Like many others, I was disappointed today not to hear Mark McGwire stand up and say (truthfully) that he had not used steroids when he broke the home run record. He admitted some time ago to having used something back in his Oakland days, but his lack of testimony today and his "focus on the future, not the past" casts a shadow on his achievements.

But wait a minute, isn't this just another example of "The End Justifies the Means" or perhaps "It's Not a Level Playing Field"? Let's see, who was asking McGwire and the others these questions? Senators? If a senator could ingest some substance with the understanding that it would increase his or her odds of winning an election, would he or she try this even if the substance were illegal? And suppose it's known or presumed that the opponents of the prospective senator is already taking the substance. Suppose it's also conceded that the substance may cause harmful side effects. Also, it's known that once the election is won, use of the substance can be discontinued.

Place a human in a circumstance like that, and make sure it's a goal-directed human who has spent his or her life with ambitions of winning, and see how many of them fall. Is it right for people to do this? I don't think so, but then who am I to judge these people? If I had McGwire's talent and could have broken records by taking steroids, am I so sure I wouldn't have taken them? I'd like to think not, but none of us can really understand that kind of pressure.

Also, where was the testing that could have revealed use of steriods during that season? Gee, were the managers of baseball reluctant to uncover steroids as Sosa and McGwire whacked the hell out of a ball and TV ratings? Would those managers have been satisfied with a level playing field if it meant no headline-catching, stands-populating homers?

Am I letting McGwire off the hook. Well, yeah, I guess I am. But...I suppose that if the truth were known, and if that truth involves McGwire using steroids to achieve the homers, then a (*) could be placed next to McGwire's achievements so that others can come after him and try to beat "natural" records without recourse to steroids. I think he owes the game that much.

I went to summer camp in Colorado when I was a kid (11-12 years old) and learned a song at camp: The cat came back. I've been singing it to my 6-year-old lately and just as I thought, there are sites on the web for this. There are many versions and each has many verses I didn't know.

One particularly cool site renders the favorite in flash!

David posted about the FBI knowing about illegal steriods but not taking any action to prosecute the buff baseball injectors. You can even become governor of California if you admit to having taken illegal steriods, but don't dare hire an illegal nanny.

All this reminds me of the fantasy I was taught in Civics class: there are three independent branches of our government. But they don't really function as independently as we would like:

• As David pointed out, the executive branch can decide not to prosecute based on a given law, thus dissing and making somewhat useless the legislative branch. Also, in time of "war" the executive branch can apparantly "arrest" people who they believe have broken some "law". Although I loathe terrorists as much as the next guy, I'd like to see our judicial branch press into action against those being "held" "indefinitely" instead of having our executive branch do all the work.
  
• The judicial branch, especially the Supreme Court, can turn activist and rewrite laws based on interpretation. A sign of this is that the decisions are so darn close and are drawn on conservative/liberal lines. The most recent case that will no doubt end up that way is the issue of religious symbols in court rooms and other public places. The 10 commandments, for example, when appearing in a court room could give the impression that one might be found guilty for worshipping false idols or forgetting the Sabbath.
  
• The legistative branch while passing laws seems sometimes to be above the law. Remember the floating checks scandal? Also they can subpoena people and essentially hold court to get to the bottom of some politically expedient issue.
  

Our city was just treated to a situation that is all to common: an estranged husband gunned down his wife and the people she happened to be with at tte time. Her kids attend school in our district, and the schools have been trying to cope with the grief and questions we all have about this awful thing.

The estranged husband led police on a big car chase that culminated in his car jumping the road and crashing to his death.

The guy had beaten his wife many times before; she left him; she obtained a restraining order. The papers said she did everything she was supposed to do in this kind of situation to avoid harm, except go into seclusion.

The paper went on to talk about several women who are now serving time in prison for killing their abusive husbands. Evidently the killings were not immediately in self defense. There is a group trying to obtain the women's freedom.

In one-fourth of all married couples, there is an abusive spouse. The abuse cuts across religions, wealth, and political inclinations.

Isn't there something we can do about this???

It's been a long time since I posted anything. Life has been a little rough. I won't go into too much detail but I got sick with the cold/virus stuff that's been going around. That hasn't been the worst -- my wife has been dealing with a problem for a long time, and some medicine she was put on turned out to have some really bad side effects. Things are a little better now but not totally great.

So what's new? I might get to extend my work arrangement with the start-up I'm at, but it involves still teaching a class each semester. I can't decide whether to do it or not -- it seems like I'll be doing more work and I'm already pretty much pegged out.

The two courses would be Software Engineering in the Fall and Compilers in the Spring. I've been itching to get my hands on the software engineering course, so here's my big chance, but then I don't have as much time as I'd like to get ready for it. What to do?