Ares and Athena Wish List

Apologies for the overlong post that follows. We’ve been having a discussion for a while now about what’s not being said in the political theater. What passes for discourse is little more than staged sound bytes. If we could rub the political lamp and get the genie to grant wishes what follows would be the discussion this country would have when it chose leaders. Any of the below items that do come up tend to not survive longer than a few news cycles. The list isn’t some manifesto; just us thinking out loud. It isn’t all-inclusive either, just the big things we see missing from the discourse. As with all things in this blogspace, it is offered with the “IMHO” tag.

A & A Wish List

1: A reasonable, pragmatic approach to addressing health care. This is a unique issue as almost everyone that touches this topic agrees that it’s broken on some level. Included in this is a serious discussion about the raging gaps in mental health care. In the end, somebody actually doing something, anything, as opposed to making speeches and changing the topic.

2: A pragmatic discussion about social security that based on fiscal realities. This, along with all other topics, would have to include a disclaimer up front that changes some people aren't going to like are going to be required. In this as with all things, politicians need to get over their opinions and listen to experts.

3: A serious discussion about the role and factor of personal debt in this country. I'm not as insistent that politicians actually do something in this case. I'm more interested in them using political clout and legislative threat to coerce the financial community into being more responsible. Congress and the executive branch aren't financial experts and the more they tend to mess with these things the more they tend to screw them up.

4: Serious effort at infrastructure upgrading. Every single jurisdiction in this country is patching together an aging, arcane infrastructure. 85% of the infrastructure in this country is in private hands. They are doing no or the bare minimum of upgrading, with the exception of the telcom industry. Something like six and a half trillion dollars in upgrades will be needed in the next generation in this country. Nobody is even talking about how to begin to approach that.

5: The congressional appropriations process is an absolute travesty. The earmarks that dot every single piece of funding legislation that get pooped out are criminal. First and foremost on the list: The Department of Defense. The half-trillion dollar defense budget has numerous programs that are orders of magnitude beyond projected cost, which the DoD continues to support anyway. Added to this are numerous weapons systems that the military isn't all that keen on having, but congress uses as a federal jobs program. This is not like herding cats: The majority of spending goes to about a half dozen defense contractors in this country. Why is the government accepting a level of incompetence and graft that a high school dropout wouldn't tolerate from a home repair contractor?

6: Serious discussion about a long term strategy in the war on terror. Yes, it is a war. Yes, we are engaged whether we want to be or not. Pull whatever demagogue positions there are about the war in Iraq out of this equation and start actually thinking about the issue at hand. This war will be 80% non-kinetic, but there will still be times we have to kill people. Get cozy with that fact, and formulate a plan for the big picture. (Best suggestion, make everyone read Tom Barnett.)

7: A serious discussion about energy policy. Global warming will have to be completely removed from this discussion, as too many people are too deeply emotionally invested in the idea. Fix one and the other will follow anyway. This has to go beyond improving the CAFE standards and getting people to drive hybrids. Making people plug in their cars and manufacturing enormous amount of ethanol merely moves the energy consumption to a different part of the grid. A complete broad-spectrum approach is needed. This area is ripe for a Manhattan Project style approach, and the first one to claim that position will probably have the political high ground.

8: Lobbying and influence buying needs to be addressed on an adult level. The only people that think the current system is reasonable are those that benefit from it. Aside from being blatantly criminal it's an insult to regular people that play by the rules in this world. Here's a novel idea: Why don’t we hold Congressmen to the same ethical standard we hold cops to. The occasional comp'd dinner is as far as you can go when it comes to accepting gifts, and even that should be viewed with a wary eye.

9: A serious, dispassionate review of the "War on Drugs" is needed. Almost 40 years of effort has wrought appalling violence and incredible levels of incarceration. We need to ask ourselves if some radical, sacred cow-busting approaches wouldn't yield better results. Whatever rationale people are clinging to about the evils of marijuana will probably thin out even more and the baby boomers start confronting terminal illnesses in greater numbers over the next 10 or 15 years. Again, a complete, across the spectrum review is needed; not more laws and more jails.

10: It’s time for a new political party. A serious one, not one thought up at Ralph Nader’s mommy’s kitchen table. We’re not the first ones to say it, and we won’t be the last, but there’s not a shit’s worth of difference between the two biggies anymore, and we all know it. I’m still trying to forget H. Ross Perot’s venture into national politics, but good grief, somebody do SOMETHING. (Ares note: I actually voted for Perot, mainly because he had actually done something with his life besides politics.) The last time we had a new political party that stuck in this country was just before the Civil War. The soil is ripe for some innovative reinvention, especially as the baby boomers move off the stage.

In reading over this list it appears to me that the thing we need most is decisiveness and a willingness to try new things. We need to look down on the floor of our debate houses and see lots of broken rice bowls and dead sacred cows. Innovation and exploration is our birthright, not our peril.

Ares and Athena

Genocide, The Game You Play At Home

I’ve got a question that’s been stuck in my head for a while now. Why is it that after self-induced lightweight slaughter in Palestine it’s referred to as “sporadic violence”, but a bomb in Baghdad means an intractable civil war is at hand? A quick consultation of my Funk & Wagnalls shows that they both fit the civil war descriptor pretty well. There is some strange violence-labeling algebra being applied. The tragic-comic relief of the entire episode in Palestine was when the “government” was dissolved. Guess this means all those employees Palestinian Park Service and National Archives won’t be getting their regular paychecks.

While we’re in this neighborhood I’ve got another question stuck in my brain box. Where is the Muslim engine of indignation at the slaughter that’s taken place in Palestine? Every time a Palestinian gets killed by Israeli troops in retaliation for a suicide bombing the chest thumping Arab media machine works itself into a lather. I guess they view these as noble deaths. If there is one bright side that might come out of this, it’s that to the average Palestinian, (Mohammed Six Pack, if you will) Israel seems pretty reasonable in the context of their own leadership. Why in the name of the almighty are we giving so much as a nickel in foreign aid to this place?

Ares

Update: I was feeling pretty alright about this post....until I clicked over to Michael Totten's latest. As is usually the case after I read his stuff, I'm feeling pretty small. I'll simply implore you to read his latest as I offer a hearty "Yea! What he said!" in concurrence.

Nobody CAIRs

Happy news about one of the organizations I love to hate. Turns out CAIR’s membership rolls have been falling faster than the President’s approval rating. They’ve dropped from 29,000 in the year 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006. Oh, and the bonus statistic: Pew Research estimates there are only 2.3 million Muslims in the U.S. This is significant because it’s less than half the number CAIR used to pimp, which means their “market share” is even more pathetic. Seventeen hundred out of 2.3 million is almost statistically non-existent.

Let’s do a little comparison shopping, shall we. According to the FBI, in 1995 there were 1,100 members of the North American Man Boy Love Association. Aum Shinrikyo, the apocalyptic cult that released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway and released Anthrax on several other occasions, currently has 1,500 to 2,000 members. Jim Jones’ People’s Temple “church” boasted 3,500 at its height, and nearly a thousand of those drank the kool-aid. Are we starting to see the statistical company they’re keeping? Now if we could just get the media to stop pretending they represent anyone.

Ares

All Things Not Considered

I came up with a new drinking game the other day at work. While listening to NPR: Every time they say “Congressional Republicans” or “Congressional Democrats” take a drink of your beer. Every time they use the terms “failure” or “quagmire” in relation to the war in Iraq take a shot. If you wanna play Dublin Rules you have to take a shot every time they say “President Bush”.

Ares

Media Whores Part II

Mrs. Ares and I were at a hole in the wall last night having dinner. CNN spewed forth from a black box near the ceiling on today’s fear of the day: The “TB Patient”. (We’ll put aside for a moment that Mr. TB is a world class asshat.) The topic may have been Mr. TB but the theme was fear. The pure and simple peddling of angst and unknown. He’s a little test you can do at home, if you even still watch the news. Look how many segments are loaded with the words fear, uncertain, doubt, concern, possible, or deadly. Charged words that designed to induce an emotional state in the viewer. (Hard to talk about this stuff without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I assure you this is the absolute last thing I am implying.) Ultimately, the news media is selling a product. The product is their version of information. Getting the facts correct is a distant second in priority. Uncertainty is designed to keep you turning in, which in turn keeps the ad revenue flowing in.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina I went to a preparedness seminar put on by a large corporate sponsor. The audience was about 200, mostly civilians with a few public safety people thrown in. Good information on how to get yourself ready. One of the last speakers was a retired CDC official. After his very common sense presentation that only tangentially touched on terrorism there was a Q & A session. The first one to shoot his hand in the air was a pudgy middle aged guy in a suit. He was pretty earnest when he asked what he should do to prepare for the dirty bombs. The CDC guy sighed and the public safety people rolled their eyes. The civilians leaned forward and were fully attentive to the speaker. A patient and lengthy answer, loaded with facts and statistics, was delivered by the CDC guy. Four follow up questions from other members of the audience made it clear that facts weren’t sinking in.

There are 300 million people in this country. Over forty thousand of those die in car accidents every year. Half of those accidents are alcohol related. Sixteen thousand people are murdered, most by people they know. Cardiovascular disease killed over 800,000 in 2004. Thus far dirty bombs have killed exactly no one. In the event of a dirty bomb more people will be killed in traffic accidents attempting to flee than from radiation. But the body politic is swallowing the line that dirty bombs are the thing to fear in their lives. Overweight smokers that live in the suburbs and commute over 50 miles a day primarily fear gamma radiation. This is learned behavior, and guess where it was learned?

Barry Glassner, in his absolutely excellent book Culture of Fear, talks at length about this idea. Culture of Fear is probably the most infuriating book you will ever love. One little factoid from the book is worth repeating. During the ‘90’s the murder rate declined by about 20%(if memory serves, Athena has my copy of the book). The reporting of murder by the main stream media rose by 600%. Guess how we see our world? Not as it is but as it is presented to us. Folks, there are an enormous amount of people going forth into society each day. What is truly amazing are all the bad things that don’t happen.

Ares

Love that Cynthia

This kind of stuff almost writes itself. You couldn’t ask for a better entertainment subject than Cynthia Much-Ado-About-A-Hairdo McKinney. Found this little nugget on YouTube from election night. (Sorry about the Fox News, couldn’t find it anywhere else.) That would be the night of the election she lost. By the way, in case you were wondering, there wasn’t so much as a bleat of apology from her camp after this little episode. And for those not local, the New Black Panther Party is to race relations what the Salafi Jihadist movement is to tolerance.

Just to recap on Cynthia’s credentials, she’s also a signatory of the 9/11 Truth Statement. (Not going to honor those assholes with a link.) You know, these are the folks that think the Twin Towers were a controlled demolition and the Pentagon was hit by a missile. Also, according to Wikipedia she’s trying to pimp herself as the ’08 Green Party Candidate. By all means, take it on the road and inflict yourself on the rest of the country. Then she can blame all of the Jews when she loses and not just the ones in the 4^th District.

I’m thinking about posting the following personal ad:
Wanted: Representative for the 4^th Congressional District. Must be able to speak in complete sentences, have a modicum of education in public service or public administration and lack criminal record. Charisma desired but will settle for articulate and well groomed. A strong grasp of reality and facts is essential. Ideal candidate must have at least a passing respect for authority and not make District residents nauseas.

Ares

Media Whores Part I

Today I was trapped for several hours in a venue that had CNN blaring. With nothing else to view but my fellow human it was inevitable that I spend some time looking at the glazed over phosphor glow. Let me give you the highlights of what you already know so well: Iraq, Iraq, 2008 Presidential Race, What The President Did Today, it rained somewhere. Repeat ad infinitum. I know nothing more about my world than when I woke up this morning as a result of this involuntary investment. The formula for all segments was to present the most contentious angle possible. Even the weather made sure to harp about the storms that were going to wreak havoc on poor defenseless people.

There was another annoying factor aside from pandering to idiocy and fear, and that was the obsession with dead American soldiers. I've taken pains over the past few years to learn as much as I can about terrorism, guerilla warfare, and insurgency. Most of what passes for inspection of this phenomenon concerns itself with the kinetics (killing people and breaking things). If you read about the practice of Fourth Generation Warfare, and read with the leaders on the Salafi Jihadist movement write and say, you'll learn that the conflict is 80% non-kinetic. It is stage managed violence that is formulated for maximum visual impact beyond the battlefield. (Here's a little example of this type of conflict. When the PLO was engaged in the Intifada we were bombarded with imagery of Israeli military forces wreaking destruction upon the Palestinian people. Conditioned response: Those Israelis are slaughtering helpless civilians. How many video clips did you see of suicide bombers detonating themselves in Israeli restaurants and cafes? None. This is Fourth Generation Warfare at its most clinical.) There are virtually no strategic kinetic fights. What you have are a series of tactical engagements that are positioned to give a strategic appearance. This is where CNN comes in, willingly.

The endless obsessing about death serves absolutely no positive purpose. The "other side" views this as weak, overwrought wailing. The domestic consumers have images constantly piped into the visual cortex, bypassing cognition. The deep inspection of each death serves to keep viewers in the emotion and well away from logic or analysis. This is precisely the state that Fourth Generation Warfare opponents need us kept in. The broadband obsessive-compulsive stream of conflict that is being constantly mainlined into our jugular keeps us intellectually anesthetized. While immersed in emotion sound judgment is essentially impossible. Imagine, if you will, doctors that broke down uncontrollably every time a patient was diagnosed with a serious life-threatening illness. This overproduced microscope of television creates self-fulfilling prophecies. Just like your life, complete daily inspection of all aspects will rarely show marked progress. The ancient lie told since the beginning is that they are merely reporting what transpires and aren't responsible for what happens in the world. A cursory inspection of Fourth Generation Warfare reveals this to be turned on its head. The other lie passed off by big media, that they're just doing what everyone else is doing, wouldn't pass muster between a parent and child but is willingly swallowed by an entire society. Eventually, in the long term, I think this issue will sort itself out. I have yet to meet and discuss this very concept with anyone that is anything less than disgusted. When enough people vote with their eyes and feet this whore of a dinosaur we're forced to endure will wither and die.

Ares

The Future of Food

With thanks to Drew:



Watch it. This is important.

Athena

Warning

Found another little gem on the Internet: The Warning Label Generator. I’ve been having all kinds of fun with it at work. Take it for a spin.

ht: Boortz

Ares

Useless Donkeys

The new, fledgling legislature of Afghanistan almost has the hang of it. They’ve suspended a female member of parliament for some things she said. Her sin: She said a stable was more useful than congress. “A stable is better, for there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk”. Amen! Apparently that’s flamethrower language in Afghanistan.

This actually works on a couple of levels. First, it proves that legislatures are the same worldwide. Second, I think she actually meant “Democrats”, but inserted the more common “donkey” reference. (Just want to see if Athena’s paying attention.) Still, it’s a huge step forward that they just suspended her. Back in the day she would have been lucky to just be beaten for speaking out. During Taliban times she ran a school for girls, an offense that is still occasionally punishable by death in that part of the world. Personally, I think the men of that august body of law makers looked at themselves, then at her, and realized they weren’t measuring up in the proverbial dangling genitalia department. More than anything cowards hate people that are more than they could ever become. And that male dominated collection of inferior souls hiding behind Islam is the most stunning example of externalized cowardice ever witness by humanity.

Ares

Exposed to Art

So Mrs. Ares’ employer had their annual awards diner last night. The good news is the grub was free and there was an open bar. The bad news is that it was at the High Museum. It’s only bad because all forms of art appear to be lost on me.

After diner and the awards ceremony the museum opened for our perusal. The current centerpiece is the Louvre exhibit. Let me give you the abbreviated version: Painting, painting, rug on the wall, somebody’s dishes, and a few statues. Walking among the old stuff made me long for a single wish. I desperately want to come back 400 years in the future to see what detritus from our current landscape will pass as art. Call me a heathen, but a lot of the ‘art’ looks like stuff that was just lying around. My crowning moment of mental inferiority was looking at the miniature bronze figures from the first century A.D. About 4 inches high, my immediate thought was that they looked like the Star Wars action figures I played with as a kid. Apparently George Lucas really was on to some universal themes. My next thought, which I idiotically shared aloud with Mrs. Ares was “Look! Mercury has a little itty bitty penis!” That was one of those ‘or worse’ moments they mentioned somewhere in the wedding ceremony.

It was a nice evening. Just about perfect weather and the High is a beautiful space. A tidy little island of serenity tucked into the canyons between skyscrapers in Midtown. The only intrusion was the occasional thumping of car stereos on nearby Peachtree Street. (If there’s a place in metro Atlanta to get away from that I haven’t found it.) The High is also home to the Atlanta Symphony. A little fact I learned about Symphony attendance: You can get gourmet coffee with a shot of Amaretto and a box of Junior Mints before listening to Tchaikovsky. That might just make it go down a little easier. Maybe I’ll be better at the symphony that I was at the Louvre.

Ares

The Final Frontier

This still feels a little silly, writing the miscellaneous whatever and posting it to the great nothingness. I’m not a scholar with an intellectual bunker to defend, nor am I an ‘issue’ blogger advancing a tightly held concept. Just some guy in somewhere America, scrawling on his 15 column inches of fame. It still seems a little narcissistic, but also a little cathartic. Maybe it’s the flight from nothingness that appeals. In posting to that great formless yet all-encompassing Internet you become part of something bigger than yourself. With apologies to our father, a sort of confessional and communion with a keyboard. Makes you wonder if the Internet might someday supplant that portion of the psyche that organized religion currently occupies. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch, given that there are 65 million MySpace registrants. The irony is too sharp to measure, millions of people spending more time alone in order to be with other people. Then again, it’s the best way to enjoy other people: Selectively filtered. This is new psychological territory, somebody’s PhD thesis waiting to happen. In the mean time, I’ll just keep pecking away.

Ares

Middle East Rochambeax

So Hamas kills Fatah, which begats Fatah to kill Hamas, which begats everyone to kill Israel. This is a new twist that no one didn’t see coming. Seems the Palestinians skipped that pesky rule set thing that goes along with self-rule and went straight to the civil war. I don’t think its considered racist anymore to observe that Palestinians have a propensity for self-destruction. But in truth this is more about the retention of power by a select few and fighting over the checkbook than anything the Israelis ever did. It’s just that it gets a little wearisome watching generation after generation self-immolate.

I’m only half-kidding when I offer the following suggestion. Why don’t the Palestinians clean up some of that rubble, make a trip to Home Depot, and build themselves a world class casino or two. Take a page from the Native/Original/Indigenous Americans. Do themselves a Dubai, if you will. If they can talk themselves around the Koran’s prohibitions against slaughtering innocents surely they can step around the gambling verses. Everybody sneers until the money starts rolling in. Besides, wouldn’t it be better for the Palestinian ego to have Israelis serving them drinks and cleaning their toilets, just like whitey does in Tunica and Cherokee? Because if they don’t get some sort of plan, some alternate trajectory, I’ve got two words that perfectly describe their evolution: Easter Island.

Ares

Open Up and Say Stupid

Today’s edition of the WTF Files comes to you from Lawrenceville, Georgia. An enterprising fellow decided to open his own dental practice….in his apartment. (No citation available, the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation puts their stuff behind a firewall. Deep thinkers, all of them.) Who needs certification when you’ve got desire in your heart? This story bothers me on two levels. First, who has a burning desire to stick their hands in other people’s mouths? That career pushing a broom just wasn’t enough, so he thought he’d really level up and pretend to be a dentist? But weirdness knows no bounds, so it’s not too difficult to believe.

The really, really disturbing part is how many people fell for the good ‘doctor’. I’m not sure how many there were, but one is too many. Let me walk you through the mental gymnastics that were required by the participants.

‘Doctor’: Welcome to my office.

‘Patient’: Isn’t this your apartment?

‘Doctor’: I’m just working out of here until my office is ready.

‘Patient’: Okay. Where is your office staff?

‘Doctor’: Uh…they’re at lunch. Have a seat in the chair.

‘Patient’: It’s 9:30 in the morning. Isn’t that a Lazy Boy?

‘Doctor’: I’m waiting on new furniture. Let's have a look in there.

‘Patient’: What’s that in your hand? Is that a screwdriver? Why do all of your dental tools say Craftsman on them?

‘Doctor’: Uh…Craftsman has a new line of dental tools.

‘Patient’: Don’t I get any anesthesia?

‘Doctor’: Sure. Take this.

‘Patient’: This is an aspirin.

‘Doctor’: Uh…yea. It also helps if you happen to have a heart attack.

And so on. Whoever this ‘doctor’ is I think he’s got a bright future in sales. Then again, DeKalb County will be looking for a new CEO next year. Gig probably pays better than being a fake dentist. Job comes with its own armored SUV and a phalanx of body guards. That should help when those pesky regulators start asking questions. And he couldn’t possibly be any worse than Vernon “We-Gotta-Darken-This-Place-Up” Jones.

Ares

Tinky Winky Says Hi

Welcome to the sad club there Athena. We’re gonna get jackets made. Wasn’t it Drew Carey that said “There’s a club for that. It’s called everyone, and it meets at the bar.”?

And now for something completely different, I have a grassroots campaign I’d like to start. I want people to start leaving Tinky Winky dolls on Jerry Falwell’s grave, once he gets there. Jerry reminds me that the old saying “He fought for his people” is usually the first half of a complete sentence. The second half is “and crapped on a lot of others in the process”. World probably would have been a better place if he’d just learned to MYOFB, as we say on the Internet.

Ares

Love in the Modern Age

I’m trying to remember what it was like before the Internet. How the first cut was generally made. But now, in the age of eHarmony and match.com, the cut comes differently.

A friend recently told me the story of talking to her not-so-ex-boyfriend (seems strange, in itself, to call him “boyfriend” since he is in his late 50s and she is 60, but there it is). He spoke of his current paramour—my friend is most insistent that all other connections be disclosed—and how she differed from my friend. My friend, knowing they met online, made note of details, and very shortly found the new paramour’s profile. She discussed this with her ex; and he agreed with her when she listed the ways in which the new woman fell short. This is all just a bit too open for me, but its not my life, so I merely listened, in awe of their ability to discuss all.

So then we come to me and my tiny little life. I decide, genius that I am, to check out a certain online dating service. I have tried many methods over the years: personal ads, online dating, telling ALL my friends that they should introduce me to their single male friends. And I’m still single. Never married. At least I can say I never paid a divorce lawyer. But I digress. I go to this unnamed online dating service, and within 60 seconds, I see the profile of my most recent ex-boyfriend. The person I thought was my soul mate. The man I intended to take for better or for worse. And he’s out there lookin’ for love.

At first I was stunned. Then angry. Now, I truly wish him well. Because, if I say I loved him (and I do) then I have to want him to find happiness somewhere, somehow. And I am no saint, but I do not subscribe to the scorched earth theory of love.

However, I do know this in a way I apparently didn't know before: its over.

Athena

Gilbert's Got Back

Just a little bit of silliness, courtesy of an old friend. I think you have to be uniquely damaged to get this one. If they gave Oscars for creative wastes of time these guys would be winners.

Ares

she's alive

Yes, I’m alive. No, I haven’t been hiding in a cave. However, if my work life continues as it has been, I intend to look for a nice, quiet cave. Just in case anyone out there wondered, accreditation is not for me. Never has been, never will be. Not long ago, a trusted colleague told me that it is in my “skill set.” I thought (but did not say) “yes, and so is tearing out and eating my own toenails, but you won’t catch me doing it.” This too shall pass. Meanwhile, I will try to do better about checking in. Ares isn’t a blog-hog; he’s just the only one that’s been dutiful about posting.

Later, dudes.

Athena

Getting Old

I discovered one of those tiny truths in life this morning. As I rolled out of bed the first thing I registered was soreness from doing more than I should have yesterday. Going through the machinations of getting ready for the day I continued to catalogue the various aches and whatnot. Today’s issues were less about overuse and more a small reckoning with years of mild abuse. The little truth was this: Getting older means it gets tougher to lie to yourself. Not as small a thing as it may seem. There are little bouts of delusion that aren’t necessarily evil, just a little mental cover. But at some point you come face to face with it and make a decision. I think fully accepting it is almost a form of sobriety: You acknowledge there is a thing you are powerless over. And much like sobriety you always have to work at it. You can’t just waive at the idea and move on. It’s going to keep challenging you.

Because if you don’t do this properly you end up like my boss, a guy in middle age that is engaged in a constant campaign of euphoric recall while hurtling towards his demise. The longer it goes on the more elaborate the mental dance becomes, and the final reckoning is probably going to splatter you on some mental pavement somewhere. My point isn’t to dropkick my boss but to thank him in a backhanded way. Even the ass***** in your life have something to offer. Usually they’re a human sign that says “Don’t go there!”

Ares

Another Digression

Just a short little aside, which is all this blog really amounts to anyway. Found a link on the ever cool Common Sense Technology. Seems somebody had the brains to ask a simple question about temperature collection methods used to support the global warming idea. Short version: They changed the type of paint used to cover the boxes at National Weather Service data collection points. The new paint doesn’t reflect as much infrared radiation, thereby making the boxes hotter. Also, they are some collection points directly adjacent to concrete and asphalt expanses. Don’t take my word for it, read the article. He doesn’t say everybody’s full of poop, just says we might want to reconsider some of the data.

Ares

Papa Hemingway.....Still Dead

Today’s little dose of foreshadowing irony comes from Ernest “Ate-a-gun-in-61” Hemingway.

“Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.”

I just finished To Have and Have Not. They must have been hard up for good material in the 30’s because that book is largely a piece of crap. Hem pulls it out a bit in the final 20 pages, but meanders and drifts for the bulk of the work. I get the themes about class struggle and man verses man and whatnot, but what does that have to with three chapters of sitting in a bar getting obliterated? We won’t even talk about his love of the n-word, which is absent in the other things I’ve read by him. And just a little side note, I think I’ve got an idea why he took the cosmic hit on the 12 gauge bong. These are just a few of the medical conditions he suffered from at one point or another: Anthrax, a cut eyeball, a torn groin muscle, Spanish Flu, shell fragments, machine gun fire, concussions, loss of vision in his left eye, loss of hearing, crushed vertebra, ruptured spleen, kidneys, and liver, paralysis of the sphincter (WTF!), first and second degree burns, and, of course, depression. Can’t say I blame him for hitting the bottle.

Ares

Those That Do

Been gone a while. That wages for work concept intruded once again into my life. Another four day entertainment extravaganza. (Just an aside thought: Doesn’t it feel like decades of marketing and advertising has cheapened words like extravaganza and spectacular into uselessness?) Came home at the end of it a choking, human-sized bile duct. Mind you, it was nothing I actually had to do or see at work that left me that way. It was the management of my own organization that left me spelunking the depths of human incompetence while sitting on my couch at 7:30 this morning.

I feel very old when I resort to analogies like this, but I’ve come to believe there are two types of worker in this world. The first are those that do for a living: Driving a truck, mowing lawns, moving furniture, answering phones. At the end of the day they have a work product of some variety that justifies their fiduciary existence within an organization.

The second are those that administer for a living. Not having a product they can articulate using nouns, they merely tend to a given process. More often than not this process is the movement, deployment, and juxapositioning of those that do in this world. Because they lack the metrics to measure worth there is a default to belief that process is reason for existence. Inordinate amounts of time are expended calculating the angles, obliques, and intercepts of the human trajectories within their power. The interpersonal aikido serves two purposes: It gives a masturbatory feeling of power when the process is exercised and it redirects the questioning energies back onto those that do. Worth and competence are benchmarked against how the organization’s human dynamics can be bent and negated within desired parameters.

In my organization these are cowardly, chicken-hearted boys posturing to be like men. We suffer under an astounding weight of management and an appalling vacuum of leadership. In lieu of leadership we endure infantile temper tantrums about our lack of faith to the process. A process that is so empty without flesh-and-blood inspiration that merely being on the clock empties your soul. A form of mental radiation, it lays latent but silently takes away invisible chunks of those in its orbit. The justifications are a one act human puppet show that consists of the refrain “Because I said so” followed by a gesture towards a title. The work product machinations of those that do are a sanctuary from those that administer. This sanctuary, one of the few places on earth where respect can only be purchased from other participants through competence, enrages and mystifies administrators with its lack of manipulatable human levers. Having existed on credit for so long they cannot grasp the mechanics of hard currencies.

Hemingway once wrote “All I’ve got is my cojones to peddle.” Nothing could be more truthful of the doers in my organization. They offer their very existence by showing up. In this shadow stand the administrators, inspecting the stark difference and attempting to bluff what they cannot purchase. Alas, I am not member of their collective. I didn’t participate in The Great Raid of File Cabinet 3 or The Battle of Tuesday Staff Meeting. In lieu of concrete peril they fester over parliamentary procedure. A common, self-justifying mantra of denial heard from on high is some form of “if people don’t like it why are they still here?”, as though you can measure success by the lack of corpses. The absence of flight from those that administer is not a reflection of their competence; it is a testament to people that believe what we do is a powerful benefit to our fellow man. But there is a limit to what men will endure and tolerate.

Ares

The Last Great Heresy Part II

You can’t swing a dead polar bear these days without hitting something related to the global warming/renewable energy/we’re-all-gonna-die parade. What we seem to be fed looks like an amalgamation of the above three themes, hopelessly intertwined. Lacking the skills to craft a better descriptor I’ll refer to it as the Environmental Movement. For some time now the Environmental Movement has bothered me in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The reason finally crept in on me over the past few weeks. It’s the frenzy coupled with righteousness.

A little dissection is in order. The renewable energy portion of this is perfectly legitimate. A five year old can understand that there are finite quantities of energies that we extract from earth. Planning for the day when we’re out of those energy sources is simply thinking ahead. There does seem to be an underlying current (sorry, no pun intended) that we should have been doing this all along. The truth is that technology has just now progressed to the point where we can begin to peer over the mountain top and into the next valley. (For an excellent breakdown consult this roundup by the always stellar Popular Mechanics.) This will probably take a generation or two, so people need to relax a bit and let Mohammed come to the mountain. The infrastructure build out that allowed the automobile to become ubiquitous took almost two generations, culminating with the Eisenhower Interstate System.

This leaves us with the global warming/we’re-all-gonna-die remainder. Frenzies are almost universally unhealthy. P.J. O’Rourke hit on this a little in Give War a Chance. He’s writing during the We Are the World/Live Aid days on the mid-80’s.

"A mob, even an eleemosynary mob, is an ugly thing to see. No good ever came of mass emotion. The audience that’s easily moved to tears is as easily moved to sadistic dementia. People are not thinking under such circumstances. And poor, dreadful Africa is something that surely needs thought. "

These words were echoed over twenty years later by the greatest heretic of the Environmental Movement: Bjorn Lomborg. In an interview with PBS’s Newshour he said “I would argue that it’s very unlikely we make sound decisions if we are scared witless.” It’s an excellent interview and Lomborg raises some great points I have not seen anywhere else. Bjorn is the Martin Luther of the Environmental Movement. His book The Skeptical Environmentalist is the modern equivalent of the 95 Theses. The hard factual analysis offered by the book is the antithesis of frenzy. Letting go of the frenzy doesn’t mean letting go of concern. It can simply mean you’re injecting sound analysis and judgment.

Ares

Mullet Man

The Mullet Man Triathlon of 2007 has passed into history. And no, that isn’t my actual time. Start times were staggered, so you can subtract some from that. As with half marathons, your first one is just about surviving. That reference to surviving isn’t so trite when you consider the surf and currents we had to contend with. A nice easterly 25 knot wind was ripping white caps out beyond the 3 to 4 foot surf. Sixty six degrees sounds cold for a water temperature, but I had bigger things on my mind, like not drowning. Once we got out past the surf zone the current and wind continued to play hell with me. I ate a lot of seawater. Actually called over the lifeguard guy in a kayak to just sort of hang out with me. He was a great guy with a Kiwi accent who talked to me for a bit. I found out later that two people had to be rescued from the water. The guy next to me in the transition area told me he barfed during the swim.

The outbound half of the bike leg was great. Wind at my back, iPod in the ears, no surf trying to drown me. I practically flew. Had it in max gear for most of the trip. Until the return trip, where I had to ride into the face of that wind. It was like trying to ride with a deployed parachute on your back. Dropped down to midpoint in the gears and still was only able to make about half the speed on the return leg. Disgusted at the amount of time and effort the return leg took, I was happy to finally get down to the running. Aside from not being able to unlock my lower legs for the first 2/3 it was fine. I was able to genuinely sprint the last 200 yards.

Overall it wasn’t too bad. It’s definitely less effort than a half marathon. No post-race or day after aches or soreness. I found some serious holes in my training regimen. The first is the idea that I actually can swim. I plan on getting some professional coaching before I think about another one. Adam’s already trying to talk me into another. I think I need to, just to prove I can do more than merely survive. Oh, and one final note. The gulf coast of Alabama is about as white trash as you can get. It’s like the Bahamas and a trailer park had a kid, and the trailer park got the beach in the divorce.

Ares

The Long Tail

I finally finished working my way through The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. I won’t even begin to attempt to explain what the Long Tail signifies in a powerlaw distribution. Watch Anderson’s presentation at Pop!Tech. It’s an interesting pulse check of this societal event horizon we seem to be living. It would be easy to dismiss the book as an Internet treatise, but the implications are much wider. Don’t just think Amazon making the bulk of its money on obscure titles; think of Al Qaeda moving mass violence down the scale from nation-state monopoly to “Super-Empowered Individuals”.

Companies like Amazon and Netflix make the bulk of their money by selling an abundance of non-mainstream titles. “As of early 2006, Apple had sold 42 million iPods and 1 billion tracks on iTunes…” Here’s the really interesting fact: At the time of writing the book every single track on iTunes had been downloaded at least once. It’s a niche consumer culture wonderland. This may look like materialist hedonism, but it expands our world and culture in ways we’ve just begun to explore. While there are no institutional checks and balances on the blogosphere it tends to have a better error-correction rate than mainstream media. (A visual display of blogosphere would look like an iceberg, with places like Instapundit, Boing Boing, and Engadget above the waterline. Your current location is far, far beneath the waterline. The above-water blogs are what Anderson’s referencing when he talks about error-correction.)

The transformation went from having our mediums structured for us (newspapers, broadcast TV, inventory in book and music stores) to having everything available to us (Amazon and NetFlix’s seemingly boundless and ever available inventories, blogs and news of every possible variety). And this transition was missed by every single traditional media and entertainment institution. In the face of enormous evidence and slow asphyxiation most traditional institutions are clinging to last-century paradigms. Interesting aside to this point: The toughest DVD to find is WKRP in Cincinnati. Why? They won’t license all the music played on the show.

This is one of the most tightly compressed cultural shifts in human history. Tectonic social shifts have traditionally moved people to extremes. This time is no exception. The difference here is that for the first time it's easier for people to opt in than opt out. I'm curious where this is headed, and where we'll be in another generation when this has sorted itself out.

Ares

Think You Used Enough There Butch?

Kinda speaks for itself. This is why you shouldn't let grown men play with explosives. Somebody is probably still filling out forms over this one.




Ares

Two Days Later

There’s nothing left to say. I wish someone would take a hint and simply leave these people alone to grieve and heal as best they can. I can’t remember ever being so impressed and so revolted at the same time. The media has, quite frankly, made as ass of itself from the start. It began with looping the same footage over and over again, for hours on end, of police and ambulances rushing to the scene. Then there were the incisive questions during the press conference, such as “If you knew who the gunman was after the first shooting why did you let him go so he could kill more people?” Now CNN has the dancing silhouette of crosshairs going in the background all the time. (This infuriates me in ways I’m still trying to get a handle on.) Another favorite question was why police didn’t do something after the gunman wrote the disturbing play for creative writing class. If we’re going to follow that line of stupid logic, ignoring that whole constitution thing, the police should be en route to arrest Tarantino, Rodriguez, and the staff writers at CSI, Law & Order, and Murder She Wrote.

The redemption, if there is any to be had, has been watching these kids at VT. To a person every one I’ve seen has been calm, articulate, and focused. Thus far they’ve been the embodiment of character. It’s worth remembering that these kids were all in their early teens when an entirely different crop of evil flew a pair of planes into the World Trade Center. They learned early and well that there are no guarantees in life and adjusted accordingly. They refused to succumb to paralyzing fear, both then and now. Resilient is the word that comes to mind. One hell of an example for the rest of us. I’m not too worried about the next generation.

Ares

The Media Orgy Will Commence in 3, 2,....

As of now the death toll stands at 22 at Virginia Tech. Stand by for the over-wrought, over-worked, microscopic introspection to follow. By tonight it will have its own graphics and theme music on the network news channels. By tomorrow morning there will be a parade of victim’s relatives being asked those oh-so insightful questions like “How do you feel?”. By this time tomorrow someone, somewhere, will find some way to blame the president. It’s doesn’t matter how obscure or out there the person is, they’ll get some variety of face time. The left will use this to advance a gun-control agenda. The right will use this to advance a family breakdown/we need more religion meme. And what will we as a society get out of all this theater and posturing? Nothing.

Ares

Read This

Bit of a geek’s digression here. For years I’ve wanted the powers that be to produce some sort of e-book; a device like an oversized PDA that can display electronic texts. Sony has finally taken a step in that direction with the Reader. It’s a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

An e-book won’t ever take the place of traditional bound volumes. Nobody longs to sit at the beach under an umbrella with a computer on their lap. (Nobody except my boss, who’s his own form of damaged.) A rainy night in front of a fireplace with a computer just doesn’t have the same ring. That said there are some very practical applications for an e-book. One of the best features is the ability to load several books onto a single device. Every time I go on vacation I end up packing several books as I’m never sure what I’ll be in the mood for. Also, e-books should have the ability to display PDF files. This would be a great leap forward. PDF is the standard for online publishing. Reading PDFs on a computer gets tiresome after a while. (Try reading this online without going cross-eyed.) A better interface would help.

If the publishing industry was a little more forward thinking they would realize this technological leap could save their bacon. What are the production costs to put out a million copies of an electronic text? Older works that are in the public domain could be digitized and sold for almost pure profit. As I’m learning in reading The Long Tail, the money lies in the niches and not the big hits. Amazon has mastered this but run up against the physical barriers of storing and shipping. A little fact I learned from the book: Amazon has started digitizing some titles and printing them on demand when ordered.

The Sony Reader has some serious limitations that will keep me away. The first is it’s monochrome screen. That was probably a trade-off for size and power consumption, but a color display is non-negotiable. Second is Sony’s iTunes-style online store. The lack of title diversity will be rectified with time. Prices will have to become more reasonable. There is no good reason to charge 10 bucks for 200 year old book that is no longer copyright protected. I suspect that Amazon or Google will rescue this orphan and make it their own. Finally, the $350 price tag is simply too much. It’s gonna have to be less that half that price before anyone but the truly geeky will take interest. However, it’s worth remembering that CD players were nearly a grand 20 years ago and there were almost no titles available. Same for VCRs and DVD players. History has shown that “if you build it they will come”. Somebody please build it.

Ares

Imus Killed the Governor

Or nearly killed the governor of New Jersey. Seems Jon Corzine was coming back from negotiating a little love-in between Imus and the Rutgers basketball team when he got smashed up on the freeway. Imus should have seen this coming, people getting hurt as a result of his words. I say we indict him.

Let me see if I’ve got the stage right in this little production. An entertainer says something about a group of college basketball players and a governor is required to negotiate the situation. Somebody called me an asshole at work last week; get Condi Rice on the phone. And Jessie “Hymietown” Jackson has the moral high ground here?

Al Sharpton lied, people died.

Ares

God Bless you, Dr. Vonnegut

Sad tidings to report here at A&A. Kurt Vonnegut has gone to the great beyond, and we’re all left lacking as a result. Slaughterhouse Five was required reading in Miss Woodward’s 11 grade English class and I loved her for it. Slaughterhouse Five led to Cat’s Cradle led to The Sirens of Titan led to Player Piano led to Breakfast of Champions led to Hocus Pocus, which eventually led to Richard Brautigun’s Trout Fishing in America in my modern fiction education. Kurt had a long life, probably a lot longer that he ever thought he would have. He drank too much, smoked too much, and was his own man when it came to his work. The Frank Sinatra of modern literature. Vaya con Dios.

Ares

Pop! Tech

Sorry material has been so light, been a slave to that wage thing for a few days. Rest assured when I tell you I had a full entertainment package on somebody else’s nickel. However, blogospheric silence doesn’t equate to wasted time on my part. Found a little gem in the form of Pop!Tech. (I’d suck at trying to explain it, so I’ll just link to their description.) I first heard about it through Barnett’s website, as he was a speaker at last year’s event. Turns out they’ve posted some of the highlights from previous years on their website. Absolutely beautiful brain food. Really smart people explaining the world from different perspectives. The difference here is that there aren’t any CNN-style “We’re all gonna die!” undertones.

Thomas Friedman’s First Law of Petro Politics borders on brilliant. The amazing part of his hypothesis is that he’s a journalist: This nexus was missed by all the academics and intellectuals. Friedman was the guy that posited the theory that no two countries with a McDonalds had ever fought each other. Juan Enriquez’s presentation was stellar. I plan on watching that one a few times, just to catch it all. Chris Anderson’s bit was good enough that I’m now working my way through his book on the same topic. As I’ve said before, I’m a huge Barnett fan so his presentation was simply intellectual dessert for me. Well worth the time. View, enjoy, and be sure to discuss.

Ares

I Got Nothing

My brain is shot. In light of this I've decided to offer up a little more Chuck, because you can't have too much Chuck. Actually, you can and it would probably lead to institutionalization. This is from Lullaby.

"Several years ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. .... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?"

Ares