Arlo and The People - Episode III Sailing Down The Golden River

Celebrating the last evening of their tour. I am so glad I was there for the dress rehearsals. :) To the Guthries: Sail On!!

FB Open Graph and Public Safety Applications

A strategy for implementing profitable open systems is to create variations at interfaces that act as forces on integration thus market selection. This is particularly true of web systems with a small set of mostly interoperable browser clients. The competition shifted to the plug-in protocols or application content servers. It's a natural evolution and it leads some to think high reliability is best obtained by closed systems free riding in open IP environments or at least, semi-permeable. Given local shops implementing open vocabularies, the choices made on the production floor combined with the market force of the vendor at the time/season of release create the opportunity.

Social net clients are convergence clients by fact of membership in distribution communities with overlaid meta-rules for social semantics. Social net clients are a member of cross-boundary communications client markets seen otherwise in server-side public safety systems for organizing emergency response. Change the games to resource tasks and dispatch and set up the groups and with chat, you have a basic volunteer-side emergency response system. The integration opportunities are obvious and already emerging in weather reporting and news organizations who are using the FB pages locally to keep citizens informed.

So a question would be does the OpenGraph protocol enhance the market emergence of increased integration with the classes of functions and operations over resources described in for example, the US National Response Framework with it's Emergency Support Functions? I think the answer is yes, it's a start because of the notion pages represent real world objects.

My God is a Loving God

My God is a loving God, My God
My God is a loving God, my God
Keeper of souls from the darkest obsession
Healer of hearts by the secret confession
My God is a loving God, my God

My God is a jealous God, my God
My God is a jealous God, my God
Here is the bond that I set before thee
Thou shalt have no gods here before me
My God is a jealous God, my God

Giver of life
Almighty power
Give us this day
Give us this hour
Bless us with your Eternal Love

Universes fly
We may not know why
Our lives in the palm of your hand

One God feels you
One God heals you
My God is a loving God

len bullard

Dixie Carter: How Great Thou Art

Dixie's gone. :( :( :(

She made beautiful Southern women legends by right. Designing Women was brilliant.

This is the episode I remember best because of Charlene's dilemma. It helps to know the context of the story where she performs this. In ways, it's Designing Women's finest moment.

When you can't find faith in yourself, you can sometimes find it in others who find faith in themselves by having faith in what is greater.

Domine Jesu

Last week the Hazel Green United Methodist Chancel Choir performed my composition, Domine Jesu. This is my first sacred classical work with a Latin text derived from the Jesus Prayer, a prayer of humility and a plea for forgiveness. At that service, our Choir Director's daughter, Hannah Williams performed Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone. That performance is included in the video below.

My deep appreciation and thanks to the Chancel Choir, our director, Gwyn Williams, our organist, Barry Sublett and my friend Terry Cornett, percussionist for their beautiful work on this most somber hymm.

Green Screen Paradise

The war of critics of the iPad heat up.

Some people can tune and play their guitar. Some can only play their boombox. iPad is a boombox. I'm ok with that, but I'm on the other side of the door where making software and having the freedom to access user screens sans the interference of the screen maker is important to competitive success.

Then there are the old radicals on the West Coast who traded their Grateful Dead t-shirts for open shirt dress coats and Bob Dylan blasting from earbuds, became the vendors of the over-the-counter culture and own a lot of Apple stock. They value their freedom but maintain it at the cost of the freedoms of others. They demand to be recognized as creative but cheer when that creativity is boxed. They remind me of H.G. Wells' Morlocks who fled underground and then controlled and fed on the Eloi who stayed above ground and endured. When it is a choice between their stock portfolio and their ethics, the portfolio wins every time. When Apple rings the marketing bell, they come out at night to herd the Eloi into their stewpots.

Open systems are tough to endure. Meanwhile, LA is shutting down city services for two days a week. I wonder if there is a market for garbage perfume or if they can simply green screen a paradise. Ah California: home of recyclable indignity. Here's an ode for the blowed.

It's a green screen paradise
The weather there is very nice
Bright images in focus all the time
California cats are big and fat
But, hey, they've got an app for that
Just plug right in. Enjoy that sunny clime.

With tsunamis, floods, volcanoes and drought
It's the perfect place to live no doubt
It's all the rage for the smarter set, ya know
Sliding into the sea in an earthquake zone
Thank God, Nevada's holding on
When the Santa Ana winds begin to blow.

Take a shovel when you walk the dog
Don't lose that poop in the summer fog
Concrete rivers and illegally tended lawns
Regulating collected feces
Considering exotic species
If you can't see the air you know it's gone.

The oldest trees and the largest debt
There's not a thing they don't tax yet
And still they can't believe they're out of dough
Interactive and highly polished
Can't do much but who's astonished
It's overpriced and they've sold out the show

They say politics are in need of fixing
By Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon
I think there's a slicker pig left in the sack
California is the Golden State
For give aways. They just can't wait.
We would but the Mexicans won't take'em back.

There's a rain shadow hanging on the mountain turn
When the sun goes down you can watch it burn
The girls are tan and the men are so controlled
With empty wallets, their banks are closed
A fortune blown right up their nose
They'll move to Hawaii as soon as the mansion's sold.

It's a green screen paradise
The weather there is very nice
Bright images in focus all the time
California cats are big and fat
But, hey, they've got an app for that
Just plug right in. Enjoy that sunny clime.

len bullard april 7, 2010

Get Timmy

Here is another reality check from an article at VirtualWorldsNews.com. A product launch:

“Inversoft’s software understands and analyzes how users communicate with each other, a tremendous value to our customers,” said Amy Pritchard, CEO of Metaverse Mod Squad. “In the hands of our community managers and moderators, this information not only makes us more efficient in stopping inappropriate conduct, but also allows us to channel back a wealth of information about the preferences, behaviors, and motivations of the community. These are incredible tools built by an exceptional company.”

It’s hard for me to grasp how many myths of the web this shatters or what it says about online culture. If they told me this was only being applied to the New York web scene, I might understand it, but as a much needed way to both moderate/control and harvest human behavior across the board?

T-Bone Burnett is right about this medium being cold except that the wires are just wires. All it can really be is a communications amplifier and the collective message from its users has become such that it also has to be a nanny and a snitch. Just as TV went from the great teacher to the subculture pimp, the web devolved in less than two decades from the library of Alexandria to pulp fiction.

And the technology isn’t the reason. The people using it are.

Song for Kim

The Beatles said all we need is love. Keats said, we need beauty and truth. From a life spent making art of my passion, they both were right. I wrote this song for a girl when I was twenty. A friend took her photos. A friend taught her guitar. Art is joy.

All of the men who worked on this video cared about this woman. Because of that, thirty five years later, this video could be made and given to her.

The best art we make of our own lives. This is what is true, beautiful, made of love. We take light and shadow in turn but always love, and from it emerges a greater light. Let there be light.

Song for Kim

I wrote this song when I was 20 for a wonderful girl. I sang it to her for the first time in the then trendiest restaurant in town where I was playing my first night and she was a college gal waitress. I looked up when I finished into two of the most beautiful luminous happy eyes I'd ever seen. The days of long nights playing solo in front of a fire to a room full of young college hippies were grand.

Someone asked if I would take it out of the attic.

Diane Sawyer or GMA: The Kiss of Death

Note that CNet is also running an article where newly signed bands try to refuse to social network or tweet. Note the comments are anti-social network on that announcement.

Kill The Wabbit!!

So in a single week, two trends we were promised were absolutely going to change our lives forever appear to be poised on the tip of the whiplash. True or not, it is a clue about how fragile any socially-driven technology really is. It is never about the technology itself. It is about the social perception and the enjoyment of the engagement. The first is fickle and the second is shadowed by boredom.

Note that all it took was the labels publicly telling their acts that social networks are good for their numbers. This is true. I can look at my YouTube stats and show you the exact day I started using FB to promote videos. No money involved. It was an experiment. On the other hand, Anti-The-Man sentiment is perrenial and eternal in some demographics and that happens to be the precise demographic these bands and their labels want to buy the music. Oopsie.

I have a rule of thumb: as soon as ABC Good Morning America runs a piece promoting a technology, a trend, a book, whatever, it’s on life support after that. If Diane Sawyer is into it, the hipsters are out.

Class War: Fight or Immunize?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10456382-261.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

The Google plan to scan books gets a Federal hearing and a lot of "low level static". Note they have a monetization plan. Note the fierce resistance.

The scare to society is or should be that the edge cases pushing back are no where near as far from the center as they once were. The kid who capped a bully at school here, followed by Amy Bishop and now a software exec with an airplane should be a warning to bullies everywhere, real or culturally perceived. The people stepping up are no longer the kid looking to steal CDs to buy crack. These are well-educated, well-trained, well-equipped and even well thought of people who like the guy in the basement finally has his red slimline stapler taken from him and says, “that’s the last straw”. When we were analyzing 9-11, the remark was made this could be controlled until it began to recruit so-called lumpen terrorists, those who emerge from the elites of a society itself as it did with Bader-Meinhoff.

So far, at least with the copyright bs, no one is taking down major labels the way Charlie decided to go after Terry Melcher. The goodness of the conversations we are having at Jon Taplin's blog is if we keep after this problem, no one ever will. At a certain point it becomes evident to the artists and their fans that a plan is starting to take shape by which they all benefit. The importance of the win-win to the overall health of the social networks that are emerging to reorganize media businesses cannot be overstated.

In most cases, class war is not an organizational event. It is more like a contagion in bad weather. It can be stopped and it can even immunize. It is important to make the right gestures up front and back them up with visible acts before it does become to the advantage of organizations to keep the conflict alive much the same as it is for RushBozo and dimBeck to keep their listeners perpetually stirred.

What if Google Managed Copyrights and Paid the Registration Fees?

What if Google Managed Copyrights and Paid the Registration Fees?

At Jon Taplin's blog is yet in another long series of debates on the woes of the publishing industries for copyright.

Most geeks know that all you have to do to fix the registration problem is enable the Save boxes to require it the first time it is saved. And that probably solves 80% of the problem of universal registration.

The licensing agencies and usual suspects want to recreate the old world in the new one of digital publishing. I'm not a player so who knows how this comes out. But the fact of derivative works and the need for multiple registration agencies to share information if that is a competitive system complicates tracking.

The question of how to assess the relative value of URI-identified resources is built into the licensing. I wonder what it is worth to and of the service systems providing very large distributed services right now to pay the licensing fees for the artists for works contributed. It protects YouTube.

Austin: Another Edge Case

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” – Leonard Bernstein

Another edge case goes over the edge in Austin today, burning his bridges, his home and taking a blow against the man. I expect more. We have enough laws, we have guns,we have sufficient police and God knows, we will soon have far too much surveillance. We should pay attention to wise Leonard Bernstein who understood that the change we needed then and now is a change of heart.

Props to Daniel Bullard (The Buddha) who sent that quote my way.

Mojo Overload

Mommas and Daddies hide yo' children. Here comes Mojo Overload. TASTY!!!

A Class War: It's Not That Simple. The Case of Amy Bishop.

The disturbing signs of the class war continue to emerge.

Some are familiar with the terrible event that happened a block from where I sit writing this article. It is cliched to say driving past the campus from my office to my son's home to talk to him and his friends was surreal. To see my alma mater awash in a sea of blinking blue and red gumball machines was stupefying, maddening and grotesque. To see the students finally out of lockdown almost zombie like as they got into their cars was heartbreaking.

Yet one has to stay a little disattached. Eventually, Amy Bishop will come to trial and having that in this city will be almost impossible, but we may have to get a local jury pool and try.

There is an unsettling and as yet unanswered question in the article linked above: was this the act of an elite, a Harvard graduate who although evidently disturbed, an edge case as I call them, saw herself victimized by the small town university politics in a city rich with intellectual property holders based on genetic and Federally funded research? Did she believe that not only her teaching career was being destroyed by failure to be granted tenure, but her life's work would be appropriated by senior members of the faculty, licensed for their profit while she was being dismissed to the woodpile?

In articles at Jon Taplin's blog much is made of the problems of copyright for artists and old school fee collections agencies such as BMI and ASCAP. The problems of digital rights management are well known. In that, some ask how we came to the place where the fans would turn on artists and try to deny them a living based on collecting fees for use of their work?

What if this isn't that simple? In the writings from the copyleft and creative commons community, there are often the complaints about the ripoff of the artists by their labels, their collection agencies and so on. The notion that stealing music is a blow against The Man is pervasively held in many parts of society.

What if this is just one part of a bigger notion that class and elitism have become too entrenched? Given the economic events of the past two years, it's no use quibbling that the very wealthy are using any means at hand to maintain that wealth. That feeling of being had is very pervasive. In the case at UAH, it may be someone who believed as the article author asserts, her lessers were getting the better of her and she reacted violently. It isn't justification, but it may be a sign of a wide spread and intensifying belief powering not just this horrific event, but the last election, the tea partiers that have followed, and who knows what else yet?

Wars of class, the struggle to unseat the elite and the struggles to maintain them have been among the bloodiest in history. Like religious wars, they have a similar basis in the notion of the natural right to power or class of some select annointed. But whether it is the struggle of the annointed to reclaim rights, or of the unannointed to strip them, in a religious war the leaders are plainly recognized. In a class war, it's not that simple.

Scenes

Scenes last. Shared memories are powerful enticements to keep on keeping on. I’d say Dylan was co-opted long before Carter got to him. It’s not that important. Singer/songwriters are journalists and if they report honestly, if they are fair witnesses, they’ve done their job. They don’t need to be on the front lines and they surely don’t want to be bait to increase the crowd of innocents at a riot.

If they get wealthy and famous, they get to play that same dangerous game of survival all such must. I’ve seen the A-listers who have to watch every conversation, investigate every contact, go insular because the edge of the crowd always has a lot of desperate well intentioned but it ain’t happening wannabes and at least one or two lost whackos who might just hurt somebody.

It’s a fragile life and not just a little risky.

I looked at my neighborhood riding in from church with my daughter and wife, looked at the nice middle class houses new and brick, the beautiful country scenery, the neighbors waving and I breathed a deep satisfaction knowing I have achieved the real merit badge of the family man: I’ve provided a good life for them and to this point, they have not disappointed me.

It’s rare. It’s good. It’s real. Praise be.

Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine

Props to Simon St Laurent for passing this along. I recommend this site for anyone who needs a shot of fake schadenfreude.

Though I've never been hip or a hipster, lately I've begun to reflect on the fact I've spent most of my life naively and blissfully unaware of the extraordinarily large percentage of things I've admired, believed or followed that turned out to be fake. It seems to me that a creeping awareness of this was part of the early Sixties kick to the collective head that was quickly put to sleep by the market's astute filling of the void with new fakesters saying all the sayings that made us feel collective about our insights, thus faking us out once again.

I wonder how long any culture can tolerate being awake and aware of it's own state of fraudulent flatulence. We learned lucid dreaming only to realize that lucid wakefulness is really very painful. We self-medicate with purchasing power and will break any moral code, any promise made, any self-assurance of our own coherent being to increase our power to purchase another dose of cultural homeopathy, quack grunt control.

As Paul Simon sang, "a big bright green pleasure machine".

Agism Is the New Racism

Agism is the new racism.

The one lesson learned from the browser wars was how profitable it is to win one. That this generation is so easily led is no big surprise. Bright and shiny with a hook works on most fish most of the time. As i said, the iPad launch is the Titanic to Avatar's iceberg. Cynicism is hard, cold and following the currents of a political zeitgeist where we know what we want to believe but no longer who. The cracking noise you hear is millions of gestalts snapping and falling into the frigid waters.

Revolution? Devolution for the usual reason: new trumps established in the pop market. Not a very difficult lesson.

Avatar vs iPad: Why No One Cares

Despite all appearances, the Republicans have Obama on the run and they know it. Meanwhile, the spirit of the country continues to dissolve in the face of the reimagining campaigns of both sides. One hopes they collide in the middle like the old commercial about peanut butter and chocolate. Maybe they'll accidentally do something right but when the public has no stomach for reality and are too burned to buy the dream, we're left betting on accidents. Calling oneself "progressive" to get around being called "liberal" or "socialist" is pretty thin.

As surmised, Constellation is dead. This is how it must have felt to be the janitor at Camelot after Arthur and Mordred duked it out and the body of the king was ferried away to Avalon. Something splendid happened in these dark halls full of leaves, dust and cold winds through banging shutters.

Elsewhere some wonder why the iPad has received such a drubbing in the technical press. I have a theory: with the buying public, having been fed unreal notions and increasing levels of Spy vs Spy, all it took was the dream world of Avatar to push them into a complete and fixed state of cynicism. The Apple campaign tricks that worked wonders with the iPod and the Mac are being met with skepticism and yawns. No one cares that Steve Jobs Loves Bob Dylan. Too many know that Thomas Edison was the orignal white pig putting his name on the ideas and hard work of his employees. Too many know that the Apple technologies serve the marketing goals of content capture first and the creative freedom of the users and developers only once that capture is ensured.

Perhaps it isn't that we don't want reality; we no longer can tell what is real. As Richard Reeves points out, we thought we were the people that made the impossible happen in the Berlin Airlift only to discover we are the people who made Abu Gharib possible. It is the feeling of sleeping in slime.

People know the emperor is butt naked except they aren't laughing. When hope fails and misery seems to be at hand, despair follows, and after that, cold hard disbelief no matter the facts at hand. When John Kennedy faced this, he used the space program, which he himself did not care for or believe in as a way to reignite the imagination of a generation. It will be interesting with the cancellation of Constellation effectively killing the future of American manned space flight what kind of futuristic vision we'll be offered this time.

Social Media: The Attentivore Venn

As I was reading a comment by Stefanie Michaels that said,

"Had you only taken the time to check out our feeds, you may have been able to have a more in depth understanding of who we are... after all- that's social media."

I thought about this picture; so here is it is at the speed of tweet.

The amazing thing is she didn't know we did read them and even made a video to support them in a good natured way. Maybe these gals don't get it unless it comes from their own inner circle. It is interesting that a report from the UK asserts that 90% of the tweets come from 10% of the twitterers.