South Of Someplace: December 2014

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

2014 Wrap Up

Everyone's experience is unique. I realize that 2014 was a difficult year for many people. Tragedy dominated the headlines on many occasions, and people work through their private struggles as well. I empathize with anyone who has had a difficult year. I don't want my remarks to be taken as an indication of a general trend. I had a good year while some others didn't. I am sensitive to each person's challenges, because I realize that fortunes can change at any time.

2014 has for me been a wonderful year. First among my many blessings is my family, who have been kind and supportive to me year after year. I was able to spend a number of weekends throughout the year with my Mom and Dad, sisters, nieces and nephews. As always, I'm most proud of my son and his continuing success.

I'm also blessed with a core of longtime friends. Our monthly dinners are filled with laughs and lively conversation. I'm always looking forward to the next one.

2014 was also one of the most productive years of my life.

I spent a lot of time in the office. That might not seem like a positive, depending on your perspective, but I enjoyed my projects and responsibilities and the opportunities that they provided. For instance, it was the first time that I had the chance to develop code on three database platforms in the same year (Oracle, Sybase, Teradata) all while working on complex computational models. That pushed my brain into some new cognitive territory.

In addition, I appreciated very much the opportunity to work with a large team of bright and highly capable colleagues, each of whom is also a supportive, thoughtful, and interesting person. There's no substitute for a fulfilling work life. Vacations and alcohol can't mask the damage of enduring a miserable career. I have been very fortunate in this regard.

I enjoyed significant productivity in my creative life, as well. Experiments with new photographic techniques yielded encouraging results, and I look forward to applying these techniques on future projects.

I completed a number of musical compositions, and others are in the works. I hope to set up a new website in 2015 as an avenue for sharing this new music.

I did quite a bit or writing this year. (Maybe that's a bit of an understatement.) When I tallied up the total number of posts on my various blogs, I was a bit shocked. It's a wonder that I didn't have to replace my computer keyboard along the way. (I did finally replace my old iPad where much of this writing occurred, so I guess that counts.)

I also wrote my first mystery story this past fall (Powder Blue Lies). I think it turned out well, and it has received some very generous commentary from the readers.

Along the way, I found time to run consistently throughout the year, spend two weeks in Greece, and teach ninety dance classes. I was able to spend some time polishing up my dance technique, as well. All of these activities, dance, travel, and exercise, bring me a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

So, yes, I guess it's fair to say that I accomplished quite a bit. I'm happy with the results. I enjoy the photos. I enjoy listening to the new music, and I think that the mystery story turned out very well. But I'm also proud of the effort. I couldn't have worked much harder. I came about as close to doing my theoretical best as I can imagine.

But there's much more to do - more projects, more creations, more skills to develop, more places to visit. I am looking forward to 2015 with eager anticipation.

Happy New Year! May you enjoy each new day and take advantage of all the possibilities that life presents.

It's Winter - Deal With It

It's winter. I understand. It's cold, it gets dark early, and frozen precipitation can cause all sorts of problems. So what?

Put your hat and scarf on, your coat, your boots, your gloves (long underwear if necessary), and get on with it.

Spring will come soon enough. People aren't meant to hibernate, and no one has time to waste.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Influential Moments

Critical moments can change the course of our lives. A handful of key experiences have redirected mine. At an early age, a live performance of music awakened a lifelong passion. An exhibition of world class landscape photography awakened another.

I had a vision one evening while sitting alone in my room - I was about eighteen at the time. I saw myself as an old man looking back over a wasted life. I had squandered one opportunity after another and was left bitter and unfulfilled. I was devastated. I felt so disappointed with myself and with my choices.

The experience was brief, and it existed completely in my imagination. Nevertheless, it frightened me and moved me in a very powerful way. I didn't want to become that person, that tragic shadow of a man. I didn't want to miss out on all of the wonderful rewards that a lifetime has to offer.

Since that day, I have been driven by a clear and powerful inner force. Things haven't always gone smoothly. I've made countless mistakes, and opportunities didn't always materialize as quickly as I thought or in the places where I had expected to find them. But I continued to work relentlessly and undeterred. I pursued my dreams, acted with purpose and consideration and gratitude, built a joyful, memorable, and meaningful life, and to the best of my ability, encouraged others to discover and follow paths that are meaningful to them.

That old, sad version of myself has all but faded from the realm of possibility. Even if my journey ends today, it has been rich beyond anything that I could have imagined as a young man. But the vision still drives me. There's more to do, more to experience, more to accomplish. That tragic old man still lives in my heart, pushing me onward. Every now and then I thank him for scaring the crap out of me before it was too late.

Job Satisfaction

Yesterday, I found myself actually looking forward to returning to the office after these few days off. I can't remember the last time I felt that way about a job.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Charles, Prince of Wales, Old Guy

I always assumed that Prince Charles was much older than I am - like, decades older. But he's not. And that bothers me. Because he looks old and stuffy. Do *I* look old and stuffy?

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

How To Make A Lasting Impression

Some people will underestimate you. Others will think that you can jump over the moon.

Either way, if you want to make a lasting impression, you need to exceed their expectations. All expectations.

People exist in two states - astonished, and bored out of their minds. Choose the result that you want, and then take your best shot. And remember, there aren't any do-overs.

A Curmudgeon's Christmas

Christmas gifts are like a tax on having a family. Not that having a family isn't taxing enough.

Hours of shopping in horrid weather, hours of wrapping, a small fortune spent - and for what? They rip them open in a few brief minutes and then run along to watch the television for the rest of the day.

Do the little dears actually like their gifts? You'll never know. Communication isn't their strong suit. Besides, they're too busy arguing to pay attention to an old fart like you or anything that you brought.

Next year, they can all go Scrooge themselves! Humbug!

Monday, December 22, 2014

An Epidemic of Violence

The ambush killing of two New York City police officers this past weekend has sparked tremendous outrage. It's difficult to accept the brazen treachery of this heinous crime. The resulting frustration has led some to level blame publicly. Some blame the Mayor. Some blame the protesters. But such blame is misplaced and misses the larger issue at hand.

For context, we can reflect upon a second tragedy that occurred during the past week. An ex-Marine in Pennsylvania shot and killed his wife and five members of her family, including children.

On the surface, the two incidents don't appear to be related. But they speak to a larger societal problem that has nothing to do with police or protests or grand jury decisions.

The United States is suffering from an epidemic of rage. Angry people with access to powerful handguns are slaughtering innocent civilians at an unprecedented rate.

In 1969, Charles Manson and his followers shocked the world when they killed six people in two separate incidents. The killings seemed to arbitrary, pointless, and cruel. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Manson killings still have never quite made our peace with what happened.

If the Manson killings happened today, they would be in the news for perhaps a week. And then another mass murder would occur. And then another and another and another.

Society is moving backward. An angry person with a gun can show up anywhere at any time and start killing indiscriminately. It happens in schools. It happens at universities. It happens in stores and shopping malls and movie theaters. It happens on military bases. It happens in churches. It happens in factories and offices and other places of work.

It happens all the time.

The ex-Marine who killed his wife and her family last week - angry person with a gun.

The Baltimore resident who killed two NYC police officers over the weekend - angry person with a gun.

The guy who killed his girlfriend while she earned extra money as a holiday retail clerk over the

Thanksgiving weekend - angry person with a gun.

Dozens of school shootings in the past year - angry people with guns.

Is the pattern unclear?

We have a mental health crisis in this country. Intersect our lack of will to address this problem with easy access to the most powerful firearms ever manufactured, and we have a mortal crisis on our hands.

Some argue that we would be safer if we were all armed. But that has now been clearly disproven. The victims of this weekend's shooting were armed and trained to use their weapons. Guns won't protect us from a society gone mad.

We as a nation need to come to grips with some serious issues before more police officers are ambushed, before more innocent people are massacred week after week after bloody week. We should have tackled these issues decades ago. Every year that we pretend that the problem is manageable or it's covered by existing regulations, more people will die senselessly.

Happy Holidays - The Controversial Christmas Greeting

Happy Holidays!

This is such a joyous and cheerful greeting! How did it become embroiled in so much controversy?

Is "Happy Holidays" a legitimate Christmas greeting? Or is it deliberately watered down so as not to offend non-Christians?

There is a school of thought that links "Happy Holidays" with the aggressive doctrines of political correctness that dominate American society today. But there's one problem with this theory.

Political correctness rose to prominence in the 1980's. People have been saying "Happy Holidays" and "Seasons Greetings" for far longer. I remember seeing these phrases written on Christmas cards back in the early 1960's (about 20 years BPC).

In that bygone era, unmarried women were still known as Miss So-and-so. Words like "Ms." and "African-American" had yet to be invented, as did the entire notion of political correctness. When someone wished you "Happy Holidays," everyone accepted that it was synonymous with "Merry Christmas."

That said, we live in a different time now. Political correctness dominates social interaction and public communication in the United States.

Visit a retail business and say "Merry Christmas" to an employee. They'll probably wish you "Happy Holidays" in return. I don't know for a fact that their companies compel them to answer in this way, but I suspect that this is so in at least some circumstances. If that's true, it's tragic. Why stigmatize the "Merry Christmas" greeting by punishing employees for saying it? "Do you punish them for saying "Happy Easter?" Or forbid them from mentioning Bastille Day or Cinco? It's absurd.

(I would have said that it's "idiotic," but that term offends some politically correct people.)

I have to agree that this is indeed political correctness gone haywire. But just because some people are coerced to say "Happy Holidays" to strangers, that doesn't mean that it's an inferior Christmas greeting.

Christmas is more than one day. It's an entire season that comprises a number of holidays. The four Sundays of Advent. Christmas Eve. The Twelve Days of Christmas. Epiphany (Twelfth Night). And just for good measure, New Year's Day and the Winter Solstice (formerly known as Yule) are bundled in there, as well.

So, I don't see anything anti-Christian about the Happy Holidays greeting. After all, we Christians have a lot of holidays at this time of year. We celebrate all of those holidays as part of the Christmas season.

When I greet people at this time of year, I say "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays." I think that covers the bases pretty well. Christmas is my holiday, and I wish them the same level of joy and love that I feel at this time of year. If that upsets them, then they probably need the Christmas Spirit even more than they realize.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Cuba

Open relations with Cuba. It's a good idea. Twenty years too late, but it's a good idea. We have relations with Vietnam. What's the difference?

Let's start spending dollars in Cuba before Putin decides to use the island as a missile launching pad. We don't need a new Cold War. I hope to visit Havana one day soon. And I don't even like cigars.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Beyond Senseless

I can understand one deranged person attacking a school. We've seen this in the US many times, in Scotland, Norway, and a number of other places. But why would an organized group of adults deliberately target children? What is to be gained? Is this supposed to raise sympathy for a cause? If so, it failed miserably.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Enigma

I haven't been out to a feature film all year, but I am very much looking forward to 'The Imitation Game', the true story of Alan Turing and the team of British mathematicians and cryptographers who broke Germany's Enigma code during WWII.

The Conceit Of Ignorance

An ignorant man who lives in a cave will tell you all about the sky and insist that he's right.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Trial By Jury

Trial by jury. Chain of evidence. Due process of law. These practices were not established to pamper criminals. Their purpose is to protect the innocent.

The monarchs of Europe once had the power to imprison, tax, torture, and execute their subjects at will. How can an individual defend himself from the wrath of an vengeful state? How can the falsely accused demonstrate that blame has been misplaced?

The mob mentality is even more dangerous. Lynching, stoning, flogging, dragging, burning at the stake. History is full of tales of hideous injustice at the hands of angry mobs.

The criminal justice system makes grievous and well publicized errors from time to time. Innocent people are jailed by mistake, and killers and other criminals escape conviction through trickery of prosecutorial negligence. But those are exceptions. Most of the time, the legal system delivers its intended result: justice. Those responsible for harming others are punished, and those who have been falsely accused are exonerated.

Sometimes, when we feel emotional about a topic, it's easy to lose sight of how important these fundamental rights really are. I'm certain that it's difficult for victims and the families of victims to endure the tedious pace of justice. I sympathize. But we can't apply fundamental principles selectively.

I have heard people defend the torture of prisoners in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They're terrorists," they claim. "Why should we care how they are treated?" It's a legitimate question.

But aside from concerns about the accuracy of information derived by torture, how do we know that the man that we waterboarded a hundred times was indeed a terrorist? Did we catch him in the act of trying to blow someone up? That might be compelling enough. Or did he just happen to be in a town where someone who looks like him and has a similar name might be a terrorist?

Again we are presented with the classic problem of the falsely accused prisoner. Before we hang him, should we not determine beyond a reasonable doubt that he was indeed the person who committed the crime? And not some unlucky guy who happens to live in the same neighborhood?

How would you feel if you were the accused? Or if it were someone in your family? Held without charges. Without a chance to clear your name. Subject to imprisonment and torture for months and years? Civilization has worked diligently to prevent that from happening in recent centuries. And yet, notice how eagerly some people want to turn back the clock on progress.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Using Physics to Pick Up Women

My friend Vektor uses his knowledge of physics to pick up women. I know, I know! It sounds unbelievable, but he explained how it works.

His opening topic is always light. If he doesn't get a reaction, he relies on fluid dynamics to overcome inertia and accelerate the discussion. If he detects any waves, he'll explain the gravity of his position.

As things progress, he strings the woman along with charm, especially if she has a nice bottom. He has some quarks, but he's not strange. He likes to laugh and claims that, in principle, it relieves uncertainty. If he can get the lady to laugh, that increases the probability of them being unified.

This approach has been working well for Vektor. Recently, he's hosted a number of intensive all night sessions on thermodynamics and oscillatory motion. I think he's been with Zeta and Rho, but he doesn't disclose his partners. Quantum mechanics taught him the relative importance of being discrete.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Lashing Out In Frustration

I saw a guy spit on a bus today. The light had changed, and it was time for the pedestrians to walk. The bus was making a turn and had to wait until the light in his direction turned red to get through the intersection. It's a fairly common scenario. As a pedestrian, you have to double check that the interaction is clear.

A guy waiting across the street from me apparently took offense to the bus' late entry into the crosswalk. So he puckered up and spit on the bus. The bus driver didn't notice; he was looking straight ahead, not to the side where the spitting man was standing. And the bus obviously didn't sustain any damage from the saliva.

No meaning was communicated via the gesture. The spitter lashed out like a two-year-old to no effect whatsoever except to express his own inability to cope with frustration.

Lashing out in frustration is perhaps the lowest level of the human experience. It demonstrates an acute loss of control over ones own emotional stability. And yet, it's extremelh common. We all get frustrated from time to time, occasionally to the point of lashing out at others. But some people live in this state, people who are quick to lash out at others in expression of their own frustration. It's pathetic. It's frightening. Unfortunately, it explains a lot of the negative incidents that occur in our lives and in society in general.

South Of Someplace