New Year A'Comin'

This is the time when we pause to consider all that has occurred over the course of the year just coming to a close and contemplate our hopes for the year ahead.

Meh.

Nothing all that encouraging comes to mind, I'm afraid. "I hope things go as well for you as they do for me", doesn't display the insightful quality one has learned to expect to mark this annual occasion. Still, it is at least an honest sentiment so it'll just have to do.

See you next year, assuming we're all still upright and breathing on our own by then.

Merry Christmas ...

... to you and yours.

If I Could Talk To TED

Cross-posted to Future Blogger.

In his 2005 book FAB, author Neil Gershenfeld introduced the world to the possibilities of our potential near future.

If I could talk to TED, I would remind them of this and point out that there is likely to be a longish wait for whole-object fabrication technology to be affordable and reliably available to the general public. And, that it isn't really necessary to wait for that happy day either. We humans are long established tool users already, so how unreasonable is it to seek to develop the fab technology to create replacement parts for our existing technology and simply replace the worn bits as necessary? The technology already allows for the used parts to be de-constructed on-site for re-use in later fabrications as well.

If I could talk to TED, I'd remind them that guys like me, in our 50's now, along with our wives and children are the initial target market for this technology to achieve ultimate universal acceptance and application. I would suggest to my fellow TEDsters that a useful mechanism for achieving that goal would be a video campaign that visually demonstrates the technology and its application process to any potential additional user. I would also point out that there is a wide-spread lack of understanding of why adoption of new scientific advances takes so long to come to market; watching as the early attempts fail, and explaining the complexities involved, will be an express objective of this video campaign also, with the eventual objective of showing ultimate success of course.

If I could talk to TED, I would point out that there exists an empty building in Tyler Texas that would be wonderfully suitable for such a long-term effort that is available for lease. A former Walmart store, it already has a heavy maintenance area (the former automotive department) as well as warehouse storage, shipping and receiving facilities in place. An enclosed section of the parking lot (part of the former garden center) allows for long term secure testing of environmental effects on fab'd items and materials as well as extensive interior space for multiple projects to occur simultaneously. The ready availability of cable technology allows for high speed data transfer capability at little expense, so such a site would be suitable for tele-presence research efforts involving Dr. Gershenfeld's MIT lab and others to collaborate on projects at little added expense. Perhaps TED could facilitate developing and coordinating such projects.

If I could talk to TED, I would point out that this technology will have a profound effect upon existing commercial and social models of human behavior. I would beseech the members of TED to intercede with the Board of Directors of Walmart to facilitate their becoming the corporate sponsor of this effort. Their business model in a future FAB society might be to provide the fab facilities for larger projects than a personal unit could handle as well as downloadable (for a modest fee) specifications for proven items of common usage that individuals might occasionally have need for. Don't want to fab 10 rolls of TP (or whatever) on your personal machine? Go to Walmart and pick up the order you submitted on-line earlier. The possible opportunities for Walmart from such an association are numerous.

If I could talk to TED, I would point out that a potentially decade-long effort could be basically funded for $7 to $8 million with the expectation that much of the capital equipment would be donated and/or secondhand. Three regular employees would be augmented by research students and collaborative corporate sources with only periodic specialty contracted services necessary otherwise. It is specifically stipulated that any expansion beyond the basic video campaign would be financed in full by the expanded effort - indeed, that such a commercialization of the research would explicitly include additional funding for the research project.

If I could talk to TED, I would point out that social change has need for attention to practical necessities as well as high minded ideals. That Vision can't always be focused on the objective if it wishes to overcome the obstacles. That failure along the way to success is a valuable lesson too. That taking the time and making the effort to answer objections in real and demonstrable fashion is also an important part of gaining acceptance of change, which itself is necessary to attaining widespread adoption of desired change. And finally, I would point out the obvious, that the future is coming no matter what we do and ask how much better are we prepared to make it be?

A Practical Implementation of Strategic Principle

Cross-posted to Future Blogger.

I recently examined some of the strategic principles involved in advancing a position in a competitive environment, in particular in this comment exchange. I have found little opportunity to demonstrate the practice of the principles I study on this page heretofore.

Continuing on, Brian Wang of the Lifeboat Foundation, has compiled an instructive post on the recent nomination by President-elect Obama of Professor Steven Chu to the cabinet post of Energy Secretary. As Director of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Secretary-nominee Chu is well versed in both the scientific realities of energy generation and distribution systems and the - quirks - of government agency operations.

I have in the past stated my thoughts on effecting a national energy strategy. While this proposal was specifically intended only to rectify the forecast US shortfall of electrical generation and distribution predicted for the next decade or so, Professor Cho is eminently qualified to judge how well it can also serve as a mechanism to bridge the country through to wide-spread construction of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors which are capable of supplying both base load as well as demand load electrical grid requirements to any level of generation capability we wish to build, whether or not options such as solar or wind grid power are further developed. As I am confident the Secretary-designate will point out to the President-elect, there is a sufficiency of nuclear fuel remaining, regardless of the reactor type chosen. He is also well positioned to make clear that Molten Salt Reactors and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors leave unspent fuel in minuscule quantities having a half-life measured over several decades. By re-processing existing spent fuel (as well as nuclear weapons material), the US would no longer need the storage facility at Yucca Mountain, unless Congress finds it economical to use it to replace existing storage facilities as they are emptied to fuel MSR and LFTR power units around the country over the next few score years.

President-elect Obama is my president too. I sincerely wish him the greatest success in leading our country through the economic and other challenges we presently confront, not to mention the other as-yet unidentified challenges that will no doubt appear during the coming four years. Mr. Obama finds himself in the politically rare position of being presented with the mechanism whereby he can effect an order-of-magnitude improvement in the existential capabilities of our country as well as initiate a resurgence of the nation's economy by the means I have identified. The same technology permits moderation of the world's potential for conflict as well, without fear of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Threats of assassination and the like (whether directed at the President-elect or more generally towards "government officials" or generic law enforcement) are largely the result of fear among the citizenry and challenge to supremacy amongst foreign elements. By such dramatic efforts to redress the employment and energy concerns of the country, Mr. Obama extends opportunity to the general populace and poses a challenge to his detractors to improve upon his efforts, thereby reducing the anxiety levels that contribute to such contemplations. By including foreign allies, he extends the pax americana in a non-conflicting fashion that further empowers other nation's leadership (political and other) to inhibit conflict with the US and among themselves. The foregoing won't guarantee peaceful results, but they will do much to ensure the nation's survival should conflict break out and work to isolate those who choose destruction over cooperation from their own potential allies.

There's my contribution to hope and change.

PS: Should any officer of the court desire to discuss the contents of this treatise in greater detail, they are invited to telephone me at their discretion - they have the means to acquire my cellphone number from the personal data associated with this blog. Should I not answer, please do leave a message and telephone number, I will call you back. In the event a personal contact seems desirable, please permit time for the morning coffee to kick in, then feel free to come knock on my front door. I will be happy to share the remainder of the Yuban in the pot (I'll even make fresh) and answer any questions that might exist concerning my statements.

On Alliance

Kevin Baker has a new post up since Friday titled Fantasy Ideology in which he examines the recent resurgence of dispute within the (largely) US gun-owning populace over the proper method for protecting and advancing those ownership rights. I'm going to pick out one link he provides in particular because it so neatly illustrates what I regard as the more fundamental problem seeking address within this debate.

In a comment to his post, Caleb says:

I’m a prag, no doubt about it. Just like everyone else, I’ve got a line in the sand. I just don’t particularly feel the need to tell the entire world where my line in the sand happens to be, because that seems tactically unsound.

As a brief aside, and stipulating that Caleb is indeed a competent judge of his tactical circumstance, tactics are the immediate, transitory and situational-specific actions employed in response to a particular juxtaposition of events and locale. If in fact it was tactically unsound for him to reveal his "line in the sand" when Caleb wrote those words, the tactical situation has assuredly changed in the interim. As too, I should point out, has the precise nature of his hypothetical line.

What I believe Caleb was trying to express was the strategic concept of doubt, which I like to summarize as: Never let anybody know everything about you.

Literally anyone can choose (or be made) to threaten your position. This may be as trivial as influencing your decision to buy grocery item "A" instead of your preferred item "B" to the entirely non-trivial constraint against your buying a particular make and year model firearm (to bring this closer to the topic du jure, and thanks to Kevin for that link as well). Whatever the particulars might happen to be, the concept of doubt applies to all aspects of your life (and extends to literally everyone else in existence, to at least some degree); doubt as to your intentions, your capabilities and your limitations. Your parents, your children, your spouse, your colleagues, your closest friends and your most virulent enemies, all of them should be in some (and mutually contradictory) doubt regarding one or more fundamental aspect(s) of you. Doubt as to whether (or how) you either would (or would not) respond to a given stimulus in a particular circumstance with unreliable estimations being the only result no matter who is being asked. Doubt always empowers you, even in your most intimate relationships, because it provides a natural avenue of communication with anyone willing (or manipulated) to enquire of you. Multiplicity of options provides leverage to advancing your position without need of resorting to outright force - what Sun Tzu described as the epitome of good generalship. And, communication is the key to arriving at and maintaining an alliance.

While "country" can be limited to topological configurations, "nation" is always an alliance of insufficiently dis-similar competing positions. Kevin Baker's list of priorities is without doubt different from that of my own, but insufficiently different to preclude our mutual participation in that peculiar alliance known as the United States of America. The same could be said (if only barely :)) for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rush Limbaugh, too. All of which serves to illustrate that the present contretemps over ideological determination and expression is not only fundamental to the existence of our national alliance, it is the mechanism by which we test and improve our selves and our relationship, both together and with other's national alliances. To put it in manufacturing and engineering terms I'm sure Kevin can appreciate, ideological divisiveness is the Non-Destructive Test mechanism in our national alliance, and is so as a matter of express foundational choice (see: 1st Amendment, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, et al). We dispute together whereby we may advance together.

Strategic science (principles of classification and organisation utilizing measurable and falsifiable theorem) teaches that advancement can be least damagingly achieved by utilizing other-than-violent means. This requires encouraging the competitors into communicating amongst themselves and cooperating to mutual advantage. The technique most commonly employed to do this is to expand the field of conflict such that non-violent competition becomes more advantageous (amongst and to the involved parties) than is the alternative of doing violence to one another. As can be seen, this process works well whether or not there exists conflict between the parties; expanding alliances between warring nations (or neighbors or relatives) or between competing businesses or ideological adherents provides equally effective opportunities without resorting to destructively violent means. It also happens to illustrate the sometimes confusing nature of tactics as well; even transitory and situational dependant options have their perennial aspect.

In this recent post, I draw a parallel between this Eric Raymond essay and the current circumstance of actress Denise Richards (and, yes, that's partly your fault too, Kevin :)). Whether or not you concur with my opinion of her as either a person or artiste, I submit that Ms. Richard's circumstance provides a viable example of one mechanism whereby we gun owners and 2nd Amendment supporters might expand the national debate on this issue to our (and the nation's) positional advancement. You'll have to actually click on the link and read what I wrote for yourself to decide how best to utilize this option, but whether or not you agree that this is the best available tactic I stand by my assertion that it would extensively alter the terms of engagement over this nationally (and in my opinion largely falsely) divisive issue. TamaraK might have a suggestion as to yet another possible national sponsor of such an effort, as well.

Which leads quite neatly to the strategic concept of controlling the context of conflict or, in the modern military parlance, "shaping the field of battle". As is often the case, strategic manipulations commonly employ mutually supportive efforts that involve different contributors to the action. What makes mundane strategy different from the more widely recognised military application is the preference for involving "the enemy" in the process to a much greater degree than most soldiers would be willing to risk. I attribute this to the basic military premise that conflict is the foundational assumption whereas competition is the normal condition otherwise. However violent competition might become, it precludes actual destruction of the opposition, if only on economic grounds; destruction of the enemy's supportive infrastructure is the preliminary position for the military.

Answer me this: Chrysanthemum Empire or Dirty Japs; Teutonic Efficiency or Nazi Slave Labor Camps; and most recently, Islamic Freedom Fighters or Rag Head Terrorists? How you phrase the concept profoundly influences people's subsequent understanding of the topic. If you let your opposition supply the terminology you allow him a dominant position from which to further advance his position; you on the other hand find yourself constantly re-stating your fundamental position with little time to spare for additional advancement. In my opinion, the classic example of this from the 20th century is wide-spread adoption of the word "capitalist" or it's corollary "capitalism". Karl Marx popularised these words in his 19th century socialist encyclical as a means of disparaging the market economy and its participants by lumping them together with the excesses and abuses of its evolutionary forebears and all of their (to as recently as just last week - whenever you may be reading this) detrimental manipulations of their various currencies and economic models. By consenting to the word, we consent to the premise as well, thereby granting the context of conflict to the political and philosophical enemy.

In the 3% issue Kevin writes about, there remains understated as of yet one of the principal attributes routinely touted by practitioners of other martial arts and sciences - the individual benefit to the practitioner from the discipline that rigorous adherence to the strictures of the practice input to the student. Rather than re-state the observations from Eric Raymond's outstanding essay on this aspect of gun ownership, I refer the reader to this recent soliloquy from a widely respected gun owner that approaches this issue from it's more practical viewpoint, from which I excerpt here:

Make up your mind ahead of time to resist; that's the most important thing of all. When the flag flies, your decision will already be made, and your mental decks will be cleared for action. Resist. Do not go gently. Fight back. The life you save may be your own, or it may be that of the innocent person standing next to you who now has time to run, but make up your mind now.

As a student of strategic thought I can find no fault with the foregoing as a foundational principle. As a student of the gun, I hasten to point out that the tactical environment will play a huge role in determining when and to what degree this principle should be adhered to. While strategy is universal, the tactics utilized to achieve positional advancement are always situational and pragmatic. In more common philosophic terms, strategy addresses moral issues while tactics are always ethically challenging. As promoters of the RKBA, we need to involve the general American public in establishing a national discipline of gun-related martial arts and science principles that can be practiced without aid of an actual gun - think sport karate or kendo as opposed to Hong Kong street fighter or Samurai. I know that Krav Maga teaches some of these practices, but not as a philosophy per se, what we need is to develop that philosophy and involve as many non-shooters in the development process as we practicably can. They may still decline to own a gun themselves thereafter, but it almost certainly won't be out of ignorance or lack of understanding. If we gun ownership supporters can achieve such a national condition (per Eric Raymond, again) then we operate to advance our position over those who directly - and pretty much openly - threaten us, not seek to "protect" us.

A school of philosophy that safely teaches our children discipline and self-reliance, as citizens of a nation founded upon those very principles, pretty much becomes our national and personal "line in the sand", doesn't it?

Res Publica

Are you a resident of the state of Texas? If so, go here and cast your vote.

It's the only way we'll ever get an opportunity to cast a real one someday.

Ambivalent

I keep reading about this on-line test that most of the country apparently can't pass.

On the one hand, I feel much better about my own 84% (how did I miss the one about the 1st amendment protecting religion? What was I thinking?).

On the other hand, this result is more than a little disturbing. I've long thought politicians were generally quasi-criminals, but stupid ones too?

Thanks to Rand Simberg and Glenn Reynolds for the links.

Now That Would Be Entertainment! :)

Strategic principle is often put into practice by arranging an alliance between two or more seemingly unlikely positions to the mutual benefit and advancement of all concerned. A "strategic visionary" is frequently little more than someone who has made the effort to grasp the basic concepts involved and recognised a nascent juxtaposition before anyone else.

Eric S. Raymond wrote a compelling essay a couple years ago about the important role firearms historically played in the development of responsible people and competent citizens. Mr. Raymond relates the convergence of personal responsibility that conscientious gun users develop and practice to the equivalent public duties and character that good citizenship demands. While recognising that this personal development mechanism has fallen into dis-favor in recent national history, Mr. Raymond declines to go into specific examples as to how this circumstance might be rectified.

As a matter of personal conviction, I consider the actress Denise Richards to be one of the most physically arousing women alive. Now, I recognise that her genetic inheritance isn't an accomplishment she can lay especial claim to and that her professional training and experience makes passing judgement on her character based upon her occupational efforts more than a little mis-leading too, but her personal and professional circumstance positions her to take the public stage in a manner not often permitted those in her chosen trade, I believe (and yes, I read this too).

One of the problems shared by historical re-creation and "Reality TV" is the obvious contrived nature of their public presentation. US Civil and Revolutionary War re-enactors overcome this by totally immersing themselves in the character minutia and historical circumstance such that their actual personality becomes submerged - very like the process followed by traditional stage and screen actors, I imagine. Audiences to their "performances" are generally understanding of the amatuer theatrics involved and that the action being portrayed is the feature, not the actors theatric accomplishments. Reality TV programs, on the other hand, are premised on the personality of the featured celebrity and the circumstance de jure being supposed to offer some measure of drama or humor. The participants are measured against the same standards by which any other public performance might be - however "unscripted" they're purported to be. Let's face it, drama in our personal lives rarely turns out happily and isn't something we can schedule at all reliably.

In Ms. Richards' recent on-screen effort, she explicitly avoids resorting to the single most universal circumstance she shares with her potential audience - her ex-husband. Despite the all-too-public nature of their relationship (not to mention its demise), her publicly expressed desire not to damage his relationship with their children speaks well of her as a parent, but denies this legitimately expected programming content that a reality-based presentation such as hers requires. What makes this decision on her part even more pronounced is her decision to include her two daughters in the on-screen presentation and the court proceedings she found necessary to over-ride their father's objections. Her deliberate on-camera confrontation with a magazine editor over the nature of the coverage she recieved was also damaging. Not to make too much of the issue, but someone who spends her working day in front of a camera with the intent of publicly broadcasting the result comes off as somewhat less than genuine for objecting to someone else doing the same thing. The result was to disappoint the most salacious of the potential audience while de-meaning her own public personae to her critical (or only spiteful) observers. In any case, the program suffered and failed to achieve or hold sufficient audience to justify its continuation apparently.

A successful strategy advances the disparate positions of its constituents. For Denise Richards to achieve such positional advancement herself, she must ally herself with others so as to reinforce their individual actions.

Ms. Richards needs continuing occupation that doesn't intrude excessively on her parental responsibilities. Mr. Sheen needs to maintain active contact with his daughters and a viable cooperation with his former wife. Not to be discounted, the two young Miss Sheen each has needs to be accounted for as well; a stable home life with two parents guidance and comfort combined with an opportunity to grow into adulthood as functional contributing citizens of the Republic. Mr. Raymond's essay offers a potential framework into which all of these considerations can be structured to advance each, both separately and in concert.

Presuming Ms. Richards can arrange for further filming of her program at all, a change of venue and a structural re-format would extend the potential audience and remove certain distractions from the production.

One of the principle distractions Its Complicated suffers from is the legitimate concern Mr. Sheen has for daughters Sam J. and Lola Rose's welfare. I'm willing to stipulate that Ms. Richards seeks to involve them in the production as a mechanism to further their financial benefit. By moving the program venue to this portion of Texas, she and their father can jointly purchase some property (I would suggest 20+ acres of undeveloped land) and vest ownership jointly in the two girl's names while arranging for the property to be managed as a blind trust over which neither parent has direct influence. The TV shows premise would shift to Ms. Richards working to build a home for her daughters while she home-schooled them. Given the generally universal love young girls have for horses, it seems reasonable to plan for a non-commercial horse ranch environment that would also accommodate Ms. Richards' love of animals as an initial construction objective.

Mr. Raymond begins his essay thus:

There is nothing like having your finger on the trigger of a gun to reveal who you really are. Life or death in one twitch — ultimate decision, with the ultimate price for carelessness or bad choices.

It is a kind of acid test, an initiation, to know that there is lethal force in your hand and all the complexities and ambiguities of moral choice have fined down to a single action: fire or not?

In truth, we are called upon to make life-or-death choices more often than we generally realize. Every political choice ultimately reduces to a choice about when and how to use lethal force, because the threat of lethal force is what makes politics and law more than a game out of which anyone could opt at any time.

But most of our life-and-death choices are abstract; their costs are diffused and distant. We are insulated from those costs by layers of institutions we have created to specialize in controlled violence (police, prisons, armies) and to direct that violence (legislatures, courts). As such, the lessons those choices teach seldom become personal to most of us.

Nothing most of us will ever do combines the moral weight of life-or-death choice with the concrete immediacy of the moment as thoroughly as the conscious handling of instruments deliberately designed to kill. As such, there are lessons both merciless and priceless to be learned from bearing arms — lessons which are not merely instructive to the intellect but transformative of one's whole emotional, reflexive, and moral character.

I don't know that he was thinking of pre-school little girls and Hollywood starlets when he wrote those words, but they apply all the same. America is a nation of gun users because we were founded as a country on the principle of personal responsibility for the life-and-death nature of our individual liberty. Mr. Raymond further points out:

The Founding Fathers of the United States believed, and wrote, that the bearing of arms was essential to the character and dignity of a free people. For this reason, they wrote a Second Amendment in the Bill Of Rights which reads the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with it, the Second Amendment is usually interpreted in these latter days as an axiom of and about political character — an expression of republican political thought, a prescription for a equilibrium of power in which the armed people are at least equal in might to the organized forces of government.

It is all these things. But it is something more, because the Founders regarded political character and individual ethical character as inseparable. They had a clear notion of the individual virtues necessary collectively to a free people. They did not merely regard the habit of bearing arms as a political virtue, but as a direct promoter of personal virtue.

The Founders had been successful armed revolutionaries. Every one of them had had repeated confrontation with life-or-death choices, in grave knowledge of the consequences of failure. They desired that the people of their infant nation should always cultivate that kind of ethical maturity, the keen sense of individual moral responsibility that they had personally learned from using lethal force in defense of their liberty.

Accordingly, firearms were prohibited only to those intended to be kept powerless and infantilized. American gun prohibitions have their origins in racist legislation designed to disarm slaves and black freedmen. The wording of that legislation repays study; it was designed not merely to deny blacks the political power of arms but to prevent them from aspiring to the dignity of free men.

The dignity of free men (and, as we would properly add today, free women). That is a phrase that bears thinking on. As the twentieth century draws to a close, it sounds archaic. Our discourse has nearly lost the concept that the health of the res publica is founded on private virtue.

As knowledgeable hunters and shooters around the world can attest, the moral and ethical lessons that provide the foundation for civic virtue and personal integrity that gun usage can provide don't actually require they be used to their full design potential - it isn't necessary to actually kill with one to learn the lessons it can teach. With that in mind, Ms. Richards should explicitly include a family known-distance shooting range on the property and arrange for regular lessons and practice for herself and the girls. Since instruction is the intent rather than competition, a distance of 100' (200' max) ought to suffice. A decent backstop berm or other terrain feature to shoot against at one end and a simple concrete slab with awning and a couple benches or tables behind the firing line at the other would be ample. While pre-schoolers are more likely to better accomidate air rifles then .22's as a general rule, the purpose is to begin their introduction to the moral and other lessons that responsible gun usage ought to impart and to bolster their self-reliance by watching their mother doing the same thing.

It's commonly estimated that there are something in the neighborhood of 100 million gun owners in the US alone; if even 1 percent of them watch the show that's 1 million viewers tuning in to see their personal interest being shared in a responsible and entertaining fashion on TV. Not to mention three ladies of varying age helping to pass on one of life's most crucial lessons to each other and anybody else who happens to vicariously join them each episode.

Since no TV show can survive without advertising sponsors (well, they can I suppose, but having some certainly must make production more assured), I think Denise (and the girls to the extent they are able) doing the P90X exercise program would be an entertaining and physically beneficial regular segment of the show. [Trust me, despite my current dimensions, as a former gym-rat I can assure you that there is very little more entertaining on this Earth than watching someone shapely bend, twist and sweat copiously on her way to physical collapse. And very little will build respect faster than watching her succeed in overcoming the physical challenge.] Additionally, the Nutra System nutrition program would make another excellent sponsor for the show as Ms. Richards and the girls make at least one meal each episode on-camera from their menu. The advantages of home delivery and storage the food offers is a legitimate point to bring up as is the dietary considerations a professional actor shares with pretty much anyone else to some degree.

By moving the show away from its present environment Ms. Richards can spend some portion of each episode working on some aspect of the property in addition to filming some regional activity or attraction whether or not she or the girls actually takes part on camera. 3 or 4 minutes of each episode of her doing voice-over for a segment showing some aspect on non-Hollywood life would be an excellent opportunity for other celebrities to have cameo appearances on the show if such could be arranged.

I don't ordinarily insert myself so directly into these strategic examinations, but in this case I can't resist. Ms. Richards is going to need the active assistance of someone who has the basic skills needed to carry all of this off. Now, admittedly much of the major work of building the property will be performed by professionals hired for the purpose. The premise requires that she and the girls at least try to do some of all of it though and a male helper who has some expertise would not seem unlikely under the circumstances. It doesn't really matter what the job title ends up being, there are really only two primary considerations involved; he will work for Ms. Richards (this is a job application, not a proposal for matrimonial dependency) and he shouldn't be an experienced acting professional himself. Ms. Richards will need some area of superior expertise not only for her own continued good mental health but also to bolster her starring role in the program format. Having to help a non-professional work reasonably well before the camera ought to fill both needs admirably. I will confess to tailoring the specifics of all this to permit my own participation to be at least possible. [I will also confess to having to step out onto the front porch and letting my periodic flights of fancy take wing for a bit just to get them out of the way of writing this down.] I presume by this point in her acting career the lady has become reasonably accomplished in helping men technically old enough to be her father through their initial urge to act like a 12 year old upon first meeting her. That being so, whether or not she might consider me personally for the job, someone to meet that need would benefit the program and improve the girl's potential property value by providing a maintenance staff candidate post-production.

By taking the show away from the obviously contrived (or just unseemly) situations it has revolved around over the course of the first season, Ms. Richards presents herself as someone with whom many more people can positively identify then has so far been the case. She will participate in and de-mystify a variety of behaviors that often receive short shrift from her industry and develop an inheritance (with the active participation of their father) for her two children, all while continuing to earn a living in her chosen profession.

Yeah, it's complicated, but like all good strategy it's quite do-able.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link to Eric Raymond's original post.

Tears in your eyes

From laughter:

TOP TIP this week comes not from Viz, but from the front page of the Daily Telegraph (yes, the front page).

If you’re feeding the birds this winter and your bird table keeps getting mugged by squirrels, just sprinkle a bit of chilli powder on your nuts. Apparently the birds don’t mind it, but the squirrels hate it. Probably keeps you warm as well. Pip pip!

and its polar opposite.

Dodge The Draft, Volunteer Now!

Cross posted to Future Blogger.

Remember all the Democratic concern over a resurgence of the draft? Looks like they knew what they were obsessing over:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

(my bold)

Now, I readily grant that there is a substantive difference between involuntary active military service during time of war and 150 hours of involuntary "community service". If it needs be said so bluntly, my derision is cast at the inducement to service, not the nature of the service performed.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I was once granted the opportunity to satisfy my misdemeanor debt to California society when I was - several - decades younger by performing "community service". As a result, I have actual direct experience of all aspects of this issue upon which to base my commentary.

It's going to be sooo much fun tormenting the well-meaning over their self-inflicted cognitive dissonance resulting from the distinction between type or conditions of involuntary service and the act of involuntary service itself.

[Note to self: Wait until some obvious Democrat makes the argument the the military draft is akin to slavery but the Obama involuntary service is not. Then break out in peals of soul-purifying laughter at the blazing hypocrisy. Timing is the most important thing in comedy.]

Does anyone actually believe there will be some sort of exemption available for those of us who actually hold down jobs so that we can remain employed to pay the taxes needed to pay for the school and other government expenditures related to just this one program? No, I don't either, so that's three hours out of every work week for all of us apparently.

It just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? I have to say, my Hope is certainly Changing.