Running for Your Life: Yeah, That Addiction Thing Again

When it comes to appeasing liberal guilt in an age of tech dominance of public policy consider this:

The American Academy of Pediatrics has just released guidelines on cellphone use for our youngest users. I saw the news item about it as part of a national TV broadcast over the weekend (Oct. 21-23). Here are the highlights:

• ·         No screen time for children under the age of 2
• ·         No more than one hour of screen time a day for those between 3 and 5
• ·         Older kids? Guidelines get vague

Where to begin. While laudable, it’s hard to think of a more meaningless gesture. Imagine guidelines being set for children re: smoking. That they are cautioned against cigarette smoke intake while their parents chain-smoke through the day – and even during bedtime stories, or in their own bed, the blue light of the screen dumbing their faces as the child wanders in the room, awakened by a dream not stirred by looking into a phone.

I will believe the likes of politicians’ promises when they are not affected by the fortunes in campaign dollars being funneled to them by forces in Silicon Valley. When serious guidelines are published and distributed to warn adults against the dangers of overuse of mobile phones. Until then, do yourself a favor and read The Deep State. http://bit.ly/2eyEL9j

Would that we could get serious about informing people of the deleterious effects of cellphone addiction. That is a cultural climate change that I’d like to see.

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting

  

Running for Your Life: Mo’ Canada

When it comes to my adopted country’s political season, where best to look for moral direction than Canada – my home and native land.

For those of you who didn’t see it on Facebook, check out this post

http://wapo.st/2epGSsp

Are Canadians too smug in their modesty? We’d rather not stake such a claim.

Consider my recent post about the quote I discovered from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

My childhood pal Frederick Harrison points out that this quote – and many many others –  received wide distribution in Canada in November 1967 (and to radio listeners around the world from the dynamic ideas program, The Massey Lectures on CBC Radio).

Here is the link to those lectures: http://bit.ly/2eL2a7g

As I wrote to Frederick in a recent commentary, the Massey Lectures have been truly formative in my thinking, travel and have shaped the way I see the world.  Most important for me was the 1984 Carlos Fuentes, "Latin America At War With the Past" that I listened to during the days I was employed as assistant night editor at the Windsor Star. Just a few months before I'd returned from three months living in Mexico (with a one-week tour of Cuba). In January 1985, I was back in Cuba, and in July, to Nicaragua where I wrote news articles during the sixth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution.

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting

Running for Your Life: Ed Whitlock Rocks!

OK, I had planned to post today about pace setting. Not in terms of racing, but just for those looking for guidance on an overlooked part of road training. Going out too fast. How do you stay within yourself? Listening to your body. Feeling comfortable with slow.

Then Ed Whitlock came along, courtesy of my pal in Canada, Susan Wright. When it comes to Running for Your Life, pause a moment to read this article and consider the last forty-plus years of Ed Whitlock's life. (I started running in 1976, so my forty-plus begins in January ...)

http://bit.ly/2dZ4IeH

Rime of the Ancient Marathoner, indeed !

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Imagine if Dr. King were with us. For a fleeting moment I felt he was this morning, when I saw the quote below on signage in front of a Catholic Church in Gowanus, Brooklyn:

"Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Something our political leaders (and wannabe leaders) should show. If only.

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting

  

Running for Your Life: Deep State S—t

Here are some uncheery thoughts.

Political campaigns may just be the leading growth business in post-industrial America. (Hurry! Please donate today to CAMPAIGN _________. There has never been a greater threat to civilization as we know it than the prospect of a ____________ Party victory. Don’t delay! Pony up today!)

And what do you get for that investment? Hope and change? Or more of the same?

Surprise! More of the same. That equates to trillions spent on defense and foreign policy prerogatives that have been proven failures, at best, and elitist pet projects, at worst.

Do politicians earn the right to represent us after filling their pockets from coins from our pockets? Yes. Do they actually control (or even mildly have influence to fiddle with) the levers of power in such a way as to earn the trust we put in them by our honest investments in their business. No. Not even close.

I read a lot of books: novels at home and nonfiction – primarily political and social science books – during my daily commutes to and from my paying job. Hands down the most interesting I’ve read this season is Mike Lofgren’s THE DEEP STATE http://bit.ly/2e4U19B.

DEEP STATE s—t is scary s—t. As scary as Trump being president? Well, no. But scary enough to warrant a new wave of folk considering asylum in Canada if its central messages were to be given wider distribution.

In our daily news feeds, the deep state doesn’t get discussed much. Consider what J. Edgar Hoover did in the 1950s-1970s (See THE BURGLARY http://bit.ly/2ebfJrr )  What Dwight D. Eisenhower complained about in his famous military industrial complex speech in 1961.

In the Hill-Pill debates, what time is given to balancing privacy concerns with national security? What gets classified? We know that Hillary used a personal e-mail server but do we ask the question: What does get classified? Who is in charge of those policies and practices? What are the checks and balances?

The deep state – the Washington, DC, Puzzle Palace – is in charge. And democracy? That’s the fastest-growing civilian business in post-industrial Amerca. It’s like melting gold and pouring it into an unused well in coal country.

Fraud, baby.

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting