Pensives & Ruminations

“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-well…how did I get here”? – Talking Heads

I was reading Dana’s Brain (invite only) and it got me thinking about where I am.  I have posted vaguely on this before, but not in quite the same sense. My last post was more about motivation and changing my life and less about where I am.

At some point in my life, if you had told me I would be living in Maine, married to a girl from the town I grew up in with and had 2 kids, I would have laughed at you. For a long time I was bored, frustrated, and angry with my life and where I was. No blame on a bad childhood or poverty or any excuses, I just was unhappy.  Any thought of a suburban lifestyle made me cringe. There are parts that still bug me, I don’t like the environmental waste that I see all around me (ChemLawn, lawns in general, three-ton SUVs driven by one person to a store that is half a mile away, sprawl, and more), I don’t like the remoteness from downtown to walk to dinner or a bar, but not having the remoteness of not seeing my neighbor’s house.

However, I would not trade the life I have. Not for money or fame or hedonism. I love my wife, I love my kids (D2 & D3) and my dog (D1).  I can have a firepit in my backyard and drink a beer and not worry about burning down the town or forest. I have a garage that I get to use for 5 months of the year when I have no top on my Jeep and my wife gets the other 7 for rain and snow.  My job is not difficult and pays well, even with the two pay cuts I have gotten lately.  Some of my friends have gotten divorced and/or laid off, they have lost money in stocks or failed companies, they have endured the late loss of a pregnancy, the headaches of ex-spouses and step-children and the politics of family. I know five separate groups of siblings that don’t talk to each other or their families do not speak due to divorce, marriage or who knows.  My biggest complaints in life are around money, my occasional Gout attack, and … well, that is mostly it. I am sure there are others, but I lead a very happy life. I won’t say lucky or blessed life because there is no evidence for such things and thus don’t belive them (big post on that soon).

The post that started this was from a person I knew pretty well in high school and recently got in touch with again. She was commenting on the fact that some days she feels like she is just acting like an adult and that someone will show up, confront her that they know this is all a scam and they will take it all away.

I think that comes in part from being a theater geek in high school (as was I) and also from the same level of insecurity that smart people seem to have when they know lots of options and thus can second guess themselves when they make decisions.  In my earlier post (referenced above) I spoke of “fake it till you make it” and such, but was referring to getting into good habits and out of bad ones, like excersising every day or taking photos every day, quitting smoking, etc.  But I think what can help with life in general is the same thing. Nobody has all the answers, although I am sure Gorgeuous McWifeski would say I try, and nobody ever will. That does not mean we should try to come up with answers.

Where ever you find yourself now, unless you are under 18, you are currently responsible for your life. Where you are, what you are doing, who you are spending time with, all of it. If you don’t like it, change it. If you feel like you don’t know how or can’t, ask for advice. Post on anonymous message boards, ask people at the bus stop. If you know what you want, but can’t seem to motivate to do it, then just do it. I know that sounds trite, but of all the cliched phrases that I have heard and remember one has always stuck out to me:

The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.

Fill out the job application, walk 100 yards, do 3 sit ups, write a letter to the person you miss or lost or hurt. Act like a parent or a sibling. Just start.

Just do it.

peace

• 45 million Americans without health care
• 60 percent of EPA scientists report political interference with their work
• 1,273 whistleblower complaints filed from 2002-2008; 1,256 were dismissed
• 190,000 U.S.-supplied weapons missing in Iraq
• $212.3 million in overcharges by Halliburton for Iraq oil reconstruction work
• $455 billion deficit for fiscal year 2008; estimated to reach up to $1 trillion in 2009
• $9.91 billion for government secrecy in 2007 — a record
• 809 government laptops with sensitive information lost by FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
• 30 million pounds of beef recalled in 2007
• $300 billion over budget for Department of Defense weapons acquisitions
• Less than 3 percent of U.S. electricity needs met by alternative energy
• 2,145 troops killed and 21,000 injured in Iraq from March 2003 through November 1, 2008, by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and other explosives — many while awaiting body armor. Additionally, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the conflict
• 34.8 percent of oil used in America imported during Nixon administration; 42.2 percent during first Gulf War; 59.9 percent in 2006
• $100 million for failed FBI computer network
• $100 billion in federal tax revenues lost annually to corporations using off-shore tax shelters
• 163 million airline passengers delayed 320 million hours; cost to U.S. economy: more than $41 billion in 2007
• $60 billion stolen in Medicare fraud each year
• 2.5 million toxic toys recalled in summer of 2007
• $12.5 billion for defective National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System
• $4 billion to upgrade National Security Agency computers that often crash, have trouble talking to each other, and lose key intelligence
• 60,000 flights made by 46 Southwest Airline jets in violation of FAA safety directives due to lax FAA enforcement
• 12.8 percent job turnover at Department of Homeland Security in 2006 — double that of any other cabinet-level agency
• 730,000 backlogged patent applications
• 148,000 troops not enough to secure Iraq, enabling insurgency to take root
• $1 billion, six-year “Reading First” program called ineffective by Department of Education Inspector General
• 20,000 U.S. deaths annually from lack of pollution controls on diesel vehicles and power plants
• 60,000 newborns a year at risk for neurological problems due to mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants
• Two-thirds fewer clean ups of EPA Superfund toxic waste sites during 2001-2006 than in previous six years
• 935 demonstrably false statements in lead-up to Iraq war by President Bush and seven members of his administration
• At least $500 million for FEMA trailers contaminated by formaldehyde occupied by thousands displaced after Hurricane Katrina
• 558 detainees at Guantanamo detention facility reduced to 255 after court-ordered case reviews
• 26 percent of corporations holding at least $250 million in assets audited in 2006; percent audited in 1990: more than 70 percent. IRS audit staff slashed by 30 percent
• $431.5 billion spent on Medicare in 2007, double amount in 2001
• 47 dead in mining accidents in 2006 blamed on lax oversight
• $9 billion in federal oil and gas royalties mismanaged by agency linked to drug-and-sex scandal
• 275 largest U.S. corporations pay, on average, about 17 percent in taxes in 2007, half the standard corporate tax rate
• $45 trillion in credit-default swaps, without federal oversight, in 2007
• 760,800 disability claims backlogged, awaiting hearings at Social Security Administration as of October 2008
• 806,000 Veterans Affairs disability claims in 2006, up 39 percent since 2000; backlog reached 400,000 claims by February 2007
• 2,677 days Osama bin Laden at large since September 11, 2001 (as of January 12, 2009)

Staggering, just staggering.

Full details at http://www.publicintegrity.org/

So, I went to church today.  And the Pastor’s reading was Matthew 29-36 (I think, could be off by a verse or two).  Which she used to explain that we always needed to be ready for Jesus to come back, based specifically on 24:36 ” But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

However, just two verses earlier it says this: “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.”
Matthew (not really written by him, but let’s play along for a bit), clearly quotes Jesus as saying that he (Jesus) will return before the people he is talking to, die.

And now they are dead. And have been for (according to the story) nineteen centuries.  So, that does not make sense.  Now, you can come up with varying excuses for this, but then that is admitting that the bible is not the word of god.

And if it is not the word of god, then it must not be the be-all, end-all of knowledge/morality/truthiness/etc.

And is just another reason why I think all religion, including Christianity, is crap.

Creationism/Intelligent Design [sic] is debunked by Evolution.

The earth is NOT flat.

The earth DOES rotate around the Sun.

Being “possessed” is a chemical imbalance in the brain, not demons.

etc

etc

I often wonder if I am in the position I am for a fear of success/failure.  Not necessarily a commitment, because I have done the same job for 8 years, been married for 8 years, have a kid (soon to be 2). More that the risk taking to do something big and bold requires a leap of faith, and faith has never been a strong point of mine.

Perhaps you (Ltl) do not have a commitment issue, just an expectations issue?  Set academia at the same level as films or music. Sure, some can be outstanding, both in small/indie releases, as can some big ones, and some can be miserable. Academia seems to be the same. You may find a Professor that inspires you to great heights at a small college in the smallest state, or you might find one at UT Austin, with 50k+ students.  I think the trick is to expect to go see a Will Smith movie as stupid, but entertaining for 90 min, and to expect a Kieslowski film to entrance and so forth.  You may just need to expect that to get your PhD. will be a grind with the highlights NOT being the professors, but rather what YOU create during that process.

WHile I was getting my Masters of Science, I remember one of my Professors talking about school in stages of responsibility, which I have adapted here with my own thoughts.

Elementary school is mostly memorization, most of the onus is on the Teachers to teach you the basics of reading, math, etc, so you can grow into learning more. About the only choices you get is what color crayons and whether the fire truck eveyone is drawing is facing left or right.  90/10 on the teachers.

High School takes those basics and starts to do critical thinking work, you write essays that are not just book reviews to show you read it, but rather to compare the book to another one, or a style of literature or such. Still mostly the teacher expecting you to learn, but the beginnings of independent/analytic thought, say 75%/25%.

College expands that role so that you are (hypothetically) never doing book reviews, but instead are expected to synthesize several books into longer papers of 10-20 pages to answer certain questions posed by the Professor. You can often explore independent studies and take classes not related to your specific degree.  50/50

Masters work tends to finally swap this equation, such that you begin to decide what you are going to write about, within a fairly narrow framework of a particular class. When I did my MS in Information Systems at University of San Francisco, I wrote a great deal about Apple Computers (was the name then) and privacy in the internet age.  I could focus on those topics whether it was Telecommunications, Database Theory or Marketing.  However, you still often have specific topics from your teachers and sets of core requirements for math, science, language, etc.  40/60 Teacher/Student responsibility

Finally, from what I understand, as I have not endeavored one for myself, a PhD. program is almost the “student becomes the teacher” paradigm.  You pick your thesis, you choose the books and studies and methodology to use, etc.  Of course it needs approval, which is why I peg this at 10/90, but I think this is what makes PhD work apparently both the most frustrating and rewarding of educational experiences.

You can’t really complain about the teachers giving you too much homework, as you picked it for yourself. You can’t really complain about the teachers giving you a bad grade, as you set the goals when you picked the program. Of course, any group of people will have personality conflitcs and issues with internal politics, but generally speaking, its like telling a bunch of people that you are going to build a bicycle. And then complaining about bending steel, oil, and the smell of rubber.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that students can’t complain about pinching their fingers or ruining a shirt with grease, just that complaining about the process seems arbitrary.

As to LtL, whose post on Academic Romance got me thinking about education again, I hope this does not sound like a personal attack, it is not that at all.  I hope it comes across as more my own views on how academia works, and perhaps a way for you to recognize that if you have committment issues with the process, perhaps the committment issue is really with yourself.

Which goes back to the beginning when I spoke of my own fear of failure. I think that I often do not take the leap of faith, into running for office or going for a PhD or JD, because I do not trust myself to finish what I started. Past experiences of half-assery have probably only reinforced this belief. However, as I approach 40 next year, I think that perhaps I need to commit myself to a path of action to change my past. To look forward to the future more than I do now.

To do something I have not done much in the depression of the Bush Presidency, and in the fog of having small childeren.

To hope.

Seriously. If anyone happens to come across this, I would be curious about rational reasons you are voting for McCain.

I do not want (and will delete) any thing about Socialism, Communism, Islam or any other falsehoods.

If you are doing it because you make $500k a year and want to keep it, fine. But please give me some reasons why you are doing this.

Again, I would like POSITIVE reasons you are voting for McCain.

Thanks.

Or perhaps do less harm.
Greta Christina has a great article up on viewing this election. As she says, I do not expect Barack Obama to be THE BEST PRESIDENT EVAH™, but I do think that he will do a great deal to mitigate some of the harm of the last 8 years and will certainly do more to help the environment and energy, as well as restoring the Army and actually going after Bin Laden than McSame ever would.

Therefor, if you are debating the issue, simply do what I suggested to another friend.
Pick 1, 3, 5 or 10 of your most important issues, things that you feel passionate about.
Taxes, abortion, energy independence, rational thinking, etc. Then compare the candidates stand on those issues.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/

Then be sure to check out http://www.factcheck.org/ and www.snopes.com to see what is a BS and what is spin and what is true.

OK, I know it is painfully obvious to anyone except fundies who keep their head in the sand, but this is pretty funny:

Whether it’s the power of prayer, or faith healing, or astrology, or life after death: the same pattern is consistently seen. Whenever religious and supernatural beliefs have made testable claims, and those claims have been tested — not half-assedly tested, but really tested, using careful, rigorous, double-blind, placebo- controlled, replicated, etc. etc. etc. testing methods — the claims have consistently fallen apart.

From Greta Christina’s blog (some language and URLs NSFW)

The strongest reason I gave up religion when I was about 13 was realizing the hundreds of competing religions could not all be right. Not to mention all the religions that were no longer in place, but that had thousands or millions of followers at some point in time. Think Zeus, Thor, Isis, etc. However, I still believed in some sort of indeterminate god, Taoism most closely fit what I felt:

In Taoism, Tao both precedes and encompasses the universe. As with other nondualistic philosophies, all the observable objects in the world – referred to in the Tao Te Ching as ‘the named’ or ‘the ten thousand things’ – are considered to be manifestations of Tao, and can only operate within the boundaries of Tao. Tao is, by contrast, often referred to as ‘the nameless’, because neither it nor its principles can ever be adequately expressed in words. It is conceived, for example, with neither shape nor form, as simultaneously perfectly still and constantly moving, as both larger than the largest thing and smaller than the smallest, because the words that describe shape, movement, size, or other qualities always create dichotomies that are only parts of Tao.
…
Tao is often compared to water: clear, colorless, unremarkable, yet all beings depend on it for life, and even the hardest stone cannot stand in its way forever.

Perhaps it is because I grew up near the ocean and have lived 37 of 38 years within 30 miles of the ocean, mostly within 5 miles, but water has always had a strong attraction. I like swimming, sailing, fountains, watching rivers and waves, pretty much anything to do with water.

I think the leftover ideas of god as a powerful force in the universe made me want to believe in the Tao, the Force a la Star Wars, or some sort of universal energy.

Now I know there is lots of energy in the universe, but there is no evidence it has any sort of conscious effect on our lives or the universe. There are “four fundamental interactions (forces) may be assumed: gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction.“, which hopefully the LHC can provide some more insights into. Those forces shape our bodies and expand the universe. They keep atoms together and let them bond to create thousands of molecules. Those forces are powerful and awesome, but they are not god. They are simply the way the universe works.

Any attempts to show the effects of prayer, crystals, homeopathy, Tarot cards, dowsing or anything similar, consistently show failure or, at best, the same chances as randomness.

Many people have written on this, many far more eloquently than I. However, I think in this day and age, just as homosexuality is finally becoming less and less of an issue (although still big, at least they are not sent to mental institutions for it!), I think that being an atheist is pretty much reviled. I think there will always be superstitions, but if we got to the point where that was the strongest version of religion, I think that would make life better for everyone. I hope that “outing” myself as an atheist may encourage others to do the same and make more people understand the issues of religion.

Peace.