Machines Still Hate Me, But I Help Them

Yes, Monday is starting early this week.

Yesterday I spent the day power-washing the driveway, washing Agnes's car, weeding the yard, carrying out trash, and generally working quite hard in the warm sun...and that was before fixing a nice dinner of marinated, planked salmon and rice pilaf. By bedtime I was exhausted, and so I was extra careful about following my normal routine: I carefully checked and re-checked to make absolutely sure that my alarm was set for the Monday time (4:10 AM) rather than the Saturday time (6:30 AM). Satisfied that it was correct, I collapsed into bed.

Of course, the alarm clock always works better if, in addition to properly setting the time, you actually turn the alarm on.

AARRGGHH!!

I woke up at about 4:40, gawked at the clock in horror, cursed in several languages, and sprang out of bed. Not only was I half an hour behind schedule, but I also had to factor in time to take Nessa (our daughter's dog, for whom we are, if you remember, dog-sitting) for a walk in addition to everything else.

So...

Here I sit, with my body clock and carefully-crafted daily routine out of whack. I am not a person who deals well with changes in my normal routine outside of the office, so things will be rocky for a while. Even my blog suffers, as I don't have the time and mental capacity to write my usual well-crafted and spectacularly popular (well, with my usual 36-45 readers per day) post.

Sigh...

But I must pull myself together enough to remark on the fact that this is a most remarkable day: it is the day on which, in 1969, man first landed on the moon. I didn't actually know it had happened for several days, as I was far out in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of southwestern Colorado with the rest of Monitor Patrol, all of us attending the Colorado Outward Bound school. We first learned that the landing had been a success when we came down out of the wilderness to a public campground to meet our resupply vehicle, and got the news from some campers roughing it in their camper van (complete with TV and radio).

Now, forty years later, we are still stuck in earth orbit. Don't get me wrong, the International Space Station is a marvelous achievement, but it's just not the same as actually walking on another planet. Okay, moon. Where's the dream and the drive to go beyond orbit and back to the Moon, on to Mars, and then ... well, wherever? How can we be ready for First Contact with the Vulcans and the Borg, not to mention Klaatu and Gort? How can we (sorry, Army) be all we can be?

Of course, we could solve a few problems here on earth, like religious intolerance, affordable health care, and an economic system that benefits everyone, but you can't do those with flashy special effects and the thrill of high adventure.

Food for thought on an already-hectic Monday.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Really Big Houses

One of the problems with living in Disneyland on the Potomac is that lots of people can't actually afford to live here. The cost of homes - even with the collapse of the housing market - is such that many young couples just starting out can't find homes they can afford within a reasonable distance of where they work. The vast herds of wealthy lobbyists, lawyers, corporate executives, and similar demigods has driven the price of real estate to stratospheric heights, and has led to the proliferation of the sprawling edifices disparagingly called "McMansions" - gigantic houses with all sorts of tasteful (and expensive) extras like gourmet kitchens, sun rooms, multi-car garages, spa-quality bathrooms, media rooms, game rooms, home gyms, and so on. Of course, land being as expensive as it is, these gigantic homes tend to sit on postage-stamp-sized lots, so that you have to turn sideways to walk between your mansion and your neighbor's mansion. It's ludicrous.

And it's expensive. If you're a clerk at the local grocery store, a janitor, a short-order cook, or a minor government employee with a title below the rank of First Principal Vice Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Making Air Travel a Pain in the Ass, you can't afford to buy a home appropriate to your income and the size of your family anywhere close to the capitol of your country...and you probably couldn't afford to pay the property taxes even if you could.

But nevertheless, I would love to live in a Really Big House.

I grew up in a modest 3-bedroom house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with my parents, two brothers, and sister. Eventually, my father turned the basement into a bedroom for two of us, and installed a second (half) bathroom, which helped ease the crowding. But I always dreamed of having a Really Big House in which I didn't have to wait in line for a bathroom. In which I could have a bedroom to sleep in and another room for all my stuff. A Really Big House with long hallways, grand staircases, dens, parlors, sitting rooms, a solarium, and big French windows opening out onto terraces overlooking smooth, emerald-green lawns dotted with trees and flower beds. And a library - it absolutely must have a library, preferably with a nice stone fireplace. And a big kitchen with enough counter space that aircraft in trouble could make emergency landings without hitting the sink.

I'll never own the Really Big House of my dreams. But I'm close enough, and perfectly happy with what we have. Agnes and I have 2-1/2 bathrooms, so we're never far from relief when nature calls (and she calls much more often as we get older, dontcha know). We also have five bedrooms, allocated as follows:

The Grand Imperial Master Bedroom (use your imagination);

The Guest Room (which is large enough to be comfortable, and small enough to discourage lengthy stays);

The Nest (where Agnes can curl up with a book while her hair dries, and where we can stash the overflow from other rooms during spasms of housecleaning);

My Study (shared with Agnes); and,

Agnes's Workshop (currently piled high with fabric and equipped with an array of fancy sewing machines that each have more computer power than NASA used to put Neil Armstrong on the moon).

It's a minor-league place when compared even to the smaller of the McMansions, but it's a good size for us, and the payoff of the mortgage is actually glimmering on the not-so-distant horizon. We've worked hard be able to live in our nice, comfy Maison de Bilbo, and I'm not complaining.

But if I ever win the lottery, I'm getting my Really Big House. I think, at Northern Virginia prices, we can afford this one ...

And someone to clean it.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America" and the most admired newsman of his (or any other) generation, has passed away; an Air Force jet with two crew members on board has gone down in Afghanistan; six people have been killed and at least 50 injured in the bombings of two hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia; anti-government protests continue in Iran where, according to a former Iranian president, the clerical leaders are losing the people's trust; the Iraqi government has sharply restricted the movement and activities of U.S. forces, leading to concern on the part of commanders about the safety of their troops; and Michael Jackson and Anna Nichole Smith are still dead.

What would you do without Cartoon Saturday?

I always have to laugh when I see young men so loaded down with gold chains, rings, grilles, earrings, piercings, and other flashy junk that they look like the wrecks of Spanish galleons. Don't they realize how stupid they look? I loved this twist on that image ...

I had wanted to use this cartoon as part of a set of two on a related topic, but - of course - I can't find the other one in my file. You may see this once again in the future when I find the other one...

This one just appeared this past week, and it had us all in stitches in the office. But then, we're easily amused...
Here's a good twist on an old adage ...

This one should have been here all those years ago when I was studying Greek mythology ...

And this one is for all you men out there who, like me, have wives who are seamstresses seriously into the selection of just the right material for their next project ...

We're dog-sitting this weekend with Nessa, our daughter's very large Chocolate Lab that can't seem to remember she's not a puppy any more. So I'm off once again for an energetic drag around the neighborhood in search of just the right place to poop...followed, no doubt, by hours of thrilling excitement tossing balls and frisbees for a dog with far more energy than brains.

She ought to be in Congress.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

When I Was 10 Years Old

Last Monday I wrote a post titled The Things That Shape Our Points of View, which looked at two different ways of understanding how particular people look at the world. In researching that post I ran across a third proposed system, but - of course, being a geezer-in-training, I didn't write down where I found it, and so can't remember. You'll just have to take my word for it.

According to this system of estimating one's worldview, our perceptions and opinions of the world around us are shaped by the time we are ten years old, the benchmark year being the year we reach the double-digits. I was born in 1951, and turned the magic ten in 1961...what happened that year to shape Bilbo's view of the world? In 1961:

Cuban exiles backed by the United States invaded Cuba in an unsuccessful (disastrous, actually) attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. History records this event by the name of the site of the abortive invasion: the Bay of Pigs. The lesson: plan well, plan realistically, and think twice before doing something hugely stupid.

The Berlin Wall was built in an attempt by the government of East Germany to stem the huge exodus of its citizens to freedom in West Berlin. Twenty years later, as a young Captain in the Air Force, I was stationed in West Berlin and working with those who managed to escape over, under, or around The Wall.

President Kennedy established the Peace Corps. I've always thought that while military power is good, it needs to be augmented by so-called "soft power" that shows the generous and idealistic side of America. For some reason, our government doesn't seem to be particularly interested in my opinion.

Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space. Ever since then, I've been fascinated with space travel and a big fan of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and similar shows and movies.

Bob Dylan (real name: Robert Zimmerman) was discovered by a Columbia Records representative, singing in a club in Greenwich Village. If anyone out there can explain the more bizarre lyrics of his song "Shelter from the Storm" ("...and the one-eyed undertaker, he blows his futile horn/come in, she said, I'll give ya/shelter from the storm"), I'm listening.

The civil rights movement continued to grow in the American South, with the Freedom Riders drawing national attention to segregation in Alabama. I learned very early in life that there are lots of good reasons not to like someone...and that race isn't one of them. There are large numbers of blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians that I can't stand, generally because stupidity is not dependent on race, religion, or gender.

So, what happened in the world when YOU were ten years old?

Time to get ready for work. Today's goal is to make it to 9:00 PM so that I can enjoy an evening of dancing, which is much more fun than sitting in a cramped office, rearranging electrons on a hard drive for the greater glory of the U.S. Air Force. The latter activity does, however, pay the bills.

Sigh.

Have a good day. Tomorrow is Cartoon Saturday - be here.

Bilbo

Odds and Ends

My Blog Fodder file is backing up, and I need to start moving things out of it while they're still timely. Today, I have a few random things to offer - each worthy of a full post on its own, but I only have so much time. Sigh.

1. Where's the Outrage? As China cracks down on the Uighurs, Foreign Policy magazine asks an interesting question: why isn't the Islamic world reacting with its usual outrage? When Danish newspapers published cartoons Muslims found offensive, the result was incredible: embassies and churches burned, priests and nuns murdered, calls for boycotts of Danish goods by Muslims, and angry fatwas demanding death for the cartoonists. In China today, Uighurs suffer discrimination, loss of their lands and culture, and even death ... and where is the level of outrage caused by a few stupid cartoons? Good question.

2. Putting It All in Perspective. Things seem to be back to "normal" in the news world now that the All-Michael-Jackson-All-the-Time spasm is over. On July 5th, a lady named Martha Gillis wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in which she noted that her nephew Brian Bradshaw was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on the day Michael Jackson died. Ms Gillis asks, "Mr. Jackson received days of wall-to-wall coverage in the media. Where was the coverage of my nephew or the other soldiers who died that week?" Good question. Read on to the next item...

3. A Soldier Comes Home. Yesterday, the Washington Post published, with the permission of the Bradshaw family, a letter the family received from the crew of the military aircraft that took Brian home on his last journey. I literally cried when I read it. You will, too. No matter what you think about our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have to honor the sacrifices of those who serve there.

4. More Thoughts on Passwords. The other day I wrote about the Password Fandango - the mess we all go through all the time with the endless parade of logins and passwords we need to get access to websites and networks at home and at work. There are actually people who think about this stuff for a living...here is a semi-heretical article on the topic: Do Strong Passwords Accomplish Anything? The authors' short answer is ... sometimes. The article is interesting, even though it does contain Greek letters and math and stuff.

And finally for today ...

5. Visually Pleasing Destruction. This is an expression I heard some years ago in the context of the joy one feels when watching a really bad guy meet a really bad end in a huge and theatrical explosion. We see VPD in the movies all the time - remember the destruction of the White House in the film Independence Day? This is an interesting article from Slate.com on how famous landmarks get blown up in the movies...complete with video clips. You'll love it.

And that's all for today. Time to go to work. No comments, Mike.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Wise Latina, Stupid Process

Every few years here in the United States, we go through the national trauma of selecting a new Supreme Court justice. The process works like this:

1. A sitting justice dies or retires.

2. The President considers potential replacements based on:

a. Judicial philosophy of possible nominees;

b. Gender balance of the court;

c. Racial balance of the court;

d. Special interest groups which haven't been placated lately;

e. Religious considerations;

f. Cost of linoleum in Fond du Lac;

g. - y. - Other socio-political considerations; and,

z. Legal qualifications of the nominee.

You can see all this at play in the ongoing soap opera over the nomination of judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

No matter what anyone thinks, the selection process for Supreme Court justices is not designed to identify and nominate the most outstanding and well-qualified jurists. It's the legislative and judicial equivalent of making sausage - you toss all the social and political considerations into the hopper, let a few cranks have a turn, and out comes not the best, most qualified individual, but the one who is least offensive to the largest number of people with a vote.

It's all so predictable. Republicans will insist on a "strict constitutionalist" who will not "legislate from the bench." Democrats will insist on someone who understands the problems and concerns of average Americans. Every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee will bloviate at length for the benefit of his/her constituents, the nominee will give all the right answers, and then - after days of grueling grilling and political theater - a vote will be take under conditions of exhaustion. And then, either there's a new justice on the court, or the whole kabuki dance begins again.

This is stupid.

For the record, I think Judge Sotomayor is a very impressive jurist. I also think she shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. Consider her much-quoted and much-maligned comment that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Can you imagine the howls of outrage that would have arisen if a white male nominee had said, "I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a (insert minority here) who hasn't lived that life"? Be honest. You know it's true.

The comment was stupid. Even if you read Judge Sotomayor's comment in the context of the entire speech (which you can read here), it remains insensitive and in poor taste, and it plays directly into the hands of those who would object to her nomination simply because she's a woman or a Hispanic.

And consider the recurring, moronic canard about "activist judges legislating from the bench." I would suggest that judges legislate from the bench when spineless legislators won't legislate from the legislature. When Congress is too wrapped up in political considerations and too indebted to various special interests to write necessary laws, the courts step in. This allows Congress to have it both ways: they don't have to be on record as having taken politically unpopular positions, and they can blame someone else for doing what they were afraid to do.

Unless Judge Sotomayor shows up drunk for the hearings, or a video of her dancing topless while waving a Nazi flag appears on the Internet, she'll be confirmed to the Supreme Court. I just hope that she proves to be a wise jurist, regardless of her sex and ethnicity.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Password Fandango

There are so many serious things I need to write about that I sometimes just have to step back and reset my internal system with something off-the-wall. Today, that would be passwords.

At work, I use five different networks, each with its own login and password. At home I have my Mac, which has a system password, and about 700 websites I visit regularly, 2/3 of which require a login and a password. Agnes's computer has its own login and password that I need to know on the rare occasions I need to use her machine.

I'm up to my pasty white backside in passwords.

The ones at work are the worst, because each network has its own standards for login (firstname dot lastname, lastname plus first and middle initial, lastname plus first intial dot six hundred random characters, lastname plus California's current budget deficit estimate, etc, etc, etc). But the passwords are worse. Each network wants its own password that can't duplicate the password used on any other network ... and then there are the other rules ... this is my latest attempt to summarize the Arcane and Mystical Rules of Password Generation:

* Each password-protected network will begin prompting you to change your password three days after you change it, and will warn you that it will soon expire ("Your password will expire in XX days. Do you want to change it now? Well? Do ya, punk? Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!").

* Each password-protected network will allow its passwords to remain valid for a different length of time - one week, 30 days, two sidereal months, etc. The validity period will change randomly each time you reset the password.

* Each password must be at least 72 characters long, at least 17% of which must be upper case, 19% lower case, 22% numeric, and the remainder “special characters.” A given number of each character type must appear in specific locations, and the required number and specific locations will randomly change each time you have to change the password.

* Your password must not duplicate any of the last 475 passwords you used.

* Your password must not include any words contained in any unabridged English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Urdu, Hindi, Swahili, or Xhosa dictionary.

* It must not offend anyone for any reason.

* It must be complex enough that you will lock yourself out of your account at least twice per week.

* All of your passwords will change at irregular intervals which are not synchronized with any other networks, so that at least once a week you need to remember a new password for one of the networks...and you can never remember which one.

I'm not the only one who finds the Password Fandango maddening. Yesterday in the Washington Post, John Kelly wrote this wonderful little article - "So Many Passwords, So Little Time," which pretty much summarizes my password fatigue. Check it out. Oh ... I forgot ... you may need a login and password for washingtonpost.com. Sorry about that.

Aren't you glad you don't need a password to read my ramblings every day?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Things That Shape Our Points of View

In my post last August 20th, I suggested you check out the interesting Mindset List from Beloit College - a list the school publishes each year to help the faculty understand the factors that have shaped the incoming freshman class. This is a fascinating way of looking at why young people think and act the way they do (and it would probably be equally interesting to look at similar lists for persons of any age).

Last week in the Washington Post, staff writer Ian Shapira interviewed business coach Anne Loehr about the similar, and equally interesting, list that she called her "Generational Cheat Sheet." Because the online version of the article doesn't reproduce the cheat sheet as clearly as the print version, I've reproduced it here (sorry if the quality isn't perfect ... I did it as an MS-Word document, saved it as a .pdf, and had to re-save it as a jpeg to post it here) ...

In contrast to the Beloit Mindset List, Ms Loehr's approach is to look at the "life-shaping events" that produce certain "traits" in people of a specific generation. She looks at four generations: the Traditionalists (generally speaking, the World War II generation of my father, born in 1923); the Baby Boomers (yes, I'm one of those, born in 1951); Generation X (the generation of my children, born between 1974 and 1977); and Generation Y (which would include Marcy, my oldest grandchild, who was born in 2000).

The full article provides a very interesting look at how we miscommunicate across generations based on the events and times that shaped our views of the world. Based on my own very unscientific observation, this is generally a pretty accurate and astute list. I'm not particularly politically correct and I tend to believe in following, rather than breaking the rules, but the rest of the traits seem to fit. How does this list apply to those of you of the other generations, and how is it different? No single list can provide a one-size-fits-all guide to the way everyone in a particular generation thinks, but as general guides to beliefs and behavior, the Beloit College Mindset List and Anne Loehr's Generational Cheat Sheet are pretty good efforts.

I'm interested in your opinion...post a comment to let me know what you think, and how well the cheat sheet applies to you.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Girl with No Future

One of the most interesting and sobering articles I've read in a long time appeared this past Thursday in The Washington Times. Written by Michael Yon, it dealt with the sobering realities of trying to accomplish anything politically and socially realistic in Afghanistan in the short term...short term meaning, oh, 50-100 years or so. The article was titled "Girl with No Future," and if you don't read anything else about Afghanistan this month (or ever), you should read this one.

I've long believed that the Afghan people would be best served if all the non-Afghans (and the concept of Afghan-ness is itself secondary to ethnic and tribal affiliation) would just get the hell out and let the Afghans sort things out themselves. Get rid of the Arabs, the Pakistanis, the Indians, the Russians, the Americans, the Brits, and everyone else who has been fighting over some of the world's crummiest real estate for centuries. Don't try to build a central government with all the trappings of Western-style democracy...they don't have a tradition of that, anyhow. And in any case, there's no infrastructure outside the major cities to support a modern society. Here is how Mr Yon describes his observations of the Afghan province of Ghor:

"A person can tool around in towns like Kabul, Jalalabad or Mazar-i-Sharif and build up hopes, but to extrapolate beyond the tangible is folly. Iraq is 1,000 years more advanced than Afghanistan. Nepal is far more connected to and cognizant of the outside world. ... After nearly eight years of war and billions spent, there is not a single Afghan soldier in this entire province. There is not a meter of paved road. There is a single television station that operates for maybe four hours a night when it has fuel."

And it gets worse...

"Today," Mr Yon writes, "I was in the village of Karbasha Qalat, situated in a remote area at 8,800 feet. The 20 families had no electricity and not even a battery-operated radio. During the winter, the horses, cows, donkeys and other animals live with them inside their mud homes. Only the village elder was literate, and his language was Dari. He said that only two trucks had come to Karbasha Qalat in the 14 years since the village was founded; the visitors were searching for information on land mines. None of the children had been to school, and none are likely to go. The mothers are illiterate ... the hand that rocks the cradle. Nearly all mothers in Afghanistan are illiterate."

Mr Yon's ultimate point is that we are fighting for the wrong goals in Afghanistan, at least in the "short term." A modern, or even a nascent democratic society needs an educated and informed population that can understand and debate issues on a national scale. We may luck out in spite of ourselves and someday establish a quasi-democratic government in Afghanistan, but I doubt that it's writ will extend much beyond the city limits of Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar (maybe), and other "big" cities. Out in the remote provinces, at the very end of the dirt road where everyone is illiterate, electricity is non-existent, young girls are considered useful only to keep house and have children, and the tribe is more important than the nation, nobody is worried about what a national government has to say.

I think the best thing we could do in Afghanistan is flood the place with people who can make a difference. People to build a modern infrastructure to bring electricity, clean water, medical and dental care (hey, we could use that here in America!), improved farming techniques, and schools that can teach things beyond rote memorization of the Koran. Work within the cultural system that the Afghans know and understand, while trying to bring the most backward parts of it into the 20th century. The 21st may take a little longer.

Take a few minutes to read Mr Yon's article and think about what we can realistically accomplish in Afghanistan.

Then wait for the next Cartoon Saturday to cheer you up.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

The death toll continues to rise in deadly ethnic violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese in China's Xinjiang province (and, according to the Chinese government, it's all orchestrated from elsewhere...couldn't possibly have anything to do with their policies); a cemetery in Illinois is now a crime scene as police investigate the digging-up and resale of burial plots; insurance giant AIG is trying yet again to pay some $235 million in bonuses to executives in its financial products division...that would be the division that wrecked the company, leading the government to bail it out to the tune of about $182 billion; the Taliban in Pakistan may finally be ready to talk with the US; and our top general in Afghanistan says he will need more money and troops to prevail.

Well, at least you have Cartoon Saturday.

Yesterday morning, long after I'd finished my post about toilet paper, this cartoon appeared in the daily paper. I expected Mike would have gleefully posted it this morning, but I guess he's still soaking in the hot tub, recovering from his construction mishap...

World leaders at the G-8 summit have once again taken firm action to address global warming. Sort of. I think the real plan they agreed on was more like this one...

I thought this cartoon was hysterical...but then, I have that degree in Linguistics I need to put to use occasionally...

One of our granddaughter Leya's favorite nursery rhymes is "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and it's fun to watch her work her little hands to mimic the actions of the spider and the rain. This cartoon was pretty timely...

I started my Facebook page a few months ago, and have enjoyed using it to reestablish contact with some of my old friends (sorry, Debbie, I meant long-time, glamorous friends). I thought this cartoon was a very good look at how some people can get carried away with Facebook and other online social networking sites...

And finally, there's been much concern in some quarters about the real or imagined dangers of eating genetically-modified foods. As the old commercial for Chiffon Margarine said, "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature" ...

And that's Cartoon Saturday for today. Take some deep breaths, relax if you can, and let's do this all again next week, shall we?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo