Water Coolers and the Battle of Midway

I bet you're wondering how I am going to tie these two together.

Let's start with the battle of Midway.  This was a decisive battle fought towards the end of WWII.  It is significant in that it is the second naval battle where the two opposing fleets were never in visual sight of each other. (After the Coral Sea thanks to Ron S. for that bit of data.)

A little while before Midway, the Japanese severely damaged the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier.  It was so beat up they assumed it sank.  But, it made it back to Pearl Harbor, barely.  It was listing heavily to one side and the flight deck had huge holes in it.

The fleet admiral asked the officer in charge of the shipyard, how long it would take before the carrier could return to full service.  The officer said, "6 months at least."

The admiral had a war to fight so he said, "I will give you 96 hours."

Four days later (96 hours), the USS Yorktown went back to sea.  The impossible had happened simply because anything less was unacceptable.

As it turns out, the Japanese saw the Yorktown and assumed it was our main fleet, since they were certain the real Yorktown had sank.  They attacked the carrier and sank it.  They then returned to rearm.  That was when we struck back.  That was the battle of Midway.  We won it, in part, because we refused to accept that the impossible was too hard to do.

This brings me to a certain water cooler that was left on a sidewalk in Times Square.  We had a fit over it, shutting the place down, bringing in dogs and x-ray equipment.  In the end, it held water and books.  Now I ask you, did the bomber from last week, the Nissan with the fire crackers in it, really fail?  I say it was a big success for the terrorists.  They want us to be afraid and we say, "We are not afraid of you!!!" and then run screaming when someone forgets to throw away their lunch sack.

This is terrorism at work.

Ask the average person and they will say, "Well, you can never be too careful."  Hard to argue with that, but I completely disagree.  We shouldn't have to be "too careful."  We are accepting the idea of being afraid instead of insisting the Department of Homeland Defense do its job.

Someone will say, it's impossible to do this job perfectly.

To that I say, "You are fired."  Go to any top company and get the top guy and tell him, I am going to give you unlimited resources to solve this problem.  He will get it done.  He won't put tracking collars on us.  He won't beef up the Patriot Act.  He won't spy on U.S. citizens.

He will get creative and he or she will get the job done.

We all need to stand up and say, "Get it done or get the hell out of the way."

We can do this.  We don't have to run from empty brown paper bags because some guy in a Pakistani cave is pulling our strings.

I see this political theater today.  They are tracking the hundreds of dollars this guy spent on fire works.  This is make-work.  This is pretending to be effective.  This is failure.

When I get time, I am going to make a web page where anyone can easily find their congressman and email or call them to say, "Get it done or get the hell out of the way."

Okay, I am all out of steam....time for some Family Guy and a nap.

j

An Orwellian World

I once had a pot-bellied pig that use to help my out in the garage.  She would hand me tools as I constructed one failure after another.  You see, I was trying to build a pig-proof way of making dog food available to the dogs but not the pig.  Her plan, I can see it now in hindsight, was to watch as I built the various devices so she could see the weak link.

She always won in the end which makes me think George Orwell's Animal Farm is not all that unlikely.

This brings us to his book 1984.  In this book, Big Brother knows everything.  I found this to be a scary yet unlikely scenario for any future.  At the time I read it, it seemed to be full of holes.

How could any entity track everyone?  They would need computers and such.  DONE

Why would we let them take control of us like that?  Certainly we would be able to see it coming and put a stop to it.

Or would we?

Over the last couple of years, I have been starting to see a scenario where Big Brother may someday become the lesser of two evils.

Terrorism the the problem.

If we truly want to stop all terrorism, then we need to know where everyone is at or what they are doing at all times.  This is probably not an absolute.  For example, maybe someone will invent an "evil detection chip" that we put in everyone's head.  If they get seriously evil, their head explodes or something.  Barring that type of breakthrough, as terrorism increases, so will surveillance as we try to catch the bad guys.  People will be encouraged to turn in their neighbors over smaller and smaller trifles as government lowers the threshold for what is considered subversive.

To be free of fear, we will need to imprison ourselves.

This is not the path I would choose.  In fact, I prefer to not react to terrorism other than to terrorize the terrorists. Bagging deodorant or removing shoes to get on an airplane?  Get real! I am in favor of cruel and unusual punishment when it comes to terrorism.  Let them be afraid.

The problem then becomes, "What is terrorism?"  If someone blows up a bridge, we call it a terrorist act.  Suppose they blow up a gas station.  Suppose they just rob a gas station.  Suppose they jaywalk.  I think it is hard to draw that subjective line and say, "Over there on that side, you are the terrorist."  Who knows, in they eyes of the Taliban, maybe we are the terrorists.

So, no cruel and unusual punishment until the bugs are worked out.

After that...let's get creative.

I really want to be the person that turns the other cheeks.  I actually prefer any alternative to what I am suggesting, so long as it works.  I would encourage a "hire a terrorist" program that would provide job retraining and put hope into lives that have no hope.  Fanatics are created by circumstances.  So let us create more positive circumstances.

Until then, I favor a more medieval solution.  I just hope someone can convince me otherwise.

j