We got some Christmas pictures taken of the kids last Friday. (One must start early in one is to have any shot at getting Christmas cards out on time.) Here is one of Lil'E and Lil'er E. Aren't they cute!
I've put up a new post on Inspired to Action, talking about the idea of proximate justice.You may ask "what is proximate justice?" Good question! Go over to I2A and find out. I want to hear some people's thoughts on this topic.
On a semi-related note, today the Texas Attorney General's office has released their 2008 report on human trafficking in Texas. You can read the report for yourself: "The Texas Response to Human Trafficking". I've done a quick skim of it; it has some 21 recommendations for changes to current laws and actions to be taken. A bit hard to get through for the average person. But, at the end in Appendix B, there are summaries of fifteen recent news stories from Texas on people held in forced labor or sexual slavery.
The U.S. Department of State estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 are trafficked into the U.S. from Asia, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe, and many more are trafficked domestically within the United States each year. About one in five people trafficked have been in Texas. (That's at least 3000 every year right here at home.) This is in my back yard - what can I do to change this? The first thing is to talk about it, open my eyes and others, and make people want to see it change. The Underground Railroad (and need for it) is not resigned to historical footnote; it's an active road today.
Tags: Texas Attorney General, Human Trafficking, Report, Proximate Justice
You may not realize it, but tomorrow, November 18th, is the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre. In total, there were 909 people dead - more than a third of them children. Today, to most people, Jonestown and Jim Jones have been reduced to little more than an aphorism, a cliche warning us not to "drink the Kool-Aid".
I was only five when this terrible thing came to pass, but I remember how the news filled the airwaves and shocked everyone. The memory of this has always brought me sorrow. As with so many other events, this is ingrained on my memory and makes me consider my actions, my choices, and their consequences carefully.
So today, as I remember what happened three decades ago, I think of songs that rend my heart. As long as there is evil in the world, as long as there are men whose passion for themselves is greater than their love for God, we will sing songs of morning and sorrow. Here are two of my favorite songs, songs that tear me apart and fill me with sorrow (in a good way).
Shaun Groves' "Sad Song"
Nickel Creek's "The Lighthouse Tale"
What are some of your favorite sad songs?
Tags: Jonestown, Sad Songs, Remembrance
Maybe it means the end of the world, but it needed to be done. I've updated my blogroll (that thing on the right hand sidebar where your blog is linked to from my blog). I did a little arranging while I was at it. There are a couple of blogs that I don't want to take off my list, but since they collectively blog about once a month I felt they should be separated into a "slow lane" of the information highway.
What, you don't see your blog listed over there? Well, let me know about it and I'll put it before the management and see what can be done. But if further losses in the stock markets ensue, don't blame me!
While I'm at it, you can enjoy this child's homework (not one of mine!) that needed some adult proofing before turning it in.
(I'm told this mother works at Home Depot – she is selling a shovel. The teacher thought she was a pole dancer.)
This past Wednesday, at work, I received 101 lessons as to why people should learn a lesson. Specifically, I received 100 lessons from people who did not learn the lesson from the first person's mistake.
On Wednesday morning, my work e-mail received what would seem to have been a spam e-mail. It was one that we had been recently warned about, appearing to originate from someone within the company and asking to have access granted to various security systems. Having been both forewarned and armed with the knowledge that I had no business granting such access, I deleted the e-mail.
The the first lesson came. In the form of a reply to the original e-mail by a person questioning why they were sent the e-mail. Of course, this person hit "reply all", thus sending it to everyone. Isn't it annoying when someone blindly uses "reply all" like that?
Ah, but then the real fun started rolling in. Over the next four or five hours I continued to receive e-mails from people protesting their inability to perform such a task and the likelihood that they were sent the original e-mail by mistake. All of them hit "reply all". I also got e-mails from people who were begging people to stop using "reply all", who also (naturally) had hit "reply all". The best of these was sent in a eye-catching blue, 100 point font - to everyone. In total, 101 "reply all's" were sent out. To everyone.
Oh, and when I say it was sent to everyone, I mean to everyone. Every single employee of this great company for which I work. All 38,000 (give or take) employees. All of it internal e-mail. I could practically smell our e-mail server melting from here. Other e-mails took significantly longer to get through the system. If it weren't so comedic and absurd, it would be downright frustrating.
Anyway, I survived without becoming e-mail cannon fodder. Either people finally wised up (unlikely) or the IT group put a block on everything related to this e-mail chain (more likely).
So, what's the record for the number of "reply all" junk e-mails for you?
So I've been out of town the last couple of days. I flew home last night - barely. I boarded the plane on time, and then a minute after I sat down I noticed that no one else was getting no the plane. Sure enough the flight attendant came on and told us we all had to get off the plane because the Houston airport had been closed by heavy rainstorms. So close! Finally, after a 90 minute delay, we reboarded and took off. As we were heading out, the flight attendant told us we were taking a somewhat different route to avoid the storm system. Below is an illustration of the normal and new flightplans:
Yes, the flight took twice as long as normal.
Normal Route
"New" Route
And did I mention that the plane smelled like poo? And I don't mean the cuddly bear with a honey pot! It seems the air-o-potty had a few issues.
But, for the last hour or so of the flight, I was treated to the most phenomenal light show I've ever witnessed. And I've seen July 4th at DisneyWorld!
As we skirted the edge of the storm system I got to watch - rather close - the lightning discharges. Not just the ones you see on the ground, from sky to earth, but also all of the cloud to cloud strikes. I wish I had had my camera. It also reminded me of how small we are. All the effort we take to fly, and one of these random flashes could take us out of the sky. All of our clamoring for energy and electricity to power an unending appetite, and here is casually thrown around enough power to run the whole of earth's greedy demands. Humbling.
I'm glad to be home. I'm glad to have had a chance to see what I saw. (And no, the picture below is not my plane. This is from a plane leaving Japan. Read about it here.)
In May I complained about the idiotic following of good guidelines for giving a presentation. The past two days I have spent with the same university group as they gave their fall update on projects (which my and other companies kindly pay for). Apparently somebody read my blog and got the point because only the professors and one or two new students followed the format so rigidly that it was comedic.
What a relief.
It made the nine hour day bearable. Even when half of the presentations involved finite element analysis. Now if I could only get them to move into reality and stop using such ridiculously idealized test systems. Maybe that's asking to much, though.
Over the years I've seen a few of the productions of Spike Lee. Overall, I've not really liked them very much, with one notable exception. A few years back (okay, 18 years back), he put together a TV special - Do it a-cappella - the soundtrack of which I've played to death. Here are a couple of samples for you.
The first is from one of my favorite a-cappella groups - Take 6. They have a great blend of tight harmonies and a jazz sound that is just terrific. This video shows them singing two songs, "Get Away Jordan" and "Something Within Me". Listen for the high note at the end of "Get Away Jordan" - they take it a third higher in the concert than on the album version of the song.
The next highlight is from the group Rockapella. You might know them better as the group that sang the theme song for the PBS game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. (Okay, a moment of honesty - who watched Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) Thankfully, they have since cut their hair from the mullets worn in this clip. They're singing "Zombie Jamboree", but it takes about two minutes into the video to get past Spike Lee and get to the music.
Thursday marks four days of my sitting through lectures by none other than Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Okay, it isn't really Peter Sellers' famous character, but close enough. A little older, portly, and with graying hair - but the exaggerated accent is there.
You'd think that would be fun, wouldn't you? Yes, he did talk about how there is very little resistance keeping a man and woman apart in the shower. And yes, he has repeatedly referred to some surfactants as looking like "cookratches" (cockroaches). But, how many ternary phase diagrams of surfactant/oil/water combinations can you look at in a four day period before the onset of insanity? Here, look at this one and tell me how long it would take you?The worst part of it is that we brought this guy up from Venezuela to teach this He did the same thing 20 months ago. He is covering the exact same material. We were all hoping for a little more advanced teaching this time. The one thing he took out for this round - rheology of surfactant systems. Total bummer! Ah, well, such is life. I'll make it through this last day and then I'll be able to get back to some real work. Maybe. In the near future. I hope.
I have posted over on Inspired to Action the interview I did last week with Sara Groves and Charlie Peacock. Read it here.
Here's a little teaser, from Sara, on dealing with the hugeness of these problems:. . . when she landed on the ground the very first thing she saw in South Africa was a little girl who had just been abused, had just been raped, and she was crying. Not because she had just been abused but because she’d been paid a dime by her abuser and some older boys had taken her dime. So this little girl, her perspective, her whole world – that she had been violated in that way – wasn’t even really . . . the point of her pain was that she had lost the dime. And I asked my aunt how do you not cry every single day?
Go read the interview and find out more about International Justice Mission. Once you do, tell me what you think about their work - what impacts you most, or what questions are you left with. I may be able to get some more answers from my contacts at IJM.
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