Technology is good. Computer illiteracy is bad.

A dear friend recently sent me an article from Alabama's The Huntsville Times. I think my friend was trying to suggest that too much TV for kids can be a bad thing, which I agree with. But because the article is so painfully misguided, I felt the need to respond. Unfortunately (and ironically), the article is not online, so I scanned and OCR-ed it (you know, with computers).

Here it is in its entirety. Beware. Reading it may give you an aneurism.

HIGH SCHOOL WRITER

LUKE CHITWOOD

Randolph Senior

Limit TV, computer time; be productive

Get out from behind screen; try something new

The modern youth culture seems to reinforce the idea that everything must move at the speed of light. Among the MTV, ADD and HIV culture something good should have come out of the last 20 years.

Instead, my generation has inherited the broken speech of Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher. While other world cultures become more focused, American youth seem to have become less concerned with the future.

Can America really keep up with the Chinese in industry, commerce or education?

This trend to go faster has passed me by. I do not have a Facebook. I can not use a computer above a fourth-grade level. It takes me about 14 minutes to send a text message. But for me, the disconnect really came when I tried to watch TV after a long break.

For two years I hardly looked at a television. Between going to a boarding school and working a full-time job, I was too busy. When I turned it on again, the medium and its mass commercialization stunned me.

Commercials have 30 seconds to emblazon their message and tend to leave me with the impression of an Andy Worhol drop cloth. The quick changing of screen shots makes me long for the return of "The Andy Griffith Show."

Commercials can not stay on the same shot for more than four seconds, and "effective" commercials repeat the same sentence no fewer than five times.

While the average American spends 15 to 20 hours a week with the TV, kids all over the world are doing their math. While kids in America check their Facebook accounts nine times a day, kids in India are studying chemistry. While kids in America send 4,000 text message [sic] a month, kids in Europe are playing soccer.

Maybe tonight, instead of watching television, think about something. Try something you always wanted to do. Cook something. Make a quilt. Mow a lawn.

Do something, because in a time of national insecurity, we need to have some idea of what's really going on rather than what comes to us through the talking heads on TV.

If this is what passes for scholarship in the United States, then God help us. Say it with me: Ignorance is not a virtue. The writer equates watching television with using computers and then suggests that we should step away from the screens "to have some idea of what's really going on…" Worse, he says, "I do not have a Facebook. I can not use a computer above a fourth-grade level." If the United States is turning out high school seniors who don't know how to use computers and think that using them is a bad idea, then we're in serious trouble.

I'm sure the writer is a good kid, and I mean no disrespect. But it's going to take more than being a good kid to succeed in the 21st century economy. Here's a reality check for you:

1. Technology is good.
2. Knowledge of technology is good.
3. Technology and the knowledge of how to use it makes us more efficient as a society.
4. Efficiency is good. More efficient = more productive. The standard of living increases for everybody as a direct result of technology.
5. Television and computers have already merged. You don't have to watch TV the old way. TiVo it. Or watch it on YouTube. President-Elect Barack Obama was elected as a direct result of a technology-centered campaign.
6. Ignore technology at your own peril.

By way of comparison, I first got my MySpace (and later Facebook) account to keep up with my young and hip niece and nephew (who were then in high school and are now in college). My 10-year-old daughter has her own money-making blog. My 12-year-old son composes music with Garage Band on our iMac. And my 14-year-old son uploaded his first video to YouTube before I did. All of these kids are learning, growing, and opening doors of opportunity as a direct result of being technologically literate.

You can also learn about cooking, quilting, and landscaping on the Internet.

So this technology-is-stupid-even-though-I-have-not-tried-it attitude must end. Or we as a nation will be left behind. I'm pretty sure the kids in India, China, and Europe know how to use Facebook. Computer illiteracy in the 21st century is at least as dangerous as book illiteracy in the 19th century. Keep up or be left behind.

Technology is good. Ignorance is not a virtue.

How to avoid duplicate content in WordPress.

I assume that most people read this blog via my feed, not via my website. For those that do visit my website, I've just updated my non-permalink pages (tag pages, category pages, monthly archive pages, and home page) to include excerpts of the latest ten posts (per category, per month, or per whatever) rather than the full text of the latest two. I did this primarily for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by avoiding problems with WordPress and duplicate content.

I use the Excerpt Editor plugin (by Andrew Ozz) to automatically generate excerpts for each post, and I use the Different Posts Per Page plugin (by MaxBlogPress) to specify ten posts per page. Each plugin has lots more options, but that's the short story.

By Harry Beckwith.

The excellent book Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith makes many great points about service marketing, including that a good solution today is better than a perfect solution tomorrow. A ready-fire-aim approach (implement first, then iterate to fix mistakes) is generally better than a ready-aim-fire approach (wait for the perfect solution, then implement). You've still got to aim. You've still got to fire. But you may need to reconsider the order.

Beckwith's "know where to hammer" story is perhaps the most telling:

A man was suffering a persistent problem with his house. The floor squeaked. No matter what he tried, nothing worked. Finally, he called a carpenter who friends said was a true craftsman.

The craftsman walked into the room and heard the squeak. He set down his toolbox, pulled out a hammer and nail, and pounded the nail into the floor with three blows.

The squeak was gone forever. The carpenter pulled out an invoice slip, on which he wrote the total for $45. Above the total were two line items:

• Hammering, $2.
• Knowing where to hammer, $43.

Charge for knowing where.

Summary: five stars (5/5).

The best time for entrepreneurs to start a new business is during a recession.

Since Barack Obama's election, I have been inspired and motivated to figure out something that I can do to help our struggling economy. Most of my clients are startups. Most new jobs in this country are generated by startups. Getting off on the right foot is key. At Clock Tower Law Group, we believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And it is much less expensive to choose good trademarks (for your company and products) initially than it is to change them after the fact.

So here's my offer. If you're a startup, I'll file your first trademark for free.

Is there fine print? Of course. Here are the details. In order to qualify for this offer:

1. You must be a startup. This term is loosely defined, so this should be an easy requirement to meet.
2. You must be a company. That means that you must be organized in some state in a way that I can verify via the web, for example via the Massachusetts Secretary of State's corporations database or Delaware Secretary of State's corporations database. Or whatever state your company is organized in. Trademark law is federal law, so you and the firm don't have to be located in the same state. As such, our clients are located all over the country (and the world).
3. You must have at least one registered domain name, and your domain name must be registered in the name of your company. We recommend that companies register their company name, product names, and trademarks as domain names in all of the generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) (including .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and .us). You should also register domain typos, including singular and plural variations. Registering multiple domains is cheap insurance to protect against possible infringing use. Also, we recommend registering domains in the name of your company using the exact same contact information for each domain.
4. You must contact me electronically. Preferably via Twitter (@ErikJHeels) direct message. You can also email me; my email address is easy to find.
5. You must hire my firm, Clock Tower Law Group, by using our proposal letter. Future payments must be made by credit card.

To be specific, the value of this offer is $1500 per company. The $1500 covers everything from hiring to filing, including the trademark search, USPTO filing fee for one class, application drafting, and application filing. It does not cover any costs after the filing (such as responding to office actions and the like). Most of our trademarks issue without major problems because we work hard to get them right initially. Clock Tower Law Group's fees are fully disclosed on our website. As is our list of cool clients.

Why I am doing this? Based on a survey that my firm conducted, each company has, on average, four unregistered trademarks. So I'm counting on your future business, as well as your referrals. I'm being straight with you. I'll trust you to be fair with us.

I reserve the right to cancel this offer at any time (unless, of course, the Federal Reserve offers me a bailout package I can't refuse). If this offer is wildly successful, then I might not be able to keep up with the demand. But I supposed that would be a good problem to have. If I have to cancel or modify this offer, I will do so via comment to this blog post. You can find this post at:

FreeTrademarksForStartups.com

I launched my law firm the week of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was very quiet in my office in the fall of 2001 and the spring of 2002. Two years later, I was featured in a cover story in the ABA Journal on lawyers as risk-takers. The advice I give to startups is this: get plants. Because some days you are going to need a reason to go to the office. Most startups fail. But those that succeed are the ones that persevere through the tough times. As my mentor once said, success is not so much a matter of being at the right place at the right time as it is a matter of being. Just keep plugging. Go to the office. Water the plants. Grow your business.

And spread the word. Yes we can.

Related posts:

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The Madrid Protocol is a great option for startups who want foreign trademark protection but don't want to file trademarks in separate countries.

If you want to have trademarks in the United States and in Europe, then (1) file your trademark application in the US and (2) within 6 months of your US filing file a Madrid Protocol application for International Registration (designating the European Community).

Madrid Protocol: Overview

Under the Madrid Protocol (an international system for the registration of trademarks), a U.S. trademark application or registration can be the basis for an international trademark application, thereby allowing for centralized filing and administration of an international trademark portfolio. Most industrialized nations (with the notable exception of Canada) are members of the Madrid Protocol. The United States became a member of the Madrid Protocol on 11/02/03, and the European Union became a member on 10/01/04. If you file a Madrid Protocol application within six months of your U.S. filing, then your international application will have the same filing date as your U.S. application (pursuant to Article 4 of the Paris Convention). Otherwise (e.g. for already registered marks), your international application will have the filing date of your international filing.

If international registration is important to you and if you want to maintain the benefit of your earlier filing date, then you should consider filing a Madrid Protocol application before the six-month deadline. You can always file international trademarks after the six-month deadline, but you will have lost the advantage of your earlier U.S. filing date by doing so.

Madrid Protocol: Advantages And Disadvantages

The Madrid Protocol's main advantage is that it eliminates the high filing costs associated with filing separate national applications in each foreign country. The Madrid Protocol's main disadvantage is that the rights granted by an international registration can be extinguished if its home application does not mature to registration or if its home registration is canceled during its first five years. This concept is commonly referred to as "central attack," which is extremely rare and whose effects can be avoided by converting Madrid Protocol applications to national applications.

Another disadvantage of the Madrid Protocol is that the description of goods/services in the International Registration is based on the parent application. The United States requires more narrow descriptions of goods/service in trademarks than some other countries. As such, you may be able to secure broader protection by filing directly in those countries. However, if you file trademark applications in any country with broad descriptions of goods/services, you may end up inviting unnecessary conflicts with third parties. (In other words, if your trademark counsel drafts trademark applications like patent applications - starting with broad descriptions then narrowing them during the course of prosecution - then you are doing the equivalent of chest-thumping and are inviting conflict with third parties unnecessarily.) Wise trademark counsel should draft goods/services that are sufficiently broad to protect your trademarks while not causing confusion or conflict with trademarks owned by third parties.

The Madrid Protocol does for international trademark applications what the PCT system does for international patent applications (except that Madrid Protocol applications actually mature into substantive trademark rights, whereas PCT patent applications merely give the applicant the right to file for foreign patent protection). The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) administers the Madrid Protocol.

Madrid Protocol: Costs

International filing fees are generally more expensive than U.S. filing fees. For example, Clock Tower Law Group's fee is $1500/mark, and filing fees for the European Community are about $2500/mark (depending on currency exchange rates), so it's safe to budget about $4000/mark for filing trademarks in Europe.

Madrid Protocol: Flow Chart

The following is an overview of filing a Madrid Protocol application designating the European Community:

1. International Registration Received
2. Formalities Check
3. Absolute Grounds Check
1. International Registration Refused On Absolute Grounds
4. Absolute Grounds OK
5. Opposition Period Open
1. Opposition Pending
2. International Registration Refused On Relative Grounds
6. International Registration Accepted
1. Renewed
2. Removed From Register
7. International Registration Decision Appealed
8. Opposition Decision Appealed

The Madrid Protocol application process starts with the filing of an Application for International Registration with the USPTO. After the USPTO reviews the application, it will either certify the application and forward it to the International Bureau (IB) of WIPO in Geneva, Switzerland, or it will notify the applicant of any problems.

WIPO then issues an International Registration (IR), which is sort of like an international trademark application filing receipt. The International Registration is then forwarded to the designated international trademark offices, who determine whether the IR holder is entitled to an "extension of protection" (i.e. substantive trademark rights) in their region/country.

In Europe, a First Statement of Grant of Protection (GP1) issues after the trademark has been examined without objection by the examiner. A Second Statement of Grant of Protection (GP2) issues after the trademark has been published without objection by third parties.

The goal, of course, is to get to the "International Registration Accepted" step. In our experience, this occurs, on average, 12-17 months after the initial filing with the USPTO.

In Europe, use of the trademark should be established within five years of registration to prevent having the trademark canceled for non-use.

The term of trademark protection is 10 years from the date of the International Registration (IR), and (as with US applications), the IR can be renewed for subsequent 10-year terms.

Additional countries can be added at any time to the International Registration by filing a Subsequent Designation.

Assignments and renewals are all handled centrally via filings with WIPO, which makes managing your international trademark portfolio much more simple.

Madrid Protocol: Summary

In summary, the Madrid Protocol is a great choice for startups who want to secure protection for their trademarks in multiple foreign countries without the expense of managing multiple international trademark applications.

For more information, see:

• Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) - the European Union agency responsible for registering trademarks and designs in EU countries.
• United States Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO) - information about the Madrid Protocol.
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - the international agency that administers the Madrid Protocol.

Related posts:

• Domain Name Law
  White hat domainers are not black hat cybersquatters.
• Yahoo! Registers First Favicon Trademark
  Clock Tower Law Group filed historic favicon.ico trademark.
• Trademarks For Company Names And Nicknames
  Trademarking company names and nicknames. Just drop the "Inc."
• Trademarks For Logos
  Trademarking logos.
• Trademarks For Product And Service Names
  Trademarking product and service names.
• Trademarks For Slogans And Taglines
  Trademarking slogans and taglines.
• Just Say Moo - How To Name And Brand Your Product To Make It Stand Out From The Crowd
  Good branding can separate your cow from the other cattle.
• How To Name Your Company, Trademark Your Domain Name, And Domain Name Your Trademark
  Think there are no cool domain names left? Think again. I found 201 cool domain names that are taken but six (count 'em, six) that are not. Some of them from a box of crayons. Plus strategies for protecting your trademarks, domain names, and company name.

By Henry Hazlitt.

Every politician and business leader should be forced to read and understand Economics in One Lesson. Again and again, the classic mistake is made: pursuing a short-term policy that benefits only a select few at the expense of a long-term policy that could benefit many. It's why hybrid car policies can lead to more traffic and pollution. Why setting maximum prices for staples (such as milk) can lead to shortages of those staples. There are many more examples. Read the book. It's a quick read with a huge ROI.

Summary: five stars (5/5).

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One veteran's thoughts on being patriotic in the face of conflict.

How do you maintain your patriotism when surrounded by peers who don't share the same values? How do you work within the system to effect positive change? These were some of my challenges as I served in the Air Force. I joined the Air Force for all the right reasons, I served on active duty for all the right reasons, and I remained in the inactive reserves until honorably discharged for all the right reasons. I am a veteran. And on this Veterans Day, I wanted to share my story of my patriotic struggle in the Air Force.

Code Of Conduct (DOD Directive No. 1300.7)

I. I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

II. I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist.

III. If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

IV. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

V. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am bound to give only name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

VI. I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

Family Tradition of Service

I first put on an Air Force uniform in the fall of 1984 when I started college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on an Air Force Reserve Office Training Corps (AFROTC) scholarship. I remained in the Air Force until I was honorably discharged in the spring of 2006. In one form or another, I was in the Air Force for 21.5 years, about half of my life. In that time, I learned a great deal about patriotism. When I first started blogging about my Air Force experience, I said that I would have more to say when the time was right. Today is Veterans Day, and the time is right.

My family has a tradition of military service. My grandfather served in the Army in WW2, my father served in the Army in Korea, my uncle served in the Navy in Viet Nam, and my brother served in the Army. On my 18th birthday, I registered to vote and registered for the draft.

Air Force ROTC At MIT

I grew up a poor kid in a rich town, and I knew that if I wanted to go to the college of my choice, then I'd have to pay for it myself. So I applied for ROTC scholarships in order to attend MIT. I was awarded scholarships from the Navy, Army, and the Air Force. If I had accepted the Navy scholarship, then I could have freely choose my course of study. The Army required me to pursue a degree in a technical field. And the Air Force was even more specific, limiting my major to electrical engineering. I concluded that I had the highest chance of actually doing work related to my degree in the Air Force. So I accepted the Air Force ROTC scholarship and was off to MIT.

While at MIT, I learned that I was very good at the things that were valued highly by AFROTC: organization, discipline, public speaking, leadership. As a result, I rose to positions of leadership within the AFROTC corps of cadets, serving as cadet commander my senior year.

Unfortunately, I also learned that I didn't exactly enjoy electrical engineering. If I could have chosen my major, I would have chosen computer science. Other degrees that interested me were mechanical engineering and civil engineering. My scholarship was limited to electrical engineering. There was, however, a way to change majors. If you were selected for pilot training, then you could major in whatever you wanted (presumably because you'd be flying, not doing engineering). I also learned that if you wanted to make the Air Force a career, then the best path was to be a pilot. So I applied for, and was awarded, a pilot scholarship. I was the only pilot candidate in my class.

Ironically, by the time I was awarded the pilot scholarship, it was too late to change majors and graduate in four years. The summer after my sophomore year, I attended AFROTC field training at Plattsburgh AFB in New York and Initial Pilot Training (IPT) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Flying is an expensive hobby, and I couldn't afford more than a couple of lessons before IPT that summer. If I had failed to complete IPT, then I would have been in breach of my AFROTC contract. Going back to a non-pilot assignment was not an option. I would have had to drop out of college and enlist in the Air Force to pay back my scholarship. So no pressure.

I successfully completed IPT, returned to MIT, finished up my EE degree, and graduated in the spring of 1988. Then the waiting began. For decades, ROTC graduates have had to wait - up to a year - for an active duty assignment. During this time, you are unpaid. It's difficult to interview for a job if you know that you have to leave sometime in the next year. Some of my classmates opted to lie to their employers, who otherwise might not have hired them. I took my "year off" to live an work in Finland, where I met the woman who became my wife. My mother is from Finland, and much of my extended family lives there. I was fortunate that I had a degree that allowed me to get a job during this time. Not all ROTC graduates were as fortunate.

Pilot Training

In the spring of 1989, I was called to active duty. I started undergraduate pilot training (UPT) at Reese AFB in Lubbock, Texas, class 89-08. There were about 30 of us in our class and only two or three engineers. Most of my classmates had been flying for years and already had their private pilot licenses. Several had multi-engine ratings. A few were private pilot instructors themselves. With only my IPT training under my belt, I was at a severe disadvantage.

I have always considered myself to be patriotic. I entered the Air Force in order to pay for MIT, but I was determined to be the best Air Force officer that I could be. Being a pilot not only gave me (in theory, at least) the freedom to major in anything that I wanted, it also opened more doors in the Air Force than any other career path. At pilot training we were taught that there are two kinds of citizens in the Air Force: (1) pilots and (2) second-class citizens.

Unfortunately, the belief that you are a first-class citizen comes with the twisted notion that the rules don't apply to you. This is why pilots consider themselves mavericks. I was disillusioned to discover that our instructor pilots systematically taught us to lie, cheat, and steal. We were taught how to fudge expense reports to get the most out of them. We were given written tests, and then the instructors would leave the room and remind us to "work as a team," which was code for "cheat, but don't let us see you cheat." If one student failed a test, it made the class and the instructors look bad. But the worst part was the lying.

During one of my solo flights, a rare situation occurred. The tower called "hot air procedures," which meant that the air was dangerously thin and everybody had to land. We had never even practiced these procedures in the simulator, but I had the checklist strapped to my leg. Landing speeds were higher, flap settings were different, and everybody had to end their sorties immediately. While I was entering the pattern, I was simultaneously flipping through my procedures book trying to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do and in what order. I would have to overfly the runway, pull a 360, and land. The problem was that I didn't see the plane in the pattern in front of me. He was already in the pattern and had the right of way. I was supposed to climb, circle, and re-enter the pattern. The other plane was piloted by my friend Chuck, who was (and is) a better pilot than me and recognized what was happening. He rocked his wings back and forth to make himself more visible. Thankfully, I noticed him at the last second, went to full throttle, and climbed out of the pattern and out of his way. As you can imagine, there are rules for reporting near misses, and this definitely qualified as a reportable incident. But reporting looks bad for the class and for the instructors. So we were encouraged to bend the truth about what happened. The truth is that both of us could have been killed that day.

Another student that year wasn't as fortunate. He was flying a T-38 with his instructor pilot and was on final for landing. As you approach the runway, you are not supposed to descend below minimum descent altitude (MDA) before seeing the end of the runway. If you "bust the floor" and go below MDA, then you run the risk of landing short of the runway. On this occasion, the instructor pilot allowed the student to go below MDA. His plan was to teach his student a lesson, to dramatically take control of the aircraft and go to full throttle to demonstrate why busting MDA is dangerous. Unfortunately, it was a hot day, the air was thin, and there was not enough time to recover. With the instructor at the controls, the T-38 hit the ground short of the runway and started sliding on its belly at a slight angle, dirt flying over the canopy. The T-38 has a zero-zero parachute system, which means that you can bailout at zero airspeed and zero altitude and still survive. The instructor decided to stay with the plane. The student decided to bail out. Even with the zero-zero parachute system, the student's parachute failed to deploy in time, likely because the plane was sliding at an angle. The student died in his instructor's arms.

Five of us banded together in an attempt to rise above the problems that we saw in pilot training. We called ourselves the Regulators. Standing up for the patriotism that we believed in, fighting to do the right thing (e.g. not to lie, cheat, or steal) felt like a losing battle. Only one of the Regulators graduated from pilot training.

Half of my class - including me - didn't make it through pilot training. I was again fortunate to have an electrical engineering degree from MIT to fall back on. But I felt even more fortunate to have escaped pilot training with my life.

Military Contracting

I bounced back from pilot training and was given the coveted assignment of working at the Electronics Systems Division (ESD) at Hanscom Air Force Base (HAFB) in Bedford, MA. I worked in the E-3 Advanced Warning And Control System (AWACS) System Program Office (SPO). Our job was to upgrade certain electronics systems on the AWACS, a modified Boeing 707 with a huge radar dish mounted on top that acts as a flying aircraft control tower.

As it turns out, officers in ESD don't do actual engineering. That work is left to civilians and contractors (such as MITRE). My job was contract management, trying to make sure that the Air Force was getting a good bang for its buck. And there were a lot of bucks at stake.

Just like in pilot training, I felt like I was a salmon swimming upstream at HAFB. Several experiences stand out for me.

Junior officers get assigned all of the unglamorous routine tasks, such as stocking the office refrigerator with soda from the Base Exchange (BX), couriering documents (I once flew from Boston to Seattle to Boston, having spend only 45 minutes in Seattle), and performing other additional duties.

I handled one additional duty which was anything but routine. In our office, there were several safes for storing classified (secret and NATO secret) documents. Every day, the security officer is supposed to check each safe to make sure that it is locked and that no classified documents have been left laying around. Unfortunately, somebody arrived in our office one morning to find secret documents sitting on top of one of the safes. My job was to conduct an investigation. I interviewed all of the parties involved, including the security officer. The investigating officer is required to read Miranda Rights to all parties being investigated. When I read the Miranda Rights to the security officer (who was senior to me), he was noticeable nervous. My investigation revealed that the security officer had not done his job on the day that the secret documents were left unattended. He had not properly checked the office before leaving for the day. According to the regulations, the consequences should have been that (1) the materials in question get declassified and (2) the officer at fault gets court martialed. A court martial is a legal proceeding with consequences, some severe, some not so severe. The guilty officer was not going to prison, but he would have a permanent black mark in his record. I followed the regulations and submitted my written report to the colonel in charge of our office. The colonel refused to accept my recommendation. He directed me to back-date the report and change it so that there would be no consequences to the guilty officer. The colonel was a former pilot. As members of the military, we are required to obey the lawful orders of our superiors. But what if you believe the orders to be unlawful (as I did)? I tried to fight this battle, but I lost. I submitted a compromise report that the colonel ultimately approved, but I also separately documented what I believed to be improper activities that had transpired. I still have a copy of the memos I wrote explaining my actions.

On another occasion, I got to participate in an AWACS training missing to better understand the electronic systems we were working to improve. During that flight, the air traffic controllers were junior officers like me. Although they were to be controlling F-15s and F-16s on a training exercise, they were not required to have experience as ground air traffic controllers. And the pilots knew this. As I listened in on the headset to the vectors that the AWACS controllers were relaying to the fighter pilots, I was struck by the fact that the controllers were not giving the pilots correct information. When the controller I was working with ended her shift, I asked her about this. Her reply was that the radar dish (the main sensor on the AWACS) rotates so slowly (about once every 10 seconds) that you pretty much have to guess where the fighter jets are at any given point in time. So there was a lot of real-time guesstimating going on. Lovely.

Later, during a meeting with Boeing, we were arguing over the specifications for another sensor that had response times measured in milliseconds. Why, I asked, did we care about millisecond response times, when controllers in the sky rely on the one-blip-every-ten-seconds radar for vectoring pilots, and even then they have to guess at the planes' location? I was never a popular person when technical specifications were being discussed.

I often found myself fighting an uphill battle to do what was right. It was frustrating and exhausting. One day when my frustration must have been particularly evident, my boss said to me, "Erik, you can't fight city hall." To which I replied, "Sir, I'm going to fight city hall until the day I die."

In the defense acquisition system, an officer's clout is directly proportional to the size of the budget he manages. And "manage" is synonymous with "spend." If you don't spend money allocated to your program, then you loose it in the next fiscal year, and your clout decreases. One year, there were rumors on Capital Hill that President Bush was going to announce a spending freeze for the Department of Defense during his State of the Union address. At that point, our office was negotiating contracts (primarily with Boeing) worth about $80 million. If budgets were frozen, then none of the projects could be completed. By doing a change order, contracts can be quickly finalized with an agreement that the details will be worked out later. Since change orders involve more risk for the contractor, they come at a higher price. So that day, there was a crowd outside of the legal team's office as ESD workers and the Boeing representative lined up to sign change order after change order. That day, our office spent $120 million. I was flabbergasted. These were contracts that we could have secured for $80 million, but we wasted $40 million to rush them through. As it turns out, President Bush did not freeze defense spending that day. And guess where the rumors about the spending freeze originated from? Boeing lobbyists in DC. I reported this event to the fraud, waste, and abuse hotlines at all levels of the military: Hanscom, Air Force headquarters, and the Pentagon. As far as I know, no action was ever taken. The only consolation for me was that the money was going to Seattle. At least it wasn't being put in a huge pile in the parking lot and burned. But I think our standards should be higher.

Lessons Learned

One of the things that the military taught me is that nobody is in charge of your career except you. If you wanted an award, you had to nominate yourself. If you wanted an assignment, you had to make it happen. All officers wrote their own performance evaluations so that our bosses didn't have to.

My frustrations with the system ultimately led me to apply to law school, so that I could single-handedly fix the defense acquisition process and end $10,000 toilet seats once and for all. At some point, I concluded that the best way to serve my country was not as a military officer but as a civilian lawyer working to fix broken laws. I'm still working on that.

I am reminded of the great quote from Winston Churchill: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." So I often say that while the military needs nobody, everybody needs the military. As broken and frustrating as the military can be at times, it's still essential. Every Veterans Day, I think about my own experience in the Air Force, and how it challenged me to think about what it means to be patriotic. I served in the Air Force and took an oath to defend the Constitution and the values for which it stands. I am proud that I served until honorably discharged, rather than resigning my commission when faced with politics and policies with which I disagreed.

I love this country, and I wish that everything about it can continue to improve. It is the hope that keeps me going. Happy Veterans Day.

Related posts:

• The Speech That Sarah Palin Must Give
  I'm sorry. Please accept my apology.
• Independent For Obama
  Breaking my political silence.
• LinkedIn: Erik J. Heels: USAF
  Reese AFB, Lubbock, Texas. Hanscom AFB, Bedford, Massachusetts.
• A Rare Political Post
  Ten percent of troops in Iraq may have tours of duty extended by four months.
• LinkedIn: Erik J. Heels: MIT
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology class of 1988.
• LinkedIn: Erik J. Heels: CEHS
  Cape Elizabeth High School class of 1984.
• Captain Erik Heels Honorably Discharged From The United States Air Force
  I will have much to say about my Air Force years when the time is right.
• A Smattering Of Things That I've Learned In Life
  This article explains, in a way that a resume cannot, what life experiences I have had and how these experiences have contributed to the unique perspective that I bring to everything that I do.
• The Meaning Of Life Online
  We need to seek a middle ground where we can use technology to deliver what it has promised: improved quality of life.
• Finland, WW2, And International Law
  The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance between Finland and the Soviet Union - Its Underpinnings, Operation, and Cancellation.
• Crescendo to Panic
  A Crisis in the Persian Gulf.

In which we learn about the limitations of Google Reader Shared Item Notes.

In tribute to my favorite software class at MIT, I have a recursive logo. The logo - an airplane in a circle - appears in the tail of the airplane. So it's a logo in a logo. In my MIT class, 6.001 (i.e. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" - but everybody refers to it by number not by name), we learned Scheme, a dialect of the LISP programming language. One of our assignments was to write a Scheme interpreter in Scheme, to learn about the recursive features of the language.

So this blog post is a little experiment in blog recursion for my friend Rick Klau, who has been part of an ongoing conversation taking place primarily via the Notes feature of Google Reader Shared Items.

This will make more sense if you subscribe to my Google Reader Shared Items or one of my other social networks.

And I promise to get back to more normal topics (branding, trademarks, domain names) shortly.

Tags: @intersectionfail

Social networking sites come and go. Here are the ones where I'm currently active.

Following up on my post Drawing That Explains Social Networking, here are my current social networks:

1. My Blog
   http://www.erikjheels.com
   My personal space on the Net. My personal branding machine. My - OK, you get the point.
2. My Blog's Feed
   http://feedproxy.google.com/erikjheels
   Powered by FeedBurner. You can read blogs as websites, but that's inefficient. Use a feed reader like Google Reader to have your favorite blog's posts come to you, rather than you having to go to them. Kind of like email for websites. Try it, you'll like it.
3. My Google Reader Shared Items
   http://google.com/reader/shared/10427218196851376844
   I know, it's a mouthful. I read lots of blogs. I share interesting posts. Sometimes I comment on shared items by adding Notes. You can subscribe to my shared items feed to see what I'm reading. Or at least what I'm sharing.
4. Twitter
   http://twitter.com/erikjheels
   Twitter is a microblogging service. Posts, called Tweets, are limited to 140 characters. Twitter is like a gigantic email list with instant feedback. Only better. It's also highly addictive. Try TweetDeck to manage your Tweets. You can subscribe to my Twitter feed or you can follow me directly in Twitter by getting you own account.
5. LinkedIn
   http://linkedin.com/in/erikjheels
   I use LinkedIn for business networking (my resume and the like).
6. Facebook
   http://mit.facebook.com/profile.php?id=711783
   I use Facebook for friends and family networking.
7. FriendFeed
   http://friendfeed.com/erikjheels
   FriendFeed allows you to aggregate all of your feeds (whether Atom or RSS) into one combined feed. You can subscribe to each of my social networking services individually, or you can subscribe to my FriendFeed feed.
8. Plaxo
   http://www.plaxo.com/directory/profile/103081141354/ded3340f/Erik/Heels
   Plaxo also allows you to aggregate feeds.
9. My Google Profile
   http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/108138843529551827266
   You can also find much of this same info on my Google Profile.

Note that since the advent of Notes, my Google Reader Shared Items feed is no longer being published via FeedBurner. If you are using the old feed (http://feedproxy.google.com/erikjheels-googlereader), please switch to the new feed. Thanks.

Tags: @intersectionfail

I'm sorry. Please accept my apology.

I apologize for not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is.

I apologize for the Katie Couric interview.

I apologize for not giving any interviews after that.

I apologize for answering real questions with canned talking points.

I apologize for suggesting that Russia has entered Alaska's air space on my watch and claiming that living next to Russia gives me foreign policy experience.

I apologize for accusing Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists."

I apologize for accusing Barack Obama of being a socialist.

I apologize for suggesting that Barack Obama is not as patriotic as me or as John McCain.

I apologize for suggesting that Barack Obama is un-American.

I apologize for equating the words Muslim, Arab, and terrorist. And I especially apologize to Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans.

I apologize for not repudiating supporters who yelled "kill him" and "bomb Obama" at my rallies. I do not support racial or ethnic intolerance.

I apologize for abusing my power as Governor of Alaska in the firing of the state's public safety commissioner.

I apologize for accepting $150,000 in clothing from the Republican National Committee. I will return all of it.

I apologize for criticizing scientific fruit fly research that may benefit those with autism.

I apologize for calling myself a feminist but not supporting Roe vs. Wade.

I apologize for not being able to name another Supreme Court case other than Roe vs. Wade.

I apologize for hanging up on Canadian comedian Marc Antoine Audette after getting pranked.

I apologize for voting for Republican Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, despite his being found guilty of seven felonies.

I congratulate Barack Obama for becoming the 44th President of the United States of America. While we may disagree on the issues, we can and must disagree civilly. I recognize that united we stand. And divided we fall. And I echo what John McCain said in his concession speech last night: "I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Senator Obama. I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president."