Get out of my way.

The history of humanity is one of marginalization, subjugation, and elimination. This is facilitated by genetics, class, wealth, technology, and combinations of those and related things. It has been that way for recorded history and has analogs among animals and plants (alpha males, invasive species).

Editorial cartoon, 'Paper or Plastic,'
by Tom Cheney

We've certainly tried to overcome our biological intransigence, from prophets and liberators (Jesus, Martin Luther King) to formalized rules (Code of Hammurabi, the US Constitution), but our efforts are ever and always nulled by due process, conflicting interests, happenstance, natural disasters. (Consider, eg, the rise of the peasant class in Medieval Europe following the Black Death when the ruling class was forced to bargain with the dwindling number of laborers who maintained the land and livestock).

I do believe some systems have more merit than others, but what I think doesn't matter. The USA we know is foundering amid a noisy snarl of competing ideas and will someday succumb to one or a mixture, and future generations will uncover statues, circuit boards, plastics, and analyze us like we do the ancient world.

Neither Dawkins nor Pope Francis, Black Lives Matter nor the alt-right, Islamic Reformism nor ISIS can change this.

And the ideologues who replace us won't understand that, in time, our fate will be theirs. And between now and then, millions will suffer who are guilty of nothing more than being born and being in the way.

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From the drive into work to the the fate of nations, the whole of humanity distills down to "Get out of my way."

Revolutions are satisfying, but only set the stage the more revolutions. Interesting, isn't it, that "revolution" is related to "revolve" (as in doors and planets and handguns).

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Good ideas sometimes need to be enforced, and bad ideas discarded, because too few of us are able to distinguish among them (cf Thomas Jefferson).

Some modern examples are immunization (a good thing), climate change (a real thing), freedom of expression (a vital thing).

I'm tempted to extend the idea of the "wisdom of the crowds" to large scale human events and patterns seen over decades and centuries. (I.e., that enough people given enough information will make a good decision without needing to now how or why they are doing it. Cf Francis Galton's county fair experiment where attendees accurately guessed the weight of an ox►.)

There's a Darwinian elegance to this that I like, a "survival of the fittest idea" idea. (See Nicholas Wade's excellent The Faith Instinct - How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures►).

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This blog entry was sparked by:

1. A coincidental encounter with Robert P Jones's The End of White Christian America.
   
   As far as I know, Jones doesn't propose that the end of White Christian America is a good thing or that what's replacing it will be better. Being white, Christian, and American, I'm rather fond of the environment that fashioned me. I have trouble seeing anything wrong with that, or why I might have wanted to prevent it (if that were even possible - leopards and spots and all that).
   
2. And the driver who tailgated and honked at me for 100 yards on a 35mph side street until I pulled off to the shoulder and let him/her pass.
   
   I had children in the car and used it as an object lesson. I waved and smiled. He/she may have recognized me or felt guilty; he/she slowed down considerably after passing. This was in Ada, MI. If you don't know Ada, think Podunk. 

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Novel nearly done, approaching 100,000 words, which is where it will likely end. Summer and vacation draining my time and energy. And as anyone working on a large project knows, if you spend too much time away, you have to reassemble some mental bits, which is painful, and takes even more time than you spent putting them together the first time.

Started: 07/07/2017

Why I'm Worried (Getting on the Wrong Bus)

Each day I start with an hour or two of NPR, then a couple with FOX (I like John Gibson), finish the day with a network broadcast, usually NBC, and occasionally add some MSNBC (I like Chris Matthews; disagree with him a lot, but like him).

 

I've discovered that If you abandon your preconceptions and let yourself follow the discussions on any of these networks, they can be quite thought-provoking, even convincing.

 

For this to happen, some things must be true:

• The speakers need to have my trust.
• The guests need to be allowed to speak without the host correcting or adding shades of meaning.
• Everyone needs to be polite.
• Everyone needs to be honest with themselves.

 

This is so rare (and I'm so rarely able to stow my preconceptions), that recently while watching John Dean (White House Counsel for Nixon) on Hardball with Chris Matthews, I was surprised at myself for considering an opinion I would have discarded 10 minutes before.

 

Despite Matthews's frequent inability to keep his internal dialog internal*, I found myself eager for Dean's every next word, the same sort of attention I give to Bob Woodward, Charles Krauthammer or David Gergen.

 

I realized then how polarized we are. We're not only not on the same page, we're not even in the same book.

 

And it's not, as you might suspect, that I suddenly realized ideas were flying all about me without ever intersecting. It was instead that I was gladly entertaining a new idea that wasn't intersecting an old one.

 

Perhaps not unlike getting on the wrong bus and not realizing it's the wrong bus until you see your regular bus going in the other direction.

 

Perhaps there's actually a smidgen of hope here. If I can go joyriding among contrary ideas, why can't others?

 

I wish it were that simple. We are intractable and angry, littering our discourse with logical fallacies, insults, lies, exaggerations, and redirections.

 

It's amazing we settle anything at all.

 

We all know what happens when a relationship descends into loathing and contempt. It's only a matter of time before it dissolves, sometimes bitterly and painfully, inflicting even greater pain on those around us.

 

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My opinion on the latest scandals?

• The Russians meddled in our election, just as we've done in others.
• There was no collusion.
• Trump was surveilled, and records were unmasked and leaked for political purposes.
• Regardless of who did what, no one of any status will be punished.

 

Just my opinion. I may be wrong. But I don't think so. I did say Hillary was unelectable. I also said Trump was unqualified. Just not as disastrous as Hillary (who continues to live at arm's length from reality). And I still maintain that.

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I had planned to write a follow-up titled "Why I'm not worried," but I realized there was very little to say, aside from the fact that I haven't the energy to look for silver linings right now.

 

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*He suggested Susan Rice was being targeted because she's a woman and Black. Look for the 4/4/17 episode here; you'll need to log in with your TV provider to watch.

 

 

[2017.04.05]

 

 

Strict Open XML & Win10 on VirtualBox: An update on my search for the perfect word processor for writers.

This is where I was at last time I wrote about it this: Writing in the cloud: A free solution for long manuscripts >

Things I've learned since then:

• The MS Word editor built into Dropbox is outstanding. It's the result of a partnership between Dropbox and Microsoft and the cooperation shows, but I was having trouble editing Word docs. This is the error I was getting:

• Solution: Discovered this by just opening the problem doc in the full Word installation on Windows 10 and saving in different formats until I found one that worked in the Dropbox web editor. The format that worked? "Strict Open XML Document":

• (Strict Open XML is still a docx file, but doesn't include some Word-only formatting that as I understand contains legacy bits from older Word formats.)

WPS Writer Update

• WPS Writer for Linux is crashing when trying to open any Word doc.
• WPS Writer for Windows doesn’t seem to support Strict Open XML. At least, I can’t get it to work. (Odd that Linux and Windows versions of WPS Writer would start acting up on me at the same time; the Linux version hasn’t updated and isn’t on the same release schedule; in fact, it isn’t on any published schedule that I’m aware of.)
• Epic Fail: Discovered a need WPS doesn't meet: You can't reorder sections from the document navigator pane. Now, you can't do that with Dropbox's (or Microsoft' OneDrive) web editor, either, but when you need it, it's critical, so I had to work with the a full MS Word installation on Windows.

LibreOffice Update

LibreOffice 5 opens Strict Open XML just fine, and it allows you (though rather inelegantly) to reorder sections. It doesn’t, however, preserve images that are saved with Word in Strict Open XML format.

Why not use Google Drive? (which I like)

• Not sure I trust its built-in web editor for Word docs.
• Doesn't play on Linux.
• Doesn't play nice with Windows 10.

Where am I at today?

• Since I had to reinstall a full version of Word on Windows 10 to solve my Dropbox issue and reorder sections, I'm still using it.
• When I’m not using my Word computer at home, I use Dropox's Word editor.
• I’ll keep an eye on WPS, but I don’t have the time to figure which of the dozens of moving parts is causing the problem.

2016.10.21

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*** UPDATE ***

• Performance while editing long docs in the cloud (DropBox, OneDrive and Google) is really finicky. Can vary from adequate to unusable, whether I’m at McDonald’s or  plugged into my router. There are so many factors influencing this, there's no way I can make cloud editing 100% reliable.

So...  

• For home: a) Windows with full Word install and DropBox, and b) Windows 10 in a virtual machine on Oracle VirtualBox. This gives me access to Word and Windows on Linux. Not ideal, but no performance issues with my apps, and running Windows in a window is somehow ironically satisfying.
• Want to try it? It’s free and easy (and fun). Complete instructions are here: https://www.pcsteps.com/184-install-virtualbox-linux-mint-ubuntu/
• Away from home: Windows with full Word install and DropBox
• Using only Strict Open XML regardless.

2016.11.19

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Donald is red, Hillary’s blue ...

order turns on gossamer gears

and either

falls into a downy heap

or

floats apart as hoary seeds

strewn by grabbling breezes

--Streckfus Wort

Presque Isle

2016.11.08

Donald is red,

Hillary’s blue,

Elections are pointless

When you live in a zoo.

--Clarence Oddbody

2016.11.08

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About Book #4: 92,815 words. Perhaps I’ll share a chapter when I’m done and I’m actively seeking a publisher. Interested?

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A thought, a theory, a guess, and a rant.

(I still don’t know who I’m voting for, so please bear that in mind.)

A Thought:

Likely Hillary supporters are a noisy lot. Likely Trump supporters are quiet, mostly (I think) because voicing Trump support subjects you to ridicule, and that’s bad for careers, friendships, marriages, neighborhoods, etc.

A Theory:

A vote for Hillary is a protest against misogynistic husbands, boyfriends, bosses, coworkers, lecherous airplane passengers, and 500,000 years of gender role evolution (about the time we started wearing clothes and cooking our food).

We don’t like who we are and what mutating genes and collateral attributes have made us, so we blame our parents, God, church, each other, and anything else that’s tightly molded over our most indelible selves.

Hillary reminds me of a smug and prescriptive grammar teacher I once had. I can’t shake that unpleasant connection anymore than I can return to that ancient classroom to appreciate Silas Marner.  

A Guess:

The election will be very close and the loser will contest the results. The winner will be the subject of impeachment or legal inquiry within the first year.

(10/30/2016: An observation:

When someone remarks how crazy this election is, Hillary supporters often laugh. Trump supporters don’t.)

A Rant:

We tend to conflate ideas because it’s easier to support or condemn wide swaths of people (religion and decency; civil rights and abortion; marijuana and opiates; racism and color; etc).

But protection is protection, and it’s pretty meaningless if, instead of coexisting peacefully, we force everyone to share the same protected beliefs.

And it should apply to beliefs most of us hold (freedom of speech, association, worship) and those most of us don’t (freedom to hate, ridicule, and exclude). That’s one of the things that (up until I learned of Podesta’s “Catholic Spring”) I thought would never be in doubt.

What prompted my rant? Star Trek’s Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation) who cited the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision as an example of precisely why we need Hillary in the White House.

I like Wil Wheaton. I think he’s probably a good man. I also think he’s terribly wrong.

2016.10.26

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For those keeping, track: My book is at 92,446 words. Still expecting to end at 100,000 or thereabouts.