Dave's Blog

Monday, August 26, 2002 10:18:49 AM 

An Open Love Letter

Today is Margaret and my first anniversary!  

It's been a good year.  One might say, "Yes, the first year of 
marriage is supposed to be a good year."  If you make it through a 
year then by definition it was good, but I mean it has been a very 
good year!  

I have had a chance to immerse myself in my passion for teaching, and 
to encourage and console dozens of budding technical people in a 
puzzling market.  I have had a chance to see what a very intermittent 
income stream educators get to experience, and to choose to move back 
into the corporate venue.  I have had a chance to look as a relatively 
disinterested party at the fragmented, checklist-oriented methods 
used to recruit technical staff, in the face of a growing awareness 
among managers that when the rubber meets the road the social and 
problem-solving skills one possesses are at least as valuable as the 
specifics that show up on a checklist.  I have learned to apply the 
patience of a metaphysician as circumstances change before me, to 
know that those circumstances have no power over me, to know that the 
Universe is infinitely abundant and that as a child and part of the 
Universe the abundance is here for me to share.  I have managed to do 
all this with the patient and loving support of Margaret, my partner 
in life.  

Margaret has maintained a wonderful lifestyle herself, continuing her 
role in the banking world while she explored her mission of helping 
everyone in the world discover its abundance and their right of 
inheritance to it.  She has had the chance to help people discover 
their higher consciousness and to move up in the world, floating to 
the new level of prosperity that they have attained, accepting the 
abundance that is always around them and constantly offered to them.  
She has managed to do all this with the patient and loving support of 
me, her partner in life.  

We have each obtained a Doctor of Divinity certificate from the 
Universal Life Church, which is virtually free, but you have to ask 
for it.  We have celebrated Extreme Spirituality by doing all kinds of 
impossible things, like breaking arrows with our throats, walking on 
glass, skydiving, and starting a new business.  We've moved into a 
new apartment with more space and a better view -- visible, happy 
evidence of our prosperity.  

The book I was planning to write devolved into this on-line diary, 
which has the advantage of giving me an outlet to clarify my thoughts, 
and the disadvantage (maybe!) of having a readership of less than 
twenty people.  That is, twenty people who regularly check in and see 
what I've been thinking lately.  That's not such a bad thing, as it 
also allows me to develop, and although alternative publishing is 
neither the foot in the door nor the road to riches, it can be the 
vehicle that provides the practice and recognition for both.  Most of 
all I have found my interests moving with each new opportunity, and 
have yet to clarify the area of life experience that others would 
wish to discover vicariously.  

I have managed to become more calm, more centered, happier, healthier, 
a better person over the last year.  My body is becoming stronger and 
cleaner, a visible barometer of the changes in my mind and spirit.  
Margaret also has evolved, becoming prettier, smarter, more charming 
and more compassionate, an angel to me and to many others.  

There is the matter of how we wish to celebrate our anniversary.  On 
its surface it's a day like any other.  Underneath, marking the 
renewal of our dedication to supporting each others' growth and 
adventure, it is reasonable to expect a celebration.  Perhaps the best 
celebration will be to recite our original vows and to 
consider a statement of intent for what they will mean to us in the 
year to come.  As I observe the little miracles in my life, for 
example, I am certain that my awareness of them comes in part through 
Margaret's encouragement for me to explore that part of my reality.  

Perhaps at another anniversary we shall throw a big party and invite 
all our friends and relatives and the press and people who have the 
advertisement from the newspaper, but this year we will celebrate in 
private, enjoying the knowledge that we have, indeed, passed a 
significant milestone.  One year is long enough to know that we do 
indeed share happiness, long enough to discover that this is a better 
relationship than we had before, long enough to take pride in our 
reputation as a Human Awareness Institute success story.  At a HAI 
workshop we met each other, and right from the beginning we 
communicated honestly and openly.  Dedicating our lives to growth, 
open loving acceptance, respect and communication, we found we could 
dedicate ourselves more fully and meaningfully together than alone.  
Our participation in a Couples Workshop may be an anniversary as 
significant as this one, where we look openly and free of judgment at 
ourselves and each other, clear our differences and our past, and move 
fresh into our new year together.  

For my part I am glad that Margaret shares her life with me, that when 
I wake up in the morning it is she that smiles back at me, that when 
emotions take possession of my attention Margaret is there to share 
them and to help me grow through them.  I love this beautiful woman, 
this soul mate, and I thank God that we are privileged to share this 
life together.  


Thursday, August 22, 2002 2:18:07 AM 

I'm humming along, simply appeasing my urge to write, cheaply 
satisfying my urge to publish, regardless of who in the Universe may be 
reading ... and then a technical question takes me into a new 
realization.  I was wondering how far back the Google caches were 
lagging on my blog, and looked up "Dave's Blog."  Well, looky here!  
There are a lot of them, and one Dave is actually collecting a list!  
After a few hours of looking over the works of my fellow bloggers, I 
am truly humbled and amazed.  Some professionals blog, some make the 
news with their combat against the corporate machine, some produce 
truly amazing graphics and web pages.  How many more there must be, 
not named Dave.  I now feel it is a small world, yet large as well.  
The kind of feeling I get at 5:30 pm on the Metro when the entire 
City seems to be crammed in my very train car.  I'm sure people from 
London to Tokyo can relate to that!  A small world, indeed, but a lot 
of people.  
 

Wednesday, August 21, 2002 12:37:11 AM 

A friend who read my skydiving article asked me what radical action 
I had taken lately that used my new understanding of fear.  I had 
stated that my new idea of fear was simply excitement combined with 
ignorance, and that if I knew what questions to ask to satisfy my 
lack of knowledge, the fear would dissolve.  

Teaching a class turned out to be my trial of this new understanding.  
As my contract for teaching Unix/C/C++ programming disappeared, I sent 
out a bulletin to several schools declaring my willingness to teach, 
because I had found teaching to be an extremely satisfying experience.  
One school called back.  The academic dean asked whether I would be 
willing to teach a class in the summer session.  It was a class on 
decision modeling, something that I had studied in my own MBA 
curriculum.  "Yes," I said, "I could do that."  

Now what I used to recognize as fear came up to greet me in a very big 
hurry.  What exactly was decision modeling these days?  Where would I 
find enough material to develop a syllabus?  How was I going to present 
myself as an authority?  How would I greet the challenges of students 
who would inevitably see through my fear and call me on my charade?  
How was I going to learn all the material in an academic course and 
stay enough ahead of the students to answer their questions?  I had 
only two weeks to find out!  

Oh, it got better.  The dean's office and the bookstore called me a 
week before the class began and asked me to place my book order for 
the class.  At least I had found out that the professors who regularly 
taught the course were in San Francisco, and I had asked them for 
advice.  Both responded -- the one who designed the course originally 
sent me his personal class notes, and both of them gave me a list of 
recommended books.  I had ordered all the books from Amazon, shipped 
overnight, at no small expense, and at least had an idea of what the 
course could cover.  I had looked at all the other professors' web 
sites and learned how they handled the material, and I had read their 
syllabi.  There was a good deal of information available on the web 
if I wished to direct the students' attention to it.  I had read the 
University's course description and had discovered that no one book 
appeared to cover all the topics.  

I decided to order a book that included the necessary software on a 
CD.  Since I was teaching a night class the very least I could do for 
my students and for me was to put as much material in their hands as 
I could, quickly as possible.  Then I wrote my own syllabus, copying 
the course architect's syllabus as much as I could, changing all the 
negative messages into positive ones or leaving them out.  In a few 
days I actually had a decent-looking syllabus!  

The "fear" was still with me, after I had chosen the book and written 
the syllabus.  Recognizing the adrenaline, I asked myself what I 
needed to know to bring the excitement level down.  All the other 
questions came back to mind.  I put myself in the place of a student, 
and asked myself what I would respect and require of a professor 
teaching the course.  

Then it struck me -- this was a graduate-level seminar!  The students 
would teach themselves!  It didn't have to take a lecture format.  
The learning would come through exercises and class participation.  
Straight lectures were for undergraduates; graduates were expected to 
find their own way, with the guidance of the professor.  So, my role 
was not to be a taskmaster and authoritarian, it was to be a coach!  

Things straightened out after that.  I advised the students and took 
their advice as it came.  I put all the books I had ordered from 
Amazon on reserve in the library so the students could access them 
freely.  We worked together on our project, making it through the 
curriculum.  I recommended a second book to cover the missing 
material, one which also included a CD, and the students bought it.  
I let the students make their project presentations to the class 
and encouraged class discussions to round out their understanding.  I 
admitted freely that I was not an ultimate authority and that we were 
learning together.  I used grading policy to shape behavior, rather 
than to create dissention and competition.  For the most part the 
students appreciated my position, and they respectfully called me 
professor all the way through.  

We made it!  Several of the students asked me if I would be teaching 
again in the future.  One of them thanked me for the fun class, and 
for contributing to it myself.  She noted that even though the subject 
was hard, I made it enjoyable!  So once again, having conquered my 
fear, I found teaching to be an extremely satisfying experience.  


Friday, August 16, 2002 2:21:31 PM 

Is the expert the person with all the answers?  

Last month I was talking with some students about their training in 
system administration and programming.  One of them commented that it 
was simple enough to go onto a job and begin with the training she  
had, but that to become a consultant would require her to learn nearly  
everything.  She explained that it was OK for her to ask questions as 
a new employee, but as a consultant she would have to know all the 
answers.  

To me, that's not exactly how it works.  As a  successful consultant 
I don't walk into a company and begin dispensing wisdom.  First, I  
need to orient myself to the company culture, find out what their 
issues are, and figure out who knows what.  Then, I need to find out 
what has been done to settle the issue I'm consulting on, what has 
succeeded, what has failed, and who has been miffed by the outcome.  
Last, I need to go over the entire plan and make sure I understand it 
forwards and backwards.  In the process of coming to an understanding 
of the plan, I ask lots of questions.  "What does this box represent?  
Who owns it?  What cable and devices make up this little black line?  
Do you have the cable now?  May I see it?  Has it been ordered?  When 
was the last follow-up?  Who is the salesperson?  What needs to be 
done to make the real environment look like this plan?"  Asking the 
right questions along the way will help the client get a clear 
picture of current conditions versus planned conditions, and will 
clarify the path to get from here to there.  As my consulting moves 
to higher and higher levels, I find that the answers I can provide 
become much less important than the questions, and that clients are 
happy to have me on hand to ask the right questions for them.  


8/7/2002

Today Margaret and I have been awarded Doctor of Divinity degrees by 
the Universal Life Church.  They don't certify a curriculum of study, 
but they do get rid of any feeling that a more advanced degree might 
somehow validate our competence.  We know everything now, and so do 
you.  All the knowledge of the Universe is available all the time, to 
everyone.  We trust God to give us just the right information at 
just the right time.  


Sunday, August 04, 2002 11:29:13 PM

Today is International Forgiveness Day.  I attended the celebration 
at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco.  In an 
age when the Taurean mode seems to be struggling to dominate, the 
Arean to maintain, and the Aquarian to emerge, it is worthwhile to 
reflect on the foundations of peace.  The International Day of 
Forgiveness has been established to promote peace and understanding 
worldwide, to advance civilization to civility.  

Early in the afternoon Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed that the City 
recognized the International Day of Forgiveness.  One of my early 
afternoon epiphanies occurred when I saw and greeted Julie Layne.  
An accomplished Bay Area musician, Julie had worked with me at a 
computer manufacturer in the middle 1990s.  Julie was there for me 
this afternoon; her presence reminded me that all is right with the 
world, and that the past no longer has power over me.  

I had come to watch the East Bay Gospel Choir perform.  I was there 
early enough to hear some warm-up rehearsals, and then I was happy 
to listen to their powerful performances throughout the afternoon's 
program.  

I was surprised by a gift to all of us from Colin Tipping and Fred 
Luskin, two champions of forgiveness that were honored this afternoon.  
They led us through forgiveness exercises that took us into direct 
involvement with the theme of the day.  

Then the honored heroes of forgiveness shared their lessons and 
missions with us all.  

Kelly Campbell, whose brother-in-law died in the air attack on the 
Pentagon last year, became active in promoting forgiveness both in 
the United States and in Afghanistan.  Her approach was to work 
directly with the families in both countries who had suffered loss.  
Her story was both heart-wrenching and heart-warming.  

Aqeela and Daude Sherills were two men of vision in Watts, the 
war-torn district of Los Angeles.  They described the unpublished 
and ongoing civil war in the United States.  Then they described how 
they had laid down their arms and picked up responsibility, founding 
a community organization that attacked the causes of conflict, not 
the persons in conflict.  They emphasized the use of peaceful means 
to achieve peaceful ends, and how their organization, the Community 
Self Determination Institute, was working to combat poverty and to 
promote dialogue and peace.  Serious about their mission, they had 
gone to places of global conflict to study successful peace processes 
they could implement in their home town.  

Demetrius Williams, a San Franciscan, co-founded the Bayview/Hunters 
Point Coalition on Crime Prevention.  He was honored for working to 
bring the youth of the City to sanity, to lay down their guns and 
knives, and to work for peace and prosperity.  His organization asked 
for and received advice from the Community Self Determination 
Institute in Los Angeles, and is adding their principles and methods 
to those developed locally.  

As the students and faculty of San Francisco State University 
proclaimed last fall, "love is stronger than hate."  Communication is 
stronger than combat, and peace is stronger than war.  It is our 
destiny as intelligent, inspired, responsible people, to live that 
principle.  


Saturday, August 03, 2002 11:49:09 PM

August 3, 1857: George F. FitzGerald, Irish physicist who postulated 
the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, born. 
 
Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction

also called space contraction, in relativity physics, the shortening 
of an object along the direction of its motion relative to an 
observer. Dimensions in other directions are not contracted. The 
concept of the contraction was proposed by the Irish physicist  
George FitzGerald in 1889, and it was thereafter independently 
developed by Hendrik Lorentz of The Netherlands. The Michelson-Morley 
experiment in the 1880s had challenged the postulates of classical 
physics by proving that the speed of light is the same for all 
observers, regardless of their relative motion. FitzGerald and 
Lorentz attempted to preserve the classical concepts by demonstrating 
the manner in which space contraction of the measuring apparatus 
would reduce the apparent constancy of the speed of light to the 
status of an experimental artifact. 

In 1905 the German-American physicist Albert Einstein reversed the 
classical view by proposing that the speed of light is indeed a 
universal constant and showing that space contraction then becomes a 
logical consequence of the relative motion of different observers. 
Significant at speeds approaching that of light, the contraction is 
a consequence of the properties of space and time and does not depend 
on compression, cooling, or any similar physical disturbance. See 
also time dilation.

--"Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction" Encyclopædia Britannica
  <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=50131>
  [Accessed August 4, 2002].  

Today I wore my Calistoga hot air balloon pin to honor the evolution 
of science and philosophy, a reminder that "everything we know is 
wrong."  Not wrong in the sense that it is completely unreliable, 
but wrong in the sense that the visible, apparent truth is always 
changing.  There was a time the public knew man could not fly; this 
year a man flew around the world in a hot air balloon.  

Fitzgerald was responding to the news of the day, as Michelson and 
Morley had published an experiment in which they attempted to measure 
the speed of the earth through the ether.  They reasoned that if the 
electromagnetic waves, which Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell 
had described, were carried through a medium just as all known 
physical waves were, then by a comparison of them the speed of the 
earth through this medium could be measured.  Their experiment was 
designed to beam coherent light (before lasers!) at right angles for 
equal distances, and compare the phase of the returning beams.  By 
setting their apparatus on a rotating table (which, among other things, 
floated on a mercury bed -- we wouldn't do that today) they could 
compare all right-angle relationships and discover the speed no 
matter which direction the earth was moving.  The news that there was 
no phase shift in any direction floored the scientific community.  

Fitzgerald, as well as Einstein, put logic to the service of 
experiment.  Fitzgerald postulated that the experimental apparatus 
contracted; Einstein postulated that space itself contracted.  We 
all know which theory bore the support of scientists who followed in 
the 20th Century.  

I have seen two articles this week on the life and character of 
Albert Einstein.  One was published on page A3 in the August 2nd 
Investors Business Daily; the other was written by Dr. Mort Orman 
in 1995.  Both articles admonished us to question our common sense, 
question reality, question knowledge itself.  Both articles credited 
Albert Einstein with the genius of changing the structure of the 
Universe with bold new thinking.  However, Einstein was thinking 
about and commenting on the scientific discoveries of the day.  His 
supposition that space and not physical objects (is there a 
difference?) contracted was just one step beyond the idea that space 
or objects could contract at all.  

I remember reading in engineering school that Einstein's most famous 
equation, E = MC^2, was also derived from the works of Max Planck, 
whose equation E = (h)( nu ) was published circa 1900.  Einstein 
received his Nobel Prize in physics for explaining the photoelectric 
effect, discovered by Heinrich Herz in 1887.  

What was most remarkable about Einstein, then, was his ability to 
explain to the scientific community and to the public the phenomena 
they had observed of late, in a way that everyone could understand.  
Newtonian physics apparently went out the window with Einstein's 
explanations, and Einstein was a world hero by the time he died in 
1953.  

What of George Fitzgerald?  Although his theory was not as widely 
accepted, and not as general as those of Einstein's, he outlined a 
practical way to produce radio waves, helping to lay the foundation 
for all modern wireless communication.  He died in 1901, too early to 
see the elegant general refinement that Einstein would apply to the 
idea of physical contraction through motion.  

We see that at the turn of the last century physics was in a period 
of drastic change.  We celebrate the mythology of a hero of physics, 
who was able to popularize and integrate the discoveries of the day, 
banishing Newton to the annals of the past.  But was Newton banished?  
A century later, Newtonian physics still dominates the popular mind.  
Relativity, although taught in colleges and universities, still 
eludes the common man.  "What relevance has relativity to me?" asks 
this man, as he uses the CD-ROM player which depends intimately upon 
those century-old discoveries.  The Universe has already changed to 
the point that the common man's perception is a lie.  

Time has not stood still.  New discoveries have been made, new 
theories presented and tested.  Light now moves at any speed we wish;  
we can make it move faster or bring it to a dead stop.  New theorists 
such as Stephen Hawking have replaced Einsteinian physics with a new 
Universe, and even most college students have been left behind.  

All this reminds me of the two classes I took in chemistry; it only 
took me six weeks to realize that I was being presented a history of 
the evolution of chemical theory.  Then, behold, years later I found 
that at the very peak of this evolution of chemical history was the 
use of physics.  Chemistry and physics were not two disciplines, but 
one.  

Behind this changing, ephemeral, apparent truth there is constant 
truth.  Just because we have preceived the world as flat, the sun as 
revolving around the earth, the Universe as curved, the speed of 
light as constant, does not mean that these phenomena have changed as 
our understanding did.  The Universe is merrily doing what it has 
always done, regardless of our understanding.  Each perception and 
refinement that some in their ignorant arrogance have called the 
final refinement, has had some glimpse of the underlying truth in it.  
At least, in the chemistry classes, my professor noted that each of 
the ancient and modern theories still has its place in practical 
application.  Each world view is valid for its own purposes.  The 
idea behind the world view, the world itself, is unchanging.  We 
credit the idea of "the idea" to Plato, 2,400 years ago:  

According to Plato, all of the things that men perceive with their 
senses appear to be but very imperfect copies of the eternal Ideas. 
The most important and fundamental one of these is the Idea of the  
Good. It is “beyond being and knowledge,” yet it is the foundation 
of both. “Being” in this connection does not mean existence, but 
being something specific—a man, a lion, or a house—being recognizable 
by its quality or shape. 

Knowledge begins with a perception of these earthly shapes, but it 
ascends from there to the higher realm of Ideas, which is 
approachable to the human mind. 

--"philosophy, history of" Encyclopædia Britannica
  <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=115380>
  [Accessed August 4, 2002]. 

No amount of evolution of science has escaped the fundamental idea of 
"the idea."  Behind all our perceptions of the truth, behind all of 
our temporal, apparent truths, a real truth is lurking.  Einstein was 
able to get a better view than many of his peers and, later, his 
fans.  Hawking was able to get a better view.  Others will get an 
even better view.  But the Universe doesn't change.  The Idea, the 
universal, unchanging truth of everything, which has always been here 
and will always be here, continues to reveal itself one discovery, 
one idea at a time.  


Thursday, August 01, 2002 5:34:40 AM

The Recession of 2001 

It's official.  The GDP figures have been revised downward, as 
reported in Business Week:  


The July 31 report contains one other interesting nugget. Growth 
figures for the first, second, and third quarters of 2001 were 
revised lower into negative territory -- a cumulative decline of 
2.5%. This presents a much weaker trajectory than previously 
thought. The upshot: The recent recession stretched out over the 
first three quarters of 2001, in contrast to the brief third-quarter 
slump of 1.3% portrayed by previous data. 

This is similar to the pattern in the last recession in 1990-91, 
when the downturn in reported data was revised sharply in the first 
set of annual revisions to coincide more closely with the recession 
dates chosen by the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business 
Cycle Dating Committee. 

The upshot: Investors should note that though top-line GDP is lower 
than expected, the fundamentals of a recovery remain intact. 

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