"It is a luxury to be understood."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lefties welcome, too!
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
11:32 a.m.

"The Poor Voter on Election Day"

To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

John Greenleaf Whittier

Evil Thoughts on Halloween
Sunday, October 31, 2004
10:48 p.m.

Speaking of Halloween, Garrison Keilor said something to the effect that, maybe we thought it better for good people to impersonate evil than for evil people to appear in the guise of good. This bounced off a repressed reaction I've had regarding some religious folk's remarks about demons. When I hear these folks talk about a piece of art or the wearing of certain costumes or even the whole idea of Halloween as glorifying demons, I've wondered how they can so easily recognize the demonic?

What is the quote about the devil's greatest lie being that he does not exist? If evil is smart enought to sell that lie, why should we expect the truely evil to appear in classical forms? Wouldn't it be more likely, for them to appear "normal"?

So, if you really can't judge a book by its cover how can you recognize the truely evil among us? I think it's by how they approach us! What is it they try to get us to do? Do they appeal to our baser instincts? Do they lead us to do unto others before they do unto us. Do they attempt to control us through fear? Do they encourage us to resolutely follow wherever they lead?

It doesn't take a lot. With just a bit of clear thinking the choice is easy. Will we give in to revenge and greed? Will we continue to strike premptively? Will we allow our better natures to be swallowed by a fear of terror? Will we stand resolutely and not be misled?

The choice is ours!

Contemptable Acts
Saturday, October 23, 2004
05:18 p.m.

  I don't know which is worse: the kidnapping of British-Iraqi director of CARE International in Iraq, Margaret Hassan or the poorly (if at all) thought out war that spawned it. It is despicable that the life of someone who has spent over 30 years helping the Iraqi people would now be used in this way. Equally base is the fact that we were misled into the war which daily provokes such senseless acts. It is pitiful that the administration can not/will not admit their errors on Iraq, I sincerely hope we citizen realize and admit the mistake of allowing this administration to take office. In about a week we have a chance to reverse that error!

"The people have spoken ... the bastards!"
Friday, October 22, 2004
03:28 p.m.

American Theocracy?
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
02:55 p.m.

October Surprise
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
01:20 p.m.

Dear G. W.,

Just think (sorry, I forgot) Just imagine, if you'd have kept your eye on the real enemy, we probably would have captured or killed Bin Laden by now and your reelection would have been assured. Too bad for you and 1000+ American kids, you became distracted!

Now that it is official that Sadam had no WMD nor programs nor significant activities along those lines we know that U.N. inspections were working, despite your assertions in last week's debate. The threats from Iraq were and could have continued to be contained. You could have persued Bin Lauden at full force and not alienated much of the rest of the world.

Surely, this would have occured to any normal human being as a mistake! You seem to have a problem identifying your mistakes. Many of us have discovered that we can learn and grow from acknowleging our mistakes and resolving to do better. I think you may have a problem in this area - maybe you should get some help?

One area you were right about in the dabate was when you lauded the intelligence sharing provisions of the Patriot Act. But you are wrong that the act does not abridge our rights "at all". Mr Kerry sited examples of folks who's rights have been abused under the act. He is correct that we should not let our response to terrorism, "change the Constitution of the United States in a way that disadvantages our rights."

I know you like to deride a person who changes his mind in the face of new information as being wishy-washy and/or a flip-flopper but it's OK. Try to understand the importance of the U.S. Constitution and of our need to work with the world community in this new century. Take new information into account, allow new thinking, adopt some new ideas and embrace change - it'll be good for you! You're going to need these skills to figure out what to do with yourself after January.

God knows when but your doing it again...
Thursday, September 30, 2004
04:48 p.m.

Last week, as I was setting up the P/A for our monthly "Live Band" gig here, I noticed some irregularities with the monitor amp. First, it was 'put up' in a different position than I usually put it into it's cabinet. Next, we noticed that one of the speaker cables was not in the box. Then I saw that one of the speaker extension cables had been plugged across the stereo inputs and that the cables that are normally used at those inputs were not in the box either.

I asked the guy in charge of the physical location of the P/A equipment (I'm responsible for maintence & operation) if he knew where the cables might be. He did not, but offered that he had recently encouraged an employee to resign before being fired. Later, we learned that this (possibly disgruntled) employee works as a DJ in a local club. He could have wanted these cables for his own set-up or might have 'borrowed' our amp for some personal purpose and not gotten all the cable back.

Either way, there seems to be an assault on my cabling underway, this fall!

"I been run down, I been lied to..."
Monday, September 13, 2004
03:32 p.m.

Actually, a satellite cable was run down, and I was lied to!

I was in my usual configuration, working on some project or other on the computer and listening to CNN on the television over my right shoulder. Suddenly CNN was gone. It's not unusual for the satellite to momentarily drop out from time to time but this time it stayed out. I got up and went to the operations room. I tried other channels, everything was out indicationg that the problem was most likely with my receiving equipment.

In the absence of the sound of newscasters droning on, I noticed the sound of a mower coming from outside. I wondered if the Grounds Department were mowing in the satellite enclosure and if maybe they had 'clipped' or bumped something. Sure enough, as I approached the enclosure, I saw a guy get off his mower at my gate and cross over the driveway to open another gate.

I slipped through my gate behind him and began to examine the dish and cables. The groundsman saw me as he returned to his mower and asked if something was wrong. I told him it had just quit and that I wondered if he had bumped anything. "No", he said. We stood and chatted a while then I went back to my examination.

The coax had a nick in the cover but the shield was intact and the control cable was in pretty rough shape. The control cable was old and weathered with some insulation missing where it made the bend around the edge of the dish. One conductor broke as I picked it up. I twisted it back together and seperated the exposed conductors to eliminate the possibility they were shorting.

I went back inside but there was still no signal. I would have to swap out the coax and replace the control cable. It was late in the day and I needed some parts from home so I resolved to start the job fresh in the morning.

The next day I lowered the dish, removed the LNA cover and both cables. Close inspection of the coax revealed that the center conductor had withdrawn about a half inch into the cable on one end. This did not happen on its own, it was the result of the cable being stretched and bent as it would be if it was snagged by something driving by!

I swapped in a good piece of coax and replaced the control cable but there was still no signal. I decided to take a look at the block converter the damaged end of the coax had been connected to. Well, what do you know, its connector was broken, too. This meant that, not only had the cable been snagged by somthing moving past it under the dish - it had been hit HARD and I had been lied to! I swapped in another downconverter and the system came back up.

I had not asked the mower driver if he had bumped something because I needed someone to blame or to get him in trouble. I was trying to save myself some work. Had I not suspected the source of the failure, I'd of had to troubleshoot every piece of equipment and cable in the chain. As it was, I was able to start at the suspected source and got the problem fixed straight away. If I had not been present I'd have not known where to start.

I couldn't totally blame the driver anyway. I had neglected maintenance and allowed the cables to sag to where they could be snagged in the first place. Still, it would be nice to know that my co-workers were mature and secure enough to be able to provide me with useful information to help me do my job.

"..Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel,
Like I been tied to the whipping post,
Tied to the whipping post,
Tied to the whipping post..."

It Takes All Kinds
Monday, August 9, 2004
10:44 p.m.

I had jury duty today. What a wonderful venue for gaining insight into the makeup of your community. Two juries were being impaneled, both for criminal cases. One of the questions used to assertain our fitness to serve on these particular cases was, "If you knew 9 of 10 people were guilty but you had to either convict or acquit all of them, would you choose to convict an innocent person to 'get the others' or acquit them all rather than convict one innocent person". Two of my fellow citizens said they would convict them all.

These folks were not selected for the first panel and one of them was given an opportunity for clarification by the defense counsel in the second case. I think he was as incredulous as I and asked, "Would you convict them all even if the innocent person was your son?" Her reply was that she did not have a son, but convicting the innocent was of no concern to her as long as the guilty got put away. The best thing I can say about this is that there were only 2 in 100 of us who admitted to thinking like that! I would have gone one step further and asked her how she would feel if she were the innocent person to be convicted.

She was not selected for the second jury either and neither was I. I was not selected for either panel. I was glad to not be chosen for the first case as it was a juvenile sexual assualt case. I was actually dismissed for cause when I told the court I could not convict if the only evidence I heard came from the victim. The second case involved a forgery. I would not have minded sitting on that jury but I was 'too far down the line' and a panel was made before they got to me.

Questioning meanings...
Thursday, August 5, 2004
09:52 p.m.

You might have heard mention of the words Kerry and waffle in the same sentence recently. If not, fire up Google and put those two words together in a search. There are a lot of matches and I'll wager most speak of waffle or waffling in negative terms. I've been thinking about the meaning of the term for some time now and don't see anything negative about it.

"There you go again"

I remember a kindly seeming old gentleman who once tried to convince us that being liberal was a BAD thing. I went to the dictionary then and discovered liberal to mean generous, tolerant and favoring extensive personal liberty. I could find nothing bad about any of these and decided the kindly seeming old gentleman was merely ACTING kindly while hiding sinister, greedy, intolerant and paternal motives.

Now, it seems, the kindly ACTING gentleman's ideological minions are upon us again. This time they want us to think waffling is BAD. Well, what is waffling? Isn't it changing ones mind? Who among us does not want the freedom to change our minds? Isn't change the very essence of life? Don't we need to be able to change to survive individually and as a species? Don't we need the ability to change our minds to be able to learn and to grow? Isn't change actually quite natural?

So who wants us to think the ability to change is bad and why? These seem to be the same folks who want us to believe generosity, tolerance and liberty are bad. Now they appear to want us to believe that the essence of our very lives is bad, too! They have not and will not convince me. Black is not white, wrong is not right; liberal is good and nature favors waffling over intractability.

Belief != Truth
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
04:07 p.m.

Just because you believe something, does not make it true - further - just because your beliefs work for you doesn't mean they will necessarily work for me (or anyone else for that matter)!

(Sorry folks, sometimes living in 'The Bible Belt' gets to be too much!)
So, what brought this up?

I saw a commercial for a local church yesterday that didn't just imply they had religious truths to offer, they flat out stated "We have the truth!"

This stopped me in my tracks. I've always thought churches (religions) worked within the realms of faith, so I had to do a quick check of the meaning of faith to be sure I was on the correct track. Dictionary.com listed, "The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will" as what I assumed was the relevant definition of 'faith' in this instance. Not exactly clear, but with words like trusting and belief it certainly doesn't equate faith with an irrefutable 'truth'.

So I looked up belief. Dictionary.com violates what I was taught as a basic rule in definitions when they list, "Something believed or accepted as true" as a definition of belief. I was taught, you are not to use the word you are defining in a definition, so let's leave it out. This makes the definition of belief, "Something ... accepted as true" Not something that is true, but something that is accepted as true.

So, it seems to me it was a mistake for the ad to say this church "has the truth". Im sure they have faith in things they believe to be true but my faith is that there exists an absolutely verifiable and irrefutable truth that transcends mere belief. Consequently, I try to not lean to heavily on belief*, preferring instead, to seek verifiable truth where and when possible.

* Not that there is anything wrong with belief. Few if any of us are blessed with universal knowledge. There is much we must take on faith just to get through our daily lives. All I ask is that you not present your BELIEFS as ultimate verifiable and universally applicable TRUTH. Leave some room for other's beliefs and the possibility of an irrefutable and transcendental TRUTH!

'Doonesbury' on Bush
Sunday, July 25, 2004
04:23 p.m.

Some quotes from Garry Trudeau's interview in the current Rolling Stone which reflect my own feeling very well:

"George [H.W.] Bush was a competent public servent but no leader. Now, of course, he seems to be a paragon of decency, moderation and thoughtfulness, everything his arrogant, radical, proudly ignorant son is not. What a shame the world has to suffer the consequences of Dubya not getting enough approval from Dad."

"Dubya, tragically, is the best target [for humorists] so far. I'll never forgive him for giving me such a huge stake in bad news. At least with Clinton, people didn't get hurt, outside of Mrs. Clinton. Bush has created more harm to this country's standing and security than any president in history."

Monday, July 5, 2004
09:49 p.m.
I've been meaning to say something about this film - everybody else is!

Really, all I have to say is go see it!

But, Paul Krugman wrote an editorial in the N.Y.Times last week that, while sort of a 'left handed compliment' does make a pretty good case for seeing this movie. Krugman, (recent editorial scandals aside) by virtue of his position is probably better qualified to comment on the merits and veracity of Moore's material than I. So read his piece and go see the movie!