"Until death do us part"

One of those odd bits of news that still comes as a bit of a surprise.

Al and Tipper Gore separate after 40-year marriage - Yahoo! News

I don't identify with his political beliefs and find his climate change alarmism bordering on cartoonish until some better data establishing a relationship between atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and climate conditions over the last few millennia is developed (following link gives an approach which might work, although it will take a few years to collect Antarctic ice core samples and perform the necessary analysis):
 
Unearthing Cold, Hard Facts About Climate Change in Antarctica - WSJ.com

But, that's one of those things hopefully we'll be able to figure out and know with a higher degree of confidence than we do today. Our emotional reactions to things which we don't know about, but only react to is something else. I sometimes fear my empathetic and sympathetic responses to events reflects as much my experiences, age, and general state of mind at the time as they do the actual event. Still, that being said, the Gore's separation after such a lengthy marriage and public live leaves me sad. I can't really say why and instead will relate one of those anecdotal tales which I store in the recesses of my brain.

Some years before meeting J, I had a short lived first marriage which ended with the girl leaving. The days and nights which followed that misadventure changed me in ways which reverberated through me for more than a few years. It's main effect on me was I misbehaved. To this day I hate meeting some of the people I knew during that time because I was not exactly the most effective, brilliant, or honorable individual during that time of my life. I seemingly lost the capability to care about things which had been very important to me just a few years earlier (it was still there, maybe I just stopped caring about caring). On weekends I would go down to the local nightclub/bar on the hunt for random female company. Most of the time I would meet someone who liked to party or drink. Sometimes both. Rarely did I meet anyone memorable, although I suppose I would've had to first define memorable requirements, which I really didn't care to do at the time.

And so we present, a typical evening at "Avenues" (a "true" story):

"I'm so happy tonight!" she exclaims as she slides close to my right elbow, which in turn rests on the heavy poly surface of the bar. I'm nursing some type of whiskey on the rocks, periodically poking at the ice with my index finger.

I turn and smile and simply respond, "Oh, that's good", the response tempered as much by my drink as a desire to engage. She's about my age, mid twenties (definitely no longer a teenager), blonde hair with dark roots showing, nice smile, nice figure, but a little too eager to compliment the place which my drink has taken me to. That place was uncomplicated by sharp edges, detailed examinations of memories for clues, and consideration of life's complexities. That's gone. That's why I'm there. Again. On Friday night. I just need a little company and it'll be perfect. I'm in a pretty good mood and continue to smile as I check out my new found companion.

"Aren't you going to ask why?"

"Well, I wasn't going to, but I don't mind listening if you want to."

"I got my final divorce papers today!", she exclaims before I can really finish saying "want to".

I hesitate just a smidge (maybe the drink?) and simply say "Oh."

She notices. "Well, I'm just glad it's over. It's been such a long time and now it's finally done and I've got my papers". She gives me a look like she just remembered something, and I really don't want her to just leave, but I'm feeling the effort of coming up with something to say that will keep her talking at my right elbow.

"Well that's good for you then. I'm just never sure what to say to people when they tell me that because I don't really know their story or the people involved. You know. Most of the time I just tell them I'm sorry, but I can see that's not where you are."

"Well, I'm not and it's a really good day for me", she insists.

"Well then congratulations," I say and smile.

She stays and talks about a lot of things. Her just concluded first marriage. Her two children. Why she left him. "He just wasn't growing anymore, you know?"

I drank during that time to take the edge off. To make the memories not so overwhelming. Yet, something about that remark penetrates my consciousness and I feel offended. Should I have? No, this was just a girl I didn't know in a bar on a Friday night, but the wiseass part of me uncoils a little bit, "Couldn't you have got him elevator shoes or something?" I inquire while smiling gently. "No", she says quickly, "I don't mean like that." She doesn't laugh.  And she continues talking.

"Oh", I say somewhere in the middle of things.

Her kids slept at her mom's house and she had dinner with them. This was beginning to attract my attention on another level. "Gee, do you really think that's fair?" I quizzed.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know. Your mom raised her kids and now she's got a fair amount of responsibility for yours. That doesn't seem fair."

She pauses for a minute while looking at me. "No, I don't think so. I mean, how else could I go out like this?"

I smile slower this time, close my eyes for just a moment while still smiling, and realize all of these places have the smell of stale beer, cigarettes, sweat and old perfume (I usually put my clothes from Friday night in a plastic bag until I could get to the Laundromat). For a second I just didn't want to be there, but then I simply responded, "Yeah, I guess you couldn't".

We leave together, but I still have this feeling I wanted to be somewhere else. I wind up following her in my car with a growing conviction the whole evening is wrong.  In the end my memories of who I had been a year earlier were more dominant than any opportunity available that night.   So as the evening draws to its' inevitable conclusion, I decline to cross a doorway, and with as much grace as I could muster I excuse myself and go home before I compound the mistakes of that lost year. About the same time I also started to realize no amount of drink, or passages through new rooms, would ever change the fact that what had happened to me in my life, had happened.

A long time later I still don't know why we're all so damn prickly. I realize, like Woody Allen once said, "The heart wants what the heart wants", but somewhere along the border between id and ego, between individual liberty and social constructs there are casualties and I think something is lost even though I understand it can all be explained. So, for Al and Tipper, although I don't know you and often disagree with you, I'm sorry to hear the news and I hope things work out for the both of you.

As for me, almost thirty years ago, the Friday following the above tale I was back at "Avenues".  Today, I'm much more reluctant to trust the emotions of any one moment.

Some Righteous Anger

Riehl World View: When In The Course Of Human Events

I originally meant to post this when it came out around March 3 (first real discussion of committing to reconciliation as a way to pass Health Care Reform). I created HREF link and then forgot to create posting. Sigh. Well, beyond the MSM media portrayal of all those unstable, mouth-breathing, tea party types, Dan Riehl's expression of fury still resonates with me. So, here's the original post for your perusal. On a side note, Dan doesn't seem to get upset normally.

As for me, I'm still angry.

The end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:


From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
From Courage to Liberty
From Liberty to Abundance
From Abundance to Selfishness
From Selfishness to Complacency
From Complacency to Apathy
From Apathy to Dependency
From Dependency back into Bondage"

- Alexander Tytler, 18th century Scottish historian, Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.
 
Where do you think democratic progressives have brought us today?

Would you like a little more tea?

A "Tea Party" convention was held in Nashville a few weeks ago, and I was impressed by the fiscal conservatism and calls for legislative transparency which seemed to characterize the majority focus of the six hundred attendees. Of course, there was also the Tom Tancredo rant on civic literacy (which seemed to run off the track shortly after he started with the references to illiterate foreign socialists putting Barack Obama in the White House), the “Birthers” (who believe Obama shouldn’t be in the White House because he isn’t really a native born US citizen and Hawaii officials are conspiring to hide the birth certificate), and the “Truthers” (who believe 9/11 was also some type of government conspiracy, or at least government “white wash” of the actual events). I’d like to think these folks were a really minority position in this nascent movement, but the truth is they were obviously there in some number. Glen Beck, interviewing Rick Perry’s Republican “Tea Party” primary opponent Debra Medina, concluded the interview real quickly once Debra aired her belief some of the “Truther” accusations needed to be investigated thoroughly (where’s Oliver Stone when you need him). Hopefully Ms. Medina’s polling will go into decline going forward.

I like fiscal conservatism and legislative transparency, but really could do without the conspiracy nuts (no objective evidence of anything other than their own delusions), or outright bigots. Still, as a First Amendment absolutist, I really do want these people to speak so the movements they attempt to represent can disown them (the early conservative movement in the Republican party in the 50’s and 60’s was forced to do the same thing with the KKK and John Birch folks who needed to be identified as repulsive to real conservatives). What proportion of “Tea Party” folks are represented by present day “repulsive” extremists? My gut guess is 10 to 20%. Still, I hope the majority disowns these folks in a timely fashion. The country’s voters deserve more than a choice between “liberal” and “liberal-light”.

Consequences schmonsequences... as long as I'm rich.

The consequences of the great American real estate gamble continue to accumulate. In formerly booming real estate markets, like southern Florida, prices have again started to decline. The interesting thing is a sizeable proportion of the population and media seems to expect the federal government to remedy what, basically, were bad purchase decisions by individual buyers. Of course this seems to parallel a number of recently stated public expectations where we expect profits to be private and losses to be socialized. Whether this approach is healthy for civic society, or our country, remains to be seen.

Contracts, from my perspective, represent a codified public trust between individuals, or groups, whose only relationship may be the commercial transaction they jointly participate in. Is it really the duty of the federal government to isolate us from the negative consequences of those relationships and contracts we voluntarily enter? Would this destroy the power of markets to discipline both buyers and sellers (specifically caveat emptor). More importantly, would we want a federal government with such powers?

The Noble Savage and Paradise Lost

I finally got to see Avatar this past weekend (IMAX 3D, real high end stuff) with son D this past weekend.  Really impressive technical achievement from my vantage point (in a high back, velour coated chair).  The experience is really bordering on immersive, the visual clarity of the large screen and depth of field is stunning with a nice complimentary edited audio track.  It is the first time I've seen a CGI film where the eyes didn't have that funny "shark eye" look.  It is something to experience.

At the same time the story has that vague Rousseau-like obsession with the uncorrupted nature of "savage" man.  Technology, and trade are ultimatedly corrupting evils driven by man's pride, vanity and avarice.  Of course, the fact that the fictional Navi could never make this movie, or derive any pleasure from seeing it, is an irony more than one person has commented on (not to mention the fact it has made more money than any movie previously made).  Add to that a fair dollop of pantheism, and you have a very new age fantasy of the paradise Western Civilization has lost for us.

Does any of this square with my understanding of life in primitive cultures?  No, but it's probably best to ignore the cultural labels so obviously hung from Mr. Cameron's work.  I'll go see it again because it's an entrancing piece of visual work, and I'll try to convince myself, to paraphrase S.Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke.

"I don't see the votes for it at this time."

Nancy Pelosi announces she can't come up with the 218 votes necessary to pass the Senate version of health care reform. 

Pelosi: House won't pass Senate bill to save health-care reform - washingtonpost.com

Of course the Washington Post advances the microeconomic meme; it's lacking "this", or "that". I think the larger (and more important) conclusion is the huge government mandated restructuring of American health care is dead (maybe permanently). By the time the government gets around to trying this again medical technology will have advanced so far only the social justice types will consider it worth pursuing. For now the American people don't want it, and moderate politicians reading the tea leaves and always concerned about self-preservation have decided not to follow their leaders off the cliff. In the meantime, I hope congress gives serious thought to straightening out the insurance stuff (level playing field for individual and company purchased medical insurance, loosening of preexisting condition clauses, allowing selling across state lines), make sure things work and make sure people can decide what level of risk they're comfortable with in their purchase of medical insurance.

What will this mean? I'm hoping the end of most of the all-encompassing, impossible to kill, top down government schemes by the self-anointed elite who believe their every thought is a revelation, and their every worry requires government intervention. The Republicans will hope the midterms will bring them a reversal of their electoral fortunes, and the majority of Democrats will realize the president, while well thought of, is advancing a very unpopular agenda. I'm hoping for gridlock and majority approved, incremental changes which can be evaluated as they are instituted.

For me as one citizen and a guy who has worked in medical device development for the past 15 years a good news day.

Liberty and the failures of markets

After all the spin masters have finished commenting on the implications and (later tonight) results of the Massachusetts special election, I still believe what we're witnessing is a general pushback against the insistence of progressive political elements that the social safety net we operate above is not sufficient for it's task, or in possession of enough prescriptions to assure our confidence in it.  Of course all of this has to do with the level of individual and social risk we feel comfortable living with as a society.  In the health care reform debate I wish we had been more explicit about what the tradeoffs involved here really are.  Are we willing to trade a certain level of medical treatment development for the a guarantee of a government funded minimum level of care for individuals?  The markets can't decide that question for us although they will eventually show after the fact the broad decisions of the population in terms of preferred purchases.  Can we live with the individuals who either through fortune, or poor decision making, make a decision which results in their harm?  Is the government responsible for constraining the many, to protect the few?  Do the majority of citizens wish for such a government?

In my work I'm often forced to think about "What is safe enough?", and "How do we know we're done?"  The strictly business types don't exactly welcome this line of questioning.  They want to get to market.  Who's right and protects the greater public good?  I don't know, but I want to at least know the process so I can hold someone accoutable.  Here's my process flowchart for addressing failure modes and effects analysis for medical device risk management.  It doesn't tell you how to do a good job, but it gives you a framework to make decisions in.

History

I suppose we never really think of ourselves as living in the midst of historic events, we still have to worry about paying the utility bills.  Still, the last week has been both horrifying and interesting.

It's been 6 days since the shallow 7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince in Haiti.  Estimates this evening are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the structures which collapsed during that minute long assault.   That country has been a basket case for so long, it's not surprising so many people died.  If you compare the magnitude 7.1 Bay Area Earthquake of 1989 (65 fatalities) with the Haiti quake it rapidly becomes apparent the major difference between the outcome of the two events is the poverty and lack of building codes in Haiti.  In my opinion both of these conditions are driven by the horrible political heritage of that land and the tenuous nature of social stability among its' people.  Satellite views of the area not only show the horrifying devestation of the quake, but also the social partition between Haiti and the Dominican Republic which also shares the island of Hispaniola.  Of course for all of the money spent there, so little has improved for its' people.  Still, this is a humanitarian disaster, so I send my donation and hope it makes some small difference in the lives and deaths of Haiti's people.

In Massachusetts, republican State Senator Scott Brown has come out of nowhere in the past month to challenge democrat Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.  In Massachusetts alone, that development would be astounding, but Senator Scott Brown would represent a 41st vote for the Republican Senate Caucus and the end of the Senate Democrats fillibuster proof majority.  With the current Health Care Reform bill (pick Harry Reid or Nancy Peliosi's effort) being advanced as a strictly partisan offering which rewards partisan allies, and creates another huge entitlement program under the subterfuge of advancing healthcare for those without coverage, I would prefer an actual bipartisan bill which would look to improve medical insurance coverage without totally revamping the medical care system in this country.  I would expect we'll know by this time tomorrow how things went.  I'm trying to be optimistic, but elections are tough to predict.

On a professional level, my efforts to totally revamp the Risk Management system at M continue with another set of VP level edits.  More details tomorrow.