World-Wide-Matel

I have been watching the Institute of Peace building going up outside my office.  Most of the time it is pretty prosaic work, like the guys laying concrete in the picture above.   But sometimes there is something more unusual, such as the flying portable toilets, pictured below.

I imagined how it would be if some poor guy was using it when the crane picked it up.   I suppose the best course of action would be to lock the door, hunker down and hope for a soft landing.

As long as I am on construction, below are pictures from the hot lane construction along the I-495 beltway.  I wrote a post re the hot lanes last year.  I took the pictures from the rolling Metro, which accounts for some of the blur.

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Posted by Broadnax at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"If you see 10 troubles coming toward you, you can be sure nine will run into the ditch before they reach you,” so said Calvin Coolidge and he was right. He could also have added that politicians will work the people into hysteria about those nine, take credit for vanquishing them, be distracted enough not to properly address the real one and then blame the tenth (the one that actually arrives) on somebody else.

It seems the swine flu may be the mildest pandemic ever and likely fewer people will die this year than in a normal flu season. We could credit the fast and effective action by the authorities, but there wasn’t much of that. The vaccine is only now becoming generally available. 

Please let me be clear that I am not saying that our efforts to fight the flu were misplaced. I got my own flu shot a couple days ago. It is only that we had a fairly routine problem which the authorities made sound like the return of the Black Death.  Unfortunately, this has become a common communication method.

According to the media, stoked by politicians and special interests, almost everything is an existential crisis.  When you look back, the disasters not only did not destroy civilization as we knew it, but are not important enough to be reported a few months later. On to the next "hair on fire" crisis. This is not a coincidence.

Posted by Broadnax at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Broadnax at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was devastated when I first learned about original sin. No matter how good you are or what you do, you can’t overcome the sin carried by all humans. Fortunately, there is a way to redemption. Many in today’s world have rejected this religious concept and some have rejected religion altogether. At least they think so.

If you believe in nothing, you fall for anything

But humans are hardwired to believe in something beyond themselves. The non-religious or the un-religious often develop some very rigorous dogmas of their own. Sometimes they are deadly godless quasi-religions such as Nazism or communism. More often in our own times they are variations of difficult to define new age beliefs. Some people are attracted to these sorts of things because they can fill in whatever they want while still enjoying the safety net of spirituality.

Excessive purity is a perversion

IMO, one of the most pernicious perversions of religion was/is the type of exclusive, bigoted purity (BTW - I avoid using the term puritan because that implies a particular time, place and people.) that declares the very nature of humanity as evil and holds out almost no chance of redemption. We have had outbreaks of this throughout history and it is a deadly disease.

Posted by Broadnax at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pedestrians are like Rodney Dangerfield. We get no respect. They did a good job plowing the streets for the cars, which means they piled the snow up on the corners, where anybody on foot has to climb a small mountain to get to the road. The problem is often not climbing the snowy mountain, but sliding down the other side and controlling your descent w/o falling on your rear or sliding into traffic.

I have written before about the obvious way the authorities prioritize auto traffic while ostentatiously praising pedestrians. Below - if you look carefully, you see that there is a car in there. Good luck on driving out of that.

This is even the case near the Metro. Presumably some people might be on foot on the roads leading to Metro entrances.

But I have to admit that Washington DC does a relatively better job than Virginia. As you can see from the picture below, they have made a path. Here we have a different problem.  Pedestrians tend to walk in front of cars even when the cars have a green light.

I think we have a general disrespect for the law because the law has a general disspect for us.  Many drivers in the Washington region don't seem to understand crosswalks.  It is not just because we have a car culture.  California is more a car culture than we are but you have to credit drivers in California.  They pay attention to cross walks. Many places the "walk/don't walk" signals require you to push a button and wait a long time.  In other places the transitions are too fast.  I know of one place where the green turn signal stays on all the time, confusing both drivers and pedestrians.

Above - I just had to include this. It was actually fairly warm in the sun and the guy was snoring loudly.  If you look nearby at the bottles, you notice that this guy probably has plenty of antifreeze in his bloodstream anyway.  Below is the three-way snowball fight standoff. Something went wrong with my camera settings, which is why we have such "artistry."

Posted by Broadnax at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yesterday I did something I have never done before:  I left work early because I felt sick.   In retrospect and with the benefit of knowing how I feel today, I know it was nothing much.  I was just really tired and my body ached all over.  I now believe I just didn’t get enough sleep and a pulled muscle in my back was radiating discomfort through the rest of my body. It is better today.  I usually would have just ignored it, but I guess I succumbed to all that hysteria about the H1N1 flu, which BTW doesn't seem as big a deal as we all feared.

Sick of sickness

I felt a little bad about bugging out yesterday and on the way to work this morning, I thought about sick leave.   I have a lot of it saved up.  In the USG, you earn four hours of sick leave every pay period (two weeks) & can carry your sick leave balance over to the next year.   I have saved more than 2300 hours, which comes to about a year and a half of work time when you count in normal holidays.   I always thought of it as a kind of disability insurance policy.   Who needs AFLAC when you have SL?   I am lucky that I just don’t get sick very often, but I also don’t allow little discomforts to keep me home.  For example, I would not normally have taken sick leave for something like yesterday. Life is full of little discomforts; most don't matter.

The whole concept of sick leave is interesting, when you think of it.  We get annual leave (vacation) and then we get sick leave.   We are not supposed to mix them, but a lot of people do.  A significant number of people use every hour of both each year.  Sometimes I suppose they really are sick; sometimes not and sometimes I think the definition of “sick” is stretched past normal credulity.  

As a manager, I noticed that sickness tended to happen more often on Monday’s and Fridays and some people were consistently sick whenever some sort of difficult assignment was on the horizon.  It is a tough call sometimes.   Ostensibly you have to respect that people get sick. But you are very often faced with a simple choice.  Either the person is there or not. If they are not there, they cannot work. Whether the reason is good or bad, not showing up takes away a chance to succeed.   Since success tends to build on itself, if you don’t show up a lot you will have a lot more trouble succeeding.  

All success depends first on just showing up

Is that fair?  The chronically absent tend to think not, but what can you do?   I did an informal poll at my table during one my senior training last year.  It is hard to get into the SFS, so getting there is a measure of success. There were six people at my table and we all had thousands of hours of unused sick leave.   It was not a statistically valid sample but I think it makes sense.   Of course the causality is unclear. Do successful people get sick less often?  Are they sick less often because they are successful?  Do they just not abuse sick leave as much?   Correlation is not causality, but you can learn lessons from it nevertheless. 

I earn more than two weeks of sick leave a year, which I don’t use, so that means that I work two weeks more than I would if I took off.  In the course of my career, I have worked about a year and a half longer than someone who took off all the sick days allowed.  It stands to reason that additional time on task will probably yield better results.

I don’t believe that you should come to work when you have some contagious sickness and I don’t.  But that just doesn’t account for very much time. My general rule is to assume I am doing something I want to do, a vacation.  Would I let whatever I am feeling stop me from doing that?  If the answer is no, I should also go to work.

My parents taught me good habits. I don’t remember my father EVER taking a sick day. I suppose he did, but not often enough that you would notice. When I said I was sick he would tell me some stories about the depression or the war. He also told a story about his cousin, Eddy Wysoki, who evidently drank a whole bottle of rubbing alcohol. That made him really sick. I guess ordinary sickness wasn't invented yet back then. My mother let me stay home from school any time I claimed I was sick.  The catch was that I had to stay in my room and rest on the assumption that if I was sick enough to stay home, I was too sick to play.  I still recall an instance when I was legitimately sick in the morning, but recovered.  Nevertheless, I couldn’t play with my friends outside after school. I thought it was unjust, but it was a lesson I obviously still remember.

The problem with accumulating sick leave is that it goes to waste when you leave the government service.  That is why I was happy to hear that the Congress has decided to tack ½ of the total sick leave hours onto our time in work for retirement purposes. That means that I will have an extra six months of credible Federal Service when I retire.  If you retire after 2014, you will get the whole time credited.  It makes sense, since as I wrote above I did indeed work that extra year. The USG was having some trouble with absenteeism.  

There is the incentive to just be sick.  I mean, who doesn’t feel sleepy in the morning? Could it be sickness?  Maybe we better sleep a little more to make sure.   Feeling a little winded after climbing some stairs?  Maybe better go home and rest.  When you have a year’s worth of sick leave that you will just forfeit and you plan to work for less than a year, such things begin to make sense.

I remembered a stanza from the Book of the Tao. It really doesn’t make much sense, but it kind of applies here.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 71

Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The media is wallowing in the Tiger Woods affair. The idea seems to be that he deserves special opprobrium because he seemed so good before. Schadenfreuden always take pleasure in anybody’s trouble, but it goes deeper than that. Many people seem almost to resent goodness as an affront to their own imperfections and they think they can pull themselves up by pulling others down. 

One of their most effective tools of character destruction is setting an impossibly high standard.   When nobody can reach the standard, the losers can say that we are all equal – equally craven.  

Two types of standards are useless: stupidly low standards that include virtually everything and impossibly high standards that are almost impossible to attain.   Mark Phelps is a better swimmer than I am, but if we make the test the ability to swim 50 yards in less than five minutes, we both equally qualified as swimmers.   On the other hand, if we make the test the capacity to swim from California to Hawaii, we are both equally unqualified as swimmers.  

It is fairly easy to identify and argue against absurdly low standards. It is harder to get at the absurdly high ones.   Proponents can accuse you of being against excellence or not caring about improvement.   The fact that nobody can achieve the standard just proves that we have a long way to go before we get where we should be.   The challenge is that these arguments can be valid to improve motivation and performance. It is just that they are easily misused.

So we just have to recognize that everybody is a sinner; everybody makes mistakes; everybody should strive to do better and some do better than others, i.e. we are not all equally good or bad. I told the kids that saying you are sorry means you will not do it again. That means you have to do better and if you can do better it implies that not everything is the same.  Just because we cannot achieve perfection doesn’t mean we have the option of slouching into decadence. Just because you cannot do everything doesn’t mean you have to do nothing.

I take no pleasure in Tiger Wood’s fall. It is none of my business.  I do not have the “right to know” and neither do the hack-journalists covering the affair. The fact that another human is not perfect doesn’t absolve any of us of the responsibility to be better.  It is a challenge we face every day and it is a challenge that nobody can face for us.  We should be judged on how well we fight the good fight, aware that we will never achieve the ultimate success.  

People who delight in the misfortunes of others are assholes, but I feel a bit sorry for them.  How bad must your life be if your outlook can be brightened by someone else’s sorrow?

Posted by Broadnax at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

People say that like it is a bad thing.   In fact, the ability to put a price on most things is the basis of most of our prosperity.   It also reduces or even eliminates many conflicts and just makes everything work smoother. A lot of blood has been shed over “priceless” things, but any problem you can buy your way out of is not longer a problem; it is just an expense.

People have a strange way of disparaging thing they want the most and talk obliquely about them.   For example, when somebody says, “you cannot put a price on that” he usually means that the price offered is too low.  When he says, “Nobody should have to pay for that” he usually means that he wants somebody else to pay for it for him.  

Something for Nothing

Everybody likes to get something for nothing (or at least for not too much.)  We wince when we think about the venality of some of our interactions, but it is just part of human nature.   Actually, it is part of nature in general.   Animals implicitly calculate the amount of effort expended for a particular payoff.   Lions go after the zebras or wildebeests that are easiest to catch and they chase their prey only so far.  After that, it is not worth the effort.   And the king of beasts is happiest when he can find a fresh carcass that he doesn’t have to chase at all, i.e. get something for nothing. That’s nature.

What is it Worth? 

The most important part of a price is the information it contains.  The price tells you whether it is worth the effort.   It also tells you how much effort others would put in making or getting this thing.  It allows you to compare and make choices about disparate things and forms a judgment on the relative effectiveness of various producers.  All this is Econ 101, but it bears repeating since we often forgot why prices are good.

BTW - I have been watching a good show called "Pawn Stars." I recommend watching that when thinking about the "true price" of anything.

Price’s role in conflict resolution is something we talk about less often but it is one of its most important functions.   Price can accomplish so much because it contains all that stuff mentioned in the paragraph above.   W/o price, these are things you would have to fight about.   To illustrate the role of price in conflict resolution, imagine a situation where two or more people want exactly the same thing and have determined it is priceless.   Those are the conditions where people come to blow and nations go to war.

Think of the rare heirloom from grandpa that all the grandchildren want and think is theirs by prior right.   They can all come up with endless credible arguments as to why it should be theirs.   Put a reasonable price on the thing and the conflict usually drains away, as most of the heirs decide they really didn’t want it that much and/or something else is more valuable to them.

Something Beyond Price, or Just a Price Range

Of course, there are some things we really would not put a price on, but fewer than we like to admit.   I am telling the truth when I tell people that I don’t want to sell my forest land, but my statement is valid only within an implicit price range.   I am not exactly sure what that range is.  I know  a price I would accept  is currently significantly more than I am likely to be offered, which I why I can make my “not selling” statements with such moral certainty.   But I think if someone offered me $1 million an acre, I would  take it.

There is joke (I think it is from Groucho Marx) that illustrates the price dilemma:  This guy asks a woman if she would sleep with him for $1 million.  After a little thought, she says she would.   He says, “How about $10?”  To which she indignantly replies, “Sir, what do you think I am?”   The guy says, “We have established what you are; now we are haggling over the price.” 

You Can't Sell That

It is precisely our human “price flexibility” that makes it necessary to have some laws about things that cannot be sold.  No matter what the price, you cannot self yourself into slavery, for example.  Society does this not only because slavery is odious or even to protect the person selling, but rather defends the whole concept of freedom and takes it out of the negotiation/price world.   I think most people support this kind of limit on choice, but we need to be careful not to go far in proclaiming too many things off limits.  Things w/o a price often tend to get abused. 

I recently read a series of articles about the art world.   Art is one of those places where you have a lot of price confusion.  Much of the price is based on fashion and capricious opinion. Artists put a lot of their personality into their works and usually pompously over-value it.   And many people get positively indignant about prices that are too high, too low or anything else.   But price may be more important in the art world than in many other places.    Simply stated: price preserves both art and artists.

Price Preserves Art

One article talked about Chinese art.  Now that some Chinese have piles of money and Western currencies to burn, Chinese art has risen in value.  Some complain that it was undervalued in the past and that Western collectors were able to buy it up at a fraction of what it was worth.   This is a fairly meaningless statement, BTW, because it is worth what somebody will pay for it.   Today it is worth more.  That’s it.  But there is another permutation. 

During the bad old days of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, traditional Chinese art was often worse than worthless within China.   The Communists made a special effort to denigrate and destroy what they considered symbols of decadence and oppression.    Much of the Chinese art now being “repatriated” would have been lost of destroyed had it not been “plundered” by Western collectors at a time when the people on the ground didn’t value it.

Think of the terrible case of the Tailban destroying those giant Buddahs, because they were an offense to their fundamental interpretation of Islam.  If the British had "plundered" them, they would still exist.

Unappreciated Ancient Civilizations 

The same goes for a lot of the art of ancient Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia.   I know this provokes strong emotions, accusations of insensitivity and even expressions of outrage, but if you look at the historical record, it was British, French and German archeologists who essentially brought the ancient world back to the places where it had been and had been forgotten.   The current inhabitants didn’t know much and cared less about the world of antiquity and usually saw archeological sites merely as places to dig up valuables or convenient places to steal bricks or rocks for new construction.   

There is a legitimate dispute whether those ancient artifacts now housed in museums in Berlin, Paris, London or New York were plundered or saved.    I think it is clear that had those things not been preserved in those museums, most would have ended up lost, part of somebody’s retaining wall or – at best – in some rich guy’s private collection.

Anyway, it is a good thing that these things had a price and that somebody was willing to pay it. The Rosetta stone could have easily become pavement on the road to Cairo, which illustrates another benefit of price.  It tends to put things into the hands of those who want or can use them the most.  The Rosetta stone was laying around for more than two thousand years and nobody bothered to try a translation until it got into the hands of someone who cared.

Posted by Broadnax at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A significant part of my pay could be “performance pay” now that I am in the Senior Foreign Service (Senior Executive Service) and don’t get automatic increases.  I didn’t get to compete for performance pay for 2007/8 because of a technicality – Congress acted too late on my class’ promotion and we were not in grade long enough to qualify according to the State Department’s arcane rules.   (Ironically, however, they acted quick enough that I lost my overtime pay in Iraq and ended up taking a pay cut because of my promotion. It won’t be until the middle of next year that I make up the money I lost by being promoted.) This year I just didn’t get performance pay.  I am a little surprised.  

This was the last performance report that included Iraq.  Next year my Iraq experience will be buried under the relative obscurity of this Washington assignment.  If I didn’t deserve performance pay for Iraq, I certainly should not get it for Washington, so my prospects don’t look good. Iraq was about the best I can do.  I am beginning to feel unpopular.

In fairness, my colleagues are doing lots of important things in Embassies overseas and in Washington.  I don’t doubt the merit of those on the list. 

But being a PRT leader in Iraq seemed a bigger deal to the Department when they asked me to take the assignment. They dragged me out of the job I had and made me feel that delay of even a couple of days was disastrous.  It sure seemed important. Of course, the perceived value of a service declines rapidly after that service has been performed and there has, anyway, been a shift in priorities.   You get little advantage being tied to yesterday’s urgency, no matter how important they told you it was at the time.  

I said when I signed on for Iraq that I did NOT do it for career advancement and I was telling the truth.  I remain glad that I volunteered.  I derived immense satisfaction from doing the job there. I worked with great colleagues and I am convinced that there are people alive in Iraq today who would not be had we not done the work we did.   I would not change my decision.

Nevertheless, it bothers me a little to conclude that I would likely have been in a better career position, at least in terms of contacts & assignment prospects, had I not volunteered, had I kept and built on the good job I had in September 2007. Things moved along w/o me while I was literally wandering in the desert.  It is my own fault too. I did a poor job of reconnecting.   I thought I could just pick up where I left off; I was mistaken. 

Chrissy says that I don't get mad enough about these sorts of things and that I need to develop a stronger sense of entitlement. Sometimes the people who make the most noise get the most recognition. I tend to downplay hardships and achievements and I am not prone to anger. I am mad about not being recognized for my Iraq service, but this is about the extent of my rage.

"Do it because it is the right thing to do, but remember that the State Department talks a lot about the importance of the mission and the people who do it, but the bureaucracy has no memory."  That is what I will tell the people who ask my advice on taking on hard assignments.

It is a dreary, depressing day, both in terms of the weather (as you can see from the picture above) and my outlook, but the sky will brighten up and so will my situation.    I plan to wallow in self-pity for a little longer; then I will stop and try to do something useful again.  

Posted by Broadnax at 06:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We stopped at the remains of a small artillery fort on the Petersburg battlefield.   These days it is located in the middle of a neat planned community.  As you see in the nearby picture, they don’t have much imagination when it comes to naming streets.  We lived in a nice community in Londonderry, NH.  It was built around a man-made lake and had a lot of green space snaking through.  These were not gated communities, but they are limited access.

I have mixed feelings about gated communities.   Their closed characteristics vaguely offend my egalitarian impulses. I also don’t like the basic layout of the gated communities I have seen.   They are not conducive to walking.  They tend not to have shops or attractions you get to w/o driving a car. 

On the other hand, there are ample recreational opportunities.   Most of these places come with clubhouses and pools and running trails are often usually well laid out. The ones near natural areas tend to have hiking trails connected with the living areas. 

They are also reasonably secure.   The gates keep out troublesome people.  That sounds like a terrible thing to say, but most people really don’t want to open themselves up to all sorts of aberrant behaviors.  A city neighborhood no longer provides “defensible space.”  Everybody has the “right” to come around.   This is a problem.

I admit it.  I don’t like lots of street people around.   For one thing, they compete with me for places to lie around.  I like to run and at the end of a run, or just in the middle of a walk, I like to lie on the grass or on a bench in the sun, look at the clouds and/or take a nap.  This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do – unless you have lots of boozers or street people more or less permanently occupying the prime real estate.  They make hanging around a bad practice.   I suppose my specific habits are a little peculiar, but I think most people just don’t want to be bothered by weirdoes.   Beyond that, I don’t want my eccentric habits to be lumped in with theirs. 

We have be admonished by a generation of after school specials and public service announcements to be accepting of everybody.  This is BS.   A community – any community – is inclusive of members and exclusive to others.   Members must observe some basic rules of behavior and contribute in some way to the community.  We have obligations to our fellow human beings, but these obligations are not open-ended.  We are under no obligation to accept everyone on THEIR terms.  

That is why we need defensible social space and we need defensible physical space, places where we feel comfortable and secure.   When the greater society cannot or will not provide or even allow such space, people seek it in the form of gated communities.

If you cannot defend your work and your community, you will build nothing.  That is the whole basis of civilization.  Even if it offends the romantic in us, property, compassion and civilization clearly go together. 

You cannot be generous until you have something of your own to give.  When the kids were little, we didn’t force them to share everything.  After they felt secure in their own stuff, they became generous on their own.   This applies to larger communities too.     

Posted by Broadnax at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Clooney is charming; Kevin Spacey is villainous and Jeff Bridges is funny. But don't go to "Men Who Stare at Goats".  You saw all the funny parts already if you saw more than one commercial for the film, so let me spoil the ending.  The "good guys" put LSD into the water and chow of American troops in Iraq and release a bunch of terrorists from jail to the happy sounds of 1960s style music.  Then the two main characters steal a helicopter and fly off. 

At the cinema, they also featured the trailer for another movie to avoid.  It featured Natalie Portman as the wife of a soldier who disappears in Afghanistan. She proceeds to sleep with his brother. The guy is found alive and comes back home and goes crazy.  It seems to me to be part of the usual crazy veteran movie.  Don't go.

So far, Hollywood has produced a steady stream of bad movies related to Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't make money, but they keep on making them.  "Men Who Stare at Goats" is a kind of stealth trashing.  You might not recognize it as such from the trailers or the television commercials.  I liked all the actors.  The idea of the movie is interesting and amusing. They could have just made a funny movie, but they chose to go with the tired old political crap. It sucks. Don't go.

Posted by Broadnax at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don’t begrudge the old folks that extra $250 … well maybe I do.   The cost of living actually went down this year.   That means that Social Security recipients will not get an automatic increase this year, since the increase is tied to the cost of living. 

The President proposes just giving everybody an extra $250, justifying it as a sort of second (or third) stimulus that will not come from the SS trust fund.  It is hard to be against this generosity.  It is great to be generous, but since we already are living on the national credit card the money will come from additional government borrowing.  That means that the younger generation will have to pay this back – with interest. 

$250 doesn’t seem like much money and it is not – until you multiply it by the number of times you are going to give it out.   But the problem is NOT this particular small money.  It is the whole principle behind the quick resort to pushing the gold out the door.  It shows how difficult it is for government to stand up to any powerful group.  Entitlements already make up 2/3 of the Federal budget.   All the wars, parks, roads etc are included in the other 1/3 and that % is ever shrinking (it used to be 2/3 only a generation ago) because politicians like to be generous, but they cannot be.  All they can do is take from some to give to others.  It is not even up to a zero sum transaction, since some significant percentage leaks out in administrative costs or plain waste.    

There is a long tradition for politicians to bribe “the people” with their own money. Roman politicians got themselves into bidding wars for the loyalty of the people.  They lowered the price of grain with state subsidies until they were giving it away for free and sponsoring ever more elaborate entertainment for the mobs of people hanging around the city of Rome. Gladiators killed each other.  Prisoners were killed by wild animals.  The people loved to watch the spectacle while being fed at public expense.  The famous “bread and circuses” corrupted both the Roman state and the Roman people. 

It was easier for Roman politicians to be generous with the public purse than it was to help create the conditions for jobs and prosperity.  In fact, having a bribable mob at their disposal was a positive benefit and a preferred outcome for many.   In other words, some politicians did their best to KEEP the people in a state of resentful dependence. The people receiving this “generosity” thought watching gladiators kill each other was better than working and it became a self-sustaining downward spiral that contributed mightily to the decay and fall of the Roman Republic.  Nero, Caligula and Commodus (the one featured on the movie “Gladiator”) are probably three of the best known Roman emperors today.  They were all very bad and spectacularly corrupt.   But if you look closely at the ancient sources, you find that they remained popular with “the people” because they made sure the bread was plentiful and the circuses exciting. 

There are lots of good things we have inherited from the Romans.   I have written many times about those things.  But we don’t have to take their bad habits with the good and maybe after 2000 years we should not repeat their mistakes.

The picture up top is the Coliseum in Rome, BTW.  Despite its impressive structure, it was essentially a place where the Roman mob was placated by watching mass slaughter.  

Posted by Broadnax at 03:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All of what I know about baboons I learned from watching nature shows, so I am not an expert.  But I don’t like them.   They only good thing you can say about them is that they seem to be fearless, but that might be just because they are stupid and aggressive.  Beyond that, they seem to have most of our petty human failings, except worse.  Baboons are intensely social and hierarchical and enforce their social status by violence and humiliation.  Among their communications methods is displaying their big red asses to the lesser baboons.   This is the kind of nature we hope that culture and civilization will help us rise above.

But I have been in enough group interactions to know that we don’t always rise much above the red assed baboon, but there are particular situations that bring out the better or the worse in us.   When cut through all the fog, obfuscations and commentary, you see the key factor is the sense of objective truth, a goal beyond the particular personal preferences of individual group members.  W/o that, we are victims of popularity, personalities and ephemeral politics.

Think about some easy examples.   Working with engineers, scientists, farmers and foresters is relatively straightforward because you can point to objective results.   You can argue about how best to build the bridge but only within what is permitted by the constraints of topography rules of physics and the characteristics of materials.   Or consider agriculture.   A farmer’s work ethic and decision making is on display literally on the ground.  A flamboyant personality or wonderful aspirations don’t make up for not getting the seeds in at the right time.   

Now consider the opposite side of the spectrum: fashion and entertainment. In these fields of human endeavor success depend on almost nothing but personality or celebrity and everything is open to interpretation and restatement.  An aggressive personality is more important than core competence and winners are willing – often eager - to put down and humiliate subordinates and potential rivals.  Many of the most successful leaders in these fields seem to revel in this and have developed a kind of dark ethical system of insincerity and shallow coolness.  Speaking of “A-list” or “B-list” or even “C-list” celebrities is just a human equivalent of showing your red ass and the display has the same purpose as it does among the baboons.

I am afraid that our society has been drifting away from the tangible truth and more in the direction of power of personality as fewer and fewer of us work on task that yield tangible results and an even smaller minority can see long-term outcomes of their efforts.   It is no surprise if more people behave like selfish baboons.

I don’t consider myself a moralist or an example for that, but I understand that society must be based on transcendent moral principles that allow us to see beyond the problems of today or the personalities or proclivities of the participants.  There should come a bottom line where you can say, “that just ain’t right” or “this is what we have to do” w/o reference to who did it or who you are talking about.   

One of the practical benefits of a moral compass is that it makes life more predictable and helps protect people when their status in the group changes.  Among baboons, it is all about power and position.  Baboons have no objective morality.  Humans should. What the big baboon can enforce is the truth … until he can’t do it anymore.  We humans should be above that and I do say above in the sense of better.  Yes I am making a judgment about a moral position.  

Our experiences reinforce each other and color our judgments of the wider world. I know that my experience with long-term requirements of forestry informs my thinking on many ostensible unrelated issues and helps balance the venality of some of my public affairs work, where staging for today may be rewarded more profusely than building for tomorrow.  If we rarely anymore see the consequences of our ordinary daily choices, we start to lose the capacity to judge moral choices.  Everything starts to be relative and standards drop.  As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, we define deviancy downward.  The neutral – and wrong – way to put this would be that morality has been redefined to be more inclusive.

Moral decisions should be hard.  We are likely to make many mistakes and none of us can live up to our highest aspirations, provided our aspirations are set properly high. We often won’t make the cut and some people will never make it at all.  Put in traditional terms, we are all sinners and can never overcome our base natures, but we are constrained continually to strive to be better.   

Otherwise we are all just a bunch of red assed baboons.

Posted by Broadnax at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alex and I went to see a Darwin interpreter at the Smithsonian.  It was very interesting, although not exactly what I expected.   Richard Milner did Gilbert & Sullivan songs about Darwin in between his story telling and interpretation.  

Alex was probably the youngest person in the room, by far.   I might have been in close contention for second place.  I bet the median age was around sixty.   Mr. Milner told lots of jokes that I understood but depended on cultural nuances from before Alex’s time. Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby & Jack Benny survived into my time but even I know them largely through reruns of old movies.   This kind of thing worries me.  I also have trouble adapting new jokes.   There are humor generations and it is hard to bridge that generation gap.   Our references are just different.

I was crowd watching as much as performer watching.  An evolution audience is peculiar and the performer pandered a bit to their prejudices.  I don’t think there is any doubt that evolution explains our world, i.e. it is true scientifically.   I also believe that Darwin was the greatest thinker of the 19th Century and the only one whose ideas are still broadly useful today.  But I don’t partake in the Darwin hagiography and the kind of snooty superiority on display in this otherwise very polite and reasonable crowd.   Dare I say that they treat Darwin with almost religious reverence.

The Darwinism of the 19^th Century, i.e. the original ideas, is wrong in many details.  This doesn’t really subtract from Darwin’s genius.   Almost all the science of genetics, much of statistical analysis and most of the archeological record of early hominids was unavailable to Darwin.   You can look at this in two different ways.   Accolades say that it shows Darwin’s prescience and genius that he could still get so much right even w/o all that science.   I would also praise Darwin’s skill, but say that he was very lucky in his guesses and made some seriously unscientific extrapolations that turned out well.  We don’t have to believe that man was some sort of superman.  We can still admire him.

Speaking of supermen, this is another problem with overdoing Darwin.   Darwinism is closely associated with scientific racism, Nazism, abusive eugenics and so called social Darwinism.    Darwin didn’t take part in this and he didn’t foresee it.   You could say that all these things are ignorant misinterpretations of Darwin, and you would be right.   

But when you look at something in totality, you have to consider what will become of it when it faces the grit and error of the real world.  Academics argue academic theories that are manifest nowhere in reality.  Reality matters.  The best example of how reality can turn a minor intellectual pathogen into a deadly disease is Marxism. In theory, Marxism is just kind of silly.  In practice it is deadly.   Darwinism was not like this, but it was abused in the service of politics.

Let me make one small note about evolution.   The common conception of it is … wrong and that is one of the reasons why the theory got abused.   If you look at the various charts and timelines, you think that evolution is moving toward a goal.   In fact, evolution doesn’t imply progress in any way.  Fitness means only that organisms have reproductive success.   In modern terms, the “Octomom” is the most successful and fittest human woman of our age and perhaps the most successful of any age.  She evidently has fourteen children with a good chance of surviving into adulthood.  Some sleaze who fathers a dozen kids out of wedlock is fitter than the childless Noble prize winner - kind of depressing.  The related wrong idea is that species evolve from each other with the idea of progress, so that a fish or a frog is lower on the evolutionary ladder than monkey or a man.   In fact, the science of evolution doesn’t have anything to do with this kind of idea.   The fish that successfully reproduces is more successful than a man who doesn’t.

Anyway, I take the pragmatic approach to knowledge.  We can never find absolute truth.  Science cannot give that to us, since science is in the process of becoming.  It is always in revision.  We can, however, achieve USEFUL knowledge and that is enough for most of us most of the time.  Just never get too enthusiastic about any particular ideas, don’t attribute infallibility to any human and don’t hold that lack of infallibly against them.  

Even a genius is wrong most of the time because to err is human.  And that is why I don't feel it is a contradiction to believe in both science and transcendence.

Above is sunset from my office window behind the construction of the Institute of Peace. 

BTW - I found a good article on this subject after I wrote this.  It is at this link.

Posted by Broadnax at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Our Virginia Tree Farm delegation met with staff members from the offices of Jerry Connolly (my congressman), Mark Warner, Jim Webb & Eric Cantor.  The ATFS convention was held in Washington this year and they wanted to take advantage of the presence of hundreds of tree farmers in the capital (how exciting!).  We had tree farmers from most states in our nation's capital. I suppose our meeting with only staffers shows our relative lack of political clout.  Tree farmers are not a feared interest group. Two actual members took the time to meet with us personally: Robert Wittman & Robert Goodlatte. I was impressed with both, and not only because they were nice enough to talk with us.  

All politicians are charming.  That is how they get and keep their jobs.  In addition, however, these guys really seemed to understand forestry issues and were genuinely interested in protecting the environment. I suppose that is one reason they talked to us. I think it may also be because they both come from rural districts, where get some real experience with agriculture, forestry and hunting.  They were really on top of some of our esoteric issues, such as the use of woody biomass in energy and biosolids applied to the land.

And we are interested in some esoteric issues.  For example, forestry prefers a broad definition of biomass to include woody biomass. The woody biomass we are talking about, BTW, is mostly the branches, bark and odd pieces left after forest harvests.  Biomass is already used to fuel mills that make paper or process wood, but more could be done. The advantage of woody biomass is that it is produced widely and could be used in small plants.  This is also a disadvantage. It tends to be locally available and heavy to move. 

This is a bigger issue than it seems for the Federal government, because government picks winners and losers in the energy market.  Other sources of alternative energy get privileged by government money and programs.  Woody biomass makes a lot of sense for Virginia and the Southeast, where there are lots of forests and would be used more widely if other forms of energy didn’t get direct and indirect government favors and subsidies and/or if the government “help” was applied evenly.  Anyway, that was one of the things I explained.  I also emphasized that forestry in Virginia is sustainable, now and forever.   That is simple and true, but it must be repeated.

Most of the real work of the Congress is done by very young staffers and those are the kinds of people we met.  They are really smart, but I worry about their lack of experience.  Maybe ferocious intelligence coupled with lack of experience can actually be a disadvantage.  I don’t know.  They seem to do okay. They need the energy of youth to cope with their daunting schedule. You only have a short time to make your point and then get out.   It seems like a superficial way to get constituent input.   Of course, Otto von Bismarck warned that you should never watch either laws or sausage being made.

We also met the famous Joe Wilson. One of our colleagues used to rent a house from Joe Wilson in South Carolina so when we passed him in the hall, he stopped to talk.  It was a short meeting and I didn’t ask about the Obama comment.  He seemed a nice guy.  But, as I wrote above, all politicians are charming in person.  

IMO, politicians don’t get the credit they deserve. Most are smart and motivated - at least initially - by the desire to do good.  And it is a hard job, maybe a job that has grown too big as the reach of government has expanded into parts of our daily lives where it may not belong. Too many people come around asking too many things.  And if others come, you have to be there too. Even if you don’t want to ask anything directly from government, you have to have lobbyists to protect yourself from what others who have lobbyists asking government to do that impact you. 

One consultant told us that we could be either, "victims of public policy or engaged players in the system."  He implied there was no third option.  Pity. A citizen is free to the extent that he can safely ignore politics.  That sphere is shrinking.

I don’t know when politicians really have time to think, what with all the tight schedules and need to posture for the media. The wealth of activity has created a poverty of attention.  When good people don't have time to do a good job, maybe the system is overloaded, overextended and overreaching.  If you can't do more well, maybe it is best to choose to do less better and expand that sphere where citizens can ignore politics.  But thinking that could happen is probably the triumph of hope over experience. 

Anyway, we played our part.  We "deployed our talking points," so now everybody in Congress understands forestry, supports all our legitimate positions and will do the right things.  But I wouldn’t like to be a full-time lobbyist.  I couldn’t take the constant shallow dives.  I enjoyed the experience of doing it for one day. That is enough. The Constitution gives me the right to petition my government, but I don’t much like the drive by fashion such petitioning has acquired.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been almost exactly twenty-five years since I drove on I-70, going the other way to take up my new job as an FSO.  We were living in West Lafayette, Indiana, where I had a very brief job as a market researcher at a firm called Microdatabasesystems (MDBS).  They made, as the name suggests, data base software.  Since I was the only guy in the marketing research department, I suppose I was the director.  Never trust titles. 

The firm had been founded by a couple of professors from Perdue.  They knew computers, but were not so strong on marketing.  I worked there a couple of weeks and learned the software only through the indulgence and kindness of the engineers who explained it so often.  Then the owners called me in and asked my opinion about their firm.  I was flattered and they were very nice and open.   I told them the truth.  That the software was wonderful in what it could do (for the time) but that it was too hard to use, maybe they should put in some menus or something.   One of the guys, very nicely but w/o attempting humor said, “If people are too dumb to use our product, perhaps they shouldn’t buy it.”  I am not sure of the exact words, but it was something close.  

I went back to my office and called the State Department. I had taken and passed the FSO tests, but they were doing a security check.   I asked when they would be done.   There was the usual pause while they looked up my stuff and then the woman told me that the security check was done and that I had been offered a job. I never saw the job offer.   It must have gone to my old address in Minneapolis. I was supposed to have responded by “yesterday.”  I asked for and got a one-day extension.   The next day I took the FS job and told my soon-to-be former employer that I was moving on.  I felt bad, but they were not that upset.  To my surprise, they asked me to stay as long as I could.   I don’t think I earned my salary, but if they wanted me to stay, I hung on for three more weeks.

So on a Friday, I finished work at MDBS and in the predawn darkness the next day got in the Toyota Corolla diesel (the first car I had ever owned) I had recently bought and headed down HWY 65-70.  Chrissy was still in Minneapolis finishing college, so I was alone.   The car didn’t have a radio.  Well, it had a radio but no antenna (don’t ask why) but it did have a tape player.  I had three tapes: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Linda Ronstadt’s County Songs and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  Beethoven was on when the sun came up over the hills in eastern Ohio.   Michael & Linda got me through the darkness until then. 

When we think back to 1984, it all seems so easy.  But back then things were not so clear.  We were just coming out of a really bad economic time (worse & longer unemployment than today. Look at the chart.) and the pundits were telling us we would soon sink into something even worse.  Internationally it looked like the Soviet Union would last forever and they often seemed to be winning the ideological war.  I wanted to fight world communism, which I hated ever since Prof Artajani (I am spelling the name wrong) made me read Marx and I found out what a fraud the old fool was.  I think the professor thought we would be impressed, but any good and true son of the real working class can tell right quick that Marx stinks on ice.   I am pleased to say that within five years that benighted system was largely defeated.   I don’t know why it took others so long. The rest is history.

Anyway, I am staying at a Holiday Inn in Springfield Ohio and thinking about those times.   It features a “Holidome.”  I know that is so 1970s, but those are the times I became an adult and as far as I am concerned the Holidome is the ultimate in class, so I am content.  Tomorrow I will have breakfast in the Holidome before I head out to Wisconsin.

Pictures: the one on top shows turning leaves in Garrett County Maryland.  Fall comes early in the hills and seems to be coming early this year. 

Above is a rest stop in Ohio.  It is nice to have a rest stop.  Many in Virginia have been sold because of budget cuts. 

Posted by Broadnax at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Much of the growth in health care costs comes from lifestyle choices.   Being fat, not exercising, smoking, drinking too much taking drugs and lots of other choices make people sick or sicker.  The debate is whether or not lifestyle should affect health premiums. 

You get a familiar breakdown.  Believers in individual responsibility say that people should try harder.  Just say no to the donuts and yes to the walk.   Others respond that it is not their fault.  That some people cannot afford to eat right or don’t have the time to exercise. (IMO, if you can afford to be fat, you can afford not to be, since it tends to cost less not to eat as much.)

Let’s stipulate that we are not talking perfection.   Few people can be in top-shape for extended periods, even if we could define what top-shape means.  But most people can indeed eat reasonably well and exercise moderately.  If we could just bring the rate of obesity down to 1980 levels, we would be a lot better off.  This is not perfection.  It should be attainable by all or most.   It is also true that no matter what you do sometimes you will get sick, maybe seriously sick.  We need protection from that. Reasonable.

Another stipulation is that I hate the use of the passive voice in health care and the language of victimization.  When I hear someone say that he wasn’t “offered the opportunity” of a good lifestyle or – worse – when they say “it’s is not my fault” or “I was denied the chance,” I know I am talking to a loser.   

That is my prejudice.   Not everyone can be perfect but everyone can change their lifestyles to improve. 

So let’s strip down the debate.   We don’t have the personal responsibility crowd v the caring people.  What we really have is the incentive folks v the determinists.  If you believe that incentives can change behaviors, you tend to fall on the side of responsibility.  If you believe that large forces determine your behavior, you are a determinist.

A false moral argument is that we need to take care of each other and help to the “least fortunate among us” (another phrase I dislike). This argument is usually made with a cry in the voice and it is meant to stop debate. Don't let it. It is not really wrong, but it is incomplete.

I think we DO indeed have responsibilities to each other, but it should not be unconditional.  If you fall through the ice on a frozen lake, I should help pull you out.  But you should have shown reasonable care in not getting out on that lake and risking both our lives, and if you fall through too much, maybe we should let you make an ice cube of yourself.  We have a duty to help the sick and downtrodden, but if the sick and downtrodden have fallen into that position because of their foreseeable bad behavior, THEY have let down the team.  A person who becomes sick because of something like drug abuse, obesity or heavy smoking is probably more a perpetrator than a victim since he demands resources that could be used in better ways but for his misbehavior.

It is clear to me that big forces do determine many general directions.   But within those big directions, we have a lot of choice and we can and do respond to incentives.   Sometimes you have to “blame the victim” because the victim consistently puts himself in positions or places were bad things happen.  We do have to be judgmental and have the duty to stigmatize bad behavior and reward good behavior.  It does nobody any good to pretend that the obese person is a victim of society or that his/her behavior will not increase the chances of premature death and higher health care costs.

So we should all do our parts.  As in a good team, we don’t demand everybody make equal contributions, but we do demand that everybody do what they can.   There is no virtue in letting yourself become a victim through indolence, ignorance or lack of discipline.  Those people are stealing from those who get sick because of true bad luck or forces beyond their control.  

Posted by Broadnax at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am getting to that age where I get annoyed when I think we spend too much time thinking about the youth.   Don’t get me wrong.   My children are young and I used to be young myself.  would be younger if I could. Youth has definite advantages.   But society is changing in ways that are leading us away from the youth domination of the recent past, which – BTW – may well have been a historic anomaly. 

Let me focus on the one area (other than physical prowess) where youth is supposed to enjoy the greatest advantage: technology. 

Posted by Broadnax at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The news carries reports that some people are still living in FEMA trailers and many homes are not rebuilt four years after Hurricane Katrina.  

When a big tragedy hits, we feel the natural human desire to reach out and help the victims.   We certainly should.  But after the “first aid” and the flood waters have receded, it is time for everybody to get back to work as usual.  After four years, it is past time for the victims to be on the other side, i.e. willing and able to help others.  And it is not the government’s duty to offer indefinite help.  It starts to get abusive.   If my house burns down tonight, I don’t expect to be living in a FEMA trailer at all, much less still be there four years later. Beyond that, I learned that many of the victims were renters.  If you lose your rental home, you move and pay rent somewhere else.  The landlord takes the loss. 

I like to watch nature and science programs on TV. Going back many years, I have seen programs about the Mississippi River, New Orleans, global warming, sea level rises or all of the above.  They all said the same sorts of things.   Much of New Orleans is below sea level. Everybody knew that it was only a matter of time before a big hurricane would come and do what Katrina did.   And everybody knows it will happen again.  It is not “if” it is “when”.  And there is nothing we can do about it no matter how much we spend.  Those low-lying parts of the city should not be inhabited at all today or tomorrow and they should not have been occupied yesterday.  It was a mistake. The destruction of the wetlands to build these areas was a slow motion tragedy. The clock was set ticking a century ago.  We just didn't see it until the big one hit.  Actually, we did see it, as all the nature show programs said; we just didn't care, sort of like today. It gets worse. Global warming will cause sea levels to rise. Those lands currently below sea level will be even further below sea level.  Building/rebuilding is just a waste of time and a cruel hoax on anybody living there.

Let’s say it plainly. Start with the good news.  Those parts of New Orleans that are above sea level (including many of the historical areas) can and should be preserved. The port areas can be rebuilt and enhanced.    BUT New Orleans must become a smaller city. The parts of the city that are at or below sea level should not be rebuilt. 

The best use would be to make some of these erstwhile flooded neighborhoods, such as the 9th Ward, into wet forest or “walking” wet land used for agriculture. Letting these places return to a more natural state will serve to protect the salvageable and more valuable real estate.  There is really no other practical or ethical course. 

We should stop promising or implying that people will be returning to their homes on these once and future swamps, bayous and lakes.   It makes absolutely no sense from either the ecological or the economic point of view.   This goes beyond New Orleans, BTW.  

Decisions about where to build should be local decisions.   In most cases, I would not deny someone the right to build on his own property, even if I thought the choice was stupid.  But we should not help.  Much stupid development comes down to subsidized insurance.   If no private company will insure your new home, maybe there is a reason. The risk is too high. We certainly should not subsidize your bad decision.   W/o the unnatural public subsidy for  insurance to live on unstable places, most people would not build on barrier islands, flood plains, loose slopes … or below sea level in New Orleans.

We need to be realistic.   Some places are just not suited to some uses.   It is a tragedy if your house is destroyed by a flood … once.   If it starts to become a habit maybe you are just stupid.  Stupidity is not against the law and maybe you have a good reason to keep moving back, but stupidity shouldn’t receive government subsidies. 

The U.S has a lot of land.  We are not like Holland.  We don’t need to build billion dollar levees to protect hundred dollar real estate, nor should we sacrifice nature to our hubris.   We should help our fellow citizens in such situations, but we should help them move to higher ground.

There is an old joke about a preacher and a flood.   During a big flood, a preacher was trapped on the roof of his church.    A boat came by.   They said, “Reverend, get in.  It is still raining in the hills and the whole town will be covered.”  The preacher said, “I trust in the Lord.  He will save me.”  A second boat comes and it is the same.   Then comes a third boat.  The guy in the third boat tells the preacher, “Listen, this is the last boat.  Everybody else is out.  It is still raining.  Get in!”   The preacher just responds, “I trust the Lord.  He will save me.”    The last boat leaves.  Finally the preacher is up to his neck in water.   He looks toward heaven and says, “I trusted you to save me.  Why have you forsaken me?”   The Lord answers, “I sent three boats; why didn’t you get into one of them?”

Victims cannot always dictate the terms of their salvation.   Sometimes there are more important considerations. 

Posted by Broadnax at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched a rerun of Annie Hall. It has been around long enough that it evidently has become a classic; it was on PBS, so it must be classy. I mostly watched it for old time’s sake and as a kind of thought provoking commentary on a particularly shallow part of human nature. I used to like Woody Allen, but I now find his persona on-screen merely annoying.  

I would credit Woody Allen with creating a hateful character just to call showcase the flaws, but  his on-screen personality is evidently better than his real-life one, so he is just being a better version of himself.  And there are a lot of people like him, so let’s consider the real characters that Woody’s screen character represents. 

In one scene, Woody’s character complains that he cannot be happy as long as he knows that one person on earth is miserable.   He implies that this is somehow noble. Of course it’s just stupid.  But it is worse than stupid in many cases. Here’s why.

I have known many of those guilty types who claim to feel terrible about the world’s suffering. But they very rarely do much about it. IMO, they think that the fact that they feel guilty is a kind of penance that absolves them of the responsibly to do anything proactive. The Woody Allen character is a horrible human being, for example. He is selfish, unreliable, dishonest, weak and just a general shithead. He causes suffering in the people around him. BUT he says the politically correct things and he feels bad about the state of the world. This, in his opinion, buys him an indulgence. 

We sometimes mistake such attitudes as intellectual.   Of course, we have to recognize that intellectual does not equal intelligent, at least in the current conception. An interesting definition of a modern intellectual is that he loves all mankind, but cannot think of too many individual people he likes.  This is the Woody Allen character and unfortunately there are more. 

I wonder why I ever found this funny. I don't object to the sharp, cynical or even nasty humor. It is just that the wimpy perpetual victim is not funny or attractive. I guess I can make the excuse that I was a lot younger and less experienced. That kind of pseudo-wisdom appeals to the pseudo-educated and that was me back when Annie Hall came out. IMO, you have to pass through that stage, where you are a little selfish and cynical AND you think the rest of the world is that way too. If you are lucky, it passes quickly, although some, like Woody Allen himself, seem never to recover. It is sad really.

If everybody likes you, you are probably a kiss-ass w/o a strong personality or values. On the other hand, if nobody likes you, you are probably an asshole. It is unlikely that you are that seriously  misunderstood. It is not nice to "blame the victim" but sometimes the victim is to blame and some people are not only unhappy themselves, but they inspire unhappiness in others.  No good can come from being around them.  And since you probably already know how to be unhappy, you cannot learn much from them. Well ... I suppose you can learn by negative example, and maybe I should thank Woody Allen for showing me things I would never want to be.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The health care debate has spawned an unusually large number of articles saying that they are “fact checking” or clearing up “myths.”  Reasonable people will come to similar reasonable conclusions if they have similar facts.   And you can take so much smug pleasure in trumping (thumping?) an opponent with THE facts. It leaves him speechless. Not anymore.  Facts just aren’t what they used to be.

The concept of “fact” is closely tied to having a recognized arbitrating authority. James Burke made an interesting BBC program about this concept and way back in 1985 and anticipated the problem we would have as the concept of fact dissipated.   Extrapolating from what he said, shareable facts were possible only with the widespread introduction of printing.   Before that you had to rely on personal knowledge, faith and a lot of interpretation, since hand copied books were full of mistakes and oral history changes with the needs of the circumstances.  Most people didn’t know very much and much of what they knew beyond their personal experience was superstition, hear-say or legend.  They weren’t stupid.  It is just that w/o the kinds of recording tools we use today it was simply impossible for them to master a lot of information beyond what they could see, hear, feel AND remember personally.

I grew up in an age of fact.  The early 1960s in the U.S. might well have been humanities apex at the rational/science/fact culture.  We had faith in science and the certainty it could and would provide, if not today or tomorrow, soon.  We had reference books that could prove the facts and scientists who continually stuffed more facts into them.    I have written about this subject before, so I am going over some of the same ground.  Look at the previous post if you want, but indulge me in this one.  

The bottom line is that facts are not the same as truth and the truthfulness of a fact depends almost entirely on context of reference.   This is provided by the social and cultural environment.  Back when I was a kid, almost every reasonably educated person shared a reasonably common context.    We used the same reference books, read the same newspapers and watched the same things on television.   This context is weakened.   On the other hand, the power of opinion is vastly strengthened by the proliferation of cable TV, Internet sites and just by the vast numbers of experts talking and writing about everything.   We are back in the world of interpretations.   We still long for the certainty that we can no longer achieve and we still try to trump (or thump) each other with our facts, w/o comprehending that they no longer are THE facts.  

I started with the health care debate because it is current, emotionally charged and an excellent case study of the matters of fact and interpretation.  The health care debate is mostly about interpretation because there currently is no bill to debate.  The tentative proposals are subject to interpretation and they are fluid, which is even more problematic. There is a lot of space to read between the lines and to add or subtract whole paragraphs.  But it seems like it should be a matter of fact, since there is so much written and discussed. 

But the would-be fact checkers are deluding themselves if they think they can trump debate with their interpretation, which they call fact. The details of the health care bill are not only unknown, they are also currently unknowable because they have yet to be hammered out.   Even in the world of certainty, something needs to have happened before it can have a fact associated with it.     It cannot be a fact that John Smith landed on Mars on April 1, 2020 and it cannot be a fact what is included or not in the health care bill. Neither has yet happened. That is WHY we have a debate.

We need an honest debate to lay out the parameters of what we want and what we find unacceptable. Let's not try to shut it down too soon. This is a big deal and everything should be on the table. I wish everybody would stop saying that the other side is ignorant, depraved, greedy or stupid.   In fact, we are ALL currently ignorant on the subject, since the details are not yet manifest. Put in health care terms, ignorance is a treatable condition.  Presumably we are not all stupid, which you really cannot cure.   

Posted by Broadnax at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A famous Bollywood actor, a Mr. Khan, was stopped at an American airport for that extra search.   He claims it is because he has a Muslim name.   Read this absurd article and look at some of the comments.   If it doesn’t annoy you, you might indeed be deluded yourself.

Khan and I have some things in common.  I got that extra search at airports several times, so did Mariza and Espen (when he was only 12).  If airports are profiling, I am not sure why I come up so often.  Maybe it is my Midwestern accent or my blue eyes.  I suspect it is my baldness.  Bald men suffer terrible discrimination. I still cannot explain Espen or Mariza, however.

This whole profiling thing at airports is BS.  Airport personnel are extraordinarily careful NOT to do it.  In fact, they go too far, IMO, searching grandmothers in wheelchairs at the same rate they search healthy young men.  Yes, granny COULD be a bad one.  But you have to go with the probabilities. 

Speaking of probabilities, nobody has ever been able to show a statistical probability of being searched at an airport  based solely on race or ethnicity.  There are lots of suppositions and innuendo but no facts.  Of course, there are other factors that sometimes correlate, but as we all learn in Statistics 101, correlation is not causality.   In my case I think I was "profiled" because I traveled several times to particular areas of the world and I was often traveling on one-way tickets.   These things are uncommon enough to raise a little suspicion.  But who knows?

It is more likely that simple random chance is the cause.  Random chance will NOT spread out evenly.  In fact, if you find perfectly even results, you can be sure that random chance is NOT involved.  It is counter intuitive but true. 

If airport security stops me, two Irish students, a couple from Milwaukee returning from Polish-fest and Khan, who do you think is being “profiled”.  If you answered “none of the above” you are correct.   But will any journalists reporting on this know or care?   Indeed, it will look wrong.   But sometimes we have to accept looking wrong when doing the right thing. 

Consider the amusing case of Bob Dylan.  He evidently is a complete unknown to many in the younger generation and somebody called the cops because he seemed suspicious as he walked around a residential neighborhood.  Was he profiled? I suppose he was based on his behavior.   The reports didn't mention any other sort of profiling because it wouldn't make sense, so we just pass it off.  It doesn't make any more sense to claim profiling at the airport.

We are not energetic  enough in defending ourselves against these accusations. There, IMO, are three big reasons.  

Posted by Broadnax at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have never before encountered anything like it.   As I rode my bike out of Arlington, I noticed about fifty cops and a dozen protestors.  One protestor carried a sign that said, “God Bless IEDs.”  I couldn’t believe that she knew what IED were, so I stopped to ask her. She said something about an IED being a blessed device that killed soldiers.  When I told her that I had been in Iraq and people I knew had been killed or maimed by IEDs, she told me that was a good thing and that I must be a coward for coming home alive. It was an almost instant escalation with all the weirdoes yelling at me, calling me names and screaming that I was going against God’s plan. They didn't specify how.  

When I asked what kind of horrible and vengeful god they worshipped, since I didn’t recognize the one they were talking about, they really went wild and threatened that he would strike me down. I noticed that they had started to tape the meeting (I may appear on the “Nutcase News tonight). 

Posted by Broadnax at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Business is down for the guy looking for spare change outside the CVS Pharmacy.   He has been there a long time and people are used to him, so I don’t think it is because people have become less generous or less tolerant.   I think the new self-service check-out stations are to blame.  

It used to be that I went in to buy a coke or some potato chips and came out with a pocketful of change and it was almost natural just to dump it into his cup.   When I use the self-service stations, I always use my credit card.  It is just easier and faster, so very often I literally do not have any change, “spare” or otherwise.   Most stores and restaurants now make it easier to pay by card than with cash.   This works out well for me, since I get one monthly bill, but it is hard on the spare change guys.   They may soon have to find another profession … or start taking credit cards. 

It is funny how little changes in habits and technologies can have knock off effects you just don’t expect.   Since I am on the subject of the spare change guys, I think there is an interesting connection between them and containerization.  Let me explain. 

Medusa Cement, where I worked as a young man, was “served” by the longshoreman’s union.  I guess because we were on The Kinnikinnick River and near the Port of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan.   My father was a long-time member and a lot of the people I knew in my work life at that time worked on docks, drove trucks or bashed metal.   They were good, hard-working guys who gave a good day’s work for a good day’s pay. 

The easiest job was the "fireman" on the trains.  As I understood it, they used to need a fireman to shovel in coal.  When the railroad converted to diesel engines, firemen were no longer needed.  But they had a strong union and so they stayed on the job.  

Most of the jobs didn’t require much in the way of thinking, which was a good thing for some of our colleagues.  Many were smart, but with levels of education you just don't see much anymore.  One my father's friends was called “Sitzinone.”  That wasn’t his real name.   It came from the way he would say “that is six and one” when shooting craps.  (Seven is the key to success in that game and shooting craps was a big deal.)  He evidently could not count beyond seven but didn't need to.  He recognized the patterns on the dice and had an intuitive understanding of the odds. Another of my co-workers, Lester, couldn’t read, but he had a great memory and could usually recognize also patterns on work orders. He drove the folk lift and loaded trucks by following familiar patterns. It worked most of the time.  

Then there was Tom, who worked the twelve-hour shifts and then went off to deliver pizza for a place called Pepi’s on Mitchell Street. Tom didn’t wash much and never brushed his teeth.  He bragged that he hadn't bushed his teeth since he was discharged from the army after the Korean war. I doubted him, but he smiled broadly and convinced me.  I used to like Pepi’s pizza, but stopped eating it after I got to know Tom.

They used to say that work was the curse of the drinking class and unfortunately many  preferred to consume their daily bread, potatoes and rye in liquid form.   It was easy to slip down that road to perdition.  The bars near the factories opened at 6am for the early liquid breakfast.  (I used to go to a place called the Nautical Inn for lunch.  They had good greasy hamburgers and I would usually get a couple of beers to cut the dust of the afternoon shift.  I had to stop doing it when I got to like it too much.)

Nobody works harder than a drunk sweating off a bender and as long as it was possible to get good paying episodic work these guys could be productive, even admirable members of society. This changed with containerized cargoes and general automation.   

Not only did containerized cargo cut the total unskilled workforce, it also required the remaining workers to be more reliable. Since they operated heavy machines, also excluded were the hard-working boozers, who tended to shake a little too much, not a good thing when running a crane with containers hanging off. 

This change coincided with closing of the flop houses.  If you watch old movies or old “Twilight Zone” episodes, you see guys living in dumpy one-room apartments.  Many of them were not up to code, but they were cheap and could be rented on short-term basis.  In the 1960s, they began to urban “renew” these kinds of places out of existence. These dumps had few champions, but they had provided cheap housing.  When they were gone, some people were left w/o a place to go.

So unskilled episodic jobs disappeared at about the same time the cheap, if substandard, housing was improved out of existence.   Worse yet, the economy started to decline after 1972 and the damage caused by the upheavals and social experiments of the 1960s started to become apparent. Things fell apart.

Anyway, little seemingly unrelated changes and decisions can have big unintended consequences. Above is me in front of the cement company where I used to work.

Posted by Broadnax at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Equality can sometimes debase into a type of leveling that is the enemy of real diversity of variety. That was clear in an article in the Washington Post on “The Racial Politics of Beer” decrying the fact that “American brewing was and largely remains a white man’s world.”   What a supremely stupid thing to worry about.   But it is even worse than ordinary stupid.  It betrays that leveling mindset that find discrimination and conspiracy in every human difference that makes life interesting and enjoyable.

None of us has the same culture as our parents, because culture is in a constant state of change, but we can see the persistence of habits & values.  It would be very surprising – and very bad – if everybody just reacted the same way to everything. The basis of true diversity is difference and when you get differences you get different results. Let me write that in a separate line.

The basis of true diversity is difference and when you get differences you get different results.

Let’s think about beer.   They say that the ancient Egyptians brewed a type of beer, but we are heirs to a beer culture that originated in Central Europe in the lands that used to be part of the Holy Roman Empire.  This includes Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, along with parts of what is now Poland, France & Northern Italy.   The Germans even had a beer purity law called the Reinheitsgebot.  The English and the Irish also have a significant beer culture, as do the Danes and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians.   It tapers off from that home area.  What do you notice about the people living in these places?  Now people drink beer all over, but they still don't always do it the same way or with equal enthusiasm.  Beyond that, many consumers of beer are not really part of the culture of beer.

Beer culture was not merely a matter of chance.    Beer is consumed in between the places where they can easily grow grapes for wine and where it is too cold and people consume hard booze.  Europe traditionally had essentially three zones from south to north and from west to east from wine to beer to vodka.   Water was not consumed much in pre-industrial days because it was so polluted and carried diseases.   People, even children, instead drank beer or wine, although the daily beer was a weaker version – small beer.

I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was a center for the American beer industry.  The other center was St Louis and there were significant smaller centers in Cincinnati and Western Pennsylvania.   What these places all have in common were lots of German immigrants. (I still drink beer.  I also eat bratwurst and liverwurst.  I guess that is just because I am priveleged.)

In the early part of the 19^th Century, one of the criticisms against immigrants was in fact that they were beer drinking boozers.  Beer drinking was not always a cool thing to do.   It still is not.

If you analyzed beer drinking, I am sure you would find significant geographical differences.  I am sure you would also find big difference based on ethnicity.     Big deal.   These differences are based on different preferences.

If you look for them, you can find differences in everything.  This is the way everything is. If you believe racism exists everywhere, you can find it in all of life's variation and joy.  It is really true that people’s habitual view of the world is a confession of their own characters.  Maybe those who see crooks, racists, shirkers and idiots everywhere are just looking in the mirror.

Posted by Broadnax at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I was in Norway, one of the local television stations constantly played reruns of Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer.  I used to wonder what kind of image of our country these clowns created. They were bad enough, but now we have a whole slew of reality shows.    They show unattractive people being venal and selfish.  We live here and we have a wide variety of other impressions.   But I was imagining if I was to see something like “Bridezillas” w/o other context I might not want anything to do with the culture that produces such monstrosities. 

Americans are no more venal than people in other countries and our television shows are really no worse than other.   For example, the Dutch invented many of the reality shows, like “Big Brother.”   But most of these offerings don’t get distributed around the world.   The Brits seems to have developed the perfect television PR.    I have been to the UK and seen some of what they watch back home.   It is not very uplifting.  Yet in the U.S. and around the world, we get “Masterpiece Theatre.” 

I am not the only one to worry about the coarsening of America.  I don’t know how much television is reflecting changes in America and how much it is driving them.    I also am not sure of how people are looking the programs.   When I see people being selfish and demanding to be covered in bling, I look down on them.   Everybody needs somebody to look down on and the low-lives on reality TV provide an outlet.

There is an old saying that the bad man is a lesson for the good.  You can see what not to do.

But are negative role models enough?  Are they really seen as negative?  A lot of the bad people get what they want by being aggressive.   Maybe some people see that as good thing.

We should not underestimate the power of television.    Advertisers understand that a fifteen or thirty minute commercial can sell a product.   Maybe a thirty minute or an hour program can sell a lifestyle.  I watched a lot of television when I was a kid and I know that I consciously modeled some of the behavior and habits of some of the television characters.     It sometimes surprises me today when I watch an old show and see one of my traits in embryonic form.    Maybe I was just more impressionable than most kids, but I don’t think so.   I hear too many stories, jokes and tag lines from movies. 

Television characters help define the boundaries of what is acceptable.   For example, when did it become acceptable to call women “bitches,” much less use the word on TV?  But both things are now common.   How is it that the “poor” people on reality TV can afford and think they deserve fancy cars and jewelry?

I grew up on science fiction and westerns.   Both were common when I was a kid. They were actually very similar.   “Star Trek”, for example, was a lot like “Wagon Train.”   They travel through unexplored territories meeting strange people, with whom they alternatively cooperate and conflict.    And they all were morality plays, very simple and clear.   They seem very naive today, but they are certainly no more simplistic than “Bridezillas” and they have a better purpose.

I have to stipulate, however, that television has generally improved. The production values as well as the complexity of programs are much better than they used to be.  In addition, we have many fine productions on history, science and human affairs.   But this is a result of a general widening of offerings.  There is much more choice now.    You can choose to watch well produced dramas (like Law & Order), good news programs (Newshour on PBS), technology (Modern Marvels) or any of the great variety of history programs.   Or you can watch crap all day and night.

Choice is enhanced (exacerbated) by the ability to time shift and save programs.  At one time television united the country.  We watched the same things at the same times and that made us more similar.  Most Americans watched the evening news with Walter Cronkite.  Half the country tuned into the final episode of “The Fugitive.”   Now we all watch different things at different times.  I suppose that will make us all more different.  Unequal inputs produce unequal results.

Posted by Broadnax at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The old keep getting older and the young must do the same.  I am 54 years old today. Assuming that I live to be 108, I am middle aged.  I went running yesterday and ran my record worst time for a late spring run. I only measure the middle mile, so that it is not a sprint or a worn out finish. I used to run it in under six minutes.  Yesterday it took almost ten. Fat guys and women now sometimes pass me AND stay ahead. Running still feels the same.  Maybe my watch is defective.  Maybe all watches are defective. Maybe I will just leave the watch at home, since none of them seem to measure my running accurately. I still do ten chin-ups after each run. Since I never try to do more, I don’t know that I have become weaker in that respect.  I am pretty sure I have but since I don’t know I have plausible deniability.   

I am also not as quick as I used to be mentally. This is an interesting situation. I sense that my raw cognitive power has declined, but in compensation I have more experience so I respond better to some challenges. Emotional intelligence is higher, in other words. I am also better at judging situations so that I can do things I am better at doing and avoid the ones where I am weaker.

I read an article a long time ago about useful intelligence and how it develops over a lifetime.   Young people have more raw brainpower, but they lack the perspective and experience to make it useful in all fields.  The raw brain v experience makes the most difference in pure reasoning such as math.   If a person has not achieved something extraordinary in math by the time he is twenty-five, he never will. Achievements in physics come just a bit later and on it goes. In fields where experience and perspective make the most difference, older people do better.   Historians, statesmen and diplomats continue to get better.  They do their best work when they are fifty or more. That gives me a little comfort as I hobble down the the winding path.  The picture, BTW, is me cutting a path through the prickly brush on the tree farm.  The machine ran out of gas long before I ran out of brush to cut.  I suppose that is a metaphor for life.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An unforeseen outcome of my sojourn in the Iraqi desert was that I lost control of the television remote.   Now I get to see American Idol, Hell’s Kitchen and others, but you do get a different perspective when you don’t choose all your own programs.   If left alone, I would watch the variations of History Channel, Discovery and the News, along with reruns of "Bonanza" & "Star Trek".   I suppose some variety is okay and I can see what others are watching.

I really hate “Family Guy” and the boys know it, so they make a special point of coming up and turning it on. When I object, they claim that they are only seeking a family experience and something we can watch together.   “Family Guy” is clever, but very hateful.  It is an old comedy tradition to poke fun at society, but the writers of this show seem to hate everything about the way most people live.  Still, it provides a type of entertainment.   When the lead character, called Peter, does or says something particularly egregious, the boys look at me and wait for my ranting.  I don’t disappoint them. It is a family social event.

“South Park” is a show I started off disliking, but now generally enjoy.   It is very uneven.  Parts are horrible, but it there is some legitimate social satire.   The writers of this show don’t display the disgust I perceive in “Family Guy’s” treatment of our society.    The one today parodied the economic mess.  If you get a chance, watch it.

Chrissy likes the tournament style shows like “American Idol,” “Top Chef” and “Hell’s kitchen.”   We also get to watch “House” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”   I really cannot stand “Grey’s Anatomy.” The doctors are all ostensibly skilled, but rotten and selfish. They usually redeem themselves with an ostentatious show of some politically correct compassion or outrage.  It actually drives me out of the room.  I clean up the kitchen, which might indeed be its purpose.  Chrissy likes “Ax Men,” which I also like and we watched DVDs of “The Wire,” which was a great show.   We have now reached the end of it, however.    I used to like “The Office” but that is also starting to get on my nerves.

I guess you have to have an English accent to be truthful.  On “American Idol” only Simon Cowell tells the truth about the sometimes horrible performances.  The audience boos him for it, but I think most people respect his integrity.   Otherwise you just get that vapid praise.   Paula Abdul praises everybody, but doesn’t seem to be sure where she is or who she is watching, so it is not much value.  The terrible truth is that half of all people are below average and always will be, but that seems to be an unwelcome surprise. The other truthful guy is Chef Ramsey on “Hell’s Kitchen.”  Actually, I am not sure if he is truthful or just plain mean. He is constantly out of control.  Of course, they seem to pick a bunch of idiot savants as contestants. They seem to be able to cook, but lack all social skills and common sense.

Below - This happened near the Capitol. I don't think anybody got hurt.  You don't have to hit a car very hard to do a lot of damage.

We now have TViO, which means we can record shows for later viewing.   This is less useful that it might seem. We have lots of shows recorded but not enough time or inclination to watch them.   The only show that I record and actually consistently watch is “Modern Marvels.”   Recently they had episodes re how cheese and sausage were made, a history of pigs, oil refining, plastics and – my favorite – forestry technology.  I like it because you get the story with all its parts but w/o the social commentary crap that seems to have accreted to most things today.    For example, they talk about how pigs are raised and eventually turned into bacon and ham.   That’s it.  We don’t get the sad music or the criticism of modern eating habits.  I just want to know how things work.  I don’t need the help re how I should feel about it.

For all the criticism of TV, it really has improved and it is a great learning tool – if used properly.  You could get a decent general education from watching things like “Modern Marvels.”  “Nova,”  or the various History Channel Shows.    It also democratizes and fosters search for knowledge.  There are now a lot of people trying things out.  For example, there are whole cottage industries involved in figuring out how people in the past lived and built things by actually building them with the tools and techniques of the times.  

Of course, you could just spend your time watching reality shows.  They are popular, IMO, because all the losers watching can feel better than the even bigger losers on TV.

Posted by Broadnax at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is still a cool spring, but some of the trees are starting to bud out & flower.    Below is the Capitol on March 22 at about 8am in the morning calm and the soft morning mist.  You can see some of the trees are getting leaves.  

Below are a few interesting links. 

This one from the Economist talks about new dams.   Many countries need to develop more water storage.   Follow this link.

This one talks about the ancient Greeks & Romans.   The Greeks & Romans are a little out of style in the modern academia.     Many people now prefer to emphasize the contributions of the less well known or the less western civilizations.   The problem is that the reason we have revered the Greeks and Romans for so long is that they contributed so much to civilization.    The Greeks and Romans also had a viable literature.    This article tells more about it.

Finally, I happened on this name popularity page.   The most popular first name in the U.S. is still John.    And the most popular last name is still Smith.   You can put in any name and find out where it ranks along with a map showing the distribution.   I typed in “Matel,” which is not a common name.   Matels are relatively most common in Wisconsin.  I suppose most of those are some relation of mine.    There are also some in California, I don’t know if any of those are my cousins.  There is a Matel in Colorado.  I know at least one person there, Larry Matel is my relation. He contacted me via email a while back. I noticed that there is a John Matel in Duluth.    According to the Whitepages, he is ninety-five years old. My father was born in Duluth and his family lived there.  Maybe this is one of his cousins.

You can play with the names in various ways.  For example, you can choose names from various ethnic groups and see the distributions.  Wisconsin is the home of many German names.   Minnesota has lots of Scandinavians.  I didn’t find anything unexpected, but I wasn’t looking hard.

Posted by Broadnax at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is probably a genetic maladaption.  My mother had all that kind of stuff -  vegomatics, cap snafflers – all those labor saving devices that make more work while ostensibly being labor saving.  I saw the “Slap Chop” on television and called in for one.  I got the Slap Chop and the bonus Graty for the one low price of  $19.95. Great.

It does what it is advertised to do. It easily chops onion, potatoes, mushrooms and other vegetables with one slap.   It just isn’t worth the trouble. In this respect, it is a lot like the “Fry Baby.” It does what it is supposed to do, but you have to go out of your way to put it to good use.

The one good labor saving device I have is the “Pizzaz Pizza Oven.” I actually cannot take credit for this thing.  Chrissy bought it.  It cooks frozen pizzas to perfection. If you put a few fresh mushrooms (I suppose I could use the Slap Chop) on a Tombstone Pizza, it is as good as the average take out.   I have learned to put it first only on lower to crisp the crust and then do dual to finish the job. The kids eat a lot of pizza, so this thing make sense for us. It is more useful than a toaster.

Below - magnolias are flowering near the Smithsonian.

I am still glad that I bought my hybrid car back in 2005 but on TV today, they reported that hybrid sales are down. Last year they couldn’t keep them on the lots. Consumers are fickle, but logical.  They respond very rapidly to one thing – the price of gasoline.  Everybody I talk to claims to be interested in saving the environment and concerned about our addiction to Middle Eastern oil, but their behavior tells a different story.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So why not have it all together. 

The ostensible arbiters of taste hate the suburbs.  They critically acclaim crappy movies like “American Beauty” or “Revolutionary Row” that fit into cognoscenti stereotypes of life in the suburbs.   Maybe these wise guys won’t understand, but suburbanites are the happier with their lives than those people who live in small towns or big cities, according to Pew Research.

I feel uniquely qualified to speak to this issue, since I work in the city, live in the suburbs and spend a lot of time on my farms in rural areas.   Each has its attraction and I would not want to have to choose among them and I don’t have to, so in many ways it is a false choice.  Let me address it anyway.

The key advantage of the city is that you can walk to the places you need to go, although this advantage is lost on many urban dwellers, since they don’t walk much anyway.  Suburbs are a little too much car culture for me.  Of course, I am a bit spoiled in Washington, which is one of the world’s most pleasant and walkable cities. Washington really isn’t a city.  At least around the Capitol, it is more like a nice park with magnificent monuments and musuems.  Who wouldn’t like that?   In many cities these days you cannot really walk around much. 

Diversity used to be an advantage of cities, but not anymore.  Today that is an advantage of the near-in in suburbs.  Fairfax County, where I live, is more diverse than Washington DC.   My homeowners’ association has people from all over the world interacting and getting along, which is true diversity.  People in cities tend to have more defined and sometimes antagonistic group identities.   Group identify is not diversity; it is just a kind of standoff.  The suburbs are now doing a better job of breaking down archaic group-think.  I suppose that sort of homogenization is one of the things that offends some people, but I prefer to interact with people, not “representatives.”   Rural areas tend to be less diverse, in my experience, because fewer people are moving in.

The advantage of the rural areas is space and I love to hike in the big natural areas and I really love MY forests, but absent those things, rural life holds few attractions for me.  The countryside is a place to get away to … and then get away from.  It is not a place I would like to live permanently.  We lived in Londonderry in New Hampshire, which was an interesting exurb.  It has the demographic characteristics of a suburb, but the density of a rural area along with a little bit of a small town. We lived in a kind of cluster development, which I found very pleasant. 

Above was our home area in Londonderry, NH.  It was both suburb and country.  The picture below is about 200 yards away.

I like to see my neighbors, but be able to leave them behind when I want to be alone.  This may be the blueprint for the community of the future.  You can have fairly dense development amid green fields connected to urban amenities.   The old suburbs, where everybody has a rambler or ranch style house set on a half acre lot are soooo 1950s.   The gritty urban environment is too unpleasant and the countryside is too vast.  Put the three together, and you have something nice.  I guess that is why I am happy where I am now in Fairfax.   Of course, I will be keeping my eyes open for something better.   That is the American way.

Above - people like old fashioned small towns ... in theory, but they demand the larger floorplans and conveniences available only in modern suburbs.  Below is a little too empty.  Some people think they want to "get away" but few really do.  They are nice places to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Speaking of that, Pew has an article about the middle class (available here) and I read the Economist special report on the growing global middle class (here).   The middle class is also much maligned by the cool ones.  The cone headed intellectuals used to call us bourgeois.   But when you think about it, most of the good values come from the middle class.   The poor are too screwed and screwed up to think about the better things in life and the rich are too spoiled and effete to care.   Read the articles, and I bet you will agree. 

Posted by Broadnax at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought that I would need a root canal in at least one of my teeth.  I counted on that or some other health care disaster, so I put money into my FSA account, but no such luck.  My teeth stayed healthy and so did the family and we put too much into the health care savings account that I have to use or lose by March 15.  This has never happened before.  Maybe I should just get that root canal preemptively.  

Below is a decoration at the Air & Space Museum.

The FSA is one of those heath savings accounts.   They are great.  They deduct money from your paycheck each week.  It is tax free, with the caveat that it be used only for certified medical expenses and that it be used by March 15 of the year following when it was deducted, or else they just take it back, so you have to guess right.  You can use it to pay deductibles, medicines etc.   My insurance doesn’t cover most dental expenses, so I pay myself for all that Coke and Hershey cars I consumed in my misspent youth.    Tooth fillings don’t last forever, and the ones I got when I was young are breaking down.   I don’t fear the pain of the dentist, only the price.   FSA spreads that out over the year.

Below is the National War College, T. Roosevelt Hall.  The building was started in 1903 and finished in 1907. 

This is the first time I have put too much money into it.   Usually I don’t have enough and I get stuck with unexpected expenses, so this year I decided to be smarter.  It looks like smarter was dumber. I am sure that something will go seriously wrong on March 16 and I will be stuck again.  

I suppose I can stock up on aspirin, Pepto-Bismol and Nyquil, but you can only buy so much of that stuff before they suspect somebody is setting up a meth lab. It is odd to have this problem and it is better than the alternative, but I don't want to throw away the money.   I will figure something out.  I suppose I can pay for something in advance.

The thing about health care is either you need it or not.   It is not discretionary.   I generally dislike going to doctors and avoid them if I can.   My father went to the doctor only once between when he was discharged for the Army Air Corps in 1945 and when he died more than fifty years later.   I am not trying to match his record but we have done all the routine checkups, even the colonoscopy I should have gotten three years ago.   If medical visits can make you healthy, I am there. 

As long as I am on the subject of forfeiting heath related stuff, let’s talk about sick leave.   The USG gives me four hours of sick leave every two weeks.   We can roll the hours over at the end of the year and I have been saving it up.   I now have 2275.50 hours of sick leave saved up.    If you count in paid holidays, I could be sick for around a year and a half before I ran out of sick leave.   This is good.  It provides a de-facto disability insurance and I don’t need Aflac.   But the government, in its wisdom, has decided that it will just zero out all those hours when I retire.    This is the “new” retirement system that came into force the year I joined the FS.   Unused sick leave was added to your retirement in the old system.  Some in Congress are talking about changing the rules for the new one, but given the hard economic circumstances I don’t suppose anything will come of it.   

Frankly, this doesn’t bother me too much.  They can have the sick time back; I am just glad I never was sick enough to use it up.   But a significant number of people evidently view sick leave as just another form of vacation day and giving sick leave days an expiration date doesn’t encourage thrift or conservation, especially as so many employees are approaching their own expiration dates.   The first generations of employees in the new system are approaching retirement and absenteeism will no doubt rise among those in the new system within a few years of retirement.    

Posted by Broadnax at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Below is the my regular Capitol picture taken at 7:45 on February 13. As I wrote, I am trying to take regular pictures through the seasons. It is getting warmer and lighter in the mornings.

Beauty is all around us and all sorts of common things are interesting if examined. The beauty often lies less in the physical attributes of the things themselves than in the serendipity of finding them or in their  ephemeral nature, like the flower that blooms only for a day or the leaf that hangs an instant in the wind. Of course, people create and appreciate art.   

Patronage.  That was the whole basis of art until a short time ago and it was a good thing.   In the days before government grants, few artists had independent means so they had to find patrons.   Most of the world’s great art was made to order.  The patrons set the bounds and artists were not free to express themselves exactly as they wished.  In fact the tension between artists and patrons was one of the ingredients of masterpieces. The Sistine Chapel is great because of the tension between Michelangelo, who was doing the painting, and Pope Julius II, who was paying the bills.  Everybody needs boundaries.

Below is modern art at the Hirschhorn Gallery.  It is interesting, but not much.  It has no particular context.  I bet the government paid way too much for it.  I am sure the artist had fun making it and even more fun spending the money he got for doing it.

The context determines the value. We all hold onto things that have meaning to us.   I have carried around the world a little statue of Caesar Augustus that my Aunt Florence gave me in 1965.   Objectively, it is worth next to nothing and it is poor art (It doesn't look like Augustus, more like Napoleon), but it has meaning to me on several levels. It is representational.  

Below is another sculpture on the Mall.  Also of limited interest.  I read the sign in front and didn't get any more meaning than you do from looking at it. It would be okay if they let kids climb on it, but they don't.

I take sublime joy in just walking around the Capitol Mall.   The monuments and buildings have meaning to me as an American, a lover of liberty and as an individual.   I have “a history” with these things personally (25 years of knowing them) and for the larger reasons.  The monuments represent something bigger than what you see.  You can find out the names of the artists who worked on them, but it doesn’t really matter.  They don’t represent an individual’s narcissistic artistic ambition or personal vision.  They represent traditions, aspirations, sacrifices and triumphs of the American people. Of course, there is also the modern art pictured on this post.

Below is the Natural History Museum.  I like the traditional buildings better, but that is just my taste.

I don’t like art that doesn’t have greater meaning or is just an expression of what the individual artist wanted to say.   I don’t like the artists to challenge or try to shock me out of what they considers my complacency.   The artist has no more right to challenge me than I have to challenge him.   A lot of challenging art is just crap.   We have fallen into a kind of emperor’s new clothes trap, where all of us are afraid to express our own taste for fear of being seen as unworthy philistines.   But as Emerson wrote, “The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.”

Above is a community garden near the Capitol.  I think they started these things in the 1960s and there used to be more of them.  If is kind of interesting to see this little hippie farm in the middle of the monuments and monumental buildings.  This is a more meaningful art than those two modern sculptures above.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We create a lot of our own troubles by demanding standards that individually make sense but together make our world less pleasant.    Today I went to an urban forestry meeting where we discussed trees and roads.   It turns out that our policies are a big part of the reasons we do not have beautiful tree lined vistas, why it is scary to be pedestrians and why we don’t have the tree canopy in our cities and suburbs that could give us shade and help keep our water cleaner. 

Let’s start out with street trees.   I imagine the trees near the streets on that little belt of grass.  Today’s rules don’t permit that unless they can be several feet from the road.  Otherwise they are hazards to traffic. Usually there is not enough room on the grass strips, especially because our new roads tend to be way wider than they need to be. I understand why you don't want obstacles (like trees) along high speed highways, but city streets are different.   On the city streets having trees on the grass next to the curb is not only more attractive; it is also safer … for pedestrians.   I would rather the car hit a tree than hit me.   Beyond that, the speed limit on city streets should preclude the trees being a real danger.   Only a drunk or a manic would veer off a straight city street and hit anything on the side.   But it is clear that road designers see everything from the car point of view.

The woman explaining the rules told us that anything near the road has to be “breakaway” so that it is not a danger to a car that hits it.  Trees cannot be made break away, which is why they cannot be close to the road.  The thing that surprised me is that bus stop shelters are designed to be “break away”.    I think they should make an exception for bus stop shelters.  If a car comes careening across the sidewalk, I would hope that the bus stop can at least slow it down before it hits the “break away” pedestrian sitting in the shelter.

The car point of view is also why they round the curves.   You can see an example above from  just outside my townhouse complex.  This very wide strip of pavement is supposedly a city street.    The speed limit is 25 and there are lots of pedestrians.   The cars should not be taking that corner fast enough to require the rounding.  Every time I cross that street at the place shown, I have to keep looking over my shoulder to watch for the idiot making a high speed turn while talking on his/her cell phone.  I would prefer that they have to slow down to make the squared corner.  Maybe put both hands on the steering wheel.

BTW - they are going to make the road above even wider.  It is one of those shovel ready projects that the bailout money will buy.  I am glad it will create a few jobs, but I don't really welcome the prospect of having an even longer jeopardy zone to cross.  It is like that old video game "frogger."

In a very good book about livable places, A Pattern Language, the authors studied patterns that people around the world like in the places they live.   People feel more comfortable with narrower roads with buildings and plants near the road.   Of course this is when they are walking or just living nearby.   Drivers like wide open roads with no obstacles.    We all impose suffering on each other by thinking like drivers when passing through somebody else’s neighborhood.    Our love of driving has destroyed the attractiveness of our cities. 

One reason our roads and the areas around them have to be so wide is that utilities are placed far from the actual road.   Suburban roads don’t have manholes and that is why.   The total road footprint is a couple of football fields wide.

Something we could use around here are traffic circles or roundabouts.  They work very well in UK.  Traffic moves through.  Drivers yield to the traffic already in the circle and enter and leave w/o the need of stop lights or stop signs.   We cannot seem to pull it off.  We don't even try to put them in real streets anymore.  The original design of Washington included circles, which now just confuse and perplex drivers.  The one in the picture is mostly decorative.  It is the traffic circle at our complex.  Notice even in this simple case they have to have a sign telling people what to do.  They also have stop signs on the sides.  Ruins the advantage.

The tragedy is that all of us are making good decisions for ourselves but taken together they end up being bad decisions for all of us.    Most of us are drivers and we all like convenience, but we should consider how much it is really costing us.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I suppose the economy will continue to decline for some time, with or w/o the stimulus package.   But I prefer to look to the things that are looking up.  

Below are the new homes near my house.  Now sold out.

While we were at Sears yesterday to get a new dishwasher, making our small contribution to the recovery, we noticed the help wanted signs.  There was also a help wanted sign at Safeway.   Construction around Washington has slowed but not stopped.    The new complex near my house, the one that had sold no lots last summer, is now sold out and the houses are almost done.   I don’t like the houses, but the evidently are what some people want, people with the means to buy new houses.

Recessions aren’t all bad.   I read in the papers that people are saving more money, putting off purchases and being more careful about what they buy.   

Same place in July 2008 (six months ago)

This is the paradox of thrift.  Saving is a virtue, but if enough people save enough money during hard times, not enough money flows through the economy.

Below is condo construction near my house.

Still,  until recently we worried that people were not saving enough, that houses were getting too expensive and that people were becoming to extravagant in their purchases.   It is not what you make but what you keep.   Real disposable income rose every month of the last quarter and the savings rate spiked up too.   Read about it at this link.

I don’t want to minimize the problem.   I know people are suffering and I stipulate that I have a steady job so maybe I don’t feel the downturn as much as some others.  But I have lost money in the markets and my house is worth signifcantly less.  I would also point out that even with the recent jump in unemployment; almost 93% of Americans still have jobs too.  So my experience is not that special.  I think we are getting a little too worked up.  FDR famously said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.  Maybe we should recall his wise words, uttered in a much more difficult time.  I think some of this passion we hear on the news is hyperbole.    As Ben Franklin said, “passion governs and she never governs wisely.”

I have been reading a lot about the Great Depression and I got a second-hand feeling for those hard times from my parents.  During those years, unemployment reached almost 25% and that number understates the problem in comparison to today, since there were many more farmers back then as a % of the population and many of them suffered hard times or even lost their farms but were not immediately counted as unemployed.    Beyond that, back in the 1930s many more families had only one wage earner.     

Below - we still have vultures.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Below is a statue of Admiral David Farragut.  He captured New Orleans in 1862, which split the Confederacy and virtually stopped the export of southern cotton.  His famous quote, "damn the torpedoes, go ahead full speed ahead" comes from the battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. In those days, they called naval mines torpedoes. The harbor was mined but Farragut ordered it forward anyway.

It is only embarrassing if you don’t talk about it. I had my first colonoscopy today and I am happy to say that I don’t need another one for ten years.  The actual procedure is very easy. They use general anesthesia and it is no more uncomfortable than an afternoon nap.

The preparation is the hard part. You have to drink about three liters of some chalky stuff.  It is really hard to drink that much of anything and this stuff is harder than most. You also cannot eat anything the day before. This was not as hard as I thought.  

Modern medicine is wonderful.  Things that used to be hard are now easy. They are very careful legally, however. I had to sign lots of forms and they told me lots of things about privacy. They worry too much.  I think we should expect reasonable - not absolute - privacy.  

Absolute privacy, the privacy where you were really unknown, is a thing of the past. Hanging onto this old fashioned privacy illusion is silly and counterproductive.    While some people are busily reinforcing the front gate with ridiculously stringent laws and regulations, they are eagerly tearing down the back walls, by putting all sorts of really personal information on Facebook or their cell phones.  Internet has got you anyway. The only way you can hide from Google is to have a really common name. Chrissy (Christine Johnson) is immune to Google search.  Most people are not.     

It doesn’t bother me if somebody can find out my buying or travel habits.  I voluntarily share information with Amazon, Safeway, CVS or Marriott, among others.    I don’t mind if this helps them tailor their offerings to my tastes, although I am mildly annoyed that some computer program can fairly predict my behavior by extrapolating from my previous choices.  As a Federal employee, I give the government the right to monitor my office computer use.  Frankly, I find this a type of protection from scammers etc.  Privacy?  All I want is that people cannot compel me to do things or buy things.   They can offer all they want. 

Below is the National Portrait Gallery, one of the most interesting museums in Washington.

Generally, I figure anybody who wants to find out about me can do so but they will soon get bored and go away.   I do, however, like to be unconnected.   I don’t own cell phone and I don’t use the one the government gives me if not on duty.  When I go down to the woods it is very hard to find me.   We can still get lost.  This is the kind of privacy we can still choose, but it is the kind of privacy most people don’t want.  They want to be connected all the time.   I hate it when those clowns talk on the phone when they are driving.   Few things are so urgent that you really need to take a call when driving … or doing most other things for that matter.  

But you don’t need details about everything.  That is why I included only the unrelated pictures in this privacy article.

Posted by Broadnax at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Being yourself” is overrated and it is terrible advice to give a young person.  Much education and virtually all professional training is specifically designed to teach you to be different – and better.  Most success in life depends on your ability to play the proper roles.   This is as it should be. 

On the left is me when I was 19 and knew everything.  I actually had hair back then.

People left to just be themselves will often behave with slothful indifference, or worse. Doing the right thing is hard work that requires significant discipline and preparation.  Those doing the wrong things often rationalize away their failings, since the wrong thing usually results from the sin of omission rather than commission.  People neglect preparation or lack reasonable foresight and then find themselves in an untenable position.  Portraying themselves as victims, they plaintively ask, “What else could I do?” as circumstances "force" them into some questionable actions.

Random chance – luck – is an important factor in any result, but the chronically unlucky are probably making poor choices, often by what they are choosing NOT to do, as I discuss above.   

Below is a picture of my father (the guy w/o the hat) back in the summer of 1941, when he was 19 and knew everything. Even from our distant time, we can feel the joy of care free youth.  The Great Depression was ending.  Young men could find jobs. Later that year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  By the next summer, my father was in Europe at the request of his Uncle Sam.

I am a natural procrastinator.  I have known that since I was a kid.   I compensate for this because I am a quick study with a significant talent to “think on my feet” or “wing it.”  I don’t say this to boast, but rather to point out the mixed blessing.  These skills allow me to get away with insufficient preparation and even when I pull off a success, it may not be the best I could do.  Because I recognize the problem, I can fight against the tendency, but I will forever struggle against the tendency to “be myself.” 

We are our own first creation.  We demonstrate who we are by what we aspire to be, by the choices we make and by the roles we choose.  My “self” is defined by my family, my forests, my diplomacy career and various long term habits such as reading and running.   I doubt anybody would have predicted this for me when I was born.  The things are do now are not the default option; I am not being my "natural" self,  but I am certainly being “me” – the me I have chosen, the one I want to be, not the one I was stuck with.  Sure glad I didn’t try too hard to be myself when I was younger.

My advice to the kids is don't just be yourself; be better.  It will be more satisfying.

Posted by Broadnax at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Below is from the Smithsonian Metro stop looking east toward the Capitol, which is hidden by the fog and snow.

It doesn’t take much snow to paralyze our nation’s capital.  Even this little bit you see on the Capitol Mall was enough to shutter the local schools. It has been a cold winter (by Washington standards) but this is the first snow that has stuck to the ground.  The biggest snow storms come usually in February & March.  The sun is warm and the snow doesn’t last long, but they tie up traffic in this city of southern efficiency and northern charm.

When I was a kid they almost never closed the schools.   We had to walk miles through mountains of snow – up hill both ways.   When you reach your anecdotage, the hardships of the past are magnified in relation to the wimpiness of the present.    It has always been thus.  My father told me tales too.   Of course, things actually were hard for him in the Great Depression followed by WWII.  Those who compare our easy times to those years have a not studied the history and/or did not have a parent to tell them about it.

Below is the view from the Smithsonian Metro looking west toward the Washington Monument.

But we had hard times in the 1960s & 70s too.  This was mostly related to having to listen to the hard times stories of our elders, but decade from 1973-82 really was bad.  What we fear MIGHT happen now DID happen then, with double digit unemployment and double digit inflation. 1979/80 was the worst time of my life so far.  Not only did we suffer the economic malaise, but the environment was much dirtier than it is today.  The Ayatollah had grabbed the hostages; the Soviet Union was expanding all over the world; Central America looked like it would go communist; the debt crisis was crushing the developing world; interest rates were high and gas prices were higher. There was no way out.

My father told me that the 1930s were much worse, but I didn’t live through those worse hard times, so I feared the contemporary fall was forever. Ten years later, the Berlin Wall fell; the economy was expanding; gas was cheap and interest rates were coming down.  The boom that started in 1982 would continue with two minor shocks (1991 & 2001) until 2007.  Nobody would have believed that back in 1979.   There was a whole industry of doom and gloom books, predicting the imminent replacement of the U.S. by Japan, the collapse of the free market & the triumph of the Soviet Union.  Hard to remember now and you cannot find many people who will admit to believing those things, but they did and the experts were wrong.

America is never really down.  We are just resting before going on to our next success. 

But returning to the snow, it was indeed colder during the 1970s.   Earth has cycles.  The 1930s were warm years.  It returned to “normal” in the 1940s, so that the Battle of the Bugle occurred during the coldest winter in 15 years.   The 1950s were a bit warmer again, and then we had a cold decade from the middle 1960s until the middle 1970s.  That is the weather I remember as a kid. 

They didn’t close school unless there were a few feet of newly fallen snow.  Conditions have changed, however.   Most of us went to neighborhood schools and we walked to get there.   You might slip and fall walking to school, but a fatal accident is unlikely.  Today most kids are bussed to school.  It is dangerous to ride in a bus on icy roads.  That is the weak link and that is why they have to close schools more often today for smaller accumulation of snow and ice, that and the liability exposure.  Our culture has changed and so has our adaptation to the weather.  I was not at tough as my old man and my kids cannot be as tough as I was.   We won’t let them.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A homeless man killed the trees in the pictures.   I saw him carving on them with a pocket knife a couple years back.   He moved on when I asked him about it, but he came back.   The police can't do anything about these kinds of incidents and they discourage citizens from even giving the miscreants a hard time.   I have not seen the guy around since I have been back from Iraq.   I hope he is gone for good, but maybe he is taking the winter off.   How many trees he killed all together I don’t know, nor do I have any clues on the motivation.  Maybe he was just bored.   Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.  There are dozens of dead trees about the right age in the neighborhood, but there are other possible causes.   

There are a lot fewer homeless around here than there used to be when I first moved to Washington.  I don’t know if they are gone or just gone someplace else.  There used to be a guy called Mitch Snyder, who ran a local homeless shelter. He deployed the homeless around the Washington area with the expressed purpose of making a kind of political statement.  I moved to Washington during the heyday of his activities, so I suppose some of my impression of the time was part of his street theater. 

I think it was back in 1999 when I was running near the Lincoln Memorial and noticed an unusual number of street people.   As I turned toward the Korean Memorial, I ran into a television production crew.  They were filming for a TV show called “West Wing,” with Martin Sheen playing President Jed Bartlet.  The guys lying around on the ground were ersatz homeless – i.e. actors. I watched the episode they were filming later in the season.   It was about the homeless in Washington. It was ironic that they had to hire their own homeless TV props to create the visual image they wanted.   Homelessness dropped a lot, and we have better responses than we did before, but it doesn't take very many homeless to make a problem.

There is a legitimate argument about rights. All citizens have the right to use public spaces, but the public has the right to expect each individual to behave in a reasonable way. A homeless man is both a victim and a perpetrator. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan commented, we defined deviancy down and learned to accept that people either w/o the ability or motivation to control their weird behavior could dominate our public spaces.  Bad behavior feeds on itself and engenders worse behavior. During the height of the homeless epidemic during the 1980s, many public parks were rendered unusable for ordinary citizens.  Kids couldn’t use the playgrounds.   A stroll in the park was like running a gauntlet of beggars.  When you lose public space, you lose public spirit and weaken the community.    

It is better now.  The homeless are fewer, but it is frustrating when one guy is responsible for thousands of dollars of slow release vandalism that deprives future generations of shade on hot summer days.  Sometimes we tolerate too much.

Posted by Broadnax at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Respect is a complicated and apparently internally inconsistent concept, with tinges of love, hate, fear and admiration all at the same time.   It is precisely because of those complications that respect is a key element in human relations.  

Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of realpolitik, reasoned that it was better to be feared than loved based on his assessment of human nature that, “... they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you.”   I am not quite as cynical as Machiavelli, but you can see this pattern over and over in politics and foreign affairs.  The colloquial American phrase is “What have you done for me lately?”

Machiavelli avers that it is indeed better to be BOTH loved and feared when possible.  This describes being respected.   You earn respect by being consistent over the long term.  If people know you will be consistent and will act with integrity, they will often accept what you do, even if they don’t like the things you are doing.   And I have been repeatedly surprised how quickly acceptance can turn to support.   Success matters.

That is why you cannot give up when you hit opposition or try to run your affairs like a popularity contest.  Public opinion is indeed fickle and despite what people tell pollsters it is usually based more on impressions than on facts.    

People who don’t respect themselves have trouble respecting others.  That is why we have some much trouble with some people and places.  The proper response is not to lower the bar for these guys, but rather demand more from them. 

How much more insulting is it to imply or say outright that some people are unable to reach the higher standards we set for ourselves, so we will create a kind of ethical junior varsity for them.

I was moved to think about this by the guilty verdicts for the five immigrants who planned to attack Fort Dix and murder American soldiers.  Actually, it was not the verdict itself, but the subsequent gnashing of teeth about what this would mean to the “Muslim community.”  When you read carefully, however, you see that most of the teeth gnashing is done by the professional victims, who don’t speak for the community they purport to represent.  Actual people involved want to be treated with respect AS Americans.  One Albanian immigrant said, "I don't know what they were thinking. They were just out of their mind and they should be put away for life. The Albanian community is nothing like this. We come from a country that has a reputation for religious diversity and tolerance. To go against the American government _ that's unacceptable to our community."  Got it - respect. 

All immigrants have revealed by their actions that they prefer the U.S. to wherever else they came from.  America is the land of their choice.   Many of us have forgotten this simple truth so we let the malcontents speak for “the communities” and don’t give or demand the proper respect from everybody else.   Treat each individual as a human being, not a member of a group, and we will all be better off.  It is the principled choice.

As for those five clowns who betrayed the country that welcomed them, they seem to be getting the justice they deserve.   These were stupid young men who were misled by all that holy war BS.  It is a pattern we see too often.  I always felt sad when I saw detainees in Iraq.  The pattern was you would see around ten stupid young men, who really didn’t think clearly about what they were doing and one hard eyed bad guy who had led them to hell with his hatred.  The purveyors of that poison are complicit, but the young men evidently were determined to kill innocent  for no reason we can ethically accept, so let’s not waste too much sympathy on them.  

Posted by Broadnax at 08:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another post out of chronological order. 

Flying

I dreaded the flight to Doha.  When I got to the ticket counter, they couldn’t find my reservation.   I had a momentary feeling of guilt mixed with relief that I could avoid the trip.   It would not really have helped, however, I would just have to go the next day and meanwhile it would have been a lot of trouble.  They found my reservation, but not my seat so I got an exit row with a lot of leg room.  Sometimes it pays to be oppressed and forgotten.   I got better than I expected.

I was listening to an audio book re expectations.  People enjoy more things that are more expensive or harder to get.  The placebo effect works because of expectations.  People get real fake drugs because they think they will.  And they get better relief from more expensive placebos because they perceive higher quality.  You get what you pay for.  Maybe it will never be possible to get really cheap drugs because people may get the relief they expect and they expect less when things cost less.

The mind makes it so.  I was telling Chrissy re conditions in Iraq.  As I described the sand, snakes, scorpions, heat, hardness, fumes, bouncing and hazards, I realized how objectively it was horrible.  But it was not that bad.   All these bad things were balanced by the sense of purpose, friendship, the experience and the fact that I chose to do it.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The dates of these posts are out of order.  I didn't have Internet.  I could not take pictures of the buildings in camp or the running trails, but imagine a parking lot paved with crushed stone surrounding a maintenance facility and you got it.

Below is the hall outside my quarters.  This is how it looks day or night.  I am on the second floor.

Yesterday and today I ran around the trail that follows the perimeter of the camp.   It is five kilometers long.  (Although I doubt the veracity of that claim since it is obviously taking me too long to run around it).  The surface is good for running and the terrain is phenomenally flat.    It is not a hard run, but it is boring.   You can only tell how far you have come by looking at your watch.  I suppose after a while I will notice differences.  Maybe not, since I am running at night.  Actually not night, but it gets dark at around 5pm.   The trail is well lit, so there is no unusual falling hazard or chance of smacking into stationary objects. 

The full moon was out today, which made the run more pleasant, as far as it is possible.   It gets warm during the day, but is nice and cool in the evening.   The weather has been great.  If the place was more interesting, it would be really nice.    Compared with this place, however, Al Asad is paradise.  Well, maybe not paradise but much nicer.  

Below is my room.

My discomfort is exacerbated by the jailhouse conditions of the cans.  We are in a warehouse stacked on top of each other, literally.  There is no connection to the outside and the window has the perpetual dull glow of artificial light.   You cannot tell the nighttime from the day w/o looking at your watch.   I like to be able to see the natural light.    I saw a Sci-Fi movie with Sean Connery.   I think it was called “Outland” about a mining colony on Io,  one of the moons of Jupiter.   It is that kind of place.

Posted by Broadnax at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have given up sleeping, or put more correctly I don’t sleep much during the nights.   I still have not adjusted to the jet lag and the conditions.   I wake up during the night, impatient for the dawn.   Today I got up at yesterday I got up at 530 and went running.  Today I got up at 330 and wrote on the computer.   Actually, I went to the MWR where they have a wireless internet connection, which is why I can post this entry. 

This sleeping problem is unusual for me.   I am usually more adaptive.   But this is a weird place.  If I had to mention one problem it would be the air conditioning.   You cannot turn off the vent.  Cold air blows in unremittingly and there is a steady draft, more like a 5 mph wind, throughout the can.

Anyway, I have been sitting here for a couple of hours.  I have written some entries which I will post when I hitch them up with pictures.  

Later today I have to make a presentation.   Despite my fatigue, I am confident that it will go well. I am ready to go.   I feel tired all the time but not acutely so.  I can easily make it the next couple of days.   I will be glad to be out of here.  

I should leave the Middle East to those more in tune with its idiosyncracies.  I don’t understand its politics or habits.  Who builds a ski slope in one of the world’s hottest places?   It is unnatural in the most basic sense.  The pleasure palaces are like Las Vegas on steroids.  Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  There is a problem of unearned wealth all over, but there is so much more of it around here.  It is the classic rent seeking behavior.   The locals provide little of the management and almost none of the labor or technology that produces the resource.     

Wealth w/o effort is a moral hazard and the easy flow of oil explains lots of the troubles.   This is the only region of the world w/o any real democracies.   If the rulers can live off revenue pumped out of the sand through the efforts of others, they don’t have to consult the people who might actually produce something.   The wealth can  be used to placate or out flank opposition.  Even more perniciously, such easy wealth destroys initiative and honest work.   Why should anybody work for chump change when he can jump on the oil bandwagon of at least live off its droppings?

There will be momentary pinch now that the price of oil is falling off from it unsustainable highs, but we will not learn the lesson.   The low prices drive out alternative fuels and bankrupt innovators.  Then the price of oil goes up again.   We need a carbon tax and now is the time to put it on.   We have to take the pain in the short term for a better future.  

Well these are the extent of my predawn thoughts after the days and nights of poor sleep.  I believe I will wander over to the chow hall.  It opens soon for breakfast.  My IPOD has just begun playing "Hotel California."  Fitting.

Posted by Broadnax at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It reminds me of that old horror movie where the babysitter calls the cops to ask for help with a stalker who has been making threatening calls.   When they manage to trace the call, however, the find out that it is coming from inside her house. 

My search for the root problem of America’s image abroad has brought me right back home. That some of the most scurrilous attacks on our values & institutions come from within our country will come as no surprise to anybody who has seen a Michael Moore movie.   Yesterday night I was watching “American Dad” with the boys.   It is simply horrible.   This episode could have been funded by Al Qaida.   It portrayed American officials as torturers who liked to do it so much that they would sponsor a telethon to raise funds to continue it.   Unfortunately, this is not an anomaly.  Much of the Sunday night lineup is like that.   “American Dad” is preceded by “Family Guy.”  This one has some very funny vignettes, which are the Trojan horses that get the propaganda through the gates, but the overall theme is that the average American “family man” is a selfish, stupid, pervert who thinks only in terms of his own short term gain, short term because he is too dumb to plan much beyond tomorrow anyway. 

People accuse me of being an old crank when I complain about these things.   Some even imply that I am against free speech.  This is unfair.  Free speech is useful because it allows us all to judge the good from the bad.   Free speech means that people have the right to voice their opinions, whether they are reasonable or stupid.  But not all speech is equal.   We all have the duty to assess the contentions of others.   I would not censor those things I mention above, but I do think intelligent people have to point out how stupid, misguided and harmful they are.   It is not just good fun and it is not just satire.   These are consistently hateful and misguided attacks.  Just because we have to tolerate it doesn't mean we have to like it or support it.

People usually claim more sophistication than they manifest.  Most don’t pay attention to the news and few people in the world could pass even a simple multiple choice test about American foreign policy.  American cultural products, however, sell well overseas.   We export a lot of good quality material.   But it comes with a heavy leavening of the sort of crap that coats our television sets so many nights and what do you think gets the higher ratings?   It is not hard to understand why a lot of people worldwide would dislike us if their media images of ordinary Americans come from “American Dad,” “Desperate Housewives” & reruns of “Jerry Springer.”   We Americans presumably have real world comparisions to counteract the media images, yet we still harbor prejudices about Americans from different places.  What about people who don't know Americans in person?

Perception is reality.

Imagine if you watched a television series made by the cultural elite of another country that consistently portrayed their leaders as horribly corrupt, bigoted & vicious, and their ordinary people as stupid, shallow and dishonest.  Imagine if all the false and pejorative stereotypes you had heard were confirmed by their own media ... repeatedly.    What would you think?   Defenders of this trash say that you would be really impressed that our hypothetical foreign friends were so open that they welcomed this kind of attack on themselves.   Would you really?  Does holding the tolerant high ground make you immune from real world ridicule?  Or does it just invite offense as the next insult tops the previous?  If your spouse ridiculed you and pointed out all your faults in front of your friends every time you went out, would that improve the reputation of your family?  The best you could get is someone who calls down a plague on both of you. 

It is like the story of the drunk who smashes into his wife's car parked in the driveway and comforts himself with the idea that the other car is as wrecked as his. 

A good test of fairness, BTW, is substitution.   Watch one of these "satires" and substitute for the American any other nationality, ethnic group or affiliation.   How long would an Arab "Famly Guy" stay on the air?  Is it still funny or is it just plain mean and bigoted?

Posted by Broadnax at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The economy is in unmistakable decline and it is astonishing how fast perceptions change.   Although my investments have tanked like everybody else’s, I have to caveat that my personal exposure to the downturn is not immediately significant and  while I suppose the value of my forests has declined, land endures and gives you a feeling of secure permanence not possible with paper assets.

Below is Penagon Mall in Arlington.  Nice food court.  Still crowded.

I have some prejudices that I should also state up front.  I don’t like ostentatious displays of wealth and I observe that the culture has coarsened in the last few decades.   People are no longer self conscious about bragging about their wealth.   There are all sorts of programs on TV where rich celebrities brazenly show off their riches.   Nearer to home, the Northern Virginia countryside is studded with giant houses with expensive cars parked outside.   I am glad that affluence has spread so widely in America, but the spread of opulence is not so welcome.     It is even worse that much of this opulence was bought on credit.   I don’t know if we are at the end of the long economic boom that started in 1982, but after twenty-five years of good times (with tame downturns), we have forgotten what hard times look like.   The long run of good times has also decoupled wealth from work in a pernicious way. 

Rock stars, and their equivalents in the corporate, sports or entertainment world, make such piles of money so quickly that it degrades the hard work of ordinary people.   Add to this a capricious legal system that can reward someone for his own stupid behavior or bankrupt a prudent person and you have a really noxious cultural stew.   Rock stars, big bosses, big payout plaintiffs and millionaire sport stars are rare.   But they cast a long shadow and their influence is enhanced by a media that loves them while exposing all their flaws and weaknesses. 

It bothers me that entertainers can do drugs and treat the people around then like crap and still be admired for their ability to bring in the money.  Need I mention executives in private jets going to ask Washington for a hand?  I find it offensive that sports stars can literally be criminals and still rake in the big bucks.   (Green Bay’s great halfback, Paul Hornung, was suspended at the height of his career for betting relatively small sums on football games.  He also, BTW, earlier had to do his service in the army and play football while on weekend passes.)

I don’t object to people having money in general.  In fact, I support it. Making money is a laudable goal.  If you are earning money you are probably producing something other people need or want.  But those who earn the big bucks should be circumspect in what they do with it and how they behave in public. 

The irony of today’s conspicuous consumption is that it is to some extent based on the egalitarian idea that we are all the same.   Greater wealth, whether that comes from money, talent or just good luck, SHOULD bring greater responsibility.  But if we are all the same, those who just happen to have more have no special responsibilities. There was never a golden age where the rich & famous behaved in a really responsible way, but it has indeed got worse.    

Below - Rowing practice outside GWU in Washington.