enginPost

Democracy Corps runs a survey and finds that they are shocked at the results.

2010-03-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

So what was the survey, you ask? Democracy Corp ran a survey asking Americans how they felt about American leadership with regard to National Security and world respect for the identity of the United States of America. What they found is that the majority of Americans feel that the world sees us worse today as compared to two years ago and that Republicans are awarded higher credit for National Security than both Obama and Democrats in Congress.

The devil is in the details. 51% of Americans surveyed said that “American standing” has dropped during the first 13 months of President Obama's administration. That is compared to 41% of Americans who say the opposite.

So who is Democracy Corps and are they promoting a particular political agenda? Wait for it.

According to the Washington Times reporting on the survey results, 50% of likely voters feel that Republicans would likely do a better job of providing National Security. Only 33% favored Democrats in the pole.

Nearly one year ago (May of 2009) just after the Presidential transition, the same poll showed that the American people felt Democrats were equally as capable as Republicans with regard to national defense. When asking questions like “Keeping American Safe” or “Ensuring a strong military” or “Making America Safer from nuclear threats” Democrats now trail Republicans at 13%, 31% and 11% respectively.

So now, you are thinking that numbers can be made to look favorable to whomever is pimping them, right? I would agree with you. What is interesting is that Democracy Corps was founded in 1999 as the result of a few people feeling outraged at the political partisanship of Congress when they impeached President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 2000, Democracy Corp rallied the proverbial troops of voters when their preferred candidate, Al Gore, didn't get elected the next President of the United States. Said another way, this group isn't about to win any political conservatism awards.

And now they are reporting that America is disappointed in the Presidency of Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats. Why would that be? Well, it appears that today, the Democracy Corps is dedicated to what they would call “making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people.” They clearly take issue with the fact that the government doesn't appear to be listening to the people.

All of the poll on health care demonstrate the same exact outcome. The trend as it were, exclaims loudly that the American public don't feel the current administration nor Congress is listening, and they are being vocal.

There is plenty of advice the group gives to Democrats in Congress and the White House. They label that advise “Analysis.” But regardless of their politically aligned advice, the bottom line is: American's feel that we are less safe and the world has a lower opinion of America now than it did the day this administration took over Washington, DC.

Feel free to read more straight from the horses mouth:

http://www.democracycorps.com/strategy/2010/03/the-politics-of-national-security-a-wake-up-call/?section=Analysis

Foot Full Of Mistletoe

2009-12-10T11:21:00.001-08:00

The trees in DC are leaveless but there is still no snow on the ground. For a very short bit it snowed last weekend but this week it has been pretty dry. This weekend it is supposed to snow again but who knows if it will stick. Some people love the changing of the seasons and some folks have such a dislike for winter (I fall into this category in many ways) that they would prefer if it didn't exist at all. But nature has a way of making us familiar with the seasons whether we prefer them or not. The tell-tales are there, whether they represent our favorite season or not.

This winter I have been around or a part of a new Christmas tradition. It was not started by me and I won't likely be the one to end it, but I find it fascinating nonetheless. Two different groups of people I know have initiated conversations about “not offending anyone who doesn't share your religious holiday celebration.” This is the “new tradition” that now seems to happen each year following Thanksgiving and just before Christmas. The fundamental question goes like this:

“Is it wrong / inappropriate / unthoughtful to publicly celebrate a holiday using religious overtones when people around you might not be a part of your religious affiliation?”

For one Christian friend, within the context of a larger conversation, he felt it was more respectful to honor the paradigm of other people who don't share your views by specifically not wishing people a “Merry Christmas.” In exchange he offered “Happy Holidays” as a generic alternative and was fine with joining ranks with the people who would rather do away with “Merry Christmas” and it's obvious religious affiliation.

After much discussion, he felt that it was safer to not offend, say, an observant Jew by wishing them a “Merry Christmas.”

A few days later (and with zero prompting whatsoever) I received an email from another friend. I am going to share just a small portion of that email:

I have to say that even as a non-christian, I still love the part of a Charlie brown Christmas where Linus stands on stage and tells what Christmas is all about. And I pity da fool who organizes some “high standards” group and tries to get that taken off the air, cause I’ll be kickin some butt with a foot full of missile toes.

Now this was the beginning of the email and 2/3rds of it, after which he celebrated one of his favorite TV Shows letting me (and other friends / email recipients) know that the cast of Scrubs did their own version of the Charlie Brown special. Very funny I might add.

I went on to ask him “I was curious, from a non-christian (and specifically Jewish) perspective, does the presence of iconography and terminology (“Merry Christmas”) offend you?” I found his response to be very interesting.

He told me that someone he knew ask him about what he was doing for Christmas and then the friend got all flustered and said “I mean, Chanukah! I'm sorry.” His response was that nobody needs to apologize for asking him about Christmas, or saying the word Merry, or wishing him a merry Christmas. In his reasonable mind he feels that “merry Christmas” doesn't mean “I am forcing my beliefs upon you, so why not convert already?” I can honestly say I have never said “merry Christmas” and meant it in such a manner, so I would be willing to agree that for most people, that is a pretty reasonable expectation of understanding.

As for iconography, he said he could respect the fact that Christmas trees are “pretty” but we both agreed that the Christmas tree tradition, while adopted by Christians, is really pagan and not Christian almost at all!

This prompted me to ask a specific set of questions about what, of the following list, feels imposing or insensitive. This is an excerpt from my email in reply:

Is there a difference between... celebrating some element of who you are (via iconography or conversation) and... imposing your beliefs, and what might be a good example of either? How would you qualify these items / activities:

1. A Christmas wreath on a door.

2. An old lady wearing a pin on her coat that says “Merry Christmas.”

3. A menorah or a Christmas tree in a window.

4. Someone singing Christmas carols.

5. Strangers talking about their holiday traditions (religious or otherwise) while in line at a grocery store.

6. A game of dradle being played on a piece of cardboard in an alley with people standing around it with cash in their hands.

7. A pamphlet handed to you by a “Jew for Jesus” explaining the Christian message about Jesus as it pertains to thankfulness while in New York City watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

8. A stranger asking you “Isn’t that a beautiful nativity scene over there?” and points to some display setup in the lawn outside a city hall building next to a life-sized depiction of a “Chanukah-remembrance of the Maccabean Revolt” and a sign staked down by a local agnostic fellowship that reads “There is no God and religion enslaves people.”

9. Someone forcing you to bow down at a nativity scene.

For my friend, the only offensive bit was option 10. But he also admits he feels a bit progressive in terms of both being able to “get over” being hung up on something someone said and fundamentally not preferring all-things-Jewish over, say, a good looking blonde who just walked into the room regardless of religious / cultural identification. I digress.

In conclusion I think that both friends have great hearts when it comes to wanting to treat people well. In both cases, I would likewise not want to offend anyone or adopt feeling offended unnecessarily. That would definitely be the upside to both of their personalities and thoughts. I would also add that I am not in favor of hedging all imagined bets to avoid offending everyone. The fact is that the potential to call so many things I don't agree with “offensive” but I have to choose to not be “offended” and coerce everyone around me into my beliefs.

Now, don't get me wrong. I would love for everyone to share my beliefs. That would make my life a whole lot easier. But forcing compliance with what I believe would simply make for a planet full of hypocrites. I do make an exception for common laws that do stuff like defend life or encourage safety or protect children. And many of my beliefs about the harmful nature of pornography or social appropriateness of entertainment media would also likely make the world a better place, but I would rather people come to an agreement with me rather than force their compliance (and I am willing in the mean time to advocate for the idea that people should agree with me and maybe somedays my reasonable thoughts will become laws agreed to be a good thing... but I will waitto write more on that until I decide to run for U.S. Senate.)

But I love the idea that my Jewish friend here is willing to kick someone's butt with a foot full of mistletoe if someone decided that celebrating Christmas were suddenly socially inappropriate!

(worthy of note: The friend who's emails from which I've been directly quoting has granted me permission to share his thoughts. Out of respect to him, his perspective is not a license to attempt to offend people with your word choice under the guise of "celebration" but rather just his reasoned perspective with regard to the freedom to celebrate in a way that is not actually imposing but that doesn't require completely hiding oneself from the public eye for fear of offending someone.

Might someone be offended by your word choice, even though you are being kind and not intending on offending or verbally confront people who wouldn't otherwise agree with you? Sure they might. But I feel that this is there problem to wrestle with and not your problem in this case.)

New Website In Production

2009-12-06T17:08:00.000-08:00

In my last blog entry I wrote about learning Drupal (the web-content management system tool) and that I am rebuilding my website in it. Right now it only lives on my iMac at home but soon I will be relaunching enginpost.com and moving my blog over to that site. In the mean time, I am fairly happy with what I am able to do to build a very stylized gallery in Drupal.

These sample images show what the basic site will look like but I want to focus on the gallery.

Intuitive URLs

First, replace "localhost:8888/ep" right now (in your mind) with "enginpost.com" and check out the address to get to the gallery on my site:
The nice thing about clean URLs is that it makes content on your site quite memorable and less cryptic, which I prefer. So, once I go live, if a person wanted to check out all of the images in my gallery they would type in: http://enginpost.com/gallery

Here is a screen grab of the gallery page on the site will all five images I have uploaded (click the image to view a larger version.) I designed it to make each image look a bit like an old photo. No more than six images to a page and if there are more than six images then at the bottom of the images you get a "pager" which uses Ajax to move you through the images in groups of no more than six at a time.

Instant Sub Galleries Via Tagging (Taxonomy)

Next up, I like to take a lot of photos and currently I use flickr to manage all of that, but I am only allowed so many uploads per month. So, since I manage my own site (as well as pay for the space and bandwidth) I am going to start moving all of my images over to my new gallery. No more being spread across flickr and blogspot and enginpost.com for me. I will be all in one site.

The next important task in creating my image gallery is being able to easily tag the images and then find them again by searching through those tags (if you are not familiar with tagging, it is like labeling or indexing your images based on ad-hock categories. Said another way, imagine that you took a picture of a friend during Thanksgiving. Well, you might want to tag that picture of "frank" with the terms "Frank" and "Thanksgiving." Later you will want to search for and see all of you shots where you tagged "Thanksgiving" you should be able to pull up that image.)

Now, check out this URL. It is the same as above with the addition of "/scottish"

The idea here is that I can pull back only the images where I have tagged them with "scottish." In this case I tagged only 4 of the 5 images I uploaded (for testing) using that tag. So only those images come back!

Make note that the gallery title says "Gallery: (Scottish)" this time and not "Gallery: (All)" like it did in the earlier image (click the image above to view a larger version.) I am doing a couple of tricks. First, this is the same exact gallery page in Drupal. In fact it is the same basic core page for my entire web site but I have themed just the output of the images here so that they look like old photos. Second, Drupal is reading the URL to figure out if it needs to filter the results based on the tag term I put on the URL. When I themed the image content coming back I just did a little trick to be sure it capitalized "Scottish" even though it isn't capitalized in the URL. This way everything looks nice and consistent and professional.

Larger Image Versions Using Lightbox

Finally, just as I have been asking you to click these images to view a larger version, I wanted that same feature in my web site. I have noticed that people are using a technique these days which opens a larger version of the picture on top of the existing page rather than opening a different window, and I think that looks great. It is really the new standard for how site galleries operate so I went looking to see how that was done.

In the end I was able to pull this off quite easily in Drupal. In addition to that I was able to setup an image processing module that would take the huge images I was uploading and it created thumbnails and standardized large view sizes to make the gallery images incredibly consistent!

Notice in this image that you can also download the original image in it's even larger size once you have clicked to view the larger version. Beautiful! I also made it so that when you click one image to make it larger, it automagically starts a slideshow of any remaining images in the group. You can stop the slideshow at any time or manually advance the slideshow as well.

Drupal sure makes this stuff easy. If I had to do this sort of thing from scratch I don't have a clue how long it would take me to build out all of this functionality. In addition, the site design is completely mine (so one wouldn't necessarily assume this was a Drupal website by looking at it.) Beyond that the time I save now by allowing drupal to create thumbnail and standard larger views of my images more than makes up for the time it has taken me to learn how to do this stuff!

Very exciting geekery!

The Difference Between My Brain And A Web-CMS

2009-12-06T10:29:00.001-08:00

That title is a joke. I am nothing like a web-content management system and so comparing my brain to the purpose of one is ridiculous. But I have been bashing my brain against one particular web-cms for a while now and while my head hurts from the steady rate of growth and discovery, I can say that the experience has been, well, glorious compare to the learning curve of other kinds of technology. I am talking about the web-cms Drupal.

I have learned a number of other languages over the years: Visual Basic, Cobal, Powerbuilder, Foxpro, C, Objective C, C#, .NET framework, Cold Fusion, PHP, ActionScript, JavaScript, Smalltalk and a few others (fhew!) The thing about most programming languages: it is a lot like riding a bike. There are many kinds of bikes out there, single gears, multiple gears, road bikes, trail bikes, and while they all ride differently, once you learn one the others implement the same basic expected functions (pedals, breaks, gear switching, turning, etc.) just not in the same way (rod-based gear changing, twist / crank gear changing, breaks on the handlebars, breaks on the pedals, etc.) With most languages the purpose remains the same, the tools to get you there are what change a bit.

Diving over into a web-cms is like tweaking a bike for a particular purpose. The seat, the handlebar grips, the shoes, did I mention the seat? A web-cms can implement many different approaches based on the technology (or programming language) beneath it. This means you need to know a bit about the programming language it is written in, but then you need to know how they used that language to put the whole thing together so you could snap it together in a custom manner: enter headache.

Drupal, the web-cms of my choosing, is really built on the best of the best. Allow me to throw out a few buzzwords: apache, MySQL, PHP, jQuery and Ajax. And Drupal sites tend to look amazing in old browsers as well as new browsers, index really well on sites like Google (sidenote: it is funny to think of a monolithic entity like Google as fundamentally a site) and plays really well with other technology. If Drupal were your kid, it would never disobey, would be infinitely creative and filled with potential, and you would never have to tell it to clean it's room.

Drupal is clearly the premier poster-child for Open-Source-Gone-Well. It nearly defines the phrase. Drupal is open source in that Drupal version 6 (the current version) included the participation of over 700 developers world-wide devoted to making this community product better.

And the magic of Drupal is in the contributed modules. These are little optional pieces of downloadable functionality, all open source, available for the purpose of adding functionality to the core web-cms that is Drupal. Do you want a site to run your personal blog? Core Drupal does that. Do you want to setup a community calendar and a photo gallery and manage document libraries with sign-in & sign-out capabilities? Go visit http://drupalmodules.com/ and you will find all of the Contrib. Modules you need to pull that off.

Learning Drupal is, however, just a bit sketchy, but not in the way you are anticipating. It isn't that Drupal information is difficult to find. On the contrary. There is too much information out there. And self-published experts range from goofy to golden-nuggets. The trick is getting good references from community members to find the right best sources of knowledge. In a sea of Drupal there are a few amazing stand-out sources that every wanna be Drupal user needs to find... but I am going to hord those references so you all don't benefit!!

That is joke. The first amazing source is IRC. That's right! I said it! Remember back in the day when AOL first came out and how cool it was to chat with people over the internet? Well, long before AOL pretended to BE the web, IRC was! IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, are these communities of like-minded folks who are chatting it up on various topics. In the Drupal IRC world, irc.freenode.net and #DRUPAL-SUPPORT are your bread and butter. I have received tips from everything from (1) great hosting services, to (2) how to enable features in my custom theme configuration, or (3) great book recommendations.

All in all, my career has taken a completely reborn turn in the last 3 years. I was completely invested in Microsoft a few years ago. If I were to explain my career in terms of technology I would have said: SharePoint, VB and C#, Ajax, CSS and SQL Server. These days, without a doubt I would now say: PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, Flash, ActionScript 3, Drupal, PHP, CSS, xHTML, XML and Design. In the world of tech, that is like agreeing to fight with the English and just before impaling William Wallace on your sword, shaking his hand and joining his team along with the other defecting Irish (not that I am Irish... I am Scottish!)

So I am geeked about the future of my career. I am 36 years young and feel like I am just getting started.

Scottish Christmas Parade

2009-12-05T09:36:00.001-08:00

I am about to snuggle down and watch a Clint Eastwood movie with my brie and crackers with rosemary chicken and wild rice while I watch the first snowfall of the season out the living room window, but first I wanted to share just a couple photos from my morning in Alexandria.

These police on bikes lead the parade. It was cold and the rain just turned to snow.

This man walking away is wearing the tartan of Clan Donald (my Scottish heritage.) My photos really turned out great. Now I just need to take the time to go through them and post them. Be sure to click on the images to see the larger versions.

Letter From VA Congressman On Health Care Reform

2009-12-04T05:51:00.000-08:00

First, here is the letter I just received in my email inbox (following this is my email reply):

Dear Mr. McDonald,

Thank you for contacting me with respect to the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962). I appreciate the opportunity to hear your views on this important legislation.

My approach to dealing with the issue of health care reform has been to listen to you, my constituents. Through town hall meetings, telephone town halls, e-mails, letters, phone calls, and even over lunch at neighborhood diners, I have heard from thousands of constituents. >From that interaction, I learned that Northern Virginia families and businesses want health care reform that lowers costs, increases choice, improves quality of care, and provides peace of mind.

H.R. 3962, while far from perfect, ultimately met those tests and that is why I supported it. Below, I have laid out some of its provisions.

Lower Costs

o Eliminates co-pays and deductibles for preventive care.

o Strengthens Medicare by closing the prescription drug donut hole for seniors.

o Provides tax credits to help small businesses provide insurance.

o Reduces the federal deficit by more than $100 billion.

Increased Choice

o If you like your current doctor, and your current insurance plan, you can keep them.

o A National Health Insurance Exchange, allowing you to choose from a menu of different private plans, with a public plan as one option.

Higher Quality

o You and your doctor make your health care choices - not insurance companies or the government.

o More doctors and nurses in the workforce to care for you.

Peace of Mind

o Caps catastrophic costs so families aren't forced to declare bankruptcy because of health care costs.

o No more insurance company coverage denials because of pre-existing conditions.

o No need to worry about changing jobs based on health care coverage.

You should also be aware of the impacts this bill would have on the 11th Congressional District specifically. It would provide tax credits to make insurance more affordable for 87,000 households, close the prescription drug donut hole for 3,800 seniors, allow 19,000 small businesses to offer health insurance for the first time, and protect up to 1,400 families from bankruptcy due to health care costs.

In particular, our seniors will benefit tremendously from the provisions of H.R. 3962. In addition to closing the prescription drug donut hole, saving thousands of dollars a year for affected seniors, it will eliminate all Medicare co-payments for preventive services like checkups. Furthermore, it will strengthen the solvency of Medicare, ensuring that this critical program is in place for years to come.

Finally, I was able to secure substantial changes in the final version of the bill that protect nearly all Northern Virginia families and small businesses from paying higher taxes to finance the plan.

As Congress continues to work on health care reform, I look forward to hearing your views. Once again, thank you for contacting me on this important issue. I encourage you to visit my website at http://connolly.house.gov to read H.R. 3962 and view numerous videos where I explain my position on health care reform in detail.

Sincerely,

g
Gerald E. Connolly
Member of Congress
11th District, Virginia
GC/PC

And here is my reply:

Thank you for you email ((you spammed me about your support of H.R. 3962.)

Please endure my thoughts for a moment as I analyze what you have said here:

Provides tax credits:
This is fundamentally raising the cost and not saving the cost. We all know what a tax credit is and how you pay for it.

Eliminates co-pays and deductibles for preventative care:
I have that today. You efforts have accomplished nothing if you are pretending to give that to me. The market already manages well the competitiveness of these health related components.

Lowers Cost:
The Congressional Business Office disagrees with your analysis (and they are more qualified than you to analyze cost) so you need to be honest about this. If the CEO of a Health Insurance Company misrepresented the financial state of their entity in such a way as to ignore what that companies accountants were saying, that CEO would be crucified both socially and legally by investors. As a tax-payer I am your investor. As a Congress-person you would be an officer of the public health option included in this plan. Any inaccurate representation of the financial analysis and budget of this plan would constitute a breach of trust and you are now culpable in your dissemination of misinformation. Expect that the federal government will be rightly sued by any and all tax-payers as the officers of a public health insurance company would if you continue to misrepresent the reasonable analysis.

Let's talk about a few additional areas of concern which bring into question the current state of your “analysis” of H.R. 3962:

You and your doctor make your health care choices:
My doctor and I make those decisions today. You are inferring that the restrictive control of coverage by insurance companies will be tamped down by this bill, implying that my doctor and I can make decisions about my health care that we can't make today. This is completely deceptive. While you are taking the power of some “coverage” decisions away from insurance companies, you aren't handing that power to me and my doctor. The bill hands the lion's share of that power to the new “Health Choices Commissioner” essentially now putting me and my doctor in bed with both the insurance company as well as the federal government. Applying simple math you have essentially complicated who will be involved in choosing my coverage, and not simplified it to me and my doctor.

Protecting us from higher taxes:
Independent analysis of H.R.3962 has proven that there are many new taxation opportunities created if this bill passes. Maybe you are hiding behind the idea that you will not directly tax us at the federal or state level, but we are all paying attention. From new device and service taxes to small business taxes, to tax penalties if we prefer to not participate in purchasing insurance, you are raising our taxes. Your letter is intentionally worded to deceive.

In addition to these specific rebuttals, you are also proposing changes to medicare and medicaid which are both analyzed as either not helpful or specifically harmful. Now, I realize that an element of reform may mean that any programs numbers will change, but in the case of medicare you are making decisions with which America is not comfortable.

If I were to give you a letter grade with regard to your analysis, you get a “D” at best. More importantly you appear to have spent more time word-smithing the grammar and word selection in your sentences with a desire to deceive people about these various talking points, as opposed to just analyzing the bill. I recommend you go back and study it again.

So far Congress and the current presidential administration have done an absolutely horrible job at estimating, anticipating and analyzing our troubled economy. Independent news outlets like MSNBC have called your optimistic analysis of the economy flawed due to real-world outcomes in comparison to specific estimates. Now we are to believe in your analysis of the cost and value of H.R. 3962 over the analysis of the Congressional Budget Office or other independent analysis? Not unlike the Congressional arrogance in imagining that the 111^th Congress can solve or better manage a health care company, you have made the blunder again in imagining we will trust your defiantly optimistic analysis despite the real numbers.

In conclusion, if a public option continues to get pork-barreled onto health care reform legislation and you continue to support it, I along with a number of other Americans will do whatever I can in my circles of influence to remain vocal about ensuring that you do not remain in your Congressional seat.

If you really want to listen to the American people, then stop the spending spree and do a better job.

Sincerely,
Steve McDonald

P.S. I will be posting your letter and my response to my blog so other people can independently review the quality of your work. If you decide to recant and reconsider your analysis and go back to work for the American people, feel free to send me an email in reply and I will update the blog entry with your responsible political adjustments.

My First Comic In 20 Years!

2009-12-02T20:10:00.000-08:00

I have truly been slacking. When I was a kid I used to draw all of the time. And while I do creative artistic work with regularity, i don't really spend any time drawing comics, at least not to any level of completion.

Well tonight as I was headed home I had this thought that I needed to put down on paper. A couple hours later after digitally coloring it and adding captions, here it is! (Clicking the comic will open a larger version)

Feel free to leave me your thoughts in the form of comments!

American War Criminals

2009-12-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Middle East was heating up. Muslim groups were fighting with other Muslim groups. Oil resources were being debated. World leaders were whispering about the impending threat of “weapons of mass destruction” being produced in Iraq despite various UN Security council resolutions to prohibit it.

Feeling pressure to unseat Saddam Hussein from his position of power, the President of the United States sought funding from the U.S. Congress to set into motion an effort to replace Saddam's regime with a democracy. Specifically the act put before Congress requested the use of United States Armed Forces to pull of this large and risky effort.

The President had few international friends. To gain a tactical advantage the U.S. hoped to use various Middle East countries to base their entry into Iraq, but those countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates initially denied the request. It seems that the U.S. would primarily have to count on the United Kingdom as it's near sole support, advocate, friend and military partner.

The act approved by Congress gave the President the means to drawdown defense articles and assign resources for the purpose of going into Iraq to fundamentally perform the goal of unseating a violent, hostile and non-compliant sanctioned Iraqi regime. Some saw risk in assigning that sort of power to a president while others saw it as a reasonable act in times of war.

The U.S. President's administration was actively engaged in ensuring people of the world knew what we were up against and what was at stake.

“The weapons of mass destruction are the threat of the future. I think the president explained very clearly to the American people that this is the threat of the 21^st century,” said the administration's Secretary of State.

A plan was in place. Congress had been briefed. The American people were informed. It was nearly time to go in. The known tactical targets: weapons research and development installations, air defense systems, weapon and supply depots, barracks and command headquarters of Saddam's elite Republican Guard, along with Saddam's lavish presidential palaces.

For a while then there were musings about the U.S. Military taking impending action in Iraq and despite the common objections to warmongering by certain elements of the American public as well as the world, it was time to go into Iraq.

In December of 1998 Operation Desert Fox was set into motion by then-President Bill Clinton.

Unless you were aware of this piece of recent world history, my guess is that you were thinking about a completely different U.S. President and war.

How long have you attributed military action in defiance of the UN and world opinion, warmongering, WMD threat and Congressional support for misinformed action in Iraq to President Bush only now to realize that President Clinton has more to do with the writing of this story than you would have ever imagined?

WMDs were a threat then according to the UN and various intelligence sources, even though Clinton's raid on Bagdad yielded no WMDs. Was President Clinton simply wrong about WMDs or should we run out and print “CLINTON LIED” bumper-stickers? It was rumored that U.S. Inspectors under Clinton sabotaged Iraqi relations and inspections to provoke the Bagdad bombing. Should we go back and talk about releasing those documents and prosecuting the Clinton Administration as war criminals?

As a direct result of the failed Bagdad bombing effort former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, “We did not do, in my view, enough damage to degrade [Iraq's programs for weapons and mass destruction]... because in six months to a year they will be back to where they are and we cannot keep repeating these attacks. At the end of the day what will be decisive is what the situation in the Middle East will be in two or three years... If Saddam is still there, if he's rearming, if sanctions are lifted, we have lost, no matter what spin we put on it.”

As a direct result of the President Clinton's Bagdad bombing, the Islamist group Vanguards of Conquest called for attacks on the US “for it's arrogance.”

The fact is, this is all very complicated stuff. Someone selling platitudes about “he lied” or “prosecute the war criminal administration” are simply evoking emotional ploys rather than discussing facts (or whatever we can glean from history that seems close enough to fact.)

I am not in a rush to condemn former President Bill Clinton, but I think people need to get down off their historically inaccurate high-horses and stop the very narrow propaganda that crucifies former President George W. Bush. I am not saying he didn't make mistakes. I am saying that you don't have to go back too many Presidents to find perfectly similar examples of admirable and embarrassing mistakes, liberal or conservative.

Note: My telling of this story comes from a retelling of the wikipedia article on Operation Desert Fox. You can fact-check the story starting there. Feel free to leave comments.

UPDATE:

After President Obama's Afghanistan address last night, I will watch public reaction closely. I fully anticipate a spectrum of responses from military families encouraged by support, to families fearfully anticipating deployment of their family members, from feeling confident in the President's explained approach in Afghanistan to seeing this as more of the same business-as-usual regardless of President Obama's campaign promises on war efforts in the Middle East.

Is President Obama's selected military option enough? Some say it is a move in the right direction but because it is not equal to the demands of the Afghan war-front it doesn't have a large chance for success. We can only hope that if they will send more people into the fray, it surely has a significant chance of working. In President Obama's own words, "As your Commander and Chief I owe you a mission that is clearly defined."

President Obama also said, "it is in our vital national interest to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan... I do not make this decision lightly... if I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow... I am convinced that our security is at stake... this is the epicenter... this is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat."

Now that President Obama is making these tough decisions, we will see how the polarized political response to the demands of national security, many of which got him elected because of his outspoken desire to bring the troops home, will either support him or begin to name President Obama and his administration as one of the American War Criminals.

climate scheming

2009-11-27T04:04:00.000-08:00

As reported by the BBC, hackers target a lead climate research unit's server to capture files and private emails. They successfully downloaded a number of very damaging emails where scientists were discussing topics such as: ouster the scientists who don't agree with them, hiding climate study results that don't agree with their conclusions, altering data to support their perspectives, etc.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) hacked email system included emails from a veritable "Who's who" of AGW climate scientists, so says the climategate web site. So this brings into question the work directly contributed to the IPCC report very much at the center of the AGW debate.

The site climate gate has also reported the story has been in contact with individuals who were included in the list of hacked emails willing to confirm that the emails matched emails they previously authored. At the same time both climate gate and the BBC have reported that the hacked group is willing to verify that they were hacked but were unwilling to address any specific questions about the contact of the emails or documents.

I think it is reasonable to demand more verification of the facts, and it is not reasonable for this group to simply be unwilling to face the accusation posed by their own hacked emails. At the same time I am not surprised that they are willing to simply not address those very disturbing emails. In one of the emails they are completely honest (privately with each other) about refusing to provide all of the supporting data and models associated with one of their "scientific" conclusions.

Four of the biggest posed cover-ups in those emails have everything to do with [1] screening comments on the supposedly neutral RealClimate.org website to ensure a pro-AGW message, [2] "fixing" data to make the historical record appear to consistently rise in temperature over the industrial revolution period, [3] altering land and ocean temperature difference data to hide the reasonable conclusion that the models do not take into account the amount of "urban island" warming heat measurement effect and [4] hiding the fact that measured temperature trends for the last entire decade breaks their trend and invalidates their trending models' conclusions. These three pieces of evidence, acknowledged by these AGW advocates who's science found the results and are now scheming to hide the evidence, would be a significant and reasonable breach in the armor of the AGW initiative.

What does that mean for average Americans?

It means that AGW as a factor in making political decisions is now reasonably in question and that AGW skeptical science results aren't just coming from skeptics but from the models of pro-AGW scientists. We can now put our carbon-tax checkbooks away and ask people like Al Gore to go sell crazy somewhere else.

First Video With Letus

2009-11-21T14:24:00.001-08:00

This is my first video with my new Letus 35mm Lens Adapter. I need to rerender it in letterbox since vimeo doesn't seem to be able to read the information that says it is widescreen, but I don't know that workflow yet. In the mean time, here is the video. Make note of the depth of field in some of the shots (stuff in focus while other stuff is out of focus.)

Everyday Super Heroes from Steve McDonald on Vimeo.

Equipment used:

Canon XH-A1 HD camcorder
Letus 35mm adapter
Canon 75-300mm/4 lens
Canon 85mm/1.8 lens
Rhode boom with Sure SM81 mic
Final Cut Express

Dreams Of War

2009-11-19T05:44:00.001-08:00

I woke up this morning face down in my bed. My brain was fuzzy from the deep sleep I just had and I wasn't sure what was real and what was not.

Last nights dream had me sitting along a concrete wall with a crowd of people wearing jeans and jackets or military camouflage. I was still near home in the Arlington area, but along a road that seems to be on a hill. As I looked down the road the sky grew darker and there were flashes of colored lights and the sounds of explosions like faint thunder.

The soldiers around me seemed experienced and calm but also a little anxious. The scene began to make sense as it would seem that the civilian people in the crowd were joining the military in battle down the hill. It was an all-hands-on-deck moment where anyone who could fight was about to.

I was as cool as... ok, completely not true. When faced with the fact that I was in the masses about to go down the hill I started to think about the mortal possibilities. I said to myself, “I don't want to die.” The soldier to my right turned and said, “What? Did you say something?” I repeated my self only a little louder for sympathies sake. Everyone was going down the hill. There was no getting out of it and I was prepared to go. But I was also marking the moment, acknowledging that it could be my last on the planet.

There were soldiers and civilians walking around everywhere making preparations. Then people started going over and down the hill. I turned to the soldier on my left and smiled. She seemed experienced but also empathized with my cavalcade of emotions. People were moving forward now. I reached over for the soldier and for some reason we kissed. It was just simple human contact I think. The desire to connect with something positive and full of normalcy that I think caused that to happen. I don't know.

The hilarious thing to me is that I am the first guy in a movie that instinctively calls out “Come on! Do we have time for this?” in a theater when two characters kiss in the middle of an action sequence. Now, while my motivation didn't really parallel the passion that you see on the silver screen in a action-moment-kiss I think I could understand how if given the right amount of stress and time, such a thing could actually happen.

I woke up after that, my alarm calling me from my sleep.

I can say that this is likely a media dream. Between reading the book “flashforward” to watching the TV shows “V” and “Flashforward” and recently beating the video game “Modern Warefare 2” and all of the press talking about a Congress bankrupting the country, the idea of being engaged in a bunch of unsettling upheaval where regular citizens have to get involved or get plowed under seems to be at the front of my mind.

Save Money, Get Breast Cancer

2009-11-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

The American Cancer Society is not recommending any changes to breast cancer screening, despite what a government task force says about self and mammogram breast cancer screening.

You might wonder why I would care about this issue. Am I just being political somehow? Yes and no. I lost my mother to cancer and I am hopeful that people will keep an eye on potentially political decisions on health care.

For the last 20 years the American Cancer Society has recommended that women start preventative exams at the age of 40 and recommends self exams regularly and mammograms once per year. At the same time the government committee called the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force claims that the costs associated with breast cancer screening and biopsy scares a lot of people unnecessarily and doesn't “substantially” improve the odds for survival.

I recall when my friend Gregg became sick with cancer. He and his wife did everything they possibly could to fight, fight, fight. I seriously doubt that they weighed the idea of not trying something because the odds weren't “substantial.”

In the case of my mother, every medical professional agreed: if her cancer had been caught earlier, it wouldn't have been fatal. In her case colon cancer became liver cancer which eventually spread until her body couldn't fight it any longer.

According to Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, “This is one screening test I recommend unequivocally, and would recommend to any woman 40 and over.” He went on to say that the committee is “essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives, just not enough of them.”

While Medicare and private insurance companies are currently not announcing any changes in coverage at this time, they admit that the U.S. Preventative Service Task Force reports do influence the coverage plans of those groups.

All of this to say, I believe we are looking at an in-kind example of government managed health care decision models that would change the rules for mandated insurance coverage and cost containment. If you haven't been paying attention, it would be likely true that a government run health option would decide rules like this and fine health insurance that didn't “competitively” conform to the types of service decided by new government managed health care rules.

What is even more disconcerting is the idea that these declarations are coming from a preventative task force. This is like your local Police deciding not to respond to all 911 calls because, statistically a certain number of crimes never get solved. At what point should efforts in prevention decide to stop passing along preventative advice and instead only pass along advice proportionate to the amount of potential benefit? I know the answer to that one. Never! Nobody wants to be a cancer statistic.

So with respect to statistics, and in conclusion, let's briefly review a few stats. According to cancer.gov, if you are woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer...

you are 1 in 233 if you are in your 30s
you are 1 in 69 if you are in your 40s
you are 1 in 38 if you are in your 50s
you are 1 in 27 if you are in your 60s

Which of those statistics do you want to become? If I could ask your families and friends that question, I know the answer would unanimously be, "You are 1 person fully worthy of not becoming a cancer statistic."

TV Show V Tops All Shows

2009-11-15T15:48:00.000-08:00

Well, the new TV show “V” is a hit. The typical top-of-the-list show has been “Grey's Anatomy” for a while now, but as of November sweeps, “V” topped it for over-all viewership and specifically within the 18-49 crowd (that's a large crowd!)

What I find fascinating about the show are the seemingly political analogy that underlies the program. From using “devotion” as a weapon, to marketing for favor via selling “universal health care” to a large demographic of youth getting involved in promoting the “visitors” doing what they call “spreading hope” the show seems to have taken it's plays straight out of the 2008 presidential election.

Some might say there is nothing new about those political ploys, but there is an interesting twist only more recently found in the 2008 presidential election: courting of the fan-boy press by the visitors to gain influence over the masses through “news” media.

People are very aware of the influence of the press. And, of course, as “news” in the 21^st century has become a commodity like shampoo brands, people behind the news desk think about their careers more often than not. It is understandable as everyone who works likely thinks about their careers. But promoting someone at a news desk in “media” today is far different than merit-promotions of old. Look at the rise of previously unknowns like Katy Curric, who was formerly lost in small offices as a lowly pentagon reporter who “caught her break” during dessert storm in the early 1990s and was later promoted because of her demographicly-tested trustworthiness. Through the years weather forecasters have gone from scientists/climatologists to up-and-coming wanna be actors who said their first lines in front of green-screens reading scripts about the coming day's weather before heading to Hollywood. Every news job is a stepping stone today. And it isn't about telling the truth or breaking some news. It is about effective polling and degrees of perceived trustworthiness and influence.

I digress. Here is an exchange between two characters from “V.” In episode #2 a news reporter was asked to give an exclusive interview of the “V” high commander, when just before going on-air the “V” high commander instructed the reporter to not ask any questions that could portray the visitors in a bad light. When the reporter asked what she meant by that, the response was to appeal to the reporters rocketing career and the highly visible nature of the interview. Said another way, make us look good and we will do exclusives with you that rocket your career to the top. So, now in episode #3, the reporter is struggling with having sold out his conscience for an advancing career move:

Other news person, “Poll numbers. The country is split about the visitors.”

Lamenting reporter, “50 percent are still undecided.”

Other news person, “Yeah, I mean, people don't have enough info.”

Lamenting reporter, “That's my fault. I didn't ask any of the hard questions. I got played”

Before you think this is just pure entertainment fiction, check out this news article from the Orlando Sentinel:

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2008/10/obama-campaign.html

When Barbara West asked a few tough questions that Joe Biden could have answered in a manner that laid such questions to rest, instead his response was “I don't know who's is writing your questions” and the Obama team canceled scheduled interviews and cut off that news outlet. In recent days the White House has given the same cold shoulder to any news group willing to continue to ask tough questions, attacking those news groups and questioning if they can even be qualified as news because they are thinking about questions that the White House would rather people not think about.

Spoiler alert:

The show “V” is a remake. In the original the alien “visitors” come to earth to consume humans as a food source. And how do they make their ulterior motives happen? They mislead and lie about their intentions attempting to persuade the masses to support them while they quietly work out their actual plan.

In general, the show is maintaining it's basic plot. What is different would be a modernization of tactics and efforts to fool people in order to gain their devotion and support. The makers of the show admit, they are drawing these modernizations from our contemporary life.

It is interesting how palatable the idea of people feeling undecided because they don't have enough questions is in a TV plot, or how obvious it is for the news reporter to claim the blame because he wasn't asking any hard questions. It is just interesting to me that TV shows can expose this problem in the form of allegory, but if a news outlets or common people call the press on such stuff then (in the 2008 presidential election) they are labeled “enemies of hope.”

Busy Days

2009-11-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

I've been busy lately with a number of new developments:

Video Work!

At work we have been talking about incorporating more video into our e-learning and marketing products. In some cases we are supplied content. In other cases we need to produce big content, so we will be outsourcing much of that for sake of scale, resources and quality. But there seems to be a number of opportunities to take on small to medium-sized video work.

About a year ago I investing in a nice Canon XH-A1 HD (1080i) 24f pro-sumer camcorder. I love it. The images from this piece of equipment are amazing. But, if I am going to use my camera for these projects, I have decided that getting the "film" look is important.

Recently I purchased a glidecam, which is an in-hand stabilizing device that makes your shots appear to have been taken from a dolly rig.

Secondly, I just purchased a Letus device which allows me to attach my Canon XT Digital SLR lens onto my XH-A1. This allows the camera to shoot with an extremely shallow depth of field (which means that your subject stays in focus while everything closely in front and behind the subject falls out of focus.)

A while back I had already invested in an XLR field condenser microphone and rode boom for the purpose of capturing higher quality audio while on the run.

Click the above image to check out a larger pic!

This next week is the first shoot. Unfortunately I do not have any light gear and investing in a basic low-quality 3-pointing kit (for film) costs around $2k!!! So, if anyone knows of some place with a better price, let me know, so I can get my boss to make the investment.

Updating My Resume!

Specifically, I've been thinking about revamping my website http://enginpost.com for the purpose of "simplification." The current site is quite busy and filled with a level of detail that is, well, distracting.

I am pondering taking on more side work in my free time, so revamping the site might be the way to go. Here is a shot of the new site.

You can checkout prototype (which does nothing yet) at:

http://enginpost.com/cs

Mobile Games!

Lastly, this one here is a completely new venture for me. At work we are talking about building playable games for mobile devices, but rather than learning proprietary languages for each device we are targeting, we have been looking into both browser-based javascript-driven games as well as flash CS5 mobile game development.

For my first javascript-browser-based game, I decided to attempt to reinvent a classic old-console game. I am not done yet, but so far I have been able to master animating a few bits using HTML, DHTML, CSS and JavaScript, and it works on my iPhone!

If you want to check this out in your browser (or on an iPhone) go to...

http://enginpost.com/bomber/bomber-drop.html

When I complete any games I will be sure and post them here.

Health Insurance For Illegal Immigrants

2009-11-05T04:45:00.000-08:00

Congress has made a lot of statements about Health Care Reform and specifically providing a public option. People who have read the bills proposed have shown serious concern about supporting a bill that funds a government run health insurance plan, especially a plan that can be utilized by people who are not here legally. Here is the idea...

In a nutshell, not everyone benefiting from the plan will be paying taxes. In fact, quite a few will not be paying taxes. So those who are paying taxes (that's you middle-class) will be financially backing this plan and so naturally you might prefer the the idea that IF you are going to pay then you would rather limit your financial investment to only paying for people who are currently citizens or who have undergone the complicated, lengthy and costly process of earning the right to be here legally. Now... I have lost most of your at this point! Most of you either don't want the public option (because it has almost nothing to do with reform in reality) or don't want a plan that pretends to save you money on health insurance only to crank the cost back up again through new taxes! I get you!!! But stay with me.

As a protective measure to at least mitigate some risk with regard to paying for illegal immigrant health care a number of senators have proposed passing an amendment to any health care bill that closes the illegal immigrant loophole. Well, as reasonable as that sounds, Dems won't have it.

"I would find it extremely difficult to vote for any measure that denies undocumented workers health care," said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat. He said undocumented workers should be allowed access to insurance coverage provided that they get no tax assistance.

This sneaky little health care quote above is from the Washington Times newspaper. Breaking his verbiage down, this is what he means:

I would find it extremely difficult to vote for any measure that denies undocumented workers health care: the missing word here is "coverage." Nobody is talking about denying health care. If someone gets sick in America and they are not FROM America, we do not refuse them health care. What we don't do is pay their bill... well, in some cases. To date, many hospitals have philanthropic arms that "forgive" medical bills for people. So, nobody is really talking about refusing health care to anyone. The Illinois Democrat is simply making an emotional appeal here. What he really means is that he WANTS to allow people who are living here illegally the ability to participate in the public health care insurance option.
He said undocumented workers should be allowed access to insurance coverage provided that they get no tax assistance : This means that the illegal immigrant CAN take part and sign up for a public option. What he doesn't want to allow is the Federal Government cutting that illegal immigrant a "tax credit" check that further subsidizes that public health care option provided by the Federally Funded Health Insurance Plan!!!

You see there are two moving parts in this plan. First, the whole plan will be funded through taxation (now basically admitted when Congress asked state Governors to sign a letter that committed states to help fund the Congressional Health Care Scam.. I mean Plan.) Secondly, in addition to the existence of a Federally run Health Insurance public option plan they want to cut checks to people (also paid by you in taxation) in the form of a "tax credit" to make the plan more affordable.

Note that this week Republicans are also going to present a plan to help control the rising cost of Health Care. This is a very limited plan with a number of reforms (many in the legal realm) that would likely lower the cost of health care due to reduced number of fraudulent lawsuits which would in return likely reduce the number of unnecessary butt-covering procedures that doctors have learned to employ to simply reduce their legal exposure but that do not help the person who is undergoing the procedure or bearing the cost of that procedure. Keep an eye out for that proposal and read up on it. It actually works to achieve the initial goal of Health Care reform!

Health Care Reform Passing The Bill

2009-11-05T04:24:00.000-08:00

So in a revelation shared by the Washington Times newspaper Congress has asked state Democrat Governors to sign a letter to Congress promising to locally fund the medicare portion of the health care bill.

Basically, Congress can't find a way to make their health care plan affordable so they are hiding cost at the state level. What does this mean to us?

Well, first off it means that Congress can't balance the cost of this program. Secondly, it means that your local state politicians will have to raise money to pay for these programs. Said another way, Congress is looking to find a way to semantically claim they have an affordable plan while pushing program taxation down to a state decision so that they don't get blamed for it.

What is the outcome of this? Well in the case of a number of state governors they are either refusing to sign the letter or are getting vocal about the Fed not printing more funny money to pay for these programs we cannot afford.

So, let's add up the score so far. Dems in Congress can't balance the cost of the plan. A number of Dems have gotten vocal about refusing to support a plan with a public option. Other Dems don't think the cost is something American can wisely invest in right now. So Congress reaches down to the state level in search of more support and more than 25% of those politically aligned Governors are vocal about the fiscally irresponsible budget-busting nature of the Congressional plan. In my score book the American's are still loosing the Congressional Health Care Reform game!

Virginia And New Jersey Go Conservative

2009-11-03T19:42:00.001-08:00

Sending a significant and critical message to Washington, both Virginia and New Jersey selected conservative leadership in their Gubernatorial elections. With a year-long Federal power grab led by the current Presidential Administration, selecting conservative governors (important for a state so strategically located next to DC and huge for a state as historically liberal as New Jersey) means defending states rights against an out of control and out of touch Congress and White House.

Just two days ago President Obama called incumbent liberal Governor Jon Corzine a "key component" in his ability to keep his campaign promises. according to the Associated Press. Tonight, according to CNN's political ticker White House aides claim that President Obama isn't even watching those same "key" election results roll in.

I guess that means President Obama can't keep those campaign promises?

Fox News vs. The White House

2009-10-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

Since mid-presidential election of 2008 I have heard plenty of debate about how Fox News is too conservatively-biased resulting in a not-so-"fair and balanced" presentation or how the White House shouldn't be afraid of the one news organization willing to ask the tough questions. No matter the perspective, it isn't new for a president to have a particular known view about a news outlet. What is interesting is that NPR is weighing in by asking people to voice their opinion in a poll asking the public who they are more likely to side with.

Before I show you the snapshot, two items worth mentioning:

First, it isn't a one-sided battle with Fox News picking on the silent suffering Obama Administration. The White House Communications Director recently said "let's not pretend they are a news network the way CNN is" when referring to Fox News. There are many regular news shows on Fox News, and they aren't all The O'Reilly Factor or The Glen Beck Show. I am certain we could list at least two non-conservative news commentary programs to compete.

Secondly, statistics might prove that the White House Communications Director is simply showing political bias and demonstrating he is out of touch with America when claiming Fox News isn't a real news network. The numbers show that Fox News trumps all other news networks when you consider basic viewership. In fact Fox News typically has as many viewers in a day as all of the other news networks combined (Daily: Fox News = 1,375,000 as compared to 1,392,000 = CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and HLN combined; at primetime, Fox News beats all other news networks combined by over 100,000 viewers.)

So, you might already be guessing where the results of this NPR poll are headed (as of 10am October 21st, 2009):

At the bottom of the poll there is disclaimer information about how the poll is not scientific and an appeal for more people to more regularly get involved in these web conversations. I think, even though the poll is not scientific, it is interesting that 2/3rds of the NPR voting public would side with Fox News rather than the White House. NPR has never been famous for attracting a conservative audience so I wonder what this poll really reflects about this little war between the Obama Administration and Fox News?

Cash For Clunkers Is A Clunker

2009-10-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

According to cnnMoney the cash for clunkers program numbers are in and those numbers don’t look too good.

In the article, a reputable automotive review site Edmunds.com shared analysis about the 2009 year end sales predictions and compared those figured with the actual number of sales that cashed in on the clunkers program. Here is what those numbers look like:

A total of 690,000 new cars were cash for clunkers deals.
Even in this economy 565,000 of those sales we previously predicted.
This leaves 125,000 auto sales that no one anticipated and that could be attributed to the program

In dollars what does this mean?

Well, if each deal cost the taxpayer $4,000 in rebate dollar to the purchaser, that means that the program cost $2,760,000,000. That's almost $3 billion! More importantly, if you remove the 565,000 auto sales that were already predicted, then divide nearly $3 billion across the remaining 125,000 new and previously unpredicted sales, the taxpayer paid around $20,000 per clunker (give or take a few thousand bucks.)

So what does $20,000 in taxpayer money buy us?

Here is a nice truck! Would you pay $20,000+ for this truck? Wait for it. You don't actually get the truck, though. You are simply buying the right to have the truck put down. Half of the Cash for Clunkers gimmick was about taking old gas-guzzlers off of the road. So once those heaps were purchased (with your taxpayer dollars), they were put out to pasture. That's right. Your $20,000 in taxpayer cash was used to buy and then crush this car. What a deal!

More offensive than the waste is the program managements response to that waste:

“It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone," said Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation.

Let's read through that government spin and re-interpret that quote...

“It's unfortunate TO OUR PROGRAM that Edmunds.com has NOT TAKEN THE TIME TO FIND A POSITIVE SPIN BUT RATHER FOCUSED ON THE OBVIOUS FINANCIAL FLAWS OF OUR PROGRAM AND EXPLAINING THEM TO THE PUBLIC DESPITE THE FACT THAT WE AT THE GOVERNMENT WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE TO CONSIDER THIS A wildly successful program that sold 250,000 cars in it's first four days alone EVEN THOUGH ONLY HALF OF THOSE EARLY SALES CANNOT BE DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED TO THE PROGRAM ITSELF.”

Isn't 125,000 sales still a big number and should we cut the program a break?

Shouldn't we just celebrate big numbers? Well, if they had sold 1 billion cars over the program period, then it would have been a success. You might be thinking “Steve... seriously!!! They would have to have sold 1 billion cars for it to be successful! Is that really reasonable? Was there even enough time in the program in a good economy to have sold 1 billion cars?”

You are right. It isn't reasonable. In fact, 1,000,000,000 car sales isn't enough success by the numbers!

Let's run the numbers. 1 billion cars would have meant that half of those cars were attributable to the program, lowering the rebate per car cost to the taxpayer down to $5,500 per car. Technically, they would have needed to sell over a billion cars such that about 630,000 of those sales could be directly and reasonably attributed to the program to just get the per car number down to $4,500 (the maximum rebate.) Mind you, we as the taxpayer are still footing the bill to underwrite U.S. auto sales which almost makes no sense to me!! But at the minimum this should have been the target for success. If there wasn't enough time to hit a reasonable margin for financial success then WHY DO THE PROGRAM? At what point and by what measure does running a program that simply creates more debt at the expense of taxpayers become a good investment?

Calling 125,000 new auto sales a success just verifies that the government has no idea how to measure success.

iPhone Game Project

2009-10-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

My first iPhone game project is underway...

(click the image to make it larger)

Step one is learning all about basic physics and how to pull off physics in Flash. I have so far tackled basic velocity and trajectory along with some collision math (when two or more object bump into each other.)

In the above screen shot you can see an iPhone sized screen with 100 objects bouncing around the screen at random velocity, spinning at random rates, all random sizes and one of three random shapes. Next notice the colors. That is only helpful to me at the moment while I am programming but the color coding goes like this:

Green: the object recently bounces off of the west wall.
Yellow: the object recently bounced off of the north wall.
Orange: the object recently bounced off of the east wall.
Blue: the object recently bounced off of the south wall.
Red: Two or more objects recently collided with the object.
White: the object recently collided with another object but is currently not touching another object nor is it touching an outer wall.

Here is another screen shot with 400 objects all bouncing around the screen!

Almost nothing is anything other than red, meaning that flash is working hard to calculate a whole bunch of collisions. Technically, with 400 objects on the screen that means that Flash would potentially need to calculate 400 x 400 possible combinations of objects colliding. I recently learned a little trick about how to pull this off without demanding that amount of CPU power to collision detection. Basically, in short, I have divided the screen space into a grid and I am only testing for collision against objects that share reasonable proximity. This drastically cuts down on the number of tests. Next I can avoid testing similar converse cases meaning if I test if Object-A and Object-B are colliding then I don't have to test if Object-B and Object-A are colliding (that would be a valid test [permutation], but a redundant one.) That cuts the tests way back again. Finally, to keep track of objects I am sorting them into Vector (or data-type-based) Arrays which just cuts process time for lists of objects to test... in half!

Here is one more screen shot of the same view but with only 25 objects bouncing around...

You can see more colors at work depicting bounce-state in this example since there are fewer collision opportunities.

So, currently there are over 75,000 iPhone apps out there which means there are likely not many more opportunities falling into the "completely unique" category. Whatever game idea this evolves into, well... there will likely already be "an app for that." So I am not worried about competition. I am in search of killer cool ideas. My first game might be something simple like rounds of flying a spaceship through an asteriod field (like this game here) and each new screen would get increasingly more complicated. I have a few ideas for interesting ways to make the effort more challenging using multitouch and the accelerometer (when you tilt the iPhone) , but we will see.

Below is a tweaked version of this for the blog here (only 50 objects set into motion with object collision turned off):

desktop wallpaper creation site

2009-10-24T06:25:00.001-07:00

I thought I would share this interesting site where people can create a share wallpaper designs using the tools provided by the site. It's a fairly cool site with a number of interesting tools for layering these stamp-style illustrated graphics, sharing your designs and downloading them for use on your computer.

Here is a quick shot of my mac hard at work helping me create a desktop wallpaper:

You can click the image for a closer view.

The site is http://wallpapers.x3studios.com/

Google Andriod Mobile OS Moves to #2

2009-10-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

Phones running on the Google Android operating system just got a promotion in device domination, PC World reports. Just as looming is the news that by 2012 industry analysts are saying that the Apple iPhone will lose market share. Don't obviously cash in your Apple stock yet. The iPhone surely seems to be the trend setting device at the moment and I believe it's a safe guess that we will see more innovations over the next two years.

What is interesting is the proliferation of available mobile software development kits that allow mobile device software developers the ability to more easily build games and applications for these devices.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the 2010 commitment of Adobe to put its final touches on the coming Flash 10.1 player. Flash 10.1 player will be the first majorly significant move by Adobe to unify the Flash player across desktop and mobile platforms. To the average person, this means, if your phone can see Flash then any Flash on a website you view from your desktop will be fully visible from your mobile device. No more stripped down version of Flash player (i.e. Flash Player Lite) for mobile devices. This also marks the first time Flash will show up on a number of Mobile Operating Systems.

What does this mean for Flash Developers? It means that it is time to get your creative hats on and be ready to invest in building your own mobile applications for sale. Apple has gotten the whole "there's an app for that" right from the beginning of their foray into phone devices. Now Adobe is following close behind with the development tool to end all mobile development tools... Flash CS5!

The web you hold in your hand is about to get a whole lot better!

Flash On The iPhone is (almost) Here!

2009-10-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

My dream just arrived! Hot off the press, Adobe has announced that the next version of Flash, Flash Professional CS5, will compile ActionScript 3 Flash projects into iPhone applications distributable via the Apple Store!

Read the press release here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

Before you jump to conclusions, there is still no Flash browser plugin for Safari in the iPhone. So all of the websites that display Flash are still not going to work on the iPhone (yet.)

So what does this mean for Flash Developers? Well, it simply means that we will be able to create ActionScript 3 projects that can run like iPhone applications. At the moment, we have no way of knowing how much of ActionScript 3 or what techniques outside of scripting will translate to the iPhone. For example, will timeline effects and tweens all translate? Do we have to do anything to optimize graphics for the iPhone? Are their new features that allow Flash for iPhone apps to save data to the iPhone? Can Flash for iPhone apps communicate with web services and retrieve external XML data? Can Flash for iPhone apps communicate with iPhone data and services (like GPS data, photos on the iPhone, the iPhones photo and video camera, phone lists, email, etc.) There are no answers yet. And even if there were, those answers would likely change since Flash CS5 isn't even in beta yet. But this is only going to get more fun.

Recently in the news, Adobe also made an announcement that the new HTC Hero Phone running the Google mobile operating system would have Flash built into it. According to Adobe, while that is only Flash Lite right now, they are throwing their weight behind getting a full Flash player for mobile devices this next year.

It seems that Adobe is completely poised to dominate as the development platform for cross OS mobile device development and that is great news for the many people who have invested in Flash for years. If you are simply someone who is geeked about your iPhone or interactive mobile device, just wait until the Flash development community has at it.

Now, we just need to see more people embrace cloud computing and the world will truly go mobile!

Note: For those of you who start spamming about where I found a picture a Flash for iPhone version of the all-powerful Adobe Kuler application, well... I didn't... it is a mock up I threw together assuming that would be one of the first apps that adobe will likely convert for use on the iPhone. Can you imagine it? Take a picture of something and launch the Kuler application so it can inspect it and create color schemes from the photo!?!?!?

Religulous is just another example of an anti-religion

2009-10-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

I recently watched Bill Maher's docu-propaganda “Religulous” and while there are so many unbelievably trite biasing stereotypes in that film (I found myself mentally defending other religions against some of his over-the-top generalizations) that I couldn't begin nor do I want to address them. There were a few that I feel I would like to “set the record” straight with regard to.

The short list of “stuff I would like to address” would be (1) the parallel that he draws between the story of Jesus and the story of the Egyptian god Horus written nearly 600 years before Jesus shows up on the scene, and (2) his assertion that humanity is doomed if reasonable agnostics don't take a stand and say that religion needs to be done away with once and for all. I will address the second, first.

Religion blindly holds us in the past and if we don't give it up we are doomed.

Statements like this (not that exact one. This is a reasonable summary of his film's end-statement) are damning and conclusive. They are also partly true which makes them dangerous if we allow it to stereotype reality into an unreasonable conclusion.

I just had this discussion with a co-worker recently. It went something like this: The Jewish population broke new ground in culture with Abraham and Moses. You see, up until that moment in the cradle of civilization Egyptian-style world religions were busy reliving a pattern-cyclical view of life. Said another way, from calendars to religious holidays the world was stuck in an infinite loop of staring at the past, doomed by a lifestyle to repeat it or risk not appeasing the gods they served. There was truly nothing new under the sun and they preferred it that way as demanded by their cultic priests. Society wouldn't have it another way. Then along comes this nomadic tribe following after a God demanding that the old patterns be damned requiring them to break free of the bondage of thinking like the cultures around them.

With the Jews the proverbial circle was broken. God was off and running in a straight line beckoning these tribesmen to follow off into places they would never have ventured on their own. Being stuck blindly in the past a slave to a doomed unconscionable pattern was not the form or function of this relationship. Having said that ground rules were in fact laid down for the purpose of rebooting an entire group, breaking their ties to that compulsive culture from which they emerged. It doesn't honestly get any more cutting edge than that in that specific context.

The truth is that we continue to need the lessons taught to that tribe. We need to remember our past so we can remind ourselves of where we've been in hopes to affect where we are going and not for the purpose of repeating it. We need to remember how to relate to God. We need to employ a basic and reasonably responsible manner of relating to one another that is not selfish and that defies the more base-learned behaviors of a broken culture that surrounds us. Up until that point in history the world hadn't seen a view of God in relationship to man that moved in such a direction. We simply take that relationship for granted today (some of us are worse off than others in this area.)

Bill Maher evokes doom by shocking us with intense music and images of nuclear blasts and he describes the waring of religions around the world, as they blindly worship. What we, as the viewer might neglect to realize as we watch the movie, is that Bill is the wizard behind the curtain. He is the one who is deciding what images to splash in front of you, selectively leaving other images out completely. For example, even if every war that could ever be blamed on religion had never happened, the world would in fact not be war-free. Blaming all war and destruction on religion is completely ludicrous and anyone who might be willing to reflect on the last 100 years of world history can point to plenty of good and bad examples for why people get into intense conflict, many of which have no obvious correlation to religion. His stereotype is hugely revealing at this point to the degree that it derails any semblance of reality nor could he be accused of being reasoning or reasonable (the very thing that he claims to defend throughout the movie.)

Bill draws a parallel between the story of Jesus and the story of the Egyptian god Horus written nearly 600 years before Jesus shows up on the scene, claiming that the Jesus story is just a cheap alternative to a fairly well known (at that time) religious story.

The accusation goes something like this: 600 years before Jesus shows up the Egyptians write about Horus who...

Was born of a virgin.
Who was a god.
Who healed people.
Who walked on water.
Raises someone (like Lazarus) from the dead.
Who was born on the 25^th of December.
Who had 12 disciples.
Was confronted in the wilderness.
Was crucified and resurrected.

This is, at the minimum, unsettling, and Bill Maher is fairly rock solid on declaring that these are documented realities of that story. Clearly ignorant Christians are just not familiar with the fact that their religion was simply the retelling of an old mythological fairytale and are just dead wrong and their outspoken confidence in Jesus is sadly misguided...

or (as you may have guessed) Bill Maher just has it all wrong. Let's walk through these claims:

Was Horus born of a virgin?

There are multiple birth stories for Horus and absolutely none of them make his mother out to be a virgin. Anyone telling you otherwise is just making up facts. Horus mother was married to a god who was killed. As the mythology goes, she had him raised from the dead and which point she got pregnant from him so her child, Horus, could avenge his fathers death. The Egyptian gods and people in those stories were constantly having sex so there is no chance she, married to a Egyptian god, wasn't getting it on, nor does it imply that she was not having sex with the god to whom she was married.

Was Horus a god?

He eventually becomes one of a huge cast of Egyptian gods. In that sense one could argue that since Christians say Jesus was God that Horus and Jesus were similar stories. If that were the matching criteria, then Jesus story would be likenable to any of the stories of the Greek or Egyptian gods a weak association at best.

Could Horus heal people?

There is no such story. In Egypt there were these plaques that were used to evoke the name of an Egyptian god for all sorts of purposes, including healing. But there are no stories where Horus did in fact heal anyone. Bill has to make a fairly big jump to liken the stories of Jesus healing people with the Egyptian evoking plaques. My best guess would be that Bill is just regurgitating something someone told him and I would be giving him more credit than he is due in assuming he even knows about the evoking plaques.

Did Horus walk on water?

There is no story of Horus walking on water. Where does this stuff come from? It is interesting that people are willing to retell such thing and not point to a reference of such a thing. Christians can easily point to scripture that at least documents such a story about Jesus. Not so with Horus.

Did Horus raise someone from the dead the way Jesus raised Lazarus?

The fairytale Bill tells is this... Horus raises a character named Osiris from the dead and Osiris translated from Egyptian to Greek becomes Lazarus, so the Lazarus story is simply a rip-off! What Bill doesn't mention (or doesn't know) is that according to mythology Osiris is the dead father of Horus and Horus life goal is to avenge his fathers death, which he does. There is absolutely no story where Horus raises Osiris or anyone else from the dead.

Horus was born on the 25^th of December, so Jesus birthday is a fabrication and parallel of Horus birth story!

Horus wasn't nor was it ever written that he was born on December 25^th. He was written to have been born in the Winter Solstice which would have been October to November, and paralleled him to many other Egyptian gods and mythological figures.

The truth is that Jesus wasn't likely born on December 25^th. There was a period of church history where the church was working hard at redeeming the calendar and would take goofy local or regional holidays and turn them into Christian celebrations. Unfortunately December 25^th is one of those holidays. From what we know of history, the “nativity” was moved to December 25^th around 350 A.D. So while we really don't know when Jesus was born, we do in fact know it wasn't December 25^th which makes the likelihood of a parallel in the original story completely ridiculous.

The Jesus story stole the idea of 12 disciples from Horus who also had 12 disciples!

If Horus had any following, then the only record was of four lower-gods and some human followers (total head counts are not consistent but are guessed to be around 16 with lots of other soldiers who went to war along side Horus.) Nowhere is there any mention of 12 disciples associated with Horus. I even read about how the zodiac constellations were like his disciples based on his relationship to them, but it's a ridiculous stretch to imagine a parallel.

Horus was tempted in the wilderness and so Jesus wilderness temptation story is a rip-off?

This is the worst parallel of those I have researched so far. Jesus temptation in the wilderness follows a 40 day fast and is documented in Matthew 4 if you want to read it. Jesus is tempted to take an easy road and calmly remains steadfast in his resolve to do his sacrificial mission on earth.

Horus does a bit of fighting in his mythology and there is a story that is depicted as the wilderness parallel, but it is nothing like the Jesus temptation. The Horus story includes castration and competition for power via proving sexual domination over the other. It is so completely far fetched to imagine these two stories as any sort of parallel (I am really cleaning it up here: the real story is vulgar and more like two guys trying to prove their dominance by having evidence that they raped each other.) It seems the only parallel is the idea of simply being in the presence of a contentious individual and that is such a weak likening factor.

Horus was crucified and resurrected and is the savior of the world, making this the most convicting parallel levied against the Jesus story!

The idea that the Horus mythology contains all three of those facts is really trouble for the Jesus story. If Horus' story contains him being crucified, later being resurrected and perceived as the savior of the world, Christians have a real problem!

But... alas... they do not. None of that is in the Horus story. In fact, in Horus mythology, he does not die... at all. Which invalidates both the crucifixion as well as the resurrection claims about Horus. And the Horus story is not a story about saving anyone. It is about revenge.

So why does Bill Maher share this stuff if it is clearly all wrong?

Because he is the very thing that he claims he is rising up in “reason” against. He is a blind “believer” in an anti-religion, ill-informed and equally as confident and evangelical on behalf of his anti-gospel called “doubt.” And I don't have a problem with doubt, as long as someone is really searching for truth. And Bill claims this is who he is. But as you can see here, a few spare hours and a willingness to do some research can pull up more truth than the rantings of someone with deep pockets and a public persona like Bill Maher with an ill-informed agenda.

If you watched the movie and walked away absorbing his facts and doubts, just know that if one guy like me can take a couple hours and find a slew of failed facts and faulty logic, you might want to use the very brain that Bill Maher was so arrogantly worshiping and consider not investing trust in people like Bill who have the budget to market ideas but that don't really care enough to reasonably separate the facts from blind-anti-faith opinions that don't hold up under the scrutiny of a web designer / developer.

Final note:

I would expect the possible response to this might be “Well, Bill was misinformed about Horus, but there are many documented examples of how Christianity as a religion borrowed from Mithras mythology,” and those folks are wrong too. Here are some of those stories (as shared in Religulous):

Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25^th as witnessed by Shepherds: Mithras was hewn from a rock (again in the Winter Solstice) and the early accounts say that happened before man was created. 100 years after the documenting of the Christian gospels, the Mithras mythology contained additional new story elements where shepherds helped Mithras emerge from rock where he was hewn.

Mithras was a teacher: There isn't a single story of Mithras walking around giving teachings or sermons.

Mithras had 12 disciples: Same as Horus, no 12 disciples. Again well after Jesus, people added an associated connection between Mithras and the zodiac's 12 signs (it was documented later than the time of Jesus.)

Mithras, the leader offering eternal life through shed blood: Nearly all gods talk about continuing life, but in the Mithras story the mention of blood isn't his own, but the blood shed because he killed something and nobody got eternal life via his killing. Not even close to the Jesus story really.

Mithras does miracles: All gods in all stories do god-like stuff, else why would they be gods? This isn't a silver bullet, but rather just part and parcel with god stories. The Bible itself contains stories of people worshiping false gods who claim to do miracles and the Biblical characters teaching those followers various lessons about their false gods.

Mithras is buried in a tomb, and after three days, rises: No such story. Far later in the tradition and new documentation and discussion of Mithras (after the time of Jesus) Mithras was said to travel souls to heaven or hell and some commentary imagine that ascending from hell might evoke images of resurrection, but those commentaries do not imply any comparison to the Jesus story, and even if it did, that commentary shows up after Jesus and not before. There is no tomb, or any 3 days. All of this is just extra-added silliness.

The most damning evidence against the whole idea that Christianity's Jesus is a copy of Mithras has everything to do with mistaken identity.

History tells us that the Persians told stories of a god named Mithras before Jesus showed up on the scene. But those stories, while predating the days of Jesus, are different from the Mithras religion that formed in Rome and became popular after Jesus. All of the stories that make Mithras like Jesus happened after Jesus, not in the Persian version of Mithras that predates Jesus.

So, Sorry Bill Maher... wrong again.

Glidecam balancing and fluidhead tripod on the cheap

2009-10-03T11:03:00.001-07:00

Balancing a glidecam can be frustrating. The purpose of the glidecam allows you, as a camera opperator, to move your body without significantly affecting the steadiness of the shot you are filming. More specifically it keeps the shot uniformly level. Said another way, been the lack of shaking at the amount of consistent level, your shots look like they come from a dolly (I will toss some video up soon to demonstrate.)

Getting the sucker (your camera) to balance on the thing (the glidecam device) has been, so far, a hit and miss process. The magic of the whole thing is a combination of the plate the camera sits on, which can move forward, backward, left and right, and the counter-weights at the bottom of the device, which can move closer to the vertical pole and further away. If you have a camera with a heavy piece of expensive piece of glass on it (like a canon XL1 or greater) then you might want those counter weights far to the outside away from the vertical pole. In my case, I have the XH-A1 and while that is heavier than say, the GL1, putting the weights somewhere about an inch from the pole works for me.

It is really the adjustable plate that the camera sits on that is the fidgety part. You set the whole contraption down and make a few tweaks and then pick it up only to realize that it isn't ballanced only to do through this a few hundred more times until you get it right. Well, I think I have figured out the quickest way to make this process happen.

The real problem in the balancing work flow is the fact that you cannot easily adjust the camera plate or weights while holding the camera in the air. Here is the solution.

I just realized that the bottom of the handle of my glidecam pro 2000 is open. The handle is basically like an open tube at the bottom. This is by design so that it can be mounted onto another more expensive additionally stabilizing device. Then I realized that if I took the head off of my vertical microphone stand I could put the vertical end of the microphone stand into the open tube end of the glidecam handle.

Wowser! The glidecam is positioned above one of the outwardly stabilizing legs at the bottom of the mic stand and it hangs there perfectly well without tipping over.

Now I can easily start adjusting the camera plate and within a few adjustments I can see that the camera is now balanced both forward and back, left and right. ba-da-BING!

On to the topic of fluid head tripods.

In some cases people just walk a simple tracking shot of someone walking up a street and then the camera pans to follow them as they walk past and on down the street. If you don't have a fluid head tripod (which costs at least $300) then your shot ends up looking jerky and unpleasant. Here is a simple way to get that shot if you have a glidecam.

Put your glidecam back on the mic stand, and all you have to wory about now is pivoting the vertical pole, which sits fluidly on bearings and will give you the shot you are looking for without the hundreds of dollars of investment.

Obviously the one unfortunate problem is that you can't then lock down the camera and start pulling focus or something. But you can do other fun things, like slipping the glidecam handle up and off the mic stand to suddenly start following your shot!

Ah, what fun. If you have other ideas, feel free to append them here.

Nick Hornby, Naked

2009-10-02T07:27:00.001-07:00

“Tomorrow morning, a hand full of middle-aged men would be regretting that they had gone to bed much too late.”
- Nick Hornby from Juliet, Naked

About one week ago I was looking for something new to read and noticed that the new Nick Hornby book was about to hit stands. So on my Kindle DX I decided to try out the whole advanced order thing. The Kindle is supposed to download the book auto-magically the morning that the book release happens. If you are a fanatically fast reader then you could have consumed it before the typical 10am rush to pick the book up at a Barnes and Noble. I however, was not in a rush.

Jumping ahead: Yesterday morning I was thinking about how I was enjoying the book and googled Nick Hornby to see if I was remembering a story correctly. Within a few clicks on was on his website where, to my surprise, I realized that he would be a few miles away in the bookstore Politics and Prose right here in town. So right after work I threw on the ipod, grabbed my satchel bag and hit the metro.

For the next fourty minutes with a train change I was able to devour a few more chapters of Juliet, Naked, reminding me about why I enjoy his books.

One mile walk later after my final metro destination I was sitting just a couple of rows away from the front of the podium. The room was filling quickly and we had another 40 minutes of waiting to do. I strategically placed myself on the side of the room with two doors and an office. I figured he would walk into the room from that corn if he shows up at all!

Lo and behold, about ten minutes before the beginning of the talk I noticed he was standing in the glass window of the room adjacent to me chatting with the bookstore event hosts. How fun.

The time with Nick started off with him updating everyone on his recent efforts and then he dove right into reading two excerpts from his book. The first was from a bit I had already read and I found it very interesting that he audibly “performed” his characters by taking on a different persona when each one spoke. It reminded me of my mother reading a children's book to some kids in her old classroom. The second piece was from a bit I had not yet read and frankly I didn't want to spoil it so in classic guy-style I willed myself into a mentally vegetative state so I would be sure and not retain any of what he read at that point... totally worked!

After the reading they setup two microphones and streams of people lined up to ask all manner of questions. All I can say is that he was quite a patient and down to earth man. One person who prefaced his question with a very articulately accurate and eloquently detailed history of the forgotten industrial working class in England asked "Who, in fact, are your books audience?" As I turned my eyes to Nick Hornby, his eyes went from wide-eyed near-panic to smiling and he said "Thank you for that!" I think he too was wondering where the mans dissertation was going and if he would be ready to speak to the question at all! Funny stuff.

After the lecture he was supposed to sign books, or butts or foreheads or whatever and so I quickly re-purchased my favorite book of his, “How To Be Good” rather than have him sign my Kindle... or my butt.

In line I had the pleasure of meeting quite a few other Nick Hornby fans where we exchanged notes on favorite NH characters and stories as well as other authors and books. The 30+ minutes in line went quickly being surrounded with well-read and well-mannered people with apt social skills and a desire to tell their personal stories.

When it was my opportunity I handed him my book and said, “I... your book... so much...in the one with the.... and YOU!....thank you!”

Just kidding. I didn't fumble my way through it. I had a chance to say hello and thank him for his books and tell him how I liked them and ask him if he ever went skydiving. OK, not that last question, but we did speak briefly and it was a pretty fun experience.

Breakfast Cappucino No Sleep Book Signing

2009-10-01T07:42:00.001-07:00

Lately, due to some personal life schedule changes and morning tiredness I have been driving to work. This affords me the convenience of making a Starbucks run so I can grab a grande caramel cappuccino (non-fat and wet) and one of those small protein breakfast kits that consist of a grapes, boiled egg, a mini bagel and slice of cheese, along with apple slices and a peanut butter packet. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to the peanut butter and apple slices. What a combo.

For the last couple of days I have had trouble sleeping in. Basically, this amounts to waking up somewhere around 3am to use the bathroom and then having a difficult time forcing myself back to sleep. I think I have too much running through my head and as a result my brain will not relax. Creativity seems to be compatible with sleep; analysis, not so much. You would think this getting up early would make me more awake when the real morning rolls around... think again.

My job requires that I do a lot of programming and problem solving. Be it balancing creative resources for web work or just flat out figuring out the best approach to building some Flash or JavaScript widget I need for an e-learning project, I am employed to be systematic and analytical (not necessarily in that order.) Some days I feel like I am in the middle of five speed-chess games and I have only two arms and one brain!

At 3am, if I turn on the light in bathroom my brain seems to say, “time to make the donuts” and before I can lay my head back down it is off to the races problem-solving that days agenda. This is where my Kindle comes in.

Currently I am reading the newest book by Nick Hornby. For the uninitiated, Nick Hornby has written a number of books which have been turned into movies: High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and About a Boy. My personal favs are: How to Be Good, A Long Way Down and Slam. His latest book is entitled Juliet, Naked which is about a woman who’s boyfriend is obsessed with a musician-turned-hermit. It is more complicated than this but Mr. Hornby is an amazing writer. The pages just fly. In his books he often references the music culture namely because he began his career as a columnist reviewing and writing about music. Reading his writing on music makes listening a far better experience.

For me, reading fiction is like a laxative for sleep. I don’t mean to say that it puts me to sleep. I think it just helps me to dream rather than problem-solve.

Today I have fallen succumb to my early rising habit and while I can now put myself back to sleep for a few more hours I seem to be able to rest until at least 5:30am. So, to save a few bucks I have broken out the old Italian stove-top cappuccino maker and having recently purchased some apples and Omega-3 fortified Jif peanut butter… mmmm.

I figure if I bought a grande caramel cap + protein kit every morning from Starbuck, five days a week, but replaced it with this little 5am treat, I will save nearly $20 per week… waking up early has its benefits.
So, now I sit and read the Washington Times e-edition on the iMac, watch a few interesting videos on YouTube, and read some Nick Hornby on the Kindle all while gobble and slurp my breakfast. It works for me.

As a final note, as I was writing this I made a visit to Nick Hornby’s websites where I just learned that he is on his book tour right now for the book I am reading and will be at a signing tonight here in DC! That couldn’t have worked out any better! Now, how do I get him to sign my Kindle?

Bill Clinton on Meet The Press

2009-09-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

This Sunday on "Meet The Press" former president Bill Clinton spent some time talking about the continued war on terror. The conversation focused on efforts in Afghanistan.

He was asked the question "Will committing tens of thousands of U.S. troops to the war in Afghanistan make Americans safer?"

I found Bill Clintons response very thought-provoking.

'The answer to that is maybe..."

He went on to quote General McChrystal, "...we have to have an "Iraqi surge in Anbar."

Former President Clinton added "that worked well there... I think what the president is saying without saying it... is that an American surge in Afghanistan maybe be a necessary condition for success."

This is interesting for two reasons: political and for national safety.

Political:

All personal politics aside, I sometimes find it difficult to differentiate between someones ideological position and their political pandering. For example, nearing the end of the last presidential election cycle then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama stated his opposition to the Iraqi surge that then-President George Bush was supporting in the war effort in Iraq. When it was soon considered to be a success the press asked Obama how he felt about the surge effort and he remained steadfastly opposed to it, refusing to call it a success (is that ideological or political?) He could be legitimately ideologically opposed or he could have just been politically pandering.

We are now facing the fact that General McChrystal is recommending we learn from the successful surge effort in Iraq and have American forces "surge" in Afghanistan. According to Bill Clinton "that worked well there" and so we should do it because it may make Americans safer.

So what will Obama do? Was his previous opposition ideological? If so, we should see him challenge the General and oppose calling up more U.S. troops for service. That would be an ideological response. If he sends the troops in for an approved surge effort, then it wasn't ideological.

National Safety:

Some might object the premise of former President Bill Clintons arguments. Those individuals may not like the idea that any war effort is required to successfully protect Americans from Al Qaeda, which is what makes the follow-on question equally as interesting.

"What specific threat does Al Qaeda pose to the United States?"

Clinton responded, "They have proven that, alone, among all the non-state actors, they have the power to organize and execute leathal assaults far from their home base."

Clinton went on to say, "Since we've driven them into the mountains... in the ill-defined border between Pakistan and Afghanistan... their movements (and) communications have been constrained... and they've not been nearly as free to organize and mount such attacks."

The interviewer then quoted former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying, "If you abandon Afghanistan, you'll have another 9-11 in the U.S."

After briefly discussing the additional measures of protection in place around the world to stave off such attacks Clinton went on to say, "It's impossible to know that with certainty... but I would agree with her to the extent that if (Al Qaeda) have freedom of movement in Afghanistan, it will increase by some significant factor, the likelihood, that they will attack successfully, if not in the United States, somewhere else against people we consider our allies, that we have to be concerned about."

I really hope that Obama DVRed Clinton on Meet the Press. I think he should be taking notes because the man is doling out an education on foreign policy (and I am not even a Bill Clinton fan!)

In a conversation lasting less than 10 minutes Bill Clinton:

Affirmed the Surge in Iraq.
Made statements about the near impending necessity to surge in Afghanistan which would qualify him as a "war-monger" under the same criteria as other so-called war-mongering politicians.
Affirmed that pinning Al Qaeda to the mountains of Afghanistan (a move in place since the "Bush Regime" .. no real progress since then) has been effective in hold down their efforts in terror.
Affirmed the idea that a war on terror on foreign soil is in the best interest of Americans back in the United States (something people ideologically opposed to the war said was a false assertion coming from former president George Bush.)

If you are paying close attention former President Bill Clinton seems to be speaking quite freely these days. It truly appears he is willing to set down his political hat from time to time and discuss the war on terror without filtering for a political agenda or for partisan points. I mention this because I know people who were ready to vote for Obama simply because Obama appeared to not be a "war-monger" based on what had been his ideological stand against the war on terror.

Every day it seems that what was perceived as a commitment to ideology has been traded in for political pandering. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to invoking secrecy and non-open communication on various White House related fronts, it looks more and more like Obama was stroking the heartstrings of ideologists within a typical political agenda to romance would-be voters.

The point of sharing this isn't to call Obama a hypocrite. It is an effort to demonstrate that sometimes ideology in the hands of a politician is nothing more than political pandering. So I now mentally weigh the outcomes of the following two ideologies/panderings:

John McCain was accused of fear-mongering when he would talk about the threat of a repeat 9-11 on U.S. soil and why fighting the war on terror seemed to be important. If he was ideologically defending the right to go find the self-proclaimed terrorists and bring them to justice, does that justify scaring people into that agenda? So, said another way, McCain show the threat without explaining, like Clinton, that there is no impending certainty, only an increased likelihood of attack, to justify going after self-proclaimed terrorists. Is leaving out the Clinton-esk differentiation of increased likelihood as opposed to perceived impending certainty fear-mongering? Maybe so.
Barack Obama was accused of pandering to people fed up with the cost/risk/death of war for the purpose of winning votes, only to continue the same practices previously qualified as war-mongering. Said another way, Obama seems to be willing to talk against surges and war-mongering while being elected, but willing to take the same "war-mongering" actions that people elected him to stop. Is saying one thing to take a political stand with voters and then doing the opposite ideological pandering? I think so.

Which is worse? Scaring people into doing what you said you would do, or pandering to people but doing what you said you wouldn't do? Oh, I wish we didn't have to deal with either.

It seems that surging and fighting and defending to protect people from individuals or groups who are proactively threatening or have perpetrated terror is the definitive action of the president no matter who ends up being president. If you are ideologically opposed to that, then you have an up-hill battle to climb. And if you are looking to vote for senators in the coming election cycle who do not fear-monger or pander to your ideological position, well... good luck.

Watch video of the interview here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Nigerian Scam

2009-09-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

..and no i did not create this graphic...

If you have been on the internet for a while then you have likely been targeted with at least one version of the "Nigerian Scam" email. It is also known as the "4-1-9" or "advance fee fraud" scam where the sender wants to gain access to some locked down money but can't unless someone like you is willing to be a financial mule and take part of the cut. Some of the emails pretend to be from bankers who are trying to move money from accounts that have been abandoned (this would be against the law) while other emails pretend to be moving their own money out of economies in countries that are in some political termoil (legal... but why would they contact you? answer: they wouldn't.)

No matter the story, the end game has you opening an account with the email sender while you seed that account with enough money to legitimize the type of account required. Of course, the email sender never puts any money in the account. They simply remove your seed money and then disappears (or some variation of this scam where you eventually grease the wheels of the money transfers with you money and then the email sender disappears with your cash.)

This scam has been on the web in some form for more than a decade where snoops.com quotes a secret service agent saying that as of 1997 the Nigerian Scam stole at least $100 million out of the U.S. economy in the last 15 months.

I have no idea how effective the scam remains and I can say that the emails have dwindled in the last few years. But this week I have received a new version of the message and I think it is kind of funny. Here it is (I've bolded a few items worthy of note):

Joseph Owor
Dean of Faculty of Business Administration
Uganda Christian University
Mukono Town , Uganda.

Confidential Message:

I hope this message will meet you in good faith, please pardon me for reaching you in this manner because you do not know me, I have an obscure proposal of mutual interest to share with you. I got your email address from the Internet through my search for a relatively unknown person who will assist me in securing a large sum of amount.

I am Joseph Owor , The Dean/Head of Faculty of Business Administration of the Uganda Christian University.

I will need you to assist me in executing a confidential business project.It involves the securing of a large sum of fund. Everything concerning this transaction shall be legally done without hitch if you are willing to consider this proposal.

Please I will kindly request that you endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this message if my proposal is accepted by you and if this proposal is not acceptable by you, kindly delete this email and do not pass it to a third party as I vehemently risk my job to send you this email.

I am presently on a foreign committee appointment in Europe through the United Nations Christian charity project fund of Uganda.

Once the transaction I am proposing to you have been successfully completed if accepted by you and the fund in question is in your possession, we shall be offering to you a ratio to be agreed upon.

kindly reach me back at this juncture to get your opinion first, after that I will furnish you with more information about this transaction.
You are to contact me on my secure email address below for further details if this proposal is accepted by you:

profjosephowor@mcom.com

Yours Sincerely,
Joseph Owor.

So, typical Nigerian Scam. Here is what makes me giggle:

The scammer decides to evoke a degree of trustworthiness (in my opinion) by saying they work for a Christian University. As such they hope the message meets me "in good faith." I have no idea what they mean by that other than to evoke the work "faith" near the reference to "Christian." Lovely!
They found me in their search for someone who is relatively unknown. OK. I don't know if I am supposed to feel offended at being classified as relatively unknown or if I am supposed to be impressed by the search capability of someone who can find me, a relatively unknown person. Pretty fun either way!
I am told in one line that the transaction will be "legal" and a few lines later there is this obscure reference to their committee appointment in the United Nations Christian charity project fund... hello? So the transaction will be "legal" even though they are hinting that the money will be laundered from a U.N. Charity fund? Downright silly!
More funny is the idea of a United Nations Christian charity. While I could imagine the U.N. working with a Christian charity, I think it is downright hilarious to imagine that the U.N. has a Christian charity fund. Full-on hilarious!

Finally, to use the grammar from the message, I am typically in favor of personally "securing a large sum of amount" or "a large sum of fund" but...SERIOUSLY, when will this scam die?

I don't know who I feel worse for... the entrepreneurial scammer who is just now hoping to strike it rich with this scam today in 2009 OR the sucker who receives the email and ignorantly tries to participate!

Fun With PhotoShop, part 2: i,Beyonce

2009-09-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the fact that Beyonce seems to have this growing obsession with looking like C3PO from Star Wars, I decided to kick out this movie poster for her up-and-coming film with Will Smith, "i, Beyonce." Click on the image for a larger view!

This is built from five images: the poster from the "i, robot" movie, head shot of Beyonce, high resolution hair shot of Beyonce (had to search for that one), a picture of Beyonce with her "cyborg hand" jewelry worn in the "Single Ladies" video, and a close up of the main cyborg from the "i,robot" movie. In addition to the images I used the Arial Round font coupled with a hort-load of photoshop layer effects to make the font look all futuristic. As well I did quite a bit of touch-up on both Beyonce and Will Smith, and used path selection to get clean edges around the composite parts.

Why am I wasting my time thinking about Beyonce as a robot? Well, for one, it is just funny to me that she seems to like the whole robot/cyborg thing, and it is less about her and more about fiddling with Photoshop.

Fun With PhotoShop

2009-09-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

I would so totally go see this...

...if it actually happened.

This is a composite of 4 pictures and a winging a bunch of photoshop effects. Click the image to see a larger version!

Enjoy the silliness!

HTC Hero - The iPhone Killer

2009-09-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

It’s here, and it is exactly what people were suspecting. World, meet the true iPhone killer!

Before we get started, it is worth mentioning that I am an iPhone owner and I love the device. But HTC Hero is a device that cannot be ignored.

So, this is the HTC Hero, a new device that has so much going for it that as a mobile platform all of its early moves are in the right bleeding edge directions. For example:

It uses the new(ish) Google mobile operating system, Android.
That’s right… it isn’t Apple, it isn’t Palm, it isn’t Windows Mobile and it isn’t Blackberry. It is a mobile operating system built buy the same folks who are currently taking over the web! Probably going to be a mobile OS killer.
It uses multitouch.
If you don’t know what multitouch is, then go get your hands on an iPhone. The geniuses over at Apple created (to the best of my knowledge) the concept where you can pinch or push the mobile device screen with two (or more) fingers to zoom in or out, rotate something, or drag a number of items. From what I have heard I am not certain that the HTC Hero can do all of the multitouch stuff that the iPhone can do, but the fact is that most apps out there are currently only using multitouch in two-finger mode so HTC Hero will seem comparable. Not killer, but if people implement more than two finger multitouch apps, it gets killer fast.
It implements the Adobe Flashlite Player.
This means Adobe player 9 targeting ActionScript 2 at the moment. But Adobe seems committed to getting the full Flash 10 player optimized and available for a slew of mobile devices in the coming months. Flashlite is, however, a great start! At the moment Apple seems deadest on not allowing the Flash player (in any form) onto the iPhone platform. They are full of excuses while Adobe seems willing to work through anything. This could be the downfall of the iPhone. Ubber-killer move.
It can run apps concurrently.
At the moment the iPhone only allows certain features and apps (mostly Apple apps) to run at the same time as other apps on the device. For example, on the iPhone you can be on a call while looking through your contacts, you can listen to music while checking facebook, and you can get a push notification of a friend attempting to contact you on AIM Instant messenger while on the home screen. But, if you want to start a web search and then go start some music and head over to the check the weather forecast, and make a move in an online chess game, well, half of those apps stop if you leave their screens, which means your search is on hold until you load the browser again. Not so with the HTC Hero. It can run multiple applications all at the same time. Not just a killer move, an Ender move.

With Adobe and Google driving forward with these amazing technologies, Apple will soon find itself left behind quickly if it doesn’t get the Flash player running on the iPhone. Here is why.

At the moment if someone builds an application for the iPhone they are specifically targeting the iPhone market. And building iPhone apps means embracing a fairly Mac specific programming language, set of tools, as well as a slightly tweaked development methodology. This is a great way to build a base of dedicated developers because once they hone these skills they aren’t likely to run off and target another platform with their skills, mostly because they can’t do it.

With Flash and ActionScript, you have a completely different paradigm. If you build a flash application for the HTC Hero, you can easily port that work to run on, say, any Windows Mobile device since Flash is always installed on Windows Mobile Devices. And if you want to create a version that runs from the web, well that is simple enough because Flash was built for the web. So the Flash and ActionScript developer can market to many different devices including the HTC Hero which will provide a similar but possibly more flexible experience than the iPhone.

The one risk that exists for HTC Hero Flash Developers that does not exist for iPhone developers is the monetization scheme. Right now, if you are an iPhone developer, your application has a predefined path for sales. Basically, you have to sell your iPhone app through the Apple App Store where Apple takes its 30% cut and your app competes with 75,000 other apps in the iPhone marketplace (at the time of this writing.) To my knowledge I am not aware of an HTC Hero app store and if there is a store, does that include the sale of Flash-based applications for the HTC Hero. All of the Flash examples I have seen so far on the HTC Hero are running from the HTC Hero browser as opposed to a purchased FlashLite application that was installed to the device independent of a browser. So I have to do more research on how to make money building Flashlite applications. But it is worth knowing that Microsoft (which implements Flash player in their Mobile OS) has launched an app store and there are other app stores for android that currently already exist. So it is a matter of time before the Google Android market has a fully saleable store selling Flash apps for the device. The likely key difference between Google Android application sales and iPhone application sales would be that HTC Hero users will be able to buy apps from a number of sources (which means HTC Hero Flash Developers can sell their apps from a number of stores) while iPhone users will still only be able to buy apps from the Apple App Store.

Stuff to watch for:

Full Flash player on Android Devices. Adobe is committed to tweaking the performance of Flash Player version 10 (the current player) so this goes for any device that currently implements FlashLite on mobile devices, and could include Flash player 10 for the iPhone (Steve Jobs himself implies that while they have seen a version of the Flash player run on the iPhone they won’t release it because it doesn’t perform well enough.) Adobe seems committed to getting the full version 10 player on mobile devices.

Flash App Store likely partly partnering with if not owned by Adobe. Since the Flashlite application market is not owned by a single app sales store it wouldn’t surprise me if Adobe sees the need to help foster a Flash community-driven app store to help build more momentum for open devices like HTC Hero. This is a fairly important step in the roadmap to success.

Adobe AIR Applications adopting the Mobile Device platforms. Adobe AIR wraps web and Flash technology allowing it to act like an installable application. While this technology is fairly young, it has turned quite a few web developers into application developers. Intriguingly, Adobe AIR applications can run on Windows, Mac and now Linux. This means you write the app once and it runs (can be sold) for any of those kinds of computers. Watch for Adobe AIR for the various Mobile Platforms: Windows Mobile and Android first, more than likely, then possibly Palm and Blackberry and taking up the rear iPhone (but not likely any time too soon for Apple.)

Earbuds and Sonic Memories

2009-09-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

Over the years I have grown accustom to the headphones that come with a number of my iPods and iPhones. For that matter I have been wearing headphones on portable devices for years. I can remember laying in the back of my parent station wagon (the “L-T-D” I used to call it) and listening to audio cassettes in these simple goofy silver wired headsets that culminated into plastic-sizers as the speakers shoved these cheep foam pieces that softened the blow of unreasonably large speakers being pressed to the sides of my brain. It is surprising that I can hear anything today at all after the abuse I put my ears through as a kid.

I remember my first portable CD player. I didn't have a lot of money and I desperately wanted a portable CD player. So after much saving I finally purchased a Sanyo player. I was saving for a nice Sony player but I did not have the money or the patience to wait it out. After I got home I immediately fell in love with the CDs I owned and wondered how I ever got along without them previously.

The truth about that Sanyo portable CD player, there was nothing portable about it other than it's size. You had to carefully handle it like you were diffusing a nuclear bomb. Any tiny bump, jostle or sideways glance and the player would lay waste to your CD sending it skipping and scratching into eternity.

After a few weeks of listening I had a bit of buyers remorse because I imagined that the Sony player would have been a far better purchase. The infinitely curious boy inside me had me in my room cracking the case of the Sanyo player one afternoon. Low and behold I quickly learned a harsh lesson in marketing and branding as all of the chips affixed to the Sanyo circuit board had the word “Sony” imprinted on them. Alas, I felt fine with just enjoying the state of the art and challenging the branding machine from that day forward.

Here we are years later and while I am fully addicted to portable electronics (I am writing this on my mac book while listening to my iPhone at a Starbucks in downtown DC) I still forget the trade-offs that we sometimes make for portable convenience. For example, the fidelity of the tiny earphones that came with my iPhone, while fine enough, leave a bit to be desired. Then there is the nearly forgotten reality that average MP3-style technology trims the audible (and near-audible) range of sound files to make room for longer tracks in increasingly smaller space.

We forget that hearing the music isn't everything. Sometimes hearing and feeling music makes all of the difference. For the same reason we all still go to theaters to see movies, sometimes we need to get out of our headphones and turn the stereo up to 11. In the audible range of analog music you can hear subtleties of musical nuance. But then in the near-audible range of sound you can sometimes find the rhythm and crescendo of music drive you to your feet and make you want to sway and dance. You can't quite find that in a set of earbuds blaring MP3 tracks regardless of what Apple iTunes ads attempt to convince us.

So, go re-download the highest bitrate version of your favorite songs (or go out and buy a CD or heaven forbid- a record) and feel the music again. Hearing isn't everything.

Oh worthy of note! Before you run out and buy $400 earbuds hoping to improve your listening experience, an independent tests claim that better headphones don't ensure a better listening experience.

tech-tip: If you tend to purchase CDs and rip them to iTunes then with a little tweaking you can turn up the quality of your sonic experience.

From within the preferences of iTunes, select the import settings for audio CDs. Then with MP3 selected, pick “custom” from the list of possible bit rates. Now, you will notice that from within the bit rate list you can select more than double the rate that was likely initially selected. You might guess that by selecting the highest rate you would be ramping up the quality, and you would be correct. But you would also be cranking up the size of each MP3 file and that will effect any MP3 storage, so you have to find the sweet spot between quality and size.

So here is my recommendation: 192 kilobytes per second (kbps), with a “high” quality “Variable Bit Rate” (VBR.) VBR means that if the moment within a single audio file could benefit from scaling up to 192 kbps then it will vary the bit rate up to that value. And if the sound data won't benefit from that quality well, you guessed it, it will save some space and not crank up the quality. From what I have read, this is about as good as it gets within earbud headphones. If you are thinking of taking off the headphones and turning up the stereo, then push it on up to 256 kbps with High Quality VBR. And if you are ripping audio DVDs then take it all the way to the highest bit rate and VBR quality if you want to experience the same quality but not have to worry about playing the DVD.

Again, fiddling with these settings can increase file sizes and slow down the ripping process, but hey we are talking about a better sonic experience right? Remember, it isn't just about what you hear, it is about what you can feel.

Mac OSX Snow Leopard having a bit of a Vista moment

2009-09-03T18:47:00.001-07:00

In my mac world I tend to live in a couple major applications:

Firefox
Thunderbird
Mamp
Flash CS4
PhotoShop CS4
Dreamweaver CS4
MS Word 2008 (for Windows in Parallels)
and OpenOffice

By far the Adobe CS4 products are my career bread and butter and I wouldn't (couldn't) give them up if I wanted to.

At the moment Apple is really pushing anyone with a Mactel (Mac computer running on the Intel architecture) to upgrade to OSX 10.6 a.k.a Snow Leopard. How are they pushing? Like a drug dealer with blowout pricing. If you've recently purchased your mac, you can upgrade for $10. And if you didn't recently purchased it, then the upgrade costs $30. For me, that would mean $30 for my Macbook Pro and another $10 for the iMac.

But here comes the Vista moment (or maybe it isn't Vista as much as it is an old-mac-moment.) Snow Leopard made a number of core changes to how stuff works in the system but boasted that any of the current apps that we running fine under OSX 10.5.x should run fine in Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, that isn't proving out to be true. People like myself who live in the CS4 applications are currently encountering so many blowups that the forums are in flames. If you are running CS3 then you might as well boot up your old Windows XP machine, because if you upgraded to Snow Leopard then it is going to be a while before Adobe gets around to helping you out.

Adobe has been saying that they tested CS4 and it is good to go, but that Adobe CS3, while important to the company, isn't getting the priority at the moment. People still using CS3 got a little heated about that and started accusing Adobe of abandoning CS3 as a result, but Adobe assured them that it is just a prioritization issue and they will be getting around to ensuring CS3 works on Snow Leopard soon enough. Little did we all know that the reality about CS4 compatibility with Snow Leopard was more of an issue than Adobe was letting on. In fact, it now appears that Adobe new there were issues and the reason they weren't focusing on getting CS3 up to speed on Snow Leopard had everything to do with the fact that they can't yet get CS4 running smoothly on Snow Leopard.

But it isn't just Adobe products. There seem to be reports of intermittent issues doing regular stuff like "opening" or "saving" file. Hello!? What else does one do on a computer?

Rest assured, I am certain Adobe and Apple will resolve this current nightmare full-stop, but in the mean time I am waiting for some funny counter-strike style Microsoft commercials that mock Snow Leopard's buggieness. "Hello, I'm a PC. And I'm a ma... Hello, I'm a ma... and I'm a...I'm sorry but a number of system plugins are not responding. Please, visit help > system to view the... hello, and I'm a mac."

I will not be upgrading too quickly. I am sure I will upgrade, but just not as fast as the gotta-have-it mac-fan-boys across the interweb that were quick to regurgitate the Apple marketing on Snow Leopard even though Apple seems to have been less open than ever in allowing news firms to get access to Snow Leopard for pre-launch reviews.

Activist vs Extremist

2009-08-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

“Well, she is an environmental activist,” or “He's a political extremist!”

We've all heard this, one way or another. These terms get word-smithed into various conversations as tiny little golden nuggets or strategically placed verbiage bombs of analysis to persuade the listener. I recall a day when these nouns had real meaning, but today they are generalized into social stereotypes.

Another such term was “fundamentalist” used specifically and most commonly along with a reference to someone involved with organized religion. But to be a fundamentalist you had to earn it. You didn't just “think” a certain way, you had to act our in a certain detrimental manner. “religious fundamentalist” were blowing themselves up or taking an entire 747 hostage.

Today these terms mean only one thing: you get involved with a goal of affecting some kind of outcome. The only other differentiating factor is whether that involvement is viewed as positive or negatively correlated with the person performing the analysis. For example, imagine someone who advocates for the environment. If they picketed dirty businesses or advocate frequently for public recycling, or attempt to get people to sign petitions, “well, she is an environmental activist.” The key is that you believe a certain thing and then that you try to have an influence on the world around you. But activist isn't a dirty word. It just seems to mean “involved” but in a way that the person doing the analysis prefers.

Now let's look at the other side. If someone is involved in wanting to influence the world around them toward their values but the person doing the analysis of their behavior doesn't like what they are doing, then you simply change the noun from “activist” to “extremist.”

Let's go back to the environmentalist. Take them off the picket line and simply have them sign a petition to require all city management to recycle. They value the environment and they are taking action via their signature. But if people don't like that petition they just cast it as an “petition put forth by environmental extremists,” and suddenly it gets the right negative spin. In this scenario, “extremist” is basically reduced to meaning “I don't like your cause because I don't share your perspective and I will call it extreme because you are getting involved but not in ways that I support."

Back to “fundamentalist.” The greatest abuse of word-smithing seems to happen around this generalized label. According to the free dictionary the term is defined as (1) a religious group, (2) adhering to fundamental core beliefs, (3) who are intolerant of other perspectives, and (3) who are militant (historically.) But that definition is changing. Today people get called “fundamentalists” for simply promoting a piece of legislation. In fact, to judge something as “not tolerant” is a pretty subjective act in reality. For example, let's remove militant and religious from the definition altogether and see how this terms could be applied under a looser definition like what we experience today.

Let's go back to the environmentalist. They want a bill that requires city management offices to recycle. In that law they in fact want to require that recycling be mandated. So, any law like this qualifies as “intolerant” because it makes no room for alternative perspectives on recycling. By definition only one perspective wins and it would be called "a law" and laws have a funny way of not tolerating being broken. Next the proposition of recycling would be considered adherence to a core environmental protective belief. It isn't a loose definition. It is a core belief that drives one to feel that to protect the environment we need to save it from ourselves.

(Before I go on, I want you to understand that I am not advocated against recycling. It is just an analysis of terms here. Please stick with me. We are almost there.

So by examining any effort to move a belief into law we could well define the advocates of that belief as “fundamentalist.” Suddenly the term gets smothered to nothing and what was an “environmental activist” has moved to “environmental extremist” or worse yet “environmental fundamentalist.” But these are just words.

Crazy as it may seem I think it is time to rethink our dialog. It is one thing to examine history and talk about our values and align ourselves with belief systems or liken one thing to another thing to more clearly understand it. But these terms are just labels meant to influence how you feel about the person or the associated defining adjective...

education advocate, animal rights activist, political extremist, religious fundamentalist, etc.

The more obvious attempts at influencing you come in their one-two combination as they sandwich the adjective...

extreme left-wing fundamentalist

So the next time you get into a conversation and someone starts talking about an activist, extremist or fundamentalist, don't assume you know what they mean. Maybe they are imagining the old definition of fundamentalist, and you might want to ask a refining question. For heaven's sake, don't get sucked into the buzzword war...

“Those crazy neo-environmental fundamentalists are trying to get my office to recycle.”
You reply, “Did they hijack your garbage can again?”
Your friend ponders your question, "Ah, no, but they are trying to create a rule about recycling."
In an effort to cool his jets you offer an equally silly buzzword-laden reply, "Those fascist totalitarianists should keep their garbage-management-values to themselves and let us LIVE OUR LIVES!!!"

The Many Faces Of Health Care Reform

2009-08-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

I can't keep up these days... and I am really trying. But the winds at the White House are changing so fast. or maybe they are not and it is just a tactic, I don't know. I hate to think the worst but when something totally stumps you, you have to look at the possible alternatives.

The big debate right now on Health Care Reform is "the public option" meaning government would provide a competitive alternative to current insurance plans. Many people fear that because the government will play the role of both "health care insurance company" as well as "health care insurance rules judge" that they will always beat out any competition. This will result in the government taking over health care both in terms of (1) health insurance and (2) health insurance regulation, but also in providing health care (because of new regulations on Doctors and the fact that they would then be paid by the government.)

The other side of the debate has everything to do with providing health care for uninsured people. Forget the fact that not everyone wants to buy insurance and that senior citizens would be forced into the government program (if they don't spend their money on a government-approved alternative.) The fact is that the other side of the debate is concerned with providing health care insurance to the currently uninsured. Whether they understand how this gets paid for or if millions of Americans flooding into that new solution creates health care rationing, just about anyone agrees with the altruistic goal of helping people. That isn't the debate. The problem is in the "how."

So, this blog post is not about the details of the plan. This post is about the mixed messages coming from the bills largest proponent, the President.

Over the weekend the Washington Times (and a number of other news groups) wrote that the White House communicated President Obama was not married to passing a Health Care Reform bill that contained a "public option." Since that time other Democrats went on the record saying that the Public Option didn't have enough Democrat support in the Congress to pass the reform bill and that we should move on to focus on "reform" and stop flogging that dead horse. The White House even did a little more face-saving by saying, ...We have been saying this for about two months now. Now, I thought I was paying attention and I don't recall them ever saying they were fine with supporting a bill that didn't include the "public option."

Next in the time line comes a letter from the Congressional Democrats sent to Obama asking, "What the? No Public Option?" This only just happened and was likely the result of so many Democrats hitting the road to pimp Health Care Reform including the public option and taking a beating in public forums.

Now, in today's Washington Times President Obama is said to be back in vocal support of the Public Option. The source: his letter back to Congressional Democrats. Obama basically writes back and says, wait a sec... I still want a public option and nothing has changed.

So how do we take this? Here are my alternative explanations for this kind of double-talk:

Semantical Accuracy: If you look at both sides of what President Obama is saying at the same time, then he is communicating... I want the public option just like you, Liberals, but I am not married to it and would sign health care reform bill into law without it, like you, Conservatives.

Liberal Bias: If you look at this as a liberal, then you think that the President saying he is fine without it but really wants it simply means that he wants people to cool their jets in opposition to it, while he gives a wink to the liberal folks and says, ...hey, keep pushing for it because we really still want it. At the same time liberal folks who have stuck their necks out and said stuff like health reform without a Public Option is a waste of time (Nanci Pelosi) are worried that Obama might be simply pandering to them if he is really willing to sign a Health Care Reform bill into law without it.

Conservative Bias: If you have your conservative hat on then while you thought that the President's wavering commitment to the Public Option felt like a move in the right direction, now you simply wonder if he was pandering to conservatives while still sending support to the senators who are hitting the road pimping the Public Option. The conservative mind feels worried that the President is pandering at best and lying at the worst if he isn't really willing to sign a bill into law without the Public Option.

At this point the double-talk only serves up one outcome for those who are paying attension: a loss of trust for somebody. If you are a liberal and you want him to simply be pandering to the conservatives but in the end he signs a bill into law that doesn't include the public option, well, then you lose trust. If you are conservative and he refuses to sign a bill without the public option, then he is a liar to you, and you lose trust. Someone loses trust as a result of this experiment in words.

There is one other reaction at this point that I can think of and it goes like this...

Fan-boy: The substance of the President's words matter less that your ability to spin them into unwavering support. One week ago you were championing along with the President for Health Care Reform that included the Public Option and this week (for at least a moment) you were celebrating the seemingly bi-partisan move to not be married to a bill that must contain the Public Option.

The problem with fan-boy is that the only guiding value in that scenario is unwavering support for the icon that is the President. If you were a proponent of the Public Option and looked at the details then you would likely have a very difficult time cooling your jets and suddenly be fine with not including it. If you opposed the bill then you understood the ideological, social and financial difference that the Public Option made and were not about to simply start endorsing it. If none of that mattered to you, then I have a difficult time imagining that you were paying attention, because one way or the other a decision in this category would end up shaping the lives of Americans. So the details matter.

Forgot My Drupal Password

2009-08-11T07:05:00.001-07:00

From time to time I use a web content management solution called Drupal to build websites. Drupal (pronounced Droop-pull) let's you build websites that are secure, that allow you to write articles and blogs with ease and basically manage the content of your website. Sometimes the trouble with Drupal is that it makes web development too easy.

Having said that there is one problem I keep bumping into with Drupal. Often times I will be setting up a site, and then I get side tracked and need to come back around later only to have forgotten the administrative password. Ugh! In a real implementation for Drupal, that would never be a problem. If you forgot your password, Drupal has the capability (out of the "box") to send an email message to the email associated with the a user so that user can reset their password. The problem is, if the site is in development and running locally, sometimes the email feature of Drupal doesn't get configured basically breaking the ability of Drupal to send that email and start the password reset process. Here is a work around for that!

On a local installation you probably have access to your MySQL database for the Drupal site. This is not typically something that someone on a live site would have access to, so this is a safe procedure. Drupal also protects against SQL Injection so what I am about to show you is pretty darned safe.

Go to your MySQL Database for the Drupal site using a tool like MySQLAdmin. Now, find the "user" table and "browse" it. Notice that you can see the user names in the table. At the same time notice that the passwords saved in the "pass" column seem encrypted. That is because, well, they are. Specifically they are encrypted using the MD5 algorythm. Now, if you know anything about MD5 or security then you know that the MD5 algorithm has been cracked. In reality, while this is true, you pretty much have to be super-human to hack MD5 encrypted messages so there really isn't anything to wory about.

So, how do we figure out this encrypted password? We don't. The trick is to simply change the password. Assuming that the password you want to change is associated with the user id "1" (the field or column should be called "uid") open up your MySQLAdmin "SQL" tab and run the following SQL:

UPDATE users SET pass = MD5('newpassword') WHERE uid = 1

...and that should result in telling you that one record was updated.

Now go back to your Drupal site and attempt to login with your new password. Easy, Peasy, Lemon Squeezy!

The Purpose for H.R. 3200 is Not Misdirected, sort-of

2009-08-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

H.R. 3200 is such a hot debate, but what is interesting (at least in the D.C. area) would be that people are willing to talk about it. Only one month ago in my office people would be quick to make small talk about T.V. shows or movies or ideas for new T.V. shows or movies, but just this week things have changed. I have noticed that there are quite a few people who will just bring up a news tidbit about what is going on in Health Insurance Reform (that would be the “street name” for H.R. 3200) and ask each other questions or share what they have read about it.

This week in the news the Congressional Business Office decided to release a preliminary review of the cost estimates for the bill if it were set into motion. While I would love to discuss the social ramifications of H.R. 3200 on the average American, I will decline to do that right now. If you want to know how the bill would affect you where you live, then go read the 1,036 page bill at...

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

At the moment there is only one part of the bill I believe is worth reviewing for the sake of this blog: the charter statement at the beginning. It goes like this...

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce
the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

As a goal I think that people aren't going to say such a statement in a vacuum is a bad thing. I want people to experience affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduced growth in health care spending. The last phrase bothers me a little, however. The phrase “and for other purposes” is a catch-all phrase which supports two relatively common abuses of extravagance in government: it allows for the funding and addition of special pork-barrel projects within the documentation and it hides the fact that the bill actually does much more in the last phrase than it does in the first two phrases. Allow me to demonstrate.

Nothing in life is free. We all know that. When the government spends money, it is always our money. If you are willing to say something like, “Well I make so little money I don't pay taxes, so it isn't my money,” then you are missing the point. It is someone's money and you are disrespecting that reality.

The first phrase in this declaration of purpose is “To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans.” Well, let's quickly test the phrase affordable. At this point the CBO says that the government program will add $239 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. beyond the first ten they are specifically not willing to estimate but have said that if there is any saving in the second ten years into the program, it is so small that it wouldn't be considered any economic advantage. And this is just the beginning of the estimates. This is if nothing changes in that healthcare program from day 1 to 20 years into it. It also does not include the cost of the Government administrating the plan. Again, if you are imagining health care cost savings, then you have to imagine revenue and there isn't enough of it built into the program. This means that while they are proposing paying for this by raising taxes (again there is the real cost bearing it's weight on Americans), after 10 years of deficit spending we would realize a real net deficit of around $65 billion added onto the national debt. Affordable as a term quickly becomes a meaningless selling point if there really is no savings.

Next let's look at the word “quality.” This last week I drove to work a couple of day. Typically I take the metro, but I was running late and driving gets me there quicker even if parking is a horrible problem (let's just say that I recently invested $40 to the City of Alexandria because a meeting ran long and I couldn't get outside to move my car fast enough.) On the drive home the classical music station I sometimes listen to was reporting news about the causes for the rising cost of health care. The top two items on their list: government regulations (for good or for bad, a necessary evil or a federal fundraiser, they are whatever they are, let's not debate that now) and the demand for improvements. You see, as people get smarter we create smarter ways of doing things. And some of those smarter things mean new cutting edge technology or retraining doctors. All of this adds cost.

A number of years ago I worked for an electronics manufacturing company that built everything from cell phones to medical devices. My job was to be sure that the statistical data that was generated as a result of testing the quality of devices being produced was accurate and easily reported in near-real-time for our clients. While the nature of testing electronics is mostly the same regardless of the product being produced, the regulations around electronics varies quite a bit. Take for example a cell phone versus a heart monitor. Nearly everyone has read that little sticker on devices that claim it was tested to not create radio interference. Now imagine the quality demanded out of medical devices! This is no cheap venture.

So how is the government going to increase the quality of care? Well, first they tell you in the bill that a committee will be the one to define that. You can begin to imagine a conflict of interest by it's nature on this one. If a car company were to claim “we make the safest cars” and then you found out that they are the group who gets to define what “safe” means, this word “safe” would become (again) a meaningless selling point.

Now let's look at the phrase “for all Americans.” At this point if you are like me then you've been hearing the number 40 million a lot lately. Congress tells us that this is a number of Americans who don't have health insurance. Then you find out where that number comes from. 40 million is the number of any American who was without health insurance at some point during the last year. This is a very flexible number, in other words. In an alternate universe called “reality” something like 8 million are currently without health insurance rather than this very unspecific and knowingly inaccurate 40 million (which implies we currently have 400 million Americans walking around right now without insurance of any kind.) When all of the more realistic math is cut and calculated the number of uninsured comes down to about 2% of the U.S. population. What does that mean then? Well, it should mean that with such a huge program generating such an amazing deficit we really ought to be able to help out those 2% of U.S. citizens right? Well, sadly this is not true either. The fact is that there are Americans who aren't poor enough to qualify for certain benefits outlined in H.R. 3200 while at the same time don't make enough money to purchase private health insurance. H.R. 3200 doesn't bring a remedy to these people either. So the phrase “for all Americans” is also meaningless since the plan actually doesn't serve all Americans.

Finally, let's look at the phrase “reduce the growth in health care spending.” How will they do this? Can Congress put a “cap” on health care spending? Will they “cap and trade” our benefits and we pay a penalty if we use too many? Are they going to control the salaries of doctors or overrule medical law suites to contain costs? Will they approve less medical procedures, reducing demand hence reducing costs? Are they going to hand out coupons for “half off an appendectomy?” The fact is that we don't know and they don't know. In only a few industries has the government jumped in and controlled a pricing structure. More importantly, if the government does force prices down, then those services will get cut in another way to offset the artificially low cost. That is the nature of economics. In fact I believe this item in the list is nearly meaningless simply because it completes with the other items in the list. Now, from time to time an industry will innovate and create ways of reducing product or service costs. That innovation sometimes means more revenue and it sometimes means more people are able to more cheaply gain access to those products or services. That is a result of traditional Capitalism. But at the same time the government of the U.S. to-date has NEVER INNOVATED IN A MANNER SO AS TO CONTAIN COSTS. Zero times, people. If the U.S. Government wants more, then they KNOW they have to spend more. They don't have the “technology” to pull off this goals and history proves that I am correct on this point (though, please prove me wrong if you can come up with stories that validate how the U.S. Government innovated and generated lower costs that resulted in more people gaining cheaper but better benefits.)

Base on these issues alone I don't see how this plan will be able to achieve it's own dream. It is dead on arrival. In the spirit of fixing Wall Street and using their lingo, this entrepreneurial effort is a poor investment because it will not meet it's own goals set forth by it's charter. If Congress where a health care company, and H.R. 3200 was it's business plan, I would deny it's request for start-up-capital investments.

To end, I want to share a small insight I gained from having swapped a couple emails with the U.S. Senator representing northern Virginia. This last week I wrote the man a letter and he wrote me back. There is nothing he said in that letter which shed any new light on either H.R. 3200 or that gave me confidence that he even understood H.R. 3200. In fact the content of his letter defied the information coming out of the CBO. This is no surprise because even the White House is now reinventing history telling us that H.R. 3200 isn't about “cost savings” even though, as you can see here, they claim it is. I am convinced that Congress is doing a whole lot of posturing around the content of a Bill they they haven't even read.

So, to the Senator representing northern Virginia. If you would spend as much time reading H.R. 3200 as you do crafting opinion papers that defy the facts rather than represent them, I think America could benefit from any true insight you can bring to the situation. As well, please remember that you represent us, and that this is not a monarchy. We send you as much to vote on our behalf as we send you to be our voice and not your own. Please be a leader and not a follower.

And to my reading friends. Write your senators. Tell them your story and how you feel. If you believe that we should help the uninsured then write them and request they your Senate regains focus and drafts a Bill that simply does that and avoids clauses like “and for other purposes.” Tell them that you support helping others but that this Bill does more harm than help simply because it has already been proven to not accomplish it's charter objectives. And if you feel that it is not the job of the government to provide health care, then let them know that they are extending their own power without the approval of the citizens. Tell them that they draft their authority from you and not the other way around. Remind them that this government is “by the people” and that they are only your employees at the end of the day.

Windows 7, You Make Me Glad I Bought A Mac

2009-08-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

I really hope someone from Microsoft reads this blog post.

Last year I invested in my first mac ever. It was a macbook pro laptop and after much deliberation I finally got the guts up and pulled the trigger and forked over the bucks for a mac. They are a bit more expensive and I was worried about the cost of converting my software over to mac but I was ready. Here is why I went mac and how looking at Windows 7 made me fall in love with Apple all over again.

About every year I blow at least a week of my life formatting my PCs. Many people do this and they do it for a number of reasons: they like to start anew with a fresh system; they need their Windows system to perform well again and Windows performance seems to degrade over time; their computer crashes and they have to start all over. Now, I am a computer programmer and while you might imagine that means I tinker with my computer and tweak it to death causing it to die annually, I don't actually do that. I try to keep it very clean and yet each year Windows just seems to take a fatal nose-dive and I have to reinstall the operating system and all of my software again.

This whole effort of reinstalling means I lose time and as we all know time is money. In 2008 I had to reformat my system twice! Before you start thinking I own some sad old machine that should be retired, it is an HP AMD64 dual core machine with 6 GB of RAM and about 1 TB of hard drive space with dual digital monitors and nearly 1GB of video RAM, so I should be good to go. Needless to say I started doing the math. If the rumors were true about Apple computers being fairly maintenance free then I would save enough time each year to nearly purchase a new Mac computer annually rather than invest that time/money into fixing Microsoft Windows. So, starting with a laptop seemed to be the right next move toward a switch.

After co-existing with Windows Vista for over a year and having the Mac book pro laptop as long, the crash happened again. At this point I didn't need to do the math again. The main computer took the final crash and I was ready to go all-mac-all-the-time. So I bought a 24” iMac and never looked back... until the new buzz about Windows 7 came out!?

Windows 7: it loads quickly, no more Vista crashes, no more constant warning message interruptions, easier user interface, tons of usability enhancements... did I go to the iMac too quickly? Should I have been more patient?

Then I hear about the free Windows 7 Release Candidate downloadable from Microsoft. It is at this time that I fall in love with my Mac all over again.

Like Charlie Brown depending on Lucy to hold the football one more time in hopes that she won't pull it away YET AGAIN just before he kicks it, I decide to waste some bandwidth and download Windows 7.

First off, you can't easily download Windows 7 in anything but Windows Internet Explorer. The Windows 7 download crashes Firefox. Next up, I have to load up my Windows Vista in Parallels on my Mac just so I can fire-up IE and download Windows 7. 3 hours later I have Windows 7 on a DVD and I am read to install.

Here is where my investment in Apple pays off and vindicates me. After three attempts to install Windows 7 which is interrupted 3 times with the installer crashing my computer, I finally couldn't boot the machine anymore. Just so you don't panic, I am not attempting to install Windows 7 on my Mac. I am installing Windows 7 on my crashed Vista computer. It was even a completely fresh installation, new partition on the hard drive and everything! To no avail could I get Windows 7 installed and running. What a piece of... crap!

Needless to say I decided immediately to sit down on my Mac and write out this blog. Ah, my beautiful, flawless and painless Mac. It runs, it plays, it works... alas it does not crash!

So Windows is no more. On the upside, I happened to burn the Windows 7 installer on a reWritable DVD so I didn't even waste the DVD. I am now about to install Kubuntu Linux on that PC and be done with it. Never again I tell you. Never again!

White House FY 2010 Budget Has A New Name

2009-08-02T21:08:00.001-07:00

The Fiscal Year 2010 Budget from the White House is now being renamed by Obama's Treasure Secretary. While it was once described as “A New Era of Responsibility” it has now been labeled “an exploding budget deficit.” And do you think that the answer should be to tame that budget by cutting back programs that we cannot afford, the same tactic that all Americans employ when faced with a financial short come? No. We are being told that the answer could be a tax-hike for the Middle Class.

One of the latest additions to an already run-amuck budget: H.R. 3200. The H.R. 3200 bill, dubbed “America's Affordable health Choices Act of 2009,” seems anything but affordable. At the minimum it promises to add $1 trillion do our national debt and since President Obama doesn't want to appear irresponsible, rather than simply tack that onto our national debt (nobody wants that) his White House staff are leaving the door open to ask the Middle Class to foot the bill. When National Economic Council Director Larry Summers was asked if Obama would tax the Middle Class rather than keep his campaign word when he repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime," Summers said "There is a lot that can happen over time... it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what."

Now, I know a number of Americans who would like to stick it to the high priced insurance companies and find a way to bring down the cost of health care. The trouble is that H.R. 3200 is so far reaching that it funds programs, makes decisions and eliminates choices faster than it brings in alternatives or a savings. To answer your question in advance, no I have not read the entire bill consisting of more than a thousand pages. But I have struggled through the first 50 pages, and it is painful. For the government to create an affordable competitive plan they first have to take over the game. In fact, for them to compete they have to pretty well fix the game. To bring to light a comparison, imagine the following scenario:

Imagine that the U.S. Government wanted to make buying cars more affordable. Well, according to this plan, first it needs a horse in the race. So it goes and buys a car company (hmmm... check that off the list.) But owning a car company doesn't make cars more affordable. So what does it have to do? Well, it needs to control the features on the car, “optimize” them to keep the costs down. How does it do this? By creating a committee that decides who (which Americans) get what features. That is the first part of the equation: keeping costs down. But how does it make it competitive? Well, private car companies could just offer nice features at a reasonable cost and keep the U.S. own car company out of the game, right? We all win then, right? Well, no. You see the U.S. also needs to define what it means to be competitive. How do they do that? Well, they allow existing car companies to maintain their existing cars for the next four years, at which point all non-government-owned car companies now have to play by the new rules as defined by the government. Literally all of the cars older than four years old would have to come off the road at which point everyone would have to get into a car that now played by the governments new rules. In other words, if you are happy with your car, feel free to keep it... well, for the next few years, at which point all cars will have to look like the government cars. Hmmm? And the committee keeps deciding whose car gets what features? You guessed it.

Now we do the math! If you are in the Middle Class then you are currently paying a good sum of money for your health care. Next, imagine that H.R. 3200 gets passed. Now you are paying for your private health care and at the same time paying for other peoples health care because your taxes just got hiked up. I thought this was supposed to be cheaper... or “affordable?” Apparently, it is only affordable if you aren't paying taxes at all. But wait for it! You might anyway. Since Joe Biden was voted into the White House as the Vice President he has headed a task-force to define WHO the Middle-Class really is. So, for all you know even if you make less than $50,000 per year (currently the cut-off for the Middle Class), soon you might fit into the definition of Middle-Class. At what point does this plan become affordable?

Well, if you are anything like me, you are seeing a pattern here. The American public was first duped when Obama said he wouldn't raise your taxes. During the election he defied John McCain when he confidently declared to America that he could pull off his budget plans without raising taxes. He named his first fiscal budget “An Era of Responsibility” but we all now know that it is “an exploding budget deficit” at the admission of his own Treasury Secretary. I am waiting for the same Americans who voted President Obama into office to finally realize that the “America's Affordable health Choices Act of 2009” is both not affordable and oxymoronically eliminates “choice” by simply becoming the gatekeeper for the definition of what our “choices” will eventually be.

As a sidenote to this health care debate: research the history on Medicare and Medicaid. These struggling programs are constantly in jeopardy due to the way they exist and are managed by Congress. While you are at it understand that H.R. 3200 is modeled after elements of both of those programs as well as the Social Security system all of which have been bailed out over the years due to the unsustainable fiscal reality of those programs. Why are we sitting on our hands imagining that Congress is suddenly able go from mismanaging those three programs and yet we are cool with them taking on something so much larger and further reaching!?

CALL, EMAIL or WRITE YOUR CONGRESS-PERSON and tell them NOT TO SUPPORT H.R. 3200. If ever a public health care plan was a good idea, this is not that plan (and Congress knows it... now you need to tell them you know it too!)

F-22, the President, and Spending Cuts

2009-07-31T04:56:00.000-07:00

There has recently been a bit of press about how President Obama is going toe-to-toe with Congress declaring that he wants to see spending cuts! Specifically, he says that he will not sign any bill that attempts to fund the F-22 aircraft project. Now, I thought that the President was a spend-thrift? Does this spending cut action prove me wrong? Let's take a look at the details.

Well, it is true that President Obama has said the program needs to be cut and that he won't sign any bill that funds the program. It sure feels like he is wanting to cut some pork, right!?

The bill the President is referring to is a $636 billion bill coming out of Congress. Within that bill you can see the f-22 project getting funding. The price tag for the f-22 in this bill: $369 million. Our heads start to spin... millions, billions! These are numbers we never have to deal with in our everyday lives. Let's put these numbers into perspective. The President is saying that he refuses to sign a bill that funds a project worth about 1/20th of 1% of the entire bill. Let me type that again... one twentieth of one percent of the entire bill.

Does this mean that the President is a man of principle? That might seem like a plausible guess. It isn't about how much of the bill it equals, but based on the primciple of not wanting to approve wasteful bork barrel spending, he refuses to sign a bill because he objects to a line-item worth 1/20th of 1% of the bill's total worth.

Here is the problem with that. Pork barrel spending watchdogs claim that the bill contains over 1,000 porkbarrel items in it. The f-22 project is maybe one of those one-thousand items!

Ok, there goes the case for "principle" out the window. Why then is this such a big deal? Well, to you and I who will never see $369 million in our lifetimes, it IS a big deal. But in reality it is a sham of a deal, a token if you will, of what might be wrong in this situation.

If the Presidents gets his fractional cut hacked out of the bill then it will likely be heralded as a "victory for the President" and will be remembered as his move to uphold his promise to get the pork out of Congress. But now, you and I both know, this is a dog and pony show.

This is like the President allowing Congress to go into all of our wallets and at the last minute putting on a loud show, "Wait just a minute! How DARE YOU CONGRESS. Give that man back his empty wallet! How DARE YOU take his wallet from him! You can take all the cash you want from the wallet but LEAVE THE MAN HIS WALLET FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!"

If you want to see the pork out of Congress, well... HEY I am with you. But this is a show and not principle. And if you are still thinking this is a pricipled move because the President really just wants to reduce military spending, well, you have another think coming! If they pull the f-22 out of the bill he said he would sign it: The remaining $636 billion of the bill is all funding programs at the Pentagon... think again!

Favorite New Quote "The truth has come a' knockin!"

2009-07-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Recently a friend from work has decided to force me to watch season one of "Pushing Daisies." This is a very surreal TV show about a man who can bring dead people back to life for 60 seconds and he and some friends solve murders as a result of this gift. It is mostly a dark comedy and there is a lot to like about the show in its various parts while the jury is still out on the show as a whole (for me.) Even though the show only lasted a season and a half, it is growing on me as each episode takes creative turns with the characters and the relationships of those characters on the program.

Well, I have just found my new favorite quotation and it comes from this show.

Near the end of season one there is this episode where a man is killed by his neighbor. You see, the neighbor invited this man out on a double date and when the man meets the neighbor's girlfriend he finds out that the crazy neighbor is dating a life-sized plastic doll that only looks like a women (like I said, quite a surreal show.) Cutting to the chase, the main character in the show is about to confront the neighbor. As the main character is about to knock on the door to begin the confrontation, one of the main character's friends says...

"What if he does actually believe that his doll is a person? Maybe that is his truth, it's just different from our truth?"

The other friend of the main character replies... (and here is my new favorite quote)

"The truth ain't like puppies a bunch of them runnin' around, you pick your favorite. One truth. And it has come a' knock'n!"

Yes! I love it!

What Can We Learn from Obama’s Thoughts About His Respected Friends Arrest

2009-07-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

Here is how I would like to do this. Let’s look at The Good, the Assumptions and The Outcomes.

The Good

Obama can be a compassionate and committed friend. He knew his friend as well as his friend’s reputation and came to his friend’s defense based on what he (thought he) knew. We could always hope for such a friend in our own personal corner of life.

Obama is an educated man and reflects on other external information to review situations in a larger context. A couple of times now a number of radio talk shows from NPR to independent national commercial radio programs have attached themselves to Obama’s reflections on studies that state the idea that Black and Latinos are disproportionately stopped by the police, inferring that this is such a case.

Obama admitted that he knew little about the details of the case. He prefaced everything he said with that statement. I would go so far as to say that it seems to qualify any following remarks in that context.

The Assumptions

Obama said what he heard.

He claimed to have heard that his friend was inevitable inside his home having presented his ID to the police officer who eventually arrested him.

He also stated the assumption that the Boston Police department acted “stupidly.”

The Outcomes

Nothing is resolved yet. We know a few additional facts that we did not previously know. For example, we know, according to Reuters that the man was arrested outside his home, not in it. This simply demonstrates that Obama new less than he previously thought.

We know that Obama jumped to some conclusions about the cause of the arrest, that being racially motivated. According to the admitting of Obama his bias was motivated by those external sources of information that he allowed to influence his line of thinking. Said another way, while he might be right about the event being racially motivated, he could easily as well be wrong and his assumption simply demonstrates that he is willing to jump to certain conclusions based on his bias in the absence of fact.

Before we jump on him for that, I will admit that I do this as well from time to time within my conservative bias. The point is, just as a judge must separate themselves from their bias and review facts in the light of president judgments and the constitution, can Obama successfully do the same in his role as President? Rather than allowing his bias to generate strawmen for the purpose of knocking them down, can he, as President, refrain from building a case for bias and instead demonstrate being a reasonable person willing to wait for the facts? I heard his story of what he thought had transpired. I also agreed with his response to that story. At the same time I also, like many others felt like I was willing to wait for the facts. I didn’t want to jump in and say, “I think that cop was right,” or “Man, that poor respected citizen abused by that policeman.”

Obama could have said, “If what I have heard is the whole story and ends up being true, well, then I think that that police officer acted stupidly.” Moreover, if it were racially motivated I might have used more severe and critical language than simply calling it “stupid.”

But that isn’t what Obama did. Instead he made assumptions and literally claimed the entire police force acted “stupidly.” I am far less a believer that such a statement will come close to being true in this case. Maybe the cop individually acted stupidly, but that leap was clearly irresponsible. I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon read about a detraction on that point; either detraction or a White House redefining of “what the President meant” by that, which is an excuse rather than an apology.

But Obama said he didn’t know much, didn’t he? Well, yes he did. And yet he made the declarative statements he made. In other words, he knew he didn’t know enough, and at that level of knowledge he willingly rendered a biased judgment. I know plenty of people who know the limit of their knowledge and aren’t willing to render such a judgment.

Is this a big deal?

Well in the scope of this situation, I don’t think it is as big a deal as people are making it out to be. It does however raise questions about how Obama comes to conclusions about certain facts or even decisions without the availability of facts.

We already know that Obama isn’t a big reader, so how much insight does the man demand before he is ready to render a decision on big stuff like… the economy, healthcare plan details, local education funding in the multi-billion dollars with unprecedented new federal oversight, cap-and-trade policy, new U.N. Treaties that give jurisdiction over local government at an international level, etc?

My assumptive guess, based on this demonstration of his response in-kind… he doesn’t require nearly as much insight into these scenarios as we previously might have imagined.

Kindle Book Reviews

2009-07-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

So I am thinking about buying a Kindle. I love reading and spend a good portion of the week commuting on the DC Metro so maybe it is time to invest in a Kindle.

What I enjoy the most is the fact that while I could continue to buy lots of books I will no longer have the drawback of the weight and expense of having to move from apartment to apartment with a huge library.

I even found out recently that a few of the publishers who have published my favorite books are selling electronic copies to people at a discount if you can prove you own the book by naming a few obscure facts from within the pages of the text. Interesting!

So the million dollar question for me is, "Will they have the books for which I am looking?" To answer this question I checked out the Amazon.com Kindle store. This was also very interesting. You can see the complete supply of books which range from very obscure goofy texts to extremely popular books that are currently riding the waves of the New York Times bestseller list.

You can annotate the pages, bookmark each book you are reading and if you buy the crazy expensive version then you can even put any PDF from anywhere on the device and read it as you go (I currently own a number of book PDFs and I could include those books in my library.)

At the moment the larger Kindle claims to be able to store about 3,500 books at a time. I feel safe in saying that this is more than the number of books I am typically and concurrently reading, so that would suite me fine. In addition, if I were to hop into my car, I can plug the Kindle into my car stereo and the Kindle will read my book to me. Wait, it gets better. Kindle will also play MP3s for you, so you can throw a few tunes on the device and listen to music on the go while you are reading.

It works in daylight, it is crazy thin and amazingly lite. Have I sold myself yet? I hope so. Now I just need to find a few hundred dollars to get my "kindle" on, if you know what I mean (what? I don't even know what I mean.)

As a side note, as I was reviewing the Amazon Kindle book supply I came across quite a number of interestingly opinionated reviews. I came to a book entitled "Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine." Now I have heard of Glen Beck but I really don't know what he is about other than the fact that he seems to be this slightly goofy conservative commentator. Not that I have a problem with that: I am goofy and I am conservative. I digress. I don't know Glen Beck or his material.

I started to review the synopsis of his book and decided that the Thomas Paine history part sounded interesting. Then I wondered if other people had left comments. Well, of course they had. Here, without permission is a copy of one of those comments...

This is America's eleventh hour! Our democracy is morally, politically and economically bankrupt. I suggest we stop hiding behind "trashy best-sellers" and pore over Glenn Beck's "Common Sense." If for no other reason, at least to grasp a sense of ominous reality and sobering history.

As a former Cuban immmigrant (50 years ago) I see so many similarities between my former country before Castro's revolution and the US today, that sometimes I think I'm re-living a nightmare.

Andrew J. Rodriguez
Author: "Adios, Havana," a Memoir

Here is a link to the commentator's book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Adios-Havana-Andrew-J-Rodriguez/dp/1598000489/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248395449&sr=1-1

I am hoping that this serves as a reminder that not everyone concerned with the state of the country is a white middle-aged card-carrying Republican. Food for thought, people.

Now, where did I put my credit card?

Another $18 million down the drain

2009-07-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Recently I have read stories where we are being told that the economy is once again sound, but not quite back to where we would really like to see it. In other words, “Everybody relax, but not too much.” And why should we relax but not too much? Mostly because there is more fund raising to do. Current the Congressional Budget Office took a look at the recent government plans for health care and announced that it will now add yet another $1 trillion to our national deficit. This is on top of the few other trillions of dollars scheduled to be added onto the deficit since the conclusion of the 2008 election. It was at this time that now in an unprecedented reach-out to influence the Congressional Budget Office, the White House has invited the leadership of the CBO over for a private meeting. Hmmmm? If I am a betting man I would guess that the meeting might have to do with the unfavorable review of the financial outlook of the plan.

Back to the fund raising. While we should relax, one reason we shouldn't relax is because if we don't and health care keeps treading forward as it is today, then we are being told that we could be buried under the expenses of medicare and medicaid costs in future years. On that point alone we are told we should quickly approve this current government health care makeover plan. But, then again, these were the same people who told us to “act now” on the near trillion dollar bailout so that we can save jobs only to completely blow away their worst case scenario on national unemployment anyway (despite the fact that congress “act(ed) now!”) These were the same folks that admitted not long ago that the economy was worse off than they anticipated and that “they were wrong” about their understanding of it. Now we should relax, but not so much that we don't feel this new pressure to solve something else that they are likely wrong about as well.

And the newest, well, not so new fiasco has everything thing to so with how they intend to share information about all of the recovery dollars being spent. Recently Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland said “If we can't show them that we are doing the right thing with their money, we're going to have problems.” So how will they show us?

Check out the website... http://www.recovery.gov

This is a new website, but apparently it is not new enough. I know, the web moves quickly and this site has been up for what... a couple months now. That is like a century in internet years, right? We'll that is what the White House thinks. So, they recently awarded what will turn out to be an $18 million contract to a company called Smartronix from Maryland (isn't that convenient) that will... redesign the site? That's right. I know of a multimillion dollar company that revamped their entire e-commerce / website by simply putting a single company on less than $1 million annual retainer! They are doing fine! And yet for some reason Recovery.gov needs $18 million to pull this off? That is pretty amazing.

And here is the killer. What are they going to do for recovery.gov again. They are going to redesign the site. Let's take a look at their website.

Go check out... http://www.smartronix.com

Is this a web 2.0 demonstration of social interactive web technology? Does this group even advertise “website redesign” tallent in their top skillset? No!!!

And buckle up for the final note: How will this $18 million pay out? Over the next five years! Said another way, the White House would have us believe that the economy is sound, but could be doing better, so shift your focus to spending $1 trillion in deficit on national healthcare, but well, understand that we feel it is important to set into motion a 5 year plan on phase 2 of a website that explains how we are still recovering from this slump we recently shouldn't feel too bad about, but well, don't get too comfortable?

Are you feeling schizophrenic yet? Well, you should be feeling crazy. Because this current batch of politicians seem to be willing to say whatever the heck they want in completely contrary directions so people will do what they want them to do. What kind of suckers are we? What kind do they take us for?

If you watched TV tonight then at the minimum maybe you got a small feeling of levity when President Obama cracked a few jokes. He can be a very endearing and personable seeming fellow. I can honor that in the man. But it is time to get real people. He may be personally likable, but we don't have to like what he is doing with the other face he seems to have.

Si Senior, Gracias

2009-07-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight I am returning from having been downtown to relax a little before heading into the next business week here. On the way home to Crystal City I went to catch the yellow line from Chinatown and was fully distracted by my thoughts and the soundtrack playing through my iPhone.

I flipped open the metro app to see when the train would arrive and it said it would show up in about one minute. Just then people started to fill the platform from various directions.

I noticed this Hispanic family paying very close attention to their map and each other. Everyone was holding hands. Suddenly the matriarch of the family stepped up the couple standing beside me and said something in Spanish. The darker-skinned man next to me replied "Si!" and the lady smiled.

As the metro opened its doors the family, hand in hand all flowed onto the train.

I found myself sitting just behind the couple who offered advice in Spanish to the family. They all kept smiling over in the direction of the couple, appearing thankful for his having shared advice with them. Then I overheard the couples conversation.

"I did not know you knew Spanish," she said.

"Yeah, people see me and think I know Spanish. This wasn't the first time," he replied.

He went on, "Usually it is just a question and so I just say 'Si' which means yes."

I was in shock! What did the family ask him? Were they on the right train? Did they ask about something to do with what would be at their coming destination?

At the next stop the family got up, all hand in hand, and began to file off the train. Each of them smiled at the couple. The patriarch of the family took up the rear of their family line and as he exited the train said, "Gracias!" to the couple.

As our train took off again, their conversation briefly continued.

"What did he say," she asked.

"He said Gracias, which I think means... like... 'You are a very kind person'... or something like that," he replied.

I really hope that family is not lost in DC? How bizarre was that?

America is Democrazy - Afterward

2009-07-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

OK, I have investigated the history and a quick sampling of current events that contrast Socialism, Communism, Democracy and Republic governance. I can say that while this has in no way been a complete review of the history on these topics it has been very eye-opening. I am certain there is so much more to know and understand but I feel like my ever-so-slightly-less than superficial understanding of these forms of government has put some concerns to rest while giving birth to others.

Initially my reason for investigating this was in response to hearing people debate whether our current Congress + President is or is not moving our country toward Socialism. In addition to that I have listened to discussions where people want to talk about various sliding-scales of socialist ideals and how a government could employ an administration that is either more or less “socialist” without actually being or legitimately moving toward a truly socialist form of government. I have come to a few conclusions on these points but I think it is important that people read the included links to my 5 previous blog entries before entering into debate about my conclusions. Here are a few of my thoughts:

Social politics is a scale from a category I will call “complete automatons” on the left to “total personal freedom” on the right. In the case of utopian social control or “complete automatons” is complete and total fiction. And in the case of utopian liberty or “total personal freedom” you again have a fictional reality that will never be attained. So the scale seems to look like this, in short:

Fascist / Communist: Total tyrannical control.
Socialism: Karl Marx said this is a temporary transitional form of government at best from capitalism to Communism.
Capitalist / Republic: Values driven civic-liberty-focused governance with a free-market economy.

Both socialism and libertarianism have been fundamentally reduced to philosophies today. Libertarianism as a philosophy leads somewhere between democracy and anarchy. Socialism, again according to its co-founder Karl Marx is a government in transition from a capitalist Democracy toward a Communist society.

So if you have been thinking that Socialism is an issue of being “more socialist” or “less socialist” then you would be right because at it's nature it is transitional. The problem is in embracing an increasingly socialist-trending government. We know by definition, literally, where that is headed and it is unsuccessful.

I also found the tactics of Stalin's form of Communism an eye-opener. From the manner of propaganda to the intentional “cult of personality”, it reminds me of the current trend in American politics. These days I regularly read about how the opinion polls on Democrats and Republicans are down but the “Obama brand” is strong. This is very Stalin-esk in the light of history. All of that to say that I think we have nearly outlived our roots as a society and that the most basic political tricks are ruling public opinion these day. We are nearly ignorant of our history or of world history and as a result we are a living example of repeating that history.

Finally, in the Socialist example of Robert Owen I found too many parallels for the way he invested in the Socialist economy to what America is doing right now, HOWEVER, these investments will likely fail for the same reason Owen's New Harmony, Indiana, experimental community failed. To recap, like New Harmony, America's leadership is mostly sloppy with their theory and implementation at best and that for our investment to be a success we would have to subjugate some basic capitalist ideals such as personal sovereignty and self-preservation. I will be bold in saying that I am not in favor of such a plan succeeding under any conditions. I would rather be a person of values, knowing the importance of civic liberty and sovereignty rather than trade those values in for a socialist transition toward nationalized communism.

Understand that communism comes in many forms (it is all not Stalinism.) There is Maoism and a host of other variant from parts of the world with flavors of communism that seem far less tyrannical but that are all equally failing. If someone were to say “Socialism is a sliding transition toward communism” people today would be quick to call you a conspiracy theorist. But it is the very definition. And people continue to absorb the principles in those philosophies and styles of governance. For example, Socialism is primarily an economic theory. People who rage against “corporate America” yelling non-specific stereotypical accusations at people who support Capitalism are in fact siding with Socialist philosophy. It isn't like Socialism, rather it is part and parcel with the "class war" agenda against industrial development in a free market categorically that makes it Socialism specifically. Contrast that with people who talk intelligently about actual problems in a capitalist society that are not proposing Socialist solutions that contradict the values of Capitalism. Equally so, people who rage against any semblance of a faith-informed politics are actually siding with a number of oppressive tenants of Communism. Again, contrast that with people who don't demand that a person compartmentalize their life but rather allow their faith, education, intelligence all inform their decision process in a truly rational manner. Ruling out faith as an inappropriate informing factor is specifically an agenda item for the Communist model. I am not making these talking points up. It is in there!

I am learning to think through this stuff as I am sure we all are. But as an experience, I highly recommend people take the time to review history on this topics and not simply take someone else's word for it. In the mean time, TAKE MY WORD FOR IT... just kidding. Feel free to read my thoughts and come up with some of your own (as I am sure you will.)

Here are the links to the blog posts:

What is a Republic

2009-07-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

A Republic is a representative-based government without a monarch. In a Monarchy the government is headed by an individual typically legitimized by heredity often thought to be christened by God. The leadership of a Monarchy typically rules their entire life or until they abdicate to a descendant. In a Republic the governmental legislators are legitimized by their Constitution and via selection by citizens.

There are a few versions of what makes up a Republic and in the case of America the politics are most well defined as a representative democracy. Contrast that with the early democracy of Roman where citizens voted in the Assembly in a form of direct democracy, America selects it's representatives and indirectly adheres to a democratic philosophy of governance.

The idea of a Republic comes from the Renaissance. The most basic core value of a Republic is Liberty. Said another way, a Republics first priority is value-based Liberty or Freedom for it's population. This is an interesting distinction. The latin phrase “libertas populi” means something more like “civic liberty” as opposed to the more nebulous “personal freedom” though both ideas can be found in that phrase.

The definition of liberty is where we begin to see a split between liberal and conservative citizens of a Republic such as the United States of America. Historically, liberals would bring an emphasis to the idea of personal freedom (it is good for everyone for individuals to maximize their freedom: to each his own) while conservatives would prefer to it through the viewpoint of civic liberty (it is good for everyone for individuals to adhere to a common standard: for the betterment of all) Neither of these overarching philosophical talking points address what is actually being stated in the Constitution under Article four.

In Article four of the Constitution it says that the U.S. government will “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government.” Because the concept of a guarantee has become so watered down today, and as well because we are more focused on federal governance than on individual State governance we might want to take a moment to talk about that phrase.

When the Constitution was signed the colonies were separate States. This means that they were sovereign but with both internal and external relationships to another governmental entity, namely the United Kingdom or Great Britain. The Constitution legitimized a federation of governance over a collection of States. And why would a State switch it's allegiance from G.B. to this new United States of America?

Well, the federal entity was guarantying (i.e. militarily protecting) the States sovereign right to implement a Republican government as opposed to being governed by the Monarchy in England.

What other roles does the new United States of America play other than military defense? According to the founding documents, it would liaise on behalf of those united State with other sovereign nations. It would also play a role in signing treaties between U.S.A. and other nations. How about education, healthcare, financial stability, retirement of its citizens, federal taxation? In all of these cases... it was left up to the States to decide. In the case of taxation however, it wasn't until the first World War that the federal government had grown so large that the constitution was amended to allow for federal taxation (something previously considered unconstitutional.) It was also the advent of federal taxation that lead to ever-increasing growth of scope of responsibility within the federal government (i.e. now that funding was available, so much more could be done.)

So what is distinctive about a Republic?
As you can see if you have been following the other blog entries, nearly all of the other forms of government are based on economic theory. At this point, a Republic stands alone. It's bold declaration that it values civic liberties as the foundation for it's guiding existence makes it revolutionary in it's approach to governance. You might now wonder if that is true in the light of the existence of Monarchies, but in that case you need to know that nearly all Monarchies were again also Republics (U.K. under the King/Queen, Italy under the Pope, etc.)

There have been attempts at drawing a distinction between Republics and Monarchies saying that Monarchies are about land ownership while Republics are about acquisition of wealth through commercial production but this is a fairly recent concept and it breaks down as an argument under certain living examples today.

The fact is that faith played a huge historical role in the formation of Republics. Take for example the Catholic faith. Many Republics in the Middle Ages were legitimized by their position with relationship to their King/Queen and how they related to the Catholic Church. Later under Luther and the Protestant Reformation there were many Republics created without being legitimized by the Catholic Church. This was a further move toward civic liberties often legitimized by Constitutions and not by the Catholic Church. But still, the formation of a Republic existed as a matter of united civic values relating to faith.

In the case of the U.S.A the colonial leadership they continued to feel that faith played a role in legitimizing their governance but rather than coming from the Monarchy, their power came from the people in a way that can only be described as a Republic. From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

And why did we form a Republic?
We often hear it had to do with “taxation without representation” like we seceded simply because of taxes! The fact is that they were struggling with the laws and the poor implementation of the rule of law in the States. In essence the Monarchy was on a power trip and living out a tyrannical set of abuses for whatever reason on the colonies. The colonies would have been satisfied to have been considered Republic-governed States, a part of the U.K. They were not being treated as such.

So with obvious faith when they wrote the phrases...

"... the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles them ..."
"... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights ..."
"... appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world ..."
"... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

...they established a new Federal Government and in the Constitution promised that the new United States of America would "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government."

So, is America a Republic?

It is clear historically that we are a Republic. But the founders of America were not ignorant. They understood that tyrannical leadership can spring up at any time and break, redefine, pillage and destroy what the generations before them suffered so hard to defend. In the Declaration of Independence it also says...

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes...”

The “such principles” they refer to are the unalienable God-given rights they mention before that phrase. The Republic of America was not a government founded on economic policies but on faith that informs the politics of the nation.

So with the same understanding and educated effort of Ben Franklin, who after he helped to draft the Constitution was asked by a woman, “Sir, what have you given us?” when anyone asks us what kind of government America has, we should reply...

America is “A Republic... if you can keep it.”

Here are the links to the blog posts:

What is Communism

2009-07-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

Communism is like Socialism but with the safety wheels taken off. If you want to learn about some of the history of Socialism, you can read a previous blog entry in this set.

Communism is a social and economic political ideology. According to the founders of the philosophy, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (mid 1800s), authors of The Communist Manifesto, the exploited working class within a Capitalist society must rise up in a revolutionary manner to overthrow their Capitalist forms of government in order to implement a transitional Socialist dictatorship via the collective working class (think: philosophical modern Democracy ruled by only the “working class” ) in hopes to eventually evolve into a form of governance of communal classless society that equally shares ownership as well as the means of production.

Today there are a number of different forms of transitional Communism. The most famous forms are politically moderate Communist ideologies that push less for revolution and proletarian (working class) democracy but rather believe in parliamentary forms of governance where representatives would vote in place of the citizens. These moderate communist forms are often politically referred to as Reformists or Social Democrats.

In America in the 1800s New Harmony, Indiana underwent an attempting to form a Capitalist + Socialist form of economic experiment. Within 2 years it failed because Capitalism values personal ownership and personal sovereignty. But Socialism is only a transitional stage between Capitalism and Communism according to Karl Marx. In the early 1900 Vladimir Lenin lead Russia into a Socialist revolution which resulted in a similar incompatibility of values. 100 years earlier in America it was also said that the New Harmony Experiment failed because the leadership in the situation were all not embracing a purer form of Socialism (in the educated and motivated sense of the word.) Back in Russia Communism would not be allowed to failed because of such values.

After 4 years of civil war lead by the Bolsheviks under Lenin, a form of social communism had taken hold but the leadership still struggled with capitalist ideals like personal sovereignty. Joseph Stalin followed Lenin in leading the Russian Communist movement and crushed any remaining over capitalist ideals converting Russian Communism into a form now referred to as the Communist Totalitarian ideology. How did Stalin do this? Lenin opened the door to the Marxist economic philosophy in Russia. Stalin wanted to ensure that Communism continued and that he would remain the figurehead to that movement. As a result his implementation of Communism resulted in something called Stalinism which was most famous for maintain communism with him as the head by: enlarging the reach of his government in ways that reduced personal sovereignty, national and international spying, punishment by law enforcers that did not involve court-based judgments, political “purgings” by killing, suppressing or exiling political opponents, extensive use of propoganda to establish a “personality cult” around him in order to maintain control over the nation and his Communist party. This is what it took from the Stalinism form of Communism to crush the values found in Capitalism.

Nearly 80 years later we learned that the Soviet Union established by Lenin, bolstered by Stalin, was nearly bankrupt. America in the 1980 cranked up nearly every political and social pressure to hen reveal that the U.S.S.R. was a failed experiment in Socialism and Communism. By the end of the 1980s the Soviet Union was no more and former Soviet nations began to move back toward Capitalist economics.

So is America Communist? In my opinion, like socialist ideology in America, people still promote certain values found in Marxist ideals like “class war” or “political governance of the means of production”, or “the subjugation of personal sovereignty for the purpose of social reform” or even “communal ownership via federal governance (of certain resources or opportunities)” but fundamentally America itself and its founding documentation doesn't allow for the Elected to simply do away with our Capitalist Republic in favor of the current winner 's sociopolitical-economic ideology. Well, not inevitably. It will always take a revolution to undo our Constitution or Bill of Rights or the values found in the Declaration of Independence. That is not to say that various expensive sociopolitical-economic “experiments” could not be attempted in ignorance in such a way as to simply cause long and painful and sometimes irreparable harm to America without actually turning us into something we are not.

It is better that we know the definition of these ideologies and their historical experiments before we simply jump out-of-context into some new political movement.

Here are the links to the blog posts:

What is Socialism

2009-07-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

Socialism is first and foremost an economic theory. If someone says “This country is socialist” they mean to speak specifically to the way politics manages the economic administration of the country.

So what does this economic perspective encompass? Traditionally, socialist (economic) political agenda includes collective ownership and administration of (1) the means of production, (2) the distribution of goods and it's fair distribution across the full spectrum of society in an egalitarian (aka all people are philosophically equal) manner.

To offer a little history the most famous promoter of the Socialist perspective was Karl Marx. He said that socialist ideals would be achieved via class struggle where the working class would fight to come into power. Said another way (that you have maybe heard in the press), Socialism would be achieved via a proletarian “class war” revolution.

In an American form of government we are ruled by a Constitution. All other laws in our country are based on and conform with the rule of law provided by the Constitution. If laws are suggested that do not comply with the Constitution then we hear that the ruling was “un-Constitutional” and the ruling is typically addressed and reversed.

In a proletarian (or working class) “class war” the only way an American form of government becomes truly socialist would be via revolution. A revolution would be required to abandon the Constitution which explicitly declared that we have a Republican and not Socialist form of government. Said another way, no matter who is elected in the American form of government, the elected rulers cannot simply convert the government from a Republic to a Socialist form.

As late as the late 1700 and early 1800 a man by the name of Robert Owen from Wales helped to co-found the Socialist economic theory. Mr. Owen believed that Socialism should be founded on three core philosophies: (1) people are a product of their environment and are not responsible for who they have become. They are a socially engineered creature and society is responsible and not the individual, (2) all religions are absurd and weaken mankind while general spirituality is acceptable to a degree, and (3) that the government should manage the output of the nation on an administrative level.

Socialism has not moved far from the days of Robert Owen. In fact in as late as 1825 Owen himself ventured to implement a form of Socialism within a Capitalist society. The experiment lasted two years, was placed in New Harmony, Indiana (USA), and was a miserable failure. Even though a lot of money had been invested in the socialist experiment (this was a historical hallmark of Owen's form of socialism... the large financial investment) it was said to have failed because the social mix in the planned community consisted of people who were well intentioned but contained others who were called “wrongheaded enthusiasts” or “lazy theorists.” Said another way, for Owen's Socialism to have worked in a Capitalist society it would have demanded that all those in power be well educated in the principles of socialist production, confirmedly well intentioned.

On the flipside Josiah Warren, a participant in the experiment, said that it was a plan doomed to fail from the beginning because it ran against traditional Capitalist values such as individual sovereignty and private ownership. It seems that Josiah had a grasp of the incompatible values between Socialism and Capitalism while Owen would have to subjugate Capitalism to the values of Socialism to be successful.

So is America Socialist? Well, I think this selection of history demonstrates that while America is confirmedly Capitalist that people from time to time attempt to implement Socialist philosophical economic theory into it. Because Capitalism is not compatible with Socialism one or the other eventually must step aside. And since Capitalism values personal individual sovereignty and private ownership and these value must be removed from society for Socialism to inevitably work, I don't see America truly embracing Socialism anytime soon.

As an additional side note, it took two years for Owen's Indiana experiment to fail. Again, recall that it required a large investment and as at war in Capitalist values and it still took two years to fail. If you increase the scale of the experiment to encompass all of the United States and increase the investment from, say, thousands of dollars to, say, trillions of dollars you can imagine that America could try a grander “Capitalism + Socialism” experiment again, but he result will likely be one of three scenarios:

1.Capitalism leaves the equation quickly and Socialism becomes the economic theory for America.
2.Capitalism leaves the equation slowly and Socialism becomes the economic theory for America but the investment is so expensive that it reduces everyone into either the “working class” or into the “administrative (governing) class” (read the history of Communism.)
3.Capitalism stays and Socialism leaves slowly, and we are again buried under the investment of the experiment in a new national great depression.

At the moment I don't think we are in a place that could truly afford the investment to make such an experiment a success (if it could be a success at all.) I worry that we might try however and end up in scenario #3 above.

Regardless of speculation, I do not believe America has a Socialist form of government. Based on this history I do believe we might be heading for a new experiment in merging socialist values with capitalist values.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Karl Marx said that Socialism is only a transitional stage. History tells us that his assertion is true. Countries do not inevitably stay socialist. According to Marx, on one end of the economic spectrum lives Capitalism, on the other end Communism. Karl Marx said that Socialism is the transitional stage from Capitalism to Communism.

Read my blog entry on Communism to learn more.

Here are the links to the blog posts:

What is Democracy

2009-07-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

The word democracy means “majority rule.” What does this mean in practical terms? Well, fundamentally it means that when faced with a decision that results in “rule” the majority of people decide.

Let's quickly imagine what a majority ruling could mean in reality. Think about various scenarios: race demographics, companies that employ us, folks on a camping trip, etc. And now imagine that for each situation there are no guiding principles but rather decisions voted upon by a group of available contemporaries and whatever that majority looks like in that moment decides what the current rule looks like. Sounds sort of wild-west doesn't it?

Now, you might imagine that a majority rule scenario was how we were founded, correct? But rather than voting on a moment requiring a ruling, we voted on a constitution that established a basis for future rulings. In that case you would be mostly right, except for the fact that we didn't vote as a country of people in an opportunity. A number of colonial leaders voted or rather drafted the Constitution which defined a new way of governing, not by majority rule but by a rule of law that outlined a limited form of government with a very particular purpose.So if Democracy means majority rule, how did the phrase get re-purposed to mean a select group of people rule? Is it still a Democracy if the majority does not rule but there is another guiding rule of law that is simply implemented by a representative minority?

Is America a democracy? Well, I believe as a philosophy, we could say that we are philosophically democratic. But in reality, we are ruled by established law and to this day we continue to refer to the Constitution as our basis for law and legal rulings.

To offer a little Democracy backstory, in ancient Rome if you were a citizen, you were allowed to vote in the Assembly (think about how big those meetings must have been!) This was a more true form of Democracy. In an American form of government you cannot vote with regard to Congressional laws unless you are a seated senator (and even there you will find certain exceptions.) So, clearly America may be philosophically a Democracy, but in reality and by all practical means, we are not a Democracy by that definition of that form of government.

By the Middle Ages, Democracies began to take a different form. The groups being allowed to vote became smaller and more representative rather than inviting citizens to vote. Some might blame the degree of education or lack thereof during the Middle Ages on the reason voting power became representative. Said another way, Democracies simply began to morph into an elite group of empowered individuals who ruled in their delegated minority and simply called themselves representatives of the majority. It is as if by the Middle Ages the notion of Democracy almost fully transitioned from a true form of citizen governance to simply a philosophy of words. In this sense of the definition for Democracy, America does partly fit this form of rule. But we still have a guiding Constitution which forms a basis for rule, which again challenges the notion of America having a Democratic form of government.

Finally America was established and we “Declared” and “Constituted” our rights and rule of law. Interestingly enough there is not a single mention of democracy in either of these documents. I find it interesting that while there were documented (not in these documents) various philosophies of Democracy, that our form of government is not described as a Democracy.

In the case that you might be thinking I am drawing up a straw man, I am not. You might want to ask me, “Well, just because they didn't say it, doesn't mean it isn't true, right?” Let's take an example of that:

If you were to say, “Steve is a fighter,” and your basis for this is founded in the probability that Steve didn't mention that he isn't a fighter, well, you might be right, but you might as well be wrong. Now, what if I did explicitly say, “Steve is a lover.” In that case would it not be more accurate to say, “Steve is a lover, not a fighter.” It would be more accurate yet to say “Steve is surely a lover, but he might also be a fighter,” as long as the two things aren't contradictory.

Equally as interesting, it is explicitly documented in the constitution under Article 4, Section 4, that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...”

In the blog article for What is a Republic you can decide if it is possible for America to be both a Republic as well as a Democracy and if these ideas are contradictory.

Here is where you scratch your head. If you have been asked or asked people “What form of government does America have?” and the popular answer to date has been, “We are a democracy” then you might want to examine why the notion of a Democracy is now more popular that the answer “We are a Republic.”

Here are the links to the blog posts:

Crazy Dream

2009-07-12T10:24:00.002-07:00

When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.

I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.

Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.

In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.

There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.

I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. Second, as the younger version of me darted around the corner I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature. That never happened to me in a third-person perspective dream before.

Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30-something aged woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kid was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.

The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.

Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.

Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.

So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.

So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.

Crazy Dream

2009-07-12T10:24:00.001-07:00

When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.

I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.

Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.

In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.

There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.

I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. The younger version of me darted around the corner but I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature.

Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30 something woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kids was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.

The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.

Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.

Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.

So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.

So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.

Crazy Dream

2009-07-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.

I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.

Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.

In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.

There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.

I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. The younger version of me darted around the corner but I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature.

Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30 something woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kids was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.

The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.

Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.

Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.

So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.

So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.

AS-MVC: Hot From the Geekery

2009-06-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

In the world of code development, stuff changes all of the time. And when a programming language makes a big change everyone using that language suddenly gets reduced from being fluent to, say, a seven-year-old who is recovering from having just fallen from a tree. You brain hurts all of the time and you can't remember where you left your shoes or how to tie them.

In the Adobe Flash world I have lived through a few of these large changes. For example, Flash used to have a coding language under it that was, well, fairly silly at best. But it was the most interactive language for client-side web development and so I learned it. From that language (I believe this would be back in Flash 3 or maybe 4) ActionScript was born. ActionScript (later referred to as ActionScript 1) added some standardization but also let you write code the older, sillier way. But it was a syntax move in the right direction (they added something called "dot notation" which pretended to be object oriented.) Then along came ActionScript 2.0 which was a move from "dot notation" to a slightly more "object oriented" reality.

Since ActionScript 2.0 a Flash Developer had the luxury of writing code that adhered (mostly) to object oriented development techniques but could also write completely valid AS 2.0 code that had far less to do with Object Oriented Programming (OOP.)

Now we are in ActionScript version 3.0 and that is also quite similar to AS 2.0 but the OOP-side of AS 3.0 is far closer to OOP than flash has ever been. As a result, people attempting to learn AS 3.0 are searching the web for examples of how to build Flash content using AS 3.0 and are running into a mix of OOP techniques and non-OOP approaches. I say OOP approached because Object Oriented Programming to many people comes down to meaning "I built a bunch of classes" but that is a very rudimentary understanding of what OOP is. Saying OOP is "building a bunch of classes" is like saying web accessibility is "adding ALT properties to IMG tags in HTML." To a degree that is true, but that doesn't begin to come close to explaining what 508 web accessibility really is, how it works and all that it encompasses.

If you have made the jump from "timeline" code in flash to "class-based" code then you have surmounted the first hurdle. Again, because you could write non-OOP code in AS 2.0 making the jump into AS 3.0 was like pulling off a motorcycle trick across the wide side of the Grand Canyon. Having at least created classes in AS 2.0 is like having a bigger more powerful bike and simply jumping across, say, the Mississippi River: still scary but you can at least see the other side without squinting.

So, if you have made the first jump (building classes) then here is a hint to understanding some of the rest of the jump.

Now, I don't have the time to help outline all of the new classes or any new syntax here. That is an unavoidable effort at scratching around and memorizing a new framework / code-base. There are no shortcuts to that, but I can say that tools like FlashDevelop can help you find your way much faster since FlashDevelop will add your import statements to your custom classes. The bigger (or at least equally as large) hurdle in making the AS 3.0 jump is understanding the most appropriate approach to coding your classes and how the timeline (or visuals) relates to that code. Most folks don't know how to avoid writing code in the timeline and are searching desperately for what the right best approach might be.

The amazing part about OOP is that there are a number of excellent approaches to organizing your coding effort, but I am going to briefly explain one of the older techniques that remain valid to this day.

Let's look at the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach to development.

Model-View-Controller is about cleanly separating the three parts of a software development experience: The interface (View), the common utility logic (Model), and the instance of the application and it's controlling of the interface and the utility logic (Controller.) Let's go through each of the three parts.

The View:

In the Flash world, the View is the "front-end" interface where the user is listening, watching, talking, typing and clicking. In the MVC approach the interface would be planned appropriately to break apart the interface into various logical parts: video player, audio player, text presentation, lists, editing forms, common game controls, etc.

In the various Views you might create animations that are completely controlled in code by class utilities like "Tweener" which can be told to animate something from one frame to another specific frame and notify you when that animation is complete. That sort of "control" code is written into the Controller to manipulate various states of a View.

The Model:

The Model is where we put the logic of the application. I previously referred to it as common utility logic because I want to separate in your mind the code that animates the state of an application and the code that provides common services in a very interface-agnostic utilitarian manner. Said another way, you might create a rich internet application (RIA) in flash that retrieves information from an RSS feed for displaying in the browser. In this architecture and approach you would write an interface-agnostic utilitarian class that simply gets that data and hands it over as a result. If you write a class to retrieve RSS feed data (XML) and hand back the results and you keep that separate from any interaction with the presentation / interface / View then you can reuse that code (Model utility class) in future projects that implement different interfaces.

Your custom common utility classes, any other classes you are using in Flash, or classes from some third party are typically referred to as part of the Model part of the MVC approach.

The Controller:

The Controller as you can imagine is also comprised of code. In the AS 2.0 world the controller was typically just a number of functions in the lowest level "_root" timeline in flash. In the AS 3.0 world inside the Flash paradigm of development, the Controller is the Document Class associated with the lowest level timeline FLA. Inside the Flash project properties you can now assign a class to basically be the code that the SWF calls first before anything else. It is inside the Document Class where all of the action starts.

The document class could create an instance from the View (some interface, possibly a login), animate it into visibility and link up code that "Controls" (or watches) for clicks from that Interface, which might create instances of common utility classes from the Model to perform some function. Let's look at one example of what that interaction might look like.

Going back to the previous example, let's imagine someone arrives at your RSS Viewer RIA. Once the SWF loads it would call the code in your Controller (Document class.) The Controller would animate in a presentation of the RSS List View (an Interface element from the library) and then wire-up the list to code, in real time (animate and setup the View for interaction): The Controller might use a class from the Model to get the list of RSS Feeds and then populate the View with that information. The Controller might dynamically associate a mouse-click event with the list.

Let's imagine that the user mouse-clicks on an RSS Feed item presented in the RSS list View. The Controller would be notified of that click (because it wired it up a moment ago) and would then need to present the RSS Feed Reader View (yet another View inside the View part of the MVC approach.) Before it does this you might have written the Controller to clean up the List View by unloading arrays or removing event watchers that are no longer needed.

Once the RSS Reader View was ready, the Controller would wire up that view for scrolling and various kinds of mouse-click interactions.

This is the basic MVC approach to OOP in AS 3.0 under Flash CS3 and CS4. As you can see, it is all about events managed by the Controller resulting in the presentation of new Views and the Controller management of their interactions via Controller code as well as the Controller using other utility classes from the Model but it is all about events.

Naturally you are going to want to get really familiar with the ActionScript 3.0 event model: how do you code for events, how do you handle asynchronous events, how do you author asynchronous events in your custom classes, what are the more common View related events that the Controller needs to manager (for example: setting up a View, managing interactions a user experiences with a View, cleaning up after a View no longer needed in that moment, etc.)

Well, that is MVC and I hope it wraps some context around knowing how to explore AS 3.0 and what sort of architecture and approach decisions you might want to make inyour new coding projects. Have fun and build cool stuff!

America is a Democrazy

2009-06-10T05:08:00.001-07:00

Many terms get tossed around today as if we know what we are talking about, “America is becoming socialist,” or “What that guy said is communist,” or “America is a Democracy”… on and on, yet I would be curious if people really understood the meaning or ideas behind those concepts or ideologies or political types of government.

Then out come the old quotes that defend our personal perspective. It is funny how quotations work. In my mind, quotations are symbolism. They remind us of perspectives. Now, unless you are quoting from an academic study, you are likely dealing with a conversational quote. And like I said, those quotes are just symbolic. For example, for a while now I had heard about a quote from someone named Alexander Tytler, who was said to say that democracies only last about 200 years at which point voters vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. Well, if you are a fiscal conservative (like me) then you look at that statement and you want to quote the piss out of it like you are naming something from the periodic table of elements. The trouble is, while the statement was first well circulated in the 1970s, nobody knows where that really came from. It could have been my grandma. We will never know. My point is, just because it is an old statement doesn’t make it significant or profound, but everybody pulls out their quotes. What is more interesting is history and the symbolism of quotation to provoke thought. If we abandon either of those, then we go brain dead.

So for a bit of history, here is the first of 6 blog-posts that will investigate the history of 4 different forms of political government: Democracy, Socialism, Communism and Republic. I will identify the major ideological perspective of that form of government and suggest how I think America is either like or not like those forms. I will also see if I can find out the state of those forms of government (do they work; are they successful; what makes them successful.)

Here is a video to get you interested in the topic:

This will be pretty therapeutic for me because I have been thinking that America is moving toward a Socialist form of government and feel that has proved to be a poor decision in the history of our Earth. You can help me keep it honest by not allowing me to turn this into a propaganda piece (which will admittedly be difficult… but we will see.)

I am going to try and keep this pretty short (I know, not my usual thing) so each post will be easier to digest. Hopefully that won’t result in an over simplification of the facts and symbols. All of the following blog posts will link to each other so that it is easy to read through the full thread when I am done. As I write these blogs posts I will go back and update the links.

Here are the links to the blog posts:

Leftist Ideological Spying

2009-06-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you’ve heard it all. In the news at the moment is a recent revelation that Walter K. Myers, a State Department intelligence analyst, is defending himself in a court of law for spying, a.k.a. sharing intelligence secrets, for Cuba against the United States of America. As we know spying for Cuba means spying for the Soviet Union since they back the Cuban Government politically speaking.

So what is the key defense that Mr. Myers is using? Well, it has been reported that he has grown frustrated with U.S. Policies. What does that mean exactly? Well, he used to complain to his politically liberal neighbors who would agree with him about feeling appalled by “the Bush years.” This is crazy talk since G.W. Bush was only President for the last eight years in his 30 year spying spree. So what does that mean?

Probably no surprise to anyone at this point, Myers complained to his diary about “greedy oil companies”, inadequate healthcare and “complacency of the oppressed” in the United States. Does any of this sound at all familiar? Wow, that sounds like the Democrat Political platform… literally.

So what happened to Myer in the 1970s? He made a two week trip to Cuba where he was supposed to be making an academic trip as a part of a United Nations effort. Interesting. Once he arrived for this little United Nations trip he was met and led around by a Cuban Intelligence Officer. The story spins out into a series of moves where he was recruited and eventually joined the State Department Intelligence community explicitly to spy for Cuba. Myers says that his growing frustration on the above mentioned points culminated in his eventual inspiration for a new American revolution: Communism.

Let me say that again. His liberal ideals leading him to buy into the typical Democrat talking-points eventually brought him to the ideological conclusion that America needs a revolutionary move toward those ideals, and the government-type that most well embodied those ideals was… communism.

I am not remotely surprised that this definitive example of such an ideological connection now has a walking-talking face. The closer we get to over-simplified political arguments that demonize the concept of democracy, or free markets, or that value a social ideology over personal freedom, the easier it is to see how a country under pressure can move toward Marxist ideals. The biggest tell-tale in a move toward a Marxist ideal is when people who are already empowered to make a difference hand over their power to a leader that will now advocate for the general welfare for the betterment of all. Go back and read about the history of Russia, the communist revolution or the short book “Animal Farm.”

This is why it is so important that we don’t just look at where we are but where we have been and where we are going.

Climate Change Legislation from 2002

2009-06-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

If you'll read anything I write this year, definitely read this...

As the recorded averages reveal more and more that we are in a planetary cooling trend, the new ECOconomy is changing the term from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change," or so I've been told. At least guys like Michael Crichton have said stuff like that (in his book, State of Fear, and in speeches before Congress.) But is it true? Have "they" now traded in the phrase "global warming" for the phrase "climate change" in hopes that people won't deny the reality of it, even if the world isn't really getting hotter?

In recent videos published on youtube by the State Department, you can observe their use of phrases like "climate change" and refer vaguely to it's challenges as they enter into international talks on "clean energy." There are so many buzzwords and nearly all of them are being used in a pseudo-scientific manner, including "clean energy," and we have yet to cleanly define those terms. In fact millions of dollars are spent internationally to create talking points like these even before experts have fully qualified what the standards are. I digress.

The fact is, if we are "we" then who is "they?" And if there is a "they," are they really coordinating a phrase change. Well, no not really. The fact is that there is a movement and phrases catch on here and there and we go with the most simple, memorable explanation whether it is true or not. My sisters and I used to joke about "respecting movie knowledge," meaning if we can't remember where we heard something, from a book or in a movie, well - that's OK, we respect movie knowledge so share your thought anyway. I think many Americans often feel the same way. This is how slogans and facts get handed around. And in this information age we forget that this is happening and that not all facts are equal (said another way, not all facts are either the whole truth or the truth at all.) So why do we refer to Climate Change? Is this really a new face on Global Warming? The answer: not really. Here is one way to know this is true... let's look at the past.

Here is part of a speech from G.W. Bush back in 2002. he was giving this speech about a new "Blue Sky" legislation that was drafted under his administration:

"America and the world share this common goal: we must foster economic growth in ways that protect our environment. We must encourage growth that will provide a better life for citizens, while protecting the land, the water, and the air that sustain life.

In pursuit of this goal, my government has set two priorities: we must clean our air, and we must address the issue of global climate change. We must also act in a serious and responsible way, given the scientific uncertainties. While these uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the human factors that contribute to climate change. Wise action now is an insurance policy against future risks.

I have been working with my Cabinet to meet these challenges with forward and creative thinking. I said, if need be, let's challenge the status quo. But let's always remember, let's do what is in the interest of the American people.

Today, I'm confident that the environmental path that I announce will benefit the entire world. This new approach is based on this common-sense idea: that economic growth is key to environmental progress, because it is growth that provides the resources for investment in clean technologies.

This new approach will harness the power of markets, the creativity of entrepreneurs, and draw upon the best scientific research. And it will make possible a new partnership with the developing world to meet our common environmental and economic goals.

We will apply this approach first to the challenge of cleaning the air that Americans breathe. Today, I call for new Clean Skies legislation that sets tough new standards to dramatically reduce the three most significant forms of pollution from power plants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury.

We will cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent from current levels. We will cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 67 percent. And, for the first time ever, we will cap emissions of mercury, cutting them by 69 percent. These cuts will be completed over two measured phases, with one set of emission limits for 2010 and for the other for 2018.

This legislation will constitute the most significant step America has ever taken -- has ever taken -- to cut power plant emissions that contribute to urban smog, acid rain and numerous health problems for our citizens.

So as you can see here the phrase "climate change" was used all the way back in 2002. And in this case, Bush was honestly saying that we could get behind certain changes with regard to this issue because, well hey, it can actually bolster the economy. He made the direct connection and spoke about it honestly.

So, what happened to the plan. Here is an amazing bit of history:

Most Americans share this view, according to a new poll released by the nonprofit Clean Air Trust. The survey of registered and likely voters, conducted for the Clean Air Trust, found that, by almost a three to one margin, voters reject the notion that electric power companies should be able to buy pollution credits from another company rather than clean up their own emissions.

That result held true even when the Bush cap and trade plan was described in the White House's own terms, claiming that the proposal would "lead to faster reductions in air pollution at less cost by relying on the efficiency of the market."

"If it were up to the voting public, the Bush plan would be dead on arrival," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust.

O'Donnell noted that the survey questions were worded carefully in order not to load the results.

"The truth is, once the voting public understands what the Bush plan is all about, they flatly reject it, even if we don't point out that it will encourage irresponsible corporate behavior," added O'Donnell.

O'Donnell noted that 53 percent of surveyed Republicans, 69 percent of Independents, and 70 percent of Democrats oppose the cap and trade proposal. However, 70 percent of voters said they supported tougher enforcement of existing clean air laws.

Voters also said they would be less likely, by a 45 percent to 10 percent margin, to vote for a candidate who supports the cap and trade proposal.

Here is a link to that full article:

http://www.air-pollution.net/clearskies.htm

So, how is what Bush wanted to do any better? Well, we have studied the affect of mercury and the two other elements and we are seeing the practical nature of those changes today. Mercury has almost been completely removed from computer manufacturing and if we would implement the other restraints we would actually see a reduction of smog in our cities. So one difference would be the actual science involved. At the same time, there is an admitting of what we do not know and a reasonable restraint with regard to it. That is very different than our current President calling skeptical people "climate change deniers." In fact, back in 2005 when it was time to vote on Clear Skies Legislation, Obama voted against it. Historically, Obama also funneled $9 Billion to the coal industry at around the same political timeframe. Hmmmm?

So, what can we learn from this? That only a few years ago Congress as well as the public thought that CAP N TRADE was a crock and that it did not work! And so now this is (again) what is the LARGEST HOPE for Climate Change!?!?!?!?!

You tell me... what has changed?

Supreme Court Criteria, Sonia Sotomayor

2009-06-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Is there a difference between prejudice (pre-judgment) and racism (pre-judgment with regard to race-based stereotypes)? I think there is. Many people can be legally prejudiced against a certain perspective without it making them into a racist. This happens as a result of various life experiences. Being a racist might have nothing to do with experience but rather indoctrination into a set of perspectives. Am I splitting hairs? Maybe.

In the press right now is the possibility of seating a Supreme Court justice who has made a few statements that could quite possibly be found somewhere between legally prejudiced and possibly racist. I will go out of my way and expose myself as someone who doesn’t think this potential S.C. justice is a racist. Let’s quickly examine this.

Here is the context of what has been asked that created the questionable response:

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

The full context of the speech can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

So was she contextual legally prejudiced in the scenario she was speaking to, is she a racist or none of the above?

Well, I don’t believe she is being a racist. She is basically saying that she feels that perspective is a byproduct of life and in certain circumstances having a particular perspective will offer greater insight for the purpose of rendering better decisions. In fact, some might ask the question, shouldn’t we want diverse experience within the Supreme Court? Wouldn’t having diverse experiences benefit the court’s decisions?

In the legal system this is unfortunately the wrong question, and Obama being a lawyer won’t likely be promoting this perspective (unless he is hoping to persuade the approval of Congress by creating public pressure to do so.) If it were the right question then she gave the exact wrong answer.

Our judges should be experienced in parsing the law, not in empathizing with the experience of others. If we are looking for criteria for seating people on the Supreme Court then we are looking for people who have the strength to measure out legal judgments that value our laws more than a biased perspective outweighing our understanding of those laws. Perspective should be wrought from having an ability to identify truth, justice, and compliance based on facts with regard to the law and not based on who makes the more compelling emotive argument or worse yet, who is willing to render a “better judgment” simply by their historical or stereotypical vantage point.

Now, imagine the court system!

Let’s imagine you were going to court and the evidence is in your favor. But imagine the prosecutor is amazing at weaving a very relationally emotive message that connects with a jury in such a way as to help bring convictions. You would want lawyers defending you that could dismantle emotive arguments and focus on the facts and the law. Only in the case where the evidence didn’t support you, would you want a jury emoting in your favor. This is why jury selection is so tedious a process. Juries aren’t typically selected because they are diverse (diversity can't be confused with being "representative"... there is a big difference.) They are selected because they have the capacity to understand the issues and do not carry any pre-judgment. If the defense or prosecutor can identify legal pre-judgment (prejudice) then you can be removed from the jury.

Again, if the case is a shaky one then the lawyer might try to find jury members who could be emotionally manipulated by their perspective and experience.

The same is even more true of judges. If prejudice or racism is in question then naturally the people (Congress) who select the grandest “jury” (the Supreme Court) will and should be allowed to ask refining questions. Moreover, judges are not considered "peers" like a jury is considered "peers" to the defendant. This means that "peer" criteria is flat out of the equation for judges. Electing judges on such criteria reduces S.C. justice criteria to political criteria and works against the very nature of the system that has been established.

I say, ask a few more questions and then move on. I don't think she is a racist. She might be biases based on legal pre-judgment and then should be disqualified (even at a more local level.) I can't believe we are suddenly out of good candidate who are both qualified and untainted.

I encourage you to keep watching this case.

Based on the above here is my short of list of unacceptable explanations (if they are offered):

The court needs my diverse perspective.
Sure, I think that my demographic stereotype is uniquely special. Here are a few more demographic stereotypes that are now also special and should make me seem less like a racist.
I am not a racist.

Even if all of these items were true (well, except the second one) none of them would bring us any closer to gaining an understanding of better Supreme Court justice selection criteria in the context of the aforementioned goofy statements we already know about.

Update:

It is almost entirely true now.

Politico is reporting that some Dems in Congress are pressing for an unprecedentedly quick confirmation of Sotomayor while others are saying, "There is no need to be in a rush."

At the same time Sotomayor is saying that she also supports her friends counterargument with regard to white male stereotypes (i.e. she said that in the speech she made reference to the fact that white male Supreme Court justices were a part of most of the larger civil rights laws of the previous century, but she still gives the majority credit to female lawyers.) This is just her justifying her stereotype by validating another friends stereotype.
(That is like my above second point of unwelcome excuses.)

Someone recently reminded me that if what she said had been spoken by a white person, it would surely be called racist. Let's see how that looks:

I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life.

You decide if the above statement would be called racist or prejudice. Feel free to leave a response here.

UPDATED AGAIN:

Ends up that 60% of Sotomayors decisions were overturned by a higher court. Forgetting about stereotypes based on race and gender, that means that the legal system thinks that this particular (specific) Latina woman does not "more often than not reach a better conclusion"... than her peers. So fundamentally her words are at best a sideshow to the fact that she is not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

Now, mind you, she is an appeals judge. This means that she doesn't have to sit through long presented cases and come to a decision. She only has to look at the appeal criteria. And so, a lower court would say, "No, you can't," and she would review that and say, "Yes, you can," which would be appealed to a higher court in which six out of every ten appeal decisions would then be overturned by saying, "Ah, no, you can't" and inevitably that would be the outcome. So, fundamentally that might be a measure of poor "judgement."

The Obama Admin Admits More Than They Tell

2009-05-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

Read this amazing article:

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/27/steven-chu-white-roofs-to-fight-global-warming/

To understand what is shocking about this article requires that you understand some core realities of the global warming issue.

Here is a primer:

The core of the issue with global warming is the concern that the surface temperature of the earth will change significantly enough that it will change the environment. This is immediately followed by a debate about the effect increasing ratios in carbon concentrations have on that environmental equation. Within the carbon emissions (increasing that ratio) issue rests the debate about how much of those emissions are directly related to human activity. This debate is very complicated and rests mostly on the shoulders of statisticians who may or may not being reading data correctly on either side of the debate and they attempt to draw both correlation and causation with regard to human activity that causes increased earth surface average temperatures (Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW.)

What most people don’t know or won’t tell you is that the predictions are coming, for the most part, from information provided by models. What does this mean? Well imagine that you are looking at a farmer’s almanac. The almanac tells you the weather history in that part of the country and from a series of recorded events the hope is that you can guess the weather for the time frame you are in at the moment, based on the past.

The fact is, that is too simple an explanation if we are supposed to imagine how predictions in global warming are established today. Imagine being a part of a collective of farmers. You watch your area while others watch theirs. Now, the manager of the farmers looks at all of the almanacs. From there they pull out their slide-rule and predict what the weather will be like tomorrow. Do you trust it? Sure. Why not. How about a year from now? Are you willing to imagine that the farm manager is so accurate based on the local information that you can decide if you will have a picnic outside a year from now? Now imagine 100 years from now. And you, as a farmer, have to invest $100 billion and your farms future on whether or not the farm manager’s prediction is accurate. What about a 1,000 years from now? Can you trust that? And now imagine that there are a couple farm managers working together and they have conjoined their results and are now delivering the following prediction, “We believe that in 100 years approximately the temperature will be between -200 degrees and +200 degrees F.” What is the value of a prediction like that? Now, imagine the farm managers feel they have read enough farmer’s almanacs that they decided to mostly throw out the almanacs and they are now going to plug their best guesses are the values of certain variables into an equation to come up with a prediction like that? Still feeling pretty good about the prediction (as well as the science and the math?)

This is AGW science. The predictions are based more on the results of people sitting in labs plugging numbers into models rather than information from the field. If the models don’t agree with field research then rather than challenge the science they just attack the scientist for being an “AGW denier.” The predictions across a number of teams modeling results can be as much as 400% variant (if you were on the job and your boss asked you for inventory levels for production and after you gave him the result you said “But my numbers may be as much as 400% off,” how long do you think you would get to keep your job?)

And even within those models, we now know that they underestimate certain factors and leave out others completely (this can be like trying to bake a cake and then forgetting to include flour or including way too much salt.) This is the science of models. This is what we are being told is the “undisputed” science behind much of AGW. Not facts, but models that predict with 400% variance at times.

So what does this article tell us?

To understand this, you have to understand one of the larger alternative understandings of Global Warming.

The Alternative Global Warming Understanding Primer:

While we do know that the carbon ratio is increasing, we know that we are only talking about parts per million. Now, maybe your mom once said to you that you are “one in a million” but that simply means you are really unique. Carbon at parts per million is debatably not a huge determinant of weather or global average temperature when you consider that it is minor compared to the full spectrum and intensity of all of the greenhouse gasses known in our atmosphere (again, in the world of greenhouse gasses carbon would be like the nerd in school who got expelled for aggressively flicking his booger at someone while the school mostly ignores the fact that the halls are being overrun with gangs that regularly beat people up.)

So what does affect the surface temperature record and is likely skewing AGW model predictions? The answer is “Urban Islands.” Urban Islands have everything to do with increasing the area of surface temperature around cities mostly due to land use and not carbon emissions. Said another way, these islands of heat are warmer than say, a forest, and as the city grows the heat island grows. Does this affect AGW? No. By definition temperature changes that are explained as local phenomena cannot be considered global (this is not my definition, this is the way it is measured and defined.) So how does this skew AGW numbers or modeled predictions? Well, they have to factor it out, which they do, but do they do a good job at that?

Imagine that you want to measure and see if people are regularly experiencing more pain than did people of a previous generation. We will call this measurable global analytical model Natural Global Pain or NGP. To determine the degree to which people are feeling pain we would need to find a previous record of pain. And for each degree of pain greater than the average, we add a point to the NGP Crisis counter.

Now, going into hospitals for that record would skew the results since they might be in pain if they are in the hospital. And let’s imagine that most people in the hospital are measuring 12 points above the pain average. Well, since a hospital is a “pain island” we have to adjust downward for these scores. If the average pain score in a hospital was then 12 above average, then naturally you would think we should adjust downward by 12 knowing that some people will be experiencing a measurable 14 which will add to the NGP Crisis counter. Well, if we are going to act like AGW scientists, then instead we adjust downward by only 5.

Naturally then we are saying that at least half of the pain in the hospital is not due to an isolated local experience putting us in the hospital (“pain island”) but rather that half that pain is really just higher because, well, people experience more pain now for some reason. But we don’t know that. We are simply just factoring our bias into the conversion offset scale. This is the affect that measurements on “urban heat islands” have on the models for AGW. They are bias and there are published scientists who have publicly stated that the offsets with regard to Urban Islands in the AGW equation are showing that bias. And even though they try to factor Urban Islands out, we believe they don't do this without unreasoanble bias. But nobody disagrees that Urban Islands need to be factored out.

So maybe you are starting to put two and two together. If the numbers going into the models (again, not facts but models that predict) are skewed, then the results are skewed. More over if they are hoping to dodge skewing the results by factoring out the affects of the Urban Island because they know it have nothing to do with “Global” warming, then they are admitting that the Urban Island isn’t an AGW problem but just something to skew data.

But in this article, the Obama administration is claiming that part of the solution for global warming includes dealing with Urban Islands by painting roofs white. Now either this leader in the Obama administration doesn’t really understand the arguments and (crappy) science behind AGW …or… they are just making a Freudian slip in revealing that amongst completely political “solutions” to AGW that simply serve to redistribute wealth across the planet under the guise of AGW Prevention, they know they also have to implement some steps that will lower the “perceived average temperature” experienced in Urban Islands so that people will say “See, we are fixing the problem by paying carbon taxes to the U.N. and reinvesting in a new Green Economy!” (where people like Al Gore have gone from a net worth of around $2 million to $100 million in only 8 short years mostly due to his “green” business investments that continue to ride the coattails of his movie.)

This news is just too telling. When will people round out their understanding of the issues surrounding AGW to include the very reasonable questions that they don’t even know to ask yet because they trust these politicians and “green” businessmen more than their own intelligence?

Quote of the Week - Lowell Ponte

2009-05-29T04:25:00.000-07:00

"We simply cannot afford to gamble this possibility by ignoring it. We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who say we are entering a period of climate instability are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored."

- Lowell Ponte, "The Cooling", 1976 Prentice Hall (Books)

This is a quote from only 30 years ago on gobal cooling, the impending ice age that was supposed to have overtaken us by now and the question, will we survive it. Here is a quote from Lowell Ponte today:

"But the Leftist press continues to quote bug and flower scientists about global warming - including doomsayers who three decades ago were predicting a fast-approaching, planet-freezing ice age. I should know, being author of the 1976 Prentice-Hall bestselling climate book The Cooling."

If you are open to being personally challanged on this issue, read "The Skeptical Environmentalist." The author of this book, a Danish statistician and Green Peace activist, set out to prove wrong the claims of Julian Simon who said that these current environmental fears are unfounded and that the world was actually improving. Throughout his research he found that Simon was more right than wrong and book reflects the outcomes resulting from his research.

On This Memorial Day: Reflection on Iraq

2009-05-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

Whether you agree or do not agree with a U.S. presence in Iraq, I want to honor the lives of U.S. soldiers who while serving in the military gave their lives. We won't forget your sacrifice to defend the world from a environment filled with oppression and terror.

I would also like to specifically honor those who have fought with honor. Even though some press would explicitly estimate that over 600,000 Iraqis died purportedly at the hands of coalition forces over the course of the last six years I would like to remind those harbingers of untruth that even now in 2009 the Haditha massacre remains unproven (Time magazine said of this event, "Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began." 15 people died horrible deaths.) Not to minimize, but if this is the worst case of deliberate killing in the entire Iraqi conflict while those who perpetrated it should be severely dealt with, it says something quite admirable about American soldiers at war. Like I said, who ever participated in that situation (if any US soldiers did) should be dealt with severely. But the fact that such attrocities are not happening says something about the quality of the people who are serving.

I don't know how Time magazine can say what it says while the Lancet survey claims so many violent deaths?

Bad Financial Advice (or bad advice, period)

2009-05-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

It is a bit morbidly entertaining to watch someone in financial disarray give financial advice. Tell me you haven’t observed this! You likely have an uncle or friend of the family that is full of get rich quick schemes, ideas for making money if it weren’t for a distinct lack of financing, and on-demand (or without request) advice for the would-be investor or the financially troubled.

This character has even made its way into movies. You’ve seen it, right? The semi-crazy street vagrant dressed in rags carrying around a disconnected rotary dial red telephone yelling “Sell, sell!” into the handset.

The world is full of self-proclaimed experts and as a result it is always important to ask the right qualifying questions before even listening to advice to plague your mental process. Take for example, an old lost friend. He used to talk about money quite a bit. If you were to simply ask him if he was a business magnate or someone of just relative success he would be quick to tell you about the number of entrepreneurial businesses he was brought in to consult with on their way to the big-time. If you simply said, “Well, that works for me!” you wouldn’t ever hear the part of the story where nearly all of those businesses took his advice and are currently either in various stages of bankruptcy or in some cases the executives lost their right to be executives in any business ventures for nearly a decade as a result of them taking advice from him directly. Asking the right relevant questions is as important as getting purportedly good advice from “experts.” You can’t outsource your intelligence.

Such is the financial political world in the U.S. at the moment. If you are finding yourself affected at all by or thinking about the new national direction on issues like welfare, immigration, taxation, lending, regulation, government (deficit) spending, ecology, environmental laws and policies, housing market trends then you might want to ask yourself, “Where are we getting our advice on these new moves?” The answer is, well, no single source really. But what a reasonable person can do is look at parallels and say, “Are there states or governments that have already moved in the direction our nation is now headed in and what is the outcome of the progress they have made as a result?”

This is by all means not a foolproof technique in estimating the potential for success, even if it is how most of us make our daily decisions on a broad cross section of situations (i.e. we consult friends who have been through similar situations and learn from their missteps or successes.)

Our best parallel on nearly all of these socio-political fronts is both a U.S. state as well as the 9th largest economy in the world: California. Since the end of 2008 and in the beginning of 2009 California is, for lack of an actual legal ability to declare itself as such, bankrupt. States can’t declare bankruptcy, while local community governments and cities (more specifically) can do so, and in the case of California have (or in some cases nearly have if it weren’t for Federal bail-out.)

When you look at the policies in all of these categories it is no surprise that California runs a regular annual budget deficit of over $30 billion. It has falsely propped up its housing market. It has publically funded healthcare and lax boarders that allow illegal immigrants the benefits of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens. It has the highest personal income taxes in the country. It has the highest energy costs partially due to so called "green" legislation. It has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation (at 9.3%, and second only to DC which is nearly 10% unemployment.) It has completely over-leveraged its value against its lending power. It has been bailed out by the Federal Government and it has its hand out again!

Now, if you listen to the New York Times, they would have you believe that this is a shared story amongst Americans. Our American spirit should have us rally behind supporting a Federal bailout for California (as they ask for it again) because, well, this will likely be our states story too, right? Well, unless you are in New York City, that just isn’t true. And the runner-up for “in between a rock and a hard place” NYC is still only half as hard off as California. All of the states in between these two monolithically self-important socio-politically similar communities are not nearly in the same situation financially and otherwise. Oddly, if you go back as "far" as October of 2008 you can see Nancy Pelosi claim that bailouts are "bad policy" as she spoke out against it then and later wrote checks to NYC and now possibily against her own advice, to California. So why would we bail out these clear exceptions to the rule if the rule across the country doesn't trend into the toilet like these less-than-apologetic examples that spend and legislate themselves into a hole (and don't look like they are about to change that trend)?

The answer is simple, and you’ve likely heard this on TV: we can’t afford to let them fail. What you haven’t heard is the reasoning behind that statement. The can-do-people behind such statements need California to be a raging success because they epitomize the model implementation of their current nearly-manifest dream for the nation. If California can’t survive, and all of the states between California and DC are being turned into little Californias (politically and financially speaking through legislative action and spending) then naturally, California cannot be left to fail.

Maybe in this context, the New York Times would then be correct for once. If we all become little Californias, then maybe our states would all genuinely have a financial fate similar to the aforementioned. Then the Fed will swoop in and buy up the political landscape through the power of bailout funding that forces states to conform to the new political agenda.

In response to this unparalleled federal spending spree that attempts to change the socio-political momentum of the country through the power of financial leverage using these bad-example-communities, I have decided to start a mock campaign against this very obvious political movement called…

“Bailout BONANZA! America sells low.”

I am thinking about creating bumper-stickers.

On a more serious note, I think the solution could be a whole lot smarter. If we allowed for the creation of state to state lending where profitable states could provide contingent financing for less profitable states, then we sell out less and can skip the more costly middleman (the Federal Government, who would have to take money from the more profitable states anyway.) And contingencies could be established by the more profitable states, demanding that states requiring bailout take a few lessons on management from those more well-off states and set into motion plans that move them in the right direction. Now, mind you, my bias shows through in this statement, because the most profitable states across America are all fiscally and politically conservative states. At the same time, and with less bias, the upside is that funding would come from real sources and not the Fed which would either print more money lowing the value of the dollar or by just taking it from other states in the least efficient manner possible.

The Cap And Trade Market Is The New Wallstreet

2009-05-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

The word on the street is that the Carbon Pollution (still only a theory and disproved more and more everyday by observed non-anomilic science) “Cap and Trade” is poised to make certain folks into quick billionaires. GE is one of those companies. There are many others. Here is how this will work.

For some time now a number of companies organized as a group called “USCAP” have teamed up to recommend how cap and trade works. The gist is, based on recommended levels for carbon pollution, companies in the US would be awarded credits. If you are beating the cap then you get credits and if you are exceeding the cap then you need to go out and buy credits due to your credit deficit. Over the course of the next 50 years those credits would be progressively reduced lower carbon pollution numbers (wait for it.) Here is the problem.

Carbon pollution is not science nor are the standards. They are manufactured "Caps" (I will explain how these Caps came to be in the next point.)
The USCAP group is recommending standards that stack the deck in their favor. If the government adopts their recommendation, then since those companies have a head start on adhering to the standard they would be awarded an inequitable number of credits.

As a result many other companies would have to go to them to buy credits. And companies like GE are then awarded in the billions of dollars. Years later after politicians are willing to agree with the current science debunking AGW and proving we are on a new cooling trend, rather than returning all of our money they will only claim we've now solved AGW at a globally and ecologically infeasible speed and now we can stop doing Cap and Trade and energy taxes... wait a minute, WHO AM I KIDDING?

If the government can crank up personal energy taxes, why would they EVER STOP? And if companies can OWN the Cap and Trade system before it even gets going, how hard will they lobby Congress to keep that cashcow alive long after Anthropogenic Global Warming pseudo-science is debunked publicly?

Well, the answer is, they won't stop. This is a new industry they are creating. And we are not talking about companies trading billions based on carbon credit trading alone. Here is where you are I come in.

Carbon Cap and Trade laws would very quickly affect the average American household at the rate of over $3,000 per year. This is already all over the news based on the plan being proposed. If you think you have a tight budget now, imagine finding another $3,000 per year to handle trickle down Cap and Trade economics. If you are single with a roommate renting a home, well then it will only be $1,500+ for you, but I am sure you are now doing the math. As energy costs go up, also due specifically to energy taxes, it is being estimated that people will retire older electronic devices and from who will they purchase those new devices? Two letters: G.E.

This also affects companies and communities. G.E. is not only a major participant in crafting the Cap and Trade recommendations to the US Government but it is the largest manufacturer of the purported consumer AND company AND community level “solutions”. Where will people buy windmills from? New generator? Updated "low polution" arcraft engines? G.E. And this is only one company in the mix.

Let's talk about oil. Since the beginning of AGW theories ExxonMobil has been quit public about disputing the science behind the claims. And while they have not publicly changed their position, they are surprisingly getting involved in USCAP to help shape those policies before they become laws. So they aren't debating the fact that they don't believe in AGW anymore today than they did yesterday. They are only reading the writing on the wall and grabbing a seat at the big table so they can be one of the key families in the new enviro-mafia.

So (like usual) let’s do the math:

Cap and Trade doesn’t solve any problems, it creates a new trade market.

Moreover it creates or IMPLEMENTS a scheduled problem for average Americans to which that same group “creating” the problem will then be the very group providing the solution. The last time I heard a storyline like this I think I was watching the movie “The Godfather.” I am just starting to really understand those funny new “Tea Parties” in the news these days. You know? Those blips in the news where the media tells you that a few people got together to complain about taxes? Well, historically, people got pretty pissed because England wanted to get more money out of the colonies, so while England controlled the tea being exported to the colonies, they saw an opportunity in controlling the taxes associated with them. To be fair, Cap and Trade is just a new Tea Tax. But in this case it isn't tea they are taxing, it is carbon - the most prevelant element in the known universe. Said another way, if America could tax you for breathing, comparitively they couldn't raise as much funding as the AGW carbon "polution" taxation market will be able to do.

So, am I nuts? Where do I get the guts to call Cap and Trade a planned ploy to create a problem and then pimp the only solution? Well, just follow the story for yourself…

OK, be a good American and read these two articles:

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em: Industry owns Cap and Trade rather than really being about Green Legislation

…and…

Cap and Trade Slumlords: If going green is so altruistic, how did Al Gore go from a net worth of $2 million at the end of his vice presidency to over $100 million in only eight years due to the new green market?

...and if you prefer to watch video instead then check out...

Saturdays and Sundays

2009-05-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

Wearing my tennis shoes, shorts and pullover, sporting my freshly cleaned glasses I gripped my warm caramel cappuccino in one hand as I cradled my newly purchased books in the other while dialing in some good walking music which ended up being Tom Middleton’s “life tracks” album. This is a balancing act whether you throw in a moving escalator or not.

At the bottom of the down elevator I meandered out the front door of the Barnes & Noble at the corner of 12th and E Street. It is worth mentioning that E Street turns into Pennsylvania Avenue one block East. It is worth mentioning because even though the weather is a bit chilly, hence the pullover, people seem to swarm the vicinity of the Whitehouse on the weekends. If you slow down enough and do a little crowd observation you will see people standing around the parameter fences gazing at the place in hopes to see the president, or some recognizable government official walk past a window. Ironically, these are the same people that would ask themselves “Who is this idiot?” if they saw their own state senator giving some commentary on the nightly news, let alone recognize a government official stroll past a window in the Whitehouse. But I digress. The streets are filled with people and just out the doors at the base of the escalator I will become one of many as I work my way toward the metro.

The breeze on the street gives me goose pimples on my legs as I walk making the coffee that much more welcome. I really love a warm coffee on a cool day. Thankfully, the overcast sky is holding back the raindrops and I am really digging the walk, and the crowds, the clean streets and the eclectic mix of it all. The music really helps too.

As I round the corner to go East down G Street toward Chinatown I find myself thinking about the movie I just watched and how it reflects a few key moments in my life. The film was “Management” with actors Steve Zahn and Jennifer Aniston. Not all of the film is a great match to my life but what movie, or book for that matter, ever is. In fact if I were to write a book or a screenplay I don’t think I would make it too much like my life for fear of mostly boring the snot out of the sucker who dropped the cash to call the story entertainment. But this movie definitely struck a chord with me. I could go into the details and explain but it is maybe better to just recommend the film and tell you that it contained some decent writing and a few moments of great acting. Even though it is a somewhat melancholy film I still think it has a metric ton of heart and touches on some very intimate moments that most films so callously blast through with over acting and dramatic scoring. I am still thinking through the parallels between the two main characters. It is worth the $10 ticket.

At about G and 10th I can see the Verizon Center flickering in the distance. It is a nice little walk as it takes you past the north side steps of the National Portrait Gallery. That is where people sit and chat, eat ice cream on a warm summer day (which this is not), talk on their cellphones and such, as the world buzzes by headed for the Capitol buildings or the Shakespeare Theater or the Spy Museum.

Just as I am about to step across the street the person to my right seems to say something to me. I turn slightly and give a nod and as I turn back to cross I notice he is smiling right at me. For fear that I have done something unintentionally awkward and in an effort to fix the situation I slip one earbud out of my head dulling my walking soundtrack just slightly and ask him, “Did you just say something?”

He struggles to respond. I am thinking maybe I made a mistake. My assertive question seems to have made him a little uncomfortable and he is searching for words in his mind as if I have just asked him, a perfect stranger, for money and he is now dragging his hands through his pockets out of inconvenient kindness.

“Do you…where…ugh…know you…Chinatown?” He is foreign. Every word is crystal clear and even though he doesn’t quite have all of the nuances worked out, his broken English makes perfect sense. Fhew. I am not the crazy guy hearing voices and barking at people on corners today. He did say something.

I attempted to explain how the huge building in the near distance with the blinking signage for sports events and concerts was basically the edge of Chinatown. He didn’t get it. Finally, “Hey, just follow me. I am walking in that direction,” I offered.

Over the next few blocks I learned that he is going to be in the U.S. for a month and is hoping to explore his way up to Manhattan before heading home. He didn’t speak a word of English when he got here. He is basically picking up the language as he goes. I am starting to envy his journey. “Where are you from?” Tajikistan is his reply.

My brain is riffling through memories from the 10-years-or-older file when I once remembered learning something about Tajikistan. I asked him, “So what languages do you speak then?” He replied, “I can… Tajik, Russian…now English.” He smiled. There were a few other languages that he picked up along the way but I was confused a little by his pronunciation of their names. My brain also stopped at “Russian.”

At the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, I took a few years of Russian. I had taken a number of years of German in High School and wanted to continue learning that but in between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college I traveled to Russia where I caught the bug. So, midway through my Sophomore year of school I started taking Russian language classes. That turned into about two and a half years of Russian, about 12 years ago. In my mind, as time passes and you don’t use a certain skill, you lose street-cred in that area. Doing the rough math of street-cred depreciation I figured I have retained the equivalent of maybe one year of Russian language skills, if I am lucky. Nonetheless, it felt like an opportunity to jump back on the bike.

“Ya ezuchia-you po-Ruski adeen le-yet vv-Oonivers-i-tyet,” I said. He smiled again. “You know Russian?” I just told him I studied the Russian language for one year at the University (I think) and he now wanted to chat about it… in Russian. “Vwee ezuchach Ruski Yazik, vam?” It started coming back to me. “Adeen Lyet v-Oonivers-i-tyet, dyesiet lyet… ugh… ago!?” I told him I studied for one year at the university, ten years ago. Of course this wasn’t quite right, but my street cred was low and I couldn’t remember how to say the number 12… or the word “ago.” He corrected my grammar a little and I tried to say it a little better repeating the pronunciation he just gave me.

“You say… I understand… very good.” I got the thumbs up. Then somewhere between Russian and English and over the course of a few blocks I was informed that my pronunciation was very good and that if I wanted he was offering to sit and have more coffee so I could practice my Russian. For one, what a nice offer, and two, I was shocked that any of that Russian was coming back to me. In fact, in retrospect now I don’t honestly remember translating some of the phrases I said. It just seemed to come back to me, which is very cool if not completely inspiring. But at the moment I was also quite overwhelmed. I should have sat down and had more coffee and talked but at that point I had fully exhausted the remainder of my Russian vocabulary.

We exchanged names and email addresses and I turned to head for the metro. He opened a notebook and pointed to an address. Apparently there was a particular place in Chinatown where he was headed and it worked out that I had my iPhone on me so I could give him directions. I punched in his destination as we walked North to the corner of H and 7th. Amazingly his destination was less than a full block West on H Street and he smiled again. “I am lucky,” he said. We shook hands and went in two different directions.

I have decided that my life is often most fun in the “by chance” moments. Some call it providence, some call it luck, others destiny in the hands of God. I don’t believe any of that honestly. I think in all of those situations God would have people connecting to people and the result is a somewhat profound moment when we realize that making a living connection is better than a phone call, or a movie or a book, or the internet or even blogging or reading someone’s blog. The moment is made by God, but not like two wind-up toys marching toward each other in a fated collision course. We are not automaton robots who are slowing figuring out that we are either on or off God’s script. We are dancing with Him and dancing with each other and this is His party. Sometimes we are so busy self destructing or trashing His place that we lose sight of the party and take no joy in it. Others of us are so amazed at those in attendance that we forget who is throwing the party to begin with. And once in a while we realize He has pulled this thing together and no matter what our backgrounds happen to be, where we have been or where we are going, God is throwing one great party and I don’t want to miss it. I don’t want any of us to miss it. Lots of people are invited to this party, but so few ever really show up.

In conclusion here, I also want to give a shout-out to my friends the Hartantos. On Saturday they picked me up at my place and took me to Annandale, VA, (a veritable Korea-town part of sorts) where we feasted on some amazing Korean cuisine. All I can say is that you two are a blessing to me. Thank you for making my Saturday and showing me around a bit. I really appreciate it.