I just wrote a lengthy piece on, essentially, why I deserve to be paid more. Despite that, I swear my head isn’t getting big.

God forbid something happens and I never attain “neurosurgeon status,” say I can’t pass my boards or something, and all of this in hindsight looks like bluster. The point is, no matter what I was aspiring to I think my arguments for the pay gap stand and have little to do with what ego I have.

I thought I’d start my return to posting with something completely off topic and geeky.

I am a huge fan of Nobuo Uemtasu, a Japanese composer who has turned compositions for video games into an art form. Time magazine named him an innovator for the coming century several years ago and his work on the Final Fantasy series has spawned a number of concert tours. Above is a group of professional performers and the Royal Stockholm Symphony Orchestra performing an act for an opera which Uematsu wrote for an early Final Fantasy game.

Consider that the thesis of this post. It is a rehashing, I’ve posted a post similar to this before, but since I continue to be lucky to be alive and because I can’t find that original post I’ll rehash the point of it.

I’m sorry to share a commercial for a television station to make my point but the ad expresses a truth wrapped in a production quality that I can’t find elsewhere.

It is a beautiful day outside, I am so lucky and blessed to be alive. And while I’ve been comparatively blessed the whole of my life and, only in brief truly experienced suffering, as it should be defined when looking at the range of human experience, I feel comfortable in claiming the impressiveness of humanity.

The fact that life or the rest of the natural world or human achievement somehow seems common place is depressing. The universe is incredible and wonderful. The mere fact life exists at all is something amazing. I think that a single day of life, even one filled with suffering, would be worth it for the observations and the experience in general.

I love the whole world.

I have a fiancee who doesn’t quite understand my devotion to my state. Texans’ devotion to their state has its historical roots but in some ways Texas’ pride is merely circular, I’m proud that Texans have such pride in their state.

And I’m proud that Texas has exported its influence. From it’s rise in national politics just prior to and following World War II to the presidency of the second Bush it is hard to argue another states’ influence in Washington was greater in the past century.

The 28th state has loomed large over Washington for much of the past century — think the president, his father, Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn, John Tower, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay.

Since at least the 1960s, Texans have been simultaneously admired and loathed by the rest of Washington. Their command, for the most part, has come on account of seniority. Their home districts were so safe that they were able to stay in Washington more or less all of the time and invest wholeheartedly in committee work.

But [when President Obama is inaugurated], Texas becomes — please don’t throw things — just another state.

Such declarations are a little premature.

No, Texas’ congressional delegation carries no standing committee chairmanships. Not surprising considering recent redistricting, turnover amongst the States’ 12 Democratic congressmen and only a single truly rising star amongst them in the form of Edwards.

“Chet is a good guy and will have a lot of influence,” Frost said. “But the reality is that Texas doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of clout that it used to have.”

Nor do Texas’ current two Senators inspire the cult of personality and the projection of influence that the Lone Star state has often sent to Washington. All a bummer. But the future is not bleak. In the current political environment Texas is showing its state politics have cultivated galvanizing figures who are now becoming more and more prominent on the national stage. A recent Texas Monthly piece asked ‘Why Not President Perry?”

Throughout his career, Perry has always benefited from an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time, and once again, his luck seems to be working. The Republican field for 2012 is not deep. Who among the contenders has a better conservative record? Who better expresses the anger of the average Republican voter? Who has a more robust fundraising base? Of the governors commonly mentioned—Tim Pawlenty, of Minnesota; Haley Barbour, of Mississippi; Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana; Mitch Daniels, of Indiana—whose state has weathered the recession more successfully?

Perry has been so often viewed as a caricature that many Texans have failed to recognize his talent. The fact is that no Republican has so ably surfed the wave of populist anger that has swept through the party in the past year.

And while I have mixed feelings about Rick Perry, why not another President from Texas? It certainly seems like Perry is setting himself up for a run at national office. And courting the conservative base across this country very nicely.

Texas’ play on the national stage is far from dead. Texas’ influence in Washington has dropped off, for a period, it remains however the nation’s second most populace state. And more importantly the nation’s fastest growing state. In Congress, the midterms which are sure to cost the Democrats something, promise to help Texas. And perhaps more importantly, so does the 2010 Census. It’s large Hispanic population, whose political souls remain surprisingly up in the air despite their ties to the Democratic party, makes it a state which cannot be ignored.

The state, with its low tax and low spend focus, has weathered the recession as well as any state in the country. Compare that to say, California, the bread basket of progressivism.

If California doesn’t want to be Texas, it must find a way to be a better California. The easy thing about being Texas is that the government has a great deal of control over the part of its package deal that attracts consumer-voters—it must merely keep taxes low. California, on the other hand, must deliver on the high benefits promised in its sales pitch. It won’t be enough for its state and local governments to spend a lot of money; they have to spend it efficiently and effectively.

The optimistic assessment is that things are going to get worse in California before they get better. The pessimistic assessment is that they’re going to get worse before they get much worse.

States that have grown accustomed to thinking of the engine that drives their economies as an inexhaustible resource—whether it’s Michigan and the auto industry, New York and Wall Street, or California and the vision of the sunlit good life that used to attract new residents—find it tough to compete again for what they thought would be theirs forever, and to plan budgets for lean years that turn into lean decades. Instead, they invest their hopes in a deus ex machina that will rescue them from the hard choices they dread.

The failure of progressive economic policy and entitlement programs, in examples like California, only bolster Texas’ example. Despite lacking current representatives in leadership positions, Texas policies are poised to become entrenched as the soul of the GOP. If liberal economic policies continue to fail on main street it isn’t hard imagining Texas, and a new generation of good ol’ boy Texas pols, taking back the flag of influence as reactionary voters look for examples of the antithesis of current policy.

No matter how well the reactionary voter manifests in the coming midterms or in 2012, it is hard to imagine Texas out in the political wilderness for a generation. The fall of Texas has been grossly exaggerated.

Well, let me fail there for a moment. I’ve been thinking on the United States’ obligations to our allies since I’ve been interested in current affairs; I’m sure anyone with an interest in politics or world events has had the same thoughts. This week with Secretary Gates criticizing the demilitarization of Europe the issue comes forefront again,

“The demilitarization of Europe – where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it – has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st,” Gates said.

The perception of weakness in Europe could offer “a temptation to miscalculation and aggression” by hostile states, he said.

And while Europe shoots back they can hardly muster a convictionable excuse. The situation is that western Europe was allowed to flower into progressive liberal democracies, at THEIR discretion, behind a shield of American threat of force. Social spending in western Europe never could’ve been what it was through the 20th century without NATO. And NATO was little more than America’s guarantee to Europe (and Canada).

I’m hardly the first to say it. I’m hardly the most well read to say it. But it irks me that, whatever your convictions concerning the war in Afghanistan, America’s European allies seem so reluctant and seem to have contributed so little. I understand that NATO’s scope has been vastly expanded from its original premise by the September 11th attacks. That NATO was never intended to require its founding signatories to sign up for the projection of force outside of North America or Europe. But forget the official construct of America’s agreement with Europe.

The simple fact is that the promise, whether laid out in the North Atlantic Treaty or simply understood, of American force guaranteed European security throughout the Cold War. The NHS, French pensions, German infrastructure were paid for as much by American tax payers as anyone. Even a country like France who supposedly took on their own defense obligations: what would their defense spending have been at the height of the Cold War if not for the understanding that America would oppose any Warsaw Pact aggression? 8 or 9 or 10 or 15% of GDP? Not unrealistic. The lack of the obligation to fully supply for their own defense allowed for the growth of liberal Europe.

As The American Spectator quotes,

Vassilis Kaskarelis, the Greek Ambassador to the U.S., told the Washington Times: “They don’t have the capabilities, because in the last 50 years, the U.S. offered an umbrella in terms of military, security and stability.” So “You had the phenomenon [in which] most of the successful European economies — countries like France, Germany, the Scandinavians — channeled all the funds they had on social issues, health care, pensions, you name it.”

I’m not saying the United States didn’t have a stake in NATO. It did. But the benefits were lopsided in favor of the Europeans. And the costs were lopsided in favor of the Americans. America ponies up better than 2/3rds of NATO’s budget. Through the end of the Cold War America routinely mustered 5 or 6% of its GDP for its military and were lucky to see its European allies muster up 2%. Nowadays the situation is even worse. The SIPRI has a great resource looking at military budgets from the late 1980s.

And now America is facing its greatest threat to its national security since the fall of the Berlin Wall and some support would be lovely. What the European’s have at stake in Afghanistan is something less than what the Americans do. Fair enough. But those thirty or forty years of prosperity on American guarantees should count for something more than it has. From the Dutch government falling to limited engagement rules and caveats over their troops’ roles in Afghanistan to threats of British troops pulling out, evidence of a lack of commitment is all around. Support for America’s operations has been less than remarkable from the beginning.

I’m all for calls to leave NATO to the Europeans. That’s easy to say in the current enviornment with the threat of state versus state conflict in Europe at an all time low. I truthfully imagine the Europeans would regret that, when the current situation proves transient. Still I’m all for fostering unified European defense cooperation with North America stepping back.

Present-day Europeans — even Europeans with a pronounced aversion to war — are fully capable of mounting the defenses necessary to deflect a much reduced Eastern threat. So why not have the citizens of France and Germany guarantee the territorial integrity of Poland and Lithuania, instead of fruitlessly demanding that Europeans take on responsibilities on the other side of the world that they can’t and won’t?

But that’s for the future. I’ll be frank, the point I’m trying to make is that Europe owes the United States something in the present. If they garner nothing for their own security, if their populations are morally repulsed by the war…they should still muster up.

I’d like some payback for the thirty or forty years prior. I’d like Europe to remember what America meant to world security at its peak power; meant to their security at its peak power. Consider that petty but it irks me that Europe seems to have forgotten so quickly.

Jamie Oliver talking at TED2010 on childhood obesity.

Funny or Die has a half bizarre of a skit Pete Carroll participated in after he decided to leave USC.

Now Pete has always been playful and something of a kidder and the skit is somewhat humorous but I’m not sure I’ll ever understand in full what Pete was thinking when he decided to participate in making it.

A Cuban gynecologist moves to America, becomes a car salesman and Tim & Eric help him make this hilarious commercial.

Remember, remember the fifth of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot

Comedy at homeopathy’s expense is almost too easy. Still this is clever; from a British variety show called That Mitchell & Webb Look.