Plan "B"

At the end of each year, I like to look back with two mirrors. One that goes through the last 365 1/4 days and another that goes back 5 years. I like to reflect on what I've been doing (1 year) and where I am as compared to where I've been (5 year). I've noticed a few things.

I realize that I don't let things go. I let them fester. I may say that I forgive you, and I'd never seek any retribution, but I still keep a little hurt inside my heart. Perhaps it's normal, but normal or not - I don't want to do it. I want to be the sort of person that can get over stuff. To anyone I may owe "one free forgive", let me say that I do forgive you. As much as I'm able - I do.

I also realized that I've been backsliding this past year. I haven't been taking the important things very seriously. Sure, I've been going to church and found a singles group, but in my spare time, I've spent the year drinking beer and watching tv, and not on the more important tasks at hand.

Of lesser importance, I've grown some much needed muscle mass and lost some fat (yep, fat!). I was 185 lbs and I've gotten close to 190 while working out 3-4 times a week and sticking to my new 3300 calorie diet. I've since lost most of my weight gain, but I think I've lost fat and not muscle. So, that's goodness - right?

Lastly, I can't believe how much I've grown technically. I've learned so much about my job while on this new project that I'm hoping for a really nice bonus in May. I could do without the long hours though :-|

I think you're completely up to date now. Have a great New Years and a wonderful Festivus.

When it comes to work, I may be "in" technology, but when it comes to the rest of my life I'm certainly not "into" technology as some most other people here in Silicon Valley are. I have a telephone at home, but it's rarely plugged in. I have the Federally mandated cable which costs $13 per month. I have a cell phone, but it's on the pay as you go plan and I don't think I've spent more than $100 for the 6 or so years that I've had it. I don't even own a computer at home.

So basically, I'm not a slave to technology. Unlike the guy next to me right now. He's working on his laptop and he has his headphones plugged into the side. It looks like he's ripping songs off the Internet or something because he's going through a series of thumping and searching. Thumping the table and bobbing his head - clicking and typing for more songs.

Anyway, the funny thing is that his cellphone keeps ringing, but he can't hear it. He's just blissfully thumping away. Thump, thump, thump.

"N" is an interesting number. It's the number that we use at work all the time. "N" represents whatever number isn't known. I'm currently at home watching a documentary which is seemingly about Cosmology, a hobby of viewing interest to me. I sometimes struggle with what I know about science and what I know about God. Cosmology is just a hobby though.

The documentary is currently describing Drake's Equation. At least that's what Carl Sagan and James Burke call it. I think Stephen Hawkings calls it that too. It has to do with the vastness of space and the special conditions needed in order to be a conscience, thinking entity reading this blog.

The documentary asserts something which I found interesting and really puts some additional requirements on ol' Drake. These additional requirements for life certainly make sense to human life, but I'm not sure if they're absolutely required. They list the need for a planet which is no more than 5% closer and no more than 20% further from a star similar to our own white dwarf so liquid water would be available. They also require a planet about the size and shape of our Earth (which I capitalize, but nobody else seems to) in order to have a thin enough crust to have plate techtonics, but just large enough and with an iron core. They go on to dictate that the planet needs an iron core because it has to have magnetic poles in order to deflect the radiation of the primary star ( see: Aurora Borealis ). Lastly (well not lastly really), it needs a nearly perfect orbit. No highly eliptical or comet-like orbits, so that pretty much eliminates the planets we've found so far.

With all that in place and working perfectly for a few billion years, you still only have a place that life *could* possibly exist. You also need the following. One, you need some seed of life which (for us anyway) would be in the form of a simple protein or amino acid that somehow starts reproducing itself. I don't know about you, but when I put a few hundred carbon atoms together, it doesn't spring to life and start making copies of itself. Maybe after a few billion years it could - I dunno.

Second, you need that reproducing organism to mutate perfectly, while at the same time branching off if you wish to have life in the abundant variety that we have. Darwin, right? I heard an interesting lesson a while ago. Basically, it stated that you (You! the reader of this blog) are a survivor. You represent a long chain on surviving ancestors. Everyone in your ancestory was successfully born, lived through childhood, met someone, mated, had a baby and raised that baby to full maturity in order to give birth to the next line in your lineage. When you think about it, it's a very thin chain of successes that leads to you. None of the people in your lineage died at birth, none died in wagon accidents before reaching maturity. None of them them died virgins. All of them successfully had sex which lead to pregnancy, which lead to a successful birth. And on and on - it's amazing really.

Anywho, where was I? Oh yeah, evolution would need to successfully reproduce and mutate in just the right way so these simple proteins would eventually turn into lizards. Or fish. Or birds. Or whales. And you need to do all of this in 10 or 12 billion years.

Furthermore, one (or many) of these surviving species needs to develop a way to think with their meat. When you consider it in terms of what an alien from another star would see, that's what we do. We think with meat! We think with meat, and we communicate by pushing oxygen and nitrogen through hollow pockets of meat. We record history and try to understand the Universe around us by writing with pens held by meat. Wierd really.

Now, you have to think in terms of a civilization. Because life is easier when you develop civilization. These ugly bags of water and meat have to use their meat-brains to figure out how to live together without just eating each other. Then, we have to figure out technology - how do we communicate with others on other planets, in other solar systems? And how do we develop technology for science without also producing technology for blowing ourselves up?

If the inhabitants of a planet succeeds in all of these (and probably more), you're in the running for becoming aware of your surroundings. You would then have the potential to see the Universe around you. And you have 12 billion years to do it.

Did I say 12 billion? Well maybe, but you would'd have to start with a bunch of hydrogen and start from there. That's the sum of your raw materials. A whole bunch of the simplest atoms possible. One proton, one electron and that's it.

I'm not going to sit here and say that it's impossible. I just want you to consider the notion that we not just the sum result of hydrogen and 12 billion years of randomness. Human life is extraordinarily rare. We're not just one in "N", we're one in N to the Nth. And you (the person reading this right now) are one in N to the Nth to the 6 billionth in terms of people who are alive right now. Now, aren't you pretty rare? I think you are.

*** The names have been changed to protect the innocent ***

Brian's a person I work with who I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for. He's been instrumental in teaching me many many things about the inner workings of this company as well as a technical mentor for the past 7 years. By all accounts, he's a scientist's scientist. Methodical, critical, skeptical - qualities that make a good scientist.

He's basically way up there on a giant ivory pillar as far as I'm concerned. We also get along quite well considering we're VERY different types of people. We play bocce indoors when it rains and sprint like children for free donuts when the donut girl brings them by. Given his level of cogno-intellect, I was quite surprised to see him standing in my doorway this morning holding a donut. Well, that wasn't the oddity by itself. It was, "dumpster donuts!" which he stated proudly. I just had to start laughing, but the laughter quickly gave way to a flashback to a Sienfeld episode. I had to see for myself. I ran, quick as a bunny, to where she used to sit, and sure enough there was a dumpster sitting outside her door. And sure enough, there was a large pink box sitting on top amongst the festooness of old books, binders and assorted other office basura.


http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheGymnast.html

“So let me get this straight. You find yourself in the kitchen, you see an eclair in the receptacle, and you think to yourself, ‘What the hell, I’ll just eat some trash.’”
“No no no no no. It was not trash.”
“Was it in the trash?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was trash.”
“It wasn’t down in. It was sort of on top.”
“But it was in the cylinder.”
“Above the rim.”
“Adjacent to refuse is… refuse.”
“It was on a magazine. And it still had the doily on.”
“Was it eaten?”
“One little bite.”
“Well, that’s garbage.”
“But I know who took the bite. It was her aunt.”
“Well, you, my friend, have crossed the line that divides man and bum. You are now a bum.”
- Jerry and George, in “The Gymnast”

I'm the last person in the world to say, "an eye for an eye"**, which makes the case of Tookie Williams difficult for me. On the one side, he says he didn't kill anyone (actually, he says he didn't kill the people he is charged with killing, but due to my rule of not backspacing - i had to leave that in). So, taking his word for it, he's innocent of the crime he is to be executed for. On the other side, what of the culture of hate that he concieved? Despite any attempts to reverse this train of violence with children's books, the gang he started is responsible for many deaths.

Would we find Hitler innocent if he himself never murdered anyone. I don't know if that's true or not, but you see what I mean.

As a citizen, I would not seek revenge/restitution if one of my family members was killed by his gang - although I would want to. So, as a government, do we follow the old testament law of 'an eye for an eye', or do the words of Jesus stand for all mankind? For me personally, this is the heart of my feelings about capital punishment. There are three directions that the government can take.

One, we could carry out the lethal injection and kill Tookie. This would be the because of the official belief on the part of the government that he did kill the people he allegedly killed. You see, there's no severe punishment for starting gangs, so the government needs some way of making him pay for the crime of instigating the crips. The old testament in effect. For what purpose though? Perhaps, it would make some victim's family member feel good to see him die, but I personally think that's counter productive to the healing process. One thing it would do is serve as a deterrent for other gang members - a sort of "cut off the head and the body will die" mentality. Then, we have to think about riots in the streets of L.A. if Tookie is put to death. Do we let the gangs run the streets?

Two, we could declare that his life has some redemptive value and release him. This would be forgiveness on the part of the government. The new testament. But, what about the families of the victims of everyone who has been struck down by a thug in a blue bandana? Or red for that matter. So, one possible rule could be that if every family of every victim forgives a murderer, then the murderer might be set free. Might be. Would that open a window for threats to family members?

None of these seem to be a good answer, so lastly we could leave him in jail for the rest of his life. This is the worst decision that could be made in my opinion. It's extraordinarily rare for a lifetime criminal to reform to the point that Tookie has. It's also extraordinarily expensive to keep these people alive. One idea I had was that if the government has decided to kill him, private citizens could come forward and pay out their after tax dollars to keep him alive. I imagine support would wain in short order.

The picture that is appearing for me while I write this is that the case of murder & execution needs to be handled on a case by case basis. In my heart, I don't believe that citizens should be paying to keep murderers alive. I also belive that some murderers have some redemptive value. I also believe that there are murderers in prisons who are simply seeking "suicide by government".

It's interesting to me that the case that Tookie's liars (lawyers) are making are the only argument that I dismiss as immaterial. This is the "reform" that he has experienced by writing childrens books about the dangers of gang membership.

Having said all that, if I were the governer, I would do this. I would ask Tookie if he is responsible for the death of anyone. That is, would an alternate universe without him be more or less violent? If he admits to his role that lead to the death of people, the government has a state constitution which allows for him to be killed. If he denies any responsibility for the death of anyone, we should release him to the public a free man. In the end, it won't be man who judges him.

Finally, and most importantly, this idea trumps anything that can be said about capital punishment: I don't think anyone should murder anyone for any reason, but our hearts are hard.


** For those who get their Bible verses second hand, "an eye for an eye" is an Old Testament verse (Leviticus 24:20) from God to leaders of nations (in this case, Moses). A later, radically different direction was given by Jesus to the citizens of nations (namely, us). "You have heard that it was said, 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'. But I tell you, don't resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:38)

I was going to post this a while ago, but forgot for a while. I've recently celebrated my 1000th meal prepared by me. Roughly anyway, I'm not REALLY counting. When I first moved back to California, I went to CostCo and bought 2 x 500 packs of paper plates, and I've been eating off those for the last 3 years or so. Well, I recently went through my last pack and bought another. I've moved onto plastic cups too because I don't spend much time at home lately, and I don't want to spend it cooking, cleaning and sewing. Yes ladies, I cook, clean, sew, go to church, yadda yadda yadda. I'm even going to take a stab at decorating someday, but for now, I still have sheets on the windows and no furniture.

Anywho, on to the post "Always something to remind me". I mentioned the 1000th dinner thing because yesterday I turned on the oven to make a tray of enchilladas for the week. I turned on the oven and got a little, um .... reflective. Sorry to keep bringing her up, but Trace used to make the BEST enchilladas! She was a whiz in the kitchen, really. Anywho, when my oven reaches its target temperature it makes a little "beep beep beep" to let you know it's ready for whatever you're going to bake. More memories - our bread machine used go "beep beep beep" when it was ready for you to put fruits and nuts into the dough.

Are these stupid things or what? They're little, insignificant events in a past life that somehow creep back into the front of my mind instead of the recesses like they should be.

So, they've been saying this for a while now... "You're always swamped. We're going to try to bring someone onboard to help you with your workload."

I've been hearing this... "We're going to hire your replacement."

Tomorrow morning, I get to interview a candidate who has over 10 years of experience and 3 Masters degrees.

I imagine there's a special place in Hell for people who, either through greed or simple machismo that distorts from the true meaning of Christmas. Instead of celebrating the birth of our Savior, they celebrate something I call "Xmas".

Like many pagan festivals in America (see below), Xmas is timed to coordinate with a holiday, namely Christmas. Gifts, food and fun are all rolled into a sort of mini-vacation or Thanksgiving Part II in late December. There are many weeks of preparation in anticipation of this festival including shopping for things we can't afford to impress people we don't care about.

Darn, I was off to such a good start on this entry, but I simply don't have time to finish. More complete thoughts later. P.S. Anyone up for Hawaii for New Years? Not sure if I'm going yet, but it would be nice to visit Susi. I promise not to wake up with a tattoo this time.

Other pagan festivals that coordinate with ours:
Halloween - the night below All (Hallowed) Saints Day - a night of sin before giving saints some facetime
Mardi Gras (literally: Fat Tuesday) - the night before Ash Wednesday - a night of sin before you have to give it all up for Lent.

At any rate, how would you like to be this guys neighbor?