When Latin Ruled The World

A blimp of a change, the inclusion of other language character sets for addresses/destinations in virtual space on electronic computing systems. Can you convert your keyboard quickly enough to jump between domains? Can you read what you're typing? Can we stay connected with one another despite language barriers?

I watched the blades of a ceiling fan for hours in the dark hours of the early morning, patterns emerging and disappearing, looking at tangents, seeing the near perfect circle drawn in the air, rapidly blinking my eyelids to see snapshots of the fan in motion. I heard the pattern, the pitter-patter, of words in my thoughts. I couldn't believe I used the phrase "inner being" in a recent blog post.

I got up and wrote in my pocket moleskine:

What bothers me about the business of education, the business of healthcare, the business of business, for that matter, and our seeing life in terms of economic conditions like democratic capitalism or communist socialism (or is it socialist communism? I can never remember) is this:

Life is not working for a living. Life is getting paid to learn, to earn our way to self-actualisation, market viability of our inviolable right to live.

Are we looking at the wrong paradigm for educating ourselves? Should children be taught problem solving skills from the very beginning, encouraging them to seek out alphabets and number systems through cooperation with each other to figure out how to give/get food, clothing, shelter and other social goods/services?

I happily stared at the ceiling fan thinking about this. I have thought about this issue for many years, especially as a person managing others in an office work environment or as a worker in the sewer business. As a person making lunch at Taco Bell, looking at the adults beside me and asking, "Is this what 12 years of public education gives back to society?"

We separate ourselves into age categories for many reasons. Pediatrics. Geriatrics. However, learning is a lifelong process. Should we have mandatory mass education for people of a certain age anymore? Should we develop a new system of learning, where the student and the teacher are the same, on the job and in the classroom at the same time, solving problems and managing projects with others regardless of age?

Alternative education is a hot topic right now as many public schools face the issues of failing to provide sustainable skills to youth. As a person who grew up in the public school system, whose family was/is/will be intimately involved in the public education process, I wonder what increased value I would have received had society used a different model to turn me into a useful interdependent being.

I look at the teachers who meant the most to me and remember them for their encouragement to see life outside the textbook and classroom.

I look at the friends with whom I congregated and realize we tend to gather in herds of like personalities. The teachers/administrators/coaches who encouraged us to socialize outside our herds were the ones who impressed me most.

I recently decided to leave my role as an instructor in the adult education system as exemplified by the for-profit model I worked for because I believe that education is integral to the workplace. I always paid my employees to learn on the job, using cross-training to encourage my employees to learn what their coworkers were doing. People shouldn't pay to get an education. We should pay people to solve problems and guide them, education being part of the solution, not part of their problem repaying debt.

I ought to know. I learned just as much, if not more, spending time with my friends experimenting with breadboards and diodes and homemade power supplies in our basements and bedrooms than I did in formal education settings. I learned more about my physical capabilities playing street ball and backyard football than in little leagues. I was a Vikings, Dolphins, Redskins, Falcons, Cubs, Reds, Braves, Hawks and Volunteers fan long before I knew about dangling modifiers or differential equations. I read Mad magazine as much as I read classical literature. I fought with my friends and verbally sparred with adults.

I have more to think about this education situation as faced by developed nations and developing nations. I believe it's tied to healthcare. Essentially any universal service, those which we consider the rights of our species, should be integral to what we do everyday. Physical and mental training is who we are.

No solution is perfect. The solutions we have do good jobs. I know that business concepts like process improvement are no panacea but they provide examples with which to soak in a pot of spaghetti noodles, pull out and throw at the dartboard to see if they stick to the bullseye. Mixed metaphors are useful sometimes, too.

More as the film develops color distortions in the rusting canister. I want to stew on what matters to me most, building a team of people who thrive on constant learning, no matter what their innate capabilities may be. Nothing in life is guaranteed. I want people around me who want more than an insurance policy to protect them from catastrophe - I want people who find solutions to problems before they exist.

Going Pains

How connected do you feel to your surroundings? According to the ol' seven effects of habitual people, we go through three stages - dependence, independence and interdependence. Makes me think of Depends. Which takes me to the adverts which point out men's need to release bladder contents on frequent occasions. Do any of you find yourself desiring to pee more often after seeing those actors looking for the nearest toilette?

Speaking of affective habits, are you a leader, a coach, a mentor, a manager, a supervisor, a parent, an innovator, an inventor, or a visionary?

Do you encourage people to overcome adversity or do you throw obstacles in people's way? Do you try to accomplish one with the other?

I have one life to live here on this planet with you. I don't have time to waste on timewasters or busy work. I don't like assigning homework for homework's sake or officework to fill empty spaces in a schedule. I look at another person and ask myself what it takes to improve that person's interaction with me and/or others. Then, and only then, do I decide as the person in charge how to address the use of time between us.

Do I know what's best for us? No. Do I make wild guesses sometimes? No. I make wild guesses most of the time. But I base my guesses on what I deem to be beneficial for us.

Leadership is easy. You put yourself on a pedestal to see what's going on and then put everyone on a higher pedestal than you. You lead for their sakes, not yours, but you don't put your life aside. You lead for the whole group, including yourself. There's time for every individual to make valuable input in the workplace, sports team, group of friends, family, crowd, political gathering, you name it.

And sometimes, you decide to walk away from the situation. You realize you are not the leader the group needs to succeed. You put your personality aside and say you will lead a team to victory somewhere else. A decision easier said than done. I know. I've only done it two or three times in my life and it hurt my pride every time.

We're influenced by adverts subliminally. We catch ourselves going to the toilet two or three times in the middle of the night when we don't have the urge or don't need to simply because our thoughts are looking for similarity and found a connection to actors portraying bladder control problems. When leading a team, we influence our teams subliminally. Sometimes, unspoken thoughts circulate and influence a team when we're not paying attention. A leader spends time paying attention to the unspoken thoughts and deciding where the subliminal influence needs to be applied for team success. Do you see the equivalent of team behaviour linked to adverts over which you have no control? Leaders in the emotional realm - religion or industrial psychology, for instance - use external influences all the time. They deliberately tie social trends into their work. Great leaders in any field do the same.

Am I great leader? I've had moments, flashes, of greatness but I'm not completely interdependent. Often, I see the independent self in the wonders of the universe and believe I am alone in my beliefs. When I realize I am not alone in my beliefs, I feel a great understanding of interdependence and then share that understanding with and between others, sometimes when I'm leading, sometimes when I'm neither leading nor following.

This blog is my outreach of understanding my interdependence with my species. Some days I don't feel like typing here but most days I feel an overwhelming desire to share myself and what I've learned from others with you. Of course, we're all the same way. That's why we create blogs, buy portable media devices and lose track of time on social networking websites.

You see what I'm saying? We all have the potential to be great leaders. The best way to get there is to not see yourself as a leader or as great. See yourself as yourself responsible to yourself in others.

Every past was a future. Every solution was a problem. Every leader was a inquisitive baby wetting its clothes. We all influence someone and someone influences us.

Speaking of which, the squirrels and chipmunks roaming the forest floor are making me hungry. Time for lunch! Talk to you great leaders later on.

A Tree or an Obelisk?

Today, I sit in my place of sanctuary, my temple, my meditation center, my moment to be me and not me. The floor beneath my feet smooth concrete. The window onto the world an open, double-width garage door. Ambient temperature near 20 deg C.

Dozens of trees in near view. Hundreds behind those. I am not a painter so the colour of the landscape takes the form of leaves and branches and trunks and vines and pieces and parts built by my species.

Deciduous trees pulling back into themselves for winter, their suncatchers sealing off at the base, losing their breath, their purpose changing, waving at me one more time before their trip in the fall.

Am I a tree or an obelisk? Do I sway with the wind but hold my place because of strong roots, or do I hold my position because of massive weight and size, rootless?

Metaphors and similes. Which is more athletic? Which is more academic? Can I run faster or push you over? You know what I'm saying.

The grass is in the ground because of the tree overhead. The rotting tree feeds both and doesn't know it doesn't exist.

If ten generations of chickadees have fed at my feeders and I don't feed the eleventh, why does the twelfth stop by and ask for food? Are feeders a universal chickadee food sign?

My friend, the maple tree, stands next to the dead cedar tree, perpendicular to the ground and straight as a compass needle. North is not important but the Earth's core is. Maybe. I think. At least that's what I've been told.

I've never heard a tree laugh. But I've seen a satisfied one. "Ooh! Aah! Feel the sun heat my fluids. Grow leaves, grow!" A sugar maple I could tap and boil its fluids for sweet syrup to pour over breakfast foods or dessert. But I don't. I let it and the wisteria have their twisted relationship on the edge of the suburban forest.

Whispering oaks loom over us all. The mimosa sneaks into a lit corner and displays the last of its clawlike leaves.

These trees are under my protection. I choose to let them be, having trimmed a few branches to keep them from scraping my car but otherwise letting them grow as high as they please. Do they care? Of course not. When a strong enough wind blows, many of these trees would crash down on my car, my house, my driveway, my gate to the backyard garden. They would not uproot and run away from all this to protect me. In the meantime, their shade in summer keeps my house cool. Their leaves in winter provide food for grass and cover for squirrel food. Birds use their branches to find seeds and grubs and hide from predators. An equal bargain? Perhaps. But we don't keep count.

And what of the obelisk in which I sit? What makes this edifice of sticks and nails sit in place, impervious to breezes and thunderstorms? A solid base? Hardly. The ground beneath us shifts and moves, its idea of time different than mine.

If I am not the trees in front of me or the obelisk around me, what am I?

I am these questions. I am the space between the trees and the obelisk. I am the breath of the trees and the meaning to this obelisk. I am filler. I am paste. I am action. I am noise. I am what they are and what they are not.

We say that time slows down in a garden but the leaves here are constantly moving, measurable down to nano- and pico-scales if we choose. We mean the plants in front of us are not a group of people whose faces and actions we scan at a people pace. I can yell at a tree and it won't be offended but I can't ask a tree for immediate help in an emergency. I can climb its branches or chop it up for firewood.

This obelisk is made of trees in its framework and skin so trees braced together form an obelisk.

I find myself by my place in the environment around me. At times, I prefer the environment of people; at times, I prefer the environment of trees. Trees may be obelisks and obelisks may be people but trees can't be people but people and trees can give each other breath and life.

I live in this time. I live nowhere else. I live with the trees and the people. We measure time in different ways - sunshine, seasons, calendars, clocks. We eat and we feed. We live and we die. We are. We be. Timeless and well-placed.

The Latest of the Early Wearable Computing Years

Early happy b'day to Mark M. I was more of a Rypien fan myself but without you Rypien would have been Capitol carpet, eh? A connection via Riggs was one factor in keeping up with you guys, not to mention the Honorable Heath.

While new players get circulation systems for their outfits and communications devices in their headgear, we get HUDs in other uniforms for those with more firepower. What's next?

In an old copy of "Heavy Metal" magazine, a comic detailed the firefight between two infantry divisions. Hard-fought battle. At the end, a soldier removes his exoskeletal gear and looks at the gear of his opponent, discovering his opponent is completely robotic. That '80s era scifi foretold today. What tells us of tomorrow?

What will semi-pro (i.e., college) and pro players wear on the fields of battle? When will robotic body parts become normal, like the videogames of old when robotic football players faced each other on their wheeled parts? Will players see their routes on HUDs, removing the confusion in huddles of loud stadiums? Will player body stats get displayed on trainers' laptop screens? Will nanoscale drug capsules get released when pain relief or adrenaline doses are needed? Will smart padding absorb and spread contact pressure, preventing concussions and broken bones?

Will football fields become electronically active and track the 3D position of footballs? Will players and balls be able to switch between live slo-mo and accelerated action? Will 3D advert placement become part of every piece of the field, including players, refs, yard markers, coaches, field goals, etc., like wearable electronic art?

Will fans get to have football helmet cams to track like NASCAR car cams, following their favorite players on iPhones during the game, with pay per view allowing expletives and body slamming to be heard in 7.1 sound?

Will players work with their agents to franchise their images for robotic leagues? Multiple Peyton Mannings at quarterback? Adrian Peterson at RB? Mean Joe Green coming back from "retirement"? Reggie White coming back from the dead?

Semi-pro (sorry, college) players will share the rights of their robotic images with their teams, trading revenue for college credits in such classes as "Branding Entrepreneurship" and "Image Capitalisation." Fans can take the robotic role of their favorite players during off weekends, filling stadiums many times during the year, not just for home games, playing anybody from any year against the other team's mix of players and eras, in the FRC (Football Robotic Championship level, of course). DARPA will use information from these college/university performances to tweak their robotic fighting forces, a version of Robocop just a hard metal step around the corner.

Bookmakers learn the names and capabilities of FRC design engineering students and professors just like college football players today. They track the professional careers of robot designers. New revenue streams appear in the hacking of robot players to fix games.

And that's when terrorists will take over Antarctica, using clandestine robotic units to set up robot factories, training camps and synthetic drug manufacturing facilities where few will tread. Submarines to transport e-army units and drug shipments around the planet (submarines disguised as whales, of course, taking down both Japanese whaling vessels and Greenpeace ships that get in their path).

The future is a fun place to play. Anything is possible. Some things appear just as predicted. Surprises surface and steer the future in a whole new direction.

Too bad the Hokies ran out of gas. I don't want to see another opponent's field goals for a while! Night, y'all. More international info on the morrow. A big hint. While the news focuses on "Muslim extremists" (if that's not profiling/stereotyping/hate crime material, what is?), I look at cartels for more interesting futures. Power is not in being seen, it's being invisible that gets you into places nobody's looking. Once you're in, nobody's paying attention because you're one of them/us. After that? Just because someone's no longer demonising you doesn't mean you've stopped reciting history to yourself and your cohorts. You can draw the rest of the picture by now, right? No? Like I said, later on, dude.

Yet More Stuff Again

Good to see solar power and smart power grids get a boost by the U.S. president. Has someone asked the guys in cowboy hats what they were there for?

On the other side of the pond, two bits of news:

1. Finland ranked most prosperous country
2. Work too hard for most

What price prosperity, eh? Maybe it helps to get someone to financially help share the load.

Titleless

[Now that I'm calmed down, I can rest for a bit and think about someone else's issues for a change.]

A student of mine mentioned that she always starts the term feeling prepared and organized but quickly falls into disrepair and gets behind in her assignments.

I know how she feels. During the 21 years of my struggles to overcome self-deprecation and situational depression to finally complete a bachelor's degree, I told myself every quarter/semester that this was the term I was going to take my studies seriously and get a good grade.

Do I have some philosophical insight to provide the student? Not really. I wouldn't suggest the path I took to discover that it's when you figure out who you are and thus the major line of reasoning and studying that gets you excited to attend class and master the subject after you've spent countless hours and years of in-class sitting and twindling your pen, not to forget the thousands of dollars invested to discover your inner being...

I am an example of myself to myself as far back as I can remember. I want to see independence in a person but not true independence, just the demonstration of independence in thought as built around the zeitgeist. Done. I want to see freedom from worrying about having money, not the freedom of having lots of money to spend. Done. I want to say I took the use of my environment into consideration when consuming goods and services but not be a total hermit in the woods. Done.

I entered university without knowing what I wanted to do in life. I spent the next 21 years taking a variety of classes, building up my knowledge of the knowledge in books and lectures and labs and teachers' thoughts to see that a university-level education is whatever you want to make of it. For me, it has always been about the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake that can be turned into these words. The acquisition of a better job or position in life was never my goal, only my perception of what others thought my goal of an education should be. I value the quality of one scoop of fresh ice cream, not a basement full of 80 different flavours to choose from.

I have no sage wisdom in me. I acknowledge that fact. I have the accumulation of knowledge that bounces around in my thoughts and gets bounced off the people around me, many times used to the benefit of others and the detriment of, or noneffect on, me.

I am teaching my last class at the local technical institute. I have given the students I met all that I know. I have shared my thoughts, my knowledge, my love of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, my pursuit of cheap technical gadgets and a basic understanding of the class subject. Did I know all there was to know about the subject? Never. Did I inspire all my students? No. But that's real life. We reach out and affect/effect some we meant to and many that we didn't.

What can I tell my students who have trouble focusing on their classwork? Look at the big picture. Is it just this class that you're having difficulty with? Is it the teacher/instructor/professor? Is it your major course of study? Your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/child/grandchild? Don't expect to see a clear answer standing out. The solution may be fuzzy. Life is not a series of Yes/No, True/False and multiple choice answers. You have to experiment sometimes to see what is the best answer for the time and place.

A school diploma will open doors for you but you are not your diploma. You may discover who you are before, during or after you receive your diploma. In fact, you'll discover multiple versions of yourself as you go along.

Despite all the distractions that seem so important to you, you are the only coursework, the only project that matters. The class you're taking is part of who you are in the moment. If you understand that, you'll see how unimportant the distractions are. If not, you'll let the distractions get the better part of you. It's no secret. It's what you learned in the crib when you cried for food and your parent(s) were distracted by something temporarily more important than you. We learned to cry ourselves to sleep and we learn to study on our own. It's not hard work. It's just what we learn to do as long as we're open to learning and open to new opportunities. I paid a price of a couple of hundred school credit hours to learn that lesson. I 'ope you don't 'ave to.

Lost In Allemagne

Mad, Hopeful, Dazed, Depressed, Contented, Ashamed, Famished, Cranky, Stressed. The many moods of mes chats mâles.

A day of contemplating life through another's eyes.

Meanwhile, on the battlefront...

David McWilliams: Rich get richer as rest of us pay for their mistakes

Kierkegaard on the Couch

The Mismeasure of Woman

= & =

A day of contemplating nothing and nothingness, happiness a stranger in a strange land somewhere. What's the point of using ASCII or binary if the text won't type itself since today's not a day for one to be typing one's thoughts? :^(

The recession over and less than 90 percent of the people fully employed. Should the remaining folks jump for joy? Best be quiet, eh? Guess I should be a good bloke and eat me fish and chips and drink me draught. Daft, I say. Here's my fully Monty to those who put us in this mess, guilty and charged up. Maybe there's something numbing on the telly to take my mind off me. A couple of mouse hunters my companions for the day.

Link O' The Day

What do we do with what we know and how do we apply resources effectively?:

http://www.good.is/post/how-might-we-measure-what%e2%80%99s-most-meaningful/

Clinical Chill

When writing the types of stories I write, I look at the junction of wordplay and madness. Deep in the bowels of the bowels, bacteria gather to feed on our discarded youth. In the bacteria gather other goodies.

Condensed versions of what matters.

In the meantime, small rubber cylinders spin incessantly, grinding rock upon rock in hopes of creating polished gifts to give out at the end of the year, the muddy goop poured off the front deck onto the roots of azaleas which may or may not add colour beneath the redbud tree in spring.

Bach concertos on earpieces.

When in class at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in the early 1980s, I listened to a professor discuss the issues of death and dying, the majority of my classmates nurses who dealt with the elderly or terminally ill. I the oddity. I the curious. I obsessed with mortality in my second decade of hesitating, halting living writing. A comment from the teacher: "Those who've thought about self have thought about self's death. Those who step into the abyss find desire to go back, some taking the permanent route. Some put off self's death until their 50s, waiting for something stronger than the abyss to keep them on this side." Studied Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and other authors. Don't go into the light, etc., because the light's not real, just the decrease of oxygen to body parts, including the aerobic bacteria fending off the anaerobic bacteria in our guts.

A year before our 30th.

Within a calendar year, two secondary schoolmates have taken their lives from the rest of us. Snuffed. Eliminated. Subtracted. Of my ~477 classmates, how many others have ended their lives with their own means?

Depression in a depression.

Or a recession. Words have no meaning except when you're facing yourself in a mirror asking why, why, why. Where are the answers? Reactive reagents. Organic or inorganic chemistry. Beakers. Stopcocks. Microscales. Notebooks.

I know that mirror. I've stared at my face looking for answers. Whose face am I? My long-lost grandfather? My parents? My...what? Temper tantrums as a child. Red hair. Scandinavian rage. Scandals. Scandalise. Vandalise. Valise. Valet. Anger and nowhere to release because no one upon whom berserkers should attack.

I know the questions. When will it end? What's the point? Why bother? What's the difference? We all know them. We've asked them or asked them of others.

Alone but not lonely. Lonely but not alone. Any time, any place. All the time. No place. With or without words. Chemicals pumping through our bodies, driving us insane. Artificial chemicals - drugs - a plaster mask over a crumbling wall. The abyss, known or unknown, desired beyond rational responsible logical 40238tmnF)$MDS_$

Meaningless meaningful mean meanings means

Can...not...wait...five...more...minutes...of...life...

Two-stepping, two-timing or twelve steps. Don't give a damn. It's just another fucking minute on this planet that can do without me.

And never at a convenient time. Pounding headaches. Unbearable silence. Screaming without mercy. Can hell be any worse?

These moments curl around us like a boa constrictor that hasn't eaten in a month. We're but little mice in the vice.

If this is madness, where's the line that divides us from genius? Why can't we choose? Why be normal if the cycle's going to hit the mountain trail and sling mud and rocks into our sore spots over and over and over and send red rover to simple simon's clotheslined the pieman and got the cobbler nailing the little old lady in the shoe?

Where are the signs that help others help those who think that help is forever out of reach?

I lost two classmates recently, both who took their lives. They thought what they thought and did what they did because of who they were. In my stories, I see the reflection of those with whom I've spent my life. My life is not yet spent. I still have breath. Where in my stories are my classmates whose lives are spent? What can I learn? What have my characters learned? Is there a lesson in what we call clinical depression, bipolar personalities, or other mental twists and turns that make normalcy a bad joke we never get? I don't know. I have a normal life. I have normal friends and normal family. Of course, normality is a statistical mean to which none of us wholly belongs, according to John Weightman.

Statistics. Sadistics. Permutations. Connotations. Mathematics for masochists.

Today, I am sad. Happiness will have to wait its turn tomorrow. I miss my dead classmates. I miss my fellow secondary schoolmates who are still alive. In the depths of our depressions - real, imagined, temporary or permanent - we miss ourselves, too. A good comforting thought or relief valve of a funny joke is out of my sight right now. I am p-p-p-pefdurhitdaqwty perplexed.

We cannot solve the world's problems by ourselves. It takes time and effort to see what's really going on. We may never figure out what's wrong with ourselves but we move forward and try anyway. Trial and error. Fall down and get back up. Two steps forward and one step back. No, it's not easy. No, it's not hard. It is what it is. Some of us will choose to kill ourselves and there's nothing we can do to stop the action. From another galaxy, I can't see if that's what we should expect of a growing population of one species getting more and more crowded but that's what population studies show. Murder, violence, depression, suicide. The other side of longer lifespans and healthier birthrates on less and less arable land.

I like to write. What I write is not always what I like. I don't like this blog entry but it's one I want to write down and observe. I have met the clinically depressed. I have met schizophrenics, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive and manic-depressive types. I have met the disenfranchised and the despondents. I have met those who feel they have no hope left. Drug addicts. Suicidal loners. People who've found a way to live despite their desire to die. All of us alive, breathing, kicking and screaming our way through the next minute, five minutes, hour, morning, afternoon, evening, night, day, week, month, year...

Every moment is not a blessing. Every moment is not happiness, joy, peace and quiet. Every moment is whatever we do to get through the moment.

Can we get through the moment? We just did. We will again right after this next one. Can we save our schoolmates, coworkers, family and friends from killing themselves? We hope so. We may not be able to. In the moment when we lose one or more, we face ourselves and what we feel we might have done. Why? What if...? The answers never appear. Or do they? We're left with ourselves. You see, that's the answer, don't you? We're left with ourselves. We're the ones who go forward with each other, looking at the remaining questions to be answered and working together for solutions.

No matter the reason or what we believe, every body dies. We had our lives and lived them, no matter how short or long. We interacted with those around us the best way our bodies could, good or bad.

The past few days, I've tried to maintain a happy demeanor but I've been sad. The older I get, the more I become a sympathetic old fool. I lost a classmate to suicide and there's not a thing I could have done to stop her. Her life was hers to do with as she chose. I want to blame the knuckleheads who created this economic downturn but I know that's just the Viking in me who wants some bloodletting to feel better. I want to grab someone by the collar and punch as hard as I can but who's at cause? Too many chemical-laden instant meals? Too much breathing industrial pollution? Clinical depression is a disease beyond my comprehension, a label I know little about.

One less person in the world. One less smile. One less tear. One less hug.

Tomorrow's another day. Tonight's a long time, sleep far away. I don't have enough arms, smiles or soothing words to reach out to all my classmates at once and tell them they're more important than anyone else in the world. If you can read this, whoever you are, I love you. You are important to me. I need you more than you can possibly imagine. I don't care what you look like or what you think. We may be worlds apart in thought but we're brother and sister in fact. Look in the mirror and imagine someone(s) beside you or behind you smiling at you smiling back at them.

Some moments are tough to handle by ourselves. If nothing else, the Internet's here to help us see we're not alone. We can share our problems anonymously, if we have to, to find creative solutions from online strangers when we feel we can't turn to immediate friends and family.

I wish you a good night, my friends. Here is my virtual handshake or reassuring pat on the back. You'll have to pardon my emotional outburst here. I'll get back to my humourous ways soon enough. I want to feel every emotion, even sadness and depression, when the moment for one arrives. Why else live? Why not live? There's always tomorrow. Procrastination is a good thing!

The Spirit and Influence of Giving

Two movies yesterday - "Mon Oncle D'Amerique" and "Race to Witch Mountain." Two generations of moviemakers, multiple movie generations between the release of the movies. Messages and culture markers. Theories. Entertainment.

On this part of the planet, a dose of water falling from the sky.

Tithes and offerings. Forced offerings/sacrifices via government taxes and income redistribution.

We have one voice, one life, one moment.

I see this moment a thousand years from now, when our time is reduced to a few sentences that summarize the general mood and outcome of this century. My thoughts will be long forgotten, these words paved over by a million million blogs and whatever else comes next, including brain-to-brain synapse/thought sharing, people having mosh pit sessions of thought bashing, smashing, ripping into each other's brainwaves at raves and virtual jam sessions. Cutups for cutups.

I forget how time filters out noise. I forget how noise filters out time. I forget I can take a timeout from all this and be noise-free.

Owning the Book of the Future, I already know where these words fit into the scheme of this century, no scheming involved, just a flow of symbols temporarily taking up space in a computer storage system somewhere I don't know, one keyclick away from being deleted forever, assuming places like archive.org don't archive these words.

And then what happens?

A thousand years in the future. A simple statement. A few words. Lives upon lives leading to more lives and yet? Yeti? SETI? Our imaginations running away from us. Discovering aesthetics is not universal. Real life is being integrated into the planets we're on, not separated from them.

I want to believe I'm singular. But I've been taught to believe I want to believe I'm singular, which makes me part of the plural, which wants to believe it's plural when it's really singular, part of the whole one.

I won't live to see one thousand years from now except reading about it. By reading about it, I live it. By living it, I am it. I exist now and forever without doing anything about it. My ancestor planted one extra seed and I'm alive because of it. I write one extra word and someone reads what I didn't write because of it.

I hold up one hand and say, "This is my hand." What is a hand but a section of the environment interacting with itself?

Concepts easy to see and play with. What of emotions? What of heartbeats?

One person kills others in a marketplace, maximizing the number of deaths. Maiming. Creating orphans. Another person kills a family in a jealous rage. Is a reason necessary? A thousand years from now, no one will remember. Can we live today like we'll be seen one thousand years from now? Can we even see tomorrow?

Do you give more than you receive? Do you resolve more problems than you complain about?

These are words. They've never been more than words. They appear to represent symbols greater or less than they are but they are not.

I look for novelty. I look at myself one thousand years from now and ask if I did something different every day that I had to live and breathe. That's all I do. Because I'm a member of a group that sees itself as unique, I think about myself representing that group in what I do differently every day, assuming our group will be here to talk about itself one thousand years from now, talk being a concept that I have no idea how it will be represented at that time. In thinking about differences between now and then, I imagine ideas that could make our group's history more meaningful to folks one thousand years from now, instead of repeating the same historical petty squabbles we play up as epic battles, wars and revolutions, with heroes on one side and villains on the other.

I'm just one person. I'm not a historian. I don't plan to invent a better mousetrap. I plan to live today and the next today and the next today after that. I know all about the mislaid plans of mice and men but I live anyway. Novelty and happiness are my guide. I look for others like me but never place too much hope that I'll find someone like me every moment because I know we get caught up in ideas that take control of our unique lives and twist our emotions and thoughts into tight circles that we can't get out of very easily. I am an example of myself and an example of others to myself and others. The pebble, the pond and the waves all at once.

I don't live to make others happy. I make others happy by living a happy life. I live a happy life by seeing myself one thousand years from now, most of my actions inconsequential and nothing to get riled up about. If my actions won't matter, I can be free to do what I want. There are no rules because the rules of today don't apply one thousand years from now. Concepts easy to see and play with, don't you think?

Continuing Saga of the Pioneer Family

"Pa, how come our mobile phones don't work out here?"

"Boy, it's on account of them swindlers."

"Swindlers?"

"Yeah, that swindler sickness 'bout wiped everyone out."

"No, Ez, it weren't no swindler sickness. It were the heinous virus that wiped them out."

"Mama, I ain't talking about that thing. I'm talking 'bout afore that happened."

"But, Pa and Ma, is my phone ain't working 'cause it's ill?"

"Young man, you watch your mouth. Ain't nobody or nothing ill 'round here."

"But my brother..."

"He's just got a bit of fever 'cause he drank what he shouldn't've. You sit back there with your brother and play another game."

"But Ma, our batteries've run out."

"Well, son, as soon as your Pa figures out what makes them batteries work, we'll get it fixed. Meantime, you play the counting game with your brother."

"Aw, Ma, it's boring."

"Look, now, boy, you listen to your Ma. Play that counting game but play it quietly. I's got a headache from listening to you flap your jaws so much."

"Oh, okay. Brother, it's your turn to count."

"Is it? Well, I see one, two, five, ten, fifteen dead electric wagons on this side of the road. How about your side?"

"I see five, ten, fifteen, twenty dead horseless carriages and ten, twenty dead electric wagons!"

"You win this round."

"And there's some of them feller eaters over there."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah, they're eating some fellers."

"Lawdy may, they sure is. Pa, we got some feller eaters in the area."

"Well, son, they's plenty of fellers in them dead wagons to eat so we're doing just fine."

"Yessir. Pa, when do we get to a place where there's some kids to play with? I'm tired of all them dead wagons and such."

"Boy, ain't mine to say. We're heading to where your Mama's family gots some land. We's hoping there's some folks still up and around in them parts there."

"Yessir."

"Whyn't you boys count vultures for a change? They's different than regular feller eaters but not tasty like regular fowl."

"Yessir."

"Yessir."

"Ez, I sure hope you know what you're doing."

"Mama, if you've got a better idea, I's listening 'cause I still ain't used to the stench of dead folks."

"Don't know, Ez. I's just glad we had nothing to do with them swindlers and hope we ain't got nothing to do with the heinous virus."

"'At's right, Mama. We done the right thing all the time. You, me and the boys'll do just fine. And you know I know all 'bout them batteries. I's just teaching the boys how to wean off of them things. Won't be needing them things no longer, the way I figure it."

"I know, Ez. But I gotta give 'em hope 'til we find something else for them to do."

"Hope's 'bout all we got, Mama."

"Hope and each other."

"'At's right."

Fall: Between Yellow and Brown

Outside the window, sunlight and shadows form a crisscross pattern on a yellow redbud leaf full of holes. Brown leaves fall to the ground in a timed dance, flipping and spinning toward Earth's core, stopped by the woven vines and roots that feed off of last year's crop of tree leaves, dust and other former living material.

An invisible breeze passes through, indicated by waving branches.

The cycles of this patch of planet vary but repeat, tied to the tilt, spin and rotation around the Sun.

I cannot tell you if there is a Who or who, Them or them tied to the creation of this planet and its inhabitants. That is for you to know and believe. I wander aimlessly, my body what it is, what it was and what it might be. I support those who support others but I seek no support for myself. I observe and report, tied to my nurture and nature, no matter what else you know and believe I might be tied to.

Your belief is wonderful. Your happiness shows on your face and in the joy you share with others. Your gifts are not just self-sacrificing, they're life-enhancing. I've tried to be you but my vanity and my vices get in the way. That's why I support what you do, believing the world of our species is better served by you than by me.

I'm a crotchety old fool, fooled by his folly. You are the salt of the earth and the honey of the beehive. I'm a beer drinker and sports enthusiast who cusses like a sailor when he's angry. I seek resolutions that will make our species more successful - sometimes a resolution requires "adjustments" that make me uncomfortable in the moment but I look at the big picture and try to shake off what I know I just approved to be done that I don't like. I don't seek forgiveness or acceptance of my actions. I accept what has to be done that will get happiness later on.

The leaves on the tree outside the window...some of them still have shades of green but yellow and brown are the dominant theme now, here in late October in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere of this planet.

I happily sing songs from my childhood spent in summer camps and youth retreats. I enjoyed my time in the choir, singing four-part harmony, trying my best to stay in tune before tinnitus took away my ability to hear myself sing in a group. I'm a middle-aged guy now, subject to chronic aches and pains I didn't know when I was younger except when I played sports and took a few days to heal from wounds. Happiness is knowing the aches and pains and my off-key singing mean I'm alive.

I admire those who adhere to religious practices, no matter what you say in prayers. I understand what you seek but I do not ask myself for the same. I respect one sacrosanct ceremony - the wedding vow - and seek only the same of others. My wife is my angel, my saint, my partner, my companion, my eternal joy. Everything else that I do and think relates to that one belief, monogamy. Others have different ways to celebrate monogamy, different rules, different beliefs. My sight is limited - I do not know what is right or wrong and will not judge others' behaviour, no matter what I personally feel about their practices.

I celebrate me. I celebrate you. Life is the key to living. Our planet is tiny, tiny, tiny. We forget sometimes how small our world is because we live in isolated pockets most of our lives and think the world must be gigantic in comparison.

I am just one person but we are seven billion strong. The more we focus on our strengths the less we have to let our weaknesses get in our way.

What is one leaf worth? It can become food for plants, or warmth and shelter for a gray squirrel's nest. In a few weeks, the leaf in front of me will be gone. The bare branch of the redbud tree in winter will face me for a few months, its seedpods hanging until Earth's axis points the Northern Hemisphere toward the Sun again, bringing out new redbud blooms and fresh seedpods.

Happiness is being at peace with myself. Peace is knowing you have found the life you seek. Let me share my life with you from here, knowing you're sharing your life with others in more direct ways in the moment, no matter whether you're in a church, temple, synagogue, mosque or other formal religious gathering place.

Five Million Miles Away From Home

First item on the agenda: rumour of the day. Now that the fire ant nest has been disrupted, the fire ants are busy cleaning house and then they're on the march, looking not for hostages to take home but for vengeance. Killings home and abroad. Prisons are meant to keep people in so how many people does it take to break people out, especially along the border, to show that power is as mobile as the Peacekeeper or other intercontinental treaty trickers? I learned a long time ago that you don't stuff your mattress full of dough because the doughboys want all 200+ pieces of your pie. Best invest. Anybody want an overpriced piece of "art" now that the Windy City deal went bust as predicted?

Who sings the old song best, The Brothers Four, Bobby Bare, the Hooters, Nick Cave, or a different take by the Proclaimers?

Today's a popular day for allegories among the poplars. The Story of the Falling Tree Seed. The Time that Lightning Felled the Old Oak up the Hill. The Gully Washer of the Ages.

Folk songs. Easy lyrics. Simple melodies. On a bright, sunny morning, everyone sitting around the campfire, waiting on the breakfast to warm up, we sing a few tunes appropriate for the day. Kumbaya. Sing 'til the power of the Lord comes down. Scarborough Fair. He's Got the Whole World. Blowing in the Wind. Day by Day. Michael Row the Boat Ashore. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Waltzing Matilda. It's a Small World. Make New Friends. Gaelic Blessing.

One day we'll be sitting on Mars, gathered around the solar-powered heating system, eating our flavoured algae breakfast. Will we look up at the sky and shout with joy? Will be reminisce about the good ol' days on Earth? Will someone sing a revised version of being 500 miles away from home?

A journey of over 500 days begins with the thought that you're one of the chosen few to take the long ride across the chasm, no wagon trail, no dual carriageway, just you and a few companions. I would like to be one of you but I won't be. Envy is my companion. I'll sing a campfire song or two in your honour, whoever you end up being, whenever you decide to sign up for the adventure. The military forces of my country are always advertising their Earthbound adventures. Wouldn't it be more exciting to say you went where no one has gone before? Or even to have been a technician who worked on the equipment that went where our species had never laid foot?

Back in the 1980s, I worked on a contract for a company called Rocketdyne (I was a subcontractor working directly for a firm named Bizbing Enterprises/Butler Services). My job description included working on a CAD system because of my recent associate's degree that had an emphasis on CAD (this is back in the days of AutoCAD 1.o on desktop PCs, meaning my work at Rocketdyne in the basement of a Marshall Space Flight Center building was actually in a cold room on an Intergraph system loaded on a DEC mainframe VAX computer).

At the time, Rocketdyne was analysing the logic of the code in the space shuttle main engine controller because of the recent catastrophic accident of the Challenger and every company's scrutiny of their possible contribution to the accident. My job was relatively simple: take the handwritten logic flow diagrams from the engineers and draw them in CAD. Based on the skill set developed during my days with my secondary schoolmate when we handbuilt computers in our basement using the Intel 8080/8085 and RCA 1802 CPUs in the 1970s, I personally reviewed the logic as I drew the logic blocks, pointing out to the engineering manager the places where the logic didn't make sense to me. Also, because of my quick typing skills, I typed up engineering reports of the analysis, making grammar and formatting changes on the fly, leaving the concepts and ideas in place.

Have I ever flown on the space shuttle? Of course not. I'm not a pilot or a mission specialist. I'm just this regular guy who grew up in the suburban mazes of the southeastern portion of a political entity called the United States of America. Somewhere in the code in the box attached near the main engine of the space shuttle there might still remain the equivalent of an if...then statement I drew or pointed out was misplaced. That code has orbited the Earth countless times. My workmates designed the box for space hardness and wrote the code to control valves.

Happiness is what you make of what you do or have done. I am not a genius. I am not a trendsetter. I am me. I am happy to see the sunshine today and feel the solar heat on this cool day. I am happy to smell the burning wood of a campfire. I am happy to eat burnt toast and runny breakfast goo. I am happy to know I'll have a stiff neck and back from sleeping on the ground.

Somebody out there wants to be part of the space program, somebody in the Mongolian desert, somebody in the Australian outback, somebody in the Amazon forest, African plains, European forests and American suburbs. Life is about working together to accomplish goals beyond what any one of us can do.

I challenge anyone who might run into this blog to think about what you're doing. Are you caught up in the political gossip or rumourmonging or are you reaching outside of your insular life and asking others what we're doing?

Our species has accomplished goals unimaginable a century ago. We have so much more to accomplish than border squabbles or drug wars. But it takes every single one of us to make progress. Learn to laugh off your troubles. Or pray for guidance, if you need to. Whatever it takes to see we're the same species with a wide variety of individual lifestyles.

A part of me, in one form or the other, has circled the planet in near-Earth orbit. I hope that many of you get to see yourselves reach destinations that I can barely imagine, just like those who worked on the Voyager spacecraft never hoped their work would take them to the outer limits of the solar system.

According to associates...

According to associates, I need to pare down the pear I'm peeling and watch where my core is. Dripping juice leaves trails. Seeds sprout where they shouldn't. Pardon my Scandinavian fervor but fuck you, associates. If freedom is quantifiable, we've lost our journey into space where political parties have no place to hold conventions or bar protesters. I call it like I see it, not the way I want it all the time, because I know I'm not always right. Sometimes I have to put words down to hear what I'm saying and see what others are reading. A switchboard operator doesn't say, "Sorry, I can't connect you to the requested party - you two aren't meant for each other."

Time to watch football and drink beer, a quantifiable good time!

I like my associates but if they get in my way, they're... hmm... how do I word this with legal aplomb? They're no longer in my way later on. I smile on the outside and figure out on the inside where the weak spots on the flanks are to be exploited while I hold your attention. I get what I want using input from others all the time to see if what I want profits just me or my whole species. I aim for the latter but sometimes hit the former on the head.

Style Points

In a dream last night...

Last night, a dream, in...

A last night, dreamin'...

I spin the tiny rock in my hands and remember the theme park song about the size of this planet. Rubicon. Rubik's cube. Pros and cons. Political debate. The click and tock of phonemes.

The first grunts. The expanding vocabularies of sights and sounds. Who gets to name the object in front of us? Whose vocal utterings are the official mental lists? Why do we keep breaking down the image in front of us into smaller chunks?

We aim to please, our precision and accuracy like archery class. The more we seek unity, the more we find disparity.

The rock has no boundaries, just a continuous spherical surface, smoother than a billiard ball. But no one cares about those comparisons.

We want more descriptive details. We want delineation. We want categories.

Big government rolls down a hill, gathering no moss and crushing tiny stones, smoothing all in its path. Plurality has a single personality.

The issue at hand, what to do with artificial boundaries, issues proclamations to protect the right of sovereignty to govern others.

We watched tribes grow to the size of municipalities and feudal lords into kings and queens. We watched monarchy give way to democracy and communism. We'll watch the ecumenopolis turn democracy and communism into...?

I had a dream last night. Dreams are what they are, my brain with little external stimuli to play with. In my dream, I walked around a theme park with a former classmate of mine. We met other former classmates and eventually lost track of our current families, just the two of us walking through the park, looking for a way to get to the other side, finding a tram to take us up and over. I had other dreams, too. I value my dreams for their insight into my personality and the changes I seek to make my days more eventful and fulfilling. But my dreams are not secret visions or gifts from the other side. They are the result of my earlier interaction with the environment and lack thereof in the moment.

I am one person watching all of you, interacting with many nearby. Like the kids who walked into my yard to find a lost cat. Or the woman who wants my wife and me to attend local weekly religious services.

Local, regional, global. I have opinions and dreams about what to do with perceived conflict between the regional factions in Afghanistan. But I don't have a clear picture. Do we declare groups in the area VNSAs (violent non-state actors) or belligerent forces? Do encounters with FARC, the Red Brigades, the IRA and other fighting forces teach us valuable lessons to apply in the Afghan hills and Indus valley? What is the definition of a benevolent government and is there such a thing in existence? Does unity or disparity make better diplomatic policy in situations like this?

In Britain, a separatist got major airtime to talk about insular views. Is there a place for British separatists and Afghan separatists? Should there be? If the planet knows no bounds, should we recognize others' desires for homelands? If separation is granted, should international support be taken away?

In becoming an ecumenopolis, we face the question of who we are. Are we one species and two genders? Are we one species with multiple cultures but not necessarily multicultural, or a little of both? I don't have the right answers. I have opinions and dreams. I depend on my fellow members of our species to come up with a variety of answers, situational and timely, to solve problems iteratively because we're perpetually changing.

Change is constant. Change is pain and joy. Thus, we face constant pain and joy. Easy? Never. Eventful? A most resounding "YES!" We can see square pegs and round holes. We can pound a screw with a hammer. The choices are many. The solutions are few.

You can choose where you want to live. Your life is now subject to international scrutiny. Can you live a separatist life that is acceptable in an ecumenopolis? Absolutely. The right of a member of our species to perpetuate a subculture is guaranteed at birth. How hard you're willing to fight to protect your subculture against those who want to be where you live is up to you, not me. Cooperation and coordination 'midst competition - that's where I'll meet you and see if your subculture is worth promoting on the international stage. As always, we don't have to like each other, just agree that we're one species. The rest of our lives are opinions and dreams to do with as we see fit.

Subbaculcha

A parent co-creates. A parent nurtures. A child survives childhood. And when childhood is over...?

Senioritis. A feeling of accomplishment. The red carpet awaits. The world at the doorstep.

And what does a senior get?

Recognition for participation. A flower. An announcement. A walk with one's parent(s) across a football field.

Parents get what...?

Recognition for participation? Thank goodness, yes. A feeling of accomplishment? Affirmative. The red carpet awaits? Maybe a vacuum cleaner waits to be used. The world at the doorstep? A pile of bills and a day off before the work world starts all over again.

Wins and losses fade with time. Family remains important. Like traveling all the way from Saratoga, NY, to Hazel Green, AL, to see your sister's niece as a cheerleader. Like taking pictures of your friends' son, #46 on the football team, while they travel.

Moments will stand out but the score, 14-42, will be forgotten. The rest of the school year will not wait. Friends will go hunting and fishing and dating and studying together.

As the senior year winds down, the exit gets closer, the door to adulthood opens wider and the moment of truth arrives. Soon you'll discover just how prepared you are to handle everyday life as your own parent - waking yourself up in the morning, preparing your own breakfast, making your own household budget, handling unanticipated emergency situations. The next few months make the difference between successfully leaping out of the secondary school student life and being pushed out.

One night on the football field showed you life as a game winner. Another night on the football field showed you life as a graduating senior surrounded by supportive friends and family, the game's outcome important but not critical. In other words, life, just as real as it gets.

What's the old saying? You never get time to study for life's quizzes? Life is always preparing for the wrong test? Sayings aside, your senior year is about you and about your parents/guardians. They want you to succeed in life and you want to be independent. Independence and success are linked to the social contract your parents signed when they conceived you. Society is yours and yours for the taking as long as you learn to give back.

One day (and that day is sooner than you think) you'll sit in the stands with other parents, yelling for your child who may be carrying the flag on the field, cheering on the sideline, tackling between the yard markers or performing in the band at halftime. Between now and then, the world waits to see what you have to offer. The better you prepare yourself now, the more relaxing and fun will be that day when you're the parent who's holding the flower after walking your child across the football field as a senior. It won't seem important now but it will.

So listen to yourself for a moment. Hear what you have to say. See what your parents are trying to instill in you before you graduate. You are the most important person in the world. Learn to act like you are. When you're important, so is everyone else. When everyone is important, you own the world and the world can't wait to accept you with open arms.

Your growth began when you were born and ends when you die. Make the most of your growth while you're young and have the world in your hands. We want you to succeed because we know you'll be one of us soon. Your success is our success. And soon your success will be your child's success.

A loss is never fun but we learn from the loss and move on. Tonight you were winners in the bigger picture. Take the win that is your parents' pride in seeing you reach your senior year and celebrate. This night and the rest of your senior year is a party that all your schoolmates are invited to. Make it an event no one will ever forget. You are the graduating class of 2k10! Your success begins now.

Pentagon Orders Troops: No More YouTube Ghost Rides!

Pentagon Orders Troops: No More YouTube Ghost Rides!

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Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook

When is censorship not censorship? That's a question I do not answer because I see open communication as necessary as breathing, fraught with risks. Here's one reason for preventing open communication from use by professional nation preservers/protectors:

Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook

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Speculated Speckled Pickled Eggs

[Personal note for myself. Feel free to skip.] I have no idea what's going on. I see and do not believe. I feel and make no record of my skin contact. People have wants and needs and I cannot discern their logical connections. Logic makes no sense to me. The sun does not shine. Clouds do not exist. Yet, I define my day by the water falling from the sky that blocks the sunshine.

I am me. I have no capability to be more than one person. Better yet, I do not want to be more than one person. I actually want to be me. I like being me. I like me who likes the person who likes being me.

RNA is ribonucleic acid. A right turn is a coordinated series of actions determined by a football coach who teaches the staff to teach the players to stand in place until the play caller takes a ball and turns to hand the ball to the person willing to run and get hit. Recombinatorial, or some such.

People are willing to ski and play tennis. Physical coordination.

A large number of living beings have the same set of genetic material that is turned off or turned on in a particular sequence. God's blueprint or random observation by the current species to which I belong? Both? We see what we believe. We believe what we believe we see. Plate of shrimp. Pine-scented car freshener.

I belong to nothing. I am not nothing. Therefore, I don't belong to nothing. Absent is not the same as present somewhere else.

A drop of water flows along a pine needle hanging from the gutter. The drop stops at the end, formed by surface tension and stretched by gravity. Another drop flows along and pushes the first drop off. Nothing is as I just described it. A drop of water does not exist. A pine needle does not exist. A gutter does not exist. Gravity is in my imagination. Instead, I just saw a spherical magnifying glass, a solar energy collector and a trough for collecting debris to grow tree seeds, all in the recesses of my brain.

Sober, sanity and madness. Like diving into a mountain stream in winter with no way to get warm. Idiocy for idiots.

I stand alone by myself, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of my species, words my clothes, paragraphs my floor, away from here and nailed into my shoes. "Mommy! Mommy! Why am I going around in circles?" "Shut up or I'll nail the other foot to the floor."

A worker at an eyeglasses factory fell into a vat of molten glass. He made a spectacle of himself, didn't he?

I am one person. I am happy being one person. How important is my happiness? Does happiness exist or have I made myself believe in happiness?

Somewhere I read where religious belief is directly tied to one's brain and the need for deep social interaction. Social intercourse, if you will.

If I have learned the steps to complete a task, excel at repeating the task, should I perform the task again and again? The pursuit of perfection? Not for me. I am looking for novelty.

This universe is not just about my species but my species is all I know. If I ask questions and get answers from the universe that run counter to the existence of my species, where does that put me if I will never be other than a member of my species? Should I avoid the questions if I don't have an idea what the answers could be? The absence of self is close to the absence of selfishness which is close to the absence of my species, is it not?

I do not exist. If I do not exist, who or what is writing these words and seeing the intensity of light vary with the passing of dark shapes in the sky above me?

I choose to ask questions because I want to see myself from another angle, even an angle that includes the absence of me or the non-necessity of my existence. Like bashing my head with a rock or flogging my back with a whip. Only less messy.

I am me. I will always be me. I am also you but today I need to see myself as only one person so I can see the parts separate from the whole and better determine how to strengthen the power of the whole through the belief in the presence and the absence of the self.

I don't enjoy keeping quiet. I like transparency so that when a thought occurs to me I let it go out into the world without thought of impact like it bouncing back to me in some other form hours, weeks, months or years from now. If I have a thought, someone else had the same thought. If I express my thoughts in words or speech, others will hear what they thought they thought but may not have thought or spoken.

We get so wrapped up in our day-to-day activities, which we believe with conviction are what we're supposed to do, to hell with others who might have better things for us to do, that we lose sight of where we are. No matter how much I think I see our species from the right angles, I miss what I should see or should do. I'm not out to change the world. I'm here to see what our species could do if we changed our points of view. I don't care which particular points of view others have - they may be right or wrong for their time and place. I don't ask that they look at my point of view. I can only see what one person sees. I'll always be me.

I like me. I like who I am. I like my species. I like what my species likes. I don't like what my species dislikes but I'm willing to see the point of view of a disliking person because only then can I see if there's a like hidden in dislike that I should like.

These words do not exist. These are just electric, magnetic, particle-wave-speculated, speckled pickled eggs laid by a drop of rain splattering on a bed of wet tree leaves. Everything else is in your imagination.

Quick Nod

Another quick nod, this time to the person who pointed out I should have used the words "netizen" and "avatar" in a recent post. I won't go back to edit the post in question because I haven't.

The Great Yippie-Kai War

Every now and then, with its worn covers staring me in the face, the Book of the Future taunts me to turn a few pages and see what's going on outside this moment. Now, the Book of the Future is a a funny creature (yes, that's right - it's a living document, always sneaking in changes like repagination and outline formatting to fool with me).

The Book of the Future is a misnomer. The book is just a bundle of pages stuck inside an electric pencil sharpener. To read the pages, I have to find a certain kind of wood used to make a wraparound for sticks of graphite. Then, I push the pencil into the sharpener and pull out the reels of shaven wood. There, written in the woodgrain, are the messages that the book delivers.

The book belongs to someone else. I found the book in a ditch when I was biking through my childhood neighbourhood, not far from the house of an eccentric old lady who made me mow her lawn with an electric lawnmower.

Inside the book, instructions detailed how to create more pages to the story. You make the pencil shavings and then glue them together using the glue formula found on page 123. At first, I couldn't find page 123 and then I realized there was no page 123. I had to create it! But that's a story for another time.

Today, I've flipped open the book and gone back to the pages that someone else had written. There, between pages delta-x 47 and adhmad mór, I found the following short chapter:

Scientists from the Astronomy Sector of Silicon Woods, the southeastern housing estate bordering the dark side of the Moon, reported a signal trace of familiar origins. According to the scientists' calculations, the signal, a broadcast sent sometime in the seventh millennium of the modern era, appears to have bounced back from the edge of our universe.

Amateur astronomers are encouraged to point their radio antennae to the same spot in the sky to help further define the edge of space.

If what they see is correct, our universe is part of a oil drop floating along the gutter in a rainfall event in the local township on a planet in a larger universe. But that's just speculation, scientists' theories driven by their reading of pulp science fiction. You can rest assured we will dispel this theory in no time.

In further news, scientists have finally unlocked the secrets of space travel hidden in beer. For those willing to become lab subjects, more research is available. Stop at your local pub to become volunteers.

Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

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Wagon Trail

Sitting around a campfire, a pioneer family talked about the day's trip across the prairie.

"Mama, tell them boys of yours the troubles we've seen."

"Well, Ez, seems like when we wuz kids, the snows piled up to the rooftop."

"'At's right, Mama. So you boys better think twice afore complaining about our trek through these lands."

"But, Pa, there's nothing to do out here. Back when we lived in town, there was plenty of kids our age to play with. Now, all we do is sit on the wagon most of the day and then set up camp at night."

"Boy, I oughta smack you up side the head for that kind of back talk!"

"Ma, what's he talking about? I ain't never back talked him."

"Young man, you mind your father. If he says you back talked him, you agree with him."

"Yes'm."

"And you, young feller. Don't you put that smirk on your face. I know what you're thinking."

"What'd I do?"

"You're thinking your older brother's taking the troubles off of your back. You're still in trouble from yesterday."

"Ah, Ma, I always get in trouble for nothing."

"Ain't nothing. You've been going on about when we're getting to our next stop when I told you to take care of business afore we get back in the wagon."

"Mama, leave the boy alone. He's got smaller parts'n the rest of us."

"Ez, that ain't no excuse for knowing you're going to have to stop sooner than if you'd paid a mind to yo'self."

"Reckon you're right about that'n, Mama. Young man, you mind your ma. If she tells you to step over to them bushes afore we leave in the morning, you do as she says."

"Yessir."

"Well, whose turn is it to tell a good story? Mama?"

"The older boy told one last night. Why'nt you tell one tonight, Ez?"

"I'd be obliged. A long time ago, long afore any of us wuz born, there wuz only this wilderness. Not a soul in sight. Just hilltops and treetops and fields of prairie grass. There were large stretches of them pretty flowers that your Mama liked. And plenty of wild fowl for hunting, if there'd been any of us around. 'Cept there ain't. Or weren't, that is."

"How'd you know that, Pa, if there weren't any of us around to know?"

"Boy, this is my story. You just shut your trap and listen. I'll get to the good parts soon enough. Now, in those times, wagons hadn't been invented yet so animals didn't have no good trails to tell them how to get from one place to another. They just went from one patch of grass to one watering hole, day after day, sometimes crossing their own paths many times a day. They weren't in no hurry, neither, so they might spent most parts of a day in one spot.

"Well, one day, these group of animals, they..."

"What kind, Pa?"

"What kind of what, son?"

"What kind of animals were they?"

"They were them grasseating kinds, that's what they wuz."

"Uh-huh."

"Don't you 'uh-huh' me, boy."

"Yessir."

"Anyway, these prairie grass grazers were thinking to themselves, 'All we ever do is eat grass and drink water. Ain't there something else more to do?' Well, you know how they get. One sight of our wagon from far off and they skitter and scatter like...well, like themselves. So, without wagons around, they didn't have nothing to mozy them on up the way. They kept eating and drinking and thinking.

"Well, it weren't long afore they figured out this sort of same thing day after day was not awful but just regular ol' mind-numbing. It was no wonder they did the same thing because there weren't nothing to get them to change their minds. Think about it, boys. If you had the best tasting grass to eat every day and you didn't have no hunters or wagons around, you'd be just as pleased as...well, as yourselves, wouldn't ya?"

"Yessir."

"Yessir."

"Well, one day, this feller was walking across them plains and he saw them grasseaters and told himself, 'Now, if I wuz them, what would I be doing out here?' He watched them from afar and..."

"From a what?"

"From afar."

"Pa, you didn't say nothing 'bout no far."

"I didn't because there ain't no far. That feller ain't seen far 'cept by lightning. Now let me get back to the story. So he watching from a great distance and sees them animals is doing the same thing over and over again. What do you reckon he did?"

"Dunno."

"Well, he figured he'd have himself a little fun. He crawled in the grass until he got right next to them animals and he stands up and hollers at the top of his lungs. Them animals runs as far as their breath'd let 'em. And still some of them run some more. They run until it got dark and then they went back to their ways and sat down to sleep. The next morning, they wake up and go right back to what they wuz doing, eating grass and drinking water. Afore they know it, that feller showed up again and tried to scare 'em. But they was keen on him and weren't falling for the trick a second time. Instead, they ran up on the feller and they ate him!"

"They ate him? Every part of him?"

"That's right, son. They ate his head and his fingers and his toes. Everything!"

"What happened next?"

"Well, them animals, they weren't no longer just grasseaters. They wuz feller eaters. They got a taste for folks and they weren't going back to just walking around eating grass and drinking water. So now, any time a feller walks through them plains, there's them feller eaters not far behind."

"You mean...you mean, out here?"

"That's right."

"Pa, I'm scared."

"Well, boy, now you sees why we stay in this wagon all day. It's not in account of you ain't got no friends to play with out here, it's account of them feller eaters."

"Ma, I don't want to use them bushes in the morning. I'm afraid them feller eaters is out there."

"You don't worry about them feller eaters, young man. They ain't gonna bother you when you're doing your business. They's only interested in you when you're taking off by yourself through them prairie grasses."

"Pa?"

"Yes, boy?"

"How long we got afore we get out of these prairies?"

"Could be a while, son."

"You reckon them feller eaters is looking at us right now?"

"No, son. They go to sleep when the sun goes down. Which is about time for us, too."

"Pa, how come we ain't never seen no feller eaters out here?"

"'Cause you never knew to look for one until now."

"Ez, you scared up the boys enough as it is. Boys, you get up in that wagon and go to sleep yo'self. We'll be with you shortly."

Weedy Decision

As a frugal spender, I look for ways to conserve spending. If it also conserves resources, so be it. Here's another person's take on one area to conserve:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/21/DDS51A378K.DTL

My lawn is not a meadow but the edge of a suburban forest. My lawn mowers, including a hand-pushed reel mower, hand-pushed motorised mower and a small tractor, have sat idle for years - I could sell them but then it means I'm promoting someone else's lawnmowing. Anybody have a creative use for former grasscutting machines?

Time for lunch and class prep - have a great day!

"The Numbers Don't Add Up"

While one set of people face long-term unemployment, another set is investing and reinvesting in the climbing stock market value. An intersecting subset is paying more attention to investment portfolios without employment income to work with.

Some people are selling their second yacht or fourth retirement property. Some are having their first home taken away. Some are scooping up cheap assets for later profitable resale.

On whom do I focus?

Experts, analysts and other questionable words float in the open marketplace of ideas. Ideas. Hmm... What is an idea? And no, not the dictionary or wikipedia definition. What is an idea to you?

I don't know the diets of the lifeforms whose daily habits take them across the patch of ground on which my house was deeded. As an experiment, I throw bits of food next to the driveway to see what happens. Apples quickly disappear. Oranges and grapefruits are never consumed by large lifeforms, their round shapes shrinking with the growth of mold. Today, I threw a few stale doughnuts out and will check on them later. Birdseed is almost instantly consumed.

I try not to distinguish one lifeform's needs from another in what I choose to toss into the yard. That way, I get to see a variety of responses to my application of the "trickle down" food cycle. You remember the "trickle down" theory, don't you? A person who's eating a large, juicy sandwich will have some drops of nutritional liquid drip off the chin and onto the ground for other lifeforms to feed on. That's not the "trickle down" theory, you say? Are you sure?

While we google our memories of the "trickle down" theory, let's think for a moment. Did you take an economics class in school, primary, secondary or collegiate? Do you remember the theories of supply and demand, the iterative value of currency, or how the banking system is supposed to work? Do you know how to write a check? [Those of you who've only used credit/debit cards your whole life, or even your mobile phone to pay for goods, are excused from answering that last question.]

At one point I thought about majoring in economics or accounting in my college studies, especially since beer consumption and football watching weren't offered in college curricula. Somewhere between chemical engineering, foreign languages, religious studies, computer science and IT management, that is. Meanwhile, my college loans piled up.

If I have no personal belief in the power of money, should I speak from a monetary point of view? If I only see life in the moment, should I talk about the value of compounding interest?

Questions today...questions...sigh...what to say, what to do...

In my family, participation in the exchange of goods and services vary. Some live on the minimum monthly payment plan. Some live frugally and pay cash for major purchases. Some invest heavily and make major gains in their personal wealth. Risk and reward. Comfort zone. Playgrounds.

I don't know what money is other than an idea. I see pieces of paper and bits of stamped metal and hear about the comparative value of one version versus another but it makes no sense to me. Money. What is it? Barter converter. Murder incentive. War inciter. Peace initiative. Health provider.

Suggestions pour in on how to make our economy strong again, from isolationist policies to single global currency, from free market to centralized control, from high risk rogue investors to highly-regulated / scrutinized market management teams.

And still, I have no internal concept of money. It's like a void in my mind, the center of a hurricane / typhoon, alive but empty, surrounded by bustling activity.

No matter what I say or believe, people will use their definitions of money to take risks or do nothing with their money. No matter what we think, the future is undefined and full of risks - there are no surefire definitions of safety and security. We act and the rest of the universe reacts, seen mainly on the local scale.

For instance, decades after the launch of the Voyager spacecrafts, war and pestilence have killed millions of people, yet these tiny boxes of metal parts keep moving outward from the center of our solar system. Like beams of energy reaching us from across the universe, the Voyager units represent us at a point in time that no longer exists. We took many risks using vast sums of money to create those spacecraft, money that could have been spent on any number of ideas but we chose to learn more about our solar system and thus more about our place in it, including the risks facing the survival of our species in this area of the galaxy.

Where is real growth occurring in our economy? What is truth? What is reality? What is money but this shirt on my back and the laptop computer under my fingertips?

I tell myself I am the only person writing and reading this blog so that I can be free to say what I think and feel, not tied to emotions between myself and others or economically linked to others who might give me motives to speak or keep quiet. Sometimes I believe what I tell myself and other times I see myself not saying enough because of fear of offending others.

While those versed in the ways of making money more valuable (and thus more likely to be loaned, spent or invested) express their opinions or use their actions to put money in motion, I sit here and look at our planet from the edge of the solar system, as if I'm a vulnerable set of technology long past accomplishing its stated goals, and even past its imagined value as a precursor to "V'ger."

I have no use for money. I only have use for my species. To see value in what the two have in common, I pull away from all the voices who are trying to make money by talking about the value of money and imagine a time and place where the current value of money is unimportant. If I talk about a time 10,000 years from now, I might as well write a science fiction story. If I talk about a time a few months or a few years from now, I might as well become an economic policy expert.

I imagine a time in the near future - could be tomorrow or could be fifty years from now - most likely, a time where we're still repeating ourselves over and over while pretending that our new discoveries, new technologies and new genetic changes make us a better species. I don't mind the repetition because repetition is like the food I throw into the yard, giving us ongoing experiments to see which changes we make will lead to more innovative beneficial changes.

In this near future:

• We've rewritten the laws governing advertising and marketing - we can no longer over-promise the benefits of goods and services - we must give messages that demonstrate the real benefits and detriments of products, including product life of average enjoyment/usefulness and environmental impact, with links to forums discussing the products/services.
• Community service is a required set of skills/classes taught to children throughout their school years and has monetary value which can be exchanged for goods and services, useful during times of economic downturns when those who are less actively employed, both children and adults, can put their skills and hobbies to use for the community and still have economic purchasing power.
• We fuse fantasy and reality where we can don imaginary lives that are viewable by others wearing similar augmented reality gear - no longer do you have to use limited resources for your wardrobe or lifestyle - you can create, lease or buy your own AR life and change it at will, making mandatory school/office dress codes obsolete. On the Internet and in real life, nobody sees you as a dog.
  
• Office hours become completely useless as labor laws recognize the blend of work and private life into one - we get paid for completed projects, not hours worked, freeing us to do what we want when we want as long as we stay on schedule (schedule being a flexible definition using time, cost and resources creatively).
• Poverty still plagues society due to war, pestilence, mental challenges and drug abuse. However, voluntary poverty becomes fashionable as people try and stay in the "no impact" lifestyle. Governments grapple with the concept of low-tax zones to encourage more people to live in low-stress, low-overhead areas, asking if such citizens must demonstrate higher community involvement to qualify or if being just plain "we don't trust and don't want a government" folks can live there, too.
• The digital divide raises the barrier higher and higher that separates the educated from the uneducated, continuing to spark inventions to connect those who want to be digital citizens but don't have the means or understanding to get connected. Political revolutions are led by digital citizens pretending to be members of the nondigital proletariats.
• Greenland becomes a major tourist destination when people flood to the island to bathe in the curative cold waters of melting glaciers.
• Antarctica becomes the next major battleground for terrorist groups to control.
• A child of parents of Taoist/Buddhist Han, Muslim Uyghur, Hindu Indian and Ainu heritage is born in space.
  

Poiuytrew

I looked at two sets of eyes today - deep-brown, almost black irises. Too dark to see if pupils were expanding or contracting. I looked at other facial movements for clues about the two people. We have seen each other many times but I still look for reassurance of our connectedness. Why?

I exist in this moment - well-established fact. I find what I want in this moment - self-assured fact. I want to give my share of this moment away - curious fact. Why?

I want to know you but do you want me to know you? By knowing you, I write down what I observe about you from my perspective. My perspective, though, has many moods and styles of writing. I may use humour, criticism, fiction, or some mix of the three.

I look at one face and see the profile of Mayan royalty. I look at the other face and see Asian beauty. Each with a history, personal and cultural. Each with a set of daily problems and solutions.

I look for a smile but if I won't get a smile will I be happy with what I get? What if a smile is not the personal/cultural recognition sign from the other? What if a smile is preserved for close friends only, in order to maintain a shell of indifference, a shield against the rest of the world of faces?

I live in this moment. Today's earlier moments are gone. I cannot retrieve the previous moments but I can remember them in this moment. In reliving a moment in my thoughts, I take away from my ability to learn a new task like writing a new song, or seeing a new view of the outside world.

To some degree, I value wandering and aimlessness so I can keep my sense of wonder alive. Wandering and aimlessness mean forgetting previous moments so the current moment is all I've got, free from planning for the future. When free of time, I have only myself to give, no external gifts I've made or future to offer. I'm just plain me, with all my freckles and wrinkles, not an athletic star or academic giant. When I'm me outside of time, I don't know who I am except through you. If I get no indication from you who I am, I am not me. When I'm free of time and no longer me, I am a clear pane of glass, devoid and null. Not even a chameleon or a mirror.

To be devoid and null means no concentration, no focus, no exertion of my will. A little scary at times, keeping all but my physical appearance out of the picture, subject to your interpretation without commentary from me. Comparable to showing a photograph of a friend to someone who seems unimpressed and adding, "Oh, he's got great charm and personality. He's just not photogenic." What if you don't say anything and the person doesn't say anything back? You're both standing there looking at a photograph, a static image, a time-based capture that doesn't represent the friend except in one moment.

That's what it feels like when you don't smile back.

Time to review some of the feedback I've gotten in regards to reviving the loan/credit business...

Who's Not Paying Their Taxes?

Now, I'm not here to accuse any particular legislator but have you ever noticed the number of legislators that get caught not paying their taxes or having workers for whom they don't pay employee taxes? Or the fact that in this tough economy, with all the talk about the economic slowdown and reduction in collection of taxes, we haven't had a push by legislators to take a pay cut, lower their expense accounts, or reduce their support staff?

Not that I should be the one talking. I haven't reduced my support staff during this economic downturn, either. The same squirrels, birds and insects are free to feed off my land as when the economy was growing rapidly.

Well, folks, time to hitch up this wagon and hit the road. Peddle my wares in the next town. Yippie-kai-yay, Mister Falcon.

Once More Into The Breach

Last night, I sat with my wife and watched an hour of "Almost The Truth, The Lawyer's Cut," a series of interviews with comedians, writers, and others involved with or inspired by the Monty Python comedy team. I felt like I was watching the Discovery Channel about a series of excavations or True Hollywood Story about a cartoonish movie icon. It would be like finding out Alexander the Great didn't intend to conquer the known world - he just happened to go for a walk and a bunch of angry, fighting soldiers followed him around.

Meanwhile, in our TV viewing room, an American football game progressed along. With no guarantee of a victory, making every play essential, Moreno charged into the middle of the pile on 3rd and 1 in the second half of the ballgame, achieving his goal of reaching the first down marker, joining his teammates in their drive for success.

Two paragraphs - two means for adults to make names for themselves.

I think about the group of friends with whom I spent my childhood and the group of friends from my adulthood. How have we made names for ourselves? Did we mean to? Do we take turns charging forward to conquer our foes? Will we have the luxury to look back at ourselves and recount our victories for admirers?

Do you want to be talked about? More than likely. But who is your intended audience or set of admirers? An arena full of screaming fans? A kitchen full of loving family? A comfortable group of friends?

As my grandfather used to say, success is not the size of the wheelbarrow, but rather if you finished digging out the hole, no matter how big or small.

Who'da Thunk It?

I think back to the jobs I've had and wonder where I'd be if I knew where I would go. Mowing one lawn after another while working for myself. Scraping varnish off upright pianos in the heat of summer for a piano tuner/refinisher. Squeezing the juice out of ground beef at Taco Bell. Punching holes in tubs of rising pizza dough as a kitchen cook at Chicago Dough Company. Typing up military contract proposals at GE. Wading in sewage up to my hips in large sewer pipes for ADS Environmental Services. Setting up computer networks for Microsoft WHQL tests at Conexant Systems. Managing a test lab and traveling to Europe as a program manager for Avocent. Teaching classes at ITT Technical Institute.

Where will I be in 15 years? What work will I have performed? I have no idea.

Motivational speakers encourage their listeners to break the mold and seek out new horizons, quitting your job, if you have to, so you can become the real you you're meant to be. They sell their success stories as part of the marketing/branding of themselves, sometimes seen as motivation for motivation's sake, like selling a book on how to sell books that promote selling your own book.

What is success? I ask myself that question every morning after I wake up. What do I want to do today that will make me happy to wake up the next morning and look back at my previous day's accomplishments as motivation for that day's accomplishments? Sometimes I'm happy to say I did nothing more significant than watched the Sun trace a path across the sky. Sometimes I'm not happy enough, having expected more of myself than I gave the previous day, motivating me to move a little faster/smarter during my waking hours.

Success is felt in the moment. I am living my life only in the moment and can find success nowhere else. My previous accomplishments may demonstrate success or lack thereof, but what I do in the current moment determines what success means to me, not the past or expectations of the future.

Like I said, job titles and the activities involved with work have little meaning to me. They indicate my social/economic interactions, not who I am. I am me, here and now, not who I was or what I did with others.

Sitting here now, I contemplate what I will think when I wake up tomorrow. Will I feel happy? Yes. What will I feel motivated to do? I don't know. I plan to meet a friend/business associate for lunch but other than that I have no concrete plans. I will talk about and think about my next set of social/economic interactions but I will not know with certainty who I will be. What kind of success is that? Wonderful.

If a boy on a fully-funded Navy ROTC academic scholarship at Georgia Tech as a chemical engineering student who left after three quarters because of poor academic performance to find himself making pizzas a year or so later can end up where I'm sitting today, then anything is possible. Happiness is seeing the lessons learned (e.g., learn to study before you take "weeding out" courses like chemistry, physics and calculus while being in the ROTC jazz band and football marching band at a place like Georgia Tech) and moving on (put aside distractions and complete classes to get an associate's and a bachelor's degree years later).

I have collected a set of experiences in life that have made my 47 trips around the Sun successfully entertaining and happy. I discovered along the way that when I seek my definition of happiness and not the definitions others want to impose on me I am much more successful.

How did I get here, retired at 45? I learned to laugh. I taught others the value of making fun of yourself. I found a life partner at age 12 whom I married 12 years later. I valued my mistakes, no matter how painful they felt at the time, and found ways to apply corrective action for success.

For some, success is having their faces and bodies snipped and tucked. For others, success is traveling to Central America to heal the sick. For many, success is having children who have children.

I didn't plan and follow a perfect path of success to get here today. Long ago, I thought that I'd like to be a millionaire by age 45 and retire but I did not create a spreadsheet and manage my funds every day to accomplish the task. Instead, I meandered. I wandered and wondered. I listened to the advice of others (especially my wife's advice to avoid the trap of "buyer's remorse") and followed advice when it made sense to me, sometimes working out and sometimes not. I emotionally leaned on my friends and family when times got too tough for one person to handle. Always, I laughed and joked around.

I have taught classes for three quarters in the local classrooms of a technical institute. I have learned a better way to teach, one that is as old as our species: motivate others to enjoy life and nurture their natural curiosity and capacity to adapt. Teaching is not rote memorization. Teaching is encouraging others to desire to learn and count success as the grasp of a school subject, including concepts and jargon/vocabulary. I've learned more than I expected on the night I showed up at the technical institute as a guest speaker last winter. Time to take that learning and move on to the next social/economic interaction called a job or occupation, my definition of continual success as a wandering wonderer.