I'm Coming a Little Late to This Party...

But SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act currently being fast-tracked through Congress, seems like a lousy idea to me. You can draw your own conclusions here, here, and here.

(Hint: Under SOPA, posting these links to copyrighted material could get not only my blog, but Blogger shut down.)

I'm pretty sure this law, at least as I understand it, would not survive a First Amendment challenge. But how much damage could it do to the Internet's rising talent in the meantime?

Make up your own mind. I'm going to do some more research into this.

HN

Hat tip to Seth Godin for putting the word out about this. Thanks, Seth!

Celebrating Steve Jobs

When I began imagining this post this morning, I kept thinking of Steve Jobs as the Thomas Edison of our day.

But that's inadequate--not because Jobs was greater than Edison or because Edison was greater than Jobs, but because they are different. Even for all their similarities, they are different.

Yes, we can say Edison (among many others) brought the world into the twentieth century, while Jobs (among many others) brought it into the twenty-first. Yes, both men were relentless in pursuing their lives' passions, in making perfect the many, many gifts that sprang from their amazing brains. Yes, both men enjoyed astonishing careers for which most teachers will tell you they were woefully undereducated. Yes, both men's impatience with lesser minds left ruffled feathers and bruised egos in their respective wakes.

The similarities are so striking that if you believe in reincarnation you might be tempted to think they shared the same soul.

But they weren't the same, and we should remember each on his own merits.

See, I have no desire to be anyone other than who I am, and I am determined to be the very best me I can. Others want to be known as modern-day echoes of our past heroes, but somehow I don't think Steve Jobs was among them.

So I celebrate who he was. One of the great men of our time. A man who reminded us we don't always have to play by the rules. A man who showed us computers and electronic gadgets are really all about us, not the other way around.

A man who showed us the power of dreams is in living them, not waiting for them.

I will miss him, miss the joy and the power his creations and his personal example brought to my life. I will celebrate the power of his dreams. But I will not mourn him. To mourn him would be to miss the point of his life.

Steve Jobs got to live his dream. His dream demanded everything of him, and in return it gave him everything. Fame. Success. Wealth. And from what I read on his face in the last few months of his life, it gave him contentment. Perhaps even peace. If that isn't a full life, a life well lived, what is? What is there to mourn at the end of such a life?

He lived his dream every day for the best part of fifty-six years.

We should all be so lucky.

HN

Failure: The Second Best Outcome

Well.

My thirty-day writing challenge, it's safe to say, was a failure.

No, let's be more clear: I failed to complete the thirty-day writing challenge I set for myself.

Better. More direct. More precise. A subject and verb. I failed. No evasion, no ambiguity.

Why really doesn't matter. Life got in the way, I got busy, I got tired. It happens. Part of success, I think, is recognizing that it happens and moving on instead of beating myself up about it.

Because after all, if I fail--it's because I did something. Did something, put myself out there, and fell flat. Which beats the stuffing out of doing nothing, which is exactly what I've been doing the last two months. What I've been doing most of my life, actually.

It's the second best outcome I could hope for. The first, obviously, is success. Take on a challenge and complete it. Stand tall knowing I did what I set out to do.

The second best is to take on a challenge and fail, and know that even though I didn't complete it, I'm ahead of where I was.

The worst outcome--last place in any endeavor--is to sit on the sidelines thinking wow, that looks hard. I'm glad I'm not out there.

Because, really, what do we accomplish if we never take a risk, never push ourselves to do the one thing we can do that no one else can?

I'll still answer the rest of the Trust30 prompts, in time. Not out of some stubborn ideal of finishing what I started; just because they're fun, and they get me writing and make me think. Sometimes about things I'd rather not think about. Which is a good thing.

I'm also going to start doing some history here again. I think next we'll explore the changes in warfare that led from armored knights on horseback to rifle-armed militia. From Knights to Minutemen is a concept I've done with my kids; I'll adapt it and share it here. That will give us something to talk about.

Let's move forward together!
HN

How Many Wars Have There Been, Dad?

I asked my son what question he thought I should answer next in this blog. His response: "How many wars have there been in human history?"

Hmph. So much for throwing me a softball! He might as well have asked me how many died on the Eastern Front in World War II. Or how many fought for the Persians at Thermopylae. Or how many bullets were fired in the Civil War. The numbers are unknowable--we can estimate them based on what we do know, but we'll never know for certain.

Still, the question deserves a little attention. The main problem, as I see it, is in the terms: if we could know the numbers, we would still have to define what we mean by war and human history.

Now, HN, that's just stupid, you say. Everybody knows what a war is, and everybody knows what human history is.

Well, maybe. But bear with me. Someone with unlimited time and patience, with access to all the world's existing records, might be able to pore through book after book in library after library and find every recorded instance of war. That would be a complete list, as far as the records go--after all, if it isn't written down, it isn't really part of history. But would it really answer the question? It seems to me an approach like this ignores a huge part of our past. More on that in a bit.

So how should we define a war? You'd think we could say for certain, but a quick glance at our headlines shows we still don't agree on what a war is. Most news outlets will tell you the U.S. is involved in two wars right now--but the military considers Iraq and Afghanistan to be two fronts in the same war, the Global War on Terrorism. Who is right?

And what about the conflicts in Libya and Syria right now? What about Egypt, or Yemen, or Bahrain, or Tunisia? Are those wars? Insurrections? Rebellions? Revolutions? If the rebels lose, will they have been wars, or something else? To the rebels, I think it's safe to say most of these "Arab Spring" movements are wars. To the dictators they seek to throw down, probably not so much--unless the rebels win.

The past gives us plenty of examples, too, as far back as we care to look. What about Israel's incursion into Gaza in 2008-09? What about our own wars against the American Indians--should we count each campaign, or the destruction of each tribe, or each uprising as a single war, or was the whole bloody mess one war from 1865 to 1891? Was France's war in Indochina distinct from ours in Vietnam, or were they parts of the same war?

We can ask the question as far back as Alexander. Should we consider his conquests--of Asia Minor, Persia, Afghanistan, and western India--separate wars? I suspect he would have regarded the whole long march a single glorious string of conquests. I also suspect his adversaries would have considered each of their parts distinct from the others.

But let's say we can reconcile all those. Let's say we can reckon the number of wars of one sort or another during an average year of human history at one. It's probably a low guess, to be honest, but it makes the math easier--and after all, I'm a Histry Nerd, not a math nerd.

So the average number of wars is one--for how many years? We have hard historical evidence of war as far back as the pharaohs of Egypt; the five-thousand-year-old Narmer Palette appears to depict the pharaoh in the act of killing a captive, and another part of the palette shows a row of decapitated corpses. The cultures of the Fertile Crescent--the Sumerians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Babylonians--left similar records.

But archeology places war's origins even farther back. Jericho had walls and a tower, all of stone, eight thousand years ago; even if we don't know who threatened the city, we can be sure it was a who rather than a what. If your enemies are wild beasts, walls of earth or timber or thorns will suffice, and you don't need a tower.

And just so we don't leave the question unasked: how many walls of timber or earth already existed before Jericho built its walls of stone? We can't know that answer, either--but we can bet they weren't all for keeping animals out.

So if we take the earlier date, we get eight thousand years with one war apiece. Eight thousand wars in human history. If that sounds like a high number, consider this: the wars I've mentioned in this post--in fact, all the wars I've mentioned in this blog--don't even scratch the surface. For every year in which we can't count a single war in Europe, we can surely find a year with more than one. And that's only in Europe. I haven't even mentioned Africa, or South America, or Australia, or most of North America, or any but the tiniest slice of Asia. If anything, eight thousand is probably a conservative number.

War is part of the human experience. Our need to protect ourselves, or to improve our family's lot, or to seek more than we have--even if it means someone else, or many someones, must die--is universal. Whatever progress we have made in the last decades or centuries does not yet amount to an eyeblink in the scope of our history--and let's not forget the last century was the most violent in history in spite of that progress. It is wishful thinking at its most dangerous to believe we are anywhere near the end of war.

All the more reason to understand our past; perhaps understanding what we have fought over, and why, and how, will help us find ways not to fight over those things in the future. I remain hopeful we can figure it out, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. I believe courage is the highest of human qualities, and I have to believe one day we will discover the highest form of courage in something other than killing each other.

So eight thousand, by my very rough estimate, and counting. Let's hope the count ends one day.

Now go get your nerd on!
HN

A Nerd Moment. Has This Ever Happened To You?

I had a Nerd Moment yesterday morning.

You know what I'm talking about. You're buzzing along in your normal world, being responsible, being practical, when something happens that jolts you out of the practical world and sends you somewhere else. And for some time, a minute or an hour or a week, it's hard to see anything else and you feel compelled to focus on whatever caught your attention. In a movie or book, it's the pivotal moment, the moment when the brilliant but unproductive scientist or doctor or engineer watches something happen, drops whatever he's doing, and spends the next week working non-stop, barely sleeping or eating, coming up with the Big Idea the story hangs on. It's the moment that inspires an entrepreneur to start a company to solve one problem.

Some people call it a Eureka Moment, or a Moment of Clarity. I call it a Nerd Moment.

This time, the nerd struck me on my daughter's soccer field. It was a girl on the opposing team that did it.

She was tall--among the tallest players on the field. She was lean, and fair, and freckled. She squinted in the sun, her focus entirely on the game, and in her eyes I read just a hint of coldness. This girl knew just what she wanted and how to get it.

But it was her hair, flame-red and curly and bound at the back of her head to froth down her back to just between her shoulder blades, that really caught my attention. That, and the fact that her team wore vivid emerald green. And in my mind, she became something else.

I saw her as an Irish princess, a cloak around her shoulders and a long sword in her hand in an age before the Vikings ravaged Ireland. At first I thought the sword was hers--that she was a warrior-princess standing guard over her home while her father and brothers and cousins were off making war against one of their neighbors. But as the vision developed, I realized the sword was her father's; she stood holding it for him while he readied himself to leave for war. And she was less than happy to be the one left behind. She had already asked if she could go with him, but he had firmly refused, and her noble pride wouldn't let her beg. But she burned to go with him and share in the glory and adventure of battle, and she vowed to herself that one day, she would--no matter what he said.

To be fair, she could have been nearly anyone: a thrall from Sweden or Norway, a Dane, a Scot. She could even have been Berber. She could have been a stowaway on the Titanic, or working in a factory in London, or sister to a Dane who hoped to prove himself by joining a ship's crew and going i-viking. She could have been crossing the prairie with her family, moving west to a better life in Texas or California, or watching her father leave for the Army in 1861, or 1942. I don't know her or her ancestry--so I'm free to come up with any story I want. And to me, she is an Irish princess in an age before the Vikings.

I've never really had more than a passing historical interest in the Irish. My fascination has always been with the other side of the Irish Sea, with the Britons and Picts and Scots. But thanks to a nameless redhead in a green soccer jersey--I may just have to write an Irish story one day.

My daughter's team lost the game 5-4. But my daughter played hard, and that made me proud. And you know, it's not so bad to do your best and lose a close game when the other team has an Irish princess playing for them.

Be open to the Nerd Moments. You never know where they might take you.

And go get your nerd on!
HN

History in the Making - a Ramble

We're watching the people of Egypt make history right now. Hosni Mubarak, the president who ruled the country for thirty years under an unending state of emergency, is gone. Gone largely without bloodshed, without fighting, without pointing of fingers or mass arrests or urban panic or violence spilling over into neighboring countries. Even the voices of radical Islam have been largely silent. A few people rose up and said, We are ready. We want Mubarak gone. And others joined them, and still others, until their voices could not be silenced.

And now Mubarak is gone.

How many times has this happened in the Middle East? How many times has this happened anywhere?

Of course, we make history every day, and watch it made before our eyes. When I sell my house, it's history. When you send a letter or an email to your friend in another state or country explaining how the recession has affected you, it's history. When your car spins on the ice and blocks traffic in the middle of the worst winter storm to hit North Texas in living memory, it's history. When a soldier leaves for Iraq, or gets shot at, or comes home, it's history. When the Superbowl comes to D/FW, it's history.

Of course, there are some events we can watch unfolding, or take part in if we're in the right place at the right time, and know we are participating in what will be known as a big, historic Event. The men who marched east into Russia with Napoleon knew they were part of such an Event. The men of the Union Army who shouldered arms as the Confederates filed past and stacked theirs at Appomattox Court House knew they were part of such an Event. So did the men and women watching the Japanese planes fly away from Pearl Harbor, and the men and women who with hammers and picks and earthmovers dismantled the Berlin Wall.

We are now watching such an Event unfold in Egypt.

Is it over? Not by a long shot. But for the first time in thirty years, the people of Egypt can go to their beds tonight knowing that tomorrow will be different than yesterday.

This could end badly for Egypt, and for the Middle East, and for Africa, and for the West. But it could end spectacularly well. Right now, none of us knows. But I, for one, am eager to find out.

What an exciting time to be alive!
HN

Why History?

Well, it's a happy day here in Fort Worth and Dallas! The Texas Rangers crushed the Yankees last night, 6-1, in game 6 of the American League Championship Series. We're going to the World Series for the first time in the history of our baseball club. It's an historic event.

And it's got me thinking: why do we care about history? I mean, it's already happened. It's done. Why bother to study it? Why look backward instead of forward?

First of all, let's dispense with the platitudes. Let's not lean on Patton's advice that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. Let's see if I can come up with an original thought and put it in my own words.

You can look at my bio and page header and deduce why I care about history. It's about people, about stories, about feats of skill and sport and war and discovery that were impossible--right up until someone did them. I like history because I find stories of the past exciting, interesting, and fun.

But there are lots of other disciplines I find exciting and interesting that I'm not trying to make a living doing. Zoology, paleontology, astronomy, mechanical engineering, pottery, weaving, auto maintenance, medicine...all areas of endeavor I find fascinating, areas that impact our lives in a real way every day. But I'm not writing about those, except as their past developments affect us today.

See, history is where we come from. The stories of the past all run together, weaving through each other and overlapping to bring us the world we know today. The world we live in proceeds directly from the world of the past, just as tomorrow's world will proceed directly from the choices we make today. The "it's already happened" school would say it does not matter that the Rangers won the pennant last night--what matters is that we are going to the World Series next week. But if we had not won the pennant last night, we wouldn't be going to the Series. And you can be sure that in years to come, when the Rangers' play is less than stellar and another Series seems like a far-off dream, people who were in the Ballpark last night will speak fondly of their memories of that game.

Okay--it's an absurdly short-range illustration. After all, the game is only a few hours in the past, and the Series is less than a week away. And it's baseball, not war or politics or literature or art or anything that's supposed to be Important. So what's my point?

For one, I'd argue that it is important to a large number of people. Will it advance civilization in a perceptible way? Probably not. But it will bring people to the Metroplex, and a few of them might stay. It will bring business, and some of that business might find opportunities to grow and flourish here and bring jobs. People who have had a hard couple of years might be able to take advantage of some of those jobs, and lift themselves and their families to better lives. To them, this will have been as big a deal as the war on terrorism or anything that's happening in Washington. And without it, it may not have been possible.

So you see, everything is tied in to history. Our world would be very different if Washington had died of smallpox, if Nixon had not lied, if Columbus had sailed south instead of west, if the Mongols had not conquered China, if the Danes had not conquered much of England. Our lives would be very different without Einstein's physics, Edison's inventions, Gutenberg's press, steel, wheels, or fire. Our families would be very different if great-great-grandma Josephine hadn't put her little brother in a wagon and headed west with no money and no plan, or if uncle Thaddeus hadn't been killed in Vietnam. Our town would be very different if the Cowboys had never won a superbowl. And it's all in the past, already happened, already done and gone.

It's who we are. It's where we come from. And it happened, whether or not we care, whether or not we record it. But our lives might just be a little better for knowing.

That's why I study history. Care to join me?

HN

Histry Nerd is Going Pro!

Right. Here's the deal.

I am not a credentialed historian.

I don't have a Ph.D., or tenure, or a professor's chair.

My Master's degree is in business, not history.

I didn't major in history. Or even minor.

All I have is a bunch of books, a few ideas, and a lifelong love of history.

And for me, that's going to be enough. I'm moving forward with it.

Because I've realized--life is too short not to spend it doing something you love. See, I have a good job. It pays well. I'm very good at it. But it isn't what I love.

History is what I love. So that's what I'm going to do.

I've been teaching a history class to my kids' homeschool group. And you know what? They love it. Not just my kids, but just about every kid in the class. And so do I. None of us--not even the parents--cares that I don't have a history degree. We're having fun, and we're learning, and that's what matters.

So I'm going to figure out how to do this full time. Writing, teaching, sharing... you know, nerd stuff. Histry Nerd stuff.

I'm working on my plan. I have some ideas. I'm not quitting my day job, Mom. Not yet.

But this is where my passion is, and I'm going to make it happen.

Watch this space. This is gonna be pretty cool.

HN