Soccer

Ever wonder what it's like to play world class soccer? The perspective of a player working his way up through several teams and facing off against the world's best. From a Nike commercial.

May Recipe

(Each month, I include a recipe in the monthly newsletter for the kitchen where I work. These recipes need to complement the entrees on our menu that particular month, and are targeted towards our average customer. That means it needs to be simple, require little active prep work, and use only the most basic ingredients. For May, it is not a recipe, but a technique. You can find all of the recipes from that newsletter by clicking on the Recipe label.)

Grilling 101

May is a great time of year to get the grill out, clean it up, and get a fire going. A number of the entrees on our May menu can be grilled, so here are a few things to remember to get the best results.

1. Your heat source. Whether you are using a gas grill or charcoal, you will want to have one part of the grill hot and another part of the grill medium hot. After preheating the grill (for at least 15 minutes on a gas grill and 30 minutes with charcoal), hold your hand about 5 inches above the grill and count how long you can comfortably hold it there. If it's only 2 seconds, you have a hot grill. If it's 3-4 seconds, then you have a medium hot grill.


2. Your grill grates. Clean grates will keep last night's meal from flavoring tonight's, and will keep your food from sticking. After preheating the grill, scrape all of the residue off the grates with a metal grill brush. Then oil the grates with vegetable oil. Using tongs, dip a wad of paper towels into a small bowl of oil, then rub the paper towels over the hot grates (wait until the towels stop dripping - you don't want oil to drip right into the fire!) Oil the grates immediately before adding the food.


3. Your food. Start your chops, chicken, or steak over the hottest part of the fire. After 2-3 minutes, depending on the thickness of the meat, flip it (you want to see grill marks, and the meat should release from the grates. If it sticks, wait another 60 seconds and try again) using tongs. A spatula works too, but avoid using a fork. You want to keep all of the delicious juices inside the meat, not dripping into the fire. Give the second side about the same amount of time, then flip it once more, moving the meat to the cooler part of the grill. (If at any time while the meat is on the hot part of the fire there are flare-ups, you should move the meat to the cooler side of the grill) If you rotate the meat about 60 degree, you will end up with nice diamond shaped grill marks. Again, give the first side another 2-3 minutes, and then flip it a final time.


4. When is it done? The only way to be sure is with an instant read thermometer. Pick up the meat with your tongs and insert the thermometer through the side of the meat until most of the shaft in is the meat (unless you have an electronic thermometer - then you want the tip to be in the center of the piece of meat) Check the label on your entree to see the minimum temperature required for your entree. Because grills have hot spots and drafts, you need to check each chop or chicken breast - don't assume that they will all be done at exactly the same time.


5. Enjoy!

97% Safe

I received the results from my ServSafe certification class I took a couple of weeks ago. It's not a terribly impressive result. Anyone who graduated from High School ought to be able to pass this. There were important things on the test, things that anyone working with food needs to have memorized - such as the optimal conditions for bacterial growth and minimum recommended cooking temperature for various foods. There were also things on the test that I really don't think I need to have memorized.

I don't need to know off the top of my head whether a shellfish poisoning likely came from saxitoxin, brevetoxin, or domoic acid, particularly if I know that I can find out within a minute or two. Our short term memory has a limited capacity, and it takes work to move info from short term to long term memory.

One of the ways that the world has changed recently is that the value of being able to find information has increased. With so much information available on the web, knowing how to find the exact piece of information you need is critical. And while the "information superhighway" has put a vast amount of information at our fingertips, but it has also placed an equally (if not greater) amount of junk at our disposal as well. Knowing how to use a google search (or when google is not the right tool to use to find the info you need) is a skill that has real value.

I think I sometimes take this for granted, but then someone will ask me how to find a particular website. I don't usually bother to memorize an exact url, so I can't give them the answer that they think they need. I would just search for it, but usually the person with the question has already tried that. Various tips about how to use google help somewhat, but they assume you know which words to use. All the Boolean operators in the world won't help if the words you use are vague or you don't use enough words.

I imagine web search optimization (for the people doing the searches, not for people trying to drive traffic to their website) will become a standard part of school curriculum. I remember being in elementary school and learning how to use the card catalog and to understand the Dewey decimal system in a library. Learning how to use to a search engine, and then how to evaluate the results of your search, are just as important now.

Running Update

I'm still running, and I can tell that I'm slowly getting in better shape. Yesterday I did the 5K route near my house and only needed to stop to walk once. I think that I'm going to sign up to do the Hospital Hill 5K in six weeks. As it's name implies, there will be a lot more elevation gain on that run than what I'm currently doing. I could do a flat 5K without walking really soon, so doing Hospital Hill will provide a bit more of a challenge for my first official 5K. Since I hate the heat, I doubt I will add too many miles this summer, but I will find a 10K to do in the fall. I think having some events lined up will help my motivation to keep running.

I don't think I would start running barefoot, but this article in New York Magazine certainly has some food for thought. I've always liked to go barefoot as much as possible, and this article verifies my suspicion that it is healthy to do so. It's been years since I had a pair of Gazelles, but they weren't like this photo that accompanied the article.

10 Most Recently Played in my iTunes

1. Air Mail Special - Ella Fitzgerald - First Lady Of Song [Disc 1]
2. Don't Be That Way - Ella Fitzgerald - First Lady Of Song [Disc 3]
3. A Fine Romance - Ella Fitzgerald - First Lady Of Song [Disc 3]
4. Save Me - Nina Simone - The Very Best Of Volume 2
5. Flamenco Sketches - Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
6. All Blues - Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
7. Arizona - Alejandro Escovedo - The Boxing Mirror
8. Pyramid Of Tears - Alejandro Escovedo - Gravity [Live] [Disc 2]
9. Go Ahead - Alicia Keys - As I Am
10. Rehab - Amy Winehouse - Back To Black Ltd. Ed. Reissue

I don't have as much to say about this list tonight. There's some jazz on it. As a Kansas City native, I feel like I ought to know more about jazz than I do. The few times that I've gone to a jazz club, I've been mesmerized. Some of the folks at Arts & Faith had some suggestions for those looking to explore jazz, which I why I picked up the Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.

The Looming Robot Menace, part III

All of the robot posts were really just an excuse to talk about Battlestar Galactica. If the only Battlestar Galactica that comes to mind for you is the cheesy late 70's Star Wars wanna-be, then you might be pleasantly surprised by the new version. From the wikipedia page:

The new Battlestar Galactica departs from the original in several ways. In terms of style and storytelling, it rejects the traditional televised science fiction styles of Star Trek (after which the original Battlestar Galactica series was conceived) in favor of what executive producer Ronald D. Moore calls "naturalistic science fiction". The new series emphasizes character drama in an edgy survivalist setting and has many of the characteristics of military science fiction, shedding the light-hearted action/adventure style of the original show. Among plot differences, the key characters of Starbuck and Boomer have been recast as female roles. The Cylons are the creation of Man and a new breed of Cylon models now imitate humanoid appearance down to the cellular level.

Ronald D. Moore tackled the re-imagining with realism in mind, portraying the show's heroes as being part of a "flawed" humanity, and drawing inspiration from the September 11, 2001 attacks and their aftermath. In the re-imagined series, many characters struggle with deep personal flaws; for example, Adama and his son have a profoundly dysfunctional relationship while Colonel Tigh is an alcoholic. Their enemy is one capable of living amongst them unnoticed and willing to carry out suicide attacks, allowing an exploration of moral and ethical issues brought up by the War on Terrorism. The show has dealt with Cylon and human suicide bombers, the torture of prisoners, and a struggle motivated by intense religious differences. To add to this realism, the creative direction also redesigned Galactica with a decidedly 'retro' submarine look, approximating the function of an aircraft carrier, using bullets and missiles instead of directed-energy weapons such as lasers.

I like the show for the political and religious themes, as well as the fascinating characters. I normally don't consider myself a fan of science fiction because I have never had any interest in Star Trek. Of course I grew up with Star Wars, loved Firefly and Serenity, and now watch BSG obsessively. (I wish that George Lucas had sought out either of the guys behind these shows, Joss Whedon with Firefly/Serenity or Ronald D. Moore with BSG, to get involved with the Star Wars prequels. Moore could have done much more with the politics that bogged the prequels down, and Whedon did a better job than Lucas in the original Star Wars of referencing the style of an old Western - and he definitely gets the Hans Solo wiseass sense of humor)

Maybe I am not so influenced by genre as I am by a good story. If a show has interesting, flawed characters, who are in believable relationships, who face real dilemmas, and the story is told with a minimum level of technical proficiency, I'll give it a chance no matter the genre. Since BSG does all of those things well, with politics and religion thrown in for good measure!

The other thing we learn from BSG is that part of what makes the looming robot menace so scary is that the robots will rule over us in the manner of the George W Bush presidency, but with space ships.

The Looming Robot Menace, part II

Writing about robots is a good excuse to link to that video that was going around a few week ago of the "Big Dog," which the Pentagon is funding in hopes that it could used as pack mule for soldiers.

Did anyone else feel sorry for the thing when it was kicked or when it was slipping on the ice? Our ability to anthropomorphize just about anything is amazing.

Anyway, I writing about these robots because of the looming robot menace. Surely these researchers watched the Terminator movies as kids or teenagers, and I image many of them might watch the reimagined Battlestar Galactica that is currently on the SciFi channel. Unfortunately, they must not be taking these shows seriously. First, we teach robots how to drive cars, then how to carry military gear off road, and now we working on teaching them how control limbs just like humans do. Creating Skynet or a Cylon is not too far off.

The Looming Robot Menace, part I

Continuing with my earlier post about robotic research, I was reminded of the Hummer that was driven around campus when I was in school. CMU's robotics department was busy teaching a computer how to drive. A friend of mine who was a doctoral candidate in the Computer Science Department told me all about the use of neural networks and the theory behind this approach to artificial intelligence.

From what I remember, the Hummer had all sorts of input devices, mostly video cameras I believes, that recorded reams of data while a human drove the vehicle. The computer would look all of the data that was recorded, for example, when the human stopped the vehicle. At first, there would be no way for the computer to determine which data was significant, and which was not. The next time the vehicle stopped, however, that data could be compared to the data from the first stop. And so on and so on. Eventually patterns could be detected (like every time the video camera recorded an image of a red octagon with the white letter "STOP" on, it the human stopped the vehicle, therefore the computer could "learn" that a stop sign was consistent with the human stopping the vehicle)

The robotics department was pretty good at this, and last fall won a $2 million prize from DARPA in what to date has been the most prestigious robot race, the Urban Challenge.

The grounds of the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, CA, served as a mock city that the robots had to navigate. The course consisted of 60 miles of roads and parking lots and took about six hours to complete. The whole time, the robotic cars needed to obey traffic laws and avoid both cars driven by professional stunt drivers and the other robots on the course.

While DARPA is interested in autonomous vehicles for military purposes, obviously, the technology will likely be used to eventually add safety features to consumer cars.

I Got Mad Skillz, Yo!

Thursday is going to be a busy day at work. We are catering a lunch for 90 people at a financial company where we plan to start a business delivery program. It's a bit intimidating as we have never catered anything this big before. In addition to the lunch, tomorrow night we will host an open house for the 5th grade class at local elementary school (the school that I attended as a whippersnapper) This will kickoff a fundraiser we are doing with the school.

It felt like we racing all day to prep for tomorrow while also doing all of the regular work that comes along on a Wednesday. I spent the first hour and a half of the day mincing herbs and chopping green onions. Last November, when I started this job, it would have taken me twice as long (and my arm and wrist would have been quite sore) to do all of that chopping. I had not noticed along the way that my knife skills had improved as much as they have. Now, I'm certainly not as fast as I would need to be if I worked in a busy kitchen for a nice restaurant, but it's nice to see progress!

New album for Alejandro Escovedo!

From his website:

NEW YORK, April 17 /PRNewswire/ — REAL ANIMAL Alejandro Escovedo’s 9th solo album and follow-up to 2006’s critically-acclaimed THE BOXING MIRROR will be released in-stores and online June 24, 2008. A limited edition double vinyl release featuring two bonus tracks: “In Love Again” and a cover of the Stooges “I Got a Right” will be released on June 10, 2008. Produced by Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T.Rex, Thin Lizzy), REAL ANIMAL is a collective journey through Escovedo’s various musical incarnations from punk rock to string quintets and is as introspective as it is retrospective. “The inspiration for this record really is my life in music and the characters that I have known in and throughout that life. It’s also about how music helped me survive that life,” Escovedo said. Recorded at Saint Claire Studios in Lexington, KY, REAL ANIMAL features a band of frequent collaborators, including David Pulkingham (guitar), Josh Gravelin (bass), Hector Munoz (drums), Susan Voelz (violin), Brian Standefer (cello) and Chuck Prophet (guitar).

The 13 original tracks on REAL ANIMAL unravel Escovedo’s musical autobiography while presenting him as a masterful American musician, whose palette encompasses eloquent string quintets and shattering blasts of punk rock. From his early days in the punk scene of San Francisco (”Nuns Song”) to chaotic times living at the Chelsea Hotel alongside Sid & Nancy (”Chelsea Hotel ‘78″) through his pioneering alt-country days with Rank & File (”Chip n’ Tony”), REAL ANIMAL weaves a vivid tale of music as well as characters met, played with and lost along the way (”Sister Lost Soul” and “Sensitive Boys”). The punk-infused track “Real as an Animal” is an homage to Stooges’ front man Iggy Pop — one of the many influential artists that hit home with Escovedo — while “Golden Bear”, a song named after a local music club in Huntington Beach, CA where Escovedo spent his teen years, has a haunting and melodic reference to his near-death battle with Hepatitis-C.

I just migh get my wish

I've written about how nice it would be to hook a computer up to my brain and be able to download thoughts directly to my blog. It seems that some researchers in Japan are working on a technology that could be adapted to do this. Their idea is to place sensors directly on the brain so that the disabled could control robotic limbs with their thoughts. Recruiting volunteer test subject has been a challenge in this endeavor.

Although brain waves can be measured from outside the scalp, a stronger, more accurate signal can be obtained by placing sensors directly on the brain — but that requires open-skull surgery, making it more difficult to recruit volunteer test subjects.

This research is a long, long way from the intended application, much less what I would want to do with it. But I think that needing to do open skull surgery will remain an obstacle for this phase of the project!

10 Most Recently Played in my iTunes

1. Dance My Pain Away - Rod Lee - The Wire...and all the pieces matter
2. Brandy Alexander - Feist - The Reminder
3. Friend of Mine - Lily Allen - Alright, Still
4. Turkish Song Of The Damned - The Pogues - The Definitive Collection
5. Greenville - Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams - Emmylou Harris Duets
6. Over You Again - Willie Nelson - Moment Of Forever
7. Terry's Song - Bruce Springsteen - Magic
8. The House Of The Rising Sun - Nina Simone - The Very Best Of Volume 2
9. Joy - Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
10. Broken Butterflies - Lucinda Williams - Essence

I can't believe that I resumed blogging for several months now without mentioning the greatest show in the history of television, The Wire, which came to an end this spring. The soundtrack of The Wire is as notable for including favorites snippets of dialog on the show as it is for the music. I'm sure I'll write more about The Wire in the future, but in the meantime I would commend this reflection on the show that was published at the great TV/Movie blog The House Next Door. Some of the best popular culture criticism out there can be found on this blog. This particular article talks about what The Wire might mean for the future of visual story-telling.

...Simon and his collaborators have hoisted the medium of film onto their backs and marched it into the territory previously inhabited by Tolstoy, Melville and Dickens, the greatest of the long-form storytellers.

The achievements of The Wire suggest that the two-hour American-standard-length film only scratches the surface of what the medium can actually do. And it does so with none of the diluting effect that some might expect would come from breaking up a 13-hour film into individual episodes. The experience of watching The Wire is precisely the same as reading Anna Karenina. We do it by sandwiching its chapters in between the chapters of our own lives. We read a chunk, we live a chunk, and each enriches the other.

I've long thought that the best movies were comparable to short fiction, but it required a television show to accomplish the things that a novel can do. The Wire is exhibit A that great television indeed is comparable to the novel. (Others that have done this were also on HBO, like The Sopranos and Deadwood) David Simon, the creative force behind The Wire, used one plotlines in the last season to tease the critics who compared his show to the work of Dickens, but the comparison is apt.

Live Music

Brooks Williams is an incredible acoustic guitarist. I've seen him live a couple of times and have always been blown away. Since he is based in New England and I have not been able to go to one of his concerts in over a decade, I wondered if I'd be able to see him the first weekend in May when I go to New Hampshire (to see my nephew) So I headed over his website a few days ago to see if he was playing anywhere that weekend. The good news is that he is performing on Friday, May 2. The bad news is that he is playing in Lawrence, Kansas, just 30 miles away from where I live, but 1445 miles from where I will be that night. Damn!

The night before, May 1, Steve Earle will be in Lawrence, but that would be a late night right before an early flight. I'll have to think about that one.

There are a couple of shows this summer that have peaked my interest. Both Alejandro Escovedo and Emmylou Harris are playing at the Wakarusa Festival (in Lawrence) this June. I've never seen Emmylou live, but Alejandro performed the most transcendent live concert I have ever seen a couple of years ago at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle. He was with a five piece rock band plus a string quartet. This video is from a few weeks ago during SXSW.



The more acoustic side of Alejandro can heard here or here.

Feist will also be in the Midwest this summer. She's doing a free concert in Omaha on Saturday, July 12 and then will be at Starlight in Kansas City on the 13th. I imagine it would be a better musical experience in Kansas City (and with the price of gas it wouldn't be any more expensive than a road trip to Omaha) but I have a cousin who lives in Omaha. It would be fun to hang out up there. I don't know anything about Sarah's taste in music, but a free concert is a free concert.

I really need to learn more about local musicians in Kansas City. I've been hankerin' for some live music, but I don't know enough about whose worth seeing around here.

That's What You Gotta Do

I have never made any contribution to a political campaign (other than voting) before. Never stuck a sign in my lawn, never volunteered to help out at phone bank, never made a donation. Partly that's because I'm lazy and would prefer to spout off rather than getting up off of butt and doing something, but mostly it's because I've never been very enthusiastic about the candidate I was supporting. My votes have often been about opposing candidates who I thought would do damage to the country (or state or city, depending on the election).

Tonight, however, I made a donation. I guess it took last night's debate to sufficiently motivate me, even though I have been enthusiastic about Obama for a long time. I did not see the entire thing, but the parts that I did catch were so disappointing. It took 45 minutes before a single question came up about policy. 45 minutes. Instead, the questions dealt with serious issues such as wearing a flag pin on one's lapel as a sign of patriotism, and whether or not Obama loves America more than Rev. Wright. I had to check to see if I was watching a debate sponsored by ABC, or by The Onion.

Now, I know that in the fall Obama will be faced with this kind of inanity. It is a staple of Republican campaigns. He will be called an out-of-touch elitist because all Democrats, no matter who they are or what their background, are called that by the party that has nominated a Bush for president four times. His patriotism will be questioned, not because anyone who is informed actually believes Obama might not care about his country very much, but because he is a Democrat and therefore his patriotism is automatically suspect. I get that.

One thing that I like about Obama is that I think he makes those engaging in those attacks look small. Like some dirt that just needs to be brushed off your shoulder.



I think he makes a good point that Clinton is engaging in this negative focus on posturing because "that's the lesson she learned when the Republicans were doing that same thing to her back in the 1990's." I'd like to try to leave that stuff back in the 90's.

Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams is a great musical friend to have while going through a divorce. She has songs that fit many of the different and conflicting emotions that swirl about in those times. If you are not familiar with Williams, click on the names of some of the songs I list. It will take you to Last.fm where you can stream, in most cases, the entire song. She is a very bluesy alt-country singer songwriter who has a very sultry voice. (The Editor - everyone knows you have unusual taste in vocalists, so why should anyone pay attention to a description like that from you? I don't know, but speaking of my unusual taste in vocalists, I recently imported out an old Iris Dement album into iTunes - I love her voice!)

Lucinda's catalog includes the bitter and angry songs, like Joy (I don't want you anymore, cause you took my joy. I don't want you anymore, you took my joy. You took my joy, I want it back. You took my joy, I want it back!) and Wrap My Head Around That.

There's the painful songs, like Everything Has Changed, Still I Long For Your Kiss, and Can't Let Go. There are songs like Reason to Cry that are about trying to understand your ex.

She has a song that for a long time I thought fit with the angry songs, Changed the Lock, but now I'm not so sure. I metaphorically did a lot of the things in that song, not from a place of anger but from the need to move on (both in a practical sense and in an emotional sense)

I changed the lock on my front door so you can't see me anymore
And you can't come inside my house, and you can't lie down on my couch
I changed the lock on my front door

I changed the number on my phone so you can't call me up at home
And you can't say those things to me that make me fall down on my knees
I changed the number on my phone

I changed the kind of car I drive so you can't see me when I go by
And you can't chase me up the street, and you can't knock me off of my feet
I changed the kind of car I drive

I changed the kind of clothes I wear so you can't see me anywhere
And you can't spot me in a crowd, and you can't call my name out loud
I changed the kind of clothes I wear

I changed the tracks underneath the train so you can't find me again
And you can't trace my path, and you can't hear my laugh
I changed the tracks underneath the train

I changed the name of this town so you can't follow me down
And you can't touch me like before, and you can't make me want you more
I changed the name of this town

There's the song that I wanted to hear a friend sing to me during the painful times, Are You Alright? I was blessed to have a couple of friends who did express the sentiment of this song to me on a frequent basis last summer. Thanks Dave and Audrey!

There's a song that perfectly expresses what I image the meeting would be like if I ran into my ex in a grocery store or at a bar, Out of Touch.

One in particular that I listened to a lot was Learning How to Live, which is about realizing the need most to the next part of your life even before you are really able to start.

And then there is the song I listened to tonight, while walking Leo, which started me down this path of thinking about Lucinda Williams. Unsuffer Me is about getting to the place when you realize that you are not obsessing about your ex all the time. You might have noticed that it has been days since you even thought about her at all. You realize that what you miss is not exactly your ex, but rather you miss being connected to another person. You miss intimacy, but not necessarily intimacy with your her.

...unsuffer me
take away the pain
unbruise, unbloody
wash away the stain

surround my heartbeat
with your fingertips
unbound my feet
untie my wrists

come into my world
of loneliness
and wickedness
and bitterness
anoint my head
with your sweet kiss
my joy is dead
I long for bliss

I long for knowledge
whisper in my ear
undo my logic, undo my fear
unsuffer me

Great Fast Food

Tonight, I had a great fast good burger. Californian swear by In-N-Out Burger, Oregonians like Burgerville (I'm sure that other regions have their favorite high quality fast food joints). Those places are good, and a huge step up from the national chains, but they just aren't at the level of the burger I ate tonight. (It was not the best hambuger I've ever had, that would be from Tessaro's in Pittsburgh. But Tessaro's is not fast food) I was in Lawrence all day for a class, which was a great excuse to finally try out Local Burger.

Local Burger is leading the evolution of fast food with fresh, organic, local, and sustainable fare that is free of unnatural additives and preservatives. At Local Burger, we consider the special diet, the environment, the economy, animal welfare, and the health of everyone who eats our food. At Local Burger, you'll always know where your food came from and exactly what's in it. Try it, you'll like it!

I've read about this place ever since I moved back to Kansas City last fall. They got a lot of buzz when Bon Appetit named them one of the top ten eco-friendly restaurants in the country. Their meat is all grain-fed, which I prefer. Some people think grass-fed beef is less tender (it is leaner) and has a stronger flavor than corn-fed beef. I don't think there is any dispute about it being healthier.

I had their Buffalo burger and progressive potatoes. The buffalo tasted lean and had that great, meaty flavor that I love so much from any kind of buffalo meat. I actually put too much mustard on the it (The Editor - too much mustard? I never thought I would hear those words from you!) but the burger was substantial enough to stand up to it. The next time any of you are in Lawrence, you gotta check out Local Burger!

War Crimes

I know that covering the story about torture and whether or not the President of the United States has committed war crimes is not nearly as important to the media as the story about whether or not Clinton landed in Bosnia under sniper fire or if Obama is out of touch because he noticed that many people in rural America are bitter about politics.

Somehow Keith Olbermann managed to ignore these horserace stories for a moment last week to talk about war crimes.

Pittsburgh

I moved to Pittsburgh in 1993 to attend Carnegie Mellon University. I assumed that I would be there for 4 years, and then return to Kansas City. I enjoyed growing up in KC, and did not have any expectation about either liking or disliking Pittsburgh.

I ended up falling in love with Pittsburgh and lived there until 2002. Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an editorial by author and native yinzer Michael Chabon. Chabon talks about Obama, Roberto Clemente, racial reconciliation, and who we are as Americans. He ends his article expressing some of the things that I admire both about that city and about Obama.

I saw grace, the grace of Robinson and Clemente, in the way Mr. Obama balanced a steadfast refusal to surrender to anger with an equally staunch refusal to deny or repudiate its enduring legacy, for good and ill, in the history of race in America. There was grace in the intelligence and abandon of Robinson running the bases, in the fatal arc of a Clemente throw to home from deep right field, in the steadiness and candor that Mr. Obama brought to bear in making his difficult speech on race in America.

And there is grace in the fierce survival, down into this time of homogeneity and gentrification, of the Pittsburgh I remember, with its secret language and wildly manifest accent, its hill-and-hollow, mom-and-pop, ethnic crazy-quilt neighborhoods. As much as any other place in the country, Pittsburgh -- Polish, Italian, African, Jewish, Ukrainian, Scots-Irish, Hungarian, Slovenian, Serbian and, more recently, Indian and Chinese, among others -- embodies and, more importantly, preserves, the spirit of "Out of many, one." The neighborhoods are still there, separated from each other by chasms and ridges and rivers; still linked, stitched up, bound together by 446 bridges.

It's in those bridges that the hope and the greatness of Pittsburgh lie. Though they were built to serve the needs of commerce and industry, other fundamental human needs -- for communication, for connection, for free passage through the world -- also drove their construction. As with courage, a beautifully engineered bridge such as Pittsburgh's Smithfield Street Bridge can be defined as grace under pressure, reconciling distances and bearing heavy loads with elegance and steel. Pittsburghers live in their neighborhoods, but they rely on the bridges they have built to teach them how to live together in their city, through a transfer of shared humanity, a mutual reaching toward the opposite shore.

Though there was mistrust and misunderstanding on both sides, and a certain necessary amount of forgetting, with the passage of time Clemente and the city of Pittsburgh built a bridge. They came to honor, respect and even treasure each other. Like the people of Pittsburgh, Barack Obama understands that we live in a Nation of Bridges -- his life and his history are the proof of it. In steel, stone or acts of human daring, that is the grace bestowed on all of us by those who, in spite of the terrible downward pressures of gravity, or bitterness, or fear, build bridges.

Boosh

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a big fan of our current president. I recently heard an interview on Fresh Air that mentioned Bush in two very different ways. Paul Salopek is a Pulitzer Prizing winning journalist and a foreign corespondent for the Chicago Tribune. He wrote the fascinating cover story for the April edition of National Geographic about the Sahel region in Africa.

Stretching across northern Africa roughly along the 13th parallel, the Sahel divides—or unites, depending on your philosophical bent—the sands of the Sahara and Africa’s tropical forests. It is a belt of semiarid grassland that separates (or joins) Arabs and blacks, Muslims and Christians, nomads and farmers, a landscape of greens and a world of tans. Some 50 million of the world’s poorest, most disempowered, most forgotten people hang fiercely on to life there. And for 34 days in Darfur we joined their ranks.

While he was working on the story Salopek, his interpreter, and his driver were taken captive by pro-government guerrillas in Darfur. They were then traded to the Sudanese Army for a box of uniforms. Before being captured, Salopek had an interesting encountered with a refugee in Chad who had named his son George Bush.

My journey began among refugees in eastern Chad. This is where I met George Bush’s father.

Bush tyrannized his family’s small plot of sand. He threw his mother’s battered dishes to the ground, pulled on visitors’ noses, and scampered away giggling. He got away with this because he was an only son. His elder sister, age four, despised him. Bush was fat-cheeked and two. “Boosh!” the refugees cooed. “Boosh-ka!” He was clearly a great camp favorite. This was in the Gaga settlement, where more than 7,000 Darfuris lived and died under UN canvas.

“Only George Bush can stop the Arabs in our land,” said Bush’s papa, Ahmed Juma Abakar. He corralled the boy in his lap. “When he grows up, he will help kill them.”

Multiple lines of identity were braided through Abakar. He was a coffee-colored African with a puff of white hair on his chin. He was a Masalit, a member of one of the African farming tribes driven out of Darfur at gunpoint by the janjaweed, the Arab nomads armed by the Arab-dominated government of Sudan. He detested Arabs. Yet he himself spoke Arabic. He also served sugary tea in shot glasses like an Arab, wore a white Arabic robe, and prayed five times a day toward Mecca. I, too, find this puzzling.

This Muslim man admires our president enough to name his son for a man that a significant portion of the Muslim world believes has been engaged in an anti-Islam crusade. This refugee, however, does not consider the president to be anti-Islam as much as anti-Arab. In the interview on Fresh Air, Salopek mentioned that this man believes that the president also had done more to help black African than any other world leader. I suppose there is some support to both the anti-Arab and the pro-black African opinions of Bush. I've written before about Bush's actions in Africa, largely drawing on Nicholas Kristof's reporting.

The other reference to our president was not nearly so positive. After being turned over to the Sudanese army, the three were brought to the capital of North Darfur. They were held in a secret prison without any access to their various embassies.

I was protesting my being held separately, in solitary confinement. I resumed eating on the eighth day when the guards informed me they would force-feed me through a rubber tube. “Like Guantanamo,” they said.

It turns out that there are several Sudanese men, including a journalist, who were being held in Guantanamo Bay. It must make it tough for our government to complain about the treatment of American citizens being mistreated in Sudanese prisons when we are treating Sudanese citizens the same way.

I try to be objective when it comes to President Bush. I don't ever listen to his speeches because his his voice sounds so condescending to me. Instead I read the texts of them because I would rather focus on his actual words instead of the way he says them. When he does something that's good, like his work on a truce in the North-South conflict in Sudan, I applaud even as I wish he did more.

So, when I say that I believe Bush ought to be tried for war crimes, I really am trying to be objective. I've read plenty of folks who clearly are on an anti-Bush crusade, but I don't think I'm one of them. When Bush has admitted to approving the torture techniques that we used in Guantanamo, migrated to Abu Ghraib, and are still being employed by the CIA today, he leaves himself without a defense other than:

"I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

"We had a legal opinion that enabled us to do it." So much for being the decider, huh? John Yoo gave him a legal opinion that the President could do whatever he wanted, the Constitution be damned, so he did. And he ought to be held responsible for that.

10 Most Recently Played in my iTunes

1. Gravedigger - Willie Nelson - Moment Of Forever
2. Mi coraz - Gipsy Kings - The Very Best Of The Gipsy Kings II
3. It Be's That Way Sometimes - Nina Simone - The Very Best Of Volume 2
4. Volare (Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu) - Gipsy Kings -Mosaique
5. Are You Alright? - Lucinda Williams - West
6. Allegria (Instrumental) (Live) - Gipsy Kings - The Very Best Of The Gipsy Kings I
7. How My Heart Behaves - Feist - The Reminder
8. Right In Time (WXPN Live At The World Cafe) - Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
9. Everywhere I Go - Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris & Daniel Lanois - Teatro
10. Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah - The Pogues - The Definitive Collection

At work, we listen to Sirius Satellite Radio, and they have been playing Willie Nelson's cover of Dave Matthew's Gravedigger quite a bit the last few months. Despite being a big fan of Johnny Cash, I never really got into Willie Nelson. Gravedigger, though, grabbed my attention. I just picked up Nelson's most recent album, "Moment of Forever," this week. It's a bit uneven, but the good songs are really good. Nelson's voice seems to have gained depth with age (he's 74). I always remembered it as being a bit reedy or nasally, but it's not like that here. Nelson only wrote 3 of the songs of this album, but two of them are among my favorites here, Over You Again and Always Now. If you have never paid much attention to Willie Nelson before, it might be worthwhile for you to give this one a listen.

Cookbooks

In the past couple of months, I've gone on something of a book buying spree. I am definitely of the camp that believes it is impossible to own too many books. Not only did I get the stack of books picture to the right, but I also needed to get more shelving for them! If you look at the picture carefully, you might notice a theme. Not only are they all cookbooks, but most of them deal specifically with feeding crowds.

My church in Kansas City, St. Andrews, has a Taize-style Candlelight Communion service on Sunday evenings. The service consists of meditative music, readings, silence, and communion. The worshipers generally leave the service in silence.

One of the goals (but certainly not the only goal) behind this service, as I understand it, was to provide a worship opportunity that might be meaningful to the community at the nearby UMKC campus. There have been people from UMKC who attend regularly, but it has been difficult for them and the other members of the congregation to get to know one another.

Adding a meal following the service to facilitate community building was discussed in the initial planning for the Candlelight Communion, but there was nobody willing or able to provide leadership towards making that happen. I have volunteered to be a part of a team to provide that leadership in the fall. We will spend this summer planning and hope to begin the dinners in September. I think that my role will be to plan menus and provide guidance to the volunteers who will help me prepare the meals each week. I would be happy if we had around 15 people stay for dinner in the beginning.

I was a member of a church in Pittsburgh that had a Saturday evening worship service that was followed by a meal. That meal was an essential part of the life of the community who worshiped at the Saturday Celebration. That should not be a surprise to anyone who has ever read the Bible; many significant Biblical events occur over a meal (Jesus' first miracle, the Last Supper, many of the Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, and of course one of the primary images of heaven is that of a feast)

I am excited to explore how this might help me bridge the gap between the two sides of my professional life. Until now, I always worked for either a church or a faith-based non-profit. You could say I was all about being a conduit so that people could be fed spiritually. Now I am focused on feeding people physically. This fall I hope to do both at the same time.

Lost

One of the things that I like about the show, Lost, is all of the questions it asks its viewer to consider. Like these:



Hat tip to one of my favorite movie reviewers, Jeffery Overstreet.

April Recipe

(Each month, I include a recipe in the monthly newsletter for the kitchen where I work. These recipes need to complement the entrees on our menu that particular month, and are targeted towards our average customer. That means it needs to be simple, require little active prep work, and use only the most basic ingredients. Here is what we published in April. You can find all of the recipes from that newsletter by clicking on the Recipe label.)

April is the beginning of asparagus season. One of the keys to serving great asparagus is knowing how to choose the best bunch. When you are browsing in the store or the farmer’s market, the first thing to look at is the tips of the asparagus. The leaves should be tight to the stalks and not showing any signs of wilting or drying out.

Next, look at the size of the stalks. I prefer them to be thin, about the diameter of a pencil. If they are thicker than that, you will need to get rid of the woody end. That’s easy, hold the middle of the stalk in one hand and the very end of the woody end in the other, and break it. The stalk will break at just the right place for each piece.

While steaming is the traditional method of preparing asparagus, I prefer using high, dry heat. The best source of that heat is from your grill, but using the broiler or roasting in a hot oven also works. The high heat caramelizes some of the sugars, which always results in more complex flavors in any food. All you need to do is coat the asparagus with olive oil, put them on the grill and turn frequently, cook until the stalks have browned, and top with fresh lemon juice, salt, and pepper right before serving.

A day at the Park

The Pacific Northwest has an extremely dog-friendly culture. I imagine it's just an urban legend, but I've heard a number of different people say that the city of Seattle has a larger population of dogs than of children. One of things that I loved about visiting either Seattle or Portland was the large number of dog parks. Some were huge, like the one at Magnuson Park in Seattle where the picture on the left was taken, but a lot of them were in small sections of neighborhood parks.

Kansas City has a long way to go before being as dog-friendly as Seattle. There are a couple of large dog parks a long way out in the suburbs. Before I found a job, I took Leo out to Heritage Park and to Shawnee Mission Park quite a bit. He could swim at both places, but because there are so few other parks, they both are usually crowded. That's probably fine for most dogs, but Leo doesn't like to play with other dogs if there is a tennis ball around. He gets along with other dogs just fine, but doesn't think they are nearly as much fun as a human throwing a ball for him.

Today we went to Penn Valley Park, which is right next to the World War One Memorial. From the Memorial, there is a great view of downtown. By the way, I knew John McCain was going to be in town today, but did not know that part of his itinerary was taking a tour of the Memorial. A CNN camera crew was the only evidence that he had been there earlier in the day.


The dog park at Penn Valley is fine. There is not any place to swim, but it does have both large open areas and shady areas with a couple of picnic tables. Dog owners in Kansas City don't do a great job of cleaning up after their dogs, but today the park was in much better shape than it was the last time we visited.

There was a couple at the park today with their pair of bull terriers. They (the terriers, not the couple) had a great time chasing Leo, who was chasing his tennis ball. He is still not in very good shape, judging by the number and length of the breaks Leo took, but he's getting there. You can see all of the pictures from the park on flickr. But I think the picture below from when we got home shows that it was a successful trip!

Running Update

I took a few days off from running because I was starting to get worried about shin splints. Instead, I used my elliptical machine for a lower-impact way to exercise. I've done some reading the last couple of days about training to run 5K's and 10K's, and ways I can use my heart monitor to help my running. I think I've been over doing it. (That probably contributes to my shins starting to bother me)

I had been running for about 2 miles without walking. My heart rate would get up in the 190's. From what I've been reading, my heart rate should only get up above something like 175 for short intervals after I'm in much better shape than I am currently.

Today, I changed things up. I only ran until my heart rate got up to 175, and then I would walk until it dropped down to 140. When I was jogging, I went at what felt like an extremely slow pace (otherwise I would have spent almost as much time walking as running) Because I was doing some walking and was running more slowly, I added more distance. Tonight I drove the route, and it turns out that it was almost exactly a 5K.

I don't know why I should be surprised that one of the obstacles I need to overcome in this endeavor is my own stupid ego. My ego is why I was running too hard without stopping to walk. It felt wimpy to do otherwise. The results? The beginnings of shin splints and feeling rather miserable at the end of each run. Maybe if I literally pay attention to my heart, I can find a balance between love and hate (no matter what kind of shoes I wear) and avoid injury.

10 Most Recently Played in my iTunes

1. Let Me Down Easy - Chris Isaak - Best Of
2. Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing - Chris Isaak - Best Of
3. Wicked Game - Chris Isaak - Best Of
4. Somebody's Crying - Chris Isaak - Best Of
5. San Francisco Days - Chris Isaak - Best Of
6. One Evening - Feist - One Evening
   
7. I Got The Rest Of My Life - John Austin - Byzantium
8. I Changed the Lock [Take 1] - Johnny Cash - American Outakes
9. 100 Days, 100 Nights - Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights
10. A Night In Tunisia - Ella Fitzgerald - First Lady Of Song
    

You can see I just bought the Best of Chris Isaak. And that 1996 John Austin album, Byzantium, is amazing. It was just re-issued and is only available, as far as I know, as a digital download. You can find it on Amazon. Here's what Austin wrote about the band that backed that album on his website.

Those of us who worked on the record have always thought of it as a little gem that never quite had it's moment in the spotlight. Interestingly, many of the players for the Byzantium sessions went on and up to bigger things. Travis McNabb joined Better Than Ezra, bassist David Labruyere went on to help John Mayer form his band, Kristian Bush went country with Sugarland, Marty Kearns joined Shawn Mullins' band for a time, Randall Bramblett plays with Steve Winwood's band, engineer Don McCollister went on to produce Grammy winners, and engineer Glenn Matullo made a big splash with Shawn Mullins, and has since worked with Indigo Girls, Collective Soul, John Mayer, Outkast, Pink and Collective Soul, to name a few.

Every song on Byzantium is a little gem. I probably listen to it more than any other album I bought during my college years.

Obama

If you read back through the archives of my blog, you will see that I have been very interested in Barack Obama ever since his election to the Senate. I subscribed to his weekly podcast in which he would spend 10-15 minutes talking about a particular policy question. I remember watching him on CSPAN during Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings. He was a freshman senator on that committee, but he always was the most impressive. He used his time to ask questions, rather than make speeches disguised as a question like most of his colleagues. The questions he did ask demonstrated to me that he was extremely knowledgeable about the topic at hand, and his questions were designed to help him even better understand the topic that was the subject of the testimony.

(The Editor - I knew you were a nerd, but watching Foreign Relation Committee hearings on CSPAN? Really? Hey, this was when my dog was recovering from his ACL replacement and on bedrest, so I had to sit on the couch with him all day to keep him still. The fact that I enjoyed watching those hearings has nothing to do with how much of a nerd I am!)

Because of that background, I wanted Obama to be our next president long before he began campaigning. I like Clinton well enough, and think she has been an excellent senator. Her biggest drawback, I believe, is that she brings out the worst in Republicans. I think that all of the Republicans who have been able to work with Senator Clinton these past 8 years, would be completely unable to work with a President Clinton. It would be suicide with their base. It's not her fault, and it's unfair, but it's reality.

I actually have not been following the campaign as closely as some of my friends, who know how much of a political junkies I am, have expected. (George Will has claimed that running a presidential campaign is good preparation for being president, and provides some insight into how able a person might be as president. Since George W. Bush ran pretty good campaigns, I think we can pretty much dismiss Will's theory.) It's been amusing to me to read people who are concerned that Obama is all style and no substance. The style is fun, but his substance is absolutely there if one is interesting in looking.

On that note, Spencer Ackerman has a good introduction to how Obama approaches foreign policy questions.

Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. It cuts to the heart of traditional Democratic timidity. "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right." (The Democrat who counseled that Americans wanted someone strong and wrong, not weak and right? That was Bill Clinton in 2002.)

But to understand what Obama is proposing, it's important to ask: What, exactly, is the mind-set that led to the war? What will it mean to end it? And what will take its place?

To answer these questions, I spoke at length with Obama's foreign-policy brain trust, the advisers who will craft and implement a new global strategy if he wins the nomination and the general election. They envision a doctrine that first ends the politics of fear and then moves beyond a hollow, sloganeering "democracy promotion" agenda in favor of "dignity promotion," to fix the conditions of misery that breed anti-Americanism and prevent liberty, justice, and prosperity from taking root. An inextricable part of that doctrine is a relentless and thorough destruction of al-Qaeda. Is this hawkish? Is this dovish? It's both and neither -- an overhaul not just of our foreign policy but of how we think about foreign policy. And it might just be the future of American global leadership.

Obama has surrounded himself with stellar foreign policy advisers who share an extremely important trait. They were correct on the most important foreign policy question we faced during the Bush presidency, what to do in the aftermath of 9/11. Not only did they oppose the Iraq war, but they predicted what would unfold if we engaged in that distraction. We live in a crazy world in which people who were right about Iraq are the not ones seen as experts in the media, but the New Times gives a hack like Bill Kristol a weekly column in the most important newspaper in the country. Obama has experienced some of that insanity:

Most of the members of Obama's foreign-policy team expressed frustration that they had taken a well-considered and seemingly anodyne position on Iraq and suffered for it. Obama had something similar happen to him in the spring and summer of 2007. He was attacked from the left and the right for saying three things that should not have been controversial: that if he had actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan but no cooperation from the Pakistani government, he would take out the jihadists; that he wouldn't use nuclear weapons on terrorist training camps; and that he would be willing to meet with leaders of rogue states in his first year as president. "No one [of Obama's critics] had thought through the policy because that was the quote-unquote naïve and weak position, so they said it was a bad position to take," recalls Ben Rhodes, the adviser who writes Obama's foreign-policy speeches. "And it was a seminal moment, because Obama himself said, 'No, I'm right about this!'"

The key concept of an Obama administration's foreign policy would be dignity promotion. He recognizes that no matter how many al-Qaeda opperatives the US kills or captures, unless we make it difficult for them to recruit new members, we have not made any progress.

What's typically neglected in these arguments is the simple insight that democracy does not fill stomachs, alleviate malaria, or protect neighborhoods from marauding bands of militiamen. Democracy, in other words, is valuable to people insofar as it allows them first to meet their basic needs. It is much harder to provide that sense of dignity than to hold an election in Baghdad or Gaza and declare oneself shocked when illiberal forces triumph. "Look at why the baddies win these elections," Power says. "It's because [populations are] living in climates of fear." U.S. policy, she continues, should be "about meeting people where they're at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That's the swamp that needs draining. If we're to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we're not [providing]."

This is why, Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years."

Obama sees this as more than a global charity program; it is the anvil against which he can bring down the hammer on al-Qaeda. "He took many of the [counterinsurgency] principles -- the paradoxes, like how sometimes you're less secure the more force is used -- and looked at it from a more strategic perspective," Sewall says. "His policies deal with root causes but do not misconstrue root causes as a simple fix. He recognizes that you need to pursue a parallel anti-terrorism [course] in its traditional form along with this transformed approach to foreign policy." Not for nothing has Obama received private advice or public support from experts like former Clinton and Bush counterterrorism advisers Richard Clarke and Rand Beers, and John Brennan, the first chief of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Not only is this a much more realistic approach to the "war on terror," but it also is a blueprint for dealing with Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the rest of the developing world. While it might not apply as directly to our dealings with China or Russia or North Korea, by rebuilding the respect of our allies, we will in general have a much stronger hand to play in future conflicts.

This post is much longer than it ought to be (The Editor - maybe you should offer a prize to anyone who has actually bothered to read all the way to this point. Hmm, I'll think about that), but Ackerman's article about The Obama Doctrine is a great overview and ought to be required reading for anyone wanting to understand how Obama would be different from either McCain or Clinton in leading the US's interactions with the rest of the world.

Taxes

I finished doing my taxes yesterday. It was easier than I expected, although I ought to file an amended return for the state of Kansas. As a part year resident, I have the choice of either filing as a resident or a non-resident. The state recommends figuring out what you owe both ways, and then filing with the status in which you are better off. I started by figuring out what I would owe if I filed as a resident, but then just submitted that without redoing it as a non-resident. I'm pretty sure that means I paid more than I needed to (I only earned a paycheck in Kansas for 2 months), so I'll probably take another look at that.

A friend of mine from college, Jon, after completing his 2007 return pondered how things would change for him if Mike Huckabee's flat tax plan were implemented. Jon runs his own company, so I'm sure his taxes are much more complex than mine. One of the things that was appealing to him was the simplicity of a national sales tax. I don't blame him for that after he and his wife spent something like 27 hours working on their return.

I decided to figure out what I would have paid in taxes under the national sales tax. Since Huckabee has said that his plan would be revenue neutral, it means that a federal sales tax would be around 32%. I took my gross income, subtracted my savings and investments, to get a rough estimate of what I spent in 2007. I multiplied that number by 32% and then subtracted the prebate that fairtax.org, a national sales tax advocacy organization, recommends for someone of my income level. The total was about 3.3 times as much as I paid in taxes under the current system.

My understanding of a national sales tax like Huckabee advocated is that people at the top and the bottom of the income scale would pay less in taxes, while most of the country would pay more. That would certainly be the case for me.

Of course, the main objective in a federal tax code is to raise enough money for the federal government to operate, but other goals include crafting the code to ensure compliance (which often means making it simple) and to ensure that it impacts the country in a just manner. Those last two goals often work at cross purposes. If you make the tax code simple, like a national sales tax would, it treats everyone the same. I think it would be more just to expect those who have derived the greatest benefit from our society to contribute more, not less, to the costs of maintaining and improving the country. The more progressive a tax system is, however, it becomes more complex.

Right now hedge fund managers are able to classify most of their compensation as capital gains rather than wages. This means they pay at the 15% capital gains rate rather than the 35% income tax rate which would normally apply. Not surprisingly, they have fought an effort in Congress to reclassify their wages so that they pay a similar amount as other's who earn similar amounts of money. That change would make the tax code more just, I believe, but also slightly more complex.

Another danger of the national sales tax is the effect it would have on local and state governments who current rely on sales taxes. The sales tax where I live is 7.8%, so when I purchase an item that costs $100, with a national sales tax I have to hand over $139.80! Of course, all of the local and state governments would have to change their tax structure because the lure of under-the-table transactions would too high at almost 40%. Most economists believe that about 10% is the maximum sales tax rate you can set before the underground economy really starts to grow. So the governments who already have a sales tax would need to change to something like an income tax, or rely more heavily on property taxes.

All forms of taxation have some economic distorting factors. An income tax with no capital gains tax, or AMT, hits only those who primarily earn money from a paycheck, while the wealthiest Americans would get by without paying hardly any federal tax. A sales tax hits those who spend almost all of their income much harder than those who earn enough that they have other uses for their income. Property taxes are a way to capture the wealth in real estate that many accumulate, but is extremely harsh towards those on fixed incomes who paid off their mortgages years ago (Since property taxes are a prime way we fund schools, the quality of a school is often directly tied to the wealth of the neighborhood in which it sits - so the kids from poor neighborhoods who likely need the most support from their school, end up attending schools that are crowded, struggle to maintain their physical plants, and have teachers at the bottom of the income scale)

I think it is for the best to have a variety of different kinds of taxes, rather than relying on any one scheme. It makes for a more complex tax code, but the various distortions have a chance of balancing each other out. And that's probably more of my thoughts about taxes than anyone wants to read on my blog!