About 9/11...

Dear kids of America under 15:

If you were 3 when it happened, I am more than happy to have you post something memorial about 9/11 on your Facebook wall.

But please, please stop saying "Never Forget." You were probably still in diapers. You can't forget something if you weren't aware it happened.

It'd be like me saying "Challenger explosion: never forget."

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Jason

Out here at work, we've got a pop machine and a snack machine. The prices are outrageously high. It used to be just a pop machine, but then they added the snack machine, asking $0.90 for the smallest of items. This made me angry, both because of the slow roll of inflation but also because I could buy two of the same item at a grocery store for that price - was the convenience charge really 100%?
So I fashioned a hilarious meme to put on the vending machine. I was going to print it and tape it to the machine...I figured the rest of the folks out here would find it hilarious. Of course they would! I'm hilarious! I left it here on my desk Friday when I went home, and forgot to put it up.

I was down in the break room, heating my lunch today, when two men came in. One appeared to be in his fifties, the other in his late 20's. The younger one, I immediately noticed, had a strangely-shaped skull, and as the older man talked to him kindly...slowly...a picture began to form in my head and the crushing weight of shame descended.

"Jason" is a mentally-challenged person about the same age as me. His job is to ride around in a van he cannot legally drive and refill the vending machines at various businesses here in the southwest corner of Kansas City that have signed up to have their machines filled by a cooperative called Johnson County Developmental Supports. The older man is his guide in this: he drives the van, helps count the money, helps Jason load the right cans of pop back into the machine and the right snacks into the other machine. And off they go to their next location. It's inefficient, meticulous - and completely explains the high vending machine prices.

And there I had stood, last Friday, smugly chuckling to myself about my hilarious yet-to-be-deployed meme.

It's a tough thing for me to do, writing this. I'm a proud man. I have a master's degree in engineering. I am the star engineer at my company. I've got everything going for me, and I knew it all weekend as I strutted around the city with an arrogant confidence that one gets when one has nothing to fear and turns a blind eye to his own weakness(es).
Then there's Jason. What separates me from him? A few tweaked genes is probably all. A dice-roll, and 3 billion base pairs, and I sailed through unhindered. Him? Not so much. And so I get to live my charmed life, work hard at a job I love, make lots of money, raise a family, create the future, while Jason's life is one spent filling vending machines and living in a group home.

And what of the selfless soul - the older man - who is helping Jason put soda in a machine? How can I possibly look a man of that caliber in the face? I am a shadow of this man. Had I put the picture up on that vending machine its meaning would have been lost on Jason, of that I'm sure (thank God). But the kind older man...he'd have seen it, and my heart clenches like a fist thinking of him internalizing my sarcastic complaint.

"Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me."

Eyes wet with tears of shame, I went back down to the break room, asked Jason for a Coke while the machine was still open, gave him my dollar, and thanked him. I hate feeling like this. I hate it. But every time I do, it's my own damn fault.
I am not ashamed of being smart. I am ashamed that I take it for granted.

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Triple Post-Humanity Article Day

Three articles that all showed up on my feed this morning:

Article 1: Man Walks With Aid of Brain-Controlled Robotic Legs

Article 2: Researchers Hack Brainwaves to Reveal PINS, Other Personal Data

Article 3: What Will Happen to Humanity After We Upload Our Brains?

Hello future.

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Genius Engineers: Don't Settle.

"It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest." - Buckminster Fuller, 1970

Two disclosures. First, I'm an egotist. I've worked really hard to get where I am and that has helped me, but my character is a proud one and I feel like I matter in the sense that my actions have far-reaching consequences, good or bad. I like to think I am a growing influence in the world of engineering, in Kansas City, and in the world. Second, my first engineering job after grad school was laying out ductwork and plumbing at a MEP firm in Lenexa, KS. It was honest work, and I loathed every minute of it. Worse yet, I did not proudly walk out of there to a better job; I was laid off in 2009, and only by a stroke of luck (and a couple good interviews) landed one of the best engineering gigs in the city. It's all been a party since.

All that being said, I want to speak an irritated word of lament for a promising young engineer who settled. I met this young engineer when I was at KU in grad school, and she was an incoming freshman. I mostly noticed her because she was pretty, and pretty girls in an engineering school stick out like the Woman in the Red Dress.  I bravely introduced myself, at some point, but that was about it. Four years later, she was featured on the cover of the KU Engineering magazine, carrying the Engineering School banner at graduation, beaming. I found out she'd basically aced life, and had decided to go to grad school. Score! Another engineer bucking the easy way out (entry-level industry) and diving into a more dedicated path of continued specialization. She told me she was going into computational mechanics, or something. I honestly don't remember it exactly, but I got that she was analyzing mechanical designs on very powerful computers using very advanced mathematics. I remember being impressed.

So I hatched a plan. I was going to hire her. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I dreamed that I'd be in a managerial role by the time she finished whatever advanced degree she wanted to get (she suggested she'd go all the way: PhD) and I could hire her. I thought "now there's the kind of human being I want to have working with/for me: a socially adept, genius engineer that excels at basically everything and clearly has ambition.

I found out a couple weeks ago that she took a mechanical design job at XXXXXX.* Two caveats. First, working at XXXXXX is a pretty glamorous job here in Kansas City. It's supposedly a great workplace, it has great benefits, and the company is healthy and vibrant and utilizes leading edge technology. Second, I don't want some XXXXXX engineer to read this and go "what a shitty asshole" because I clearly appear to be gearing up to trash XXXXXX engineers. Look, someone made the computer on which I am typing this, and for that I am grateful. Someone designed the roads on which I drive, and for that I am grateful. Someone builds GPS units that make the world a safer place for transit, and for that I am grateful.

Nevertheless, XXXXXX is a place for engineers who want to do a job designated to them by someone else, making products designed by someone else, so that other people get credit for their hard work. XXXXXX engineers are cogs in a large corporate machine. At XXXXXX, your managers hype team-building nonsense like "Corporate Challenge" and management periodically has all-staff meetings (live-streamed to everyone's desk so they can keep working while they listen in). No engineer at XXXXXX right now, especially not an entry-level one, will make a breakthrough that will support ten thousand.

That is why I lament my young engineer friend going there. The engineering world was her oyster. She had stellar grades, two degrees, was the toast of KU's engineering school (literally) and at the end of that run she planted herself in a cube in someone else's large, ponderous company. She could have been the one in ten thousand that shook the world.

Part of me is bitter. I have high hopes for my company and for the engineering department, and I am irritated a really good engineer slipped through my fingers. But the other part of me is...disenchanted at finding someone with all the tools and none of the ambition.

Granted, it's early in her career. She's been a real engineer 2 weeks. Maybe in a year or two she'll visit my company website and drop her resume. And I'll get my wunderkind.
<
But please. You in the back. Yes, you. The 19 year old engineering student with the bright eyes and the messy apartment. I read you have a 3.9 GPA and are thinking about double majoring in electrical and computer engineering just for kicks. And because its easy for you.

Send me an email. You'll never be just a cog in my machine.



*The original version of this named the company. After thinking about it, I've redacted the company name out of respect for a great man I knew named Paul. I will say it is a company of about 5,000+ employees that is headquartered in Olathe, KS.
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Circumcision, Ctd UPDATED

I'll just put this right here...

I'd bet good money that this article is never mentioned by Andrew Sullivan.

Wow, Sully took the bait:

I remain of the view that this is best decided by the human being whose body is being permanently mutilated - before he becomes sexually active. But the religious and cultural traditions are too deep to be banned in a free society.

I remain, as ever, completely fine with my parents decision to permanently mutilate me.

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My (NASA) Day Has Come!

NASA is asking the public to weigh in on their strategic vision and budget! AW YISS.

My opinion of NASA's "strategic vision" and budget here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Me saying nice things about NASA here, here and here.

(Disclosure: I ranted against the Mars Science Laboratory here. My opinion on that has evolved.)

TL;DR: NASA should:
1. Pay theoretical physicists to exhaustively prove faster-than-light travel is impossible. Conversely, if a feasible method of FTL travel is hypothesized, aggressively research it.

2. Pay scientists to identify and harness Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

3. Pay astronomers to develop methods to identify currently habitable extrasolar planets and then start identifying them.

4. Pay engineers to continue robotic exploration of the solar system.


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Into the Cool Dawn Air; I Am But A Spectator

It's 5:58 AM. I am standing in my front yard, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, with my 4 month old puppy on a leash in front of me. Seconds ago, she was oscillating in front of the door, waiting for me to let her out.
When we first get up in the morning, the combination of a good night's rest and a full bladder turned Niki into a 20 pound helicopter, spinning and gyrating so wildly that at times all four of her feet simultaneously leave the ground.
Our mornings have become routine. About 5:30, she politely starts making "I'm awake" noises in her crate, like the rhythmic scratching of an ear, or a deep, impatient sigh. At 5:45 my alarm goes off and she's instantly sitting up, confident my rise and her release are imminent.
After I stumble into some clothes, I let her into the backyard, where she relieves herself. Then, like a heat-seeking missile she arcs at top speed back to me and we go inside. A quick drink of water and she begins orbiting around me, her entire back half wagging, waiting for the leash. I put it on her and let her drag me to the door. I've been up barely 10 minutes, can't even really see out of my foggy eyeballs yet, but she's bright-eyed and ready to run a marathon.

So there I am, 5:58 AM, in my front yard. We step forth into the cool morning air and she takes three lunges off the porch and freezes like a statue. A bunny is crouched in our yard, near the mailbox. My puppy has spotted it, and forgotten all else. I do not matter, the rest of the world does not matter, and the morning walk is forgotten.
My dog is a Brittany, and her two favorite activities are running and pointing. In this case, the running has been furloughed for a few minutes in favor of holding absolutely still, legs stretched forward to their fullest, eyes a bright unblinking stare at a rabbit in the yard. Hundreds of years of careful breeding has made it essentially impossible for her to move.
Once the sleepiness has left my eyes I realize that my little dog isn't holding still after all...she's vibrating. Pulses of energy appear to be traveling up and down her torso in waves, and every second or so she let's out a little squeak. Her feet, however, have been cast into the concrete of the front stoop. Her little brown nose wobbles back and forth as she gulps in rabbit-scented air.
Then the rabbit bolts, and my dog becomes a projectile after it. She's thrown up into the air when she hits the end of the leash, but comes down on all fours, never having taken her eyes off the retreating bunny. She stands still again, watches the bunny for a minute, and then when I murmur "Let's Go, Niki," she turns and leads me down the street, nose to the ground.

These mornings are fun for us both, I think. All too often before I got the puppy, the pre-commute hours were filled with nothing but sleep-to-the-last-minute and then a quick shower packing a lunch and rushing out the door. I've added an extra 45 minutes onto the front end of my morning, for that little dog, and it's amazing how different life is for me.
But really, on these walks, I'm just along for the ride. Niki moves forward and backward on the leash, left and right, running out ahead of me, stopping to smell something, falling behind, then racing to catch up. She doesn't so much go for walks with me...it would be more accurate to say she is in some sort of erratic orbit around me.

And yet, she's under control. At cross-streets we stop to check for cars, and she sits down calmly next to me and waits for permission to go.

But still; having been awake for only a few minutes I am numb. Cars go by and I do not notice them. Niki stops to smell things I did not smell or even see. She finds every bit of trash and investigates it. No rabbit, no bird, no squirrel is safe from her piercing gaze and intense focus. Honestly, I'm just a dumb automaton plodding through the dawn air. I'm not entirely unnecessary, however. When a motorcycle passes by, its loud exhaust frightens Niki and she comes running to my side. Then after it passes she wags her tail excitedly at my side for a moment, as though to say "Did you see that?! Crazy!" before returning to her adventure.

There's a lesson here, I know there is. Maybe I should see the zest for life that my dog has and remember my own, rekindle it, and go forth a little lighter...a little more curious. Maybe what I should do is see the energy in my young pup and lament my own lost youth. Maybe I should follow her example and be a bit more aware, a bit more chipper in the morning.

Or maybe I should just breathe in that cool dawn air, watch the sun rise over the back of my dog, and enjoy being alive. In this moment, in this place, I am alive.


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