Recognizing and Acting My Age

I don't know why I'm so thick, but it just occured to me that in in everything I "belong" to, I'm the oldest guy in the group.
If you don't count the boss, Michael Cudahy, I have to be the oldest guy at my part time job with Discovery World.
I am the oldest Toad
I am much older than my wife, which makes me the oldest member of my immediate family. (Only RM, my mother-in-law, is older)
I guess the best part of this realization is that I don't think of myself or feel like the oldest guy in the room, ever.
I still think of my life in terms of the possibilities, even though I'm realistic enough to realize a PGA tour card is not one of them.
I continue to learn new things because I think it's important to keep up with the world around me. (What Jennifer, Brad, Brittany and Nicole is not important, but than this kind of information has never been important to me.)
Age has it's drawbacks. I tell everyone not to bother to get old it's a wasted effort and way over rated. But it has it's advantages. Mine are named: Zack, Devon, Grace, Eli, Abbott, Max and KC

Differences of Opinion

You often hear the cliche, "We'll never agree on everything." It is the art of politics's that we must agree on something. I hear friends of mine, and I'm sure that I am no exception, saying things and posing solutions to political and social problems that sound nothing like the liberals we are suppose to be, but I observe the same in the other camp.

There is some current thought that the major parties are primarily aligned with the extremes of their party and can't be representative of the nation as a whole. Movements like Unity08 have sprung up in response to a search for middle ground and to better represent the perceived "middle" of the political spectrum, that is alleged to be under represented, disillusioned and uninvolved.

I will buy all of this if we get candidates that are clear about their stance on the hot button issues. If they tell the public where they stand on the future involvement of our troops in Iraq, pro-life v choice, gun control and gay marriage, they are asking for a multimillion dollar public relations battle that is breathtaking in it's scope. We've witnesses the destruction of careers and reputation of potential candidates for public office for just putting their figurative toe in the water for higher office. If they can withstand this gauntlet and still be standing to face election, I will have some faith that there is change in the wind., because this would mean the "middle" actually put their votes where their sentiments are believed to be.

I think there is political will with in the established parties to go to the middle, but no one has the courage to lead the charge. I hear a lot of lip service, but the smart money still favors the son's and daughters of the extremes of both major parties. Sadly, in this game, money is everything.

Unity08 asks it's members to nominate and support, a non-aligned slate that represents the group consensus "middle of the spectrum" view. As and alternative, it will run a candidate from each party. The presidential candidate has to be either a republican or a democrat. Depending on the party of the presidential candidate, the vice presidential candidate has to come from the opposite party.

Think of the possibilities. Clinton and Powell, McCain and Obama come to mind, or reverse their positions on the ticket. What would be apparent is that the so-called middle would have to put up or shut up. The hot button issues are not going to be solved or furthered by this group. My feeling is that while their view's on these subjects are known, they would not be leading a full front assault on any of these issues.

They would hopefully be re-establishing the American reputation in the international community, working toward a solution on health care delivery, giving hope to those displaced by globalization, working on the immigrant workforce issues and bringing defense costs into line with the rest of the world.

If the voting public indicated a preference for this kind of approach by giving these candidates their support Unity 08 will have done their job. the ticket doesn't have to win. The ticket merely has to get a significant portion of the vote, 15% of better, to wake people up.
Two things would happen. Either Unity08 would morph and grow into a viable political party or one or both of the major parties would take the risk and move strongly toward a more middle position in the pursuit of power.

The lynch pin in this whole scenario is the apathetic public, who are allegedly waiting for this mythical middle of the road candidate to get off their figurative butt's to support and vote for this ticket. We'll see.

It isn't the How, It's the Why

When you hear the cliche that knowledge is power, you should take that thought further. If knowledge is power and power can be turned to economic gain, what is knowledge worth? I think that we are willing to pay for in the economic world of is not so much the knowledge of how things work, but the knowledge of why things work. There is one codicil to this theory, but I leave that until later.

Consider the lowly disposable battery. The guy that makes the battery is paid pretty well, I imagine, but this product has become a commodity, therefore economy in production and scale will encourage further and faster modes of automation eliminating the human factor as much as possible. Certainly a child of four knows how to change or install new batteries, so field technology is non-existent. No, the real money to be made in the battery field is in dreaming up new batteries that are better and more functional than the current product. To do that you have to know more than how batteries work. You have to know why they work.

I don't know about you, but suspect that most of us are somewhat expert in certain area of how, but the why of things that we use everyday is a mystery to most of us. I know how and just little bit of why my car starts and propels me down the road. I know enough about my computer, but I'm saved from embarrassment constantly by my kids who bale me out on operational issues and software manipulations all of the time. (Thank you all for being so patient and understanding.)

My one exception to the rule is the person who knows the art of the thing besides the science. I remember well the days when we would set up two packaging machines side by side on production lines. In theory they should be set up exactly the same and should run identically. These machines had computer and digital controls. Mechanical operations were reduced to a minimum. But there always was a reason that one machine ran slightly different from the other. Discovering that reason and compensating for differences was the art of the thing. The person who could diagnose and allow for the differences was in high demand and paid very well, but than that was because he knew not only the how, the why and the art of the thing.

FEMA, A Pegoroative

Sometimes it's hard to believe how quickly the fortunes and reputations of an organization can change. The Red Cross went through a period of scandal. The Boy Scouts didn't make friends with their anti-gay stance. I can remember when people were proud to say they were liberals. (That might be coming full circle). But FEMA, The Federal Emergency Management Agency, has to be a case in of one bad decision after another, until we have admit that it is beyond the jokes of the late night comedians and truly a national disgrace.
The latest revelation is the the "FEMA Trailer" fiasco.

In response to the devastation on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katerina, the agency ordered on a no-bid basis 145ooo mobile homes. It now admits it bought to many and wants to get rid of them. I won't dwell on the obvious that there are still people that need shelter and could use the trailers and that we don't know if we might have another storm that could create further need. The fact is they want to get rid of them.

FEMA has a couple billion dollars tied up in this investment and seemingly needs get rid of some of them. They can't. The government won't let them because the very people that plucked the plum from the tree, the mobile home manufacturers, are afraid that by dumping that many mobile homes on the market the government would ruin their business.

The estimated value of the FEMA trailers would be in the neighborhood of 40cents on the dollar. Let me see, new trailer full price versus once purchased never used trailer 60% discount. Yeah, I'd say they have a point. And I don't blame the manufacturers for taking the government no-bid contracts at full price. None of our war supply contractors is offering voluntary discounts either. But folks, what happened to the sacred rite of the free market. The homes exist. The owner no longer has a need. A market, no matter how depressed, will be created. (I suggest they put them on E-bay) The people that claim they will get hurt made money, and I would bet great amounts of it, the first time around. They just have to treat the downside like they treated the upside and ride it out.

What we have going of course is the representatives of the districts in which the manufacturers are located are being lobbied to "save jobs and small business". The other representatives at this point can promise their votes on this issue and bank the good will for their pet projects. After all a couple of billion dollars is just chump change in our national budget and they can always explain it to the folks at home. It's FEMA's fault.

Sharing your Fate

Cancer is a horrible disease. It like most killers is misunderstood and hated because we fear what we don't know or understand. One thing we understand and accept about cancer is it's death sentence. Most of us never experience the Doctor telling us we have about so much time to live and that the last months, weeks, hours and minutes of our lives may be painful and humiliating. To those of us that do...? I have no answer to how that might feel. It's one of those things that I think you have to go through. I can't imagine a lot of things and being told I'm going to die isn't one of them.

I can imagine myself being brave and going on with life as if it didn't matter because, (what's the cliche?) we all know we're going to die, some of us just know when. It would help me to focus on what's important and although my life might be ending it would have more depth and quality because I would do the things that mattered and would take nothing for granted. But this is the product of an overactive imagination that has been groomed by way to many disease of the week television movies and anecdotal conversation.

I have observed this disease killing friends of mine. I must say that all of them died with as much dignity as they could muster and we could afford them. In total, it was not pretty and I would not wish it on anyone.
There was one commonality. I can't remember one of them that wasn't concerned about making people uncomfortable with their fate. It was as if talking about dieing was embarrassing and they simply didn't want to make people unhappy.

Yes, I'm sure that dwelling on their impending death did no good, but I dare say that even alluding to it was out of bounds. Again, I don't know what I would do or how I would feel, but I do know that I'd have to talk to someone. I would hope that I would have the courage to live as well as I could before I had to die and that the goodbye's would be short, sweet and heartfelt.

Common Sense & Politic's

Maybe the two don't mix, but I want to talk about common sense and politics. The Dixie Chicks won multiple awards for their music at the Grammy Presentations. Please forget for the moment that I don't believe in these Award shows, (see my blog about the "Oscars"). Let's concentrate on what many people thought this award represented. Commentators thought that it meant that at least the people in the music business had come around on the issue of the groups well known comments on the War in Iraq.

A few years ago while on European tour, Natalie Maines, the groups lead singer remarked from the stage that she was ashamed to be from Texas, because of the actions of President Bush regarding the invasion of Iraq. A firestorm of public criticism and a commercial boycott resulted. At least in the country music world, the once darlings of the genre, were verboten. Yet on this night, just a few years later, there are accolades and applause raining down on them as they accepted their awards. What changed?

Talent aside, certainly a strong component has to be that public opinion about the War in Iraq has changed. The balance of public opinion often moves like a landslide with a slow almost imperceptible roll of pebbles building to the roaring rockslide that tears down the slope. I believe public opinion on the war has moved partially by the "Groundhog Day " like reports of body counts and insurgent attacks that makes us seem helpless against the enemy and the misleading reports and hollow feel good rhetoric of our leaders that began to ring hollow and false.

I remember seeing Joan Baez in concert after the fall of the Berlin wall. While the conservatives were crowing about our great victory over the Soviet Union, Joan, the antiwar poster child for the left, put it into perspective. The Soviet Union didn’t fail because of anything we did. It failed because of its own weakness and inability to govern it's people fairly and honestly. The Soviet Union was and always had been a paper tiger. Its power was like the Wizard of Oz was in its ability to prevent us from looking behind the, in this case, iron curtain to view reality and to appear strong. However, the myth served certain interests in our county very well. The myth of the common enemy is a tremendous unifying fulcrum.

It's a true thing that given a common enemy more frightening than any of our other differences, a society can suspend conflict to fight that enemy. Today that concept is being challenged. Maybe Lucy has pulled the football away so many times that Charley Brown won't believe her no matter how sincere she becomes. People realize albeit a little late that fighting the real enemy in the wholly mislabeled “War on Terror” that the US hasn't done itself any good by invading Iraq.

What is served by this digression is more than likely important to understand if we are to make sense of something that seems designed not to make sense. But the whole cloth of wool that is being pulled over our eyes seems to be too loose of a weave for some light not to penetrate. People just can't be fooled forever and the timeline for the life of a myth is getting shorter, mostly because of the flood of information that is available. Not only the internet and print media but cable and local television are providing more information. Despite the claims of bias, that may be true from outlet to outlet, the overall effect of competition in the media industry presents people with a wide range of opinion on almost any issue.

While it, may be true that people gravitate to the opinions that they agree with, but I think that's true of only some. Most people can, do and will change their opinion. Why do they do it? If you believe in the "Wisdom of Crowds" and the theories of open or wiki operations, giving people more information and more time, common sense or majority opinion will prevail. I would postulate that public opinion on the war has come around from the Dixie Chicks being banished from country music stations to the darlings of the Grammy’s because we were able to look behind the curtain and we realize the truth.

Weather, A Zero Sum Game?

Well, there it was again. We are having a bout of bad weather in Milwaukee. It' almost inevitable that some one will remark that we should expect this weather, since we've had a relatively mild winter up to this point. People! Weather is not a zero sum game. We do not have a ration of bad weather and good weather days which must be used by the end of the year or we get taxed with a really bad day to make it up.

Our weather is effected by so many factors that it would be impossible to mention them all here, but there are givens. The migration of the sun from north to south and back again provides us with our seasons. Longer days mean more sunlight therefore warmer average temperatures. We have statistics that tell us what the average temperature, high and low, can be during a period. These variations can be dramatic as they were this last December (2006) and January (2007). So when some homespun prognosticator tells you, "We shoulda known it was going to be nasty this winter when we got all that warm weather in January", it's just talk.

The fact is that average temperatures are trending upward. This is one of the factors that are concerning scientists about global warming or climate change. If you like Milwaukee with 40 degree day time highs in January, you may think that global warming isn't such a bad deal. But before you become smug you might want to look at the down side. We have enough people from Illinois coming up here to cool off during the summer. Can you imagine what will happen if our climate becomes even more inviting?