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By Jason Gillikin | February 28, 2010

This evening I turned in the keys to my apartment, having cleared it out and boxed up most of the small amount of stuff I have remaining. I am grateful to Charlie, who helped me schlep boxes.

The act of moving prompts thoughts of homes past and future.

The first real home of which I was conscious was the house on Little Brower Lake. We moved in with Ed after my mom divorced; I was in kindergarten at the time. We lived there about two years, until we bought a house on Lincoln Avenue in rural northwest Grand Rapids. We lived _there_ perhaps four years, until we built the Marne house, about a mile down the road on Lincoln. That house was “home” — I lived there from the fourth grade until well into my college years. Despite a stint in the dorms in Kalamazoo, I lived most of my life in the Marne house, just 500 feet away from my grandparents, with whom I was close.

When mom sold the house in the spring of 2003, I moved to my first apartment at Kellogg Cove in Kentwood. For the first couple of years, it was fabulous — quiet, clean, conveniently located near the Gaines Township shopping area and US-131. I lived there more than four years. Although the last year or so sucked — I had loud upstairs neighbors who were up all night — I do miss that place. It felt comfortable. I lost weight there, started karate there, and experienced other life milestones there.

After that, I spent a year and a half at my moms condo, until it sold last spring, and we moved into Apple Ridge.

I have no complaints about Apple Ridge. It was a decent place, clean and quiet. But it wasn’t my first choice. It never felt like home.

As I prepare for my next housing transition (four to six weeks here, then off to better things), it occurred to me that the “where” of a home is less important than how the place feels. Who is there with you? Who is in your life? Is “home” a place of comfort and joy and familiarity?

Domiciles come and go but homes are rarer things, a mix of person and place and time and space. Treasure them while you have them.

Topics: Personal | No Comments »

The Next Adventure

By Jason Gillikin | February 27, 2010

Tomorrow, I vacate my apartment at Apple Ridge.  I have lived there since late May. The place itself was pleasant — I enjoyed having two bedrooms, one of which served as my office, and there was a definite benefit to being located conveniently close to the essentials in Standale. Essentials like Blockbuster, Peppino’s Pizza and Meijer.

That said, it’s time to move on. Some exciting things are under development, and the next four-to-six weeks will witness some extraordinary change in the life of Jason.  This is for the good.  Sometimes it takes a “hard break” like a residential relocation to keep one motivated and moving forward, focused on goals and on the people we love.

In the interim, I’ll be shacking up with family, which has its strengths and weaknesses, but it reinforces the temporary nature of the arrangement.  Today, I’ve been shedding stuff — I sold my desk, recliner, and dinette.  I have a ton of stuff that will either be junked, or given away to scavengers.  When the move is done, I’ll have very little left, which suits me just fine.  The reduction of “stuff” is healthy and appropriate.

So, one chapter in live’s novel is closing, and a new one is about to begin. Yay!

Topics: Personal | No Comments »

Apple, Google, Microsoft

By Jason Gillikin | February 27, 2010

Some observations about the tech industry:

So:  Microsoft good, Google bad, Apple as emo adolescent.

Topics: Politics & Culture | No Comments »

Jason’s Playlist

By Jason Gillikin | February 14, 2010

This morning I was exposed to the delicious treat of listening to a pair of GVSU students talk about their favorite musical talent. What made the conversation interesting was that the female half was clearly immersed in the minutiae of genres and obscure artists, while the male half knew a few names but was far more interested at staring at the young lady’s ample and well-shaped bosom. Apparently, stumbling through a music conversation was his passport to a grand sightseeing adventure.

Their teenage exchange prompted me to reflect on my own choices in music.  In the spirit of sharing, I’m offering my list of preferred music, with commentary.  Caveat lector.

* N.B. — In general, I prefer baroque-era music (especially Bach’s organ works and similar, ornate and musically complex works) and medieval polyphony. However, since a list consisting of “Bach, J.S.” and “Anonymous 4″ doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, I’ll focus on what I like in music written since 1960.

Jason’s Playlist: Alpha by Artist

There.  Fifty-two songs spanning multiple genres.  I’m sure I’ve given my friends ample cannon fodder, but hey — I like what I like either because the melody is catchy or the lyrics resonate or the song is associated with some memory, person or event.  At the end of the day, I’d rather like music that means something to me than to like music that other people think I should like in order to be considered trendy or musically literate.

Happy listening!

Topics: Personal | No Comments »

Stupid Voters?

By Jason Gillikin | February 7, 2010

Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate that “the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large” is the chief reason that “our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year.”

Weisberg makes a point that has been echoed, more subtly, by President Obama, who has hinted that the reason voters have rejected his health initiative is because they were too dumb to figure out how they’ll benefit from it in the long run. So, in his State of the Union speech, he graciously agreed to accept his ”share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people” despite that, according to columnist Charles Krauthammer, Obama has given 29 speeches in the last year on the subject of health reform.

Indeed, there is evidence that some Democratic pollsters and activists are encouraging the White House to push ahead on the health bill despite its toxicity at the polls, on the theory that once it’s signed into law people will start to like it.

Who knows?  Perhaps the Kool-Aid drinkers are correct. After all, as Weisberg notes, Medicare was unpopular when it passed but now seniors cling to it like lawyers to an ambulance.

My current vade mecum text is On Democracyby political scientist Robert Dahl. Dahl argues that one of the five main criteria of a democracy is that the electorate be sufficiently informed, with access to solid data with which to make reasonable decisions about matters of public significance.

It is intriguing that the media — Did I fail to mention that Weisberg is the editor-in-chief of Slate? — has picked up the people-as-rubes trope and now suggest, ala New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, that the Democrats should simply force a health bill irrespective of the wishes of a public that is, in their consensus view, too uninformed and excitable to appreciate the benefits of Obama-style reform.

Blaming the voter for being too stupid to know what’s good for him is a timeworn elitist attack on democracy, but surely we have outgrown it by now. After all, the media and the Democrats have prided themselves as being something of a voice for the common man. So if the public speaks and it’s not in the voice of the elite consensus position, then golly — the people are insufficiently informed. And if more and more and more information doesn’t change their perspective — recall Obama’s 29 speeches? — then it’s simple fear or intransigence that is leading the people astray.

No, there can be no chance that the people know better than the political elite. Can there?

That’s the curious thing about Dahl’s perspective. If we concede that the value of a democracy is that citizens debate and discuss weighty public matters before registering their collective will, it should be a no-brainer that when 61 percent of the public wants Congress to drop health reform, the political classes will act accordingly.

Instead, the political classes suggest the people have debated the subject and came to the wrong conclusion, and because the conclusion was wrong, the Democrats should do what they think is best.

The question is simple: Given massive, sustained public displeasure with the specific proposals generated in the Democratic Congress, and factoring the widespread debate across the nation about health reform, should political leaders pull back and re-tool the plan, or abandon it altogether? Or should they press ahead, on the theory that they know better than the folks who elected them?

Yet Weisberg’s column is about more than just health care. Across the board, he argues, the people seem to want conflicting things. In principle they want health reform and banking reform and housing reform, yet they oppose the plans put forward by lawmakers or the Administration.

Weisberg’s eminently predictable conclusion is that the people are dumb: They don’t know what they want, so they want conflicting things simultaneously. He seems incapable of accepting another logical possibility — that the people may want a governmental fix on big-picture subjects, but reject the specific proposals advanced by a left-leaning Democratic Congress and a left-leaning Democratic President.

Is it possible that a center-right electorate wants specific policy proposals that reflect a center-right mentality, instead of solutions arising from left-wing ideology?

Perhaps the public wants health-insurance reform, but not a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. Perhaps the public wants banking reform, but not massive TARP bailouts. Perhaps Americans want the Detroit automakers to be successful, but not be subsumed into the Executive Office of the President.

Public discourse is not advanced when thought leaders like Weisberg and Krugman and Obama act as if disagreements with their specific policy positions are tantamount to ignorance.

Perhaps the issue isn’t that the voters are stupid. Perhaps, instead, the voters simply prefer different and less ideological solutions to America’s pressing problems than those favored by Weisberg and his ideological compatriots.

Topics: Politics & Culture | 1 Comment »

Hither and Yon

By Jason Gillikin | February 6, 2010

This month marks the fourth anniversary of the current incarnation of A Mild Voice of Reason. In that time, I have accumulated 255 posts, 165 legitimate comments, and 4,832 spam comments rejected automatically by Akismet. This translates to 64 posts per year, or 1.2 posts per week. Not bad for a project that spans 40 percent of a decade.

A few recent developments:

  1. I’ll be moving again at the end of the month. Not sure where I will be on March 1, although I have a good sense of where I will end up in the long run. My current apartment was a joint lease between me and my mother, and now that lease has terminated.
  2. Ryan, Jess and the kids are in Bay City. Jess experienced two deaths in her family in January (for which she has my sincere condolences), and one of the funerals was yesterday. Other than that, things are good. The kids are happy, healthy and strong. Ryan is doing really well; he has recently gotten back into doing some architectural drawings again.
  3. I’ve had a little bit of social interaction this week. Had a quick cup of coffee with Alejandro this past week, and yesterday I went to dinner (Palace of India) and drinks (Mangiamo!) with Stacie and Charlie. That was fun.
  4. I continue to recover since beginning Vitamin D supplements two months ago. Amazing how something as trivial-sounding as a vitamin deficiency can so thoroughly kick one’s buttocks. Next step: Re-regulating my weight, which spiked in the last few months of 2009. Need to drop about 30 lbs. to return to relative normalcy.
  5. The hospital front continues to fascinate. We hired a new person who started the Monday before last. Verdict is still out on how well the Informatics team is going to coalesce.
  6. I continue to do my Demand Studios writing. I recently crossed the “300 articles” mark, which is cool. At $15 per article, this has turned into a pleasant source of secondary revenue.

All for now.

Topics: Personal | No Comments »

January, My Arch Nemesis

By Jason Gillikin | January 23, 2010

A few items of interest –

For the most part, things have been fairly quiet and routine over the last three weeks.  February, however, promises to be much more interesting.  Stay tuned.

Topics: Personal | No Comments »

Why I Bother, 2010 Edition

By Jason Gillikin | January 3, 2010

A few reflections to inaugurate 2010:

The Fullness of Life

The measure of a man is best assessed in the sincerity of his struggle to realize his natural potential. For me, this potential is rooted in the development of authentic wisdom, obtained through the joyful pursuit of diverse experiences, meaningful relationships, and new ideas.

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.

Key Strategies

  1. Reduce consumption.
  2. Cultivate serenity.
  3. Nurture relationships.
  4. Exhibit insatiable curiosity.

Why Bother?

“See everything, overlook much, change what you can.”
+John XXIII

“The Road goes ever on and on/Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,/And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,/Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet./And whither then? I cannot say.”
+ J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit

Roadmap for 2010

The path to excellence begins with a single step.

Topics: Personal | No Comments »

Political Evolution

By Jason Gillikin | January 2, 2010

Once upon a time, in the far-away land of Grand Rapids, there was a young man who decided to distinguish himself from his peers by articulating a full-throated, aggressive conservatism in a social space permeated with superficial left-wing dogma. This young man internalized his conservatism, turning it into a badge of honor; he felt at ease with its hard-headed pragmatism and rejoiced in its elevation of individual merit.

As time passed, the young man became so identified with his ideology that he became something of a foil from central casting, the Alex P. Keaton in a room full of Phish groupies, to the point that his persona, during his college years, became irrevocably intertwined with the public perception of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

Yet all was not right in Grand Rapids.  Our hero, far from being personally content as a political malcontent, instead grew increasingly cynical about the political process. The lucid conservatism with which he found succor through the pages of National Review and First Things was transformed without his consent into a semi-coherent ”compassionate conservatism,” and he found himself defending, with diminishing zeal, the ineptness of a President who just couldn’t seem to marshal the competence to match his conviction.

By the time yet another national election cycle came around, the young man found himself utterly disconnected, even after the brief puff of excitement following the Palin announcement. No, not only were the Party and the Movement different, but so was he; an ideologue, no more.

II

My journey from educated-but-unreflective ideologue to something more nuanced has been a long, painful process. The first trickle started after Hurricane Katrina; the “heckuva job, Brownie” nonsense mixed with ongoing stupidity at the TSA and the obvious excesses of the K-Street GOP did not sit well. Although my faith in theoretical conservative beliefs did not waver, my hope that conservatives ascendant would be an unmitigated force for good, did. In early 2006, I started to share in the sense of doom about the mid-terms, and after that, my heart wasn’t really in it.

The fact that Mike Huckabee could be a contender for the GOP nomination that John McCain eventually won, left me listless and politically cranky. The enthusiasm of the Left over Barack Obama and the 2006 elections suggested that perhaps conservatism flourished best when it was in the wilderness, serving as a counterweight that may occasionally stymie the Left but which was simply not capable of governing in its own right.

Yet Obama, and particularly the Pelosi/Reid team, have moved in disconcerting directions. Going wobbly over Gitmo, treating the underpants bomber as a law-enforcement issue, forcing the Porkulus bill, ram-roding a horrid health-reform bill, advocating cap-and-trade — all of it, based less on sound science and prudent economics than on the cynical desire to placate a hungry activist base.

This has renewed my political interest, yet I am no longer able to claim the role of the unreflexive GOP apologist.

Partly this is because of my stands on the issues, which I had to hone without substantial regard to the “party line.”  This has led me to an economic neoliberalism, marked by fiscal restraint, low taxes, low regulation and more privatization, low national debt, and free trade.  In defense and foreign affairs, I support maintaining a large military and using it to aggressively defend American interests abroad, and to end widespread human-rights abuses (e.g., genocide), something on the Dick Cheney model. On most domestic social policy, I now trend libertarian, even though I oppose abortion in all instances and would prefer that innovations like gay marriage wait for widespread social acceptance instead of mere judicial fiat.

Accordingly, I now consider myself a center-right Republican. Most social issues don’t resonate with me like they used to, although I remain a very strong proponent of fiscal restraint and aggressive prosecution of the war on terror. Furthermore, I am much less likely to pull the GOP lever in the ballot box by default; I’d vote for a competent, centrist Democrat (like Bart Stupak) over a bomb-throwing radical (like Michele Bachmann) on any first Tuesday in November.

III

From this new vantage point, a few observations emerge with greater clarity.

  1. Not for naught is Peggy Noonan growing on me. Her columns of late continue to address the erosion of civil discourse in the body politic. The Left and the Right, it seems, aren’t even bothering to shout over each other anymore; now, they talk only to their true believers. Those in the middle who could be persuaded have very little recourse to reasoned debate. Those on the fringes are engaged in discrediting their opponents in any possible way. This does not bode well for the nation; America as a two-party environment needs to have a certain amount of social lubrication to keep those two wheels spinning at least on the same axle. The “Climategate” story is an excellent case-in-point: Fudged climate data could have been a teaching moment for climate-change proponents and skeptics alike, but instead it turned into something akin to an early Soviet party congress in Copenhagen, with a deluge of dogmas and denunciations substituting for meaningful debate.
  2. The Democrats are playing a dangerous game by utterly ignoring the will of the middle (which by ungodly proportions is opposed to Obama’s signature issues of health reform and cap-and-trade) to impose a solution written by the fringe Left. The arrogance of this imposition upon the electorate is breathtaking, and it will not redound to the Democrats’ good eleven months hence, nor to the good of the future generations that must pay the bill for this package of reckless spending.
  3. The Republicans have gotten lucky by being irrelevant, yet they still seem incapable of providing a unified and coherent alternative to myriad issues that could earn them genuine goodwill and respect. This is the perfect time to build a solid case for a responsible, pro-freedom policy alternative, but little comes back except “No.” A golden opportunity, wasted.
  4. The last year should put the nail in the coffin of the idea that media figures are unbiased. Look no further than Anderson Cooper’s “teabaggers” nonsense, or the resurrection of Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” strategy with regard to Climategate, for proof.
  5. The people most affected by the big-picture political struggles of the day are the people least likely to be tracking these issues with diligence. How many 20-somethings who don’t really care about health insurance are really aware that in just a few years, they may face steep penalties for going without? How many 13-year-olds realize that their goal of serving in the military may well result in a tour in Afghanistan? How many senior citizens understand the impetus to rationing that underpins the Senate health bill? And where are the mediating organizations that should help keep the average citizen informed, with utmost objectivity, about policy changes?

Some commentators, including Noonan, have suggested that the 2000s were a “decade of disillusionment.” Perhaps this is so, but it need not be a self-fulfilling prophecy. At some point, the cooler, wiser, more moderate heads must prevail. They must be open to some change, but perhaps not a restructuring of the country. They must be willing to talk, but not to encourage the sloganeering and invective of the fringes. Most importantly, they must have the courage to run and win elections, thereby bringing a sense of balance back to the national debate, a framework of fairness that has been missing for a few years.

Political evolution is hard work. It takes real courage to set aside the talking points and the knee-jerk ideology that accompany a sociopolitical movement, and instead find wisdom along the path less traveled.

Hard work. But necessary.

Topics: Philosophy, Politics & Culture | 3 Comments »

Cleansing

By Jason Gillikin | January 1, 2010

Interesting way to start the new year – I deleted eight of 14 email addresses, and got rid of all but five IM accounts. Most of these were holdovers from my sim days, or from when I was concerned about anonymity during my wilder “dating” days. No need to keep them around any longer.

All that remain, in terms of email, are my personal email, three work addresses, and Hotmail and Gmail addresses. For IM, I have one AIM, two Yahoo, an MSN, and a Google Talk screen name.

Much cleaner.

And on top of it, I finally bit the bullet and leased space on an Exchange server with BES so I can keep everything synchronized between Outlook, a Web client, and my Blackberry. No more trying in vain to force Outlook 2010 beta (x64) to connect to Horde.

Topics: Personal | No Comments »


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