The scenery that stimulates thought (ahhhh…the back yard of the Westin in Lahaina, Maui…how lucky/blessed I am):

Here are my thoughts.  Tell me if I’m wrong.  I want to listen.  I want to learn.  I want to collectively help find a way out of this economic mess and get to the root issues facing us.

One can hardly blame conservatives for wanting to preserve the incentives built into our system.  Those who work harder and more efficiently than others should get to have (relative to local conditions, though I suppose the definition of “local” creeps over time as civilization progresses) more than others.  I bet most wouldn’t disagree with that statement.  It’s at the heart of Capitalist thinking.  A Wall Street Executive who started from humble roots and worked his ass off to get there, deserves to be there, and deserves the wealth he earned.

Then again, one can hardly blame the idealistic thinking of socialists, and even communists (yes, I said it).  The Utopian dream is without blame, at it’s heart.  People want everyone to have everything they need…and want, ultimately, to live increasingly long lives.  Most wouldn’t disagree that this sentiment is pure with good intentions at it’s root.

I think the protests (at least the legitimate components), and really, our root economic issues, are about disparities caused by unchecked human greed, and fueled by COMPILED/ACCUMULATED familial wealth, corporate wealth, and societal wealth.

Greed is inherent in human nature.  It is also a necessary evil in our flawed existence, as the driving force of a capitalist society, which history seems to suggest is the only tenable societal model, given that rampant greed permeates, corrupts, and destroys other models to an even worse extent.

Compiled wealth feels like the solvable problem buried in the noise.  I can understand that.  One side wants (and deserves) a level playing field.  The other side also legitimately wants keep the incentives built into our system.  But for crying out loud, the way the complaints (and counter-complaints) are being laid out and vocalized is just….insanely stupid…on both “sides” (another issue to be dealt with…there are more than two sides…we do live on a sphere after all people…).  The people with the mics and (widely published) pens are the idiot free-loaders (lazy people, druggies, drunks, etc), idiot trust fund babies (rich republican assholes), and idiot idealists (Tom Friedman).  The rest of us have been too busy working (like we should be) to give a damn.

I’ll say it again.  The problem is NOT corporations…or families…or countries…in and of themselves.  It is the compiled, generational wealth of corporations…and families…and countries…that is really at issue.  Rings true to me.

If protesters…and people sitting at home…actually made an organized, well spoken attempt to make this differentiation, people MIGHT actually listen…and MIGHT actually come together and fix the root issues.  The issue is in placing humanity farther ahead of generational compiled wealth, as opposed to humanity ahead of the individual (since individuals would rather look out for themselves anyways, and governments, as we keep finding out, really suck at looking out for people, since individuals run them…).

We need reset mechanisms to combat greed and level the field across generations and (maybe eventually) societies, but we need them in the correct places, with the correct individual incentives, with the correct economic feedback polarity.  There is ground to gain there, for everyone.

This is why I (a pretty staunch conservative, in most lights) favor the “death” (estate) tax (omg really?!?).  Want more revenue (yes, we do obviously need more revenue to solve the budget problems…and more cuts…because convergence takes time)?  THAT is the (most) fair (fair relative to humanity, not family) place to get it right now, that doesn’t detract from the LEGITIMATELY made individual (because they’re dead!).  We don’t want to eliminate the curve (some small generational feedback is certainly good), but we can definitely afford to change the shape of it.  The current estate tax of 35% for >$500k can grow by a HUGE amount, without pissing off too many people…or removing economic incentives.  Hell, make it 75%.  I won’t care.  I’ll be dead.  You shouldn’t care.  You’ll be dead too.  And humanity will be better for it.  I want my kids to have to work hard to get there.  You should too.  It should really be a tax on all large integrated (includes frequent small gifts) gifting in general too, not just at death (loopholes, loopholes people…rich people love them).

Same thinking (generally) applies to corporations, though I don’t think I have very specific solutions there.  Generally, we must to keep incentives to produce at all costs, and we must let the FAILED institutions FAIL.  Pull the men out from behind the damn curtains.  STOP BAILOUTS.  Let the damn deck to get re-shuffled occasionally, for crying out loud.  Turn over the hour glass.  Hit the reset buttons.  Failed banks/corporations/governments should fail, if they deserve to fail, because the PEOPLE RUNNING THEM have either failed, or are in way over their heads, and (in most cases) will keep failing, and not admit to having taken too large a bite.  IT’S TIME TO REALIZE THE LOSSES, AND PLUG IN NEW PEOPLE!

Here’s the kicker…this type thinking has large positive feedback…and it seems like the legitimate, right thinking to pursue…but it’s longer term thinking that is difficult to implement, and is certainly not readily supportive of short term fixes.  Unless we let the corporations fail and redistribute the spoils…and/or steal from living rich people and redistribute their wealth…neither being happy solutions due to consequences involved (short term job loss, probable blood-shed).

At the highest observable level, we are experiencing a marginally stable economy that is nearing a large perturbing cascade of events.  It is a dynamics and control problem.  It’s a tough one too, because economists are most definitely (at present) incapable of modeling/simulating/understanding the system dynamics, and have minimal ability to affect control.  The vocabulary of economics and economists tells us this in and of itself.  What’s more, we seem to be playing with both the system AND the feed-backs.  To solve the issue, we’ve gotta move the pole(s) of the economic system left somehow somehow with the correct balance of positive feed-backs for the present reality to stabilize the system.  Since there is entry lag, we have to suck it up, grin, eat ramen noodles for a while, and bear it until we get through the lag.  Then, we gotta keep adjusting the balance as our system (global economy, globalization), negative feed-backs (production automation, product longevity => market saturation) and noise floor (internet, speed of human communication) get worse over time.

Short term greed-driven solutions provide the wrong long term feed-backs, wind up the system, and raise the probability of an even more catastrophic singular or nearly singular perturbing event with dire societal consequences.

What are the solution mechanisms?

Long term thinking.  Austerity.  Solid planning.  Softened rhetoric.  Humility.  Respect.  Giving.  Selflessness.  Sharing.  Long term thinking, long term thinking, long term thinking.  Long term thinking, with both humanity AND the individual in mind, balanced and stabilized as best we can.

It hurts, I know.  It is going to hurt worse.  Don’t worry, I’m hurting, and going to be hurting worse too.  The system is changing in favor of the rest of the world for the short term (as it should), and there are some nasty bubbles to pop.

Referendums, probably, which means a LOT of work by a LOT of people.  Certainly can’t count on the political/economic establishment (mostly rich people and power lovers) to vote for short term losses, vote their families out of money, and vote themselves out of office/jobs.

You might be asking yourself: “Where on earth has Jon Nikkel been?”.  You also might be eating a bowl of Kix right now, devoting more neurons to pondering the milk dripping from your chin than you are to me.  Either way, it is my duty to update the world on my life situation, and breath new life into my blog, which has been bereft of life this year.

“Travel” best sums up late 2009 and 2010 for me.  I’ve been extremely blessed to have seen a lot of neat places in my short life, and met a lot of incredible people along the way.  I have been on the road more than I have in any other year (I think), for both work and pleasure.  Nothing too exotic (yet…), but varied, and fun.  Prose is never fun, so we’ll sum up the destinations in a nice readable list:

• Eagar, Arizona - Weekend in October, 2009
• Sedona, Arizona - Weekend in November, 2009
• Mt. Wrightson Summit - Weekend in Late November, 2009
• Yuma, AZ for Work - December, 2009 - March 2010 (off and on…3 months of madness)
• Hollister, CA for Work - April, 2010
• Nova Scotia, Canada for Work - May, 2010
• Hollister, CA for Work - June, 2010
• Socorro, NM for Work - July, 2010
• Michigan and Indiana for Weddings and Fun - August, 2010
• San Juan Islands, WA and Vancouver, Canada for Sailing - August, 2010
• Coming Soon - Israel, to meet with our heroic counterparts at IMI

A few noteworthy events for 2010:

I seem to be headed down the path of becoming a “nav guy” at work, and now have a “rep” as a “GPS guy”.  Amazing technology (as everyone knows).  Hopefully will get to branch out into other some other genres of navigation in the future.

Old news at this point for most, but I met lovely Elizabeth, and her companion Lucy the Dawg, in October of last year.  Liz has been a huge blessing in my life.  We have tons of fun together (so do Lucy and Kitty), and I have no fear in saying that I love her about as much as the ocean is vast.  There are big things in store for the two of us me thinks ;).

I had the privilege of working with a number of Israeli Military Industries engineers this year on a 120mm mortar project for the US Army (if you want details, use your power of Googling).  They are some of the most hard working and fast thinking people I have ever met.  They are fearless and wily in both work and life, and have more than earned my deepest respect.

I have been giving serious attention to Roman Catholicism.  Liz opened the door for me and made it accessible.  I’ve since learned quite a bit about the church, and very much like what I’ve seen and read.  I still have much to learn.  I’ll not get into the details here, but to sum it up, what I’ve seen in recent months attending some Masses and reading up has pretty much completely trashed what I was “taught” about the Catholic Church growing up while wandering through various Protestant churches, and raised some very intriguing, fundamental questions about the basis of most Protestant Christian church theologies (or the lack thereof in some cases).  Probably more to come in the future on this one.  Conversion is not a sure thing for me yet, but it’s fair to say that at minimum I have a new-found respect for the Catholic Church, it’s people, and it’s teachings.  If you let the occasional news blurb about a bad priest mar your thinking, you are but cheating yourself.

I am studying for the GRE.  I have put off actually taking the test many times now, because I have not felt ready.  I am not going to take it until I can ace the damn thing.  After all, whats the rush?  I still hate thinking back to what I could have achieved on the SAT/ACT if I had studied for them.

2010 is only half-way over….

Without further ado:

August Backpacking at Timber Lake, Sailing in the San Juans

Link to .zip with Originals

A little background info:

We backpacked on the Timber Lake Trail, a really nice one just down the west side of the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park.  5.5 miles into the camp site…not too bad.  Great access to tundra day-hiking from there!

The sailing trip started the day after Ben’s wedding (sorry we missed your open house you two).  We flew to Seattle, drove up to Bellingham, got briefed, and hopped on boart the 37′ Jeanneau.  Really nice boat…3 cabins, kitchen, plenty of seating.  The main sail was set up w/ lazy jacks and pulley-driven reefing…makes it almost too easy.  Nice chart plotter and radar too.  Weather was excellent the entire week.  We sailed north up near the Canadian border, made our way west, then south and around, and finally back to Bellingham.  Stayed at a couple of the big island harbors along the way….Roach and Friday.  Great hiking, did some shrimping.  No rum until halfway in…bought to much, and couldn’t finish it all heh.  Dingy got lost once….that was fun :D.  We ran a hat-overboard drill too….fished it out right in the nick of time (was sinking).  All in all, great week with a lot of fun in the sun….I’m no longer pasty white :D.

Good times.

Spent this afternoon/evening working some more on the wireless power stuff.  No pics yet, but they’ll come next time.  Got the primary coil mounted in a fashion thats at least somewhat safe: superglued to an old motorcycle tire!  Built a simple wood stand for the tire, so now its up on my work bench (and yes, this is a 30 inch diameter, 3/8″ cross section diameter inductor built out of multistrand copper grounding wire). 

The driving circuit is coming along too (along with my knowledge of RF electronics and power supply design, knowledge/fear of which has been my real holdup so far).  I have a simple B+ power supply built now, and a bunch of power electronics, tubes, air-core inductors, and air-variable caps of various sizes to play with.  I was going to build the driving circuit with tubes at first, because I was concerned about stability, but I think I can probably get away with solid state.  Solid state is nice b/c its easy to power a large load w/ a single device, whereas a comparable circuit built with tubes would require a BUNCH of tubes in parallel (the characteristics of which have to be matched in order to retain the advantages).  So…I’ve got an order in for some high voltage MOSFETS now.

In the midst of all my googling today, came across a great site written by a guy who built a solid-state Tesla coil, complete with Faraday Cage to prevent himself from getting irradiated.  Startin to think I ought to build one too heh.  Guy did some nice sims to go along with his work too…something to appreciate.  

(Photo linked to from http://users.skynet.be/BillsPage)

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your
self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up,it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

I sometimes have odd mental blocks that make actions requiring minimal work seem more taxing than actions requiring more work.  Some days I can see straight through these, others see me falling for them.

Example:

Even though it is obviously much easier for me to grab my coffee cup and bring it in when I get home from work, I will sometimes leave it in the car overnight, and then come out and get it in the morning (even when I consciously notice the cup).  Why?  For some reason, the simple act of grabbing it and lugging it in when I’m tired at the end of a long day seems more taxing than just coming back in the morning for it.

Sillyness.

My insignificant efforts, alone, mean nothing. But insignificance compounded breeds significance, and gives rise to the entity we call society.

Thus, there is that faintest hope within hopes that our combined significance will bring forth some level of greatness.

When, in fact, this greatness comes of age, our paltry minds will gloat, and back to insignificance they shall return.

Furthermore, our heady air invites the evil that lurks, waiting to grasp a hold of the insignificance within our greatness.

And then, our greatness, once more, shall return to the depths of insignificance from whence it came.

I’d actually driven by the little dirt road that offshoots from Pistol HIll Rd a few times, but I thought it was all private land at the time, so I backed off.  But no…most of it’s state land, and it runs right up to the very west end of Coronado National Forest, given me a PERFECT access point to head up into the Rincon’s.  Sooo much closer than having to drive all the way out up north of Benson to get there.  Better yet, its a perfect place to hunt/shoot….hardly anyone goes up this thing.  Looks like it is leased out to ranchers for grazing, and there were some spent shells of course, but not a ton, so I don’t think it’s traveled much.

Pretty sweet.

Purpose.  What little I know about it is that a) life seems meaningless without it, b) I have one, or more, and c) I have no idea what in heck they are, much less what they mean, and how and to what extent they fit into the grand scheme of the universe.  

Perhaps I’ve already fulfilled it (or them), and my remaining task in life is but to realize I’ve done so.  Unlikely.

Many stories and notions deal, ultimately, with human purpose.  

Dune (Frank Herbert)…the ultimate grasp at universal, infinite human purpose.  In all his years (decades) of exploring that universe and concept, he never reached a finite conclusion.  There was plentiful relative purpose…but never absolute, ultimate purpose, other than existance and continuous improvement within ever-expanding human webs.

Patriotism.  What better sense of purpose than to work towards the survival and expansion of the American way.  Build advanced technologies, giant militaries, throw our clout around in the world, convince everyone else our way is best.  It has the ring of purpose, because our work in the present is felt by many generations in the future.  But.  Ultimately, it’s relative.  It iterates, and never ends, like the explorations of many Sci-Fi stories, such as those two above.  There is a general fealing of good vs. evil, but it is vague, cloudy, and largely undefined.

Battlestar Galactica…yet another grasp at definition of human purpose, and again, it fails to conclude, implying merely repetition of a complex system (life) in a, for all intensive purposes, infinite universe.  Perhaps the one obvious purpose they all had throughout was to ensure that the cycle continues, but in the end, it defaulted to a deity, an absolute.  The only purpose the deity clearly had in mind was continued existance.  Not bad.  A step in the right direction.  However, it is missing something.  Good vs. Evil.  It muddies and mixes good and evil, and ultimately does away with them, defaulting to one polar extreme.  This does not ring true to me.  The universe is quite obviously not monopolar in nature.  Nearly every experience I’ve had indicates that existance favors two poles.  

The Lord of the Rings…the classic narrative of good vs. evil.  It implies they are two polar extremes…absolutes, and that ultimately, human purpose is to ensure that the former prevails.  This rings true with me, as it does with most.  Everyone knows good vs. evil, and most hate evil, when it is clearly recognizeable.  Unfortunately, this life is not so simple.  There is no clear absolute enemy on the horizon, no glowing red eye in the east to direct our purpose towards.  It is fleeting, it hides, shirks, wiggles, and creeps its way into every facet of our lives.  There is no defeating it, at least of our own accord.  How I would love to pick up a sword, and run screaming into battle, hurling myself at evil until it is vanquished, or falling in heroism and honor while trying.  Were it only so easy.

The Purpose Driven Life…arguably the best (modern) Christian attempt at definition of purpose.  It is a microcosm, and generalization of purpose.  It defines five concrete purposes: 1) You were planned for God’s pleasure, 2) You were formed for God’s family, 3) You were created to become like Christ, 4) You were shaped for serving God, and 5) You were made for a mission.  It presupposes Christianity of course; it is not (at least directly) an argument for Christianity.  It merely tells us how to fight the battles of life, to help win the war of our lives.  It implies, again, the existance of and struggle between two polar opposites of good  evil, and is providing guidance within a specific religious context.  It does very little to help one distinguish individual purpose in many daily actions, unless you’re considering becoming a clergyman.  

It, and the rest of the Christian faith for that matter, never really answers, or even addresses purpose after the war.  It implies that, once at the pole, purpose is continued, infinite existance in goodness and harmony with God.  There is never any discussion of God’s ultimate purpose(s), if there are any, outside of his creation.  But, maybe that is the key.  If God is the true absolute, he does not require a purpose.  Shakespeare put it best.  He is, and his purpose is to be.  Hence, adherenace to the best polar absolute is necessarily the only true human purpose.

I think the choice and derivation of purpose starts with a decision between belief in a mono-pole or bi-pole.  I have admit that while there are many indicators of bi-poles to me (electic polarity, good and evil, matter and anti-matter, positive and negative), there are no crystal clear proofs or discriminates of what exists at the absolute(s).  There are still fleeting indicators of monopoles (gravitation, existance of zero).  That said, I think we can narrow it down by logically formulating our choice between the two.  If the universe is truely mono-polar, then it is easy to argue that the choice is meaningless anyways, without consequence.  If the universe is bi-polar, then there are consequences to choice.  So, if one does not know, self-preservation would dictate it is safer to choose adherence to the most desireable of the bi-poles than not to.  This is perhaps a weak argument to base ones faith upon (which is not surprising…the fact I am searching for an argument at all implies I am more lacking in faith than others), but it is one of the few truths I know.  It is a selfish notion, and it is survivalistic, but it rings true.

And here I am…still no closer to reaching an answer that satisfies me.  Are continued existance and adherence to an absolute the only true ultimate purposes?

I’ll say this…great place to get ammo for CHEAP.  Got a 1000 rds of Wolf .55 grain FMJ for $270.  Cheapest I’ve ever found it.  Those Russians know how to make it CHEAP.  No problems with it either…I put 500 rds through the AR last month, and not a single mis-fire.

Got a couple new toys to pimp out (and I think complete) the AR: the 3X EOtech scope, a very light composite bipod, and a two-point harness.  Check it out: