Lock Up?

"We lock up more of our citizens per capita than brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro," wrote Cynthia Tucker in her request to end the War on Drugs.

I've got news for her. In the early 1960's, Castro's Cuban revolutionaries shot the entire previous party dead... up against a wall. No going to see a judge. It was televised, day in and day out. "Paredon!" they chanted. Thousands and thousands died, so there was no locking them up in the hoosegow. And many of the ones that were lucky enough to get to jail ended up dead anyway, due to starvation and sickness. Rape, murder and looting (in that order) were wholesale and only deterred by hefty walls and demonstration of defensive gunfire. No getting caught and going to jail for that, since the murderers were the new revolutionary party. Then in the 1980's, Fidel sent his prisoners here via the Mariel Boatlift and emptied his jails.

Since then, news and pictures have appeared of dissidents being beaten to death at the US Special Interest Section in Cuba ("the embassy")... no need to lock them up either.

Yes, Cynthia, brutal dictator Fidel Castro doesn't lock up the citizens... he kills them instead. Your statement is an insult.

"Tijuana authorities found 275 pounds of marijuana and a half-completed tunnel under the border," quipped Jay Leno, "Wonder why the tunnel was only half completed?"

Dahhh! Is it better to laugh with Leno and be ignorant like Tucker, or be stressed with the truth?


- text © 2009 by Willy

Thievery

Once is randomness, twice catches my eye but the third time is a 3-sigma event that raises the hair in back of my neck and makes me pay strict attention. The fourth time?


I knew that there were all kinds of thieves, from the idiot with a gun robbing a bank cashier to the bank vice-president stealing it big-time. But I did not expect to see our citizens in cahoots with congress and the bankers giving the entire country away. I lived through the Savings & Loan debacle of the 80's but the current thievery makes the S&L crooks weak amateurs by comparison. And it's happening not once, twice or three times... they're about to raid the treasury for the fourth time in a little over a year to the tune of yet another trillion or so. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking ALL the money (with appologies to senator Dirksen). The fiscal year 2009 deficit was three times that of 2008. The foreign-owned US debt is $3 trillion, a quarter of that China's. There is no letup in sight.

Our great nation is the last bastion of stoic common sense, but we seem to want to go the way of Rome. It's not my congressmen who are voting screwy, it's the big cities and "blue" states.

The fourth time scares me.


-text © 2009 by Willy


P.S., it's also called looting and plundering, but it's usually done to another country.

A Real Engineer

The times were when an engineer could work in his garage all by himself and invent a great new gizmo.

Those times are long gone.

Real engineers still help solve problems, first by careful observation and then by bold intervention, but we are now do-it-yourself self-starters with ant-like collaboration. We have to work well with others on our machines. We have to cooperate and coordinate. Sometimes we have differences and we get frustrated. Like brothers, we have to learn to get along and get past our differences. We have to share in the work, in the fun and in the glory. We have to make this people challenge equal to the technical challenge... a problem to solve.


It used to be that all we needed was a wirewrap pencil in a lab. Nowadays, it takes that plus the right words... and only the right words... spoken with all our heart, all our soul and all our might. Whether we like it or not, it's true: we have to work together to get things done.

Well, self... get on with it: go talk to the team and give them some inspiration, and remember that I'm a real engineer. I'm a real engineer. I'm a real... [clicking heels together]. Oh, for the good old days!



- text © 2009 by Willy

It's Natural?

Mother Nature loves variety... and in quantity.

If you train a telescope on a dark spot of the night sky, you see a star field. Zoom in and you'll see a star field, zoom again and you'll see... a star field, endlessly, but each one of those stars is unique. Same is true in the woods, with what seems like an infinite number of trees and rocks, but each is really different from the others. And ditto with people... an infinite number, but one very different from another.

In nature, some trails are easy and interesting but challenging, and others are difficult, painful and nasty.



Similarly, some people's souls are lazy, shallow and nasty, whereas others have interesting depth and breath to them, either because they escaped their nature... or because of it. Some people help solve problems... and others ARE the problem... and there are an infinite number of them in each of these two categories. I'm staying away from the problem people just like I'm staying away from The White Mountains. Deliver us from evil! That is, while I'm here, I'm associating with and choosing to enjoy the good. There's PLENTY of good here to choose, in the variety of people as well as in the variety of nature.

The attraction of naughty is much overrated and antiquated. Enough, already!

-© 2009 by Willy