Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Yesterday, the 15th of August, was the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the surrender of Japan.

Also this month, the 70th anniversary of the use of the only two nuclear weapons in war.

Despite everything, we have managed not to trot out the nuclear weapons again. And Japan and Germany are our allies now.

The fragile European peace, which morphed into the Cold War after WW II, has also reasonably held, at least in Western Europe.

It is hard in 2015 to fully understand what WW II was. On any side. That hasn't stopped us from trying. Books and movies abound of WW II themes. Many more than of Korea, Vietnam or the Gulf Wars.

Of course, with the anniversary of the end of the war, my first thoughts go to the 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives, which gives serious thought and realism about what happens to the American soldiers after they return home.

And the aftermaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still continue to this day.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

First, on this Fourth, is a comment on the Third. Two years ago, I heard about an attempt to create a British holiday, Independence Eve, celebrating the Third of July as the last day of British rule in the Colonies. I am amused by this, but it turns out to be a marketing campaign:

British brands, understandably, don't have much to say around the Fourth of July—until now. Newcastle Brown Ale, among the cheekiest of U.K. marketers, has turned America's most patriotic holiday to its advantage by inventing a new, completely made-up holiday: Independence Eve on July 3. The idea of the tongue-in-cheek campaign, created by Droga5, is to "honor all things British that Americans gave up when they signed the Declaration of Independence," Newcastle says.

I remember mentioning this to someone last year. I may be the only person in America still talking about Independence Eve. Though I will point out that in 2015, the Third of July was a Federal holiday. (grin)

Second, yesterday on Independence Eve, we heard a rebroadcast of a Diane Rehm Show about Danielle Allen: “Our Declaration”:

For the Fourth of July: A fresh reading of the Declaration of Independence, and how ideas of freedom and equality have been interpreted over the years.

One of the points Prof. Allen raised was the addition of a period in some of the printed versions of the Declaration -- and used in the Archives transcript I've been using on this blog for a number of years. The handwritten copies do not have this. Early printers did a lot of editing, just as Adams and Jefferson fought over "inalienable" versus "unalienable" rights -- a point made with some amusement in the movie 1776. (grin) I have made the "correction" as I see fit in the text below, as I think the text flows better without it. The period is removed right after "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". ***

We will have to dig out the DVD of 1776 for its annual viewing tonight. Alas, Netflix doesn't have it listed, which would be easier than looking for where we put the DVD. (grin)

So, without further ado...

_______________________


Meanwhile, in a sweltering hot Philadelphia, a Continental Congress did meet and through rancorous debate and terrible compromises, did finally solemnly swear together, unanimously...

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Button Gwinnett       William Hooper       John Hancock
Lyman Hall            Joseph Hewes         Samuel Chase
George Walton         John Penn            William Paca
                      Edward Rutledge      Thomas Stone
                      Thomas Heyward, Jr.  Charles Carroll of Carrollton
                      Thomas Lynch,Jr.     George Wythe
                      Arthur Middleton     Richard Henry Lee
                                           Thomas Jefferson
                                           Benjamin Harrison
                                           Thomas Nelson, Jr.
                                           Francis Lightfoot Lee
                                           Carter Braxton

Robert Morris         William Floyd        Josiah Bartlett
Benjamin Rush         Philip Livingston    William Whipple
Benjamin Franklin     Francis Lewis        Samuel Adams
John Morton           Lewis Morris         John Adams
George Clymer         Richard Stockton     Robert Treat Paine
James Smith           John Witherspoon     Elbridge Gerry
George Taylor         Francis Hopkinson    Stephen Hopkins
James Wilson          John Hart            William Ellery
George Ross           Abraham Clark        Roger Sherman
Caesar Rodney                              Samuel Huntington
George Read                                William Williams
Thomas McKean                              Oliver Wolcott
                                           Matthew Thornton

The 1823 Stone engraved version of the Declaration of Independence
at the National Archives

*** Last year I noted:

I'm not sure I noticed before that in the first line, "united" is not capitalized. A Ken Burns moment, as he had noted that before the Civil War we said "the United States are..." while after we spoke of "the United States is..."

We can still learn from our history. Happy Birthday US.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

Next week is the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the evacuation of Americans and some South Vietnamese, which was the true effective end of the Vietnam War. And next week PBS will be showing a documentary Last Days in Vietnam. Tonight there will be a public screening and a panel discussion at Celebration South cinema, but last night there was a special invitation screening at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in downtown Grand Rapids.


©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

The auditorium seats 250 and was not full. But the audience was one of the more mixed ones we've seen at special events. A large number of Vietnam vets were in attendance -- they were asked to stand -- as well as an equal number of Vietnamese evacuees. The setting was particularly appropriate, as not only was Ford president when Saigon fell, but through his Grand Rapids connections many of the first South Vietnamese refugees came here, and the iconic staircase from atop the U.S. embassy in Saigon is located in the museum. The Vietnamese community in Grand Rapids numbers over 10,000.

Last Days in Vietnam is two hours, of which we were shown the first hour. There is amazing footage, including the unscheduled arrival of Huey helicopters at the USS Kirk (DE-1087/FF-1087). What we saw was subtitled -- either in Vietnamese or English, depending on the speaker.


Panel discussion moderated by WGVU's Jennifer Moss, and L to R: Red Cavaney, Hung Vu, Phillip D. Nguyen. Lighting in the auditorium was very dim, there are no enlargements available.
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Red served three tours of duty in Vietnam as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1965-69. Worked river interdiction duty. Currently President of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. Hung was a 2nd lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Air Force, nominally flying the A-37 (A-37B?) -- but at the war's end they had no fuel and no ammunition. His family spent four years in a reeducation camp before coming to the U.S. as part of a Humanitarian Order in 1990. Phillip serves as the President of Vietnamese-American Communities of West Michigan and grew up in Hue, watching army officers take Jeeps filled with their families and drive them into the sea, rather than get taken by the NVA.


As people were leaving, I was struck by the two flags on the left of the stage -- of course the South Vietnamese flag has been supplanted in the now unified Vietnam.
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Vietnam had a significant impact on my life, but indirectly. In the small upstate New York town I grew up in during the 60s, going off to volunteer in Vietnam was something one did. Canadian TV kept showing a different picture than the American news. Still, I was shocked in 1968 when we moved to White Plains, near New York City, and found my classmates were strongly against American involvement in Southeast Asia. My 9th grade Geometry teacher changed last names in the middle of the year -- Mrs. Miller became Mrs. Rothenberg -- and we found out her first husband had come home from Vietnam in an aluminum box. Somehow it never occurred to us that teachers had lives... And I didn't graduate high school until 1976, and my class was the first who were not required to register for the draft -- and the first to be exempted when Selective Service registration was reinstated some years later -- so I never served.

Last Days in Vietnam will be shown on Tuesday 28 April 2015 on PBS' American Experiences.

Highly Recommended

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

Announcement

The university's e-newsletter included the following note yesterday:

Thursday, 04 April, 2013

The OpenVMS computing environment (vms.wmich.edu, also known by service names Winnie, Kanga and Pooh) will be removed from general service April 30.

Once there were VMS computer domains on campus named Winnie, Kanga, Roo, Piglet and Pooh. I ended up using Piglet until it was retired, then Kanga after that, until they migrated the university e-mail over to other servers. In the early 90s, I still had FORTRAN programs that I ran on the VMS computers, and I seem to recall that one of the VMS machines ran a Gopher server I used in one of my grad classes when I was working on a 2nd Ph.D. in Science Education for a time.

Before that, of course, we were using Digital Equipment Corporation DEC VAX-11/750 hardware at the Center for Experimental Communication at Michigan Tech. VAX-A was the main machine for Physics when I started there in the Fall of 1984 and had a Floating Point Systems FPS-164MAX array processor attached for doing calculations. The VAX-11/750 was a very nice box, looking like a washer/dryer pair with one of hard drive boxes next to it. I was amused to learn that a couple of CS students bought VAX-B and VAX-C from the university when they were retired for a couple of hundred bucks and had all this network hardware installed in the living room of the house they were renting in Calumet Township. (grin)

Learning VMS in the mid-80s was very handy for when we finally bought our first IBM Personal Computer around 1986, because some of the command structure that PC-DOS/MS-DOS used was derived from VMS. And ten years later when I started doing serious work on Pentium-class PCs, Windows NT4 was developed by some of the same people who made VMS so stable.

In my Northwestern days in the late 70s, there were lots of DEC machines around the EE and CS departments. The CS network lab was a loose assemblage of DEC PDP-8s and PDP/LSI-11s. And around 1979, I think it was, Vogelback Computer Center, which housed the big iron Control Data CDC-6400 and CDC-6600 machines I worked with, decided to buy a pair of those newfangled VAX-11/750s and set them up in a spare room and let anyone who wanted to play with them do whatever they wanted. After all, the VAXen were so much cheaper to buy and operate than the CDC and Cyber machines, that they considered it "free" computing.

My dear friend from ISP days, the late Steve Houdek, adored the VAX and the VMS operating system. He learned all he could at VCC's two pet VAXes and then later worked for a VAX data center.

VMS eventually became OpenVMS. There was once a move to port VMS to the PC architecture, but PC-VMS never even made it to beta level, as far as I ever heard. I would've built a PC-based research computer and run VMS on it, if I could have.

I'm sure I have friends from all those eras who get chills and break out in hives thinking about having to work with VMS, much as when I contemplate working with IBM MVS or IBM VSE with JCL. (shudder) But I found the VAX/VMS combination to be very dependable and a good system to really cut my teeth on serious computing. A few years later, when we started using the Berkeley version of UNIX, I had a much better idea of what I was doing.

It's been years since I had to actually log into a VMS system at WMU -- when I was logging into piglet or kanga, I was using DEC VT-100 or VT-240 terminal emulation in MS-Kermit to do command line processing.

But you know? The VMS-Mail system worked pretty damned well for its day. And I had a lot easier time of managing thousands of old emails that way than the current stupid system. Really.

Enjoy your retirement, OpenVMS. At least for the five or six machine cycles before the power is cut and you're lobotomized forever. (evil grin)

Dr. Phil

About That Thirteenth Amendment

So Spielberg's movie Lincoln shows the House voting for the 13th Amendment on 31 January 1865. Remarkably, Illinois was the first state to ratify on February 1st. Rhode Island on the 2nd. Michigan, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia on the 3rd. Virginia (!) was the twelfth state on the 9th. Though it took until December 6th, when Georgia became the 27th of 36 states to complete ratification, I had no idea that half the total states (18 of 36) ratified within the first month. (The 35-star flag above was in use at the end of the Civil War, until 4 July 1865 when the 36th star was added for Nevada's entry in 31 October 1864.)

I really think there should've been some comment about this in the film.

The Death of Lincoln

Ken Burns tells the story of editing The Civil War. They had the script for Our American Cousin, actors reading the parts, a recording of a gunshot. They were editing and came up to the moment... and had to stop for a few minutes. Lincoln still lived, his second term still lay before him. Eventually they continued, because they had to. They knew they couldn't quit for the day and come back to it -- that would've been more painful. But for a brief moment of quiet, they reflected on what might have been, while holding off the awful truth.

[SPOILER]

In Lincoln, we see Lincoln going out for the evening. The film is nearly two hours long, it's April 1865, we know what's coming. Except...

We are about to be punched in the gut. The scene on the stage involves a sword fight. In Our American Cousin? Huh? We cut to the balcony and see not Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, but their young son with a handler. Oh no. When a manager bursts onto the stage to announce that the President has been shot over at Ford's Theater, we are properly horrified. It is as in Apollo 13 when we watched Jim Lovell's older son in class at military school when the reentry blackout exceeded four minutes.

Manipulative? Sure. But it is a way to take the known and make it unknown again.

And I was impressed.

Dr. Phil

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness (DW).

Remember...

As family and friends gather and picnic, the grills run hot in the heat wave, neighbors threaten to burn down our houses with wild fires started by their fireworks, and we conveniently forget about our fellow citizens without power or serving in faraway lands and seas, it is hard to think about those who toiled to create this nation. Having recently seen The Patriot on TV, we'll probably bring out the DVD of 1776 and marvel at how close it was that America wasn't, and the seeds sowed in Philadelphia 236 years ago which spawned the action in the same colony/state of 149 years and a couple of days ago in Gettysburg -- and not the vampire battle.

A little reflective reading. First SF writer Elizabeth Moon on the disgraceful treatment of an amputee veteran for the sake of politics. Second an interview including Jim Wright, whose blog at Stonekettle Station is must-read material. You don't have to agree with Jim, but he writes reasoned, thoughtful and damned profoundly funny thoughts for adults about where we are and where we're going.

Finally you can click on the link at the top of this post and contemplate all the words I quoted two years ago, not just the sound bite top ten.

There'll be a quiz on this reading in a couple of months. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Wikipedia Says It Flew From 7-4-1959 to 7-4-1960

In response to a question from a friend, oh yes, there was a 49-star flag. One wonders how rare a real, displayed 49-star flag is?

Of course 7 × 7 = 49 is one of the easier design concepts.

Sources: Wikipedia on The 49- and 50-star unions and illustrations of all the flags.

Dr. Phil

A Much Better Day

At the start of 2012 we went to the AMC (former Star) Holland 8 theatre to see War Horse, the weather was not pleasant (DW). January ebbed and February dawned with a bizarre warmish weather pattern. I walked into the theatre today in shirtsleeves, since it was a short walk.

Red Tails [PG-13]

Holland 8 Theatre 8, 2:20pm, 2×$6.75

The title of this post comes as a rebuff to the idiotic quote, prominently featured at the beginning of the movie, that "Negroes are incapable of handling complex machinery." I've been waiting to see this movie since I saw the first trailer. The Tuskegee Airmen are an amazing piece of WWII history. And since this opened while I was off at ConFusion, for the first time since Amistad, there was a movie worth seeing that I wanted to see during Black History Month, some lackluster reviews notwithstanding. With George Lucas involved, I knew it would look fantastic -- I hoped the rest of the movie would work as well.

In 1995 HBO released The Tuskegee Airmen, which looked at the origins of the unit, early North Africa service by the 99th Pursuit Squadron and the formation of the 332nd Fighter Group operating out of Italy. Breaking with a bad habit of many of the comic book superhero movies, Red Tails chose not to do an origin story, instead starting in Italy with the 332nd looking for its place, its mission.

I suspect that it would help if the average viewer knew something of the history of the Tuskegee Airmen. Or WWII air campaign movies. Or the shocking performance of those German Me-262 jets. There are few As You Know, Bob, conversations.

One side plot involves the courting of an Italian girl, played by Daniela Ruah of NCIS: Lite. I kept waiting for someone to object to this relationship, to try and break it up -- but they chose not to go that route. I am conflicted as to whether this works, but it is sweet. Still, it illustrates the one side of Red Tails, which seems to dwell on characters and tropes out of Central Casting and Central Scripting. There is, to some extent, just one dastardly Nazi German pilot -- nicknamed Pretty Boy. Then there's the Stalag 18 sub-plot, which again pulls on things you should already know. Are they trying to make this just another war movie? Or keep the story from being All About Color All The Time?

Perhaps this odd confluence IS what's needed to make the oh-so-obvious-in-2012 points about the abilities of the Negro/colored/black man to serve, to train, to succeed, to live, to do the same as anyone else.

Look, I loved this movie. In just over two hours they showed some of the Pentagon machinations, terrific leadership roles by Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr., and some nice teases of the hard work by the plane maintainers. Beautiful production values. I'm not sure I recall a WWII movie where the metal mats used to control the mud become almost a minor character -- including their distinctive sound.

Perhaps paired with The Tuskegee Airmen, Red Tails makes for an important story arc in WWII stories. Certainly the bombardier who wrote a letter to the Grand Rapids Press last week objected to some of the criticism of the movie. He pointed out that the bomber crews did in fact prefer the 332nd escorts, who stayed and protected the large vulnerable bombers. And that their attempts to thank them were forbidden by the Army, which allowed neither colored airmen on a white base or whites on the colored base.

While nearly seventy years of history haven't erased racism in America, at least some levels of this idiocy have been vanquished. And we need to know about the Tuskegee Airmen and hear more of their stories. Still, I don't know enough to know how this plays outside of WWII film buffs.

Recommended

Dr. Phil

The History of the World in Two Hours

History Channel, Thursday 6 October 2011, 9-11pm EDT

An ambitious project, given all of history in two hours, especially when you start at the Big Bang and spend the first 14 minutes or so doing cosmology and the creation of the world. But part of the logic is that the makeup of the universe in part controls what elements and materials are available and in what scarcity. Copper is three elements past Iron in the Periodic Table. That means that like everything past Iron it cannot be built up in the cores of stars by fusion alone -- it can only be created in the fury of supernova explosions. So advancing from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age not only made stronger materials, but more common ones.

So what is civilization? What does civilization move around the globe from peoples to peoples? Apparently it's dark magenta smoke. (grin) At least they used smoke trails snaking through the Silk Road and crossing the Atlantic, billowing from the sacks on camels, pouring out of smoke stacks, etc. But... all kidding aside, the metaphor is a good one.

I suppose one could criticize the animations of representations of morphing and construction and development, which might give some people the wrong idea. They get shown repeatedly in recapitulations to remind the viewer of their point, probably because they really are trying to create a coherent and complicated weaving together of facts and influences. Images get inlaid and expanded in things like the representation of the Big Bang and expansion -- again, a metaphor rather than literal. And for my tastes the space program and modern communications and computers get short shrift. But given that they don't get to the 20th century until 14 minutes left, there's only so much you can include.

After all 14 minutes was enough to cover the first 10 billion years of history. (double-grin)

So Who's This Good Looking Guy?



This is our friend Craig Benjamin. Transplanted Aussie, professor at Grand Valley State University and the most energetic True Renaissance Man that I know. He teaches, among other things, a History course which covers this whole scope of the Universe sort of thing. And he's one of the talking heads used in this show.

We knew he'd worked on this project, but Mrs. Dr. Phil found out during a noontime water aerobics session today when Craig was in the pool that it was on tonight -- which is why I didn't get a chance to post advance warnings out there. But I think it'll be run again on the History Channel.

It's a cool show. And it's so very cool to know somebody who's in it! Thanks, Craig! I wish we could spend more time talking... about everything.

Dr. Phil

9/11 Ten Years Out

This past week and this weekend is filled with 9/11 remembrances. Some concentrate on the technical details. The failures or naivete of security. The extraordinary efforts by first responders. The recovery. The mess. The responses. The wars fought since that fateful day.

People say that everything's changed -- and to some extent that's true. But life also goes on and so life was going to change from 2001 to 2011 anyway.

I've talked here before about 9/11. This isn't about those stories. Instead I want to talk about change.

If you'd had enough 9/11 I won't mind if you go. I hope what follows is coherent.

Reset

On September 11th 2001, I'd just turned 43. Google was still fairly new -- Wikipedia had been up and running for nine months. Homeland Security had a vaguely fascist or Soviet feel to it and would never be the name for a U.S. department. In 2001, the Prius was first marketed beyond Japan -- you might not have known anyone who owned one or soon would. The last GM EV1 had been produced two years before and in two years they would all disappear. So much for electric cars or worrying about fuel.

We weren't expecting much beyond the new school year, the college and NFL seasons. The baseball playoffs. We just weren't thinking about what was going to happen. Building implosions were complicated works of demolition, not in the scope of terrorist attacks -- to be fair, I don't think Osama bin Laden expected both towers to fall. And I didn't even know there'd just been a big renovation of the Pentagon -- closest I'd ever been to the Pentagon was the underground Metro stop, though I guess my father was a secretary there at one point of WWII.

Living In The Future

As point of reference, I didn't get onto Gmail until June 2005. Facebook in November 2008. I got my first Windows XP machine in March 2005 -- and I'm still using it today. Mac users? There was no OS X. No iPhone either. No iPods either, not for another two months. Much of the tech we use every day wasn't in that form in 2001.

Undoing The Cobwebs

Because I learned of 9/11 during my long comute to/from WMU in Kalamazoo, for months afterward I had to have the news on the radio during the drive. No more CDs or Books On Tape. What if something happened?

I didn't write for a while.

And yet... a week after 9/11 a faculty piano recital was held on the campus of GVSU. The professor, a Van Cliburn medalist, was born in Israel. He felt it important for the recital to go on -- but he ditched the virtuoso program and instead gave us an hour of emotion and relief. Yes, life would go on.

Not quite a year later I started sending my stories out. Hiding from harsh reality? Realization life is short? I've talked to a lot of writers -- you can over analyze things and read too much into it. Perhaps it was just time.

What Makes This Different?

The second hit on the WTC happened live on TV and radio. The shutdown of the skies was nationwide. There is so much video.

What many forget is that Tuesday 11 September 2001 was a primary election day in NYC. And yet democracy did not fall that day. (Though there are forces trumpeting patriotism while threatening democracy today.)

We did not make 9/11 a holiday. Thank goodness. Imagine 9/11 Sales -- Don't Let The Terrorists Win! We Have Special Deals On Mattresses, Big Screen TVs And Many Chinese Made Products! -- and 9/11 "celebrated" on whatever Monday is convenient.

Finally, I think what made the difference on that day was United flight 93 -- Americans did not wait for someone to help them. They stopped the last plane themselves. This is what instant communications did.

Indeed, for those worried about overblown and intrusive hype, this may be the last big 9/11 commemoration. Ten years fits our historical sensibilities. The main memorials in New York, Washington and Shanksville have been dedicated. Rebuilding around the WTC site is happening. And some are already exhausted by the endless media coverage.

What Makes A National Event?

What's my point? Nick Mamatas wrote today that, "If you weren't local to the events ten years ago, or didn't have loved ones close to the events, I have to say that I really don't give a shit about your memories."

Of course that fails to realize the scope of the events. We were all affected. While I did not lose anyone directly in my circle, I know people who did and I know people there at the time. I am not about to compare my reactions to those in the direct path. Nor am I going to ignore it either.

Who "should" mourn 9/11? Who should remember? In terms of the entire population of the US, only a relatively few families were directly hurt that day -- and they live with it all the time. It's rather disingenuous to claim that now they have closure after this weekend's dedication. Few of us as a nation serve. The response to 9/11 has not been the national sacrifice of a WWII. And yet it was and still is a national event.

The fascination with 9/11 outside those directly affected isn't just the macabre, the real-life blockbuster movie images, the victims, the heroes. Or even the political, military and economic responses.

The Empire State Building survived being hit by a B-25 bomber in 1945. The WTC was designed to survive being hit by a 707. But by the time they were built, the airlines were flying the 747 and later the large fuel capacity 767 and 757 planes used by the hijackers. Design versus hubris? Are there things that my engineering students can learn here?

I've been avoiding the discussion of the Ground Zero memorial and rebuilding until something tangible was happening. Recently we started catching episodes of TDC's Rising : Rebuilding Ground Zero, which given that I grew up watching the original towers being built thirty miles south of us, has been a really interesting technological discussion.

This piece is already so long I shan't go into the rights and wrongs of the changes in security and law enforcement. Certainly on that morning there was a complacency -- there hadn't been a US hijacking in years.

So my point is that change happened. It was going to anyway. Some of the changes have nothing to do with 9/11 -- and some shouldn't have anything to do with 9/11 but somehow do.

The world has changed. For good, for ill, for reasons that have nothing to do with 9/11.

Tomorrow it will be September 12th. And life will go on. If we're smart.

Dr. Phil