How Can A Man Stand Such Poor Times and Live

Obama describes his view of poverty. Long winded lawyers... sheesh.

Poverty: No Product. No Market. No Sale. No Pay.

That's capitalism in eight words or less. Simplistic but true.

Let Brother Cooder say it all.

Meat To The Spit

The John Legend interview Jake Tapper at ABC blogged illustrates that the news coverage of the election has run out of stories. Obama is doing what Nixon did with George Wallace: every issue that resonates, he adopts and the media goes along with that.

Legend can't see beyond the color of his skin. Obama can't see past the demons that have chased him since birth. Hillary sees that poverty is a far more potent source of misery than race. She has more insight than either of them.

Vote your skin color or vote for change. It's that simple. As Mahalia Jackson said, "Get up today and help someone. If you can't today, try again tomorrow."

That is the way to get it done.

It's time to quit pitting the rich against the poor, young against old, white against black, Christian against Muslim. This is how we are manipulated. That is why we are fools fighting in a burning house.

If you are tired being the meat, vote your conscience and your self-interest. When you can figure out how to do both at once, you'll do the right thing.

Otherwise, we are fools for the fooling, meat to the spit, and yet another failed generation.

If Not Today, We'll Try Again Tomorrow

Ever been to your local jail? I played a gig at the jail. 90% of my audience was black. Now there is no way that racism creates that kind of disproportionate number. There aren't enough racist cops on the street to do it and in this case, a large percentage of the cops ARE black.

Only poverty and a thug culture can create that number. This is a Chinese finger puzzle. The only way out is for one side to push TOWARD the other. Only the blacks can look at their culture and decide how best to change it. Many have. Ask Cosby.

At the other side, we can ALL work on the poverty trap.

How do we do that in a broken economy? I don’t know, but we’ll have to do it together or it won’t get done. Nothing will change.

Actions speak louder. Choices illuminate character. The wisdom of choice is not in how it makes us feel but in how it enables us to change for the better.

Reverend Martin Luther King was a fighter for the spirit as was Gandhi. If we are to stay on the road to social justice, we need a fighter for the spirit.

Does our judgment hold us back?

It is not just about freedom from Jim Crow, but from judgments that imprison our hearts and separate us from each other. We forge our own chains that way. When will we spiritually understand the deep meaning of "Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Racism doesn't end the day we quit hating each other for what we are; it ends the day we start loving each other for what we are. We can break those chains.

We have to get the mote out of our own eye first. Then get on the bus.

Today we celebrate the legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King. We'll all get through this. If we can't do it today, we'll try again tomorrow.

The Dream Speech

We come to the anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, and of course, it is folded into the current political contests. That is understandable. Regardless of what we pretend, race and gender are twin elephants in this room. The story of gender is so old we can barely tell it. The story of race is very fresh in my mind. I was born in 1954 and grew up in Alabama. That story circumscribes my life tightly.

It's a story with many sides. Media, movies, popular books, etc., tend to tell only one. That would be the real value of The Conversation: to get all the stories out where all sides can hear them and maybe understand the demons each has living inside them to this day.

We didn't get over racism. We decided to do everything in our power to keep it from being passed on to our children.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

We found out too late, they pass it on to each other. But this much is true: our children in Alabama play together today and no one gets in their way. Whatever we could not fix in the inequalities of wealth, we've done a lot for opportunity and equality before the law. While there are exceptions, we do live together peacefully.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

Things have changed. Responsibilities have shifted. This is where Obama and I agree.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I can't get past Obama attending Trinity with his family for twenty years and denying he knew what his pastor was on about. I can't understand a man exposing his children to so much racist rhetoric unless this is the way he wants them to perceive the world they live in today. There are so many contradictions in his character, one wonders if the demons he is wrestling with will get the better of him.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

Amen, Reverend King. Amen.

Smoking In The Boys Room

Jake Tapper at ABC reports that he smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Yesterday it was video of Obama being rude to a fan seeking a photo.

Hmm... Obama lies about Rezko, his resume, the Kennedy's, his contributions from big oil, and on and on and on. In fact it's hard to find out where he told the truth about anything. But sneaking off to suck on a cancer stick? Wow! What a big phony!

"SMILING FACES SMILING FACE SOMETIMES THEY DON'T TELL THE TRUTH!"

... then someone with a real nicotine aversion finds you out.

Money Needed for Beer, Pot and A Hooker

We can bitchslap this country into a depression.
We can forget everything that makes us proud of who we are.
We can lose the election and continue the war.
We can ignore the homeless. We can walk past the hungry.
We can saddle our grandchildren's grandchildren with debt.
We can keep on polluting the air for them.
We can keep on teaching them to hate.
We can keep on showing them how to lie.
We can pave a road straight to hell for them and light it like the second coming.

... or maybe

we could remember that there is world of hurt out there

... and do something about it.

Do the right thing by America
If you call yourselves leaders
Show it. Embrace the change.
Be the change. Join hands.

Everyone needs a friend.
Everyone follows a leader.

Hillary/Obama 08

Listen To Mario

Here's how it plays out. Obama squeaks out a narrow victory in the General Election. Once in office, lacking a credible legislative agenda, the ultra-left wing extremists in the DNC are able to force bills onto the floor with more spending, reparations, etc. With the US economy tanking, a recession becomes a searing depression. Inflation soars.

In two years, the Republicans sweep both houses of congress with calls to repeal Obama's socialist agenda. In four years, the executive branch falls to the Republicans.

So much for the election we couldn't lose.

Obama didn't throw his grandmother under the bus. He exaggerated a situation he thought would buy him time. It worked. None of the people in his circle who made the statements causing the uproar are allowed anywhere near a microphone. That is working too.

The problem is, it won't work all the way to November much less for four years.

He had a normal upper middle class childhood and found himself feeling guilty about that. Why? Ask him. He has led a very successful life but is still telling us about his pain filled background of self-loathing and doubt? Why? Ask him.

In fact, this man is not a race candidate. In the mixed neighborhood I grew up in, the blacks would have referred to him as an 'oreo' and me as 'buttermilk'. Those names stick hard and hurt but we raise ourselves above them and move on because we learn that the only names that matter are the ones we call ourselves. The beliefs that matter are the ones we choose.

Justice is not found in nature. It is found in the choices of the heart.

Obama didn't move on. He married, embraced his wife's faith and church. He chose a base of political support that chooses to preach Black Liberation Theology. Obama can't speak to those beliefs so he puts them down as 60s rhetoric but they still are the tightly held beliefs of his base in Chicago.

Obama is a man with demons. He needs to work those out and the conversation will help. But he can't be doing that and running the country at a time of economic crisis and threats to our security. Give him some time and one day he might be ready for this.

But that time is not now. He is unelectable.

Bosnia: well that was dumb, big girl. On the other hand, screw the lie. I saw the movie, folks. She was there. Where was Obama? She was in the Senate for the vote? Where was Obama? She was in the White House for eight years? Where was Obama?

Tell you what, I'll trade you a verse of "My Baby Does the Hanky Panky" for a verse of "Papa Was A Rolling Stone". Then we can all drink ripple and smoke gold together while we dance on the grave of the Democratic Party.

A caucus is not an election. It is a screamfest. Rumors are it is getting mean at these. The caucai are getting caca. Should we mau mau our way to the nomination?

How did the guy at CNet put it?

Write like a strategist and think like a stoner.

Now the TUCC scrubs their site. For a campaign that is rumored to be very good with technology, not knowing about Google cache wasn't too bright either. Nor is ignoring that your competition and not just a few nutcases have it archived in their personal cache.

We've let our parties be hijacked by the extremes. Bummer.

Scrubbing the web site is just the opener. It gets even more Orwellian from this point forward. It is one thing to misstate memory. It is quite another to start erasing it. That's fear. With a double digit lead and the press piling on, moves like this means the Chicago machine is terrified of what has yet to surface.

You want to win this. Listen to Mario. Mario knows things. Like getting 28% back in the fold is the difference between winning and losing no matter who is nominated.

Or ID_NilCorrecto: Mario is Italian. Italians know things. Capiche?

The following video has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this blog, but seriously, doncha need a laugh right about now?

Come Together

Blackmail. Hate. Muscling. Orders to Get Out.

Not really the election I was looking forward to.

Don't let either side divide us. Don't come together for Hillary. Don't come together for Obama.

Come together for each other.

Or have you already? Someone said that Senator Obama being elected would be the fulfillment of Reverend King's dream. When the black and white children began to play together in Alabama, and no one stopped them, that was the fulfillment of the dream. That dream was for black and white, together, unbound.

I suggest both candidates get over themselves and sit down and work out the deal for a victory in November for all Americans.

Let It Be

I read that the reason white people don't get Reverend Wright is because white people have not had to sort out the issues of race.

Oh yes, some white people had to sort that one out. Come to Alabama. For those of us born in the fifties, we've been sorting that out all of our lives.

We live together in peace and prosperity. We have attitudes but we have common causes: our children and our God. People who love their children and honor and respect their neighbor do not hate. We worship.

This isn't about misunderstanding; it is about not caring. We care about our children and our God, and that is common purpose enough for living together. Gandhi was right. Reverend King was right.

Two suggestions:

1. Ask Reverend Wright to appear on a Sunday morning with a panel of theologians from all religions and ethnicities. Let them ask him questions about Black Liberation Theology.

2. Create a YouTube channel called "The Conversation" for the people to contribute their thoughts and memories of the race issues in America and the world. Mainstream media by fact of concentration of power must not manage the limits of a converation that must be honest.

Leave the campaigns out. No ads. No sneaky posts. Make it a conversation among people, one at a time, two at a time, whatever.

Ask the hateful, ask the faithful, ask the powerful to let it be.

Brain Dead Liberals and Other Extremists

David Mamet wrote an excellent article on why he quit being a 'brain-dead liberal' in the Village Voice. He explains

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart. These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices.

Dean, Pelosi and MoveOn do not represent the Democratic Party any more than Reverend Wright, Michelle Obama and Black Liberation Theology represent the black faithful in America. They are both examples of extremism. We need competency in the white house, not another eight years of extremism. The infatuation with the minority view of extremists is how we got ourselves into this mess. More extremism is simply fighting in a burning house.

Extremism and extremists are the death knell of the Democratic Party. If ever we have needed moderation in our actions and words it is now, but the media will not enable it because anything said in low tones with deliberate thoughts does not play well.

I am voting for Hillary because she has the best grasp of the policies and the problems. Obama and Michelle are students of the school of Black Liberation Theology. I am liberal but I am not brain-dead. When told to take Wright's comments in 'context', I find even more scary rhetoric. When told to read Obama and Michelle's writings, I find more separatism and inability to articulate a united vision.

Take it all the way to August and beyond. Senator Clinton, it is time to quit parsing and worrying about who you will offend by speaking truth to bigotry. The bigots won't vote for you anyway. Instead of worrying about who you will offend, speak loudly for those you must defend. They will vote for you.

Hijack The Conversation

The Conversation is too important to the people to leave it to the politicians except where the politicians are people. :-)

Open a YouTube channel for The Conversation. Ally ally in come free.

I lived the 1960s in Alabama. Some lived more of it in Boston, Watts, Detroit, all the cities that burned.

Some lived it in Poughkipsie. Everyone has a story. Video is cheap.

Tell the story of the people. Have The Conversation on YouTube.

We must recite our tales to find our common fears.
We must understand our tales to find our common God.

Tell it all, brother!

Hillary Says Vote for Obama If He Wins the Nomination

It's a matter of loyalty. If she says vote for Obama, I will....

.... as soon as he can explain Black Liberation Theology to the rest of the faithful.

We are told we cannot hold another man's religion against him. True for some. Not others.

How otherwise can one reply if another holds it against you?

This is a real hurt, Senator Obama. This is a real wound. Is it your intent to spend the duration of your term closing that wound?

Or fixing the economy, the environment, the war, the housing crisis, the cleanup (FINALLY!!) of New Orleans, you know, FIX STUFF.

In my generation, we believed we had taken down the ropes. Two very powerful forces were at work: the media and our shared belief in God. Black Liberation Theology hammers our souls on the anvil of our shared beliefs.

Is it a goal of your administration to take our souls off the anvil, or to hammer harder? When the anvil breaks the hammer, what is between them remains undone.

Having A Conversation

Shelby Steele made points worth making. It is the black perception of themselves as victims (we keep being told that politics are about perceptions) that is the strongest link in the chain that binds them to the past. Senator Obama cannot change being black, but he cannot make the campaign about "The Conversation" without distracting the electorate from issues of more immediate importance to the electorate as a whole: the war, the economy, and the environment.

A conversation has to be two way. Consensus is compromise. If Senator Obama's supporters want to discuss race, they can't just complain. They have to offer solutions.

Reparations? No. That won't change anything. It leads to the same victim mentality that keeps the issue of racism on the table. So precisely what will be considered 'the end of racism in America'? I don't think the textbook definitions from sociology help here, Joy Behar not withstanding. The fact of Senator Obama's successes suggest we are past "oppression of a minority by a majority", a phrase she used to make the claims that blacks cannot be racist.

Puhleeeze... ask Hispanics about that one.

Guilt-proscribing definitions won't further The Conversation. We have to change The Conversation from the past to the future and that means we need to talk about our shared goals.

Perhaps a change of term is needed. Try this: white America does not fear black America. It is intimidated by black culture. Our government does not practice racism if the laws on the books are enforced. But nothing can change the preferences for culture except appeal and excellence.

So now white America might ask itself: what about black culture is intimidating?

I will not vote for Obama. He lacks the depth of character I require for a President at this time. On the other hand, no one is prying my Temptations collection out of my lily white hands. I'm not giving them up. Black music has black soul and black soul is a very powerful force for good and comfort.

Is it really about hate or fear? We've shown we can get past fear. When the ropes came down, when the signs came down, when the neighborhoods integrated, when the mixed marriages became non-notable, we put down fear. I'm not saying there are no racists and that we have eliminated fear. Racism is a disease. It can't be eradicated but it can be made statistically irrelevant and manageable. Polarities are not resolved; they are managed.

Fear has to be conquered by individuals. There is no universal solution.

Hate? Each generation has to decide for itself one person at a time just as they have to understand their fears. The difference is hate inspires violence. Wherever we can use the tools of culture to reduce hate, we must. This must be the goal we share. Culture can be a means. Ask Whoopie Goldberg. Ask Sinbad. Ask Reverend Wright. Ask Obama.

Hate? My advice? Lay it down. Then pick up the prize of love and celebration of distinctions. It isn't enough to quit fearing or hating. In my opinion, racism ends the day we walk into our daily lives and instead of accepting someone for being black or white, we revel in it, we enjoy it, we love it. It isn't about loving them despite who they are, but because of it.

Here's the fun bit: this many years later, we all still know who Tonya Harding is. Few remember Kerrigan and almost no one can pronounce the winner's name.

When politics become entertainment, the news media becomes a ring master. Beware of tigers and clowns.

Democrats United By Our Stupidity

If we let this nomination be about race, we are stupid.

If we let this nomination be about Bill Clinton, we are stupid.

If we let this election be a web blog conversation instead of a campaign to win, we are stupid.

If we lose THIS election to the republicans, we are blithering professional A-lister STUPID!

They could run together and the Democrats could have the White House for sixteen years. Any Democrat who can't work out what kind of real change that would be shouldn't be in the Democratic Party.

It isn't hard to be stupid but it takes practice to be good at it. I know it sounds stupid, heck it is stupid, but wow, should we make stupid moves that give us the White House for 16 years or stupid moves that give it back to the Republicans after the last eight?

How stupid can we be before it qualifies as brain-dead?

Well, you have to pick your stupid moves too. And wow, can we be stupid in the Democratic Party!

He can't win the general election.

She can. Together they can run the table and show in one election the power of the right choices by people who REALLY DO hold the good of the country above their own.

Now THAT would be REAL change.

The Swift Boat

It just keeps getting uglier. Some one posted the following today on one of the news sites. The quote is from a professor who teaches Black Liberation Theology, Dr. James Cone whom Reverend Wright cites. You can google him for Cone.

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Maybe there is a context for this. I'm not sure it matters. Lanny Davis, a hard nose attorney, posted this as the two questions Barack Obama will have to answer before or during a General Election.

1. If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

2. Would you support that candidate if, after knowing of or hearing those sermons, he or she still appointed that minister to serve on his or her "Religious Advisory Committee" of his or her presidential campaign?

Therein is the crux of what Obama has to explain in conversation. For my colleagues who use the Internet to promote Obama, like it or not, this is what you are involving yourselves and the technology in. One wants to believe Obama is not involved in this theology, but he will have to answer those questions. Some one really should have vetted all of this before the Democratic National Committee allowed this to go this far. Howard Dean is toast no matter how the election fares.

One astute reporter said it best noting that Obama did not grow up as poor or oppressed: he won't be defeated for what he is, but he may be defeated by what he pretends to be.

We tell ourselves we won't be fooled again. Then we are.

The Kareoke Candidate

Obama is the Kareoke Candidate. He presents well but every note is borrowed and his sound is the sound of overamplified overprocessed machinery.

Kareoke and disco became popular for the same reason: people with no talent and no discipline could pretend to be dancers and singers. As an old band mate of mine put it, 'it is the audience as the stars instead of the professionals'.

Populism succeeds in elections. It simply cannot govern. If we elect this man, we'll go from a ruthless DJ who only spins what he likes to amateur singers who can stay on message but not on beat. Meanwhile, the sucking sound in the background is our economy being flushed to syncopated blues notes.

Using Bill Richardson and other surrogates, the Obama campaign will keep picking 09-09-Race and giving it to the media kareoke masters of ceremonies for today's news spin cycle. The Wright affair and the Rezko trial are causing Obama's base to erode. That base is passionate about the race issue. His campaign will keep finding ways to hit that button. The best thing the rest of us can do is yawn. It isn't that the conversation isn't important, it is that this isn't a conversation. It is a one-sided attempt to guilt us into voting for Obama. Ignore it.

Barack Obama isn't the Manchurian Candidate; he is the Kareoke Candidate picking his songs from a playbook. He does that well. He is a good singer. That doesn't mean he is a good musician or a bandleader.

Gesthemane: YouTube

My gig tonight was a Maundy Thursday service.
Sing the songs of the death of the Savior.
Pray for forgiveness.
Be quiet as you leave.

Here is something I share with you as a You Tube video. Be well!

Conversations

@John Cowan:

13.4 and women don't get along with each other well enough to be 51.4. Hence, the Democratic Party.

Friend Obama, does a great service, Dr. John. He introduces a conversation. Conversations are the soul of the Web. If our technology is a greater good, this is where it is more easily sensed.

Whatever the greater scary of economics and war, what America wants is to feel good about itself again. What change we make we make because we need that.

The conversation of race is a conversation the people choose. It is a conversation that may indeed be a healing force in our country.

Whatever we speculate, it is a conversation that the young want or a very important demographic drops away from Friend Obama.

Conversation is their birthright.

It Was A Good Speech

>>Will his speech help or hurt his chances of becoming President?

It won’t change the fact that he waited too late and made too many contradictory statements. Obama lacks discernment and the ability to make the right decisions even on topics to which he has given considerable thought. When it got to the crunch, he chose to protect his candidacy instead of the values he espoused. He is not ready for the toughest job in the world. He may be someday, but his time is not yet come.

>>And is our nation in a racial stalemate?

No. If it were, Obama's candidacy could not have come as far as it has. He is the proof of change if not the agent of change. Have we come far enough? The fact as stated by him that statements such as those made by Wright are typical of the black church experience in America proves we have not. We have a lot of anger and hate yet to lay down.

However, the sad fact is if he does lose this nomination, it will be the statements of his pastor and his own refusal to confront him many years ago that beat him. Trying to spin that any other way is exactly the kind of response that keeps us from making that progress so many desire so earnestly.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Senator Obama gives his speech tomorrow. I hope it is a good one.

Race divides America.
Gender divides America.
Wealth divides America.
War divides America.

America is a land divided.
Are we a family divided, too?

Lord, let us find a way from the hate that divides us.
Show us the bridge across these troubled waters
In this saddest of weeks for the followers of Jesus
Show us mercy and a way into the Promised Land
Undivided by hate
United by your purpose
Living together in hope of His Return
Lead us
Love us
Keep us
Forever in your hands.

Amen

Lay It Down

That moment between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Senate floor yesterday counts for something. I do hope earnestly that supporters on both sides pay attention.

The Obamites make much of what Obama says, and repeat over and over that words matter. If words really matter, then will Obama take responsibility for belonging to a church for so many years and espousing the words and works of a man who is clearly a black racist, his minister? Where I live, if a minister says things like that, we fire him or go to another church. Obama full well knows what his base believes. It isn't just what a man says that he is judged by, but also who he listens to attentively.

Is this really the campaign you want to run? Can the black community in America get past those remarks? Can the rest of us ignore them? If we keep ratcheting this up, only bad will come of it.

For the kids in the campaign, step back and ask yourselves if you want to be the ones to set back race relations in this country fifty years. For the adults of my generation, try to remember when we promised each other that despite what our parents said or did, the horrible disease of racism stopped in our generation.

Do it for your children. An election isn't worth this.

"Lay down lay down
Lay it on down
Let your white bird smile up
At the ones who stand and frown."
- Melanie Safka -

The Devil and Obama Webster

Jack Cafferty asks at CNN.Com if Obama should go negative.

Not if he wants to win. He needs to get his supporters to quit being shrill.

Explain this, Jack: if he claims that his rival believes his followers are delusional, what does it mean when he claims her support is all blue-collar and undereducated, or in short form, stupid?

Obama is running out of speeches fast. If he continues to repeat himself, he begins to sound like a caged parrot. If he squawks too loudly and shrilly, he is a cooked goose. That is the fatal flaw of populism: it is based on the popularity of an idea, not the execution of a plan.

Maybe common sense is prevailing at last. People who understand that their government is actually NOT a vast right wing closed conspiracy, but a representative democracy (say Republic) in need of competent executive leadership are voting for Hillary Clinton. They understand that we don't have to overturn the government; we need to fix the mess left by the current administration. This isn't 'old school' thinking; it is common sense patriotism. It is belief we have a good system; we need better leaders.

She governs best who governs least, isn't that the conservative mantra, Jack? We want a change of leadership, not a swift boat to hell.

Technologists With Obamamania

Declan McCullagh writes an article at C-Net on the topic "In a technological upset, Obama bests Clinton". Someone writes in that Obama has a grand plan of opening up the corrupt closed insider system in Washington DC to the people.

Sounds good. Answer these questions before we start spending the money:

How many hours of C-Span do you watch a week?

How many letters do you write to your Congressman?

When your local council has meetings, do you attend?

Do you read the local political news and review the published bills?

There is an abundance of information and opportunities. There are few users or takers. The US government is not a large closed conspiracy (Bush I and II being exceptional). It is a large bureaucratic form of representative democracy (say Republic).

What you need to understand is WE ELECTED BUSH TWICE WITH ALL THE INFORMATION WE NEEDED IN FRONT OF US.

What Obama is saying sounds good, but that is it. Neither he nor those programs will change the culture or the goals of our government. Once elected, all those neat sounding ideas vanish into budgets and hearings and costs and taxes and finally into a low dull snore.

Technologists like the sound because they can sell more technology and they can *feel* empowered but this won't change Washington in the least. Competent persistent knowledgeable executive leadership can. When you vote, you are not voting for machinery but a machine. Be very very sure the machine you are voting for has your best interests at heart because once in, they have the power for four years, and the agenda they set determines the cultural changes possible within the limits of that power (and the limits are considerable).

The most telling aspect of Obamamania is that it sells hope but is driven by deep seated paranoia. That is why the shrillness in that camp when debating. It isn't that they are delusional but that they believe everyone else is stupid (citing the blue collar vote for Hillary Clinton). Technology cannot fix the government. In fact nothing can. The system we have is the one we passed legally, is in the Constitution, and is not in need of radical overhaul.

It is in need of competent executive leadership.

The Hand On The Tiller

What is behind that face?"

In his own words, anything you care to put there. Caveat emptor.

"... overturn the machine"

Do that without a new one ready to roll and you walk home. Caveat vendor.

I don't take the bloggers that seriously. The Nixon generation didn't take us that seriously. It is easy to campaign and put enough spin there, and you can win. But to govern, you have to have the people in place who have the knowledge because no single man, woman or President will change a government of laws. For Larry Lessig, the answer has always been, ignore the laws and do what feels best for you. As a result of that, I can go to YouTube and find one of my songs taken without permission or acknowledgement and used in a video. There is another web site selling that song, also without permission and without sharing the profits.

Boy howdy, what a deal for me.

However you slice it, that's theft, and worse, theft of goods that I have shared graciously when asked and credited. But Lessig and now Obama keep promoting an idea among the young that whatever they want they can take without any preconditions because They Are The Internet Generation. In fact, they are a mob organizing for a generational war.

It will fail but with a price. Perhaps they are a generation that history and power should by-pass because they have failed to learn the lessons of history, and have not earned the power.

Security is a boat in a storm where the captain keeps a light hand on the tiller. The tiller is technology. You need it but it is just stuff. The hand requires experience. You can't steal that.

Barack H. Obama: What's In A Name?

The latest distraction is whether or not Obama's critics are baiting by using Obama's middle name, Hussein.

Get real. Some words DON'T matter.

The name isn't important. The problem Obama is having is he is late to realizing when something is important. With Rezko, he gives the money to charity but only after the press notices. With Farrakhan and his minister, he denounces and rejects but only after the press notices. With Al Qaeda in Iraq, surely he noticed? With the chair of the sub-committee, he should have held hearings but said nothing until the press noticed. He knows there is a puppet government in Russia but doesn't know any details until the press notices and Clinton explains it to him.

What this buttresses is the charges that he is long on rhetoric and short on real experience because all of these are the kinds of details a leader absolutely must be aware of at all times. It's no good to be in California when a hurricane roars into New Orleans as Bush was.

Why will moderate Democrats vote for McCain? At the age of a lot of us, we've been watching "movements' all of our lives. Most failed to deliver so we are very cynical about that and not just a little creeped out by Obamamania. We know by experience this kind of thing doesn't deliver. We don't want 'a dream'. We want a plan. We know Obama may someday be a good leader but these gaffes in judgement are too frequent and too noticeable.

At voting time, we vote for real change, and we do what Obama says we should do: we cross the party lines to get leadership and a practical approach to government based on our perception of the person best qualified to lead. If the Democratic Party has decided it is more important to make a statement than it is to lead effectively, then the Democratic Party has abandoned us to its feel-good politics which we know don't work when the choices are hard and unpopular but ultimately the right choices.

I'm a Democrat and I support Hillary Clinton, but if I have to choose between party loyalty and loyalty to the country, I choose the country. Had the Republican Party done that, the last eight years would not have happened. I didn't make that mistake last time and I won't this time. It isn't that Obama is the same thing as Bush; it is that a choice for Obama is a choice for the same kind of thing: feel good over experience.

It comes down to doing the right thing and if we lose doing that, we lose doing it right. If we win, we won for the right reasons.

Last Night's Debate: The F Word

Looking at the CNN political ticker, the Farrakhan question caught fire as I thought it might.

In the South, if a minister espouses a position a person of conscience can’t abide, the person works with the church to get a new minister or goes to another church. Bifurcating churches are a reason the landscape and real estate market here is flooded with church buildings. This is the danger because those looking the Trinity pages now understand that it is a bigger deal than Louis F., that this is Obama's base and it is a separatist base. So now the moderate Democrats have more in common with McCain given an Obama v.s. McCain bid. Meanwhile, the separatists get pushed to the front of the debate and unless Obama clearly puts some distance between him and them really fast, at the end of this, we still get a Republican president and set back race relations in America fifty years.

On the other hand, the loser of last night's debate was Tim Russert. Mean little man.

For John Cowan: Which Words Matter?

So to be for Hillary is to be against the JPL, John? In other words, Obama is all inclusive and somehow her opponent is all divisive?

Ok. Here is the web page for Senator Obama's church in Illinois. Read it.

http://www.tucc.org/about.htm

I've seen this sort of stuff in the papers the guys who stand in suits on the corner sell here. Not new news. For people who don't live in heavily mixed neighborhoods, the words may be a bit of a surprise. So here are the typical positions taken by those who encounter this stuff.

Pro:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_11_124/ai_n19328537

Anti:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/barack-obamas-church-ultra-left-and-afrocentric

The problem about the hard positions is it is tough to sort the words that matter from the words that don't, which means effectively, no one knows what Obama is about if that is his professed beliefs as a member of Trinity. It may be that that church is his political base and the means to get elected. Ok, politics as usual, but it means that only some words matter to him and his political base. Or it means his congregation has been duped by his membership. Not possible?

Then it means he believes all of that.

So John, which words matter?

Pro or anti, the message that church is espousing is political dynamite. This is what the Republicans will go after him with because they can get this message to their base without having to go through the Big Media outlets, and when it does, it will go through without traceability. That is how Obama will be Swift boated, except not with third party assertions, but with his own. Get ready for it.

It seems to me that for too many this is about some kind of Great Get Even. Some want to get even with the rich, some to get even with the Baby Boomers, some to get even with whoever. But that is exactly how the right elected Bush twice.

I won't vote for that. I vote for real change, a change of leadership that actually is inclusive and actually has a real plan to get our economy out of the dumps and our troops out of the desert. Not a cause, a movement, or a "people's liberation". If we need liberation, it is from those self-serving whining delusions that somehow a grand conspiracy got us in this trouble.

We did it to ourselves. Twice. What does it say if we do it a third time and call that liberation? Which words matter?

Bewitched: Dakini

In the alley by the third to last shadow of the mid-day stood the door to the Dakini, a house of idle chatter, conspiracy, and oh, magic of the most secret kind, the secrets of children who play in the mortal world while yet protected by that most ancient spell called innocence. Light shielded by shadow, in a room shaped by incantation, hidden among the busyness of the mortals, two girls played as little witches will, making up forever evers from recitations of dreams, practiced sighs and wrinkled noses.

Twin proprietors of the pleasures of the patrons of the Dakini, they practiced feminine arts of wit, and guile, satisfying their indulgent desires so sweet, no mortal man could resist them nor tell the dark from the light haired. Nor cared any to take one when with the other, or ever knew that both were satisfied. Even as the girls competed for the most high and delicious adventures of their immortal imaginations, they remained without question, cousins, devoted to each other’s hearts, each other’s needs, and each other’s failings. Neither would ever fall to sorcery or treachery in the mortal world while the other remained with her.

Mortals believe that magic is spells. Spells are a mask that bends the surface of an illusion inscribed by light on the magical eye. The face that names the names is hidden behind the veil of appearances summoned from the heart as signs tumbling in clusters of sparkling light. Calling these names, she can fly fearlessly among the dark stars that consume beings such as she. Their dark penetrating hums become the land marks by which a witches craft is discovered. Each act of magic inscribes a map of the light devouring spaces.

“He is waiting”, said the light-haired witch laconically with a resigned sigh as she counted the coins in the box for her turn. To the young man seated behind them, they were serving maids preparing for evening work. To each other, they were luminous goddesses preparing for an evening of amusement.

“Then let him”, her dark hair cousin coyly said, drawling in her deliberateness. “See how he taps his fingers on the case he carries. If he is the tiniest bit impatient to ask his question, let the answer be even less forthcoming.” Her face drew into the small curve, narrow at both ends but with fully pouted purple lips. “Anyway, he isn’t here to see me, now is he?”

Her laconic cousin saw the hint of jealousy betraying her disregard when a tiny spark escaped as if launched from the arched curve of her dark mascara. “Signs of attachments, or do the signs hold no currency for you, Samantha?”

“If signs were currency, Serena, you would be wealthier than your Mother,” the other replied with uplifted eyes smiling.

Bending over her as Samantha counted, she retorted “If your Mother’s currency were better clothed, you would be my Sister, Cousin.” the dark haired girl laughed with a pitched giggle.

“He is still waiting” she reminded.

The light haired serving girl glanced at her unmade face in the mirror hung on the wall behind the lid of the counting box as she closed it. Identical to her Cousin, her unadorned dress and face distinguished her as she moved among her customers. Polite and unassuming, she minded her magic with care and did not tease the men. They saw in her plainness any woman they desired but did not see the true face of Endora’s daughter.

Her eyes fixed on the boy sitting there. “Is magic enough?” she asked herself nervously moving her lip.

Serena’s dress clung like blood to every curve of her body, spread thickly in a few places, but thinly to the edges of these. Sam wore the plain robes of a servant girl hiding all that would cause a man’s eyes to linger, using her magic to keep their eyes fixed on her bewitching smile, crinkling nose and luminous green eyes, as if in her plainness, her intimate secret would be safe.

The young witch did not wish to be unattractive; she wished to attract only one. Like the boy drumming his fingers, she could count time until the moment of attraction, but until that one moment, she could play safely, instructing the willing and letting her Cousin steal the will of the others as she pleased. She knew that once she loved, she would always love. Her Cousin was perspicacious. That currency was her immortal heart.

Her fear silent, her heart needy, she asked his desire of the Dakini.

He raised his eyes and looked upon her true face.

A door opened and closed letting him see the immortal behind it for just a single thought. The light dissolved into a million suns plummeting toward him, blinding him, scattering him then swallowing the shards. He died wordlessly, his eyes still reflecting the luminous face he had seen. He vanished from the little girl’s magic.

As her Cousin laughed cruelly but without malice, she heard her Mother’s sad words whispered in her ear,

“To truly love a mortal is to lose one’s magic forever and ever again.”

Lessig, Obama and Hillary

I'm debating my web mate, David Petersen, about the announcement that Larry Lessig is considering a run for Congress. Inevitably, this becomes about the Presidential race. David says it is about The Movement, the People. Like Obama, he talks about a wave of change that will sweep over Washington and change government.

My problem is I've heard it all before. It feels good. It resonates in the media.

Does it work?

Populist appeals are very workable in campaigns. George Wallace was an example. George W. Bush is an example. An 'empower the people' speech is always thrilling, but it conveys the idea that they are not empowered already, that they do not participate already, that they are not heard.

We elected George W. Bush not once but twice.

The people did speak. They always do.

This is not about an election where one candidate speaks for the people and the other does not. It is not about populism or a movement. It is about governing the country well and for the best benefit of the people so governed. Yes, the will of the people to participate is strong and vital, but the needs of governance are the means and audacity to fight for what is right and to know exactly how to take that fight to Washington in a way that will succeed.

Populists elected Carter. Populists elected Wallace. Populists want to elect Obama, to send populist figures to Washington such as Lessig. Populism can elect a President.

But the buck stops at the Oval Office. It is a real job not a movement. It takes a skilled fighter and one who's heart is as strong as the head. It takes a lifetime of commitment. It takes leadership, but David, leaders are not reflectors. Ultimately we elect our leaders to make decisions that may not be popular. We do not elect them to reflect our will but to govern us and to provide by the power we entrust to them, the protection of the opportunities of liberty and justice.

I've seen what Hillary Clinton can do. I like it. For me, that's what this is about: the only choice I have is to pick the candidate I believe can do the best job and that I trust to do it.

I've seen how hard she fights for her family and her country. I've seen what a woman can do when everything she values is threatened. She prevails. She preserves. She advances.

I trust her.

... And she's sexier.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/134.aspx

Epiphany

Baby mine oh
Sweetly smiling
In my arms so close tonight
Promise made to Eve in Eden
Cries so little
Cries so low

Reconcile my heart to sorrow
To the end of days
Wise men tell of kingdom's glory
Pierce your side for wine and water

Love,
My Love,
Your hand
Needing mine
At the dawn

Though God's heart in me is breaking
I will bear you on.

len bullard - 02/20/08

PS: The music for this is
HERE!

Once Again, The Geeks Are Clueless

The Republicans are making sure the money goes where it does them the most good. Smart. Unscrupulous but smart.

The Democrats are about to put John McCain in the White House. What no pundit thought possible, once again, we will do for the sake of spiting ourselves. The harsh bit is if one takes race off the table as every good liberal should, Obama is just a freshman Senator without any credentials beyond presentability. Given that, if we want to make some kind of statement, the big change would be gender. It appears that America is more biased about gender and fearful of women in charge.

The $40 million of our money spent by the Republicans to destroy the Clintons worked, and now for their effort, we will give them another four years, or we will elect another Jimmy Carter who while admirable, was too inexperienced to undo the mess left by Nixon. After that, we get another 12 years of Republicans just as we did with Reagan/Bush. You have to admit, it is a brilliant strategy. The Democrats take the fall for Bush Jr's criminal rule, and the same party that made that possible get another decade to loot.

John Cleese was right. The Queen needs to revoke our independence except for "Kansas which she does not fancy." At least the Brits understood that Ironpants Maggie was no threat and had the nescessaries to govern.

Between The Anvil and The Hammer

There is controversy about Raph Koster's keynote suggesting that virtual worlds and games are irrelevant to a world that has it's Darfurs. Some see this as a trivialization of the game worlds; others, a Panglossian attempt to recruit game devs into social causes.

Yes, media can change people not because it changes the way they think but because it can change what they think about and the act of thinking can change the way they think. D'oh.

A series like The Prisoner can change what we think about and did. It is great art and remains relevant or is possibly more relevant. If one sees games in this view, then games that give more to think about are positive.

Virtual worlds are different. They don't tend to have the same 'god like' Number 2 running the show and defeating every attempt to escape, though it is to be noted that through iron-will and persistence, Number 2 did break the will of his captors.

But these are still just works of art. Reality changes in much more complex and difficult to control ways. Did the Prisoner cause the kids to go to the streets in 1968 to stop the war? Some, likely yes. Did they stop the war? No. That happened when the cost began to bankrupt the economy, there was no political advantage, and it was clear no win possible except for the locals. Like Number Six, iron will and discipline broke absolute power.

So is there some lesson virtual worlds and games should teach with respect to Darfur? Maybe. If you want to create worlds that teach lessons, they can certainly do that.

Or perhaps Darfur will be another example to the West like Vietnam that absolute power simply will not change hearts and minds. It can aid them when they are ready to change but otherwise, human suffering like human evolution is controlled by humans who ARE the emergent controls.

I see the campaigns of the left and well-intentioned as hollow when it comes to acts. It takes incredible experience and planning to create real change. It is not enough to say, "We Can"; we have to say "We Can Do THIS" and this must be doable. Otherwise, as Orwell is quoted, the anvil breaks the hammer, and the follow on is that whatever was between the anvil and the hammer at that point is left undone.

Frustratingly sad but so. I am in sympathy with Raph because we can lose consciousness of what is to be done and what is doable by retreating into fantasy worlds. I agree with Prokofy Neva we can lose it just as easily while shopping for groceries. I disagree that art of any kind is the means, just a reflector. In this is the heart of the problem of our media society: leaders should not be simply reflectors. Hope is a condition, not a goal. Actions without a goal are as dangerous as words without a cause.

If you want to make a change, put $25 into an organization feeding the refugees. This will not solve the problem. It will keep someone alive long enough to make a plan and maybe act on that. Little acts can lead to great victories if they follow the human instead of directing them.

Dark Stars and Standards

With all of the discussion on XML-Dev initiated by Simon St Laurent about the ten year aniversary of XML and the question, is it time for a new review, I have an odd thought given we are comparing the last experience with SGML's struggles and the ease with which XML was sold.

Is there a dark star phase for technologies and ideas? I tend to think of SGML as being sold to publishers and industries whereas XML was sold to programmers. Do standards or technologies endure a phase where the amount of combative energy among the users of different types is such that there is insufficient momentum for it to collapse and fuse until a primary group emerges or is identified which can instantly coalesce and create the required amount of cooling for the collapse?

What are the standards evolution analogs of neutrinos, photons, and electrons?

Humans are the emergent controls of their own evolution. Their intelligence is the fuel and until the coalescence, they cannot shine. The question is, are our conflicts, our resistance to our commonality, our desperate clutching of our self-identity, the dark matter?

It's a fun model.

It IS About Race

I'm being asked about my voting preferences in the upcoming elections. First, I'm a Democrat. Readers of my blog know that and know my positions on the War, Bubba Bush, Rove the MasterBaiter, and so on. No mysteries there.

1. If it comes down to McCain vs Clinton: I vote for Clinton. I've had enough of the Republicans. Although I respect John McCain, his age and his party work against him.

2. If it comesdown to Obama vs McCain: I vote for McCain. Obama is slick but hollow. A good speechmaker, he may be just a bit too much like John Kennedy who was also a good speech maker but shallow in foreign affairs and up to his hips in scandals which fortunately for him, weren't revealed until after he was assasinated and deified.

Is it about race?

We're told we can't ask that question. The fact that we are told that means it is about race. We were told we couldn't ask questions about the war too because we'd be unpatriotic. When a topic goes off limit, it is worth talking about. I don't hold race against Obama personally. I hold the notion it isn't worthy of discussion against his supporters. I have the very fresh memory of the announcing of the results of the OJ Simpson verdict when the black community stood up and cheered for a man who had cut the head off his wife and murdered a young boy in cold blood. I can't get over it or past it. Now I see Oprah talking about a 'new day for our people' and I have to wonder if I am in the demographic. If I have to wonder, it is about race. Otherwise, why vote for someone who doesn't even have enough experience to know a slum lord from a land lord.

From then until now, I've had all I can stand of tribal drum beating from the far right wing nuts of the Republican Baiting Party to the Al Sharpton's who can't seem to understand that as long as race is an excuse, nothing is inexcusable. Now we can add the Millenials with their age bigotry to this camp who believe it is time for them to take over the country. When you can pay for it, you can have it, kids.

I don't think this country needs a Great Get-Even and that may be what we get with Obama. That WOULD be the politics of the past.

No, what we need is a good hard nosed executive. There is work to be done and I've had enough of visionaries and other feel good fairies. I want to know how the next President will manage my money and the resources I want to leave to my children.

Epiphany and Cecile

Here are some new instrumentals for you. These are reflective, meditative, lush... ah heck... ear candy.

Why Epiphany? Why not?
Why Cecile? Fred didn't fit.

Both of these are part of the new Virtual Reality world being built for the University of Western Australia - Perth. I can't wait to see the completed work.

Epiphany
Cecile

Enjoy!

Hanging On The Santa Cross

There is a strange cultural phenomenon here in the South. When a person dies in an auto accident, the family or friends of the victim will put a wooden cross memorial at the site of the incident. These crosses dot the Alabama highways and are a accepted as an expression of public personal grief even as they ugly up the roadsides.

This year I saw one that filled me with dark fascination. Someone decorated the wooden monument with a holly bough and a Santa hat. Imagine that: a Santa Cross.

I've been interviewing people for jobs at our company. This is new for me. I didn't expect to become the manager of product development eight months after accepting the job, but one who takes chances the way I have in my career doesn't always predict the path ahead. I know why I left but that doesn't mean I had a good plan if any. Uncertainty can be pleasant or unpleasant. I manage it. I enjoy it. Risk is acceptable regardless of what I have to lose because when I manage it, there is a thrill to that. No matter how nasty people or circumstances are, one can make do and better themselves.

Something I notice is just how dissatisfied some are with their current employer, yet how reticent they are to take a new job when offered until they get the opinions of the very people they are leaving if they take a new job. Perhaps we want approval or applause or maybe we just don't have enough confidence to believe we can control the circumstances wherever we land. I understand that.

Yet I don't understand when someone is so uncertain that they will endure another season in a freezing hell over taking a chance that they might have to manage uncertainty. We can talk about having to take care of our families, our responsibilities, but eventually we have to take care of business, we have to manage uncertainty.

Sitting here watching a miles long flight of birds flying Southeast, content in the cold, and otherwise looking for grain, maybe that is the way most people manage the winters of discomfort and discontent.

Others put up a Santa Cross.

I understand both. I just don't want to hang on one and wait for the wind to turn warm again. Better to fly.

Is Being Online Rude?

Tim provides his opinion about audiences being online during presentations as conferences. Generally, if a speaker is that boring, I find another presentation. Most good conferences are running multiple tracks so I've usually marked up the schedule for this occasion. The debate is 'is such behavior rude?' At a concert or pretty much any entertainment venue that isn't *classical* or "dryad jazz*, the answer is no. On the other hand, a power amplifier is a marvelous antidote.

When I observed my children texting at the family Christmas function, I took their cellphones away from them. As I said, "That's rude." A conference might be different. Maybe not.

1. You paid to be there. It's your time or the time of your employer. You may have an issue with your employer if you are texting with your fav(n) while your competitor is presenting.



2. The speaker paid to be there. They take risks doing that and one of them is they may fail to hold the interest of the audience. If the speaker is paid to be there, they already have the money.

It is pretty easy to rouse an audience from somnambulance. Point the microphone into the monitor. Some will consider that rude and will leave to type elsewhere. Those that stay are interested. Think of it as culling by holding the wand of power. Rudeness like violence begets more of the same but in the moment, they don't have a power amplifier and you do. They have a wireless connection. They are welcome to IRC their displeasure from another room and surely will. That's fine.

Then there is the one that is most irksome: cellphones in business meetings. Do you tolerate that? If someone is required and does that, count the number of people in the meeting and multiply by their average salaries for the time you are waiting? Was that cellphone call as important as the time at the time? Does your company still have confidential meetings and allow people to bring their cellphones and Blackberries into the meeting? Remember, those are also recording devices. You might want to have a chat with your company security person if you do.

Reflexivity is the nature of communicative acts. Only when they are tolerant, considerate and compassionate can they be considered 'civilized' acts. If this is 'over' it might be a good idea to turn up the power amps, put on some earplugs, and make sure that the force is felt. Then at the very least, boredom ends quickly.

Uncivilized behavior follows it out the door. What is left has value however small.

Same Song New Recording

Here is the final recording of

My Son's Time To Go.

It took some time to winnow this down in the 'less is more' tradition of arranging acoustic songs.

The sadness of wars is we keeping having them.

*********************************************************************

For the music geeks:

G Harmonica, Godin nylon string, Roland 1080 synth, electric bass, Rickenbacher 12 string, voice.

The processed sound effects are nylon string guitar with Doppler effects. The harpsichord is the 12 string electric resampled up an octave (an old hippie songwriter trick).

La Vie en Rose

La Vie en Rose is a recent French film depicting the life of Edith Piaf. Piaf is a name I knew but I knew nothing of the details of her life. The title song is a recognizable melody, but this tells me how short even international fame is once a singer dies. Yet...

For those as little cultured as I am, she was a French singer of the 1930s to the very early 1960s. It is a tragic, sad film with very few light moments and even those always in the context of her willful need to be both loved and independent. The music is extraordinarily beautiful, the acting is world class and the story is not one to be forgotten easily.

I recommend the film for a rainy winter day. There are some YouTube shorts of the real Edith Piaf singing her signature songs. I recommend these highly. Of course, now I will be out looking for Piaf's records.

I am always amazed at the haunting quality of the right song sung by the right voice supported by the right heart in the context of a tragic life. The film director says he intended to portray the life of the artist. He succeeded. Bon.

Jack and the Magic Beans

This weekend was the occasion for the local church production of Jack and The Magic Beans. They cast all kids in these and I get the plum task for writing and recording songs for the show.

The music is here.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/FeeFiFoFum.mp3
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/MooBooBouree.mp3
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/FeeFiFoFumInstrumental.mp3
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/jack.mp3

It was great fun to see the little heads bobbing and twisting to the macarena beat of FeeFiFoFum. The kids in the cast made up a dance for it. Love it!!!

For the gearHeads:

1. Software: Adobe Audition and Guitar Pro
2. Axes: Takamine Six-string acoustic, Godin LGA electric six string, Rickenbacker 12 string electric, Kentucky Mandolin, Roland JV1040
3. Voices: Len Bullard
4. Acoustic Bass: Mark Huff

The Cloister and The Fence Jumper

Bob Sutor asks an interesting question about social networks becoming the banks of our personal information. Haren asks if open standards for exchanging social network information will improve that market.

Would that it were that easy, Haren. Let me compare this to the current faux standards initiatives in virtual worlds. The question is

1. The import/export of object serializations still needs a common object model if the behavior of the system is important. One can import/export geometry assets fairly well minus the color pallette (notoriously variant). After that, scripts are the challenge. VRML is the most ubiquitous import/export format for web use with Collada coming up fast. X3D has a better model but isn't as widely deployed.

2. The next issue is the runtime. These formats are usually not reversible, or what we once called 'lobster traps'. The lobster goes forward but can't come back without shedding a limb, sometimes called 'lossy'. XML doesn't protect a data asset from this. Being without semantics, it can't. The XMLers have long claimed XML is a good runtime format, but most of us are document wonks, not real-time 3D systems designers. Given the size of files required to create a seamlessly navigable virtual planet, verbosity matters. A lot. Animators won’t accept slower frame rates to enable open human-readable formats these days. The pioneering days of VRML gave way to the Second Life city-states where ‘stickyness’ is the analog to the Hotel California: check in but never leave.

In other words, highly competitive markets “forge, f**K, hide and deal” to obtain locks on their customers. The Haight experience repeats endlessly in the Valley: it starts off starry-eyed but pretty soon everyone is focused on the bottom line.

So there are two problems: having a common model to share that is operationally compatible, and the will to share.

Social networks have a slightly more dismal story I'm told. Not much attention has been paid here for the same reason the virtual world owners aren't raging for common interchange. Being entertainment venues or light social interaction venues, the idea is to keep eyeballs from wandering, so like a possessive mistress, they tend to guard the secrets of their attractions.

That might be seen as an indicator of the immaturity of the market. Small firms acting small. As larger companies become involved, they tend toward the common data models because they are more interested in increasing the size of the market itself. Note for example Google created KML for its 3D assets and it was implemented in the X3D/VRML editors such as Media Machines Flux. That is a win for the authors because they can move assets independently among the vendor worlds. This would be the result for the social networks; the users can move information assets. The problem is finding some net advantage for the network owners.

A change might be if more of these were P2P and the local machine could be used to protect the privacy where necessary. People would have to be responsible for it and some would rather pay someone else to do that. That was what I was saying in the first post. If a person could provide all of that information to one trusted/paid-to-be-litigable source, then the ability of that source to protect and manage the private information would be their selling point. Think of it as the Swiss Bank model for personal information. That vendor could provide a card or other means which a user then gives to say their doctor or other transaction partner rather than having each partner own a copy of the personal information. That was the problem of the SSN: it gets too widely distributed-by-value rather than reference; so its security is minimized yet it unlocks an incredible amount of personal information.

It is an interesting conundrum: a system designed to distribute (the web) results in the concentration of stored information to offset the dangers of the very characteristic it was designed to enhance.

Then there is the danger of sharing. It isn’t simply a matter of enabling it. If that were so, adultery would be a very well supported human behavior instead of one that while ubiquitous, is generally punishable sometimes by law but most often by social ruin. Just because something is popular to do doesn’t mean it is safe to do, yet Silly Valley investors and developers act as if every thing they sell has a social imperative.

"The web is going to be a much more immersive, a much more multi-dimensional environment," said John Doerr, one of the founding board members at Google and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which invests heavily in the tech sector.

Mr Doerr's presentation touched on a range of areas that would be affected by the web, in particular green technologies and the energy sector, as well as disease therapy, and he gave stark warning to any firm that was not willing to embrace emerging trends. "In any real revolution there are winners and losers. The internet wasn't some kind of 'kum ba ya' thing," he said.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2726190.ece

Doerr is funny if not ironic. His statement comes down to "Buy from us or perish." Actually, the web was a kumbaya thing. When the scout master began to molest the scouts, things changed.

Revolutionary changes don't often come from where the mass is looking. The status quo resists change and nature conspires against intelligence. Revolutionary comes from where few are looking and that few are struggling for their lives in some cause shared quietly if reluctantly by many. That is why it is called ‘revolutionary’.

The first revolution of the Internet is sharing yet sharing has created many problems with identity theft and other social illnesses. The rise of a ‘smarter’ web may be the creation of a cleverer burglar. The problem is protection, not sharing.

The next web is not an open web, but a cloistered one of many walled gardens where the contract is not how widely shared information is, but how safe and protected it is. The rise of the city-state was the rise of a gated community in the beginning. When what goes on inside the gates has enough value, the walls get higher and the guards become more professional.

In a world of competitive dog shows, breeders don't tolerate fence jumpers kindly.

Rock A Bye Baby

Force vs culture: force loses. It is a rock fighting water. The rock loses every time over time but it takes time. Even with a large rock, enough small streams crossing will erode it to dust.

We seem to be approaching such a time in the evolution of the global Internet and a more massive shakeup in the power structures of our companies and governments. Where companies and individuals talked open standards and open systems, we seem to be witnessing attempts to close it on several fronts particularly given the opportunity to use the emerging markets for virtual worlds to gain keiretsu locks on the technologies. A considerable numbers of streams seem to be crossing.

Single Language Unification

There is an emerging effort on the surface from several domains to propagate the idea of single language unification. After all, that is what HTML is, right?

This is the wrong approach for many reasons. It creates an unhealthy ecosystem. Even where there is one language for a period of time, requirements for it diverge sufficiently to cause either so many variants that they may as well have separate titles or to eliminate areas of application that look similar on the surface but are quite different in the domain in which they operate (eg, design time vs runtime datasets). Generic markup succeeded precisely because it is the antithesis of the single language ecosystem. Think of DNA and you see how the engines of living systems actually work in cooperation or competition with the host environments.

The single language approach has a very long and public history of failures. One only has to look. XML succeeds precisely by NOT being a single language approach. SGML stalled because of having too many variations in the approach to a syntax unified system. HTML bifurcates because of too many necessary variations in the object frameworks that support it and the plethora of scripting languages that animate it.

This single language meme is stacking up to be one of the Big Idea discussions in the next year given the numbers of ostensibly separated emergence points I am seeing across various blogs and forums. Taken to extremes, it is a very bad idea. Not considered in terms of the technical reasons it is advanced, it is a dangerous idea to ignore. Not understanding that some of the motivations at some of the emergence points are not technical in nature makes it insidious.

Standards Or Not

While the discussions of social networking make for a fascinating coffee table book collection of musings, the elephant in the room is standards for interop.

1. Platform unification: pick a winner among the various competing gardeners. That's a non-starter for obvious reasons.

2. Keiretsu unification: a consortium of non-standard technologies are pulled together to create a network of interlocked walled gardens. Christian Renaud might want to use a different analogy than speciation. Look at the emergence of cities and city states. This one succeeds for some time but it is the Roman Empire approach to civilization. It has the advantages of money AS a force for integration but it creates a short lifecycle for the content. 3D content minus RADs is very expensive. Caveat emptor.

3. The Language IS the Platform. This approach has historically produced the healthiest ecosystem of standards. Languages are much more like living entities in their development cycles if you want to use speciation metaphors. The lifecycle advantages for the authors and owners of content are far greater as they force system vendors to compete for talent by offering better rendering and other services. The service bundle becomes the product for host vendors. In the X3D/VRML history, multiple vendors vied and died. Had it not been for the language basis, the content would have died with them. That is the ultimate outcome of building walled gardens in the desert. Archaeologists are the inheritors.

On the other hand, The Single Language Theory postulates that multiple languages create fractures with the most popular meme being the Tower of Babel myth interpreted as "God's vengeance on audacity". The counter interpretation is that it was God punishing one King who wished to become the single intercessor and that multiple languages enabled all to pray with their own expression.

The second analogy more nearly fits the situation we encounter with 3D standards. The problem is as Watte points out at Forterra, performance. This is the place to start thinking about 3D interoperability: runtime languages with high performance versus design time languages (eg, X3D, Collada) with desirable lifecycle characteristics.

That is the convergence we have to solve. The rest is marketing politics.

Games In the Workplace

This is a profoundly BAD idea. Many years ago the founder of Fairchild tried posting salaries as an exercise in motivating employees. It was the same reasoning: transparency leads to better performance. According to the stories, it almost destroyed the corporation as the inside games quickly became more important than external business. I’ve seen similar problems with so-called peer reviewing systems that then submit names to a committee to pick the so-called ‘high pot’ performers. Who ever dreamed that one up was certainly high on something. The key clique insiders began to game the system immediately. The results were very predictable.

This is folly because it assumes people are rational and given good information will act to improve the situation for themselves and others. The AI guys know the fallacy of rationality is bogus. The humans will take many kinds of acts given such rating systems but most of them are destructive. There are reasons for privacy laws and for restricting the flow of certain kinds of information. Transparency in proximity means closing the door to the bedroom first.

China and The Rest of the World

With cheap labor and dirty manufacturing coupled to the infinite desire of the West for More Stuff, the Chinese have amassed a substantial cash advantage. It is a bit like Google or Microsoft in the software market. Keep a lock on a market long enough and eventually you hold all the cash and most of the high cards in the deck. So goes the pace of globalization. IBM surrendered to China and other companies are kowtowing as fast as they can send salesman.

This is normal and predictable. The US dollar is in the toilet for awhile, the Chinese are holding the notes, and just as we had to do in the late 70s and 80s to dig our way out of the oil debt and the falling dollar post-Viet Nam, we have to do some major kowtowing to rebuild from our latest misadventures. Again, this is predictable as sunrise.

Markets seek levels like water seeks low ground or metal anneals when heated. The problem of annealing processes is sub-optimum minima that have to be socked really hard to restart the flow. One wonders where the thump will come from but those poisoning events will rattle something. What is truly entertaining is how strange the bedfellows become and how former bad guys turn out to be the good guys at the denouement.

It isn’t that the mammals aren’t rational. It is the shocks it takes to get them to use it. They claim the Chinese curse is ‘may you live in interesting times’. I think the right word for what is happening is ‘insidious’ because it is otherwise, deadly boring. What was that old quote about “lulling them to sleep”?

Rock a bye baby, indeed.

Why William Gibson Hates Futurists

Gibson says he doesn't like futurists. He goes on to talk about Osama and Alabama. It makes for the kind of reading that other self-absorbed and pathologically cynical writers enjoy: an affirmation of the emptiness of their work.

As one might suspect, Gibson knows as much about Alabama as he knows about virtual reality: technically nothing.

A vivid imagination is only one part of predicting the future. The other part is the chops to make a prediction come true. The rest is timing. Gibson writes pulp science fantasy. Jules Verne dreamed of rockets to the moon, but he fired them out of cannons, something even the scientists of his day knew was bad engineering.

So here I am back in the office a half mile from an engine laying on its side that once took man to the moon and five miles from the test stands where it was first fired.

I just came from the services of the man who's invention was the coating of the heat shields that saved the life of every American crew returning from space until the space shuttle flew. I sang and then watched his daughter, a prima ballerina now retired and teaching in New York dance for her mother and father's friends, a woman who would bring people such as Dave Brubeck to his home. This I watched in the rebuilt ruin of a tavern on a mountain not half a mile from where Alan Ginburg taught me the blues forty miles from where W.C. Handy, the father of the blues was born, and not much further, where Helen Keller first saw the world through the water falling on her hands.

As I looked through the rain cloud that settled around the park, I realized I am glad for the ignorance of William Gibson and those like him who know so little about my home but wish to use it as their frame for ignorant thought. It is thoughts like theirs that keep a tidy mist around my home keeping others like them from coming here as if it were Brigadoon bewitched. I wish them well and that life and liberty will keep them far from here where giants lived, where the thunder of their engines shook my house and broke my Mother's picture frames.

I live in a place both quiet and beautiful and filled with the gentle men and women who looked at the stars and in them drew a line straight to future while the William Gibson's of their day did not believe and could not go. Please stay in Vancouver, Bill. It is the right place for you. I will stay in Alabama. It is the right place for me.

MooBooBouree: You Can Teach A Cow To Tap

Here is the children's song I was asked to write.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/MooBooBouree.mp3

I can't believe I'm doing this, but hey, so did Garcia and Grisman, so it must be ok.

Thanks to my choirmate, Mark Huff, for playing standup bass!

Blue Moo Bouree (You Can Teach A Cow To Tap)

Blue Moo Bouree (You Can Teach A Cow To Tap)
c len bullard - sept 17 2007

You can dress her in a skirt
You can rouge her up good
She can even wear a mighty fine hat
But if you try to make her dance
She's got two left feet
And there's nothing she can do about that
You might get her on the stage
But she won't say much
When she's chewing on her cud she can't rap
There's many fine things that you can't do
But you can teach a cow to tap.

If she sways too far she might fall down
On the fence or the chicken or the dog
If you her leave outside when the sun goes down
She'll get lost wandering round in the fog
There's a trail to the pond and a trail to the barn
All she needs is a compass and a map
Well there's just some things a cow can't do
But you can teach a cow to tap.

Instrumental:

Show 'em, Prissy!

You can show her to the feed
She'll give you what you need
Grade chuck roast, burger or broil.
She's content to be beef
She's content to be boots
Where there's grass n'er a cow was ever spoiled
But she can't do a waltz
Play a fiddle or a flute
As a singer she'll be coming up flat
As an entertainer goes, she's a pretty dull show
But you can teach a cow to tap.

Look at that.. Blue Moo Bouree!

Day Two: Testing the River of Life World

So far tests are running about as I expected. On the Bit Management Contact browser, it works ok minus the expected case sensitive file errors. I'll fix those. One tester sent me his Flux Console output and that IS VERY HELPFUL. BIG THANKS!

I published one comment from an Anonymous source which I normally won't do, but will make an exception in this case. Please when you send feedback, include the name of the browser you are using. One of the reasons for completing and fielding ROL is to provide a shake test for the VRML/X3D browsers. As we understand where this world won't run outside of BS Contact, we'll have a pretty good idea of where and why we aren't achieving the cross-browser playability that is so critical to the success and growth of standards-based 3D content on the web.

Many thanks, Folks! If you want to keep up with this, go to my other blog,

http://3donthewebcheap.blogspot.com

where I'll discuss the technical issues. Lamammals is a personal rant blog.

New Version of River of Life Is Posted: Please Test

The new version of The River of Life world is now posted at this link.

There are usually some problems with a fresh release (caps in titles, etc.). If you load the world and find these, please post them to me here. I'll be testing as well. This world is encoded in VRML97. I will convert it to X3D once this version works.

Note that the world was built by hand using the Bit Management Contact browser. I have not tested it on other VRML browsers lately. If you do, let me know how that goes. The worlds have been through Chisel and are error free to the best of my knowledge. There are still warnings and non-conformance messages given the tight restrictions of Chisel, but other wise it runs.

One favor: please don't pilfer the sound files. Those are samples under fair use and this is a not-for-profit world. All of the artists are listed in the credits.

Thanks!

A New Song Fer Ye

I'll make a proper recording of this song, but for those who like them rawer, this is a raw as I get: one voice, one guitar, one mic, all real time.

This is my comment on war, not the politics, but the sad reality of it over the generations for me.

My Son's Time To Go

len

No Cure for BitTorrent

I was having a conversation with a younger developer about the resurrection of one of the more popular copyright infringement sites using Bit Torrent. He said it can't be stopped and seemed proud of that stating it was like cancer: remove it one place and it just pops up somewhere else.

Two thoughts come to mind. One was the pirate radio stations off the British Isles many years ago. They thought they were untouchable. The British Navy made stink of that belief monitoring their last broadcast even as the fresh holes in their sides were filling them with water.

The second is, well, I know a little something about cancer. Not to be cloying, but the truth is it is treatable in very many cases and types. It is just, well, the treatment isn't pleasant. I wonder if that is what is in store for the Bit Torrent sites trading in pirate intellectual property. Perhaps it is a cancer and it may be time to make it clear that the treatment or cure is... well, unpleasant for the host. Even if there is no cure for some cases, it can be driven into remission and even where it can be cured, the poison applied is well, unpleasant.

The millenials believe this piracy is making musicians "competitive". It's probably time to take the poison back to their servers and provide them with an experience that is... unpleasant. Hardware isn't free yet. Something that leaves it hairless as well might be the right cure.

Emergent Controls in First Order Systems

From time to time I comment on control emergence in cybernetic systems transitioning from first order to second order. In the current parlance, there is the term 'crowdsourcing' and quite a lot misdirected effort to support it as a serious study of research. On the other hand, some of the research does tend to support the model of control emergence.

Good. It may also create some good data for planning such efforts although that seems to be a contradiction in terms. It isn't really. One can sum it up as we once did at a former employer's work site with a scrawled banner on a wall:

We build the tools to build the tools and sell the tools we build.

Not as mystically satisfying as "crowdsourcing", etc., but much easier to present to the investors.

Ravings From A Microsoft Junkie

Oh it is so sad. For so long I've been a Microsoft junkie consuming the twinkies of the uber-toolkit vending machine slobbering over gridviews, popping providers, and storing my procedures where the kids won't find them.

But even junkies have pride.

1. Save As HTML should save HTML. Period. Take out the MS processing instructions. Do yourselves a favor in the document office wars: punt to making extremely easy systems extremely reliable. There is ALREADY ENOUGH INFORMATION IN HTML 1.0 for long lifecycle support. Don't piss in the soup. CLEAN exports and imports are to stressed out
junkies what water is to aspirin.

2. CSS must work in IE exactly like it works in Firefox. It must work in ASP controls. Why do I need TWO style namespaces?

3. The Ajax Controls are hosed in namespace aggregates. Unpredictable Crapware Wastes Days. Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into lost dollars. Junkies don't have enough time for thisjunk AND other junk. If switching between the design view and the XML source view regardless of container states can cause bindings and controls to disappear without error, crapware is too kind a word. If there is an error in the design view, that same error must be indicated in the XML view. Well-formed XML is not enough.

XML/Design Mode: It is valid or it isn't. If it is the design state is valid. If it isn't, it says so.

That's how synergy from dual-representation editing works. Otherwise, it doesn't.

4. The choice to support a polyglot for web application development is a commercially practical one, but the inability or unwillingness to implement a subset that is common to all web systems normatively, that is a failure to negotiate. Don't *be* the friction. Be the grease.

Clue: Too Much Stuff. Even for junkies.

ps: the C#/SQL Server stuff is good s**t.

The Millennials

Somewhere out on the flatlands of the web I was grazing on a press blurb about the so-called millennials, a term Gen-Xers prefer to describe themselves. It said they are not that well-liked by their bosses. The article described their high expectations, fast production and technical skills coupled to their inability to stick with an employer without quick promotions and senior salaries. The comments warned the baby boomers to get "out of our way".

Umm... glad to do it.

When a generation's most notable contribution to culture is the concept of "the starter marriage", that says it all. History skips right over them. Why? For all their ambition, ultimately, they're bland. As my wife says, "no staying power".