No Grasp of Your Reality

Paul asked why I was looking for a job in Japan. I think a response is worth a separate post.

My job has taken me to Japan quite a few times (I think my passport has 14 Japan entry stamps in it). Prior to taking this job five years ago, I had rarely left Pennsylvania, and had only once left the United States when we had driven through Canada when I was a kid (I slept the whole way).

My travel to Japan, and other parts of the world, has left with a real exposure to the huge differences in culture between the United States, Australia, England, and Japan. Since then, I wanted to make sure that my kids have an awareness of the different cultures around the world.

When Sarah and I made the decision to homeschool the kids, we both agreed that we wanted to make the most of the kids’ time at home with the family. Not being tethered to a school means that the family can travel with me, and we can move to different locations around the world and have hands-on exposure to the world around us.

Here’s my incomplete list of pros and cons for moving to Japan:

Pros:

• I did received a promotion to a senior staff position at Lockheed Martin. This usually requires a lot more experience than I have, and I’m excited to be “ahead” in my career.
• My company significantly reimburses us for different costs, which will allow us to save more money.
• Japan is a major country that is little known to the rest of the world. There is a lot of potential for outreach to a normally inaccessible culture.
• Despite the fact that over 128 million people speak Japanese, it’s one of the more little known languages amongst non-Japanese. One reason is that Japanese is a hard language to learn, but when my children learn the language, they’ll find that their skills as native English speakers with an understanding of Japanese will be potentially very beneficial to their careers.

Cons:

• Being away from my family is going to be hard. Despite Vonage, email, webcams, and other technologies, we won’t be able to just hang out like we do now. Plane tickets to Japan are not cheap either, but hopefully, our families will be able to come visit and have an experience they wouldn’t have otherwise
• While the weather is just as cold as it is in SE Pennsylvania, they get a lot of snow. They average 35 feet per year. That’s a lot.
• It’s not Tokyo. In Tokyo, you can eat at a different restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a lifetime and never hit the same place twice. The area is pretty rural and poor, so we’ll be traveling by car and when we go out to dinner, we’ll probably hit the same few places.

I’m sure there are more, and I might edit this post in the future to add other reasons. But that should be start.

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Ron Paul mania has died down, we’re members of a new church where there’s a little more peace and quiet, and my month long trip to Australia happened to be to one of the more boring parts of the world.

For the last year or so, I’ve been browsing the Lockheed Martin job boards to see if there were any cool overseas positions. A couple months ago, I saw a position for a systems administrator in a small, remote village in Northern Japan called Shariki (even the Wikipedia page is extremely sparse). I applied for the position, and was rejected for the position, since knowledge of the program was required. I was disappointed, but life goes on.

A couple months ago, I got a email out of the blue asking me if I was interested in interviewing for an overseas position in Japan. The person who sent the email had a subject line that had the name of the program I had interviewed for earlier. I called the guy back and we chatted for a while. A few minutes into the conversation, I realized that I wasn’t interviewing for a systems administrator position, but for an Information Systems Security Officer (ISSO) position at the same site in Shariki. The interview went well, and a week later, I was told they were putting together an offer for me.

After talking to Sarah and my family, we decided to accept the offer.

The position will be for at least one year, but probably more like 2-3 years in Shariki. We’ll probably be living in a larger town further south called Goshogawara. I haven’t been up to the area, but I’m planning on heading up there next month after an upgrade in Tokyo next month.

The next few months are going to be pretty hectic, but I plan on doing a better job of keeping up with blog during the overseas travel. The Aomori area of Japan has some of the more remote and pristine areas of the country, and we’re really looking forward to some rural living over there.

“Having appeared on numerous conservative radio shows to promote other projects unrelated to foreign policy, I have had to tread lightly and watch my words, lest the subject of our current foreign adventure might arise. I quickly learned U.S. policy in Iraq is for most conservatives literally beyond discussion. It is not that these people will not debate the war; they literally cannot. Even questioning American actions abroad while our troops are in the field strikes them as a form not so much of treason as of blasphemy. It’s as if our troops were several hundred thousand Christs, and to criticize their mission amounted to jeering at Jesus on the cross.” - John Zmirak

(HT to Lew Rockwell)

Because it’s the only thing in the bathroom, and I’m a captive audience, I started flipping through the March 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I flipped 8 pages before I found any content. So, for giggles, a started counting the advertisements.

Of the 236 pages that make up the issue, 112 pages are full page advertisements. Of the 124 pages of actual content, 14 of those pages have half page ads on them. That leaves 110 pages of unadulterated content.

Starting on page 115, there are 44 consecutive pages of beautiful content and photography, but it really does seem like a needle in a haystack.

Except for one really uncomfortable moment, Glenn did a really good interview with Dr. Paul

For those of you out there who like camping in front of the television, the Ron Paul DVD Project have put together some videos to watch on your DVD player at home. You can download them via the bittorrent links using azureus, or any other bittorrent client.

If you only get one, I’d recommend The Ron Paul Revolution project. It’s a well-produced video about 45 minutes long that goes over Dr. Paul’s various policies.

These two DVDs (DVD 1, DVD 2) are compilations of various speeches, interviews and debates that Dr. Paul has done over the last few months. The DVD is easily traversable, and you can pick and choose what you want to watch.

Finally, one DVD was produced specifically to answer questions for Christian voters regarding values, taken from a speech in Iowa and from a pastor’s conference. This DVD is designed to answer a lot of the specific questions for Christian voters, including his position on abortion and foreign policy (including Israel).

If you’re unable to burn any of the moves above, but still want to watch them, shoot me an email, and I will burn a copy for you and send it via the mail.

Following the success of the last fund raising day, where we raised $4.2 million for the Ron Paul campaign in a single day, we’re looking to try to double that number on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Check out this video put together by a supporter… the campaign had nothing to do with the last contribution surge, and has nothing to do with this one. It’s the people coming together to support our candidate.

The guy who has been repeatedly voting on every on-line poll has been caught and here is his picture

read more | digg story

When one enlists in the military, one signs certain rights away. You essentially sign yourself up for indentured service to the country for a period of time, and during that time, certain constitutional rights no longer apply to you. These rules are listed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

One of those rights you voluntarily give up is the right to free speech. Article 88 of the UCMJ states the following:

“Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

The reason why I point this out is because recently, we’ve see many neo-con pundits pointing out that the Generals in the army are testifying to Congress about the situation in Iraq, and making positive statements about President Bush’s policies. But military officers are required to support the policies of their civilian leaders, and take very severe legal risks if they do speak out against the policies of Congress or the President.

This is the same reason why polls of American soldiers in Iraq are next to meaningless. Of course soldiers are going to say they support the mission to any media person who asks. That’s their job to do so. It’s like asking a football player whether they think they’re going to win on Sunday. Who is going to say no?

However, there is one place that we can find out what the members of the military really think about policy, and that’s by looking to see which candidates to whom they’re sending their campaign contributions. And Congressman Paul is winning that contest.

For all you folks who say that Ron Paul has no chance of winning the Republican nomination, I’d like to see you put your money where your mouth is. Right now, Sportsbook.com has Ron Paul’s odds of winning the Republican nomination at 4-1. That means if you bet $100, you’ll win $25 when Ron Paul doesn’t win the nomination, like so many of you are absolutely sure won’t happen.

Tell you what. I’ll even take anyone up on the bet, at 4-1 odds. I’ll put up $25 to anyone who wants to put up $100. Just post in the comments, and we’ll work out the details.

I posted the following over on the Daily Paul.

There is a common misconception amongst the people whom I talk to about Ron Paul that he’s some sort of a pacifist, and against all forms of foreign war. This misconception was reinforced and repeated by Bill O’Reilly a few months ago when Dr. Paul was on his show.

WIth the limited television budget, I would love to see the following in the hardcore “red states”. I would love to see Dr. Paul say something like the following.

“On September 11, 2001, America was attacked by a group of Islamic militants in a plan masterminded by Osama bi Laden. On [fill in the date], I voted to authorize President George W. Bush to deploy our military into Afghanistan to overthrow the corrupt government which was protecting these criminals, and to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. Since that time, our government has been distracted from this quest for justice by a war in Iraq, a country that has never attacked the United States and joined us as an enemy of Islamic jihadists.

The war in Iraq is draining our resources, and distracting us from our original mission of finding Osama bin Laden and destroying the Al Qaeda terrorist organization.

As president, I will refocus our military on the original mission, and go after the global criminal terror networks, and not allow our military to be used for to serve the interests of the oil companies and the military industrial complex.”

I think this would really ring a bell with the red state republicans and make them think twice about the other republican candidates who somehow equate the war in Iraq with the “War on Terror” and also remind people that Ron Paul isn’t a pacifist, but simply promotes the proper use of the military.

Sarah tagged me, so I’m therefore obligated to let you all know what I’m currently reading.

I’m in the middle of a couple books right now… I started out reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which has succeeded in stoking my hatred for people. In order to cheer me up, I took a break from that and read through Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is much less of a downer than Rand.

Sadly, I don’t know five bloggers to tag them, but I’ll try to make an effort to find a few.

Update: Apparently, I don’t know how to follow simple directions. I was supposed to “open the book you’re currently reading on page 161 and read the fifth sentence on the page, then think of 5 bloggers to tag with”

Here we go… Atlas Shrugged.

“Next time you give a party,” he said, “stick to your own crowd. Don’t invite what you think are my friends. I don’t care to meet them socially.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to give an explanation, but the “he” refers to Henry Reardon, the steel industrialist, and one of the protagonists in the book. It’s the end of chapter seven, after Henry’s wife had just thrown a birthday party for him, and purposefully (and spitefully) invited the exact sort of people that she thought Henry should be socializing with, but chose not to. The crowd was made up of people who thought themselves important in society, but (in the eyes of the industrialists) really didn’t amount to anything, i.e. the authors, journalists, philosophers and politicians.

Brave New World is much more mundane.

“Do you have many twins here?”, the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on the tour of their inspection

“The Savage” is John, and the tour is of a school in this brave new world. John was born in an Indian reservation, and although he was the son of “civilized” people, he spent his life among the savages. He received special permission to leave the reservation and tour the society outside the reservation, and at every turn in thoroughly disgusted by every aspect of it. In this chapter, he is touring the education/indoctrination facilities in the new world, and his question was due to his experience of seeing identical faces on all the lower class workers (gammas, delta, and epsilons), brought about the new technology of Bokanovsky’s Process, where a fertilized egg can be split into different identical people, with the world record being 16,500 identical twins. The identical twins unnerved John, hence his question. However, since they were touring a school for alpha-pluses, there were no twins to be found.

One side note… page 161 is about two-thirds of the way through Brave New World, and a little over one-tenth of the way through Atlas Shrugged.

I know I’ve been quiet for a while, but I wanted y’all to see a new independently produced Ron Paul video. It’s 8 minutes, but I think it’s worth it.

(HT to Daily Paul)

Never try to dry beef jerky when it’s 100% humidity. For some reason, it doesn’t work very well.