But I won’t fly any more, at least commercially.   This past winter I needed to travel from my hometown, Redding, to Detroit, Michigan… and I drove.   It took me six weeks, and I enjoyed every minute of it.    As you’ve probably figured out by now,  I won’t fly because I won’t give in to the TSA.

I’m a fiercely independent fellow anyway, but the scanning fiasco was the last straw.  You have to understand me first:  I’d rather not eat and live in a box than get welfare help from Uncle Sam.  They can keep it–I don’t want their help because I never asked for it, nor wanted it.   That’s just how I am.

Because of these things I’ve been called silly and unrealistic, but I don’t care.   The stakes underlying this whole thing are too important to shrug off.   This year, 2011, it will have been ten years since September 11th, 2001.   In that time, under the guise of security,  I personally believe we Americans have given up more liberties in the past ten years than the prior one hundred.   Powers that be are listening to your telephone calls, reading your emails, and now looking at your body–all without a warrant.    Sounds great huh?

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Sit back and think about that for a minute… really think about it.  Remember folks, once you give up a liberty to do something it is extremely hard to get it back.   Need proof?  It has been ten years and we’re still scanning the airport gates like it is 9/12/2001.   The powers that control our government are eager to jump at any chance to increase to their power over the people.    Those powers are cunning, and are driven by greed and money.   They will not hesitate to use a tragedy to further their control–and history has shown this to be true time and time again.   Yet we’re allowing them to do it again, and most appallingly; we’re doing it willingly.

The irony of it all is that this is precisely what the terrorists want.   They want us to be miserable.  They want us to be afraid and to submit to their whims.    If the terrorists wanted us to be afraid to use subways,  they’ll bomb a subway next.   Swooping in to save us all, our government would then install an overbearing dose of “security”.    The terrorists have hired our own government through its ineptitude to do their work for them.   More sinister, the moment it became convenient for that same government that “saved us”  to use that additional control & security against us, it will happen.   Don’t even pretend for a second that it wouldn’t.

The shocking thing is that our government doesn’t care–this single fact alone is the most convincing part about its subversive nature:  If our government was really concerned about defeating terrorists, why are they doing what the terrorists want?   Wouldn’t being defiant and doing the opposite be the approach to success?   Instead of locking down the airports, allow them to open up.    Open them completely up.

Would terrorists have a field day?   Probably, at first.   Would innocent people get hurt?  Probably.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
-Thomas Jefferson

But dear reader, this is the price of liberty.   Liberty doesn’t come with a guarantee of happiness, or even life.   It’s the conduit to happiness in life.   To maintain liberty through our lives people will get hurt and even die, and there is a good reason Jefferson used the word “patriot” instead of “soldiers”.   Sound cold?  It isn’t.   It’s the tax of freedom, and like it or not that is how it works–and has worked throughout history.   Our country’s inventors understood this because they too lived (and died) through it.   The umbrella of safety will always block the sun.

The generations before us didn’t hesitate when that tree of liberty needed blood.  It is because of them that we enjoy the liberties what we now have.   My generation has become selfish and complacent–and in the name of convenience, we willingly surrender our liberties to the government

“Give me convenience or give me death.”
-Jello Biafra

Who are we to deny future generations their liberty?   We’re doing it right now by making excuses.   We do it in the name of convenience and haste.   Our fathers and dead soldiers are rolling in the grave.

“No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
-George Mason

I don’t propose going  right winger-crazy tomorrow waving guns around in one hand and a Bible in the other.   I suggest doing what you can, and for me and most others that is refusing to submit to what I’ve been told is good and safe for me–especially when I know it is a lie.

THAT is what being an American is about, and if you don’t understand that, I’m pretty sure you really don’t understand how or why the country you share with me was built.

One side of the coin, I’m an avid technologist.    I own an obscene number of computers, both Mac and PC.   I’ve got an iPhone, and owned one of each generation.   I cancelled my cable nearly a year ago and stream Netflix and local channels via Windows Media Center on a computer hooked up to my television.   I don’t own a landline; all my telephone service is wireless or VoIP.    Even my business is completely done on the web with Quickbooks Online and Google Sites, Gmail, and Docs.

Now flip that coin over:    I have three, yes three, apps on my iPhone.   I don’t use LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.   I have no desire whatsoever for a tablet PC or an iPad.   I’m seriously considering purchasing an older (pre-1975) car to re-build as a daily driver and dumping my 2007 Aveo.   I still write checks, fill out forms with a ball point pen,  and do my bills via snail mail.    I’ll call someone instead of texting them.

So what gives?  Why the dual personalities?

I’ve been wondering that myself lately, and started keeping track of why I tend to do things a certain way versus another.   For instance, I’ll not think twice  in allowing Quickbooks Online (which is great, by the way) automatically post transactions in our business account directly from Chase, but minutes later I’ll be writing a check and affixing postage to an envelope addressed to the office insurance company.   Insanity perhaps?

Well, no, as a matter of fact.   You see my moment of clarification resulted from an airbag light and an accelerator pump.   Let’s back up six months, and put our gearhead hat (or welding visor, for you true hardcore grease monkeys) on for a few moments.

I’ve had a lingering problem with the Camaro that anyone with old-car experience has probably felt before.   When dropping the gas pedal to the floor, the car would stutter and hesitate for a moment (kind of embarassing in a muscle car!) and then finally pick up steam and roar ahead.   The reason for this is due to the carburetor’s throttle plates suddenly opening all the way, and all the vacuum in the engine’s intake system disappearing for a moment while the engine’s RPMs spool up.  For those not-quite-car-savvy readers out there, vacuum in the engine is what pulls the gas/air mix in and allows it to go ‘vroom’!  No vacuum, no vroom.

Over the decades carburetor designers figured out that if a small syringe-like pump–called an accelerator pump–was physically hooked up to the cabling coming from the gas pedal, they could preempt this pause with a small squirt of straight gasoline into the throat of the engine. This provided some temporary “oomph” for a few seconds while the vacuum caught up with the driver’s right foot.  Clever thinking, to be sure.

Now, let’s fast forward back to modern-day.   My 2007 Aveo has an Airbag light on.   Much to my chagrin, it is completely undiagnosable sitting in my garage.  You must take it to a service center with the appropriate code scanners to even know what’s wrong.

So here comes my epiphany.

As an engineer and a tinkerer, I want control.   However, I’m also lazy.  What I’ve found is that if something  just works, I’m willing to allow it to work behind a set of curtains–even if that means raising an eyebrow and surrendering a bit of control.   However,  if something is problematic nothing angers me more than not being able to fix it myself.  In fact, I’ll even stop using it or throw it away.

I own the 2007 Aveo.  I have the title, and it is lien-free.   However, I couldn’t even obtain the specifications on how to diagnose the airbag system on the car even if I wanted to.   Chevrolet doesn’t make them available, I’m sure because they’re afraid someone will set the airbags off by accident.    So the question is, do I really own it?   I’m still subservient to the manufacturer, even though I’ve paid for the product.

I also own my Camaro, and last weekend I finally fixed the hesitation problem by bending a piece of wire on the carburetor with a pair of pliers.

I’ve realized that this same disparity lack of control and trust is my issue with software and technology in general.   As software is getting more and more complex, and nearly everything is online 100% of the time, quality and control  is seemingly going south along with it.  I doubt this is intentional by software developers;  more likely its just the vast task of maintaining and QA’ing gigantic amount of source code.   I’ve recently noted that when software or a piece of digital tech fails me, I get very bitter and don’t often go back and use it again.   The same thing is happening with my 2007 Aveo, and I’m once again behaving irrationally about it.

So for all you software developers out there:   Take a lesson from the carburetor designers of an era past.   It’s cute to be clever, but simplicity and reliability are true genius. It seems software is going the wrong direction–placing features higher in importance over function and reliably.

Get back to to basics, and just write damn tight code.   Your user base will thank you.

I’ll keep the Haynes manual handy, if you need to borrow it.

So what is the definition of absolute truth? The terms “absolute” and “truth” as described by various dictionaries unequivocally mean “total fact”. So, the question is can there be? Well, like I mentioned before–it’s tough.

And here’s one reason why. The concepts, interpretations, philosophical views, and debates of truth are obviously  held and processed by the gray matter of billions of human minds. However, if intelligence (including people) did not exist in this universe, the question becomes: “Would absolute truth still exist, or would the whole concept simply be irrelevant?”

If “absolute truth” is taken at its literal definition, then it would still exist independent of the existence of intellect. But if that situation were case, how can that be possible? For “absolute truth” to work at all, there must be a context for that truth to be valid in. For instance, if “lying is bad” is an “absolute truth”, then how does that particular truth hold up in the absence of any intelligence being capable to lie at all?

This logically leads you down the opposite path of thought, being that absolute truth has a dependency on intellect for itself to be valid, naturally meaning that intellect and relative exposure to a given individual at least in part has a contribution to what absolute truth is. This means absolute truth would seem relative in definition, since without an intellect and a context for it to be valid and applicable to, it wouldn’t be valid at all and most definitely not absolute. You can go in circles in your head about it for hours.

However, I for one do claim it is impossible to divide by zero. Well, without any useful output anyway. That’s my absolute truth; and after thinking about this for a bit, mathematics and physics seem to be the only paths of transcending absolute truths out there. Want proof? Try dividing an orange into two pieces using absolutely nothing. Can’t do it can you? See, told ya.

My new icon of faith is now the obelus, more often termed as the math division symbol: ÷

Time for a beer.