A musing Beam

Like with many people, the holidays are bittersweet for me.  I cannot begin to list all the many people that make me thankful -- I'm very blessed there. Much of the bitter part comes from the fact that my father died just over four years ago after a month of attempted recovery following intensive heart surgery.  For those that did not know him, he was in AA for 33 years and died sober, but he switched addictions from alcohol to nicotine, and it killed him.  I'm sure he would still call it a good trade. Anyway, the above is pertinent to give readers context for what follows:  a poem I've had in my mind since the evening of December 1, 2006, as I left Baptist. This poem isn't a happy one, so I would suggest stopping now if you do not want to read about an extremely difficult time.  That said, I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. A Puff of Alcohol A puff of alcohol fluffy foam sanitizer as you enter the room or when you leave. a silk

Doc: Banes... how's your lady love? Banes: We... um... we broke up. Doc: Really? That's too bad, yeah. Now George has a love at his side and she is sticking with him. You know why? Because he bought her chairs. That's pretty smart to me. You ever buy Lisa's chairs?' Banes: Doc's real drunk tonight. Doc: Every woman has her chair, something she needs to put herself into, Banes. You ever figure out what Lisa's chairs were and buy 'em? [pause] Nope.    ... from Phenomenon When asked about my talents, I will usually list two things: I'm good at school, and I'm good at being a friend.  I list those because they speak to my values in a way that prompts me to continually try to improve my aptitude. I've mentioned the school stuff a few times, and I'm sure I'll come back to it in later posts, but this one is about one approach I use to being a good friend: buy her chairs.  (NOTE: I'm going to continue to use the female pronoun h

The correct way to read that statement is to emphasize the second word:  I'm not interested in your knowledge ; I'm interested in your actions. This refrain was my frequent response to my daughters when, following when I would remind them about one of their responsibilities, they would answer something like, "I know that I have to do that."  Great, acknowledgement is the first step, but there are several more (not always 11 ... heh).  This boils down to the old saying that "Words are cheap" -- something I wish I had realized before I spent a few years getting a degree in English.  ( :-) ... but I still would have gotten it, 'cause I got to read all those cool books.) A similar situation would arise when we would get onto one of the girls and she would say, sarcastically, "Well I'm sorry!"  I would calmly say, "No, you aren't."  In that case, she really was not.  Even if she was serious, though, I would usually push back. 

Anybody that has ever successfully completed a long-term project will be able to easily tell you how many ways it could have gone wrong.  (The hard-working and professional folk will probably be able to tell you how it DID go wrong, but they had planned for the unexpected and were able to deal with it.)  It's always easier for things to go against the plan than to follow it.  Newton pointed this out with the law of entropy (which is now slightly varied in that order may eventually form from chaos, but we'll ignore that for now ... heh). One of my earlier posts was about Bloom's taxonomy, and an old high school friend sent me a more up-to-date version that includes a new pinnacle:  creativity. It's harder to create something than to destroy it.  For an extreme example, 19 men took out two skyscrapers, part of the most powerful military in the world's command center, a good section of the world's progressive economy, and a large chunk of common sense for years

How are astrologists like racists?  There could be a funny one-liner response to that, I'm sure, but the answer I'm looking for is simple:  They are lazy thinkers. I'm going to spend a few paragraphs here doing a cursory job of debunking both viewpoints and showing why they are lazy, but I'm not going to go into much detail, as that's not the real point I want to make. Astrology:  Really?  You honestly think that 1/12th of the human race will have the same general set of experiences based on when they were born?  (This is assuming the "normal" Zodiac, though a similar thing can be said about, for instance, the Chinese Zodiac, and this is ignoring the silliness added in by distinguishing between "Sun signs" and "moon signs.")  Do you realize that these signs were based on people believing some quite inaccurate things about the stars (like virtually anything besides that they are gaseous giants that are light years away)?  Did you kno

Blame is not a percentage game, and neither is credit, in most situations.  When I roll out a new application at work, I should not attempt to take 100% of the credit.  Tommy probably did the better part of the coding (meaning both more time and higher quality), the docs and nurses gave the input I needed, the technicians made the database and network connectivity possible, the insurance companies paid for the kids to get their hearts worked on (which paid my salary), etc.  That does mean that I shouldn't "take" or "get" credit -- it means that it isn't a simple computation where the amount I get should decrease the amount someone else gets. And if the applications fails, that doesn't mean that it shifts from being credit to blame, or that I should in turn get all the blame.  (Though I think, there, as a team leader, I should strive to take as much as I can ... but that's for a whole different reason.) When my daughters were younger and they woul

There's an old bit of advice that says you should look at how your date treats the server at the restaurant to see how nice a person your date is.  I think you should probably get to know your date a little bit better, and use a slightly more nuanced approach, but ... I think the point is very valid.  How you treat those that are situationally below you, hierarchically, says a lot about you. My larger thought here, though, is about small considerations in general.  By small considerations, I mean when you have to think about something minor, and take a minor act, in consideration of someone else.  Put the shopping cart where it goes, park in between the lines, walk on the sidewalk instead of the grass, hold the door for someone, respond to a greeting, put an item back on the shelf where you got it, stay in the flow of traffic instead of trying to pull in front of someone half a mile down the line, etc.  What does it take for you to feel empowered to ignore those small considera

Some of you may be familiar with Dave Ramsey.  He is a financial advisor with his own show, etc.  He compares his advice to a dietician who says "Eat less, exercise more."  I came across a resonating line in his Total Money Makeover book a few nights ago:  "My plan isn't complicated, it's just hard." Partially because we felt like we were treated poorly by AT&T (which jacked our interest rate up to 26% after we were a day late on our payment ... the day before the new consumer protection law went into effect), and partially because we have felt like we were financial dolts, Dee and I decided to join the ranks of people following the Ramsey plan.  It requires a few things: 1)  Get current on all your bills 2)  Create a detailed, written, zero-based monthly budget (and use it!) 3)  Get a liquidated $1000 emergency fund 4)  Cut up all your credit cards and vow never to use credit again (with the possible exception of a home) 5)  Pay off all your cred

I had a crazy trip to Minnesota in the latter half of last week.  My law school sent two moot court teams, and we competed.  Moot court is where you get up in front of a 3-judge panel and argue a contentious, current legal issue for an hour (each team puts up two people, and each of those gets a quarter hour).  I like to compare it to being like doing a comedic set, except you have to be respectful to the hecklers who are constantly attempting to throw you off your game. To make a long story short, we lost every match.  The first one was actually against our other team, and basically both sides had their worst arguments of the competition.  We lost to them, but it seemed pretty close to a tie (which would have meant they won, anyway, based off a written portion of the competition).  The next two arguments we thought we had destroyed the other teams -- our coach sent a text out saying we had just "pummelled" one of the other teams ... yet we lost both times, somehow.  Our fi

When I was in college I spent two sleepless nights worrying over the existence of free will (thanks to John Milton and how man was "sufficient to have stood, but free to fall").  I sent a frantic email to an old mentor, hoping he could talk me back into believing that there was some way that I could believe in a morally culpable form of identity.  He failed.  (Not his fault, of course.... :-P) That, though, has nothing to do with what MOST people mean by free will, and importantly, it has little to do with what I mean in this post.  (It's just a funny story ... that I couldn't help sharing ... ahem.)  My point here is that free will is bound up with doing things that you don't feel like doing.  Except under exceptional circumstances (a la David Koresh), you don't have to worry about your will being free from other people.  Even in assessing what other people think, that assessment is YOU, so ... you just can't blame others.  Sorry, kids and defense lawyer

My wife (she's a Gifted and Talented teacher, for those that don't know) and I sometimes chat about important concepts in teaching, but I think this concept is an important life one:  Bloom's Taxonomy (specifically, of the cognitive domain).  Here's a random link: http://www.officeport.com/edu/blooms.htm Why is this so important?  Because having a meaningful conversation without following this pyramid is virtually impossible.  People try it all the time, though.  See, the bottom of the pyramid is knowledge, and the top is evaluation, but a lot of folks get those mixed up.  I'll give a few examples. 1)  Talking heads.  See your average interview on CNN/Fox/etc.  Someone will be asked a question and that person will try to give you a value judgment.  "This was the wrong course to take in healthcare," "We should have left Iraq earlier," etc.  Did he have the facts?  Has she been to Iraq?  If you can't handle even the lowest level, you should

From The River Wild : Meryl: ... I'm sick of the whole thing. I'm sick of the whole fight. Everything has become unbelievably hard. Her mom: Huh. Honey, forgive me, but you don't know what hard is. That's because you give yourself an out. In our generation, we had no out. That was the pact of marriage. Do you think if I gave myself an out ... with your father, given his orneriness and his deafness, that I wouldn't have taken it years ago? I have often chatted with my daughters about the difference between the hard and the impossible, and that distinction has been in my mind frequently of late. (Not, by the way, because of my marriage; to quote Joe Dirt, you're paying attention to the wrong part of the story, man.) I think that the values of delayed gratification, sacrifice, and paying for things as you go are increasingly ... not valued. I have friends that run into hard times, and I understand hard times -- I grew up in them, and most of the world, b

I am starting my sixth term of law school next week. Since I am on the four year plan, I take ~11 hours of class each term, at night, for four years. So far, I have squeezed in regular classes, an externship at the Arkansas Supreme Court, moot court competition, law review, and a research assistantship with Dean DiPippa. I am going to travel to Minnesota at the beginning of March with the moot court travel team, but besides that ... I'm trying to make this term low-stress. Last term almost killed me... and I still don't have my grades yet. Ack. If I had it to do over again, I would follow the same path. Law school is tough, as much harder than college as everyone always said each next step would be, but I never found that so until now. Junior high was actually easier than elementary, high school was not much harder, college was pretty simple ... and then, BAM! Socratic method with smart people! This has been the first really challenging academic experience of my life,