don’t panic

On this day, I would like to salute (in a manner of speaking) George W. Bush, who, may very well go down as the single most destructive human being of the life on our fair planet. In all of history, no other human has been responsible for doing more to hinder the causes of an eco-friendly Earth, or promoting the interests of those responsible for the most destruction of our ecosystems than good ‘ol GWB. Whether snubbing the Kyoto Protocols, or propping up your buddies in big oil…

Here’s to you, Mr. President.

May Gaia give back to you in kind, all that you have done for her.

Having a special needs child is hard on your soul. They push every button, test every bit of patience you have, and at the end of the day, they may not even give you the simple hug that makes it all okay.

Not that an average two year-old can’t do that. But then, my daughter isn’t two. She’s ten.

A normal child will make mistakes or have a difficult time with a tough concept, and as they grow up you watch them learn. You are constantly surprised by the things that they are now able to do. But with a mentally disabled child, you are instead constantly reminded of their shortcomings, of what they can’t do. You live surrounded by examples of what your child should be, but isn’t. This is a heavy sadness to bear. It hurts to the very inner core of being a parent. There is no comfort for this pain, because – this is who she is.

My daughter has no real concept of time. We’ve tried. But at some point you run out of things to try. You exhaust the methods and techniques and are left with a sigh and a shrug and you just accept that this may be something she will never get. But time is a something that permeates every aspect of our lives. It guides our day, measures our work, and allows us to bear the distasteful – but not for her.

She understands sequence, but that’s not the same as time. She can tell you that Tuesday comes after Monday, but the term “next week” is mostly meaningless. Even the word “tomorrow” is alien to her.

My daughter uses the word, “remember” to direct your attention to something she is thinking about. She will say, “Daddy, remember we were at the park yesterday?” But the word “yesterday” is a filler. We could have been at the park that afternoon, or three weeks ago, it doesn’t matter. The concepts of past, present and future simply don’t exist for her. Her memory is in the eternal now.

So, it was with some stress that she got up this morning (with much normal Monday morning ten year-old complaining) and said, “Ten more days, right daddy?”

After pondering this question for a respectable time, and finding myself at a loss for context, I asked, “Ten more days until what, honey?”

“Ten more days, then graduation, right,” she asked, hopefully.

I visibly slumped. Somehow she had gotten it into her head that her fifth-grade graduation (a mostly symbolic event in the special needs track at school) was at the end of April. We had made some progress with her regarding calendar days. She’s really still just counting them sequentially, but she can point to “today”, which is huge. She doesn’t fully understand that “today” starts at 12am and goes until 12pm, or even that “today” starts when she wakes up and ends when she goes to sleep. But she can look at the calendar and point to the day and (mostly) tell me the date. So it was with great sadness that I had to inform her that her graduation wasn’t until June. She doesn’t get this, of course, and is even more upset because for her, graduation marks the end of school, and she isn’t liking school right now.

She used to like school, but then she was placed in a class of 16 kids (seems small, yes?), all special needs, in grades three, four, and five. One teacher and an aid. So much for individual attention. She spends her days mostly doing pre-printed worksheets that are mind-numbingly boring. And every time she turns one in, she is handed another which is harder than the last. Needless to say, I think I am looking forward to middle school for her as much as she is. Change has been a long time coming, and June can’t get here soon enough. So I ache inside ever time I am reminded, myself, that she doesn’t have the concept of time to help her cope with this educational gulag. Every day is just another sentence lived out in between recess and lunch and finally meeting me at home. She can’t say, “just six more weeks”. A week is an unknown quantity. Vaguely, it is what happens between the days of Sunday and Saturday.

So after much weeping and frustration (hers and mine), she finally relented and started a new barrage of questions about the number of days until June… Counting them out would have left her in despair so I worded it simply as “a few months.” Saved by the distraction of ambiguity.

Finally, as we were going out the door to meet the bus for school, she turned to me and asked, “Remember tomorrow, dad?”

How do you even respond?

I was reading today that Turkey is responsible for relaying 5.9% of the world’s junk mail and I got to thinking:

Why not let our ISP’s filter mail by country of origin. I mean, I don’t know anyone in Turkey, and I seriously don’t expect to EVER know anyone in Turkey. Why can’t my ISP simply block all mail from that country? I know it’s only the last mile of the chain, but it’s the mile that effects ME. Hell, let my ISP block ALL mail from outside the U.S. unless it comes from a country that I have specifically allowed to send me mail. If I know I might be doing business with someone in Mexico, how hard would it be to go in and add an “allow” for that country?

And if it’s originating inside the U.S., then we can hunt ‘em down and fry them to a cinder.

There was an article on Slashdot.org today about how many people “barrow” other’s wifi connections. This didn’t surprise me in the slightest. Nor did the fact that the article claims that 50% of those polled also used the same password for all online accounts.

But part of this problem stems from the industry itself. Consider, in order to make passwords more “secure” most online services require you to have an 8 character (or more) password with no common words and at least one numeric. This is the minimum. Now you can argue the value of random passwords all you want, but personally I don’t see any difference in the password “ghllsx652g” and “mylitterbox”. It’s not like someone is going to guess the one that happens to be 10x easier to remember, and if they can, then it is far more likely that they will know enough about me socially to make getting a password moot. They could just steal my whole identity.

So the industry has set itself up so that people will have to use the same password everywhere. The same systems that ensure secure random passwords, ensure that they will be almost impossible for the average consumer to remember. They are purposely non-intuitive. Duh. So either we memorize one, and use it everywhere, or we end up writing them all down in one place and violating the cardinal rule of information security, which is – you NEVER write down your passwords.

The solution? Why not make the system simply weed out all the obvious words and phrases that the majority of hackers are going to try? When you go to make your password, the system politely informs you that the word “password” isn’t suitable because it’s on a list of known words a hacker will try. I don’t mind my password being freakishly complicated, so long as it’s complicated in a way that I can remember, like “rrrybgdtsmmmmlibad”. Looks complicated, and would be nearly impossible to crack via random generation, yet is mindlessly simple to remember. “Row Row Row Your Boat Gently Down The Stream…”.

Obviously, that example might be too easy, but any phrase that you can remember easily could be used.

The other problem I see is that the more of our lives we have online, the more passwords we are going to have. I pay bills online, check my medical insurance, post to blogs, buy products, etc – and every one of those sites wants me to have an account… with a unique password… that I can’t remember. Right. I have more than 30 online accounts. You think I’m going to have a unique random password on each one? Not bloody likely. Sorry, but I’m getting old. My memory isn’t what it used to be. I’m lucky if I can recall my phone number without pause, and I’d bet most of the country is in the same boat.

Here is an article on CNN.com that makes me weep for the future of our country. What it boils down to is that a group of students (boasting 25,000 plus) wants it to be legal for students to carry a weapon on campus. This is in response to last year’s Virginia Tech shooting.

These students are the future leaders of our country…

Let me see if I have this right. The scenario they give is one in which they are able to “take out” a would be assassin that might manifest themselves in class – defend themselves as it were. But there are so many things wrong with this that it just boggles the mind.

- What does a would-be shooter look like? The guy at Virginia Tech was just another student. Nothing special. People even said he was a quiet guy… that he seemed nice. You won’t know that he wants to kill you until he has already pulled out his gun and shot you.

- What are the chances of being killed or injured by an accidental discharge, compared to that of being killed by a rogue gunman? I’d bet on the accidental discharge with 10-1 odds.

- Where are you going to keep it? On your body in a holster? What a fashion statement. More likely it will be tucked away at the bottom of your backpack where it will take you thirty seconds or more to dig for it. In the mean time, the killer has had plenty of time to blow away six or seven people before he notices you (rummaging through your pack while everyone else is running for cover) and makes you a priority target.

- If it does happen to be in a holster on your body, do you really think you are going to sit there cooly and draw while bullets are whizzing around you? I’m tempted to say that all but a VERY small number of gun toting students will have had ANY actual combat experience (if they do, then they are probably still in Iraq – thanks, Mr. President). In fact, it’s highly likely that they won’t have even fired a gun outside of a range, let alone in a high-stress situation with adrenaline flying through their veins and twenty-five other students screaming around them. Hitting the intended target (even if they can immediately figure out what is going on) is about as likely as them winning the lottery.

- If you DO happen to get your own gun out and can actually pop off a few shots, what happens if you hit someone else? They are running around screaming. What if YOU kill someone? That’s homicide, baby. You go to jail.

- By allowing people to carry weapons (we assume they are loaded weapons, or what’s the point?), you basically make it legal for a would be killer to walk into a class with their gun. They could have the thing out and ready to go and no one could say a thing. Brilliant. Once they have emptied the clip of their 9mm, they can reach into their pack for the sawed-off shotgun and Uzi.

I find it incredible that a school would actually consider this. Granted, I’m not much of a gun fanatic, and while I don’t have a problem with people owning a gun at home, the “right to bear arms” takes on a completely new meaning when you remember that the average IQ in the U.S. is about 97. Certainly, a college is going to have a greater percentage of “smart” people, but that doesn’t make them Rambo. Relatively speaking, these are cocky, young adults with little or no real life experience. Having a number of them carrying lethal firearms while they sit in lecture hall just isn’t the solution.