Current Affairs « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Current Affairs ... Science ...

The Paul Frampton “drug mule / honey trap” story is a real head-scratcher. The NY Times just ran a good article about the case. In a nutshell, Frampton is a 68-year old theoretical physicist who works on cutting-edge research in the fields of particle physics and cosmology. He is a professor at the University of North Carolina, although for the past two years he has been in South America, either under arrest, awaiting trial, in prison, or most recently, under “house arrest” on the premises of a fellow physicist who lives in Argentina. Frampton hasn’t done too well with women most of his life; he was married at 50 but soon divorced, and recently tried to get “back in the game” using an internet dating site. He had earlier gotten something going with a woman in China, and traveled all the way there to see her (given that they were discussing marriage). But the whole thing blew up quite quickly once they were face-to-face.

Undaunted, the big professor took up with someone claiming to be a 35-year old swimsuit model from Europe. As with many things in “virtual reality”, it all seemed too good to be true. And of course it was. Unfortunately, it did NOT seem too good to be true to this great thinker. He and “she” made plans to meet in Bolivia, but once he got to LaPaz, his sweetheart claimed to be in Europe, called to an important last-minute photo shoot. So he was to fly to Brussels to catch up with her, but she asked him for a small favor. I.e., pick up a piece of luggage that she had allegedly left behind in LaPaz and bring it to Brussels for her.

Professor Frampton was warned about this “in real time”. He was in touch with a friend during the trip, and was told point-blank that this was a set-up, that the suitcase would have drugs » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:15 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, March 3, 2013

◊ Shrinks, Snowflakes and Zen: One Size Fits All?

Current Affairs ... Psychology ...

I am lucky in that I had parents who cared and managed to do a pretty good job of bringing me up. They certainly had their problems; being their child was not always a sunny-day picnic. But they were the kind of parents whose ultimate loyalty could be taken for granted, all the way thru to adulthood. Only later on in life did I find out what a luxury that was.

I was also lucky in that I never experienced a really bad trauma, like being sexually abused by a priest as a child, or being on a battlefield or witnessing a murder. (And I hope that trend continues into the final decades of my life). As such, I never felt the need to see a professional therapist. I’ve been able to deal with most of my emotional problems by talking with others and thinking things through on my own. (I enjoy questioning myself sometimes, questioning my reasons and motives and behaviors as though I were someone else.). I feel as though my own behavior is under my own control (most of the time, anyway). Thus, I couldn’t imagine investing my time and money into a series of therapeutic discussions with a trained counselor. I can always find better things to do with my limited bank account.

Nonetheless, psychological therapy is still a popular practice amongst college-educated suburban Americans like myself. So I wondered what it was like (although I have read stories about therapy, and » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:30 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

◊ Heads in the [dark] “Cloud”

Current Affairs ... Technology ...

I’m probably into the final decade of my working life, so I’m not trying all that hard anymore to keep up with modern business trends. Nevertheless, I was chatting with the IT director at my job the other day, and we started talking about cloud computing. Our employer (a mid-sized local government agency) does not yet utilize cloud services, but the IT guy wants us to. I asked him, just why do we need to buy our computing services from “the cloud”. The IT guy in question is not very good at giving concise, relevant answers. And once again, he went off on one of his rambling monologues (sort of like my blog entries!). But somewhere in his speech, I heard a sentence that actually summed it up.

In a nutshell: my employer invested over a quarter million $$ into servers and enterprise software for e-mail, file storage and exchange, anti-virus, and other network management functions. This is the backbone of our data system, to which about 400 desktop computers are connected. We pay additional on-going sums for all the wiring within our main office, and to rent T-1 connection lines between our headquarters and 5 remote office locations. There are further fees for equipment repair, software maintenance, and the in-house staff needed to keep the servers healthy.

Going to the cloud means renting all of this capacity from some big company with a huge server bank, and connecting to it with individual high-speed internet connections from every local site. As such, we could do away with » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:04 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, February 17, 2013

◊ The Zen of Zero Dark 30

Current Affairs ... Society ... Zen ...

My Zen sangha (Clear Mountain Zen Center) has a web site where they post recorded mp3 files of the weekly “teisho”, i.e. the 10 minute talks usually given during the second sitting period by Sensei Carl Bachmann, or one of the senior teaching members. Last week, Sensei Bachmann’s talk reflected upon the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” in light of the First Buddhist Precept, i.e. “abstain from causing harm and taking life”. Actually, the Sensei was discussing the overall US effort to find and kill Osama Bin Laden, which is what Zero Dark Thirty fairly accurately portrays. The movie seems to have convinced him that evil truly exists. Some weeks ago he was considering re-writing our Gatha of Repentance as to expunge the term “evil karma”. But since ZDT, he is content with it.

So what did teacher Bachmann find to be the main evil of ZDT? I would have thought it was the September 11, 2001 attacks which killed 2,996 people, and also the other terror attacks carried out before and after that date by Al Qaeda against civilians in London, Madrid and throughout the Middle East. Those attacks appear to me to violate the First Precept in a huge and heinous fashion.

But no. The good Sensei felt that the covert US actions depicted in the movie, including the torture » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:30 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, February 2, 2013

◊ Railroad Voices: Women and Trains in a Changing World

Current Affairs ... Society ...

Knowing that I was once a serious railroad enthusiast (and still am, to some degree), a friend from my Zen community recently loaned me a photo book relating to railroads, Railroad Voices by Linda Neimann and Lina Bertucci. This was not the usual dry historical tome or railroad photo album aimed at buffs and modelers. Railroad Voices tells a story of two women who encountered modern railroad life in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, a time of much change and contraction in the railroad industry. The book speaks to an artistic and intellectually engaged audience; both women have unusual combination of academic achievement (PhD’s) and experience as train crew employees, being among the first women to break the male-only barrier in that job category. Their book does not assume any particular interest in the railroad industry; the railroad serves mostly as a stage for the unfolding of various social vignettes. The railfan can come along for the ride, but shouldn’t expect that hobbiest interests and sensibilities will be catered to.

Thus, from a railfan perspective, I was initially disappointed with Railroad Voices (but not to say that its stories and photographs are entirely devoid of technical interest). Also, as a former switch tower operator, I would have liked some pictures and stories from inside the switch towers (like the ones seen in Ms. Bertucci’s photos from Milwaukee). Ditto for the dispatchers who directed train movements, plus the signal maintainers who kept the switches and signals working.

But no, this is a train crew’s story told in words and photos. A story well told, albeit from a somewhat unusual perspective — i.e., from the eyes and ears of women » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:10 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

◊ Trendy Articles

Current Affairs ... Public Policy ...

For today, I’m going to list some recent articles that caught my attention, with a short comment on why I think they are worth reading.

First, an article on a conservative commentary site, saying that there is a “new government class” consisting of government workers and retirees, Social Security / Medicare / Medicaid recipients, food stamp recipients, TANF recipients, veterans receiving long-term benefits, etc. These people (including myself) have a vested financial interest in the existence of a government, one that goes over and above the usual social benefits of law and order, military defense, education, keeping the streets clean, putting out fires and responding to other emergencies, etc. I think this all relates to Mitt Romney’s famed “47 percent that won’t consider voting for me” comments at the fund-raising dinner in Florida.

This “government class” is opposed, I would guess, to the entrepreneurial class, who are supposedly burdened and slowed down by the government hordes, given the taxes that they need to pay in order to let us get our checks and benefits. Of course, the article author accuses Barack Obama and the Democrats with trying to expand the “government dependency class” as much as possible, so as to make it politically impossible to reduce government and taxes. This would assure that the entrepreneurial class will be forever limited, such that our economy’s growth rate and overall well-being will not reach full potential; thus, our nation will be poorer and weaker overall than it otherwise would have to be, solely because of the short-sighted political machinations of the Dems.

I gather that this is a popular notion amidst Republicans and conservatives these days. Actually, it is a rather bogus dichotomy. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:27 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Friday, December 14, 2012

◊ Open Letter to Scientific American

Current Affairs ... Public Policy ... Religion ... Science ...

There’s an article in the November, 2012 Scientific American magazine by a fellow named Shawn Lawrence Otto that summarizes the strain of un-scientific and even anti-science sentiment that has worked its way into American politics over the past decade or so. You’ve heard of the issues — teaching “creationism” in schools (the notion that evolution isn’t right and that God did directly create human-kind as per the Book of Genesis); barriers to fetal stem cell use; denial of climate change; opposition to government-sponsored vaccination programs; and restrictions on contraception and abortion. Anyone who followed the GOP presidential primary season will note how far such notions have come in terms of public acceptance, especially if they recall the names Bachman, Perry and Santorum (has-been politicos do fade fast, though, don’t they).

This is all somewhat ironic, given that America today is living in such a science-dominated environment. I mean, just where did all those smart phones and tablet computers and Prius’s and miracle drugs and high-tech medical equipment come from? From factories far outside the USA, no doubt; but without all the scientific research done right here in the USA over the past generation or two, they would never have seen the light of day. Science has been very, very good to the economy and standard of living in the USA. So why are so many people pushing back against so many things that the scientists are telling us?

I won’t go into a full-blown examination and analysis of that question here (as I probably don’t know most of the reasons). But I will say this: the scientists and their friends the academic philosophers have really asked for trouble » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:52 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, November 4, 2012

◊ Hurricane Reflections

Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ...

When I was a kid growing up in suburban New Jersey back in the late 1950s and 1960s, I had a thing about disasters. Big snowstorms, floods, riots, nuclear war – I saw it on TV, and it looked like fun! Day to day life in Jersey just seemed so plain, so predictable, so dull. Why not rattle the china a bit, see what happens? Sure, some people get hurt, but others become heros. Why shouldn’t I get in on that?

Sidenote on the nuclear war part – although I was only 9 years old and in 4th grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I knew just what was going on and followed it with great interest. I was a natural hole-digger as a kid, always loved to get out a shovel and create a pit of some sort. I had a big excavation project going when Kennedy decided to call Khrushchev out for putting nukes on our southern shores, and a day or two later my mother asked me when I was going to fill it in. I told her that I was going to keep it until the missiles are gone from Cuba – a ready place to hide if I was out in the backyard and those sneaky Reds unexpectedly shot one at near-by Manhattan! (Like a 4 foot hole would protect me from a megaton H-bomb going off 10 miles away.) My mother was taken aback by my response, and I got to keep the hole unfilled for a few more days.

Ah, the naivete of youth. We didn’t suspect that societies are frail and can collapse, no idea that it was even possible. Even thought I knew a little better than most kids about » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 3:52 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, October 27, 2012

◊ A Facebook Murder of an Innocent Girl?

Current Affairs ... Society ... Technology ...

I’m nearing the end of my fifth decade on this planet and I admittedly don’t know much about bring up kids (other than having watching my parents do it — and realizing many years later that they had done a much better job of it than I had thought at the time). But with that said, I wanted to discuss a recent “high profile homicide” involving a 12 year old girl, and the question of whether her parents had in some way failed by not training her to be wary of the situation that did her in. (Oh, and also some comments on the parents of the leading suspects.) Actually, I am not going to stand in judgment as to whether the parents in question “failed”. Obviously I cannot. In fact, I am sympathetic regarding all the challenges that parents face in the modern world, a world that is arguably more complex and uncertain than the one that my parents brought me up in.

The case in question is the murder of Autumn Pasquale in Clayton, NJ last Saturday. From what I’ve read, 12-year old Autumn was a fairly typical pre-teen Caucasian girl who lived in a single parent middle-class home. Her father is a postal worker; I couldn’t find out very much about her mother (Jennifer Cornwell). It appears that Ms. Cornwell presently lives in Cherry Hill. According to MyLife.com, Ms. Cornwell lived in Clayton until 2005, then was in Moorestown until 2010. If true, then Autumn lived with her father only. It’s uncertain if anyone else lived with them (Mr. Pasquale was pictured at Autumn’s funeral with his girlfriend Cheryl Evans).

During the week before last, Autumn had a brief discussion on Facebook with one of the suspects, 15 year old Justin Robinson of Clayton (an African American). The discussion was about a picture of Robinson’s BMX » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:04 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, August 30, 2012

◊ R.I.P. Neil Armstrong, and the dream you lived

Current Affairs ... Outer Space ...

The press recently marked the passing of the first man to walk on the moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong. Ah, another famous figure from my youth has gone to the great round-up out in the blue. And another reminder is had that life is not to be taken for granted.

The RealClearScience web site published a tribute to Mr. Armstrong just after his passing, making the point that he probably saved the Apollo 11 mission from being aborted or even failing tragically during the last minute when the lunar module approached the moon’s surface. As the story goes, the “LEM” (lunar excursion module) with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was off course a bit and was heading towards a rather rocky and dangerous landing spot. Armstrong decided to over-ride the computer controls and pilot the craft himself, which required him to fly horizontally over the moon’s surface, looking for a nice flat spot to land. This maneuver used up a lot of fuel, such that the LEM was less than a minute from running on fumes (which it basically doesn’t do). But Armstrong stayed cool and finally found his spot, and the rest was history.

Not long after reaching the moon, Armstrong took the first walk on lunar soil. It obviously was a moment for the history books, and Armstrong had a good line prepared for the moment. As his boots hit the lunar dust, Mr. Armstrong spoke into his helmet microphone “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. It was a big moment (recall the scenes of CBS News anchorman Walter Chronkite being flabbergasted and losing his words), and this line sounded really good. Only later on did anyone think about what Armstrong had actually said. Man . . . mankind . . . what’s the difference? One small step for humanity, one giant leap for humanity? What’s this, a Zen koan or something?

No, Armstrong was trying to contrast how his stepping off the LEM platform was physically just » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:04 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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