News came down yesterday that I am being temporarily, massively, retasked at my job. Most of you know that we had a big demonstration last week for our customer. On the basis of that demo, they will be deciding whether or not to continue funding this project for another year. Company X's Board of Directors meeting will be occurring in a couple of weeks, and it could take up to a month or more after that for the final details of the next stage of the project to be finalized and the money to start flowing again, assuming they agree to re-up the funding.
So, in the meantime, most of the Optical Engineers on my project are being 'lent' out to the archive drive project, which is the chief project of InPhase since its inception. For comparison, ROM Stage 1 employed about 12 people, vs. about 105 for archive. I am one of those being lent (or 'whored', if you prefer) until the end of July or so.
On the up side, the project sounds interesting and challenging. The archive drive is moving into production phase. They have broken the process down into 12 stations. Each station will be manned by a single engineer, whose job is to understand the process, build several (8-15) versions, iron out the wrinkles, then write sufficiently detailed instructions that it can be handed off to a non-engineer for assembly-line production. Several people hunted me down today to stress both the difficulty and the importance of my stage, which is implementation and alignment of the final stage of the laser.
On the down side, I am naturally a lazy walrus of a human being. It has served me well and gotten me this far in life, and I don't see any particular reason to change. The idea of being tasked with something which is both difficult and important is, well, not the kind of thing lazy walruses take on by choice. But, nobody asked me my blubbery opinion.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
I Don't Want A Pickle, I Just Wanna Ride My Motorcycle
Well, the Samuels Family Motorcycle Extravagansa of 2007 has been planned.
In early July, my 'rental units will be coming to Longmont, with Dad's Crrrazy Harley (which is worth twice the value of my car, and has an engine almost as big besides) in tow. All three of us; Dad on the bike, Mom in the Navigator, and me on the half-crotch rocket, will take off on a 5-day tour of Northern Colorado.
Here is the map of the planned trip. The trip is inspired by the Rule the Rockies tour, which is sponsored by the American Motorcyclist's Association. I think we hit most of the major points, and so long as nobody kills themselves and my ass doesn't develop bedsores and fall off, it should be a lot of fun.
In early July, my 'rental units will be coming to Longmont, with Dad's Crrrazy Harley (which is worth twice the value of my car, and has an engine almost as big besides) in tow. All three of us; Dad on the bike, Mom in the Navigator, and me on the half-crotch rocket, will take off on a 5-day tour of Northern Colorado.
Here is the map of the planned trip. The trip is inspired by the Rule the Rockies tour, which is sponsored by the American Motorcyclist's Association. I think we hit most of the major points, and so long as nobody kills themselves and my ass doesn't develop bedsores and fall off, it should be a lot of fun.
What I'm Listening To
Devotchka!
You should listen to them, too. They rock. If you enjoyed 'Little Miss Sunshine', then you have already heard them, as they did the soundtrack. Here is their website, where you can listen to a few snippets.
The saddest news of the summer thus far is that I will not be able to attend their concert at Red Rocks on August 3rd, as that is the night before the Colorado Cup, the Ultimate Tournament I run. However, my Colorado-based Faithful Readers should definitely give it a good ponder. You won't regret going.
You should listen to them, too. They rock. If you enjoyed 'Little Miss Sunshine', then you have already heard them, as they did the soundtrack. Here is their website, where you can listen to a few snippets.
The saddest news of the summer thus far is that I will not be able to attend their concert at Red Rocks on August 3rd, as that is the night before the Colorado Cup, the Ultimate Tournament I run. However, my Colorado-based Faithful Readers should definitely give it a good ponder. You won't regret going.
Sports Commentary, Or Deep Cultural Criticism?
Bill Simmons writes a very good article for ESPN The Magazine (published on Earth, the planet, as Tuesday Morning Quarterback would point out.) He is discussing the fleeting nature of sports fandom, as the next generation of superstars is lauded as being the Greatest! Ever! regardless of their relative quality vs. those who came before.
This is not universally true, and it has been less true in the past than it is now.
In the book Ishmael (once again, and in this case I mean this as seriously as I can possibly say it: if you haven't read this book, you should. And then you should read it again.) Quinn develops the argument that there was a major cultural break in human history about 10,000 years ago, when three memes came to reside in a particular culture simultaneously.
1) You should grow all your own food using agriculture.
2) Growing your own food is the Right Way To Live.
3) Everyone else in the world should live this way as well.
Quinn uses these three ideas to define a Culture which he calls The Takers. Now, this is a pretty controversial way of defining 'culture', since it means that Americans, Japanese, Swedes, and Brazilians are all part of the same culture. If you want to know more, please, read the book.
For the purposes of this conversation, though, please accept this definition and move on. Quinn's point, and it's a strong one, is that the peoples who don't live as Takers (who he calls Leavers) continue to live, on those few places on planet Earth where they still exist, much as they have been living for thousands, or tens of thousands, or, in parts of Africa, hundreds of thousands of years. Living in much the same way for this long gives your cultural identity a kind of permanence, a feeling that the culture long predates you, by so far that it may as well have been around forever, and that it will postdate you, again for so long it may as well be forever.
Our Culture, however, is a technological one. Which is not to say that it uses technology; all cultures do this. I would go so far as to offer up 'uses technology' as one of the three or four things that defines human beings as human beings. What I mean to say is that our Culture, the Takers, are defined by our technology. It inspires us, drives us, forces us to further and further accomplishments. And it's not a bad thing, not at all. In a mere 10,000 years, we have gone from scattering some grass seeds to peering into the cores of atoms.
But one of the downsides of this technology is that every generation feels like it has to come up with a new way of living, because those old rules don't apply anymore. And so we go 'round and 'round, each generation thinking that it is the first one, ever, to have to deal with these problems, and constantly refighting battles of the past.
This is not to say that I have a solution to this problem. I have some ideas, but they're a bit...complicated. Stick around for a year or two, maybe we'll get there.
And while Simmons is just trying to make a point about sports, he ends up making a point about Culture. The never-ending drive for growth, improvement, advancement, while it has been responsible for some remarkable accomplishments, also prevents us from being able to appreciate the accomplishments of the ones who came before. Which is a shame, purely for moral reasons, but also leads to much of the strife we have in our political and religious strifes historically.
So why do we pump up the present at the expense of the past? Goldman believed that every era is "so arrogant (and) so dismissive," and again he was right, although that arrogance/dismissiveness isn't entirely intentional.With all due credit to Daniel Quinn, whose arguments I am undoubtedly about to mangle, as I have done so often, it basically is true that people, at least as we tend to define them, are arrogant and dismissive of the past.
This is not universally true, and it has been less true in the past than it is now.
In the book Ishmael (once again, and in this case I mean this as seriously as I can possibly say it: if you haven't read this book, you should. And then you should read it again.) Quinn develops the argument that there was a major cultural break in human history about 10,000 years ago, when three memes came to reside in a particular culture simultaneously.
1) You should grow all your own food using agriculture.
2) Growing your own food is the Right Way To Live.
3) Everyone else in the world should live this way as well.
Quinn uses these three ideas to define a Culture which he calls The Takers. Now, this is a pretty controversial way of defining 'culture', since it means that Americans, Japanese, Swedes, and Brazilians are all part of the same culture. If you want to know more, please, read the book.
For the purposes of this conversation, though, please accept this definition and move on. Quinn's point, and it's a strong one, is that the peoples who don't live as Takers (who he calls Leavers) continue to live, on those few places on planet Earth where they still exist, much as they have been living for thousands, or tens of thousands, or, in parts of Africa, hundreds of thousands of years. Living in much the same way for this long gives your cultural identity a kind of permanence, a feeling that the culture long predates you, by so far that it may as well have been around forever, and that it will postdate you, again for so long it may as well be forever.
Our Culture, however, is a technological one. Which is not to say that it uses technology; all cultures do this. I would go so far as to offer up 'uses technology' as one of the three or four things that defines human beings as human beings. What I mean to say is that our Culture, the Takers, are defined by our technology. It inspires us, drives us, forces us to further and further accomplishments. And it's not a bad thing, not at all. In a mere 10,000 years, we have gone from scattering some grass seeds to peering into the cores of atoms.
But one of the downsides of this technology is that every generation feels like it has to come up with a new way of living, because those old rules don't apply anymore. And so we go 'round and 'round, each generation thinking that it is the first one, ever, to have to deal with these problems, and constantly refighting battles of the past.
This is not to say that I have a solution to this problem. I have some ideas, but they're a bit...complicated. Stick around for a year or two, maybe we'll get there.
And while Simmons is just trying to make a point about sports, he ends up making a point about Culture. The never-ending drive for growth, improvement, advancement, while it has been responsible for some remarkable accomplishments, also prevents us from being able to appreciate the accomplishments of the ones who came before. Which is a shame, purely for moral reasons, but also leads to much of the strife we have in our political and religious strifes historically.
Boobs Nipples Teens Horny
Well, if that title doesn't get me more search engine hits, I don't know what will.
Ezra, discussing a so-called 'amateur porn revolution', comes up with a nice reductio ad absurdum debunking of the thesis that 'porn makes men uninterested in real, normal women.'
If porn really did raise men's standards so high that they were unable to become interested in normal, non-porn star women, then rom-coms starring George Clooney would do exactly the same things for women's expectations of men. I can smile demurely, and try to deepen my voice, and even act a little roguish. But at the end of the day, it's just my ugly mug and that damn cowboy hat, and I just don't compare.
But, and here's the point, nobody is arguing this. Nobody with an IQ higher than, say, Shaq's shoe size is writing op-eds for the New York Times arguing that Hollywood needs to be more responsible and realistic with its depictions of courtships in rom-coms. Because it's a silly thing to say. Likewise, while men are more easily visually stimulated than women, the idea of watching attractive women having sex doesn't quite stack up to, you know, actually having sex. Or so I've been told (don't worry Mom, still waitin'!)
It's fair that feminists don't like porn. I definitely think I understand why. But be honest about your motivations, rather than cooking up wild, fairly unbelievable theories.
Ezra, discussing a so-called 'amateur porn revolution', comes up with a nice reductio ad absurdum debunking of the thesis that 'porn makes men uninterested in real, normal women.'
Making the rare look achievable may do more to change behavior than the outlandish. All that said, though, I highly doubt porn is a serious culprit here. If it's unrealizable beauty standards in romance, it's romantic comedies you want to yell at.This is a fine point, although not quite the one that I think he's making. Maybe it's just because Ezra is much smarter than me, which is undoubtedly true, but for my own sake I have to say it.
If porn really did raise men's standards so high that they were unable to become interested in normal, non-porn star women, then rom-coms starring George Clooney would do exactly the same things for women's expectations of men. I can smile demurely, and try to deepen my voice, and even act a little roguish. But at the end of the day, it's just my ugly mug and that damn cowboy hat, and I just don't compare.
But, and here's the point, nobody is arguing this. Nobody with an IQ higher than, say, Shaq's shoe size is writing op-eds for the New York Times arguing that Hollywood needs to be more responsible and realistic with its depictions of courtships in rom-coms. Because it's a silly thing to say. Likewise, while men are more easily visually stimulated than women, the idea of watching attractive women having sex doesn't quite stack up to, you know, actually having sex. Or so I've been told (don't worry Mom, still waitin'!)
It's fair that feminists don't like porn. I definitely think I understand why. But be honest about your motivations, rather than cooking up wild, fairly unbelievable theories.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Israel, The Ugly
And finally, the extremely ugly.
As Israel discredits one Palestinian governing body after another, they find that the groups that replace them are...worse than the ones before. We don't like Arafat, so we press him to put Abu Mazen in power. Abu Mazen is too weak to control the terrorist elements of Fatah, so we press for popular elections. The people elect Hamas, who the Americans promptly freeze out of any discussions whatsoever.
So now, brilliantly, we have driven the Palestinians into the arms of...Al Qaeda. This is fantastic. It seems like the Bush administration policy, ever since achieving moderate success in Afghanistan, has been to make the entire rest of the world a safer, more friendly place for the one group of people who really wants to harm Americans, and has shown the ability to do it in the past.
It's quite amazing how, if you tell people to make a choice, then tell them 'oh wait, no, you didn't choose who we wanted you to, so we're going to take all your money away', they develop a 'fuck you and the horse you rode in on' attitude towards you. Call it the 'No Shit, Sherlock' corollary. And, in place after place around the world, we are demonstrating it.
For better or worse, the Middle East is going to be problematic for a long time. A necessary first step to ending this state of affairs is going to be reducing the general level of pissed-offedness towards the US and Israel there. And, for the last 6 years at least, we've been pointing firmly in the wrong direction.
As Israel discredits one Palestinian governing body after another, they find that the groups that replace them are...worse than the ones before. We don't like Arafat, so we press him to put Abu Mazen in power. Abu Mazen is too weak to control the terrorist elements of Fatah, so we press for popular elections. The people elect Hamas, who the Americans promptly freeze out of any discussions whatsoever.
So now, brilliantly, we have driven the Palestinians into the arms of...Al Qaeda. This is fantastic. It seems like the Bush administration policy, ever since achieving moderate success in Afghanistan, has been to make the entire rest of the world a safer, more friendly place for the one group of people who really wants to harm Americans, and has shown the ability to do it in the past.
It's quite amazing how, if you tell people to make a choice, then tell them 'oh wait, no, you didn't choose who we wanted you to, so we're going to take all your money away', they develop a 'fuck you and the horse you rode in on' attitude towards you. Call it the 'No Shit, Sherlock' corollary. And, in place after place around the world, we are demonstrating it.
For better or worse, the Middle East is going to be problematic for a long time. A necessary first step to ending this state of affairs is going to be reducing the general level of pissed-offedness towards the US and Israel there. And, for the last 6 years at least, we've been pointing firmly in the wrong direction.
Israel, The Bad
For years, I used to maintain that Israel was 'the good guys' in the fight with the Palestinians, because when they would conduct operations against Palestinian terror groups, Hamas, etc., they would take precautions to attempt to protect the lives of civilians. They wouldn't always be successful, in large part because the terrorists would conduct their operations from bases located in residential areas, often located inside civilian residential buildings.
This is still mostly the case, I believe, although the Israeli Defense Forces were quite hamhanded in Lebanon last summer, and quite unsuccessful in keeping their hands clean. However, by comparison with, say, Hamas, who specifically targets civilians, the IDF are absolute saints.
Unfortunately, I don't think it really matters anymore. It used to be the case that it was acceptable and unavoidable for there to be some 'collateral damage' in such military operations. Never a good thing, but acceptable. The trick was to keep the populace from getting so angry that true civil conflicts could be ignited. Unfortunately, with Al Jazeera, video cell phones, and the internet, this kind of anger, which might have been kept in check historically, has a way of percolating, gathering, and building its own momentum.
Add into this the fact that, whereas it might have once taken tens of thousands of people to cause serious damage, it now might take hundreds, or even dozens. And, someday soon, you can envision a few biogeneticists locked in a room unleashing something much, much worse. These conditions combine to make a world where it's no longer a functional strategy to bomb a house with 3 terrorists and 9 civilians. If the PR fallout ends up pissing off 5 people enough that they want to become suicide bombers, you've lost.
The good news is there are strategies and smart ideas floating around as to how Israel might defend herself in more productive fashions than they have been. The bad news is, she hasn't seemed too interested in finding out about them just yet.
This is still mostly the case, I believe, although the Israeli Defense Forces were quite hamhanded in Lebanon last summer, and quite unsuccessful in keeping their hands clean. However, by comparison with, say, Hamas, who specifically targets civilians, the IDF are absolute saints.
Unfortunately, I don't think it really matters anymore. It used to be the case that it was acceptable and unavoidable for there to be some 'collateral damage' in such military operations. Never a good thing, but acceptable. The trick was to keep the populace from getting so angry that true civil conflicts could be ignited. Unfortunately, with Al Jazeera, video cell phones, and the internet, this kind of anger, which might have been kept in check historically, has a way of percolating, gathering, and building its own momentum.
Add into this the fact that, whereas it might have once taken tens of thousands of people to cause serious damage, it now might take hundreds, or even dozens. And, someday soon, you can envision a few biogeneticists locked in a room unleashing something much, much worse. These conditions combine to make a world where it's no longer a functional strategy to bomb a house with 3 terrorists and 9 civilians. If the PR fallout ends up pissing off 5 people enough that they want to become suicide bombers, you've lost.
The good news is there are strategies and smart ideas floating around as to how Israel might defend herself in more productive fashions than they have been. The bad news is, she hasn't seemed too interested in finding out about them just yet.
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