Tag Archives: ruminations

Are the stories really true?

Each time I hear one of the silly stories about people getting hassled at airports – getting denied entry based on their chosen reading material, perhaps, or their choice of t-shirts, or their accent – I wonder if the stories are really true, or if they are slightly exaggerated. I’ve never experienced, or witnessed, stuff like that. Of course, I have had stupid things confiscated, and I have been subjected to a variety of indignities. But I’ve never caused a flight to be delayed or cancelled, and I’ve never been denied passage.

In fact, some small impish part of me wants to see how far I can push things, just to see. After all, this is America. Stuff like that doesn’t *really* happen.

And so, this afternoon, as I approached the security check with a book which had been sent to me by a friend, I was really just hoping for some kind of reaction.

However, at the last minute, I chickened out, and put it in my bag. After all, what would it prove, except that I was an idiot, if I was indeed refused entrance? And I really need to be there in the morning to teach this class. Maybe some later time I’ll have the luxury of making political statements. Sorry, Eddie.

Opinion polls invalid if you don’t agree

I’ve long mocked the opinion polls that are run on places like CNN. Asking people their opinion about things like the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin, or whether Prince William cheated on his tests in school, does not constitute real journalism.

Anyways, that’s probably a topic for another time. Here’s a *real* opinion poll which has been deemed invalid because the results were controversial. And that’s just as bogus.

A television show in South Africa conducted a poll to determine who the 100 greatest South Africans of all time were, in the opinion of the viewers. The show was then forced off the air because the results contained some officially unsavory characters, such as Hendrik Verwoerd.

So, presumably, democracy and public opinion are good things, unless they are politically incorrect. And if it turns out that public opinion isn’t what you thought it *should* be, the best thing to do, obviously, is to suppress that public opinion.

It’s things like this that make me wonder whether the American Way of forcing democratic governments on the entire world is really such a good thing after all. Some nations don’t think the way that we do. (I know, that’s a shock to some people.) Some cultures value different things than we do. And it’s entirely possible that if we force democracy on some nations, the preponderance of their public opinion just might not be what we think it *should* be.

It also demonstrates that it is predominately the minorities, rather than the majorities, who tend to rule in many modern societies. This is clearly the case in the USA, where it is the minority groups and special interest groups which form a huge number of the policies that come out of Washington. And, of course, folks who happen to be in the majority can’t speak out against those minorities, even though that would be democracy, in the traditional definition, because to do so would be discriminatory. Indeed, if you can wave the discrimination flag, or the oppression flag, or the victim flag, your political battle is 90% won. Logic need play only the smallest part.

One wonders how long, in some parts of the world, the oppression by the oppressed will be tolerated.

In line with our mandate of creating unity among South Africans, we would like to see a national debate around this issue.

The undertones of that statement are just a little weird to me. Does it mean that it’s important to educate people as to how they *should* think?

By the way, before you label me as an apartheid supporter … I’m not. But I do tend to agree that for some definition of “greatness” (ie, overall influence on the history of the world) Hendrik Verwoerd would certainly have to be considered as one of the great figures of the history of Africa. For the record, Shaka Zulu wasn’t a real nice guy either.

… and your neighbor as yourself

I’m often reluctant to discuss religion and politics here, or topics related to those areas. The reasons for this are many and carefully considered. I don’t say that they are necessarily good reasons, but carefully considered anyway. So when I break that rule, it’s generally because of things that I’ve been thinking about a great deal, and need to write about to work out some details.

Feel free to give it a pass if you so choose.

Still here? Ok, good.

I’ve been reading a number of things lately. Anna Karenina. Wendell Berry. David James Duncan. A number of things have been driving me towards the same line of thought. The David James Duncan essay in Citizen’s Dissent solidified some of it.

It’s the notion of loving your neighbor as yourself, and what that actually looks like in the real world.

At the same time, partially because of the news, and partially because of these readings, I’ve been pondering who I can, in good conscience, vote for to be the next president of the United States of America.

These things are all interrelated, and you should not anticipate that I will expound on them all in this brief missive.

My daughter keeps asking me who I’m going to vote for. I’m not able to give her a straight answer. I’m concerned that people who think that it’s an easy question are burying their heads in one sand bank or another. Or maybe they have a clearer vision than I do. I just don’t know. I find it a very difficult question.

Let’s start with this quote from David James Duncan:

To be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, is to immerse oneself in unstinting fiction-making. Christ’s words “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” to cite a famously ignored example, demands an arduous imaginative act. This deceptively simple line orders me, as I look at you, to imagine that I am seing not you, but me, and then to treat this imaginative me, alias you, as if you are me. And for how long? Till the day I die! Christ orders anyone who’s serious about him to commit the “Neighbor = Me” fiction until they forget for good which of the two of themselves to cheat in a business deal or abandon in a crisis or smart-bomb in a war — at which point their imaginative act, their fiction-making, will have turned Christ’s bizarre words into a reality and they’ll be saying with Mother Teresa, “I see Christ in every woman and man.”

For context, please understand how the word “fiction” is used. The entire essay focuses on the difference between fiction and lies. Fiction is a constructive creative act of truth. You really must read the essay to get the full force of that, and I won’t attempt to do that all here. But fiction here does not mean lies.

What does this have to do with the presidential election? That is wrapped up in the question “who then is my neighbor”, and also in Anna Karenina.

I hate everyone in Anna Karenina. They are all self-centered jerks. Except Levin. He’s not very bright, but I really like him. And one day he discovered that “his peasants” are real people, not some other species somewhere “between man and ape.” This changes his entire world view. And, of course, makes things a lot more complicated for him.

Because if we think that the other guy hurts as we do, we can’t continue to act towards him in the same way. It’s much more convenient to think that foreigners are not like us. It makes matters of foreign policy so much easier.

Or, to quote Dickens:

… think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

I think I might have gotten sidetracked again. The presidential election. I don’t like any of my options. Mr. Bush has committed to a course of action whereby we have killed many, many of our neighbors. How many? Does it matter? Go read Brothers Karamazov, and pay particular attention to the discussion of paradise based on the suffering of a single child. Was it wrong for us to attack Iraq? I have absolutely no idea. I simply can’t say. However I do know that we are not, as Mr. Bush claims, Good in a fight against Evil. We are fellow-passengers to the grave, committing different kinds of evil against one another.

Mr. Kerry, on the other hand, has as his greatest strength that he is not Mr. Bush. That’s precious little to go on. Maybe it’s enough for some people, and I fear that I have been rather harsh on those people in the recent past. I have greater sympathy towards them now.

Mr. Badnarik seems my best option at the moment. Sure, the Libertarians are a little looney. But so was my hero John Adams, in many of the same ways. But the Libertarians’ views on foreign policy and foreign aid are troubling, to say the least.

In the end, I must love my neighbor, but with the whole world as my neighbor, I must made distinctions between one neighbor and another. These turn out to be very difficult and interrelated problems. If I love this neighbor, I must neglect that one. If I feed this one, that one must starve. If I clothe this one, that one will remain naked. Indeed, if we look a the world as our own personal problem, outside of the greater community (whether that be the church, the nation, the world, or something else) one must either be overwhelmed, or choose to selectively ignore the problem.

Obviously, in my case, the solution is to quit reading stuff like this, and slip back into my comfortable self-centered world.

An afternoon in the mountains

This afternoon I had the unexpected, and completely unplanned, pleasure of spending several hours with my aunt in the mountains of eastern Ky. I was in Jackson, Ky, for reasons not worth mentioning in the public record. When I got done there, it was just 3:15, and the most beautiful day one could hope for. Since I was just a few miles from KMBC, I decided to drop in and visit for a few minutes.

I ended up staying for about 3 hours, and I’m really glad I did. Things move at a slower pace up there, and it was very, very nice.

My aunt went geocaching with me, as she wanted to see what was actually involved. Turns out that the cache in question was exceedingly easy. When we got there I said “Well, if *I* was going to hide this, I’d put it …” and I reached out and grabbed it. 🙂 But at least she got the general idea.

Then, I stayed for dinner. The board of trustees was there, and so apparently I picked a very good day to visit. Dinner was excellent, and the company was even better. After dinner, the college choir sang, and they were excellent, too.

In all, although not how I planned to spend my afternoon and evening, it was by far the best thing. Very enjoyable, and relaxing.

Oh, and I got to meet Romeo, too. 😉

Feeling older than dirt

I’m sitting on a bench in front of the library at Asbury College. I’m on the wireless network. Back in my day, there *certainly* wasn’t any wireless networking. Of course, the library wasn’t there, either.

<DrBacchus> Note to self: Hanging out on a college campus makes one feel old as dirt.
<DrBacchus> Was I ever this young?
<crschmidt> Yes.
<DrBacchus> ’tis hard to remember
<crschmidt> To you, going to college makes you feel old. To me, going to work makes me feel young.
<crschmidt> (The average person where I work is 11 years older than me)
<DrBacchus> I vaguely remember that sensation, too
<crschmidt> That’s what I get for dropping out of college and getting employed
<DrBacchus> Now my work is populated by young whippersnappers who don’t know what USSR stood for.
<crschmidt> heh
<crschmidt> United Soviet SuckeRs!
<DrBacchus> see?
<crschmidt> (united soviet socialist republic? wow, i am one of those whippersnappers. sorry.)
<DrBacchus> Just makes me nostalgic for when things were so much simpler and I thought they were complicated.
<DrBacchus> Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, actually, but it was just an example.
* crschmidt nods.
<DrBacchus> *sigh*
<DrBacchus> Of course, in my day, there wasn’t wireless networking to the park benches in front of the library, I can tell you that much.

(Apologies to crschmidt.)

Seeing all these kids making the decisions (and mistakes) that will mould the rest of their lives, one is tempted to grab a few and shake them. It’s amazing to me how seldom I really saw past the borders of the college. And how many things that seemed so important then seem so trivial now. And, certainly, vice versa.

Mother Africa

I wrote this a long time ago, and recently rediscovered it. I’ll resist the urge to edit, as well as the urge to add commentary, and just reproduce it as I found it, written on yellow notebook paper from long ago.

=====

I want to tell you about my mother. Her name is Africa. Perhaps I don’t look like her; indeed I have many brothers who do not resemble me. And there are many who claim to be her children who never met her. Many who claim to be her lovers who never slept with her. Many who write her love songs, but have never heard her sing.

She used to sing to me, as I fell towards sleep. Sometimes in the deep voice of the bullfrog, while the owl sang tenor. Sometimes the throb of the KR train on the tracks down the hill. And I remember that night, high on mount Kenya, when she sang to me – a beautiful sound. A sound that millions will live and die, having never once heard. The sound of total, uninterrupted, silence.

To the world, her name is Africa, and her face is black. To her children, she has many names, and many faces.

Her name is Congo, with the richest soil on earth, but where the people starve, because tilling the soil is not a noble profession. She is also called Sahara, where nothing grows, but the sheikhs can live like kings because of oil.

Her name is Cairo, an ancient city which has prospered for thousands of years, and produced great thinkers, rulers, and artists. Her name is Soweto, created in prejudice, governed by opression, but producing men who changed their world.

She is called Dar es Salam – the city of peace – and Bulowayo – the place of killing.

Some remember her as Shimoni, where her children became property, some as Liberia, where those same people became rulers again.

Her children are as diverse as her names: Haille Selasse. Shaka Zulu. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. Idi Amin. Steven Biko. David Livingston. Tut Ankh Amon. Myself. And perhaps you … perhaps not.

She cannot be trusted, or predicted. She is always a mystery, even to those who know her. But though we have been apart for many years, I am still her child, and I will always love her.

No, I won’t move to LA

While at OSCon, I spoke with someone who was a representative for a company that I would really like to work for. People I know work there, and seem mostly happy. And it’s a cool/interesting company, with respect to technology usage. He was encouraging, but not so much that I could assume it was a done deal.

Well, I’m afraid I allowed myself to get my hopes up just a little too much, even though I knew it was, realistically, a long shot, given that I’m not willing to move out of central Kentucky. So when I spoke with him today, and they said that, unfortunately, they really needed people in LA, and they would keep me in mind for future positions, I was sorely disappointed.

Granted, life is not unpleasant, but I would still like to be working somewhere where I feel like I’m making a difference in the world, and where I’m actually doing something I’m really good at, as opposed to a job that I can do, but which doesn’t really require any particular skills that I’ve worked so hard to develop.

So, I’m not exactly depressed, but very disappointed. Maybe something will come up, and they’ll be able to use someone off site. I’ll try not to get my hopes up. The secret is keeping expectations low.

More about great hackers

I’ve hired a few great hackers. In general, it is very hard to get them to work on things that they’re not interested in. However, if you can spark their interest, you can persuade them to give you better work than you are paying them for. This is a very difficult balance to maintain.

Now, I certainly don’t claim to be a great hacker. But, when working on projects that are uninteresting to me, my burnout rate is very fast. But I’m also disciplined enough to keep plodding on. I’m doing an upgrade now – roughly 200 machines from NT to XP, and RAM in about 600 machines. This is not exciting work. But I keep doing it because it’s what I’m getting paid to do. And, after all, my job is what I do in order to pay for the part of my life that matters.

The thing is, I think that this is what Paul Graham is saying. He’s speaking both to employers and to the hackers themselves, about the good and bad parts of hiring “hackers.” They will produce quality work, but they are harder to motivate, because very few business problems are interesting. On the other side, if you’re one of those folks, get over yourself and learn to work under those conditions, or learn to look for another job. The days of the “rock star” programmer are long gone, and folks need to adjust.

Does the “hacker ethos” need to go away? Of course not. It is very valuable. But it needs to be tempered with a sober understanding no job is exciting all the time, and many are never exciting, but you’re not being hired for your own personal amusement, but for the benefit of a capitalist economy, and one business in particular. For the rare Great Hacker that gets to work on fun stuff all the time, relish it, because it won’t last.

Now, there are some things in the article that I disagree with, and many of these things are put in there *specifically* to pander to a particular audience. The whole “python programmers are smart, java programmers are dolts” thread that runs through it is both unnecessary and false. After all, a Great Hacker should be language-blind, right? The “get your hacker a nicer office” bit is a nice sentiment, but grossly self-serving, and simply impractical in most organizations. Treating programmers like rock stars went out with the dot-bomb, and isn’t coming back. It was really nice while it lasted, and some of us have fond memories.

On the whole, I’m not really sure who the target audience for this article is. If it is managers, it will largely get ignored. “Yeah, nice, but I’m not treating my programmers like superstars or spoiled children.” If it is the hackers themselves, then it needs to emphasize that not all of the character traits that he is discussing are *good* things, and some of them may be worth trying to change or adapt. If this is merely a psychological character study, then I think it’s pretty much right on.

What I guess I’m still not entirely clear on is why people are reacting quite so negatively towards the article. I need to read more of these reactions. I have a suspicion that the anti-Java sentiments in the article are spurring a lot of the negative reactions to be more negative than they would be otherwise.

Great Hackers

While various people are asserting that Paul Graham’s paper Great Hackers is wrong-minded, I have to say that the talk at OSCon, from which it was derived, was one of the better things going at OSCon. Granted, a large part of his audience was the Great Hackers of whom he spoke. I don’t actually have time right now either to read the entire thing, or to figure out why so many people think that he’s wrong. But those of you who were not at his talk might be interested in reading at least the introduction to what he’s saying. I think he makes some brilliant points. And I particularly like his introduction:

I didn’t mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it efficient. I didn’t want to waste people’s time telling them things they already knew. It’s more efficient just to give them the diffs. But I suppose that’s bound to yield an alarming book.

(See Feedster for some of the remarks being made on this topic.)