Myself, I think 'Mangler' sounds more appropriate. Part 1.

My daughter is the proud owner of a new Jeep Wrangler, though after three days of urging the thing around Vegas, I honestly can't tell you why. (That means I can't tell you why she willingly owns it...and I certainly can't tell you why she's proud.) By the way, this post isn't just a case of Steve Tries to Mimic Consumer Reports; I'm building to a point or two, and I hope you'll bear with me till we get there. I'll try to keep you entertained en route.

Without further ado, then, here's my armrest review of the 2008 Jeep Wrangler:

Routine handling is impeccable, as long as you're stopped at a light. Once you actually begin moving, the car steers as if it were purposely designed to wander back and forth between lanes. There are moments when you'd swear you were on one of those kiddie carnival rides where the steering wheel in your miniature vehicle isn't connected to anything.

Emergency handling, meanwhile, is downright scary. There is just no way to make a controlled high-speed maneuver in this car—not one that yields predictable results. Even at the moderate speeds you quickly learn to settle for, unexpectedly sharp bends in highway exit ramps will make you think you're on the verge of a wheelie. I've been driving for over 40 years in all types of vehicles, from shiny and new to ancient and rust-ravaged, and I don't think I've ever experienced the weightless "uh-oh" feeling that this Jeep provides at least once per drive. The moving van I piloted around SoCal for four days while my family and I looked for housing (it's a long story) handled more precisely than this Jeep. No joke.

But at least the ride sucks. Usually when a car handles this poorly, it's because the engineering dollars went into a so-called "boulevard ride." Not here. An unnoticed speed bump is a seismic event. And, rather shockingly (since this is a certified off-road 4WD we're talking about), even more modest topographical irregularities will cause the suspension to jiggle and sway, requiring corrections in course.

Acceleration is sluggish, despite the added horsepower that Jeep touts in its promos. On the highway, you hit the hammer for that surge of passing juice you need in order to escape from the kinds of local lunatics who take traffic personally, and it's just not there.

Another thing that's just not there: the horn. Seriously. You have to feel around for it to get it to toot, and by then, of course, it's too late. Even at that, the horn isn't always in the same place. Which is not good in a city like Vegas, because I wasn't kidding about the lunatics. Drivers out here seem to think "red light" means "only three or four more cars should speed through this intersection..."

The alleged climate control is perfectly adequate if you're traveling at a steady speed of 60 mph on a flat stretch of road. As soon as you accelerate or need to climb, the compressor cuts out, balmy air pours from the vents, and you get to feel the temp inside the vehicle climb by a fast 5 or 10 degrees. And don't tell me this is because it's 109 in Vegas. We rented a Caddy last weekend and it'd get so cold that we had to cut back the a/c to "economy" now and then.

In short, I think I know why there's that big "X" on the door of the Jeep. It's a secret message from some designer with a conscience, and it means DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, BUY ONE OF THESE! Quite simply, my daughter's Jeep Wrangler is, with no contenders, the worst new vehicle I have ever driven.

She loves it. Luuvvvvvs it.

But why, Jen? I implore. Why? (When you're imploring, you have to repeat the key thought.)

"Because," she says, "it's so cute and fun!" A moment later, seeing the enigmatic look on my face, she amplifies: "It just does it for me. I had one before* and I always loved it and I hated giving it up, so I'm so happy I could get another one." She also mentions that it came with satellite radio.

Oh, OK. Now I understand.

The problem I have with my daughter's taste in cars is twofold. (Actually, I could cite about a dozen reasons, but to keep it manageable I'll focus on my two primary gripes.) For starters, Jen is a single mom. She's responsible for my grandson, Jordan, who is very precious to me, and it therefore bugs the hell out of me that she's driving him around in a Jeep. As it happens, I warned her about the Wrangler when she first told me she was considering it; I sent her the skeptical reviews of its viability as an everyday car and recited its litany of safety concerns. No matter; she plunked down her $25K anyway. Worse, half the time she doesn't even have the hardtop on—she likes the wind in her hair while she listens to that satellite radio at nuclear-fission volume levels—which leaves Jordan sitting in the nominal back seat, not only exposed to the desert elements but far more likely to be thrown from the vehicle during a collision (or if Jen drives over an unusually high speed bump).

Regrettably, my daughter's unapologetic attitude is symptomatic of the way many moms (and not just the single ones) think nowadays: Sure my child's welfare is important, but not so important that I'm going to sacrifice my own happiness, by gosh. If these moms can look out for their kid in a way that doesn't cramp their style, fine. Otherwise he's sitting in the back of a Wrangler with the hardtop off. (This, for the record, is another reason why I dedicated my book, SHAM, as I did. I don't have a copy with me so I can't quote it verbatim, but it's something like: "To mom and dad, and the rest of the parents of their generation who were codependent enough to put their kids first.")

You know, my wife and I have to laugh, in a gallows-humor kind of way, each time we drive to my older boy's house in Ossining. Once best known for its eponymous prison, Sing-Sing, Ossining these days is a gentrifying bedroom community of Manhattan, filled with double-income young-marrieds. The last leg of the 2.5-hour trip from PA to Ossining puts you on NY-9, a business route where you pass several day-care facilities that advertise "SATURDAY HOURS!" Come again? Could it really be that parents who don't see their kids all week (save for maybe an hour of "quality time" before bed each night) also need an additional respite from the poor creatures on weekends, too? If you're in that category and you're reading this, excuse my impertinence, but why did you have children?? So there's someone to visit you when you're old and gray? You might want to take a listen to Cat's in the Cradle.

Next time: The implications of my daughter's automotive choices for vanity and the American way of life.

P.S. Lest you think I'm being too hard on the Jeep, take a look at these answers to an innocent question about the Wrangler's suitability for a beginning driver. Or simply Google expert reviews using search coordinates like, say, "Jeep + Wrangler + handling." See for yourself what comes back.

* This was when she lived by herself in San Diego, pre-Jordan. (My wife and I had moved to Indy.) She got rid of it for financial reasons before I even knew she had it.

Quick but seismic illustration...

...of my oft-made point about Big Journalism's institutional tendency to invert reality, such that what you see on TV may well be the opposite of what really happened. (Btw, if you haven't yet read my long article in Skeptic, it's still on the stands.)

You probably heard that earlier today there was an earthquake in Los Angeles, magnitude 5.4. That is a relatively minor event, as these things go—I slept through a similar one, once, when we lived in San Diego—and property damage, by all reports, was negligible. So what does ABC correspondent Miguel Marquez do? He finds a spray of bricks that fell to the street from one of the very few structures that suffered some damage, and he files his report on the quake, for World News With Charles Gibson, virtually standing in the mini-rubble.

LMAO. Literally.

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UPDATE, WEDNESDAY, 7:30 a.m. VEGAS TIME. So this morning CBS correspondent Ben Tracy is reporting from in front of the same freakin' bulding...and he's holding a brick! (I guess that's to kill any nearby birds that may be carrying avian flu...)

A death in Malibu.

This past June 7, 53-year-old David Bassett walked onto a California beach and ended his life with a shotgun. This took place not far from the home he shared with his wife, Lucinda. If the names sound vaguely familiar, it's because David and Lucinda Bassett were principals in the Midwest Center for Stress & Anxiety. At one time my item on that Ohio facility (which isn't a treatment facility at all, but more of a distribution warehouse and boiler room) enjoyed the distinction of having generated the most comments of any post in SHAMblog history. Not a few of those who left their thoughts were refugees from the Center's in-house discussion forum, where their critical remarks had been expunged or edited; a few claimed to have been banned altogether. Collectively, they seemed to feel they'd been abused, if not conned. The gist was that the Center had used misleading claims and credentials to charge them a lot of money for programs that didn't work (or at least hadn't worked for them). To be fair, a number of Center apologists also weighed in, and for a while we had a spirited, thought-provoking give-and-take going.

I hesitate to write anything that's perceived as dancing on someone's grave. And, just to be clear, that is not what I'm doing here. Faithful readers know that my own family has been touched by suicide in the recent past. (Some years earlier, my youngest son also lost his best friend to suicide.) I've said that I consider suicide the most tragic end a human life could come to, and I stand by that unoriginal but heartfelt sentiment. All the same, one has to find irony (and perhaps significance?) in the fact that this was the final recourse of a man whose special franchise in the SHAMscape was the marketing of a revolutionary, fail-safe way of conquering one's personal demons.* A prospective customer might reasonably ask: If the Center's programs can't even prevent one of the Center's owners from killing himself...? I'm reminded of Tony Robbins' exploits during the summer of 2005: Tony was spamming his mailing list with a promotion for a $210 video on keeping the spark in a mature relationship...at the precise moment he was also in court in Canada, describing the circumstances under which he exchanged Wife No. 1 for Wife No. 2.

Leaving aside the natural desire for privacy, such credibility considerations may explain why Lucinda Bassett has been guarded in her formal statements on her husband's death. Published obituaries simply noted that David Bassett "passed away," praising him as a devoted father with a "fearless, take-no-prisoners attitude" who "spread enthusiasm." The one short item I was able to find online that did use the words suicide and shotgun disappeared within days. I spoke with Anne Soble, editor and publisher of the Malibu Surfside News, which ran that item; she voiced surprise that her paper's coverage of the suicide no longer was available on the Web. But Malibu, you know, is a cozy enclave, where favors may be asked and niceties may be observed. (Again in fairness, Soble told me she hadn't initially been aware of Bassett's ties to the Center, and she said she may revisit the matter now that such information has come to light.)

On several occasions over the past year I've been in touch with Lucinda's first husband, Jim, who looked me up after reading my skeptical post on the Center. He felt that his ex-wife's overwrought narrative** of the longstanding emotional and psychic upheaval that supposedly motivated her personal search for answers (and led her to found the Center) did not gibe with his recollections of the "Cindy" he once knew or the general circumstances of their life together. Jim and I talked about all this at some length, and I'm sure I'll have more to say in a subsequent post. [To hear some of Lucinda's standard patter on anxiety and such, click here.]

For now I guess the takeaway is that the SHAMscape is not some Elysian wonderland that enjoys immunity from the slings and arrows that afflict the rest of us: There is much left unspoken, and there are always things going on behind the scenes that the demigods of self-help will withhold from us until circumstances out them or leave them no choice.

These are people, folks. Businesspeople. Not mystics and soothsayers.

* I don't know how much hands-on involvement David Bassett had in the conceptual end of the Center and/or its programs, but the fact remains, he lived with the chief guru and motivational officer.
** rendered on Oprah, among other high-visibility places.

'Win a boob job!'

Well, folks, I have now been in Vegas for two weeks, and I can truthfully say that if I see one more woman with a 40-inch bust that provides shade for a 20-inch waist, I'm going to find my way to the MGM Grand and personally tear out Roy's throat again.* On a related, um, front, there's the whole cleavage thing. I apologize in advance for being somewhat coarser than I've historically been on SHAMblog, but I wish someone would tell me what it is in the first place that makes it "attractive" for a woman to flounce around with the equivalent of a gigantic bulging ass-crack in the middle of her chest. What's especially galling is that most of this bustiness and decolletage is manmade—clearly, laughably manmade at that. You see these babes at the pool, filling their bikini tops with what look more like fleshy cantaloupes than actual human breasts. Some of them even sport incision scars that refuse to tan.

I've been all over this great land, and have even spent considerable time in Hollywood, and I can tell you that Las Vegas is, unequivocally, Silicone Valley. The climate is perfectly captured in the headline I chose for this post, which is in fact a current promotion at one of the Strip's hottest clubs, the CatHouse. (A second club, the Forty Deuce, recently announced the debut of "Silicone Sundays!") And, the capper: This Look, as it were, is almost always topped off by—need I say it?—that ridiculous mane of lifeless, doll-like blonde hair that so many women of that ilk apparently think is necessary to give the full effect.

But I'll give credit where credit is due: It definitely does give the full effect.

We've touched on this topic before, and I repeat that I don't understand the compulsion to be, or at least look, unreal (or maybe surreal is the proper word here). Are cookie-cutter Barbie Doll dimensions really the male ideal? Not this male. To me, there is very little that's more lovely than a smallish, nicely shaped female breast (as per art). In any case, if the look is storebought—if you have to become something you're not in order to feel "whole"—then how can you possibly take pride in that? (Do such women not see the irony of abandoning their true Self in the pursuit of self-esteem?) It's like guys who roar off the line in their new Vettes, then look around at the next stoplight to see who noticed them. Where's the personal payoff in such behavior? It's not like they built the damn thing, for crissake! They just bought it (or, increasingly, leased it). Nor did they have to endure a long and arduous apprenticeship in which they gradually mastered the skills necessary to drive at neck-snapping speeds; anybody who can scrape together enough money for the drive-off is instantly capable of acting like a juvenile a-hole, as soon as Experian pronounces him fiscally fit.

I sometimes get criticized for overreaching, for trying to find deep global meaning in the likes of boob jobs...but see, this is really the problem with so-called self-help in a nutshell (and also goes a long way toward explaining why the self-help we presently have is the only self-help that could've viably emerged in our culture, which, for all the hoopla about individuality and self-expression, doesn't really honor or even value The Individual. In reality American culture represents The Cult of the Ideal, or the so-called Ideal). Like that seminal self-help book, I'm OK, You're OK,** SHAMland generally sends the message that you're not OK, that in order to "work on yourself," you pretty much have to scrap yourself and become something else, some mass, generic something that can be summarized in "7 Keys" or "10 Steps." (Or two giant, fake breasts.)

And apart from all the billions wasted on useless and/or counterproductive therapy, I just find that very sad.

* I don't know what one thing has to do with the other, either, but it seemed like a reasonable Vegas reference.
** which I discuss early in SHAM.

But there is an i in pseudo-intellectual.

I'm doing a couple of pieces related to happiness or the lack thereof, and in the course of my research I came across a quote, from an article in Discover, that's almost breathtaking in the magnitude of its stupidity. The speaker is Harvard's Nancy Etcoff (the latest academic to hop on the positive-psychology bandwagon* that has all but hijacked the psychology department at that Ivy League enclave), and her thinking goes as follows: "The more selfish you are, the more unhappy you are. If you look at suicide notes, they are filled with I, me, and my." See the reasoning? Unhappy people commit suicide. Suicide notes are full of I, me, my. Selfish people use I, me, my a lot. Ergo, selfish people are unhappy people.... Got it? (Maybe Etcoff has better proof than this, but it's the example she uses, and I don't think it's unfair to judge a person's argument by the evidence she uses.)

First of all, anyone writing a suicide note is about to end his life and is pausing briefly to explain why, so perhaps he can be forgiven his momentary self-absorption. But the real point is, people commit suicide because they are in pain, and pain is experienced personally. What would you expect a suicide note to say? ("You people are always so damn depressed. And those folks down the road! Don't even get someone else started....") That is no more an indication of selfishness than if you were to ask some guy who'd just applied a Band-Aid why he did it and he replied, "I cut my finger and, well, it was kind of bothering me."

This is the problem I have with making "emerging sciences" out of realms that are so highly speculative and uncertain. The so-called authorities in those realms, in order to justify their existence and position, end up looking for things to expound on, finding significance in happenstance or random apocrypha, connecting dots that have no business being connected, at least not yet. In the attempt to sound all-knowing about the unknowable, they overreach big-time, and usually end up sounding just plain dumb.

Moreover, this notion that you can tell how selfish a person is by examining his prose and counting the appearances of I, me, my... Well, some of us could go on and on, but why not end with the words of a person who, based on that formula, is surely one of recorded history's most selfish people. I mean, will you look at all those i's!:

"One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition. And I told the Sisters: You take care of the other three, I take of this one that looked worse. So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: Thank you—and she died. I could not help but examine my conscience before her, and I asked what would I say if I was in her place. And my answer was very simple. I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself, I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain, or something, but she gave me much more—she gave me her grateful love..."
—Mother Teresa, from her Nobel acceptance speech, 1979

* Fathered by Marty Seligman, whom I cite in several places in SHAM.

Flocking to the polls.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm writing this "in one take," from Vegas, no less, so I apologize for any errors in computing or manipulating numbers that the reader may find herein. Please feel free to point them out. Broad-brush, however, I do believe that my case is sound.)

I must be either the dumbest or—giving myself the benefit of the doubt—the most naive person in America. I say that because I was actually shocked by the results of a poll question on AOL today that sought to take the temperature of public sentiment on race's role in the forthcoming election. The poll had four questions. One asked whether the nation was ready for a black president, and I'm not sure we can deduce any meaningful insights from the dispiriting results; a "no" answer could simply be a sign of fatalism from a well-meaning person who whiffs a good deal of closet racism in the air. I'd even imagine that quite a few who support Obama answered "no" to that question.

But the next query was direct, and telling: "Are you personally ready for a black president?" This was the stunner, to me: 47 percent of the roughly 200,000 respondents (at this writing) answered "no."

In a subsequent question that plumbed the racial breakdown of poll participants, 77 percent self-identified as white and only 9 percent as black. Making the reasonable (though not ironclad) assumption that the same demographics hold for the responses to all questions*, one must conclude that at least 36 percent of the whites (i.e., 77 percent of the 47 percent who answered "no," they weren't ready) are confessing that they wouldn't vote for a black candidate. Now, AOL polls hardly can be said to carry scientific weight. But I'm floored nonetheless. Truly, and sadly. (I'm also left wondering: Who are the rest of the 47 percent? Did all the Hispanics and Asians say they wouldn't "vote black"? I know, I know: I'm assuming that almost no blacks weren't ready for a black president. Read on.)

At the same time, I'm troubled by the conventional wisdom on what such stats "tell us about today's America." The springboard for the AOL poll was in fact a New York Times piece on a similar (and more scientific) survey, which found a similar racial divide. But again, in its calculus of American bigotry, the Times had no particular comment on the 83 percent of blacks who said they lean towards Obama. Eighty-three percent. You're telling me that's just coincidence? Seems to me that that level of approval rating has to have racial underpinnings, too. (Nowadays it's hard enough to get 83 percent of any given constituency to agree on the spelling of the word agree.) Put another way: Many black voters probably like the guy because he's black and he's viable, and/or they figure he'll support "black causes." This, by the way, echoes the findings in exit polls from primaries, especially as the spring wore on and Obama's viability was certified. So I return to another question that I've asked a half-dozen times on this blog:

Why is the fact that four of five black voters favor Obama somehow more benign (and/or better news for race relations) than the fact that at least a third of whites reject him? Is not bigotry—pro or con—still bigotry?

* Not all respondents answered all questions. The question on demographics garnered the lowest number of total responses.

An unconvincing 'mallrat'-ionale?

Once again, to underscore how selective we can be in deciding whom we discriminate against: A major shopping venue in my region, Delaware's Christiana Mall, has decreed that henceforth, after 5 p.m., shoppers under 18 no longer will be welcome unless accompanied by parents or other adults. The rationale is simple: Teens cause trouble. They're loud, they're obnoxious, they start fights. They drink illegally, then come into the mall and curse and carouse, or cruise the parking lot with their 500-watt stereos blaring profane hip-hop. Even when they're not wreaking havoc, these swarms of so-called mallrats indulge in embarrassing PDA sessions with their BFs/GFs. So the mall is drawing a line in the marble. This is actually part of a trend. In fact, there are malls that have banned teenagers, period, after certain hours. And, of course, there are many downtown areas (and some entire cities) that have established curfews for underage citizens. In such cases, the message to teens is blunt and unflinching: You're either home by a certain hour or we arrest you.

As targets of discrimination, you see, teenagers are "safe." They can't vote until they're almost done being teens, and they're often apolitical anyway; it's hard to be too political when you're constantly texting Heather to, like, find out who Josh hooked up with last night*. We don't see teens as a legitimate constituency. Basically, everyone past the age of 20 thinks of teenagers as airheads whose rights aren't worthy of consideration. So when a mall steps forward and announces a policy like the one described above, we don't force the mall to justify its actions. We don't demand proof that teens, by and large, are unruly. We know how we feel about teens, and that's good enough for us. Therefore, even though the mall may be curtailing the freedom of all teens based on the transgressions of a relative few, we nod and say, "Yeah, that makes sense. And it's about damn time, too!"

But suppose we replace the word "teens" with the word "Hispanics" (or even, say, "Hispanic teens"). Suppose mall management had asked its security people for an assessment of who was causing the most trouble, and the security people replied, "That's easy: It's the Latinos." Regardless of whether the security team's perceptions were valid—let's say there were stats showing that Hispanics had accounted for 78 percent of all crimes committed in the mall during the past five years—would a mall be permitted to enact a policy that banned Hispanics only (or even "just" Hispanic teens) from the premises? If a mall tried to do that, would the media report the event uncritically, as my local ABC affiliate reported Christiana's decision vis-a-vis teens as a class? Or would the reporting sound a distinct note of outrage and indignation?

For the benefit of those who periodically accuse me of being a closet bigot: I'm not suggesting that malls ban Hispanics. Nor is this my "clever" way of saying that if malls really want to get rid of the problem, they should ban Hispanic teens specifically, not all teens. I'm saying that there are some forms of bias that we're allowed to have based merely on general impressions—e.g. that teens are a pain in the ass—while there are other forms of bias that we're not even permitted to contemplate, regardless of whether we have hard data to back up those impressions. In much the same vein, we are permitted to have (and espouse) positive bias rooted in nothing more than anecdotal inference—"women excel at teamwork"—but not negative bias rooted in anecdotal inference—"women make lousy bosses." We wouldn't be allowed to say that last one even if we had reams of statistical data supporting it.

For the 153rd time, I ask: Will someone explain this to me?

* and in making that remark, I hereby show evidence of my own biases.

Criminal (in)justice.

I've been watching a lot of true-crime lately. It's not hard to do; true-crime is the staple content nowadays of TV newsmagazines like 48 Hours, Dateline, and Primetime: Crime. (Seems like every show on television is either a reality series, a drama set in a hospital or police precinct, or a true-crime newsmagazine.) Invariably as such shows rouse to a finish with the obligatory guilty verdict, thus providing closure to hard-line viewers who otherwise would've felt cheated, I end up leaping to my feet and screaming NO! at the television (which, oddly, does not reply or even acknowledge me). I do this not because I think the defendant is a nice person, or even that he or she is innocent, necessarily; most of the time it seems likely that the cops got the right guy (or gal). But—call me crazy—I always thought guilt actually had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt (and to a moral certainty, the oft-forgotten part of the admonition given to juries*). In nine out of 10 of these shows, unless whole portions of the prosecution's case unaccountably got left on the cutting-room floor, guilt goes sorely un-proved, at least from my POV. Not only that, but when the reporter convenes jurors after-the-fact to question them on their thinking, it becomes clear that the jury rendered its verdict based on factors that had no business even being included in the case. Again, IMHO.

Ergo, I hereby take the liberty of presenting a few recommended changes to a criminal-justice system that—if these shows are any indication—is seriously broken:

1. PLEASE: No so-called evidence rooted in the defendant's demeanor upon learning of the crime.
I don't want to hear testimony from cops (or a post-mortem from a juror) that goes, "I was immediately suspicious because he didn't react the way you'd expect people to, when they just found out their wife is dead...." Human beings are different and react differently to things. I know people who fly into a blind rage when confronted with the slightest speck of adversity, and I know people who just sort of swallow and do/say nothing even when faced with major setbacks. "Unexpected reactions" are not evidence of anything, have no direct relevance to the commission of a crime, and should never be admissible at trial. Related to this:

1a. PLEASE: No so-called evidence that suggests that the defendant was happy the victim was dead.
I don't care if the defendant started laughing or burst into applause when informed that her husband or former business partner had just been found decapitated and on fire. Maybe she hated the man and wished him dead. That has nothing to do (legally) with whether she killed him.

2. PLEASE: No so-called evidence based on commonplace things the defendant did, or didn't do, or would've normally been expected to do (or not do), in the days following the crime.
Look, it's one thing if the defendant was observed out in his yard throwing guns, knives and body parts into a giant vat filled with sulfuric acid on the night his wife disappeared. But I don't want to hear vague evidence about how so-and-so "never called the cops to check on the progress of the case" or "seemed perfectly fine to me" or began screwing the neighbor-lady up the street the day of the funeral. (Nor, for that matter, do I want to hear about how he'd been screwing the neighbor-lady up the street for the past two years. That has nothing to do with what happened the night of the killing.) Once again, people are different, and people in a high-stress situation may act strangely. That's not evidence of anything, has no relevance to the commission of the crime, and should not be admissible at trial.

3. PLEASE: No so-called evidence based on the defendant's behavior/comportment at trial or during testimony.
I don't want to hear jurors say things like, "I was watching him as he sat there during the testimony, and he just seemed so arrogant to me" or "I didn't see any emotion in him at all when they talked about the night of his wife's death...." That's not evidence of anything, has no relevance to the commission of the crime, and should not be admissible at trial. Moreover, if the defendant chooses to testify, I don't want to hear jurors later say things like, "I just didn't believe him. He wasn't credible to me." Jurors shouldn't be permitted to simply discount sworn testimony on the basis that "I just didn't buy it." Now let me be clear: Jurors can make that determination if they catch the defendant in a lie, or spot contradictions/inconsistencies in his or her testimony. But no juror should be allowed to disregard otherwise consistent testimony simply because that juror "didn't like the guy's manner" or "didn't find him credible." If the defendant testifies under oath, that testimony must be given proper weight. Not only that, but in the absence of refuting evidence, that testimony must prevail.

4. PLEASE: No cases built entirely on circumstantial evidence.
I know, this is a really controversial one that would have prosecutors nationwide screaming bloody murder. But people, I've had bizarre things happen to me in life. In all likelihood, you have, too. There are times when things that just don't happen...suddenly happen. Ergo, you cannot, I repeat, cannot send someone to jail for life (or, god forbid, to the gas chamber!) because a series of bizarre coincidences suggest that s/he committed homicide. If there are no witnesses and there is no direct/physical evidence, there is no case. Period.

5. PLEASE: No cases built primarily on the fact that prosecutors couldn't seem to find anyone else around who would've/could've done the deed.
This, to me, is prosecution "by default," and shouldn't even require further comment.

Though most of my gripes are with the prosecution, I do have some quibbles with the defense as well. And so:

6. Defense attorneys should not be permitted to advance "alternative theories of the crime" that they know are fictitious.
If the defendant has confessed to his attorney, then the attorney's defense of his client must be limited to highlighting the reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case. No attorney should be permitted to put on an affirmative defense that suggests the involvement of other people he already knows had nothing to do with the case. That is fraud. And if laws (and even constitutional protections) need to be changed to effect this, so be it.

Reckoning guilt or innocence should be based on a balance sheet. As much as possible, we should seek to remove the "human factor." I'll have more on this as time permits.

* though that phrase has now come under fire.

Cut-throat marketing.

Perhaps you've wondered, as I have, where the end-game may be in the loopy and ongoing bout of one-upmanship that holds razor manufacturers in its vice-grip. (I do not claim to be the first to wonder. See what Gizmodo had to say, riffing on an article in The Economist.) How many blades is enough? Too many? First we had the twin-blade revolution (Trac II), then we marched on to three blades (Mach-3 etc.), then four (Quattro etc.)...and now some of these gizmos look like embryonic miniblinds. (Here's a little background on Gillette's product progression.) As it is, I can't imagine what a man of my father's generation would make of all this—and yet the trend shows no signs of abating. These days, if you shave your face with a single-bladed razor, you feel like that vaguely ominous-looking old guy in the small cottage just outside town who still does his front lawn with a push mower.

The real kicker is, we've reached the point in shaving evolution where function takes a back seat to form. If you're a man who likes his face smooth and clean-shaven (or whose honey does), you know what I'm talking about. The bigger and bulkier today's "shaving systems" become, the more unwieldy they are to maneuver around the angles of one's facial contours. For example, 'round about the time Gillette trotted out Mach-3 (and my ever-helpful wife began buying them for me), I began to notice how much more difficult it got to effectively shave the tiny mustache hairs directly below my nose. You just couldn't get the damn contraption in there anymore and still leave yourself room for the distance of travel necessary to cut the uppermost hairs; I had to keep a single-blade razor around for such tasks. Similarly, I defy anyone to execute a nice, straight, one-pass sideburn cut using a razor above the two-blade level. You usually end up cutting about a half-inch's worth of hair north of where you intended to. And unevenly at that.

The Economist hit the blade right on the edge when it noted, "It took a leisurely 70 years after King Gillette invented the safety razor for someone to come up with the idea that twin blades might be—or, at least sell—better" (emphasis added). This phenomenon is sales-driven, not functionality-driven. As is true of more than a few products on the market today, five-blade razors exist because people will buy them. What such devices add in utility (if anything) is far less important than what they offer in "cachet," or the buyer's belief that the products are simply the Clear Next Step In Shaving and thus a necessary component of any proper gentleman's personal-hygiene arsenal.

This may sound innocent enough, especially when you're talking about products that top out at $10 or $12. But think about it: Why should there be products that, in essence, exist solely to create a marketplace niche for which there was no preexisting need? If a single-blade razor shaves as well as (or better than) its five-blade counterpart—for less than half the price—then why should anyone even consider buying the five-blade razor? Ergo, why should there be a five-blade razor? Nor does the discussion end there, because an interesting thing happens along the way: Typically, the mere existence of the "better" product exerts an incremental upward force on the prices of many or all of the products beneath it. It does this by creating an artificial ceiling from which "lesser" versions of that same product are discounted. Look at it this way: If there were no Cadillacs, then who would willingly pay $35,000 for a Buick? But because GM has conditioned many status-minded buyers (especially older ones) to think of a Buick as "almost a Caddy," people pay almost-Caddy prices for a car that is, in every meaningful aspect, just a glorified Chevy.

Of course, so is the Caddy itself, in many important respects. But because that requires some amplification, and I'm already at risk of going pretty far afield here, it's a good place to stop. I'll just leave you with an exhortation to think about such things when you make your consuming decisions. Yeah, it's a pain. Only, if more of us took those pains, lots of things would cost a whole lot less. Including gasoline.

An outlook that fits me to a tea?

True baseball fans will remember Jim Abbott. Even those just casually acquainted with the sports world will recall hearing something about "that one-armed pitcher" who became a Major League sensation for a time. In reality Abbott was one-handed, which is to say, his right arm ended just below the wrist. He pitched successfully for a decade, 1989-1999, after devising a brisk and efficient way of transferring his glove from his right stump to his (left) throwing hand after delivering each pitch.* He even tossed a no-hitter in 1993. Just as impressive, perhaps, Abbott collected two hits of his own during his swan-song year with the National League's Milwaukee Brewers. He'd spent the rest of his career in the American League, where pitchers generally don't bat.

This morning I was reading an article about Abbott and what he's up to these days, and I was at first dismayed to learn that what Abbott is up to is motivational speaking. That's not to say I was surprised. If you think about it, who better personifies the standard Sportsthink mantra—"It's all up to you! You can do anything if you really put your mind to it!"—than a one-armed ballplayer?** Well, I'm here to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised by what I actually heard from Abbott (or at least what was quoted in the newspaper. For all I know, his seminar audiences may be treated to an hour's worth of Lasorda-style magical (sports)thinking). Abbott points out that in the game just prior to his no-hitter, he'd had a terrible outing, so bad that he wondered how he was going to right the ship and become a successful pitcher again. And what does he conclude from this astonishing game-to-game turnabout? "You might be down now but you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow." Or—to paraphrase—if things went from good to bad, they can go from bad to good again.

Now that's a terrific motivational message—not just because it's uplifting, but because it's likely true in most settings. Also notice what Abbott doesn't say, at least in this passage. He doesn't try to blur the distinction between the possible and the probable. He doesn't lapse into Byrne-ese and start blabbering about how, if you believe it, it will happen. He just says, in essence, that you shouldn't give up too soon. Point is, we don't know what's going to happen next. Ergo—if I may be permitted to supply my own expansion on Abbott's thoughts—while there's no reason to expect life to suddenly shower us with abundance, there's no reason to expect life to keep kicking us in the ass, either. But if you don't at least strive for greatness, then you're probably going to get a lesser result than someone who tries really hard.** So just go out and keep striving and maybe, just maybe, you'll be rewarded.

File that under "What Steve's self-help book would sound like, if he wrote one, Chapter 5...."

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And then, at the other pole of the vast attitudinal continuum (I would say "on the other hand," but I don't want to be accused of having some tasteless fun at Jim Abbott's expense), there's my youngest son. This morning he phones his mother from Vegas, where he lives these days, quite upset about the fact that Wendy's doesn't offer iced tea (at least not at 8:12 a.m. his time). I'm not overstating. He was indeed quite upset over this, my wife reports. I think the message here is this: If you're the kind of person who gets "quite upset" because there's no iced tea at your local fast-food joint—upset enough to phone home at 8:12 a.m. specifically to complain about it—you could probably use an attitude adjustment. Hell, maybe even a one-on-one with Tommy Lasorda.

* "Normal" two-handed pitchers, of course, wear the glove on the non-throwing hand, which Abbott was unable to do because he lacked any fingers with which to control the glove. It should be obvious that a pitcher requires a glove not just for defensive purposes—to field the ball as part of his team's overall effort to retire the opposing batters—but also for self-defense, in the case of laser-shots that come back at him at speeds well in excess of 100mph.
** Even though the odds of any given one-armed ballplayer making it to the Major Leagues are probably 5 million to 1, no matter how much he "wants it."
*** though even then, the link between effort and outcome is far from conclusive, especially in a sport like baseball, where totally random events play a key role in separating winners from losers.