Red Tide

We've spent a lot of time worrying about the Chinese and what their economy and way of business is doing to our economy. While this obsession is in vogue currently, it was present in a different flavor years ago. I remember reports about the trade deficit with the Chinese going back to the days that they were still totally Communist and the pro-business policies had not been tried yet. Yet, the flavor of these worries seems to be escalating. Now, you are more likely to hear fears that this deficit is fueling the Chinese military, or that having the Chinese buying up U.S. government debt is a dangerous thing.

Back in the 90's there was a big movement toward "Free Trade". I can't remember whether this phrase cropped up before or after the public arguments about extending "most favored nation" status to the Chinese in trade arrangements. There was an announcement each year that they had once again extended this status to the Chinese, yet it always seemed to me that they were toying with holding the status back because of the way that the Chinese treated their people or would not allow information out of the country. Then there was a movement to formalize this arrangement into a more permanent status and you started hearing about Free Trade all the time. Those that tried to sell the public on Free Trade kept repeating standard arguments. Early on, there were concerns about losing American jobs to the Chinese. Advocates were saying that the jobs that would go away to China would be low wage jobs and would clear the way for Americans to do higher wage more skilled jobs. They said that the American public would benefit by having access to low priced goods.

This happened, to a degree. American manufacturing started to decline in fields like textiles and steelworking, but this higher wage higher skilled segment of manufacturing did not grow to a degree to outstrip the losses in the low skilled fields. There can be little debate that manufacturing in the U.S. has declined noticably in the last 15 years.

Many that advocated Free Trade talked also about how it would bring about Globalization and an equalization of wages. The problem with this is that they were not very honest about emphasizing what that meant. If you think about it, equalization of wages means a successful exporting country eventually has to deal with labor shortages and this results in wage inflation and rising prices. A country that imports more will eventually pay lower wages because the manufacturing base will decrease and the number of workers to fill the jobs will increase, making labor in oversupply. The result is a lowering of wages. This has in fact happened in the U.S.

The natural result in this is that laborers will tend to come together in their wages. The problem is that Americans expected that this meant that eventually other counties wages would rise to meet ours. They did not consider that equalization tends to be a lowering on one side and a rise on the other. When you average two numbers, the average is lower than one number and higher than the other. The only way to get to wage equity is if American wages drop. What we did not foresee was a rapid rise in Chinese inflation. Reports out this week show that the inflation rate in China is rising their wages much faster than our manufacturing decline is lowering our wages. The Chinese standard of living is leaping forward. People are buying cars in huge numbers, and wages are rising faster than expected. Couple this with energy prices and resource scarcities, and things rapidly start to tilt back in our favor.

In fact, the Energy markets are probably the thing that will turn around the discrepancy the quickest. World population continues to rise, and energy demand shows no sign of scaling back. Oil as a source of energy is finally reaching the end of its natural life, with environmental and geopolitical concerns making oil use less savory each year (not to mention the fluctuation nature of the price of petrochemical energy). Coal, too, is reaching a limit, this time from environmental pressures. Alternative energy sources will be needed to convert us over to our future energy needs, probably a combination of Nuclear, Wind, Solar, BioFuel, GeoThermal, and Tidal sources. No one of these forms will be enough, it will probably require a combination of all of them. Even if Fusion energy becomes feasible in the near future, all this means that there will be a huge need for jobs here in the U.S. to satisfy these needs. You can only make your energy at home, and while some things like wind turbines and solar panels, can be purchased from China, I suspect that the cost to ship them using fossil fuels will make it more feasible in the long run to make them at home. This means that many of the manufacturing jobs lost in the last few years will be coming home.

So I see in the upcoming economic climate the perfect storm: for advancing our economy and reversing the losses since Free Trade came into fashion.

Crunching Numbers

I listened to the 2/11/11 Science Podcast about a month ago where they interviewed the author of a paper about the World's technological capacity to handle information.

One of the co-authors of the paper, Martin Hilbert discussed how they were trying to determine how the world has changed in handling information, which he defines as storing, communicating, or computing the information. Communication of data is either one way, broadcasting, or two way, telecommunication. Computation is compiling information by computers or little controllers that are in everything.

Nature is awash in information, but we don't notice or capture most of it. Much of the information that we do capture has a tendency to be lost and little of the rest of it is actually compiled into a useful form.

My thought when I hear this was that the power of information goes up exponentially as it is stored, communicated, and then compiled. In fact, the biggest limitation in using information in the past was computational power. This is why individuals like Newton, who developed Calculus and found a way to reduce information into its simplified essence were responsible for great leaps in thinking.

Genius, or even a well trained mind, is the human equivalent of an efficient or effective compiler of information. Someone that has absorbed a lot of information and has a brain that is good at sorting it out and compacting it into core kernels, essential facts, and basic truths. Sometimes this happens with some insight because a person is in the zone or attuned to the phenomenon they are observing. Sometimes it happens because the person’s mind is a combination of a steel trap, but also a fine filter of the information, or a good discriminator of good information and bad information. This is where written history multiplies human capacity. The deeper the knowledge bed for a fertile mind to till, the more productive the output can be. When linked with the rapid access of information, even people with only average compilation skills can put together powerful constructs and conclusions.

This power of computation, of compiling information to its essence, is an idea whose time has come. Recently, a computer named Watson was put on the game show Jeopardy to compete against humans. He readily beat the humans, but the designers of Watson were frank about the machine’s limitations. It can compile huge amounts of data quickly, but it doesn't know what the information means, or which computations are more valuable than others. They gave an example of one possible application for Watson by saying that a computer with his capabilities could be designed and tasked to read all the medical journals available from this point back and then continuing into the future after it was put into service as new information is learned or collected. If provided with a medical case, the information and symptoms of a particular patient, the computer could spit out all cases that correlated with the data. Some of it would be gibberish, coincidentally related data that is not actually pertinent to the particular case. The power of the computer could be exploited by mating it with a skilled medical person, who could look at the possibilities that the computer suggested and determine which is most likely. The computer crunches vast amounts of information, but the person interprets what that information means.

I've often thought about this in my work, how the information, if compiled properly, could work to shortcut the amount of time spent fumbling around trying to figure out things. Can you imagine if your workload could be culled down to a small amount of more certain actions? The amount of time you could save just nailing down sure things would be tremendous. I’ve stopped listening to news fluff programs and have been getting a lot of my information from podcasts that I’ve vetted and culled until I have a small core that is a source of facts that I trust. I find it easier to compile the truth of the situation when you listen to just the pure sources that dig deep into core truths and try not to waste time shouting obscenities people as they try to walk by and mind their own business.

So the fascinating interview about the interesting paper left me with a lot of hope about the future, but I had to spoil it by thinking about how this truly translated into current reality. People now are awash in broadcast information. Much of it is advertising, a case of questionable information at best, as it is designed to try to persuade you to purchase something, whether you need it or not. Then there is political information, which is very much like advertising. It is designed to try to get you to buy a political ideology and to try to persuade others to join this ideology, and to contest those that do not believe your positions. This poisoning of information has corrupted news sources, as people with pre-conceived ideas are choosing their news sources based on whether these sources are putting out information that they already agree with, and ignoring any data source that conflicts with their dearly held beliefs. The information is “compiled” in a deliberately deceptive manner. This is fed to the public, complete with instructions to disregard or react with hostility to anyone that questions or contradicts the core ideology.

This is bad enough, but even more problematic is the dumbing down of the data. Compilations that amount to “bad man hurts animals” or “tragic tale is villain’s fault” are often the main thrust of news programs. It’s as if people attention spans are too short to absorb the full truth and nuances of actual events. They would rather be fed a pre-digested take on events, even if it lacks depth of understanding or even basic veracity. People sometimes turn away from the complicated dialog to fixate on the simple and easy to comprehend story about the iconic events that often dominate news cycles, yet really amount to nothing important. It’s noise. Just like when a signal is corrupted by static, our information stream sometimes gets clogged by rubbish. This makes it hard to hear the real truth when it is being drowned out by random loud annoying noise. Sometimes noise such as this can generate heat, as if the masses have listened to the lunatic scratching his nails on the chalkboard and screaming about the end of the world. You listen to such cacophony at your own risk.

I believe that what happened in Egypt and is trying to happen in the Middle East and places like China is that the raw compilation power of the general public is having the wool stripped off of their eyes for the first time. When the raw truths emerge, populations turn to their governments and leaders that have been contradicting those truths and become enraged and intolerant toward them. Propaganda and misdirection break down when we are awash in information. This can be truly enlightening and empowering for those under the thumb of a repressive regime, but you can imagine that they can be terrifying for those powerful leaders who built their massive house of cards on a foundation of lies and misdirection. This is not only true for governments, but for personalities and pundits and for large corporations. The key here is that pure unadulterated information is available to the masses so that they can decide what is right, what is the compiled essence of that information.

This information revolution is on an exponential track. That is what is really scary about it. What is going to happen to us when our ability to understand starts to approach our desire to focus our attention to a subject. Verner Vinge is the author of a book called Beyond Realtime, where he speculated that people’s understanding will accelerate so rapidly that we will simply evolve to the next realm. In his fictional account, most people simply disappeared. They had been linked mind to mind through a vast internet of humans that could communicate directly with the network and each other by their thoughts. Eventually, this lead to a hive mind kind of mentality and speculation that humans graduated to beings that no longer required physical bodies. Ray Kurzweil is a futurist and author who has written a book called The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. His work contains much the same conclusion. You can feel this acceleration of information and looming growth of computation embedded in society. The only question is whether it’s more like the coming of great things or doom.

The End of Cash

I wonder if there is ever going to be a time when people stop using money. I don't mean that they would stop using paper money, or change from the dollar to some other means of exchange, I mean a future with no money whatsoever.

I was listening to a story about hydrogen fuel cells. These take hydrogen, and make water and electricity. They are currently made with platinum alloys, which are rare and make hydrogen fuel cells expensive. They talked about bringing the cost down by using something other than platinum, a cheaper and more abundant metal that might serve as well. It got me to thinking about how something has a value to it which is somewhat arbitrary, but usually based on scarcity.

What if money was scarce and we somehow evolved past it? This is a theme brought out in Star Trek, where there are a couple of scenes where a character expounds about how money is no longer used. This is supposed to be about 250 years in the future, in a time when energy is cheap and abundant and any food or material goods can be manufactured just by requesting it out of a replicator. Very few medical problems cannot be whisked away by waving some glowing or humming box over the effected area. So you wonder why you would even need money when all of your needs are met effortlessly.

Yet the Enterprise keeps running into races that still use money, such as the Ferengi and their obsession for Gold-Press-Latinum, whatever the hell that is.

I was wondering how this works in practice. How do they pay for their precious dilithium crystals? How does trade in general work, as there are mining colonies, and some are shown in relative poverty, others in wealth. You can't just fly in and take what you want, there would have to be some kind of exchange. It doesn't seem realistic that the miners would toil and stockpile minerals and then someone would just come and take them without given the miners anything at all.

I've always wondered why they still gamble. You see scenes where they are sitting around playing poker, yet there is no money, so they are not really gambling with anything. They are simply pushing chips around. If a player runs out of chips, can't he just get more since they don't cost anything? Maybe the chips are just for keeping score. Hell, that's the way some people today look at money.

If there was no money, how would you account for rarity? I've always thought that the Soviet model of Communist could never work, but why not. Of course people would not be motivated to produce an excess of anything if their hard work would just be given to those around them. Some people's efforts in life are simply valued more than others. It's hard to imagine a time when this would not be so. It's hard to imagine a time when the lowest producing segment of the society was doing virtually nothing and expecting others to provide for them. Imagine a world where everyone was working hard, striving to their limits. It just doesn't seem realistic. You will always have those that are content to sit back and do very little. Without money to provide a way of sorting the achievers from the lazy, what is the point of killing yourself working hard?

Of course, you can turn it around and see all the people that have lots of money that did very little mental or physically challenging work to attain their riches. And you also see those with lots of money and power not content unless they have an ever increasing larger amount of wealth. When this comes at the expense of others, or when the wealth of a few is paid for by the destruction of the environment that has to be shared by all, it is not hard to see why some dream of a day without money.

It's just not a very realistic dream.

Ship of State, Iceberg Ahead

I listen a podcast by Dan Carlin called Common Sense. He's got some good ideas, a good way of looking at things, and an interesting way to describe the situation as he sees it. His background is that he used to work for broadcast companies as a news man and later commentator/personality. He felt restricted by it and now podcasts and blogs to get his ideas out.

In his last Common Sense show, he re-emphasized an old analogy about how steering the ship of state is just like that, and there's a big iceberg out there. His point is that if you see the iceberg a long way out, you have plenty of time and it only requires small corrections to avoid the iceberg. He seems to think that we are right in front of the iceberg, bearing down on it and our two-party system is gridlocked and unable to respond.

I've had an old analogy that is something like that. In mine, the two parties are in a vehicle and each keeps grabbing the wheel and yanking it their way. The analogies are similar, because it has those governing us not paying attention to where the ship of state is headed. Unfortunately, those that are elected usually concentrate on the next election and no one thinks about the long solution and what direction we want to take the country in the long run.

Here's what I wrote on his forum message board:

"Your analogy about avoiding an iceberg is similar to an analogy of mine. I always thought our governing cycles that swing back and forth between the parties were like a car going down a ridgetop road with a steep drop off on either side. One side veers one way when they have control, and then the other side takes over and steers us back onto the road briefly, then on toward the other cliff. I suppose there are less perilous times when the terrain is flat, like the dry lake bed they land Shuttles on. Then it doesn't matter if we veer drunkenly around, at least we don't hit anything or fall over the side, but even then, it's a damned inefficient way to make it to your destination. The problem is that our elected leaders don't have a long term sustainable goal, and therefore don't tend to steer the ship of state in a straight line toward a safe harbor or rich trade port, or even a sexy vacation destination. We're out somewhere in the ocean dodging icebergs. Let's take the ship to a good place! Can't anybody appreciate visionaries?

"Today we need solutions that piss off everyone but harm no one. We need to roll the Bush tax cuts back by 50% and cut spending about 50% of what the last draconian proposal was. You don't diet by eating everything you want and exercising all day or by eating concentration camp rations and sitting still, you eat less and exercise more. We need to legalize marijuana and tax the hell out of it while scaling back DEA and foreign aid for drug interdiction. We need to cut all the wars off immediately and stop arming ourselves to the teeth. We need to raise the retirement age to the neutral point (the magical age where those paying in equal those taking out, plus about a year for slippage and inefficiency). We need to put everyone on Medicare on a program where they go in for annual checkups and if they stay healthy and loose weight, lower their cholesterol and blood pressure and stay off tobacco, we give them a check for $1,500 every year. I'm convinced that it's cheaper to bribe people to stay healthy than to pay for expensive and preventable diseases brought on by chronic unhealthy lifestyle choices. Don't promise people it will continue forever, tell them it stays in place until it stops showing a financial return. If we stopped subsidizing the incredibly profitable oil and gas industries and gave tax breaks or incentives to solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and other alternative energy producers, we could generate jobs here, cut our dependence on foreign oil that only funds states that support, harbor, or generate terrorists, and then sell the technology to the rest of the world.

"Each major problem has a common sense (and usually untried) solution that both sides in Washington reject. This has gone on entirely too long."

Bad Luck in Panama

It has been over 22 years since I left Panama. I was stationed there when I served 4 years in the U.S. Army. Three years of my time was in the 536th Engineer Battalion in Ft. Kobbe Panama. It was not a good time.

I recently got to talking about it with some friends and I realized it was mostly a tale of woe. I spent 3 years being moderately to severely unhappy, stressed out, and depressed. There were a few good times, but only a few with the time spaced out far between them.

I arrived in Panama in December of 1987. I was assigned to a unit with 23 other Lieutenants, and I was the youngest Lieutenant for almost a year, because there was a long gap between the time I arrived and the next Lieutenant arrived. There was a tradition of hazing the junior Lieutenant. This treatment usually only lasted a couple of months at the longest, so for me to have to deal with it for a year was unusual. The problem with this situation is that the hazing was by the other Lieutenants. For anyone not familiar with the military, you might not understand what it is like. There is a rank structure, and this is strictly enforced, and in reality, it is a caste structure. You do not associate with those in the ranks below you. It's called Fraternization, and the reason you do not do it is because they are supposed to obey your orders, and if they feel like they are your friend, they will feel like they may not have to do what you say. By the same token, you cannot suck up to or befriend those in the ranks above you. This means you have one group of people to befriend, those that are at your rank. This situation was destroyed for me because those people were effectively my enemies by virtue of the fact that they were hazing me. So I had no one in the military that I could count as my friend.

There was an additional tradition that was part of the hazing of the junior lieutenant. There was a travelling trophy, a model castle that the junior lieutenant was required to bring to all social functions. This model was required to be improved by each recipient prior to passing it on to the next new lieutenant. The damned thing was about 2 feet wide and a foot tall, a scale model of the castle each engineering officer wore on their lapels. The wooden base was a piece of plywood about 2 feet deep and 3 feet wide. The lieutenant before me encased the castle in a plexiglas cover, making the thing even more unwieldy and impossible to carry. My improvement, done before the second function I took it to was to remove it from the plexiglas. Everyone complained that this was not an improvement, but I only had to ask if they wanted to carry it around in the massive plexiglas dome to get them to shut up. Eventually, the hazing surrounding the object because so severe that I stopped bringing it to the functions and basically told anyone that complained to shove it up their ass. This worked so well that I took the castle out to the parking lot of my apartment building and destroyed it with a sledge hammer and tossed it into the dumpster. When I told my wife this story recently, she said it sounded like that scene from the movie Office Space where they destroy the copier. This was before rap music, though it did feel good to be a gangster.

I was newly married when I joined the Army and my wife had a little dog named Spunky that she loved. Panama was a three year accompanied tour, and the way it worked was that the service member went down first and when they had gotten a place to live, they could then send for their spouse. We thought this was going to be a short process. With pets, you travelled down with them but they put them in the pound under quarantine for 60 or 90 days, I can't remember how long. The temperature in Panama was 90 to 95 degrees in the shade, and the pound had open air kennels with concrete cages. It was miserable. The dog was freaked out and looked forward to having me visit as the only relief from this stressful and uncomfortable situation. Within the first week, my unit told me that I was going on a deployment to Chirique province of Panama where they were building a road in the mountains in a coffee growing region. I would be gone for two months. I could not bring my wife down until I got back from the deployment and I could not stay to help our dog deal with his captivity. Off I went.

Eventually, I back, got a house, and brought my wife down. She was miserable there. She was 19, had never been out of the country, could not speak the language, and could not get a job due to the U.S. Panama treaty that forbid it. She was immediately bored to death, and I was putting in 12 hour days and exhausted. I would come home and she would pounce on me (not in a good way), either wanting to complain about how bored she was, or wanting to go out on the town. I was way too tired to handle that.

I got sent out in the field again, this time for 3 months, and my wife did not handle the separation well. Eventually, I got back and the finances and the car were both not doing well by then. This was also during the era that the Panamanians started to rebel against their dictator, Manuel Noriega. It became more dangerous to get to and from work, and we were ordered to stay at home after duty hours. It just kept getting worst locally. They kept shortening the tours until eventually, they changed it to 1 year unaccompanied tours. This meant that people could not bring their families, but I still had my wife there, and they did not shorten my tour. However, some of the people that came down after me had their tours shortened and I started seeing people come and go in the time that I was there, while I still had months left on my tour. Finally, it became so dangerous and stressful that I decided to move my wife back to the U.S. at my own expense. While I was up in the States, relocating her, they changed the rules and finally sent all the remaining families home. If I had waited another week or two, they would have moved my wife at the Army's expense.

I was contacted by my unit about the situation. I was told that all I had to do was come back down and outprocess. The personnel officer asked me if I wanted to go to the upcoming Bolivian deployment, which was going to be about 4 months. I told him that sounded like a horrible idea, and if I had a choice, my decision would be no way. So I cut my leave (vacation) in the states short, and returned to Panama.

During my time away, the Battalion Commander, LTC Evans, changed command with a new commander. I had not met him yet. I can't remember his name, now. When I returned to the unit, I was taken in to his office. By this time, I had been passed over for promotion. For many years since the draw down after the end of the Viet Nam War, promotion from Lieutenant to Captain was virtually automatic. Only about 3% did not make it, and you had to screw up spectacularly to be in that group. In my year group, it was the first time they changed the rules. They were drawing down the forces again, and 1/3 of my year group was not promoted. I never expected to stay in the Army, I always intended to serve my 4 years and get out. As a result, I did not do any of the things people did that were trying to make a stellar career out of the Army. I did not max out my PT (physical training) tests, I even turned down some awards when I was told that I could not submit my troops for the awards. My evaluations were done the old fashioned way, which was to give low ratings to new lieutenants, and raise them up slowly, showing that you were improving. This old method preserved the Senior Rater's Profile, which was supposed to show a bell curve of rating scores given out. The only way that could occur was if some people got low scores, and these were reserved for the junior lieutenants. I never fought this system, because I felt it didn't matter and it didn't apply to me. By the time I returned to Panama to outprocess, I had already been passed over for Captain.

The new commander immediately told me that I was declared mission essential for the Bolivian deployment and my tour was involuntarily extended back out to the original 3 years. I fought with him, earning me his disrespect and animosity, but not changing his position any. He never did satisfactorily answer my question about how I could be passed over for promotion, but indispensable to the military at the same time. I was soon on a plane to Bolivia.

Bolivia was a shit hole. We stayed in an impoverished and remote region, a high plains desert. Our camp was at about 12,500 feet altitude, and we took some kind of experimental drug to relieve the effects of altitude. You had to drive or take a train from the capitol to the area we were, which took 12 or 24 hours. There were no flights in or out of the area, the altitude was too high. The mail took about 4 weeks to get back to the states. We had moral calls home. This was pre-internet days, so this consisted of a satellite link back to a ham radio operator in the states. He would connect you with your family via regular telephone lines. You had to say "over" after each sentence, or they didn't flip the switch and you couldn't hear the other person. Each night, everyone got in line for the phone, first come first served, and we had about 4 hours before they shut it down. By the time dinner was over, the line was 4 hours long. If you got in to talk to your wife, everyone in line close to you got to hear the conversation, which was usually shouted. I only tried a couple of times, and my wife was never there when I called (this was pre-cell phones, too). I did not receive any mail from my wife while I was there.

I took up smoking, just as a way to say Fuck You to everyone and the military in general. I never enjoyed it, and no one really cared, so it wasn't as if my gesture of defiance hurt anyone but myself. The task force commander was Major Cain, and to be honest, I really liked him. It was hard to stay mad at him for probably being instrumental in getting me extended. Finally, the Battalion Commander came down for a visit. At some point, he was meeting with me, and he told me that he heard that I was doing a good job and was not slacking off due to my situation. He promised me that when I got back to Panama, he would shorten my tour to that point in time and let me leave. This was sort of like prison where your sentence is reduced to time served.

However, when Bolivia was finally over and I got back to Panama, I was again involuntarily extended at the unit. This time it was because there was some new motor pool maintenance software that had to be started up and I was supposed to be perfect for the job.

So I finally got to a real phone line back to the States and made my first call back to my wife in four months. She was not happy to hear from me. During the short phone conversation, she told me that something had happened and that I would probably want a divorce. Then she refused to go any further. She said she would not discuss it over the phone. This was worse than actually being told something concrete that I could deal with. I had no idea what the problem was, which meant I was free to imagine all sorts of things.

Things were bad in Panama by this time. No one lived in houses or apartments off base any more. They moved all the soldiers into former family quarters. I had two roommates, two younger lieutenants that I really liked, but I just wanted out of there.

After a few days back at work, I visited the personnel office. I had served as the personnel officer for the Bolivian deployment, so by then, I knew all about the paperwork. I found out that the colonel was going to try to extend me out to my release date from the Army in order to hold on to my longer. That would have made my tour the longest in theater for years, eight months beyond the standard tour. After determining that I was in a strange state of official limbo, I realized I had to take action myself. I filled out all my transfer forms myself. I took them to the Personnel Sergeant myself. He knew my situation, and we got along pretty good. I asked him to slip the papers into the colonel's morning stack of papers to sign, and not to say anything about it. The next day, I picked up my signed paperwork and took it over to the base Personnel Office myself. Orders came down from the Department of the Army in a couple of weeks and my date was set for a couple more weeks out. As far as I knew, no one at the unit realized I was leaving. I quietly outprocessed, and since I was supposed to be down in the Motor Pool all the time (out of sight and out of mind), I was not missed while I outprocessed.

The day of my departure, the acting S1 (Personnel Officer) a First Lieutenant (Promotable) Ron Condon called me in to his office. That office is supposed to be for a Captain, and the (P) for promotable at the end of his rank meant that he was told he was going to be promoted, but the date was still out a month or two in the future. He hoped and expected that we would start saluting him and calling him sir early, which we did not, because he was a joke. Up to this point in time, each time a lieutenant left, the other lieutenants got him this commemorative plate. It was a nice wood plate that was hand carved and painted by local Cuna indians with our unit crest on it. They cost about $60 or $80 each, and the tradition was that everyone chipped in for the outgoing lieutenant's plate. So for the last 3 years, I had managed to pay for almost 30 other lieutenant's plates. Ron announced to me that the tradition had changed and that now I had to buy my own plate, which he had ordered, but was not there yet. I told him to shove the plate up his ass. He also announced to me that my leaving had taken everyone by surprise and that they had not had time to put together a going away party for me. So he wanted me back up to the Headquarters at noon for some cake and punch and a meeting with all the officers. My plane left at 1:30 and you had to be there an hour early to board, so I had no intention of showing up. I immediately got a ride over to the airfield and nervously waited for the flight to board, fully expecting someone to come in and order me out of the airport and back to the unit. I can't remember who showed up, but it was a friend who knew the score, and he came over to have a laugh with me and tell me that everyone was over at Headquarters waiting for me to show up. I didn't fully believe that I would be leaving until the plane lifted off the runway and I could see the base shrinking away behind me.

I got home and met my wife and parents at the airport. I politely asked my parents to go home and told them I would catch up to them in a few days. I went to Manhattan Kansas with my wife, where she checked us in to a hotel. We sat down to have our long awaited discussion. She admitted to me that she had been cheating multiple times. I told her I expected it would be something like that. I told her that I forgave her, and that we could blame the whole experience on Panama and the U.S. Military. I told her that we should wipe the slate clean and make a new start from this moment on. She told me she still wanted a divorce. I always wondered why she confessed if she never intended to stay in the marriage. I told her I thought we should work it out, and she told me that she would not ask for alimony or any kind of support if I would just let her go without a fight. So I agreed.

This did not stop her from calling back a couple of days later and telling me that she had been talking to her friends, who told her that she was entitled and she should ask for alimony. I informed her that I would fight the divorce if she insisted on payments from me. She dropped it.

I showed up at Fort Leonard Wood on the coldest week of the year. The temperature got to about ten below, and the wind got the wind chill down to about 25 below. I did not have sufficient cold weather gear and was freezing my ass off. I managed to freeze the brakes on my car shut when I tried to blast through some drifts in order to make it easier to leave at the end of the day. The last day before Christmas break, I was out there in the freezing wind on my back in the snow with a propane torch, trying to loosen up the frozen brake calipers.

On the way home that night, I heard on the radio that the U.S. had invaded Panama. I finally felt like it was over and I was at home.

Quitting Smoking Can Kill You

A friend of mine, Kurt, was a heavy smoker. I spoke to him recently, and he mentioned that he was quitting smoking, and that it sucked. He's using the patch, but he loved to smoke.

In trying to be helpful, I related what I did 16 years ago when I quit chewing. I told him that exercise is good, that it helped me. He told me that was not a great option for him, as he was in such terrible shape. I was trying to convince him that even walking would be a good enough form of exercise.

He told me he didn't really give a shit about much of anything right now, but thanks for the suggestion.

I suggested he walk in some of the worst neighborhoods of East St. Louis. I said it sounded as if he didn't care much if he lived or died. People would probably sense that and stay out of the way. I told him it would be a good way to gage his recovery from his nicotine connection. When you realize you're starting to care again, you're over the nicotine, and it's time to stop walking in the danger zone.

I'm very helpful.

Big Advertising Brother

Sometimes, the fun times and the free ride abruptly comes to a halt.

I've been wondering for the last 12 years, ever since the dot com bubble, how some of these internet companies make any money. It seemed to me that they weren't really selling anything, and they weren't charging me for the use of their work, so I could not figure out how it worked. There has been a lot of really cool free websites to choose from. The same is true for podcasts. It seems crazy (but somehow right) to me that so many excellent podcasts are available for free online.

Well, we increasingly see where these companies get their money. Facebook recently incurred the anger and ... well, I was going to say wrath, but actually no one is doing anything against them. They supposedly released a great deal of private information to third party advertisers. However, the general public is posting their private photographs and inane comments on the site all day without any regard for who sees it.

Now Google has started mining the search habits of people to target advertising at them. Not just casual and average Google using web searchers, but particularly the users of gmail, their popular (and FREE! see the pattern?) email service provider. The gmail program was reading the public's emails and targeting popup ads to people based on things they mentioned in private messages. That is kind of creepy, like a stalker staring in through your curtains at night. You can opt out at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/opt-out.html

There is another site called Criteo that watches where you go browsing on the web and then targets personalized ads back at you about sites you've already been to. The banner ads on the sides of the screen reveal what the person has looked at before & offer ads targeted at that, serving as constant reminders to go back to the site later. This can be disabled, once you notice it, through a site at http://www.criteo.com/us/privacy-policy

The reaction is not universally bad. Some say it's not all Big Brother but potentially something that can make web browsing more personalized. Some can easily ignore the privacy concerns. They think this is OK if the computer sorts through your web browsing habits and just show them the things they are interested in. After all, if you're going to be exposed to ads, wouldn't it be nice if it was something you were probably interested in? There was a recent Science Friday episode where this was discussed, but the supporter of the ads was in the industry themselves.

I feel strangely ambivalent to this. In one view, you could say that the death of privacy would be great if you could not be discriminated by public disclosures of private facts. There is a certain honesty and surrender to not worrying what anyone might find out about you. And knowing that you are constantly being monitored could be exactly what some people need to help behave honestly and ethically. On the other hand, it sure seems that the potential for harm when someone has the ability to look at your private activities is something that cannot be denied.

Wisconsin Machinations

Suddenly, the bogeyman of the day for the newly elected and empowered state governors is PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS.

While giving away huge tax breaks to major corporations or helping with public funding to steal businesses from other states, thus insuring that their state budgets veer into the red, they are, with the other hand, waving an accusing finger at the public unions. Somehow, school teachers, that's right SCHOOL TEACHERS, who don't get paid enough for the crap they have to take on a day to day basis, and who give up any hope of making a decent living when they agree to teach (usually for the idealistic reason that they want to help the next generation to learn their way in life) are being painted as these greedy people living high on the public dime.

The real calculus here by the conservative governors is a hope that they can break the backs of the unions that usually support and vote for democratic candidates. It's pure political maneuvering. If they spent more time trying to empower teachers and making sure that they had everything they needed to do their jobs, rather than trying to get the science teachers to teach religion in the science classes or get students to drill for standardized tests rather than learn critical thinking, they might actually impress some teachers and make them more likely to treat conservative candidates as something other than a threat to their way of life.

This week, a liberal blogger spoofed big conservative political supporter and contributor, David Koch. He called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and recorded a 20 minute long conversation with him where he got the governor to reveal his true thinking on the matter. What was discussed in an open and unguarded conversation was that the issue is not budget balancing, but union busting, pure and simple.

The conservative Koch brothers are big supporters of the Republican party in Wisconsin, and through their generous contributions, they have had a hand at dictating public policy in the state. They have a scheme that would put the most polluting public power plants up for sale to private sector, where they would be unregulated. Detractors fear that they could set up an Enron-like scheme where the power rates could be jacked up and massive profits could be had at the expense of customers that would have no choice but to pay the price being asked.

Walker is a huge supporter of the union busting efforts and is hoping it will spread to other states. There are signs that it is at work in Indiana and Ohio. If not directly supported by conservatives, these governors have been the benefactors of massive ad campaigns funded by big interests and targeting conservative governor's opponents.

Wisconsin has already limited lawsuits against big companies, meaning corporations that pollute or act against the public in some other way cannot be assessed punitive damages greater than $200,000. Another tactic is a move to try to insure that all regulations will have to be signed off by the governor before they will be enforced. I don't understand if this is a form of a line item veto, or a way that a governor can simply avoid enforcing laws he doesn't agree with without fear of penalty from the legislature.

I heard a comment from some random Tea Partier that "We need a revolution." He probably wants to take down big government and disrupt taxation, but it could just as easily ignite a backlash by people wanting to assert their rights and interests over huge corporate influence and corruption. Perhaps they should be aware what they ask for, as political machinations have a way of backfiring on you.

Arab Uprisings Background: Historical Parallels

Check out the two pictures I found. I saw the first one, which is a map of where protests and uprisings are happening. The second one I searched out because of a memory of a book I read about the rise and spread of Islam. I remembered the extent of the Caliphate because I remember thinking that it was sort of a mirror image across the Meditteranean of the Roman Empire. One of the crazier comments about the uprisings was by Glen Beck, who said it was a conspiracy to start a socialist Islamic Caliphate. So maybe, as truly stupid as the comment was, it helped plant the idea of the Caliphate in my mind.

The interesting thing is that the Caliphate is the area where Islam first expanded out to. In general, Islam was spread at the point of a sword during this initial expansion. Since that time, Islam has spread to some additional areas in the world and diffused out into the rest of the world without state support, but the territory of the Caliphate remains strongly and primarily Islamic and the governments of the region are somewhere between strictly enforcing Islamic ideals to strongly supporting Islam at risk of loosing their authority if they did anything else. So this core of Islam is now a region where most nations have dictators that are strong, intolerent and repressive, and have been in power for long periods of time. It was unbelivable to me how many dictators in Arab countries have been in power for such long periods. We truly do not pay attention to whats going on in the Middle East until it erupts.

Besides the near perfect overlay of the Caliphate and the current unrest, the other correlation I noticed was that some of the best food producing areas in the region rioted the earliest and had the strongest response. They say that part of what initiated the unrest was high food prices, so you would think the food producing areas would be least prone to that problem, not most vulnerable to its effect.

There was an interesting show on Frontline about how organization and unrest spread via social media networks. The governments had been in power for so long that they were older and not technology saavy. One of the things I found amusing about some of the stories was about how they tried to shut down the internet, but the protests had grown too large by then and taken on a life of their own. By the time the figured out that the internet needed to be shut down to hold on to power, it was too late.

There has been some fear and speculation in this country that the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge of Egypt's revolution and that they were trying to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state. I knew nothing about them, so I looked them up. Apparently, they had been seen as a threat by Mubaric and suppressed years ago, but they were later allowed to exist as long as they did not get political. The reports say that they were content in this role for years. Before Mubaric, members of the Muslim Brotherhool were responsible for Sadat's assassination (bringing Mubaric into power). Apparently, the group split after that with a milder public part of the brotherhood seeking peaceful co-existence with the Egyptian authorities and another faction radicalized to the point that they supported Bin Laden. In this recent Egyptian revolution, the young organizers worked to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups from making the overthrow of Mubaric a fundamentalist Islamic uprising. They calculated that the revolution could not survive the opposition that would arise if it was only a fundamentalist Muslim movement, and they wanted to include women and non-Muslims in the uprising to maintain support for it.

The story is not over yet. We are not in a position where we understand much of what's going on, let alone could be justified in getting involved in any of the conflicts, but who knows how hard it will be for us to stay away.

To Write is to Dream

I have three blogs. There's this one, which is usually pretty serious. I have another one called Animal Tales at http://wagginganimaltales.blogspot.com/ which is daily observations and attempts at humor. The third blog is called Technically Speaking at http://techequipment.blogspot.com/, which is where I make humorous comments about my work environment under the guise of an official company blog.

Why?

At least in the other two blogs family and coworkers occasionally read the entries. In this blog, to my knowledge, no one reads the material. So the question becomes, why do it if no one is reading it?

I was asked this question by a business associate. It was in the context of a situation where I had two people visiting from a company, one who had read the Technically Speaking blog, and the other who had no idea that I had any blogs. His rhetorical question was why anyone would blog at all. No answer would have satisfied this person, he was actually making a statement, not asking a question. His statement was that it was worthless to write a blog, whether anyone read it or not, but especially if no one read it.

If no one ever read my blogs, it would still be worth it to me. The act of organizing your thoughts and explaining an idea is a useful exercise because it helps to define and refine what you think and believe. It's sort of like practicing a speech before you give it, you familiarize yourself with it. Having an external listener, even if it is a theoretical or fictitious one, helps to focus the explanation to someone outside yourself that is unfamiliar with your thoughts. This is useful because you make no assumptions that anything is a given, nothing is taken for granted, everything must be explained.

Writing is not a new thing for me. I got a Diary for a gift when I was in fifth grade and found that I liked writing down what happened to me and expressing my ideas and feelings about life. When I was in Junior High School, I started keeping a Dream Journal. This was after I read an article about how your dreams work. The premise of this idea was that you have a conscious mind that is aware of itself and under your control and consists of your inner audible thoughts. However, you also have a subconscious mind, the 90% that you "don't use" that sits quietly in the background and observes everything and never speaks to you directly. This subconscious is powerful and very aware, but can only communicate through dreams. It's as if the barrier between the two halves of your mind breaks down under sleep. The subconscious mind is aware of the separation and the dream conduit, and it spends dream time trying to send your conscious mind messages. These messages are usually things that are important or interesting that your conscious mind is missing, but your subconscious mind picked up on and wants to call attention to.

The subconscious is almost like a foreigner, speaking a different language. You don't have a dream that says, "you need to ask this girl out" or "you should cook more often" or "look out for your coworker, she is undermining you to your boss." Instead, the dream makes a little story and weaves it with emotions and memories. I found that by writing all the dreams down, I found they were rich in subcontext. You aren't just trapped in a dim and dirty room in the dream, there is terror in the very fabric of the dream. You don't just walk up to a friend on the street in the dream, you walk up knowing that you haven't spoken in years and that you are finally going to confront him about something that bothers you. In a flash, there are whole background histories embedded in the dream, something that was either in the background or took a second to realize, but might take several minutes to write down in a dream journal. It's sort of like computer zip files. Tiny little packets that open up and are full of lots of information.

The point of keeping a dream journal is to discover what it is that the dreams are trying to tell you. It takes practice and familiarization, but eventually, you get pretty good at it. The point is that you have to spend time at it and learn how to make it happen.

The same is true with blogging. It is a way of practicing explaining something and hopefully, fleshing out the subject and gaining a deeper understanding.

So I have to admit that I really do enjoy writing this blog, which I consider a chance to discuss the deep thoughts and revelations that occur to me, whether they are political, emotional, or philosophical. It helps me to feel like I am figuring out big questions in life and how things work. I have always had daydreams about being that teacher that really gets people to understand things or writing editorials for a newspaper that people really find to be interesting and insightful. The only problem is that I analyze things in too much detail and do not distill messages down to their simple core. I am definitely more of a blogger and not a Twitterer. I often think that no one wants to listen to this shit. I am also writing a novel that has been kicking around in my head for a long time. I started it, and really got going on it, but then I realized that it would not have broad appeal, it would not be a best seller, probably not even get past an editor. Still, I enjoyed writing it, and should not have let the thought that it was not going to be a bestseller stop me from continuing work on it.

If no one reads it, why write? You could also ask why anyone would keep a diary, especially one that you don't intend to let anyone read. After all, a blog or a diary isn't exactly like a diet journal where you write down everything you eat each day. It isn't raw facts that don't have any deeper truth, it isn't a dull accounting of mundane events. But it does have something in common with the a diet journal. If you don't write down what you eat, you often have a complete misconception about the quantity and quality of your diet. Write it down and you can't pretend you didn't do it. With writing your thoughts, memory can't rob you of what you thought or how you felt then, at that moment. You can read it years later and think it was ridiculous, but you can't deny that you said it or thought it.

Actually, there is a much deeper reason for writing a blog. I don't find many opportunities to talk at length about what I think with a real person. I don't know many people interested in the same things as I am. So it is good to have an outlet for what's really on my mind. Also, I am 46 years older than my son, meaning that he will live a significant portion of his life after I have passed away. I don't know how old he will be when I die, but whatever that age is, the chances are that he will not fully know or understand me. And as time passes after I am gone, he will develop a whole life that will not have me in it. There will be times when he might wonder what I would think or wish he could talk with me. There will also be a time when memories of what I was like will begin to fade, and he will forget much of what I was like. But if some of what I am is written down, then I will never completely die, and I will still be able to share some thoughts with him from across time and beyond the grave. I know that sounds sad and morbid, but it feels comforting and self indulgent, like eating something deliciously bad for you and not writing it in your diet journal.

[Actually finished 4/30/11, not back in February when I jotted down the idea and saved it to be written down later.]

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Sometimes it seems like it's been a long time since a movie has come out that is a truly original idea. So many "new" movies are just recycling old ideas or trying a new take on an old familiar character or story. Yet there are many stories and pieces of history that never make it to the movies.

I've always wondered why no one has made a movie about Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. On one hand, it's understandable. Even the respected and admired General Robert E. Lee does not have many big screen movies about him. There just hasn't been much call for any movies about the losing leaders in the Civil War.

Of all the characters of the Civil War, General Nathan Bedford Forrest is one of the most notorious. In fact, I would venture to say that Quantrill is the only one that surpasses him, and that is simply because he went so far overboard. But on a good day, Quantrill had half the daring that Forrest had. Forrest managed to be a scoundrel, yet still have honor and integrity. He managed to use guile and deception, but still garnered respect from his adversaries. He usually attacked from a position of weakness, yet still prevailed. He had no formal military training, and not much formal education, yet he rose from private to general, and giving him a command was proven to be justified time and time again.

His strength was in his use of perception and deception. He was a natural military leader. Without being a student of history, his performances mirrored great battles like Trasimene and Agrigentum from ancient Roman times. Many would say he was an Anti-Hero, a villain and a scourge.

Perhaps one of the main reasons no one has ever done a movie about Forrest was because he was a cruel and brutal supporter of slavery. Most high ranking Southern officers owned slaves while the average fighting man did not. Forrest bought and sold slaves, which was much worse than just owning slaves in most people's minds, even in the minds of his fellow Southerners. Forrest hated Northerners and approached war as not only the duty to defend the South, but a great game with the added benefit that you got to kill Yankees. That was his recruiting slogan "come along boys, join up, have a lick of fun and kill some Yankees". He had a dashing personality that appealed to the young Southern hotheads under his command. He could draw more people to his banner more quickly than any other Southern commander. He was always able to put together a new unit of soldiers at almost any point of the war, except near the very end.

He pulled off several exploits that endeared him to his fellow rebels. These events would make many exciting scenes in my hoped-for movie. At Fort Donaldson, when the Southern forces surrendered to Grant, Forrest called the Southern commander a coward and escaped with his soldiers before they could be surrendered. After the battle of Shiloh, Forrest was tasked to guard the rear of the defeated Confederate forces as they were retreating. His rear guard detachment met up with the pursuing Yankees at a place called Fallen Timbers. Some have called this action the Battle of Fallen Timbers, but in reality, it was a one man show. He waited until the Federals were bogged down going through an area thick with fallen trees, and he wheeled his men around and charged them. He soon found himself out in front of his men, alone. He was soon surrounded by Yankees. When they discovered this fact, one charged in and shot him in the side, point blank. Forrest, in a battle frenzy, wheeled around slashing his saber and took off to escape. On his way out of the group of Yankees, he reached down and grabbed a Federal foot soldier. He hoisted him onto the back of his saddle and made a beeline back for his lines. The Federal soldier served as a human shield for the General, and was unceremoniously knocked off the horse when Forrest got back to his own men. The action checked the pursuing Federals and secured the retreat of the Confederate forces, but Forrest had to spend a couple of months to heal from his gunshot wound after the skirmish. So the injury was bad enough to put him out of action for a few months, yet he could still reach down while riding by and pick a soldier up off the ground and put him onto his horse.

Another one of my favorite stories about Forrest was a time when he met a Union force that was much bigger than his. He asked the Union commander to come out for a parlay, where he demanded his surrender. In plain view of the conference, he had two of his big guns brought over a hill, down a road and out of sight, toward the front lines. They looked like they were being moved into place for the battle. In reality, the same guns were quietly moved out of view to around the back of the hill where they were brought around again. This was repeated several times, and the Union General, after watching this while speaking to Forrest suddenly exclaimed, "My God, General, how many guns do you have? I've seen 28 so far!" Forrest replies that this must be all that have kept up - implying there were even more. The Union General surrendered without a fight, even though he had Forrest outmanned and outgunned.

In another famous battle called Brice's Crossroads, Forrest correctly predicted the exact course of the battle some two hours before it started. He taunted a larger Union force into hot pursuit on a blisteringly hot day. The column marched too hard and too fast and was tired and blown and strung out by the time they got to Brice's Crossroads, where Forrest had a massive ambush set for them. He chewed up the head of the column, and then the rest of the Federals that fed into the battle piecemeal were eaten up as well. Once they stopped coming on, Forrest counterattacked and pursued them and routed them. His soldiers all fought hard because they trusted him, and time and time again he delivered victories against all odds.

As the war wound down, Forrest's command was one of the last left standing. They could have become a guerrilla force, dragging out the war with the Union for months. Forrest decided to lay down his arms and convinced his men to do so, too, rather than taking them to Mexico to continue the conflict for years.

He settled down after the war as something of a hero to the Southerners, but was soon tempted into an organization that would later become the KKK. He wanted to fight to protect the rights of Southerners as they were re-admitted to the union and he wanted to limit the rights of Blacks to vote and control the new Southern governments. This was not an unusual position for a defeated Confederate. The organization began to transform into one that wanted to intimidate, harass, and harm blacks, and Forrest parted company with them at that point. Yet, his reputation was tarnished for years because of his association with the KKK, which was actually outlawed and went underground for over 30 years, with members being hunted down and arrested in the period just after the war.

This showed that Forrest had limits, and some would question if he was principled. If you asked whether he was he honorable, many of the people of the time would argue both sides of that position. Did he become honorable as time passed? In a strange and tarnished way, I would say, yes he did. Many that opposed Southern Rebellion and abolitionists that hated all repression of the blacks would probably never admit that there was anything honorable about the man. Yet many of those who faced him in battle would have a hard time arguing that he was not a man to be reckoned with.

Galaxy Zoo

I think I heard about Galaxy Zoo on a Science Friday broadcast about 2 months ago. I had heard about it before, but this time I logged on to http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ to see what it was all about.

The premise of the site is for astronomers tasked with classifying distant galaxies getting some help. There are something like 200 billion galaxies in the universe, which is far too many to go through all of them in a lifetime with the number of professional astronomers doing the work. They developed programs to sort out the galaxies, but found that a computer is not good at distinguishing a disk from a sphere or recognizing a disk seen from edge on. Humans are very good at this. So the images were split up by a computer and fed to a site where you can sign on to help. This is known as crowdsourcing, where you use volunteer citizen scientists to help perform a long task. Right now, there are a quarter million volunteers helping with the work. Unfortunately, that still works out to 800,000 galaxies for each volunteer to classify. The work would still not get done in our lifetime at this rate.

We have had so many exploratory space probes, generating so much data over the last 40 years. The average person probably assumes that all this data has been thoroughly analyzed by teams of diligent scientists. The reality is that the information is beyond the ability of scientists to study. It's a simple matter of time constraints. Can you thoroughly catalog all of your personal photographs? Most people probably do not take the time to do this, and that task is simple compared to analyzing the photos from a single fly-by of a satellite.

I used to watch Star Trek and wonder why they wouldn't have everything all figured out by 300 years from now? They are always flying by some red dwarf star or some nebula and stopping to explore like it's a wonderful new thing. I remember thinking, "surely they've seen this before?" It makes sense if you think about it. I have been paying attention to distance and speed in the various Star Trek series and have concluded that Warp 9 is not 9 times the speed of light. It's something much faster. There seems to be an exponential effect to warp factors, because they zip along doing 8 light years in a matter of hours. Even at these impressive rates, 300 years from now, we still have barely scratched the surface of one quadrant of the galaxy. That's just in our galaxy, which stretches for 100,000 light years across and contains 200 billion stars (give or take a hundred billion - we don't even know).

In the past, organizations like SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) have come up with ways that you can donate your computers processor to help crunch huge numbers. I believe they were analyzing huge amounts of radio spectrum looking for patterns that might be "man made". These efforts used distributed processing to run a large virtual supercomputer, but I have not heard that they have had much success in their efforts. They certainly have not found an intelligent signal, but I would also classify success as analyzing all the available data, and I'm not sure they've reached that milestone, either.

I've heard of crowdsourcing projects that search for habitable planets, supernovae remnants in nebulae, surface features on planets and satellites in our solar system, and protein structures in living organisms. There is a lot of knowledge out there to ponder. Last week, IBM put its new supercomputer called Watson on the game show Jeopardy to see if it could beat the two best Jeopardy contestants in history. It did so quickly and easily. This was seen as a huge challenge for computing, because answering the questions is not a simple database search, but an interpretation with some tricky aspects to it. Not all Jeopardy questions are straightforward, some involve word play and subtle twists. While the computer did admirably, they confessed that sometimes it would just miss the point completely. I witnessed this in the Final Jeopardy question on the second day. It was a question about airports being named after WWII battles and soldiers, and I knew it immediately (only because I stopped and read the historic plaque in O'Hare during one of several incredibly long layovers there). They said that Watson's strength is the ability to go over huge amounts of information in multiple databases, but it doesn't always make good sense of it. One of the possible applications that the IBM team said we could use Watson for was to point things out and make suggestions for a human user or team to quickly discard and sort through. They used the example of putting a patient's symptoms into the computer and having it list several possibilities. The computer could search through all the recent medical papers and all the old archives and do what amounts to an enormous amount of research very quickly. It would take a human forever to read all the medical papers and keep up to date. However, if the computer did that portion of the job for us, we could concentrate on those few possibilities that have a high probability of yielding good results, thus focusing our time and making us more efficient. We can see patterns and connections that the computer doesn't understand.

Our curiosity and need to improve our lives will always push us to learn about all the unknowns. I find it encouraging that we are still finding new ways to think and learn how to learn.

Arab Uprisings

I'm currently going through a period where I am behind on the news. I don't generally know the day's news until a few days later. I see this as a mental health move, in addition to being busy with work and perpetually behind since the blizzard.

I have a coworker that does not seem to be able to let my ignorance last for too long. He asked me about the Egyptian protests one day and suggested that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind it. Suspecting that this information came from Fox News, I took to the internet to better understand the background information. I skimmed through the Wikipedia backgrounds on the Tunisian Revolution and the Muslim Brotherhood, branching out in my search to learn when and how the various countries gained independence and got their current leader, as well as what their politics and society were like. I found out that one of the most probable replacements for Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was Mohamed Elbaradei, a Nobel Prize winner who had worked to control Iran's nuclear weapons program. I also found a map of the Arab world that showed which countries were experiencing revolutions and protests. I could not believe how widespread the movements were or how quickly they came about. In two months, most of the Arab world has seen unrest that could very well topple more governments.

My initial reaction was surprise that the Arab populous had this combination of dissatisfaction and willingness to express it. I think of travelling to an Arab country, particularly the less secular ones, as something I, as a westerner, should not even consider. I would expect the governments to be intolerant and likely to nail me for a crime whether I committed it or not. If you've ever seen Midnight Express, you know what I mean there. I would expect the people of these countries to form an instant lynch mob to help insure that I would be prosecuted for some transgression, most likely one that I had no idea I was doing. I have heard reports of people getting executed for blasphemy, which can be something simple like saying Muhammad or touching the Koran. I'm not saying my fears are completely rational, or that my views are well researched and backed by solid evidence, I'm just saying that my perception of the region is of a place that I could not relate to the government or the people and would not care to visit. I didn't realize this about myself until I started contemplating that these people were in revolt. They are acting more like I expected us to behave, with a thirst for freedom and a willingness to be rebellious.

Boiled down to the simplest summary of the situation in Egypt, it is a popular uprising of people wanting freedom from a tyrannical dictator who is corrupt and oppressive. Is that not an exact match in the description of America's own revolution? The differences are there, too. Egyptians are not taking up arms, they are stopping work and taking up banners. These protesters are militarily defenseless. After the common examples of what usually happens to freedom loving protesters in oppressive dictatorships, you would expect only one outcome, a Tiananmen Square style slaughter. People rounded up and put into re-education camps if they were not executed immediately. Worst, people simply disappearing without a trace.

The fact that the revolution worked - worked in overthrowing Mubarak, not necessarily giving them the better country that they want - is a miracle. The fact that it is spreading is also a surprise. At the time of this writing, protesters have been shot and killed in Pearl Square in Bahrain, and the movement in Libya is showing signs of evolving into a civil war. Not one country in the region is not dealing with unrest.

Many people credit Facebook & Twitter for enabling these movements. Governments are forced to attempt to shut down the internet to control the uprisings, and by then it's too late. The flow of information is too difficult to stop. The media has also been taken completely by surprise by the uprisings. Al Jazeera seems to be the only media outlet with eyes on the street in many of the areas of unrest. I find it ironic that the media outlet that conservative Americans were furious about for reporting unfavorably on the Iraq War are now the one outlet defying local Arab governments and reporting on the protests.

I see parallels between the use of Facebook and Twitter to get the facts out and WikiLeaks' recent influence on world events and opinions by bringing secrets out to the public eye. I grew up during the Cold War and entered the military during the Reagan era when we trained exclusively to face off against the Soviet Union. We were raised to fear this monolithic country that maintained power by lying to and oppressing their people. We felt that fighting the Chinese Communists was not as likely as fighting the Russians, but the adversary was similarly corrupt and oppressive. Both communist behemoths maintained their grip on power by a steady diet of misinformation and by blocking the truth from getting out. This is why we had Voice of America, a U.S. government run radio network whose only goal was providing our truth to the poor slobs trapped behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. We all knew what would happen if you stood up against the government in those countries. Death, torture, or re-education were the most likely possibilities. We felt we were better because we had free elections, freedom of the press, and freedom of expression, along with economic freedoms. I find it ironic that we have evolved to the point where we have participated in torture, where the governments are more interested in staying in power than telling the truth, and where a few very powerful corporations are increasingly in control of policy if not elections. When someone rips the veil off of our government and shows some glimpses behind the scenes, you actually have citizens that are rising to the defense of our government to keep secrets and take hideous actions in the supposed best interest of our country.

Even though the protesters say they want democracy and freedom, there are those in this country that do not trust or believe it, and further, they do not trust Muslims to have these freedoms because they fear they will be used against us. I hear the stories of how some conservatives fear the rise of Islam if Arab populations are free to elect their own leaders, and there are also Glen Beck style rants that are so far into left field that you can just classify them as "the sky is falling" assertions of pure panic, and not reasoned analysis. I cannot believe that people can abandon their ideals just because they can't relate to the people that profess those same ideals.

What amazes me even more is how unprepared the U.S. was for these revolutions. Here we are again, using a page from the old play book that we never seem to learn from, which is backing oppressive leaders simply because they behave as we like them to in the global or regional political arena. The irony I find in the events is to recall some of the things that George W. Bush professed and to wonder if he was right, even if it was for all the wrong reasons? The Iraq War was started under the pretext of self defense. Later, when the weapons of mass destruction were not found, the reason transformed retroactively to "Spreading Democracy in the Middle East". I remember at the time thinking that it was so much hogwash, because you can't have someone else's revolution for them. If they don't fight for freedom themselves, it doesn't mean much, and if you occupy a country, you can't truly say that they are a self governed democracy. Bush made several speeches where he touched on his desire for the Middle East to be transformed by Democracy. Then, in the Palestinian Elections of 2006, the radical Islamic Terrorist group Hamas was elected by the Palestinians in their first really free elections. What did the freedom and democracy loving West do at that time? They immediately denounced the elections and declared that they would not deal with the new government and things have gone downhill since. So while a look at George W. Bush's opening remarks in his May 2008 speech at the World Economic Forum in Egypt provides one with an eerie foretelling of the events in the last two months, I still do not think that we were ready for the actual possibility (let alone the speed) of popular uprisings, nor are we willing to allow them to take their natural course, if that means fundamentalist Islamic governments taking power.

I do not think Iraq was a starting point for this revolution. I understand that the youth in Iraq are less religious because of the way their country was torn apart by religious violence. I think that their youth spent an inordinate time growing up on the internet, because it was too violent to go outside. I am curious to see what they do with the democratic society we are trying to establish there. It's been 8 years, and you can't say the government is stable or not corrupt. It's just not as oppressive as it was under Hussein. I keep thinking about Iran in this crisis. They already had a revolution, back in the 70's and the Islamic Fundamentalists that seized power after that uprising turned the clock back in that country to a level of progress and technology from years ago. They are facing their own uprisings, first the 2009 and 2010 ones following an election that many felt was stolen and did not reflect the will of the people, and in recent days, a continuation of that unrest inspired by the success of the uprising in Egypt.

Even the Israeli society is undergoing a transformation of sorts. There is a movement of ex-Israeli soldiers speaking out against the actions in occupied territories. The group Breaking The Silence has been collecting recordings of anonymous Israeli soldiers telling about their experiences, and mostly questioning the stories coming from and the policies of the Israeli government. It reminds me so much of what could happen in a world where there were dozens of Wikileaks and the information on what America is really doing behind the scenes came out for the consumption of the general public. While painful, I think this would be a good thing. How can we form honest opinions about our government, that we are charged to select, if we do not get to see what it is that they are really doing and why? How can we correct corruption and misdeeds if we remain blissfully ignorant of them? Why should we blindly support a government that will not share the information of what they are doing and why? Are we small children that cannot be trusted with the truth?

While my coworkers comments on the Muslim Brotherhood were a reflection of the fears that many in this country hold over the possibility of a more fundamental Middle East, I do not share these fears. Better to be dealing with a government willing to express the will of their people and hopefully have some chance of solving many of the intractable problems than to continue on as we have been. Let them elect their devout Muslim countrymen, we seem to make Christian beliefs a prerequisite for getting elected in this country, why shouldn't they make Islamic principles the basis for electing their leaders? I'm not saying I think religious people should rule any country, I think that's a disaster. I'm just asking why we are so blatantly hypocritical of the practice and unable and unwilling to see that our stance is inconsistent?

Whatever happens, the situation is fascinating. The thing about history that is constant is that things get shaken up from time to time. Sometimes, things seem to get jostled into place more firmly, the revamping of society is like an urban renewal project that cleans out the blight and sets things right. Sometimes the revolution pushes things out of control and makes us wish for better days. I think it's good to sit back and watch groups of people struggle for their freedom. If you aren't inspired by this, what side are you on?

Power Plays

In my opinion, it is no question which side of the political divide exerts more sway on public opinion. The Republicans have a much more unified effort at pushing their political agenda. Through Fox News and conservative talk radio conservative talking points are continuously hammered into the public's brains. Don't give me this bull about the liberal media - conservative viewpoints dominate the media in all meaningful ways, and if you doubt me, look at advertising revenue and market share. This is a well oiled machine, this way of pushing a certain viewpoint out on the public. There are many people I know repeat the same talking points and if you ever wonder where they get these ideas, tune in to Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, or O'Reilly for a week and then listen around for how often you hear their remarks being parroted. The true brilliance of this approach is that people are walking around making smart sounding arguments and assertions about subject that they know absolutely nothing about. Hey, it sounded good on the radio or TV, no reason to research it and see what it's all about, you're armed and ready, just get out there and shoot your mouth off. It's the great American pastime.

I heard about the Wisconsin Representative walkout and efforts by the Governor to end collective bargaining by government employees. I saw the initial reports that were shaping it up to be a union breaking effort by a heartless Republican on one side of the argument and a reining in of overpaid and over-privileged fat cat government workers on one had. I did a little research and found that the salary comparisons were said to be unfair, as you are looking at a mostly degreed, well educated and professional government service population being compared to everyone from CEOs to minimum wage workers in the private sector. Apparently, the government does very little blue collar work, and what labor intensive functions they do have, they take care of with private sector contractors. One report said that the Wisconsin legislature just passed a package of tax breaks for large corporations in the state that exceeds the budget shortfall. They then pointed to the budget shortfall, conjured up a government employee boogie man and had all the justification they needed to try to do something they really wanted to do anyway, which is to pull the teeth of the unions.

I'm not a huge fan of unions, as they are strong on protecting their rights and benefits and short on holding their membership accountable or enforcing the need for standards and continued education. I get tired of the thought that seniority is everything and exceptional performance is not being rewarded in union controlled labor sectors. I find this to be a fatal flaw of unions, because it kills the possibility of continual improvement and exceptionalism.

I do see some merit in the charge that the budget crisis was created in order to limit the power of the unions and thus permanently tilt the balance of power in favor of the Republicans. I might be open to the possibility that this was not their intent, but it is certainly the effect. And it's hard for me to believe that the Republicans would not want to take credit for this accomplishment if they can pull it off.

State Legislatures do not have filibusters and there is no way to prevent a vote or force those that want a vote to be in the supermajority if they want to proceed. The action of fleeing the assembly does not strike me as cowardice as much as desperation. Running away is not a sustainable tactic in the long run. As politics go, the only way that this tactic works is if you can get strikes and protests to turn up the volume while you delay the vote. If the pressure rises during the delay, it might cause some of the Republicans to retreat or reverse their positions. I doubt the Democratic opposition is well enough organized to pull that off. It's not as if the public is going to rally behind the government workers, either.

What I can't believe happens in these debates and in some elections is how teachers are vilified by conservatives just because they are in unions. It's like wanting to hit your mother. I can't see tearing down the people that teach our children, and I don't understand why anyone supports those that do. I've yet to hear a convincing argument that teachers are harming our children.

This reminds me of the great Texas Redistricting Fiasco of 2003. The Republicans in the state finally took control from Democrats and immediately sought to redistrict the state to form more favorable conditions for Republicans. The Democratic legislators fled the state and Texas actually called on Homeland Security to try to track them down. The Democrats failed and the Republicans solidified and gained stronger control of the Texas election system. Some analysts assert that the Republican efforts have permanently tilted the balance of power in the state.

It's not hard for me to believe that political operatives look for opportunities like this and are quick to implement power grabbing plans when they come up. We've also seen it in textbook review boards that are trying to force textbook publishers to rewrite history more favorably to the conservative cause and Republican point of view. In Kansas, the state board of education is notorious for being taken over by conservatives every other election with the result being that they immediately try to get evolution out of the science classes and creation inserted, sometimes under the guise of Intelligent Design.

I see a system that is being continually gamed to the advantage of whoever can successfully peddle their influence. If they can't get to the people in power, they try to put people in power that they can control. We live in a system where the rich get obscenely richer and the poor and middle class just slide a little further down the socioeconomic scale every year, losing ground, losing influence, and losing power. In cycles in the past in this country, money has exerted its power until the conditions reach the breaking point for the masses and they push back. Some of the conservative propaganda you hear, the constant talking points that are parroted endlessly, are centered on how the Europeans are "Socialists". People that parrot this phrase do not truly understand what Socialism is. Socialism is not taking over industry in Europe. You do not have governments controlling the production of goods. You have government providing a broad and extensive safety net in the way of retirement pensions and medical care, but this has not resulted in a massive bureaucracy or horrible health outcomes. What Americans fail to understand is that Europeans are getting the type of system they want. They are electing officials that support these systems and demanding that they be continued. They cannot understand our system that allows the people at the bottom of the economic spectrum to be neglected. It's a little like the elementary school boy that is being teased by his friends for liking a girl. In this case, the little boy is looking at his tormentors and going, "yes, I like her. Why is this a problem for you?" The barbs and the insults are not considered derogatory to the target, so they do not have the power to sting or influence them.

Is the U.S. system of large corporations and political parties pulling power plays on the rest of society a good thing? Are we more productive and prosperous because we have this way of doing things built in to our society? Are there less European multibillionaires than there are in the U.S.? Does the European system have more immunity to the few powerful people purchasing influence and trying to reshape the world in their image? Is it true that the average American is not in favor of limiting the power or advantages of the rich because they hope and expect to be rich some day?

Americans are not a timid people. The same rebelliousness that caused us to seek independence still thrives in the hearts of our supercapitalists that want to do business as they see fit with no interference from the government or the people. The problem is that the people come from the same stock, and when you ride over them for long enough, they will start pushing back. In the end, our competitive and rebellious nature will force us into confrontations and conflicts. We haven't evolved to the point where we can have empathy for our opponents and seek solutions that provide the best outcomes for both sides. We run our Power Plays and hope for the best.