Mat Borton's Blog

The Failure of the OWS Movement

2011-10-27T15:34:00.002-05:00

There is a long and well documented history of mass protest being a successful driver for social change in this country. So why is it that the occupy/99% movement, in spite of steady growth sprinkled with some civil disobedience, has been ineffective?

In attempting to find an answer to this question, I realized I didn't quite know what change it is that the movement wants. In looking for answers I decided to go right to the source. On the site http://occupywallst.org/ I found this statement:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

1. "Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance". This sounds good in principle. No leader, so everyone has an equal share in the direction of the movement. Everything is decided by consensus. But who organizes? Who chooses the issues to be decided upon? Do they have an agenda? How do we know that all the issues have been appropriately presented to the body for consideration?

2. "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%". Since the start of the movement, I haven't been fond of this. Where did these numbers come from? How accurate are they? Also, there appears to be this notion that because people share a common demographic they must share the same opinion, and therefore one person can speak for all. I feel this an offensive and counterproductive group-think tactic that leads people down the same paths as the establishment that OWS wants (I think?) to overthrow. It also sets up a simplistic "us vs. them" scenario that I'm not sure really exists. I think the situation is orders of magnitude more complex, with overlapping social issues that cannot possibly be so easily expressed.

3. "We want to see a general assembly in every backyard and on every street corner... we don't need politicians". Except that we already have these things in some form. Even if you tear down the established political bodies and build new ones you will still end up with politicians who have agendas. There is no way around this. I would love to believe in the ideal of selfless people all contributing to the greater good, but my experience with human nature says it's just not possible.

So what we have is lots people who are angry because they feel like they have been treated unfairly by (the man?) who want... what? New government? No corporations? Change? It's not clear, and beyond the message that everyone is really mad about something, and they blame the government and "Wall Street" for it, I'm not sure anyone else knows what's going on either.

Let's set aside for a minute the fact that we have a leaderless movement with no goals. Why protest on Wall Street? by making noise and marching and blocking subways you aren't hurting the guy with the diamond underwear and the private jet, you're hurting the people who work for that guy. You're interrupting the middle class office worker who more than likely sympathizes with the anger on some level, but is really much more interested in getting to work on time so they can do their job and make a living to feed their family. Blocking the subways doesn't stop the 1% from getting to work. Harassing people on the sidewalk and making noise around office buildings doesn't make the money stop flowing.

On a similar note, Occupy Hobart, Indiana (or any other small town for that matter) doesn't do a whole hell of a lot of good (sorry B). The businesses and corporations that exist there are more likely to be owned by the "99%" than the "1%". Protesting in these areas does not get your message across to your target audience either. It just blocks traffic and might hurt those local businesses.

The same is true, though perhaps to a lesser extent, in places like Providence RI and Seattle WA. The cities are bigger, and there are corporations with holdings there, but again, you're likely just getting in the way same citizens you're trying to speak for. Providence is at least worth while because it's the seat of the State's government, but they don't have any money either.

I don't think that complaining about a thing without offering up suggestions for improvement does much good, so I can't just lest this post end here. Here are my suggestions for improving the Occupy Wall Street movement:

1. Find leadership. I know, some of you are saying, "But Mat, leaders got us into this mess." But I said find leaders, not politicians. They are not the same thing, and I would argue that few if any of the current politicians are really leaders.

2. Decide on some actionable goals. What is it that the movement really wants? Find something that the majority can get behind that can be enacted. You will not likely end Wall Street and you will never ever get rid of politicians. However you can push for reforms that minimize corporate influence and corruption in government and you can strive for better equality in government funded education regardless of social or economic background (though that one might actually be more difficult).

3. Occupy Washington DC. That's where the people who can change things are. The politicians, if nothing else, respond to pressure. The faceless corporations and their boards have no reason to change things. Instead, go to the politicians. Focus your anger on them and let them know it. They are the ones who make policy and they are the ones who most directly rely on the people for their jobs.

Think critically, and then speak with your votes. Right now, that's still the most powerful tool you wield.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

2011-10-18T15:14:00.001-05:00

I've rewritten this a couple times over the last two weeks. There is a lot here, and I want to make my thoughts as clear as possible.

I love this country. I think one of the things that makes it great is our right to free speech. Anyone who knows me me well knows that I will defend that right even if I don't agree with the ideas that are spoken. I love that this allows for debate, disagreement, and open criticism of our government. It goes hand in hand with our right to assemble peaceably, allowing us to both discuss our ideas and make them known to the powers that be.

There are increasingly vocal cries of discontent from several camps. I have been trying to critically analyze the things I see and hear in order to form my own conclusions. I have come up with some very general thoughts, which I have attempted to sort through below, for your consideration.

1. "Deserve"is an often used word. The dictionary I have handy says it's a transitive verb meaning "do something or have or show qualities worthy of (reward or punishment)"(emphasis mine). What this means to me is that by default, a citizen of the United States deserves only rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution. You get those simply by having the quality of citizenship. Anything else requires some action on the part of the individual.

2. The government owes a lot of things to a lot of people. They owe me. If you've held a job in the last 74 years, chances are they owe you too. There are a couple problems here. First, many people believe that the government owes them debts that they simply have not earned. They feel that by their virtue of being, they are entitled to benefits that the government has not guaranteed they will receive. They expect something for nothing. The other side of the coin is that the government cannot pay what it owes. The government has debts not only with individual citizens, but also private companies and other countries that exceed the revenues that can be collected. As this debt increases, credibility decreases and public infrastructure crumbles due to the lack of funds necessary to maintain it.

3. Life isn't fair. It never has been. There is no system of government or economics devised by man that will ever make it so. There will always be haves and have-nots. political and economic shifts merely shuffle the numbers. Those with monetary wealth may have earned it, inherited it or stolen it, or (more likely,) some combination of the three. The system we have in place was originally designed with the idea that it should be possible for those who were not in the have category to change their station by their own merit. By the same token, those haves should be allowed to fall if they did not maintain their status through wise and responsible action. The catch here is that the system has been tampered with, and now functions abnormally.

4. The rights of the people as guaranteed by the Constitution have been eroded over the past 224 years. The system as designed worked well, but it wasn't perfect. The original designers foresaw the possibility of imperfections and designed the system so that it could be easily modified. The problem is that more often than not, laws made in the name of security have filed away at the edges of liberty. It seems to me that this erosion has accelerated in the past 20 years, though my perception may be skewed because of my frame of reference. This lack of personal liberty negatively impacts the ability of those who wish to change their socioeconomic status because it further limits the options available to them.

5. The government is in bed with big business. This is not a new situation that has cropped up in the current administration, the last administration, or even in the last thirty years. It goes back to at least the antebellum period and it's likely someone with a better grasp of history could point to much earlier roots. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least one example that predates the United States by a few hundred years. Money talks, and big businesses, of course have money. It would be naive to believe that politicians in either an official or unofficial capacity would be swayed by it. The problem is that the voice of the corporations has begun to hold more power than the voice of the people, and the rights of the corporation are protected over the rights of the populace.

So what can we do?
We as citizens have tools that have not as yet been stripped away from us. I believe it is still possible to initiate change within the current legal bounds of our society. Speak out. Talk, discuss, debate, write, blog. By all means, peacefully protest. As you do so, think about the change you're asking for. Does it truly benefit society, or is it a short term solution to your own needs?

Vote, but vote smartly. Forget political parties. They set agendas that benefit the members of the party. They could care less about the needs of the people. look at ALL the candidates. what do they claim as a platform? If they've held office before, does their record match what they say? If not, why?

Why Can't Rhode Islanders Drive? (An Editorial in Their Defense, Mostly)

2011-07-18T12:40:00.009-05:00

One of the things I was told when I started at Brown is that Rhode Islanders are terrible drivers. Coming from the outskirts of Chicago, and being used to Illinois drivers, I initially dismissed this as some sort of New Englander modesty. What could possibly be worse than the crazed exodus from the Loop on a Friday afternoon in late July? As I began to explore Providence I quickly found out. Their claim to poor driving is indeed valid.

At first I was annoyed and a bit afraid. As I experienced more and more of the local culture, I came to realize that there are aspects to life here that predestine the Rhode Islander (and maybe New Englanders in general) to higher insurance premiums and a steady employment rate for auto body mechanics. What follows are my observations in defense (mostly) of the largely deficient abilities of the RI driver.

1. Why bother?

This may only apply to city dwellers, but I suspect that it's true for the more rural areas as well. Everything is in walking distance. I have a grocery store at the end of my street, and a Walgreens a couple blocks away. There are myriad restaurants, bars, bakeries and even some specialty shops right in my neighborhood. It would be more painful to try to find a parking space in some cases than it would be to walk. Need to go a little further? The bus system isn't the greatest in the world, but it covers most of the state, and it's a hell of a lot better than public transportation in most of the midwest.

2. The "paved" roads require a trail-rated suspension.

I don't want to dog too badly on the state or city government. I haven't lived here that long and I don't think I have enough of the story to pass judgement. The fact is the roads are in pretty bad disrepair. They're full of pot-holes, cracks, and unintentional humps. I feel confident in my jeep, but I've had some close calls in my little Saturn. The truth is, more people have vehicles that are similar to my Saturn. They spend extra time and attention trying to avoid car eating pot holes or launching themselves over impromptu tree-root speed bumps.

3. Three hundred seventy-five years of history.

The City of Providence has a rich and interesting colonial history. Why is this relevant to the current discussion? The streets and roads have been in place for much of that history, a majority of which predates the automobile. What we have then is essentially a series of old cow paths and game trails that have evolved over time into modern roads. they are winding and narrow, and in the city they get narrower during heavy snow, as there is no place to put the excess snow that is removed from the streets. Rather than being laid out in a nice orderly fashion, they tend to radiate out from sometimes random seeming central points, the importance of which having been lost in the progression of time.

4. Here a sign, there a sign here and there a sign, sign.

Signage, especially street names, are inconsistent, and in several instances just plain don't exist. It's hard to know where you are, where you're going and what you're supposed to do when you get there. The disparity is so great that when people are confronted with signs, like the red octagonal ones, they aren't sure what to do. In the absence of authoritative direction people tend to make up their own rules. Take for example a certain intersection on my normal commute route. It would appear to the casual observer to be a single lane in all four directions with a stop light in the middle. However, the road is wide enough at the intersection for a turn lane, though nothing official indicates one exists. In the morning, (and only in the morning,) an ad hoc right turn only lane appears.

5. Where do we go from here?

In reality, this is a consequence of points 1, 3, and 4. Rhode Islanders outside of their neighborhoods tend to become disoriented easily as they try to make their way through unfamiliar territory. Without adequate signs to guide them, they must rely on landmarks for navigation. They put so much effort into finding these landmarks that they are unable to concentrate on the road.

6. 75% of Rhode Islanders (and possibly New Englanders) are too polite.

My wife and I both are blown away at just how nice people are here. Many extend this to their driving. They stop quickly to allow people to enter the lane, stop at throughways or when they have green lights for pedestrians, and wave people through at four way stops. While pedestrians do indeed have the right of way these actions can be disconcerting for others not accustomed to driving in such an overly accommodating environment.

7. 10% of the remaining drivers are overly aggressive assholes.

Honestly, these people exist everywhere. You know the type. Too busy on the phone to pay attention. Swerving in and out of traffic to get to the stoplight more quickly, pulling out in front of you, and rolling through stop signs. They honk and cuss and act like YOU are the idiot. I wouldn't notice them anywhere else. In Rhode Island because of all the above points they stick out like a sore thumb.

As you can see, the cards are stacked against these poor people. For most, it's not a matter of lack of skill, but environmental and cultural differences that cause the deficiency. The exception is as always that 10%, and you can find them anywhere. Screw them.

Long overdue post.

2011-07-06T17:29:00.006-05:00

I'm still alive, though I'm guessing if you're reading this, you already know that as you probably are in contact with me in some other fashion. I have been meaning to blog more, but haven't had the drive to do so, and I kept finding other things to do. So now that nine months has passed, here I am trying again. I don't have much beyond work to distract me so I don't have any excuse not to write at least once a week. That's my goal. Those of you who know me outside the blog, (which is is probably all three of you that read it,) have my permission to bug me if I don't keep up with it.

So what's been going on?

Well, I am firmly entrenched at ICERM at Brown. We are in our new space and I'm overseeing the finishing touches on our A/V systems as well as trying to complete our VDI project on time. I've got a lot more going on but I don't want to turn this into a list of my projects at work. One of the things I've been learning to do better is delegate. It helps that some of the things that need to be done are out of my realm of expertise. I have no choice but to hand those tasks off to the people I hired because they do have said expertise.

Criss spent the better part of the last six months prepping the house to sell, getting it sold, and getting the moving done. I owe her. She is amazing. She ended up dealing with a lot more work than I thought she would have too. She handled pretty much the entire process and did an awesome job. Did I mention I owe her? The house was only on the market for three weeks. We ended up taking a pretty big loss, but it's better that we got out from under it. I was pretty upset at the time, but I'm over it. Mostly.

We are renting a place on the North West side of Providence in a quiet little neighborhood. The house is a little bigger than the place we had in Indiana. It has some quirks but for a rental it's great. The area is very diverse, and there are tons of little ethnic shops and restaurants on the main strip at the end of our block. Providence is full of little neighborhoods and we're finding that it's a neat place to live. We've been exploring some and once we get settled in a bit more we'll probably explore a lot.

So that's it, nine months in three paragraphs. Obviously I left out a lot of detail. Likely I'll bring these things up in later posts, if I can stick to blogging this time. I'll leave you with a list of things I might write about in the future. If you have suggestions for things you'd like to hear me prattle on about, by all means, let me know.

TOPICS I MIGHT DISCUSS HERE:

Work

VDI

IT Management

Vendor relationships

Beer

Movies

Books

Living in RI

Exploring New England

Other adventure

Gaming (likely not casino or video)

writing (how meta)

politics ( gasp!)

religion (double gasp!)

geek culture

cyber conflict (still interested)

policy( still interested in that too)

the combination of the two proceeding

things that piss me off

Maybe other things as I think of them.

The Next Chapter

2010-10-25T12:59:00.003-05:00

Back in May I asked what's next? I speculated a lot and didn't do three quarters of the things I said wanted to. I do have answers to some of the questions I asked back then. I have accepted a position at Brown University as the IT Manager for the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) effective December 1. This will be a huge move for Criss and I. Criss has always lived in Northwest Indiana, and I have been here the majority of my life. We have a lot of unknowns at this point, but we feel that the path was laid pretty clear for us.

Afghanistan 2050 Roundtable

2010-08-12T23:11:00.003-05:00

Guest post at Chicagoboyz.net. Read it here: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/14814.html

And you may say to yourself "My God, what have I done?"

2010-06-04T10:04:00.004-05:00

Lets talk about oil for a minute. I'm probably one of about 10 billion know nothings with blogs writing on the subject, but it's been on my mind lately so I want to get the thoughts out there. I don't know very much about deep sea oil drilling or even crude oil's effects on the environment, so I have to rely a lot on the media and the Internet for my information. If I say anything blatantly wrong please enlighten me gently so as to bring me out of ignorance.

As I am writing it appears that BP has finally had some success with a solution. But is it too little too late? How much sea life will die because of contamination? What is the global impact? Will the damage be repairable? If so will it happen in our lifetime? What is the economic impact? If the vibrant fisheries have been wiped out, certainly fishermen will lose jobs, but the economic loss will certainly roll down. There are cannery workers, and brokers, and boat dealers and maintainers, and marinas, and grocery store clerks etc, who will feel this. It won't be localized. The price of fish will certainly increase. This might be good for fisheries in Alaska, but Alaskan fish are not necessarily the same as Louisiana fish. The chain will keep going. I'm rambling about the economic toll this will have because it's the easiest thing for me to get my mind around. I don't think we can begin to understand the devastation that has been dealt to the environment. This is an unprecedented man-made disaster on an epic scale.

I have heard comments that the public is being overly critical of BP, that this incident is a "black swan" and that occasional accidents are the price of our dependence on oil. I don't think we've been hard enough on them. This was not a black swan. A black swan is a rare unknowable unpredictable event, an outlier (for more read Taleb). BP knew the risks. They knew what the appropriate safeguards were and chose not to use them. When the worst case scenario occurred, they didn't have a crisis plan in place. They moved slowly to find a workable solution, and claimed they didn't understand at first the scope of the problem. Really? It's their hole, they are the supposed subject matter experts. The rest of the world took one look at it and said "this is really really bad" and you couldn't see it? People died because of their negligence, more will suffer, their livelihoods ruined. Uncountable plants will be killed. Unknown numbers of animals will suffer and die, likely slowly and painfully. But BP CEO Tony Hayward is very sorry. He just wants his life back, so hey, let's go easy on them. It's all good, right?

There is some truth to the notion that this "accident" is related to our oil dependance. We as a global society have become tied to this natural resource. The notion that "these things happen" is unacceptable. I believe in sustainable resource management. We have the technology to make it happen. Greed gets in the way. Indicators point to greed, the desire for higher profit from this necessary resource, as the cause. There are known risks to this type of resource exploitation. There are mitigation strategies that were ignored in the name of speed and ultimately a larger profit margin. What does that profit margin look like now? Our dependence is indirectly to blame, yes. But the exploitation of that need in the name of money is direct cause. Accidents can be prevented. This one could have been.

Some say the public has been too harsh on our government. I ask "Where the hell are they?" The Coast Guard should be applauded for their early attempts. At least they tried to do something. Congress wants to investigate the root cause. That's all well and good, but how about we stop the bleeding first? The President has said vary little. When asked, he said he's angry. Good. We all are. What are you going to do about it? This is an incident of national significance if ever I've seen one, and I believe it has more potential to harm the nation than a killer flu outbreak. How is it being handled? Hell, who is in charge?

I have heard a few say that this really isn't that big a deal. Yes it's bad, but the earth is a self-healing system, and it will clean its self up eventually. Yes, the earth does have some capacity to heal damage over time. The problem is that post-industrial revolution mankind has the ability to overload that capacity. We have a tendency to outstrip natural processes in such a way that the damage we can do in a matter of a few years or even days will take the plant thousands of years to heal. In the mean time, we damage the systems we depend on for life to the point where they can no longer meet our needs and our societies collapse (for more, read Diamond). This is a big deal. we have pushed beyond the threshold on this one.

Some of you who read this (If anyone reads this) will think I'm just angry. I am. I'm also frustrated and depressed. I'm angry at BP and I'm angry at the government. We give corporations rights, will we hold them responsible? I'm frustrated because I don't know what I can do to help fix the situation. I'm depressed because I look and see the scope of the problem, and all the suffering now and that is to come, and I don't see much hope.

What Next?

2010-05-17T12:36:00.002-05:00

That's a good question. This last year has been extremely full. I pushed hard to graduate in two years rather than the three I originally planned. Now that I'm done, I'm finding myself with large holes where I used to study. I'm sure I'll find ways to fill them, like blogging for example, but I need to consider what my options are and where I'm going.

First there's the trip. Criss and I are taking a vacation that we've been looking forward to and I need to kick planning and prep into high gear. We haven't taken a vacation together without other family involved since we've been married. She may kill me before we get home.

Next there's the garden. We had really good results last year, and we're going to expand. I plan to spend a lot of time taking care of it and the yard in general this year. Maybe the neighbors will stop giving me the evil eye when I'm outside. Maybe closing the blinds in the bedroom would help too. I also have two years of an accumulated to-do list that needs to be taken care of. Not as much fun as the garden.

I need to get back into shape too. I have no excuse any more, and I just don't feel healthy. I'm going to start exercising again on days when I don't have to work late. I'm also going back off pop and I'm going to try to stay away from fast food. there's no reason I can't.

There are some other things too. I also want to spend time painting more. I feel kind of odd doing it in the summer when it's nice out, so that will probably be reserved for nasty weather or the winter months. I want to game more too, but I'll take that as it comes. I have a whole backlog of things I want to read for fun. Some of them are related to my research, some not so much.

I also have some more long-term (and slightly more serious) things I need to consider. I'm shopping for PhD programs. It would be easy, except I had to go and pick an odd niche research area that doesn't fit cleanly in one discipline. I have a couple of front runners, but I'm taking my time. I also still need to take the GRE. I got lucky. PUC didn't require it for the Master's program.

On a somewhat related note, I find am in an interesting employment situation. I have a Master's degree, I'm a CISSP, and I've got two publications under my belt. I feel like I have outgrown the position that I am in. There is nowhere to get promoted to and not much room to go sideways. I have discussed this with my boss, and (I think) he understands the position I am in. I need to see what's out there. I can take my time, find the right thing. It's nice to be in that position. It has not happened to me very often. I'm willing to entertain suggestions on any of the above subjects. Let me know.

Good-bye Bear Cat, My Friend.

2009-10-09T11:05:00.004-05:00

We lost Bear this morning. He was a good cat. He had a good life. We will miss him. Some people say that animals don't have souls. I don't think this is true. I believe that animals act on instinct over reason, are incapable of making the choices that lead to sin, and are therefore innocent and have a place in heaven. So rest in peace, Bear. You were a very much loved part of our family, and you will be missed.

33

2009-10-06T11:40:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 33. There's nothing particularly spectacular about that age. Nothing important happens. I took the day off yesterday any way, and I did some thinking. I've actually been doing a lot of thinking lately anyway, but I've come to some conclusions, and I'm going to throw them out here to organize and validate them.

1. I don't care about money. I have to have money to survive, (right now,) and it makes life easier, but it is not how I measure success, and it will not make me happy. Toys are nice, but they are just that. I can live without them. I did the corporate money driven thing, and I hated every minute of it. I refuse to go back to it.

2. What does make me happy is making a difference. I want to make my community, my country and my world a better place. I thoroughly enjoy teaching. I like the concept of helping others help themselves. There's something else here I haven't quite worked out, something about the well being of the society. I'm not quite there.

3. I need to be a better steward of the things I have been given. This is a simple statement for a complex set of issues. I need to take better care of my self, physically, mentally, and spiritually. These are things I've been working on, with varying success. I need to provide for my family. For me what this means is I need to be a good husband. I'm pretty sure sometimes I miss the mark. I get so wrapped up in taking care of me that ignore my wife's needs until it's too late. I need to manage my property better. Part of this is maintaining the physical things I have better. I have a plan, and it's getting better, but it's still not where I want to be. The other part is managing money better. This appears to be in conflict with part one, above, but it's not. If I had no debt, money would become less of an issue, and would hold less sway over my life. To this end, I'm trying to live with a budget. It's hard to stay on track. The unexpected rears its head and I keep having to adjust. It's painful, but it appears to be life.

The question is where do I go from here. This little bit is a lot to balance. I have a short term goal, but how do I derive long-term goals from here? It's there already but it's very broad and very vague. I have more thinking to do.

Update Ramble.

2009-08-16T19:00:00.004-05:00

Hello Everyone. Consider this an update and forgive me if I ramble on in random directions. It's been five months since I posted here, which makes me about as consistent as I always have been. I have been writing fast and furiously most of the summer, and most of it has been posted to a blog, just not here. It was almost all team writing, and I'm not excited about what the team produced, so I didn't link to it. If you know me well enough, and weren't bored stiff by the content, you've read it any way.

I'm officially half way through my masters coursework, and have been encouraged to speed up my plan of study, so I'm shooting for a spring graduation. It hasn't gotten any easier, and in fact, it's getting harder. I've given up all of my regular gaming groups and have forgone most things that aren't connected directly to school or survival. Maybe that's a bit over-dramatic, but sometimes it feels that way. Part of the reason I'm writing this is to get back in the swing.

This process has been made painfully more difficult by the untimely demise of my Macbook Pro. This whole episode should probably be a post by it's self, but long story short: AppleCare doesn't. I'm pretty certain they didn't even diagnose the problem. I think they looked at the woefully inaccurate level one tech support notes, opened the box, saw my dented case and made a decision. My plan is to take it to the Apple store in the next week or two and make a Mac Genius troubleshoot it. I'm totally unimpressed with the way this process has gone, and I'm disillusioned with Apple's customer service.

In the meantime I'm getting along with a department loaner that weighs about three tons, but is still a fairly capable machine despite its age. I do miss Mac OS though. I'd forgotten how frustrating XP can be. I would have loaded Linux but I don't have time to mess around with drivers and such. I have seen bits and pieces of Windows 7, and it looks promising, so I might have another go. Maybe if it's good enough I can load it on Criss' laptop, and she can get the full potential out of the hardware.

It's time to replace the Neon. It has too many problems that I've fought with for too long. I've been looking around at inexpensive cars, (getting harder to do, because the government is gobbling them up in an effort to encourage people to buy things they can't afford,) and I've found that I have an attraction to all things Jeep. It's become a bit of an obsession lately, as I scour the Internet for the perfect deal. I'm looking for a Cherokee or YJ, TJ, or maybe JK that is in decent shape and won't cost me a fortune. I figure I can use it as a daily driver for a year or two and slowly build it into a wheeler as I get time/money. Anyone want to buy the Neon for parts or a project?

Criss and I got a chance to canoe a couple weeks ago. We took a weekend trip and went down the Tippecanoe River at Tippecanoe State Park. It was a decent trip. We paid the local livery service to drop us at the boat launch and then drive Ruggy back to their place, and it didn't cost us much. The park was nice and quiet (and big) and the trip down the river was smooth. We went at a good time, and we're looking at going back soon.

We've also decided that we don't do that sort of thing often enough, so we're making plans. Next summer we're doing Yellowstone to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. We're also looking at a small hike up into the Smokies for a night or two at a rustic cabin. Who knows where else we might go.

This sort of thing requires that we be in shape. We've fallen of the wagon a bit in the last month or so, but we have done a fairly good job of not eating out, (especially fast food,) Not drinking pop, and in general trying to make healthy food choices. Oddly, it's helped us save money. We've also started exercising mostly, on the Wii. It's easy to scoff at, but I've lost weight and gained a bit of strength, and I feel better in the morning.

I'm certain there are other things I could go on about, but I've probably bored most of you to tears anyway, so I'll leave off here. the whole point was to get my brain running again and get ramped up for writing anyway. I will try to post more often as things come to mind, but who knows when that will be.

IT Security Education

2009-03-30T23:14:00.001-05:00

I taught IPSec to my freshman platform class today. I love teaching this particular section of the book, because I usually expand it beyond the borders of what the chapter covers into a broader discussion of security. This time, as well as the last I assigned the McCumber cube paper (annex?) as a read and respond to lead up to it. It helps the discussion if the students have at least seen the source material. I opened today’s discussion by asking what the students thought of the paper. I had one student tell me that in researching his response, he talked to the industry professionals that he knows and they had never heard of McCumber or his ideas. Further, when asked, the same professionals could not articulate how they would plan for security of a system. The student wanted to know why this was case, given that I said McCumber provided the model for good security practices.

Though I never really gave much thought to the issue, the problem is endemic in the IT field. Certainly I see it in my daily dealings with my “service provider”. The solution however is glaringly clear, and came to me right away: Most likely they had never been taught it. In fact digging deeper, I would suggest that the way the IT security is taught is inherently flawed.

While I admit I have not done exhaustive research, my experience tells me that Security is generally given second billing or ignored in classes not directly dealing with the topic. It’s certainly true that the Platform technologies class I teach would be this way, were I to go directly from the book. (It basically says using IPSec will help you be more secure). When security is taught, more often than not, we teach the tools (the technology facet of the cube) and ignore policy and education. Even then, we don’t necessarily teach appropriate use of the tools, leaving IT professionals ill-equipped to deal with the realities of securing systems.

This holds true in every niche in the industry, from coders to database admins to network engineers, creating potentially dangerous knowledge deficiencies which increase risk exponentially. While specially trained IT security personnel can sometimes help to mitigate some of the danger, real world example after example shows that it’s usually not enough.

The solution is simple, though it will take a shift in the collective pedagogy of the field, and will move with the speed of academia. We need to teach security and security principles as core competencies across the IT discipline. Curricula should include the fundamentals of security as an integral part of technology rather than an overlay. At a minimum, all IT students, regardless of focus should have a dedicated security class early on in their academic careers. Education is one facet of the McCumber Cube. It should be applied to Information Technology professionals as much as any end-user, in fact more so. Early and often.

Clausewitz Roundtable post: Fin

2009-03-20T12:18:00.001-05:00

My final thoughts on Clausewitz. Not very articulate, but read them here.

Clausewitz Roundtable post 8

2009-03-14T14:04:00.000-05:00

Read it here, it's good, I think

Clausewitz Roundtable post 7

2009-03-08T23:39:00.000-05:00

Please read it here. Especially all you MBAs.

Clausewitz Roundtable post 6

2009-03-03T18:06:00.000-06:00

Book six. Read it here.

Clausewitz Roundtable post 5

2009-02-28T13:52:00.001-06:00

Read it here.

Clausewitz Roundtable post 4

2009-02-16T21:28:00.000-06:00

Read it here

Clausewitz Roundtable post 3

2009-02-02T23:42:00.000-06:00

At Chicagoboyz.net.

Clausewitz Roundtable post 2

2009-01-25T22:10:00.000-06:00

Second one, not as exciting as the first. Read it here.

Clausewitz Roundtable post

2009-01-16T23:36:00.002-06:00

I submitted my first post for the Clausewitz Roundtable at Chicagoboyz.net. You can read it here.

Another Year Over

2008-12-30T13:09:00.003-06:00

I failed at blogging weekly. I'm not going to say I didn't have time, that would be a cop out. What I will say is that I need to improve my time management skills and reprioritize a bit. That said, I intend for this post to be a sort of reflection of the past year, so perhaps from that those of you who are disappointed in the frequency of this blog will feel at least a bit of sympathy for me. Before I get into that, however, I would like to mention that I will be participating in a blog style round table discussion of Clausewitz' "On War". More details can be found here with the schedule and format of the discussion here. I hope I can contribute intelligently. With that, let's get right to the year in review or things I learned:

1. Fishing can be fun. I used to hate fishing. Sitting around for hours for a minute or two of excitement was never my thing. My father-in-law took us to Northern Minnesota this spring however and changed my mind. I've never caught so many fish. It may have just been that we were in the right place at the right time, but I think there is more to it. My father-in-law knows the lakes we were fishing, so he knew where the good spots were. He gets as impatient as I do, and perhaps more-so, so we moved if we didn't see any signs of activity. I also think that we happened to hit the lakes at a good time, but what do I know? I look forward to going back again soon, and I would be willing to give fishing in this area another look, though I'm not sure I'd want to eat what I caught around here.

2. If you really like your job, and care about what you do, doing what is best for the organisation comes before everything else, even preservation of said job. There were some rocky patches at the University this year, and some shake-ups in the department. It caused me to stand back and reflect. Knowing that there is not much upward mobility in my position, I could leave for something with more growth potential, keep my head down and go with the flow, or speak up and do what's right, even if no one else likes it. I decided option three was the best course. If I get fired for doing the right thing, so be it. It just puts back at option one. That sounds really dramatic. It wasn't as exciting as it looks, no heavy ethical issues or anything. I just don't want to get into a long, boring story that most people don't care about. Mat is not a hero.

3. It could always be worse, material objects don't mean much, it's your health that matters, grass is always greener... etc. I have relearned several of these truisms. probably the more important thing here is it's easy to get wrapped up in the day to day slogging and forget what's really important.

4. Grad school is hard. Individual classes may vary, but the commitment required is really tough. In addition to being a student, I was (and in most cases still am) an instructor, a husband, a home owner, a systems engineer/admin/manager/etc., a part time mechanic, a lousy friend, an avid gamer, and I'm sure some other things at various times that I've forgotten or lumped into other roles. These roles often overlapped, and sometimes conflicted, as each really required more time than I really had to devote to them, all things being equal. This is where the reprioritizing mentioned above comes in. If you are considering grad school, look at your commitments. If you are supported by your parents and have no real commitments, or you are single and work a day job, you'll probably be OK. If you have anything more than that on your plate... think through it. I thought I was prepared, and academically I still think I was, but if my wife were less understanding or my employees less tolerant of my mood swings and half-crazed mumbling, I'm not sure I would have made it through the semester.

That's it. Four points. Did I learn more than this? Likely. But these are the major things that stick out to me right now. That said, I will attempt to make this blog more of a priority in the coming year. I hope everybody had a merry Christmas whether you celebrate it or not, and that any traditions you observe are happy. May next year be better than last year.

Look ma, I Blogged two weeks in a row!

2008-09-20T17:32:00.004-05:00

That's right, two weeks in a row. It's a new record for me. It's now one week after what turned out to be the worst flood the Region remembers. I finally started cleaning our basement. It's not too bad, and from what I can tell we haven't lost anything of value, but we were way over do for a cleaning. During this whole flooding mess Purdue Calumet opened a day, and in some cases two days before other institutions in the area. Why? Was it to maintain normalcy for the students' benefit? If that's the reason, it failed miserably. Regardless of what the ultimate goal is, a large majority of PUC students still commute to school. With most of the major roads in the area under water, this was no easy task. Add to this the flooded basements and in some cases whole houses that they had to deal with, and school being open was just one more hassle everyone had to deal with. I know as an instructor that it's hard when you fall unexpectedly behind in the curriculum. I understand that days of the school closing mean salaried employees who are paid not to work. But (This may shock some people) sometimes money's not the most important driver. Maybe there was a good reason for doing what he did, but if I were the Chancellor, I would have waited at least until 80/94 opened. It would have been easier on the students faculty and staff.

In other flood related news, my friend who owns Critical Effect, the local game store, is feeling the secondary effects of disaster. a small but vital bridge, or the roadway in front of the bridge, suffered severe damage in the flood. The store sits very near though is thankfully a few feet higher than the bridge and they received no damage. However, the city is worried about the gas and electric lines that ran across the bridge and under the road. Until they give the all clear, he has been ordered to remain closed. Does insurance cover revenue loss when there is no direct damage?

I bring this up because I feel bad for my friend and his wife. Though this is not their only source of income, they have worked hard to be fairly successful, and a week or more of lost revenue can't be good for anyone in small business. But I also have a more selfish reason. I realized today that gaming has become an important part of what makes me who I am. (Those who didn't already know this can feel free to make their geek jokes now, I'm not bothered by them anyway.) The few hours a week I spend gaming provides me with an escape from the weekly stresses I deal with. Painting my miniature armies gives me a creative outlet, though I'm not all that good at it. It's also kind of nice to do something that's not IT related all the time, and to talk to people whose lives don't revolve around IT and in most cases don't know much about IT. Maybe that's a techie sin, I don't know. I have (or had,) other hobbies too (also non-computer related in most cases), but life has gotten in the way of a lot of them. It's hard for me in my current situation to leave work at work, and school has become ingrained in some way in most of my life, so it's nice to still have an outlet from both.

BTW, Chris, if you read this, get in touch with me in a more direct method. We haven't talked in too long, and I don't have any good contact information on you.

So-called weekly Blog

2008-09-13T18:38:00.008-05:00

OK, so this is what? my fourth post in four months? So much for posting weekly, I guess. I will try to be better about keeping up that schedule, now that the beginning of the semester fires are burning themselves out, and I'm starting to get used to the fact that free-time doesn't exist when you are a student, and you work full time, and have a wife and a house and responsibilities, and oh, by the way, technically hold down a part time job on the side. I had a plan to manage my time today. I had a list of things I needed to do, and I was going to get up when Criss left for the kids' band competition (early) and perform a series of mundane house associated tasks and then grade papers, followed by homework.

Instead I woke to a flood of near biblical proportions. That's an obvious exaggeration, but it was the worst it's been since we've been here. The street was flooded up to the door step, and our back yard had obvious standing water. My poor beat-up Neon is now waterlogged on top of everything else.

Crissy still intended to go to work, and went into the basement to get her pants out of the dryer. The only problem was, the entire basement was under a little more than a foot of water.

I went and bought a pump. It's the best $100 I've spent in a long time, once I got the floor drain cleared, it and the pump got most of the water cleared up in about 20 minutes.

So, I was only about two or three hours behind at this point and could have jumped into action with the housework... instead I went back to bed and slept.

In other news, we had an SOT meeting yesterday. I'm not going to into many details because I don't want to say anything that may jeopardize my employment. I will say though that it put me in mind of my last posts here, so let's take another look at higher education.

Last time I wrote, I came up with the following definition: An institution of higher learning with teaching and research facilities, made up of colleges and professional schools, which grants both graduate and undergraduate degrees, and is governed by the state and not a private body.

That's all fine, but it still doesn't answer the question. So, in order to measure anything we need a valid metric. I mentioned before that the metrics currently in use were not appropriate, so let's look at our definition to try to find something valid. The pieces I see as being important to the mission of a university are " with teaching and research facilities" and "grants both graduate and undergraduate degrees". If we take just "with teaching and research facilities" we end up measuring the facilities and not the mission. So instead we focus on he granting of degrees. If we just count number of degrees awarded, or number of different types of degrees awarded, however, we end up back where we started, counting throughput rather than quality.

Something is still missing. but if we go back and look again at the context under which our public universities are founded, we may find the key. While I said before that not all public universities were founded for the same reason, most have in common the fact that the original purpose was for the training of the population (usually at the state level) in various professional pursuits. Taking those things together, I'm going to make a leap here, and propose a metric. I say that quality should be measured by the number of degree recipients from a given university (who so desire) that are actively employed in the field for which they were educated.

I could be wrong, but I think it's a valid metric, and one that is only marginally tracked. Why? I have my thoughts. Maybe I'll talk more about it in a later post.

Quality Education continued

2008-07-09T09:55:00.005-05:00

I've decided that the best way to start looking at the question is to define what a public university is. So let's start with just "university". After digging through several dictionaries and the Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as various less reputable sources, I've compiled this definition: "An institution of higher learning, with teaching and research facilities, made up of colleges and professional schools, which grants both graduate and undergraduate degrees.

A "public" university, I've found, is something slightly different depending on where in the world the University is located. This means I need to rephrase my question. So I'm going to change it to: How can you empirically measure the effectiveness of a public university in the United States?

This leads us to defining exactly what a public university is in the U.S. The landmark document in this case appears to be the Morrill act of 1862, which provided states with Federally owned land to sell in order to fund "... at least one college, where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts... in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life."

Certainly not all "public" universities were created as a direct result of this act, and, it would be a mistake to apply the "leading object" above to every public university. Other public universities, for example, were started as teachers colleges or strictly agricultural schools, and were founded by individual state act, or as the result of private donations to the state. What we can say is that the Morrill act provided the precedent for universities to be governed by the state rather than a private body.

So, this makes my definition "An institution of higher learning, with teaching and research facilities, made up of colleges and professional schools, which grants both graduate and undergraduate degrees, and is governed by the state, and not a private body." But now, based on my definition, I need to determine what the measurable output(s) should be in order to answer my question.

More on this later, hopefully less than a month this time.

Quality Education

2008-06-11T08:36:00.003-05:00

I had an interesting conversation yesterday that brought up the question, "How do you measure the quality of a university?" It's a question that I know has been posed before, and it is important enough that there was a documentary on PBS about the situation, (though unfortunately I missed it). If we analyze some of the common metrics that universities use to measure themselves, we quickly find them to be inappropriate. For example, retention is often a key mark for schools. However, retention measures only the number of students who stay enrolled from one period to another, not how well those students did or the difficultly or appropriateness of their classes. Other often advertised statistics like first term enrollment and incoming student GPA or standardized test scores only reflect the institution's ability to market its self. No matter where we turn, it appears that by using any of the standard measurements, we end up with misleading or irrelevant data. So this leads me to one conclusion: we must be asking the wrong question.

So what is the right question? As a working start, I was given "How can you empirically measure the effectiveness of a public university?" It's a start, but it leads to other questions. The most glaring is, what is the purpose of a public university? In fact, what is the purpose of a university? More to come, as I try to answer these questions, and possibly come up with more questions. It's going take some research.

Grad School

2008-05-08T10:19:00.003-05:00

It has been pointed out to me that I don't write enough, so I've started this Blog. There were several options, but I chose this format, because it is hosted from a neutral location, is open to the public without need for membership or registration, and is easy to use. I have applied to and been accepted to Graduate School at Purdue University Calumet, and will be pursuing a Master of Science Degree in Technology. What follows is the main part of my purpose statement from my application:

In the past twenty years, information technology has moved from the domain of the ultra-specialized to a commonplace feature of daily life. Because of this integration into all aspects of our society, we must be aware, not only of the benefits technology provides, but also the danger it poses. I believe that it is critical to understand not only the technical means by which both state and non-state actors may execute attacks using information technology, but also the social impact these actions may have, in order to appropriately mitigate and respond.

To this end, I would like to continue my study of information technology, focusing on the methods used to assure the security of data. I would also like to examine the social impact of technology on the global society. I believe that this combined approach to my education will allow me to positively contribute to national security initiatives and provides the potential for contributions to the overall body of knowledge in this area.

So, basically, I've identified two areas, society and information security, and combined them in the context of "cyber-warfare". What I need however, is a question. What is it that I want to prove, or solve? It's not a question that needs to be answered right away, but it is something I need to think about.