Lawmakers and executive branch leaders across the political spectrum are acutely aware that they’ll never be criticized for “supporting the troops” that serve in these operations.  In his recent speech updating the world on the status of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he also acknowledged the tenuous state of the economy, President Obama said that, “as long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and we will do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us.”  The finest in the world.  Whatever it takes.  These phrases mean something coming from the President of the United States.

Locally in my community, as our City Council debates questions of funding various departments and programs, shrewd Council members have learned that they can shore up support for cutting the funding of any given budget line item by raising the specter of having to cut back on law enforcement or fire-fighting personnel.  In a newspaper article just today, a Council member pits public safety against funding the local Human Rights Commission, because he knows public safety will always win: “When you are forced to get rid of police officers and firefighters, I’m sure human rights is going to come up for discussion again.”

Is that what it’s come to?  We will be asked to endure any cost, any sacrifice as long as we don’t have to cut back our spending on police, fire, and military?  Why is that?

Essential Services

These public safety jobs have long been described as “essential services,” things that you just don’t give up on unless you’re abandoning your very participation in civilized society.  We use tax dollars to train emergency/public safety/military personnel and equip them with expensive, high-tech gear that (in our idealized narrative, anyway) allows them to solve problems in ways no ordinary citizen can:

• If someone is threatening to harm our country, these people of courage and might can use unparalleled military force to stop them!
• If a fire is threatening to harm our household, these people of courage and might can use special fire-fighting equipment and training to put the fire out!
• If someone is threatening to harm us personally, these people of courage and might can use the threat of force – or actual force – to stop that person in their tracks!

Members of the military, fire-fighters, police officers, EMTs – these aren’t just people doing an everyday job; they’re out there saving lives.  Whether we think we’ve ever directly benefited from their work or not, they become our protectors, our heroes, our saviors.  They are something reliable, essential, rock-solid in a world where so much can change so fast.

So raising the question of reducing funding for these heroes is of course unquestionable.  How dare we even consider what it would mean to ask someone who has put their life on the line to look for work elsewhere?  Where is our loyalty to the troops?  Where is our appreciation for their sacrifice?

Just Another Job?

While it would be a stretch for anyone to say that these roles in our society are “just another job,” we do need to remind ourselves that those who find themselves in the military, in a police force, in a firefighting department have almost always chosen to be there voluntarily.  They are made well aware of the risks involved, and they are paid for their time and for putting themselves in harm’s way.  This doesn’t make their heroic actions any less heroic, but it does mean that our contract with them has some limitations.

When we as taxpayers choose to pay people to protect us, we are not also committing to their life-long, tenured employment.  We are not committing to never question the value or utility of a given public safety program weighed against other community needs, or to never ask what a reduction in forces might look like.  We are not blindly saying that we’ll always do whatever it takes to keep those public servants employed, no matter what.

After all, what kind of bleak existence would we have if we always gave absolute priority to defense spending and police/fire budgets?  When we’ve whittled away our budgets for maintaining a given quality of life, when we’ve closed all of our parks and our public spaces, when we’ve traded local control of services and programs that ensure our rights are protected and our voices are heard for the empty assurances of monolithic state and federal governments, when we’ve accepted that you don’t have to be well-informed about the news of the day or about how the world works as long as you can be entertaining, when we’ve given up on providing educational settings that enrich lives instead of preparing us to pass tests, when we’ve destroyed the natural landscapes of the Earth so that we can buy a Big Mac more conveniently…will it really be enough to know that there are police and firefighters and military forces patrolling our streets, watching out for our safety?

Is that really the best future we can imagine?

Or,

Another Way

Can we start to turn this conversation around?

Can we start to ask questions about how the money we spend on the military and public safety services fits in to our priorities as communities?

Can we accept that discussions about changing how we use our community resources does not equate to bashing the service or worthiness of the heroes who have put their lives on the line?  That in fact, we best honor those who serve our community by being good stewards of the community’s limited tax dollars?

Can we put aside the absolutes and the unquestionable statements of “whatever it takes” and instead allow ourselves to sit with complex needs in a complex world?

Can we ask ourselves what we might spend money on if we weren’t driven by fear – fear of not being re-elected, fear of being accountable to our mistakes, fear of that which we cannot control or that which is not familiar?

Several years back, at a town hall meeting here in Richmond, I watched Congressman Mike Pence use this hero worship against one of the heroes themselves.  A police officer from the Richmond Police Department stood up and asked a question about Pence’s views on, I believe, healthcare benefit funding for police officers.  The question was one that challenged Pence and demanded more than a sound bite answer.  So what did Pence do?  “Ladies and gentleman, first of all, let’s just all give this officer a round of applause for the service and sacrifice that he and his fellow officers make every day.”  The room erupted in sustained applause, and by the time it died down and everyone was sitting again, Pence could have answered any question he wanted any way he wanted – we’d all forgotten about the officer’s good, hard question.

Mr. Pence knew what he was doing, and indeed, he proceeded to not really answer the question, the officer unable to push him further without seeming ungrateful for the applause.  It was a scary moment, one when the power of this particular form of hero worship was hit home for me.

Up to us

I appreciate what the police officers in my community do for me.  I’m glad to know that I can call 911 and expect a fast response if I need a fire put out.  I’m immensely grateful and touched that there are those who believe so strongly in their job that they’re willing to risk their lives as a part of it.

So let’s not take that for granted.  Let’s not let politicians and uninformed fear-mongers create a false dichotomy when it comes to funding the work of the heroes in our community while also maintaining a reasonable quality of life that includes protection of civil rights.  Let’s honor the service of those involved in public safety by being willing to truly understand whether their sacrifice and risk is actually necessary in the context of the future we really want to create for ourselves.

I recently took the IRS’s advice and inquired into enrolling in “EFTPS” – Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.  (It’s too bad they didn’t call it something really cool like “Maximum Velocity Pay” or “Blue Tiger,” but I guess EFTPS is at least accurate.)  The idea behind EFTPS is that it will save you time and simplify payment and filing of federal taxes.  So far, here’s what the process has involved:

1. Receiving copious amounts of printed materials sent via postal mail encouraging us to sign up for EFTPS.  There was no obvious option for opting out of these mailings.
2. Visitng the EFTPS website and “enrolling,” which meant typing in a bunch of information that the government already has on file and could have looked up using our Federal Tax ID number, which we also provided.
3. Receiving an “Enrollment Trace Number” that we had to write down as a second unique identifier in the process.
4. Waiting 10-15 days to receive a letter in the mail informing us that we’ve successfully enrolled in EFTPS, and noting that we’ll receive a PIN in a separate mailing, for security purposes.
5. Receiving a PIN letter on the same day as the welcome letter, in identical mailing envelopes, so as to make it especially easy for someone trying to intercept the PIN.  And just noting: that’s 10-15 days for them to automatically generate and mail out a 4 digit number.
6. The PIN letter says that we must now call a toll-free number to obtain an Internet password, which will require the Enrollment Trace Number and the PIN to generate.
7. I call the number and enter our Federal Tax ID, our enrollment trace number, and our PIN.  The system generates a temporary INITIAL password that we can use to log on to EFTPS for the first time.
8. As a part of the first login, I enter our Federal Tax ID, our PIN and our temporary password.  To generate a new password, I again enter our Federal Tax ID and our PIN, and then enter a new password.
9. Finally, we have access to EFTPS.

Sigh.  I hope I never have to see inside the brain of the person who thought up this process.  “If we just make it complicated enough with enough different numbers, no one will EVER be able to crack it!”  Of course, the end result is a sense that the government wasted taxpayer dollars creating and implementing an overly complex system.  Shocker, I know.

Why not a simpler version?  If being able to safely receive postal mail at the address on file for your business is the linchpin of communicating sensitive information securely (which is NOT a given), we could have done it this way:

1. Visit EFTPS website, enter Federal Tax ID.
2. Receive postal mailing with a sufficiently unguessable PIN
3. Visit EFTPS website, enter Federal Tax ID and PIN, pick a password, enrollment is complete.

That’s at least one fewer postal mailings (and the paper and postage required), at least one less phone call (and all of the phone menu infrastructure required to support that call), and at least a few minutes saved on the part of EVERY SINGLE FEDERAL TAX PAYING BUSINESS IN THE U.S.

I think I’ll suggest it to the IRS.  Via e-mail, subject line: “Proposal for Blue Tiger.”

And then I’ll probably go back to walking checks down to the bank.

The Reader is one of those films that haunts my thoughts and dreams for some time after I’ve seen it – in part because of the subject matter, and in part because of how beautifully and authentically it was rendered.  Director Stephen Daldry rightly relied heavily on the amazing ability of his cast to communicate so much through the slightest changes in expression or well-timed pauses, and the cinematography only complemented this by just getting out of their way.

The weight of the story revolves around a very specific plot twist that ripples out into the parts of the movie you’ve already seen and every scene after, but the emotional components of the movie as a whole span no less than every challenge a human being and its culture might face in a lifetime: love, war, genocide, justice, family, aging, integrity, honest, class, fear and more.  The film also reminds present day viewers that the Holocaust is not just a part of history – the things that happened then are very much still playing out today in ways someone of my generation can probably not imagine.  There are no sweeping conclusions or black and white moments of morality here – it very much shows the complexity of being human, and that we are all under construction until the very end.

If you appreciate gray areas in what it means to be human, you will probably also enjoy Then She Found Me, which Helen Hunt directs and stars in.  Despite the other big name cast members – Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick – this is no nicely wrapped romantic comedy.  It cuts to the bone of what it means to be in love, in partnership, in a family and shows no mercy in trying to genuinely portray the gut-wrenching ups and downs that comes with it.  It’s not all painful and there are moments of joy, hilarity and redemption that are only possible when a filmmaker helps you fall in love with the characters at some level, but this is not brain candy by any stretch.

A favorite exchange in the movie’s recurring theme of what it means to love, and then hurt the ones we love:

I know what I did to you. To you in particular.

Like a worst nightmare kind of thing, right?

I knew that.

Even at the time, I knew that.

- What else? – I’ll do it again.

I will. I’ll hurt you again and again.

Not like that.

You’d have to leave me if I hurt you like that.

If we were together, you’d leave me if I hurt you like that again, wouldn’t you?

Yes. Yes, I would.

Good.

But I’ll hurt you in other ways. Little ways. I won’t mean to, but I will.

And sometimes, I will mean to.

This is quite an offer you’ve worked up.

You’ll hurt me, too, you know? You’ll hurt me and change on me.

You might leave me after you promise you won’t. How about that?

- I wouldn’t. – You might.

- But I wouldn’t! – But…

you might.

Yeah, I guess I might.

Well done.

And lastly, you know what the exact opposite of well done is?  Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, that’s what.  Hopefully most people know by now that seeing a “3″ of any film franchise is a big risk to start with, but for some reason we tried it out, and we quit halfway through (which, for a 3 hour movie, was still quite a bit of time wasted).  I’m here to warn you off of this movie, so I won’t offer any analysis other than to say that it’s clear the script for this movie was essentially vomited out of of someone’s brain while they were under the influence of some sort of illegal narcotic, and then hurriedly made into a film before anyone could say out loud what they must have all been thinking: “we are doing this to make enough money on opening weekend to cover our costs and a little more, and we don’t care if it makes absolutely no sense at all and totally wastes the talent of our cast.“  Mission accomplished.

Seen any good films lately?

As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

Surely there’s some middle ground to keep a President as tech-savvy as Barack Obama from being forced off of e-mail altogether? I mean, this is the guy who announced his VP pick by SMS text message, for crying out loud.

Here are some scenarios to explore:

It’s clear that the President could probably not have a public e-mail address that was directly addressable from any other e-mail account, and that was expected to be read by the President himself. It would be flooded hourly with requests, comments and threats from around the world, and instantly become useless as a form of effective correspondence.

The White House does already have a public e-mail address, comments@whitehouse.gov, but they make it clear that they probably won’t respond, and that you can’t even send graphics or attachments. (How the heck are we supposed to share funny photos of our cats, then!?) I suspect that they have some serious hardware and network capacity dedicated just to receiving and processing mail sent to that address – there’s no way that much or any of it will make it’s way to a laptop on the President’s desk.

Here’s one option: the President could have a private e-mail address that is directly addressable within the executive branch of the U.S. government, using a private domain (e.g. president@whitehouse.gov.private) and set of mail exchangers. This would allow Barack Obama to e-mail with other government officials who have established addresses, taking advantage of the utility of e-mail for more direct conversations and unfiltered access to information. Anyone wishing to reply to his messages could send e-mail like usual, and as long as they were on that private network, it would go through.

When the President wanted to send e-mail outside of this private network of addresses to a regular e-mail address, his message would be intercepted by a correspondence manager who could insure that the message was free of sensitive information, and that it would not be a source of embarrassment for anyone if delivered to the wrong hands.

Here’s a hard part: should that recipient with a regular e-mail address be able to reply? If it’s to some other regular e-mail address, e.g. “barack.obama@whitehouse.gov,” then that just wouldn’t do, because the address would eventually leak out and become just as much a target for a flood of messages as “comments@” might be now.

BUT, a variation on that might work. The President’s outgoing message could be dynamically rewritten to appear to come from an address that had an expiration date, and that used a unique hash token to prevent guessing it – this is common in software like TMDA and other special e-mail submission systems. So instead of

From: barack.obama@whitehouse.gov

it might be

From: barack.obama-JLK23ADSF23423K@whitehouse.gov

and it would only work for, say, up to 70 hours (or a week, or…). The next time the President responds, it comes from a different address, which also only works for 70 hours. In this manner, correspondents of the President with regular e-mail addresses could carry on an e-mail conversation and not worry about the address becoming public in a way that mattered. If someone tried to e-mail the expired address, they’d get a bounce back saying, “sorry, please e-mail comments@whitehouse.gov.”

For someone with a regular e-mail address to initiate a conversation with the President, we’d have to take a slightly different approach – the addresses would essentially need to go on a pre-approved list of correspondents whose messages would be allowed to go to “comments@whitehouse.gov” and be automatically filtered straight on through to the President’s internal (not publicly addressable) account.

So, to initiate an e-mail conversation with the President, you’d either have to be a known associate with a known e-mail address, or you’d have to be an employee of the Federal government with an established e-mail account. Better than nothing, right?

Another pitfall: the President would still generally have to consider any content sent via e-mail, whether it was to a private internal address or not, as up for public scrutiny. Until whomever controls Presidential records passes a law identifying some kinds of Presidential communications as truly private, it’s just the reality of the thing. And even if that did happen, we all know how easy it is for an e-mail that wasn’t meant for you to make it into your hands, so it’s probably just safe to assume that’s happening anyway.

From the article:

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

Well, that’s my brain dump on how it might work to let the President of the United States of America have an e-mail account he can actually use. What do you think?

Must we really become the change we wish to see in the world?

As I try to work in my life and community to create a peaceful and sustainable existence, these are questions that churn in my head daily.

On a personal level, I think a lot of us struggle with living out the values we hold – we have aspirations and ideals about ourselves and the world we live in that can seem hard to enact, even when the path might feel clear.

But when you start to talk about how the rest of the world could be – even should be – the conversation goes beyond issues of self-discipline, time management, or having sufficient support and encouragement. When we talk about sharing a message with others about how we want the world to be and perhaps suggest they change their behavior to get there, it becomes a question of whether there’s a practical or ethical obligation to already first be living out that existence well as the messenger.

Some people say you have to transform your own life first before you can expect others to transform theirs at your suggestion. Do we?

In Favor of Evangelistic Integrity

There’s certainly an issue of credibility that comes with bringing a message of change or new ways of looking at an issue. If you can’t demonstrate that your suggestion is working well for you, how can you expect others to follow? If you don’t follow your own advice, how can you speak with any authority? This is probably why we subject our spiritual, political, and community leaders to such thorough scrutiny and hold them to a “higher standard” – if they’re to lead us in these critical areas, we think their levels of purity and integrity should be above and beyond ours.

Further, people generally look up to other people who model choices and lifestyles that they want to achieve themselves. When someone has fought a demon or barrier that we’re fighting, and we see that they’ve won, it gives us hope and inspiration. Just as we might only expect true solace in the loss of a loved one from someone else who has experienced a similar loss, we tend to open ourselves more to the teachings and suggestions of those who have gone down the path we’re on now and found something good.

As a practical matter, you can get a lot of useful information from practicing what you preach (depending on the topic). If I’m to encourage people to use a rain barrel to collect rainwater for re-use, it helps a lot if I’ve actually set up a rain barrel and put it to use, as opposed to having just read about it on the Internet. I can still offer the initial suggestion, but when they ask “how will I attach it to my gutter system,” and I give them a blank stare, my utility in the conversation is limited.

Against Requiring That You Become the Change First

Why might we not need to practice what we preach? What could possibly justify this seeming lack of integrity?

For one, we might have a sense of urgency about the changes that we’re suggesting, and the overwhelming number of things that need to be changed, such that we don’t think we have enough time to really become the change we wish to see. If it takes me three years to figure out how to be an expert on growing my own food, should I really wait that long to start talking to others about how they grow their own food? If I know that a community tool shed might benefit a friend’s community but I haven’t had time to start one up in mine, should I wait to suggest it? I’m not sure that there’s enough time for such delays.

Another big one for me: if the positive impact you can have by being a hypocrite is greater than the positive impact you can have by demonstrating total integrity, why stand on principle? Doesn’t the practical nature of the need for changes in our culture dictate an imperative to act, even as hypocrites?

Former Vice President Al Gore is a great example of this question in action: the lifestyle choices that are implied in his “Inconvenient Truth” talks would probably suggest that flying around the world using fossil fuels to visit hundreds or thousands of audiences every year is not sustainable. But, if Al Gore didn’t do those things, awareness about climate change would be much lower than it is now. Some have criticized other parts of Gore’s lifestyle – where he lives, what he drives, etc. – but I think it would be hard to deny that he’s significantly reduced the collective carbon footprint of so many people that those concerns fade away, from a purely quantitative standpoint.

I think about this with some the historically environmentally harmful processes that are involved in the production of the high-tech equipment that powers our Internet connected existence. Lots of people, myself included, use that Internet every day to lobby for more sustainable production processes (or name your other favorite social justice/environmental concern), and the irony can sometimes be hard to swallow.

There are myriad precedents for flawed human beings creating significant and lasting positive change, sometimes even in the areas where they were flawed. There are the pastors who guide families of their congregations through moral crises while quietly abusing their own spouses or children. There are the civil rights advocates who changed the world but struggled with inner demons, the political leaders who spread messages of hope and peace while ignoring their own pessimism and violence. It’s hard to suggest that any of the figures who have shaped our lives for the better while failing in some other area should have withdrawn from their messages of change, though perhaps they should have been more transparent about and aware of their failings.

Lastly, living out a certain model of change or personal transformation sometimes requires being surrounded by others who are doing the same, perhaps even in such quantities as to trigger a tripping point before the actual transformation is possible. If I want to get around town by bike more instead of car, I might encourage others to do the same, but I might not actually live that desire out until my community becomes more bike friendly. As much as we can desire change, speak about change, advocate change, sometimes we have to be a part of a movement of others changing at the same time to actually live it out.

Tricky Areas

Some especially tricky areas to think about:

• What kind of a model do we present for our children? Do we encourage them to favor practicality over integrity or vice versa? Will they know where to draw the line?
• The question of the use of violence often brings up these dilemmas. Can I harm or kill one person in order to heal or save the life of another? If I seek peace and abhor war, how do I respond when corporations and governments and polluters conduct war on my community, my water supply, my environment? What does practicing peace look like then?
• We must be careful not to construct such duality in our lives that we can justify any lapse of integrity. Our sense of self and the values we stand for does seem to matter quite a bit in terms of happiness, ability to connect and love others, and more. There may be some joy in preaching successfully, but it’s hard to imagine a fulfilling existence that is only about spreading the word and not benefiting from it.

Conclusions

So, those are some thoughts that fly around in my head when I try to answer that question about practicing what I preach. My conclusions? I don’t have any solid ones to offer, but here’s where I’m at right now:

• I think we can educate and create change from a position of aspiration, without achieving personal perfection in a given area.
• We must be transparent about and vulnerable to our hypocrisy and its impacts, sometimes asking for forgiveness.
• We must respect those who do want to stand on principle and only speak out from a place of successful personal transformation, and they will hopefully reciprocate.

The change I wish to see is bigger than me and my personal struggles with integrity, but all we really have is what we do with our time here…I’ll be content to be remembered as one who struggled, but acted anyway.

It is our human nature to be competitive, individualistic, and materialistic. Our well-being depends on strong leaders with the will to use police and military powers to protect us from one another, and on the competitive forces of a free, unregulated market to channel our individual greed to constructive ends. The competition for survival and dominance—violent and destructive as it may be—is the driving force of evolution. It has been the key to human success since the beginning of time, assures that the most worthy rise to leadership, and ultimately works to the benefit of everyone.

As Korten notes, this story makes a world of peace and sharing one that is just a naive fantasy, forever out of reach.

Is this why we don’t mind our police state so much? Why we make fun of people who don’t achieve through competition or power-grabs? Why we’ll go to any length to protect those “free market” forces?

Is this story true for you? How much of it do you encounter or even enact in your daily life? Are there other stories about who we are that you might want to tell instead?

For my recent road trip, however, I got over these hesitations (for better or worse) enough to want to give the use of GPS a real spin, and I did in the form of the Garmin Nuvi 360. Here’s my review.

Overview

In short, traveling with the Nuvi was like having Google Maps at my fingertips, all the time. I could always quickly try out different scenarios for directions and distances to different spots from wherever I was, and see what kinds of attractions and services were available along the way. Pre-GPS, I would have sat down at home and done the same thing on Google Maps and on an atlas, and then printed out/written down my desired routes. But, once I was on the road, I would have had to stick to that plan unless I was ready to get out the map and recalculate by hand, or find Internet access to research alternatives. With the Nuvi in hand, I literally left all of that behind, got on the road, and left the rest up to realtime navigation.

As a result, I often changed plans, destinations, or routes on a whimsy. Want to drive down that road without knowing where it goes? No problem! The Nuvi will know how to eventually get you to your final destination without a lot of backtracking. Want to find a local bookstore or restaurant somewhere between here and there? No problem, the Nuvi will provide an array of options, how far they are away from your current location, and in what direction. (At some points, I was literally navigating by looking at this little screen in front of me, instead of out my windshield – not good driving practice, I know.) Whereas on past trips I might have mapped out where I would camp or rent a room for a night well in advance, with the Nuvi in hand I would just drive until I was about ready to stop, and then find a suitable option up ahead.

Interface

The user interface to the Nuvi was probably my biggest potential concern because, well, user interfaces are rarely done right in the world of consumer electronics. But Garmin did get it right, with intuitive buttons, clear and useful displays, and a quite reasonable set of default settings. I appreciated that they went out of their way to not just make it functional, but to make it a pleasure to use.

Phone Features

A favorite feature (which completely blows us out of simplicity-land, I know) was the Bluetooth interface to my mobile phone and the built-in handsfree system on the Nuvi. I could not only look up a possible destination, but tell the Nuvi to call it on my phone, and then talk to the person on the other end without ever fumbling with a headset or the phone itself. The Nuvi had full access to my phone’s addressbook and call history, so I could easily navigate other calls as well. Sometimes the sound quality wasn’t great, but I think this was a Bluetooth issue, not a product issue.

Other Features

Another favorite feature is that the Nuvi’s own internal data set can be expanded with custom data sets, injected via the use of an SD memory card. The data format is open and easily created, so I quickly found online resources that let me download all sorts of interesting waypoints – wacky tourist attractions, wifi hotspots, rest areas with certain amenities, etc. Kudos to Garmin for not forcing customers to purchase or download this data from them.

The Nuvi came out of the box with a versatile windshield mount, which I just assumed I was going to have to pay some ridiculous amount extra for as an accessory. It also came with a nice carrying case, and a number of power options.

I haven’t yet used the Nuvi for navigating significant routes on a bike, or for other extra-curiccular activities like Geocaching, but I’m told by my fellow users posting reviews online that the Nuvi has great modes/features for these things, so I’m looking forward to that too.

Areas for Improvement

Now, for some of my gripes, which may not be particular to this model of GPS, but are worth mentioning anyway:

• Even with the “2009 map data” uploaded prior to my departure, the Nuvi still had significantly out of date information. In one instance, it tried to guide me to a bookstore that had apparently been gone for 2 years or more. In another, an interstate exit system had clearly been completely reworked since the Garmin folks visited, and if I’d followed the Nuvi’s directions I would have ended up going the wrong way on an exit ramp. I can’t complain too much – it is a huge data set to maintain and this is the kind of complexity that I wish didn’t exist at all – but it’s still worth noting.
• For some busy and complex highway systems, the Nuvi didn’t do a good enough job giving me the notice I needed to navigate successfully, and in a few cases where poor highway signage was also a factor, I missed various ramps or turns. In most cases, it actually tends to overcommunicate about upcoming turns, so I guess it’s just a testament to how insane some highways are.
• The Nuvi doesn’t provide any way to let you access the route you’ve travelled after you’re done with your trip. Many GPS units will let you download your route for display on a computer or even posting online, and the Nuvi was known to be able to do this at one point, so this seems to be an intentional limitation placed by Garmin, probably to avoid hurting sales of other units that do provide this feature. This was probably one of the most disappointing flaws for me.
• The suite of software that is available to interface with the Garmin, at least on Mac OS X, is a little too confusing for my tastes. It includes “Garmin Bobcat,” “Garmin Map Update,” “Garmin MapInstall,” “Garmin MapManager,” “Garmin POI Loader,” and “Garmin Web Updater.” Now, just looking at the list, how are you supposed to know what application does what? It turns out there’s really only 1 or 2 you need to use, but and fortunately in addition to the somewhat clunky mapping software package that comes standard, you can also use a web browser plugin to just send information straight from Google Maps to the GPS unit, bypassing the clunking software. Yes!

Conclusion

All in all, the Nuvi became an essential and much-appreciated part of the trip. Despite my initial hesitations, I really did just give myself over to its advice, and I think that turned out fine. Whereas in the past I might have been stressing out over missing a turn, finding the best route, or searching for interesting attractions along the way, I was instead enjoying the scenery and thinking happy thoughts.

It’s still a luxury and a ridiculous privilege, I know. I don’t use the Nuvi for navigating around town or on short trips in the region, but for now I know that if I’m going into territory that is at all unfamiliar, I’ll probably have it along (at least until the satellites stop working).

• Do you depend on Gmail or Google Calendar? Did you know they’re not ready for production use yet?
• The Rockridge Institute, a progressive think tank (THE progressive think tank for many) abruptly closes its doors because there wasn’t enough money coming in. But as a part of their exit, the description of “The Big Job” to be done is compelling, and so life goes on.
• I love a good idea I’ve never heard of before, and this place has lots of them
• Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer? I didn’t think so.
• One of the best YouTube videos I’ve seen in a long time: An Engineer’s Guide to Cats
• The Palladium-Item will be updating its website this week – and once again wiping out any archive of past reader discussions in their forums. I can’t decide if this is a blessing or a shame, and it’s probably both. I hope the new beginning represents a new mode of conversation, but I won’t hold my breath.

I had a moment of awakening about this a number of years ago when I was sitting in a local hair stylist’s chair having my hair cut. On my recent visits I had been observing the process more closely than prior haircuts in my life, and partly out of resentment for the $15 I was paying per 10-minute haircut, partly out of an engineer’s curiosity, I starting asking questions about where her equipment came from. Together we concluded that she was using a trimmer I could get at a local store for about $20, and therefore that the main value she brought to the process was the ability to see the whole of my head to trim it when I could not. Ah-ha.

So, I went out and bought my trimming set, and then went home to design a mirror rigging system that would allow me to see all of my hair at once, and a guide system that would prevent me from making my rear neck hairline too short or uneven. I started cutting my hair at home after that, and apart from a few special cases, haven’t paid for a haircut since. This has been a good thing, but for some reason, it was a difficult leap to decide that I could do it myself. After all, I’d always had my hair cut by someone else – why would it work any other way?

I think we are pretty heavily conditioned to avoid such leaps. Our consumerist-driven world loves that we’ve outsourced so many basic functions of day-to-day life to its storefronts, and it doesn’t want us to go back to the “do it yourself” mentality that drove so much innovation and self-sufficiency in past versions of humanity. In fact, the modern world requires that things break frequently, and that we pick up the phone and the credit card at the first sign that they might be breaking. It requires that we know little to nothing about where our food comes from, and that we pay outrageous prices for produce that can be grown for significantly less on our own. This culture requires that we forget how to make or repair or even operate the basic tools we use every day, because then we are dependent on the people and power structures that do have control over that knowledge, and we pay them to make the world right again. It doesn’t mind reinforcing our fears, either: what if we try to do it ourselves and it doesn’t work? What if we get lost? What if we can’t defend ourselves or our family against a terrorist? Surely we’re not qualified? Surely we don’t have the right tools? What if we don’t have the right standard of living? What if…?

The haircut example is perhaps a pretty benign one. (For those patrons who required more than the uniform trimming, the stylist did provide a needed sense of style and, because that took longer than 10 minutes, a kind of relationship that is probably pretty far from exploitative.) But with that milestone of self-cutting independence under my belt, I was set on a course toward some other kinds of self-sufficiency that I perhaps hadn’t imagined possible before.

For a time shortly thereafter, I lived on a small organic farm and had a daily participation in planting, growing and harvesting much more of the food that I ate. I made contact with the land that helped to feed me, and listened to what it had to say, and tried to do what it asked. I learned to cook, and to cook with the harvest that was available, instead of just what was convenient or cheap. I learned to store food, to make it last. In time, I felt much less clueless about how to sustain myself, less dependent on a grocery store for this basic daily need of food.

Every time I’ve had to hire someone to do some repair work for me, I’ve watched closely, asked them about what they were doing, and then gone out to read about it and learn more. The result has been that I’m much more bold about taking on home improvement projects that I would have previously been too intimidated to even think about. I’ve now installed light fixtures, replaced kitchen faucets, repaired walls, hung shelves, painted entire rooms, installed a trailer hitch on my car, flown a small plane, wired up telephone and Internet networks, run coaxial cable, and so many other things that I wish I’d learned about a long time ago.

Of course, doing it yourself doesn’t always mean doing it alone. All of my above adventures were accelerated greatly (and sometimes enabled entirely) by the knowledge of others, not to mention by some social and economic privilege. None of us can be specialists or knowledgeable in every area needed for survival or comfort, so there are great benefits that come from living in community where we distribute those responsibilities, and from being able to learn from others. If Alice is the community metal-smith, then maybe she doesn’t have to worry about being a good cook because Jake has dinner taken care of (as long as Alice sharpens his good kitchen knife when it dulls).

Recently a friend began teaching me a bit about forging metal, and while it may not be a calling for me to be the community metal-smith, it was one of those experiences that showed me what was possible for the first time, and I went home and looked at my kitchen knives with a whole new sense of awe. Running coax cable is great to know, but it’s these more base skills that interest me now; forging tools, learning more about four-season gardening, finding out how not just to survive in the “elements,” but to thrive in them. These skills feel real, globally applicable, like they’ll be useful no matter what.

There are still plenty of things that I don’t take on myself. I don’t change the oil in my car. I don’t perform surgery on myself, even with my mirror rigging system. I don’t make soy milk (though I do have a tofu-maker raring to go in the basement). This week alone, I’ve paid a substantial amount of money to have someone else tell me how much I still owe the IRS for the Iraq war effort, and I’m about to pay an only slightly less substantial amount to someone who knows how to repair a refrigerator that’s got all sorts of problems. I hope it doesn’t sound too strange that I have zero interest in being able to do my taxes (made immensely complex by my ownership of businesses, “thanks!” says the global economy), but I was watching that appliance repairman like a hawk as he put on the bullet piercing valves so he could attach his pressure gauge, wondering where I could get one of those myself for next time.

What are the things you want to better learn to do for yourself? What are the things you can’t imagine doing yourself? What parts of your life depend on complexity that is beyond your reach? What parts of your life would benefit from a community that fills in the gaps?

The one question I have is…

WHY? Why do people feel the need to take it that far? Why do we want to be so immediately connected to each other that when our friends and colleagues decide to make themselves a sandwich or blow their nose, we want to know about it?

And I ask that question not entirely out of judgment or disdain. I’m truly curious about this phenomenon, and yes, there’s that part of me that wonders if I’m just a moron (or worse in my line of work, “Web 2.0 Stupid”) because I can’t understand the motivation to spend that much time sharing so little useful information. There’s some urge to try it out to see if I feel any different, like maybe there’s a secret chemical that’s released into your brain when you tell the Internets about crossing the street or visiting the bathroom. But I can’t imagine that it does anything other than to further isolate people from meaningful face-to-face interactions, or to further destroy the collective attention span of humanity. As one person said today in our office conversation, “Twitter is like blogging for people who can’t concentrate long enough to complete a three paragraph blog post without getting distracted.”

Three paragraphs! Three paragraphs is a tome compared to 140 characters. Has it gotten that bad? Why, when I was blogging back in the day –

Wait, what was I typing about?

Oh yeah.

So, I’m thoroughly perplexed, and I don’t like being thoroughly perplexed about things that lots of people are doing. It’s scary, scary like realizing that everyone around you just became a flesh eating zombie and that they might be looking for food soon. I understand why people smoke, watch the Super Bowl, and pick their scabs, but I don’t get this. Maybe I just need to try it out.

If any zomb–er, Twitter users out there want to try to justify this insanity to me, please do so below…I expect more than 140 characters.