The conservatives are touting March of the Penguins as an ode to monogamy. It confirms what I've always thought: it's for the birds. They also say it confirms intelligent design. So an intelligent creator dresses you in a tuxedo and makes you walk hundreds of miles to find a mate, then after sex, you have to stand around rolling an egg between your toes while she goes fishing.
Ok, I get that last bit. I live in Alabama. But I don't fish in a tux. It scares the bait.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
VRML and The Numbers
The deal for authors of content on open source software should be that the content is open. Trust works better than technology.
If the programmers accept this deal, I don't see why the content authors believe they have to get a better deal.
But it keeps VRML from being adopted by the $ content paid for by employers that pay the salaries of engineers for 3D content. CAD. So far, no one has invested the $ into a VRML project that it takes to assemble and maintain a team to create a very compelling VRML-based game for online or single-download play.
Worlds, yes.
Look at the price difference though: say $35 to $40 to belong to a chat site, vs $35 to $40 to download a single copy of a game. Downloading worlds is having the band come to play for you instead of buying their records except they come for pennies a gig and someone else has to own the club. So while online worlds are where much of the best VRML content is, cost per gig has to increase to pay the band and the bar.
Or the teams that build both have to sell both. Gigs and games. This takes serious chops and serious chops earn serious money.
If someone with serious shekels to bet wants to make a bet, funding a team to build an open format online game with all of the secondary add-in sales is even money tonight. Maybe better. VRML has numbers and technology. By the way, when I say VRML, I mean X3D too. The differences are mostly in the minds of the browser makers. They are for the most part, the same thing.
Except X3D has encryption and some other baubles, but encryption stands out.
Lack of encryption denies some vendors access to markets that can buy far more copies of software and services. While computer scientists know that anything you can compile, I can decompile, it is nonetheless believed it constrains theft to only those smart enough to pull it off.
Sorta true. It gets rid of the bleachers.
When I saw the first diskcracker in the 80s that started with "Ho Ho Ho! A pirate's life for me..." I gave up on encryption. If it's cool, they'll get it. If it's not, who cares. If they get busted for stealing the Bewitched movie, they are dorks-for-bucks anyway.
Who cares?
If they are stealing to learn, that is a different story. That is a compliment. Encryption slows those who can be slowed, but the players hungry for it get it anyway. Might as well smile and accept the compliment.
It comes down to the variables you believe you can trade-on with your partners. I want to make money from content, but I will make content anyway. Copyright is good enough. My songs are in mpgs and wavs. Anyone with a speaker wire can copy that; so tell me what good those are except to stop another musician from learning my licks and he can do that by listening? Or buy my midis, but all that is saving you is typing time. If you want them, we can talk.
How exactly does encryption help me? Nada. Copyright is good enough.
So it comes down to how you pick the variables you trade on.
This blog is a part of an email response to a Google survey Viveka Wiley did. It showed that VRML use is growing. Other entries to the 3D market such as Adobe's new PDF 3D are entering the market, but VRML by dint of history and community has grown fourfold in the last year. 3D interest is increasing. Why? It's generational. Dominance isn't the issue. PDF coexists with HTML. it is an issue of who gets good numbers, not who is the last browser standing.
I believe VRML gets good numbers because of the variables selected as it emerged. They shape it. They are deep parts of the networks of selected variables now. In the genes.
1. PDF with 3D is a done deal. What you use it for and who chooses to use it remain to be seen. I note only that so far, the success of 3D has not been a function of its format but of the difficulty of authoring in the medium and imaginative use of it for one-off downloads. PDF is still a slow loader for anything complex or deep. Hardware happens, but it floats all boats. It comes down to content and reach just as it did for Flash.
2. VRML's numbers such as they are are increasing because VRML has been adopted by research universities who understand the rationale of the choice to keep VRML open:
Students can afford it.
Students are still young enough and loose enough to want openness in their relationships. What loves them, they love. Mathematics departments get it. Archaeology departments get it. Navy scientists get it. As long as the code is open, people are learning it. As long as people are learning it, it is alive. Life is learning; VRML's choice of variables chooses education.
Don't need no stinkin' badges.
3. A tipping point in 3D on the Web is approaching. The frequency of new entries into 3D plus the history of VRML in creating 3D presence on the web are coupling to the entry of younger 3D-proficient users onto the web. The first generation of native 3D users has begun to arrive in increasing numbers.
Pick up your prize. If you pick up mine, send me an email. If you pick up something I was paid to do, it will be encrypted and that makes it the problem of it's owner. Not mine.
If the programmers accept this deal, I don't see why the content authors believe they have to get a better deal.
But it keeps VRML from being adopted by the $ content paid for by employers that pay the salaries of engineers for 3D content. CAD. So far, no one has invested the $ into a VRML project that it takes to assemble and maintain a team to create a very compelling VRML-based game for online or single-download play.
Worlds, yes.
Look at the price difference though: say $35 to $40 to belong to a chat site, vs $35 to $40 to download a single copy of a game. Downloading worlds is having the band come to play for you instead of buying their records except they come for pennies a gig and someone else has to own the club. So while online worlds are where much of the best VRML content is, cost per gig has to increase to pay the band and the bar.
Or the teams that build both have to sell both. Gigs and games. This takes serious chops and serious chops earn serious money.
If someone with serious shekels to bet wants to make a bet, funding a team to build an open format online game with all of the secondary add-in sales is even money tonight. Maybe better. VRML has numbers and technology. By the way, when I say VRML, I mean X3D too. The differences are mostly in the minds of the browser makers. They are for the most part, the same thing.
Except X3D has encryption and some other baubles, but encryption stands out.
Lack of encryption denies some vendors access to markets that can buy far more copies of software and services. While computer scientists know that anything you can compile, I can decompile, it is nonetheless believed it constrains theft to only those smart enough to pull it off.
Sorta true. It gets rid of the bleachers.
When I saw the first diskcracker in the 80s that started with "Ho Ho Ho! A pirate's life for me..." I gave up on encryption. If it's cool, they'll get it. If it's not, who cares. If they get busted for stealing the Bewitched movie, they are dorks-for-bucks anyway.
Who cares?
If they are stealing to learn, that is a different story. That is a compliment. Encryption slows those who can be slowed, but the players hungry for it get it anyway. Might as well smile and accept the compliment.
It comes down to the variables you believe you can trade-on with your partners. I want to make money from content, but I will make content anyway. Copyright is good enough. My songs are in mpgs and wavs. Anyone with a speaker wire can copy that; so tell me what good those are except to stop another musician from learning my licks and he can do that by listening? Or buy my midis, but all that is saving you is typing time. If you want them, we can talk.
How exactly does encryption help me? Nada. Copyright is good enough.
So it comes down to how you pick the variables you trade on.
This blog is a part of an email response to a Google survey Viveka Wiley did. It showed that VRML use is growing. Other entries to the 3D market such as Adobe's new PDF 3D are entering the market, but VRML by dint of history and community has grown fourfold in the last year. 3D interest is increasing. Why? It's generational. Dominance isn't the issue. PDF coexists with HTML. it is an issue of who gets good numbers, not who is the last browser standing.
I believe VRML gets good numbers because of the variables selected as it emerged. They shape it. They are deep parts of the networks of selected variables now. In the genes.
1. PDF with 3D is a done deal. What you use it for and who chooses to use it remain to be seen. I note only that so far, the success of 3D has not been a function of its format but of the difficulty of authoring in the medium and imaginative use of it for one-off downloads. PDF is still a slow loader for anything complex or deep. Hardware happens, but it floats all boats. It comes down to content and reach just as it did for Flash.
2. VRML's numbers such as they are are increasing because VRML has been adopted by research universities who understand the rationale of the choice to keep VRML open:
Students can afford it.
Students are still young enough and loose enough to want openness in their relationships. What loves them, they love. Mathematics departments get it. Archaeology departments get it. Navy scientists get it. As long as the code is open, people are learning it. As long as people are learning it, it is alive. Life is learning; VRML's choice of variables chooses education.
Don't need no stinkin' badges.
3. A tipping point in 3D on the Web is approaching. The frequency of new entries into 3D plus the history of VRML in creating 3D presence on the web are coupling to the entry of younger 3D-proficient users onto the web. The first generation of native 3D users has begun to arrive in increasing numbers.
Pick up your prize. If you pick up mine, send me an email. If you pick up something I was paid to do, it will be encrypted and that makes it the problem of it's owner. Not mine.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Call Ray: The Recording
Most songs I release are produced. That means I spend a lot of time in my home studio working on an arrangement, writing out the midi, recording tracks, fixing bad notes, etc. etc. onward to the slickness that technology affords.
For Call Ray, I sat in front of a mic and sang it one time with my guitar. No retakes, no overdubs, no synths, no technical magic; just the song and the emotion.
So warts and all, this is as honest as it gets. Why? This one needs to be honest.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/CallRay.mp3
Someone else might produce it and give it slick but I'm not of a mind to do that. Of all the people I've known, things I've done, honors good, bad or ugly, the honor closest to my heart has been to be a member of the tribe of musicians that play rock, blues, folk, country, and classical in bars for people who came to hang their blues on the tab, leave a tip, and be with other people just like themselves. It has always been a privilege. So for all of you who spent time with me particularly in the very early days before I had anything but long hair and a guitar, just my songs, here is an honest song.
We miss ya, Ray. Happy trails, Man.
For Call Ray, I sat in front of a mic and sang it one time with my guitar. No retakes, no overdubs, no synths, no technical magic; just the song and the emotion.
So warts and all, this is as honest as it gets. Why? This one needs to be honest.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/CallRay.mp3
Someone else might produce it and give it slick but I'm not of a mind to do that. Of all the people I've known, things I've done, honors good, bad or ugly, the honor closest to my heart has been to be a member of the tribe of musicians that play rock, blues, folk, country, and classical in bars for people who came to hang their blues on the tab, leave a tip, and be with other people just like themselves. It has always been a privilege. So for all of you who spent time with me particularly in the very early days before I had anything but long hair and a guitar, just my songs, here is an honest song.
We miss ya, Ray. Happy trails, Man.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Katrina and Public Safety
While I am glad to see the individuals pulling the online resources together in response to Katrina, I reiterate Rex Brooks' post that getting more professional and informed resources into the specification processes for the public safety and justice systems is a very positive response.
Had CAP and EDXL been online, the response effort could have been better. Among the systems that gather name information, we have location and address, phone numbers, classes of registered vehicles, and named relationships among these. Between your Utility and other public safety agencies, there is sufficient information to warn you and organize the recovery.
It comes down to cost. What doesn't?
Sign up lists for notification are optional and through the receiver of your choice as long as it conforms to the specifications for the system and the standards for the data.
Interoperable asset cataloging and management is needed.
Interoperable dispatch systems integrated with wide area and broadcast communications are now possible and being implemented.
Standards are lacking but emerging.
While large scale sensor systems are vital to homeland security, we are seeing in Katrina the results of overfocusing on one source of hazards to the neglect of more probable ones.
"Fear is the mindkiller." Frank Herbert.
We have to face this squarely. This stops. From 9/11 forward we have been operating in a climate of fear and distraction, somewhat normal given the enormity of that event, but ever since being played as a card in the game of political distraction.
Officials using the destruction of the Gulf Coast by Katrina as the means to push agendas for left or right political causes are not doing their jobs to serve the people. Turn them off for now and remember them later at the ballot box.
The media is not excused either but frankly, they were in fast and providing real time data.
We all failed. Too many people are dead, dieing, homeless or grieving to believe otherwise.
Beware the blame game. It doesn't helo people off roofs.
From my desk, it is clear that the call list systems were inadequate. Call lists are part of the major incident response protocols that enable resources to be brought on line quickly and efficiently.
It is likely that inadequate provisions were made for rapid mandatory evacuations, and just as obvious that some people don't heed warnings even when the evidence is in and time is short. It is obvious that some people even with adequate warning do not have the resources to evacuate. That is a very tough problem to solve logistically. When the danger is coming fast, there are no magic helicopters or fleets of ships. It comes down to school buses, flat beds, tractor-trailers, Wal-Marts and Lowes.
Remember that.
Think hard about what is on their shelves and which parts you want on the street the morning after. Pass laws.
A top-down response is always combined with a bottom-up response. There are plenty of lessons to learn for everyone involved. It is obvious that we must step up the pressure to implement a well-thought through and fearless National Response Plan. It is obvious that State and Local protocols must be improved NOW to cope with the need to interoperate at a national level.
For you XML geeks, it's just the message set, D'oh!
While local and State control of resources remain standard procedure, requests from these officials are not required to mobilize national assets under the NRP.
Old habits can be bad habits. New habits save lives.
Old habits can be good habits. New habits can kill.
What do you know about your location and what is near you?
Do you have a plan to find family members fast if your cellphone callist is unavailable?
Do you know your neighbor's name? Do you know their children's names?
Do you have an evacuation plan that all of these people know?
Are there large chemical plants or nuclear reactors near your home? Do you know about plumes and prevailing winds?
Do you have alternatives?
Act.
If you see a Cat 2 or 3 enter the Gulf in August, you don't need much analysis to know time is wasting. The engine of a hurricane is hot water.
As a member of the public safety industry watching my company stock climb even as I know public safety systems are inadequate in the face of a Cat 4/5 hurricane, I have that same sick feeling I had on 9/11: making money on misery. On the other hand, I know these systems save lives. And more can be saved.
Public safety is an industry where ego-driven competition kills people. It is the industry that in the face of this disaster, must come to the standards table.
The amount of senseless local deviation in your dispatch and records management systems to keep your local response officials nice-to-your-mayor or unions will get you killed. Kick their heads until they implement GJXML, NIMS, CAP, EDXL and other document protocols that work Just-In-Time.
Regionalize. Immediately.
Train your cops and firemen on computers. There is NO excuse for a computer illiterate in a cruiser or any other first responder vehicle.
There is NO excuse for software that is so hard to operate that a college degree is required.
Know what the real problems are and don't let your public safety systems become political footballs. In my experience, it means you cutover slower and often pay the same money multiple times for bad procurements.
Coverage and technology are not the same thing. Choose wisely particularly with respect to scale. LANs rule; WANs fuse.
Networks don't fight floods, fires, or CBRNE but they can place a lot of the right calls to the right people at the right time. At the very least, fix the callLists by event type and support subscription-based notification on any eligible receiver.
Buy wisely. Pay attention. Act.
len (speaking only for myself and not my employer)
Had CAP and EDXL been online, the response effort could have been better. Among the systems that gather name information, we have location and address, phone numbers, classes of registered vehicles, and named relationships among these. Between your Utility and other public safety agencies, there is sufficient information to warn you and organize the recovery.
It comes down to cost. What doesn't?
Sign up lists for notification are optional and through the receiver of your choice as long as it conforms to the specifications for the system and the standards for the data.
Interoperable asset cataloging and management is needed.
Interoperable dispatch systems integrated with wide area and broadcast communications are now possible and being implemented.
Standards are lacking but emerging.
While large scale sensor systems are vital to homeland security, we are seeing in Katrina the results of overfocusing on one source of hazards to the neglect of more probable ones.
"Fear is the mindkiller." Frank Herbert.
We have to face this squarely. This stops. From 9/11 forward we have been operating in a climate of fear and distraction, somewhat normal given the enormity of that event, but ever since being played as a card in the game of political distraction.
Officials using the destruction of the Gulf Coast by Katrina as the means to push agendas for left or right political causes are not doing their jobs to serve the people. Turn them off for now and remember them later at the ballot box.
The media is not excused either but frankly, they were in fast and providing real time data.
We all failed. Too many people are dead, dieing, homeless or grieving to believe otherwise.
Beware the blame game. It doesn't helo people off roofs.
From my desk, it is clear that the call list systems were inadequate. Call lists are part of the major incident response protocols that enable resources to be brought on line quickly and efficiently.
It is likely that inadequate provisions were made for rapid mandatory evacuations, and just as obvious that some people don't heed warnings even when the evidence is in and time is short. It is obvious that some people even with adequate warning do not have the resources to evacuate. That is a very tough problem to solve logistically. When the danger is coming fast, there are no magic helicopters or fleets of ships. It comes down to school buses, flat beds, tractor-trailers, Wal-Marts and Lowes.
Remember that.
Think hard about what is on their shelves and which parts you want on the street the morning after. Pass laws.
A top-down response is always combined with a bottom-up response. There are plenty of lessons to learn for everyone involved. It is obvious that we must step up the pressure to implement a well-thought through and fearless National Response Plan. It is obvious that State and Local protocols must be improved NOW to cope with the need to interoperate at a national level.
For you XML geeks, it's just the message set, D'oh!
While local and State control of resources remain standard procedure, requests from these officials are not required to mobilize national assets under the NRP.
Old habits can be bad habits. New habits save lives.
Old habits can be good habits. New habits can kill.
What do you know about your location and what is near you?
Do you have a plan to find family members fast if your cellphone callist is unavailable?
Do you know your neighbor's name? Do you know their children's names?
Do you have an evacuation plan that all of these people know?
Are there large chemical plants or nuclear reactors near your home? Do you know about plumes and prevailing winds?
Do you have alternatives?
Act.
If you see a Cat 2 or 3 enter the Gulf in August, you don't need much analysis to know time is wasting. The engine of a hurricane is hot water.
As a member of the public safety industry watching my company stock climb even as I know public safety systems are inadequate in the face of a Cat 4/5 hurricane, I have that same sick feeling I had on 9/11: making money on misery. On the other hand, I know these systems save lives. And more can be saved.
Public safety is an industry where ego-driven competition kills people. It is the industry that in the face of this disaster, must come to the standards table.
The amount of senseless local deviation in your dispatch and records management systems to keep your local response officials nice-to-your-mayor or unions will get you killed. Kick their heads until they implement GJXML, NIMS, CAP, EDXL and other document protocols that work Just-In-Time.
Regionalize. Immediately.
Train your cops and firemen on computers. There is NO excuse for a computer illiterate in a cruiser or any other first responder vehicle.
There is NO excuse for software that is so hard to operate that a college degree is required.
Know what the real problems are and don't let your public safety systems become political footballs. In my experience, it means you cutover slower and often pay the same money multiple times for bad procurements.
Coverage and technology are not the same thing. Choose wisely particularly with respect to scale. LANs rule; WANs fuse.
Networks don't fight floods, fires, or CBRNE but they can place a lot of the right calls to the right people at the right time. At the very least, fix the callLists by event type and support subscription-based notification on any eligible receiver.
Buy wisely. Pay attention. Act.
len (speaking only for myself and not my employer)
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Civil War Thinking
From: Mike Bullard [mailto:mikeb43@charter.net]
Received this from a friend and the father hits the nail on the head. During the 40s she would have been run out of the US and the threat now is greater than then. We won that one because we stood united. When the politicians are through with her she will be left to die on the vine by herself and they won't be mentioned.
"An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan From the Proud Father of a U.S. Marine
By Brantley Smith
Posted On August 17, 2005"
NOTE: Mr Smith's letter is not presented here because of copyrights and permission. Please find his letter and read it.
I wish it did. It doesn't. Like Ms. Sheehan, it hits to one side of the nail. It is two people with very opposite positions about the way of American foreign policy and the cost of not correcting mistakes quickly before losses mount higher. Brother, I do read a lot and not just the Bible or the Constitution, but history, philosophy, religion, analyses from foreign policy experts and so on. They may know more than me or you, or maybe not. So this is just another whack at the American nail.
Our fight is not with the Muslims; it is with sects. These are the people who attack us; not the world of Islam. Unless we wish for this. If we do, it will come true.
Here's the deal with the Muslims: Islam is a religion of peace. The law of Sharia about occupiers on their land is the man who owns it must fight, if he cannot his neighbor must, and if not he, his neighbor to the extent of the whole of the Muslim faith.
That means eventually, we will have to fight them all if we do not leave the lands of the Middle East when asked by the people of those lands. Who we fight about over that will depend on who welcomes us and who does not. Oil doesn't matter; religion does. We invaded and like VietNam, we will face an insurgency that will only grow stronger. When we leave, a Civil War will occur whether we provide cover or not if this is the will of the people of Iraq. Today, they fight us because we are there. Whatever we think we are achieving, we are not stopping the insurgency. We are prolonging it just as we prolonged the Civil War in VietNam by taking a side after the French failed to hold their colonies in SouthEast Asia.
Whether Cindy Sheehan is right to protest the loss of her son in a war we should not have started, or whether this man truly believes the sacrifice of his daughter will somehow make him safer, Iraq did not start a war with the United States. We did.
We violated the one tenet most Americans share: we would not strike first. We say we did this out of fear of Weapons of Mass Destruction when America possesses the
greatest stock of such in history. If it really is our intention to liberate, then we have done that. If it really is our intent to turn Iraq into the war where all terrorists come to learn how to fight us, we have done that too. If it is our intent to leave in peace and enable the people of the region to choose as freely their lives as we do here, then we must leave.
If our intent is other than that, then we must ask ourselves if we do as Americans share such cause. If all that sends us there is fear, then we are a dishonored nation before the world for we of all peoples have learned by history and experience the costs of stocks in the village square, or sending our children into harms way to satisfy the craft of craven leaders.
Bodies. Ours. Theirs.
At the end of this when we do withdraw as we eventually will, those costs are not unnoticed or dishonored. The children and men who go to die as professional soldiers
will have as they always have when called, fight selflessly for each other and for whatever else they value.
It is Their fight. Not mine. Not yours. Not Cindy's. Not Mr. Smith's.
When they come home, they will tell us if it was worth it, but they will come home, to say or be buried. That is war.
Received this from a friend and the father hits the nail on the head. During the 40s she would have been run out of the US and the threat now is greater than then. We won that one because we stood united. When the politicians are through with her she will be left to die on the vine by herself and they won't be mentioned.
"An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan From the Proud Father of a U.S. Marine
By Brantley Smith
Posted On August 17, 2005"
NOTE: Mr Smith's letter is not presented here because of copyrights and permission. Please find his letter and read it.
I wish it did. It doesn't. Like Ms. Sheehan, it hits to one side of the nail. It is two people with very opposite positions about the way of American foreign policy and the cost of not correcting mistakes quickly before losses mount higher. Brother, I do read a lot and not just the Bible or the Constitution, but history, philosophy, religion, analyses from foreign policy experts and so on. They may know more than me or you, or maybe not. So this is just another whack at the American nail.
Our fight is not with the Muslims; it is with sects. These are the people who attack us; not the world of Islam. Unless we wish for this. If we do, it will come true.
Here's the deal with the Muslims: Islam is a religion of peace. The law of Sharia about occupiers on their land is the man who owns it must fight, if he cannot his neighbor must, and if not he, his neighbor to the extent of the whole of the Muslim faith.
That means eventually, we will have to fight them all if we do not leave the lands of the Middle East when asked by the people of those lands. Who we fight about over that will depend on who welcomes us and who does not. Oil doesn't matter; religion does. We invaded and like VietNam, we will face an insurgency that will only grow stronger. When we leave, a Civil War will occur whether we provide cover or not if this is the will of the people of Iraq. Today, they fight us because we are there. Whatever we think we are achieving, we are not stopping the insurgency. We are prolonging it just as we prolonged the Civil War in VietNam by taking a side after the French failed to hold their colonies in SouthEast Asia.
Whether Cindy Sheehan is right to protest the loss of her son in a war we should not have started, or whether this man truly believes the sacrifice of his daughter will somehow make him safer, Iraq did not start a war with the United States. We did.
We violated the one tenet most Americans share: we would not strike first. We say we did this out of fear of Weapons of Mass Destruction when America possesses the
greatest stock of such in history. If it really is our intention to liberate, then we have done that. If it really is our intent to turn Iraq into the war where all terrorists come to learn how to fight us, we have done that too. If it is our intent to leave in peace and enable the people of the region to choose as freely their lives as we do here, then we must leave.
If our intent is other than that, then we must ask ourselves if we do as Americans share such cause. If all that sends us there is fear, then we are a dishonored nation before the world for we of all peoples have learned by history and experience the costs of stocks in the village square, or sending our children into harms way to satisfy the craft of craven leaders.
Bodies. Ours. Theirs.
At the end of this when we do withdraw as we eventually will, those costs are not unnoticed or dishonored. The children and men who go to die as professional soldiers
will have as they always have when called, fight selflessly for each other and for whatever else they value.
It is Their fight. Not mine. Not yours. Not Cindy's. Not Mr. Smith's.
When they come home, they will tell us if it was worth it, but they will come home, to say or be buried. That is war.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Intelligent Design
After going into full flame mode on XML-Dev about intelligent design, I should apologize.
But I won't.
You see, every time anyone in America apologizes to the evangelicals, their extreme members use it to push their agendas harder. This is the only group I know of this side of the Moonies that have summer camps for preparing children to debate their agendas. I don't want that taught to my children. There are lots of parts of their agenda I oppose, but most of them can be debated without pulling the rest of the world into the debate.
Intelligent design is not science. It is religion. Science does not admit universal first cause. Why? Because this premise is not testable or verifiable. Once introduced, logical investigation stops. Competent well-trained scientists know this. Those who mix their faith into their technique of investigation, and science is technique, know this.
My position on the existence of God can be found all over my writings. My beliefs are as strong as they need to be. My relationship with God is not for anyone else to judge.
But I do not and cannot accept this thesis that attempts to beggar that relationship because some believe they can strengthen their own position with it. It adds nothing to my faith, and it detracts from the body of science.
In the past, when faced with the political agenda to create a unified faith in this country, the result was to build stocks on the village square. From that experience and others, we learned to separate our religion from our State, but this is not why intelligent design cannot be a subject for a science class. The thesis has no tests for proof and no proof offered adds knowledge that strengthens faith.
It isn't science. Teach it in the temple and I will be there with you. Teach it in a science class, and I will remove my children from your class. Make it a State-enforced requirement, and I will remove my family from the State. No negotiation.
The world today is filled with extremism. We are pumping these emotion-stirring positions into a system that amplifies them and gives them power over otherwise reasonable men and women. We do this at our peril. Any fool, whether foolish about religion, science, or their own relationship to God can see that. Fools that we are, if we wish to harm ourselves, this will achieve a fool's end.
Let the worshipper be known by that to which they live assimilate.
But I won't.
You see, every time anyone in America apologizes to the evangelicals, their extreme members use it to push their agendas harder. This is the only group I know of this side of the Moonies that have summer camps for preparing children to debate their agendas. I don't want that taught to my children. There are lots of parts of their agenda I oppose, but most of them can be debated without pulling the rest of the world into the debate.
Intelligent design is not science. It is religion. Science does not admit universal first cause. Why? Because this premise is not testable or verifiable. Once introduced, logical investigation stops. Competent well-trained scientists know this. Those who mix their faith into their technique of investigation, and science is technique, know this.
My position on the existence of God can be found all over my writings. My beliefs are as strong as they need to be. My relationship with God is not for anyone else to judge.
But I do not and cannot accept this thesis that attempts to beggar that relationship because some believe they can strengthen their own position with it. It adds nothing to my faith, and it detracts from the body of science.
In the past, when faced with the political agenda to create a unified faith in this country, the result was to build stocks on the village square. From that experience and others, we learned to separate our religion from our State, but this is not why intelligent design cannot be a subject for a science class. The thesis has no tests for proof and no proof offered adds knowledge that strengthens faith.
It isn't science. Teach it in the temple and I will be there with you. Teach it in a science class, and I will remove my children from your class. Make it a State-enforced requirement, and I will remove my family from the State. No negotiation.
The world today is filled with extremism. We are pumping these emotion-stirring positions into a system that amplifies them and gives them power over otherwise reasonable men and women. We do this at our peril. Any fool, whether foolish about religion, science, or their own relationship to God can see that. Fools that we are, if we wish to harm ourselves, this will achieve a fool's end.
Let the worshipper be known by that to which they live assimilate.
Getting Fed
Tim Bray is right, as usual.
If blogs, vlogs, mlogs, in other words, subscription systems are to grow faster, subscribing should be a one-click operation. On the other hand, the web is full of one-click nasties and if the XML icon is to be used for that operation, it should be safe. It seems to me, getting people to learn and trust the operation because they are fairly certain they can is the challenge.
Otherwise, yes: drive learning through the common interface convention. That is what hypertext has done best for decades.
If blogs, vlogs, mlogs, in other words, subscription systems are to grow faster, subscribing should be a one-click operation. On the other hand, the web is full of one-click nasties and if the XML icon is to be used for that operation, it should be safe. It seems to me, getting people to learn and trust the operation because they are fairly certain they can is the challenge.
Otherwise, yes: drive learning through the common interface convention. That is what hypertext has done best for decades.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Gas and The Suburban Warrior
My son turned 16 and I bought him a six cylinder car. Gas prices rise. My plan to keep him close to home is working.
Next year, you will see very poor people driving very nice previously owned SUVs. You will see very rich people driving very nice restored VW Beetles. There is a rough justice in that.
The men in my neighborhood are organizing group expeditions to Wal Mart and Home Depot on the weekends. Our wives are organizing whose lawn will be mowed on alternative weeks.
The beneficiaries of the gas prices are local TV stations. We can't afford to drive to the movie store, and we gave up on the movie industry last year anyway. Come to think of it, Hollywood is the one place in the nation that is truly low on gas.
I could take this seriously, but first I have to help repair my neighbor's push golf cart. In return, he is sharpening my wooden handle hedge clippers and swingblade. That's ok. The fellow across the street is blowing his leaves off his driveway.
The knee pads help.
Next year, you will see very poor people driving very nice previously owned SUVs. You will see very rich people driving very nice restored VW Beetles. There is a rough justice in that.
The men in my neighborhood are organizing group expeditions to Wal Mart and Home Depot on the weekends. Our wives are organizing whose lawn will be mowed on alternative weeks.
The beneficiaries of the gas prices are local TV stations. We can't afford to drive to the movie store, and we gave up on the movie industry last year anyway. Come to think of it, Hollywood is the one place in the nation that is truly low on gas.
I could take this seriously, but first I have to help repair my neighbor's push golf cart. In return, he is sharpening my wooden handle hedge clippers and swingblade. That's ok. The fellow across the street is blowing his leaves off his driveway.
The knee pads help.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
To The Canadians
When my country needed its friends, Peter Jenning's friendship was a great gift. For boys my age, he was a truthteller, the greatest gift that friendship gives. I grieve with you. We will remember our friend, for his goodness, his charm, and his wit but most importantly, his truth.
God, give Peter a job.
len
God, give Peter a job.
len
Doing Business in The Jungle
The fastest gazelle rises early to outrun the slowest gazelle.
The fastest lion rises early to chase the slowest gazelle.
The lazy hunter rises at noon, loads a gun, and shoots the fastest lion before shooting the slowest gazelle.
The slowest lion waits in the bush for the hunter to reload.
The crafty vulture patiently waits to feed on the slowest gazelle, the fastest lion, or the lazy hunter.
Be the middle gazelle.
The fastest lion rises early to chase the slowest gazelle.
The lazy hunter rises at noon, loads a gun, and shoots the fastest lion before shooting the slowest gazelle.
The slowest lion waits in the bush for the hunter to reload.
The crafty vulture patiently waits to feed on the slowest gazelle, the fastest lion, or the lazy hunter.
Be the middle gazelle.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Call Ray
Ray Brand
"master bluesman, saint, husband, father, friend, legend"
1946 - 2005
Look around this room at all these beautiful people
Holding on to what they've got and memories
All the times they came to play
All the loves they took away
All the fights they had when the night was bad
And the room was dead and the Man was short
Weren't we lucky?
And the Man that's laying there, He was a friend of ours
He could play the sweetest song you ever heard
He could make you cry or laugh
Set you on a better path
Teach you to play, show you his way
If you needed a friend you could talk to, you'd
Call Ray
Call Ray
He played your song and talked to you at the table
Never forgot the band or the till or the take
No matter who came his way
He had a cheerful thing to say
Not a word for dues just a powerful blues
And believe in the thing that you're doing,
Aren't you lucky?
So all of you saints and sinners and friends and lovers
Do one last gig for the man who cleared the way
As long as you play, you will always hear Ray
In your hands, in your hearts,
In the notes of the songs that you're bending
Call Ray
Call Ray
When the storm above your head's
Too warm to let it rain
When the face you see's too sad
To keep away the pain
There's a sound you want to hear
There's a hunger in your ear
There's an aching in your heart
That just won't go away
Call Ray
Len Bullard - Aug 03, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Ibn Abu Archie
As the British government works to create alliances with the British Muslim community, they take the path that the law is law for all citizens and not a minority. This approach that favors legal remedies was proposed in the United States post 9/11 but rejected loudly and derisively by the religious right and the neocons of the Republican Party. As recently as a month ago, their acknowledged spokesman, Karl Rove dismissed this strategy as weak just prior to being plunged into a scandal based in his own disregard for the law. At least he is consistent.
The danger in this thinking is summarized in the remark made in the run up to the 'war on terrorism', that it is 'our right wing religious nuts against their right wing religious nuts'. There are tempting parallels but I don't think that exactly catches the image I see and hear in the hallways of American business and private enterprise. It seems that since the return of the Republican Party to power and the September 11 tragedy, an old and comic figure has come to dominate the speech of the right wing: Archie Bunker is back. Archie was a comic figure as he emerged at the end of the period of social revolution of the 1960s, but coming at the beginning of one, he is a terrible omen.
I find him sitting at his desk with his door closed listening to the hate mongers such as Rush Limbaugh, who eerily resembles the religious instructor at a madrassa repeating the edicts of the illegitimate fatwa. His lack of deliberation has that same empty eyed 'challenge me not' purpose, accepting his fate and the fate of his enemies as he works his purpose: to unify believers, destroy non-believers, and make his office environment pure. He knows without purity of intent and action, we can never defeat our implacable adversaries because to understand them is to justify them, so any attempt to open our minds is to be resisted first with derision, and needs be finally, with force. He lives for that moment when his force can be felt because then he will be triumphant and pure before his God.
His law is the law of the presumption of might. He believes that we can have both peace and cheaper gas if we will just unleash our nuclear arsenal on the countries that oppose us. Unknowingly, he embraces the dark vision of his opposite number: the gates to paradise are under swords.
He is our worst enemy and he is us. He is Archie Bunker not simply telling Edith to 'stifle', but his fellow worker, his mates, his neighbor, his children's teachers, and if needs be, the opposition party. His way is right. His way is rule. All others are his enemies.
While Archie sits stewing listening to the fat man with the radio show, others are beginning to realize that rule of law is the best means to defeat terrorism. Terrorists are murderers. They are not freedom fighters and are not even devout Muslims because Muslims live under religious laws, the sharia and understand the hadith. Mohammed The Prophet was only a warrior for eight years of his life and he taught that even in war there are limits that cannot be trespassed without invoking the wrath of Allah. The members of al-Qaeda have trespassed and have no place in paradise. They have raised their sword against the innocent and in so doing, have violated both divine and human law. Their punishment is to die and their self-chosen destiny to suffer the agonies of eternal separation from the divine.
Here on Earth, we have the law of man and it is the best solution if it can be applied equally, transparently, and where just, mercifully. When the Bani Quraiza were judged by Sa'd bin Mu'adh, he judged them in accordance with their own law, the Torah. This is of importance: we have both international law and the law of the local countries.
Systems of justice are now supported by information systems. This is a business I know well because that is what my company provides. I do not speak for my company, but I do see the immediate potential of such systems as they are provided internationally. Where law can be made transparent, it can be applied equally and where just,mercifully. Where such systems are integrated with the ever growing surveillance systems as they are being, evidence becomes more difficult to obscure and available to all sides in a case. Where integrated with the open source intelligence systems now coming into being, they are incorporated into the deliberative systems that can make it possible for both religious lives and secular lives to be lived if not in perfect harmony, at least in constant reexamination and growth.
The danger is that all sides of the war on terror are enabling the fundamentalists, the Archie Bunkers to drive our deliberations. This is a terrible mistake because whether he sports a cigar and an old hat, or wears a khaftan and a scowel, he is always the same bigoted loudmouth terrorizing his family and his neighbor. We must see him for what he is and understand that in this circumstance, he is not a comic figure but the agent of Shaytan. He leads away from peace, paradise, and the righteous life lived under the law of God and Man, away from dar al Islam to dar al Karb.
The danger in this thinking is summarized in the remark made in the run up to the 'war on terrorism', that it is 'our right wing religious nuts against their right wing religious nuts'. There are tempting parallels but I don't think that exactly catches the image I see and hear in the hallways of American business and private enterprise. It seems that since the return of the Republican Party to power and the September 11 tragedy, an old and comic figure has come to dominate the speech of the right wing: Archie Bunker is back. Archie was a comic figure as he emerged at the end of the period of social revolution of the 1960s, but coming at the beginning of one, he is a terrible omen.
I find him sitting at his desk with his door closed listening to the hate mongers such as Rush Limbaugh, who eerily resembles the religious instructor at a madrassa repeating the edicts of the illegitimate fatwa. His lack of deliberation has that same empty eyed 'challenge me not' purpose, accepting his fate and the fate of his enemies as he works his purpose: to unify believers, destroy non-believers, and make his office environment pure. He knows without purity of intent and action, we can never defeat our implacable adversaries because to understand them is to justify them, so any attempt to open our minds is to be resisted first with derision, and needs be finally, with force. He lives for that moment when his force can be felt because then he will be triumphant and pure before his God.
His law is the law of the presumption of might. He believes that we can have both peace and cheaper gas if we will just unleash our nuclear arsenal on the countries that oppose us. Unknowingly, he embraces the dark vision of his opposite number: the gates to paradise are under swords.
He is our worst enemy and he is us. He is Archie Bunker not simply telling Edith to 'stifle', but his fellow worker, his mates, his neighbor, his children's teachers, and if needs be, the opposition party. His way is right. His way is rule. All others are his enemies.
While Archie sits stewing listening to the fat man with the radio show, others are beginning to realize that rule of law is the best means to defeat terrorism. Terrorists are murderers. They are not freedom fighters and are not even devout Muslims because Muslims live under religious laws, the sharia and understand the hadith. Mohammed The Prophet was only a warrior for eight years of his life and he taught that even in war there are limits that cannot be trespassed without invoking the wrath of Allah. The members of al-Qaeda have trespassed and have no place in paradise. They have raised their sword against the innocent and in so doing, have violated both divine and human law. Their punishment is to die and their self-chosen destiny to suffer the agonies of eternal separation from the divine.
Here on Earth, we have the law of man and it is the best solution if it can be applied equally, transparently, and where just, mercifully. When the Bani Quraiza were judged by Sa'd bin Mu'adh, he judged them in accordance with their own law, the Torah. This is of importance: we have both international law and the law of the local countries.
Systems of justice are now supported by information systems. This is a business I know well because that is what my company provides. I do not speak for my company, but I do see the immediate potential of such systems as they are provided internationally. Where law can be made transparent, it can be applied equally and where just,mercifully. Where such systems are integrated with the ever growing surveillance systems as they are being, evidence becomes more difficult to obscure and available to all sides in a case. Where integrated with the open source intelligence systems now coming into being, they are incorporated into the deliberative systems that can make it possible for both religious lives and secular lives to be lived if not in perfect harmony, at least in constant reexamination and growth.
The danger is that all sides of the war on terror are enabling the fundamentalists, the Archie Bunkers to drive our deliberations. This is a terrible mistake because whether he sports a cigar and an old hat, or wears a khaftan and a scowel, he is always the same bigoted loudmouth terrorizing his family and his neighbor. We must see him for what he is and understand that in this circumstance, he is not a comic figure but the agent of Shaytan. He leads away from peace, paradise, and the righteous life lived under the law of God and Man, away from dar al Islam to dar al Karb.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Deliberate Means
Today, President Bush changed his story. Now, he says if anyone in his administration has committed a crime, he will fire them. So one can be pretty certain that his lawyers have assured him that his buds, Karl and Libby, can't be convicted because by some technicality, they haven't committed crimes. But...
Rove & Co. outed a NOC: someone who volunteers to serve in deep cover overseas without diplomatic credentials, meaning if caught, disavowed by their own government and executed. Further, he and his destroyed a CIA front for deep cover operations during a time of war.
If you or I did that, we'd be in prison awaiting execution.
So the President's statements don't express a deeply moral position but I'm under no illusion about President George W. Bush and moral convictions. Yet this story hasn't played out. I was asked, what I thought and I replied,
"I think of 1973 and what happens when one starts pulling a thread on a carefully knitted sweater." The ghost of Tricky Dick visits George W. in the wee hours of the morning.
"So when will McCain dive into the fray. He has felt the lash of Rove's tongue?"
I wrote back, "If he is smart, when it formally becomes his obligation and not before. The lawyers are still parsing. Wait until the result tree is there to be deliberated, then strike like a black mamba."
A smart man is deliberate in his actions and his words. McCain was a naval officer and combat veteran. He is no fool about timing given a known enemy. He learned patience in many life experiences, not least of all, the Hanoi Hilton. He can wait.
The problem is we are at war and can't afford another zedGate. So this is a game that has to end without overtime or a Hail Mary pass. If Rove Inc has one ounce of patriotism, they will resign before the investigation is completed. Because they don't, we have to pray for their survival instincts to take over. All administrations end; thriving is a matter of what one does AFTER the next guy's innaugural. Traitors don't have careers on the salad circuit or sweet consultancies, so if the results of the investigation lead toward prosecution, their survival instincts may kick in.
How this plays out could make or break the next slate of presidential candidates on both sides. So they will be quite deliberate in their deliberations.
That word... hmm?
The press smells blood. If it bleeds, it leads. No moral required; just business. Rove can be hung by the very dynamic he has created, and that may not be justice, but it is bloody well karma.
What works for Rove also works for Jon Stewart. It is a matter of presentation.
Yep, that is Rove's problem. He is the master of the mirror image response. That is a proven tactic on the playground, but it works for anybody. Rove managed the evangelicals because they are conditioned to accept nonsense and the more fantastic the assertion, the more readily they accept it. The rest of the mammals like a good belly laugh. That works for Jon Stewart.
Presentation to the tastes of the audience matters. Is that deliberate? Sure. Is it democratic? Maybe it is just entertainment on both parts.
A good and dear friend writes to me and says
"Regarding Rove, et.al., the subject of a paper I am writing is the need for increased civic engagement and deliberative democracy. If the average person had any idea what goes on up there..."
Well, we engage often. We present, we communicate, but that word again... deliberation. Hmm?
Most people don't know who Rove is. They view politics as corrupt from jump, so a master at corruption looks like someone who is a master at cooking or knitting. They have to see something very graphic repeated before it rises to the forebrain to be considered pertinent to themselves. They sleep through their lives lulled by a 4/4 beat of consumption of mediocrity. Who can blame them? The truth is ugly. We can't be bothered to deliberate about what we don't believe we can change.
That word again...
She made an excellent point: a democratic process is deliberate. That is a precise term. It has meaning. It creates conviction. It exercises reason.
Let's deliberate...
I keep reading that it is important to understand what blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. have offered, that the citizen journalist can change the nature of modern democracies. I wonder if these technologies have offered any new fundamentals or merely changed the character of the existing processes of deliberation. For example, the fact that we can send email speeds up deliberations at a distance, but letter writing is an old and established means. Only the character changed, not the means.
Whereas it has been possible to control most media easily, these new media are not easy to control and they can be used by any participant with access to the Internet. So what? Niche positions emerge quickly.
Is that a fundamental change of means?
Some say that people get More Of What They Want To Know instead of diversity (think Fox News), thus fracturing the electorate, enabling them to be driven by sensationalized issues. In a sense, this is Yellow Journalism come back with a vengence. Success comes down to the strategy for establishing the belief in a system of distraction.
That is manipulation. It is NOT deliberation.
Rove builds a mirror image of any position his opponent takes and uses it to demean the issue into banality. He is able to smear without penalty because even if verified or denied, the damage is already done. Facts don't matter; he is using a non-linear model of recursive self-interests to create emotional perceptions of superiority. That is why the evangelicals are useful; they are conditioned to accept faith-based proclamations without argument and from there, it is easy to get them to accept nonsense of any kind. Goebbels 101: prepare the ground and plant The Big Lie.
Blogging seeds niche issues. Blogs and niche issues don't always have much effect because of a limited readership, but blogs are a testing ground for the talking points.
What succeeds best is a blog-inspired information chase picked up by a central medium. This is amplification. By co-opting blogs AND talk radio and stifling NPR, public radio and E-TV, they are creating a perception of solidarity. Is it real? Perhaps not, but it is effective because it distracts OR informs and it is hard to tell which on any given issue. Even if blogs catalyse and dissolve false positions, they also create support for them. The shared metric is acceleration. Once the talking points are vetted in a blog, it is simply a matter of presenting them in a mainstream media such as TV, then they take off.
Presentation is NOT deliberation.
Democracy is participative. The problem is an abundance of signal and few good reliable filters. I predict the near term result is fatigue. Information overload leads to the desire to opt-out but that isn't easy to do. People want to turn off the cellphones but discover they are addicted to the feed. They organized their lives and schedules around being always connected and now they can't easily disconnect. By participating, they become easy targets for information.
Infoglut is only suffered by gluttons.
In the long run, there is more information, some better information, and those who have a will to know can know... something and they can participate.... across borders. That is better. The influence of the global observers is felt. That is, British, Canadian, etc. citizens become part of the American political conversation, and given the role we play in their economies, they participate to help themselves. It isn't unselfish, but it is the wildcard limiting centralized attempts to steer the conversation with propaganda. The outsider by nationality can participate.
But it isn't entirely global.
In countries and cultures such as China, a different dynamic is emerging. They are using their economic clout to persuade technology vendors such as Microsoft to become partners in filtering the conversation to enable more centralized control. The question is, as the western powers observe this, will central planners attempt to do the same here? The average wirehead believes it is impossible to control the internet, but that is false. It is not only possible, it is reasonable to do so given that unfiltered communications also makes the invasion of privacy, stalking, identity theft, rise of hate groups, and so on more probable. Participation is dangerous.
Participation is NOT deliberation.
The politics of the 90s until now have been about the suppression of deliberation.
Communication is not deliberation. Presentation is not deliberation. Participation is not deliberation. Yet deliberation is the critical skill for participative democracy reliant on communication and presentation. What must be mastered is discriminating among these qualitatively as means to suppress deliberation and these as means to enable deliberation.
Democracy is not only communication, participation, or simply the global conversation. Emphasize the meaning of deliberation: a process of coming to a reasonable position BEFORE voting based on verification, critically noting the results, and continuing a deliberation with new facts. For that to work, one must be able to verify facts. The Internet has made it possible to both get facts and to work in community to verify facts, but it has also made it possible to create false and reasonable domains of interest that distract us just as television did and continues to do. In the end, the Internet is simply an amplifier; it is still the will of the listener to deliberate that settles issues shouted from a merely louder podium.
The short version of this long rant is this: democracy can only survive by mastering the critical ability to discriminate between the means of real deliberation and means that even while disguised as communication, are really means to suppress deliberation.
What about the web enhances deliberation?
An overlooked power of the web is the wikipedia and Answers.com, not the blogs, the podcasts, and the online newspages.
This is not Googling. This is the power to type in a word and instantly get back a definition and all of its available references. Awesome. The ability to 'look at all sides of a question' is the definition of deliberation. That I can find the definition faster may not change the nature of deliberation, but it sure as hell improves the speed and accuracy when the terms are there for everyone's immediate access so we can look at all sides of a question with the same shared meanings.
Those wise in the ways of power will become very aware of these online dictionaries and ontologies. Because these are edited by communities instead of authorities, they make a persuasive case for both the vox populi and the intelligensia.
When ANYONE can post and EVERYONE can edit, a new dynamic emerges and that is a qualitative change. That is participative, that communicates, and that convergence on a sharable, verifiable meaning, is deliberate.
Rove & Co. outed a NOC: someone who volunteers to serve in deep cover overseas without diplomatic credentials, meaning if caught, disavowed by their own government and executed. Further, he and his destroyed a CIA front for deep cover operations during a time of war.
If you or I did that, we'd be in prison awaiting execution.
So the President's statements don't express a deeply moral position but I'm under no illusion about President George W. Bush and moral convictions. Yet this story hasn't played out. I was asked, what I thought and I replied,
"I think of 1973 and what happens when one starts pulling a thread on a carefully knitted sweater." The ghost of Tricky Dick visits George W. in the wee hours of the morning.
"So when will McCain dive into the fray. He has felt the lash of Rove's tongue?"
I wrote back, "If he is smart, when it formally becomes his obligation and not before. The lawyers are still parsing. Wait until the result tree is there to be deliberated, then strike like a black mamba."
A smart man is deliberate in his actions and his words. McCain was a naval officer and combat veteran. He is no fool about timing given a known enemy. He learned patience in many life experiences, not least of all, the Hanoi Hilton. He can wait.
The problem is we are at war and can't afford another zedGate. So this is a game that has to end without overtime or a Hail Mary pass. If Rove Inc has one ounce of patriotism, they will resign before the investigation is completed. Because they don't, we have to pray for their survival instincts to take over. All administrations end; thriving is a matter of what one does AFTER the next guy's innaugural. Traitors don't have careers on the salad circuit or sweet consultancies, so if the results of the investigation lead toward prosecution, their survival instincts may kick in.
How this plays out could make or break the next slate of presidential candidates on both sides. So they will be quite deliberate in their deliberations.
That word... hmm?
The press smells blood. If it bleeds, it leads. No moral required; just business. Rove can be hung by the very dynamic he has created, and that may not be justice, but it is bloody well karma.
What works for Rove also works for Jon Stewart. It is a matter of presentation.
Yep, that is Rove's problem. He is the master of the mirror image response. That is a proven tactic on the playground, but it works for anybody. Rove managed the evangelicals because they are conditioned to accept nonsense and the more fantastic the assertion, the more readily they accept it. The rest of the mammals like a good belly laugh. That works for Jon Stewart.
Presentation to the tastes of the audience matters. Is that deliberate? Sure. Is it democratic? Maybe it is just entertainment on both parts.
A good and dear friend writes to me and says
"Regarding Rove, et.al., the subject of a paper I am writing is the need for increased civic engagement and deliberative democracy. If the average person had any idea what goes on up there..."
Well, we engage often. We present, we communicate, but that word again... deliberation. Hmm?
Most people don't know who Rove is. They view politics as corrupt from jump, so a master at corruption looks like someone who is a master at cooking or knitting. They have to see something very graphic repeated before it rises to the forebrain to be considered pertinent to themselves. They sleep through their lives lulled by a 4/4 beat of consumption of mediocrity. Who can blame them? The truth is ugly. We can't be bothered to deliberate about what we don't believe we can change.
That word again...
She made an excellent point: a democratic process is deliberate. That is a precise term. It has meaning. It creates conviction. It exercises reason.
Let's deliberate...
I keep reading that it is important to understand what blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. have offered, that the citizen journalist can change the nature of modern democracies. I wonder if these technologies have offered any new fundamentals or merely changed the character of the existing processes of deliberation. For example, the fact that we can send email speeds up deliberations at a distance, but letter writing is an old and established means. Only the character changed, not the means.
Whereas it has been possible to control most media easily, these new media are not easy to control and they can be used by any participant with access to the Internet. So what? Niche positions emerge quickly.
Is that a fundamental change of means?
Some say that people get More Of What They Want To Know instead of diversity (think Fox News), thus fracturing the electorate, enabling them to be driven by sensationalized issues. In a sense, this is Yellow Journalism come back with a vengence. Success comes down to the strategy for establishing the belief in a system of distraction.
That is manipulation. It is NOT deliberation.
Rove builds a mirror image of any position his opponent takes and uses it to demean the issue into banality. He is able to smear without penalty because even if verified or denied, the damage is already done. Facts don't matter; he is using a non-linear model of recursive self-interests to create emotional perceptions of superiority. That is why the evangelicals are useful; they are conditioned to accept faith-based proclamations without argument and from there, it is easy to get them to accept nonsense of any kind. Goebbels 101: prepare the ground and plant The Big Lie.
Blogging seeds niche issues. Blogs and niche issues don't always have much effect because of a limited readership, but blogs are a testing ground for the talking points.
What succeeds best is a blog-inspired information chase picked up by a central medium. This is amplification. By co-opting blogs AND talk radio and stifling NPR, public radio and E-TV, they are creating a perception of solidarity. Is it real? Perhaps not, but it is effective because it distracts OR informs and it is hard to tell which on any given issue. Even if blogs catalyse and dissolve false positions, they also create support for them. The shared metric is acceleration. Once the talking points are vetted in a blog, it is simply a matter of presenting them in a mainstream media such as TV, then they take off.
Presentation is NOT deliberation.
Democracy is participative. The problem is an abundance of signal and few good reliable filters. I predict the near term result is fatigue. Information overload leads to the desire to opt-out but that isn't easy to do. People want to turn off the cellphones but discover they are addicted to the feed. They organized their lives and schedules around being always connected and now they can't easily disconnect. By participating, they become easy targets for information.
Infoglut is only suffered by gluttons.
In the long run, there is more information, some better information, and those who have a will to know can know... something and they can participate.... across borders. That is better. The influence of the global observers is felt. That is, British, Canadian, etc. citizens become part of the American political conversation, and given the role we play in their economies, they participate to help themselves. It isn't unselfish, but it is the wildcard limiting centralized attempts to steer the conversation with propaganda. The outsider by nationality can participate.
But it isn't entirely global.
In countries and cultures such as China, a different dynamic is emerging. They are using their economic clout to persuade technology vendors such as Microsoft to become partners in filtering the conversation to enable more centralized control. The question is, as the western powers observe this, will central planners attempt to do the same here? The average wirehead believes it is impossible to control the internet, but that is false. It is not only possible, it is reasonable to do so given that unfiltered communications also makes the invasion of privacy, stalking, identity theft, rise of hate groups, and so on more probable. Participation is dangerous.
Participation is NOT deliberation.
The politics of the 90s until now have been about the suppression of deliberation.
Communication is not deliberation. Presentation is not deliberation. Participation is not deliberation. Yet deliberation is the critical skill for participative democracy reliant on communication and presentation. What must be mastered is discriminating among these qualitatively as means to suppress deliberation and these as means to enable deliberation.
Democracy is not only communication, participation, or simply the global conversation. Emphasize the meaning of deliberation: a process of coming to a reasonable position BEFORE voting based on verification, critically noting the results, and continuing a deliberation with new facts. For that to work, one must be able to verify facts. The Internet has made it possible to both get facts and to work in community to verify facts, but it has also made it possible to create false and reasonable domains of interest that distract us just as television did and continues to do. In the end, the Internet is simply an amplifier; it is still the will of the listener to deliberate that settles issues shouted from a merely louder podium.
The short version of this long rant is this: democracy can only survive by mastering the critical ability to discriminate between the means of real deliberation and means that even while disguised as communication, are really means to suppress deliberation.
What about the web enhances deliberation?
An overlooked power of the web is the wikipedia and Answers.com, not the blogs, the podcasts, and the online newspages.
This is not Googling. This is the power to type in a word and instantly get back a definition and all of its available references. Awesome. The ability to 'look at all sides of a question' is the definition of deliberation. That I can find the definition faster may not change the nature of deliberation, but it sure as hell improves the speed and accuracy when the terms are there for everyone's immediate access so we can look at all sides of a question with the same shared meanings.
Those wise in the ways of power will become very aware of these online dictionaries and ontologies. Because these are edited by communities instead of authorities, they make a persuasive case for both the vox populi and the intelligensia.
When ANYONE can post and EVERYONE can edit, a new dynamic emerges and that is a qualitative change. That is participative, that communicates, and that convergence on a sharable, verifiable meaning, is deliberate.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Reason Is Not Treason
With the recent London bombings, Tim Bray quotes from CNN,
“Authorities across the United States worked to increase security on subways, trains, and other potential targets...”.
then goes on to comment, "That’s really, really stupid. If someone wants to kill you so badly that he doesn’t mind dying in the process, chances are he’s probably going to get you, and a few more cops on the subway aren’t going to help."
Here we disagree. Cops help. Surveillance helps. There is a considerable amount of technology and human resources one can apply to secure mass transit systems. XML, for one. We of the markup community created the core technology for the systems to be applied to global terrorism. Will our technology stop all of the terrorist acts? Never has, but it reduces their severity, intensity and frequency. A sad fact of war, and this is a war, is that it isn't about saving everyone; it is about denying an enemy their chosen target.
My friend goes on:
"My other radical suggestion—which some will denounce as treason—is to work harder at figuring out the “Why?” of it."
Reasoned inquiry and learning is never treason. If one believes the published writings, reasons range from reestablishing a worldwide Caliphate under Muslim law to driving the US out of the Middle East. To the first, that won't happen so we are beyond reason here. To the second, that will happen anyway.
"...when something is driving enough people into insane belief systems that we see regular explosions in our cities, it would be smart to care—a lot—what that something is. Because, on the evidence, I don’t think the leaders of the Western world have a clue."
This is the nut of it: I don't think it is one thing. I believe on the evidence one will find it is many reasons, some fantasy, some an expression of deep discomfort with life as they lead it now. Which is to say, it is not that people adopt insane belief systems that mystifies me. That is common enough. It is that sane people give them support, and for our leaders in the West to change this, they must find and work with these people and change their attitudes about the worthyness of supporting the insane actions of the few.
When the reality of the Palestinian living conditions are brought to the screen, they are compared to the Israeli lifestyle. The Israelis built their country of their own effort. Whose effort improves the conditions of the Palestinians? One thing I've observed in my half century on this rock, when living conditions are made better by the effort of those who live in a place, they seek to keep that place safe. Golda Meir said it best: "When we love our children more than we hate each other."
Some think the Middle East is a culture committed to its own destruction. That's baloney. That is the mote in the eye of the West, and by our own experience, we know that this can change. Thirty years ago, the Russians and the Chinese were a Red Peril. Today they are cagey economic allies working to get a bigger slice of the global economy. The streets of Beijing are not filled with soldiers. It is filled with businessmen. One doesn't read about Great Leaps Forward. One reads about pressuring the US Congress to allow the sail of UNOCAL to Beijing. One reads about the reforms in the banking systems.
Where the West and George W. Bush are blowing it is in creating extra-Middle Eastern terrorists. The next wave will be Caucasians, Western European, the dissatisfied of the well-off seeking a purpose and finding it in the call to worship and the slums of the inner cities. Terrorism is cheap, and as warfare goes, not that challenging. Slaughter of innocents is the easy means to stay in the game. But that game builds no dams, improves no banks, feeds no hungry, frees no prisoner. It is only death come to speak for the disgrace of hunger and powerlessness through the acts of the demented.
This can change for the better. It always has. Through the long slog from global threats of anilhilation to this taste of terror as we board a bus, the one constant has been when someone has more to lose, they work harder to keep what they have. It is a simplistic analysis, but I believe by experience, it is the surest path to a day when we will be able to turn off the cameras.
But until that day comes, be prepared for a world where every act on every public stage is real time hyperdistributed, cataloged, indexed, and analyszed. May we, if we learn nothing else from this experience which is new in human history, the truth about ourselves.
“Authorities across the United States worked to increase security on subways, trains, and other potential targets...”.
then goes on to comment, "That’s really, really stupid. If someone wants to kill you so badly that he doesn’t mind dying in the process, chances are he’s probably going to get you, and a few more cops on the subway aren’t going to help."
Here we disagree. Cops help. Surveillance helps. There is a considerable amount of technology and human resources one can apply to secure mass transit systems. XML, for one. We of the markup community created the core technology for the systems to be applied to global terrorism. Will our technology stop all of the terrorist acts? Never has, but it reduces their severity, intensity and frequency. A sad fact of war, and this is a war, is that it isn't about saving everyone; it is about denying an enemy their chosen target.
My friend goes on:
"My other radical suggestion—which some will denounce as treason—is to work harder at figuring out the “Why?” of it."
Reasoned inquiry and learning is never treason. If one believes the published writings, reasons range from reestablishing a worldwide Caliphate under Muslim law to driving the US out of the Middle East. To the first, that won't happen so we are beyond reason here. To the second, that will happen anyway.
"...when something is driving enough people into insane belief systems that we see regular explosions in our cities, it would be smart to care—a lot—what that something is. Because, on the evidence, I don’t think the leaders of the Western world have a clue."
This is the nut of it: I don't think it is one thing. I believe on the evidence one will find it is many reasons, some fantasy, some an expression of deep discomfort with life as they lead it now. Which is to say, it is not that people adopt insane belief systems that mystifies me. That is common enough. It is that sane people give them support, and for our leaders in the West to change this, they must find and work with these people and change their attitudes about the worthyness of supporting the insane actions of the few.
When the reality of the Palestinian living conditions are brought to the screen, they are compared to the Israeli lifestyle. The Israelis built their country of their own effort. Whose effort improves the conditions of the Palestinians? One thing I've observed in my half century on this rock, when living conditions are made better by the effort of those who live in a place, they seek to keep that place safe. Golda Meir said it best: "When we love our children more than we hate each other."
Some think the Middle East is a culture committed to its own destruction. That's baloney. That is the mote in the eye of the West, and by our own experience, we know that this can change. Thirty years ago, the Russians and the Chinese were a Red Peril. Today they are cagey economic allies working to get a bigger slice of the global economy. The streets of Beijing are not filled with soldiers. It is filled with businessmen. One doesn't read about Great Leaps Forward. One reads about pressuring the US Congress to allow the sail of UNOCAL to Beijing. One reads about the reforms in the banking systems.
Where the West and George W. Bush are blowing it is in creating extra-Middle Eastern terrorists. The next wave will be Caucasians, Western European, the dissatisfied of the well-off seeking a purpose and finding it in the call to worship and the slums of the inner cities. Terrorism is cheap, and as warfare goes, not that challenging. Slaughter of innocents is the easy means to stay in the game. But that game builds no dams, improves no banks, feeds no hungry, frees no prisoner. It is only death come to speak for the disgrace of hunger and powerlessness through the acts of the demented.
This can change for the better. It always has. Through the long slog from global threats of anilhilation to this taste of terror as we board a bus, the one constant has been when someone has more to lose, they work harder to keep what they have. It is a simplistic analysis, but I believe by experience, it is the surest path to a day when we will be able to turn off the cameras.
But until that day comes, be prepared for a world where every act on every public stage is real time hyperdistributed, cataloged, indexed, and analyszed. May we, if we learn nothing else from this experience which is new in human history, the truth about ourselves.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Five Days of Independence
Five days of independence... no gig, no job, a lawn, a picnic, two days of old friends, old movies, one more song in the can.
My son tells me he is becoming disillusioned. At sixteen, I say, that's normal. You are comparing your values with the values of the world, thus, discovering your own values.
That's a good thing.
Will it get better, Dad, and how long?
It will and I don't know. Our culture phases, and so do our relationships. They will swing about as far as they swung. The important bit is what you are doing now: learning about your own values.
Five days of independence. My country is divided. Some say our religious values and our politics are too far apart. Some say they are too mixed. I don't think that is the problem. I think our values are too far from our hearts, our own values too far from our own desires. We've let symbols, wealth, and politics become too centralized and forgotten that it is the single human heart that chooses good, evil, truth, falsity, fidelity, cause and compassion. We believe stories that make us comfortable or resigned and forget that we should be about changing ourselves because that is ALWAYS within our power.
My independence is that I may choose for heartfelt reasons, or for mindfulness, but that in this land, these can be the same for not man nor government may force that choice from me. The beliefs that divide us may divide us from each other, but the heart that chooses against itself chooses a broken heart.
Those who seek power through our hearts seek wisely because that is where power is to be found in politics, but the mind of the broken hearted turns away from the politics of power yielded to power wielded. When democracies cry, change comes.
My son tells me he is becoming disillusioned. At sixteen, I say, that's normal. You are comparing your values with the values of the world, thus, discovering your own values.
That's a good thing.
Will it get better, Dad, and how long?
It will and I don't know. Our culture phases, and so do our relationships. They will swing about as far as they swung. The important bit is what you are doing now: learning about your own values.
Five days of independence. My country is divided. Some say our religious values and our politics are too far apart. Some say they are too mixed. I don't think that is the problem. I think our values are too far from our hearts, our own values too far from our own desires. We've let symbols, wealth, and politics become too centralized and forgotten that it is the single human heart that chooses good, evil, truth, falsity, fidelity, cause and compassion. We believe stories that make us comfortable or resigned and forget that we should be about changing ourselves because that is ALWAYS within our power.
My independence is that I may choose for heartfelt reasons, or for mindfulness, but that in this land, these can be the same for not man nor government may force that choice from me. The beliefs that divide us may divide us from each other, but the heart that chooses against itself chooses a broken heart.
Those who seek power through our hearts seek wisely because that is where power is to be found in politics, but the mind of the broken hearted turns away from the politics of power yielded to power wielded. When democracies cry, change comes.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Bewitched: The Movie
We saw the movie tonight. It sucks.
Hollywood threw all of the talent, wit and ideas at the movie they could devise, and it still sucks.
Some things can only be made of a time and a place and one true love. Liz Montgomery loved Bill Asher and he her. Between them, they could make Bewitched in the light of that love. Some of the best episodes are when Liz is pregnant with her children, and certainly the first two seasons. It doesn't translate to today and it can't be made again because it isn't honest, and it isn't Liz and Bill.
Somehow that makes me glad.
Magic is real. Maybe that is the point of the movie and that is the best they can do is make that point: magic only happens to people in love.
Hollywood threw all of the talent, wit and ideas at the movie they could devise, and it still sucks.
Some things can only be made of a time and a place and one true love. Liz Montgomery loved Bill Asher and he her. Between them, they could make Bewitched in the light of that love. Some of the best episodes are when Liz is pregnant with her children, and certainly the first two seasons. It doesn't translate to today and it can't be made again because it isn't honest, and it isn't Liz and Bill.
Somehow that makes me glad.
Magic is real. Maybe that is the point of the movie and that is the best they can do is make that point: magic only happens to people in love.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Ingrid Bergman
In the roles they choose, their screen time, and the spaces within which they perform, actresses use light to accomplish their goals. Some would be "Sister Mary Benedict" or "Golda", a passionate saint or a leader of nations, while others, are merely "Ilse" dutifully flying beyond the fog
"... not today or even tomorrow but soon and for the rest of your life..."
only to become "Maria" for whom
"... it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest."
yet for herself, Ingrid Bergman chose to live a passionate life because she knew that a passionate light illuminates a life even as it wanes. A dutiful light illuminates the moment of discharging that duty otherwise casting no shadow nor making clear the way for any other act.
Time and space pilfer light. The bitterness of the dutiful choice is to finally understand that all we get is old.
"... not today or even tomorrow but soon and for the rest of your life..."
only to become "Maria" for whom
"... it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest."
yet for herself, Ingrid Bergman chose to live a passionate life because she knew that a passionate light illuminates a life even as it wanes. A dutiful light illuminates the moment of discharging that duty otherwise casting no shadow nor making clear the way for any other act.
Time and space pilfer light. The bitterness of the dutiful choice is to finally understand that all we get is old.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Revenge of The Sith
Revenge of the Sith is a GREAT movie. Of it's genre, it's one of the very best. No polemic required; the packed movie house and the cheering says it all. Vox populi. Buy a bag of popcorn and a giant belly buster of a cola and sit with your kids for a few hours of pure thrills.
Of course, the ultra right will see that differently and applaud its critics. That is expected. Their inability to relax and enjoy the ride is totally in character. That's why they wear ties: it keeps their heads attached when their hearts are trying to gnaw their red necks off.
"So that is how liberty dies: to the sound of thunderous applause."
Well said, Lucas.
len
Of course, the ultra right will see that differently and applaud its critics. That is expected. Their inability to relax and enjoy the ride is totally in character. That's why they wear ties: it keeps their heads attached when their hearts are trying to gnaw their red necks off.
"So that is how liberty dies: to the sound of thunderous applause."
Well said, Lucas.
len
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Advice for College Graduates
It's not who dies with the most toys that wins, but who has the most fun with their toys while they are alive.
Swing for the fences, but don't be ashamed to be walked to first base.
Wealth without fame is slightly boring, but fame without wealth is surprisingly dangerous.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; so, sell the bird and buy the bush.
Good looks vs good cook: cooking can improve with practice.
A map of popular trends looks like a map of soil erosion for exactly the same reasons.
The surest way to get more of the same is to keep getting it from the same source.
Better is the enemy of More.
Swing for the fences, but don't be ashamed to be walked to first base.
Wealth without fame is slightly boring, but fame without wealth is surprisingly dangerous.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; so, sell the bird and buy the bush.
Good looks vs good cook: cooking can improve with practice.
A map of popular trends looks like a map of soil erosion for exactly the same reasons.
The surest way to get more of the same is to keep getting it from the same source.
Better is the enemy of More.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
A Get Out Of Hell for Free Ticket
A good day at work is when the CEO calls all of the developers and staff in and says, "I'm putting you all back together as one team. Let the code flow."
Today was such a day. Praise the Lord Almighty; change at last.
Verticals in small companies make for good bookkeeping but bad development. Too many product lines emerge and given platforms, versions, customer domains and the local politics of sales and development, it doesn't make for a merged set of services, and more importantly, a sharable codebase. As Jack Welch taught GE, the goal of enterprise engineering is to take OUT work.
The first and last bit of business is product. No idea no plan no product no customer no pay. Services are in the long tail, but they don't have a network effect. Timely innovation is where the risks are and all the fun.
The essential challenge is the codebase. No d'oh. Even if a software company is not publishing open source, within it's own IP and contractural boundaries, it must practice open source to reduce the semantic load from the applications. Uncertainty is proportional to semantic load, thus the high cost of reliable customer-specific adaptations. Where cost == features, features lose unless the business model is features. Customizations cost, implementations cost, conversions, new forms, new interfaces to old systems, help desks, technical documentation, all are features with costs. You Mr. Customer, get to choose what you want.
"Speed is money, how fast can you afford to go?" (Ron Harlow)
Some dumb costs:
1. Rich formatted printed forms designed to reduce the size of a file cabinet but obsolete in the digital age. Yeah, I know about the law and printed forms, but really, get over it. You are out in the range of 10k to 20k to get one from a vendor given a complex report. Simplify.
2. Interfaces to legacy systems. This is unavoidable for ecologically active software environments. Do work with the IT staff to work out with the vendor how to phase this better. Beat the everloving tarnation out of the vendors who refuse to work with you on this. Remember, you pay for it.
3. Multiple languages and platforms are the maximum contributor to dumb costs in software development. Specialty languages seldom are. On the other hand, in an active web environment, failing to master the skill of XML application language development and implementation and not just the standard implementation of a standard vocabulary is failing to master survival. Tags are local even if they are not.
If you are an IT wonk, do the software hood a favor: read the RFPs the contracts wonks are publishing. Show some nuts and insist on taking out the excess. Simpler is more reliable. Cheaper too in most cases.
If shooting consultants is necessary to achieve this, party on. Consultants are just salesmen in lawyer's clothes; bounties vary. I'm not saying consultants aren't useful, but use them wisely, then feed them to a tank of piranha. Fast replacement rates strengthen species.
If there is a lesson to the last of the big ticket big iron vendors from the lowly but doing ok web developers, it is this: less. Use the basic web languages to do as much of the work as you can. The tradeoff of rich vs reach is not just a tradeoff with your customer but within your codebase. You trade on opportunity and cost when you deal in complexity as a barrier to competition.
Today was such a day. Praise the Lord Almighty; change at last.
Verticals in small companies make for good bookkeeping but bad development. Too many product lines emerge and given platforms, versions, customer domains and the local politics of sales and development, it doesn't make for a merged set of services, and more importantly, a sharable codebase. As Jack Welch taught GE, the goal of enterprise engineering is to take OUT work.
The first and last bit of business is product. No idea no plan no product no customer no pay. Services are in the long tail, but they don't have a network effect. Timely innovation is where the risks are and all the fun.
The essential challenge is the codebase. No d'oh. Even if a software company is not publishing open source, within it's own IP and contractural boundaries, it must practice open source to reduce the semantic load from the applications. Uncertainty is proportional to semantic load, thus the high cost of reliable customer-specific adaptations. Where cost == features, features lose unless the business model is features. Customizations cost, implementations cost, conversions, new forms, new interfaces to old systems, help desks, technical documentation, all are features with costs. You Mr. Customer, get to choose what you want.
"Speed is money, how fast can you afford to go?" (Ron Harlow)
Some dumb costs:
1. Rich formatted printed forms designed to reduce the size of a file cabinet but obsolete in the digital age. Yeah, I know about the law and printed forms, but really, get over it. You are out in the range of 10k to 20k to get one from a vendor given a complex report. Simplify.
2. Interfaces to legacy systems. This is unavoidable for ecologically active software environments. Do work with the IT staff to work out with the vendor how to phase this better. Beat the everloving tarnation out of the vendors who refuse to work with you on this. Remember, you pay for it.
3. Multiple languages and platforms are the maximum contributor to dumb costs in software development. Specialty languages seldom are. On the other hand, in an active web environment, failing to master the skill of XML application language development and implementation and not just the standard implementation of a standard vocabulary is failing to master survival. Tags are local even if they are not.
If you are an IT wonk, do the software hood a favor: read the RFPs the contracts wonks are publishing. Show some nuts and insist on taking out the excess. Simpler is more reliable. Cheaper too in most cases.
If shooting consultants is necessary to achieve this, party on. Consultants are just salesmen in lawyer's clothes; bounties vary. I'm not saying consultants aren't useful, but use them wisely, then feed them to a tank of piranha. Fast replacement rates strengthen species.
If there is a lesson to the last of the big ticket big iron vendors from the lowly but doing ok web developers, it is this: less. Use the basic web languages to do as much of the work as you can. The tradeoff of rich vs reach is not just a tradeoff with your customer but within your codebase. You trade on opportunity and cost when you deal in complexity as a barrier to competition.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Remixing History
This is proof that the remixing of history is alive and well on the web, and that there are very talented funny people with far too much time on their hands or on their shirts. So there it is; the mockumentary that Ken Burns was too wussy to make: the faux history of
the Old Negro Space Program.
Some things the Internet made possible should be impossible possibly.
the Old Negro Space Program.
Some things the Internet made possible should be impossible possibly.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
A Quantum Riff On God
Light is in superposition to the observable universe.
It is continuous therefore to the discrete observer, constant and indivisible, so waveform. Lightspeed is the observable and measurable.
It is the measurements that are discrete and create the illusion of the particle universe.
Observations are made at will.
What is the role of choice in semantic loading?
What are the rights of the chooser?
What are the rights of the chosen?
Whence comes the will to choose?
Whence comes the knowing of choice?
Uncertainty increases proportionally to semantic load.
Simplification reduces uncertainty. It does not induce choice.
It increases the particularity of choice. Choice is particulate.
Infinity is continuous and everywhere the same.
We evolved to be particulate so to measure infinities.
Faith evolved so we could be conscious that we are infinite.
We are light.
What is faith that it gives light the power know itself?
It is the choice to love.
Light gives up the infinite to know that choice.
So we become particulate, to be measured by the immortal light
that thereby knows itself yet always is itself.
One.
It is continuous therefore to the discrete observer, constant and indivisible, so waveform. Lightspeed is the observable and measurable.
It is the measurements that are discrete and create the illusion of the particle universe.
Observations are made at will.
What is the role of choice in semantic loading?
What are the rights of the chooser?
What are the rights of the chosen?
Whence comes the will to choose?
Whence comes the knowing of choice?
Uncertainty increases proportionally to semantic load.
Simplification reduces uncertainty. It does not induce choice.
It increases the particularity of choice. Choice is particulate.
Infinity is continuous and everywhere the same.
We evolved to be particulate so to measure infinities.
Faith evolved so we could be conscious that we are infinite.
We are light.
What is faith that it gives light the power know itself?
It is the choice to love.
Light gives up the infinite to know that choice.
So we become particulate, to be measured by the immortal light
that thereby knows itself yet always is itself.
One.
Jane Fonda
No one will tell the story of Jane Fonda better than she tells it. Her life has been one of privilege and searching and now of faith. That is altogether a good life. Along the way, she crossed paths with many other lives great, small, privileged and simply searching too.
When I saw Jane Fonda she was speaking at our university in my hometown. I was a high school ROTC cadet dressed in my Army green watching a tall unadorned woman in her shag haircut looking as if she had just stepped off the set of Klute. Her voice was strong, her convictions firm, and she spoke the truth of what she had seen in Southeast Asia, giving voice to what we all knew even if we did not want to say it, that the war was wrong, that people were dieing for reasons that made no sense, and that it was our responsibility to say no. This speech hit home. I returned to the ROTC class the next day with questions for my instructors, questions they could not answer, did not like, yet could not turn away easily from an earnest if far too young cadet.
Regardless of what others think of her, Hanoi Jane, a traitor, a fool, a shallow actress who did not realize that the same media that made her famous could make her hated, Jane Fonda spoke the truth. In that one moment of her life, she stepped up to her convictions and responsibility. She used her privilege and her wealth and her stardom to go to the heart of the conflict and find the truth for herself. Then she used those same qualities to come home and tell her generation of which she was the first and I was the last, that truth. In that moment, if she was foolish, she was also brave, and if she was believed to be a traitor, she was also believed to be a true American. While I was willing to take that step in my uniform, willing to go, because of Jane Fonda, I knew it was wrong. Because of Jane Fonda and those like her who had a truth to tell, before that time came, the war was over. However else she is viewed, she, the first of my generation, saved the last.
The core of American values is independent initiative. By our own initiative, we set out with whatever strength and position and privilege we have to find the truth as well as it can be obtained by one person. If we have that value, then we also have the strength to tell that truth to others, for it is the moment we share, our place in time and history, and our responsibility is to the others who share that moment. This may not be uniquely American, just merely human. But not all Americans or all humans have the strength to seize that moment and present that truth. Jane Fonda has and did and will.
Thirty years on, long after the bombs have stopped falling on the rice paddies, long after the thump thump thump of the Huey blades have quit sounding there, they sound elsewhere. Whatever it is we learn from our moments, however we share the truths we find in them, another generation from first to last will be born and live out their moments. One wishes they would learn the truths of the generations that have come before them, but often they do not and that is another sad truth my generation learns from the present.
I wish that for this generation, a Jane Fonda would come to their university and tell them a truth, a truth to give them questions to take back to their classrooms, for evidently, there are few answers we can share but we can share our questions.
Thirty years on, as the time comes that it may be my son or my daughter's time to go, I thank Ms. Fonda. Thank you for sharing a truth in a moment and a time long ago, but unfortunately, not so far away. You are American, you are of your generation, and you are one of the best of us. Thank you for sharing your truth. It did not come without cost or hurt, but it was generously given and gratefully acknowledged.
When I saw Jane Fonda she was speaking at our university in my hometown. I was a high school ROTC cadet dressed in my Army green watching a tall unadorned woman in her shag haircut looking as if she had just stepped off the set of Klute. Her voice was strong, her convictions firm, and she spoke the truth of what she had seen in Southeast Asia, giving voice to what we all knew even if we did not want to say it, that the war was wrong, that people were dieing for reasons that made no sense, and that it was our responsibility to say no. This speech hit home. I returned to the ROTC class the next day with questions for my instructors, questions they could not answer, did not like, yet could not turn away easily from an earnest if far too young cadet.
Regardless of what others think of her, Hanoi Jane, a traitor, a fool, a shallow actress who did not realize that the same media that made her famous could make her hated, Jane Fonda spoke the truth. In that one moment of her life, she stepped up to her convictions and responsibility. She used her privilege and her wealth and her stardom to go to the heart of the conflict and find the truth for herself. Then she used those same qualities to come home and tell her generation of which she was the first and I was the last, that truth. In that moment, if she was foolish, she was also brave, and if she was believed to be a traitor, she was also believed to be a true American. While I was willing to take that step in my uniform, willing to go, because of Jane Fonda, I knew it was wrong. Because of Jane Fonda and those like her who had a truth to tell, before that time came, the war was over. However else she is viewed, she, the first of my generation, saved the last.
The core of American values is independent initiative. By our own initiative, we set out with whatever strength and position and privilege we have to find the truth as well as it can be obtained by one person. If we have that value, then we also have the strength to tell that truth to others, for it is the moment we share, our place in time and history, and our responsibility is to the others who share that moment. This may not be uniquely American, just merely human. But not all Americans or all humans have the strength to seize that moment and present that truth. Jane Fonda has and did and will.
Thirty years on, long after the bombs have stopped falling on the rice paddies, long after the thump thump thump of the Huey blades have quit sounding there, they sound elsewhere. Whatever it is we learn from our moments, however we share the truths we find in them, another generation from first to last will be born and live out their moments. One wishes they would learn the truths of the generations that have come before them, but often they do not and that is another sad truth my generation learns from the present.
I wish that for this generation, a Jane Fonda would come to their university and tell them a truth, a truth to give them questions to take back to their classrooms, for evidently, there are few answers we can share but we can share our questions.
Thirty years on, as the time comes that it may be my son or my daughter's time to go, I thank Ms. Fonda. Thank you for sharing a truth in a moment and a time long ago, but unfortunately, not so far away. You are American, you are of your generation, and you are one of the best of us. Thank you for sharing your truth. It did not come without cost or hurt, but it was generously given and gratefully acknowledged.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Bewitched: The Movie
It has a chance. Nora Ephron did crack a way to do the story without Liz: by not doing that character, just her situation. That might work.
No one will do Sam and Serena better than Elizabeth Montgomery. She was the magic. Great beauty always is, and if it comes with a disposition to love, it is eternal as well.
No one will do Sam and Serena better than Elizabeth Montgomery. She was the magic. Great beauty always is, and if it comes with a disposition to love, it is eternal as well.
3D Chat: Why VRML Lives
3D chat is the reason VRML97 still lives. For some people, the technology is a passion and a tool. For the VRMLers, the dream is cyberspace and that dream gives the builders a passion to build. VRML collects only some 3D graphics artists, but it collects a very dedicated group of worldbuilders.
And boy, can these people build. Not just game worlds, but parks you want to walk in, forests with tree houses that look out over a sea of islands floating past in the air, malls, museums, stores, exotic secret hideaways by a sea of green and a great big moon, with the sounds of passion in the air. People go there together and enjoy the scenery. It is as if TV let you choose a location, and you can go be with whoever is there and talk about whatever you like.
Quite a dream really.
And wow! They've done it. Those worlds are out there to be explored courtesy of the worldbuilders that just would not give up on their vision. Gibsonian cyberspace was not about the power of the dream, it was about the willingness to dream together, to be together in a dream. Presence.
It is the powerful magic of not being alone.
In the last few years, quite under the radar of the snifly press and the powerful pundits, VRML found its niche: 3D chat. The dream of the 3D junkie is to be able to communicate in a natural language of the humans: bodily gesture and motion in a local space. While the database designers have sought metaphors for tables and rows that store numbers for business, the worldbuilders worked to create environments and objects that resemble what the tables and rows only count and remember.
Human bodily gestures convey emotion, and therefore entangle the viewer. By enabling the avatar in the database, the human viewer intuits intimacy. The human craves intimacy.
So where some dismiss this use of VRML, claiming 3D chat is a waste of bandwidth, I ask you, have you tried it?
I have.
1) It does work as a collaborative space. The use of media types for shared texts combined with the 3D avatar and synth-enabled chat provides sufficient eyeball bandwidth to carry on a real time event. Some say chat is sufficient. I dispute that. Why? Again, the gestures of the avatar provide sufficient onset cues to entangle the human in the conversation emotionally. The chat text keeps them focused if they practice the protocol needed for the chat event. To wit: in a meeting stick to meeting topics and follow the leader. In the square, it's your party.
2) As collaborative spaces go, this is very cheap server technology. A combination of this and RSS would go a long ways toward being an interesting dispatch system given the right document types. Given more online integrated editors, it becomes a cheap 3D library of reusable integratible types. Standards have their benefits. The game industry may not need them, but the non-game industry needs them badly to get costs in line with benefits.
3) The claim that the media is data-costly was true. However, lidar mapping, aerial mapping, and other means of getting that data both in geo-GPS form and in the neartime sampled singals are completely adequate to get resolution in a usable form of reality. It is a cheap means to provide a fused view system of the feeds.
4) Immersive 3D space does not vanish given loss of real-time sensors. Given near time fidelity, presence is simulable.
5) The key term is presence. Creating presence is the secret to command and control.
3D representation enables the UI designer to lose fidelity while clarifying intent, thus allowing the human to focus on more objects even if direct access to available details is slowed. Presence is not the absence of fidelity; it is the fidelity of what is left. Real time 3D cues organize the mind spatially and temporally. Spatial and temporal components couple to the signs expressed in 3D to enhance attention.
Attention is presence.
The second reason is simpler: Joy. The VRMLers build worlds they want to be in, worlds in which the language they want to speak and see, the language of smile, wave, bow, point, flip, turn, fly, walk, jump to, and beyond, the repetoire of human movement in space and time, are performed. If the great Wizards don't get it yet, the VRMLers do: human expression is enjoyed. Add that to chat, and you get a nicely coupled system.
Oh, yes, and the best reason VRML lives:
6) In VRML chat, if you don't like your looks at the meeting, you can buy or build a better body for the next one.
Gender optional.
And boy, can these people build. Not just game worlds, but parks you want to walk in, forests with tree houses that look out over a sea of islands floating past in the air, malls, museums, stores, exotic secret hideaways by a sea of green and a great big moon, with the sounds of passion in the air. People go there together and enjoy the scenery. It is as if TV let you choose a location, and you can go be with whoever is there and talk about whatever you like.
Quite a dream really.
And wow! They've done it. Those worlds are out there to be explored courtesy of the worldbuilders that just would not give up on their vision. Gibsonian cyberspace was not about the power of the dream, it was about the willingness to dream together, to be together in a dream. Presence.
It is the powerful magic of not being alone.
In the last few years, quite under the radar of the snifly press and the powerful pundits, VRML found its niche: 3D chat. The dream of the 3D junkie is to be able to communicate in a natural language of the humans: bodily gesture and motion in a local space. While the database designers have sought metaphors for tables and rows that store numbers for business, the worldbuilders worked to create environments and objects that resemble what the tables and rows only count and remember.
Human bodily gestures convey emotion, and therefore entangle the viewer. By enabling the avatar in the database, the human viewer intuits intimacy. The human craves intimacy.
So where some dismiss this use of VRML, claiming 3D chat is a waste of bandwidth, I ask you, have you tried it?
I have.
1) It does work as a collaborative space. The use of media types for shared texts combined with the 3D avatar and synth-enabled chat provides sufficient eyeball bandwidth to carry on a real time event. Some say chat is sufficient. I dispute that. Why? Again, the gestures of the avatar provide sufficient onset cues to entangle the human in the conversation emotionally. The chat text keeps them focused if they practice the protocol needed for the chat event. To wit: in a meeting stick to meeting topics and follow the leader. In the square, it's your party.
2) As collaborative spaces go, this is very cheap server technology. A combination of this and RSS would go a long ways toward being an interesting dispatch system given the right document types. Given more online integrated editors, it becomes a cheap 3D library of reusable integratible types. Standards have their benefits. The game industry may not need them, but the non-game industry needs them badly to get costs in line with benefits.
3) The claim that the media is data-costly was true. However, lidar mapping, aerial mapping, and other means of getting that data both in geo-GPS form and in the neartime sampled singals are completely adequate to get resolution in a usable form of reality. It is a cheap means to provide a fused view system of the feeds.
4) Immersive 3D space does not vanish given loss of real-time sensors. Given near time fidelity, presence is simulable.
5) The key term is presence. Creating presence is the secret to command and control.
3D representation enables the UI designer to lose fidelity while clarifying intent, thus allowing the human to focus on more objects even if direct access to available details is slowed. Presence is not the absence of fidelity; it is the fidelity of what is left. Real time 3D cues organize the mind spatially and temporally. Spatial and temporal components couple to the signs expressed in 3D to enhance attention.
Attention is presence.
The second reason is simpler: Joy. The VRMLers build worlds they want to be in, worlds in which the language they want to speak and see, the language of smile, wave, bow, point, flip, turn, fly, walk, jump to, and beyond, the repetoire of human movement in space and time, are performed. If the great Wizards don't get it yet, the VRMLers do: human expression is enjoyed. Add that to chat, and you get a nicely coupled system.
Oh, yes, and the best reason VRML lives:
6) In VRML chat, if you don't like your looks at the meeting, you can buy or build a better body for the next one.
Gender optional.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Pope John Paul II
I am not Catholic. I don't think that matters tomorrow. Tomorrow, I shall mourn the death of Pope John Paul II. He was a good Pope, but moreover, he was a brave and kind man who served his God, cared for His people, and in all ways that a man should be remembered, will be.
God keep Pope John Paul II. God bless his successor. God bless and watch over all that he loved: all of the people of the world.
God keep Pope John Paul II. God bless his successor. God bless and watch over all that he loved: all of the people of the world.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Being Oz
It being a classic, most want to do the line: "I Am Oz The Great and Powerful!", but it is not the best line of that character. The best line is, "Well, anybody can have a brain!" because that is when the old humbug knows he is going to get away with it one more time. First, he must handle the Scarecrow because he has ideas and ideas are dangerous, so better give him a title so he will shut up. The Cowardly Lion is more dangerous for he is a forest lion and can shred this man and his balloon. But of all there, the Tin Man is the most dangerous for he cannot persuaded, he must believe he has the heart himself and if he does not, his axe is most persuasive. The girl? The girl is going with Oz.
Acting is about access to emotions at core. It is the emotions that give believability to breath, and breath that gives words to emotions. That is how one goes beyond the lines and the blocking to the onset cues that persuade a mammal brain to suspend belief. While it is possible by dint of hard work to simulate the emotions, learn the expressions, feel just that much inside that one can fake it, it is so hard no sensible mammal tries it. They feel it. That is acting. Listening is everything, timing is everything else. Emotions are the shared currency of acting.
"Better to be what you is because if you is what you ain't then you ain't what you is." - from an old poster in my studio
To find the character of Oz, I did the research into Baum and watched Frank Morgan to learn lines and borrow some magic. But mostly, I listened to Luz Ladrillono, our director. I haven't acted in 30 years. I trained for it from 13 to 23. I loved it when I did it, but two artforms are one too many when working, so I chose the one that made the most money:
.... computer science. And kept a band on the side.
It leaves a tattered hole in the ceiling of one's heart to give up any great love in one's life, and for me, that was theatre. It is the Great Art and the Complete Art. Music is demanding, but theatre asks for all of the talents and the more one can master, the greater the experience of live theatre. So it was both my fortune and God's gift that when I did return to it, Luz was there. It is rare in this area to meet a stone cold professional actress, dancer, teacher, and director who is also kind and willing. Her shaping of my character was basic: some gestures, some voices, placement of the eyes, and simple blocking. Gentle, good, and basic direction given consistently, repetitively, and never sternly but understandably. Luz never raised her voice to the cast even once. Amazing.
Oz is six voices: Professor Chester Marvel, Marvel's Magic Voice, OZ, OZ revealed, OZ the Survivor and the Man Behind The Curtain.
Chester is a carny magician, a man of some background, and one who does this job because he likes it. He isn't a bad fellow, but he believes in his act and uses it to move the world around him. He is a good-hearted man who uses his magic voice to send Dorothy back to the farm, but he is so caught up in his own act that he sees the storm and worries about the horse yet sends the little girl into the storm with only a glance over his back.
OZ is simply big and dismissive. It's an easy voice to do. Easiest of the lot really because one only has to be loud and arrogant. I can manage that. It's a Rock Voice. ;-)
OZ revealed is the timid man. Pulled from behind the curtain, at first he thinks he is toast. He has used up all of his tricks and this time, someone came back from the Haunted Forest. In a land of real magic, this man had none and even though his most fiercesome enemy was disposed of, he was history as The Great and Powerful Oz. Time to get a new act. But first, he has to get to the balloon. When he hears them say, "And what about Scarecrow's brain?", Oz the Survivor knows he has a chance.
In every act, whether as Oz or acting as Oz, there is a moment in the script where the character and the actor find that moment. No turning back. I dropped the bag in my hand.
"Well, ANYBODY can have a BRAIN!?!"
His own voice is the Man Behind The Curtain. When time came to deliver the line that is the point of the tale, I used my own voice. At 51 on a stage toe to toe with teenage actors who had performed flawlessly and beautifully, before all those children in the cast and the audience, for all the adults with them, but most of all for my daughter, I wanted that line to be heard as honest and sincere. In truth, I do look back through the years they look forward through. The wisdom of age is not given, meritorious or heartfelt; it is the truth of the eyes that see and remember and the breath that sustains and marks out time. That truth is itself, ageless.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others."
The joy of theatre, the reason it is the Great Art is the cast. What we experience together is a far greater magic than that seen on the stage. It is access to emotions, both in the parts we play and as we go to our entrances hugging and smiling at by those who have worked so hard together, excited, nervous, exhillarated and finally triumphant. The play is an act; the emotions are real.
As the cast took its bows, I thought, "We are Oz. The Great and Powerful."
Acting is about access to emotions at core. It is the emotions that give believability to breath, and breath that gives words to emotions. That is how one goes beyond the lines and the blocking to the onset cues that persuade a mammal brain to suspend belief. While it is possible by dint of hard work to simulate the emotions, learn the expressions, feel just that much inside that one can fake it, it is so hard no sensible mammal tries it. They feel it. That is acting. Listening is everything, timing is everything else. Emotions are the shared currency of acting.
"Better to be what you is because if you is what you ain't then you ain't what you is." - from an old poster in my studio
To find the character of Oz, I did the research into Baum and watched Frank Morgan to learn lines and borrow some magic. But mostly, I listened to Luz Ladrillono, our director. I haven't acted in 30 years. I trained for it from 13 to 23. I loved it when I did it, but two artforms are one too many when working, so I chose the one that made the most money:
.... computer science. And kept a band on the side.
It leaves a tattered hole in the ceiling of one's heart to give up any great love in one's life, and for me, that was theatre. It is the Great Art and the Complete Art. Music is demanding, but theatre asks for all of the talents and the more one can master, the greater the experience of live theatre. So it was both my fortune and God's gift that when I did return to it, Luz was there. It is rare in this area to meet a stone cold professional actress, dancer, teacher, and director who is also kind and willing. Her shaping of my character was basic: some gestures, some voices, placement of the eyes, and simple blocking. Gentle, good, and basic direction given consistently, repetitively, and never sternly but understandably. Luz never raised her voice to the cast even once. Amazing.
Oz is six voices: Professor Chester Marvel, Marvel's Magic Voice, OZ, OZ revealed, OZ the Survivor and the Man Behind The Curtain.
Chester is a carny magician, a man of some background, and one who does this job because he likes it. He isn't a bad fellow, but he believes in his act and uses it to move the world around him. He is a good-hearted man who uses his magic voice to send Dorothy back to the farm, but he is so caught up in his own act that he sees the storm and worries about the horse yet sends the little girl into the storm with only a glance over his back.
OZ is simply big and dismissive. It's an easy voice to do. Easiest of the lot really because one only has to be loud and arrogant. I can manage that. It's a Rock Voice. ;-)
OZ revealed is the timid man. Pulled from behind the curtain, at first he thinks he is toast. He has used up all of his tricks and this time, someone came back from the Haunted Forest. In a land of real magic, this man had none and even though his most fiercesome enemy was disposed of, he was history as The Great and Powerful Oz. Time to get a new act. But first, he has to get to the balloon. When he hears them say, "And what about Scarecrow's brain?", Oz the Survivor knows he has a chance.
In every act, whether as Oz or acting as Oz, there is a moment in the script where the character and the actor find that moment. No turning back. I dropped the bag in my hand.
"Well, ANYBODY can have a BRAIN!?!"
His own voice is the Man Behind The Curtain. When time came to deliver the line that is the point of the tale, I used my own voice. At 51 on a stage toe to toe with teenage actors who had performed flawlessly and beautifully, before all those children in the cast and the audience, for all the adults with them, but most of all for my daughter, I wanted that line to be heard as honest and sincere. In truth, I do look back through the years they look forward through. The wisdom of age is not given, meritorious or heartfelt; it is the truth of the eyes that see and remember and the breath that sustains and marks out time. That truth is itself, ageless.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others."
The joy of theatre, the reason it is the Great Art is the cast. What we experience together is a far greater magic than that seen on the stage. It is access to emotions, both in the parts we play and as we go to our entrances hugging and smiling at by those who have worked so hard together, excited, nervous, exhillarated and finally triumphant. The play is an act; the emotions are real.
As the cast took its bows, I thought, "We are Oz. The Great and Powerful."
Sunday, March 20, 2005
To The Director
I wished only to portray him as you saw him.
To do this, I surrendered my breath to you,
let your face be the face in my dreams,
let your voice be the voice that guided me,
let your hand be the hand that shaped me.
Only then could I be what I must be, do I what must do
feel what I must feel to achieve my purpose,
.... to shine in your eyes
Then take all of that back and put it away until
it would be needed again, knowing that it is
forever better because for the time that was,
it was yours.
To do this, I surrendered my breath to you,
let your face be the face in my dreams,
let your voice be the voice that guided me,
let your hand be the hand that shaped me.
Only then could I be what I must be, do I what must do
feel what I must feel to achieve my purpose,
.... to shine in your eyes
Then take all of that back and put it away until
it would be needed again, knowing that it is
forever better because for the time that was,
it was yours.
Friday, February 25, 2005
UFOs: Fact or Friction
Yes, I saw the ABC UFO show. Yes, most of it is old material but not all of it.
There are more military types coming out and testifying and more admissions that the radar tracks do exist. More recently retired airline pilots are finally testifying now their careers aren't threatened.
1. There are too many eye witnesses with high credibility and film footage to say it is just kooks and cranks. There are reports that predate 1947. 1947 is when people started paying attention. The Twining report is legitimate and so was the testimony of the officer who used to run Blue Book. J. Allen Hynek was a seriously credentialed scientist.
So smarter people than thee or me take this stuff seriously.
2. The question one asks is: if UFOs are real, extraterrestrial or not, why is the government covering up? Either
a) what they know is bad or
b) what they know they don't know is bad or
c) it is government work or
d) they don't know.
3. Eyewitness accounts are not science. True. But they are evidence. Of what, I don't know. But evidently, neither do the scientists.
4. Is it crazy to believe in unproven things? Lots of people believe in God. So far, proof is minimal but there is more film footage of UFOs than God.
Do I believe? I keep an open mind and watch the skies, because as the old song says,
"There's things going on that you don't know."
There are more military types coming out and testifying and more admissions that the radar tracks do exist. More recently retired airline pilots are finally testifying now their careers aren't threatened.
1. There are too many eye witnesses with high credibility and film footage to say it is just kooks and cranks. There are reports that predate 1947. 1947 is when people started paying attention. The Twining report is legitimate and so was the testimony of the officer who used to run Blue Book. J. Allen Hynek was a seriously credentialed scientist.
So smarter people than thee or me take this stuff seriously.
2. The question one asks is: if UFOs are real, extraterrestrial or not, why is the government covering up? Either
a) what they know is bad or
b) what they know they don't know is bad or
c) it is government work or
d) they don't know.
3. Eyewitness accounts are not science. True. But they are evidence. Of what, I don't know. But evidently, neither do the scientists.
4. Is it crazy to believe in unproven things? Lots of people believe in God. So far, proof is minimal but there is more film footage of UFOs than God.
Do I believe? I keep an open mind and watch the skies, because as the old song says,
"There's things going on that you don't know."
Concerts and Stuff
We lived between the war and before Reagan. For a few years, we partied and we partied well. I'm not sure I want my kids to do what I did but I don't want them to grow up afraid to go out and live. It goes by so fast and as far as there is proof to tell, it goes by only once. What's the point of having all this stuff if getting it makes us spectators when we should be players. Old though I am, when I was young, I was a player. As my son says, "Dad isn't evil; he's just twisted." Fair enough. It was fun.
We were a half generation out of phase between the Beatles and KISS. Whatever else we didn't have or do, we had the best music since the Jazz Era. I went to the Georgia Jam in '74 to see the Allman Bros, Lynard Skynard, Marshall Tucker Band, etc. It was all 'shrooms, smoke, 'cid and wine at that concert and it rained in the middle of the day. The crowd got under their blankets and sat on the ground holding them up so it was solid ceiling a few feet above the floor and blue smoke pealing out from between. Eventually it all turned to mud so the kids in the middle went to the buff and began to toss each other up on the blanket until they dropped one naked chick and she broke something. Marshall Tucker stayed on stage in the rain and played to us so we'd stay calm. To heck with calm; we were just trying to stay conscious long enough to see the Bros.
Hours later, the Bros hit the stage way late. Betts furious with Greg who was so drunk he fell off his piano stool. I walked behind the mixing board platform, threw up the shrooms, then pushed my way to the stage to boogie to the Statesboro Blues with the best southern rock band that ever picked up a Coricidin bottle to make a slide. It was fabulous.
I caught Clapton twice; once in Birmingham at the old stadium. He was junked out and shot the crowd a bird for squealing for Layla after every song. My bass player and I had hitched to the concert, then found some musician friends who had a motel room. After the show, we went there to do the Seventies party things, then caught a ride back to the 'ville in the back of a pickup. There were about eight or nine of us in the back riding high on I-65. There was a redhead eager to do the nasty, and did while everyone pretended to be asleep. It was without shame, without fear, and long before AIDS. I do feel badly for the mammals now who need a health card to have a fling. Spontaneity is a rare pleasure.
I saw Clapton again later at the VBCC while they were filming Ravagers in town. I was dating a State Representative at the time and she and I walked in with Richard Harris (yeah, Dumbledore and King Arthur). and his wife (Turkel). I was surprised how short Harris was. I wouldn't let Martha Jo approach them though. They were there to see Clapton and enjoy the night and I don't approach public people in public. It's a drag for them. Clapton was cleaned up and did a great show that night.
The best concert I ever went to was the Grateful Dead in Tuscaloosa. This was just after they released the Europa album and they were at the height of their jams. They start loose but play for hours and by the time they get into the second hour, it's delirium. There is no music as good as the Live Dead. I miss Jerry. I hope those guys still kick main butt.
I caught Ronstadt at her peak. Very good. The West Coast had taken the best of Nashville and Bakersfield and turned it into the smoothest pop of the decade. I was playing at the Huntsville Hilton lounge with the band, Bitter Creek, in 1975 which was across the street from the civic center, and everyone stayed there. I partied with most of the bands when this was a venue on the A list. Great memories. Musicians can be monster jerks to civilians but among themselves, they are tribal. I was 21 and the superstars treated me like a little brother. I loved it. The Eagles, Average White Band, even Chet Atkins. All fabulous guys. Big brothers with good advice for the long haired skinny kid with the nylon string doing solos while the crowd came back from the concert.
We made love in the park watching the police cars come and go from the main station. We stayed up all night watching TBS. We hiked to the empty water tower on Green Mountain and chanted inside as the echos swelled inside us like hormones. We climbed to the top and tied out sleeping bags to the post, laid there and watched the sun come up across the peaks in the distance lighting the clouds in the valley that crawled toward us like a bright white fluffy blanket.
We had the sounds, the soul and the urge. Freedom. It breathes and it sings and it plays loud guitar. And it satisfies.
So why not do it for a living? As a party, there is none better; but as a lifestyle, it stinks. The soft sweet music I loved was killed by disco and cocaine infesting the good people, and that was a step too far for me. I partied but I knew poison on sight so when all the cooool people started that trek, I got off the bus. The party days before the suits grabbed the controls once and for all were good, but after that, it was just a job and who gives up their heart to that. Music IS my heart and that I keep for me. "Songs to aging children come; I am one." - Joni Mitchell
Now the programmers have come to free the musicians from the suits. That's a very good thing. It's past my time but I feel good for the kids. They can explore art in ways we couldn't even dream of. They can podCast, make movies, animate worlds, put their music in them, and do it for the whole world with the whole world without ever leaving their backporch. Sure, they should get out and do gigs; that is the best part, but they should also find the guy or girl in Egypt or Turkey or downtown Buffalo that digs their grooves and send them to them.
For Free. For Fun. For Fate. For Love. For Good Times. For the Blue Flame.
I envy you that, and at the same time, I don't. I've had fun and every season that comes as this world spins in a cold night has its own unique concerts and gigs and stuff. Be a player.
Gitcha some.
I have all the toys I want; so now I record what I like, when I like, and only play if there is an audience that really wants it. There is no pressure and I won't be found dead old and alone in a motel room, the death even the superstars fear. I can be in a local theatre production and act again, which is what I trained for. Music was how I paid for college, but then it became the real act. I've had fun. I recommend it to anyone.
At the end of the day, you only have to achieve three things to have an excellent life:
1) status among your peers that matches your level of ambition,
2) a family that loves you,
3) enough stuff.
Most people screw their lives up trying for more status than they really want so they can get more stuff for a family that would rather they be home more. I have enough stuff. It's all extra after that.
You probably do too. Remember that next time you see your kids because it's their time now and the best thing you can tell them is you are proud of them, you love them, and that when they get enough stuff, relax and have fun.
It's not who dies with the most toys; it's who has the most fun with their toys while they are alive. Party on, Babies.
We were a half generation out of phase between the Beatles and KISS. Whatever else we didn't have or do, we had the best music since the Jazz Era. I went to the Georgia Jam in '74 to see the Allman Bros, Lynard Skynard, Marshall Tucker Band, etc. It was all 'shrooms, smoke, 'cid and wine at that concert and it rained in the middle of the day. The crowd got under their blankets and sat on the ground holding them up so it was solid ceiling a few feet above the floor and blue smoke pealing out from between. Eventually it all turned to mud so the kids in the middle went to the buff and began to toss each other up on the blanket until they dropped one naked chick and she broke something. Marshall Tucker stayed on stage in the rain and played to us so we'd stay calm. To heck with calm; we were just trying to stay conscious long enough to see the Bros.
Hours later, the Bros hit the stage way late. Betts furious with Greg who was so drunk he fell off his piano stool. I walked behind the mixing board platform, threw up the shrooms, then pushed my way to the stage to boogie to the Statesboro Blues with the best southern rock band that ever picked up a Coricidin bottle to make a slide. It was fabulous.
I caught Clapton twice; once in Birmingham at the old stadium. He was junked out and shot the crowd a bird for squealing for Layla after every song. My bass player and I had hitched to the concert, then found some musician friends who had a motel room. After the show, we went there to do the Seventies party things, then caught a ride back to the 'ville in the back of a pickup. There were about eight or nine of us in the back riding high on I-65. There was a redhead eager to do the nasty, and did while everyone pretended to be asleep. It was without shame, without fear, and long before AIDS. I do feel badly for the mammals now who need a health card to have a fling. Spontaneity is a rare pleasure.
I saw Clapton again later at the VBCC while they were filming Ravagers in town. I was dating a State Representative at the time and she and I walked in with Richard Harris (yeah, Dumbledore and King Arthur). and his wife (Turkel). I was surprised how short Harris was. I wouldn't let Martha Jo approach them though. They were there to see Clapton and enjoy the night and I don't approach public people in public. It's a drag for them. Clapton was cleaned up and did a great show that night.
The best concert I ever went to was the Grateful Dead in Tuscaloosa. This was just after they released the Europa album and they were at the height of their jams. They start loose but play for hours and by the time they get into the second hour, it's delirium. There is no music as good as the Live Dead. I miss Jerry. I hope those guys still kick main butt.
I caught Ronstadt at her peak. Very good. The West Coast had taken the best of Nashville and Bakersfield and turned it into the smoothest pop of the decade. I was playing at the Huntsville Hilton lounge with the band, Bitter Creek, in 1975 which was across the street from the civic center, and everyone stayed there. I partied with most of the bands when this was a venue on the A list. Great memories. Musicians can be monster jerks to civilians but among themselves, they are tribal. I was 21 and the superstars treated me like a little brother. I loved it. The Eagles, Average White Band, even Chet Atkins. All fabulous guys. Big brothers with good advice for the long haired skinny kid with the nylon string doing solos while the crowd came back from the concert.
We made love in the park watching the police cars come and go from the main station. We stayed up all night watching TBS. We hiked to the empty water tower on Green Mountain and chanted inside as the echos swelled inside us like hormones. We climbed to the top and tied out sleeping bags to the post, laid there and watched the sun come up across the peaks in the distance lighting the clouds in the valley that crawled toward us like a bright white fluffy blanket.
We had the sounds, the soul and the urge. Freedom. It breathes and it sings and it plays loud guitar. And it satisfies.
So why not do it for a living? As a party, there is none better; but as a lifestyle, it stinks. The soft sweet music I loved was killed by disco and cocaine infesting the good people, and that was a step too far for me. I partied but I knew poison on sight so when all the cooool people started that trek, I got off the bus. The party days before the suits grabbed the controls once and for all were good, but after that, it was just a job and who gives up their heart to that. Music IS my heart and that I keep for me. "Songs to aging children come; I am one." - Joni Mitchell
Now the programmers have come to free the musicians from the suits. That's a very good thing. It's past my time but I feel good for the kids. They can explore art in ways we couldn't even dream of. They can podCast, make movies, animate worlds, put their music in them, and do it for the whole world with the whole world without ever leaving their backporch. Sure, they should get out and do gigs; that is the best part, but they should also find the guy or girl in Egypt or Turkey or downtown Buffalo that digs their grooves and send them to them.
For Free. For Fun. For Fate. For Love. For Good Times. For the Blue Flame.
I envy you that, and at the same time, I don't. I've had fun and every season that comes as this world spins in a cold night has its own unique concerts and gigs and stuff. Be a player.
Gitcha some.
I have all the toys I want; so now I record what I like, when I like, and only play if there is an audience that really wants it. There is no pressure and I won't be found dead old and alone in a motel room, the death even the superstars fear. I can be in a local theatre production and act again, which is what I trained for. Music was how I paid for college, but then it became the real act. I've had fun. I recommend it to anyone.
At the end of the day, you only have to achieve three things to have an excellent life:
1) status among your peers that matches your level of ambition,
2) a family that loves you,
3) enough stuff.
Most people screw their lives up trying for more status than they really want so they can get more stuff for a family that would rather they be home more. I have enough stuff. It's all extra after that.
You probably do too. Remember that next time you see your kids because it's their time now and the best thing you can tell them is you are proud of them, you love them, and that when they get enough stuff, relax and have fun.
It's not who dies with the most toys; it's who has the most fun with their toys while they are alive. Party on, Babies.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
The Witch's Hat
Several writers are blogging about the so-called long tail of distributions of various resources such as readership, sales, contributions, work performed and other values based on connectionist technologies. That's a good approximation and what the graph looks like in a single case, but take all of those cases and plot instances of the populations in the z-dimension. That plot looks like a cliff if side by side, but the more economical rendering puts the XYZ orgin in the middle of the global space and plots around it. Then it looks like the familar witch's hat.
That's a resonant image. Most of us don't live in the tail of the curve, we live on the brim of the hat. We don't wear hats for the point, fashionable though it might be at the time; we wear them for the brim because it is the brim that protects our eyes from the sun and our ears from the rain. It is the brim we can curve up or down or flatten as the seasons and the styles change. It is the brim we hold in our hand when we say hello or wave goodbye. The brim is the reason for the hat. It is the service, the valuable surface that with the sides covers our bald spot, holds down our hair, and supports the top. As the hat grows old and the pointy top begins to curve and the sides begin to wrinkle coming at last to resemble the sorting hat from Harry Potter, the brim still serves us.
There is no great moral here, except to note that being average doesn't mean something is necessarily of lesser value. After all, it is the point of having the hat.
That's a resonant image. Most of us don't live in the tail of the curve, we live on the brim of the hat. We don't wear hats for the point, fashionable though it might be at the time; we wear them for the brim because it is the brim that protects our eyes from the sun and our ears from the rain. It is the brim we can curve up or down or flatten as the seasons and the styles change. It is the brim we hold in our hand when we say hello or wave goodbye. The brim is the reason for the hat. It is the service, the valuable surface that with the sides covers our bald spot, holds down our hair, and supports the top. As the hat grows old and the pointy top begins to curve and the sides begin to wrinkle coming at last to resemble the sorting hat from Harry Potter, the brim still serves us.
There is no great moral here, except to note that being average doesn't mean something is necessarily of lesser value. After all, it is the point of having the hat.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
The Baron Speaks
Yes, children, the sexual and social Neanderthals of the Great State of Alabummer have once again proven that a very small minority of superstitious, repressed, and terrified conservatives can rob you of your freedom of expression and the right to party hearty. The good legislators that tried to outlaw the diminished 5th in music, thus killing all forms of jazz, blues and rock have outlawed the sale of marital aids, yes, SEX TOYS!
Why? Because they can't read the instructions.
The voices of the tightly clinched sphincter called into the local college radio station to tell the spin master that if a woman ran for the office of president of these United States that they would vote for her if she is qualified and her name isn't Hillary. Once again, they show they have yet to master simple arithmetic because as the current president proves, they will vote for one boob and we all know that two are twice as good as one.
But that's alright! You see, social movements swing like a dog's tail from right to left, and just as Bawdy Newton said, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. As I look around this Great State of equal opportunity to a last class education, I know that somewhere in the future a reallllly big street party will be happening. As luck would have it, I'll be toooo old but our kids, yes the children of the dammed, will be there swinging from the trees in celebration of their bonobo heritage. Party on, Babies.
This is Radio Free Alabama, the voice of the resistance broadcasting from the heart of the red states, and I AM the Baron Mondo.
Why? Because they can't read the instructions.
The voices of the tightly clinched sphincter called into the local college radio station to tell the spin master that if a woman ran for the office of president of these United States that they would vote for her if she is qualified and her name isn't Hillary. Once again, they show they have yet to master simple arithmetic because as the current president proves, they will vote for one boob and we all know that two are twice as good as one.
But that's alright! You see, social movements swing like a dog's tail from right to left, and just as Bawdy Newton said, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. As I look around this Great State of equal opportunity to a last class education, I know that somewhere in the future a reallllly big street party will be happening. As luck would have it, I'll be toooo old but our kids, yes the children of the dammed, will be there swinging from the trees in celebration of their bonobo heritage. Party on, Babies.
This is Radio Free Alabama, the voice of the resistance broadcasting from the heart of the red states, and I AM the Baron Mondo.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Evolution In Flatland
The bloggers are cranked about the Google version of smart tags, and they should be. Content is altered by linking but linking is what the web is about. Yet so seldom is it discussed as a purposeful act and that is really what the debate comes down to. The web is not about progress; it is about purpose and this has all the implications of every network-as-ecology article ever written.
On the other hand, some are glossing right past the ChoicePoint fiasco in which a dataMegaMart is conned out of product and opened up potentially half-a-million people to identity theft. The deeper bad news is that ChoicePoint has just purchased I2, one of the more powerful link analysis engines used for crime analysis. Had the hustlers also purchased the link profiles, they would have had not just the identities, but potentially first rate extortion opportunities and some other great behavioral data. Combine this sort of thing with surreptitious RFID scanning and you get a first rate criminal enterprise.
You see, people fear government when they should fear administrations. People think there are smart people out there in the technical community protecting them when actually the geeks are making a buck. Meanwhile, the web like life isn't evolving hierarchically into better forms but extending itself into every niche it can and aggregating these into ever larger entities. One confuses progress with proliferation. Life only propagates. So it is with the web.
On the other hand, some are glossing right past the ChoicePoint fiasco in which a dataMegaMart is conned out of product and opened up potentially half-a-million people to identity theft. The deeper bad news is that ChoicePoint has just purchased I2, one of the more powerful link analysis engines used for crime analysis. Had the hustlers also purchased the link profiles, they would have had not just the identities, but potentially first rate extortion opportunities and some other great behavioral data. Combine this sort of thing with surreptitious RFID scanning and you get a first rate criminal enterprise.
You see, people fear government when they should fear administrations. People think there are smart people out there in the technical community protecting them when actually the geeks are making a buck. Meanwhile, the web like life isn't evolving hierarchically into better forms but extending itself into every niche it can and aggregating these into ever larger entities. One confuses progress with proliferation. Life only propagates. So it is with the web.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Part II. The Universe Whispers OZ: The Bucket Brigade of Good Deed Doers
A friend asked about the Bucket brigade blog....
I'm rambling of course. That is what happens when lots of ideas start to collide. In India, or so I've read, someone with attention deficit disorder is considered holy. In the West, we give them drugs and try to integrate them.
To do evil, the wicked use the acts of goodness of others for their own purposes, to fool the living. Funny thing is, it never works for very long. Life knows what it likes. Life can be fooled by humbugs, but not forever.
I got an email today seriously suggesting that we can patent the idea of metadata-driving software factories. I pointed out that his immune system already does that and nature holds the patent.
In the play,(based on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre script) the Wicked Witch watches through her very large crystal ball, the progress of the foursome. She makes a speech about how it is fate that the Wizard delivers them to her. She has real power, but knowing everything doesn't make one able to choose better because she does not know what it all means in context.
Is there risk doing the right thing in the open?
Always do the good thing anyway. The good will help you and the wicked can't figure out why a good deed is worth doing; they can only steal it, and then what? There is no yellow brick road in the land of the Winkies because she always knows when a stranger enters. She sends her Flying Monkeys to bring her doom to her. Her castle is a secret place and "the nature of evil is secrecy".
How much power do you really need in a plot that is sensitive to initial conditions, a land of magical emergence?
Not much. Hardly any if you choose rightly.
The Professor has no power but with his small "genuine authentic magic crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the Pharoahs of Egypt, in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony... and so on and so on" he uses his humbug magic to try to send Dorothy home, only to send her in to the path of the tornado. He does the best he can with his humbuggery, and that is enough to put her on a path to self-discovery. Dorothy stumbles into the ocean of real life through a dream.
Life dreams. It fantasizes. It comes to know itself. It likes to be wet.
The Witch knows all that happens in Oz, but she doesn't see that bucket of water coming. One evil act too many blinds her. That is how all tyrants fall.
Living things self-lube. Life is wet. We come from the ocean. "There's no place like home."
Life knows what it likes. That's why the bucket brigade, the web, folksonomy, and open source all work. Lots of little good hearted decisions all self-lubing and in their own time, making something an individual wants to use through group effort, cooperation, respect, patience, and willingness to let the other person pass because we all get there in time.
A name is a wall. It isn't that we don't need them, but we mustn't make them more powerful than they need to be. Like XML namespaces. It is the principle of least commitment. It doesn't melt when the semantic ocean, like a bucket of water, is tossed on it.
"What a world! What a world!" ;-)
I'm rambling of course. That is what happens when lots of ideas start to collide. In India, or so I've read, someone with attention deficit disorder is considered holy. In the West, we give them drugs and try to integrate them.
To do evil, the wicked use the acts of goodness of others for their own purposes, to fool the living. Funny thing is, it never works for very long. Life knows what it likes. Life can be fooled by humbugs, but not forever.
I got an email today seriously suggesting that we can patent the idea of metadata-driving software factories. I pointed out that his immune system already does that and nature holds the patent.
In the play,(based on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre script) the Wicked Witch watches through her very large crystal ball, the progress of the foursome. She makes a speech about how it is fate that the Wizard delivers them to her. She has real power, but knowing everything doesn't make one able to choose better because she does not know what it all means in context.
Is there risk doing the right thing in the open?
Always do the good thing anyway. The good will help you and the wicked can't figure out why a good deed is worth doing; they can only steal it, and then what? There is no yellow brick road in the land of the Winkies because she always knows when a stranger enters. She sends her Flying Monkeys to bring her doom to her. Her castle is a secret place and "the nature of evil is secrecy".
How much power do you really need in a plot that is sensitive to initial conditions, a land of magical emergence?
Not much. Hardly any if you choose rightly.
The Professor has no power but with his small "genuine authentic magic crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the Pharoahs of Egypt, in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony... and so on and so on" he uses his humbug magic to try to send Dorothy home, only to send her in to the path of the tornado. He does the best he can with his humbuggery, and that is enough to put her on a path to self-discovery. Dorothy stumbles into the ocean of real life through a dream.
Life dreams. It fantasizes. It comes to know itself. It likes to be wet.
The Witch knows all that happens in Oz, but she doesn't see that bucket of water coming. One evil act too many blinds her. That is how all tyrants fall.
Living things self-lube. Life is wet. We come from the ocean. "There's no place like home."
Life knows what it likes. That's why the bucket brigade, the web, folksonomy, and open source all work. Lots of little good hearted decisions all self-lubing and in their own time, making something an individual wants to use through group effort, cooperation, respect, patience, and willingness to let the other person pass because we all get there in time.
A name is a wall. It isn't that we don't need them, but we mustn't make them more powerful than they need to be. Like XML namespaces. It is the principle of least commitment. It doesn't melt when the semantic ocean, like a bucket of water, is tossed on it.
"What a world! What a world!" ;-)
One Ringy Dingy Two Ringy Dingies
I'm sitting in the staff meeting watching a Power Point presented by a novitiate attempting to explain Indigo. He really likes Don Box. I mean, Really likes Don Box. That's ok. I really like Carly Fiorina. A good rack IS an asset in this business. At the end of the presentation, he puts up a slide with the so-called "Challenge Question". It was "What is an Enterprise Service Bus?" I replied, "It's a patch bay." but thought, "That won't explain anything to a non-musician who hasn't spent time in a recording studio."
Somewhere deeper in my subconcious I heard a voice saying, "One ringy dingy! Two ringy dingies! Gracious good afternoon! Is this the service to whom I am speaking? SNOOOORRT!" and laughed out loud. Of course, I didn't explain why.
Live long enough, and everything becomes iconic, symbolic, or indexical. That doesn't mean it is explainable or funny to anyone but oneself. Quiet moments of silent laughter are best enjoyed in the privacy of one's own hallucinations.
Somewhere deeper in my subconcious I heard a voice saying, "One ringy dingy! Two ringy dingies! Gracious good afternoon! Is this the service to whom I am speaking? SNOOOORRT!" and laughed out loud. Of course, I didn't explain why.
Live long enough, and everything becomes iconic, symbolic, or indexical. That doesn't mean it is explainable or funny to anyone but oneself. Quiet moments of silent laughter are best enjoyed in the privacy of one's own hallucinations.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The Universe Whispers OZ: The Bucket Brigade of Good Deed Doers
Is a folksonomy the categorization equivalent of a John Holland bucket brigade classifier system? Just a human-driven neural net learning system? Do keywords have a bidding process for rule matching? Do they just die off if unused? We keep seeing a repeating pattern in things that work and don't work on the web and in any system for which a network is the pattern and things that don't work just die off: connectedness. Maybe getting laid IS the real criterion of success or happiness. Works for me.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but my how much you are loved by others."
The universe whispers Oz and the longer I am around, the more I realize what he really meant when he said, "Oh no my dear, I am a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard." Maybe we really don't need wizards for most of life's affairs. Being connected is good enough. Why don't we know that? Is it a secret we keep from ourselves? As in the Oz spinoff, "Wicked", the Witch says to the dinner guests, "...the nature of evil is to be secret." and so many of our connections are hidden. The Bonobos don't do it that way. Why do we? Why, indeed.
Perhaps because so many games are of the form RSP (Rock Paper Scissors) and the only successful strategy is to psych out the opponent, and the only pattern that defeats that is randomness. We have to hide our hearts from those who would attempt to control our desires, but in doing so, we become wicked, made into what we would not be were it not for our hidden desires for acceptance and control.
That's just too hard. It turns our brains into straw, our hearts into tin, and finally robs us of our courage.
"... and I hereby decree, that until such time as I return, if any, the Scarecrow by virtue of his highly superior brain, shall rule in my stead. Assisted by the Tin Man by virtue of his magnificent heart, and the Lion by virtue of his courage. Obey them as you would me."
A folksonomy isn't very precise the way a professional taxonomy is, but since naming things unnames other things, it has the one kind of magic that professionals try their best to diminish: serendipity. We are pros; we hide the fact that most of our victories are dumb luck. Browsing over searching is usually the way we innovate. Searching is how we fix what we make. Very different kinds of actions, those; one is creative and the other is reflexive. The first makes questions; the second finds answers.
Desire. If your heart's desire isn't in your own backyard, you never lost it.
Some used to tell us that we should use rigorous methods to design our DTDs in SGML. It seldom worked. Most of the time, we took what they had and sprinkled tags pointing out inconsistencies along the way, but simply enabling a customer to see them. Some tried to build the DTDsFromHell that described the universe much as a Wizard would be able to make order from chaos, but it seems those never worked well and mainly created more complexity. Even worse, done in secretive committees away from the users they intended to order about even with the best of intentions, they did real evil.
Emergence works better. Dorothy was only trying to put out the burning Scarecrow. That the Witch was sensitive to being wet, well, she was a dried up evil old bitch and they don't ever get wet. Wetness is a quality of excitement and attraction, not evil. It's very good. It emerges. No threats produce it, no amount of will can control it and no amount of force can stop it. It's instant feedback when communications are of the right kind even if of the lowest quality. Life knows what it likes.
They tell me my career is dead because I piss people off, yet I watch them doing exactly what I need them to do. Power is not for the timid. Try to do good as the wicked watch and they will always do exactly as you wish: become angry and scheme to take your plans and make them their own. Mission accomplished. Evil is made to serve good. The universe moves.
"Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead! Hail to Dorothy!"
Free the Winkies and they'll make you their queen. Even Glinda for all her Goodness couldn't do what the fat little farm girl could trying to save a friend. She nor her sister to the South could change the balance of good and evil in Oz, so the Winkies and the Munchkins remained slaves until the eastern meanie flew into a spinning house and the western meanie finally did one bad deed too many. But it was the Witches who brought Dorothy to Oz for tornados in Kansas aren't spun up by winds from the North AND the South. Indirection, suggestion, hints and allegations, just a bit of noise in the ear of desire is enough. "Just follow the Yellow Brick road."
The universe isn't a place where all of our affairs are under the control of a 'very good but very mysterious' wizard, as Glinda said, but by a bucket brigade of courageous brains and wise hearts. In the presence of evil, you must start the fight. Even if the old wizard has nothing in his black bag for you, you may not need him. You have the ruby slippers right there on your own two feet.
Let the universe judge. And the universe, as I said, whispers Oz. The Great and Powerful.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but my how much you are loved by others."
The universe whispers Oz and the longer I am around, the more I realize what he really meant when he said, "Oh no my dear, I am a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard." Maybe we really don't need wizards for most of life's affairs. Being connected is good enough. Why don't we know that? Is it a secret we keep from ourselves? As in the Oz spinoff, "Wicked", the Witch says to the dinner guests, "...the nature of evil is to be secret." and so many of our connections are hidden. The Bonobos don't do it that way. Why do we? Why, indeed.
Perhaps because so many games are of the form RSP (Rock Paper Scissors) and the only successful strategy is to psych out the opponent, and the only pattern that defeats that is randomness. We have to hide our hearts from those who would attempt to control our desires, but in doing so, we become wicked, made into what we would not be were it not for our hidden desires for acceptance and control.
That's just too hard. It turns our brains into straw, our hearts into tin, and finally robs us of our courage.
"... and I hereby decree, that until such time as I return, if any, the Scarecrow by virtue of his highly superior brain, shall rule in my stead. Assisted by the Tin Man by virtue of his magnificent heart, and the Lion by virtue of his courage. Obey them as you would me."
A folksonomy isn't very precise the way a professional taxonomy is, but since naming things unnames other things, it has the one kind of magic that professionals try their best to diminish: serendipity. We are pros; we hide the fact that most of our victories are dumb luck. Browsing over searching is usually the way we innovate. Searching is how we fix what we make. Very different kinds of actions, those; one is creative and the other is reflexive. The first makes questions; the second finds answers.
Desire. If your heart's desire isn't in your own backyard, you never lost it.
Some used to tell us that we should use rigorous methods to design our DTDs in SGML. It seldom worked. Most of the time, we took what they had and sprinkled tags pointing out inconsistencies along the way, but simply enabling a customer to see them. Some tried to build the DTDsFromHell that described the universe much as a Wizard would be able to make order from chaos, but it seems those never worked well and mainly created more complexity. Even worse, done in secretive committees away from the users they intended to order about even with the best of intentions, they did real evil.
Emergence works better. Dorothy was only trying to put out the burning Scarecrow. That the Witch was sensitive to being wet, well, she was a dried up evil old bitch and they don't ever get wet. Wetness is a quality of excitement and attraction, not evil. It's very good. It emerges. No threats produce it, no amount of will can control it and no amount of force can stop it. It's instant feedback when communications are of the right kind even if of the lowest quality. Life knows what it likes.
They tell me my career is dead because I piss people off, yet I watch them doing exactly what I need them to do. Power is not for the timid. Try to do good as the wicked watch and they will always do exactly as you wish: become angry and scheme to take your plans and make them their own. Mission accomplished. Evil is made to serve good. The universe moves.
"Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead! Hail to Dorothy!"
Free the Winkies and they'll make you their queen. Even Glinda for all her Goodness couldn't do what the fat little farm girl could trying to save a friend. She nor her sister to the South could change the balance of good and evil in Oz, so the Winkies and the Munchkins remained slaves until the eastern meanie flew into a spinning house and the western meanie finally did one bad deed too many. But it was the Witches who brought Dorothy to Oz for tornados in Kansas aren't spun up by winds from the North AND the South. Indirection, suggestion, hints and allegations, just a bit of noise in the ear of desire is enough. "Just follow the Yellow Brick road."
The universe isn't a place where all of our affairs are under the control of a 'very good but very mysterious' wizard, as Glinda said, but by a bucket brigade of courageous brains and wise hearts. In the presence of evil, you must start the fight. Even if the old wizard has nothing in his black bag for you, you may not need him. You have the ruby slippers right there on your own two feet.
Let the universe judge. And the universe, as I said, whispers Oz. The Great and Powerful.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Always Connected and Getting Laid
The ease of today's communications technologies and the billions of dollars, yen, euros and smart rocks being invested to make them easier and more ubiquitous reveal the lust we as mammals have to communicate. That the communicative act is intimately tied to our sex drives seems obvious as well. That this comes with implications for social development and ettiquette follows. We make a communications technology, and the mammals decide based on its capacity to promote their sex lives if it is worth owning.
Or maybe this is a classic case of sensitivity to initial conditions and strange attractors. Geeks do the work of building this stuff and geeks are the demographic most overly addicted to 'strange'.
Or maybe I'm at fault. That's right. Me. len. It's my doing. There are things I said that seemed cute at the time but might have spawned web memes of a virulent nature:
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
and I'll just have to live with that one. Bad act; bad karma. So sue me.
As someone who doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't want one, thinks they are the spawn of Satannic forces emerging from the troll caves of high technology, watching my friends, neighbors and anyone who has $40 a month to spare become bionic players in a web of the trivial pursuit of excess intercourse, I must say I think it is a downward spiral. I learned to hate video games when PONG took over the living rooms and my friends quit having conversations or watching Kung Fu to go "THOK THOK THOK THOK". These digital devices are getting in the way of getting my way.
Of course, our grandparents complained about TV and their parents complained about radio and their parents complained about telegraph and their parents complained about complainers. It could be that those who are getting laid are the objects of jealousy by those that aren't. That meme plays well on soap operas anyway. But those technologies didn't signal us with a three minute cheesy rendition of Smoke On the Water or chunkOfDebussy. Just as Muzak made music easy not to hear (a meme from Leonard Bernstein, rest his soul), our websphereOfCheapTalk is making it easier to get laid, cheaper, and possibly less interesting. I don't mind that you are out there rutting; I mind that you are making even more irritating noises while you prepare. There is a reason the cell phone vibrates. Make that connection and you'll turn off the ring tones.
I bought the book "Wicked" for my daughter for Valentine's Day. The fact of not having a cell phone or a blog means she will actually read it. The Broadway show is NOT the book. The book is a meditation on evil. We'll talk about that when she is done. It's too deep a subject for Instant Messaging, and it might keep her away from boys just a little bit longer... at least until her Mother goes over my head and buys her a cell phone.
And I won't protest. If I do, I won't get laid.
Or maybe this is a classic case of sensitivity to initial conditions and strange attractors. Geeks do the work of building this stuff and geeks are the demographic most overly addicted to 'strange'.
Or maybe I'm at fault. That's right. Me. len. It's my doing. There are things I said that seemed cute at the time but might have spawned web memes of a virulent nature:
and I'll just have to live with that one. Bad act; bad karma. So sue me.
As someone who doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't want one, thinks they are the spawn of Satannic forces emerging from the troll caves of high technology, watching my friends, neighbors and anyone who has $40 a month to spare become bionic players in a web of the trivial pursuit of excess intercourse, I must say I think it is a downward spiral. I learned to hate video games when PONG took over the living rooms and my friends quit having conversations or watching Kung Fu to go "THOK THOK THOK THOK". These digital devices are getting in the way of getting my way.
Of course, our grandparents complained about TV and their parents complained about radio and their parents complained about telegraph and their parents complained about complainers. It could be that those who are getting laid are the objects of jealousy by those that aren't. That meme plays well on soap operas anyway. But those technologies didn't signal us with a three minute cheesy rendition of Smoke On the Water or chunkOfDebussy. Just as Muzak made music easy not to hear (a meme from Leonard Bernstein, rest his soul), our websphereOfCheapTalk is making it easier to get laid, cheaper, and possibly less interesting. I don't mind that you are out there rutting; I mind that you are making even more irritating noises while you prepare. There is a reason the cell phone vibrates. Make that connection and you'll turn off the ring tones.
I bought the book "Wicked" for my daughter for Valentine's Day. The fact of not having a cell phone or a blog means she will actually read it. The Broadway show is NOT the book. The book is a meditation on evil. We'll talk about that when she is done. It's too deep a subject for Instant Messaging, and it might keep her away from boys just a little bit longer... at least until her Mother goes over my head and buys her a cell phone.
And I won't protest. If I do, I won't get laid.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Random Thoughts
Carly Fiorina: I will miss her terribly. Smart, foxy, an excellent speaker and the one woman in compSci who proved a glass ceiling can be shattered has left the building. At this point, she didn't make her numbers and in the high wire act of CEOs, that is the one thing one can't combine with political insolence and still survive. She leaves HP well-compensated and a major player who can choose her next job in comfort.
Carly will be back. I'll be glad. Smart women improve the business. Smart beautiful women improve the species. You go, girl.
National ID Cards: There are lots of reasons to have these, and from the point of view of a public safety vendor employee, we need them. On the other hand, technologies have implications and this one isn't safe to deploy without thinking these through. I am a lot more frightened of administrations than I am of the government per se. It won't be the government, but the current administration who abuses this stuff at the high levels of power. At the street level, the abuse will start on day one. Criminals don't waste opportunities.
One prediction: because scanning RFIDs surreptitiously poses immediate dangers, wallets and purses could evolve quickly to make them unscannable, but that will raise hell with the airport scanners, so there will be specialty carry-on items for travel. Or, the modern version of the ID pocket protector will be devised. Whatever the shape of the solution, wherever there is fear or inconvenience, there is money to be made through innovation. That is how capitalism works. Radar guns spawn radar detectors. The cold war of technology is the engine of western economics.
URIs Vs URNs Vs URLS: How can we still be having this argument on any serious technical list? The cost/benefit issues of having layered systems for name/identity management are so exhaustively documented one could list the issues on a Chinese restaurant menu. This is the one permathread that should become a classic and first year course in universities required of both the philosophy and computer science departments. That way, the students can get this out of their psyches before they enter the world of real work.
Carly will be back. I'll be glad. Smart women improve the business. Smart beautiful women improve the species. You go, girl.
National ID Cards: There are lots of reasons to have these, and from the point of view of a public safety vendor employee, we need them. On the other hand, technologies have implications and this one isn't safe to deploy without thinking these through. I am a lot more frightened of administrations than I am of the government per se. It won't be the government, but the current administration who abuses this stuff at the high levels of power. At the street level, the abuse will start on day one. Criminals don't waste opportunities.
One prediction: because scanning RFIDs surreptitiously poses immediate dangers, wallets and purses could evolve quickly to make them unscannable, but that will raise hell with the airport scanners, so there will be specialty carry-on items for travel. Or, the modern version of the ID pocket protector will be devised. Whatever the shape of the solution, wherever there is fear or inconvenience, there is money to be made through innovation. That is how capitalism works. Radar guns spawn radar detectors. The cold war of technology is the engine of western economics.
URIs Vs URNs Vs URLS: How can we still be having this argument on any serious technical list? The cost/benefit issues of having layered systems for name/identity management are so exhaustively documented one could list the issues on a Chinese restaurant menu. This is the one permathread that should become a classic and first year course in universities required of both the philosophy and computer science departments. That way, the students can get this out of their psyches before they enter the world of real work.
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