Words

I work as a user experience designer, and I love my job. It's especially perfect for my academic background. In college I majored in German and also cobbled together sort of a minor in art and art history. Back then, I was preparing for a career that at the time didn't even exist! But I was driven by two things: learning the language and culture of others, and learning how to create things. Fast forward to now and this is exactly what I do every day. I design building management software that has a major impact on people and how they live and work. Sometimes it's hotel guests, sometimes it's customers in large retail stores, and sometimes it's teachers and students.  But that's just the occupants. Other people impacted by this software include the owners of buildings, the managers of buildings, the technicians who service the equipment and update the software, the engineers who design systems that include our software, and the distributors who decide to specify ...

My experiment to resume blogging has certainly lagged since April! But there's something about the approaching election, and Trump descending even further into hell, that motives me to write again. Today's topic is the death of the Republican party. It's not something that I wish for -- I've had Republican periods in my life, especially growing up when the Republican party was led by decent people acting decently.  But today's incarnation of that party is definitely self-destructing. And while it's scary to watch and see how it divides and damages our country in the process, I feel some comfort that it's finally happening. So I'll start with facts, something that I know are completely foreign to Trump and many Republicans today. But I still rather like facts. And here's an interesting fact to observe: the last time the Republicans had a legitimately and popularly elected president of the United States was in 1988.  That's 32 years, or 8 administr...

Yesterday the acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned because of comments he gave about Captain Brett Crozier, who Modly fired a week ago (Google "Crozier" and you can catch up on the story if you're unfamiliar).  In accepting Modly's resignation, his boss Mark Esper (Defense Secretary) said, "I have the greatest respect for anyone who serves our country, and who places the greater good above all else." Modly himself noted that the Navy was placed in a negative spotlight "largely due to my poor use of words," so he thought the honorable response was to resign. Interesting. So does this same standard apply to our president, the Navy's commander in chief? I'm not going to waste my time finding specific examples of our president using a poor choice of words that has placed our nation, numerous ethnic groups, other countries, scientists, women, career civil servants, and even his own staff in a negative spotlight. I'm not going to d...