Random Chaos

...which I suppose is a redundancy from the department of redundant superfluosities.

Its been a source of continuing wonderment to me that as technical jobs get more difficult -- not so much difficult due to technical content as difficult due to having to do more because we've laid off people or because we want to keep the auditoids happy -- the tools available to do the jobs have not kept pace, nor has the training to do it. I'm not talking training as a techie would, either -- that being, training that tells you interesting stuff that might eventually be useful. I'm talking survival training that tells you what you need to know to do the job today. I guess the assumption is that you'll learn as you go, and hopefully not sink the customer as you do it.

I know that we're not alone in that predicament, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.

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I'm dammed if I know what we should do about Iraq. Waist deep in the Big Muddy.... I despise the idea of staying for no useful purpose, and despise the idea that the only useful purpose that comes to mind is for us to guarantee a source of oil. Not that I think we can guarantee it, not if we had ten million troops carpeting the ground. Plus, though I can secretly think 'it'd be worth it' if somebody else's kid died for the goal of readily available and inexpensive gas, I wouldn't give a scratch on my own daughter's skin for it. No one would.

I am frightened by the idea that the White House is now being advised by experts in opinions on wars, the result of which is 'people are more likely to support you if you project the image that you expect to win'. Just how dumb do they think people are? Course, we are talking about the people who voted for him in large numbers.

And then there's Donald 'you go to war with the tools you've got, and when I visit, I get the heaviest steel-reinforced rolling stock that Halliburton's got' ..Rumsfeld.

I think that we could install a properly functioning democracy in Iraq with apple pie and brass bands (or whatever the Iraqi equivalent is) , march out with all flags flying, and two days later the place could be in chaos again, burning flags and giving the finger to us.

I do not believe that we are dishonoring the people who have died if we bail out on that country, yet I the thought of giving up -- anywhere. By which logic we should still be in Vietnam. I guess my gut feeling is that there is no upside to staying, and lot of downside. Or is that the idea -- that we can't make it better, we can only keep it from being worse?

I want a grownup to tell me what to do. Someone who's smart, forceful, and direct -- like Dick Cheney -- but who has scruples.

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More money doesn't always buy better stuff, and even when it does, it doesn't buy proportionately better stuff. This is Bills Hotel Room Rate Theorem, upon which I've expounded before. Most current example: my wife bought me a beard trimmer a couple of years ago. I liked it, but it would not keep a charge. I went out looking for a replacement. All of the replacements have many many attachments and cost many bucks, but they don't do the basic job any better than the old one.

We're going to be looking for a replacement car in the next twelve months, probably, and we want to keep that theorem in mind. We can afford a very nice car, but we don't want to get the best we can afford, because we don't think it'd be worth it. We know what we want -- preferably hybrid engine, sunroof, room for four me-sized s. We don't think a given vehicle will make us ier, more desirable, slimmer, or cooler (thats an offshoot of my thoughts about why certain cars sound 'powerful' or 'muscular'. Pshaw. ) and we don't care who we buy it from. Saab, GM, Volvo, BMW. Though I'm a little leery of names like Hyundai, still.

Same thoughts apply to the house we'd like to build. We don't want to best we can possibly get, because that last fifty thousand dollars won't buy fifty thousand dollars of satisfaction. More like a thousand or two, if we're lucky. We know what we want, and we've prioritized that list. I know there are ten thousand things we didn't even think about (what kind of roofing material? what flooring in the bathroom? How many lights in the hallway? Where does the mailbox go?) so what we want to do is list The Big Stuff and hope that the others follow logically.

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Saw another article about pharmacists who won't dispense legal meds because they don't agree with their use. If I try hard, I can understand their point of view, but not their action. The latest spin was that they 'want the right that doctors have had to refuse to take actions that are contrary to their personal beliefs'. I think they'd better stock up on malpractice insurance -- I seem to recall that doctors are required to provide emergency care even when they don't want to do it -- not continuing care, but emergency care. The morning after pill fits that description.

I guess what irks me about this sort of thing is that it feels like people pushing their beliefs into my face, changing my life because of what they believe. Similar to the people who believe that religion should be part of everything, and a prominent part, too. I don't agree with that view -- I think that if you're religious, it should inform and instruct your life but should not be something that you expect me to follow or be affected by. (Though I did get to use that kind of rigid religious intolerance in a joke yesterday -- after I saw a marketing packet for my company that said we were 'all evangelists for the company', I asked a coworker if he was an evangelist for us, and he said no, he was a contractor. To which I replied 'Then you must be a heathen. ') I want a way to push back on these people, but I don't want it to be Howard Dean, whom I regard as a self righteous pompous maniac. I want someone I can respect. How long has it been since I've seen a politician I respected?


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Looking for stuff to read. The latest issue of American Scholar arrived yesterday -- some nice writing about the Pope and the papacy, and an article about Social Security that I'd swear I've seen elsewhere, but still interesting to read (mostly because if I did see it elsewhere, I didn't read it all.) I dragged a couple of books down off the shelf that I bought and never read. They're books I want to Have Read, and some -- Shelley's Heart, for example -- are very well written, they just didn't grab me. I found an interesting list here. Makes me think my own list isn't nearly so overwhelming.