Silly Me

This is kind of a strange little blog, isn't it? Why would I want to have written such a thing, exposing myself to embarrassment for my somewhat unmetered remarks, admissions, and freewheeling assessments of current events and the state of our world? In this politically correct society, it's more advantageous to pull our appendages back into our shell, and go along to get along. How do my friends react? (Answer: I haven't told any of them about this, and if any have discovered this blog, they haven't confessed it to me.) Certainly, this blog represents an injudicious move on my part when it comes to preservation of my personal dignity within the social and professional circles within which I move. A better approach would have been to select purely non-controversial topics, such as programming, where I can lay some claim to professional expertise, and could quietly, uncontroversially, pass along some small packets of wisdom gained from experience to novice developers. That would have been the more prudent course of action.

What can I hope to contribute to the national debate, after all? I'm reaching far beyond my professional areas in my discussions, and often well beyond any personal decorum in the persona I project. It's pretty shameless, probably egotistical, and in the long run, just plain silly, especially given that the amount of effect I'm likely to have would be far outweighed by the sidelong glances cast by professional colleagues toward this endeavor. I'm just sort of urinating in the wind, as it were, and some of it is more than likely to just blow right back in my face. Now that's a disquieting image!

Why do I bother? Well, for one thing, I'm reminded, in ways some of my colleagues have not yet been forced to confront, of the very brief time we're allotted to make our little marks on society. I became somewhat frustrated in that attempt at Microsoft, because my health situation had begun to rob me of the physical capacities I needed to be fully effective in that environment. Perhaps, also, I knew that something else, of which this blog is but one visible attribute, was struggling inside of me to find expression. My background and education is in the arts, not computers. I had come to Microsoft specifically in the hope that I might add something to the digital environment that made life just a little bit easier somehow. That was always the promise of computing from my perspective, that it could take on some tedious task and relieve that burden from the humans who could benefit from the fruits of that labor. I have had occasion, especially in my earlier years of software development, to see my programs physically replace some of those human efforts, and see a chore that had once required hours become available at the press of a single button. In my world, I didn't eliminate workers; I freed them to spend more time solving the myriad other problems of their complex and multi-tasked professions. It was a collaboration that, when successful, provided benefits for all. I looked forward to finding some way to extend that path of involvement to the whole overburdened world. If I succeeded in some way, I can't say for certain. My work at Microsoft has borne little resemblance to the cul-de-sac environments of my earlier days, and any effect I may have had will be more difficult to measure. But I tried.

So what now? Should I continue to post these odd personal notations, as if my thoughts might actually make a difference in this world? It's apparent they've had little effect so far. From my little corner of the world, I can honestly say that I've never seen us collectively in such a mess, so perhaps my disconnected ramblings are justifiable in a society that's already out of control. I'm listening now to Thom Hartmann's radio show, as I often do, and he's interviewing Naomi Wolf about her recently published book The End of America. Thom commented that only a year ago, Naomi had been his guest to discuss the fairly innocuous subject of cosmetics, prompting Ms. Wolf to remark on how much has changed in only a year. Unless you've paid no attention at all, I suspect you'll agree, surely to some extent. This blog can be seen as another example of how much has changed.

I've stopped to listen to the interview of Naomi Wolf, and it's continuing through several of the ubiquitous commercial breaks. Ms. Wolf might be considered the Cassandra of today's progressive thinking, and her tone can sometimes strike the listener as over the top. My own perspective has changed in pretty obvious ways over the months of this blog's existence, and it's valuable to me to review these postings to see the changes over time. I'm beginning to wonder how many of us there are who still think the warnings of Ms. Wolf go overboard, and I suspect the entries here can serve, in their own way, as a chronicle of our dwindling sense of our comfort level about how things will work themselves out. The interview is over now, with a plug for the web site americanfreedomcampaign.org, which you may want to visit. I have, and I used it just now to send my senators a little reminder note about the confirmation of Michael Mukasey. Maybe every little bit does help. Or not. Who really knows?

Things have changed a lot over the past year. I really suspect you sense it as much as I do, although it's hard to tell. I went through this sort of agonizing, narcissistic self-assessment a couple of months ago, though not to this extent, and blogged about it here, of course. I tend to think my ravings may be viewed a little more sympathetically now. It's hard not to see that we're in trouble.

I do suspect that global warming is a far worse problem than we've even begun to come to grips with yet. I believe that feeds into the political climate in many ways, and lends to this accelerating sense of attempts at national redefinition. I'm not a climate expert, and don't expect my voice regarding climate change to ever rise above the level of vague and semi-apocalyptic warnings, so you're free to take that for what it's worth. I have paid sufficient attention to some of the details, even beyond just the details, of some of the questions we're asking now. I will soon be pausing to watch a show I'm recording from LinkTV called "Nobelity", a two-hour talk by a group of Nobel laureates on the problems we face today. You're still at work, most likely. I am watching, reading, thinking. I'm probably supposed to report on this somehow, so here I am.

My sense of things right now is that Michael Mukasey's confirmation is one more of those watershed moments. So far, those watersheds haven't done much beyond sending it all downhill. This one seems extra special, however. Our esteemed Senators poise on the verge of actually institutionalizing torture and imperial executives. Now that's a watershed moment we can be proud of! America will in a very real sense be redefined in this coming week, so try not to view such events as the writer's strike in complete isolation. All things work together, etc., as someone once may have stated.

My Tivo is busy in two directions, as it's also recording Wolf Blitzer for three solid hours. I'll put the Wolf on fast-forward mostly, but I'll get the gist. It appears to be a pretty eventful news day all around.