SimNation Under the Tree

In 1989, SimCity, a city-building simulation computer game, was released. The point of the game was to get the player to design and create a city by adding buildings, creating power grids, establishing transportation systems, adjusting the tax rate, zoning property, and more. The player could expect to encounter a number of calamities like floods, earthquakes, plane crashes, fires, and more. In some cases, these disastrous occurrences could generate other hardships that the player had to deal with.

As the player played, he or she needed to establish a tax basis, a zoning plan for the kind of growth that would encourage and support production and consumption, and make growth decisions his city could afford to purchase and maintain.

In light of the budget and spending battle underway in the Congress, it occurred to me that it would be great if there was a simulation our Congressmen could plug their proposals into to see what exactly they should expect in the way of outcomes of all of this spending they seem to love. If I was a game designer, I'd create that game and call it SimNation. Congressmen could plug in a set of beginning parameters: the GDP, inflation rate, unemployment rate, and so on. Then, he or she would plug in their budget values and see how it plays out. If the Congressman overspends, they can watch the budget deficit add to the national debt and watch it go through the roof. Or they might get concerned they'd lose the game and make better spending decisions.

I don't know if there's enough logic in the universe to make that kind of game work. Even if Congressmen won't be finding a SimNation under the tree this Christmas, I would really like to start the new year in the belief our our representatives will begin to game their decisions out so our kids and grandkids don't get stuck with it all they've been creating.

Way to Go, GEICO!

I'm sure you've seen the GEICO Insurance commercial where the squirrel runs out into the middle of the road, causing a car to swerve and run off the road. After the car crashes, the critter's little squirrel buddy runs out and they high-five and dap each other. They're pretty proud of themselves as GEICO goes on to preach about how easy it is to get GEICO. So, I was driving down a narrow road early yesterday morning when a squirrel ran out in front of my car just like that one did in the GEICO commercial. The road was fairly narrow so I didn't even hesitate in my decision to bear down on that squirrel rather than steer out of my lane to miss it. Before you judge me as insensitive and cruel, let me say that there was no way that I was going to veer off the road into a ditch or a tree and leave a couple of tree-climbing rodents to high-five each other in the middle of the street at my expense. Instead, I lined up on that squirrel. He got all bug-eyed when he realiz

Serving with Uncle Mel

One of the rewards of a career in the military is the opportunity to serve with truly great people up and down the chain of command. That was certainly the case for me. This is a story—part of the story—of one of those genuinely great people, Melvin W. DeMars, Jr. On October 18, 1983, Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 261 (HMM-261) and the 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) was underway on the helicopter carrier USS Guam (LPH-9) for a deployment to Lebanon as part of its Mediterranean deployment with the U.S. 6th Fleet. The squadron had already been to Lebanon after the Israelis invaded in June of 1982, so they had every expectation that the plans to return there were pretty firm. They were at sea for about a day, headed east toward the Mediterranean when, at around midnight on October 20, 1982, the Guam turned south. There wasn’t a lot of information circulating around the ship that indicated that anything had changed, but the Marines in the squadron knew that when you’re headed for

Yellow Footprints: An Anniversary Reflection

Hurry Up and Wait... I grew up in a small community in southern Illinois–Newton, Illinois–where people generally knew each other or at least knew of each other. It was–and still is–a nice town. It’s the kind of town that still holds a fall parade where tractors and marching bands own the streets. People sit along the curb in their chairs while the kids play along the street. The people there cherish the tempo and lifestyle, quietly aware that if everyone lived that way, it would be a much better world. I wasn’t exactly setting any academic records in high school, so I needed a change of pace and some way to transition to a successful track somewhere, somehow. I had thought about the military, but I hesitated to follow through. I wasn’t sure I would be cut out for the military life, and I didn’t know which branch of the service to enter. I was very certain that if I did join the military service, it wouldn’t be the Marines because I was pretty sure I couldn’t make it there. However,

Blithering On

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