Kids and the Future

A friend recently wrote to me about his feelings on the future. He’s been reading a lot and staying up on current events and watching documentaries and “it just depresses” him “that things are so bad right now.” He went on to say, “I’m ready for something big to happen, but I’m really scared about the future. There’s a lot of talk about things getting a lot worse and I don’t really know what to believe.”

My anxiety about the future grows the more I pay attention to the direction of the world and of humanity. I wrote him back, saying, “I too worry about the state of the world. I sometimes feel like there is a great, great struggle ahead of us, either for our generation or for our kids, which brings me to kids. While we still want them, it is not without reservation that we will choose to bring them into this world. With exploding population centers, the changing environment, and the unsustainable ways of living we have adopted, it is hard to go forward with building a family when you know deep down things are not going to get easier for humanity. I hope the news doesn’t depress you too much and that all those documentaries don’t make you fear the future. I hope you stand up against the tide and do all that you can to improve the world on a large or small scale. That’s all we can do.”

So I have been thinking about this a lot lately. More specifically, what are the realities the next generation will face? One that always comes to mind, and my generation could see this too, is the end of oil. It’s going to run out. Everything about this world is going to come to a screeching halt. Sure, more oil reserves will be discovered while I am alive; perhaps extending our consumption of oil past the end of my generation, but that is delaying the inevitable. How are we going to do as a species when we revert to much older forms of transportation to do anything from go to the grocery store to ship something across the country/world? My confidence in humanity to properly address these issues without panicking and all hell breaking loose is slim to nonexistent. When not getting an iPad 2 means the end of the world for you, how are you going to deal with two-mile long lines at the gas station?

I recently saw a prediction of the world population leveling out, or at least reaching a point of much slower growth than in the past 50 years. That’s somewhat comforting, but it doesn’t mean our consumption is leveling out or decreasing, something that desperately needs to happen in order for future generations to live a good and peaceful life.

Keeping hope alive is crucial, but it is hard to ignore the feeling I have that we are hurtling toward an inevitable and disastrous conflict or conclusion of our time here on Earth. It’s tough to strike a balance between concern for the direction of things and a hope in the future. My mind runs wild: Is there going to be another war, a war to end all wars? There can’t be more than three world wars. If sea levels significantly rise in the next 50-100 years, where are the millions of displaced people going to settle? What strain is that going to put on the world’s food supply? Are the world economies going to collapse?

All I’ve got to say is that you better have some faith left when you decide to bring someone into this world.

OBL: Conspirators and Complainers

Rarely does a politician pull something off that we can all celebrate regardless of where we are on the political spectrum. I think Bin Laden’s death is worth celebrating. Although it was President Obama who made the call, President Bush deserves congratulations as well. Bush said we would never stop searching and Obama made finding and killing or apprehending Bin Laden the priority of our wars in the Middle East.

I was at work just a couple of days after the Bin Laden news broke when I heard someone talking about it. There was talk among some employees of the Bin Laden conspiracy. Is he really dead? If he is dead, then where are the pictures? This has come to be called deatherism. Also, there seems to be quite a few people out there who don’t know why we buried him at sea. I explained this to someone the other day and their response, “So, all of a sudden we respect Islamic tradition?” My response, “Well, isn’t it better now than never?” Seriously. Could you imagine how many more people would be upset about Bin Laden’s death if we didn’t observe the burial custom?

Most Republicans have congratulated President Obama and President Bush in their statements about the killing of OBL. However, as far as I know, one only congratulated Bush. Her name I will not mention, but if you’ve graduated high school you know about as much as she does about U.S. history, government, geography, and current events. Which is to say, you just graduated a U.S. high school, so you probably don’t know too much, but it’s enough to get your name on the ticket for VP of the U.S.A. Dream big.

Lastly, I hope I never have to celebrate another man’s death to the degree I celebrated OBL's death. I am happy he is dead. The dancing and singing in the streets the night of his death does not seem barbaric to me. Our celebration that night is in no way comparable to barbaric celebrations in the Middle East over Koran burning, successful terrorist attacks, or the maiming/killing of western troops throughout the region, which happen a couple times a week. Like I said earlier, I think we can have one night in the last ten years to dance in the streets. I approve.

From The New Yorker

Steve Coll, author of The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, and staff writer at The New Yorker has an informative post up on the News Desk blog. Worth the read.

The Death of Osama Bin Laden

This is as close as our generation will come to experiencing the sense of joy and excitement millions around the world felt on May 8, 1945, VE Day. Osama Bin Laden, long removed from direct day-to-day operations of al-Qaeda, but still the influential and spiritual leader of al-Qaeda and many splinter groups around the world and the leading force in the 9/11 attacks was killed yesterday.

Bin Laden, more than anyone else, has shaped US Foreign Policy in the last ten years. From our security at home to our approach to the rest of the Middle East to our action on three fronts (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan), Bin Laden was the primary target of the war we have been waging for 9 years. This is huge. It took the most powerful nation in the world nearly 10 years to find and kill one man. One man. His ability to camouflage himself will not be forgotten, but his violent end will overshadow everything else for me. I was ready for sleep last night and I turned on the TV. Instantly, I sat up in bed and told Kate to stop talking for a minute. There was a CBS News special report and along the bottom I read that President Obama is going to make an announcement soon. About what I did not know until a few seconds later when a reporter said Osama Bin Laden has been killed. I looked at Kate, whose eyes were huge with the news, and I sat up a little more, turning the volume up and settling in for President Obama’s announcement.

The details of his death are rapidly spreading across the media and blogosphere. According to some sources, it was a double-tap to the side of the head during or at the end of a firefight outside a curiously large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The operation, in the works since August, was completed in 40 minutes. Bin Laden’s body was taken by US Navy Seals, identified, and buried at sea within 24 hours of his death (according to Islamic tradition).

I have spent the morning reading the blogs and news feeds of most of the world’s major papers. The one thing that is not overlooked by the media, who are always speculating about political implications, is how this will affect Obama’s chances in 2012 and if it will be his defining moment as President. I think it’s important to examine the political effects of this news, but more important is to first celebrate what this means for our troops, the families of the thousands killed and injured on 9/11, and the American psyche in regards to the war against terrorism.

It is not natural to celebrate a death. But this morning, I was happy to. I watched archival footage of the 9/11 attacks. I watched cadets at the Naval Academy yelling their hearts out. I watched someone spraying champagne from his perch on a light post onto the crowd gathered below him at Ground Zero. And, truly, I felt pride for what America has done. My pulse elevated and I recalled the morning I was going to class as a freshman at the University of Wyoming with people crying throughout the union, unable to pull themselves from a TV to go to class, where, if they went, they would undoubtedly be watching a TV anyway. I recalled the spring break the USA went to war in Iraq. Sitting on the couch with Aaron, watching the shock and awe campaign, wondering if this was really a necessary strike to avenge 9/11. Nearly two-thirds of the country had given up on finding/killing Bin Laden, but our troops and intelligence gatherers have never rested. Neither has President Obama who clarified again and again as candidate Obama in 2008 that if he received reliable intelligence that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, he would not hesitate to go in there unannounced and take Bin Laden out.

Naïve our generation is not. I don’t think one of us believes this means the end of terrorism. The detractors are already pointing this out, assuming that some must believe the end of terrorism has come. We know it hasn’t. There will be more terrorists. There will always be evil in this world, but this was a victory America had to have. The celebrations across the country do not bother me at all. If the extremists can go kill Westerners anytime a Koran is burned or stomped on, then we can have one day in the last ten years to yell in the street, to wave the American flag, to put on display our fanaticism for all the world to see. Yeah, I don’t feel bad about that.

Reading through the blogs has uncovered bits of information about the raid and the coincidence of May 1^st in 20^th and 21^st century war. May 1, 1945: Hitler’s suicide is announced to the world. May 1, 2003: President Bush gives his infamous Mission Accomplished speech from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. May 1, 2011: President Obama shares the news of Bin Laden’s death in Pakistan.

Most troubling about the news of where Bin Laden was hiding out is the fact that he was in a relatively affluent neighborhood and not in a cave like many presumed for years. He was in a mansion six to eight times bigger than any of the surrounding houses with high walls and barbed wire. How could anyone in the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence service) not know about Bin Laden’s location? This makes it clear for those who doubted it; Pakistan is the home of al-Qaeda operations and the source of much of what we are dealing with in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government routinely denied that Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan. Wisely, the US intelligence did not share much information of the operation with the ISI, worried that word would get to Bin Laden and he would slip through our fingers again.

If the administration were looking for another reason to get out of Afghanistan, this is it. Bin Laden has been the target from day 1: September 11, 2001. He was the reason we went to Afghanistan, almost sealing the deal at Tora Bora in December 2001. His death marks the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one in the war on terror. I think it is important to remain cautious and to not let our guard down, but today, tonight, whenever, remember 9/11, remember the firefighters, remember the policemen, remember the troops, and remember what you felt that morning and raise a glass, spray some champagne, sing the Star Spangled Banner and wave the flag.

Reading the News

It's official. I am going blog crazy this morning. Thank God for the internet on days like this. The accessibility to the facts and the commentary on Bin Laden's death is amazing. I highly recommend stopping by Andrew Sullivan's blog (now on the Daily Beast, but my link in the sidebar still works) or Talking Points Memo (also linked in the sidebar). Both of those blogs are covering all angles of this story, from archival footage of Bush and Obama speaking about Bin Laden to amateur footage of 9/11, which is tough to watch, but a good reminder of how justified the USA was in hunting this man for nearly the last ten years.

I headed out early this morning to pick up a New York Times. I like to collect newspapers the day after huge events. Anyway, the Times was the only paper without a headline on Bin Laden's death. The news broke too late. Tomorrow's paper will have plenty of coverage, including Bin Laden's obituary, which runs seven pages on the Times' website.

What Trump Was Doing While Obama Was Killing Osama

Also from Sullivan's blog. One of his readers too.

A reader writes:

While Obama was addressing the nation last night, Donald Trump was hosting a cat-fight between NeNe and Starr Jones, voting off some chick named Hope, and making an "historic" decision to bring back LaToya Jackson.

Seriously.

Sweetness

Thanks to Sullivan for posting this on his blog. I don't know where it came from, but it's truly awesome.

Birthday Cards

I finally did sell a picture to that greeting card company. I know I blogged about it months ago, but now it is finalized. I received my free box of them today, giving me the birthday cards I will send out for the next few decades. That's probably the most exciting thing about this, I won't have to shop for a birthday card for a very long time.

Please run, Don.

I really, really want Donald Trump to run for president. I can’t think of a more entertaining candidacy, or a more embarrassing one for America. Things can’t get more embarrassing than Sarah Palin being a Vice Presidential nominee. A Trump candidacy would just maintain the norm of having an ignorant moron run for at least half of the Republican ticket.

Could you imagine Trump in a debate? Laughable, it would be if he were debating other Republicans. And if he were debating Obama? Well, it would be like Obama in a Battle Royal against 40 Trumps. One at a time or all at once, Obama would walk all over him. Proverbial powerbomb here, choke slam there, and then a clothesline. And the wrestling metaphor is not that far off, Trump has a close relationship with WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. Trump has his own theme song and participated in a hair vs. hair match, after which he got to shave McMahon’s hair. I’m not making this up and neither is Wikipedia.

Not to be overlooked by fiscally conservative Republicans, is Trump’s rollercoaster ride of financial problems and resurgences. According to Wikipedia, we are currently in a Trump resurgence, but their have been low points, like Trump’s personal debt of $900 million and business debt of $3.5 billion in the early 1990s. But it seems Trump takes offense at anyone low-balling his net worth. Author Timothy O’Brien estimated that worth to be at most $250 million. This pissed Trump off, who sued O’Brien for libel because, according to Trump, he is worth much, much more, like $5.75 billion more. The case was dismissed, but I am sure Trump would argue that the taxpayer’s money spent on handling this very important case was a very good investment for the American people.

Most of Trump’s recent TV appearances have included discussion about his own investigative team looking into the legitimacy of Obama’s U.S. citizenship. That’s right, the leading candidate in some pre-preliminary polling of Republicans is a birther. This is the defining characteristic of Trump’s flirting with presidential candidacy. This will be the defining characteristic of a Trump candidacy. That is, it will be if we can momentarily avert our gaze of wonderment at his hair and pay attention to the drivel coming out of this dumb, dumb man’s mouth.

Lessons Learned at the Denver Auto Show

Despite all the press and the ads mentioning global warming and the importance of decreasing our carbon footprint and our reliance on foreign oil, most cars still have very poor gas mileage. It is not just the SUVs that fail miserably in this category. I walked the entire floor of the Colorado Convention Center. I saw many cars. As I arrived at Subaru’s section of the floor I thought, now here is a make of car that will have good mileage. Nope. Not even the Outback had any impressive numbers. Our Highlander’s gas mileage is technically 17/24. Although we get a little better than that, it isn’t great gas mileage, but after walking the floor at the auto show, I feel much better about what we get in that car. You mean I could be driving a granola-lover’s Outback, be sacrificing legroom, style, speed, and other space and get one more mile per gallon than a Highlander? No thanks. (And I do apologize to anyone who drives a Subaru. I am sure you love your car and that you get better gas mileage than the Subaru I saw. The thing to keep in mind when you are at the auto show is that every car is fully loaded and typically has the most powerful engine they put in the car. But still, I was expecting much better from Subaru and everyone else.)

Hyundai’s display wasn’t good enough to even get me to step on their section of the carpet. *This lesson wasn’t really learned at the auto show, just reinforced.

Since childhood I have eyed BMW’s 7 Series, thinking, now there’s a sedan I can fit in. The only problem being, it’s a BMW 7 Series and way, way out of my price range. Now there are two problems. One, the price as I’ve already mentioned. Two, I don’t fit in the 750. As is, the $107,000 BMW I sat in does not have enough room for me. The backseat has tons of room, air-conditioning that shoots up into your butt, and heated seats, but who wants to be in the back seat of a 750? Not me.

I do fit in a BMW X5. Again, the price is an issue, but I had to try. I’ve always been curious about the X5’s legroom. That said, when I was sitting in the driver’s seat, there was approximately one inch between the back of the driver’s seat and the end of the second seat. The car turns into a four-seater when I am driving.

Driving an expensive car means you’ve made it, you’re happy, satisfied, and successful. At least that’s what a lot of people think after talking with a few car-crazy nutters on the showroom floor last week. It really made me just want to walk out of the convention center.

People spend beyond their means. Not really breaking news, but the number of people interested in BMW, Audi, Mercedes, and the like, drastically outnumbers those who can actually take on that financial burden. But, note the last point. People have drunk the Kool-Aid.

The most surprising lesson: I fit in a Mini Cooper. No lie. I could actually drive one if I needed to. I fit better in this car than in some SUVs and most sedans. Love this.

Misc. March

Just some photos from March...

Kate under black lights at the Denver Art Museum.

The floor in the DAM's light exhibit.

At Roxborough Park, south of Denver.

My grandparent's letters from WWII.

Obit Quote

From The New York Times obit on Geraldine Ferraro, Sunday, March 27, 2011:

In any event, she said, the political realities of 1984 had made it all but impossible for the Democrats to win, no matter the candidates or their gender. “Throwing Ronald Reagan out of office at the height of his popularity, with inflation and interest rates down, the economy moving and the country at peace, would have required God on the ticket,” Ms. Ferraro wrote, “and she was not available!”

A City Washed Away

I post this video because it better displays the power and devastation Japan was up against than any other video of the disaster I have seen. It just makes you want to help. I assume the person taking the video is on top of a building. I am amazed it doesn't collapse. The building across the parking lot remains standing. Also incredible. But everything else is washed away. The power is jaw dropping. The consequences are heartbreaking.

From The Onion

NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move

Classic.

Damn You, MSNBC

All I want right now is to get some information about our newest war in the Middle East, err, I mean, Africa, and I am surfing the cable news channels (all of them), but freaking MSNBC, you're showing "Lockup"? C'mon!

Freelance Whales

Okay, so I am probably discovering the band Freelance Whales very, very late, but I don’t care, it’s a new band to me and I really like their sound. I had the TV on for a few minutes this morning and I heard a song that sounded so great I quickly wrote down the first line so I could look it up later and find out who was responsible for it.

I did the Google search and found Freelance Whales and all their quirky sounds. I watched a video of them performing at SXSW 2010 for NPR Music. They were performing Generator (First Floor), which at this infant stage of my appreciation for them, I can tell this must be one of their more popular songs, or their most popular song. After all, it was playing during a Starbucks commercial.

While watching them jam away I was reminded of Arcade Fire (although Freelance Whales is a smaller group), but in their performance they had this awesome connection like they were all sharing the same brain to tell them when to start into the song or when to pick it up or slow it down. Arcade Fire is extremely good at this. I know this comes from a ton of practice and memorizing all the songs and reading each other’s signals, but not all groups do this very well. So, Freelance Whales definitely caught my eye because of this.

And there was one more thing, they looked very Portlandish. A couple flannel shirts, a couple glasses leaving you to wonder if the people wearing them actually need them, some tight jeans, and one pair of pink leggings. It appeared to be a carefully crafted image that is no longer unique and now the fodder for jokes in Portlandia. And then I read that they weren’t from Portland. They’re from New York. All of a sudden I liked what they were wearing and I liked them a heck of a lot more.

In the Heart of the Bisti

Kate and I were in New Mexico over the weekend. We had a great visit with my parents and we saw some extraordinary land called the Bisti Wilderness. Here are some pics of our hike there.

This looks like a leg coming right out of the ground.

Why I Didn't Tell You

This time around, if things went the same way they did last year, I didn’t want to tell anyone about not getting into grad school, not even my in-laws. I just didn’t want to deal with that public failure again. Last year hurt, a lot. Going into the process, I didn’t think I wouldn’t get in anywhere, but after 4 or 5 rejections, I realized 10 rejections was possible, even likely.

A writer’s ego is a very fragile thing. Sharing about the rejections over and over again, I felt like I was announcing through a large megaphone from the top of the world, “My writing sucks and no one likes it.” It’s hard to describe how that shattered my motivation and made me dislike—even hate—things completely unrelated to my attempt at getting into grad school.

After months of recovery and having to focus my attention elsewhere, it was autumn in Colorado and with a lot of support and guidance I reevaluated grad school and my interests. I chose a few schools to apply to, all of which wouldn’t prevent me from doing some writing, from letting me develop my voice, and share my opinion in some format. Essentially, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to grad school just to go to grad school and because I didn’t get in the first time. So, I committed and vowed to give it another go, telling only my wife, sister, and parents. No one else.

However, doing this again meant dealing with this menace from my past. The GRE. As you may recall, I first took the GRE in April 2009, prepping in advance for my first attempt at grad school. I wrecked my car on the way to that test and was seated for the first part (the essays) less than 40 minutes after a four-car accident on the interstate. I managed to do okay on the test, or at least I convinced myself that the results were good enough, especially given the situation. That held for a while, but for me, applying again meant doing everything better this time around. I signed up to take the test on December 9^th.

Shortly after the New Year, I wrote a brief summary of 2010, mentioning the highs and the lows of each month. For December I mentioned, “I celebrated a private accomplishment.” That accomplishment, improving my score in every category of the GRE, gave me a helpful dose of motivation to finish this round of applications. I did so in the first couple weeks of January. And I did so with no expectations this time around and with no sense that I deserved this. I guess that was more me protecting myself than wholeheartedly believing I truly didn’t deserve to get into grad school.

And last week I opened an email and I didn’t have to worry any more about weathering another round of rejections. I admit to taking a little pleasure in keeping this all a secret until now. It was a storm I was prepared to face privately and now it’s a little piece of success I am happy to share publicly.

It is my pleasure to inform you that…

I don’t have to spend another year wandering and wondering what if?

The eleventh letter doesn’t begin with “I regret to inform you…”

I don’t have to file this letter away with the other ten I still have.

Perseverance pays off, which is good, because I apparently had some to do this all over again, to take the GRE…again, and to pay the application fees again, to contact professors who may or may not remember me again.

I didn’t have to look up at the sky and curse. I, instead, closed my eyes and sighed, releasing burdens taken on long ago.

The first word I read was, “Congratulations!” That one word, I don’t know why I had to see it so badly, why that combination of letters could change my thinking in a split second, but they gave me hope, a smile, laughter, and tears.

I read the first paragraph over and over again before moving on to the second. “It is my great pleasure” (to eradicate doubt for the time being it could have said) “you have been accepted to the Master of Arts in International Studies program” and “I would like to invite you to be a part of the University of Denver community.”

I still feel like Michael Phelps, Jordan, Usain Bolt, and Arnold. But all for different reasons than last year. All for different reasons.

A Panther Going To NCs

Going to NCs (NCAA Championships in D1) for swimming is a huge deal. NCs is one of the fastest meets every year, including international meets. If you go to NCs for swimming you are very successful. If you final at NCs you're close to, or in, the top tier of swimmers in your event in the world. So, it is no small deal that UW-Milwaukee has someone going to NCs this year. She's a freshman and already a three-time Horizon League individual champion who holds the conference records in all three of those events (100 and 200 Breaststroke and 200 IM).

Read about the story here. I had to put a shout out to Kyle and Emily on the blog for an amazing season that isn't over yet!