Charity

June 5, 2013 8:20 PM , Leave a Comment ,

2004 and it was a drizzly early Saturday night.  About May I think it was.

I was dressed up, I had a date (for once), and I was late.  I stopped at the turn light waiting for the light to change.  A homeless man was on the median with a sign asking for money.

He was in his late thirties or early forties, lean and tall with dirty blond hair peeking out under a filthy baseball cap.  A worn out yellow rain coat with torn grey pants and old sneakers covered his skeletal frame.  His face was a study of the rough life he had lived.  A light grey beard, with light blue eyes and a deep tan outlining deep crags on his cheeks and brow.  Thoroughly beaten down by life.

He came up to my truck expectantly and looked in hoping I would roll down my window.  I looked at him and wondered how he could have let himself get in this state.  Out of an arrogant whim I reached for my wallet and opened it.  I had just stopped at the ATM and had nothing but fresh new twenty dollar bills.  I shrugged and pulled one out.

“Your lucky night, bro.  Here you go” I exclaimed as I handed over the twenty.

He looked at me and then at the twenty in his hand and he began to sob.

“Thank you mister, God bless”  The light changed and I took off.

So later that night here I was sitting in a fancy restaurant with fine company and I can’t stop thinking about that old man.  Couldn’t stop thinking about what one little piece of paper meant to both of us.

To me that twenty dollars was nothing.  To him it was probably the first twenty dollar bill he had seen for weeks or months.  To him it was food, possibly liquor or drugs, but maybe a long distance call to someone who could help him, someone who cares. maybe a cheap comb and mirror to fix himself up.  Maybe just a temporary lifeline of hope.

I tend to follow the advice of homeless advocates and only donate to charities and homeless shelters.  I know that there exist “professional” panhandlers that go out and ask for money on regular street corners.  But there are also people out there that are in trouble.  For some reason they won’t go to shelters (pride, not knowing where to get help, fear).  I see them on street corners and busy streets and sometimes I can’t just drive past.

Posted in: life in general

Music and altered states

June 4, 2013 8:00 AM , Leave a Comment ,

1999 I think it was.

Walking into a club on the Richmond strip on a Friday night.  The main dance floor is crowded.  It’s early yet but already I see lots of pretty girls standing around.  Just as I step onto the main floor the DJ plays Miserlou (the theme song from Pulp Fiction).  I stand up straight, I take on a nonchalant air, I walk with confidence.  Suddenly I’m James Bond, Brad Pitt, Frank Sinatra and any other cool or hot guy you could ever mention all rolled into one.  Music could affect me that much.  Too bad no one noticed.

Odd isn’t it?  Nothing had physically changed about me, my clothes were the same, the surroundings were not different yet here I was feeling a confidence that had nothing backing it up.

Music has always had an inordinate effect on me.  No place more so than when I’m driving.  Give me an open highway, a fast car, and george thorogood’s “Who do you love” and get out of my way,  Immediately my reflexes heighten, my aggressiveness increases and I become ‘Speed Racer‘.  This is probably why I stick to NPR while driving in town.

Why this is, I don’t know.  But I’m not alone.  Some studies suggest the ‘right song’ can help people ease pain, reduce stress levels, increase stamina and strength, and increase cognitive skills.  It’s just a matter of finding that song that strikes the correct chord you want.

Of course it’s not practical to walk around all day long plugged into a music player and of course I can’t get in front of a group of people to deliver a pitch with headphones on.  However I have learned to take advantages where I can get them and in whatever form they come in.

I have found that the right song delivered right before a stressful situation can have great effects upon me and help me perform at a higher level.  The effect varies in duration.  Never more than an hour or so.  But again I will take it whenever I can get it.

Posted in: life in general, music

The purpose of free education

June 3, 2013 1:57 PM , Leave a Comment ,

The other day the deadline for protesting your local property tax passed.  These taxes mainly fund the local school district.

Confession:  I always protest my tax evaluation.  Not because I hate education, or don’t want to pay my fair share.  I just work damn hard for what I have and have no wish to just simply give it away.

This got me thinking of an online discussion awhile back that I was following.

One person took the view that all public education was a waste of tax money.  Summarizing his viewpoints, he felt that the system was fundamentally broken, public school teachers were lazy and over coddled by a powerful union which refused any attempts at reform or accountability, illegal aliens are taking advantage of our generosity and diluting the level of education for other kids, and that the only solution that politicians could come up with was to throw more money at the problem.  Finally he opined that the public school system should be shuttered and that only private schools should exist.

I normally do not step into online discussions.  I have had a long and sorry history with these.  I participated in the flame wars of the 90’s and I know from experience that these type of discussions eventually degenerate into ad hominem attacks.  Sometimes though I still get pulled in.

My own history with public education is not all that great.  When my family arrived in Houston in late ’77 we went looking for a school for me.  I should preface this with the facts that in Bogota, where I had previously lived, that I had attended a bilingual kindergarten and I had a smattering of English.  Not enough to converse but enough to understand some things.

Back in Houston we found the local public elementary school.  My parents and I went in and sat down with the registrar.  She asked them if I could understand English and they admitted that I knew very little.  She looked down at me and said “He will have to sit at the back of the class and be quiet.”  I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.

Perhaps it was a sense of self preservation, or perhaps it was the very first adult decision that I ever took.  I told my parents that I did not want to attend that school.

They eventually found a private school, Ascension Episcopal, where a kindly teaching assistant took the extra time to basically teach me English and catch me up with the other kids.  I seriously doubt that I would have received that level of extra care from the other school.

Eventually I did enter the public school system but only after I had caught up to the kids in my grade level and could compete on even terms.

I should be bitter and agree with the individual above about public schools but here is why I don’t.

As a nation we are living in a time of tremendous challenges and opportunities.  Trading partners are emerging as powerful rivals, old time allies are not as tractable as before and are trying to do what’s best for them, and enemies are becoming more sophisticated and organized.  It’s a leaner, meaner world that we live in.

Why then are we indulging the luxury of not utilizing every resource that we possibly can to keep or even enhance the standard of living that we enjoy?

We live in an age where the knowledge and the service economic sectors are the becoming the primary economic engines, at least for this country.  This is not the simple age that my parents grew up in where a man could walk in off the street and take up a trade to support his family.

The next generation is going to need all the educational resources that it can get its hands on just to stay competitive around the world.  America will need everyone on board and bailing just to keep the ship afloat.

From an altruistic viewpoint you should want to help your fellow man and should be happy to give them an opportunity to better their lot in life.  From a pragmatic standpoint we need to take individuals that could potentially be liabilities and make them into resources.

Now, do I believe the current system to be perfect or even good?  No, of course not.  The educational system is fragmented, corrupt, and profligate.  But just because it has problems is no reason to end it.

To be brutally honest you can either spend your tax dollars supporting education and turning out the next generation of innovators, leaders, and fellow tax payers or you can spend your tax dollars for police protection from the next generation of street criminals and thugs.

I know which future I would rather fund.

 

Posted in: education

Energy

June 3, 2013 1:30 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The other day I was at the Natural History museum with my friend Rebecca.  We were in the hall of energy looking at all the exhibits.  We came upon an exhibit designed to show the amount of power that gasoline contains.  The idea is that you turn a handle as quickly as possible and the experiment will tell you how much energy you expended in drops of gasoline.  She got 2 drops of gasoline.

No, it doesn’t mean that she was weak, that was actually quite good.  It does show however the amount of energy stored in gasoline, and that’s the problem.  Gasoline has one of the highest energy densities around (about 36 Megajoules per Liter(MJ/L)).  This is the amount of energy stored per volume of space.

That amount of energy has revolutionized the way we live in the US.  It means that any time that you want you can pack up and move across a continent in a couple of days.  A journey that once took up to 6 months.  So amazing that it’s now just taken for granted.  A truly unappreciated wonder of the age.

Not easy to replace.  If you look at the available alternatives you get depressed.  Batteries?  4.32 MJ/L.  Propane?  26 MJ/L.  Nuclear power?  1.55 billion MJ/L.  But who wants to pack a nuclear reactor in your car?

We have had a temporary reprieve in gas prices due to hydraulic fracturing (fraccing) but that is not a permanent solution to dwindling hydrocarbon reserves.  In a few decades we will again see spikes in energy prices.

Ideally we would see some sort of wireless transmission of energy to receivers of vehicles that could continuously charge batteries and keep them running.  Barring that you would probably want some sort of hyper efficient solar power cells or extremely efficient battery that could take massive charges in limited spaces.

Future’s almost here folks.  If we don’t prepare for it you might want to take up walking as a sport now before it becomes a necessity.

Posted in: science

people and their toys

June 2, 2013 1:01 PM , Leave a Comment ,

You always learn something new about your parents.

The other day my dad related that he had been a “motor head” back in the ’50s.  Hard to believe that he and some of his friends had scrounged an old car from the junk yard and souped it up to make a hot rod.  And to make it cooler they did it in California!  I never imagined.  1950’s, in California, and hot rods.  Wow!

But back to the post in question, I suppose that everyone has their little hobbies or passions whether it be cars, boats, cooking, gardening, or in my case, computers.

I went through the phase about a decade ago.  I peeked through websites, magazines, and talked to people and decided to build my own computer.  You could of course custom order a machine from a website but it’s not really the same.

Manufacturers have to make deals for the most cost effective parts, they have profit margins to consider but most of all they’re designing for the masses.  Designs that are too skewed in one direction won’t sell so they limit the customization choices.

I picked out a case, the motherboard, a CPU, the power supply, the cables, and then put in the video card, hard drive, DVD drive, and LAN card.

I downloaded a BIOS off the net, and tinkered for days.  Gave up a couple of times, restarted, got some advice but in about 2 weeks it was up and running.

It was no world beater and really had no huge advantage over other machines.  So why make it?  I can’t say really.  Maybe it’s the artistic yearning to express myself made manifest?  It was a decent machine that ran for about three years.  Finally ended up donating it.  Sadly I came back to that charity shop and found that they had scrapped it for parts since it wasn’t a name brand.

I may do it once again or maybe not.  Mainly I did it that one time for the feeling that I could do it.

Posted in: hobbies

Time

May 31, 2013 8:00 AM , 2 Comments ,

One of my profs once quipped that before a test you only have a finite amount of time to study and that therefore everything else should be postponed till after the test.  After all you could always go to a bar or a party after a test just as well as before.  But you couldn’t study or prepare for a test after it happened.

This holds true for so many other parts of my life.  I therefore get easily annoyed by people that seem content on frittering away time specially if it’s my time.

Time is a commodity.  We can buy or sell it, we can borrow money against it.  The one thing that we can’t do is recover it. Once those particular seconds tick away they’re gone for good.

The average human has about 42 million minutes in his or her lifetime, and in those minutes you will have once in a lifetime events happen.  A comet might pass by, a world event might occur, or something as common as a first date with someone special.

I sometimes look back on my life and think about some of the frivolous things that I have spent my time on.  How I have had to pass up opportunities because I had other commitments I had to honor, how many hours I have had to spend in waiting lines or on hold.  What could I have done in that time?

I then think of my present life.  How am I investing my time?  What time commitments do I have that I have to honor and which can I drop?

I am just a little past my halfway point right now.  All things being equal I have about 20 million minutes left.  Morbid?  No!  It makes me appreciate my life more.  I spent a little over the first two decades of life getting ready to live it and the last two decades living it in a slightly better than average fashion.

I want to make those last four decades count!  Get the most out of them for as long as possible.  I don’t want to waste them away on waiting lines and in regrets.  Make it a life that will be worth looking back upon.  After all you can’t live your life after it ends.

Posted in: life in general

Where it starts

May 30, 2013 1:46 AM , 2 Comments ,

One evening or some morning when you get motivated or just fed up.

Going out 15 minutes in one direction and then back.  You’re sore, sweaty, and disappointed.  Maybe you quit, maybe you come back.

Over and over again until you determine that it’s not working or it’s not enough.  Then quite by chance a park.  The street clothes make you stick out like a sore thumb so you get “running” gear.  Go as far as you can, as far as you dare.  Two weeks in and you’re sore as hell in joints you didn’t think could get sore.

You work through the aches and pains.  Still not enough, nothing’s happening.  Short sprints here and there.  Even more sore.  Leg cramps at night suddenly waking you up because your body’s not used to it.  Two miles before dawn, three in the afternoon and three more at night.  If it’s worth it then make time for it.

92, 95, 101.  No one else dares to come out in this sun but keep going.  Use the sun, use it to burn away the old shell.

Hip pain.  Did I just screw up my hip or is it just sore?  Months spent just walking.  Any time I try to run, crippling pain.  Nine months of waiting comes to an end one evening.  You can run again.  Short distances but at least it’s something.

3 miles, 5 miles, 11 miles walking.  Feet aching, exhausting.  How many more thousands of miles more to go?

Sprint farther each time.  Try to make it from one tree to another and the next day a little farther.  Lungs burning as you go as far as you can.  Drenched in sweat.

Keep your head down as the others run past.  You’re not ready yet, not at their level yet.  Some day.  Keep going.

Hills, your legs can barely move up.  You can see the inflection points where the angle of the hill changes but keep going almost to the top and stand up straight as you go down the other side.

6 months, another pair of shoes, how did you wear out the old ones so quickly?

Quarter mile markers.  Keep pumping keep breathing, pass it, keep going as far as you can.  A pitiful little victory but something at least.  Repeat over and over again, don’t worry about half miles yet.

Cold weather.  Barely 40 degrees and what the hell are you doing out here at 5 AM in under armour while everyone else is in bed?  Get home soaked in sweat.

One morning, what the hell?  No one’s watching, keep going, keep going, you know this segment so well now.  Pace yourself, breathe, don’t stop.  Just one more hill and the rest is cake.  Remember when just this bit was enough.  Blow past some arbitrary point.  Jump up and down and celebrate.  People watching you like you’re nuts.  It’s just one mile after all.

Keep doing it, keep building on it.  Faster, farther.

One day you realize those short little sprints, those short distances don’t mean anything anymore.  What used to be big deals are just blurs now.  No fanfare, no big cathartic moment, no graduation ceremony.  Just more miles.

Another soul passing by walking, starting out as I once did.  I want to reach out and say something.  “Keep it up, it’s worth it!  It get’s easier!”  But no.  I didn’t want that at the beginning.  A simple head nod.  A sign of recognition and respect

Posted in: running

trial under fire

May 28, 2013 1:34 AM , 2 Comments ,

Getting chewed out at work is never fun.  The first time is even worse.  Specially if it’s not even your fault.

When I started out after college I was a general handyman type of guy.  I would get assigned all the monotonous and boring jobs.  Digitizing monkey was the worst.

Our company would make maps and someone had to take the hand drawn maps and transfer them to digital format.  Nowadays we have digital scanners and software that does this.  Back then it was labor intensive work using a digitizing tablet.  Something like a drafting table with a mouse attached.  I had to trace each and every line on a map.  After eight hours of doing that you felt mindless and asleep.  So we called the guys that did this the digitizing monkey because it was such a mindless task that we joked that even a monkey could do it.

I finished my first map after a week and drove to our cartographic expert at the time and delivered it to him.  He exploded.  He told me it was all wrong, that it was sloppy, that it was incomplete, that I had wasted his time and it was all garbage and then he kicked me out of his office.

I went home feeling that I had lost the job.  Totally dejected; I was already looking for another job.

I got called into my superior’s office the next day.  I was sure I would be fired.  I wanted to protest that it was unfair and that the cartographer was a jerk.  Instead I kept my mouth shut and stood up straight.  Determined to take whatever was coming without showing any emotion and be professional about things.

Instead he apologized to me.  The work I had done had been a raw version and not the finished version.  Our expert had realized that after kicking me out and called my boss to apologize to me.

I wanted to laugh or cry.  Don’t know which.  Most of all I was glad that I had stood up to my first real challenge at work without making a fuss.  Ever since that day I have learned not to react too quickly or to make snap decisions.  Always think before you do something that you may regret later on.

Posted in: business

Why we need myths

May 26, 2013 2:36 PM , Leave a Comment ,

Gilgamesh was probably some illiterate brutish thug that raped women and smelled terrible.  Noah was probably some religious nut babbling on about the end of the world when he happened to stumble into the middle of a local flood.  King Arthur was also probably another plunderer on horseback that killed and maimed for profit.  Joan of Arc would be sedated and locked up in today’s world.

Does it really help us to know these things?  Do we profit somehow in knowing that George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree or that the Washington family never even had cherry trees and that Washington lied all the time.

I understand the need of historians to get the facts straight.  Everyone wants to do their job right.  But i question the thought process that decides that myths are not important to future generations.

Myths are the way we make sense of the world around us.  Or so said Joseph Campbell.  Where do these myths come from?  They derive over time from faulty history, from details glossed over, from dates misremembered, and from wish-fulfillment.  Myths are symbols and humans desperately need these to make the world work for them.

Cold dry facts are just that.  They neither breathe or live in the mind, nor do they serve any purpose but to record.  Statistics, time lines, records.  We might as well use accountants to tote up the numbers and write-up a ledger.

Myths inspire, they drive on unborn generations to think what is possible to achieve and to strive to better that achievement.

What myths will our modern age inspire?

Posted in: life in general, myths

…goeth before the fall

May 25, 2013 8:45 PM , 1 Comment ,

When I was in college I would drive into Bryan and visit the local Half Price books for paperbacks.  They actually had a better selection than the regular bookstores and even back then the price of paperbacks was starting to get ridiculous so if I wanted something to read it was a good choice.

Sometimes I would pick up good thought provoking books and other times just time filling mind candy.  I once picked up this techno thriller book.  One of those Tom Clancy like books dealing with the military and set in the middle east.  The story wasn’t anything special but a line in the book stuck with me.

A general was dealing with some tough choices concerning a battle that his army was engaged in and losing.  A subordinate could tell that due to pride and bravado that the general didn’t want to take the prudent course and save his command.  The subordinate took the general aside and said “It’s time to save the army”.

I used to have a problem with pride.  I would get into bad situations where I had no good choices and the only prudent course would be to cut my losses and quit.  Yet I would persist, even knowing that nothing I did could change the situation or make things better.  I reasoned that if only I invested a little bit more into this situation then I could turn the tide.  Inevitably of course I would lose and become despondent.

During one of those situations this phrase popped up in my mind.

“It’s time to save the army”

I rolled it over in my head and thought about what was going on and suddenly realized I was persisting not because I could change things but due to pride.  I didn’t want to lose or fail.  I immediately quit the situation and felt better about my choice.

I always applaud passion and drive but sometimes we get so caught up in the moment that we lose the big picture and our perspective gets warped.  We get fixated on an objective and don’t see things logically.  Some voice, maybe from inside, but often from outside has to stop you and say “It’s time to save the army”

Posted in: life in general