The TV is dying

Television is dying for me.  I'd like to identify the culprits (in chronological order):

• My kids.  When they're around, I can't always watch the shows I want to watch.  And when they aren't around, I don't want to waste my precious screen time on commercials or waiting for a show. 
• The iPad.  Sherry and I bought one about a year ago.  It is a complete game-changer in how it altered my preferences for consuming news.  Ironically, I have ceded ownership to my wife.  She gets more out of it than I do.  I'll still get chances to occasionally use it to read my magazines and The Inquirer.
• The Kindle.  Really, it might be a bit player in all this.  But I acquired it last summer just as I was starting to get more interested in reading Game of Thrones.  Reading on it came to supplant watching the Phillies as my way to pass a pleasant summer evening. 
• The Philadelphia Eagles.  Their 2011 campaign was such a clunker it diminished my desire to watch nearly any sport.  The Flyers' pratfall in the playoffs and the Phillies' mediocre start to the 2012 season hasn't helped matters.  Ironically, I won't miss a single Eagles game after switching off the cable.  Those are still over the air. 
• The Roku Box.  It's nimble.  It's flexible.  It links me to nearly anything I want to watch.  I just have to pray that the little guy holds out against the titans that are Apple and Google.  
• That commentator on Michael Smerconish's show who, back in March, talked of how one should invest one's time rather than just spend it.  It's made me rethink what I do when I relax.  (By the way, a peripheral casualty of this was Angry Birds.) 
• This laptop.  Now I can just digest however much content online as I want.  And a lot of it is news and commentary.  I like the ability to create and consume this laptop gives me.  I like being able to pick away at tasks both tedious and amusing online as I half-heartedly watch something.  Further, I'm starting to lock in on the richness of news that is out there.  

And that's the story.  The economics teacher in me wants to point out the diminishing marginal returns of television.  And after 36 years of watching a lot of television, it makes sense that I've hit the end of what it can do for me.  It's amusing to think of how these changes are going to make my household look different by the time my kids are 15 or 16, the age I was when cable first came to my neighborhood. 

Sherry reminded me tonight of how I used to yearn for a television in the kitchen.  No more.  The iPad and laptop can satisfy that.  I think she enjoyed knowing that holding the line on keeping TV out of the kitchen has worked out so nicely. 

My Sunday News Roundup

Some interesting angles on what's going on in the world:

Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett wrote an interesting essay on the long-term cost of unemployment.  What they have to say on unemployment's impact, for me, wasn't as meaningful at the idea they shared from Germany.  Germany, when it encountered the cyclical unemployment that came with the Great Recession embarked on offering subsidies to companies if those companies would keep workers on their roles, albeit at reduced hours.  Instead of paying out unemployment benefits they subsidized the payrolls of companies that otherwise would've been sending workers tot he unemployment office.  I like it.  It strikes me as committing money for something more purposeful than just supporting the misfortunate.  It's giving them something purposeful they can do. 

Jess Gavora's op-ed in the Washington Post struck a chord with me  She was commenting on the Julia advertisements from President Obama's campaign.  I share Gavora's perspective.  I watched the whole ad on the president's election website and I felt unsettled at the ominpresent nanny-state it seemed to call for.  To me, there seems only a small degree of difference between Uncle Sam being there for every life change and Big Brother being there instead.  It's the sort of ad that won't win any convert, but instead reassure bases.  Conservatives watch it and are repelled.  Liberals watch it and might be tempted to look for the "Donate Now" button.  Let's face it, that's what the candidates' websites should do.  I wonder how the target demographic for which Obama's campaign is targeting would feel about Governor Romney's Mother's Day marketing.  I couldn't help but feel a little sad for that future that the ad depicted because, with the exception of Julia's son Zachary, there is no one else in her life.  No spouse, no parents, no siblings, no friends; only a government on whom one could lean.  Life is richer with others. 

Speaking of Mother's Day, did anyone in the media think about doing a series of interviews with recent presidential moms?  If I'm not mistaken, the mothers of Obama, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton are still alive.  Oh, whoops, I'm very wrong.  The president's mother died in 1995.  Never mind. 

Little else in the news intrigued me today.  A lot of coverage about the president's decision to endorse same-sex marriage, but after a while that commentary seems repetitive, and it seems like conservative pundits aren't weighing in on it yet, which leads to a lot of commentary that seems like an echo chamber.  Then again, I don't miss any commentary decrying the president's endorsement.  I'm glad the president did it, but there is no legislation or amendment pending in Congress regarding the topic.  What occurred was more symbolic than practical last week.  Though symbolic acts offered by presidents usually are seismic.

One odd gem: Apparently Studebaker once sold a car called the Dictator, or so says George Will in his column.  I would call the 1930s an inopportune time to choose that as the label for an automobile.

My conservative friends reading this might be surprised that I linked to a NY Times piece.  I broke down and got a digital subscription.  Hope I'm not voted off the island.   Ironically, some justification comes from a column written by the Washington Post's ombudsman about the massive IT infrastructure their paper now requires.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.  If we want good journalism, we need to support the  businesses on which we rely.

The 24-Hour News Cycle is Reaching New Lows

So, Mitt Romney was allegedly cocky and obnoxious as a teenager, prone to moments of cruelty to other teens.  Or, so says this flash-in-a-pan story.  My, my, the president's pronouncement of support in favor of same-sex marriages didn't even take a day to become too stale for the media cycle.  We've already moved on to the sophomoric behavior of a grown man back when he was, well, a sophomore. 

I guess I have something in common with both candidates for president.  Like the incumbent, my views on same-sex marriage have evolved.  Like the challenger, I regret some of the things I did as a youth. 

I guess that approximately 100 million other Americans could say the same thing. 

We've got two men of character running for the highest office in the land.  Both seem like principled human beings.  Both are family men, well-spoken, well-educated.  Why is there reluctance on the part of them, their advisers, or the media to move on from this silly side-show stuff and onto more substantive issues.  If the news cycle has stooped now to claiming that Mr. Romney was a bit of a brat in high school, I content that we have hit the law of diminishing returns of side-show character issues.  For the president and his challenger, can we just concede that there aren't really any instrumental issues of character and that, instead, there are important issues of vision, policy, and priorities that should dominate our national discourse? 

Okay, now this is amusing

So the History channel website had an interesting article on the five U.S. presidents who have taught school.  One of them was Lyndon Johnson.  On one hand, I could actually see that working.  I could see him being a very capable teacher.  But I can't help but chuckle at how he must have dealt with ornery senior high school students.  After all, he was famous for the "Johnson Treatment" (pictured below)

Farewell to another RINO

All I can say to this story is "sigh."  Not even a capital S for my sigh.

Politico Reports Lugar's Defeat

The fella had been there 36 years.  He had fallen out of touch with his constituents.  He was at one time a miserable candidate for president.

But he had sound credentials on foreign policy.  He had an impulse toward creating consensus and reaching across the aisle.

Just as it was for Arlen Specter, I guess it was time to go.  But what is replacing this generation of leadership in Washington?  What are their principles?  What is their calling card?  D or R, I just don't know.

I look at some of the successors to the venerable ones in the Senate and wonder what they've accomplished, independently or as a cohort.  I don't know if I can recognize anything worth mentioning. 

A Divine Sense of Humor

I do believe God has an amazing sense of humor.  Please accept as evidence this little tale . . .

I have a fund by which I save for fun purchases.  You know, toys for men in their mid-30s.  I've maintained this fund, building it through savings gimmicks, spending it, then building it again, since early 2006.  I've bought some neat stuff with it.  I pat myself on the back for my frugality, for buying items with cash rather than credit, for depriving myself of transient luxuries like beer or bourbon for loftier goals. 

Uncannily, each time I make a big purchase with it, an unexpected expense ambushes me right after I have depleted my savings.  My favorite such instance came after the purchase of the big-screen TV and Blu-Ray player I scrimped for and purchased back in 2009.  Within a week of paying for the TV, I was stopped by one of Upper Gwynedd's finest for doing 40 mph in a zone that called for only 25.  Oh, and shortly after that episode I lost my wedding ring. 

This trend continues.  Two weeks ago I purchased the computer on which I'm typing this post.  (A great system, by the way.)  And then . . .

• A bicycle belonging to my kids was stolen from the porch.  (Really quite sad.)  That'll be about $180 and a couple of broken hearts. 
• I punctured a tire on my automobile driving over an enormous bolt.  That'll be $200. 
• On the way back from shop where tire got fixed my recurring check engine light came on.  My hunch: catalytic converter.  If I'm right: four digits. 

Normally God's humbling moves come at a cost of half the price of the big-ticket item on which I just splurged.  The ticket and ring ended up being about $450 to replace; the TV and Blu-Ray about $900.  It looks like this most recent dose of humility will exceed my normal agreement with the Big Fella. 

These are funny things to muse on.  I have so much to be fortunate about.  I must if I'm trying to make light of it. 

Space

The last word from this week's The Week is worth a read.  It's a mournful commentary on the demise of America's space program.  It pushed me to wonder, how is America trying to grow right now?  What is our grand national project?  Is there any? 

We've always had a grand project.  Westward Expansion.  The Transcontinental Railroad.  The Panama Canal.  Saving the world from tyranny.  Space.  But what is it we're yearning to do today.  I really can't think of anything not having to do with preserving, maintaining, or elevating people's standard of living.  Noble, perhaps, but not grand.  I miss grand.

It's funny.  I have little time for science.  Chemistry, biology, physics never really have much of a hold over me.  Yet I'll drop a lot of things to look at the tales of our quest to the moon.  I miss something grand like that which captures my imagination and makes me temporarily overlook my biases against the world of math and science.