Fear and loathing in the Capitol

I love our nation's Capitol.

I love politics.

Unfortunately for us, politicians are humans, and there are some of them who just don't act very nicely...... especially these last few years in the USA.

[borrowed from http://aoc.gov/sites/default/files/styles/artwork-node/public/images/buildings/6345373408_e4f8fb2728_o_0.jpg]

I was having a long teleconference on tuesday with two colleagues from work.  We were discussion a contentious topic that really makes my blood boil.  At one point I blurted out something along the lines of, "unfortunately for us, we have to deal with humans who will not always tell the truth.  In fact, it is in their interest to lie in certain situations."  I have been in some interesting diplomatic negotiations where you KNOW that the person on the other side of the table is stretching [actually, tearing apart] the truth, but you have to sit there politely and keep your mouth shut.

For me, that is NEARLY impossible.  It helps when you are conducting the negotiations with non-simultaneous translation, because you have time to think of the right way to say, "uh uh!" in a much more graceful manner that doesn't cause an international incident.

I believe that the gentleman whose statue is shown in the picture above, good ole General George, would have been very disgusted with the way that our elected officials in the two houses of Congress are not getting along very well.  We sent them there to do good things on our behalf, but they spend WAY too much time making people worry about made up stuff.

They want us to fear some sort of fiscal cliff, they want us to worry about the future of social security, and one of the minority leaders spent the last four years devoting himself to trying to unseat the president.  Why was he focusing on that, rather than representing the people of his state, and doing things that need to be done?

I know the answer, and it makes me so annoyed that I am going to stop blogging right now and get some breakfast.

Have a great weekend everyone, and try not to be so fearful!

Legacy of service

I only met one of my great grandparents, but I still think that I can draw the connections between some of them to myself.  Having been associated with the military for the past two decades, when you meet someone for the first time and they find out you are a career military member, they often ask you if your parents were in the military.

I love to tell the story of when my dad was in the NJ National Guard during the Vietnam War.  He was a helicopter mechanic, but he didn't really want to fly in the thing after he had worked on it.  It had nothing to do with his confidence that he had maintained or repaired the machinery correctly, he just didn't want to go up in something that didn't have wings.

I frankly don't blame him, but I have enjoyed most of the helo rides I have taken during my time in the service.  However, there is something more comforting about being in a big C-130 fixed wing aircraft that might have a chance of gliding back to terra firm should something bad happen to all 4 of its engines.  I understand the theory of auto rotation of a helo's blades to bring you less precipitously back to earth should its engines fail, but I do not want to experience that first hand.

My dad's brother was a Marine during the same time frame, and though neither of them deployed overseas, they still did their part to serve their country during a very unpopular war.

My Norwegian great grandparents were soldiers of a different stripe.  They both served in the Salvation Army in New York for many years.  One of them achieved the rank of Colonel.  I am not sure exactly what that means when you are trying to save people's souls in terms of what I know of the US military chain of command, but it still sounds pretty impressive!

[borrowed from http://kxlt.images.worldnow.com/images/20171502_BG1.jpg]

I always think of these ancestors in particular during the holiday season, when I see the folks with the red kettles outside stores collecting money.  Please be as generous as you can during the holiday season (and the rest of the year as well) to great philanthropic organizations such as the Salvation Army, American Red Cross, Red Crescent, Heifer International, etc.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all!

Crabs crabs crabs!!!

Not sure if it is because I spent so much of my life in the environs of Baltimore, or because my mother was born under the appropriate zodiac sign, but I do love me some crustaceans!

Or maybe it is just that I have a very "Crabby Patty" attitude some of the time, and I tend to snap at things that might be good to eat!

When the spousal unit was working in AK most of the summer, I was back in MI, where the only live saltwater crabs I saw were at the local aquarium shops.  We bought an emerald crab a couple years back for our saltwater tank, but I think he got eaten by the ravenous snails (who also dispatched an unsuspecting blue spotted sea hare within 24 hours) many moons ago.

So I had a hankering for some crabs other than the ones you can buy frozen in your local seafood emporia here in the landlocked (big lakes don't count) midwest of the US, and when my favorite pet shop [Lou's] had blue legged hermit crabs on sale 10 for $7.99, I had to pick up some to take home!!!  They at least fared better than the feeder fish I was experimenting with in old whiskey barrels in the backyard.  But that is a story for another day.......

[borrowed from http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/userpix/47_blueleghermit2_1.jpg]

I did do some research on them before I actually purchased them.  I was also waiting for the new saltwater tanks at Lou's to get firmly established, so that I was fairly certain that the critters living in there were healthy.  My research also indicated that the crabs themselves can be crabby about finding new and bigger places to live, and that they might attack snails and try and take their shells.  To forestall any more death in the saltwater tank, I went thru my extensive seashell collection and found a few good places for crabs that were bulking up, to potentially trade up into.  (Yikes!  Two prepositions next to each other AND ending the sentence......  but I am too lazy to rewrite it now, so it will have to stay that way.)

Instead of the crabs picking on the snails, someone has been eliminating crabs.  I think the likely culprits are either another nasty crab, or the aforementioned bullying snails.  I found a crab carcass in the back of the tank last sunday, and the urchin was making a beeline for that area.  When I looked in the aquarium a few hours later, the crab was gone, and the urchin was taking a  nap on the other side of the tank, just in case it got blamed for the original crab extraction from shell, is what I am thinking it was thinking......

Not really sure how complex the urchin brain is though, so I may be giving it too much credit.

Polarization and Mobius strips

I can never remember if I live in a red state or a blue state (my spouse would say that could be the mad cow disease kicking in), as the colors are both in the American flag I can see outside my window at work every week day.  There are some places where the red stripes are touching the blue field of stars, but you would not think that is the case with our two primary political parties in these "supposedly United" States these days.

[borrowed from http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/american-flag-2a.jpg]

I tried to watch some of the RNC this summer, but after the robot Callista and creepy Newt show, I could not continue to expose myself to such torture.  I have heard some clips of the even more creepy Clint Eastwood performance later in the week, and they make me disappointed that an actor whose body of non-political work I respect would stoop to that level.  [I had a good laugh when he later said that anyone who gave him a live unscripted spot on TV got exactly what they deserved.]

More than 160 years after the War Between the States (there is nothing civil about most wars), it seems that we are suffering from an unhealthy level of partisanship.   There are red states and blue states and blue dog democrats (not to be confused with the yellow dog democrats) and the number of politically dominated news [and comedy] shows seems to have exploded in the last 10 years.

I find it interesting how the far left and far right perspectives are closer to one another than they might think.  The folks in the middle, the moderates of each party (in our primarily two party system) are also fairly close.  I like to think of it as a mobius strip, where the moderates are close to one another in the middle of the straight portion, while the extremists are right at the ends where the twist happens.

[borrowed from http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/main/A4mobius.jpg]

Made in Macau

I went to Comerica Park today for a meeting about the Detroit Police Department's security concerns for the upcoming World Series games, and I just happened to stop by the overpriced Tigers shop.  Since I don't know whether I will be willing to afford any tickets for the upcoming series, I decided to buy a hat.  I wanted a world series one, but those have not been delivered yet, as they want to have the logo of the Detroit opponent to be embroidered on them.  Right now, we don't know who that is.  I am hoping it will be the Giants, but I think it is more likely to be the Cardinals.

[borrowed from http://media.mlive.com/sports_impact/photo/tigers-celebrate-alcs-620x400jpg-32b8382536a1dcdc.jpg]

When I got back to the office and took off the tags, I noticed that the item was "Made in Macau".  I knew it would most likely be manufactured somewhere in Asia, because it has to be made quickly and cheaply enough to have nearly half of the items dumped for a mere fraction of the cost that I paid here in the US.

It reminded me of shopping for sporting apparel in the garment district near the big soccer stadium near Seoul.  When I visited my friend Jon in Seoul after attending a fisheries meeting a few years ago, there were quite a few Utley Phillies jerseys, and a bunch of other baseball and football related items that didn't make sense to me.  There were hats and t-shirts festooned with sporting facts that I knew were not true.

At first I thought that I had misremembered who had won a specific series or Super Bowl or division championship, but when I asked Jon for some confirmation, he explained that people like to buy items with english characters on them, and it doesn't really matter what it says on the shirt or hat.

I remember buying a japanese baseball jersey at a street fair in Chicago, having no knowledge of what the characters indicated about its former wearer, so I can relate to that phenomenon.

I wonder how much in advance MLB and other sports teams order their playoffs paraphernalia?  I wonder if the teams have to order these themselves, and if they are required to destroy the ones that do not reflect reality?

Do they look at the betting odds when they decide how many to order of each outcome?

So many unanswered questions.......

Go Tigers!!

Giant scary eyeballs!!!

Just in time for Halloween,there is a great story in the news this week about a HUGE eyeball that washed ashore near Pompano Beach, FL.

They have not tested it yet to determine what creature lost it, but I am voting for the giant squid.  I think it is more likely to belong to a whale, but it is eerie how much like a human eye this thing looks.  You can read one of the stories here.

[borrowed from http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/12/giant_eyeball_found_on_pompano_beach_squid_whale_mystery.html]

I read a few of the stories on this today, and some folks are speculating that the eye might have come from a fish, but they mentioned that squid often have their eyes pop out.

Yikes!  OFTEN have their eyes pop out......  I guess that is a bad side effect from not having a nice hard skeleton.  Sure they have a lot of legs, a yummy diet of seafood and get to swim around in the nice warm waters off of Florida, but that would stink to have your eye just POP OUT!!!  

I checked down in the saltwater aquarium in the basement to make sure that everyone had their eyes, and we seem to be good on that account.  Unless the person holding the eye has incredibly small hands, it could not have been any of my salty friends.  The biggest eye I saw was on the clownfish, and that is maybe 3 mm in diameter.

I will make another post when the Florida Fish and Wildlife folks decided what animal lost this......

All about lids (part two: Curved or flat?)

I know it is not very hip-hop of me, but I prefer the relaxed baseball type cap with the VERY curved brim versus the trucker style upright lid with a nearly flat brim.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am a more CURVY than FLAT human being.  I have hips and other curves, like many women I know.....

So........ of the photos displayed above, which hats do you think that I would prefer?

I am on a turtle kick right now, and I love wearing red hats, since I have to wear only blue hats at work, so it should be pretty easy to figure this out.

No prize, unfortunately for those of you who choose correctly!

All about lids (part one of ????)

When mere humans are allowed to take pictures of me, I can normally be found wearing some kind of hat.  This compulsion has various explanations, the first of which being I hate to have hair in my face, and a hat is great at keeping my very fine tresses away from the toxic face slime.

Me and the cats, watching some boob tube with Andy.

The second reason I adore hats is because I like to be able to see stuff, and the brims of my favorite hat (a relaxed profile baseball cap like the one I am wearing in the photo above) are great at keeping sun out of my bespectacled eyes.

Another great feature of hats with big brims is that you can hide your facial expressions.  I am very quick to react to things, and I would make a horrible poker player because my face always tells people my emotions.  I don't want people to know what is going on inside my head all the time, so if I need to compose myself before responding, being able to lower my head and grab the nicely curled brim of my hat for a few seconds while I think, that's priceless!

The hat pictured below doesn't facilitate that type of protective behavior.  It has SOOOOO many things wrong with it.

I call it the bucket hat, because it is VERY far from relaxed.  It is very firm, and makes you stand up straight (I guess promoting good posture is one of its best attributes, in fact).  It has these magical properties because it is a military cover with shiny stuff on it.  It also does not fit very snugly, so you have to stand up straight and refrain from bending over quickly.

It is part of my fancy uniform, and I DO NOT like wearing my fancy uniform.  I would much rather be wearing my working duds, which includes being able to carry a knife, or even better a multi-tool, and of course cargo pants with HUGE pockets, and big old boots which make me seem taller than I actually am.

Chris and I wearing my least favorite hat in the world.  Curse you Edith Head!!!!

In the picture above, Andy asked to take a picture of Chris and I in our uniforms at Admiral Gene Brooks' change of command in Juneau a few years back.

However, we are wearing slightly different versions of the United States Coast Guard's Service Dress Blue (SDB) uniform.  I am wearing gloves and my big medals on one side of my jacket, and my other ribbons backwards on the opposite side from where they would normally be.  I also have a white shirt on, while Chris has the normal light blue shirt, no gloves, and the ribbons on the regular side, with her name tag on the opposite one.

I was in the honor platoon, which is why I am wearing the Alfa version of the SDB, and Chris is modeling the Bravo, which we would normally use for events involving non-coasties, during the fall/winter season.

Since I am currently attached to a "field" unit, I wear our Operational Dress Uniform (basically a dark blue fatigue type uniform), which includes a high profile baseball cap.

Unfortunately for me, the current Commandant does not like relaxed baseball caps, so he has mandated a nasty trucker style hat, with no scrambled eggs.  More on that in a later blog.

Why are we fearing more than fear these days?

If you have read any of my political or football (a.k.a. soccer in the USA) related blogs over the last few years, you can understand where I am coming from in terms of the power of fear.

On my drive home earlier this month, I listened to an NPR story about Texans and their fears about gun control.  If you want to hear the entire piece, please check it out here.  There were some parts where I sympathized with the Texas gentlemen and their desire to continue to exercise their second amendment rights, and then there were the parts where I spoke to the radio in the car and asked it, "why do they need AR-15s and night vision scopes to hunt wild pigs?  Are the pigs THAT much smarter than them?????"  The radio had no answer......

The AR-15, for those not in the know, is basically the commercially available version of the M-16 I learned to shoot when I joined the military.  Since then I have mostly used pistols and the dreaded shotgun.  [ I am left eye dominant but right handed, so I have to shoot long guns left handed.  This situation and my relatively small frame (and even smaller brain) which had to figure out how to position the shotgun on my shoulder while wearing a life preserver vest which was too large for me, resulted in a HUGE bruise from burst blood vessels that stretched from my left armpit all the way to the back of my hand.  It was painful during the experience, but only scary looking for the next few weeks, and I did qualify on the course of fire, even though I could barely see the target by the time the final whistle blew.]

Here is a schematic of the AR-15:

[borrowed from http://survivalblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ar-15-parts.gif]

Even better, here is the lovely Hello Kitty model with the much larger banana shaped magazine, which can hold many more rounds.  Hello Kitty needs the additional rounds to take care of all the bad folks she might encounter on a daily basis.  You can see how happy she is by her smile on the butt of the assault rifle pictured below:

[borrowed from http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NNJ_93KS4Hw/SNQb4Pex24I/AAAAAAAAAYs/ZOKKYWqoIlg/s320/HELLO-KITTY_AR15RIFLE.jpg]

To be perfectly honest, I think she always has a bit of a smile or smirk on her little kitty face, so maybe I have misconstrued her affection for this firearm.....

I don't have a problem with guns.  I would actually like to own one, but my husband doesn't think that is a good idea.  I don't normally take that as a comment on my mental stability or judgement, but more as a comment on the fact that we already have WAY TOO MUCH sporting equipment in the house (and the storage space up north, I am afraid to admit).

If we lived in Canada, he would be able to veto my application for permission to own a gun.  Here in the USA, I don't need his permission, but I would not purchase one if he did not agree to it.

I was struck by the statement that FDR made during his first inaugural address in 1933, which I mistakenly thought was related to the famous address to congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  You can listen to an excerpt from the speech here.  

Of course the quote is, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."  He is referring to the Great Depression and the challenges that face the entire country and his new administration to climb out of the financial crisis gripping the world economy.

It struck me that these days, we fear what people MIGHT do, even if they have given no indication that they intend to attempt to accomplish this particular scary feat that the reptilian parts of our brains imagine could happen.  These two gentlemen from Texas being interviewed for the NPR story I mentioned at the beginning of this blog were worried that the Obama administration was going to restrict gun rights, even though there have been no attempts to do so to date.  OK, the second part of that sentence is my opinion, not something that they said during the interview.

They also believed that President Obama was kowtowing to United Nations (UN) attempts to restrict the amount of ammunition (ammo) that people could purchase at one time.  The journalist pointed out in their commentary that the UN resolution they were referring to was designed to limit the purchasing power of African warlords, not US citizens, and the US delegation did not support the resolution.

So their big fear was based on a misunderstanding of the goals of a UN resolution that the dreaded Obama administration did not even support!  That's fear for you......

To Assange or not to Assange

I love Ecuador!  They are making for some very interesting silliness to help me recover from London Olympics overload and annoying US Election craziness.

As I type this blog, Mr. Assange is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy, hoping that the Bobbies are not going to storm the place and send him back to Sweden.  Harboring suspected criminals is great drama!

I don't know if he did what he is accused of doing in Sweden, but I am fairly certain that Mr. Assange is at least partially responsible for USCG computer security policies that prohibit me from using thumb drives in my unclassified computer.  There are many reasons that you should not freely share thumb drives, safe computing and scary viruses that can destroy all your important junk on your exterior brain devices......  but the things are darn convenient!

And very cute, which is quite tempting to a tchatchke lover like myself.  [ upon entering my office in Juneau, a colleague blurted out, "it's like a Chinese curio shop in here!"  Japanese might have been more accurate, as I LOVE little anime inspired doo dads like those produced by the German Sanrio company]

[borrowed from http://www.geekiegadgets.com/tag/hello-kitty/]

And since I tend to follow the rules which, if broken, could result in my spending many years in a lovely military location in Kansas learning how to make big rocks into smaller ones (at least that is the common joke), I refrain from using thumb drives in my work computer which is attached to "the network".  Many times, I think it should be called "the net won't", but that is a topic for another blog at a later date.

Back to our Australian friend.  Due to his prowess in getting people to share info which they should really keep in classified spaces, I cannot use useful items like the cute one pictured above to quickly transfer data from one computer to another.  I can, however, burn the data on to a CD or DVD, then put that large easily scratchable item into a computer which is NOT connected to "the network", and then, finally, put it on the illegal thumb drive.

I have attended many international meetings with multiple copies of my presentation on several different types of media.  I have even given some of those copies (usually CDs) to colleagues, so that if one person's luggage was lost, we still might be able to share the information electronically.

But back to our friend hiding out in the embassy.  I hope he is all settled in, because someone will surely grab him if he ever leaves the place.

I personally am hoping that the Brits revoke the diplomatic status of the building and send him back to Sweden.  He needs to pay for at least some of his transgressions!!