The credit markets have pretty much frozen as banks are unwilling to lend to consumers or each other in a deafening reduction of confidence.

Many banks made mortgage loans with impossible terms or to unqualified borrowers. These banks then invested in securities backed by these now failing loans. It is this hidden potential for toxic holdings that reduces bank-to-bank confidence. And even a banks own self-confidence in consumer lending, if the bank itself relies on borrowing.

The reaction from the US government to this problem has been to provide liquidity to reinflate confidence. This has been unsuccessful, largely because, its dependent upon setting a floor on the US mortgage market and/or mortgage-backed securities market despite a natural state of correction in both. Price-fixing will not help lending between banks nor free-markets. Since inter-bank lending is immediately crucial to the economy, I present my own idea for solving this problem with our banking system.

Two important points; first, lending is both in the near-term costly and risky. Second, the current rash of government backstop-lending is no different with few exceptions (since the government controls the rules of the market).  This is the more important power of the government, not its ‘infinite’ supply funds, but its ability to control the rules. 

What if the Federal Reserve in coordination with the FDIC opens a new window.  This window will help banks lend to each other without lending them a thing. For a smartly set (perhaps percentage based) premium to the bank borrowing, the US government would — like a bank certifying a check — hold in escrow the amount of some bank-to-bank loan. Then, on at least these occasions, US banks could ensure transactions with each other through the help of their shared regulators and assistance providers.  Obviously, when and where these banks felt more comfortable, they could go back to working together directly.  The impact of the premium is disincentive to using the window.

This would be self-sustaining through premium collection and would not be harmful to the banking system or US tax-payer. I believe something as simple as this could help form an insurance for slowly winding down the operations of other windows at the Federal Reserve.  The windows could then help to support each other until varying crisis are resolved.

I love to paint myself as a sober minded person, one that would not very easily fall in with the crowded world of conspiracy theories. Some people go on believing everything that they read. You shouldn’t (thats right, *evil grin* not even I). This idea begs the question, who can you believe? An interesting paradox presents itself though similarly here: Who’s watching the watchmen?  But first, the details…

Buying into this next idea isn’t joining the crazy club at all, no matter how many of those kinds of alarms this might immediately set off in your head. Give it a chance — I did, and was surprised. If you do, this will find you as far from that group as possible and in a world that makes a bit more sense, about why for so long, the Internet has been able to remain this “open” bastion of communication. Because none of this is a conspiracy theory, its not a theory at all, its a simple to understand fact. Infrastructure, especially something as revolutionary as the Internet, must be protected, in other words, watched.

For a long time now, the United States government has been monitoring Internet usage going directly against all constitutional forms protecting individual civil liberty. How would I know? Besides the video below, and the myriad trustworthy Americans who’ve worked in telecom I’ve known, and what I’ve heard from them for years, I too have had my own personal experience.

In the late 90s, a person representing the FBI offered me a job tracking hackers as part of a project at that time, I was told, was called Phoenix (a re-vision of Project: Sun Devil). Now, it is known publicly by the same name as at least one of the software tools that resulted from the current instance of the project, called Carnivore.

While the video shown below is aging, dated 03/02/2007, the latest on the FISA decision brought all this to the front of my mind, and caused me to want to re-highlight all of this, as well as my experience (if not for my own personal reflection, for your review). I mean, if its just a conspiracy theory and no one’s watching, why would telecommunication companies even require legislation providing immunity, right?

No friends, its not some far fetched circumstance at all unfortunately, or something hidden under a deep brow of secrets and codes. Essentially, the government has been doing this since it was possible, and since experts could tell there would be a mass exodus of our culture (but especially an explosion in media on) to the Internet. And because everyone was so busy eating up their new technological toy, no one bothered to notice. And if they had, like back in 03/2007, what could they do? Watch the video and ask yourself: Who’s watching the watchmen?

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=2930944

Sometimes, I do not fit in with ‘the crowd’. And even though I understand my misfitted social standing better than most, it is a problem in my life as untamed as the very seas that surround me. Its a truth that perpetuates simply because I will not offer up my will to those almost automatic processes in my brain that say ‘just rely on altruistic fairness’.

What in the holy hell does that mean? Well, allow me to explain.

Other people seem to talk about their life as if like some shape, they have always been made just so, and managed to fit into some designated place. These people consider that they have always been right where they belonged. Sadly they are unaware, that this constant is a trick played by the mind. Implemented to keep people (most of them anyway) emotionally stable. This emotional counter-balance can only be described with two words: altruistic fairness.

Altruistic fairness as a measure, is exactly how the mind makes you accept whatever it is you end up with, and it is also what keeps you from trying to set the world on fire, if what you end up with substantially less than desired. The mind does this and other things through a complex process which has been re-enforced your entire life; activities learned all too soon become behavior.

For instance, If you were shooting for a $500,000 house, and end up with a house worth $250,000, almost immediately, neurological activity takes place that quite literally re-writes your preferences. You will now consider the $250,000 option to have been not only just as well, but better (and why not? its YOUR house — that too is part of the trick, just because this particular house is YOURS its better, it now shares all your ‘goodness’). You’ll ponder on how much closer it is to places you like to go. Maybe its near relatives. Its certainty much better than a house worth $100,000, you’ll reason. Besides, you had fallen in love with this particular house’s in-ground pool…

Did you really though? The answer was an obvious ‘no.’ But now, its, ‘of course’. Altruistic fairness provides guidance in this way and would act to make you feel great with whatever you ended up. The mind protects itself from being overwhelmed from any sort of consistently negative observation (as part of the survival instinct), it is achieved in the simplest and most economic way — through the measure of things under the scopes of altruistic fairness, we change what we fundamentally believe was best; we change our mind.  The facts however remain unchanged.

When I see this, I tend to immediately denounce it. Only because I hate to see someone allow such a simple mechanism stop them from the greater goal. For all the good it does, this leverage of altruistic fairness perhaps, is the greatest of human flaws. And as I sit there watching, writhing in unutterable anger at these people, I wonder: How few are we — those of us being weird — that look beyond our own sorted programming, and try to find the world hidden under our cheated senses, conceived within a mind full of lies?

Heres my first attempt at taking some footage and posting it. It’s Tommy playing around on his smallest ATV.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

My friends (who’ve quit on me) always end up asking me the first two questions in these lyrics — because I apparently need to calm down as they have — and I always reply about the same as the song, from this state of cynical and sarcastic realization: this Superman has too many problems to solve. In other words, I can’t calm down for the same reason I didn’t just stay down on the farm and listen to my old man. I’m not meant for that or to know people that want to live denying the darknesses that surround them when they ought to re-find their youthful innocence, and be inspired to create light — or “be too young to be singing the blues.”

When are you gonna come down
When are you going to land
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man

You know you can’t hold me forever
I didn’t sign up with you
I’m not a present for your friends to open
This boy’s too young to be singing the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can’t plant me in your penthouse
I’m going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I’ve finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

What do you think you’ll do then
I bet that’ll shoot down your plane
It’ll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again

Maybe you’ll get a replacement
There’s plenty like me to be found
Mongrels who ain’t got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground

Something happened when I turned 28 — I changed fundamentally. As the unrecorded lyrics to a song my old friend Mario once wrote explains, “time… changes.” I think this was Mario’s uniquely interesting way of explaining how as people change, that change propagates in the world around them. I’m not quite sure I understand why or even how things came to be so in my case, but maybe trying to describe these two parts of my day (my secret times) will help.

Secret #1: The Beginning

Everyday now, by the time my rather expensive coffee maker has quit its gurgling, I find myself feeling a lightning-like excitement. Before this, the newness of a day did not excite me in the least and instead stared back at me questioningly as if from the gaze of a wondering child.

I would ask while trying to convince myself to get up, “Why do you keep doing this?” In other words, why do you keep on living, as if it were that torturous. I think we can all agree that that is a ridiculously pessimistic outlook and was probably a big part of my problem. When I realized I had stopped asking myself this (which I realized suddenly one morning), my first thought was I had just quit caring altogether and that I had become so cynical that such questions required no answer for someone like me. Fortunately howsoever, for me (and the rest of the good people in my life), this is not, nor was not, the case. No, in fact, because I had been so far from the feeling for so long, it took all this to realize, I’m happy!

I love my family. I love my friends. Above all else, I love information. A close second might be, that I love our troubled world. I love problems, as such I love my job. Certainly I have no love of creating problems, but knowing they’ll be there because not everyone is so interested in solving them as I, is a kind of comfort. This may be partly because I have come to believe in, whole heartedly, the Zen aphorism the obstacle is the path — which really just means among other things, a direction toward solution is only ever clearly defined by the problem invoking its need. But, I’ve come to understand my love of ability more, and my love of freedom to contribute. Though I find odd to reveal, I even love that I get to use tools like Wordpress everyday to continue to practice and hone the art of writing. All this, so that one day, I may take this show on the road, so to speak — and write a book.

Secret #2: The Ending

Everyday, around six or seven o’clock in the evening, I settle myself outside. If its cold or raining, I’ll secure myself away on the porch or even in my parked car with the windows down (as much as nature allows me). I’ll sit out there for hours sometimes. I sit there, outside, and I try and empty my mind of everything swirling inside it. I try to give myself over to nature by listening to the world.

Whether it be birds chirping, clicking crickets, the wind’s whispering voice (as Hendrix thought of her) in my ear, the gentle tapping of raindrops, or the more silent and wispy, stinging snowflakes at my face, I watch and listen to the world. I think of this quiet and relaxing time by myself as a tutor in ethics, but much more. It is nature as this teacher that tempers me, helping me as a man and a technologist, to understand, that in world rarely interested in acclimating itself with the old and left behind, we must seek to understand the oldest technology, nature itself, as time… changes.

Over a year ago I created a monster…

It was a 4 processor 3.0Ghz Linux box. Strung unto its many available ports were over 12 terabytes of mounted data. I struggled with what exactly to call the beast until finally turning it on for the first time.

While the hum of all those drives and all that cooling equipment left me somewhat hypnotized, I was immediately aware that all the lights in the house flickered into that dim, please-give-me-more-power, state.

Thus was born, “darken.infophobia.net.”

For the last year “darken” served its 12 TB, also providing a nice extra desktop through VNC. Last night though, I came in to the smell of electric fire. It seems ole’ “darken” just couldn’t handle the heat (and being a computer obviously could not get out of the kitchen; err bedroom). Sad.

And so, I must explore an alternative solution to serving my 12 terabytes, as “darken”’s processor melted down at 5:10pm, January 16th, 2008. Perhaps I’ll buy the latest XPS from Dell that uses the new liquid cooled H2C system.

Until then…all now a moment of silence for my once mighty Core 2 Quad that overheated last evening, creating with its death, the worst smell of electric fire I’ve come across.

Darken… you will be missed!

If I were like you I would keep all this inside and not tell you about my life.

I’ve wandered through this life without a point, mostly anticipating a day at some point in the future, where things would become better. But, better is a difficult thing to define, at least when what one compares it to — namely the present — is constantly changing. If I were like you, I’d bottle it up, but, I get mad at the world, and all the people in it.

I think sometimes it has to do with how much pressure I put on myself and how my observations of others would have me believe I’m the only one doing this — that I’m alone. In fact, I am alone, but only because this sort of view of the world allows for the creation of a gap of injustice between me and anyone else.

If I were like you, I might not notice it. But, when I’m not under the gun of some project with a complex implementation, one that keeps my mind a spin, I’m constantly disturbed with the nonsensical world that surrounds us. That too is not like you at all. But, if I were like you, it would be easier to explain, because I wouldn’t pressure myself into having to explain.

For instance, I, hate that people are so inclined to consume, transact, and seek excess. Stop it. No one cares about your ability to climb to a higher rung on a ladder that you, yourself, invented. You never consider those things in such general terms either. You, my friend, tend to specify. Thats why you invented and subscribe to a policy of life which is rooted in money. Because you my friend, have preferences.

Also, and somewhat to the contrary, I’m equally upset with people so inclined as to conform or seek sociality. Not because those things are inherently bad, but because I hate that most people do those things because they feel it offers them a better potential position in some non-existent social network. The fact is, this is not true. You, as I, are alone. And it is this misconception brought on by the fact that people rarely take time to wonder what life would be like, if they were like you.

All the truth man will ever know comes from the place by which he or she distinguishes self…. and other. The sooner man learns this, the better his existence will be.

If I were like you though, and I can tell just by looking out my window, none of that would matter. Instead, I’d sit quite ignorantly in my living room or bedroom, so despondent that I fear any one knocking at my door or calling my phone. The same way that you sit in that idle state of watching all the people you pretend to connect with, coalesce into the nothingness to which you have all subscribed. While at the same time you wait for a check from social services to which you expend no understanding nor true means of sociality or compassion. No, you seek only a reminder of your presence.

And yes, if I were like you, I’d do all this to a soundtrack; whilest I listened to digital music I didn’t pay for, stored in file format I didn’t understand, on a file system I had no awareness of, coming through and out of a device I could barely operate. All because if I were like you, I would never take any time to see beauty (even in nature’s cruel violence).

Nope, I would only dream as you do about a job performing for people who are equally despondent and apathetic. If I were you, I would dream to be the poster-child of the celebrity of nothing. I’m certain of it. If I were like you… I’d change.

A handful of programmers (or perhaps thinkers works better), through entries in blogs, have been collaboratively jotting down a few things. What few things? 3 things they learned about software in college, and 3 things they learned about software outside of college.

Here are a few examples of this little phenomena: Dare Obasanjo, Scott Hanselman, Insane World’s Author, Kenegozi’s Author, Shawn Oster. I’m sure there are countless more I didn’t find, or haven’t read. Of that short list Shawn Oster’s is of particular interest.

Now, I didn’t go to a college. But, I work at one. So, I wondered, does that count? Can I play along too? I’ve been in IT for over a decade. I’ve created software solutions big and small for organizations like: the Department of Defense, the Computer Science Corporation, Lucent Technologies, all Six Stock Options Exchanges, and now Academia. And, in considering all those environments, I thought, “software is too tight a focus for me.” And, again, I never went to college.

Instead of what I’ve been reading, which has all been very useful, I decided to broaden the discussion slightly, to meet my experience. I wanted to contribute. Anyhow, here are: 3 Things Learned in School, and 3 Things Learned On-The-Job.

In School

1) Nothing in this life will be worth more than a teacher who can reach you.

2) History is a subject that speaks to us in the many colors of learned lessons. And, sometimes in shades of lies.

3) Show up on test days.

NOT In School

1) Speak up! Especially in the beginning don’t be afraid to offer your ideas, of getting fired or even just being noticed. The beginning is the best time for all those kinds of things! Its the time you’ll be expected to make mistakes. And, the time you’ll gain the most perspective on them.

2) If you are not your own master, the world will happily take you by the hand and lead you where it thinks it needs you. But, you may not be very happy with where you end up. So the lesson is, if you do not shape your world your way, your world will shape you its way.

3) Take off on test days.