Friday Fives

1. What was your first job?

My first paying job was as a soldier in the U.S. Army. Growing up, I lived in the hills of pastoral Pennsylvania and my parents only had one car, so job opportunities were limited to the occasional seasonal farm work. Although I will say that baling hay in the hot summer sun and tossing said hay around a dust-filled, sweltering hot barn for 8 hours was some of the hardest work I've ever done. But strangely, some of the most rewarding as well..................

2. How much did you make?

I think my starting salary in the military was like $800/month. To an 18 year old fresh away from the country, this was a fortune. Now it barely supports my booze bill.

3. Describe your least favorite co-worker of all time.

Wow, this is one is almost too easy. There are exactly two people in my life whom I have hated. Truly hated, as in, if a bus hit this person, I'd pick up their remains with a big snow shovel and heave them into the nearest city drain. Who was the object of this intense hate, you ask? My lab manager at the Nix Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. She was the most unpleasant, unfair, and unkind BITCH I can ever remember running into. Favoritism was the order of the day in her lab. She also took every opportunity to let everyone know that she was in Graduate School and that she was SO above everyone else. On one occasion, she actually berated me for not having a degree, taking another opportunity to remind me that she was in Graduate School. Having had my fill, I replied that it was unfair to compare herself ( a graduate student ) to someone who had yet to get a B.S. It was like comparing apples and oranges, a fact which was somehow lost on this intellectual powerhouse. ( As an aside, I've never believed that degrees are an accurate measure of intelligence anyway. ) I assured her, that when I did go to school, I would run circles around her very average 3.0 GPA ( it was a well known fact about the lab that her Graduate GPA was hovering around a 3.0, and her B.S. GPA was little better ). So, Lily, if you're out there, this is for you: my graduating GPA was a 3.94. I graduated cum laude. Who's smarter now? BITCH

4. What is your dream job?

Simple. A symphony conductor. A very eccentric one. I'd do the classics but I'd mix it up with bombastic arrangements of Nine Inch Nails and Cocteau Twins songs.

5. What do you currently do and do you like it?

I am currently working as a Professional Research Assistant at CU doing cancer research on Phase I drugs. Sounds impressive, no? A good job to be sure, but it was once GREAT. I'm in a bit of a funk lately and am getting the itch to do a 180 in my career. Of course this is fraught with peril as I've been in a lab for 17 years. Dexter has nothing on me!

Friday Fives

1. Are you more comfortable being the new kid or the experienced one?

I like being the new kid as it increases my thirst for knowledge and provides a challenge. After some time though, I enjoy being the experienced one. I'm a pretty good teacher and I like making others' transitions more palatable. If I had to pick though..................well, I'd go for the New Kid On The Block.

2. When is the last time you were the new kid?

Far too long ago. About 8 years? I'm definitely getting the itch to do a 180 in my life as concerns my career. Maybe its just my impending mid-life crisis. Not sure, but I know change is afoot.............

3. If we met face to face, right now, what would my first impression be of you?

Stuck-up or shy. I'm not the most "approachable" person, but once the ice is broken, I'm a fairly congenial fellow.

4. Who is the last person you said goodbye to?

Joey, as I left J.R.'s last night.

5. Joey, Jordan, Donnie, Danny or Jon?

I don't understand the question. Are these the New Kids' ( continuing the theme from the first question) names? Or are we supposed to pick one?

At any rate, I'd pick Jordan. I've always liked that name. And wasn't he the cute one in NKOB?

Bombs Away!

Wow. I thought Texas had the corner on "The Most Asinine Things Government Officials Say" market, but I would be wrong. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican from Littleton, recently advocated bombing Muslim holy sites in retaliation for any future nuclear attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists. Great. That's going to do wonders for American-Arab relations: I can see the Muslims embracing all things American now, lining up to eat at McDonald's and storming the Apple store to get an iPod! All hail Western Culture! I can envision Muslim parents teaching their children that Americans are NOT imperialist invaders and infidels. Yeah, right after they rush out and buy their new King James Bible. Destroying Muslim holy sites would only add further fuel to the anti-American fire burning in the Middle East and galvanize even more Muslims against the U.S., Muslims that now may be neutral on the subject. Jesus, how do people like this get elected?? The most frightening aspect of this is that because he is a U.S. Congressman, Muslims around the world will mistake this for U.S. policy, further fanning the flames of an already raging cultural/political/military war. By making this statement, Tancredo is once again reinforcing the stereotype that somehow ALL Muslims are terrorists, which of course they are not. The message he is sending is " if Muslim terrorists attack us, we will indiscriminately retaliate against your people", which sounds much too close to a terrorist act to me. The Land of the Free should not be engaging in this sort of rhetoric; the attack on the World Trade Center was an indiscriminate attack upon innocent people. To suggest that our government would do the same reduces us to nothing more than terrorists against the Muslim world.

While I resoundingly reject Tancredo's remarks, all this talk of labeling all Muslims as terrorists does bring up one of my pet peeves..................

Start Tangent

One aspect of this entire post-9/11 world that does grate on my nerves is the liberals' trepidation of calling it like it is*. Right after 9/11 ( and still to this day to some extent ) the liberals were all up in arms about "racial profiling". They were concerned that in the chaos and heightened security following the 9/11 tragedy, Muslims would be "unfairly" targeted as potential terrorists. Now, on an intellectual level, I totally agreed with this argument, because the actions of a few radical terrorists should not be used to implicate an entire people. However, on a practical level, I totally disagreed with this position as a matter of pragmatism. The hard and cold facts are that Muslims have been responsible for a great deal of the terrorist actions carried out against the U.S. for the better part of my life ( going on 36 years if you're counting ). History has borne this out and it cannot be simply ignored. Let's review:

• The Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. Muslims? Check.

• The 1983 Bombing of U.S. Marine Barracks. Muslims? Check.

• The Downing of Pan Am Flight 103 Over Lockerbie, Scotland. Muslims? Check. Most of the passengers on this flight were American. ( I must say here that there is speculation that the bombing was in retaliation for Reagan's bombing of Libya and/or the downing of an Iranian passenger jet by U.S. forces that same year in 1988. )

• The Bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Muslims? Check.

• The Bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Muslims? Check.

• 9/11. Muslims? Check.
  

These are but a few of the terrorist activities perpetrated by Muslims over the last 30 years. There are many more and probably some we'll never know about. When a pattern exists such as this, is it unreasonable for law enforcement to target Muslims in particular as possible terrorists? We do it all the time for other types of criminals. Most of us know by now that most serial killers are usually white males in their 20-30s. Does that mean that ALL white males in this age group are serial killers? Of course not, but it would be ludicrous for the police or FBI to ignore this vital information when looking for a potential killer on the loose. Profiling white males as potential serial killers is not done out of hatred or prejudice against them, it is done because history has borne this information out; its just a fact of life, just as the fact exists that most terrorist activity against the U.S. has been carried out by Muslims. I'd bet my next year's salary that if, over the past 30 years, Frenchmen had been conducting terrorist activities against us, we'd be targeting and profiling the French instead of the Muslims.

* I confess to being a free-thinking, dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Question: what DOES "dyed-in -the-wool" actually mean?

Burning the "Broadcast Flag"

For those of you who don't know, back in 2003, the FCC passed a law requiring that all electronics manufacturer's products be DRM-compliant by July 1, 2005.....which was about 18 days ago. Luckily, the FCC was bitch-slapped by the D.C. Circuit Court in May of this year. Had the FCC not been handed its hat, what exactly would all this have meant?

DRM ( Digital Rights Management ) is essentially a small stream of code that "flags" any digital broadcast. Dreamed up by the RIAA and the MPAA as a way to "curb internet distribution", it would essentially curtail our rights as citizens under the Fair Use clause of the Copyright Act (see section VII). Basically, once the flag was in place, only equipment ( radios, TVs, DVRs, PVRs, MP3 players & computers ) with DRM circuitry would be able to accept the broadcast. Not only that, but the DRM would restrict uses we now take for granted. Undoubtedly, recording to another device would've been restricted as well as transfer to another machine. In other words, recording a digital media stream would become impossible or very cumbersome unless you went out and bought a new DRM-capable component. Want to burn a CD of a recorded MP3 stream? Good luck. Want to make a copy of that Family Guy episode you watched Sunday night? Good luck. Think I'm exaggerating? DRM is widely used by Microsoft and I've just recently discovered how irritating it can be. A few posts ago, I enthusiastically gushed about downloading a couple of Jens Lekman's EPs at the MSN music site. They play on my computer just fine, because Musicmatch is obviously DRM compliant. A few days ago, I tried uploading these tracks to my MP3 player. Guess what? No dice. The player won't upload them because its not "DRM-compliant". To this I say, Horseshit! How does restricting the ability to upload music to my MP3 player help curb illegal internet distribution? I went to a LEGAL site to purchase music. I should be able to do anything I want with it except sell it for profit! Needless to say, DRM has turned me away from MSN's site and I will never use it again. The absurdity of the "flag" is just how easy it is to circumvent. All I need do is burn these tracks to a CD as .wav files and then re-rip them as MP3s onto my hard drive. Cumbersome: yes, but not rocket science. Worth it?: Absolutely if it allows me to use my LEGALLY PURCHASED music the way I see fit.

Now imagine if DRM had gone into effect July 1st......for ALL broadcast media. My current DVR would most likely have been rendered obsolete, as well as my $3600 HDTV purchased just 3 years ago. XM and Sirius radios around the nation would most likely have been rendered obsolete. All because the RIAA and MPAA are trying to "stop rampant internet file-sharing". And the fight isn't over: unfortunately, the MPAA is now petitioning Congress to authorize the FCC to mandate the broadcast flag. We can only hope that those in Congress realize that DRM will do nothing to further the cause of the Digital future or, for that matter, Copyright Law.

Friday Fives on Sunday

1. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

• Get to Mexico ( check )
• get drunk in Mexico ( check )
• get sun-tanned ( check )
• Get back home ( check )

2. What were the last three things you purchased?

Necklace for myself and 2 bottles of wine at the Los Cabos Airport.

3. The name of your very first best friend?

Chad Greeley. He was the kid next door when we lived in idyllic Wellsboro, PA. I often wonder what he is doing and where he is even to this day.

4. What does it say in the signature line of your emails?

" It's like someone spilled a beer all over the atmosphere " from a song by Jens Lekman.

5. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?

BEAKER

Friday Fives

1. What is the best thing about the city in which you live? What is the worst?

The best thing about Denver is the weather. We get more sunshine here in the Centennial State than Florida or California. There is next to no humidity which makes the summers quite tolerable and our winters are fairly calm. I grew up in the northeast and I can tell you the snowfall here is a pale comparison to being trapped in your home by 6 ft. snow drifts. What is the worst thing? Um........I guess I'd have to say our infamous Brown Cloud. While not as unsightly ( or as persistent ) as the cloak of pollution that covers Los Angeles, it is rather ugly. The good thing about it is you really can't see it unless you're rather high up in a building, so most times we Denverites are oblivious to it.

2. Describe an idea or invention of yours that you would like to see turned into reality.

This certainly isn't my idea exclusively, as any Trekkie will point out, but the teleporter/transporter would be--I think--the greatest single invention since electricity. Think about the possibilities and ramifications:

• mass transport that uses no fuel ( other than sweet, pure fissible hydrogen ) and thus generates no pollution.
  

• the ability to travel would be limitless. Egypt for the weekend? Sure, why not!

• the need for roads and all the infrastructure that comes with them would be needless. Think of the open spaces we would reclaim.

• Traffic jams, road rage? How quaint!

Of course, one would have to get beyond the reality of your molecules being scrambled and beamed to another locale to be reassembled, "hopefully" in the right sequence. Otherwise, we'd have a world of Brundle-flys, and who wants to live in THAT world?

3. If you could strike one word from the English language, which word would you choose and why?

I cringe even as I type this word: cunt

Hands-down the most vile, loathsome word ever to be ejected from someone's mouth; it is such a biting and crass word. Ruefully, I must confess to having used this word a few times as it certainly does a great job of conveying distaste for someone, but I'd rather it not exist.

4. If the world had a front porch, what would you do on it?

I would sip mojitos as I rocked in my chair. What else do you do on a front porch?

5. Did you think that being an adult would be cool?

Actually, I did. I couldn't wait to crawl out from underneath my parents' 17 year reign and begin commanding my own destiny. It was refreshing and exhilarating to make and spend my own money, to form relationships with new people and make decisions based on MY judgment, or lack thereof. And all things considered, my adult life has turned out pretty damned well.