Launch Delayed Due to Fog

The woman who doesn’t believe in or have dreams appeared in one of my dreams last night. That one and another dream stand out among the untold REM thoughts I had.

Lately, a few months after seeing people in nursing homes who have no quality of life left ahead of them and just last week, after seeing similar people in the hospital hooked up to a spider web of tubes in their last hours of life, I have wondered if a society should allow self-elimination as a decision to make a major change in the way people live. Needless to say, self-elimination is the choice not to live any longer, but if one has excruciating, unbearable pain in the midst of terminal cancer or faces a fate worse than death, is death of one’s choosing a viable option? Although my life is a happy one, self-elimination is still the a possible decision that looms when I come up on the fear that I might end up a ‘vegetable’ putting costly economic and emotional burdens on family, friends and society.

The first dream I had I can barely remember because the people and their activities in my dream constitute the classic nightmare. They performed acts of unconscionable, deplorable but imaginable violence on people and other animals – murder, torture, cruelty of all sorts – as if their actions had no consequences and they just happened to be torturing and killing that day instead of feeding the poor or attending to the sick. I woke up realizing that if I or someone else chooses self-elimination, then we are no different than those non-conscientious people in my first dream.

The second dream stands out for its theme of hope.

In this part of the world on an early January Saturday morning, fog hangs over the landscape. As I look out on the 270-degree view from the sunroom into the backyard, my eyes wander up the hillside, over the wet leaves, around the big boulders, through the gray and light brown tree stalks and into the fog that obscures a distant view. My dreams will fade away with time like the foggy forest beside me, unless I record all the details while they’re fresh in my mind.

Before I went to sleep last night, I sat up in bed and read “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” The epic tale contains many references to the importance of dreams, just as other ancient texts such as the Talmud and Bible do. Therefore, I am not surprised that my dreams gained more than average importance for me this morning. I attribute the technological aspects of the dream I’m about to recount to the two books I’ve just finished, “Outliers: The Story of Success” and “The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” and the book I’m currently reading, “The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal.”

Space exploration serves as a thematic background for me. In last night’s second dream, I found myself sitting with a group of about 70 friends and family, including Gwynn, her husband and children, her parents and other familiar faces. We sat in rows of chairs that were like seats in the cabin of a space shuttle (each row composed of two sets of seven seats divided by a center aisle, with five rows; thus 2 x 5 x 7 = 70). We faced a speaker who pointed at a 3D projection and explained why a particular experimental spacecraft had been built. The space plane he described had two hulls that were like delta wings attached to each other in a hinged manner so that the plane ‘flapped’ to gain momentum. A previous version of the plane used freely sliding weights to cause the hulls to flap up and down but gravity was not sufficient to keep the plane flying so a piston system had been installed to increase the plane’s chance of taking off from the ground and flying into space. The speaker asked for volunteers to ride in the plane during its maiden flight so they could provide weight balance and give a subjective account of the flight.

I sat in the middle of the third row that was in the section on the right side of the aisle facing the speaker. Gwynn sat in the same row but in the middle of the section on the left side of the aisle. She spoke up and joked that all her father’s constant talk about community responsibility (getting good grades in school, having children, chaperoning your kids’ school events, joining social groups, etc.) could be summarized into sending all his offspring onto the plane for the experiment. If the experiment succeeded, Gwynn's father could point proudly to the bravery and honor that his children and grandchildren have shown. If the experiment failed, why couldn’t he exclaim the same thing, Gwynn asked out loud in a mocking voice, even though he would have no surviving representatives of his genetic output left to hear his wisdom and carry it out?

Gwynn's father, who sat ahead of me in the first aisle, started to speak and we all turned to face him. “I believe…,” he said, hesitating before continuing, “I believe that you misunderstand my philosophy. Responsibility to the community includes NOT taking unnecessary chances.”

Gwynn laughed. “Dad, that’s where I disagree. Each generation makes its own decisions, even while taking the advice of previous generations into account. I say we all get on that plane and help test this plane.”

Gwynn's father cleared his throat. “In times of threat such as war, yes, then we must volunteer to protect the community. But this is just a plane, and one limited mainly to space use at that. Our community responsibility does not mean we have to help test a plane of which few citizens will ever use.”

Gwynn laughed again, got up and walked toward the door at the rear of the room.

Her laughter reminded me that I’d had some good times with her when we were in high school together so I followed her to see what she was up to. She slowed down when she saw me so we could walk together.

We walked out of the briefing room and down a corridor that further indicated to me we were inside a vehicle in outer space. Or at least we were in such a vehicle. I had no idea if we were on Earth or in space.

Gwynn motioned us inside a small control room. I could hear the quiet rhythm of hidden machinery, like someone breathing behind me. Gwynn quickly talked me through the uses of the keys and knobs on a panel in front of us, which operated the launch and guidance of a small experimental sphere into the midst of space debris. She then looked at me and laughed again.

“You know what. This experiment is more important than that other one. And for you, even more so, because it involves exactly two people, you and someone else.”

“Really?” I looked back down at the knobs and calculated the risks involved in launching a two-person craft from the space station we were on. I felt someone step in between Gwynn and me and could see out of my peripheral vision the other person was wearing a space suit but no helmet.

I lifted my head and standing next to me was Helen. We smiled at each other with a look of familiarity that spoke of a long time apart and the satisfaction of being back in each other’s company once again.

Helen put her arm around my waist. “Hey.”

“Hello.” I felt a warm glow running up my back from where Helen pressed her hand.

“So you want to go up in this thing with me?”

I smiled even bigger than before, sending signals to Helen that only she and I could interpret, my face saying, ‘There’s no one else I’d want to go out into space on a dangerous mission with.’

She returned the smile, her eyes saying, ‘Of course, what was I thinking?’

I put my arm over her shoulders and looked back at the control panel. “Well, Gwynn, the launch is set for tomorrow night, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Rick, it is.”

I looked at Helen, sighing with the satisfaction of the restoration of my inner peace. “There’s a meteor shower tomorrow…”

“And…” Helen jumped to continue my sentence, as she used to.

“And that means there’s a two in a million chance of our being hit by micrometeors. In other words, of a million meteors of different sizes flying around us, two of them will go undetected and hit our spacecraft, creating untold damage, up to total destruction of the craft. What that means about the rest of them flying around us and their influence on our flight, I don’t know.”

Helen squeezed my waist, telling me she didn’t care.

I pulled her to me, hugging her, leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Do you want to go out there tomorrow night and take the chance of dying with me in space?”

She leaned the side of her head into my face, letting me know that she could die with me and be happy. “But I don’t want to die yet, do you?” she whispered in my ear.

I pulled back and looked down into her eyes. “No.” There was still just too much more life left to live, especially with her.

Helen hugged me tightly, her face buried in my chest.

I nodded at Gwynn. “Some things are more important than advancing technology.”

Gwynn laughed again. “It’s funny hearing you, of all people, saying that. Oh well.” Gwynn shrugged her shoulders and walked out of the room, disappointed that I wouldn’t help her with a technological experiment but happier that she had gotten Helen and me back together.

I woke up, noting that I had slept on my left side, with our oldest Cornish Rex cat asleep under the covers of the bed, leaning against my chest, and our youngest Cornish Rex cat sleeping against the crook of my back. My wife dozed quietly behind me.

I got up, used the bathroom to pee and wash my hands. My wife woke up and requested I bring her the mouthpiece that helps her sleep without snoring. I gave her the mouthpiece, fed the cats who were then begging for food, cooked myself a bowl of oatmeal, fed the fish, heated a mug of Earl Gray tea and walked out to the sunroom to write. I sat next to the copy of National Geographic that detailed the 50 years of humans traveling into space that I had read a couple of days ago. Hmm...

The fog has lifted but full sunshine is still just out of reach. Time to eat my oatmeal and figure out what to do about my dream. My dreams have come true before. Haven't yours?

Simple, Short and to the Point

May we all enjoy the next 365 days. In other words, have a great year, regardless of the cumulative number and start day you assign to it. Mine just happened to start today, the 1st of January, and is arbitrarily numbered 2009 (human history is much older than 2009 years, of course, but since my ancestors chose to follow this numbering system so will I).

When a Blog Entry Is Just a Diary Excerpt

Tuesday, 30 Dec 2008 – Rogersville, TN (limited number of crosslinks due to slow Internet access). Every culture develops ceremonies for which humans can spend time away from their assortment of usual activities, thus giving special meaning to the humans’ lives because they gain a sense of unique value while focusing on their participation or non-participation in the ceremonies. Wintertime ceremonies flourish this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, with calendar-synched activities occurring in the warmer Southern Hemisphere. Living in the Northern Hemisphere my whole life, I’ve lost the true global perspective on how a winter ceremony that we Northerners have globalized appears to someone who’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, swimming trunks and sandals singing “Winter Wonderland” or “Frosty the Snow Man” in the southern half of the world.

Many centuries ago, my ancestors chose to adopt the ceremonies that the Roman Empire had adapted itself to (I can see the value of a large political system changing from a multitheistic emotional support system to a monotheistic one, “proving” to the general populace that a single emperor makes more sense than competing emperors), thus participating in the rituals developed under the banner of the Christian religion, including the use of a Romanized language.

This winter, as in all the winters of my life, I received gifts on or about the 25th of December, symbolizing the rebirth of our emotional selves (our souls, if you will) in the midst of the doldrums of days with less sunlight. As I’ve grown older, I’ve given gifts to more and more people in a subconscious attempt to even out or exceed the number of gifts I’ve received, a sort of yin-yang of Christmas, if you will.

As I approached the day of Christmas, I found myself reading “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys, a book that loosely chronicles the life of the author who grew up in the Caribbean islands. Before I could find time to finish the book, the days of gift exchange occurred and I find myself awash in more bundled pages to focus my eyes upon:

• “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell
• “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” by Leonard Mlodinow
• “The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal” by Jared Diamond
• “The Story of Chicago May” by Nuala O’Faolain
• “Revolutionary Wealth” by Alvin & Heidi Toffler
• “Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace” edited by Mark Tovey
• “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore, a popup book by Robert Sabuda

I also received the following movies:

• Layer Cake
• Memento
• A Clockwork Orange

I have one CD to hear, “Cripple Creek 2007, Better Than Ever,” as well as a hunting knife to play with, a bottle of Puerto Rican rum to drink and a crank-powered LED flashlight to shine ahead of me (I think I should create my own ceremony using the items just listed, don’t you? LOL).

With all of those wonderful gifts in my possession, what did I give away? Not much, frankly. I made necklaces for my wife and mother. Every other gift which bore my name was purchased with my wife’s money this year – such is the life of a consultant in the idle part of a working 12-month calendar.

Which brings me to the reason for this blog entry, probably my last one for the year 2008.

While I sat in the hospital last night, waiting for a medical professional to stop by the hospital room where my 91-year young mother in-law lay in bed after being admitted through the ER earlier in the day for uncharacteristic body function measurements noted by a home health care worker, I flipped through some old magazines in the patient/family lounge. I skipped over the “Mature Living” and “Field and Stream” magazines I had read on previous hospital visits and picked up a copy of the September 24, 2007, edition of “Newsweek” with Alan Greenspan on the cover. The articles on Greenspan including a general business review of Greenspan’s career by Daniel Gross, an interview ('two-hour tutorial') with Jon Meacham and Daniel Gross and an excerpt from Greenspan’s book, “The Age of Turbulence.”

A paragraph from the excerpt haunted me during my dreams last night, especially the highlighted phrase below:

As awesomely productive as market capitalism has proved to be, its Achilles' heel is a growing perception that its rewards, increasingly skewed to the skilled, are not distributed justly. Market capitalism on a global scale continues to require ever-greater skills as one new technology builds on another. Given that raw human intelligence is probably no greater today than in ancient Greece, our advancement will depend on additions to the vast heritage of human knowledge accumulated over the generations. A dysfunctional U.S. elementary and secondary education system has failed to prepare our students sufficiently rapidly to prevent a shortage of skilled workers and a surfeit of lesser-skilled ones, expanding the pay gap between the two groups. Unless America's education system can raise skill levels as quickly as technology requires, skilled workers will continue to earn greater wage increases, leading to ever more disturbing extremes of income concentration. Education reform will take years, and we need to address increasing income inequality now. Increasing taxes on the rich, a seemingly simple remedy, is likely to prove counterproductive to economic growth. But by opening our borders to large numbers of highly skilled immigrant workers, we would both enhance the skill level of the overall workforce and provide a new source of competition for higher-earning employees, thus driving down their wages. The popular acceptance of capitalist practice in the United States will likely rest on these seemingly quite doable reforms. [bold/italicized emphasis is mine, not Greenspan’s]

It is not an accident that human beings persevere and advance in the face of adversity. Adaptation is in our nature, a fact that leads me to be deeply optimistic about our future. Seers from the oracle of Delphi to today's Wall Street futurists have sought to ride this long-term positive trend that human nature directs. The Enlightenment's legacy of individual rights and economic freedom has unleashed billions of people to pursue the imperatives of their nature—to work toward better lives for themselves and their families. Progress is not automatic, however; it will demand future adaptations as yet unimaginable. But the frontier of hope that we all innately pursue will never close.

I continue to educate myself about current economic and research trends so that I can understand where our society is moving, giving me the insight I need to understand where my skills are best applied. Despite my continuing education, I know my level of intelligence limits my true comprehension of fields such as quantum mechanics and synthetic drug development. In other words, my ability to go from the front suite of a corporate office to the labs of a research university and integrate my knowledge of the two into an in-depth whole would not impress the deepest thinkers of the world but might fool the general person on the street. So if I, with an IQ measured many years ago at a level a standard deviation or two (but not six) above average, realize my limitations, what should I expect of the vast majority of humans living under the rest of the bell curve?

If technology complexity increases indefinitely, how do we keep unskilled workers productive?

In this season of reflection and gift giving (and cuddling up by the fire in the Northern Hemisphere, including me on the chilly December day, even if the “fire” is a set of artificial logs heated by natural gas to supplement the warm air blowing out of the vents of a home central heating/cooling pump system), I say that we skilled workers who have the ability to develop and integrate complex systems should give our unskilled workers the gift of simplifying the usability of technology systems. The gift that keeps on giving, as they say.

We stand up and protest when car manufacturers insist on putting iDrives into mass-produced automobiles. We tear up any user interface that requires more than two or three buttons to operate. We treat every system as if it was an emergency situation that can be handled with the press of a large red panic button to set into motion immediately (or stopped just as easily).

As Greenspan noted, the behemoth of the education system, like a large cruise or battle ship going at full speed, cannot be stopped and turned on a dime in a short period of time. While school experiments such as KIPP are taking place and slowly influencing the way students are taught – the bottom-up approach to building a better functioning society – skilled workers will work on building systems that anyone can use, a top-down approach that hopefully will let us meet in the middle more quickly, not only putting the current topsy-turvy economy back on its feet but make our global society more cooperative and working toward a peaceful solution to many local skirmishes that are caused by economic inequalities that can be tied to poor education and workplace training.

Change in Plans

I had planned to write this blog entry about the recent revelation concerning the contagion sweeping the world in the form of happiness. Then, I thought about the news article and realized this is not news. We have been sharing happiness, joy and a positive attitude with one another for millennia. Instead of talking about spreading the 'disease' of happiness, I have changed my daily habits so that I'm spreading happiness almost every day. [NOTE: I'll get to that in a few paragraphs]

In concert with the report on happiness, I was also going to discuss the prospect of investing in "green" technology during a worldwide recession, telling you where I had planned to put my money to ensure that not only does the economy get a boost but my portfolio grows in a green way, too. Then I realized that a recession, or a contracting economy ("contracting" as in diminishing in size, not as in formal building proposal), is a form of green technology in itself.

By letting the economy shrink and forcing many people to curtail spending on superfluous goods and services, we actually find ourselves making decisions about what's important for our survival. Then, instead of buying the "next great thing," we can see for ourselves that spending time with other people, in lieu of spending money on items that substitute for one-to-one interaction, can bring us joy and happiness.

In conclusion, I have determined that a recession causes happiness! Or at least, if we put our minds to it, we can use this economic slump to bring happiness to others via our smiling faces and personal talents such as storytelling, singing, dancing, card-playing and game-playing, instead of giving each other a gee-whiz portable music player, catch-all cell phone, all-in-one transportation device or humongogigantisaurus televising entertainment complex.

==========================
Secrets to Share Happiness -- Part One

Now, to the ways we can share happiness.

I am a technology buff and believe that ingenuity in the realm of technology brings people together in a one-to-one way we hadn't thought of 100 years ago. Who would have thought that our journals/diaries would become public announcements in the form of blogs that we would want to connect to others'? As a technology buff, I want to use the tools available to me and know that the progress of technology will continue to increase the ways people connect with each other.

At the same time, technology serves as a dilemma to those of us who recognize that the raw materials needed to support high-tech growth have to come from somewhere and usually it's from areas outside of our immediate sight. Thus, as we enjoy the world's largest LCD TV installed in our special-purpose HD theater room, we do not see the local strip mines and the low-paid workers who extract the precious metals needed for producing LCD panels. Nor do many of us see the island forests cleared to build factories and other manufacturing infrastructure in Malaysia.

I tell you this because I believe our happiness should not come at the cost of ignorance. When we approach our friends and colleagues in virtual connections in the hopes of spreading happiness, let us keep in mind the cost of virtual reality. That way, as you move forward, you can with clarity ask yourself whether walking down the street to visit a dying neighbor is more important than checking the list of holiday joke emails you've received from your worldwide network of virtual friends.

With that said, during the recent U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday, I visited my hometown, the place where I spent my days going to study reading, writing and arithmetic with my school mates. During the holiday, a former school mate of mine told me that I should connect up with other former primary school mates through Facebook. I created a Facebook profile and all of a sudden I found myself reconnecting with people I haven't seen since 1980. Facebook and other social networking sites are fun to use (I also have profiles on LinkedIn, Plaxo and Naymz).

Over the past few days, I have scanned dozens of photos from the period 1978-1980 and posted them on Facebook.

The happiness that people have expressed in seeing themselves and other school mates in photos from 30 years ago cannot substitute for much in my life, other than actual face-to-face contact with them. However, because the group of people I spent my school days with have dispersed across the globe, this is the only way we have to see each other, and for the advance in technology that has made this possible, I am thankful. I balance this virtual happiness time against the good times I spend with friends, neighbors and colleagues in my town.

So, see, there is a way to share happiness during this worldwide recession. You can physically visit with your neighbors, friends and long-lost relatives and you can visit them virtually. When engaged in the latter activity, keep in mind the cost to the environment, even if you have to stretch your unused altruistic muscles to do so -- your future neighbors, friends and long-lost relatives will happily thank you, I'm sure.

Don Quixote's not dead.

Yesterday, while ruminating about the future after eating a mesquite-smoked turkey sandwich, I remembered what I had forgotten I remembered -- the subject for a future blog entry. Therefore, the future is yesterday because the blog entry is now.

I dedicate this blog entry to a friend of mine named Ali. Ali grew up in Lebanon, the son of a Christian mother and a Muslim father. He saw firsthand the violence that religious belief causes. When he moved to the United States to earn a college degree, he saw firsthand the tolerance that religious belief causes. Ali eventually got his PhD and somewhere along the way he became a U.S. citizen, giving up the riches of his Lebanese inheritance, including a Ferrari his father promised him if he returned to his birthplace (his family is part of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East that, frankly, I know little about). How many of us know the price of freedom that someone like Ali has paid? I see it but I can only imagine the conflicting thoughts and health-wrecking emotions that such a person goes through, to give up family ties in order to live freely.

While thinking about the main subject for this blog entry, I took a walk through the woods behind our house. A cold breeze stirred up freshly-fallen maple leaves, burning my ears that were trying to hear the sounds of spring which always warm my body frozen stiff from cabin fever. Deer tracks in the mud reminded me of the overpopulation of Odocoileus virginianus in this part of the country. We humans attempt to control the deer by shooting them for sport and to a small degree, it helps. However, the deer keep multiplying. If ever there was a problem looking for a solution, then finding a way to deliver deer meat to homeless shelters and the homes of the poor fits in there somehow...perhaps we should teach the poor to hunt for themselves. What's that saying about teaching a man to fish? Let's see, "he'll never go hungry"? No, that's not it. "He'll sit in a boat all day and get drunk"? Maybe that's the one.

While incense burns nearby, I spend a few minutes contemplating the rotation of Earth on its axis as the Sun passes by in the low southern sky. Interesting, how the problems of the world economy, the pestilence, the poverty, the history of humanity, the dos and don'ts, the haves and have nots, and all the other human-centric issues just disappear. Prayer and meditation cure many an ill.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched the movie, "The Man of La Mancha," starring Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren, and James Coco. I wanted to see how the movie compared to the book I had read recently, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha ("The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha"). Surprisingly, the two matched up pretty well. Both had slow parts that made me wonder where the author was taking the narrative. Most importantly, the movie reminded me of today's blog entry. But first, some lyrics from the movie:

"The Impossible Dream"

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

========================

For you see, the subject of today's blog entry concerns the understanding (or misunderstanding) between two religions -- an impossible dream, it seems at times. In the Western world, Christianity dominates as the form of ethical, moral and meditative education given to children and practiced by adults. In the Middle East and northern Africa, Islam dominates. Or rather, I should say that through tradition and relative success, families in these regions have found the two religions useful in producing offspring. I will not argue that one religion is more or less violent than the other. To turn a phrase, religions do not kill people, people kill people.

Having grown up in an English-speaking Christian society, I celebrate when those of the majority population truly accept others who may not speak English and do not profess Christianity as their emotional foundation. At the same time, I expect acceptance of my language and other behavioral skills when they are in the minority at the local population level.

At my mother in-law's house last week, I skimmed through a stack of National Geographic magazines. I had just finished reading a local newspaper column about wrestling entitled, "WWE no doubt thankful for its money-making DVD sets," and reminisced about the conversations that Ali and I had about the old wrestling stars. There's nothing like a good rumble in the ring for fans of all backgrounds to enjoy time together. I would talk about watching the likes of Ric Flair while Ali reminded me that Ric was successful only because of the popularity of wrestlers like Dusty Rhodes, Andre the Giant and Ivan Koloff. Ali taught me much about Lebanese wrestlers, such as Sheik Ali, telling me that wrestling was as popular there as it is here. Who knew? Obviously not me.

Anyway, I came across the August 2008 issue of NatGeo that focused on Persia, "Ancient Iran: Inside A Nation's Persian Soul." There, I read an interesting paragraph:

The legacy from antiquity that has always seemed to loom large in the national psyche is this: The concepts of freedom and human rights may not have originated with the classical Greeks but in Iran, as early as the sixth century B.C. under the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus the Great, who established the first Persian Empire, which would become the largest, most powerful kingdom on Earth. Among other things, Cyrus, reputedly a brave and humble good guy, freed the enslaved Jews of Babylon in 539 B.C., sending them back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple with money he gave them, and established what has been called the world's first religiously and culturally tolerant empire. Ultimately it comprised more than 23 different peoples who coexisted peacefully under a central government, originally based in Pasargadae -- a kingdom that at its height, under Cyrus's successor, Darius, extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus River.

So Persia was arguably the world's first superpower.

Cyrus the who? Because of my upbringing that emphasized the history of my northern European ancestors, I had never heard of Cyrus, yet here it appears that a leader had great vision millenia ago. Why don't we learn more from him in the land of the current superpower, the United States?

The NatGeo article pointed to the acts of magnanimity carved into the Cyrus Cylinder, an object that should be getting more attention than the cryptex, a cylinder supposedly invented by Da Vinci that many studied during the height of popularity of "The Da Vinci Code."

Which brings me to the main subject of this blog entry -- Islamic feminism. Yes, that's right. We spend so much time in the West worrying about Islamic terrorism that we forget about the daily lives of the majority of Muslims, who find a peaceful way to raise children, run businesses and get along with their neighbors.

In general, I do not support feminism as a force majeure because of the tendency that the word "feminism" attracts and is associated with radicals. Some say that the only way to change a society is through radicalism but I disagree. Radicalism is required only if suppression and oppression are the status quo and the general populace suffers declining health and higher death rates. I believe that feminism should be practiced (and thus demonstrated) and not shoved down the throats of those who cannot comprehend the value that women bring to a society that touts equality.

What is feminism?
Plenty of websites and blogs define feminism. You can use your favorite search engine if you want to investigate what others say about feminism. I define feminism as the attitude that women are equal to men in all walks of life, including mental and physical activities, but enjoy specific differences that enhance the relationship between the two genders.

Some activities tend toward gender bias because they concentrate on gender-specific traits but that does not mean a person of the other gender cannot participate. However, the inclusion of a member of the opposite sex in such activities requires acceptance by the group. Even with an open mind, the group may not include the other person for a variety of reasons but if the group believes in feminism then the issue of gender is not one of the reasons for excluding the other person.

Islamic feminism (or nisa'iyya in Arabic) is similar. For those who've read and practiced the teachings of Muhammed, Islamic feminism may seem like a nonissue. For them, the Qu'ran clearly makes a place for women. The same could be said about the Bible. But many people interpret the Qu'ran and the Bible in male-dominant terms. By the same token, many women are comfortable living in a male-dominated world. Religious tolerance allows for this way to live.

Religious tolerance also allows for Islamic feminism. If you are a Westerner, I implore you to consider the prospect of an Islamic feminist and smile with gladness. For when you accept the purpose of feminism, you accept the concept of equality. When you consider a man and woman as equals, then you can accept a Christian and Muslim as equals on this planet, too. And only when we learn to treat each other as humans without preconceived notions clouding our thoughts can we work together to build a better world.

Wearing Off My Fingertips

Well, the world is not coming to an end this week but boy, I tell you what, I'm not sure about some of my stock picks. I thought Rio was a good long-term buy (and given a long shot for a robust recovery of the economy by 2012, it will be) but news today implies that Rio's debt sinks the company like Somali pirates after finding a ship full of jungle camo parkas -- with no ransom, to boot.

So be it. I want cheap stocks to buy and that's what I get. Rock-bottom, in the cellar, down in the mine shaft CHEAP!

Anyway, I haven't had a lot of time to search for good stock deals this month. Instead, I've let my fingers fly over the keyboard piling bad phrase upon tired anecdote in an effort to complete a new novel for NaNoWriMo 2008. And I did it! Since I now have no fingerprints after typing like a coffee-coddled medical transcriptionist for the past few weeks, maybe now's the time to start of life of crime. Just kidding. In any case, mission accomplished for this month -- 53,467 words and counting.

Time to start thinking about a delicious lasagna meal for Thanksgiving!

Wooo, Pig, Sooie!!

This was my "culture hog" weekend (you know, when you go from one art trough to another, soaking in, slopping up, and stuffing yourself on the high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture). Saturday, I saw the Metropolitan Opera perform "La Damnation De Faust" by Berlioz via HD theater. Definitely a blued-hair crowd at the Regal Hollywood 18 in Huntsville but that's okay. The music was classic Berlioz with a set similar to the multilevel jail set from the movie, "Chicago," with acrobatics and infrared-controlled video projection a la Cirque de Soleil (during one of the intermission interviews, I found out the opera's director, Robert Lepage, also directed the set of a Cirque de Soleil show). Glad that opera has been modernized for us young folks. LOL

The only negative about the opera was the lead female singer, Susan Graham, who looked a decade (or two) older than the character she was portraying, Marguerite. John Relyea as Mephistopheles clearly upstaged and out-acted Marcello Giordani, a decent-acting Faust with a bland face but an even better singer with a good French accent.

Sunday morning I attended a local Methodist Church in Huntsville, built in the style of wood-and-brick European cathedrals, to enjoy singing the old-time harmonious church hymns, hear a halfway decent choir and hope for a good organ solo (and a bonus! -- the boring annual "time to pledge your money and services" sermon by a newly ordained minister).

Last night, I watched the swingin' performance of the Miss Tess Trio (a smaller version of Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade) at the Flying Monkey Arts Center in Huntsville. Wow! They had three to six couples toe-tapping and dancing on the floor at any one time. I felt like I was back in the Jazz Age, what with the brown-baggin' going on and moonshine jug sitting on the table nearby. The opening act, Helen Keller's Ukulele was more interesting, as far as music style goes (imagine a mix of circus music and Tiny Tim) but not something to dance to -- that music was more appropriate for a soundtrack, in my opinion -- the lead singer wearing what I call grandma glasses, shoulder-length hair and a green scarf, sang with a soft voice. I drank a bottle of old-fashioned ginger ale from the Buffalo Rock company -- great fizzing sensation!

Anyway, the band inspired me to sketch them in action. The band members autographed the sketch after the show and asked me to scan and email it to them because they thought it was cool (so do I, knowing I drew it in dim light from the stage!). I forwarded the sketch to the band this morning.

Helen Keller's Ukulele inspired me to rewrite my novel and retitle it from "Passing The Time" to one of the following:

· Rational Exuberance
· A Period Not Yet Justified
· A Space Not Justified
· Capitalized and Justified
· No Photos Outside Tourist Areas
· A City Goes Silent
· A Space, A Period and A Capital

The novel is a prequel to the next one which will star the illustrious Kay (a/k/a Belle) and Phyllis (a/k/a Sofia).

Here's a sample from the novel:

A few weeks later I found myself at home alone, with my wife gone on a business trip and my cats just wanting to be left alone sunning in the dining room. Bored, I drove over to Fredirique's house so I could once again heave open the ancient garage door and face the daunting task of solving the mystery of Japanese rice burners. I knew Fredirique wasn't home so I could work on the bike in meditative peace, sort of like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, only I haven't read the book so I know about as much about it as I did fixing the bike.

Sitting on the concrete floor in the suffocating heat of that day was bad enough but here I was trying to be a backyard mechanic, skillfully whacking at a stubborn bolt with a broken pair of pliers. After two hours of banging and cursing, I leaned backed, letting my neck rest on the cool vinyl of the weight bench. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, but only momentarily.

In my half-awake state, I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle whose engine noise reminded me of an old Volvo. Didn’t Fredirique own a Volvo, I wondered. The engine stopped and a door opened. With my eyes closed, I couldn't see the person coming but I imagined someone getting closer.

"Lee, are you all right?" a concerned voice said into my left ear. I looked up to see Fredirique leaning down over me. Caught as I was half-asleep, my mind raced through a multitude of personalities like a cat in a room full of catnip. In the same moment, panic swept through my mind, then relief when I realized I was not under attack by an invisible voice. At first, my platonic self looked at her sisterly eyes but then my caveman self took over and I glanced down at her shirt hanging open, exposing her white bra which, of course, led down to her hips shrink-wrapped in a pair of tight shorts. My eyes continued to slide down her thin white thighs until my self-conscience self took over (pretty well stereotyped by the psychiatrist-obsessed Woody Allen) and I found myself looking down at my hands stained with grease and engine oil.

"Uh, yeah, I just can't seem to get the engine case open," I managed to say out of my dried-out throat.

"Why don't you come inside for a minute and cool off? I can turn the air conditioner on for a little while."

"Okay," I mumbled.

"I've got some juice leftover in the fridge, if you want some," Fredirique yelled from her bedroom as she unpacked her suitcase. "There may be a beer or two in there, too."

"No thanks," I managed to say, sprawled out on the couch.

"Are you sure?"

I lay there in the cool silence.

"I'll get it for you, for a price," she said as she walked up to the couch from behind.

I leaned forward, craning my neck and cocking my eyebrows. "Like what?"

"Well, considering that I've let you keep your bike here for over a month and...well, you can see that the air conditioner doesn't do that good a job."

"It feels fine to me."

"Lee-e-e-e," she said in a nasally, whining voice, "I mean it. When you stop sweating like a pig on my couch, you'll see what I mean. You won't feel cold anymore."

"So, uh, you want me to fix your air conditioner."

"No, I had something else in mind," she said in a quiet voice, while beckoning me to the bedroom hallway with her finger.

I sat up on the couch. "So what do you have to drink?" I said as I got up and walked toward the kitchen.

"Lee, come here for a minute, will you? I have something to show you."

I stopped at the kitchen doorway. What exactly was going on here? Either I was misreading the signals or Fredirique didn't know when to stop teasing me. I shrugged my shoulders and turned back toward the living room. "What do you want?"

"Come on into the bedroom," her voice called out.

I stepped into the small hallway and stuck my head in her bedroom. Seeing her unmade bed with the covers piled up made me smile. Miss Architectural Digest didn't make her bed.

"No, over here," she said behind my back. I turned around to see Fredirique standing in the bedroom at the other end of the hallway.

I walked up behind her.

"Give me your honest opinion of what you think," she said, putting her hands on her hips with pride.

"Of what," I asked timidly.

Fall in a Maturing Maple Forest

Mid-day sun, an orchestra conductor warming up and delighting the crowd, a diverse group of beings, including shabby (some say a bit nutty) shagbark hickory trees, cedars always dressed for the occasion, stately oaks with their well-weathered skin, and the vast majority, young, fashionable maples showing off their golden, amber, and persimmon coats worn in late fall; chickadees, thrushes, and tufted titmouse birds, like children at their parents' feet, enjoy the 54 deg F air, restlessly flying from tree to birdfeeder and back, with tasty treats in their mouth. Red berries of a deciduous holly hang in undetected suspension, envious of the popular sunflower-and-safflower deluxe seed mix from Wild Birds Unlimited.

In this cozy atmosphere, I look down at the three tomes I recently purchased from Woodward Books, a "premium" used bookstore on 108 E. Jackson Avenue in the historic Old City area of Knoxville, TN:

Sophie's Choice by William Styron
The Limerick, edited by G. Legman
Crashing the Party (first edition) by Ralph Nader

Before I dive into discussing those heavy volumes, I pick up a book I have read and reread, laughing at the timeliness of human folly that I remembered from Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," that is summarized in other books like Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," but seemingly satirized best in Machiavelli's book written around 1513, "Il Principe" (better known as "The Prince"), which I hold in my hand.

While the U.S. President-elect assembles his advisory staff, perhaps he can learn from the ageless wisdom and observation of previous advisors, as in the final section of Machiavelli's 500-year old political treatise, Chapter XXVI, "An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians" -- [substitute "United States" for "Italy," if you will]:

HAVING carefully considered the subject of the above discourses, and wondering within myself whether the present times were propitious to a new prince, and whether there were the elements that would give an opportunity to a wise and virtuous one to introduce a new order of things which would do honour to him and good to the people of this country, it appears to me that so many things concur to favour a new prince that I never knew a time more fit than the present.

And if, as I said, it was necessary that the people of Israel should be captive so as to make manifest the ability of Moses; that the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes so as to discover the greatness of the soul of Cyrus; and that the Athenians should be dispersed to illustrate the capabilities of Theseus: then at the present time, in order to discover the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that Italy should be reduced to the extremity she is now in, that she should be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians; without head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, overrun; and to have endured every kind of desolation.

Although lately some spark may have been shown by one, which made us think he was ordained by God for our redemption, nevertheless it was afterwards seen, in the height of his career, that fortune rejected him; so that Italy, left as without life, waits for him who shall yet heal her wounds and put an end to the ravaging and plundering of Lombardy, to the swindling and taxing of the kingdom and of Tuscany, and cleanse those sores that for long have festered. It is seen how she entreats God to send someone who shall deliver her from these wrongs and barbarous insolencies. It is seen also that she is ready and willing to follow a banner if only someone will raise it.

Nor is there to be seen at present one in whom she can place more hope than in your illustrious house [Historical note: refers to Giuliano de Medici. He had just been created a cardinal by Leo X. In 1523 Giuliano was elected Pope, and took the title of Clement VII.] , with its valour and fortune, favoured by God and by the Church of which it is now the chief, and which could be made the head of this redemption. This will not be difficult if you will recall to yourself the actions and lives of the men I have named. And although they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.

With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in them. Here there is the greatest willingness, and where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those men to whom I have directed your attention. Further than this, how extraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example: the sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured forth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

And it is not to be wondered at if none of the above-named Italians have been able to accomplish all that is expected from your illustrious house; and if in so many revolutions in Italy, and in so many campaigns, it has always appeared as if military virtue were exhausted, this has happened because the old order of things was not good, and none of us have known how to find a new one.
And nothing honours a man more than to establish new laws and new ordinances when he himself was newly risen. Such things when they are well founded and dignified will make him revered and admired, and in Italy there are not wanting opportunities to bring such into use in every form.

Here there is great valour in the limbs whilst it fails in the head. Look attentively at the duels and the hand-to-hand combats, how superior the Italians are in strength, dexterity, and subtlety. But when it comes to armies they do not bear comparison, and this springs entirely from the insufficiency of the leaders, since those who are capable are not obedient, and each one seems to himself to know, there having never been any one so distinguished above the rest, either by valour or fortune, that others would yield to him. Hence it is that for so long a time, and during so much fighting in the past twenty years, whenever there has been an army wholly Italian, it has always given a poor account of itself; as witness Taro, Alessandria, Capua, Genoa, Vaila, Bologna, Mestre [Note: The battles of Il Taro, 1495; Alessandria, 1499; Capua, 1501; Genoa, 1507; Vaila, 1509; Bologna, 1511; Mestre, 1513].

If, therefore, your illustrious house wishes to follow those remarkable men who have redeemed their country, it is necessary before all things, as a true foundation for every enterprise, to be provided with your own forces, because there can be no more faithful, truer, or better soldiers. And although singly they are good, altogether they will be much better when they find themselves commanded by their prince, honoured by him, and maintained at his expense. Therefore it is necessary to be prepared with such arms, so that you can be defended against foreigners by Italian valour.

And although Swiss and Spanish infantry may be considered very formidable, nevertheless there is a defect in both, by reason of which a third order would not only be able to oppose them, but might be relied upon to overthrow them. For the Spaniards cannot resist cavalry, and the Switzers are afraid of infantry whenever they encounter them in close combat. Owing to this, as has been and may again be seen, the Spaniards are unable to resist French cavalry, and the Switzers are overthrown by infantry. And although a complete proof of this latter cannot be shown, nevertheless there was some evidence of it at the battle of Ravenna, when the Spanish infantry were confronted by German battalions, who follow the same tactics as the Swiss; when the Spaniards, by agility of body and with the aid of their shields, got in under the pikes of the Germans and stood out of danger, able to attack, while the Germans stood helpless, and, if the cavalry had not dashed up, all would have been over with them. It is possible, therefore, knowing the defects of both these infantries, to invent a new one, which will resist cavalry and not be afraid of infantry; this need not create a new order of arms, but a variation upon the old. And these are the kind of improvements which confer reputation and power upon a new prince.

This opportunity, therefore, ought not to be allowed to pass for letting Italy at last see her liberator appear. Nor can one express the love with which he would be received in all those provinces which have suffered so much from these foreign scourings, with what thirst for revenge, with what stubborn faith, with what devotion, with what tears. What door would be closed to him? Who would refuse obedience to him? What envy would hinder him? What Italian would refuse him homage? To all of us this barbarous dominion stinks. Let, therefore, your illustrious house take up this charge with that courage and hope with which all just enterprises are undertaken, so that under its standard our native country may be ennobled, and under its auspices may be verified that saying of Petrarch:

Virtu contro al Furore
Prendera l'arme, e fia il combatter corto:
Che l'antico valore
Negli italici cuor non e ancor morto.

Translation:
Virtue against fury shall advance the fight,
And it i' th' combat soon shall put to flight:
For the old Roman, valour is not dead,
Nor in th' Italians' breasts extinguished.
--Edward Dacre, 1640.

==========================================

While researching medical companies worthy of my investment, a friend asked me if there were solar companies that might give us a better ROI. I think she's got me there. From a quick look at the industry, including a blog, industry news, and analysis, it appears that the price of solar and other alternative power stocks has dropped significantly lower than the general market, offering a good buy opportunity, IF AND ONLY IF the alternative energy market will recover anytime soon. I don't see that happening, assuming history is correct. We saw the same thing back in the 1970s, when the oil embargo pushed Americans into thinking that alternative energy might save us from the influence of foreign oil. For a few years, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave energy, nuclear and human power gained the attention of the general public. Many people found a way to adapt their daily living to alternative energy sources but the vast majority continued to use oil and coal-based power to fuel their lives.

My father taught energy efficiency courses for Virginia Tech in the late 1970s and showed me then what I still know today -- when it comes to sources of energy, the average American citizen wants something cheap, reliable, and easy-to-use (e.g., an electric car will not work for the family that likes to travel long distance; the noise and vibration of neighborhood-located wind turbines is unacceptable). I perfectly understand -- I live in the woods but I've found a way to use solar at home (photovoltaic cells to re-energize rechargeable batteries). We use CFL bulbs in the house. We close off heat pump vents and doors to unused rooms. On the other hand, I drive a used 1995 6-cylinder BMW 325i that gets 34 MPG on the highway at 57 MPH, not a hybrid Prius that gets 50 MPG, simply because I can't justify new car payments for what boils down to a slight decrease in monthy gas bills. With the recent plummet in oil prices and the tightening of the credit market, I doubt many Americans will adopt alternative energy on a large-scale basis unless the U.S. government heavily subsidizes or mandates it. Therefore, until I see concrete evidence that the Obama administration will add alternative energy to the budget deficit, I will continue to watch the solar market but not invest in it.

Now, returning to my crystal ball and the investigation of the medical business. Hmm...medical supplies or medical services? Health insurance companies or outpatient physical therapy clinics? Tough decisions, indeed.

Meanwhile, back to helping a team of engineers get their invention to market, all while working on my NaNoWriMo novel. Life is fun on this warm fall day! Hope yours is, too.

A Match for the Ages

Some of us got to watch the match via the wonders of the Internet. For those who were there (and you know who you are), the match between Munster and the All Blacks (New Zealand), where Munster led 16-10 at the half and 16-13 until late in the game, cheering for the tired, courageous, injured and wornout players in red must have felt like the kind of fun and fable we long to tell our children about.

Although the Munster team lasted as long as they could, they lost 16-18 in a match we will tell our children about.

Thirty years after the famous 1978 match, Munster can still hold its head high:

To the brave and faithful, nothing is impossible.

Long live the 2008 Heineken Cup champions!

Dusting Off The Crystal Ball

A coworker named Joe once told me, "Saying I'm a millionaire is easy -- getting there was even easier...and fun, too!" He bought, lived in and sold homes back during the Internet bubble at the turn of the 21st Century. When the Internet bubble burst, he gave up his "easy" job as a day trader and returned to the workforce as a computer programmer. A few years ago, I heard from a friend who'd received Joe's resume and asked if I would hire him. I said sure, he was a good guy and seemed to know what he was talking about. I have no idea if my assessment of him was true but I was willing to back it up by stating that Joe's air of confidence stood for something.

In these unsure economic times, unconfident people hope for a simple solution to their woes.

In 2006, I joined an international group of folks who dedicate their time during the month of November to complete a 50,000-word novel in 30 days in an event called National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). The winners simply have to tell a story in 50,000 words or so. I've successfully completed two novels during NaNoWriMo 2006 and 2007 by putting fingers to keyboard and telling a straightforward story, including a satisfactory ending.

Everyone likes a good story. I guess that's why we see and hear the concerns from citizens all over the world. Their local news media tell stories about the sluggish economy, including bankrupt companies, job redundancies, etc., that don't have a happy or satisfactory ending right now (unless you're a sadist or masochist).

I dug through our storage room at the house this week, looking for some old writing material that might spark a memory for a plot for this year's participation in NaNoWriMo. Not only did I find a great storyline (an idea for intertwining story about a couple of old flames, one from high school and one from college) but I also found an old crystal ball I'd forgotten I'd acquired in 1984 from a soothsayer who had "retired" to the life of a homeless alcoholic on the streets of Knoxville.

I saw the crystal ball in his Army surplus canvas bag while he was digging for aluminum cans in the dumpster in front of my house and offered him some beers and cash for the ball. When the fortune teller sold me the crystal ball, he told me that his mother had entrusted the oracle to him on her deathbed, telling him never to use it unless he found himself in dire straits. He had never used the sphere for fear he'd see his future, something he was not interested in. Instead, he preferred to tell other people's futures through Tarot cards.

So here I am, sitting here with the crystal ball in my lap. Last night, I bought some incense sticks to try to simulate the conditions you see when wise men and women peer into their crystal balls (okay, maybe it's just special effects smoke machines you see in the movies but go with me here).

I set the ball on a fleece blanket and polish it to remove my oily fingerprints. As I polish it, I see an image appearing in the ball, kind of like a portable LCD TV the day after the digital TV transition February 2009, or a shaken snowglobe -- white clouds spinning around, a virtual tornado. Wait, wait...I see something appearing. It's...it's...well, it's a stethoscope? No, no, it's a staff with a snake wrapped around it. Yes, that's it. The classic medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius. I shake globe and rub it and it still displays the snake and staff.

What does that mean? Hmm...well, I don't predict the future and certainly have no confidence that a crystal ball I traded for some fermented hops is going to tell me the future. However, I think I see what's going on. In the midst of a shakeup in the way people have chosen to pad or protect their portfolios, one thing is clear: we want our lives and the lives of our loved ones to contain good health. What better way to ensure we're healthy than to invest in the medical industry?

I'll play with the crystal ball and see if there are any specific medical companies that I should buy (and maybe Joe should, too). Meanwhile, I'll keep working on my NaNoWriMo story.

A Sporting Mood

While we grow up, we play with our mates. We behave like any other animal - pushing, shoving, biting, rolling around, hitting, hugging, poking...you name it, we do it.

Eventually, we capture the attention of our adult caretakers who direct us toward organized physical activities like ball tossing, block stacking and body tagging.

Those of us who display exemplary talents for throwing and chasing after balls often get promoted into organized team sports like soccer (i.e., futbol), baseball, basketball and football (with its American, Canadian and Australian versions).

The majority of us who play these organized sports do not progress to the next level of play, moving on to something else in which we excel. That is, a large population of youth may play football in secondary school but only a portion of those with superior football skills will continue playing football in primary school and even fewer will play the sport on college or semipro teams.

Therefore, the further the player progresses, the better we presume the player has become. Also, the player's value to society increases, giving the player the option to convert the combination of talent and skill into a usable trade in the open marketplace of job opportunities, including the amateur "job" of college scholarship-funded student-athlete.

For the past 19 years, my wife and I have watched American-style football from the same seats in Neyland Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. We have enjoyed the drama of the game as well as the increasing maturity of the players as they grow from boys to men in their three to five-year college stint. We continue to marvel at the ability of the players to take bruising hits week-in and week-out while still finding a way to attend college classes, study class material after or in-between classes and improve their ability to play football the next game through weight room training or team practices.

Most importantly, we appreciate the players who understand the team concept, putting egos and superior talent aside in the drive to win football games.

During this football season, we have observed the inability of the group of players to overcome talent shortcomings or poor individual efforts on the field in order to win each week's game. Many theories regarding this year's team have been touted by fans, boosters, former players, current players, former coaches, current coaches, news media and current athletic administrators. We watched as the most common consensus among this diverse group of people coalesced into the desire to get rid of the head football coach, the adult who has personal responsibility for attracting the players' attention in primary school to come play football for him in exchange for a college education. The coach was forced by the director of the athletic department to resign last week. No matter what people thought about the man himself, they now face a future without him coaching and leading the football team. The football players responded by proclaiming they would win the rest of the games to show their respect for the coach and prove the athletic director's decision was wrong. However, they lost their next game, 13-7, while hosting a typical "weak" homecoming team, an opponent favored to lose to the Tennessee football team by 27 points.

In business, we use group dynamics to make our company move forward toward a set of common goals. Every person in the company has a set of job duties that contribute in part to those goals. When the employees fail as a group to perform their duties in a way that makes the company successful, how long should we wait to place the blame for their failures on the company's CEO, president, or department VP? This question follows a CEO or president every day, whether employees, stockholders and the board of directors consciously think it.

Not every adult gets to play professional sports on a team but every one of us participates in team activities, no matter what we do.

So, when you work with others, observe the team's group dynamics and ask yourself these questions:

• Am I tuned in to the team and the individual efforts of the team's members?
• Can I put aside my ego to assist a member of the team I do not like personally but needs my help in order to get the team to succeed?
• In the depth of misery (i.e., the team is collapsing from loss of control or intense conflict), can I use humor to pull the team back together again?

HINT: You should respond, "Yes!," without hesitation. After all, the chances that your team is sitting on a field in front of 100,000 screaming fans are fairly slim. More than likely, you're sitting in a room with less than 10 people where team decision-making is easy. Therefore, no matter what your team struggles with, remember the sports teams that have to make decisions in front of thousands or even millions of people -- they practice team continuity on a daily basis in order to achieve their team-based goals -- like the successful sports teams, no matter how great your talent, you should always put the team first and be the one to show others how to achieve the team's goals by disregarding ego-driven or externally-initiated conflicts. Don't wait for a leader to get fired for you to be the one to make a difference.

Gesundheit!

Gesundheit! You just sneezed. If sneezing is contagious, does the simple act of saying, “Gesundheit!,” make one sneeze? There you go again – Gesundheit! – I guess it does.

We learn our behaviors through imitation and repetition. We learn our behaviors through imitation and repetition.

As the paragraph above demonstrated, we sometimes repeat a behavior without knowing why. In primary school, I discovered the works of the behaviorist, B. F. Skinner. [Before that, I read books by psychology and psychiatry “gurus” such as Freud, Adler and Jung but always felt their works about the animal mind (especially, the human mind) missed the vital aspect of animal behavior – after all, we do not respond to other persons’ thinking but to their behavior, either immediately in their presence or delayed by communications devices (notes, letters, telephones, televisions, computers, etc.). Thus, to me, the Freudian focus on what occurs at the thought level reflects more about the history of human culture and the expected behavior of specific humans in a given culture/subculture than it does the actual functioning of the whole human body, including the brain (and unfortunately, the almost universally accepted concept of a mind sitting somewhere in the area behind our eyes and between our ears).] I felt relieved that someone else agreed with me that a “mind” does not exist. Or, at least if we’re going to study humans, we should look only at their behaviors and not build elaborate schemes for second-guessing how a person’s brain (synapse-based storage and processing system) was arranging and rearranging sets of symbols in a higher-order, invisible mind.

Today, the people in the world who are tuned in to their local media outlet are responding to the news that Barack Hussein Obama will be the 44th President of the North American continent’s political organization called the United States of America. If we observe the people’s behavior, we see a range of facial expressions, vocal cord utterances and arm, torso and leg movements. We respond to their behaviors in various ways, including my typing this blog one-handed while holding a sleeping cat in the other arm.

But my responding to the outcome of the election does not concern me. Instead, my interest lies in our behavior in the days ahead. With a new U.S. Presidential administration moving into the White House in 2009, we can change our behavioral patterns of the past and establish new ones. We can stop repeating behaviors that have no purpose other than to show we still use our bodies to imitate, store, retrieve and repeat learned behaviors.

As you get a moment away from your daily set of normal routines, use this change in Presidential officeholder to look for new behaviors that will change and enhance your daily life:

· Turn off the television or step away from the computer to give an evening to greeting a neighbor you’ve never met before and learn about one of his/her unique behaviors/skills like fly fishing, flower arranging or painting; turn around and teach that behavior to someone else on your next “free” evening.

· Take an inventory of your work skills to see if there’s a skill such as file sorting, carpentry, or negotiation you could offer and teach to a volunteer / charitable organization; teach that skill to someone else and then get that person to teach it to another.

· Teach your child a behavior that he or she can use to make life better for anyone, including how to sew a button, change an automobile tire or cook a simple meal on a stove; then get your child to teach that behavior to someone else.

In other words, we can do a lot for each other when the contagious behavior we share is more than just sneezing. Hope we run into one another at a neighbor's house or local charity one day soon. And I know you'll recognize me when I hear you sneeze, because you know what I will say. No, it's not "Gesundheit!" – it's "Teach me more!"

The Number One Secret to Success and Happiness

When you find yourself on a planet whose most widespread inhabitants are bacteria, what action do you take to survive? Do you try communicating with the bacteria? When you deplete your food supply, do you avoid confrontation with the majority population (in case the bacteria have large-scale defense mechanisms) and eat some other species besides the bacteria?

How did you figure out the population count and distribution patterns to begin with? Quite possibly, you anticipated the types of organisms you'd encounter and brought surveying instruments with you to measure a sample population, from which you then extrapolated total population data.

No matter how much you analyzed and prepared your approach to the planet, you know you have made decisions that will limit your capabilities.

However, you maintain one important goal -- personal survival.

And so it is in business, also. When you entered a new market, you prepared a set of goals and objectives, made assumptions about the market conditions, including competitors and customers, but inevitably missed some important factor that you couldn't see until you stepped foot in the market.

Question is, if initial results are disappointing or a negative market condition looks too daunting to overcome in a reasonable timeframe, do you just step out of the market and start over later?

The answer is no. You must pretend that you've crash-landed on another planet, with some tools and food for immediate life sustenance. But to ensure long-term survival, you have to study, process and cultivate the surrounding resources. Setbacks will hit you at every moment as you learn about the inert and hostile aspects of an environment not tuned to your existence. You celebrate the smallest iota of success. If you've arrived with a team, then every member reassures the other when solid, thought-out efforts do not lead to success (even if the effort resulted from a hunch rather than analysis), because only through experimentation can we ever achieve success.

Friends, strangers, coworkers and family have expressed their concerns to me about the current economic conditions during this pending U.S. Presidential election. They all look forward to the exit of the current President as if the change in the U.S. political administration will cure the global economic headache, no matter whether they believe McCain or Obama will win the election.

The U.S. economy indeed faces many challenges ahead, tied as it is to the rest of the world and the competition for limited resources. However, we humans share this planet with other species that, though more abundant than us by many magnitudes, have no clue about the temporary ebb-and-flow of money. Their minute-by-minute survival does not directly change from the simple uptick or downtick of the price of a stock, mutual fund or barrel of oil. In fact, their species thrive with no regard to human existence, which points us to a simple secret.

So, what's the number one secret to success and happiness? Well, it's an easy secret to share, one that young wise people know and old wise people have learned:

All problems are insignificant and transitory.

We've crash-landed on this planet together. We depend on each other to survive. The current economic conditions dominate the mass media communications networks but don't forget these conditions, as dreadful as the news organizations play them up to be, are insignificant and transitory. We will survive. And better yet, we will thrive. If a mixed race man and a former prisoner of war can run against each other in a civil contest for U.S. President, then together, WE can accomplish anything. Let's put our minds and bodies to the task of making this planet a better place to live, work and play.

The Best Time to Start a New Business

When is the best time to start a new business?

Last year, a small group of engineers and other technical types saw a problem and invented a new gadget to fix the problem. They test-marketed a "proof of concept" unit, which excited the customer who used the gadget and gained interest from others who wanted to purchase the unit, even at the hand-built stage the unit was in. The inventors realized this high level of interest meant they could go to market with a set of prototypes. Instead, wanting the product to reflect their engineering expertise and professional approach to problem-solving, they hammered on the design details of this gadget for the past year and finally filed for a patent last month.

One of the engineers brought me on board about a month ago to run the business side of their venture. After examining their gadget and analyzing the gadget's potential market, I assembled a business plan to give the inventors information they needed in order to see if they really wanted to incorporate a business, finalize the product's design for manufacturability, work with a contract manufacturer (CM) to mass-produce a bunch of units, start selling the gadget by the dozens and build enough momentum in the marketplace to attract a buyer. At the same time, I established a budget so the inventors could see the investment dollars they needed to offset the cost of the startup, including consulting/contracting fees for accounting and engineering support, salary for a technical manager and payment to a CM for a set of preproduction units (and the first run or two of production units, depending on cash flow).

As is the case for many startups, the inventors want to maintain majority control of the company so they will benefit from their invention whenever profitability and/or buyout occur. They don't want their invention to make someone a gazillionaire while they end up getting pushed out the door without so much as a dollar for their efforts. They have seen this happen to friends of theirs and don't want to make the same mistake. Therefore, I set up the business plan to show their majority ownership position to potential investors.

The investors we've spoken with so far see the great potential for this product, which is somewhat recession-proof and opens up a completely new market. Well, as luck would have it, we started selling the business to investors during the recent downturn in the stock market. In addition, the U.S. Presidential election takes place in two weeks. Combine those two uncertainties and investors have shied away from putting money into a new company until at least after the election and perhaps until after the first of the year.

So what's a couple of months, right? Well, with this delay, we've already lost one of the key members of the group, who would have worked as the technical manager to coordinate all the development activities but can't wait until 2009 for investors to fund his salary. He left this week to work a regular, six-figure, salaried engineering job and he's taken his expertise and the investors who counted on his participation to make the product a success.

Meanwhile, the remaining members of the team have agreed to move forward with the product, albeit at a much slower pace.

Those who take risks know they don't fail. They just add to their list of lessons learned. Although this current business venture hasn't yet failed, it has faced a setback and reminded me of a valuable lesson:

There's no such thing as the best time to start a business but there sure are times when getting a business started would be much easier!

I'll keep you posted.

A Simple Thanks Will Do

Regardless of your position on the subject of religion, you understand the interconnectedness between creatures of the same species -- chemically attracted to one another, genetically predisposed to reproduce like offspring and amazingly sympathetic to each other's pains, joys and sorrows.

Therefore, if we're programmed at birth to help one another (discounting the ones whose genetic makeup drives them to non-procreative actions such as murder and self-isolation), should we feel grateful and thus express our gratitude to those who treat us kindly? In other words, what does the concept of "common courtesy" -- the give-and-take of a civil society -- mean to you?

A friend of mine once said, "Be kind to everyone because you don't know who's having a worse day than you are." Usually, this friend of mine lives her life in New York City as a loud, boisterous, happy person, with no care in the world other than gladly spending her husband's money and helping old people across the street.

Unfortunately, her husband was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which has spread to his liver. Medical science is full of unexpected, miraculous recoveries from devastating diseases that run counter to the normal outcome for people who've received radiation and chemotherapy to slow down the destructive nature of the diseases or even put the diseases into temporary remission. I don't know what will happen to my friend's husband but I know they will pray for miracles while the certified medical professionals follow their prescribed course of action.

About the same time as this, I found out my mother in-law has deteriorative vertebrae that will prevent her from living the active home life she was used to for the past 91 years. I took care of her for a few months last year, moving her from a hospital to a physical therapy unit at a nursing home, getting her much needed physical therapy to strengthen her leg and back muscles that eventually put her back in her house and her active life in the community. A few weeks ago, I returned to her house to get her medical attention for a kidney infection. After X-ray and CT scans of her body during an examination to determine the extent of the kidney infection and possible diverticulitis/colitis, a surgeon once again recommended she go to the nursing home for physical therapy. The physical therapists do not want to push her as hard as they did last year because they worry my mother in-law will literally break her back. Of course, she feels frustrated by the lack of progress.

This past weekend, good friends of mine suffered a heartbreaker when their son, who ran to the grocery store for his mother, seemingly lost control of his car. The emergency personnel who arrived at the scene watched the young man's brain shut down as he went into a coma. Examination at the hospital revealed broken ribs, broken femur, crushed ankle, collapsed lungs and head/brain trauma. He remains in a coma and now has pneumonia. He will stay in the hospital for weeks, at least.

Also this past weekend, my parent's next-door neighbor of 38 years died. His health had declined recently so he had talked with my father a couple of days before he died about setting up legal documents for his son so the transfer of property after his death would not cause any hardships. Unfortunately, his son found his father's cold, dead body before he was able to create the paperwork he'd talked about.

Meanwhile, everyday, all over the world, people get maimed in fights, receive brutal torture, die in political skirmishes and starve to death from malnutrition. Children are born with birth defects directly attributable to negative environmental conditions (whether through the mother's negligent behavior and/or exposure to toxic chemicals), creating hardships at birth they will carry with them the rest of their lives.

Despite all of these people's stories, despite their tragedies and suffering, most of them maintain a positive view of life. They thank God or their lucky stars that there is hope. They ask for miracles but do not expect them. They will accept whatever happens, even if they suffer mental strain and stress in the process.

From this, I have learned not to take anything for granted. With relatively good health, I have what I need. With loving family and caring friends, I have more than what I need. I don't ask for anything else. I do hope that people around me see the appreciation I feel for their presence in my life when I smile at them with a ridiculously big grin, say "Thank you" for no reason, or slightly nod in passing. We may not agree about our political beliefs, religious beliefs, or favorite football team, but we share this planet together. Instead of labeling others and wishing them out of existence, let's reach out to others and see them for who they are: fellow members of our species. If you can't think of anything to say to one another, a simple thanks will do.

FWIW, AYWTP Revealed

More than one reader has asked about the organization and meanings behind the novel, “Are You With The Program?” [AYWTP]

I have procrastinated, putting off any thoughts I have held about considering answering that question. After all, the humor disappears when one has to explain a joke.

In any case, while driving from my parents’ upper east Tennessee house to the domicile of my mother in-law late Thursday evening, I played around with the idea that maybe the world hasn’t come to an end after major U.S. financial institutions collapsed like stick-and-stilt houses in Galveston, Texas, during Hurricane Ike (e.g., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG, to name a few of the stalwart companies finding themselves shorted out of existence by bigger players in the international market – has NYC completely lost its financial center luster and/or has the U.S. seen history repeated in that military strength means little in protecting the virtual world (intrinsic stock value, debt, etc.)? Thank goodness the U.S. still has value as a major consumerist society.). If so, then my desire for mystery surrounding my writing will survive even if I give away some of the secrets of my last published novel. I drove past “photo enforced” speed limit zones in Mt. Carmel, and porpoised across the peaks and troughs of the road through Church Hill, with a rhythmic chant of “Three, one, two, four” rattling in my mind, keeping me awake at midnight.

Why the sequence, 3-1-2-4? Well, AYWTP has four sections but the chronology, such as it is, twists a little. The novel opens with section three of the superficial, chronological order of the story, then goes back to the first section, progresses to the second, jumps to the fourth and final section, and finally leads to the epilogue.

On the surface, AYWTP reveals the “Walter Mitty” escapist mindset of the main character, Bruce Colline. Unlike Thurber’s tale relating the fantasies of Mitty, however, Bruce’s takes place in a Jorge Luis Borges’ labyrinthine world with Swiftian-style parables right out of Gulliver’s Travels. Literally and figuratively, Bruce finds himself trapped in a labyrinth. The reader follows Bruce as he slips and slides down dead-end allies, backtracks to what seems like the main path, steps in and out of time, and finally uses his sense of smell to seek out the monetary reward of retirement at the other end of the rat race maze in which he’d wandered for years. Along the way, he encounters mini-societies, subcultures and individuals whose rules for living seem preposterous to general readers because of their absurdities but represent a distorted sense of reality that only (AND truly) makes sense to those who’ve lived it (and those who’ve lived it have told me they know exactly which scenes in AYWTP are nearly word-for-word retellings of their peculiar lives).

One easy example of the parallel to Gulliver’s Travels: while Gulliver found himself tied down by Lilliputians, Bruce found himself bound by a mechanical spider.

In an unintended “art imitates art” moment (ars imitatia artis?), I seem to have copied the style of Cervantes with the opening pages of reviews, both real and imagined, in AYWTP. I suppose all novelists owe their existence to the works of Cervantes, even if they don’t know it.

So, too, I owe a debt of gratitude to Gabriel García Márquez, whose novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” told me that the ghost stories, urban legends and tall tales of my youth about folks in the southeastern United States varied little from similar fables in other parts of the world, including Ireland and Columbia.

AYWTP also satirizes business books such as “The 4-Hour Workweek.” In fact, the working title for AYWTP was “The Four-Tablet Workweek,” but I decided the working title limited the scope of the story.

More could be said. I hope that this blog entry answers the main questions my readers have posed concerning AYWTP. If not, I’ll consider expanding the explanation at some future date, maybe even in this lifetime. Otherwise, my body is tired and I feel scatterbrained at 2:00 a.m. – with no current Internet access, I’ll have to fact-check and post this blog entry sometime later today. Good night and good morning to you, my faithful readers.

Another writer/thinker takes his leave

I never read any of his work but heard about him through the years. Sadly, David Foster Wallace, a writer of popular "thinker's fare," bid farewell to the waking world by hanging it up, so to speak, committing suicide over the weekend. He joins a long list of literati who chose their own ending, including Spalding Gray and Sylvia Plath.

His reason for leaving has escaped the news so far. Any reason for suicide seems a sad one, including those for whom physical pain has overwhelmed their senses.

May his literary legacy last and he rest in peace.

Living By Translation

What makes you "you"? Some say that to know ourselves we must get to know people not like us, in order to see our true selves through others. Yet, as we meet new people, our personalities change ever so slightly, through either the new knowledge we've gained or the quirks and quips we've taken on from those we've met. Therefore, we have no one shape or personality, unless we decide to live in a subculture of homophily, a good subject rather timely for the type of propaganda (i.e., advertising) that groups put out to appeal to their kind:

• Theory of Advertising

I promised myself not to get drawn in to the rants and raves, the rhetoric, and the preposterous pontifications of those involved in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Yet, I can't resist because I don't have a vested interest in the outcome of the election, or as my father would say, I don't have a dog in the fight.

Thus, I can research subjects, read books and discuss ideas that are incongruous, go off-topic, and genuinely clash.

Of course, we've all heard about the Presidential candidates -- Barr, Keyes, McCain, McKinney, Nader, Obama, Paul, etc. -- are they Presidential? Really? Honestly, I can't say that any of them particularly appeal to me. However, one of them will become the U.S. President, a figurehead overseeing the world's largest economy, the "leader of the free world," if you will, and serve as a focus for many who want certain ideals to guide the direction the United States will take over the next four years.

In my travels, I have heard international opinions about the role the U.S. has played in the past 10 or 12 years and the role others would like the country to take. Some praise the U.S. for taking a role in rooting out terrorist groups, a role being celebrated today, 9/11, in honor of the thousands who died on 11th Sept 2001. Others blame the country for creating an environment of fear, directly feeding into the mood that terrorists want people living in peaceful countries to feel.

I attended publicly-funded schools from age 6 to 18. During that time, I encountered a variety of personality types. Some people treated classmates in a passive-aggressive manner, some acted as "school yard bullies," some naturally gravitated to leadership roles, some sought no specific group or clique and lived independent lives and some meshed with all social groups, acting neither as leaders nor followers. Needless to say, the world culture reflects the same mix of personality types.

So the easiest way to look at the future of the U.S. is to look at the adult roles people play today with whom I attended public school. In other words, the U.S. just turned 232 years old this year, a mere child in the ways of the world. What will it act like when it grows up?

While the airwaves fill with chitchat, I have decided to investigate the possible futures this country may take by thumbing through a few books I picked up at Unclaimed Baggage recently:

• Living to Tell The Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli
• The Last Days of Socrates by Plato
• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer
• The Great Books Reading and Discussion Program - Fourth Series, Volume One

I had put aside Don Quixote, the last book I got at Unclaimed Baggage, after getting halfway into the second book. I will finish the novel one day, I'm sure, just not today. Cervantes makes me put down pen and paper and stare at the wonders of the world with no desire to write anything.

As I delved into Living to Tell The Tale, I saw reflections of myself and better understood the makings of an imaginative writer like Marquez, who saw the world around him wrapped in mystery. His tales fit with those of Cervantes like two pieces of a Spanish jigsaw puzzle, with just a small section missing. That missing piece of the puzzle hides in the pages of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston's tale of life in Florida, once a bastion of Spanish culture, tells the story of a child of American culture raised in the shadows and heat of the Spanish Caribbean just like Marquez and probably in the same way Cervantes would have, seeing mischievous creatures rising out of the swamps and rivers like gators out of drainage ditches today, dragons of old basking in the sun and rattling human minds.

I don't read books all day. But for the most part, I read. Sometimes I surf the 'Net, looking at news headlines or checking my investment portfolio. I ponder the purposes of every news item -- seeing the journalist, the news editor, the publisher, the headline maker (from politicians to pontiffs to pickpockets), the popup ad, the popup ad designer, the popup ad company's owners, the popup ad product maker/owner, the Web designer, the intended audience for both news item and popup ad -- and see the general storyline that my culture wants to tell.

How easily do we get steered toward entertainment, whether through general news or advertising, that we believe enhances the life we think we lead? A rhetorical question, I know.

That's why I rarely watch television. I find very little on all the local or cable stations that helps me in my daily life. It's as if everything on television is humming a tune to a beat I can't hear with words in a language I can't understand. But somehow I think that the Internet gets around this because I can choose my own channels, so to speak, even though the majority of the Web sites I visit post text in English. Shame on me. I should know better than to let my favorite form of mass communication, text, fool me into thinking I'm thinking for myself with an open mind. I may search for random phrases using general predictive search engines provided by Google or Yahoo but I should know that I'm still looking at a limited world of ideas, specifically those posted onto the World Wide Web in English. How many people out there have found the solutions to problems but I don't have access to them because they speak a non-English language and choose not to use the Internet?

I'm living most of my life by translation, in other words. A friend of mine, Ann P., told me she much rather prefers to read poems and stories in their original language because translations lose the alliteration and true meaning of words and phrases. She likes meeting homeless people on the street because they have a world view unlike hers. I know what she means.

The next U.S. President, no matter where he or she grew up, no matter how much money he or she has, had, or will have, does not live an everyday life close to mine. The candidates seek public office, the highest one in this country, with the sole intention of saying whatever it takes to get votes. I do not. I have no convictions strong enough that I want to live the rest of my days behind the shelter of the Secret Service. However, I thank the candidates for their devotion to this task. They have helped me know what makes me "me":

• I am a leader of men and women who can move about the world making business and personal decisions without an entourage.
• I am a writer, an observer, a satirist, a thinker.

The candidates' public lives help me live my private one. If all of our lives aren't a definition of the dedication to the idea of freedom, then tell me what is.

Seven years ago, 2,993 people died because of their beliefs. Some were dedicated to business, some were dedicated to military service and some were knowingly or unknowingly dedicated to martyrdom. I have learned who I am from all of them, no matter which of the 90 countries they came from. I hope and pray that the next U.S. President will learn from them, too, and work with other countries to make this world more peaceful and prosperous for everyone. The world won't end because of one country's president but the administrators and workers of one U.S. Presidential term can inspire the world to work together. Let's support the next U.S. President, regardless of who he or she is, and not get trapped into believing or feeding each other empty rhetoric.