The Fry Side

Andrew Sullivan takes a look at The Bigger Picture

Mukasey and Hayden complain that the president has tied the hands of future presidents in this. Yes, he has. What Obama understands is that what is truly vital is that this dark and shameful period not become a workable precedent. It must be repudiated at the very heart of the American political system, and removed like the cancer it is.

As my throngs of fans on Twitter know, I got a borrowed iPod Touch and the At Bat app for it. Today was a long day made even longer by my wonderful pair of out-of-their-minds children. One couldn’t stop moving and the other couldn’t stop throwing up. While I was making dinner. Fun.

After my small dish of dinner, I took my cocktail and my iPod outside. I turned up the volume as loud as I could and closed my eyes. The sounds of the ballpark came from this tinny little device on the table. The constant buzz of the crowd, escalating as a tough inning was closed by the home pitcher, made up the background for the announcer.

There’s a language to baseball. It’s an auditory game. You can listen to the balls and strikes, the outs, the pitches thrown, who is on base. When you hear all that, the game gets painted into your mind. You know who’s up and who’s waiting to bat. There’s a story forming.

Each half of the inning is its own tale. And there is time between pitches and events to talk about the past, talk about what’s going on in the city around the team, and what other teams have been up to. You feel a part of it no matter how distant.

As the season rolls on, the story gets more interesting. History has been happening, changing the scenery itself behind each and every pitch. As with life, you rarely see it happen at the time. But when you look back, suddenly the world is different.

Still, through it all, it’s all baseball. That tinny little voice on the table next to me, all simply, grainy radio waves with the same commercials between each change in sides.

My iPod has an app that shows the pitch-by-pitch movement of the game. To do that, it connects to my wireless network. From the router creating that network is a wire to a cable modem. The cable modem is what connects my home to the giant and strange ethereal world known as the Internet. At some other point on the internet is the home of Major League Baseball. This is the collective home for all the information and broadcasts coming from all the ballparks across our lovely continent.

So the announcer’s voice goes into his microphone, the signal carrying wire moving it to the local broadcaster. The local broadcaster sends it out to the central company who then distributes it to other outside stations, namely my local station. Then, over the air, that voice manages to reach my device, coming out small and tinny, yet clear, to tell me that there was a popup to left field, the runner on first tags up, the throw to second, not in time!

My son joined me for a bit out there on the deck. We didn’t last outside for long. April in Minnesota is still cold after dark. We sat there, listening to the voice, drinks at our ready. His milk, my adult beverage.

And it’s been like this for what is quickly closing in on 100 years. The adage of the story?

Though the technology may change, the point remains the same.

Baseball.

He hits it high! He hits it deep! This one is… outta here! – Duane Kuiper, through my youth, joyfully over and over again.

What we witnessed has happened for over two and a quarter centuries. Every two years, our nation shifts its seats of power, and every four or eight years, the most powerful person in the world shakes the hand of their successor and simply walks away from it.

Aside from the other great steps we have taken that came to fruition today (such as my children growing up in a world where a Black man has already been President), the event itself is historic interest. Watching the swearing in of the elect and the bidding adieu of the former floored me. For over two hundred years, for essentially our entire existence, the stewardship of our country changed hands.

No violence, no riots, no revolution has come about due to a change in our executive. Nothing happens. It never has. It’s all rather dull and dry (well, usually). And it’s just what we expect to happen. Sure a great many other countries go through similar changes, but we have been at it for a very long time.

We should be quietly proud of that fact, too. Our Republic and Constitution are the oldest and longest unchanged in the world. I guess having the people be the ultimate check on government was a rather staying notion, no?

As for today’s ceremonies, I loved the music. Aretha Franklin singing before the Vice President took his oath and John Williams’ original composition performed by a circle of geniuses… it was just grand and timeless. And I thought the Benediction by Dr Lowery and his inclusion of text from the Negro National Anthem was a brilliant touch.

Dear Dr King,

I hope you’re starting to sleep a little better.

Sincerely,
Evan

November Eleventh holds a strange place in my life.

Two years ago today, my wife and I were married. Twenty-four months and she still hasn’t offed me. Hot dog!

There is also the meaning of Veteran’s Day. Since living in England, the value of it is so very different. I appreciate it more, what a nonsensical and nightmarish time that all must have been for those poor, brave souls lost. It astounds me that there are veterans of that war still alive today. Ninety years since the treaty was signed, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, of 1918, and there is still a small contingent of survivors. Simply amazing and wonderful, and they deserve every possible drop of our respect and gratitude.

And lastly, there is the strange sensation that this day is also marked for my friends. Guys I went to high school with, who I learned to play Dungeons & Dragons with. They’re veterans of a war now.

Growing up, there was always a sense that veterans were old chaps who remember battling in the air, manning mass numbers of ships across the sea, and fighting tooth and nail through Europe and Asia to the rescue of good.

And there were the hidden veterans of Vietnam. It had already been in the history books, tucked in the chapters that still remained after the school year was done. There was a vague sense of guilt surrounding the whole topic, and it was apparently something my parents’ generation knew and felt deeply, but it was lost on their children.

Now, however, the honor is on these young men who are never far removed from my memories of growing up. I don’t know whether to thank them or apologize to them. I doubt that feeling will ever leave me. At the very least we have learned from our collective past and know to give these brave, still living souls our respect and love.

So here are thanks to the ones I know served. Thank you Garren, John, Jon, and David.

For us 80s kids: Get a cassette case for your iPod nano

(Found via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Did you know that the origin of the term ‘awkward’ comes from ancient times when people would lose coherent speech when faced with arctic penguins?

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In the heyday of Steamboat and Rail travel, the pilots and conductors would actually have an assistant dedicated to operating the horn. While their official titles were Sonic Engineers, they were widely known as simply Head Honkchos.

As a historical carryover, this is also the title bestowed on all adolescent lead Bari Sax players.

Does Bush Believe McCain Was Tortured?

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

Little known historical fact:

Imperial Spain attempted to invade what would become Wisconsin to search for the perfect cheese. The soldiers sent were known as the Conquesodors.