What Defines Marriage?

I wasn't thinking about writing on this topic, but here it goes anyway. Current voting in California has Proposition 8 passing, due in large part to African Americans supporting the proposition, at a clip of 70 for to 30 against despite numbers exceeding 90 percent support for Obama. While Obama was not in favor of Proposition 8, he certainly didn't want to create negative ripples by committing to heavily to this. I doubt he made commercials supporting the defeat of Proposition 8.

Someone made the argument that marriage is between a man and a woman. Now, what was this argument based on? Judeo-Christian definitions? Is marriage a sacred institution?

Let's try this thought experiment. If a man and woman are married in a Hindu ceremony, would you consider their marriage valid? Most people would, right? Yet, Hinduism is quite different from Judeo-Christian tradition. People like to point to the US as a kind of Christian nation despite the fact that the founding fathers were interested in separation of church and state. Freedom of religion should also be freedom from religion.

People like to point to religious institutions as a kind of backing to marriage, and that religious institutions generally, though not exclusively, prefer to define marriage as between a man and a woman. This religious backing creates the weight of authority.

However, it's the legal form of marriage that carries weight because that's what allows spouses to have visitation rights, to have property rights, and so on and so forth. Some people call this legal form a "civil union". People have argued for removing marriage from legal usage so that, as far as legal institutions are concerned, civil unions are what's important.

The thinking is that when you say two people are married, then their marriage is given the sanctity of some religion. However, there are religions, even in the traditional Judeo-Christian structure, perhaps especially in such traditions, that permit multiple wives. Both Muslims and Mormons allow polygamy, though multiple wives is fairly uncommon among Muslims and mainstream Mormons have long since abandoned polygamy so they could be taken more seriously by mainstream Christians.

Consider atheists. Should a male and female atheists be allowed to marry? That their marriage conforms to what religion considers valid marriage should be inconsequential. Is there marriage being given the equivalent force of religion despite the couple not believing in religion? Most people would not have a problem with atheists getting married and would not nullify their marriage.

The religious form of marriage often has a legal counterpart. Thus, Christians who don't favor polygamy, have made polygamy illegal, despite, say, certain conservative Mormons who think it's their right to have plural wives. There is a great irony that Mormons have closed off one form of marriage (same-sex marriage) which would affect more conservative Mormons.

It just so happens that most religious traditions happen to only permit a single man and a single woman to get married, but just because a couple gets married doesn't mean that some religion has permitted this to happen.

Many years ago, many states had anti-miscegenation laws which basically said couples of different races couldn't marry. This was mostly due to the fact that white Americans saw African Americans as something less than human, and that mixing black and white blood would lead to impurities in the white race. Religious figures could find justification of these laws through some passage in the Bible.

At some point, the government said this was wrong, and no such law would be allowed. These days, most people no longer consider mixed marriages a problem and certainly not enough to make the marriages null and void.

So why the change in attitude? Did the Bible change between then and now? What happened, quite simply, was that people had some irrational dislike of interracial marriages, and found some justification that made their prejudices have the weight of religion. And yet, once the laws disappeared and people got used to the idea, the thought of mixed marriages being "wrong" is seen as folly. How did we ever think like that?

I would argue that in those days, people would say such interracial marriages brought down the institution of marriage, which was a polite way of saying they disapproved of such marriages taking place.

There are already gay marriages taking place now. Do people feel like this has made their marriage less worthy?

Finally, people talk about marriage as something sacred. It's something two people get together because of religion. If that's the case, why allow divorce? Divorce is an insult to the marital institution. Despite many Christians finding the notion of arranged marriages absurd, the fact of the matter is most Indian marriages do not end in divorce. If the couple doesn't get along, they still don't get divorced. Bollywood marriages, unlike their Hollywood counterparts, generally do last, and for decades. Hollywood marriages, one could easily argue, made it acceptable for people who feel unhappy in a marriage to split up.

And yet, no one much seems to say divorce should not happen. And how many single family households are there where the mother and father never got married before the woman had a child? Should that be illegal? Should the mother have rights? No one seems to question she should despite the lack of a marriage.

The reason no one cares is that heterosexuals get divorced (at least in the US) all the time and to take this right away, despite the way it reduces the sanctity of marriage, would be unthinkable. People want the option to opt out of marriage if they can.

Ultimately, while people claim gay marriage is something most religious traditions are against, there are so many attacks on marriage that happen in normal heterosexual relations that those should be considered illegal too. The fact of the matter is that many conservatives are uncomfortable with gays in general and find some convenient religious excuse to explain why gays can not marry even as they allow atheists to marry, even as they allow married couples to divorce, people to have affairs without legal punishment.

And really, these propositions are out there anyway mostly to get a certain kind of voter to come out and vote, one who doesn't fully understand all the details, and one who is likely to vote for one party over another. At least, that's how it worked in 2004. It turns out, however, in California, the Democrats were just as guilty of this because of religious conservatism.

It's not the religious sanctity that needs to be observed, but the legal one. Whether it be called civil unions or marriage, the legal form should be allowed.

The issue of gay marriage is somewhat odd because a few years ago, most people would tell you it wasn't even on the radar (or gaydar as the case may be) of gay political activists who felt that gay marriage was so far from being socially acceptable that it wasn't worth the fight. It was only because some conservatives made it a big deal that it got a big push.

Indeed, it's as far as it is now because of that push.

But here's the kicker as far as gay marriage is concerned. Too many people still see homosexuality as something that is a choice. Yet, how many people have willingly chosen to be gay. Has the percentage gone way up? If it was so "easy" to recruit, why aren't there far more gays now?

The percentage of gays is somewhere between 5 and 10 percent, possibly smaller. With regular marriages that are maybe 10 to 20 times more common, how exactly does gay marriage affect heterosexual marriage? Indeed, if it were allowed, would it not make people more accepting of others. People hate for no good reason, and yet, this is giving the weight of law to hate more.

The irony is that there are African Americans (and Latinos and Asians) who say "we're born black" and won't believe people are born gay because it's not hereditary with 100% certainty (and really, Obama is half-white, by that measure, and really didn't go through the traditional African American experience).

People who voted for Prop 8 thought there would be certain consequences or they certainly disliked the idea, and the irony is that the same prejudices often befell them, showing that being a victim of prejudice doesn't make you any more enlightened.

Indeed, this creates interesting issues for someone like Obama. Liberals generally believe in the ability of people to do good for one another while conservatives generally believe more in survival of the fittest at least when it comes to making money and the right to discriminate, the right to impose religious values on others because people are sinful and need the weight of law to make them more like us. Indeed, conservatism is often about making others more like us, while liberals take the more challenging path of accepting people, for the most part, as themselves.

I think the key to changing views is more education. Religion seems to be against education because the goal of education, effectively, is to question authority, or to merely question. Galileo faced the wrath of the religious mighty because he dared question their view of the universe. Religion seems to say it's perfectly OK not knowing much, because it leaves the leaders in charge, and the masses pacified. Once people begin to ask "why should things be this way", they begin to make more informed choices.

And this is why, it seems, that with education, with questioning authority, we'll eventually come to see this period as a time of folly when people found reasons to hate others and dress it up in a gown of religious authority to make themselves feel better about their decisions.

The Reality of Obama

People always said about Bill Clinton that there was Bill Clinton, the campaigner, and Bill Clinton, the governor, and I mean that as someone who governs, even as the President. Bill Clinton, the campaigner, was always more successful than Bill Clinton, the governor, although he did eventually get quite a few things done.

Were it not for the OPEC crisis and Iran and Carter's lack of insider savvy in Washington, Jimmy Carter may have been one of the best presidents. He looked at alternative energy sources, helped nations that warred to achieve peace.

Obama comes in on a wave of hope, and some have already contended that there's no way that he can accomplish everything he says he will do (although some have also criticized that he hasn't actually promised too many specifics either). To be fair, compare that to "W". What things has he promised and delivered? Both he and his father governed war, so that it became the issue, and not the US.

I'll agree that we don't know how liberal Obama is. The fact of the matter is that he's not so charismatic that whatever he says, people do. This means he has to deal with the reality that the last 8 years, and really the last 20 years, have seen a move to the right, anchored by religious conservatives. Even the fiscal conservatives have to be concerned, although they tend to get away with it because they bankroll campaigns, and polticians aren't always so pure in their motivations.

Because of this, Obama will have to pick his battles carefully. When Clinton first came to office, the first two big issues he tackled were gays in the military and health care reform. Both went badly because there was huge resistance to them. The military was too conservative to listen to Clinton, and the medical lobby also didn't want reform of health care. This cost Clinton political capital (although, to be fair, he did win re-election rather handily).

It helps that Obama has a Democratic majority, but don't expect that Republicans won't try to fight this, as they have in the past. We'll see how committed McCain is to his promise of trying to assist Obama, as he is still a senator and seemingly more moderate than most Republicans (I feel all these years of Bush support was out of ambition to be President).

I think Obama will look to some safer topics like infrastructure reform as well as trying to phase out US involvement in Iraq. We like to flag-wave and claim the US only goes to war for noble purposes, but these wars aren't free, even as we borrow money to finance them. It will be hard for the economy to recover if the government keeps paying for an expensive war.

I'm surprised how many conservatives pronounced gloom and doom based on zero economic knowledge. They simply assert statements with no reason at all. This was the same kind of assertion of socialism, terrorism, Christian extremism. In other words, McCain's campaign was simply throwing as many names as Obama to see what would stick, primarily because McCain knew his ideas didn't resonate enough (he resorted to the same old, lower taxes argument that Republicans always trot out).

To combat this, I think Obama will look to using grassroots organization to move some of his "agenda" forward. This will be completely separate from the usual Congress stuff like the war or infrastructure reform.

Anyway, he's got a few months to set up a staff, and so it won't be for a few months into the new administration before we see what happens (the first big thing is who gets picked as his replacement as senator of Illinois).

Whither Prop 8?

Starting in 2004, one of the keys for conservatives to get elected was to put gay marriage on ballots. Often, these measures were conservative in nature, reaffirming straight marriage. The idea was often a twofer. Convince conservatives that if they didn't vote for conventional marriage, then this would open the floodgates and allow gay marriage and gay lifestyle to run rampant, and while such voters were being baited to come to the polls, they'd also vote conservative.

Except in normally very blue California, the current polls suggest Proposition 8 which affirms conventional marriage (ironically supported by a treasure trove of Mormon funding which lead to misleading ads) is likely to pass. This is even as many celebrities are against it, many leading Democrats are against it, and even Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is against it.

The problem is, alas, a lack of education. It is both a combination of fear and loathing for gay marriages from socially conservative Latinos and African Americans who voted increasing Democrat, despite not supporting many of the more socially liberal views. Indeed, were the Republicans not so reliant on race-baiting to convince conservative poor religious whites to vote against minorities, you could almost imagine African Americans supporting Republicans.

I can see the Republican party splitting in two directions. One is moderate Republicans which is heading to the center on social issues, but staying conservative on fiscal issues. The other way, which seems more likely and was spearheaded by Huckabee, is to be socially conservative, but still looking at supporting the poor. This side would have to embrace African Americans and Latinos. The problem, for now, is the lack of a charismatic candidate, and no, I don't consider Sarah Palin that person.

The key to real changes is improved education. Religious conservatives believe in loyalty to religion above all. If a kid lacks education, this seems a bonus, even if this makes people increasingly susceptible to the weakest arguments.

Gay marriage is a perfect example. Statistics show that LGBT people make up maybe 5% of the population. Even if every one got married, it's still a very small percentage of American marriages. Even so, there's a perception that being gay is a choice and that people can be "wooed" into it, even as there's really no evidence of this. This is that fear and people's general discomfort as well which they back by pointing to a religious tome to back their prejudices.

If Obama is to truly make the changes he wants, he really has to figure out how to make education more valuable to people, but that is tough. Education is a multi-year goal that not everyone agrees. While there is no guarantee that well-educated people are going to be more liberal (there are bright conservatives), the chances are still far better than if they are not well-educated.

To be well-educated is not about knowing more facts than the next person. No, it's about thinking critically. It's about listening to someone's statements and pointing out its inaccuracies. Too often, people listen to an argument and if it sounds good, they think it is good. They lack the mental acumen to see if the argument truly makes sense. Obama and his wife, with their training as lawyers, have learned to dissect arguments, argue its pro and cons. It's perhaps not surprising that Clinton was also a lawyer.

They've all learned, of course, that you can't present standard logical debate arguments to the average American who can't appreciate such arguments. Appeals are made to emotion. I'm moved by Obama's soaring rhetoric too, but it's true that emotion is just that. You can use it to lead and convince, but it leads and convinces with the heart, rather than with the mind.

If Prop 8 passes, it will be because a very blue California is still easily swayed by misleading ads, and even as they voted for Obama, they couldn't bring themselves to vote No to 8.

Obama himself wasn't willing to expend political capital to put his full support behind no on 8. In the end, he knew that was a powder keg that could have derailed his presidency before it started. Now he has to tread a fine line to figure out how to deal with this issue. Certainly, he's likely to avoid it for a while as he tries to pass other initiatives.

Consider the start of Clinton's administration where capital was wasted on gays in the military and for health care reform where strong opposition built up and Clinton had to back down. President Obama will look for safer ground before he tries something with more controversy.

Indeed, if he thinks he can win in 2012, then he may push all those initiatives to the second term, unless his first term goes so swimmingly well that he'll tackle issues few people thinks he will.

Still, I think few people would have thought gay marriage would have gained this much traction. It's not there yet, as it's still being used as a wedge issue to convince religious conservatives to vote conservative, and while certain states have voted against it, there's a possibility that, with the right Supreme Court mix, it could eventually be defeated through the courts. Indeed, court appointments will become a huge issue.

What Obama will do, I'm sure, is to use the grassroots organization to build support from the ground up even during his presidency, and may represent the most novel politician ever, if he takes advantage of it.

Now the question is how will he lead?

Obama 08

So I was driving home when I noticed this car ahead of me with the license plate Obama 08. Not a bumper sticker. A vanity plate. From West Virginia. In Maryland?

Weird.

Wonder if it bodes well?

Voting in the Morning

The Internet has revolutionized the way candidates run elections, from email to viral videos to raising money, the Internet is now a resource that modern candidates need to use.

The one place it hurts, for now, is the act of voting, which has a number of issues. First, is making sure people who are registered are voting, and those who vote are who they say they are. Wouldn't it be nice if people could bring in a laptop or pick up a special number and use that to vote?

This morning, I got up before dawn and made my way to the local Starbucks before I arrived at the polling place which was maybe 2 miles from where I live. I arrived just before 6:30, half an hour before the polls opened. I was probably, hmm, 50th to 80th in line, and it took me maybe half an hour to get in and then only a few minutes to vote.

It helped that the local party sends out fliers suggesting how to vote down ballot, that is for every other position past president and vice-president. I checked into this last night and happened to stumble on this flier and brought it in with me.

Half an hour still feels awfully slow when you are waiting to vote, but the whole process was pretty efficient. It was worth coming in early given the lines stretched out the door once I was done.

But imagine if we could all vote in parallel. There wouldn't be lines, and we wouldn't even have to take much time off work as long as we had access to a computer.

Well, I think I'm going to get a bit of a siesta before heading to work.

Hopefully, the news will be good this evening.

Secrets and Lies

I was listening to an interview on CSPAN radio with Richard Shenkman, author of Just How Stupid Are We? (the title is longer, but I'll just leave it at that). This is about the average voter and how uneducated they are with respect to politics. Even basic facts such as the three parts of government and how they work (legislative, executive, and judicial) are beyond many in the electorate.

The consequences are that the kinds of argument politicians trot out appeal to the basest instincts. Despite the easy access to information from the Web, many are uncomfortable finding information and are unable to distinguish good information from bad. Indeed, many suffer from the worst case of confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is a bias where you believe things that support your viewpoint, and ignore anything that doesn't. Thus, many are predisposed to believe that, say, the New York Times is biased because it likes Barack Obama and won't say enough negative things about him (or enough positive things about John McCain).

One of the consequences of the willful lack of knowledge is that some voters base their decision on who it affects. If Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists", well then he must be. If John McCain does the same thing, well, that guy isn't really a terrorist, so it doesn't count. Obama is inexperienced, but Palin is experienced?

It says something very poorly about the electorate when the something said about one party is awful, and the same thing said about the other party is irrelevant. In the end, the goal of politics is reduced to name-calling, insinuation of wrong, and sometimes flat-out lying. And why do such despicable acts happen? Because people are unwilling or unable to look up the facts.

Furthermore, they don't know how to question the "facts" presented to them. Many people take what's told to them at face value without even raising a question as to its accuracy. If Obama was a "terrorist", what act did he commit? How did he manage to get to the Senate? It boggles the mind that this charge could stick, and yet people believe it because they were told by people they "trust".

Perhaps a more potent example is the involvement of Iraq and Saddam Hussein in 9/11. After facts were revealed, it was found there was no connection between Hussein and 9/11. Even after Bush himself admitted there was no connection, there are still plenty of people who believe there is a connection. Why? Because looking this information is a pain. Because they are woefully ignorant about the Middle East. Everyone in the Middle East is the same to the average ignorant American. Most people don't even distinguish the two major divisions of Shiite and Sunni. Thus, all Muslims are the same and are, in their eyes, terrorists.

Interesting how only Colin Powell has been the only one to defend Muslims. Even Barack Obama, the uniter that he tries to portray himself, doesn't want to deal with that topic because it would be too much of a powder keg. Powell, with nothing to lose, can talk about that openly.

The desperation of tactics is perhaps no more acute than in North Carolina where Elizabeth Dole, desperate to keep her job, has accused rival Democrat, Kay Hagan, of being an atheist. Dole feigns ignorance saying that she only questions who Hagan is "pal-ing around with" rather than question her beliefs, but her ad was clearly meant to put doubt about her faith to a conservative electorate in North Carolina.

What you find out is how much people will tar their opponents with anything that will stick, even if it amounts to lying.

And that should disturb parents who like to teach their kids to tell the truth. Indeed, politicians seem fond of lying and then sticking to their lie and never admitting errors and then insulting any dissenters. Is that the kind of leaders we want?

But if the populace isn't better educated, better informed, willing to ignore slander and lies, then the temptation to use these tactics will always be there because they work, because a person unwilling to find out information for themselves will always leave themselves susceptible to insinuation and lies.

And that's a sad state of affairs

Closing Arguments?

I don't recall this term, closing arguments, being applied to a campaign.

Obviously, a lawyer term, the idea is the last thoughts these campaigns want to impart to the electorate. How much are people paying attention right now with days left to go?

The Politics of Hate

Politicians like to tell you they are going to run a respectful campaign. After all, they like telling people what they want to hear. How many people will admit to saying that they want to hear slander about their opponent?

And yet, time and again, politicians resort to negative ads because as long as the campaign season is, as lazy as people are to verify what is being said, that's how effective negative campaigning works.

If you ask someone that is going to vote Republican what they think about Obama, they'll have numerous negative opinions and say he's wrong for the country. If you ask an Obama supporter their opinion on McCain, they are likely to say the same thing. Indeed, most people seem to hate the opposing party's candidate more than they love their own.

Lest you think that this phenomenon is restricted across party lines, consider the rather lengthy primary between Obama and Hillary. At the end, Obama supporters hated Hillary and Hillary fans hated Obama. This wasn't a collegial competition between two friends, but two adversaries. The fact of the matter are the two voted quite similarly on a number of topics.

OK, so the one big difference was their stance on the Iraq War. Obama wasn't a senator then, although Hillary was. Nevertheless, he could point to his stance then (and there's a video of him saying he was against the war).

How can we solve this problem? One way, that would never work, is to allow the opposing parties to approve ads. However, if that were done, there would never be any ads allowed. These days, they try to force the candidate to say "they approve the ad" so at least the candidate can't claim ignorance that the negative ad was done without their knowledge (even if it was done without their knowledge).

Until voters can demonstrate that they vote for a candidate's positive side (and even then), then negative ads will continue to air. And yes, they air because they work, because people won't check whether these ads or true or not, and because they will make decisions based on your middle name.

Whereforth Politico?

Have you heard of the website, politico.com? Here's a website that reports on American politics, and has cracked a lot of interesting political stories including stuff about Joe the Plumber and the amount of money spent on Sarah Palin's clothing.

But where did they come from?

Less than two years old, many places, like Keith Olbermann, cite Politico showing its increased importance in the political discourse.

Has anyone heard of them prior to, say, 2008? Their reputation has increased from virtually nowhere and that's surprising.

Radio Days

Once upon a time, just before television, the way people would get their entertainment was the radio. Families would perch on their couches listening to shows. Shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza, westerns that, like Star Trek, were commentary on today's society filled the airwaves. Many of the shows made the migration to television.

After the advent of television, radio evolved in other directions. In particular, radio excelled in a medium that was purely auditory. Music. Radio stations played music. Later on, as cars became more prevalent, as commutes got longer, and traffic jams contributed to the long journey to work, long as in time, rather than in distance, other things filled the airwaves.

Beyond music, sports shows with sports pundits became common. Men, who loved their sports on the weekends and Monday nights, could now get their fill of sports as they head to work and returned, listening to the opinions of sports broadcasters. On the flip side was the radio station of the elite, educated, the meritocracy built on intelligence and rational thought, namely, national public radio. This has been augmented by its political cousin, CSPAN for radio.

Thus, television became for the home, and radio became for the road. Indeed, for the average person that's less than an audiophile, the best radio they own, possibly the only one they own is in their car. Few people seem to invest in a nice radio the way they invest in a nice television. Indeed, the only other radio I own, and I barely even think of it as a radio, even though that is what it is, is my clock radio.

Why did that happen?

Indeed, why isn't my television also a radio? I should be able to pick up local stations and listen to the radio, possibly even as I watch television. Perhaps I would prefer commentary on some sports event from the radio rather than television (except, with many shows delayed by at least a few seconds, the audio and video would likely never match).

It's weird that I know how to get a decent television, but have no clue on how to get a decent radio.

And that's perhaps to my everlasting regret.

Tennis Update--Forehand

This is one of those posts that you can quickly check out on. While blogs have been compared to diaries, they are clearly different. The obvious public nature of a blog means that entries that are generally of little interest to anyone except the author would not likely see the light of day. Even so, blogs record content, so it does satisfy the need to have it etched somewhere semi-permanent. And you never know, someone might actually care enough to read it.

Basically, I've been trying to revamp my forehand, with some success. The first clue I was doing something "majorly" wrong occurred end of May when I finally made a video of me hitting tennis balls (I want to say "videotaped", and technically, I am using tape, mini DV to be precise, but I wish there were a better verb than this. The best one I've thought of is video'ed or video recorded).

In particular, I've generally fed the ball (that is dropped it in front of me so I could hit it) very near my right foot. This was because it was easy and convenient. However, because it's convenient, it was leading to a bad habit. In particular, I would get cramped hitting my forehand. Now, I never noticed this, not knowing any better.

Furthermore, I would have a few other bad habits. Rather than turn my shoulders, I tended to just reach back with my arm. To get a sense of this, raise both arms to you side, until you look a bit like a cross. Now, with one arm or the other reach back behind you as far as you can. You might manage 30 degrees or so.

In general, you should never have to reach back at all. Your arms should be roughly to your side, and instead of reaching back, you should turn your shoulders.

I'd also flip my grip in a funny way. Normally, as you take the racquet back (for a righty), the side of the racquet you hit the ball on will face to the right fence (the right fence is the fence to your right as you stare at the net). If you were to open your fist, your palm would face to the right fence.

Instead, I manage to contort my arm so my racquet face was aimed at the left fence. To imagine this, stand with your arms to your side like a cross. Have your right palm facing forwards, with your thumb up. Your fingers on the right hand should point to the right fence. There should be be no bend in your wrist.

Now bend your wrist backwards so that the fingers now point to the back fence and your palm now faces the right fence. Your hand and forearm now form a 90 degree angle.

Now (and this will be a little challenging). flip your hand upside down so the thumb points down. The back of your hand will now face the right fence, and the palm to the left. This is awkward, but easier if you begin to reach your arm behind your back.

This pretzel move is what I had discovered I was doing, and it came naturally after years of ingrained practice. Originally, my fix for it was to repeat the correct motion over and over.

While it worked whenever I wasn't hitting a ball, it failed miserably when I tried to hit the ball. Then I realize my hand orients the racquet, so I just had to think about the orientation of my hand. Even so, this was not a natural adjustment, and I would frequently have to think of my hand, palm faced outwards to the right fence.

Anyway, a week or so ago, I thought I had fixed this issue, and was working on a different problem I noticed.

My follow-through.

When you swing a tennis racquet, there is several phases. There is the takeback where you prepare and then ultimately bring your racquet back to point to the back fence behind you. Then, there is the swing until contact. That is when the racquet makes forward progress to hit the ball.

Finally, there is the follow-through. This is after hitting the ball until the racquet's momentum stops typically over the shoulder or with the arm wrapped around your other arm's biceps.

Although there are three phases to talk about, the entire swing consisting of threee parts should be one fluid motion throughout.

I had spent a fair bit of time on the takeback. This involved two or three things. First, I needed to stop pulling my arm behind my back. Second, I needed to orient my palm outwards and not flip the racquet. Third, I needed to rotate my shoulders more (which is related to the first point). The second part was the hardest to achieve.

When I swing, I often let muscle memory take over, and just focus on hitting, but when you're trying to retrain the mind to do something else, you have to consciously think (or in this case, consciously feel) the change. And it takes lots of repetition, and so far it hasn't felt completely natural.

I felt I had made progress on this, and was starting to focus on the follow-through, rather than the takeback. My follow-through has a bit of a herky-jerky movement, mostly due to the result of how fast I hit my windshield wiper forehand.

A windshield wiper forehand is a style of hitting the forehand where the trajectory of the racquet head (and the forearm) in the leadup to hitting the ball and follow-through looks like a windshield wiper, where the elbow acts as the base of the wiper.

The problem with that analogy are several. First, the elbow should not be stationary. This is more like a two-part windshield wiper. Imagine your windshield wiper is not a straight arm but has a bend in the middle (i.e., like your elbow).

There are two moving parts. The elbow serves as the base of the wiper (in a sense), and the shoulder moves the entire arm, including the elbow. It's tempting to just hit the ball with the forearm and leave the rest of the arm stationary.

Furthermore, people view the windshield wiper as symmetric. The path that starts the windshield wiper (at least, up until the racquet points face up) is mirrored on the way down. That is untrue.

The motion on the way down is complicated by the elbow also moving (to the left). Furthermore, once the racquet has moved so that the wrist straightens out (it starts at a 90 degree angle), then the wrist, more or less, stays straight. This is really hard to describe without a picture.

The result, in any case, is that most pros finish the follow-through to the left of their body (for a righty). In a sense, it's much like a comet whose path around the sun is severe near the sun, but elongated at other parts of the orbit. The follow through is most arced at the beginning, and the arc stretches out at the end.

I was working on that (somewhat unsuccessfully) when I noticed the takeback had broken down and I had regressed to hitting my old forehand.

Alas, it's disappointing, but at least I am aware of it.

Balls to the Wall

I had been contemplating titling this blog entry with something more noble, more austere. Something like The Wall. It reflects more of the tenor of the entry, but the title, despite it's provocative nature, is, quite literally, the subject of this monologue.

I was introduced to "The Wall", by my tennis buddy, Adam. The Wall is actually four walls, that reside at Cabin John, near a baseball field, adjacent to a sand filled volleyball field.

This Wall isn't meant for tennis. It's meant for the venerable sport of handball, which is seldom seen. The Wall towers nearly 20 feet high, much higher than typical walls which are, unwisely, only as tall as the fence that surrounds a court, and as many a tennis player will tell you, not quite tall enough to prevent the scurrying of an embarassed player out into grass or woods or worse to fetch a golden orb and bring it back from the elements.

So few people play handball that the Wall is free, most days, for tennis players to hone their strokes.

I'm new to the Wall. As common as tennis courts are, decent tennis walls are rare. And, as much as the Wall is meant to teach you how to hit a ball, it is not a real tennis partner.

Indeed, when you first meet the Wall, it's hard to control the ball. Balls hit against the wall come back quicker. It's not obvious why this is, so I'll explain.

Normally, when you hit the ball, it must make it from you to across the net. That distance is then doubled while on your opponent's side of the net. The ball must cross the net and reach the opponent, and then the opponent must hit the ball and the ball makes a return path back to the net. Finally, it crosses the net and bounces and you get a chance to hit it.

When you hit against the Wall, that doesn't happen. The ball doesn't really cross the net. It impacts the Wall. All the time spent in the territory of your opponent, that round trip time, is gone. The Wall reflects the ball back and you must react to it sooner.

And because the Wall is passive, not active. It doesn't impart spin, it doesn't hit a weak shot, and it likely moves the ball higher or lower than you expect.

It takes a while before you learn how to hit a ball against the Wall so that you don't hit too high, nor too low. Very often, beginners to the Wall, as some kind of rite of passage, must learn how to avoid sending the ball too high.

Furthermore, balls must generally be hit "down the line", which is basically in front of you, so that the Wall doesn't apply a bit of physics and take the angle of incidence and flip it as the angle of reflection, thus causing you to scamper across to fetch the ball again.

While this strategy works well in racquetball where you get the benefit of side walls to bounce off, in tennis, it means running.

The Wall encourages a bit of complacency. Many who seek the wisdom of hitting against the Wall believe the objective is to "Hit The Ball As Many Times As Possible". It is a game, after all, and the game is to hit over and over and over again. But because the Wall has peculiar behavior, the time that it robs you from hitting the ball most glaringly, the goal of hitting against the Wall often forces most players, unwittingly, to ease up on how they hit.

I've seen many a player that look quite good hitting against the Wall. The technique appears solid. They can get the ball back quite a few times in a row. But once they go to the court, their strokes are weak. They lack purpose. They may have steadiness, but they often lack the control to maneuver the ball to difficult positions on the court. The Wall encourages mostly straight ahead hitting. The variety and purpose of shot isn't something you can easily practice.

If you want power, you must resign yourself to the fact that you must hit the ball quite low and that no, you aren't going to hit ten shots in a row. Power, how hard you hit the ball, is an important component of tennis, and the Wall lulls you into treating it as a secondary consideration.

Once you get past the fact that the Wall isn't a truthful partner, then you begin to find some truth.

Tennis is typically played with two people, sometimes more. Even if your partner agrees to practice, there's always some burden. Is the partner good enough to hit a few shots in a row? Do they really want to practice with you? What if you want to hit 10, 20, 30 shots in a row to hone some shot down? And what if you actually have to talk?

No, the Wall, is a predictable opponent. Not as varied as a typical person, but predictable. You can hit against the wall 10, 20, 30 times, and it doesn't complain. And you have time to think.

Sport, most will say, is not about thinking. Or more properly, it is about transcending thinking. Just as drivers who worry about their arms being in 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock and who sit rather rigid and who worry about cars in their blind spots, and look a bit too uncomfortable their first few times behind the wheel, tennis players seeking to improve, to change the way the want to hit, must take time to think.

Once they consciously think of what the body should do, they strike the ball once, then again, then again. The mind understands the body needs time and repetition and waits for the body to "learn". The repetition builds a memory and the goal is for the recent memory to take over the older memory, to replace a worse stroke with a better one.

This retraining is not particular to tennis. Tiger Woods retuned his swing not once but twice in his career. He would spend upwards of a year training his body to swing a certain way, and only through hours of repetitions and thousands of balls struck would the motion chisel its way into his body so that the body would do its master's bidding.

I've gone in cool spring days, and in hot balmy summer days, and seen the changing of the colors of the trees nearby, whose golden leaves listter the court, and brought out the racquet, and bounced a few balls, and hit them against the wall, and again, and again, hoping to find a kind of truth, a kind of purity of swing and motion.

The Wall is a kind of monastery to which I head to, a place of quiet introspection. Monks seek time to themselves, to search for something, they often know not what. They hope to find wisdom and insight in solitude. They are left to their own thoughts, and hope to draw inspiration. Silence and time and a singular objective can create the kind of mix that allows for that.

Perhaps the goal of the perfect tennis shot, as mundane and comical as it sounds, is not that far removed from what monks seek. Perhaps the monks discover as I have discovered that there is no One True Swing, but that each of us forms our own truth, the truth that gives us comfort and satisfaction, and that it isn't really the attainment of Truth that we seek, but the journey towards truth that is ultimately what it's all about.

This journey is far from perfect. We may never obtain the Truth we seek, but we see ourselves getting closer. It is the distance reduced, the effort put forth, that while not entirely pleasurable, gives depth to our cause, our mission. Humans seem to crave a clear goal whose path to fulfillment is not so clear nor easy.

It is when we walk a difficult path, but know that each step is getting us closer, that ultimately makes us keep going. The destination may be a kind of folly, but the journey is what it is ultimately about.

And so the Wall, immovable, implacable serves a quite testament to that journey. And many more balls will be struck upon it. And through this repetition, this penance, one hopes to gain a little enlightenment.

Days of Being Young

Two days ago, I decided to get a haircut after work. Yesterday, I woke up early, around 7:30 in the morning, so I could get in line at the MVA, what some places call the DMV, so I could update my driver's license. I wanted it to reflect my current address. I had hoped, on a chilly Saturday morning, that the lines would be short.

Alas, it was not.

The line went around the building, and it seemed 100 people were ahead of me. Two people in front of me was a guy, perhaps in his late 40s, gray hair, dark moustache, wearing a biker shirt. Apparently, he was there to get a motorcycle license or possibly to renew it.

Bikers were made famous, I believe, from a documentary in the 70s or so about Hell's Angels. Bikers were made out to be rebels of society, groups to be feared for indiscriminate violence. However, as time passed, and fewer bikers were out riding in gangs, the notion of a biker has become more quaint. An outsider, yes, but this guy was remarking how he had withheld a driver's license from his son because he wanted his son to get better grades. According to him, this wasn't effective.

So much for biker stereotypes.

Just ahead of me was an Asian girl. She had brought her book describing the various traffic rules of Maryland. She was planning to take an exam to get her learner's permit. The biker guy was talking to her, asking how things were. I suppose I should have seen it as the casual conversation that it was, but it kept running through my mind that he was hitting on her (though, there really wasn't so much evidence of that except he was talking to her at all).

It hadn't occurred to me that the girl would have needed a ride there, but after a few minutes, her father showed up.

Apparently, she goes to the nearby Rockville high school, one Richard Montgomery, where my friend Adam is an alum. I had mentioned that he graduated around 1991 or 1992 and she pointed out that she was born in 1991. Ah, so young.

She was confident enough to talk to strangers, inquisitive enough to ask questions about college, and graduate school. I've seen the type, and perhaps been the type minus the bit of extroversion. Kids who look at their books, trying to cram facts into their heads, heading down the road of destiny that will take them to college. These are the high achievers of American society, the so-called elite that a McCain campaign so roundly decries.

At a time when most kids should be eager and ambitious in life, using their intellect to make good decisions, we seem happy to raise a generation of youth that are happy not knowing much, that listen to what's told to them, without questioning it, and more importantly, without the ability to question it. They prefer a night of drunken carousing rather than a night in front of the books.

Oh, they would argue, that people should have fun, but not at the expense of education. And most well-educated students do have a measure of fun too, and then they have real jobs.

Right now, schoolwork is this girl's life, and perhaps a few other extracurricular activities. Her life isn't so much different from the one I lived once upon a time, but things change as you get older. Priorities change. Life changes.

Still, for a brief moment, I was filled with a touch of nostalgia for days gone by, for a time when all that mattered was test scores, applications to fancy colleges, and leaving family for the first time. When I look back, it wasn't such a bad time, after all.

The Internet Economy

There have been a bunch of ideas on the Internet that, if you were to mention it to anyone 20-30 years ago, would have been laughed at, but because the Internet evolved the way it did, it has allowed the kind of use that no one would have expected.

Let's start with free email. Back in the day, when free email was available, you were limited to 10 MB or so of email space. Anything more and you'd have to pay for it. Let your email account stay idle, and it would get deleted. GMail, Google's mail, changed that. It offered free email with 1 GB of space, which was considered outrageously huge for the time. Needless to say, many companies had to fall in line.

Best yet, it was free.

But here's one that's even wilder. YouTube.

Think of a business that would allow any user, for free, to upload as many videos as they wanted. This has allowed people an outlet to make their videos available anywhere. With cheap camcorders, the most expensive part of the video making process is the computer itself.

Without the "free" part, a video site would have a tiny fraction of the videos it has now. That has its pluses and minuses. Because anyone can upload a video, a site like YouTube has tremendously more videos than it would otherwise. Free speaks to people like nothing else. That is both good and bad. It allows a great deal of freedom to video creators, but places an immense burden on the site to keep the presumably millions of videos accessible.

This notion of free, I'm sure, appeals to a great deal of computer types who would like to see all notions of digital stuff for free. Free songs, free videos, free software, and so forth.

Are we ready to see real content like that for free or not? Right now, the industry says no, since it wants to make money on content by "real" singers and directors and actors and so forth.

But the Internet has seen things as strange.

You never know.

Primal Fear

They've been showing Primal Fear, a film with Richard Gere, from 1996. This was the first big film by Ed Norton, who was pretty unknown at the time.

This movie is a nice showy role for Ed Norton, who plays a guy with a split personality. He's Aaron, who stammers and stutters and is sweet and innocent, and he plays Roy, who is psychopathic. The secret, revealed at the end, is the real guy, whoever is, is faking it.

And this, once you think about it, makes no sense at all. Aaron is a bright guy. But somehow he thought it was a good idea to play a mildly retarded fellow and join a church where he is subjected to sex video tapes.

I mean, why would he do this? The film only makes sense in that it tries to trick the viewer, and has a gotcha moment at the end. But the real answer makes no sense whatsoever.

Even so, it's a nice showy role for Ed Norton.

CSPAN is cool

CSPAN does something that every network covering the debate should do, and that is to display the question that is asked. If they would do this, you would see how much the politician evades the question being asked.

And believe me, they do a lot of evading. The average listener often forgets the question. So the networks should be obligated to put it up.

That is all.

String Theory

David Foster Wallace, not yet a month deceased, wrote a story for Esquire in 1996. Early on, he writes the following paragraph:

A tacit rhetorical assumption here is that you have very probably never heard of Michael Joyce of Brentwood, L.A. Nor of Tommy Ho of Florida. Nor of Vince Spadea nor Jonathan Stark nor Robbie Weiss nor Steve Bryan -- all ranked in the world’s top one hundred at one point in 1995. Nor of Jeff Tarango, sixty-eight in the world, unless you remember his unfortunate psychotic breakdown in full public view during last year’s Wimbledon

Notice Wallace is careful to use the hedge word "probably". After all, there might be tennis fans out there who pay attention to players that are ranked outside the top 10, or, as the case may be, outside the top 30.

As it turns out, I had heard of Michael Joyce, Vince Spadea, Tommy Ho (of which I'd say Thundercats, ho!), Jonathan Stark, Robbie Weiss. Steve Bryan, I don't recall so much. Jeff Tarango, yes, I've heard. The meltdown occurred when he accused an umpire, one Bruno Rebeuh, for having it against him. Tarango was a modern day John McEnroe, and like McEnroe, Stanford educated, and a tennis professional, but lacking McEnroe's stellar resume. His wife then was accused of spitting at the umpire. It was a bizarre scene, with lilting French accents from one Mrs. Tarango.

Vince Spadea manages to stay in the news. Spadea looked like one of those up-and-comers. He had played Agassi tough at a US Open, and I thought he'd knock him out. Recently, Spadea tried to make a bigger splash as a self-styled tennis rapper, two words that shouldn't go together. He was recently in DC playing at the Legg Mason. He's got a book about him where he talked about his dad. Tennis is filled with tennis dads, but mostly, they oversee their talented daughters.

They range from Stefan Capriati, to Richard Williams. Jim Pierce, Mary Pierce's dad, was so volatile that Mary's mother divorced him, and he was banned from attending WTA events. Until then, Mary always seemed so stressed. She was so much happier afterwards.

Surely, there are tennis dads that pressure their sons to succeed. Indeed, Andre Agassi fits the bill. He was something like Richard Williams in that he studied the game even as tennis was not his first sport. Sons of tennis fathers generally don't get as much press because the fathers typically disappear after they get good, so we don't see the over-protection. The closest to that might have been Michael Chang's mother, but even after a while, she stopped traveling with him.

Vince Spadea, as it turns out, was a product of a tennis father who trained all the Spadea siblings in tennis. Even as Spadea's older sisters showed talent, they lacked the heart of Spadea, and so it was Vince that held the mantle of Spadea success. In many ways, Spadea is as successful as his dad could have hoped.

Any one that rises to the top 30 has made a huge breakthrough, and even as they may toil in relative anonymity, they've proven themselves to be members of a tennis elite.

Because Wallace was a tennis junior, he understands how hard it is for players to reach the top. Wallace could easily have picked players ranked 300 or below. I've never heard of them. How long do their careers last? Can they afford to be on more than a few years. You imagine these are the younger players, early in their career, trying to work their way up the rankings. It would be hard to imagine, short of independently wealthy players, someone toiling at 500-600 all their lives. The cost of travel would be too prohibitive.

Indeed the top pros have perks beyond perks. If you're seeded (a seed means you get some protection in the draw from meeting other seeds too early--basketball is too nice letting the top seed always face the lowest possible seed at each round, where only a small fraction of players get seeded, so they could easily meet a high-ranked unseeded player), you get benefits.

You get free hotel rooms. You get free food. The perks go to the players that can most afford them. But, they also extend to doubles players. So the Bryan brothers, who don't have much of a ranking in singles, benefit from this. Although the Bryan brothers do fine for a living, they don't make the stratospheric income of a top 5 singles player.

When you're used to watching only the top players, your view is completely skewed. You don't realize what they do is so atypical. I'm sure the same thing happens in many sports. A basketball player who plays in college might look at a top player like Kobe and wonder how Kobe and do the things he does.

What's all the more remarkable, beyond the physical ability, is the mental ability. Top pros will find themselves in close matches, perhaps far more than they want, and yet, they manage to win nearly all the close sets. They lift their games, hit the extra shot, even get a lucky net cord, and win matches that they look like they should lose. Weaker players rarely do this.

People say luck favors the well-prepared. Luck seems to favor the talented too. At times, games, sets, hinge on little things. I was watching a match between Federer and Nadal in Miami. In every set, it looked like one player was dominating the set, but then a few points would get played, and momentum would completely shift. It happens in their matches time and again. Just when you think one is on the brink of disaster, they shore their game up just enough, and then they win the set.

Does this happen even among weaker players? I'm sure, yes, to some extent. Perhaps they can simply use their superior shot-making skills, or superior speed, or exploit a weakness of an opponent. There's still some hint that talent can win over smarts and mental strength.

Witness Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, who just whales at the ball. He's a man that seems governed by whim. When he's in the zone, he goes all out on his forehand. It serves him well when he plays well, but when the opponent is holding his own, Gonzalez has no plan B. He plays stupid in those situations, trying to go for bigger, less probable shots, and like a gambler deep in debt, his sense of odds disappears.

Few people understand the level of concentration, the level of confidence, and the level of physical talent needed to win at the very top. Concentration, and the ability to hit the shot when you want, plays a huge roll in winning. Chris Evert wasn't the most physically blessed player, but she could focus, and hit good shots even in duress, and if you weren't pressuring her, she could outsteady you, make you hit one shot, then another, then another.

Basketball seems to lack the concentration element, one that allows a player to keep hitting good shots, even as their opponent is doing the same, and win them at the end.

Golf, on the other hand, is all concentration, and lacks the physical movement and reaction time that tennis needs.

Football has some of these elements, but not over and over and over again, except for possibly the quarterback.

The top players are often where they are because of superior physical talent, but certainly they are there because of their superior mental tenacity, the sheer mind over muscle getting their bodies to do exactly what they want.

Wallace on Tennis

You know that David Foster Wallace knows something about tennis when, in his article about Roger Federer, he credits whom with being the father of modern day power tennis?

Bjorn Borg? Jimmy Connors? No, Ivan Lendl.

If you've never followed tennis, you may not be aware of the Czech player who, for many years, seemed like the Darth Vader of tennis. Tennis has produced its share of striking women players, and I mean their appearance, in addition to their quality of tennis. The 70s didn't exactly produce male studs.

Connors and Borg, who were the top players of their day, were considered reasonably good looking for their time. Connors wore his long hair over his ears, much like the Beatles. Borg wore his hair even longer. And it seemed, unlike Agassi, something Borg preferred to do, rather than a stunt to promote an image.

Lendl, on the other hand, was Eastern European, with dark hair, sunken eyes, and for a while, crooked teeth. Early in his career, he had a nasty habit of spitting all the time. Over time, he stopped spitting, his teeth got straightened, but many still considered him ugly, and as many people liked players like Kournikova for their beauty, they disliked Lendl for his lack thereof.

Furthermore, as Lendl sought to be number one, he saw how McEnroe would argue with the chair umpire and realized that he, too, needed to argue, even as it made McEnroe unpopular, and it didn't help Lendl either. McEnroe was perhaps the premier serve and volleyer of his day. He would charge the net, but early in his career, Lendl showed the kind of blistering power that marked his game. Lendl wasn't above pegging a player on the passing shot, a legal shot that makes it difficult to volley, but considered, in polite company, in poor taste. Lendl would learn to remove that shot from his game.

There were several keys to Lendl's game that lead to its influence over the modern game. His huge forehand was number one. Lendl frequently hit his shot down the line and frequently ran around his backhand to hit inside out. To do this, Lendl would move left. But instead of striking the ball with his backhand, he would continue to move left, then hit the shot with his forehand, but with the same target as his backhand, that is, to his opponent's backhand (assuming his opponent was a righty).

He ran around the backhand because he had a powerful forehand.

Much like Babe Ruth may have hit so many home runs because he tried, Lendl went for winners, because he could. Although bigger racquets have been blamed for causing the increase in power, Lendl actually used quite a small racquet, at 72 square inches. Had racquets been limited in size to about 80 square inches, Lendl still would have had his power game.

The revolution that marked the advent of power tennis may have had more to do with graphite racquets than oversized racquets. Sampras and Edberg used a racquet at 85 square inches, a significantly larger size than the 72 that Lendl used (the old timey racquets were 66 square inches, so Lendl used something only a touch bigger).

Power tennis was going to come whether or not the large racquet did. Case in point. Jimmy Arias. Few people remember Jimmy Arias because his career was so short. Jimmy Arias used the same racquet as Borg, the Borg Pro, which was a classically sized racquet. He had a huge forehand, but an awkward backhand. Ultimately, his diminuitive size hurt him.

Although Lendl epitomized power tennis, it's likely that it would have come anyway. Lendl's began playing his brand of power tennis starting around 1979. He would begin to play superlative tennis around 1982, when he beat McEnroe seven times in a row. Lendl would hit winners off the ground.

Connors hit hard, but his goal was like the classic Aussies. Get to net, and cut the point off. Borg was a steady baseliner willing to run down shots all day long.

Mind you, Lendl didn't hit with flurries of winners like modern day Federer or Nadal. He was raised on European clay, and could rally from the backcourt with the best of them. Like Borg or Wilander, Lendl could and would rally 20-30 shots. But as he improved, he learned to go for winners. He showed it was possible to do this, and it changed the way tennis was played.

It took a while for women to get to that level. For women, the player that made the huge breakthrough was Steffi Graf. Martina rushed the net, and her serves kept opponents off balance. She'd win quick matches because they couldn't pass her. But Graf would overpower her opponents from the baseline. Her biggest nemesis would come in one Monica Seles. Where Graf had a huge forehand, her backhand was an accurate slice, but one she rarely hit winners off of. Strong enough that it was hard to attack her backhand, it was not strong enough to win outright points.

Monica Seles, on the other hand, hit two hands on both sides, and so she didn't have real weaknesses except her speed. Graf was simply a much quicker player than Seles.

It wasn't long after Lendl began showing how power tennis would be played that a series of other players joined in. In the early days, they would have been Boris Becker, then Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. The Bolletieri bunch were actually power hitters that included Jimmy Arias, Aaron Krickstein, before Agassi broke through. Even Ecuadorian, Andres Gomez, was a formidable power hitter with a huge lefty hook.

Really, in those days, you could play a game that was more Borg-like or more classic. Edberg played a classic serve and volley game, becoming the most elegant and precise volleyer of his day, an oddity among Swedes, who preferred to hit from the backcourt. His huge kick serve became a model for others to follow, and while his serve eventually became a liability as others managed to serve harder and harder, Edberg played good tennis for over 10 years, basically from 1983 to 1993.

Wilander was really a throwback. He lacked the power of Lendl, but was quick enough to run down Lendl's shots, and was consistent enough to give Lendl fits. Lendl may have hit winners from the baseline, but not tremendously often. Wilander had his best year in 1988, but then his decline was huge in 1989. Somehow, he managed to stay in the game even through 1994. He was Borg with a lot more variety and thinking.

By the time 1990 rolled around, players like Sampras and Agassi were redefining the game once again, going for even more winners, until you get to 2002 when Federer, then Nadal started their rise. Gone were the days when top players could have weak groundstrokes but big serves and volleys. A player like Roddick, with a huge serve, should be a great serve and volleyer, yet, his game is played from the back, like many of his contemporaries.

It's amazing a top serve and volleyer like Federer can't actually play serve and volley, so he must resort to playing off the ground. He's perhaps the most accomplished serve and volleyer to rarely play that style anymore, partly because passers are so good that he can't do it, partly because he's fantastic off the ground as well.

David Foster Wallace understood a lot of the history of tennis especially tennis in the 1980s and onwards. I grew up watching tennis and would agree with his assessment of tennis. Of course, he used far more eloquent words in his summary of tennis, but he had the tennis acumen to point it out.

Clever Lines

With so many people on the Internets, people come up with so many good zingers that go by the wayside. Some are deemed too harsh, too offensive.

I was just listening to Barack Obama's speech. He criticizes McCain, especially McCain's use of lobbyists on his campaign staff. He says "If you think his staff is working day and night to put themselves out of a job, I've got a bridge to sell you in Alaska".

This drew cheers.

But. But.

Obama could have taken it further. He could have said something like "And his vision for the future of the US, is much like that bridge. It's a vision to nowhere. We've had eight years of that. We don't need four more. I'm sure you will join me in saying 'Thanks, but no thanks'".

I like the twist in using that phrase back on McCain.

David Foster Wallace

I can't say I know much about David Foster Wallace. His name was only vaguely familiar to me. I had heard of his book Infinite Jest, but not much more than that.

Wallace had been a junior tennis player; his parents were academics. Although he found his full expression as a writer, he never lost the love he had for tennis, especially the players that would never become the best, that toiled as journeymen. This might have been the life Wallace would have had for himself, but his life took him a different direction.

Wallace wrote a piece for the New York Times two years ago, just before the US Open, waxing rhapsodic over the elegance of Federer. You knew he preferred the effortless smoothness of Federer over the bullish Spaniard, Nadal, who, while effective, doesn't evoke beauty as much he does toughness, whippy shots that spring from his muscled physique. He has a cyborgian like quality that doesn't match his shy, deferring personality.

Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008. As a tennis observer, he had to know that his favorite player to watch, Roger Federer, had been having a down year. Federer had had mono at the beginning of the year. Despite this, he reached the Australian Open semifinals in January, losing to Novak Djokovic.

He had plenty of losses, many more than he was used to. He lost decisively to Nadal at the French, then lost in five sets that was punctuated by rain delays, and darkness, in what many proclaimed as the best match ever played at Wimbledon. He lost early in some tune-ups to the US Open, to Gilles Simon, then to Ivo Karlovic. He went to the Olympics and lost to James Blake in the quarters, whom he had never lost to before.

He had gone from a shoo-in to break Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slam events, which Sampras mostly feasted at Wimbledon and the US Open, to a player that looked washed up. This was washed up after reaching one semifinal (the Australian) and two finals (the French, Wimbledon). Most people would consider that a successful year. But not for the dominant Swiss. Had Nadal passed him by? Had Djokovic?

Federer was simply losing matches by making mistakes. Now, Federer always makes mistakes, far more than most players of his caliber. While Nadal is parsimonious with errors, Federer is a gambler, going for high risk to get high reward. When he's on, he looks sublime. Even when he's off, he's often quite competitive and still wins. But this year, he would inexplicably toss several errors in a row, and lose games he had no business losing.

The one respite from all this came from an unusual source. Federer not only represented Switzerland in singles (he was again, flag-bearer) in the Olympics, but also doubles, where he teamed up with Stanislas Wawrinka, who had cracked the top ten that year. Wawrinka wasn't exactly a great doubles player, but he serves well, had a decent backhand volley. They upset the Bryan brothers of the US in the semifinals, quite a feat, considering the Bryan brothers had been number 1 and have played doubles for years, where Federer plays sparingly.

The team then captured gold over Swedish team of Thomas Johansson and Simon Aspelin. Johansson had won an Australian Open back in the cusp between the decline of Sampras and the rise of Federer, when lesser players like Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick were laying claims to number 1.

Although Federer is first and foremost a singles player, this doubles win seemed to thrill him. The casual camaraderie, the winning, all lead to smiles for Roger who never thought winning in gold in doubles was possible nor that it would bring him that much joy. Federer's likely to be a little too old to win Olympic gold in 2012, when he'd be 31, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Emboldened by his victory, he came to the US Open a bit of underdog. With his perennial rival, Rafael Nadal, having won Olympic gold, most people felt that he was the odds-on favorite to win in New York. There were a few other names mentioned. Djokovic had beaten Nadal in Cincinnati, and fell in a close match to Nadal in Beijing. Andy Murray, the Scot and the great British hope to win Wimbledon, had beaten Djokovic twice.

Yet, the draw worked so that Federer had to play Djokovic in the semis on one side, and Nadal would have to face Murray. Djokovic and Nadal were the favorites in both matches.

The men's semifinals were moved early in the day with Hurricane Hanna threatening to rain out Saturday play. The rains somehow moved up the east coast and west of New York until rains fell around 2 PM. Federer played his match at 11 AM, and playing as crisp a tennis as he has in a long time, dispatched Djokovic, whose game seemed off-kilter after an ill-advised post-match comment against Roddick where he voiced his disapproval of Roddick claiming he was faking his injuries, lead to a rash of boos. Djokovic tried to recover, but already the fickle crowd was against him.

He tried to play without complaint, without resorting to timeouts, and it lead to a strangely muted game, just as Federer was finding his timing, and playing like 2007 instead of 2008.

Although Federer expected to play his longtime rival and Nike co-endorser, Rafael Nadal, Nadal's exit from the Open came at the hands of the wily Scot. Murray had gone on a regimen of building up his fitness and muscles to compete with Nadal. But it was his brain that was on display, as he moved Nadal around expertly, mixing up pace, alternately hitting hard and soft, forcing Nadal, a man whose style requires a great deal of energy, a man who had spent many weeks trying to be at the top of his game, a man who was spent after his victory in Beijing, and crafted a strategy that lead to a win.

It didn't help that Nadal, who likes his routine to be just so, everything nice and predictable, found his schedule all jumbled up, as he and Murray had to take the court several hours early to try to get in a few games prior to Hanna hitting New York. The normally energetic Nadal came out a bit lifeless, while Murray came out dominant, taking Nadal to task early in the first set, and holding his advantage to win a second set in a tiebreak.

Even a rain delay that interrupted play for the entire day just as Nadal had gone up a break of serve in the third set, a delay that should have helped Nadal regroup, wasn't enough. Although Nadal came out far more animated on Sunday than he did Saturday, and took the third set, and it looked as if Murray had no chance to recover, Murray then managed to recover a break, a break that came easily after Murray himself had so many chances to break, and eventually clawed back to win the match in four sets.

Murray came out to try to take it to Federer, a guy he's had good results against, despite a paucity of meetings. Somehow, Murray expected an error-prone Federer, and chose to play off-pace shots, hoping to entice errors out of the masterful Swiss. Roger was having none of it. He attacked and played as crisply as he did against Djokovic.

When Murray plays junk ball, it can be tough for him to get out of it, and start hitting with more power. He tried to alter his game, and was getting some success when a key point early in the second set when a ball that should have been called out, but was not, lead to deuce and eventually a Federer hold. He would go on to hold that game, and eventually secure a break and take the second set.

After the second set, Federer really let it all hang out. Drop shotting, coming to net, playing fast and loose. He was having fun, and Murray, clearly dejected, was letting Federer do what he pleased.

And so when Federer won his 13th Grand Slam title, quite improbably, all the while trying to tell the public that he still had enough game to challenge for the titles, telling people that his losses had not gotten to him, that he was this close to getting back to where he was, and finally--finally, people believed him.

David Foster Wallace, who had to be following the travails of Federer, surely was thinking that, despite his depression, he was going to live long enough to watch the US Open, live long enough to see if the Swiss maestro had it within him. And when Federer hoisted that trophy above his head, perhaps Wallace savored this victory as much as Federer, a victory of beauty and grace over guile and power.

And he savored it until that Friday.

And then he was no more.

Charlie K

The web snuck up people, didn't it? Moved into their lives as seamlessly as technology seems to do. The microwave. The VCR. The cell phone. But the web is the gateway to information. Questions you would never have bothered to look up can be checked with so little effort.

They are showing the 1991 Steven Spielberg's Hook. Not his best film, but still very entertaining. Part of the reinterpretation of the venerable tale involves Hook's plan to be a better father to Peter Pan's son than his real father.

The son, a shy uncertain kid, is played by Charlie Korsmo. Made me wonder, what exactly happened to Charlie Korsmo? Turns out, not much. At least, acting-wise. He made one more film after Hook, and that was 7 years later, and pretty much nothing else after that. He was apparently offered a role in the Terminator movies.

Instead, turns out he was a bit of a geek. He majored in physics at MIT, and then obtained a law degree at Yale about two years ago. There have been some very bright actors, though they are few and far between. It's perhaps no surprise that child actors, who are already precocious in acting, might be precocious in other subjects too.

Too bad he's a staunch conservative.

The Reinvented Newspapers

People say that newspapers are dying, mostly because of the web. At one point, people thought you could sell newspapers on the web, but when that failed, they put select content for sale, and when that failed, well, that was tough. People now expect their news to be free on the Web. The New York Times. The Washington Post.

To compete with television, online papers have been adding tiny video segments to break up the text, text, text, of most articles. Before I extol the advances of using video, I have to say that newspapers and newsmagazines serve a much better function for informing a reader than TV does.

By its very nature, news programs on television really are reduced to sound bites. An article that may take you 20-30 minutes to read would never see the light of day on television where being longer than 2-3 minutes will drive someone to watch Jeopardy!. We need long, in-depth articles because they reveal the depth of real issues.

Having said that, it makes sense for online papers to bring a contrast by having little video segments.

Many of these video segments lack the gravitas of real articles. They are as much about the person presenting the information, and their personality, as they are about the article they report on. For example, I just watched a snippet of Chris Cooley being interviewed.

All in all, it's a friendly interview. It's not interviewing a head of state, or asking the political stance of someone running for high office. It's an insight to an athlete who gives you a little slice of their life. Tabloid magazines wouldn't do so well if the public didn't have curiosity of how the rich and famous lead their lives. Even if the ultimate conclusion is that many of them lead similar lives to the rest of us, that is often a refreshing conclusion.

It's too bad video isn't more elegantly laid on a webpage, and usually requires a bit of digging around. Even so, I think it increases the personal touch of a paper, the kind of intimate immediacy that rigid reporting doesn't attempt to achieve.

The Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals

Yet another compelling TED talk, well worth the twenty minutes it takes to listen to it.

The Honest Life

One site I like to occasionally visit is "Stuff White People Like". The number of items on the list is now just a shade over 100. Here are a few items on the list:

• The Onion
  
• Grammar
  
• Outdoor Performance Clothes
  
• Bad Memories of High School
  
• Graduate School
  
• Threatening To Move To Canada
  
• New Balance Shoes
  
• Marathons
  
• Wine
  

Now Justin hates this site because he feels it's filled with hate. Take the show The Wire. I know quite a few people that will tell you this is the best show on TV. They all happen to be white. I find that amusing. However, the site claims people only like The Wire because they are pretentious.

That is, they pretend to like The Wire and proclaim it good because everyone else does.

And this is what offends Justin.

Because isn't it possible that people really do like the show because they really do think it's the best show, not because a few select people like the show and they want to join the bandwagon. It's much like the people who bought A Brief History of Time, one of the most successful science books ever published, who have, nevertheless, never read it.

Now I have said most people don't read Stuff White People Like so deeply to believe the criticism that may be dished out. They have the superficial view of "Oh god, I love marathons too" rather than delve into the article which talks about how such people are insufferable and how hard they work to train.

Indeed, the articles seemed aimed at people who know "white people" and really "white people" could be extended to highly educated folks. The reason "white" is used is because people often look at the US as black/white, and many of the things white people like, African Americans don't care for, even those that are in the highly educated bunch.

You see, the kind of person that looks at Stuff White People Like isn't even typically white. It's someone with education, who likes to read books, discuss topics amongst their friends, believe they live a life that befits the research they've done. This isn't red America.

But then who is on the web all time, looking for information, reading sites like reddit, trying to find information outside the mainstream? Generally the same folks that stumble on Stuff White People Like.

Although the author seems to have disdain, it's our short attention span that ignores the attitude expressed in these articles, though clearly Justin reads it carefully enough to be offended. Most skim through the titles and wonder "how are they so right about me?" and chuckle.

Is the argument reasonable? Are white people filled with the kind of pretense suggested by the articles? I don't think so. But it is aimed at people who want to poke fun at such white folks by pretending to be them. And for the people that it represents, well, for as much research as they do, they seem to take it all in stride as something humorous.

Roger Dodger

They said it was an off year for Roger Federer. He has 12 losses this year, which is nearly twice what he's had in the previous four years. It's strange to say that because Federer has reached the finals of three of four Grand Slam majors, and the semifinals of the other one.

To compare, Nadal reached two semifinals and two finals. Now, Nadal did win both those finals and beat Federer in the those finals.

Still, you wouldn't think a guy that reached three finals and a semifinal of the four majors was having a bad year. Such is the life of Roger Federer who people expect to win at least 2 of every 4 majors he's in. He's remarkably consistent, except that everyone expected Rafael Nadal to take that leap into transcendency.

Only no one told Andy Murray. While Nadal is the undisputed king of clay, and has become the best or perhaps the second best grass court player in the world, there are many more people who can give Nadal a run for his money on hard courts. For one, there's number 3 Novak Djokovic, who did just that against him in Cincinnati. For another, there's now Andy Murray, who I believe is one of the smartest, if not the smartest, male tennis player out there.

Most players have a one size fits all strategy. They play the same way against most people, and it usually does the trick. Many fewer things to think about this way, don't you know? Murray, on the other hand, seems to adjust his tactics to whoever he plays. All that thought makes it tough to decide how to play someone. First on Murray's list appeared to be world's number one, Rafael Nadal.

Now Nadal has a style that's bruising, and while it hurts others, it hurts himself in the process. He came into the US Open weary, but even a weary Nadal can beat most players. Except Murray. Murray used a combination of no pace and hard pace to throw Nadal off his game until, dare we say it, Nadal was frustrated and impatient, two traits that rarely define Nadal's game.

By outthinking and outplaying Nadal, many people, including myself, thought Murray had a good shot at beating Roger Federer. However, many others thought, with his strong victory over Novak Djokovic, that the four time consecutive winner of the US Open wasn't ready to concede his crown, that the hugeness of the moment, so familiar to Federer, and so new to Murray, would be enough to rile Murray. And perhaps the Roger Federer of old, the one that was so dominant, that seemed poised to knock Pete Sampras's record 14 majors into a footnote of history, might be back.

And with a superior serve and aggressive play, Federer put a 6-2 beatdown on Murray in the first set, bewildering the poor Scot, before he started to string a few points together. And when Murray had a chance to break, and failed to challenge a call that turned out to be clearly out, and then lead to a Federer hold instead of a Murray break, Murray's chances, which seemed to be decent, began to dim.

Federer managed to break in the second set as well, and with two sets firmly in hand, Federer started to really relax. He drop-shotted, he chipped and charged, he served and volleyed. Murray, who had been content to hit off-pace shots, hoping to elicit errors from Federer, found himself retreiving hard hit shots which only weeks ago had not made it inside the lines, which had let players that hadn't had a whiff of victory against Federer, feel they had a chance.

Murray, ranked number 6, wasn't really feeling sorry for himself. With a successful summer, he was ready to move up to number 4 in the world, ahead of Ferrer, ahead of Davydenko, guys who play consistent, guys who make the semifinals, but not guys who people seriously consider as potential winners of the majors. Murray was better than these guys, and finally, he strung enough victories, played confident enough tennis, played smart against good players, and pushed himself ahead of those guys to be number 4 in the world. And he's had 2 victories over Djokovic. Though he lacks the bruising precision of the 3 players ahead of him, he plays with his brains, and perhaps soon, the power and precision will come for Murray too.

He's only 21, after all, much like the power youth movement. Nadal, 22, Djokovic, 21, trying to fend off the youth of 19 like del Potro or Querrey or Nishikori.

Meanwhile, Federer has asserted that he isn't quite ready to cede the mantle of king. Not yet, anyway. He's going to have to go back to the drawing table, figure out how to get his game to resemble years past, rather than the year that is. He's in a battle against time, to win 2 more majors before age gets to him, before the new kids start to draw even.

Federer's smiling now because he knows his time hasn't past yet, that the old man of tennis, at 27, still has some punch for the young'uns. Maybe he'll learn a lesson from Murray on how to play a Nadal, and maybe that will serve him well, lead him to a French title that is missing from his prodigious resume.

Who knows? The dream of break 14 majors that had been put on hold is now breathing life again, and that elegant player from Switzerland is all smiles. The year wasn't all bad, after all, don't you know. The golden boy of doubles took something positive and made one more golden trip to New York.

Murray Rolls

Rafael Nadal came into the US Open ranked number one for the first time coming into a major. He had gained number 1 when Roger Federer played poorly at the two master series tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati, losing to Gilles Simon and Ivo Karlovic, respectively. Those losses, combined with Nadal's semifinal loss in Cincinnati (and win in Toronto) meant Nadal would become number one shortly after the Olympics concluded.

Players that have reached number 1 have traditionally had difficulty winning the next major they are entered. Perhaps it's the pressure, or the fatigue of having to play so many matches to get to number 1.

Coming into the US Open, there were the usual suspects of favorites. Federer was the four time defending champion. Roger had been having an off-year for him. He had nearly twice as many losses as he's ever had. He lost to Nadal badly in the French, then lost to Federer in a five set thriller, and then lost early in the next three tournaments he was in. Many people didn't think he had what it took to regain the title this year, despite having reached the semis of Australia, the finals of the French and Wimbledon.

Djokovic, who had a wonderful 2007, and played well in 2006 too, was becoming a solid number 3. When he won the Australian Open, many thought he might be poised to take number 2 from Nadal, and there were chances. But each time Djokovic had an opportunity, he faced Nadal, and Nadal held him off, and held to number 2.

And of course, there was Nadal, who had been the bridesmaid for so long, ranked number 2, until a series of hardcourt victories meant he would become number 1, replacing the magical Roger Federer, who suddenly wasn't himself.

Outside of the three favorites, a few other players were considered contenders. Andy Roddick was the only top player to forgo the Olympics and stay in the US to prepare. This turned out to be a little bit of disaster. In LA, Roddick lost in the final to unheralded Argentine, Juan Martin del Potro. It would turn out that del Potro would have a magical summer winning four tournaments in a row to head into the US Open.

Roddick then lost to Viktor Troicki, a Serbian who found himself in Washington DC when he discovered he wouldn't be in the Olympics after all. These losses encouraged Andy Roddick to make a break with his brother, and work with Patrick McEnroe who knew Andy's game because he was Davis Cup captain.

James Blake also plays best on hard courts. He missed out on a bronze medal, but beat Federer en route. His risky tennis has never lead him to the semifinals or finals of a major, but otherwise, he's quite tough.

But the real outside shot was Andy Murray. Fresh off a five set Wimbledon win over Richard Gasquet, but a drubbing by Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals, left Murray hoping for better results in the US. Hardcourts has always been Murray's best surface. He won the 2004 US Open juniors, the year Gael Monfils had won 3 of 4 junior Slams.

Murray reached the semifinals of Toronto, but lost to Nadal in straight sets. However, that tournament was a breakthrough of sorts because Murray beat Djokovic for the first time in Toronto. He would then win Cincinnati over Djokovic the following week. Djokovic had played a brilliant match to beat Nadal in the semifinals.

Murray barely escaped Jurgen Melzer, a hard hitting Austrian who had beaten Agassi back in the day. Murray stayed patient until Melzer started to cool down. When Murray played del Potro, who had been considered an up-and-comer, he took advantage of del Potro's on court time which had been a few hours longer than Murray, and Murray's fitness. En route to a straight set win, Murray found himself mired in the middle of a fourth set, but hit slice forehands, and off-pace shots, while moving around del Potro, trying to make fatigue del Potro's enemy.

del Potro eventually lost as he was too weary to chase down any more shots.

Against Nadal, Murray varied the pace, trying to open up hard hit forehands or down the line backhands. Two things helped Murray on the first day. First, Murray served fantastic. Nadal had a tough time tracking down Murray's serve. Second, Murray returns Nadal's serve better than nearly anyone. Murray stands 10-12 feet behind the baseline, then rushes up a few feet as Nadal serves.

Nadal had complained a bit about fatigue, but he's so good, and his opponents are often so intimidated trying to play Nadal that they play way above themselves, making numerous errors. While Murray's errors outnumbered Nadal's, his shots seemed very much in control.

Murray played lots of shots up the middle, to remove the angle that Nadal likes to work with. Murray also knows that Nadal doesn't like to give away points, so if Murray were to play shots up the middle, Nadal was content exchanging shots, rather than go for an ill-advised winner. Murray himself would then look for a short-ish ball to try to open up the court.

Murray was serving so well the first two sets that Nadal didn't see any break points, while Murray had broke twice in the first set, then had to work his way to a tiebreak, before winning that.

In the third set, Nadal got up an early break before the rains came. Most people felt the break would help Nadal who would get coaching and try something different. Indeed, Nadal became more aggressive the next day, while Murray was not nearly as hot, having some troubles returning serve, and dumping easy shots into the net. As both players held serve, Nadal took the third set, 6-4.

The fourth set had a very long game where Nadal staved off 7 break points, and eventually held on his second game point. That was to get to 1-all. Murray served, but his inability to break lead to some poorly played points, and Murray found himself a break down. Murray looked like he had simply collapsed and that he'd have to wait until the fifth set to recover. Nadal took the lead 2-1. Nadal then held to 3-1, and Murray needed his hold to 3-2.

At this point, Murray was feeling better again, and again started to work on Nadal. Murray used a combination of very deep shots, changes of paces and height, to cause Nadal to make errors he's not accustomed to. Murray eventually broke back to tie the match.

Murray was up 5-4 with Nadal serving. Murray was at deuce, and played a long point where he would hit the ball inside out. Nadal, rather than go for a winner, hit a hard shot somewhere between down the line and down the middle. Murray could have gone for the winner. Instead, he looped it crosscourt, forcing Nadal to have to reach up. He then hit another shot inside out, and then another crosscourt. Eventually, he hit a shot inside out, and attacked the net. By that point, Nadal was a bit fatigued, and gave Murray an easy volley. Nadal was really tired, more than he usually ever is.

On the next point, Nadal got a short ball and decided to drop shot, probably showing more evidence of fatigue. Murray ran the shot down, hit the pass, and got himself into the finals.

Murray played a very intelligent match, using tools to his advantage. In particular, Murray has a very compact backhand. He can hit down the line very accurately, as well as hit a powerful crosscourt shot. This makes his backhand versatile and dangerous, and he doesn't need much time. Even when Nadal managed to hit a hard forehand that forced Murray to run, Murray has such great defensive skills that he invariably made Nadal have to hit another shot he didn't expect.

Credit Murray with coming back and playing a solid match against Nadal when Nadal came out more aggressive, and looked like he had mentally beaten Murray. However, it turned out it was Nadal who was beaten.

Rarely do you see a player like Murray who adjusts how he plays to his opponents. More often than not, you see a Nadal-like player, who plays the same way, regardless of opponent.

Now Murray sees if he can be the roadblock to Federer winning his 13th major and his fifth US Open in a row. Federer got a day's rest and is hoping that he can find the same magic that allowed him to play the best match he's played since Wimbledon against Novak Djokovic. However, Djokovic lost to Murray twice, and now Murray's beaten a guy he's never beaten before in Nadal. Can Federer figure out a way to beat Murray before Federer really does get too old?

The answers will be found out Monday when the finals are played.

The Dumbing Down of American Politics

Sean Penn recently complained that both Democrats and Republicans are playing politics (duh!) and that America deserves better than either party. Or something to that effect.

There are a bunch of reasons for this, but there are two reasons: first, many Americans simply don't care about politics. It's all about politicians trying to look good, make their opponent look bad, and spend money for special interests. Yes, everyone does that. When folks worry about the latest football, basketball, baseball game, trying to pay rent, dealing with their job, paying for gas, then these issues matter to them very little. It's homework for most people to even know what politicians do.

Thus, we get simplified politics. And in the world of simplified politics (sorry to hear the passing of Don LaFontaine, who did that voice, though he wasn't the original one that Jerry Seinfeld used in his trailer), the idea is to treat political parties like sports teams. It's even worse than the worst rivalries you can imagine.

Red Sox-Yankees, Redskins-Cowboys, Duke-UNC, Michigan-Ohio State? Nothing compares to Democrats-Republicans.

I have to say I'm not immune to this. I find Sarah Palin's voice like listening to nails on chalkboard. The Republicans have a simple strategy which is to sling mud and then make up credentials. They criticize Governor Tim Kaine for a lack of experience, being a mayor of a tiny city, then turn around and say Palin with even less experience, being even mayor of a smaller town is not qualified.

Here's the funny thing. Republican talking heads know they are doing this, and they do it because they think Americans are stupid. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Because people have picked teams, and they can't stand the other team. How much loyalty is that?

You can literally point to places where Republicans say one thing when it's a Democrat and another when it's a Republican. Worse still, these points are handed out to Republicans to say everywhere so everyone stays on the same message as if this thought were somehow original. Jon Stewart continuously points this out, but brand loyalty is hard to squash.

Machiavelli once said it is better to be feared than to be loved. The corollary is that it is better to hate your opponent than to love your friend. Hate transcends love always.

Democrats have taken to similar strategies, but have avoided really heavy hitting stuff. They don't criticize McCain's leaning on his POW past, his involvement in the Keating Five, his soundbite of drill for oil to turn around his campaign, his cheating on his first wife, his embrace of Bush even as Bush insinuated McCain had fathered an illegitimate child in their 2000 run for presidency.

Obama has tried to claim the high ground. He argued that removing the gas tax in the summer (of 17 cents) was silly, that drilling was silly. It is! But Americans think there are easy solutions everywhere. Drill more and our problems are solved. And Republicans look for strategies to win. They accuse Democrats of this, but they are far more interested in winning.

They've done it in a variety of ways, the most common being trying to make Democrats look wimpy. Republicans like to feel tough and independent (despite being poor). The other factor is religion. Although Jimmy Carter was the first evangelical to run for President, he was an anomaly by being both smart and Democrat (by smart, I mean he has an advanced degree; his political savvy wasn't so good).

You can blame Bush for this kind of strategy. Bush trotted out the Willie Horton ad. Bush, Jr. merely followed the same tactics (remember Swift Boats).

The thing is many a Democrat would love to sling back, hitting hard on Republicans, except what works on the average Republican voter doesn't work on the average Democratic voter (is there such a thing?).

And that it has come down to this kind of petty bickering is because the level of discourse has been dragged down by Fox News, the Republicans, etc. And it's been dragged down because it works.

As Ron Paul tries to run an alternate convention, no one much covers it because it would give credibility to some other viewpoint. Rather than create a democracy of ideas, we are given the autocratic two-party system with one sides fighting dirty as they've done time and again.

Even Democrats rail against their own, vilifying Nancy Pelosi for lacking the will to stop the war, giving Bush whatever he wants in the hopes that the elections will swing Democrat and maybe she can do some of the things she actually promised.

We deserve better, but it ain't coming any time soon.

Tennis Update

I was going to blog about politics, but I don't have anything coherent to say. I only say that most people don't really understand politics (including me) and so they either perpetuate the spin or the fall for it. Spin is when the other side does something wrong and your crucify them for it, but when your side does something wrong, you find excuses.

Instead, I'll talk about tennis, and rather than talk about the US Open which is going on right now, I'll talk about my own tennis.

Tennis is a hard enough sport that it takes a lot of work to improve. Most people don't care that much about improving. They simply care about playing. I don't know why that is, but there you have it.

Lately, to improve, I've been taking tennis lessons. As much as I read about tennis, I can only self analyze so much. Having a second pair of eyes can help quite a bit. The big drawback is how much lessons cost. However, I figure I only have a handful of years for me to play better tennis before age really starts to catch up with me. So the money part doesn't bother me so much.

The latest lesson I've learned is the volley. I've generally been a "good" volleyer meaning I can get my racquet on the ball. But my volleys always float, and never have much power. I always attributed it to not swing hard enough. Little did I know that there were other factors hurting my volley.

In particular, I had an incorrect perception. The key to a good volley is not to use the arm too much. Instead, you want to turn your body sideways and let the torso do the work. That way, your arm is pretty steady, and provides a much stronger base to hit the shot. What a difference that makes! Volleys that used to float now have some pace to it. I can't say I understand the physics of it, but somehow using too much arm actually makes the volley weaker. I wonder if players in the 40s made that mistake too (I was watching some video of tennis in those days and volleys looked awfully weak).

I'm starting to get a bit more power in my forehand, at the cost of missing more, but for now, that seems like an OK tradeoff. I'm still trying to figure out how to use my body more on my forehand instead of arming the ball so much.

Alas, my wrist and shoulder have been bothering me lately. I probably should give my body a more serious rest.