Spending Emotion

You can't be engaged in American Culture without being infected by it to some extent.

I've used AOL for years, since some time around 1995 or 1996, I think. Lately, they have a little news banner that is shown both before you sign in and after you sign in but before you check your mail. The content is such that the usual reaction is to click on it. If you do, you wish you hadn't and you find that the content is usually inane, boring, and empty of any importance or fulfilling information. It's like reading the National Enquirer or the World Weekly News. This suspicion was really brought home one day when I had checked my email and then went to the store. While standing in line at the store, I looked at the trash mags and tabloids. The headlines were the same. AOL = Trash Journalism.

Yet we all wade through this crap every day, and even if you do not seek it out, you will be exposed. You probably do know that Britney Spears and Kevin Federline are divorced and Britney is in melt down. You probably know that Lindsay Lohan is in rehab, that Paris Hilton went to jail, and that TomKat broke up.

Why? Not only why do you know, why did they spend so much time and effort making sure you know, but why do you care?

I was talking to a friend about the latest celebrity crisis and in exasperation told him that I wasn't willing to spend any emotion on the subject. I had never thought about spending emotion like money before, but we do. You can only choose to care about so many things, there is a limit.

My fear is that we spend so much time worrying about what's not really important that we don't spend enough time caring about what's important or who is important to us.

And by worrying about wasted worries, that's what I'm spending my emotions on.

Road Map to a Suicide

I was in a fraternity in college, and we had all these deep, dark secrets that you're never supposed to tell anyone about. You are supposed to take them to the grave. Enhanced interrogation techniques should never pry these stories out of your tortured breast.

Wanna hear one?

We had a ceremony that we enacted in December that was supposed to kick off the end of pledge training in the fall semester. This was back in the days that pledge training meant hazing, pure and simple. We heard about how much harder it was in the old days, and how much easier we had it than our fathers. Nowadays, there is no pledge training. Nothing much is required to get in, so I guess I sound like those people that used to tell me what a wimp I was for the pledge training I endured.

We called the week before Finals Week Dead Week. It was called Dead Week because you didn't do anything but study, and if you did attend class, they were just review sessions, no assignments. So, in the spirit of Dead Week, we had to dial back the intensity of pledge training for finals. So the Friday before Dead Week, we did an interesting thing. We kidnapped each of the pledges separately. We did it during study hours, so no one would be able to see the others being taken. Two actives would go up to the pledge and tell them to close their books and come with them. We took them down to the sleeping dorm and had them get a pillow case off their bed. Then we took them out to our car, handed them a bent dime, and had them put their pillowcase over their head and get in the back seat. We then took them out to some remote place, sometimes after driving for a long time, and assembled them together in a group, yanked off their hoods, and shouted "Surprise!" We gave them a bunch of beer and told them to have a party and have fun and when they came back, pledge training would be over. So you spend this tense hour or so thinking you're going to be dumped somewhere out in the countryside and you'll have to bash the dime out flat and walk a couple of miles to the nearest pay phone. Instead, you get released from PT (Pledge Training) torture and you get a party.

We all had it happen to us, and so we all enjoyed turning around and doing it to others. It was a fun story and a fun little trip. The year I was a junior, my cousin Jerry and I were asked to find the party location for the affair. We went up to Tuttle Creek Reservoir north of Manhattan (Kansas - we were at KSU) for a location. We found this place where a road ran into the lake from before the lake filled up. It was a parking lot, and there was the remnant of an old rock quarry right next to it, making the perfect party protection area. We drew a map up, made copies and distributed it to the Actives. Obviously, you were supposed to keep it away from the Pledges so as not to ruin the surprise, but someone left theirs out and it got stolen. The pledge that found it took a friend and followed the map one night right before the ceremony.

You have to put yourself in the Pledge's state of mind. They were being messed with and harassed constantly and this strange map had an unspoken promise of something unpleasant to come. So the night they followed the line on the map to the big X that it ended at, they did not know what to expect.

What they found was a dead body.

By some very strange coincidence, some guy decided to end it all right where the X marked the spot on the map, right before the Pledges went out to follow the map.

The freaked out, drove away, and anonymously phoned it in to the police. Then they spent the next few days quietly asking themselves "What the f***!?"

I found out about it the night of the ceremony when two of the Freshmen found out who drew the map and selected the spot and dragged Jerry and I out to the gravel parking lot to show us the spot. There was a dark stain on the ground where the guy landed and bled out.

That's the secret story and as wild as it sounds, it is 100% true.

Military Ethics

I went into the Army because I had an ROTC scholarship that paid for college. My father encouraged this, and I liked the idea when I was 18. I was offered Army, Air Force, Navy, & Marine scholarships, because in 1981 the memory of Viet Nam was fresh enough that recruiting was not easy. The scholarships were generous and easy to get. I was determined to go to Kansas State University because of family tradition, and because it was a good engineering school with plenty of women and a drinking age of 18. I wanted to be a jet pilot, but was told (erroneously, as it turns out) that I could not be a pilot and a scholarship recipient because that was too much money spend on one person. So that left Army ROTC.

I signed up after my application was accepted. Men's hair was still pretty long, a leftover from the 70's and mine was no exception, completely covering my ears, but not to my shoulders. I knew the Army would eventually make me get it cut short, but surprisingly, the standards were not strictly enforced and I was able to adopt a style that did not mark me or make me stand out.

LTC McCann was the Professor of Military Science (PMS - everything in the Army has acronyms, you soon learn). The Kansas State University (KSU - some things in the civilian world have acronyms, too) ROTC program had a outdoor adventure fun time image it was trying to project, so things were fun and lax for the first two years. We repelled off the side of the Old Stadium and learned map reading skills complete with weekend jaunts out to nearby Fort Riley to tromp around on the range doing the military equivalent of an Easter Egg hunt. It was in my Junior year that I finally had a Military Science core class, Leadership and Leaders, and finally saw LTC McCann as someone other than the "old man" that sat in his office smoking a pipe (or was it a cigar? MAJ Piper smoked the pipe).

Embedded in the leadership course was an ethics class. I can't remember whether LTC McCann taught the class or was a guest lecturer. As you can see, some of my memories are sketchy about this era. My memory of LTC McCann's story in this class is still crystal clear after all these years.

Young 2LT McCann served in Viet Nam when he entered the Army. He was in an Armor unit on the front line, in heavy combat. They occasionally lost equipment, either through normal wear and tear maintenance issues or in combat. His unit's inventory of tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) had dwindled to the point that they were having difficulty completing missions, soldiers were fighting unprotected, they did not have the heavy support they wanted, and people were dying. They needed new vehicles, which finally arrived in country at some depot and had to be picked up. Their requisitions and paperwork in hand, young LT McCann went to the depot and presented his paperwork to them to pick up his new tanks and APCs. Unfortunately, the paperwork listed vehicles specifically by their serial numbers, and they were not in the depot. Feeling despondent, he left the offices and wandered out to the new equipment lined up in the yard. He saw all the tanks and APC styles they were due represented in the yard, and it occurred to him that it wasn't right or fair.

He went around and took down some serial numbers of vehicles that were parked in the yard, awaiting distribution or pick-up. He took his requisition paperwork and erased the serial numbers on them and put the numbers he found in the blanks. He must have waited for the personnel to change out before going back and submitting his new paperwork. He picked up all the equipment and moved the vehicles out of the depot and back to his unit.

He knew that taking those vehicles meant that other units that those tanks and APCs were meant to go to would probably struggle like they had been struggling. He even knew that his actions probably resulted in the deaths of people in those other units. He knew that by the book, by the letter of the rules, he had done something not permitted and wrong. He could probably have been reprimanded at the least, possibly court martialed at the worst. He knew he was wrong, but he told us that he never lost a night's sleep over his actions.

Whichever unit came up short of equipment would probably suffer additional casualties because of those shortages. In his mind, he said it wasn't a dilemma because if someone had to die, it was better that it was people in the other units rather than his. Was he playing God? Did he think his people were worth more than the others? That wasn't it. The difference between his soldiers and the soldiers in another unit is that he didn't have to watch them die.

Nightmare Scenario

Ignorance is Bliss.

That's what they say, but in reality, proceeding along in ignorance leads to anything but bliss. I heard about a study recently that was centered around the phenomenon of deception and one of the conclusions they came to was that some of the happiest people are people that lie to themselves. Those that tell themselves that they are fine and everything is fine and manage to convince themselves of this despite all evidence to the contrary are rewarded with not only happiness, but success. It's just another variation on the old Ignorance is Bliss adage.

I've always been a big fan of Science Fiction, so I've read a lot of it over the years. Many Science Fiction writers are engineers or scientists by training that went into writing because they spend a lot of time thinking about why things are the way they are and now things should be if we could just plan an orderly transition into the future. I like history, too, and I always thought that History and Science Fiction were perfect wings spreading out from the present. They answer the important questions of where have we been and where we are going. So many of the authors look at all the elements of what led up to this point and project a future based on what they know. That future is sometimes quite rosy, but often is the result of some really nasty times. The scary part of knowing a lot of these tales is that many of the story elements used in them are coming true.

A lot of storylines center around a crisis where the carrying capacity of the planet becomes outstripped by rising population. The scenarios differ in severity. Some hint at belt tightening, or new laws restricting freedoms in order to conserve food or energy or space. Others take the dire route and outline food riots and all-out war for survival. Technology plays various roles in future dramas, sometimes riding in to save the day, other times riding in as the pale horse of the apocalypse.

The stories I'm specifically thinking about while I write about this are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, The Stand by Stephen King, Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge, the Foundation series by Arthur C. Clark, the ancient history outlined by the Dune series by Brian Herbert, the backstory for the Terminator series, and the "history" of our upcoming times outlined by Star Trek (mostly Next Generation, but Enterprise too). Numerous short stories and other books touch on the subject, too.

I've been watching the Ethanol Boom over the past few years and noticed the unpleasant effect of unintended consequences. Due to high energy prices and instability in the world, it finally makes sense to start trying to make our own energy out of mostly corn. Half way through the "boom" of dozens of plants going up everywhere, people started talking about the downside of the scheme to grow our energy. Corn prices started to rise dramatically. But what the heck, it's not a boom without something exploding, right? So suddenly the profit numbers for ethanol production start to drop. These plants were not put up with efficiency in mind, they were constructed with low capital cost in mind. Not only is it so expensive to produce a gallon of ethanol, but no one wants to distribute it or use it because it's not a lot less expensive than gasoline (especially when you look at cost per mile you can drive). Then people start realizing that these plants use a lot of water and water is not something that is in such abundant supply that you can use it indiscriminately and not worry. Next, you start to hear about corn that used to go into food production drying up and people having a hard time feeding their cattle. Food prices start to rise. The reports say the food prices are rising a lot, but it's hard to tell unless you actually watch what you pay for things. The program that used to pay farmers not to try to farm marginally croplands and put them to rest for wildlife buffers has seen farmers withdrawing land and putting it back into production at an incredible rate. Recent rises in corn prices have caused land equal to the area of Rhode Island and Delaware to be brought out of this idling program and into production.

I heard that some countries are cutting off any export of food since they are finding food scarce all of the sudden. I've also heard that food prices are rising even faster in some parts of the world, cutting poor people off from a large portion of their daily intake. There is talk about food riots, so far just talk. Asia & Africa are supposedly the worst place to be right now in that respect, but Mexico, surprisingly, was listed as a place where food prices have really outstripped people's buying power and shortages are being felt. Some reports say the cost of food has doubled in some areas of the world.

Gasoline prices, in the mean time, keep going up and people are starting to personally feel the pinch. I grew up in the late 70s and up until just recently, they have been saying that gasoline is not as expensive now when you adjust for inflation. That is no longer true. Now gas is more expensive than it has ever been. This is starting to alter people's behaviors somewhat. It's not making people drive less, it's making them buy less of other things in order to feed their hungry gas tanks.

After energy and food, Water is due to become the next crisis. It already is in some parts of the world. I've heard for years that water will be the next spark to set off war in the Middle East. Fixed supplies of water and an ever increasing population make this a certainty. We're starting to see much more desalination plants going in around the world. This is a great solution except for the fact that it uses a huge amount of energy. And looking to the oceans has its limits, too. You may have heard about collapsing fish stocks due to overfishing, increasing dead zones near river deltas, and growing amounts of trash in our oceans.

So there are all these warning signs that a rough road is ahead of us. We've managed to curb widespread wars and learned to beat back many diseases, so our population isn't getting thinned out like it used to. We recognize a need for population control when it comes to deer, and justify hunting as a necessary thinning of the herd. There is no season on humans.

One thing is sure, if you ignore all this, life is sweet. For some reason, I can look at all this and not feel despair. I think there is a point past being realistic where it stops being depressing. One thing certain about human society, it doesn't make any fundamental changes until it is forced to. I think all these things coming to a head are just a wake up call that will force us to act. What we really need is a combination of solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, and fusion energy to power our growing energy needs. All these sources will have the added benefit of being clean as well as being renewable There is a place for biofuels, but more in the form of algae grown from our own wastewater than crops like corn. We'll have to learn to recycle our own waste back into drinking water. They have to do it in space, because space is a closed system, and Earth is too. We could afford to ignore that fact when our numbers were small, but there are enough of us now that there's no frontier or open space for us to move into. The days of the nomad or frontiersman are over. We'll have to learn to preserve the plants and animals of the world, because many of our solutions will come from them, their genetic tricks designed by nature and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And their health and prosperity will be an indicator of our success. So rather than being bummed out by these prospects, I'm encouraged. We have a job to do and a sense of purpose to spur us on. What more could you ask from life?

Sub Prime

All the activity next door makes me listen to the financial and economic news with a little bit different ear. It becomes more of a real problem when you see it happenning.

I will set aside for a moment the reports that the "Credit Crisis" is sending ripples through the economy at large, causing our economy to falter and possibly sending us into a recession. That doesn't seem possible, but I'm no expert. For me personally, business is better right now than it has been in 9 years.

This all started when some financial geniuses decided that the "sub-prime" market was ripe. My understanding of the term "sub-prime" is that people that have crappy credit ratings and no money for down payments are eligible for these loans, and nothing better. So some greedy corporate schemers rubbed their hands together and devised their plan to make billions in profit. They hatched their plan into the perfect environment. The stock market had underperformed, and people were looking for the next good place to invest their money. They knew that the government enviroment nowadays is geared toward leaving corporations alone when they aren't writing legislation to specifically benefit them or removing regulatory hurdles. Bush is pro-business, everyone believes. So they geared up some new "products" - loans custom made for unsophisticated borrowers with bad credit, and they flooded the country with one of the most aggressive ad campaigns seen in years. I'm sure you've seen all the stupid banner ads with people dancing spastically, saying "Interest rates are going down again!" and "You're eligible for a home loan!"

So they got these poor saps to sign fat contracts for loans with a fatal flaw embedded in them. Sign up and your payment is x per month, but after about a year it becomes almost 2x per month. "My house payment went up and we can't afford it!" was the common cry that went up all over the land. "Stupid people got in over their heads," was the callous comment heard most often around the water cooler.

I disagree. A complete lack of regulatory oversight as well as sheer stupidity on the part of the lenders is the problem here. If you're approving someone for a loan, you know how much they make. If you slip a provision that jacks up the payments after a year, you could probably do the math and figure out that they won't be able to pay and that it's a bad investment. Lack of regulations lets you hook in people without even making them come up with a down payment. So even if your plan was to set up people for failure and then take possession of their homes, it's still a bad plan, because you're not even going to profit from their down payments.

Then the perfect storm happend to make this into a full blown crisis. Lots of people rushed to make these loans, they started going bad in huge numbers all at once, and the bottom fell out of the housing market. It takes a long time to sell a house right now, and you will never get the full price in today's market. So suddenly it's not a bunch of ignorant borrowers that are feeling the pinch, it's big banks.

What a fiasco. Imagine rich investment types, used to pulling in 6 and 7 digit incomes watching their net worth evaporate away in a matter of months. These are the type people that used to fund political campaigns, so is it any wonder that they are also the people with access to power and influence? So who gets the first big bail out? Bear Stearns, an investment bank with some of the bluest of the blue bloods gets access to a line of credit to stabilize it while it is on life support. I have no doubt that the other lenders that pushed us into this mess will get similar support and bailouts in the months to come.

Meanwhile, let's hope that the people that got fooled by these bad loans in the coming months can afford their rent if the economy does slip into a recession.

Masters of the Universe? Time will tell.

Mean but True

I listen to a podcast called Princeton Review, LSAT Logic in Everyday Life. They break down issues in a logical way to hopefully make rational arguments for things. Andrew Brody, the podcast host, takes questions from listeners and got an interesting one via email.

This man wrote to say that a woman in their group of friends loved the sport of character assassination. She loved to comment on the worst traits and shortcomings of others. When someone in the group would respond that her comments were mean, she remarked that "It's not mean if it's true." The writer was bothered by this but did not know how to respond to her to shut her down.


Brody dissected the statement logically, "if true = not mean" and said to test it by making the inverse. Does that mean that all mean statements are false? Would you go to the hospital to visit someone that was dying and walk in and say "You look terrible, you look like you are going to die"? While true, it's a very mean thing to say. He further broke down the meaning of mean. Mean statements were more of an intent than a statement of truth. Why are you saying it.

In the end, my initial response was what I stuck with. It's true and mean. Saying it's not mean because it's true isn't a statement of a fundamental principle, but an excuse for bad behavior. She was justifying her desire to be catty, and trying to erase her conscious inhibitions against doing what she loved.

It makes me think further of when it is appropriate to point out sad, uncomfortable, or unkind truths. By ignoring the reality of the situation, sometimes this allows it to continue. We had this discussion at work over walking around with your zipper open. It's much better to be told, even though it's embarrassing, than to walk around with your pants unzipped. The same can be said for having food on your face. However, what about bad breath? That's a tougher one. I usually offer gum to the person if I'm trapped in close quarters (they don't always take it). The Savage Love podcast by Dan Savage often features Dan ranting about how you have an obligation to tell your friends when they are making big mistakes in their relationships. He concedes that sometimes you'll lose them as a friend, but it's better than letting them get married to the wrong person, for example. That's an extreme example, both where the desire to point out something is so clearly central to the well-being of a person, yet at the same time so huge and serious that it probably rarely gets done.

While in business and science, I believe that facing problems is the only way to solve them, I think the central issue here is just personal observations, matters of style for example. I don't know if I always want the truth myself. I guess you have to turn it around and try not to be hurt or offended if you're ever on the receiving end of a painful truth. Try to be thankful for the assistance and not embarrassed at the insult. And that's the cruel truth.

Barrack Obama Election

I was recently listening to a normally conservative person making his comments about the Democrat's primary elections. While he did take the time to specifically say he did not hate Hillary, I would have accused him of this. I know plenty of people that hate Hillary Clinton. I swim in a sea of conservative people in my work and personal life, and all I know is that the 90s, while prosperous and carefree from an economic and energy standpoint, were clogged with conservative vile directed at the Clintons. While almost any kind of Republican could have been elected in 2000 without inciting similar feelings of the opposite extreme, instead we got George W. Bush. I wonder if there are more Bush-haters out there than there were Clinton haters. In my opinion, the Bush-haters are much more impotent than the Clinton haters ever were. As evidence, I submit the impeachment of Bill Clinton over lying about a blow job.

I think it's time for there to be a woman President, and I'll be glad to vote for one when the right one comes along. Now is not that time. Hillary is not a good candidate, if for no other reason than that she will keep the cycle of hatred of the Executive alive and well. The Bush Presidency (43rd) was the only thing that could enshrine Bill Clinton's Presidency. While Bill's popularity numbers were pretty high near the end of his term, one thing you can't measure is the extent of the hatred of him. People only get one vote, and so approval polls don't have weighted multipliers. If someone thinks he's ok, he gets a plus. Conversely, if someone rants about him all day long and dreams about his untimely demise with the fervor of a high school boy dreaming about the head cheerleader, he gets a minus. These two votes are not equivalent. People quietly approved of Bill Clinton or violently opposed him. With time, his image mellowed, and the upsets of 9/11, a crummy economy, and rising gas prices helped make the 90s seem like some distant utopia of times gone by. I think Hillary was hoping to ride these feelings right into the White House. Rather than everyone bowing down and handing the reins over to Hillary, she found that she had a serious contender in Barrack Obama. Only by trying to trash Obama and defend Hillary could Bill Clinton manage to make his prestige drop off. He seems a little unbalanced (mentally) now when you listen to him. For the last 3 or 4 years, you'd see him on talk shows or giving speeches and he seemed like this brilliant guy that had a handle on things. Now he seems old and crotchety.

I believe that either McCain or Obama will break the cycle of hatred of the Executive. It's hard not to like the calm maverick style that McCain exudes. There's something about the guy that allows you to disagree with him violently and still respect him. When he speaks you don't feel like he's an idiot, condescending, or lying to you.

But I like Obama better. I think he provides a sense of hope and possibility that this country needs. I can't help but compare him to Kennedy. Kennedy was witty, compassionate, decisive, and visionary. Even if Obama didn't have a solid plan, a sense of optimism and opportunity would make people behave hopefully and positively. I think that simply having a leader you respect pushes the country in the right direction.

One of the things that I have always been dismayed by is the influence of big donors on the President. The winner is always the one with more money. There is a cause and effect feedback present, because donors always try to secure influence with the candidate they think will win. I've always felt that this was a corruption of our democracy because you get leaders that spend their terms paying back all the people that put them in office and ignoring what needs to be done for the good of the country. Obama gets 90% of his donations from people giving less than $100 each. Much of this is done through the internet by individuals, not from big donors. I like to think this makes Obama beholden to the people, not energy companies, polluters, trial lawyers, unions, or investment bankers.

Don't you want to see a leader that can tell some narrow faction of society that they are not going to have their entitlement preserved at the expense of the greater good of society? Think about it, this goes both ways in it's most pure form. Whether your pet indignation is oil companies making record profits or unions dragging the vitality of a manufacturing base down to a fragment of it's former ability, you want someone as a President that can say no to those that drain or disrupt society. At the same time, you want a President with enough compassion that he can help those that need it, whether it's a dying industry or a needy individual.

I think both Obama and McCain fulfill this description. For the first time in a long time, (assuming Obama gets the Democratic nomination) I feel like whichever candidate wins, the American people win too.

4/16/08: Right after posting this, the first headline I saw in the news was a story about Hillary's credibility rating plummeting in the polls. It cited the story about landing under sniper fire as the cause, but that's just the story of the day. I don't know if I agree with that cause and effect.

Podcast Review

My recent computer meltdown causes me to review the contents of my podcast lists. There is a post below about my computer problems, if you are curious about that story. Thinking I may soon lose everything on the hard drive, I scrambled to make note of the contents. One of my most used programs on the computer is iTunes and the most downloaded and listened to files are podcasts. I started this blog almost a year ago, and listed podcasts that I like at the bottom of the blog's page layout. If you scroll down, you'll see them all the way below all the posts. I haven't changed the list since then, and I would have to say they are still considered my favorites.

Listening to podcasts, by now, has become a solid habit that is strongly ingrained in my daily routine. Although I do not listen when I am working, because I like to concentrate on the stories, I still manage to listen to between 2 to 4 hours during workdays and sometimes 6 to 8 hours during weekends. I listen when I drive, when I run or work out, and when I do housework, yardwork, or cooking. I like the fact that I am learning something while getting something else done or commuting.

For a long time, the podcast file, which is followed by the number of unlistened to podcasts, had a 666 after it. It seemed that I was in a strange balance where the number of files I listened to equaled the number I downloaded.

In case you're reading this and you have no idea what the whole concept of podcasts are or how they work, I can explain. Much of the early podcasts were just radio programs that were digitally recorded for later download to listen to at your leisure on your own schedule. Think of it as a combination of a VCR recording your programs (audio/radio programs) and then emailing it to your computer for your convenience. iTunes has a "iTunes Store" that shows what is available. Music is available for 99 cents per song, but podcasts are mostly free. You "subscribe" to a podcast, once you search through a list and find something you want to try. Once you have subscribed, each time you go into iTunes, it automatically downloads newer episodes of that program. You then dig through your podcast list and copy anything you want to listen to over to your iPod. Then you unplug it and take off with hours of audio at your fingertips. I have a 2 GigaByte second generation shuffle, which holds around 8 to 12 hours of programming (I've never really looked to see what it will hold). When I had my first generation shuffle, the files all went onto the iPod in the order that they were copied. Now they are automatically reordered on the iPod in the reverse chronological order of their release date. This is annoying, but I've learned to live with it. I don't have a video screen, so I can't easily skip around to whatever podcast I want, I just listen to it in the order it comes and don't worry about it.

At first, I subscribed to a lot of NPR programming. I also discovered AP & the New York Times had news broadcasts. AP was very annoying because it didn't download just the most recent hour, but each hour since the last time I had been on the computer. It was more annoying because it was at 2 or 3 times the volume of the other podcasts. I got to think of it as the Fox News of the Podcasting world. Short on content, but making up for it with volume and fury. I also found a bunch of science podcasts, from NASA and JPL to the journals Science and Nature, as well as Scientific American (long and short versions) and NPRs gem, Science Friday.

I found a great deal of Spanish language podcasts, and after listening for a year, I'm starting to be able to understand the language better than I ever did after 3 years in Panama. I recently started listening to French, Italian, & German. Not really trying to learn the language, just trying to let it wash over me.

I listened to a podcast call podictionary from the beginning. Charles Hodgson is an Electrical Engineer with a passion for the meaning and origin of words. His narratives weave the meaning of the word in with a little humor and a hook in the end. So I started emailing suggestions to him and he was putting them in his podcast. He was writing a book based on his podcast and somehow found out that I linked his podcast on my blog. He contacted me and asked me if he could send me a copy of his book for free in thanks for linking with him. It felt like a small world.

Some podcasts had a brief and powerful run and then retired. Logically Critical, Brain Food, and Callbox 7 are good examples of this. Callbox 7 even featured some long ranting email by me. Daniel Brewer, the podcaster, put together a good program, but it was interfering with his work and personal life, so he had to give it up. It's possible that he was driving himself nuts with the subject matter, too. He was into politics and didn't like Bush, so imagine how you'd feel in his shoes a year ago. One of my favorite moments in his podcast was an interview of his father, a retired physician. His father said that people came to him in poor health and expected him to make them better. He remarked that the reason they were in bad shape was because of a lifetime of bad habits, and that no doctor would be able to erase that with a pill or ointment.

Another cool thing I've found are college classes that are available as podcasts. It's an excellent way to learn something without paying tuition and having to do the homework. I look at it as auditing a class (we could audit classes in college, you attended them but got not credit and didn't have to turn in homework or take tests). One of my favorites is a professor from Oxford's Anglo Saxon history class. He reads from Beowulf and other old English works and gives translations. He's a hilarious Scottish or Irish guy, full of funny little stories. The podcast blends language and history into an interesting combination. Another class I like is History 132, which is a young professor in Anchorage Alaska teaching 20th century history. The guy likes to open up the hour with a list of obscure holidays and observances. I also listen to Quantum Chemistry and Organic Chemistry, but I don't think I'm becoming adept as much as exposed. I was listening to some Physics podcasts from a professor at MIT, but that effort stalled out because his classes are in video, so I have to watch from the computer if I want to do it. It's not portable.

Many podcasts no longer there, but some were not worth listening to in the first place. There were a couple that were from ex-religious people that fell from belief and wanted to expound their new way of thinking. Surprisingly, it was not very interesting. They were well versed in the scriptures and could pick apart the Bible from the inside, but since I don't care to read the Bible, I wasn't very interested in their analysis. The most hilarious religious podcast was from Logically Critical, putting old testament bible passages into his own words. It sounded like he was making it up and making fun of it, but then I read a couple of sections he was highlighting and realized that he wasn't exaggerating, he was just putting it in modern English with slang and modern inflection, and it just sounded crazy.

For humor and fun, I could say Savage Love, but that is a sex advice column, and while strange and amusing, it is not usually intentionally funny. The Onion has a hilarious Onion Radio News podcast, and they also produce "The President's Weekly Radio Address". The guy that does it has Bush down pretty good, and makes him sound like a complete idiot. I just recently discovered the real President's Weekly Radio Address, and unfortunately, the two podcasts sound pretty much the same. Enjoy!

Norton Induced Computer Melt Down

Do not buy the next version of Norton antivirus internet protection. Don't even think about it, you will regret it as sure as I'm writing this.

My virus protection was set to expire some time around the first of March, and I was irritated by the fact that my own computer, through its own antivirus program, kept trying to get me to renew early. I figured out what a scam this is. In order to get the message to stop appearing, I'll bet millions of people renew as soon as they start getting the message. The problem is that the company, Norton's parent Symantec, doesn't start the new coverage when the old coverage was set to expire, they start it right then. If you were foolish enough to always renew as soon as it started warning you, you would consistantly get 11 months of coverage for the price of 12. In MBA-speak, that's a 8.3% untapped profit stream. Hell, why not just start reminding people a couple of days after they buy a year's worth of protection? Maybe you'd get some people to buy again right away, over and over.

So I was already not favorably inclined toward Norton, and I let the subscription expire. For around 3 weeks afterwards, I got messages about how the subscription was expired and I wasn't protected against new viruses! I kept ignoring it, and eventually my wife asked me when I was going to do it and offered to do it for me if time and hassle were the only issues. Principle was the only issue, I was tired of dealing with them.

I was still mad at Norton for "upgrading" their product from 2006 to 2007 and taking their anti-spam feature out of their software. The was for my computer at work, and since that time, I've been spending about 15 to 30 minutes a day wading through spam manually and picking out the stuff I can delete.

On a hunch or nasty suspicion, I took that time to finally get a new external hard drive and back up my computer.

Finally, one Sunday morning when my wife was at work, I decided to upgrade my Norton anti-virus program. The new program was called Norton 360, and I already noticed that it was difficult to get the Norton Systems Works as a separate item. I uploaded the program in about an hour and decided to copy some files from another computer to work on. I could not get the files on my pin drive to copy. I tried Windows Explorer and an old program like it called Power Desk, and neither worked. I could open a DOS window and copy the files manually, so it wasn't that the disk was so badly messed up that I couldn't copy anything, it was just that my file utility programs were suddenly not working. Then Internet Explorer started getting sluggish.

I tried to uninstall the Norton program using the uninstall tool, but it wanted to delete my ACT! Database, which I wasn't willing to let it do.

I took it to work the next day and called their help line. They walked me through uninstalling the Norton through Windows and full file manipulation functionality returned. Then we reinstalled the program and the problem was back. That ate up an entire day. The next day, I got online through their online advisor chat system again to start fresh with another young clueless person from Bangledesh. They were using this utility where you give them remote control of your computer and you sit back and watch them make changes, like some kind of magician's trick. I saw what he was doing, and I couldn't imagine it would help. He told it to uninstall, and the computer got hung up for about 30 minutes. So I started moving the mouse around and he came back on and shut the window.

"Is it working now?" I checked, "no, still not working." Norton is uninstalled, and it is still not working, therefore it is not the fault of Norton. I was not convinced that Norton was not installed, so I checked and it was still there. His "uninstall" did not work. I went back to the Internet Explorer window where his chat window was and he was no longer there. Shortly after that, Internet Explorer stopped working. I could not uninstall the Norton manually, it hung up when you got to the point where it was supposed to be removing it.

I found on the internet tons of hits for people that were devastated by trying to install Norton 360.

I had to pay a Computer IT guy $150 to completely reformat my hard drive and reload the computer from scratch. Norton still charged me for the product, even though I emailed them to remove the charges. The IT guy loaded AVG on my computer for free to protect me from viruses. How Norton is going to stay in business after this fiasco is beyond me. I used to think that Norton made the viruses in order to force people to buy their product (conspiracy theory style thinking). Now I wonder if their product isn't the virus. The way they demonstrated their inability to help me and the immediate and dire consequences of their program has led me to believe that they are not smart enough to make a virus.

Now my wife's computer is prompting her to renew her subscription to Norton.

The Moat Next Door

More in the continuing saga of the empty house flipping next door.

I haven't written about our "neighbors" since January 14th (two entries) http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2008/01/house-next-door-unplugged.html. Before that you can check out my earlier posts: http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/07/house-3.html, http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/07/house-next-door-2.html, and http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/04/our-neighbors-house-in-middle-of.html.

Things don't seem to be improving for our poor hapless "investors" that purchased the house next door and thought they would hang some baubbles, double the price, and skip along down to the bank with their check. Fools. Dreamers and Fools is what this business attracts.

The house has sat idle for quite a while, with the realtor sign finally coming down at some point and no work activity. Some time in March, a new sign appeared in the front window that stated that the bank had moved to winterize the piping to "protect their investment". Seems that action was a little late. You generally do that at the beginning of winter, not at the end. The scary thing is that the house burst all its pipes last winter and the owner didn't even try to drain or prep the house for winter this year.

A couple of weekends ago, the son of the owner came out and was loading something into the back of a pickup with another guy. A couple of days after that, my wife called and told me that some workers showed up and came to our house and asked if they could use our electricity. Andrea told them no, and I was ready to go home and re-emphasize that if necessary. By the time I got home they had 6 pickup trucks in the yard with a generator chugging away somewhere. I left to go jogging about an hour later and I looked over and noticed that there was a trailer filled with cabinets, all bungied down. As I started running, it occurred to me that they were taking things out of the house, rather than fixing it up for sale. When I got back from my run, all the trucks were gone. I peeked in the windows and discovered that they had indeed taken all the cabinetry and sinks out of the kitchen and first floor.

A few days later, more trucks came and started removing carpet. Someone got stuck in the waterlogged front yard, and another neighbor helped pull them out. We have some nice new pretty ruts to look at, now.

A few weeks ago, while looking for a cat, I noticed that their pool equipment room had a foot or so of water in it. This little basementlike foundation had its little pool house on top that was removed and then a deck was put on top of it (which is not sealed to rain, I don't think). However, the stairs have always been open to rain and the foundation has a floor drain. That must be clogged with leaves. The last time I checked, this little room (after our 3" of rain this week) has 3' of water in it. I'm sure the heaters, filters, and pumps are ruined after spending 3 months underwater.

The pool is filling with leaves and looks like a giant glass of iced tea. I recently spotted a 12" across (the shell) snapping turtle in the pond. I'm guessing that the turtle fell in full-grown as opposed to getting this large by living his whole life in the pool.

There are some pretty daffodils still, missed by the "landscapers" whose main function seemed to have been to tear things out rather than planting anything. The grass looks surprisingly lush and I can't tell that there has been much damage from leaves choking anything out. The other side of the house away from us has deep ruts and big low spots from the construction over there, and there is still a lot of construction debris laying around. The "breezeway" that they installed from the house to the "guest house" or studio (whatever that box they built near the pool) has a large opening that would allow animals as big as a cat to get inside of the house. I wonder if anything has taken up residence in there.

We know they bought the house for a lot more than the person before, and we know that they were able to get a loan for even more than they paid for the house, probably to finance the improvements. After the freeze damage and the other problems, I'm sure they are thoroughly upside down on the house. They not only haven't paid any of their utility bills, but they also did not pay the last notorious contractors (the guys with the tricycle mower). So if the house happens to have any leins on it, it's in even worse shape than just trying to sell it.

The house wasn't ready for someone to buy and move in before this latest trend of tearing it up. Now it's in even worse shape. I don't expect to have new neighbors any time soon. I do wonder how long it will be before the house goes up for auction.

Draining down Science

We need to step up our efforts in science in this country. We had a wake up call once before, when the Russians launched Sputnik. That panicked Americans because until that time we sat back in fortress America, secure in the certainty that we were ahead and invincible. Spuntik taught us that if the Russians could launch a satellite, they could launch ICBMs and wipe us out.

Our panic spurred the space race, drove a generation of students into science and engineering, put men on the moon, and provided us with the boost to keep us ahead in technology for decades.

We stand at a point similar to that right now. This crisis isn't as clear as Sputnik but its implications are just as dire. The problem is that we are divided in our understanding and perception of this crisis. In fact, have a sizable faction of the country that doesn't think there is a crisis.

The main crisis I'm speaking about, of course, is climate change, but that is just a result. The root crisis is energy and our using up resources while polluting our planet. The tragedy is that not only are we not prepared with enough engineers and scientists, but we aren't trying to increase our pool of qualified people or fund the institutions that train them and produce our basic research.

These are not new thoughts to me, but lately, there are some things that have happened that remind me of the horrible position we are in. I love the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Last month's decision to scale back the Martian Probe program and idle the probes shows a lack of spirit and squanders a golden opportunity. Here is a program that is being cut because it is succeeding far beyond its initial expectations. The probes can't last forever, shouldn't have lasted for as long as they do, and shouldn't be abandoned just because we are short sighted and don't have the will to see this experiment out to the end.

The mounting crisis I fear the most is the degredation science education in schools. It started coming under deliberate and systematic attack because creationists objected to the teaching of evolution in schools. Elections of School Board officials in Kansas were based solely on the desire to turn back science education 140 years and derail progress in rational thought. When parents teach their children that science is attacking their religion and they shouldn't believe in what science tells them, they are no better than the Taliban or Iranian fundamentalists that sought to cram their people's increasingly free minds back into the box of religion inspired ignorance.

Science has also been under attack by Bush Administration, starting with the muzzling of any government scientist that spoke out about climate change and continuing with the restrictions on funding stem cell research.

Our trade agreements have resulted in a steady drain of manufacturing jobs, requiring less trained engineers in industry than in the past. Our software companies cannot find enough qualified programmers to develop the programs we need to function in society (witness the latest Windows launch of Vista, in addition to many other examples of glitchy, slow, and poor performing systems and software).

A recent Journal of Science podcast had an excellent discussion where the speaker talked about the long term benefits of primary research. He mentioned that some of the most important discoveries were originally just novelties and real breakthroughs took years to become developed, put into widespread use, and eventually become essential to life as we know it. The podcast listed railroads (almost 60 years from discovery to widespread use), computers (40 years), lasers (30 years), and transistors (30 years) as inventions that fit this description.

The mysteries we are probing now, such as the nature of Mars and Saturn, the search for dark matter, and understanding subatomic particals are basic fields of research that need to be explored. No one can predict where these searches will take us. The discoveries we are tapping into now have the promise of fueling industry and solving our problems for many years to come. Now is not the time to scrimp on science, now is the time to redouble our efforts.

Post Script: right after posting this, I heard a Scientific American story about the movie Expelled starring Ben Stein. This is a movie touting the merits of Intelligent Design and talking about how Evolution is flawed, but the scientific community is aggressively working to discredit anyone that opposes it. So my posting is timely, and the story goes beyond my premise to show that there are people actively working to discredit science.

Adversity Makes Strength 2

The Kansas City Business Journal had an article about how people in sales learn to live with, learn from, and sometimes ignore adversity. His point was that working through setbacks makes you resilient, prepared, and naturally optimistic.

I was discussing the article with a friend and told him that it reminded me of dating in High School. You humiliate yourself over and over again and get nowhere. It's not a great analogy, just a good joke line.

There was a citation for some study that said that younger soldiers have a harder time surviving conflict than older ones. I believe this was supposed to apply to Iraq, but I also remember hearing something about this said about WWII and even the Civil War. The theory here is that with a little experience under your belt, you learn that setbacks do not mean defeat and that demoralization isn't the best reaction to adversity.

People have often cited the string of failures of President Lincoln and General Grant as examples of people who eventually prevail through hardships by perseverance.

I think there is something to be said for this. Some of the rhetoric I hear by older adults when they try to explain why "these kids these days" can't hold a job or won't work hard or don't know how to succeed have a degree of merit in one important category. Anyone who grows up sheltered from criticism, not required to work hard for the things they acquire, and not exposed to hardship or deprivation is going to have a naturally easygoing view of the world. And while it is true some people are hugely successful with little effort and lots of luck, most people do have to work hard to achieve their goals. The younger you are, the less likely you are to have been challenged by any hard knocks. So, in general, younger people do have a higher probability of not being "battle tested".

So if you find someone saying all these things as a blanket condemnation and being somewhat derogatory of young people, just remember what are some of the other things that come with all this age and experience. Remember that age takes away many of the good and fun things of youth. Who doesn't look back on youth wistfully as a carefree time when you had little worries and it was easy to be enthusiastic and energetic. Many of the endeavors in life would not be undertaken if people had a clear understanding before starting out just how difficult and demoralizing they would be.

Much of schooling is designed to do just this. We talk about learning hard lessons in life, but difficult subject matters are something you have to struggle through to accomplish. The thing that most people that have worked hard have learned is that even with the setbacks and difficulties, there are the results. Only through struggles and strenuous efforts will you accomplish the things you want, getting the job, finishing the project, or cleaning up the mess you were handed. That glowing feeling of looking back at the mess you've put in order or the job you've accomplished makes all the sweat and toil worth it.

Touchy Pokey Nation

I was thinking about the divisive political discourse in our country. You have liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, rich vs. poor, black vs. white and any other dividing line you can think of. People love to push these boundries and define themselves by these categories.

I had heard an episode of the podcast LSAT Logic in Everyday Life where the analysis was based on a "part vs. whole" error. The example was one where Bill O'Reilly was calling some website a hate site, after showing a couple of examples of things posted on the site. The point was that you can't show a couple of examples and claim that the entire group exhibits those traits. How true. Think about how people hear about some crime in some nasty part of town and start thinking that it's a violent world, and maybe they aren't safe in their peaceful suburb.

I'm guilty of this effect. I know when I hear someone irrational or stupid, I tend to think that "those (fill in the blank)'s are such idiots". OK, it's easy to fall into this trap, it's easy to take or give offense based on preconceptions or individual examples.

Our nation is based on this phenomenon. It's almost as if our sports fanatic ways are translating into the way we treat each other. It's one thing to trash talk someone because they like another team, but does it really help our society to trash talk people that don't think like you. One of the ways that people like to disparage others is to call them "touchy feely". This is supposed to mean that you are too emotional and not thinking right. I think what we have in the country is a lot of touchy people that are quick to take offense, and a lot of other people that are quick to give offense. Touchy and pokey.

The problem with this phenomenon is that the same people that like to give offense are usually just as likely to take offense. They can dish it out, but they can't take it. You just don't see a lot of people trying to understand other people's point of view. Less touchy, less pokey, more feely. That's what we need.

Puente de La Paz II part 2

Continuing with the story of my Costa Rican deployment. If you haven't read the previous posts, this is the 4th in a series of recollections of my time in the Army when I was stationed in Panama from 1987 to 1990. Our Unit, the 536th Engineer Battalion, deployed all over Central and South America doing engineering missions called Nation Building. We built roads and bridges, schools and churches, and dug water wells with our engineering assets.

We always had National Guard troops attached to us, part of their annual 2 week rotations. Mostly these were a hodgepodge of Engineering units, such as the Georgia National Guard that I distinctly remember being in this deployment. Their thick accents and non-stop horseshoes tournaments marked the territory they inhabited. You always knew when the good old boys from Georgia were tossing shoes because there was a constant ringing sound as they racked up the points. Besides engineering units, we always had medical, dental, and veterinarian units attached.

The medical assets were part of the "winning the hearts and minds" strategy. You have to remember, this was at the tail end of the Cold War and we were in a constant battle to exert a stronger influence on the impoverished people of Latin America. With Nicaragua as a recent example, we knew that poverty and a lack of help or hope were making the entire region ripe for revolution. So we had a Gate Clinic, where anyone could come and see a doctor for free. Each day when the clinic opened, a long line formed. One day, a small child was brought to the gate in dire condition. He was immediately medevaced to Limon, the nearest hospital, where he died. His guts were completely overwhelmed with a parasite.

Our Batallion Commander decided that part of our education as officers would be to go out and see the remote clinics, so one day we flew over to a small town that a medic, a veterinarian, and a dental tech were sent to. The vet showed us a donkey with worms and talked about how foul their water supply was. Then we were ushered into the dentist's office. They brought a dentist chair and a bag of tools, and that's it. We stood to the side and watched silently as a native woman came in, sat down, and opened her mouth. The dental tech talked cheerfully to us as he leaned in with a pair of dentist's pliers and quickly yanked out three of her teeth. He smiled and turned around to show us the bloody tooth in his pliers. Someone asked how he could do this without anesthesia or even any painkillers or deadeners. He replied, "These people are tough." They walked around with rotten teeth for a long time, then felt nothing but relief when they were pulled. The guy remarked further that while Americans would sit on a couch with a bottle of painkillers for a few days, these people would be out working in their fields by the end of the day.

I walked the road route one day, and found a large tree next to a little soccer field in the middle of the route, nowhere near any roads. The route had been marked by LT Condon, an older Lietenant that took himself way too seriously. The large tree had a colony of Crested Oropendolas. These beautiful birds made teardrop shaped nests that hung under the branch and sang with a flutelike melody. There were hundreds of them in this enormous tree, and it was marked for removal by LT Condon. I decided this was stupid and removed the mark, putting it a good 50' away so the road would go around the tree.

I walked on to a spot where they were building a small culvert style creek crossing. SFC Malloy was at the controls of a big trackhoe, doing the excavation. He wasn't normally supposed to work equipment. Older NCOs were supposed to train and supervise the younger soldiers who were supposed to do the actualy work. We did not have a trackhoe in our TOE (Table of Organization and Equipment - our equipment did not include this). We rented the trackhoe and maybe no one was familiar with it, or maybe he just wanted to play. I watched him move this enormous excavator right up to the pit, expertly and quickly scoop out the hole, and lower culvert pieces into place. They said that good equipment operators could push a dime around on the ground with a grater, and seeing the skill he had with the trackhoe, I could believe it. As I talked with SFC Malloy afterwards, I told him about the colony tree and what I did, hoping that he would back me up as the man in charge on the ground when they reached that spot. "Fuck LT Condon" was his comment on the situation. He never planned on knocking the tree down. "Too much work. Easier to go around. If he can get the Colonel to tell me to do it, I'll tell him the same thing. We haven't got time to waste on such foolishness."

My tentmates were all the junior officers in the 15th Engineer Company. They were mostly Lieutenants, but there was one CW4, Chief Young. Chief Young was almost 60. He had served a full career in the British Army and then started from scratch again in the U.S. Army. He was grumpy and hilarious. Each night he "played cards" with the CO (there may have been rum involved) and then would stumble in long after the lights were out in the tent and go to bed, making hilarious comments in a thick British accent. One night, we caught one of the enormous Rhinocerous Beetles that you found everywhere in the camp. These things were the size of half a tennis ball, with a huge horn like a rhinocerous out the front of their face. They could fly, but you mostly noticed them crawling. We caught one that day and tied a string to it's horn and tethered it to the empty cot next to Chief Young's cot. He stumbled in as usual and fell into his cot, settling in. Soon, the beetle started to strain as the end of his tether, making a horrid scratching sound on the tight cot fabric. "BLOODY HELL! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" Chief Young yelled, startling the beetle and setting it into flight at the end of it's tether. Imagine a bumblebee the size of a rabbit and you'll get the idea of what it sounded like. "GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT!" He started shouting. We were all awake and laughing like hell as we moved to release the poor beetle. Chief was sour about that incident for a week.

My other tentmates included LT Damore, who was an enthusiastic runner and the only one in the whole camp that I was aware of that kept up his PT (Physical Training) while on the deployment. The only problem with this is that he had only one jogging outfit and hung it out to dry on the tent cords next to his cot each day. As we did not have easy access to laundry, you can imagine how this smelled after only a few days. It was a constant source of tension. The lower enlisted tent next to us had a guy with a boom box that played "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" by U2 every morning. It became our theme song. LT Wilson, who worked the bulldozers that were tearing into the leading edge of the road, became the focus of an interesting daily ritual. The first day they reached the 4 to 5 story tall trees they had to knock down, they got a surprise. The bulldozer ran into the first tree, and as the operator reached down to put it in reverse, the rain of snakes that were dislodged from the tree hit the bulldozer. Imagine an operator running like hell as dozens of already freaked out snakes slithered like mad after contacting the hot engine cover of the bulldozer. It was quite unnerving, so they worked out a procedure. The first tree strike was followed by people moving in with long forked sticks and flicking all the snakes out of the way. A piece of plywood was set over the operator's open cage so he wouldn't have to pick one out of the back of his shirt. LT Wilson wanted to know which and how many of the snakes were poisonous, so he would cut their heads off and bring them back to the tent each evening. What I remember is that all of the snakes were poisonous.

We had a lot of equipment problems. A couple of times we had bulldozers get bogged down stuck in the mud. One time there was a spring-fed bog that a bulldozer went into and got mired up to a point over it's tracks. It was stuck so badly that we had to get two other bulldozers attach their winches and pull together to get it out. The danger in pushing the winches to their limits was that the cables could snap. Apparently, a snapped cable of this size under this much load would could cut a man in half faster than a hot knife through butter. We did not get to test this theory. We did however, manage to roll a scraper (you may have seen these vehicles, whose pans were big enough to put a pickup truck in) as well as break the fuel truck, and a dump truck.

The dump truck rolled backwards, went off the road, and then rolled side over side down a hill. The guy inside was not buckled in, as we had no seat belts in the dump trucks. I was about 300 yards away and ran over when I heard about it. Another driver ran to the dump truck and pulled the driver out just as the spilled diesel coming out of the fuel tank started to catch on fire. I was in the ambulance with the soldier before he was medevaced out. His leg was broken and he knew he was going to be taken straight from the accident out of the country. He told another soldier to get his things taken care of, "You know what I'm talking about, right?" I'm pretty sure he was asking the other guy to hide his stash, but I didn't worry about it. His pants were cut where they hit something sharp in the dump truck. I asked the medic what the white jelly on his pants leg was, and he explained that this was body fat that squirted out when his leg split open under impact.

In the end, my work as the Platoon leader of Equipment Support Platoon wasn't the only thing I did in the deployment. I also was tagged to be in charge of the "trail party" which were the people that drove all the equipment to the port and loaded it onto the ship. Aside from someone driving one of the wreckers into the ocean and a soldier stealing his buddy's pay, it was pretty uneventful.

Ghosts of our Fathers

I found some Polaroid photographs last night from around 1980. They were of our back yard, growing up, and there was one of my father, bent over some little pine saplings, watering them with a red Folgers coffee can. Judging by my little brother's height in a picture that was in the set, I could calculate the year. That would make my father about 43 in the picture, 2 years younger than I am now.

That night, I dreamed about him again. In the dream, Dad was a quiet, almost ghostlike presence. He did not talk, but silently followed me around as I visited a customer and looked over a system of conveyors in order to recommend solution to some problem they were having. The customer was telling all about their problem and what they were needing, and I was asking questions. Dad was taking it all in, absorbing what the situation was, and I knew much of it was new to him. We were going to figure out the solution together.

That's the kind of occasional visit I get from my father. He comes to me now in my dreams. He passed away 17 years ago when he was 54. For the first 3 or 4 years after he died, I had a series of dreams about him, all similar. In the dream, I knew Dad was dead, but it was a joyous occasion, because he got to come back to visit. I knew it was ... not miraculous, but a rare gift that he got to come back to see me. He was always relaxed and in a good mood. All the stresses of life were gone, lifted off his back, and you could tell he was lighter. We got to have a short visit, talk about things for a while, and that was it. I would wake up on those days feeling great, not even a little bit sad.

I don't remember how many of those dreams I had or for how many years, but I don't remember having them for a long while. However, now they've come back and they aren't quite the same flavor.

I think the dreams come from me, not from the great beyond. I studied dreams as a juvenile fascination when I was in Junior High, even kept a dream journal for some years. I learned that the subconscious mind was trying to communicate to the conscious mind, and could only do it through the dream state. The subconscious can't communicate like the conscious mind, so it creates these stories, dreams, that have the information embedded in them. Usually, the subconscious is trying to tell the conscious mind about something that it either figured out or noticed that the conscious mind missed. Once you had been journaling for a while, and thinking about what the dreams might be trying to say, you could start to figure them out. There was usually a metaphor, play on words, or some kind of analogy that would be involved. The message was never blatantly and directly in the dream, always alluded to or hinted at. It was a great deal of fun, because once you learned how to interpret them, it was easy. I found out a lot of things about fellow students, friends, and family, simply by paying attention to my dreams.

I used to say that someone never truly dies as long as people remember them. The corollary for this is fame, people who have achieved recognition through their discoveries, writing, creations, or public deeds have a form of immortality (or at least extended lifetime). This was a little something that I used to tell myself when my father died, always believing in the back of my mind that it was a transparent attempt to comfort myself. On one level, it's undeniably true. A person's actions and convictions during their life, or their life's work, continues on after they are gone. It's sort of a different expression of the themes of religion. Heaven is where people go to live on after life on earth.

So this semi-mystical, semi-religious way of looking on the rosy side of things has been percolating through the back of my head for many years.

Lately it's come home to roost.

I finally figured out that my cousin, whose father also died early, also has a ghost hanging around. I spent a lot of time thinking about the times my father spent with his father and how much fun they had. I think the efforts in life of the fathers cannot help but boost or channel the children along their paths. In the simplest form, you learn from school and parenting, and that lays the foundations of your thinking. You watch the experience of your parents and you either follow in their footsteps, building on their successes, or you avoid their pitfalls (hopefully - I suppose some follow the misdeeds).

So I had an Easter vacation going down to a place my Dad loved to visit, able to remember his ways and my Uncle's when reminded by the familiar surroundings.

This is one ghost I can live with quite comfortably.