Who, me? Responsible?

Ever notice how everything that happens to you is always someone else's fault? How there are decisions you make that are the result of someone else forcing you to make them, because "their" actions leave you no other choice? "Well, I really didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice . . ."

If there were a way to sigh in a blog, I would do so now. There are just times when I can't help feeling that evolution was a really bad idea. Forget about coming down out of the trees, we never should have left the oceans.

Let me tell you a little story . . . and no, it's not about a man named Jed, barely keeping his family fed. Absent all the gritty little details, for those really are my business alone, let's just say that I currently have some medical issues. Let's also just say, for again the details are unimportant, that current financial considerations prohibit me from running right out and getting every medical test done as soon as they are ordered. Life is one huge balancing act between competing priorities, and sometimes things have to wait to get done.

Now, I'm not whining about either my state of health or my finances. But today, as I was trying to refill some prescriptions that I really need to have if I want to keep sucking air into my lungs and blowing it out again, I discovered that my pharmacy would no longer fill them because my physician's office had dropped me as a patient.

Imagine my surprise. Escpecially when I had last been to see the doctor just about a month ago, and they had said nothing to me about no longer carrying me on their patient list. Sure as hell took my money, though, but not a peep in the vein of "Never darken our doors again, you mangy creature, you." Imagine how much greater my surprise was when I managed to get said physician on the telephone, and was informed that I had been dropped as a patient because . . . I refused to follow their medical advice, comply with treatment and get medical testing done when directed to do so.

Hmm. Seems to me that I have done everything they asked me to do. At least it seemed that way, when I was off getting tests done and seeing every specialist they referred me to. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't always get a test done as soon as it was ordered, for the simple reason that I had to wait for the money to become available so I could pay for having said test done. After all, that's the way it works in this country: people expect payment at the time services are rendered. And trust me, my now ex-physician knows all about that, judging by the big sign hung up in his receptionist's window.

Funny thing is, I'd been seeing that physician for the past three years, and he knew all about the way I had to do things from the first appointment with him. Matter of fact, during that last office visit I had, they did indeed order a test, and I explained, as I always do, that I would have it done as soon as I had the money to pay for it.

Now, all of a sudden, after 36 months of treatment, that isn't good enough. Now, all of a sudden, it's a case of me "refusing to follow medical advice and comply with treatment." Hmm. If I were really the cynical sort, I might have been tempted to ask if my cash had bounced after my last office visit . . .

Which brings me back to my original point. After the shock and anger had had a chance to wear off - somewhat - I confess that I really had to admire how the physician tried to turn this around and make it my fault. Even if to rationalize it meant basically coming up with a lie. "I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice . . ." Which is amusing to no end, because some of the first words out of his mouth tonight were, "Ethically, I can't leave you with no treatment . . ."

Excuse me, doctor, but that's exactly what you just did.

But don't let me ruin what's apparently a really good ego trip for you, doc. Life would just be a grand thing if everything could be done exactly the way you want it, when you want it, and how you want it done. Such a pity that the real world has to get in the way of that, which it has a nasty habit of frequently doing. I've just got to say, though, that I know all about the God Complex. And you know what? You're not Him, so deal with it.

Really, now, I'll readily admit that I'm not the greatest patient in the world. I'm not the worst, either. But I do take the doctor's orders quite seriously, and I do get done the things they tell me to do, if not always as soon as ordered. I make no excuses for that, just as I don't expect them to cook it up into an excuse.

You know, I was in the business of treating people, too, for almost twenty years. Were there times when my patients tried my patience (ooo, a rhyme, I love it!)? You bet. But I never refused to treat anyone. At the end of the day, I still had to be able to look myself in the eye and be at peace with my soul. And I never forgot that they weren't there for me.

But perhaps I should have turned that sentiment around, as my ex-physician seems to have done. At least that way, I would be in-step with the rest of the world, right?

Breaking News . . . Day 8 of the Great Skiffy Die-Off

There continues to be an extinction-level event of epic proportions over on the SciFi.com bulletin boards. The forum administrators continue, it seems, the do everything in their power to kill off the membership . . . or, at least, do absolutely nothing to correct the mistake they initiated that is making it impossible for people to actually use that forum.

It really must be a wonderful thing to have a job in which you can get away with just sitting on your ass, doing nothing.

Oh, hell, it's just a stupid internet bulletin board, right? In the vast scheme of things, this ranks somewhere well below even mildly important. Who cares that the people running it have screwed things up so badly you can't access the forum? But that isn't the point. Because no one over there who is actually getting paid to make sure the forums run properly is even bothering to acknowledge that there is a problem, much less bestir themselves off of their no doubt exceptionally large rear ends to do anything about it, this issue has become almost a point of honour.

I'm tempted to say that I've seen monkey-sh*t fights at the zoo that were more organized than the apparent cluster-f*ck going on over at Skiffy, but that would be an insult to monkeys flinging poo everywhere.

Right now, I could just kick myself. All of those years I spent working at jobs where people actually expected results in return for my paycheck, and I somehow missed this opportunity. I'm thinking of dusting the old resume off and firing a copy over to the SciFi Channel for a gig running their bboards. Hell, if all I have to do is sit around picking my nose, making rude noises out of my rear end and stuff my face with cold pizza and warm Mountain Dew while not actually doing anything as the forum crashes and burns around my ears, that's really not a problem. Just hand me a paycheck every week, and I'll happily tell you that absolutely nothing at all is wrong while I completely ignore all those pesky little e-mails from those whiny little bastards who used to be customers. I mean, really, what's the big deal? All those fat little geeks need to get real lives, anyway, maybe get out and get some exercise, the damned losers.

Of course, I don't know what I really expected from a bunch of people who seem to think that professional wrestling is somehow a sub-genre of science fiction. With programming choices like that, I'm sure they network executives are all sitting around, looking puzzled and wondering just why it is none of their shows can seem to break a 1.0 rating, even on a niche cable channel.

Really, though, it's the whole "Well, who cares?" attitude over there that sets my teeth on edge. The same people running those boards who seem to think they don't have to do jack-sh*t when something goes wrong are no doubt the first ones to lose their minds when someone gets into the express line at the grocery store with sixteen items instead of just fifteen. Imagine if your doctor had that attitude; "Hmm, Mr. Jones, we found a spot on your lung in the x-rays. Well, who cares?"

I mean, how does that performance review go? "I asked to see you today because I understand that your latest upgrade to our forum software is preventing several hundred of our customers from accessing our boards. That is entirely unacceptable, and you know it. Only a couple of hundred? You're going to have to try harder if you want to continue your employment here . . ."

Ah, well. Maybe I should just take this as an opportunity to do something else, like go outside. I understand that there is this thing out there that I've heard some people call the "Sun" . . .

The $135 Million Boondoggle

We're being had. Again.

In the area of, "Wow, that's a cool toy," I'd be one of the first to say that the F-22 Raptor is, well, a cool toy. But such things as the wow factor and gee-whiz technology aside, it's a toy that we don't particularly need - or afford, for that matter.

I can't help but wonder just what the purpose of the F-22 is. Certainly, the mission it was conceived and designed to fulfill is widely touted by both the DoD and Lockheed-Martin, the contractor: air superiority. But against whom, exactly?

Consider this. The F-22 arose out of a 1981 requirement issued by the DoD for an advanced follow-on stealth design to the F-117, and as a replacement for the F-15 in anticipation of the emergence of Soviet fifth-generation designs. At the time the programme was formalized in 1986, it was envisioned that a total force of some 800 F-22s would be required in the face of what the Soviets were likely to bring to the table. But a funny thing happened by 1991, when the first Raptors began flight-test . . . the Soviet Union collapsed. Not only that, but the design-generation the F-22 was meant to face by and large failed to materialize, and still hasn't.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the intended production numbers for the F-22 were scaled back from around 800 aircraft to 600 or so aircraft. That was in 1997. By 2003, the production numbers had been reduced again, this time to around 400 aircraft. Not too long ago, the contracts were revised yet again, this time finalizing the production run at a mere 187 aircraft.

Now, this should concern all of us, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is cost. The F-22 was already a hideously expensive aircraft to begin with, but there's something else that we all have to remember. A basic law of the marketplace is that the more you build of something, the cheaper each individual unit is in terms of cost. On a per-unit basis, 800 F-22s are less expensive than 400, or 187. So as production numbers went down, individual unit cost went up, until we arrived at an aircraft that costs a little over $135 million per aircraft.

Here's a comparison for you. For each F-22 we buy, we could buy four F-15s. Which, by the way, is still a perfectly capable air-superiority platform in the face of current threats, and certainly more useful than the F-22 in the kind of war we find ourselves currently fighting and likely to fight in the foreseeable future. But why is that important? Because of this.

Since 1991, we have been happily hacking away at our military capabilities; overall, the DoD has shrunk by over half, funding is tight, and its unlikely to get any better. Problem is, none of our military committments has shrunk and, on top of that, we're also now fighting two on-going wars. We keep going to the well, but the well is running dry. The Air Force, however, is charging full speed into fielding the F-22, knowing as it does so that it is going to have to give something up in order to do that.

In other words, it's force of F-15s and F-16s.

For every F-22 that is fielded, four F-15s are going to have to be withdrawn from service. It's already being done; the F-15As, Bs, Cs and Ds are already being stood down, leaving only the F-15E models, which were the strike variant - and which now also have to double in the air superiority role. Fewer aircraft to do more jobs . . . terrific.

Look at it this way. After the end of the Cold War, one of the Air Force missions that took one of the biggest hits was - you guessed it - Continental Air Defence. In other words, the air superiority mission. In 1990, the Air Force had twelve air groups that it used to control and defend the air space of the United States. By the time 9/11 rolled around, the north-east sector of NORAD could generate exactly four aircraft from two widely-separated bases in order to provide an immediate response to the threat. That wasn't an accident; it was a direct result of the force draw-down and the post-Cold War funding priorities.

Now the DoD, the Air Force and Lockheed-Martin want us to believe they can take a force of 187 F-22s and provide not only air-defence of the country, but also overseas theatre-level air superiority and strike, all at the same time. Yeah. And I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell them. They're really hoping that no one will notice but, in addition to the appropriations for the planned 187 Raptors, the Air Force is now also asking for a further $62 billion to be "held in reserve," just in case they might have to buy a few more F-22s.

The really stunning thing in all of this is that, by continually reducing the planned number of purchases, the DoD and the Air Force have all but admitted that the F-22 is an aircraft without a mission. And after a design-cycle that has lasted for twenty-seven years, we're left with a boondoggle that costs $135 million each. I'm all for advancing the technology, but at this point, this thing has become a sinkhole at a time when we really can't afford it. Worse yet, in order to fund this programme, we're throwing away technologies and capabilities that are still perfectly viable in the current and foreseeable threat environment. The most insidious thing is that we keep insisting on trying to do more with less, and that almost never works.

Anyone else remember the Maginot Line?

Who You Gonna Call?

Anybody out there seen a ghost lately?

I'm only asking because it seems lately that the country has been overrun by all manner of spooks, goblins, monsters and critters. At least it seems that way, if you watch any television at all. Hell, if we're not chasing Bigfoot or Nessie on The Discovery Channel, we've got Paranormal State on A&E and an entire night of chasing spirits on The SciFi Channel. Of course, with the latter, I'm not sure what the supernatural has to do with science fiction but, hey, if you don't like that, they've got wrestling, too.

You know, there's really nothing like a good ghost story, when you're out in the middle of the woods, to get the old heart pumping . . . except, perhaps, for when a bear wanders into the middle of your camp. That can be pretty exciting, too. But, I mean, really . . . aside from Halloween, when they're out grubbing for candy, does anyone have any proof that ghosts exist?

I had a friend in college who used to tell me stories about a spectral "tiger hand puppet" that used to appear at his bedside at night when he was a child. And it wasn't just any kind of run-of-the-mill tiger hand puppet, no, it was an evil tiger hand puppet, that would talk to him and ask him to put his hand in its mouth. Presumably to eat him, although I suppose it could also have just been looking for a good dentist. I asked him after one such story if he had any older brothers who liked to tease him. Turned out he did and, while I thought I saw a connection between that and the tiger hand puppet, my friend apparently did not.

He also told me stories about his grandmother, who lived out in the back woods of Tennessee, who apparently owned a kitchen table that every so often would "walk" across the room. Why no one ever thought to snap a polaroid of the table in mid-stride, I don't know. Of course, being a smart-ass city boy, I asked my friend if his grandmother ever pulled a fast one on those "damned rev'noors" and by chance made her own liqour . . . Imagine my surprise when he said yes. Again, could just have been me, but I pointed out the possible connection between that and the walking table, but . . .

I guess people see what they want to see. Got a strange noise in your house? Well, that's got to be the footsteps of a previous owner; couldn't possibly be the house settling on its foundations or anything mundane like that. Hell, I used to have an experience where it felt like someone was lifting the end of my matress up into the air in the middle of the night. So which is the more reasonable explanation for that sensation - that in the groggy netherstate between sleep and wakefulness, I was for some reason lifting my legs into the air, or that I was being visited by some spectral apparition with a twisted sense of humour?

Ever see the show Ghost Hunters, or its spin-off, Ghost Hunters International? These are prime examples of what I'm talking about, of people chasing their tails and convincing themselves that there really are things going bump in the night. It really is hilarious. It usually goes something like this: in a nice, dark room, ghost hunter 1 says: "I feel something." Ghost hunter 2 then asks, "What do you feel?" Ghost hunter 1 answers with something like, "I feel [insert favourite phenomenon here]" or "My little ghost-detecting electronic doo-hickey says . . ." Ghost hunter 2 then confirms everything ghost hunter 1 just said, and then they move on to their next "encounter."

The real hilarity ensues when the ghost hunting team reviews all of their "evidence" the next day. They take hundreds of photographs, shoot hours of tape, and have hours of audio recordings, all of which they go over, only to find . . . nothing. Perhaps because there was nothing there to find in the first place, or perhaps because all the ghosts are just terribly shy. I know which one I'm betting on.

My favourite, though, are the so-called EVPs, or Electronic Voice Phenomena, which are purported to be the actual voices of ghosts. The idea is, you can let a recorder run and then, when you play the tape back, hear voices on it that you couldn't hear when you made the tape. Presto, instant ghost. They always manage to "find" at least one of these, which they then play back for the owner of whichever "haunted" building they happen to be in and pronounce them to be on the receiving end of paranormal activity.

Except . . . we all know the mechanics of speech, right? You suck air into your lungs, then force it out through your vocal cords which, along with jaw movement and tongue positioning in the mouth, produce sounds. So . . . since when do ghosts breathe? Oops. And, frankly, the only thing I've ever heard when listening to a purported EVP is a bunch of static. The power of suggestion, though, is a wonderful thing, and if you really want to hear something there . . . well, I'm pretty sure I could produce a tape in which a ghost recites the Gettysburg Address. Want to hear it?

This whole thing is kind of like those who believe in "past-life" experiences. Ever notice how everyone, in their past life, was someone like Cleopatra, or Ceaser, or William the Conqueror, or someone else famous? How come no one is ever William the peasant, who shoveled manure in a barn in 8th Century England for a living? Curious, that.

Okay, so I guess its pretty safe to assume that I don't believe in ghosts. But maybe I'll keep my proton pack handy, you know, just in case. And I promise I'll be careful not to cross the streams . . .

Think of Something New, It’s Been Done Before

So it begins again . . .

Just in case you've been living under a rock and by chance haven't heard, this past week an ex-graduate student walked into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, and began shooting. Many victims later, he turned his weapons on himself and took his own life - something, really, he should have done before he opened fire on the other students, thus saving the rest of us a lot of aggravation.

I'm not meaning to make light of this; death is a tragedy, whenever and however it strikes. But just when did it become a competition to see how many others you could take along with you? And the news has already forgotten about this, moving on to the next story that bleeds . . .

For the moment, at least. Now I'm just waiting for all the calls to ban firearms to resurface. Because, you know, there's really no such thing as either personal responsibikity or personal accountability any more. Firearms are the problem, not people; take away the weapons, and everything will be just hunky-dory, right?

Um, well, no. Look, there's nothing you can do with a pistol, shotgun or rifle that you can't do with, say, an ice-pick. It's just a lot messier to use the ice-pick. If one individual is going to kill another individual, they're going to do it whether they have a firearm or not. And, judging by the numbers of people killed by knives, baseball bats, lead pipes and any other kind of weapon you can think of, the availability or lack thereof of firearms doesn't seem to be slowing anyone down. But I don't see any calls to ban baseball bats . . . or ice-picks. Yet people wind up just as dead.

Both sides of the gun-control issue really need to just shut up for a moment, take a deep breath, and then start talking to each other rather than at each other. The "anti-gun" folks need to realize that there was a reason the Founding Fathers included the Second Amendment in the Constitution. Quite apart from wantng a large pool of manpower familiar with firearms in the case of invasion, the Second Amendment was included as a protection against the Federal Government turning into a tyranny. After all, the Government is far less likely to try and oppress the people if those people are armed than if they aren't.

On the other hand, the "pro-gun" folks need to realize that the Second Amendment is not a blanket permission to turn yourself into a one-man army. You know, I think the M4 carbine is a neat weapon, and I have one that I use for target shooting at the range. But if I hear one more person say they need an M4, or an AK-47, for deer hunting, I'm going to slap someone. As far as I'm aware, the deer don't shoot back. Nor am I particularly interested in the argument that is often advanced that the Swiss, for example, require all males between 18 and 50 to have an automatic weapon in their home, yet they somehow manage to avoid turning their country into a shooting gallery. Yes, they do indeed do that . . . because every male between the ages of 18 and 50 in Switzerland is subject to being called out for military service if necessary. There is a difference.

Firearms really aren't the problem. We are the problem, and the way in which we regulate firearms is the problem. I really don't have a problem if you want to own a firearm. Go right ahead. But I do believe that if you have any kind of criminal record or history of psychological problems, you should be barred from that ownership. I do believe that not only should your weapon be registered with the authorities, you should not be permitted to buy any ammunition for it until you have completed a firearms safety course that teaches you not only how to shoot, but how to safely handle and store the weapon. I do believe that in order to keep the weapon, you should have to renew your FOIA card on a periodic basis, just like you have to renew your driver's license. I do believe that if you violate any of the licensing requirements, your FOIA card should be revoked and any firearms you own be immediately taken away.

But we all have to realize that firearms are a means to an end; it's the individual pulling the trigger who bears the responsibility for that act. I have yet to run across a firearm that just up and decided to kill someone all on its own. The disaffected, the unstable, and the hopeless, if they really mean to exterminate themselves and others, will find a way to do that, whether or not they have a firearm. It's up to the rest of us to recognize the people on the edge, and to take appropriate action. In other words, yes, you are your brother's keeper; that's one of the reasons why we form societies, for the benefit and protection of each other.

The man who walked into that lecture hall at NIU and opened fire didn't just come out of nowhere. Someone, somewhere, noticed a change in his behaviour, that something just wasn't right. "If" is a slippery thing to debate, but had someone intervened, the incident may never have happened. We've got to do better at this, folks.

A Boy and His Dog

It's funny, sometimes, the things you think about in the pre-dawn hours, when you can't sleep. Memories have a way of bubbling to the surface and teasing you, echoes of now distant times and places, as insubstantial and elusive as a morning mist, leaving behind a bittersweet yearning for what can never be again.

I've had dogs around me for my entire life; I have five hounds right now and, yes, the smart money says that they are brighter than I am. The real secret is to not let them know that. And just so long as they keep me trained to do exactly what they want me to do, it all works out for the best.

I love every dog I've had the privilege to live with, but . . . there have only really been two that have so completely captured me that when they left this world for the next, it was almost too much to bear. If you really stopped to think about it, it's a lousy deal we enter into when we bring a dog into our lives. They ask for so little in return for their unquestioning love, and they never, ever judge us; but their lives are short, and we, at least, go into the relationship knowing that they are going to break our hearts.

When I was still a toddler, my parents acquired a breed of dog known as the Otter Hound. If you've never seen on - and you probably haven't, they are a fairly rare breed in this country - they are magnificient hounds. Originally bred in the 12th Century for the English kings and nobility, the Otter Hound was used, as the name implies, to hunt otter. Proud, stubborn, faithful and playful, they are wonderful scent hounds. They are big dogs, but gentle, with a shaggy overcoat and a wiry undercoat and webbed feet, for they are water dogs - the joke goes that an Otter Hound drinks from the bottom of the bowl up. They are talkative dogs, with a melodious bay that can be heard for miles.

The Otter Hound's name was Lady Crudley. At the time, we lived in an ivy-covered brownstone my parents had christened Crudley Manor, and since every manor must have a lady . . . She was my parents' pet, yet, as only a dog can, she "adopted" me.

When I was still crawling around in diapers, Lady Crudley was always there to watch over me. If I happened to start going someplace she didn't want me to go, or someplace she decided might be dangerous, she would gently pick me up by my diapers and relocate me somewhere else . . . and thank God my parents never managed to snap a picture of her carrying me around. When I was in my crib and people came over to see the newest addition to my parents' brood, Lady Crudley had a habit of making sure everyone was on one side of it. She would then go over to the other side, jump up so that her front paws were on the railing, then stand and lean forward over the crib so that she could be sure that no one would get too close. That was something she did to the end of her days; even when I was entering into my teen-age years and my friends would come over, Lady Crudley somehow always arranged it so that I would be standing on one side of her, and everyone else on the other.

When I started going to school, she would wait for me at the front door every day when I got off the school bus. As soon as I came in, she would either take my wrist in her mouth or grab my shirttail, and take me upstairs to see my mother. She would sit, patiently waiting, until I was done telling my mother about how the day went, and then she would take my wrist or shirttail in her mouth and take me to my room. If I went out into the yard, she would go, too, just to watch. If I went out into the street to play with my friends, Lady Crudley would be there, sitting at the window by the door, keeping an eye on me. When I went to bed at night, she would come in and curl up on the floor next to the bed, waiting until I fell asleep. She never sayed in my room for the entire night, for she had other people in the house to watch over, but I know she would come in and out several times. Just to check. Sometimes, I would play a game where I pulled the covers over my head, so she couldn't see me, and she absolutely hated that. I could hear hear, pacing and snorting impatiently, and then she would grab the blankets and yank them off my head, whereupon everything would be right in her world again.

Eventually, we moved out of that house, and into another one that was across the street from a church. Every Sunday morning, when the bells rang during the services and Lady Crudley was outside in the yard, she took the opportunity to exercise her singing voice. The bells would ring, and Lady Crudley would bay along with them, a long, loud, melodious celebration of a hound being a hound. Many years later, I met the man who was the musical director of that church; he had gotten a job as a music teacher at my high school. One day, somehow, the conversation turned to the topic of dogs, and I mentioned Lady Crudley and her singing. The man looked at me and said, "That was your dog?" Apparently, when she sang, they could hear her in the church.

In the summer of 1972, my parents rented a house in the Indiana Dunes, right up against Lake Michigan. Lady Crudley was getting older, and would now only go (for her) knee-deep into the water. I would tease her by going deeper, trying to coax her out, but she would only stomp her feet and then bay at me until I came back to her. We also acquired a Cocker Spaniel puppy at that time, and I still remember how Lady Crudley would take her off down the beach, teaching her the finer points of chasing butterflies.

Lady Crudley was a joyful dog, a playful dog, with a tail that, when she was happy, could sweep a coffee table clean in no time flat. After we got the Cocker Spaniel, I can remember how amazed I was when we fed the dogs. The puppy would finish off her dinner, then commence yipping and yapping at Lady Crudley, who would then sit down and patiently wait while the puppy ate what she wanted out of the big dog's bowl. This was a dog who's heart truly was too big for this world.

Lady Crudley left when I was 13. My parents had taken her to the vet, to have some minor surgery. She had been home for about a week, but she had grown listless, so my father had taken her back to be checked on. The vet found nothing particularly wrong with her, save that she had done what we all do, gotten older. But when my father returned the next day to pick her up, they couldn't get Lady Crudley to leave the kennel. She simply wouldn't get up. Eventually, they brought my father back to her . . . whereupon Lady Crudley wagged her tail once, and then died.

The world is somehow a lesser and drabber place without her, and there hasn't been a day since then that I haven't thought of her, chasing and never quite catching butterflies on the beach.

Back in 1988, shortly after I had started a new job, the woman I was seeing at the time called me at work, and asked me if I was interested in acquiring a puppy. It seemed that her sister had rescued a dog from an abusive owner, but didn't have the ability to care for it. So I figured sure, why not? An hour or so later, my girlfriend brought the "puppy" over to where I worked, and I was introduced to a six-month-old Rottweiler weighing close to a hundred pounds. Well, so much for the puppy idea.

But I will never forget that first meeting with him. This was a dog that had truly been broken in spirit. He came right up to me, but he didn't so much walk as try not to be noticed, his head hung low, as if he expected to be smacked merely for being. When he had been rescued by my girlfriend's sister, he'd been wearing his original collar - they'd had to take him to an animal hospital and have it cut off, because it was choking him to death slowly.

That was on a Friday. On Saturday, the dog tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible in my house, on the theory that if he weren't seen, he wouldn't be beaten. On Sunday morning, I woke up early, took one look at him, and yelped. Patches of fur had fallen out, and one of his eyes had swollen shut and was leaking pus - the poor beast had the mange. Once again, he had crept into the bedroom, head low and looking absolutely pitiful, as if he expected me to beat him for being sick. Just what the hell had his original owner done to this dog? I woke my girlfriend up, threw her and the dog into the car, and drove like a madman to the nearest animal hospital.

Gradually, after a lot of medicated baths and plenty of food and water, the dog realized that nothing bad was going to happen to him. The biggest problem he now had was that I had no idea what to call him - "Hey, you!" was frequently used in those first few weeks. Then, one day while driving around in Chicago and passing through an old neighbourhood I'd lived in, I looked up at the street sign and said, "Works for me." So "Hey, you!" became Roscoe.

As a Rottweiler, Roscoe was a huge disappointment to the entire breed. There truly was not a mean bone in that dog's body - which, considering the circumstances of his first six months on this planet, was something of a minor miracle, I suppose. Roscoe wanted to be friends with everyone and everything. At the time I acquired him, I also had a cat, Ashley, that I had inherited from my mother. Roscoe was fascinated by Ashley, a feeling that at first was not reciprocated. Which is why I refer to that time as the year of the screaming Christmas Tree.

Ashley would do his best to hide whenever Roscoe was around, which by Christmas time meant that the cat spent a lot of time under the tree. The dog would circle the tree as the cat hid, whining, and the cat would commence yowling when he got bored and realized he was stuck as long as the dog was looking for him. Then, one day, something interesting happened. Ashley hid under the tree and, instead of circling, Roscoe passed on by and went into the kitchen. He then carefully poked his head out around the door jamb, and without making any noise, stared at the tree. Eventually, Ashley decided the coast was clear and crept out from under the branches, ntending to make a dash for the bedroom.

He never made it. As soon as he came out, Roscoe leapt, held the cat down with one paw . . . and proceeded to lick the cat about the head and shoulders. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing, I was faced by a very happy dog and a very wet, unhappy, cat. But Ashley got over it.

Like Lady Crudley had done, Roscoe would follow me wherever I went. He always wanted to be near me, to the point that if I stood still or sat down, he would sit down right up against my leg. When I was working at home, he would stick he head underneath the arm of my chair and just lay his head in my lap. If I let him off his leash, he would exhilirate in the sudden freedom . . . for about ten feet. Then he would turn around, run right back to me, and snuggle his shoulder up against my leg and not move until I did. At night, he would crawl up into bed with me and lay down right into my side, which is no mean feet for a hundred pound dog and no doubt aggravated my girlfriend to no end.

And he was smart as a whip, too. So smart, he actually scared me once; I looked at him, wrinkled my nose, and said, "You smell. You need a bath. Go get in the tub." And he did. One day, while I was out, Roscoe knocked over an ice bucket I kept filled with hard candy, then proceeded to eat it all - after he unwrapped them. I remember standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by all the cellophane wrappers, looking at him and saying, "But . . . but . . . you don't have thumbs!" I remember another day, coming back from the gorcery store, and finding that he had turned one of the burners on the stove on - to medium-low heat. Or one particularly hot summer day, when I was sweating like a madman and wondering why, since I had the air-conditioning going full blast, and turning around to see Roscoe lying on his back on top of the vent, enjoying all the cool air . . .

Roscoe died when he was eight years old, because of kidney failure. I swear to God, if I could have found a doctor that would have done dialysis on a dog . . . That was the first time I'd ever had to put a dog to sleep, and I couldn't even be in the same room with him when they did it. There was no other choice, and it was the kindest thing for him I could do, but it still makes me feel like I betrayed him somehow. But I know that I would give anything to have him back.

Perhaps, if there really is a God, he's on a beach somewhere, with Lady Crudley teaching him the art of chasing butterflies . . .

It isn’t just the dollars, it’s capabilities, too . . .

A long time ago, back when I was young and impressionable and thought it would be a really neat idea, I drove airplanes in the Navy for a living. If you couldn't tell from the photo associated with the profile, I still have a soft spot in what's left of my heart for my old office. But the Turkey is long behind me, and my illustrious military career was neither that illustrious or even particularly long, since it seems that even God enjoys a practical joke every now and then. But don't ask, don't tell - I generally don't and won't talk about my service (no, no, I was mustered out because of medical reasons, so stop wondering), and in any event that's not what I'm blabbing about right now in any event. What I am here to say, simply, is this:

Dick Cheney is the Antichrist.

Okay, stop. This isn't political. I don't give a damn about Halliburton or no-bid "reconstruction" contracts. But I do care about the men and women in uniform, and whether or not they have the tools they need to accomplish their missions. And yes, all you Hornet drivers out there, I'm about to piss you off.

Now, the F/A-18 is a wonderful aircraft - at what it was designed to be, which was a replacement for the A-7 Corsair and as a complimentary air-defence fighter to the F-14 Tomcat. Even so, the aircraft was handicapped from its inception. Due to a design error, the original production models of the Hornet lacked sufficient range, coming up well short of the A-6 Intruder, which at the time the F/A-18 was introduced was the Navy's medium-range attack platform, and of the F-14. The Hornet also carried a smaller payload than the Intruder did. Less gas and less bombs does not necessarily a winning combination make. Nor does the trade-off of the Hornet being able to switch roles from attack platform to air-defence platform simply by jettisoning its bomb load, despite the official line to the contrary, constitute a saving grace. Less range means the bird farm - that would be the carrier - has to get closer to the target, thus increasing the risk to what's probably the only friendly "airfield" in the area. Fewer bombs hung on the bird means that either more aircraft have to be assigned to each strike, or more sorties must be flown against each individual target, thus increasing the risk to the aircrews involved. Being able to jettison your ordnance prior to striking the target in order to "switch roles" simply means that the target goes unserviced, and you have to fly the strike again - and now the bad guys really know you're coming.

Enter Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defence. Yes, the A-6E Intruder was an "old" airframe by the time the '90s rolled around. After all, the original airframe had been designed and then built in the 1960s. But age isn't necessarily a limiting factor; after all, the B-52 arose out of a design requirement established in the late 1940s, was built beginning in the early 1950s, and is still chugging along today and for the foreseeable future. Despite having new toys like the B-1B and the B-2, the Air Force plans on keeping the B-52 in front-line service for several more decades. Why? Because it is a big aircraft, and partly due to that size, it can be easily upgraded to operate in the current threat environments.

As such aircraft go, the A-6E was a big airplane, too. While by the early '90s the official plan was to replace the Intruder with the ill-conceived and ill-fated A-12, there was also an option to upgrade the aircraft to the A-6F configuration. Put simply, same airframe, same ordnance load-out, entirely new aircraft on the inside. The A-6F variant would have given the Intruder at least another twenty years worth of productive life, at a far cheaper cost than having the contractors cough up an entirely new design; more importantly, it would have allowed time for a new design-generation to be completed.

Instead, Mr. Cheney rightfully killed the A-12 programme. Problem is, he then went on to kill the A-6F, too. What we got then was the F/A-18 being shoe-horned into the vacuum left by the departure of the Intruder . . . even though the Intruder was a more-capable platform in the medium-attack role. The reasons offered for killing the Intruder upgrade and replacing it with the Hornet, on the surface, seem simple enough: costs. The F/A-18 was a newer aircraft, with a longer potential service-life, incorporated in its design newer technology, and was cheaper to maintain.

Dollars over lives, in other words. Yes, the Hornet may have been cheaper to maintain, but it was still hobbled by a lack of range and a lack of payload. Not so bad, really, if you have to do something like fly from the Persian Gulf to Kuwait or Iraq or Iran, but it really sucks if you have to, say, fly from the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan. The latter can't be done in a Hornet without either having a divert field somewhere along the way, or tanking a few more times than you would have to in an A-6 or an F-14, but, hey, so what, right? You don't have to spend as much time and TLC on a newer airplane, so we'll save a few bucks . . . that we can then throw down the sinkhole known as the F/A-22 Raptor, along with a lot of other good money.

A funny thing happened to the design of the F/A-18 about the time that Mr. Cheney decided it was the wave of the future for Naval Aviation. A requirement was issued to upgrade the airframe. Imagine that. All of a sudden, DoD wanted a Hornet that could actually do the things they needed it to do at the ranges and with the payloads necessary. So the concept of the "Super Hornet" was born - a bigger airframe, with more gas and able to carry more bombs.

Except that even the F/A-18E Super Hornet still comes up short in range and payload when compared to the old Intruder and to the F-14. Oops. Someone's still asleep at the switch, it seems.

In September of 2006, the last F-14 squadron was disestablished by the Navy, finally turning over both attack and fleet air-defence entirely to the Hornet community. Now, right up until its demise, the Tomcat was widely acknowledged by aviation experts to be one of the premiere fighter aircraft in the world, particularly in its F-14D configuration, which solved a lot of niggling little problems (such as the under-powered engines). Even better, the Navy had rediscovered the fact that the Tomcat had been designed with an attack capability. Yes, Dickie, they could hang bombs on it and it could actually deliver them on-target, hence the new nickname of "Bombcat." Oh, yeah, and the F-14 was one of the few tactical jets the Navy had that could fly from the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan with a minimum of tanking.

Now, how does Mr. Cheney fit into this part of it? Well, back when he was Secretary of Defence, he decided that it would be a good idea to kill the F-14 programme, too. Not just kill it, but drive a stake through it's heart and cut it's head off, just to make sure it never rose from the grave to threaten him again. He killed the on-going programme to reconfigure all of the F-14A and F-14A+ models to the F-14D standard, and then he killed all production of the Tomcat.

Why? Because the F/A-18, he said, could do the job just as well, despite the fact that it had less range. Because the F/A-18 was a newer platform and . . . it was cheaper to maintain.

Well, again, not entirely unreasonable, I suppose . . . though the technology embodied in the F-14D was of the same generation as that in the F/A-18. Oh, and except for the fact that there was a plan to provide a "Super Tomcat" version that would have kept the F-14 on the cutting edge until the 2030s or so . . .

Which Mr. Cheney also had a hand in killing, as the Vice President.

And that is why Dick Cheney is the Antichrist. I have no problem with wanting to save money in the defence budget, or in any other part of the Federal budget. God knows, there's plenty to be saved. I do, however, have a problem doing that by jamming platforms into roles they weren't meant to fill. I do have a problem with doing that by slighting the men and women we expect to do the heavy lifting when push comes to shove. If it comes down to a choice between dollars and lives, I'm going to go with the lives, every time.

So maybe it's a good thing I don't work for the government . . .

Which way to Earth, now?

For those of you who haven't bothered to watch it - and, from the ratings numbers, that seems to be a whole lot of you, aside from television critics and die-hard SciFi fans - I can pretty safely say that the "re-imagined" version of Battlestar Galactica is not for you.

Way back when, in the dark days of 1978 when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, I was a fan of the original Battlestar Galactica, brought to us by Glen Larson. I never missed an airing, and I was heart-broken when ABC cancelled it at the end of the first season. But even then, I was aware that the show had some significant problems. Killer robots that couldn't shoot straight. The annoying cute kid that served no purpose. Wild West episodes in space. Characters that were so one-dimensional that if they turned sideways, you wouldn't be able to see them. The first thing they do after the genocide of their race and destruction of their home worlds is stop at a "casino planet" and have a party. "Space fighters" that maneuvered as if they were in an atmosphere. The list could go on and on, but still, there was something epic in the premise of the show that kept me watching, even though, sadly, the show itself consistently failed to live up to that premise.

But the show was cancelled, life went on as it generally does, and it became just something else from childhood that one looks back fondly on (and, yes, I'll admit that when I see the original show now, it makes me wince). Then Ronald Moore decided to pick up the reins (and let's really not go into how he became involved) and present his "re-imagination" of Battlestar Galactica.

Well, that got my interest. Moore brought a lot of SciFi experience to the table, from all of his years working on the various Star Trek franchises. He generally delivered solid episodes for that franchise, and he promised a vision for Battlestar Galactica that would be more faithful to the scenario underlying the show. Yeah, this was something I wanted to see, a show that wouldn't forget that it was forged out of the destruction of the human race at the hands of an implacable enemy, that found itself hunted and having to cope and survive with almost nothing.

The miniseries that aired on the SciFi Channel really left me hoping that it would be picked up as a series. There were powerful moments of dramatic tension - the choice, for example, between abandoning those who don't have the ability to run, or staying and attempting to save everyone at the risk of losing everything. The characters were presented as actual multi-dimensional human beings, with virtues and vices, and who did not always answer the call of the angels of their better nature. There were things that didn't work, too, but by and large, Moore had delivered on his promise, at least with the miniseries. And I wanted more.

Which eventually came, when the SciFi Channel did, indeed, pick up the new Battlestar Galactica as a series. The first season, on the whole, was very good television, certainly better than anything I had seen on network TV for a long time. But . . .

Ah, yes, but. There were problems. That happens, of course, with any show, especially in its first season, when it's "finding its feet." There were episodes that felt rushed, such as Litmus, ostensibly about investigating Cylon infiltrators hiding among the survivors. This was a story arc that could have been profitably played out over many episodes, but was instead hurried to a conclusion so that it could be wrapped up in the confines of a single episode. There were creeping logic errors, such as in the episode Water, in which Galactica's supply of potable water is sabotaged. In one moment, we had Commander Adama, the ship's commanding officer, explaining to Laura Roslin, the notional President, that his ship stored enough water for "several years" and that the water recycling systems were "nearly 100% effecient." In the very next moment, however, half of the water storage tanks are blown up, and all of a sudden the ship is almost out of water and the survival of everyone who depends on that water is in jeopardy. It was as if the writers had completely forgotten about what they had just written. In the same episode, they included a scene in which they detailed an ungodly amount of food and vegetables needed to feed all the survivors on a weekly basis - and then promptly forgot all about it, never to mention it again. In a later episode, Hand of God, this refugee fleet suddenly developes a fuel shortage, which they solve by raiding an enemy base and acquiring "enough fuel for years."

Oops. Say, what happened to the reality of it all? Why are we suddenly resorting to the magical SciFi cliches? Oh, well, things will get better in the second season. Right?

Well, no. Season Two started off okay, but the creeping errors were still there and, if anything, getting worse. The episode where an officer orders a really stupid attack on a Cylon outpost that's pretty much guaranteed to get everyone killed, only to get shot by one of his own people. Problem is, not ten seconds later, in the ensuing firefight with the Cylons, we find out that our little band of humans had a grenade launcher with them the whole time, which they could have used in the first place to eliminate the Cylons. I guess they forgot about it in all the excitement. Commander Adama hands over a nuclear weapon to a civilian, but doesn't insist on actually maintaining any kind of security over it. We get introduced to a "peace movement," that ostensibly has wide support among the survivors, but we never heard about it before and we certainly don't hear about it again after the episode. We find out that there is an active black market that is thriving in the fleet - yet, with no money and no way to actually manufacture anything, how could that be?

The second season was all about character development, yet the characters never progressed. All they did was rehash the same old personality conflicts, episode after episode. It got old, and it got boring. These people were stuck in amber; nothing was ever concluded, nothing was ever resolved. But we did get a caricature of a military officer that was so bad, the only thing she lacked was a handlebar mustache to twirl. So that's something, I guess.

Then, at the end of the season, we were given the infamous "one year later" leap . . . The only purpose to which, it seems, was to reset the entire show to where it was at the beginning of the miniseries. Leaving aside all the plot holes, continuity errors and dropped plotlines from the first two seasons, by doing that Moore and his writers completely junked every plotline they had established. It served absolutely no purpose at all, save for that the writers must have felt that they had somehow pushed themselves into a corner and had no other way out. But it killed the story.

The third season was just a disaster of epic proportions. Any thought of story continuity went out the window, with episodes contradicting each other. It became entirely character-driven, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but these characters continued to go absolutely nowhere. They just spun their wheels week after week, fighting the same fights among themselves. It was as if the show had morphed from asking the question in the first season of, "How do we survive?" to asking, by the third season, "How can I possibly make this situation worse?" It became like watching a train wreck: you really don't want to, but the sight of two locomotives smashing into each other is just so morbidly fascinating, you can't seem to tear your eyes away.

And now we wait to see what the fourth and final season of this Battlestar Galactica will bring. Personally, I'm hoping that the entire refugee fleet runs into a convenient black hole . . .

So how come they never land in Washington?

UFOs. The Grays. Alien abductions. Roswell. Area 51. They say we're being visited and watched . . .

So how come the little green men from outer space never choose to land in Washington? Or London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing or Tokyo, for that matter? Are we really expected to believe that E.T. would come all this way, just so he could land in the backwoods somewhere and conduct a proctological exam on the first hapless victim who wanders by?

Why do I bring this up, you might ask? In my wanderings through the vast wasteland we call cable TV, I ran across a show on The History Channel about so-called alien abductions (a clear misnomer, to be sure, since we are not abducting them). What caught my eye, and my admittedly momentary interest, was a bit in which a doctor removed a small metallic flake from someone who claimed it was an "alien device" he had been implanted with. The hook for this bit was that this piece of metal could be seen moving, which the narrators claimed it was doing on its own, and thus proof of its alien origins. Except that it was stuck in someone's flesh, and someone else was trying to fish it out with a pair of foreceps . . .

Of course it was moving around. If you've never noticed, a splinter does the same thing when you're trying to yank it out.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do believe that there is other life out there in the universe, intelligent and otherwise. With all the billions of stars in the Milky Way alone, the numbers are against us being the only life present. But they are not here.

Think of it this way. The closest star system to us lies 4.3 light years away. That means if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take you 4.3 years to get there from here, and vice versa. But you can't travel at the speed of light; Einstein was pretty clear about that. The faster you go, the more power you need in order to make yourself go faster until you basically require infinite power when you hit the speed of light. So, physics restricts us to moving at something a lot less than the speed of light.

As it does our friends the E.T.s. Physics isn't just physics here, it's physics everywhere. Without going into such arcane things as M-theory and multiverses, the same physical laws that define us also define the little green men, and what they can and can't do.

So, if our notional journey to, say, Alpha Centauri, at the limited fraction of light speed that we can attain, would take us several thousand years, E.T. is just as SOL as we are. And that problem gets worse the farther away you want to travel . . . It may just be me, but that seems like an awful lot of time and effort just so you can go somehwere and peek up something's rear end.

Ah-ha, some would say, but E.T. is much smarter than we are, and he's figured out how to travel faster-than-light. Well, no, actually, he can't. While a physicist would tell you that Einstein leaves open the possibility that there may be a "short-cut" around the speed of light, the chances of that actually being done are, well . . .

Mass warps space; the more mass an object has, the more it warps space, which is why planets go around stars. Theoretically, then, given a sufficiently massive object, you could warp space enough so that two distant points become close enough that you could reasonably travel between them. But think about that for a moment; where and how do you find enough mass to do that? Le's put it another way: galaxies are pretty massive objects. But the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way is the Andromeda galaxy, and that's 2.3 million light years away . . . so we need more mass than that. Guess I shouldn't be in a hurry to pack my bags.

In most cases, I do indeed believe that those who claim to have seen UFOs and those who claim that E.T. has visited them truly believe that (just as I'm sure that there are some who claim that because a good hoax is a good hoax), but . . . I'll ask again: how come they never land someplace like Washington, march up to Congress or the White House, and announce themselves? I mean, really, if they come all that way, the least they could do is offer the President a fruit basket. The whole point of the exercise is to introduce yourselves and say "Hi! We're the neighbours," isn't it? Just as long as they don't start poking things where they don't belong . . .

Sci Fi is Dead, Long Live Sci Fi!

Let's start off with something simple, shall we? Sci Fi is dead, long live Sci Fi.

Which has nothing at all to do with science fiction as a genre. Though you wouldn't suspect it from the title, this is really about customer service, and the idea that it is becoming - or has become, if you prefer - something of an endangered species in this country.

There used to be a saying that "The customer is always right." At least, way back when as I was still trying to figure out just what I wanted to do with my life and was managing a business, that was what I was taught. These days, however, it seems that little axiom has morphed into something like "The customer is an annoyance."

Now, I can see you asking yourself, "Is there a point to this?" There is, I assure you, and I may even get to it eventually. Or not. We'll see.

Until fairly recently, I was a regular poster on the SciFi Channel's forums, and had been for a couple of years. Just something to do in my spare time, right? But on Tuesday, the wonderful people in charge of that forum decided to change their log-in procedures, allegedly to add "new features." What no one expected, unfortunately, was that these "new features" was really a buzz phrase for axing as many members as possible.

Okay, that's probably not fair. I'm sure that wasn't their intent, but that was the result. As of now, there are dozens of members over there who can not access their accounts because of these "new features." Which brings us to the subject of customer service. The point being, there is none over there. The forum administrators have been alerted to this problem with logging in. There are threads listing all the people who can no longer access the boards. E-mails have been sent to the administrators asking for help in resolving the issue.

Nothing happens. The issue is not resolved, the forum continues its pogrom and more people are added to the list of the disenfranchised, and the forum administrators do not even bother to reply.

Okay, it's a silly internet bulletin board, so what? It really isn't that big of a deal, right? Except . . .

Either I'm just noticing it, or it's an attitude that has been steadily creeping it's way into our everyday lives. The other day, for example, I was in the grocery store, and a cashier looked at me and said, "If you were moving any slower, turtles would pass you by." Really. Okay, I'm not going to go into it, because it is something between me and my physician, but there was probably a reason why I was moving slowly. The point is, it's also none of that cashier's business, and that was a really stupid thing to say.

Ever been in a store and, when you don't need any help, they're all over you? But the second you do need assistance, it's like an alarm bell goes off and the sales people all scatter? There you go. Somewhere, there's got to be a line in the employee handbook that says, "We'll take your money in the expectation that no services will actually be rendered."

Look, I get it. People are annoying. After twenty years or so in the psychological field, trust me, I understand. But civility and common courtesy are the grease that allows society to function without us tearing each other's throats out all of the time. It would just seem to me that, if you are going to work in a business that requires contact with the great unwashed masses you might, I don't know, actually want to respond to them. Or at least think before you open your mouth to speak, if you even get that far in the process.

Unless, of course, your intent is to go out of your way to tick them off. By all means, then, go ahead and treat them like dirt. Doesn't seem like a very good business practice to me, but, hey, what do I know?

See? I told you there might be a point to all this. Or not. Your mileage may vary.