-->

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Wow...Talking Pictures, Man!

I just discovered that my new laptop has a webcam. I'm really excited about this as this should open up a whole new world of expression. Here's the result of my first test run, which I posted on YouTube:

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Beautiful White Christmas

What is it about waking up to view everything covered with a fresh coating of snow on Christmas morning? Perhaps, it's years of social conditioning from various sources that have given me this western perspective that there must be snow on Christmas. In my mind, Christmas and snow go together like cake and frosting even though 90 percent of the people who celebrate it never, ever experience one.

This year, the "White Christmas" scenario played out almost perfectly here at my home in west-central Indiana. Frantically, we did our last-minute, Christmas Eve shopping yesterday. And almost on cue, snow began to fall when we got home to wrap our gifts to lay under the tree. The front room window view looked almost like a turn-of-the-century Christmas postcard with snowflakes magically falling and adding a white canopy to everything they collectively touched. It continued to fall through the night. And by morning, the winter storm had relented after dumping about 2 inches of snow on us. Not too much...not too little....


I'm going to enjoy every minute of this wintry spectacle so long as the calendar says it's Christmas. But tomorrow is Dec 26th...and the official countdown to the vernal equinox begins.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The Terrible Loss of Lennon

Thirty years ago, John Lennon, one of the most imaginative, insightful and unpretentious celebrities to have ever lived, was gunned down in a senseless act of violence. Of course, his impressive compilation of music lives on. Unfortunately, so does the memory of his tragic death.

While watching my tiny, 13-inch TV in my University of Missouri college dorm room on this date in 1980, I learned about Lennon’s murder. The New England Patriots were battling the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football, and the usually brash Howard Cosell humbly broke the news to millions of viewers.

"Yes, we have to say it. Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash, which in duty bound, we have to take."
-Howard Cosell



After the game, Ted Koppel on ‘ABC News Nightline’ put the Iranian hostage crisis on the backburner and led with the Lennon story.



The next day, Yoko Ono, forced into the role of being John’s widow, requested that there be no funeral.

"There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean."
-Yoko Ono


That, however, didn’t stop the outpouring of grief. Spontaneous vigils were held globally…and on the following Sunday (Dec. 14, 1980), nearly a half-million mourners gathered in New York City’s Central Park to pay their respects.



Personally, this was a very distressing time for me. Ronald Reagan had recently become the President-elect. Together with the loss of Lennon, I was certain World War III was just around the corner.

Fortunately, my bleak assessment didn’t come to pass. But, I often wonder how things would be today if John Lennon were still alive. He’d be 70 now….and he’d most certainly would be able to boast of an even vaster music anthology that would continue to demonstrate his brilliance. And perhaps, the actual course of history would have been altered. I absolutely believe the world would be a better place in this alternate universe.

Losing his base...

President Barack Obama could very well fail to win a second term. His decision to acquiesce once again to the GOP and allow the Bush tax cuts to continue may be the final straw. Keith Olbermann's latest commentary is one sure fire sign he's losing his base.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



I believe the next few months will prove critical to Obama's political future.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

AND SO THE MYTH CONTINUES…

Republicans still seem to have most Americans convinced that their way is the path to austerity and fiscal responsibility. Despite a contrary record of governance during nearly the last four decades, the GOP continues to campaign by boxing progressives into a corner using the old name calling, sucker punch tactic: calling Democrats “big spenders”.

But now this image has grown to be so entrenched, the 44th President of United States, who was elected just two years ago on a left-of-center mandate of change, has allowed himself to be portrayed as one. While yielding to yet another Republican talking point, President Obama has offered to freeze the pay of civilian federal workers for two years.



A federal pay freeze isn’t the worst idea on the table. At least it’s better than federal job cuts, which is what many in the GOP want.

But what’s so troubling about this latest effort at bipartisanship isn’t so much the nuts and bolts behind the idea, but the consequences it will have on public perception. Obama’s federal pay freeze idea reinforces this false notion that Democrats are ‘big spenders’.
Why has Obama ceded this argument when the record clearly shows that the GOP has been the party that’s run up biggest deficits?

And what makes this idea so depraved is that it’s an ineffective and unnecessary gimmick that puts undue hardship on many hardworking Americans who aren’t exactly rolling in the lap of luxury. It’s a penny-ante, symbolic debt reduction measure that totally ignores areas where huge cuts could be made, such as two needless and seemingly never-ending wars.

President Obama is in a lose-lose situation. He’s allowing his foes to frame the debate by inaccurately manipulating the public’s perception of him and his party. Plus, he’s appearing weak and spineless to his political base.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Still Boneheaded After All These Years...

This story must be put in some geographic and historic perspective.


St. Louis Most Dangerous City


Due to a boneheaded decision from the city's politicians during the 19th Century, St. Louis' city boundaries haven't changed since 1876. At the time, the boundary ran through mostly rural farmland adjacent to St. Louis County. The idea, shortsighted as it was, was to free the wealthier, urbane city folks from the tax burden of supporting the needs of their poorer, farming neighbors in the county.

As the years passed, St. Louis' urban area expanded into this county frontier, but the city's outer boundary did not. By the 1960s, most of the area's wealth and tax base resided in the county, which was a complete reversal of the situation when the boundary freeze was first enacted. Now, the 'city' of St. Louis...still separated from the county...contains mostly impoverished and blighted neighborhoods. And the 134-year-old boundary that's still in place now runs through some of the most urbanized terrain one could possibly see in the U.S.

Had St. Louis been allowed to expand and develop as most major American cities did (e.g., Indianapolis), suburbs like Clayton, Kirkwood, Webster Groves and Florissant would be city neighborhoods. And, the statistics from this study, I believe, would paint St. Louis in a much more favorable light.

I wonder how Chicago or New York would have fared in this study if they retained their 1876 city limits.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Leadership Doesn't Always Come in Pinstripes

An informal leader is someone within an organization who is seen as worthy of following despite not having an ‘official’ title.



I used to work as a forklift operator in a warehouse that was more or less guided by an informal leader. There was an older forklift operator there who could probably drive circles around everyone else. I think his name was Clarence, but everyone called him “PeeWee”.



PeeWee knew every nook and cranny of that warehouse, and knew how to keep our whole fleet of fork trucks, tuggers and pallet jacks running consistently and safely. Formal management saw him as the “go to” guy when logistical problems arose. And he had the utmost respect of his peers.



Oddly, PeeWee always scoffed at formal leadership. I once asked him about becoming warehouse supervisor. He responded by first cussing under his breath and then said, “No way, man.” I think he thought, perhaps rightly so, that a formal title would bring more responsibility, culpability and stress.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Define Quality...and Drop Down and Give Me Twenty!

Back in 1999, I was working on a manufacturing assembly line helping make semi-trailers for a company that was seeking to meet ISO 9002 requirements.
It was here where I first heard quality defined as “meeting or exceeding customer expectations”. With a pending shop floor review from ISO auditors, company supervisors instructed me and my co-workers to recite this phrase word for word when we were most assuredly going to be asked: What is quality?



At the time, I thought the whole thing was rather silly. But that’s probably because my company did a rather poor job of explaining the ISO process to its workers…and handled the quality definition recitation as if we were prisoners of war reciting just our name, rank and serial number.



I’ve come to learn that the ISO is an international quality accreditation organization that determines whether a company meets a standardized process which helps the company meet both its and the general public’s needs.



As for my company, it met the requirements. Within months after winning approval, we began producing trailers with ‘ISO 9002’ emblazoned across our company’s logo.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Inside Satisfaction

At work in my company’s packaging department, supervisors assign the task of making ready-to-use boxes out of cardboard flats to one person at the start of every shift. All this person does for 12 hours is make certain that the five or six packaging lines, which don’t have automatic box-making machines, are properly supplied with boxes. This usually entails converting roughly 5 thousand flats into usable boxes.

By supplying these lines with boxes, the box-maker is serving the needs of his or her customers, which in this example are internal. And in order for my company to reach total quality, it must place equal importance on satisfying these internal customers as it does on its external customers, who are, of course, the consumers who purchase the final product in retail stores.

Poorly made boxes can cause the product to fall out and get scrapped. Failing to supply these boxes in a timely manner can cause unnecessary down time. Both cases in point cut into company profits. Customers…both external and internal…are the judges of quality.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Higher Prices means Better Qual...er uh..Advertising!


Do we get what we pay for?


If it were a perfect world, high prices would translate into high quality. But in reality, the two do not necessarily go hand in hand.


There are countless examples of higher-priced products not having more quality than their cheaper competitors. One area where consumers often find this contrary price/quality relationship is in the prescription drug market.


The drug commercials we see on TV would have us believe that their brand-name drug is superior, but the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) says this isn’t so.
The FDA requires generic drugs to meet the same safety standards as their name-brand counterparts. Generic drug makers can charge less because they haven’t had to spend as much in developing the product. But let's not forget some this higher cost can be attributed also to advertising and packaging.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

My Hell

The New York Yankees
Circle I Limbo

Libertarians
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Ben Bernanke
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

General asshats
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Creationists
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

George Bush
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Republicans
Circle VII Burning Sands

Bernie Madoff
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Osama bin Laden
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Turn it up!

At my work, we are required to keep the volume of our PC’s turned up.

My employer manufactures the digital discs that much of the world uses for gaming, CD’s, DVD’s and now high-definition DVD’s. I work as a material handler in a digitally-controlled library where I issue and collect returns of needed manufacturing component parts. The company refers to this area as the “matrix”. I’m not exactly sure why.

Anyway, to make a long story short, our PC’s that we use to keep track of inventory transfers can get rather noisy during the course of a day. One sound we hear quite often is a drum roll. This sound tells us that a particular manufacturing area needs a part ASAP, and that we either need to locate or order one. This drum roll will persist until someone clicks on the “acknowledge” link that came with the message.

Trust me, there are days I wish I could permanently mute all of our PC’s.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Midterms and Insanity

I can’t believe how short and selective some, or according to recent polling, most Americans’ memories are. Logically, one couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the Republican Party would be banished from power for possibly a generation after leaving us in 2008 with massive and historically-high debts, two questionable and unpopular wars and an economy in shambles teetering on collapse

But with less than 40 days now until the 2010 midterm elections, voters appear ready to give the legislative branch back to the GOP, whose leaders don’t even say they’re bringing anything new to the table. In fact, they’re promising more of the same disastrous policies they generated while holding power during the eight years of the Bush Administration.

Now, Americans historically vote against the party in power during midterm elections, and I fully expected that trend to impact the Democratic Party this fall. But not to the extent that is being forecasted by pundits and polls.

I just would wish folks would remember that some things take time. President Barack Obama can’t twitch his nose like Elizabeth Montgomery did on “Bewitched”, and suddenly make all our problems disappear.

Don’t get me wrong! Obama has been disappointing on many fronts. But I do give him some credit. I think he stopped the economic free fall, and a few things are starting to improve. Remember, most of his stimulus programs are not scheduled to kick in until next year. I really believe 2011 will be a year of genuine economic growth and lower joblessness.

Experience from the last decade tells us that Republican policies don’t work. Many wise people have said trying something again that’s known to fail is the very definition of INSANITY.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Overused Words and Phrases used by Football Announcers


Football season is upon us once again. And it’s time to desensitize our ears to football lingo being uttered by thousands of Keith Jackson wannabes at a stadium somewhere near you every weekend.

Now, there’s game terminology, such as “yardage” and “touchdown”, which football fans will hear during every game. But, then there’s also the excessive expressive talk. Here’s a short list of five words or phrases that football announcers rely on too much:

* Tremendous – I don’t think this word would even exist were it not for football. Howard Cosell was, perhaps, the one who popularized tremendous.
* Monster – as in BIG! “Jones is having a monster game” or “The Colts’ matchup with the Patriots next Sunday is going to be a monster game”.
* Wide Open – This one must be taught in Football Broadcasting 101. Announcers at every level of competition, high school, college or pro, use “wide open” at least once a game to describe a player who had no coverage during a passing play.
* Execute or Execution – Somebody somewhere told football announcers that saying “He’s really executing well.” instead of “He’s really playing well,” makes them appear more educated. But hey, Terry Bradshaw says execute…so what does that tell you?
* Work Ethic – I hear this one a lot in basketball also. It goes very well with entry number one, “He has a tremendous work ethic!”

So, if you want to be give up your day job and try football announcing as a career, just start constructing sentences with one or more of the above phrases. “Davis, showing tremendous execution and work ethic, managed to get wide open on that monster play.”



Monday, August 9, 2010

So...Just How Friggin' Old Am I?

Another August 7th is now history.

And with its passing, I've observed another anniversary of my earthbound existence. In other words, I just celebrated my birthday. And before you ask, I'm 53 years old..

What exactly does 53 years old mean? Well, the easy response is, "Joel, you're getting to be an old fart". But I'm wearing my cosmic hat today, and I'm liking the answer, "Joel, the Earth has orbited the Sun 53 times while you've been alive".

So the concept of the year is linked to astronomical events from an earthly perspective. But what if lived on the planet Mercury? Putting aside the fact that the planet is far too hot to sustain life, I'd be 222 years old!!! Whoa!

This can be explained by the fact that Mercury completes its "yearly" orbit around the Sun in just 88 days. And it has done that 222 times since August 7, 1957 (my birthday).

The following lists what my age would be on some of the other planets:
*Venus - 86 years
*Mars - 28 years
*Jupiter - 4 years
*Saturn - 1 year

Meanwhile, I'd be less than a year old on Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (Yes, I know Pluto isn't really considered a planet anymore, but I'm old school). These three planets haven't yet completed one full revolution around the Sun in my lifetime. In fact, I would have to wait almost two centuries for my next birthday on Pluto.

If you'd like to find out how old you are in other planetary "years", visit SolarBeat.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Graphic Perceptions

Graphs and charts can manipulate audience perception unethically by simple design variations. One can construct two different graphs based on identical data, and give an audience two very different messages.

Altering the range of data used for plotting charts is one way certain information can be either emphasized or de-emphasized. For example, certain trends can either be minimized or maximized on charts depending on how the data is plotted.

The following two bar charts use identical data, but the yearly decline in profits in the top one appears much more severe because of the smaller range of data along the axis.






A writer wanting to make declining profits seem worse might choose the top chart to manipulate unethically the perception of the audience.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

My Unique Experience with Globalization


At my last job, I worked as a warehouse specialist at Aisin Brake & Chassis, a Japanese-owned automotive parts manufacturing company in Indiana. And as a consequence of this ownership, the vast majority of company high management positions were held by Japanese nationals who, more often than not, knew little about our language and customs.

To bridge this gap, Aisin held unique diversity classes that taught special but simple Japanese expressions and customs. These classes were open to everyone employed at the factory. Also, for some fortunate American workers who were being considered for management, Aisin offered an intensive diversity course where the candidate spent a week in Japan itself with all expenses paid.

I always thought that it was telling that the Japanese placed an emphasis on the American workforce learning their ways, and not the other way around. But, hey, it was their company.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Beware! Zero Credibility and Dangerous

Andrew Breitbart is a dangerous liar who deliberately distorts the truth to intensify racial resentments in America. This isn’t a partisan statement; it’s a fact.

Breitbart is a 41-year-old a conservative blogger, newspaper columnist and television commentator. He’s responsible for posting edited videos Monday (July 19th) that discredited Shirley Sherrod, an African-American woman employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The videos appeared to show Sherrod giving a reverse racist speech at a 2009 NAACP fundraising event. The clips were edited so that Sherrod looked as if she was showing off an unashamed discriminatory attitude toward white farmers while NAACP audience members laughed and shouted with approval. Sherrod was forced to resign in the resulting controversy.

Breitbart said he posted the clips because they contained “video evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient”. However, the unedited video of the speech came out the next day (July 20th) showing almost the opposite happening. It revealed that Sherrod was, in fact, making an argument against racial discrimination, and the NAACP audience was applauding her call for tolerance. Shortly thereafter, the mainstream media backtracked and began exposing all the deception contained in the original clip, and Sherrod got a job offer from her old boss.

So with that hubbub behind, the “inside the beltway” crowd has shifted its focus back to Breitbart. Pundits from Politico.com, as well as CNN commentator Anderson Cooper have asserted that Breitbart is just an example of the out-of-control partisanship occurring in the blogosphere. Politico editor Jim VandeHei has said Breitbart is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s Arianna Huffington.

This is pure drivel. While definitely biased for the Democratic Party and progressive politics, Huffington has never intentionally manufactured a story and tried to pass it off as journalism. Breitbart is a scumbag whose messages go well beyond the boundaries of partisanship.

Yes, I said messages!

Do you remember the uproar over ACORN when an apparently incriminating video surfaced? This clip featured an apparent undercover reporter dressed as a pimp, who entered an agency office and supposedly exposed rampant corruption.


Like the Sherrod video, the ACORN pimp clip turned out to be fallacious and manufactured, and the person behind it was none other than Andrew Breitbart. But unlike Sherrod, ACORN never recovered because Congress decided to defund the community action agency after the pimp story first aired.

That’s two examples where Breitbart’s “partisanship” has poured gasoline on the charcoal embers of American racism by dangerously manufacturing stories. Breitbart is free to speak, but the media are free to quit giving him a podium. News sources must have at least some semblance of credibility. The next time CNN, MSNBC or FOX carries a Breitbart video, it should be one of him being dragged into court on civil lawsuit charges.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

REEE-jected!!!

When I worked in broadcasting years ago, I quickly learned that job insecurity was one of the major pitfalls. As a result, I often found myself on the job market and the recipient of one of the more common negative business messages: THE EMPLOYMENT REJECTION LETTER.

Effective rejection letters in broadcasting essentially follow the standard rejection letter format that almost everyone gets when seeking employment. Since I’ve received a high proportion of rejection letters during my many job searches, I’ve read some that range from polite and encouraging to disrespectful and downright mean-spirited.

The worst came from a Program Director at a Danville (IL) radio station. He proceeded to explain to me how Danville was much too big for someone of my talent because it was a market of 200 thousand people. Whoa! It’s right up there with Chicago and St. Louis…NOT! Ironically, I was working at the time in Terre Haute (IN), a market roughly about the same size as Danville.

In my opinion, the most effective rejections began with a buffer statement, such as “Thank you for your interest in continuing your broadcasting career at WJX-FM”. Some rejections contained statements that were more direct, but I always appreciated getting acknowledged for taking the time to apply.

By the way, whenever I received a letter from a broadcaster during a job search, I could almost lay a wager that it was a rejection. If the broadcaster was interested in me, they would contact me by phone.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Joel’s Got Mail!!


I read all the e-mails that I get on my work account, but ignore and delete roughly 90 percent of the ones that I receive at home.

On my home computer, I have a personal e-mail account with Yahoo. The only messages I always open and read are from family members, friends, job search leads and DeVry University. However, I’m flooded with e-mails from Facebook, which are messages containing friend requests, notifications and gaming updates. I immediately send these to the trash heap because I can retrieve the same information by simply logging on to the social network. Plus, my home account is the target of both legitimate and not-so-legitimate sales pitches for credit cards, insurance plans, other online college degrees and a whole host of other items on which people are hoping to make a buck.

The e-mail subject line can make a big difference. Sometimes a properly-worded subject line will prompt me to open a message I’d normally cast off.

For example, I once received a message from some person locater service that had the subject line: “Joel Wells, we’ve found a friend of yours!”. This message was rejected after I found out that this service needed my credit card number to discover who it was.

My e-mail account at work, in contrast, gets messages from just one source: the company. The messages are from management, human resource personnel and other co-workers. They send information that’s work related (at least it’s supposed to be), and I take the time to read, or at least skim, it all.

Subject lines on work e-mails only affect the sequence in which I read them. However, they don’t have an effect on whether I read or skim the message since I open them all anyway.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Yes, I Once Wrote for a Newspaper...Really!

Back in 1981, I worked a stretch as a sports reporter at the Columbia Missourian, a daily, commercial newspaper run by the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Since then, I often went around bragging about how I once was a sportswriter. But, I had no proof...until now.

Thanks to some wonderfully diligent librarians at Mizzou's journalism library, I was able to retrieve some long lost samples of my work. After tracking down the articles on microfilm (They have every issue of the Missourian dating back to 1923.), the library sent me several PDF files of stories with my byline. Then, I conveted these to JPG.

Now,Jay Mariotti's job isn't in any danger, but here's some of the samples. All the stories were about track. This is a preview I wrote about an upcoming meet for Mizzou.



The second set is my story about the local high school (the Hickman Kewpies) winning the state title in girls track.




My stint as a sports reporter ended shortly after these stories were published because I had to withdraw from Mizzou for personal reasons. I did graduate later but my emphasis was changed to broadcast news.

UPDATE:

FYI, I wrote and submitted the girls state track meet story on the day it happened, Saturday, May 30, 1981. The Missourian published it the next day in their Sunday edition for May 31, 1981. I'm still uncertain on the exact date for my other Missourian story, but I believe it was published the week before.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

The Disaster in the Gulf: Beyond Katrina

This may be the 2nd-worst disaster in the Gulf. The most catastrophic came when a rogue asteroid or comet smashed into the Yucatan peninsula some 65 million years ago. That calamity caused the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs and many other animal and plant species.

This oil spill should be thought of as a pending tragedy that easily has the potential for comparable damage. This is more than another Hurricane Katrina...it just may be another asteroid!

Friday, July 9, 2010

Before and After: The Power of Facebook?

I think there’s more than coincidence working here.

Last Monday (June 14th), severe thunderstorms producing high winds (some say tornadoes) and flash floods made an unwelcome visit to Vigo County and West-Central Indiana. As usual, the heavy rains left a nearby gravel road virtually impassable. It’s now five days later, and it appears the county has come out to make repairs. The following is a before and after shot of the area in question:


Now, this road, called Milliken Street, is along my daily bicycle-riding exercise route. “Wow!” I thought to myself. “The county is really on it”.

But, hold the phone… Milliken Street has been flooded many times. And never once did any trucks come out to pour gravel. Never once was the street leveled. Milliken’s puddles, no matter how deep, were always left to the goodwill chance of having at least a week of dry, sunny days to dry it up. And don’t forget, normally Milliken would still be a lake because it’s rained heavily nearly every day this week.

So what’s up? Well, the fact that I took pictures of the flooding and posted them on the Facebook page of the local television station (WTHI-TV, Channel 10) is, perhaps, the missing piece of the puzzle.

Channel 10’s local news is heavily viewed by the local powers-that-be, especially during weather events. They frequently broadcast Facebook mobile uploads on their newscasts. Now, I missed Channel 10’s newscast that night because the storm knocked out the neighborhood’s power. But, I’d say it’s a good bet that they broadcast my photos of the flooding.

Perhaps, my ego is getting the better of me. But I tend to think not. I think that it’s quite possible that my photos unintentionally made someone look bad, and provoked some long, overdue government action:


You gotta love it

An Equal Opportunity Wickedness


The most infamous example of human occupation began some 500 years ago when the leading European powers began invading and conquering the Americas. But it should be remembered that the history of humankind is full of conquest. It’s just that most attacks have happened on a much smaller scale.

Take the history of England:
-The Celts were overrun by the Romans.
-The Romans were overrun by the Germans (Anglo-Saxons).
-The Anglo-Saxons were overrun by the Vikings.
-The Vikings were overrun by the Norman French.

Each conquest was brutal to indigenous populations. The difference, of course, is that the invaders didn't have to travel half a planet to do their plundering and pillaging.

The only thing that sets Western cultures as more menacing is, perhaps, the lengths as to which they inflicted their oppression. However, no culture that exists on Earth has a spotless record in this regard, including the indigenous pre-Columbian cultures of the Western hemisphere.

THE FIRST ROAR

It was sometime during the summer of 1964; I don't remember the exact date. The hometown St. Louis Cardinals were in the middle of one o...