Jeff Maurone

Suburban sprawl, for lack of an aphorism, sucks

Robert Reich, who recently has made news by endorsing Obama, puts forth an incredible explanation of the way we live now in his most recent book, Supercapitalism.

His argument, adapted to my life, is: I lament the loss of Main Streets. I detest big box retailers. I cringe looking at how every corner of every town looks the same. But, on the other hand, I'm giddy at the efficiency of the American economy. I know that by cramming as much merchandise into a cheap box on an enormous field Wal~Mart contributes to our prosperity as a nation. Can this ambivalence ever be resolved?

The fight for Main Street and the Public Square has an advocate in James Howard Kunstler. Admittedly, Kunstler is as much a polemicist as he is passionate. Every single one of his books could be put in the growing jeremiad section at Borders. But this presentation from a recent TED is absolutely worth a watch. I agree with nearly everything Kunstler says in this talk and found myself cracking up laughing at his witty distaste for modernism.

(A nod to colleague Jeremy, as I found this presentation on his blog.)

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Image comes from Flickr User Dean Terry. My condolences to the owner of that McMansion.

Going off to war today versus the equivalent in 1945

If you've been following my Twitter  updates, you likely noted that this week I saw Maggie off to the desert (Iraq) until July. With a difficult goodbye came a lot of thinking and contemplation.

Imagine going off to fight in World War II. How long was your tour of duty? The length of the war. Which, depending on when you departed, could be up to four years. Telephones? Email? Instant messaging? No, no and, obviously, no. You wrote home, what, every two months and hoped to received a treasured piece of mail about your child's first birthday that is now months in the past.

Flash forward to 2008. I've already talked to Maggie as if she were on a phone just ten minutes away. I know that when she arrives at Balad Air Base she'll have Internet access, satellite telephones, a digital camera and more of the devices that we use to stay connected in the an age of global dispersion. I know that she'll be coming home in July no matter how much this war protracts.

I don't, for a second, deny the great personal risk taken by the members of the military that have spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan or Djibouti. Watching members of the Army pulled away from their families for up to fifteen months, returned for twelve and pulled away for another fifteen months has left me bitter at the human cost of this war. My position on our presence in Iraq is ambivalent and nuanced at best; it's also strongly influenced by what I've seen as the true cost paid by other American families. I am, however, thankful for how things have changed in the past sixty-three years.

And, while we are on this topic, some resources for those interested: Balad Air Base, called LSA Anaconda by everyone but the Air Force (Logistical Support Area), is roughly fifty miles north of Baghdad. Its flight line is currently considered the second busiest airport in the entire world, including commercial terminals! Maggie is running intel support for the 48th Rescue Squadron, a unit of Pararescue (awesome wikipedia page). For some photos of the base:

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All shots are of the base. Some from Flickr User MASSIVE DEFEAT (I can't help but wonder about that username) and some from Flickr User James Gordon. All, as usual, under Creative Commons. Have you donated your content to CC yet?

Six hundred Hiroshimas

The W-53 warhead atop the Titan II ICBM had an estimated yield of nine megatons, equivalent to nine million tons of TNT.  That's roughly six hundred times as powerful as the warhead inside Little Boy that leveled Hiroshima.  For most of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s this missile was the centerpiece of our deterrence posture: fifty-four missiles sat in silos in Kansas, Arkansas and Arizona, able to fire within moments of a launch order but classified as retaliatory only.

I've written prior about my visit to the only remaining Titan II silo in Sahuarita, Arizona, now more than a year ago.  When I left Titan I was impressed by two things in particular: first, the knowledge and talent possessed by my tour guide and, second, the incredibly complex engineering problems solved by the crews that built Titan II. Within a few weeks, Maggie and I had signed up as volunteer docents (tour guides) and, a few months after that, started giving our own tours of the missile and launch complex.

Every Sunday we drive the thirty miles from northeast Tucson to missile site 571-7 in Green Valley and give four tours to up to twenty-five visitors. During these tours, we've met an array of incredibly interesting people: a plutonium expert that aided in the development of the W-53 warhead, guys from Czech Republic thankful that the US had a strategic arsenal that would protect them from Russia, former missile crew members that worked on Titan I, Titan II and Minuteman I, an astronomer working at NASA on Aries III.

This past Sunday Maggie and I gave the last tour we'll give for the next two months while she is in Iraq. We look forward to returning to Titan later this summer, but if you're in Green Valley any time in the near future, Titan is worth a visit.

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Second photo credit: Flickr user Telstar Logistics, under Creative Commons [Link]

The Gates estate

I've said this before, but 75% of my blog traffic still goes to the one post I wrote nearly four years ago about the summer evening I spent dining at Bill Gates's house. I recently learned that two years ago Bill stopped inviting interns to his house for dinner. So, for all of you current Microsoft interns longing for dinner at his house on Lake Washington, here's a video I that does a great job of walking you through his house.

What, did you expect real video of the house?

John McCain throws one back at Villanova

The national attention being afforded to Villanova over the past weeks have left me with a great warm feeling. First it was a dance to the Sweet Sixteen from our twelve-seed Wildcats. Now it's a visit from John McCain to the Pavilion as part of the MSNBC Hardball College Tour. With MSNBC meeting Villanova, how can I not comment?

Of course, McCain's visit to the Pavilion and subsequent interview with Chris Matthews hasn't gone into the pile of day-old campaign media without a bit of sophomoric fun from one of the Villanova students picked to pose a question to the Senator and presumptive nominee of the GOP. First, the clip. Advance to 2:56 for the question to which I'm referring.

Mustering up his share of undergraduate male machismo, the Junior questioned: "I'm sure that you saw one of your Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton, recently drinking whiskey shots with some potential voters.  Now, I was wondering if you think that she's finally resorted to hitting the sauce just because of some unfavorable polling.  And I was also wondering if you would care to join me for a shot after this." Of course the Pavilion went wild and students wondered if the Augustinians running Villanova broke into a cold sweat under their habits.

As is often the case, things aren't exactly as they seemed. In this week's Villanovan, we've got an interesting piece from Tom Nardi:

Viewers and audience members wouldn't know, but those four questions weren't the only ones that students wanted to ask.  I would know; I was question No. 6. Staffers pre-screened 12 questions that afternoon from students and placed them in the order that students would be able to ask.  But the first two questions we got to were set up to be softballs.

I always find it disappointing when I learn that the spontaneity of live television isn't so...spontaneous.

Do you value experience?

I'm sitting in the jury assembly room in the beautiful (not sarcastic) Seattle Municipal Court building downtown. The waiting continues as many eager jurors once deep in magazines have turned to staring into space. Care to see?

Yesterday I got to thinking about this article that ran in the Times discussing the resurgence of philosophy as an undergraduate major. The article professes philosophy's value in forming the compass we use to view and act in the world (it reminded me of an Ayn Rand speech, "Philosophy: Who Needs It?"). Having spent a while contemplating how I view the world and my role in it, I got to wondering in what ways my philosophy affects my daily life.

I got through a list of ways: morality, virtues, ethics, etc. The one at which I arrived almost immediately, however, was experience or, in jargon, empiricism. Wikipedia defines and contrasts empiricism like so:

Rather, according to the empiricist view, for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced, it is to be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience.^[2] As a historical matter, philosophical empiricism is commonly contrasted with the philosophical school of thought known as "rationalism" which, in very broad terms, asserts that much knowledge is attributable to reason independently of the senses.

I believe that continually stretching and expanding the sphere that contains our experiences is among the most virtuous of efforts possible. More new experiences, better Jeff. New experiences can be good ones, bad ones, whatever. They just have to be new.

I value new experiences so highly that, since early 2004, I've kept lists of new experiences I had during that year. My lists are pages and pages long--typically 1-2 pages of single-spaced flowing sentences for each year (not bulleted or numbered lists). The top of the page for this year, like all years past, reads, "What did I do in 2008 that I had not done prior?" They include cities, countries or continents visited, notable people I've seen or met, hikes completed, mountains summited, notable restaurants I've visited, new cultural events I've attended. You get the picture. I started these lists only recording exciting and "good" experiences but recently have expanded to include disappointing or frustrating experiences (realizing that these contribute to my character as much if not more than "favorable" experiences). One day I'll be able to pass this list on to children and say, "here are the experiences that formed my character."

Keeping this list has really changed the way I live on a daily basis as I look for new and different experiences to, essentially, add to the list. Is that virtuous? For me, it is. Only you can select what you deem virtuous.

What do you find inside books?

Lately Maggie and I have bought nearly all of our books used, some from Elliott Bay, tons from Half-Price Books and a bunch from Bookmans (Tucson). Something I enjoy is finding ephemera inside a book left behind from someone else who had read it. When I was re-reading The Stranger earlier this year I found a receipt from someone who had purchased it twenty-five years prior at the same used bookstore where I did. Earlier this week, reading another Camus work, The Plague, I found an old Northwest Airlines boarding pass from 1993.

Look at this thing:

Those are stamped characters! From a daisy wheel printer! I found it fascinating how antiquated that document appears today, despite it being only fifteen years old. And yes, hello Heidi Tsai.

I try to do my part when finishing a book. I'll leave behind some scrap of paper that reflects where I was reading the book and, perhaps, when. Unfortunately, with the amount I've been flying this year, this has always been a boarding pass.