After I got divorced back in 1988, I figured it would be nice to get married again. I really didn’t mind the marital lifestyle so much; the problem was mostly with the person that I married. She turned out to be, well, less than an ideal companion for such a lifestyle (with me, anyway). So I decided to get back out there and try again.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a truckload of good looks and smooth manners about me. And I was working in a place where there weren’t a whole lot of eligible women my age (as in my former job, where I had met my ex-wife; darn, I had my choice and I picked the wrong one!). Furthermore, I don’t possess a very common mix of interests, values and temperaments; finding another “bird of a feather” wouldn’t be easy. So I decided to turn to the personal ads. It seemed like a good way to jump-start my romantic life.

By 1995 or so, it was pretty apparent that the personal ad thing just wasn’t working for me (and neither was real-life, i.e. meeting someone at a job or at a volunteer activity or at church — back when I was involved with such things). I felt kind-of bad about it. I figured that perhaps I’m just a freak, maybe I’m just not meant to find romantic involvement.

Well, I’m still rather pessimistic about the whole romantic fulfillment thing. But as to being a freak just because I bombed out with the personal ads, I’ve since learned that bombing out is quite common. So I guess that I’m not such a freak after all. A recent article in Scientific American Mind about on-line dating indicates that dating-via-advertising is NOT a highly successful means of establishing long-term relationships. I myself did most of my personal ad dating via newspapers or newsletters; I only dabbled in internet dating towards the end. But there really isn’t much difference. In fact, you’d think that the ease of communication via e-mail would be an advantage over the old method of answering printed ads and exchanging letters and then talking on the phone. With e-mail, you can easily and quickly exchange photos to see if the all-important “body chemistry” factor works out. (But, as the SciAm article points out, a whole lot of people send pictures that mis-represent what they currently look like.)

However, recent studies show that internet dating has a terrible track record. The Scientific American article cites a professional analysis of some statistics released by eHarmony.com, which indicates that if a person dated 1 new person every 3 weeks via the site, it would take 19 years of effort to raise their chance of getting married to the 50-50 level. A phone survey of users of other popular dating sites showed that only about 1 in 4 users were satisfied with the site.

Another study, posted at sciencedaily.com, showed that about 90% of people using dating sites had at least one date with “a significant partner”, and of those people, 94% got a second date. Sounds great, but do the multiplication: about 85% get a second date, and 15% don’t. Furthermore, a second date does not a marriage make. The drop-off continues from there. Only about 18% of the 90% who found “significant partners” have a relationship that lasts a year (so we’re down to 16% of the grand total, or 1 in 6). Another source indicates that only about 10% of people using internet dating sites establish a “long-term relationship” via them. Sounds about right.

So, if internet dating is such a train wreck for most people, my negative experiences with its direct predecessor (newspaper ads) aren’t very surprising either. Romance is still a hit or miss thing, despite a lot of modern research and technology. You can’t just make it happen (although, as the shrinks point out, you can make it NOT happen with neurotic attitudes). You might get lucky with the internet ads; just don’t count on it. I’ll be the first to admit that my experiences were interesting, even if not always edifying. They included a long train ride to and from Minneapolis to meet a woman who turned out to be more-or-less crippled, a couple of late-night airplane trips to Florida, a break-up at the end of a Thanksgiving family gathering in South Carolina, a seemingly “hot date” in Arlington, VA, where the girl in effect said “oh, you’re not what I had pictured” . . . . still, it was all probably better than just staying home. It’s worth a chuckle!

After reading these reports, I feel a little more like a normal human being. Although I’m not 100% sure now that I want to be human, after all of the trouble that normal humans need to go thru!

The failure of the US Senate to even consider a proposed bipartisan resolution opposing a troop buildup in Iraq (Levin-Warner) reminds me of an old song. That song is “Eve of Destruction”, written by P. Sloan and made famous by Barry McGuire in 1965. The lines that I’m thinking of go like this:

“I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
A handful of Senators don’t pass legislation”

That old mock-Dylan protest song is more than 40 years old now, and some of the lines are badly out of date (e.g., Red China isn’t so red anymore and isn’t a bastion of hate, any more than any other nation; 18 year olds now have the vote; Selma, Alabama isn’t any worse on racial issues than the rest of the nation; the “nuclear button” that would start a cataclysmic war between Russia and the USA isn’t likely to be pushed anymore; astronauts stay up in the space station for four months now, versus four days; etc.). But the general themes of that song remain current, quite unfortunately. It’s still a scary world, and even though the “eve of destruction” hasn’t turned into the night of anarchy and terror, we’re still not much better off than in the mid-60s.

P.S.: you could easily update the line in that song about China and Selma as follows: “Imagine all the hate there is in Al Qaeda; then take a look around to Laramie, Wyoming” (where Matthew Shepard was beaten to death).

NEW JERSEY POLITICAL RUMOR: Cory Booker has been the mayor of Newark, NJ now for about 8 months. For those of you non-New Jerseyians, Cory is a young reformer from a suburban county who adopted Newark, an old run-down city, as his cause. Cory, who has a Yale law degree, served Newark as a councilman for 4 years, then in 2002 challenged long-time Newark mayor Sharpe James and lost. Sharpe finally called it quits in 06, deciding not to run for a 5th term. The election thus became a slam-dunk for Cory. So he finally got what he fought so long and so hard for.

But there are signs in the wind that Cory is getting a bit frustrated about the limits of his power. There’s a nasty problem with gangs and drugs and fatal shootings in Newark, and Cory is now the man who gets the blame for all that (even if he doesn’t deserve it). He brought in a savvy new police director from New York City, but it could be years until the guy can make a dent in the problem. Cory is taking the heat for other stuff too, including tax increases and accusations of contracting with his cronies. So you couldn’t really blame Cory for wondering if his dream-come-true isn’t so dreamy after all.

And you (or I, anyway) couldn’t really blame Mayor Booker if the rumor going around in Essex County political circles is true, i.e. that he wants to make a run for the new lieutenant governor seat that New Jersey will establish in 2010 (to be on the ballot in the November, 2009 election). Governor Jon Corzine will most likely run for a second term in 2009, and he would need to choose a running mate. Cory would give the Democratic ticket a shot of youth and lend some racial balance. He’d be a natural for the position. Because he’s still young, he would eventually get his chance at the governor’s mansion.

But that would mean him leaving Newark before the end of his first term as mayor. Cory fought so hard to become mayor, swearing his love and devotion to the city. But perhaps the romance has soured. Reality has hit, and perhaps Cory has seen that the old urban neighborhoods of New Jersey (and everywhere else in the country) can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Cities are strongly tied to their metro regions, and to the greater economy of the state in general. Cory might argue that the only way to truly help the people of Newark and Paterson and Camden is for him to operate on a more regional level, where greater resources and opportunities can be directed. And that would make some sense.

Still, it’s sad to see another youthful dream getting beaten up so badly by political reality.

I recently watched a PBS Frontline TV show about a guy from the Boston area who was molested by a Catholic priest as a young teenager (“The Hand of God”). I’m about the same age as the guy in question (Paul Cutela), and I also had a rather traditional Roman Catholic upbringing. Luckily, I wasn’t molested. Actually, I never heard of anyone else being molested in Catholic-land. But that’s not to deny the magnitude of the problem. I’m a northern New Jerseyite, and I’ve heard about some priests in the area who allegedly did abuse children. But I never knew any of them. So, I can’t directly relate to the very unfortunate experience that Mr. Cutela went through. But I can relate to the general attitude and atmosphere of Catholicism which Mr. Cutela’s brother, the producer of the Frontline show, depicts as the ultimate cause of the problem.

I don’t have anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church anymore. I wouldn’t call myself a “fallen-away Catholic”. I’m just not a Catholic at all. Catholicism is a world that I don’t want to be part of. I’d just as soon join the Communist Party or the Polar Bear Club (at 130 lbs, I wouldn’t do very well in those icy waters), as I would a Roman Catholic parish. I don’t hope to see it change someday, so that I could “go home” again. [However, I do know a variety of Roman Catholics who use their faith in positive ways, and I am fully willing to continue associating with such people and respecting their continued relationships with Catholicism.]

My aversion to Catholicism stems from something very “yucky” about Roman Catholicism, as I have known it. And that “yuck” factor extends all the way to the top, right up to Pope Ratzinger (or whatever they’re calling him these days). It’s a certain breed of mental unhealthiness, a form of closed-mindedness, an extreme form of institutional sclerosis.

Back when I was a kid, the winds of change seemed to be blowing in the Church, following the lead of Pope John 23rd and the Vatican Council. There were young priests who didn’t need a church to say mass, who relished guitar accompaniment, who worked for social justice and who talked about bigger changes yet to come (perhaps women priests and married priests and real power being given to the laity in church affairs). It reminded me of those books we read in grammar school about space exploration, promising that we’d all be journeying to the moon by the time we reached middle age. The bees-wax-yellow yuckiness of Roman Catholicism was finally being washed away. But that all got shut down, in due course. So it’s back to pay, pray and obey, back to condescending forms of charity in lieu of social activism, back to philosophies that were crafted in the middle ages. Back to yuck.

I think that the Cutela brothers are right; that sort of thinking does inspire unhealthiness on the part of those who work for the Church, and child abuse is an integral (albeit extreme) aspect of it. The Church fathers have done their best to stop the immediate problem, but won’t – actually can’t – think about changing the underlying sociology. The “yuck” factor remains.

Here’s another bad sign in Iraq: the Sufis have taken up guns. The Sufis are the mystical Muslims, an old faction of Islam which isn’t entirely trusted and accepted by the mainstream Sunnis and Shia. They represent a kind-of “third way” in Islam, an interpretation of the Koran that seems more interested in spiritual exercises and the veneration of the saints than in spreading the sharia (Islamic law) throughout the world by geo-political methods. They interpret the concept of jihad as the fight against one’s own defects in the quest for spiritual perfection, and not as the fight against the infidels without. They’re our kind of Muslims (in a way; actually, the westernized Muslims who have gained a taste for Enlightment ideals are my favorite). Unfortunately they’re a small minority group, albeit one with staying power. The Sufis are most famous for their “whirling dervishes”, those who occasionally dance and spin in spiritual ecstasy during their prayer services.

(Worthless trivia break: wasn’t there an indie band called The Whirling Dervishes? Didn’t they do “You’re a Mean One, Mister Grinch”?)

The Sufis have historically been more prevalent in Iraq than in other Islamic countries. Up to now, they’ve kept away from all the armed violence going on in the name of either democracy or oil or Allah. They even cooperated with U.S. forces, up to a point. But no more Mister Nice Guy. They now have an armed brigade. Reportedly, they are doing this for self-defense against sectarian violence, not to take pot-shots against the Euro-American crusaders. They haven’t given in to Al Qaeda or the Madhi Army; they want to stay alive.

Things must be pretty bad in Iraq for the dervishes to stop their whirling and pick up M-1’s or AK-47’s and RPG’s. It’s just another sign that Mr. Bush’s great initiative in Iraq has turned into a Greek tragedy, and the furies have been set loose.

WHOOPS …did they pull the plug on Terry Schiavo too quickly? I recently came across the following quote about vegetative states from a Scientific American article:

in a persistent vegetative state . . . . patients show no sign of recognizing or interacting with their surroundings . . . [however] . . . [s]cientists at the University of Cambridge and the University of Liège in Belgium reported that they had used MRI brain-imaging technology to detect signs of awareness in a 23-year-old woman who had been in a vegetative state for five months. ‘The brain scan showed us that not only was she able to understand speech, she was able to follow simple instructions,’ says Adrian M. Owen, lead author of the study.

So, was Terry Schiavo still conscious when they took her off the feeding tube? The problem is that we still don’t know exactly what consciousness is. How do we judge consciousness? How would we know if a super-sophisticated computer system gains consciousness sometime in the future? You know when you are conscious . . . . but you need to be conscious to know that you are conscious. You think that you know when another human being is conscious; but since you cannot directly share that person’s consciousness, you can’t really know for sure. There may well be twilight zones, and Terry Schiavo may or may not have been in such a zone when they pulled the plug.

The vegetative patient’s response to speech, as indicated by the MRI tests, may indicate some form of consciousness. But then again, these brain responses could also be occurring solely at a sub-conscious level, where much of our day-to-day waking activity is directed from. For you baseball or softball players who might doubt that half of what we do each day comes from the “zombie” part of us, think about this — could you consciously hit a fastball? If you were to concentrate intensely as the pitcher winds up and think the whole thing through as the ball approaches, you would never get to first. You absolutely need to put your mind on automatic. You let your motor coordination mechanisms in the sub-conscious brain guide your arms as you take the swing. If you have very good brain mechanisms to coordinate your muscles, you will get a hit maybe 1 in 3 times at bat. If not, then you’re not an athlete (as I’m not), so forget about sports. Take up another interest.

One of my main interests is the topic of human consciousness. And right now, a lot of thinking and research is being done on it. But there is still a whole lot of uncertainty left. Actually, the more that scientists and psychologists and philosophers talk about consciousness, the more uncertainty there seems to be. The Terry Schiavo case came down smack-dab in the middle of that uncertainty. There were many people on either side of the issue who seemed quite sure of themselves — i.e that Ms. Schiavo was still consciousness and thus should have been kept alive, or that she was clearly not conscious and should have been left to die.

They were all fooling themselves. The nasty truth is that we just don’t know all that much about human consciousness at present. Maybe Ms. Schiavo should have been left alive, as a gesture of humility in the face of the great uncertainties we have regarding our own minds. Or maybe she should have been unplugged, given that we live in a world of limitations; the world is one big emergency ward, where triage is the name of the game. That was what the issue really came down to – two very unsatisfying alternatives. But hardly anyone seemed to grasp this. And once the politicians got involved, the whole thing was a melt down. Let’s hope that more honest thinking and discussion can prevail the next time that a case like Terry Schiavo hits the media.

BARBER SHOP MURDER? About a week ago, an old guy who owned and operated a small video store in Orange, New Jersey was beaten to death with a hammer during a store robbery. Orange is an old urban area that has seen better days. It’s really just an extension of Newark. The old guy and his family had operated the store for years and years, back before there even were videos (it was originally some kind of electric repair shop). They moved out to the suburbs, but the guy still kept the old store opened and tried to stay involved in Orange.

Another urban tragedy. But here’s the urban sociology twist to it. I was sitting at my desk at work today, listening to some assistant prosecutors shooting the breeze. (Recall that I work in a county prosecutor’s office, and Orange is located within our county – so this murder is “one of ours”). One of the big wigs said that a barber shop had recently opened near the video store, and was attracting “the wrong element”. Arguably, it was someone from this “element” who did the old guy in (my inference, not an official statement of my office).

Wow, I didn’t know that barber shops were becoming hang-outs for the bad guys. Back in my day, barber shops were mostly for clean-cut guys. Criminals didn’t get their hair cut very much. I guess that things in the city have taken a turnabout. For a while, there hardly seemed to be any barber shops left – they had been replaced by “salons”. But now, barber shops are back – but they may not be the safe and stodgy kind of place that they used to be. Barbershop harmony has a very different beat today.

It feels like a night for random thoughts, so here are three:

First, a memory from last week. I was walking out to my car at 7am one day, getting ready to go to work, when I noticed the full moon setting in the west just as the dawn was breaking in the east. Ah yes, one of those perfect transitional moments in nature. The Queen of the Night was leaving, and the King of the Day was drawing near. It was like some kind of old German clock, where a figurine is leaving thru one door as another comes out of the opposite side.

The second thought is about President Bush’s latest brainstorm about Iraq, i.e. the “surge”. This is a classic example of the stitch that didn’t come in time. Had the US surged its troop strength back when the Iraqis went on their looting binge back in 2003, it might have done some good. But now? It seems to me as though this is a time for biting bullets, for getting real. And getting out, actually. (Although I would support a UN force to occupy the Baghdad area, where there could be a real bloodbath; that is, if a UN force could accept that it might actually need to fire weapons and kill people, and not just hang around with those blue-banded helmets on).

Third thought: I just read that the Mahayan Buddhists believe in a celestial bodhisattva names Manjushri, who cares for learners and students. Being one of this world’s eternal students, I’m glad to learn about Manjushri. I hope that the good Manjushri is looking down right now on me and my messy, book-strewn apartment. And on all those who never gave up on the beautiful act of learning, even when the classroom has been left far behind. Because if you want it, the world can be your classroom. Right, Manjushri?

I don’t get out to the movies much anymore. Movies just aren’t a big part of my life these days. But I did make an exception recently for Rocky Balboa. I’m not a boxing fan, not really a sports fan at all. Nonetheless, I’ve seen all the other Rockys, every one from One to Five. So, I figured that I might as well keep my perfect attendance record going with Stallone. (Not that I’ve seen any of his other movies – thank goodness.)

Rocky Balboa isn’t a masterpiece, but if you liked any of the other Rocky movies, you might like Rocky B. It revolves around a big boxing match – the standard Rocky movie scenario. But there are enough twists to it, bittersweet twists that reflect upon the passing of time and the aging of the body and spirit. And he now runs a restaurant, which is kind of neat.

Again, as with all Rocky movies, the fight is the thing. But coming in a strong second is the fact that Adrian, Rocky’s wife, is dead and gone. Nonetheless, Rocky is still devoted to her memory, spending a lot of time sitting at her gravesite and driving around with her brother Paulie, visiting the decrepit old places in Phillie where it all began (way back in Rocky I). Of course, all of this is accompanied by the same old slow piano and French horn score by Bill Conti.

It’s kind of like watching a sunset from an urban neighborhood. Not quite as dramatic as a desert sunset, but you still get the general idea (and the emotional response to it). In the end, Rocky proves his point in the ring, but saves the final scene for Adrian’s grave. After “talking with her” about the fight, he kisses the gravestone and walks away. The camera follows him a bit, then he stops and just disappears. I guess that Stallone is telling us that the Rocky story is finally over. Hard to believe, given that Stallone is such an egoist and since Rocky is the only thing he came up with that might be remembered fifty years from now. But I can’t see how anyone would take a Rocky 7 or 8 seriously. Hopefully, he knows how to finish a good work of art (I wouldn’t say “masterpiece”, but Rocky was good). “Rocky Balboa” is a much better ending to the story than Rocky V was. Just remember Mister Rocky Balboa as the guy who loved Adrian, and who will always love her. Yea, OK . . . that’s a nice way to end the story.

Oh, just how did I get interested in the Rocky movies? Well, my brother got caught up in the enthusiasm for Rocky I just as soon as it came out, way back in 1977. I was living in the Washington DC area at the time, and one weekend I came up to visit my mother and him (a more-or-less monthly thing) and he insisted that we see it. My brother is a physical guy, and he responded to Rocky by taking up boxing himself. Luckily, he didn’t push it too far after a few experiences in the YMCA ring with some tough kids who grew up in nasty urban neighborhoods. I interpreted Rocky in the more generic sense, the idea that a nobody from nowhere (like me) could somehow catch a break and put out his heart and soul and do some great things. At the time, I was planning to apply to law school and was getting ready to take the LSAT. So of course, I saw it all as my own chance to fight the big one. “Gonna Fly Now” and all of that.

Rocky I became a big movie because it sold a dream, a dream that people liked. But most dreams don’t come true, including my own “Rocky” dream. I never got the chance to change the world. I never went the distance. I turned out to be just another kid from the neighborhood. Law school prepared me for an exciting career pushing papers for government and non-profit agencies. I found a woman and married her, but she wasn’t Adrian and I wasn’t Rocky, and we split up within five years. I’m not the one who will always love her.

Oh well. That’s why they don’t make movies about real life. Still, Rocky B is just a step closer to reality than the other Rocky movies were. And that’s why I’ll always like – but not love – the whole Rocky story.

Final Thoughts from an Old Year: Oh well, 2006 is almost over. Too bad, as it wasn’t the worst of years. For me, anyway.

About the only thing on my mind right now is soda ash. The stuff they use to make glass and a whole lot of other stuff. Here in the USA, we used to manufacture most of our soda ash from limestone. Now, we get most of it from mines out in Wyoming. A guy I know who talks with people who actually make stuff like glass tells me that the old manufactured soda ash was better, in that it was always the same. The natural soda ash from the ground varies from lot to lot, in terms of moisture and impurities. That’s a pain for people who have to make stuff from soda ash – they have to keep adjusting their processes to whatever kind of soda ash they get.

That’s a side of America that no one much notices or cares about anymore, the stuff that we’ve mostly lost to China and India and Brazil. We live in a world of consumer electronics and financial services and management consulting and entertainment and information technology. We hardly get our hands dirty anymore in making stuff from the raw elements of the earth (like wood, iron ore, petroleum, sand, minerals, etc.). I really wonder sometimes if that’s a bad thing for us here in America. We really don’t have a good sense anymore of what it takes to keep things going. We’re getting kind-of disconnected from reality. Kids today see nothing but shopping malls, internet cafes, theme restaurants and movie theaters. The rest of it is shipped in from somewhere over the horizon, by UPS and FedEx.

But, whatever. That’s America in 2006, soon to be 2007. I hope that your soda ash will be pure for 2007.