Special needs

I spent last weekend in Las Vegas on OTO business. I now support a law requiring hotels to mention that their firewalls block outbound UDP network packets in all of their advertising, and possibly on the video displays outside the building.

On a related note, it is a measure of my distance from the cultural mainstream that I was astonished to find the Strip utterly jammed with people over the weekend, and had to ask someone what this "March Madness" thing was all about.

Useless days

The Aztec civil calendar consisted of 18 "months" of 20 days each, for a total of 360 days, followed by 5 days called the nemontemi (neh-mohn-TEH-mee), or "useless days". These days were considered unlucky. People would lie low during the nemontemi, delaying the start of new projects, keeping to their homes as much as possible, until the new year began.

The week between Christmas and New Years has no official name in our culture; I can think of few better names for it than "the Useless Days". We certainly treat it in much the same way as did the Aztecs. So, happy (if quiet) nemontemi!

Laziness

Salon has an interesting article on the idea of the "lazy unemployed", much touted by those opposing extension of unemployment benefits. The article enumerates several sociological and psychological reasons why people fixate on the idea that unemployment is caused by personal failure rather than economic factors.

I was rather surprised that the article left out what I consider to be the main reason people worry about abuse of the unemployment system: It happens. And not merely in the abstract; I personally know several people who have described their plans to game the unemployment system in order to pursue personal projects. None of the people I happen to know who are doing this are "lazy" per se, but they are most definitely abusing (or contemplating the abuse of) the unemployment system. Oddly, none of the people who told me of their plans seemed to consider the fact that they were announcing their intention to rob me personally of some small fraction of my paycheck.

Anecdotal evidence is meaningless in a quantitative, scientific sense, but it has critical emotional impact. I am about as liberal as can be in such matters, and I still have to force myself to take a deep breath and swallow my rage when I think about how cheaters will inevitably abuse any system meant to help those truly in need. I can easily understand how that visceral sense of unfairness might lead many people to disapprove of the entire system, even if only one recipient in a hundred is cheating.

If I know a handful of cheaters, odds are most other people do as well. It seems to me that arguments in favor of expanding unemployment benefits will fail if they deny or ignore this fact. Unfortunately, like the current Salon article, most proponents of expanded unemployment coverage do precisely that.

This is one of those times when being an engineer watching sociology is very frustrating. In repairing a complex system, you can't afford to ignore or minimize any aspect of its behavior. Yet politics is composed almost entirely of such distortions. It's a wonder anything every works at all.

Oh solstice tree, oh solstice tree...

Lenore and I finally decorated  the tree this evening. Then we ate kettle corn and talked. Life is good.

Pretty good presentations

I was a competitive speaker in high school, and I give many presentations as part of my work for the OTO. I am a natural speaker (or as some would put it, nobody has ever figured out a way to shut me up), but I still try to find ways to improve my craft over time.

I have been following the email newsletter of a speech trainer named T. J. Walker for some time, and get lots of good ideas from it. Last summer he published a book called How to Give a Pretty Good Presentation which contains most of the best material I have seen in his newsletter.

Many of you have probably heard me mention this book during Kaaba, AIT, or similar OTO seminars. I am blogging about it now in the hope that (a) those to whom I have already recommended it will be reminded to consider reading it, and (b) many others whom I have not yet pestered about the book will now also consider reading it. I can't imagine anyone who gives presentations -- formal or informal, at school, work, or in any other setting -- failing to benefit from the advice it contains.

Note that there are a few things he says with which I disagree, but that actually makes me enjoy the book more; I like that sense of engagement, of being challenged. I'll share my quibbles with anyone who corners me in the bar next time we're at an event together.

A fine and private place

Today would have been my late wife Lauri's birthday. This is the second one since she died, and once again I find myself feeling oddly adrift; all my birthday reflexes have been kicking in, but there's nowhere to apply them. It's the same way I feel when I hear something that would have really interested or amused her; I always have that immediate "Oh, Lauri is going to love...damn" reaction. I suspect that this will continue to happen for the rest of my life.

One of the most recent such moments came when a coworker, who shares my (and Lauri's) fascination with Los Angeles history, mentioned that he had the quintessential LA backyard, with an orange and an avocado tree. "The only way it could be more perfectly LA is if I were watering it using the neighbor's hose," he added, and I immediately pictured how delighted Lauri would be with that joke. But of course she'll never hear it.

All of this has put me in mind of one of Lauri's favorite poems, Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", one of many examples of the pattern she called "We're all going to die, so fuck me now". (I personally prefer "The world is falling apart, so fuck me now", as exemplified by Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach".) The couplet she most enjoyed is

The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Nor do any trade quips about LA history, or make fun of bad movies, or spend eight hour drives debating existentialist philosophy. Her silence is a particularly intense silence, because she was so loud in life; so loud, in fact, that I still hear her voice echoing.

Another perfect day

Lenore's friend Aubrey is visiting us, and the other night Leanne and I took them out to dinner in Santa Monica. Afterward we walked over to the bluff overlooking Santa Monica Bay, and I took this picture of the three of them. I still can't quite believe I work two blocks away from this view.