Juan Williams was on the Bob Edwards show yesterday promoting his new book. He stated again that people in Muslim garb in airports do frighten him (without any caveat this time) and that his saying this is part of Honest Debate.

If you’re truly interested in such debate, the first rule is to question the validity of your premise beforehand.

The Muslims who conducted the 9/11/2001 attacks were wearing button-downs and khakis, while the people who held Mumbai hostage in November of 2008 wore jeans and tshirts. Unless you’re actually in, say, Basra or the Swat valley, your chances of being attacked by a person in a dishdash or chador are slim to none. Not only is this a horribly inefficient method of profiling, the attitude is also extremely silly. My aunt had “dothead” yelled at her in New Jersey by a man tattooed with a German Iron Cross, while a fellow geophysicist of Indian origin was recently beaten up in London by a bunch of punk thugs wearing Union Jack tshirts and bandanas as they referred to him as a “Paki.” These are attacks that occur almost everyday in the western world. At the gym the other day, I saw a guy with a giant iron cross tattooed on his right leg. A colleague put up the British flag in his office. By all rights, I should be frightened by these outward symbols of identity, correct? If I had then gone on the Rachel Maddow show and freaked out about it, I would have been laughed off the set.

The best way to fight fundamentalism is to get rid of it in yourself first. Each time I hear paranoid squawks about the growing Islamization of the West, I don’t fear Muslims. All I think is, “Hey, these guys sound exactly like those old mullahs in Kuwait who fumed and incited their young over the growing Westernization of the East.” Don’t sound like a fanatical mullah, for starters.

Next time: “Collective guilt” for you, but not for me.

Called my father-in-law, the loving old coot of a Korean war veteran, today and thanked him for his service. He always gets a kick out of that.

Growing up, November 11th was Armistice Day. Say that here and folks will look at you like you’re sprouting a second head. Like a certain person I will not name other than to hint that he is my husband.

Ahem. From the United States Department of Veterans Affairs:

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day.

… An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday—a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as “Armistice Day” … the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.” With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

Apparently, America knew what an armistice and Armistice Day meant for a GOOD SOLID 35 YEARS. Ahem, I say!

This morning, I listened to Bob Edwards interview some military personnel about the Dignified Transfer that takes place in Dover, Delaware, the port of American re-entry for our slain soldiers. As we now know, all coverage of these events is conducted only by military photographers and videographers, and the media is not allowed anywhere near the place. Edwards notes the relative visual impact.

The imagery of the event heavily influenced public opinion during the Vietnam War, but public concern over the war in Afghanistan is comparatively low.

And then I read this over at Editor B’s:

[Bradford J. Kelley] begins by noting the lack of attention paid to our current military engagements in the recent election cycle, but notes that politicians can’t really be blamed for failing to focus on a topic people don’t really seem to care about: “The apathy in American society regarding these wars is appalling.”

You will never truly understand what you do not allow yourself to see.

Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and a veteran himself, recently recommended Derick Leebaert’s The Delusions of American Foreign Policy From Korea to Afghanistan to me. From the WaPo book review:

The magical thinking of Leebaert’s title is the recurring American self-deception that we have what it takes to persuade the peoples of foreign lands whose histories, cultures and traditions have little in common with ours to see and do things our way.

… So you won’t agree with Leebaert about everything — no matter. If you can’t disprove his large thesis, then you confront this painful conclusion: We have squandered tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars on foolish attempts to remake a world we simply cannot guide. And we’re still doing it.

I am prepared to fight and die actually defending the values of this country but not the fiscal comfort and missing spines of a bunch of jackbooted thugs in government who abuse my willingness to serve in misbegotten wars to the point of my serious injury, mental illness and death, care nothing for me and my health after I return and spit on my service to the nation on a day meant to honor me.

For, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, I am tired of old men who have never been to war dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

Honor is not a parade. It’s everything after.

Needless to say, you’ve all heard about Apple’s iPad by now.  I’m certain Steve Jobs’s unveiling speech yesterday was more popular than Obama’s State of the Union address, judging simply from the crazy high TPM (tweets per minute) related to the new gadget’s drop.  (Disclosure: I contributed to said traffic with 9 tweets and around 10-12 replies and retweets.  Glad to have done my part.)

As a technologist and tech blogger who attends conferences regularly, I am in the market for a new portable computer that is a little lighter and faster than the existing Dell Inspiron. Size, shape, bezel and “form factor” are meaningless to me.  Following is what my portable computer has to DO, along with what the iPad does (green) and doesn’t (red) offer as a solution:

* Word-processing program for rapid note-taking, with machine on lap or standing at booths with very little counter space. $70 keyboard dock.  The awkward iPad-keyboard size ratio and keyboard’s tilt make it seem unlikely the setup will stay put on a lap.
* WordPress post creation and editing in full visual editor.  The WordPress 2.1 app or WordPress in Safari should work pretty well for this (images may have to be resized and repositioned later, especially on photojournalism blogs).
* Occasional code testing in Python or from a terminal window An impenetrable Terminal app exists, but other than that, I haven’t tried any such thing on my iPhone.  Anyone?
* Upload photos to Flickr directly from device OR quickly connect camera/device to computer, crop/adjust/saturate and upload to Flickr or to blog post.  No built-in camera. $29 Camera Connection Kit with two dongles that plug into the keyboard dock connector; one for USB and one for SD cards.
* TweetDeck. Check.
* eReader sans DRM. iBooks is right out because it cannot read Project Gutenberg plain texts or anything other than the EPUB format. Not supporting that crap. The Stanza App will continue to read all formats, but will lack “form factor” of iBooks.
* Standalone GoogleChat. IM+ App or m.google.com
* All of these programs running simultaneously.  NOPE!

Secondary requirements:
* Ability to view videos and HTML5 content.  YouTube app for video. No Flash (no Hulu for you!) or HTML5.
*  iTunes which accesses my 8GB iPod or my 20+GB iTunes music library.  HAHAHAAAA!  Dream on!
* Not having to deal with AT&T. What are my options here?

When I mentioned some of these points to a colleague who is seriously considering buying an iPad, he said, “I really don’t think it is meant to be a note taking device or for other uses you mentioned. Those are called laptops.”  This person is also going to get the $500 base model (16GB; WiFi only, no 3G) for “casual use at home, looking at the internets, watching videos, reading books, pictures, etc.”  Another friend is going to buy it as a second home computer, while yet another will purchase it as an eBook reader with internet access.

In no way will the iPad replace your phone, MP3 player, camera and a laptop/desktop, which you will still need to make calls, listen to much of your music, capture photos and video and do any substantial work.  Moreover, as the HotHardware review says, “If we’re going to carry around something that requires a separate bag, we want it to have a real desktop and real multitasking capabilities.”  It is, however, a cool toy with which to block the television while seated on the couch, read at the cafe or restaurant during those oh-so-frequent breaks or fall asleep with.  A large-font eReader that surfs the internet and runs apps without having to run a giant OS.

Therefore, let’s not kid ourselves about the iPad as Disrupting Gamechanger That Forever Changes The Face Of Computing.  That day is not yet here.

***

In my 2009 VizWorld tech wrap-up, I wrote, “There are many more people out there who simply want access to maps, books, music, data and that is the real imperative upon revolutionary, disruptive technologies.  We cannot swallow the eReader marketing pill because it’s handed to us and, in our obsolescence-inducing plenty, unwittingly set data standards for the rest of the world. Consumers going into the second decade of the 21st century must focus on content and delivery – useful content in an accessible and understandable format on a relatively fast and ubiquitous machine – as their technology drivers. Open data, better communication and scrutinizing intent in this day and age of Twitter and other social media will make this happen.  But, so will awareness, responsibility and active participation.  In 2010, I ask us to be mindless consumers less and nurturing communities more.”

So, think critically about the social context of the iPad and read some more before you make this purchase.

Kathrine Cargo (of TOKIN) and John Hyman (of my very own subkrewe, C.R.A.P.S.) were on George Ingmire‘s show on WWOZ this morning talking about the Krewe du Vieux parade that rolls this weekend.  This weekend!  Wasn’t it just Christmas and Twelfth Night?

The mother krewe theme is Krewe Du Vieux’s Magical Misery Tour and a number of subkrewes went to town coming up with clever twists on Beatles song and album titles.  My favorites are Mama Roux’s We All Live In A Jello Shot Machine and Drips ‘n’ Discharges presents Sgt. Eddie’s Only Honkies Banned.  My husband came up with I Am The WalMart for our subkrewe but we decided to buck the Beatle-themed trend and settled on C.R.A.P.S. Mutinies: Where’s Da Booty?  We started out asking what in the name of Blackbeard happened to FEMA’s missing millions but that, in the way of all subkrewe themes and their execution, transmogrified into a rip on our mayor, No C.  Um Ray Nagin, and his jump to a Dallas-bound vessel.  C.R.A.P.S. has a tendency to change its acronym each year based on the theme so I came up with the title of this post (avaricious, yes, we are Craps-playing pirates after all and I love the word cur).  Also bouncing around in me noggin’ is C. Ray Abdicate Power Soon.

Tonight is the Captains’ Dinner when we honor our King, Mr. Ronald Lewis of the Ninth Ward’s House of Dance and Feathers, and the captains of the seventeen subkrewes.  Then, it’s downhill to parade day.

Many of us have worked very hard – through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, car wrecks, illnesses, surgeries, children, work-work and loads of other responsibilities – to bring this early, early, early parade to you this year.  If you are in New Orleans this Saturday, you must come to this parade.  (Bring the kids, they’re not the pure little cloistered nuns you think they are.)  It looks like it will be cold outside, but at least you can bundle up while we run through the streets of the Bywater, Marigny and the Quarter in nothing short of skimpalicious. 

Consider it your solemn duty to line the streets for Krewe du Vieux.  Read the latest Le Monde de Merde, memorize the new time and route, come out to support the best parade in the world and kick off Mardi Gras season right!  Don’t forget the ball; tickets are $25 each and available at Mardi Gras Zone, Louisiana Music Factory, Up In Smoke, Miss Claudia’s Vintage Clothing.  Costumes are highly encouraged.

Laissez les bon temps rouler starting 6:30pm on Saturday, January 19th!

Reading a popular LiveScience article called Global Warming: How Do Scientists Know They’re Not Wrong?, with hope filling my heart, this paragraph stopped me in my tracks.

Contrary to popular parlance, science can never truly “prove” a theory. Science simply arrives at the best explanation of how the world works. Global warming can no more be “proven” than the theory of continental drift, the theory of evolution or the concept that germs carry diseases.

Back off, man, I’m a scientist!  Hate to break it to you, but continental drift was disproven; we now understand such geological activity via a snazzy new concept known as plate tectonics. Evolution is not a theory, but a fact. I’ll leave the germ statement to a microbiologist.

Sigh, with friends to science like this, who needs creationists? I need a hug. Paging highly-educated Jersey boy, txyankee. Come in, txyankee!

So, what makes us different and better than our male counterparts (this time)? It’s still multitasking and, wait, what is this … emotionalism. [NYTimes article]

What intrinsic qualities do women have that give them a competitive edge over men? By an overwhelming margin, the trait they touted most was their multitasking expertise … They even turned a common dig against them, their supposed emotionalism, on its head, saying it is a manifestation of a compassionate nature that motivates employees, attracts customers and enables them to keep their priorities straight.

… A few respondents acknowledged that men seem to have innate advantages, like moving more quickly to put out workplace fires and paying more attention to the bottom line.

I love how these studies have no room for emotional and compassionate men, as well as no-nonsense, quick-as-lightning women who keep their eyes on the bottom line at all times.

In some sense, it probably explains why I constantly have five or more projects going, start crying and breathing into a paper bag three-quarters of the way to the finish, eventually put out fires, find out exactly how much everything costs, almost always do things for other people and get my work done anyway.

You know what, I realize that’s not female multi-tasking and emotionalism, it’s anyone’s work, stress and deadlines.

This post is a bit of navel-gazing that has nothing to do with New Orleans, politics, geoscience, copyright issues or travel. Ever since VatulBlog went from being a simple stump in my portion of electronic acreage to an über-public space, I’ve thought about starting another blog, a more personal one under an anonymous name that serves as online Dear Diary, but of a more private nature. Well, I do have one of those somewhere, but it now serves mostly as repository of quizzes, YouTube videos and conversations held within a select group of friends.

That is, however, the beauty of blogging, isn’t it? I don’t have to wear a Dolce & Gabbana suit and a ton of makeup to come to you with breaking news, analyses of New Orleans and scientific happenings, and internet roundups. By the same token, I’m not limited in any way by a holding company or publisher to speak only of certain ordained things. It is after all, heaven forfend, my blog. Subsumed, in a way, by the professionalism required to be a purveyor of often serious news, but still my blog.

What does this long preface lead up to? Yesterday, thanks to an online social networking site, I found an old friend from my Kuwaiti youth. Type-A and competitive youngsters, we didn’t always get along, but loved one another as kids do when they’ve known each other since kindergarten. Bad things happened to both of our families in 1990, we went our separate ways, and we never saw each other again … until I caught her grown-up face in a blurry picture, while surfing through friends’ friends lists. It brought back all kinds of memories and sixteen years of rumination.

There’s something I have come to realize in my years of reluctant adulthood: People are people. I don’t have to like all of them, and not one of them is obligated to like me — THIS IS OK. And that, yes, there are people who dislike me, but for each one who does, there are at least two dozen who have overwhelmingly positive or neutral feelings towards me. This is not a plea for “I like/love you” or “I despise you” comments, so don’t bother with them. Why not? It’s because no human is fully angel or demon; inter-personal relationships and attendant judgments are just not that black or white. There is no such thing as all love and all hate towards one person, and most of the time to our self-centered eyes, people just are. Coincidentally, D said something very profound to me yesterday, “No one is wholly a bitch, Maitri, they were being bitchy under those set of circumstances. This is why it’s best not to speak ill of anyone, for you will never know what they were going through at the time to prompt that awful behavior.” (I love this man, and his ability to be a sage and an impetuous sixteen-year-old at the same time.)

Thought I’d share.

Update: When discussing this topic with friends just a few hours ago, they said, “How could anyone not like you?” I rolled my eyes and said, “Very easily, it just depends on the set of circumstances.” Objectivity between friends is not guaranteed, hence the blog post.

Ever since Katrina, the death of D’s mother a few months after that, and now with my grandmother’s passing, I’ve pondered the utter lemon that is life followed by death. What do I mean? You’re born, you do so much, make somewhat of a difference in your life, touch the lives of others, become a better or, at the least, older and experienced person, and then you die. Moksha, nirvana, karma, heaven and hell are all fine and dandy, but I want it and I want it now! You still don’t capisce? Follow along with what I wrote my friend, Joel, in reply to his condolences:

“You, of all people, being Jewish and terribly sensitive to these things, may recognize that it’s hard to observe the body’s decline. Those like you and me, steeped in the knowledge of our roots back to God, are so attached to family, stories, abilities and elders that, when they pass on, a living tenet of who you are, and I don’t mean a part of you, goes with them.

“My grandmother was so energetic, so talkative, so capable (crochet pieces she made me at the age of 90 with failing eyes sit here waiting to be framed) and so mighty. And the life graph plummeted in the last few months leading to her sudden death. Poof. Gone. Vanished.

“I can’t call after her with, ‘Wait, there are so many unanswered questions. Tell me more about Dad when he was a child. What did you like most about my Grandpa? What is your favorite color? Just talk to me some more.’ It’s so final, so stiflingly final, that even a download of her brain before death could not mirror the affection and affectations she infused in her stories. The way I sat at her feet and she rubbed the palm of my hand when imparting those tales, the pride I felt when she told me how much like my mother I look, the loving glances she gave my father … who records that? Where is the justice in the world losing that? Why are we made to love and attach, and equally fragile and mortal? Death is so bloody frustrating that way.”

Of course, as a Hindu and a Vedantin, my head-heart-soul complex understands impermanence. But, just because I get it doesn’t mean I have to like it. This is the portion of the program when I equally appreciate my attachment to people and yearn for my doctor brother’s clinical outlook on being and everythingness.

August 10, 2006 – Is it horrible that I don’t feel this sad when humans are killed?

July 11, 2006 – Today is one of those days I wish I weren’t in New Orleans.  One thousand miles north of here, my mother goes into major surgery late this morning and will not emerge until early in the evening.  It bites that I am her only daughter and only child who will not be there with her.  Please think positive thoughts for my mama, InternetLand; she let her baby grow up to be a blogger.