Ever wonder how many lies are told in public speeches, or possibly even more important: how many facts are conveniently left out? After 9/11, we heard a lot about Islamic fundamentalism being taught in the schools of the Middle East. Now, I have no doubt that it was, but what I find shocking is this little tidbit that claims that we provided some of those textbooks to Afghanistan:

1984 - 1994: CIA Funds Militant Textbooks in Afghanistan

The US, through USAID and the University of Nebraska, spends millions of dollars developing and printing textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren. The textbooks are filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. For instance, children are taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles, and land mines. Lacking any alternative, millions of these textbooks are used long after 1994; the Taliban are still using them in 2001. In 2002, the US will start producing less violent versions of the same books, which President Bush says will have “respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry.” (He will fail to mention who created those earlier books). [Washington Post, 3/23/2002; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 5/6/2002]

I can only conclude negligence, and that at the very least.

Hearing that billmon has returned, I was excited to see that one of his newest articles exemplifies an important idea that I have been trying to get down to paper:

Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy Seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Think Progress
July 31, 2008

You must always remember that there are many magicians that are weaving spells to influence your perception or model of the world. While discovering their true intentions may prove impossible, we each have a personal responsibility to recognize that such things are constantly happening to us and to develop the appropriate faculties to deal with them.

As always, we choose our reactions to all input.

The industrial world appears to be entering into hard times as we begin to face off with a lessening supply of easy-to-extract energy. Also, as more and more populations step up and demand that they have every right to live like Americans, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the status quo. Last year, the IEA took its usually starry-eyed gaze away from the horizon of endless growth and told us that an energy crunch is coming. Today the Dutch Clingendael Institute released a report stating that it’ll be here by 2010.

I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons today in honor of the late Gary Gygax.  It was fascinating, and unlike any other game I had ever played.  Screw video games, guys - nothing can replace the imagination of an adept dungeon master.

I’ve been reading Bill Moyer’s new book, Moyers on Democracy, which once again prompted me to begin thinking about my own personal philosophy and values. I’ve put a lot of thought into it, but have never really tried to write it down in a coherent manner. I have always worried that doing so would pin myself to a specific ideology or creed, but perhaps I am mistaken and can benefit from the labor.

Before beginning, it should be understood that whatever I may write below is intended to apply only to myself. I have no interest in dictating how every other citizen of the world should think, nor do I think myself capable of producing a Utopian philosophy for everyone’s benefit. In fact, perhaps the only thing that I will get correct in this essay is that realization.

This leads to my first point: I am, and will always be a student. Mastery is not obtainable. Since I was a child, I have immersed myself in books of all variety and cannot imagine ever stopping. I love to listen and to be proven wrong, no matter how much it can sting. When someone approaches me and offers to teach me something, particularly something that I’m uncomfortable with, I cheer. This sort of thing happens every day - no matter how well I think I am doing, I always know that it can be better.

It is my job to keep learning, and to keep refining myself. No one else will ever do it for me, and I can never do this for anyone else. The responsibility is in my hands.

One of the best ways to learn is by doing. As an example, if one is curious about various political philosophies, don’t just read about them, but take up their banners. I’ve worn the clothes of conservatism, liberalism, and libertarianism, and have learned a great deal from each. There is no doubt that doing so has been difficult and uneven, mostly due to social pressure, but I’ve gotten better at it as time goes on.

Coinciding with the previous point is belief in personal responsibility. I own my actions and reactions. I own all all of these angers and fears that I project on to my poor friends, family, and colleagues. It is my responsibility to both evoke and banish whatever demons I have, and it is also my right to reject those of others.

I have a hard time believing that I could really do much good to my neighbors without a lot of introspection, and strongly think that one should temper themselves as a blacksmith does with his creations. Only through making a lot of mistakes could I have come to this conclusion.

Don’t get me wrong - this isn’t a cry for self-flagellation, but only for honest personal analysis. There is a lot of strangeness lurking in the background mind of Western Man, and it can only be realized and integrated through honest and willing effort.

Beyond the psychological responsibilities comes the necessity of local action. I think it is wisest to act within your sphere of influence, meaning that I need to make sure that I have my act together and am doing my best before I demand anything from anyone else. I used to spend a lot of time bitching about the President, Congress, etc, making statements such “Well, if they would only do this…”, “If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely…”, “If they didn’t have their heads so far up their asses…” - I think you get the point. Somehow I figured out to try and do better than that.

Being concerned with Peak Oil, for instance, I figured that I should make sure that I am in a position to weather an energy crunch. For starters, I had to figure out how to grow some veggies. What is involved there? How hard is it? How much do I need to supplement what I get from the current industrial food system? I have occasional problems with heartburn - is there something that I can grow that can take care of it? What about headaches?

All of this is certainly small scale stuff, but while government assistance or intervention could certainly help a lot, I think we are wasting our time waiting on that. I am of the opinion that the hackers will make the real innovation. Refine yourself, take action, and then begin influencing your neighbors.

The final point that I am going to jot down is one of fellowship or service. Considering the importance that I place on personal responsibility, and the relentless public shouting match of conservatism versus liberalism, it may seem contradictory. I consider it to be a necessity. I believe that equilibrium between individualism and community is just as important as the balance between mercy and strength. While I encourage private charity, I am also entirely supportive of public services such as health care, social security, and welfare.

It is easy to forget, especially when things are going good, that I owe a lot of people for where I am. So much of what I do is built upon the labor of others and of previous generations. In fact, as a sysadmin, most of the tools and services I use are provided by others. I just figure out how to make them work in our context and band-aid them when they break.

I believe that it is necessary to help those in need as we can. Things go bad for people, and there are an amazing amount of them that slip through the cracks. Seriously. Don’t forget about that, and don’t give me that bullshit about it all being their own fault. There are abusers, without a doubt, but there are those who are victims of circumstance. It could be you, and if things continue to degrade as they appear to be doing right now, it may very well be.

That is the end of the road for this essay, but probably the beginning of a new revision. Is it self-aggrandizing? It’s not meant to be, but later reading might show me otherwise. For now, I’d say it was worth writing if only for the sake of forcing me to collect me thoughts.

A customer of ours ran into some trouble when their Microsoft database server crashed and damaged their production database. All that they were able to recover from the wreckage was the original mdf and ldf files, and had to bring it up on another server. When trying to attach this database, the new server screamed claiming that the log file could not be replayed due to damage. Unfortunately, some critical changes had been put in place after their last backup, so restoring from tape was less than desirable.

Knowing that there was a fair chance at seeing data loss, we still figured we’d try and repair the database for them. I was up for the challenge, as it has been a while since I’ve had to do such a thing. I had to stumble around a bit, so I figured I’d post a simple guide for others. Again, this method is not guaranteed to restore your database with all data intact. You’ll need to run sanity checks against the data to make sure you’re not missing anything.

I’m a really lucky guy, and if you doubt it you may read why.

Earlier this morning, Eric was kind enough to let me know that the next 2600 conference / convention is taking place in July.

I just signed up. There are three days of scheduled talks, many of which sound very good or at least very interesting. A sample:

• Advanced Memory Forensics: Releasing the Cold Boot Utilities
• Building Hacker Spaces Everywhere: Your Excuses are Invalid
• Citizen Engineer - Consumer Electronics Hacking and Open Source Hardware
• Crippling Crypto: The Debian OpenSSL Debacle
• Death Star Threat Modeling
• Earth Intelligence Network: World Brain as EarthGame
• The Emperor is Naked
• Exploration of Possibilities: Brain Hacking
• Ghetto IDS and Honeypots for the Home User
• Hackers and Planet Earth
• Hacking Cool Things with Microcontrollers
• Hacking Democracy: An In Depth Analysis of the ES&S Voting Systems
• Hacking the Price of Food: An Urban Farming Renaissance
• Kitchen Hack Lab: Interactive Food Disassembly
• No-Tech Hacking
• “Off the Grid” Voice/Data Communications
• PGP versus PKI
• Port Knocking and Single Packet Authorization: Practical Deployments
• Social Engineering
• VLANs Layer 2 Attacks: Their Relevance and Their Kryptonite
• XSS Vectored MITM Attacks: Vulnerability Assessment

Wow. That’s a lot of awesomeness.

Anyone else wanna come play?

I turned 28 today, and I think I can actually say that I feel older. I’ve been feeling that way all year, and it is hopefully for the best.

It has been a time for growth and progress. Shortly after my last birthday, I made the decision to adopt a personal philosophy of ‘model agnosticism’, meaning that I will never again accept a given belief system as the absolute Truth, nor will I allow myself to be lured into thinking that there is a way for man to have access to such a thing. I will allow myself to use different models as they seem appropriate, but will do my best to remember not to confuse the map with the territory. So, um, sorry to all you religious fundamentalists, scientific materialists, and die hard Republicans and Democrats, but I doubt I’ll be hanging in your club houses any longer.

The idea is pretty simple: we appear to live in a mostly subjective universe, meaning that we are constantly modeling it and its denizens in our minds. Because our model or map will always be less complete than the real thing (we cannot know all of the details), we therefore do not have access to the Truth.  

Know that this is neither a license for nihilism nor one for picking and choosing various beliefs just to make myself happy (I’m sure there is an ‘ism’ for that, I just don’t know what it is).  I have been able to explore various systems in earnest, and have discovered a degree of liberty previously unknown to me.

I gave up meat eating for nearly six months, and learned about the wonderful world of vegetables that I had previously considered to be a side dish. While not lasting at it (damn you, steak!), I would say that at least 70% of the food I now consume is non-meat.

Several years ago, I decided that my musical talents were no more and that I had grown out of it for one reason or another. In February an opportunity presented itself, and I teamed up with Paul to see if I could turn my conception around. Although we did not complete our album, I was able to see that just by donning the garb of the musician, I was actually able to produce something. Our results, far from complete, are here.

With the world seemingly ecologically strained, I decided to investigate my model for interacting with it. It turns out that I mostly considered nature to be a cute amenity (despite any big talk I had done in the past) rather than the necessity it is. I take much for granted, particularly when it comes to necessities such as food production. Things are very different when you decide to revere nature and consider industrial civilization to be the amenity. I have taken an interest in the nutrient cycle, and have decided to attempt to grow some of my own food in an urban environment to understand just how much work is involved on both ends. It has been inspiring, and I hope to go further with this and explore the basics of herbalism and natural remedies down the road.

I abandoned the idea of having to go to the gym to be healthy, and put a simple home exercise program in place. Rather than lifting weights or running on the treadmill, I am spending 20 minutes in the morning doing an aerobic workout derived from Hatha Yoga known as the Five Rites. I doubt that this routine will ever bulk me up, but it has improved my muscle strength and most certainly improved my general well being. I feel great after completing the exercises (not to mention hungry!), and can notice the difference on days that I skip them.

Possibly one of the more personally important results of all of this has been a reintegration of sorts with my spiritual roots.  As a child, I was brought up in a Protestant Christian tradition, and held it in high regard.  I thought that somewhere, quite possibly hidden within, was a map to personal growth and greater insight.  That innocence lasted until age 12 when my family moved to Oklahoma City and I began having regularly arguments with the fundamentalists and their apparent love of eternal damnation for those that were not club members.  I spent years trying to find ways to either prove that they were wrong or reconcile our points of view, but could not.  I was trapped in my model, and they were trapped in theirs.  Bitterness set in, and I ultimately mirrored the fundamentalists by choosing sides with scientific materialism. I have to admit that it was fun scoffing at some of those people and their complete disregard of scientific insight and common sense, but in the end the ‘New Atheist’ crowd appeared to be just as self-congratulating and as divisive.

After figuring out that I have both the ability and the responsibility to change my point of view, I decided to explore the metaphysical once more. Having a certain amount of love for the Hermetic movement that flourished during the Renaissance, I began pouring over as much material as I could get my hands on. I figured that I could grow with a model that both proposed a metaphysical map and demand that the student verify it with actual work. Wow. Who else says that? Even nicer, the tradition tends to be syncretic, and I could therefore align a lot of the finer points of the Judeo-Christian tradition with it. The Rosicrucians did just that. It was also a bonus that a lot of the Hermetic concepts meshed well with the Jungian school of psychology, a system of thought that I have a layman’s fascination with.

I have chosen the eight limbs of Raja Yoga to be part of my toolset for this adventure. While I am still only working (and at times struggling) with the first few limbs, there have been some interesting results. My general stress levels have been reduced, I am not nearly as cynical as I had once been, and my acid reflux disease of ten years has vanished. Whether this approach will lead towards gnosis or not is yet to be seen, but it has already shown its value.

All of this model-shifting business has taught me a lot about humility. I recall several older generations of this blog, in which I’d regularly write scathing commentary on either political, technological, or religious affairs. When doing that, I was often just working to validate your own model. You become that much more entrenched. I just don’t think I can do that anymore. Sure, I have opinions, and I have my bad days - but whenever I begin to point out the flaws in others, I am now starting to see them in myself.

This all makes me wonder how this next year will turn out. Tune in!

We had to put our wonderful dog, Sassey, to rest today. She was 15 years old, and while not having any skill (or perhaps interest) in obedience, she was certainly a fantastic companion.

We all trekked across the country together, stopping here or there for a while.

She taught me a lot. Through our small adventures, she really helped me understand what was important to me: simple and true friendship. I haven’t got many, but the friends (and family) I do have are gold to me. A sometimes crazy, sometimes drunken kind of gold, but still worth more than anything else I know of.

Eventually, like all of us, she needed to rest from her travels. We miss her dearly.