Tom's Rhetoric

A critical review of “Big Bag of Douche” by Murray

2007-02-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

I recently had the pleasure of reading a new work by poet, Murray. In this piece he transcends the trappings of metaphor and alliteration that often plague young writers and delivers a message with clarity and without apology. Stripped bare of ornament, Murray borrows the form of Haiku to deliver a message that grabs the living squarely by the shoulders and looks them in the eye, as well as rattles the bones of dead literati. It says what we all too often long to say but cannot find the courage or the words or pander to the constraints of what is considered an “ordered society.” But, like all revolutionaries, clearly Murray has signed R. Mutt on his urinal and hung it as art in a gallery to make us gasp or giggle in embarrassment or walk out of the gallery in a huff. And though many will debate from this time forward, as they did with Duchamp and the Dadaists, whether or not it is art, no one can deny that it is. And now that it has been done, it is forever in the history books and time can only embrace it as the gospel of innovation.

Though I wouldn’t use the term alliteration, this piece is not without rhythm and repetition. It flows from tongue and teeth and makes one want to close their eyes and soak in its canter:

You are such a dick
You are such total dick
I hate you, you dick

And sit back one more time and say, “read it again, dear. More slowly this time.”

Tom

Happy Holidays from Saudi Arabia

2006-12-26T09:38:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody,

I was going to comment back to you all on the post that C created, but there was just such an overwhelming rush of well wishing that I thought I'd take a moment to create a post and thank you all here.

First of all, thank you so much for all of your messages. I did get them and they meant a lot to me, being so far from home. Unfortunately, for some reason I cannot perform many functions, like get into blogger to update my blog, etc., with the service that I have in my room here, so basically I just pick up and send e-mail from there. however, there is a dive center at the palace that has satellite service and that is how I am able to do this post. I use it occasionally for chat and internet browsing.

Christmas here was pretty funny. I went to the house of a British friend in a Western housing compound (the kind that like to get car bombed) and as it housed Western diplomats we wound our way through checkpoints and cement barricades and army trucks with rear mounted machine guns with guys sitting in seats attached to them and then through an inner guard station and gate to get to his home. That was how Christmas began. Their house was decorated with the center piece being an artificial fig tree with christmas lights and ornaments. in the back courtyard we barbecued and where the courtyard was positioned we could hear the call to prayer from three different mosques mixing together and echoing in the couryard in a surreal caucophony.

For those of you who don't know, I am a sort of court artist and designer for a faction of Saudi Royalty and do a variety of art and design projects for a specific palace on the Red Sea. My primary reason for being here is to do maintenance on 10,000 Square feet of murals that I perfromed years ago in the marina where His Excellency's yachts are docked in the Red Sea. In additon I completed and had presented at the request of H.E. (we call him "the boss" here) a design that I have been working on for a couple of months now for a private shark aquarium about the size of half a football field with underwater acrylic tube and 360 degree underwater observatory. It is a crazy design that I might share with you later and was met with approval to send on to the architects and engineers for detailed plans. There is a possiblity that the meeting with said architects and engineers will be in Cyprus where the primary contractor has his offices. The architects and engineers are from England. Last project I went to England but I'm hoping this one will be Cyprus for something new and I can take Cindra with me!

So, that's a slice of my alter-life that crops up in between terms of teaching and here and there as the need arises. Mystery no more. I will be bringing home pics so that the curious can see what I am talking about.

Again, thanks so much for dropping by my blog and may peace and love fiind you wherever you are and whatever you may be celebrating this holiday season.

With Love,

Tom

Merry Christmas from here to there

2006-12-23T20:52:00.000-08:00

Hello Bloggers,

This is Cindra, just hijacking my husband's blog for a moment.

As most of you know, Tom has been in Saudi forever, I mean, for awhile, and he will be there through Christmas this year since our collective brood is scattered about with their other parental units and it won't be Christmas until we are all together anyway. Well, seeing as most of the peeps who work with him have gone home to be with their families for the holiday, although his stoic damned self would not admit it, Tom is understandably getting a wee bit lonely. He has a but a few days left until he is safely home again enjoying his own happy Christmas, but in the meantime, knowing full well how embarrassed this will make him, I encourage you to wish him a happy holiday in the comments area which will go directly to his email, where he will be surprised and thrilled to receive them, I'm sure.

Thanks for that.

May you and yours enjoy a warm and wonderful holiday!

Happy thanksgiving-- a patriotic message

2006-11-23T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't want the last thing that I posted before taking off to the middle east to be something as sad and disheartening (and political) as war crimes. As I have tried to let everybody know, I'm extremely busy with deadlines, wrapping my term up early in preparation for a solid month of work in what amounts to another world. Traveling to the middle east is one of those things that does cause me to count my blessings as an American.

And so, I thought it only appropriate that I should tell what I am thankful for and also make the distinction that cannot be made clearly enough between my unhappiness with the actions of my government and the love for my country, my home.

First of all, I couldn't be more thankful to simply have this experience we call life. I guess it's my way of saying "God first," on my thankful list as if by stating anything with the word God in it makes it clear. I don't pretend to know what God is, what shape or gender God takes. Aside from the statement made in Genesis that "God created man in his own image," I don't know whether that is to be taken metaphorically or if the maleness of that statement was just the writing style of the times-- even Jane Goodall, in the early part of her career, spoke of "man" when referring to humankind, Latin uses the plural male form of a noun when referring to male and female together in the plural form. But, what I do have is a profound sense that the mere fact that I can utter these thoughts about something as dark and intangible as what reason or madness is responsible for our existence and awareness of ourselves is in itself a miracle and one that I, in all of my Madisonian logic (if you knew my family you would know what I am talking about ), cannot solely attribute to a mere accident of physics. So, here's to being here. We have won the lottery and have at least a one way ticket on this ride (hats off to my buddhist friends) that we can be sure of. That, my friends, is something to be thankful for.

I am thankful for my family. I couldn't be luckier. We have the usual foibles of any family, the usual groans over this or that member that are the hallmarks of any good family. We aren't perfect but we love each other and more importantly, we accept each other. Shrinking that to the nucleus we have at home, I am blessed again. We love and fight and laugh like the best of them. We are loud in everything we do, but when we have a group hug, even the dog gets up on her hind legs and joins in.

And I am thankful for America. We are as corrupt as any country in the world but we have a couple of things that some countries do not. We have the right to say that out loud and to publish it here. We have the right to make change as a people, like we did in this last election that not only led to a paradigm shift of political power but the long overdue ousting of Donald Rumsfeld-- but we, as a people, got it done. We have checks and balances, investigators and prosecutors that bring down at least some of the rotten politicians. But, again I wax political and this is not exactly what I want to say. We have something even more important than that. We have the American Dream. I was flying on this same journey last year and seated next a man from Finland. And as we have lost the respect of most of the world there is always a little feeling of apology when you say that you are American abroad. He was quick to tell me how much he loved America and Americans. Then he said, "do you know why?" I asked him why and he said, "Because everybody has a plan. Everybody has a dream. Everybody is going to be rich or make it big and even if it doesn't happen they still have that dream and maybe next year. In Finland, if you are a carpenter you will probably be a carpenter and that's it." I hadn't really thought about it like that or maybe just assumed that's the way life was-- it certainly has been true for me and mine-- always scheming, always dreaming, going back to school or changing careers, writing novels or screenplays, holding out for "the plan" to work its magic. He gave me back a sense of what was great about being American.

So, heres to you, America, you sower of seeds, you conjurer of dreams. Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, whatever it may mean to you. And may peace find you on this day.

Update on War Crimes Complaint

2006-11-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

Hiya folks, thanks for the amazing responses to my previous post on War Crimes. The discussion is still going strong. As an update, the Complaint has been filed. Interestingly enough, my local newspaper, which is fairly liberal being in Greenie Eugenie, made no mention of it. I went to NY Times online and didn't see it in the world section but did keep digging (I think I found it in European news) and came up with something pretty deeply buried.

Below is testimony I found on the CCR (Center for Consitutional Rights) site (www.ccr-ny.org) by Brigadier General Janis Karpinksi that is rather compelling. She has flown to Germany to testify. Check out what she has to say:

War Crimes

2006-11-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has bugged me since the capture of Saddam Hussein has been some of the charges which he is being tried for. When there is talk of his killing innocent people in reprisal for their complicity in the first gulf war or as a reprisal for an assassination attempt, when there is talk of incarcerating people against their will, torturing them and having them die at the hands of their torturers, I have to wince. Though Saddam is being charged with the coup de gras of all war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and he's not welcome at my barbecues, many of the things I read about in the course of his trial sound eerily familiar.

I had begun to wonder, as Abu Ghraib came out, as the entire reason for our bombing a nation turned out to be null and void, as the death toll in Iraq mounted, if ever there would be a similar trial for Bush and company someday.

Well, Bush and company must have wondered that too as you may know that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 passed last month as a response to the Hamdan Vs. Rumsfeld Supreme Court ruling that “held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions”—“effectively declaring that trying Guantanamo Bay detainees under the Guantanamo military commission (known also as Military Tribunal) was illegal under US law and the Geneva Conventions.” Both quotes from Wikipedia
T
he Military Commission act of 2006 is “a controversial bill that allows the president to designate certain people with the status of enemy combatants thus making them subject to military commissions, where they have fewer civil rights than in regular trials” (Wikipedia). What you may not know about the Military Commission was that it granted officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

Something else that you may not know is that on Tuesday, November 14, a criminal complaint will be filed under the Code of Crimes Against International Law in the International Criminal Court in Germany. The complaint is being filled by the following individuals and organizations along with much new evidence.

The Plaintiffs:

The Center for Constitutional Rights
The International Federation of Human Rights
The Republican Attorneys Association
The International Bureau of Peace (Nobel Prize winner 1910)
The 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Perez Esquivel
2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Almada
The National Lawyers Guild
International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms
Lawyers Against the War
European Democratic lawyers
European Democratic Jurists
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights
Veterans for Peace.

The Defendants:

Former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld
Former CIA Director George Tenet
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Dr. Stephen Cambone
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez
Major General Walter Wojdakowski
Major General Geoffrey Miller
Colonel Thomas Pappas
Former Chief White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales
Former Assistant Attorney Jay Bybee
Former Deputy Assistant attorney General John Yoo
General Counsel of the Department of Defense William James Haynes II
Vice President Chief Counsel David S. Addington

The complaint alleges that high-ranking US officials authorized war crimes in the context of the so-called “War on Terror.” It alleges that the US administration has treated hundreds if not thousands of detainees in a coercive manner and tortured them in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1984 Conventions Against Torture, to all of which the US is a party.

Some of you may recall that this is a retrial of sorts for some of the defendants of the 2004/2005 complaint that was dismissed. The reason for the dismissal was that the judicial body had no reason to believe that America was not carrying out investigations of their own into the allegations of war crimes. However, the backlash of the Military Commission Act of 2006 is that by granting amnesty to high ranking US officials coupled with the fact that American prosecution and investigation into the war crimes at Abu Ghraib only touched the lower ranking officials is allowing the case to be reopened. The CCR has also stated that new defendants have been added, much new evidence of war crimes has surfaced and a former Brigadier General will now provide testimony for the plaintiffs.

Stay tuned.

Tom’s Challenge-- The Riddler 3 Results

2006-11-11T19:30:00.000-08:00

First of all, this one was kind of a poker game for me. To explain this, I need to give you the answers first today:

The three people being discussed were:

1) Silence Dogood,-- the alias for a Boston woman who wrote letters to the editor of the Courant, a newspaper started by one James Franklinaround 1622. Silence wrote letters that satirized the puritanical ethics of the dominant Boston family, specifically it’s patriarch,:
2) Cotton Mather. Much to the Chagrin of Cotton and his kin, this rebellious newspaper, especially publishing the sharp-tongued letters of Silence Dogood, was becoming popular in its rebellion. Even the pseudonym, Silence Dogood, was a play on words as Mather had published two works prior to the arrival of Silence on the scene: Silentarius and Bonifacius or Essays to Do Good.

However, James Franklin had no idea who was behind the Silence Dogood letters that were found slipped under the door of the print shop. In fact they were the work of a very precocious and ingenious apprentice of his, the one setting the lead type and printing the paper (hence the reference to lead being mightier than swords or pens)—his 16 year old younger brother:

3) Benjamin Franklin. James Franklin was less poetic and mysterious in his assaults on the Puritan “ruling class” of Boston and his words landed him in jail and eventually on the lamb from the sheriff. One of the more interesting facts about the younger Franklin’s life was the fact that in order for James’ newspaper to continue, he was forced to sign the management and editing of the print shop over to Benjamin, to prove that he was no longer printing and in compliance with a gag order of sorts.

And so, Benjamin Franklin became the manager and the editor of a Newspaper at the ripe age of 16.

The reason that I gave the answers first was to show that I was gambling that the words “silence” and “cotton” were mundane enough that they wouldn’t be googled. If you simply google those two words you get the answer immediately. I also had to use improper grammar and not capitalize the two proper nouns or I found it drew way too much attention to those words. A bit of a cheat.

As it was, my ruse worked fairly well. The poker analogy is that I gave you the answers up front and so confidently that I was sort of bluffing that you would think them unimportant. Guess I can’t use that trick again, however.

First place: The most unfooled and quickest to the draw was: Goldennib! I always ask my winners how they found their way to the answers—if they just already knew them, or partially so, or if it was their mastery of research (or some combination). I haven’t heard back from Goldennib on this yet but she sure was fast! Perhaps she googled silence and cotton!

Second Place: Quilldancer! Quilly got Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather but not Silecne Dogood and at one point, very aptly named James Franklin a the third person-- who did play a role in the whole satirizing of Mather. However, after telling her to try again a few times she did get the final answer: Silence Dogood.

Third place goes to Doug! Doug had an identical problem as Quilldancer and actually turned his answers in second and though I gave him prompts to keep trying for that third answer he let me know that he was headed out of town and probably wouldn’t be able to continue to play.

Honorable mention this time goes to O Ceallaigh for the most complicated wrong answer yet received for our game. Sometimes, OC, being smart is a curse. I’m going to cut and paste his answer to the riddle since I don’t even want to try and copy it:

“I'm going to guess that you're referring to:

Henri Braconnot
Theophile-Jules Pelouze
Christian Friedrich Schoenbein

All of whom were involved in stages of the discovery and refinement of the process resulting in gun cotton (nitrocellulose).”

Dude, get a PhD. Oh, too late.

Thanks for playing and visiting the site. Until next time…

Tom's Challenge- the riddler 3

2006-11-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

Well this one is simple, making up for lost time. Due to the election and anniversaries and life in general, my challenge has been a bit slow to come about.

So here it is, nice and simple:

He mocked cotton in silence,
When lead was mightier than swords or pens.

Who are the three people this riddle is referring to?

It's our anniversary!

2006-11-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

This picture shows what Cindra was really getting into. It also shows the collective Brady bunch clan that we became.

It’s something, but the work goes on…

2006-11-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

Change isn’t over with the election. We can celebrate the fact that the American people have shown the courage to make such a strong statement with their right to vote, but it doesn’t mean that everything will be instantly better. Personally I’m happy about the outcome of the election but I certainly don’t suffer from the delusion that there is but a hair’s thickness of difference between the dealmakers on either side of the aisle, much of the time. Let’s pray for the courage it will take to go the rest of the distance towards a less warring, more humanitarian and environmental state.

These are just a few of the headlines from the last week that summarize the mess we are in and how deep of a hole we have dug.

I celebrate the victory for change and pray that it really will be all that it promises to be. Peace, T

Wild seafood could be wiped out by midcentury
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post
Published: Friday, November 3, 2006

WASHINGTON - An international group of ecologists and economists warned Thursday that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, based on a four-year study of catch data and the effects of fisheries collapses…

Britain Warns of High Costs of Global Warming
October 31, 2006, Tuesday
By HEATHER TIMMONS (NYT); Foreign Desk

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain warns that failure to act swiftly on global warming would have cataclysmic effect on global economy...

Bloody month ends, but violence doesn't
By Steven Hurst
The Associated Press
Published: Friday, November 3, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A blood-drenched October has passed into a violent early November as a motorcycle rigged with explosives ripped through a crowded Shiite market in Sadr City on Thursday and suspected Sunni insurgent gunmen killed a Shiite dean of Baghdad University.

The attacks showed no signs of abating after at least 1,272 Iraqis were killed in the first full month of autumn and the 43rd month of the U.S. bid to quell violence and build democracy in Iraq….

Rise in Iraqi refugees challenges U.N. agency
By Alexander Higgins
The Associated Press
Published: Saturday, November 4, 2006

GENEVA - Nearly 100,000 Iraqis are fleeing each month to Syria and Jordan, forcing the United Nations to set aside its goal of helping refugees return home after the U.S.-led invasion, officials said Friday…..

AWOL soldiers rethink any return to U.S. soil
By Brett Barrouquere
The Associated Press
Published: Sunday, November 5, 2006

UPDATE on Path to Peace

2006-11-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

After some good feedback from friends and our own thoughts on the matter, C and I have decided to cut the prologue to the 2 documents at the Path to Peace site altogether. It was too subjective and might give an impression one way or another-- the mention of Quakersim and the litany of republican scandals certainly gives away that this is being put forth from a liberal point of view. I think that the letter of apology and Bill of Rights can stand alone without a bunch of gratuitous comments. This is truer to our wish for bipartisan support on this matter. Thanks to all for your continued support.

Peace, Tom

Peace blog is up

2006-11-06T23:50:00.000-08:00

After much wrangling and reworking, Cindra and I have put together a blog poll called Path to Peace.

This new spot has a condensed version of the post I did at Sar's and two documents: one is an American apology letter which gives you the option of a) If you are an American would you sign this letter (comments available) and b) if you are not an American would the apology letter make you feel differently about America. The second document is the International Bill of Rights to which you can click yes or no to "sign" or not (and comments are active). I invite people to give their locations and we plan on having a map that will show where people have come from to visit and/or vote.

The entire thing is being done anonymously. Obviously, within our circle of bloggers, people already know that this originated at Sar's and may be aware that I am the author. I would love for you to post an announcement and direct people to this new site and vote if you feel comfortable doing so. Otherwise, I hope you will stop by and give feedback and maybe circulate this among your circle of friends. Within that, we ask that if people make comments who know that “Just Tom” is involved, not to use that name or address their comments to me. It is important that this is done without identity to ensure that it does not have any hidden agenda for furthering the cause of any party, group or individual.

Whatever you can do to help launch this on this election/peace day would be greatly appreciated. One by one we can spread the word— we are those butterfly wings, after all.

Peace and thanks,

Tom

The Challenge results

2006-11-04T20:17:00.000-08:00

First off, great job you guys. It was a slow start as many of my usual participants were somewhat indisposed but this brought in some who hadn’t played for a while and some who had not played before. So, it was good thing.

First the answers:

1. Archimedes
2. Eureka! Greek for “I’ve have found it!”
3. A circle inscribed in a cylinder

Onto the victors:

1st place honors go to O Ceallaigh. Much as he did in one of my first Challenges, I let him know in the course of some other correspondence that the game was on and the going slow. He came back immediately with the answers. So, congratulations to O Ceallaigh for coming back around and kicking riddle booty.

2nd place goes to the inimitable Quilldancer, who I’m sure would have snatched the prize had she not been tied up with grading. However, she did quite well finding the answers by simply googling siege+move ships and started seeing the name Archimedes. She is the master of searches, I think. Way to pinpoint the key words right off.

3rd place is someone new to the challenge but not new to many of us: Logophile. Logo happens to be teach a classical Greece class (though in what cpapcity I have not yet learned, and it struck a bell. She also remembered a Mythbusters (I love those guys) episode where they tried another of Archimedes tricks during that siege where he is said to have concentrated the heat of the sun through reflective material and burned whole ships like a giant death ray. The Mythbusters failed by the way to burn a ship in this manner.

Honorable mention: Someone came in just before I was to submit this and as we had so few people getting these answers I thought it would be worthy of a bit of spotlight. This is also someone new to my blog, though I have visited theirs and found it quite entertaining and made it onto at least two people’s list of five funny blogs—Diesel started it. Ladies and gentleman announcing The Drive By Blogger—take a bow Drive By.

Archimedes. I have an art deadline for a client 11 time zones away (morning is rapidly upon them) and so I won’t be able to give a long description here, but here are some interesting facts about Archimedes:

First off, Greek mathematicians, in the ilk of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, etc. felt that the field of applied mathematics, i.e., engineering was a vulgar field and soiling ones hands to make something that might use their ingenious theories for money was well beneath them and left to lesser men. It was similar to the way we think of “selling out” today in the arts. If you are a mathematician, then you are a philosopher and philosopher is somewhat of an ascetic I suppose. Hence, Archimedes only wrote about one or two mechanical achievements and volumes on mathematics. The amazing instruments of destruction described by the Romans (Plutarch being the primary source) are sadly lost to us.

However, after giving a physics demonstration to his King, Hieron, of Syracuse about how leverage and mechanical advantage could bring a large ship up into dry dock from the sea with the ease of one man pulling a rope through a series of pulleys, King Hieron, astonished at what he saw, endeavored to give Archimedes the task of creating a mechanical defense system for his fortified kingdom. The King never lived to see it in use, however, as fate would have it a 75 year old Archimedes would be present to pull the ropes of his mechanized war machines against one General Marcellus (similar in sound to Marsalis, the famous New Orleans jazz family) which laid Syracuse under siege. Though the siege that came from the sea was 60 ships strong, equipped with catapults and a large army they were, according to the Roman account, mere trifles for Archimedes machines. Large arms came up and over the walls of the fortress and with beaklike claws, grabbed the prows of the ships and pulled them into the air, dropping them back down to sea in terrible destruction. Rocks, missiles of all sizes hurled from the walls, great poles came from the walls and sunk more ships. The report that he burned ships with a glass came in a much later report and were isolated to a less reliable source. The armies that made advances were wiped out by automatic missile launchers. It got to the point, according to accounts given, that if the soldiers were nearing the fortification and they caught a glimpse of the old man grabbing a piece of rope or wood that they fled in a panic. Marcellus could not get his army to fight against this one, 75 year old geometer.

Finally, Marcellus spotted a weakness in the castle design itself and saw a way he could sneak in under cover of an annual celebration to Diana. During the festivities when all were drinking and eating, Marcellus and his men made their way into the city and before anyone could do anything, they were occupied by the Roman force.

Marcellus had given strict orders to his men not to rape and pillage and especially wanted to meet Archimedes alive. However, as legend has it, a Roman soldier who did not know him, or so it is thought, found him drawing geometrical diagrams in the sand, deep in thought. He ignored the command of the soldier, some have him saying, “do not disturb my circles,” but either way he was run through by a Roman soldier after Syracuse fell against the will of the Roman General. Thus pinpointing his death to the fall of Syracuse to the Romans in 212 B.C.E.

Archimedes had instructed his friends and family to have a circle inscribed in a sphere upon his tomb with the ratio he discovered to solve geometrical problems of volume of a shape inside another shape—what he considered his greatest discovery. His Eureka! Exclamation came when he was asked by his king if he could determine whether a gold article received as a gift was pure gold or cut with silver. While taking a bath and seeing how his body displaced the water he got the idea of how to determine the King’s request using buoyancy. It was then that he was said to have run through the streets naked yelling “Eureka!”

some Clues for You

2006-11-03T23:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, here are a couple of facts that might make a difference:

Those laying seige were Romans, the city under siege bears the name of a city on the Eastern seaboard of the United States and the Roman general in command of the siege has a name that sounds like the surname of some famous, contemporary Jazz musician brothers from New Orleans (not the Neville Brothers-- that's pop).

see if that makes a difference

2006-11-01T23:39:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's challenge. I'm working this new theme for a while. It's fun and I can use more cryptic terms. Though with this crew I doubt it will take long. Still it's fun to have a new fellow to talk about. Best of luck!

With a mind like his it is no wonder,
That he did toss whole ships asunder,
And thwart whole armies with wheels and rope,
To give a fortress days of hope.

Yet through stealthy acts the walls were breached,
And inside the fortress, the enemy reached,
They found him pondering dusty glyphs,
And commanded, “come,” though he stayed stiff.

Transfixed by what his mind had conjured,
He hushed them wait ‘til he discovered,
The answer to his diagram,
But an impatient sword, through him ran.

1. Who was he?
2. What is his most famous utterance?
3. What did he have placed upon his tomb?

Please e-mail in your answers. The game is played until we get three winners (first, second and third)

breathing

2006-10-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

Well, after a record week of printing that coincided with midterms last week I just finished a marathon of sorts. I am doing my best to take it easy this week (my printing slate is caught up and midterms are graded. whew!). The only reason I pulled off the whole guest post thingy last week at Sar's was because there was a mix up and I thought it was going to be featured a week earlier. So I had accidently done my homework early and got to just send it over and check in and make comments in what turned out to be an exchange of upwards of 60 comments that is still going on! I tried to sign off and say thanks and goodbye and then Sar started in again on Major Dad and then O Ceallaigh chimed back in and as of today I entered the fray again.

It's all been a grand experiment but one that has given me some insight and also, sadly, reinforced my feeling that all of the powers of civil discourse cannot make a dent in some levels of dogma. At the end I got scrappy and wasn't proud of some of the comments I made. Though I made some apologies I think I still need to learn the meaning of the phrase "shake the dust from your feet" and walk away or just maintain patience and calm. I still have much to learn.

I am going to have some time to write for a change and I've got people waiting-- nothing great, no more War and Peace, no novel, just computer graphics stuff and if I get the time, my long shot book, The History of Design, From Animal Fat to Inkjet (The War and Peace of Design). I've been waiting to shove open a window to focus on writing these textbooks and it will be a different pace than last week. Something to look forward to.

C Jo and baby Bonnie are going to take off for the coast for three nights. I'll be home alone with the other kids and that will give me more writing time (one hopes). We were set to go as a family but Rob's football team won their first playoff game! It's a single elimination playoffs that is open to all teams, regardless of their record. Well, Rob's team had only won a single game all year. We had heard mid season that only teams that had 4 wins would go to the playoffs. So we scheduled a trip for after football, once his team got to where there were less than 3 games left. Come to find out that all teams go to the playoffs. Okay, no worries, chances are, the way things had been going, that they wouldn't get past round one. Well, they destroyed the first team and looked like Ohio State out there! What happened! They executed plays, they threw passes, they had sacks. Now what do we do? We have a house rented at the beach. So, C said I'll go have some fun with the wee one, you stay and write and support the football thing and it will be fine.

All's well that ends well. I'll miss the beach and my wifey and the little snapper. I love the coast. but a light work week and a weekend without a toddler will be a nice change, especially with all of this writing to do. We'll see-- I do feel like somewhat of a taxi service for my teenage daughter's social life a lot of the time and I don't want to ignore Rob, but at least the spinning head of parental radar can be turned off and I might be able to focus. Famous last words, I know.

Wish me luck. And I hope to steal some time in blogworld, especially since I won't be nursemaiding a somewhat fruitless discussion on war and peace at Sar's that I created. Will I ever learn?

Tom

Tom’s Challenge—The Riddler Results.

2006-10-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

This week’s challenge champion is “Goldennib!” Way to go Nibby! Ya done good.
Second place goes to the reigning queen of the challenge, Quilldancer—always the one to beat.
And third place goes to Diesel! a new friend who popped over from the Sar guest post commentary and knew this answer out of his head, it appeared! Though I forgot to mention that Goldennib remembered Turing from a computer class she took and that he was associated with artificial intelligence.

Y’all done good. Real good. Here’s the skinny on this week’s mastermind:

Alan Turing is perhaps the most unsung hero of the twentieth century. He is another story equally as intriguing as Descartes or Wright from previous challenges. Turing attended the “public school.” – what we in America today think of as private school—the Sherbonne, and went on to King’s College, Cambridge to study mathematics. Turing was one of the first if not the first to pull logic into mathematical circles and marry philosophy and mathematics and to some extent in later years, psychology and neurology to try and create artificial intelligence. At the outset of this quest was a groundbreaking 1936 thesis entitled (short version) “On Computable Numbers,” which is the first extant paper written about how a fantasy machine would work that could calculate anything, using a binary system. Further, once you had one of these machines that could execute a given “program,” you could add programs until it could perform any function you wanted it to. Turing not only described the computer as we use it today, he gave us the math and function of how this could be performed before any hands had touched metal. He called it a Turing machine.

His paper was met with little fanfare until experiments began to take place in the US with “computers” and his paper ended up in their hands or in discussions on how to proceed. Little by little, Turings Computable Numbers became the seminal piece for the creation of computers.

In 1939, Turing saw the animated movie Snow White and wrote to friends about it. He memorized the lines the Witch said as she created her poison apple. Mostly due to the social discomfort attributed to being gay in a predominantly non gay world, Turing talked about suicide at various times in his life.

But, then came the war. At that time, Turing was teaching at Cambridge ( I think) and was snatched up by King and country to go to the now infamous Bletchley Park—the decoding center for the war effort. Turing’s theories were put to use in creating decoders for the German enigma machine, a machine that scrambled text so well and so randomly that the German’s were, to their demise, overly confident that no one would ever break the code. But this job was made for Turing and his intelligent machines. Decoding machines were created under his direction and ultimately a large machine was created called “the Collossus” that many have thought should be given the honor of being named the first computer. In one account I read that until the code was cracked, with the U boats keeping England under siege, it was thought that England had about two weeks worth of food left. I also read that Churchill made a tough decision once the code had been cracked not to warn the people of a particular town that they were about to be bombed, so as not to give away that they had cracked the code. That would be a call I would not want to make. With Turing’s machine, England was spared and the advantage turned to the allies, ultimately guiding their way to victory.

As you may have surmised, Turing’s end was not nearly as glorious as his heroic years at Bletchley Park. He was gay and as is often the case in intellectual circles, this never posed a big problem when he was at Cambridge amongst his colleagues. But, having strayed to a new job, working on a post war computer project (trying to think of what University) he picked up a man of questionable character and dated him for a while. His new friend arranged a robbery of his house with an accomplice and when Turing reported it to the police, it was quickly surmised that the two were involved. Turing was never one to tell a lie and so confessed as much. Homosexuality was illegal at that time in England and he was arrested.

At that time, experiments were being conducted with hormones to try and find a “cure” for homosexuality and one of the things that was found was that when men received estrogen that their sex drive was diminished. Turing was given a choice—jail or estrogen treatments. He chose estrogen treatments for the period of a year (I think) and went about his work. But he started changing physically--- he was growing breasts. Turing was a distance runner and often entered into competitions, even though he was a youngish forty something. He did not like having breasts.

It was also illegal for gays to work in classified areas as there was a fear that they could be blackmailed to give up government secrets. So, he was stripped of his clearances. No one is actually sure why he killed himself, as he left no note. He did not express sadness to his friends or that he was living in great shame or loneliness. But, he was found lying on his bed with a partially eaten apple laced with arsenic at his side.

Bonus Question

2006-10-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

So far we have some people with the right answers, but still holding out for third place. One thing I noticed was that no one addressed the stanza:

Quick they were with his arrest,
and sentenced him to grow women's breasts,

A rather intriguing couplet, don't you think, considering it promises to be of historic significance?

Solve that riddle and you may move into a new position! I'll have to find some clever way of rewarding you.

Tom's Challenge--the Riddler

2006-10-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

When England lay under seige by sea,
and bombs by night rained from the sky,
the food grew scarce and times were grim,
but all was saved by the brain of him.

And great honors to him, his King did pay,
Until it was found that he was gay,
Quick they were with his arrest,
and sentenced him to grow women's breasts,

His life from then was not the same,
Though he tried his best to hide his shame,
But in the end he chose Snow White's plight,
But no kiss would ever bring back his life.

1. Who was he?
2. What did he do for Jolly Old England?
3. What was his fate?

cheaters and heartbreak

2006-10-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

My schedule is crazy from Sunday night until Wednesday, but of course the good part is that I am done with any out-of-the-house work at noon on Wednesday (this does not preclude in house work, but that's different). I mentioned in an earlier blog that I am working in a new program that I helped to create, in a new capacity which is great. Only, there is almost no curriculum available since I invented the class and have to create it all myself from scratch-- I try to use other people's stuff or text books that come with CDs and assignments but I just can't do it. I always have to make it my own. So I scramble and I write (four hours of lecture and four hours of lab work per week). It's a labor of love, but the operative word here is labor.

But tonight, after a major marathon of class material prep and writing the midterm I gave this morning, I decided to take a break and chill in my robe, play Bazza's quiz and generally dip back into the global friendspace.

After reading Quilldancers blog about her test, I had to convey one of the weird things that happened to me in grading my first graphic design project this week: Two people cheated.

I gave them an assignment in a page layout program where I give them the raw components--some digital images that are very large and have to be sized down and placed into a string of frames, some text in Word and a set of instructions also in Word. I also give them, only on the first assignment, an example, in the same program, that they can use to see how I constructed mine. I give them a speech that I only give them this one example in the same program that they are using on the first assignment because it is difficult the first time they use the program again after the Summer break. After that I give them a PDF file that will show them how an assignment looks but they cannot "strip it for parts." I told them that unforunately due to the fact that there has been cheating in the past I have had to resort to this, as much as I would love to give them as much information as they need to do the best job that they can.

After that speech, I figured there wouldn't be any cheaters trying to turn my own example back in renamed as their own. Plus the fact that I know these guys, they are in their second year, juried in, on track for their degree.

So I'm going through this first project, pulling them up one at a time and they are all designed to look like mine, but it's amazing how accurate the human eye is-- I can tell that they are different. It's like, give someone a picture of cut out shapes of paper arranged into a collage, then give them the same colored paper and ask them to cut out their own and paste them up. They won't be exactly the same as the picture but very similar. There are differences in proportion, but when there isn't... it was amazing-- it was like hearing a chord and knowing that it was the same chord you had just heard. I opened up a file and this person had put all kinds of different fonts surrounding the string of resized images to disguise it, but the sequence of images just struck me. I had seen that proportion before. So I simply clicked on one of the images, brought up the info palette which told me the exact dimensions of the image to ten thousands of an inch, opened my example, clicked on the same image and I'll be damned-- exactly the same. I went through all of the placed images and they were all the same dimensions down to ten thousands of an inch. So I marked a "see me" down, I was a a little disappointed and about 6 assignments later there it was again! The bells were ringing, the chord was playing.

So, in lab while people were working I called the students up one by one to go over their projects and grades while people were working on the new project and when I got to cheater number one I explained very quietly the fact that I have info in my files that serve as saferguards against anyone using the stuff I provide... then asked, do you know why I'm telling you this? "Because I used your file." "Because you used my file. You can't use my file for your assignment." To keep this short, he got a 0 but I told him that if he did the assignment over he could get half the alotted points for that assignment which was better than a 0 but still an F (50%). The second person came up and I got as far as "You know my images have measurements that are down to ten thousand of an inch.." and she just said bluntly "I cheated." "Yeah, you cheated." Same speech followed but man, I was shocked and dismayed that that is how we started the term off. What a bummer.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Peace, Tom out

Challenge #5 results

2006-10-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Well, the results are in. Each Challenge gets a little tougher it seems but the race does go to the... well, stubborn. Once again, the reigning queen of the Challenge pulls it off, this time without the hint of a movie she had seem too many times by chance. So, ever more the accomplishment.

First the answers:

1. Frank Lloyd Wright
2. Taliesin (rebuilt twice after fires)
3. Taliesin West, the snow bird school for architecture in Arizona (hence the reference to Jackie's recent migratory departure).

And the winners are:

1st: Quilldancer! I already gave her victory introduction above.
2nd: Bazza! The music hint created an instant bridge over the troubled waters (pun intended) of this challenge for Him. The 1970 album, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," by Simon and Garfunkel contained a song entitled "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright," written by Simon. That album was one of the few to keep the Beatles off of number 1, competing with the Beatles "Let it Be" album. Now that is a high honor to come out number one in that field of competition. Bazza responded very quickly after that hint went up.
and 3rd goes to Kat who pulled this one out of the hat to make it into the winners circle again. Congratulations Kat!

Frank Lloyd Wright is worth a look as there are so many amazing things about his career. Considered a has-been by the time he was in his sixties, Frank made a come back and created his most amazing work after retirment age until his death at the age of 92. the Guggenheim Art Museum in New York was nearly completed at the time of his death and Frank was right in there during the construction up until he reported stomach pains. After surgery to remove an obstruction, he slipped away.

I highly recommend the Ken Burns documentary, Frank Lloyd Wright. It is a stunning piece of work and will keep you captivated through its entirety. Like Descartes and scientific method, we owe as much to FLW and his approach to architecture and design.

Thans for playing and I'll see you in the blogosphere.

Tom

A CLUE FOR YOU.

2006-10-19T20:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you who might still be pondering this. Here is something more for you to chew on.

Upon the death of this certainly most famous person in their field, one of America's most famous songwriters wrote a farewell song for this person.

The album this song appeared on reached number one on Billboard Music Charts pop albums list. It won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year while its title track won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

The album proved to be a vast success in the United Kingdom, enjoying several runs at number one, spending some years in the charts and eventually becoming the country's biggest-selling album of the decade that it was released in.

Tom's Challenge #5

2006-10-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody. Sorry about the radio silence but the term is starting to build up to midterms and it’s a whole new curriculum this year so I have to reinvent the wheel in all my classes. In addition, I’ve had some design deadlines and some major printing jobs, so it’s been quite a week, but all of it is very good stuff.

We’re happy here though our house has been getting cold lately and we are reluctantly turning on the heat for the first time. It’s a big house and winter means spending a lot more on electricity each month. So, we’ve been telling the kids to put on slippers and wear a sweater or something but our bones are getting chilled and it gets pretty dark around here before seven o’clock rolls these days. The change is upon us.

This week’s challenge is as follows:

This is one of our most famous Americans. This person’s influence led inadvertently to a revolution in Europe in their respective field. By way of Scotland, the most controversial of revolutions traced to this person took place in Vienna.

This person’s personal life was both flamboyant and tragic. At one point, a disgruntled associate, sealed all of the doors but one of the family house, with this person’s spouse and children inside, then lit the house on fire and waited at the only exit with an axe. This person’s entire family was wiped out in a most grisly way on that day.

The last clue is that this challenge is dedicated to Jackie and her annual migration.

Because you guys are so sharp, that is all that I am willing to say at this point.

1. Who is this person?
2. What was the name of the location where the tragedy described took place?
3. What other significant place in this person’s life also bore that name?

Well, I hope this is challenging enough for you. It’s hard to say. These facts may be either new or cryptic but the person is not considered obscure.

As always, please e-mail your answers to me. If for any reason this goes slowly I will post clues. Cheers and happy challenge!

The Winners of Tom's Challenge # 4

2006-10-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

Hello all and thanks for participating in the most difficult challenge yet. First the answers:

1. The mysterious group was the Rosicrucians ( or the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross)
2. The Scholar of old was Christian Rosenkreuz
3. And the founders published their manifesto, Fama Fraternitatis, in 1614

And the winners are:

First place: Quilldancer, who managed to pull the Rose and the Cross from the Sean Connery movie, "Name of the Rose." She said she got lucky and had done caretaking for a woman who watched TV 24/7 and had seen the movie a bunch of times. she says, "lucky," but as she has won several of my challenges, I don't think it's luck at all. I think she's damn smart!

Second place: Goes to Jackie's Garden. I think this deserves special applause because she didn't have the flash of a movie to send her in the right direction and did hours of research and came up with all three answers before the clue was put up! That was no easy feat and at one point Jackie declared she didn't want to play any more (but I hope she does). She really did an amazing research job to pull that rabbit out of the hat. Great job, Jackie!

And Third place goes to Goldennib who managed to get the Rosicrucians, the date 1614, but guessed, the ancient scholar was Francis Bacon (not a bad guess at all). I'd like to mention here that not only did she get third place, but she should be proud of the fact that nobody else even submitted an answer besides these three. So this was a tough one. Good Job!

So, here's to the winners three. I hope you feel especially proud because I went to much greater lengths to make this challenge difficult, googled the stuff that I posted and reworded things to make it less googleable. But the two sisters, Quilly and Jackie, got the answers within hours. You guys are amazing!

The Rosicrucians were an exciting mystery during the 17th century as they published anonymously, saying that they lived among the population of any given city, could be your next door neighbor, blended like an alien race into society but held an almost Demi-God (that was the term that was used)-like knowledge of science and magic and met secretly to further humanity and to solve the problems of the world.

In the comments, I mentioned Descartes a couple of times as I came across their fascinating story in an equally fascinating book, called "Descartes' Secret Notebook," by Amir D. Aczel-- almost a very real Davinci Code. Truth being stranger than fiction, the adventures of Descartes and his contemporaries are quite amazing and due to the discovery of a single, quickly scrawled copy of Descartes secret notebook, which he had instructed his heir never to show to anyone upon his death, the author explores, among many things, the issue of whether or not Descartes was a Rosicrucian.

If that sort of thing is your cup of tea, this book is new, I bought it this summer while visiting Jackie and is probably pretty easy to find. As I said in some of the comments flying around during the contest, Descartes is the root of so much of who we are today. My father told me that he was watching a show where a group of nobel prize winners were round table discussing various topics and the question was put to them what they thought the greatest inventions of all time were and one of them thought for while and said, "the scientific method." So, there ya go. As we are all Cartesian, at least here in the West, if you haven't checked out the man who gave us "I think therefore I am, " and the fact that the existence of "imperfection" implies the existence of "perfection" and hence is proof that God exists, you might want to check him out.

Cheers and see you in the blogosphere.

A CLUE FOR YOU.

2006-10-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

Here's something for those of you who...well, still care. We do have a first and second place, but I'm looking for a third. Regardless, here it is:

Please send answers to my e-mail!

2006-10-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Tom's Challenge #4

2006-10-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

Tom’s Challenge #4

All right. This is something really interesting that I came across recently in doing some research for a text book that I am working on. There was a group formed under some interesting circumstances in which a group of scholars discovered the tomb of a much older scholar that was filled with ancient wisdom and objects of science and magic that the earlier scholar had learned and acquired though his travels in the middle east. In the tomb of the older scholar was an inscription stating accurately how many years it would be until he was found. Taking this as a sign, the scholars who made the discovery formed a group that exalted science, opposed the power of the church, advocated reform of the church, was opposed to national loyalty and the members considered themselves citizens of the world. Their group would advocate a unity of science and humanity without any national or ethnic boundaries.

Formed during a time of religious persecution for scientific thought that countered that mandated by the church, they were a clandestine group, published scientific and philosophical texts anonymously. Among their rules were:

1. They must heal and distribute free medicines to all people who need them.
2. They must dress in accordance with the customs of the country in which they live.
3. They must meet once a year.
4. Each must choose a successor, so that all of them will be replaced once they die.
5. Each must carry a hidden seal with the letters ___
6. They will keep their group concealed for at least one hundred years.

So,
1. Who were these people?
2. Who was the older scholar that they discovered?
3. When was the group formed, as determined by the publishing of their first manifesto?

A little light ...

2006-10-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

There's so much I want to say about the North Korean nuclear test, the sharp rise in U.S. soldier casualties in Iraq, the way that the government spin would rather let us know that 2700 US soldiers have died in the war than let us know that 20,000 soldiers have been injured; about Rumsfeld changing his tune and wanting to increase troops instead of maintaining a leaner, more technologically efficient army and his request for 10s of billions more in the budget this year than last for the war. That's just todays paper. But that's about all I can muster. Somedays you just don't have it in you to go there. You just have to shrug, shake your head and go for a walk and look at some trees.

What I want to do is give all of you wonderful people that I have met through this cyber experiment a big old cyber hug in a time when we could all use a little light. We are this collective of made up names with invented icons, school teachers and gardeners, cynics and saps, satirists and storytellers and we drop in from time to time for a chat. We provide our own tea. In one of my moments of silent exasperation over the daily news I went looking for some music on You Tube and through a random mix of searches came across two old men, a couple of musicians that I had no idea ever mixed their unique musical talents together, performing a song, live, that I was meant to hear. It made me smile. So simple and poignant and perfect. So, in the hope that it might make your day just a little brighter, here is Randy Newman on piano and Peter Gabriel on vocals with a small orchestra singing a song called "That'll Do." Enjoy.

A very useful word

2006-10-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

My friend, quasi family member (Aunt-in-law who's about the same age as me) and fellow blogger, Quilldancer, had put up a funny blog about her english-as-a-second-language 5th grade students (spanish being the first) trying to come up with a spanish equivalent for the yiddish word, "Chuzpah." Well, in her words here's what happened (I hope it's okay that I reprint it here, Quilly-- let me know if that's a problem. I mean, call me... don't have your attorney call me. I mean.. I can just take it off the blog... really):

"The kids used words like brave, courageous, daring, dangerous, and even silly. I told them that the word chuzpah pretty much covered all those things, at which point Rico, excited, piped up with, "Oh! I get it! Cahones!"

That gave me chuckle and I commented that there are often words that are unsavory in certain company that are very useful. Then I remembered this thing I heard about another very useful word some time ago. Now, this circulated the web years ago and so you may have heard it before, but it's still good for a laugh and I thought it would be timely to give it another go around. So here ya go. For you, QD, though it may be much to your chagrin that I tied you in with this (don't do me any more favors, Tom-- I can just hear it. Pft!):
a useful word

Tom's Challenge #3 Winners

2006-10-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

Well, my friends, I'm sorry this one was so easy. On the Captain Cook one I googled my own contest and it was a little more obscure and hence only one person got all the answers correct. This one took minutes. I will try to be more obscure in the future to keep it interesting. I will also post the rules of the game with each and every challenge.

So, as every person who submitted an answer got all of the answers correct we simply go in chronological order:

First place goes to Quilldancer
Second place goes to Brooke
and Third place is shared by Auntie Caryl and Bazza

But the one good thing is that I received comments from some of you that in the process of doing the homework, people were learning things. And that's what this is all about to me. Ho Chi Minh led his people through a war with Japan, then a war with France and then a war with the United States. The Vietnamese people prevailed in all of them. but at a loss of millions.

The most disconcerting part about that war was not that the US was wrong in its "Domino Theory" of communism. They couldn't be expected to see the future, even if it was a bit paranoic-- that was just being wrong on a political opinion. What was more disconcerting was that by all accounts, the United states fabricated an act of military agression against the United States in order to gain public support for a war.

Here is an excerpt from Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States that echoes something all to clearly...:

"The Tonkin "attack" brought a congressional resolution, passed unanimously in the House, and with only two dissenting votes in the Senate, giving Johnson the power to take military action as he saw fit in Southeast Asia.

Two months before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, U.S. government leaders met in Honolulu and discussed such a resolution. Rusk (Secretary of State) said, in this meeting, according to the Pentagon Papers, that "public opinion on our Southeast Asia policy was badly divided in the United States at the moment and that, therefore, the President needed and affirmation of support."

The Tonkin Resolution gave the President the power to initiate hostilities without declaration of war by Congress that the Consitution required. The Supreme Court, supposed to be the watchdog of the Constitution, was asked by a number of petitioners in the course of the Vietnam war to declare the war unconstitutional. Again and again, it refused to consider the issue."

Interesting if nothing else. But can we learn from past events? We bought 9/11 against some very disconcerting evidence. Will 9/11 go down as just being another thing created by our government to create a carte blanche for the president?

I haven't presented the disconcerting evidence yet, but who out there doubts that the government is capable of doing something like that to meet its ends?

Let the fur fly.

Peace. TOM

2006-10-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

Well y'all, I'm back. I had a very surreal experience flying dowwn to California for a meeting with a client and getting back Sunday night after ten o'clock and getting prepared to be able to lecture for two hours beginning at 8 AM the next morning. Time whizzed by and here I am. I have written extensively about what went down in Cal, because there were some mind bending events, but I think I'm going to publish that at another time. I need to digest it and edit it before letting all that out. But, in the meantime, I hope you will find this challenging!

Tom’s Challenge #3

There’s not much to say by way of introduction this time, so I guess I’ll just dive right in.

A country had just won its independence after a long fought battle. In their victory, they wrote a declaration of Independence that began, “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” In the aftermath of the war, the leader of the country wrote 8 letters to the leader of another country seeking help. Below is an excerpt of one of those letters, with key words, dates and identities edited so as not to give away information that might make this too easy:

“I wish to invite (the ) attention of your Excellency for strictly humanitarian reasons to (the) following matter. Two million (of our people) died of starvation during the Winter of (year) and spring of (following year) because of (the) starvation policy of (the enemy) who seized and stored until it rotted all available (crop)… three-fourths of (our) cultivated land was flooded in the summer of (year), which was followed by a severe drought; of (our) normal harvest five-sixths was lost….Many people are starving… Unless great world powers and international relief organizations bring us immediate assistance we face imminent catastrophe…”

Here are the questions:

1) Who wrote the above letter (and the other 8 letters) and what country was he/she the leader of?
2) To whom did he/she write the letters?
3) What was the response to the letters?
Bonus question: What year did the country in question gain its independence and write the Declaration of Independence referenced above?

This one may be more difficult than the previous ones, but if no one is getting it, I will begin to give out hints, so hang in there and check back if you are at a loss.

Thanks for playing.

Bush vows to keep doing the wrong thing until...it..is the right thing

2006-09-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

With the emergence of that latest bi-partisan intelligence report that cites the war in Iraq as the "cause celebre" for Jihadists along with such observations as "anti-US and anti-globalization is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies" and many other, well if you've been reading my blogs, predictable assessments (you can read what has been declassified here www.registerguard.com/intelbrief), Bush has come out to say that he will continue to fight until he wins. Let's review: The war is causing more terrorists, breeding a wider range of anti-US sentiment, making it, according to the report, more likely that terrorism will hit the homeland and Bush's response is to do more of the same. It reminds me of the saying an old friend of mine used (don't know if he made it up but it sounded like one of those clever cliches of old) when he was frustrated by the company he was working for: "you can't lose a penny on the dollar and make it up in volume." Well, George, your digging through a pile of horse manure that is now up to your neck and your still saying, "there's gotta be a pony in here somewhere!"

One of the things the report did say, that falls closer in line with the earlier post of mine, "Ok Mr. Smarty pants, what do we do, then?" is that since the majority of muslims are peaceful and do not support the violent measures of the Jihadists, then the best possiblity of weakening extremism is through the lack of support from the larger muslim community (in other words muslims need to solve muslim problems). The reason I feel this relates to the above-mentioned post is that the report also suggests that by angering the muslims that should be on the side of anti-terrorism through our meddling tactics we are preventing this from happening. The report reads: "Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the Jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq "Jihad;" (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most muslims-- all of which Jihadists exploit."

So, George, Lord knows that you, of all people, need an "intelligence committee" so why oh why discard their report? But who am I to make such hard judgements on our commander and chief? Don't take my word for it. How about you take the word of this guy and his 415 friends: excerpt from an article by Princeton University History Professor Sean Wilentz: "Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst(president)ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant."

You can view the entire article about why he thinks George W. Bush is a good candidate for the worst president in American history at www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history

It's actually quite entertaining reading while at the same time very cautious in its assessment. well, there's my rant for today. I guess it's Tom's war rant day. Gotta pick up the thread sometime. I'd love to hear from a Bush supporter who can give a concise and intelligent comment on how Bush is a good president and how his policies are working. "Is anybody out there?" Peace, Tom

stolen moment

2006-09-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

The house is silent. I got home from work ahead of the rush to play bus driver to the three. The house is messy, scattered toddler toys, teenage hoodies and flip flops (they don't wear shoes any more). Football gear, breakfast mess, newspaper scatters, morning rush randomly placed coffee cup, dog hair dust balls skitter like the ghosts of mice as I walk through the tile halls. I should clean up. I should take care of that paperwork. I should write that memo to my boss. I should.... but the house is silent. Just me, the hum of the computer and the cadence of my rythmless keys.

So, I steal a moment while the moment lasts. The clock leaking away what there is of it as the time draws near-- to the daycare, the middle school, the high school-- brother and sister fighting over the front seat, baby screeching-- to the post office with the promise of a check that most go immediately to the bank-- groans of disappointment, "we have to go to the bank? Can't we just go home first?" -- then making our way back home to get bombarded with snack requests and a clinging toddler with a cold. Then put together dinner, then football practice and chasing Skye at the nearby park and then home and then time to put the baby to bed and help Rob with homework.... but right now. Right now the house is silent. Drink it in. Leave the dishes...drink it in. let go of all the shoulds...drink it in. For soon you will take a deep breath and plunge back into the whirling world.

Zip, Bam, boom!

2006-09-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

First week of classes, Cindra's out of town at a conference so single parenting three, dogsitting one, and getting the car towed that blew a radiator the other day. The first time I looked up at the clock tonight it was ten o'clock. My first class is at 8AM and there are three kids to get sorted out somehow before that. Skye Bonnie will get dropped off at daycare at 7:30, the other two, whose (is that a word, looks funny) schools start at 9:00 will be dropped off at a coffee shop that is next door to their schools (fortunately the middle school and high school are a block apart) with some cash and I will hopefully meet my bright eyed and bushy tailed students at 8 AM across campus from the parking lot. We all have days like this, so not trying for sympathy here, just blogging. I guess that's what this thing is for. A not-so-personal diary.

On a more interesting or noteworthy note (somewhat redundant, no time for picky editing here) I have a rather unique situation for my teaching career: I have the exact same group of students for all my classes this term and possibly for the entire year. To Quilldancer this may not seem like such a novel thing, but this is college. How could this be? Well I teach in a small Graphic Design program at a community college and last year I was sort of promoted (I don't get any more pay just more responsibility) to take the students that get accepted into the second year of the program (it's a two year GD program and you have to submit a portfolio at the end of the first year to be accepted into the second year due to the fact that there are only so many positions available) through the production part of the program. There are essentially two aspects to Graphic design: design theory and production. Previously I was the boot camp guy, filling in for upper division here and there but mostly taking in the freshman, running them randomly en masse through art 101, basic design 115, drawing 131, etc. which feeds into sculpture, multi-media, studio art, graphic design, etc. But, this year I get to take the second year Graphic Design students through all of the 200 level classes and through to the graduation ceremony at the end of the year. I also teach at a four year University and I've always thought that it was kind of sad that I might have a student for two or three classes in four years, just enough to kind of get to know them and then they disappear into the world. But a full year of seeing these guys through and going through commencement is going to be a different thing altogether. So, it's an exciting year.

Well that's it from this end. Gotta tend to getting kids into bed. After that I'll cruise my friends blogs, drop in to say hi before crashing out into nervous sleep.

Peace,

Just Tom

Tom's Challenge #2 results

2006-09-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

The results are in. First of all, I want to thank so many of you for participating or at very least, heckling the Challenge. We got responses from around the globe this time and so the Challenge circle grew a new ring. I visited lots of blogs and actually invited people who I thought might be interested and this led to our all out winner: A man I had run across a few times in the blogoshpere who seemed to have good things to say. I went to his blog and in his profile saw that he was a marine science professional with many similar interests and thought he might enjoy a crack at the Challenge. As it turned out, he was almost too good of a match for the subject as he was not only an ocean science researcher but had spent time in New Zealand and knew exactly who wrote the entry, of whom it was about and when it was written. With that introduction, here are the correct answers and winners:

Correct answers (cut and pasted from O Ceallaigh’s e-mail):

1. Commander (later Captain) James Cook
2. New Zealand Maori (I am unable to discover which iwi [tribe], if in fact it was recorded)
3. 1773, during the second voyage to New Zealand.

1st place honors go to O Ceallaigh
2nd Place goes to Brooke, who got Capt. Cook, wasn’t too close on who the people were (suggested native Americans), but did get very close on the year (she put 1775)
3rd place goes to Bazza who got Capt. Cook, Australia/New Zealand but had a date of 1778 (both got 2 out of 3 but Brooke’s answer came in well ahead of Bazza—probably not a fair contest with the time zones the way they are) so I gave him third place.

Honorable mention goes to Jackie’s Garden, who put down Captain James Hook, Europeans and 1778. Now, Captain Hook was a delightful character in the classic, Peter Pan, but don’t think he made it into the history books. Also doubt he was talking about Europeans having a bad experience dealing with Europeans (though there is probably some truth to that). However, the fact that she put James in front of Hook leads me to believe that this was an unfortunate keystroke or phonetical slip up. Anyway, she deserves some mention.

So, Congratulations to all and thank you so much for playing!

Pursuant to our discussion of Columbus after Challenge number one, the ethical question of the deeds of Captain Cook is still hotly debated and much more enigmatic than that of Columbus. To add insight to the progressive thinking of this amazing mariner, here’s an observation he made of the people of New Holland (Eastern Australia) as he made his way up the coastline for the first time:

“…From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon the Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility of which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household-stuff & c, they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy very wholesome Air, so that they have very little need of Clothing and this they seem to be fully sencible of, for many whome we gave cloth &c to, left it carelessly upon the Sea beach and in the woods as thing they had no manner of use for. In short they seem’d to set no value upon any thing we gave them.”

There are many passages that show a very fair and balanced, almost modern, assessment of the people Cook encountered and though firm with the natives if they attacked his men or stole from them he was equally firm with his own men if they committed crimes against the natives—which included lashes at the post for stealing from them (some serious, corporal punishment).

I have only read the “Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific as Told by Selections of his Own Journals 1768-1779” Edited by Grenfell Price, published on Dover (my copy c. 1971, don’t know if it is still in print) which is a great synopsis that gives great insight into the man and his journeys, mostly from the horses mouth. I own “Blue Latitudes” by Tony Horowitz, the New York Times bestseller that retraces Cook’s voyages and gives a modern perspective of Cook from the cultures he impacted. I have not read the book but my father has and I have also done some reading on-line about the book. Herein lies the rub: he is not much of a hero to people he “discovered,” today. His prophetic statement that was in the Challenge #2 quote that commerce with Europeans does not benefit these cultures held true with his own explorations and contact with indigenous peoples and hence he was, however unwittingly, the deliverer of the poison seed of colonization and empire building that decimated the once pristine life of these people.

Now, I really like this guy. He is the original Captain Kirk—philosophical, always trying to do the right thing and one hell of a navigator. But he planted the flag (a bronze plaque really, if I remember right) that claimed the lands he “discovered” for England. Apparently, he wasn’t so philosophical about this act of discovery to allow the people he found to remain sovereign, at least in every case.

I’m not an expert on Cook, so I am inviting others, especially and hopefully O Ceallaigh, to chime in here and tell me what they think about Cook and his deeds. He’s certainly a better man than Columbus, morally speaking --- though I would argue a much better navigator and mariner as well. But was he also responsible for bringing about the end of days for the people he came into contact with? And if so, should he have known this or how could he have acted differently?

Challenge rules?

2006-09-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on how this challenge will work but for now, it's simply on a first come first win basis.. I realize that some of you whom I have invited to this challenge are in completely different time zones and so this makes it unfair. I have figured out that if this thing grows and there are more global players (other than George W.) that there is an optimal time to post it-- either early morning or late evening to accomodate people at the opposite side of the earth (UK is 8 hours from here the middle east is centered around 11 hours and parts of Asia hit 12 (then it kind of works it's way back around-- like Australia-- it's listed as + 14 but my Aussie friend says "During daylight's savings time (U.S. does it, Queensland doesn't), I think of it as 7 hrs difference (although a day off). So, if it's 1pm Saturday here, it's 8pm in Oregon -- but the day before (i.e. Friday)). The times zones start chasing their tail after a 12 hour diffence.

If you have suggestions on how the game might go better, please let me know! I've never done anything like this before.

Tom out

Tom' s Challenge #2

2006-09-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

This one is in the same vein, so we are following a bit of thread here and not too much more difficult than the last one. Here are the questions three:

1. Who is the author
2. Of whom (what people) is he speaking
3. what year was this written (closest wins)

(all spellings and grammar are shown exactly as in the original quote)

“During our short stay in this Sound I have observed that this Second Visit of ours hath not mended the morals of the Natives of either sex, the women of this Country I always looked upon to be more chaste than the generality of Indian Women, whatever favours a few of them might have granted to the Crew of the (ship’s name) it was generally done in a private manner and without the men seeming to intrest themselves in it, but now we find the men are the chief promoters of this vice and for a spikenail or any other thing they value will oblige (d) their Wives and Daughters to prostitute themselves whether they will or no and that not with the privacy decency seems to require, such are the consequences of commerce with the Europeans and what is still more our Shame civilized Christians, we debauch their morals already too prone to the vice and interduce among them wants and perhaps diseases which they never before knew and which serve only to disturb that happy tranquility they and their fore Fathers had injoyed. If any one denies the truth of this assertion let him tell me what the Natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans.”

Answer by using the e-mail found in my profile (click on the word “more” at the end of my little description below the picture of Cindra and I at the top right of the page).

Good luck!

Tom's Challenge #1 winners announcement

2006-09-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

Well, my first Challenge was kind of funny. I only have a handful of people who visit my blog or know that it exists and one of them got all three questions within minutes of posting them. Cindra knew them but was disqualified for reasons given—I knew she knew the answers before I wrote the questions. But, a challenge is a challenge nonetheless. So here are the results:

First off the answers, copied and pasted from QDs e-mail answer to me (because it was so accurate):

1. Columbus
2. Arawaks
3. They would make fine servants...With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

The Winners:

First place: Quilldancer
Second place: Jackie’s Garden (she got all three but came in second for not turning in her answers)

Good job!

That’s right, our good ole’ buddy Columbus. The man who makes Hitler look like a school boy (he succeeded where Hitler failed. Produce one Arawak Indian for me). A couple of notes on Columbus and his time:

In a discussion about the evils of Columbus, a friend of mine made the comment (paraphrasing here), “But that’s the way thing were back then. They didn’t know any better.” Or something to the effect that what Columbus did was in tune with the times. My rebuttal was that Columbus was not alone on that island. The atrocities perpetuated by Columbus have two major sources in recorded history: 1. Columbus’ own diary (log). and 2. The diary of one Bartolome Las Casas, a young priest who accompanied Columbus. Their views on Spanish cruelty were diametrically opposed. Even though Columbus made many references in his reports to Spain using,“God’s will , etc.” to appease the church, the church’s representative on the ground couldn’t have disagreed more. Here are some examples from Las Casas account:

First a description of the people found (which is corroborated in Columbus' own descriptions):

“They live in large communal, bell-shaped buildings, housing up to 600 people at one time… made of very strong wood and roofed with palm leaves… they prize bird feathers of various colors, beads made with fishbones, and green and white stones with which they adorn their ears and lips, but put no value on gold and precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality…”

Then the contrast of these people and Columbus’ intent for them:

“Endless testimonies… Prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…but our work is to exasperate, ravage, kill mangle and destroy. Small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of now and then…the admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.”

Then the deterioration of the people in its final throes as the men and women are worked to death in slavery—after 6 to 8 months of working in the gold mines, up to one third of the men died from the non-stop labor:

“Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight to ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides….they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them. And for this reason while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation… in this way husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk… and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile… was depopulated… My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write…”

According to available reports, by the year 1515 there were perhaps 50,000 Indians left. By 1550 , there were 500. By 1650 there were no descendants of the Arawak that could be found.

I think ethics in such matters did exist at that time. It is obvious from Las Casas diary that he certainly saw it much the way we do today, as a holocaust. If one person can see it then others could as well and some must have knowingly took part in the raping and pillaging of the land knowing they were committing crimes against humanity.

But enough! This is a very depressing subject (but an important one). Now you know why we should never celebrate Columbus Day (we don’t celebrate Hitler Day). We kept Carrie out of school for a personal day once on Columbus Day (that she needed, anyway, when she first started middle school) and the school called because she wasn’t in attendance. Cindra told them that we pulled her out of school as a protest to there being a Columbus day and that we were going to educate her about Columbus—which we did. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

Tomorrow I will post the next Challenge, which will be related, but more positive. Look for Tom’s Challenge tomorrow and spread the word! Thanks for those of you who participated.

Cheers,

Tom

Holy smokes, I survived.

2006-09-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I somehow made it through, with the extraordinary help of my wife, Cindra. At every level she was helpful. From watching our two year old the entire time that I was working on this project (THAT is no small contribution),to telling me exactly what I needed to hear about the proofs, especially the color. I'd be struggling with a color and she'd look at it and say, "It needs just a touch of blue and some extender (like a thinner) to make it more transparent." I'd take her advice and it was spot on every time. What a lucky guy. So, thanks honey. I love you.

Now, I just have to write up all of my syllabi and first weeks assignments and be ready for classes at 8 AM on Monday. I think it's cruel that they make the submission for the faculty show due on the Friday before school starts. Oh well, whattaya do?

To those of you who mentioned the Saudi murals, I might put something together for that... It seems a bit gratuitous in this venue, but be advised that we are working on a business website that I can send to you privately, when completed, if you are still interested. As I will be preparing to go overseas at the end of this term, I may put something together as it is pertinent to my daily life.

Okay, new game: Tom's Challenge. Dut tu duh

The following is a quote from a log. There are three parts to answer:

1. Who is the author
2. Of whom (what people) is he speaking
3. What's the next line

There are no rules, you can google, go to the library or just take an educated guess.

Winners will be posted.

Here's the quote:

"They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawk's bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... they were well built, with good bodies and handsome features... they do not bear arms,and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane..."

good luck!

2006-09-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

Hello all ye good folks of blog land. I have been slammed up against a deadline to get something done for the annual faculty show. Every year I say that I'm not going to let that creep up on me and every year I go nights without sleep to put something together. The good news is that I'm having fun as we built the screen print studio this summer so for the first time I'm going to use my skills as a commercial screen printer to do some fine art. Something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. And I'm loving it. My screens are burned, I'm mixing ink and will have a fun night of seeing something conceived in the mind be printed on fabric (I bought some canvas and will be trying to print on that, then stretch it onto a frame for hanging). This year's theme is "Art as Activism," and so it is a subject very dear to my heart. I have been thinking about doing a series of unsung heros and martyrs of the twentieth century for some time and this was just the impetus I needed to see that through. I chose Rachel Carson as my first subject. I call it my Rachel Carson Shrine ala Rauschenberg meets Warhol-- with Northwest/Oregon organic colors on organic, unbleached canvas. I think I covered all the bases. below is a comp made from the computer created separations..

Well I'm back to the studio. Wish me luck! Cheers, Tom

And now for something completely different...

2006-09-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe we can't solve the world's problems with a blog (though sometimes I feel like we could do a better job than Blair and Bush). Like any greenhorn blogger, I suppose, I managed to cover religion and war in my first few days. Cindra is concerned that maybe I'm a bit too heavy for this crowd. You know, the irony is that in person I'm always out for a laugh (though rarely achieved-- my 14 year old daughter will certainly attest to that) and not that heavy of a person (except in pounds per square inch-- 5'6" and just over 200 lbs). I guess I feel that the fact that we are at war is pretty important, yet we are also at life. One day at a time. and for many of us, myself included most of the time, that is enough.

Unbeknownst to you new friends, I spend a fair amount of time in the middle east, specifically Saudi Arabia (I'll tell you all about it at some point I'm sure). I have been traveling there on business for just coming up on ten years and one of the things that has struck me over the years is that people are people, generally speaking. The majority of us, as far as I can see, don't want any hassles, don't want to kill anybody, would love it if other people would stop killing people and really just want to get back to our families at the end of the day and live our lives. Like I said, we are also at life.

So here's to you, livers of lives, dreamers of dreams, lovers of love. Here's a non-political day in my life:

It just started raining again here in the temperate rainforest of Oregon. Oregon. Just the word means "green." But we do have long, hot summers and when that switch is thrown ( and some years, like this one, it is just like a switch has been thrown by some elves in the night), Fall comes; the rain comes. Today I walked out of the open garage doors of the shop and just smelled the new rain-- the forest duff (It's like a forest every where you turn in suburban Eugene) parched from months of sun, released a pungent, damp smell, almost like cow manure. It may not sound too palatable, but to me it was a glorious smell, rising from the earth all around me. It was life.

I would love to hear your Fall thoughts....

Tom

"Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants, what the hell do we do then?"

2006-09-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this in response to an e-mailed response to yesterday's post by an individual who suggested rather eloquently that if the American people lacked the common decency not to do it, we could reduce the region to glass and knock them back to the stone age, then occupy and set up the new government, much as we did in Japan after WWII.)

I enjoy and invite your comments. In fact, if there is a way to win the war, what you propose is the closest I’ve seen to being feasible. I don’t condone it because I am, I suppose, putting it in your words, one of those possessed with the common decency not to nuke entire populations. But let’s pretend that this “common decency” didn’t exist and we were more than happy to wipe the enemy off the face of the earth. Well, where are they? They are spread across the globe in cells, they are in the mountains of Afghanistan on the Pakistani border, they are in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. And that’s not to mention the African nations. There is no target. You could nuke one fourth of the globe and the next day a terrorist who was somebody’s suburban neighbor in London would bomb another train. We are not fighting a people as much as an ideology.

The next big question to throw back this way then would be, “Okay Mr. Smarty Pants, what the hell do we do then?”

Here is a very naïve and idealistic model: It seems to me that we cannot denounce violence while we are being violent. We must not become the enemy. Think about it: your saying that we must eradicate every Jihadist Muslim off the face of the earth, or as close to it as we can-- by reducing them to the stone age. Sounds eerily familiar if you listen to Jihadist rhetoric. Perhaps we can make a move in the name of a higher position. What about:

1: Announce that it has become self evident through history that violence begets more violence. That acts of aggression create acts of reprisal. That we understand that the enemy will use deadly force against innocent people to further their cause and that such a thing is wrong and that we won’t have any part in it.

2. Acknowledge that in all conflicts, both sides tend to believe that they are right and that either the people fighting or the governments ordering people to fight are willing to sacrifice lives for their “rightness.” This can make such conflicts go on for generation after generation after generation as these sentiments are handed down— look at the Israeli/Arab conflict.

3. Make a simple worldwide plea asking the world and it’s political and religious leaders to denounce violence, especially the killing of innocent people, in the name of their country or religion and stand together with the United States to make the first move towards a more peaceful planet. In this way, the world becomes allied with the US, further alienating the extremists.

4. Once global support can be rallied for a less violent approach to conflict resolution, the likelihood of an international coalition force giving support to the newly formed Iraqi government goes up and troop draw downs can begin for the U.S., improving public opinion. With less cost for operating costs of occupying Iraq with 140,000 US troops, support can be given to the Iraqi government in other ways.

If the US changes it’s position of being a known aggressor and acting police force for the whole world (whether they like it or not), and becomes a promoter of peace, it would take some of the wind out of the sails of those who hate the US. How do you continue hating a reformed nation that wishes not to use force against other countries but extend a hand in diplomacy and have a policy of non-violence? Statistics have shown and US generals and ex-cabinet members are saying that the actions taken by this administration have only stirred up the hornets nest and created a breeding ground for terrorists. We certainly can’t be doing any worse than we are on this tack.

Food for thought. Would love to hear more from you on this.

Cheers,

Tom

How about this: we can't win the Iraq war.

2006-09-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

The issue of how we feel about Islamic and Christian fundamentalism aside (one must study the Holy wars and how the empirical drives of western civilization have been justified through “manifest destiny,” or converting the heathens, through time immemorial to understand how this has truly happened on both sides), the war in Iraq, unfortunately, cannot be won by the United States, statistically and pragmatically speaking. To make this clear, we have to examine the Vietnam War. Though the conflict in Vietnam may seem somewhat principally different than in Iraq (debatable, but I'll leave that topic for another day), there are three striking similarities:

1. Both conflicts were sold to the American people under false pretenses: for Vietnam it was the Gulf of Tonkin incident and we all know too well that for Iraq it was weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was somehow connected to Al Qaeda and hence had something to do with the tragedy of September 11. 2001 or Jihadist mentality in general.

2. The fighting techniques of the enemy included a blatant disregard for the casualties of their own ranks and hence they would not be swayed into surrender based on their losses or being bled into giving in for fear of losing future generations.

3. The American people do not share this blatant disregard of casualties amongst their ranks and public opinion of the war has and will turn sour before the enemy has even given a single thought to such ideas.

The problem that this sets up is that even if the U.S. takes the approach of total annihilation of every fundamentalist, Jihadist Muslim, there is no way to practically carry out such an idea. There is no nation, no border to the ideology and their ranks swell with the anger that they feel over the further occupation of Arab lands and the war under false pretenses. And the west has not been innocent in its Middle East and third world dealings. Study your history and you will find that we have manipulated and controlled countries for their assets much the way we broke treaty after treaty with Native Americans throughout our domestic history in order to expand our holdings and acquire resources. If there’s something we want and it’s on someone else’s land we will find a way to get it. Agree or disagree with the above, certainly there are enough disenfranchised Muslim youths that do and these will flow across the borders of Iraq from Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, etc., etc., etc, and create fresh martyrs for the cause. After all, this is the same basic enemy that has already defeated the Soviet Union and let us not forget that Ho Chi Minh defeated China and France before taking on the United States.

A writer's world, a world for the writing.

2006-09-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

My friend Andrew once told me (paraphrasing from memory), "It's not that interesting things happen to writers more than anybody else, interesting things happen to everybody, every day. Writers are just people who happen to write it down." I must say that my old buddy really nailed it. We are all just souls at summer camp so we all get the near death canoe trip (ask Cindra about that one), the broken hearts and the stolen kiss by the lake-- not to mention poison oak, dysnetary and herpes. The best part is that we don't know what's coming next. As Camus said in The Stranger, "Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising towards me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time..." So write on you bloggers. One absurd day at a time.

And so it goes...

2006-09-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

Tasmanian Tom 9-15-06 posted by wife

Here is the newly established blog for Tom. He's at work in the shop making us a living right now...which I appreciate. I'm sure he will say something interesting very soon, though. That's what he does!

Stay tuned...

Wife Out

The subjectivity of morality and the moral majority? How do we come to terms with 6 billion empirical perspectives?

2006-09-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

You know, it bugs me when people of like mind sit around and talk about like things in a mutually gratuitous rallying session. For that reason I will see how long I can go without revealing too much of my leftness or rightness (since those unfortunate polarizing labels are so hard to avoid). I would love to somehow have the opportunity to get a discussion going with people from as far left, right and middle (how far is middle?) on any practical, political or spiritual subject to bridge the gap that is instantly created with these labels. There's a quote I heard once that I like: "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged." conversely, how about "a liberal is a conservative that got laid off one month before their retirement would have kicked in"? We are all people concerned with keeping the bills paid, a roof over our heads, food on the table and that our children get every opportunity they can to have a good life. Black, white, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or pagan we can mostly agree on those fundamentals, can't we? What else can we agree on? I'd love to hear comments on that subject: what are the universal truths or values amongst us?