A bit of knowledge that I've gathered, and some tips, about coronavirus

Knowledge is anathema to panic, so I figure I'll share some of the things I've learned as I've been watching this thing grow, and maybe it might help some of you. It's long, but maybe you'll find it useful. I care about you and want us all to do as well as we can. I’m not an expert at all, but I do like to use analysis, be pragmatic, and try to figure out what I can do to help. I know this is far outside what I normally post here, but on the off chance it will help someone, here you go.

1. The virus doesn't like direct sunlight; UV helps kill it. So it doesn't live outdoors very long. The higher the temperature, the faster it dies.

2. It can live on certain solid surfaces (ie glass, metal, plastic) for UP TO 9 days. The average seems to be three.

3. Ethyl alcohol kills it extremely effectively. After one minute of exposure to at least 62% concentration, it kills nearly all traces of the virus.

4. It doesn't live on soft surfaces (like cloth) as long, but still lasts for a few hours. You can use lysol for this.

5. It transmits via droplets from coughing, sneezing, boog-boogs. The spread of a sneeze can be up to 10 feet, but the average is a couple meters. It does not appear to be transmitted via regular respiration (like measles does) so that is very good news. That's why it's important to wash hands a lot, cover your mouth with your elbow when you cough, avoid touching your face.

6. The average time to show symptoms is 5 days, though it can take up to two weeks.

7. It attacks immunocompromised people and the elderly the most, HOWEVER, that doesn't mean everyone else isn't affected. Even if you aren't in a target group, you can spread it to someone vulnerable. So practice good hygiene and keep to yourselves, even if you're a super cool guy who feels like you won't be affected (HA), because we need to watch out for one another.

8. It spreads literally exponentially. The average person spreads it to 2.2 other people. That's why this is so scary.

9. Since it takes so long to infect and become deadly, it also overloads health systems. It takes a LOT of resources to treat people who can't breathe, and with it being a pretty bad flu system, US hospitals are already overtaxed. If we can do something called "flattening the curve". Say an area has 1000 cases. If those all hit in the same two weeks, and 50 of them are critical, the hospital is going to have a very hard time keeping up with all the treatment (personnel will be exhausted, it's likely that they will run out of critical supplies like masks, and they won't have room). However, if the same amount of people catch it over a one month period, that same hospital will have a much better chance of keeping up. When hospitals get overwhelmed by people who can't breathe, people die. This is what's happening in Italy right now. A lot of those people would live, if they could be treated, but there are just too many for the (very good) healthcare system. So we are trying to flatten the curve, and slow the spread of disease, to give EVERYONE a better chance.

So, what can we do?

1. Avoid groups of people! That means, avoid restaurants, theaters, games, big meetings (did you know the growing outbreak in Boston was due to one meeting that infected 70+ people? And it probably could have been an email ;) ). I know we have to work, but cut back on going out wherever you can. Italy wouldn't stop going to cafes or restaurants, and they have a 6% death rate now.

2. Clean yo self. Wash your hands, 20 seconds, hot water, all over. Wash your doorknobs in your home. We've been lysoling shoes whenever we come in the house. Clean, clean, clean!

3. If you can't wash, have hand sanitizer.

4. If you have any symptoms and have masks available, wear them! They keep it from spreading and we need to watch out for one another.

5. Don't buy into stupid conspiracy theories. We are on a planet of 8 billion + people, with a complicated biosphere. This came from nature, and the math makes sense. This isn't political, and you shouldn't allow your fear to overshadow your logic. This is real, it's happening, and we can do a lot to make it better.

6. Watch out for one another! If you know someone who is older or immunocompromised, take them some food. Knock and leave it on the doorstep, back away, and wave nicely from a good distance. Remember, you could be a silent carrier and we are just trying to help!

7. Reach out! This is lonely and scary, but we are still here for each other. Call or text people who are keeping to themselves, particularly the elderly. Maybe play words with friends online with them? Make a movie date, watch the same movie in different places at the same time! Maybe you can both make popcorn. Order surprises for people on amazon. FaceTime. You are not alone!

8. Have a few weeks of nonperishable food, things to do, medicine and tissues. Then you can avoid dealing with the rush, AND contributing to it.

9. If you have symptoms (cough, fever, trouble breathing), CALL your doctor first for instruction. Don't go to a clinic and spread it. The majority of cases are mild, so don't freak out!

10. Boost your own immune system! Try not to stress, do what you can to keep control because that will keep stress down. Stress makes our immune system vulnerable. Take vitamin c and d, and elderberry if you show symptoms (this has been shown to shorten the length of time that other viruses hit us, no official word on if it helps against coronavirus but I'm ready to try it). Hydrate, maybe have powdered gatorade on hand. One of the big things this does is dry people out, so hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Even if you feel you don't have it, your body operates better when well hydrated.

11. Remember that this too shall pass. We can make it a lot better by taking personal steps as early as possible.

12. DON'T PANIC! We have never had such a great chance fighting a pandemic as we do right now. We just need to be logical, acknowledge the problems, and learn the lessons other places are teaching us.

References:

How to build a home kit for emergencies:

https://www.ready.gov/kit

Reference for how long coronavirus lives on surfaces, and what kills it:

https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext

Disinfection advice:

https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/environmental-services/best-approach-disinfecting-surfaces-amid-novel-coronavirus-outbreak

CDC advice:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

More coverup insights, and a book tie-in for one of my favorites

One of my favorite books of all time is World War Z by Max Brooks. It's a zombie book, yes, but written from the perspective of ten years after, when people have survived and are being interviewed to share their survival stories. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Not only is it entertaining and well written, but it's a great vignette into how different societies and types of people respond to crisis, and I find his interpretations highly plausible.

It was written nearly 15 years ago, and was banned in China. The reason was that he based the outbreak there, and his character blamed the chinese government for covering up and lying about the epidemic, concealing it until it got too late. Today, Max Brooks had an article about the banning of his book, and how he based the response off of China's response to SARS. It's very interesting, and I thought you might enjoy it.

TLDR: Disease flourishes when mismanagement, coverups, and a lack of transparency in authoritarian governments allow it to. See also: Lessons from Chernobyl 101

Link to the original article here.

Security Tip of the Day

Security tip from your saucy security minx: When a website asks you if you'd like to save your credit card information, if at all possible, don't do it! This doesn't apply to your own browser's secure store; rather the option the website itself asks you to use.

When you allow a company to retain your cc data, that's one more potentially exploited server that can make your data compromised. You never know how secure someone else's databases are; you'd be surprised at the large companies that store extremely sensitive data in clear text.

I do trust secure stores that are based on your own computer (apple has one, for example) because that data is held in a pretty secure place. But if you're shopping at www.scubastevesbaittackleandsushi.com, don't allow them to "save data for easier checkout next time". It's just one more way that you can take your data security into your own hands.

Not all security is equal.

Having lots of fun with custom laser projects lately, check out what I’ve been up to.

Today I finished a custom designed and burned cherry wood Dresden Files sign for a friend. Lots of fun in the design process, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. Every project teaches me something new, and commissions give me the chance to make ideas that I wouldn’t have been able to come up with alone.

Dresden Files Accorded Neutral Territory Custom Sign

A few weeks ago I got to make three pieces of a triptych. Ultimately they are going to be used as a Dungeon Master gaming screen. My client had the original artwork; I added a few details and flourishes.

This was also made of cherry wood.

Cherry wood gamer screen.

As a personal project, I made this box to hold sundries for our vacation. Tickets, MagicBands, mouse ears…I wanted a place to consolidate our Disney World necessities before we leave. So I made this maple wood box, with cherry Mickey ears accents. Just sort of a special family keepsake to keep things safe, and help get the kids excited.

Side view of the box.

I’ve really been enjoying these projects. Let me know if you have an idea you’d like to see become reality!

In case you didn’t know I love Disney World…

….now you’ll have no doubt. This winter we will be taking the family on a vacation to Disney World. I am a very big Disney fan (for reasons I’ll go into more depth on in a different post, but to get the idea: I love the stories, I love the family focus, and the engineer part of me loves the efficiency of Disney World. That place is one well-oiled machine, and I love seeing it operate. It really is magical to me!)

One thing the I love to do before a Disney vacation, is to get my kids hyped. So I came up with an idea for a “Magical Memories Box”. It’s where I’ll put our tickets when they arrive, our Mouse Ears, Disney Magical Express tags, the little booklet confirming our resort stay, our MagicBands, and the day we go….the kids will open the box and there will be some Disney candy inside ;)

As the separate surprises arrive, we’ll put them all in the box together (plus, it keeps all the important things together and I don’t have to worry about what I did with them).

So I got the idea for it, and then designed this box up. It’s made of maple; the handles are cherry. I made the mickey handles because the lid fits flush with the rest of the box, and I thought it would be interesting to make them contrast with cherry. I made the design in affinity designer, then cut the pieces and engraved it on my Glowforge. “Welcome Home” is the typical Disney World greeting when you arrive, and I loved the idea of using it on here. The people in the silhouette each represent one of us. All in all, I’m really happy with how this turned out, and I’m already putting it into action.

A view from above

Box with the lid off.

Side view.

A Quick PSA For How To Get Around Email Gateways and Protect Your Data

Ever go to a website to look at a product, only to discover you are REQUIRED to put an email in, before you can even browse?

I think that's aggressive and annoying and pretty shady. So here's a quick tutorial on how to get around it.

The first screenshot is a site that has a stupid email gateway. Just wanting to harvest your data and sell it, methinks…or at the very least subscribe you to a stupid mailing list.

The second is the URL from the top of the page; if you look closely, you see a part that starts with "gateway.php" plus a bunch of gobbledy gook.

Select right after the “g” in gateway.php

Select starting at the "g" in gateway. Then delete from that point on. This removes that stupid gateway overlay, and you should be able to browse the site without giving away your personal information (like in the third picture).

Privacy preserved.

You might want to consider not supporting a business that REQUIRES you to give away your data just to browse. But this is just one way to get around it (at least some of the time).

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood security and privacy Minx, Phaedra

D-day 75th Anniversary, and what it means to me

75 years ago today, the D-day invasion occurred. Every year on June 6, I try to take time to reflect on the immense sacrifice and valor that were shown by the Allies that day. It’s a sobering exercise, but I try my best to put myself into the shoes of the men who were assigned the duty to attack Normandy.

The logistics of the attack were immense, and the coordination was incredible. Below I’ve included this graphic to give you an idea of just how large all aspects of this single day operation were. 156,000 allied troops were used; we haven’t seen anything on that scale since. The terrain was harsh, the enemy entrenched, and the specter of what loomed was terrifying.

The actual numbers (in a great graphic) of this operation.

There are plenty of articles (and many, many books) that go into the actual planning and execution (even the battle plans themselves) of Operation Overlord. I can’t restate all the facts as well as they can; I’ll include some further reading suggestions at the end and highly suggest that you go and educate yourself about one of the most monumental military engagements in history.

What I’m going to try to do is bring this home on a personal level, from my very removed position of an American woman sitting in comfort and safety, 75 years after this event changed the world. My own life, and that of my children (and you, by extension) could look entirely different if 156,00 troops hadn’t been deployed. If 4,413 of them hadn’t been sacrificed, with full knowledge of the dangers they were facing..

The human impact of being one of the boots-on-the-ground troops assigned to attack Normandy on June 6, 1944 brings tears to my eyes 75 years later. The odds were nearly insurmountable, and the boys who were to face the threat of the Nazis across the channel knew it.

Storming the beach.

They knew it as soon as they got the orders. That they were likely going into a venture that would result in their death, or at the very least the deaths of someone they knew and cared about. And that the death they would have to stare in the face, would be a horrific, terrifying, and painful one. Whether that meant storming the entrenched bunkers of the Nazis built into the very stone of high ground of a foreign shore, or it meant drowning from heavy gear in crashing waves, or being cut down by machine gun fire before they’ve even had the chance to stand to get off the boat. Or, for their airborne brethren, it could be dying in a shot down plane, getting picked off from the ground while they dangled defenselessly mid-drop in their parachute. Perhaps getting stuck in a tree and killed by ground troops; or the actual chance to face battle and engage the enemy face to face, if they were lucky enough to get that far, and pray to make it through.

And those are just a handful of the myriad actual deaths that occurred. And they still went.

Because the character of the boys who were sent to face down the looming terror of a world under Nazi control, meant the sacrifice would be worth it. They swallowed their bile, they powered through the tunnel vision, steadied their shaking hands on their rifles, and they went. They jumped, or they ran, or they swam….and many of them died for it. But they were willing to give it their all, for US.

The face of war.

This wasn’t an abstract idea that motivated them. It was that they knew, they wanted their sweethearts, or wives, or children, and future grandchildren, to live in a world without this threat. And to buy that future for us (I am the proud grandchild of a World War II veteran), they would go and do the most terrifying thing I can imagine.

That’s the kind of commitment to others that is incredible to see. Bravery is being afraid, and doing it anyway. The ultimate illustration of bravery is going into terrible odds, and being scared to do it, but still getting it done. So I try to live my life in a way to show those thousands of young men who sacrificed, that I appreciate what they gave us. I try to show my children, that our world would have been much different if the young men of a hazy and increasingly distant past, hadn’t made an in-the-moment choice to face fear, thousands of them, and give all they had for us. The sacrifices made that day weren’t only deaths; there were horrific woundings, of the body, and of the soul and heart. Some recovered, some didn’t. And I will be eternally grateful for all they gave. For looking into the mouth of a dragon, and charging with their swords right into the maw. Because that’s the kind of decision that takes more bravery than we can fully realize in the abstract. And it’s the kind I pray I would have, if I were faced with that situation.

Look at the resolve on their faces.

I try to remind myself in life, when minor things get me down (and in comparison to Normandy, it’s all minor), that my problems aren’t that bad. That I am privileged to be bothered by minor things, and that so many others in the past have faced true hardship. And I imagine what it would be like, in a sea of flak, seeing other aircraft fall in flames around, and then being told, it’s my turn to jump in the maelstrom. And I say to myself: “This isn’t Normandy. I can handle it.”

So remember that, when you’re stuck in traffic, and someone cuts you off. Or some jerk stabs you in the back at work. Or you argue with your obscure relative on facebook. Or, your wifi doesn’t work. Or, any other problem in our modern American world: “This isn’t Normandy. I can handle it.”

And if you WERE at Normandy, pray that you could have handled that, like our ancestors did.

Further Reading:

If you’d like to read further about the invasion, I very highly recommend www.dday.org They also do incredible outreach; I recommend donating to them if you can.

They have survivor accounts, and very informative articles about the invasion itself. If you ever are in the area of Bedford, Virginia, PLEASE go to the National D-day Memorial. It is a truly awe-inspiring experience Bedford had the largest per-capita deaths at D-day in America of any town, so Bedford is the official site for the memorial. Here’s an article about the human toll of losing 20 men in one day from a small farming town: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Bedford-Virginia-lost-20-men-on-D-Day-13950155.php

Figured out what must be happening with Frozen 2....

I was underwhelmed (to say the least) with the “conclusion” of Game of Thrones (quotemarks are intentional….) but I AM looking forward to Frozen 2. Especially now that I think I have the plot figured out ;)

Totally digging Anna in beast mode.

Chernobyl (warning, spoilers ahead!)

On HBO, there’s a miniseries called Chernobyl. I’ve always been fascinated by that event, and was hesitant to see a dramatization of it, thinking they would miss too many key facets of the story. Little did I know how wrong I would turn out to be.

I didn’t they be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but here we are.

Tonight is the series finale. I’ve been completely enthralled since episode one. Not only is it cinemetically impeccable, the storytelling is just as nuanced as it needed to be to capture not only the direness of the situation, but the aspects that specifically revolve around living behind the iron curtain.

Chernobyl hasn’t once flinched in showing the heavily Soviet problems of burying a problem, at the expense of human life, to avoid being called to task by the Party (and, by extension, the threat of the Gulag and secret police). From the get-go, this has been a theme of the show: people who realize the almost incomprehensible devastation of the Chernobyl core explosion, set against Communist bureaucracy. When pieces of radioactive graphite from the explosion are littering the ground, and the engineers are repeating this fact, their boss immediately tells them that they did not see the graphite on the ground. His fear of the state is so much, that he discounts the concrete and clear cut evidence in front of all of them. It’s a fascinating scene.

The immediate aftermath of the explosion and fire.

The series wastes no time in getting to the heart of the story. It starts with the meltdown, and doesn’t let up. One of the most impactfull features of this series to me, is seeing superb graphics illustrating the effects of the accident. I’d read about it, but it’s one thing to use the abstract imagination of an uninformed mind’s eye, and another to see it perfectly rendered in excruciating detail. The meltdown of the core, through the eyes of firefighters are sent as sheep to the slaughter in an impossible task, shows us full on a nuclear eye of Sauron.

The core on fire.

I really hadn’t understood on such a visceral level what it would have been like as a citizen of Pripyat, before the evacuation was finally ordered. The fact that the sky was glowing, with children allowed to play on a playground in front of the dying plant, is such an illustration of the life of the individual having such little sway over the image of the Mother Russia. It was clear that something was very wrong, but with no guidance, they were trying to continue to live their lives as usual.

The fire at Chernobyl.

The entire series is a cautionary tale of what happens when the state trumps the individual at the most elemental levels. The cost of a lie and cover-up ended up being far worse than the toll of the original accident, and the need to save face to the world is a very present theme. The fact that the accident wasn’t even acknowledged officially until the rest of the world posted imagery that was undeniable, is fascinating and terrible. Intelligent people with answers are ignored in favor of the party line; and clearly it’s systemic. One of the most poignant scenes to me is when nuclear scientists have to communicate in code about the disaster and response. They have a sophisticated system that they clearly have needed to use many times, and their own familiarity with the need to talk around what they are purportedly there to do, is chilling. We don’t see the person that must be listening in on the call, but the unseen KGB agent is the largest person in the room.

To contrast the machine that is the Communist state, we are offered the very human and heroic stories of the proletariat workers who sacrificed so much to staunch the flow of radioactivity. We see the vignettes of the first responders who bravely went into the maw of the beast; the soldiers who assisted with disposing of the graphite on the roof (after the radiation was too much for moon lander robots to penetrate), and the miners who dug beneath the core. These people were the grist in the machine, and their stories are respectfully and truthfully told.

The miners are heroic and human, in the face of disaster.

The stories of these people remind us that ultimately behind every horrible regime, are regular people who try to do their best. I’m glad that this element is so poetically captured.

Chernobyl is not a show for the faint of heart, but it should be required viewing for every citizen. It reminds us of what happens when states have too much power, when lies matter more than facts, and how ultimately it’s the good people who pay the price.

The end of an era!

It’s been a while, but how could I not update about the conclusion of one of the most epic shows of all time? I had some….OPINIONS…..about other episodes in the season (the “battle” of winterfell, and its total lack of battle planning, for example…), but ultimately, I managed to bludgeon my expectations down by the last episode and feel…..well, content. And mostly that’s due to the fact that Jon and Tormund get to chill out (literally) north of the wall. (And yes, I will be posting on here more often, don’t worry).

A good bromance can fix many ills, people.

Friendship and Wisdom

I've been thinking a lot about friendships and relationships lately. When you're young, you just sort of assume people will stay around until catastrophic actions happen. As you get older, you realize this is not the case. Sometimes we hurt each other, intentionally or unintentionally. I definitely have made mistakes with people; mistakes that I may not have even realized I committed, but saw later. Sometimes we are hurt by others. Sometimes it happens repeatedly. And sometimes, we just grow apart, as our goals and personalities and interests change.

In my youth, I genuinely felt people had the best intentions for me, as I did for them, unless they blatantly told me otherwise. I've fortunately moved on from that painful innocence, and realized that plenty of people can act kindly to our faces, but the buck stops there. I still try to do my best to help others whenever I can. If someone is acting in a bad way, I try to see what pain they may be moving through that is causing it. But I no longer allow myself to be stepped on for the betterment of others.  Sometimes people can be false friends because of their own jealousies. Sometimes they keep you around to feel better about themselves, but then if they feel that they no longer have the upper hand, they no longer want the friendship.

One of my most important friendships ended in an incredibly painful way, out of seemingly nowhere, due to this. Sometimes they subconsciously don't feel they deserve a true friendship, and will sabotage it because they feel that's what they deserve. I've seen that happen too. Sometimes they are selfish and put themselves first; looking back, I can see that I've done this before, though I try my best to make sure not to be that person any more. And sometimes things end for reasons we will never be able to rationalize. We are long lived, and that's just how it goes.

Eventually you find out...and it's a tough realization, but honestly not everyone is good for you. Not everyone can deserve friendship. They can always deserve love, and caring, and for your best hopes. But you can't always let them into your circle. You don't have the time, or the energy, because eventually putting yourself out there for everyone will consume you. Some people will try to take all of you. I've learned to curate my friendships. I've learned that I no longer have a wide sphere; I have a close circle.

But here's what I have found to be a silver lining, because with age comes wisdom (even for someone as stubborn as me). Sometimes people stick with you, and give you more chances than you deserve. And sometimes you do the same for others. And as time goes on, and you assess people around you and your own goals, I realize something.  I am closest to people who are trying to do their best. They are setting goals, and sometimes missing them, but always trying for them. The more I have surrounded myself with people of strong moral code and ambition, the more I have found, you really ARE more like the people you spend time with. And I find that the spaces that were filled by those with bad, or mediocre, feeling for me, are now filled by those who genuinely care for, and inspire me. I've replaced what used to be a crystal necklace of friendship, with a bracelet of diamonds. And that can only come with time and age, and it is one of the sweetest parts of getting older that I've found.

I have friends now from every stage of my life, and we have all changed and adapted and learned, but we have stuck together. The wisdom to be discerning in who I let into my heart, is a lesson that hurt to learn, but was worth learning. And to those of you here, who have stuck with me through my trials, through my darkest days and years, I raise my glass to you. Thank you for being here for me, and I am here for you.

Happy New Year!

It's a popular idea to hate 2016, but personally for me it was a good year. If you follow my favorite advice and pay attention to the things that happen in your day to day life, instead of what the 24 hours news cycle media monster wants you to believe, maybe your year wasn't all bad either. Business wise this year was a big success for me, my family is happy and healthy, and I learned all kinds of new things. I hope yours was similar. Here's to a brand new year full of new ideas, learning, loving our neighbors, friends and family, and doing the best we can. 

Part like a Viking.  

Goodnight, Princess

Yesterday, Carrie Fisher died. She'd had a massive heart attack on Christmas Eve, and succumbed on December 27. She was 60 years old.

I'm still sort of in shock about it. Considering the fact that I never even saw Carrie in real life, let alone know her, she had a large impact on me. I hadn't even really considered it, until suddenly she wasn't here anymore.

As with so many other people born in the 80s, I was a huge Star Wars fan. Still am, in fact. (LOVED Rogue One, in case you're wondering). Obviously Leia was one of the main characters, and since she's really the only female of note in the original trilogy, she was the one I gravitated to. That fancy hair, those flowing white robes. Sassy, smart, fierce, and still gorgeous. Some people found her too prickly; I say that's a good thing for a girl in a man's world. 

For a little girl growing up just after the blatant sexploitation era, it was a great thing to have a strong female role model in such a popular series. I know Wonder Woman existed as well, but I was a bit too young to get into that. As far as sci-fi women went, she was really in a league of her own. Think of how recently Barbarella had been the most famous sci-fi female. I'm not knocking her; it takes all kinds to make a world (although I've got some thoughts on Jane Fonda herself) and she's definitely entertaining. But as the mother of a tiny little Shieldmaiden, I can tell you hands down Leia is the one I want to be an influence, any day. 

Carrie was smart and witty, and you can clearly see that in the way she played Leia. She was imperfect and feisty, and still came off as feminine. What a great thing for little girls to see. A few years ago there was a tempest in a teapot where a male said, "What am I supposed to tell my daughter?" About why there were slave leia action figures. Carrie's response: 

"The father who flipped out about it, 'What am I going to tell my kid about why she’s in that outfit?' Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage."

I feel that's such a perfect response. It states that bad things can happen to women, but it's up to us to control what occurs after. What an important, and realistic, lesson for little girls. Don't deny the facts of the world; teach our little ones how to handle them instead. 

I believe women deserve the chance to try to be whatever we want, but I equally believe we can't all fit into every role. Leia was a representation of doing the best with what we have in bad circumstances, and excelling at it. As General Organa, she reached the ultimate role of wisdom and power. I hope my little girl looks up to her as I did, and I hope that later she learns about the smart, witty, honest woman who played her. The Star Wars world lost a bright star unexpectedly, and it's a sad thing. But at least we will have Leia and General Organa for our little girls for years to come.

Winter Solstice and the Doldrums

Hello, dear readers. It's December 21st, officially the longest night (or shortest day) of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. As with so many other denizens of this planet, current and past, I mark this day strongly in my personal calendar. In my head, as autumn closes and it gets harder to be motivated to do things, I keep track of how close we are to the solstice. Because it always feels to me, after Christmas has passed, that January and February seem unduly long. It's a long, dark, cold plain. But I remind myself of this: the solstice has passed. The days ARE getting longer, even if it doesn't feel like it. We turn our faces, so slowly, back to the sun.

It used to bother me a lot more, to have so much time in the darkness and cold. Now I try to embrace it; "embrace every season" is a phrase I say to myself quite a bit, and in a variety of applications. But I started saying it for winter.

No matter how positive I try to make my attitude, the lack of sunlight still does get me down at some point. But I don't mind it nearly as much as I did ten years ago. And this is what I try to do to embrace the winter.

I fully throw myself into my Christmas preparations, especially since I have two very small children. I make cookies, send out cards, make gifts, sing the songs, watch the movies, and eat all the comfort foods. After all, they are named that for a reason. We've been celebrating the solstice season the same way for thousands of years here in the northern reaches of the planet: feasts, company, wearing the little bits of green and red we can find in the grays and browns of winter.

But I don't stop there. Because I think that's a trap I used to fall into. I'd enjoy the heck out of Christmas; even as a kid. My parents were amazing at making Christmas magical for us kids, and I feel safe in saying that feeling hasn't left us as adults. But I used to get to January 2 and think, "now what?" All that society tells us we have to look forward to then is the inevitable disappointment of making and breaking New Year's resolutions. Heck, no wonder we get so sad at this point! So, I've thrown the resolutions out the window. 

But I have accepted that I'm really not going to hold myself to a high standard between Thanksgiving and New Years on many goals. I'm not going to exercise as much as normal, I'm going to indulge more than I should in delicious sugary and unhealthy treats (and more than a couple libations), and I'm going to buy some presents for myself while I buy presents for others. And I'm not going to have resolutions for the New Year. But I DO recognize that I am cyclical, just like the length of days and nights on this planet, and I embrace that. I allow myself to go into what I think of as "hibernation" mode during this time. I rest more, I'm easier on myself, and I let more of my defenses down and let a bit more gentleness out. But this is all in recognition that after the days start to get longer, so will my own personal regimen.

As the year begins, I recognize that I can't keep my own personal December soma holiday going. Slowly, I start working on myself again. I don't tie it to one day, but I know that it feels right within the first couple weeks of the year. I realize that I can't eat treats as much, I make myself move more again. And I start to work on welcoming the sun back into my life. It feels healthy to me this way. Even though the days are cold, I do keep the cozy feeling going. I've taken pages from the Norwegian book on this, and I embrace the idea of "koselig" (which basically means coziness). In the evenings I light candles and make warm teas and drinks. I invite people over to chat even though it's dark and cold. I make warm food, but less cookies. I have come to embrace the idea of "there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear", and so I dress my children and I warmly and we go enjoy the fact that we don't have to worry about sunstroke or mosquitoes or ticks. I even enjoy shoveling snow (for a while, at least).

So many people in the US find it so hard to shake off the doldrums in the winter months. I understand that; I've struggled with it too. But adapting my behavior to embrace the negatives and find the positives within them, has made winter something I look forward to now. And here's the thing about "the doldrums". That term is a nautical one that has become part of the common lexicon. The doldrums are areas in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that are usually areas of low pressure. As such, for hundreds of miles, there is barely any wind. That's not a big deal now, because of course we don't depend on wind for most ship transport. But when sailing was nearly the only way to travel, hitting the doldrums was a big deal. You'd be becalmed for potentially weeks, working through rations, sitting bored in still heat. Most likely on a ship with at least one person you couldn't stand (let's be honest here). So no one looked forward to it, but eventually, they DO end. And the same is true of our winter doldrums. Make a plan, embrace the potential suck, and realize that this too shall pass. And soon enough you'll get more sunlight, so then you should embrace that, and move your body and love the breeze. But for now, embrace the warm cuddly silence of winter, let yourself relax a bit, and remember that the doldrums end.

Welfare, and the Relevant Conversation We Need to Prepare Ourselves For

I like to try to approach things with an open mind, and learn and adapt when confronted with new data. It's a human foible to want to cling steadfastly to an idea, and I try to release myself from it whenever possible. In the last few years, I've realized that I need to adapt my way of thinking for a different human scenario that we are likely to be confronted with sooner than we think. And that has to do with the welfare state, and, as so much that I talk about, technology.

A theme that I harp on quite a bit is trying to live a balanced life in a world that is increasingly aslant. I've written several posts that revolve around that idea, and I'm sure I'm not done yet. Give me a topic and I'll yammer on, trust me. But essentially a few of the ideas for leading a fulfilling life in a world that is doing everything it can to distract us from that are: 

• Try to move around every day. Depression hates a moving target. Do some pushups, do some squats, walk and run, jump rope. Any motion is better than no motion.
• Create something physical whenever possible. You don't have to make a masterpiece, and as any artist can tell you, creation is mostly about failures. But the satisfaction of having something tangible will satisfy something in you that nothing else will. Hence my candle business for example.
• Avoid creating an echo chamber that reinforces your own opinions. Seek conflicting information and try to learn. 
• Read! It doesn't matter what. Read cookbooks if you want. Read science fiction (we all know I love it), find history books that engage you. Just read. It engages your mind, as does exercise, and helps fight off mental apathy.
• Keep moving forward! Set goals and work towards them. If you don't, all of a sudden you'll realize 20 years passed without accomplishing anything. It's never to late to start making goals and growing. Make sure not to only set large ones, either. Set small ones as well so you are always seeing progress somewhere; that way you don't get frustrated and bored on the way to meeting large ones.
• Move with kindness and compassion. Stand for your convictions, but remember everyone has arrived at different points in life due to a lot of circumstances, and be compassionate. No one ever looked good by berating someone who was in pain. Help others whenever possible, both through charity contribution and through charitable acts.
• Surround yourself with intelligent people who motivate you and do good things. Understand that no one is perfect, but having people that inspire you to live a better life will help insure that you live a better life. I'm blessed to know some of the most inspiring people on this planet, and I'm not being hyperbolic. 

That's just a partial list, but it's a good starting place. It doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines to see that I'm someone who believes in working towards things. And as such, as you might imagine, I believe that government handouts and welfare are a two-edged sword. I absolutely understand that there are circumstances in which people are thrown off-kilter and can't get back on their feet alone. This life is not easy on any of us, but it's also harder on some. While I believe that it's essential to help others and be compassionate, I also think that large government offices established to fulfill that role are not ideal. First of all, I've been working in the government for the last decade, and can fully reinforce how much waste of funding there is when there's no capitalism involved. I've seen plenty of chairs filled for the sake of securing funding. 

The other problem with large government offices doling out....well, the dole...is the atrophy to the recipients over time. It's a truism of human nature that if we don't have to work for something, eventually, we don't appreciate it. Even if at the beginning we did. We start to see it as something that we deserve, and desire to give nothing back. That feeling is really a poisonous one, and I'm not blaming the people who fall into it. I'm not shirking the responsibility of the receiver here, but I really think it's just a symptom of depression, when we don't feel we're contributing. And it can make us selfish and petty. So I'm a big fan of welfare programs that also give the recipients a purpose. The New Deal building programs changed over time into something that I applaud less, but the initial programs that gave us dams, parks, schools, and much more, built by citizens who were crushed beneath the Great Depression, had a lot that I liked. People didn't atrophy due to lack of motivation; they could see that they were doing something for their community while they got off their feet. That was huge.

So where am I going with this? Well, I've realized something. I'm not the first or only person to think about it, but I like to talk here about things that are rattling around my brain. The last several years have had extremely heated conversations about "handouts" and welfare state behaviors. Belief that work and the feeling of contribution is essential to mental well-being obviously puts me on a certain side in the current conversation. But that conversation is about to go through a fundamental change. 

Within the next decade or so, humanity is going to go through another fundamental upheaval. The population of the earth has ballooned since the 1730s from less than 1 billion to more than 8 billion. As that change has occurred, simultaneously there has been a huge leap forward in nearly every aspect of life due to technology changes. We are quickly approaching a nexus yet again. Within the next one to two decades, most jobs are going to be able to be taken over by AI programs or robots of some kind. That's not just true of the assembly line and customer service jobs that we already see (and as we talk about raising the minimum wage, the rush is coming faster to replace lower skill jobs with cheaper robots that don't require things like healthcare). That also applies to many of the higher level jobs too. Drones will soon be in everything from package delivery, piloting aircraft, driving trains and our own cars. Even now programs are intelligent enough to write NEW programs that can outperform programs written by humans. There are programs that are intelligent enough to design and create music, too. AI is going to be able to out-human us in nearly every human endeavor. That's frightening, but quickly coming closer. Brave New World, indeed. Although a perk that I see is that the outsourcing problem America has had will most likely quickly go away. While human personnel in India and China have taken many production jobs from the US, that will become an obsolete problem. While currently paying an overseas worker much less to than an American to do a job has undoubtedly affected production stateside, the price difference between an overseas robot and a US based robot likely won't be much different (at least not for long), so perhaps we'll see a lot of production return home. I hope so anyway.

So the "welfare" conversation is about to change. Suddenly, instead of requiring people to "find work", even those who would seek work of their own volition, are going to have a hard time finding a role. And in that scenario, we can't just allow millions of displaced workers to starve to death because they refuse to find a job. There just literally won't be enough jobs. It won't be a matter of cross training or getting a new field. Workers won't be needed. So what do we do? Humanity will fundamentally change. It will be necessary to have a basic universal wage for all the displaced people.

What I HOPE is that we will essentially end up in a "post-economy economy", of sorts. In the utopian view, it would be a situation in which people figure out how to adapt and happily live when their work isn't "necessary". My recommendation is that we all look into how the nobility of England occupied themselves in the 18th century. Learn languages, learn to draw, take exercise...maybe the waters at Bath, haha....read and write. Engage ourselves. But what I worry about is that we'll basically just stay heads down and argue on the internet even more. 

The stigma of "not having a job" is going to be much more universal before we know it. And we'd better learn how to adequately prepare ourselves for that era. Learn to be happy and make work for ourselves that doesn't result in wage, but satisfaction in other ways. Because those days are coming. Hopefully we can adapt and become more balanced, rounded, and embrace that change. The conversation will need to.

Post script for further reading: If you'd like an interesting book to read about rapid technology change and its implications for what it means to be human, I highly recommend "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler. It was written in 1970 so it's not 100% accurate anymore (there have been even more leaps since then), but it's a good jumping off point for contemplation. "Brave New World" is a good cautionary tale about how to be the wrong sort of leisure class, but it is disconcertingly easy to think about it going that way.

Pearl Harbor 75th Anniversary: A perspective from a "millennial"

75 years ago today Pearl Harbor happened. It's been on my mind all day, although I'm just now putting pen to page. The shock of that morning has always brought me to tears, though I wasn't even born for another 41 years. I try to place myself into the shoes of people on that day, and I find myself shaken.

In a world already wrought with unrest, and America caught between two warring fronts of terrifying proportion and building terror. To be someone who was all too familiar with the horrors of war; after all just 23 years before the horrors of World War I had concluded, and many people were still scarred and maimed, spiritually, mentally, and physically, from that experience. Now the same power was raising its head in the East (and being terrifyingly successful); to the West, the atrocities and whispers of acts like the Rape of Nanking were creeping in. The Germans and the Japanese were knocking, and we were hoping to find a clear path without being frayed by warfare again so soon. The country was only just over 150 years old, and there had already been so much exhaustion.

Just crawling from beneath the wreckage of the dust bowl and the great depression, and now the storms on every horizon. Can you imagine the oppression on the hearts of the average American at that time? No wonder Americana was such a large cultural force: cling to each other, cling to our history, and think about baseball, movies, and dancing as much as possible. It was a terrifying time. And that was what it would have felt like on December 6, 1941.

Now picture the morning of December 7. A shocking attack out of nowhere (to most citizens, though the signs were there for leadership in retrospect, but the pieces put together too slowly to prevent the attack). That morning it must have felt like a lightning bolt that struck right in the stomach....but you knew the bolt would come sometime. Maybe there was a feeling of sick inevitability, in a world so topsy-turvy and so recently cruel. We knew we'd get pulled in, but not like this, not NOW. A shock attack, cowardly and early in the morning on a Sunday, perfectly calculated to maximize the carnage of those simply trying to rest. Right before Christmas, on a beautiful Sunday morning, before church. 

2,403 military men were killed that morning; many of them drowned in the hulls of the ships they slept on, in a force at peace. Men like people we know now, who surround us every day. People who had children, who wanted children. There must have been someone who died that loved reading too much, and his brothers teased him for having his nose in a book all the time. There must have been someone who died that took care of every stray animal who came his way. Another who wrote home to his little brothers and sisters every week, and sent them his pay, to help, since the farm still hadn't recovered. There must have been someone who hated to talk, but had a sweet smile if you caught it. They loved, they laughed, they hoped, and they dreamed. They knew they were in a world at war, and they would be pulled into it...but they didn't even get the chance. The horror of that morning resonates today just as strongly as it did then, because our clothes and styles change, but humans don't. They were the same as us. 

And thus they were pulled into the war, and our country was pulled into the war, and our world was never the same. And we learned once again through tribulation who we were and what mattered, and did what we needed to do to make it as right as we could. The sleeping dragon was awoken, and didn't sleep again until after Jimmy Doolittle had his raid, and bombs were dropped, and millions of lives were irrevocably changed. But things were still better than they would have been if we had turned our cheek the other way.

So now, it is 75 years later. And to many it feels as though it's ancient history, and eventually it will be. But to me it feels like it could have happened yesterday, and every year I cry on this day in remembrance of those who were lost, and thank them for their sacrifice. Because the world is still made up of people, just as it was then, and that shock feels just as real now as it did to people then. We try to do the best we can, but sometimes someone decides they need to try to take it. And then we have to fight.

Why I'm so excited about General Mattis as Secretary of Defense

I have been very excited about the possibility of General Mattis as potential Secretary of Defense in the new administration, and the closer we get to an official announcement, the more my excitement increases. In fact I've been buzzing like a school girl about it, and an old friend the other day asked me why. That's when I was once again reminded that not everyone automatically has the same knowledge as me, and that sometimes I need to explain myself rather than just flamboyantly tap dance around waving a flag and yelling "Whoo hoo!"

So I'll use part of my response to her here, and I'll flesh it out a bit more as well, about why I (and many other members of the Defense community) are acting like kids on Christmas morning about this possible pick:

General Mattis is renowned throughout the Marine Corps (and the military community in general) as being a very pragmatic man, who knows how to get things done, has the best interest of the country and his people at heart, and isn't afraid to step on bureaucratic toes. He embodies the "warrior scholar" ideal, he is well read and very intelligent. He doesn't have any interest in anything but doing the job the right way, and is seen as a leader who will make good decisions even if they are politically unfavorable (a big deal in an era when many members of the flag ranks are seen as being willing to sacrifice ideals for politics in order to secure a civilian job after they retire). He is (as far as I can tell) universally respected, and a very rare man. He also has an amazing sense of humor and is known for his non sequiturs. A great leader and man. Here is an article that has an email he wrote in response to someone asking what to do when they said their officers didn't have time to read. 

I love the fact that he is so well read and employs his knowledge of history handily and without pretense, and travels with a library of books. He fully appreciates the importance of history in warfare, and in human nature. I feel that we haven't had the best luck in Defense Secretaries for having their fingers on the pulse of the military, and he would definitely not have that problem. He fully understands all levels of military life (check out one of my favorite stories about him) and hasn't let his position ever erode his humanity. He also has a fundamental understanding of the enemy, and I absolutely love how candid he is about it.

In an era of people saying whatever it takes to get the job, no matter their true beliefs and with nary a care for hypocrisy, General Mattis is a true throwback in his honesty. He knows his job, he loves it to his core, and he won't mince words about it. He's so good at being in Command that he rose to the top despite this time being one that mostly rewards people for checking boxes and glad-handing even in the highest levels, and he never let go of the truth to do it. That is a very large breath of fresh air. We've had several SecDefs who were definitely more political than actual, and while I usually like balance (a civilian SECDEF is in many ways a good thing, to balance out the bias that can come from a military background), in this case I'm sure he will do such a good job that I don't mind having a fully military person in the position. He's so informed, well-read and well-rounded that he has a pocketful of invisible civilian advisors riding on his shoulder at all times (as long as you are willing to listen to the wisdom of greats like Marcus Aurelius and Gertrude Bell). It's so refreshing to have someone who understands the importance of classical thought and teaching, instead of a MBA from an ivy league university.

I know I'm gushing here, but I can't help it. I've followed his career for years, and was very sad when he retired and wasn't made Commandant. This development is unforeseen and even better, so I'm on cloud nine. I've managed to get this far without stating the fact that he's a very formidable enemy to anyone who would go against us on his watch, but the man is known for his tenacity and true embodiment of the "devil dog" spirit. I can't hide my enthusiasm for this pick, and I figured I'd flesh it out a bit for those who might not have known more detail. 

In parting, here's a list of some of his best quotes, which cut straight through bs and right to the heart of every matter they are addressing: 

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

-Gen. Mattis gave this piece of advice to Marines in Iraq, as quoted in “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq”

In a similar vein, Mattis has also said:  

“There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them. I don’t think you do. It’s just business.”

“There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.”

On the flip side, the general would rather not be on the receiving end of it. 

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.” 

Mattis said this during a 2005 panel in San Diego, California, according to a CNN transcript. Later, his boss Gen. Hagee chastised his frank speech, saying Mattis “should have chosen his words more carefully.”

“The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some a**holes in the world that just need to be shot.”

This was a line in a motivational address to his Marines at Ayn al-Asad Airbase, an Iraqi Armed Forces and U.S. armed forces base located in western Iraq.

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f*** with me, I’ll kill you all.”

Mattis reportedly said this to Iraqi tribal leaders. 

“PowerPoint makes us stupid.” 

Mattis, then Joint Forces commander, said this at a military conference in North Carolina, April 2010.

Society's shift away from forgiveness, and its repercussion on human interaction

Gonna get a little bit hairy in here today. Of course, if you get down to it, it's a hairy era in general, so I'm really just blending in.

There's plenty in the news these days to aggravate and inflame people, and it sure seems to be doing its job. Every other person I interact with is desolated, and the ones in between are enraged. It's a rough time for humanity. Not in the creature comforts, survival sense. Plenty of studies back up the fact that overall, violence and sickness and every other awful way of dying are on the decline. I'm speaking of our spiritual, cerebral facets. 

It's such a confusing time for Americans. In the last few centuries, the entire scope of culture has been flipped upside down. What are we here for? Who do we claim fealty to? And in the next few decades, this will likely get worse, as more of our life becomes automated, and more of us are left with too much time on our hands to spin ourselves up in a tizzy.

So what do we turn to in order to blow of our steam? It used to be family, God, the church, and hobbies/making things. But those are becoming more scarce as outlets, and we don't know how to deal with it. So we apparently turn to allowing our Id out online, with nary a Superego in sight. Hopefully this is just a growing pain (and everything feels permanent when you're in the middle of it), but it's hard to tell.

Here's what I do know: Bullying, hatred, and judgement are the order of the day right now. Particularly in the social media realm. And I think the biggest red flag I see is the total lack of forgiveness.

In Western society, Christianity has been the moral compass for most of the last couple thousand years. There have been missteps and miscalculations and errors along the way, but essentially it was the law of the land. As we move further and further into the "Science as a God" era, the human morality tenets of Christianity are being left behind. Obviously there are plenty of implications and discussions to be had with that little thesis statement, but I'm going to leave much of that to other posts and focus on the compassion, hypocrisy, and forgiveness areas. (And before you get worked up, I absolutely endorse science most of the time. I just don't find it provides all the answers for me, and that's where my religion steps in). 

Now I don't automatically accept the thought that all Christians are the good ones, and all non-Christians are bad. There's plenty of nastiness to go all over the place, trust me. After all we are all flawed humans fighting battles; some winning, some losing. But I will say that the basic premise of "Love one another", and "forgive", are really being lost when we have no outer moral code to help guide our consciences. 

Every day I am seeing the mob of online thought drag humans through the mud for missteps, some of them decades old. I do believe that some crimes are offenses that shouldn't be forgotten (murder, rape, crimes against children etc etc), but that's not what I'm talking about. It's not decades old grievous crimes. It's decades old "things said in passing", or decades old opinions, or things of that nature. And the online mobs are completely prepared to pillory anyone for something said in the past, wrecking lives and families and livelihoods, oftentimes for statements that have been disavowed. And this really bothers me.

I am not sure if students are still encouraged to read 1984 or Brave New World, but it sure doesn't seem as though enough people have taken lessons from those books to heart. As we grow ever closer to every single moment of our lives being captured by technology and stored, and our lifespans are already being predicted to reach 150 years before too much longer, I just wonder what traps we as a society are setting for ourselves. "Thought crimes" are very much a reality these days; perhaps the government isn't very much into prosecuting them yet, but the individual has so much power that the judicial system can be totally sidestepped for punishment, and the lynch mobs are more than ready to take it over.

I'm not saying people should be allowed to say awful things; if you hear someone say something terrible, call them on it, right then. But I don't understand how in an age where we are meant to accept plenty of things that were taboo before, all of a sudden for a misquoted phrase, we expect the speaker to take a long walk off a short plank. Why? And who made us all such moral superiors? 

Humility was something that used to be taken as something commonplace, a virtue that we were expected to uphold. I recently visited the Midwest and was reminded of how nice it is to be around people who are "down to earth". People who do their jobs, live their lives, and are pragmatic. That is definitely NOT something you see often in the DC area, and it's something I most miss about home. The ability to own mistakes, the ability of others to forgive, and the ability of all parties involved to move on. I never hear this promoted any more. These days so much is about self promotion, envy, and the tearing down of someone on the other side. 
 

The internet has done many great things (I just had Christmas presents delivered to my house on a very windy and chilly day, thank you Amazon), but it sure hasn't done much for human interaction. Echo chambers and self-righteousness are detrimental and exhausting, unless you're online where they are commonplace.

I think it would be good if we tried to remember that just because someone says something we disagree with, doesn't mean we should never forgive someone in a spirit of contrition. I know the First Amendment is meant to protect free speech from government interference, but I'm starting to feel it isn't enough anymore. The largest threat to the individual and their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is no longer the government overreach. It's been supplanted by neighborly overreach. Next time you see an online effort to totally wreck someone from holding different beliefs than you, try to remember that that person is a human who has foibles and should be forgiven. We shouldn't have the power as individuals to decide whether someone is guilty of a crime. That momentary feeling of purposeful elation, isn't really worth it. When the mob moves on to its next over-righteous lynching, the wreckage of a life will be left behind, and we all forget about it.

We can do better. Think of the worst things you've done, or said, or felt. I know I've had plenty of opinions over the years that have been annealed and changed over time. I'm grateful that they are mostly lost to antiquity, but that won't be the case for much longer.  I know I'm in no position to judge anyone for any statement they made decades ago, particularly if they don't hold those opinions now. Are you above that self-judgement? We are all flawed and imperfect, and most of us try to do better tomorrow than we did today. So let's try together.

Veteran's Day

Hello everyone. I'm going to take a break from my usual scheduled program of addressing fear mongering (or at least, that's been the recent theme), and instead I'm going to write about Veterans, since today is Veteran's Day.

My life is full of Veterans. I'm married to a Marine, my brother is in the Air Force. I'm hugely proud of both of them, and will brag all day about it if you give me the chance. My uncle was in the Air National Guard, and if you go back a bit further my grandfather was in the Army Air Corps in World War II. We have veterans in every generation, including the current one. 

Outside of family relationships, I'm in the unique position to have the bulk of people I associate with be either current or former military. Most of my coworkers have been or are military, and many of my friends as well. This is a pretty unique position in the United States today. It turns out,  roughly around 1% of the current population is actively serving, and 13% overall have ever served. If you live in the south you're more likely to have spent ample time around active military.

I remember growing up not knowing many active military. I knew of one Marine, a fireman in my town. Being from the Midwest, most people went Army or Air Force. I knew a handful of other veterans, but in classic Midwest fashion, they didn't talk about it a lot. My grandfather passed when I was 14, so I didn't get to talk to him much about his service. I was always avidly interested in military history, even as a very little girl. I was fascinated by strategy and tactics, though I grew up in a very liberal college town. It's what I gravitated to, and still do. I always had a very strong respect for the military (as do the rest of my family), but not a lot of one on one interaction.

After graduating from high school, I immediately went to Chicago to get my art degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As you can imagine, there weren't a ton of veterans in that environment, although I did have the pleasure of making one former sailor's acquaintance, a friendship which I still treasure. My interest in military history, strategy, and tactics never waned, and in a surprise to no one, I became a defense contractor after graduating. I moved to North Carolina for a job, and have been in the defense/contracting world ever since. 

Since making that move, the last 10 years have been filled with experiences with veterans. I got married to one, of course. But I've spent much of that time working with military personnel in tough environments. Frequently I was the only female on my team, and might go days without seeing another female in a professional capacity. So what did I learn?

This is how I'd characterize my experiences, for those who don't know. The military people I have had the pleasure of working with have come from across the US. They have been male and female, gone to military academies or enlisted straight out of high school. They have been Native American, White, Latino, Black, Middle Eastern and Philippino, and that's just a smattering. Jewish, Atheist, Christian, Asatru, and Muslim. Some enlisted after 9/11, some before, and some since while we've been at war. And they are even more varied than I've been able to describe.

But they've had more in common than they have had differences. With very few exceptions, the people I've known to wear uniforms to defend this country have been absolutely some of the best people I've ever known. They know how to work hard; they know how to work hard on a project that they don't believe is a good idea. They work with people who they don't agree with, or necessarily like. They have a fierce and true love of this country. They are opinionated, and brave. They are selfless, and when complimented on their service, seem to feel as though they don't deserve the praise, it's just what they're supposed to do. They don't give up, they will tell you what they think with unvarnished opinion, and they keep their feet solidly on the ground. They talk a lot more about "Honor" than any other group I know of, and they try their best to uphold it. They have a high personal moral code, for themselves and their brothers and sisters. 

They may not always agree with reasons that they are going to war, but they understand that they signed up for it, and it's their job. But even if they disagree, they stay because if the threat comes to our shores, they want to be first to defend us.

In all my time working with veterans, the only time I ever had anyone "sexually harass" me, or give me a hard time for being female, was a male contractor who had never served in the military (though he'd be quick to tell you that he ALMOST did). Beyond that, everyone I have worked with has just assumed I was there to do my best and do my job, and treated me like a comrade. The workplace was full of off-color humor, good natured complaining and teasing, and people who wouldn't hesitate to tell you if you were fucking it up. And that is the best way to work, as far as I'm concerned. 

If I were to hire someone for a position tomorrow, and one of the applicants was a veteran, I would likely hire them on the spot. Because I've seen veterans in tough times and easy times, and I think they are made of the best things about America. Acceptance, tolerance, good humor, and a sardonic grin. God bless our veterans, and God bless America. I am honored to spend so much time in your company, and I raise my glass to you.

The blind push for biometric security, and the very real repercussions that we don't talk about

Last week, Apple announced their debut of biometric, chip-based security on their laptops. This joins the biometric, chip-based security that is already present in their iPhones. Now I'm a big Apple person; I work on a macbook pro and an iPad pro, I have an iPhone and an Apple watch. I'm not an early adopter, but I'm an adopter. I enjoy how their stuff meshes well together, and how  it supports my graphic software seamlessly.

But I do not like the biometric laptop security. And I'll tell you why.

I've heard this refrain become more and more common in recent years: "Well we should just move to biometric security!" You hear this every time there's a hacking scandal at a big bank or another huge data dump of compromised passwords. You hear this whenever we are pushed to make another strong password; you hear it in reference to the fact that strong passwords aren't as secure as we would think. And I understand the drive for it, and the desire for more security. Trust me, security is my life! 

Not kidding.

I'm very security conscious. I applaud the use of the stronger passphrase passwords than randomly generated passwords with special characters. I change my passwords frequently, I avoid the use of passwords keychain programs because they often have backdoors, and I use more secure browsers and different sessions for important things like finances. So you would think I'd be all over the use of my fingerprints as a security measure, right? Well, no. Even though I do use it on my phone. 

The reasons I use the iphone biometrics are as follows:

1. It's securely stored inside the chip on my device, and not kept in the cloud or offsite in a database. 

2. My phone is rarely out of my sight, or off my person. There's very little chance for someone, besides my 2 year old and 4 year old, to compromise the device. (Though they do try their best)

3. As far as security measures go, Apple is pretty good about safeguarding theirs. It's not infallible, but they do care a lot more about security than a lot of other companies seem to, and invest in it accordingly.

So why do the new apple TouchID measures on the laptop make me nervous? Reason number 2, for one. I commonly leave my laptop (in comparatively safe places, but still) and it's therefore susceptible to compromise. It doesn't exactly fit in my pocket, after all. And I'd venture to say most people are like me in that.

The fact that touch security can be foiled by false fingerprints is a big deal (it happened in 2014, just after touch id came out. It's a lot easier to find a way to defeat security than it is to safeguard it, after all. It's commonly said that offense only has to succeed once, and defense has to keep it together 100% of the time, and it's as true in biometrics as it is anywhere else in security/defense).

The concern that's utmost on my list is that while there are already ways around biometric security in fingerprints, there's no way to get new biometrics if yours are compromised. If someone is able to get your biometric data, you can't have new fingerprints or a new cornea issued. The bad guys will have your private biometric data forever. It's bad enough if they get your sensitive question answers, but having a copy of your biometrics is infinitely worse. 

As the technology becomes more widespread, the relatively high level of security will not be maintained by all vendors. They WILL get sloppy, they always do. It's a sad truism that in business, security is often more lax than it should be because it's expensive to do right, and there's usually no one willing to pay the premium over the bottom line. It's even true in government.

I think the best way around it (though I am no expert by any means), is to have a combination of biological keys and behavioral adaptation. As sensors get more advanced they'll be more sensitive to individual movement signatures. So as some devices already allow pressure patterns to unlock, the combination of a memorization device that is customizable as needed (such as six gestures that must be repeated correctly), with the individual movement idiosyncrasies of the user, will help make a more secure logon that doesn't require a device that can be left/forgotten (such as chip cards or tokens). This way there is nothing that will be permanently forever compromised if compromised once (as biometric maps are), but it will be tailored to each person specifically and won't allow someone to just repeat the sequence. 

My point is, there are more solutions between "come up with a secure password", and "use your most specific biological data to secure", that don't require the risks of biometrics. So anyway, thanks for reading this week's edition of, "What's rattling around in Phaedra's noggin." Take care, and as always, have a plan, have a kit, live your life to the fullest and for heaven's sake get some fresh air.