Amber Alerts and Manic Mergers

I was lounging around in a cozy armchair the other day at a local bookseller, browsing through a copy of Tom Vanderbilt's "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," which is ostensibly an examination of driving personalities, and the implications of our good, bad, and ugly driving habits. I only read through the first chapter, before deciding to instead take home a copy of  "Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity" (written by Michael Lewis, who is probably best known for either "Moneyball" or "The Blind Side," which was recently screen-adapted for the film of the same name), and while it didn't quite impress me enough that day to purchase it I did come away from my short time with the book thinking quite determinedly about what it is that most irks me about traffic -- and what my faults as a driver must say about me.
The book is good. The writing is sharp and the content is highly entertaining. Vanderbilt certainly knows the subject matter well, and has a keen understanding of the human psyche under duress. More importantly, his discussions, whatever the topic, seem to be well balanced, presumably because he knows that while most driving codes are pretty clear-cut there are gray areas of the law (areas that many people disagree over on a daily basis -- often at high speeds). Personally, just thinking about traffic -- which most of us can easily empathize with -- makes my blood boil. People on the road tend to be either careless or reckless, self-important drivers who feel it's their duty to police others, or just plain catatonic (those who act -- and appear to be -- comatose behind the wheel). And none of these personality types bodes well, in my opinion, for any of us.
Vanderbilt agrees, though he gives each of these different drivers the benefit of the doubt. The prologue opens the book with a comic yet enlightening explanation of the art of merging traffic, specifically the difference between those of us who merge rightward in a safe and timely fashion and those who refuse to do so -- barreling down the highway in the far left lane until the last possible minute (muscling their way into the line of cars beside them as the pavement they are on disappears into the shoulder). For the record, I tend to fall into the former category. I am generally a rather conservative (read: careful) driver, which is to say that I usually opt for the safer spot in traffic, as opposed to the one which may or may not get me somewhere quicker, but mostly when the arterial I'm traversing is at or near a congested state.
When the road is clear, however, I can be found cruising around, at speeds upward of nine-over the speed limit (which is commonly known as the "safe zone," in which cops usually leave you alone), passing those drivers who insist on maintaining the precise speed limit (wherever they may be on the road). But when it comes to intersections, I am a fervent abider of the law. Many of my traffic pet peeves have to do with infractions of intersection codes. For example, nothing infuriates me more than people who slam on the gas 15 feet from an amber light and gun it through the intersection. I don't know for absolute certainty, but am relatively sure that (collisions involving drunk drivers notwithstanding) a good majority of traffic accidents result when one or both parties involved (assuming there are only two) have run an amber (yellow, in lay terms) or red light.
The law is clear on the matter: "If the signal exhibits a steady yellow indication, vehicular traffic facing the signal shall stop before entering the crosswalk at the intersection or at a limit line when marked, but if the stop cannot be made in safety, a vehicle may be driven with caution through the intersection" (per Michigan state Legislature). Now, there are two operative words in this law, and, yes, I have highlighted them for you. They both, by definition, have to do with roughly the same concept -- which basically asks that we all move about in our daily travels carefully, taking into full consideration those around us. When a driver wantonly disregards those measures that have been designed to protect us from one another he or she is basically living on borrowed time (hence, forcing everyone else to do so too). And we all know the downside of borrowing: At some point, usually when we are least prepared, we are going to have to somehow repay those debts.

A Decade of Distress

One of the benefits of man-made instruments of time, specifically the yearly calendar, is that we are provided with innumerable opportunities (daily, weekly, monthly) to start anew, to click the refresh button on ourselves, so to speak, and proceed with a more emboldened sense of purpose and direction. One of the easiest ways to forget about a bad day at work, for example, is to find a way home, enjoy a decent meal, veg-out for a couple hours, and get a good night's rest. Our problems won't usually disappear, but these measures can at least help us to mentally file them away for a short while, if for no other reason than it gives us the chance to recharge and (sometimes) reevaluate what has gone awry in our lives. On a much larger scale, the month of January is one of those moments. It is typically used as a kind of springboard to a better, more healthy and organized way of living, a time in our lives when we resolve that "this will be the year" we actually make an effort to purge all of our unruly demons and habits -- and believe it possible.
Now, the skeptic will tell us that we are merely kidding ourselves, that this is just the procrastinator in us viewing the advent of "a new year" as an opportunity to put off addressing what is most pressing in our lives (usually when we instead opt to take a break and, often, go back to the drawing board, as it were). For many of us, this is true. For most of us, it's a thought which more than casually crosses our minds. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't take advantage of any opportunity available to realign whatever it is that has gone wobbly in our lives. To be sure, 2009 was a rough year for most of us, and for many it capped-off a turbulent decade in which a whole lot of excess and ignorance and malfeasance came back to bite them in the ass. It was a decade marred by corporate and political greed and corruption, widespread downsizing and bankruptcies (not to mention that the housing market got swallowed by the earth), and -- oh, yes -- one of the worst decades for entertainment in recent memory.
The average price of a beer in restaurants and bars across the nation rose from $2.50 to $12.75, the cost per average pair of tickets to a professional sporting event went from $48 to a first born child, and the country's biggest television networks and movie production companies yearly shoved nothing but recycled crap down our throats (The Departed notwithstanding), while the prices of cable and satellite television skyrocketed, forcing most of us to repeatedly remortgage our homes (which is probably largely to blame for the foreclosure crisis). The price of gas per gallon eclipsed the price of gold per ounce (but eventually dropped to something more commensurate with that of titanium) while the price of cars hit all time lows -- some dealerships even offered two-for-one deals (it actually happened!). Furniture retailers were forced to bundle couches, tables, and rugs with High-Def televisions and gaming consoles (at a low, low price). Heck, the Hot-N-Ready Little Caesers pizza even ushered in an era of $5 fast-food meal wars.
But 2010 is going to be different. It is going to be the year we all rebound and get that much-needed foothold we have been grasping for. It is going to be the year that marks the decline of over-weight and under-medicated Americans, a year that is remembered as one of the first to close the gap in the pay rate between teachers and corporate figureheads, and it will some day come to be viewed as a turning point in our dependence on fossil fuels. It will halt urban sprawl, turning people back toward the cities where businesses are alive and thriving, homelessness and crime has been snuffed out, and competent leaders prevail upon the masses. And it will be a year in which Major League baseball finally exercises it's steroid demons, the NBA sheds its thugs-in-sneakers image, the NFL becomes a picture of parity, and the NHL becomes watchable again. That is, if those imbeciles who have since fallen from grace don't grab us by our ankles and drag us back into the mire (yes, Mark McGuire, I am talking about you).

Pride and Promiscuity

An excerpt from Monday's Detroit News discussing the sexual promiscuity of actor Warren Beatty put the number of women he supoessedly slept with at 12,775. The article cited Peter Biskind's recently published biography of the actor, "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America," warning that the oddly random number of conquests was just a ballpark figure, that the actual count could be well north of it (if certain "casual" encounters were included). It took me by surprise, not merely because of the subject matter but mostly because of the placement of the piece in the day's paper: It was at the top of page 2A (which is located on the left hand side of the paper when you open the front-page  -- or "A" -- section, for those of you unfamiliar with the layout of a daily paper).
In the wake of the revelation that Tiger Woods -- priorly the world's greatest, most well-groomed and behaved athlete -- was a philandering hoax of a model citizen, infidelity seems to have become the world's new obsession. Folks whose beliefs fall in line with that of those on the far right of the political spectrum decry this behavior, typically citing fortune, fame, and a rusty moral compass as the impetus for sexual infidelity. And those whose lifestyles are more progressive -- whose beliefs are more endearing to that of those on the left end of the political spectrum -- tend to be somewhat more forgiving (usually attempting to diffuse an argument or discussion on the matter by claiming that the world's entertainers are not role models, and thus should not be held to such standards).
Fortunately, the majority of us reside in the gray matter between these two extremes, which is healthy because it means that we tend to be more dutifully open-minded (as opposed to recklessly so, or just plain closed-minded). It also means, though, that we tend to have more difficulty forming firm opinions about matters of morality and immorality. This can tend to grate on one's patience. But it too can be a healthy disposition, mainly because it helps us put everything we encounter into a proper context (as it should be, as opposed to being jammed into some predetermined moral peg slot). For example, I was lying in bed the other night and (accidentally) caught half an episode of Oprah. She had on Cookie Johnson (Magic's wife), hawking her new line of denim jeans, which apparently are designed for -- ahem -- women with disproportionately large backsides.
Now, despite how difficult it may be to understand how a woman could possibly find it within herself to remain faithful to a man (regardless of what he accomplished as an athlete) who spent a good portion of his adult life as a rampant philanderer (with untold scores of women, no pun intended),there she was on Oprah, standing next to her husband (his appearance was via taped video), he with his arm wrapped tightly around her, gushing with  pride in support of her endeavor to be a compassionate clothier. He even joked at one point (which should have made anyone in their right mind uncomfortable), grabbing his wife by her hips and turning her back to the camera, laughing about how much he was in love with her...curves. But who are we to judge, right?
It's at this point in the discussion (or argument as I earlier stipulated) that people tend to amble into the "Is man meant to marry?" realm of the topic, so let us do so too. For the record, I am married, and happily so. But that's not to say that my life isn't a challenge (it most certainly is) or that it is daily everything that both my wife and I expect it to be. Rarely is anything in life that self-fulfilling. Nor should it be. Especially in the case of marriage, where the idea of self is replaced (more accurately, transcended by) the idea of discovering thyself in another, which is -- I think -- a vital component in the evolution of man. I mean, we've all seen what forsaking others for personal gain can do in terms of setting us back as an evolutionary species (think: Columbine, Nazi Germany, The Vietnam war, the sad state of affairs the attacks on 9/11 have plunged us into, et. al.).
On a recent feature on MSNBC a reporter wrangled her way into the homes of several Mormon fundamentalist families to discuss with them the practice of plural marriage. Specifically, she was hoping to get some answers to some of the more vexing questions about how the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (or FLDS), a fringe component of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or LDS), operated. Now, the LDS church -- commonly known as the church of Mormons -- is not in any way affiliated with the FLDS, nor do they allow plural marriage (which is an antiquated Mormon practice that only a handful of renegade sects still embrace). These people live and practice their faith in small, tight-knit groups well out of sight in rural areas of Utah and Arizona.
At any rate, it has long been believed that the women in plural marriages are probably somehow brainwashed, or in some way trapped in these relationships. But to hear them tell it (albeit in front of a television camera) they wouldn't have it any other way. The ones that participated in the interview explained that their way of life -- sharing their husbands with multiple women, while raising not only the children each of them bore with their husbands but also those of numerous other women -- was a much more sophisticated way to live, one that most of us (in effect, the majority of the world) could not possibly understand. The basic premise of their argument is that men in their culture are "committed" to each of their wives, and children, which makes them (apparently) more evolved than what they believe to be most of the men in mainstream society who marry one woman and still get involved with others, committing in no real way to any of them.
I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment. But I do find it hard to believe that men like Warren Beatty, Tiger Woods, and Magic Johnson (among countless others, I'm sure) are fully committed to the women with whom they have entered into marriage -- especially when their infidelity counts are so astronomically high. So, are these men exceptions to the norm, or -- unfortunately -- representative of it? It's hard to say with any degree of certainty, especially when infidelity is so pervasive: We see it in Hollywood, in professional sports, and even in politics. That, certainly, doesn't mean that it inflicts only the rich, high-profile, and famous among us. No one, I suppose, is so infallible, nor are our convictions so impenetrable,  that we cannot be influenced by the seductive tongue of temptation. Which is to say, I suppose, that we are all human. As such, we are each responsible for our own actions, and for those people in our lives who are directly affected by them. And, like it or not, we all know better than to compromise what means most to us, even if we do it anyway.