A Few Thoughts on a Friday in December

It’s a Friday and there are a few things that I just have to post.

Drilling for Oil

Have you seen that Shell Oil commercial where the petroleum engineer is having a problem drilling for oil? To begin with the company is not able to find the oil. When they do find it, it isn’t in one big “pool” of oil but is scattered all over the area. Finally, the engineer is having lunch with his son, who is not happy that his father is in a business which pollutes the environment. The son is drinking a milkshake from a glass with a bubble-shaped bottom. To get the last drabs of the milkshake, the son bends his straw so that he can get into the various nooks of the glass and get every last bit of the milkshake. This gives the father an idea on how he can get all of the oil out of the new site.

The whole concept of drilling for oil is, I think, badly misunderstood. First, there is really no such thing as a pool of oil that you stick your drill pipe into. At best, oil underground is trapped in the empty spaces between rocks (think of a sponge filled with water). There is a pressure differential involved that allows the oil to flow upwards (you squeeze the oil). That is why some oil companies have begun pumping water into oil wells that have stopped producing; there is probably still some oil in the site but there is no pressure to force it out. If you pump water down, it stands to reason that you can force the residual oil up.

But the thing that gets me is that this petroleum engineer thinks he has come up with an innovative and inspired way of drilling for oil. The thing is that this method of drilling (from the side) has been in use since the first wildcatter drilled a dry hole next to a producing hole in the “oil patch” of Texas and Oklahoma. It is not a new idea and some people feel that it is essentially an illegal way to get oil out of the ground.

But I guess that it is all right to say that you have come up with a new way of drilling for oil if no one knows (or cares) that it is not a new way. I have had students give me the same argument on some of the papers that they have submitted; but in their case, it is called plagiarism.

That leads me to my second topic for today.

The Mitchell Report

First, I will state that Senator George Mitchell is no relation to me. Second, I believe that steroid usage for any reason other than legitimate medical reasons is wrong. Third, I have not read the report.

But because I have taught students who are going into medicine, I have kept abreast of the problems with steroids in sports, not just baseball. It is interesting to read what some of my students have found out and what they believe.

More to the point of today, it is interesting to note the clamor that is coming from his report about the apparent widespread usage of steroids in major league baseball. That he was able to produce a report at all is remarkable. Senator Mitchell had no way to force anyone to talk with him and his report carries no legal weight. Players were reluctant to talk to him, perhaps because they were embarrassed but probably more because to do so would expose them to legal problems. I find it laughable that some people say he had a conflict of interest because he is on the board of directors of the Boston Red Sox.

If his loyalty to the Red Sox is greater than his own personal ethics, then the problem of steroids is far greater than anyone can imagine. And that is what bothers me about how everyone is reacting to this report.

First, when the majority of the players took steroids, it was legal for them to do so. This may not have been the case in football, basketball, or other sports. We have to define the timeline when the use of steroids for performance enhancing reasons was deemed illegal. This is not to say that steroid use at any time is smart. Those who took the drugs, by what ever means, and did so without knowing the risks associated are stupid; it is that simple.

But they took the drugs and accepted the risk. Why? Because we, as a society, like winners; those who are not winners will do whatever it takes to become winners. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that the majority of the players named in the report were lower-level players, players trying to get to the “big kid” level. Yes, there were several All-Stars and MVP’s named.

I was a football official for a number of years and did games at the elementary, junior high and high school level (I was getting ready to move up to the college level when I suffered the career ending knee injury). It was before steroids were a problem but “winning at all costs” was still a virus that infected too many players and coaches.

It was probably worse at the elementary level because the coaches were often volunteers and their knowledge of the game was limited to when they themselves played the game. But you could see the need to win rather than have fun as the driving force in the game. The fundamentals of the game were only taught in terms of what was needed to play.

What we as a society have forgotten is that the games that we played as children are now businesses. We get upset when our “games” are corrupted and we cry when our “heroes” do not meet our expectations. But we cheer our heroes when they win the “big game” and we certainly don’t cry because they somehow altered the playing environment for the chance to play in the “big game.”

If we want the games of our childhood to be the games we watch as adults, then we have to insist that they still be fun. In his autobiography, Bill Russell wrote about the challenge of playing against Wilt Chamberlain. While they were good friends, the media played them as “enemies” and Bill Russell described a fantasy scene where they were playing against each other in pure friendship. But then he described how the game turned into competition by those who wanted a winner and a loser.

The players who took steroids were wrong and there is no denying that. But we have to look at the forces as they understood them that made them take the drugs, risk and all.

Having said that, there are some times when one should take a risk.

The Political Climate Today

As of right now, with every political pundit making their pronouncements and every television news broadcast reminding us how many days until the caucuses in Iowa and the New Hampshire primary and so forth and so on, I want to announce that I do not intend on voting for any of the candidates of either major party. If I could, I would vote for “none of the above” but I can’t do that because I don’t live in Nevada (which, I have been told, allows people to do that in certain elections).

I have had it with the campaigning that has been going on since, it seems, the 2004 election campaign ended. I have this image in my mind that no matter how the 2008 election turns out, someone will announce on the November 5, 2008 their intention to seek their party’s nomination for the office of President in 2012.

As much as it has been the endless drivel that all of the candidates have given, I have heard nothing that is substantially different or exciting. I have heard nothing that gives me hope for the future. Now, many of the candidates have offered plans that speak of what they are going to do but nothing has been given in depth or in such a way that it can be really studied and discussed.

Part of the problem is that no candidate is willing to put anything out in the open for such study and discussion because the other candidates will tear it apart and destroy it without offering anything substantial in return. Our politics no longer are politics of hope but politics of despair and fear. We are entrapped in a war of our own making and no one is willing, though some have come close, to be definitive in what they are going to do. To do so is to cause others to question and criticize. We have become a society that has changed the definition of patriotism; we are a society that supports any idea that benefits us but will tear apart any idea that requires an effort on our part. We have become a society of sound bites, not real thoughts.

Oh, I know that many of the candidates will say they offer a plan for tomorrow but they spend as much or more time telling us how their opponents’ plans for tomorrow will not work. No politician today, it seems to me, is willing to put their plans out before the public and defend them. And it seems to me that every politician is more than willing to attack their opponents and degrade them before offering something better.

And the American people repeatedly allow this to take place. It is not enough to say to the politicians “quit the mud-slinging, the back-biting, and the negative campaigning.” We have been saying that and politicians say that they are going to do it. But when “push comes to shove” we, the people, allow it to take place and the politicians are quick to do it.

So, right now, unless any of the candidates makes a are major and dramatic changes in what they say or do, my choice for President of the United States is “none of the above.”