The Real Web

My brother, who normally resides in South Carolina, has been visiting here for the last four days, courtesy of a seminar/work assignment that his wife had to do in southern California. As with the large separation we don’t get to have really extended conversations too often, these last few days have been pretty much filled with just such, on anything from family history to world politics. Which is great. It also gave my eldest son a chance to meet his uncle, which had never happened previously (which says a lot about how frequently we’ve managed to get together).

But the older I get, the more I value such family things. Back when I was a stripling and serving in the Air Force, it didn’t bother me that I was neither talking to nor visiting my father, as that relationship was very strained. But when I did finally re-contact my family, and found out that my father had died in the interim, it was a pretty large blow. There are many times today when I wish I’d been able to talk more to my father, and learn what he’d done and what he felt was important, when I was old enough to really grasp such things. Too much of my father’s life is a black hole, and that leaves something of a hole in my own life.

I suppose you can never really know everything about someone else. But life is a web of interconnections and happenstances, and when the web has gaping holes in it, it is less secure, less complete. A hermit’s life is hardly worth living.

Fire Up Your Neurons

I’ve been tagged with the Thinking Blogger Award, kind courtesy of Fencer, whose own blog certainly qualifies for this award. This particular meme was started by Ilker Yoldas, and it’s rules are:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relevant content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!

I had to scratch my head a little to figure out who else to pass this award onto, but my choices are:

Whatever by John Scalzi. Now Scalzi is a professional writer, and this blog is one of the top rated ones on the net. But if you haven’t seen it yet, do so now. Scalzi writes on a very wide variety of topics, has a very easy, conversational style, and his stated opinions on everything from the current status of the sf publishing market to why bacon taped on cats is a fun thing are always coherent and thought provoking.

Asking the Wrong Questions by Abigail Nussbaum. Her site offers insightful dissections of books, movies and TV shows.

CJWriter by Chris Levinson. He’s a relatively new author hailing from Australia, and his blog covers topics from global warming to some intriguing movies.

Sci-Fi Science Blunders of Infamy by Travers Naran. Makes you look at that Hollywood hokum with a fresh eye for just how much they get wrong.

A Modest Construct by Heliologue - odd words, music, prose sketches, reviews, and software critiques.

All hail the power of thought!

The Value of Blogging

The blogosphere continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Some estimates put the current number of US hosted blogs at 60 million. This is a significant portion of the population, even if you remove from consideration the number of foreign bloggers, ’spam’ blogs, inactive, and duplicated blogs - the number would probably still be something like 30 million. Some questions come to mind about this phenomenon:

1. What do all these people have to say? What subjects are hot?

2. Why has this medium grown so fast?

3. What value does it have versus things like print media? Will it eventually push things like newspapers to oblivion?

There may not be definitive answers to the above, but some things are fairly clear. People are writing about whatever strikes their fancy, from butterflies to canned soup, but some of the most popular topics are, not surprisingly, politics, wars, economics, and religion. A good chunk of these postings may not add much to the world’s understanding of causes and fixes for problems, and some of this material is poorly researched and validated, but at the very least some of these posts rival any information obtainable from more traditional sources, and also provide a good snapshot of current mass opinion on a host of issues that politicians had better be paying attention to. But there is also one subject area that is somewhat unique to blogosphere, namely computer-related material, reviews of this or that software, hosting facilities, how to get things done in the computer world. The depth of this material ranges from stuff for neophytes to some very sophisticated analysis of stuff that only propeller-heads are likely to understand. Certainly there are magazines and such devoted to this type of thing, but all too often reviews of software in these media are commissioned for pay, and are neither totally unbiased nor have they received testing on the incredible variety of computer platforms that exist today, so these blog posts serve a very useful purpose.

Which leads to at least a partial answer to why blogging has grown so quickly: it is filling a very real need for unbiased information that is relevant to its audience. But there are several other reasons which are possibly even more important. The first of these is the sense of community that the blogosphere engenders. Americans from the fifties to the nineties seem to be growing more and more isolated from each other (quick, now, when was the last time you had a substantive conversation with your neighbor?), grew inward to concerns about only their own families, and seemed to lose connection with their wider community. This seems to have left a feeling of there being something lacking in everyone’s daily living, and blogging has provided a means for filling at least one part of that hole, a way to connect to many other people in a non-threatening manner. To some degree, the blogosphere has become the new town-hall meeting or the gathering in the old hardware store. The other part of this is the feeling of empowerment; people who have felt that their opinions and their voice were not being heard can now get these words out there for the whole world to see, and the feedback that they can get is a validation that what they are saying is being heard and matters.

Now many established professional writers and journalists have denigrated the value of blogs, stating that they simply cannot match the accuracy of the work that they do, and can in fact lead to some very dangerous and unsupportable allegations and misstatements of fact (and there have even been a few lawsuits challenging just what can and can’t be said on a blog). It’s certainly true that getting all your news from reading blogs is probably not a good idea; that what you see in one place should be checked via some other source of information. But it’s also true that the sheer number of people involved in this means that subjects will be tackled that traditional print and TV media simply don’t have time or space for, and that benefits everyone. I doubt that blogs will ever completely do away with traditional media; there will probably always be a place for people who are dedicated to the full-time work of determining and reporting the facts, but neither should bloggers be dismissed as not having the chops to present issues that need to be addressed in a timely and well-written manner.

Which brings me to my final point. At least part of the allure of blogging is the dream that many people have of being a professional writer. Blogging lets people put their attempts at writing out there for all the world to see, without having to wait years to see it in print or submit their work to sometimes crotchety editors who insist on proper grammar and well-organized material. Of course this leads to some blogs that are almost unreadable and of little or no value. But the great majority of the ones I see, anyway, show a proper respect for the written word, and frequently do present their material in both a logical and persuasive manner. Such work shows me that that there are far more people out there than those who do get published who can write well enough that they could be published. The limitation is just how many things the publishing industry can produce and sell. It’s quite noticeable that since the advent of print-on-demand and cheap vanity publishers that the number of published books has risen steeply. Much of what is published today may not be world-class literature, and it’s certainly true that many self-published books could have used the services of a good editor, but at the same time I can’t help but think that the more things get recorded via the written word, the more our culture benefits.

Silicon Valley

Why does Silicon Valley dominate the world of electronics innovation? Not that there aren’t many things that are developed elsewhere, but for the last thirty years or so this place has been the leader in developing new products, manufacturing methods, and even whole new industry segments. Other places have sent people here to see just what the ‘formula’ is, and to a certain extent have managed to copy it, but they are still trailing this place in terms of patents granted or almost any other measure of success.

Now clearly part of the reason is the local great schools: Stanford and Berkeley are both world-renowned schools that year after year graduate brilliant and usually well-grounded students into the local businesses. And this doesn’t even count the network of various local community colleges and places like San Jose State. But having these students wouldn’t do any good if the local businesses couldn’t induce them to stay in the local area, not so easy when you consider that this area is one of the highest cost of living areas in the country, and is plagued with some of the worst commute traffic.

Business inducements range from relatively high starting salaries to the incredible number of start-up businesses that offer stock options and other perks, along with the opportunity to work on something new and different to new employees. Money alone isn’t all the answer, though. Another major piece is how employees are treated: here, most companies really believe in empowering their ‘little people’, giving them the authority to make meaningful decisions about the company direction, and treating them with some respect rather than as interchangeable cogs. Flexible working hours, corporate game and exercise rooms, memberships in athletic clubs, help with day-care and other family obligations are all part of the parcel.

There is a positive feedback effect working here, too. With so many high-talent people working here, an idea percolates from one group over to another, sparking additional ideas. Networking between people in multiple companies is common, happening anywhere from the corporate cubicle to the evening watering hole.  And of course, the very fact that things are happening here attracts more people who want to be in on the action.

Now it doesn’t hurt that the Bay Area has what some people would consider the world’s best climate: never too cold, you don’t get soggy-drenched in the winter, hurricanes and tornadoes are almost unheard of, and typically there are only a few days in the summer that it really gets hot.  And if you really want to go flop in the snow, there are some really great ski runs located only a few hours by car from here. There are some pretty good cultural/artistic places/theaters/museums here, too, allowing you to be a geek and art-lover at the same time.

I first moved to the Bay Area in 1972, when I was still in the Air Force, and got stationed at Mill Valley Air Force Station, located atop Mt. Tamalpais, about ten miles north of San Francisco. This, however, was not the place to experience the Silicon Valley revolution, as, with 169 curves from the top to the bottom of the mountain, plus another sixty miles to get to the heart of Silicon Valley,  it was a major chore to make the trip. However, when I left the military in 1980, I got an immediate job with a firm in Sunnyvale working on (as one small aspect of their overall business) microcomputers for use on the Galileo space shot.  This was my first real experience with the excitement and rewards of working in the valley (besides instantly doubling what I had been making in the military).  It was also my first experience with something known as environmental testing; clearly, if you expect a circuit to work in space, it makes sense to test it here on the ground at both very hot and very cold temperatures, in a vacuum, pure oxygen or nitrogen atmospheres, drop it a few times (the g-stress test), shake it up some more, and in general abuse it in every way you can think of. This is a field I’m still involved with today.

But since that first experience with the Silicon Valley way, other than one side trip to Florida to get married, I’ve remained in the valley, one among many others who find this environment a great place to work.

Looking Backward

This will make my 100th post to this blog, and a total volume of words equal to a short novel. As such, it’s time for a little rumination on how well this space has met my original expectations.

When I started this eight months ago, my only real plan was to put forward of few of my pet hobby-horses to a wider audience than just my friends and family - things like various trends in science, the extolling of some the better science fiction works and the ideas embodied within them, a few riffs on the political scene, and just a general diary of daily happenings. In this I think I’ve been pretty successful. The other half of this, to interest other people in these things and get meaningful feedback and commentary, has not been quite as successful as I would like, not because those who have commented have not been intelligent, reasonable, and interesting in their feedback, but merely because there haven’t been enough of them.  I have found a few other bloggers with similar (though not identical) interests, and reading their blogs has enriched my life.

Now perhaps what I’m peddling is just not that interesting to large number of people. But I like to think it’s more a matter of publicity, of getting this site more well known. Which doesn’t happen overnight, given the incredible number of blogs out there competing for everyone’s attention.  Writing these posts has probably helped me focus and organize my thoughts, and given me considerable practice in how to present those thoughts, so I will continue slogging on, and wait for the fame and fortune that will surely be mine when this site gets discovered by the great unwashed masses

Don’t Pack It In, Stock It Up

There’s a disaster waiting just around the corner. Your corner. No matter where in world you live, there is always some hazard just waiting for you to turn your back to come snarling around and sinking its teeth in your throat. It could be an earthquake. Or a hurricane, tornado, flood, forest fire, blizzard, giant sinkhole, volcano, meteorite, lightning strike, famine, or pandemic. No one is absolutely safe - if not any of these natural hazards, then I’m sure your fellow man will be kind enough to supply the requisite level of destruction via war, revolution, or environmental poisoning.

The question is, what are you doing about it? Do you have emergency supplies stockpiled? Know what your escape route will be if needed? Have insurance? A passport?  A means to get news and communicate when there’s no power? Know where your local emergency center is (assuming there is one - and if not, why not?), who administers it, what services and personnel are dedicated to helping in times of trouble?

If you’re like 90% of Americans, your answers to these questions will show an abysmal level of readiness. As this is one area where what you do and how you prepare really, really counts,  and you can’t depend on government or other organizations to ‘fix’ this for you, then it’s probably time you got cracking.

And if everyone was truly prepared, when that disaster happens, which it will, everyone will have an easier time of recovering,  and be able to go back to enjoying life that much sooner.  Unless, of course, the disaster that does happen is a planet-killer collision with a really large rock, or the sun going nova - in which case no one will have to worry, forever.

Why Are We Here?

Usually somewhere around late adolescence most people start asking themselves just what the purpose of life is and just what they want to do with their own lives.  This can be a very depressing period, as even a cursory look at the state of the world would indicate that there are a great many people who seem to believe that rape, torture, enslavement, mutilation, destruction, and mayhem are perfectly acceptable methods of achieving their vision of what the world should be, and another large group who seemingly would like to do absolutely nothing except live comfortably in their own little cocoon without any effort on their part. For someone looking for some reason for being, for some guiding principle(s) around which to structure their lives, this picture of the world is not very enlightening or encouraging. This is probably at least part of the reason for the high teen suicide rate.

But there are reasons to be found to not only continue existing, but to put forward major effort towards personal goals. For some, religion provides a ready made set of answers and guidelines for living. Others find an answer in humanism, in trying to better the condition of all humans. Still others find hedonism to be attractive, living only for the day and personal pleasure. The largest group, however, are more than likely those who decide that the basic question is unanswerable, that there is no real, verifiable purpose except that which each individual decides is valid for themselves. And having put this question aside, they can move forward towards whatever goal meets their interests and abilities.

It’s a tough time in most people’s lives. Weathering this period is part of the process of becoming an adult. And, unfortunately, it is very difficult to help someone going through the throws of this period, as each person must almost necessarily arrive at their own conclusions about this question. But if you should so happen to be near to someone at this stage, being a non-critical listener, a sounding board that the person can bounce ideas and questions off of, may be the best thing you can be.

Dull Boy Jack

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. This is not too surprising, as I indicated in an earlier post, as my working hours have been nothing short of outrageous. While I didn’t quite hit 100 hours a week for the last three weeks, I was running over 90. The end result of all this effort is a prescription for even more effort to finish this system and make it work right - but it’s no longer an all-out, do or die effort.

Now all this work has left Jack a very dull boy, and a not very happy wife.  Companies that think they can require this of their employees all the time and thereby achieve greater productivity are at the very least fooling themselves, as after only a little while of working these kinds of hours your brain turns to mush, stupid mistakes multiply, and the employee’s basic attitude becomes more and more pessimistic. In extreme cases, such policies lead to companies losing some of their best employees, which will end up costing the company huge amounts, both in dollars and in time lost while they try and train someone new for the position. Happily this is not my company’s attitude - they only request something like this when it is truly necessary and it looks like the extra effort will bring immediate benefits, but it’s still a drag when it happens.

But at least maybe now I can get back to posting here on a reasonably regular basis.

A True Human Invariant

Every human culture and society has music. It seems to be hard-wired into the human brain, our genetic structure, and the human voicebox is one of the most remarkably versatile organs in nature. But why should this be so? What survival characteristics are enhanced by music, that it should be so deeply embedded? After all, it doesn’t seem to be helpful in putting food on the table (but see below), or building a shelter, or anything else you can directly point to and say “This helps us survive as a species”. Except perhaps courtship. Music can be used to communicate to others your availability and desirability as a mate, and is clearly used in this fashion in some other species. In fact, a large proportion of the songs that are produced deal directly with our mating desires.

But most people are not great singers or instrumentalists - and listening to some of the contestants on American Idol, I would think that some of the ’singing’ done there would actively turn off any potential mate. Very few can write a song. If only a very small part of the population can produce, in one fashion or another, something pleasing enough to actively attract others, then it’s hard to see how music can strongly effect mating choices and thereby enhance survivability.

Perhaps we need to look at some of the other effects music has.

Now one characteristic of music is rhythm, and the typical frequency of rhythms present in almost all music is close to the normal human heart rate. Some studies have shown that the heart rate adjusts itself to be close to whatever the ‘beat’ of the music is. What most people consider to be ‘relaxing’ music has comparatively slow rhythms, similar to the heart rate when ‘at rest’. The converse is also true - music with accelerated rhythms produces a quickening in the heart rate. Right alongside the heart rate effect is the apparent effect on brain rhythms, which seems to follow a similar pattern (and leading to some claims that playing Mozart will increase your child’s intelligence).

One strong item which derives from this is the ’synchronizing’ effect between the music and the actions of the person listening to it. People are not normally very good at accurately timing their actions - typical is perhaps getting within 10 - 20 milliseconds of when they wanted to do something - but when trying to, say, match the timing of words in a song, most people can get a lot more accurate, near 1 - 2 milliseconds. This might be a good ability to have! Especially when looked at in terms of a group of people. Imagine a group of hunters who need to coordinate their attack on a large animal. A song with a strong beat will allow these hunters to precisely time their actions, and be more successful in bringing down their prey. This accuracy in timing is apparently due to the ability of the brain to pre-process all the needed setup for the action before it actually needs to occur, based on the repetitive nature of the beat. So here is one benefit that can actually help us survive.

But music has a whole host of other effects on the human body, from skin galvanic levels to production of various hormones and other chemical facilitators. What survival attributes these effects have is not very clear. But apparently, over our long evolutionary course, these responses to rhythmically produced tones had some benefit to the individual’s ability to survive and propagate the trait.

But regardless of how it came to be, one of the strongest attributes of listening to music is pure pleasure, in some ways akin to a drug ‘high’ (possibly this effect is mediated by the same chemical ‘triggers’ in the brain). Music is addictive and (normally, when not played at 120 db) harmless, and I for one am very happy that today’s technology allows me to get my ‘fix’ almost anytime and anywhere I want.

A Negative Aspect

Woe betide the husband/wife who forgets that today is Valentine’s day. Such a transgression is probably good for at least a week in the doghouse. But consider what it would be like if the poor person had an alternative form of marriage instead of the traditional monogamous one, such as that depicted in Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a ‘line’ marriage, where there may be both several husbands and several wives, whose age range may be 16 to 90. Now of course in such a group hopefully at least one of the involved parties will remember what day it is, and ensure that all the rest of his/her cohorts of the same gender are reminded, but just think what it would be like to be the only one who forgot out of a group of ten individuals. ‘Doghouse’ wouldn’t quite be adequate - perhaps ‘Coventry’, that area set aside in the south forty for those who can’t abide by the customs of their society, would be more appropriate. A small downside to such living arrangements.

Positive, Think Positive

‘Tis a new year, and hopefully a great one. That’s one thing people can always have, plain hope. Now 99% of the time, all the hopes don’t pan out, and you end up with something less than envisaged, but that’s alright, new hopes will come along to replace those that didn’t make the cut. It seems to be something that is hard-wired into the human makeup. If that wellspring ever dries up, the end result is a broken person, a stick figure that looks human but is really a zombie. So, anyway, my hopes/projections for this year:

1. My family will end the year together and happy. There have been some rough times in the past, and there probably will be quite a few shoals this year, but so far we’ve muddled through, and finally it looks like there will be some conclusion to a few of the ongoing problems.

2. Congress will get hip to the fact that this planet is a very fragile place and start doing something about it: provide truly adequate funding to the space program,  develop rational plans to handle all the various eco-catastrophes waiting around the corner, initiate a major upgrade to the nation’s infrastructure to make it more efficient and less taxing on the world’s resources, and actually develop a road map for the future of this country that encompasses a time frame longer than the next election, with strong enough controls enacted that they’ll actually have to follow it. Yeah, I know - this is blue-sky dreaming. But I can hope.

3. While Congress is doing (2), they’ll also wake up to the fact that security is never a 100% guarantee, and repeal the most obnoxious intrusions into personal privacy and the almost limitless police-state powers they have granted to various federal agencies. This country was built by people who took risks, and one of the major reasons they did is that they could see the direct benefit to themselves, without fear of the government tromping all over them.

4. Wars will continue to happen. It’s a given. But perhaps there will be a few places where compromise and real discussion will break out. It would be very nice to see the almost 60 year debacle of the Israeli-Arab conflict get to a point where “suicide bomber” is no longer a revered profession and the reasons for them no longer exist.

5. I could win the $250,000 bowling shootout in May. This one actually has a real chance of happening, though the odds aren’t great.  It would certainly go a long way towards making my financial position tenable. Along these same lines, maybe I can at least get my chess rating back into the Class A category. Higher than this doesn’t seem to be in the cards - I just don’t see enough time to do the really heavy studying Expert and higher would require. But here again, I can hope!

6. I’ll get off my tail and actually finish writing a story, and be able to sell it. Even if I only get $2 for it, this would be an accomplishment I’d be happy with.

7. I’ll be granted a couple more patents this year. This one is pretty likely, as the applications are already in, the concepts are sound, the technology exists, and my company is already building systems that utilize the concepts.  Now I won’t get any great financial reward for this, and the patents are ‘group’ things, developed along with quite a few other people, but I like the feeling that I’ve help add to the world’s knowledge by developing something new.

8. We’ll be contacted by the aliens from Acturas IV about next Christmas time. Fermi paradox be damned, they’re out there somewhere, and what better time for humanity’s hubris to be taken down a couple of notches when it finds out that it’s not unique, that intelligent life exists elsewhere.

9.  They’ll actually implement a fix for Social Security and Medicare and develop a real, workable universal health insurance plan. More blue-sky stuff. While they’re at it, they’ll revise the tax code so Mr. Average Joe can actually figure it out.

10. People will actually act more rationally to world events, instead of reacting with hysteria over every blip reported by our excitable (and deliberately provoking) media.

You never know. It all could happen.

Commercials, Commercials

It’s almost Christmas time again. A season that has now become a celebration of commercialism, with darn little reference to its supposed roots. In some ways, perhaps this is not a bad thing, given the track record of just about every major organized religion. Unfortunately, every religion requires its adherents to trust in faith, to accept without any provable physical evidence a concept of a supreme being. And of course, once you allow such a thing, logic disappears, replaced by emotion. All too often, that emotion is distrust and hate for those who are not adherents to your own particular concept of god, which leads, again and again, to strife and wars.

Religion may not be the only cause of wars, but it’s certainly a major player.

Still, there are times when I wish that this season would be more like it was when I was kid, when church, carols, apple cider, and small, heartfelt gifts were more the rule, and I was watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time. The sentiments that Christmas is supposed to have are admirable ones,  and it seems they’ve been shoved under the pile of sell, sell, sell.

An Unnecessary Plug for Final Fantasy

Just ordered Final Fantasy XII for the Playstation 2. Now I’m not much of a video game player (unlike my sons), but I do make an exception for this series. The quality of this series has been very consistent, with cutting edge graphics, excellent story lines, decent battle mechanics, and typically a slew of interesting side-games within the main line, all without being raunchy, super-violent, or morally questionable. For my money, the best of the RPGs that are out there. I was also happy that they developed this one for the PS2, rather than the PS3 - I don’t need to spend another $500 for yet another game machine, at least not yet. Maybe next year. In the meantime I’m looking forward to another 50-60 hours of engrossing playing time with this one.

Time Binding

One of the distinguishing characteristics of homo sapiens is their supposed ability to bind time, to look towards the future and modify current actions in order to achieve something better.  Unfortunately,  it seems as if the great majority of members of this species don’t make very good use of this ability.

Talk to your average teenager or twenty-something. Ask them if they’ve thought about their retirement, or have done anything to fund it. Probably more than 90% will answer this in the negative.  Ask about long-term goals for career and family. That answer will mirror the first. Ask about what actions they have taken to assure a clean, robust Earth for their children. Here you might actually get a few positive responses - but then ask them about nuclear, wind, solar, and water power and what percentage of the world’s needs can be met by these methods, and the answers will all too often indicate that they haven’t done any real research in this area and have been unwilling to do the math to really evaluate these items.

For that matter, talk to your Congressman. If his time horizon includes things beyond his next election date, I’d be surprised - note the almost total inaction on Social Security, energy policy, universal health care, etc. Although they seem to talk about these items a lot, when it comes to actually implementing policies and laws in these areas, it’s pretty much a blank sheet of paper, as regardless of how he votes, your Congressman is afraid of alienating someone, and hence not getting re-elected.

Corporations are no better - the next quarterly financials seem to be the be-all and end-all driving decisions about the company’s future direction.

Asking people to look not just to next year or even a decade out, but hundreds or thousands of years out seems to be an impossible proposition. About the only people who seem to do this are some scientists and science-fiction fans, who make up a miniscule percentage of the population.  And without this long-term perspective, I can guarantee that a lot decisions made now will be flawed, with some possibly very dire consequences for everyone on the planet.

Seems to me that people’s noses need to be rubbed into the catastrophic possibilities that are coming towards us like a train wreck.  Maybe science fiction works that illustrate these problems should be required reading in school. Maybe an organization should be formed to advertise this (hmm…there probably are already quite a few of these, all crying in the wilderness, and nobody is listening). Maybe it will take a real catastrophe that affects everyone before people will wake up and do a little planning.

Kids and Porn

You’ve got kids and you’ve got a computer hooked to the internet. Now what? Afraid that your kids will start lurking around all those sites that portray sex very explicitly? Afraid that they might see something there that they might decide to go out and emulate in the real world? Most parents, I think, have some such fears, and many, many groups and organizations are continuously putting out warnings to parents that their kid’s internet use needs to be monitored for just such reasons. But in the real world, what can parents do about this, and what should they do?

Option one is the obvious: get rid of pornography on the net. While this is seemingly obvious, trying to really do so runs into a hornet’s nest of not just problems in trying to define what pornography is, why it should be restricted, what harm it causes, and how to physically stop it when much of it is produced outside the jurisdiction of American courts, but also the legal rampart of free speech and not implementing any remedy that also restricts the right to publish and access non-pornographic material. Congress has tried a couple of times to implement restrictions in this area, and has stumbled over this particular point every time. Sex is a very powerful human drive, and as long as the demand for this material exists, it will be produced and distributed. The only real question is is if and how access to such material can be restricted without causing an essential breach in the right of free speech, or worse, a government that snoops on everything posted on the net.

Option two: Teach your kids about sex. Seems like most parents either don’t want to do this or don’t know how. Teach them not just what sex is, but what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior in this area. And by inappropriate I mean violence, sadism, rape, and other such power trips masquerading as sex. Part of this education should be that pornography exists, and that in and of itself it’s essentially harmless, that the human body and its sexual functions are not evil, but beautiful and normal. The schools will not do this. You’re lucky if they manage to cover the mechanics of it, and perhaps some of the risks such as STDs associated with having sex. Be aware that until kids reach a certain age, even if they should happen to run across some sexually explicit material while roaming the net, it just won’t interest them. Once they do reach that age, though (and it’s a lot younger than most parents realize), knowing what it is, why it is, and what is good and bad about sexual relations will allow these kids to process such material appropriately. Having your kids made aware of sex will also allow them to be a bit more cautious in chat rooms and such, where there is a very real danger of sexual predators hanging out - and this is a danger parents should be worried about, not whether their little Johnny or Jane so happened to catch sight of a video of two people having sex.

The Downside of Living Longer

As part of the process of getting my new mortgage approved, I had to go through all of our various retirement type accounts, which for us amounts to four different 401K’s, three different pension plans, savings bonds and certificates of deposit. When I totaled everything up, the sum looked fairly impressive. But when I look at it another way, it’s not so much, less than two years worth of our current combined salary. Will it be enough to really make our retirement financially worry-free?

Now there’s still some time that we have before retirement, and I expect that in that time our total savings will almost triple from current levels if we can continue to save as we have been. And if (that’s a big if) Social Security is still around and paying what they say they will, it looks like there will be enough, barring any major illnesses or Congress deciding to dismantle the SS program. But that’s the worry - I can’t predict the future, but I can point to high probabilities.

The first of these is that the likelihood of major medical problems for us is quite high. My wife is a Type II diabetic, which at the moment has not caused her any major problems, but this ailment is known for catching up to you in many nasty ways, including glaucoma, kidney problems, high blood pressure, circulation problems, and neurological disorders. Treatment for these ’side effects’ can be extensive and expensive. I have Crohn’s disease and COPD, both long term, essentially incurable problems. Either of these, if they get out of control, would make it impossible for me to work. And Medicare (Parts A, B, C, D, and by then probably part Z) will not cover all of the medical costs I can see coming.

The second high probability is that Congress will do something with Social Security. The program as it stands is financially unsound. Raising SS taxes even more to fund projected shortfalls doesn’t look like it’s in the cards, which leaves some form of benefit reduction as the most likely path for reform.

So I fiddle with the numbers, and look to see if we can set even a bit more aside each month. But I’m afraid I’ll have to live with this nagging worry about retirement. Still, we are far better off than many people, who have little or no savings. Which is still another worry. If there are too many people who don’t have enough to live comfortably at retirement time, who have to be supported by additional aid from the government in the form of housing and food subsidies, this will leave even less wiggle-room in the government budget for Social Security and Medicare. It’s something of a nasty spiral, and it at least partially springs from something that everyone wants, the ability to live longer thanks to the improvements in medical care in the last century.

Being Poor Is Not a Crime, But We Treat It Like One

John Scalzi, the author who just won the Campbell Award and who had one of his novels on the short list for the Hugo, wrote an essay on being poor a year ago, in the aftermath of Katrina. That piece, and some 700 comments, are posted on his Whatever blog here. I highly recommend that if you haven’t read this piece yet, you do so now. And read the comments - this might take you awhile, but I can almost guarantee that when you finish you will have:

Some very moist eyes

A much better understanding of what being poor in America is like

An urge to do something about the conditions described

Have I ever been poor? No. There have been times when I had to literally count pennies, there were days when I had zero dollars and rent coming due, but I’ve never had to go hungry, never had to make a choice between putting food on the table or paying the power bill, never had to wear Goodwill clothing, never had to use a medical clinic instead of seeing my doctor. Oh, I had a few times when I had to collect unemployment, and one four month stretch when there simply were no jobs to be had, and during that period I had to dedicate all the money I had to just rent and food, but these are picayune things compared to the situations described in that set of blog comments.

One thing that comes through those comments loud and clear is the sense of embarrassment that so many of these people feel. Embarrassed that they are in that situation, when in most cases it was entirely beyond their control. This, perhaps, is what we need to try and fix. Those of us who are better off can always make donations, can go down to the community help center and provide some labor to help get things to people who desperately need them, can ‘adopt’ a family in need and see that they at least have the basics. But how do we get rid of that sense that everyone looks down on them simply because they are poor? The current mess of food stamps is guaranteed to cause embarrassment in the check out line, with all the government red tape that causes considerable extra time to process and all of its restrictions on just what can be bought with those stamps, while everyone else waiting in line scrutinizes the person and purchases, sure that here is another example of someone ‘working the system’ and taking their tax dollars, when if they would just go out and get a job —

Sometimes they can’t get a job. Sometimes they are working two jobs and it still doesn’t pay enough to properly feed, clothe, and house their family.

Step one is to quit looking down your nose at people in such situations. Sure, there are some who are gaming the system, but most are there through no choice of their own. And you could be there yourself - all would take is one little downsizing, and after a few months of looking for a job while what savings you have disappear, and not finding anything that pays even close to what you used to make, taking anything to bring in a few dollars, and finding that’s not enough, and that this downward spiral has no end.

Step two is to make it possible for those receiving assistance to do so without having to let the whole world know they are. Get them a special debit card, where their purchases get charged against their assistance account, and get rid of the restrictions on what types of things they can purchase with that account. Use that same type of card to allow them to make clothes purchases at discounted prices. Make it possible for their children in school to get their lunches just like everyone else - why does everyone have to know that Johnny is getting free lunches because he’s so poor?

Step three is to provide basic health and dental care for everyone. If you’re sick, you can’t work, and currently the price of medical care for anyone who doesn’t have insurance is prohibitive. This may sound like an advocation of socialism, and to some degree it is. But in the end, having a healthy population benefits everyone, and being able to go see the doctor about a problem before it turns into a major catastrophe would actually end up saving everyone money. How this is set up needs very careful thought, such that we don’t just create another huge government bureaucracy that fritters away your taxes in administrative costs while adding paperwork barriers to actual medical access or driving doctors into some other field because they aren’t paid properly for their labor, but somehow the richest nation on earth should be able to do this!

Read that essay. Think about it. Help.

A Scene Unhappily Come True

I was going through some of the junk around the house in preparation for the move, and I came across this item:

Astro-Fired

I sense the wired unrest

inside the quiet voice and harsh control

Deliberate decision, constant test

Drone of backward clock tick,

tick,

grinding taut flayed nerve

 

Last tick, ignition spark

A blossom fire, a black of smoke

Hesitant lift,

pause,

sudden lark

Embroiled in sound hard high

High,

catching eye, ear, throat

 

A sigh, a smoke, relax –

My last to watch, control, the flying thought of man.

They say they will not pay the tax;

More important things than dreams

Dreams

of my heart, mind, soul

I wrote this in 1965, when I was a stripling of 16, and long before the Moon landing and the later almost total dismantling of the manned space program. As poetry it may not be great, although neither is it bad; in fact it surprised me, as I’d forgotten this poem, and it’s better than I’d thought I was capable of at that age. But more importantly it highlights the fact that even back then I could sense the ambivalence of the American populace to the need for and the importance of space flight. That hasn’t changed in all the years since then, and I have to rate NASA’s public relations efforts a dismal failure. And that is something to cry about.

Stone Age Music Companies

When are the music producers going to get it? Now I’m not referring to the artists, but to the giant companies that package and market music.

First these companies still set both restrictive and penurious clauses in their contracts with the artists, such that the poor artist rarely sees the full benefit of his work. While at the same time, these companies insist on pricing CDs at exorbitant prices. A $20 CD, containing perhaps 10 or 12 songs, and having perhaps only one or two of those tracks that the consumer is really interested in, provides only $1-2 to the artist, costs maybe $1.50 to manufacture, and is sold to the retailer for $8-9. This means the company gets something like $4.50-6.50 in gross profit, out of which (sometimes) some portion goes to promotion of the CD. Something seems out of balance here. And the artist must kowtow to the company demands for promotional tours, publicity events, etc, and can’t just hop over to a competing label.

Then we have the head-in-the-sand attitude of the company execs about the internet. It has taken them several years to finally admit that there might be a better way to market and distribute music, and to actively support digital downloading, albeit still with lots of restrictions on copying capabilities, a limited selection of their entire vault of songs (I mean, what if you want to get some of those hits from the 1940s? Darn few available), and pricing that is still too high, although somewhat easier to swallow on an individual track basis.

Maybe sometime they will finally get hip to what people want:

1. No proprietary formats. Apple’s format is OK, but if you want to play iTune songs on something other than an iPod, you’ve got a problem. And along side of this, some people want to able to get their digital tracks in the highest resolution possible, say 320 Kbps, instead of Apple’s 128K default, especially for things like classical music.
2. Ability to