September 20, 2006

Thymes Change

The morning read brought this diatribe at LRC - the author has a serious bone to pick over funding NASA. Dr. Lenny worked in a lab researching water recovery for the lunar/Mars missions for a 3rd level NASA company. That is this company worked for a company that worked for Boeing on NASA contracts. Think of the typical skim for pass through. At one point, Dr. Lenny and his 'boss' (a one year, in and out engineer) completed a proposal on a Boeing RFP - request for proposal - to clean Heathrow Airport water, which was causing scale in airline engine cooling systems. Once the response was received, Boeing cancelled the RFP and built our system using their engineers. Part of the game for awarding us the NASA contract.

It struck me when reading this; we could substitute any agency of the federal or state level into this piece and make a just case. Think education - and what a huge waste of dollars this current system is, passing students through each year that have demonstrably less skills that the students of the previous year. When you have your own school age kids, you find that they have more than enough homework from school to keep them occupied, but no interest in the application of the concepts - why bother sending homework? To get people used to taking their work home with them after their 9:00-5:00. The middle management snooker - be responsible for the work of other people, but chase the carrot of potential to upper management, when the compensation and stakes are higher. Sounds more like a TV game show than a life. Perhaps for most people, that is what life is, a rigged game they are destined to lose.

The way howdt of course is to take control of our own frames of mind. When I control my center, then my actions add effort to the things i need to do. Life is filled with animosity, anger and rage - we need our whole range of emotions to be human - but they should be tempered with love, harmony and compassion using peace, wisdom and most of all truth. Temper tantrums are the first tool we can use to get our way as a child, and the last that we pull out as an adult, when we can see we are going to fail to get that way. Getting the kid to just shut up and go away is often the easier solution - so temper tantrums win their share of fights. But we adults lose these battles in the end, with loss of respect for the tantree and ourselves when we cater to such nonsense.

The government at all levels is on a temper tantrum spending spree because the US cannot have it's way in the world. State politicians aspiring to federal election and/or looting the coffers for the 'benefit of their district' have placed people at continuous odds with each other for their share of the bread and circus. Is this any way to run a country? How do we vote no at the next congressional election?


No comments: