Opaque Lucidity

The Power of the Anecdotal

I was listening to Art Bell last night as I drifted to sleep and his guest was a "real" science guy, a physicist who spent most of the evening talking about the universe and our place in it. I say "real" because Art Bell/George Noory populate their show with a lot of quacks who will tell any tale to sell books. This guest was the real deal.

As the show went on, the topic turned to preminitions (I had drifted off to sleep more than once, so I missed the transition). Art talked about one that he experienced many years ago and how it made him a true believer. The guest said that, while that was certainly interesting, science is only interested in things that can be repeated under study conditions; anything else is an anomoly that could be explained away by environment, personal quirks, etc.

It was then that Art unleashed the callers. Almost every call went like this:
"I don't think it's fair that you are dismissing Art's experience. Here's what happened to me...". I know the guest was frustrated, but he was polite. He kept pointing out that all these testimonials were anecdotal and, while they mean a great deal to the people involved, don't amount to much from a scientific standpoint.

A thought struck me as I fell back to sleep: we Americans have come to believe in the anecdotal as proof of fact. Listen to the network news or NPR some night and you'll see what I mean. Any story about the economy will start out with a number; let's say that unemployment is down. The rest of the story will be something like, "But in this rust belt town in Pennsylvania, Vern Collier has been out of work for two years." We are then treated to Vern's unfortunate life. This appeals to us, I think, for two reasons. One, it is a little bit like reality television, surely one of the hallmarks of the demise of Western civilization. Second, it gives us the chance to do something that, admit it or not, most of us do: we can look at that guy and say, "Man, that sucks. Better him than me."

The problem, as I see it, is that our elections are now determined almost solely by anecdotal experience. John Kerry (did you know he served in Viet Nam?) talks about the "Benedict Arnold" companies who are shipping jobs overseas, but the phrase never carries a statistic. Is this new? Of course not. But I believe it has replaced the use of facts and figures because, to be honest, I don't believe that many in this country want to do the hard work of absorbing them.

Sunset on Mars

This is a picture of sunset on Mars, taken from one of the rovers there (don't remember which one). As I looked at it, it occured to me that it is, possibly, the loneliest picture I have ever seen.

The King is Dead?

Howard Stern has been kicked off of all six Clear Channel stations he was on (including WTFX here in Louisville). It looks as if the removal may be permanent, even though Clear Channel is inviting a rather large breach of contract suit by dumping the show during an active contract.

I listen to Stern almost daily. His show can range from incredibly funny, incredibly boring to incredibly stupid. He has pissed me off more times than I can count, especially when he tries to over-simplify political issues that he doesn't understand in the first place.

But why, suddenly, is Stern so offensive? He's been on national radio for the better part of 15 years and the FCC has been fining him regularly since 1992. Three words: Janet Jackson's breast. The FCC is in such a tizzy over the Super Bowl that Clear Channel, Jacor and all the other monster station-owners in this country are running with their tails between their legs.

So when do "community standards" become censorship? I think we have reached that point. In a truly free society, there would be set rules by which to govern media: you can't say these words or phrases or you're out. No fines, no warnings; you're out. However, it seems as if the FCC is very, very selective about who gets fined or kicked off the airwaves.

Beyond some very basic rules, it should be the marketplace that decides who gets to be on the air. If enough people quit listening to Howard Stern, he'll go away. The fact that he has been around so long tells me that people like him (at least enough people to satisfy the show's advertisers). The adult film industry is another example. It has become a multi-billion dollar a year industry in this country. Do you think it's all dirty old men in trench coats watching Spice TV? No way. It's Mr. and Mrs. America, albeit secretly.

I guess my point is that decency starts at home. It seems that our inability to accept responsibility in this nation has gone so far that we now rely on government bodies to make our viewing choices for us. And so the slide begins.

The Passion

Mel Gibson's tour de force opens today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry; you soon will. It seems as if every church in the Western Hemisphere has booked a theatre so they can show it to the flock. I'm sure there was laughter in Hollywood when word spread that Gibson was funding the picture himself. I'd bet that no one's laughing now.

Will I go see it? Sure---I'm too curious not to. I have read that it is gruesomely violent, which is not suprising if you want to make an accurate film about the last 12 hours of Christ's life. But there is something about all this that I find troubling. It's not Gibson's sacrifice in making the film. After all, he knew that this could be a career-ending project (it won't be). It's not Gibson's looney father saying publicly that the Jews run the world and that the Holocaust was exaggerated. After all, who doesn't have an old man in their family who's off his rocker?

I guess what bothers me is that some of the faithful in this country need a movie to help bolster their belief in the Son of God. Are you going to be a better Christian after you see this movie? If you are, then I think you need to ponder why you are a Christian in the first place. If you need to be part of a giant emotional "awakening" in order to feel spiritual, then I submit that you are no different than an Islamic fundamentalist.

I believe that faith and belief are deeply personal. Most people I know who spend a lot of time talking about their faith are phonies who enjoy the publicity of faith more than the mechanics of it. Having said that, I believe Mel Gibson's heart is in the right place, but I also believe that people's response to his work will reveal it as misguided.

Yellowstain Blues

Conversions are always messy things. If you've ever worked at a bank, you know that there are always problems which no one foresaw. This makes an already difficult job even harder. For the past three weeks, I have been in Conversion Central down here in the IS department. It's been alright until today.

Under normal circumstances, it's pretty cool to work with people who have worked together for a decade or more. They generally know their jobs very well, which contributes to a smooth working environment. However, these are not normal circumstances. Under conditions such as these, the ugly side of prolonged co-worker exposure rears its ugly head. The things you learn about people over the years become weapons to use against them.

Even though I have worked here for just shy of four years, I am still the new kid. Thus, much of what happens here I can only bear witness to; I don't really have a say. One thing I would say, if given the chance, is that we all still have to work with each other when this is over and things are back to "normal". It's not so much the people in our four-person department who concern me; it's all the other people we are working with. I suppose time will tell.

Diversity

It has become customary for those of us on the radio show to have lunch beforehand. We ate in Jeffersonville today and several new members showed up. During my tenure on the show, about three dozen people have come and gone. Many find that they do not feel comfortable on the radio; others just don't want to commit to it.

But there are about a dozen regular members who answer mail or are on the show or both. About six of those guys were at lunch today. As I have mentioned before, I feel smarter just being around them. But something else hit me today, something that made me feel even better about our little fraternity: we are amazingly different people. Our ages vary wildly, as do our salaries (presumably), our jobs and our personal lives. But there we are, working as a good, smooth team every Sunday. I am proud to know them.

Service with a Smile

Part of my new job responsibilities is the help out our full-time PC support guy. To that end, here's a real, honest-to-goodness "confrontation" I had on Friday with a man on our sales team. His attitude was half-joking, but just barely.

Me: Hi, Joe (not his real name). Can I get on your PC real quick? We have to.....It will only take about a minute.

Joe:Uhhhhh, I guess. (Stands up). Don't close any of my open programs.

Me: I won't

Joe: You guys always say that, but it never works out that way. After all, whose time is more valuable here?

Me: Do you really want to have that conversation with me?

Joe: And you're a new guy; I've got seniority.

Me: NO, Joe, I've been here for four years and you've been here eight months.

Joe: But you left for a while and...

Me: No, Joe, I didn't. Get your facts straight.

Joe (trying to laugh it off): See all the time I wasted arguing with you?

Me: Maybe you'll remember this the next time you want to start a losing argument with me.

We had drawn a crowd by the time the conversation finished. I thought I was going to get a round of applause.

Posting

I find that it's a lot harder to post here daily now that I work during the day. When I worked in the evenings, I was all alone; my "social" energies went to the weblog. Now, I spend all day communicating with people, so that energy is being focused towards something else.

I don't want to give this up, nor do I want it to become a conduit for rehashing stuff from other sites. My only choice, I guess, is to try to go for quality over quantity. We shall see.

A Virus Story

I have to be careful the way I tell this story, for I do not want to give away the name of the company I work for, how our network is set up, or which software products we use. I guess I'll just start from the beginning and tell it in the simplest terms I can.

I was leaving work yesterday at 5:30PM when my cell phone rang. It was a friend, telling me that he had just received three e-mails from my company's domain. I was caught off-guard, since I had just cleaned out our e-mail filter and had opened several attachments, none of which appeared to be infected. However, I went back into the building, booted up my machine and looked for the telltale registry entries for this particular bugger. Sure enough, I had it. Shit.

My first thought was how in the hell this thing had managed to infect my machine AND send itself out through our mail server in such a short period of time (less than an hour). After reading about it, however (it's Beagle.B, in case you want to go read all about it for yourself), I knew what had happened: once it infected my machine, it read every .txt and .html file on my hard drive. In there somewhere, I'm sure, was my friend's e-mail address. From what we were able to determine this morning, it never left my machine. Jobs are lost over screw-ups like this; I'm just lucky that I have a good, intelligent manager.

So why didn't the anti-virus software on my PC catch the file when I opened it? Because (hold on to your chair) it was so new that the latest update (from yesterday morning) didn't have a definition for it. This means that we must've been some of the first people to receive this thing. I have never been so close to the beginning of a virus.

After getting over the relief I felt, I began to get angry at the asshole who wrote this train wreck. While it wouldn't have wreaked total havoc, it certainly would've been inconvienent. What was gained here? Money? No. Fame? Certainly not? A move in the direction of anarchy? I guess so.

This is the future of the internet: fast-moving viruses, worms, etc. which can't always be caught before they cause damage. The problem is increasing at an exponential rate and technology is barely keeping up. It's bad enough when it occurs to a company with a good IT staff; what about the average small business or home user who's not very tech saavy but relies on his PC every day?

JFK---Just for Kerry

I normally wouldn't copy something like this, which is unsubstantiated. However, recent accusations against our President have made me realize that it really doesn't matter whether what you have to say about someone is true or not; all that matters is how many people listen. Thank you, Maryellen.

"February 5, 2004 -- BOSTON

ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress.

Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the city of Boston at his behest.

The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside "cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they imported porta-toilets onto the front lawn so the donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms. (They later claimed the decision was made on septic, not social, considerations).

It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He sails Nantucket Sound in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a similar boat; the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000. Sen. Kerry bought it new, for cash.

Every Tuesday night, the local politicians here that Kerry elbowed out of his way on his march to the top watch, fascinated, as he claims victory in more primaries and denounces the special interests, the "millionaires" and "the overprivileged."

"His initials are JFK," longtime state Senate President William M. Bulger used to muse on St. Patrick's Day, "Just for Kerry. He's only Irish every sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish at all.

But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he was never really seen as Irish, even when he was claiming to be (although now, of course, he says that any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).

Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter was marrying down.

At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.

Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater.

Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."

For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.

In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."
Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.

The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.

"Do you know who I am?"
"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."

John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.

Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist and syndicated talk-radio host, has been covering John Kerry for 25 years."

The only thing that still gives me hope for November is my gut feeling that Karl Rove is still polishing his boots. Stand by for heavy seas.

Wisdom's Pain

I don't consider myself particularly wise; it's not that I don't learn from my mistakes as much as I keep making the same ones over and over again. Sometimes, it is merely out of force of habit and is something I would not do if I had my brain in gear. Sometimes, it's for short-term satisfaction or gain and I understand that there will be a bill to pay later. I guess that doesn't make it any better; I just understand myself better now.

Still and all, I can't help but cringe when I see people I care about making some of the same mistakes I have made (or continue to make) in my life. There are a few distinct things I can look at and know that I gained some wisdom by royalling screwing up. One is finances. I have been in some serious money trouble in my life, so bad that it took years to dig myself out. Yet, I see young people, married and otherwise, back themselves into that same corner, hoping that they will continue to make the same (or better) salary year after year. They never plan for disaster or sickness; I guess that's the reason why there are over one million bankruptcies in this country every year.

What I know about money I learned by being dropped on my head by life. I had to make some serious errors in judgement in order to know what I know now. Many people learn wise money management and never fall into the traps I did. However, I can say that I have been on both sides of the fence and know how to deal with either. That is wisdom.

I see a dearth of wisdom in our society. Part of this, I believe, is that we have been so successful that fewer and fewer of us have to struggle to do better than our parents did. I will be 33 in May and, adjusting for inflation, I am probably doing better financially than my father was doing at 43. I don't own a house or have any children, but that is more by choice than circumstances. I have never known the hard times my parents knew. They were both children of the Depression, and they learned early that money earned needs to be money saved. They are wise, but it came at a dear, dear cost.

I am afraid that, when I am my parents' age, the wisdom that comes from overcoming adversity will be all but dead in this country. I do not wish hard times upon us, but I don't know what else in life can teach those lessons. Certainly our media does not, nor do I believe most churches do. I fear the future will be populated by educated idiots who see success and financial wealth as entitlements. Or are we already there? (Terry McAuliffe, please call your office).

Quadrangle

Kelli and I went to take some pictures at the old Quartermaster Depot today. We were going to wait for warmer weather, but the renovation is moving along much faster than I thought. I'm afraid that, if we waited for spring, too much will have been changed. The trip was exhilirating.

How 'bout a Nice, Big Cup of STFU?!

From the Washington Times Letters to the Editor:

"George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Texas Air National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight and squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris and Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now deceased). While we were not part of the same social circle outside the base, we were in the same fraternity of fighter pilots, and proudly wore the same squadron patch.

It is quite frustrating to hear the daily cacophony from the left and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, et al., about Lt. Bush escaping his military responsibilities by hiding in the Texas ANG. In the Air Guard during the Vietnam War, you were always subject to call-up, as many Air National Guardsmen are finding out today. If the 111th FIS and Lt. Bush did not go to Vietnam, blame President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, not lowly Lt. Bush. They deliberately avoided use of the Guard and Reserves for domestic political calculations, knowing that a draftee only stirred up the concerns of one family, while a call-up got a whole community's attention.

The mission of the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate 111th FIS, Texas ANG, and the airplane it possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was focused on defending the continental United States from Soviet nuclear bombers. The F-102 could not drop bombs and would have been useless in Vietnam. A pilot program using ANG volunteer pilots in F-102s (called Palace Alert) was scrapped quickly after the airplane proved to be unsuitable to the war effort. Ironically, Lt. Bush did inquire about this program but was advised by an ANG supervisor (Maj. Maurice Udell, retired) that he did not have the desired experience (500 hours) at the time and that the program was winding down and not accepting more volunteers.

If you check the 111th FIS records of 1970-72 and any other ANG squadron, you will find other pilots excused for career obligations and conflicts. The Bush excusal in 1972 was further facilitated by a change in the unit's mission, from an operational fighter squadron to a training squadron with a new airplane, the F-101, which required that more pilots be available for full-time instructor duty rather than part-time traditional reservists with outside employment.

The winding down of the Vietnam War in 1971 provided a flood of exiting active-duty pilots for these instructor jobs, making part-timers like Lt. Bush and me somewhat superfluous. There was a huge glut of pilots in the Air Force in 1972, and with no cockpits available to put them in, many were shoved into nonflying desk jobs. Any pilot could have left the Air Force or the Air Guard with ease after 1972 before his commitment was up because there just wasn't room for all of them anymore.

Sadly, few of today's partisan pundits know anything about the environment of service in the Reserves in the 1970s. The image of a reservist at that time is of one who joined, went off for six months' basic training, then came back and drilled weekly or monthly at home, with two weeks of "summer camp." With the knowledge that Mr. Johnson and Mr. McNamara were not going to call out the Reserves, it did become a place of refuge for many wanting to avoid Vietnam.

There was one big exception to this abusive use of the Guard to avoid the draft, and that was for those who wanted to fly, as pilots or crew members. Because of the training required, signing up for this duty meant up to 2½ years of active duty for training alone, plus a high probability of mobilization. A fighter-pilot candidate selected by the Guard (such as Lt. Bush and me) would be spending the next two years on active duty going through basic training (six weeks), flight training (one year), survival training (two weeks) and combat crew training for his aircraft (six to nine months), followed by local checkout (up to three more months) before he was even deemed combat-ready. Because the draft was just two years, you sure weren't getting out of duty being an Air Guard pilot. If the unit to which you were going back was an F-100, you were mobilized for Vietnam. Avoiding service? Yeah, tell that to those guys.

The Bush critics do not comprehend the dangers of fighter aviation at any time or place, in Vietnam or at home, when they say other such pilots were risking their lives or even dying while Lt. Bush was in Texas. Our Texas ANG unit lost several planes right there in Houston during Lt. Bush's tenure, with fatalities. Just strapping on one of those obsolescing F-102s was risking one's life.

Critics such as Mr. Kerry (who served in Vietnam, you know), Terry McAuliffe and Michael Moore (neither of whom served anywhere) say Lt. Bush abandoned his assignment as a jet fighter pilot without explanation or authorization and was AWOL from the Alabama Air Guard.

Well, as for abandoning his assignment, this is untrue. Lt. Bush was excused for a period to take employment in Florida for a congressman and later in Alabama for a Senate campaign.

Excusals for employment were common then and are now in the Air Guard, as pilots frequently are in career transitions, and most commanders (as I later was) are flexible in letting their charges take care of career affairs until they return or transfer to another unit near their new employment. Sometimes they will transfer temporarily to another unit to keep them on the active list until they can return home. The receiving unit often has little use for a transitory member, especially in a high-skills category like a pilot, because those slots usually are filled and, if not filled, would require extensive conversion training of up to six months, an unlikely option for a temporary hire.

As a commander, I would put such "visitors" in some minor administrative post until they went back home. There even were a few instances when I was unaware that they were on my roster because the paperwork often lagged. Today, I can't even recall their names. If a Lt. Bush came into my unit to "pull drills" for a couple of months, I wouldn't be too involved with him because I would have a lot more important things on my table keeping the unit combat ready.

Another frequent charge is that, as a member of the Texas ANG, Lt. Bush twice ignored or disobeyed lawful orders, first by refusing to report for a required physical in the year when drug testing first became part of the exam, and second by failing to report for duty at the disciplinary unit in Colorado to which he had been ordered. Well, here are the facts:

First, there is no instance of Lt. Bush disobeying lawful orders in reporting for a physical, as none would be given. Pilots are scheduled for their annual flight physicals in their birth month during that month's weekend drill assembly - the only time the clinic is open. In the Reserves, it is not uncommon to miss this deadline by a month or so for a variety of reasons: The clinic is closed that month for special training; the individual is out of town on civilian business; etc.

If so, the pilot is grounded temporarily until he completes the physical. Also, the formal drug testing program was not instituted by the Air Force until the 1980s and is done randomly by lot, not as a special part of a flight physical, when one easily could abstain from drug use because of its date certain. Blood work is done, but to ensure a healthy pilot, not confront a drug user.

Second, there was no such thing as a "disciplinary unit in Colorado" to which Lt. Bush had been ordered. The Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver is a repository of the paperwork for those no longer assigned to a specific unit, such as retirees and transferees. Mine is there now, so I guess I'm "being disciplined." These "disciplinary units" just don't exist. Any discipline, if required, is handled within the local squadron, group or wing, administratively or judicially. Had there been such an infraction or court-martial action, there would be a record and a reflection in Lt. Bush's performance review and personnel folder. None exists, as was confirmed in The Washington Post in 2000.

Finally, the Kerrys, Moores and McAuliffes are casting a terrible slander on those who served in the Guard, then and now. My Guard career parallels Lt. Bush's, except that I stayed on for 33 years. As a guardsman, I even got to serve in two campaigns. In the Cold War, the air defense of the United States was borne primarily by the Air National Guard, by such people as Lt. Bush and me and a lot of others. Six of those with whom I served in those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in crashes flying air-defense missions.

While most of America was sleeping and Mr. Kerry was playing antiwar games with Hanoi Jane Fonda, we were answering 3 a.m. scrambles for who knows what inbound threat over the Canadian subarctic, the cold North Atlantic and the shark-filled Gulf of Mexico. We were the pathfinders in showing that the Guard and Reserves could become reliable members of the first team in the total force, so proudly evidenced today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It didn't happen by accident. It happened because back at the nadir of Guard fortunes in the early '70s, a lot of volunteer guardsman showed they were ready and able to accept the responsibilities of soldier and citizen - then and now. Lt. Bush was a kid whose congressman father encouraged him to serve in the Air National Guard. We served proudly in the Guard. Would that Mr. Kerry encourage his children and the children of his colleague senators and congressmen to serve now in the Guard.

In the fighter-pilot world, we have a phrase we use when things are starting to get out of hand and it's time to stop and reset before disaster strikes. We say, "Knock it off." So, Mr. Kerry and your friends who want to slander the Guard: Knock it off.

COL. WILLIAM CAMPENNI (retired)

U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard

Herndon, Va."

Michael Moore, call your office you despicable asshole.

The Path Not Taken?

I talked to a cousin of mine this evening, and the talk turned to religion. My cousin left the Catholic Church a long time ago, at least in the spiritual sense. He and his family now belong to the Methodist Church and are very, very happy there. The reasons are myriad and I will not delve into them out of respect to him. I have wanted to ask him about this for years, but we don't talk very often and when we do, it's normally not the time or place for such conversations. Tonight was different, and I'm glad it was.

What I took away from tonight was one question he asked of me. He said, "Do you remember how the Church started?" I responded, "Sure. Jesus picked the 12 apostles and then after he died they went out preaching the Gospel." He said, "That was how the apostles got started. The Church started when Jesus told Peter that he was the rock on which the Church would be built. Do you remember what else he told Peter?"
"No."
"He didn't tell him anything."

Stop and think about that for a moment. Until tonight, I never had, either. Jesus could've told Peter anything and it would've been incorporated into Christianity---say this prayer, follow these rules, etc., etc. But he did none of that. He pretty much said, "Pete, you're in charge here." All Jesus left was the example of His life.

I can't pretend to know why God just didn't spell it out for us. However, I think I may know: He needs us to choose Him freely. If all were made clear, our faith would lake depth, for it would be backed up by facts. In short, our belief must be an exercise of free will.

Hypocrites

Does it amaze anyone else that the Democrats are trying to make an issue of President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard? I mean, after all, they did sponsor a draft-dodging coward through not one, but two consecutive terms in the White House.

Witness the reincarnation of John Kerry. He is lifeless and bland, a child of Northeastern money who married into the Heinz fortune. By the time this is over, you'll be thinking he shoed horses to save the family home and became a Fleet Admiral. He is genuinely a hero, truly deserving of our respect for his service in Viet Nam. But like most men on this planet, he will never be qualified to be President.

It's funny and infuriating to me that the people who are screaming the loudest about GW's lack of Vietnam service are the same people who would've run to Canada at the drop of a hat. And, more than thirty years after we left Viet Nam, should it still be a campaign issue?

Daylight Come...

So days are nice. This week is kind of screwy, though; I didn't get home until after 9pm this/last evening. Anyway, all is well. I am amazed at the number of people who knew me on sight, even though we probably never met (I say "probably" because we used to have Christmas parties).

Something big is about to happen at work. I dare not talk about it, and I hope I'm wrong. It's just a gut feeling, but I think I'm pretty good at reading people. We shall see.

Top 5 Rules for Clubs

In the tradition of Top 5 Fridays, below are my Top 5 Rules for behavior in clubs and bars. These rules have been learned mainly through observation, but a couple come from my personal experiences as a barfly in Texas. Enjoy.

1. Take care of your bartender. If he's worth his salt, he'll respond in kind to generous tipping. Also, don't be an asshole; he'll remember if you made his night more difficult (even if you did tip large).

2. Get to know the bouncers. No matter who you know or think you know in the club scene of any city, you will eventually run into a some badass who can make your shoulders lonesome for your head. In some places, the bouncers are allowed one or two drinks a night; if you have taken care of your bartender (see rule #1), you can make it a double.

3. Spend money. This sounds like a given, but you'd be suprised at the people who show up at a bar or club with a 20 and want to party all night. If you get a reputation as a tightwad, no one will have anything to do with you. If you can't afford to spend the cash, go rent a flick and stay home.

4. Find a "home base" early in a strategically favorable position. I like to be somewhere where I can see the main entrance and a fire exit. This has come in handy more than once.

5. The more, the merrier. This is true for many reasons, but the biggest reason is security-related: when that big-gunned guy decides he doesn't like you for whatever reason, he's much more likely to back off if he knows that you have eight of your friends there with you. Preferably, you want these friends to have names like Jimmy, Tony, Petey, Sal or Vinnie.

Mother, Do You Think They'll Drop the Bomb?

I love the Internet; it allows us the ability to retrieve information on topics that would ordinarily go unnoticed. I was listening to Hugh Hewitt last evening and he was playing snippets of George Tenet's address at Georgetown University (Tenet is the Director of the CIA). So I searched around and, lo and behold, found the transcript at CNN.com. There was a little Q&A session after the speech, where I found this gem:

"QUESTION: You've presented a very sobering view of the intelligence community today. My question involves elements that are technically outside of the intelligence community.

Recent investigative reports, including a long piece in the journal Mother Jones, which came out this past January, detailed the creation of a Pentagon group a few weeks after September 11th which, as of January of 2002, became known as the Office of Special Programs.

And it contained prominent neoconservatives with direct ties to Dick Cheney and members of the administration.

This group was shown to have a clear political agenda, to have influenced people in the intelligence community, and definitely used gross intelligence to promote their case.

So my question is, can you confirm or deny the existence of such a Pentagon group? And if so, how can we prevent small ideological groups from influencing intelligence estimates?

TENET: Well, I haven't read Mother Jones in a while, but let me say this.

(LAUGHTER)

Let me say this. I'm the director of central intelligence. The president of the United States sees me six days a week, every day. I tell him what the American intelligence community believes.

There are always people all around town -- you know, "There's gambling in this casino." Everybody has different views of what the intelligence means or doesn't mean.

I can tell you with certainty that the president of the United States gets his intelligence from one person and one community: me. And he has told me firmly and directly that he's wanted it straight and he's wanted it honest and he's never wanted the facts shaded. And that's what we do every day.

The rest of it, I don't know.

(APPLAUSE)"

? Really? I didn't know anyone under 50 actually knew what Mother Jones was. For those of you who don't know, Mother Jones is a conspiratorial rag started by a bunch of hippies in the early 70's. It's sort of like Communism for Socialists.

I imagine that the turtleneck-wearing, no-upper-body-strength-having, skinny, bad-haired, bespeckled, metrosexual, Dean-loving, girlie boy-child who asked the question thought that a sly reference to Mother Jones would show him to be someone who is "in the know". To those of us who are in the know, it's the equivalent of going to a White House press conference and asking, "I read in The Weekly World News that aliens are advising the President. Can you comment on this?"

Back Among the Living

I need you to go ahead and come on in Monday morning and start working during the day, mmmmkay? Thannnkkksss.

The Hermit Kingdom

As an armchair historian, I often wonder how our times will be looked upon in fifty or sixty years. Our society has gotten pretty good at second-guessing the leaders of previous generations. Of course, we have the advantage of seeing the results of bad decisions. But some of the decisions made in the first half of the twentieth century and before had to seem pretty bad even when they were taken; time has only made them seem worse.

The Holocaust is a good example of what I'm talking about. We now know that the Allies knew about the concentration camps fairly early in the war and even had aerial photographs of most of them. Jewish leaders now wonder why they were not bombed. This seems like a brutal choice, but it may have slowed the brutality going on inside the camps. Even severed rail lines going to these areas would've made a difference. But nothing was done, mainly because the camps were full of civilians. Had the war gone badly for the Allies, Germany could've gotten great mileage from stories of innocent Jews killed by American and British pilots.

Fifty years from now, our generation will be asked why we did nothing about North Korea. For most Americans and Europeans, North Korea is the last dim Stalinist dictatorship run by a small group hardcore elites who may or may not have a few nuclear weapons. If it were only that simple. When North Korea collapses under the weight of famine and corruption or is liberated, the world will have on its hands the worst humanitarian crisis in living memory.

You don't know more about North Korea because it's almost impossible to find accurate information about the place. An extensive Google search will return two types of information: dry summaries of the country, gleaned from information that is a decade old, or personal journals from the few European and Asian tourists who visit there each year (Americans are universally denied access). The official summaries are vague; the personal journals are anecdotal. But three things are clear: North Korea is starving, her leadership is growing increasingly desperate and things are not going to get any better without a radical change.

As I mentioned above, I believe that one of two things will happen in the country. First, it might just fold up on itself. If the leadership in Pyongyang lost control, for whatever reason, of the centrally-controlled mess they have created, the entire country would quickly cease to function. Streams of refugees into China and Russia (there are refugees now, but they are small in number and normally sent back to face life in one of the nation's many Gulags) would tell the outside world that a total collapse had taken place; it would take the help of many nations to feed and clothe 22 million people.

Second, the country might find itself on the wrong end of American military might. I believe this would only occur if the North attempted an invasion of the South (a remote possibility, in my opinion) or if the North sold a nuclear weapon to someone who used it on American soil. There will be not a first strike against North Korea as there was against Iraq; there are too many lives at stake, both Korean and American.

No matter what happens, it will happen sooner rather than later. Our response will echo through the ages and reflect upon us as surely as the Second World War reflected upon the Greatest Generation. There will be no room for half-measures; timidity is what divided the Korean peninsula in the first place. It just goes to demonstrate that peace is not the absence of war; peace is the absence of fear and the presence of justice.

Sons of Saud

According to a survey from UPI, a quarter of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (160 of 650) are not from Afghanistan but Saudi Arabia. Allies? Hmmmph.

Down to the Sea in Ships

I started not to mention this, because it may make me appear to be something I am not. Although I was once a Petty Officer in the Navy, I was not what anyone would call "salty". The only ship I served on was a training vessel that never left the pier. The rest of my time was spent at shore commands, learning about the sea from the men who had been there and done that.

I have always had a love for things naval. I guess I get this from my dad, who was the real thing. Until I joined the Navy, I had never seen an active duty warship; my experience had been limited to a viewing of the USS Yorktown, a WWII carrier that looked almost small compared to her grandchildren. So when I first drove down by the piers at main base in Charleston, I was blown away. Even the frigates, small by Navy standards, were huge to my eyes. The ships were grey and stately and built for a purpose. I loved them all.

When I still thought I was going to successfully graduate from NPTU, I talked to my dad about my options. Most nukes ended up on submarines; what little time I spent on one told me that wasn't an option. I only had two other choices: aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered cruisers. Dad told me to go with cruisers, because he knew that carriers spent more time at sea. In a protracted conflict, a carrier's escorts (cruisers, destroyers and frigates) could be rotated home. But carriers are few and far between; every at-sea record was held by an aircraft carrier.

At that time, there were still 9 nuclear-powered cruisers in the fleet. That was all that had ever been built. Three of them were unique, two others were twins and the last four were a class (I had to look this up; my memory's not THAT good). I wanted to get on one of those last four because they were the newest and, thus, would probably be in service longer.

While still in Nuclear Power School, I had asked my section adviser, a weird Senior Chief named Cates, about cruisers. He had served on the grandaddy of all nuke cruisers, the USS Long Beach (CGN-9). Affectionately called the "Long Bitch", she was a monster---nearly 800 feet long with a superstructure that made her look top-heavy. She had been built as a life partner for the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the Navy's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. In fact, the Enterprise, Long Beach and Bainbridge (CGN-25) had gone on a round the world cruise together, the first modern warships to do so without refueling.

Flash forward to last night. I was watching the History Channel out of the corner of my eye when I saw the area of Puget Sound where the Navy sends most of its ships to be mothballed and eventually cut up for scrap. Lo and behold, there was the Long Beach and the South Carolina (CGN-37), tied together. Only, it was just their hulls. The rest of them had already been cut up for scrap. I only knew them because of the white numbers still painted on their bows.

Now, don't get the idea that I got weepy for two ships that I never even set foot on, much less served aboard. But it was sad. First, it reminded me that I'm getting old. Second, it seemed almost sinful that two things of such awesome beauty (and they are beautiful, in their way) should be turned into scrap that will be hauled away in trucks. They were the vanguards of the Cold War; now that we don't need them, they are being kicked to the curb. Because of them, and hundreds of other ships, we never fought the "inevitable" war with the Soviet Union. There will never be a monument to those years, but those ships were the best investment this nation ever made.

Bullets and Beans

I don't like the New York Times. It's not that they're liberal, anti-American, pussyfied, French-acting girlie men whose world doesn't extend beyond Manhattan; it's the fact that they try to look objective that bothers me. So when I read something like this, I try to keep in mind where it's coming from before I blow my stack. After all, I doubt that anyone in an editor's chair at the NYT has ever worn the uniform of his country.

In case you don't want to read the article linked above, please allow me to summarize: the Army has released a study of their performance in our recent invasion of Iraq. To put it bluntly, they feel as if they dropped the ball when it came to supply and logistics. In fact, the Third Armored Division was two weeks away from being out of spare parts. This is inexcusable and needs to be addressed before we invade someplace like North Korea, where we'll have to fight a real, large army.

The problem comes when you take in the tone of the article. It's written with zero sense of history, as if this is the first time an American force has encountered supply problems. If you didn't know any better (and I hope you do), you would be left with the feeling that our military bungled the whole thing and it was only the weakness of the Iraqi Army that kept the whole operation from ending in failure.

A few points here: first, supplying multiple armored divisions in the field is ALWAYS a nightmare. During the height of the Second World War in Europe, General Patton's Third Army actually ran out of gas because it was all being diverted to Field Marshal Montgomery's little excursion into Holland. A modern armored division is huge and complicated and everything from toilet paper to shells has to come from the United States. Even though the Army practices for deployments, even a casual military historian will tell you that even the best plans rarely stand the test of reality.

Second, the NYT is completely ignoring how ingenious the American soldier/sailor/airman/marine is. In peacetime, there is never, ever enough of everything. Every command I served with in the Navy kept an unbelievably tight rein on inventory of even the smallest items. And there's always the old Master Chief or Gunny who can make a hydrogen bomb out of a car battery and a chocolate bar. The job gets done, as was so beautifully demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq. And despite the fact we are at war, the military budget is still at peacetime levels. This isn't World War Two, where price was no object.

Finally, the folks at the NYT do not understand how such a report is used. Any large endeavour, be it military or corporate, tracks productivity. No one ever produces a productivity report and says, "Well, fellas, this is the best we are ever going to get. Let's just hold here." Instead, this year's productivity becomes next year's minimum. A good company is its own worst critic and the Army is no different. I'm sure that no one at the Pentagon is saying, "Damn, we barely won that one." More likely they're saying, "We can do better."

Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend...

After shamelessly stealing the concept from Pentrant's Lair, I present to you the states I have visited:

create your own visited states map

I have visited exactly 25 states. Go figure.