A Mild Voice of Reason

A Linguistic “Issue” with “Community”

Posted on 22 January 2012 | No responses

The “While We’re At It” section of last month’s issue of First Things contained an interesting paragraph about the word community. Specifically: That the word is losing it’s meaning, shifting in emphasis from a defined group of people to something more abstract. Other, choicer terms must then be introduced to cover the former and more specific purpose of community.

I’ve noticed a similar trend with words like issue. Writers sometimes use this term as an all-purpose, no-fingers-pointed surrogate for more precise terms like problem or disagreement. It seems that computers don’t break anymore, they “have issues” — just like people coping with emotional difficulties are “dealing with issues.”

The meanings of many words fluctuate over time. Some words trend more specific; others become more general. Yet I cannot help but wonder sometimes if the general tendency in contemporary language is for everyone to speak like some sort of ESL student, using a conversational style not unlike the Roman copia verborum that flourished after the Silver Age of Latin literature. In the Roman Republic, sentences remained compact and speakers elected for a single precise term, even if the word were relatively rare. In the later Empire, especially as more and more non-native speakers started picking up Latin, the linguistic tendency was to use shorter, simpler words — requiring, therefore, more subordinate clauses and adjective phrases to convey meanings that could have been rendered with one well-picked but relatively rare word.

Is English undergoing a similar transformation? As the language settles as a lingua franca for international trade and as technologies like Internet-enabled messaging emphasize speed over style, it probably ought not shock anyone to see a sentence like “You can pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees in order to get it ready for baking your cookies” when “Heat your oven to 400 degrees before baking your cookies” is more concise. Yet how many would really see anything wrong with the first sentence? In fact, it’s not really wrong at all in any but the most pedantic analysis. Just inelegant. We’ve grown tolerant of simplistic prose, unnecessary over-use of the passive voice and sentences written with twice as many words as they require. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Beats me.

But it’s an interesting question to think about sometimes.

Surviving the Apocalypse

Posted on 8 January 2012 | 2 responses

We’ve seen the doomsday scenarios played out in countless novels and big-budget films: Some calamity strikes, civilization collapses, and only a few stragglers are left to survive against the odds. Their humanity and ingenuity is put to the test, but in the end, our heroes carry the day and lead us to hope that Earth 2.0 will be wiser and kinder than its ill-fated predecessor.

If a real doomsday arrives, though, the results will be less kind. Picture it: Famine. War. Rape. Disease. Wanton murder. Illiteracy. Prostitution.

What might a future look like? What must stout-hearted people do to survive, if the prophecies of those pesky Mayans prove accurate?

Assume a total global catastrophe, like a horrific virus or nuclear event or solar flare that kills 95 percent of the population and eradicates effective government. In the first few days, the struggle is simply to survive the event itself — steering clear of infected people, seeking protection from radioactive fallout, etc. Long-distance communication may well cease; electricity and water probably would stop flowing and gasoline becomes worth its weight in gold. Families would try to connect and people would seek supplies necessary for their short-term survival, even if acquiring them meant looting and pillaging or even killing.

As reality sets in over the next few weeks, though, a few things would likely happen:

• The elderly and infirm would die.
• Small children would be at elevated risk, especially if their parents died.
• More and more aggressive, Type A folks would seek to dominate the supply chain around them, forming the nexus of small chieftains that would rule over areas not already divided along tribal lines.
• Society would fragment along ethnic/tribal/familial lines in areas where those traditions still carry weight. People would have to increasingly make tough choices to survive, in the “If you want bread, give me your 15-year-old daughter for the night” vein.

In the unfolding months and years, a pseudo-medieval system of the strong controlling the weak would prevail. Most durable resources like transport, weapons and tools become prized objects, typically looted from “before the fall.” Odds are likely that a patchwork of communities would arise across the world. In places where a strong local community exists — think Africa and the Middle East — existing authority structures may well endure. In places like Europe, North America, Russia and China, civilization would fragment along much more strongly Hobbesian lines; picture survivalists with guns offering protection in return for labor, obedience and access to nubile young girls.

But what happens a century later? What happens when the tools break and there’s nothing left to loot? What happens when the bullets and gasoline run out? What happens when the antibiotics and canned food are gone? When the doctors are all dead?

In the Middle Ages, Europe adapted to climate and disease with “more of the same” — a feudal, agrarian society may not have a lot of excess resources, but it could subsist in all but the most horrific of conditions. If modern-day North America collapsed, would enough people remain with the skills necessary to re-create even a feudal level of society? Would we regress from high-tech to agriculture to hunter-gatherer mode? And even if we did farm for a while, who among us could mine or smelt iron or even copper so that we could replace our tools as they wear out and break? Who has sufficient woodworking knowledge to build large structures or sailing vessels? What would happen to literacy? If top-down oppression became the dominant mode of small-unit political organization, how would cooperative villages with a healthy division of labor spring up?

Tough questions. The best a person could do in the early days after the apocalypse is simply survive. After that, all bets are off.

So what prompts this blog post? Merely this: Social fragmentation and happy-go-lucky utopianism remain the hallmark of today’s left-wing ideologies. When push comes to shove, and Occupy fetishists have the chance to live the “we are family” mode of Rousseau-inspired communitarianism, will a post-capitalist, post-apocalyptic world be happier and more free? Or will it look like Europe in the Dark Ages?

Think about what it would be like to survive the apocalypse. Think about what your ideology says about human nature. Then try to reconcile the cognitive dissonance.

The Year That Was; The Year That Will Be

Posted on 2 January 2012 | No responses

On balance, 2011 was kind to me. I spent the year in residence in a lovely South Hill apartment, and my rusty, ancient Ford Ranger really didn’t fare too poorly. I traveled a bit, including two trips to Las Vegas and a week in Miami Beach for a conference. My health stayed stable, and I have mostly re-provisioned after the Great Purge of 2009. I’ve made progress on many fronts, earning just over $7,500 from my side business and even making the first steps back to church via the Cathedral. And the monthly cigar-and-cocktail evenings have helped bring a different focus to my personal social networking. (Oh, and PPQ — 100 percent attendance rate in 2011. That’s all I’m sayin’.)

So, my farewell to 2011 is largely without disdain, although the year did go out with something of a whimper: I went with Tony and Jen to the Laurel Manor NYE party in Livonia and didn’t acquit myself as professionally as I would have preferred. It was a somewhat fancy affair, with 500 or so attendees, many of whom were older folk in tuxedos and ball gowns but there were plenty of the younger crowd, too. Let it suffice that despite the good conversation and the salmon/filet dinner, I was insufficiently attentive to the nature and pace of the product flowing liberally from the premium open bar and ended up paying the price. I think part of it was that the bartenders were wildly inconsistent in how stiffly they poured the drinks — some were thin, some would shock a bear’s liver. Hard to pace yourself when you’re not acutely aware of what’s coming your way.

The last week of the year witnessed unheralded productivity. I’m not sure if it was the time off, or adding fish oil to my daily vitamin cocktail, or what, but my vacation saw me knock off more long-term goals from my to-do list than I’ve accomplished in the last two years combined. Among other things, I wrote a journal article, tweaked my various social-networking profiles, set my 2012 goals list, wrote a letter of inquiry to finish my master’s degree, pulled my annual credit reports, knocked off a bunch of around-the-house tasks, scheduled a long-delayed dental appointment, set up appropriate Mesh syncing for my files across my phone/netbook/PC, updated my freelancer profile with SPJ, reviewed my 403(b) investment allocations, blogged a fair amount and sketched out the drafts of four different books. Whew. And that was on top of holiday parties and a few other goals I accomplished too personal to mention in a public blog post.

So. I’m off to a good start. As part of my 2012 planning, which began in October (as usual), I’ve pulled forward my long-standing personal vision: “I aspire to be an elderly man who, upon his 70th birthday, can look himself in the mirror free of the sting of regret.” This vision will be realized in party through four major life goals and six core strategies:

Major Life Goals

• Begin the Great Loop by the time I turn 40.
• Complete a circumnavigation. Eat lunch in Antarctica.
• Finish at least one major thru-hike (PCT, CDT, AT).
• Write at least one fiction and one non-fiction book.

Core Strategies

• Reduce consumption.
• Cultivate serenity.
• Nurture relationships.
• Exhibit insatiable curiosity.
• Do fewer things, but do them well.
• Favor action over study.

In the master plan, I’ve got a series of almost 50 tasks between now and September 30 (and a handful extending until 2016). These tasks represent time-bound chunks of the various activities I need to do to make progress on my bucket-list goals. So, it’s good to have a plan of attack. Other major things I want to nail this year, at a lower grain than the bucket list, include (finally) running the Riverbank Run and G.R. Marathon, getting the prerequisites out of the way to begin divemaster training, return to the dojo in late winter, go skydiving this summer, and take a long weekend to backpack/hike in a national forest.

In other news … 2012 is looking interesting. I’ve planned out attendance a series of business-networking mixers to grow my company, and the prospect of playing in the new water park in Las Vegas in June provides great incentive to get back to my target weight (no one likes a shirtless muffin top). Tony and I are spending the weekend together in a few weeks to dedicate solely to joint business planning. I’ve already booked a client meeting for next week, and I’ve got a good handle on my tasks, calendar and bills for January. Yay.

I am looking forward to 2012, and I hope that my dear readers have a safe, happy, healthy and profitable year as well!

Answering Step Two: Or, How to Beat the Underpants Gnomes at Their Own Game

Posted on 29 December 2011 | 1 response

In the second season of South Park, the boys uncover a colony of underpants-stealing gnomes. The gnomes have a purpose for their nefarious deeds — profit. They even have a three-step business plan. Step One: Steal underpants. Step Two: ?  Step Three: Profit!

So far, so good. A nice little satire about the business world, yes?  How many enterprises start with some sort of asinine idea (say, build a mobile app that does something 37 other mobile apps already do, but differentiate by using “creatif misspellingz” in the app name), and then … profit! Somehow. Err … Umm. Yeah.

But funny thing about those underpants gnomes: Like all good satire, there’s a hidden truth behind the laugh track. In this case, I think the secret is that people are either really good at generating ideas, or at profiting off the ideas of others, but there aren’t that many people who are good at moving something from concept to execution.

Lately I’ve been on a “life as project management” kick (have to put that CPHQ certification to use at some point!). Having taken the week between the holidays as vacation, I’ve enjoyed the spare time to get caught up on a bunch of mundane things like laundry and cleaning – but I’ve also invested considerable effort into figuring out, relative to my goals list, how to get from idea to outcome with maximum efficiency.  Long-time blog readers know that I undertook the “idea” phase seriously in late 2007. Prior to that, I drifted in the wind. After that, I had a game plan, a series of goals and attitudes and bucket-list wishes that I intended to guide subsequent decision-making. And I even identified my personal version of the “profit” phase: Being content at what I saw, when I looked at myself and my life’s history on the morning of my 70th birthday.

But darned if I didn’t have a big red question mark in the middle.

Oh, sure. I had an idea that certain goals required certain things to occur in a defined sequence. One of my goals, for example, is to earn my divemaster certification. I am currently open-water certified. To get to divemaster, I’d need to get certified for advanced open water and rescue diving. Then log  a minimum of 40 dives to meet eligibility requirements for the divemaster program. But did I ever put those things on a calendar or in my budget?  The total cost of getting eligible to earn that divemaster c-card will probably run between $2,500 and $3,000, factoring in the cost of the two major large courses, the cost of air for dives, and all the equipment I’d need. (And don’t get me started on the professional training costs … I think it’s running more than $1,000 these days.)

Again: For a long time, there was just a big red question mark between “I want to be a divemaster” and “Yay, I’m a divemaster.”

And the story repeats for so many other parts of my bucket list. And the thing is, the items on my lifelong goal list aren’t even that unreasonable. The things I want to do in the short term are eminently doable. I’ve just spent so much time defining the concept and clarifying “what done looks like” that I never really said, “Hey, idiot. Are you actually going to make progress on any of these things, or just tweak your goal list year after year?”

So the last few days, I’ve been plotting the execution. I’ve looked at all of the things I want to accomplish in 2012, what the material costs are, what the reasonable timing may be, and then slotting everything on a monthly calendar. Much of it has been guided by a consistent project-management methodology: Identifying scopes and exclusions, setting key dates, budgeting, linking dependencies, noting potential constraints.

The great thing about this exercise is that it provides a sense of purpose, a feeling that one’s actions are leading to a significant conclusion even if any given tasks seem boring in the moment. It also helps to level-set expectations. If I want to get everything in the “Jason 2012″ project accomplished as planned, I’m looking at a total cash requirement of between $25,000 and $27,500 and a wrap-up date of September 30. I’ve separated everything into blocks, so that routine living expenses (food, utilities, rent, etc.) are wholly covered by my hospital income, so the costs of my goals require a totally separate source of funding. Like, you know, my business.

Having thus identified the financial resources, I can then back into what I’d need in terms of client development, projects, etc. Suddenly, that $25k doesn’t look so daunting. It’s just roughly $3k per month between now and September. Just $100 per day. I can do that.

And scheduling. Instead of saying, “I’d like to do X in 2012, or Y by 2020″ I’ve moved into breaking down complex goals into logical milestones and then scheduling those milestones for a specific month. So, with the divemaster goal — pick up essential diver gear (BCD, regulator, octo, gauge) in February; pick up wetsuit and remaining accessories in March; sign up for advanced training in April; schedule rescue diving training in June; log 40 total dives by Labor Day. At which point, I can enroll in the divemaster program and work through it in September.

And so on, and so on, for a dozen different goals. Heck, I’ve got one item on my task list with a due date in late 2016.

This planning carries within the seeds of implication, though. It means that every day, I need to be focused on the future. It means I need a defined set of tasks that I perform each day, and a mechanism for tracking detailed tasks on an ongoing basis. It means that coming home and thinking, “Hmm. I guess I’ll just veg out on the couch or play Star Wars: The Old Republic for hours” must become a thing of the past. Thanks to a subscription to Office365, I can use the power of Exchange and SharePoint and OneNote to keep all my devices in sync using the right tools for the job.

This story has a moral beyond public peacocking, though. To wit:

The first stage of self-actualization is thinking seriously about who you are and who you aspire to be, removing the pernicious influence of others and understanding the you that most of us keep hidden even from ourselves; done right, it takes months or years — not just an afternoon spent with a pot of coffee and a notebook. The second stage consists in identifying clear life goals — with a solid expectation of what it takes to say you’ve achieved them. Come back to them every few months for a year or so until you know in your heart as well as your head that you really want to make it happen. The third stage is moving from planning to execution, to put away excuses and endless tinkering and simply begin. The fourth stage is, having been successful, you mentor others in the art of success.

In short … we need to beat the underpants gnomes at their own game. A little project management for your life can help.

“I’m Dreaming … Of a Lukewarm Christmas!”

Posted on 27 December 2011 | No responses

Two separate conversations, three identical conclusions: The 2011 holiday season doesn’t really feel like anything worth celebrating. I think it, my mom thinks it, Jess thinks it. This year, the holidays seem more trouble than they’re worth.

Perhaps the unseasonably mild weather contributes; without snow and bitter cold, it feels like late spring. Not like Christmas.

Perhaps the lack of a defined routine matters. In the past, the holiday season inaugurated with a giant feast at my grandparents’ house on Thanksgiving, then progressed through the solemnity of Advent, and culminated with a two-fer of a huge family get-together on Christmas Eve night at my grandparents, then Christmas morning at home.  With my grandfather enjoying his eternal reward and the other holidays skipping around a bit (or fixed but with fewer people), there’s not a lot of joy in it anymore.

Perhaps its a sense of impatience: with myself, with the world. It’s like I can hear the clock ticking but can’t do anything about it.

Perhaps it’s an overall frustration with a whole bunch of things right now. Mostly work-related. Plus the brakes on my truck are shot, which means driving is risky.

I don’t know.

I did have some fun. Dinner and cigars in Lansing with Tony and Jen was nice. The office potluck before Thanksgiving afforded the opportunity to try a new jambalaya recipe on the unsuspecting masses. My mom’s Thanksgiving meal was lovely, as was Christmas eve, and the weekend before Christmas offered a great opportunity to spend time with the family at my grandmother’s condo. I went to the 10 a.m. Mass of Christmas Day at the Cathedral of St. Andrew; the service was beautiful and I even got a bit emotional during the singing.

And the new year should be fun — a huge dinner and open bar at a hotel in Livonia to ring in the new year with Tony and Jen. Looking forward to that.

And this week, I’m off from the hospital. Yay. And I’m actually being astonishingly productive. (Said, as laundry is cycling and dishes are drying and my email is caught-up and my task list is refreshed … while I blog.)

But still. In terms of holiday seasons, this one doesn’t rank high on the memorableness chart.

Tax Rates — The Next Civil Rights Battle?

Posted on 14 December 2011 | No responses

Amid the drama of the Occupy movement, with its anti-corporate sloganeering, and the push by Democrats in Washington to reduce the deficit through tax hikes, conservatives seem to be waging a rearguard action. Prominent Republicans (the “Young Guns” of the House, notably excepted) appear to be mostly accepting of Democratic arguments at face value, without bothering to dig into the premises behind those arguments. The game seems like a tit-for-tat struggle over talking points for which the Dems, by virtue of their ethics-laden rhetorical style, enjoy a natural advantage. Who, after all, wants to be seen as taking away goodies away from voters?

The problem is that the Democrats, by and large, simply aren’t serious yet about the discontinuity between their policies and the health of the country; they either refuse to acknowledge, or fail to understand, the cliff up to which their entitlement programs have pushed the federal treasury. It was smart politics a century or even a generation ago to promise more Social Security, more Medicare, more union benefits. More, more, more. Yet it’s increasingly obvious that America has reached a point — brilliantly observed and meticulously calculated by the likes of National Review‘s Kevin Williamson and Mark Steyn — where the old rules simply don’t work anymore.

To be fair to the Democrats, it’s not exactly easy to pivot when your party’s playbook has transformed from a path of short-term electoral success to a program of long-term national suicide; witness the GOP struggle to define a coherent foreign policy in the aftermath of the Soviet dissolution. The wrenching change that accompanies a material shift in the country’s fortunes rarely ends well for ideologues who anchor their political edifice to yesterday’s reality — think, for example, of the unceremonious death of the Whig Party before the Civil War and the implosion of the Republicans during the early New Deal years. We can hold out hope that the Party of Jefferson will find a bold leader who will reorient the left toward a saner worldview. It’s possible … but then, so is failure.

Yet although there are hints that some Democrats have wisened to the new economic reality (think James Carville or Doug Schoen), the rank-and-file of the party seems caught in the cross hairs of a struggle between centrist-leaning New Democrats and hard-left Progressive Democrats. The failure of the so-called Supercommittee to find meaningful deficit reduction seems to boil down to one point: Republicans wanted to cut spending without increasing taxes. Democrats wanted to make wealthy people pay higher taxes so as to reduce the spending cuts to programs that they favor.

This leads to a curious impasse, with the Dems forging a curious end-run around it through the politics of group discreditation.

American history is replete with examples of scapegoating. When hard-working Protestants were priced out of the labor market in the nineteenth century, Irish Catholic immigrants bore the blame — and the wrath of government, through immigration restrictions and laws that made it harder for Catholics to integrate into mainstream society. When Detroit suffered the first massive wave of layoffs in the 1980s, people blamed Japan and Japanese. During the national paranoia after the Soviet bomb and Sputnik, the rump of U.S. communism was persecuted without mercy. In the 2000s, it became fashionable to blame Mexican illegals and NAFTA for “taking good jobs” from white Americans (despite that white Americans steadfastly refused to take those jobs). After Pearl Harbor, FDR ordered Japanese Americans rounded up and put in prison camps; after the Civil War, wounded Southern pride exacted its pound of flesh from freed blacks, setting up generations of segregation and lynchings.

And so on, and so on. Easier to blame than to reform.

America overcame institutional scapegoating largely though a deeper commitment to ensuring civil rights for all citizens. Anti-Catholic bias is mostly gone. Racism has largely been eradicated from government. Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Although some problems remain — why does anyone care if a Mormon is elected president? And why is Mexican immigration still such a hot potato? — the default position in polite society remains one of neutrality and toleration of our differences.

Curious, then, that the response of the Most Elevated Disciples of Toleration, the Democratic left, seems to play the scapegoating game again with reckless abandon. Economy in the tank? Blame “millionaires and billionaires” who’ve gamed the system by speculating off of unsustainable bubbles that left the working family’s 401(k) plans empty. Can’t find a job? Blame “large corporations” for sending jobs overseas. Cutting back on bloated local spending? It’s because “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share.”

Is there any problem in today’s America that doesn’t spring from the wealthy? One would think the rhetoric of socking it to the Rich Parasite would have fallen away after Auschwitz and Treblinka and Birkenau, but apparently it’s still okay as long as you substitute “millionaires and billionaires” for “Jews.”

Blame substitutes for reform, because reform would make the Democrats face the unpleasant reality that a not-insubstantial share of today’s economic crisis results from generations of DNC-sanctioned policy preferences. Easier ignore the facts and point fingers than to accept responsibility for giving birth to Leviathan.

Housing bubble? Look at the irrational federal expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act that mandated banks to make housing loans based on sociopolitical rather than economic factors. Death of heavy industry? Most of this comes from generous union contracts, making domestic labor significantly more costly than foreign labor. Infrastructure decay? It costs much more in time and regulatory compliance just to get an clean environmental impact statement — making such projects unattractive and inherently risky. Medicare at risk? The doc fix doesn’t help, leaving fewer and fewer providers willing to pick up federally insured patients.

America has a lot of problems. Insufficient taxation of the wealthy isn’t among them. Consider:

• For tax year 2009, the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 36.7 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 10 percent of wage earners — those with a federal adjusted gross income of just $112k or higher — paid 70.5 percent of all federal income taxes. By comparison, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners paid 2.3 percent of all federal income taxes.
• Taxing income at 50 percent for earners in the $1 million to $10 million category would raise enough revenue to reduce the deficit a mere 8 percent (and the debt, just 1 percent). Taxing at 100 percent for all people earning $10 million or more would generate a 12 percent deficit reduction and a 2 percent debt reduction. Guess what? That’s a drop in the bucket.

So. Even if we granted every progressive’s wet dream and taxed the wealthy at 100 percent levels, we won’t have enough revenue to solve America’s financial problems. Not even close.

Demonizing the wealthy isn’t about economics, it’s about politics. It’s about redirecting blame from bad policy to allegedly bad people. It’s easier to lambaste successful Americans for “not paying their fair share” — and why isn’t 70 percent of revenue among the top 10 percent of earners fair enough? — than it is to admit that a socioeconomic model based on wealth redistribution eventually proves unsustainable.

Conservatives need to fight back against this demonization of the successful by turning economic success into a civil right. Just as it’s not fair to scapegoat Jews or Catholics or blacks or gays or Mexicans for our problems, it’s also not fair to scapegoat the wealthy. The counter-argument must self-consciously adopt the language of civil rights activism if it’ll stick against Democrats who relish class warfare as much as children relish candy.

The rich didn’t make America’s economic problems; bad policy did. If we want to play the blame game, lets start with generations of politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, who treated America’s wallet like a no-limit credit card with a bill date of February 30. And instead of merely pointing fingers, let’s put in place policies that promote economic growth and reduce the influence of burdensome regulations pushing down on small businesses across the fruited plain.

America faces a difficult economic future. Present spending is unsustainable and no amount of tax increases will fix it. The only solution comes from significant spending restraint and entitlement reform. If we continue to let the Democrats blame the wealthy, we will turn these important reforms into an unnecessarily ideological hot potato that means we’ll see ruthless ideological warfare in the back seat as Uncle Sam drives off the cliff.

The unhappy ending is avoidable. The question is — will we stop the unnecessary and distracting class warfare and actually address the problem, or will we let envious scapegoating continue to block meaningful reform?

Perhaps a bit of good old-fashioned civil rights talk can help the body politic get the scapegoat off the altar long enough for our leaders to institute real and meaningful reform.

Quick Thoughts re: Last Night’s GOP Candidate Debate

Posted on 11 December 2011 | No responses

Last night, six of the GOP candidates (from stage left: Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann) for the presidential nomination met on stage in Iowa for a televised debate hosted by ABC News correspondents Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. The event lasted nearly two hours. Impressions:

• Sawyer and Stephanopoulos did a good job at moderating. They tended to be warmer than other moderators, and less critical of the candidates. They seemed to view their job as being facilitators rather than dictators, being much less aggressive about timekeeping than, say, Scott Pelley was, and more celebratory of the human side of campaigning. Although Sawyer’s delivery tended to ramble a bit, the questions themselves were fair game and delivered in fair manner. The pair made for the best debate moderators I’ve seen yet this cycle.
• Maybe it was the more relaxed timekeeping, or that there were fewer candidates on stage (Cain backed out and Huntsman and Johnson weren’t present), but it seemed like the candidates had more time for crossfire and to express themselves in a reasonable amount of time. No one was really cut off the entire night. Everyone on stage had plenty of time to talk — no “Siberia” in the corners, as it were.
• Santorum performed well. His answers were generally good, and delivered strongly, although he felt too nervously earnest. Like the popular high school jock running for class president, and you know in 10 years he’ll be selling used cars and be overweight with three kids and a minivan. Unfair, I know. I just wish he seemed warmer and less uptight. He could try smiling and even crack a joke every now and then.
• Perry had a good night — he rarely stumbled and had some fairly decent answers, although it’s not clear he helped himself by appearing unable to count to three. He has a maddening habit of giving a cursory answer to the question presented to him and then using the rest of his time to answer someone else’s questions — the net effect is to suggest that he can’t answer on the fly and instead needs to think about what the last guy said and then try to one-up it.
• Romney was Romney — generally polished, with good answers and an easy grace. He took more of a beating than Gingrich (unfairly, I think, from Bachmann) but handled it OK. The ABC News commentators argued that Romneys’ “$10,000 bet” to Perry about the contents of Romney’s book hurt him in Iowa, because Iowans don’t bet $10k even on sure things. Not sure I believe that — it was a gimmick, but it pushed Perry on defense. I wasn’t a huge fan of Romney’s answer about Gingrich’s “Palestinians are an invented people” claim: The former governor seemed to suggest that the President of the United States needs the approval of the Prime Minister of Israel before opening his mouth about Middle East affairs, an absurd claim if ever there was one. Yes, Gingrich’s comment was ill-timed. But it wasn’t wrong, and to suggest publicly that making statements of that sort requires pre-clearance by the Israeli government transmits a sense of American weakness I think it’s best to avoid. Romney seems to defer to the side of caution. This may be admirable in a POTUS but as a candidate being blunt about being cautious sends the wrong signals.
• Gingrich was Gingrich. The Speaker did well, giving generally good answers. Sometimes he seemed a bit too impressed by his own cleverness, but again — Gingrich was Gingrich. He handled the marital-fidelity question with grace. Newt is a polished extemporaneous speaker. The ABC News commentators suggested that by this point, it’s Gingrich instead of Romney who’s the apparent nominee. I wouldn’t be upset by a Gingrich candidacy, but it’ll take a lot of discipline to get through the primaries then the general election, and Newt’s lack of discipline is … well, legendary.
• Paul remains the GOP’s irascible old curmudgeon of an uncle. He provides color, and a welcome diversity to the ideological spectrum on the stage, but his policy proscriptions are so off-kilter that it’s good for America he’s polling so poorly.
• Bachmann enjoyed a very strong night. She spoke frequently, and forcefully, on many issues. Although her performance was solid and likely helped her in Iowa, her bulldog-like attacks on Gingrich and Romney seemed contrived and desperate (and were successfully rebuffed by both men simultaneously heaping scorn on her for the comparison) and when she gets on a roll, her eyes glaze over and she doesn’t blink or shift her gaze. Minor point, but it kinda creeps me out. And she needs to stop worshipping Herman Cain.

In all, the debate left me heartened about the overall quality of the Republican field. Any of the people on stage — even Paul, and even the candidates who weren’t there — would make a far better president than the incumbent.

The current horse race puts it as a two-way competition between Romney and Gingrich. I’m OK with either candidate. I think Romney would perform better with independents in the general election, but Gingrich may inspire more conservatives to turn out. And although Obama is currently weak, the Democrat’s chances could improve, and the eventual GOP nominee may well suffer from self-inflicted danger.

The long series of debates had a real impact on the nomination process. Painful as it sometimes was, the system did its job of helping Republican voters better understand who their nominees really are. For that, and for the quality of Republican candidates in this cycle, every conservative ought to be relieved.

The Last Few Weeks ….

Posted on 10 December 2011 | No responses

Caught in a titanic struggle between “busy” and “sick,” the last few weeks have been somewhat less than enjoyable. Nevertheless, a few items of note are worth passing along.

• Malaise.  Last weekend was unhappy; by Friday afternoon I got clobbered by some sort of stomach ailment that didn’t clear up until Sunday night, although it came back for a mini-encore on Wednesday. I ended up missing Mega 80s and the TGIO party last weekend (sadness) and scrubbed a planned site visit to Zeeland on Wednesday.
• Cigar Night. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I hosted another monthly cigar night. Tony, Rob and Brad attended. We shared Tony-supplied Gispert robustos and I made bison grass martinis. A pleasant way to unwind before Turkey Day madness, even if Tony’s intervention led to a few of the martinis being more olive than alcohol. Next event is planned for this coming Tuesday, at Chop House.
• Thanksgiving. This year’s holiday was fun … the festivities started the Friday prior, with an office potluck. My sausage jambalaya went over well — cutting back on cayenne and adding more red curry and chili powder led to a more flavorful but less intense spice profile. On Thursday, the family assembled at my mom’s house. Brian, grandma, and Sue/Robert/kids attended for a lovely meal.
• NaNoWriMo. I didn’t “win” but I learned a ton about novel-writing, and had a blast at the twice-weekly write-ins. Kudos to everyone who made it so enjoyable, especially Duane, Jennifer, Adrianne, Liz, Nicole and Mary. This year, I discovered that it’s a bad idea to try to force-fit a character story on top of a genre template. Next year, I’ll be more ready. At Duane’s suggestion, I bought a Kindle copy of Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The book is a largely unstructured and informal reflection by this popular Japanese novelist about his lifelong loves of running and writing, and how the two intertwine throughout his career. I’m up to the third chapter.
• Interface Rejections. My team at the hospital grew by one member and one huge pile of work. We are now cleaning up all the daily rejections between two of the hospital’s primary systems — the facility clinical environment, and the facility billing system. Yay us.
• Walking. I’ve driven along Butterworth Avenue often enough that I decided it was time to start exploring all the trails in Millennium Park. From the trail head near the Coke plant at Butterworth and O’Brien, I walked along the trail that hugged Butterworth, crossed the new elevated pedestrian bridge over Maynard and then skirted the lake along the park proper before looping back to the trail head by means of the Grand River path. It turned out to be a nearly 6 mile circuit — quite refreshing. I’ll have to walk (or cycle) this more often.
• TV. I don’t watch too much television, but based on Sondra’s recommendation, I watched both seasons of Better Off Ted on Netflix. The show featured a deliciously sociopathic Portia de Rossi and the suave Jay Harrington as two of the main characters. If you seek a TV show that mixes over-the-top satire with wickedly funny dialog, you’ll love this program. It’s what The Office should have been.
• Phone.  This week I managed to drop my phone into a sink full of hot soapy water. Although it took a few days to completely dry out, the HTC HD7 survived with no apparent problems. Yay. And even better — last week I received a Windows Phone upgrade that, inter alia, included a new Wi-Fi hotspot feature. Which works really well, although it is a bit of a battery drain.

All for now.

Past, Present, Future

Posted on 20 November 2011 | No responses

Feels like I’ve been living my own little version of A Christmas Carol lately. To wit:

Past. Last weekend I took the scenic route home. Drove through eastern Ottawa County, and passed by the haunts of my childhood — the beautiful river views from Lamont, the rolling farmland in Marne, the dirt roads on the periphery of northwest Grand Rapids. Cruised by the three houses in which I lived in as a child (the two on Lincoln, and one at Leonard and 14th). Interesting to see what’s changed, and what has stayed the same. Prompted fond memories of my youth, but also a reflection on what “home” means; I’ve lived in five different places in the last five years, and eight places in the last 15. That’s a lot of impermanence. Although I’m delighted with my current abode, it’s hard to find a place that feels like “home” when you move around a lot, even when you move around the same metro area.

Present. In the process of moving some task-oriented stuff from OneNote to Outlook (hooray for the new Office365 subscription, and the tight integration across desktop/laptop/WP7 devices), I noticed that I’ve made substantially more progress on some of my goals than I expected. This makes me happy. The major “hard work” part remaining is the challenge from Tony, to be prepared to appear in public in a swimsuit for the water park experience during his birthday celebration in June. Last time I was shirtless in public was, oh, September 2008, when Andrew and I decided to spend the day lazing around at Oval Beach. I have the lead time to get into the kind of physical shape I’d prefer for such an excursion. Fun part will be thinking through the upper-body program. I’ve always had a slender chest/shoulder/arm profile (when not covered in blubber) so I’m thinking that a weightlifting program may be in my future. On the bright side, the June trip provides ample opportunity to prepare.

Future. As I continue to work through my novel, it occurred to me that although it’s hard work, chunking out the aspects of novel-writing into into a series of discrete steps, with deadlines, helps to sort through the work. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to “win” NaNoWriMo this year, but I’ve learned a heck of a lot already about how to write a novel, and if I can get this MS done by the end of the year, I think I could be in good shape … to write more novels. If I could find an agent — yay. If not, I’m enjoying the craft of writing, and I think that Duane’s model of putting them up on Amazon will work, too. He gets monthly royalty checks that somtimes cross into the triple digits for some of his old, early novels.

Assorted Ruminations

Posted on 12 November 2011 | 1 response

Well. What an interesting couple of weeks it’s been. Summary commentary follows, on subjects as diverse as writing, politics, socializing and privacy. Read on, dear friends, and be enlightened.

“Society” Isn’t Responsible For Your Bad Choices

Big Al and I have engaged in several recent conversations about Occupy Wall Street, and in particular, about the nature of the main claims emanating like a vile penumbra from the protestors’ wish lists. The crux of the debate: To what extent is society responsible for the condition of people saddled with huge student loan debt and no strong employment opportunity?

Although Alaric refuses to state categorically that he thinks the protestors are totally free of moral culpability for the current condition, he does seem to argue that they aren’t solely culpable and therefore deserve a personal bailout. He asserts that the overwhelming social message that “college is the key to success” means that people really had no other choice if they wanted to be successful, and that colleges have misled many students about the value of their chosen courses of study. As best as I can tell, his position is that the social pressure to attend college mixed with bad or misleading counsel about the options available for majors means that many unemployed students were effectively sold a bill of goods. Therefore, in the interests of the macro economy, it makes sense to lighten their load and to implement reforms to prevent such from happening again.

Our debates have been lively. Although I appreciate his perspective — and do, in fact, concede that social pressure is a not-insignificant contributor to the higher ed bubble — I cannot agree that debt-laden students get a pass. For one thing, imprudence isn’t a virtue. Yes, I’m sure some people really did think that a degree in puppetry would be fulfilling — but did they bother to check the expected labor market for such a focus? Research is abundant and free, beginning with the Department of Labor public databases. As an ethics major, I realize that the only job I’m qualified for is one that requires “a degree, any degree” — no one is actively looking for someone with a B.A. in moral philosophy. I knew that going into it. I made my choices, and I have to accept my consequences. Choosing to go in willfully blind doesn’t provide a layer of insulation for when times get tough.

I get that for many people, life is challenging. I don’t think it’s society’s problem.

Evening of Cocktails and Fine Dining

Last Saturday I welcomed the opportunity to have dinner with Jon and Emilie, Tony and Jen, and Joe. We started with cocktails at Tony’s office in Lansing, then went to Copper for dinner. The meal was delightful and the company was heavenly. We had a great time and settled on the dates for the “All Things Tony” trek to The Happiest Place on Earth in early June.

Scotch Is Good for the Soul

Good Scotch whisky is proof of the existence of a benevolent God. In recent weeks, I’ve enjoyed Ardbeg 10-year (a staple of Jim Murray’s list of top whiskys) and now I’ve laid hands upon another rare bottle of Ballentine’s 17-year. Add to that a good deal on Lagavulin 16-year, and life is good.

But added to the mix: Gentleman Jack. I saw a fascinating Discovery Channel documentary on how Jack Daniel’s is made, and it impelled me to pick up a bottle. Glad I did. GJ may become my default sipping whiskey.

NaNoWriMo Is Harder Than It Looks

So I’m writing a novel. It’s harder than it looks. The goal of National Novel Writing Month is to produce a minimum of 50,000 words in the month of November. Some people have already met their goal, and bully for them. I remain stuck in the low four figures, mostly because I started late and have been planning as I go. The prose I’ve generated so far, I’m mostly happy with. And I purchased Scrivener for Windows — an all-in-one writing application for professional writers — and sync its data files with SkyDrive so I can pick up on any of my computers. So far, so good.

The “discipline thing” presents something of a self-improvement opportunity. My goal is to generate 80,000 words and shop it for sale. As a published writer of non-fiction work, I hope I have at least a tiny bit of credibility to get an agent to look twice at my submission. But if not — it doesn’t matter much. I’m enjoying the craft of writing for writing’s sake.

The fun thing about NaNoWriMo? The social aspect. There are active forums and chatrooms for local areas. The “Ottawa County – Grand Rapids” group has been a blast. I’ve done two write-ins with fellow novelists already, and will do more in the coming weeks. It’s been motivating, and fun to connect with fellow local writers. Even if Elizabeth insists on circulating a paper chat room while I try to write and even if Jennifer won’t bring me Scotch. At least Adrianne gave me chocolate because she’s a nice person.

I’m Not a Commodity: Or, Facebook+Spotify Sucks Huge Donkey Dick

Having read of the hype around Spotify, the streaming music service recently made available in the U.S., I was eager to install the app on my phone and enjoy a wide library of musical bliss. The downside? The only way you can actually register for Spotify is to log in with your Facebook account and agree to share an astonishing amount of personal information (including your name, age, location, friends, and profile details) with Spotify. There is no other way to gain access to the music service. Spotify, seemingly caught off-guard, insists that people can create dummy, empty Facebook accounts if they wish — which seems to defeat the purpose.

Long story short: I refuse. I uninstalled Spotify. And for good measure, I logged into Facebook and stripped all of my data from the service. I deleted all my photos (except a really crappy one for the profile), untagged myself from everyone else’s photos, removed all my personal profile details, and set all privacy settings to the most restrictive level. I even “unliked” almost everything I’ve liked in the history of Facebook — only a few dozen things, but still. My profile is now mostly an empty shell devoid of useful marketing data. Fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg.

Note to Big New Media: I’m a human being, not a data profile. I own my information. You don’t. I grow weary of being offered “free” apps or services only to discover later that the fine print says that you get to commodify me into a package of information that you can sell to others and that I have no say in the matter (not even to opt out or to at least curate what gets shared). I’m also out of the game of “logging in with Facebook” (or Google, or Twitter, or …) — give me the chance to log in using de-identified information, or forego me as a customer. Next up for scubbing: Google. I’m watching you, Mountain View.

State of the GOP Presidential Race

Here’s what I know. Most significantly, Rick Perry managed to disappoint me; I can forgive a bad debate performance, but not a 100 percent failure rate in debate performances. Mitt Romney really does look like the default nominee, and despite Erick Erickson’s bloviations, I think he’d be a strong contender and a solid POTUS. Notwithstanding my lack of enthusiasm for his early debate performances (where he came off arrogant and picking fights on social issues he didn’t need to wage) I think Jon Huntsman might be the best man for the job — he’s sufficiently conservative, smart, polished and experienced. Paul, Gingrich, Bachmann and Johnson should probably exit, stage right. And Herman Cain? He just needs to implode and retire from the race before too much damage is done to the GOP brand. Between the sex scandals and the implausibility of 9-9-9, the risk to Republican seriousness is high.

What a Difference A Gigabyte Makes …

Last week, I acquired for the low, low price of $44 a 2 GB memory chip for my netbook (the package also included an 8 GB micro-SD card). I installed it, booted up the machine — and it purrs like a kitten. Still not quite as fast as my full-sized laptop at home (what, with its dual-core Athlon processor and 4 GB of RAM) but the netbook is keeping up admirably with a dual-boot Win7+Fedora16 setup.

Truth be told, I think I’ve finally settled on an all-Microsoft approach to data management. My laptop, netbook and smart phone all run Microsoft OSes, and I use Windows Live SkyDrive for all my personal cloud storage. I’m increasingly centralizing information with OneNote, conveniently synchronized across all my screens. Although it’s not a perfect setup, I’m satisfied with it and am more productive than I was in the days of miscellaneous FTP syncing and random OS mixes.

… Also, a Single Settings Tweak

The only non-MS device left in my portfolio is my HP TouchPad. Granted that I acquired it at firesale prices, I find WebOS to be snappy and elegant. I was tempted to install the CyanogenMod tweak to push it to Android, but why screw around when WebOS works? The only problem I had — and it frustrated me to no end — was TouchFeeds, an RSS reader that’s simple and robust. However, it would hang the tablet on occasion and sometimes be mind-numbingly slow. Slow, to the point I wanted to chuck it at the window and grind my boots on the shards just to show it who’s boss. Funny thing, though: Simply changing the TouchFeeds setting to stop auto-mark-read-as-you-scroll completely fixed the problem. Now, I just push the “mark all read” button and it flies like a dream. Sometimes, just screwing around with settings solves problems.

Pictures on the Wall

Last weekend, I finally got around to printing 21 4-by-6 photos for the huge wall-mounted photo display I got for a steal a while back. Picking which 21 I wanted to print prompted a delightful trek down memory lane. It also reminded me of how bad of a job I do at taking pictures, despite having a 5 MP camera in my HD7. Now the display is prominenly affixed to the wall of my living room.

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