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Random Thoughts

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By Thomas Sowell

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 5, 2008

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can't stop with just one.

Anyone who is honest with himself and with others knows that there is not a snowball's chance in hell to have an honest dialogue about race.

I wonder what radical feminists make of the fact that it was men who created the rule of "women and children first" when it came to rescuing people from life-threatening emergencies.

Despite the New York Yankees' awesome record over the years, no one has ever made 3,000 hits in his career as a Yankee, nor has any pitcher ever had 300 lifetime victories with the Yankees. Despite their well-deserved reputation as "the Bronx Bombers," there is only one Yankee among the top 10 career home run hitters.

After getting DVDs of old "Perry Mason" TV programs and old "Law & Order" programs, I found myself watching far more of the "Perry Mason" series. The difference is that too many "Law & Order" programs tried to raise my consciousness on social issues, as if that is their role or their competence.

What is amazing this year is how many people have bought the fundamentally childish notion that, if you don't like the way things are going, the answer is to write a blank check for generic "change," empowering someone chosen not on the basis of any track record but on the basis of his skill with words.

With all the big-name entertainers who have put on shows in prisons, why have so few put on shows for our troops in Iraq?

Some of the most emotionally powerful words are undefined, such as "social justice," "a living wage," "price gouging" or a "fragile" environment, for example. Such terms are especially valuable to politicians during an election year, for these terms can attract the votes of people who mean very different - and even mutually contradictory - things when they use these words.

It may not be possible to have machines call balls and strikes in baseball, since the vertical strike zone depends on the height of each batter. But a machine can tell whether any part of the ball passed over any part of the plate, so that umpires won't be able to call their own "wide strikes" any more.

It is heart-warming to see the Williams sisters maturing as people. They made tennis history from the beginning but they had a lot to learn about human relations - and now they seem to have learned it.

Although most of the mainstream media are still swooning over Barack Obama, a few critics are calling the things he advocates "naive." But that assumes that he is trying to solve the country's problems. If he is trying to solve his own problem of getting elected, then he is telling the voters just what they want to hear. That is not naive but shrewd.

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Thomas Sowell's column is distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc

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