8:15 AM At last, Tom won't be ragging on me for my choice fo football teams. <g> The Vikings won yesterday, and over the 49er's, one of Tom's favortie teams. How nice.

This should be an interesting week; first item on the agenda is finish installing Exchange 2000 on the Windows 2000 Advanced Server test box. Second item on the agenda is to build my new workstation, and third item is... well, by the time I get there, there will be something. More than likely several somethings. <g>

I mentioned last week that I'd most likely jump into some debate; despite Tom's suggestion, I'm not going to debate the pros and cons of clubbing baby seals. I was tempted, but, no, I don't think so. I spent the weekend reading "Firestorm", by Michael Flynn, whish is an excellent near-future science fiction novel. Actually, the story takes place right about now; when it was written, it was a near-future story. The premise is that one woman, Mariesa van Huyten, uses her family fortune and her industrial conglomerate to begin building a private space program, based on an SSTO design. Her motivation is to protect the Earth from asteroid strikes, and her fear and terror of such a thing happening is so great that she'll do almost anything to stop it. She takes over public school districts - "privatizes" them - in order to teach the children the wonders of space, in hopes of creating a generation of risk-takers and dreamers. The US government tries to shut her down - much mention is made of Chapter 35, a regulation requiring a NASA official to inspect every launch vehicle and payload before every launch, and forbidding US citizens from operating foreign launch services. All in all, it's an excellent book, with a lot of thought-provoking material.

Which brings me to the point. (Finally! I can hear you say... <g>) The overall impression I got from the book was that the author though of our society as running down. There's a comment made between the main character and a much older gentleman, referring to an even older man, that goes "his generation fought a world war over freedom, then came home and rebuilt the world. My generation fought to a draw on one small peninsula in a corner of the world." Mariesa takes over with the statement "And my generation tried not to fight at all." That's only one example, there are hundreds scattered through the book and its sequel, "Rogue Star."

Is that true? Have we stopped fighting for new goals and experiences, or has the fight simply changed? Are we now content to sit at home and maintain the status quo? Or are we simply fighting for other things? And is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

I think I'll let someone else start this one off, and we'll see how much fun we have. Which is the point of the exercise, after all.

Tuesday

8:30 AM OK, I admit it, I wasn't paying enough attention yesterday when I spell-checked this site. Somehoe, I let Adobe Go Live change the title of Michael Flynn's novel from "Firestar" to "Firestorm." Ooops. Thanks to Gary Berg for pointing that out.

Tom Syroid was the first to write in with his take on my "topic du jour:"

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Syroid [mailto:tom@syroidmanor.com]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 12:06 PM
To: Matt Beland
Subject: Topic du Jour

Mmm. Interesting topic, as always... OK, I'll bite.

I think we (as a global society) are just as willing to fight for things we believe in as we ever were. BUT, the black and white beliefs that have inspired us to act as we have in the past are not so clearly defined anymore. Which in many ways, is a Good Thing. What calls a society "to arms" (mentally or beyond) is typically a notion of "us versus them"; the underlying premise being that "we are right" and "they are wrong". Pick an example -- any will do: black versus white, democracy versus communism, Catholic versus Protestant.

Today's society, however, no longer relies on the propoganda machines of the past to fill our heads with the "facts" we form opinion from. As individuals, we think more independently than we ever have. Twenty years ago, abortion was clearly "wrong" by all accepted standards. Why? Because the religious structures of our society told us so, and we accepted these views without argument. Today we see both sides of the coin -- that a woman has a right to choose on one hand, and on the other, we openly wonder whether or not the unborn fetus also has claim to such "rights". "Knowledge" that used to hit us with laser-like intensity is now diffused. And as a result of this, our thinking and views have become more diffuse as well.

The net-sum-gain is that we are confronted with fewer issues that can be cleared sloted into black or white. Have the issues themselves changed? I think not -- but our skills to see the many complexities of an issue have. Before you raise a society to arms, there must be a mental concensus to propel this call forward. I'd like to think if another Hitler invaded Poland tomorrow, the world's response would not be terribly different that it was 60 years ago. But clear distinctions of right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, are not as prevelant today. And not because we are lethargic or disinterested. Quite the opposite, actually.

An interesting point, and I find it hard to dispute your logic. But although I think you are correct on point, I think I'd have to fault the general reasoning.

Although it's true that individuals are thinking more independently, in that there are many more valid points of view now then there were in the past, I think that it is also true that the number of people actually thinking for themselves is about the same. Someone once said "99% of the people can't think, 99% of those who can won't think, and the rest of us are getting lonely." While that's an exaggeration - I hope - it still gets the point across. How many people that you know honestly think for themselves? If the people I know are any indication, not very many. As someone who only relatively recently escaped from the public school system, and who still watches his younger brothers go through it, I can say with a certainty that we aren't teaching our children to do it. The Book is the king of all, and reasoning the answer out for yourself is, while still valid, something that is not to be trusted easily. I ran into a personal example of that yesterday; a "coworker" insisted that a Class C block of IP addresses can be split into two equal blocks (true) from 0 to 128 and 129 to 255. Now, that's patently ridiculous, because those two number ranges are not equal. But he would not accept that unless we showed it to him in a book.

So although it's true that there are more points of view, I think that it's also diluting the purpose that those points of view have. And although in theory the multiplication of viewpoints is a good thing, in practice it's turning out to result in the same thing any average committee results in - chaos and unproductive politics.

Wednesday

8:15 AM Booted up my new workstation for the first time last night. This is the first "production" machine in our office to run Windows 2000 - I think. The reason I'm not certain is that if I can't get my video and CD-RW drive to work properly, I'll have to drop back to NT 4 until those drivers are released. As of now, it looks like the CD-RW drive will work, but not the software. So if anyone out there has gotten Adaptec CD-RW software to work, let me know. (I understand there is other software out there, but Adaptec is what we use.)

Other than that, I really like this system. Fast, clean, and more RAM than any machine in the office that isn't a server. <g> Specifically, the system is a dual-Pentium II 400 Mhz (primarily because I had those processors on hand) with 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk space on two drives, a 48x CD-ROM and a 2x2x12 HP CD-RW. The video is a Diamond Viper 770 (on sale at Fry's, a better deal than the cheap stuff), there's a 3Com 3c905b 10/100 Fast Etherlink card installed, and a Sound Blaster AWE 32 salvaged from my old workstation, which is still running for the moment. The system is based off a TYAN BX Tiger 100 motherboard, with 100 Mhz FSB, 1 GB maximum RAM, based off the Intel 440BX chipset.

Got a response to my response from Tom yesterday:

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Syroid [mailto:tom@syroidmanor.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 12:47 PM
To: Matt Beland
Subject: RE: Topic du Jour

Sigh. I knew I shouldn't have started this, but I had the same devil on my shoulder that Bob had today.

1. Schools are not responsible for teaching our children, we are. Parents, peers, friends, relatives. Schools provide the resources; we instill the ways and means to use those resources in the context of the "real world". We help the child/teen/adult synthesize resources and lessons to create knowledge.

2. It's hard to mass "society" into an argument or philosophical treatise, so let's narrow for a moment. If you run into someone who "isn't using their gray matter for purposes intended", what are you doing to help? Society, and the way it thinks, is EVERYONE's responsibility. You opt out, you don't vote, you don't get to bitch when the polls come in.

3. Instead of focusing this discussion on what is wrong with the world, we should be focusing it on what we can do to change things. Granted, this involves analyzing the problems before you arrive at potential solutions, but I didn't see much solution in your rebuttal. Lethargic, my friend? Lazy? Don't care perhaps? Good thing you don't live in my house. <seg>

/tom

Ah, but Tom, this is the FUN part. <g>

1. Agreed. But schools are an essential part of our children's lives simply because our children spend so much of their time there. It's not sufficient to simply say "well, the schools are screwed up, but that's OK because I can fix it at home." Because you can't. While they are at school, they're learning facts, which is essential, but they're also learning that authority is source of all answers. Nothing you can do in a few hours in the evening will resolve that; you're fighting a battle that is horribly unnecessary. Parents and schools should reinforce one another, not conflict with each other.

2. There are a number of solutions. What should we do, for example, with someone who can't think? How do we separate them from those who simply won't? One is unfortunate, but obviously not the fault of the individual; the other is a crime, albeit one not in any section of the US Code, or any other statute. The best solution is for each individual to decide what is best for themselves, and simply hope that enough people who have the ability choose to think.

As for society, we are all voting, with our brains. Are we a thinking society, or not? The problem is that I don't think we will much like the answer.

>3. Instead of focusing this discussion on what is wrong with the world, we should be focusing it on what we can do to change things.

3. That's next week. <seg> Seriously, though, there may be no "solution," in the sense that we can fix the things that are wrong with society. There comes a point in every repair job where you have to sit back and say, "This is no longer worth the effort, and it's better to go build a new one." It's been suggested, at least here in the United States, that we dismantle the public school system and replace it with something different and hopefully better. That may be easier than fixing it.

Likewise, in the past when societies became too stagnant, with more non-thinkers than thinkers, the thinkers moved out. It's been suggested that this process served to improve society, because only the thinkers moved on, and only the best of the thinkers survived. According to this theory, younger, physically weaker societies rapidly overtook their elders and became strong, until the society matured, created a critical mass of "non-thinkers," and the process began again. The problem with this theory is that we have no where to go. "Firestar" and my own wishes may suggest space travel, but the reality is that at this point, it would take the force of a nation to begin any such exodus, and the non-thinkers are already in control, fairly well forestalling such a movement.

Thursday

8:15 AM A pox on HP and all their hardware.

Strong words, I know. But my nice, brand new, dual-processor machine is worthless for one of its main tasks - CD copying and data archiving - in Windows 2000. Why? Becuase HP doesn't support Windows 2000 yet, has no plan in place, and according to their support personell (I spoke with several) apparently has given their people no training. (One actually In short, they've buried their collective head in the sand. So, either I take the CD-RW back and pick another brand - recommendations, anyone? - or I dual-boot my machine and just reboot any time someone needs a CD made. Piffle. Or, as Tom would say, "Grand Bother." I'm not sure which would be a bigger hassle at this point.

With that and a bunch of other things on my plate, today looks to be a full day. More later.

10:00 PM Well, it's later, and as I promised, I'm back with more. <seg> First of all, HP gets a reprieve; thanks to a timely tip from Tom (shortly before I ripped the HP drive out by the roots and sacrificed it and its receipt to the hardware gods, and the bean-counters be damned) I upgraded to Direct CD version 4, and it all works now. Praise and glory be.

More in the morning. Good night all.

Friday

8:45 AM Lots of ground to cover this morning. First of all, everybody feel bad for me; until Samsung gets their life back on track and replaces my broken monitor, I'm stuck using a "ViewMate" 19" monitor. This thing is crap. That's all I can say about it. Complete and utter crap. Besides, the 19" screen is just so horribly cramped. <seg>

Email on the "Topic du Jour" from Jay Donalds:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jaydonalds@aol.com [mailto:Jaydonalds@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 7:01 PM
To: matt@rearviewmirror.org
Subject: World conditions-etc.

Matt;

I think that you ALWAYS do what is best for your child. Do what you can, and look for what else you can do.

We; my wife and me, tried with the older child. We found that if we gave him objectives to go for, he was there. He devoured all the challenges we gave him. Let him go on "Food Service" and find a job in the field -- there was no stopping him.

Let him see Scouts - there was no stopping him.

We moved us from school to school, until we found a proper setting for him. He received his Degree in 1995. Volunteered fir the US Cavalry; 1st Troop. He went to Bosnia for 10 months; came home and had a sick baby. I believe that the education this young man received helped to make him into the responsible young man he is.

Every sort of system has its success stories. Every year, there are hundreds of kids who come out of public schools intelligent, knowledgeable, curious, with good imaginations and that fiery spark that says "I know who I am, what I'm going to do, and how I'm going to get there." And it certainly sounds like your son is one of them. The problem, though, is not the hundreds of students who come out with that attitude, it's the thousands and millions who don't. Out of my high school class of roughly 350 students, in 1995 at Owatonna High School in southern Minnesota, I can count on the fingers of one hand people that I knew were going to be that sort of success story. Out of 350. Now, I could easily have been wrong; perhaps plenty of the students had the intelligence and the outlook to be the kind of thinking, reasoning adult we're looking for. But I doubt it. Out of that 350, by definition 175 were above average intelligence, from 1 point over the median to the 99% percentile. And I knew my classmates well enough to know that our town was about average. So let's assume that, say, 50% of those students fell in the "average" range of 20 points either side of average. (Not IQ, but some indefinable "point" that measures intelligence. IQs are for bean counters.) 25% then fell below that average range, and 25% above. So roughly 85 (OK, OK, 87.5) of those students were "above average." 

How many of those people were actually thinking? I knew of about 5. The rest of the class knew them too; the captain of the football team was one, renowned not only for his high GPA and SAT scores but his ability to pull something together at the last minute and think on his feet. That kid who could debate any topic, any time, with no prep and come off appearing like a world-famous expert on the subject. That girl who, although no straight-A student, could twist anything into a reasonable story. The point is that 85 to 90 of those people were above average intelligence, and if we assume "average" is pretty good, then at minimum, 260+ of those students could really be considered "intelligent." But only 5 were "thinking." Not just quick with figures, not just honest or morally upstanding - although those are important traits, as well. But actually thinking.

It shouldn't be that way. We should be teaching our children to think above all, that it doesn't matter so much if you can remember that 8 x 7 is 56, as it does matter if you can reason some method of always determining the answer to the problem. That doesn't mean teaching our children times tables and then how to combine them; that means that unusual answers are also correct.

To draw an example from the book that got me thinking about this, "Firestar," there was a test given - at the beginning of the school year! - to determine who was thinking. One of the questions was "You work for minimum wage at a grocery store. You would like to take your date to the beach, which is 50 miles away. You car gets 20 miles to the gallon, and gas costs $1.35 per gallon. How many hours do you need to work to go to the beach?"

Conventional wisdom says that the answer to this question is 50 / 20 = gallons needed * $1.35 = money needed / $4.25 = hours of work, or about 4/5 of an hour. Of course, you have to double that to get home, so 1 and 3/5 hours will actually be required. Is that the right answer? Or is this the right answer:

"Quit dumb job at supermarket, get job at gas station. Get gas for free."

Our children need to know how to multiply, divide, add and subtract, no question. But we need to teach them how to get the gas for free, too.

While talking to Tim Werth about another matter, I was asked about my recommendation of Adobe Go Live. The actual email isn't worth repeating here, but this section is worth repeating:

I recommend Adobe Go Live for people who know something about HTML, and know how to accomplish what they want to do if they were stuck with nothing but a text editor, but simply don't care to take the time to do something like that. Very few "WYSIWYG" editors are good enough to create whole web sites without some sort of hand-coding to get the rough edges smoothed out. For someone who does not know HTML at all, Adobe is really not a good way to go.

Saturday

Sunday