Destined for Destiny

Throughout Christian era history, each generation has its apocalyptic fringe.

They believe that the "end times" are going to happen soon. They'll be here to witness it.

2000 years of people, countless hundreds of thousands have believed this.

They were all wrong.

Peter believed it. He wrote a large portion of the New Testament and helped set Christianity on its path to dominance. He was wrong.

You can believe whatever you want to believe. I don't want to change your beliefs if you think things are going to end tomorrow. I expect you have a plan that conforms to your beliefs. I wonder what that plan is, because I wonder if there's any way I wouldn't max out my credit cards and live a life of wanton debauchery if I believed it was all going to end tomorrow. But the end time believers wouldn't get to heaven if they did that.

The thing that kills me is that some of them got into government. One became President.

That is profoundly scary.

If you honestly thought that God was going to swallow up all the faithful and leave the rest to suffer through the reign of Satan on Earth, what would your motivation be to improve life on earth?

I don't want these people running things. They aren't likely to worry about global warming or to try to explore space to help preserve humanity. They wouldn't see any reason not to burn up all the oil and get rich today, damn tomorrow. They would not have a long term plan - there is no long term for them.

Take your religion and stay home. The future is for those that believe in it.

For whom the bell tolls

OK, this is not going to be funny or uplifting. It's a morbid thought that somehow gives me comfort.

I heard this guy talking about having a "near death" experience. He was in a foreign country and was accosted by a group of men with guns. He said that they were pointing their guns at his head and he was sure they were going to kill him. In the time that he had to think about it, he said that his "life flashed before his eyes", but not in the movie scene kind of way. He said that he thought that this was it, and he was just resigned to it. He faintly hoped that it wouldn't hurt, but other than that, he felt numb. It occurred to him that he was 36, and he would have liked to live longer, but that he had had a full and good life and if this was all he got, that was enough. They didn't kill him and he said that the experience changed him profoundly, although he did not get to elaborate. It sounded from the slightly dull retelling of the story that it didn't make life richer and more appreciated, more like it just traumatized him somewhat.

I used to think about the Civil War (any war will do, actually), where huge numbers of men were extinguished, many at the prime of their life, in their youth. Those that survived the war often lived to ripe old ages, 80 to 90 (you'll notice this if you ever visit a Civil War veteran's cemetery). While I often thought that exposure to all the diseases and the resulting immunities that were developed were part of the cause for this longevity, I've also wondered if there wasn't a psychological effect. Living the life taken from your comrades.

I've said that I want to live to be 125. This was in response to loosing both of my parents to tobacco induced disease while they were still pretty young. They had their own fate in their hands and chose not to do what it takes to live longer. I've speculated that with advances in medicine, that we only have to hold on for a few more decades until the fountain of youth treatments (actual longevity treatments and/or cures to most of the things that eventually kill us) will be available. So aim for what you really think would reasonably happen. If the life expectancy now is 80, just a few medical tricks would make 125 not that difficult. I assume that this is a vital 125, where you can remember everything and still move under your own power. So I've planned on working all my life, not retiring, but switching professions as I grow older.

This rambling background leads up to the Virginia Tech massacre - the senseless killing of young and ambitious students with their whole life ahead of them.

My response is to take note, think the appropriate consoling thoughts, and then forget it and move on. I expect to see a lot of death and tragedy in life. If you're reasonably aware of how life works, you will know this.

It's not a bad thing, it's just how things work. You take your lessons from the fallen, avoid all the obvious traps yourself, keep your affairs in order like you could die tomorrow, and live like there's no end in sight. Your own life is usually not all that important in the great scheme of things. It's important to those you care about and love, your friends and family, but outside of your immediate circle, your death will not alter the world. There's nothing to lament or regret here, it's just the way it is. Knowing this may help you position your life in such a way to get the most out of it while you're alive.

The path

I am a science geek. I love it, I think about it all the time, and I try to consume as much information about current scientific efforts as I can.

I was listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, Brain Food by Kyle Butler, and I wondered what this young college student was going to do with his life after university. I was impressed by the way he explains things, speaking to people with no scientific background in a way to keep them interested. I wrote him a letter telling him that I thought he could be the next Carl Sagan.

It reminded me of my Thermodynamics instructor in college. He was 23 and a graduate student, surely taking the teaching job in order to help pay for grad school. Possibly destined to be a professor and teach, or maybe he was headed into industry. I can't remember his name and it never occurred to me back then to go ask him, but I wish I had. He taught beautifully. He made what was supposed to be a "weed out" course, that you should be happy to limp away from with a C be a fascinating and engrossing course that seemed to open up the world to new understandings and possibilities. His strength was that he had just learned the stuff himself. He remembered what it was like to struggle through the thick wooded undergrowth from ignorance to knowledge in this subject. He had the road map. He was an excellent guide. Often, a person that is so far along in a subject has no idea how to explain it to a novice. That is frustrating.

Also, instructors of all courses at all levels fail to explain why you need to learn something. They don't tell you where you're going and why you want to be there. This is essential.

The path of knowledge is not an easy one. It is a struggle to cram new thoughts and ideas into your head (least of which is tossing out the old ideas that were wrong). If you don't know where you're going, why would you want to even make the effort?

Would you get in a car and drive for hours and hours with no destination in mind? Just hope when you get there that there was something worth getting to? That's crazy. You'd be the fidgeting kid constantly asking: "are we there yet?"

It's easy to see how expectation mapping helps. When I was a kid, I watched the first moon landing on TV. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to learn all about science, because science was this magical vehicle that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon on Apollo 11 (poor Michael Collins, watching it from just a few miles away in his Command Module). This is a classic example of being shown where you're heading and gladly packing up and making the arduous trek to get there. Millions of people went into science and engineering. Everybody was excited. We could do anything we put our minds to.

It still gives me goosebumps and sends a thrill up my spine to think of it.

We CAN do anything we put our minds to.

You just have to know where you're headed before you set out.

I was lucky in school. When I didn't understand why we were learning something, I just ate it all up on faith, figuring it was going somewhere good. I was like the kid in the back seat that just knows Dad wouldn't take me on vacation to somewhere bogus, there must be something cool at the end of the long drive. I was lucky to feel that way. In the end, almost everything I've ever learned was for the betterment of my general knowledge, direction, or motivation.

I've often dreamed about being a teacher and making my students feel that way. Maybe I will do that one day. Life is long enough to do many things before the final destination.

Race Relations

I was thinking about the path people take in life.

In particular, I was thinking about a black cultural phenomenon of black people getting down on other blacks that try to do well in school, are interested in learning, and want to improve themselves and their chances in life. They are harassed and the popular black culture is to work to prevent anyone from bettering themselves through education.

How ironic.

When the Civil War ended and the Klu Klux Klan arose in the South in response to the blacks being given the vote, the goal was to keep the blacks ignorant and fearful. Many early Klansmen would pull pranks on the terrified freed slaves, pretending to be ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers. That's where the uniform came from, it's a glorified version of the ghost cape children wear on Halloween. I remember one story I heard, the Klansman had rigged a bladder device under his robe and when he made his appearance, he poured a whole bucket of water into it, in a way that looked like he drank down the whole bucket as fast as he could pour it in. Then he exclaimed, "Damn, it's hot in hell! Sure makes me thirsty!" Before the Civil War, it was a crime to teach a black person to read. Those unrepentant Confederates would sure be proud of the black youth of today, continuing their efforts to keep blacks ignorant and therefore at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

Education is free. It's not a trick. Education does not mean that blacks will be automatically accepted or that they will not still run into prejudice and resistance by bigots. It does mean that if someone works hard in school, earns degrees or a degree, and then persists in looking around in the workplace, they will eventually find something better than they could ever hope for than if they remained willfully ignorant. It would be nice if those that do not buy into this idea would at least get the hell out of the way of those that do.

I'm not black, so I have no idea what it's like. It's easy for me to sit in my comfortable existence and make lofty pronouncements about how things should be. I tried tutoring inner city middle school students for a while, and I left feeling it was hopeless.

I assume that most blacks see my white face and assume that I like things the way they are, with blacks still the "bottom rail" as they used to say back in Lincoln's time. I don't. I don't like it when someone is bright and hard working and can't get a break, just as much as I don't like it when someone white and privileged and utterly ignorant gets to be President of the United States. But you can't tell that from looking at my face. Our black/white dialog is so constricted, restricted, and bitter today. What this means is if I have something encouraging to say, I am just as unlikely to say it as if I had something degrading or racist to say. I think that what happens because we self-segregate according to race and because we can't talk about these things, is that we do become a little more racist as we grow older. We can't understand or tolerate the various conflicts that periodically erupt over the world over long past events (Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Rwanda), yet we're guilty of it ourselves here in this country.

How the hell do we evolve past this point?

Road Construction

I finally had to write to my state assemblyman about some new road construction:

I met you briefly at a local meeting a couple of months back.

I like your newsletters, they are informative and to the point, covering issues that affect us all. Development and growth come with prices and it is good that elected officials are aware of the situation and working toward making things happen properly.

The point of all the activity is that our town outgrew its infrastructure. So much has needed to be done lately and getting around is not easy. I have to use from 3 to 5 detours just to get home. I keep telling myself "It'll be nice when it's all done!"

3 small issues that I wanted to mention:

New roads with curbs: Why square curbs? I keep looking at these beautiful new concrete curbs and thinking, "I hope I never drift over into one - it would wreck my car". I see no reason for this design. A gentle curve would be better for mowers or bikes moving from the roadway to the sidewalk, and would be more forgiving if someone breaks down, drifts off, or falls asleep. Why design a hazard right into the side of the road? I also noticed that the turtles are migrating in their mating season right now, and the curbs are a death sentence for them. As long as you're designing a new system from scratch, you might as well put the gentle curbs in.

Roadway lighting: Again, since we're doing this new from scratch, let's do it right the first time. If you need a light by the road, I don't need that light 300 yards or a mile away. Let's pick light designs that are shaded from lateral light and just cast their light downward. This cuts down on glare that obscures oncoming traffic and creates a dangerous driving situation. It also cuts down light pollution, which is a big issue if you live in the country and used to be able to go out and look at the stars, but less and less with each passing year. I'm sure there have been many complaints about the lighting on the new baseball fields, and it's all a matter of designing it correctly the first time. Just because you need light in one place doesn't mean it's a good thing to share with everyone within sight of the light fixture.

Stoplights: Metropolis is working on approving cameras on stoplights to catch people running the traffic signals. I think this is a terrible idea. Paying to make the lights more synchronized or to make them smarter to the traffic flow is always said to be too expensive, yet they seem to have plenty of money to bilk the public out of funds for traffic tickets. Sure, accountants are probably telling the government people that this program pays for itself, but that doesn't make it right. It's just a form of taxation at that point, not a safety issue. No one has conclusively proved that running stoplights is such a menace and danger to the public that it must be stopped, IT'S JUST REVENUE ENHANCEMENT. Revenue enhancement projects breed mistrust between the public and their elected officials. If you want to spend the public's money on projects around intersections and their traffic symbols, spend the money to make them smarter! Think of how much gasoline is being wasted idling at intersections. Think of how much money and time is being wasted by citizens at these intersections. If you want to put a camera on the intersection, make it to control the lights. Don't make someone want to run a light by having a dumb signal that is doing more to impede flow than promote safety. Make the lights smart and people will trust and obey them more. This will have all the benefits: more safety (because of more compliance), less fuel and time wasted, and a reduction of road rage. I know this metropolitan issue isn't yours to vote on - but again, if this does come up in state legislation, I would appreciate it if you can push to make this smarter. It's easier to put smart technology into a new light than to have to retrofit later. My understanding of existing lights with roadbed sensors is that it's not the sensor array that is lacking, it's the controller software. Current software still has to cycle through the same or similar sequences in each cycle. It doesn't have the logic necessary to open channels where traffic is heaviest. The light should be able to change the sequence so that solitary traffic always gets a green light. Do the right thing here and the public will respect government, rather than learning to resent them.

LATER I sent another letter:

I'm the one that wrote about the square curbs they put in the new streets - how the turtles can't climb them, mowers and bikes can't go over them, and they are an inattentive driver hazard. I've been going down a just completed road now for some months and would add that the snow plows can't get too close to them and that narrows everyone down to the middle lanes, as people mostly stay out of the outer lanes. Even when it's dry, people stay away from the sharp curbs. It's almost like not having those extra 2 lanes at all. I've been trying to figure out why they would design a road with the curbs like that, and I think it's a money saving effort. No shoulder work required. When cars break down, they have to just stop right in the lane of traffic. I'm convinced it's a really bad design.

LATER thoughts:

I think they put those curbs on to keep storm water on the road so that roadside erosion is less. Bad idea. You slope everything away from the road and make sure your drainage is good. Using the road as a big gutter just puts big puddles in the road during rainstorms and makes for a hydroplaning hazard.

Flip that house

My boss used to live next door to my house, the house I grew up in. He bought the house from an uncouth and clueless bozo with a yappy dog that divorced soon after moving in. He lived there a while, moving out during a really contentious divorce that I found myself in the middle of.

They sold the house to a couple that allowed their children to run naked in the yard. The mother believed the angels were watching out over them, and sometimes she followed the angels into the woods, trespassing on another neighbor's land. They were loud and undisciplined and a thorough mess to live next to. They brought immigrant labor in to build a photography studio in the back yard, it was a large 2-story monstrosity that did not match the house and loomed over the poolside cabana.

They left suddenly about 3 years ago. The house sat vacant, and then was put up for sale after a few months. I think he wanted $500,000 for it (I'll check my notes). The grass in the yard would get to be about a foot tall, and then a crew would show up and chop it down and leave it all dead like a farmer's hay field. No one came by later to bale the grass, so it was quite a mess. One time we found three wet hungry kittens, lost from their mother after a mowing crew left. We still have them today - they are the best things that ever came from that house. I finally found out that someone had purchased it some time later, and the next phase in the adventure began.

Things between the new owners and us were contentious immediately. They had routed the septic system into the pond and I knew that a literal stink would develop over this when someone moved in. I had to do an inquiry with the state real estate commission just to find out who owned the property and to register my protest about the rerouting of the sewage into our pond. The new owner, a house flipper, at one point threatened to sue me if I didn't back down.

He went in and totally renovated the house. There were contractors over there for months. They tore out a screened in porch and made it into a room in the house. One of the contractors that worked on that told me that he found some files in the basement about someone that was a child molester and had gone to jail. I never got to see them and the guy didn't have many details. They reworked the first floor of the house, demolishing a brick bar and reworking the structural support of the second floor. The first floor was transformed into someone's idea of a home furnishing style magazine spread. Meanwhile, the basement, formerly finished, was ripped up to accommodate the changes. The upper floor, which had been redone by the lord of the flies people in jungle, angel, and baseball wallpaper themes, was not touched. The jungle wallpaper, probably done over too many sherries by a god-fearing housewife, was peeling off the walls and looked tragic. After seeing the house at this phase, my wife remarked, "No one is going to pay $800,000 for a fixer-upper." Eventually, the price was reduced to $750,000.

The house sat vacant for some months longer. We thought someone had bought it when the For Sale sign came down, but then nothing happened, no one moved in and there was no activity. Then some weeks later, these construction laborer types started pulling up in all kinds of pickups and got busy. They brought in a giant trash dumpster and started working day in and day out. How strange this was since the house was supposedly finished and there was an enormous amount of construction material going into the dumpster. I went over one night and peeked inside and there appeared to have been extensive water damage from upstairs to the central part of the house and from the first floor down into the basement. There was a ton of drywall missing, and it was a complete mess in there. The pipes had frozen, burst, then proceeded to flood for some time (days) before someone figured that out.

We met a friend that used to live in the house. He heard that the house has been sold again to another house flipper. They ripped into it, trying to fix the damage from the frozen pipes, but also making changes like putting plumbing into the "guest house" (the photographic studio abortion), pouring a concrete patio and tearing out a nice poolside cabana. My wife found on line that they bought the house late last year for $705,000. My friend was told by the contractor that they were going to fix it up and sell it for $1.1 million.

Meanwhile, the contractors started playing monster truck rally in the yard. Every time they pulled out it was a minute long squeal of tires and a trip through some portion of their yard or ours. Then Mr. Wonderful started bringing his dog and his ATV out and proceeded to rip up the entire yard with his exploits. My neighbor (who had been trespassed on by the Angel Chaser) told me that he heard automatic weapons fire coming from the house. We weren't there and a subsequent investigation by the police (with the crazy contractor being the only suspect) resulted in nothing.

I finally met the new "owner". He was actually the next house flipper. I had this really nice conversation with him, where he explained to me that there had actually been 3 house flippers owning the house (he was the 3rd). He said he paid $605,000 for the house and got $75,000 insurance for the water damage (which he said would not cover the costs). He showed me the house and told me that he was thinking about living in it himself. He showed me the work on the "guest house" which was being attached to the house through a concrete patio and a breezeway. He told me that this would add 2500 square feet to the main floor of the house and add $500,000 to the value. Looking around, I guessed he was putting maybe $20,000 into this modification. If wishful thinking can be taken to the bank, that man will be rich. I told him about the septic problem and he assured me he was going to repair it.

Despite that, we're running lab tests of the pond water as a baseline for the proof that their septic system routing into the pond was done incorrectly.

As we say, we have another in a lengthening line of idiots involved with the property. Maybe they can paint it tie-dyed and make it into a hippie commune. That would be fine with me except for the sitar music. My boss, who used to live in the house, confided in me his thoughts about the house. He was embarrassed, but asked me if I thought maybe the house was cursed or haunted. The barn he had made when he lived there has been eaten into a swiss cheese affair by the squirrels. I didn't believe it until I saw it myself one day. There must be some tasty starch in the particle board used for binder. The tennis court is completely overgrown and is crumbling away. Wild animals roam in the yard, including turkeys, deer, owls, and a friendly muskrat. I really like that. One day, our refugee kittens caught a cute furry little mouse and brought it terrified into the house. I grabbed it (disappointing the hell out of the cats) and my wife was aware of the episode. My wife is a tenderhearted animal lover, and I knew I would have to answer to her later, explaining what I did. We once tried to adopt and nurse some baby mice after their mother died in a tragic lawn mower accident, so I knew what her feelings about mousicide would be. If I returned the mouse to the cats, they would play with it for hours, no fun for the mouse, and just as likely to result in an escapee in our house as a meal for kitty. So, releasing it outside would probably result in it being re-caught by the cats. Dashing its head on the patio was sure to win me the disapproval of my wife. I finally came up with a solution. I assume it was captured in the empty house next door, so I returned it to its home.

No one has been over to work at the house for several weeks. There is an enormous pile of trash in the driveway, and from time to time, people show up and throw more trash, brought from somewhere else, onto the driveway. It will probably fill up one of those enormous dumpsters, whenever they get around to bringing out another one (I reckon there have been around 8 or 10 taken away from the house in the last 3 years - these are the big semi trailer sized ones).

We spent a nice weekend working on the yard and my wife expressed her concern about the trash pile and the foot high grass in the yard next door. I told her that I don't care. Let them trash the place. I enjoy having the wildlife and the quiet, and if no one moves in, that will be fine with me. I wonder if they are upside down on the loan. The housing market is terrible now and rather than doing something reasonable, people keep trying to scam someone into plopping down much more than it's worth though some scheme. That means we are likely to have someone with a lot of money and very little sense move in. Not my idea of an ideal neighbor. I keep wondering and waiting for the place to mysteriously burn down some day. It seems to me that this would be the only way for the house flippers to get out of this trap.

It's not over yet.

Trivial Trifecta

From a while back, to a friend:

I've been reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is pretty interesting - how people domesticated plants and animals, and why some "tribes" got more advanced than others. Human development history. I just finished a couple of audiobooks from the library on religion. Actually, they are Teaching Company courses, one on the history of Islam and the other on early Christianity.

Also, there was a really interesting Science Friday program on Neural Plasticity. This lady wrote a book about the Dali Lama's interest in current brain science, and all the new ways of rehabilitating brain injuries. It's at http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1998/Jan/hour2_013098.html, but I downloaded it on my ipod. It's really interesting.

They tried to get me to run for city council in (censored city name) again, so I could help with our (political issue). It's sort of like the Iraq war: we were told a bunch of lies, we voted for a course of action based on those lies, the leadership proceeded to prove that they were wrong and didn't know what they were doing, and now we're stuck. The only difference is there's no bombs involved with our intractable situation.

Dark Tower by Stephen King

(SPOILER WARNING!)

I finished the Dark Tower series.

I thought it was really well written. I read in the paper the day after I finished it that they are going to have a "Graphic Novel" (can anyone just say Comic Book) come out about it. The article said that many fans were disappointed in the ending of the Dark Tower Series.

I wasn't. I didn't see it coming and I was really hoping Roland could finally rest, but it made sense when you thought about it. How else could Roland know so much about what was going to happen? They always said that Ka was a wheel. I like the little twist at the end where this time around he has the horn that Cuthbert had dropped the day at the battle of Jericho Hill. It's like reincarnation, a zen buddist thing, where each life you get to improve a little until you finally got it right. I told a co-worker about it and he said, "It's like Ground Hog Day (the movie)". I guess he's right.

I have to say that I probably liked Oy better than any character. I did like Jake a lot, and I was surprised to find that I really liked Eddie by the time he died - I couldn't stand him at first.

I was wondering why they didn't have the magical artist character draw legs back on Susannah, fingers back on Roland, and a tongue back on himself. As long as you've got magical powers, you might as well use them. I know I would.

King really does borrow a lot from other stories, doesn't he? I remember the premise of the guy that made them laugh. I've seen that story or something really close to it before.

Well, you're not supposed to walk away from a Stephen King story feeling all happily ever after, are you? It does make you want to go back and re-read the older ones, doesn't it?

New Cocktail Party game

I have some social advice for you. I believe, given the atmosphere of the American Idol parties, that you too should try to bloviate about some manure to see if anyone buys it. If you need fuel, just get on snopes.com and read the top 10 rumors, pick one and see if you can pass it off as real at the party. Each week, you bring on a new rumor, and you see how many weeks you can go until someone calls you on it. If they ask where you heard it, just say it was sent to you from a person you trust via email, and that it's all confirmed. This could be the most talked about hot new drinking game this decade, if you get caught, you could make a trivial pursuit styled questionnaire where you read 3 things, 2 are true from "News of the weird" and the third is from snopes and you have to guess which are real and which are B.S.

Bush visits our Burg

Letter the day before Bush visited our town:

I wonder if he'll fly over in a helicopter and say "Oh no, Riggy! Riggy! What have they done to you?" (Daily Show reference to a Bush flyby of a damaged Oil Rig after Katrina/Rita.)

He's got a health care initiative he sprang out a couple of days ago. I heard something about it last night on the way home on NPR. It involves taxing people's health benefits as income to encourage them to drop employer provided health care and buy it themselves, then give them a tax break for that. It sounded like someone took a corporate wish list, a campaign promise, and 2 tabs of acid and started writing policy.

I think Bush is starting to be more worried about his legacy. Right now he has a pretty good chance of going down in history as the dumbest President ever, but he needs to pad the score to be sure of this illustrious title.

Makes you wish for the good old days where the only thing wrong with the President was that he got a little randy around the interns. And Congress tried to impeach him for that! This President should wear one of those old-fashioned man-sized billboard placards that says, "I'm an Idiot!" on the front and "Impeach me!" on the back.

Brother can you spare a brain?

Baby 101

Here is a letter I wrote in response to the subject of baby education:

I can teach you all about babies.

Babies are tiny, they cry a lot, they poop in their pants and it stinks, and they don't know any calculus.

Do not attempt to take someone else's baby home. They may be small, but they are cute and they will be missed.

When babies first come out they look like they've been in a car accident. That changes, but it's a slow process. Even though they are really ugly, if you tell the parents that the baby looks like them, they will consider it the ultimate compliment. They go through a larval stage where they are pretty much worthless. During this stage, the mother will show you the baby and tell you how precious it is, and you have to agree, even when the mother is obviously biased or insane.

A mother's brain shrinks to the size of a walnut during the child's infancy. Their attention span is short and their idea of what is fascinating shrinks down to the point where each gurgle is "Breaking News!"

That's what I know about children.

Customer Service Rant

Another one from the archives. Sometimes it's good to rant:

Dear Customer Service,

I purchased 2 of your heating pads today.

My old heating pads failed and I needed some new ones.

I was dismayed and disappointed to find out that you have put an automatic shut-off feature in the heating pads, which I did not discover until they shut themselves off.

Is there a way to disable this feature? Tomorrow, I am going to open up the controller and attempt to do this modification myself, but it would sure be easier if there is some button that I could push to turn off the automatic shut off.

I use the pads to keep some outside cats warm. I built these little houses for them, and they are heavily lined with old towels and blankets. The heating pad in the bottom really helps them through the winter. It's going to get down to 3 degrees tonight. I read the manual and see that the pad will shut off every hour. That is unacceptable. Obviously, I'm not going to wake up every hour and go outside to turn the heating pad back on.

Why must consumer choices be taken away in the name of safety? Once I've purchased the equipment, it's mine and if I want to use it as I see fit, why should you be so paranoid of a lawsuit that you don't even offer me the option to use the product this way? Isn't a warning label enough to get you off the hook on a lawsuit? I can understand if some old or disabled person was using the pad and was incapable of realizing the pad was burning them or incapable of turning the pad off, that an automatic shut off would be a necessary feature. That's got to be rare. In all other cases, this feature is not required. This is really ridiculous when the lawyers are preventing us from doing what needs to be done.

I assume I can figure out how to modify the controller to leave it on, but it would be nice to get your help with this. After all, I'm supporting you with my purchase and as it stands, you can count me as a very unhappy customer.

[They wrote me back and politely told me tough shit. They also mentioned something about cooking my cats, which I did not think was necessary.]

Confirmation Hearing

This is a letter I sent to a friend that was going through a Senate confirmation hearing:

I've been thinking about some suggestions to help with your confirmation hearing.

They always have those giant charts that they bring out to point to and rant about, so I think you should take the picture of that little girl in Guatemala and if things get testy or contentious, pull it out and point to it and explain that you have adopted a whole village of orphans that depend on you. If they don't confirm you, they are saying no to the orphans! Do it for the children.

Wear a beret.

Take your girlfriend along and have her give you a long passionate kiss in the aisle before you seat yourself at the table. Senators respect dudes with hot chicks.

Practice the phrase "homosaywhat?" and see if you can get one of the Senators to go "what?"

Try singing a song in your opening statement. No one ever does that, and I'm not sure why.

Take your camera with you and take pictures during the hearing. (it's called the Rainman maneuver)

If you do the previous suggestion and they ask you what you're doing tell them that your photoblog was lacking a picture of a blowhard asking a stupid question in it. Then thank him.

Ask to go to the bathroom every 7 minutes.

Spread out a rug and do a Muslim prayer in the middle of the questions.

Try telling a knock knock joke.

Remind them to tip the waitresses generously and tell them you'll be appearing in the Spy Museum for the rest of the month.

Use the phrase "Do you know who you're talking to!?" as often as possible.

Bring some guy that looks like a gangster (or Jack Abramoff). Have him sit behind you and if anyone asks tough questions, turn to confer with him, point to the Senator and have him nod threateningly.

Bring your dog to the hearing and act blind.

Remember to use the phrase "do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"

I hope my excellent suggestions will help with your preparations. If you need me to fly out and help, I'll be glad to!

When life gives you lemons....

The proper response to the title is "suck on it!"

Here's a letter I sent to a friend about being dumped and broken hearted:

Check out this link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4704772

This guys says it pretty well. He's talking about something I used to think about a long time ago. I used to think that if life was all even keeled and not eventful, you wouldn't understand or appreciate life's peaks, the joys and celebrations. Pleasure and pain are 2 sides of the same coin.

You don't understand joy without understanding pain. If you're in a part of your life cycle that seems kinda empty, but it's not a definition of who and what you are, it's just an indication of where you are in this particular part of your life.

Experiences with betrayal will teach you to never treat someone else that way and to appreciate someone that doesn't shit on you.

There's something appealing to someone that lives life on the extremes, people that are either deliriously happy or miserable. After you've been with someone like this and moved on, you look back and remember the highs or the lows. They seem exciting. They seem inviting. You're looking through the lens of time and at tiny narrow snapshots of what happened. If you try looking at the broad view of your life, see if pleasure and pain don't tend to balance out overall.

You're never lonely when you have yourself. You have to look at the circumstance of your life at any particular time, and figure out what resources you have and how to employ them to make the most out of what you have. When you have time, do something you've always wanted to do. Write, do some kind of craft, or work out. Go fly fishing. Paint pictures. Use time to your pleasure and advantage. Make it the best you can. That's also the best way to attract someone else into your life, if it's rich with interesting things.

If you think you're looking around and seeing only couples, but that's statistically not correct. There are a lot of single people in each age group. The percentage of single people surpassed married people in the US population just recently.

It's not true that "all the good ones are taken". That's a bunch of shit. Most of those people out there that are in relationships have got at least one major problem with it. Maybe they have a raft of little problems. You have to believe and understand that there are many people out there that are in relationships that are not exactly thrilled with them. They fight, or disagree, or just have different interests. They feel constrained by what the other person is or is doing. Many of them weigh the pros and cons and decide to stick it out. Single people, on the other hand, have only got themselves. So if they're not happy, guess who is to blame and guess who can fix it? The easy thing about being single is that no one is holding you back if there's something you want to be spending time doing.

I recommend that everyone try to enjoy your time in life because you might not have that much more, and even if you do, you'll wake up one day and you'll be 80 and you'll go "where did all my time go?" So make the most of it.

That's my advice.

Titan

I find myself checking out the NASA/JPL sites on the Cassini mission. This mission has really captured my imagination.

One of my favorite little tidbits is a video of the Cassini probe's orbit. It's called a petal plot and if you look at it at this site, you'll see why: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/movies/cassini_petal_tour.mov

When I was a kid, I read Arthur C. Clark's Imperial Earth, where the main characters lived on Titan. I've never forgotten it.

The pictures of the lakes on Titan are quite inspiring.

There was a nice story in last month's Analog magazine about a future explorer that has to crash land on Titan and uses the supply module that he was supposed to deliver to juryrig his own rescue. He had a symbiotic intelligent computer entity living inside of him, too, which was a very interesting idea.

That's all for now, but I think I may beef this post up more later.

Commercialization of Space

Letter to Dr. Tony Phillips, who puts on the Science at NASA Podcast:

Dr. Phillips,

Thank you for taking the time to put on the Science at NASA podcast. It's great. I enjoy listening to it in Spanish, too, as a good way to brush up my language skills.

I listen and dream about space and how we approach it politically, and this seemingly huge hurdle of getting to our next step. Space has always been a governmental concern, and as such, will be forever stalled by the politics of publics funding. Commercialization is the key to getting lots of people into space. We always worry about how someone is going to make a profit on space, and I think we have to prime the pump. We want a robust movement, almost to the point where you have a space gold rush. Private investors throwing investment money at getting into space would make for rapid advances in space travel. I think the government should partner with someone like Martin Marietta (who has expertise in both space travel and mining) and go to the asteroids with the dual mission of learning to deflect Earth-killer satellites, and mining and exploiting the mineral (and liquid and hydrocarbon) riches of the asteroid belt. An asteroid cycler - a take on the Martian cycler concept where you put a large ship - almost a space station, in orbit between the Earth orbit and the asteroid belt, and people simply hop on one end and jump off the other. These things would be huge, with artificial gravity in the form of centrifugal spin and massive slag shields against cosmic radiation. Once there, you do the most important first work, monitoring and categorizing the belt. Then you would employ proximity gravimetric techniques to change killer asteroid orbits (hover close for long enough, and you exert a small force on the orbit). You could also use selective albedo alteration, inducing a spin or movement by "painting" one side of the asteroid. Additionally, you practice landing, mining, and physically moving asteroids in a more direct manner, possibly employing slug driver magnetic rails with iron for reaction mass.

On another subject, I would be interested in knowing if equipping Lunar Satellites with Ion Drives would be sufficient to maintain polar lunar orbits. On your 11/29/06 podcast, you discussed the gravimetric anomalies that degrade lunar orbits. I understand that an Ion Drive uses very little fuel and is a very low power, like the drive recently used on ESA's SMART-1 [see http://www.esa.int/science/smart1 ] spacecraft. If you just employ a small push at the same point in every orbit, can you correct the way the moon pulls objects out of stable orbits with only solar power input to the satellite?

I also think we need to develop a robotic Earth orbit scouring device. Maybe with an ion drive, maybe just a disposable module with little deployable boosters. It's about time we thought about station keeping in Earth orbit. Something long term and fairly autonomous that takes a really long time to slowly match an orbit of (first the largest of the) orbital debris, maybe attaches a small rocket, backs off and activates the booster to push the debris into the Earth atmosphere for burn up.

The 1976 bicentennial issue of National Geographic is something to go back and look at. I still remember it after all these years. It had a space colonization plan in it. One aspect, besides the lunar mining, the space factories, and the bicycle wheel space stations, was the space power plants. Huge arrays of solar panels that would collect power and then beam it to the Earth in microwaves. I've always wondered whether that was a good idea, or could ever be made practical, but now I have a different twist to this. Why not put the solar panel array in one of the Lagrange points between Earth and the Sun (I admit that I don't know if there is a stable intra Earth-Sun orbit). Then you could make the array enormous, and work it like a huge venetian blind. In this way, you could selectively ramp down solar input and mediate some of the effects of global warming. Once global warming was fixed, you could use it to stabilize and influence Earth's weather. I've always thought it would be wonderful to "terraform" the Sahara desert (it was once a tropical jungle, not that long ago). This would do a great deal to alleviate population pressure on Earth, while also teaching us techniques that we might be able to use to terraform Mars or maybe even Venus.

Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to unload these ideas. I'm sure you're very busy, and if you've even stuck with this email to this point, that's gratifying to me that someone has heard these ideas. I'm a Mechanical Engineer who became interested in science during the moonshot era and have never lost the bug. While I'm disappointed that we don't have cities on the Moon and inhabited space stations, I still believe that space is our future and I still dream about doing something in that field. Thanks for doing your part to feed the hunger that I and many others have to push humanity towards its next frontier.

Slate Gabfest comment

Below is a letter I sent to Slate after listening to one of their podcasts:

I just listened to the Gabfest for March 30. I believe it was Emily that stated that the General Attorney Alberto Gonzales Attorney Firings scandal was over.

The gist of the comment was that Democrats got as much mileage out of it as they can and that they should quit while they are ahead. There is a common thread on some of the "scandals" that drives me nuts. People are brought in for testimonies and then later they get into trouble for lying. At that point, there seems to be no real outrage or attention paid to the original cause for the attention.

I find the attorney firings to be VERY troubling. Why? Because if the judiciary is not truly independent, if their very careers survive at the whim of the executive, this is a huge separation of powers issue. Are we to expect that whatever party has the presidency can pick and choose corruption prosecutions based on party? If the opposition may have done something wrong, turn up the efforts full force, but if your own party does something wrong, looking into it will get you fired. Does this not fulfill the definition of corruption to a tee?

I had the same problem with 2 other "scandals". Scooter Libby is not being punished for outing a CIA agent. That's the real crime here. I'm not saying that it's completely inconsequential that he lied, but on a scale of 1 to 10, the CIA outing is a 9.5 and the lying is a 1 or a 2. I would have to say that I draw the same conclusion in reverse for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I was seriously disappointed that he lied, because up until then, they had nothing on him. Then when he lied, they had something to stick to him. He should never have given them the satisfaction. That was a cover-up of an affair? Ever see anyone thrown out of office or arrested for an affair? No. So in that case, there wasn't a crime until he lied. In the CIA and attorney cases, the crime isn't even being investigated once we've got someone lying.

So I find myself arguing that this "gotcha" game is a distraction from what should be our real concerns. While lying is not a good thing, you have to keep your focus on what is important.

One more story that is a strange corollary to this. Look at the Kerry questioning of Fox testimony for the Belgian ambassador position. Here Kerry is saying that Fox says that 527s are bad, that truth is important, and yet he funded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that attacked Kerry - attacks that were later found to be erroneous. Yet Fox's position is that he just gives money to people and doesn't even think about it. I guess if they will take that money and attack Fox's political opponents, he wants to be able to have his political way but not get his hands dirty. Well, his hands are dirty. Is this the kind of person we want to represent our country? If he was the Sudanese ambassador, would he continue to fund the government to fight terrorism even if they used the money to kill their own people? Relative moralism is not a Christian Core Value. How did we get to this point where what really happened is not important as long as it gets the job done?

Heck of a job Bushie.

Imus' Firing

So Imus got fired. I'm actually quite surprised. I'm surprised how much charity and good stuff the guy does, too. Never paid any attention to him before this "crisis". Seems like nobody is fully angel or fully villain when you learn about them.

On the Imus crisis: some people say, hey, he's just exercising his free speech! This political correctness has run amok!

Tell that to the Dixie Chicks after their careers were torpedoed for criticizing Bush, they even got death threats.

Tell that to John Kerry after he said that if you don't go to school and pay attention, you get stuck in Iraq. His later claim that he was bashing Bush directly didn't do anything to lessen the maelstrom.

Tell that to Bill Maher after he was canned for saying that the 911 terrorists were courageous, although who could argue that from their point of view, what they did took a lot of balls.

And yet there's a whole bunch of people out there that make outrageous comments and never have any consequences.

Rush Limbaugh says that it's disgusting that Michael J. Fox fakes his disease for political reasons. Yet he still has all the dittoheads out there lapping up his every word and parroting his bogus arguments.

Ann Coulter says that the 911 widows love their status and are glad their husbands are dead. She later calls John Edwards a faggot a couple of days before his wife finds out her cancer came back. Yet she still gets asked to go to all the GOP fundraisers.
Sharpton and others call for the punishment of the Duke Lacrosse players before any evidence comes out and they find that the accusation was without merit.

The same people out there that think that doing a cross burning should be protected speech probably don't feel the same way about the "ragheads" chanting "Death to America" in front of an embassy.

Freedom of speech means you get to say any damned foolish shit you want. But it's society's duty to point out what a load of crap they are dishing out and to stop buying their books, listening to their shows, and electing them to office. But some people's crap is other people's gospel.

It's sad when someone with a mouthpiece spews out a wacky conspiracy theory, like O'Reilly's "war on Christmas" and Rosie's "the government blew up WTC building number 7". It's also sad when someone provides legitimate evidence and tells the truth and they are instantly ignored, vilified, or attacked (see scientists on global warming and evolution). Why do we get it wrong so often?

It's the Wikipedia effect. You can say or publish any damned fool thing you want and you don't have to prove it. Sites like snopes are great for debunking chain email urban legends, but we need the equivalent for people in the spotlight. They started doing it with politicians, but those sites quickly became politicized, and you tend to only visit the site that already supports your way of thinking. The news can no longer be relied on, with major networks no longer even trying to hide their bias and emotional ranting replacing straight facts reporting and reasoned and researched methods are a thing of the past.

Truth vs. Opinion

2400 years ago, Plato contemplated in The Republic who is best to govern society. He talked about truth versus opinion and concluded that opinion was something less than truth. He talked about the type of person that loves opinion and concluded that they understand little about any of the things they hold opinions about. He remarked that they should not be annoyed at him for pointing this out, because they have no right to be annoyed at the truth. In a recent NPR interview, Rush Limbaugh stated that he was not interested in anything other than stating opinions that would maximize his advertising revenue. He was not much concerned if his opinions acted to divide the country; he just wanted to sway elections toward his way of thinking. It seems that our society has fallen victim in recent years to the siren song of firebrands that are just saying whatever they want, not what is really true. The sad thing is when such a large portion of the population is susceptible to these persuasions. Human nature hasn't changed much over the centuries. There will always be those who stir up trouble over half-baked opinions. The thing you have to be worried about is when those people are the ones governing your society.

Another Election Cycle

Biden was just putting out his talking points this morning and it occurred to me again, as it does for each election, that what we really need is a blend of the primary candidates.

I remember watching a debate with Sharpton in it, years ago, and thinking "OK, he's completely unelectable, but I like that feistiness, that speak truth to power element".

I like Obama's freshness and his idealism, I like Hillary's compassion, I like Edwards' earnestness, and I like Biden's "enough of this bullshit"-ness. On the Republican side, I like McCain's straight talk and Giuliani's can do attitude and Romney's energy.

But I don't like any of them enough to vote for them. I always feel like we only get the candidates that get some rich interest's seal of approval (money) before they even get to a ballot where I can choose from them. Why didn't Kurt Vonnegut ever run for President?