How would you best handle a long lasting term crisis in your life?

“…Now, gentle flags that flutter on the graves

Recall the pain in blood where armies fell

And multitudes of tombstones line the hills

As somber spirits cast a ghostly spell”…

(Barry Middleton – impressions of Vicksburg battle)

As I set foot in Vicksburg on this road trip, I came across the above quote. Reading these words , it was easy to picture Vicksburg as a place that has seemed to stand still since since its iconic Civil War battle in 1863. Know then I imagined that Vicksburg’s setting straddling high cliffs above the Mississippi River was not the right place for a quick war resolution as time became the ultimate weapon itself. For what happened here was endurance under pressure as both Union and Confederate soldier losses mounted for over forty seven days.

So that’s what makes Vicksburg feel uncomfortably relevant today. So many conflicts nowadays don’t resolve. They linger, expand and settle into something prolonged where the question is no longer who wins quickly but rather how long can it go on? Consider, for example, the difficult terrain that the Vicksburg siege conflict was fought on. How much has war changed since then? Like a chess game, the advancing militia seeks to take advantage of strategic place positioning of troops in order to overwhelm the enemy. But that doesn’t always work so well for as in chess a stalemate often occurs when there’s no clear winner or loser in this battle . Meanwhile innocent people caught behind the scenes can only watch the bombs fall on their precious land.

So  Vicksburg’s bloody long history should not be underestimated. Inciting war in the Middle East now may seem to be a glamorous choice on the surface for ego driven power holders. But is it worth risking prolonged crisis which might threaten to erupt into a worldwide crisis?  We must learn to work out our problems peacefully together to sustain the ultimate survival of our human species. Perhaps  my travels might help in some way to accomplish that task. 

If you tell me your ID number, your phone number or the wiring instructions for your bank account, not only will I forget them, I’ll need you to repeat it a few times so I write it down without making a transcription error.

When we first started using serial numbers (the Roman Legion did this thousands of years ago, and the British Board of Ordnance required it by law in the 1700s), it made perfect sense. Issue the next number on the list and move on.

But numbers alone are difficult for humans to error check and handle. So we use computers to help. The problem lies in the pesky humans who are still part of the chain.

So, here’s a simple hack. It’s unlikely to catch on worldwide, but I think it’s fascinating enough to consider…

If you had a list of 150 three letter words, all selected to be easy to say, spell and discern, you could use them to replace numbers in a productive and useful way.

So, big bob zap car cat is five words next to each other. There are 75 billion combinations of five words, which means that it replaces a number like 4839450381 with room to spare.

For ATMs that are four or five digits, you only need three words.

Think about that the next time you need to tell a customer service person your order number or serial number, or share a wifi password.

Let the computer do the work.