On Sunday, I went to the Virginia Renaissance Festival at Lake Anna. I’ve only been to one other, which was in Minnesota last August. The one in Minnesota was huge and being that it was the first time I’ve ever been to a Renaissance Fest, I was in awe. So when I went to the one at Lake Anna, I had something to compare. When I got there though, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Not many vendors or attractions, but it did have a few bright spots. Lots and lots of swords and weapons, a couple of good attractions, and lots of cleavage!

The fest in Minnesota showcased all sorts of dances, bands, and sideshows. I enjoyed the jousting, even though it rained during the middle of the thing. Lots of animals were showcased, such as boas, alligators, and other reptiles. However, at the Virginia Fest, the only animals showcased were an Alpaca and a couple of baby chickens and ducks and a beautiful and big Alaskan Husky. I was disappointed also since I got to see a lot of belly dancers in Minnesota but not here in Virginia.

There were a few things I did enjoyed. There was one show that was put on by a contortionist/juggler. He started out his routine with a few tricks with the contortion and moved to juggling. I was standing in the rear while most people were sitting down on hay bales and a few kids sitting up front near the stage. There was actually one kid, probably between 4 and 6 that I could constantly hear talking to the guy on stage. At one point, the guy started with the fire sticks and was doing a trick that consisted of a stick, the bottom being on his chin and balancing it on top of it another wand that was set on fire on both ends (just visualize the sticks being in a T formation on his chin). He finished the trick and everybody clapped in appreciation. He proceeded then to tell the audience that would do the same balancing trick, saying that all the women would enjoy this one, by balancing it on his tongue! When he finished, he said to the audience; “Well, I hope that all the adults in the audience would get that (refering to what he said about the women enjoying the trick). But I hope that none of you kids do!”. Well, right when the guy said that, the kid that was just talking up a storm to the guy in the front just yelled out “I GET IT, I GET IT!”. At that very moment everybody in the audience just busted out in laughter. However, the guy on stage rolled with it and asked where the boy’s mother was! Reluctantly though, everybody saw the boy’s mother, who was sitting on the ground raised her hand in acknowledgment. I think everybody got a kick out it.

I think the Minnesota fest spoiled the Virginia one for me since that was my first time to one. I’ll probably go back again in the future since my friend Rachel told me this is still new down here. We’ll see. Next thing I have to go see is a Sci Fi convention.

Some might call it good research, others might say it is just good management and still others (I’m in this camp) believe that some Hedge Funds help manipulate the value of a firm for personal gain. Take the case of Star Gas Partners, a company targeted by Daniel Loeb at Third Point. According to an article by James Althucher in today’s Financial Times (”The Brutal Truth of the Hedge Fund Activist” by James Altucher on page 12 of the US addition), Mr. Loeb wrote in his 13 D filings (a filing with the SEC whenever someone takes more than a 5% interest in a publicly traded company), that the “it is time for you to step down as CEO and Director so that you can do what you do best; retreat to your waterfront mansion in the Hamptons where you can play tennis and hobnob with your fellow socialites.” Interestingly, according to the same article, the 1st Q 2005 filings show that Starr beat all expectations and the stock soared. I wonder how long Mr. Loeb will hold onto his investment in Starr?

Hmmmmm…..let me see.

I’ve been busy around the house lately. The last month, my father and I have been trying to put up a fence around my property. Why? Because my neighbor is getting a cow. The next question that I get is why do we have to put up the fence, it’s the neighbor that’s getting the cow. Well, it’s actually my fault. There was a fence before I built the house, but when I had to put in the driveway and build the house, the fence that was there had to be torn down. We told my neighbor that we would put it back up if she decided to get another cow. Well, these last few weeks working on it has been a hard job. Working with my father has never been easy since he has a short temper and is a perfectionist. I did lose it a couple of weeks ago when I cussed him out, which was the first time in my life! Long story!

The grass is turning out very nicely around the house. It has helped with the erosion, since I had that problem last year. I finally got to use the riding lawn mower for the first time on Sunday. Let me just that riding that thing down the yard is scary as hell the first couple times down it. I had to put the brake on down the whole way and I was fish tailing a better part of the way down.

I’m also putting rip rap around the back of the house and down the right side of the bank. This will help with the erosion still. However, the hard part is putting all the rocks down which will a long hard back-breaking job. Once I finish though, it will look awesome. Next job after that will put in the fire pit.

I’ve been playing softball with both my company and church teams. My company team is finally doing well since we started three years ago. Right now we are 4 and 4, which doesn’t look that great but if you knew the company, that happens to be the best record we’ve had ever! It’s the middle of the season, so we still might have a winning record.

I saw “Star Wars: Episode III” on Sunday night. Before seeing it, I did read all the spoilers to it but that didn’t stop me from wanting to see it. I was impressed with it and I’m sure like everyone else, felt like this was the better of the first three. It can’t beat Star Wars, A New Hope or Empire Strikes back, but it was better than the others. I was disappointed that the reason that Amidala died was because of a broken heart. Kind of a pathetic excuse of a way to die. Also, we find out how Darth Vader gets his name, but I’ve been asking what does Vader mean? Maybe we weren’t meant to know how the Sith get their names.

Been watching all the season finales the last two weeks. I was watching NCIS last night and I was very disappointed that they killed off one of the main characters. She was shot in the head by a sniper! Again I was aghast by this way of being killed. Though this does make me want to know what they are going to do next season. Also, I watched the finale of 24 and was impressed. I’m not a big fan of Keifer Sutherland, but this role fits him. I think good writing has helped that show, though it can be over the top sometimes.

It may be unfair to characterize U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) as the "last of the Goldwater Republicans." There are plenty of us out there in the party, but our voices are often lost amidst the shrill sounds emitted by the increasingly larger social conservative wing of the GOP. And a few legislators -- notably Arizona's Jeff Flake -- still hold firm against pork-barrel spending and vote according to a Goldwateresque understanding of the Constitution.

Dr. Ron Paul -- like Senator Tom Coburn, he is an obstetrician-gynecologist in real life -- is the only life member of the Libertarian Party in Congress. He ran for president as a Libertarian Party candidate in 1988, after he had given up his seat in the House of Representatives for an unsuccessful run for the Senate in Texas.

Saturday's Houston Chronicle has a largely positive profile of Dr. Paul. The article says, in part:

Paul almost always goes against the grain. He recently cast one of the few votes against President Bush's emergency spending for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In March, he initially declined to comment when part of the Texas City BP refinery in his district exploded and killed several workers. A staffer said Paul wanted to avoid the appearance of grandstanding.

In general, Paul's goal is to provide an alternative voice in Washington, even if it's often ignored. And his nine terms in Congress may be proof of his constituents' admiration of his independent streak. Texans have a soft spot for those kinds of politicians, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

"They sometimes value people who will get in the way of government and slow it down to question, to prod and sometimes steer for the ditch rather than down the center lane," Jillson said.

Paul "doesn't work the mechanism and play the game," he said. "He is the guy sticking the broom in the spokes. There are enough people in his district, the old and the new, who know who Ron Paul is in the context of American politics and think that's fine."

Paul opposes anything that in his view is not proscribed in the Constitution as a federal responsibility. He'd like state governments or charitable institutions to take care of those things.

A sidebar to the article lists a few of Ron Paul's votes that set him apart from other Republicans in Congress -- indeed, from most other Members of Congress:

In the U.S. House, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson was:
•One of three Republicans who voted against the U.S. Patriot Act.
•The only Republican who voted against the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act of 2002.
•The only Republican who opposed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004.
•One of six Republicans who voted against authorizing military force in Iraq in October 2002.
•One of three Republicans who voted against the emergency supplemental appropriations bill for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On his own House web site, Dr. Paul lists the "freedom principles" that animate his service:

Rights belong to individuals, not groups.

Property should be owned by people, not government.

All voluntary associations should be permissible -- economic and social.

The government's monetary role is to maintain the integrity of the monetary unit, not participate in fraud.

Government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth or to grant special privileges.

The lives and actions of people are their own responsibility, not the government's.

This list of principles echoes the political manifesto presented by Barry Goldwater in his 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative:

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."

I'd venture a guess that Dr. Paul is the only Member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, in the House or in the Senate, who features on his web site the famous story about Tennessee Congressman Davey Crockett called "Not Yours to Give." The story, which describes an incident years before Crockett's death defending the Alamo, illustrates Crockett's philosophy that Congress cannot use other people's money -- taxpayers' money -- for even a good purpose, unless that use is specifically authorized by the U.S. Constitution. The story begins:

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I ever heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

The story, taken from Edward Sylvester Ellis' biography of Davey Crockett, ends with a succinct summary of Crockett's view of the men who served with him in Congress and their poor adherence to constitutional principle and concomitant desire for private gain:

"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday. "There is one thing which I will call your attention, "you remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men - men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased--a debt which could not be paid by money--and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $20,000 when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

Ron Paul is one of the few federal legislators, if not the only one, to see Davey Crockett as someone to emulate. He may not be the last of the Goldwater Republicans, but he is surely among the last of the Congressional Crocketts.

I have worked on a number of IT committees (some for my children’s’ school) and it always seems to come down to the question of “visible” dollars out….i.e., what is the lease costs, including maintenance? Many of us who are comfortable in both the PC and the Apple realm (we use both in our business and at home) understand that the visible dollar cost is, perhaps, the least important part of the puzzle. What is most important is the added value of the learning experience within the community. How is IT integrated into the learning experience? What sort of skills are we looking to develop for the next generation and how can the right IT help us? I suggest that these skills are not how to do a PowerPoint presentation, or how do an Excel spreadsheet. We can learn these skills in a day’s time. Rather, what’s most important are the skills of developing imagination and cooperation amongst a large group. Here, history can be a guide…the Renaissance in Europe my have been helped by the development of certain technologies but it was in the imagination of the users that made the difference, wasn’t it? When we are freed up from having to worry about the technology we can allow ourselves to be better teachers and learners.

I have attended one of the Apple Learning Summits and I was impressed by the quality of the Apple representatives. Yet I saw more of a focus on the gee whiz tech side than on the learning side. Wouldn’t it be interesting to work through a real case study or two of how the technology helped develop the imagination and the community as a whole? Apple came close to doing this in the presentation material they provided on the Maine project. Along with the talk about the gee whiz side of the technology, there was an excellent vignette of a young man who was known as being a disruptive influence on the class. Like many of us, this young man had a different way of learning and the traditional methods had left him frustrated. When the Apple program was implemented, this young person found “his” way of learning and subsequently become an inspiration to the teachers and the other students. In the end, he became a scholar and a leader in the school. He helped his fellow students learn the technology as if he were the school’s “help” desk.

I hope that Apple can find a way to articulate the greater values of their approach to learning in such a way as to encourage more parents and school boards to look beyond the “visible” numbers. In the end, a $4 million short-term savings does little good when life long learning skills are sacrificed. I know that it is a frustrating battle; however, in the global scheme of things, if we lose the battle, we loose the war and our future will be far less bright.