Remembering Poppy Day

This past weekend, while I was out running errands with my daughter, she received a small red flower from a man in front of the grocery store (after I made a small donation into his collection bucket). The gentleman wished us a happy Poppy Day, and my daughter turned to me and asked if she got presents for Poppy Day (obviously confusing these gentlemen with the men who ring the Salvation Army's bells at Christmas time).

Never one to miss the opportunity to give one of my children a civics lesson, I explained to her that the armistice ending The First World War ("The Great War") was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month: November 11th, 1918. I told her that we celebrate this day to honor all of the men and women who have served our country in the military, and that is why she had a long, four-day weekend.

When she asked me, "Why did the men give us a flower?" I told her that these flowers, poppies, grow all over the fields of Flanders (in northern Belgium), where so many of the men who were killed in that war are buried. I told her about the famous poem that commemorates the sacrifice of these men "In Flanders Fields" and while she can only barely comprehend these notions, she understood that the Poppy was symbolic and she proudly wore the flower on her dress the rest of the day.

After having this conversation with my daughter, it struck me that not enough people really know or understand the meaning of the poppy (as a symbol of this day) nor what our vacation day actually commemorates.

To most Americans, Poppy Day is better known as "Veterans Day" honoring all of America's Veterans. Europeans commemorate November 11th as "Armistice Day", while citizens of the Commonwealth know 11/11 as "Remembrance Day", and in Poland armistice day is also celebrated as that country's independence day.

Given that so many countries celebrate this day as a way to honor those who have served their countries as well as those who are serving, how is it that our children (and many of us) have come to "forget" the day's meaning? I could blame the usual cast of characters, our educational system, our consumer-oriented culture, generational changes, or a hugely unpopular war that makes it passé to remember Thomas Jefferson's admonition that "Liberty needs to be watered regularly with the blood of tyrants and patriots."

What is missing isn't a physical space or thing. There are monuments and reminders in nearly every corner of our towns, states and nations commemorating the sacrifices of the men and women in our military. The content of what these men and women have done is certainly not lacking. In fact with the election of the United States' first African-American president (and all of the historical comparisons drawn by our media) there is quite a bit of content and context to accompany these physical objects commemorating our veterans.

The actions that bind the content and these objects together are what are missing. When I was a child all of my friends knew what the poppy stood for. Our grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, and teachers made sure we knew why they wore poppies to church on Sunday or on Veteran's Day. Our pastors recalled the sacrifice made by others when they called upon us for two-minutes of silent remembrance. We knew why we flew our flags on these days and we watched as military color guards raised their flags to half-mast.

Certainly, these actions still happen. But my daughter's question made me realize that they are no longer part of our society's lexicon. The ritual associated with these actions does not exist any longer. Which if not shameful, is at least a shame.

Nearly 10 million military personnel died during The First World War. The poem, "In Flanders Fields", was written by a Canadian military physician, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, to commemorate just one of those deaths. He penned these words on May 13, 1915, in the trenches on the battlefront -- one day after he witnessed the death of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

No matter if you are a hawk or a dove, for or against our current military policies, as you enjoy your day off from work or school, as you curse when you walk to the mailbox only to recall that today isn't a mail day, or hear the mournful wail of a far off bugle playing Taps at a ceremony honoring the service of those men and women who ensure our security, past and present...

Please put a poppy in your lapel, display your flag, or stop and observe 2 minutes of silence at 11:11 A.M. today and let us remember those who gave their "last full measure of devotion" -- in Flanders Fields, and elsewhere.

The Ugly American (REVIEW)

The Ugly American by William J. Lederer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first encountered this book as part of an undergraduate political science class on American politics. Among other long and dry reading assignments, I found myself thoroughly engaged in the book and looking forward to spending time reading Lederer and Burdick's work. In fact, I'd have to say that it has been my favorite book since that political science class almost 25 years ago.

I have read it at least 20 times in those 25 years (often as a source for a paper I was writing, but also for pleasure). While this is not a typical "beach read" I have re-read it while traveling and at the beach on several occasions. This past week I was on a business trip and sleeping in a hotel room. This combination of factors is usually good for a bout of insomnia on my part, and this trip was no different. Lederer and Burdick came to my rescue yet again and provided a thoroughly enjoyable way to pass through several hours of insomnia.

The story(ies) centers on a fictional country in Southeast Asia named Sarkhan. The book's chapters compare and contrast the competence and incompetence on the part of the diplomats, politicos, military officers and ex-pats in Sarkham. Heroes include Ambassador Gilbert McWhite, John Colvin, and Homer Atkins (THE ugly American) -— all men who took the time to learn the culture in which they were being planted.

It is easy (now, with 20/20 hindsight) to see this book as a parable stemming from the Vietnam War. However, the book was written well before American stepped up its involvement in Vietnam (in 1958) and was purportedly read by President Eisenhower and responsible for many of the reforms that he introduced into America's foreign aid programs. The general thesis of the authors was that US diplomats (and other foreign station workers/advisors) who failed to study and adapt to the cultures they were entering, were doomed to failure (or worse). Worse still, the American bureaucracy wasn't interested in the opinions of the Foreign Service staff that did study and understand the cultures into which they were placed.

Given that this book was written at the tail end of the McCarthy era, the insights of Lederer and Burdick are quite exceptional (if fact, some government agencies sought to ban the book in Asia and in many ways that (failed) effort can be seen as one of the last "scenes" of the McCarthy era). Burdick and Lederer are at once, tongue in cheek, cynical and satirical in their views of American foreign policy

Every time that I read this book, I can't put it down. Despite its age, it is still a fine read and certainly has additional significance in today's world as the U.S. fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although some parts of the book are antiquated (in particular the parochial way the authors treat the few female characters -- especially the Marie MacIntosh character), that small niggle can be forgiven to a book that retains its readability and relevance 50 years after it was first published.

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Stranger in a Strange Land (REVIEW)

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember reading _Stranger In A Strange Land_ as a young high school student in the late 70s. At the time, the story appealed to my changing state (as an adult, I think I can finally admit that the adolescent young man who read this book the first time, did so because my friends told me it was filled with lots of sex scenes). I also remember that despite Heinlein's writing found it a difficult book to read as a result I "skipped" around looking for the "good" parts (which are all in the second half of the book).

However some (other) passages in the book did leave an impression on me during that first read. Heinlein's railing against the parochialism of the Church (and the Catholic Church in particular) was certainly instrumental in shaping my views on religion and partially contributed to some of my more existential leanings (I'd also note that the criticism leveled at Heinlein for passing off his impressions/views/ideas as fact is certainly warranted).

So, when I found myself stuck in the Charlotte, NC airport for 5 hours this weekend (awaiting a 5 hour flight home to LA) I surprised myself by deciding to buy the Ace (trade paperback) version of Stranger In A Strange Land and re-read it -- in retrospect, I am ambivalent that I took the time to re-read the book.

The protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, is a child born on Mars to two of the crew of the first human expedition to that planet; he is raised by the Martians when a catastrophe wipes out the adults of the expedition. Years later, another expedition to Mars results in contact with the Martians and Michael's return to Earth, completely innocent of knowledge about the planet. The greater part of the novel details his attempts to understand human nature from his Martian philosophical perspective (which is rather like that of Eastern philosophy); these end in his foundation of a new religion to help human beings achieve their full potential which hitherto has been impossible because of the straitjacket of human culture.

The book makes me think, which now (that I am considerably past my adolescence) I appreciate much more. It can be slow in parts (most of the book is dialogue with very little or no action), but (and I'm not sure if it is my age, or the fact that Ace added back in 30,000 words to this edition that weren't in the copy I read 30 years ago) much more readable than the first time through.

Some parts, especially in the second half of the text, result in disturbing thought patterns, even now. The concept that all human morals are arbitrary (which is how the "Martian" Valentine Michael Smith views them) and that anything that leads one to "grow closer" is good -- also leads down a slippery slope where moral objections to murder, and other heinous things, can be downplayed (in the name of the collective growing closer). While these attacks on Western culture don't seem quite as shocking as they must have been back in the 1960s, other parts of the book are just preachy and long-winded. The international intrigue and world government sub-plot of the first half of the book are more interesting to me now than they were on my first read (but ultimately unfulfilled as Valentine Michael Smith escapes to become the messiah like character of the second half of the book).

It would be easy to write this classic of science fiction off as a novel of the hippie era and relegate it to the dustbin (and history could still do that). However, the somewhat unique premise of analyzing human culture from an alien point of view as well as the fact that the novel forever broke (maybe bridged) the barrier between science fiction and mainstream literature, put it into the classic (must read at least once) category. By all means, read it and form your own opinion. Or better yet, (re)read Starship Troopers!


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An Army at Dawn (REVIEW)

An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is the first of Atkinson's three-book "Liberation Trilogy" series, which provides an overview of the campaigns that eventually led to the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi occupation.

Above all else, the book's historical narrative is so well written that it simply refuses to let the reader loose from its pages. It will be hard to put it down until the job is finished and the book is completed. Atkinson's writing is very well executed and unlike many books covering military operations, the story he weaves is consistent, clear and a pleasure to read.

This title covers the North African theater from Operation Torch in 1942 until the last German and Italian troops were evacuated or captured in Tunisia in 1943. The North African campaign is frequently seen as a backwater and doesn't receive the attention of the later Italian, Normandy and Bulge campaigns. However Atkinson's thesis is that every subsequent Allied (or at least the U.S. Army) victory, would not have been possible if the Allies had not attacked North Africa first.

The author shows the US Army's maturation as the crucible of battle transforms the men of the raw American war machine from a gang of inexperienced citizen-soldiers into a highly effective, efficient, and well led army that lead the defeat of Germany's vaunted Wehrmacht in Western Europe.

Covering the North African campaign at the operational and strategic levels, Atkinson's text does a terrific job illustrating the leadership problems of coalition armies. Showing that the Allies did not just "click" because they were united in opposition to Hitler's Axis powers. The text discusses the tensions that existed between the American and British leadership and does a good job of giving General Eisenhouer "his due" as the right man, in the right place, at the right time (albeit one who had to learn his job and role). That Atkinson does so, with such a wealth of intimate detail, is clearly the result of many hours of research into contemporary first-person resources -- as evidenced by the hefty section of notes found at the end of the book.

My only criticism of the book is that the graphics (maps and illustrations) are a little sparse (in particular the maps) and while they do an adequate job of illustrating the text, I wish they were more detailed. However, Atkinson's book is absolutely a recommended read, so get a good atlas and dig right in.


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I Miss Green Bar Paper and Fixed-Pitch Fonts...

I have to admit, that I am pretty old school, at least that is what my staff (and kids) tell me... As much as I like, and embrace, technology (managing technology and IT types being a significant portion of my work responsibility), I still prefer printed books to digital ones, I prefer file folders stuffed with papers to 300 page PDF documents (of the same stuff).  Paper has a tactile quality that is simply something that a computer will never be able to replicate.

As a result of my fondness for paper, I go through frequent paper purges in my office. Essentially, trying to digitize documents so they are retrievable records of the work we handle--today happened to be one of those days.

As I was digging through one old file folder, I found several really old reports from when I used to work at a subsidiary of the Atlantic Richfield Company (one of my first "real" jobs after college).  The reports themselves were nothing spectacular, but they made me nostalgic none-the-less.  These reports were old school spreadsheets printed on line printers in our data center and were printed on green bar paper in a monospaced font. Ahhhh, the "good ole' days."

Back in the "day" most people did not have PCs on their office desktops.  Most of us had a terminal that was networked to a mainframe in the data center (and if we did have a PC, we were using it like a terminal).  There was fairly robust spreadsheet software on these mainframe systems, but it wasn't like the WYSIWYG applications that are used today.  Then, when you printed a report, it went into a queue and you had to get up from your desk and walk to the data center to pick it up (although if you were high enough on the corporate food chain, the report would be delivered to you). 

The entry level (from a skill perspective) just to get to the data from the mainframe was pretty high (you had to actually know and understand how the data was stored to retrieve it).  But then to to format that data into a useable report, well, you really had to understand more about how computers are programmed/work than you do with today's high level programming languages and GUIs.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Macintosh and its elegant GUI. I am glad that many more people can utilize spreadsheet, word processing and database software to create reports, and I believe those are skill sets that should be taught in our secondary education system (although, I also believe that PowerPoint maybe the root of all evil...but I'll save that for a different post).  I am also happy that printers are cheap and ubiquitous (and that we recycle a lot more paper now, so we "kill" fewer trees).

The problem is, that with all of the tools and options we have today, too few people know how to really use them.  Rather than the intuitive GUIs and WYSIWYG applications truly bringing computing power to the masses, enabling the end user to produce a report that is concise, clear and too the point, too many people spend too much time worried about how the report looks, and not the actual content of the report.  Or (only slightly less worse) they can not use the most rudimentary of tools inside of these applications to perform simple tasks.

Looking at this old report, I remembered that it was in this particular position that I discovered that I had a somewhat unique technical skill that my peers (and supervisors) lacked.  The ability to translate between "geek speak" (before the popular GeekSpeak radio/pod-cast was glimmer in anyone's eye) and English. This skill has propelled me throughout my career, for which I am thankful. But its has also held me back (in some circles)--as I am perceived as the office's "go to tech guy..."

In fact, just the other day, I was instructed to change the fonts on all reports going to one of our high level executives.  When I asked why, the answer came back: "That is the font he prefers reading internal reports in" (sic). Really?! Are you serious?  I'm trying to re-work a report so that it contains the correct data and you want me to stop and change fonts on 30 reports? This is our priority today? Yes, there is something wrong with this picture...

There is something wrong with the fact that most of the people that work in offices (including mine) don't have the requisite familiarity with the primary business applications that they use on a daily basis (just in the last month, I have shown the same person 6 times how to sum a column of numbers...seriously).  There is something wrong with the fact that many people can't simply format a report (despite all of the WYSIWYG features embedded in our programs) so that it is readable...

Which is why the discovery of that old report made me nostalgic for "the good-ole' days" of green bar paper and mono-spaced fonts.  The fonts were easy to read, clear and unambiguous.  We didn't worry if the font matched our letterhead or wordmark, it was a report after all--its purpose was to convey information first (style wasn't unimportant, the information needed to displayed in a way comprehensible by the user, but it was a distant second, and wasn't really about aesthetics).

All of these observations really make me wonder why we don't have any line printers (or any impact printers for that matter) anymore?! We do have Excel and a bunch of laser printers though, and they do produce more aesthetically pleasing documents (or at least they can). Changing a font to a different fixed-width one is pretty straight forward in most applications (⌘A and change the font) but since that train had already left the station today, simulating green bar paper is my mission...Fortunately all of that WYSIWYG power in Excel can come to the rescue (using the conditional formatting feature)...

So, for those wishing to replicate the shading of green bar paper in Excel, here are some quick instructions: First highlight the rows that you wish to apply the formatting to (you can either do a portion of the spreadsheet or select all rows in the spreadsheet as done here):

image 1: select all sells in spreadsheet

Select the Conditional Formatting option form the Format menu in the menu bar:

image 2: select conditional formatting from menu

When the Conditional Formatting window appears, select "Formula Is" from the drop down list on the left side of the dialog box. Then type the following formula: =mod(row(),2)=1

image 3: type formula into dialog box.

Next, we need to select the color we want to see in the alternating rows. To do this, click on the Format button (below the formula bar).

When the Format Cells window appears, select the Patterns tab. Then select the color that you'd like to see. In this example, we've selected a light grey. Then click on the OK button.

image 4: select highlight color desired.

When you return to the Conditional Formatting window, you should see the following. Next, click on the OK button.

image 5: click ok to apply formatting to spreadsheet.

Now when you return to the spreadsheet, the conditional formatting will be applied.
As you can see, you now have alternating colors in the rows. You can insert, delete, and move rows, and you don't have to worry about reapplying formatting.

image 6: congrats alternate rows are now shaded.

As good as this is, the traditional green bar paper that I worked with was shaded in blocks of 4 or 5 lines.  In order to accomplish that, a better understanding of what is going on with the conditional formatting command is necessary...

The Excel MOD function returns the remainder after a number is divided by a [specified] divisor. The result of the function ends up having the same sign as divisor. So in this case the formula in the conditional formatting field (which was =mod(row(),2)=1) means that Excel is dividing the row number by 2, and returning the remainder (which is either 1 or 0).  If the remainder is equal to 1, then it is shading those cells as specified.

So, let's say that you want to shade blocks of 4 rows (like my green bar paper of old), the formula will need to be modified slightly.   In this case we want blocks of 4 rows to be shaded and then blocks of 4 rows to be unshaded.  This means one pattern of shaded and non-shaded cells is comprised of 8 rows (rather than 2 in the alternating scenario above).

However the remainder results from specifying a formula of =mod(row(),8) will range from 0-7. So grouping those numbers together we'd have rows with a remainder of 0-3 will be shaded and those 4-7 will not (i.e., the formula to type in the dialog box would be =mod(row(),8)<=3).

This would work perfectly, if the rows started with 0 instead of 1, but since the first row of any spreadsheet is row 1, the first cycle of shading only shades 3 rows.  Therefore, to get the formula to work properly a small modification needs to be made to the formula as follows:

=mod(row()-1,8)<=3

image 7: enter the modified formula in the formula bar

By subtracting one from the row number we are effectively forcing the rows to start at zero (as far as the formatting is concerned) and  everything works out perfectly:

image 8: groups of 4 rows are now shaded.

So, you can use this formula for any number of rows =mod(row()-1,2n)<=(n-1)

Where n = the number of rows you want grouped and shaded.  For instance if you wanted to shade every 6 rows the formula would be: =mod(row()-1,12)<=5.

QED