Ones and Zeros

Some years ago I ran a marathon.  I wasn’t fast, but I wasn’t near the last one either.  I want to run one again too so I have an interest in marathons.  Many American runners are, in a more competitive way, like me in that they’re not fast.  Or not fast enough.

But for the first time in quite a while, an American has won the NYC marathon in 2 hours 9 minutes and 15 seconds.  There were also more Americans in the top ten that in a very long while too.

But a CNBC commentator referred to this as an “empty win” saying that Meb Keflezighi is a “ringer” because he’s a naturalized American instead of native born.  The next day the commentator backpedaled and tried to correct himself.

Let’s get in straight: By constitution, law, and tradition, you’re an American if you’re either born here or if you take the oath of citizenship.  That’s it.  Keflezighi is as American as anyone is.  The sole difference is a legal one having to do with the ability to become President, this is limited to native-born citizens.  And that was muddied by the last election in which Sen McCain was unchallenged in this despite being born outside US boundaries.

Frankly, it was no effort for me to become American.  As I was born here it was a birthright.  But for Keflezighi and many others citizenship is an earned right.

Changing countries isn’t easy and it can be a one-way street.  It requires a willingness to start over and create a new life for yourself in a strange and foreign place.  It means you will understand your children even less than most parents do, and it means you may always feel you don’t fully fit in.  You will have a foot in two countries and two cultures.  But you do it anyhow for your future and your family’s future.  So in many ways a naturalized citizen is one who’s made a real choice and commitment and is in many ways more an American than a native-born citizen who can take it all for granted.

So yes: Meb Keflezighi is a real American.  And he averaged 4 minutes 55 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles.  He has my respect on both counts.

We’ve seen the python invasion of south Florida, and the python hunters of the Everglades. (Hm, that would make a good Discovery Show!) Here’s some recent news:

In this first story, a man steals a ferret by putting it in his pants in Jax Beach. He must have really wanted that ferret! I like to keep biting animals further away from delicate parts of my anatomy. Of course then the thief uses the ferret as a weapon which makes the ferret a special weapon in FL law. And gets an additional charge for the thief too.

And, in Panama Beach, a Fish and Wildlife officer lost a gator at an elementary school. How’s that for a bad day? He took the gator to his daughter’s school for show-and-tell. The gator jumped out of the truck. In more recent news it looks like they found it.

This last isn’t animal, but vegetable. In a protest, some Lantana FL residents are mailing coconuts in an effort to preserve their post office. The residents are saying closing the post office would be nuts, so they’re sending coconuts. But at several hundred coconuts being sent at $4 each, any budget issues may be relieved.

Recently the Congress passed and President Obama signed “The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” that extends federal hate-crime law to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It also extends the act to cover more activities, strengthens prosecution possibilities and provides funding for prosecution.

Like Maddow said in her report on this, “elections have consequences”. I’ve made it clear several times that I don’t like how Obama is governing in some areas. But credit where credit is due: this bill has been blocked for years now and it’s under the current Congress and President that it was passed and signed into law.

I got this idea Friday.  I would do a Cylon pumpkin with the red LED eye-scanner moving back and forth.  A quick google search and I found that others had done the same thing.  I even found code for the Arduino board to do this.  (Ok, I’ll tweak the time constants, I thought his was scanning too fast.  It looked like an anxious cylon to me.)

My wife had bought some great pumpkins so all I needed was ten bright red LEDs.  I have ten LEDs already, but of miscellaneous colors and brightnesses.  Off to Radio Shack, or “Shack” as they oddly call themselves now after a basket-ball player.

Of course, Radio Shack doesn’t have them.  And what they do have is poorly organized, the bin labels don’t match the contents. The sales guy took pity on me and called their other stores.  No one had them.  Some don’t even carry parts anymore.  There are no other stores that might carry stuff like this either.

Radio Shack is moving to selling just cell phones, cameras, and other consumer electronics.  There are a number of other stores that do that better, Best Buy for example.  And there are numerous online sources as well.  Yet, the burgoning “maker” movement of hacking, tinkering, customizing, and creating your own electronics has only online sources for parts and materials in most areas.  Radio Shack is missing a potential market by their rush to what everyone else is doing.

In Silicon Valley, Austin, and other reasonably techy areas, there is Fry’s Electronics.  But here in the Wash, DC area, there’s nothing.  It’s a desert wasteland of unavailability.  This is the way things are in most of the U.S.

Industry and government figures wring their hands sometimes over the lack of engineers and scientists that the US creates.  We import both from India, China, Europe, and Africa.  Fortunately enough want to stay to keep us all in GPS toys and more important things, although that seems to be changing.

The thing is that taking things apart, experimenting, playing with parts, and maybe building something new and tinkering in general is important.  Tinkering leads to design, design leads to engineering, and engineering can lead to scientific inquiry.  But tinkering begins with parts.  No parts, nothing to tinker with.

A lack of easily available parts is directly affecting the next generation’s engineering and scientific abilities.