I believe that that in Howard County, where I have recently been working, there are many interesting things being created or analyzed, or designed. Surely, with all those government contractors, technology companies, and industrial concerns, there has to be some really interesting things happening there.
The problem as I see it, is that most of these interesting things have been compartmentalized and kept secret inside the brains of contractors. These folks are then placed in cubes and kept from the outside by polarized screen protectors and by firewalls, which are impenetrable to all but a boss, who breaches both virtual and real space on occasion to insure that information is being secured and that internet page counts are not too high. Then the whole works is enclosed in a non-descript building with a large parking lot and multiple evergreens. I’m upset becasue the only part I can usually see is the trees. Trees, despite past posts to the contrary, don’t always make for good MDP material.
When I look at a bank, I know what happens there. I might even know what happens inside a hospital, or a police station. However, for people like me, who are curious about what is happening inside any big building, it is sad to be kept so far out of the way from so much of what’s happening around you.
Thus you can imagine my joy when I drove past the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Finnally I pased a building that gives a hint about what they do… Or so I thought. Later I realized that all I really know is that apply physics to the world though the use of satellite dishes, and I still have no idea how to decipher that hint.
In fact I’m sure that the screen protectors in there are extra polarized, that the cube walls are double thick, and that there are twice as many cinder blocks working to hold up their roofs. However, I am totally satisfied with just seeing this piece of the puzzle. I don’t need to know everything. I’m just grateful for just this taste of what’s going on.
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