Homeland

If you are Irish or of Irish descent, you can celebrate your Irish culture and heritage anywhere in the world. You can make occasional trips to the 'old country' and enjoy yourself even if your Irish ancestors had to leave Ireland over a century ago or starve. If you live in Ireland, you can make a yearly shopping trip, as many Irish so do, from Dublin to New York and Boston. If you are American-Irish, you can celebrate St. Patrick's Day along with the millions who are not Irish and parade in the streets, wear green, drink Guinness and gorge on corned beef (or boiled bacon) and cabbage. If you are Irish you have a culture and a homeland: Ireland. Doesn't matter if you are Catholic or Protestant; you have a homeland. If you are of Irish descent you are welcome just about everywhere.

If you are Italian or or Italian descent, you can celebrate your traditional Italian heritage all over the world. Consume Italian food at a local restaurant. Have a parade on Columbus Day. Visit Italy and search for your relatives. You have a homeland also: Italy. Never mind that your ancestors may have fled Italy over a century ago, or that Italy was on the wrong side of the war in WWII. If you are of Italian descent you are welcome just about everywhere and everybody celebrates with you.

Almost every nationality and culture can tell this same story. Despite hardships, despite discrimination, even despite national laws to keep you in your place, you can celebrate your culture, honor your past, and practice your group traditions. And somewhere on the planet you have a 'homeland'. You might not want to actually live there but it exists. No matter how 'outside' you may sometimes feel, you know emotionally that there is a cultural home somewhere.

Until the mid-twentieth century however, the ideal of cultural identity and celebration was not true for one particular group: Jews. Until 1948, Jews worldwide were a culture without a homeland. A powerless minority, Jews were discriminated against legally in almost every nation on earth for millennia; marginalized, robbed, raped, and murdered - ghettoized in some nations, kicked out of others. Expelled from England in 1290; expelled from Spain in 1492; forced into ghettos in Italy in 1516; taxed excessively, socially restricted; the occasional murder, and barely tolerated in Muslim nations. It made no difference even if Jews tried to fully blend in and integrate into the national culture. German Jews were more German then most Germans in the early 20th century and we all know how that turned out. America was the only tolerant nation although anti-semitism continued to be a strong social force until the later part of the 20th century.

Jews have felt like outsiders in every nation on Earth and no amount of adaptation to the dominate culture made a difference. Even in America, the Jewish joke was to 'always kept a packed bag just in case you needed to flee in a hurry'.

Jews would dream like the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz': 'If we only had a home". This then was the essence of Zionism: Let us have a home so that we are no longer outsiders in an unfriendly world. The dream came true with the creation of the nation-state of Israel. Many people were surprised that it actually happened, including Palestinian Jews. They had not asked for a country, just a homeland, but even that was unacceptable to their fellow Arab Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations. So the nation-state of Israel, a secular nation, emerged out of violence in 1948 and was given little chance of actual success. But it did. American Jews were somewhat ambivalent about Israel at first. Most folks have either forgotten that. It wasn't until 1967 that American Jews gave their full support to Israel. The reason? For some it was pride in defeating Arab nations in the 1967 War against overwhelming odds, but I believe that it was really because it took 20 years for Jews worldwide to realize that they finally had a homeland: a small piece of real estate that they could culturally identify with even if the reality of Israel bore little resemblance to their everyday lives . It is significant that it was after 1967 that Jews worldwide began to immigrate to Israel, not because they had no other place to go, but because they wanted to be there.

Until the late 1960's there were only 3 reasons why Jews immigrated to Israel: One, they were very religious and were tolerated in a secular Israel. Two, they were European DPs, displaced persons with no other place to go, survivors of the holocaust, who were not welcomed back in their home countries. Three, they were among the 700,000 Arab Jews who were kicked out or fled from their homes in Arab states like Morocco, Syria, etc. By the way, I would have more respect for those who champion Palestinian Arabs if the fact of displaced Jews was treated with equal importance as displaced Arabs.

Jews have a sense of homeland in Israel; a cultural home. They may have little desire to actually live there. They may often disagree with the nation's policies. But it is still a place of culturally identification. It has nothing to do with religion. After all, how many Jewish American actually like hummus. Unfortunately, it is not that simple for Jews in the world. Just as Jews were outsiders in every nation they ever lived in, the Jewish 'homeland' of Israel is treated as an outsider in the world of nations.

Jews are still the globe's pariah. Once Jews were only unacceptable in the nation they lived in; perennial outcasts no mater how French, Spanish, Italian, or German they tried to be. Now that Jewish culture has a homeland nothing much has changed. The nation of Israel, the first Jewish homeland in 2000 years, is treated the same as Jews have always been. The nation, the culture, the people, have no right to exist except in servitude. Is there any doubt among those who understand history that if the state of Israel had been not created in the 1940's that Jewish culture would have disappeared? Where would the DPs have gone? What would the status have been of Arab Jews? An historical fact that has perplexed scholars for decades is why was the percentage of American anti-semitism higher after WWII than before it?

Why is it so difficult for the world, particularly the Arab world to allow a small homeland for Jewish culture? Sure, Israelis can be irritating, righteous, and argumentative, but we don't use other culture's stereotypical characteristics as excuses for mass annihilation. When was the last time you heard: Those Irish are all a bunch of drunks, let's drive them into the sea? Bernard Lewis, Middle Eastern scholar, was once asked what he though would satisfy the Islamic world concerning the fate of Israel. His response: other than total annihilation, move to Mars.

(see http://www.aviperry.org/uploads/1/7/2/5/172566/on_the_jewish_question.pdf)

I will soon be visiting Israel for the first time. I have little in common with Israel as a nation. I'm an American from the midwest. I may like my time there or I might not. I am not religious, I do not speak Hebrew, I do not follow dietary law. I am critical of some national policies. But it still feels like I'm going home. And that's the last word on the subject.

Poor Palestine

The plight of the poor Palestinians. Nobody in this world every gives them a break. Chased from nation to nation, massacred, raped, bombed, denied basic human rights, no country of refuge of their own. A powerless people that by necessity resorts to violence at times, but they are such a small population that there is no hope of salvation without sponsorship by the more powerful nations of the world. Most of the world however would rather that they just disappear, but that was tried for a time and it just didn't work. Left alone they thrive because they are an intelligent and industrious people. Most of the world refuses to do that though, and now that they have their own tiny corner of the world that they can call their home, not recognized as such by many nations, they still need to withstand constant attempts by a powerful neighbor to destroy them. What hold back their final destruction? Many it is because they have the atomic bomb?

Oh? Are you confused? Did you think I was writing about the Palestinian Arabs? No. I am writing about the original Palestinians. Those who called themselves Palestinians and were known as Palestinians before they became a nation named Israel and before the word 'Palestinian' was appropriated in 1967 by Yassir Arafat. Before the original Palestinians began to call themselves 'Israelis'. The Jewish men and women who when asked who they were would always answer 'Palestinian' because there was no Israel until 1948. The Jews who were members of the Palestinian Brigade during WWII, who were members of the Palestinian Assembly of Representatives, and the Jewish National Council in the Palestine Mandate.

I bring this up because I need to highlight one of the many great successes of the Arab world: To change the meanings of words and the history of the area previously known as Palestine.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine for an informative Wiki on the British Mandate.

Appropriating language is a common practice in the world. Right-wing reactionaries do it all the time in this country. Left-wingers seem to be less successful. Consider how 'liberal' became a dirty word, how ''anti-abortion' became 'pro-life'. Zealots know that if you change the language and alter the meaning of words, you can control the direction of the argument. Similarly, if you repeat a lie often enough, eventually many people will believe it to be true and you can re-write the historical record.

Think about it. This is NOT the last word I will have on this subject.

Rudes of the Road III

I never thought I'd need to rant again about drivers. But I never thought that driving would become more hazardous then it already was. It has. Thanks to cell phones and the bad habits of drivers, driving has become a combat sport. Let's not mince words here: The problem is not cell phones, it is bad drivers who risk both their lives and ours every day on the road because they are too self absorbed to pay attention to the task of driving an automobile.

The facts are undeniable. Human behavior is at fault in combining cell phone use and driving. People who use a cell phone while driving, and particularly those who text while driving, put everyone on the road at risk. Although data is limited and difficult to obtain, the available data and most current research on cell phone use proves beyond a doubt that cell phone use while driving is dangerous.

Each year, 21% of all teen fatal car crashes are the result of cell phone usage. This fatality percentage is rising. Talking on cell phones also causes 25% of all adult auto accidents.

One third of all teen drivers text on cell phones while driving. One fifth of all adult drivers also do it. A 2007 insurance survey revealed that 73% of all drivers use cell phones while driving, And although 84% of all drivers are aware of the dangers of cell phone use while driving, they continue to do so. Recent university research has proven that reaction time is significantly slower, alertness is hampered, vision is impaired, and, despite popular myth, there is no such thing as multi-tasking in human beings. Computers, yes; humans, no..

We see the effects everyday. Humans behind the wheel slowing down traffic, driving through stop signs, weaving out of lane; causing a countless number of almost accidents and too many real ones. In Pennsylvania, from 2003 through 2006, 50 auto deaths were directly linked to cell phone use. During that same time period, the state also reported 5715 cell phone related car accidents.

There have been only 2 beneficiaries of this lack of common driver sense: Lawyers involved in auto personal injury and death and insurance companies that can raise rates. There is perversely one other benefit. Grisly as it may seem, bad drivers have made some drivers, who may never use a cell phone behind the wheel, more vigilant and defensive.

I have spoken often about bad driving. Sometimes out loud while driving to the amusement of any passengers. See that woman eating a sandwich with one hand and a cigarette in the other? Look at that man reading a notepad while behind the wheel. All dangerous but also astonishingly stupid. I once saw a woman painting her toe nails while driving. Use your imagination to figure out how that was done. However there is nothing funny about recent increase in deaths and accidents caused by cell phone users. It is criminal behavior and should be treated as such by our legal system. 50 nations currently ban cell phone use while driving and a few have added prison sentences for violations. In the US, 6 states out of 50 have cell phone bans and one state is considering adding a mandatory 15 year sentence to any auto death caused by a cell phone user.

Cell phones and texting while driving are symptoms of a larger problem. There are too many poor drivers in the USA. The reason why the US has so many bad drivers is the relative ease that a person can obtain and retain a state driving license. Most drivers learn to drive by driving the family car and taking a High School Driver's Ed course. High School Driver's Ed is woefully inadequate and usually assumes that someone has already taught the prospective driver how to control a vehicle. Since Driver's Ed is part of a high school curriculum, student's often treat the course like any other dumb school requirement and work as little as possible for driving certification. It as an easy way to get a state driver's license with little sweat, little work, and not much real learning beyond the basics of handling an automobile. After you get your permit, unless you mess up with too many tickets and those pesky accidents, you get to keep your driving license forever. Some states offer restricted licensing, but most of these are based on age, not skill.

My driving training of many years ago was not much better. High schools in my day did not have Driver's Ed but commercial Driving Schools were in abundance. For a fee, you were taught the basics, sort of, and you were prepared to take the state driving test, sort of. If you were lucky, you passed the state driving test on the first try. If not you retook it until you passed. State driving tests, at least in my state of birth, were hard. The driving test was precise and there was no room for error. Any little mistake meant a failure. My children could not have passed my birth state's driving test with the minimal training they received in high school. Modern state driving tests are easy in comparison.

The most interesting driving test I had ever taken was to obtain a driving license in Puerto Rico. Here is the driving test: Study a sheet of sample driving questions, take a written test which, surprise surprise, were the same as the sample questions, and then take the driving test. Start the car, drive down the street, pull up to the curb, park, turn the motor off. I passed the test. Got my license. After taking the test, I understood the underlying cause of the nature of Puerto Rican driving skills. I assume that driver training and licensing in Puerto Rico has improved since my days behind the wheel in P.R.

I was a typical American driver until I was required to take a driving course while in the military in order to be authorized to drive military vehicles . The defense driving skills I learned in that class influenced my driving skills forever. Even then I wondered why all citizens were not required to take such a course. I later discovered that there were places that it was, just not in the USA.

I have traveled extensively around the world. I had been told horror stories about how awful driving was in other countries. The stories were only partially correct. Driving in some countries is frightening and difficult, but the drivers in some were not. They were good, well trained, and paid attention to their driving. Only superficially, through American eyes, did drivers in countries like Ireland, England, or Italy appear reckless. International auto fatality data for 2004 ranks the USA 40th out of 52 for per capita death rate per nation. We are not the worst, Portugal holds that honor, but statistically 11 states of the USA have worse death rates than Portugal. Other nations are not without their traffic problems but many of them have something we do not: a stricter driver licensing procedure. Unlike in the USA, where a license is considered a 'right', Some foreign nations consider it a 'privilege' that must be earned. Recently, particularly in the EU, there has been pressure to ease the requirements for licensure to attain consistency between European nations. Germany is known for the most rigorous procedures.

Let's take New Zealand as an example. New Zealand has a graduated driver licensing system. Each stage requires a test, medical exams, and driver education. New Zealand drivers start out with a learner's license like the USA except you cannot drive alone. After 6 months, a driver applies for a 'restricted' license which is similar to the US learners permit ( no driving at night, no passengers, automatic transmission cars only). After 18 months if you are under 25 years old, you can apply for a 'full' license. The total cost for entire process, not including driving classes is $282 NZ dollars. There is also a 'no tolerance' policy for alcohol if you are under 20 years old. New Zealand is not without it's driver problems. It is 27th out of 52 on the per capita death rate index and the nation is currently debating raising the minimum driving age from 15 to 17. NZ also does not ban all cell phones yet but the issue is currently being debated and, as of November 2009, cell phone use by transport drivers will be banned. Now compare NZ to the USA and consider that this example is one of a nation that does not have tough driving regulations.

The solution should be obvious. Not only does the US need a ban on cell phone use while driving but tougher driver licensing. Humans cause auto accidents and more needs to be done to reduce driver risk. A 1977 study concluded that human error was the cause of 57% of all auto accidents and was a contributing factor in over 90% of them. Only 2.4% was due to mechanical failure and only 4.7% were due to environmental factors. 90% of all drivers believe that they are good drivers. Yet 90% of all accidents and deaths are due to driver error. How can this be?

The sad truth is that people have bought into the myth that driving is easy. It is not. It is a complex task that takes intense concentration and the key to becoming a good driver is a high standard of driver instruction, monitoring, and learning how to be both a good driver and a safe driver. And this must include legal enforcement of minimizing distractions such as cell phones usage.

I would like to think that this will be my last word on this subject but I fear it will not.

Privacy Online and the Last Word

Well, I am back after a long multi-year absence. I was really never into this blogger posting thing, nor the current obsession with Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, and all the other social media stuff. I am basically a person who likes to keep to myself, let others take the credit, and keep out of the public eye. I'm the one who stands in the rear of public group photos and never sits in the front row. Although there have been many times in my past that this was not possible, and, as my children can attest, I can be as loud and overbearing as anybody, I do not actively seek attention. It has always bothered me that something I might written in an e-mail, a blog, or something I did on the job could appear on the internet and stay on it forever. The issue is privacy. I value mine.

Every year or so I google myself to see what turns up. Over the past few years I have sighed with relief that much of what I had done that was accessible on the internet is no longer searchable because my former employer, which contained much of my writings, articles, and newsletters, locked their servers away from public view. But not everything. This blog for example. I was surprised that after 5 years it was still available. 'The Last Word on Everything' was one of 3 blogs I wrote over 5 year ago. After I re-discovered it and re-read it, I thought that I might as well transfer it to this server and try to re-start it.

I also found myself referenced by another blogger critical of a negative review I gave a book that he apparently liked. The funny thing was that he referenced my real name even though I did not write the article under my real name. In fact I had written it along with other internet entries and a fake website for a class I was teaching on internet credibility and how to tell the authoritative source from the lame ones. Even though I had deleted all entries after the class ended, my book review was still there years after I wrote it under a pseudonym specifically for this class. I also discovered that it was very easy to find out what my actual real name was on this website despite my use of the fake moniker.

Further searches revealed that I could find all sorts of neat stuff about myself. And If I really wanted to dig out the dirt, I only needed to pay $29.95 here and $39.95 there and I could do a deep cover search that would make the FBI proud. Fortunately I did not have to pay for the information I found but I was still surprised at the quantity of information available. My property tax bills, the property I owned, my credit ratings, who owned my used car before I did, my family history, some e-mails, membership lists, and so on. After I took advantage of a free credit report, I hit the info jackpot. So much for privacy. For a person who valued his invisibility, it was disturbing to learn just how visible I really was. Of course there is a plus side to all this. My visibility on the internet meant that everyone else was as visible as well, and since I am very skilled in research and computer use, it was a part of my professional life to find information for colleagues, I decided to do some snooping on my own.

I had only one rule for my venture into online nosiness - Do not pay a fee for anything, free public and business records only.

Needless to say, I was amazed how much information I could quickly find on the web, and by extending my search to other off-web sources based on what I learned, I was surprised about how much more additional information I could gather. Here are only a few examples:

1. The value and construction details of the homes of all my neighbors.

2. The nearest sex offender and felon to my house.

3. The address, phone number, job history and current photo of a friend I lost track of.

4. My ex-wife's e-mail address, phone #, and residence (photo included).

5. My Facebook page, Classmates page and my Amazon wish list.

6. Letters I wrote to periodicals, some more than 5 years old.

7. An article written by my youngest daughter while in high school with a photograph of her.

and lastly,

8. Although I expected to find a lot on the web about my journalist oldest daughter, I did not think that I would find a decade old copy of her resume being used as a sample of superior resume writing (since removed after being discovered)

Many years ago, comics used to joke that you could use the web and no one would know that you were a dog. That has obviously changed. Not only would they know you were a dog, but everyone would also know your breed and if you were neutered. There is no real privacy in our information overloaded world. If you exist, if you work, if you use credit cards, if you send e-mails, if you subscribe to newspapers and magazines, if you buy groceries, you can be found. My admiration for those who manage to keep a low profile has increased after I discovered how easy it is to get basic personal information. It was once was difficult to do so. In the pre-web era, researchers has to use foot power, the telephone, and the mails to find information. In those days, I would often use false identities to make product inquiries, using coded names so that I tell who was selling mail and subscriber lists. The results were often amusing. Under one pseudonym, I received free magazine subscriptions for years. And under another, well, I still get biannual coupons for free panties from Victoria Secrets.

But now in the era of social webbing, people give up personal information willingly to corporations. I am amazed at what people reveal about themselves on sites such as Flicker, Facebook, Myspace, etc. It is a information junkie's gold mine. It actually must make choosing people to target for scamming very difficult for unscrupulous people. There is so many folks to choose from, how do you limit your targets? Yet, we have become so accustom to social webbing, how can we make use of its many acknowledged benefits and still maintain personal privacy of factual information? Even I have a Facebook, Flickr and my Space account (I draw the line at Twittering).

It was the realization that much has changed in my 5 year absence, that sealed my decision to restart this blog. I have wanted to write my viewpoint on a multitude of subjects over the past half decade: The increasingly hazard of doing nothing about global warming, the rise and fall of the reactionary right in America, the blessing of finally having a U.S. President who has a brain, the best places to eat for foodies. And so forth. I have not made any blog entries for years because I valued the privacy of my thoughts and views and felt uncomfortable about making my thoughts available to everyone throughout eternity. However I have come to realize that in this internet obsessed world, there is no privacy anymore. Anyone can make a comment, even dogs, and it quickly can become international news. How else do you explain how idiots like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, cable news channels, blogger commentary, and tweeter's 140 character abbreviated phrases can become nationally newsworthy. What does it say about us that the most reliable source of information today is the Daily Show and the Colbert Report ( I am a fan of both by the way). In the absence of moderation and real journalism over the past decades, the power of the far-right and the far-left to spread dumb ideas around the world has gone unabated and unchallenged by actual factual reporting and thoughtful analysis. So why not, I thought, join the discussion. It cannot get any worse.

This blog actually is not for the few readers who might find it anyway. Personal blogs such as this one are a method of sorting out one's own thoughts, and any response given by online readers merely helps we writers adjust our thinking . We used to call this 'journaling' , except that journals were either private or shared with an instructor, not put out to the whole world to see. It is how we learned to write in the olden days - before the internet. And as I have said previously in 'The Last Word', I hope by writing about a subject, I can get t out of my head and be done with it.

In this post internet world, folks need to be vigilant with their thoughts because what they reveal might someday come back to bite them in the ass. Some blogs I have read are truly painful to read. They reveal too much about the writer. Material that rightly should be in a private diary accessible only to the writer are open to the whole world. I wonder if the meaning and value of personal privacy is beyond the comprehension of some individuals. Why so little concern by the public of the easy availability f personal information? Are the teen writers of blogs aware that the intimate details of their lives are available for anyone to read? Why the lack of supervision by parents of their children on the internet? Why are so many into social webbing and ignorant about the dangers of privacy violations? Why has gossip replaced 'fact' in journalism? Has this nation turned into a society of narcissists who have this need to state "Hey look at me, here I am'?

The issue of privacy is not merely about the threat of the violation of the right to privacy, nor the misuse of personal data. It is also the question of why so many people have the need to share their daily lives with everyone. The lack of privacy and the invasion of personal space is a fact of life on the internet whether we like it or not. Social webbing does have intrinsic value, and professional bloggers perform a great service by adding to reasoned discussions on topics of current interest, but why do so many people feel the need add to this nation's information overload with useless bits of personal data? Do they not realize that they are also adding to the data that can be collected on their likes, dislikes, behaviors, financial status, and so on? Oh, well. I might as well re-join the online parade. Perhaps some good can come of it, and anyway, I'm too old to care about revealing too much information.

I am very concerned that so much of myself and my family can be made available with a simple internet search by anyone. I am a person who tries to keep a low profile yet there is a lot of information out there about me that can be retrieved. There are millions of people who don't seem to mind and actively invite inspection.

In these ramblings about internet privacy, I have actually barely touched on the subject of privacy. I have not even mentioned the continuing fight between businesses and individuals to protect online anonymity. Recently, for example, bills were introduced in Canada that would dramatically change the Internet in that nation. It would require Internet service providers to install new surveillance capabilities and force them to disclose subscriber information such as name, address, and e-mail addresses without a court order, and grant police new powers to obtain Internet transmission data. Scared yet?

I am thankful that in this age of no privacy, that my real identity is not revealed worldwide by this blog. Or is It? As I re-read my blog entries, I realized that a skilled researcher (and what is a researcher if not a PI), can discover my true identity easily. Now that's scary. And that is the last word on the subject, For now.

For more information about internet privacy visit:

http://www.netatty.com/privacy/privacy.html

http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs18-cyb.htm

http://www.pcworld.com/article/159743/facebooks_privacy_flap_what_really_went_down_and_whats_next.html

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/internet/index.html

http://www.scambusters.org/identitytheft/collegestudentsguide.html

NOTE: I will be posting some of the older blog entries here. Please excuse any dated information, misspellings and grammatical awkwardness. I've been able to recover some of my old blogs. Others apparently are lost forever.

On Blogs and the Last Word

[Originally posted on January 15, 2005]

I have some thoughts about my Blog and its purpose. First, I want to prove that a person can write a lot about anything and on any subject - even Subway restaurants. I remember a writing exercise I had to do in a Creative Writing class in college. The instructor made a list of topic suggestions he solicited during a brainstorming session assignment. He did not tell us why. He said it was an exercise in brainstorming ideas. At the next class meeting, to our surprise, he handed out a printed numbered list of the topics and assigned to each of us a numbered topic. He told us that in the space of the next 40 minutes he wanted us to write a coherent piece of writing on the assigned topic. A tough assignment. Somehow I managed to write a page on a topic I no longer remember. The point of the exercise was to show us what the pressure was like to be a journalist who had to write on demand. The secondary purpose was to show us if we wanting to be writers one must be able to write about anything at a drop of a hat. It mattered little if you knew nothing about the topic - a writers skills was in the writing, not the subject matter. Subject can always be researched, he said. Our job was to make it coherent and readable.

Secondly, as I reads what passes as Blogs on the Internet, I notice that only a few are both readable and factual. Many Blogs I have seen are stream-of-consciousness drivel written by young minds searching for meaning in their lives or
essays written with a hidden agenda (or often not so hidden) to sway a readers opinion on a specific subject. Often these latter Blogs are filled with facts that are chosen to 'prove' the writers point of view or facts that are outright falsehoods and/or distortions. I feel uneasy about Blogsters that post personal thoughts and feelings on the Net. I am uncomfortable with the idea that one's personal thoughts can be accessed by anyone in the world. I am also concerned that much misinformation and disinformation is passed from one disaffected person to another via these Blogs. It is bad enough that fake and distorted events are passed from person to person with e-mail. The thought that Blog distortions can effect national events, as has happened over the past couple of years, is more disturbing. The problem is that many Blogs are not fact-checked. As a person trained in research, I am concerned that almost all blogs are not supported by the standard rules of research: Is the writer authoritative? Are the facts supported by evidence? Is the source definitive? Is the source reliable? For this reason, I try to incorporate facts in my Blog. For example, if you want to confirm the facts about my post on Subway, go to www.subway.com and you will see where I confirmed most of my factual statements.

Last, the reason why I choose to call this Blog my 'Last Word' was not due to some sort of arrogant attitude that I knew the answers to everything. It is more personal than that. I am writing these blogs to rid myself of thinking about the topic. Thoughts about topic such as Subways and Bagels permeate my percolating mind and sit there like stale coffee grounds until I get them out. Once out I rarely think about the idea again. My hope for my Blog is that once I get out my thoughts on a subject, it will delete itself from my head and I would not think about it too much after that. And THAT is why I hope it is the 'last word'. Not that it is truly the last word but that, for me, once I write it down, it will disappear and I won't think about it anymore.

And that's the last word on the last word.

The Chinese Invade America - Buffet Style

[Originally posted February 5, 2005]

Another Chinese Buffet opened nearby recently bringing the official count of Asian-style buffets in this area of approximately 180,000 people into double digits. Quite a change from many years ago when there was one, yes, let's count them, one chinese restaurant of mediocre quality called 'The Dragon'. The number of Chinese restaurants increased slowly over the years to three, Yen Ching's and Pei's, and that was that for a very long time. Ever so slowly a few more Chinese restaurants were opened by immigrant families. Some where good and survived. Some were awful and quickly closed. Southasian style restaurants followed; a couple of Thai places, a couple of Vietnamese places. The lack of Asian food was a great hardship to me over the years, almost as great a hardship of not having access to a single delicatessen nor bagel shop. But all that has changed since the Chinese Buffet came to town. Chinese Buffets appear to have taken over. There's almost one on every corner. Ands the results are not always good.

Traditional Chinese restaurants have had a harder time surviving since the invasion of Chinese buffets. Yen Ching's closed and became a take-out place, The surviving restaurants saw the writing on the wall and began their own buffet style menus. The buffet is popular with consumers of mass quantities of food. You can see these people arrive by the dozens, looking for a food bargain, heaping mass quantities of food on their plates; plate after plate after plate. Not to say that some buffet items are not good. Most buffets supplement their buffet tables with fresh food grills and sushi, both of which are very good. You can also get freshly grilled meats and decent non-Asian foods at these places. Many of the non-Asian choices, though odd and out of place in what supposedly is an oriental restaurant, are fresh. But for the most part, the buffet's Asian choices offer a plethora of soggy, lukewarm, spiceless run of the mill generic Chinese food, poorly prepared and of questionable quality and health.

Sauces are essential to Chinese cooking. I have never seen a buffet offer any thing other than soy sauce. No mustard, sweet 'n sour, dipping sauces, fish sauce, hot sauce, ginger, carrot, nothing. The lack of sauces at Chinese buffets is a major disappointment and does not allow the visitor to doctor up mediocre dishes.

It is no secret that Chinese buffets are frequently cited by health departments for not maintaining standards of service. Search your local records and you will often find a good fair share of Chinese buffet health code violations that range from lack of cleanliness to improperly maintained food temperatures. Ever wonder why your stomach protests after eating at a Chinese buffet? It's not the mass quantities of food you consume. It might instead be bacteria or excessive improperly stored fats used in the cooking process.

I grew up with Chinese restaurants. A shop across the street from my family's business was a Chinese restaurant where as a kid I learned to like Asian style cooking and how to make some of the dishes. Over the years, I learned how to make many oriental dishes and it has become a staple cuisine in our house. So I examine the quality of Chinese buffet items a bit more than others might. In general, I am disappointed over the quality of Chinese dishes on the steam tables.

Here are some suggestions from a longtime oriental cook if you frequent Chinese buffets:

1. Avoid the steam tables except for rice and noodle dishes. Although not the best these dishes are usually OK because they are SUPPOSED to be bland.
2. Avoid the fried meat dishes. If you want to know why do a simple test. Take apart one of the fried meat bits and try to discover for yourself what the meat is - or even if there is any meat.
3. Use the grill. Know exactly what spices to have the chef add to your food choices. He usually does not know.
4. Eat the sushi and California rolls. It is often very good if fresh. Good sushi however seems only to be available on Sundays.
5. Forget the Asian foods and have the chef grill you a steak. Avoid the steam table steaks. The food on the steam tables are almost always keep at too low a temperature. You take a chance on stomach protests.
6. Examine the meats in the non-fried meat dishes and ask yourself: Is that really chicken? Is that really pork? The chicken is from a wholesaler who uses some unknown process to make the 'chicken' tasteless and rubbery. The pork is often all fat.
7. Find out what foods are made by the restaurant and try them. Some items are such as pot stickersand salads. Most however are bought from a wholesaler who specializes in tasteless fatty salty food.
8. Go to a real Asian restaurant and have a good meal. Notice the difference. Your stomach will thank you.

Keep in mind that my opinions are based only on buffets I have visited in this state. Iowa has never been known for the high quality of its enthic foods. It is probably true that buffets elsewhere are quite good. I certainly hope so.

Postscript:

The latest craze is now Japanese restaurants. 2 new locations have already opened with a third on the way. Unfortunately, these versions of Japanese restaurants all seem to be teppanyaki outlets.

There is still not a single delicatessen anywhere in this area. The closest authentic deli is over 150 miles away and it is still merely a pale imitation of the real thing.

'The Dragon' Chinese restaurant closed and re-opened under the same name as a gay bar and night club. Get it?

The Un-Bagel

[Originally posted on January 3, 2005]

I love bagels.
As a kid I savored the smell of yeasty bagel dough at the local bagel bakery and the soft but chewy taste of a fresh right-out-of-the-oven perfect circle of bageliciousness. The local bakery was a small store front, as all bagel bakeries were, with bins of fresh bagels just waiting inside the front door. The choices were limited; plain, sesame, onion, poppyseed, and garlic. Plain was always the bagel of choice and the most plentiful. And they were cheap. Ten cents each or 3 for a quarter. Then the bagel market went national. A firm began to market some sort of erstaz frozen bagel that bore as much resemblance to a real bagel as ice milk to ice cream. They survives and led the way to bagel store franchises and bread stores that added bagels to their product line.
Some bagel franchise stores weren't bad. They weren't real bagels but they came close and if you lived out in the hinderland (anywhere outside of New York, Florida, or California) they at least were a decent subsititute for the real thing. Usually smaller and not as tastey, these franchise bagels were OK between the infrequent trips to real bagel territory or overnight mail order form H&H in New York. But then the bread store franchises saw the potential of an untapped market and decided to bring the bagel to the masses. And began to change the bagel....
The first changes were flavors of bagels that seemed to appeal to the new bagel market. Some were interesting; I really like Asiago bagels. Some were so-so variations of existing speciality bagels such as pumpernickel and egg. Then came oddities such as sun-dried tomato, jalapeno, cranberry, blueberry, pumpkin. And then sweet dessert bagels that is almost sacrilegious to the very essense of bagelness such as chocolate and cinnamon. The worst was yet to come. Chains such as Panera's changed the baking method of making bagels. They made them more like rolls than bagels, good they are but they are not bagels. Bagels at places like Panera's are not the low calorie/ low carb treats that a plain bagel should be. Of course the prices also went up accordingly.
These psuedo-bagels really aren't bad. They just aren't real bagels. As the popularity of bagels grew with the mass market, the nature of the bagel, both in chain stores and in supermarkets became imitations of the real thing. And, to state this for the first time in this posting, un-Jewish.
Let's face it, no matter what the real origin of the bagel (the facts are in dispute), the bagel is a Jewish bread. As the marketing of the bagel became more intense, the further away from its Jewish roots the commercial bagel became. Many people I know do not know that the Bagel is a Jewish thing and that the bagels they consume in restaurants is not really a bagel but a corporate recreation with all ethnicity pulled out.
The last connection between the real world of bagels and the Macbagel that is so popular right now was made obvious to me the last time I was in Panera's. Every since Panera's began making erstaz bagels, they have also sold an erstaz cream cheese. Not the real thing but still good. If you have had a real cream cheese with bagel treat you might pass this pale imitative expensive stuff up. Panera's also sold a cream cheese and lox variation. I was always careful to ask for cream cheese and SMOKED SALMON because the help never seemed to know what lox was. A bagel with lox and cream cheese is the ultimate Jewish treat. Add a slice of tomato, onion, or cucumber and you have a real classic. And please, none of these flavored bagels. The flavor is in the lox, cream cheese and anything else you add on to it.
I looked in vain for the lox and cream cheese on Panera's menu last time I was there. It was gone. It has been removed from the corporate menu as well. In my opinion, Panera's has removed the last trace of the bagel's Jewish roots. As far as Panera's is concerned, a bagel is just another bread. In most chain bagel joints you can at least pretend you are eating Jewish food if only because the name of the business sounds Jewish. But not in Panera's.
Panera's is now off my bagel buy list. In my hometown, amid the plentitude of fake bagels, there is still a chain bagel that close to the real thing; Breuggers, and they will have to satisfy my bagel fix from now on.