Recently we noticed a small puddle near the septic tank. This was surfacing effluent. Effluent–the watery discharge that normally flows from the tank into the drain field for natural purification by the soil–had stopped flowing through the underground pipes and found its way to the surface.

Yesterday we had the septic company come out to pump the tank so we could begin working on the problem. The technician found a surprise. The inspector had gotten it wrong. The tank he found was only the first of two. The effluent had been coming up through a gap in the lid of the second tank which was set slightly lower than the first.

We still don’t know what is causing the stoppage. It could be a collapsed line, some other kind of blockage in the pipes such as tree roots, or the soil may be suffering from reduced hydraulic capacity for any number of reasons. Not only is the cause a mystery but we don’t even know where the drain field is. I suspected there might be one about 60 feet away where two or three strips of grass thrived even during last year’s drought. However, that area was not in the direction that the outlet pointed. I decided to dig in and see what I could find before asking for professional help. Here is the hole I dug:

Septic pipes

Of interest are the terra cotta fitting, the gaps and loose joints, and the 90º elbow. (Incidentally, near the surface in the corner of the hole I found a dented wheel hub. I have no intention of moving it. Knowing this property, it would not surprise me to find it attached to a complete automobile buried upside-down.) The elbow turns the flow in the direction of the grassy patch, suggesting that our drain field actually is all the way out there.

After all of that digging by hand, I threw up my hands and called the professionals back. Tomorrow we should have a digging crew to unearth and inspect enough of the line to confirm the cause of the problem. If we get our wish, they’ll be able to fix it on sight and leave us with a reasonable bill. We really don’t want to pay for a new drain field or anything more major than a bit of digging and 4″ PVC.

Wish us luck.

This is what Google thinks  you   I  someone near my location would want to know.

What does Google predict when you type “how do I know” into Google Instant?

We stayed around the corner from the Canal end of Bourbon Street. I’m a bourbon enthusiast. My current obsession is the Antique Collection, five small-batch whiskeys released once a year from the Buffalo Trace distillery. I already had bottles of all but the most difficult to find, the George T. Stagg bourbon. When Zoe and I toured that distillery this summer we found none for sale within 100 miles. When I tried to pre-order Stagg from my local store I learned that the distributor’s entire allotment was already allocated.

Bourbon hunting is a serious game. It’s like Pokemon. So when we sat down for a late dinner Friday night at Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House I had to ask for Stagg. The waiter asked the bartender and was told they were out. I shrugged and had a Sazerac cocktail instead.

On the way to lunch the next day we stopped again at the Bourbon House for a drink. This time I sat at the bar and scanned the bottles myself. I saw antlers. I was going to get my drink!

The bartender picked up on my enthusiasm and we talked about this and other bourbons. She put the bottle on the bar for my inspection and handed me the distillery’s letter of pedigree. Then she gave us the name of a liquor store in the French Quarter that might carry it.

After lunch we found the store. They had three bottles of Stagg on the shelf. I asked whether they limited the sale of rare whiskeys. Nope, just buy what you want. So I got a case (three bottles) and walked straight back to the Bourbon House to thank the bartender. She made my day and then some.

I later found out via Google and Wikipedia that George T. Stagg is nicknamed “Hazmat” when it is more than 70% alcohol (140 proof) which is the maximum concentration allowed by the FAA on commercial flights. The 2009 proof is 141.4. Stop by for a taste but let’s not talk about how I got these bottles back home.

The most difficult thing to do is nothing.

The most difficult thing to be is nothing.

Strive anyway.

(2008-03-06)

The reason I bring all this up is that it would be great if the people with alleged physical evidence of the age of the universe could nail it down to a precision of picoseconds. It might take a while so in the meantime let’s guess how many seconds have passed since time began and broadcast in all directions the estimated serial number of each second at the borders of its duration. When our scientific discoveries let us measure the duration with greater precision let us reset the clock. Other life forms that have similarly estimated of the age of the universe and are able to receive our signal might infer from the magnitude of the encoded numbers and the frequency of their arrival what the signal intends and thereby know that life exists at our distant star; we should be lucky enough to find a binary clock pulsing away across the galaxy to make us sure.

At least then we wouldn’t have to deal with negative timestamps because our 32-bit clocks are based on the number of seconds since 1970. At least, not until we try to represent time before the theoretical Big Bang singularity.

If we had first evolved as pure Turing machines and then copied our neurophysiology for the basis of inorganic computing, this would not be a problem; either we would simply reverse engineer ourselves or we would never be so inventive as to wonder how we work.

If you want a computer with real intelligence you will not be satisfied by waiting for computers to evolve into higher life forms. You will give it any push you can. You will try to make it in your own image.

If you have a few minutes, I invite you to set aside your moral and typographical standards long enough to read it from beginning to end. Take note of your reactions as you read. I hope your impressions are as self-instructive as mine, which follow.

Briefly on the Author

I never attended church as a child so I was not brought up believing in any certain religion. But 20 years ago when I was 18 I became pregnant and went to church on mothers day with my mom at her request. It was then that I decided to explore religion a little and continued going regularly.

The article is a rant by an anonymous person (handle: Never Surrender) purporting to be a high school dropout who turned religious before becoming a single mother. How are these demographics meant to impress me? By forming this persona you might stoke my sympathy but it’s a gamble. You also might stoke pity, shame, or despise.

Natural use of CAPS LOCK and chat-room lingo (lol) decorate the writing. A good writer can assume such an affect on command but nothing in the article’s substance suggests we are reading the work of one who writes with hidden intention. I take it at face value.

The Premise

I am not any religion, I am not any political affiliation, I am not a citizen of any place. I belong to NO group with an agenda, I have dropped out of all of those things as to be a part of any of them you have to be limited by only those beliefs that are part of that group, you are tied down to a set of beliefs and then one group fights another group with opposite beliefs, it is childish and petty and frankly below me.

The author believes that we are enslaved by false ideas that have been implanted in us, but that she has overcome ignorance and can help us if we will follow her lead. All we must do is escape the influence of our most deeply held beliefs and decry all efforts at further indoctrination. Such sweeping proclamations fail without invoking specific grievances and she does get specific, from Babel to Jesus and from Illuminati to 9/11.

The article touches issues on which I have been sensitive since I was a boy, all of them facets of the grand unifying theory of conspiracy: that we are being manipulated via our education, religion, culture, sports, language, politics, taxes. Basically, every civilizing aspect of life has been subverted. The victims are “us” and the perpetrators are “them”. Thus the author creates rapport with the audience.

The Problem

What if being DIVIDED and FIGHTING for the right to keep our “beliefs” IS THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM?

L. Ron Hubbard, who I think got some things right, defined a problem as two forces acting in opposite directions, or intention plus counter-intention. This is a convenient and useful definition because identifying the forces is a sure step toward resolving any problem. As long as the forces remain unknown the problem cannot be solved.

Never Surrender understands that being divided by our thoughts is what makes us fight. She says that dividing humanity is evil and assigns the evil to a group called “them”. The pronoun is supposed to refer to an entity previously mentioned but she fails to define this group and thus implies that we already know who it is. Dictionaries include this definition for the word: “Used to refer to people in general as seen in a position of authority.”

Undoubtedly the author has problems with authority. Everyone does. It is the nature of authority to participate in problems. If you have an intention opposite to the intention of authority, you have a problem with authority. Even people who hold authority are subject to it. Even a supreme dictator is subject to the final authority of natural laws.

The Forces

The ONLY person that is served by all this division is EVIL and the BAD GOD!

This is as close as we get to learning from Never Surrender the identity of our common enemy. From here on, she urges us to set aside our differences and unite against evil. When we succeed, our foes will retire to another universe and there will be no more division or war, only unity and peace. That sounds groovy but it’s completely wrong.

You cannot talk of unity without implying the existence of a non-member. You cannot talk of “good people” without implying the existence of “evil people”. To accomplish the ultimate goal of ending division and conflict you would have to make us truly indivisible. No group has achieved it. The only indivisible unit of humankind is the individual.

An individual is indivisible because no part can survive without connection to the whole. To be indivisible we would have to treat each other as indispensable. In a society based on that morality, abiding self-interest would be a fatal flaw. Try to imagine the authority in that world.

The Irony

Just think of all the pain and all of the suffering worldwide that could be eliminated…stopped if everyone were to realize that we have ALL been lied to by evil evil beings that sought to control and enslave us and lord power over us.

Never Surrender could be the most ironic author I have read. She dreams of unity but her only skill is division. She would define good and evil and divide people accordingly. She would separate the good teachings from the bad. She would let there be a separate universe to be inhabited by the vanquished evil. Her chosen name commemorates division by proposing conflict everlasting, for peace is nothing but a universal surrender of arms.

Divergence deserves all the credit for making us what we are and so it is ingrained in us even more than our physical forms. We diverged from the ways and forms of our predecessors and we must allow our progeny to diverge from ours. Self-interest has been the force driving every person who survived long enough to learn to take an interest in others.

The Solution

We need to stop fighting each other and go out and hunt and kill all versions of the lie and we will again be a united people, a strong people, strong enough to be a threat to the evil that currently controls this world.

Lies are ideas. Ideas exist on paper; you can expurgate books for future publication but you cannot destroy every old copy. Ideas exist in minds; you can teach your children but you cannot reform every old mind. It would be even more wrong to dictate how all children must be taught.

An evil force is one that harms me against my will. As an infant I included nurses with needles in that category. I learned that pain is not always harm and so nurses ceased to be evil. Perhaps when I am senile my judgment will revert. The lesson is that we aren’t always able to know what’s best.

I agree with the premise that conflict is typically fomented by unseen hands far from the bloodshed. That is the basic form of organization: the mind never swings the axe. We might be better off too smart to be tricked into fighting for causes we aren’t allowed to understand. We might not.

It’s often said that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. I just now realized that I have always arrogantly believed my intuition about people based on a mere first impression, a momentary experience that will be tainted by microsecond subconscious attempts to match you with others from my memories.

You haven’t ever spoken to me or met me but I have heard you and seen you. You made an impression. Everything you did, your look, your words, and your tone reminded me of people I have known who were complete assholes. Thus my intuition was that you were a complete asshole.

Wait. Let me back up a little. Those people might not have been assholes in their lives, but they were assholes in my life. Some of them became assholes over time and some became some of the best people in my life. First impressions are not permanent.

See, what’s happening for me right now is that I’m becoming less of an asshole myself because I am giving us another chance to see eye to eye. I reviewed my entire experience of you and I see now that there is room for doubt. For all I know, you could be the nicest person in the world.

That’s why I want to know you. Take my card. If you don’t want to talk to me right now, talk to me when you do. I’ve invaded your time and space enough. Please just tell me your name.

The solution is Quiz, a WordPress plugin that I wrote while enjoying a pot of coffee on Sunday. With Quiz installed, comments don’t even come to moderation unless the commentator has correctly answered a question in the comment form.

Authors can write a new question for each blog article just by typing a shortcode into the article, like this:

[quiz What is your quest? to seek the holy grail]

This secret shortcode will never be shown to visitors. (It is safely stored in postmeta.) If you publish without a quiz shortcode, your article will use the default question which you can specify by editing the plugin. There is also a shortcode to override the default: [noquiz]

Quiz is free. It could be made easier to use. If you are interested in improving it, email me for SVN access.

Gun control lovers fill their tanks on this stuff (State lawmakers push, pull on gun control following NIU shootings).

This time, investigators find a link (Gunman, Virginia Tech shooter used same Web dealer) suggesting that the shootings might have had a third party in common.

Besides well-meaning but misguided Americans, who would like to succeed in disarming the American populace? A foreign enemy, that’s who.

This is a perfect opportunity for the JTTFs to stop training layabouts to act like terrorists (Myths of Domestic Terror) and find the real foreign agents sowing violence in our midst.

Reality check: I have no more evidence than the articles linked above. Nevertheless, weaker leads have sparked investigations. If our enemies are plotting to weaken our domestic defenses by fueling (and, who knows, possibly staffing) the gun control lobby, they are very wise indeed. I stand behind an “individual rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment.