute comedian Bill Gates and now we get this amazingly creative and original ad campaign that tells us that Gates both uses PC's and wears glasses. And obviously the famous TV pop psychologist isn't a "human thinking". He's using a PC. First Vista, then the Seinfeld commercials and now this. Someone needs an intervention I think.

And that thought I'll bid you good night. Remember to tip your wait staff.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Yes, I am still riding and training and even racing (sort of). I haven't written about this in a while simply because I figured most of my readers either know what I'm up to or are bored by my spinning my wheels. Never-the-less, I thought I'd update those who might be curious as to my goings on in the two-wheeled world.

The racing and training season is definitely winding down. I find the motivation to get out and really put in a hard effort harder and harder to come by, especially when fall seems to be delayed and the weather remains not only warm but almost unbearably humid. My two hard time trial training rides this week were carried out in muggy morning conditions which conspired to play havoc with my power data gathering equipment. Tuesday's ride I managed to get a good data set but Thursday was a loss. I was hoping to do a long ride this weekend but my body was pretty clear with me that sleeping was a good thing and shorter rides were better than longer ones. I managed to get in two good indoor rides but neither was as long as I had planned and there was much napping to be had.

I was supposed to race in Augusta last weekend but the threat of a hurricane and the resulting low registration led to the event's cancellation. That was going to be my last competitive event of the year which would have allowed me to switch over to long tempo rides for the month of September along with a few charity rides and centuries to enjoy the fine fall weather we usually have. The problem is that the state time trial championship got moved to October 18th. That was one of my BIG goals when the season started and so I'm loathe to give up on it. That means I'm still training and will be for another month. I managed to find another time trial at the 40 k length to race on Oct. 4th that's going to give me some intermediate motivation but this is going to be hard.

To be honest, I've never raced this many races in a year and the toll is beginning to show up. As I mentioned before, I don't have the motivation I did and my body is demanding more rest and recovery time. I'm worried I'll either overtrain or I'll do something else stupid that'll put my season next year at risk. Still, I can't give up on this goal. The one thing I wanted to do this year when I decided to come back and race was to get to the state championship and race really hard.

On the positive side, I've switched about 50% of my hard training rides completely over to the the TT bike (up from 20-25%) and I can really tell the difference it's making on my position. I'm a bunch more aerodynamic and I can feel the muscles in my hips getting stronger. The rides are mentally very challenging because the intervals basically consist of going at my threshold power for between 15 minutes and 1 hour depending on what I'm doing. That means there are only a few routes I can do that'll let me maintain that effort uninterrupted for that length of time and that don't have overly steep climbs or descents. That means the routes get boring quickly. The other thing is that there's little variety in the workout itself which makes getting on the bike difficult. Hard to get excited about putting your head down for an hour and suffering when what you'd really like to do is crawl back into bed or sit on the porch with a cold Harvest Moon.

During the next four weeks or so I'll be looking at coaches and doing a few interviews to see about hiring the right coach to work with me to take me to a few new goals next season. I'm tired of being a Cat 4 racer. I'm know that I can be better and stronger than that but I seem to have plateaued. I know that with the proper training regime I can make that step up but I don't have the experience or mental energy to figure out all the training based on power to get there. I decided that I'd rather hire someone who knows how this works and who can teach me and include me in the decision making process. Who knows, maybe I can find someone who wouldn't mind taking me under their wing after I get one racing in a few years and teach me how to coach. I know I'd be a good coach, I just need the experience of being coached. If you know of someone who I might contact (Gary, send me the name and email of that coach you've worked with) let me know and I'll include them in the interview process. I figure that with something like this, they'll want to interview me as an athlete and I'll want to know more about their coaching process and skills.

Well, another week is about to begin. Have a good one and I'll be back soon.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, September 13, 2008

At this point in the process I am utterly sick of politics in this country. Both campaigns and the parties that run them have devolved to the point of merely uttering babble. The mainstream media takes positions and passes them off as news and these positions basically have nothing to do with what's really important. What are the issues that really matter?

Restraint of Government Spending and Debt Creation
The Future of Energy Production and Use in America
Regulation of the Financial Industry
Avoidance of Economic Stagnation
The Role of America in World Democratic Expansion

Right now there are really only two of these issues that the campaigns need to be focused on and that's the first two. The problem is that both campaigns have dropped any pretense towards balancing the budget or tax reform at any level. American businesses are taxed at the highest rate in the industrialized world. Republicans have overseen the greatest expansion of government spending in modern American history. The discussion, according to various groups independent of both campaigns, is not whether we will deficit spend but by how much over the next 10 years. Neither candidate is willing to tell the American people that it's time to tighten their belts and that the government is going to do the same. Neither will take on some entrenched group and say, "I know your cause is important but, you know, it's not as important as getting our debt problem under control." Especially senior citizens. Conservatives are ready, willing and able to rail against anything that looks like socialized health care or welfare assistance until it comes to seniors (or veterans). What to you think medicare and medicaid are? Why do we do a better job of providing government benefits for people who can still work to provide for themselves than we do for children who can't? Because kids don't vote and seniors no longer care about anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, but themselves.

I wanted to believe in Obama. I liked his message of hope, at least when that was the focus of his campaign. That's really what won Reagan the election in '80. Both men painted a picture of an America that could be believed in. But Obama's campaign has lost that message and is now involved in a snipe fight with McCain over who will change Washington more. Without some sort of major shift in the legislative branch, neither will do much changing at all practicing a politics of division as they are doing now. I'm not voting for or against McCain because I believe that he's in cahoots with the banks and financial institutions that have caused the mortgage and credit meltdowns and that cancels any "maverick" status he might have had. Besides, he won't survive eight years in the White House. If you look at what those eight years did physically to Reagan, Clinton and Bush I can't vote for McCain because I honesty believe he has less than a 50% chance of surviving to his 80th birthday. With Palin I see a complete continuation of the Republican politics of the last eight years. Sketchy insider deals, abuse of power at the edges, lack of oversight in the middle. I'm a Republican but I believe my party has lost it's way in the last 10 years. There is no longer any restraint amongst those in power in the GOP but rather a sheer lust for power and it's continuation. I honestly wonder what Reagan would have thought about the expansion of government under the Bush administration.

There are times when the only way to affect political change is to throw out the people in charge and make everyone step back and think things through. With as bad as things are in the the GOP, I'm considering the possibility that now is that time. Yes the Republicans say they support my views against abortion but are we any closer to restricting abortions that we were when Clinton took the White House? No. It's an issue that's used to scare and rally the party faithful and then forgotten for four years until such a time that it's taken out and dusted off to get a Supreme Court justice some support or to tar another election opponent as a baby killer. Each time I see it I feel used and dirty. The Republican Party will no longer pay the political price for standing what it claims to believe in because it exists now only to perpetuate itself.

On the issue of energy, it's really quite sad that the only reasonable energy policy is coming from an oil tycoon who sees the dependence this country has on foreign interests and doesn't have to depend on campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit the most from the status quo and the slow, inexorable bleeding of our country. As this price spike we've seen due to hurricane Ike has shown, we are not just at the mercy of oil producing countries but also from the companies that process the sludge for our use. These companies are multinational in nature and stand to benefit from weak governments fighting over non-issues or who's electoral system can be bought. Over the last three or four elections, our systems shows evidence of becoming both. The only issue between the Democrats and Republicans no is how much drilling they're going to let the oil companies do and how much more they'll try to delay the inevitable while the mantle of world economic leadership shifts to governments foresighted enough to realize that the age of petroleum is over.

And where's the fourth branch in all of this? Obsessing over teenage pregnancies and "lipstick on a pig." It is truly sad that the most credible journalistic voice in this election season seems to be the host of a comedy program. But we're too selfish and too self-centered to see past the crap. Americans still cling to the idea that they can drive their gas-guzzling cars hundreds of miles per week and not suffer the economic fallout from it. We still think that it's always someone else's representative to the Statehouse or Congress whose causing the problem and not our guy (or gal). It's too inconvenient to ride our bikes, walk our own streets, learn to get along with our own neighbors and cook our own meals and so we turn to a government that's for sale to solve those issues for us.

I believe in the values and promise of America but I'm not sure I believe in us anymore.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

So, you've probably heard the news that Lance is coming out of retirement to race in 2009. While his program is still up in the air, he's been very clear about wanting to race in year's edition of the Tour de France. This blog is a collection of a few of my thoughts about this turn of events.

On the comeback itself, I think Lance can still be pretty competitive as a stage racer as long as he keeps his number of racing days to a minimum. From all reports, it sounds like that's the intention with him lining up to do most of his training races here in the States at high caliber events such as the Tour of California and the Tour of Georgia (if it happens) or in France with Paris-Nice and the Duaphine. There are a few reports that he might race the Giro but I really don't see that happening for this year. (Though one more year where he goes for the Giro/Vuelta double would be awesome...especially if he were to race the World Championships and find a way to win at the end of 2009.)

On the motivation side of things, it's clear that Lance has got a lot of things that are contributing to this decision. He's been very clear about this being about cancer awareness on an international scale but like all things Lance, this is a lot more complex. The first thing is that Lance is a huge competitor. When he was a part owner of the Discovery team he could get his fix by riding in the team car but once that ended the path basically had to lead back to the bike. I think also there's a desire to fix what is an increasingly tarnished legacy. Lance always claimed to have never doped but that's getting harder to believe. By coming back and living under the new regimens of transparency for blood work, he's got to be hoping to show that he can win clean. Finally, I think he'd really like to tell David Walsh to shut up and this is probably the best way to do it and to help rescue the reputation of American cycling in international eyes.

Where's he going to ride. Odds on favorite would normally to reunite with his old director who's now with the Astana team. The problem with this is that Astana already has a Tour champion who I don't think will take kindly to riding for another champion. I don't see Johann mortgaging the future of his team so that Lance can ride one or two more years to have a shot at an eighth Tour victory when he could get three of four more with Alberto Contador. Still, the ties that bind make tyhis a 20% possibility in my eyes. Lance has said that this will be an international initiative so I think he'd like to be on a team with that sort of scope. If he wants to remain with an American owned team, that suggests Team Columbia where his good friend George Hincapie is riding. Hincapie has been coy about this whole story so I think this is the best option, especially after Columbia' phenomenal Tour outing in '08. I give this the highest possibility of about 25%. I don't really see Lance signing with Garmin-Chipotle as his relationship with Vaughters is rumored to be tense and Vaughters has said some pretty uncomplimentary things about Postal/Discovery in the past. One interesting but very unlikely option would be for Lance to race for Michael Ball's Rock Racing team. This would definitely make for great marketing and have huge international appeal but there's very little chance Rock Racing with it's questionable riders would get a Tour invite. Oversees options include Lance riding for CSC who will be looking for a Tour contender and who has a team director, Bjarne Riis, that Lance admires. I think this has the highest probability for a Euro team and I place it at 20%. One final option is for Lance to put together his own team with his own money. There are a bunch of riders who need jobs with the Gerolsteiner and Sanuer Duval-Scott teams folding and Lance could probably make something happen out of that. I give that a 15% chance of being the solution. Some of the comments coming from the Armstrong camp sound like their doing all planning themselves and I could see them wanting the team to be about the "LiveStrong" brand. The biggest problem would be for such a team to get an invite to the Tour and, maybe, for them to get the staff to run a racing operation.

Which solution do I like? To be honest, I've always wanted to see Lance race for Bjarne Riis and I think the team has the same kind of work ethic and single pointed focus and training style that Lance is known for. For a lot of reasons I see Columbia as the most likely option in a traditional sense. I'm most intrigued, however, about the idea of Lance forming his own team that serves to promote the cause of cancer awareness and agitate for more funding on a global scale. To me, this would be the most compelling reason to come back even if the logistical issues are the most insurmountable.

We'll know more by September 24th.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |