Question: What if we feel an unbearable compassion for the suffering of other beings–especially animals, because it is often more obvious–yet we have not developed the wisdom to deal with it properly?

HHDL: This is all the more reason why, now that you have developed that feeling of ‘unbearable’ compassion toward others, you should try to increase your wisdom, and intelligence, in order to deal with the actual situation. This is why practitioners on the bodhisattva path are encouraged not to be satisfied with just an idealistic idea of compassion, but to put that ideal into practice immediately. So I believe that when you follow the bodhisattva’s way of life, it is possible to match your compassion, at whatever level it may be, with an active kind of interaction with others.

I fill something of a leadership role in my company – and I find myself re-inventing a lot of wheels. My stock line is that in another few years I’ll have re-discovered everything that they tell you on the first day of MBA school. I’m okay with that re-invention, and here’s why:

I have a gut level suspicion of ‘usual’ business management practices. Most businesses run, not for the benefit of the individuals doing the work, but for some other entity. Generally that other entity is either specific (“the owner”), more diffuse (“the shareholders”), or somewhat terrifying (“The Company”).

I want to run a team that uses the structure of ‘corporation’ for the benefit of the team members, not the other way around.

Today, for example, we backed into internal budgets and ‘costing’ for non-revenue-generating activities. This grew from a need to associate both cost and value with activities like writing proposals and attending trade shows.

And to think … I used to be some kinda programmer.

Had a recent experience that demands documentation.

My brother graduated from Peabody conservatory this year, racking up the family record for most degrees per year: Two bachelor’s and a Masters in five years of study – guitar performance (Peabody), recording engineering (Hopkins), and acoustics (masters from Hopkins) – in case you’re keeping track.

In town for the festivities, I insisted that he get us into the Peabody library – a gorgeous architectural relic from the 1880’s, with cast iron tiers of old-school grandeur housing more than a century’s worth of eccentric and excellent collections of generations of librarians. He’d been telling me how awesome it is for the last five years. On this last opportunity I called his bluff, while his student ID was still valid. One fine afternoon, we wandered in and around the main level for a bit. Finally, on something of a whim, he and I walked into the office of the librarian and asked (somewhat cheekily): “We’ve heard you have awesome stuff in the private collection. Can we have a tour?”

The librarian was an absolute geek – which I mean in the most complementary possible way. The man loves his books, loves details, knows his stuff, and has a great job. He paused, looked at us, and said “sure, give me a sec to wrap up here.” In short order, he emerged from his office with a key and ushered us upstairs past a series of locked gates. Into the back room we went, which was a mind-bendingly classic room with 20 foot ceilings piled high with antiquities.

There was a central table, where the librarian went straight to a cloth wrapped bundle. “You want to see the oldest items in the collection. These are cuneiform tablets from approximately 2,200 BC.” He semi-casually laid these priceless artifacts out on the table and explained how they were basically receipts. Unbaked clay documenting temple gifts. In a very early sort of RSA coding, they would be baked into a clay box. In the event of controversy, one could break the box and read the (demonstrably) un-molested data.

He looked at us, warming to the task and our obvious enthusiasm. “You guys like science? How about a first edition Copernicus?” There, on the table in front of me, he opened up one of the books where Copernicus documented his observations of the elliptical orbits of the planets. A first edition Origin of the Species? No problem. My dad got to hold it for pictures.

I touched a piece of paper printed on Gutenberg’s press. I caressed calfskin vellum documenting nobility in pre-renaissance Italy. I ogled a French Enlightenment encyclopedia – whose frontispiece showed a group of men forcibly unveiling a rather delicate and feminine depiction of Truth, while stripping a crown from Faith to adorn Truth’s head.

After perhaps an hour, the Librarian glanced at his watch and with a somewhat staged “goodness, look at the time” ushered us back out and resumed his duties.

All I can say is: “Hell yes,” and “some days, it rocks to be me.”

Vignette 1

I spend the morning stomping the stupid out of several prospective plans. Stomp stomp stomp. At one point I was heard to say, “look, don’t imagine that you can hurt my feelings here. We’re talking about technology and I’m pretty sure I’m right. If I’m wrong, then show me how I’m wrong – but please don’t worry about things (like hurting my feelings) that just aren’t going to happen.”

Vignette 2

My customer asked my opinion on a bill of goods from a third party, totaling $400k. I corrected it down to the $270k that they actually needed. They they bought it.

That’s some sort of a personal record. It’s also pretty scary. Hope it works.

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Went to jiu-jitsu this evening, and got hit with a sneaky armlock. How sneaky? My opponent was working – working – working – and then cries out (a la Pink Floyd) “MONEY!” right as he locks it in and I start the pre-emptive tapping that one does when you don’t need them to actually crank the shoulder to make a point. I totally had no idea that it was about to happen – and he was, like, warming up his victory cry.

Damn. Owned.

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At the bar, I read that the executives responsible for the Bhopal disaster have finally been brought to justice. In case you’ve forgotten, back in the 80’s, a chemical plant farted and killed 3,000 people in the slums of India. It also sickened perhaps a total of a half million – who have since been compensated to the tune of $500 apiece. The penalty? About $2k for each of the executives responsible – and maybe some jail time. Maybe.

Consider that, when we talk about how BP might be fined – like – a third of the $10B dividends they’re paying out right now for crapping the biggest crap ever in the gulf.

Vignette 5

On the way home from dinner (I walked the three blocks from the hotel), I was propositioned by the scariest looking streetwalker I’ve ever seen in my life. “Where you headed? With your wife? You don’t want to have a good time? Can you help me out for gas then? I’m on E…” Yeesh. Poor girl.

And now to bed.

Indulged, this past weekend, in the now four year old tradition of renting a cabin in the woods with a dozen or so friends. The stated purpose of the weekend is to work on the arts and crafts projects that we push to the side on any particular day in our “real” lives. The subtitle might be “if we’re so successful, why don’t we live more like this?” It was invigorating and wonderful.

The structure is minimal – people respect each other’s space – but at the same time revel in being physically close to friends. Each morning, someone offers breakfast (crepes one day, omelets the next). It’s small enough to be a comfortable mix of socialist sharing with boundaries. Folks settle in and work quietly (with occasional bursts of laughter) through to the mid afternoon. At some point, the first beer of the day gets cracked – and conversation begins to spread. Eventually, people set aside their projects and jump in the pool – or pick up musical instruments. Each evening has a more structured dinner – this year mine was on Sunday. With and , I cooked a risotto, broiled fish, and kale. This had the dual purpose of emptying the winter larders of frozen fish and kale in preparation for the onslaught of this year’s CSA. Five pounds of fish per week doesn’t sound like a lot for two families, but you can’t let yourself fall behind.

There are three of us who homebrew – we had four varieties of beer, one mead, and my wine. This year saw first homemade keg of art weekend – and it is whispered that I might try distillation next year. In preparation for that, I made a 24 hour, 15% alcohol solution using “Turbo” yeast. “Turbo,” apparently involves discarding all niceties of flavor and just going balls-out. It was foul, and we dumped it out.

The talents my friends bring are amazing. My small offering was a bit of Japanese brush work.

So ask yourself – if you can imagine a better life than the one you live now – what are you doing to make that more than a dream? More than one weekend per year?

As someone or other said – it’s always a choice.

I’m ever-so-slowly making my way through a truly massive tome: Christianity, the first three thousand years. It’s a brilliant and thorough (oh god, 1,200 pages of tiny type) history by a smart and snarky Oxford professor.

I highly recommend this book both to my agressive and combative atheist friends and to my sensible and intelligent Christian friends. Both groups fall all-too-easily into the mental trap of assuming that Christianity is a single, monolithic, straightforward faith. If that were the case, one could reasonably argue whether or not the Christian beliefs are accurate and useful – and perhaps accept or discard them wholesale.

The author does a great (and thorough!) job of detailing how religion has always been tied up with national, ethnic, linguistic, political, familial, and cultural identities. There is no “one true,” Christianity to be accepted or rejected wholesale.

The experience of religion has ebbed and flowed through the years. For many centuries, to say that a town or country became “Christian,” represented a political alliance struck at the highest levels between local rulers and itinerant bishops representing a massive, wealthy, foreign power. The current, highly personal experience of conversion is a relatively recent development requiring massive personal freedom, and echoing the very ancient pattern set by Paul of Tarsus. Christians have been killing Christians for as long as Christians have had settlements on desirable plots of land.

The author also does a wonderful job of setting aside issues of the historical truth of miraculous events. “Accounts differ,” is a favorite phrase … though he does take a subtle joy in detailing some of the sillier claims of the faithful:

Towards the end of the seventh century the monks of Fleury had mounted an expedition far into the south of Italy, to Monte Cassino, and there they clandestinely excavated the body of Benedict himself, plus the corpse of his even more shadowy sister and fellow religious, Scholastica. The consecrated raiding party bore they swag of bones back in triumph to the Loire, and there Benedictine monks still tend them in a crypt in their great church, to the continuing mortification of the Benedictines of Monte Cassino. Benedict had not put up any resistance to his abduction, so it was reasonable to suppose that he approved of it, and thus gave his formidable blessing to the whole people of Francia.

If we’re to have a serious discussion of either a religious or a-religious life and belief system – let’s do it from the basis of deep and specific knowledge – not hysterical edge cases.

multiplexer has adequately captured my feelings on the matter of what Obama should do about the oil gusher. It amounts to “so long as BP has the best experts and equipment, and appear to be working as hard as they can, let them run the site and support them with whatever they need.” Also, “prepare for an ungodly huge, multi-year cleanup.” Some photo-ops of him frowning at murdered wildlife might help with the political fallout.

Punishment for the guilty comes later. At some level, we’re all culpable for this. You want to talk about true cost of your massive, inefficient vehicle? Take a look. Still, I would like to see at least some of BP’s assets nationalized – and (ideally) someone do some prison time for this. BP externalized the risks – we need to re-internalize them. There’s plenty of precedent for jailing foreigners who endanger American national interests without charge or trial. We’ve been doing it for years. Some folks have even advocated torturing such people. I don’t go that far – but I would like to see words like “manslaughter” and “negligent homicide” bandied about. Perhaps we could also work out a reasonable ratio – like – 100 seagulls to one human life. Let’s crank the importance of animals up from “zero.” Multiplying even a large number by “zero value” is somewhat frustrating.

Anyway, since she covered the fun bit – I thought I would do some math: Operation “circumcise and install condom” appears to be going okay on the oil gusher. Estimates put the raw flow rate of the leak between 5,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. They’re currently capturing from the reservoir tip at a rate something like 1,000 barrels per day – so we’re catching between 2% and 20% of the mess. Hooray for non-zero! There’s also something about “flaps,” “hydrates,” “it’s really freakin’ hard to work at a mile below the surface.” Anyway, right now we’re between 2% and 20% of the way there.

I had no idea what those numbers meant, so I looked around for some online calculators. One barrel is 42 gallons. To get 5,000 * 42 = 210,000 gallons through a 10 inch pipe in 24 hours, you need to push 8,750 gallons through that pipe in an hour. That’s a flow rate of 35 feet per minute, or about 0.4 miles per hour. The upper estimate is 12 times that – or 420 fpm, which is 4.8 mph. Either of those velocities seem eminently reasonable.

technolope could probably tell me more about the sort of pressure differential required to push a fluid as viscus as crude oil out of a 10″ hole, into water at 5,000 foot pressures at that rate. I would be interested in that math. technolope?

Another fun number is that crude oil has fungibly traded at between $70 and $100 per barrel this year. That means that the gusher is gushing $350,000 to $6M per day in precious, precious crude. Don’t think of it as an environmental disaster – think of it as cash washing up on the shore!

What a night.

Around 2am, the battery in the floor level plug-in CO2 monitor in the hallway by the bedroom failed. The device (plug-in, mind you) started to beep – approximately once every 90 seconds. This woke me. I got up and stared at the CO2 monitor, as well as the two ceiling mounted smoke detectors in the hallway, declared myself mentally incompetent to deal with the situation right then, and shut the door. This woke , who heard a beep and asked me to fix the problem at the source.

So I grumbled, picked the wrong beeping thing, got a stepstool, and started to take down the smoke detector that’s hardwired into our security system. This set off the house alarm. Sirens. Klaxons. Annunciators. Loud. Okay, okay, now I’m awake. What? Huh? Help? Sirens? Help?

Replaced the detector in its sconce, went back into the bedroom, and keyed in the “all clear.” Sirens stopped. Woah. Ow. Then the phone rings. Security firm checking in. “Were you aware of the fire alarm on the second floor?” Yeah. Yeah, I’m aware. Ow.

Back into the hallway, unplug the correct beeping thing, remove the battery, and fling it in the closet. That’ll teach it. Then, back under the covers.

Perhaps 5 minutes later, my pulse is back down below 100bps, and we hear what sounds like an electrical short – also coming from the hallway. I’m like “what, huh?” I get up, and localize it. There’s a fly buzzing madly on the floor, going in tiny circles. I’m assuming that the sirens drove it insane. Pick up the fly, out the window. Close the window. Back to bed.

redmed is like “what was that?” I’m like “deranged insect.” She’s like “huh?” I’m like “shh-sh-sh.”

I think that at some later point the clothes drier un-balanced itself and started beeping madly – but that could have just been a bad dream.

I’m modifying my financial structures, and I wouldn’t mind some thoughts from you smart and beautiful people out in internet land.

First off, I’ve got a handle on the day to day and month to month finances. I track all expenses in quicken (because it can download straight from the banks and credit cards), and then I’ve got a set of Excel sheets containing monthly budget vs. actual, account balances, and a few other things. After more than 15 years of fighting with them, credit cards are a tool for me to use rather than an onerous weight on my shoulders. I’ve even successfully done the “no interest loan for a year” trick with a couple of cards – and paid it all the way off.

Now I’m trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to retire someday. This work thing is a DRAG.

I break my savings into three tiers:

* Tier 1: Pre-tax, long term: This is the 401k, the IRA, the Roth, and so on. This is money that is locked up until I’m at least 62 – or else I pay substantial fees on it. Every analysis I’ve seen indicates that – if one has the liquidity to do so – one should absolutely maximize pre-tax savings. Worst case – you wind up paying the taxes on it to get it out early. Interestingly, some portion of my mortgage payment falls in this category (assuming that the value of my house does not fall to zero) – since I get a tax deduction on it. The idea of home ownership as “enforced savings,” finally makes sense to me.

Tier 2: Post-tax, long term: This is money explicitly intended for retirement, but post tax. According to my math – I need some in this category to meet my goal of retiring prior to age 62.

Tier 3: Liquid savings: This ought to bottom out around 3 months of expenses (more would be nifty), and what’s above that ought to be available for capital expenditures. Tuition, boats, cars, helicopters, gently used nuclear submarines, diamonds so big that they require a team of eunuchs to carry, that sort of thing. The point is that this is spending money – but only on things that accrue value.

What I’m trying to work out is the best way to manage those tiers.

Tier 1 is broken out for me. My brokerage company has a rollover IRA account – and while I can trade shares around inside that account – I can’t easily move money in or out of it. That maintains the pre-tax-ness of that money, which is fine. I’ve also got the current employer’s 401k with another brokerage – and someday that’ll roll into the IRA.

I’ve also Tier 3 at the same brokerage company. It’s just a money market account. Like a checking account – but with interest. Remember savings accounts? It’s one of those.

The question, I guess, is whether I should just start locking up some of that Tier 3 cash in longer term bonds or something at the same financial institution – or if I should get an account with Treasury Direct – or what. My brokerage company can totally do this for me – and there is a convenience associated with having a single dashboard. On the other hand, I *like* the idea of having an account with the US government for my bonds and treasury bills.

The other question is whether I ought to be thinking of these as one big pool of investment and diversify the same way in each of them, or if I ought to explicitly use my rollover IRA (for example) for my longest term investments. Re-stated: Is the mix on all three categories the same (because that’s the best mix, right?) or do I balance each of them independently to reflect their various goals.

Thoughts and references welcomed.

First in a series of posts to catch up a bit on el-journal-o. Now that our brief flirtation with facebook and twitter are over – all the cool kids can come back here and write more than a couple of sentences at a time about our lives.

Vignette 1

After a recent workout at a gym that I visit while on the road, I was stopped after class by one of the guys who has made an effort to remember my name. He caught me between the mats and the locker rooms and asked, somewhat conspiratorially, “so, are you a humanist or something?” I explained that I had helped start the RI Atheist Society – been on an atheist radio show – and considered myself a Buddhist. He said something along the lines of: “Well, I’ve been atheist for a while, and there’s just nobody around here that I can talk to without feeling like I’m a bad person for not believing in Jesus.” He continued with a really high complement – said that I was perhaps the first outspoken atheist he had met who wasn’t “a complete jackass.” He shares my opinion of Dawkins and Hitchens – that they are just too shrill and abrasive to actually help anyone live a good and productive life.

We talked for a bit about resources for the godless – the Unitarian Universalists in particular – as well as the fact that if you find strength and comfort in a particular tradition it is 100% okay to hang on to your doubts about what he termed the “hokey superstitions,” present in most organized religions. I’m a big fan of bringing analytic thought *into* religion rather than completely tossing thousands of years of moral thought.

When my martial arts training comes full circle to discussions of spirituality – that means I’m doing something right.