Re-humanization

Its been discussed and written about ad-nauseum, but so often forgotten. Our "enemies" are people too. In conflicts of all types, the idea is to de-humanize your adversary, so as to make it easier to make their defeat more palletable. Americans today must recognize and respect the humanity of everyone. We don't have to like them. We don't have to agree with them. But we must treat them with dignity and respect. And, as a Christian, I must love them. We live in a polarized country and a polarized world. Demonization doesn't help anyone but besides the media & the war-mongers.

I saw a quote from Kerry Patterson (of Crucial Conversations fame) in an email this week:

I learned that if I put grandpa’s fedora on a stranger—instantly transforming him or her into a person I loved dearly—the stranger became someone worthy of my care and attention. Putting a face on the faceless masses, assigning a name to a crime or war victim, thinking of the people who cause you grief —thinking of them as real people with children of their own—well, this humanizing act has a dramatic impact on how you first think about and then treat them.

Who do you need to re-humanize?

Driving 85

I'm driving 85 in the mini-van this week. Not just on the highway, but in our subdivision too. No, not I-85. Or even 85 mph. I'm actually driving E85. As in Ethanol-85. That means what's in the gas tank is only 15% traditional gasoline and 85% ethanol.

A few weeks ago, Durham got its first E85 pump at a gas station easily between work & home. I'd read the news accounts with curiousity, but not much else until I noticed a sticker on the gas lid of the van, indicating that E85 was an acceptable fuel for it. Cool! So I did some poking around to find out what to expect (this link has a wealth of information) and filled it up. And what's it like to drive 85? Well, not very different. The van seems to be driving pretty normally, with one big caveat. Fuel efficiency is about 20-25% less than with "pure" gasoline. So given that the E85 was only a little cheaper than gas, I'm paying more per mile.

But, looking at it another way, I've reduced the amount of gas used in the US by about 1 barrel's worth over the 2 weeks that it'll take me to go thru the tank. For those keeping score at home, that's about 0.0000004% of the gas used in this country during that time. Give or take.

Ok, its not much, but I suppose its a start.

Clueless, insensitive, or careless?

I haven't really been following the saga of Northwest Airlines very closely. They aren't a major player at RDU and given that they rate as the absolute least favorite airline of my dear wife (who has some ugly air war stories to justify it), their woes just don't make it onto my radar screen.

Anyway, it seems that bankruptcy hasn't gotten NWA back to a viable business, so there is talk of additional layoffs and potential strikes. And as if things weren't bad enough between mgmt and employees, it seems last week an "employment assistance company" (management rule #1: blame it on the consultants) passed on some helpful tips to some machinists who are about to be layed off, titled "101 Ways To Save Money".

Unfortunately, the tips fail any miniscule test of sensitivity towards these employees. For example, #46: Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash. Now I'm pretty cheap. Ok, really cheap. And the list has some good ideas in it. In fact, I do some of those things. But sensitively presented or suggested they are not. Speaking as someone who's just gone thru this, this is in no way the type of thing you give to folks about to be layed off. Google shows me that the same list appeared on the web page of the San Franciso Credit Counseling Center, which seems like a more receptive audience for the tips as presented - folks who are actively & desparately looking for ways to cut back, not ones who just got hit in the head by a 2x4 by their union and their employer.

I can see how this happened though - some poor guy (who has probably been sacked & in real need of the list right now) was trying to be helpful, found a list somewhere out in cyberspace and did a quick cut and paste. But didn't read it. Nor did the person putting together the packet at the consulting firm. Nor did anyone at Northwest.

Or at least let's hope that nobody read it before it was distributed, because if anyone did and actually thought this was a good idea, they should be the ones getting layed off.

A Vocational Crisis

I had a major career crisis today. Actually, I suppose it would be better described as a vocational crisis. The difference being a career crisis is one of those quite frequent "what do I want to be when I grow up?" moments. A vocational crisis is much more rare; its one of those "am I really an engineer?" moments. And given that I've wandered a bit off the pure nerd path, gotten an MBA, and have just done some management, this is a bit of a soft spot for me, even though I am really an engineer to the core of my being.

Anyway, the crisis is all Jodi's fault. She sent out an email with the Subject line: "So Many People Just Won't Get This . . ." If that isn't a challenge, what is? So I opened the email with the full expectation of "getting it" and having a good chuckle. Jodi usually sends out funny stuff. Upon opening, the email contained this Dilbert cartoon and, well, I Didn't Get It. Or, what I think I got just didn't make any sense. Uh oh.

This precipitated the crisis. Not only was I looking at the archetypical diary (hmm, is that an oxymoron? can a diary be architypical?) of the life of an engineer in a large company and not understanding what the venerable Mr. Adams was writing about today, my friend Jodi Got It. My friend Jodi, the sole non-technical person in our house of 9 folks during senior year of college. My friend Jodi, who... well, let's just say that she didn't really need to be subjected to the frozen tundra of Houghton, Michigan and its gaggles of geeks and nerds, other than she was married to one of them.

In the midst of my crisis, I stopped in for some validation from a longtime friend on my hallway at work who was definitely an engineer. She has not one, but two engineering degrees. And deals with Linux all day in her current job. Definitely an engineer. So explained my dilemma and showed her the cartoon. She told me what she thought it meant and well, I'd understood it. The problem is that it just wasn't funny. But there's that nagging feeling there, since Jodi found it funny. Funny enough to send around to all her friends.

It was engineering management. Really.

Seen on a t-shirt

"The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas"

Long range forecasting

There was a weather forecast in the newspaper yesterday: "The possibility of rain... is between 30 and 40 per cent. If it does rain, it will most likely be only a drizzle." Its not so unusual for a newspaper to carry a weather forecast. What was unusual about this forecast was

(a) it was made by a government official who had nothing to do with the Chinese equivalent of the weather service, and

(b) it was for two years in the future, August 8, 2008. Greg Fishel, eat your heart out.

And why the interest in that day? August 8, 2008 is the day the XXIX Olympiad opens here in Beijing.

So is it the power of positive thinking or one of the advantages of a planned economy?

P.S. Aug 8, 2008 also happens to be the 20th anniversary of the first attempted night game at Wrigley Field.

Tastes like chicken?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm in China this week for work. Beijing to be exact. The heart of the beast, some would say. Life is very different here, although some of the differences have more to do with being in a city of 10-12 million people vs the Triangle. Not that there are nearly so many bikes in Manhattan (probably wouldn't hurt though!)

My Lenovo colleagues have been typically gracious hosts, treating us to a couple of excellent meals. The food is radically different though - and very good, especially, I find, if you don't insist on asking what everything is before eating it. I've decided that when your Chinese host says "I don't know how to translate the name of that food," it really means "you don't want to know".

Definitely no chickens were harmed in the writing of this post... nor, unfortunately, in the making of my dinner.

Anyone who says "the world is shrinking" has never flown non-stop to China

I flew to China on Sunday. And most of Monday for that matter too. While its an amazing feat of engineering to create an aircraft that can carry hundreds of people over 5000 miles, I couldn't help but wonder (sometime during hour 11 or so of the flight) whether actually doing it was a good thing. There's something unnatural about packing a bunch of folks into a hunk of metal and zooming a 6 miles up into the air to go around the world. This definitely falls into the category of "just because we can, does that make it good"?

Still, I admit, its pretty cool. I had a window seat this time. A window seat in business class (with huge thanks to a very clueless check-in agent at RDU). And even better yet, that seat was on the upper deck of a 747. I'd never been in the upper deck of a 747. Check off something else on my list of things to do before I die.

Yeah, what he (she?) said

I don't know who wrote it, but this post on the blog "Religious but not Right" puts voice to many of my thoughts on the latest mid-east chaos and the war on terror in general. Its reproduced below (cutting a brief rant about unequal media treatment, which I've heard coming from both sides).

What is the proper, appropriate response of a nation to violent attacks by "radical extremists"? We have seen one model illustrated in the response of the British government to last year's attacks on London's public transportation system, in which 52 people were killed and 700 injured. The British rightly understood the attacks as terrorist acts, but responded in a measured manner, dealing both with the investigation of the terrible crime and the need for enhanced security in its wake. But, pointedly, the British military attacked no sovereign nation in reprisal.

Similarly, when seven blasts rocked suburban trains in Mumbai this summer, India refrained from a knee-jerk confrontation with Pakistan over the violence (as opposed to the war that nearly erupted when India sent troops to the Pakistani border following the 2001 attack on India's parliament building). This time, again pointedly, India refused to allow the acts of terror to provoke it into a war footing.

We have also, of course, seen an altogether different model of response, perhaps most clearly exemplified by the U.S. invasion of two countries -- one of which was arguably an actual source of the terror -- following the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001.

It has obviously been in the latter spirit that Israel responded to terror attacks in the past fortnight. Provoked by the Hamas kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Israel not only invaded the northern Gaza Strip but also destroyed a significant portion of Gaza's infrastructure, including airstrikes against Gaza's power grid. Likewise, days later, when the Syrian-backed terror group Hezbollah seized the opportunity to raid northern Israel and capture two Israeli soldiers, Israel responded with a massive attack on Lebanon's civilian structures, from the Beirut airport to a dairy factory, civilian buses, bridges, power stations, and medical facilities, according to reports. Hezbollah, for its part, responded with rocket fire into northern Israel. And the result, not surprisingly, has been the death of many civilians.

Israel's rush to war in response to acts of terror raises many questions. The most important, perhaps, revolves around the issue of legitimate self defense vs. collective punishment. Israel is indeed surrounded by sworn enemies, including many who are demonstrably willing to violently destroy Israel. But does the real need for security justify the massively disproportionate response to an act of terror? Is the collective punishment of an entire population morally and ethically justified?

Even apart from the ethical questions raised by Israel's massive retaliation, there are significant issues of efficacy: Does it work? Is Israel made more secure by its militaristic approach? Israel has destroyed 42 bridges in Lebanon this week, along with 38 roads, communications equipment, factories, runways and fuel depots at the Beirut airport, and the main ports of Beirut and Tripoli. Does the destruction of much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, so painstakingly rebuilt after years of civil war and occupation by both Israeli and Syrian forces, bode well for future peace between the neighboring states? In sum, will the Israeli attacks bring long-term security for Israel, or will they ensure that the next generation of Lebanese (and the next generation of Palestinians) grow up with a undying hatred in their hearts?...

One of the most difficult aspects of trying to be a peacemaker in the Middle East context is the "separation wall" of understanding between the two peoples. The very definition of what is happening is understood in vastly different ways by the two sides. Supporters of Israel see the country attacked by its sworn enemies, and see in its response a necessary and justified act of national self-defense. Others see the region's most powerful military force illegally occupying their homeland and engaging in massive, disproportionate attacks on innocent civilians.

As Christians committed to the cause of peace, our role is not to "take sides" in the struggle, in the traditional sense, but rather to constantly stand for the "side" of a just peace. We can ignore neither the horror of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians nor the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. We must have the vision and courage to stand against the acts of violence by terrorist organizations, as well as the massive state violence by the region's military superpower, while avoiding the trap of positing a false "equivalency" between actions that are not at all equivalent.

And we cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the political, strategic, and moral complexity of the situation to stand back and do nothing. The well-being of millions of people in the region -- and, frankly, peace throughout the world -- requires that people of faith and conscience be actively and conscientiously engaged, for "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."