Masterful starts and fits

   
      It's just not supposed to happen this way.  Young men in their early twenties are supposed to be preoccupied with things like spring break, frat parties and, maybe, starting to consider what they'll do with their lives once college is over.  They are not, conventional wisdom tells us, supposed to be dismantling a storied major championship venue like Augusta National.  I suppose we shouldn't mention that to Rory McIlroy.  The Twenty-one year old from Northern Ireland fired an opening round seven under par 65 that can best be described as, well, businesslike.  Seven birdies, no bogeys and none of the normal fireworks one expects  from a player who has it going on the premier risk/reward course in the world.  No spectacular escapes from trouble, no eagles, no recoveries from the bogeys that are the penalties for the slightest lack of precision on Augusta's difficult greens.  Rory's day was spent, by and large, driving the ball where is should be driven, striking approach shots to the proper places and leaving himself with great looks at birdie all day.  As hard as it is to believe, 65 was just about as high a score as he was going to shoot yesterday, given that he failed to convert at least three make-able birdie putts.  There are three rounds left to play in a tournament that is notoriously unkind to both youth and first round leads, and McIlroy has some dark history to overcome where first round leads in major championships are concerned (he led the 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews with a first round 63 only to shoot 80 the next day), but this is one young golfer who will certainly bear watching over the next three days.

     McIlroy sits atop one of the most internationally flavored major championship leader boards in recent memory.  You have to scroll down to a tie for fifth place to find the first American names and six of the top ten first round scores belong to foreign born players.  Spaniard Alvaro Quiros is tied with McIlroy at seven under and former PGA Champion Y.E. Yang tied for third with K.J. Choi   at five under.  Two former U.S. Amateur champions, Ricky Barnes and Matt Kuchar are tied for fifth at -4.

     The biggest surprise of the day may have been the performance of reigning PGA Champion and current world number one Martin Kaymer.  Kaymer posted a shocking 78, putting him in real danger of missing his fourth masters cut in four tries.  Other first day fizzles included current U.S. Open champion and fifth ranked Graeme McDowell's 74, matched by Ian Poulter and Dustin Johnson, all players whom were included in the pre-tournament discussion of Masters favorites.

     Perennial Masters favorites and buzz-meter needle movers Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were decidedly average on day one, with Woods carding a one under 71 and Mickelson a two under 70.  Mickelson only managed to find three fairways and was saved by his short-game prowess while Woods recovered nicely from consecutive birdies at 10 and 11 with a 20-foot par save from the back of the green on the dangerous twelfth.  When asked how he felt about his chances going forward, Woods responded that he felt good about his round and his prospects by pointing our he was "only" six strokes back.
  The early tee times are already on the course for round two, stay tuned for more

TSA Torture Live

I'm not sure how I got myself roped in to this, but I'll be taking Mrs. Vagabond and the Tiny Vagabond to my ancestral sod for the Thanksgiving holiday.  I've been keenly following the media firestorm concerning the TSA's new "enhanced" patdown and security procedures (pictured).  Although wandering is a passionate interest, I have always made it a point to avoid airports like the plague during Thanksgiving.  I'd really rather eat glass or listen to John Tesh's entire musical opus than subject myself to airport security on the busiest travel day of the year.  However, in the interest of keeping up good family relations (Mother Vagabond would not be amused if her 2 month old grand daughter didn't make it home for the holiday), we will bite the bullet and endeavor to perservere.  I'll be tweeting my experience live, and you can all follow it here.  I'm putting Mother and Father Vagabond on notice that they had better be serving adult beverages upon arrival.  Saints preserve us!

The Vagabond way recommends: "Golf her Wei"

It warms my wandering heart to see someone refuse to let a dream die. Thus, with suitable fanfare, thundering cannons and streaming confetti (all virtual, of course), The Vagabond way announces it's latest addition to our "recommends" section: Wei under par.

"Wei under par," founded, operated and otherwise cared for by Stephanie Wei, is quite simply some of the most original, irreverent and innovative coverage of the world of golf you can find.  Wei brings a unique perspective and rapier wit to a genre of sports journalism that is moribund at its worst, staid and stuffy at its best.  Very few golf writers produce work that non-golf junkies would care to read and, even for golf fans, most coverage is eminently forgettable.  Not so with "Wei under par." Wei, along with contributors Kevin Merfield and Conor Nagle, consistently finds a fresh angle to combine with straight reporting and produces work that anyone could find interesting and funny.

Wei, a former competitive junior golfer and Yale grad, has a growing presence in the male dominated world of golf journalism, with her work being featured in The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and ESPN.com, a presence that is 100% self made.  Working  in the event planning field after graduating college where her collegiate golf career was cut short by a back injury, she had a desire to make her living doing something golf related.  Thus was born, "Wei under par."  A few short years later, the WSJ sent her around the world to cover major tournaments and the 2010 Ryder Cup.  Talk about making your own niche!

Stephanie, The Vagabond way commends and congratulates you for your vision, tenacity and skill.  Keep grabbing that brass ring!  As with all honorees in The Vagabond way's "recommends" section, you win an absolutely free cup of coffee from Vagabond himself, assuming it's not too close to payday and Mrs. Vagabond says it's ok.

For anyone reading this, take a huge step up in blog quality and check out "Wei under par."  You won't be sorry!

Those who live in glass houses . . .

The Vagabond Way loves few things more than hypocrisy exposed, hubris laid low and public rants proven wrong. Thus, it is with great glee and fanfare that we present "Those who live in glass houses . . ."

Our inaugural entry involves one Lou Dobbs, famous CNN financial reporter, immigration tough-guy and possible political candidate. Since being forced out of a long gig at CNN due to equal parts of personal asshattery and public outcry, Lou has stumped the country advocating his "get tough" brand of enforcement first immigration policy. He has waged a veritable crusade against illegal immigration, reserving a special brand of disdain for employers who hire undocumented workers. Dobbs has been quoted numerous times excoriating such employers, railing against their "exploitation of illegal aliens," and advocating felony charges for such offenses.

Well, it turns out that Dobbs isn't above hiring just such a contractor to care for two of his large estates and his daughter's million dollar show horses. An article by Isabelle MacDonald in "The Nation", outs Dobbs for engaging in the exact practices he has so publicly opposed. An example of Dobbs' rhetoric can be seen below:



The full article can be found here and is certainly worth the read, but the highlights are basically thus: Dobbs employed, through a contractor, undocumented workers who were isolated at his property, worked long hours doing menial tasks, were on call at all hours for the care of the horses involved and paid substantially less than minimum wage. They were also provided no health benefits even though the work is physically dangerous. Hmmm . . . Let me get this straight . . . for all of your moral indignation on this issue, you can't find the time in your busy life to check the veracity of your contractors efforts when it comes to employing undocumented aliens, or even talk to the poor guys who are scooping your horseapples and trimming your roses. You can afford to pay a million bucks a pop for show horses but you can't afford to kick a few greenbacks the way of your underpaid workers who live in conditions that mirror indentured servitude. Hell is in the details, Lou. Thanks for busily chucking rocks from the glass magnificence that is your estate. You have proven yourself to be even more full of it than your horse stalls.

Seconds to decide . . .

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WARNING: THE LINK ABOVE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF COMBAT

An organization called "Wikileaks" has posted an edited version of the video above. I'll warn you now, it is horrifying and graphic. The video is from the optical sighting equipment on a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship. It details an aerial attack on a group of men in Baghdad in 2007. The attack resulted in the deaths of, among others, two journalists, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen who were covering the war for Reuters. The attack also resulted in the wounding of two young children.

Wikileaks, according to Wikipedia, "is a Sweden or Iceland-based website launched in December 2006 that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of its sources. The website is run by The Sunshine Press, and has said it was founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Newspaper articles describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director. Within a year of its launch, the site said its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents. It has won a number of new media awards for its reports."

I want to invite you to watch the video above, and then watch the version posted at the Wikileaks website, here.

The first thing you may notice, other than the horrifying and harrowing raw content of the video, is the packaging done by the watchdogs at Wikileaks. We start off with an appropriate quote, move on to some background information and then proceed to the video feed, complete with subtitles and labels. At various points, we fade to black so that more background information can be passed along. The extra information helps to clarify a chaotic picture, helps us to see things we may have missed, documents the atrocity unfolding before our eyes . . . or does it?

The problem with the reporting in the edited version is simply this: It may be slick and tell a compelling tale, but it's not journalism. To paraphrase the late Paul Harvey, you're not hearing "the rest of the story." The labels, information crawls and subtitles, while truthful on the face of things, obscure and hide the other facts and prevent you from developing the perspective you need to form a complete picture. Even the raw video itself lacks this perspective, as it only displays a small piece of a very big picture. The folks at Wikileaks would have you believe that the U.S. Army rained murder and destruction on a group of peaceful, innocent bystanders with no provocation, and that the Army has covered this event up or painted it as a heroic combat mission.

Here are some things you may not have realized if you only watched the edited version: Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen were journalists embedded with an armed insurgent group. This is not an uncommon happenstance, but any journalist working a combat zone for an international news organization certainly understands the risk entailed by such action. How do we know this? Reuters admits as much and there is evidence in the video. Look at about the 1:43 mark. See the two guys just above and to the right of the cross-hairs? One is armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and the other is carrying an RPG launcher. There are no arrows or labels pointing to these two gents in the edited video.

Also, if you look at the video from 2:06 to 2:17, you'll notice someone kneeling just behind the building to the right of the cross-hairs and fiddling with a tubular object. Just as he is about to be obscured from the camera by the corner of the building, he points this tube directly at the helicopter. What is he doing? As it turns out, that is one of the journalists pointing a telephoto lens equipped camera, but that helps to illustrate my next point.

Wikileaks describes the attack as indiscriminate. The fact is, the Apache was on a combat mission over hostile territory. They were monitoring a group of armed insurgents who were equipped with weapons capable of shooting down their helicopter and at least one of this group pointed an object resembling a weapon at their aircraft. They believed they were taking ground fire (this is supported by the subtitles, although it is unclear where they believed the fire was coming from). None of this is mentioned in the edited version's "analysis." No attempt is given to provide the viewer with this perspective. Wikileaks is leading their audience to a predetermined conclusion from the very beginning. Look at the Orwell quote use for an establishing lead. "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." To my mind, once you take that step, you've left the world of hard journalism and entered in to Op-Ed writing. You've abdicated your position as an objective journalist and you are engaged in sensationalism.

There is no denying that this incident is tragic. The two journalists who lost their lives were bravely performing a vital service to the free world. They also knew the risks. The fact that children were wounded is horrifying, but no less horrifying is the fact that the adults caring for those children chose to take them in to an active firefight. To be fair, the U.S. Army hasn't handled inquiries into this situation in a forthright manner, and that has contributed to the perception of wrongdoing and cover-up. Reuters has been asking forceful and probing questions since the incident and received no good answers and their request for the video via the Freedom of Information Act has been stonewalled. You can also make an argument against attacking the van that attempted to rescue the wounded. Some interesting comments were made here on that very subject. We don't really know whether or not the attack was made in accordance with the established rules of engagement, primarily because we don't know what those were at the time. Wikileaks claims to have them, but I can't see them posted anywhere on their site.

The simple fact is, this situation is as complex as it is tragic. To attempt to reduce it to a simple act of wanton murder is to surrender to an agenda. The soldiers in that helicopter had to examine a chaotic and ambiguous situation and make a choice within a few seconds. The price of failure could very well have been their death and the deaths of the infantry soldiers whom they were covering. They didn't have the leisure to examine the video at length as we have done. The comments they made during and after engaging the insurgents were indeed graphic, and may be shocking to the layman. They are also absolutely common to any battlefield. This is after all war, and not a debate. Witness also the efforts of the ground troops to save the life of the wounded child. This also was discounted by the "analysis."

I believe Wikileaks can, and has provided a valuable service. Too much secrecy is a bad thing for free societies. Those who would engage in cover up and conspiracy should have cause to worry and to fear exposure. The trick for Wikileaks and like organizations will be to avoid engaging in those activities themselves by shading the truth to fit their own notions.

Book review: Stephenson's "The Baroque Cycle"

Neal Stephenson's "The Baroque Cycle" is nearly as intimidating to review as it is to read. At 2,700 plus printed pages spread over three volumes (the page count and number of discreet books may vary depending on the format of your purchase), this work is massive in scope, setting, ambition and sheer physical size. The picture at left is the handwritten manuscript for the work, displayed behind the three published hardcover volumes. The experience of reading it is worth every carpal tunnel syndrome pang you will suffer and more (even this slight price to pay can be alleviated by using one of the readily available electronic book readers now on the market).

Set against the backdrop of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, The Baroque Cycle features a bewildering number of characters, both historic and entirely fictional, pursuing their plot strings and character arcs across five continents and nearly 50 years. The cycle follows three main characters, Jack Shaftoe, Eliza and Daniel Waterhouse as they rub shoulders with and often directly influence the movers and shakers of enlightenment Europe. Their story arcs shape Stephenson's hyper-historic, mind-bending narrative of the shaping of the modern world. Historic figures from the period (Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, John Churchill, Louis XIV and George I to name a few) are blended with a rogues gallery of highly developed, idiosyncratic fictional characters to tell the tale of the foundations of modern science, politics, commerce and finance.

Stephenson's writing style is wryly humorous, with an eye for the ridiculous. I feel it fair to warn you that reading this work in public will result in sudden fits of laughter, assumptions of mental disorder and possible beverage squirting as the author makes deft use of the hilarious and ridiculous to both advance plot points and diffuse tension. Jack Shaftoe, in particular, is equal parts swashbuckling adventurer and comic misfit as his various sobriquets (King of the Vagabonds, L'Emmerdeur, Half-Cocked Jack, and more) will attest. Stephenson often writes of Jack's actions being prey to the influence of "The Imp of the Perverse." The same could be said of the entire work, providing a lively and surprise filled narrative, even considering the accuracy of the story's historic events. The reader is treated to a picture of the period that spares no detail, however distasteful (the sanitary conditions of the age, or lack thereof, seem to hold a particular fascination) or racy, and therefore the work is not for prudes or the squeamish. For those who may be daunted by the work's sheer size, I can promise that the pages turn quickly with a goodly amount of belly laughs interspersed with "I'll be damned" moments.

In all, this is a story and an author worth investing your hard earned guineas and increasingly valuable time in. The dividends will be rich and rewarding.

Shameless lack of work ethic

Today is my birthday. I will likely have too much strong drink and will be in no fit state to write. Have a good weekend all!