The Robblog

When Will We Ever Learn

2010-08-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I walked into a public library with my Dad. I had gone before, but it was always just a fast affair. It was summer of 1976, and Dad wanted to walk around, so I did the same. Being thirteen at the time, I no longer needed to visit the children's section. For the first time, I was looking at adult books.

The sheer number of books at the Regency Branch was astonishing to my young mind. But there weren't just books. There was music, records, plenty of them. There were also newspapers and magazines from all over the country, and I flipped through the "New York Times" for the first time. Sandalwood Junior and Senior High had them as well, but I never paid attention; here, they leaped out at me.

The sheer bulk of information available at my fingertips left a lasting impression on me. For me, libraries are every bit as important as any other civic institution, and perhaps on par with churches in relevance. Keep in mind that this was still the mid 1970's, and most mass consumed communication at the time consisted of radio, television and the various publications. Keeping current usually meant that you were maybe a day behind, though with television big events could, and did, preempt anything showing at the time.

Still, the amount of disinformation that I encountered (and frequently believed as well) was amazing. By the time I graduated, I was learning how to discern the chaff from the wheat, and still struggle to move beyond innuendo and rumor. For me, that library, as well as the one I worked in at school, were brains to borrow. It was all free.

Around the time I entered college, the first computer networks were being traced between many of the local colleges. The potential power, the promise, they held amazed me. I knew that the day was coming when those same college networks would connect everyone. It had been speculated for years that this was coming. By 1995, thanks to companies like AOL and early social sites like The Well, millions of homes were connected. Today, it is rare to encounter a household without the Internet.

When you think about it, this is sort of like a digital library of Alexandria... with scandal sheets, bulletin boards and diaries for the reading. While not perfect, there is plenty of verifiable information on the Internet, real honest information. It is not perfect, but it is current. News is almost instantaneous. So is innuendo and rumor.

Somehow expecting that at an age when news and information could be had in mere seconds that people could verify information for themselves, to discern the chaff from the wheat, was simplistic and naive.

While the facts may be the facts, belief systems are harder to overcome. If something looks too far fetched but fits into our belief system, it is easier to not look for those facts than to overturn those beliefs. For us, our perceptions are more important, too valuable.

I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't a victim of my blind faith at times.

The inability to acknowledge facts when they come up against our beliefs is not just a human weakness. It is a fatal flaw, something those who wish to control us seek to control at any given chance. In this day of oligarchs and plutocrats it is easy to be manipulated. Even well meaning, though sometimes occasionally misguided, friends and family fall into these traps and rifts can form. The powerful are not so misguided, and their pockets deep, their will strong.

But not invincible.

For their control depends upon an uniformed public, one which won't verify facts. They may seek to control that flow of information, and in many cases have succeeded in turning the tables. Facts, though, are immutable, and sooner or later resurface.

It is up to us, therefore, to try to stay ahead of the hucksters. They have plenty of flash, plenty of noise. We must look beyond all of that. We must learn.

We Get What We Pay For, And Someone Else Pays

2010-08-14T17:41:00.001-07:00

A few months back I was researching my Schwinn Spitfire. This is a classic, from the days before they were known as "beach cruisers" or even "cruisers"; they were simply single speed, coaster brake equipped bikes. In the case of the Spitfire, and its near stablemate the Tempest, they were dubbed "industrial bikes". Industrial indeed, for at 22kg, they are extremely solid.

My Spitfire was made in April 1978. At the time, it sold for $139, not a cheap single speed but fairly typical for the period. When I found the bike, as a pile of rusty parts in early summer of 2008, it was basically worthless. But, adjusting for inflation, it would have sold for over $450 new.

That seems pretty steep, but in fact many well made bikes pretty much cost the same. A comparable Huffy model from the same period was correspondingly less, of course, but would still be over $300 today.

These were mass produced bicycles. Huffys were common to most department stores, while Schwinns by that time were relegated to shops. The lesser bikes, your AMFs and Murrays, plus a few off brands such as Setico (common to the local chain, Pic-n-Save) could frequently be found for much less, usually the $50 to $75 range. You don't see too many of them around, and for good reason; they were poorly made, usually from plants in Taiwan.

Those plants in Taiwan would eventually improve, and much of their production would be taken up by manufacturers in the People's Republic. A few years ago, Huffy and Schwinn were acquired by a large conglomerate, and the production moved to those same manufacturers.

Which is why you can still find new Schwinn and Huffy cruisers for less than a couple hundred dollars. Suffice to say, they are a far cry from their ancestors.

But they are inexpensive and every new school year or Christmas they leave the racks in droves and find their way onto American streets. And, due in no small part to their cheap construction, frequently find their way to dumpsters within a couple of years, when they are sometimes replaced by bikes of similar quality.

Logically, simply spending a good amount of money on a good quality bike is the right thing to do. The larger retailers know this, but seldom stock them. Their business is in turnaround; bikes break and are replaced. For the most part it is a good economic model for retailers, but a poor one for the consumer.

But that's not what this is all about.

The drive to keep consumer prices down has had several negative effects on our economy for the past three decades. The first is the mass migration of manufacturing to areas where the costs can be kept down. While this has sometimes resulted in good products, the vast majority of these products have been of lower quality, cheaply made and soon landfill fodder.

The second is an artificial devaluation of consumer goods in some areas, and a resultant flattening of wages. Because the costs of a vast number of consumer products is so low, the drive by the worker to demand even modest increases in wages decreases. Forget the fact that some things have kept pace with inflation or have even surpassed it; we can still fill our lives with cheap consumer goods, so we feel as if we are living a good life. That feeling is what the producers and marketers of these goods are banking on, so to speak. As long as those cheaply made trinkets that clutter our lives can be supplied, we should be expected to feel good.

The trade-off, though, has been a reduction in real manufacturing jobs, stagnant wages and a lifestyle that is artificially buoyant. A good many real productive jobs have been replaced by service jobs, which lack the same security.

We didn't mind, of course, as long as we could have that lifestyle. People here may have lost jobs, and people abroad may be forced into factories with abominable working conditions and horrific wages. As long as we could have our big televisions or even cheap bicycles.

Yet we have embraced this lifestyle, even as we have been racing towards along with an economic model that was unsustainable. What I fear is that we have yet to hit rock bottom, and it may be all of us who have yet to feel that impact.

The Mad Dash

2010-07-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

Complaining about other drivers seems cliche, let's be honest. Today, however, I feel compelled to. I live near a major road that, just a few years back, wasn't. When I first moved here, it was a two lane suburban street. The problem was that it lay along a proposed route that would connect a very important part of Jacksonville to another very important part of Jacksonville. Portions of this route had already been built, with some on top of preexisting infrastructure while others were purpose built for the remaining leg.

Seemed like a good idea to the traffic planners.

Aside from the one purpose built leg, most of the route runs through neighborhoods, sidewalks bordering its asphalt flanks, with well delineated (though I think narrow) bicycle lanes. The speed limit for most of this run is 45 mph, typical for most suburban arteries in such settings, with a small 55 mph segment through a less congested area, then back down to 45 for the remainder.

Of course, nobody drives the speed limit anymore.

But this route has gotten almost dangerous.

Wait; strike the "almost".

Today, as I drove home from work, I found myself doing 55 in the long 45 stretch. I was in the left lane, preparing for my left turn, and while I normally don't like to speed at all, not doing so in this situation is foolhardy.

The trouble is that people were passing me, in the right lane, at speeds that were probably closer to 70. If they were simply going around is one thing, but they maintained these speeds and that slot until they disappeared down the road. If it were one or two people is one thing, but this seemed to have been almost every single one of them today.

And if it hadn't been for the rain, chances are they would have encountered bicyclists a little further up the road. Indeed, they may have, beyond my turn off.

Which brings me to another terrifying moment.

I have to make a left turn into my neighborhood where there is no light. This means crossing the two westbound lanes. Gauging the speed I need to cross the remaining lanes should be easy, assuming that the oncoming traffic is doing 45 mph. Which, of course, is not the case. Just like the eastbound jets, we now have westbound jets, also moving along at speeds greater than 55. This is the flow I have to go with during my morning commute, when my thirty one hundred pound Volvo 240 wagon is still warming up.

As anyone can tell you, getting an older station wagon up to speed is hard enough, let alone one that weighs in at a ton and a half. Then, not even a third of a mile up, I have to get into the left lane to turn off (I take a different, though parallel, route in the morning). In other words, I have to scoot my one and a half ton elderly grande dame of a car into the left lane, where many a frustrated test pilot seems to be living, all the while being pushed by others.

It can be argued that I wouldn't be having this problem if I were to buy a newer car, perhaps a lighter one. Yes, that'd be swell, except, of course, I live and die by the adage "buy new, wear it out, make do or do without". Besides, if people were doing the speed limit, or even just a little over it, this would not be a problem; my car is quite capable of speeding along, it just takes a little time to get there.

But this is just crazy. Forget coffee, my morning adrenalin rush is provided by my fellow drivers.

I could so go into how this seems endemic of a society that lives faster than it should. I won't.

Though I just did, of course.

The Rounding

2010-07-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I really wasn't particularly active. Due to a number of health problems, my activities were restricted to those less strenuous. I did a number of things most children did, but not those that pushed my body too hard.

Because of that, as well as one of my health problems, I was a little pudgy. Earlier, I could only be described as round, but as a teen, I always carried around a belly. It was my cross to bear, and I still do.

At least my activities were stimulating, at least for me. I built models, rode my bicycle, explored the woods behind our house, walked to Pic n' Save for my parents, went to the library by myself, stuff that seems, in my still young mind, to be fairly harmless. I did play some sports, though the last time I played football, it shattered my collarbone; no future in the NFL for me. No, most of my activities were really centered around learning and exploring. Not school work, but self directed education.

The other day, we went to the water park. Right now, swimming is a real pain for me; I have an injured shoulder, the one that many years earlier I busted playing back-lot football. My plan was to laze around in a float and maybe wade in the wave pool. Being a poor swimmer, even when my shoulder isn't hurting I prefer those activities anyway.

When we arrived at the water park, our friends had already been there for awhile in our shared cabana. I'm body shy, and always dread the moment I need to remove my shirt to hit the liquid. You see, I still have a bit of a belly. A bit more, in fact. Thin arms, thin but somewhat well-shaped legs, and a belly. I worry that people will look and comment, as they are so apt to do.

Fortunately for me, I was in good company.

I would have to guess that a good three quarters of all the adolescent boys there were rounder than I ever was. Their parents, namely good ol' dad, were my size or bigger. Well tanned, muscular, frequently tattooed but with bellies that sometimes rivaled my own. Definitely the wrong sort of oneupmanship.

In total, I would have to say that two thirds of the males there had my body form.

For the first time in my life, my shape wasn't the exception, it was the rule.

The parents' condition could be forgiven. With age comes weight, usually, and once you hit your late thirties and early forties, it becomes a challenge. But these kids?

Even as we were heading home, I noted a number of local boys who wore the same body shape. Sadly, there were also a number of girls who looked the same.

Maybe we've become too focussed on activities that require more mental exercise than physical. It would be easy to spout off the numbers from the government about how we've become less active overall, but that's not my point.

I feel for these kids.

I know that by the time I reached sixteen I was capable of making twenty mile round trips on my Schwinn Continental 10-speed. I may have had a belly, but I had rather muscular legs. Some of my other friends who did the same were veritable rails, with barely any body fat; how I envied them. Yes, I still built models and yes I was still a bookworm. But my parents rarely took me those places I needed to get my things, and when I became interested in girls they seemed even less interested in giving me lifts to see them (Mom, Dad; you were wise). If I wanted something, it was either walking or bicycling.

To be honest, I loved my bike.

I don't see children today riding bikes as we once did. Maybe it's because the most common ones today, derived from off-road and mountain bike designs, are heavier than the bantam weight Schwinns, Huffys and Raleighs of my youth. Perhaps its our now fear based culture; we are afraid of letting our children wander beyond our sight.

Or maybe it's this thing I'm typing these words into.

Maybe it's all forms of distraction that keep us indoors. We've built our worlds around things that require that we sit and stay. Our children are growing up in those worlds.

Don't get me wrong, I feel that the computer and our networked world has been one of the greatest creations in human existence. With the click of a button I'm chatting with friends oceans away. I don't play most computer games but there is a Wii in the house, and it is a whole lot of fun. Many of the children I worked with told me about all the things they have made their game systems do, about how many hours they sat and explored all the little niches of their virtual worlds.

Sat and explored. It's fun.

So is bicycling, or flying kites, or hitting a few at the diamond.

And really exploring.

A Republic, Madame, If You Can Keep It

2010-07-04T06:43:00.001-07:00

The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin was leaving at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman walked up and asked the good doctor if we were to have a monarchy or a representative government. "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," was his response.

The wise doctor knew perhaps too well how easy it would be, could be, for any form of government to be manipulated.

By the end of the 19th century, with the Constitution being interpreted in ways that I'm sure our founding fathers had never intended, the path was being blazed to allow the rich and powerful to manipulate our government more to their likings. There have been many times when they have been pushed back, held in check by the law. Eventually, though, they found ways to have the very population whom they were seeking to control vote to allow the powerful to do just that.

We the people were, and are, ultimately voting against our best interests.

It saddens me to see the depths of the divisions within this country today. Regardless of the differences, be they skin color, religious, philosophical, political or economic, these divisions seem to be growing in magnitude and width.

This is exactly what the powerful want.

In so allowing this divisiveness to flourish, they can go about their business of actually holding the reins of real power, namely economic.

I'm not sure if we've passed a threshold of no return yet, but I worry that we are fast approaching it. Woe be unto us if that happens.

As long as we allow the forces of fear and irrational thought to rule the day, as long as we allow rumor over fact, speculation over what can be substantiated, govern our actions, the powerful, whose interests are certainly not our own (and indeed can be said to be light years from it), will continue to manipulate us.

It is time for the people to realize that it is indeed "we the people". Failure to do otherwise will take this once great land of ours down a path that many have tread before. Remember, it is not military or economic strength that truly defines a nation. It is in how that nation stands for its principles, and for its people.

Happy Independence Day.

Immobilizing the Masses

2010-06-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Last summer, the band Wilco released a new single, "You Never Know", a very George Harrison-esque song. In the first verse, the singer, Jeff Tweedy, sings "Come on, children, you're acting like children, every generation thinks it's the end of the world." He managed to capture, in that verse, something I've noticed for a long time; we seem to be braced for the worst at all times, and this psychosis seems to be passed from one generation to the next.

And the newer generations are better equipped to experience that paranoia even better than the previous.

Our generation has taken it to new levels, in fact. With the advent of the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle, our need to believe that the sword of Damocles is hanging over our collective heads is taken to even greater heights. What is this accomplishing?

Nothing.

This mass hysteria, this belief that the end is forever nigh, is a poison, a neurotoxin on our society. It freezes us, it paralyzes us. We are unable to think clearly, we are confused, easily befuddled, and for the most part perpetually angry but with no real focus.

Trust me, there are people out there who will help us to focus that anger.

A quick look throughout history shows that those who are willing to help us focus that anger have their own agenda, and you may be assured that ultimately your best interest is not in mind. Think of them as fear peddlers, who also throw in a heaping helping of hate with every sound-bite.

A really good example would be the politician who can only win an election by demonizing his opponent. Or a minister that is always waiting for the Second Coming, and they need your donations. Or a newspaper that can only maintain circulation at the expense of rational thought.

In many circles, this is referred to as FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, an effective tool to achieve control of populations by playing on their neuroses.

As long as they keep us befuddled, we can't really think.

Do they honestly believe it?

Maybe, but the cynical side of me can't help but notice they are laughing all the way to the bank. Some of the people who are playing on our fears are raking in money, be they politicians, talk show hosts, televangelists or entrepreneurs.

They play us for suckers, and if I had to guess I would say they have done a very good job of it. We are effectively paralyzed.

Even worse, we are also controlled, and like a spider that has received the sting from a ground digger wasp, all we seem to be able to do is lay still while our very souls are devoured by their schemes.

Remember, people, this is still a democratic republic. If we wake up and shake off our fear and move forward, we, the people, can take it back.

And that is what they fear the most.

Living In These Modern Times & Trying To Keep Perspective

2010-06-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had an email exchange with the CEO of a toy and model company. It was basically pleasant banter of sorts. I wrote to the company with my concern that they were going to price themselves out of existence; some of the model kits they are selling are very overpriced, especially compared to imports. He replied that production costs for the workers in the plant works out to almost $20 an hour including benefits, and this simply for the people working the dies.

If this sounds familiar it's because Detroit has made similar remarks about their employees.

While I'm not sure of the risks associated with working injection molding equipment, I do know the risks associated with manufacturing a car are surely magnitudes greater, which is why an autoworker can demand greater pay, even if they aren't in a union.

But plastic models are not cars, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Ironically, the fastest growing fields of employment in this country are in areas where there are no real tangible products, aside from one. This has been in financial, insurance and real estate, the so called FIRE economy. Aside from the latter (real estate), there are no real products being manufactured. Ultimately, the bulk of the FIRE economy has been the movement of data from one institution to another, of inflating one set of numbers and agreeing that another set was either going to increase or decrease. This may have been based upon some real products being moved or produced, but in the end it is all simply numbers, an agreed upon insanity that has gripped our economy for the past three decades.

This insanity has spread to almost all walks of life; we expect more, it seems. We want our slice of the pie, even if minimal effort has been applied. The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness has meant, frequently, that we have had to sell our very souls to ideas that we once would have found repugnant, even repulsive. In the end, we justify those feelings as simply the costs of living and staying ahead.

Staying ahead. Competition. Pretty much what it is really all about too often, isn't it?

We wanted to stay ahead of our neighbors, and for a long time that seemed to be the name of the game. Now, thanks to a lifestyle that had us behave more like racehorses not people, many of us find ourselves trying to stay ahead of the wolves, those forces that seek to undo the lives we have made.

Thanks to that idealistic notion of the American Dream, we have nearly bankrupted a nation, and not just financially.

Morally.

Why is it not enough to simply have enough?

Because it is bad for the economy that we had produced. We are a consumer oriented society, and a lifestyle that emphasizes "enough", or God forbid "less", runs counter to that notion. We openly mock people who choose lifestyles that are perhaps austere as being backward and Luddite. People who choose to ride bicycles over driving, or if they drive a used small car. People who choose to live in tiny houses and apartments. People who have ditched their televisions. We look upon them as quaint and awkward and not really fitting in.

But maybe there is a voice in our heads saying that perhaps they are more right than we realize.

During the nineteenth and going into the twentieth century, many practitioners of the still young art of economics had a tendency to base many economic models on physics. This certainly seems logical enough, on the outset. Of course, in the end it was a failed idea due to the fact that the economy is a social construct and as such can be manipulated far easier than one can manipulate the law of gravity, for instance.

If we must base our belief in an economy following a model closer to physics, here's an idea that nobody seems to remember.

The second law of thermodynamics.

This law states, basically, that everything decays. Energy can only be lost, not gained, and over time, complex systems break down. Entropy, friends and neighbors, is defined as order collapsing into chaos.

Welcome to our world.

How do we overcome this? I haven't a clue. I'm not going to break out a chalkboard and draw figures and connect dots and pretend I know, as some pundits have. The fact is that our economy, indeed our society, is simply a mass agreement. It is not based on reality, let alone physics. It is based on human nature; ever changing, subject to whims and trends and God knows what.

It is that last fact that those in power are all too aware of.

The ones who actually hold the monetary reins are all too aware that this house of cards that they have produced could collapse if the populace should suddenly wake up and realize that they have all been collectively had. The past thirty years years have seen the largest redistribution of wealth in this country's history, all of it towards the upper few percent. We may be the wealthiest nation in the world, but that wealth is concentrated, and insanely so, at the top.

In short, trickle down economics became tinkle upon economics. This, my friends, is the very definition of plutocracy, rule by the rich.

When a simple medical operation is enough to send most American families into bankruptcy. When we keep sending jobs overseas and laying off workers here. When public schools are forced to lay off teachers while enrollment grows. When it becomes painfully obvious that the United States is well on its way to becoming a third world country with pockets of modest prosperity. When something that used to cost $5.95 suddenly jumps to $15.00.

I could go on with the "whens". It'd be insane to. But there is one more "when", and that is when are we going to wake up from this fugue and pull ourselves out of this morass? Or are we going to continue along this path as long as we are forced fed and willingly consume our daily bread and circuses that keep our minds mushy and the powerful assured of their lofty perches?

Trying to keep this in perspective is an exercise in futility, because sadly the perspective shifts. I understand and emphasize with many viewpoints. It'd be better or simple enough to say that we are all collectively screwed as long as this continues.

And from where I sit, I see this only getting worse.

The Rented Life

2010-06-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

One of the things I find most humorous about humanity is our ability to be contradictory. We say one thing yet clearly mean another. Human nature, yes?

We are ultimately self serving. It is something in our makeup, our biology even, that produces this selfishness. We tend to place emphasis on ourselves first. I'm not saying it is good or bad, simply a trait of humanity.

However, the one thing that almost everyone fails to remember is that we are here on borrowed time.

On average, the human lifespan is eight decades. During a single human lifespan, several other generations come along (I find the idea of generations itself interesting; there will always be others born after you, and in a real sense every year following your birth is yet another generation, as really they blend together). The newer these generations, the longer they will survive you. Somebody born thirty years after you were born will likely be around thirty years after you've died.

While it is said that humans are the only animals on Earth that are aware of their own mortality, we also seem to be the ones least likely to acknowledge it. That same selfish streak that so defines our actions seems to make us think that the only life that truly matters is our own, or at least that which is around as long as we are. We say that we care about children, about the young voices, and indeed go to extreme lengths to protect them. However, that protection, that care, seems to wane as they age. By the time the young become adults, they have joined our ranks and are treated with the same regard we show toward other adults.

In short, it's sink or swim.

And as with all the others amongst us, the selfishness begins its cycle anew.

Each generation treats the world as its own, yet feigns concern about the young. We talk about how much we care about children yet treat the world as if it were ours and ours alone. It is a world that they will inherit from us, yet we seem to give that fact little thought at all.

In his book "Next", author Michael Lewis explored how the then up and coming generation in the 1990's and early Aughts were handling the world that they were being handed, and their use of this nascent technology to make a better one for themselves, usually to the consternation of the adults.

One theme that was a constant in his book was the fact that there is actually generational warfare going on. While we say we care and want the best for our children, the truth seems to be that we fear them and what they might do to the world that we have really created for ourselves.

I find this idea fascinating. It actually makes sense, for it never really becomes so apparent as when the younger generation reaches adulthood. There seems to be a cut off point for caring about those younger than us. There is some logic to it, to be honest. But all this posturing we do for children and making their world better seems to be insincere at best; they will eventually become adults, and at that point we won't care.

Perhaps this dichotomy is no better illustrated then the lengths we go to protect the rights of the unborn yet how we also seem to be underfunding public education and simultaneously destroying the very world that they will inherit.

We love babies, we hate people.

And we love our own babies more than anyone else's. If you need proof that humans are nothing more than animals, look no further than that; our offspring first, our genetic heritage first.

This tendency to only think of what benefits us and our offspring is indeed linked to our very genetics. We want to give our own gene pool a better chance to propagate.

If we expand our point of view to beyond our own lives, we will find that thinking of our own life as the only one that matters is ultimately destructive. Too many of us think this way already. We are not immortal, we rent this life at best. One day, we will die, and our true heritage is what we leave behind, who we leave behind. If we think beyond our own mortal lives, we can truly produce a better world not just for the here and now but for the yet to come.

That's real immortality.

Digital Ghosts

2010-06-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

I had a few errands to run today. As I was driving, I was listening to Neal Conan on "Talk of the Nation". The topic; preparing for your digital demise, with guest Robert Roper.
This gist of the story was basically this; how do you close out your online life after you have shuffled off this mortal coil? It was an interesting discussion indeed, but it touched on many things that have been on my mind of late and the subject of much philosophy for centuries, not that things digital have been around that long.
We leave much behind. There is always unfinished business, to be sure. With the advent of the Internet, some of this unfinished business gains a new digital dimension that previous generations would have never even speculated on (though certain science fiction writers certainly have). Imagine receiving email from someone recently deceased. It has happened. Or online accounts that continue with their activity after the account holders have died (I can't help but wonder how this will affect online role playing games). There are blogs, Facebook accounts, documents and other files stored online. With more and more of our lives being stored in this Cloud (as it is often called), this likelihood is great. We are virtually all over the place.
The first time I read about someone posting about their lives as they were dying was in "The WELL: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community" by Katie Hafner. One of the principle characters in the book, futurist Tom Mandel, was aware that he wasn't long for this world and posted his thoughts shortly before died, and there they remained after.
In a very real sense, what we write is what we are. It can be thought of as one-way telepathy; you're putting your thoughts out there, straight from your brain, through the nervous system to your fingers and then through your stylus or pen or the keyboard you are punching. You have now converted electrochemical energy into tangible form that others can see. Through that, perhaps they can get a sense of who you are.
Or were.
For many years, I kept a journal, recording my thoughts and ideas. When the opportunity to share these with others arose, I really didn't hesitate to do so. It allowed me to share... me. Like my journals, I want these to survive my physical body. Perhaps its buying a little bit of immortality to have my ideas, those firings (and occasional misfirings) of synaptic activity moved someplace else. Of course, there are always the journals as well.
I would want to be remembered.
The notion of my email and networking accounts surviving me, though, is an intriguing one. I suppose I could always set them up to send out an occasional haiku or some random verse. A message in a digital bottle from the afterlife, if you will. Certainly fits in with my sense of humor.
All the random bits I've thrown around, that all of us have, are now digital echoes in electronic space. From time to time they are our own ghost in the machine.

Embracing Mediocrity

2010-05-30T14:27:00.001-07:00

Recently, I read on another blog (Dinosaurs and Robots) about NASA doing a full inflation test of their latest research vehicle, a lighter than air craft known as the Bullet 580. It is quite large; over eighty meters in length (253 feet, in fact) and designed to travel at over 128 kilometers per hour (80 mph) and should be able to carry substantial payloads.

And it was cheered.

But, as was pointed out over at Dinosaurs and Robots, why is this such a big deal, when in the 1930's we had many airships, and there were even larger craft afloat, the zeppelins. The 1930's, over seventy years ago, we were doing better than this. True, lighter than air craft were largely replaced with fixed wing aircraft in most applications, but there was truly something anti-climatic about NASA's announcement. Certainly, we can do better than this, right?

It's not that we can't, it's that we won't (or in NASA's case afford to).

Our country has been steadily back-peddling on many technologies not because they can't be done, but because they are not cheap. We have embraced mediocrity for the sake of the bottom line, discarded progress for profit. Not only are there plenty of examples that can be found in our space program (replacing the shuttle with a capsule?!?), but also elsewhere. Take the automobile, for instance. Prior to the oil spikes of a couple of years back, most Americans didn't give much consideration to mileage; usually, the only performance that was really pushed was horsepower, and most dealers only considered mileage as a measure of the car's age. During the summer of 2007, when gasoline prices hovered around $3.00 per gallon for a number of weeks, we suddenly realized the importance of mileage. We leaned on Detroit (and to a lesser degree, Japan, Korea and Germany) to produce better mileage. Of course, the scare ended and many of us breathed a sigh of relief. So did the manufacturers, though there were now hints that mileage was going to matter.

What most people don't realize is that the American automobile reached peak mileage around 1987, with most cars averaging better than 24 MPG (a 9 MPG improvement from the average of 15 MPG twelve years earlier, 1975). Then, over the next few years, MPG... dropped. It was gradual, but it sunk to a low of 22 MPG in 2000. It finally started to rise again in 2004, though slowly at first. It took a hit to our very tight wallets for us to realize that we were considering the wrong things. Mileage, as a whole, has improved.

But why was there such a huge improvement initially (1975 to 1987) and really very little since?

Because inefficient cars are cheaper to make.

And it's not just in the automobile industry that we see this. It is in everything. We embrace mediocrity not because we don't know better but because it is cheaper. Why buy a nice Swiss watch when a cheaply made Chinese watch will still tell you time? It probably won't last as long, true, but then you just go out and buy another one.

Trust me, over the lifetime of a well made Tag Heuer, you'll easily spend more for the number of cheap watches you'll go through.

And the bean counters know this. They're counting on it, in fact.

For while our collective incomes have leveled off, indeed have somewhat fallen over the past four decades, our need to meet those day to day needs have continued (and have even increased). Most of those needs have been met through the cheap; we import more items now of substandard quality than ever, because demand has not subsided while our bank accounts have. It has to balance out somewhere, after all. We spend more now on our houses and the debts we have collected pursuing the elusive American dream, we just don't have the reserves for anything else. We demand our local governments do more but not hit us with taxes, assuming that they too can cut corners elsewhere.

Yet we are the wealthiest nation on the planet, right? What gives?

It might be that tremendous gulf between the rich and the poor. Our wealthiest aren't just wealthy, they are insanely so. We don't want to say too much to upset them because they control our jobs, right? Plutocracy, anybody?

Or perhaps it's just a case of collective laziness. We no longer aim high, we aim low-ish. Easier to hit your mark that way.

Besides, when we are fat and happy, the ruling class can continue to fool us and cajole us and sleep easily knowing that the bread and circus they provide will keep us busy and out of their hair. If we don't notice their shenanigans, they can continue to shove mediocrity down our collective throats.

We Have Met The Enemy

2010-05-10T07:43:00.001-07:00

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Remember that line? Do you remember the origin of it? It was first uttered by Walt Kelly's "Pogo" in a poster for the first Earth Day, 1970. It is easy to think it goes back further. The line is actually a play on Oliver Hazard Perry's famous quote "we have met the enemy and they are ours" (he actually included the line in a dispatch to Major General William Henry Harrison after defeating the British on Lake Erie on 10th of September, 1813). When Walt Kelly wrote those words for Pogo, it was meant as a comment on the state of the environment.

That is not what I am going to write about here. I might touch on it, yes, but the environment plays just a small part.

For the past few decades, certainly the last three, our country has been growing ever more polarized. There are those in positions of power, both within government and big business, who more than likely rely on this polarization to keep them in their lofty positions, be it in higher office or tremendously powerful. We have sacrificed common sense and, yes I will say it, our very souls, upon the edifice that these powers-that-be have erected. They have managed to get us to turn against our better judgment and to vote against our best interests by using that one truly American trait; paranoia.

That, mixed with a dash of neurosis and healthy serving of arrogance, has been our undoing.

There is really no point in going into the current political climate beyond that. Everything that has driven this country, especially for the past decade, has been particularly toxic. But even before this, we have done things that have truly been against our best interests. The last thirty years have been about gaining as much wealth as possible without even a hint of civic responsibility. We are the wealthiest country in the world and enjoy some of the lowest tax rates globally, yet still we grumble about paying it. Folks, we are in the bottom five for taxation (depending upon the source, the countries that have a lower tax burden appear to be Ireland and Iceland). On the local, state and federal level, cuts are being made to keep the budget somewhat in the black, yet spending is always being called for. We have a crumbling infrastructure across the country, replete with failing bridges, and roads that are completely unsafe to drive on. This stuff has to be paid for in some manner; sadly, there is no Infrastructure Faerie to place a new one under our pillows when the old one breaks.

When cuts are made, they are always to the things that the voters feel are superfluous to their needs. In the past, this has included things like libraries and, in some districts, schools. Cutting either of these is wrong, especially during an economic downturn. Libraries (while some might say are probably not as necessary thanks to the Internet) still provide free Internet access in many parts of the country, and given that many employers have dispensed with regular paper employment applications, that alone is a godsend. Cutting education spending is like giving your community a collective lobotomy. While you may, say, never have had children, or if you have can afford to send them to a private school, the idea that someone else's offspring is not your responsibility is misguided. The true wealth of a community is not in its houses, buildings or banks, it is in its people. It is measured by how the people of that community live, and in what conditions. What determines this is education. Not paying for education now, normally results in paying later; law enforcement, the courts and prisons are even pricier.

This brings us to the environment. Once upon a time, scientists were held in high regard in this country. Nowadays, they are held in suspicion, unless it is something that industry agrees with. Most of those who lead the charge against the scientists sorely lack in any scientific credentials, though they may be leaders in industry or carry around a good degree of political clout. We have turned one of our most valuable commodities into modern day Cassandras, who warn of impending problems but are ignored or, worse, shunned.

Perhaps the problem has to do with losing sight of the long term. We're human, we live, on average, 70 to 80 years, and that is not a lot of time. Most Americans are only looking as far down the road as a couple of years maximum, and for many of us the next few months are shrouded in a mist as we live from paycheck to paycheck. It is the here and now that governs our lives, as well as a personal quest for wealth, even if modest. When I say long term, I am not speaking just for the individual, but for all of us, our community at large. It is human nature to not look beyond the needs of our immediate clan, but in order to address the problems that are facing us today, we need to broaden our gaze.

That we excuse our behavior by calling it human nature also is something of a dichotomy. By referring to something as a human behavior, indeed as animal behavior, we are being hypocrites, especially if one is religious. Most western religions believe that we are divine, and in the case of Christianity that we should be more Christ-like. Yet not only do we accept that we are imperfect, we almost seem to revel in it when it suits our needs. Rest assured, there are certainly those who will help us fail, especially when it suits their's.

We have met the enemy and, indeed, he is us.

Where Does The Time Go?

2010-04-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

Right now, as I type this, I have one of my favorite CD's playing; the Electric Light Orchestra's 1976 album "A New World Record". I loved this album back then, and have had successive cassette, 8-Tracks, LP and CD copies of it. I listen to it, and I remember this somewhat lanky kid riding his Schwinn 10-speed along Southside Boulevard, his rather pricey GE cassette player strapped to the handle bars, blasting the music in startling monophonic. I loved that bike, and I loved ELO. Still love ELO, bike is long gone.
When I listen to this music, I remember, very clearly, what I felt; when "So Fine" plays, for instance, I remember April of 1979, riding past Bradley Road towards a date with a couple of girls I knew (not a "date" date, just a friendly game of tennis). "Living Thing" reminds me of an even earlier period, late fall 1976, heading over my friend Greg's house with my brother Terry driving me in his Chevy.
Only two and a half years separated those two events, in an opposite direction, but when you are a teen, it might as well be an eternity. For me, music links me to the past, to events, a melodic synesthesia that combines memory, sound, color and vision. If I try hard enough, it is as if I am actually there.
By the time I entered my thirties, it was as if I were lost in a fog. Months would blend together, and events that had happened years before were as clear to me as if they had happened yesterday. I might have problems remembering where I had left my keys, but I could tell you what I was doing in February 1978, what I was working on, what I was feeling (hint; deeply depressed, trying to regain my footing after a terrible loss, building model airplanes like mad to sooth myself).
Once my life began to pickup again, and the malaise abated, it suddenly struck me; where in the hell had the time gone? The 80's blurred by, and I never really enjoyed it. The 90's saw me trying very hard to get on my financial feet only to lose myself again, and the Aught's had me starting to find myself again. By the time I landed on my feet, I was in my late thirties, and once I was standing, my forties.
I had lost two and a half decades.
That's a long time.
Forget the two and a half years between the two memories associated with "A New World Record"; that's a drop in the bucket. Twenty five years. Wow.
Forget how crystal clear the album sounds to me (better than it did through my small GE cassette player). I hear that music now, and it still makes me smile.
But it is also associated with a place long gone and occupied by the ghosts of teenagers desperately searching for their place. It took this teenager a few decades, and he still isn't there yet.
"Out Of The Blue" has started playing. That's another set of memories.

A Strange Magic

2010-02-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

That I love music is a given. I grew up in a musical family; we sang, some of us could play instruments, and we listened to anything and everything. I started singing when I was seven or eight, following in family tradition.
As I grew up, I got exposed to a very wide variety of musical styles. Country, rock, pop, gospel, and even soul. Later, I would discover punk, new wave, alternative, jazz... I could go on. It was all good.
When I was nine years old, my sister had a tape recorder, one of the smaller reel to reel models. I discovered it one day and sang into it; my version of the Beatles "Nowhere Man". My sister Lynn found it and thought it was the greatest thing and shared it with her friends. The sudden gush of attention actually caused me to panic, and I couldn't do anything like that again for a very long time. Years, in fact.
It turned out that I was very much an Anglophile when it came to my evolving tastes. There were a number of English bands that I loved as a child, and sang along with in my private spaces lest I be discovered. I thought the Marmalade's hit "Reflections of My Life" was a thing of beauty, anything by the ex-Beatles magnificent, and even the Rolling Stones had me with "Angie".
But it was my discovery of a Birmingham based band in late 1974 that really changed my life. The local FM pop-rock station Y-103 was playing a number of songs by British and Australian artists one night. The DJ was having a great time taunting the listeners, playing Olivia Newton John's "I Honestly Love You" every other song; this is no joke, he'd say "let's hear that again, shall we?" and yet again, the song would play, many times just a bar or two. He had just finished one of those partial Olivia segments and had just played Elton John and John Lennon's duet, "What Ever Gets You Through The Night" when he played a song that started off with stirring strings and a soft piano, followed by a rather British voice. The chorus stuck with me; "Can't Get It Out Of My Head". The band was the Electric Light Orchestra.
And I thought it was great. What a song!
The problem was it just didn't get a lot of air play locally. I wouldn't hear from the band for most of 1975, soon forgetting the name of the band. That changed in the fall of 1975 and the release of "Evil Woman". From that point on, I was a fan.
It's not that ELO was great. Certainly, Jeff Lynne knows how to cater to an audience, and his music was aimed at the US market with precision. It wasn't as progressive as, say, Yes or Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. But for this young teenager, who was blithely optimistic, it was wonderful. The sweeping strings, Jeff's vocals, Bev Bevan's rocking percussion, it was all very powerful.
The first ELO album I owned was "A New World Record", which I got almost two and half years after it came out (I didn't really become interested in buying music until I was fifteen; I may have loved music, but I loved my bicycle and other hobbies more). I say album, it was actually a cassette, one which I played to the point where the iron oxide was wearing off in places. I listened to this cassette in my rather expensive handheld GE tape recorder, which many times was strapped precariously to the handle bars of my Schwinn 10-speed as I peddled to the rhythm of the songs. There were other albums I wanted, namely "Out Of The Blue", which many consider ELO's magnum opus.
I would eventually get them all, except for the first three, which, to be honest, just didn't work for me. The albums (and that's what they would eventually be, genuine vinyl) that would mean the most to me were those two, "A New World Record" and "Out Of The Blue". The music, the lyrics, the... optimism.
For me, that's what it was all about. Jeff Lynne may have written some bittersweet and occasionally dark songs, but there is something very comforting about the music of ELO to me. When I first discovered ELO, I was convinced that the future would be very bright; we made it to the Moon in 1969, we'd probably have moonbases by 2000, there would be a whole fleet of space shuttles, every home would have computers and the world would be beautiful. When I listen to "Out Of The Blue", I'm not reminded of late 1977 or early 1978, when the album came out, but instead of 1981, the year I graduated and was fortunate enough to finally get the album. That was a halcyon year for me, and that album symbolizes all the foolishly optimistic dreams I had.
It's comfort food for my soul.
ELO would lead me to discover the Alan Parsons Project, Roxy Music, Genesis, the Moody Blues, and many new wave bands. All somewhat darker, moodier. I love it all, but for me, when I'm depressed or low, one thing will surely bring a smile to my face; thanks Jeff.

We Could Go On Forever

2009-10-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

What I'm about to say here will be shocking to some, not so to others, and perhaps even profound; there will be no end to humanity, at least until the end of time.
No doubt that statement reeks of hubris, for who am I to say what fate lies in store for us. Surely, I could be wrong, and I readily admit that.
However, over the last few years, as the current economic mess has unfolded around us, there has again been talk that the end may indeed be nigh. History, however, has taught us better. Let's take the most common example used here in the West, the Roman Empire. When it's collapse came, around the 5th century AD/CE, many refer to it as a civilization that collapsed. The reality is that civilization did not collapse, just the Roman Empire in that form. Instead, it effectively split, becoming the Holy Roman Empire in the west and the Eastern Roman Empire in the east. Both would continue for centuries, and in the end would eventually fall, only to be fused with other nations, or "civilizations" if you will.
This is not even considering what was happening in other parts of the world. In China, for instance, the 5th century AD/CE was the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and after the Sui Dynasty annexed both, China simply grew even more. In the Americas, the people known as the Mayans were busy building their empire as well. During the same period, India was under the Gupta Dynasty and growing as well.
For the next few centuries, all of these different cultures would rise and fall, until one culture, the Europeans, would begin to take center stage. It would eventually move on to reshape the affairs of the planet. That is the era we find ourselves in right now.
But, hypothetically, what happens if, say, the United States collapsed? What of the rest of the world? What if the EU collapsed? What then? My guess, and I apologize if this steps on toes, is that the rest of the world will dust itself off and move on. No doubt that, at this time, we are seeing the ascension of a number of countries, with some areas (Africa) still on their way up and others (India, China) becoming economic powers. Just because one "civilization" falls does not mean that it all collapses.
Of course, this is barring some other catastrophe, such as a super pandemic, an extinction level event or some other total cataclysm, human-made or otherwise. And this is not to say that the civilizations that might remain after any collapse will be tolerable ones, though I feel that it is human nature to push and need those freedoms and eventually get them.
It was Edward O. Wilson who planted this notion in my head seven years ago, when at the Connecticut Forum he was asked how long did he think humanity will last. "I think we'll last forever, or at least until the end of time" was his answer; words that I have never forgotten. I also believe in the words of the late Carl Sagan; "The sky calls to us, and if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
We should never underestimate the human desire to go on, to survive, to thrive.

Confession

2009-09-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

They say confession is good for the soul. Obviously, admitting failures falls into the same category. Well, here's mine; my returning the Florida was a colossal mistake.

My reasons for returning were numerous; the cold, my allergies and asthma, how stark things could be in Connecticut during the dark months, nostalgia and a feeling that maybe I could begin again. Since my return, what I've gotten are jobs with no benefits, less pay, narrow minds, my own weaknesses. My marriage failed, my nerves are shattered, I have been hopelessly human and have seriously strayed. Very little good has come out of my return.

Yet, in the current economic environment, what am I to do? Fate may yet conspire to force a move on me; Florida has high unemployment right now, and chances are very good that I will be joining those ranks before year's end. Where to then?

I don't know. Maybe a return to New England, maybe some place new.
But as long as I stay in Florida, I will go nowhere. Of that I am certain. This was my childhood home, yet instead of being reinvigorated, I feel drained most days. I've never liked the things that make Florida a great place to live. I've never cared for the beach, I don't care for the night club scene, partying doesn't make me feel good (on the contrary; it makes me nervous and uptight). Inside, I am a quiet man, someone who searches his own soul for answers.

The answers are not here. They never were. They are in me. But I am incapable of finding them here.

Enough... Really...

2008-11-30T13:56:00.001-08:00

Just before the election, I sent an email out to all of my family and friends. It seems that for the past nine months (and in some cases longer than that), I had been under a near constant barrage of emails of a political nature. My friends and family know that I tend to be middle of the road, leaning left. But many of the emails I read were full of such obviously blatant baloney as to push my BS meter well past 11. I was further incensed by their lack of even looking into the matters. Instead, they took these emails (all of them "FWD's") as truth, which of course they were not.
My email, in short, was a cease and desist, as well as stating for the record my position on a couple of matters.
It hit home.
A couple of people simply aren't writing anymore. Only one tried to defend their position, which I understand but really didn't want to get into.
Seriously, I've had enough politics. I've been political in one form or another since I was 18, and firmly believe the things I believe. Many times, I have also been dead on right. But all this talk about how "liberals" or "fascists" were destroying this country was getting to be too damned time consuming. At the age of 45 (there... said it... and I'm about to be 46), enough already. The world is not perfect, never has been, never will be. But we can make it better, I really do believe that. We don't have to be selfish or immoral. If we think as a community, we can make things better. But how in the blue blazes can an email screaming to me about how so-and-so is ruining this country change things? Do people think I don't read the news or something? Really now... stop whining about the problem, you can either do something or nothing, but don't just bellyache.
I want a simpler life, I believe we all do. We want good things, we want good times. Both are getting scarce.
Perhaps the solution is a citizens revolution to just... do good things. Ignore the pundits for once, get out from in front of the TV and just do something. The people who control the media, the ones pushing things that none of us can really afford anyway, they're the ones controlling it. They want you to be good little producers and consumers... mostly the latter. Don't fall for it. Do something truly revolutionary by simply... doing something!
But enough politics, enough finances and enough troubles. Please?

So Little Time, So Much On My Mind

2008-09-23T06:44:00.001-07:00

I've been slacking severely lately. My online column "The First Coast Sky @ Night", has not been maintained lately due in no small part to constant pressure on me from other quarters, namely, the need to survive and support my family. I was unemployed for two months during the summer, and we are only now just able to get back up on our feet. This, on the brink of what appears to be an impending meltdown of the financial industry, where I am currently employed.

To say the least, astronomy, the other love of my life, has taken a far back seat to the mundane.
Nonetheless, I am also preparing to return to school with the simple goal of trying to complete my bachelors, and then rush headlong towards my masters. I want... no, make that need to. I cannot afford to let those jobs in the area that I so dearly love slip right through my fingers simply due to a lack of degree. Besides, I need to affirm within myself that I can do this.

But time is short. There have been almost five decades from the time I was born to now, and each day brings decade number six closer.

A Spitfire Of My Own

2008-07-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

Most people who know me know that I am very fond of RAF aircraft of the Second World War, and in particular the Supermarine Spitfire. All marks of this aircraft are simply beautiful, if you happen to find fighter planes that way. My love for the Spitfire runs deep, and it is a dream to build as many of the different versions as possible in 1/72 (or thereabouts). In my mind, there have been few aircraft built that match the sheer grace of Reginald Mitchell's design.

Well, last week, I landed a full size Spitfire, except that this wasn't an "aeroplane". This Spitfire is a bicycle.
My new Spitfire is a Schwinn, manufactured in April 1978 (the serial number on the frame indicates this with a "DP" proceeding the digits; D = April and P = the 14th year from when Schwinn changed their numbering system beginning with 1965). This is a cruiser bike, and weighs in at a hefty 20+ kg.
The bike was being tossed by one of our neighbors, and looked very pathetic, yet somehow that frame, which just screams "Chicago Schwinn", looked to be in great shape.
Fifteen hours of work; removed rust from wheels, rims and handlebar. Reworked chains. New coat of silver paint for same. New Schwinn handlebar grips. Attached a new Bell basket. In the end, the bike looks pretty decent.
It rides great after a little lubrication. I did, however, decide to keep the red color that had been so sloppily applied perhaps more than two decades ago on most of the frame. Wasn't easy, mind you; I had to carefully work a wire brush and paint remover (okay, carburetor and choke cleaner) on to some of the overpainted chromed components (the fork crown, the fork bearings and nut). It looks a little unusual to say the least, especially since I also repainted the head badge in something close to original Schwinn condition (the black ran in a couple of spots during sealing, but I chose again to leave it). Final product; a nice cruising bike.
Being as I tend to name those things I consider important in my life, so it is with this one. What name did I choose?
Spitfire.

The New Economy... Sucks

2008-04-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

Let me say right here and now I was a bit of a fan of Reaganomics for a little while in the 1990's.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I voted Republican in 1980 but was always a registered Democrat. I had a little concern about "supply-side economics" but once I found myself in a career that relied on it, I was okay with it.
Now, we have this; the worse economic mess in years, perhaps the worse in a few decades, and I feel as if the US has been caught with its figurative britches down. By the mid-1990's, I began seeing the severe downside of supply-side; jobs were being sent abroad, mostly manufacturing. Most Americans (guilty here) were borrowing beyond their means. The only things Americans seemed capable of producing was software the past decade, plus labyrinthine investment strategies that seemed aimed at helping those that have money make more.
Mean time, I watched my employers get gobbled up by bigger companies (not so much a problem when I worked as a astronomy educator at a couple of science centers). Now, here I am working as a contractor for a very large financial corporation, with no paid holidays, sick days or benefits worth a damn. And my hours are being cut.
This is not the American Dream as I envisioned. And it looks as though it is going to get worse.

Some Random Thoughts

2008-03-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

They're called trolls.
I'm sensitive. Though I've lost a great deal of it over the past two years and have become even prickly I suppose, I'm still sensitive. And there are certain things that hit trigger buttons with me. And I want to respond.
And I shouldn't.
Too many of these are people who are setting out specifically to push these buttons, whether with me or others, and it is a little game they play. They love to provoke responses, to see how riled up they can get you. For them, it's fun.
Not that this sort of behavior would be tolerated in person. Polite rules of society, this sort of thing just isn't done. The normal results might be at least a major scolding, at worst hospitalization (or death). Since this is the Internet, they are relatively immune, hiding behind a cover.
Don't get me wrong, I've done some rotten stuff on the 'Net. I've created a sockpuppet or two (and regretted the decision) and have done light trolling (normally just poking fun at things). But the length that some of these people go through amazes and shocks me. Perhaps they are true believers in what they say?

I've had many regrets over the last two years. There are things I wish I had never done, many of them, and yet they still are there, lying like bleached whalebones on the shores of my life; the ruins of things once viewed as splendiferous that either through my own inattention collapsed, went horribly awry or that I deliberately dynamited. Not particularly wise everyone of those choices, and I live to live with the consequences. There have been some good things that have come out of it, but too much of it is simply painful. I'm still trying to mend and have become oh so very cautious (some would say too cautious).
But I'm also 45 years old, and perhaps this is some long midlife phase. For the first time, I'm trying my best to put my life in order and concentrate on the things that matter. I have consistently, insistently, tried to find fulfillment through others, as if having another helped me to be complete (to some small extent that may be true). Some have said that I seem distant at times, as if my mind is really elsewhere. Maybe.
While I don't necessarily prescribe to the bulk of their beliefs, Ayn Rand followers seem to follow a simple statement that has shown up in the game "BioShock" (to my readers; I'm not a gamer, but came across this via Wired.com) -
"No Gods Nor Kings, Only Man"
A bit more powerful version of "If it is to be, it is up to me".
And I've entered that portion of my life.

The Severe Lack of a Redo Button In Life

2008-02-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

It is very, very easy in life today to want to compare the happenings with those things that are relatively new to human experience, and here I'm referring to computers. Windows and some other operating systems have a system restore option built in. Have a system boo-boo of large enough impact and simply run system restore; you can even pick how far back you want to take the system!
For me, there would be two points that I'd want to restore my life to; late fall 1977 and late summer 1979. Those were two very pivotal moments in my life, though there are many more. The thing is, what's to keep those things that would happen from happening? Life is a series of seemingly unrelated events that suddenly tie together in to what we know as experience. Everything shapes us, and we either become stronger for it, or weaker. I am not going to advocate some plan or meaning behind it all. It may simply be just because it is. Dreadful, I know.
Even if there was a way to undo some of the damage that may have been inflicted upon your life, is it even wise to do so? How many other things might be undone simply by your undoing? Reality is a web; you pull one line here, and the whole web senses a shift.
In a word, somethings were simply meant to be the way they are. Nothing, in the end, can truly be undone.

Into The Woods…

2008-01-08T10:55:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks back I took Breanna (my ten year old) to the ~~Timaqua Preserve~~ Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, in northeast Arlington, part of Jacksonville, Florida. This used to be one of my favorite places to just get away and be with God and nature (the other area is Mandarin Park, southern end of the county). I love being outdoors. I was raised on a farm in the Mandarin area, once a small farming community prior to the consolidation of Jacksonville. When I was young, I couldn't stand being outside; I had been sick for a long time when I was much younger and was confined to the indoors and grew fond of television, and now here I was being deprived of it. In time, though, I preferred being outside. We had a few acres, most of it wooded, and nearby there were woods of turkey oak that were crisscrossed with trails. Why watch "Skipper Ed & Bozo" when I could blaze trails! And I braved the depredations of ticks and golden orb spiders to see where those trails went.
I always had images of finding the most bizarre things. I knew that there had been numerous plane crashes in the area, or at least fantasized that there may have been, due to nearby NAS Jacksonville. In all my searches, though, I only found dumped washing machines and the rusted hulks of very old cars.
Still, I learned much about what was wild in northeast Florida at the time. I discovered things that should be avoided, such as stinging nettle and its vicious, stinging hairs. I learned the different sounds of the woods, from the riotous call of a blue jay to the high pitch shriek of annoyed kestrels. And I learned to appreciate the silence of an early spring day, as the sunlight painted golden colors as it passed through the pale, new canopy overhead.
Children today here in Jacksonville, perhaps elsewhere, seem to have lost something. There was a time when it was safe for a child to wander safely through forests that were probably owned and technically off limits. The owners weren't usually around, and the ones I happen to know never really cared, as long as no shenanigans took place. Nowadays, we're afraid to let our children go around the block unsupervised, worried about what might happen to them, or to a lesser degree what they may do themselves. Forget going into the wild unsupervised.
Yet we read with fascination those tales spun more than a century ago, about the exploits of the young in a young and mostly untamed America. The world may have indeed become a more dangerous place, or is it that we have changed? Perhaps both?
So Breanna and I wandered deep into the oak forest on the edge of the St. John's River, where, centuries before, Timaqua Indians and French settlers once trod, over ancient sand dunes and oyster mounds now buried under the debris of countless oak, holly and hickory trees. We wandered until we reached the bird watching platform overlooking Round Marsh, where the ten year old in me imagined it to be an ancient meteor crater (which it is not). I climbed the stairs to the top of the platform and looked around while Breanna played below. It felt good to be here again, since I hadn't been here in almost two years.
Breanna seemed to just love it.
I just wish, though, that she had known the world the way I did. Perhaps she does, and I'm wrong, who is to say.
But the wonder of it all is still there.

Rock n' Roll Rant...

2007-12-21T16:05:00.000-08:00

I've hinted at it, and I think I'm going to come right out and say it.
I don't care for the classic rock format.
Oh, I'll listen to it from time to time, but I really just don't care for it. I think the problem is that the commercial stations that play it seem to be catering to an image that didn't really exist. In the 1970's, as a teenager, I was introduced to some college stations, notably WQUE out of Gainesville. The selection they played was unbelievable; you'd hear The Beatles followed by the Boomtown Rats with a helping of Al Stewart. You'd here some funk occasionally, maybe some Jimmy Cliff or other island singers.

Here in Jacksonville, though, FM radio was dominated by WIVY, Y103. When I received my first FM radio (late summer 1978), it was a poorly built SETICO radio from Pic-n-Save. There was a little bit of looseness where tuning was concerned, and because of the strength of Y103's transmitter, all of the frequencies from 101 to 104 were washed out. This was the height of the disco era, and while I liked some of it (Heatwave, some Bee Gees), most of it was mind-numbing. WQUE, on the other hand, was barely there at the best of times, and if the weather turned it was simply gone.

One day, during the summer of 1980, it... vanished. Fortunately, disco was waning and Y103 began to play New Wave as well. It was different, new... I liked a lot of it. Before long, though, a new station emerged and it was simply a rock station, simply Rock 105. It played... rock. Rock rock. Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones (they had a new album, and it was in serious rotation), AC/DC, KISS, every southern rock band... Rock 105 was rock. A little bit of new wave, but mostly rock.

This was perfect for a testosterone laden 17 year old, and I really liked it. They played a real variety, though again most of it was aimed at 17 year olds like myself.

By the end of the summer of 1981, I started hearing more college music, and early in 1982 was introduced to MTV. At that time, they played really good music and some of the most unusual acts I had ever seen. Rock 105 seemed suddenly irrelevant, but they too caught on and started playing pretty much the same mix with their standard fare.

Jump forward 25 years, and now radio has fractured into many different genres. What I used to consider rock doesn't quite exist. When the first classic rock stations began to appear (the first one I listened to was in south Florida), I noticed a tremendous lack of diversity in their playlist. Some bands simply weren't being played. I also noticed regional differences. I hardly heard southern rock in south Florida and New England, but it gets plenty of airplay in Jacksonville (pretty much the de facto home of that genre). Some bands get only scant airplay when they used to be heard a lot. Other bands get entirely too much airplay.

I decided to dig into this; why is that Yes or Todd Rundgren and Utopia get hardly if any airplay? Oh? They're not classic rock? Uh, didn't know that. But they used to get... oh, they're progressive rock. Okay, right. Got it now. How about the Talking Heads? Oh, they're new wave... or maybe progressive. But they aren't classic rock. Hmmm. But didn't you play them... oh, you had a different format then. What was it? Oh, right... rock.

Like middle-aged businessmen buying overpriced Harleys, the classic rock station is catering to an image of a memory that is simply not the truth. It tends to cater to middle-aged men who can sit around and say "oh, yeah, I remember when they played Van Halen all the time! Right on!", when in reality the old rock stations played a lot more and the typical middle-aged man was into pop and disco just like the vast majority of Americans when he was young. These stations are just illusions, playing from computerized playlist songs from a synthesized reality.

Perhaps it's fitting that most of these stations are pretty much automated, lacking any real human presence or soul. There's more to music then just "Stairway to Heaven" again and again and again...

The Sweetest Deal For A Job Not So Well Done

2007-10-29T15:32:00.001-07:00

We live in a day and age when executives are paid fees that rival the gross national products of many small countries. Many are paid in the hundred's of millions of dollars (US), and receive a similar amount upon being shown the door.
Let's use an average American $1 bill as a unit of linear measurement. They are 157mm in length. So, if we call this an "uno", 100 million unos would stretch 15,700,000,000 millimeters. Convert that to kilometers and you arrive at 15,700. How far is that, you ask?
Try over 1/3 times around our little ol' planet Earth. That's a lot of money.
And some of these people are paid in multiples of that. That's multiples of hundreds of millions of US dollars. On average, the lower rungs of the pay scale within many of these companies is occupied by people making less than $30,000. If we took that as the lowest possible salary and $100 million as a typical high earning CEO's salary, we arrive at a ratio of 1:3333.3333... . Put another way, they make over 300,000 % more.
That goes beyond ludicrous as is. But what if that same executive sends the company into a financial tail spin? Then what?
Would you believe that for many their severance packages are just as lucrative?
What times we live in...

Telephone Foot Soldiers

2007-10-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

It's like trench warfare, or any warfare for that matter. My current job consists alternately of helping fellow employees with computer issues and handling directory assistance calls. It's the latter that I'm referring to here.

Many of the calls I receive are from other call centers. Most of the time, these callers are impolite, rather rude and rushed. Every now and then, though, I get a kindred spirit. You can hear it clearly in their voices; "this is not my first choice for work". I suppose they are all like that to a degree, though some truly excel at it (years ago, I did). For those of us to whom it is simply "work', though, it seems beneath us. "Truly, is this the best I can do?" seems to permeate your psyche when you're in that position.

It is almost akin to those stories we've oft heard about, where opposing sides in warfare call a momentary ceasefire to exchange in goods, or goodwill for that matter. Aside form truly hardened, professional soldiers, most were simply there for the duration and hoped to return to their previous careers as farmers, bankers and what have you. They were not interested in going out and killing each other, but they answered the call of duty (or were simply drafted). Until the Second World War, the enemy was almost always in sight, a few yards away quite often. As awkward as this sounds, that had a humanizing effect on combat; you saw who you're shooting at, and quite often they looked like our neighbors. You knew they were human, which is why our leaders in the field took so many pains to remove the humanity from combat. If you perceived that you were shooting at monsters, it was easier to do the task; you were less likely to empathize. Yet we all knew too well that that man huddled in the trench nearby may have a family, anxiously awaiting his return home.

It was those wonderfully short little moments, where the gunfire would cease and the shelling stop, that humanity would make a brief reappearance. Sometimes it was to allow the injured or dying to be removed from the field. Sometimes, it was to exchange rations. And every so often, it would be for a moment of peace during those most holy days. During those times, we remembered that the opponents were just men, mere mortals.

Likening trench warfare to telemarketing is probably a stretch. But in both instances, those that run the operation view those on the receiving end as something other than (or less than) human; for them, they are simply numbers; goals to be achieved and not people to be bothered. As with warfare, there are skilled practitioners, professionals who take to their jobs with a certain aplomb. Then there are those who are simply there because it seems to be the best they can do, though not by choice. You can hear it, in their voices, the weary sound of a common foot soldier doing a job that they do not desire but still have no choice but to do. The alternative, unemployment, is worse. Too often they know that an unsuccessful contact is a hit on their quota, that the numbers that have been set out before them are not being met. Their failure to pull the trigger or hit the target resounds through the effective kills of their platoon. And this is a "kill or be killed" environment. They know this. Their targets, however, are never as sympathetic, something that I too admit to.

But I have no problem hanging up on the go-getters, the die hards, the pros. It's the others I feel for, and usually apologize to.

They're just foot soldiers.

Thoughts On A Summer's Day

2007-08-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

It's been warm the past couple of weeks. July and August are like that here in Jacksonville. The wind form the ocean seems to die down as the inland breezes increase in strength, leaving the air of northeast Florida basically stagnant. It's simply hot. The height of summer.

I've had a lot on my mind. I have many interest and hobbies. Since age 12, I've been a modeller. Oh, to be sure, I had built models before then but never with the amount of care I used when I was halfway through my twelth year. My best friend Craig and I were in a silent arms race, on in participation of a "remote control war"; models engaged in miniature combat and sustaining real damage. We lacked the means to go that far, but we at least wanted to hone our skills in plastic.

I started off with an old Aurora model of the USS Nautilus. Craig followed suit with the Skipjack. The model building didn't really follow any set pattern; we were, after all, just children. We'd buy models that were interesting. By the end of spring 1976, with both of us thirteen, the rate of the building picked up, with us motorizing a number of our model ships. For Craig's birthday, my mother bought him a model of the Bismarck, and gifted me with the Tirpitz; sister ships. These were no small models, at over 600cm in length each. And motorized. We spent hours at the pool in the apartment he lived in watching our two German warships circle in the water.

The following year, I began concentrating on making my models look more realistic, with accurate color schemes and markings. I began using sandpaper, putty and emory boards to clean up parts and seams. Craig took notice and began to admire my work (for once).

Just when things were getting really good, his mother died. It was my birthday. The last time I saw Craig was just before Thanksgiving 1977. I wouldn't see him again until June of 1978. My best friend, my achor, was gone.

To ease the pain, I dove into a frenzy of model building. It was the one connection I had to that time. The memories weren't enough. I was trying to hold on to every last feeling of it. My skills improved, but there was no bringing those earlier times back. All the models brought me were a sense of accomplishment. But Craig wasn't coming back. Those earlier times were a memory.

Douglas Hofstadter, in his newest book "I Am A Strange Loop", touches on the idea of being able to recreate segments of someone's "soul" within ourselves. If we understand enough about them, their circumstances and personality, we might be able to program within ourselves small segment of them. It certainly seems a profane idea, to be certain. But there is something attractive about it. It seems actually plausible. Many a person has been kept alive either in the collective conscience of the masses or within the mind of an individual. "Remember me", these ghost seem to be saying, these ghost within us. "Remember me and carry me". Is this a good thing?

Perhaps. I am not equipped to say. It is possible, though, that the pendulum here can swing both ways, between the helpful and the obsessive. It can certainly lead to melancholy (one immediately thinks of Edgar Allen Poe). This I know first hand.

I've done this, and still do. For some reason, I still pick up model airplanes; almost always World War II, almost always 1/72 scale and almost always vintage kits. My techniques haven't changed that much, still prefering the brush to the airbrush. My results aren't bad, they're adequate. It's when I'm engaged in the building the models that I feel that soul of another. He's sitting right there with me, commenting and recommending. He's also trying to get me back on track, to the time before the first of many sorrows would enter my life. There is a reassurance there; "Things really are going to be all right. You'll get through."

The soul I'm trying to recapture is mine, you see. That teenager lives inside of me still. The shy boy who preferred pop and classical to hard rock. The same boy who would spend hours looking up. Still there.

Thirty summers ago, on a summer like this one, my life seemed so full of potential. Most of that vanished in the vacuum of time, lost. Did it? That teenager, in many ways, was more together than I. But he still lives. And he's finally growing up.

Gee, That Was Fun (As Well As A Waste Of Money...)

2007-08-04T19:26:00.001-07:00

Today was the day that the little project car of mine, "Inga", my 1978 264 Volvo, was hauled away. Why, exactly? Because even though I had managed to get it running fairly well (in spite of the model being a bit of a thoroughbred, and you know what that means), it turned out that the frame had excessive amounts of rust, especially the front end.
Yet, even though I knew this was beyond repair, I still held out. In the end, though, it was best that she was hauled off. As she was being pulled up the deck of the wrecker, you could hear the frame popping and moaning; it was simply too late.
I still have my 1984 Blazer, though. Still want a Volvo... just have to wait.

We Just Can't Ask?

2007-07-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

People are funny. Humans are a peculiar species. We have these incredible abilities. Yet, somehow, we slip... severely.
One of the worse things I've seen many of my fellow humans do is simply to embrace those lesser qualities and then fall back on the old saw "we're only human." I guess it's human to do that, but isn't the whole point of being enlightened and intelligent in the first place rising above all of these baser instincts? Some of these very people call themselves religious, no less, even educated. And still, they do it.
I do it, who am I kidding.
But God truly knows that I am trying. In order to be more Christ-like, as Christians are expected, I want to (notice; I do not say have to).
One of those habits that make us truly "human", I suppose, is the assumption. Does anyone really have an idea of how potentially destructive an assumption can be? We see a poorly dressed man in the bookstore and assume he is a derelict and just seeking shelter, when in fact he might not be that at all. We see the genuinely homeless and assume they are drunkards. We see someone wearing a turban and assume their Muslim, or that those black kids on the corner are up to no good, or that the good odd looking fellow around the corner a pervert. We assume. We don't ask.
That's not to say that people won't lie about themselves. Many of the guilty do just that. But an assumption, or simply assuming, is a very wide brush. How many lives have been ruined by that, who knows. Rumor and innuendo travel very fast indeed. They are usually unstoppable if left unchecked.
The sad thing is, most of those with whom we paint with that brush are totally innocent. To be honest, though, those things we deride in others are often times those demons we carry ourselves.
Christ oftentimes compelled us to rise above this (witness the incident in John 8). As Christians, we're supposed to. He even said that the second most important commandment was to love one another (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39, Luke 10:27). We fail, because we see someone and assume we know what is in their hearts.
Trust me here; Only God knows what is there.
One of the attributes that sets us apart from other creatures is our ability to communicate complex ideas and thoughts. Is there any harm in simply asking someone if we have doubts about them? If they lie, sooner or later, they'll be caught (it is far from easy to perpetuate a lie than to admit a truth). But there is no harm in asking. If we don't, we really have no right to criticize.

Futurist?

2007-03-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've been wrong all this time. I tend to concentrate in one area, but trust me, if you ask anyone, they will tell you that I am a Jack-of-all-trades (and perhaps a master of one or two… or maybe none. Who knows?). Perhaps it is the mindset we have here in the south; we don't need generalists, we need specialists. It is a conundrum for me, to possess all these skills yet having to live one skill at a time.

For most of my adult life, I have simply wanted to be a science educator, and for the past six years have actually been doing it professionally, in one form or another. Yet the gravitational tug of being multifaceted remains. I have done a lot. I still do.

However, in looking over my interests, one thing is becoming clearer. I have faith in the future and humanities abilities. I am a technologist; I believe that technology can cure many of society's ills. Yes, it can worsen them, but, when properly applied, it can be wondrous. I'm a computerist and a netizen. Look at all the computers I own, and how all of them, even the oldest one, can access the Internet. It is the digital marketplace, the electronic commons. Again, it has faults (the heartbreaking proliferation of online porn and numerous scams comes immediately to mind), but it can shape, and indeed is shaping, our culture. I'm also a spacefarer. My interest in astronomy actually grew out of my interest in space travel. In my mind, they are and forever will be linked. Astronomy is cartography, space travel is seafaring. We need to know where we're going if we are to arrive there.

All of this underlines something I've never considered, an aspect of me that is really starting to manifest itself as I enter my fifth decade in the cosmos. I am a futurist. I believe and am thoroughly convinced that our species will survive, thrive and more than likely move out to the stars, perhaps even colonizing our entire galaxy in time. We're still children, we're still young and growing. But I believe that if left to dream large dreams and do those things in a grandiose style, we will indeed be children of the stars.

I am a futurist.

Finally... My First Volvo

2006-10-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

The fascination began way back in early 1976.

I'm not sure when they started running, but I began to notice commercials for a car from Sweden called the Volvo. In these commercials, they touted the car's safety, by doing things like driving them off of a waterfall and then starting the car up and driving ashore. The only other European imports I had familiarity with were Volkswagens, Mercedes Benz and Porsches (I come from a racing family and we had a good relationship with Brumo's Porsche in Jacksonville). These Volvos weren't much to look at, they were boxy and lacked the refined aerodynamics I had come to expect with some imports, even at age 13. Still, they attracted me.
My friend Shean Toney's father bought a 245GL wagon that year, and finally I had the opportunity to ride in one. It was different to say the least. My mother had an early seventies Delta 88, and my father a brand new Grand Prix. For being smaller than both, the Volvo seemed solid. From that point on, I knew my first car would be a Volvo.

It wasn't. My first car ended up being a 1975 AMC Pacer X (the silver sport model, if you can imagine that), followed by a 1976 Peugeot 504 wagon. Because fate had placed me on the lower rungs of the economics ladder during the eighties, a Volvo would never enter the picture. I went through Datsuns, Toyotas, Fords and Chevies, but not a single Swede in the lot.

When this year arrived, though, I guess I snapped. I was doggedly determined to at last have a Volvo. What I had in mind was a diesel wagon, and in my mind I always pictured it being blue-gray. Didn't matter the year. Just a diesel wagon. Well, a diesel, though any Volvo would do. Again, it was not to be.

The car I spent most of this year with was Enid, my 1986 Chevy Celebrity Eurosport. Not a bad car, a little big for my taste but she ran fine up to the point where she didn't; her transmission bought the farm in early September and thus the car had to be scrapped. I got $25, which I converted into a telescope (another blog). The unexpected death of Enid meant a search for another car was a necessity, especially with my return north.

That's when my first Volvo finally entered my life.

This car appeared on Craigslist for the incredible sum of $350. It was actually one of the Volvo models I was most interested in as a teenager, a 264GL (I had wanted a 262 originally, but the Bertone styling came with a heftier price tag. Besides, even then I knew I'd be carrying things, though at that time I was sure it'd be stuff like keyboards, guitars and amps). This one is a 1978, and you'd think for that price I'd be getting a clunker. Externally, she is pretty rough. But, she only has 45300 miles on the odometer; mechanically, she is extremely sound.

Here's the story. This is only a two owner car. The first owner bought her in the spring of 1978, a mature woman. As the old saw goes, she literally drove the car only for shopping and local running about. Sometime in the mid eighties, she backed into a garage and damaged the rear and hatch. The car was only run intermittently after that and finally parked around 1991. There it sat until this year when the owner, now in her eighties, donated it to the Salvation Army. They restored the car enough to make it sellable. Its next owner purchased her in September, but due to a family emergency had to return west where the motor vehicle laws are more stringent, so the car had to be sold yet again. That's when I found her.

The years of sitting idle have taken their toll on this car. The finish is faded, the metallic sea green pitted and chipping in spots. There is rust in a few places, and of course the aforementioned rear end damage. The interior was left to deteriorate as well, the seats torn in numerous places. On Sunday one of the hood hinges broke due to it seizing and rust. Still, mechanically, she runs. The engine sounds good, strong, and there are plenty of horses still under the hood. The transmission fluid does need to be drained and the filter replaced. But aside from cosmetics, this car has plenty of potential. In short, I have a new hobby; restoring my car.

"Inga" (a good Nordic name for a car from Gothenburg), my first Volvo, arrived 28 years late. Like me, she's a little rough for wear. And like me, she still has plenty of miles to go.

My first Volvo. I'm happy.

A Rescuer Learns

2006-10-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

I've never been truly alone. I've been surrounded by people my whole life, coming first from a large family (middle child of seven), then going into a marriage at age twenty and following that with another. No real alone time. The closest I came was while I was in basic training for the Army, and even then I was surrounded by a couple hundred guys, eight to a room.

In short, I've never really been a bachelor.

Right now, I am, sort of.

So far, it has allowed me to ruminate on things I have done, and seem to continue to do. One thing, in particular, is a fondness for fixing things, or caring for things that have been put aside, unloved and/or discarded. Most of my computers fall into that category, including the Macintosh G3 that I am writing this on. Even my recently acquired Volvo is a discard, a donation to the local Salvation Army and in need of some major body work (though it runs beautifully, and the subject of a future blog). I suppose that my place is caring when others don't. To me, there is still plenty of use in these items, they are not bad and in fact are quite nice, to me at least. This makes me a rescuer, plain and simple, a badge I wear with pride.

And it is a badge that carries a price, for I am that way about many of my relationships as well. It's not enough for me to just be a friend. I have to be a doctor, a lawyer, a confidant, a therapist. I try to be a fixer, a healer, even when it is not necessary. Is this wrong?

Sometimes. Sometimes, all people need is someone to listen to them, to talk to, to not be talked to (or at). I'm good at that, don't get me wrong. I'm a listener. The problem, though, has been that I can't just listen... I have to pretend to be an oracle, which I clearly am not. The lessons I've learned in this life have been shaped strictly by my experiences, from my viewpoint, and let's face it, I am clearly not like anyone else; none of us are, really.

It's taken me being alone and dealing with myself, my own demons, to realize that I do not have the answers. I can be a friend, an ear and a consoler. But I am not an oracle... I am just a man. And a man with flaws. You see, my rescuing was an attempt to hide the fact that I have emptiness and pain, and rescuing others allowed me to help myself by helping others. Only I wasn't.

As I look at the things I've rescued, the truth comes out; sometimes, not everything can be rescued. Who really needed rescuing, this whole time, was me.

The Lost Art Of Walking

2006-10-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

(Written on the morning of 6 October...)

I'm a little beat right now but I'll write this anyway as it is still sharply implanted in my mind.
We here in the west take a strange view on things that other cultures simply look upon as common place. One of the saws I heard over and over again was "everybody has a car." Okay, granted, many of us in the west do. The truth is that human powered transportation is still the predominate form of travel on this planet.
Human powered transportation translates into bicycling or walking. Today, let's focus on walking, the oldest form of locomotion that humans have. This week, I decided to undertake this for of travel mainly out of necessity, due to the fact that my 20 year old car died a few weeks back. In order to adapt to this mode of transportation, certain lifestyle changes had to be made. First was finding a place to live that would be central not only to my job but to common immenities like markets and bus lines for those times that I would need to travel further. For those of us who have had the pleasure of living in New England, one of the first things you notice about those smaller towns is the fact that everything is centralized. Keep in mind when most of these towns were built, a time when most people would be getting around by foot. Litchfield, Connecticut is a good example, but even here in Florida some small towns and cities such as St. Augustine also reflect this. Today, thanks to suburban sprawl, we are often miles from even basic necessities; this lifestyle doesn't work in that setting, obviously.
Next was a change of habits, namely my sleep schedule. I would need to get as much sleep as possible to be in good enough form to walk. Seven to eight hours are preferable. Got six last night, and the lactic acid build up that I didn't sleep off is making its presence known this morning.
Finally, dietary changes. No, this isn't to lose weight. But one thing I learned in my youth was that it was very hard to walk any distance when I had eaten too much. Seriously, you end up feeling pretty bad.
A few additional things that I've learned this morning -
1. Everything is within walking distance - Plan accordingly and give yourself plenty of time. This is transportation, not a race. Which brings me to...
2. This IS transportation, not exercise - You'll get the exercise anyway by doing this, but if you are going to be walking to work, you need to pace yourself. Your work is your goal, not losing an additional 5 pounds this month.
3. Walk into traffic - This seems counterintuitive, but some of us out there seem to derive perverse pleasure in making pedestrians targets to such things as a small order of fries aimed at the head (been there). You need to see what is coming, whether it is airborne fast food or a tractor trailer losing control.
4. The destination is the goal, not what's behind you - as in life, it is pointless to keep looking behind you while you are walking to work or anywhere else. Keep your eye on the goal, but...
5. Be aware of your surroundings - Keep your head level and be alert. You're not in one of those shiney metal boxes whizzing along the roads, you are truly a soft target.

It took me thirty minutes to walk this today. I'm a little beat, but I did it. I figure that if the Lakota, the Masai and millions of other people can do it, so can I. Besides, in a tip of the hat to point #2, I could use the exercise.

The Great Port-a-Potty Caper of 1974

2006-08-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in February 1974, there was a bored 11 year old named Bobby Ray...

Okay, it took talking to my cousin Donna tonight to bring this memory back, but once it resurfaced, it all came back to me. To those out there who've always wondered how long I've had my sense of humor, well, I think it was innate.
You see, my maternal grandparents, Elmer and Grace Cox, decided it might be fun to take me to the Daytona 500. I admit that I come from a family of speed freaks. Ask any cop who patrolled the streets of the Brookview area of Jacksonville back in the 1970's, and they'd have said that the Coxes and their kin were a bunch of high speed demons. And they were right.
Except me; I was always "special". Yes, I loved race cars, but not NASCAR. For me, it was Formula 1. I also liked faster things, like jet aircraft, rockets and the starship Enterprise. NASCAR just looked like a bunch of street cars painted all pretty. After a day of being down there for the speed trials, I grew b-o-r-e-d.
Early on, after my grandparents had selected their parking spot. I noticed that there were signs pointing to the restrooms located in roughly a grid-like pattern. As I was strolling through the campgrounds, I decided to try and lift one of the signs. It didn't even take that much effort; it came right up out of the ground. That's when I had a brainstorm.
Let's do the math here for a moment. You have the following elements in this formula -
1 eleven year old with a high IQ
1 bored eleven year old with a high IQ
1 bored eleven year old with a brainstorm and a high IQ
= a lot of trouble.
The signs were arranged roughly in a grid and all pointed towards the restrooms. Hmmm...
It took around an hour, but soon folks who were in desperate need of the Port-a-Potties soon found themselves wandering in circles. Well, that wasn't the original plan. I was busted while working on the culmination of my dastardly deed, and took off like a shot. My plan was for the poor, befuddled, beer ladened denizens of the campground to slowly spiral inwards. Alas, 'twas not to be.
Still, thanks to my cousin Donna, I remember sitting in the back of that RV and hearing the cursing and complaining as many poor souls looked in vain for that blue booth of relief. Ah, the wondrous days of my youth.

Do You Ubuntu?

2006-08-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd never post about an operating system in any of my blogs, but I have to do this. I've discovered an operating system that not only runs smoothly, but that completely reflects my personal philosophy. It is called Ubuntu, and it is a Debian Linux distribution (for all of my friends and family who do not know, nor care, what that is, to be honest it really isn't that important. But read on...). Unlike Windows, or my beloved Macintosh OS X, it is free. As in no charge. As in it costs you nothing. You can download it or contact them and they will send you a copy. Free. And it is complete. Everything you need to use your computer. You can run it from the CD directly or install it. They make different versions for different tasks. It is also a very easy operating system to learn and use.
So far, though, I've waxed rhapsodic over some of the technical issues. Let's talk about the philosophy behind it and why it matters to me. As I mentioned before, it is free. The developers do all of this knowing that the software will be free. It is a community, and is partially funded by Mark Shuttleworth, who, incidentally, was the second "space tourist". The word ubuntu is an old sub-Saharan Bantu African word that means "I am because we are". What a beautiful concept! Ubuntu is an ideology that is part of their culture, and compares wonderfully to early Christianity. Bishop Desmond Tutu defines it as this -
"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
I'm not saying that the Ubuntu OS will change your life, but it might be the tip of something bigger. More and more, there is emphasis on what is good for the community, and an OS that aims to be not only easy to use but espousing those philosophies seems a grand idea.
So, I Ubuntu. Not just the operating system, but the philosophy. What a great world we could live in if we all did.

Thoughts While Listening To Paul Schwartz's "Miserere"

2006-08-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

My spirituality is in flux again. Recent events have me reevaluating my beliefs and their meaning. This isn't a case of what I believe as much as how that belief impacts my day-to-day life. So many of my family and friends are firmly implanted in their dogmas, their religions. I'm not saying that is wrong; far from it. This is what works for them. For a long time, it worked for me as well.
The problem I have of late is one of balancing what I believe, what I understand and how the world operates. Many Christians (and members of other religions) tend to gravitate towards a literalists view of religion, that what is written and the manner in which it was written, is to be taken as literal (dare I say gospel?) truth.
That seems to me to be the wrong path to go down.
Much of what is written in the Bible has to be taken internally and evaluated from a deeply personal perspective. Many of the values that are written down in those hallowed pages hold as much truth today as they did the many centuries since they were first put to parchment. There are other aspects, though, that can be more problematic. Still, the value system is steady in its core principles.
One thing I take issue with are people who pick and choose passages to suit their purposes. Doing this you can justify anything. That is a dangerous course to take, yet it is one that many follow.
I also have difficulties with people who seem to lose their spirituality once they are away from their organized religions. Either you are spiritual or you aren't, it's that simple. And there is a difference between being religious and spiritual, a big difference in fact. Being spiritual is a deeply inner experience, yet one that has the potential to manifest itself in what we say and what we do. It is in how we act, how we behave towards ourselves, others and the world in general (Scientists tend to be dismissive, saying that this is just a trick of the brain and its complex chemistry. Perhaps the Spirit talks to us this way, after all, if there is a God that could have created an entire universe on a whim, then surely He could talk to us in anyway He chooses, even if it means the firing between synapses and neurons and brain chemistry itself. Surely, He has the ability to manifest himself in anyway He sees fit). Being religious, to me, is simply following the doctrine and the words of the hierarchy and not truly feeling them, to be simply followers.
And this is the main point that I am trying to get across in this essay. Spirituality is not something that can be taught but something that has to be experienced. It is that soft, quiet voice you hear that tells you if you're right or wrong. It's those little coincidences you experience that push you one way or another. It's looking around and seeing the works of a Creator or an Architect or a Designer in the world around us. It isn't dogma or doctrine or religion. It is an inner experience. It defies explanation to many. It seeks no explanation or asks much of us, except perhaps to simply believe and have faith and trust.
That is the point that I've arrived at. With this move, I have the opportunity to explore this more in surroundings that are both old and familiar to me, and yet new. This move brings clarity and, perhaps, some more resolution to my life. I know what I believe, deep in my heart and soul. What I need to do is to bring that again into my daily life.
Still, it manifests itself, in subtle ways, and sometimes, not so subtle. The Spirit chooses when and where and how. I simply have to pay more attention.

The Other Women In My Life - The Singer/Songwriters

2006-08-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

(Written while listening to Natalie Merchant)
I have a very odd tendency in my musical taste. For some reason, I tend to listen to a lot of female performers. Okay, you say, not a big deal. I guess, for me, it is; I should be a stereotypical hillbilly redneck, considering my upbringing (though you'd never guess that from my accent, which sounds decidedly northern in tone. Most people guess New England to Wisconsin). I should like Lynard Skynard, 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, country rock and hair bands, long, rock ballads sung by men who are pouring their hearts out as sincerely as they can. In fact, I don't like those sort of songs at all. Don't get me wrong, there are a few songs by those bands that I do like, but not as a rule.
I guess the reason I like female singer/songwriters is that they are sincere and honest. For some reason, most male singer/songwriters aren't. They mask their feelings beneath layers of machismo, singing about the power of their love but not the depth of it. They sing about the surface but not what lies beneath. Men, as a rule, prefer to hide.
It was my upbringing that no doubt made me what I am. Up to the time I was 13, I was pretty much following the same path as the other males I knew. Then, unbeknownst to even me, I started to grow sensitive. There was a period, between the ages of 16 and 18 that I used that gift to my advantage, since I could relate to girls very well. I never wanted for dates for a long stretch. Eventually, I realized that was wrong. As a teenager, my favorite female performers were Heart (I love you, Ann...), Carol King and Carly Simon. Too many of the other female performers of the period simply seemed to be following in the stereotypical path laid out before them by the record company executives. This was the disco era. Of course, Deborah Harry saved the day for me, as well as Pat Benatar (though at times I felt that the songs, again, were being aimed at my demographic specifically).
Over the years, the artist in me kicked in. The sensitivity grew, and the voices of these women seemed to make more sense to me than the songs of their male counterparts. I wanted and really desired sincerity, not just in my music but in my life. I still do, in fact. There are male performers out there who write sincere music as well, but too often they get muffled by the high powered, high profile sounds that the recording industry thinks we really want to listen to. Perhaps they are just catering to what the public really wants to hear. I think, though, that if you play some more of this music, that perhaps it might sell. Of course, it seems that these days the typical American male is too busy trying to prove how much testosterone he has coursing through his blood. Witness the proliferation of tough guys out there, dew rags in place and riding rough on the backs of their hogs...
No. That's not me. It never could be. I went through that stage but very briefly. It seems insincere, much as the high-decibel noise that they call music. No, I listen to music to be inspired. I listen often to just relax. These profound, siren songs from the likes of Cheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette and Natalie Merchant are far more suited to my tastes these days. You can never have enough beauty in your life. Or honesty and sincerity.

The Lilies Of The Field, The Stars In The Heavens & The Space In Between

2006-07-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

I miss doing what I do. That's to say that I miss being an astronomy educator. Oh, I still do it occasionally for my friend Jolene as well as my Vagabond Astronomy events. The truth is, though, I miss the daily routine of working doing something I truly love. I'll never get rich being an astronomy educator. But for me, the personal rewards far outweigh those monetary.
We live in a day and age where we are almost forced to participate in this mass-consumer driven society. The pressure is always there to buy a new car, new clothes, new computers. We have to spend, spend, spend. And what sort of lives do we lead? Shallow, hollow and devoid of substance. We may live in houses that are huge, have several cars and spend enough on doodads to keep us in debt well beyond our years. Still, we're not happy, and so the chase begins in earnest; we believe that we have to buy something to sooth that ache, and the cycle repeats.
We live in a day and age where most of us don't really have any interests that seem substantial and worthy. If you read about life as recently as fifty years ago, it seemed that they were able to be happier because their lives were so rich and vibrant, that they didn't need money or things, that they were able to be happy with what they had and what they did. The truth is, we're all victims of our economy's success. Our economy depends on just that sort of behavior. If someone is feeling blue, then perhaps a new pair of shoes will help. Or a new computer. Or a new blender. Or a new house. We have these ideas rammed down our throats daily, hourly. Mass commercialism has made us all mass consumers and to support that lifestyle we sacrifice our happiness.
Jesus told us to this was a bad path to take in Matthew 6 -

28. And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin,
29. yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
30. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!

He warned us that physical pleasures were not the answer. Yet, here we are, a nation of so-called faith, bowing down to the pleasures and desires of the material. I am no exception.
How do we get around this? What do we do? For me, the answer is simple; throttle back on this lifestyle (not that I haven't already). When I did this before, the spending habits really weren't that bad. I was satisfied with what I did, what I was, to the point where I didn't need anything else. My life was wonderful, pleasant. Not rich in a material sense, not consumptive. Rich in what I was doing, who I was. Never had I a sense of purpose than when I let my heart lead me into a field where I had a purpose. It was satisfying on all levels. And I miss it.
Soon, things will change. Until then, I have the hope that this life I'm leading right now is a temporary bump in the road. Soon, I will again derive pleasure from sharing the greater part of Creation with others. That's what I do. That's who I am.

An Apology

2006-07-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, we humans tend to be more emotional than rational. I'm afraid that I definitely fall into that category. I just don't think sometimes. I've had a pretty tumultuous last two months, and as a result of all of this, nearly lost my best friend. You see, when this all started, I felt that she had turned on me. That wasn't the case at all; she was trying to push me as far as possible from the situation that was about to unfold, and for my own good as it turned out. I took it way too hard, and as a result did some stupid things. It ended up becoming a recurring obsessive thought that I just couldn't shake; why was she doing this?
The problem really wasn't her. It was me and my inability to let her go when she really needed to be free. Let me rephrase that. I know well that she belongs to nobody, no one. Yet I just couldn't leave the situation alone. In my attempt to keep her from being hurt, I ended up becoming a target myself (and to a degree still am). She didn't want a martyr, she wanted a friend. She didn't need heroes, she needed an understanding soul.
I let those events consume me. It was one of the things that played a major role in my own drama. But it wasn't her fault at all. She had asked that I give her space. And I didn't. And it nearly cost me a very dear friend, and probably has done some serious damage to our relationship. It will heal, I've no doubt. But it will need time.
To my dear friend, and you know who you are, please forgive me for all that I've done. It was never my intent to make this situation more complicated. Just trust that I will always be here for you and will do all I can to mend this. I promise.

Bitter Ironies & Acts Of Greatness

2006-07-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Tracie and I had to drop off my prescriptions at the Walgreens near our apartment. I spent the better half of the day going from one doctor's office to another; I'm tired, still a little shaken but no longer stirred. Since we had a few minutes to kill, we decided to just drive around in silence and listen to her "Wicked" soundtrack. I am easily touched by things - music, imagery, words. A couple of the songs on that soundtrack really struck a chord in my heart.
I'm an emotional person. Things touch me in ways that are truly deep and profound. I seem to find beauty anywhere, in anything and in anybody. Sunsets, sunrises, clouds, stars, trees, small animals and children. The stark asymmetry of a city skyline. The majesty of the ocean. The silent grace of a pine forest. To me, they are all indicators of something greater. For that reason, they are wonderful. Perhaps I should be more logical and rational. It would certainly keep me from hurting myself as much as I seem to do. But I feel that I was made this way for a reason. I'm a sensitive guy.
After we returned to Walgreens, we had a few minutes before we had to pick up my meds, so I decided that we should take a walk to the bridge. This was the very bridge that last week I was considering throwing myself off as a result of the wrong medications and too much stress. Now was my chance to walk across it victoriously. I had beaten those inner demons.
As we stood at the point where I had considered jumping, I looked to the southern shore of Goodby's Lake and saw an anhinga on a fallen log. For the unfamiliar, the anhinga, or snake bird, is a cormorant-like bird that is perhaps better at swimming than it is at flying. It appeared to have a fish in its beak, and would shake it from side to side.
It seemed odd that the bird simply wasn't throwing its head back and swallowing this small fish. That's when I realized it wasn't a fish at all. It had a piece of plastic stuck on its beak, holding it closed.
The water's edge along the tributaries of the St. John's are not the safest in the world to try to walk along. But being me, I went off on a knight's errand and was soon standing on those muddy banks, ten feet from the bird. It was surprisingly calm. The plastic looked like maybe a fishing lure, but translucent. As I tried to get closer, my feet soon began to sink; the mud in this area can get waist deep. I backed up and realized that there was no easy solution here.
A couple nearby saw me and what I was trying to do as Trae stood on the bridge, watching and hoping to be able to flag down a police officer. Ed and Debbie come to the newly built boat ramp to enjoy the view of Goodby's Lake. As they saw me and my attempts to rescue this bird, they decided to help as best they could. Ed went to a nearby marina and sports club while Debbie hunted around for a net. I stayed to keep an eye on the bird. The folks that Ed spoke with were too drunk to really care. Debbie found a sheet and a netted bag. Not much, but a start.
It was now 8:20 PM, and with clouds filling most of the sky, it was growing darker by the minute. Ed came around to the section of muddy shore where I stood. We tried to come up with some sort of solution, but hope seemed to be dimming with the sunset. That's when two young men with a jet-ski showed up. I never did get their names, but we called to them and explained what we were trying to do. Without even hesitating, one of them jumped straight into the murky water and deep mud and began to close in on the anhinga.
The bird seemed pretty weak, but as the young man reached out to grab it, the anhinga dove into the water. As I said, this is a bird that is more at home in the water than in the sky. For the next twenty minutes, all of us, the boy in the water, the one on the jet-ski, Ed, Debbie, Trae and I tried, in vain, to herd the anhinga towards the boat ramp. In the end, though, it out maneuvered all of us. It is a swimming bird, after all.
By this point, it was past 9 PM. The sky was too dark, and so was the anhinga. We left feeling a little down. The anhinga's prospects are very dim; without being able to free itself from this human-made trap, it will starve. That sad point was at least balanced by the fact that six humans came together for a half hour to try and save it. In that simple act, grace was upon each of us.
Last week, I wanted to end my life from that bridge. My life was spared. Sadly, a little life that didn't ask for this punishment may be lost near that same bridge. More importantly, though, a small group of good hearted people gave the best they could to spare that little life, acting in greatness and true kindness towards another traveller upon this Earth.

The Ultimate Act Of Selfishness

2006-07-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

In the week since my journey to Ten Broeck, I've come to realize something I never would have. I was reading an email from my good friend and former co-worker Mark. He wanted to let me know the impact I had made up there and on others, especially on one of my own students. As I read it, it hit me that suicide is actually the ultimate act of selfishness.
Suicide is a way out for too many people. They want to end their pain and suffering. It is a permanent solution to their pain, but causes more pain and suffering. In ending their lives, they are putting themselves too far ahead of their friends, family and loved ones. When someone commits suicide, they are denying others so much. You see, suicide is a deeply personal act. It is rarely done with the knowledge of others. When someone decides to go down that path, they are disregarding how others feel.
It is so easy to recall the Jimmy Stewart movie "It's A Wonderful Life". Yet the story in that rings so true. We have connections to so many people, many that we are completely unaware of. The impact we have on others is vast. In a way, as we live, we weave a web of connections. One tug in one spot on that web, and the whole web moves. Perhaps the effects diminish with distance, both physical and emotional. Still, the effect is there. I have friends on the other side of the Atlantic, as well as on the other side of the globe, who would have been effected by my suicide.
Think of the survivors of suicide. It denies them closure, a chance to say goodbye. They are simply left picking up the pieces and asking why. The person who commits suicide may have said goodbye, but no one else could.
I feel sad for those people I've known who've committed suicide. All they had to do was let someone know they were hurting and how deep it was. If one person was unable to help, they could have always turned to others, and if that failed, there was always counseling... or in my case, hospitalization.
As I look back at the events of last week, it hits me just how wrong, how painful, how selfish I was being. When I started feeling that the Paxil was failing, that instead of controlling it was worsening my depression, I should have immediately sought help. Instead, I internalized the problems on the one hand, and externalized perceived "causes" and "triggers" on the other. I'm intelligent... usually. Instead, I let the pain and my own stubbornness take command; "Surely, this is the deepest pain in the world! No one has suffered as much as I! Look at me, I am the king of pain! It's hopeless!"
It took a number of things to fix this. First, of course, were the meds. Next was just the isolation and therapy. The two biggest things, though, involved others. While at Ten Broeck, I met people who have problems far greater than mine. Yes, depression is bad. There are mental illnesses that make it pale in comparison, however.
And there was the big, gaping hole I would have left in the lives of others. I might be one person, but the lives I've touched in turn touch others.
I'm not a selfish person. There is so much more I want to give... and I can't if I'm not around to do so. To those to whom I've seemed selfish, I am truly sorry.

Being Normal & Other Myths

2006-07-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

Last night, I attended my first support meeting. I really wasn't sure what to expect when I got there. From what I had heard, it was going to be a mixed bag of diagnoses; paranoid schizophrenics, manic depressives, bipolars and your basic home-variety clinical depressives like myself. More than anything else, though, I wanted to listen. Surely, there have to be other, non-prescription ways to control this demon.
When I arrived, I discovered that most of the people there were just average people, for the most part. Perhaps they smoked more than others, but really who could blame them? As I looked around the room, it occurred to me that some of the faces were familiar, and not from my stay at Ten Broeck. I had surely gone to church with one of the women, and I think I may have worked with someone else.
You see, conditions like these don't have any real physical manifestations on appearance, at least most of the time. The person in the cubicle next to you, that good looking woman driving the red sports car, the pharmacist who fills your prescriptions, a large number of actors, writers and artists, a few major political figures... that's right, folks, the mentally ill are all around you, and you don't even know it.
What I aspired to be when I went there last night was "normal". The new regimen they have me on has rather flattened me out; is this "normal", is that what it feels like? When the topic of being normal was brought up, pretty much everyone laughed. You see, "normal" is a myth. It is a fabrication. No one is "normal".
What we want to be is "stable".
This fact was first brought to my attention around 1976 by my best friend's mother. She was an artist, and in many ways my mentor. She certainly didn't consider herself normal; she was decidedly eccentric. And she revelled in it, and encouraged me to do the same. Perhaps you can blame her for the fact that I am an astronomer/artist/writer/musician/philosopher/computer geek. More than likely, though, I was heading in that direction anyway. She just taught me the importance of embracing my eccentricities. They are what make me.
Even my therapist brought this up to me a few weeks back, as I felt myself beginning my slide downwards. I told her that I just wanted to be like other folk. She asked me why. I told her so I wouldn't hurt all the time. At that point, she told me that other people hurt, too; they just have coping mechanisms. Her advice; embrace all of those eccentricities. Old advice. Quoth Polonius, "To thine own self be true."
While that might not have helped me the way it should have (mostly due to a major chemical imbalance), it certainly does so now. I'm not normal, and to be honest I never want to aspire to be. I'm me, and I'm pretty darned good at it. What I need to be is stable.
Stable means predictable... at least to yourself. Stable means being able to cope with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (more Shakespeare; in fact, Hamlet was probably the first, true clinical depressive in literature to be truly popular!). Stable is simply knowing that you can be yourself... and be yourself no matter what. No swings. Just somewhat steady.
You have to ask yourself. What if everyone was truly alike, what if everybody just acted the same? When we're young, we're conditioned to accept that as being "normal". Now, imagine a world where no one was interesting.
No, for me, it is stability. That's the goal. Normal is a state of mind that doesn't exist. Stable is what we all really need.

Vagabonding Detoured - A Not-So Cautionary Tale

2006-06-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight (Wednesday, 28th June, '06) was supposed to be one of two nights with me doing the Vagabond Astronomer thing in front of Books-a-Million in Mandarin. By 7:30 pm, it was looking like that wasn't going to be happening, so I decided to just go to BaM and look for a few magazines and have a coffee.
I should have brought my telescopes.
As I was leaving, I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the western sky had cleared up sufficiently to show a thin, sliver, fingernail clipping of a crescent Moon hanging in the twilight. Not only that, both Mars and Saturn were visible below it, and Jupiter glowed steadily high in the sky.
I've written before that I normally have two telescopes on standby in my car at all times. Since my car was broken into last week, however, they no longer reside there and instead rest comfortably inside. Now, here I was, perfect opportunity... and no scopes. There were a couple of options. I could race home and grab some scopes... but I had already informed the folks at BaM that it wouldn't be happening tonight. The other option was to do it anyway, but there were still enough clouds in the sky to not tempt cruel fate; I knew for certain that if I did grab my equipment, not only would the clouds return, but they'd no doubt be accompanied by a deluge the moment I set up. Final option - accept my fate and simply go home. That's the one I chose.
Once I got home, however, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I raced upstairs and grabbed my old 76mm Newtonian "George". It is certainly light enough to be carried quickly. Instead of my usual three eyepieces, I grabbed a lone 20mm, and went back outside to the water's edge, an area thick with mosquitoes and no-see-ums. You see, in my haste, I failed to grab repellent.
Still, it was worth it. Some of the neighborhood kids came up, and I had a chance to show them the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn before the bugs got to be too much. After thirty minutes, and what surely must have been a liter of blood lost, I packed it in and went back inside.
Did I learn something? Yes, I guess I did. Always be prepared; I jumped the gun when I took my equipment out of the trunk, which really is impenetrable without the key. Need to keep at least one decent scope with me. Also, be flexible. One opportunity lost might mean another opportunity elsewhere. The children in my apartment complex are poor, and may never have another chance to look through a telescope. In that regard, I gave them something they might have missed.
So, when the road of life throws you a detour, just follow it. You never quite know where it will lead.

The Loneliest Creatures

2006-06-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

There seems to be one flaw in life that is extremely hard to overcome. Humans are intrinsically alone. You can be lying next to someone, but still, you are trapped in your own skin. You can never really understand what the other person is thinking, what they are feeling. We can only imagine, and maybe those of us who are more empathetic can get a better understanding. Still, we have no idea.
Instead, we have to rely on the actions and the words of others to indicate what they may (or may not) be feeling or thinking. Are these the best indicators? Of course not; true human intention can always be shrouded. Instead, we have to rely on trust and faith, the latter being more of a spiritual nature than the former; trust is usually earned, while faith is always deeper and more intuitive.
We go about our lives hoping that those we interact with feel the same, feel for us, are capable of feeling altogether. You can usually tell much about someone by the people they associate with they say, and I guess to an extent that's true. Still, truer intentions can be hidden, and no one would be the wiser. Lacking telepathy, humans have to hope. It's all we have in a very real sense.
I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. For some reason, I feel it is important for those around me to know what I'm thinking, for better or for worse. I tend to be passionate about everything, everyone, in my life; that is fraught with problems, because passion is a flame that can burn many ways, good and bad. It is who I am, however. I don't hide behind facades. On the Internet, I am always known by my real name, and even the Vagabond Astronomer is Robert Little. I alter who I am for different people, but those alterations are still me. It is my attempt to be true, honest, to others. Yet I'm not perfect. Who am I kidding, no one is perfect, and I am certainly as far from it as anyone else. In attempts to not hurt others, many times I hide what is really on my mind at times (and sometimes those periods can stretch on for years). I try to be as true as I can, and hope sincerely for the same from others. I fail. We fail.
I think that's why humans want that connection with others, even when we say that we want to be alone. We're always alone, really. Many times, the only way we feel human is by connection, whether romantic or casual or professional, we seek connection. When those connections are lost, no matter how tenuous, we ourselves feel lost. We find ourselves wandering, wondering, trying to find that connection or trying to build others, seeking like the blind and not really sure how to. We want to trust, have faith and hope. It's all we can do, though, because in the end, humans are the loneliest creatures. The best we can do in this life is comfort each other as best we can and simply be there. The rest... we have to wait and see.

The Best Days Of Our Lives?

2006-06-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

I can't help but notice the popularity of classic stations on the air these days. Notice I say "classic", not "classical". Yes, stations that play classic rock, country and even pop. Americans seem to be rather hung up on nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. Maybe that's not the case, though. At least for me it isn't.
Until a few years ago, I'd find myself listening to some of this older music and reminiscing about "the good ol' days". That is really such a superfluous term. What, or more to the point when were the good ol' days? For me and my rampant nostalgia, it was a period between 1976 and 1981, the better part of junior and senior high school. That's five years, ladies and gentlemen. Five years out of a life that has the potential to span over seventy, perhaps over eighty. Five years. That's a drop in the bucket in a typical human life.
For me, some how, those years seemed to be the best. But why? At the time, and here I'm referring to the period I was lost in the reminiscences, they were like a beacon of hope in a life filled with despair. Ah, sigh. My life was so miserable at that point that I felt that escaping to when I was a teenager seemed the only thing to do. Those songs from that period, by Styx, Boston, the Eagles, Paul McCartney and Wings, even my beloved ELO, all represented a better, simpler time in my life.
Oh, yes, it was better. Sure, yeah. The prospects for a teenager are really not that great. Let's be honest; when we were teenagers, all we wanted to be were adults. In retrospect, it seems that our teen selves were simply horrified at being teenagers. That period of our life we wanted to get behind us ASAP and get on with living.
When I reminisce about my reminiscing, I find it all very funny now. Tragic, but funny. Think of all the wasted time I spent, head phones on, listening to "More Than A Feeling" and trying, very hard, to remember what it was like being 13. And there I was, in my late 30's. Instead of living, I was reliving, over and over again. Oh, yes, to be 13 again. Give me a break!
I listen to those songs now with the wisdom that three decades has brought. Some of those songs seem very pretentious now. Most of them seem rather over produced and insincere. That's not to say they're bad... they just don't seem that important now. But as a starry eyed teenager, they seemed oh so important.
Perhaps its the advance of time that's brought me to this point. I've entered my forties, and now those things in life that I had once set out to do seem more important than ever. The time I've spent bellyaching and wallowing in self pity for wasted time was itself wasted time. The best days of our lives can be any time, at any point in our lives. We can choose to sit around and listen to ghosts from our pasts... or we can move on and face the challenges of our lives in the here, the now and tomorrow. We have the ability to decide when our lives are at their best.

"The Same Old Sun"

2006-06-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

The Alan Parson's Project was one of my favorite bands as a young man. I had all of their albums up until 1987, and like many philosophical youth, found meaning in the lyrics of their songs. For the most part, the songs, lyrics written by Eric Woolfson, were dark. Every now and then, though, songs would shine through as uplifting. One such song is the last number on their 1985 album, "Vulture Culture". The song is titled "Same Old Sun".
When compared with the rest of the album, it is very melancholy but then suddenly becomes uplifting, a fascinating song to say the least. For me, it held a very important place; I picked up the albim as I was leaving the Army after a remarkably short enlistment and a medical discharge. The song has extremes; "Tell me what to do, now the light in my life is gone from me, is it always the same is the night never ending?" to the chorus "And the same old Sun will rise in the morning, the same bright stars will welcome me home, and the clouds will rise way over my head, I'll get through my life on my own." In the end, the song is about hope in the face of loss.
Think about the subject of the song for a moment. I certainly did the other day, as I was driving down Jacksonville's newly completed SR-9A. Just north of the University of North Florida, the highway is elevated over sensitive wetlands populated by thick groves of magnolia trees. These trees were in full bloom that mid June day, covered with thousands of white blossoms that just shown against the dark understory like botanical stars against a universe of dark green. It didn't matter my state of mind at the time, they were going to bloom regardless. For them, life goes on, as it does for everything. And overhead, the Sun shown just as it had since its creation and will do for a long time yet.
In that instant, I felt suddenly insignificant. But not unimportant.
Each and everyone of us has a role to play in this drama we call life. We may be bit players, we may have major roles. Regardless, we are all here for some reason. We just dont't know what it is, ultimately. It is easy to let the troubles we have and had overwhelm us. It is easy to look upon the ocean and the night and the sky and that thick magnolia forest and feel that we don't matter at all, that perhaps it is best if we were to simply disappear into those places, perhaps that we would make the world a better place, or at least ease our own pain and suffering.
Pain and suffering, though, are usually transient events. If we have strength enough, they soon pass or at least grow distant. In time, if we believe in ourselves and God, the pain soon becomes a memory. It is simply a matter of getting through the difficulty and remembering that even though there may be darkness in our lives, that life will go on if we let it.
And the same old Sun will rise in the morning.

For Daphne.

Mockingbird Revisited

2006-06-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

It's pretty blustery out there today, as Florida braces for tropical storm Alberto. I was driving in, watching the clouds moving along in a northerly direction when I caught sight of my favorite bird doing something it does best.
A lone crow was sitting atop a telephone pole just about half a mile from my job. As it sat there, a mockingbird made repeated dives at it. Truly amazing. Consider the audacity; here's the little mockingbird attacking a bird many times its size. Crows aren't slouches, either; they can turn and get pretty vicious if provoked (I've seen adolescent crows mob a redtailed hawk before, inflicting serious injury). The mockingbird seems unfazed by this possibility and just continues the assault.
I've written about mockingbirds before, noting how their song seems to paint a picture of the area where they live (incidentally, I found out that my assumption was correct!). Today just reinforced my fascination. As usual, yes, I can tie this back to life in general.
Why should the mockingbird attack a larger animal?
There is an honesty in their actions. The mockingbird attacks the crow (and at other times other larger animals, including humans) for the sake of their community. Crows and other larger animals pose a potential threat to them. Lone mockingbirds work to drive away these threats, even in the face of real danger. Are they aware of this? God knows. But their sense of preservation seems to be skewed; they could be turned victim, yet continue these assaults. Like brave little Minutemen, they fight the good fight.
By the time I passed the mockingbird and crow, another three mockingbirds had joined in the fray and the threat was finally driven off. One lone mockingbird continued pursuing the crow until it flew into a patch of rain soaked pines.
Whether the mockingnirds are aware of it or not, they have something to tell us. If a smaller creature has such an innate sense of duty, what does it say about larger, more sentient creatures? The little mockingbird, fighting against considerable odds, is far braver and more honest than even the best of us, it seems. Perhaps we need to be more like them.

Being Human & Other Disasters

2006-06-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

In my 43 years upon this planet, I've come to discover one thing, one truth, that stands out above all else.
We're extraordinarily good at being human.
Admittedly, that sounds bad. Well, perhaps not bad, but perhaps a bit too general. What does it take to be human anyway?
It is so tempting to say that the most basic part of being human is an incredible ability to cause chaos. Recently, in a forum I belong to (Distributism at Yahoo Groups), one of our members launched into a debate concerning the debasement of human nature and how, for the last 2000 years, it has led to the gradual decline in the quality of life and the degradation of humanity in general. It is so easy to see that... we spend perhaps too much time concentrating on the negative aspects of being human. One only has to look at the daily news to see just how debase we can be. How can we be good when it seems that all around us us proof that we are otherwise? That seems such a gross statement of the facts. How can we believe that human nature is wicked when we look into a child's eyes, or gaze in wonder upon those wonderful artistic achievements or listen to heart stirring music, also human in their creation?
The funny thing is... we make mistakes. We learn from them. We go on. It's called learning. It's how we grow. Sometimes the mistakes are grandiose whoppers; I've been guilty of a few of those. Perhaps more than a few. You can't dwell on them, though. To do so is to admit that there is no hope. It can lead to paralysis of decision, an inability to do anything. We can wallow in the disaster and let it consume us... or we can rebuild and move on. Many times, these mistakes, these disasters, lead to better things. Sometimes, they don't. But if we persevere, hang on to hope and remember, as my PDA has been programmed to remind me everyday at 11:55am, that this is only temporary. we can get by. All things pass, both good... and bad. All we need is time and enough strength to get through them.
How much strength, though? The late Richard Pryor once said that he'd rather run from a fight than actually get in one, because a broken pride heals much faster than a broken arm. And it's true. It is so easy to let a bad situation eat us up, eat us alive and leave us feeling hollow. Is that really necessary? To what good is it? Physical pain is bad enough, but mental anguish only exist if we allow it to.
And that's the trick we must learn. Oh, trust me here, I am as guilty as the next poor soul when it comes to mental anguish... three suicide attempts are in my past. Looking back on them, though, I can't help but wonder... what would have happened had I just given up, say in 1978, 2000 or 2001? I'd have never graduated, I'd have never gotten out of a bad situation alive and I'd have never started this wonderful journey I am now on. It's still hard, trust me. When it comes to self loathing, I'm an expert.
Then, that little PDA goes off and reminds me.
We're human. We make mistakes. We're chaotic. We also make children, art, music, love. We're the only species alive on this planet that has an understanding of our place in the Creation. We're children of God. Rough times pass. Disasters end. We carry on.

Reveling In Embarrassment

2006-05-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've been shown up by a bird.
Not just any bird, mind you, but a redtailed hawk. Allow me to explain.
One of my many interests is free flight model aircraft, both elastic (rubber band) powered and hand launched. I have recently been given the opportunity to use those skills acquired years ago with this hobby to write an aeronautics curriculum for a science learning center in southern California. To that end, I've built several gliders that teach the basics, as well as being fun to fly. The glider I was testing on the 13th of May was intended to be a part of that curriculum, but soon I discovered that I had neglected the one thing I admonish student to do - think "simple". The resulting glider, while fairly simple, could not be a simple class project. Still, I decided to complete it and fly it for my own satisfaction.
That's where it gets complicated.
It used to be that I had a real knack for throwing together good designs. While this one looks good, it seems to be loaded with problems. In short, this glider just doesn't want to fly right. I spent a good couple of hours on that Saturday trying, in vain ultimately, to get the glider to stay aloft for more than ten seconds.
It was an embarrassment.
That's when I heard the hawk.
Buteo Jamaicensis, family Accipitridae, subfamily Buteoninae... that's how science refers to the bird we know as the redtailed hawk. It's one of the most common accipiters, according to most books (by the way, that's a lot of fancy talk for falcon and hawk-like birds). They're beautiful, and I've many more interesting stories about them.
But this time, it just seemed that God was out to prove a point. The redtailed appeared, leaving some pines across the street from the field where my humble attempts at free flight were being snuffed like a candle. It let out a cry first; that's what drew my attention to it.
So, I stopped and picked up the damaged glider and watched. With a few flaps, some simple motions of its powerful wings, the hawk began a counter-clockwise climb. It had found a thermal, and was using it to full advantage. It let out an occasional cry, one that seemed to reflect a glee that I for one wasn't experiencing. It just soared, not flapping once, until it was easily eight hundred feet up. At that point, its cry almost sounded like a laugh, and it began making diving runs near the trees. What was it trying to prove?
Lacking the ability to understand redtail, and not being born with the gift of telepathy, I could only imagine what was going on in that hawk's brain. But it seemed to be reveling in life. It was doing so easily, so fretlessly, what my little glider could not. Had it seen me and my foolish attempts at my folly? Even if it did, it wouldn't know what I was doing. It was simply being a young redtailed hawk, nothing more.
Soon, I forgot about my glider and watched as the hawk climbed, making an occasional dive, but soon just a speck in the spring sky, a small, circling fleck of black against an infinite blue. Had I not given up on my glider, I would have missed such a wonderful sight. My embarrassment had soon turned to wonder.
What a wonderful lesson.

Peace,
Rob

Opportunities & Reminders

2006-05-12T21:07:00.000-07:00

Whenever I have a day that I'd rather put behind me, I try to reconnect with Creation in some form or another. So it was with the evening of 12th of May, 2006. This day was a tough one for me. Between medical problems and various personal issues, it was just a day I'd sooner forget.
The night, on the other hand, was certainly worthy of memory.
It was dryer than usual, the humidity having taken an unexpected drop. The sky, as a result, was crystal clear. The only real let down of the evening was the fact that it was a full moon. Normally, to many people who don't spend many hours looking at distant, celestial objects, a full Moon is a thing of beauty, a marvelous sight. For astronomers, amateur and otherwise, it is problematic. Not so for me; there is still enough of a romantic in me to find that beauty regardless. I just have to shift what I plan to search for.
Which brings me to the first point I want to raise. One of the chief popularizers of amateur astronomy was a 19th century Anglican priest named Thomas William Webb (there is, in fact, an astronomical organization named for him, The Webb Society). He wrote one of the first truly popular works for the average person, "Celestial Objects For Common Telescopes". It's a wonderfully written work, and in fact is still readily available today. One of the points raised in his book was when to observe -
"Do not lose time in looking for objects under unfavourable
circumstances. A very brilliant night is often worthless for planets
or double stars, from its blurred or tremulous definition; it will
serve, however, for grand general views of bright groups or rich
fields, or for irresolvable nebulae, which have no outlines to be
deranged: a hazy or foggy night will blot out nebulae and minute
stars, but sometimes defines bright objects admirably; never condemn
such a night untried. Twilight and moonlight are often advantageous,
from the diminution of irradiation."

The point he was making was that no opportunity should be lost, and on a night such as the one on the 12th of May, I'd have been much more depressed to know that I missed an opportunity; "no, it's too bright a Moon."
Silly indeed!
Jupiter, the largest of the known planets (in our Solar System) was glorious, its four largest moons readily visible, even in the small instrument I was using. It was so clear and steady that its darker atmospheric belts were clearly visible at times. I even managed a look at an even more distant and faint object, a globular cluster (a large group of stars in a roughly spherical shape) known as M13, in the constellation of Hercules, even with that full Moon lighting the night sky.
I wouldn't have been able to see these that night if I hadn't taken the opportunity. I would have missed a great night for observing. The point that Rev. Webb was bringing up about astronomy also applies to us on a day to day basis. It is very, very easy to overlook opportunities. We want to turn our backs when things are not perfect.
But what is perfect? More to the point, how many things do we miss because things are not as pleasant as we'd wish? There is beauty in everything, lessons to be learned at any point; we simply have to be open to the experience. By turning our backs or choosing to wait until everything is just right, we miss out on important things in life. The lesson is... there will always be lessons. Don't let them slip by.
The second point I want to make is altogether different. As I was looking at Jupiter, I discovered that I wasn't alone in the night.
Somewhere, off in the swamp adjacent to Goodby's Lake, a low 'hoo" cut through the night air. Some people would have frozen; it was a haunting sound, after all. Being raised on a farm, though, I knew the sound for what it was, a great horned owl. Somewhere, out there amidst the pines and cypress trees, an owl was making his presence known. I stopped for a moment, trying to judge the distance between the big bird and I, but to no avail. Yet, there were times when the sound could have been coming from a few yards away, it seemed. It was a reminder, though, that no matter what we do, we are never truly alone.
The signature on my email account reflects this as well, "I have loved the stars too dearly to be fearful of the night", a stanza from a poem by Sarah Williams, "The Old Astronomer To His Pupil". For whenever I think that I am lost in the world, whenever things are at their worst, whenever I feel alone, I just have to go out and look up, around, and pay attention. The sound of the owl tonight was just another facet of that, albeit an audible reminder.
We, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, are never truly alone.

A Fragile Beauty

2006-05-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

There is a spectacle going on in the sky, and relatively nearby, in a cosmic sense. It involves a comet, Schwassmann-Wachman 3.
This visitor is not like other comets, plunging into the inner Solar System from the depths of space. Instead, it belongs to an interesting group of comets that orbit closer to the Sun and have notably shorter orbital periods, almost five years five months for this comet. As of tonight, though, it just isn't that interesting to look at. At least over the heavily lit Southside of Jacksonville. For even though it is a relatively dry night, it still has to compete with the lights of shopping centers and neighborhoods as it sat low, just east of the better part of the constellation of Hercules. If I could wait another three hours until it is higher, its apparition will improve, but alas I have a day job.
But I digress.
The main point of this essay has to do with a very visible reminder that nothing is permanent. Comet Schwassman - Wachmann is dying. In fact, all comets die a little at a time, but in the case of this short period comet, we are witness to its final death throes. How long these will last is anyone guess, however they were first noted about 15 years ago.
Thanks to popular science and movies ("Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" being recent examples), we think of comets as impressive and fairly tough. Thanks to the aptly named Deep Impact probe, however, we've discovered that instead that have a consistency similar to marangue; it crashed an imapct probe into comet Tempel 1 and blasted out much more material than anticipated, indicating a pretty weak surface. This does very little for their image as planet-killers!
As this comet continues to break-up, it will occasionally flare and dim down. At some point, perhaps this trip round, perhaps next, who knows, it will simply break apart into smaller fragments that will not last long under the intense bombardment of the solar winds. Soon, where once was a comet there will simply be a loose conglameration of material whirling around in an orbit that last a little less than five and a half years; from dust it was created, to dust it will return.
And what a wonderful analogy. I suppose that, in a very real sense, we're like these celestial visitors, going about our lives, occasionally showing moments of brilliance unmatched in our lives, but all the while racing the clock of our own mortality on this plane. For soon, much like this comet, we too shall return to dust.
Don't dwell on that thought, though. Instead, while we still have our moment under the Sun, we should live in the beauty of Creation, and do as we are expected to and endowed by the Creator.
Right now, Schwassmann - Wachmann 3 is but a faint smudge in my binoculars, barely visible. Soon, in a week or so, it will brighten, perhaps one last time. At some point in the future, the only reminder we'll have that it was ever around will be dust, perhaps even a meteor shower. I pray that we all may have many more trips around the Sun.

Apple At 30

2006-03-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is a big deal for a lot of people. Okay, perhaps not that many, really. Tomorrow, though, the 1st of April, will mark thirty years of Apple Computers. Those of you who know me are aware of my fondness for Apple. My near constant companion is an Apple eMate, a hopped-up PDA/laptop hybrid that runs the Newton OS. At home, most of my editing is done on a PowerMac 5260/100, an all-in-one Macintosh that is also my office's multimedia center. I also have two PowerBooks (a 540c and a 5300cs), an iBook (an original Clamshell, tangerine in color), a Macintosh Portable (Apple's first attempt at a portable computer... it weighs 15 pounds), two compact Macs, the form that introduced the computer series back in 1984 (a Plus and an SE FD/HD), a Centris 650AV (the AV? Audio/Video), an indentical PowerMac 6100/66AV and a currently dead PowerMac 8600. Oh, plus another eMate, plus two non-working units. And my oldest Apple, a //c.
That's a lot of computers. And I love them.
But they're just computers! There's nothing else to them accept PCB boards, intergrated circuits, glass, plastic, epoxy, gold traces, wires and silicon. They are as alive as the desk on which they reside!
There is something that is inherently attractive about Apple's products, though. Good design comes to mind. Sturdiness is another. Well made. Think Rolls Royce, or maybe Mercedes (pre Chrysler). But the design... these aren't just computers.
Way back in 1977, when Apple released the first Apple ]['s (yes, that's one of the ways we Apple enthusiast write "II", for the older units), they didn't look like computers. Well, yes and no. Most computers of that time period were hobbyist machines. They were metal cabinets with switches a'plenty up front, many had LED's flashing in sequence that seemed to indicate activity. They were decidedly unattractive. Apple changed that. Their first Apple ]['s were housed in attractive beige/tan housings whose only light was a power indicator. The keyboard was built in, and video was acheived through a plug on the back. Another thing that these machines had was expansion capabilities; in other words, slots. In fact, pretty much everything that we take for granted in modern machines could be found in these computers. And they weren't ugly. They were actually pleasant looking, and could be at home in your home. Seven years later, the first Macintoshes were even more pleasant looking.
Thirty years later, home computers are ubiquitous. We can't imagine life without them, it seems. One of the reasons for this had to do with two college dropouts who decided to tilt against windmills and share their vision of a computer for the masses.
So, to Steve Jobs and Steve "the Woz" Wozniak... many thanks!

Subtle Lessons, Major Truths

2006-03-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

What a weekend.
Sometimes, the Lord our God decides that you need to learn in subtle ways. I've always tried to learn by observation... perhaps I should rephrase that, I attempt to learn by observation; it's a conceit to say that I've always done that. Like many of us, I've tried to learn in ways that were perhaps abrupt. But just like trying to catch the wind in a jar, we miss the point. To learn, we need to pay attention. Sometimes, the truth is hiding in the subtleties.
Not this weekend.
It started when I feared that someone in my family was ill. My family means the world to me. It was not for a lack of faith in God that I worried. It is speculated that perhaps I worry for the novelty of worrying. That is to say that I simply worry. Thus began the lessons to be learned.
It can be said that our faith can carry us, and this time it did. I needed to learn that. But that was not the only lesson, merely the first. And it was a big one.
The next lessons had to deal with pride and importance. For this weekend I discovered that I am a know-it-all.
It is easy when one has a little bit of intelligence to do what we think right, to share it. Can this be done in a manner that is neither boastful nor loud? I think so. Pity. There is a fine line that separates the good from the bad there, however. What I discovered is that it is very easy to go on doing what we perceive as important, when in fact it's just mental jetsam and flotsam. A lot of what I've perceived as important is just that. In fact, it's only important to me.
(Does this mean these little essays will stop? Probably not; you can always choose to ignore them).
Jesus beseeches us to be humble. You can teach and share and be humble. After all, to what purpose does it serve to be otherwise? This was a major theme that runs throughout the Gospels, and one that was handed down to me not once but thrice today. It started when I checked my email this morning. I receive daily "Sayings of Jesus", and today, it was Matthew 6:5-18, part of the Sermon on the Mound. It really wasn't necessary to read it again, as I could tell the chapter and verses simply by reading the subject line. Still, I had to, and the lesson in humility was a good. The lessons of the day were just starting, however.
At service, we covered the presentation of the Ten Commandments, Jesus driving the merchants from the temple and Paul writing about the laws and sin. It was the sermon of our main parish priest, Rev. Jim McCaslin, that really started to draw connections back to my email. As he spoke at length about the all that was read, and tied it all together in such a way that it was very easy to see that, yes, even an entire church can stumble and fall. Human arrogance. Human pride. We know better than He, it seems. Do not fool yourselves. Not for one second.
This all then tied together with my reading of Ecclesiastes.
What lesson did I garner from this?
That it is very easy to let ourselves be too boastful, too proud and too convinced in our own minds of our self-proclaimed importance. After all, who knows how much better, how much smarter, we are than ourselves?
If we really feel that way, then why share it? Is it to His glory... or our vanity?
It would be a lie to say that I've been humble. I'll be the first to say, most unequivocally, that I'm as human as any of us, and that I am someone who likes to boast, if even "modestly". And I do it to bolster up my own, fragile psyche. You see, in the end, it doesn't matter how smart or how dumb or how rich or how poor I am. What matters most is how I interact with my fellow humans. Have I been kind? Have I helped? Have I been there? Most important, have I simply shut my mouth and listened? Many times, I haven't. It doesn't make me a bad or evil person, it simply makes me human.
Still, I've no doubt stepped on toes, as I'm sure others have. The words of the Sermon on the Mound weren't just suggestions, they were the words of Christ and were there to help not only to save our souls, but to save and inspire others. After all, humans learn best by example.
So, I guess that I needed that little wake up call. It took seeing me from the outside to get a good glimpse of what needed to change on the inside.
God works in mysterious ways. Just sometimes not necessarily subtle ones.

Consider The Dandelion

2006-03-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

You really want to just classify them as weeds. Dandelions. Okay, they aren't the most attractive plants in the world. But when they flower, they wear a bloom that is very pretty, even beautiful in its own way. And they are stubborn. And persistent.
This little plant really makes its appearance known this time of the year. Usually, we're grumbling about them working their way up through cracks in our driveways and sidewalks. If you have a healthy lawn, they can really take off. But they come nonetheless. There are a few fields out there that are literally covered with them. They aren't readily apparent at first, but here in Florida with the coming of March, the fields explode into a sea of yellow flowers. This from a plant that we deride as a weed.
True, we don't want them in our yards. When they aren't in bloom, they aren't attractive. They can do damage in unintentional ways, namely by blocking sunlight from reaching smaller plants. Still, they are wonderful plants. And they are ever so persistent. Especially when they go to seed. That wonderful little globe that we so often picked as children and blew on was aiding this plant's reproductive cycle. We didn't know any better, we just loved instead to watch the little seeds parachute down... or up, to be carried off by the winds to any and everywhere.
We are not unlike the dandelion, really. Perhaps we should be more like them, in fact. Think again about how this little perennial pushes its way through even the smallest crack. There's a moral for you. They do not let the tightest situation keep them from living, from doing what they do best. And we should send our gifts a'flying, like those dandelion seeds, floating upon the winds of chance to grow and thrive.

The Barest Of Necessities

2006-03-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

What do we need to live? Really? Think about it for a minute. What are the bare necessities that we, as humans, need?
From a strictly biological standpoint, we need food, water and oxygen, the same as any other living creature on the planet. Can we get away with that? Can modern humans subsist on the barest of necessities? We can, but we'll revisit that in a moment. Let's look at what "modern" humans need and perceive as essential - food, water, oxygen (pointless to even bring that one up, since it requires the least amount of work to obtain), shelter and clothing. The last two items there are where the differences from the rest of the animal kingdom emerge, what makes us human. There are millions of humans living in with just those right now, and many of them are thriving. For thousands of years, in fact, that's how humanity survived. Fortunately, one of these items tends to be a once in a while concern; clothing. Only the roughest amongst us needs to worry about them on a daily basis. Shelter can be anything, though. Sounds harsh, but it's true. Again, we'll touch on that again.
Today, though, in and amongst "modern" society, we need more. Add to our list electricity. How do we get along without that?
Perhaps we should ask members of some religious sects such as the Amish, or perhaps those who have chosen a lifestyle off the grid. In the past 100 years, the vast majority of modern cultures have grown dependent on electricity and what it provides. If you've gone camping for more than a week (truly roughing it), you really wind up missing those "creature" comforts that we "modern" humans have accustomed. But 100 years is still nothing compared with how long humanity has walked this planet.
Yet that one item has become our saving grace. Our ancestors relied on fresh food, either grown by them or picked up for consumption usually that day. In days gone by, meat could not be stored unless it was cured. If you wanted fresh, you either walked to the butcher... or you did it yourself. True, the invention of the icebox in the 19th century made it easier to store perishables, but generally only the wealthy could afford them... and their associated upkeep.
Society has also changed to the point where these more "primitive" lifestyles are generally unacceptable. So, aside from some religious groups and diehards, our new list of bare necessities looks like this -
Food & Water (they share equal billing)
Shelter
Clothing
Electricity
Now that we've gotten it down to four items, you might ask "what about transportation?" Do you really need to own a car? Millions of people in some of our largest cities don't; they walk, ride the bus or mass transit. That's all the transportation they need. If you have children, this might be a problem, though, or if you live out in the suburbs with their usually illogical layout (there are many suburbs that are literally miles from the nearest store. Try being a hunter/gatherer there, I'm sure your neighbors will appreciate that). If you're rural, yes, you need transportation. We can add that to our list.
How about entertainment? You know, cable, satellite? Ask your parents, or their parents. How could people survive without these? Well, they did... and probably did just as well. Same can be said for things like the Internet. Yes, I will admit, I am just as hooked as most to it, but I've also accepted that I didn't have it for the first couple of decades of my life. Some of these things can be supplied for free in most communities, thanks to a marvelous, and I might add old, invention known as a library card.
Communications? Really optional. If you live in the same area as friends and family, you can always visit them. We'll put it on the list, though, after transportation.
We do not need really anymore than that to live in modern society. But we've convinced ourselves that we cannot live without a daily bombardment of television, computer games, Internet, satellite radio. Many of us have buried ourselves under mountains of debt, most of it needless, as a result of pursuing those things that are really unnecessary (and I will admit to doing just that). In the end, you just need to look at that list, and the order in which everything is listed. You will always need food and water, it has to be on top. You have to have shelter, especially if you have a family. Clothing isn't really a constant consumable and doesn't have to be replaced with reckless abandon, regardless of what the dictates of modern fashion insist upon. You can live without electricity, but you can't live without the preceding items. Unless you live a lifestyle where you don't need electricity, though, trying to live without it for too long imposes a whole new set of problems. And so forth.
That's how I look at life, and that's the order I tend to put the necessities. Everything else isn't really necessary.
Now, let's touch bases on a few things mentioned early on in this; what are the barest of necessities? Ask a homeless person. How do they exist? Trust me, many of them are not alcoholics or the mentally ill. There are a lot of people out there who are just the victims of the harsh blows of circumstance. Many of them have still managed to hold on to their dignity, however, and make do with the least this world has to offer. Eventually, they climb up out of that pit to rejoin "society". But the trip can be a long and arduous one. For them, every penny gathered during that climb is like gold.
Remember that the next time you worry yourself sick over how to pay your cable bill, or afford those new shoes or buy that new television. There are people out there who make do everyday with the barest of necessities. They are the ones who are really struggling.

Listen To The Mockingbirds

2006-03-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, as I was leaving our local Golden Corral (I must admit that I fell victim to the siren song that is its breakfast), I spotted a mockingbird flying low over the parking lot, singing the whole way. If you're not familiar with this flying cacophony, let me tell you a little about them, at least from a scientific viewpoint.
Mimus polyglottos. Gray and white, native to a rather large portion of North America, from Florida north into parts of Canada, with the heaviest concentrations along the southern and eastern coasts. Not very big, no larger than 8" usually. But what they lack in size they make up for in behavior. And what behavior! Let's move away from the biological now.
The mockingbird is one of the few birds I have seen that doesn't miss a beat once it takes to wing. It starts a song at one point, flies to another, and the song doesn't sound interupted. Usually, they create their own little songs; they don't "mock" all the time, they don't have to. In my travails, I've noticed that they might have regional dialects. The species has been aggressively moving into New England now for the past couple of decades, and their song sounds markedly different than members in south Florida (can't say the same for the human species, though; some south Floridians sound like displaced New Yorkers, which in many cases they are).
What I observed yesterday, though, was interesting. I've studied mockingbirds for a long time, but only as someone who finds their antics fascinating. After all, here is a little bird that seems to have no natural enemies. It will attack birds and animals many times its own size. That's bravery... or chutzpah. But yesterday, I was noticing the song.
This little character didn't skip a beat as he flew from the rooftop to a fence to a sweetgum. His song was a mixture of mockingbird, with its requisite whistles and clicks, and other birds. This is where it gets unusual. A cardinal flew by, all a chatter, and suddenly the mockingbird started doing cardinal. Just a couple of measures of a cardinal's mating song. Again, the mockingbird returned to its native tongue.
As it flew to a sweetgum tree next to a retention pond, it started doing the chatter of a redwing blackbird. Almost on cue, a blackbird emerged from the cattails and landed nearby the mockingbird. Did the mockingbird even know what it was saying? Doubtful. But whatever it was, the blackbird didn't sound too amused. Our little mimic flew away to a scrawny pine and started doing its usual song... and threw in an osprey's cry.
This was all very amusing, but then I noticed... it was telling a story of its area. The cardinals must pass through quite a bit in order for him to pick their voice. Obviously, he spent a lot of time in this area, near the retention pond and the blackbirds. And less than a quarter mile away, a mating pair of osprey had built a large nest on a cell tower.
The mockingbird's song reflected its life. It was a miniature saga; "This is who I am, and in my area are cardinals, black birds and osprey." What else it was saying is a complete mystery, but by copying others in its little neck of the woods, it was telling about its life.
What can this teach us?
God made us incredibly complicated. Like the mockingbird, though, often times we say and do things that reveal not so much who we are, but what we do, the company we keep and the things we see and hear. It is really a human trait to want to fit into our environment, and as a result, we tend to mimic. Everything we watch, read, hear... it plays a role in shaping who we are and what we do. In short, our behavior. And in turn, we effect others in the same way. It is a fallacy to think otherwise.
There is wisdom in the old adage "think good thoughts". Perhaps it's not just the thinking we should be doing good. Perhaps in our own little way, we are not unlike mockingbirds.

A Poem, A Song & Ecclesiastes

2006-03-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

For the last week, I've been reading Ecclesiastes as part of my Lenten season Bible study. As I read it, two things come to mind, a poem and a song.
The poem is "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. For those unfamiliar with this little sonnet...

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Now, contrast that with the song, "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas...

I close my eyes
Only for a moment, then the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Now, don't hang on
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
The wind

This is a theme that recurs throughout Ecclesiastes; all that we do in this life is at best temporary, no more than a lifetime. In fact, Kerry Livgren and the members of Kansas were building the song around that book, and it is far less subtle than the Shelley poem, which deals mainly with human arrogance. Still, the point remains.
If all of this is true, then what is the point? To make the best of what time we have, to do so with humility and modesty and the understanding that this life is short. It doesn't matter whether you live less than a decade or you become a centenarian, we all suffer the same fate. Do not be too boastful and proud, for you will die just as the most meek among us.
Yet as grim an outlook as this is, it should serve to remind us that God wants for us to love one another and help one another make it through this life. Here, in this world, ultimately, we are all we physically have. Money is meaningless. Power is meaningless. Life... that's important. That's the most valuable thing we possess. Life... and time. The two are inexorably tied together, and one should not waste either.
Everything is dust in the wind. Nothing beside remains.
"For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his life, which he passes like a shadow?" Ecclesiastes 6:12.

Coming Soon To A Theatre Near You - More Christian Bashing!

2006-03-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (for those of you keeping track, that'd be 5th March, 2006), Tracie and I went to the movies, sort of a weekly ritual. Sometimes, the movies are good. Other times (too often), they aren't. Yesterday's movie fell into a chasm between the two, and for good reason. But I'll get back to that in a moment.
Before the movie, they showed a trailer for "Stay Alive", a horror film set to open in the next few weeks. The premise; there's this computer game, and once you start playing it, you're fate is linked to that of your character. This is role playing taken to the next level. As the trailer played, it showed some very interesting statistics.
- Right now, there are roughly 100 million people in America involved in computer games. That number might be a little on the high end, but it certainly seems close to numbers I've read elsewhere.
- 25% of these people are addicted to games. Given that you have a 1 in 4 chance of becoming addicted to anything... again, pretty close to reality.

That a movie would be made about computer online gaming being a vicious virtual reality tied to reality should have seemed obvious. Sooner or later, real life and Hollywood cross paths. Or is it that Hollywood likes to shape reality. Which brings me to the main thrust of this little essay.

The movie we saw was "Ultraviolet", starring that frequently-seen-in-this-genre

-actress Milla Jovovich. It dealt with a future (and I might really add alternate) Earth where society has been ravaged by some virus that has turned a significant chunk of the populace into hemophages; basically vampires. Our heroine is one of these. But that's not what bothered me. It wasn't the plot (very much graphic novel inspired), nor the effects (surely generated by the same software that generates much seen in higher end games). No, it was the Ministry of Health. "Ministry" is the key word here. Once again, Hollywood tied the bad guys to the cross.
The Ministry's symbol was the classic caduceus (the snakes wound around a staff, the accepted symbol of the medical establishment) combined with a cross. The big bad guy was named Vice Cardinal Daxus (played by Nick Chinlund, who, has luck would have it, has also played the scripture-spouting McGivens in the latest "Zorro" movie).
Vice Cardinal. How more blatant can you get?
Hollywood has been assaulting Christianity since at least the 1970's. The assault has been getting worse. Part of an agenda? Some would say yes, I think no... or possibly. Hollywood always wants to think of itself as the nexus of civilization, the great manipulator and shaper of all things fashionable and trendy. It is inhabited by an assortment of folks who fancy themselves intellectuals. Artists but intellectuals. They look in disdain at the older, established cultures, and too often this means religion.
They do not care. If suddenly Christianity became fashionable, they would probably jump on board. Since it isn't, and they really want to impress the elite crowd out there, as well as each other, the religion bashing will continue.
And it will continue until enough people become appalled enough to simply stop buying the stuff.
Am I advocating a boycott of Hollywood? No. But, as a society, we've already become desensitized to the point where violence is meaningless and values merely fashion accessories. If you see something anti-Christian in a film that appalls you, don't be surprised. It's simply what Hollywood passes off as high art. We don't have to buy it.

The Burden of Knowing

2006-03-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

When is knowing too much too much?
Last night, I decided that, for this Lenten season, I would pick one book of the Bible to concentrate on, in this case Ecclesiastes. One chapter a night, that's the current plan. Considering how small Ecclesiastes is (12 chapters), that is certainly plenty of time to reflect and ruminate on the words. However, as I read the first chapter of the book, it really seemed to underscore personal beliefs that I tend to carry deep inside; all is vanity. The last verse of the first chapter, though, really stood out; "For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow." (1:18).
So it begs the question; When is knowing too much too much?
This touched on so many things that have been on my mind of late, and the Ash Wednesday service seemed to be particularly inspiring as well. For though I attended the service before I read Ecclesiastes 1, the two just seemed to dovetail, especially in reflecting on the words of the pastors as the ash was applied, "remember that you are mortal". Knowledge for knowledge's sake is vanity. What purpose does it serve beyond giving its bearer a feeling of superiority over their peers? I heartily admit to being arrogant as a young man, perhaps pushing away many children my age because of the repellent nature of my being a "know-it-all". And what has it done for me? Aside from my writing and the teaching I do, it seems to instead be a burden. This is when knowing too much begins to hurt.
I can still look at the stars in the night sky and admire their beauty, but a voice in my head can't help but tell me how unreachable they are. Everyday, I go to work with the purpose of wanting to live a modest life, yet a voice in the back of my head keeps reminding me that, statistically speaking, I may have cleared the halfway point in my existence on this plane. There are times it is so very hard for me to make small talk without starting to sound, again, like a "know-it-all". I've always believed that knowledge is power, but too much power is a bad thing. Perhaps too much knowledge is a bad thing, perhaps as bad as the author of Ecclesiastes knew. There are times, though, when it certainly is a burden.

An American Flyer

2006-02-24T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here listening to ELO's 1976 album "A New World Record", perhaps my favorite one from the band. I didn't listen to it much when it first came out, but almost three years later, it was a near constant soundtrack for my life.
You should have seen me back then. I just went inactive in the Civil Air Patrol and decided to let my hair grow long, and by March, it was touching my shoulders. I also rebelled by refusing to shave. When St. Patrick's Day 1979 rolled along, I had a fairly full, light brown beard (the only time in my life when I'd have a fairly full beard, in fact). I was sixteen, and had just discovered that girls were interested in me, and I was more than willing to indulge them.
Thanks to my brother Terry, I had learned to drive, but didn't have the money to even think about a car. So, my chief form of transportation were my ten-speeds, namely a Murray nicknamed "Spindrift". It was small for a ten-speed, 28" wheels, but unlike my Schwinn, I could fly on it. It was on that bike that Terry once clocked me at 30 MPH on level ground. And I had gone much faster. It was just a good bike.
The Christmas of 1977, Mom bought me a GE mini casette recorder and player. When I entered tenth grade, in late summer 1978, I made dual earplugs, a full five years before Sony would make them commonplace with the Walkman. It wasn't stereo, but it insured that I had the music coming through both ears with no external distractions. And I had "A New World Record" on casette. Perfect match.
The first time I tried to use the bike and casette combo was in late March. I still had the brace from my broken collarbone on, and it was awkward and painful at times. Somehow, I managed to work around it. Initially, I carried the player. That didn't quite work out. Next, I found the perfect solution; make a strap on the handle bars to hold the player. That worked. I was now set. In late March, the collarbone brace and bandages finally came off, and full mobility returned. It was spring. The beard also went away. I was in love... with love. I had a bike, I had music. I was set.
It must have been an interesting image, me racing along Southside Boulevard at a full clip, my light brown hair blowing in the breeze, ELO blasting in both ears, as I raced along towards whomever I was seeing that week. There was a certain thrill in it; the feel of the wind across my face was wonderful. In my mind, I was flying at low altitude. No more were the impressive little stunts of my earlier years important; no more flying dismounts, no more catwalks, no more "hands-free" steering. They weren't important anymore, since I knew I could do them. No, what was important was forward momentum, heading towards God-knows-what with reckless abandon.
In the spring of 1979, I became an American flyer. The feeling was amazing, and looking back on it, it all makes sense now. It wasn't the fact that I was riding over Marcia's, or Melinda's or Jamie's. It was that I was simply moving. I could go anywhere, do anything. It was the journey, not the destination.
That's what it's all about. Almost three decades later, I realize that again. It's not where your going, it's simply going. And I'm going again... and what a ride it is going to be!

A Test Of Faith

2005-12-13T05:34:00.000-08:00

Not really surprising...

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

93%

Roman Catholic

82%

Neo orthodox

82%

Emergent/Postmodern

82%

Reformed Evangelical

57%

Fundamentalist

54%

Classical Liberal

50%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

46%

Modern Liberal

32%

What's your theological worldview?
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Digital Divide

2005-12-13T05:29:00.000-08:00

Five decades ago, Edward R. Murrow stated "this medium can teach". The medium was television, and he felt that it held great, untapped promise. Those of us who remember the days prior to color televisions being commonplace may remember nights when the family would gather around their new electronic campfire, to listen (and watch) stories being told from afar. Alas, those days were seemingly short-lived; thanks to solid-state technolgy, the costs of televisions declined, making it possible for multiple televions to be had per household. Junior and Sissy no longer had to watch the same boring stuff Mom and Pop did, they could go off into their rooms and watch whatever they wanted. Still, the potential that television had remained largely untapped, though the shows got better (or worse, depending on your view). Its ability to teach came out in other ways. While educational television shows bravely fought against the tide of commercial programming, we were learning. Society began to change, and this "medium" began to have a profound effect on society. Mores changed and shifted. Murrow was indeed correct, this medium could teach. And those who wielded its power could effect everything we do, for it is a fact that the world does not operate on reality, but upon our perception of reality. Those who can shape our perceptions can, in effect, shape our reality.
Fast forward to the early 21st century. Everyone has a color television... we aren't neandrathals, after all. The new medium is the Internet (with a capital "I"). That this medium can teach is a given. It holds its inception to education, to a degree; it was initially a network connecting research centers, universities and colleges, together, via a government funded program. During the nascent period of the Net (with a capital "N"), I was witnessed to its power through my local university. I was bedazzled, as were my classmates. That was in 1981, the beginning of the age of the home computer. Many of us endeavored to own a computer, and to perhaps one day join this vast network and share ideas and... connect. That was what we were hoping for at the outset. We sought connection, globally. By the end of the 1980's, that was happening, and when the World Wide Web (three capital "W's") burst onto the scene in the 1990's, we knew a vast societal change was at hand.
Change, yes. There was change, but for some of us, it wasn't necessarily for the better. That's not to say it was for the worse, either. It just never lived up to its full potential, and sadly, because of the commercial stresses upon it, it has a long way to go; indeed, that potential is a moving target that keeps moving further and further away.
The one thing that the Internet has as its greatest gift, the ability to connect people worldwide, is also wrought with problems. It seems to be actually making strangers of people within their own cities, nay, their own families. I know of instances where the only conversation that is held between some families is online. One has to wonder; do they miss the sounds of their voices? Some people become obsessed with the Internet (I have to admit that I find myself frequently, during bored times, looking to see just how far it is to the last webpage). Many view it as their only social interaction. Who among us hasn't heard the stories, lonely, desparate people creating personas far removed from their realities just so they can interact and feel human? Horribly sad, though with a kernal of truth.
I still believe in the potential the Internet possesses. It is not my world, however. I still live and operate in a flesh and blood, brick and mortar world. I like to talk to people, face to face if possible. I want to intermingle. You can intermingle on the Net, yes, but it can be cold, impersonal (though those who have talked to me on the Net know that I am just as brutally honest on there as I am in the flesh). Will I chat with people? Oh, yes, I always do, I always will. It is not a substitute for reality, however, just a means to enhance it. The Web (big "W") does not exist when the power is off.
This medium can teach. It can connect. It is not reality.

The End Of A Season

2005-11-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my last class of the year.
I teach the occasional astronomy class to homeschoolers and anyone who is interested, and have done four in the past two weeks. Today was the most vigorous one, "Walking The Solar System", where we walk, and build, if you will, a miniature Solar System. In 1/10,000,000,000 scale (ten billionth!) scale, the Sun works out to an easy to handle 5.5 inch/137mm ball, an astronomical unit 49 feet/15 metres and the distance to Pluto works out to 1935 feet/590 metres. Of course, Pluto is the size of a grain of sand in this scale, and only the four gas giants are even discernible, being three dimensional representations made from wooden beads of an appropriate size. I had a sizeable turnout for the last class, 16 people in total, and we had a great time, following the class with a telescope workshop. The way the children involved responded to the class was wonderful. A couple of my students are well on their way towards being amateur astronomers, with one of them already planning on being a physicist. At age eleven.
It's easier at times to teach high-minded concepts to children. While we, as adults, can understand the vast numbers and concepts involved, it takes a child's mind, and imagination, to truly be transported by the experience. One of my youngest students, age seven, told me at the end of the walk that "the Solar System sure is a big, big place! I don't think I could ever walk it!" The children seem to really grasp the ideas, even if the numbers really go over their heads at times.
After traveling and building a Solar System, and covering over a kilometer in total, I arrived back at the main pavilion in Mandarin Park for a quick telescope workshop, something that was being done more as a service than a real class. It was aimed mainly at the parents, who want their children to develop a love of nature and science, yet who have no idea what to pick up when it comes to optics. After going over what to avoid, what to buy, how they work, et cetera, I packed it in and headed home.
There won't be anymore classes until after the New Year, but something tells me that while this may be the end of my regular classes, the urge to teach "looking up" will still be there. The temptation is very strong to be a vagabond astronomer, just setting up in mall parking lots and showing people bright objects, which is about all they will see under the glow of those sodium lights. Or maybe I'll set-up at Mandarin Park again, maybe a night before sunset, and let the occasional visitor stroll up and take a look at Creation.
I suppose what all of this is about is that teaching never really stops for me. What I share is important to me. In a day and age when entertainment is a remote or mouse-click away, our tendency to stop and look not just up, but at the world around us, is diminished. To get anyone to slow down and look, that's what I enjoy. Forget my real "amateur" astronomical pursuits (chasing clusters and stellar associations). This is what matters.
So it may be the end of this teaching season, but the teaching doesn't end. Whenever there are questions from people, whenever we have information, and enthusiasm, to share, teaching is always with us.

Been There, Done That: Time To Simplify

2005-11-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

It really wouldn't be a brag to say that I've accomplished some of the things in life that were important at one time or another. In my years, I've had a lot of fun, just not very long periods of it. Here's a small list with the age of the wish and the age(s) of the act(s) -
1.) Fly an airplane (age 5) - finally flew (age 12), piloted a plane (age 15), alone (18)
2.) Sail on a sailing ship (age 8) - worked on a schooner (age 25) and square riggers (age 26 - 32)
3.) Be a rock singer (age 8) - formed a band (age 18)
4.) Work as astronomy artist (age 12) - sold first astronomy painting (age 25+)
5.) Be a writer (age 14) - NSS reporter-at-large (age 32), freelance (age 36+)
6.) Teach astronomy (age 17) - volunteer (age 25), full time (age 38)

I've done a lot. I've accomplished those big things, I just chose to move on from some of them (except for numbers 4 - 6, since they all tie together). So now, after all of this, what next?
How about settling down to the things I do best.
In short, time to simplify. In doing all of those things, I've developed interests vast and varied. Problem is, I live on a working man's salary, and as a result, have to live in tight quarters. I have too much. So, I have to thin things out. Will this be easy?
Can you say no?
Neither can I, and there is the dilemma. I need to. I have to look at a lot of this accumulated flotsam and decide. I've already done quite a bit, now it comes down to the tough choices. What do I really need? Have these things seen the light of day recently, if a while? If they haven't, there's the answer.
Change is never easy. But it is always inevitable.

An SUV Through The Eye Of A Needle

2005-08-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I sat and read an essay written by Bill McKibben in the latest issue (August, 2005) of Harper's Magazine. The essay made a very good point; 85% of Americans consider themselves to be Christian, but too often the actions of this country fall short of what Christ expected. Notice, I said what Christ expected, not necessarily what our church expects, because, too often, the two are not the same. We tend to lose Christ in our religion.
The main points that he brought home were tough, but incredibly honest. They were pause for wonder, and the more I thought on them, the more I realized he was right. Look around at what we Americans have wrought. The average home in America is now over 2100 square feet, yet the average American family has a total of four members; I grew up in a house with barely 1100 square feet, and we had seven living there, on average. Our country has 5% of the world's population, yet we use 25% of the world's fossil fuels. Fuel efficient automobiles were at their peak in the mid 1980's; now, we have the suburban phenomenon of the SUV, plus a return to inefficient, big engined, high powered cars. Americans also have a hubris unmatched in recent history; we shape the destiny of our world, not just our country. Is what's best for America really what's best for Eritrea?
Contrast this with what Jesus Christ said in the Gospels. He wanted us to be humble (The Sermon on the Mound, Matthew 5:1-10), tolerant (Matthew 5:38-42, 7:1-5, Luke 6:37); he beseeched us to forsake the riches of this world (Matthew 6:19-21, 24, Mark 10:17-22) and to respect one another (Matthew 7:12). These are just a few examples; there are many, many more in the Gospels themselves.
So, we have to ask ourselves; if we call ourselves Christians yet live as ancient Romans, what does that make us? Christ knew the word; hypocrites.
You're wondering what I mean by the subject of this essay. It is a play on the passage Mark 10:25; "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." We don't see many camels these days, save for trips to the zoo, so I chose the closest equivalent. Of course, we rarely use our SUV's as beasts of burden, unless we count that burden as ourselves and a cup of hot cappucino for our morning commute to the office.
I recommend to anyone and everyone to try and read the essay, but more important, read the Gospels. Jesus Christ was the New Covenant, what he said carries great weight and are words to live by, not just recommendations. These lessons he gave us for our salvation; not just spiritual but physical. America needs to step back and reevaluate what it truly means to be Christian.

Music In My Memory

2005-06-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

Music plays a very big role in my life. Since very early in my childhood, it has been a running theme in the background, a soundtrack. All sorts of music.
There is a very strong emotional element to music, and with me emotion is tied into memory, and so the music sometimes takes me back to events. It's that way for everybody, and for me it's almost like being there again, whether it was my first church dance where I had many little crushes or long bike rides with my tape player balanced on the handle bars or... bad things.
The bad things being tied to music is very awkward for me. Because of these events, some of my favorite songs have become tainted. There are even entire albums that I simply can't listen to because they entered my life at bad points.
One of my favorite bands is The Alan Parsons Project. For a long time, I had every one of their albums. Except one. That was their late 1983 "The Best Of The Alan Parsons Project". When it came out, I was in the beginning of my first marriage. For me, the album symbolizes what was a very bad idea; that I was ready to be married, that I was completely miserable because I wasn't.
It's just music, and at that songs that came from all of their proceeding albums; only one song, the single "You Don't Believe" was recorded specifically for it. I just can't listen to that song. As a result, I couldn't buy the album for a long time. Even now, I skip that song. Whenever I hear it, I just have memories of a cold apartment, an empty refrigerator and depression.
Our memories are truly amazing thing, but sometimes it takes just the right trigger to bring back a response that makes us remember specific events in ways we might not want to. But it is the burden of being the most complicated of God's creation. The trick is trying to pick the right triggers. If it's music, always try to emphasize the positive. After all, there's nothing more awkward than trying to explain to coworkers why you're sitting there looking depressed for no apparent reason when the CD you're playing hits that certain song.
In music as in neurosurgery, you need to be careful what part of the brain is probed.

Knowledge & Imagination

2005-05-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Albert Einstein said that "imagination is more important than knowledge." So, how true is that? What amount of truth is there in this statement, from who is considered by many the greatest thinker of the 20th century?
There is a lot.
Wikipedia defines knowledge as "awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning." In other words, knowledge is that which is known. It is different from imagination and creativity. Far different, in fact. As an example, a domestic cat is born with an interesting array of skills that might be defined as instinctual. As it learns and acts upon these instincts, it gains knowledge that allows it to refine these skills. That knowledge allows it the ability to use them better.
Knowledge is what is known. Imagination and creativity deal with the unknown. While knowledge is very important, we as humans could not have arrived at this level without imagination, and that is one of our most defining characteristics. It was a combination of our insatiable curiosity and our imagination that allowed us to advance. It still allows us to advance, and should even more in the future as our tools improve.
So, we learned and gained knowledge, then we tried new things, acquired a new set of skills. Imagination, creativity adds to our knowledge. In that way, the two are tied together and support each other. Our current level of knowledge would not have been possible without imagination.
Yet we live in a society that seems to fear imagination. Whenever a paradigm shifts, many of us bristle and growl. We look upon creativity with a certain degree of fear and loathing. In fact, many of us discourage it altogether. It's time to get a grip.
People, this is how humanity functions. If we disallow creativity, if we persist in stifling it, we will stagnate. Imagination, creativity, is growth. Growth means there is life. A growing organism is a healthy, thriving entity, and that is what humanity has been for so long. No growth equals stagnation, and like a pond in which the waters have stilled, nothing flowing in or out, the only outcome is a bad one.
This is not the fate that we or our children deserve. Humanity is about pushing outwards. Let us always continue to grow, to dream. Let our imaginations take us and carry us forward.

"The Edifying Thoughts of a Young Writer"

2005-05-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

"A pen and paper can serve an awful lot. A pen and paper can declare war or order peace. A pen and paper can unite two in matrimony and equally separate them. A pen and paper can build cities and equally destroy them. We, as writers, could rule the world."
-RL, 14th July 1981
Like many writers, I keep journals. In my case, I began while still a child, and was especially prolific during my teen years. Sadly, only one of these has survived to the present day, what I called "Summerbook 1981"; this was the journal I started after graduating high school. It really wasn't a journal so much as a notebook, a catch-all for all of my ideas. There are poems, songs, sketches and ideas, all crammed into its pages. The covers have long since vanished, and the pages are heavily stained with age. But this is one of the only surviving links to my childhood.
One of the early entries was a little paragraph titled "The Edifying Thoughts of a Young Writer". As I sit here reading it, I find the clarity of purpose amazing, especially at that point in my life. I was fairly sure what direction I wanted to go; I wanted to write.
Not too bad for an 18 year old.
Going over the pages, I find that the idea of writing, for me, was a natural one. I'd been writing fiction since I was thirteen, perhaps earlier. But that little paragraph strikes a chord in me that is at once sad and uplifting. I knew, with certainty, that I was to be a writer. Instead, I kept taking detours. It has taken almost twenty years to get back to what I wanted to do to begin with.
To anyone who reads this, take note.
There is a moral in this. Sometimes, your first instincts are the right ones.

State of Fools

2005-05-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

American's are a gullible lot, it seems. In a time when reporters can be bought by the Whitehouse or any political party, you'd think that we'd be a bit more skeptical. We're not, of course. Which leads to some interesting beliefs amongst the masses, the majority of which may be adding to the "cultural divide", that ever widening schism between the left and right.
These are reactionary times, and in order to maximize political gain, both sides put out information that is misleading. Note, I said both sides; the Democrats are just as guilty. Here's an example - during the initial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, forces on the ground found a "Scud" missile, hiding in a hanger. The eager officer traveling with the press corps showed off the find, and it made the news in a number of quarters in no time. Problem was, it wasn't a Scud at all; it was an air launched missile, an anti-shipping weapon. Keep in mind that most of the Iraqi air force was destroyed during the 1991 Gulf War; there was little chance that the weapon could even be used. That little fact went unnoticed by most American's. No doubt, many papers that are practicing partisan politics buried their retractions deep within the classifieds, page 47, bottom, small typeface.
It is in the interest of both parties to keep the disinformation going. Problem is, and trust me, they know this, Americans just don't follow up with the facts. We don't want to, we're loathe to. Americans would rather just accept the information that our leaders give to us then to take the time and follow up on their own.
There may be an even more insidious reason why Americans don't want to know the facts, though, and the thought of it makes my skin crawl. Since the initial Gulf War, many of our fellow citizens have had this notion that we've needed to take care of Saddam Hussein once and for all. Don't get me wrong, the man was a tyrant and his departure would be a good thing. Forget the fact that Iraq was a completely encapsulated country for most of the 90's. Americans, it seems, wanted blood, no matter the cost. This before the events of 9/11. After that dreadful day, the blood lust grew, and regardless of the facts, for many Americans, Iraq had to be involved. In the past three years, we've been steadily growing a severe "us vs. them" mentality. Many amongst us see no difference between a Saudi, an Iraqi or an Afghani. Worse, many seem to think that anyone whose genetic origins can be traced from the western extent of North Africa to the eastern edge of the Indian subcontinent is the same ethnic group, "Arabs". Of course, they are not. But in a country where many can't even find all fifty states on a map, it is little pause for wonder. For these people, they (meaning the large, amorphous "them") are all guilty.
September 11, 2001 was a galvanizing moment in this country. After the initial wave of patriotism died down, and cooler heads urged jurisprudence, we now are a nation at odds with ourselves. More than willing parties amongst our politicos are happy to take advantage of this for their own aims, not the nation's. Therefore, it is now more than anytime in our nation's history that we proceed not with arrogance but with awareness that these difficult times require logic and reason before action. This is not to say that defensive measures be ignored; it is to say that we must know the enemy, or even more rampant xenophobia will set in. There is an old saying "fool me once, shame on thee, fool me twice, shame on me". We should not allow ourselves to be fooled by those who we know most intimately, ourselves.

Of Mice, Men & Me

2005-05-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we have personally revelations that have resounding repercussions. This happens with me quite a bit; my personality is the type that makes it easy to go overboard, and in the process I wreak havoc. Sound obsessive? You betcha.
Since this personal problem first manifested itself years ago, I've tried to rein it in. Sometimes, I'm successful. Other times, barely. Enthusiasm for certain things is something I have plenty, and trying to hide it, especially over those things that really, really make me happy, borders on impossible. There are too many examples in my life of that behavior. Controlling it is the problem, and as I mentioned earlier in this paragraph, it's hard.
Why do it at all? Why should I just smile and be happy when I can immerse myself in the river of the experience and let it completely overwhelm me? There's the crux of the problem, right there, second to last word, previous sentence; overwhelm. It's not me that my enthusiasm overwhelms. It's everyone else. Somehow, sometimes, my being happy is hazardous to some. I'm not saying this to be derogatory. It's just the truth. Little things that make me happy become obsessions; big things that make me happy become big obsessions.
In all things moderation, we're told again and again. My luck is not the greatest, and my childhood was rife with problems. Those two reasons are more than likely the reasons why I tend to go overboard. But, I also have a big personality. When I love something, I'm 200% into it. There are times I need to throttle back and not kill the things I love. I suppose in a way I'm like Lennie from Steinbeck's "Of Mice & Men". Though I ain't that strong. Or simple minded.

Tramping The High Seas

2005-05-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

Growing up on a healthy diet of old movies has left a mark on me. To no one's surprise, I'm a romantic. This shows through in many things I do, and at many times has been an impediment in my life. But true it is, and I guess it's just my cross to bear.
One of the most enduring images in my mind has to be the primary form of long haul transportation for much of the past two hundred years; ships. I used to love the movies that took place on those great ocean liners of the 1930's; even a few of the more adventurous movies, where the action takes place on smaller vessels. Adventure and romance on the high seas didn't have to take place in the days of sail. As a result, I wanted to be on the water (even though I'm a lousy swimmer). Since my family couldn't afford a boat (or perhaps it's just that some members would have preferred that we didn't have one...), I had to settle on the miniature form. It was always a full sized one that I desired, though. Models just didn't cut it.
So, I have dreams of building a boat. Not a big one, mind you, just something to scoot about the coast and nose in and out of the various inlets that run along Florida's shores. I always pictured a flat-bottomed boat; bad for far offshore work, good for the shallows. Simple rig, either a simplified schooner or sloop, something that could take singlehanded sailing. Sturdy, easy to run ashore, not too difficult to put back out to sea.
And that's where the dream ends. I no more have the funds to build a sailboat then I have to buy a house. For now, the boat has to remain a dream.
There are other ways to spend time on the water, though, that aren't as costly, and in 1983, I began scheming a way to do that; a freighter cruise.
No doubt many of us have heard the old term "tramp steamer". My plan, in spring of 1983, was to take a tramp freighter to England. At that time, it cost around a low $450 USD one way... that was damned cheap! There were issues that needed to be squared away before I was to do this, such as passports, work visas, et cetera. To my twenty year old brain, though, it was a rock solid plan.
Pity fate intervened. Or perhaps that was love... I was dating at the time and the two girls who were in my lives at that time weren't so understanding. As with the sailboat, that dream was never realized.
Today, though, it turns out that the cost to do this is not all that different. I just discovered that a single one way ticket to Dublin, Ireland from Baton Rouge, LA would run $800 USD, including food. Deep inside of me, that twenty year old is saying "all right!" Of course, the married forty two year old is saying "can't happen". Still, it's a wonderful idea. Perhaps for those who still have the means, who are still free enough to travel unencumbered, the romantic notion of traveling the high seas in something other than a hotel on the water is a worthy goal. For me, though, it's satisfaction enough to know that that way of travel is still with us.

Chatrooms, Telescopes & Egos

2005-05-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

No matter what the vocation, people are people. We want to think that those involved in fields that are noble and worthwhile don't stoop to the petty politics that the rest of us face. While they may be more professional, they still tend to be human. And that's the way it is in amateur astronomy.
If you're brave, you can, on any night, venture into the "Beyond Earth" chatrooms in Yahoo Messenger. The number of people who inhabit these rooms can range from three to fifty on most nights, even more on weekends. While "Beyond Earth" isn't limited strictly to amateur astronomers, many who haunt that digital domain are. I figured that this would be a nice enough room to enter one night a couple of years ago. My initial moments went like this -

Welcome to Beyond Earth II...
Rob: Hello
Other Person: Hi...
Rob: What's the topic this evening?
Other Person: It says in your profile that you're an astronomy educator...
Rob: Well, yes
Other Person: Define blackbody radiation
Rob: What?
Other Person: Thought so

Of course, I could have defined blackbody radiation. Instead, I left the room. It angered me that the first thing I encountered was a "prove it" mentality. If I was aware the chatroom had a test requirement, then surely I would have boned up. That incident was pretty much standard fare whenever I tried to go into these rooms and say anything. As for discussions, most of them bordered on pseudo and junk science. The few amateur astronomers I knew there eventually left them as well. Chances are great that the perpetuators of this angst are good people, and I have to admit that I'm still a bit of a neophyte in the newer chatrooms and am not accustomed to the mores within this latest generation of cyberculture. Still, civil discourse in those rooms was muffled by the flame wars.
Not that some amateur astronomers behave any better in person. Just like any other human endeavor, there are people in it bent on trying to impress everyone with their skills and equipment. Forget actually trying to help anyone; for them, it's all about the toys and the knowledge they possess. This is particularly sad when it comes to public viewings. Initially, some of these amateurs seem fairly pleasant, but soon, their talk turns to how much you should spend and what sort of mental acrobatics you need to be a "fair" amateur astronomer. Even amongst themselves there exist a certain degree of derision.
The biggest problem that some amateur astronomers have is "aperture fever". For them, it's not the type of telescope, it's the size of the optics, obviously the bigger the better. Anything less than 254mm (10 inches) is a "toy". One can't help but feel that they're making up for other aspects of their lives (beyond the innuendo).
Still, it is human to do these things. We all want the biggest, fastest, greatest of anything. In doing so, though, we may be pushing others away from those interest that we hold so dear. In astronomy and the sciences, that's a particularly troubling aspect. If ever there was a time for the general public to have an interest in science, this is it, since it effects so many parts of our lives. In trying to reach others, we must not let our egos get in the way.

It's Not Like There Are Other Problems In The World...

2005-05-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

This morning, I read that the state of Texas is considering legislation that will prohibit sexually suggestive routines from being performed by school cheerleaders. Hip hip hooray... but I mean, think about it, what goes together more than a violent sport and sex? It's American! They do have a point, though; teens are becoming more sexually active, and at earlier ages, and there is a strong correlation between their behavior on the field and their pervasive thoughts elsewhere. But passing legislation? Come on.
With so many other problems in the world, and in Texas, this seems almost inane. We live in a country that has a healthcare crisis, rising prices for resources, crime, environmental concerns, I could go on. Instead, we decide that this particular aspect of being a teenager is worthy of devouring state time. Not to sound cliche, but in my time, this sort of thing was left to the individual school districts.
More than anything else, though, this smacks of state involvement in something that used to be the exclusive domain of family and church; morality. This day and age, the moralists among us want morality to be legislated. That is not the place for it. Morality begins at home. It is our society's failure there that brought about this problem. Our music, television, most forms of mass media project these images. Passing legislation will not change things. A change in heart, a change at home, will.
There are bigger problems in the world that our legislators need to be tackling. Scantily clad teenagers should not be one of them.

Workers Of America... Never Mind...

2005-04-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

The world is a very wicked place, all too often. Nowhere is this more visible than in the workplace. Each of us is expected to do useful work in our lifetimes. That's how our society works, and here in the United States and the West, it is an inherent part of our culture. Good works is part of our national consciousness.
That's the way it's supposed to work.
That's the way society wants us to believe.
However, do not think for a moment that hard, and even harder, work will get you ahead.
I've written that class structures exist because we allow them to, and those very structures are as immovable as mountains. Nor would they allow themselves to be moved.
Outside of many professions, the bulk of our workforce is now concentrated in what is called “service industry”. The work done in these industries is there to help others in some form or another. An interesting fact – this is a cycle of sorts, because the service industry often services itself.
Workers within this industry enjoy many levels of employment, but too often they are not viewed as people. Let me explain, and I’ll explain it based upon my own personal experience. For years, I worked as a support person within the customer service arena. Early on, it was drummed into my head that I was lucky to get the job; that for every employee there were perhaps as many as ten people who wanted that position. No doubt this was a scare tactic of sorts, because at least it had the effect of reminding you that you were replaceable. Whether or not it was true at the time is not the point. The point is it worked. You had to stay in line or you were replaced.
To my employer at the time, people were a commodity. Upper management never viewed anyone lower than middle management as people most of the time. This made it easier for them to make the tough choices, so I was told. If an entire project had to be shut down, and you had a few hundred people looking down the barrel at unemployment, it was best to not view them as “people”. They were “things”, numbers on a spreadsheet. They might as well have been office furniture; they were simply another cost.
Large service companies, in short, do not want “people”, all of their protestations aside. They want “automatons”, robots who simply understand commands.
What is the worker to do?
This is going to sound harsh; just deal with it, because this is the society we’ve allowed to come into being. We have been manipulated into believing that big business and government has our best interest in mind. Horse hockey. Who’s to blame? Well, who allowed this to happen? Don’t think too hard, America.
You see, that’s the problem to begin with. We just prefer not to think these days. We let our media decide for us, with flashy/trashy ads during election time and feel good programming the rest of the time. There is no such thing as a truly public forum to question our leaders, both governmental and business, at least one that isn’t managed; sorry, no tough questions for them. It’s all staged.
In the past, there was always an alternative in workers groups, such as unions. Nowadays, they are faltering as well as corrupt. They are both ineffective and scarce today.
This leaves it to the employees to do something on their own. If you think that will work, let me throw a figurative wrench into the works – it is called outsourcing. Today, the service industry knows that there’s not just ten people waiting to fill your shoes, but perhaps a hundred or more in Asia and Eastern Europe. If a company feels that they can save money (the usual excuse) by outsourcing, they will. Unabashedly. Usually brazenly.
All in all, this puts everyone in the service industry in a very uncomfortable position. You are, in short, being held a hostage of your own needs. You need the money, and they know it. Economic blackmail is such an effective tool, and it works both for government and big business.
And we allowed it to happen.
What can we do?
Just sit back and enjoy being taken for a ride.

Personal Significance & Family

2005-04-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

This idea started off when I found myself thinking about a lack of offspring. I don't have children, and the fact is I'm probably not capable of producing any heirs at the moment. Kind of sad, but really kind of interesting. Let me explain.
I had the lack of foresight to marry when I was 20. One of the first things my ex-wife started talking about was having children, something she herself should have been avoiding. It started off simply, and then it became an obsession to her. She had to have children. The problem was, she had a tubal ligation before we married; a pregnancy could have been fatal to her. Didn't stop her from wanting children. Eventually, it became one of the many straws that broke the camel's back of our marriage.
My new wife isn't in such a rush. Thankfully.
Why is that a good thing?
Well, based on what I've seen and have experienced, the act of producing heirs and raising them has a detrimental effect on the parents. Right now, every pro-life and Christian group out there is preparing to pounce upon these words, but hear me out; If you want to make something of yourself, do it before the kiddies come around. Trying to be successful and raise a family at the same time can have disastrous results. The amount of time you need to spend to develop yourself will take that same amount of time from your family, and that has a reciprocating, negative effect. That's not to say it can't be done, but the risks are too high. Now, if you're already in a good financial position, you could take an approach that many wealthy families have taken; let someone else do it. Want to see what kind of fruit that bears? Look at some of today's no talent uberkind. Products of good breeding, yes. But not a sensible bone in their bodies.
As I said before, I’m not saying that this can’t be done when you have kids, of course. Just be prepared for what that entails. The average lower to middle class family has a hard time making ends meet these days; this normally means that both parents work. The added strain of trying “to get ahead” (or doing something significant) is hard enough on people who don’t have children. The stress of making it work without setting ambitious goals is hard on even the strongest people, and marriages. Unless you have the money of, say, the Hilton family and can hire good childcare, your chances are slim. Then, of course, there is that whole argument stated earlier (think; Hilton).
The only other option is to wait. Either have kids at an early enough age that you are still young enough to make an attempt at your ambitions when they’ve grown, or just be brave and try when you are older. Don’t think that for one moment I’m against the idea of personal advancement; on the contrary, I believe that everyone should strive to do something important in this world. But in our search for significance, we need to set our priorities well in advance. In our search for meaning, don't let your family be a casualty.

The First Amendment & I

2005-04-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

For many years, a couple of decades in fact, I've been an outspoken proponent of the separation of church and state. What haven’t been readily apparent are the reasons why.
My spiritual path in my youth was a wandering one. My mother always made sure that we attended a church; she wasn't particular what church we attended as long as we went. Between the ages of six to fourteen, I attended Methodists, Baptists, Assembly of God, Church of God and various evangelical churches. Each church had its own approach to Christianity, and many were openly hostile towards the others. In 1976, my stepfather introduced me to Catholicism. After attending for a few months, I decided to join the faith; I was attracted to it, and it seemed to be the most original.
Before I joined the church, though, I heard various negativisms from the other denominations about Catholicism, though I paid little heed to each one. None of them seemed to be based on reality, at least to my young mind.
In my senior year in high school, I was very active in the CYO, the Catholic Youth Organization; I even held a number of offices in it. I also served as an altar boy as needed. I grew to love the religion. About this time, I decided to attend a couple of meetings of the Bible Rap club at school. Those meetings turned out to be rather cold.
Whenever I tried to talk, I was basically ignored. This hurt; these were my classmates, after all. One day, after a meeting, I approached one of the club members and asked her why I was ignored. Her response stunned me; "It's because you're Catholic, you're not a Christian." She was Baptist, she went on to explain, and they all knew about my religion.
I quit the meetings at that time. The truth was, the vast majority of my hometown leaned Baptist, and her opinion was not an isolated one. This situation made it difficult to be Catholic anywhere, it seemed. It was going to get worse.
A group known as Campus Life began having rallies at my school. I attended these, and really enjoyed them, fully aware that there was a definite Christian undertone to them. After one of the rallies, I was approached by one of the spokespeople, who asked, "Robert, are you saved?"
"When you asked, 'saved', you mean accepting Christ as my Savior?" I responded.
"Yes... are you?"
I looked at her with incredulity. "I was just confirmed into the Catholic church..."
"Oh, then, you're not saved..."
That was the point where I walked away. About this time, Campus Life was no longer holding its meetings on school grounds, but instead at a public park in the Glynlea area of Jacksonville. However, most of the schools in the area backed, even encouraged, students attending, regardless of their faiths.
As a young Catholic, I was angered to tears. I wanted so badly to fit in, and these social events seemed like a good way. Because I was Catholic, "not a Christian" to many of my fellow students, I was made to feel ostracized. I may have been a good person, but I was still going to hell, it was certain. The fact that many of these happened under the auspices of school extra-curricular activity, public school, didn't help.
Up to that time, I never paid the First Amendment much attention. Afterwards, after I had succinctly experienced why it was needed, I began to understand. America is a plural society. There are many forms of Christianity here, as well as other faiths. Allowing one religion to dominate too many aspects of public life is rife with problems. The First Amendment exists not only to keep religion out of government, but to allow the various religions to exist together in a legal manner, not allowing one to dominate another. It's not anti-religious, as some pundits would write, but irreligious; it cares not the faith, nor does it prohibit the exercise of.
Allowing one faith's religious views to dominate public discourse is a slippery slope. There are people who want a constitutional ban on flag burning, yet many of these people hold the flag above that cherished document, the one which our very freedom is based. The flag is just a symbol, the Constitution is a statement of what we, as Americans, believe. Or at least what we believed.
Don't let go of our freedom, the freedom to worship as we see fit.

Creativity, Competition & Society

2005-04-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

In all of the reading I've done of late, one thing keeps getting drummed into my head. In our world today, there is only a small window of opportunity that exists, for most of us, to either make it or not. Michael Lewis, in his book "Next", compares today's marketplace success stories to athletes. Most athletes are in their prime for only a few years, after which they become uncompetitive. He had a very good point when he brought up comparisons between athletes and young innovators. On the other hand, Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" brings up how the establishment is constantly putting restraints on any new, up and coming competition to the status quo; they inflict their will upon those who try to use the tools and materials that have been created to produce something new. In short, they seek to stifle progress.
Where is the classic renaissance human to go in a world that sees cut-throatism at either end of the age spectrum? The powers that be don't want you to succeed, let alone exist because of what you represent, while the younger generation is hot on your heels, seeking to undo you as well.
The creative class is a dynamic group. To be a member is to know that there will always be strife in your personal life, whether internal or external. It's not a comfortable spot to be in. It is the spot I've chosen, however, and I do not seek ways to fit in to regular society. Indeed, I actively seek not being assimilated altogether. Not that I buy all of that anarchy nonsense either.
I feel, however, that society, polite society, prefers that we find our place and stay put. When your soul prefers not to stay still, society is uncomfortable. When you try to stay still, your soul stirs and becomes restless.
I suppose this might explain the amount of antidepressants dispensed today. It also explains why I choose not to take them.

Old Macs Just Don't Die... Nor Do They Get Tossed

2005-04-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been reading about certain groups and their concerns over our high-tech society. The majority of their concerns dealt with the issue of waste; where does all of this high tech stuff go when it dies?

A quick look around my apartment suggests that it comes to me.

I grew up poor, and as a result, I have a tendancy to use things until they can't be used any longer. When I got into computers, though, this tendancy mutated into rescuing old computers from the trash. At first, this seemed like a good thing to do. Now, I can honestly tell you that is perhaps the furthest thing from the truth.

For me, opening up these old machines and making them run was a challenge. Once the challenge was met, though, my interests in them waned, and they had to go. Usually, they wouldn't. Lately, though, they are starting to trickle out. It's good to see them find homes that aren't mine.

The reason I bring this up has to do with those aforementioned advocacy groups. Lately, they've brought their gripes to my favorite computer company, Apple. One of their members said that if Apple doesn't begin actively recycling their machines, by 2008, there will be over 10 million Macs and Apples in dumps. That's a lot of computers in the garbage. Problem is, I just don't buy it. Most of the Mac/Apple enthusiasts I know just do not throw these machines away. They go out of their way to find alternative methods for disposing of them; by giving them away, trading them, selling them, even just holding on to them in storage. For us, these machines symbolize not just an appliance, but a culture. Trust me, people who tend to name their computers are more than just a little bit attached to them.

Obsessive? Yes, I guess so. Incredibly, I'd have never gotten into the Cult of Mac had it not been for someone tossing out an Apple Lisa. I was strictly a PC guy up to then. Their loss, my gain, and the rest is history.

A landfill loaded with Macs is about as likely as a dump packed with Rolls; just isn't going to happen.

A Sad Argument For Class Structure

2005-04-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

We've all heard that America is a classless society. Nothing could be further from the truth; we are clearly delineated class-wise. I once heard that some of the brownstones in New York and New England were deceptive. When viewed from the outside, you see what appear to be multiple apartments. But, once you pass through the doors, you find that many of them, in middle class neighborhoods, hide large, single dwellings. That's how class works in this country - you don't see it at first. But it's there. Ask any minimum wage employee.
That's the crux of the problem. Some of my friends say that personal advancement is an individual issue. They take a very libertarian viewpoint, and they have that right. However, what they don't like to talk about is that in order for their ideal society to work, classes have to exist. For instance, you might have senior managers and owners on top, middle managers and specialists on another layer, and your average workers and then laborers near the bottom. Is there interclass movement? Probably, but it would be doubtful that someone from the bottom tier could make it any higher than a middle tier. The upper tiers would always set out to assure that they maintain that position.
Simply put, a rigid class structure would always come into being. Somehow, it's human nature. We want structure, our collective conscience needs it. Or so it seems.
I would argue that this is partially nature, but more than likely nurture. For all of our time on this planet, there have always been leaders and followers, rulers and servants. This need to follow and be ruled over is part of our psyche, coming up from the most primitive part of the brain, the area just above medulla oblongata, our reptilian ancestry. It is our animal selves that want this. We can't help but listen to it, against our own will.
Can the upper brain, the cerebral cortex, our higher selves, overcome this? I doubt that it can, not any time soon. This is not an argument for class based on biology, however. The one thing that truly separates us from the rest of nature is our intellect. It is simply too easy to listen to those animal instincts that were bred into us. We have, within ourselves, the ability to rise above these notions. Society forces us to accept things as they are, it seems, and the class structure would demand this of us.
We're still relatively young, both as a species and as society; it was barely a tick of the geologic clock ago that we were hunter-gatherers, trying to eke out a living. Biologically speaking, we've been a raving success.
Perhaps in time we can find another way to make society work. Until then, we just have to do the best we can and remember that we are all human, no matter our social position.

American Ozymandias

2005-04-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Every nation goes through a period of rapid growth, and many of the more progressive ones go into an expansive period. Thus are the cycles of countries and kings; evolve, develop, grow, influence. If the growth is slow, the nation and its sphere of influence can survive for many years. However, nothing lasts. Every great nation eventually grows old, and its reach contracts until only the country itself remains. For some nations, this happened in more of an implosion; much like those cosmic cataclysms, where a bright star explodes after a massive implosion in what is called a supernova. All that remains is a dim remnant of its former self.

Empires evolve and die. That's the way it works. That's how balance is maintained.

It is easy to think that the United States is not an empire. In fact, the amount of influence our young country exerts over the globe has been tremendous, especially since the 20th century. No single country has ever had such a profound effect on the fate and fortunes of others. We have burned brighter than any other nation.

Much like those bright stars. And empires of yore. And like those super luminous stars or massive empires, the momentum to continue burning so bright is lost. Collapse is the outcome of both. Is this our fate? Only the future knows.

The words of Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" reflects the arrogance that is inherent within such societies, and it should serve as a reminder...

"...Nothing remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away"

The Life Artificial

2005-04-20T05:02:00.000-07:00

Tracie and I saw the movie "Robots" recently, and while we both thoroughly enjoyed the movie, it started a chain of thoughts in me that are at once fascinating and perhaps a little more than profound. In the movie, you find a world completely inhabited by robots; robot men and women, robot dogs and even robotic birds. No real life forms could be discerned, they were all mechanical. Could such a world exist?

Given an infinite number of possibilities, it could. In the Piers Anthony novel "OX", the human explorers find themselves going from one alternative universe to another. One such alternate world is abandoned, but it appears that it was entirely automated; even one of our explorers is hurt when a robot flower closes on his finger. This was my first introduction to this bold idea, and the movie "Robots" has again sparked interest in it.

How could it work? How would you create an entirely automated ecosystem?

Some technologists fear that we may accidentally create a race of nanobots someday that will run roughshod over our humble planet and leave behind a "gray goo", a writhing mass of nanobots that covers the planet... or perhaps even planets. This seems to be the robotic equivalent of a bacterial experiment. Let's say that you have a test tube filled with a nutrient solution. Into this test tube you plant a starter colony of dental plaque bacteria. Within a day or so, the bacteria multiply until all of the nutrient solution is absorbed and its entire weight has been converted into a single mass of plaque. The problem is that this is a sealed environment; the bacteria begin to die once all of the nutrients have been used. The same would happen to a nanobot environment, unless you designed them to fulfill certain niches. In short, you design them to fill the same roles as organic life.

These would be the equivalents of plants and animals, macro and microorganisms. Imagine a world where artificial plants convert nutrients in the soil into mass that is then used by larger artificial animals. Once the artificial organisms "shutdown", their components are recycled back into the environment. This insures that the robotic ecosystem always maintains just the right balance.

Just like our natural world.

Perhaps this has been done already.

The comparisons are easy to make. On the most basic level, all life on Earth is composed of molecules that are programmed to do just the above. If one system tries to overtake another, it is put back into place. Balance is maintained. Life thrives.

This idea is certainly is rife with controversy, enough for all sides to condemn it. But for myself, I find a strange comfort in it. If the purpose of life is to create more life, then perhaps our ventures into artificial life are merely continuing a task that was started billions of years ago. Maybe we're working towards a culmination. It will be a long time before we see where it leads.

Where To Begin...

2005-04-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

Most who know me are aware that I tend to write. Quite a bit. Addicted to it, one might be tempted to say. Perhaps it's a function of my complex personality... or at least one of them. Suffice to say, I'm talkative, complex and puzzling. Occasionally, though, flashes of brilliance might be seen through all of the clutter. If it's there at all.
So, where to begin. Suppose I could start off with some anecdotal story about myself, but rather than rehashing all of that now, let's wait and see what appears. I will give you a little info about myself, though.
I've held a variety of jobs, though I prefer being an artist and writer. Since there's not much money in either of those fields, I've also worked as a planetarian (Google it...), and currently work as a support person at an undisclosed, unglamorous job. It pays the bills, especially the one for my ISP.
I like a lot of things. I love astronomy. I love the beach and the ocean, yet I cannot swim. But then again, I love the sky, yet can't fly unaided. I like simple, usable tech. I like old computers... perhaps a bit too much. I love my cat. I love my wife. I like old ships. I like manual typewriters. I have many, many more interests.
So, there you have it. Seems like a good place to start.