Der Tannenbaum

Actually, I looked it up. "Tannenbaum" means fir tree, and this is a blue spruce. But be that as it may, for your enjoyment, we present, fresh from the slopes of the Medicine Bow National Forest near Centennial, WY... the Olson 2008 Christmas tree.



And of course the stash of Christmas presents that accumulated over the course of the month.



And to show off the cool pictures my 5-year-old camera can take, a no-ambient-light view of the tree:



You know Santa's fallen on hard times when he has to trade his sleigh in for a Mazda:

Meet the New Era of Bipartisanship and Unity, Same As the Old Era of Bipartisanship and Unity

Longest blog title ever. I know. Cool. We'll have to see if the whole thing comes out in the URL.

2008 will long be remembered as the year in which we set aside partisan bickering and attacks and came together in a spirit of unity and consensus. Kumbaya. Yeah right. (Warning: the following blog post contains graphic partisan bickering and brief depictions of snarkiness. Viewer discretion is advised.)

As you may or may not be aware, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut that caucuses with the Democrats (and indeed, was the Democrat's nominee for VP back in 2000) endorsed John McCain for president in 2008. He is also the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and of the Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate. Now that the election is over, some are calling for him to be removed from his chairmanship. They don't even pretend it's about qualifications or past job performance. It's about his endorsement. "To reward Senator Lieberman with a major committee chairmanship would be a slap in the face of millions of Americans who worked tirelessly for Barack Obama and who want to see real change in our country. " Uh-huh. This, dear reader, is the danger of campaigning on "change" without really saying what it is you're going to change: people will use the buzzword as an excuse to justify their own agenda.

So let me get this straight. "Bipartisanship" is a good thing, as long as it means someone from the other party is going along with your idea. If it goes in the other direction, it goes by a different name: "betrayal." "Undermining the party." The above article approves a suggestion that Lieberman be "allowed" to continue caucusing with the Democrats, but to be stripped of his chairmanships. Isn't that gracious? We'll let him continue eating lunch with us along with the rest of the little people. I know. That's what makes us so nice. (What's that? You say alienating Lieberman might make us lose our filibuster-proof majority? Huh. Who knew.) Remind me, why didn't we bring this up when he first made the endorsement, rather than now when the elections are over? And why did we get so angry with Alberto Gonzales for firing those prosecutors?

Unity: what happens when everyone agrees to let me do what I want.

Politics as usual, and rather petty at that.

Ben Franklin's character in the movie 1776 had it right when he stated: "Treason is a charge used by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers." (Adams: "I have better things to do than stand here listening to you quote yourself." Franklin: "Oh, that was a new one!")

You've voted, now take a step back.

I've been thinking about an old Disney movie. Somewhat obscure, although Disney Channel aficionados should recognize it: "The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band." It's a gripping tale set in the turbulent election year of 1888, a pivotal election in our nations history where voters chose between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Which as we all know led to the climactic political event of... umm... granting statehood to North and South Dakota.

Yes I'm being facetious. At the time, though, it was pretty momentous for everyone involved. It was the first time that the popular vote went to one candidate but the Electoral College vote went to the other. (Excluding the 1876 election which was decided in Congress, rather than the Electoral College.) To quote Homer Simpson: "They're both losers! Losers!"

Maybe you're thinking "Why did they make a movie about that?" Hold your horses, at the end of the movie, we get the real message. Buddy Ebsen's character, Calvin Bower, is the level-headed father who doesn't make a big deal about politics. He's even planning on performing at the Democratic National Convention with his family, even though he himself is a registered Republican. A full-on riotous fist-fight occurs when the Electoral College announcement is made, and he calms everyone down by playing "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Then he makes a short speech. 10 bonus points to anyone who can find this speech, I haven't been able to find it anywhere. The gist of it was: losing an election is a disappointment, but ultimately it's not about our team versus their team. We're all Americans, and whoever wins will be president over everyone. Including a lot of people who didn't vote for him. At the end of a similar election in 2000, Al Gore said "George Bush is my president."

Did our nation take a completely different direction under Harrison than it would have under Cleveland? Well, who knows, but ultimately we never hear much about them any more. Whoever wins, it's not going to be the end of the world. We'll still get up in the morning and go to work just as we have before.

(To whomever wins: don't prove me wrong now...)

Edit (Jan 28, 2011):   Yay!  Sarah and I checked the movie out of the library.  His speech is as follows:

“Apparently, the next President of the United States has been chosen, and the future of Dakota has been settled.  And nothing we can do here now is going to change things one iota.  I know some of you have been bitterly disappointed.  I want to pass along to you something that was told me many years ago by a man whom I have respected and admired more than any man I have ever met, a man who never wavered in his conviction that we here together can build the greatest united country in the whole bloomin’ world if you’ll just remember one thing.  ‘There’s a time to stand up and fight for what you believe in... and there is a time to join hands and work together, or all the fighting doesn’t mean a thing.’  I know that this man swallowed more disappointment than any of you did tonight.  This was back in [18]65 when he had just returned home from Appomattox... my father, Rensselaer Bower.  And so I suggest that this is a time for joining hands, a time for making up.”

The Good Ol' Days...

Allow me to vent for a while. I hear people reminisce longingly for the days of the Clinton presidency when the economy was booming and we had a federal surplus rather than a deficit. This usually accompanies a scathing review of the current presidency's merits and/or marital status of his mother.

I shake my head in disbelief. What was the economy like during the 90's when that federal surplus had everyone's eyes popping and imaginations rolling on how to spend said surplus (which rarely included paying off the trillion-dollar debt)? I have one word for you. Well, make that one word and an internet suffix. Pets.com. And I'm not talking about the current website, run by PetSmart. I'm talking about the original sock-puppet-based one-hit wonder. That's right folks. You want to return to those years? To the days when people with a web address and an understanding of HTML had money thrown at them, with the expectation that advertising revenue (oddly enough, much of which would come from other dot-com flashes-in-the-pan with the same business model) would somehow translate into a huge return on their investment? Exciting days, to be sure, but read carefully. IT WAS A MARKET BUBBLE. Just like the housing bubble today. The downturn wasn't quite as dramatic as the latest housing bubble, but it was a bubble nonetheless. Bubbles cannot be sustained.

I had a job at one of those dot-commers during those glorious days when money fell out of the sky. The company is actually still around, although their employee list has been substantially whittled down. I'm not going to say who. I will say that the planning for employees wasn't the best. I spent much of my time sending e-mails saying "OK I'm done with that, what should I work on next?" and reading online news websites to kill time while waiting for a response. I was hired without a real plan as to what they wanted to hire me to do. I could tell the bubble was going to burst pretty early on. (And yes I do feel rather proud of myself for being able to say that.)

The moral of the story, sir or madam, is that the economy boom of the 90's was an illusion. An economy in which people tighten their belts and avoid going into debt beyond their abilities to repay is much preferable.

This Is What Happens When I Don't Update My Blog Frequently

There's an interesting intersection in downtown Champaign. I call it... "The Separation of Church and State."



Be forewarned. This is a long article, and it rambles. If you want to cut to the chase, read the last two paragraphs.

What does the first amendment mean regarding freedom of religion? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." We hear a lot of conservative commentators point out that "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution. Huh. Sure enough, not there. Still, just looking at the words, I'm just not sure how it applies to things like displays of the 10 Commandments on public property. And before you ask, no, I'm not going to make any attempt to determine "the intent" of the founders. Why? Glad you asked.

• I would bet the founders themselves would give us a whole range of divergent views. They did about everything else.
• They're dead, so we can't exactly ask their intent. Guessing would be colored by my own opinion.
• They weren't gods that were somehow superior to the law.
  

Clearly government should not interfere with religious worship. As long as the religion isn't involved with any egregious law-breaking. Ah, but now, when you put in an exception, that opens the flood gates. At what point do you call something egregious law-breaking? For the record, I do support prosecuting child molesters even if religious tradition includes arranged marriages with teenagers. However, in the recent FLDS raid, the authorities removed all the children under the claim that they were all at risk. Something about the communal society being a single household, or a culture of indoctrination, or something. That to me just smacks of religious persecution and a violation of the first amendment. A Texas appeals court happens to agree with me.

Clearly there's a distinction between government interference with religion and religion interference with government, and there's no way to read the text of the amendment to argue that the latter is illegal. Hence, the LDS Church's political involvement with politics in California is not a problem, in my opinion. Besides, the first amendment also says something about free speech. And don't chirp about questioning the church's non-profit status. If you have to earn profits before you can speak, it's not exactly free speech, is it? However, if a church were too involved with government, enough so that the church becomes the government, then there's clearly a problem.

Let's do a thought experiment. What would happen if a Muslim were elected president? (And I'm not talking about Obama here. That myth has been debunked.) According to many Christians (bless their hearts) the world would quickly come to an end. (On a side note, have you noticed that you can say anything you want about someone, and as long as you can say "bless their hearts," they can't take offense?) Anyway, the reasoning is that "this government was founded upon Christian ideals! A Muslim would trample that to the ground!"

I say, not necessarily. In the first place, we have two whole other branches of government that would help keep the Constitution intact. In the second place, this pre-supposes that Muslims would disagree with us in how to run the country. Many already run companies in the same way a Christian would. Our army is in Iraq right now on the theory that a predominantly Muslim nation can actually build an American-style democracy; what better way to prove that theory than to have a Muslim president?

What if we had (*gasp*) a Mormon president? One of the big arguments is the question "what if the Mormon prophet issues a directive and the president has to obey? Will Salt Lake be giving the White House marching orders?" Of course, they said the same thing about John F. Kennedy taking orders from the pope. And again, who's to say that the majority of Americans would disagree with what the prophet says? But OK, let's suppose he makes some statement that has unpopular political implications that might influence the president. Please. Lobbyists influence politicians all the time without any cries about "separation of business and state." (Note to self: this might not be a bad idea!) Polls influence politicians. Other politicians influence politicians. The fact that a religious figure might influence a politician is different... how? Heck, how much influence does the Dalai Lama exert? Does anyone get after President Bush's pastor about influencing him to send troops to Iraq? Just who exactly is allowed to influence the president?

Worst case. Suppose the prophet makes some kind of directive that might infringe on the rights of others, and our president truly finds himself/herself unable to follow the prophet while upholding the Constitution. I sincerely doubt this would ever happen, but let's just suppose. I have just the solution. Resignation. The idea carries such a black mark, but honestly, what greater politician could you think of than one that would sacrifice his own career to preserve his country? How refreshing! (There you go, Mitt, no charge on that one.)

Um, I don't have a TV

As part of getting all the utilities set up in the new house, I called the cable company to get an internet connection. I finished scheduling the appointment for the technician to come get it installed, and the girl on the phone asked why we weren't also getting cable TV installed. I replied that it was because we don't have a television. She started going into a sales pitch. "It's only $9.99 a month if you get it bundled with the internet, and we could get it installed at the same time without an extra installation fee."

"Yeah, I may have mentioned this before, but we don't have a television."

"You could order it now and cancel it at any time if you decide you don't want it."

"We don't have a television. It wouldn't be any use to us."

If I were a little more creative, we could have had some fun with that. Sarah suggested "Does it come with a free television?" Or how about "Can we watch it directly through the cable outlet?" Or "We already get cable, we have a wire running over from the neighbor's house."

Ticks on a Plane

Longest... day... ever.

My day started somewhat early (6:30am) and deceptively smoothly in Cheyenne. After some last-minute packing and some breakfast, I caught the 8:30am shuttle to the Denver airport and arrived not long after 10:30am. The security lines were short, and I went right through with plenty of time to catch my 12:20pm flight to Chicago (via Des Moines). My plan from there was to arrive in Chicago at 4:50pm, catch the 6:30pm shuttle into Champaign and arrive 10-ish at night. A long day, to be sure, but not unreasonable. Until my evil plans were foiled by The Tick...



At the gate in Denver, someone found a tick (or ticks) (apparently it was "between 1 and 3 ticks" according to the news report) on the plane and rather than wait to finish cleaning that plane, they decided to use another plane. Unfortunately they had to fly this plane in from Seattle, which wouldn't arrive for another hour or so, giving us a 3:15pm flight. So I called the shuttle in Illinois and told them I was going to miss the 6:30pm shuttle. They put me on the 8:00pm. No problem.

About this time I realized that I had forgotten to grab my car key. I'm still not sure where it is. I think it's in Wyoming. I remember putting it on a table or a dresser in clear view so that I would remember to pick it up again before I left. It didn't work. So I called Sis. Shepard and she graciously offered to come pick me up whenever I arrived.

Then a lovely lightning storm hit. It was bad enough that they had to divert some flights to different airports for a couple of hours. The new delay was going to put us in Chicago at 9:00pm. The only shuttle to Champaign after that was at midnight, so I went to the customer service counter to see if I could get an earlier/direct flight to Chicago. Because of the storm, there was already a long line of people trying to work out new connecting flights. For some inexplicable reason, there was only one ticket agent to help out, so progress was very slow. I stood in line for at least half an hour before some other agents finally came to get the line moving.

Fortunately the agent was very cheerful and helpful when I got to the front of the line. She put me on a direct flight to Chicago, arriving at 8:50pm. This of course would miss my 8:00pm shuttle reservation and would be a tight squeeze to catch the 9:00pm ride, so I called the shuttle office again and postponed my reservation again. The girl there was also helpful and assured me that she would get me on that 9:00 shuttle.

This was obviously going to put me in Champaign much later than I had expected, so once again I called Sis. Shepard. Once again she assured me that she would come pick me up regardless of what time I arrived.

Well, unfortunately the flight to Chicago was delayed coming in (due to the aforementioned storm) and for some reason they didn't have a full flight crew. This caused another minor delay, and we finally arrived in Chicago around 9:05pm. The shuttle had apparently just barely left at this point but when I called the shuttle office, the operator said there were a bunch of other people at O'Hare also waiting for the shuttle, so she was going to send the driver from the Midway airport across town to pick us up. He was scheduled to arrive at 10:15. My luggage did not make it, however; it stayed on the original flight through Des Moines. So after finishing with the shuttle, I asked the luggage agent if she could send my bag on to Champaign. She said she could put it on a flight to Champaign and I could go pick it up at the airport. Not the most convenient solution, but by then I just wanted to get to bed.

As we waited for the shuttle driver, one of the passengers (an old lady) fainted and had to be carried inside and examined by the EMTs. Meanwhile, the driver from the Midway airport finally arrived around 10:35pm with a van that was clearly not large enough to carry all of us. (I was also confused to no end when he also started collecting travel vouchers from the other passengers, which they had never done before. Never did figure out what that was all about.) He did tell me and one or two of the other passengers in that group that there was another shuttle driver just "right behind him." Ooooookay. We all waited as the EMTs finished examining the lady, and by around 10:50pm they got ready to go. All this time, no sign of this supposed driver "right behind him." As they left, the driver said the next guy would be arriving at midnight. "Right behind" apparently can be used to describe someone who is still an hour away. Which, you may recall, was their regular pick-up time that I was trying to avoid. Not to mention, it was going to cost me an extra $10. But it looked like my choice was between that and shelling out some money for a hotel room.

I called the shuttle company once again to make sure I would indeed have a reservation on the midnight bus, and it was a different person that answered the phone. When she asked when my reservation was supposed to be, I told her it had been postponed twice already, so it was either 8:00pm or 9:00pm. She couldn't find it in either slot, she found it in the original 6:30pm slot. Left hand, meet right hand, I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about...

And since I was going to end up waiting at the airport another hour anyway, I went back to the baggage claim to see if my luggage had arrived and if I could cancel the request to put it on a flight to Champaign. It took me a while to describe what was going on, and that no I wasn't trying to find my luggage that just got put on carousel #4. But eventually I got my bag and returned to the bus stop for another hour-long wait. Finally things started to go smoothly again-- but only because I happened to have a 10-dollar bill with me. (The driver needed exact change.)

The nice thing about traveling that time of night is no traffic jams. We had a smooth 3-hour drive back to Champaign, including a drive across Chicago to stop at the Midway airport. It wasn't very good sleeping, though, unless you happen to like sleeping while being shaken awake every 2 seconds or so. Sis. Shepard was kind enough to come pick me up at the bus terminal at 3:00am, and my long day ended at 3:45am or so.

Too bad Samuel Jackson wasn't around...



PS: I thought the title of this blog entry was pretty original. A google search on the phrase shows otherwise; however, at least every link it returned was about this flight.

"Why haven't we been told this before?"

Wow, apparently some studious Anglican bishop scriptorian has discovered some revolutionary ideas about paradise being a temporary state, the literal nature of the resurrection, and Christ's return to earth rather than everyone being caught up into heaven to meet him. Pretty wild stuff. What's next, the idea that families might still remain as families in this "new Earth" of his?!?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html

So if this is what the scriptures truly say about these things, why aren't there people trying to teach this stuff? Why, indeed, haven't we been told this before?

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

Sheesh. Two-party politics at its finest. A classic line: "If McCain is nominated, I'm voting Democrat. I'd rather see a Democrat mess up the nation than a Republican." Or equivalently, swap the two parties and replace McCain with Hillary. I think all these people should relax and enjoy a rousing episode of the Simpsons. I suggest "Treehouse of Horror VII."

Some people look at the 2000 election and say, "See how much your vote counts? That election was decided by fewer than 500 votes!" I say, "499 people could have stayed home that day and the result would have been the same!" Or even better than staying at home, try looking at some less-funded independent. Seriously. Sure there's no chance he'll win, but at least you don't have to vote for Kang or Kodos, and maybe some lucky non-major party might qualify for some funding for the next election. Or do you believe that only the rich and/or well-connected are qualified to be president?

Lars E. Olson, ABD

Two proposals in the space of one month would normally cause trepidation in the most fearless of hearts. And for good reason. Proposals require you to put your innermost soul on display for the unfeeling public to trample down and leave you to recover (or languish) in the solitude of your own personal prison.

And by that, I mean that my thesis proposal was accepted. There were a couple of sticking points that were criticized, and probably deserved to be, but overall they were enthusiastic about the project. Dr. Gunter even said that it was the best proposal he's seen recently. Which shouldn't be a huge surprise; after all, it's been in the oven for more than a year.

I do feel a little disappointed that Sarah still gets to become Dr. Olson before I do.