Conflict Resolution

Sometimes everything seems so clear.

I was listening to an odd podcast about logical thinking, and the podcaster made an interesting point. He was talking about how stories (on TV in his example, but this also applies to movies and literature) need to have some kind of conflict in order to hold people's interest. If a story just blandly describes a typical day where someone got up and went about their normal routine, no one would be interested. He went on to say that normal every day life doesn't typically have that much conflict in it, so these stories are not typical of life, but are typical of entertainment.

I don't really enjoy watching sporting events, which is pure ritualized conflict. With the popularity of sports in college and on TV, it seems to me that I am in a small minority. I wonder why anyone cares what any particular team does on any particular occasion. It doesn't change anything. Next season everyone will be at zero again. A great deal of the public would probably disagree with me, but I've just never seen the sense in it. For me it's a huge waste of time. I feel that getting really upset when your team loses is a waste of emotion. Again, I'm out of sync with the majority and I expect that most people would disagree with me.

But thinking about our love of conflict, that would explain a love of sports. You set up an artificial conflict and everyone gets to be entertained by it. I suppose it beats fighting a war out of excitement seeking, or something like the gladiatorial games in Roman arenas. At least in modern sports, no one is supposed to die.

But there is another popular entertainment genre out there that also appeals to a great deal of people, which I believe is much closer to what I like and how I think. You could call a program that has a riddle or solves a problem a Mystery. The rise in popularity of the CSI series (except for Caruso on CSI Miami - he's just an overacting buffoon) is an example of this other category of entertainment. Whether it's figuring out what's going on, solving for the unknown, or societal or scientific discoveries, I've always loved this type of story. How did it happen? Who did it? What's next?

It's like education or research in science. Life is a cosmic Easter egg hunt, all those hidden goodies just waiting to be discovered, opened up, and appreciated. The fun thing about unearthing knowledge is that there is no limit. Each mystery "solved" spawns questions that generate more mysteries. Every time we think we are at the end of scientific discovery, some new field pops up.

I think religion follows the conflict outline. It deals with God vs. the Devil, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, moral vs. immoral. Unfortunately, people that are fixated on conflict see everything else in terms of conflict. This is why religious people are threatened by and rise in opposition to scientific progress, new ideas, and progressive thinkers. Scientists mostly don't care about the bible, and if they have religious beliefs, they mostly assume that scientific discoveries fit into God's scheme. Religious people assume that scientists are setting out to disprove God or the bible and that they are under attack from scientists. This is ridiculous, but by the time you realize this is going on, it's too late. Devout people assume that if we discover that the earth is 4 billion years old, that disproves the entire bible. They assume that if people believe that we descended from apes that they will reject the Adam and Eve story and therefore conclude that the everything in the bible is completely in error.

Religious people don't understand something very basic about scientific people. We don't root for one side or the other. We aren't interested in conflict, we are interested in conflict resolution. Nothing is written in stone, you can always enhance, rewrite, or revise any scientific premise with further studies and new discoveries. There's nothing disturbing or disruptive about this, it's just the way it is.

By making a conflict about Religion, whether it's evolution, astrophysics, geology, or even whether or not to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, certain religious leaders are discrediting their own standing, they are picking an impossible fight. It's unfortunate, because while religion has some great aspects like the ability to give people hope or the belief in treating people well and taking care of those less fortunate. Religious leaders run the danger of discrediting all religion by attacking science. In the end, we need the best from both fields to get the most out of life.

Count Your Blessings

You may have seen an email going around attributed to Jay Leno. Jay Leno did not write it, it's on www.snopes.com. It's just the most recent fraudulently attributed mass email scam. An ultraconservative columnist probably with ties to the Bush administration wrote it and he probably got paid by the administration for writing it, too.

I was forwarded the email from my Aunt, who claimed that a friend of her daughter wrote the cover letter, but he did not. It's word for word from Snopes, too. He copied it from where ever he got the email. I had already noticed it and read it before my Aunt sent it to me.

The email, in a nutshell, says that people in the country are all dissatisfied, and they shouldn't be, they should count their blessings instead. This email really makes me mad. If you're interested in my take on the email, here is what I would write back to the guy who wrote it:

"Counting your blessings is fine, I believe. However, by this logic, you should be glad when you have a heart attack that your diabetes is under control. Or that the crazed madman cut off some of your fingers, but your toes are in fine shape! We don't concentrate on the positive because things that we fixed, solved, or set up long ago are supposed to keep working right. We concentrate on the negative, particularly the negative that we can control or stop so that we can identify the problems and fix them. That's what it is to be an engineer. I fix the problems. If I walked into a factory that was spewing toxic chemicals on the floor and about to explode and asked them why they were bitching because the lights were working fine, someone should just take away my license on the spot.

"If we can fix the many problems with the country and the direction it's heading right now, then we just have more things to be thankful about. Is the point of the letter to accuse anyone that thinks the War in Iraq is stupid that they ought to shut up and be happy that things aren't worse? How is that a shining example of an America you can be proud of? That sounds like criminal irresponsibility to me.

"People that don't like Bush are not anti-American and they are not against God. Buying into propaganda like this is dangerous. Only through participating in democracy, caring about what's going on, and by being willing to stand up and disagree when things are not going right will we ever be able to fix things. If you are curious about the opinion of another Republican, decorated war hero, and strongly devout conservative and his views to the contrary of this era of GOP Bush apologists, you should look at Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech he gave on January 17, 1960. 3 days before leaving office, he warned about a future situation that is an exact description of the Iraq War. It's his famous "Military Industrial Complex" speech. If he were alive today, he would not be in support of the War, or this administration. I have no doubt about it. He was most proud of the fact that in the opening years of the Cold War, that he did not escalate the world into a real war.

"We do have a wonderful country and we should be proud of it. Many people have sacrificed to make America great. We won't have a wonderful country in the future if we spend more time counting our blessings than securing our liberties and correcting our government when it's leading the country astray."

I finished my response by apologizing to my Aunt for getting on a soapbox. I told her that this patriot bashing drivel really gets under my skin, and that anyone that believes that I don't love this country because I don't agree with them should be ashamed of themselves. However, I didn't send this message to her, because she didn't write it or even take the time to really think about it or research it. My Aunt is a good person that I believe has fallen victim to the right wing ultraconservative Bush defending propagandists of the day. I would say that she is just a victim in this climate, but really, when people start questioning the patriotism of their fellow citizens, aren't we all victims?

Medical Malpractice

I'm going to rant now.

My sister-in-law, my cousin's wife, and two of my best friends are nurses. I have another friend who is a doctor, and my brother is a veterinarian.

My wife is going through nursing school. She's had a lot of discouragement in pursuing nursing, ranging from people telling her that they don't think she personally can do it, to people telling horror stories about the profession and/or the hospitals and organizations she's likely to work for. They keep bringing up how you have to be careful not to get sued. This is like a journey where every bend has another crudely painted warning sign on it to the effect of "Beware! Go back!" She has this life long dream to do something that will help people and that she has always been interested in. It's hard enough to do it without all the obstacles of everyday life. On top of that, there are these people that are telling her this is a bad idea. She has not been happy with this. I just tell her that they are all unequivocally and absolutely wrong and that I'm proud of her and that she is doing something hard and wonderful.

I don't think anyone breezes through Nursing School. The things that are truly worth doing aren't always easy to do. And some sleazy lawyer that thinks suing medical people is a good way to make money should have a med-alert bracelet that says "I sue doctors, nurses, and paramedics!" and anyone that finds a patient with one of those bracelets should be able to just refuse treatment without any penalties.

Seriously, this is like going out and shooting the people that are purifying your water or burning down farms that are producing your food. Have these people gone mad? If it weren't for the fact that most of the people that make the laws in this country are lawyers, this kind of crap would never be tolerated.

Aristotle called a society where most people toil to provide for a few an Oligarchy. I guess we have a legal oligarchy in this country when it comes to Medical Malpractice. Guess who pays for these self-appointed guardians of their own wallets? We all do. Medical costs in this country have outstripped inflation for years. Take medical malpractice insurance out of the mix and what happens? Does it fix everything magically? No, but it helps. Why are we attacking a system whose only purpose is to relieve suffering and stop us from dying? Why not just make it legal to shoot waitresses in restaurants? How dare they bring you food! What an affront! While we're at it, let's make it legal to run postal employees and delivery people off the road! The heck with them, they're slowing me down! Let's create a sport where we can throw Molotov cocktails at firemen if they are trying to put out a burning building. And if you are flying in a plane, you should be able to take a nightstick to the pilot for amusement. It should be alright for anyone in a vehicle to strike the driver in the face while they are driving. This will really help society a lot, won't it?

I'm not saying that bad doctors shouldn't be exposed, mistreatments shouldn't be brought to light, and victims of bad medical care should not be compensated. But only boards of doctors and medical personnel should be reviewing these cases, not lay people that don't understand the science, but sure can be swayed to compassion for the poor victim. Medical mistakes should be immediately dissected and disseminated as widely as possible. There should not be any penalty for mistakes that fall under the category of nobody could have known any better, reasonable and rational decisions were made, things just went bad. Doctors that should know better that make serious mistakes should have their licenses reviewed and should be removed from active practice with patients if they have more than one serious mistake with a patient. After the first mishap, they should be on probation. Panels of experts should make the rulings on whether appropriate treatment was received. Compensation should be limited to what that person would have earned plus additional expenses brought about by the condition they are left in. Students should be studying the mistakes doctors and nurses make and learning from them.

The medical system is not perfect, but it will not be able to reach it's full potential if greedy selfish lawyers see it as their mission and a worthwhile profession to dedicate their lives to pulling the medical profession down and lining their pockets in the process.

The sounds of 911

I heard a song by The Calling this week, called I'll Go Wherever You May Go. It was popular back in the summer and fall of 2001.

Someone made a medley of a song (that one or another one) that played for a couple of days during the week after the 9/11 attacks. In the medley, they added actual recorded sounds from the 9/11 attack in the instrumental parts of the song. I remember it had the sound of the towers falling, people screaming, and frantic phone calls. Then it was removed from the air and I've never heard it again.

I tried to figure out what song that was at one time, I wanted to see if I could find it and hear it again. I tried googling it, and I carefully went through the pop charts of that summer to see if I could identify it. I think it may have been a copyright infringement as well as something that they thought was inappropriate - so it was never played again.

On 9/11 I listened to the news on the radio at work. I stayed at my desk and kept working. I called my brother, who was at home and asked him to record what was going on. That was before either tower fell. He recorded Fox News for some reason, and their coverage was very inadequate. They had a fixed camera somewhere in New Jersey, shooting across the water, and they never even zoomed in, just a long shot of smoke pouring off the towers. The commentators didn't even notice when the towers fell, both times, no comments. They just yammered on about nothing.

I missed all the visual things that are burned into everyone's mind from that day, the sight of people jumping, the chaos of the towers falling from up close, the people running in terror, and the dust and smoke. It's weird, I've watched carefully edited documentaries since then, but I feel like I didn't get to see what it was like for most people watching on TV. I don't know why I felt the need to stay at my desk. There was a crappy little TV in the conference room (actually still gets a signal by an antenna) that I could have watched with my coworkers.

We didn't experience the attacks, most of us in America (or the world for that matter), we watched it. If you didn't lose someone, if you weren't there or near, you were just a spectator. I don't think this means you can't appreciate the enormity of it, but it's all second hand. Here's a huge catastrophy and we actually had news cameras everywhere near it.

They scrubbed the experience, sanitized it, edited it. Are they trying to make it more palatable? More acceptable? Nothing can do that. Why not face it, why not be able to face it? If you can't stand to watch a real life catastrophe, how can you expect to understand it? What are we being protected from? Not looking doesn't mean it didn't happen.

That's not my point, though. I can't and shouldn't argue in favor of showing gory details, I don't believe we should always show everything in an unrestricted public forum over and over. But I personally missed part of the experience.

It's sort of like when I was in the Army overseas in Panama for 3 years. I've always referred to it as a cultural gap. I missed 3 years of American culture, like I had some bad binge drinking episode and blacked out. It's pretty much a blank slate. People describe it to me, I can read about it or look it up on Wikipedia, but I didn't experience it. From the start of 1987 to the end of 1989, I wasn't here. All that hair band, the end of the Reagan era, Max Headroom, and anything else that was in the popular culture or on the news is just a classroom lesson for me. It's a strange feeling.

I would like to find out what that song was and to hear it again. I'm not sure why.

Why not suicide?

Leaders like General Eisenhower on D-Day and General Grant during the Civil War were leaders that were willing to risk men's lives to achieve their military goals. In times of great crisis, there is a need to spend lives. We were keeping the nation together and fighting global domination by a madman.

Antietam was the single bloodiest day in American History. We spent 60,000 lives that day. The Iraq war has cost 3,300 lives and 20,000 injuries over 4 years. People look at these numbers and argue them both ways. Some say that those lives are not much, the casualty rate is very low. Others say that those lives are buying nothing, so their loss is not acceptable.

Everyone seems to have a great deal of derision and distain for the suicide bomber. I think that in order to defend against attacks such as this, you have to try to look at an insurgent's point of view. Last week, a man blew up a the gasoline truck on a bridge. He was the driver of the truck. I remember thinking, "this guy was a suicider and he had a regular job as a gasoline truck driver?" That's a guy that seems pretty normal and he's capable of sacrificing himself in order to further his cause. Was he just crazy?

Iraq is not a stand up war. If insurgents wore uniforms and tried to make coordinated attacks with conventional weapons against our forces, we would wipe them out completely and decisively. If you look at combat, willing combat against a foe you are determined to never quit fighting, as a situation where you have a high chance of dying, then suiciders are actually doing something that makes good military sense. If they stood up, they would have been shot down in battle. Since they know they are going to die, they can pick a place and make it happen for maximum effect. One life, spent like a smart bomb, right to the heart of matter.

We in Western Society, with our history and our traditions can understand sacrifices like D-Day. Valiant struggles against the odds to complete a dire mission. I was talking about operation Market garden with a friend, who talked about how that was a waste. I would normally have agreed, but I realized that a bold stroke like that would have saved lives if it would have shortened the war.

The thing that we cannot understand is the choice of target. Choosing civilians as targets seems so alien. If the goal is to simply reap chaos, they are achieving that goal. If the goal is to provoke an over response in order to paint the occupiers as evil and gain recruits, they are probably doing that. If the goal is to hurt us, striking civilian targets do not do that. If the killings are simply sectarian targets of opportunity, then our presence isn't doing anything at all, we're just watching a civil war.

The more I think about it, the more I think we should just get out. There's no point in any of it. I don't believe that they will be over here if we don't fight them over there. That's doesn't make any sense. The presence of our troops over there doesn't change the tactics that you would use to attack the U.S. You would still try to send a small number of people to blend in and try to form an attack that can't be protected against. Say a backpack of explosives in Times Square. I fail to see how the Iraq war prevents someone from doing this. If we were going to quit defending ourselves and our borders after we withdraw from Iraq, then we would be more vulnerable. No one has ever suggested this. I think the insurgents will stay in Iraq to gain control from the opposing factions. That will probably keep them tied up for quite some while. When all that is done, they'll have to consolidate and hold power and stave off an insurgency from their opponents. I just don't buy the thought that staying in Iraq makes us more safe.

The Anti-Environmentalist Movement

My wife sent me an email about the hazards of CFL (compact fluorescent lightbulbs) to me this week.

Unbelievable. The warning said that the lightbulbs contained mercury and that if you broke them, you needed a hazmat team to clean up the area and that the bulbs could not be thrown away. I immediately looked it up in Snopes and discovered that the bulbs have the mercury content equal to the ink in a period at the end of a sentence. There was a procedure for cleaning it up yourself, which is to sweep it up, not vacuum it up (vacuuming disperses the material in the air where you can inhale it. You can dump the shards in the trash after you carefully sweep it up. No hazmat team, no special disposal, nothing to be afraid of.

The site my wife found was a for profit conservative website that tries to pass itself off as news. When you scroll down the site, you see it is mostly an anti-environmental site.

I just don't understand much of the anti-environmental movement. Conservatives have been angered at, belittled, and made fun of environmentalists for years. For years they declared that it is ridiculous to assert that humans could effect the climate. They use terms like "tree-hugger" like that's a bad thing. Their fear is that if big companies aren't allowed to pollute indiscriminately, they won't be competitive. So the position is basically if some small amount of fat cats aren't allowed to trash the planet at will.... what is supposed to happen that's so bad? Who benefits from crushing the Green Movement? If you're not the 1/4 of 1 % that is a CEO of the owner of a megamulticorp, what are you protecting?

Anti-Greens always say that a volcano pukes out more CO2 or mercury than worldwide industrial output does. There is some truth to this, volcanoes do put out CO2 and mercury, but not near as much as power plants. Actually, big volcanic eruptions are rare and their affects are usually dissipated in less than a year. This argument confuses me. Are they saying that a volcano has the ability to pollute more than us, so we shouldn't even try to stop our own pollution? By that logic, your city generates more trash than your household does, so why not just toss all your trash out on your front yard, because it's not as bad as the city landfill. Are we saying that Exxon Valdez was bad, so why not empty your engine oil out in the local creek?

Getting back to the CFL issue, what is this person's point? On one hand, they try to tell us not to worry about mercury coming out of industry or power plants, but heaven forbid if there's an insignificant amount in those energy saving light bulbs! My understanding is that incandescent bulbs also have a small amount of mercury. So are we supposed to not be afraid of friendly mercury contamination by industry but terrified of mercury if it comes from an evil tree hugger? If these planet trashing apologists were true to form, they would be rejoicing over the mercury content of CFLs and having bulb smashing parties where they tell the horrid EPA to stay away and let them pollute all they want.

People thought that the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" was a paranoid fantasy, but you have to admit that purveyors of Right Wing Media don't even question the basic premises or check the facts of people that are saying what they want to hear. These people are truly brainwashed, incapable of having an independent thought, analyzing both sides of an issue, or open to considering much less believing something they don't already agree with. If they wanted to persuade me, they're going to have to get some groups of scientists to study the issue and prove that there are threats or problems with some issue. The problem is, a good scientist would require proof, and the only acceptable proof for these people is what already supports their view. I keep waiting for reality to catch up to these people, and I think it's starting to happen. We may have to wait for a couple of generations to die off and take their erroneous and dangerously short sighted ideas to the grave with them.

DISCLAIMER: 2 "facts" in my posting have not been thoroughly researched or checked (whoops, I'm guilty too!). I would like to look up and confirm that the total output of CO2 from volcanoes is small compared to power plants. I heard this on a science podcast about 6 weeks ago, but I need to go back and check my source and see to what degree it's true, and what the Mercury comparison is. I don't know about mercury content of incandescent bulbs, I heard it and didn't check it. I am also painting conservatives with a broad brush, which is not fair, and does not help persuade anyone over to a different viewpoint. It is one of the aspects of right wing media, fundamentalist rhetoric, or political smear that I feel is demeaning and degrading, and hurts the public discourse. If you are conservative because you like littler government, because you believe that business is good for the health and prosperity of the country, or because you believe in a strong defense, you may be open to listening to the science and knowing the truth of the matter. If you've fallen prey to the rhetoric of either side and no longer question their basic assumptions, then you are a lost cause and there is no point in trying to open a dialog.

Military Industrial Complex

You want to think you live in a rational world, where people play by the rules and good triumphs over evil. But sometimes you have to wonder.

I just listened to the speech on a podcast called Great Speeches in History (available at learnoutloud.com). This was the speech Dwight D. Eisenhower gave 3 days before he left the Presidency. It's the famous one you may recognize where he warns about the power of the Military Industrial Complex. Listening to it made me realize there are scary parallels with Viet Nam & Iraq, and that much of what DDE warned against was accurate and prophetic.

He was talking about communism, how we were threatened by a “hostile ideology - global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This is when I started thinking about the parallels with today’s “War on Terror” that the Bush Administration has sprung on us. DDE goes on to say, “unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.” This is what we are being told about terrorism, it’s going to be a long fight and it’s going to be here for a long time. We paint Muslims in general, not just fanatic fundamentalists, as somehow “godless”. We do not recognize or accept the fact that they think they are on god’s side in this struggle and that they think we are the ones who are godless.

The difference between the cold war and the war on terror is how it’s being waged. Eisenhower goes on to say that his success, while not “winning” the struggle against communism, was in not breaking out into a shooting war. It’s true that in that era they believed that war meant nuclear war and thus the clear, swift, and permanent destruction of both sides in the conflict. While the use of wide scale nuclear weapons is not at issue now, there are other parallels, like the sense of impending doom and threat of loss of life, liberty, and happiness. My point is that not being goaded into rash action is what ultimately won us the cold war. Going to war in Iraq cannot win for us the war on terror.

Eisenhower talked about how each crisis would provoke the “temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” What do you call the Iraq War, if not the costly solution to terror proposed by the Bush administration? Eisenhower said that we would be told these costly solutions would be the only way to solve our problems. Then he urged caution and balance, and a need to look at the broader considerations. That has been sorely lacking in this administration, and conservative rhetoric has asserted that to even try to see the point of the people we are in opposition to is treasonous.

Eisenhower sensed that powerful forces, once entrenched, would continue to try to bring about conflict, or scare society into thinking one was inevitable or imminent. This is how they would perpetuate themselves and continue to grow and prosper. Only through constant vigilance could we avoid this pitfall. If you buy the premise, you have to wonder if these forces, those that stand to profit from war are working toward war, and putting those sympathetic to war in power. Then you look at the current President, and his Vice President with ties to Halliburton - a company that has profited enormously from this war, and you have to wonder about cause and effect. You have to wonder about a President that is clearly going to “stay the course” despite the obvious failure of his policies, the growing opposition of the public, and the feeble efforts of Congress to finally provide some oversight and restraint.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. “

What about our liberties? Look at the Patriot Act, Warrantless wiretaps, data mining, the detention without trial of people accused of terrorism, the deportation of people to be tortured by other governments overseas, the shifting around of people in secret CIA prisons, the failure to clearly exclude torture from our national policy, and the quasi-legal justifications for maintaining the prison in Guantanamo. It has already happened. What about democratic processes? Look at the razor thin election margins in 2000 & 2004, the questionable electronic voting machines with no paper trail that are made by Diebold (a company that contributed heavily to the Bush reelection campaign), the recess appointments of judges and a UN Secretary General that cannot be confirmed by the Senate, and the removal of US Attorneys for a failure to pursue partisan political objectives in their selection of caseloads. What Eisenhower cautioned against has already happened.

Eisenhower goes on to say that the ultimate goal is to have all humans live in peace and have their freedoms and security not threatened by other nations, peoples, or hostile ideologies. His vision of the future was a world where we cared about what happened to everyone in the world and we strived to make life better for everyone in the world. Indeed, he called upon God and his religion as demanding this of him. I believe Eisenhower had it right. The way to “drain the swamp” of terrorism is to drain the world of its recruits. The way to do this is to make the world so equitable and just that no one sees any sense or benefit in struggling against anything. That’s the way out of this mess. That’s the way to win the war on terror and make the world a better place in the process. I’m not saying it would be easy or could be done quickly. Like the cold war, it would take time, but in the end, we would have a lasting peace we could be proud of.

Deferred Pleasure

Why do we choose so many things that are not good for us? The simple answer is pleasure. All vices are appealing because they are pleasurable. Food, spending, sloth, and substance abuse all follow these trends.

Satisfying your needs in the here and now is a natural urge, but not a very mature one. The real strength in life is deferred pleasure.

For example, it's not easy to work out, to exercise. However, if you do, you get a nicely toned body and all the advantages that come of it, and therefore, a lot of pleasure in the form of being able to go and do the things you want (mountain climbing, a swim at the beach) as well as all the ego associated benefits, and the healthier life. It's the same way with knowledge. If you take the time to learn, to slog through the material, you get mental muscles. Learning is an excellent example of deferred pleasure. To master a difficult subject, you really have to stretch your brains, you have to struggle. Reaching that epiphany point, where suddenly it all comes clear makes it all worthwhile.

How do we teach people the value of deferred pleasure and the hazards of instantaneous pleasure? Given that teenagers have (medically proven) difficulties with impulse control, this is an uphill battle. The rewards would be vast if you could infect society with this understanding and get people to believe in it and live it. That would be a cool world to see.

Family Mortality

It's hard to focus on the big picture when you're caught up in the day to day struggle. It's hard to remember what's important.

We don't know yet what determines how long you'll live. Many say that genetics are a big factor and you'll live as long as your parents, roughly speaking. The final determination there isn't in yet. Without some genetic defect that is the actual cause of death, it seems more likely that lifestyle choices will have more to do with your mortality than family limitations. Diet and exercise and the amount of stress you undergo will determine a great deal of your health. If you avoid tobacco, alcohol, and accidents, you're tackled most of the top causes of death. So, fortunately, we have control of our lives.

Unfortunately, we don't take control.

Tobacco, alcohol, stress, and diet/lack of exercise. There's my family history in a nutshell. Cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and diabetes are the fates that result. I had my youthful indiscretions with tobacco and alcohol, so if I can stay in shape and eat right and manage stress, I should live a long time, right? Then why do I only do these things periodically? Do I want to die young? How can you so often behave in ways that you know are detrimental to your health? When it comes to diet and exercise, I think sometimes the answer is that it's easier. Bad diet and no exercise are the default condition, you have to go out of your way to do better. Tobacco and alcohol are easier to avoid when you consider that you just have to stop the behavior. You had to go out of the way to develop the vice in the first place. The problem is that those 2 can be highly addictive, and once you've tasted the kool-aid, you're hooked.

I think you have to love yourself enough to do what's right. You have to love life enough to put some effort into it.

Train Wreck

The metaphor of a Train Wreck needs little explanation. A colossal accident, going down the wrong track, or a huge costly impact.

But what about when a train of thought wrecks? Have you ever done that?

If you sit at an intersection, a train crossing, and go into a trance when a long freight train passes by, it's quite hypnotic. One car follows the other, like a chain of thought they are in fact attached. You can just stare at a single spot, the spectator, watching as the train rolls by. Sometimes a train of thought does the same thing, just rolls along inexorably, one thought simply follows the other.

What happens when the train of thought wrecks?

Why does a someone hop a freight car? Sometimes out of simple curiosity to see where the train goes. But the hobo has no more control of the train than when the sun comes up or whether they'll be bad weather.

And so it is with my mental trains.

I hopped on one yesterday, and I didn't expect where it would lead me. If you've ever had any forebearers whose traits you were not particularly fond of, you'll know what it is like to go over those traits that really irritated you. You can't help but feel guilty by listing the shortcomings of the departed, but that doesn't stop you from doing it. My recent recitation included personal habits and traits as well as the lifestyle and life choices.

Once I had ridden this train for some time, and took in the countryside, I recognized something familiar and realized something discouraging. I have inherited some of those traits myself. What is so clear in others is sometimes very difficult to recognize in yourself.

What do you do when you see yourself in the worst features of another?

It seems to me you have to hop off the train and find another way to go.

Greenersburg

Sent: Sun, 13 May 2007 11:52 AM
Subject: Remaking Greensburg Green

Laura,

Your article in the paper this morning (Sunday 5-13-07) is excellent.

I would be interested in getting the contact information of Lonnie McCollum and Steve Hewitt, to put them in contact with the people below.

Can you help me out?

I was inspired by the April 27th broadcast of Science Friday, which is available at http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Apr/hour1_042707.html, or through iTunes if you prefer to listen via podcast, like me. The description of the green buildings is a nice vision for Greensburg. Can you see people coming from all around the country to learn about how to build a new green city from Greensburg? They would be a green tech mecca. That would fulfill their desire to generate more tourism and interest in their city. There is a company here in Olathe or Overland Park, that specializes in digestion of sewage to capture the methane and generate energy, as well as lessen the nitrogen impact. I'm not sure if it's easy to apply to a whole city. I thought I would talk to him about it on Monday.

Thank you.

Attached Message:
Sent: Sun, 13 May 2007 11:38 AM
Subject: Remaking Greensburg Green

Ira Flatow, Host of Science Friday
Susan Hockfield, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rob Pratt, Senior Vice-President of Henry P. Kendall Foundation
Susanne Rasmussen, Environmental and Transportation Planning - City of Cambridge
John Spengler, Co-Chair, Harvard Green Campus Initiative

Hello,

After listening to the April 27th program of Science Friday, I wanted to contact all of you with a proposition. I believe your efforts and talents at making greener cities and green buildings should be offered to the town of Greensburg Kansas in their efforts at rebuilding their city.

I just read an article in the Sunday May 13th issue of the Kansas City Star about the young City Manager and Mayor of Greensburg and their determination to remake their city into to something better after the recent tornado that wiped the town out. They will need a lot of help and assistance, both financial and in planning and conception. No doubt, funding will be made available from various state and federal sources, as well as private and public insurance policies. You also mentioned on Science Friday that no-interest loans were being made available for some green building initiatives, and perhaps that would also be a way for them to defer the cost of rebuilding.

Why not make the town a showcase for green technology? Before the tornado, they were looking for ways to increase interest and tourism in the town. What better way to become something worth visiting than to become the first city in the U.S. to go completely green? It's perfect, they've got Green right in their name.

Their previous claim to fame is a huge hand dug water well, so securing a sustainable water source has already been in their past. There is a huge wind turbine project about 45 minutes to the west away from Greenville, between Liberal and Dodge City. I can see how more wind power would make the community a net exporter of energy, and what better advertisement for wind energy than a city that is a symbol of the power of wind? Another issue that could be emphasized is sustainable agri- or aqua-culture, as I understand that food miles are a great carbon concern, as well as the recent work that indicates that nitrogen fertilizer byproducts could be an even more deadly source of greenhouse gasses than carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. How to process the city's waste, could be another project to complete the greening of the new city. If they could harness the methane output to generate heat and electricity, as well as generating a more natural form of fertilizer, they could lessen the emission of methane and the various NOx's that are greenhouse gasses.

Laura Bauer of the Kansas City Star wrote the article about rebuilding Greensburg. I have her number and email. I'm trying to get the Mayor Lonnie McCollum and the City Manager Steve Hewitt contact information from her. Would any of you be interested in trying to see if we can rebuild Greensburg as the first Green City in the U.S.? People love rebuilding and rebirth stories, and if we could wrap it in a green mantle, we may be able to push green technology into the hearts of the average American and really kick start our green revolution.

Sincerely,
etc.

Cooperation Makes Strength

Evolution has rewarded those that can out compete. Capitalism rewards those that can out compete at the expense of others. I have the vague sense that capitalism has some fatal flaws that will eventually drag democracy down the rathole.

I have great admiration for Benjamin Franklin. The guy was always curious, always questioning, and always sharing his knowledge. He's responsible for many of the concepts of cooperative civil society in America. Public Libraries and Fire Stations are just 2 of many things he came up with. He was the most renowned scientist in America in the mid 18th century, due to his work on electricity. He freely published the plans for building protection with lightning rods in order to help the greatest number of people. There's no patent for the lightning rod, Franklin did not profit monetarily from the sale of them. He also came up with the Franklin stove, and was encouraged to patent it. He refused, saying that ideas freely shared can be freely improved upon. He saw patents as a detriment to innovation. After all, how can you own knowledge? It's not as if a Franklin Stove could not have happened without Franklin, someone would have come up with it. Franklin's coin was the ability to see a need, study the concepts involved and come up with a useful idea.

So, am I a communist? Well, to be fair, the world has never seen true communism. It never got a clear and fair chance in its pure form. It was always used as a justification for totalitarianism. So you can't say that communism was tried and failed, it was never tried. I don't think it would work in all the forms it was described. The problem is that people do perform out of the profit motive, and people like to think they are being compensated for their time, efforts, and brilliance. So, the whole "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" is also bogus. If you are willfully ignorant or lazy, you should suffer somewhat for it. That's how you pay for your mental and/or physical slothfulness (if that's a word). We do have an obligation to care for those that are in need, if for no other reason than to prevent an atmosphere or spread of misery.

I believe competition has reached a point where it is destructive to society. When investment bankers and lawyers are being produced in more numbers and making more money than engineers and doctors, we are in trouble. The siren song of competition tells us to take what the other person has and become strong at the expense of others. When civilization was primitive, we could see these principles at work as barbarian hordes rode into all the civilized cities and killed everyone and took what they wanted. We put up with this kind of behavior within civilized society when we can dress it up with laws and procedures and make it seem clean and justified. But how is a lawyer suing a doctor for malpractice for a multimillion dollar settlement justified? This is ruining people who stepped forward, sacrificed and worked hard to serve society, and doing it for sport and profit. This is the worst perversion of democracy the legal system has ever come up with. Engineers get it pretty bad, too. Some bonehead either doesn't maintain a piece of equipment or uses it in a manner it was never meant to be used, and of course the engineer should pay to the point of ruin for someone else's mistake. I'm not saying there should never be consequences for medical incompetence or that flawed products should not be recalled or banned. However, companies that are trying to bring you the next wonder drug will never be able to do it at an affordable price if the number one sport of tort attorneys in this country is the class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical firms.

And what about our current energy crisis? I was in high school the last time gas prices skyrocketed. Right when I reached the age of the Teenaged American Dream including the magical driver's license and first car, gas was too expensive to allow for much freedom. America just spent the last 30 years drifting, not preparing for the next crisis. How does this happen? It's in the interests of the huge (enormously profitable) companies that bring you energy and transportation to keep their lock on the consumer. They've fought emissions and fuel efficiency standards for 30 years. This has not served us well. It has not served the auto companies either. Look at how Japan is sprinting past GM with the vigor of a marathoner passing a geriatric with emphysema. What happened to American know-how and ingenuity? What happened to leading the world with technology? Things are the way they are because competition demands that those on top with the money keep things going like they are and prevent any innovation.

America got its first technological boost in the 1700's with the innovation of textile mills. The concepts were simple, use water power and put all of the processes to manufacture cloth under one roof. Raw material in one side of the plant, finished product out the other. England had all the elements of this simple, cost effective, efficient, and highly profitable system in their hands, but were powerless to implement them. They had guilds that were threatened by this new way of doing things and worked to prevent any improvements. Look at England today compared to America. The textile revolution is where we catapulted past in technology and industry. How is what the oil and auto companies are doing to us now any different? If Congress had forced the U.S. Auto Industry to make continuous improvements on fuel efficiency, they would be as competitive if not more by now. They may not have liked it, they may have had to raise prices, but they would have all been in the same boat and would have all been equally hampered in the beginning, and equally healthy and profitable by now.

I believe the world needs to find ways to provide an individual's energy and clean water needs at a grass roots level. We should transform the technology we use to provide these commodities and then sell that technology to the rest of the world. We need to start a revolution and overthrow our corporate overlords. Capitalism has the potential to kill the golden goose if knowledge can be bottled up and either kept away from us or used against us. Information should be a free exchange that generates prosperity for everyone. A healthy a prosperous world, where everyone's energy, food, and water needs are met without taking away from others is a worthy goal. Can you imagine any group of people in the world being disgruntled if all their basic needs are met? Of course, health care and education are pretty basic needs, too, so there are social needs to be met as well to make the picture complete. I believe that terrorism would whither on the vine if it weren't for massive disparities in health, wealth, and opportunity. This is where the real strength of cooperation and the free exchange of knowledge comes in.

Podcast 666

I love my iPod. Mine is like the orange one to the right.

I got the original Shuffle, that one that looks like a white jump drive, soon after giving one to my wife for Christmas a couple of years ago. Since then, I've been listening continuously.

Commercial radio is just horrible. Ever since the GOP brainiacs passed the law that allowed for media consolidation into the hands of a few big companies, like Clearchannel, quality disappeared. This seemed to coincide with the big music industry fighting Napster to prevent people from getting direct access to their music. In the old days, a good radio station was like the friend that you had with an excellent music collection (I'm talkin' vinyl here youngsters!). Everybody knows someone that qualifies as a musical taste guide. They always knew about good music before everyone else and a really good musicguidefriend is one that will even make a mix tape for you from time to time. A good radio station was like that, they had excellent music. You could tune in and just leave it there because it was good most of the time. When I was in junior high, KYYS formed in Kansas City. I remember the format, very quiet soft spoken DJs, very mellow commercials, and music played from silent whispery needle on vinyl beginning to end. Disturbing trends developed over the years, obnoxious loud DJs that couldn't shut the f*** up and talked well into the songs, cut the beginning and end off, never announced what they were playing, and seemed to be having a love affair with annoying commercials. Eventually, the trend culminated to the point where you can no longer hear actual music in the morning. From one end of the dial to the other, it's just the guys that took too much drugs in high school trying to show how close you can get to having the FCC yank your license. When you did hear music, it was studio synthesized drivel with no more appeal than a sack of stale potato chips without any salt on them. I started listening to NPR and books on tape years ago.

So what does a 44 year old science geek do with an iPod? You've seen the commercials with the silhouette dancing to cool music? Yeah. That's not me. The cool thing about an iPod is that you can listen to geeky books and programming ANYWHERE!

I currently subscribe to 60 podcasts. Already being an NPR junkie, there's about 7 or 8 feeds they provide which are mostly excellent. And then there's NASA. Some of their podcasts are video only, so don't expect too much portability with that. I also have lots of science. There's Nature, Science, and Scientific American, which are all very cool.

I go to my local public library and check out books, and load them onto my iPod and drive, work out, or work in the yard while polishing off 5 or 6 books a month. I think an audio book actually feeds faster than I read. I've found the Teaching Company, which has college courses available on audiofile. This is like being in school all the time! (By the way - that's a good thing.)

I called the links at the bottom of my blog (and this posting) "Podcast 666" for a reason. I've got a ghost in the machine. My iTunes screen shows how many individual podcasts are downloaded into my computer. For some reason, it keeps coming back to 666. I download AP network news, which will put 24 podcasts a day on there if I let it. I delete all but the noon broadcast. I also try podcasts out and then delete them if they are drivel. I did the negative review for the Federalist Society on iTunes. There was this poor little girl that did a podcast on ancient and medieval history - very interesting subject, but horribly presented. I didn't do a slamming review because she sounds so nice and sweet and enthusiastic, but it's a waste of time trying to listen to her. I also tried to listen to Princeton University's podcast, but anything over an hour that can't ever get to any point is so painful to listen to that it's best you spend what time you have in life on something else.

My nephew is in a rock band. He's 15 and likes the same music I like. He's my current music guide. He sent me his playlist, which I haven't worked on yet. I do like music, but I've gotten into the habit of consuming information rather than music and I don't know when I'll ever go back.

Justifications

Originally written 8/25/05:

Jon Stewart’s guest last night, Christopher Hitchens(promoting his latest book, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America - ISBN 0-06-059896-4) made some good arguments in favor of going to Iraq. In fact, he came closer than anyone ever has to convincing me that what we are doing is the right thing.

Hitchens laid out 4 reasons why we should invade a country. He said it’s justified when a leader (or country) 1) invades its neighbors 2) uses weapons of mass destruction 3) commits genocide or 4) harbors terrorists. He concluded that Saddam Hussein had done all of these at one time or another. The counter-argument that the time to respond and take him out was after the Kuwait invasion, he conceded.

Jon Stewart’s counter-argument was that he just doesn’t like the way Bush talks to us. He doesn’t like the way that Bush belittles and sneers at his opponents.

I found myself both agreeing with him and terribly disappointed in his answer. You don’t want to hear the champion of your cause (or maybe just your views) expose the utter weakness of one of your core beliefs.

It’s not easy to look in the mirror and see someone that is behaving exactly as the very people you spent 8 years in the Clinton years despising. The Clinton haters rarely could come up with a better argument than “I don’t like the way he looks and I don’t like the way he talks.”

OK, now the shoe is one the other foot. But let’s review some of the reasons for disliking the way the country has been run the last 5 years and some of the contrasts to the previous 8.

The economy is in stark contrast. The past 5 years have certainly been the most dismal economic time in my life. I wasn’t alive during the Great Depression, so I can’t compare, but I’m sure some of the benchmarks surpass those times. The only good thing you can say is that there wasn’t a total collapse, and we seem to be pulling out of it shakily.

We have no plan for cutting our dependence on foreign oil, and I discount more drilling in ANWAR, as it will have little impact (in supply) and will take too long to develop to help – it does not address the root cause or move us boldly into the future.

We are suppressing scientific development. Rather than using government to prod or encourage science and continue to keep our lead in technology, we have the glaring example of opposition to stem cell research. I’ll even concede that the development of new technologies needs ethical guidelines and moral oversight, but just slamming the door shut is not good enough. First, it totally removes government from the game, actually inviting abuses. Second, it ignores reality. The promise of the technology is too strong to expect that it will wait or go away. If we don’t do it, someone else will, and if the government doesn’t take a hand in it, we will lose control of the direction the technology goes and where it will take us. I could go into the question of genetically engineered humans or the whole way that patenting and tightly held intellectual property drives the cost of those innovations up and beyond the means of the average person or how pharmaceutical solutions tend to create “addictions” to medical technology rather than curing root causes, but those are other issues.

What’s more important, getting back to Iraq, is what we were told about why we were going into Iraq. I’ve often thought that if Bush had just said, “He’s a bad man, it’s time to take him out,” he’d be better off right now. As it stands, he justified the war saying there were weapons of mass destruction, which there were not. Then he said they had the ability to make them, which they did not. Then he said that they were planning to make them, which is ridiculous. Then he tried to make it seem that Saddam was involved in 9/11, which is easy for many people to accept, regardless of the fact that there is no proof or evidence of any connection. Then he started to say that the world and Iraq is better off without Hussein. Unfortunately, that’s not really clear. You could argue that the heavy hand of an oppressive dictator kept the lid on the current pre-civil war explosive situation. Saddam could keep the oil flowing to the world and kept the electricity flowing to his people. This argument doesn’t excuse Saddam to the outside world, but it gives the insurgents something to rally around and it prevents the average citizen over there from having confidence in our presence. Don’t even get me started on “We will be greeted as liberators”.

The other major problem is the planning and execution of the war. We certainly had Halliburton ready and primed in order to keep the oil flowing, which it turned out wasn’t necessary. What we didn’t have was enough troops, enough armor, enough local authorities, any appreciation of the growing insurgency or any semblance of a coherent plan.

The major thing that fills me with dismay when I look at the current administration is the feeling that things are getting much worse. We are supposed to relinquish personal freedoms because of a threat of terrorism. We are not supposed to question how people connected with the administration or those of already comfortable means are in a position to profit wildly at a time when the rest of the country watches their standard of living slipping away. We are not trying to solve any long term problems, medical care, the environment, or the future of our energy supply.

And the thing I fear the most is the death of truth and the total annihilation of civility. It started during the campaigns, when winning an election was so important that it justified trying to trash the reputation of a respected war veteran (twice! once with McCain before Kerry). It’s nothing new for people seeking power to play with the truth in order to get support. But those are the people that ended up on the trash heap of history (Joe McCarthy was quite popular for a while, but you don’t ever hear people singing his praises now).

I think the thing that angers me is that any student of history would measure Bush as one of the worst presidents this country has ever had. The problem is that people that live in the current day often can’t see how things are likely to end up. I see the Bush era as a time that future people will look back on as a dark time with an incompetent leader. But the guy in the parking lot with the W sticker on his SUV thinks people that think like me are anti-American. In their eyes, those of us that can really see how it is, we are the problem.

Post Election Blues

Letter to the Editor
Sent: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 7:46 AM
Subject: No Reason to Gloat

For those people out there that look at the results of the recent election and feel the urge to gloat, that may not be warranted. Consider that the election results in almost all issues had razor thin margins. We live in a country that is still strongly divided and highly polarized. How did we get to this point? How did we get to the point where we not only have strong opinions about subjects, but feel that anyone that disagrees with us is out of their mind and trying to hurt the country? How did we get to a point where it's normal to seek information sources that only agree with us and to reject any news or data that does not support our beliefs? When did we stop listening to our opponents?

If you fell into the large segment of the population (74% according to the latest Gallup poll) that voted "against Bush" because you feel the country is going in the wrong direction, what reason do you have to believe that Democrats can turn it around? What reason does anyone have to believe that the structure that puts people into office is functioning well and providing this country with the leadership it needs? We still have a system where special interests are throwing money at perpetually campaigning politicians, who return the favor by providing those interests with whatever legislation and oversight (or lack thereof) they need to have an advantage and to gain profit. Who's looking out for our future? Who is thinking about the shape this country will be in 20 or 50 years from now? The system rewards those who only care about immediate issues. If you need examples of this phenomenon besides politicians, look at wall street, the oil industry, labor unions, executive compensation, political punditry and bloggers lack of fact checking, and people's failure to plan for retirement. No accountability for long term consequences is the common thread. In more stark examples, look at the obesity epidemic, drug addiction, or even athletic doping.

If you were a parent and your child wanted to gorge himself on cake and cookies all day, people would understand and approve of your restricting his diet to healthy choices. That child may not understand the long term consequences or be able to control their urges and desires for instant gratification. How is this any different than a government that spends out of control and does not collect enough revenue to cover those expenses? The problem with focusing on the now and ignoring the future is that the future will come, and when it does, the choices you make in the now govern the costs or benefits you'll see in that future. This is why we need to continue to look at how to fix the problem rather than sitting back and gloating at the latest election results.

Iraq Veterans and PTSD

Letter sent to Senator Bond 12/14/2006 6:50 AM

Thank you for your recent request for the Department of Defense to look into the denial of treatment for soldiers that may have PTSD. This is an important issue that cuts across party lines.

A year ago I sent you a letter, disappointed with your stance on torture. I felt that this position could only be blind support for the President in defiance of what is right or wrong (I still do). What politicians do not understand is that there are stances on issues that are right or wrong independent of party affiliation or who supported a candidate to get elected. Most Americans have a pretty good sense of these issues and when politicians' actions seem to be dictated by political expedience rather than what that politician values, the people are sorely disappointed in their leaders.

Whether a citizen agrees with the war or not, the tools we use to fight this war are flesh and blood people, and this country owes its highest debt to those that risk harm in order to serve for the good of the country. The thought that we would ever do anything less than honor and support them is a wrong that must be eradicated immediately.

The sad truth is that war uses people up. The things we require soldiers to do in combat situations harm the soldiers' psychological well-being. This is not a weakness or anything to be ashamed of, it's a fact that we ignore at great peril. PTSD counseling should be mandatory for all returning troops, and command imperatives should be crafted to remove the stigma from this condition. We do so well crafting our service members into a "Band of Brothers" when we send them off to war, and we honor the bonds they form through their trials. Why should these brothers, our nation's brothers, not be treated as true brothers in their time of need? They need our help and understanding to restore their minds and souls after the sacrifice they make for our country.


Please continue this good effort and see it through. It is far too important to ignore.

Wiped Out

I knew Greensburg Kansas.

I traveled through it many times and a few years back I stayed in a bed & breakfast across the street from the world's deepest hand dug well. In the picture, it was next to the red truck in the center.

I was asked to go pheasant hunting with some business acquaintances. They were excited about the hunting in western Kansas and came from all over, Minnesota, Georgia, Oklahoma. My sales manager was a real birding enthusiast. He scheduled a sales trip with me a few months before season, just to scout out the area.

Kansas has a program where farmers can submit their land for public hunting. These "walk in hunting areas" are shown in hunting maps that you can get at your local Walmart when you get your license, and are further identified by little signs on the side of the road. While I am not a big hunting enthusiast, I don't really like to eat wild game and therefore see no purpose in killing it myself, I'm not really opposed to it, as long as it's not overdone. The best part about hunting is getting out and walking around in nature. It's really nice to see the wide open spaces, smell all the crisp outdoor smells, and get some good exercise. I don't mind weapons, I like to shoot a gun, I just don't really want to hurt any animals. I've never understood how that is considered fun. I like watching the animals do their natural thing.

We went out and scouted all these locations, driving down little country roads and marking all the good spots with my GPS. I didn't take a camera - I'm not sure why. Now I wish I had. So we found all these great spots north and west of Greensburg and decided it was Prime Pheasant Country. We went into town to get a hotel reservation and found out that 2 months out, you've waited too long. Everything is taken. Somehow, we found a bed & breakfast across the street from the World's Largest Hand Dug Well, and we were set.

I arrived in the dark and remember the street light over near the well and the strange light of the neighborhood. I never hung out during the day, so I don't have sunny memories of what the area looked like.

We ended up having to double up in various rooms. I stayed in a Queen sized bed with my manager. Guys don't like to sleep in the same bed as other guys, it's pretty much taboo. I remember just thinking, the heck with it, I'm just sleeping. I was able to ignore it, but my manager was highly disturbed by it and got very little sleep. I never even groped him once. I guess we did not re-enact that Steve Martin John Candy scene from Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, either.

Everybody brought dogs. It's funny, if you've never hunted with dogs, you wouldn't expect the way it really works. The dogs are only loosely under the control of the people that are "commanding" them. I think that the dogs just naturally want to scoot around in the high grass and find these birds, it's like doggy cocaine for them. The people think they are going to go into a field and sweep it in a methodical way, but the dogs don't care about property lines or fences, they just follow their nose. The people, when it comes right down to it, figure that the dogs have much better noses and surely know better than the person where the birds are, so they don't really interfere.

The men from Minnesota treated their dogs like family members. They rode in the cab of the truck, often in their laps as they happily stuck there noses out the windows into the wind. The guys from Georgia treated their dogs like equipment. I remember wondering how a dog could stand being in a little box in the back of the pickup for so many hours during the day. The Minnesota dogs were better birders. That didn't stop the Georgia guy from making all kinds of snide remarks about how silly the Minnesota guys were in the way they treated their dogs.

The strange part of the trip was sitting around in the house in the evening. It was cold out and this was these people's house. It wasn't altered or modified so the family or guest have any kind of privacy or separation with each other. Imagine what it's like to have really bad alzheimer's and visit your family, only you don't really remember or know any of them. That's what it felt like. We're sitting around, not in our underwear, but we watched TV and ate and talked and lounged in chairs and couches and around the kitchen table with this very nice couple. They had that Kansas prairie personality. Kansas people are so nice. It's not like it's a studied gentility like southerners have, or a slick graciousness like Julia Childs had, they just don't know how else to be. I think it's written on their DNA or something. Throw into the mix our man from Georgia. A loud, hilarious, raucous guy, incapable of not making fun of anything and everything, this guy had the owner/wife in stitches the whole time. Mr. B&B actually warmed up to him, too. He was a little quiet and reserved before he got wound up. At one point, he was sharing with us a story about what an idiot his cousin's son-in-law was. I can't remember the particulars of the story, but it was incredible that this guy didn't burn down his house and shoot his foot off.

You can't help but visit a place like Greensburg and wonder why it was that people wanted to live there. There was a time when Kansas was free land. Most people farmed for a living and 40 acres was the ultimate dream. Nowadays most of the land is owned by big corporations and farming is only done on the mega scale. You won't find a farm with livestock and crops. People don't have chickens and a milk cow. Sheep and goats and free roaming pigs are really rare. Forget about horses and mules. Kansas is miles of wheat fields and an occasional field full of cattle. I'm not sure what the people in these little towns do for a living. Sure, you need a diner and barber, maybe a couple of bankers and lawyers, but 1400 people? There was only about 20 businesses in the whole town. Were they all hired hands in large corporate ranches?

The 2006 Harris Directory of Kansas Businesses lists 10 businesses. Four are health care related. Those are the four biggest. There's a tractor & implement place (the next biggest with 45 employees) and construction sand & ready mixed concrete. The farmer's coop, which is probably that white silo that survived the storm, employed 15 people. Not listed in the guide would be government, city administration and the county seat, and there would be schools. None of the gas stations, retail stores, or cafes or diners are listed in the guide. Kiowa County had about 3600 people in it and half were in Greensburg.

What happens to your stuff when a tornado hits your house? I'm assuming that you survive. Furniture gets shredded and crushed, plates get smashed, and clothes get blown away. What about all your photographs? Your computer hard drive and all the files? Your financial records? How do you rebuild after that? How is having your house destroyed in a matter of minutes any less traumatic than being in a war zone? What about the pets? How many of them were wiped out?

9 deaths in a town that size has got to be hard, too. I'm sure everybody in town knew of them, if they didn't know them well.

I can't imagine what they are going through. I just remember what it was like before when someone opened their home to us and welcomed us into their lives.