Complexity

I don’t think this is classified. Even if it is, I’ll share it anyway. How could they prosecute me for breaking my Oath of Enlistment while Cadet Bone Spurs and pals daily violate their Oath of Office? Besides, I plan to make a professional point to fellow urban planners and students of public administration.

It starts this way: I possess certain information that I wish to pass along to those who never experienced the blessings of military service. It can be a hoot at times. Not so much so at others. But one learns things.

What I plan to divulge is this: There used to be, when I served my country, an approved military method of treating an infestation of crabs in the pubic area. It specified that one first shave half of said pubic area, leaving the other half bare.

Now we come to the useful part. I’m not sure this is still doctrine. I don’t think the U.S. Navy is as manly as it used to be. Anyway, having shaved half the infested area, one then applies cigarette-lighter fluid to the other half and sets it afire. The terrified crabs flee into the shaved area whereupon the subject stabs them to death with a sharp icepick. There, call me a whistle-blower if you wish.

You might ask, “ What’s the point? Okay keep up.

Fast-forward to modern times. This is exactly the method that many cities use in writing their zoning regulations. And the writers wonder why there is such screaming during the application of those regulations.

It extends to the state regulation writers as well. And the feds have fully-automatic icepicks that can deliver 60 strikes a minute. Have you ever read the U.S. Tax Code? It’s harder to read than some zoning codes. I once read the instructions for taking out money from your IRA. If I remember correctly, it was twelve pages of tiny-font gibberish.

And there are zoning codes that take four paragraphs to tell you where the front-yard setback line runs, an odd fact because front yard setbacks are a bit anachronistic in today’s world. The problem in deciding where they go stems from what to call the front of the house. See, there are overhangs, cornices, foundation extension, front porches, bay windows, and oh, my head is spinning.

And so we go. We no longer address problems with a “Hey kids, let’s put on a show.” Now it’s “Hey kids, let’s complicate the hell out of anything we can find.”

And we wonder why kids stare at their cell phones all day.

End of Year Thoughts: December 31, 2107

Sometimes a person feels conflicted. Tell someone you disagree with them and you create ill-will. Don’t and you imply agreement. That is a bipolar paradigm that doesn’t bode well. Many of our leaders, news sources, and wealthy contributors are feeding this polarization, the reason is anybody’s guess. It certainly isn’t aimed toward the common good.

Is there another form of interaction? I hope so. To that end, I’ll mention a few things that bother me these days. I will do so without, I hope, denigrating or insulting those who don’t agree with me. These are my feeling only. I don’t intend for them to change your mind. I only hope that, if I disagree with you, you might leave with a better understanding of why.

Here goes.

I worry about discourse that divides us. Simply adding the phrase “I know some thoughtful and reasonable people disagree with me, but this is how I feel” could certainly “make the medicine go down” a bit easier. Please take that as a prelude.

I worry about (and this is certainly not a new phenomenon) the use of the press to destroy an individual’s character.) Moreover (and this is new), I worry about the use of social media to spread the hate. It bothers me to see how little most people understand about politics—how few people see that it is not the art of the perfect, but, as Ben Franklin said, “the art of the possible.” It is messy and can’t be evaluated by the criteria of perfection.

I worry about the use of personal destruction in politics. When a woman who has devoted her life to public service and protecting the least of those among us is subjected to upwards of $200 Million in investigations, invectives, innuendoes, and false news, only for legitimate investigators to say, in the end, “We find no criminal fault with this woman” is amazing, in my opinion. Mistakes? Yes. Ill-considered comments? Yes. Poor speaking skills? Yes. Deserving of bitter hatred? You decide. In my opinion, she should be our president. Feel free to have your own. Ad hominem attacks will not change my mind, and, assuming they wouldn’t yours either, I’ll leave it at that.

I am a veteran of the United States Navy. I carried a rifle for a year in Vietnam. Later, I was offered the chance to return and serve on river boats. I lacked both the patriotism and the personal courage to accept. But, and I have friends on both sides of the political spectrum, I will never vote for a political party that attacked the character of a brother-shipmate who did drive Fast-Boats in Vietnam and was awarded multiple Purple Hearts. Sorry, just can’t do it. You vote your conscious as well. I don’t condemn individuals. That isn’t my job in life. I only condemn party leaders that would promote such injustice toward someone who served this country with bravery.

I worry that war brings too many profits to too many powerful institutions.

I worry about our worship of guns and the belief that they solve problems. I don't want your guns confiscated. I just want you to shut up about them. I've almost been killed by firearms several times in my life, mostly by careless friends, and once by a neighbor who liked to take his out and wave it around to show how harmless it (i.e. his gun) was when he he'd had few drinks. 

I worry about what I see as a lowering of noble standards. I never thought I would live in a country that would nominate a person for high office who was captured on film mocking a disabled person. Just my reaction. You are welcome to yours.

I worry about the economy. While it is true that the stock market has risen consistently for the last nine years, and has continued with a bump in 2017, there is a physical concept called gravity that enjoys a kinship with financial concepts. I worry that the present bump resulted from the anticipation by corporations that, soon, they wouldn’t even have to pretend to pay federal taxes, and could operate in the regulation-free world that saw rivers catching fire and toxic chemicals buried next to residential areas, or deposited in our waters. Those are not policies that imply a good future for us. Gravity will come into play, I fear, and there will be, in my opinion, great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Timing the market is hard.

I worry about our hatred of taxes. It is allowing our infrastructure to crumble and abetting the end of retail business. I fear future neighborhoods will simply become areas filled with “storage containers” for isolated and unconnected individuals.

I worry that entire "Christian" religious groups have abandoned the teachings of the Galilean, who promised mansions “in Heaven” in contrast to the teachings of the “Prosperity Gospel” adherents with their customized planes and multiple mansions here on Earth. I further worry that these groups are guided by homophobia, fear of science, and by choices that could best be reduced by sex-education, birth-control, and increased responsibility placed on the male-half of the equation, all of which are eschewed at present by the same religious groups.

I further believe, as did the founders of the country, by no means perfect men, but wiser than some, that religion is a personal matter best controlled by the heart and not by the government. Theocracies haven't worked historically, nor at the present in the Middle East and Africa.

I will believe, until reviewable and falsifiable evidence indicates to the contrary, that trust in science is more efficacious than trust in mythology. Science eliminated smallpox and polio from our lexicon of fears. Consequently, a vice-president who denies science scares me to my bones.

I believe, on evidence I have examined by the most educated among us, that homo sapiens are destroying our planet’s ability to sustain us and that distrust of science will hasten the apocalypse. I’ll make it through, but I worry for friends with children and grandchildren

I’ll stop. Believe as you will. My only feelings toward you are that you live long and prosper. May we all be guided by our consciences and not by false promises made to excite our embedded prejudices. That may be our greatest challenge for the future.

Happy New Year.

Late Morning Thoughts: December 8, 2017

I remember reading about evolution for the first time when I was about eleven. Sounded interesting. Made sense. I mentioned it to a fundamentalist acquaintance who spent the next hour describing a burning and eternal fire to which a loving deity sent people who believed in science. We only broke off our discussion when we had to go watch a film about kids who lived in iron lung because they had polio.

About a week later, I was still pondering the concept as I was taking a shower. I dropped the wash rag and, without even thinking, I clutched it with my toes and retrieved it. At that instant, I knew it was absolutely true, this science stuff.

Years later, I decided I didn’t know enough about the subject to allow me not to suffer fools lightly. I began to study the subject in earnest. I’ve probably read nearly 50 books on the topic and I’m still fascinated. Would recommend, as a starter, the late Stephan J. Gould’s All about Darwin. Then follow up with Origin of the Species. It’s fairly easy going.

Some specific facts amaze me from all the reading I’ve done. One: the early embryos of an alarming number of species are amazingly similar. Two: many species take the same number of breaths during their life. Three: We humans all start out as females in the earliest embryonic stages. The unlucky ones experience some folds and turns and end up as a an inferior model. The way things work is that genetic malfunctions like that offer some advantage, through modification, to the expansion of the species, so here we are. Four: males are inferior creatures who have to rely on size and finery to attract females. Five: Intelligence appears to derive from the size of the brain relative to body size, resulting a head too large for delivery at what would be full birth maturity, resulting in an extended gestation stage outside the womb.

These are all from Gould’s writings, so if I’m wrong, I learned it from him. I still trust him more than any TV evangelist I’ve ever heard.

Oh, one final fact, since the publication of “Origins” in 1859, practically every scientific discovery has supported Darwin’s theory of descent through modification. (He never actually used the term “evolution.” It came about later). There may have been no more prescient book ever written.

Just thinking, and wondering why we would elect a person to political office that would deny science but use antibiotics when facing a serious illness. Scary. Oh hell no. It's beyond scary.

Morning Thoughts: October 9, 2017

It's Columbus Day, or whatever the hell they call it these days. Should one take a day off from blogging today? Inquiring minds want to know.

I never got to take it off before. The only federal agency I ever worked for didn't observe it, and most private companies don't.

Of course I never got to take Veterans Day off either. By the time I became a veteran, the draft dodgers had all the good public service jobs that offered such perks. Oh well.

Anyway. I'm bummed out. Watched a good part of On the Beach last night. I feel closer to the insanity that it portrayed now than I ever have. We have elected, I fear, a horde of politicians that would make Dr. Strangelove appear sane.

I think maybe that's why people are driving the way they do.

Sailing to Oblivium: June 18, 2017

They weren’t the kind of men who normally heaped praise and adulation on another. What was going on? I took a seat on the near edge of the circle.

Then it came clear. Here was a bunch of senior men, woodworkers all, taking turns praising the owner of our local lumber store. One by one they were going around stating their greatest blessing for getting to buy lumber from him. You can’t imagine.

When they came to me, I hadn’t had time to think. “Tell us,” one man said, “what is your greatest blessing in getting to deal with this great man.”

“I don’t recall,” I said. They all laughed.

It is comforting to know that we still find humor during these strange times in America.

What isn’t comforting to know is that while we are laughing, another institution that helped make our country great is being dismantled in a systematic effort to strip us of individual protections, rights, and comfort.

What isn’t comforting to know is that while we are laughing, children are going to bed hungry, innocent people are getting shot on our streets, our oceans are becoming barren, and veterans, their widows, and their orphans are being stripped of the promise of succor promised by Abraham Lincoln in 1865. All that time, presidential power is being wasted on the re-kindling of a nearly 60-year-old cold war against country whose leader who died a year ago and whose people take no harmful actions against our country.

What isn’t comforting to know that almost an entire presidential administration is under investigation for wrongdoing and that, if toppled, we will see a new president who doesn’t believe in the most basic building blocks of science.

What isn’t comforting to know is that a foreign country, our sworn enemy for more than 50 years, likely affected the results of our county’s most recent presidential election.

What isn’t comforting to know is that the prestige of America in most parts of the world is melting as fast as the polar icecaps.

What isn’t comforting to know is the level of anger and sadness that is covering our cities, landscapes, and neighborhoods.

Speaking of Lincoln, it is written that he used humor to ease the cosmic pains of the terrible struggles he led the country through. Maybe it is “altogether fitting and proper” that we do as well.

That’s what the news of June 18, 2017 brings to mind.

President Lincoln with his generals after Antietam,
America's bloodiest single day. They say he relied
on humor to ease his pain. Can we?