First Day of School

Today was Elena's first day of school.  A half day mind you, until she starts the full day on Tuesday which includes an extended day afterschool program at the Lincoln School in Melrose.  It's funny to me, as I went to Maury School, who was a pall bearer at Robert E. Lee's funeral.

I don't usually write about education, except maybe as a piece of infrastructure in public policy as it just feels like work to me and I don't need my personal views wrapped up with that of my employer and those I serve.  That being said, it's a special day to me as my daughter goes on a potential amazing journey.

Public education is the great leveller, the answer to most societal problems.  Access to education all over America has grown greatly over the past 100 years as the United States grew from a agricultural/industrial nation to a complex economy required a large range of skills and knowledge. But education is far beyond the knowledge and skills required to get a job that will support you, your family and the American economy but also a voyage of personal emotional and spiritual growth. 

Just in the past few days, it seems like Elena has started reading, that love of decoding and comprehension that are the keys to the acquisition of knowledge.  Standing in the school yard watching the kids new and old ready to begin a new experience in their lives, a transformational experience for families and educators, I think of the embryonic nature of the American dream personified by backpacks and pencils.

Besides this access to a modern school house and a safe and consistent afterschool program, we are blessed as an upper middle class family with opportunities to supplement this education, through our own experiences, museums and other cultural, historical and educational experiences. There is no doubt in my mind that these experiences as use of our family leisure time will increase her capacity and potential for learning.  Also it bring to me an understanding that this blessing is unlikely shared by a great number of families.  It's these families I often think about in my work, how to break these multi-generational cycles of poverty.

Education is a life long journey, I find the more I learn and get to know the more holes I see in my own education across the spectrum, in places that I would be considered an "expert" as well as those such as science and programming that I am very ignorant. I look forward to learning along with my kids on new developments in the world of learning.  It is an incredible look forward at what can be.

Education is an incredible investment in the future of this country.

Little Boy And Curiosity

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. ~Albert Einstein, "Atomic War or Peace," Atlantic Monthly, November 1945

There are times, when ever I start to write about politics, that I fear I will just keep going out of control.  Spinning out like the Unabomber did in some crazy rant.  Usually this stops because I use spellcheck and that ordinarily slows me down a bit.  I tend to preface most of what I say so one would take it with a grain of salt.  It's funny to read what people put on the Internet, in full public, in comments and what not, not realizing that it's there forever.  After your anger is gone and you've grown older and more tempered (well most people).  I like to preface that I tend to use hyperbole to make a point, don't usually cite things (a blog is not a research paper) and most of all am in on my own joke and don't take myself to seriously.

But more seriously, today, August 6th has always been a day of reflection for me.  A day when science, which has always had a "symbiotic" relationship with war, really reached a crescendo with the bombing of Hiroshima.

I've had an argument with my best friend for going on 25 years or more about the atomic bombing of Japan, my point of view is that it was necessary evil in a total war against evil, while his has been that it was (in my words) a political expediency, an unnecessary evil, and a show of force over an already defeated nation.  He has from time to time started to see it my way, although I must say he has a good point.  But I think this hindsight is 20/20.  It was a free world that had tired of a long, brutal war, and the Japanese as a nation at least had not rendered itself as having any kind of mercy on POW's or the areas that they conquered.  A quick blow to end a brutal conflict?  A no-brainer at that point.

I also may have written of the fear of nuclear war that I and many others grew up with.  Certainly our parents told stories of getting ready and running drills by getting under desks.  My fears were sometimes uncontrollable and kept me from sleep, as I laid in a bed at my grandparents near Dulles Airport wondering if any of the incoming planes were Soviet bombers.  I slept better when I knew Soviet bigwigs were visiting DC or the reverse in Moscow, thinking those who ran the nation would not commit an action tantamount to suicide.

Science in all its wonder is driven by war and vice versa.  When conflict is involved, cold or hot, generally unlimited public funds and resources will be provided.  In fact, while the organization, training, pay, leadership and sheer numbers of the US military have kept this nation's force projection above all other nations for the past 60-odd years, it is science's soul sister technology and engineering that has made US military power on air, land, sea and space without historical equal and supreme nearly to all other military forces combined.  The US has seen a need, real or perceived to be able to fight two major wars simultaneously and felt threatened when unable to deal with any rising regional power or non-nation threat.  This need for supremacy, and focus on national and international security has lead to a combination of respect, reliance, anger, fear, appreciation and expectation by most of the world's population.  But that is a discussion for another day.

I appreciate people who can really understand science.  I understand more about it's social, political and economic impact than I do the science.  I frequently, due to a poor background in science in school, ask them to explain it to me and read as much about it as I can and try to learn along side my 5 year old.  So today was a big day, on the same day that 67 years ago was marked by a Japanese city with no real military value was assaulted by the first use of nuclear weapons,  NASA landed a large "rover" on Mars.  Yes, the United States had managed to land a vehicle the size of an SUV after traveling 100's of millions of miles through space.  An incredible achievement, where soon afterwards ordinary people were able to see what those who were most powerful in history could never dream of, the soil of another planet.  And yes, it was 2.5 billion dollars, an incredible price tag in a recession torn America with a large national deficit and debt, but when you think about it, about the price of taking every American to a matinee movie. (but y'all gotta bring your own snacks)

When I get into my hippie moods, I wonder about our national priorities.  I wonder why when all is said and done we will have spent a projected three TRILLION dollars on two wars that were largely "of choice".  (I'll give you the first six months in Afghanistan as a "necessary" conflict)  I wonder if we had the same energy to spend money on science and research in the life sciences, energy, space, communications, infrastructure, etc. on constructive rather than destructive conflict, what the world would look like.  If we weren't so afraid of each other and what the world was coming to, what it would be like. Certainly I know there is evil in the world, treachery and hate but I'd like to think that vision and imagination could bring us far beyond that.

In some ways, the end of the Cold War made things much more complicated.  It was easy to see black and white, communism and capitalism, good and evil in this conversation.  But the binary nature of the conflict, while fearful was easy to understand.  Assymetrical warfare against a non-nation/state has created much greater collective psychological issues on the part of Americans, particularly when this "foe" is shrouded by a religion and culture that greatly differs from that of the vast majority of the population of western democracies.

So our fear has become so much more complicated. And in fact driven us away from the logic of science, technology and engineering outside of the physics of destruction.  Can Curiousity help to bring back a dream, that on the anniversary of one of the world's darkest days, that discovery is in fact the key to peace and freedom?

Civility: The Right Way or The Coward's Way Out?

I don't really post anymore. Sometimes because I have kids, sometimes I'm just lazy or doing something else. We're back in the silly season, where people generally start to lose their minds and get all irrational.

 So on occasion, I just need a written braindump so my eldest doesn't just see me yelling at the guy with the good hair and ironed flannel shirts on TV. I'm not sure there's a middle in politics any more. Don't get me wrong, there are moderates, but I think most of the moderates have been pushed out of the conversation altogether. And it's not that either of the major party's candidate's don't have moderate tendencies. Governor Romney was governor of one of the most liberal states in the nation and until his recent chameleon like spin, would likely be considered to be at "worst" a Scoop Jackson/Bluedog Democrat and at his most conservative, one of those extinct Rockerfeller/Elliot Richardson Republicans. President Obama, managed to push through a health care plan that in 1994 was the conservative answer to HilaryCare which has somehow been relabeled as socialism.

But the moderate has become a person who does not want to be part of the crazy discourse that is going on. The yelling, the screaming, the sudden birth of the half baked Constitutional scholar, the death panels, the channeling of Ayn Rand, the general silliness. The reaction from those who lean left, sitting there stunned, disappointed by what they thought was a liberal President and just shocked at how the President has created a new generation of drone warfare, pushed a health care plan without a public option and watched as the nation has ground to a complete halt politically. The sound from the extremes has reached a crescendo. Certainly and I think even those on the conservative side would agree that outside of the wackiness of the urban camping of Occupy Wall St., etc, most of that noise has come from the right, the corollary to BushDerangementSyndrome, Obamahate.

Most just don't want to get into the soundbite struggle, the armchair and keyboard riots. So to be civil, many have just excused themselves from the conversation altogether. I wonder sometimes how these folks can stand it, all the noise, how they will feel when they go to the polls, this huge majority of "independents"/non-aligned people and how unfortunate that this disorganized militia of regular folks can't really have a voice in the conversation. They are constantly under assault by media, both paid advertisement and the rest of the noise that goes on.

The right plays this game much better than the left, much of the information is easily digestable with easy to remember arguments, statistics and repartee. The argumentative left usually has very shrill exclamations of fairness and social justice. The conversation generally leaves rationalists of all political backgrounds shut out of any potential positive conversation and discovering consensus and middle ground. So what is the position of the rationalist? And again there are rationalists of many political background.

Where is the vital special interest group whose special interest is in fact a better America? And is civility shutting up, going to the ballot box and voting your conscience. Or is in fact cowardice, not standing up to the big money PAC's and noise and just acting like you're powerless? I feel the pull to not engage, certainly among friends the conversations can be heated and in fact entertaining. But to other, from the craziness of black helicopters, birthers and 9/11 conspiracies to the less extreme but still constant cacophony of FoxNews soundbites, socialist/Muslim/death panel babble, the effort just seems to be worthless.

What is the role of civility in a country that seems to have gone bonkers?