Rebane's Ruminations

Mensis Horriblis – January 2023

George Rebane

The month that changed my life and perception of the human condition.  Due to the onset of a number of health related factors last year, including both Jo Ann and me coming down with Covid, my kidneys decided to go into acute renal failure, and I came to within one day of leaving this orb before they put me on dialysis and refined the diagnosis to prescribe the hopeful treatment regimen that allowed me to return home after three dreadful weeks under the tender mercies of my medical team at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley.  (I will write more later about what I learned about our post-Covid healthcare system – it was eye-opening, up close, and very personal.)  I was in the hospital from the first week in January, and returned home last Thursday.

Here I want to thank all of you in our RR community for the outpouring of well-wishes and prayers for my recovery – I am overwhelmed and blessed by all the kindness that you have shown.  My family, of course, rallied around the homestead and helped Jo Ann shoulder the stress of caring that included planning sessions for my on-off incipient death as new test results came in.

So now the prognosis du jour is that my kidneys have a good chance of recovering after an appropriate interval of dialysis and steroid treatment – but no guarantees.  After 80+ years of excellent health, I have now been shown the other side of the coin and understand what it means to be an utterly helpless potted plant.  But today, onward!

A View from the Eighties

George Rebane

I am 83, still functioning but past my prime. Most of the college professors and high-school teachers in my cohort have already been shuffled out of the classroom. I concede I shouldn’t be running for president or chairman of a board at my age. I’m terrible at understanding new trends and technologies. But history and literature—the events and works of the past—don’t change at all. All we can do is to try to understand why long-gone people did what they did and said what they said.

So writes retired Prof Wight Martindale Jr (here) as he looks back and looks around at what useful functions we older people can still perform, and especially to our newest generation itching to make their mark.  I too am in my eighties and share most of the good professor’s thoughts about some of the unique things those with many birthdays can do for our young.  These past many years readers have been subjected to my own particular outlook, biases, and predilections presented in an unabashed style, big words and all.

I view the eighties as one of life’s special decades, one in which many of us still retain most of our marbles and memories, and one from which most of us will exit on a gurney.  In the US fewer than two out of five males reaching eighty will see ninety.   Females fare better, almost half of them reaching eighty will reach ninety.  But any way you cut it, in your eighties you have arrived in the ‘decade of dreaded diseases and death’.  So, while you hope for the best, have your exit plan in place.

When Teenagers Worked

George Rebane

[This entry is posted as part of an occasional addition to RR’s My Story category as an expanding part of my autobiography.  It may be of limited interest to readers as a period piece describing part of an America that sadly is long gone.  It was an epoch that goes a long way to illustrate today’s generational differences in our culture, values, mores, and sense of nationhood.]

I was a teenager in the 1950s and we all had jobs in addition to home chores, school work, and after school activities (I played basketball).  We lived in the rural outskirts of Indianapolis before moving to California in 1957.  I did odd jobs for neighbors throughout the year and was much in demand because my dad and school shop classes had taught me to do almost everything required to build/repair a residential house.  But my first regular work was as a field hand for Jack Maschmeyer, my school bus driver who along with his wife Mary ran a small truck farm growing specialty crops a couple of miles from my house.

The farm work started in late April and lasted through September.  I got to Jack’s farm on my bike, and was there joined by three other teenagers.  The four of us made up the vetted and proven core team of field hands that enabled the Maschmeyers to run their operation.  Jack was a no-nonsense ‘Dutchman’ (WW1 veteran) who taught his charges carefully and put them through a probationary period before being welcomed as a permanent member.  While we did many stoop-labor tasks and harvested several kinds of crops (e.g. field tomatoes, cantaloupes, strawberries, …), our main work always included the daily cutting of about 5 acres of asparagus, an amazingly fast-growing plant – we would always hear the hiss from the field as we prepared to go home in the evening.  The white noise came from countless new spears pushing up through the dried husks of previously cut spears.

Cutting asparagus with speed and accuracy was the most skill-demanding job on a truck farm; a bad cutter was slow and usually destroyed the following day’s crop by imprecisely making broader thrusts with his V-bladed knife than was required to harvest the mature spear which had grown about a foot in the past 24 hours, and was packed cheek-by-jowl with the immature spears for tomorrow or the next day.  Jack hired no bad cutters; these came and went real fast when we had turnover.  Mary always sent us boys home with some produce, usually a bunch of freshly cut asparagus which my mom didn’t know how to cook – she boiled it to death, which was the Nordic way with most vegetables.

But the point I want to make here is that America’s society worked because teenagers also worked.  We did countless jobs that included paper routes, yard work of all kinds (this was before Mexican gardeners), house chores, clean-up and construction jobs, etc.  Suburban America’s yards looked good because the local teenagers kept them that way within win-win compacts with neighbors.  There was no concern for child labor laws, regulations, wage levels, age restrictions, workers comp and liability insurance, … .  The work contract was between the neighbor-in-need and the kid looking to work.  Relationships were struck that lasted for years, usually until the young person’s school required transitioning to more serious jobs like farm work or clerking in local stores (Jo Ann’s teenage jobs).

Dark Days Diary – 9jan21 (updated 12jan21)

No days unalert; … alertness when most necessary, is always missing, and not to give the matter a thought is to be slated for destruction.  Gracian #264

George Rebane

Over the years to this day we have seen that our leftwing neighbors don’t have much truck with concepts like nuance or shades of gray.  Their more simple worldview resides comfortably in the corners of the extreme – for them the needle is always pegged: yes/no, black/white, racist/woke, 0/1, socialist/capitalist, … .  (Bang-bang policy in control theory)  This embrace of simplicity goes back to the Bolshevik revolution and continued all throughout the 5-year civil war that followed.

During that terrible strife, communist partisans would stop trains of ‘White Russians’ fleeing the already consolidated Red areas.  They would have the passengers dismount to line up next to the tracks and show their palms.  Those whose hands were found to be soft and/or uncalloused were executed on the spot as bourgeoisie enemies of the people.  There was no middle road to be examined, nor any propensity to do so.  Terror was the name of the game, and to make their omelet, some necessary eggs had to be cracked.

Is there a Dr/doctor in the house? (Addended 18dec20)

George Rebane

Joseph Epstein’s column in 11dec20 WSJ (here) about Jill Biden’s doctorate started a national row that has even penetrated our country’s hinterlands and backwoods.  The FLOTUS-elect likes to be called “Dr Biden”, and the compliant media has, well, complied to the extent that Dr Biden has become an ever-present, in-your-face item in today’s news.  Most people (including Epstein) debating the use of that honorific in a salutation are innocent of the genesis of ‘doctor’ and ‘Dr’, so maybe a little background would help.

End of an Era

George Rebane

Puna

6 June 2009 – 30 August 2020

Wildfire Diary – 18aug20 (updated 20aug20)

George Rebane

1. PG&E turned off power on Hind Tit Road and told us it was part of the 1-2 hour rolling blackouts all across the state. Our blackout has now been rolling along for 17 hours.  Moreover, it was beyond cynical that they decided to turn off power to neighborhoods hurriedly preparing to evacuate from the Jones Bar Fire.  Our power does not come through the fire area, it comes from the other direction.  As I mentioned before, there is no power shortage, the outages we are suffering are politically mandated by the state’s Democrat super-majority who have taken offline natural gas and nuclear power generators.
2. Government incompetence and incapability has been on parade again during this fire. All information outlets, loudly proclaimed and lauded during calmer times, outlets that we’re supposed to access when the fire emergency comes, all of them were dysfunctional.  This in the sense that websites were down, phones weren’t answered, and media outlets not informed, most certainly not in any useful timely manner, of the state and extent of the fire.  County and Cal-fire failed utterly, informing us for hours of a 30 acre fire that was already over 300 acres, and no idea of its progress toward populated areas.  They couldn’t even “confirm” whether a home had burned.  Apparently in an environment of low winds and high humidity, the firefighters are doing a better job in the field than their colleagues sitting in command centers and emergency management offices.  No doubt through no fault of their own, Yubanet and KNCO have been particularly worthless as sources of useful and timely fire information.  And the nation’s useful idiots want government to nationalize our healthcare system??!
3. Memo to county emergency management: have someone in the incident command center, that always has an updated map of the current burn area, draw the fire contours on the map in their pad, timestamp it, and then send it to the webmaster who can post on the advertised fire information sites.  Do this at least hourly.
4. Yesterday afternoon we got multiple notifications, all concurrent and inconsistent, of “evacuation warnings”, “evacuation advisories”, and “evacuation orders”. You could take your pick by just choosing which outlet (website, radio), robocall, or text message you wanted.  After the power had been off for two hours, we had the Jeep and truck packed with some important irreplacables and more immediate necessaries, and evacuated to our daughter’s house in Alta Sierra.  It was a redo of a similar evacuation we did to her house in 1993 (more here).  We all had a laugh about it when we arrived – we now owe her two evacuations to our house. 
5. This morning I caught up on the Democrat doings. They’re still singing lyrics from their tried and true TDS Anthem.  Nothing about policy specifics for their promised Socialist America – the leftwing constituent demands very little information from his politicians, as long as he hears promises of OPM coming his way.  In this regard Bumblebrain Biden is his man.  Biden has called for “an end to the era of shareholder capitalism.”  According to him, it’s “untrue and a farce” that "a company’s primary responsibility is to generate returns for shareholders."  (more here)  As I have pointed out countless times, the progressive has no idea how a functioning economy works.  EVERYWHERE in the world where they have gotten their hands on an economy, it either flushes immediately or immediately starts circling the drain hole. 
6. Then there’s carefully cultured Kamelion Kamala who “when she changes her stands it tends to be politically convenient, slowly acknowledged and poorly explained. There are signals of seeing policy as an external thing, not an outgrowth of one’s own belief structure, and things can change.” She was born into a very liberal, upper-class, educated family, and enjoyed all the privileges that our land could offer.  She is a political powerhouse with few public service accomplishments save some very critical ones about which, perhaps, only Willie Brown knows the particulars. (more here) 
7. Last night we gathered all the potpourri of fire information we could, mixed it with our own considerable experience about such things, and decided to spend the night in our own bed. We arrived in the dark, fired up the generator, and had a restful night listening to the fan we set up in the bedroom.  This morning we got up, checked the web for updates (no joy), listened to KNCO (no joy), and had breakfast.  The neighborhood up here on the ridge is very quiet; every once in a while we can hear an airplane in the distance.  No S-2 bombers in sight, but we’re told that Calfire is getting good use out of 800-gallon, single-engine, converted crop dusters since they can maneuver better in the South Yuba River canyon.  So, we’re still all packed up, with our bags staged by the door, ready to high-tail it out of here once there is some visible evidence to recommend that.  Otherwise, we just check on the fire info outlets that contain little besides yesterday’s newspaper.  At 930am PG&E's bullshit rolling blackout, it don't say nothin' but jes keeps rollin' along.
8. [1313 hrs]  NC Emergency Service Fire Dashboard is over 13 hours old.  I just drove the peripheral roads of the fire and talked to stationed police and firefighting personnel.  No one in the field knows what's happening, the extent of the fire, or even where the incident command center is located.  The closest was a congenial CHP on 49 who opined that it was located in the Helling Library.  Turns out its in the Rood Center as expected.  When you try to call Emergency Service, you get blown off.  The government beat goes on; no one knows and everyone is quite sanguine about the fire.  And PG&E tells me that the dolts working for them are still trying to figure out the "cause" of my "outage".  Apparently the idiots can't determine if it's still their announced "rolling blackouts" or God knows what - power has now been out 22 hours.  And their Lucky Strike extra is that they have no information as to when they might get additional information about my outage.

[20aug20 update]  Last night Jo Ann and I got texted that it was safe to return home, our part of Cement Hill Rd had its evacuation order lifted.  We were hunkered down at our daughter’s house in Alta Sierra, she had been the perfect hostess during our stay and made the sojourn actually fun (save for trying to find out what the Jones fire was doing).  We made numerous trips into town to get more groceries and pick-up some necessaries that we left behind.  During these forays we always stopped in Morgan Ranch at a spot that overlooks our entire ridge to the north, and also provides a view of the fire’s smoke coming up from behind a closer ridge to the northwest from our observation point.

Hunker Down Diary – 8apr20

George Rebane

Today is HD32 for the Rebanes.  Yesterday morning we strapped on our pitifully sparse PPE (masks and gloves) and went to our usual Safeway to replenish the larder – we brought home a ton of veggies, canned goodies, and fresh pieces of dead animals.  The store had only one door open through which the customers were being metered – there was no line to get in and the people density was low.  Nevertheless, shelves containing paper products, sanitary supplies, and staples like flour were empty.  The last was important to me since I’m a baker and have baked ALL of our bread for the last 23 years.

For such things the dictum still holds that shortages and empty shelves will be the order of the day until all closets in America are filled with what people fear most doing without.  Fortunately, we have practiced the full closet FIFO system since we first were married and immediately witnessed the buying panic in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis (people suddenly preparing for WW3).  Actually, I already came with that kind of household policy which was hardwired into me by my parents through the WW2 years and then more years in post-war DP camps.  It has served us well, and I recommend it to all families as do our Mormon brethren – when society churns, it’s good to stay at home until at least some of the smoke clears.

Anyway, we’ve been home doing all kinds of projects, continuing our organizational meetings online, having FaceTime cocktail hours with friends, and even venturing a couple of visits to a neighbor and our local daughter, both households carrying out equal hunker down policies.  I’ve also been busy pushing squigglies on various C19 analyses, another one which I will post today.  It’s interesting that RR’s commenter cohort could care less for anything quantitative or technical, but I take heart in all that through an extensive correspondence and telecons with STEM oriented friends and colleagues who are also squiggly savvy and share my criterion for what’s really required to understand the issues du jour.  Fun time.

On this same thread, I find myself revisiting the question as to why I continue to bother posting on socio-political topics and issues, especially since I have pretty much shot my wad on how this pilgrim views the world about all things considered.  Any reader who cares, has at his disposal my entire ontology.  The only answer to that puzzle that comes up is RR’s readership; I feel that they have become part of my greater circle, perhaps even my greater family whose ongoing presence with their insights, reports, opinions, … I get a measure if not a corroboration of my picture of the world’s goings on that I update continuously.  In any case, the jury’s still out.

More later?

Blessed Milestones – 30 September 2019

George Rebane

The Rebane clans gathered this weekend in Nevada City to celebrate the marriage of granddaughter Fiona to Shawn.  The ceremony and festivities took place on Sunday at the Stone House, the town’s iconic restaurant and wedding venue that started life as a brewery in 1850.  This was preceded and followed by more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for family and guests at the homes of our now local tribe.  It was truly a joyous occasion for the marriage of our third granddaughter.  This little missive contributes to the occasional summaries of the many blessings that Jo Ann and I have received over the years since we first met on 21 September 1959 as undergraduates at UCLA.  Make no mistake, enough of our road together has also had its inevitable unpaved stretches, but this is a happy recounting of a paved part.

As we gathered in the wonderfully redone venue with its large dining area, gathering rooms, bandstand and dance floor, and bar (and a very professional and competent staff of a local wedding planner and caterer), Jo Ann and I confirmed that we had the most birthdays of all the attendees.  The entire affair with all our kids, grandkids, great grandkids, more family, and friends came to be because of that chance meeting at the Pan Hellenic All-Pledge Dance at the beginning of the fall semester sixty years ago – we two are fortunate to be at the headwaters of a large causal basin of new lives, witnessing the many arrows that we have launched into the future.  The nearby photo shows us with our very involved great-grandmunchkins Lucy, Rae, Atticus, and Nell.

Our family has spread itself out over a wide spectrum of endeavors and locales.  Oldest daughter Sini and husband Roland head up our ‘Northern Tribe’.  Roland continues a long career at Microsoft Research on the bleeding edge of AI research.  Sini, a former software engineer, is a school administrator and semi-professional photographer.  Our ‘Southern Tribe’ picked up stakes last year and moved here to live in Nevada and Placer counties.  Daughter Teine closed her longtime organizing business in SoCal, and decided to start a new career in professional dispute resolution for which she is now in the middle of Pepperdine University Law School’s Masters of Dispute Resolution program, an area for which life has well-prepared her.

The grandchildren, all adults now, have dispersed themselves over much of the country.  Oldest granddaughter Claire (mother of the munchkins) lives in Denver with software engineer husband David.  One grandson Sean is an audio engineer working in Nashville for a leading audio production and processing enterprise.  Another grandson Lucas is a mountain climber and outdoor photographer working for a leading sports and camping gear company.  Another granddaughter Elizabeth is in the middle of a heavy-duty cancer research program at UCLA going for her doctorate in molecular biology and neuro science.  Another granddaughter Catherine, married last year, is a clinical trials administrator for a company in the Seattle area where she lives with her transport systems engineer husband Collin who works for a large international truck manufacturer doing autonomous vehicle development.

Fiona is studying and working in holistic health (that’s the best I can make of it).  She lives locally with her brand new hubby who is an electrician getting ready to get his contractor’s license.  Casting an eye over the lot of our ‘issue’ gives us much to be thankful for.  We look back and recall our decision to start young – we married before graduation against all advice – so that we could still be around to see the many fruits of our labors.  Thank the good Lord, it has worked out.

Responding to the Staid and Fearful

George Rebane

RR readers who comment on these pages have a record of discussing and debating the most critical and germane questions that face our country and society in these times of fracturing polarity (albeit not always in the most churchillian manner).  I am a declared conservetarian (q.v.), and over the years of this weblog I have outlined in detail my credo, my semantics, and my prescriptions for the orderly evolution of America’s governance in this ‘last great century of Man’.  In a recent comment stream, a reader again contends these prescriptions, not on their existential merits, but on their provenance which for him is qualified only to the degree that the proposed be limited to that practiced in the past.  Here I offer a short counter to such constraints and criticism.

The ability to see futures without exemplars from the past is admittedly and obviously a gift not shared by the many.  Most people, perhaps fortunately, can only see the future as reflections in their rearview mirrors – if it isn’t there to be seen, then there’s no such possibility of it yet to come.  Then there are those relatively few who live on the edge of the arts of the possible, and who traffic in ideas and enterprises that have neither been nor yet to be.  Both cohorts of Man serve needed functions which, when tempered, benefit and power the advancement of civilizations.

The former of the staid cohort function as brakes, shock absorbers, and even anchors to dampen, absorb, and integrate the possibly chaotic and non-coherent novelties that those of the latter, living on the bleeding edge, can see, build, and seek to introduce into the established orders.  Fate, the gods, and my parents assigned me to the bleeding edge cohort, of which long ago I became a credentialed, accomplished, privileged, punished, and blessed member.

So, when people of my ilk do their work, it is almost always in the untrammeled domains where few or none have trod, and where reward always lies behind a mountain of risk.  My life’s journey through this terrain is recorded by the scars on my back and the coins in my purse.

So when I have outlined the desiderata of governance from a conservetarian perspective, it is not an exercise of just ‘cut and paste’ of the elsewhere and from the elsewhen.  Seeing something strange and new, the question of the staid always belies their fearful admonition to never go where we have not been.  I neither hail from nor have I lived in such lands.  As a native Estonian, I take pride in the innovations in education, technology, and governance that that little nation has always had the courage to adopt and practice.  As a naturalized American, I continually bless the memory of our Founders’ dedication, intellect, foresight, and courage to bring forth a land then unknown to Man.  All Americans are daily blessed by our Founders not being deterred or stayed in their enterprise by those who asked them for proof of existence and success for such a new country they gathered together to bring into the world.

11 November 1918 - Ed and Jack’s War

George Rebane

My up close and personal introduction to WW1 came at the knee of my two early mentors Jack Maschmeyer and Ed Egold. Both were WW1 veterans who were sent ‘over there’ and didn’t come home ‘until it was over over there’. Both saw trench warfare at its most horrific and survived going ‘over the top’ several times. In 1953 we moved into an old house (built in 1830s) in rural Marion County, Indiana next to Ed and Mary who were in their early sixties. Today they would be mistaken for being in their eighties; they had lived a long life of hard work and it showed on most folks of that age in those days.

Techshots – 19dec17

George Rebane

Programming was women’s work.  The WSJ has been running a series on the history of women in technology, and their being “pushed out” in the years following WW2 (more here).  During and after the war women were the workers who ran the early computers of the day and also programmed them.  Programming was then considered a kind of clerical work best suited for the fair sex.  This all brings back some interesting memories from my early engineering career.

In the mid-60s I was a young engineer, fresh out of the Army, working in aerospace, going to grad school, and raising a family with small children.  My employer was Singer-Librascope, a big defense contractor based in Glendale that was a major supplier of the Navy’s shipboard combat systems (specializing in nuclear submarines).  I worked in their bleeding edge R&D department where we were inventing new things every week, prototyping them for shipboard testing, and then analyzing the data from the test ranges and secret missions before incorporating some of the findings into the newest systems.  Pretty heady stuff that set the direction for the rest of my career.

During that time engineers were supposed to derive new algorithms from applicable science that would be incorporated into the Navy’s weapons and the systems that fired them.  We had equations and models coming out of our ears.  The company’s mainframe was the mammoth CDC3300, that computer took up the floor space of a small cafeteria and handled everything from accounting, inventory, and engineering.  Programs were coded (and stored) on punched cards and magnetic tape, and the output came back to you on reams of tractor feed paper.  Each punched card represented one line of Fortran code.  The company also maintained state-of-the-art keypunch and programming departments, these were ‘best practices’ at the time.

Engineers were required to coordinate with programming to get one or two programmers assigned to your project.  Programmers were all men, with a few women left over from the old days, to whom you explained the equations and the algorithmics you had in mind, and they would write the code.  Then you would go through laborious debugging, and finally specify the data runs that you had to make.  You could plan on two runs a day, and perhaps a third overnight if you talked nice to the computer people.

The programmers actually wrote down the lines of Fortran on 80-column sheets, precisely denoting where every character would go.  Then these sheets would be handed to the key-punch department that was staffed by all ladies (everyone knew that typing was women’s work) who would return a stack or boxes full of Hollerith formatted punch cards.

This was a long and laborious process, and in our department we young Turks soon took matters into our own hands.  All of us quickly learned Fortran, had a keypunch set up in our office area, and ‘fired’ the programming and keypunch departments.  Over time other engineering departments did the same, relegating the programmers to do Cobol programming for accounting, payroll, and inventory tracking.  The good programmers quickly left – going down the street to Disney where they started its Animatronics division – and from then on, all engineers did their own coding which became even easier when remote computing arrived (around 1970) that allowed us to write and upload both Fortran and Basic programs and get our output on teleprinters.  We now could make an unlimited number of runs per day – debugging became a breeze. 

A significant number of women started coming back to technology in the early 70s.  We then wound up with three degreed female engineers, but learning to work with them in a free-wheeling take-no-prisoners technical environment presented new challenges.  Technically they were our peers, but the ladies still had to be handled with kid gloves during project review meetings, and no-holds-barred technical critiques.

All this happened when men and women were still different, and before we all were mandated equal in the workplace.  That is until today, when we are again not equal in the workplace, and working with them, men again have to walk on eggshells lest … .

*****
We had a more recent technology related experience this summer when Jo Ann and I took our grown daughters to Estonia to experience the country, visit the ancestral farm, villages where my parents grew up, and my grandparents’ graves.  I have described my native Estonia as a small country on the Baltic that is acknowledged as perhaps the most advanced in its development of internet technologies and the adoption of these into its governance and the lives of its citizens.  (more in My Story)

To update these developments, I want to share a current article in The New Yorker that was sent to me by a reader and correspondent.  Entitled ‘Estonia, The Digital Republic’, the piece describes the most recent leap forward in implementing e-Estonia through a bevy of new online services and functions available to everyone from consumers and entrepreneurs to government administrators.  In Estonia broadband is ubiquitous, and everyone conducts their daily affairs on their smartphones, pads, and laptops.  As the leader in providing automation and utilizing the internet, that little country serves as a beacon as it demonstrates the art of the possible to more cumbersome larger countries like the US, and most certainly to technological backwaters such as own progressively punished Nevada County.

Estonia 2017 (updated)

George Rebane

Yesterday we returned home from a two-week visit to Estonia with our grown daughters.  The trip was a long-anticipated odyssey to introduce them to the other half of their heritage, to let them see and walk in the places about which they have heard from their grandparents and me.  For Jo Ann and me it was our second trip since Estonia regained its freedom in 1991.  The journey had special meaning because it was the first time our ‘core family’ had spent time alone after our girls grew up and went to college more than thirty years ago.  Now in their early 50s they are both mothers of grown children, and one is even a 4-time grandmother.

Proud grandparents brag about granddaughter

George Rebane

Well, it’s time to toot Elizabeth’s horn. Jo Ann and I attended the science and math graduation ceremony here at the Tucson campus of the University of Arizona to watch our granddaughter Elizabeth graduate with dual degrees in Neuro & Cognitive Science and Molecular & Cellular Biology (easy for me to say).  She was joined by her parents along with brother Lucas and sister Catherine, both still in school.  The kids are pictured below.

Elizabeth finished her studies in three and a half years while working as a research assistant in her professors’ laboratories. The next step is to immediately enter grad school for an appropriate PhD.  Applications have gone out and now the waiting begins.  Tonight the celebration will continue with a very large meal that has virtually zero chance of being heart healthy.  Another milestone in our family.

Back to Fort Sill in place and time

George Rebane

We got home yesterday afternoon from a visit to Ft Sill, OK and Denver, CO, a trip that also let us catch up with a lot of what’s happening in the country.  Ft Sill is the world’s preeminent artillery development and training center.  If you are an American cannon cocker or tactical missile man (Army or Marine), you have gone through Ft Sill.  The place is located on an ideal patch of land that has little use for things other than maneuvering guns and impacting shells.  All of us who graduated from there agreed that ‘if the world needed an enema, then they’d stick the tube …’, you know the rest.

The Army base itself is a small, well-kept city home to thousands of GIs and their dependents.  We also train our allies’ artillery officers there, so you see a lot of different uniforms on base.  On this occasion the historical (pre-Civil War) fort hosted the veterans who served in Babenhausen, Germany during the Cold War from the 1940s to the 1980s.  Babenhausen was already well-established in American history by the time WW2 ended.

Located in Hessen, Babenhausen was the home base of the Hessians who fought ineffectively (cf. Washington crossing the Delaware) for the British in our Revolutionary War when King George III got a deal for mercenaries he couldn’t refuse from a long lost German cousin who ran into some money problems.  (see also ‘Babenhausen Remembers’)

Scattershots – 22jun15 (updated 27jun15)

George Rebane

Economic development in Nevada County must address what many of us see as the three legs of the county’s existing economy – IT based industry, tourism, and retirees.  Absent public service employees, these are the three main cash importers.  There are initiatives in place to attract more IT companies through increased broadband availability and a new business incubator in the plans.

But not much is being done to boost the other two areas.  (Yesterday’s NC Bike Race Classic was a sad commentary on tourism.)  Additionally, aging retirees who want to downsize from their big houses on acres of land are forced to seek their next abodes elsewhere (quality condos, smaller houses in protected neighborhoods, variable care communities, …).  Tourism is suffering because we don’t have enough quality beds at reasonable prices to attract more weekend visitors who want to attend evening performances from our rich palette of cultural offerings – Music in the Mountains, In Concert Sierra, Center for the Arts, theaters, the fairground, … .

People driving up here from the flats would rather have a nice dinner, attend a performance (or two), perhaps enjoy an after dinner libation, and then hit the sack instead of driving two plus hours, tired and three sheets to the wind, to get back home.  They would much rather wake up refreshed, have a good breakfast or brunch, and then be on their way.  The boost to our economy that such a weekend agenda would provide, multiplied a thousand times, is not hard to imagine.  Another decent hotel or two, and a proper performance center would fit the bill nicely.

But in addition to the intrinsic financial risks that such projects normally entail, our county and cities add on their own regulatory and procedural burdens as recently pointed by our RL Bob Crabb in the nearby cartoon filched from The Union.  Our electeds deny all this by putting the onus on those dumb and good-for-nothing outsiders who are not bellying up to the Planning Department counters with their project plans.  But reality advises otherwise, Nevada County’s ‘development friendly’ reputation is known far and wide.  And without our chambers of commerce and planning jurisdictions actively simplifying the development processes, and then inviting people to come up here and see the opportunities, nothing much more will happen in these woods.  Tourists won’t come and retirees will continue to leak out at greater than replacement rates.

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is in the news again with the Pope’s controversial encyclical and the next UN global warming conference in the fall.  Here on RR the debate between the Skeptics and True Believers has revived in spades to the point where one reader (True Believer) has challenged another reader (Skeptic) to a public debate in which the TB promises to maximally embarrass the Skeptic, presumably by exposing the Skeptic’s case allegedly based on both weak science and a fundamental misunderstanding of the involved science.  Here are my two cents on this challenge.

The problem is that the TB has no technical credentials and bases his belief in AGW on politically sponsored reports, at least twice removed, that cite discredited datasets, ignore major areas of science impacting earth’s climate, and evince profound ignorance about the design, care, and feeding of complex climate models (the so-called General Circulation Models, GCMs).  At the same time the Skeptic is a scientifically read and astute engineer, fully credentialed with multiple degrees that attest his technological pedigree.  I began thinking about the conduct of such a media reported/recorded debate, and who would derive what profit from it.  The bottom line is that I couldn’t think of any way that such a debate between those two would shed useful light on the issue, or in any way contribute toward a resolution of it in the minds of its most likely audience.

This conclusion is abetted when we consider the TB’s more complete resume that includes being a well-practiced and rehearsed activist for almost all the leftwing causes and initiatives that have made California into the taxed, regulated, indebted, and economic basket case that it is today.  The TB will have no alternative but to spout today’s made-simple for broad, unread audiences, and politicized ‘consensus science’.  And the Skeptic will be forced to take his refuting arguments to the next technical levels where few, if any, will be able to follow – all the while the TB baselessly disparaging every one of those arguments in a manner that elicits uncritical nodding heads among the gruberized, and leaves the others numb.  Everyone knows that such audiences have been meticulously prepared to either ignore or mistrust all uncomfortable and confrontational arguments about AGW aka global warming aka climate change.

What’s more disturbing is that the entire True Believer society has for some time been quite comfortable with the way their message has massaged the masses.  Team Gore, to their strategic credit, even refuses to put their best scientists on a stage with skeptical scientists to discuss the evidence in front of a technically knowledgeable audience.  While the skeptics contend every emerging piece of IPCC’s evidence for AGW in its detail, their arguments are summarily ignored.  The only recognition of the Skeptics is a vague reference to them as ‘Climate Change Deniers’, or worse, ‘Climate Deniers’, inferring the existence of a discredited knuckle-dragging, flat earth bunch howling in the wings.

And the saddest part for our overall body politic is that such debates are now beyond the pale for many other socially important issues that relate to numbers and/or science.  And, of course, they all do.  My conclusion is that polarized dumbth (q.v.) has reached a level in the land such that only slogans shouted across the chasm serve as an acceptable substitute for dialogue.

[23jun15 update]  The topic of saving the world’s sovereign nation-states and distinct, regionally anchored cultures has long been a topic of debate and discussion on RR.  The EU is now in the throes of attempting to reconcile a good-sounding but poorly thought theory of how manage fractional or partial sovereignty.  And the problem comes down to the question of what is a border.  It turns out that having complete control of your borders is fundamental to a people’s self-determination.  Europe is rediscovering that now, and we (at least the progressive ‘we’) in America don’t have a clue.  A strongly recommended read on this is ‘What Borders Mean to Europe’ by Stratfor’s George Friedman.  The piece is like a periscope into our own future, a future that is already underway.

[27jun15 update]  In the late 00s I talked Jo Ann into letting me become a student pilot.  Reluctantly she gave permission (which I still don’t have for riding a motorcycle) and I started my lessons at Alpine Aviation under the tutelage of owner Gordon Mills.  Anyway, I progressed appropriately and on a sunny day soloed – three takeoffs and landings, followed by a longer 'victory lap' solo flight over these Sierra foothills, especially beautiful when you’re alone in the airplane.  The cross country phase of training followed with my taking the occasional solo flights in the single-engine, low-wing Diamond DA-20.

In my defense contractor days I was privileged to work with men I consider to be the best pilots in the world – carrier based, light attack – these guys (gals?) fly their F-18s so low as to occasionally get tree branches in their undercarriage.  I worked with the squadrons at Lemoore (light attack) NAS and Whidbey Island (medium attack) NAS in the design of advanced in cockpit displays for successful penetration of complex sensor and SAM fields during target in/egress.  From my naval aviator colleagues I learned about ‘OK-3’ carrier landings – tailhooking the third of four arresting cables that puts your aircraft in the optimum spot on the deck for rapid repositioning, thereby allowing a tight final approach pattern to get returning fuel-starved aircraft quickly onboard with a minimum of fuss.  The logged OK-3 landings on a pilot’s record were very important to good assignments, promotions, and general bragging rights within a talented, exclusive, yet very competitive comradery.

So during a solo flight on final to Nevada County KGOO’s 25 (runway), I decided to nail an OK-3 landing.  I picked my precise touchdown point (where my ‘tailhook’ was going to snag the ‘#3 cable’) and set my glide path appropriately.  Well guess what? your junior league aviator nailed the KO-3, but in so doing sacrificed my flare so that I touched down what might charitably be characterized as a mite hard – and porpoised, bouncing back in the air.  When I brought that bucking DA-20 safely on the runway, I felt pretty red-faced knowing that someone else had probably seen that crappy landing and was grinning ear-to-ear.

Anyway, since landings have always been my favorite part of flying an airplane, I decided to taxi back, take-off again, go around the pattern, and redeem myself.  This I did, but as I was making my take-off run, I noticed that the airplane somehow seemed to be underpowered.  I was puzzled since the engine sounded normal as I lifted off after a longer than normal run and then went around.  After landing again (no OK-3 this time) I taxied back to the Alpine hangar to report on my experience.  Gordon came out and discovered that I had shredded six-inches of the propeller’s tips, which explained the weak performance of the aircraft on the second go around.  Anyway, that turned out to be an expensive flight, but a valuable lesson in piloting.

I continued my flight training after that, but was convinced by a same-age friend who had abandoned his own flight training, that I should also reconsider going on with something for which I would have limited time in the future.  The convincing argument, reinforced by Jo Ann, was that infrequent pilots who do not keep up their hours are a danger to themselves and others when they do climb into the cockpit as Pilot In Charge.  The stats tell the story, especially for older flyers.  So now I wistfully consider just going back and flying with an instructor on windy afternoons coming in on final in a steep forward-slip, then converting into a side-slip before touchdown.  Fun stuff, even if it isn’t an OK-3.

Sandbox - 21jun15

[I am writing this moments from when the earth's northern hemisphere tilts maximally in its summer nod to the sun.  And it's also Father's Day, a day when our young'uns take notice and tell us they really did appreciate our being around as they were growing up.  I've always thought of Father's Day as being a consolation prize bestowed so as not to leave the blatant worship of mothers and Motherhood in too stark of a contrast on the calendar of annual family observances - giving the old man a nod now and then goes a long way to complete the picture.  I invite readers to share a paragraph or two about how their own dads bent the twigs of trees now grown - I'll start.

My own dad was his parents' firstborn on the family farm, soon followed by a brother and sister.  His dad (after whom I am named) was a gruff man with little education and a lot of energy and courage - a veteran of both the Russo-Japanese War and the Estonian Revolution.  The farm was supposed to go to my dad, but he had been drafted, served in the Estonian Army's Signal Corps, seen the bright city lights, and was discharged as a skilled journeyman electrician.  No farm life for this son of the sod.

With a friend he started an electrical contracting business in Viljandi, married mom, and was surprised when I came soon after Hitler and Stalin had started dividing up Europe.  My dad's wisdom, recounted elsewhere in these pages, saved our collective hind ends when he got us out of Estonia before the Red Army invaded.  During the war he was a hero many times over, saving us and others to enjoy our lives in post-war displaced persons camps and then emigrate to freedom.

My dad knew how to do everything - he was also an artist and artisan, but that's another story.  The Rebanes climbed the economic ladder by working any and all kinds of jobs available, and buying and rebuilding fixer-upper homes.  As a consequence my youth was filled with lots of work after school - that was not unusual, in those times it was the norm.  Starting at the age of 11, my dad taught me to do everything needed to build a house.  He was just following in his dad's footsteps, and let me know that I was starting out a little late.  On the farm he already knew all the stuff I was just learning.  Imparting gratuitous self-esteem was not his strong suit.  By the time I was fourteen, dad had taught me to build an entire house from laying the foundation, through framing, roofing, drywall, electricity, plumbing, and painting.  My proudest moments were when he came home from work, looked over a piece of work I had done after school, and said "That'll do." before laying out tomorrow's jobs.  And then after mom (who also worked) had cleared supper, dad would get to work on the next building task.  I grew up in a construction zone.

But my dad never thought for a moment that I would follow in his footsteps, he made sure my Job One was getting an education because I would be going to college, the first in our family to do so.  After getting some years under my belt I would look back and see that everything he did was to enable me to have a better life than he and mom did.  And then, without first checking with me, he died when I was 31.  He left too early, and I still miss him.  gjr]

RR – no longer such an outlier

To jog the understanding is a greater feat, than to jog the memory: for it takes more to make a man think, than to make him remember. ...  Gracian #68

George Rebane

When RR launched back in 2007 its purpose was to capture my and my readers’ views on humanity’s efforts to concurrently prepare for or studiously ignore the advent of an epochal milestone in this planet’s ‘Story of Man’.  The topic matter and opinions recorded in these pages cover everything from geo-politics, culture, education, economics, history, science, and of course, the Singularity, in the advent of which we now find ourselves.  Readers recall that when we do realize that the Singularity has happened – I don’t believe we can predict that hour – all of our prepared plans and hopes will become moot.  A new age will start on this blue, brown, and white ball.

Reading postings from some years back, I knew then that my views within most of the listed areas were charitably ‘on the fringes’ of what passed for common wisdom in our media.  I was prepared for that since being on the fringes has been a common thread of my life.  So I took the obligatory slings and arrows from more mainstream folks as a matter of course.  But over the last few years things have begun changing as also noted by my correspondents.  My outlandish notions of yesteryear are being discovered and embraced by more and more observers of the human condition.  What was a fringe notion on, say, items like unfunded liabilities and its impact on public policy are now repeated as alarums so common as to be in danger of again being ignored because of their repetitions.  Or even more significantly, the undeflected growth of systemic unemployment due to accelerating technology and declining education in these pre-Singularity years.

Today one can point to such ideas starting to penetrate even the denser thickets of the Left (while the densest continue to be blissfully immune).  I was reminded of this most recently during the critiques of President Obama’s SOU speech.  As Exhibit A I offer the 22jan15 commentary – ‘Obama’s American Sniper’ - of Wall Street Journal’s deputy editorial director Daniel Henninger.  This respected award-winning journalist and commentator is read internationally as an established voice of America’s Right.  The referenced column on the recent SOU speech makes arguments about Obama (as a chronic liar) and America’s geo-politics that could have been drawn straight from my ‘fringe’ commentaries of yesteryear, and now few would find them surprising in the pages of one of the world’s pinnacle (and yes, profitable) publications covering business, politics, and international affairs.

Of course I am heartened to see these ideas begin to leak into the mainstream.  And it matters not if the recently arrived make claims to have always been here.  The point is that such a migration of ideas spells hope that we may yet reverse course, and, as a society, struggle against all odds back to the tipping point.  My hope is that humans will meet the Singularity as a sane species worthy to participate in a trans-human future, instead of having become yet another dying species witnessing the dawn of post-humanity.  Such are my musings as I ponder the future of RR, and the efforts required to stay the course.  Thoughts?

Ruminations – 15nov14

George Rebane

Random thoughts on a Saturday morning.  The beautiful fall foliage on our trees is now on the back side of the power curve, but still saying ‘look at me’ as the last leaves drift to the ground.  At our house I make a big breakfast on Saturday morning.  It is always a panful of vegetables sautéed in spices and olive oil, and then my piece de resistance Eggs Rebane.  The latter is a multi-layered frittata that has all kinds of goodies in it of different kinds of meats, cheeses, spices, layered squashes in season, etc.  During the summers starting about the end of June, Jo Ann’s ‘farm’ starts pumping out veggies of marvelous varieties that overwhelm our table and larder, and become a steady supply to friends who are similarly addicted.  Sunday was the last harvest of late tomatoes and squashes.  Now the farm will be readied for the long winter with just a few ‘perennials’ like chard and parsley left to weather the weather.

This morning was double duty for me since it was also Bread Day at our house.  When Jo Ann decides we need more bread, she takes out my two jars of sourdough starter from the bottom drawer of the frig, and sets them on the counter.  That tells me that the next day I make bread, a process that begins with recharging the starters in the evening and letting them bubble up overnight.  First thing in the morning I start my process of making two to four loaves of the requested breads, usually of two types.  I am now into my 17th year of being the family’s baker of literally all the bread we have eaten.  I use only my own natural leaveners and make the whole thing by hand, not even the KitchenAid mixer gets to play.   Our neighbor has also caught the baking bug, and we often ‘talk bread’.  Some day I threaten to make an outdoor baking oven that I can pump up to 700+F for that awesome oven spring.

We eat breakfast with our print copies of The Union, the WSJ, and the everpresent iPad for online news, commentary, and answers to reference questions served up by the very responsive Siri, Ms Google, and WolframAlpha.  This morning’s WSJ front page had the nearby picture of Germany’s Angela rubbing noses with a Maori dancer during her New Zealand visit.  I thought it wonderful how a European head-of-state (OK, Chancellor) can easily pay her respects to a foreign culture through such ceremonies and observing other local customs while on their travels.

Our presidents and diplomats have also shown such deference in similar situations – I always note how our guys and gals awkwardly keep both feet flat on the floor when sitting with Arabs and other Muslim notables.  Showing the soles of your shoes communicates disrespect in the world of Islam.

But these thoughts always remind me how asymmetrical are such international displays of cultural sensitivity.  On our part, we don’t ask or even expect our foreign guests to reciprocate our American customs.   From less developed countries their diplomats almost always arrive wearing some trappings of national or ethnic dress.  And when we feed, entertain, lace their palms with cash, or sit with them, we continue to defer to their sensitivities.  There is no reciprocal ‘When in Rome …’ behaviors required of or extended by our visitors (save wearing the odd cowboy hat at a ranch BBQ).  It is as if we were ashamed of our own cultural customs both overseas and at home.  For some reason we have to be the ever-sensitive ones while they bear no such burdens.  I don’t much cotton to such kow-towing because it brings us no profit here or around the world.

You are spared more because my bread dinger-ding just went off.

Happy Mother's Day

George Rebane

Ellen Rebane (1914 - 1990)

A Conservetarian Credo (updated 17dec16)

George Rebane

From time to time readers ask me questions about my ideology concerning this issue or that.  I believe I have answered almost all of those questions either in the 2,000+ posts on RR and/or marbled in the 42K+ comments that this forum has garnered.  However, since this is a place that attempts to dissect some pretty hairy issues, and we do try to hold each other’s feet to the fire when it comes to being consistent, if not coherent, during our debates, therefore it may be convenient if your host’s socio-political ideology, or structured belief system, or simply credo were to be found in one place.

I have perused my writings and a lengthier personal credo to assemble a first rough cut at what I call a ‘conservetarian credo’.  I know of no other commentator who has presented such a structured and explicit compendium of their ideology.  You can download the pdf here - Download A Conservetarian Credo_161217 .  As witnessed by its version date, this will be a living document added to and amended as new data becomes available, as I learn more, and as the error of my ways are made apparent to me.  I have maintained a written credo for some considerable time now (with more categories than socio-political), and have been very interested to see how it has evolved with the years.  I believe it to be a profitable undertaking and recommend it to others.

Also over the years, and specifically during the life of RR, I have made the strong statement that collectivists (especially our American collectivists) of whatever stripe always shun invitations to openly publish a document outlining their comprehensive socio-political beliefs.  I base this conclusion on experience and the simple reason that such collectivist tenets will inevitably be drawn from embarrassingly banal ‘motherhood and apple pie’ platitudes, or alternatively that their specificity will  prematurely expose things better left unsaid until a time when most collectivist goals are fait accompli.  In any event, my invitation to publish the credo of any of our left-leaning readers stands, and more strongly I remain forever intrigued with what a self-proclaimed middle-roader might fill such pages now that 40% of country claims to be so situated.

‘Geislingen DP Camp Years: 1945-49’

George Rebane

As I have been assembling sketches of my childhood European experience, I found myself avoiding the considerable time we spent in the Geislingen DP camp.  So much growing up happened there that I couldn’t seem to get my arms around the story that would do justice to the life and lives then lived.  On the grand scale we found ourselves in the middle of an epic of epochal proportions.  Few in America know what went on during those post-war years in Europe, and most likely fewer today care.  But WW2 and its aftermath cast a long shadow from which we have yet to fully emerge.  Moreover, it was a time and place from which America would welcome millions of immigrants to become its new citizens, new Americans who would help to bring back the country from depression and war, and usher it into its golden age.  Having survived the war, my family was part of that DP experience and eventual exodus to the new worlds that selectively beckoned those millions of European refugees.

My procrastination came to an end a month ago as our youngest granddaughter, Catherine, emailed me that she had chosen my early life as the subject of her junior year project in high school.  She had read the previous entries in the ‘My Story’ part of RR, and, of course, heard more stories about ‘Papa’ from her mom and grandparents.  But she also noticed the big hole in the My Story timeline of the European years.

Well, one thing that grandparents will never put on the back burner is an opportunity to pass on their history, experience, and (plenty of) advice when the occasion presents itself.  Heaven knows, such opportunities are already rare enough, and here she comes to actually give that last little nudge which sent me to the keyboard, and Jo Ann scurrying to break out the old tattered Rebane family picture albums.  Type, type, type with my editor-in-chief telling me to go back and not forget to add another episode or event that would complete or further illuminate the story.

Catherine got the hot-off-the-press drafts, and wrote a excellent version of my early years in the form of a boy’s ‘diary’ that I had (never) kept, and which was interspersed with editorial expansions in a definite adult voice.  It is a well-composed piece that made an enjoyable read besides giving me a view of those early years through her eyes.  Now, for the interested reader, I offer my version - Download Geislingen DP Camp Years_v130608.

‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ – 2013 style

George Rebane

[I'm not sure that much of this is comprehensible to younger generations, but many of us older people do hearken back to some grand years in the good old US of A.  Granted, time has worn off some of the rough edges.  Nevertheless, here're some ramblings to mark another milestone that we pass in an age that is so different from the America of days gone by.]

For those of us born in the 1940s, it’s already in the bank, and no one can take it away.  We have been blessed to live in the iconic America that reached its apex during the 1945 – 1965 period.  It was an age when America was the world’s white knight, having emerged victorious from vanquishing two global foes, then pouring its enormous wealth and productive capability into rebuilding a shattered world, and setting itself to stand guard against the surviving evil of communism.  We had a common public culture, boundless energy, and a pragmatic vision of how we would continue to make ours a more perfect Union.

But best of all, most of us were free and working to bring such freedoms to all.  The beguiling bamboozle of 1930s socialism cum communism, that so enthralled America’s leftwing elite during the Depression, finally showed its true face as the Iron Curtain divided Europe into the history’s largest prison camp on one side, and thriving nations reaching new levels of prosperity and quality of life on the other side.  In schools we learned about American exceptionalism and then lived it as we hit the streets when school let out.

We were also free to work our butts off.  As kids we could get about any job we could talk ourselves into.  We flipped burgers, carried papers, mowed lawns, or even worked as field hands doing stoop labor on farms.  As we got older we could get jobs using the skills we learned in high school shop classes.  My own jobs path was going from a farm laborer into aerospace light manufacturing as a sixteen year old cutting and brazing jet engine electrical conduits.  My next stop was an aerospace draftsman drawing awesomely complex functional diagrams of submarine combat systems as a teenager in college.

There was no government to tell employers that they could not hire me, and no government telling me I could not work here or there, or taking my parents to task for ‘abusing’ me if I decided to work long hours months at a time.  In fact, I bought my first car, a used 1957 VW bug.  After arriving in Los Angeles, I registered with the California Youth Employment Agency in Hollywood.  They sent me on called-in daily jobs located from Orange County to the canyon country north of Los Angeles.  I did whatever my boss for a day (or more) would tell me to do, whether it would be to wash windows, clean out the garage, rake leaves, polish floors, or paint a porch.  America’s youth was then enabled by the state, not inhibited.

And fearing government was something we learned about in school and saw in other countries, but none of us experienced government overreach in our own or our parents’ lives.  We could go where we wanted and do what we wanted (within reason of course).  Public lands were then truly public lands.  We could throw a backpack and gun (it had to be visible) into the back seat, and before the sun set we’d be in a very remote spot sitting around a campfire with a dubiously cooked meal warming our bellies.

Our entertainments were salutary to God and country.  Coming out of a movie – whether a grand western, a biblical epic, filmed version of a Broadway musical, war story, or comedy – you invariably felt uplifted.  Hollywood was on the case, giving us a gratifying respite from our daily labors which were many.  And television echoed all that during its ‘golden age’, those shows whose recorded kinescopes are still entertaining and somewhat unbelievable to the current generations.

Administrivia – taking leave of The Union

George Rebane

All good things must come to an end, and the addition of some new responsibilities required me to drop something.  On 4 December 2012 I sent the following email – titled ‘Rebane’s column, -86-‘  -  to The Union’s publisher and managing editor.  I appreciated their cordial replies, and now look forward to being an Other Voice sans deadlines.

Dear People – Due to other mounting commitments, my run as a regular columnist for The Union must now end.  On reflection, I should have withdrawn immediately after the management changeover earlier this year so that you could better remake the paper in its new image, and not have to deal with clinging barnacles from the past.  From time to time I will continue to submit Other Voices articles which you may publish at your pleasure.  Thank you for having allowed me to share my views with your readership.

‘Does God Watch Paint Dry?’

George Rebane

[I fear that this posting will be of little interest to most RR readers.  It is memorialized here as part of my personal record of thought that I am willing to share with those few whose interest might be piqued by such subjects.]

Religions in general and Christianity in particular are suffering an assault of reason that has reached a zenith through the ascendancy and promulgation of secular humanism (q.v.) that is now touted as the all-explaining worldview held by the educated in every land.  Christianity has been on the wane in developed countries – in Europe it is mostly extinct as a belief system – enjoying gains only among the pre-educated in less developed nations.  Staying its current course, Christianity may expect a similar fate in those countries when they too become developed.

In my extended study of this phenomenon, the fundamental reason for the retreat of Christianity is that its adherents and protagonists continue to teach the faith through promotion of tenets that are easily rejected in this age of accessible mega-information.  What is taught from the pulpit on Sunday does not match the encountered reality during the rest of the week.  And when the supplicants and/or prospects present these dichotomies to Christianity’s purveyors, their counter to reason is ‘You must believe more strongly in the teachings, and then your questions and questioning will disappear.’

Most people answer that they don’t want to become a person in whom such patently reasonable inquiries are no longer possible.  They see it as undergoing a form of intellectual lobotomy, which, at a minimum, will destroy the salutary parts of the image they have of themselves.  And they turn away, proclaiming to other potential seekers the details of their frustrated attempts to understand.

As some previous posts have revealed, I am among those Christians who hold that Christianity is a most plausible and simple system (see Occam) of belief, one that lays the intellectual foundation for our cosmology and provides the most satisfying answers to the deepest teleological questions (the whys) about our existence and fate.  One can even argue that there exist perspectives from which Christianity is falsifiable.  However, such arguments cannot be made from what we may label as the commonly taught ‘everyday Christianity’.

To all this, I believe, there is a powerful yet little known alternative interpretation that can lay to rest the standard litany of doubts about the scriptural history and expression of the faith.  One of the most compelling conundrums for the questioning seeker can be summarized by, 'Does God Watch Paint Dry?'. This is the title of a little apology I have composed for those who would still like to discover whether for them Christianity can serve as an illuminated path between intellect and faith.  Perhaps it will be of help.