Independence Day...in Egypt...

The news from Egypt has been interesting and sometimes downright exciting over the past few days.  Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, was leading Egypt down a path toward an Iran-like fundamentalist Islamic republic – and the people of Egypt said (rather loudly) “No!”  If we are to believe the pronouncements of the Egyptian military that enabled Morsi's removal (and their actions are so far consistent), Egypt will get another bite at the apple – they get a “redo” on their constitution, and new elections.  It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next six months to a year.

While reading this news, I caught myself having an odd reaction, and it took me a while to figure out what it was.  It was envy, plain and simple.  I'm envious of the chance the Egyptian people have now to rework their government into something more to their liking.

Today is Independence Day here in the U.S., ordinarily a day I would enthusiastically celebrate.  Overeating and too much alcohol might be involved.  I don't feel much like celebrating this year.  The country whose independence I'd celebrate is slipping away, bit by bit.  Another slip happened this week: Obama, acting like the dictator he clearly would like to be, arbitrarily decided to delay enforce a law – he delayed the implementation of Obamacare for large companies.  He is exercising a power that our Constitution does not give him.  Under the Constitution, a president doesn't have the power to simply override a law passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.  Obama is doing it anyway, precisely as any tyrannical dictator would do.  Now perhaps there will be a lawsuit filed to prevent him from actually pulling this off, but in these days of complicity by both political parties, I'm not confident that such a thing will happen.

Why would Obama do this?  A reasonable question, and this one has a clear answer.  It's not the excuse that Obama is giving; that's just political cover.  The real reason is that his fellow Democrats are afraid of getting creamed in the 2014 election cycle – because they're afraid of the electorate's backlash when they find out what Obamacare will cost them once it's implemented.  This is especially true of some key Democratic constituencies: young people and minorities.  When these groups have to start writing the checks to pay for Obamacare, they're not going to be happy campers. 

So Obama waves his magical, tyrannical wand...and kicks the problem down the road another two years.

I'm envious of the chance the Egyptians have to adjust their government to something better.  We Americans need that chance.  We need a second Independence Day.  That's an Independence Day I would love to celebrate!

The Wheel of History...

As I was reading this excellent post (at Sultan Knish by David Greenfield) musing on the patterns in human history, one paragraph caught my attention:

That is the thing about America that most Americans don't realize. For all the hopeful speeches made by American leaders about exporting the Des Moines way of life to Baghdad or Kandahar, what people in those parts of the world see when they look at America isn't democracy and freedom, it's wealth and power. Those are the things they want, and they don't understand why American leaders keep chattering on about democracy and freedom, no more than we understand why Muslims keep going on about the Koran.

Yes. That's exactly right, and exactly what so many Americans get wrong when they try to imagine what the people in other countries envy about America. 

I remember well my first explorations in Estonia, in the early '90s, when I met quite a few Estonians who had never before met an American.  Rarely did any of them evince interest in our freedoms or our government.  What were they interested in?  Hollywood stars (especially when they learned that I hailed from California, upon which they assumed I rubbed elbows with all of them).  Jeans.  Cars.  The first Gulf war.  In other words, the trappings of wealth and the evidence of power.

I've traveled in a lot of countries; had lots of conversations with people interested in America.  The few conversations I've had with people curious about our government and what it's like to live in freedom really stand out – for their rarity, mostly...

Ideas in the Shower...

For years I've noted something that was to me quite mysterious: I would find solutions to difficult problems (either design or debugging) while taking a shower.  Having observed this, I have, on more than a few occasions, taken a shower for the specific purpose of coming up with an idea to solve a problem – and it has worked.  I've never had a satisfactory explanation of why this might be so, however.

This morning I read a blog post that purports to explain the phenomenon (which many others have also noted).  Some of the links from this post are also interesting.  Essentially the notion is that while you're taking a shower, you're not getting a lot of input from other sources, so your subconcious can surface things its thinking about.  I'm not sure about the science behind this, but it is the first plausible explanation I've heard yet.  The blog post is actually about a product that lets you take notes in the shower, so you won't forget your ideas.  That's never been an issue for me – when I come up with an idea in the shower, it's generally for something I've been working on for hours or even days.  There's zero chance that I'm going to forget a solution for a problem like that!

Taillights...

Driving into work this morning, I noticed a car that passed me because its taillights were a distinctly different shade of red.  A few minutes later, I pulled alongside that same car in traffic, and I saw that it was a 50-something Chevy – over a half-century old.  Somehow this triggered a cascade of memories...

Taillights used to be different, and somehow this happened so gradually that I never noticed it before. 

These days as you travel down the freeway at night, you'll see red taillights into the distance, all of virtually the same color (the LED lights are subtly different, but it's a tiny little difference).  Every once in a while you'll see the flashing amber of turn signals – and even they are of a perfectly uniform color.

This was not so when I was a kid.  I remember in the '50s and '60s that the taillights stretching out in front of you at night would be of many shades of red, and of very variable intensity.  It was common to see cars with taillights so dim you could hardly see them.  Some of the reds were almost purplish; others bordered on orange.  Amber turn signals were quite rare – nearly all cars used a single lamp for both brake light (steady) and turn signal (flashing).

It also used to be more common to see broken taillight lenses, as it was much harder to get replacments for cars more than a few years old.  Parts stores were relatively uncommon, and quite often couldn't get obscure parts like taillight lenses for cars more than a few years old.  Junkyards were your main resource, and even they were iffy – you had to find a junkyard that happened to remember having a car like yours.  There were no computers, no web sites to search across many junkyards, etc.

Technology changes many little things in our lives...

A Ponder...

Driving in my truck yesterday, I happened to notice the odometer was getting close to 150,000 miles. My 1996 Toyota T100 has given me nearly flawless service since I bought it more than 10 years ago. Just recently I had the first expensive maintenance in its entire lifetime, and I expect that to be the last for at least another 50,000 or so miles.

But I got to pondering another significance of that 150,000 miles. All but a very few miles of that were driven by me – so that 150,000 miles represents a whole bunch of my personal time. If you figure I averaged 50 MPH over they entire life of the truck (that's optimistic), that means I have spent something like 3,000 hours driving my truck. And that doesn't even count the time I spent driving our other vehicle!

Three thousand hours on the road. I know where most of this came from: until five years ago, I had a job that required me to commute to the office every day. Until two years ago, I traveled to the office once a week. The past two years I've worked from my home, with no commute at all.

Back in the bad old days when I was a manager, we used to figure that a normal employee worked 2,000 hours per year (50 weeks at 40 hours per week). So that 3,000 hours is equivalent to a year and a half of employment. If you figure in the fact that the vast majority of my commute time in this truck happened over just six years of employment (when I was commuting every day), a year and a half of wasted time starts to be significant.

The bottom line is that both I and my employer are gaining from the absence of my commute. I'm a salaried employee and don't formally keep track of my hours – but I guarantee you they exceed 40 hours per week (ask my wife!). I gain personally as well – no more frustrating rush hour commutes, and some more free time to spend with my family, on my hobbies, or on my honey-do list (I'll let you guess where the priorities are <smile>).

I love it that my Toyota shrugs off the 150,000 miles … but I hate it that I had to waste all that time driving to find that out!