Happiness

Happiness is a repaired computer.
My long personal computing career has always been limited to Apples - my first was an Apple-II purchased in Feb. 1982 - I was by no means the "first on the block" but they were just becoming popular. That was followed by an Apple IIe and an Apple IIGS. I still have a software IIGS simulation program that lets you run apple-2 stuff on a Mac (not the new ones with the intel chip, however) I finally threw out boxes and boxes of 7.25" floppies a few years ago - some with the first "Basic" programs I ever wrote. I still have boxes and boxes of 400K & 800K 3.5" floppies if anyone wants them
I stuck with Apple IIs for about ten years, waiting until 1993 to get my first Mac - a color classic. A couple of years later I bought my last Desktop - A powerMac 7500 which I tinkered with and added to until I got my first laptop - a PowerBook G3 "Lombard" in 1999. It still works very well, thank you, even though the battery is shot.
Three years later I purchased a titanium PowerBook G4 which also is still running despite a broken hinge. That's the one I've been using since my latest - a MacBook Pro 17 - lost its internal HD.
This is the first catastrophic failure I've had that I couldn't fix myself - I'd actually replaced the HD in the Lombard - just took careful tinkering and tiny fingers - but fortunately there is an Apple re-seller - Guru in town who was able to remove the HD, strip out and save most of the data, and replace it with a faster, bigger one - all in less than 48 hours.
Unfortunately I had not backed up finances, photos, correspondence, etc since last June, so I was much relieved when he was able to retrieve most of the data. I'll back up more often in the future - I keep telling myself.

Afghanistan - A political discussion

Afghanistan is a nation with an interesting history – which can be summed up as attempted domination by the rulers of adjoining nations for the past several hundred years.
This state is made up of more than a dozen rather disparate tribal/cultural/linguistic groups with only one over-riding similarity. They are almost all Muslims, but even here they are divided among major (Sunni & Shia) and minor denominations within Islam. The tribes do have a web of common Islamic beliefs and culture.
There are two major languages spoken – Dari Persian, and Pashtun – and several minor languages, but many Afghans are bilingual. The government has always (well, almost always) been a traditional rather weak central monarchy with local and area tribal rule. Since Afghanistan has long been a buffer state between unfriendly neighbors (most recently Great Britain and the USSR), the development of a strong central government along with natural resources and industry has lagged well behind its neighbors: Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.
Our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven there and seems to have been successful. The Taliban and Al Qaeda seem to have disassociated themselves and less than 100 Al Qaeda fighters remain in Afghan territory – at least according to the CIA.
Currently our policy seems to be to control, disarm and dismember the Taliban so as to prevent its return to power and thus once again provide Al Qaeda with a safe haven. To do this we have attempted to strengthen and encourage the growth of a fairly liberal national government – one which continues the guarantees of personal freedom and civil rights.
There are (at least) two major problems with this policy:
For most of its existence, Afghanistan has not had a strong central government – and when it did have one, that government was seen as repressive; and second, Afghan tribal society tends to be quite conservative and traditional – with traditional Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for moral authority – which runs counter to the civil rights inclusions in the National Constitution, especially women’s rights.
To achieve our current stated policy goals we will probably have to deal directly with the local and regional tribal governments – as we ultimately have done in Western Iraq. The real authority in Afghanistan lies with these local authorities but we have not yet resolved how we can breach the considerable moral and cultural beliefs which separate us.
Will the US be willing to back a strong group of regional governing bodies against the Taliban even if these rulers are essentially undemocratic and authoritarian, or must we remain as the central authority enforcing the power of the weak and corrupt central government?

Vacation Time

My wife and I have been on a continuous vacation since we retired from teaching in 1985 - and enjoyed almost every minute of it.
Since 1970, much of our vacation time has been spent in our cottage on a lake in Downeast Maine. It became a cottage when we finally got electricity in 1982. for the first twelve years we used Aladdin lamps and cooked with gas - which we hauled in - We hand-pumped water up from the lake, which was also our bathing pool. One sabbatical year we stayed until late October - our bathing was pretty brief that month!
We have lately upgraded the cottage by adding a wing with two more bedrooms, very little of the cabin remains as we bought it. Nowadays our yearly taxes cost more than half of our original purchase price - but of course then there was no road within a quarter mile and then it was just a logging trail. Times of changed, we actually have street signs and a street address - of course the road is still little better than a jeep trail but FedX and UPS do have to deliver - not that they are especially thrilled when they do. Our mailbox is at the head of the private road - about two miles away.
Our vacation spot is spectacularly beautiful -a very large lake ( two+ miles wide and six+ miles long) with high hills and a mountain at one end. It is a deep lake carved out by the mile-high glacier that covered the area twelve millennia ago.
We stay here from about July first until mid-October. By then all the foliage has Fall colors and New England is at its most beautiful. As we drive down to Florida, we sort of follow the Fall south.
Life is good.

A New Year, A New Experience

I really do not use this blogsite very much but would like to make some fairly obvious remarks about the future.

The U.S. is very probably going to undergo drastic political, financial, and social changes in the next couple of years - and not necessarily those they would have preferred.

Barak Obama was elected to lead the country in a new direction but events have overtaken him and the best he will be able to do is hurry to get in front of the parade and perhaps try to influence it's course. Fortunately he seems to be a thoughtful type  with some idea of where he wants to go. I wish him well.

Directions we should take:

1. Correct the oversight abuses and shortcomings that have contributed to the economic downturn. It is unlikely that much can be done to reverse the economy, but at least the government can act to keep it from getting worse.

2. Move toward a universal single-payer healthcare system. This will be very difficult but our children will thank us.

3. Renew the physical and intellectual infrastructure - from the power grid and roads to the educational system

4. Completely revise our foreign policy so as to correct as many of the blunders of the past decade as possible.

5. And most difficult of all: Try to calm the unreasoning suspicion and fear  in the American people  that has been so carefully encouraged so as to keep us compliant and docile.