A hirsute tale

Sometime in April, one misstep led to another and after nearly 42 clean-shaven years, I decided to find out what nature had blessed (or cursed) me with in the facial-hair department.

Within a week I'd blown past The George Michael (greasy kids' stuff) and with shaggy grays coming in, I was hurtling towards The Dr. K.

(Whereupon, let us pause for the
[famous] 1996 haiku:
Open your present
No, you open your present
Kaczynski Christmas)

By the 6- or 7-week mark, I started getting the occasional compliment. (It was all polite silence before.) I took a couple of self-portraits. Still, I continued to hear a little involuntary shriek every time I passed one colleague's office.

One comment I received: "You're looking more and more like your Savior!" High praise indeed. I'd been leading a class using the "Gospel of John" film of 2003, ... so I know I could never approach THAT hunky look (or so Suvia tells me). But on rereading the prophet Isaiah, I perceived the commenter's devious intent:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

At about the 60-day mark, I began to worry that -ummm- The Charles Darwin was looming. And beyond that, what -- The Billy Gibbons? It was time for a trim. But wait; I'd started the beard in hopes of avoiding that kind of maintenance.

...so I chickened out. Beard's gone. I sort of miss it already: I never realized I had such a weak chin! Here, then, is the conclusion of the matter: some are genetically gifted; beards are for the rest of us. I think I'm growing a new one already.

Sheep Chutes / Earth As Art

[clearing the backlog...] On my recent trip I can't say I experienced Sioux Falls in any meaningful way -- too short a trip. I did, however, bring a camera with me; and on the way to my meeting I skidded to a stop to take the photo at left. Not something you see everyday in the Washington suburbs.

My destination there was the NASA/USGS data center and satellite receiving station, where I learned over lunch that the Landsat "Earth as Art" collections are now online at full resolution: dozens of beautifully rendered views of the planet, each 8,000x8,000 pixels (give or take), freely available for any use you care to dream up. Thought you'd like to know.

On Bullshit

On a recent business trip (to Sioux Falls, SD), I read (and reread (it's that short)) H.G. Frankfurt's "On Bullshit." I'd been curious about this book ever since I saw it on a "church planter's reading list" somewhere. Given my long-time involvement in federal bureaucracy and information technology consulting, the book rang very true in several places:

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

... Been there; done that; it's amazing what one can get away with on PowerPoint slides. I've seen plenty of speech that "ignores the demands of the truth" in the workplace, and even in church leadership; and I've produced my share of it and then some. It's so prevalent that we hardly even notice it creep into our talking and writing. I try to cut through it to verifiable facts and clear, precise, neutral language; but it's often a challenge. The damage has already been done -- as Frankfurt describes:

Telling lies does not unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person's normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost.

Yup. Been there. I can remember 'way back to my senior thesis presentation (20 years ago this month!) when I mixed lab-bench results with values that would have been nice to have. What looked like "proof" was just my playing "what-if" with a pocket calculator. My thesis advisor just nodded approvingly; but he wasn't too pleased when he found out the truth as he was giving me my grade. The mix-up wasn't intentional -- just careless on my part. (Oops, bullshit alarm going off again...)

i bought a crap detector, it emptied all my savings
it's got a hair trigger feel for the slightest provocation
not there to spill blood or judge out of line
it's just a modern convenience to save you some time
- Bill Mallonee, Earth Has No Sorrow