Category Archives: History

LJ – Information Horizon

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From 4/27/2006

I began a tangential discussion with a friend a few days ago, regarding something I’ve been thinking of for quite some time. That if you were to visualize the combined intelligence of the human race as a sphere, an imaginary object that contains all the thinking, all the printed words, and all the media that humanity has expressed since we began thinking and recording those thoughts into media that such a sphere would be truly immense.

Then I imagined what one person might look like in the context of that thought-sphere. A dot, a very small very bright dot. Now for each person, you can look around, you can explore and you can learn – this I associate with movement and increase on the surface of this imaginary sphere – the more you know the bigger your dot.

What then, is the chance of any human being able to approach the horizon of that sphere? Or more likely, is it even possible?

In the case that it is not possible for any one human being to reach the horizon of the information sphere then the next logical argument would be that humanity exists on this sphere, that there are people covering every surface of the sphere, just that nobody will be able to visit all the “islands” in this sphere of knowledge. What then for our fate? If we haven’t the hope of integrating all that we know, how could we possibly think that we can consider new things – unless the sphere looks more like a puffer-fish than a beach-ball, with localized growth building up mountains of insight, surrounded by plateaus of general knowledge. What really gets me is the fear that we do have many if not all the answers we seek already, it’s just, there is nobody around bright enough and fast enough to integrate all the separate islands of knowing into a cohesive and definitive answer.

What might happen if someone miraculously did acquire the breadth of knowledge that would be regarded as a span across the horizon?

LJ – The Elderly Will, but What About The Young?

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From 6/20/2006

The Senior Vice President of the consultancy group we hired was in today, wanting to talk about how we are segmenting the phonathon program in our Annual Fund. It came up in the meeting about how it’s not ethically invalid for a university to purchase email lists from email list providers, how that a students previous experience with their university is very much different from a corporate relationship.

And just what do y’all think? Would you be comfortable if the University that you graduated from paid some email-list salesman for your email address? Is it ethical? What say my readers?! I wanna know!

So we got to talking about how people behave when exposed to our phonathon program. I relate it to my experiences with telemarketers, in so far that for me, my telephone is not a warmly lit, fuzzy welcome mat to every Tom, Dick, or Harry caller. I make it a matter of personal right to disconnect a telephone circuit when it suits me, if that is hanging up while someone is trying to sell me something, so be it. Ultimately I think it comes down to the fine sensation of whether or not you have a vested interest in communicating with someone, or if they are being intrusive (maybe insolent, even) in persisting their contact beyond your desire to maintain that contact. I find it very easy these days to simply hang up the telephone when a stranger tries to sell me something I do not want.

I’ve been called “cold and heartless” by various people because of my self-serving right to hang up the telephone when I really want to.

Then, shortly afterwards I tried to open up the notion that todays alumni that are graduating may not behave in the same way that this consultancy firm is telling us they will. I suspect that the nature of the game has changed and we are not compensating for that change in gameplay. In the past, when you were smart, when you were lucky, when you really wanted to, you went to a University and pursued a bachelors degree. The drive was personal, it was uniquely desired and all your own. You went to a prestigious institution, you took classes, you were serious about it, and you really loved your time there because it was something you were fully wanting to do. You graduated as a class, you knew other people in your class and they were your friends. As you all aged, your deep affection for where you went was carried along and as you were a success, you made sure that the place you went to, the place you were lucky to go to, was in some small way bettered later on via a nice big donation or a series of smaller donations over time. This is how it has been since the beginning…

Until around the 90’s… the 90’s changed a lot.

Instead of a culture and world where you could get a job out of high school, now you can’t, really – and be “successful” or “happy” and who doesn’t want that? So you need more education. That’s the fundamental change in the game. It went from “want” to “need”. When it became a needful thing, it became common. Every dullard went to college, everyone did, everyone took their SAT’s, everyone borrowed or had family to support them through school – because the culture was pounding it into your head that there was absolutely no future at all for high school graduates. Because of this it stopped being “K through Twelve” and started to be “K through Sixteen”. This is a fundamental change in how we perceive our education. K-16 now puts college as super-high-school. It’s wonderfully optional (no, no it isn’t, if you want to be happy), but instead of being “optionally desirous” it now is “optionally needful”. This change had effects in one direction, but not in the other. Keep in mind this unidirectional change, it’s important.

Since going to a University (or College) is needful more than desirable, this has changed how people who are undergoing it perceive their time. Now college is common, everyone does it, even the morons. You don’t have to be smart really, you aren’t there because you really want to be, you are there because you’ve no other choice, it’s another pressure that is put-upon you as you grow. This little nugget of pressure grows into adversity, suffering, and anger. You care not a drop for anyone else who you deal with in a day-to-day basis because it’s just like high school, only now with cars, apartments, jobs, and the first glimmers of true adult independence. You are a slave to your credit-hour achievement mark – you strive for 120. You might have friends in college, but nobody ever really expects those relationships to matter, they didn’t in high school, why should they matter in super-high-school? When you think back to your college days, what is more common? A tight-knit group of like-minded people who really desired to learn and grow or the perception of endless adversity as “The Grown Ups” blocked each and every move forward you made, grumbling and pissing and moaning as you passed by. Does it feel more like a real honest achievement or rather does it feel like a trip through a food mill in which you avoided successfully the paddles pushing you into the mesh below?

This isn’t the only change either! Not only did the situation change, but the people playing the game changed! Now kids are growing up in a K-16 world where they attend not Universities or Colleges, but rather ESP’s. Educational Service Providers. I’ve written about this before, how in the heyday of the long-ago, a University Professor was up on a dais, his lectern, where he professed, taught, and lead. The University of the long ago was a place where you respected your professors, there was a little fear, a little trepidation and a lot of obeisance. This was how it has been and how it was “meant to be”, but it didn’t stay that way. Instead of this notion of a University being a special place, now it’s an Educational Service Provider. The professors? Educational Service Provider Employees. The students? Educational Service Provider Customers. Now instead of the old way, when going to University was special and marked you as being exceedingly bright, you are just like all the others in the giant throng of the K-16 food mill. Students now treat their tenured professors like a customer would treat a clerk behind a counter. Students email professors making demands, being full-of-themselves with “Customer is Always Right” mentality. It doesn’t hurt the development of this when the University system regards students as “Walking Streams of Income”. The University treats the students like cattle, so the cattle treat the University like it’s a farm. The nature of the game has changed, even the nature of the place has taken this change.

Remember when I made mention of the importance of this unidirectional change? The students changed, the academy-component changed, but the University hasn’t. I suspect that as the alumni who graduated from contemporary University get old enough to give, that they won’t. That what they’ll remember isn’t how wonderful their time was spent with people of equal brightness, all shining brightly – but rather they’ll remember their acceptable time, spent with people of pitifully equal brightness, shining dully. The path that alumni relations takes has to be fundamentally different, we can’t use the classic indicators anymore, we can’t depend on “Class Identification” or “All your Friends” or even “The University that Cares” because obviously, they don’t really (will 2439-0790 please step forward!). Instead of these approaches there will have to be new approaches made, and I don’t really have a lot of faith that we can even read the rules for the new game, let alone play it.

So I sit back while this consultant is going on and on about “if they aren’t ever going to give, then drop ‘em, ignore them and concentrate on those that will.” and I think to myself that if they aren’t going to give, ignoring them is exactly what they expect. There is no reason to change, to see if the path we are on is taking us in the right direction, after all, alumni will always give.

Always.

LJ – Shrublet In Hell

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From 3/17/2003

Here we all sit, on the brink of war… and all I can think of is “We are a Nation of Peace” as a flying image, colliding with the notion that we are essentially going to flood the Euphrates and Tigris rivers with blood. We’re going to most likely bomb Iraq into the stone age – so much for being a nation of peace. I see Dubya’s new anti-war stance not as some honorable position but rather it’s the “Get the Hell out of Dodge” policy, that it’s just about Dubya and Saddam. Why don’t they simply just sit down like civilized people and try to bludgeon each other to death with their own hands? I’d go so far as to say that this may very well be Generation Y’s Vietnam. Our proud soldiers go off to fight some foreign battle and what of them when they come back? How many Vietnam Vets came back to a chilly America? How many “Rumble in the Sandbox” troops will come home facing a public that doesn’t believe in them because they fought a war against one single man and an idea? Where is good old fashioned 20th century thinking? Ah yes, right here in the enlightened 21st Century. I suppose it’s better to bomb Iraq into the stone age and create thousands more little Saddams than it would be in pursuing a more peaceful and more lucrative solution, say, flooding the middle east with American goodwill. Hah, fat chance of that happening now. The best way to battle terror is to blindly lash out, that way you can create destroy it with a war.

I sit back and think upon loftier thoughts because all of this depresses me, and I find my mind wandering towards what Jesus Christ said, that the solution was to not kill, but rather to forgive and to love. I find it quite engaging to hear Dubya invoke a God he is currently plotting on rendering moot. What footing does any good Christian have if they in good conscience allow this war to proceed, knowing that they have turned away from the teachings of their God because of laziness? It’s far easier to bomb and kill and murder than it is to forgive. I can just imagine the knot in the pit of the Pope’s stomach when the first bomb falls on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

In brighter news, the Yahoo! main page is a cavalcade of good news items:

  • Bush Says Saddam Has 48 Hours to Leave or It’s War
  • U.S. Raises Terror Alert Level Due to Iraq Crisis
  • U.S. Sees Signs Iraq May Use Chemical, Bio Arms
  • Turkey to Debate Helping U.S. on Tuesday
  • Annan Orders UN Staff Out of Iraq
  • Deadly Pneumonia Defies Global Health Experts
  • Charges Delayed in Elizabeth Smart Case

The part that particularly drew my attention was this one: * Deadly Pneumonia Defies Global Health Experts. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

LJ – The Great North American Piece of Crap

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From 3/8/2007

If I didn’t need to reiterate the lesson I’ve learned, I’ve just got a $1206.67 lesson just down the pipes. My POS American Car just ate it’s bearings and it’s 4th set of brakes. This piece of shit, built in Lansing, by General Motors is one giant proof-of-concept that American products are for the most part composed of bullshit bolted to sheet-steel and delivered by the slimiest most repugnant humans I know of, Auto Salesmen. Whats worse is that the repugnancy just gets smarmier when you go in for repair. I almost heard the repair reps talons clicking when she told me “Oh yes, you’ll need a boatload of repairs, tee-hee!”

New bearings at 60k, brakes at 15, 30, 45, and 60k… of course the joy to this all is GM claims that “Brakes are wear items and as such are not covered by any warranty”

Buying an American Car is like buying a giant money pit with which one shovels vast amounts of cash into the nethers of giant looming useless companies like Ford, GM, and whatever the third one is.

I’ve learned my lesson. Even if I wanted an American Car, I shall not buy one. Never ever again. The Saturn Aura looked appealing, but it’s GM, and therefore just another shiny turd.

From now on I shall only own a Japanese car, they are far better and I hail the day when GM and Ford, and whatever the third one is goes out of business for good. They deserve nothing more than to go hungry for manufacturing the abominations they sell to unsuspecting people. Is it any surprise why the Japanese and Korean companies are selling hand-over-fist, it’s because the American companies just put out “good enough to sell” while the Japanese put out quality.

This of course is for the most part rhetorical as most people know that American cars are rolling deathtraps built to the standards of play-doh and silly-putty.

I bitch and complain, but after all, I should pay, and pay dearly, for my mistake of owning an American piece of trash.

LJ – Math Dream

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From 9/16/1999

Mathematics. I had dreamed that I was in a high level mathematics class and that I had aced the test except for the very last questions which I could not answer for the life of me because I had no clue what the subject matter was it was that complicated. The odd flow of the dream was that the professor had put the solutions up on the blackboard just as he expected to see from us however after seeing these I still could not solve the problems. After a while I found that the solutions were washing away of their own accord and near the end I left the last question half-finished. When I looked beneath my desk I found most of the blankets that I had used to cover myself the night before hanging beneath me. When I went to collect them a big clear plastic bag appeared and I put all my blankets in the clear plastic bag. For some reason this wasn’t a surprise to anyone and I had planned on going home anyways. The dream fell apart when I began to involuntarily drift out of the dream and wake up.

LJ – The Taxman Cometh

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From 02/12/2003

Just polished off my taxes, Scott’s and Dan’s. Turns out I’ll be making quite the killing refund wise so I have decided to invest my money in three ways. One way is to completely disentangle myself from worrying over the fundage for our groups Gencon trip, second, to ferret cash away somewhere safe for an eventual trip to Wales (& Ireland, maybe), and the third bit I am not sure on just yet. A part of me wants to toss it at my credit debts, another part wants to have it broken into 5’s and 10’s and roll around in it like a horse with a bad back itch.

While putting some mileage on my Guncon2 controller for the PS/2 with my friend Dan from work we did taxes and chatted and I wondered why the feds don’t establish a monetary return (interest after all) on the withholding that I’ve been involuntarily paying via my employer, that would add a bit of flavoring to my 1040A for sure and be more fair to everyone.

Another thing I discovered tonight is that even though there are slight differences in withholding and such, I really got a taste for the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer while doing everyones taxes – the divide between Scott, Dan, and My income tax returns shows me how unbalanced income tax is and it angers me how it is affecting my friends.

LJ – Jingle All The Damn Way

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From 02/11/2003

…A WINTER STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT THROUGH WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON…

This may become something of a treat for us, as if more snow on the ice we already have yields the feeling one would associate with the idea of “treat”. I don’t see any snow yet and I’m highly critical of our childlike weathercasters but we shall see if Kalamazoo is touched or more likely that Allegan is obliterated in a fog of dense blowing snow. I still maintain that Winter is the most romantic season, however I’ve noticed a distinct lack of monster pine trees, as everything around here is Oak and Maple and therefore skeletonized and totally dreary. If you listen very closely you can make out the happy tunes of “White Christmas” being played over and over again to an audience that is howling in agony. ‘Tis the season. 🙂

LJ – Vet Visit

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From 02/11/2003

Owien and I are back from the Vet, all told each cat was $90 and they got their Feline Distemper, Leukemia and a Rabies Vaccine shots. The Vet said nothing new, Diva has some dental issues but they aren’t huge and maybe switching to Iams or Purina One would be a better choice than 9 Lives, we’ll see how much vomit we have to clean up when we switch – kitties have such tender tummies. Both are healthy as horses, Owien (the BIG male) may develop a weight problem just like his daddy Andy – of course Owien got his weight problem by being a lazy pig, his owner got his by being a… uh… er… nevermind :). I think the Vet is well meaning but I beg to differ, Owien is 12 pounds of muscular feline masculinity, this is plainly evident when he comes down the stairs, -thumpa thumpa thumpa-. The minute Diva saw the cat carrier with Owien in it, she promptly made for “under the bed” and Owien promptly made for “Damn I’m a DIRTY BOY, must clean, leave me alone” yeah, still cleaning – now he’s biting his claws… just like me. 🙂

I first considered that we owned the cats, but when you get right down to it who owns who? Scott and I work to make all the money while they get to lay about day in and day out, we buy them food and prepare it for them, we see to their health and pet them making them happy… it was only then while talking it over with Scott did I realize that indeed, the cats own us, or rather we are willing slaves. This is made more insidious because the cats purring lowers blood pressure and lengthens our lives – JUST SO THAT WE MAY CONTINUE TO SERVE THEM, HAND AND FOOT. I love my cats. 🙂

Synchronicity

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Sometimes you can’t explain how things unfold. Previous generations labeled things like this kismet, or fate. A really tremendously great word for what I just dealt with could be called synchronicity.

A few days ago while I was marveling at my silly dress-up vest with the finished pockets sewn closed, I was standing under an old-time fixture that I had installed all on my own. Frankly it was going to turn out to be a nod to the past any way it unfolded. It was either going to be the fixture we eventually chose or a “in the spirit of” Tiffany-style lamp. So either way we were going to install a fixture that prized the past. We noticed the “Edison Style” bulbs immediately and almost in the vein of “love at first sight” these fixtures trumped the Tiffany-style stained glass ones almost instantly. It helped of course that the “Edison Style” was $45 while the “Tiffany Style” was $90. We could afford a small bit of throwback style for half the price.

So while I was looking at myself, all trimmed and shaved (for what it’s worth) in a dress vest, under an “Edison Style” bulb it had to be synchronicity for what transpired tonight. For the past few days I’ve been dwelling, at least mentally, in a space that appreciates how excellent really old designs are and sometimes these designs are actually pinnacle moments. They are wonders, marvels, true magnificence that once expressed can’t really be improved upon. It takes a real romantic to even entertain that an old thing retains value. In some ways I sense that old things not only retain their value but augment their value because they last, or touch something deep inside that means something very important to you.

So I stood there, in the civil twilight of pre-dawn right before work. Standing under an Edison-style bulb and appreciating my reflection in the hall mirror and being filled with a feeling that something quite like this could have been how my predecessors felt in the 1800’s when all this technology was brand new. Nobody then marveled at the warm yellow glow from an Edison bulb as a matter of romance, they saw it as an improvement to paraffin, naphtha, or beeswax candles. So for some strange reason I thought of someone I never met, ever in my life but only know through Ancestry.com. That would be my second great grandfather Fernando Race. The father of my maternal grandfather, Allan (I think). So oddly enough I had technically summoned the shade of my second great grandfather and it was something very deep and meaningful.

I never EVER knew any of these people. The only memory I have of my maternal grandfather is little blazes of bright memory. Me sitting on his lap while his model trains ran around his little train village in the basement of my grandparents home in Ithaca. It’s true that scent can bring you back, and it does for me. Funny enough if I catch WD-40, an industrial cleaner and lubricant, and it’s scent, accessing these memories of my grandfather all becomes very plain and very simple and they kind of burst forth right into my mind. Scents carry memory, alas, nostalgia. So getting just a scent of WD-40 puts me right back there. So thinking about the past also helps put me “back there” and frankly I find it highly entertaining that I find myself preferentially dwelling in the past where things I take for granted would mostly likely be interpreted as high sorcery.

It wasn’t until a few days after my “in the past” reverie that I called my mother out of the blue. No reason for it other than I love her and miss her terribly and the missing feeling goes away a little bit when I talk to her on the phone. So I called her on my way home from the gym. People at work who find me … unique… (a great word, I love it) always ask to visit with my mother to see if that can explain why I am the way I am. Why I’m emotional and ebullient and always say whats on my mind. I laugh at my coworkers who puzzle over my behavior at work. If they knew my parents, they’d understand I wasn’t crazy but that I was as they see me, which is beloved (and special, huge heaps of special) 🙂

Then my mother laid two big whammies on me. The first took my breath away. I don’t really want to delve deeply into it for it’s subject matter, at least not now, but while dashing down I-94 going somewhere between sixty and seventy miles per hour she laid a HUMONGOUS whammy on me. It was a challenge to retain my composure and not drive off the highway into a ditch. The news she shared created a new emotion. It was a complicated knotwork of surprise, shock, and a heavy dose of what would be if you mixed “Eureka”, “Synchronicity”, and patent incredulity. Baked at 350 for one hour and seasoned with a kind of half-joking expectation, almost a kind of odd deja-vu sensation.

So I dwell here, thinking about things and people in my life. It’s important not to say too much lest I give it all away that I know, but I’ve been waiting many years for this to happen and this has awakened the voice of my power animal, my totem if you will. He talks to me in my own voice, and comes from deep within, my intuition and I’ve learned to respect that part of me, or him, or both. I will dwell where I am, quiet and waiting. That’s what I think I should do and that’s what my totem is telling me outright to do.

Anyways, beyond the unavoidable teasing which I apologize for of the previous section, it wasn’t the end of the whammies my mother laid out on me tonight. She shared with me some things which I’d rather not share here, but bear directly on my random mental roulette ball landing on the Races and Tuttles. I could have chosen anyone from my past, and thanks to Ancestry.com and my Uncle John and my Mother I don’t really have to wonder much anymore, that who I thought of first would come, in a way, forward through time and tap me on the shoulder and in a very roundabout way give me a wholly unexpected hug from the 19th century all through the agency of nobody else but my very own mother. I hate to be cryptic about this, but I feel I have to be circumspect. Suffice it to say, in a very strange and surreal way I feel like this part of my life was meant to play out this way, and that Fernando Race, his son, or his grandson – my grandfather dwelled closeby me that day when I was caught in my reverie of the past.

It wasn’t until I talked with my mother tonight that so many tumblers all clicked into place. I don’t know exactly how much she appreciates what has happened, but for me, at the focus of this storm of synchronicity, with so much all colliding all at once as if it fit together so perfectly that it lacked seams, that these two things will likely come to pass if I do not meddle in my fate. Time and time again I have been ringside as I have attempted to meddle in my fate and been handed my hat for my troubles. This time I won’t. It’s very Zen, but in a way, to move forward I have to remain perfectly still.

I can say that the synchronicity thrills me. So if anyone out there puts two and two and the square root of minus two together and expects that answer, then we should indeed talk. Life is happy there, or at least, it could be.

Splints

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I was in England and was exploring an old house with friends (didn’t recognize them) and came across a series of rooms that were exact copies of our childhood homes. Everything was perfect right down to the sinks and mirrors.

I met myself as my “splint” walked through the door to the rooms that were from my past. He was an exact copy of me. I had my iPhone and was taking pictures. I asked him about being a splint and if he knew why he, or the place he inhabited existed. He didn’t know but wasn’t upset and seemed to enjoy my presence and felt that my questions were entertaining or at least worth attending to. I was exploring my childhood bathroom, taking pictures and I turned to him and asked him if he had anyone in his life. He blushed and I had to ask if he was serious with someone and for some odd reason I was really interested in TMI derails. As he was about to tell me I was fumbling with my phone, trying to get it to take a video and as he was about to share with me intimate details the dream dissolved and I woke up.