Co-ops, L3Cs, and Hybrid LLC/Co-ops
March 17, 2010 | Business & Commerce | Cooperatives | Governance | People & Society
I wrote a comment to Don's post, but it was too long for Blogger to accept....
I have a close friend who started one of the first VT L3Cs a couple of years ago, and his intent was to signal that they weren’t out to get rich but to do something interesting and useful that a “traditional” investment wouldn’t normally value. I suppose if somehow they become billionaires that will turn out to sully the L3C pool, but it would be good to get some data on how L3Cs are performing, and what the outcomes are, and then tune the law accordingly prior to rejecting the form out of hand because of, well, I’m not sure what the argument against them is. Innovation is good. Why not in corporate forms?
The challenge for cooperatives, speaking from close experience, is that, due to their traditional rejection of “marketing” (granted, slowly changing in some areas) the public associates co-ops with alternative dirty hippie funny-smelling weirdo food shops from the 1970s. Part and parcel of the whole culture-war thing. So it’s true there are huge swaths of the economy organized as cooperatives, but the executives at, say, a large electric cooperative, don’t have incentive to play up that aspect of their organization because it might lead to more oversight of their own leadership or their business decision trade-offs. Plus, and perhaps less cynically, the AP (for example) doesn’t have much incentive to promote it’s internal organization - there’s no easily noticed benefit to the listener/reader. Great long-term benefit, but our collective ability as a species to connect the dots from short-term actions to long-term impacts is now well-known, and a likely failure-mode leading to our future extinction.
Another challenge, more structural, is that cooperatives, by nature, provide the opportunity – and at the same time *require* people – to self-organize. But we live in a convenience culture. It’s all about saving time and money, everywhere you look. Coops typically take more time (to set up, operate, participate in) and cost more money (lack of economy of scale). It’s great if people want to take responsibility for their own destiny. But it goes against the entire cultural thrust of the infantilization of America. We don’t take responsibility for anything we do!
Finally, it is difficult for the cooperative movement to make affirmative statements about the value of coops because of 1) lack of knowledge, skill, or experience in “attention-marketing;” and 2) they’re not cheaper or faster. Thus, we only hear about coops in reaction to something else: L3Cs, single-payer health care, non-meltdown banks, etc. As a general rule it’s tough to make a positive case when it’s framed as a negative reaction to an external event. (I speak from challenging personal experience.)
Cooperatives have a huge value to offer people, but I think the most likely case in the modern culture is they will rise again to respond to some very large societal problem, or take better hold as worker-coops rather than as consumer coops. Workers have far more incentive to self-organize, it’s a smaller group, and the incentives are aligned. A nice smaller-scale alternative to union collective bargaining. And, if we actually pass health reform, people may have the chance to be a bit more entrepreneurial without corporate health insurance as a friction to leaving their jobs.
And this gets to why I think hybrid coop/LLCs are so valuable (and not a bastardization of the coop form). Having personally started three LLCs, and been an early employee in a couple of venture capital funded startups, I can tell you starting a business is hard. Raising money is hard. Running a business profitably is hard. Moral and social trade-offs abound daily. The idea of a worker coop that can sell up to 40% of it’s stock to long-term value investors has the chance to completely change the perceptions of coops noted above. The investor sees a group of committed workers with real skin in the game (not semi-worthless future-vesting stock options), and the employees attract capital – where the capitalists can get an actual return, even if it’s a lower or longer-term one – rather than being limited to what they can scratch together themselves. This form could be the fuel to push cooperatives affirmatively forward, rather than always looking backwards and saying, “If only they’d considered cooperatives....”
Otherwise coops are going to have to get good at the sort of “hard-sell marketing” that captures a reader’s/listener’s attention and directs it to what the speaker is saying and why it benefits them in concrete, right-now terms. I look forward to the day coops are confident, savvy, marketers of their own brand of humane goodness in this harsh overly-capitalistic world.
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Why not to burn bridges
August 5, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Karlyn, via Twitter, asks: "why is it so important to not burn bridges when you're leaving a job? especially if the person you're burning it with already set it on fire"
- There is no absolute truth.
- Different people will have different views of a) What bridge-burning is; b) Whether one should burn bridges or not; c) Who is right; d) Who is wrong; e) Who "started it."
- Future a) Employers; b) Colleagues; c) Customers d) Friends; e) Lovers; will wonder what will happen to them in a possible future "falling out."
- Everyone reaps what they sow. No need to further the bad vibes.
Apparently they don't teach much about human relations in MBA school. As if managing people were an insignificant part of the job. Not surprising given the quant focus in our business culture.
Just Another Datapoint for my theory that everyone should do four to eight years of weekly depth analysis starting a few years after college (or workforce entry). Would do a society good.
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Apple WWDC 2009
April 7, 2009 | People & Society | Software | Technology
If you read my post last year and want to make plans, here's the link.
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The Twitter Inversion
April 5, 2009 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Perhaps another time I could elaborate further on the profound nature of Twitter's interaction model. There are flaws, but it's wired us together in as many ways as there are participants. Today, by way of illustration, here is a screenshot view into a couple of minutes of my Twitter stream:
The stream actually starts on the bottom, so right off the bat if we want to experience time progressing in the familiar direction we are reading from bottom to top, the opposite of what we expect. Thus, leaving Kansas, we hear from some characters. Context is everything.
Daniel Jalkut owns Red Sweater Software, makers of the fine MarsEdit, the weblog editing tool upon which I sculpted the very words you're reading. We've corresponded by email on a couple of topics. Nice guy. Lives about two hours south of here (in Boston) and I've always thought I should get myself down to one of the various meetups in that area and say hello sometime. His tweets and posts are each of equal quality.
Next up, Howard Rheingold, an old online friend from The WeLL, who lives in Northern California. When I got fully online in 1988, Howard was there waiting, pointing the way. We met during Internet 1.0 at the offices of Caucus Systems, maker of a well-designed multi-user conferencing system similar in interaction structure to The WeLL. I doubt I'll ever forget riding the DC metro with Howard in his bright orange silk suit, hand-painted leather shoes, and white derby. You can turn heads dressing like that. It's unlikely Howard remembers me, but no matter, I love you too buddy.
OM_o is the Open Museum (online), produced by Heritance, where I am a director serving on the board with several others, including friends and founders Maureen and Jeff Doyle. The visual design of openmuseum.org is a fork of the xhtml/css codebase I wrote for GiftEcology.com (nee Handmeon.com). I usually always check the links posted here because the objects are interesting and the stories are good. And they're friends and I'm on the board and I usually have thoughts on the interface evolution and I'll probably see them soon so I want to stay up to date with the project.
And then, look, right there, just above OM_o is Maureen, who lives in Vermont. Always nice to see her. But wait, I don't like seeing those duplicate Tweets – no no, that suddenly feels like PR. I need to email her a link to this blog post, because I want to encourage people to never do this. Don't multi-tweet with pasted text. Adopt a specific identity for each posting account, or simply tweet for yourself, as yourself. Using that imperative to make a leap to the broader issues around 'social media marketing,' I pretty much agree with everything in this 10-minute video by Perry Belcher. (Some language not safe for work.) He's coming from the Internet marketer perspective but watch it anyway, he's right on beat with the social media rap. In another video he claims to have earned in excess of $50 million on the Internet, and also that he has personally paid over $10 million to Google AdWords advertising. If you're thinking about making money online he's probably a good guy to listen to. But whatever you think about that he speaks for me on current business best practices using Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Above Maureen is my close friend and all-around great person Meg Maker from New Hampshire. You should go and read Maker's Table, her food and wine blog, right now – this post will still be here when you get back. I've known Meg 20 years, we've worked together in many different roles and structures, and we see each other socially many times a year.
Above Meg is Dave Winer, a brilliant, visionary, hard-working nerd of the first order, who lives in Berkeley, California. Dave was instrumental in creating among other things, RSS, which is what blogs use for subscriptions; podcasts, which are now ubiquitous; and outlining, which is taken for granted but wasn't really in use much prior to Dave's "ThinkTank" and "More" software. Dave also kind of invented the idea of "bullet charts" for presentations, sort of a proto-PowerPoint feature built into More.
Finally at the top, Dan Benjamin, who I've never met or corresponded with, but who I came across because in 2007 he wrote the best-ever articles on Ruby/Rails/MySQL/etc Mac OS X installation and configuration. I think he lives near Orlando, Florida. We've corresponded a bit via Twitter. He posted something about BBEdit and opening projects, and I @replied (quickly) along the lines of, "X doesn't just work?" To which he @replied me something snotty, like "@notio, no, obviously, X doesn't just work." (I paraphrase.) [See update below.] I felt horrible, like I'd annoyed the Master, and wondered if he'd make it so that my specific computer could never read his website again, but then several other people who I also follow @replied him with the same idea, before they saw his response to me. So then I didn't feel like quite such a dunderhead. Dan's a very serious meditator, so I know in my heart that his tone to me was not personal but was just part of his practice.
Now, take another look at that screenshot and tell me: Are these, you know, inane, unnecessary, frivolous, 140-character "messages?" To me, because of the context, not so much – it reads like human conversation. Not transactional messages between humanoids, but conversation between people. If you've ever transcribed recorded conversation literally you know it's really something to read – you can hardly follow it. If I think about conversation as "messages" then most conversations don't pass for quality of messages. But what's nice about human conversation is that it has all sorts of structures and processes and norms and degrees of freedom so we can actually get to know each other and find common interests, aside and apart from the transactional and informational quality of messaging.
In that two-minute snapshot of my Twitter stream I am updated on lives and perspectives, and am provided opportunities to further engage with links to several topics. I can reply if I want, or not. Some people I know well, others only through this medium. It's not email, it's not threaded, you have to be concise, the company is growing quickly and there are a lot of hiccups.
And yes, there are ways to sort-of spam Twitter and people are discovering ways (cough, TweetBlast, cough) to make sales with viral Twitter schemes, but there's one big difference.
If you don't like your Twitter stream content, you can un-follow people, and you'll never hear from them again.
How different from email lists, where names are shared and sold and the spam never stops. Here attention is earned, not demanded. That inversion makes the whole thing worthwhile, because even if Twitter dies, we'll have experienced this form of communication.
This new form is such that the listener is in control of the attention paid to talkers, and once you experience this you will never want to go back to letting the broadcast-era talkers attempt to dominate your attention and listening. This interaction model started with RSS subscriptions, and has now hit the mainstream with Twitter.
The future? Let me know when I can watch the most creative advertising whenever I want. That will be fun.
Update: Dan Benjamin commented below, and due to a problem with my TypePad ID I am unable to write a comment response on my own blog. Gotta get off this platform. In any case, I don't mean to overstate the case – I'm sure whatever Dan said was reasonable, because after reading him for several years I think he's a reasonable guy – my intent was to convey my internal horror of tossing off a flip comment to an expert. Apology accepted, with my own apology added for good measure!
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Patrick Byrne at Dartmouth Tuck School
February 16, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Patrick Byrne visited Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business this evening. It was something of a local event, since Patrick and his father, Jack Byrne, both attended Dartmouth. The 90-minute format was was structured such that three '09 Tuck students each asked a question and then the audience asked a bunch of questions. His answers were very complete thoughts with muti-minute responses.
Jack was president of GEICO insurance which was owned by Berkeshire Hathaway, owned by Warren Buffett. Because of this Warren was a regular houseguest at the Byrne's in the 1970s and Patrick grew up hearing Buffett describe his approach to thinking about business. Some Buffett pearls:
On buying companies: "Always try to buy a dollar for sixty cents, forty if you can." Byrne continues, "Sometimes, every once in a while, like now, maybe twenty cents for a dollar."
On buying stocks: "Here's something adults don't understand. When you buy a stock, don't think of it like a piece of paper that moves up and down. Instead, if you buy the stock, and the stock market closed tomorrow and you had to hold the stock for five years, would you still buy the stock? That's the question. Act like you're buying a part of the company that you're going to own. Because you are."
On buying bankrupt RTC real estate in the '80s: "If you're not going to kick a man when he's down, when are you going to kick him?"
After graduation Byrne started a nine-month master's program in philosophy at Stanford. He was diagnosed with cancer, and during the next four years (age 22 - 26) was in and out of treatment. He said he had three rounds of remission and return, each putting him in the hospital for three to nine months at a time. An interesting side-effect of this was that having fallen so far behind his peers he was never trying to keep up or prove anything. After beating cancer a couple of times he decided to live his life in six-month blocks, hoping for the best, and doing things he wanted to do. He went on to obtain a master's degree from Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford.
During this time he alternated between school and various real estate deals, sometimes with his brother. Often this involved buying RTC properties, doing a company turnaround, and selling for decent profits. They purchased a large (one million ft2) mill building in Manchester NH ("a skyscraper lying down") for $3.5 million ("the price of the carpet") and sold it 20 months later for $10 million.
In November 2000 the Wall Street Journal delivered an ego-puffing profile that covers this era pretty well.
Byrne spoke passionately about education reform. He is a strong supporter of school vouchers. He ties this issue directly to our competitiveness in the world economy. Byrne believes Americans are living in a cloud of illusion. We think we're such a great world competitor, but we forget at the end of WWII we had bombed all of our industrial competitors to destruction. We cleared the table and ran the house. But now the world has rebuilt it's industrial and educational capacity, and we have become the consumers, not producers. We cannot ever be competitive in the world with our current 140 year old educational system. We spend $11,000 per pupil per year, significantly higher per capita than other industrial countries, yet by any measure we rank in the bottom quintile of performance. We cannot fix this problem by throwing more money at it. The "guild" (teacher's unions, administrative apparatchiks, etc.) has little left to argue its case except fear of change.
Along the way he had alluded to structural corruption in the American capital markets, closing with an anecdote about a news story in India that presented America as a cautionary tale of capital corruption. At this point a student asked if he could be more specific in his criticisms of the capital markets, and we transitioned into a long segment on financial corruption.
The Wikipedia entry covers the basics, but essentially he claims there are loopholes in the stock settlement system – originally designed to allow some flexibility and elasticity in the case of systemic issues – that allow "options market-maker exceptions to rule 203b1." He joked this could be more memorably named, "The Madoff exception." This is related to changes in Regulation SHO exemptions. The whole ball of wax you may also know as "naked short selling."
This is wicked complicated, and I'm sure I don't fully understand it, but what I gather is: When you buy a stock a seller has sold you the stock. The two of you need to "settle" the deal, where they get cash and you get a numbered stock certificate. Sometimes, for a variety of logistical reasons, the stock certificates cannot be physically transferred at the exact moment the cash arrives. So the settlement company is allowed to write an IOU for the certificates. Most buyers don't take possession of the certificates, so they don't actually know this has happened.
He wrote an infamous slide deck about this called The Miscreants’ Ball.
For a long time the SEC took the position that this didn't matter. People didn't abuse these IOUs! But then in 2007, the SEC changed their mind and wrote:
Regulation SHO's grandfather provision was adopted because the Commission was concerned about creating buy-side volatility through short squeezes if large pre-existing fail to deliver positions had to be closed out too quickly....
That's secret code for, "If we forced everyone to deliver on the IOUs the market would realize those stock certificates had been sold several times over on various small foreign exchanges, sucking $2 trillion out of the system without anyone noticing. We don't want them to notice all at once, so we're going to forgive all the ones we know about and pretend they don't exist."
In other words, what supposedly wasn't happening yesterday is today so bad that if we acknowledge it the financial system would collapse. Again, this is wicked complicated, and I'm sure I don't fully understand it. But I have a feeling he'd agree wholeheartedly with Catherine Austin Fitts.
Long story short, when he took Overstock.com public they were the first company to do an IPO dutch auction – an OpenIPO – Google followed them two years later. They took a lot of flack from Wall Street, and since he had worked there people he knew told him he would be a pariah. He got an unusual phone call from a guy who told him he was living in South America out of a backpack so the Mafia didn't whack him, and Patrick needed to watch out. Byrne didn't believe him, but the guy said, "Watch. What's going to happen is: First these five prominent business journalists will write hack jobs on you or your company. Next you'll find your stock trading on exotic foreign exchanges where you've never listed. Then you'll have a Federal investigation that will amount to nothing but will take a lot of time and money. Finally, you'll find your company on the top-30 list of stocks with fail to deliver positions." Over the next four months all of those things played out, Byrne got in touch with the guy, and they started to piece together how it all worked.
Byrne's blog is Deep Capture, where all this is laid out is long-form detail. It's worth noting that he has critics. After last year's financial meltdown, he feels the intellectual argument is over.
He said he's paid millions of dollars over the past four years on attorneys and economists to gather freedom of information act requests, sue hedge funds and options market makers, and fend off the SEC. He believes the SEC is a "captured" regulator. In this case "captured" doesn't mean "control" but more like "cognitive capture," in that the industry behavior is considered so normal, and so obviously correct – it's a market, after all – that if there's a rule violation they must have written the rules wrong, because this is in fact what the industry does.
Toward the end someone asked about the supply chain he built with Overstock.com, and how it's different. He thinks supply chain theory is the most important and a highly undervalued aspect of retail business. The short version is the normal retail distribution system can't deal with small quantities and odd lots. Overstock built their system to account for this. Their warehouse is "random load" – there isn't a single place where items sit, because the items are always changing. Took a long time to get it right.
Byrne told the story of where the fair-trade worldstock idea came from. Again, the bio covers the basics:
During a vacation in Southeast Asia Byrne found many village artisans were held back by the lack of retail channels, as their production was fragmented and the quantities produced were small. He further realised the Overstock model was perfectly suited for their needs.
In this case "during a vacation" meant cruising the country on a motorcycle, before eventually driving over the edge of a bank and fracturing his arm, 15 hours from medical care, and being carried to a family's hut. When they say, "he further realized," what they mean is, while smoking whatever it was the family gave him to smoke – "I didn't ask" – to take his mind off his broken arm, awake and alone blazing in a hut in Southeast Asia in the middle of the night.
Byrne called it the best idea he's ever had.
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Link Love
January 16, 2009 | People & Society
Shout out to the The Macalope, who noted Notio's comment over at Megan McCardle's place, regarding her annoying Apple commentary. I had left an earlier comment, suggesting she use Daring Fireball as a primary source, but it didn't make it through moderation.
I was just connecting the dots between the Macalope nomination for Michael Wolff as jackass of the year, as outlined earlier today, and Megan, who failed to win this particular round, though not without consideration.
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Economics Blogs
January 9, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
I gave a talk to a local business group about blogs, Twitter, social media and all that, and one of the participants emailed asking for blog recommendations to learn more about economics. Here's what I suggested.
I think Umair Haque is by far the most interesting 'business strategy' writer right now. Strategy has to take account of economics, and he's pointing the way forward.
It would be hard to leave out Paul Krugman, having just won the Nobel Prize and all. I happen to agree with his politics, but he's worth reading even if you don't, simply because he's so dang smart.
Barry Ritholtz called BS on the housing market several years ago, and his irreverent take on things keeps him in my regular reading list. You will learn a lot about how to interpret relevant numbers and statistics from him.
Nouriel Rorbini is SUPER-smart, and was also a contrarian to the bubble mentality. His predictions will probably be scary, and more-so once you notice that he's been right most of the time.
There's the Freakonomics blog which is always interesting for always-different reasons.
Locally, Andrew Samwick of Dartmouth has always had good pointers and a take on things that doesn't always line up with my way of thinking.
Tyler Cowen gets a lot of linklove, and though I don't read him often, it's good to check in once in a while.
The Calculated Risk blog is interesting, as is The Cunning Realist in that they are anonymous, but the insight is obviously deep and worthwhile.
Probably the most important thing to do is follow links in the posts. When you find an author you like, and they link somewhere, it's like a citation to the background source. You'll often find good related blogs this way.
Also, look at blogrolls. These are the links of blogs the author scans regularly, something of a recommendation – "if you like this, you'll probably like that." For instance, the blogroll at Barry Ritholtz's blog is excellent for the econ topic.
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Yglesias and Ambinder and sometimes Klein
December 19, 2008 | People & Society
Now that the election is over, my main two politics blogs (i.e. daily) are Matt Yglesias and Marc Ambinder.
Yglesias came out of Harvard in 2002/3(?), did a stint at Talking Points, then the Atlantic, now at Think Progress. I like his focus on policy implications, with a snarky style that suits me.
Ambinder is a reporter at the Atlantic, with good sources and clear analysis. He's more of a "what's really going on" guy, which fits my insider identity. ;)
I still read Sullivan, but he's best when he's got a bone to pick, and after dispensing with Clinton, McCain, and Palin it will be a while before there's an opposing force of requisite magnitude.... (Although Rick Warren is taking the bait this week.)
I also kind of like Ezra Klein, who has a focus on healthcare. He's a little more rambling, and topically kind of all over the map, even for a blog, but worth checking maybe weekly, because when he's got it he's really got it. I actually really like his attitude; I can't really place why he's not a daily skim.
It's amazing how much time I reclaimed after the election. Some days I must have been spending three or four hours a day reading politics. I'm rationalizing that it was all part of raising the energetic vibration to get Obama elected....
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25 Seconds of Joy
June 25, 2008 | People & Society
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Better to ignore than to critique
June 23, 2008 | People & Society
dayna boyd: "In an attention economy, it's better to ignore than to critique."
I'm deeply disturbed by the proliferation of troll-like behavior in contemporary life. Why are public figures increasingly appearing whose whole identity is wrapped around driving others batty? Why does it seem as though more people are starting to write controversial books purely to make money off of the attention they receive when others attack them? Why are reputable publications publishing these authors' tirades against others that are intended specifically to draw them out in a public fight? I guess we know the answer... Or at least the equation. Attention = money. And in the world of media, attention = advertising revenue.
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Hot Dating Tip [SF, CA, USA]
June 9, 2008 | People & Society | Software | Technology
It's sweeping generalizations day at Notio!
I guess it's kind of a semi-secret, but once you crack the code, dating geeks is a really good move. Granted, the male/female ratio is unbalanced – but generally, if you're a woman and you're looking for a guy, you could do a heck of a lot worse than finding a cool geek to hang out with. The girl geeks tend to be really cool too, there are just fewer of them.
Here's a post that gives you the downlow howto. The comments there flesh it out. Here's another one a little more cliched. But their summary is good:
Why Geek Dudes Rule
- They are generally available.
- Other women will tend not to steal them.
- They can fix things.
- Your parents will love them.
- They're smart.
This post is decent too. The classic essay on dating geeks is called Dating an Apple Developer by Emily Hambidge, but the link is currently broken; maybe it will come back.
The reason I bring it all up is, this week in San Francisco CA, there are 5,200 Macintosh and iPhone developers – programmers, engineers, ubergeeks – mostly age ~16 to ~50, congregating downtown at The Moscone Center for Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). These are the people who designed and built things like the iMac and the iPod and the iPhone. There are over 1,000 Apple engineers (SF local) on-site. As Kathryn said this weekend, "Hot dating pool."
Even better, Apple has provided a two-hour keynote stream live on the Internet. Why would you want to spend two hours watching Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller (and a dozen other geeky guys) do technology demos? Well, when you go crawling the hotels and pubs around Moscone, this is what everyone will be talking about. It's rocking their world. They're hanging with their peeps, and life is good. The video is two hours of ultimate inside conversation starters, background info, and geek dude archetypes. It's like a briefing book for engaging with the hot geeks this week.
If you're single in SF, go down to the Moscone at the end of the day and follow the packs of geeks to the pizza and beer joints, and ask them what's cool at the conference, or what cool iPhone apps they've seen.
And if you miss this year, it's an annual event, usually in June, so just come another time.
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Crusty old out-of-it white guy
June 4, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
History Train: "It really will say something about this country if Obama, with all his intellect, his verbal gifts and his strategic canniness, ends up losing to a crusty old out-of-it white guy who left his principles in the dumpster years ago and has nothing to offer this country but the chance for conservatives to go on playing Jack Bauer and G.I. Joe for another four years."
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Obama's Electoral Map
May 21, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Must read for any political junkie. via Dave Winer
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Summary of political pundantry today
May 16, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
In only four minutes!
Matt Yglesias: "Conservative radio host Kevin James is on Hardball to call Barack Obama and appeaser, and Chris Matthews hits upon the nice idea of asking James to explain what it was that Chamberlain did wrong at Munich. As becomes apparent, James has no idea! He just likes to say "appeasement" a lot, but doesn't know what it means, what the context was, what was wrong with it, or how it might possibly apply today. Basically, he's an idiot, which is no surprise, but it is rare to see these things so amply demonstrated."
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The day there was no news
May 14, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
At least I can dream...
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Spirograph
May 9, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Gwad, I loved the Spirograph.
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Pioneers vs Feudalists
May 2, 2008 | People & Society | Technology
Fascinating 1982 essay by Jim Bowery.
Pioneers want to be left alone to do their work and enjoy its fruits. Feudalists say "no man is an island" and feel the pioneer is a "hick" or worse, an escapist. Feudalists view themselves as lords and pioneers as serfs. Pioneers view feudalists as either irrelevant or as some sort of inevitable creeping crud devouring everything in its path. At their best, feudalists represent the stable balance and harmony exhibited by Eastern philosophy. At their worst, feudalists represent the tyrannical predation of pioneers unable to escape domination. At their best, pioneers represent the freedom, diversity and respect for the individual represented by Western philosophy. At their worst, pioneers represent the inefficient, destructive exploitation of virgin environs. [...]
In addition to the normal modes of organizational management, new modes will spring up that are impractical outside of an information utility. Perhaps the most important example involves the way individuals are given authority within organizations. Traditional organizations select authority via a top-down, authoritarian system or via a bottom-up democratic system. The authoritarian system is more efficient than the democratic system, but it is also more vulnerable to mistakes and corruption. The democratic system gets harder to maintain the larger it gets. People have a natural limit to the number of people they can effectively associate with. In large representative democracies, such as our government, a national union, etc. virtually no one voting for a candidate knows the candidate personally. This, combined with the event called "election" creates the "campaign" where the virtues of democracy are almost entirely subverted by its vices.
Bowery authored one of the first electronic mail systems (PLATO, 1974), and the basis for Postscript (and thus laser printing), among other things. Found via .
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Hubris, Denial, and the Financial Services Culture
May 2, 2008 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Interesting behind the scenes report of the Milken Conference and pervasive "Republican/Chicago School of Economics ideology" in the face of a looming great depression.
via John Robb.
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RIP Albert Hofmann
April 30, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
At 102.
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Twistori
April 30, 2008 | People & Society
Most wonderful new Internet toy, twistori.
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US politics snapshot, all you need to know edition
April 25, 2008 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
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Quote of the Day
April 15, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Scott Heriferman: "Sadly, no time to really get into Twitter. For me, to stay healthy AND lead a needed meme (meetup to go from 5M to 500M people, ~$10M to $100M+ rev, and 20K to 200K successful meetup groups), can't get sucked in."
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Thriving Office
April 12, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Home businesses know they must seem successful to become successful. So they play Thriving Office while on the phone. This valuable CD, which is filled with the sounds people expect to hear from an established company, provides instant credibility.
It's amazing what the world has come to.
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Shine A Light
April 4, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Martin Scorsese has a new film opening tonight, a musical documentary on the Rolling Stones, filmed in 2006, called Shine A Light. It's big news in the Intertubes Classic Rock spaces. Here's the trailer (2:44):
And here's Jumpin' Jack Flash, the (complete) first song from the movie (4:10):
What strikes me most is how healthy they look. Even Keith. Well, he's a little worse for the wear, but judged by his own standards even Keith is lookin' good.
To gain some perspective on all that, check out this version of Honky Tonk Woman from 1969 in Hyde Park (3:09):
Now, that is some classic rock, eh? Meanwhile backstage, here's an amusing outtake from an MTV television ad from the 1980s (1:48):
Kids, don't try this at home.
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Job Market 2009
March 31, 2008 | People & Society
Job Market 2009 (1:28)
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They showed me the Craigslist printout
March 25, 2008 | People & Society
A pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost an Oregon man much of what he owned.
The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.
But Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave. The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.
On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.
"I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back," Salisbury said. "They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did."
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Moving On
March 18, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
A smart take on the super-delgates:
Superdelegates can worry about the party, or they can preen and carry on about the importance of their role. They can't do both. The only thing the Clinton and Obama campaigns agree on is that neither can secure the nomination with pledged delegates alone. So the uncommitted superdelegates wringing their hands in the Times are the same ones who will ultimately decide the nominee. Why wait until August? If they truly cared about ending the primary, they could do so in a matter of days or weeks. All they need to do is declare their allegiance now.
If all the 352 uncommitted superdelegates (CNN's number) chose Obama, he'd have 1970 delegates and need 55 more to secure the nomination. Slate's Delegate Counter says he could draw a paltry 35 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania and still secure that many. Once superdelegates declared, the race would be over, and the remaining primaries a mere formality. The party could focus on John McCain. The same holds true for Clinton. If the uncommitteds swung her way, she'd have 1,831 delegates to Obama's 1,618. She'd need only reasonable showings through May 6th to cross the delegate finish-line.
The story is quoteing the Sunday NY Times piece, which certainly left a bad taste in this household when we read it that morning.
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You Can't Be Serious
March 18, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
From the middle section of a longer interview with the rapper DMX:
Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!
Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak! Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.
Then come the comments!
crocker says: fucking wow. DMX has lost his fucking mind.
sooch says: why didn’t he just bark through the interview?
DirtDogggy says: Only naive young fucks wouldn’t understand what hes talking about, the wiser you get the tougher life is, he’s far from dumb, he knows who Obama is retards, he was trying to make a point, that it doesn’t mean fuck all no matter who wins the election. I’ve bin saying the presidents a puppet on a string for years, finally someone said it, it doesn’t even matter who wins it’s just a matter of timing whether people like them or not, presidents just push the button they make no decisions on their own or have any origional ideas. I have a feeling X is right, the black mans going to take the heat for fucking up the US/world but it’s really a big chain reaction of recent years of fuckery by all the politicians and presidents put together.
Diz says: Man, what the fuck kind of interview is this. I know the interviewer was ready to get the hell out of there. DMX has lost his fucking mind. But you know what they say, some of the best artists are fucked up anyway. Hopefully good music is on the way.
Real Talk says: X is on drugs, it’s no secret. He’s got a drug problem. It’s sad but that’s rock n roll man. If a normal person is on drugs, they can’t eat. If a musician is on drugs, they still got money coming in. He’s like Ozzie Osborn wit it. Hopefully he’s not completely gone, you know? I hate to see people become just a shell of what they used to be.
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A Call for Journalistic Courage
March 18, 2008 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
Important essay by Walter Pincus on the role of the press in a free society:
Today’s mainstream print and electronic media want to be neutral, unbiased and objective, presenting both or all sides as if they were on the sidelines refereeing a game in which only the players—the government and its opponents—can participate. They have increasingly become common carriers, transmitters of other people’s ideas and thoughts, irrespective of import, relevance and at times even accuracy.
At a time when it is most needed, the media, and particularly newspapers, have dropped the idea of having experienced reporters provide analysis and context and turned instead to retired public figures or so-called experts to provide commentary. It was not always this way.
From the 1950s through the 1980s, I could name reporters and columnists whose experience on their beats or in their areas made them thoughtful and respected commentators. Younger reporters today are regularly shifted around from beat to beat, never really having enough time to master totally complex subjects, such as health, public education and environmental policies. Coverage then depends on statements and pronouncements by government sources or their critics.
Jay Rosen posts a long and thoughtful comment (here quoting Josh Marshall): "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well."
Related, and best headline of the day: MSM Still In Trouble–Also Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead.
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U23D at IMAX
March 13, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Technology
One good thing about living in the society of the spectacle is that every once in a while it produces something truly mind-blowing. In this case, a U2 concert movie filmed in a new 3D technology, playing on the huge IMAX screens. Unbelievably good.
The experience is nothing like previous 3D movies. This is absolutely convincing, beautiful and glorious, with presence and immediacy. Band members exist in 3-space, walking around, moving toward and away from you. The drum kit looked especially impressive, with a depth and lighting that you just have never seen on screen before.
The technology is produced by 3ality Digital. Here's a semi-technical article on the production from Film & Video magazine's January issue. Even better, this companion article on software post-production has a lot of interesting details:
The toolset also allows for multiple convergence points. “This is something that doesn’t make sense at all in 2D,” says Postley. “You can have not only multiple 3D layers, but each one of the layers has a different focal plane or convergence point. If I took a shot of Bono, a shot of Edge and so on into editing, I can cut up the images and layer them to make them look like they’re standing in the same depth in the screen. It’s a 3D effect for which there is no 2D corollary.”
Here's a page written by a guy hired to do the Stereoscopic Depth Balancing:
Because so much of the project was edited in fast paced, "MTV" type cuts, and almost every scene involved multiple layers and special effect composites, we were faced with continuous alignment and dynamic artistic placement issues. This gave us opportunities to experiment with and learn from freely floating objects, people and backgrounds in a "dream-like" visual montage. We learned to "hand off" changes of depth from near to far and back again, smoothly guiding the eyes from scene to scene. The result is comfortable viewing through disolves and quick cuts, and an 84 minute movie that doesn't strain the eyes or induce headaches.
The sound also rocks hard. The clarity and auditory spatial focus seem to follow the visual focus. And the lighting is very dramatic. Crisp everywhere, with lots of variation and shading, as well as the usual knockout punches that concert light can deliver.
It's simply a tour de force of concert movie immersion. I certainly want to see it again and get the perfect seat, half-way up in the center. Kathryn and I saw this in Baltimore and sat low, in the 3rd or 4th row, far off to the side – pretty bad seats, and it was still impressive.
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Olbermann Goes Off On Clinton
March 12, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
OMG awesome liberal screed against racism being promulgated by the Clinton campaign.
Ten minutes of literate rage like you haven't ever seen on TV. Finally, someone with a pulpit speaks the truth.
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Copying Makes Evolution Possible
March 4, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Susan Blackmore in Wired:
The whole idea of a meme is that it's information that is copied with variation and selection. So any idea that is copied from person to person is a meme. But an idea that you think up for yourself and is not expressed is not a meme. The emphasis has to be on copying, because that's what makes evolution possible.
[Some memes] succeed because they're good for us or they're true or beautiful or useful and we select them for those reasons. Some other memes succeed, in spite of not being beautiful or true or useful, by using tricks. So religions, for example, have some value, but by and large they're false ideas that use tricks to get into people's heads -- threats of hell, promises of heaven, the allure of being a good person or of God loving you. There are also memes that trick you into thinking that you're going to get popular or that you're going to get rich or that you're going to get a bigger penis, whatever it is. [Ed: ambiguous 'it.']
Wired asks, What will [the future] look like?
Well, it will look like humans are just a minor thing on this planet with masses (of) silicon-based machinery using us to drag stuff out of the ground to build more machines.
As Kottke said of this quote, Good times.
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Economics Worldview Today
February 29, 2008 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Credit cards are as dangerous as they are convenient
Economics of the Macropocalypse
Why the Fed is compelled to lie to Congress
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Strategic Wasteland
February 27, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Now, however, as Obama has gained steadily in the polls, the Clinton campaign has reversed field. Top Clinton aides are pleading with uncommitted super delegates to hold off making any commitments, fearful that any commitments they make would be to back Obama, not Clinton.
In language that could have been lifted from the Obama playbook just a few weeks ago, the email says Clinton backers should make the case to super delegates that: "If House, Senate and DNC members try to end this process now, it would be very damaging to those institutions, the Democratic Party and our chances in November."
It's kind of sad, at this point, as long as that sympathy doesn't earn her votes. She and her advisors (and her, um, husband, not to put too fine a point on it) were completely, utterly, and devastatingly out-smarted at every turn. Next Wednesday Clinton's entire staff should immolate themselves so we never have to watch this level of bumbling incompetence again.
I have watched this race up close here in NH for over ten months. From feet-on-the-street, to backoffice technology; from knowing when to hold your cards to knowing when to take the high road, Team Obama's bottom-up decentralized aim-high campaign has won the competition for ideas, if not quite yet the nomination. This win came from a virtually unknown young man with a funny name, against the most powerful political couple of the past 20 years. One million people have donated to his campaign. Obama is not creating our desire for a new way, he is simply channeling it.
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And Then Came New Hampshire...
February 25, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
The maker of that video has a new project alive. You can add your own photo to the montage of video. Very innovative. And beautiful heartfelt text on the Creators page. Bravo.
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Your Links For The Day
February 24, 2008 | People & Society
Ms. Pac Man: Feminist Hero
Call him Doctor 'Orgasmatron'
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The Point and Pixish
February 12, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Software
The Point looks really interesting.
The Point is a social platform for people to solve problems they can’t solve alone. Start an ultimatum, fundraiser, or social contract. Whatever the cause, use a campaign to bring it to the tipping point.
Also, beautiful minimalist design.
Bonus link: Pixish, Visual Assignments For Creative People. Less beautiful design, but still very nicely done. It was this week's favorite new website design, until I saw The Point. Not a bad week for web design, when you've got two solid choices in the first two days.
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Just Three Words
February 11, 2008 | People & Society
I've watched this video called john.he.is a few times today, and lol each time (1:40). Very amusing guys, thanks. It's in response to, and generously parody's, the Yes We Can video from wll.i.am that appeared last week (4:26).
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Blueprint for Change
February 11, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
A lot of people say, "I don't know what Barack Obama stands for; he's all vague and lofty and aspirational. What are his actual policies?"
Well, he's got this thing called a website, maybe you've seen one? Even better, here's a 64-page pdf you can download and print out and read in the water closet that lays it all out in bullet points and details.
But for me, it hardly matters what the specifics are, because getting law through Congress is non-trivial – plans will change. I'd rather learn how someone thinks, how they approach problems, how they evaluate their options. From that point of view the website and the Blueprint are useful. But if you disagree with anything in it, don't worry too much, it's unlikely to end up as it begins.
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Lessig on Obama
February 5, 2008 | People & Society
Wonderful passionate 20 min presentation by Stanford's Lawrence Lessig on why he supports Obama.
So I want you to shut your eyes and imagine what it will seem like to a young man in Iraq or in Iran, who wakes up on January 21st, 2009, and sees the picture of this man as the president of the United States. A man who opposed the war at the beginning, a man who worked his way up from almost nothing, a man who came from a mother and a father of mixed cultures and mixed societies, who came from a broken home to overcome all of that to become the leader in his class, at the Harvard Law Review, and an extraordinary success as a politician. How can they see us when they see us as having chosen this man as our president?
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Clinton's Feminism
February 4, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had a teary-eyed moment on the campaign trail today during a nostalgic visit to Yale, where she graduated from law school nearly 35 years ago. [...] Mrs. Clinton, looking teary, raised her left hand to her cheek and brushed something away with her finger.
Wow, teary-eyed, the very day before a critical election. What a coincidence. This happened one other time, here in NH:
The emotional moment echoed a similar one in New Hampshire last month, when Mrs. Clinton’s eyes welled with tears as she talked about the tensions of running for president.
Funny, with 35 years in public service (sic, coughwalmartboardcough) you'd think these teary episodes wouldn't happen so much when the chips are down and everyone's watching. Unless, of course, it's part of the sell.
Hillary Clinton's definition of feminism: Cry when you want to get your way, and when the going gets tough send your husband out to bully the mean kids (coughfairytailsouthcarolinajessejacksoncough).
I am all for heartfelt emotion, but not for strategic emotional cues designed to manipulate other people. With all that's happened to Hillary Clinton, if she were genuinely a heartfelt person, she would tear up more often then just the day before an election when all the media are watching. Gag me.
Andrew Sullivan says it better than I can.
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Thanks Bro
February 4, 2008 | Life | People & Society
Got a helpful Twitter tweet from my brother last night:
@notio: Super Bowl is starting. Just wanted to make sure you know what the rest of the country is doing right now.
Thanks bro – I had a head's up from Fake Steve on Friday...
I noticed that many of the proles seemed to be talking about some big sporting competition that will happen in the next few days. Football, apparently. I don't much care for the game -- I'm more into European sports like cycling and cross-country skiing, and I still think it's outrageous that we don't have tai chi on television in this country the way they do in every country in Asia.
Since I don't have TV reception, I couldn't verify the lack of Tai Chi, or watch the Super Bowl. (But go Pats!)
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Fully Immersed in Something
February 1, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology
For when you truly have money to burn, Ultra Geeky Home Cinemas.
Instead, perhaps consider this? (All 4:21 are worth it, lyrics and images.)
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Jeffrey Hart???
February 1, 2008 | People & Society
I find it unbelievable that Jeffrey Hart and I are on the same side of any issue, ever. Thus is the power of Barack Obama's political campaign. Amazing.
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On Politics
January 28, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Worth it:
Kennedy Endorsements of Barack Obama (42 min, and worth it)
The Billary Road to Republican Victory
Races Entering Complex Phase Over Delegates
In Open Nomination, ‘Superdelegates’ May Hold Key to Victory
Clinton’s Camp Seeks Gentler Role for Ex-President
TPMtv: Sunday Show Clinton Pile-On (Snark alert)
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A Way To Live
January 25, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
A life. Some projects. A very thoughtful five-minute "game." (Read the creator's statement.) If you want, you can support this life.
Update: I didn't know it at the time I wrote this, but the Wall Street Journal covered the game in today's issue.
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Bill Clinton uncut
January 23, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
A fascinating CNN video of Bill Clinton, running nearly five minutes, uncut. The reporter asks him a question, and he just goes on and on, and on. He's pissed, but he smiles, and talks and rebuts, and all in all gets down and does some hard-core political jiving.
This video supports my long-held belief that political figures should be allowed in the media only when the clips are a minimum of five or ten minutes, unedited. Soundbites would be outlawed. Then you'd get to see them think, see their character and personality, get a better sense of who they were. Would that not be better? I used to like Bill Clinton. Today, not so much.
Obama: "I have no doubt that once the nomination contest is over, I will get the people who voted for her. Now the question is can she get the people who voted for me?"
From Notio's point of view, the answer is very likely, "no."
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On Twitter
January 23, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Software | Technology
rentzsch: yay morphed a client meeting into client work-time. "Nothing new to talk about, how about I just keep working?" "Sure." I love sane clients
I never understood Twitter. I checked it out way back when, probably around when it first started, readin' the blogs and all, and I just didn't get it. "Okay, you're supposed to answer the question, 'What are you doing?' – I guess you post from mobile phones or something – SMS, I think that's a phone thing – because posts are limited to 140 characters! What can be said in 140 chars? Well, maybe someone will probably use it."
I signed up for an account though, mostly to landgrab the esteemed and coveted notio member name. I'm not sure I ever went back, even after I read about Twitter taking off and getting popular. I just figured, "I don't really have a modern phone, pretty sure it doesn't do SMS, and gosh ain't the kids just crazy these days with their Internets??"
Then in early January a friend was flying out to Iowa, and he said, "I'm on Twitter BTW. I usually post when I travel." And I said, "What is the deal with Twitter? I just don't get it." He said, "You have to get a desktop client, like Twitterific. Then subscribe to a few people, look at my friends and then look at their friends and subscribe to the interesting ones. You can't use the website this way, you need the integrated view. They're calling my flight, gotta go."
So I downloaded Twitterific, and did what he said, and it only took about half a day, before, suddenly – bing! – the bell rang inside my head. It turns out that keeping Twitterific on the the background is like sitting in a cafe where everyone there is a friend. The 140 char "restriction" drove behavior toward a new style of online banter, sort of a synthetic conversation made up of everyone announcing presence to each other. It's not really better or worse, it's just really different.
I "followed" my friend over two days, as he made his way through his business trip. Here are some examples to give you a sense of the flow:
It's Jan 2nd, can we stop the Christmas music playing at the airport yet?Delayed twice already. Looks like I'm missing my connection.
Can someone at Gate 36 in Cincinatti please tell the woman cutting her nails in public that it is disgusting.
Next to Mike Wallace while checking in at the Marriott.
Shorter than I expected.
DSL line just went down... to the backup we go.
Up and running on the backup DSL. That was a little stressful... but better now than 8:00
Romney has conceded Iowa
They are calling it for Obama here.
Adam Nagourney is an intense typist.
The live band at the Ron Paul party next door is playing "When will I be loved"
Teardown time.
Done. I'm outta here.
Happy to see and hard to beleive but the airport is totally mellow.
It's got its own vibe, doesn't it? Poetic, in a way. I had a real sense of what was going on in his life. A tight connection, over two days. And each of those "tweets" was read in-line with several other folks on-going comments and announcements. When people subscribe to each other's tweets you often see people reply to each other, in public, using the "@" to cue the recipient, as in, "@notio are you making a point?"
All this just goes to say that Twitter is an interesting place to play, and I missed it the first time because I tried to box it into existing mental models. On its own terms it's radical and super-interesting. For instance, back to that quote from the beginning:
rentzsch: yay morphed a client meeting into client work-time. "Nothing new to talk about, how about I just keep working?" "Sure." I love sane clients
Anyone who has ever worked in a professional services capacity will recognize several nuggets of humorized truth in rentzsch's tweet. It conveyed to me a complete emotional state. I laughed out loud, smiled, and when I happened to see Twitterific ask, "What are you doing?" I wrote, "Writing about twitterific"
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In Praise of Melancholy
January 17, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Ours are ominous times. We are on the verge of eroding away our ozone layer. Within decades we could face major oceanic flooding. We are close to annihilating hundreds of exquisite animal species. Soon our forests will be as bland as pavement. Moreover, we now find ourselves on the verge of a new cold war.
But there is another threat, perhaps as dangerous: We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia.
My favorite line: "One would think that Keats's life would have fostered bitterness in him, but he remained generous in the face of his difficulties. He didn't flee to the usual 19th-century escapes: Christianity or opium..."
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FDA Says Food From Cloned Animals Is Safe
January 15, 2008 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
After years of debate, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday declared that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe, removing the last government hurdle before meat and milk derived from copies of prize dairy cows and superior hogs can be sold at grocery stores.
Tuesday’s decision means cloning technology could move into commercial use a mere decade after the world learned of the existence of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in Scotland. To create Dolly, scientists took an unfertilized sheep egg and removed the genetic material. They then inserted the genetic material from an adult cell. Machinery within the egg somehow reset the clock on the adult genes, and the new cell, after implantation into a surrogate mother sheep, developed into Dolly.
This technique has since become routine in laboratories, with clones produced in numerous species — not including humans, so far as is known.
At a time when population growth is the biggest driver of all the world's major problems (poverty, resource scarcity, drought, global warming, species extinction, civility entropy, etc) the last thing we need is to perfect and assimilate cloning.
Coming up next: Perfect Twins!! Is it safe to clone your own children? We report, you decide!
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Sigh
January 9, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Oh well. It's not over yet.
About the polls: IMHO "Strategic" voting doesn't work. Vote for who you want to win. Trying to game the system always fails.
Net-net: The Republicans are relieved, they might get to run against Clinton in the fall. She would lose in a Clinton vs. McCain contest.
Finally, they didn't randomize the order of the candidate names!?!? That's got to matter.
A photo of where I spent election night.
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Could Be Game Over
January 7, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Hillary Clinton sez:
Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Mrs. Clinton said [...]. “It took a president to get it done.”
And a commenter at Andrew Sullivan's responds:
That's right. It wasn't the courage of King and local Montgomery residents standing up to legalized white supremacy in their hometown that began to change America, it was the white man. It wasn't Rosa Parks who had enough and refused to sit in the back of the bus that got things started, it was the white man. It wasn't John Lewis and others facing down billy clubs and tear gas in Selma, it was the white man. [More]
If this story gains momentum in the next news cycle, coupled with a strong NH Obama win, it could be bad news for Hillary.
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Emotive Politics Mediascape
January 7, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Beyond his policy positions and rhetorical mad skillz, Barack Obama is setting a new standard for excellence in mass communication propaganda. Go to Barack TV and check out the "Generation Obama" video. It's just under 15 min long, documentary style, and a fascinating example of aspirational politics.
- It opens with organizing a student meeting, generating questions for a conference call. It then moves to student discussion of the Virginia Tech meltdown. The question crafted for the conference call is about international relations.
- 4:00 - Students sitting around telling their story. All student conversation; no narration or voice-over.
- 6:00 - Today's college sophomores were seven years old at the time of the Oaklahoma City bombing, 11 years old at the time of the Columbine murders, and 13 years old on 9/11/2001. Video continues with their stories about 9/11 - all their ideas and opinions.
- 7:30 - Back to Virginia Tech. Students discussion the loss of safety.
- 9:00 - Serious mood is broken to outright humor as a student acts out and mocks Barack's 2004 speech. Making fun of him! Produced and promoted by the campaign—would Clinton ever make fun of herself?
- 10:00 - Obama appears for the first time, and we're into some stump speech territory.
- 12:00 - Barack backstage with the students, joshing about cell phone photos. This short film shows students learning the operations of political operations—how to move the people and levers of democracy. This is a legacy of the Dean campaign: increasing activism. Students trying to make sense of the world—struggling to find the right response; not simply black and white reactions. Students trying to make a difference—willing to put themselves out there and have fun at the candidate the meet 'n greet. Politics is fun people.
It was filmed on April 19th, but has only just now entered rotation, taking an implicit or subconcious position that he's been a consistent candidate, the same person since Spring. All of this is powerful political propaganda. Motivational, educational, instructional. The campaign filmed all this raw material and have been producing it in due time, rolling it out when the time feels right. It's a very powerful media strategy, deploying raw media material as the situation dictates. This one models active, positive, and good student behavior. Nearly zero specific policy discussion - you can read the data on the website. This was all emotion. Closing the sale.
I have been an Obama supporter since March or April last year, which you may have first noticed as a semi-amusing blog post:
"I heard you wanted an Obama bumper sticker," he said, as he handed me the goods. I nearly fell over. "Wow! This is like a precious commodity!," I exclaimed. "Yeah, they're really hard to get," he said. I said, "I went on the website, and I couldn't believe they weren't selling them." Then Dave said, "Yeah, I was talking with Graham, and he said you wanted one." I laughed out loud. "You were talking with Graham?!?!?" Like, this is the modern political campaign. Including intrastate backchannel discussion about getting Michael J. his Obama bumper sticker? My mind reeled. "Yeah," he said, "I came a couple of times last week, but you weren't here." Three words: O. M. G. I'm thinking, here's this guy, walking the streets of Hanover, searching for Michael J., with a single Obama bumpersticker in his hand! It's like they invented some weird, inefficient, but personal, and effective, distribution mechanism.
They have long been people-powered at the grass-roots, with advanced technology (targeted CRM, portable video, web distribution, online fundraising), expressing the messages that their own audience puts in their own words!. And now everyone else is paying attention. No need to say much in person, now. Show up and inspire, support the detail online. Stay connected on a human level. Voice your campaign with your audience's own words and faces.
So, he's getting my vote this round. It's brilliant, daaahling.
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On The Obama Iowa Win
January 4, 2008 | Governance | People & Society
Nine percentage points. That's a strength you can't overlook. Look at the diversity in the slices:
- Obama beat Clinton among women 35% to 30%
- Obama beat Edwards among voters in union households 30%-24%
- Obama beat Clinton and Edwards among voters of almost every income level (Obama and Clinton tied among voters who make $15-30,000)
- As many voters age 17-29 as voters 65 and older participated last night -- in previous years senior participation has been 5-times greater than younger voters.
- Obama beat Edwards and Clinton among voters who want change (51%-20%-19%)
- Despite countless attacks and hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative mail, TV, and radio, Obama beat Clinton and Edwards (34%-30%-27%) among voters who say health care is the most important issue
- Obama won among those who said the economy was the most important issue (36%-26%-26%)
- Obama won over Clinton and Edwards (35%-26%-17%) among those who said Iraq was the most important issue
- Won across the ideological spectrum – winning among liberals, moderates and conservatives
- Won among high income and lower income voters among voters with household income below $50,000 (34%-32%-19%) and among those over $50,000 (41%-19%-28%)
If you live in NH and are undecided, please spend ten minutes watching this Obama propaganda piece. I say that with affection: I've supported this guy for nearly a year, and I continue to be very optimistic. If you are on the fence please have a look. If you're tossing a coin, do me a favor and just vote Obama.
On the video: Forgive the foolish mistake of the "Dartmouth University" (s/b "College") caption. Most of the footage was shot in the fall, demonstrating (by showing not telling) that they had a consistent message months ago. They don't have to explicitly say that Clinton changes her mind about everything every three weeks. It's also nice to reminisce about the warmer weather, so it's pleasant to watch.
If you want a shorter taste, watch this three-minute excerpt of the pre-caucus "closing" speech. Tell your friends: Vote.
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Iowa Caucus Closers
January 2, 2008 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
I had my hair cut today, and the stylist told me she supported Barack Obama in the NH primary. We chatted about that, and I asked her if she had considered Hillary Clinton. She said, "Well, it's funny, because when I first heard she was running I got really excited. People came into the salon and we would talk about it — a woman president! Sometimes, I would close my eyes, and just imagine what it would be like, what it would mean, to have a woman president. And I would just feel great — [she relaxes and collapses her shoulders, rolling her eyes up all aflutter, as if in a dreamy dream] — and then I would open my eyes and it would be Hillary, you know? And I just got sick to my stomach, thinking, 'I'd have to listen to that woman for the next eight years.' It was like, 'no way.'"
In honor of Lisa, here's Hillary's closing TV ad for the Iowa caucus:
And here's Barack Obama's:
How about this Obama propaganda ? Marching music? Check. Aspirational imagery? Check. Oratorical escalation? Check. (Still, I'm voting for the guy.)
John McCain is the only credible Republican nominee:
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On Holiday Travel
January 1, 2008 | People & Society | Travel
Patrick Smith is a commercial airline pilot, and the author of Salon.com’s weekly Ask the Pilot air travel column (and book of the same name). He's written an excellent essay for the NY Times on The Airport Security Follies.
Gift Hub takes it a step further, pointing out that this is not actually security screening, but obedience training.
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The 50 Most Loathsome People In America, 2007
December 28, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Possibly the most sarcastic link ever posted at Notio. Also probably the funniest; an instant classic. Via Kottke, with whom I post the following excerpt:
9. You
Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.
(Told you it was nasty. The other 49 are much funnier. Totally NSFW, language-wise.)
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Shopping As Hero's Quest
December 27, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
To complete my cultural survey, today we went to the mall. Had this been a comparative cultural survey, we would have also gone to this mall, where they have valet parking, which could be quite handy given the size of mall parking lots.
Nintendo has done an amazing job marketing the apparently amazing Wii video game. For two holiday seasons now they have restricted manufacturing, so it is very hard to get. Here in the Daytona FL area, local Wal-Marts are getting 15-18 units each Wednesday, with un-crating and shelving at about 11:30 AM. After a month or two of looking around, my hosts finally got one yesterday. Amazingly, after all that questing, it sits awaiting connection 24 hours later. I suppose there's no rush, but it seems like getting it was more important than using it, a decent definition of excess consumption. I make no judgments—it seems like the first video game I'd be interested in playing. It looks like I won't get to find out before I leave, though I'm sure if I was all that interested we could have set it up yesterday afternoon or this morning.
Today the quest was for 1) lunch (Chik-fil-A); 2) Books-A-Million (really low-vibration experience); 3) Sunglasses evaluation ($180 for molded plastic?!?); 4) Camera evaluation (40D definitely fits my hands better than the XTi). And: Success! We did it! It took five hours, including about two hours of driving. I used the mall stop as an exercise opportunity, getting in three walking circuits before the time was up. Now, a little zoning before supper.
On the plus side, I highly recommend Colonial Photo and Hobby in Orlando, FL. Don't let the cheesy website fool you. They are a true old-time camera shop, with a lot of experienced sales guys who really know their stuff. They sell Leica, where the M8 is $5,000 (body only) and the typical first lens is $5,300. They had the Canon XTi and the 40D in stock, as well as all the lenses I wanted to try, and they were happy to put them on the cameras and let me shoot away. Bring your own CF card and take it home to evaluate. A truly great resource in this era of know-nothing Ritz Camera minimum-wage lackeys. Like most specialized retail, the web has decimated the photography market, so it's nice that Colonial is able to stick around, offering workshops, one-day and weekend photo trips, and generally pricing stuff within reason of the online shops. Yes, a bit more, but they're offering a real service. If I wasn't waiting to see what is released at PMA in January, I would have bought a package there today.
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The Spectacle Has Not Quite Yet Been Supplanted
December 26, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Based on my suppertime family viewing, I like Jeopardy better than Wheel of Fortune. I also note, based on a one-hour television ad review, that nobody can sleep, everyone has stomach upset, most people have aches and pains, and many people are depressed. You probably couldn't give away a Buick Lucerne to anyone I know, much less get them excited about a Red Tag Sale. The public seem to prefer fake gratuitous violence over authentic honest sexuality –nipple-slips, coochie displays, and butt flashes aside; celebrities are people who have nothing to offer but their appearance (c.f. above), and when you reduce complex interdependent issues down to 10-30 second "news" summaries, everything is banal, and frequently, simply, wrong. Thus, as has been my practice since 1980, I continue to have little need for television.
Instead, you might want to read this report (and followup discussion) by Howard Rheingold about the philosopher Jurgen Habermas' lack of thoughts "about the state of the public sphere, now that the broadcast era has been supplanted by the many-to-many media that enable so many people to use the Internet as a means of political expression." It takes half as long as a 30-minute tee-vee show, and has at least a million times more intellectual nutrients.
Also, untrained Shi Tzsu puppies are frequently annoying, though exceptionally cute.
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How the Housing Bubble Worked
November 26, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
If you want to cut to the chase on the "sub-prime mortgage meltdown," or whatever we're calling it these days, tune into this post by Berkeley economist Brad DeLong:
Let’s look at the loan history on this property.... The property was purchased in January 2005 for $1,157,000. The combined first and second mortgages totalled $1,156,730 leaving a downpayment of $270. Let’s just call it 100% financing. By April, they owners were able to find refinancing through Countrywide with a $999,999 first mortgage... Option ARM with a 1% teaser rate... a simultaneous second mortgage for $215,000 pulling out their first $58,000. So look at their situation: They are living in a million dollar plus home in Turtle Ridge making payments less than those renting, and they “made” $58,000 in their first 4 months of ownership.
If you're playing by the so-called rules, it's revolting.
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Handmeon in the Local Media
November 10, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
The Valley News published a great story about Handmeon today:
"In tiny offices in Hanover, three men are trying to use the Internet to infuse with spirituality an activity that's become increasingly fraught and expensive: gift giving. Their company's quiet launch, built up over the past few months, coincides with the gift-giving season.
"Handmeon will favor people who have much to give. A person with a lot of gifts to offer is likely to get a lot in return. But as much as Handmeon is about giving, it's also about building connections. It's a social networking site, a sort of Facebook or MySpace for adults." —Alex Hanson, Valley NewsI was so happy I wrote a blog post about it over on the company blog. Thanks to Alex and James for a super job.
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On Obama
November 6, 2007 | Governance | People & Society
Andrew Sullivan has written a strong cover story for The Atlantic supporting Barack Obama. He describes how he came to this in a great interview. Combined, they provide pretty much everything you need to know about why I'm supporting Obama in the NH primary. Summary: Obama is a meta-candidate, attempting to re-frame not just the issues, but the mode of discourse. Might not work (just yet) but the time will come, and the sooner the better given the situation.
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Our Generation’s Enlightened Contribution
November 6, 2007 | Governance | People & Society
I am moved by this post, which relates an unfortunate incident on a train from New Haven CT to the dominant cultural narrative currently unfolding. [Grammatical ambiguity intended.] In 2002 and 2003 – seems so long ago, now, doesn't it? – I remember thinking that the tone of America's leadership would have a trickle-down effect on everyday life. Like buying a new car and suddenly seeing the same model everywhere, I then noticed trickle-down effects every day. Increased minor road rage, even in my small New England hamlet. More status-seeking behavior as the College and Hospital swelled their administrative ranks. Increased "black and white" judgments – "you're either with us or against us." That smug tone from the 50.5% majority, still in evidence on Fox News, even as their influence wanes. The victim mentality of the so-called "left," still in evidence at the US Congress, despite Democratic majorities in both houses.
I want to live in a society where people are kind, where we assume the best in people, not the worst. I want to understand dangers and threats, but I want that balanced by the trade-offs required for increased marginal safety. I want honest leadership, that is open and transparent and genuine. I want us all to face up to our collective challenges and take individual action even if it has negative short-term impacts on our own economics. I want to be free of jingoism. I want to be able to write a post like this without wondering if I'll end up on some list somewhere.
I am naive. But I'd rather be a free man in my grave, than living as a puppet or a slave.
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Except You
November 5, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
Bravo. Probably the most important factor in the next US Presidential election is getting young people to vote, no matter what. Maybe this campaign will help.
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What many people criticize
October 1, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
Adam Nagourney at the New York Times on NH's independent voters:
As a rule, they are middle and upper income, college educated, socially moderate, fiscally conservative, anti-Washington and repulsed by what many people criticize as the overly partisan atmosphere there.
This is the first article I've read with any analysis that comes even close to what I observe. Most electoral commentary is completely vapid and virtually fictional. This article at least gets at some depth of the dynamics, even if it starts with oh-so-breathless coverage of the so-called swelling ranks of independents. Democrat? Republican? Does this have meaning anymore? Similar to the recording industry, all this is the last gasp (decades long) of a dying form of organization.
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Unbroken Chain Conference
September 27, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
I am so registered for this.
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Beauty parlor's filled with sailors...
September 27, 2007 | Life | People & Society
We had The Big Debate here in the hood last night. Good video summary at TPM.
Complete with our own freedom pens and everything!
It was also the first day of classes, which combined with the media tents, temporary air conditioning, security presence, and pedestrian jostling to wake the whole town up from its summer slumber like some sort of cheery post-hangover alarm clock.
My favorite quote though, came from the private air services firm at the local airport:
As of 5 p.m., Barack Obama had the biggest jet on the tarmac, a Gulfstream II. John Edwards had a Hawker jet on hand. And U.S. Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd flew together from Washington, D.C., in a King Air twin engine plane. Hillary Clinton's plane was due to arrive closer to the 9 p.m. debate.
Ray Reed, a veteran customer service representative for Signal Aviation at the West Lebanon airport, said the lineup of incoming planes were “comparable to any big weekend” at Dartmouth, such as parents weekend.
Gotta love that. These big-shot politicos are no match for Dartmouth parents' airplanes!
Bonus link: Singles will check out eligible candidates at Obama rally
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Leading with love, not fear
September 23, 2007 | Governance | People & Society
The mayor of San Diego struggles with gay marriage, and does the right thing. I read the brief speech yesterday, but the power of watching him speak, tearfully, brings some hope to my cynical perspective of today's politics.
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Raising Frame at Faerie Camp Destiny
August 2, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
I am in awe of this side project Matt is doing. It's all there, design discussions, preliminary renderings of the frame, photos from logging and clearing, and today, this fantastic human-powered frame-raising movie. (4:00)
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Delete and Design
August 1, 2007 | Life | People & Society
So today Jeff came in for a meeting and after we settled in I asked him, "Should we try to do anything about the Explore page, or just wait until after launch?"
Jeff said (I paraphrase), "That tour page has got to go." We then launched into an hour-long discussion, starting with the presumption of this one particular page that we're going to rip out, and moved on to making bumper stickers with a two-word tag line on them, as an expression of the opposite of what the egregious Tour page expresses. Compared bumper stickers to domed labels in social field impact. This tangented into some lengthy discussion on the desirability of choosing a focused market segment and not trying to please everyone, concluding the best approach is that sometimes less is more. We considered the differing impact of an elite right-wing education or an elite left-wing education on one's stance toward economics and activism. Eventually we agreed that I would delete the offending Tour page and also design a bumper sticker for the tag line.
Then I said, making a few to-do notes, "Okay, cool. Do you think we should try to do anything about the Explore page, or just wait until after launch?"
And Jeff replied, "Oh, wow; you asked that an hour ago, and I heard the wrong word, and I went off on that Tour page, and everything else, and you were so nice, you didn't even say anything...."
Well, it all had to be discussed, and we had fun along the way.
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If Abortion Were Illegal...
July 31, 2007 | People & Society
Continuing in the "wish I had asked those questions" thread, Sassy Pants posts this awesome video. They ask abortion protesters, "If abortion were illegal, what should the punishment be for women who still have an abortion?" The answers are very surprising. Here's the Newsweek story.
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Schneier Hawley Interview
July 31, 2007 | People & Society
Schneier on Security: Bruce Schneier, famous security expert, interviews Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator. He asks the questions we all ponder as we go through airport security. Example:
By today's rules, I can carry on liquids in quantities of three ounces or less, unless they're in larger bottles. But I can carry on multiple three-ounce bottles. Or a single larger bottle with a non-prescription medicine label, like contact lens fluid. It all has to fit inside a one-quart plastic bag, except for that large bottle of contact lens fluid. And if you confiscate my liquids, you're going to toss them into a large pile right next to the screening station -- which you would never do if anyone thought they were actually dangerous. Can you please convince me there's not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers making this sort of stuff up?
First of four parts.
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A Gamer Tunes Into Ron Paul
July 23, 2007 | People & Society
The YouTube generation speaks. This guy is not on the pollster's radar.
(via Andrew Sullivan)
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What is beauty?
July 18, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
This Dove ad should be required viewing for anyone who has ever wondered about "manufactured beauty." (1:30) Dig the photoshop work where they extend the neck, puff the lips, trim the shoulders, lower the eyebrows, etc. She looks totally normal at the start, and a super model at the end.
Update: Sassy Pants points to this great link on the same topic.
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Sticker Bumpkins
July 12, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
About three months ago, I saw that Don had an Obama bumper sticker on his car, and I said, "I want one of those." So I went to the website, and much to my surprise, there was no way to buy a bumper sticker. No swag at all. Crazy.
I decided to send them a comment, but to do so I had to register on the site. Sigh. So I registered, and sent a message to the effect of, "I want to buy a bumper sticker; what the heck, eh??" Then I went back to work.
About a month later, I got a phone call at home. "Hi this is Dave from the NH Obama '08 campaign. I just wanted to check in and see how you thought the campaign was going so far." I said, "Seems great to me, except I want a bumper sticker, and I can't figure out how to buy one online. You should sell them for $20 or something." Dave said, "Yeah, they're really hard to get. You know, we're going to be opening an office in downtown Hanover, I'm sure we'll have them there once we open." "Cool," I replied, "just let me know." "Okay, thanks," he said. And that was that.
Then about a month after that, I was walking down Main Street and saw Tom, who, as it turns out, is doing some volunteering for the Obama campaign. He was with Graham, who is with the political desk of the campaign, visiting from Manchester NH and talking to people. Tom introduced me as an entrepreneur (simply because I can spell it quickly) and Graham said they were going to be starting a business for Obama group, and he'd love to have me attend some of those events. "Cool," I said. "Will I be able to buy a bumper sticker there?" Told him about the website, and the phone call, and said, would love to advertise for you guys; what's with the sticker shortage? He said, "Yeah, they're really hard to get." We exchanged cards, and I went to the post office.
The next day I got an email from Graham that began, "I was lucky to meet you yesterday..." And I thought, what a great way to get someone's attention. "Lucky to meet me," – maybe I'll get a bumper sticker!
About a week ago I got an email from the Obama campaign, saying, hey, we heard your pleas and cries and wailing in the night, and finally got around to opening an online store so you can buy all that swag you've been asking for. Cool, I thought, I'll check that out someday. It's about time.
Then today I was finishing a sandwich at the office and someone knocked on the door. "Yo," I said. In walks this tall lanky young friendly kinda-goofy guy, who says, "Are you Michael J.?" "Yup," I said.
"I heard you wanted an Obama bumper sticker," he said, as he handed me the goods. I nearly fell over. "Wow! This is like a precious commodity!," I exclaimed. "Yeah, they're really hard to get," he said. I said, "I went on the website, and I couldn't believe they weren't selling them." Then Dave said, "Yeah, I was talking with Graham, and he said you wanted one." I laughed out loud. "You were talking with Graham?!?!?" Like, this is the modern political campaign. Including intrastate backchannel discussion about getting Michael J. his Obama bumper sticker? My mind reeled. "Yeah," he said, "I came a couple of times last week, but you weren't here." Three words: O. M. G. I'm thinking, here's this guy, walking the streets of Hanover, searching for Michael J., with a single Obama bumpersticker in his hand! It's like they invented some weird, inefficient, but personal, and effective, distribution mechanism.
I guess you can just order them online now, but this one is more special than that, because they made me beg for the bumper sticker – they're so hard to get no one has ever hardly seen one – and then in the end they send a guy dedicated with a singular focus to this one task, not even carrying a backpack with literature or other swag, or anything, and it makes me feel like they'd do anything to deliver this to me. How odd is that?
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Summing Up My Views on Terrorism
July 11, 2007 | People & Society
In the two hours or so I’m guessing it took Ignatius to crank out yet another 800 words of substance-free alarmism festooned with platitudes about the need for “unity,” about 350 Americans died. Since Sept. 11, 2001, approximately 14 million Americans have died.
Some of these people died agonizing deaths on emergency room floors because they didn’t have health insurance. A quarter-million were killed in car crashes. Around 200,000 were shot to death. Several thousand died of acute alcohol poisoning.
In theory, most of these deaths were preventable. In practice, only some of them were preventable at anything like a reasonable cost. Here’s a question: What would be the optimal number of deaths per year in the United States caused by less-than-ideal medical care, or car crashes, or gunshot wounds, or alcohol poisoning?
I’m sure Ignatius understands why anyone who answers “zero” is saying something nonsensical. So why does he continue to write similar nonsense about terrorism?
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Toilet 2.0
July 5, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
If you've been thinking that you use too much toilet paper, the Washlet might be for you. It also claims to increase happiness.
Bubblegen provides a good overview of the strategic challenge.
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Both Sides Are Equally Human
May 14, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
The Storytellers: Why Are Most Artists Liberal?
Stories, by their nature, have some sort of conflict. Otherwise, they would be boring. Conflict, by its nature, has at least two sides. To be able to write these two sides well, the artist has to understand, deep inside, that both sides are equally human. The more he portrays the other side as human, the better the story. The less human the other side, the more flawed the story.
That puts artists on the humanistic side of most ideological battles throughout history: against racism (the other race is people, too), against slavery (slaves are people, too), for feminism (women are people, too), for the rights of children (children think and feel just like adults), against child labor, for gay rights (homosexuals are just as human), for the downtrodden, for the poor (they are just like us, only poor), against most wars (because the other side bleeds red, too, and mourns with the same pain), and against most religions (in particular, against the religions that claim its followers are ‘the chosen’ and those who are not will not get into heaven and/or are inferior in some way).
In conclusion, then, you don’t have to be a liberal to be a good storyteller. But the better your story is, the more of a liberal you are. (Unfortunately for aspiring writers, that does not work the other way round: you cannot aspire to be liberal and hope that will make you a better artist.)
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A Big Inside Joke on Several Levels
May 12, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
No, silly, not the Bush administration – LOL!!
Better, David McRaney's fantastic article on Internet communication culture and sub-cultures, called A Special In-Depth Analysis L337 Katz0rz:
Still, a fusion of sorts between learned, direct language and rapid, practical digital missives takes place with Leetspeak and macros. Both relay a great deal of information in a small burst of code. Each depends on the receiver of the information having working knowledge of the culture and its references. In a sense, these serve as argots, and help identify both sides of the information transfer as belonging to the subculture where they appear. The in-joke is part of the communication. The separation of ingroup and outgroup helps drive the rapid evolution of both leetspeak and macros.
Someone uses lol, which turns into the spoken “l-o-l,” which then becomes “lol” but sounds like “lawl,” and at some point someone in a forum thread, in response to something funny, puts up an image of Lal, the name of Data’s daughter from a single, obscure “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode. It’s a big inside joke on several levels, and the creator gets golf claps for pulling together all these references into one simple understatement. Everyone who gets it belongs in the ingroup, and the behavioral cycle is encouraged and repeated.
That post is full of win. The comments are gr8, 2.
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Spare Cycles
May 9, 2007 | People & Society
In the next issue of Wired we've got a great story about a woman who cyberstalked the lead singer of Linkin Park. She correctly guessed the password to his cellphone account. The rest was easy. She was a technician at a secure military facility, the Sandia National Labs. When eventually confronted, she explained that her job only took her half an hour a day. The rest was spare cycles. She used them to stalk the lead singer of Linkin Park.
Web 2.0 is such a phenomena because we're underused elsewhere. Bored at work, bored at home. We've got spare cycles and they're finally finding an outlet. Tap that and you've tapped an energy source that rivals anything in human history.
The Internet is perfect for people who "have too much time on their hands." Or, for people who "don't have any time to spare." Two sides of the same coin. Even when people only need half an hour to do their jobs, they're still incredibly busy, talking on the cell phone while they nearly hit people in grocery store parking lots, and agitated at waiting a full three 3 minutes for their personally brewed double tall Guatemalan mocha espresso with cinnamon and whipped creme.
The only real surprise, still to be revealed, is what, exactly it will take for people to put those spare cycles to a positive global use. Corrupt governments, erosion of civil liberties, global warming, low educational achievement scores, high infant mortality, and middle-class economic decline haven't mattered, so it will be interesting to see what does.
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Widespread Acknowledgment of the Magic
May 8, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Via David Gans:
Proclamation from the Mayor of the City of Ithaca, NY
Whereas, the Grateful Dead have been recognized by many highly credible organizations, individuals and entities including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as significantly important and integral to the musical and social fabric of our contemporary culture, and whereas, on May 8th, 1977 the Grateful Dead performed in Barton Hall on the campus of Cornell University in the city of Ithaca New York, a concert that is widely acknowledged and regarded as a defining and transcendent occasion and example of the art of contemporary musical improvisation, collaboration, musicianship, and performance, and whereas, many tens of thousands of individuals who were not in attendance that night in Barton Hall, have become knowledgeable & familiar with the extraordinary nature of the performance on May 8th 1977 through the trading and sharing of recordings of the show, and whereas, the cultural identity and perceptions of Ithaca as a community, have been informed and bolstered by the widespread acknowledgement of the magic of May 8th, 1977, and whereas, it has been said many times by many people that, “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.”
Now therefore, be it resolved that as Mayor of the City of Ithaca, and in heartfelt recognition of the thirtieth anniversary of the May 8th 1977 concert performance, I declare May 8th 2007 as Grateful Dead Day in the City of Ithaca.
University Chancellors praising Lou Reed, and Mayors cheering the "transcendent occasion" of a memorable Grateful Dead concert—is there something in the water?
Have a listen.
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A Chat with Aaron Swartz
May 7, 2007 | People & Society
You may remember Aaron from when he was 12 or 13, and won a computer programming award (Wikipedia) from Philip Greenspun. Or you may have followed his weblog (archives) wherein he chronicled his arrival at Stanford, and the subsequent disillusionment and dropping out. Or maybe you knew he was a regular contributor to Wikipedia. Or you may have heard when Y Combinator funded his company, which then merged with another Y Combinator company, forming Reddit, which sold to Conde Nast (aftermath). Or, then, you might remember how working at an office sucked, so he went to Europe, returned home and was fired.
In any case, this IM chat interview captures a young man who is smart, idealistic, painfully shy, humanist, and not following the cultural programming paradigm. I wish for thousands more like him to continue to shape the world, in all fields of endeavor. People often look up to folks who are older; here's someone to look up to who's younger.
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On The Price of Beer
April 13, 2007 | People & Society
Mind Hacks: A research report published in Applied Economics has found that the number of patients with violence-related injuries treated in hospital emergency rooms is related to the price of beer. [...] The researchers examined admissions to 58 hospital accident and emergency departments over a five year period and found that as the price of beer increased, violence-related injuries decreased. (pdf)
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Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
April 12, 2007 | People & Society
Lee Iacocca's new book: "I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?"
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Firewalk'd
April 3, 2007 | Life | People & Society | Travel
On Friday night, I, along with nearly 4,000 other people, walked barefoot over 12 feet of hot burning coals. At least 1,200 degrees. About eight or ten steps. Barefoot. It's quite an experience.
You can imagine the legal disclaimer (edited for brevity):
In consideration of my participation in the seminar I agree to release and hold harmless RRI for any liability whatsoever for any damage or injury, personal or mental, which might incur as a result of my voluntary decision to walk barefoot on a bed of hot burning coals. I am fully aware and understand that, at a seminar sponsored by RRI and its promoters, I will be given the opportunity to walk barefoot on burning wood coals, which will range in temperature between 1,200 - 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If I do choose to walk on the coals, I affirm that I have not been coerced or persuaded in any way to do so, and I acknowledge that I make this decision voluntarily and without reservation. I am fully aware and acknowledge that there is no guarantee regarding my safe passage. I am fully aware that I may suffer serious injury, including severe burns or other physical or mental damage.
Thirty lanes of firewalkers, in the first floor of a Meadowlands NJ parking garage, at midnight, in the dark, with loud drums pounding, people chanting, and dancers with glow sticks twirling about. Kool-aid; drank.
Update: Hannah posts (with good links); I comment.
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Keith's Song
March 11, 2007 | Life | People & Society
When I first arrived at Top of The Hop for book group he was playing the piano, and I paused at the top of the stairs. He continued playing, but asked, "Too loud?" And I said, "No, beautiful."
There was another guy standing near him, and I thought maybe they were playing together, or studying together, or waiting for other people -- there was a box of doughnut holes and a NY Times on the nearby table.
After I took off my coat and sat a ways away, he asked what kind of music I liked. "Everything, pretty much," I said. "Well, name a song, maybe I know it." At a loss for words I eventually said, "How about something from the bebop era?" "Yeah!," he said. And then proceeded to knock out a perfect rendition of a complicated Thelonious Monk song. Not only was it perfect, but it had soul, and swing, and he was really into playing it.
Then, again, "Name a song! What bands do you like?" I finally admitted to a Grateful Dead habit in college, which moved toward jazz, and now exploring the edges of "classical" 20th century art music. He said, "Do you like Led Zeppelin?" "Sure," I said, thinking, how funny -- just this past weekend Bowfire played a Celtic strings arrangement of a take on Kashmir (!!) at the Lebanon Opera House, and before that I hadn't thought about The Zep since I bought that archive DVD and played it while Lynne and I were getting ready for a party a couple of years ago. "Really takes you back to high school, huh?," she said. Sure does.
So anyway, he starts into Fool In The Rain (don't worry, I had to look it up). And then as I'm sitting on the couch with my tea, waiting for friends, he takes Fool In The Rain to places Page and Plant never dreamed of. Probably a dozen, or even two dozen, bright and blinding references to other composers and entire genres of music. Each time, returning somehow, some way -- sometimes quickly, sometimes briefly, sometimes with great harmonic dexterity -- returning to the Zep theme. He was moving in the seat, moving in and out of the theme, swaying, humming, and really knocking himself out.
Meanwhile, the other guy has moved to a table behind him and is working on marking up a paper or something.
I asked about a Chopin concerto I heard on the radio Monday, and he launched into it: "Is this the #7? Or was it this one?" I had no idea, but he probably had one of them right.
So then Maureen arrives, and Suzanne, and we start talking a bit, and suddenly Keith stops and comes over to a couch near us. And then we experienced a very interesting and unpredictable 45 minutes. It's not everyday that you get to meet someone who was at turns brilliant, scary, thought-provoking, deep, and duplicitous. Absolute genius, and possibly dangerous. I'd never give him any trackable or identifyible details of my life.
He was a quick conversationalist, though monologuist might better describe it. One of us would ask a question, and he would go off on a lucid, raving, coherent explication of the topic. Common touchpoints included: the relation of the self to others; understanding your self, and coming to know it; how society is constructed to keep people down; the beauty and love of children; how the grace and beauty of children are squeezed out of them by parents, teachers, bosses, friends, and assorted others; how love is the only thing that can heal you; how he feared his dad, and how long it took to get that voice out of his head; how one of the ways he's defying convention is to marry a 41-year old wife, though he is only 27; how doctors need power over others to maintain their ego; how rich people are so boring; and on and on and on.
Meanwhile, the other guy has now moved across the room, far, far away. And I'm wondering, has this guy Keith been up all night tripping, or is he a crazy genius, or what?
Along the way, I started to wonder about his truthiness. It began early, when I said I liked the Grateful Dead: "Oh, I love the Dead. The Dead are great." But he didn't know any of the songs.
When Maureen mentioned that she was playing at the hospital rotunda later that day: "At Dartmouth?! Do they have a piano there?" Then, a few minutes later: "Yes, I played there yesterday."
In the end, I wondered if he was 27, if he was married, if anything he said were true. But I did know, first hand, what a brilliant piano player he was, with a memory and soulful skill that was rarely heard in a casual setting.
By and by that other guy left the Hop without saying goodbye. Did they even know each other?
As we wrapped up, Keith took the doughnuts and left, remembering our names, and who knows what else. Later, when I looked up the Zeppelin song, I was astounded at the lyrics I read:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ledzeppelin/foolintherain.html
"Fool In The Rain"
Well there's a light in your eye that keeps shining Like a star that can't wait for the night I hate to think I've been blinded baby Why can't I see you tonight?
And the warmth of your smile starts a-burnin' And the thrill of your touch gives me fright And I'm shaking so much, really yearning Why don't you show up, make it all right? Yeah, it's all right.
And if you promised you'd love so completely and you said you would always be true You swore that you would never leave me, baby: What ever happened to you?
And you thought it was only in movies As you wish all your dreams would come true It ain't the first time believe me, baby I'm standin here feeling blue Yeah I'm blue
Now I will stand in the rain on the corner I'll watch the people go shuffling downtown Another ten minutes no longer And then I'm turning around
The clock on the wall's moving slower My heart it sinks to the ground And the storm that I thought would blow over Clouds the light of the love that I found
Now my body is starting to quiver And the palms of my hands getting wet I've got no reason to doubt you baby, It's all a terrible mess
I'll run in the rain till I'm breathless When I'm breathless I'll run till I drop, hey The thoughts of a fool's kind of careless I'm just a fool waiting on the wrong block, oh yeah Light of the love that I found...
This lyric seems to perfectly sum up Keith's story, as told in fragments to people he doesn't know, on a Friday morning when I thought I'd be thinking about 3rd and 4th order consciousness and how we relate to other people. In fact, I was, but never did I expect such a wildly radical approach to the topic.
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Real Maps
March 5, 2007 | People & Society
Fascinating maps showing the world boundaries drawn to reflect a nation's strengths or weaknesses (alcohol consumption, military spending, toy imports, etc.).
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Compare and Contrast
February 27, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Today in links:
Brûlee’s "Brownie Extradordinaire with Saint Louis" is a chocolate brownie made with Italian hazelnuts, dusted with edible gold powder and served with a very rare port. After each bite, the dessert captain squirts a mist of the vintage port on your tongue with a $750 atomizer, which incidentally is yours to keep.
Stock markets around the world plummeted today
In percentage terms, it was the worst day for the market since March 2003. In terms of points, it was the steepest slide since the first day the market resumed trading after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
So it goes.
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We Have The Power To Create Our Own Happiness
February 27, 2007 | People & Society
I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves.
—Wayne Coyne
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Food Security
February 22, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
When I say that "the food supply is far more fragile than people realize," this is what I have in mind.
It looks like fruit/almonds/etc. might get pretty expensive soon. Big commercial bee keepers, that provide pollination services worth $14 billion a year, have been experiencing die-offs of 50-90% of their colonies over the last two years.
No one knows why the bees are dying. In and of themselves, one species doesn't really matter much (heh, even humans!), but the interdependency of a living system depends on all things living. In this case, bee bye-bye means everything pollinated by the itty bitty bees will be affected. Wichita Eagle:
"One out of every three bites of food we eat is produced as the result of insect pollination, much of it by bees," said Bruce Broynton, a spokesman for the National Honey Board, which this week released $58,000 for research it hopes will lead to understanding the bee deaths.
Here's a wake-up call about what you can do to understand and prepare for the future. Short version: relearning to make everything more local and smaller-scale.
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Web 2.0 In Just Under 5 Minutes
February 7, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Technology
Tour de force video explaining how Web 2.0 is changing the nature of online interaction.
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Social Web Hits The Election Cycle
January 26, 2007 | Governance | People & Society | Software
Great post over at Bokardo Social Web Design, altering us that Hillary Clinton is using Yahoo answers to gather the prol's thoughts on health-care reform.
One, Clinton is actually asking the American people what they think, rather than assuming or generalizing from the party she’s a part of. (this doesn’t mean she’ll listen, but it’s a start)
Two, Clinton is using Yahoo Answers, a publicly-accessible social software app to ask the question. In the past year Yahoo Answers has been a runaway success for Yahoo, racking up millions of users.
Three, in just two days there are over 35,000 answers!.
Sure, it could be a publicity stunt, but that will be self-limiting in the long-run.
Then again, here's Kos' take on Hillary and her netroots support in general:
Here's what I think -- Hillary has no interest in truly making up ground in the netroots. Rather, she sees it as a place to make a good show, and then sell that to the traditional media. It's her campaign's version of "Shock and Awe". Lots of noise. Lots of flashing lights. Lots of smoke. But it's all for show.
In a straw poll taken after Hillary's announcement, she got 4% of the vote, with Obama at 28% and Edwards at 35%. For my money, it's an Edwards/Obama ticket, and they will kick some serious butt.
Okay, enough with the trivial politics.
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True Stories
January 11, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Sometimes, you can't make this stuff up.
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The Speech
January 11, 2007 | Governance | People & Society
For my money, Andrew Sullivan sums it up perfectly.
What we will discover in the next few months, therefore, is simply whether the entire premise of this strategy is actually true. The president is asking us to find this out one more time. He seems to disbelieve the overwhelming evidence on the ground - that the dynamic has changed beyond recognition. His intellectual rubric - democracy versus terror - has not changed to deal with fast-changing events, or to take account of the sectarian dynamic that his appallingly managed occupation has spawned.
Andrew Sullivan is an interesting writer. He's conservative, supported the Iraq war, and Bush in 2000 (but not in 2004). He is disappointed with conservatives, the conduct of the war, and the intellectual dishonesty of political discourse. He's written what appears to be an interesting book (among others). He was one of the first bloggers to figure out how to earn ~$80K a year blogging, and parlayed that into a gig writing (daily) for Time online. He's smart, reasonable, and thoughtful, even when I disagree with his positions. If you're of the left-wing persuasion, he is a good addition to your input mix.
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Completely Redefining What You Can Do
January 9, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
I will be one of approximately 143,215,697 people to mention this today or tomorrow, but this is as close as it gets to product-orgasm. Cell phones have sucked forever, and this is a whole new game.
iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.
The picture is so good you are nearly drooling. [Note switch to second-person voice for a bit of self-revealing distance.] This product is far, far better than I expected, even with all the pre-hype. It's a big year for Apple. See also, no slouch either: AppleTV.
David Pogue comments on it all. Better, this Time magazine article on the culture and attitude that produces an object like this. And, Joshua Allen on some of the potential problems with Apple's approach.
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Black Tie Optional
January 8, 2007 | People & Society
Current students at Hannah and Sherry's alma mater are getting awfully hip....
The Pundits, founded in 1884 as a society of “campus wits,” have a history of rebelling against Yale tradition, often through elaborate pranks. They organize six to eight covert naked parties a year, which attract anywhere from 30 to 300 people to off-campus houses, neglected rooms in classroom buildings and even small libraries on campus.
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Design Is Good For Business
January 3, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
DETROIT, Jan. 3 — The Chrysler Group was the only Detroit carmaker to report a sales increase for December, while the Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda both saw their sales grow last month, figures from the auto companies showed today.
I assert Chrysler gained sales because of design, with a capital-D. Of the US automakers, they are the only one with cars that spark the imagination. Anyone who is practical has done the math and found that Toyota or Honda will be the most reliable. If you are going to buy a car that falls apart it may as well look nice, since it will appear dated soon and you'll want to replace it.
This is the reason why design is good for business. (c.f. iPod.)
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Billionaire Divorce
January 2, 2007 | People & Society
A couple in their '50s, worth about $2 billion, settled their divorce in a few hours over a bottle of wine.
When they decided to divorce, they spent a single afternoon in the Beverly Hills Hotel, dividing it all up. With just two notebooks and a bottle of wine, the Blixseths -- California real-estate tycoons and founders of the famed Yellowstone Club -- finished the job in a matter of hours.
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Cause of Death
December 27, 2006 | People & Society
BBC: A statement from Betty Ford said: "My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, has passed away at 93 years of age." The statement did not give the cause of death.
Um, at 93, the cause of death is probably "old age." Does the specific mechanism matter at that point? It reads as though people are surprised when everyone doesn't live forever. The only real surprise is that Ford outlived the writer of his obituary.
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Strong Medicine
December 25, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Between the rampant consumerism, the killing carried out in the name of God, and your everyday garden-variety family dynamics, it takes a heckofalotof positive, weird, and funky energy to keep the cultural balance this time of year. In an attempt to stay sane, the past three days I've deep-listened to:
* Frank Zappa's, We're Only In It For The Money, Lumpy Gravy, and Civilization Phase Three. (That right there should tell you something, when those three albums are the description of sanity.) [Those are all really good Wikipedia links for learning about Zappa's music, which is worth doing, hint.]
* Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks and Modern Times.
* Grateful Dead, Truckin' Up To Buffalo, July 4, 1989.
* Phil Lesh and Friends, Live at the Warfield DVD, May 19, 2006 (twice!). This is some hot jamband-inspired jazz improvisation, showing off John Scofield tearing it up with Larry Cambell. Joan Osborne on vocals.
* Radiohead's Kid A. ("...one of the most challenging pop records ever to achieve such commercial success.")
I've also browsed Love In America, an article on interpersonal triangles by Thomas Fogarty, an MSW thesis written by a friend (regarding the effects death-anxiety has on end-of-life caregivers), and the New Yorker Complete Cartons.
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Coop Holiday Shopping
December 22, 2006 | Life | People & Society
I went to the Coop at 1:30 PM today, three shopping days before Christmas, and the first day off of work for most people. I knew it would be a scene, but it was such a scene I got a photo pass from the store manager and took a few shots. When you arrive and there aren't any carts, you know you're in for it:
After you make it through the deli (whew!!) you have the dairy gauntlet:
The intersection of wine, meat, and produce was something of a bottleneck:
I don't eat caviar, but if I did I'd be glad to know you can get it in a range of qualities this year, from $4.25/oz to $130/oz:
Checkout moved quickly, but there were a lot of people, and everyone had full carriages:
My meager basket was $143.62:
Eat, drink, and make a toast to peace in our lifetime.
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When You Act You Make New Facts
December 20, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Important intellectual analysis from Jay Rosen on how the Bush administration has played the media.
In Without a Doubt (subtitled “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”) Suskind was not talking about an age old conflict between realists and idealists, the sort of story line that can be re-cycled for every administration. It wasn’t the ideologues against the pragmatists, either. He was telling us that reality-based policy-making—and the mechanisms for it—had gotten dumped. A different pattern had appeared under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The normal checks and balances had been overcome, so that executive power could flow more freely. Reduced deliberation, oversight, fact-finding, and field reporting were different elements of an emerging political style. Suskind, I felt, got to the essence of it with his phrase, the “retreat from empiricism.”
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Eating Soy Leads to Homosexuality and a Small Penis
December 12, 2006 | People & Society
Really! That's what this Christianist guy Rutz says over at the WorldNet Daily.
Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.
James Rutz is chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries. He is the author of "MEGASHIFT: Igniting Spiritual Power," and, most recently, "The Meaning of Life." If you'd rather order by phone, call WND's toll-free customer service line at 1-800-4WND-COM (1-800-496-3266).
Then there's this ad at the bottom:
You can't make this stuff up. These people are crazy! Yeah, maybe I do need a keychain NukAlert radiation monitor!
Update: Everyone's on this one today. Wonkette:
If you’ve been on the internet today, someone has forwarded you this charming World Net Daily editorial on how the communists are sapping our precious bodily fluids through soy. Making fun of it is pretty much out of the question, not because everyone else has already had a crack at at, but because the damn headline is “A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals.” That is not a Babel Fish translation.
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Rich People Don’t Care About Gas Prices
December 4, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Great essay, with attitude, on why Ford, GM, and Chrysler are sucking eggs so hard.
We’re looking at two strategies here. Toyota: build affordable transportation for the masses at a quality level that slightly exceeds expectations relative to price. GM et al: build oversized, under-engineered and fuel inefficient cars for people who don’t care about money while palming off sub-standard cars on mainstream customers.
Recall that GM has underfunded its pension and Ford just laid off bought out 40,000 workers, and you realize how they've already lost the game. There won't be any decent American cars to buy in a few years. Just government subsidized Yugo-clones that attempt to preserve a national pride of manufacturing. Oh well; we still have the entertainment industry.
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Know Your Cell Phone
December 3, 2006 | People & Society | Technology
Did you know that when you turn your cell phone "off" it is not actually off?
Well, I had previously heard a rumor that the GPS (global positioning system) stuff was still available when a cell phone was "off," enabling it to be used as a tracking device. But that was a rumor, and I hadn't taken the time to research it.
Today comes news, from reliable sources like court documents, that in fact the microphone can be used when the phone is "off."
The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."
Pretty amazing, huh? Lest you think this is all science fiction, note that the court opinion regarded the admissibility of said evidence against a mafia crime family. So it's been done, is being done, and is being admitted in court.
Of course, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about, right?
A BBC article from 2004 reported that intelligence agencies routinely employ the remote-activiation method. "A mobile sitting on the desk of a politician or businessman can act as a powerful, undetectable bug," the article said, "enabling them to be activated at a later date to pick up sounds even when the receiver is down."
Other mobile providers were reluctant to talk about this kind of surveillance. Verizon Wireless said only that it "works closely with law enforcement and public safety officials. When presented with legally authorized orders, we assist law enforcement in every way possible."
Oh, and that really neat OnStar "safety net" in your car?
Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors' OnStar to snoop on passengers' conversations. When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored
I feel so safe I can hardly stand it.
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Axis of '70s Campus Republicans
November 7, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Like everybody else, I don't know what's going to happen today, but this election has already illuminated one critical truth: The modern GOP -- or, more specifically, the Axis of '70s Campus Republicans now running it -- really is just a criminal enterprise disguised as a political party.
Dirty tricks, large and small, are a sorry fact of life in American politics, but what the Republicans have done over the past few weeks -- the surrealist attack ads, the forged endorsements, the midnight robo calls, the arrest threats, the voter misinformation (did you know your polling station has been moved?) -- is sui generis, at least at the national level.
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Keep An Eye On the Situation
November 7, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
CNN: Bonds rally on election bets: Market surges on hopes of fiscal discipline created by Democrat-controlled Congress; dollar mixed.
via Talking Points Memo, who's doing a great job covering the election tampering...
From the GOP handbook of Maryland politics:(1) Recruit homeless men in Philadelphia;
(2) Bus them into Maryland;
(3) Arrange for the Republican governor's wife to greet them upon their arrival;
(4) Outfit them in hats and T-shirts for the governor's re-election campaign;
(5) Have them pass out flyers in heavily Democratic areas that erroneously identify the GOP candidates for governor and U.S. senator as "Democrats."
...and voter intimidation:
Over at TPMMuckraker, Justin has an interview with a poll watcher in Arizona who reports that a trio of men--one with a firearm visible--are harrassing Hispanic voters at a polling station in Tuscon. The poll watcher is a member of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The group has notified the Department of Justice and the FBI and were told by the feds--get this--to keep an eye on the situation.
Yup, that's how broken it is.
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Election Protection
November 7, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Real-time tracking the election disruptions.
EIRS or the Election Incident Reporting System is a sophisticated voting incident tracking system that will be an invaluable tool for Election Protection coalition partners and the public on Election Day and beyond. Voting problems reported through the Voter Hotline (1-866-OUR-VOTE) by coalition members or by poll watchers involved in the Election Protection program will be entered into the system for analysis during and after Election Day.
Scroll down, click on the map.
Also, Talking Points Memo is keeping tabs on vote disruption stories. Example:
Just in case you're keeping tabs, I wanted to tell you that my wife tried to vote in our precinct in Tampa and was not on the list. After several tries to find out why, she was told that the voter database was "cleaned" and there must have been a mistake. I'm trying to find out who "cleaned" it.
When you hear the media talk about "get out the vote" operations, what you should hear is "shut down the vote" tactics.
I'll say it again, if we really care about free and fair elections, then the first place to start is 1) federal regulations on the number of voting machines per capita, per polling district; and 2) uniform poll hours.
At this point, we're in a pretend democracy, kinda the way "reality TV" is real life.
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Related Links
October 27, 2006 | People & Society
CNN:
The widening waistlines of Americans have increased the consumption of gasoline since 1960 according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Virginia Commonwealth University. A report by Laura A. McLay of VCU, concludes that Americans now pump 938 million gallons of fuel more on a yearly basis than they were in 1960 because of their increasing weight.
ABC:
Fire officials said the six-hundred pound man was in being cremated when his body fluids were too much for the oven.
The body fluids seeped out onto the floor and ignited causing a fire at the Garner Funeral Home in Salt Lake City.
"Those fluids can be very flammable," said Scott Freitag of the Salt Lake City fire department. "Sort of like a grease fire."
jwz:
Fire. In crematorium. Dead man. Harmed.
Any questions?
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Does the News Matter?
October 20, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
Aaron Swartz speaks for me:
But finally, I'd like to argue that following the news isn't just a waste of time, it's actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different topics that he couldn't get any real intellectual work done the rest of the day.
I agree, and it's a hard habit to break.
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Speaking of the Onion
October 19, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Hadn't checked in with them in a while.
Christian Rock Band Cleans Up Hotel Room: Hotel staff at the Highway 82 Best Western found the suite occupied over the weekend by members of the Christian rock band Ruggid Krøss swept, dusted, scrubbed, and readied for immediate occupancy.
Area Man Going To Go Ahead And Consider That A Date: Anthony Pennline, 28, decided Tuesday, following a random encounter at a coffee shop with 26-year old acquaintance April Geyer, that their cordial, 45-minute conversation along with his offer to walk her home basically constituted a date.
Area Woman Emotionally Invested In Jennifer Aniston's Well-Being: The divorced 41-year-old dental-office receptionist and self-proclaimed "Team Aniston" member said she felt an "uncanny" bond with the $8-million-per-picture superstar. The two have never met, and are not expected to.
The song remains the same.
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A Genetic Upper Class and a Dim-Witted Underclass?
October 19, 2006 | People & Society | Science
BBC: Human species 'may split in two:'
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
Men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises. Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features.
Thought it was an Onion story.
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The Tao of Holding Space
October 19, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Chris Corrigan has posted a great book connecting the Tao Te Ching and Open Space:
It is a collection of interpretations of the 81 short chapters of the Chinese classic Tao te Ching as they apply to my experience of holding space. I started this book three years ago, when I began noting parallels between Lao Tzu’s words and my experience of leadership, facilitation and living in Open Space.
Thank you Chris! [Download]
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Connect the Dots
October 16, 2006 | Governance | People & Society | Technology
The US election is November 7th. Three weeks away. Read this, then read this. Then, spend 12 minutes and watch this testimony under oath from a computer programmer who was hired to write software to flip the vote in electronic voting machines. Scary? Well, even worse is that he was hired by Tom Feeney, the Speaker of the House of Florida at the time, currently a US Representative.
Update: via TPM: Department of amazing coincidences: Saddam verdict to be read out on November 5th.
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Getting Connected
October 16, 2006 | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology
Classic Steve Jobs quote:
Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?
In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.
The guy sure knows how to give good media.
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Obesity, Diet, and Activity
October 13, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Hood Center: Children with TVs in their bedroom are significantly more likely to be overweight than children who do not have a TV in their bedroom.
[ My friend Scott Chesnut created and produced the design for this site. ]
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Gadgetoff
October 11, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Technology
The New Yorker reports on this year's Gadgetoff event:
When asked what he planned to do with his three and a half minutes, he said, “I’m going to demonstrate how you can transfer data faster with snails than with broadband.”
Then he showed a slide of a snail hitched to a tiny chariot with DVDs for wheels. If each disk contains 4.7 gigabytes of data, and if the snail (chasing a scrap of lettuce) travels at 0.000023 metres per second, the snail-system performance rate is over thirty-seven megabits per second. That blows ADSL out of the water.
Also: robot soccer, magic lock-picking keys, and an "enormous vibrating-balls organ."
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Sonny Boy
October 2, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
The meeting was 15 people, by invitation. Hosted in a very comfortable high-tech room. The guest speaker was from a famous university a few hours south. Worker bees and VPs gathered to talk shop and think big. 45 minute presentation, then lunch is served. We introduce ourselves. Discussion ensues.
Eventually I ask: "What kinds of governance and decision-making structures work for highly complex topics? I have evolved many processes and approaches to working with this, but frequently executives override the advice of their best domain experts, which is bad for morale, bad for projects, and bad for institutions."
[Paraphrasing and editing makes me sound better than I did at the time.]
A few people speak. Eventually the VP says, among other things, with a wry smile pointed in my direction, "Those of us who have been around a while know that politics can't be avoided." Smile.
"Yes," I thought, but didn't say, "my point is we need to subvert politics. It's bad for morale, bad for projects, and bad for institutions. How about if we make decisions based on the merits, instead of the patronizing hierarchical power?"
"Those of us who have been around a while...." Those of us who have been around a while.... Those of us who have been around a while....
[I should grow my beard a little longer to show off the gray hair.]
This is your brain on intelligence, honesty, and enthusiasm. This is your brain on politics and power. Any questions?
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Just Ignore Any Conflicts
October 2, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
I'm scheduling interviews for a project and I received the following (lightly edited) email at 10 AM today, illustrating the problems of "groupware."
That works for Susan! If this works for others, please feel free to add it to Susan's calendar (I'm leaving at 10:30am today). Just ignore any conflicts that show at that time.
First of all, I'm not an internal employee (read the email sig much?), so I can't add it myself, she has to do it for me. And, uh, what does an assistant do if not manage the boss's schedule?? In this case, direct other people to add it to the schedule, I guess... Everyone needs someone to supervise.
But further, note the last line: "Just ignore any conflicts that show at that time." So, when the boss looks at her schedule she has to manually filter what she is doing when, instead of just having one item per time slot.
It's no wonder there are so many problems in the world. People don't do their jobs, or don't know what their jobs are, and then somehow people think they can do more than one thing, or be in more than one place, all at the same time. By the time they head home to find out their government is torturing people to manufacture evidence of terrorism to perpetuate it's own power, they're too exhausted to think. Mission accomplished.
Update: I requested that she add it, since I couldn't, and received the following reply:
Sorry, lost my mind. ;o)
Honesty duly noted.
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The Harder They Come
September 29, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
But I'll keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you're dead you can't
But I'd rather be a free man in my grave
Then living as a puppet or a slave
Garcia has a great version from 1978 in commercial release.
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It Will Become Impossible Not to Speak the Truth
September 29, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Scheherazade on blogging (reposted in full):
I got an email from someone today who started blogging because of stumbling across this blog. I wrote back to her, and said this:
I do think that if you blog, honestly, for six months, it will change your life. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it will. I think if you get in the habit of first noticing, then describing, the truth about your life and your reactions to it, it will become impossible not to speak the truth. And when you've made telling the truth and being tuned into your world a habit, you will make changes to things that don't work for you. And so you'll make room for wonder, and you'll become more fully yourself.
Enjoy. I don't think we know what we have to say until we start saying it. And I definitely don't think we know our power until we start being honest and brave in front of other people. I'm still learning how to do that, but this blog is teaching me how, daily.
Thanks Sherry.
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In 2006 Congress Passed a Tyrannical Law
September 29, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
I've had a really busy week at work, and now I find that since I took a blogging break the government has gone berserk.
Rafe Colburn: Prisoner of conscience
While some Republicans made a halfhearted show of conscience and Democrats hid in the most craven fashion imaginable, the Bush Administration managed to pass a bill that will enable the government to imprison people for as long as it likes without giving them a day in court, and to torture those prisoners as much as it likes. This law diminishes this country, sullies the values upon which it was founded, and rolls back many centuries of progress in how governments relate to the governed.
NY Times: Rushing Off a Cliff
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration. They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Brad DeLong: Neighbor, How Stands the Union?
This is bad. Very bad. I can't underscore how bad this is. This is our Fugitive Slave Act, our Sedition Act, our Korematsu. This is a danger to our domestic liberties and a terrifying threat to our national security--for its impact on our international standing and on our alliances may be terrible indeed.
digby: Rouge President
The truth is that there is a rogue presidency and there has been, since January, 2001 (earlier, if you count the stolen election). Certainly, everyone in Washington knows it, but no one dares to admit it. The bill legalizing torture merely enables Congress to pretend they still have some influence over an executive that from day one was governing, not as if they had a mandate, but as if Bush were a dictator. If, for some miracle, the bill didn't pass, every congress-critter knows Bush would keep on torturing.
Better to vote to pass and preserve the appearance of a working American government, the thinking goes. For the very thought that the US government is seriously broken - that the Executive is beyond the control of anyone and everyone in the world - is such a truly awesome and terrifying thought that it can never be publicly acknowledged. If ever it is, if the American crisis gets outed and Congress and the Supremes openly assert that the Executive has run completely amok and is beyond control, the world consequences are staggering. It is the stuff of doomsday novels.
Jon Husband posted a Canadian comment from the digby post:
I am remembering that the aged supporters of Gen. Franco still live in Madrid, still refusing to be civil to their erstwhile opponents on the Left. I think you are looking at decades of incivility or worse, of conflict on class lines, and maybe race and ethnic lines too. You are deep deep shit neighbours. I will wish you the best of luck with all this. We have our own neo-con dinosaurs to be rendered harmless up here. It will occupy my attention for, say, a decade or two. In the meantime, keep the embers glowing. Something will cause all this ugliness to burst into flame. Its just too grotesque to keep hidden forever.
Shame without limits, embarassment without restraint, regrets without number, apologies to the millions killed in your name, and a century of guilt to be worn and worked off. Get on with it.
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Welcome to the "Soft Landing"
September 25, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
NY Times (September 25, 2006):
The median price of a previously owned home fell for the first time in 11 years last month, and inventories of unsold homes swelled to levels not seen in more than a decade.
Jason Calacanis (September 24, 2006):
Real estate is a horribly inefficient market and many of the brokers seem to be playing games. Folks are relisting homes all over the place to "reset" the days listed number, and people are not updating their MLS listing with the market down prices. We've been to homes months ago that were shown at 10-25% less than their MLS pages *still* say they are.
Barry Ritholtz (September 15, 2006):
$2.7 trillion in loans will adjust to higher rates in 2006 and 2007. According to Reality Trac, August foreclosures were up 23% over July and 53% over a year ago. Nationally, home prices have not declined on a year-to-year basis since 1933. Recently, however, prices have been dropping in the North East, West and Mid-West.
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Just The Facts
September 21, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
There is a weapons system development effort in every congressional district. [Which weapons system to you want to kill, Senator??]
Of the 350 annual megatons of carbon output that Ford is responsible for, only eight of it comes from car emissions; the rest is from factories.
The NSA joke used to be, "No Such Agency;" now it's "Not Secret Anymore."
Ford is not using the Toyota batteries in their Toyota-technology hybrid cars, because the Toyota batteries use child labor that wouldn't pass Ford's human-rights code. But Ford doesn't publicize this because they would be accused of "greenwashing" their terrible overall carbon footprint.
Nissan executives in Japan are working 17-hour days, which includes six hours of drinking with their colleagues every evening. 55-year old men commonly sob when talking about the pressure with their personal coaches or HR.
General Hayden, formerly head of the NSA, now head of the CIA, was variously described by People Who Should Know as one of the most kind, loving, humanistic, and caring people they had ever met. [Triangulated from four discussions.]
Ford will offer buy-out packages to every single hourly production worker, and every single salaried worker over 50. In the next two years they will cut 40% of their management positions. [Can you spell "ripple effect?"]
Just three years ago Nissan's internal projections assumed an endless supply of oil and stable gas prices.
The Director of Sustainability at Ford spends 50 - 70% of his time educating colleagues. Most people still don't believe climate change is real.
There are 40 million cubicles in American workplaces.
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NSA & NPS @ SoL
September 20, 2006 | Governance | People & Society | SoL
I had lengthy conversations today with two interesting people. One is very senior in the National Security Agency, the other is very senior at the Naval Postgraduate School. In both cases I had increased hope that there are people in government who are thinking deeply about long-term issues that I care about, and are trying to make a positive impact. They were not trying to persuade me of anything. It was in the topics, the depth of thinking, the sophistication of approach, their vision, and commitment to their work that made me realize things may not be as bad as they seem. Modulo the current executive branch, of course.
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Dialectics
September 15, 2006 | People & Society
Two links from opposite sides of the human condition.
Chris Corrigan and friends have a new website for their Art of Hosting initiative.
Flagrant Disregard offers their Motivator custom poster generator. Example.
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Steal an Election with a Diebold Voting Machine
September 15, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Princeton University scientists produce a video and post it on YouTube, demonstrating how you can hack a Diebold voting machine in less than one minute. They also provide to detailed technical paper.
There are exactly zero computer scientists who think a voting machine can be made unhackable. It's time to vote absentee, in all elections, so that you use a paper ballot. These machines should be illegal, and if you walk up to one you should assume that your vote is being thrown away.
Related: If the US government really cared about fair elections, there would be a federal standard for number of voting machines per capita on a voting district level. That would prevent poor and democratic precincts from, somehow, having far fewer machines available, making those people wait for ten hours, while the rich republican districts have so many machines the lines are only ten minutes.
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Be All You Can Be
September 15, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Billmon has an excellent quote comparison post today. Who knew that in 1776 Edward Gibbon would write a book that so clearly described the state of our military in 2006?
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Life of Matt
September 14, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
My friend Matt Bucy leads an interesting life (cf Tip Top Building). He has two blogs—here's a recent excerpt from each:
if i had been with a group of gay men i'm sure there'd have been a lot of cat calling and name calling right back at him. but it was just me and for some reason, i didn't resist him, i just told him the truth. i felt great afterwards. i don't know if it made any difference in his life, but it brought home to me that telling the truth, honoring myself in the face of attack and more importantly respecting and honoring the attacker is a weapon powerful enough to interrupt patterns of violence and hatred.
timberrrr framing at Faerie Camp Destiny:
the magic of timberframing, for me anyway, is the joinery. i've said a couple times to folks when showing them chiselwork: "you're not just whittling away here, you're creating a relationship!" you spend the day, sometimes longer, chipping away at a timber, working your way down to some lines that don't necessarily make any sense to you. you do your best to create the smoothest most accurate work you can, often betrayed by eagerness and impatience. the wood works with you sometimes, against you others. each cut is a new challenge asking you to be present and attentive.
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Kids Don't Use Mail
September 11, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
If you think email marketing is going to work forever, you might want to think again.
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Link Roundup
September 10, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Miscellaneous tabs still open from last week:
Robert Young on the fat belly of the Long Tail.
Kiko threw in the towel and put the company up for sale on eBay. It went for $250K. Tucows explains why they bought the technology.
Another excellent minimalist layout a la Craigslist and Facebook. More good content, too.
Useful: How to Have Better Conversations.
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Crony Capitalism at it's Finest
September 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
Industry Note: The Rot at the Core, Special Disney Crony Capitalism Edition
Of course, neither move - coypright extensions or side payments to politicians in the form of propaganda - are in the least good for the economy, because they destroy more value than they create, through the stifling of potential innovation, competition, and new capital formation. This is crony capitalism at it's finest - we make your propaganda, you protect our assets; this is the kind of anti-capitalism that ends up destroying economies (hi Japan).
Right on.
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From the Mailbag
September 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Subject: Get a Diploma without the hassle!
Good day Notio!!Hmm, that might look nice on the wall. OTOH, it's probably a credit card capture-scam, so I wouldn't recommend dialing that number....There are no called for tests, classes, books, or interviews !
Fetch a Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and Doctorate (PhD) diploma.
Have the earnings and approval that comes with a diploma !
No person is passed by
Anonymity ensured
Buzz Us Tonight +1 (270) 818 72 44
Good Anytime
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Engrossment's That Are Not Even Their Own
September 7, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Excerpt from On the Shortness of Life:
You really must leave the ground and turn your mind's eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life there awaits much that is good to know—the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep repose.
The condition of all who are engrossed is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labour at engrossments that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world—loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Facebook Mini-Review
September 7, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Software
Well, I had a demo of Facebook, and it's a very nice web application. [Previously: Attention Metastream. Today: Fred Wilson on the changes (good comments thread).]
(I have removed names from this screenshot.)
It's hard to get a sense of it from the picture, but I can tell that if I were a college student it would be easy to live here and check in frequently and see what my friends are up to and post about my life. There are nine million Facebook users, so they're doing something right.
I also note there is zero "flashy design" on this site. Note the one-color plus black palette, the simple obvious layout, the single ad in the left column, the simple unobtrusive logo in the upper left. It's a beautiful minimalist approach. This has the beneficial side-effect of lowering the server load and bandwidth costs for high-traffic sites.
It seems like the most popular websites either have bad design, or minimal design. You might want to think about that the next time you spend two hours getting the rounded corners just so in your incremental design update. Better to hire a good writer, or to think about your use-cases and user-centric design. As always, design has to support the message and function, not overtake the purpose of the effort. Facebook is a good example of What People Want.
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Symbolic Interaction
September 7, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Last night a friend called via cell phone from Michigan between sets at a concert.
Cell phones suck. The microphones pick up a lot of background noise, there are frequently echos on one side or the other, there are subtle time delays that make it hard to tell when someone has stopped speaking, and the mics are so low quality that it's hard to hear the specific words. I end up interpolating and guessing a lot of the time.
Add to this the fact that household wireless phones also suck, for most of the same reasons, and the end result is that you're not getting much human connection via electrons. Immediately I better understood Debord's idea that " the spectacle made relations among people seem like relations among images."
We had a nice symbolic interaction, but not much human connection that wasn't manufactured in my own mind. Gawd, give me some eye contact, some body language, some tone of voice and inflection, some sixth-sensory telepathy—otherwise let's just keep it short and symbolic and not attempt any meaning.
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Commodity Fetishism
September 6, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Thanks to Tom Matrullo I am now aware of the term commodity fetishism:
In Marxist theory, commodity fetishism is a state of social relations, said to arise in complex capitalist market systems, in which social relationships are defined by the values that are placed on commodities. The term is introduced in the opening chapter of Karl Marx's main work of political economy, Capital, of 1867. It replaced the Young Marx's theory of alienation.
Georg Lukács based History and Class Consciousness on Marx's notion, developing his own notion of commodity reification as the key obstacle to class consciousness. Lukács's work was a significant influence on later philosophers such as Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. Debord developed a notion of the spectacle that ran directly parallel to Marx's notion of the commodity; for Debord, the spectacle made relations among people seem like relations among images (and vice versa). In the work of the semiotician Baudrillard, commodity fetishism is deployed to explain subjective feelings towards consumer goods in the "realm of circulation", that is, among consumers. Baudrillard is especially interested in the cultural mystique added to objects by advertising, which encourages consumers to purchase them as aids to the construction of their personal identity.
It doesn't get much better than that on a Wednesday afternoon.
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Attention Metastream
September 5, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
I don't yet have access to Facebook, but this TechCrunch review notes the key element in successful web applications:
Facebook clearly gets the idea of an attention metastream, where page views aren’t the currency that matters but rather how effectively the service allows users to communicate. Facebook users will now have a much easier way of staying up to date on what their friends are up to. It may mean less page views for Facebook in the short run as users rarely have to leave their home/admin page to see what’s going on with friends, but if it makes users love Facebook more (is that possible?), it’ll pay off in the end.
Whether for business or pleasure, information, passion, and interaction are key.
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WoW Update
September 5, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Software
In June 2005, I wrote about World of Warcraft (WoW):
Conservatively, there was a one-time revenue stream of just under $100 million dollars, and an on-going monthly revenue of just under $26 million (just under $312 million annually). They are opening the game up in China soon, where there are 500,000 players in the open beta period. It's not hard to imagine cumulative revenues of over a billion dollars, or perhaps two.
Today's NY Times brings news that indeed, they are on track for a billion dollars this year:
Less than two years after its introduction, World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., is on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year with almost seven million paying subscribers, who can log into the game and interact with other players. That makes it one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind. Almost every other subscription online game, including EverQuest II and Star Wars: Galaxies, measures its customers in hundreds of thousands or even just tens of thousands.
The Times also addresses the employee head-count, which I had guessed at 350 a year ago:
Since the game’s introduction in November 2004 the company has expanded to more than 1,800 employees from around 400. Almost all of the additions have been customer-service representatives to handle World of Warcraft players, helping them with both technical advice and billing concerns.
That's $555,555 of recurring annual revenue per employee, for the business modelers out there.
And why do people play this game? First, it's easy for beginners to get started, but it also has a lot to engage long-term players. But the most important aspect can be gleaned from an interview with this 3,000-hour player:
“Think about it: I’m a 33-year-old guy with a 9-to-5 job, a wife and a baby on the way,” Mr. Pinsky said. “I can’t be going out all the time. So what opportunities do I have to not only meet people and make new friends but actually spend time with them on a nightly basis? In WOW I’ve made, like, 50 new friends, some of whom I’ve hung out with in person, and they are of all ages and from all over the place. You don’t get that sitting on the couch watching TV every night like most people.”
People want to be engaged—some might say entertained—and they want to extend their networks. Yochai Benkler might call it social production.
Please make a note of it.
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Olbermann on Rumsfeld
August 31, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Every once in a while, it's worth noting that the majority of people continue to disagree with the Bush/Cheney administration and their approach to the so-called War on Terror, even if we don't talk about it much. Thank you, Keith Olbermann, for this searing critique. Transcript and video via the link.
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Democratic Strategy
August 25, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
The smartest thing the US Democrats could do for the next two years is split the Republican Party down the middle between the church-focused social conservatives and the less-government economic conservatives. Karl Rove (has his middle name always been "Christian?") and Grover Norquist have been masterful at holding these two unrelated groups together in one party, but if we are able to show the social conservatives how they need to pay more taxes to support their social agenda, and show the economic conservatives how the lack of social programs and safety nets hurt the economy, then perhaps these two groups can be split apart fighting about what programs to fund.
The best-case scenario is that the social conservatives start a new Evangelical party which pulls people out of the Republican party—then it's a Democratic majority all the way down the line. This has got to be Rove's worst nightmare.
We need a sound bite, along the lines of, I lost my job to outsourcing, I lost my health insurance to an underfunded pension plan, I pay all these goddamn taxes, and I still can't buy liquor or porn at the grocery store.
Or something.
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TMI: Kundalini
August 24, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Kundalini Yoga: The roused Kundalini energy moves upwards in the central nadi, the Sushumna, passing through each of the lower chakras to reach the seventh, the Sahasrara Chakra. This process is known in Kundalini Yoga as the piercing of the chakras and represents the merging of the female with the male.
Headaches: Most Kundalini headaches are caused by too much energy in the head. Many people are accustomed to releasing energy downward, into the Earth. This works if they are spiritually awakened, but not Kundalini awakened, or only using prana.Lust/Lack: While some Kundalini teachers advocate abstinence, I am not one. I believe in the Wiccan ideal, "All acts of love and pleasure serve the Goddess." Sexual tantra has been used to facilitate the awakening process, for millennia. Sex with an awakened person can cause awakening. (Something to beware of, once one reaches the stage of being Shakt-contagious... awakening can be horrific for the unprepared, so be discerning in your choice of lovers.)
Jargon alert.
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Drivemocion
August 24, 2006 | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
I have wanted something like this for years. (Horrible website alert.)
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Is Fear Always a Negative?
August 23, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Kat asked, in a comment, "Is fear always a negative thing?" I briefly reflected, and here's where I am now:
I think of fear as a continuum between "an alert edge" and "paralyzed with fear." What we generalize as "fear" starts at alertness, because at that point you can no longer be fully "open"—you are looking for something, even if you don't know what. By the time you increase your fear to paralyzation, you're toast. In the middle range are an infinite number of emotional and psyiological states which have a fearful component. A less fearful, more fear-less life would seem to have a number of important benefits. It might be worth reflecting on those in depth.
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Is Psychoanalysis Elitist?
August 22, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Was digging around the unblogged writing archives, and found this half-formed thought from July 22, 2003.
A comment has been raised that psychoanalysis is the most narcissistic and elitist of pursuits. I'm beginning to wonder if "elitist" is like "affirmative action" – defined on the fly to suit and argument or perspective.
Sure, rich people do analysis. And so do poor people. And smart people and undereducated people. I'm not sure what the label adds to the discussion.
Is self-discovery and self-knowledge ONLY narcissistic? Is self-awareness ONLY elitist? Should poor people not have access to the advantages of self-knowledge? Should we, as a species, abandon psychoanalysis and by extension formal inquiry and introspection because only some people can afford it?
No, much better that in many places analysis is on the rise. An increase in therapists will drive prices down, just as in Berkeley massage is so cheap as to have created a barter economy. Most therapists are not rich – some are, but plenty are doing it for the love of soul and as a way to increase the evolution of consciousness. This process takes eons, and simplistic labels simply enforce the status quo.
As regards narcism – it may be culture, it may be our place in our collective evolutionary path, but we are a narcissistic people. (cf fashion, makeup, designer eyeglasses, rolex watches, and blogs). What analysands find, however, is that by having an outlet for narcissism they bring LESS of that into their other relationships. You can't will narcissism away – you have to pay attention to it, listen to it, and nurture its healing.
It is likely that a root cause of narcissism is a lack of parental attention in childhood (unproven generalization alert). If this is so, we might want to consider if the two-income, high-materialist lifestyle is the best approach to parenting. It might be better to ditch one income, live a little less large, and spend more time with family and community. Or, perhaps, take a deep look at why one might want to raise children in the first place. Is it because you want a dependent, someone you can control, someone to grow in your image, someone to listen to every word you say as if it comes from God herself? If so, try analysis – it's much cheaper than children.
So. Everyone can afford children but cannot afford a few hundred dollars a month (full boat, no insurance, no reduced rates) for analysis? There's something here other than elitism.
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Creating and Destroying Mutual Understanding
August 4, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Daniel O'Connor has a brilliant post over at Catalaxis called The Political Economics of Stephen Colbert.
In simplest terms, when we communicate we tend to at least implicitly, if not explicitly, raise a set of three distinct validity claims regarding what is true, what is right, and what is sincere. When either one of us has a problem accepting any of the validity claims raised by the other, we may through dialogue challenge the claim and make an effort to come to a mutual understanding of what really is true, right, and sincere for each of us. In our ideal efforts to validate or invalidate one another's claims, we will refer to objective facts to determine what is true, intersubjective values to judge what is right, and subjective intentions to appreciate what is sincere. All three types of claims made by both of us would have to be validated before we could declare a shared understanding--and even then, we would not necessarily have a mutual agreement on all three claims.
He looks into Colbert's truthiness, and wikiality, then invents syncerity to summarize our political discourse today.
Just listen carefully to any political debate, whether it's between presidential candidates or media pundits who make a living expressing their opinions about politicians. There is so little personal sincerity and so very much deception and acrimony that it is a wonder we put up with it. Moreover, the fact that we do put up with it, that we are so easily deceived, or that we claim dishonestly to have been so frequently deceived, is evidence of our own dysfunctional syncerity, disowning the power we really do have to withdraw legitimacy from those who are systematically syncere, whether their syncerity is conscious and calculated or subconscious and incompetent.
Read the whole thing.
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The Stages of Giving
August 2, 2006 | People & Society
A very nice summary over at GiftHub of the stages of giving
The stages are given in the businesslike language of money and accounting, but they seem to also articulate a kind of personal journey to self-mastery, wisdom and serenity.
Phil is a philanthropy advisor for a major financial services company, and a great guy who cares deeply about our society. If you're interested in the intersection of NGO's, government, philanthropy, and a better world, it's worth following along.
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A Cooperative Solution
August 1, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Cooperatives | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
An excellent 3,300 word article in Strategy + Business on the cooperative advantage. A very good read.
Cooperatives are often assumed to be merely local affiliations of small and midsized companies, and therefore limited in scope and reach. But their deep roots in their countries of origin — as well as their surprising pervasiveness and stability — are exactly what puts cooperatives in a strong position in the new global economy. Through their highly participative governance models (involving both members and employees in making decisions), the cooperative system is particularly well suited to combining entrepreneurial and social objectives. Because it encourages internal checks and balances and general transparency, cooperative structure also makes it easier to avoid the ethical and legal lapses that have brought down the management of many investor-owned companies.
Also quotes my SoL colleague Arie de Geus, former head of Royal Dutch/Shell scenario planning and author of The Living Company on the value of cooperatives for being people-based and long-term focused. (Thanks Chris.)
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It's Not That Men Are Dumber
July 25, 2006 | People & Society
Sassy Pants is in fine form this morning:
It's not that men are dumber, they just choose to use their brain less if there is a female around. There are two reasons for this. The first is that their brain tends to be a little lower in their body when a woman is around. Second, men tend to coopt a woman's brain if they have one around to utilize. If you separate the couple after they've just been in close proximity, it takes a little while for the man to adjust, hence the lower mental acuity result.
I'm not sure I agree with everything she says, but I don't really disagree either, and it's possible I'm biased....
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On Sweeping
July 24, 2006 | People & Society
On my lunchtime errand walk the phrase, "Swept me off my feet" popped into mind. I decided that it's a lot easier to sweep someone off their feet once you know them—who they are, what they like, how they're motivated. Via amplification and inversion, the feeling of being swept off your feet prior to really knowing someone could be interpreted as a dangerous sign of projection or transference.
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E-Prime
July 17, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Nature & Environment | People & Society
From The Sourcebook of Magic, pg 351ff:
Alfred Korzybski (1933/1994) warned that the "is" of identity and the "is" of predication present two dangerous linguistic and semantic constructions that map false-to-fact conclusions. The first has to do with identity—how we identify a thing or what we identify with. The second has to do with attribution—how we project our "stuff" onto others and things without realizing it.
E-Prime empowers people to not fall into the "is" traps of language. E-Prime refers to English-primed of the "to be" verb family of passive verbs (is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been).
Writing, thinking, and speaking in E-Prime contributes to "consciousness of abstracting" so that as we make our maps of the world we recognize how they differ from the world. E-Prime enables us to think and speak with more clarity and precision by getting us to take first-person.
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AI@50
July 13, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Software | Technology
Meg Houston Maker is doing some fantastic live blogging of the Dartmouth AI@50 conference.
This gathering celebrates, explores, and, to an extent, reprises the original Dartmouth Summer Research Project in artificial intelligence of 1956, which proceeded "on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." John McCarthy, then a Dartmouth mathematics professor, and his colleagues Marvin Minsky (Harvard), Nathaniel Rochester (IBM), and Claude Shannon (Bell Labs) coined the term "artificial intelligence" in their funding proposal to highlight the role computers may play in simulating (or bettering) human intelligence.
It's some of the best live blogging I've ever seen — she could do this for a living.
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Examples of Categories
July 11, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Science | Software | Technology
Art: Leonard Cohen and Sonny Rollins on live TV. (Thanks Jon.)
Commerce: Do Patents Encourage or Stifle Innovation?
Culture: On media elitism and the "derivative" myth
Technology: On playing with my Holux GPS unit...
Cool: Velcro Being Pulled Apart
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We Must Disenthrall Ourselves
July 9, 2006 | Governance | Nature & Environment | People & Society
There's a good interview with Al Gore in the July 13 issue of Rolling Stone. Some quotes:
I believe there is a hunger in the country to be part of a larger vision that changes the way we relate to the environment and the economy. Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.
But the debate over oil reserves misses the point. We have more than enough oil, not to mention coal, to completely destroy the habitability of the planet. The real constraint on oil and coal is not supply, but global warming. There's a saying: "The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones."
As Lincoln said in the darkest days of America's darkest passage: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Our biggest challenge, our biggest foe, is thrall. The word sounds ancient, but it means anything that imprisons our thinking and prevents us from seeing the reality of our situation. We're in thrall to oil. We've got to break out of it. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we will save our planet.
I like Al Gore as a vocal citizen, devoid of political consultants and triangulation. A true leader, a public servant, an honest man.
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Dishonest Could Still = Nice?
July 8, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Heard last night: "Joe's a nice guy, but he's not honest."
Hearing this I noted my current understanding of nice already included honest. But apparently that's not true for everyone....
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Letting Go of Outcomes
July 7, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
Over the past ten years I've become much more "process-oriented." Part of this learning comes from my work—as a consultant I'm often in situations where I don't know very much about the specific content, but contribute to change based on looking at the larger system. I used to say that a focus on process leads to a better outcome.
In the past year I dove even more deeply into process and facilitation, especially through participating in and leading Open Space and World Cafe sessions (and couples counseling, a longer story). Now I'd go further about the value of process: When I participate in the design and iteration of a process, I am comfortable with whatever outcome arises. Focusing on how something is decided allows me to let go of what is decided.
One way to think about this is using my favorite phrase from the past year, abstract up. Take a specific situation, then generalize it a bit and work at that level. Then generalize that, and go up one more level. Continue, until you can't make a general case that still contains the specific situation you're dealing with. At that point apply the rules you've learned from the general case, and see how the specific case plays out.
Simple example: Say you're going to buy a house from a friend. It's not listed on the market, and it's a private sale without real estate agents. How do you set the price? One way is to pick a number that feels good and fight for it trying not to compromise too much. Doesn't usually work out too well. Another way is to let the buyer get an appraisal, and use that number. If that doesn't seem quite right to either party, have the seller get another appraisal, and split the difference. At this point you will have two opinions by professionals, and you can choose to use them, or walk away from the deal, but it's not going to make much sense shooting for a number a lot higher or lower than the bounds of the two appraisals.
It's worth noting that letting go of outcomes is non-trivial, as they say in engineering. I would not yet say I am expert at this, only that when I am able to abstract up it works out, usually better than when I'm obsessed with "what's going to happen."
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USA, Today
July 5, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Long Sunday deconstructs the meaning of 9/11 in the US psyche.
Billmon compares current US politics to those of Spain in 1936.
Brianstorms reminds us of the Bill of Rights.
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Finds Neither Support nor a Passive Population
July 3, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Former Special-Ops guy John Robb writes Global Guerrillas, "an open notebook on the first epochal war of the 21st Century." The latest post, An Attack On Iran = Catalyst Of Chaos summarizes his current thinking on Iran, and the implications for the US.
The economic/societal wave: state failures. A gulf monarchy falls. Successful terrorist attacks on oil production systems have deepened the global energy crisis (and it appears it will continue indefinitely). The global economy goes into a severe and prolonged contraction. The worst finally happens: China's export oriented economy collapses. Protests, currently running at 200 a day, spike to thousands and they are increasingly violent (as protesters clash with domestic militias). The government attempts to crack down with the army but finds neither support nor a passive population during this attempt. Further, the scale of the unrest is too vast. Lacking legitimacy due to a decade of rampant corruption and an inability to deliver rapid growth anymore, the country fragments.
Summary: Possible return to states as the organizing principle, without much left of the federal government. The scary part: John really knows his stuff. Always nice to have a worst-case scenario in mind, if only to attempt avoidance.
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Nano-Enabled Advances
July 1, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology
Email from Amazon alerted me to this new book: Nanotechnology Applications And Markets, by Lawrence Gasman, $79.
Discover nanotech opportunities the smart way with the first "down to business" market analysis that separates commercial reality from hype and gives you the tools you need to forecast nanotech’s impact on any company. This professional-level book spotlights the most viable R&D now taking root, what nano-enabled products will likely emerge in what industries first, and what timeframes you can expect before market rollout. You get a rich understanding of technical, business and legal essentials, and a solid framework for assessing commercial potential without either overheated expectations or overcautious pessimism. This indispensable resource focuses on the best nanotech-driven opportunities arising in the computer/electronics, medical/biotech, and energy industries — from nano-engineered microchips and fuel cells to nano-enabled drug discovery and delivery. You see where the "low hanging fruit" will be and won’t be in each field, and how nanotech will change each industry. The book also highlights nano-enabled advances taking place in such diverse industries as textiles, specialty chemicals, automotive, aerospace, agriculture, and building materials. What’s more, a unique and well-detailed "impact assessment audit" helps you identify how nanotech may soon change your company’s products, R&D, and production processes, and what new opportunities or threats to your business may emerge as the result of nanotech. Rounding out the coverage are extensive resource lists for further research in this up-and-coming sector.
This is going to have a major impact on society over the next 10 to 30 years—in other words, in our lifetimes. Bigger than personal computers.
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Narrative Selection Bias™
June 29, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society | Site Maintenance
Doug and I had an interesting exchange in the comments that's worth bringing to the front page.
I pulled a quote from a blog post and out of context the quote had a different meaning. A reader could get the wrong idea. So this is a formal disclosure statement that Notio is extremely biased. I am citing material that is interesting to me, possibly for reasons unknown, possibly unknown even to me. It's an interpretation, not an "objective" perspective. Essentially, you can't trust anything you read here.
Just thought I'd mention it.
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An Absolutely Honorable Choice
June 28, 2006 | People & Society
But I will say it here, loud and proud. I work full-time for a living and I will continue working full-time for a living. I will work full-time for a living if I have children. I will work full-time for a living if my husband gets a $500,000 a year job. I will work full-time for a living if I win the lottery. On my death bed, I will probably wish that I spent more time at the office. And I think that's an absolutely honorable choice that I, as a woman, have no need to apologize for.
Moved and seconded.
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Truly Making a Difference
June 25, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
Dave Pollard often gives detailed and passionate voice for my intuitive and information-overloaded thoughts. Today is no different.
So progressives need to acknowledge that, unless they devote most of their time and energy to activities other than electing and lobbying politicians, they will continue to accomplish nothing. Indeed, they will accomplish less than nothing, since in the meantime the corporate and political elite will be busy dismantling, rolling back, bribing their way out of, and circumventing laws and regulations, a much easier process than getting them passed, and enforced, in the first place.
I gave up on MoveOn et al a long time ago. Those organizations are good in the crunch-time of an election, but real change isn't going to happen there. And the Democrats are hopeless, look at the mess Bush is creating, in many—not several, but many different areas—and they still have no core to rally around. It's completely depressing.
The two big opportunities to make a high-leverage change are education and business. Help increase funding for local public schools. Help raise the literacy and numeracy level of our kids. Encourage parental involvement in education. Encourage deep study in science and math and music and art. Learn enough to make a direct contribution yourself. Consume less. Vote with your dollars. Start your own business or partner with a small team. Create instead of consume. Look at the bigger picture. Spend your time volunteering instead of shopping or watching TV. Engage in something outside your own self-interest. Make a contribution of time and mental energy, not money. Be the change you want.
Do all that stuff Dave tells you to do in his article, because he's thinking about this a lot more deeply than you or me.
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Notable Quotes
June 23, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
From this week's New Yorker:
Fine Tuning: Reassessing Radiohead
Radiohead has much in common with the Grateful Dead, including passionate fans who follow the band from city to city, trade bootleg recordings of shows, puzzle out the meanings of the band’s cryptic lyrics, and (in Boston, at least) dance badly while smoking expensive-smelling weed. But Radiohead’s main interest is not improvisation, nor do the band’s affinities to modern classical music and electronica mask the fact that its dominant syntax is pop. The songs mutate briskly, and are larded with hummable motifs. Even when Jonny Greenwood is fiddling with a radio and Yorke is ululating toward the great unknown, the band obeys an internal clock that arrests its elaborations before tedium defeats wonder. —Sasha Frere-Jones
Acid Redux: The life and high times of Timothy Leary
After his experience with Mexican mushrooms, Leary read [Aldous Huxley's] “The Doors of Perception” with excitement. This was a style of mystico-pseudoscience that suited him perfectly, a kind of shamanistic psychology delightfully immune to empirical challenges. As it happened, Huxley was then lecturing at M.I.T., and Leary arranged a meeting. They had lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club, which was, and remains, the unlikeliest venue in which to plan the future of a psychedelic movement. But that is what Leary and Huxley did. Huxley’s idea was that, if the world’s leaders could be turned on, the lion would lie down with the lamb, and peace would be at hand. The vision was appealing to Leary. It was, after all, simply psychiatric social work on a global scale, and administered not to convicts and juvenile delinquents but to the political, social, and artistic élites—much more fun. —Louis Menand
Comment: Name That Tone
The point is that mental and physical development never stops, no matter how old you are, and development is one of the things that make it interesting to be a being. We imagine that we change our opinions or our personalities or our taste in music as we ripen, often feeling that we are betraying our younger selves. Really, though, our bodies just change, and that is what changes our views, our temperament, and our tolerance for Billy Joel. We can’t help it. The chemistry has altered. — Louis Menand
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Squeezing the Middle Class
June 16, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
An as-usual well-researched article from the Economist: The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them.
The one truly continuous trend over the past 25 years has been towards greater concentration of income at the very top. The scale of this shift is not visible from most popular measures of income or wages, as they do not break the distribution down finely enough. But several recent studies have dissected tax records to investigate what goes on at the very top.
The figures are startling. According to Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the share of aggregate income going to the highest-earning 1% of Americans has doubled from 8% in 1980 to over 16% in 2004. That going to the top tenth of 1% has tripled from 2% in 1980 to 7% today. And that going to the top one-hundredth of 1%—the 14,000 taxpayers at the very top of the income ladder—has quadrupled from 0.65% in 1980 to 2.87% in 2004.
No surprises if you've been paying attention, but it's nice to have independent non-spun facts to consider.
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From the Mouths of Babes
June 16, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
What do 1st and 2nd grade students wish for? Mostly the same things you and I do. Excerpt:
- I wish thar was mor peas in the world
- I wish pepol wloud be treted farly
- I wish evey body could go to scool
- I wish to have more fun
- I wish everybody had food
Will make you laugh and possibly cry for the honesty.
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Making Money on the Internet (cont.)
June 12, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Video blogging is hot. Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft for PodTech.net (whose servers are so overloaded they can't even load a homepage).
And then, he mentions this:
Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That's, what, a year or so old? Did you know that advertisers are now paying her $85,000 per week? That's almost as much money as I made in an entire year of working at Microsoft.
Rocketboom is pretty idiosyncratic—if they can make $85K a week, lots of other people can too.
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Lunchtime Reading
June 12, 2006 | People & Society
As a service to my loyal readers, here is a fun instructional for your work-dodging moments this Monday. HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid, by Mark Pilgrim, as the Sarcastic Gourmet.
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The Difference Between Heaven and Hell
June 9, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Cooperatives | Life | People & Society
I'm at the Consumer Cooperative Management Association conference in Atlanta. This morning Peter Couchman from the Midcounties Co-operative in England (near Oxford) presented a (probably well-known) parable during his keynote address. I paraphrase:
There once was a highly developed Buddhist guru who had the ability to transport himself to any place in the universe. He decided to investigate Hell. Upon arrival he found a lush green valley with perfect moderate temperatures, beautiful flowers, clear sparkling water, and snow-covered mountains. In the middle of the valley there was a large table with every known delicious food available. But the people at the table were moaning and screaming in agony. All they had to eat with were six-foot chopsticks, and no matter how hard they tried, no matter what technique they used, they couldn't get the food into their mouths and it was driving them insane.
The guru decided to visit Heaven. When he arrived he found a scene much like the first. A beautiful valley, green and lush, with flowers, trees, and plants of all varieties. In addition, there was a similar table piled high with fantastic food from all over the world. The people gathered at the table were happy and joyful, laughing and talking. They had the same six-foot chopsticks to eat with, but instead of trying to feed themselves, they used the chopsticks to feed each other.
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Mission Accomplished
June 8, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
The critics have weighed in on the Zarqawi news:
greg.org: Wow, if there was any doubt about where the contemporary art market is going, they were dispelled this morning at Christie's Baghdad, where the US Government paid a record-setting $286 billion--plus $240 for framing--for this portrait of the dead Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Billmon: The Pentagon Channel today announced the cancellation of its long-running reality TV series, The Abu Zarqawi Hour, saying tonight's special-effects extravaganza, in which Keifer Sutherland and a team of secret agents trail the terrorist mastermind to his hideout and call in a massive airstrike, would be the show's last.
The show originally piloted in 2003, and found a regular place in the Pentagon Channel's prime-time lineup in February 2004, replacing the widely panned sitcom series Mission Accomplished, now in syndicated reruns on Fox News.
Doubts about the show's viability deepened in April, after Washington Post TV critic Tom Ricks questioned whether the supposedly spontaneous reality show was actually being scripted by its producers.
Flashback from the history channel:
- Washington Post (April 2006): The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.
Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist.
You can believe almost nothing in the media. Ignore it or satirize it, but don't believe it.
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Mapping Dialogue
June 8, 2006 | Governance | People & Society | SoL
Fantastic 86 page research report on the fundamentals, forms, and usage of ten different dialogue approaches. [via Chris.]
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Never a Still Moment
June 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society | Travel
To give you a flavor of the multi-media nature of modern baseball, here is a short video clip of the national anthem from the game last night.
Notice the thin horizontal video screens over the third-base line (and presumably over the first-base line where we were sitting). The effect of these was to have motion in your peripheral vision at all times. This is where the hatchet icons marched, like the hammers in Pink Floyd's The Wall and where all manner of on-going stimulation appeared.
The video was shot with my still camera, and compressed by YouTube, so the quality is not up to reference standards, but I think you get the idea.
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Home of the Braves
June 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society | Travel
Thanks to my friends at CDS, I was able to enjoy The National Pastime tonight: The Atlanta Braves vs. the Washington Nationals at Turner Stadium in Atlanta. I uploaded 15 photos to Flickr.
There's so much to say, and it's so late to say it. Even though we were outdoors, watching a live event, it was unbelievably multi-media. The screen was huge and bright. In the photos, you can see the sun shining on the field, and it's brighter than the screen in my living room.There are cheerleaders now in baseball—someone said, "You gotta stick with the National League, they're more misogynist." Every moment of the game is branded—the Holiday Inn Instant Replay, the NAPA Cap Shuffle, fireworks coming out of a Coke bottle. I can't even begin to name them all. There were all sorts of behavioral conditioning—short snippets of songs that had specific audience responses, an electronic repeating tomohawk logo that ran around the horizontal screens in a chopping motion that cued the audience to make a chopping motion with their arms, etc.
It was a fun time, especially going with a dozen people, some of who were big baseball fans, and some of whom hadn't been in 10 or 20 or 40 years. The game itself was fairly pedestrian, with hardly any hits, but it had its moments of excitement and tension. It was faster-moving than I remember it, and I missed a couple of big plays just because I was exploring camera settings for a moment. The irony level was set to max pretty much as soon as we walked in the place (see the photo of the booth selling "The future of Ice Creme" for instance) and it was so American you couldn't believe it. I'd go again, especially with a better camera and an attitude to drink Budweiser in plastic bottles washing down a big honking hotdog and a $6 bag of peanuts. Who knows, I might even go for some cotton candy and a Sno Cone for desert.
[Update: Kottke & Megnut and friends attended the Yankees/Red Sox game at the same time.]
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Tufte's "Beautiful Evidence" About to Ship
June 6, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Very interesting thread on complex bookmaking. Start around March 9 to pick up the recent info. He's self-published 1.2 million books since 1983, and the detail with which he prints these books is unbelievable. Highlights from the link above:
- We await a test printing of some of our color tints (e.g., hows does 2% yellow compare with 3% yellow?).
- We'll start printing April 25, with some 29 press OKs....
- On the first form printed, we'll set the color of the type (the density of the black used for the type, separate from the black used in images) that we'll be aiming at throughout the book. (The separate blacks for type and images allows independent adjustment of type and image while on press.) There remain some difficult color issues despite our pre-press tests and that is why we do all our own OKs. The press OKs will pretty much take all my time for the next 2 weeks.
- Form 6 is being "perfected" in the printing jargon, with both sides printed in one pass on a 10-color work-and-turn or perfecting press, so that in one pass of the paper through the 10 presses, 5 colors are printed on one side of the paper, the paper is turned over, and 5 colors are printed on the opposite side.
- Major issue now is the carton for mailing single books; the total weight of book and carton is just over 3 pounds, which is a substantial break point on shipping prices. We found a lighter shipping carton that works well to protect the book, but of course it is made in Switzerland.
The colophon should be fascinating. You can order the book here. My pre-order might arrive before I return home!
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Nature Abhors a Vacuum
May 31, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
Fast Company on changing your behavior:
If you want to change something in your life, it's common to try to stop the behaviors you don't like. While this certainly seems logical, it seldom works. The reason is simple - it unintentionally creates a vacuum where the old behaviors used to be. And since nature hates a vacuum it will fill it with anything it can find - usually the very behaviors you're trying to stop since they're so familiar. Instead of stopping certain behaviors, try focusing on what you want to create - and the new behaviors you need to get there. Eventually, with practice, new behaviors will develop enough muscle to naturally replace the old ones.
Good advice.
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What Up That?—Yo.
May 29, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
My brother-in-law said this yesterday at the Circle-Y barbecue. It made me laugh. The phrase has just enough words to convey something, yet not enough of them to resolve the ambiguity. Add the street slang (he's a law officer) coming from a white boy (though, from New Jersey) and somehow it just stuck with me.
What up that?—Yo.
The punctuation is important and I'm not sure I've got it exactly right. The first three words (What up that?) need to convey disbelief, the observational shock of the instigating incident. The italics emphasize the implausibility of the situation — its un-heard-of nature or characteristics. It is posed as a question, indicating an attempt to grasp the surprising or unfamiliar.
But the final word (Yo.) quietly expresses a slow, sad, shake of the head; a smirking "I knew it would turn out this way," and a superior arch in the eyebrows. This might be followed by a short sigh, with a second shake of the head, perhaps closing the eyes briefly, as if to mourn the dumb-ass under observation. The closing period carries the finality of judgement. Appeals are heard at the discretion of the speaker.
Connecting the two utterances with an em-dash (as above) attempts to unify contradictory – if not schizophrenic – ideas into a single sentence. The two phrases are connected, in that one prevents the other, and vise versa; but also, simultaneously, one requires the other to exist. In this view, the connecting punctuation (which probably has a technical name from grammar class [Notio: "Are there rules for this kind of stuff?" Meg: "No, you had to have been paying attention in elementary school." {grammar updated based on a comment; which also gave me the chance to use a third level of parentheses}]) – the connecting punctuation carries the flow of the whole expression.
Bringhurst says, "Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases." [Aside: the definition brilliantly models the correct behavior.] "What up that?—Yo." has two phrases, but that doesn't quite describe the phenomenology upon hearing them. Bringhurst provides a second clue: "Use the em dash to introduce speakers in narrative dialogue." Ah, perfect! There are two phrases, so we should separate them with an en dash surrounded by a normal word space. But the phrases are contradictory – as if they were spoken by two different people – therefore we should use a closed em dash—like this.
Ideally we'd follow the em dash with a thin space (M/5) but we're writing with web fonts; we don't get M/5 thin spaces this decade.
So that's one take on it. How else might you punctuate this construction?
Update: The jury of our commenters has specified the correct punctuation as: "What up that? Yo." It's settled. If you ever need to write that phrase, that's how you do it.
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So That Explains It
May 26, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
I always wondered why so many people voted for Bush when his policies are in direct opposition to their own interests. I remember this most vividly when a relative, who was pro-Bush and a big proponent of lower interest rates and taxes, realized in retirement that low interest rates meant that fixed-income returns were also low – that is, as the interest rates fell so did his income. You could hear the confusion in talking with him. Policies he'd advocated all his life suddenly worked against his own interests and lifestyle. If he got out of denial, it must have been some internal reckoning.
So this morning a summary & pointer to an essay by Jeffrey B. Perry crossed my screen which helps explain this phenomenon. It's a memorial of historian Theodore W. Allen and his book The Invention of the White Race, Vol. 1 and 2.
Specifically, Allen introduced the idea of the buffer social control group:
In 1996, on radio station WBAI in New York, Allen discussed the subject of "American Exceptionalism" and the much-vaunted "immunity" of the United States to proletarian class-consciousness and its effects. His explanation for the relatively low level of class consciousness was that social control in the United States was guaranteed, not primarily by the class privileges of a petit bourgeoisie, but by the white-skin privileges of laboring class whites; that the ruling class co-opts European-American workers into the buffer social control system against the interests of the working class to which they belong; and that the "white race" by its all-class form, conceals the operation of the ruling class social control system by providing it with a majoritarian "democratic" facade.
America is at a tipping point, but it's hard to see because in a culture it takes years to effect a change. It's happened over the last six years – which parts of peace and prosperity during the earlier Clinton years do people dislike so much? – and it's going to take a while to undo the deeper effects of the fundamentalist Bush policies. "Starving the government" through deep tax cuts and simultaneous warring is going to cut the middle class in two (this has already started) – further expanding the buffer social control group at the low-end of the elites (where my existence lies) and playing off the hopes and dreams of the top-end of the laborers (this would completely explain the email and comment spam phenomena, for instance). The increased anxiety of falling down to the lower tier, rather than simply carving out a comfortable middle-class existence, will help control people's behavior. This is why Bush/Cheney/Rove use fear so well as a political tool, and why "creating jobs" and "low prices" drive so many of our collective decisions, from local zoning and community planning to were we live and what we consume.
Only a small number of people are able to take a systemic and long-term view of things, and therefore most behavior is short-term and self-interested. But like the relative mentioned above, when the long-term implications hit it has a big personal impact, and by then it's too late to do anything about it. America as a county is going to find out what this looks like, but it will take a few more years and the people trying to fix the mess will likely have had nothing to do with creating it. If you want to take the really long view, then perhaps we should keep electing Fundamentalists for another decade or two so they're holding the bag when the charade goes south. That would be the crushing blow to this round of delusional policies and politics, if we don't become a nation of jingoistic Nazi-like nationalists along the way.
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Which is Weirder, the Beard or the Tie?
May 25, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
VT Senator Patrick Leahy with Bob Weir, May 23, 2006. It looks like a good time was had by all. More.
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Nike+iPod
May 23, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Science | Technology
Amazing advance in product sophistication. Apple partners with Nike on a blockbuster idea. Buy special (Nike) running shoes with a sensor in the footbed. The wireless sensor talks with a small receiver pluged into the dock connector of the (Apple) iPod. A special version of software takes over the display, and adds voice feedback cues over your music. When you get home, the iPod syncs your stats into iTunes and nikeplus.com, where you can get all kinda bling charts and razzle-dazzle trending of your sweat sessions. Of course, coming soon are Nike Sport Mixes, Workout Mixes, and informative podcasts from the iTunes online store. Rocka Rocka or what?
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They Call It A Brand
May 20, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
In contrast to privacy and civil rights, US consumerism continues to be healthy. Friday saw the opening of a 20,000 sq. ft. Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It's open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The entrance is a remarkable glass cube, which you enter to descend down to the underground store. Here's a short video of the countdown to opening, following the very first customer as he moves through security, shakes the hand of Steve Jobs, and walks down the staircase to raucous applause. You can watch time-lapse photos of the first 24 hours outside – the place was packed at midnight. Here's an interview with Steve Jobs working the media.
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The Principles Underlying Our System Are Actually Better
May 20, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
This post at TPM sums up my feelings on the US national security situation exactly:
[...] is just this dogmatic post-9/11 insistence on acting as if human history began suddenly in 1997 or something. The United States was able to face down such threats as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany without indefinite detentions, widespread use of torture as an interrogative technique, or all-pervasive surveillance. But a smallish group of terrorists who can't even surface publicly abroad for fear they'll be swiftly killed by the mightiest military on earth? Time to break out the document shredder and do away with that pesky constitution.
Last, there's the unargued assumption that civil rights and the rule of law are some kind of near-intolerable impediment to national security. But if you look around the world over the past hundred years or so, I think you'll see that the record of democracy is pretty strong. You don't see authoritarian regimes using their superior ability to operate in secret and conduct surveillance to run roughshod over more fastidious countries. You see liberalism prospering -- both in the sense that the core liberal countries have grown richer-and-richer and in the sense that liberal democracy has consistently spread out from its original homeland since people like it better. You see governments that can operate in total secrecy falling prey to crippling corruption. You see powers of surveillance used not to defend countries from external threats, but to defend rulers from domestic political opponents.
The U.S.S.R., after all, lost the Cold War, not because we beat them in a race to the bottom to improve national security by gutting the principles of our system, but because the principles underlying our system were actually better than the alternative. If you don't have some faith the American way of life is capable of coping with actual challenges, then what's the point in defending it?
I hope enough people are awake at the polls in November, and the flawed voting machines aren't actually rigged.
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One Possible Explanation for Obesity
May 18, 2006 | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society
I woke up this morning wondering why human muscle mass is such an attractive feature in our culture today. That is, why are fit people with defined muscles "more attractive" than couch potatoes.
My mind leaped to the idea that this taps into a primitive part of our brain that says, "If times get tough, and we have to resort to cannibalism, you want to have the right friends." Uh, okay mind, that's interesting. Then via inversion I speculated that perhaps the rise of obesity in America can be attributed to a deep-rooted fear of cannibalism. After all, who would want to eat the lumpy gristle that constitutes the body of most Americans? If it turns out that someday we're roaming the streets looking for a nice gluteus maximus to tuck into for supper a lot of people are going to be pretty safely off limits. Similarly, perhaps the popularity of garlic in blue-state cuisine is an attempt to minimize the off-chance danger of vampires.
I wonder if all this very interesting morning thought has to do with the proposals I have to write today, and the lawyer's cliché that "you eat what you kill." In any case, Good Morning!
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I Feel Safer Now
May 17, 2006 | Life | People & Society
A couple of monster military jets just flew over the house. Those puppies are loud and fast. By the time you get to the window they're already cruising down the valley disappearing out of sight. Boys with toys. Practicing for the Big Day. Probably fun to do, in that all-powerful dominant I Am God way.
Also, it's cool that China is financing all this fun. Interesting to watch Eastern countries with multi-hundred-year strategic plans toy with Western "super-powers" that can't see past the next Wal-Mart sale.
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Semantics
May 16, 2006 | People & Society
Seen on the back of a food bank van in Cambridge, MA:
"When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist." — Dom Hélder Camara
Dig.
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What The President Does
May 12, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Here is what's in store for President Bush next week:
TONY SNOW: Okay, let's do the week ahead. Here we go. And thank you all for your forbearance.
Sunday, the presentation of a White House tree at the Australian Ambassador's Residence. Monday, remarks at the Annual Peace Officers' Memorial Service at the United States Capitol.
Tuesday, South Lawn arrival ceremony for Prime Minister Howard of Australia, and Mrs. Howard. The President will meet with the Prime Minister on Tuesday, have a joint press availability with the Prime Minister. He also will be meeting with the Sacramento Monarchs, the 2005 WNBA Champions. There will be an official dinner with the Prime Minister and Mrs. Howard on the evening of the 16th. Wednesday --
QUESTION: Official, not state dinner?
TONY SNOW: It says, official dinner.
Wednesday, photo opportunity and remarks to the 2006 United States Winter Olympic and Paralympic teams. He will sign H.R. 4297, the Tax Relief Extension and Reconciliation Act of 2006 -- so we do have a -- the answer is, Wednesday; I should have read my own paper, I apologize. Attends the Republican National Committee Gala at Constitution Hall.
Thursday, TBD. Friday, attend a Thelma Drake for Congress Reception in Norfolk, Virginia, then on to Northern Kentucky, remarks on the American Competitiveness Initiative in Highland Heights, Kentucky, and a Geoff Davis for Congress Reception in Florence, Kentucky. That's the week ahead.
Wow, he's pretty busy with photo opportunities, and signing into law some more tax breaks for millionaires [hat tip, Plausible Story]. I guess everything else is pretty well under control.
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Political Action Videos
May 10, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
Wow. Check out this political ad (1:23) from a US Senate race in PA. "Our President is a criminal...."
Handheld, black & white + color, kids, aggressive language, no holds barred. Of course, in one sense it's still cynical – taking advantage of our unrest with The System, but still, you gotta hand it to the guy for taking a stand. All too rare today. Witness this anonymous blog, for instance.
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Opening Space for Ourselves and Each Other
May 5, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
Chris Corrigan posts some (great) current thinking on the Four Practices of Open Space. I hope he and Michael actually do get a book written about their experiences. Spending three days with them was life-changing, in many subtle but persistent ways. One example: staying in touch with Ashley, and thus seeing posts like this.
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An Anti-Traction, Mobility Denial Material
May 2, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology
New Scientist describes a patent for a "riot slimer."
Riot police or troops would wear a back pack with three cylinders – one containing compressed air, another filled with plain water and a third containing a supply of very dry, finely ground, polyacrylamide powder. A nozzle, resembling a shower head, would blasts two separate jets, containing the water and the polymer powder, in the general direction of an ugly crowd.
As the two jets mix in the air, after clearing the nozzle, they create a slimy mixture that covers the ground and causes everyone in the area to fall down. Even vehicles should be unable to get a grip on the goo, the patent says. And because the gel is non-toxic, it should cause no permanent harm, besides a few bruised bottoms, that is.
Oh, hehehe, that's such a clever ending!! Okay, now then, very well; let me ask: How exactly do the riot slime backpacker police themselves stay standing, or control the crowd, or move laterally once the slime goes down? Wasn't there a scene in Ghost Busters just like this? ("I've been slimed!!") How can you get a patent on something that was in a movie 22 years ago?? Has that patent clerk not seen Ghost Busters?!?!
Just one more example of the Bush administration's incompetence.
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Linkfest
May 1, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Minor procrastination battle raging. Productive but difficult. Hence:
- Ever wonder what it's like to become an expert in the press? Ph.D. student Danah Boyd helps you out. "I talk to press every time i'm in my car, in the airport and walking around. I spend a good 15 hours a week addressing press right now. It's exhausting. I can only get back to a fraction of those who contact me and i've missed most TV and radio opportunities because i can't just jump when people ask me to jump."
- Kathy Sierra reports her experience with the Shangri-La Diet. "It claims to do just one thing--cause your body to want/need less food. Period. In other words, you know that feeling you have after you've eaten a huge dinner and you think, "I'll never eat another bite ever again" -- this so-called "diet" makes that feeling happen much earlier, after a much smaller meal."
- You should really check out the Stephen Colbert video. The one I pointed to yesterday was incomplete. Here's a full version. Salon comments: "Then he turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lipped just a few feet away. 'I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.'"
Okay, back to work!
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Douglas Ruskoff Has Had It With Religious Tolerance
May 1, 2006 | People & Society
Being a contrarian is always good for traffic.
I think it's time to get serious about the role God plays in human affairs, and evaluate whether it's appropriate to let everyone in on the bad news: God doesn't exist, never did, and the closest thing we'll ever see to God will emerge from our own collective efforts at making meaning. [...]
Like any other public health crisis, the belief in religion must now be treated as a sickness. It is an epidemic, paralyzing our nation's ability to behave in a rational way, and - given our weapons capabilities - posing an increasingly grave threat to the rest of the world.
He lays out an interpretation of the Bible and the Torah to support his argument. From his bio: "Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it."
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Bush Does Not Laugh
April 30, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Governance | People & Society
The Happy Tutor educates us on the meaning of Steven Colbert's savage roast satarizing Bush. [video]
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Refreshing Authenticity
April 30, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Meanwhile, in looking to see if Umair had posted on the dumbest move this week™, I saw he pointed to this.
What a riot! Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard, who was in the running to be the new Fed chairman, issues a parody video set to "Every Breath You Take," poking fun at Ben Bernanke, who got the job.
This is the opposite of the Times move. First, it's riotously funny and very well done (as opposed to vaporware). Second, it pokes fun at the author, the subject, and the band (instead of thinking it's going to actually matter). Third, just how many professionals would be willing to take this risk, to be this authentic, to speak in a human voice without press releases? Certainly not the Times. I have several academic clients, all constrained by the institutional voice. I've seen this up close, at the point of decision.
Oh, if only more organizations could act with the spirit of carnival that this video demonstrates.
Breaking Update: We received an electronic communiqué from Doug, saying CBS.Chick.2007 is reporting that the star of the video is a student, not the Dean. Whoops, bad reporting on Notio's part. Wisdom of the crowd in action, right there. But still, the fact that this video is going out under the banner of the School is admirable. And worth another laugh, even with the student actor. He's a grad student, at least.
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Idea No. 22
April 28, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Some of my loyal readers are already subscribed to the Signals vs. Noise feed; to you I apologize for the repetition. Just skip ahead to the last three paragraphs now. For everyone else:
Could you live like this?
A slide show (NY Times) of commisioned pieces from the collection of Ohio art collector Andy Stillpass, “one of America’s most radical and eclectic contemporary-art collectors.” This is what happens if you decide to spend your fortune by having artists run around your place rearranging books, filling drawers, painting the house, etc.
Rob Pruitt’s “Idea No. 22 ‘Fill a desk drawer with gravel and make a secret Zen garden’” (1999). [with photos]
Related: There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World (photos/description) was a 2004 public installation at Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco. The store allowed its 20,000 books to be reclassified by color. McSweeney’s interviewed Chris Cobb, the idea man behind the event. [with links]
Sure, okay, rearrange the known world - bookstore or kitchen or bedroom.
Art.
That's a thought.
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Neil Young Gets It
April 28, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Neil Young has a new album, Living With War and he is working the digital network to best effect.
"Living With War will stream on NeilYoung.com beginning Fri, Apr. 28th. The album will be available at digital retailers beginning May 2nd. CDs will be available in stores early May."
Listen to the whole album free.
The Blog.
The MySpace profile.
The YouTube video.
The video interview on MySpace is fantastic. He gets key ideas of liberty and freedom onto national TV. Spread the word.
(Greendale is a masterpiece, by the way. You should really see the movie.)
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The Shangri-La Diet
April 28, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Most interesting diet (fad?) in a long time. I first read about it at Aaron Swartz's weblog, and he posted a followup today.
This is where Roberts's big insight comes -- he argues that we use a Pavlovian sort of flavor-conditioning system to see whether food is scarce. If we eat foods frequently, we grow to like their taste, and thus our brain realizes we're eating them out of choice and raises the set point. On the other hand, if we eat new foods or foods with little taste, our brain assumes we're eating them because there's nothing else around and the set point is lowered.
And thus, the way to lower your set point: eat foods with no taste. Of course, they have to have calories as well, so Roberts's preferred suggestion is extra-light olive oil (ELOO), which is basically just oil with absolutely no taste. Your body gets the calories but it doesn't get the taste, so the set point goes lower every time you eat it.
Possibly just another diet fad, but easy to try, and unlike Atkins (for example) would appear to have no (potentially) dangerous side-effects. Most interesting to me, whether it's this diet or some other future "eliminate fat" method/technology, are the societal implications.
Among those results: lots of people you know getting thin. It's difficult to imagine what this is going to be like. The fat guy at the office won't be fat anymore. That cute-but-slightly-overweight girl you've had your eye on won't be slightly overweight anymore. Social dynamics will be seriously disrupted in a way that, to my knowledge, has no analog. People have gotten taller, and thinner, and prettier over time, to be sure, but never quite this fast.
Imagine if your weight were a choice, and everyone chose to be thin. Imagine if, in the span of two or three years, everyone were the exact weight they wanted to be. Eating whatever you want, no complaints about your weight, clothes fit more or less forever. It's nearly unfathomable. Some magazines would die. Whole companies profiting on diets would go bust. Exercise would be focused on mobility and endurance rather than weight loss.
If this happened, people might actually have the attention span to focus on government corruption and nuclear war in the Middle East and electronic voting machine rigging and possibly slow the decline of our republic and the destruction of our planet.
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Sometimes It's Better Not To Know
April 23, 2006 | Cooperatives | Life | People & Society
We had our Co-op annual meeting tonight. As board president, it means I'm more or less running the show. The face of the meeting at least. Luckily we have a great staff and I can pretty much show up half-an hour before and everything is all set up. But I have to have an agenda and something to say.
So I was preparing my remarks this afternoon, working from the list I made earlier in the week. I left the list on the dining room table during the week so I could think about it in passing while I went about my days. This works well for less complicated topics – if there's real work to do then I need to sit down for hours on end and actually focus and draft and revise and edit and re-structure and grind it out. But brief remarks I can write from the heart after some background processing and everything tends to work out okay.
The most important section of the meeting tonight, from my perspective, was presenting my friend Bruce Pacht with the Allan and Nan King Award for Community Service. Bruce is a family friend; I nominated him for the award, and as president I would present it. That writing went well, primarily because Bruce has a 30-year resume of community contributions and I could work quickly from his accomplishments.
Then I worked up some notes about the Board's decision earlier in the week to pay itself a stipend for service. This idea failed a board vote a few years ago, but this week we agreed on $200 per meeting attended for board members, and $300 per for the president. During the spirited discussion about voting ourselves a salary, the moral and ethical dilemmas therein, and the potential reaction of our member-owners, someone asked, "How will the members find out?" I said, "I'm going to stand up in front of them Sunday night and tell them, and ask for feedback. Then I'm going to write an article for the Co-op News." Someone suggested we ask the members first, perhaps at the meeting. This is reasonable from many possible angles, but I came down on the side of leadership – we should consider a broad range of material and as leaders decide what's best, then explain ourselves to whom we are accountable, and then just listen. Make adjustments as required. An important component of leadership is making decisions – constant polling and triangulation generates train wreaks like the Democratic party.
So anyway I wrote up those notes, and checked the clock. It was 2:45 PM. I had to leave at 4:30. I was done, save for another round of edits, so I took a break for lunch. When I came back upstairs to check the agenda, I realized I hadn't printed an agenda yet, because I was working from Tuesday's 3x5 notecard. So I printed one out. An then it jumped out at me: The first agenda item was President's Remarks – uh oh, I haven't written that yet!
Um, maybe we could start the meeting by skipping the first agenda item?
Maybe not. So on two sheets of yellow pad paper I wrote everything that came into my head in sound bite format. Not the exact words to say but the main idea and any connect-the-dots language necessary to the other ideas. Then I got in the car and drove to the church basement where we hold the meeting.
Once things got rolling there were perhaps 60 or 70 people there. We had a very nice meal for the $5 fee, and then saw a slide show of a fair-trade coffee trip to Mexico, where an employee and the manager of another nearby co-op had travelled to pick coffee beans as ambassadors of American co-ops. A fascinating personal report. As you might expect, the village is extremely poor. The exceptional houses are constructed of cinder block and are slightly larger than New England tool sheds. They hike two hours, on a steep slope to the top of the mountain, barefoot, to harvest the beans. I saw the photos. Men, women, children; all hands on deck. When they pick the beans they put them in sacks which, when full, weigh about 100 lbs. The sacks have a strap at the top that goes across your forehead, to leverage the weight of the bag slung onto your back – you need your arms free to balance and hold onto trees going down the trail. Barefoot. My chiropractor would be horrified. Not to mention my pedicurist. When the beans make it down the hill, they have to remove the outer skin with a hand-cranked machine, and then they dry the beans out on a cement pad, like a garage bay. The moisture content has to test correctly for the beans to be valuable for export. If it starts to rain, they have to scoop them all up and put them inside then spread them out again later. In the old days, they'd walk them to market, a couple of hours away, and then be forced to take whatever the gringo buyer paid that day. The world market price is set by the commodities markets in New York and Chicago, but the farmers didn't know this number. Sometimes they had to accept ten or twenty cents a pound for their product. And, guess what, the gringo brought his own scales....
I am a tea drinker, no coffee for me, but I wonder what the grim reality is for harvesting the green tea crops.
So now that they have a co-op of their own, they have a laptop in the office that can get the current world market pricing – they have the information. They also have their own scales. And because they're dealing with Equal Exchange, the pioneer of fair-trade, they get $1.25 a lb for their coffee beans, or $1.45 for organic. Score one for co-op's, and score one for fair trade.
My remarks went over fine. The Celebration of Bruce was nice, though it sounded a bit wooden to my ear as I spoke it. Some other things were reported. I opened the "Q&A" section with the board pay bits, and we got some feedback on both sides of it. Some other questions were asked and answered. We even almost came close to approaching the beginning edge of audience dialogue there for a brief moment.
Then it was a wrap, I thought. But Don, the board VP, snatched the mic and launched into a very nice tribute to me. Because I will not accept a nomination for next year's presidency, this was the last meeting at which I'll preside. I'll stay on the board, but as a past-president. Don waxed eloquent about abstracting up, my leadership and vision, and my thoughtful concern for all things co-op. It was very nice. Then he gave me a whoopee pie as a departure gift, about which I'll have to consider the hidden meanings. Then it was a wrap.
I talked with some members who approached me. I gathered my things. I finished my water bottle. I picked up my coat. Then the GM came up to me and said, "Did you see that crazy guy in the back?"
I had, actually. He had a weird look. The winter parka, the fidgeting, the unkempt hair, the look in the eye. Down from the woods. I had smiled to him on my way to the restroom and I got a sort of vacant return. The GM said, "Did you know he had a pistol?"
What??? No, I did not know he had a pistol. Speaking as the guy in front of the microphone most of the time, I was not excited to learn that the weird fidgety guy with the vacant stare at the back of the room near the exit had a pistol. I was not LOL.
It turns out that employees Tony and Aaron had noticed this situation and had debated what to do. They didn't want to cause a scene. I appreciate this. They work in a public market, and there are discreet ways to handle disturbing situations. I once had lunch at the cafe, where, behind me down the hall an employee was having a seizure, and it was absolutely amazing how the staff handled it. Very calm, loving, professional. So I dig that they didn't want to accost the guy and create a scene.
Tony called the police to see if it was legal. They told him that if they guy had a concealed weapon permit it was legal. How would you know if he had a permit? Ask him to show it to you, they are required to carry it. Okay, Tony tells us now, he didn't really want to ask the guy because that's heading toward making a scene. So Tony and Aaron position themselves on either side of him, in case Something Needed To Be Done. Apparently when I was talking about store expansions, and a couple of other topics, the guy got really fidgety, rubbing his hands and twisting his thumbs and breathing heavily. Eventually he'd had enough and left early. Nothing happened.
I was totally freaked out. I am a very accepting person, but this was over my line. I just don't think weird fidgety guys with vacant stares are being very cooperative when they bring pistols to member meetings.
So next year, when you walk into the Lebanon Cafe and see the sign on the door announcing the annual meeting, you will see at the bottom, "Firearms not allowed." I'm not sure if we'll hire security and do actual searches, but I am just not sitting on stage at the front of the room when weird fidgety guys with vacant stares have pistols under their coats. Not even for $200 a meeting, no way.
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April 24 New Yorker
April 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Just a mention that the current issue of the New Yorker has a number of great articles around the theme of "Journeys." Especially fantastic is Anthony Lane's European Journal contribution on low-cost air travel. It's literally littered with witty asides that resonate with anyone who gets on a plane more than once a year. I was laughing out loud the whole time.
The article is not on the web, and the contents page doesn't have a dedicated URL, so no links to all that.
One thing that is online is editor David Remnick's comment on Al Gore, with which I wholeheartedly agree.
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More on Police Solicitations
April 19, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
Good morning Julia and Nicholas,
When I woke up today I had more questions about the police solicitations.
-- Is Jim Reid an employee of the Hanover Police Department? The voicemail said "with" the Hanover PD, so I assume he is, because if he isn't he should have said "for" the Hanover PD.
-- If he's NOT an employee, then I'm annoyed that I was lied to by someone representing the town. There should be much more careful monitoring of outside contractors. For instance, perhaps he should say his firm's name, along with "representing the Hanover PD." I'm sure you can understand why someone misrepresenting themselves to be a Hanover police department employee would be problematic, in both the present situation and in the long-term consequences.
-- If he IS an employee, is he being paid for this time soliciting businesses? That is, are taxpayers paying to have town employees call citizens and ask for money? I'm not sure what to think about that, but it's not an obvious win from my point of view.
-- If he IS an employee, and is NOT being paid, i.e. this is a volunteer effort, then I have concerns about the "wink wink, nudge nudge" aspect of "volunteering" for your employer. This is common in white-collar businesses, where salaried employees are regularly expected to work more than the specified 40 hours per week, violating all sorts of Federal labor act provisions and State labor laws. For some reason this is never enforced, presumably due to the power of Capital over Labor, but I would dislike the idea that a town government, especially one the size and quality of Hanover, would engage in this behavior.
Perhaps you can shed some light on the operation of this program and address my concerns, which I'm sure are shared by many others in our community. Thanks for your consideration.
Michael J.
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Police Solicitations
April 18, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
Hello Julia and Nicholas,
I received a voicemail today from Jim Reid. The message was (exact transcription), "Mike this is Jim Reid calling with the Hanover Police. Please give me a call at 448-1108. No emergency, just gotta talk to you. Thank you."
So, I'm sure you know where this is going: This was a solicitation for an ad for the crime prevention booklet. Okay, that's fine, I like to support community organizations. Jim's a nice guy, and he handled this well, and I registered no complaint with him. This is a policy issue.
My opinion is that the voicemail message should say, "I need to talk to you about our first-ever crime prevention booklet and how you can help," or somesuch thing. Because if it doesn't, you're diluting the value of the police department authority.
Which is to say, like you two, I lead a busy life. I don't have time to call back solicitors, but I would always call back the police or fire department. However, if I ever get another voicemail like that and I call back to find it's another solicitation, I will never ever return another police or fire department call that is not emergency-related. Period.
Using the goodwill and authority of the police department should be very carefully considered. I hope this experience helpfully informs your policy decisions going forward.
Thank you for having a functional website that allowed me to quickly find the appropriate contact information and make my opinion known at the time of the incident.
Best regards,
Michael J.
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Stuff You Don't Have Time To Read Either
April 17, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
- The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (book, wiki, free pdf).
- Collaborative Thesaurus Tagging the Wikipedia Way (abstract, pdf, author's blog).
- Integral Communication (review, master's thesis pdf).
They all look great. Wish I had time to read them. Maybe next year.
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Kunstler Interview
April 15, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Continuing the video theme, The Orion Online posts a five-part video interview with James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. Each video segment is six or eight minutes long. If you want a summary of the book, Rolling Stone excerpted it just before publication.
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Pay Special Attention To Human Faces
April 15, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Berkeley economist Brad DeLong experiments with video. A worthy 2:45 of your attention.
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A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
April 12, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
—Bob Dylan
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music
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An Awkward Third Bridge Steak
April 12, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Travel
Idle Words ("brevity is for the weak") brings us Argentina On Two Steaks A Day:
The classic begginer's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).
The afternoon steak is the workhorse steak, the backbone of the day. It's the steak that gets you around the city, ensures a successful nap, steers you into the bar and (most importantly) gives you the mental clarity to choose the right cut of meat in the restaurant that night. Misorder the first steak and you will either find yourself losing steam by eight o'clock, when no restaurant is open, or scampering to find an awkward third bridge steak, to tide you over until dinner.
It's a great bit of food writing.
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Let's Just Dwell On It
April 12, 2006 | Governance | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Here's a good analysis from Bill Arkin at the Washington Post:
A war with Iran started purposefully or by accident, will be a mess. What is happening now though is not just an administration prudently preparing for the unfortunate against an aggressive and crazed state, it is also aggressive and crazed, driven by groupthink and a closed circle of bears.
The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.
Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war -- despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion "is not contemplated" -- is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I've heard CONPLAN 1025.
Economic collapse is the only thing that will stop the US from being such a bully. The problem with accelerating this scenario is that it affects all of us directly. If we nuke Iran then, as Billmon says, "we’d truly be through the looking glass."
When I was a nomadic Deadhead in the '80's I thought I was learning about sound and music and tribes and love and dancing and joy and groupmind and ecstasy and interconnectedness and Dionysius. Instead, maybe the key skills learned were how to live out of a car and scrounge by in a barter economy on a few dollars a day, traveling from city to city. Could be useful later this year. (Don't tell my clients.)
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Speculative Is Not a Synonym For Untrue
April 11, 2006 | Governance | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Billmon conducts a thought experiment.
Maybe it's just me, but I've been at least a little bit surprised by the relatively muted reaction to the news that the Cheney Administration and its Pentagon underlings are racing to put the finishing touches on plans for attacking Iran – plans which may include the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki.
I mean, what exactly does it take to get a rise out of the media industrial complex these days? A nuclear first strike against a major Middle Eastern oil producer doesn't ring the bell?
3,400 words of truth.
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Nuclear Weaponeers
April 9, 2006 | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Hopefully this article is disinformation for state negotiations. If it's not, then we're in for a game-changer:
The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. “ ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”
He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”
The subject of discussion: Planning for war with Iran. God help us.
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A High Degree of Mental Extensity
April 7, 2006 | People & Society | Science
Here is an excerpt from a list of psychology tests from 1890.
Mental Time
- The time stimuli must work on the ear and eye in order to call forth sensations.
- The reaction-time for sound, light, pressure and electrical stimulation.
- The perception-time for colours, objects, letters and words.
- The time of naming colours, objects, letters and words.
- The time it takes to remember and to come to a decision.
- The time of mental association.
- The effects of attention, practice and fatigue on mental time.
Mental Intensity
- Results of different methods used for determining the least noticeable difference in sensation.
- Mental intensity as a function of mental time. [p.380]
Mental Extensity
- Number of impressions which can be simultaneously perceived.
- Number of successive impressions which can be correctly repeated, and number of times a larger number of successive impressions must be heard or seen in order that they may be correctly repeated.
- The rate at which a simple sensation fades from memory.
- Accuracy with which intervals of time can be remembered.
- The correlation of mental time, intensity and extensity.
I'm not sure why I'm posting this, except I like the idea of mental extensity, and while cleaning out my email in-box I'm also cleaning out my blogging drafts.
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Quality of Life
April 6, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
I read an alumni profile recently of someone who graduated in 1950, and is quoted as saying,
"I worked there from sophomore year through senior year. The work paid much of my way through college."
He worked as a waiter at the college-owned restaurant. I wonder if you could pay your way through college today, on campus, as a waiter? An Ivy League college?
These are questions that define quality of life for me. It's not about the vastly increased bling, or the so-called time-saving machines and so-called paper-saving computer equipment. It's about affording the basic building blocks of progress. Shelter costs, educations, literacy, numeracy, consciousness. On these measures it's hard to argue we're better off than in 1972, when my Dad bought a nice house near the center of town for the price of a department manger's one year salary. Today that same house is easily double the cost of a similar salary. Maybe close to triple.
Our education system is largely a factory producing people for last century's jobs. 17% of Americans are illiterate. If there were rising numeracy then Bush wouldn't get away with rampant spending amidst top-tier tax cuts. And we know consciousness is not evenly distributed. I guess we live longer, if you can afford health insurance.
And.... and.... what are some other ways we're better off, as a society, since 1972? ("We have blogs" is not a valid answer!)
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Flu Simulation
April 6, 2006 | Nature & Environment | People & Society | Science
Real modeling, from rocket scientist guys:
Simulation of a pandemic flu outbreak in the continental United States, initially introduced by the arrival of 10 infected individuals in Los Angeles.... Without vaccination, antiviral drugs, or other mitigation strategies, the entire nation becomes infected within a few months. Depending on the reproductive number R0, effective intervention strategies including vaccination and targeted antiviral prophylaxis can be successful without resorting to economically damaging measures like school closure, quarantine, and work or travel restrictions. This large-scale agent-based simulation involves 280 million people, and uses demographic and worker flow data at the Census tract level, as well as long-range travel statistics, to describe the geographic movement of people.
There's a quicktime movie that visualizes the spread.
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Live Better, Longer, and Even Forever
April 5, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
jwz supplies this gem of a link: Awakening Discomforts.
Inside the apartments, known as Reversible Destiny Lofts, the floor of the dining room slopes erratically, the one in the kitchen is sunken and the study features a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly lose balance, gather yourself up, and occasionally trip and fall. There's no closet space; residents will have to find a way to live there. "[The apartment] makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you'll live better, longer and even forever," says Arakawa.
If they didn't cost $763,000 I'd move there is a heartbeat!!
Exercise for the reader: Am I joking?
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N-Dimensional Web 2.0
April 5, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Science | Site Maintenance | Software | Technology | Travel
Many people are trying to define "Web 2.0" – what it is, what it means, how to build Web 2.0 apps, what makes a company a Web 2.0 company, etc. All of those efforts fall short, because Web 2.0 is n-dimensional. Web 2.0 is "reflecting more complex multivariable situations.1"
Today I learned of a new dimension to Web 2.0. Chris2 invited me to join a beta of CollectiveX, a new Web 2.0-ish social widget. To invite someone you have to set a temporary password, and when they log in they change it to whatever they want. Chris set my password to "ratdoggy." Ha! Now that's a good one. This made me laugh out loud, and when I told Meg3 she lost it too. What's so funny?
Well, it creates a strong but secret connection between the title of a recent post I wrote – wherein "maybe too much information" was offered4 – and an unrelated client task. Chris' password was an acknowledgment that he read the post. Maybe even he liked it. And he certainly knew it would make me think of that post in the middle of the workday. But in any case "ratdoggy" is not in frequent usage (Google: "Did you mean: ratdog?") and his reference expanded its sphere of influence.
Which is like a link, just not a web hyperlink. It was a link from one mind to another, from one blog post to a work moment, from a concert review to a social software login, from my original post written on a couch in the lobby of a cinderblock hotel in Charlestown to my colleague's laughter at the password in an office building in Hanover, from all that to this post which you are reading now. Links, links, links, everywhere you look. Which makes me smile.
And that seems to be the common element of a Web 2.0 app – that it makes you smile, somehow, in some way that maybe you never have before.
1) An Introduction to Chemometrics. A report given as Session F of Educational Symposium No. 17, The Use of Statistical Methods in Formulating and Testing of Rubber at the 130th Meeting of the ACS Rubber Division by Brian A. Rock, Ph.D. in October, 1985.
2) Blog updated according to a complex precision timing schedule involving the highway, the moon, the clouds, and the stars.
3) I did not invoice for this minute of laughter, nor did the client utilize any official company time or resources in reaction to the laughter event.
4) Plausible Story, personal communication.
Now, how many new links can you find in the above footnotes?
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All The Rage
March 23, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Finally, I may be in step with a style trend, just this once.
Whenever a countercultural trend becomes a mainstream one, there is a natural tendency to look for deeper meaning. Do beards that call to mind Charles Manson suggest dissatisfaction with "the system"? Are broody beards, like the dark and somber mood of the fall fashion collections, physical manifestations of a melancholia in the air?
Not that I knew anything, or did anything that put me in step. Style has just caught up with me. Of course, styles will change soon enough, and I'll appear out of step again. But if I wait long enough, it will come back around. Doing nothing has its advantages.
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Top 'O The Morning
March 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
I like the brand-new Google Finance for its page layout and information density. Lots of Ajaxy goodness throughout – check out that slider under the long-term graph!
Billmon exposes the hypocrisy that is John Snow, Bush's Treasury Secretary, standing in for arrogant overpaid CEOs the world over. Not that every CEO is arrogant and overpaid, but certainly some are, don't you agree?
Danah Boyd on the differences between MySpace's success and Friendster's failure. Required reading for online community builders. Also has some notes about the impact high-profile social software failures might generate in the legal or regulatory space.
Michael Crichton on a federal circuit court's decision that thinking can violate a patent. Patently absurd.
A 20-year study determines that whiny, insecure kids usually grow up to be conservatives, while confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals. Admit it: You thought to yourself, "No surprise."
Katrina went to a Television Preview Screening. She found it sickening; let this be a lesson to you.
The Economist on open source collaboration. Makes a point I have mentioned in the past: Open source is very good at optimizing existing technology, but not necessarily good at innovation – might require a few more years to play out, but that's the current thinking. Linux is a very good replacement for a plethora of Unix; Wikipedia is optimizes human knowledge editing. Open source is an excellent process innovation but that is not the whole game.
Adaptation offers two excellent articles on the personal economics of a post-hydrocarbon century (1, 2). These are important and valuable contributions to the planning for "powerdown." Summary: You should worry less about losing electricity and growing food than losing your job and home.
Finally, from email: I am blessed with wonderful, generous, and appreciative clients, as well as thoughtful, helpful, and supportive friends. Plus, the sun is shining and I have a clear, open day with no appointments. My time is my own. If I can't have an upbeat productive day today then I don't know what it will take.
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Modern Baby Names
March 20, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Off the top of my head:
- Pixel
- Bitmap
- Ui
- Mouseover
- Hover
- Feed
- Titlebar
- Favicon
- Clickwheel
- Earbud
- Doctype
- Serverside
- Api
- Voip
- Hosted
I threw away about half of what I thought of, but there are dozens more. I gotta get back to work. Update: Can also be used for cat names!
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Danah Boyd
March 19, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
So this "crazy, overachieving, passionate, activist grrl" Danah Boyd is pretty interesting. Her ETech presentation, G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide, got a lot of pixels this week for good reason.
My name is danah boyd and i am a PhD student at the School of Information (SIMS) at the University of California, Berkeley. My research focuses on how people negotiate a presentation of self to unknown audiences in mediated contexts. In particular, my dissertation is looking at how youth develop a sense of individual and cultural identity in "public" online environments like LiveJournal, Xanga and MySpace. Additionally, i am concerned with how digital publics do not look like the physical publics that we traditionally consider.
Prior to my current project, i studied blogging, articulated social network services (e.g. Friendster, Tribe.net, LinkedIn...). I have written papers on a variety of different topics, from digital backchannels to social visualization design, sexing of internet interactions to creating artifacts for memory work.
Worth paying attention.
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Sandra Day O'Connor Worries About Dictatorship
March 17, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Here is Slate's story on the media ignoring O'Connor's Georgetown University speech:
The smoke drifting out of your computer over the weekend was not the result of a fried motherboard but the scent of bloggers setting themselves on fire in response to Nina Totenberg's NPR Morning Edition Friday, March 10, dispatch. Totenberg had attended a speech at Georgetown University given the night before by retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in which O'Connor invoked the word "dictatorship" to describe the direction the country may be headed if Republicans continue to attack the judiciary.
And here is Raw Story's transcript of Nina Totenberg's NPR story:
I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.
What will it take for people to realize the stakes?
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Not So Much To Release The Sorrow As To Embrace It
March 17, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Dave Pollard posts a letter from organizational development consultant Roger Harrison, "A Time For Letting Go" – parting thoughts on the occasion of his retirement. Via Jon Husband.
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Oil Barrels Price Translation
March 16, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Nature & Environment | People & Society
This is freakin' awesome!
A web browser plug-in that converts all prices from U.S. dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil. When a user loads a webpage, the script inserts converted prices into the page. as the cost of oil fluctuates on the commodities exchange, prices rise & fall in real-time. 'OilStandard' illustrates a potential future when oil will replace gold as the standard by which we trade all other goods & currencies.
Via information aesthetics and Meg Maker (email).
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From The Mailbag
March 16, 2006 | People & Society | Site Maintenance
Another classic:
Dear notio.com,
My name is Chris, and I manage a web site about "Stretch mark" at: [URL removed].
[Holy crap. You wouldn't believe how many ads come up if you Google that!]
I recently found your site http://www.notio.com by searching Google for "Stretch mark treatments". I think our websites have a similar theme, so I am very interested in swap links.
What do you think dear readers? I passed on the gambling ads, should I go for the stretch mark treatments instead? ;)
Who are these people? And do they actually make enough money to keep doing this, or is it constant churn of new rubes coming into the game? If they are making lots of money, doesn't that make you depressed? If it's constantly new people, what does that tell us about the nature of hope?
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Short-Term Economic Future
March 16, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
If you want to know what the big driver in the upcoming recession will be, start here, and then read the follow-up. Summary: During the next 20 months, over $2 trillion of adjustable-rate mortgage debt will be up for interest rate resets. And those rates will go up. Consumer discretionary spending will be cut by about a trillion dollars over two years. That will have a significant impact on our entire economic milieu.
And I bet you thought we were out of the recession, getting ready for a growth spurt! Nope, we've had the growth spurt, and you probably missed it – you had to be a corrupt lobbyist or defense contractor to have made any real dough in the last few years.
The only good thing is the timing. This will have started by the time of the mid-term elections this November, and will have hit big-time by the next presidential cycle. The special sauce is that we spend $10 billion a day on military spending, which is totally unsustainable. So hopefully the fat-cat "tax cuts drive growth we need to protect America" militarist crowd will be thrown out on their bums and we can start to rebuild our democracy.
And I agree with these two guys on the state of play, in that regard.
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Me want, not.
March 14, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Baseball’s Best Burger: "A thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut.... 'We are excited to work with the Grizzlies this season on Baseball’s Best Burger,” said Tina Bryan, Vice President of Marketing for Sweet Traditions, the local area developer for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. 'Our doughnuts have been used in such things as wedding cakes, bread pudding, fondue, and now a hamburger bun. What a fun and unique way to offer our signature Original Glazed doughnut to Grizzlies fans.'”
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Lunch Menu
March 14, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Went to the Co-op to have lunch with some friends. While foraging, I ran into someone I hadn't seen for a year or more. "How are you?," I asked. "Eh. [Someone]'s father died, so I'm getting lunch for him and going over there." I had heard the week before that a key person had quit his company, and that his fiancé had left him because he drinks too much. I didn't pursue those topics, but they were in my mind. I am awkward in situations like this, never sure exactly what to say. "Ciao!," doesn't quite cut it. I told him about my dad, who has had six stents put in his heart, which is like science fiction, but also means that his heart is fragile, and of course he won't live forever. Friendship score: C.
Eventually I sat down and the first person arrived. "How are you?," I asked. "Well. Not that great. I had been on anti-depressants, and tried to get off them for a while, but then I had a lot of problems, so I'm on them again, but it takes time for them to take effect. At work everything seems so complex. I can't really focus, and even when I can I don't really seem to get it." I noticed my fear - here is an engineer who can't understand his tasks; that would be scary. I was a better friend with him, offering some perhaps meager moral support for life's twists and turns. Score: B.
Needless to say, as the other four people arrived I did not ask how they were.
But then during lunch Sarah walked by and gave me a big smile and a wave, and I felt brightened. Then later Alison walked by and gave me a big big smile and a friendly wink as she waved, and it's pretty hard to be bummed out about that. Then Doug and I had a good talk about his art show and how people relate to art, and who buys art, and how you have to fail fast enough that you can afford to succeed. Talking with Doug is always good. Then the clerk at the post office knew my box number without me telling her, so I felt recognized in the world.
I guess for lunch I had "soup of the day," in a social sense.
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Usefulness and The Banality of Business
March 13, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Umair hit one out of the park with his post on Usefulness and The Banality of Business.
There's this curious notion in America: everything must be useful. This is why, at heart, there's little, if any room, for thinking; for the long-term; for the creative.
It's the naive culture of the market taken to an absurd extreme: the old economists' notion of utility. By itself, utility is deeply insightful. It lets us understand decision-making and the microstructure of value creation in powerful ways.
But it's no basis for a society, or a culture. The useful, too often, is the banal. Strip-malls, freeways, suburbs, fast food, sitcoms - all these things are useful; but they're also deeply banal.
What's "useful" to the too often myopic and narrow discussions that happen in boardrooms has deep, pervasive hidden costs; in America, these are the death of social and cultural capital. Put another way, usefulness is the enemy of creativity.
And, ultimately, it is creativity that is going to be the single source of tomorrow's strategic advantage. Utility is the enemy of strategy in a world where coordination is cheap; a world where the cost of bringing new products and service to market is melting, where global hypercompetition is accelerating, where global supply chains can be accessed and reconfigured in hours - not years.
The whole piece is good reading.
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Mail Bombed
March 12, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Site Maintenance | Technology
Notio is getting emailed bombed, or something. In the last couple of hours I've received over a thousand emails like this:
From: Philomena Astle
(Every return address is different.)
Subject: Re: POtharamacy news
(Lots of variations on this.)
Hi,
Do you want to j O l V f E d R r P k A c Y for your u M k e j d o i e a r c x t b i b o j n n s?
Nothing like you need it, l S f a r v v e over g 5 d 0 r % with http://wiqo31.selterrote.com
They come in batches of 200 or 300. WTF? They pass through the server spam filter and get pulled down via POP3, where they pass the local spam filters and I have to wade through them trying not to miss a real email.
Thanks guys. And the point is?? Do you think you're going to get rich or something? Sheesh.
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Democracy Not
March 6, 2006 | People & Society
A Veterans Affairs nurse in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was investigated for sedition after she wrote a letter to a local newspaper criticizing the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.
Any questions?
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Paying Off Debt? You Might Be a Terrorist
March 3, 2006 | Life | People & Society
This is quite something:
The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.
And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable....
After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed....
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
I just did the same thing last week, at about twice the amount. I wonder if I've now hit The List.
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What Is Fun?
March 3, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Dave Pollard: If our job is work, and marriage is work, and recreation is work, when do we have fun?
In nature, children play, breeding adults work, and non-breeding adults do a bit of both. In raven communities, for example, each flock has a breeding pair and a bunch of singles who help protect the breeding pair's young, search for food, connect with other flocks, and otherwise spend their time doing barrel-rolls on roofs, mid-air cartwheels with their talons entwined with each other, mimicking sounds (brilliantly), and, when they're alone, singing to themselves.....
The essence of fun and play is imagination -- and that is not the same thing as creativity. I think we live in a world of enormous imaginative poverty, not because we're incapable of imagination, but because we're badly out of practice....
If we want to relearn how to play, to have real fun -- the kind that is delightful and not merely exhilarating -- we first need to relearn how to imagine, and practice it. The children and animals can show us how.
Good work with which to engage. (Heh.)
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Getting Real About Politics
March 2, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Spend ten minutes and read these two posts:
Only the Dead Sleep Well: The problem with John Kerry's email campaigns, thoughts which IMO apply to all the current email campaigns (MoveOn, Democrocy for America, etc).
Don't Think of a Donkey: The problem with "framing" and trying to replicate the right-wing think tanks. via WB.
Let's say it again: We need to move from consuming to creating. What future do we want to create together? Here's one way into the process: Otto Scharmer has a third draft of his U-Theory introduction linked from his home page. (Otto, ditch the Flash-based website, please. It looks nice but limits the spread of your ideas.)
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Bush Katrina Briefing Video
March 1, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
We take a break from our deep reflective practice to consider the implications of the just-leaked video of Bush's Katrina briefing. This is going to be very big news for the next few days, well into the Sunday talk shows.
The video presents a sequence showing FEMA's Michael Brown and various experts specifying the dangers and warning of the storm. It shows Bush assuring state officials that everything is under control. It then shows Bush on the tee-vee several days later saying that no one could have predicted the levee breech. This is an awe-inspiring a made-for-TV credibility crisis. Actual video, with his own words used against him. The liar exposed. Masterful.
Now, let's think about this. The video is from the secure communications room at Bush's Crawford TX ranch, and appears to be official. First of all, THEY ARCHIVE ALL THAT STUFF?!?!?!? Are you kidding? Supoena all of it, Iraq, NSA wiretaps, covert CIA agent blown cover, Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, et al. A video archive from the Texas ranch? Who knew? And what the hell else is being recorded?
Next, let's think about who exactly has access to this video archive, dealing with national security, from one of the most secure locations in the USA, and why this series of clips was leaked. Bush's poll popularity dropped precipitously in the past few days. Who has the knives out for Bush? Republicans worried about Bush baggage in their local elections? Career bureaucrats tired of political appointees overruling their deep expertise with shallow ideology? Is this Cheney, undercutting Bush and asserting his own authority? Is this Rove, breaking bad news on his own terms, when he thinks is best? Is this former intelligence officials throwing their weight around as long-term payback for gutting the Agency while destroying US moral standing in the world? Whoever it is, they are damn well-connected to have their hands on this video and get it to the media.
Finally, the timing. Bush is in India and Pakistan these few days, after a surprise stop in Afganistan. That's supposed to be the big news cycle for the end of the week - freedom on the march and terrorists on the run and all that crap. But now Bush has to fight this dramatic news, which will cancel his own story. The timing couldn't have been better, or worse, depending on your perspective.
This is the most intriguing United States political event since I've been alive. If the MSM is worth anything at all these days, I want to see some deep analysis on what this means. Background sources, off-the-record quotes, multiple plot-lines converging against hypotheses, the whole monty. There are a very small number of people with access to this video, and they're not grunts.
Morning update: No surprise, but it looks like the White House is trying to spin this as a positive.
Some congressional investigators say it now seems somewhat ironic that having belatedly found the Aug. 29 conference-call transcript, the administration is now touting it as evidence of deep presidential—and White House—involvement in the crisis.
It's hard for me to see how spinning that Bush was seriously engaged in the Katrina disaster is good for him, but I don't understand much of the world today anyway.
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Herman Daly's "Beyond Growth"
February 26, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Interesting post from Catallaxis on the limits to growth, the ecological dimension of economics, and the reconciliation of sustainable and physical growth.
As I see it (Figure 3), the physical dimension of the economy, which can be measured in terms of the scale of material, energy, chemical, and biological throughput, does indeed comprise an economic sub-system of the world's physical biosphere, which includes the sources and sinks for the economic throughput. This is the partial truth in the ecological vision of the economy and it affirms the existence of certain physical limits to the scale of economic growth--but, strictly speaking, these limits only apply to physical economic growth.
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With Heavy Heart
February 26, 2006 | Life | People & Society
I'm with Jon. Sad times. Not clear how to fix it either. What can we each do? Miracles are possible, but not typical. But we don't need typical, we need a transformation. How do we feed the transformation?
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Malcolm Gladwell Has A Blog (Finally)
February 24, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
It's about time!
In the past year I have often been asked why I don’t have a blog. My answer was always that I write so much, already, that I don’t have time to write anything else. But, as should be obvious, I’ve now changed my mind. I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for the New Yorker. Link
Of course, because he's using white type on a black background, it's unreadable. But the XML feed works just fine in your newsreader.
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Inability to Produce Subjectivities
February 22, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
UFO Breakfast checks in with a powerful post on our liberal plight:
What's at stake is liberal complicity in the destruction of a lifeworld that would produce qualities of character that would make sustenance and resistance possible, not just for the next electoral brouhaha but for generations to come, and not just in news-junkie blog discussions but in all the rockbottom ethical domains in which we get by from day to day. That's what Phil's critique of liberalism at WB has always been about, not that "satire will make us more politically effective in the next election." It's a prepolitical argument, and properly so because it sees the toxin that has brought liberalism down occurring at the prepolitical level, long before it gets to any strategy planning....
The whole technocratic, managerial,"strategic" aspect of liberalism is precisely what engineered its deepest failure, its disdain for the lifeworld, its inability to produce subjectivities that can move effectively in the authoritarian terrain that they've ceded to the right. A certain kind of liberal will always portray the call to "have guts" as the adolescent to his parental cool, the id to his ego. That's the automatic discourse of a failed managerial class who staked their social expertise on divesting oneself of passion, of the particularities of upbringing, in favor of a utilitarian rationalism. But what looked like an ascetic process of maturation open to everyone, has turned out to be an increasingly narrow motor of self-selection in which only a small, anal subfraction of an urban professional elite can see their temperament in that mirror....
We don't argue "principles" like the liberal schoolmarm, smugly, because we think we have more of them than everyone else. We argue them out of terror, because they're being taken away on every side, we have no one providing the resources to have a backbone in each daily small exchange, because we're deliberately made to feel defenseless and bearbaited by "our" side as much as the enemy, as a way of pressuring us toward the accomodations which they deem necessary in their use of us, and because we're tired of living with the humiliation of ceding ground in ways which seem in retrospect to be cowardly. That, finally, is what people won't live with....
Read the whole thing.
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33-Pound Cat with 31-Inch Waist
February 21, 2006 | Life | People & Society
"A 33-pound cat in Qingdao, China, is being described as a "feline monster" because of its 31-inch waist and large size, according to a report. The 9-year-old cat from the Shandong Province is so heavy it needs the help of its owner to get onto a bed. However, the cat is in surprisingly good health despite its weight. The cat's owner said it has no interest in eating fish but prefers to eat six pounds of chicken and pork each day. This fat cat is not alone in his weight problem, according to the report. Obesity has become a serious problem for the modern cat, primarily due to a lack of exercise and a richer diet."
Emphasis added. Reality is looking more and more like The Onion.
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Health Care Forum
February 21, 2006 | People & Society
This would be one way to feed the procrastination: Debate between Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik on the health care systems in the US and Canada.
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Photos of Cuba
February 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Travel
Hannah has posted her photos from Cuba. I'm waiting to hear the whole story - I thought it was illegal to visit Cuba, or something. Maybe W made an exception? In any case, they're great photos! Update: More photos from someone else on the trip.
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The Least We Can Do
February 21, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Wealth Bondage: "I do wish that liberals were above the fray, presiding over institutions characterized by moderation, fairness, good will, reason and parliamentary procedure. But that is not so. That is what we have lost, or is rapidly slipping away, under pressure from those who have no intentions of compromising with liberals, who indeed bait them, as ineffectual and diffident as they are, and call them traitors. How will we get democracy back, by fighting with one another, left and middle, or by acting like nothing much has happened, just going on working our daily procedures, as Wealth Bondage sets in? For some of us business as usual sets in like death or paralysis, not just in the body politic, but in our most personal inner selves. We become the knave we play as we go along to get along with the intolerable. To dramatize that knavery, our own, the acts in which we are complicit, is the least we can do out of human decency."
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Monday Biz Links
February 20, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
A couple of interesting items from lunchtime browsing:
Stowe Boyd: Advisory Capital: A New Basis For Strategic Involvement. Argues for a new model of funding startups. Makes sense to me – the VC route is filled with potholes and speedbumps.
There has been a great deal of discussion in the tech community about the changing needs of Web 2.0 tech startups. When the underyling economics of innovation have shifted so drastically -- cheaper high-powered servers, open source LAMP stack, accelerated development tools and techniques (AJAX, Ruby, Php, etc.) -- more and more companies can bootstrap from pocket change, and be up and running in less time than it takes to secure capital. As a result, going the VC route is increasingly seen as a brake on this class of tech innovation, not an accelerator, at least in the very earliest stages.
I still think Co-ops are a fantastic way to bet on the upside for software startups, but until I put my lawyer dollars where my blog bits are, it's all just recreational typing.
Jeff Jarvis: Edgeio and the Distributed World. Good preview of Mike Arrington's upcoming Edgeio. Useful riffs on classified ads, owning your own listing information, and unemployed middlemen.
Edgeio as it stands is pretty simple: You tag a post on your blog “listing” and Edgeio will spot it and add it to its data base. You add more tags (e.g., “for rent” and “vacation”) and your post/ad will appear in the appropriate categories. Edgeio will allow you to come in and claim your blog to be able to get direct communication from respondents and, eventually, to upgrade your ad via typography and graphics and preference (I hope I got that right). This is just a start but it is a proof of concept of a new world. I’ve been waiting for someone to do this. Arrington has.
Anyone who has thought about online yellow pages or local search will understand that services like this are going to be the future.
Also note Arrington the Brand: He came out of nowhere last year with TechCrunch, reviewing web 2.0 startup companies. Now, with solid street cred he introduces his product and gets immediate coverage from A-list (and C-list!) bloggers. Good moves.
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The Candor of Grown Children
February 19, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
The Happy Tutor, a thoughtful, mild-mannered, and quite reasonable person in real life, wrote this apocalyptic post about the loss of tolerance and lust for power that is overtaking our society in March 2005:
My Fellow Consumers! Here's to Freedom. May it pass us in our misery untouched. History is not for the squeamish. It will be written in whatever style they choose, preferably candid and complacent, by the victors, and liberals are not in the running. Their era is over. Their style is dead for any honest public purpose. They will follow meekly enough, or rise above, whether on the cross or the gibbet - or fall short, when the moment comes. My fellow Liberals, Welcome to the Dump. Here at least we can write like friends, God's spies, as Lear said to Cordelia. Let us cherish these moments together. Let come what may, a Band of Brothers and Sisters, speaking out candidly whatever the cost. Thank God, no one is listening. Are they?
It's a keeper.
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Nobody Cans Peaches Any More
February 19, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Joe Bageant: Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown. Wonderful, fantastic, valuable rant:
Joe Bageant's little inner voice is like everyone else's. Whenever I shudder at the condition of the republic, whenever I feel its utter absence of community, it scolds me and tells me I am crazy: Nothing is wrong. This is merely the way things are. It has always been this way. You cannot change that. You expect too much. Look at your wife. She's not upset. She wonders why you cannot just go ahead and be happy. What you see around you is normalcy. Take care of your own family. Relax. Buy something. And I do too. Which is why I own nine guitars, though I can only play one at a time, and even then not very well. The voice made me do it. I was bored.
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Something Happens That Shakes Us Into Awareness
February 19, 2006 | Life | People & Society
via Ashley Cooper at easily amazed: Losing Our Way of Life
One of the books I'm playing in right now is Calling the Circle by Christina Baldwin. This passage brought to mind several conversations I've had with people recently... so I offer it here:
"As we grapple with the awareness that our personal lives cannot be separated from the life of our times, we are forced to reconsider the assumptions, expectations, and values that have guided our lives thus far. One by one by one by one, something happens that shakes us into awareness.
When one vision falls, another vision rises. This is not usually a sudden switch, but a long process of the old paradigm fading away--struggling with itself to let go, subverting new forces, becoming reactionary and rigid exactly because the inevitable is obvious. We are losing our way of life, and we need to lose it, in order not to lose life itself.
... And so the fading of what-is-established gives rise to what-is-possible. The new vision starts to come into focus--struggling with itself to shift from dream to reality, tangential, experiential, a vulnerable and determined seed. We are claiming a more aware way of life, we need our awareness in order to save life itself.
...As our vision of what constitutes successful living shifts from acquisition to accountability, we seek social and spiritual forms that help us address these questions. It is the premise--and the promise--of this book that gathering in peer-led, spirit-centered circles provides such a community forum."
What assumptions, expectations, and values have guided your life thus far?
Which ones might be worth reconsidering?
What are your reflections?
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Baby Snakes
February 18, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
While writing that epic Zappa post a while back, I noticed that I had never watched Baby Snakes. That seemed like an unfortunate oversight, so I ordered up the DVD and watched it this week.
This, gentle reader, is a masterpiece of weird. Officially billed as "A Movie About People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal," Baby Snakes celebrates Not Normal and deploys live concert footage, fantastical clay animation, and backstage sophomoric humor to confound the senses and defy categorization. There are long sequences of audience participation on stage, dramatic cinematic interpretations of complex compositions and driving rock beats, an interview with an artist a few peas short of a pod - producing amazing, surreal animations - and rock guitar god tributes. I think Monty Python might have copied the Zappa formula, leaving out the music parts.
In an effort to promote this amazing cinematic accomplishment, I have extracted and posted the 2-minute theatrical trailer (4.8MB .mov file). I encourage you right-click the link (Mac users: Ctrl-click) and download it to your computer in case you want to watch it more than once. Is it worksafe? That's hard to say. It's not obviously un-worksafe, but it's not typical family entertainment. Best to get your own copy to watch in the privacy of your home.
I highly recommend the film; a more unique cultural artifact from 1979 will not be found. I myself hope to watch it several more times with friends, but it's not immediately clear who, exactly, is willing to sit through two hours and forty-five minutes of Intercontinental Absurdities. It's worth it though; it's likely you've never seen anything like this.
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Friday Link Love
February 17, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Dave Pollard: Health, Education, And Learned Helplessness: "Our education systems prepare us for dependence on employment by large corporations and government organizations. Why? Because this is the most 'manageable' way to run the system, and conveniently keeps us in our place. If the system were to equip us to be independent entrepreneurs, there would be a number of unpleasant consequences for the established wealth and power hierarchy[...]"
The Happy Tutor wrote a beautiful post celebrating Chris Corrigan: "Power is not in the center, nor at the top of a hierarchy, nor in the head or the long tail of an A-list distribution. Power is in the network, in what was once called "the body of Christ," or "the body politic," or the common weal, or the holy spirit. Dismembered, torn apart, into consuming and producing selves alienated from one another and ourselves, the body of Christ will rise again, and it will have nothing to do with the Pharisees and White Sepulchres, the paltry Caesars and pundits, who have taken his name in vain. Market Freedom is dicing at the foot of Cross. Market Freedom is on the March. But when the soldiers arrive at the tomb, they will find it empty. He whom they seek is everywhere, wherever two or three are gathered in his name."
John Robb checks in with a note on the Cantarell oil fields in Mexico: "If the pessimistic scenarios outlined in the PEMEX study come to pass, it will be very serious. The loss of nearly 1.5 million barrels a day of production capacity within three years will be very difficult to overcome either from other Mexican fields or from new production in other countries. Unlike political stoppages from exporters such as Iran or Nigeria , depletion can't be put right. Mexican exports will be seriously reduced or perhaps even eliminated forever."
Apple embedded a poem in their new Intel-based Macs: "Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc."
Winning The War On The Internet: "Government communications planning must be "a central component of every aspect of this struggle", she added. "The longer it takes to put a strategic communications framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy. In a related speech to the Rooster Foundation, Smoky Joe, Candidia's Chief Misinformation Officer, said some of the Wealth Bondage's most critical battles were now in the "newsrooms. Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... Wealth Bondage has not," he said."
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Crashing in Bolivia
February 15, 2006 | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society
My college buddy Allan Karl has a hair-raising tale of his motorcycle accident in Bolivia, and getting his sorry butt back to the States.
In a state somewhere between awake and sleep three hours had passed. The rain, thunder and lightning added dramatic effect to my sprawled body with my left leg in a cardboard box splint as I laid in the Tica Tica medical clinic. Still no ambulance. In a town with one telephone, one restaurant and no motel I wondered if I'd ever get out of Tica Tica.
Many amazing photos - if nothing else you should scan the site for the photos. And if you have time to read about medical treatment in the middle of nowhere, you are in for some good reading.
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This Is What's Wrong With The Democrats
February 14, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
In a nutshell, right here:
Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.
Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.
Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.
But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress.
"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.
I'm incensed. Here's a guy who has the Right Idea, widly popular, and senior politicians tell him to get lost so someone with more seniority can take the slot. Screw that. Let the best ideas win. Are we at least aiming for a meritocracy?
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A Curious Mixture of Complacency and Dread
February 14, 2006 | People & Society
John Hagel is no dummy. So when he summarizes his experience at Davos, you can bet it's worth reading.
More fundamentally, a curious mixture of complacency and dread seemed to pervade the formal and informal discussions at Davos. On the one hand, things are going pretty well in the global economy and the participants kept coming back to the strong performance of key economies around the world. As one economist observed on the opening day, “the outlook for 2006 is basically another goldilocks kind of year.”
On the other hand, executives in particular seemed to have a lot of anxiety about a myriad of challenges and frustrations, ranging from the possibility of pandemics to the intensifying economic competition on a global scale. On the latter topic, there seemed to be growing recognition that the cost cutting strategies that have largely driven corporate performance over the past couple of decades are delivering diminishing returns. At the same time, executives expressed considerable frustration about the difficulty in getting large organizations to deliver more significant and sustainable innovation to the marketplace. [...]
Most people immediately assume we are talking about educational policy when we focus on the importance of talent development. In fact, we argue that education is becoming more marginal as the bulk of talent development occurs outside of traditional educational institutions. As one example, the rationale for the corporation is shifting from reducing interaction costs to accelerating talent development.As we begin to recognize that talent development is a continuing process and not confined to one stage of life, we will have to broaden our view of the institutional platforms required for talent development.
Bonus: MP3 of Bill Clinton talking with Davos founder Klaus Schwab (57 min).
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Life During Wartime
February 14, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
We got computer, we’re tapping phone lines, I know that ain’t allowed
The Administration says they can do anything they want. Legal scholars are not so sure. It's an election year, so expect it to get ugly. It's not surprising that folks in San Francisco think that these are high crimes and misdemeanors, especially given that Clinton was impeached for - what was that again? - something to do with an intern. Much worse than going to war under false pretenses, lying to Congress, detaining citizens without charging them with a crime, secret renditions, torture, etc. Why does Bush hate the US constitution so much?
While you're pondering that, consider this speech from a 30-year veteran of the CIA and FBI:
The Administration’s wholesale by-passing of court review under the guise of “national security” is an extremely bad precedent. If after-the-fact judicial review of eavesdropping operations can be legally accomplished in a secret court, why should such a review requirement be totally ignored by this President? Is it because the government does not want anyone to know exactly who they are listening in on? Is it only suspected terrorists who are being targeted? If the Bush administration continues to have its way, we, and the congressionally authorized secret FISA court, will never know.
Bonus link: What macroeconomist and hedge fund manager Barry Ritholtz learned over the past few weeks.
Finally, how about that Dick Cheney! Our friends at the Wall Street Journal gather together in one place the late-night jokes.
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Interview with Christopher Alexander
February 9, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Nature & Environment | People & Society
Christopher Alexander's recent work, The Nature of Order, is a 2,000 page, four-volume masterpiece that lays out a holistic view of how space, and especially built space, impacts our humanity. I summarize, as Vice President Dick Cheney once said, Big Time.
The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1
The Process of Creating Life: The Nature of Order, Book 2
The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order, Book 4
A Vision of a Living World: The Nature of Order, Book 3
I have been browsing these books for over four years, and I'm still not ready to actually read them, because I'm concerned that they will be so engrossing that I will have to drop everything in obsessive consumption. Like all of Alexander's works, they have a very high reverie quotient, and it takes long, enjoyable afternoons and evenings to move through the spreads.
Kenneth Baker, a SF Chronicle art critic, reviews the books and then interviews Alexander at home in England.
Reading the first book of Christopher Alexander's four-volume magnum opus "The Nature of Order" reduced me to silence. I went about my business for weeks afterward, unable to tell anyone how exciting and dismaying I found the ideas it contains.
The succeeding volumes as they appeared hammered home my conclusion that I would have to reckon professionally and publicly with this work and its author, whom I had met already once or twice.
This sort of philosophical crisis happens seldom, probably too seldom, to critics. It happened to me because Alexander, a practicing architect who taught at UC Berkeley for 35 years, explained more to me about the world I see, and the potential place of the arts in it, than anyone else has.
For best results, read Alexander subtracting all literalism. This quote from the interview, for instance, can be applied to architecture, as well as many other aspects of life:
"If you start something, you must have a vision of the thing which arises from your instinct about preserving and enhancing what is there. ... If you're working correctly, the feeling doesn't wander about. If you have a feeling-vision of the thing -- a painting, a building, a garden, a piece of a neighborhood -- as long as you're very firmly anchored in your knowledge of that thing, and you can see it with your eyes closed, you can keep correcting your actions. ... It's not a question of holding onto every little detail, but of holding onto the feeling."
Baker's pieces are a fine overview to the work, and I highly recommend the books as part of any practice of long-term reflection on large-scale systems.
As an aside, for a guy who has devoted his life to the impact of space on consciousness, patternlanguage.com and natureoforder.com are two of the worst websites on the entire Internet. It's like they totally missed the fact that the web is a spatial medium. There's a lot of information there, but good luck navigating it. Somebody send him a copy of Weinberger's book.
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Fear Is Everywhere
February 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
On the lowercase cover of mtj: massage therapy journal ("keeping you in touch"):
4 tips for a safer practice, p88
how to protect your business, p64
You don't have to look too far for fear.
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Malcolm Gladwell
February 7, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Good profile of Malcolm Gladwell in the New York Times. Particularly nice are the two mp3 clips of the interview. Interesting to hear his voice in conversation. Not that he's unaware of the theater of the interview, but conversation is a little more "in the moment" than reading words.
"People are experience rich and theory poor. People who are busy doing things — as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops — don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them."
One of the perks of being a best-selling author: Receiving $40,000 per speaking engagement. One of the challenges: having to write lengthy disclosure statements about potential conflicts.
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Making Oil Consumption Tangible
February 6, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Nature & Environment | People & Society
I heard a story the other night - unconfirmed, so this is just hearsay really - that during the winter months, each morning at 6 AM three oil tanker trucks pull into our local institution of higher learning and unload their contents into the the steam heating plant holding tanks. Every day! Three of those big oil rigs you see on the highway! That is some oil consumption bubba.
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Gaston Bachelard: Subversive Humanist
February 4, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Well, it's been over 16 hours, and no one has taken up the "Dreams vs. Hope" challenge. Granted, the first eight of those hours would have been "Friday night after work" and in my heart of hearts I know that not all of my readers are rushing home to check in on the Notio Inquiry. And then the next eight hours were after midnight, or early Saturday morning, and most people were sleeping, at least euphemistically.
So I guess it's up to me to rise to the occasion and consider this question.
As we've seen, Thich Nhat Hanh believes hope is an obstacle. I resonated with this when I read it ten years ago, and I resonate with it today. Which is not to say I'm not a hopeful person - but perhaps "hopeful" is best thought of as "optimistic." At least most of the time, modulo the human condition.
Gaston Bachelard was a postal clerk who eventually rose to teach at the Sorbonne. I understand Bachelard primarily through the vectors of phenomenology, the rehabilitation of imagination, poetics, and especially reverie, even though his oeuvre is grounded in epistemology and the history of scientific thought. Mary McAllester Jones writes:
Bachelard was always a polemical thinker, believing, as he declared in La Philosophie du non (1940), that "two people must first contradict each other if they really wish to understand each other. Truth is the child of argument, not of fond affinity."
Bachelard likes to describe himself very simply as a reader, not out of intellectual laziness or false modesty, but because of what happens when he reads: "is not the reader's imagination...revealed to be purely and simply the movement of quickly changing images?" and more strikingly, "it would seem that the reader is called upon to continue the writer's images; he is aware of being in a state of open imagination." Reading poetic images brings us "the experience of openness, of newness," new images, new language, new possibilities in the world and in ourselves. What [Bachelard] brings to it is an attitude of mind, a willingness to accept and not reduce complexity, to take reading a poem seriously, as an aspect of our relationship with something other than ourselves.
What Bachelard reads is images, not ideas. In his first books, these are images of fire, water, air, and earth; later they are images of space - cellars and attics, shells, corners, the cosmos; and then in his last book, images of a candle flame. He reads material and dynamic images, neither perceptual nor rational, nor expressive of lived experience, images which are written, which are in and through language. He modifies and subverts Freud, and eventually, in his second series of books on poetry (1957-61), he rejects psychoanalysis, preferring phenomenology. He does so because psychoanalysis is reductive; it reduces images to the unconscious, the unconscious to lived experience, to infantile social experience in particular. Bachelard modifies Freud by making the source of poetic images not the unconscious ... but rather what he calls an "intermediate zone" on the threshold of consciousness and thought. Bachelard's material images, in which man and matter are conjoined, spring from "the zone of material reverie that precedes contemplation."
In 1957 Bachelard turns from psychoanalysis to phenomenology precisely because this offers a better account of reading. However, he modifies Husserl as he did in his work on science, insisting on the dynamic relationship between subject and object, so that the reader's consciousness is changed by what he reads.
- Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist, Texts and Readings (1991)
So when Bachelard says
We can accomplish nothing good against our will, that is to say, against our dreams. The oneirism of work is the very condition of the worker's mental integrity.
he is trying to infuse all of our activities, all of our lives, with an endless joy in making images as we make the world. It is not just what the reader reads, but what the person does - every moment is an opportunity to infuse our living with dynamic images, allowing our imagination to lead us, as it reacts with where we are, what we are doing, and recursively, what we are imagining.
This is much different that the idle longing of hope. When I think of "one who is hopeful," I think of passive daydreams, infused not so much with possibility, probability, or even plausibility, as with an idealized and disconnected image of perfection. In this perfect hopeful world, things work out according to the script in our heads, driven by our previous experiences and infantile impressions created in our family of origin. In this way, hope is aligned with psychoanalysis in Bachelard's view - reductionist, limiting, and of the past, not the future.
Instead, by living in the moment, by paying attention to the images we create as we work, as we read, as we dream, as we meditate - as we live - we draw our consciousness every moment toward the larger sphere of the infinite. We are not reducing the possibilities to fit our notio, we are alive in the openness of all possibilities. We then react and respond to these images both imaginatively and materially. We are changed by what we read, and also by what we imagine. We observe phenomenologically, and we then observe how our observation changes. Even as we "cram the oven with shovels-full of coal," and "challenge the oven to a duel of energy." The result: "To participate no longer in heat as a state but in heat as growth, to assist enthusiastically the becoming of its growth."
In this, Bachelard gestures toward David Bohm's work on the dynamic aspects of soma-significant and signa-somatic implicate and explicate orders of meaning-making in quantum physics. But that's a reading for another day.
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The Reciprocity of Dream and Work
February 3, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
What would a week of philosophical and ps