Monthly Archives: July 2020

Running Shoes and Knee Pads

by in Boundary Behavior, Ride, Risk | 20 Comments

I’ve become fascinated by the grimy soles of my running shoes… and no, it’s not some weird fetish.

After a minimally active late fall/winter, a defective mirror and mis-calibrated bathroom scale resulted in an enhancement of the usual running schedule. From five or six fairly flat 10-kilometer runs every week, additions included an every day schedule with alternating hill routes, and at least a couple of good bike sprints.

Settling into the new routine late last January, the bathroom scale gradually came back into calibration.  The mirror… it may need replacing.  But then, the skies decided to unload one last winter-season dump, turning the local running routes into post-holing events with intermittent opportunities for ice-skating… or a broken hip.

Persevering through several weeks of running path “cross-country” on a pair of floppy tele-skis, their bases were summarily shredded by breaking trail through road-sanded slush.  So until a last gasp of winter retreated into the high country, that was also the start of “running” indoors.

Without a treadmill, the running was really nothing more than jogging in place for an hour at a time, pushing vertically off my toes while wearing an old ski pack with about 20-pounds of free-weights strapped tightly inside to make it into a workout.  And then, in the brief interval of runners’ spring paradise before the tourists, Americans suddenly discovered that a virus had been surreptitiously installed in the new year, and breathing heavily in public became a serious social offense. 

All of this meant that by the time both the weather and the breathing restrictions had let up enough to get back outside, the months of indoor workouts had resulted in some seriously blown-out calf muscles.  Consideration of this unintended physiological alteration inspired attempting a shift from my usual “heel-striking” runners’ gait to a less impacting toe-running form.   The way my shoe soles have changed their wear patterns over the last couple of months is both surprising and impressive.

Regardless, this is the third summer in a row that’s seen the early-season acquisition of some moderately activity-damping leg injury.  And this time… it was a torn calf muscle.  The result of the extra stress from all of that toe running without any recovery days, it’s rated up to maybe a “4” on a scale of 1-to-10 (10 being worst) for screwing up activities.  Consequently, the bike shoes have also been out for the last few weeks.

To be honest, the uphills on my mountain bike are just slogs anymore.  Though to be fair, it’s a heavy ride, better suited to enjoying the downhills.  Still, some of those climbs that were once rideable (if just barely) seem to require considerably more walking (limping?), usually after spinning-out over some loose rocks or a sandy spot.  Regardless, the downhills make up for it… payback, with interest, for hauling the mass of all those suspension parts to the top of a trail. 

Someone once quipped that any activity requiring knee pads is probably worth avoiding.  Granted, they don’t exactly make a compelling fashion statement.  The reference was actually to “tele” (free-heel) skiing, but the conversation came to mind while following my friend’s bike down one of those narrow single-tracks. 

As she suddenly disappeared around a sharp, rocky curve, the lumpy knobs on the fronts of a pair of bare legs transmitted the cautionary query to an already over-stimulated brain, “Where the hell are my knee pads?”  At home, they were resting inside a pair of motorcycle boots shelved for the winter, gear from another of those activities better avoided. 

In my head, this all provided convenient justification for a new road bicycle (which I just picked up yesterday).  Still, it’s been good to be back into a (mostly) regular running pattern… and to have a reason to spend a little early morning time in the hot tub before I head out. 

And, it gives me an excuse to stare at he bottoms of my shoes for awhile.  

Job Skills

by in Boundary Behavior, Death, Existentialism, Identity, Risk, War | 25 Comments

“If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.“
–Kurt Vonnegut

There’s a time from which I can’t draw too many stories (or photos). From just a little before I cashed-out of my first graduate program until I left the US for Thailand, a period of about five or six years, there isn’t much I can tell… or to be honest, that’s worth mentioning. About all I can say of that interval is that it was almost entirely unrewarding, at least emotionally. But that’s not to say that I don’t remember any people from those times.

It was a military-industrial work environment, so most of those I came to know were either ex-military or various technical people. And there was always a sort of undercurrent of friction between the two. But the ideological and the pragmatic converged at the bottom line, a place that I found increasingly to be populated by people I didn’t particularly want to get to know. Still, there were a few worth remembering.

In particular, I think back to a production shop supervisor whom I knew only as “Jim”.  And though we worked together quite frequently for about eighteen months, sometimes for days at a time, I was never privy to his family name. In fact, I never knew his actual job-title, or even if his name was really “Jim”.

Reciprocally, Jim always referred to me as, “Chief”, what he called me from our very first introduction. I never heard him use the moniker for anyone else. And I never felt especially inclined to correct him. Jim made it abundantly clear that the shop was his domain, and that he was the one absolutely in charge there.

Clean-shaved, and maybe five-ten or so, Jim seemed superficially rather an average guy.  And if he had any tattoos, he kept them hidden.  Regardless, he came across with both a physical and emotional toughness that you’d definitely want on your side in a bar fight. And then there was the part where he’d killed some people… but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Jim was an expert machinist and a master welder, and oversaw about twenty skilled workers in a special prototyping and fabrication shop.   Since that was where the hardware for my projects were being prototyped, he would often call upon me to explain the particulars of their intended designs.

In a sense, Jim was my interpreter, overseeing the translation of my work from paper (or software) into machined and welded metal. At first, I was a little reluctant about asserting my presumed expertise with him, as he clearly had far more knowledge about how things could actually be made. But he was a good listener… though, he’d frequently conclude my explanations with an ominous shake of the head or a remark like, “Shame I’m gonna’ have to replace a perfectly good machinist who quits after I tell him he has to make that rat’s ass.” And then he’d smile and finish, “But whatever you want… Chief.”

I ended up spending a fair amount of time on the production floor, sometimes by my own initiative, gradually becoming acquainted with a few of the machinists and welders. And I learned some things as well, even some welding. The welders in particular, or “metal-joiners” as they preferred to be called, were a competitive bunch. I watched as Jim once cut apart an aluminum can and then demonstrated welding it back together, something I’ve since been told is, “Impossible!”

Over time, however, I grew increasingly less enamored of the company, which seemed to suffer from a kind of large corporate “Peter Principal” inefficiency. Once mentioning this to Jim, he countered that he sincerely appreciated the chance he’d been given when they’d hired him many years earlier, and that he’d utilized the opportunity to learn all that he could and to move up from within.

Jim explained that growing up in East LA during the Vietnam War, he didn’t see much of a future for himself.  So he decided not to wait for the draft to determine his fate, and instead enlisted.  Eventually, he ended up assigned to a Special Forces unit.  And the military, he went on, did a great job teaching him how to kill people.

“You know those guys who slide down a rope into places where even helicopters can’t land, and then fight their way out of the jungle?  Well that was me. Sometimes,” he went on, “you didn’t even know who you’d killed.  Something happened; a branch snapped, a shadow moved… and reflexively, someone died.” 

And then he recalled being assigned to a first wave where there were expected to be fifty-to-ninety percent casualties.  The action was canceled while he sat in the helicopter.  But the weight of the experience had somehow changed his attitude about the value of his life, and not in a good way.

Back in the US, Jim explained how the only work he could find was a crappy job in a warehouse.  His military training, he discovered, didn’t leave him with a lot of salable skills. He joked that whenever he’d be asked about job-training in an interview, responding that he knew thirty ways to kill someone with articles of clothing probably wouldn’t have been a good answer.

Jim went on to explain how about a year later, he had come down with a case of the flu and decided to stay home while his then wife went off to a party. About an hour after she had left, he heard a noise in the living room. And flipping on the light, he surprised a burglar who suddenly turned to face him with a stereo in his arms. 

“Burglary isn’t considered a capital crime in California,” Jim quipped, explaining that he ended up getting a five-year sentence for manslaughter after reflexively putting a bullet through his fifteen-year old neighbor.  The irony, he continued, was that prison had probably saved his own life, as it was where he had learned about machine-tools and welding.  And those were skills he could actually mention in a job interview.

Messages

by in Boundary Behavior, Fear, Hmmm..., Identity, Numbers, Philosophy, Politics, Risk, Science, War | 32 Comments

Maoist Chinese Propaganda Poster“People would rather believe than know.”
— E.O. Wilson

Emotion precedes reasoning in the same way that the rush of adrenaline precedes the conscious analysis of what elicited its release. So we’re more likely to act on a feeling without thinking than to act on even a well-reasoned conclusion devoid of emotional energy.

This is why emotions are the capital of propaganda. Whether fear or hatred, anger, respect, courage, or even love, propaganda is at its core the manipulation of emotion. This doesn’t mean that what we may feel is wrong.  It means only that the intent of propaganda is the call to action by maximizing the power of emotion over fact. And history has demonstrated repeatedly that this is a patently dangerous approach to discerning truth.

In Volume I of, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler asserted that as a mere means justified by an end, propaganda is not constrained by fact.  Rather, effective propaganda campaigns should be conducted around five core approaches (paraphrased from Propaganda and Persuasion; Garth Jowett & Victoria O’Donnell):
1) Single out and vilify a special “enemy”.
2) Avoid abstract ideas and appeal to emotions.
3) Continuously criticize a target.
4) Repeat just a few simple ideas using stereotyped phrases.
5) Present only one side of an argument.

“…since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.” (Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. I Ch. 6) 

Appealing to emotion over intellect allows for messages to be conveyed subjectively and without substance or evidence through approaches such as name-calling, broad generalizations, association, transference of status, and hyperbole.  Moreover, modern communications have introduced pseudo-grassroots movements known as “astro-turfing”, and can rapidly amplify calls to join the bandwagons, both calling out to our social instincts.

Disrupting the process of propaganda requires an openness to facts, even those we may find dissonant to our own beliefs and perspectives. Ideally, scientific inquiry is an example of how this can be accomplished through the impartial evaluation of competing claims based on evidence. Conversely, the subordination, distortion, cherry-picking or dismissal of facts are hallmarks of propaganda.

The most effective propaganda, however, can still start with the filtered perspective of something that is at least not untrue. If a community of 10,000 residents had one person who committed a serious crime one year, and then two the following year, did the crime rate go up by 0.01% or by 100%? Neither is incorrect.  But which would be cited would likely depend upon the perspective being promoted.

Even fact can be applied in propaganda campaigns.  When the Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, assassinated the German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, in 1938 Paris, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, used the event to paint an entire European population as a “threat” and justify the antisemitic terror of “Kristallnacht”. The son of a US consular official in Berlin recorded that the janitor of his block shouted, “They must have emptied the insane asylums and penitentiaries to find people who’d do things like that!” 

Americans would be wise to remember that the brutality of the Holocaust, the Maoist Red Guard, the Soviet gulags, and “Year Zero” of the Khmer Rouge were all facilitated by societies that consumed such messages.  So to even attempt to brand and to shame any segment of a population bears the echoes of the most destructive of totalitarian propaganda. It seeks to, “Single out and vilify a special ‘enemy’” by declaring a segment of society corrupt and unworthy while distracting attentions from fact. It substitutes calls for responsibility with passive ignorance, and informed thinking with the mindless repetition of vacuous aphorisms. 

If a nation is fortunate, it results in nothing.

Humans are capable of both feeling and thinking, and of both great mercy and great injustice.  We balance our lives as both poets and scientists, and each has its place.  But Americans are already dying from ignorance under an unceasing flood of propaganda that denies them the essentials of fact. And this benefits neither the scientist nor the poet.