Goodbye Ann Arbor!

I have been working on packing my house all week, and even have had some help doing so (thank you Laura!). Tomorrow, I pack the truck up, and Sunday I drive down to Virginia. I'm starting to pack up all of the computers, so this is going to be my last blog entry for about a week or two. I'm going to really miss living in Ann Arbor. My friends have been especially wonderful. And despite the lousy winter weather, it is a wonderful place to live. My hope is that I will be able to move back here in a couple of years.

The Mexico Problem

Lately, there has been a lot of talk on Capitol Hill about immigration reform. Bills have been submitted in the House and Senate that would improve border security, make it easier to immigrate legally, and nominate English as the preferred language. Unfortunately, it is highly likely that any legislation that is passed will not solve the problem. Under the current system of enforcement, if an illegal alien is detained by either Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), then provided that detainee beds are available, the illegal alien is detained and then deported back to his or her country of origin. For individuals from certain countries (such as Mexico), they may subject to the Expedited Removal process, and will be home within a week. The illegal alien can turn right around and sneak right back into the country. Other than being detained for a few days, there is no incentive for a Mexican national to not try coming right back. Even if we build a fence along the entire border, it is likely that the fence will be cut, scaled over, or knocked down.

So how do we deter Mexican nationals from sneaking into the country? The Soviet approach of shooting people crossing the border was effective, but is blantantly immoral. If we charge illegal immigrants with a felony (as the House bill attempts to do) and jail them, the United States will bear a significant cost in imprisoning millions of illegals. If the Mexican economy was as prosperous as ours, then there would be no need for Mexicans to illegally enter our country. Unfortunately, there is little that we can do to fix their economy without violating Mexico's sovereignty. And as the unification of East and West Germany showed, fixing broken economies can take decades.

The country that should have the primary responsibility for fixing the problem is Mexico. The Mexican government is best situated for fixing the problem. It could beef up border security. It could imprison people it caught trying to sneak over the border. It could heavily tax Western Union wire transfers coming into the country. However, the Mexican government doesn't want to fix the problem. In the current situation, it has effectively outsourced the responsibility for fixing its unemployment problems to the United States. And it reaps rewards as the money flows from illegals back to their families at home. And thus, not only does Mexico say, "it's not our problem", it has actively aided illegals coming to the United States.

So the solution to the problem is to find a way to pressure the Mexican government into taking responsibility for the problem. There doesn't seem to be an easy solution. The United States could threaten to leave NAFTA and impose draconian tarriffs unless the Mexican government stepped up to the plate. Unfortunately, if such tarriffs were imposed, the Mexican economy might collapse and there would be millions more desperate people trying to cross into the United States. So it seems that finding a good carrot is better than using the stick. But no matter what, Washington needs to look at every interaction with Mexico as a way of applying pressure on the Mexican government.

The Weeds are Allowed to Flourish

The Internet generally operates in a decentralized manner, which is why you can add network equipment in your house without needing to coordinate it with anybody. However, there are two types of network resources that are centralized: internet addresses and domain names. A non-profit organization known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers manages these resources. The organization has a contract from the United States Department of Commerce, but is contractually required to be an independent organization.

ICANN had been considering a proposal at create a ".xxx" top level domain (ie. like ".com" and ".org") that could be used to register domain names for porn sites and other "adult" material. The new domain would have had two consequences. The first is that it would make it easier for people to locate porn sites. The second is that it would have been easy to create new versions of web browsers that could avoid going to any site with a ".xxx" extension. Companies could even wildcard split-horizon DNS to poison the entire ".xxx" domain internally.

A centralized top-level domain might have had other positive consequences too. If porn-seekers could easily find what they were looking for, then perhaps the porn sites might have less incentive to use underhanded means to draw visitors. This ranges from spam to search term manipulation, and other annoying techniques. Further, it would be easier to filter out results that pointed to suspect sites. ISP's could even require that porn-clients resolve their addresses into the .xxx domain.

The proposal was going along well at ICANN, when suddenly ICANN voted against the proposal. It is now coming out that the United States Government pressured ICANN into voting down the proposal. This pressure was the result of lobbying by Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. After Karl Rove met with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Administration turned the screws on ICANN.

Apparently, the benefits of people being able to filter out the porn-sites weren't good enough, because the proposal would have made it easier for people wanting porn to find it. James Dobson would like to see an Internet without porn. I would too, but I also know that is not achievable. As long as the demand is there, porn will spring up like weeds. To use a TV analogy, it's easy to avoid the Playboy channel. But if the Playboy channel content was interspersed randomly with all the other channels (and some would say it is), it is much harder to avoid.

Oh, and with regards to the "Protect the Children" line: the kids know where this stuff is better than the adults do. They IM links to their favorites sites to each other. A separate domain would have given parents a chance to at least filter 30% of this junk out. Now thanks to James Dobson, the parents have a zero chance of being able to do this. James Dobson should stick to providing advice on how to raise kids, and leave the technical solutions to people who understand the technology.

What bothers me most is that the US Government pressured ICANN in their vote. The US Government has always claimed that it would take a "hands-off" role for the net. Now it has given the supporters of a UN-controlled net some leverage. And a UN-controlled net would be very bad for everyone.

The Code is Out There

As I mentioned in my posting from last night, I saw The Da Vinci Code yesterday afternoon. The movie has ignited a lot of controversy in Christian religious circles. Some groups have orchestrated boycotts, some groups are trying to ignore it, and a few have suggested that people see the movie in order to provide a discussion point for talking about Christianity with their friends and neighbors. The movie is a blend of distorted history coupled with fiction. The movie follows a typical plot of a conspiracy-theory thriller, with the typical villian (like the Illuminati, or secret spy agencies, or the Skull and Bones) replaced with the Catholic Church and a conservative Catholic group called Opus Dei. Oddly enough, the movie was predictable enough that halfway through, the viewer can figure out what the big secret really is.

There are two assertions made in the movie that are interesting from a theological perspective. The first is that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus, and that she was pregnant when Jesus was crucified. The second is that Jesus was a mortal man, and that assertions of his divinity were produced during the fourth century.

The first assertion is the most interesting, and yet oddly enough, the most irrelevant from a theological perspective. There is nothing that directly supports this theory in the gospels, but there is nothing that contradicts it either. If such an assertion were true, it would not change biblical truth, nor would it conflict with any of the Church creeds. It might shed light on why Mary Magdalene keeps appearing in the gospels, despite having been written in a culture that ignored women. On the other hand, most scholars don't think this assertion is likely.

The second assertion refers to the controversy raised by Arius in the fourth century. Arius believed that if the Son was begotten by the Father, then it meant that only the Father was timeless, and that the Son was created. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 rejected this view, and the Nicene Creed is carefully worded specifically to address this issue. Contrary to the movie's assertions, Arius didn't contend that Jesus was just a mortal prophet. Rather, his heresey was concerning the precise relationship between the Father and the Son.

At its core, The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction with an anti-Catholic bias. The movie will probably have an unintended side effect, which is to promote the discussion of the nature of God, the arguments at Nicaea, and the history of the Christian faith. If this happens, then perhaps the movie isn't a bad thing after all.

It's From Long Island...

I went up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to celebrate Megan's 21st birthday. The weather in Pittsburgh was cold and rainy, and I really wished I had brought a jacket. We did dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe at Station Square, and that was pretty fun. It seemed very appropriate because we had also celebrated Megan's 18th birthday there too. Afterwards, we went down to the South Side for the traditional bar crawl. Most of the bars were crowded but tolerable. However, at our last stop, the place was so packed with people that there wasn't even enough room to even inhale. It's amazing that people don't mind being packed into a place with no room to move.

I didn't end up getting much sleep last night. We were staying at the Sheraton at Station Square, which is a really nice hotel. Unfortunately, it has the drawback of being fifty feet from a major freight train line, and the rooms with the skyline view of Pittsburgh are closest to the tracks. And if the trains rumbling through at all hours weren't enough of a disruption, the room next door to us had a lot of little kids, who were running around way too early in the morning.

We went to Dave and Buster's today. For those of you who haven't been there, the best way to describe it is "Chuck-E-Cheese's for adults". The games were fun, although I was a little disappointed that they no longer had the pinball machines.

Went and saw The DaVinci Code this afternoon. That will be worth a long post by itself.

The Sound of Inevitability

It rained all weekend here in Ann Arbor, which probably explains the tiredness I have felt all weekend. The rain kept me from doing all of the lawn work I had originally planned. I had wanted to mow my lawn, since it's looking really bad right now. And a friend of mine had recommended Weed-Be-Gone for my dandelion infestation, so I was planning on applying that. Neither happened, and I'm pretty sure my lawn gets the prize as the worst lawn on the block. My next door neighbor has a fabulous lawn, which just makes mine look even worse. I suppose I shouldn't worry about it too much, since I'm out of here in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of my move, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it is an oncoming train. I have a daunting amount of stuff to do in the four days I'll have in Ann Arbor. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything done. I just can't wait until I'm all done with this.

My Political Rant for the Week

I flew back to Michigan tonight for the weekend, and while it is good to be back, I was a little suprised by how cold it was. I actually had to turn on the heat in the car. What happened to the beautiful May weather? I'm hoping that the rain stops long enough for me to mow my lawn. At the current rate of growth, I'm worried that I'll mow the lawn and find a car on blocks hidden somewhere in it.

US politics have been interesting lately. We had an aide to Representative Ney pleading guilty to taking bribes. We have lots of congressmen running for cover. A senior administration official had his house searched by the FBI as part of a corruption investigation. With the President's approval rating falling below thirty percent, the President is shaking up his administration. Some of the choices the President has made for recent nominees have been downright ridiculous. And now press reports claim that the government has obtained the phone records of ordinary American citzens.

I suspect that elections this fall will be very interesting. I wonder how many Americans are paying attention to the news. Will they reelect a group of Republicans who don't care about laws, civil liberties, and fiscal responsibility, or are they going to elect a whole slew of tax-and-spend liberal Democrats? Either way, I think the country is in trouble. Sadly, I would rather pay higher taxes for a bloated welfare state if the government actually cared about civil liberties. Twelve years ago, we had a group of politicians who were advocating balanced budgets, states rights, term limits, and clean government. Unfortunately, those people have either left (ie. the ones who actually believed in term limits), or let themselves get co-opted by the system. I wish we could find some idealistic conservative politicians again. The country needs them.

Random Musings in the Key of D

I've been working on getting myself back into shape for a 5K that I'm in this week. I have been increasing my mileage, but last week did something rather dumb. I bought new running shoes, and started using those for my training. Unfortunately, high mileage with new shoes can lead to blisters, and I managed to get a nice one. So I get to work around that this week, and take it easy on the training.

This evening, I tried out a new restaurant in Ann Arbor, La Shish. The restaurant is part of a chain in southeastern Michigan that serves Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. The food was very good. I'm not usually too interested in Hommous, but I definitely liked the Hommous there. My main entree was the Garlic and Almond Ghallaba with Lamb, which was good, but also a lot of food. The entree portions could easily feed two people. La Shish offers carryout (and online ordering), so it could easily be a good alternative for picking up food after work.

I spent a little time today in the ongoing battle with my lawn. My lawn has become infested with dandelions, and they make my unhappy lawn look even worse than it should. So, I got down on my hands and knees and started plucking them out one at a time. I didn't have a weeding tool, but I found that my utility pry bar works wonders as a weeding tool. I managed to get the dandelions completely out of about half my front lawn, and it was a huge improvement over the previous state of affairs. Unfortunately, I had to fly down to DC this evening, so I wasn't able to complete the lawn. I have a bad feeling that by the time I get back this weekend, my lawn will have again succumbed to the weeds.

Would You Frolic in the Arb?

One of my favorite spots in Ann Arbor is the Arb, which is a large nature area in the heart of Ann Arbor. The weather here was beautiful today, so a friend of mine and I decided to hang out in the Arb. I brought along my camera and took lots of pictures. I created a web page using some of the pictures I took today.



On the personal side, not much to catch up for the blog. The past week was pretty busy at work. I have several high priority projects going on right now, and it figures that they would all be needing attention in the month right before I move. I only have another week and a half that I'll be in DC during May, so we'll see how much ends up getting done.

Mayflowers Bring Pilgrims

Yesterday, I drove down to DC from Michigan. It was a very long drive, but it was nice and sunny once I passed Cleveland. I had the sunroof open for several hours, which just added to my nice case of sunburn. I've driven the route between Ann Arbor and DC many times, and yesterday was pretty uneventful. Factoid of the day: northern Ohio has lots of rock music stations, and western Pennsylvania has way too many country music stations. I stopped along the way to have dinner with one of my cousins, and saw the latest renovations to my Aunt and Uncle's house.

I have been away from my principal customer for a week now, so it was rather crazy going back to the office. As usual, there is too much to do, and not enough time (or people) to do it. It looks like this month (or such time as I will be around there) will be busy.

I received some positive feedback on my photos of Gallup Park. I'm planning on taking some photos of the Arb next week, provided that the weather cooperates.

The huge immigrant protest and strike seems to have fizzled here in DC. Media pundits have been going on about how proposed legislation in Congress is anti-immigrant, but in reality, it's anti-illegal-immigrant. We should probably make it easier for Mexican workers to legally come here, since they fill jobs that most Americans don't seem to want. If the workers are here legally, then it will be less likely that they will be exploited by companies looking for cheap labor. But I think we should improve our security so that illegal immigration is reduced, and impose stricter penalties for those caught illegally in the country. I find it disturbing that the official policy of the Mexican government is to assist people in illegally entering this country. They even have a nice color pamphlet on how Mexican citizens can sneak across the border. And for whatever reason, our government sits by and does nothing. Isn't a state-sponsored, deliberate undermining of our national security an act of war?

A interesting part of US law: if an employer hires an individual, believing that individual is legal to work here, and then later suspects that the individual may be here illegally, the employer can do ... nothing! Provided that the documents presented with an individual's I-9 appear genuine, the employer must accept them. Unless Immigration and Customs Enforcement notifies you that the individual is illegal, you are not permitted to otherwise question an individual about their ability to work in the US, besides the initial I-9 certification.