Wednesday, June 28, 2006

First in War, First in Peace, First with his Foot Up Your Ass!

If you couldn't already tell by the flotsam floating out of Washington DC, we're in an election season. And what self-respecting, America-loving, hot dog-eating, baby-kissing, bribe-collecting, politician wouldn't take the opportunity of the slowing news cycle - brought on by the Fourth of July holiday - to jump on the bandwagon by voting for meaningless, yet easily converted into political ad, issues? You know what that means, don't you? It's time to bring up a flag burning amendment to the US Constitution!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Beautiful, isn't it? So simple, so plain, so obvious. Its amazing what some authors can accomplish in mere sentences that others can not accomplish with volumes.

I've heard once, but never verified, that Thomas Jefferson opposed the Bill of Rights. Not because he was against freedom, but as he understood the constitution, all freedoms were permitted, and creating a list of guaranteed rights might cause harm because future generations might come to believe only those listed in the Bill of Rights are guaranteed. That is the best and only argument I've ever heard against them.

I seriously doubt the Founding Fathers ever conceived the concept that an American would actually consider burning the symbol for which they fought so hard and valiantly to establish. My money is the thought never entered their minds. If someone burned a flag in front of George Washington, I would assume they would have a lot more to worry about than a court date. They'd have to worry about Washington's foot up their ass. Literally.

But those were the old days, and today we have to deal with a never-ending assortment of kooks who see no boundaries between them and the self importance they feel society and life owes them. "I can do it, and you can't stop me, and I'm on TV because of it, see how special I am?" Special? About as special as French Special Forces, capable of deploying anywhere in the world and in position to surrender within 16 hours of notice.

On the one hand, no one* in Washington really pays attention to the Constitution any more. On the other hand, there are veterans who have really earned the right to not only proudly display their national symbol, but to cherish it's sanctity. If you doubt me, spend some time studying World War II. Trust me, they have a dog in this fight.

But on the third hand, freedom of speech (all kinds, not just spoken, but written, bought, or performance art) is a really great idea. I may not like what they say, and I have the right not to listen, but they do have a right to say it. So it seems to me, there are plenty of dogs in this fight.

Over all, I'd leave the Constitution alone, at least on this issue. I think to myself "what would the most moderate of moderates in American politics, Ben Franklin, say about this issue"? And I have to conclude that old Ben would have come up with a few pithy retorts, humiliating said flag burners. And then a little later, after the fuss was over, send a letter to some of his friends, the ones that really fought in the Revolutionary War, the ones that left blood, limbs, and friends on the killing fields, and say "Hey, do some of you guys want to come up here to my house for a few days? We'll tell some old stories, quaff a few (Sam Adams is in charge of brews!), and then I have this putrid little puke I'd like us all to meet."

Of course, by the time they got there, said putrid little puke would already be trying to figure out how to get George Washington's foot out of his ass.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Government as a bug

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a few days at the shore with my small family, just my wife, our teenage daughter (13, I know, it's coming) and myself. We stayed at a beachfront hotel in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey. Wildwood is known as the party town, but if you go a few miles south to the Crest, its peaceful, quiet, and beautiful. We did go to the boardwalk for a while, more just to say we did it, than any particular urge. But something about the beach just hits my spot. The rumble of the never-ending waves, the white, glittering sands. I even love the seagulls, constantly begging for scraps.

In between walks on the beach, lazy summer reading (John Stossel's new book - which I recommend), way too much good food, and plenty of alcohol, there's plenty of time to just let your mind roam, and think.

While just staring at the ocean (we saw plenty of porpoises and or dolphins, I don't know which) it leaves me with the impression that there is a God. After all, believing all this natural beauty is just a cosmic coincidence, doesn't quite hold up when it's displayed before you in such magnitude. Everything seems so perfect, someone must have been in charge, so grand a plan, such execution. And that's when my drifting mind suddenly realized the problem with government.

Stick with me, I'll get to the point, but first, a short detour.

I went to college in 1981 because I graduated high school and didn't really know how to do anything other than go to school. Don't worry, the professors very quickly pointed out how incapable I was of doing even that. I majored in electrical engineering technology because I did like messing around with gadgets like radios and TVs and stereos. What I discovered was that Western society was on the verge of the computer revolution and I was right in the middle of it.

Over the years as I've watched the computer revolution mature I've noticed something else, as being a lab tech on the inside of it, and a consumer on the outside of it. If you've never been part of a large organization trying to do something very large and expensive, involving teams from (at the time) all over the plant, to teams all over the world (can you say globalization?) it's quite a sight to behold. Hundreds, if not thousands of tiny ants, formed into departments, teams, divisions, disciplines. And for the most part this organization structure works pretty well. But it's not perfect.

Do you have a computer? Of course you do, or you wouldn't be reading my blog. Ever have problems with your computer? No matter how simple an action you are trying to do, something, sooner or later, will go wrong. Hard drive crashes, you lose your data, power supply fires. You think you're saving data when in fact you just deleted it, even though the menu clearly says "save". Frustrating as hell, ain't it? How could some one get that wrong, you think. But the cold fact is no one single person did get it wrong. Every one on every team associated with that particular feature got it wrong. And then the teams that integrate all those features together got it wrong. And all the people that grouped those features into an application got it wrong. And the same kinds of mistakes were made by other teams doing other features, applications and what not.

In the trade we refer to these as "bugs". That's a great story all by itself. Years ago, the very first digital computer ever built, was constructed in Philadelphia. It was a huge project that used vacuum tubes instead of transistors, and as a result, those free calculators you get when you open a new checking account has infinitely more computing power. (The computer you are using now has infinitely more processing power than all the computers that managed the first moon landing.) Well any way it was busted and a couple of service techs were trying to figure out why. Eventually they discovered a moth was attracted to the heat of the tubes, shorted out a circuit and shut down the whole thing. So they pulled it out, taped the moth into the service log book and wrote next to it "system has been debugged." That log book page is now at the Smithsonian.

Now back to computers. Essentially a computer is made up of tiny switches. Trillions and trillions of them really. And every one of these switches has an input and an output. It's either turned on or it's turned off. Group those transistors and you get what's called a logic gate. And these gates behave in a manner that depending upon a group of inputs will trigger a known output. Group these together and so on and so forth and so on and you have a classic "Rube Goldberg" nightmare. Computer programs are nothing more than a collection of instructions that change the inputs on these logic gates, which change the outputs and so on and so forth. Trust me, if you think all that happens when you click the "send to printer" button is a paper comes out, you're nuts. As a matter of fact it's pretty impressive that all these parts, all these decisions, the millions upon millions of different little things that are required to get that printed paper out even work.

And that's because computers and programs are made by humans. Humans are imperfect, no matter what we'd rather believe. And the things we humans do are also imperfect, no matter how hard we try. I can guarantee the people that made a mistake that frustrates you poured over the decisions they made a hundred times, and tested it over and over and over, but still missed it. It just happens. We are not perfect, no matter how we try. Here's some free advice. In life don't try for perfect, try for better. The lack of stress will add years to your life.

Now I promised you the problems with democratic government. Well, actually, I just did. Government is a concept thought up and instituted by imperfect humans. Yet we humans demand perfection, especially from someone who takes half our paycheck in the form of taxes. We get frustrated by politicians who don't seem to be able to accomplish anything. And that's because government, is in fact, closer to a computer than what our politicians would have us believe. "Vote for me, I'll fix it" "Don't vote for my opponent, they'll only screw it up more." But politicians don't run the show, hell, it's so big and bloated that they probably don't even realize how little they really know about government. Government is like a computer. Only instead of trillions and trillions of tiny logic gates, its populated with humans. Engineers can lay out logic gates into circuits that work to accomplish specific tasks. (Some times they don't work at all, other times they have unintended consequences. I must have heard "never thought about that" a million time). Yet government is populated by humans, not logic gates, and rather imperfect humans at that. Making imperfect decisions. The only problem is, when they screw up you lose more than your email to Aunt Maud. People get hurt, people have their lives taken away from them, people die.

Our laws are nothing more than instructions from our government trying to fix an endless stream of "bugs" associated with society, but in far too many instances are nothing more than imperfect solutions that will require more fixes and so on and so forth. A perpetual motion machine of mistakes fueling itself over and over and over.

Government is not the be all to end all. It's millions of little workers, doing what they think is best, or quite possibly, not even caring what comes out of their efforts. And even some, I'm sure, who are gaming the system for their own benefit.

Government is imperfect. Always has been, always will be. No one is going to fix it or destroy it because it's too damn big to even understand. We're stuck with it. But don't waste too much time or energy worrying about that. Save your time for something better, like a trip to the beach!