Ain’t No Shame – Why We Need to Get Rid of the Idea of Being Ashamed

vv“Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.”

These words were uttered by down-on-his-luck cabaret singer Carol Todd (Robert Preston) in Blake Edwards’s immortal film Victor/Victoria, one of my all-time favorites. I recently posted this quote on Facebook, amidst other words of rancor not so clever as those penned by the late Mr. Edwards, because someone had told my wife and son they should be ashamed of their behavior.

“Why?” you asked. (Well, some of you did.) “What did they do?”

It doesn’t matter why, because my wife and son had done nothing to be ashamed of. In all of human history, nobody ever did anything worth being ashamed of. That doesn’t mean nobody in history ever did anything immoral, unethical, or downright awful. We know they did. We established public education and TV news so that everyone would remember that they did. It just means that there’s no reason for those people who did wrong to feel ashamed, because feeling ashamed doesn’t accomplish anything.

In fact, I don’t think shame is a feeling. Not a natural one. It’s a dirty, useless, stupid pseudo-feeling that hurts people and ruins lives, without ever righting a wrong or salving a hurt feeling.

I hate shame.

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The Stuff I (don’t really) Overhear at Lunch

So I’m sitting at lunch, reading, and there are these two guys at the next table. One is young–under 30, I think–one middle-aged. My generation. Full head of hair but it’s gray. I judge by mannerisms. Young guy has a couple lines on his face, but his body language says his mind is still in a dorm room. Middle-aged guy has that pose that says he knows he’s in charge. Call it 55-60. I suck at guessing ages. A lot of people my age look pretty damn old to me. I’m still reeling from learning that I’m now older than Frank Morgan was when he played the Wizard of Oz. Damn.

Anyway, this older guy was berating–civilly, but still berating–the younger one for things like “not stepping outside the comfort zone,” and not being aggressive enough with clients or customers or whatever. And the younger guy was taking it, apologizing all over himself, explaining himself, admitting that he was falling down on the job…

In a pleasant lunch area, outside on a warm Fall day.

It was painful.

I don’t even know what they were saying, but the body language was enough to turn me off. What gets into a person my age that makes him think it’s okay to treat people that way? Like inferiors? And what gets into young person that he feels he has to respond in such a subservient manner?

Well, I guess that’s a little more understandable.  We all need a way to earn a living. If this older guy is providing employment, it’s a survival mechanism for the younger one to treat him with deference, lest he lose his job.

But, really…? Should it work that way? Should people feel like grocery store produce that has to be properly oiled and placed, so they can sell themselves? And should anyone feel like it’s appropriate to receive that kind of deference? Or deliver that kind of harsh reprimand?

I guess it’s just my egalitarian nature, but that kind of display just makes me uncomfortable. Above all, when it comes to the people who work for me, I believe in displaying compassion, letting them know I’m on their side. Encouraging their strengths, and, if I find weaknesses, addressing them with an eye toward help the individual employee make his life better, not making him fill some mold I’ve chiseled out. Sure, if the person doesn’t fit the needs of the job, they may have to find another job. But you accomplish an awful lot by treating people as though they’re succeeding, and believing the best of them at all times.

I think–I hope–that I tried to raise my kids the same way. I’d hate to meet that guy’s kids.

Which guy? Honestly, either one. Kids don’t need role models who bully, and they don’t need to be taught that the way to succeed is to toady to bullies.

Maybe I’m misjudging the entire situation. I don’t know how I look to outsiders. I don’t know how I look to my own employees. I can ask, and I do. “Do I ever set unreasonable goals for you?” “Do I ever leave you wondering which way to turn?” “Do I ever make you feel like I don’t have time for you?”

They give me positive feedback, but… do they do it because they feel they have to? Last week I was told that a colleague was “afraid” of me. Didn’t want to ask me for anything, because I’m so intimidating.

I don’t think I’m intimidating, but who knows what we look like in the eyes of others?

That scene at lunch still bothers me. It’s like it was happening in a world I didn’t want to be a part of. But can a whole different world by just a few feet away?

Guest Blog: I Lost a Good Friend of Mine Today!!!

Tonight, a guest blog, and the blogger is Battalion Chief (ret) Donald Howell. Although Chief Howell and I share long service at Howard County Fire & Rescue, we never served together as members. He retired a year before I began working there. We became co-workers, and then friends, while he was Executive Director of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF). He hired me to be his IT Consultant back in 2001. 

This past Friday, we lost a dear friend, another retired firefighter who also served with ICISF. His name was Don Gow, and he was one of the dearest, most loyal, most giving souls I have ever encountered. But I couldn’t memorialize him half as well as Chief Howell did in this wonderful essay, so I asked permission to share it here.*

Take it away, Chief Howell.

I just wanted to let you know I lost a good friend of mine today, Don Gow.

Don loved his God, his Country and his family (Jean, Sissy and Donnie). The rest of us fit in somewhere behind those three, and probably even behind his love for his dogs, Duncan and Pixie. Continue reading

Getting Slapped Upside the Head by an 18-Year-Old

220px-UMD_McKeldin_long2Now, before you call the cops on anyone to report me as a victim of assault, domestic or otherwise, be aware that the 18-year-old in question is me. And to be absolutely accurate, he’s between 18 and 21, all those ages, all at the same time. He slapped me upside the head with memories of him… me… when I took a nostalgic trip to my alma mater this past weekend.

Warning. This blog is stupid self-indulgent. There is no benefit to you, the reader, intended herein. This is all about me, and I make no pretense to the contrary.

My son’s marching band was performing at halftime at College Park’s Byrd Stadium as the Terps played the Bowling Green Falcons in a game that was interrupted by a severe thunderstorm. In fact, the game itself was not interrupted. It was the band’s fourth number, “Rock Lobster,” which was cut short just seconds in.

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Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say…? School Monitoring of Social Media

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Or this.

Basically, the Orange County School System in Florida has started using a software package to monitor the social media posts of all students and staff. The software, SnapTrends, would harvest posts (presumably after a list of names or user IDs is uploaded into it by the School System) and filter for certain words like “kill, knife, or gun.” If it finds them, school personnel will presumably investigate further to see if a student is a threat or needs mental health services or both.

Indeed, per the article above, they’ve already identified at least one student who was making suicidal threats, and sent officials to investigate. The article tells us this in support of the assertion, “The district said it has already prevented incidents.”

But is the incident loosely described proof of a prevented incident? I’m not saying you should talk to a student who is threatening suicide. I’m not saying you should not take every such threat seriously. I am saying that the threat is not the act, and you cannot claim you have “prevented an incident” simply because you followed up. You took steps to try and prevent a potential incident. You have no proof that your actions changed the course of events.

The rallying cry of proponents is, “Who cares? It’s all public information anyway.” This was certainly the opinion of the Today show staff when they aired the story.

It (the set of all posts by students) is public information, nominally. It’s also “public information” that I drive a certain way to work every day. I can’t disguise the fact that I do, and, legally, I have to display an ID number for my car where everyone can see it. Anyone who knows me knows what car I drive. If I think people can’t track my movements, I’m dreaming. A similar statement is made about people who think their Facebook postings are “private.”

But if you start following me everyday and taking notes on my actions, you’re a stalker.

“Oh, but a police officer is justified in following you and taking notes.”

Um… Maybe. If he or she has reason to consider me a person of interest in an investigation, certainly. But if I’m not? If a cop just feels like following me because he or she wants to know what I get up to? Courts have ruled that a police officer may follow a car 24/7 without establishing probable cause. Similarly, courts have ruled that a police officer may, secretly and without warrant, GPS tag a car parked on a public street.

I still think that’s stalking, but it’s legal. But a cop is a cop and a school administrator is not a cop. There’s also a question of scope. Cops physically couldn’t GPS-tag every resident of a single community, or actually follow them around in a car. The day they try, United State v. Pineda-Moren will go down in flames. Lawmakers tend to suck at thinking about scope.

I think the same is true of mass surveillance of social media. Watching one person based on probable cause is a good safety practice. Watching one person without probably cause is legal, but creepy, and probably won’t stand the test of time as a defensible behavior. Watching everybody? In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “Aw hell no!” (I can’t prove he said it, but, hey, he was a redhead. We know he had a streak of rebellion in him.)

I have no objection to a private investigator, a school administrator or a police officer checking the Facebook posts of a kid who’s made threats to which they’ve been tipped off. That’s probable cause and grounds for investigation. Such tactics have resulted in the unearthing of credible threats. But watching the Facebook accounts of every single kid and teacher in a school?

That’s completely counter to the spirit of the law, which maintains we are all innocent until proven guilty.

“But safety is the most important thing. As long as we’re keeping the children safe, does it really matter if we’re infringing on people’s rights?”

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Franklin, John Adams and Jefferson. You note that Adams looks a bit distracted. He was probably thinking ‘Inalienable’s not really a word, is it?’ Painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

I refer you to the late Mr. Benjamin Franklin on that one. He really said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

(There are some who claim that Franklin’s quote does not mean what we now say it means. Maybe I’ll tackle that in a future blog…)

 

The Intergalactic Nanny

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My brother says this isn’t the box art he remembers, but it’s what appears to have been the 1969 release art. Image courtesy of Scalemates

My brother had a model Saturn V rocket. Assembled, I believe it stood about 30 inches tall. I guess he assembled it. I remember yellow streaks of model glue on the… does a rocket have a fuselage? But you could separate it into stages (what good is a rocket if you can’t separate it into stages?) and it was almost always disassembled. It was almost always disassembled because his annoying little brother, who was much too young for such a model, wanted to play with it all the time.

And who wouldn’t want to play with it? It had the Apollo command module and capsule, the capsule just the size of an acorn, but still… It may have had a lunar module on the side. And I’m pretty sure there was a completely-out-of-scale figure of an Apollo astronaut in full gear.

It now lies in state in a cardboard box in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. What’s left of it lies in state, anyway. The bright orange launch pad is still around, and some odds and ends, including that little capsule. Yeah, we’re that family. I haven’t lived in that house for 28 years, but my room is still full of my stuff. And… y’know… stuff I permanently “borrowed” from my brother.

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The remnants…

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Jennifer Granick – Listen to Her If You Want the Future to not SUCK

Read this article. Just read it. Now. Every word. If you don’t understand it, ask someone who can explain it to you. Hell, ask me. Or, if available, ask somebody smart instead.

But don’t ignore it.

I had a whole blog post prepared for tonight about Saturn V rockets, Star Trek and childhood memories, with a gentle dose of being careful about your political environment tossed in. You can read that next week. This week, read something by someone who’s paying close attention than I am, and is here to tell you that the future is going to SUCK.

At least, the future is going to suck if you keep letting power-hungry assholes convince you that “the issues” are the need to re-illegalize abortion, legislate away climate change, defend marriage against those who just want to get married, or provide for absolutely FREE every damn thing our parents used to work for.

Those are not the issues. HERE are the issues, the ones important to people way beyond the borders of these United States, and the threats that exist to your future, brought to you by someone a lot smarter than I am. Her name is Jennifer Granick, and this is her keynote speech from this year’s Black Hat 2015 information security conference:

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-end-of-the-internet-dream-ba060b17da61

Read it. Read every damn word.

(Or watch the video.)

Spoiler: CyberSecurity is the threat. Donate to EFF.

Lies

There’s nothing more baffling to me than having to deal with someone who lies. In particular, I’m concerned with someone who lies about another person in order to look superior, or, more accurately, in order to make that other person look inferior.

The whole concept of making yourself look good by making someone else look bad is alien to me. Sure, you made that other person look bad, but can’t someone else just do the same to you? What have you proven?

If we throw objective measures of virtue and success out the window, isn’t life just a free-for-all? And then there is no virtue, and no success, just an endless parade of people trying to boost their image.

You make yourself look good by, well, making yourself look good. By doing something of value.

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Out on the Long Tail – Advice and Encouragement for New Media Creators

So, you created something original and put it out there for the world. You probably tried selling it to New York or Los Angeles. You probably collected more than your share of rejection notices. Maybe you were once a successful, paid creator, and your prospects have noticeably faded. Or maybe you still are a successful, paid creator, but you don’t like the limitations placed on you by commercial publishing and distribution.

Well, you live in a good time. There are podcasts. There are eBooks. There’s Libsyn, Smashwords, Amazon, Kindle, Nook, B&N.com, Audible ACX, OverDrive…

OMG, who needs an editor or an agent, right? You can publish a short story, a novel, a book, a radio show, a TV show or a movie, all on your own! And, as soon as the public sees your wonderful product, they’re going to beat a path to your door to demand more and more content from you. And those smug acquisition and story editor types who turned down your comic book, your short story, your novel or your screenplay, they’re going to see the error of their ways and sign you to a multi-book or multi-picture deal.

Right?

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The Fortune Cookie: “Your dearest wish is coming true”

o-ROMANTIC-FORTUNE-COOKIES-facebookIt was a fortune cookie that got me thinking. The paper inside it said, “Your dearest wish is coming true.” We were eating Chinese food, my parents, siblings, my wife and kids and I. My brother said, “Well obviously, your dearest wish is to go to Hawaii.” I was, after all, going to Hawaii that weekend. “But,” I said, “I don’t think that’s my dearest wish.”

So what was my dearest wish? And was it coming true? I had a feeling the answer might be “yes.” That’s just the way I look at life. Call me a cockeyed optimist. Many people have called me worse things. Most people, in fact.

Getting ready for a long trip keys me up, as it does a lot of people. And Baltimore to Lihue is a particularly long trip–twelve hours in two planes. I don’t like flying anyway. I don’t like any situation where access to the bathrooms is in any way restricted, having, as I do, a bladder the size of a gnat’s left cheek. So I didn’t go to sleep too easily any night that week. One night–it may have been the same night I received the fortune cookie–I fell back on one of my patented sleep aids: I put in my earbuds and pulled up a random episode of Lux Radio Theater. Continue reading