This was one of my favorite bits from George Carlin:

Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out.

Also: in football,basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you’d ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform,you’d know the reason for this custom.

Now, I’ve mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.

I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups - who’s up?

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog…
In baseball, if it rains, we don’t go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don’t know when it’s gonna end - might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there’s not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you’re capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I’ll be safe at home!

RIP George

Here are excerpts from the text of the four-part “Obama Plan to Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation,” as provided by the campaign:

1) Fully Close the “Enron Loophole”: One of the reasons our energy market is particularly vulnerable to excessive speculation is the so-called “Enron Loophole” … [which means] Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is unable to fully oversee the oil futures market and investigate cases where excessive speculation may be driving up oil prices. This regulatory gap is dangerous because: 1) the absence of government oversight has the potential to facilitate abusive trading or price manipulation. And 2) the failure of a large derivatives dealer could trigger disruptions of supplies and prices in energy markets. As President, Barack Obama will go beyond the changes included in the recently-passed Farm Bill and fully close the Enron loophole by requiring that U.S. energy futures trade on regulated exchanges. He will call for new, disaggregated data on index fund and other passive investments to increase transparency and oversight of the growing number of institutional investors participating in commodities futures markets. And he will support legislation directing the CFTC to investigate whether additional regulation is necessary to eliminate excessive speculation in U.S. commodities markets, including higher margin requirements and position limits for institutional investors.

2) Ensure That U.S. Energy Futures Cannot be Traded on Unregulated Offshore Exchanges: CFTC oversight of oil market speculation is also limited by rules that allow energy traders to engage in unregulated transactions through foreign subsidiaries of U.S. exchanges. Currently, about 30 percent of U.S. oil futures trades fly below the regulatory radar because they are transacted on a U.S. exchange that works through a subsidiary in London. Similar arrangements are being pursued by U.S. exchanges in partnership with Dubai as well. Barack Obama would limit the price impacts of excessive speculation by preventing traders of U.S. crude oil from routing their transactions through off-shore markets in order to evade speculation limits and also impose reporting requirements.

3) Work with Other Countries to Coordinate Regulation of Oil Futures Markets.

4) Call on the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to Vigorously Investigate Market Manipulation in Oil Futures.
Article

For years, the right-wing pundits have capitalized on the constant whining and spinelessness of the democrats. That continues today. There is overwhelming evidence that Bush has broken many laws and is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. So where is the support for impeachment? Bill Clinton gets impeached over getting a blow-job but Bush is responsible for thousands of deaths and gets a free ride?

Barack Obama recently opted out of public campaign financing because, as he put it, “the system is broken.” That’s very true. Four years ago, the 527 groups derailed John Kerry’s campaign and there is virtually no limitation as to how much money can be pumped into those groups, so what good are the rules when there are so many loopholes into how much money can be used?

Now it’s the republicans who are the whining since Obama has the money advantage. McCain has already opted into the system, then opted out of it, and now he’s back in it. Most democrats would have stayed within the system and then whined about the republicans not playing fairly. That’s because most democrats are spineless. We’ve seen this with their recent capitulation with the FISA bill.

Obama recognized his advantage in opting out of the system and took it, as he should have. Finally, a democrat with a spine!

Okay, I admit it… I got a little over ambitious with blogging. I now have four blogs: this one, one for cartoons, one for plug-in cars, and one for software project management. That’s too much for someone who can’t even find time to clean off his desk, so I for the time being, I cut it down to one for software project management and this one for everything else.

This post is for the cartooning process. My wife is out of town with our camera so I can’t post any of my cartoons until she gets back. That is, if I had drawn any cartoons, but the lack of camera is a good excuse. In the mean time, I can share some of what I found about techniques and materials.

I read Mark Parisi’s page about materials and this is what he uses:
2H pencil for sketching
Technical pens from .3 - .7 for inking
Bristol board
Single panel cartoon size: 5″ x 6″

Mark’s a successful cartoonist and that sounds logical, so those are the materials I’ll use to start off. I did some time as a draftsman back in the early 90s and had some technical pens back then. I’m not sure what happened to them, though. I’ll have to check some boxes in the basement. Chances are I’ll need to buy some new ones.

Now that I know what materials I need, here comes the hard part: what to draw. I drew single panel political cartoons back in my college days. I may do some of those again, but there are so many talented political cartoonists, I doubt I could compete. And I guess, that’s not really where my heart is.

So I think I just draw cartoons about life. Most cartoonists say to draw about what you know. What do I know? I know what it’s like to develop software in a large corporation. I did that for about ten years, so some of my cartoons may be in the mode of Dilbert. Then there’s my dog, Molly. She’s always getting into some kind of trouble. There are characters I’ve known — friends, relatives, neighbors… There’s Buddhists and new agey people.

So, I’m ready. I’m going to draw a cartoon. Right after my nap. Or maybe I’ll read some more blogs first. Damn, it’s hard to get started.

We often take things in life for granted — friends, family, and the few good programs on TV. Meet the Press has been one of those few good programs and it something I looked forward to every Sunday morning.

This morning on Meet the Press was a tribute to Tim Russert. Many of the big names in journalism shared their memories of him. They talked about the loyalty he had for his friends and how politicians feared being interviewed by Tim, but how it made them better politicians in the process. They talked about how he really cared about people — not just those on the same level of importance in the news world, but everyone. And how the most important thing for him was to appreciate his father and to be a good father to his son.

Tom Brokaw broke down on the show while describing a comment made by Tim. I have to admit — at the end when they showed clips of Tim, I felt pretty sad. We no longer have his comments and personality to enrich our lives. The 2008 election campaign will go on, but without his good natured presentation.

Tim Russert set the standard for news media. We can only hope someone else will come along to take over where he left off, and maintain those high standards. But losing a good TV personality is only a minor part of it. The world lost a good man when we lost Tim. He will be missed.

I just received a call from a survey company. The caller told me that if the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 were rolled back, average residents of Colorado would see an increase in their federal taxes of about $2000. He asked, “knowing that, do you favor making the tax cuts permanent?”

The purpose of this survey was to instill fear in the public that their taxes will go up if we elect democrats. That fact is, if your income is over $250,000, your taxes will indeed go up. The tax cuts for the wealthy will be repealed under Obama and a congress controlled by the Democrats, but for the average Joe, our taxes are going to remain what they are.

So I told the caller that I didn’t believe his premise so I wasn’t going to answer his question. I was polite, though. He was just doing his job and probably hated what he was involved in.

Tim was one of my favorite reporter/commentators. He seemed like a good natured guy, but he didn’t take any crap from anyone. We saw that during Scooter Libby’s trial. He was honest and sincere. I never once thought I was getting spin from him.

Sunday mornings won’t be the same without him. He will be missed.

Anouncing cartoons in my blog! Or an attempt at them, anyway. I haven’t drawn cartoons for many years so you’ll see the evolution of my development. Eventually, they are going to be on my other blog at
http://benhoffman.wordpress.com.

Right now, I’m practicing and trying to create some characters. I don’t have a scanner yet so I’ll just take photos with my camera. Here are a few sketches I did yesterday.

Here’s one character — maybe a young manager or salesman

This one is the engineer who always wears a suit, even though everybody else dresses casually.

Larry’s a bit of a slob. I thought about naming him Rob, which rhymes with slob, but Larry seems more fitting.

And this, of course, is Hillary.

Many people who meditate have problems with monkey mind. Like a monkey swinging from branch to branch, their minds move from thought to thought. I’m no different, which is the motivation for this blog.

The three elements of the Noble Eightfold Path related to meditation are Right Effort, Right Concentration, and Right Mindfulness. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate on your breath for an extended period of time.

There are several possible sitting positions for meditation. Buddha statues and hard core meditators use the lotus position. Many people have a problem with their feet falling asleep in the lotus position, or they simply are not flexible enough to even achieve that position. A kneeling bench is an improvement for many, but for us older folks, a comfortable chair might be your best bet. Whatever your position, it’s important to keep your head up and your back straight.

Discomfort can actually be a focal point for meditation, but there are countless other things to be mindful of that are much more enlightening. They are defined in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as Contemplation of the Body, Contemplation of Feelings, Contemplation of Consciousness, and Contemplation of Mental Objects.

The Seven Factors of Awakening are part of the Contemplation of Mental Objects. They are Mindfulness, Investigation, Energy, Joy, Tranquility, Concentration, and Equanimity.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is simply being in the present. When the mind wanders during meditation, you can mindfully observe your thoughts, which will bring you back to the present.

Investigation

When you’re having problems during meditation, you can investigate the causes. This does not involve concious thought, but simply observing. If there is anxiety, you investigate the anxiety and the source will reveal itself. If you are tense, observe the tension. If you are distracted, observe the distraction.

During investigation, events from the past may surface — events you might now want to deal with, but you must if they are the source of suffering in your life. By simply observing the events during this time of clarity can help you to understand why they happened. It can be like an oasis in the baron desert. Your answers are there. You simply need reach the oasis in order to understand them.

Energy

Meditation requires energy to apply the Right Effort. We can gain energy by eating right and exercise. The practice of mindfulness is refreshing when successful and can generate energy.

Joy

I’ve heard people say that the joy they get from meditation is even better than sex. There is a deep tranquility that can be achieved during meditation and if that tranquility is sustained for a long period of time, I can understand how it can be that good. I’ve only felt it for a few minutes at a time, but it’s good incentive to continue when things are tough.

Tranquility

This can be described as complete relaxation of the body and the mind. Imagine relaxing on the beach, simply observing the waves rolling in. You can achieve that feeling at any time through meditation.

Concentration

Concentration is like a rudder guiding a ship and is essential for the practice of mindfulness. In contemplation of mind objects, you concentrate on what’s going on in your mind.

Equanimity

Equanimity can be compared to getting lost in a movie or book. You see and understand what is going on, but you’re watching as an objective observer. There is a lot more to it than that, but it’s a feeling of contentment and satisfaction.

During meditation, we can recall the Seven Factors of Awakening, which will provide mindfulness focal points. You can go over the factors immediately before meditating. Remember: don’t think; simply observe.