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Cziltang wanders the trackless wastes in search of truth, beauty and personal enlightenment. He had tried to be self-sufficient, growing his own ideas, but they withered and died in the great intellectual drought that gripped the land in his youth. One day, as he gazed at the parched landscape around him, he realized that somewhere there must be ideas growing. Somewhere, rational discourse must still survive. Since that day, he has searched for a mythical land of fields and forests of living ideas. Now and again he finds a thought or two in the rubble of an occasional deserted outpost of civilization. Its a hard way to live and its not much of a life, but that's just how it is, out here in the Ratlands |
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The Dog ate my homework
link When I got home this evening, my football buddy (see Personal Folly section) was chewing up the mail. I have tried to explain to her that cats don't eat paper, but she was singularly unimpressed. I decided to get a picture as proof, because everyone knows that if the cat eats your bills you don't have to pay them, right? As always happens with cute children, by the time I got the camera, she was doing something else: in this case batting Q-tips out of the air. (The Head Rat taught her to fetch Q-tips, but she figured out that if she batted them out of the air she didn't need to go get them.)
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I was intending to write about this evening, but sometimes that's just the way it happens. by CziltangPosted: Thursday, January 08 2004 07:12:27 PM
If I were younger...
link If I were younger and 50 pounds lighter (OK, maybe 60, or 70...) I would already have submitted my resume' for the corrections job in Iraq. (see yesterday's post) And so would a couple of my co-workers. We spent some time talking about it today, just exploring the challenges involved. It seems to me that the central issues in building a police, court, and prison system that is viable are ones of respect and trust. For the new system to work, the Iraqi people have to trust the system to be equitable and they have to have respect for the system and the people who populate the system. Those are incredible challenges. Just a few examples we thought of: Criminals think differently than "normal" people. One of the hallmarks of criminal thinking is the sense of entitlement. Generally speaking, most criminals believe they are entitled to what they want, and they believe they are entirely justified if they take it, coerce others to get it or intimidate others to get it. Of course, that would appear to be an apt description of the Hussein government, so how do you separate out in people's minds that you (being a member of the new correctional system) don't operate that way and that the system now doesn't and won't operate that way? How do you design police interview and interrogation procedures to be effective, yet be respectful of the beliefs of the segments of the population that operate under the assumption that it is improper for a woman to be with men who are not family members? Our bias against cruel and unusual punishment goes hand in hand with the correctional principle that you don't demean prisoners as part of their punishment because being incarcerated is the punishment. How do you sell that idea? How do you sell the idea that incarceration in a reasonably clean, reasonably humane cell with regular meals and no torture is serious punishment? My co-workers and I are convinced that from a corrections professional's standpoint this is the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to be a positive part of something this big just doesn't come along every day. Alas that we are all older and slower than we would like to be, but its probably just as well, because our wives would probably kill us and conspire to dispose of the bodies if we were to pursue such a thing. by CziltangPosted: Tuesday, January 06 2004 11:16:44 PM
Go with what you know
link Every time I start working on an essay about foreign policy I start doing background research. In the process I always get distracted with other people's links and comments and the next thing I know I've spent two or three hours reading utterly engrossing material by excellent writers about things I want to comment on but realize I really don't have the broad backgound to do well. Last night I ran across an article by James Lileks. Read the whole thing. Here's why: "...It took me about 45 seconds of googling to come up with a long, boring press release from the IMF about the disposition of Iraqi oil revenues. They’re audited by the international community in accord with a UN resolution. How did that happen? How did a Unilateralist Cowboy War for Oil fumble the ball at the goal line? Perhaps the UN threatened to deploy Crack French Bureaucrats who'd unleash the indifferent shrug and the chastening frown. No! Not the lowered eyebrows! Anything but that! Here – take the oil money, all of it! Anything but a facial manifestation of Gallic disapproval!" I don't care what your position on the war in Iraq is, anyone who can string words together like that deserves your attention. Or if you are feeling philosophical, how about an essay on Tolkien and Mortality by Anna Mathie. For a while I was quite depressed. What I write seems kind of simplistic and shallow compared to a lot of the stuff I see on the internet. But then I remembered why I started doing this stuff in the first place. In the past year I've been through a major paradigm shift in the way I look at the world. It started out as a recognition of some serious cognitive dissonance between what I thought I thought about how the world is and the everyday practical knowledge I have about people gained via nearly 24 years of working in corrections. It sort of mushroomed into a full fledged paradigm shift. This Blog started out as a way for me to explore what I know, what I think I know and what I think and maybe get a little clarity for myself, because I still have gut feelings that don't exactly fit with what I know and I think things that don't match what I feel. So, in that context, of course it is going to be simplistic and shallow. At the ripe old age of 44 I've finally started thinking (really thinking and not just brushing the surface) about politics and philosophy and economics. I can't possibly have the background information that the writers I admire have. I haven't been at it long enough. One final note. I found a job I would like to apply for. The State Department is looking for 1000 or so police officers and corrections officers to help the Iraqi people "organize effective civilian law enforcement, judicial, and correctional agencies". I could do that. Unfortunately, when I mentioned it at home tonight the Head Rat went ballistic. She needn't have worried though. I checked the qualifications page and am pretty sure I couldn't pass the physical agility and endurance tests (although qualifying with a 9mm probably wouldn't be a problem). Still, it would be a really cool opportunity for someone like me. by Cziltang Posted: Monday, January 05 2004 11:12:58 PM
Return of The Return of the King
link I wrote this a couple of days ago while I was having problems saving Blog entries. I finally got clever and saved this one to the notepad, so I didn't lose it. Hopes and Fears realized: I finally went to The Return of the King tonight. I mentioned before that I was quite apprehensive about it. There were so many ways it could have been a disappointment, but I was pleased. Not what the English would call "best pleased," but satisfied. Given the constraints of movie making (and knowing full well that all of what I love about Tolkien doesn't necessarily make for gripping cinema) I'm not sure what else that I would have wanted could have been squeezed into a movie. My major complaint was there was no scouring of the Shire. I've always believed that this is a major point of the story. Generally, my other complaints are that I just wanted more. More of Legolas and Gimli, more of Eomer, more of Eowyn and Faramir. And, I was so afraid that Peter Jackson would go for a big finale and ruin the whole trilogy for me, but instead, he ended it correctly. I can live with the odd complaint or disappointment. Basically, it was marvelous. Now I just have to wait 8 or 10 months for the extended DVD version to come out. by CziltangPosted: Sunday, January 04 2004 09:10:44 PM
A guarded success
link Well, I've re-installed Blog 8.2 and copied in my missing entries from my backup. I say guarded success because I had copied the entries off the website onto notepad then copied them from there back into Blog. Consequently, the links didn't transfer. I will have to go fix them if I get a chance later today. I'd like to say that the entries I tried to write and couldn't because of my technical difficulties were all pithy and substantive, but we know better, don't we? Update: this exercise suggests that maybe I should pay more attention to backing up my data on a regular schedule, no? by CziltangPosted: Sunday, January 04 2004 12:22:48 PM
Repair work
link I crashed my system a few days ago and since that time Blog has been wonky. If this entry saves and posts things will apparently be fixed and I can get on to replacing the entries I made since my last backup (which was 12/16/03, unfortunately). If you are not reading this, I have just engaged in a typing exercise. by Cziltang Posted: Sunday, January 04 2004 12:06:58 PM |
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