UCLA Wins its first game at the College World Series

 There are 8 teams in the Baseball College World Series (the word "World" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here). UCLA is one of them, and the only Big 10 participant. The Big 10 has never been a powerhouse baseball conference (at their own admission), and adding the 4 Pac-12 schools, they believe, will help them.

Well, after advancing to the final 8 in Omaha, UCLA won its first game. And they looked cute doing it.

PS - The ex-PAC-12 conference has 3 of the 8 teams in the play-offs: UCLA, now Big 10, Arizona - now Big 12, and Oregon State still PAC-2.

The cutie there is Phoenix Call.

My "first" job out of college, wha whann

I did have a plan post college, you know. With a degree in Geography and Economics, I intended to pursue a career in airline route planning. Deregulation had occurred not all that long before, and I JUST knew that understanding traditional migration and population growth patterns would make me great at it.

I had a very successful interview with Hughes Air West, the Flying Banana Airline. I was invited for a second interview, and it was all working dreamy. And then... Well, this is the story as told in another blog about defunct airlines.

Republic Airlines

Credit: Jon Proctor/ Wikimedia 

Republic Airlines was born in 1979 from the combination of North Central Airlines and Southern Airways (both founded in 1944). It was the first merger approved in the deregulated era. Republic was based at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, with additional hubs in Detroit and Memphis, and operated the largest fleet of Douglas DC-9s in the world. 

To expand the airline’s footprint in the West, Republic purchased Hughes AirWest in 1980, making it the largest U.S. airline at the time in terms of destinations served. In 1986, Northwest Airlines (then known as Northwest Orient) purchased Republic Airlines for $884 million, which was then the largest merger in U.S. aviation history. The Republic name lives on as Republic Airways, a regional carrier operating flights on behalf of American, Delta, and United.

At the time, Republic Airlines' flight planning was based in Texas and was uninterested in hiring more route planners.

And so, my employment path moved into computers, something I had sworn would not happen. Best laid plans, right?

The Problem on Democracy in a Multiethnic Society

 Mwanandee Kindembo is a Congolese writer and philosopher. His quote is that a nation can't impose Democracy, people have to impose it on themselves. 

I want to make a point about why Democracy often doesn't work in general and how the United States' founders tried to address this issue.

Here is the general problem with Democracy, which the United States has avoided. Democracy can easily turn into an autocracy of the majority where they can scapegoat the minority. There are numerous examples, but let's use India as our current example. 

India is another large country with multiple ethnic groups and religions. Throughout most of its existence as a single country (since 1950), the voters have been split between different states and diverse desires, as is the case in America. This created a system in which coalitions dominated most national governments. 

However, in recent elections, a different voting pattern has emerged. In many regions, voting began to follow religious lines. The 80% majority of Hindus voted one way, and the 14% of Muslims were overwhelmed. India's government then started implementing rules that left Muslims with less and less power. Muslims were ostracized and cast as enemies of the nation. The majority groups were vindicated and rewarded with control over the minority group (see Kashmir). Democracy itself was used to deny rights to Muslims. (Note: recent elections in India have begun to self-correct this with other Hindu parties competing for power.)

Or look at Iraq, after we imposed Democracy, the voting was along sectarian lines, Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. America had to establish a shared system of apportionment to maintain peace. That agreement has long since dried up.

America implemented a very different system. We have a Democracy where the voting power of the majority to ostracize the minorities is limited. We have elections for one set of legislators every two years (House) and another set every six years (Senate). We elect a President every four years. We have Supreme Court Judges for life. The idea here is that the majority would have to win multiple elections at both the national level and state level to harm the minority, and even then the Judiciary could overrule both the legislative and the administrative branches of government.

And the way we vote for President is a combination of popular votes across different states. The idea was that a single dominant group would find it almost impossible to control all the levers of power to impose its will on an ostracized minority. It has worked in the United States for so long because we have long voted for issues, not for our ethnicity. Even now, most Republicans are not voting for whites being in charge, but for the issues they promise to fix. 

This has worked excellently in a multicultural nation. And when enough people try to punish a subgroup, it becomes challenging. Look how long slavery lasted, even though it was an unpopular system long before the Civil War! A minority of people and states held up emancipation for over a century. It's hard to change major laws in the United States. But right now, the stars aligned and the Republicans are in charge of all levers of power at the national level and in most state levels.

They have begun to do what unfettered rule by majority usually does: exclude other groups from power. The outlawing of Trans rights, making it harder for Blacks to exercise their voting rights, outlawing protesting, and more. 

Somehow, new media has been able to divide our nation into two competing voting blocs, effectively making us resemble other nations where the rights of the majority vastly outweigh the rights of minorities. The relative size of the majority vs the minority does not matter when one party controls all the power. 

In nearly all other multiethnic states, particularly in Africa and Asia - where national boundaries were drawn by outside colonizers, Democracy falls apart when some groups realize they don't have a voice in government and probably never will.

Our own Civil War started when the slave states recognized they would be permanently excluded from power. Our current ruling government is attempting to expand its own power to secure lasting dominance by altering voting rules.

The question of whether we can preserve our current democracy seems to me to be dependent on whether we can uphold our laws beyond this attempt to establish single-party rule. OR if that single party breaks into factions once Trump, a unique politician, leaves the scene. Because for the next 18 months or so, minority rights are at the whim of Republicans.

I feel like this letter is really from a man

 I know this advice letter is from a woman, but this is how many men I know feel abou tthe whole thing as well. No judgment, just truth.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

While being a mother is a life goal, my problem is all with the physical aspects. The whole thought of pregnancy and childbearing disgust and frighten me to a degree where I don’t know if I can bring myself to go through with it. I am not a two-ton Tessie, but I’m petrified of getting fat. I am also a bit of an obsessive-compulsive neatnik. I associate pregnancy and childbirth with what happens to the people in the Alien movies … there is this thing growing and mooching off of me for months, then bursting out in a most painful and disgusting manner. Ever since I can remember being told how babies were made, I have always felt this way, and the feelings seem to have compounded as I have gotten older. Do you think this is something that will go away if I just go through with it? 

When History Becomes Myth - and then it is decoded

In one of the driest parts of Ecuador, a myth exists. Due to the region's unique positioning and alternating ocean currents, there is an area in Ecuador that tends to experience years of rain, followed by a series of years-long near-droughts. This myth, and some pre-Incan maps, led a local scientist to make a major find and help local people.

That was when Ramón deciphered the meaning of an Indigenous myth, that of “touro Cango” (Cango the bull), he had heard as a child.

“The myth said that the bull, which was responsible for bringing rain, lived in Catacocha while there were lakes, as he liked the grass that only grew in them. If there were no grass, he would not eat,” says Ramón. “This means that when the lakes disappeared, the bull disappeared too, along with the rain.”

Here is what happens, which the myth explains. To get through the dry season, there is a series of small lakes and wetlands up in the mountains that hold rainwater. Modern irrigation systems drain these ecosystems quickly during the dry years for human and crop use.

But this scientist had an idea that came from the grasses in the myth. Rainwater runs off dry hills very quickly because the soil is non-porous, think desert flash floods. The pre-Inca people maintained these shallow lakes and wetlands before modern systems came along. They did not drain them for irrigation or any other purpose. 

However, these wetlands and lakes are covered in a special type of grass that slows down evaporation. These grasses grow in wet and dry years. The land under these water features has become more porous over hundreds or thousands of years. So because humans did not drain the lakes, the ground underneath has become porous and can accept water. Once you capture the water in these wetlands but don't drain it, the water seeps into the ground, replenishing the water table and wells farther down the mountains.

With this system, the wells provide water all year round and retain it even during drought years, when rainfall is limited to March and April.

Cool huh?

Happy Birthday President Trump -oh yeah - and Happy Birthday US Army. And it's Flag Day.

Looking forward to President Trump's Big Beautiful show of Force. It's like a Toyota-thon for wanna be strongmen.

It is a joke in poor taste, in which our consumer culture, here as defined by Toyota-thons, is juxtaposed against our leaders' sad need to prove their manhood by the size of their gun barrels.

Two Things, This the less important one...

 ... why has smoking become cool again? In ads, fashion shows, celebrity shoots, and entertainment media, smoking is becoming more and more prevalent. It is once again being thought of as cool.

This is an image from a New York Times story on something else, but it captures the idea that today, all the cool kids smoke.

Many of you may be thinking that something is a little off and overthinking this. Others may think I have taken a left instead of a right on the road to WhatTheHelliStan. 

But let's press on.* I have two thoughts. Note that both of these are only my assumptions - I haven't investigated them because this is more fun.

1. All the cool girls are doing it. 

• In the past, the "bad boys" in movies or TV were often portrayed as smokers who broke the rules set by "the man." True, "the man" was usually a lady teacher or your mom, but that only seems really odd in retrospect.
• Today, many of the smokers are young women, often inhabiting places where smoking makes them cool. You don't eat as much. You can drag out a cigarette break. Nursing a cocktail for the same amount of time just looks pathetic
• It's naughty. Smoking has the thrill of being a bad girl. You can't legally smoke almost anywhere now, bars, restaurants, beaches, parks, movie theaters, etc - so smoking is a low-key bad boy activity, but with totally low stakes if you're caught.
• Few celebrities' pictures are as evocative as black and white close-ups with smoke curling in the background of a sultry smile. That same picture in color (and real life) is SO MUCH LESS attractive (see headline shot)

2. Legal changes in the media. You can smoke on TV now.

• Follow me for a minute here. The FCC has established several rules for broadcast channels over the years. For years, people couldn't smoke on TV unless it was shown in a very bad moral light. Remember "Friends." None of the major characters smoked.
• This changed with the introduction of cable channels. Since these weren't terrestrial "broadcasters," but were provided via paid private cables, they could ignore the rules. Many of the early Calle shows featured our new anti-heroes smoking. Sure, it was a character flaw, but a minor one that users could easily overlook.

• Aside: You can also tell the difference by the use of seat belts. For shows made to be broadcast on public channels, right before a car moves, everyone in the front seats must put on a seatbelt. There are a few exceptions made for police and emergency vehicles. On cable, seat belts are inconsequential in nearly all cases.

One last thing. In my age-appropriate group of friends,  almost no one smokes. And when we ask each other why (sometimes there is a smoker with us, so we all have to go to the patio - and we all quiz him why), a common answer comes back. Almost all of us had parents who smoked. Our memories aren't of stars on the big screen puffing away, it was of the smell that overwhelmed you. In the car, windows rolled up, pre-air conditioning air floating around getting thicker like a Cheech and Chong movie, but without the fun part.