Nov 07

Hope

But everything has an upside, even an apocalyptic war against the forces of darkness. Such a war tends to put everything else in perspective. Conflicts that once loomed large suddenly seem petty and insignificant, and it actually becomes possible to talk about ending them.
In Northern Ireland, the IRA is laying down its weapons, and the first steps toward reestablishing the failed power-sharing government are being taken. And with the Cold War a distant memory, the U.S. and Russia are growing more friendly by the day. Where the Russia of a decade ago bitterly opposed the U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf, today’s Russia has pledged cooperation with the United States in its war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The U.S. and Russia are hammering out a plan to slash their remaining arsenals of nuclear warheads by two thirds. And the two nations are even making progress toward renegotiation of the 1972 ABM treaty, an issue over which they were deadlocked just months ago.
Even in the Islamic world, there are signs of hope. In Indonesia (the most populous Muslim nation), a militant fundamentalist who tried to organize anti-American protests on the island of Lombok was chased out by the local officials, who told him that his message of hate and violence wasn’t wanted. And in Iran, demonstrations against the fundamentalist, anti-American government and in favor of the U.S. are increasing, while government-organized demonstrations to commemorate the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy were a complete failure — almost no one showed up.
The winds of change are blowing, and some of the changes are very good indeed. We shouldn’t overlook that.

Nov 04

Rage

Anger for me has always been a temporary thing, something I could never sustain. No matter how angry I was at someone, no matter what the reason, after a day or so the tide would ebb and I would find myself ready to talk out the problem. Even if I didn’t really want to stop being angry, I just couldn’t keep it up.
September 11 changed that. Over the last two months, I have discovered that I am capable of sustained rage. Oh, it begins to ease off after a while, but then I encounter something like this memorial video that reminds me of exactly what it is that I’m enraged about. Or I read a report like this one, describing the numerous Muslims living in Britain who support bin Laden and even think the World Trade Center attacks were justified. And suddenly I’m redlining the rage meter again.
My father was born in 1932, so he grew up during the Great Depression and World War II. He doesn’t tend to talk much about that part of his life, but at one point he recalled a memory from his youth that has stayed with me ever since. He was mowing the lawn, he said, and as he did so he imagined that the stalks of grass that he was cutting down were Japanese soldiers. When I first heard that, it seemed sad and quaint, like a remnant of a different age. It was certainly understandable that a child growing up during wartime could fantasize about something so violent, but I could never imagine myself doing that.
Today I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to mow my lawn. As I pushed the mower, I thought back on the poll of British Muslims . . and before my eyes, the grass turned into Taliban soldiers and Islamic fundamentalists. I don’t know which is more depressing — that I’m back in the same place where my father was six decades ago, or that at the age of 41, I’m feeling what he felt when he was ten years old.
This isn’t going to go away, is it? The war against terrorism will last for years, perhaps even decades. And this emotion, this white-hot, chest-constricting, blinding sensation of impotent fury, is going to be with me for all that time. For the duration, as people used to say when my father was a kid. It’s just something I’m going to have to learn to live with . . . tucked away in a corner of my mind, but never forgotten.
The person I was on September 10 could never have conceived of this emotion. But he’s gone. And that, too, is something to be angry about.

Nov 03

Magnets

Like many people in post-9/11 America, I’ve experienced a renewal of interest in displaying the flag. One place to do this, of course, is on your car. You have several options: attach a flag to your radio antenna, paste a flag sticker on the rear bumper, get one of those flag brackets that mounts in a window, or opt for a flag made of that flexible magnetic plastic that some refrigerator magnets are made of.
I decided on the magnets, and each of our vehicles now has one. They seem to me to be the best solution: the antenna-mounted flags get tattered too quickly, bumper stickers are impossible to remove, and the brackets make your windows leak. The magnets have all of the advantages of a bumper sticker and none of the flaws: they can easily be removed, repositioned, or even moved to another vehicle; if they collect dirt, you can take them off and clean under them; and they don’t fade like paper stickers do. Sure, they’re a bit more expensive, but not enough to matter.
So why aren’t all bumper stickers made of this stuff? For that matter, why aren’t license plates made out of it? Car dealers figured out the advantages of magnetic license plates years ago; you’ve probably noticed the special magnetic frames they use, so they can quickly switch dealer plates from one vehicle to another. The rest of us don’t need to do that, but it would still make sense for license plates to stick to your car on their own without having to be mounted in a special holder.
I know what you’re thinking: wouldn’t that make it too easy for people to steal your plate? Not really. Anyone with a screwdriver can steal your plate right now. It only takes a minute to undo the screws and walk off with it. Yet few license plates ever get stolen. It won’t make any difference if doing so no longer requires the screwdriver.
I suspect the real reason why neither license plates nor bumper stickers are magnetic is simply that no one has thought of doing it. This is probably also the reason why the full potential of refrigerator magnets hasn’t been tapped. Refrigerator magnets are a brilliant advertising ploy, because they’re actually useful. You can never have too many of them. And so people tend to hang onto them for years (sometimes long after the company they advertise has ceased to exist). You may not give the advertiser your business, but their phone number is right there on your refrigerator door if you ever decide to.
Yet when a business hires people to put advertisements on parked cars, they always use paper flyers and stick them under your windshield wiper. This never works, because a piece of paper is worthless. Those flyers end up on the ground or in the nearest trash can. Why not hire people to stick refrigerator magnets to your car? You’re more likely to put that magnet in your pocket than in a trash can, and odds are it will end up on your fridge for the next decade or so.

Nov 01

Coffee continued

Of course there is a downside to drinking coffee. And it’s not the caffeine addiction (I already had that) or the risk of coffee stains. No, it’s that joining the global fraternity of coffee drinkers has made me aware of a whole new realm of human dimwittedness: coffee idiots.
I don’t mean the people who pour themselves a cup and leave half an ounce in the pot instead of brewing more. Everyone knows about those idiots. I’m talking about the ones who, as soon as a new pot is brewed, immediately reach past the previously existing one and go for the pot that’s ten whole minutes fresher. And, for that matter, the people who brew a new pot when the previous one (I refuse to say “old,” because it’s not) is more than half full. What are they thinking? At first I theorized that these people couldn’t stand the sight of an empty pot, or that they were simply anticipating future demand. But yesterday, I had both of those theories shot down. I walked into the break room and saw a mostly-full pot of regular coffee, another pot just starting to fill with more regular coffee, and, on the rear burner of the coffee maker, the decaf pot sitting completely empty.
And what’s the point of these plastic or wooden stirrers? If you put the sweetener and creamer into your mug first and then fill it with coffee, you generate more than enough turbulence to dissolve everything. As far as I can see, the stirrers are completely redundant.
No, all the caffeine is not making me cranky. Shut up or I’ll whack you with my thermal mug. (Hey, it’s empty — time for a refill.)

Nov 01

It’s going to take more than 24 days

The news media have been making fools of themselves in recent days by claiming the the war in Afghanistan has somehow “bogged down” or “reached a stalemate” because we’ve been bombing for three whole weeks and we still haven’t won. (Some observers have pointed out that news conferences are beginning to sound like the Saturday Night Live “Gulf War Briefing” skit.) Finally, in today’s prepared statement, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld addressed the question head-on and, in essence, told the press that they are behaving like idiots. Woohoo! After their disgracefully overblown coverage of the anthrax scare, it’s very satisfying to see them reprimanded so effectively.

Oct 31

Livin’ la vida mocha

On October 16, I started drinking coffee. It was the exact opposite of going “cold turkey”; that morning, I changed from a lifelong coffee-avoider to a person who sips the stuff more or less nonstop throughout the work day.
Blame Weight Watchers and IBM. When I started on the Weight Watchers plan in 1999, I suddenly had a very powerful incentive to reevaluate my taste preferences. I was drinking several canned drinks a day, and their sugar content was a major reason why my weight had reached 230 pounds. I needed an alternative. I had tried diet sodas in the past, and had always found them to taste nasty. So, during the first weeks of my diet, I drank a lot of water. But eventually, I broke down and drank a diet soda, and found that it tasted just fine. In fact, all diet sodas now tasted good to me.
Apparently, once the sugar content of my bloodstream came down out of the stratosphere, I could taste the artificial sweetener. (I should have expected this; years before, I had stopped salting my food, and had discovered that foods had flavors of their own.) So instead of sipping Dr. Pepper all day, I could now sip Diet Dr. Pepper. It was still expensive buying all those drinks from vending machines, though. I tried bringing store brands from home, but lugging several cans of liquid to work every day wasn’t much of an improvement.
Over the next two years, I discovered that diet drinks were just the tip of the iceberg. Virtually every food I thought I disliked, I found that I enjoyed eating or could at least tolerate. My diet gradually shifted from meat and carbohydrates to semi-vegetarian, as I learned that collard greens, brussels sprouts, and squash were not the inedible horrors I had always believed. I even found that my childhood allergies to raw vegetables and fruits had disappeared, and I could now eat bananas and watermelon like everyone else.
When I started work at IBM in May, one of the perks of the job was the free drinks. Coffee and tea had been free at many of my former workplaces, but not Coke and Pepsi products. Now I had access to vending machines that would dispense Diet Mountain Dew and Diet Pepsi without payment. At last I could get my daily caffeine without worrying about the calories or the expense! If only the drinks didn’t run out so often.
Of course it was too good to last. The drinks were running out because IBMers had no incentive to limit their consumption, and the cost of refilling the machines was becoming prohibitive. Finally IBM put its corporate foot down. Drinks would now cost 25 cents. This was still a bargain, but it started me thinking. “If what I’m really after is the caffeine,” I reasoned, “why am I ignoring the free coffee?” The last time I had tried coffee, it had tasted horribly bitter and nasty to me, but how long ago was that? Ten or fifteen years? If I could learn to love Brussels sprouts, it was time to give java another try. So, on the morning of October 16, I took the IBM thermal mug that I had owned for over a decade (since my previous stint as a contractor) and filled it with coffee for the first time. And found that with the proper amount of nondairy creamer and artificial sweetener, I like it a great deal.
So now I drink coffee all day. It’s a little thing, but I feel as if I’ve finally completed the transition into adulthood. At the age of 41, I’ve joined the worldwide fraternity of coffee drinkers at last. I’ve been initiated into the mysteries of grounds, filters, little plastic stirrers, and the magic button that sets the brewing process in motion. I’ve burned my lips and tongue with coffee that was too hot, and learned that the interval of enforced patience between pouring and drinking can enhance the joy of the first sip. And although I’ve managed to avoid getting coffee stains on my clothing, I know that it’s only a matter of time before I bear the Mark.
Best of all, I never have to sleep any more.
Note: I borrowed the title of this post from an Onion article.

Oct 24

We’ve been on this shift too long

The deadline crunch that kept me from posting here for a while has now officially passed. In the part of IBM where I work, iterations of the software and documentation are called drivers for some reason. When I started this job six months ago, work was just starting on Driver 6, to which I contributed nothing worth mentioning. The deadline that just passed was for Driver 7, and this time I wrote a bunch of online help pages (which is why I was so busy the last couple of weeks).
Now we’re starting on Driver 8, and when my manager sent out an e-mail about the schedule, he attached an MP3 file containing an R.E.M. song called “Driver 8.” (You can hear a sample of it here.) Playing it through my headset, I found that I really liked the sound of it, but couldn’t make out all of the lyrics. And in the process of tracking them down on the Web, I discovered that the guy playing drums on this song was named Berry. Isn’t synchronicity fun? No, wait, that was The Police. Never mind.

Oct 23

The next generation

A quarter century ago, when Virgil and I were both students at Northwestern High School, he was in the chorus. (I wasn’t — I never auditioned, for reasons that I no longer remember. Perhaps it was because my voice hadn’t finished changing and I didn’t feel confident about my ability to sing.) At their concerts, I sat in the audience and watched while he sang. Tonight, I was sitting in the audience again while a high school chorus performed . . . but Virgil was sitting next to me, and it was our daughters who were singing. Afterward, I asked him, “When’s the last time we were together at a high school?”
“At the class reunion?” he responded.
“No, I only went to the ten-year reunion, and that wasn’t held at the school. It has to have been 1977, on our last day of classes before we graduated.” We looked at each other.
Life has come full circle. Virgil and I met in geometry class in the fall of 1974, when he was 15 and I was 14. Now Ruth (age 15) and Alana (age 14) are both taking geometry. They’re not in the same class, but that scarcely matters, since they’ve known each other all their lives.
Where does the time go?

Posted in Me
Oct 08

Insanity

In an open letter to the terrorists (posted to a CNN message board), Laurence Simon points out that they should be afraid of us because we are crazier than they are. You should read the whole thing, but here’s a sample:

We sell hot dogs in packages of ten and the buns in packages of eight.

We can’t even decide if pitchers should have to bat for themselves or not. All those baseball fields we’ve got… none of them are even remotely the same size.

We think Elvis is still alive.

We put our money into dot-com businesses that have no imaginable source of revenue whatsoever, and then scream when their stock values plummet to zero in the frenzy of sudden realization. We lay off thousands upon thousands of workers because it is good for the bottom line and stockholders, when it’s the bosses who are the real stockholders with options for even more stock.

We gave millions of dollars to a guy that told us that God was going to kill him if he didn’t raise enough money. When he didn’t get enough money, he didn’t die. So we gave him more money in celebration of the fact that God didn’t make him die.

We’ve managed to keep the formulas for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken secret for decades, we encrypt the most banal communications on our Information Superhighway, and yet we given away our most important nuclear secrets to the Chinese and Russians at the drop of a hat.

He’s right. Heck, this explains why so many of our former enemies (Great Britain, Mexico, Germany, Japan) are now staunch allies. They realized that we’re heavily armed and stark raving mad, and decided that it is much safer to be our friends.

Historical note: When it first appeared, the open letter was attributed to someone else by a lot of people, including me. But Laurence Simon sets the record straight on his own blog, and also provides annotations for all of the things he alludes to.