jumpingfish

Maybe it’s cause for hope that notable politicians and tech experts are starting to speak out about our government’s surveillance policies. Bruce Schneier is one. A top computer security expert with a knack for communicating, he writes books, he blogs online and recently he has been publicly … shall we say … skeptical of what the Internet has become and what we’re learning about our government.

Recently, he wrote this in a discussion of how government and corporate pronouncements have completely lost our trust:

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander has claimed that the NSA’s massive surveillance and data mining programs have helped stop more than 50 terrorist plots, 10 inside the U.S. Do you believe him? I think it depends on your definition of “helped.”

The whole thing is worth reading. But this one sentence pushed a hot button that I was trying to describe to the fair and industrious and infinitely patient Trudy.

Whether we believe the good director general or not does not only depend on the definition of helped. It depends on

• what surveillance means
• what qualifies as a data mining program
• what stop means
• what terrorist means
• what a plot is
• what it means to be inside the US

In short, not a single word can be taken at face value. Nothing is what it seems.

People joked for years about Clinton’s it depends on what the meaning of is is, but this kind of triangulation is now the norm.

Schneier is right. Something needs to be done to restore our trust.

From Free Range Living‘s Project 365, comes this dandelion, at which point the pen and the tablet beside me beckon.

It does the free range dandelion no justice. It was just a scribble but not bad as a Friday night meditation.

Happy weekend.

Another from that trip more than a year ago. We’re getting very near the end…

It looks like it’s going to be a nice day. Bits of blue sky are showing thru the clouds here and there, so we go up to Kilauea one more time.

We show the gate attendant our receipt from several days ago. “We’re getting our money’s worth out of this. This is our fifth visit.”

She smiles a sincere smile on her face. “Have a good time.”

The clouds begin to thin. The sky is mostly blue. We drive slowly along the narrow asphalt road thru the rainforest, happy that there is no rain.

“Look!” I say, pointing out the window.

Beyond the trees, for the first time we can clearly see the slopes of Mauna Loa. Today there is no mist floating thru the woods. There are no clouds concealing its distant summit. The weather is mostly clear, and there it is, sunlight bathing its lower slopes, great black shadows on its upper slopes.

No, those are no shadows but rather reat black stains of black lava. Lava that some time in the past pushed out of fissures, running down the side of the volcano, cooling before it reached the bottom. We can see where the flow twisted and turned with the contours as it ran downhill. And we can see where it pooled in places, forming lava lakes high on the slopes.

This mountain is really, really big. All the descriptions say this, but it is hard to appreciate its enormity without being there. Even from this distance, we can’t capture the whole volcano in a single camera image. It fills the horizon from left to right.

And look! There in the distance beyond Mauna Loa. There’s Mauna Kea.

And holy cow, look! There are the telescopes! We were there standing beside them just the other day (although as you might remember, even though we looked back in this very direction, we didn’t notice Mauna Loa which looms before us now).

There was a guy leaning against the stone wall of the  Jagger Museum. He was in the shadows sharing miscellaneous facts and telling stories about the Halema‘uma‘u eruption. He talked about the weather. He talked about Rim Road being closed. And at some point, he mentioned Mauna Kea.

We mentioned that we had just been there, and he mentioned the magnificent view of Mauna Loa that you get when you’re on Mauna Kea.

When he said that, Trudy and I mentioned that we hadn’t noticed, and you could see from his reaction that he thought something was wrong. He mentioned something about how Mauna Kea is usually above the clouds and not socked in at which point I stopped talking about our ascent, because it had been above the clouds, and it was not socked in, and neither of us saw Mauna Loa. …um to the best of our recollection. 

Were we clueless!? How was it that we were up there above the clouds with nothing but clear, blue sky all around us, and we didn’t see Mauna Loa?

I’m sure the guy thought we were blowing smoke. And we were kind of ashamed… and baffled. So when we got home, we took a closer look at our photos to see if the cameras saw what we clearly didn’t.

And so here it is. I submit this as evidence that we really were there, as you can see from the dark slope of Mauna Kea in the foreground, and as evidence that we were indeed above the clouds as you can tell from …well, the clouds. And I submit this as evidence that Mauna Loa was barely visible. 

As you can see, it’s not obvious what that dark thing is in the distance. Is it? I mean, you see what I’m saying, right?

And what a sight it was, now that we look back at it. A magnificent view!

1. Finding

As we drove thru Kea‘au, we passed a strip mall. There was a gas station, a grocery store, a health food store and a couple restaurants.

It was dinner time. We were hungry. The parking lot was full. And a crowd was at Hokulani’s Steak House. So we decided this was the place to eat.

There was a hostess inside the door.

“Do you have reservations?” she asked. Of course, we didn’t, but she thought she could seat us.

There was a musician setting up his guitar and amps and microphones in the back corner of the main room.

I’m thinking to myself, “Wow, this is perfect.”

2. Ordering

We sat outside on the patio under a broad roof. We sat there happy to have found this place. We sat and watched people coming and going and listened to the conversation on the patio around us. We sat. And we watched. And we sat… And no one came to take our order, although four different people came out at one time or another and looked in our direction.

Eventually the fair and industrious Trudy flagged a guy down.

“I’m just the busboy,” he said in an apologetic tone. And then he added, “I never get a promotion,” an odd thing to say in that situation.

“Well… it’s coming,” I said meaninglessly, not knowing how else to respond.

A few moments later, he returned.

“Chris is the manager,” he told us and then turned around and left.

Wait. What?

A long time passed. More employees looked around the corner. But still no one came to take our order. 

I mean this was a really long wait. Even the couple at the table nearby was noticing our predicament.

Finally a waiter walked up. He had no look of apology on his face. It was as if nothing had happened (which in fact was true). He just walked up to us and said, “Thanks for waiting. Can I take your order?”

As it turned out, we neither saw nor spoke to that waiter again.

3. Eating

Trudy’s soup came first. I sat there while she began.

Then they brought out our appetizers. These were the single worst potato skins I have ever eaten in my life. Not only were they tasteless, but they were topped with canned mushrooms. Mushrooms on potato skins!? Ok, maybe that’s a thing there. But canned!? And the pile of them on top of the potato was daunting. Maybe this was their way of apologizing for how long we had to eat. Or maybe it was their way of hiding the lameness of the potato skins themselves. 

And then my steak came out. It was also covered with canned mushrooms. And it was too rare. Indeed, a guy two tables down had the same problem with his steak, and he had sent it back, but their waiter brought his steak back out from the kitchen and announced quite publicly that in fact it was not too rare, putting the steak back on the table. So I ate my steak, along with the meager, tasteless vegetables.

In all fairness, at least the macaroni salad was good.

4. Paying

After we were finished, Paul the busboy cleared our plates. We pushed back and listened to the music and waited for the bill.

It won’t surprise you that the bill didn’t come. Ten minutes passed without any hint of any face of any person who worked in that place.

At this point, I’m wondering how on earth was it that anyone came here. Trudy gave up and left to do some grocery shopping at the Foodland at the end of the strip mall. I sat there and waited. And waited.

Eventually Paul came to the table. He apologized that he had forgotten, and he gave me the bill.

Wait. What? The busboy who never gets promoted brought us our bill? Holy cow, what kind of upside down world was this?

I gave him my credit card which he took back inside.

When he returned, he set the bill and the card on the table, and he began talking.

He talked about the missles in North Korea. He told me that he like watching the news. He told me how they make fun of him and his best friend for being from North Carolina. He asked where we were from, and he said “H-town!” when I mentioned Texas. He talked about how his friend had gotten a girl pregnant and was now helping raise the boy. And he talked about how he had flown to Hawaii on a one-way ticket, at which point he looked over at me with some kind of knowing look on his face.

5. Postscript

That was our dinner in Kea‘au at Hokulani’s Steak House.

If you should go there some day, let me warn you that the parking lot might be busy, the place might be crowded, they might ask if you have reservations, and there might be live music inside, but we can’t recommend it for dinner, even if there is this great busboy who works there.

Wait. Look. I see on Yelp that the steak house has closed. I guess our experience was not unique.