Corporate Hospitality: Fill & Download for Free

It's going to take me a while to flesh this answer out, because like the proverbial blindmen trying to describe an elephant, it can be answered in multiple ways (like Rashomon in a way). I'll try to give you a couple ways of seeing various answers to the question.So I'm a 3rd generation Californian, born in the same hospital in Los Angeles that my mom was (my Dad was born in Montana and raised with my uncles in Utah and further grew up in Chicago). I've also worked with 7-8 generation Californians. So during WW2 mom was allowed to finish high school (Los Angeles High, later used as the backdrop for the series Room 222) and started internment in a horse stable in Santa Anita Race Track.One way to answer this question is to give observations I had in life about life elsewhere like: one of my first plane trips when I was young was to Salt Lake City, UT. This trip and later numerous business trip to Washington DC surprised me by the number of brick (dirty brick from when coal was burned more) buildings and structures. Europe had similar coal stained buildings with other older materials as well.Many people elsewhere value the old, tried and tired, and staid. California is one of the places where a 20 year old can become a billionaire with good reason.California homes and buildings are code covered from a 1925 and a 1933 earthquake standard. We use more stucco, glass, steel, and brick (where it appears) are mostly found in few remaining chimneys. At least 3 friends own and live in geodesic dome homes (or have an attached dome). One friend lives out of 2 tee pees (no, she is not a native American, and she used to own an Alaskan wolf, oh that's another issue). Several friends own and raise what might be termed wild animals (one professionally for use in the TV and movie industry (another acquaintance owned 200 armored vehicles (tanks and more) used in various movies)).Until recently, ranch style homes had more yard space. I grew up with a front yard and a back yard where we kept 3 desert tortoises (you can't take them as pets anymore) and variously dogs, cats, a chicken (got small eggs), etc. Now you can only find homes like that in the Central Valley.The main population centers in California are the Los Angeles corrador which depending how you count extends South to San Diego and NW to Ventura, or Santa Barbara ...Santa Maria, SLO ... or ... and the San Francisco Bay Area. The population centers have a democratic (note small 'd') emphasis which make them think everything is for them (this is the story of the country mouse versus the city mouse). I'll say a little more about that in the next section. Of course there is all kinds of weird music about all these California locations.One difference: odor, if and when you travel South into Mexico, south past Ensenada (but you can experience this South of TJ if you go in land into the mountains (which go up to 9-10K ft), you don't smell the trash burns in the country side. The odors are different in a number of ways, and you can experience them when you get here. The LA Basin was where Arnie H-Smit did his first studies on smog, and I can recall seeing the San Gab (Mtns) when we switched to un-Pb gasoline for cars. LA Basin smog is bad for the topography (the highest point of LA County is over 10K ft, and the highest point in So Cal is over 11.5K ft, and the lowest pass is just over 2K ft (from sea level). People have proposed tunnels with fans.Life has a considerable Spanish/Mexican motif. The differences are slight and subtle. In LA they tell you to go visit Olivera Street in old LA. SF only has the Mission District (you need to find out about Fr. Serra's Missions), and Redwood City for instance. You will pick up Spanish/Mexican phrases by osmosis. Cities like Santa Barbara (1925 earthquake) architectural Review Board force building review for a Spanish motif. You will also get a little of the Catholic religion forced upon you, since that came with the Spanish/Mexicans. Anglo students in elementary schools get some Spanish language exposure. However, this is changing since there are now other ethnic groups having a hard enough time with English. Hola! See separate lower paragraph on the 2 Baja states.Annoying: non-locals and newbies who mispronounce Js without using an H: like La Jolla or Jesus or Juanipero or Jorge. Try these city names: Eureka, Ukiah, Yreka, Yucaipa.Earthquakes are a great topic to scare prospective residents off. That and fall fire season (you know what Phos-check and aluma-gel are), and winter flash foods and mud slides. And spring hay fever season.What's unique about the State of California's geography is like Chile: a long narrow skinny state (not as extreme as Chile). We span 10 degrees of latitude as opposed to original states further East which chose -East-West expansion. It's also where the 10 degrees at a transition belt in a temperate area: the South part of the State is desert, and the North is forest. This is why we have water problems. CA is comparatively narrow in a N-S sense.Our state requires extensive water movement for a population to live in its pseudo-Mediterrean climate (I've been to Cadiz and Tarifa, Andaluccia, Spain as well as Gibraltar: you almost can't tell the difference in veg.). The critical clever idea was to tap the annual snow pack for water. This is because it requires the use of fewer smaller dams. The phase change of 80 Cal/cc (almost 2 orders of magnitude) from ice to water is what makes our water system useful. This is accomplished by 2 (3) major N-S mountain ranges: the coastal ranges and the Sierra Nevada/Cascade ranges. The total relief in CA from sea-level to almost 14.5K ft. squeezes water out of the air and forms snow. Snow is far more important than water because of that 80 Cal. difference. California is a 3-D major state.The Central Valley (Sacramento River Valley in the N, and San Joaquin River Valley in the S), and the lesser Salinas and Imperial Valleys are major ag centers. These are slowly being converted into urban areas. These Valleys as well as San Diego and Orange Counties for the major part of the conservative political base in California. You will even find the hints of both the California Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) Party (the documentary California Reich), KKK, and JBS (John Birch Society with "Get us out of the UN" signs).The State Government is composed of 58 counties in a State Senate and an Assembly. By now, I may have visited all of them (not intentionally). This is mostly about agriculture (land). They have very little concept about technology (GPS and chemicals are used extensively in agriculture but before that it was map, compass and surveying equipment). I've had discussions (representing the Feds.) in Sacramento, and they were good ones (I was challenged to visit 4 counties to see Internet connectivity: 2 good ones, and 2 poor ones (this was a geographic knowledge test (Siskiyou and Shasta (I had no problems), and then Inyo and Plumas (I've friends in the first and may retire fully there), and at the time I was stumped briefly (have been to Quincy a number of times now (including small plane flying)))))). A book about all county high points exists.I should note that if you want a survey of the whole State, visit the Cal Expo in Sacramento from the end of August to the beginning of Sept. This is the State Fair. Some city folk will poo-poo Fairs, but this is a survey of activity, not all agricultural in every CA county. I took a 2nd place for technical drawing (I drew an incomplete drawing for a Sikorsky S-64 Sky crane) while in Jr. High School and I started getting college offers while still in 9th grade. This is the kind of thing which distinguishes you in college and life.A neighbor and I have landed at over 100 public airports in CA (mostly Northern Calif. including OR, WA, NV, AZ, and UT, over 260) in a small plane.The urban Democrats learned the lessons of their defeat in the 2004 Presidential elections (too much time in the cities), and went into Nevada, AZ, and OR (the first two were difference) in 2008. Various Republicans are irked. Interior counties are more red but not like the East coast, ditto Orange and San Diego counties.So I know where Republicans live; in the Central Valley from Redding to Bakerfield (Demo studying rural health care economics). My HS mentor moved to Visalia. Friends grew up in Fresno. The other major areas at Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties and San Diego as well as the North Coast and Central Coast. Dad rose to the level of Dept. official in the American Legion.The motion picture industry (it's not called Show BUSINESS for nothing) is a major force in So. Cal. So much media is recorded here, that when the video is placed, residents can identify when and when something was recorded/filmed. The house I grew up in (just a middle class house) was used in a film. Because of the aforementioned latitude location, you can just about find any natural environment for filming, and they have location scouts for this. Yeah, you can tour studios, get jobs, grow up into the industry. Friends from high school and college work in the industry: I see their names roll by on credits occasionally. I briefly considered, when younger, working for WED Enterprises (Walt E. Disney) in Burbank as an Imagineer. Friends from my ACM/SIGGRAPH chapter (in the Bay Area) did (Jim has since died from Covid-19).Lucas made effective use of his time in Modesto and Petaluma.Because of WWII, a lot of aerospace industry is in So. Cal. and a little in Northern California. This has shrunk substantially, as has the oil industry (on and off shore). There is a gun culture; it's the Democrats who own cannons (really; I’ve attended cannon shoots). Some places do Renaissance Faire and Civil War reenactments. But the car culture reigns big (hot rods, motorcycles, etc.). The Conservatives count gays and Lesbians among them. What you will occasionally see are the Libertarians (people citing Ayn Rand are common (Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead)) around the coastlines and the Green Party in the far NW.Proposals to splint the state go from 2 (5 degree dividing line in CA 145 thru Madera near the geographic center of the state), three, and most recently 6 States. If you travel to the North you hear about how they almost combined with Southern OR (don't forget that part, they have their problem with OR government) to form the State of Jefferson (prospective State insignia of 2 Xs for Double Cross).Education is a big deal. It's not as snooty as the Eastern Ivy League. If you examine the very first ARPAnet map, 3 of the first four universities were in California. The 4th (Utah) was still in the West. They were thinking about the future of technology back then. They didn't have excess baggage. Unfortunately the education system is stressed. The first think tanks were here (e.g., RAND Corporation).Smokers in CA are basically very accommodating of non-smokers. It was tough dating one, but she was the finest woman I ever dated (her dad was a Caltech physics prof who recently passed away, she was not your average smoker).When you went to elementary school, you learned we are the Golden State for the brief Au rush. Other important California topics were citrus (can you name the types?), what was the California fishing, in particular tuna, industry (they were the cause of Chile and Peru to adopt 200 mile limits from the earlier 12 mile and 3 mile). The cultures which moved here, got clobbered here, would all be studied.The weather helps an outdoor health craze to this day (not that every one partakes). Public transit is poor and attempting to catch up. Distances are long and people feel forced to buy cars (Teslas are coming on but also other electrics). The Eastern US talks about the Atlantic and Ellis Island and Columbus (Italian, much less Leif Erickson). California has the Pacific and Angel Island. Some of our parents got rounded up and interned, this was overruled, and some people still to this day complain about that action (the over turning).Slavery didn't have a big hold during the Civil War. CA was part of the "North". This is lost on many on the East Coast, South. The Mason-Dixon Line took a turn South at Texas. The natives enslaved by the Missions weren’t counted.You can be in a snow storm (winter is optional; we go have quite a number of real glaciers) one moment and in a desert dust storm in a couple hours. The best place to experience this is the Palm Springs aerial tramway during a serious winter storm, but not so bad as to shut the tram down. Doesn't require car chains.Surfing is another story. Said enough.And Woody Allen noted the cultural advantage is the ability to make a right turn at a red light (not all, make certain to read all traffic signs). Many in CA like it that simple.You do need to be mindful on freeways and highways of road rage. This includes your pets.You have remaining tall Redwoods of various species (most were cut down). You have some of the oldest Bristlecone pines. Agriculture is still a big industry which many city dwellers tend to discount. Prisons are the new industry in part due to the three-strikes law. They are most visible at night in areas away from population centers. Some counties have rejected prison jobs.Many foreign countries have consulates in California. The Russians have major signal collection facilities from the Soviet era. We have the People's Republics of Berkeley, Oakland, and Santa Cruz.Tourists are always wondering what to see. We have more ghettos than people realize; some have corporate HQs like Nissan, Toyota, and Honda. Californians tend to drive more Priuses, than Honda Insights: a friend from Houston once commented.I know 3 German markets, a Scandinavian market, 3 Japanese markets, numerous Chinese, Mexican, Indian/Pakistani/Afghan markets. Mexican food isn't just tacos and burritos: it's mariscos, too. Abalone is a complex eating issue now (caught by self North of SF Bay or farm raised (hope this works)).Some of us residents have to put up with the meat and potatoes crowd making fun of our eating rice and raw fish. And tofu. The lactose intolerant have to put up with the assumptions of the lactose tolerant.Upper and middle class people pay to play harvesting wine grapes. Meanwhile, Mexicans are doing it in the Central Valley as professionals. Friends and I are caught in the middle doing it as a neighborly thing. I'm accused to taking high value PhDs and turning them into slave labor (they are just glad to get away for the day). Does this increase the value of the grapes (and then the wine) if people knew who picked them?The status car is a Tesla (one friend at google owns 2: one West coast, one at their East coast home) or various other electrics like RAV4s or EV-1s when they were out. Volts are coming along. Gas powered cars for an older generation or live in the Central Valley (Camaros, Chargers, Mustangs and many other foreign gas powered cars). I just had my car broken into (3x in my 2 vehicles now).....Many of us bike. And someone tried to steal my bike (couple of different times, it's a cheap bike, now stolen, got a donated bike from a friend). I live in a neighborhood of multi-colored bicycles most of which are single gear. We also have weird self driving cars, street view cars, etc. And they aren't all from google. They include bing (.com) and other panoramic mapping cameras, and other self driving cars from Michigan and the major automakers.Growing up as a kid, many white kids thought that the Asian kids knew Tae Kwondo, or Judo, or Karate. So I picked it up. (Actually, my parents said we descended from archers, so I've tried archery (actually recently got a gift bow (a compound model not a simple recurve bow) for a friend's son who joined the Scouts). I have to wrestle with the lethal force problem (to stay current), and may be purchasing a shot gun for trips to Alaska. I've expended $200 in 2 seconds (ammo for an M-134). Jumped out of perfectly good planes. Did the sail plane thing with my high school chemistry teacher. In turn, I taught him the basics of night sky astronomy.Many of the new rich don't feel the need to wear suits. Zuck legitimized the hoodie. The old rich (I know a few: I had Thanksgiving dinner at the SF Yacht Club: you will know if you know the rules of dress there) are disgusted by this. Women are caught in the middle of this but pull to the old, conservative. Ditto other non-whites.I see less ROTC, and church going, compared to other parts of the country.Let's see: I finished hiking the Muir Trail at the end of the 1980s. Climbed the 14Kers a number of times by various routes by that time, too before heading out of state for other objectives. We have the university which developed the atomic bomb (in another state no less, but they brought it back here later).I, at least, had a nice time in all my schools (public). Had fantastic educational experiences. Got to know a few Nobel laureate families. Met a few veterans in their time. Traveled the roads extensively (from Alturas (I edited a Knuth paper mentioning it) and Likely in the NE (Cedarville is also very nice) to Algondones near Yuma, National City to Crescent City. Our state has islands and a lot of interesting ocean. Nuclear reactors and accelerators, National labs and space and aero facilities. All Mach 3 planes were developed here.We have Death Valley. We have to share Lake Tahoe and the Colorado River with neighboring states. We have a 3rd world country to our South (rapidly changing toward 1st world). We have a fence which is porous with tunnels with a cross section for trucks which are found underneath it.We have a lot of privately owned wide open space. We have a few playas, but Nevada has more easily accessible day lake beds (CA's are used for bombing ranges, etc.; well El Mirage is open (flew in a sail plane (an S-33-2 with my HS chem teacher here)).One stands in a crowd. And some annoying person notes that everyone here is an immigrant to California, not even acknowledging that some of us grew up here.California is the home of both Sunset magazine and Scotts Lawn care products (Scotts Valley). If you are a keeping up with the Jones type, this is our version of Martha Stewart.If you are a real geek or nerd, you will know how to pronounce "halted .com". If you are a software person, your pronunciation can be forgiven. You know what district of Tokyo to visit.The most irksome thing about new California drivers is that they fail to pay attention to the road or freeway they are driving. When they miss a turn or ramp, they will attempt to cut across 2 or more lanes of traffic to make the ramp or turn, instead of realizing they blew it, get off at the next ramp and backtrack. You try to be too smart/clever and be overly quick to make up for your failure of attention. This is how you might cause a traffic accident here.Cars I have owned. This is a common computer security verification question. Largely economy cars. I've owned a car which got over 50 MPG, 4 decades ago (got over 300K miles on it). I've owned 2 SUVs (1 got over 400K miles on it), and I use 4WD low with some frequency (like yesterday in Silicon Valley). 2 of my new vehicles I didn't even bother to buy an AM/FM radio (this should give you an idea how dull I am). I care almost nothing about their color except urban camo (see my answer about Do men care about the color of their computing devices?), and thermal issues.I have met some amazing people growing up in California. Part of that was via correspondence (paper letters: introduced me to a now long time friend named Marvin Minsky, had nothing to do with computers). Then in college, I had the ARPAnet (no email at the time) and with email I was able to email people in computing like Marvin. Work allowed me to meet Nobel laureates. And Usenet was a great way to expand Internet horizons. While I didn't grow up in Silicon Valley and didn't get into microprocessors until later, I had contact. And most of these guys I run into grocery shopping. Or sometimes we carpool together (John McCarthy of Stanford was one such friend). You'd get bored with this if you didn't understand the place.California also refers to 2 States in the United States of Mexico: Baja California and Baja California Sur. Not nearly as populated, and most news concentrates on immigration (legal and illegal), but some very nice small towns like Loretto, Tecate (yes that's where they make the beer), the wine growing region. La Paz, Guerrero Negro, Todos Santos. Yes, there is crime, but there's also snowy 10K ft. peaks (possible to X-C ski). The largest Chinese population in Mexico is in Mexicali (they speak Spanish; do you expect them to speak English along with Chinese?). The Baja California States are not quite treated like the mainland Mexican states.Silicon Valley: if you have or hear of a problem (tech), you hear or get the weirdest reactions. An early noted OCR software, had an early version problem. So I called Tech Support (which just happened to be in Los Gatos). And the person on the phone said that Yes, that was an early bug and we fixed that and can mail you the update. And I gave my work address. "Do you know Frank ...?" Yes he's one of our Branch Chiefs. "He's my dad. I'll see him at dinner this evening and give him the disk then." And I got it in an interoffice mail envelope (this was back in the 1990s).East coast positives: Seasons: summer time fireflies are quite amazing. East coasters cite fall colors (New England). I've now visited Maine. California has nothing like that, but in certain higher elevations in the various mountain ranges where snow falls, you can get select fall color, like places where there are Aspens and cottonwoods. You just have to work on it. The duration and areal extent are shorter and smaller than the East coast. We have many more evergreens and scrub oaks. We are a little like coastal Spain. Better beaches (gradual slope).If you don't "Like" California, you can leave. This is why Oregon came up with the word Californication. We now have to deal with Oregon tourism ads (“It’s the economy, stupid”).For college summer jobs, I worked and climbed in Yosemite Valley. Ask me my zip code. So I have answers to tourist questions there. Friends still live there, but it’s best for me to visit them in winter or at least the off tourist season. Following that I drew masks for thin film circuits for 2 summers, so I’ve also have VLSI development.My body shop mechanic, Hispanic, once said, “You have to know 5 languages to do business in this place (Redwood City).”The furtherest South Russian colony/settlement was Fort Ross, CA, just North of SF.CA isn’t for everybody, but some of us were born here. And 1 friend’s relatives were here before statehood and were among the Donner Party rescuers.The Chinese-Americans can spot the Chinese spies (intelligence operatives trying to recruit Chinese-Americans) in Chinese restaurants. You can even read about them here on Quora (company).Quora (company) is here. It’s why you are reading this. It’s also the home of Facebook (See the movie Social Network? ever wonder why?), google, Yahoo!, even Microsoft, IBM, Wal-Mart know to have labs and offices here. The bio-tech Silicon Valley is South San Francisco where Genentech and it’s associated companies. Amgen has an office on the other side of the Bay.If you have a life variable you want addressed, let me know.Reference links:What was Mountain View, CA like before Google? Did Google have a huge impact on the development of the surrounding area, or was it just another piece of the growing puzzle?What facts about the United States do foreigners not believe until they come to America?

After reading this you people can decide that...According the New York Times, nearly one of five United States Army recruiters was under investigation in 2004 for offenses varying from “threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq.” One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany Times Union, “I’ve been recruiting for years, and I don’t know one recruiter who wasn’t dishonest about it. I did it myself.”2. The military contract guarantees nothing. The Department of Defense’s own enlistment/re-enlistment document states, “Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document” (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).3. Advertised signing bonuses are bogus. Bonuses are often thought of as gifts, but they’re not. They’re like loans: If an enlistee leaves the military before his or her agreed term of service, he or she will be forced to repay the bonus. Besides, Army data shows that the top bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of the 47,7272 enlistees who signed up for active duty.4. The military won’t make you financially secure. Military members are no strangers to financial strain: 48 percent report having financial difficulty, approximately 33 percent of homeless men in the United States are veterans, and nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.5. Money for college ($71,424 in the bank?). If you expect the military to pay for college, better read the fine print. Among recruits who sign up for the Montgomery GI Bill, 65 percent receive no money for college, and only 15 percent ever receive a college degree. The maximum Montgomery GI Bill benefit is $37,224, and even this 37K is hard to get: To join, you must first put in a nonrefundable $1,200 deposit that has to be paid to the military during the first year of service. To receive the $37K, you must also be an active-duty member who has completed at least a three-year service agreement and is attending a four-year college full time. Benefits are significantly lower if you are going to school part-time or attending a two-year college. If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, the military will keep your deposit and give you nothing. Note: The $71,424 advertised by the Army and $86,000 by the Navy includes benefits from the Amy or Navy College Fund, respectively. Fewer than 10 percent of all recruits earn money from the Army College Fund, which is specifically designed to lure recruits into hard-to-fill positions.6. Job training. Vice President Dick Cheney once said, “The military is not a social welfare agency; it’s not a jobs program.” If you enlist, the military does not have to place you in your chosen career field or give you the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market. (There aren’t many jobs for M240 machine-gunners stateside.)7. War, combat, and your contract. First off, if it’s your first time enlisting, you’re signing up for eight years. On top of that, the military can, without your consent, extend active-duty obligations during times of conflict, “national emergency,” or when directed by the president. This means that even if an enlistee has two weeks left on his/ her contract (yes, even Guard/Reserve) or has already served in combat, she/he can still be sent to war. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have challenged “stop-loss” measures like these in court so far, but people continue to be shipped off involuntarily. The military has called thousands up from Inactive Ready Reserve — soldiers who have served, some for as long as a decade, and been discharged. The numbers: twice as many troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan per year as during the Vietnam War. One-third of the troops who have gone to Iraq have gone more than once. The highest rate of first- time deployments belongs to the Marine Corps Reserve: almost 90 percent have fought.Counterrecruitment for a better worldReady to create a truly grassroots, people powered movement? Anti-war activism is changing. The familiar sights and sounds of large protests are giving way to quieter, but far more resonating, one-on-one work in classrooms, career centers, and communities. Whenever you hear people decry the lack of large-scale protest in the United States, even as the latest polls show more than 60 percent of people are opposed to the current war in Iraq, remember that the model for effectively challenging war is taking a different shape.People from all walks of life are finding inspiration and success in working locally to educate students and mobilize against military recruitment where it happens. We can see counterrecruitment asserting itself as a viable movement as independently organized actions in Seattle, Austin and Los Angeles contribute to a national context in which public schools around the country limit military recruiter access, a huge success by any measure. Schools and communities are now considering deeper questions about the increasing militarization of our culture and recognizing the need for schools to teach and weave peace into the minds and aspirations of our children. We believe that 100,000 marching one day every six months is not as effective as 1,000 people talking to students every day.In January 2006 the National Security Advisory Group, which includes former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, issued a report entitled “The U.S. Military: Under Strain and at Risk.” The report predicted a major recruiting crisis, pointing out that fewer than needed recruits, as well as first-time enlistees, could result in a “hollowing” and imbalance in the Army.The fact is, at the end of 2005, the active Army fell 6,627 recruits short of its annual goal of 80,000. In addition, the Army Reserve fell 16 percent behind its recruiting target for the year, and the National Guard 20 percent short of its annual goal. Today approximately 9,000 soldiers are not permitted to leave the service because of “stop-loss” orders, which retain soldiers on active duty involuntarily after their period of enlistment is complete. Another 2,000 soldiers have been involuntarily recalled after leaving active Army service.Despite this compulsory service, the Army Reserve has trouble achieving its target numbers. After the 2005 recruiting disaster, the military pulled out all stops in an effort to “make quota” in 2006. Army brass replaced the Army Recruiting Command’s top officer in October 2005 with Stanford-educated Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick. “A lot of concerns, I think, that the parents and applicants have are about Iraq and Afghanistan,” Bostick told the Tampa Tribune in October 2006. They also replaced Leo Burnett, their lead public relations agency, who created the “Army of One” campaign, with McCann-Erickson, who after a $200 million contract and year of research came up with “Army Strong” as the new recruiting slogan.In their comprehensive new strategy, the military added 1,200 new recruiters and spent millions on a public relations blitz that included TV ads, video games, websites, cell phone text messages, helicopter simulators in the back of 18-wheelers, internet chat rooms, sports and public event sponsorships, and even ads on the ticket envelopes for Greyhound Bus lines (“This ticket will take you to where you are going, but the National Guard will take you to where you want to be”).The Army also increased its relationship with NASCAR, the National Hot Rod Association and the Professional Bull Riders Association. The plan calls for recruiters to visit schools and malls a few days before an event, offering free tickets and the chance to meet famous drivers or bull riders.In addition, the military dramatically lowered its educational and test standards and other qualifications. The U.S. Army recruited more than 2,600 soldiers under new, lower-aptitude test standards in 2006. They allowed neck and hand tattoos, increased the allowable age to 42, increased the enlistment bonus up to $40,000 and offered $1,000 to soldiers who persuaded friends to sign up. They have granted an unprecedented number of “moral character” waivers; around 17 percent of the first-time recruits, or about 13,600, were accepted under waivers for various medical, moral or criminal problems, including misdemeanor arrests and drunk driving. But even that was not enough to “meet quota.”So, they also lied. From 2004 to 2005 the Govern ment Accounting Office found 6,600 allegations of recruiter crimes. Incidents included concealing medical information that would disqualify a recruit; making false promises and helping recruits get around test requirements. In 2006 the pressure was even greater, and seen in an ABC television investigation from Nov. 2, 2006, that sent undercover students into ten recruiters’offices in New York and New Jersey.The program reported that more than half of the recruiters were “stretching the truth or even worse, lying.” They found “nearly half of the recruiters who talked to our under-cover students compared everyday risks here at home to being in Iraq.” A Patchogue recruiter was caught saying. “You have a 10 times greater chance of dying out here on the roads than you do dying in Iraq.”It also reported that “some recruiters told our students if they enlisted, there was little chance they’d go to war. One recruiter told a student his chances of going to war were “slim to none.”After all this, the military claims to have met its 2005-2006 goals of recruiting 80,000 people to fill its ranks. It has provided no independent verification of its alleged statistics, but it has launched a major public relations effort to counter the bleak news from the year before.The Armed Forces Journal reported in March 2006 that recruiters “face an increasingly reluctant pool of potential recruits, opposition from anti-war protesters and perennial bureaucratic inefficiency in the recruitment system.” Scrambling in all of these ways to meet their numbers, the Army, more than ever before, needs fresh blood — recruits straight out of high school.Is counterrecruitment just a way to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?Counterrecruitment is not simply a tactic to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a broad-based, strategic approach to challenging the roots of unending war and militarization. The full potential of a progressive peace and justice movement will only be realized when there is an observable link between efforts to stop war and efforts to address inequality in class, race, ethnicity, immigration status and other socioeconomic factors that determine who ends up being sacrificed in our government’s wars.As recent statistics demonstrate, there are limits to how far Bush and the neocons can go with their plan for global hegemony when the resources for it are running dangerously low. Fortunately, the peace movement is in a position to further diminish those resources. If we apply ourselves to countering military recruitment, it is in our power to both limit the government’s capacity to wage new wars and build a stronger base to challenge the nation’s spending priorities. Simply put, counterrecruitment is a strategic and effective way to challenge the pro-war, anti-education priorities of our government.War and empireAs U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler put it in 1933, “There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.”Racket is one term, empire is another to describe why the U.S. government spends $441 billion a year on a military of over two and a half million soldiers (2,685,713 with reserves), and why it has more than 700 military bases spread across 130 countries with another 6,000 bases in the United States and its “territories.”Understanding what military recruits are used for in the world, understanding war, and creating viable alternatives to both are essential if we want to break out of the deadlock of militarism. Since the collapse of the “other superpower,” the Soviet Union, “empire” has become a common term among both critics and advocates referring to the unparalleled U.S. system of economic, political, cultural, and military domination of the world. The New York Times Magazine ran a 2003 cover story titled “The American Empire (Get Used to It.)” describing the United States as a reluctant but benevolent global empire. While Bush claimed in his 2004 State of the Union speech, “We have no ambitions of empire,” months later Karl Rove snapped at a New York Times reporter: “‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”Some see the start of American empire in the wake of Second World War or after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Others trace it back to the invasion and conquest of numerous indigenous nations in North America from the 17th century onward, the development of a slave economy with tentacles reaching into Africa, and the 1848 seizure of Mexico’s northern half, which is now the Southwest. Another wave of aggression abroad began in the 20th century.Smedley Butler describes the U.S. military’s role in this emerging empire: “I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to major general. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”The modern-day version of “war as a racket” and gangsterism for capitalism can be seen in the occupation of Iraq. Critics call the U.S. war in Iraq a failure, but behind the scenes, it has established several permanent U.S. military bases, allowed corporations like Halliburton to make billions from unfulfilled contracts to reconstruct war-destroyed schools, hospitals, power systems and infrastructure, and is in the final process of turning control of Iraq’s vast oil resources over to war profiteers such as Chevron.The U.S. occupation’s “Provisional Authority” under Paul Bremer also laid the legal groundwork for much of the Iraqi economy to be privatized and then taken over by U.S.-based corporations. Thus Butler’s racket and its toll abroad. What does it cost us at home?The price of two and a half million soldiers, aircraft carriers and military bases across the planet, and a massive array of weapons of mass destruction is high. It saps resources for healthcare, education and housing. It also requires keeping the domestic population in check through propaganda and the corrosion of civil liberties and human rights. Stifling domestic dissent, criminalizing immigrants, and torturing and illegally imprisoning citizens of other nations have all been stepped up under the guise of the so-called War on Terror.In his book The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, Ivan Eland writes, “Intervention overseas is not needed for security against other nation-states and only leads to blowback from the one threat that is difficult to deter — terrorism.In short, the U.S. empire lessens American prosperity, power, security and moral standing. It also erodes the founding principles of the American Constitution.” As we write this book (late 2006) nearly 3,000 U.S. soldiers and over 200 soldiers from other occupying countries have been killed in Iraq, at least 20,895 U.S. troops have been wounded, and a new Johns Hopkins report puts the number of violent Iraqi civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion at more than 600,000.War’s side effects are bleak for the environment and human society; its direct and intended effect is mass death. Down the current road of imperial dominance and warfare at will, the use of weapons of mass destruction is nearly inevitable, with apocalyptic consequences.But there are alternatives to the expense of maintaining a military and the atrocity that is war. One that has been developed over the last 50 years is called social defense. Brian Martin, Australian scholar and author of Social Defense: Social Change, describes social defense as unarmed “community resistance to aggression as an alternative to military defense. It is based on widespread protest, persuasion, noncooperation and intervention in order to oppose military aggression or political repression. There have been numerous nonviolent actions, to be sure, some of them quite spectacular, such as the Czechoslovak resistance to the 1968 Soviet invasion, the toppling of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986, the Palestinian Intifada from 1987 to 1993 and the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989.”Imagine if even a fraction of the resources put into military defense were available for the general population to organize social defense.Replacing global empire with domestic democracy and well-being requires redefining democracy — pursuing ways to shift decision making and power from corporations and government to “we the people.” It’s not enough just to oppose something.We need to envision, educate about, and then actually organize alternatives to the system of empire and war, to corporations, and to the lack of democratic participation in decisions that shape our lives and communities. What begin as pragmatic actions, like keeping youth from joining the military, are most effective when they have as their end the transformation of the root causes of war, undemocratic governance, and injustice. Every immediate action, when understood and explained as part of a bigger picture, can be another step toward this longer-term goal of getting to the roots of our problems and building a better world.Today’s movementArlene Inouye, who began her activism during Vietnam, continues her work today in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where she founded the Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools (CAMS). Her support of a bright, young student named Sal illustrates how counterrecruitment works simultaneously to resist war and build alternatives.Arlene says, “Sal is a bright JROTC student who lacked support for success in school and beyond. His father was deported to Mexico about two years ago, and he was told by the military recruiter that if Sal enlisted, his father could come back to the United States. His father begged him to enlist after high school. Sal later learned that the military was lying and that he couldn’t help his father come home.”During the spring of 2006 there were student walkouts and marches supporting immigrant rights throughout Los Angeles. Arlene explains, “The activism around immigrant rights helped Sal to see the hypocrisy of fighting in a military that is being sent to the border and has been reported to shoot down undocumented people who try to cross.“During a rally, Sal took off his JROTC uniform in front of the press, encouraging other students to resist war and drop out of JROTC. Unfortunately, most won’t because of concerns about their grades. This student who is articulate and smart is failing school and lacks the support he needs. I have mobilized help for him at the school and call him regularly. He just got back from a peace camp given by our partner organization, and that was a powerful experience for him.”Creating a supportive community to enable Sal’s dissent, and help him forge an alternative path, is at the heart of counterrecruitment. As demonstrated by Sal’s example, the best movement is as much about envisioning and building a new world as it is about resisting the injustices of this one.For more information on Army of None, visit the website.Army veteran Aimee Allison has led school and community counterrecruitment activities over the last decade. David Solnit is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” — Leo Tolstoy … the Anna Karenina principleThere are some pretty good answers here, some of which I will read more than once. And Jimmy has succinctly and with humor, identified an all too common pattern among English teachers in Japan, although my tale is a bit different. Rather than give advice, feel free to use (or not) my anecdotal evidence as a cautionary tale relevant to the question.I came to Japan to meet my met-in-USA Japanese girlfriend, and as one form of ‘Charisma Man’ — jump start a career as a science journalist (undergrad in marine biology) or novelist (loved philosophy courses better than dissecting sharks).I started off my career in Japan working for a ma and pa conversation school in Utsunomiya. Generally good times and good friends, but after about 2 years, I moved to Tokyo for more work and education opportunities, worked for a trade school, Sundai ELS for 2 years, a major Japanese trading company, Nissho Iwai Corporation, for another couple of years (managing an in-house English program), and then started teaching part-time at universities. I got my Master's in Education (TESOL) at Temple University Japan — and worked there teaching everything from Biology labs to public speaking to freshman writing, and matriculated (though never finished) into the doctoral program.I had a hell of a good time with both students and teachers, and made a lot Japanese friends through outside hobbies (jazz/Brazilian guitar and offshore fishing). I parlayed about 15 years of heavy commuting time between colleges for part-time work into a tenured position at a Japanese College with a fairly long history, Jissen Women's Educational Institute.Through what I assumed was accrued social capital, I gradually became involved with volunteer work at local kindergartens teaching English, helping mental health care out-patients (Hino City Government), editing a medical report checking for thyroid cancer clusters from the Fukushima meltdown, supporting the homeless in Shinjuku (Soup no Kai), and took 4 trips to rural Cambodia to work with local schools. I collaborated with Junior Chamber International, volunteered at local event driven projects for the physically handicapped, helped out as a volunteer with Hino Motors' in-house English program, and became (briefly) vice president of a city government funded local NPO (東京都国際交流委員会).I did the rounds ... publishing, giving academic presentations in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. — one of which was award winning, and getting involved with community outreach programs. Even though I was called upon to teach classes in everything from history of jazz, to Zen, to Joseph Campbell, to Jill Bolte Taylor, to Frans de Waal, to Dunbar's number, to pop music, to deconstructionism of short stories or movies, to business writing, to comparative culture ... I was well aware of my culture gap, generational gap, and gender gap working at a Women's College. So I often brought students along on community activities (in accordance with the Ministry of Education's long standing suggestion) as a way of improving their English AND integrating them with the working world beyond the school gates by introducing them to Japanese I deemed as worthy role models. I often had such Japanese members of the wider community, as well as exchange students from one of China's top Universities, Communication University of China join my classes and seminars as guest observers, participants, and sometimes give their own presentations.In my private life, I've had more than my share of lust, love and loss ... but somehow, I got too busy to get married and start my own family. But there were more than enough people who made me feel needed and my life meaningful. I was finding myself changing from an English teacher to an 'educator' in the broadest, liberal-arts sense of the word, and loving it.I began getting offers to judge English speech contests at Waseda, Tokyo University, Keio, Sophia, and other major universities. The standard procedure is to offer some financial compensation to the judges - the equivalent of between $100.00 and $300.00. As such contests were student organized by campus E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) clubs, as an educator, I saw an opportunity to help them make such events more than just a show of technical skills. I made it my policy to demand twice the judge's fee for my services — provided that they keep that doubled fee and donate it to a socially relevant charity or service of their choice.Though most clubs and schools were pleasantly surprised and glad to be so empowered, the E.S.S. society of one of Japan's higher ranked schools, Doshisha University , turned down my condition due to the school's bureaucratic constraints regarding the use of money. Knowing that the students were aware that they could contribute their own money to charities to meet my conditions (as at least one or two other school clubs happily did so), I regretfully declined to indulge them.But more troubling, I was under (in retrospect) a naive impression that my pro-active, student-empowering volunteer activities at top Japanese universities would have been acknowledged as good PR for my own far more modestly ranked school, as the speech contest brochures always included a brief introduction of the judges and their affiliated institutions. Far from it, my department colleagues reacted in a manner somewhere between indifference and defensive ... as if my behavior was somehow putting pressure on them to live up to higher standards.It took me about 10 more years to work my way up to Associate Professor, only to find out the school had, or made, on-the-cuff, 'special' and contradictory rules for the few full-time foreigners (I was the only tenured foreigner at the Jr. College campus) such as 'forbidden to do community out-reach work, do any kind of volunteer work with students without asking for permission from 'colleagues' (though not one of them ever asked for my permission), or even use my native English speaking skills on weekends without departmental permission (I wonder how they would enforce such rules if I were to stay home and watch a movie in English?), forbidden from collaborative work with other departments at my same school without permission, and foreigners expressly forbidden to conduct their research sabbatical in their home country.It is relatively easy to parse such discrimination in a way that is not 'racial' ... but a rose is a rose is a rose. Such rules are deliberately discriminatory, disenfranchizing, and dehumanizing.Without bothering to list the multitude of micro-agressions I suffered from such ‘colleagues’ and administration, I will say that if it were not for the joy of being in the classroom and community with students, I would have committed suicide by now ... which, incidentally, last year, was the greatest cause of mortality in Japan for males between the ages of 20 and 44. In fact, for the past decade or so, Japan has had about 30,000 suicides per year. It is enough of a problem that as of this year, a new labor law has required firms of 500 or more personnel to offer mental health care services on a yearly basis - though like many such labor laws may be little more than tatemai (lip service) — the law does not require mental health care to be provided by a mental health care specialist. The land of 'Hello Kitty'.About 3 years ago, I was told that I now had the opportunity to exercise my right to take a one year research sabbatical. So I quit my one-day part-time job at Komazawa University, combined a couple of volunteer trips to Cambodia with establishing a sister-school sponsor (all at my expense), and just prior to departing for my one year research sabbatical, I was suddenly ordered to sign a document drawn up especially for me, requiring me to promise to obey the contradictory policies of both my school and my department ... for example the school's stated purpose is to 'raise citizens capable of recognizing and addressing society's problems' … with me on the same working contract with the same rights and obligations as all other tenured members of the faculty — while my department insisted I was hired only in the capacity to assist the department members and was micro-managed to the point of having to follow their orders as to when I must use English or when I must use Japanese, and even denying me permission to do community volunteer activities with students.Say whaaat? I can not be certain regarding all Japanese Universities, but as far as I know, some kind of community service or service to society is mandatory for promotion at American Universities.I pointed out that the Dean of the school and Department Chairman (actually Chairwoman) disagreed about my status, rights, and obligations ... and despite my insistence, they both refused to meet and come to an agreement. So I refused to sign the paper. The document was illegal according Japanese Labor Law (withholding information necessary to fulfill one's work responsibilities). Regardless, my year long research sabbatical was immediately cancelled and I was notified that I would receive no classes for the following academic year. I had been set up, and fell for it … hook, line, and sinker.I quickly joined a union, started seeing a psychiatrist for stress related mental health issues, got put on meds, and promptly opted to take a medical leave of absence for work related stress issues. With much time and reason to think, I attended, as a student, a handful of classes at a rival school, Sagami Women's University which opened some classes to the public. Some of the more memorable classes I attended (and were well taught) included the history of Government sanctioned Volunteerism in Japan (surprisingly, beginning only in 1995 with the government's acknowledged incapacity to deal with the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake), moral education in Japan (pretty much left up to elementary school teachers, and even with the impending right of 18 year olds to vote - politically relevant discussions such as whether to restart nuclear reactors are banned on high school campuses in the name of 'objectivity'), and Hospitality ('Yokoso Japan', literally 'welcome to Japan' is merely a tourist trap, catch-phrase and has absolutely nothing to do with accepting refugees — only 12 out of about 5,000 applicants were accepted last year and this year's Syrian crises will have no affect on the standard government line).My stint as a student was really odd because I was probably the first ethnic non-asian to attend, one of few males, and certainly the only student who was currently a tenured faculty member of a rival school. I was even approached by the Hospitality class teacher in query over possibly working full time at Sagami Joshi Dai, but the idea was dropped like a hot potaoto when she found out that I was nearing 60.Shortly after my stint as a student, I opted to use my remaining health insurance to have hip-joint replacement surgery. I am still recovering, but in the meantime, my allotted medical leave of absence had expired and the Union had failed to resolve anything with the school. I was told that my options were:1) to press for a law-suit which I would likely win, but it would be a long, drawn out Pyrrhic victory at best,2) return to the school under the same conditions as I left - with no right to teach, no right to do research, and no right to volunteer, except under orders from my native Japanese 'colleagues' or3) resign ... which I did, under protest.That was about 3 years ago, and so here I am at 61, depending on the kindness of strangers (and friends), recovering from hip surgery, unemployment insurance from the school association having run out … I now only have a month to go in finishing the national unemployment plan (Hello Work), and not even a nibble from applications for part-time teaching jobs in either the business sector or universities.I suspect there is a possibility that like other minorities have been subjected to in Japan, I am now on a secretly circulated 'black list' Is Japan really racist? ... unless I want to be among the expendable labor cleaning up the Fukushima meltdown.I have come to the conclusion that either:1) this is all a Kabuki-Show, a Japanese version of The Truman Show,2) Japanese Labor Law is toothless and contracts are not worth the paper they are written on, or3) some, if not most, Japanese Universities are simply Black Companies, and educational ideals are just a facade as the following 3 links seem to suggest.1 - Japanese universities are ditching humanities and social sciences2 - Page on japantimes.co.jp3 - Page on japantimes.co.jpPerhaps I am just a victim of 'ba-chigai' ... wrong time, wrong place. I was too green and marginalized to take advantage of the bubble economy when I first came to Japan over 30 years ago. And my career choice was based on ideals, not economic scalability.In the end, all economies are based on limited natural resources. The Malthusian Dilemma and The Tragedy of the Commons have not been resolved, only postponed. With China’s fortunes on the rise, I am simply collateral damage — on the losing end of Japan's right-wing resurgence in an international zero-sum game.Oh well, I've got nothing but time to ponder it all.And I still have my friends, my guitar, and a fishing rod or two.For now.Steely Dan's 'Deacon Blues' anyone?