OPINIONS & IDEAS

Now For Something Really Different Part 2

Sat, 3 Apr 2010 11:30:20 -0500

Some months back I wrote an article about my plans to build a Junior Fuel dragster. I started down that path by buying a chassis, picking it up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and then welding it up. I also took the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School and got my NHRA Super Comp dragster driving license.

I had the chassis pretty much welded up when I started really looking at all the rules, regulations and expenses that the NHRA puts on race car builders. It's nuts. I've drag raced bikes since 1973 because it's a fun way to go fast without spending a fortune. I didn't realize just how expensive it is to build a car and when I did I had a decision to make - do I want to follow this though or get out of it before I'm too heavily invested?

The thought came to me that for the cost of building a junior fueler I could build an airplane. I've always thought that aircraft are kind of the ultimate high performance vehicles (well, some of them anyway). So the more I kicked around the idea of building an airplane the more attractive it started to sound to me.

Ultimately it was the course I took at the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School that pretty much made up my mind. I had to conclude that driving their super comp dragster was really kind of boring when compared to my turbo Busa. Yea, the dragster hits pretty hard about 100 feet out but it's just not all that fast and there's not much challenge to driving it. An altered or funny car might be a different thing but there's no way I could afford one of those.

So for the cost of building a dragster I could build a high performance airplane. Which one will give me the most seat time? Hmmm.... might not be such a tough decision after all.

The other aspect of all this is that I like riding fast but I don't consider it to be reasonable to ride at those levels on the street. The last time I went on a group ride I saw my speedo hit 160. That's really just inappropriate for an uncontrolled environment, not to mention the possibility of jail time. There's the track, but again how much seat time will I get and for how many $$$?

Anyway, I made the decision to fly. Anyone want to build a front engine dragster? I've got a 6.3 second rated chassis for sale.

So far it's been pretty cool. At first I was kind of nervous about the thermals that make it pretty bumpy on a hot day but I'm getting used to them. Like to bank a bike over? In the Cessna a medium bank is up to 30 degrees, a deep bank (which I've not done yet) is 45 or even 60 degrees. At 60 degrees you're pulling two Gs. I've got about five an a half hours at this point and I'm starting to get comfortable with the airplane. The biggest thing is that there's a lot going on at once. Eventually I'm sure it will be like riding a bike - almost automatic - but I'm still becoming familiar with everything.

It's kind of like riding a bike on steroids, but you do it in the sky.

So here's a blog that I set up for my new RV-6 project. I got a great deal on a kit and hope to make it out to California in the near future and pick everything up. I've also created a new site dedicated to all of this.

Should be a lot of fun.

Eric Pryor, The Witch That Switched

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:46:27 -0600

(This is a very old article that I wrote back when I was involved in neo-Paganism.)

Eric Pryor, the "Witch that Switched"

By Eric Marsh

Get out your popcorn, you are in for a wild read.

I was recently informed that the televangelist wannabe Eric Pryor was up to his old tricks again. Apparently this time he tried to prevent the Los Altos schools from celebrating Halloween. For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Pryor I thought I'd put to paper my experience with him and his anti-Pagan crusade. I believe that this is also a commentary on at least some elements of the moral fitness of leaders in the big business known as "Christianity."

Eric Pryor first showed up shortly before the first BAPA Witches Halloween Ball (1989).

A televangelist by the name of Larry Lea was coming to town Halloween night and having a huge "crusade." Lea was said by man in the know to be the next big up and coming televangelist. He was personally groomed by Oral Roberts (Mr. 900-Foot-Jesus) for the role. As part of his act Lea often dressed up in military fatigues and spoke in militaristic terms. He was the guy who pretty much put the term "Spiritual Warfare" on the map. The use of military terms in a religious context concerned me and the "San Jose Mercury News" wrote an article about him that addressed the controversy raised by such language.

A few weeks before Halloween we received a mailing by a fellow who called himself Dr. Eric Pryor. "Dr." Pryor was trying to organize a counter protest against Lea, which sounded like a pretty decent idea. Janet and I were much too busy with the Witches Ball to do any follow up on this and when we received a call from "Dr." Pryor; I chatted with him on the phone for a while and got the impression that the guy was either a very high powered individual or a pretty big BS-er. He dropped a lot of "names" mostly from within the East Cost Pagan community, such as Leo Martello, Laurie Cabot, Herman Slater, Lady Sintana, and others. I invited Pryor to the Witches Ball and told him I would speak to him some more at that time.

When Eric Pryor showed up at the Halloween Witches Ball, his appearance was somewhat striking and pretty freakish. He was tall and very thin (almost gaunt). His hair was bleached blond and he wore a clergical collar with a pentagram on the front. He introduced his girlfriend as "Lady Trampoline." He wore black leather gloves and had a large silver "occult-style" ring on each finger. At this point I was pretty skeptical about him but then again Pagans can tend to be pretty weird sometimes so I decided that for the time I would give him the benefit of the doubt.

When Pryor described his plan to do a public ritual in San Francisco to protest Larry Lea's visit Janet and I decided to go along with it for a couple reasons. First of all I supported the idea of someone getting out there and saying that we don't want a bunch of militaristic fundamentalist loonies in the Bay Area, or anywhere else for that matter. The other reason was that Pryor had drawn a lot of media attention and as representatives of a Pagan organization we figured it would be a good idea to get some more mainstream appearing faces in front of the camera so that the general public would not identify all Pagans with Pryor's brand of freakishness. Trying to present a mainstream image to Paganism was one of the goals we were trying to achieve with BAPA (in fact, it was part of BAPA's charter). In fact, we had done an interview with the religion editor of the "San Jose Mercury News" just a few weeks earlier to further that goal.

The day of the ritual I brought my camcorder and helped Pryor set up. Janet had gone with him and his girlfriend to their apartment and described it as a mess. I video taped the ritual, which went pretty well at first. There were lots of press and probably about 50 people in robes. The ritual, as described to us, was to be pretty tame. Pryor had a figure candle when he said he was going to burn as a symbolic way of removing the negativity Lea was bringing to the city. He assured us he was only going to use the candle to banish the negativity and not in any way to harm Lea.

Things went well (and according to plan) until Pryor found that the figure candle would not light in the breeze. Instead, Pryor allowed people to take out their aggressions on the candle. This started with a few people swatting it with brooms to "sweep away" Lea's influences. The action with the brooms became more aggressive and then `Z' Buddapest used the opportunity to spend a minute or two on her soapbox. Finally Pryor cut the candle in two with his athame. This upset some people within the circle and they started to do a counter working to undo what they perceived as (and it really was) essentially a curse. This was all very exotic for the press and they missed the whole point (good). The story went international on CNN and made the lead of most local stations. It raised enough attention in the area that Halloween night there was a huge gay protest in front of the Christian crusade with a lot of people getting yelled at and a couple hit with eggs.

The day before Halloween a local TV talk show was interviewing Dick Bernal, the minister of Jubilee Christian Center (JCC), a large local Evangelical church, and some others. The subject was supposed to be exorcisms, which somehow came out of the "Spiritual Warfare" of Lea and company. At the last minute Eric Pryor managed to get himself onto the show. This no doubt was a great surprise to Bernal. Since the show dealt with exorcism the fundamentalists did their little act and Pryor came up with an "exorcism" that consisted of a lot of stabbing actions (in the air) with his athame. To be honest, it was quite an embarrassment.

Pastor Bernal, being the sharp character that he is, recognized an opportunity when he saw one. He invited Eric Pryor out for breakfast and over coffee invited him to the Lea event. He sent a limo to SF to pick up Eric and his live-in girl friend, Cassandra, and he put them up in a nice hotel, payed for their dinner, and (Eric told us later) gave him a couple of hundred dollars (Eric and Cassandra were living in near-poverty). At the Lea event Eric and Cassandra were given VIP seats in the center of the first row.

Halloween night was a circus. I wore slacks and a polo shirt so that I could get into the Larry Lea event. Outside there was a big protest with lots of people dressed up for the usual San Francisco Halloween celebration. There were a lot of partying, signs, and a huge cross that used a penis for the upright beam. I went inside the auditorium and got some video and then went outside into the crowd. The crowd had their fun with the arriving Christians, and then the cops herded them off to the Castro district for the big Halloween bash. Eric Pryor did end up attending Lea's event and was treated like a king. After the event he was quoted in some brief TV interviews as saying that he was torn between Paganism and Christianity. Lea also video taped a one-on-one between himself and Pryor.

The next day Pryor called me from the hotel where he was staying, and Janet and I went to visit Cassandra and him. He bought us dinner from room service (at Bernal of JCC's expense) and explained that he was thinking of putting on "an act" of going over to the Christians so that he could go undercover and "get the dirt" on them. I was more skeptical than ever but figured it couldn't hurt to stay in the loop just to keep up with what was going on. That was the last we saw of Eric Pryor for a few weeks.

About this time Don Frew of the Covenant of the Goddess got into the act. I explained to Don what was going on and his biggest concern seemed to be that Pryor would make Pagans look bad with the Christian crowd. This was a legitimate concern, I must admit. By this time Pryor was making claims to the Christians that he was the leader of the Bay Area Pagan community and implied that he was a big national Pagan leader. (JCC was referring to him as the Witch King -- but we never knew whether Pryor claimed that or the church just chose the title on their own.) When Frew heard that Pryor planned to go undercover to get dirt on the Christians he contacted Dick Bernal at JCC to express his concerns that Pryor was not all he claimed to be. It soon became evident that Bernal (and Lea) were not so concerned with the truth as they were with appearances. I don't think that either of them cared who or what Eric Pryor was but rather what he could pass himself off as to Christian congregations.

I heard from Pryor again a few weeks later, after Thanksgiving. Eric called me and invited me to his wedding at JCC. I accepted and asked him if he would like me to video tape it for him. He said yes, and the day of his wedding I shot some footage. At the very end I shot a few seconds of Bernal and Pryor signing what appeared to be a wedding license. Pryor started to ask me if I would like to witness it but Bernal cut him off. After the wedding Pryor, Dick Bernal, the assistant Pastor (who was later convicted for child molestation) their wives, and some others went out for dinner.

At the dinner Pryor was pushing Bernal in regard to a number of "outreaches" including one to the Pagan community. He wanted to have a huge discussion between leaders of both communities, video tape the whole thing, and present it on Christian TV channels. He said that it would eliminate misunderstandings between the two groups and could open a line of dialog. I, in turn, told Bernal that if they wanted to open lines of dialog this was _not_ the way to do things. My suggestion was that a small group get together over coffee a few times to try to create some trust; only when trust was established could something like Pryor proposed work. I did say that I would try to get some local leaders in our community to meet with Bernal if that's what he wanted to do. He agreed and I started to make arrangements.

I pulled together a group that included Don Frew and Russell Williams representing COG, Janet Christian and Diana St. Martin representing BAPA, and Anodea Judith the president of the Church of All Worlds. I tried to just act as an arbitrator. The Pagans were mostly concerned that Bernal would actually believe Pryor's claims about himself and insisted that he not be included in this discussion. This got Pryor all upset but he had no choice but to go along with it. His girlfriend attended and I recorded the discussion. The Pagans in attendance said that they might be willing to consider a forum like Pryor proposed but only if Pryor was not involved in the project in any way. Bernal more or less poo-pooed our concerns and while he tried to act interested in what we had to say he didn't commit to anything.

As the result of this meeting Pryor went ballistic. He started to assert that the reason local Pagans would not support his video project was "self engrandizment" and went about trying to sell his idea to Pagan "names" in outer parts of the country. To counter this the then-leadership of BAPA went into high gear, contacting Pagans across the country. We wrote some articles describing the events that occurred up to that point. Lea Samul or COG wrote an excellent account of the whole Pryor incident. We still have copies available. During this period we spent a lot of time on the phone and spent a lot of money on postage. Eventually we got the word and Pryor's TV show never happened because no self-respecting Pagan would appear on it.

As part of this process we tried to find out just who this Eric Pryor was anyway. Nobody seemed to know much of anything about him or where he came from, although Herman Slater in New York, was able to tell us that he did know Eric Pryor. I sent a confidential letter to Bernal explaining this and Bernal immediately handed it over to Pryor. Pryor then sent me several rather bizarre faxes full of religious ravings as the result of this.

At about this time Pryor went on televangelist Larry Lea's program and agreed with Lea when asked if "a Pagan is as likely to shoot you as put a curse on you." Jubilee Christian Center also produced a video tape about Eric Pryor that they were selling for $20. What I recall most vividly about that video tape was that the security guys wearing dark sunglasses holding the crowd back while Pryor's occult books, artwork, drums, and altar implements were ritually burned in a large pile in the JCC parking lot looked like a cross between CIA and mobster. Pryor and several others even stomped up and down on the drums to break the drumheads. (I later discovered that Pryor had secreted away some of his ritual implements so that they would not be destroyed.)

During this period we were contacted by a producer for ABC TV's PrimeTime Live news program, who was doing a story about corrupt televangelists. This producer was curious about the events surrounding Lea's Halloween crusade. After telling all that we knew about the event, Janet mentioned that we were trying to research Pryor's background but could not come up with much. She also described how we had come up with a blank when trying to find the records of Pryor's marriage to Cassandra. Because I had video taped a few seconds of Pryor and Bernal signing what appeared to be a marriage certificate I sent a copy of the tape to the producer so that she could research the matter.

By this time we were getting the sense that the whole bunch, Lea, Bernal, Pryor and the rest of this televangelist crowd were pretty sleazy characters. What our PrimeTime Live contact came up with about the marriage confirmed this feeling.

The "marriage" had been a deliberate hoax. Eric Pryor was already married to a woman, and had some kids by that marriage. He had simply walked out on her one day (the classic "going out to get cigarettes and never coming back"). Because Bernal and Lea wanted to sell Eric Pryor on the Evangelical church circuit as "The Witch that Switched" they could not have him living "in sin" with his girlfriend. Knowing that Pryor was already married to another woman Bernal presided over a sham marriage for the sake of appearances. The next December the video tape I took of Pryor's marriage was shown on PrimeTime Live, along with evidence of other deceptions on the part of Lea. On top of everything else, Lea's father passed away at about this time. Taken together these events ended Lea's career as a major player among the televangelist crowd. Shortly thereafter Bernal explained his part in the sham to his congregation during a Sunday service. It didn't keep them from coming back though; some people have got to be terminally stupid.

The next time I saw Pryor was during an all day Christian event in a small public park in downtown San Jose. He was evidently developing his "act" that he hoped would make him a name on Christian TV one day. Eric's teeth had been straightened at JCC's expense and he was wearing a $400 suit (although Cassandra was still wearing "thrift store" quality clothes and army boots). They arrived in Bernal's stretch limo. Again, I recorded the whole event. Pryor did a lot of yelling about how he was going to "Kick Satan's butt" and tried to keep it comical. He also attacked Pagans a lot. I spoke briefly to Cassandra and told her that my only interest was that the truth be told regarding who Pryor was and his claims to be the former leader of Bay Area Pagans. In a brief moment of openness she told me that this all wasn't about truth, it was about the true God, the all mighty dollar. (I liked Cassandra; I think she was just a victim of her circumstances.)

Pryor next put together a presentation attempting to associate gays with Paganism. It was all pretty off-the-wall stuff that ended with a display of those gay sex toys that can be shown to a Christian congregation and some Pagan ritual implements. During the entire presentation while Pryor had his back turned to the audience so that he could operate a slide projector he had a guard wearing dark sunglasses standing with his arms crossed behind Pryor facing the audience. I have to wonder if this guard was supposed to throw himself in the way of any curses cast by Witches in the audience.

In the months that followed a number of things occurred. Pryor went to Salem with a video crew to try to get some footage of him confronting the "evil" in that town. He and his crowd accosted a young mother and forced her to kneel in front of him, his camera, and her child. For this and some other equally slimey actions the local police department sent him out of town with a warning that if he ever returned he could expect to stay for a while at city expense. He took his act to JCC south, an old bar that was converted to a church when the owner converted to Christianity. Pryor was wearing military fatigues and I was there with my camcorder. This time I video taped him spewing venom about how Pagans should not be allowed to commit such crimes as that of raising their children in their faith.

After a number of embarrassing incidents Pryor tried to improve his status by having the religion editor of the "San Jose Mercury News" write a story about him and his conversion. The only problem with this was that I had already discussed the matter with the man and had given him 30 pages of documentation regarding Pryor's past and his activities. When the article came out it shredded Pryor. After this when I sat in a Sunday service at JCC, Pryor was no longer given a seat among the church's dignitaries.

Two weeks after the San Jose Mercury article came out the author was found dead. The official cause of death was a heart attack.

Sometime around this time Janet and I received a video tape in the mail from someone back east who knew Pryor years earlier. The tape shows, among other things, Pryor having group homosexual intercourse, sitting on a bathroom floor shooting up heroin and then vomiting violently into the toilet, dressed in drag and doing an obscene dance, and other bizarre images. We also spoke to his still-legal-wife, who had been trying to find him for years so that she could try to collect child support. She was living on food stamps and welfare, while Pryor lounged in the lap of church wealth and luxury.

Eventually Pryor's past started to catch up to him. It's possible that his contribution to the downfall of Larry Lea and subsequent damage to Bernal's ministry caused him to lose favor in Bernal's eyes. When I spoke to Pryor one time he indicated that Bernal was by this time considering him to be an idiot. Pryor started to drink (he was evidently a recovered alcoholic) and crying that Cassandra had taken their child and left him as justification. Evidently because I had always treated him honestly, Pryor called me. He was on a binge drunk, had a number of guns and was alluding to suicide. I convinced him to come to an AA meeting with me but he wouldn't leave his pistol behind so we ended up just driving around a while. Eventually Bernal spent the money to send him to a couple of Christian recovery programs, but Pryor could not take the discipline and left.

Pryor then started to slide in and out of periods of drunkenness. During a period of sobriety he was involved in an incident at Circle Sanctuary were Pryor and televangelist Jeff Fenholt lead some followers to protest the Pagan gathering there. I think that these things were probably more of an embarrassment to his mentor Bernal, than anything else. The last time I saw Eric Pryor he was on a 30 day drunk and talking about suicide. Always the con, he pulled some of his old Wiccan tools out of a chest and informed me that he was ready to come back to Paganism. Though he claimed this was because the Christians had treated him so badly, evidently this was because they were just getting tired of his behavior. I told him that this might not be a good decision on his part. After that I visited him a few times and then decided that perhaps if booze really kicked his butt far enough then he might do what it takes to get his life together.

After I last saw Eric Pryor, still curious I called JCC a few weeks later and was told that he was no longer associated with the church. When I'd talked to Pryor he had mentioned another, smaller area church. On a hunch I called the secretary there. She told me that the church's Pastor was very interested in working one-on-one with Pryor because he was in such a sorry mess "as a result of his past involvement with that Satanism." I've got to give Eric credit for having an instinct of knowing where his next meal is coming from.

It impossible not to see the irony involved in the Eric Pryor affair. Pryor cast a curse on Larry Lea and those of his ilk. Consequently, as a Christian, Pryor was an element in Lea's downfall. Dick Bernal thought he would have a going (and growing) concern with Eric Pryor as the Witch that Switched but instead Eric Pryor became a growing concern of Dick Bernal. From here it looks as if Pryor may _be_ the curse that he cast at those others.

Life and death. Religion and sin. Greed, power, and deceit. Men falling in disgrace from the peak of their profession to obscurity. These are the reasons why the story of Eric Pryor is one of those fascinating true tales with all the elements of a tragedy in the greatest tradition of Western literature. Best of all, in this story all the characters deserve each other.

A religious morality tale for our own time; someone should write an opera about it.

What Ever Happened To America?

Mon, 7 Sep 2009 19:46:55 -0500

I recently read a cartoon comparing the aspirations of a boy of fifty years ago with those of one today. In the first frame the child of the fifties says that he would like to grow up to be an astronaut or scientist so that he could make great discoveries which would help humanity find a brighter future. In the second frame a contemporary boy says that his grandest ambition is to be on American Idol.

I guess that cartoon hit a nerve in my on several different levels. It spoke not only to our values as a culture but also to what I view as a decline in our national character.

When I was growing up there was a sense that the future would be a brighter time, one in which we would reach out to other worlds and a more noble humanity would live in harmony. What we got was something entirely different. Somehow in the current day knowledge has come to be spurned as elitist and ignorance, especially that ignorance cultivated in the name of one holy book or another, has been deemed virtuous. The next generation is no longer taught the value of critical thought; instead there are those in our government who would go so far as to use our schools as a source of a captive audience which they would subject to religious indoctrination.

It's easy to understand why there are those that might discourage independent thought. Many in religious communities view science as the enemy - at least when it can't be used to further their goals. As a consumer society we are constantly encouraged to purchase products that we often don't need and, if we really thought about it, might not even want. Then there are the halls of power in Washington D.C. where the manipulation of the American people (and lying to us) has been raised to a fine art. Ultimately a poorly educated population is an easily manipulated population.

The term "groupthink" describes how social pressure is be used as a means of manipulation. One aspect of groupthink is the discouragement of independent thought by the members of the subject group. For example, even though it was clearly evident (to me anyway) that the Bush administration was lying about the threat that Iraq posed to the United States, by creating a groupthink kind of mentality among the American people we were pushed into an illegal war. I refer to the run-up to the war groupthink as there was a great deal of social pressure masked as patriotism that discouraged legitimate questions about the war.

I bring up groupthink because it seems to be becoming mainstream, encouraged many different ways in a population with an ever shortening attention span. This mentality is evident on both sides of the political spectrum but is more prevalent on the far right. To a large extent it also tends to produce an anti-intellectual mindset.

The big question is, how can America compete against the best and the brightest from other countries when as a culture we encourage mediocracy?

It appears to me that we need to make some radical changes to our priorities as a nation and we need to make them soon. Failing that, America may just be at the beginning of a long slow decline.

Three Weeks On The Road with Nani and the Tiki Hut

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 22:02:11 -0500

Janet and I have had the opportunity to vacation in a number of exotic places around the world. Usually these vacations have been very active as we hustled from one site to another, spent hours underwater or spent our time on other activities.

Recently we had a different sort of vacation, spending several weeks traveling covering four thousand miles with our Dodge pickup, travel trailer and a new puppy named Nani. Traveling with a trailer is a different kind of vacation, slower and more pleasant in many ways. I guess that the biggest difference for me is that it's just a more relaxing way to travel.

The first year after we bought the "Tiki Hut" we spent quite a few weekends at various Texas state parks. While pleasant enough, these tended to be pretty short and we always did a lot of hiking and such. They still tended to be pretty active trips.

Our Big Bend vacation was one of the first that we took where it was necessary to really cover some miles to get where we were going. That was a week long trip. After my father passed away we spent more than a month on the road driving to Seattle then to North Dakota before returning to Texas. It was probably on that trip that we really had the time to relax as the miles rolled by. We also had the opportunity to see a lot of America, including Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore.

Our big trip this year was to go first to Florida and then to Bowling Green Kentucky. Janet and I each had some things that we wanted to do in Florida, and then after Florida I had to pick up the chassis for my new dragster at the Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green.

I won't get too far into the specifics of the trip itself. You can find that on Janet's blog. However the high points for me were my class at the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School, the mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs and the Hot Rod Reunion. I wrote a blog about the Hawley School and posted photos of the reunion. My visit to the Don Garlets Museum was pretty neat too.

I guess that one of the things that really makes a difference when pulling a big travel trailer on a long trip is having the right vehicle to pull it with. I've got a 2006 Dodge 3500 dually with a Cummins diesel. The Dodge may be a good truck, but the Cummins is a great engine. The engine has an enormous 610 foot pounds of torque at only 1800 RPMs and pulled the trailer with ease. I set the cruise control to 65 miles an hour and averaged eleven and a half miles per gallon over four thousand miles. The only complaint I had about the truck was that it's ride was rough over the choppy freeways of Louisiana. On the last few days of our trip the Dodge's air conditioning failed, making for an uncomfortable ride. What I didn't realize was that while there was some a/c on the drivers side, the passenger side had none at all.

I guess that one of the other things I really like about traveling with a trailer is that it makes my schedule much more my own. Janet and I visited both Weeki Wachi Springs and the Kennedy Space Center more or less on the spur of the moment. It was nice to have the freedom to do such things. On our Seattle trip we would simply drive as long as we wanted to and then find a truck stop and find a spot for the night. It's kind of a fun, gypsy way to live.

With the economy the way that it has been it's probably going to be a while before we can make another such trip but we had a great time and I am looking forward to our next opportunity to get back out on the road.

Now For Something Really Different

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:18:36 -0500

I’ve been involved in drag racing since the early 1970s. In the years since I first became involved I’ve seen the sport turn into something different than it was in the earlier days. First of all, the cost of racing has gone through the roof. Where the sport used to be about innovators such as Big Daddy Don Garlets thinking of a better way to get down the track, it has become a game of cookie cutter cars and so called Funny Cars that are nothing more than Top Fuel streamliners. In many classes an index system has been implemented so a driver can’t even run full out. In particular I’ve become very disillusioned with the direction that NHRA has taken the sport.

All of this has lead my interests in a different direction - what’s called “nostalgia” drag racing. Nostalgia racing is more of what the sport used to be about: heads up full on no-breakout drag racing on a relatively affordable budget. I’m not alone in this - there has been a groundswell of interest in the sport, much of it by the same guys who were racing thirty or forty years ago.

Here’s where it gets different. As a result of my interest I subscribed to “Vintage Fuel” magazine. The magazine mentioned a contest put on by the CEN-PEN speed shop and just for the heck of it I bought a hat and t-shirt, which was the price of admission. To my surprise, a few months later I received an email saying that I was one of the runner ups and if I was interested I could get a basic chassis kit at a huge discount. I discussed it with Janet and she encouraged me to take advantage of it and I have done so.

I’m not giving up my racing bike - the dragster just gives me another toy to play with and of course one can never have too many toys.

Well there you have the back story. With that, I will refer you to my new dragster site for the rest of the story.

Programming the iPhone, Part 2

Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:44:43 -0500

Those following this blog may have noticed that it’s been quite a while since I’ve made an entry. This is because I’ve been very focused on the development of my first application for the iPhone for the last few months.

With the economic downturn my polyurea spray work has fallen way off. Consequently I’ve had to fall back to my skills developing software. It remains to be seen how well developing an application for the iPhone will pay, but it seems to me to that there is good potential.

The application that I wrote is named imAt. It’s a small program that uses quite a few of the iPhone’s features, including the built in camera, GPS, Google maps, wireless networking and sqlite database. ImAt is very simple at it’s heart - with just the touch of a button it allows the user to save his or her location along with a comment and photograph so that friends can view all of this by going to a web site, imat.mobi. In a lot of ways this application is similar to Twitter, the program that is on everybody’s lips these days.

It didn’t take me too long to get up to speed on programming the iPhone. For a C/C++/Java programmer like myself learning the Objective-C programming language wasn’t too difficult. The iPhone’s programming interface (API) wasn’t too difficult to learn either. Where I got hung up was with the server side, which was written in Java EE 5. A lot of the toolkits I used are relatively new and I found them to be somewhat buggy and poorly documented. It took me as long, or longer to develop the web side functionality as it took to develop the iPhone application itself.

I think that my little application is nice enough, but it’s really just a jumping off point for some more elaborate applications that I plan to take on next.

At this point I’ve uploaded imAt to the iTunes store, but it has not yet been approved by Apple. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before it has been approved and is available for purchase.

So there you have it - one application down, and who knows how many more to go.

Programming the iPhone

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 20:34:07 -0600

When I got my iPhone it became evident to me very quickly that the device offers a lot of possibilities for the software engineer. I have done some work with lightweight devices in the past, writing a program on the Palm to control the fuel injection system for the Suzuki Hayabusa. So out of curiosity I signed up on Apple’s web site to download the iPhone SDK and some example programs.

As it turned out, Apple is giving free technical seminars for iPhone developers in cities around the United States and other countries and Austin was one of the cities selected. I received an email with an application to attend one of these seminars. I returned the application and a few days later received my ticket. The seminar started at nine in the morning and ran until five. Apple provided snacks for the breaks and lunch.

There were three tracks. As I really wasn’t familiar with programming on the Macintosh (or the iPhone) I took the entry level track. That track had an entry course on the Objective-C programming language, Apple’s application programmatic interfaces (APIs) and frameworks for the iPhone, an explanation of the iPhone hardware and a session on best practices for programming the iPhone. I went away from the seminar with a better appreciation of what the iPhone is and is not capable of. I was especially appreciative of how Apple makes it easy to sell applications through the iTunes Application Store.

I had been noticing that quite a few of the students at my Sandler sales class seemed to have iPhones, so at the end of one class I asked the class who had one. Out of ten students and one instructor there were five iPhones. If this is representative it indicates that the iPhone is very popular among sales professionals. This got me thinking about just how an iPhone application could be written to provide a useful tool for sales.

Oe of the first things I learned after downloading the software development kit is that it’s necessary to purchase a $100 license in order to actually load an application onto my iPhone. I anted up and bought my developer’s license and then loaded a couple of Apple’s demo programs onto my iPhone.

Out of curiosity I looked around craig’s list for listing for iPhone developers. I responded to a few in short order I picked up some work for a game developer. I’ve always said that the job of a software contractor is to jump into deep water and learn to swim before drowning. So I quickly found myself working with a new programming language on a device that is new to me with new tools and more than one new API. All in all I think that I’ve been doing reasonably well under the circumstances. There was a fairly steep learning curve but after less than a week’s work I feel that I’ve developed a good basic proficiency programming the iPhone. With some more effort I ought to be able to really become proficient on the platform.

As always, I’ve got a lot going on so I may not have a lot of time for yet another new project. But I’m continuing to put my ideas for an iPhone application together and hopefully one of these days I’ll have my own application in the iPhone store.

Promoting the Arts in Lockhart

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:24:11 -0600

After Janet and I moved to Lockhart we immediately began to check the town out to see what we could see. For a small community Lockhart has a lot to offer. There are beautiful historic homes, probably the nicest county courthouse in all of Texas and the Eugene Clark library, which has been in continuous operation longer than any other public library in the state of Texas.

Right across the street from the library is the Gaslight Baker Theater, Lockhart’s live performance theater. The historic Baker Theater opened in 1920 in it’s day it was considered to be state of the art, with such advanced features as a sloped concrete floor and a projector room that is “completely fireproof.” In the 1930s the theater was redecorated to an exotic Spanish-Moorish style with deep velvety rugs and giant Moorish chandeliers. In the 1950s the theater was again remodeled, this time to a more spartan “modern” appearance, though it still has a few Art Deco elements from earlier periods. The Baker Theater was closed as a movie theater in 1984. In 1997 it was purchased and renovated for live performances.

Janet and I attended a couple of performances at the theater and found them to be very well done. Indeed, I found them to be more enjoyable than pretty much any of the performances I have seen at Austin’s Zachary Scott theater.

One thing that we did notice is that the theater seemed to be sparsely attended. Somehow this just didn’t seem right. Janet and I have been making an attempt to become more involved in our new communities. Since we’ve been supporters of the performing arts for at least two decades, it just seemed like a natural thing to see if we could make a contribution to our community’s local arts organization.

I’ve been spending a lot of money over the last few years on sales classes and marketing consulting services. Between that and the experience of trying to grow a business for the last six years Janet and I have spent a lot of time and effort focusing on sales and marketing. Our hope is that we can use the skills that we have developed marketing our own businesses to help promote ticket sales at the Gaslight Baker.

Janet and I have discussed a number of ideas with members of the theater’s board and we believe that we have a few good ones. Janet has also volunteered to help with promotional artwork, graphical layout and writing a column in the local paper. Even though she has not done this kind of work before, Janet has produced some really nice production posters.

There are plenty of opportunities for participation in any non-profit organization and I suspect that the theater has more than most. Volunteers can learn to build stage sets (as I did today), work with makeup and costumes and, of course, performers are always needed. There is also a need for people with technical and media skills for video production, web technologies and other promotional activities.

All in all I think that this will be fun. I believe that contributing to the performing arts is a worthy cause and it’s one that I’m pleased to have an opportunity to make a contribution to. It’s my hope that this will be a not only be an enjoyable venture, but a successful one as well.

Fighting Fires

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 18:43:00 -0600

After moving to Lockhart we explored our “neighborhood”, which includes Lockhart itself and the smaller communities of Dale and Litton Springs. Our ranch is about half way between Lockhart and Dale. We actually consider ourselves to me more the residents of Dale than of Lockhart.

There are not too many social centers in a a small community. There are churches, perhaps a fraternity such as the Masonic Lodge and often the local volunteer fire department is a center of activity. Of course the primary reason for a VFD is for a community to defend itself against fire, but people get to know each other and it can become an informal social circle as well.

I joined the Dale volunteer fire department because it seemed like a worthwhile way to contribute to the community. Becoming a member is a pretty simple proposition - you pay your dues and if you want to fight fires they give you a radio. When there is a fire or an auto accident a call goes out from the county dispatch. The firefighters meet at the firehouse and then go to the scene.

I’ve only been to a limited number of fires. This is because I just haven’t managed to have my radio turned on and been available when the calls have come in. When I have fought fires I’ve mostly worked out of a “brush truck.” A brush truck is a pickup with a tank containing four to six hundred gallons of water, a gasoline powered pump, hoses and nozzles and other various tools. Sometimes the brush truck is parked and the hose pulled out to fight fires, other times the truck is driven while firefighters ride in “cages” on the back of the truck and put water on the fire from there.

The most common kind of fire we have to contend with are grass fires. The most common source of these fires is burn piles that get out of hand. It seems that too many people think that burn bans apply to people other than themselves and then we end up having to put out their fires.

I’ve seen where a burn pile can come to life after several days of smoldering and then burned down people’s homes. It’s always a shame to see someone’s home lost, especially when the cause is just carelessness or a meaningless accident.

Fighting fires is mostly hot smelly hard work. Sometimes it is necessary to work with the wind blowing smoke in your face and when it’s a burning structure sometimes that smoke is loaded with toxins. However it can also be a bit of an adventure. When the job is done there is a sense of a job well done. It’s a good feeling to know that I’ve performed a valuable service for my neighbors and my community.

I guess this is one more thing to add to my resume. Racer, patron of the arts, software engineer, machinist, scuba diver... fire fighter. Why not? Life should be an adventure!

The Visitation

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:37:07 -0500

This morning Janet and I were sitting on our patio drinking coffee when she noticed some large birds at the far end of our largely dried up lake. At first she though they might be peacock hens but I nixed that idea. We took some pictures and a little research informed us that they are whooping cranes, a species that almost went extinct in the early 1940s because of DDT. Currently there are 266 known birds in the western flock. Six of them visited us, which is 2 1/4% of the entire population.

These birds winter in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, which is not that far from us. No doubt they were on the last leg of their trip to their winter grounds.

Very cool! A very rare bird and for us an extremely rare visitation. We were very lucky to catch it.

Being an Extra in a Hollywood Movie

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:51:42 -0500

Yesterday Janet and I spent the day as “background” actors for HBO’s production of Temple Grandin. This is the second time I’ve acted as an extra - the first was in the ballroom scene for “Texas Justice.”

After moving here, we had discovered that a number of movies were filmed in or about Lockhart. Consequently when I found the Temple Grandin project on craigslist in a listing for part time gigs in Lockhart I signed us up. Spending the day as an extra sounded like an interesting way to make a few extra dollars.

Our first opportunity to act was in Austin at the convention center. Our casting call was at five, and that meant that we had to get up at three in the morning. We showed up with stacks of “late 70’s” clothing. Breakfast was provided, but we only had a minute or two to eat and so I only had a mouth full of eggs and a couple of pieces of bacon.

It seemed that almost everybody was dressed in browns of some sort or another. I wore dark brown slacks, an orangish/brown polyester shirt and a corduroy sports jacket. Janet was given huge hair and was also dressed in muted colors. Funny, but I don’t remember everyone dressing this way in the late seventies.

Regardless, either they liked the way that we looked or perhaps it was just because we were near the beginning of the line but for the first scene Janet and I were sat at a table and told to hand out literature at an “Autism Convention.” Evidently the cameras were trained directly on us for what may be used as a brief introductory sequence.

The introduction went pretty quickly. We ended up spending the rest of the day filming a scene where a speaker is shouted down because of his assertion that autism is a psychological condition, not a neurological one, which leads to Temple explaining to a surprised audience that she is autistic and has overcome her condition. I believe that this scene is near the end of the movie.

We spent a lot of time shooting this scene from a number of different perspectives, with close ups of each of the performers that had speaking roles. In between filming we waited as cameras and chairs were moved, the lighting was adjusted and other changes were made. Since I had my iPhone I used some of this down time to read a little bit about Temple Grandin and autism.

As Janet has said, this is probably not a film that I would ordinarily go to see. Now, of course, I have to see it. But it looks like it deals with a woman who was not only very interesting, but inspiring. Temple Grandin was a unique individual who made contributions in a variety of different ways, not only to the field of autism, but was also a leader in the advocacy of compassion in ranching.

All in all, it was a long day but a fun one. I don’t expect to do this kind of work all the time, but now and then it makes for an interesting change of pace. They will be filming some more in Lockhart and we’ve asked to be contacted if there is a place for us. Watch for Temple Grandin on HBO sometime next year.

The Big Band/Swing Era

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:29:26 -0500

This morning I woke up with Benny Goodman’s version of “Sing Sing Sing” going through my head. I downloaded all my big band music into my iPhone and listened to two different versions of the song along with some other swing era standards during my daily 2 1/2 mile morning walk with Bodhi. This got me to thinking about just how great this music really is and sent me to YouTube to see what I could find.

I found some great material. The first video I found (here) seems to have been cut from a movie. Doing some web research I found a mention of a 1938 Benny Goodman performance at Carnege Hall and found a two piece video (here) about the performance. There is an interview with Benny Goodman in the second part of the video (here) where he describes an informal recording that was made of the performance on acetate disks and subsequently kicked around without being listened to for decades. After listening to part of Sing Sing Sing on the same video I realized that this was an exceptional performance and even though the quality of the recording itself was poor, so I bought an album of the Carnege Hall performance from Amazon.

It’s funny, but as is the case with opera, I never intended to become a fan of big band music. But as I began to explore different kinds of music I bought a five CD collection on the TV called named “The Big Big Big Big Bands.” Being born in 1953, I came a little after the heyday of the Swing era (1935-1946) but I must have had some sort of exposure to this kind of music because I quickly took a liking to it.

At this point my Big Band.Swing record collection includes the aforementioned set, an Anthology of Big Band Swing, Tuxedo Junction, Swingtime!, More Swing Greatest Hits, Big Bands Vols 1-5, Count Basie at Newport, In The Mood, The White Cliffs of Dover, George and Ira Gershwin in Hollywood and Live At Carnegie Hall. In essence I’ve probably got much of the best of the period’s music. This may have spoiled me because when listening to the 40s channel on XM I find that there are plenty of tracks that I really don’t care for. But that’s no surprise I guess - there will always be the exceptional along with the mediocre.

I’m staring to pay more attention to, and learn about, specific performers. Benny Goodman is just the most recent on that I’ve been really looking at. There is also Cab Calloway, who’s music was used for a number of Betty Boop cartoons including Minnie the Moocher, Snow White and the Old Man of the Mountain. These videos are all well worth taking the time to see, as well as to listen to. Artie Shaw was another great clarinetist. My favorite Shaw composition is the bluesy Nightmare Side One and Nightmare Side Two. Shaw’s Stardust is another of his signature pieces.

I don’t think that there’s much debate that Glenn Miller and his orchestra was likely the most popular big band of his time. Miller’s music is not quite so jazzy as that of Goodman, Calloway and Shaw. But his orchestra has a smooth rich sound that’s often to a foxtrot beat. The Glenn Miller Orchestra has had more hits than I have room to list here. Perhaps the best known of them is “In The Mood,” which has one of the best recognized opening sequence of notes of all time (after Beethoven's Ninth) and could be considered to be emblematic of the music of the period. Other Miller hits are Chattanooga Cho Choo, Moonlight Serenade, Tuxedo Junction and Pennsylvania 6-5000.

As I had previously said in my blogs about the opera, there are just so many great artists and tunes that I can’t even start to mention them all. I’ve tried to hit just a very limited number of some of the many greats. If you are really interested in music, I can not recommend too strongly that you explore the Big Band/Swing era and all of the fantastic musicians, composers and music that came from that period.

Thirty Years of Computer Programming, Part 3

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:15:10 -0500

Software paradigms have changed radically over the last thirty years and the rate of change is increasing. For the first couple of decades the personal computer was exactly that - a single user single tasking device that would run one program at a time. Eventually multi-tasking operating systems were developed for the PC and then multi-user systems. But these computers were still essentially autonomous, though some of them would share common data when used in small local networks.

In the mid to later 1990s, mainstream computer languages usage by most programmers evolved from structured to object oriented methodologies. This reduced the complexity that the developer needed to contend with and facilitated the creation of larger, more sophisticated programs. But it was with the growth of internet usage that computer applications took on a really new flavor.

With large scale connectivity the personal computer became less of a computational device and more of a communications device. While there are still people keeping their company’s books or storing their photos and recipes on personal computers, I think it’s safe to say that these days PCs are used more to send and receive emails, do web based research, visit social networking sites, make purchases and even play networked games than for stand alone applications. This is what’s called web 2.0 by some.

The web 2.0 paradigm has been made possible by advances in computer languages and new communications protocols which have made it easier (aka faster) to develop networked applications. The networking of small devices such as cell phones, Blackberrys and iPhones has provided other tools. A new generation of software developers have taken all of these resources and used them for creative new applications. In turn, companies and individuals have been making new easy to use services available, such as the Google Maps web service.

Every Trail is good example of one of these clever new applications. I downloaded the Every Trail software onto my iPhone for free. When the app is run, it tracks my path with the iPhone’s built in GPS, allows me to take photos with the iPhone’s built in camera and then upload all of this information with the iPhone’s wireless networking capacity. I can share my trip with anyone who has a network connection. Not only can others see the photos that I have taken, they can also follow my path on a map with satellite images provided by Google Maps. You can see my walk around Lockhart here and a walk around my ranch here.

Every Trail is a good example of how many different web and hardware services can be integrated relatively easily into an integrated system. For example, the iPhone has provided a number of different built in devices and other services such as Google Maps can be easily accessed from the web. Powerful web oriented object oriented languages and standardized protocols such as XML provide the glue to pull all these pieces together. The developer really doesn’t need to write all that much code when compared to what it took to program a computer a decade or so ago.

Several years ago I wrote JInstallTool, a programming “language” where development consists of pulling objects from a pallet, dropping them onto a canvas and then dragging links to facilitate messaging between the objects. As it’s name implies, JInstallTool was developed to write application installations. However the model could be used to create a next generation software development tool. Each of the icons on the JInstallTool pallet represent wrappers around the functional objects and expose the interfaces that are used to access the contained object’s functionality. Type checking is used on the exposed interfaces to verify that the communications between objects functions correctly. With an appropriate set of standards this functionality could be scaled up so that entire web applications could be developed with simple drag and drop operations. I expect that before too long something along these lines will gain common usage in the programming community.

From there it’s just a matter of time before we see self programming systems. I see a time in the not too distant future when lightweight applications will be developed on the fly and discarded by smart software to meet the momentary needs of the end user. What those applications will look like and what services they will provide will only be limited by the technology of the day and the imagination of the people, or perhaps machines, asking for tasks to be performed for them.

The last thirty years have been an interesting ride. The next thirty should an incredible one.

Thirty Years of Computer Programming, Part 2

Mon, 6 Oct 2008 21:06:45 -0500

Since I’ve moved to Austin most of my work has been doing contract programming. Among others, I have worked for Schlumbeger, IBM, Pervasive Software and had a four year stint working for BMC Software. Working as a contractor I’ve not had so many opportunities to make a living working with languages that are outside of the mainstream. However again I’ve long been interested in computer languages so when Sun Microsystems created the Java programming language I experimented with experimented with early versions.

At the time, Java wasn’t much. It provided a way to run some simple programs inside a web browser but mostly didn’t work. However once Java version 2 was released the language started to move more towards being useful. What really attracted me to Java was the basic idea of a platform independent language. Java was promoted as the “Write Once, Run Anywhere” programming language. This means that once I have written a program it will run on Windows, Mac OS, Unix, Linux or any other operating system. Write Once Run Anywhere is a radical idea. It took a while for this ideal to become a reality and even now Java apps Macs don’t alway behave just right. But still, the idea of of not having to write operating system specific code is a very powerful one.

While working at Sun Microsystems I had attended a couple of the Object Oriented Programming Systems and Applications (OOPSLA) conferences. I still remember one quote given by a Doctor who was participating in one of the panels. He stated that “the future of computing will consist of objects floating on a sea of computational power.” That sounded great, but at the time (1990) all programs were objects written in machine specific code. Consequently I didn’t know how it would be possible for objects to execute in a non-homogenous computational environment. With Java that all changed.

One of my earlier Java applications was a calendar and scheduling application. A copy of this application would run on each of the client machines all of which interacted with a shared server. The neat thing about this application was that the client machines received objects from the server that not only included data, they also included instructions that described what to do with the data. Consequently the application running on the client machines does not need to be updated when updates are made to the server. The server would simply send updated objects to the client and the objects themselves would provide the new behaviors. I think this fits the model of objects floating on a sea of distributed computational power.

Java is more than a programming language. It is a complete programming system that comes with an extensive application programatic interface (API). What this means is that Java comes with a variety of specialized libraries of objects that perform a wide range of functions. For example, the 3D API has functions for three dimensional graphics modeling and the mail API has all of the functionality necessary to send and receive email. Java also does it’s own memory management. This means that when an object is no longer used the system automatically releases the memory that it had been using. Memory management solves many of the bugs that have plagued programmers for years.

Sun Microsystems has continued to grow the Java environment. Not satisfied with just providing the language and APIs, Sun has also developed some very powerful development tools. Their flagship tool is the Netbeans development environment. Netbeans is not just a programming editor. It also can build, run and debug programs, provide connections between applications and databases, and serve web applications. Sun has also developed many tutorials go simplify learning of the language and it’s different libraries and tools.

As was the case with C++, it took a while for Java to start to catch on. Java became mainstream with Sun’s strategic decision to move Java to the server side. That means that Java programs would run on web servers and output data that would be downloaded to browsers. This caused the use of Java among development communities to explode. Sun has also created specialized versions of Java, such as J2EE which is targeted for enterprise applications and J2ME which is targeted at lightweight devices such as cell phones.

There are other programming languages out there that have gained a wide following such as PERL, PHP and of course C++. These all have their strengths and weaknesses. PHP in particular has become the darling of many web programmers. I’ve been looking at possibly learning PHP to work on an LimeSurvey, an open source project that I’ve been using. But for general purpose programming I’ve pretty much settled on Java as my computer Language of choice. I find it to be elegant, powerful and easy to work with.

For more information about the Java programming language go to javasoft.com.

Thirty Years of Computer Programming, Part 1

Thu, 2 Oct 2008 20:20:44 -0500

I bought my first computer in 1977. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80, one of the first commercial computers made for home use. This computer came with a keyboard and monitor, a BASIC interpreter, 4k of RAM and a tape recorder for data storage. The computer didn’t do too much. It played some simple games and could be programmed in BASIC.

At the time, the idea of of any sort of a consumer computer was a radical one. I bought mine because I was learning that motor sports was becoming a game of numbers. I thought that a computer would be a useful tool to help me build racing engines and racing vehicles. Of course once I bought the computer I had to learn how to use it, and that effectively meant that I had to learn to program in BASIC. Ultimately the machine didn’t have the power to do anywhere near the kind of modeling that I had hoped for, but it did get me started in the world of software development.

In the early 1980’s Texas Instruments introduced the TI-99, an inexpensive computer console that used a television as a monitor. I bought one and wrote a casino package with it. This program had a number of games on it including video poker and keno. I used the TI’s graphics and sound capabilities to display cards and other visuals. This was a big step forward from the TRS-80.

Somewhat later Harry, a friend of mine, bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. When he first showed me the computer I sat down and wrote a few lines of code. Harry and his wife Lyn were very impressed, and told me that I should consider going back to school and getting a degree in Computer Science. I thought about it for a while and decided to take their advice. Going back to school was quite a challenge. I had not completed high school and was not all that well prepared for college. But I worked hard and received my degree with high honors.

During this time I bought the leading edge computer of the day, an IBM XT. This machine not only had 640 kilobytes (not megabytes) of RAM, it came with a full sized 10 MB hard drive. What more could anyone ask for? I was in geek heaven with this powerful machine. I spent many hours with it waiting for compiles to complete in Borland’s Turbo-Pascal. I also had another piece of leading edge technology - a 300 baud modem. This lead me to write my own version of the x-modem file transfer protocol, complete with CRC.

Once I graduated, I started my career as a software developer in a small consulting business. At the time, “C” was the hot new programming language. I developed a couple of “C” apps and some small business database systems in DBase III. One application that I wrote which I feel was very leading edge is a multi-threaded on-line point of sale system. However this was WAY ahead of it’s time and didn’t fly.

In 1987 some of the first C++ translators became available and I purchased one. The C++ translators of the day simply would not run on a PC with only 640k of RAM. But at that time object oriented programming was a concept that was ahead of it’s time and poorly understood by most of the developers of the day.

After a couple years I moved on to a company that specialized in building debuggers and in-circuit emulators. This is where I was introduced to computers made by Sun Microsystems. I ported the interface for Atron’s ICE from a PC to a Sun and developed a network connection between the two devices. All of this work was done in “C.”

My experience with the Sun lead me to a job at Sun Microsystems. It was there that I really had an opportunity to do a real programming project in C++. At the time I was the only developer that I was aware of writing in C++. I wrote a “C” like interpreted programming language that sat on top of a distributed ISAM database. I was involved in a project that had some modules written in Scheme, though I didn’t do much work in that language. I tried to encourage the Scheme team to use C++ but that failed. Consequently there was a bit of a rift between us based on programming language choice. My biggest contribution to that project was to develop a set of widgets in Motif that were used to graph data points logged by the operating system. This was used to optimize early versions of the Solaris operating system.

We decided to move from Silicon Valley to Austin in March of 1994 so I quit my job at Sun to see what challenges and opportunities there would be in Texas.

The iPhone: Insanely Great - Not!

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:09:06 -0500

A week ago today went out riding my motorcycle. When I got home I discovered that my cell phone was missing. When I tried to call my phone it went straight to voice mail. I took this to be a bad sign for the health of my cell phone. Some family members have recently bought Apple iPhones. I had spent a few minutes playing with the phone and found it to be an appealing little device. I have been using Apple computers for about a decade and Apple’s “mobile me” (previously .mac) service since it’s inception and so I’ve got many of Apple’s software and services in use. So when I lost my old cell phone I decided to make the switch to an iPhone.

For someone like me there is a lot to recommend the iPhone. I can share my address book, calendar, email and browser bookmarks transparently and wirelessly between the iPhone and my Apple computer(s). From a business perspective this is very attractive. I no longer have to call Janet to have her look up things for me on my computer. If I add or modify a record in my address book it is automatically synchronized across all my devices.

The iPhone comes with some useful standard applications, such as a GPS utility, camera, photo gallery, weather. It also comes with some not quite so useful applications such as a YouTube viewer. There are other applications available, many for free, from the iTunes store.

This is all good, at least as far as it goes. The iPhone is a useful device. But it does not meet up to Steve Job’s goal of “insanely good.”

In essence the iPhone is a tiny portable computer, though one with limited capabilities. You would not want to use it as a word processor. However it is well suited for many different communications and informational tasks. It succeeds at the large level. However it doesn’t provide an expected level of ease of use for the functionality that it provides.

A good example is the mail program. While it provides basic services to both POP and IMAP accounts, it doesn’t go far beyond those basic services. It’s not possible to view multiple in-boxes simultaneously in iPhone mail, as it is possible to do with Apple’s desktop mail program. Then there’s the fact that the “to do” items in Mac mail appear, but do not function on the iPhone’s mail. Worse of all the iPhone mail program only has the most primitive of sorts and doesn’t even have a search function.

The iPhone GPS feature ties into Google maps. The idea is sound but the implementation is poor. The map does not orient in the direction of travel. This makes it very confusing when using the GPS for navigation. Also, the advancing of navigation instructions are not automatic - the user is required to touch a button on the screen to move from one instruction to the next.

The iPhone is also missing feature is the ability to cut and paste. It can’t access the filesystems on Apple’s remote iDisk. Also, the compact version of the Safari browser doesn’t cache pages, doesn’t remember histories and doesn’t show videos.

Finally there is the issue of short battery life and non-user replaceable batteries.

Perhaps the biggest issue for many in the development community is Apple’s control of what applications may ore may not be installed on it. The best publicized instance of this is the “Podcaster” debacle. Apple rejected the Podcaster application because it’s functionality resembled some of the functionality of one of Apple’s desktop application, iTunes. When Podcaster developers found a way to install their application outside of iTunes, Apple once again shut them down.

Apple is not even willing to specify what will or will not disqualify an application for installation on an iPhone. So developers have to spend their time and money writing iPhone applications and then just hope that the app will be accepted by Apple. This is unacceptable.

Apple’s response to bad publicity by developers who have objected to their applications being rejected is to assert that rejection letters are covered by a non-disclaimer agreement and can not be released to the public. As a developer myself, this is all making Google’s Android platform look attractive when compared to the iPhone.

All in all, while the iPhone is a useful device I just expect better from Apple computers. When compared to other Apple products, I would rate the iPhone at a 1.0 or 1.1 release level, (or if it were a Microsoft product I would place it at about a version 7, service pack three release.)

I am not unhappy with my purchase, For a business person like myself who relies on Apple hardware and software the iPhone can be a good choice. It’s just not all that I expected.

My recommendation is that the prospective iPhone buyer not only looks closely at this product but it’s competitors as well before committing to the iPhone and the two year commitment to AT&T services that comes with it.

The Wonderful World Of The Opera, Part 3

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:59:45 -0500

The first operas are attributed to Monteverde and his first opera was written in 1607. That means that operas have been written and performed for over four hundred years. By Mozart’s time opera had become “mainstream” for those who could afford to attend public entertainment.

With hundreds or thousands of operas having been written in the last four centuries, how does one know which ones to attend?

A good strategy is to initially attend operas that are well known popular. There are a great many of them out there that are performed regularly so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find one of them. One might also simply buy a season’s subscription. Most established houses produce at least a couple operas from the standard repertoire, along with a work or two that are less often performed. Many of the larger companies typically do a world premier every year.

So what is this standard repertoire? It depends on who you talk to. Wikipedia has a very long list of “important” operas at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_operas. For practical purposes I feel that the Wikipedia list is a bit excessive.

I’ve created my own list of operas that are easy on the ear and “accessible.” It’s a bit shorter than the Wikipedia list. The opera connoisseur may notice the absence of notables such as Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. While I acknowledge their greatness, it took me a number of years to develop an ear for the works of these (and many other) composers. Consequently I feel that the works that they wrote may be considered a bit advanced for a list of entry level opera .

So here, in no particular order, is my list of must see operas.

Giacomo Puccini

Tosca, Madam Butterfly, La Boheme, Turandot, Il Tabarro, Giannie Schicchi

Guseppi Verdi

Rigoletto, La Traviata, Othello, Aida

Jacques Offenbaque

Tales of Hoffman

Georges Bizet

Carmen, The Pearl Fishers

Ruggero Leoncavallo

Pagliacci

Gioacchino Rossini

The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola

Leos Janacek

The Cunning Little Vixen, Jenufa

George Gershwin

Porgy and Bess

Gaetano Donizetti

Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale, L‘eliser d’amore

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Marriage of Figero, Cosi fan tutte, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni

Pietro Mascagni

Cavalleria Rusticana

Johann Strauss

Die Fledermaus

The Wonderful World Of The Opera, Part 2

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:43:17 -0500

The world of opera is a universe unto itself. The first thing that the opera neophyte needs to remember is that you can’t take this stuff too seriously. Most operatic librettos simply give performers justification to to sing heart wrenching arias, often followed by their tragic deaths. The opera is also rich with stereotypes. For example, tenors are usually stupid and often insensitive. Bases are commonly villains and there is hardly a female love interest that is not a soprano. Perhaps it is the contrast between lavish production values and the roles of schemers, scoundrels, lunatics, and lovers that can make the opera not only high art, but fun as well.

To a large extent operas tend to have strong nationalistic styles. Most people would agree that the pinnacle of operatic composition tends to be Italian. It can be argued that the five greatest operatic composers are Mozart, Puccini, Rossini, Verdi and Wagner. Of those, two are German and three are Italian. However the majority of Mozart’s operas were written in Italian (seven in German, one in Latin, fourteen in Italian) so it could be argued that Mozart, a German, comes close to falling into the Italian camp.

Italian opera tend to be light, airy and loaded with vocal fireworks. French operas are often huge productions done in a grand style (could the term “Grand Opera” have been created for the French?). Many German opera are much heavier though newer works move in many different directions including the avante garde. German composer Wagner’s operas moved in an entirely different direction with almost ponderous pacing, but possesses a huge orchestral sound that only the most heroic of performers can sing over. The overture to Tristen Und Isolde is a showcase of Wagner’s talent for orchestrations. In many ways Wagner reinvented the opera and during his life it can be said that he almost owned the operatic stage.

For the most part I’m a fan of Italian opera. One of my favorites is Il Tabarro a one act opera by Giacomo Puccini. The music of Il Tabarro moves deftly from the sounds of Paris on the Seine, to ballad, to dance and finally to the heavy tones of murder and tragedy. This 55 minute marvel is in the verismo style.

Verismo means “realism”. Verismo opera tells stories of the lives of ordinary people, with their passions, challenges and often fatal violence. The verismo opera came along relatively lately in the art form’s evolution. Prior to verismo, there were two common forms, “opera seria” and “opera buffo” respectively for serious and comic opera.

The finest of comic opera has to have been written by Rossini. His Largo al Factotum from the Barber of Seville is probably one of the most recognized of all operatic areas. Like Wagner, in his day Rossini enjoyed enormous popularity.

For all the appeal of opera buffo, It seems like the serious operas outnumber the comic by at least ten to one, though some wonderful works mix the two. Musetta’s Waltz from Puccini’s La Boheme comes to mind, a light aria sung by Musetta as she tempts and plays with the emotions of Marcello, her on-again off-again lover. Yet for all it’s lighthearted moments, La Boheme also speaks to the difficulties and the dark sides of life, with Mimi, the female lead succumbing to tuberculosis.

Sadly, I have only touched upon the most superficial aspects of the opera. It’s really impossible to do more in a few short blog entries. I will follow up with a review of a some of my favorite operatic works.

The Wonderful World Of The Opera, Part 1

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 21:13:54 -0500

In the mid 1980s my life was changing. I had decided to change careers from working in an automotive machine shop to programming computers. As a result I returned to college, which not only exposed me to computer science but also to the humanities - art, history, anthropology and other disciplines. This led me to become curious about many things that I had not really thought much prior to that time. Indirectly that led me to the world of the opera.

It started when I stumbled on a production of Bizet’s Carmen on PBS. As a life time rocker, the whole idea of listening to the opera seemed very odd to me. I had thought that the opera was for snobs and the elite. But at that point of my life but I was just curious enough to listen to five minutes of the PBS production. Some of the music was familiar, so I listened for a little longer, and then through the entire opera. I had started to listen to some classical music and to explore this opera thing a little more, I bought some cassette tapes of Marilyn Horn performing the role of Carmen. After a few listenings it was too late - I was starting to get hooked on opera.

At this point I was becoming curious about the world of the opera. I thought it would be interesting to hear a live performance and so I purchased a ticket to the Opera San Jose’s production of Puccini’s Tosca. When I attended the performance, I’d not quite developed an ear for the opera yet, but some of the arias appealed to me and the audience was enthusiastic.

The playbill had a subscription form for the subsequent year and the prices where fair, so I bought two season seats. That way I would always have an extra ticket for a date.

Since that first performance I’ve purchased a season subscription each and every subsequent year to one or more operatic companies. I’m guessing that I’ve attended about 100 performances. I’ve seen many great operas, probably about twenty first run productions and a few bad operas as well. I’ve developed a real appreciation of some composers, respect for others and at least a passing familiarity with others. One year I saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni three times, once in Austin, once in Houston and once in San Francisco. I think that the Houston performance was the best of the three.

One interesting side effect of my interest in the opera is that it has brought the past to life for me. These works were being written in the days of the American Revolution, the Civil War, pre and post WW I and WW II. Listening to an operatic performance got me wondering about the world that was being portrayed, and about the world the composers lived in.

When discussing the opera with many who are unfamiliar with it I explain that this was THE popular entertainment of it’s day. The great composers of these works were musical geniuses and many of their creations are masterpieces that stand out as unique in time and space. I won’t say that the opera was elitist, but it was probably out of reach for most members of the lower classes. No doubt that, along with lavish costumes and productions, gave the opera a reputation as only being for snobs. This is hardly the case today. Most opera halls are filled with people from all social strata, most of whom are more interested in the performances than in simply being seen at the opera.

I realize that many, if not most of the readers of this blog are unfamiliar with, or only have a superficial knowledge of the opera. In subsequent blog entries I intend to touch on a little bit about opera itself, operatic performers and audiences, and hopefully dispel a few myths along the way. The opera is a wonderful human achievement and it would be my honor to be able to introduce any new members to the legions of fans and audiences around the world.

Motorcycles, Part 3

Sun, 7 Sep 2008 20:46:05 -0500

In the early 1980s I went back to school and got myself a degree in software development. This and my moving into a new career distracted me to some extent from motorcycling. However during that time I did get a Yamaha RD-350, which I ported and took to a 370, a Kawasaki Ninja 900 which I built to a 970, and even a Honda 50 to get me to school, which I installed a hotrod 70cc motor into.

At some point I decided that I had been working hard and that I deserved a new toy. At that point for the most part I had not been paying much attention to what the motorcycle manufactures were producing. I had noticed that there were some big twins running in the tens which seemed really quick to a guy who got excited to see a four cylinder make it into the elevens. One day I decided to look at motorcycles on the web and one of the first bikes I saw was a red Hayabusa. The Hayabusa was a nine second fuel injected monster and looked every bit the part. You have to understand that one of these things is as fast or faster than a full on Pro-Stocker was in the early days of that class. Of course I had to get a Haybusa, and a red one at that.

It wasn’t that long before I took the bike to the track, just to see what it would do. My first time down the track I went a 10.20. Janet was there with a camcorder and shot some video. You can see them at http://homepage.mac.com/emarsh/iMovieTheater7.html. Of course I had to have my bike running in the nines. I lowered it, put a PC2 and a pipe on the bike and before long I was running 9.80s. But the drag racing bug had bit me again and I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Next I put a dry shot nitrous system on the bike. This made it tricky to ride, with big wheelies when the nitrous came on but put me in the mid nines at over 150 mph. That’s as fast (but not as quick) as my old Pro-Stock bike and this is on a mildly modified street bike that I regularly rode to work. I was getting this level of performance on a tight budget and most of the parts on the bike were used. Here’s a video of me running a 9.53 with only a 20hp shot: http://homepage.mac.com/emarsh/iMovieTheater10.html.

Speaking of used parts, eventually I found a second hand street turbo system for $2500. I’d been reading about turbo Hayabusas for a while and what I read was astonishing. There were street driven turbos producing 450 horsepower and even more. I bought the turbo and while I had the cylinders off to put a cylinder spacer in to lower the compression, I put a used set of 1397cc pistons in it. We put the bike on a dyno and saw 300 horsepower. When I went to the track, my first run with the turbo was on a worn out old junk tire. It spun the tire to about half track and then hooked up at over 100 mph and started to pull like a locomotive. I only went a 9.70 but that was at 158 miles an hour.

I started to work with the turbo but it threw a lot of new challenges at me. First of all, it had a severe overboost problem. I sent the turbo to Stedman Racing to have a wastegate installed but they botched the job twice and had me waiting for my parts for many months. Finally I bought a TIG welder and did the job myself. Once I had the wastegate working I added a computerized boost control system and then finally a data acquisition system.

The data acquisition system is a very powerful tool. Until I installed it I didn’t realize that the turbo was actually shutting down at about 9500 rpm and would not maintain a properly boost profile. About the time that I had that realization I was running 9.30s and the bike started to jump out of gear. I had to pull the motor out and apart. From there, the story of my Hayabusa can be found at my Dragbike Site.

I found that a turbo on the street is a bit of overkill at anything that resembles legal speeds. When the turbo starts to make power it will break the tire loose and spin it at eighty or even a hundred miles an hour. Consequently I decided to put the Hayabusa on the track where I could really use that power and bought myself a Kawasaki ZX-14. Currently this is the most powerful production bike you can buy, or very close to it.

It’s been an interesting ride over the last 35 years and I wonder where it will take me in the years to come.

Motorcycles, Part 2

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 20:34:42 -0500

In 1978 I was one of the first people in the north end of Seattle to buy one of the new Suzuki GS-1000s. This was the bike that the magazines were raving about back in that day. It was smooth, had (for then) world class handling and turn an 11.8 second quarter mile. The same year Yamaha introduced the shaft drive XS-11 which was perhaps a touch quicker in the quarter but was big, heavy and could be scary to ride.

Not too long after the 1000 was released, Cycle World magazine’s cover story was “Taking it to the Tens.” They had the Yoshamura crew modify a GS-1000 and a well known builder modify Kawasaki’s Z1-R then ran them off to see which bike could turn a ten second quarter. I was operating an automotive machine shop at the time and just needed an excuse to pull my new 1000 apart. The idea of a ten second street bike was huge and that’s all that I needed. The motor came out and apart.

When I was done the crank had been welded, the block re-sleeved and a set of 1175cc pistons put in. I put in stainless 40mm and 32.5mm Manley valves, dialed in a set of Andrews cams, ported the head and installed a set of 29mm smoothbore carbs. I modified a Hooker pipe to get more ground clearance and replaced the wire wheels with mags.

The bike didn’t make it into the tens - It was running eleven teens at that stage. So I added a nitrous system. At the time I was the first guy I’d heard of who put nitrous on a bike.

We had a lot of fun raising hell on the street in those days. I founded NESRA, the North End Street Racers Association. I entered my 1000 in an endurance race and had the fastest bike there, at least down the straights, (with speeds over 150 mph), but one of my co-riders threw the bike away and ended our day. The only bike in our neighborhood that was faster than my GS was my friend Tord’s turbo 1200 Kawasaki Z1. Tord tended to turn the boost way up (like over 20 psi) and the bike was a beast, not only when under power, but it’s low speed behavior was pretty beastly too.

Somewhere around that time I saw my first Pro-Stock drag race. It was really cool, with radically lowered and lengthened bikes running well into the lower half of the nines. When I flipped my bike (a third gear wheelie set off tank slappers that eventually went full lock) I used the opportunity to rebuild my GS into a Pro-Stocker.

The first time I took the Pro-Stock bike out was at Orange County International Raceway. I totally blew the launch and the bike turned a 9.40. With just a little practice I was in the nine teens and then the nine ohs. My first two races were at Antelope Valley Raceway in the upper California desert and I won them both. Not a bad start.

I had got into the engine building game because I figured that the best engine builder would be in a good position to win races. Eventually I learned the Golden Rule of Racing , that is, that the man with the most gold wins. But I gave it a good go and did OK for a kid trying to race on a shoestring. I managed to get enough points in 1982 to win the AMA Dragbike! West Coast series Pro-Stock championship and got a national number four.

Somewhere about that time some friends of mine convinced me that I should go back to school and try to get a degree. I decided to go for the gold, so that I could afford to go racing the right way. I parked my bike and didn’t really get into racing again for a number of years.

Motorcycles, Part 1

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 07:47:46 -0500

I never really expected to get into motorcycles as a kid. I surely never expected to drag race motorcycles. Yet I have been riding and racing bikes for over 35 years now. Life is funny that way.

I bought my first bike in 1973. The world of motorcycling has changed a lot since then.

That first bike was a Suzuki TS-185 enduro. I needed some inexpensive transportation and it felt fast on a test ride. After the engine was broke in I took it to the local drag strip and ran it down. My times were not very impressive. I then bought a motorcross bike and made some modifications to it. I took the MXer to the track a number of times and learned how to drag race on it.

Within a year or so I graduated to a used Suzuki T-500 two stroke twin. The hot bikes of the day were the Kawasaki H1 500cc two stroke triple, it’s bigger brother the 750cc H2 and the killer bike of the day, the new 900cc Z1. The Honda 750 had been eclipsed in performance by a number of other bikes and the magazines were saying good things about the Norton 850 Commando and it’s 12.8 second quarter mile.

With thirteen second quarter miles, in the mid sized class the H1 was the bike to beat. The first time I took my T-500 to the track I ran a quarter in the low 14 second range. To my surprise I was running quicker than the 500 Kawasakis. My second time out I won my class. With some porting, a set of pipes and a set of wheelie bars I eventually got the bike to run twelve seconds flat. I was proud of that since most of the Z1s were running 12.40s.

I had a friend with a Kawasaki H2 with a set of pipes that he claimed ran in the elevens. I rode the bike once and when it hit the power band big wheelies were immediate. In those days an eleven second quarter mile was considered awesome - the cut off point for the “pro” bracket class was 11.99 seconds.

The baddest bike at Seattle International Raceway was Jim Fox’s Kawasaki H2 dragbike. Jim was running 10.80s at about 128 mph. The track announcers when nuts when he came up to the line, going on about how only a crazy guy would ride a ten second bike.

In 1978 Suzuki released it’s new GS-1000. The bike would run an 11.8 second quarter mile. The magic zone on a stock bike - I was one of the first in town to buy one. More on my GS in a future blog.

My New Travel Podcast

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:55:59 -0500

I’ve wanted to do a podcast for some time now. I’d been thinking about one “heavy” topic after another but to do a podcast properly takes a huge investment of time, something that I’m short of these days.

This morning I was looking at Apple’s iMovie and thinking about doing some more work on a project that I’d set down for a while. That project is to put together a DVD of Janet and my trip to Italy and Egypt a few years ago. When I opened the project file I realized that I could upload each chapter as a video podcast. This would allow me to take advantage of the work that I’d already done as well as motivating me to finish the project up.

Once again I’ve got to say just how cool Apple’s iLife software is. In just a few minutes I’d selected the first few minutes of my movie, selected the “export” button and exported the video to iWeb. A few more mouse clicks and I had a video podcast up and running. A few more clicks and I’d registered it with Apple’s iTunes Store.

So the first two chapters of our Italy trip are now available for public viewing. For those of you who are receiving this blog as RSS, the podcast is at http://www.ericmarsh.info/Erics_World/Travel_Podcast/Travel_Podcast.html. If you are at my web site just select the Travel Podcast link. I’ll try to upload a new chapter of our trip to Italy and Egypt every week or so and when that’s done I’ll see about creating podcasts about some of our other travels.

Transhumanism

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:30:50 -0500

I’ve been a science fiction fan since the 1950s, when I was in grade school. Even though the first word of the genre’s name is “science,” for years I’ve really considered a lot of the so called science to be scientific fantasy. What’s interesting is how much of that which I have considered to be fantastic has turned out to be true.

Take, for example, some of the devices from the first Star Trek series. Back in the 1960s I thought that the idea of a small flip open communications device was simply absurd. As I write this I’ve got a small flip open communications device sitting on the couch next to me. Then there was the tricorder, a device that can the insides of a living person. I’ll admit that the machinery of CAT scans and PET scans are a bit larger than a tricorder, but they do observe the inside of people, something that was nothing short of incredible in the 1960s.

Science fiction has evolved since it’s “golden age.” If the old science fiction was about space operas, the new cutting edge sci-fi is cyber-punk. As it’s name denotes, cyber-punk tends to be about virtual worlds and a cyber-enhanced humanity. To many, this too is simply science fantasy. However such a judgement may be premature and short sighted.

One of the most remarkable scientific achievements in the last decade has been the creation of interfaces between wetware and hardware. This, I would have called fantasy were it not true. But it is true. Recent developments in neural implants let mechanical ears and eyes feed their signals directly into the brain. At the other end of the spectrum signals directly from the brain are being used to control artificial limbs.

So with direct input and output from the brain already a reality, what can we expect in the future? It seems logical that one of the first steps would be enhanced sensory input. For example, a fighter pilot might be able to directly sense the position of the enemy, along with the condition of his aircraft. Another logical step forward would be direct access to information technology. What could we be if our own memories were enhanced with all the knowledge of humanity instantly available in huge data repositories? Finally, if we can hook two people to a database, why not hook them up directly to each other?

Of course with great opportunity comes great risk. When our memories are not our own, what will our beliefs be? When these enhancements become available those who have them will have a significant advantage over the “ordinary” people who do not. There would also be a strong attraction in organizations such as mega-churches to create a true oneness by way of shared consciousness. Enter the Borg.

This is just one of many very real possibilities. The transhuman being of tomorrow could turn out to be something entirely different from the species that has brought us to the present. Whether this is for better or for worse, only the future will tell.

Taxes

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:30:28 -0500

There has been a huge amount of new highway construction in Central Texas over the last few years. While this new infrastructure is needed, there is no money in the state highway budget to pay for it. Consequently those roads had to be built on private money and it turns out that private money comes from Spain. So every time someone drives down one of those toll roads money leaves this country.

There are major bridges collapsing in America, New Orleans was lost because of failing levees - our infrastructure is collapsing under our feet. According to Popular Mechanics (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4258053.html) the American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that America needs to spend $1.6 trillion dollars over the next five years to rebuild our collapsing infrastructure.

Infrastructure maintenance is just one of many places where American need to spend money, and that money is just not there. Services that need proper funding include education, public health, our park systems, the arts and research on alternative energy sources. These are just to name a few of a long laundry list of items that have been underfunded for years.

Obviously, if these services are to be provided there must be a source of funding to do so. Back in the day when we were building this nation everybody shared the cost by paying their fair share of taxes. Since that time Conservatives have managed under the guise of cutting taxes to convince Americans that they don’t need to pay for their share of the resources that we all use. They have also convinced many of us that we are not our brother’s keepers, having sold a form of Social Darwinism where the rich get richer and the poor are left to live on the streets or worse.

The Republicans push the idea that cutting taxes for the rich will cause them to reinvest those monies. History has shown that often this is not the case, or if funds are reinvested often those investments go offshore.

Ultimately by slashing taxes for the wealthy the Republicans have cheated the other 99% of Americans, those of us who’s work and money has provided the opportunities that has made it possible for a fortunate few to become ultra-rich. Ultimately, those who have used the American system to make it to the top owe it to their fellow citizens to give something back so that others will have the same opportunities that they have been given.

What about the rest of us? Nobody likes to pay taxes. I most certainly don’t. So what? We all have a civic responsibility to carry our share of the load, to contribute to the common good and for those benefits that I have received. Properly managed, our taxes can be the best investment that we can make. They are an investment in our country and an investment in future generations.

There are those that argue that the government is a very poor manager of our funds. That private enterprise can do a better job. Yes, sometimes government bureaucracies can become bloated but recent history has shown us that private enterprise can become corrupt and at least with the government there are, or are supposed to be, oversights. Yes, our government does have it;s failings, but like Democracy it’s the worse system possible except for all the other ones.

The other day I got to wondering what ever happened to the idea of civics. Do they still teach civics in school or have they been replaced by some Conservative philosophy of dog eats dog? It seems to me that if we are to stand up to a challenging future then we can no longer live in a nation where the poor and the middle class are exploited by the most wealthy - we must once again learn that we all need to contribute to the greater good. If we fail to do so then the consequences will be felt by all, rich and poor alike.