From Father’s Day 2009:

On this day, observing the most amazing times and events in our history, two things strike me as important: The legacy of my father, and the 22nd annual cycle since my partner and I started our Fantastic Journey.

Dad’s Day

A note here about Marvin Argyle (1909-1990). He instilled in me the burning curiosity that got me here, and taught me the most important lesson in my life: “You don’t have to know all the answers. But you do have to know how and where to find them. Look it up.” He was a crossword puzzle freak, knowing at least 17 different 3 letter words for a river in India. Here’s a picture of him from a half a century ago. He would have loved the Internet, since he was the living analog predecessor of Google. I’ve often thought that if I had invented a gozillion dollar search engine, I would have named it marvinargyle.com ’cause he knew something about everything. Happy Father’s Day.

Winston Churchill: November 29, 1941 - Address To Harrow School

…this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Here’s another leader from our past that has words to heed in this time in our country’s struggles. There are those that want to spin truth from lies, that want us to give in to the claims of failed policy. The Media is not without blame in this game of spinning lies into belief. But please go back and read our history. There is always much to learn from the past…  .mp3

Factoid: Lincoln was asked by his own party to step down and not run for re-election in 1864.

Commented on HuffPost: Why Judd Gregg’s Change of Heart Was a Birthday Present to Lincoln’s Protégé –

“Thanks for the refreshing post, running somewhat against the grain of most of the splinter heads in the media (take that! Fox and MSNBC and all in between). Now is the time for the center cut of America to step up and eschew all the fringes. We should be partisans only for all of America, as is our President.”

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

More of my babbling: The State of Israel, the US Air Force, the hydrogen bomb, and myself are all roughly the same age. In those 60 odd years, we have all seen maybe a dozen moments, that in retrospect, could have gone a different way, and literally could have changed the fabric of the universe. A new shirt, or wads of tangled, smoldering thread drifting through the cosmos waiting for another set of complex hydrocarbons to make a stand. We are at one of those times.

When I was 12, I heard the “Ask not…” call, and it thrust me into a state of consciousness that has been both a blessing and a source of intense pain. But the bottom line is, that each of us can, on some level, or with some degree of success, absolutely change the way the electrons spin around the center.

Make a difference? Absolutely. One more important than another? Sometimes, briefly. Have an effect if you say “No, thanks.”? Impossible. That is not to say that “Just say No.” is not often the right answer, and itself can be a game changer. But to slip out of the ring because there might be a problem, or because things might not go perfectly, is unthinkable to me. Now is not the time to drop out.

I believe that Frodo was right not to kill Gollum when he had the chance, because you never know when even the most vile creature can, for all the wrong reasons, cause the right thing to happen. If all this appears to be psycho-literary-elitist babble, then you are just not reading enough history. Final answer. Locked in. “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

Update 6 Feb 09

Infrastructure. Information. Community.

Enabling Collaboration: Three Priorities for New Administration 5 Feb 09

on dot-gov: Transparency Requires Plain Language 2 Feb 09

White House Memo – Open Government Directive 26 Jan 09

GovLoop Group for Enabling Collaboration: Open Government Directive

Original 30 Jan 09

Government is Information. The basis of US Industry is Information. If we can perfect the model for the development, management, distribution, communication, storage and archival of information for Government, then we can provide a model to re-grow the economy, green the culture, and vastly reduce our addiction to foreign sources of petro chemicals (oil).

Government is Food. If we change the paradigm for food production away from fast food, which uses vast amounts of energy and oil, and sickens our population with sugar and fat, then we can significantly reduce our healthcare costs,  extend our environmental protection, and greatly reduce our need for foreign oil.

Step One:  Fix the Government

1. The Data Infrastructure needs a major upgrade in power and consistency, utilizing all the tools that are razor’s edge now, to bring organizations into standards that work and are secure.
2. Interactive and Collaborative methods must become part of the fabric of the organization from the top down. Part of this re-tool must include thinning out middle management bottlenecks, and empowering individuals as collaborative peers.
3. Green the Government: Telework (40%) must become mandatory for all positions where physical presence is not absolutely necessary. This includes managers. The state of consumer electronics has already proven this viable technically.  What are we waiting for?
4. We must Mobilize our legacy staff and Recruit from the talented pool that have been raised on Web 2.0. In the 30 odd years I’ve been an IT geek, no one ever learned how to help themselves with me around to bail them out. Listen to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and then walk around most any building in DC. The similarity is shocking.

Step Two:  Fix the People

Any of this sound familiar? Let me know. As we went on our monthly run for supplies at Walmart today, we walked among overweight young people, with bluetooth and 3G devices, piling up their baskets with products made from cheap subsidized sugar, vegetable oil and starch, made with energy from foreign oil. And beer and disposable diapers, for too many kids born to under-employed families. I am a childless older version of those, now diabetic, and now somewhat smarter, looking for good food that won’t kill me faster than the 40 years I spent drinking Dr. Pepper and eating at McDonalds. Of all the bounty in this modern market of deadly, cheap food, only about 23% can be eaten safely by a 60 year old white male with Type 2 Diabetes.

Step Three:  Give Peas a Chance

But don’t do this for me. Do it for yourself. And your kids that are so bright, and now have a real chance to grow up without the venom of a racist America to distract them from the incredible potential that shows in the face of children that want to grow up to become President. We really do now know that any of us can. LMAO. Steal This Blog!

27 January 2009: It seems quite appropriate to re-blog this entry, at the end of this first week of a new chapter in the American story…

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.” – Teddy Roosevelt

“Citizenship in a Republic,” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Originally posted September 2007…

As I have gone about my journey of exploration into Social Networking during the past year or so, the tools associated with this new community of new and old friends have provided some quite astounding revelations. About a year ago, I made contact with a college mate of mine from the 70’s. We were in a group that I have blogged about here and in other venues. We constructed slide/music/film presentations at UT Austin from 1968-1971.

In some of our email swapping sessions, another friend of ours from that era mentioned that she wishes we had ‘marvaloned’ rocker Patty Smith for our slide/music shows. ‘Maravlon?’ What is that? We went on to discuss in various stages of memory, how the verb got penned or voiced, in that frenzy of activity that led up to the debut of our Media 70 shows.

To that end, I offer a Webster 2.0 (sic) version of the Media 70 Dictionary.

marvalon – verb, origin unknown, perhaps from the Tralfamadorian, or Venusian. Probably not Latin, from marvalonus.

1. To capture, by image on vinyl, mylar, or other transparent material, either photographically or other method of transfer, with mounting in card board holders, which are heat sealed with a heated iron appliance. These 2 x 2 slides are suitable for projecting using slide projectors, as with regular 35mm transparencies.
2. The method of capturing, encapsulating, or incorporating the music, philosophy, political thought or psychological construct of an individual, a group or a cultural movement, for use in the presentation or display of complex theatrical expositions intended to stimulate intense discussion, emotion, or individual thoughts within a group of students, researchers or amateur explorers.
3. To simulate the physical, emotional and mental effects of experimental herbal ingestion, using sounds and images juxtaposed in a pleasing or disturbing manner.
4. To provoke thought or incite epiphany. Slang, to grok.

Also. Marvaloning: noun. the act of gazing with wonder. Often associated with an inspired or mind altered state.

Tools and Appliances.

Marvalon Coated Heat Sealing Iron

This is a perfect hand iron for sealing your heat seal stereo mounts. It has an adjustable temperature control and a non-stick Marvalon coating. It also will handle many other dry-mounting chores. It’s temperature range goes from 150^oF (65^oC) up to 410^oF (210^oC). It comes with a stand. Don’t forget to turn it off when you go to the Toddle House!

Hope this helps…

On Christmas Eve, forty years ago today, the crew of Apollo 8 pointed their television camera back toward Earth and shared their vision with the entire world.

On December 21, 1968, Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders set out on the first ever journey to the Moon. Three days later they became the first humans to enter lunar orbit.

“Providence happened to put everything together at the end of the year to give the American public an uplift after what had been a poor year.” – Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot

“It was a time when this country set out to do what seemed to be the impossible, and we did it.” – Frank Borman, Commander

Update to – Heinlein Lives

Robert and Ginny Heinlein in Tahiti 1980, taken by Hayford Peirce

While the Heinlein Centennial was celebrated in 2007, this article in the Wall Street Journal bears another look. “Robert A. Heinlein’s Legacy” By TAYLOR DINERMAN ~ WSJ July 26, 2007; Page D7.

There are some fairly good FaceBook groups providing information, links and discussion of the works, quotes and point of view of Heinlein, real or imagined.

Time Enough For Heinlein ~ Robert Heinlein fan group ~ Heinlein is my hero

For myself, I never tended to goosestep into pushing the writings, or personal life of Heinlein into a cookie cutter corner of human thought or political persuasion.       To me, the basics are enough: Hard Work, excessive logical thought, and extreme appreciation of sexy science or logical beauty, and pragmatism above all else. Authority? The authority at the ‘platoon’ level is plenty to run several universes (20 or so). Loyalty? To the person next to you, in the trench or cube. God? Let’s talk.

Marvin Argyle Everett

Augusts always seem to bring transitions, and tomorrow will mark the 99th anniversary of the birth of Marvin Argyle Everett (1909-1990), who could have been one of my favorite characters in any number of Heinlein’s marvelous stories. There’s more about “Marv” in a post I did earlier this year, called Papyrus 2.0.

Marvin Argyle Everett was not a scientist, writer or politician. He was a factory worker who knew more about the science of making soap for Procter and Gamble than all the junior execs who came through on their way somewhere else. He gently asked them not to step in his pile of floor sweepings in the Dallas P&G plant, while they queried him on the operations of the saponification process section he ran for over 20 years. He was also a Sunday School Teacher for the Men’s Class in the Baptist Church in our town for more than a decade or so.

Robert and Virginia Heinlein on the set of Destination Moon, in 1949

Marv would not have agreed with very much of what Heinlein had to say in his stories, but in my cooling tower of a brain the two provided me with all the number crunching, text processing, emotional roller coastering that I have needed to build a pretty damn good picture of life.

The enigmatic nature of the literature of RAH is that his heroes were often misfits, orphans, accidents, or inconvenient additions to whatever world in which they found themselves. This underdog mythos speaks volumes to most of us nerds, geeks, and generally Animal House denizens, who wind up on the Supreme Court or running the Olympics. I am currently involved in an effort to publicize a reunion of 60’s-70’s kids from my college days who studied too much, had too  much fun with sex, drugs and rock & roll, and now are doctors, lawyers, teachers, public servants and other ‘fabric of civilization’ types like me. Wow! Dinkum good.

These tidbits of fact and fict I pass on to you, who are smart enough to find this needle in the haystack of a Web 2.0 bloggers’ universe. Ha! TANSTAAFL I say to you!