The Impressive Thing About the Inauguration

January 20th, 2009

No, it is not that an African-American is taking office. That is trivial. No what is impressive about this inauguration is the exact same thing that was impressive about the inauguration of John Adams. The impressive thing is that a change in the highest office in the land is taking place without bloodshed. No one was killed to make it happen. No one had to die to leave the office vacant. An election happened and the current office holder vacated the office and handed it over to a new president in accordance with the law.

Actually that this is happening for the 43rd time may make it more impressive than that it happened the first time.

I wasn’t so sure that Clinton would give up the office. I half expected a Y2K issue to enable Clinton to illegally hold on to the office. No I didn’t trust him. Still don’t. He owes Bush of huge debt for making him look less bad.

I had some concerns about Bush as well. The whole war thing and the “I’m the decider” thing. But he did give it up and seems to have done so quite graciously.

This sort of thing happens in other countries today but few for as long as it has happened in the US. And of course in many parts of the world it almost never happens.

In the US the rule of law rules and that is the thing that makes the inauguration special.

Posted in Philospohy, politics | 2 Comments »

Why Pilots Get Paid the Big Bucks

January 17th, 2009

So you all know the story of the US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson River. The pilot did an amazing job and is a real hero. Imagine the pressure of knowing that lives of 150 people depend on you doing something with a plane that it is not designed to do – land on the water.

I think though that it highlights something we don’t often think about. It takes a long time to become the captain of a big airline plane. There are years of training involved and then years of working your way up from smaller to larger planes first as a first officer and then finally as captain. But that is what we want. We want the most experienced and best trained pilots in the world in the cockpit. Money is a real part of the incentive to work though that struggle. Not the only thing of course – the best pilots love to fly. But money helps keep them from flying only as a hobby.

We want these people in the cockpit not so much for the ordinary flights. We want them there when things go wrong. It’s like insurance in a way. The experience and the training make it possible for a pilot to stay calm when the sky is falling – or the plane is falling from the sky. It is experience that lets the pilot know that he (or she) can do what no one else can do at a time when most people would panic.

I get on planes all the time and you know I always feel better when the pilot has some gray hair. That way I figure I have someone who has seen a lot, done a lot, trained a lot, and will be the right person there when things go wrong. I don’t want a young hotshot – I want an experienced mature person who will go past the red line when it matters but not when it is a way to show off “courage” or “skills.” I hope the airlines are always willing to pay extra for that.

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Lawyers

January 14th, 2009

So the people who own “American Idol” (which is some TV show I have never watched) think that there are people who might reasonably think that a strip club’s “Stripper Idol” is sponsored by them. Say what! Well they use the word “Idol” and there is a logo that apparently uses a similar color and text style to the “American Idol” logo. But still – can you see people assuming that there is a connection? Perhaps an idiot might wonder for a minute or two. But would a reasonable person assume a connection? I doubt it. But there is a suit going on anyway.

Well maybe a lawyer would but if so I would drop them from my list of reasonable people. Of course the suit has brought a ton of attention to the strip club and their business is booming. So perhaps the “American Idol” people do have a piece of the action? Yeah right. Some things just make you wonder.

Posted in Interesting links, questions, rants | 2 Comments »

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

January 9th, 2009

Modern travel is amazing. Incredible when its good and, well, not much fun when its not. My most recent travels took me to Texas which is another story in it self. But my trip home took longer than expected.

It started out well enough as my sister-in-law drove me to the airport – DFW. Things continued to look good when the airline upgraded me to first class for the first leg of the trip. And it took off on time.

Now in Minneapolis-St Paul I had a 3 hour layover which I didn’t mind a bit. I took a longish and fairly good lunch in a sit down restaurant.  They loaded the plane on time. And then Murphy hit. There were traffic delays coming into Logan so we sat on the runway for an hour before take off. I called home and found out that the roads were very icy in New Hampshire. Between the late hour of my arrival (well after when my wife usually goes to bed so she can be awake at school the next day) I offered to stay in Boston for the night. A friend/co-worker offered to pick me up and let me crash at his apartment in down-down Boston. Which I did. So far so good.

The next day he dropped me off at the office in Cambridge and I got some work done. I also booked a seat on a bus to Exeter where my wife could easily pick me up. Two subway trains later I had missed the bus. It seems the MBTA estimate of how long the trip was off by a matter of 3 times the actual length. So I had my ticket changed to a later train. I figured I wanted to see what the train was like anyway.

Well the good news is that Amtrak Downeaster has both power and wi-fi. Well the power plugs in my seat were not working but I had plenty of battery so I got some work done. Good thing I had a backup battery though because the train was delayed in route for about an hour. Finally I got there and my wife was waiting for me.

With a break for supper at my son’s place (he cooked and it was great) we finally drove home. So I got home 36 hours after leaving Texas. And I rode in three cars, three trains, and two planes to get home. But you know, a 100 years ago this trip would have taken a whole lot longer so I guess I should be glad I was able to make it at all.

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How well do you use search engines?

January 4th, 2009

One of the things that amazes me is how poorly many people are at using Internet search engines. Students are particularly bad at it. You would be amazed at what they can’t find. Recently I found out about a game called Page Hunt.

A brief blurb about the game:

This game is like search in reverse:  you’re shown a web page, which you have to ‘hunt down’ using queries sent to Live Search.

When you see the web page, think of a set of terms that would return this page.

You type these words  into a search box. Page Hunt shows the top 5 results for this query from Microsoft’s Live Search.

You get points if the web page you’re ‘hunting’ is one of these top 5 result pages: 100 points if it’s at position 1, 90 points at position 2 etc. If you don’t get it right, change the query and try hunting again. If you get it right, you advance to the next page.

Occasionally, you’ll see very frequent queries listed for a page. If you don’t use these queries to hunt these pages, you’ll get a 50% bonus when you crack that page. And sometimes, just for fun, we give you other bonuses!

If you move the mouse away from the search box, it becomes slightly transparent, so you can see the page better. You can also move the box around if you like. If you get stuck on a page, you can click on the Skip button to go to the next web page, with no penalty in your score. If you encounter a page which does not render properly, or is bad in any way, click on the Bad Page button to flag it.

Each session of the game is 3 minutes long. At the end of a session, you get your session score. At the end of a session, you can review each page, the searches you tried and the results you got from Live Search.

The game uses Silverlight, so you may be prompted to load Silverlight when you first run it. 

Page Hunt is actually part of a research project that is trying to improve online search by looking at how people actually use search. How metadata is used and other attributes of both web pages and the way people form queries. So if you think online search could be better playing this game may help improve things. And honestly I find it fun trying to find out how many pages I can “find” in the 3 minute time period.

My best score so far is 520. Anyone else beat that?

Posted in Interesting links, Microsoft | No Comments »

Enough

January 2nd, 2009

Found this the other week on Tom Peters blog and it really bares passing along.

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough."

Yeah I think I have enough. Could I do something with more? Probably. But I don’t need it.

Posted in Life Thoughts | No Comments »

On Death and Dying

January 2nd, 2009

OK it’s a morbid topic and if you don’t want to face it leave now. I on the other hand have no choice but to think about it. I’ve got stuff on my mind and the need to write them down and put them somewhere. Oh and frankly I no patience for euphemisms like “passing away” or what ever. Death is death and dying is dying.

I don’t expect to die any time soon and of course I have never done it before. But I’ve lost too many loved ones not to be aware of it. With my own Dad in poor health I worry that I will see it again all too soon. Hopefully not right away but probably not that far away either.

I am not afraid of death. I’m in no hurry to try it out of course but as a Christian I believe as it is written in Philippians 1:21 “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” So I spend more time worrying about those I will leave behind than about myself.

There are two basic ways to die – quickly and slowly. Quickly is probably the best way for the person actually dying. I’ve watched a bunch of people go through slow lingering deaths. Trips in and out of hospitals, gradual failing of body and mind, tests and operations and alls sorts of people poking at parts of the body that would otherwise be none of their business. It’s painful emotionally, physically and in any way one can think of. Falling asleep and never waking up seems so much easier. Well for the person who dies. For the people left behind not much fun.

Both quick and slow deaths are hard on people who stay behind but in different ways. I’ve had several friends die quickly (at least from my point of view) in that I either didn’t know they were sick or they had sudden unexpected deaths. That was hard. There was no closure, no saying goodbye and now time to prepare myself for losing them. On the other hand watching someone be sick a long time and in pain is no great joy either. But in some sense there is closure and a time to reconcile differences, say goodbye and adjust to the future without them.

So perhaps there is no good way to die for all involved. I think I want to go quickly though. It may be harder, initially, for those who are left behind but in the long run I think maybe they will be better off not watching me suffer. I’m pretty sure I’d rather not suffer. And as full of watching suffering as I have been in my live I think that can take a toll on people that they may not be aware of. They may think they want to hold on to every second no matter how much their loved one is going through but at some point I think one wants to see their loved one end their suffering.

The term quality of life means more to me every day. The more I look at it life at any cost and in any condition is not always the best way for anyone.

Posted in Life Thoughts, Philospohy | No Comments »

Random Search Engine Notes

January 1st, 2009

So I was viewing some of the logs for my main blog today and saw a visit from Google. I assumed it was probably a spider but when I focused in on it I found that it was actually the result of a search. Apparently people who work for Google use their own product. Go figure. 🙂 Anyway, what they were looking for was “schools kindle” and what came up number one was my blog. I tried a couple of other search engines and my blog didn’t show up on the first couple of pages of any of them. Weird. I’ still trying to decide if Google has it right and the other sites have it wrong or what. Open to opinions.

My default search engine is Live Search by Microsoft. I initially switched over when they started returning my web pages at the top when one searched for my name which people do a surprising number of times. I  think they are looking for me but that may be a little vain. There are others out there including my father and son. In fact I have been contacted by people looking for both of them and not for me. I have a bigger Internet footprint. I have links to several of the members of my group and I see a lot of hits from people looking for one of them as well. It’s not as much as it used to be because they are getting more search engine attention as their blogs expand and as more people link to them directly.

Blogs are really powerful for search engine optimization. My personal web site was hard to find for the longest time. Once I started blogging and linked to my home page it rapidly climbed up the search results. If you want attention a blog (or two) is a great way to do it especially if you get people to link to you.

A while ago I tracked down solutions for an error that kept popping up. Every time it came up I did searches and seldom found anything useful easily. So I collected all the possible solutions for the things that might be causing it and I wrote a blog post about it. I included the full text of the error message and I get traffic to that post virtually every day. I think that creating a good solution with the right key words and you can really attract the search engines. A good thing I think.

Of course the power of blogs has attracted the notice of spammers. Those people spoil everything. Have they no shame? I wish there was a way to get to them and make them stop. Oh well.

Posted in Interesting links | 1 Comment »

Texas

December 31st, 2008

I’m in Texas this week. I’m here helping to take care of my father who is recovering from surgery. I probably make it to Texas on business about once a year. Sometimes twice. And I really like Texas. But it is different. Much different from New England. In fact its almost like a different country in some ways.

Take flags. One sees Texas flags everywhere. It’s in logos of businesses and organizations. It’s flying from flag poles and painted on signs. Every classroom in the state has both a US and a Texas flag hanging in the room. Occasionally the Texas flag is larger than the US flag. Intentionally so? Probably not but who knows?

Besides flags there are outlines of the state map in a lot of places. And address signs are always clear that the city, town, county or what ever is in Texas. It’s pretty hard not to know you are in Texas if you can see and pay any attention at all.

Food is different as well. There is steak of course. Though Chicago and St Louis may actually have more and (dare I say it) better steak places. But there are lots of good steak places here. And there is barbeque. I love barbeque and there are other centers of fine barbeque but it is different. The Carolinas and Tennessee have great barbeque but it is different from what you find it Texas. It’s all good and I like it all. But I still take advantage of it when I am in Texas.

Of course there is Tex-Mex. This is one of my favorite foods and Texas is where it is done best. Sometimes it is hard to enjoy Tex-Mex or Mexican food other places until the effects of a visit to Texas have faded a bit. Refried bean are almost inedible in New Hampshire but I love it in Texas. You’d hardly believe its called the same thing in both places. It has so much more taste in Texas.

People are a little different as well. I don’t just mean the accents either. People do wear cowboy boots. You do see cowboy hats and big belt buckles as well. You also see a lot more women showing a lot more cleavage than you do in the north. Lots of heavy makeup and seriously done up hair is more common as well. It looks good on a lot more than you’d expect as well. Although the word “cheap” does come to mind in some cases. But you learn to expect different styles and standards after a while. Either way Texas does seem to have more than their share of attractive women.

Texans are friendly – very friendly. Even you a Yankee like myself. I really enjoy the people in Texas. Helpful, friendly, polite, outgoing, and fun loving. People and food are two reasons I enjoy my Texas visits. I’ll be back in February and am looking forward to it.

Posted in rants | No Comments »

In Search Of Common Sense

December 20th, 2008

In just about a month from now the US will have a new President. He will bring change both foreign and domestic. Will he bring in common sense as well? We al hope so. Common sense has long been lacking in American policies. The last President with any serious  foreign common sense was  Nixon. Both men had other flaws of course but at least in this area I was impressed with them. Carter and Reagan? Not as bad as the last two Presidents but and they seemed focused on small parts of the world. They didn’t pay that much attention to south America or Africa. Not enough anyway. And forget India because most of our recent Presidents seem to have while in office. And in my mind the only President who really understood China was Nixon.

China and India are two of the main focuses of Fareed Zakaria‘s book The Post-American World. It’s loaded with common sense as well. I think there are two types of people who absolutely must read this book. People who are interested in politics/foreign affairs and people who are interested in business. Matt, if you haven’t read this book yet what’s wrong with you. 🙂 This book lays out not the decline of America but the rise of other parts of the world. It brings a lot of history into it as well.

I’m a strong believer that to understand the present one has to understand history as well.  This book taught me a lot of history of both China and India that I didn’t know before. Of course US schools are notoriously bad for covering history other than of the west which is probably why we screw up so badly in the middle east, the far east and Africa and South/Central America. We just have too few clues about what is going on and how things got the way they are. Common sense requires knowledge.

So what are my key take aways from this book? Close to home we really need to do two things. Get our energy house in order and get our schools in better shape. Some greater level of energy independence would greatly increase our future development options. China and India are going to require a lot more oil and if we keep our current level of dependence on it prices are going to get higher. Education is the key to innovation and we are going to need that. Really our education system is not as bad as a lot of the media would have us think – at least in the top students – but clearly we need to do better to stay competitive. We do a better job of teaching creative and critical thinking than the rest of the world but that edge is shrinking and we cannot afford that. And by golly we have to turn out more people who have a clue about the world outside our boarders.

Globally the growth of China and India can be a huge opportunity for us if we just grasp it correctly. And as long as we keep our innovation lead. I tell you if every America needed a program like FIRST its now.

But I fear that too much of America, including its politicians and business leaders, are focused on short term fixes, ignoring history and a quick buck over long term growth and stability. How else to explain the current financial melt down? And our failures in the middle east with regards to terror and stability. Of course we are not alone in this. In my opinion both sides in the Arab/Israeli conflict are lacking in common sense. The situation in Saudi Arabia is of dubious stability. And could Africa possibly in a bigger mess? Darfur in the Sudan, Mugabe in Zimbabwe and piracy off the coast of Somalia, just to name a few!  But we can’t count on the rest of the world to screw up worse than we do. Clearly it is time to really get smart about some things.

Posted in Books, politics | 1 Comment »

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