Daily Revolution Archive

A Good Week for Death

2007-08-01T12:55:00.002-04:00

It has been a good week for death. But not in the way you might think.

True, there have been a number of prominent deaths: filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni; the pioneering TV late-night host Tom Snyder; and Bill Walsh, the celebrated coach of the professional football team from San Francisco. There are probably a number of others that I've overlooked.

But Death, as I think Bergman himself discovered later in his career, does not play chess. Or if it does, it certainly does not seek to checkmate us into oblivion.

This is the lesson of the book with which many of us began this week, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As I mentioned in my review, this 750 page conclusion to the Potteriad is, first and foremost, the completion to an insight teaching on death. Death in Nature is both consummation and transformation: it affords us the chance to see the poetry in a true life, and to contemplate the wondrous realities that await us all, beyond it.

In Rowling's story, Harry finds that the "deathly hallows" are useless--indeed, worse than useless, because they are the product of an illusion. The power and immortality of these objects are made of the same vapor as Voldemort's ambitions; their only strength is in deceit, their only substance is the corrupting corpse of belief. By leading Harry astray, the hallows steal his energy and persist, until the bubble of delusion is finally burst in the luminous scene at King's Cross Station, where a living truth shines into every corner, even the one where the squalling mutation of the baby Voldemort lies, helpless and ignored.

Death, Harry finds at last, is simply a movement between dimensions--"the last great adventure," as his mentor told him back in Harry's very first year at Hogwarts. Ghosts and tyrants fail to perceive this, and so they quail at the very gates of freedom, and retreat, either into a shadow-life or an obsession with power.

So even though Harry does not spend a day in class during his final Hogwarts year, his education is completed more fully than if he had spent the rest of his life at school. Dumbledore reveals to him the heart-knowledge that he will need to return to the earth and finish the work of killing ego, merely by facing it down and taking back the life that it steals from our misplaced fears. As in the graveyard of the fourth year, Harry does not need a killing curse to win; the disarming charm ('Expelliarmus') is all that is required to make Voldemort kill himself.

Perhaps what Harry learns in the end is that there are really no such things as wizards. There is only magic, and the humans through whom it is done. This is as every poet knows: we can never be the wind, but only the reed.

So it has been a good week for Death, because many of us have learned so much about its living reality. It is a beginning of a better understanding, which we will have to build upon from here. For has anything in all the world been given such bad press as Death?

It goes on, of course, to this day: in the same week as the deaths of those celebrated people mentioned above occurred, another story emerged in the news. You may have heard about Oscar the cat, a resident of a hospice center, who seems to have an unerring instinct for death. He visits those who are soon to die, and has proven himself so accurate in his "predictions" of death that the physician who works at the hospice wrote a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine about the kitty that one vapid news headline would call "The Grim Creeper".

The most likely truth is that Oscar knows what Harry Potter had to struggle to learn: that Death in the way of Nature is a movement between dimensions, a passage through a veil whose fluttering light conceals another dimension, into whose gentle realm the voyagers of Earth move with a reluctance swiftly followed by delight. Ghosts are made only by those violent and disastrous deaths that violate Nature, or by the inner suicides of tyrants. For these, Death is no more to be blamed than is Life.

This insight upon Death was expressed by a poet named Lao Tzu, in a teaching he delivered some two and a half millennia before Harry Potter first received, and survived, the mark of delusion that made him "the last horcrux":

To live in the Tao means abiding in the eternal—
Perceiving completely, with all one’s being:
Life is never exhausted;
It is only delusion that dies.

Into The Silence

2007-07-30T21:26:00.000-04:00

How best to honor the memory of a man who gave the world so much? Watch one of his masterpieces again. Click the graphic to view The Seventh Seal.

Listening to the Quantum Song

2007-07-28T22:11:00.000-04:00

Another weekend walk through Prospect Park, Brooklyn (music by Debussy, played by Peter Schmalfuss; Quicktime 5.2MB, 3:00, click to view)

I have very little of any value to teach, but here is something:

If I could be heard by the young as a sort of love advisor, my advice to them would be so plain: savor every caress, every night and day of ecstasy, every dance, every look, every touch.

Experience each of these, and each other, as if there were never to be another, even though there will be, and even though you may never have such a conscious thought (in fact, it's better if you don't).

After all, it is how you feel your way through life, not what you think about it, or how much, that matters.

Mind is always busy in the background; you don't need to force it. Focus instead on all your senses—those of your bodily organs and the others that whisper to the mind from within, the words and the images of the quantum song.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-22T18:57:00.001-04:00

One of the cool things about reading literature for meaning rather than form is that you get to review books like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows without giving away anything that would be considered a "spoiler." Herewith, then, a metaphorical review, if you will, of the last tome in the Potteriad, which I just finished this afternoon.

First, one background note: the reported online page scans from last week, along with the "news" of the prominent deaths in Book 7, turned out to be vapid falsehoods. Now this may have been simply a devious piece of hype-stirring on the part of the publishers and their advertising machinery: I put nothing past Madison Ave. and corporate America anymore. But I was certainly relieved to find that the "scans" were lies, because the outcomes they predicted made no literary or metaphorical sense. Once the ending is better known to all, we'll revisit this point.

This book helped me to confirm a loose formula that I have held about Rowling's work over the entire series, and it is this: the more the magic done in the stories is applied to ordinary living, the greater is its appeal and the more compelling the reading. But the more the magic strives toward the fantastical, the more tedious is the reader's experience.

Thus, the numerous and lengthy warfare scenes in this book are, like the slightly overwrought conclusion to the fifth book, somewhat turgid and dense, especially the Armageddon-like scene at the close of this 7th tome. I suspect this is what Kakutani of the Times was referring to in the complaint about "lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours".

So it is no coincidence that the one place where Rowling's narrative fails to support her otherwise clarion message is in one of the warfare segments, where Harry—yes, Harry Potter—uses the "unforgivable curses" on another. In other words, he tortures a person, thus supporting that disgusting Bushspeak/Jack Bauer ideology that torture is OK as long as the good guys are doing it. The entire scene is a blot on an otherwise lovely conclusion to this epic series.

Yet that is as critical as I can be of Rowling's work, which in other respects glows with insight, intricately-ordered detail, and with the courage of an author willing to take on the most challenging human issues of truth and meaning.

One example prominent in this last story is death. By the end of Deathly Hallows, we have a broad view of Rowling's teaching on death. It is a movement between dimensions (according to the latest theories of quantum physics and nonlinear dynamics, there are somewhere between 12 and 26 dimensions, all but four of them outside the ordinary reach of human bodily consciousness). Since the characters of the Hogwarts universe are metaphorical creations, they are given the ability to move freely between and communicate across these dimensions.

This suggests a feature that the film versions of these novels have but poorly appreciated. The ghosts of Hogwarts, for example—presented as mere eye-candy in the Columbus films and generally ignored in the others except as plot-pushers and information-bearers—represent a crucial piece of these death-teachings in the novels. This seventh is no exception, with a ghost providing insight, and some delineation of the ordering of the formless realm in the closing scenes. The ghosts are a recurring and forlorn reminder—to Harry and to ourselves—of the grave consequences of a superficial understanding of death, such as those we find in the various institutional religions of the world. This feature of Rowling's work is perhaps worth the deepest attention and reflection from modern readers.

Another feature of the Rowling opus, again prominently explored in this last novel, is the destructive tendency of government to brainwash both grownups and children into the most insidious complacency, the most sheepish and slavish dependency, the most arrogant self-importance, the most violent and inevitably suicidal group mindsets. The best that can be said or expected of the State and of traditional, hierarchical group leadership is expressed near the end of the novel—which comes, appropriately, from a voice in one of those other dimensions:

...perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who...have leadership thrust upon them and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

The last overall theme, to the Potteriad as a whole and this last novel in particular, concerns the nature and action of personal truth. Rowling teaches, above all, that truth is not a mysterious entity, either in its essence or its pursuit, except as we accept the Voldemort indoctrination of the individual's inadequacy before the group's supremacy; the weakness of the person beneath the rigid and engraved monuments of an institution. As we disperse or dis-spell (to borrow a magical expression) these points of dogma, then the mystery dissolves before us. When we penetrate the vapor of the Pensieve, light and clarity are revealed.

Another feature of truth that is beautifully revealed in this final story is that truth is never fixed in place or stuck in the ground of time: it is transforming rather than amorphous; expanding rather than evanescent; growing rather than dead or unyielding. In order for these features of truth to flow through our lives, we merely have to be receptive; open and sensitive to the change, flux, and growth of truth. Harry and his friends advance to the extent that their awareness of this remains clear and unobstructed by attachment or assumption.

A final comment to be made on Rowling's work as a whole concerns what is perhaps most topical about it. The Harry Potter novels comprise an alternative to the media-speak of our own government and its ideological parrots in television studios and newspapers. Today, we are still constantly hearing that "we must fight them over there so that we don't have to fight them here." The superficiality and destructive myopia of such phrases are revealed in the lessons and events of the Hogwarts stories, whose protagonists always seem to respond rather than assault; influence rather than occupy; defend rather than invade. The characters of Rowling's prose most often benefit from inner clarity in advance of outer action; their motto might well be "better to fight them in here (pointing within themselves) before we fight them out, or over, there."

Now that the readers of these stories understand (or soon will) the events and the outcomes for all their favorite characters, we may have reached the point where we may now seek some meaning from these tales. As I have mentioned before, it has been my experience, both in life and in the observation of government, legal affairs, and history, that real inquiry and true discovery only occur when everything is known. Thus, I would recommend to all readers who have experienced and loved these stories, that they work more deeply within themselves with the whole. Perhaps it is time, now that we know how it all "turned out", to turn within.

7 Heaven

2007-07-21T01:59:00.000-04:00

De-Toxing Fame

2007-07-20T10:37:00.000-04:00

One final word on J.K. Rowling seems necessary, for though I've been critical of her involvement in what I call the "Cheney-fication" of her work, one overriding point to be made about her is that she has dealt admirably with an obscene level of fame.

Rowling has been dropped into a trap more perilous than devil's snare and has not just survived--she in fact stands as a living model of how to endure the assault of fame.

Nevertheless, no one truly thrives under fame's garish glare and noise, because it is, in fact, a poison to the living personality. A casual glance over the landscapes of Hollywood, professional athletics, and the mass media would be sufficient to remove any doubt as to the toxicity of fame.

Rowling's strategy on handling fame has probably been more instinct than calculation: she retreats, she stays in motion, she appoints guardians who keep the media and other hounds at bay, and she defends her private life like a mother bear protecting her cubs.

Though I am not, and never will be famous, I have learned something about fame from observation and inquiry. One secret to working through this issue seems to involve an inner affirmation of recognition over fame. Whenever we avoid the harsh glare of fame, we invite the softer glow of recognition, which is simply the acknowledgement of effort.

This, indeed, was Rowling's original quest when she wrote the first of the Potter books. She sought recognition for her work, and the chance to become free of that lower-middle-class treadmill of subsistence.

As she later admitted, she overshot the target in that respect, but not through any calculation of her own. Maybe a stock trader or a hedge fund manager would set out on his career with the notion of eventually becoming a billionaire; but not an author.

I can speak from experience to this: writers do not wish to be rich, only free. We ask only for enough critical and material recognition to allow us to keep writing, and to follow the star that has guided us through sleepless nights of work and the dark stream of three-line rejection letters from agents and publishers. Most of us sense that fame would only complicate matters and make the work itself hard, which it never is by nature.

So should fame ever be thrust upon you, as the old saying goes, that would be the time to thrust back. Reject it as far as possible, and then retreat as you can. Otherwise, the snare will wrap itself around your creative heart and eventually morph you from an artist into a mere celebrity. There can be no greater tragedy in the creative realm than this.

Friday Reflection: Felix Felicis

2007-07-20T00:01:00.000-04:00

We finish our week of Potter mania on a personal note. The sound file (m4a, 10MB, click to listen or right-click to save) in the graphic is something that would get me sued by J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Scholastic, the RIAA, and god knows who else. But since I currently have $91.51 in the bank, I think I'm safe. The fact is, however, that I have recorded every single chapter of every one of the six Potter books. My daughter listens to them every night on her iPod to help her sleep; they have been bedtime stories for her all of these past five or six years. To make it interesting for myself, I tried on some of the characters' accents, both as I imagined them myself and as we heard them in the films. This part is one of my favorite scenes: the encounter with Mr. Ollivander in the wand shop of Book One.

The Outcasts of Hogwarts

There are many wonderful themes among the sub-stories and characters of the Potter universe, and one of my favorites has to do with all the marginal people and creatures who populate the wizarding world. These include:

Rubeus Hagrid

The House-Elves

The Centaurs

Professor Trelawney

Professor Lupin

Sirius Black

Luna Lovegood

Harry Potter himself

All of these characters have been fully ostracized from mainstream society or else pushed to the margins , either as individuals (Harry, Luna, Trelawney, Black) or by virtue of their connection with a demonized group (Hagrid / giants; Dobby / house-elves; Firenze / centaurs; Lupin / werewolves).

The question that comes up for the reader, and that Rowling surely had to work through herself, has to do with the path of return and growth that these characters must take to discover their identities, their true selves. Must they each take the solitary path of self-discovery through autonomy, or can they find themselves through a validation of their group, as many gays, women, minorities, and immigrants must do in our Muggle world?

The answer, of course, is that it has to be both. A group identity may be a necessary part of acculturation, depending on the time and circumstances of one's world.

Necessary, perhaps, but never sufficient. The self gains its internal unity, its connection to the undivided whole of life, through autonomy. The family, community, nation, or other group is best furthered when each individual who comprises it is allowed the full and free expression of his or her (or, in Hogwarts, its) autonomy.

When self-rule becomes the guiding principle within the individual, then government happens as if by itself; there is no effort to it, and order becomes as natural and ordinary as breathing or walking.

This occurs through the influence of one of the universal principles of the mind and of democracy: equality. When self-government happens within the individual, heart and brain; body and mind; feeling and intellect all work as single, undivided, co-equal functional units. The remoteness and the medieval prejudices of hierarchy are unknown to such an ordering of the personality. Lao Tzu expressed it this way:

Equality is the Cosmic Way:
Good and evil are born of fantasy.
The Sage is neither partisan nor punishing:
No one is special, no one excluded.

Consciousness breathes,
Expands and contracts.
It never varies, and each moment is unique.

Now when Lao Tzu referred to "the Sage", he meant the quantum teaching energy of the cosmic consciousness. The Sage guides each of us to the right action in whatever line of work we're cut out for. It manifests itself in everyone, uniquely in every person, but the Sage is always there.

To make such an affirmation in a culture like ours is to risk the same kind of marginalization as Luna Lovegood endures at Hogwarts. Now since I've never seen or felt a nargle, I can't comment on her experience; but I can tell you something about how I and many of my counseling clients have experienced the Sage.

The Sage is not a Lord or an executive type of God. It does not demand obedience, but inspires trust instead. Can you see the difference? Trust arises from love—the attraction between equals. Obedience is born of fear.

So religions speak of cultivating the "fear of God." This is not the way of the Sage. The Sage works through the force of attraction—quantum gravity, if you will, in the field of Mind—and inspires trust. It never asks either faith or obedience of us. If you can understand this with your mind and feel it in your heart, then your Sage is alive in you.

How we make equality breathe within ourselves is very much an individual matter: each person's experience will be unique. How we make equality breathe within our nation arises from the path that each of us travels, and from the vision and planning
of leaders who never cease in the search for honesty, accountability, and above all, humility in their actions. But whenever, as now, power becomes either the means or the end of such leaders, we must call them down and demand that they cease using power, or else leave.

Back at Hogwarts, we find that whenever Harry and/or his friends must make a great journey or perform a particularly difficult feat, they are helped by some object or energy that dissolves the hard shell of form and its resistance. A web of light may form to protect Harry during an encounter with Voldemort; a magical bowl of gaseous light may take him through time and space toward a great realization; or the characters may wrap themselves in a cloak of invisibility.

In the closing paragraph of The Tao of Hogwarts, I ask the reader to don the invisibility cloak within, and feel himself as both form and light:

Think of yourself again as energy: the ceaseless movement whose order and disposition define the seeming matter of your body, and indeed of all form. You breathe out your excess into the Whole from which you came and to which you will return; you gently inhale the nourishment of renewed life-force—what the Chinese refer to as "chi". You can feel waves of movement, as of water or wind, passing through you with each breath—gently dissolving what is manifest but only derivative, while the energetic core of your personal inner truth is gradually revealed and strengthened. You are not, after all, your race, your gender, your occupation, your material possessions, your marital or family status, your sexual orientation, your socio-economic class, your political, national, or religious affiliation; nor are you what the voice from a television says you are. All these ingrained self-images dissolve with every breath, as the life-force enters and moves through you—dispelling the false, peeling away the appearance, revealing the core and center of your being, whose inimitable perfection dances in joyful separation from the realms of pride, guilt, and opposition.

If you're in Brooklyn tonight, stop by the Community Bookstore on 7th Avenue and say hello. On this lovely evening, I have one wish for all my fellow Potter fans (and the rest of you as well): Felix Felicis.

Report from Midtown Manhattan

2007-07-19T13:12:00.000-04:00

Here's an update from midtown Manhattan, where I work, and where we had an explosion last night. So far, one person has died and 30 are injured, two critically. The following streets in the area remain closed:

Lexington Avenue from 34th to 57th Streets
Third Avenue from 38th to 42nd Streets
Park Avenue from 34th to 54th Streets
42nd Street from Park to Third Avenues
Vanderbilt Avenue for its entire length from 42nd to 47th Streets

So, what happens when you start a pointless war that increases global terror, alienates former allies, kills and wounds tens of thousands of your own and hundreds of thousands of innocents in the nation you attacked and occupied?

Well, one thing that happens is that you spend up to a trillion dollars on this war, and have nothing left to spend on your own nation's infrastructure, which in turn rots and then does some of Uncle Osama's work for him.

Harry Potter Meets the Starfish Phenomenon

2007-07-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

It would take a lot, admittedly, for me to reach a saturation point re. Mr. Potter of Little Whinging. After all, I've written a book about it, which still isn't done yet (by the way, the pdf file of the entire text is now back, at my other site).

What may be conspicuous to the reader is what we've overlooked—specifically, the news that's being reported about scanned pages of Book 7 appearing on the web (though Kakutani of the Times has already read it and given it a respectful, nearly reverent review, and Barack Obama's waiting his turn).

The point of this omission is not to avoid "spoilers," because I don't think that knowing what will happen will spoil anything: as I wrote last month, plot is so small a factor in a work of literature. Character, setting, dialogue, and all those other indefinable aspects join with plot to create meaning in a novel; and that's what matters, if a work is to endure.

So I actually have an objection with the cult of secrecy that has grown around this body of work: the whole stupid drama comprises a petty act of Cheney-fication. Rowling (to the extent that she was actually involved in this chicanery) and her publishers should be ashamed of themselves for creating hype and then scolding people for getting excited. It's the old feed-the-kids-sugar-and-then-spank-them-for-acting-out scenario. Total bullshit, especially when you factor in the oppression involved in forcing printshop workers to labor in the dark and be basically strip-searched on every shift.

Guess what, then? The workers rebelled in the only way they knew how—by finding a way around the Orwellian crap being visited on them. There is also a lesson in this for all institutions that would punish people for their enthusiasm. The RIAA could tell you all about it, because they're making lawyers rich and themselves silly by chasing after housewives, students, and grandmothers for downloading music illegally. That book I reviewed last month, The Starfish and the Spider, talks about this side of the issue: when you enforce obedience, you inspire the creativity of rebellion. The creator of "Dumbledore's Army" should know this better than anyone.

So if you're reading along here, Ms. Rowling (yeah, that's likely), my advice is this: let go and move on. You're done; it's been a massive, marvelous accomplishment, and your place in literary history is already assured, if that matters to you. Put this behind you now, and grow. But if you go on playing policewoman to your first creation, you will find yourself under the oppressive weight of writer's block, and we will have a very long wait to see anything fresh and new from you. For now, spend time with your family, take a break from the typewriter, and let Harry fade into your past. That way, the next great story will arise within you as naturally and easily as this one did, on a train ride from Manchester to London some 17 years ago.
______________________

As we near the end-point of the Potter tales, I am reminded that we're also near the end for this blog. In about two weeks, we'll be done. The archives will be moved to a blogspot URL (hosted, that is, by Google), and the original domain name is now officially up for sale. If you could do something with dailyrevolution.net, and you can make a reasonable offer, it's yours—write or give me a call.

As for The Tao of Hogwarts, I'm hoping that its audience will soon arrive. It has been my experience in life that real inquiry and true discovery only happen after everything has been revealed. We see this principle in government, in legal affairs, and I hope it applies in literature as well. Perhaps once the end to the Potter story is known, people will begin to ask themselves, "what does it mean—to me?" That may be the time when some editor for a publishing house will see the potential in a book like The Tao of Hogwarts.

Meanwhile, it will soon be time for me to take the advice I'm so quick to offer others, and move on.

If you're in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn Friday night, you can find me and my daughter at the Community Bookstore on 7th Ave. (about eight blocks north of where the really big crowds in that neighborhood will be, at the B&N store by Methodist Hospital).

Geek Wednesday: Harry Potter, Geek Like Me

2007-07-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

Put down that Red Bull, geek! Try an Acai extreme instead. Whether you're a Senator doing an all-nighter or a Harry Potter geek who will need some juice to get you through the weekend ahead, you'll need to remember the basics:

Sleep during the day on Friday. If you have a job, so much the better. Bring a pillow to work and take an afternoon snooze under your desk. You can also nap while in line at the bookshop—bring a folding chair or sleeping bag.

Five minute breaks every hour while reading. All right, two. If you feel yourself fading, chug some of that acai stuff, or simply perform the Vigilimens charm (page 641, Charms for Geeks, by Flavius Wozniak).

Take Monday off. You'll be finished with the book by then, but you'll need a day to recover and come to grips with the Potterless reality of it all. I'm doing it.

Leave the PC off till Tuesday. You won't want to go online right away—the nargles take over the WiFi networks every time a new HP book comes out, everyone knows that. Instead, remind yourself that Harry still lives inside your own geek self:

Harry: Geek Like Me

Movie 5 is out, Book 7 is just days away, and game 5 is out (and being lambasted by the gaming press, which hates games that don't spread blood all over your screen). It's Potter mania, and we're in another grip of it. What does it all mean to geeks? Here's what Harry has in common with you, geeks. There's plenty, and the glasses are just the beginning of it.

DOM: it's only a Dept. Of Mysteries until you understand structural isomorphism. Then it's just the Document Object Model again.

The Dark Lord can read your mind, but fortunately lacks write permissions.

You can tell time and direction like a magician; you can write in languages that 99% of humans can't fathom. To them, it's all runes and glyphs. Your friends are all outcasts like yourself, bug-eyed nuts who read InfoWorld upside down. Your skin has a faintly jaundiced look (the fluorescent tan), as if you'd been hit with one too many Stupefy spells; yet you're strangely healthy and clear-thinking.

You know stuff that nobody gives you credit for and that most people think is useless; yet when someone's PC breaks down, who do they call? You're a walking Room of Requirement when it comes to that, and like Harry, this is when you can score with the ladies. Even the Muggle women are interested in you then.

That veil of death in the Dept. of Mysteries was what color? You guessed it: blue. BVOD.

You know that Jobs would have called his new feature in Leopard the Time Turner, except that HG Wells is public domain and J.K. Rowling is expensive.

Every spell you cast can be copied and adapted by anyone with the skill to do it. Harry, too, abides by the GPL: magic is all open source. You'd never buy an iPhone: it doesn't come with a wand.

Red Bull is made by Snape: "brews fame, bottles glory, puts a stopper in death." You don't own an owl; you are one.

That Patil girl is in Ravenclaw now, but before that she dropped out of IIT. You know the Triwizard maze, and you know how easily it turns upside down: it was your screensaver in Win95, the one with the rat (Peter Pettigrew?). That Sphinx at the end of it spouts algorithms.

Palindromes and anagrams, whether they come from Tom Riddle or a bigass mirror from your past: normal features of your world. You talk to paintings (in PS, anyway) and get answers; you walk through doors that no one else sees; you shoot fireworks with no flame (in Flash); you can remember the password to the common room from three years ago, or else could hack your way by the Fat Lady. If staircases stayed in one place, that's when you'd be puzzled.

You once owned a horcrux: it was made by Packard-Bell. Memory, you are sure, is never truly random; only evil is.

Take a close look at your forehead someday when you're doing your monthly shave. That mark--has it always been there? Or did Gates or Ballmer leave it on you? Just a thought.

Look at your PC: it's as big and medieval as the Monster Book of Monsters or a pewter cauldron with a half-melted bottom, but it's got a ton of information on it and you would feel as if you were being shot through the death veil at the Dept. of Mysteries if you had to give it up.

Slytherin = Redmond
Ravenclaw = Cupertino
Hufflepuff = Wherever BeOS was made
Gryffindor = Tuxville

You know all about divination: the I Ching can tell the future because it's 64-bit. Voldemort's power and Rowling's income double every 24 months. Moore's law. But you know it can't go on forever.

Why Harry Potter Matters, Now

2007-07-17T00:01:00.001-04:00

In case you've been under a rock recently, the publishing industry is gearing up for the biggest day in its history since Gutenberg made his little contraption.

So what's the big hairy deal? Why would millions of people around the world stand in line outside bookshops this Friday, a little before midnight, to buy a book? Why have amazon and B&N sold some 2 million copies of this thing before the release date? Why is the author of a pack of children's books a billionaire, and how has she incited the Jesus hate-club to burn, ban, and brutalize these stories? WTF is going on here?

As it has been in the long history of literature, since a blind poet wandered around Greece singing about another pointless war in the Mideast and the general insanity of men in groups, it is all about a single artist holding up a clear, bright mirror to the demonic face of human institutional ego.

This is the point: Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Jane Umbridge are in Washington and London and Baghdad and Cairo and Moscow—they are all around us, even within us in some shape or degree. Lucius Malfoy sits in the CEO's office of most American multinational corporations. Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are in Darfur, where they call themselves the Janjaweed; they have been in Rwanda and also passed through Fallujah and Haditha. Rita Skeeter sits in a FOX News studio, spewing lies and hatred against anyone who calls down this ruling evil and its cult of death. And again, each of these people and groups also lives within us, in the darkness of suspicion, racism, and fear.

Fortunately, we can also look around and within ourselves to find Professor Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Minerva McGonnigal, Professor Lupin, or Rubeus Hagrid. If you work in the media, Dumbledore is a honey-voiced, steely-eyed Texan named Moyers; if you follow politics, Lupin is a former vice-president from Tennessee; if you're a blogger like me, you know that McGonnigal is a gentle but fearlessly inquisitive and often uncompromising beauty named Huffington. Every one of these characters is also alive within you, if you can scrape away the distortions left by the others, which are mistakenly called "evil."

This leads to another point that I think Rowling makes very well in her fiction: there is no such thing as evil. There is excess, there is the malignant warping of inner truth and original nature; but there is no evil. To call a thing or a person evil is to give it a power that it does not, and never will have.

It is, I admit, a difficult lesson to digest in this era of global tyranny, government corruption, religious pedophilia, and the foul self-indulgence and arrogance of wealth.

In the latest movie, based on the fifth book, there is a living example of this lesson. Dumbledore's confrontation with Voldemort at the end of this story is their only personal encounter. Well, how does Dumbledore meet this symbol of Evil, who is there to kill and bring down everything in the world that Dumbledore is defending? Does he call him "despot," "tyrant," "Islamic fundamentalist extremist," or "Satan"?

Nope, he calls him Tom—the man's original name, the one he has had since boyhood. In other words, Dumbledore refuses to play the power game: he will not add to the energy that Voldemort has already stolen from others. He doesn't drop his weapon, mind you, or offer his antagonist therapy or sympathy (Karl Rove's complaint against liberals); but he will not aggrandize him with Evil or any of its epithets. In the worlds of art or geopolitics, it just doesn't get better than that.

So there is more than the economy of an often-faltering industry at stake in this event, the end of the Potteriad: there is also the message of the story itself, which is a frontal assault on the modern state and its tendency to transfigure men and women into sheep—principally through the use of media slaves. If 7 continues in this vein, we can expect to see more fictional portraits of Bush, Blair, Rove, and their bought media (for a more detailed study of that, check out my article Harry Potter and the State).

People in our culture tend to consume literature the way they eat: we are very much a literary "fast food nation," to borrow Mr. Schlosser's metaphor. Healthy societies, from Homer's Greece to Lao Tzu's China to Virgil's Rome to Thoreau's America, have done better.

We have heard that the way to judge the quality of a nation is to examine the way it treats its poor/its children/its animals; I would add that we could also look at how it reads. In our era of the 30-second sound bite and the Sunday morning television liar's brunch, we are in desperate need of improving our ability to communicate overall, and that includes our ability to read. Harry Potter is a good place to start because the books are substantive in metaphor, generally well written, and of course massively popular. Reading literature to penetrate appearances and inspire honest, open debate is exactly the sort of activity that Al Gore recommends in his new book: it is very much a democratic practice. And as Professor Dumbledore would remind us, democracy, when it truly happens, is a greater magic than anything we do at Hogwarts.

Monday with McKenna: Looking Back in Time

2007-07-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

Another Sunday walk through Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The music is Rachmaninoff's G Major Prelude, beautifully played by Vladimir Ashkenazy (Quicktime video, 2.5 MB, 3:23, click to view)

If you follow the lies broadcast on your television, you might believe that there were just a dozen or so of us nutcase lefties objecting to the Bush occupation-invasion-imperialist-quagmire, back when it was being planned and sold some five years ago.

But you would be wrong: there were protest marches all around the world, attended by tens or hundreds of thousands of people, depending on the location. Yet it is also true that the American mass media were generally on a forced march of slavish advertising of the war and its delusional justification. Few on television or in the American newspapers were daring to speak against the notion of war back then in 2002. I am honored to say here that my blogging partner, Terry McKenna, was one of those rare writers. If you click the graphic and zoom it in your image browser of choice, you should be able to read Terry's op-ed piece in the Morris County Daily Record, from a few days after the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And in case you can't read it in the graphic, here's an excerpt from Terry's piece of Sept. 15, 2002:

...the president is not telling us the truth. It is not that George W. Bush is lying, but he is a politician and his public utterances are spin, not truth. He speaks to advocate a position, not to explore meaning.

Bush's career is in domestic politics...He projects an all-American niceness that stirs little genuine animosity. With these qualifications, we suggest that the president knows almost as little as the rest of us regarding whether we should go to war.

[snip]

War is a struggle over time as much as place. For all the territory that we conquered in World War II, we were not able to control the subsequent history. Even over a shorter time period, control dissipates. In the 1980s, we aided the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and enjoyed their victory over the Soviet army. But in a few short years, those we favored came to threaten us. On the other hand, the Middle East nation whose people most admire the United States are the Iranians, who have tired of the Islamic revolution after two profitless decades.

Perhaps the President really knows what to do and must do it to preserve what is good. But my fear is that he does not know and that what he wishes to do will unleash events that will go as much awry as ever, yielding decades of more terror.

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Tomorrow, we'll be returning to our Pottermania feature as we gear up for 7th heaven. The Paper of Record is so excited that its movie critics are "dissecting" Harry.

On the Way Toward an Open Source Society

2007-07-15T00:02:00.000-04:00

Listen to today's post (m4a file, right-click to download, 4.5MB)

This week, we will continue with our Harry Potter feature, and I'd like to explain some of the reasoning behind this. In my own book about the Potter phenomenon, I attempted to show that Harry's path of growth through his years at Hogwarts starts from a point of domestic oppression (every story opens with Harry at the home of the odious Dursleys), where no feeling lives but cold calculation reigns alone; and leads gradually toward a place of inner balance, where Harry's action is guided by a coalescence of feeling and thought (Professor Dumbledore's lesson, which is delivered in a theme-and-variations format throughout the series).

What does this have to do with politics or culture or the media? Well, everything, in my opinion. Even among the lefties in the political world, feeling has taken a pretty rough going over: it has been isolated in a demonic polarization of intellect and intuition that have left both faculties at war in the media, among the pundits, and eventually within ourselves. We need to correct that polar misconception if we are to make the right choices for the future of our democracy. So here is an excerpt from a book I'm working on, called The Open Source Society, which I've adapted to this purpose and this moment.

The rules of evidence and the activity of intuition are not mutually exclusive. Your brain and your heart are not meant to compete for primacy within the living self. They are meant instead to work as a team, as a single functional unit of cooperative leadership. This is a principle that has guided the best scientists, the most influential artists, the greatest thinkers, and it even supports the actions and decisions of good corporate leaders and businessmen. They let feeling, the action of their inner senses, lead them to a deeper understanding of relationships and situations; and this is the direction they follow on the path of objectivity that intellect and the executive functions of decision and action travel.

Error comes in when we try to arrive at an intuitive conclusion without seeking objective clarification first. It is a very common human error—I can say so confidently, having made it several times myself. The principals of our current government in Washington commit this fallacy quite regularly, nearly to the point where it might often be mistaken for policy. Past governments have also done it: perhaps you can remember the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativity" that was written by the New York Times columnist William Safire and spoken by Spiro Agnew, back in the Nixon years. Today, similar accusations are leveled against various straw men captured in phrases like "the liberal media" and "some among the pundits" and "left-wing critics." In fact, we gave a couple of examples of this yesterday.

The consequences of such practices of incomplete and sloppy judgment can be far more severe than the kind of bland stupidity that we heard from Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee. For workers who are oppressed into the silence of conformity or the pain of unemployment, there is a range of suffering; depression, anxiety disorders, and even physical illness can result; and productivity is compromised. If that is the case for corporate employees, you can just imagine the implications when the same fallacy is committed by the leaders of powerful nations. In fact, we have seen the results: wars founded on fancy; economies ruined by misguided intuitions; diplomacy undermined by false suspicion.

Intuition is meant to lead you to evidence. It asks the right questions, raises the right issues, and targets the appropriate direction for intellect and action to follow in their unique way. To adapt an old expression, the heart steers and the mind rows. The self cannot endure in truth and balance any other way.

The Neocon MSM: Painting Targets

2007-07-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

Here's your mainstream media view of what a man should be: "Well, everybody knows that a book club is no place for a man."

That's Tucker Carlson, who is the property of General Electric. Well, men, are we anti-book, or should we be? Are book clubs only suitable for women? If so, then I say let's get the matriarchy going today.

But surely the actual candidates for 2008, the subjects of these punditry rants, are not quite so deluded? Think again: here's Mike Huckabee, taking aim at the only part of Michael Moore that he can see or understand:

Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs so much in this country. He clearly is one of the reasons that we have a very expensive system.

Well, I'm fat too, Huck: wanna take a personal shot at me? Does a 38" waist make a person a non-entity in the nation you would rule over? And make sure you get the line straight: you have to create certainty, as you did with Moore ("He clearly is..."); and as Carlson did with members of book clubs ("everybody knows..."). This way, the opinion is elevated into propaganda: there can be no disagreement.

It's the neocon / mass media way of belief, and there can be, of course, no other.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Predictions for Book 7

2007-07-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

I haven't read any of the "what-will-happen-next" books, in part because I have an axe to grind with them: if people weren't so obsessed with what's to happen next, maybe there would be room in the market for what I've done with the Hogwarts metaphor. But also, I just don't find that stuff very interesting. Blind, clueless speculation: it does nothing for me.

So naturally, here are my predictions for Book 7...as blind and clueless, I am sure, as the next man's.

Snape and Voldemort

Harry lives. Snape dies in the final battle, defending Harry and saving his life. Snape kills Voldemort and dies doing it.

Dumbledore does not return except as a painting in the Headmaster's office; he was truly killed on the astronomy tower, but not by Snape. Malfoy's wand, it turns out, was a horcrux: that's how he was able to stop Dumbledore back in the death scene from Book 6. The "Snape" who killed Dumbledore was someone else, maybe Voldemort himself, on Polyjuice potion. This will all be revealed in the course of the story to Harry, who will finally learn the truth about Snape and at last break his long delusion about him, and learn something about the consequences of hatred.

Hermione and Ron become lovers, and get married. Hermione becomes pregnant with Ron's baby.

Neville finally realizes vengeance against Bellatrix. But he cannot kill her. He is too strong, too human, for that. He obliviates her and she will spend the rest of her life in a pleasant dementia at St. Mungo's with Gilderoy Lockhart.

Ginny and Harry become a unit again, and are married. After Ginny's parents are killed in the final battle, Harry and his wife go to live at the Burrow. Harry, like his mentor, is offered the Minster for Magic job (Scrimgeour dies in the final battle); but refuses and accepts the position of Headmaster at Hogwarts instead.

The final battle takes place in the locked room at the Dept. of Mysteries, which contains the Mirror of Erised. The great old mirror now contains the glass from Sirius' mirror that Harry had received from him and broken at the end of Book 5. Sirius communicates to Harry from that mirror, exactly as he had promised. He reminds Harry that Kreacher is his elf, and that he can command Kreacher to kill Voldemort.

But Harry learns this as he knows that one last horcrux remains to be found and destroyed: this is the order he gives Kreacher. Kreacher dies attempting to do so, but fails because he cannot bring himself to kill a part of Voldemort, even under an order to do so from his "master," Harry. Kreacher commits suicide rather than go through with that task. The horcrux in question is the sword of Godric Gryffindor, which was given a slice of Voldemort's soul when Dumbledore was murdered. Kreacher himself had hidden the sword, on Voldemort's orders, in Harry's own trunk. Minerva McGonnigal, the head of Gryffindor House, has followed Kreacher to the boys' dorm and witnesses his lame effort to destroy the sword/horcrux. After watching Kreacher kill himself with it rather than destroy the sword, McGonnigal succeeds in doing so, and perishes in the effort, poisoned by the final object-fragment of Voldemortian soul, as she destroys it.

Dobby also joins the struggle, and organizes the house elves to take on (appropriately) the giants. The werewolves are defeated when Fenrir Greyback is killed by Harry. The dementors are defeated by the centaurs, who take them prisoner to the Forbidden Forest, where the black demons mutely learn divination by the stars from the hoofed astrologers, and find that star-gazing is just as nourishing to a dementor as soul-sucking.

Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

Crime, failure, corruption, deceit. Everything's normal in Washington.

So much for the news. Now on to Harry Potter.

I went with my 13-year old daughter to a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Tuesday night, and whether or not you're a Potterphile, this is a movie to see. It's sleek, beautiful, fast-moving, funny, dramatic, and endearing; and the acting, as always in these Potterflicks, is of the highest caliber in the world. I was stunned at the new arrivals on the Hogwarts set: they could have turned the planet sideways and shaken out every odd girl on it, and not found a more perfect Luna Lovegood than Evanna Lynch. Amazing. Imelda Staunton does Umbridge with an ideally superficial evilness—she evokes Ardendt's famous phrase, "the banality of evil." Helena Bonham Carter is a wonderfully psychotic hottie.

You'll have a lot of fun watching this film, unless you're such a Pottermaniac as to insist on having all your favorite literature transplanted to the reel. The fifth book on which this film is based is the longest in the series, and the movie is the shortest (by a few minutes). So naturally, much of the sub-story has been eliminated and some of the main story compressed. Examples:

No hospital scenes: St. Mungo's didn't make it into the set design. Neville tells Harry about his parents' past in the Room of Requirement.

The attack on McGonnigal is eliminated. Surprising, this one, because it's such a cinematic scene: the kids are on the astronomy tower, taking a live exam in that class at midnight, when the Umbridgean assault on Minerva M. (outside Hagrid's hut) occurs, and the lovable half-giant gets into the fray as well. But it's not in the film.

A crucial conversation with Nearly Headless Nick at the end of the story is removed. I guess too much talk of death in a movie can be seen as depressing, but I thought the scene with NHN is essential to an understanding of the Potter metaphor as a whole.

Quidditch and "Weasley is our king": gone. No time for sport in this movie, which is too bad, because the development of Ron's character depends on his experience as keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch squad. Another crucial Ron-experience that's missing is the encounter with the pickled brains at the Ministry during the climactic flight/battle sequence.

No train. The Hogwarts Express is absent. We meet Loony Luna as she is sitting on a carriage at Hogsmeade, reading her upside-down Quibbler.

So if you haven't gotten used to the fact that film and literature are two separate art forms with different approaches to delivering the message, then you may find yourself fuming in your seat at this film. Yet I found that, as with Cuaron's treatment of the Azkaban story (number 3), this movie is enlivened by the liberties it takes with Rowling's tome. There is speed, action, intensity, and spectrum to this presentation of the fifth stage of the Potteriad, and it works, by and large, because it lets the images and their connection speak. At the same time, Rowling's insight on the easy decadence of the state is emphasized in the film; there are a couple of moments where the audience gasped at the targets being so squarely hit in this era of Bushian corruption.

That said, the movie rather misses the mark on its overall theme, which it presents as the struggle between the light and the dark within the human self, and the necessity to choose the light. It is Dumbledore's message to Harry during the possession scene in the climactic battle, and Sirius reinforces this lesson, quite literally, to Harry at Grimmauld Place.

The lesson I took from the book, and which I presented in my own book about the Potter universe, is that it is excess rather than darkness that threatens the living self. There can even be an excess of light, as in the images of the state that Rowling gives us. Read the chapter about Harry's first encounter with the Ministry offices, for example: there are light-words sprayed all over the page in the depiction of the great lobby at the Ministry's entrance: "golden," "glamorous," "glittering," and the like.

This, of course, is also the lesson of the Pensieve (which also fails to make its appearance in this film—the flashback to Snape's schoolboy torments is made in the context of the Occlumency lesson). Dumbledore uses the Pensieve as a means of discarding excessive thought; and Harry always finds himself inwardly clarified after every encounter with the magic bowl of reflection.

So the film tends to oversimplify this lesson, making the entire affair into a monumental struggle of light and dark, while Rowling's theme is much more nuanced and layered: excess is the distortion that must be cleansed, so that the natural glow of humility and truth can be revealed.

The movie is also, compressed as it is, Harry-centric. This is odd, because among the kid performers, Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione) actually show greater maturity and depth to their artistic progress than does Dan Radcliffe (Harry). In Rowling's story, of course, the case is quite different: the maturation of characters like Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Hermione is actually given more emphasis than Harry's development. There are clear artistic reasons for this: Ginny, for example, is to play a big role in Book 6 (and presumably 7 as well)—in part as Harry's next lover.

But a film can't capture all of this (I sometimes wonder whether a long-running TV series in the BBC Upstairs/Downstairs tradition might have been a better dramatic medium for the Potter tales). Yet on the whole, there is far more takeaway than sacrifice in this film: the portrayal of the State in the setting of the Ministry offices (which are positively Orwellian) and the character of Umbridge; the unforgettable casting of Luna; the spectacular CGI set-pieces, highlighted by the Weasley twins' fireworks show during final exams; and the developmental arena of the Room of Requirement all contain images and impressions that will make you long and fondly remember this movie.
____________________

Tomorrow: predictions for Book 7

Geek Wednesday: Uncle Bill's Signing Statements

2007-07-11T08:27:00.000-04:00

Most of our readers are all too painfully aware of this scenario: Congress passes a bill--let's say it's a bill that reaffirms a renunciation of torture as policy, and mandates universal adherence to the standards of the Geneva Conventions. Not only is the bill passed; it is endorsed by an overwhelming, veto-proof majority of Congress.

So the Bush-Cheney-Rove tyranny machine is in a bit of a pickle: veto said bill and be exposed for the despots that they truly are, or swallow hard, sign it and live with it.

The machine, of course, discovered a third option: sign the bill and add a P.S.: "does not apply to us." Simple, straightforward protection. It's the legislative equivalent of a pre-nup agreement: you can marry me but you can't have my money or my assets. You can pass laws but we don't have to abide by them.

Now we introduce to the discussion (speaking of pre-nups) Mr. William Gates, departing CEO of a small firm based in the great American northwest. He and his minions have seen the GPL version 3 and scribbled into the margin: "does not apply to us."

Well, what would you expect? Our culture has for decades been settling under government by corporations; now that we have a truly corporate government, the lines between power and profit, the top dog and the bottom line, public good and private wealth, the corporation and the republic, have been erased. Whether it's Suse Linux or Habeas Corpus that's left holding the empty bag is merely a fleshing out of detail; the principles are the same.
________________________

I've been doing some installs onto Parallels 3.0 on the Mac Book. I've installed the following:

Windows XP Home (SP2): after a successful install and several good sessions (during one of which I actually activated and registered the install with MS), I opened it to discover a login prompt which I'd never seen before. There had been no prompt for creating a user during install, and the PW field that came up identified me as "Owner". I tried blank and then "owner" (same as ID) as the PW, but no joy. I've got a support request in with Parallels to see what's up from their perspective. Too bad, because before this came up, I was very impressed with the performance and especially the "coherence" feature, which allows you to access Windows apps and open files in winapps while you're in your OS X GUI, while XP runs in the background. Very cool while it lasted.

Mandriva Linux: I installed the latest "Spring" version, but the display was very grainy and poor. I tried adjusting gamma, changing the resolution on the monitor (only one choice was available, neither of which suited the Samsung 22" display I use), but NG.

MEPIS Linux: Installed version 6 of Simply MEPIS 32 in Parallels and it failed to make a connection with the cable modem, even after I'd set it to both Automatic / DHCP and Manual / Fixed IP. Strange, because MEPIS instantly responds to most any network protocol automatically from its installation on my Wintel machine.

Ubuntu 7.04: Tried to install the Feisty Fawn onto the MacBook in Parallels, but got the "can't find RSDB" message at the outset, and the screen collapsed into a scramble of Ubuntu doodoo from there. Completely failed to load the live cd, let alone install.

Knoppix Linux live cd: This was very neat--a live cd that loaded beautifully into a working and fully-loaded KDE environment complete with GIMP, Open Office, Firefox, T-bird, and more. The most promising Linux I've seen for running on a virtual machine.

A Brief Course in Literary Occlumency

2007-07-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

Artists, like the rest of us, need growth. Otherwise, art becomes orthodoxy, just another brand of fundamentalism.

That's why I am not signing the Waterstones' "if-you-killed-him-bring-him-back" petition to J.K. Rowling. Today, Rowling gave her response to the petition—the familiar "we'll see" line that every kid and most parents know so well.

I think we will, in fact, see a Book 8, and for a number of reasons. Rowling has already indicated that she may write one for charity, as she did with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages. Another reason is far more prosaic: Warner Bros. will soon be on their tear-stained knees before her, begging for something, anything, to help keep the Potter mania alive through movies six (2008) and seven (2009, we presume). It will take a while to build that theme park, after all.

For the rest of this year, however, there will be enough magic in the air: movie five (I'm seeing it tomorrow), Book 7, the dvd later this year, and the paperback of 7, probably in the spring or summer of next year. That will take us to movie 6, and it's around then, or soon after, that we may see a Book 8.

Here's another reason: numerology, one of the classes they teach at Hogwarts.

So I fully expect to see a Book 8 (maybe on 8-8-8, August 8, 2008). It will not likely measure up to the quality of suspense and perhaps even workmanship of its seven predecessors; yet I will buy it and read it. Meanwhile, however, I will not demand anything of this artist who has given, and received, so much. I'd be far more interested in seeing where her path of growth takes her from here.

Later this week, a small review of movie 5, and some predictions on Book 7.

Rove's True Home: Ass-Spin

2007-07-09T14:36:00.000-04:00

When you've been arrogant from the beginning, you'll be arrogant to the end. No one should be surprised at this. Shocked again, for the gazillionth time these past 7 years, but not surprised.

Sorry about the pun in the title there, people of Aspen (many of whom were doing a sotto voce boo while Rove spun). Obviously no reflection intended on you--just on KR.

Monday with McKenna: The Quality of Mercy

2007-07-08T12:02:00.000-04:00

The Brooklyn Bridge and the NYC skyline, from the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights (click to enlarge)

It's working; we're being heard at last. Isn't it an amazing coincidence that these GOP Senators are coming back to Washington with a fresh mindset about Iraq?

No, it's not a coincidence at all. These politicians have spent a week at home, hearing it from you—the disgusted, angry, despairing citizens of this nation—and they're finally seeing where their bread is buttered. Keep it up, people: just think how you'll feel when those kids start coming home, alive and whole, because you put the pressure on the pols to make it so. Every call you make, every email you send, every time you make a pest of yourself to the powerful, you're bringing us a little closer to a life-saving tipping point. Once again, keep it up.

Now I know I promised the opening of our Harry Potter week today, and now I will break my promise. Perhaps you're thinking, "this blog should be knocked off the web." Well, come back this time next month and you'll see that some wishes do come true.

First, though, Terry sent me the following over the weekend, and it deserves a hearing in its natural Monday slot. My worthy blogging partner does like to inspire debate—you can inscribe your ripostes to the comments. I'll simply say that those guys Clinton pardoned didn't start any wars, decloak any CIA agents, or cook the books on any intel. Yet I will agree with Terry when he argues that not merely is the Libby pardon an aberration of justice, it does not even meet Shakespeare's famous definition of mercy. Mr. McKenna:

Mercy and justice: they live parallel lives. Wherever one is, the other cannot be far behind. In my college days, I remember a Jewish professor telling us (in a history class at Cooper Union) that Christians go overboard with mercy, that Jews were much better balanced and so favored justice. Not being too familiar with Jewish law, I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t – but also still think of mercy as the central gift from Jesus’ ministry.

Shakespeare said this:

The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: It is twice blessed: It blesses him that gives and him that takes... Mercy... is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God Himself. And earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice.

Now we are faced with the spectacle of Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby.

If we compare his pardon to the Clinton pardons, Scooter is a more worthy figure. Yes Scooter was deceitful, but at least he believed he was serving something larger than himself. The Clinton pardons were pure excesses of venality and partisanship, mere favors to big contributors. Hillary’s brothers even made money on the deal (I forget the details, but trust me on this one).

So Bush’s pardon was less disgraceful than Clinton’s many pardons.

But let’s reflect on the pardons of a different era. During the civil war, President Lincoln was routinely faced with having to sign off on the execution of a soldier who had deserted and was caught. Lincoln understood that these men were guilty, be he also understood, “there but for the grace of god go I.” Nearly to a man he pardoned them. Of course Lincoln was a man of mercy. I think it is also clear that justice was served. If we look to Shakespeare, who does not agree that the pardons evidenced Lincoln’s kingly heart. This American King granted life to the lowest of his subjects, the lowly soldier about to die.

George Bush was faced with many executions during his tenure as Texas’ governor, for Texas leads the list when it comes to executions. And often he received a request for clemency. But not once did his hard heart bend and grant a pardon. But then, we knew that he did not have the heart of a king.

Yet now when faced with the spectacle of a 30 month jail sentence for Scooter Libby, for this successful example of the white ruling class, George Bush’s hard heart melted, and a pardon issued forth.

Justice? Hardly.

—T. McKenna

When Journalists Do Their Jobs

2007-07-07T00:43:00.000-04:00

Imagine a world, for just a moment, in which journalists actually do their jobs. Imagine a nation where not 70% or 60% or 40%, but 0% of Americans ever believed that Saddam and Osama were partners in conspiracy making nuclear weapons in a cave; imagine a world where the carnage in Darfur trumps Anna Nicole's rotting corpse and Paris' prison; where Coulter is a skeletal nobody on the Internet on a site made in Netscape Composer 4, whose monthly visitors would all fit comfortably into a toilet stall. Imagine a media whose guiding principle is the search for truth; whose primary instruments are questions and energy; whose representatives are defined by their willingness to search the past and the dark corners of power, and not stop until truth emerges, naked and blinking under the light of journalistic effort.

This week, I found evidence of three such seekers. There are more of them out there, working every day. You'll rarely see them on TV, and you'll have to go to the inner sections of the newspaper or the less-trafficked corners of the Internet to find them. But they are out there. To find them, you just have to be like them and dig a little.

Bob Herbert is probably the most responsible, grittiest journalist in New York City. He's an op-ed writer, fer Chrissake, and he does more shoe-leather investigative journalism in a week than the combination of the rest of the mainstream media does in a year. This week, he effectively exposed the rankest, foulest corruption imaginable within the NYC Police Dept., and presented the story and his evidence. Then he challenged Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly to get busy and fix the department's rotten members, and take the shields off the racists and perverts in the NYPD.

Ladies and gentlemen, you can scour every newsroom in the country and you won't find a journalist more worthy of the name than Bob Herbert. If you don't subscribe to Times Select yet, he's worth the annual $50 all by himself.

Eric Alterman is a different kind of journalist. He's a blogger with an academic pedigree and a talent for research and writing that has made his four books all bestsellers. He's researching another one now, and found this old speech from George McGovern—he recommends that you replace the word "Vietnam" with "Iraq," and the number 50,000 with 3,500 and you'll get the idea of how important it is for us to read this now:

Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land -- young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes.

There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes.

And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.

So before we vote, let us ponder the admonition of Edmund Burke, the great parliamentarian of an earlier day: "A contentious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

Finally, there's the man in that video, Keith Olbermann, who on national television called for the resignations of Bush and Cheney. How does this guy keep his job, you ask? Olbermann's show is one of the top-rated newscasts on cable; he keeps fat advertising dollars flowing into MSNBC's bank account, that's how. But he manages that by actually doing his job, which is to scratch the surface of power with a razor-honed pickaxe. Olbermann knows that if you truly, as the old saying goes, comfort the afflicted with an unbending search for truth, then the comfortable who may be afflicted by that search will pay anyway.

None of these guys is some socialist crazy trying to pull down the pillars of American government, or a shrill Medusa psychotic like Coulter; nor is any of them some P.T. Barnum showman like Bill O'Reilly. Nope, they're just three journalists, trying to do their jobs as well as they can.

Like I said, there are more of them, and all we have to do to honor them is to find them, and listen, regularly and often.

Being Green in Brooklyn

2007-07-06T20:07:00.000-04:00

The scene is Prospect Lake, Brooklyn, NY; the music is from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (Quicktime movie, 2:09, 1.3MB, click to view)

Friday Reflection: From the Rightful President

2007-07-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody, free beer at Terry's house (wmv, 8MB, click to view)

Here's a must-read on the Libby denouement, with some historical perspective, from Eric Alterman.

We'll feature Al Gore's new book again in the Friday space today. But first, a glance at the near future here as we prepare to sail back to the Land of Unwanted Blogs:

Legilimens!: Starting Monday, Harry Potter all next week. I don't care what's on the news, it doesn't matter anymore. If we're going to have corruption, let's have some fun with it, by god. I'll offer my prediction for Book 7's key events, and I'll have a review of the new film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Presidential Picks: Since we won't be around for the fun next year, Terry and I will leave you with our respective faves for the succession. The question on my mind is, "who could be worse?" Now there's a challenge.

The Best of DR: Before we leave you for good, we'll cull through our archives and pick out some goodies from the past 34 months of blogging. If you have any nominations, give us a shout in the comments or send me an email.

And now, more from the man who wouldn't have ruined our democracy if SCOTUS hadn't negated his rightful victory:

There was then, there is now, and there would always have been, regardless of what President Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it worse. We are less safe because of his policy. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us than any leader of our country in all the years of our existence as a nation.

Part of the explanation for the increased difficulty in gaining cooperation in fighting terrorism is Bush's attitude of contempt for any person, institution, or nation that disagrees with him. He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack because of his arrogance and willfulness, in particular his insistence on stirring up a hornets' nest in Iraq. Compounding the problem, he has regularly insulted the religion, the culture, and the tradition of people in other countries throughout the Muslim world.

He has also pursued policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush has said repeatedly that the war in Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. It was not, of course, the central front, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists.

The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's failed policies in both Iraq and Afghanistan have made the world a far more dangerous place. (pp. 181 - 182).

An Aria from the Next Dimension

2007-07-05T13:08:00.000-04:00

Some deaths remain in the news for weeks (Anna Nicole comes to mind) for no discernible reason; others are barely noticed, even though the life that has been transfigured could be richly celebrated over a month's worth of daily columns.

Beverly Sills, the extraordinary soprano who died Monday, is a case in point. Her life touched millions of people who became interested in opera through her direct influence. Sills, mainly in her work with the New York City Opera, poured a fresh charge of energy into opera, and gave it new life. She made that art appealing and affordable to countless visitors to Lincoln Center. I should know: I am one of them.

Back in the 1980's, I was making enough money to afford a subscription to a box at the Met. I would take my girlfriend along; we would dress up for every show, knowing that when we stepped through the curtain and into the box, folks would look to see if we were someone famous. It was fun, but a little disconcerting.

I always felt more at home in the balcony of NYCO than in that box at the Met. For that, I credit Beverly Sills, who made it her mission to give opera the same life and simple human energy that you could get from a Broadway show or a play or a television sitcom. To be sure, it was still opera: the singers were first-rate, the musicianship professional, but there was a familiar passion to the performances that gave them life.

I can recall a performance of Carmen some 20 years ago, featuring a hand-picked Sills protege who sang the famous Habanera with a unique sizzle. As she sang the refrain, she lay back on a bench on the set, parted her legs and let her hand stray suggestively between them. It was an electric moment that was kind of revelatory for me: Sills had brought open sensuality right onto the stage, made the story live in a way that perhaps no one else had ever tried.

That's how she lived, too: pushing boundaries, exploring alternatives, making mistakes, and always seeking more from the art, to make it a truer experience for those of us who came to watch and listen.

Sills was able to make opera popular because she transcended all the received truths and formalities of opera, mastered and then challenged its traditions, and transformed it into something poignantly direct and human. Those of us who love opera will miss her; but in some dimension to which our ears are not tuned, I'm betting they're hearing a hair-tingling, crystalline Cleopatra this week.

Good night, Bubbles, and thanks.

A Downpour of Silence

2007-07-05T06:47:00.000-04:00

You would think that with everything that's going on in the world—you know, bombs ripping apart the flesh of innocents in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan (to name only a few)—that the popular ardor for fireworks might cool a bit. And you would be wrong. The fireworks mania has continued apace, with the usual results.

Here in Brooklyn, it's never a good sleeping night, yet sometimes Nature helps out. I was settling in for a long night of listening to the pops, screeches, and booms of the amateurs in the neighborhood, when just after midnight, a blessing: a heavy downpour of rain.

Now in our culture, rain is typically demonized as "bad weather." Turn on the local newscast and witness the labels being applied to Nature: precipitation is bad, sunshine is good. Our mass media imagine that we're not smart enough to discern any finer shades of meaning than that. Or maybe it's just that they're not.

Same as how they portray political contests: Mitt is a real candidate, because he looks like one. Kucinich? Too short, too dumpy, not an ounce of stud in him. Unelectable.

And so we get bombs. Literal bombs, in places near and remote. Figurative bombs, in the seats of high power. It's all about the choices we make as citizens, and the decisions we make to accept or reject the lies and half-truths broadcast to us over the boxes in our living rooms.

Bombs are not fun, nor are they pretty, except via a projection of our minds. Bombs are dangerous: they can make sleep difficult, or they can make it permanent. Perhaps what we need in the Middle East are cloud seeders rather than troop surges, so that the bombs are more frequently enveloped in the watery silence of rain. I can only tell you that it sure worked here, last night: the rain came down and the fireworks were silenced.

Geek Bless America

2007-07-04T11:31:00.000-04:00

The new Harry Potter game: Non-violent, engaging, fun, visually and sonically beautiful. Available for both Mac and Windows. Can't go wrong with this one, Moms and Dads.

Geek Wednesday: Confessions of a Mac Fanboy

The Communication Declension:

iPhone
uCrackBerries
heSidekicks
sheTreos
weXpress
theyRAZR

Since when do people have so much to talk about, so endlessly? Are we turning into a giant and ceaseless session of Congress, sliding into a vortex of Sunday spout-show on a collapse into C-Span hell?

Maybe that's why I love geeks and musicians: they work in languages that can't easily be spoken, but only understood.

Anyway, the big news from last week is this: another corporate devil has climbed into bed with Uncle Steve. AT&T (your world, delivered...to the NSA) now joins Nike. But if you'd like to try out the iPhone as a WiFi device and iPod, you can, thanks to some code from reverse-engineering uber-geek Jon Lech Johansen, who writes one of the more entertaining and informative geek blogs I've read.

Yet the Apple momentum is now in juggernaut force: later this month, expect to see new iMacs—arguably the best desktop hardware out there. And we're 3 months away from Leopard, with its new previewing, file management, backup, and workspace features. All dizzyingly cool, but let me add a few admittedly petty recommendations:

click graphic to enlarge

Can we fix the traffic light? You know, the window control buttons that correspond to Windows' dash-square-X protocol? I don't care that Apple has them on the left side of the window (anyone who knows me knows I lean left, anyway), but should I need a Geiger counter to find them on a laptop display? Make them big and easy to get to...not like in Windows, but more like Linux/KDE.

Here's a lesson straight from Windows: for god's sake, can't we have the ability to resize a window in all corners/sides? Apple gives you one (lower right).

Re-naming files: This is a big one, because we do it all the time, especially those of us who take a lot of pictures. You unload your camera's contents into iPhoto and want to give the files unique names. Here's how it works now:

You drag the picture to the desktop.
You select the file "P7004305839045.jpg" or whatever, and hit Enter. You're ready to edit.
But the whole file name is overwritten as soon as you start typing, so you have to remember to put the correct extension in at the end.

Why not set the default so you're overwriting only the file name prefix, but not the extension? The current one (in this case .jpg) can remain, and if the user wants to change the format, he can but doesn't have to. Make sense?

Make friends with the Penguin: OS X has a UNIX / BSD core and runs X11. Google has a Linux version of Picasa (and now, of Desktop); Firefox, Opera, Real, and other major software providers make Linux versions of their major products. So how about a Linux-friendly version of the Boot Camp drivers? And can't Apple make Linux versions of Safari, Quicktime, and iTunes? They're all free for Windows users: what's the problem, Steve? Can't afford the geeks to do it with? The day I see a Linux version of iTunes, I'll know you're serious and sincere in what you say about DRM.

Death by a thousand charges: Two dollars to get an 802.11n driver; $30 for Quicktime Pro every time there's an upgrade (I've paid that twice so far, for v6 and v7, in the space of less than two years); $100 for dot-mac when Google gives me equal or better features NC; $100 a year to get to the front of the line at the Genius Bar. Do your shareholders have you handcuffed to continue this money-bleed, in exchange for them looking the other way when someone on exec row fiddles with dates on stock prices? Be careful, Steve: it could alienate people who might otherwise be attracted to your good stuff.

I can say for a certainty that it's beginning to alienate this one-time Mac fanboy. Much as I love Apple hardware and OS X, and as much as I'll take a long, close look at those new iMacs later this month, the likelihood is that my next desktop machine will be a PC running Linux.

There But for the Grace of God Scoot I...

2007-07-03T07:29:00.000-04:00

Here's where we stand in our great nation today: if you question or criticize the government and its actions, you will be duly branded a traitor in virtually every public forum available to said government and its slave media. But if you actually do something treasonous—i.e., compromise national security by exposing the identity of one of your government's secret agents—you will be elevated and rewarded; and if some activist judge or an attorney we forgot to fire happens to catch you and prosecute you, no problem: you will escape the velvet chains of minimum security prison, thanks to the beatific hand of the Compassionate Conservative. Of course, it helps if Congress happens to be occupied with another vacation or else running for President.

Prime Minister Stoltenberg, I'm ready now—give me a call.
_______________________

On Keeping a Dead Body Upright

Before he ever told the first of his innumerable lies to the people of America and the world, George Bush had to lie to himself.

A lie--let alone a compulsive habit of lying--needs constant support, which comes from lavish expenditures of physical and mental energy. In short, a lie takes a lot out of you, because it demands unceasing attention. A friend of mine once told me, "lies have short little legs--they can't go very far on their own power."

So a lie must be dressed up, ornamented, disguised, and above all, carried. And an entire network of lies, such as the Rove machine has manufactured these past six years—that requires an unending and vigilant maintenance program of ever-increasing complexity. You need an entire department, a full arm of your bureaucratic machine, to uphold and coordinate your lies.

It is much like the effort involved in keeping a dead body upright. All the while, as you pour more and more energy into keeping the program of falsehood standing--as you sacrifice your life-force to the cultivation of the superficial--the core slowly and silently rots.

This is the course of inner death, the story of sacrifice, the discordant song of suicide.

The Perils of Plutocracy

2007-07-02T07:22:00.000-04:00

Want a quick read on how sick and benighted our political culture is these days, and why Al Gore's new book is so timely and critical?

Just have a look at what the MSM is gushing over this morning: Obama is taking the lead. In the polls? At the caucus before the caucus? Heaven forbid, on the issues facing our political nation?

No: in the money, silly. After all, isn't that the only thing that matters?

It's all here and here and even here (shame on you, BBC—I expected better of you). Clearly, there's a place for this sort of thing—but on the front page, in your headline?

As I've said before here, money is marvelous stuff, and even capitalism has its virtues*. But if it becomes your primary signpost in the search for leadership, you are planting the seeds of self-destruction. Has the grim experience of corporate tyranny these past six years years taught us nothing? When you wed your future to a plutocrat, you get plutocracy. Sometimes, if you're lucky, a benign plutocracy, such as Rome had with Augustus, or as we had with our nation's founders or more recently, during the Clinton years. But after Augustus came Nero and Caligula; after Washington came Adams (and his odious Alien and Sedition Act, a gun that still smokes before our immigration-challenged society); after Clinton came...well, you know that story.

Yet our mass media, supported, it seems, by the Supreme Court, think that the corporate dollar is the only leader worth following. Is it any wonder that the politicians, ideological sheep that they are, follow along? Yet imagine the good that could be done with all the hundreds of millions raised by the candidates pursuing the magic moment of broadcast message—if only we could turn off the TV set and ignore the propaganda of plutocrats.
________________

*As I've also mentioned before, capital is the virtue concealed within capitalism--in this case again, it's the tail that makes the dragon: the -ism.

Friday Reflection: Alterman on Gore; Gore on the Cult of Dominance

2007-06-29T14:25:00.000-04:00

We're going to hand over our Friday section to Al Gore today, but first some perspective from a consistently lucid source of political insight (and my nominee for the next White House Press Secretary), Eric Alterman:

The very idea that a candidate like George W. Bush--extremist, incompetent, unprepared for office, addicted to cronyism and incapable of admitting even the simplest human error--could have been held by so many reporters to be a better choice for President than the two-time Vice President, Senator, Representative and environment and nuclear weapons expert, to say nothing of his central role in the Clinton Administration's successful two-term presidency, would be laughable were its consequences less tragic. And yet in that election, the media made Al Gore out to be a liar because so many reporters chose to misreport his remarks or take them out of context. To top it off, they made a joke of their maliciousness, mocking Gore for alleged mendacities that were largely the results of their carelessness and deliberate misrepresentation.

Now, with that as background, what follows is from Gore's The Assault on Reason.

It is deeply disturbing that the [Bush] administration so frequently uses the work dominance to describe its strategic goals. It is disturbing because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly pictures of those helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners [at Abu Ghraib] being so "dominated" has been to the people of our country.

Dominance is as dominance does. Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. Rather, it is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for still more power by striking a bargain with their consciences. And as always happens sooner or later to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

Next week, we'll be offering more brief excerpts from Al Gore's book. If it's not on your summer reading list yet, I'd strongly suggest you make it so.

AI: Critical Action Alert

2007-06-28T15:35:00.000-04:00

Once again, a man is facing the death penalty amid a mounting body of evidence that sharply calls his guilt into question, and AI is asking that we get involved to prevent a tragic miscarriage of justice. This needs to be done now; then we will have to raise the issue with state and national legislators as to why such medieval practices are allowed at all in 21st century America.

My Kingdom Fjord a Norse

2007-06-28T11:03:00.001-04:00

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway:

Dear Jens (you can call me Brian):

As you may have heard, the government of my native country is in the grip of a tyranny such as it has not witnessed in at least 30-odd years, since we effectively flushed Nixon down the Potomac. Today, our Supreme Court ruled against school desegregation. The Chief Justice explained the ruling by writing, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” You just can't imagine how humiliating it is to live in a nation where such idiocy is exalted and sits in the highest thrones of power.

In other words, our government, in all of its four branches (Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Cheney), is as drunk as Paris and as solipsistic as CNN covering Paris. There is no end in sight--it's only likely to get worse, what with Rudy and Mitt and Hillary as the front runners to the succession. In short, I feel like that woman in the famous painting by your countryman.

So I'm asking what it might take for you to consider me for citizenship of your great nation. Here are a few points on how I might easily fit into your social order:

I wouldn't take up much space--just me and a little black cat

I wouldn't dare take any of your beautiful blondes, unless it was OK with you

I have always preferred Fjord over Chevy

I like cold weather and actually have a kind of reverse SAD (I get grumpy and dismal in the summer and euthymic in the autumn and winter)

I'm a big Harry Potter fan, so I would fully support the Witches' Convention now being held in your country. I also look forward to your next hosting of the Quidditch World Cup, and would throw all my energy and ability behind the preparations--you know, creating portkeys, chasing Death Eaters, selling Omnioculars--you name it, I'll do it for you.

Please consider my request, and I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions.

Geek Wednesday: A Geek at the Future

2007-06-27T00:33:00.000-04:00

We've mentioned this again and again for nearly 3 years now, and it remains increasingly obvious to anyone who isn't on the Halliburton payroll or working for the White House press corps: Uncle Dick is neck-deep in evil. He is a profoundly sick and morally demented man--perhaps as ill as the Medusa-fox. Tough choice: my vote actually goes to the Matthews / GMA / mass media set that have enabled the psychoticizing of our national debate.

Geek Wednesday: Recommended Reading

We've got another month here till the juice is out of the cup, so today we offer a few recommendations on where to get your geek on after this tiny stream is dry.

Slashdot: If you go noplace else for geek news and tarball fights, go to Slashdot every day. I read their newsfeed often, just to check out some of the "departments" that Zonk, Cmdr Taco, and the rest of the gang find for their stories. For example, Zonk files the story of the NSA brownouts under the "war-on-terror-doesn't-include-juice dept."

But make no mistake about what's there: this is real journalism, and these guys are true wordsmiths. The proof is in the geeking: you can learn more about what's really going on in tech from ten minutes at Slashdot than you can in an hour of searching and surfing. They have sections on politics, IT, book reviews, science, hardware, and more. But the best thing about the Slashdot editors and writers is that they rarely if ever take themselves seriously. Think of them as the Jon Stewart of geekdom (there is no higher compliment I can make).

Ars Technica: I read this online geek journal regularly because it features excellent hardware reviews and also contains one of the best Apple-related blogs I've seen (Infinite Loop).

C-Net: For tech news and some excellent political analysis of tech-related issues, this site is a must-bookmark. I usually spend a few minutes a day on it, though you could explore it longer than that for its extensive reviews, downloads, interviews, and video clips. My favorite among their writers is Declan McCullagh, who consistently offers quality journalism and insight, straight from Washington. And how many other reporters working in that town do you know of who even deserve to be called journalists?

Those 3 are the essential sites for geek news and insight; and you'll find plenty more if you get into it. I keep a tab on my iGoogle page marked "Geek", and have many tech sites bookmarked there. Here are a few notable ones:

Wired: if you like a broad reach for your techno-news, this is a great choice. Science-related stories of all types (many of which are also covered at Slashdot), and a bright, creative, glitzy interface.

Download Squad: fresh news about the latest software, all the time; and sometimes they break a story or provide a perspective that you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

Tech Republic: if you do a lot with Windows and MS Office, this is a good site to check out occasionally for articles, tips, and guidance.

PC World: I tend to get lost amid the thick forest of zdnet (PC Magazine), so to keep up on activities in Pee-Cee Land, I rely on PC World.

Times Tech: The New York Times has a very robust tech section that's often worth checking out. This week, of course, Mr. Pogue has been busy with his new iPhone. Like Mossberg and the rest of the reviewers so far, he says it's generally up to its pre-release hype. Maybe it's a sign of the fact that I'm shutting down shop here that I care so little about it all. Or maybe...well, never mind.

Engadget is where you get your updates on all the new gear, with detail that you're not likely to find in most other places.

The UnOfficial Apple Weblog: This is the best Apple-related site I know of, because they don't care who they offend, and don't mind tweaking Uncle Steve's nose once in a while.

MacWorld But for the Mac fanboys, there's MacWorld. Take their rah-rah Steve act with a grain of salt, and you'll find some valuable reviews and tips in there. Mac Addict is also good, too; I think they changed their name to Mac Life--whatever.

Linux Insider: if you're into Linux and aren't satiated by the Linux page at Slashdot, check out the Insider regularly. And remember what I've been telling you for about a year now: this is the next big wave in tech. Linux, not Intel-Apple, will re-create and transform tech in both the enterprise and consumer realms like no other merely corporate force out there--as long as it remains true to its open source roots and identity; for that is where the future awakening now stirs from its long sleep. So even if you don't use Linux or other open source software, it wouldn't hurt to stay informed about the development model that could well transform government, business, education, and society as a whole.

"These People Scare Me"

2007-06-26T07:16:00.000-04:00

Here's a quote of the week from our former ally in incompetence, Mr. Tony:

A lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is essential and I will do whatever I can to help such a resolution come about.

Such as throwing your weight behind a tyrannical war of occupation in the region—right, T.?

But let's leave that matter with some praise for the land of Harry Potter: it is a great day for England. They have flushed out their monster; we are still groaning under the oppressive weight of ours.

I have been critical recently of the Huffington Post's inclusion of a gossip section, presumably as a revenue-generating instrument. What follows is an encouraging development. They have recently removed the gossip page, replaced it with an "Entertainment" section, and generally upgraded their site. So if you care about being truly informed on where this benighted democracy is heading, a bookmark to HuffPost is essential. No other big-time uber-blog would be likely to give a fellow like Mike Gravel prominent air space; but Huff did it today. Here's a sample of why we need to hear a lot of Mr. Gravel over the next 15 months or so, no matter whether you think he's electable or not:

Of course we can continue to compartmentalize ourselves from the truth, remove the troops and blame the rubble on the Iraqis. We can feed the collective fantasy that our good intentions and heroic efforts were thwarted by the cowardice and incompetence of others. But if that's what we take from our experience in Iraq, we will never learn the true lessons and we will be condemned to repeat the same mistakes.

The inability to admit a mistake and assume responsibility is not just a morally bankrupt way to walk through life; it is a dangerous and deadly way to lead a nation.

Urban Pastorale

2007-06-25T07:23:00.000-04:00

Pictures from the weekend: the scenes in this little movie are all from Prospect Park. You wouldn't know it was Brooklyn if I didn't tell you (click graphic to view video)

The Paper of Record Drops the Gloves

2007-06-24T20:25:00.000-04:00

I read the New York Times every single day, and I can tell you that it is NOT a liberal publication—not like the (old) Village Voice, Mother Jones, or The Nation. In fact, the Times led the mass media pack in uncritically repeating the lies of the Bushies, back before this I-Wreck ever began. But on Sunday, the Times finally took off the gloves and swung bare-knuckled and straight: the full text is here, and here's a brief sample:

President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information. And we get to see nothing about what they do.

Everyone knows this administration has disdained openness and accountability since its first days...Vice President Dick Cheney sets the gold standard, placing himself not just above Congress and the courts but above Mr. Bush himself. For the last four years, he has been defying a presidential order requiring executive branch agencies to account for the classified information they handle. When the agency that enforces this rule tried to do its job, Mr. Cheney proposed abolishing the agency.

The Times could now take the next step, and neutralize a good deal of the lousy karma it generated for itself in the Judy Miller days, by joining tens of thousands of American citizens and a growing list of members of Congress in this:

Get this Action Button

Friday Reflection: Don Mayer on Health Care

2007-06-22T19:52:00.000-04:00

Today I'm turning over the Friday Reflection to Don Mayer of Small Dog Electronics, one of the premier VAR Macintosh dealers in the country. He's no pundit or MSM op-ed specialist, but after you read his piece on universal health care, I think you'll agree that he has written the most closely-reasoned and lucid piece on this issue that you're likely to find anywhere.

There is a renewed interest in addressing health care reform on both the state and national levels. This focus may be enhanced by Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" that starts next week. Much of the legislative efforts have been concentrating on the uninsured. I think this is a valid first-step as it is the uninsured that create the cost shift that helps to escalate insurance premiums for the rest of us. On the other hand, it is a band-aid for a health care system that is barely on life-support.

We are about to get our renewal rates for our health insurance policy and we expect a significant increase of something in the neighborhood of 15-20%. This is clearly unsustainable. The rising cost of health insurance premiums is perhaps the single most uncontrollable element of business overhead and is forcing companies to make difficult choices like dropping or reducing coverage. When this happens, the costs of health care is either absorbed by the business, or shifted to families, state programs, or back onto those who are insured and those employers who continue to provide insurance. Increased health insurance premiums means businesses have reduced capacity to invest money in their business for expansion, to raise employee salaries, or to increase other benefits like retirement plans, etc.

As a businessman that provides health care coverage for my employees, I know very well about the rapid escalation of the cost of providing health care for my staff. When I first started in business over 30 years ago, when I founded Northern Power Systems, I was able to cover an employee and dependents for about $1500 a year. Today, coverage that is not even as comprehensive will cost me in excess of $11, 000 a year.

The employer has become the “payer of last resort,” picking up the costs of uncompensated provider care, whether it results from inadequate reimbursement rates or inadequate insurance coverage for people needing health care. As a business owner, no longer do I make hiring decisions based solely upon my company’s need for growth and development. I must consider carefully the impact of the rapidly escalating health insurance premiums as I make each new hire. Sometimes the cost of those “taxes” can equal 50% of an entry-level worker’s salary.

I have intentionally used the word “taxes” because in the health care debate it really all comes down to money. Businesses that do the right thing are paying a health care tax to insurance companies. The dollars I need to spend on providing health care to my employees, who could not get affordable coverage in any other way is a tax, call it a premium but it barks just like a tax! It’s a standing obligation I have, is my contribution to a defined social need. But the “health care insurance tax” that I pay is very different from the other taxes I pay. Unlike other taxes, a) not everyone pays this tax, although everyone benefits from it; b) there is no rational allocation of the tax burden; c) the burden is not distributed through a transparent democratic public debate process; and d) as a “health insurance taxpayer” I have no influence on the administration or governance of the public good that is funded by the tax. I would much rather pay taxes that are determined through a democratic process, with democratic oversight of the disbursement and delivery system, to fund health care, than continue to be subject to unpredictable, opaque and rapidly escalating health insurance “taxes”.

Additionally, employer-funded health insurance has impacted the competitive marketplace, making the decision NOT to provide coverage a strong competitive advantage in bidding for contracts. Employers that do not provide coverage shift their employee’s health care costs to those of us who choose to act responsibly, thereby doubling the adverse competitive impact. Other employers hire part-time or seasonal workers to avoid this premium/tax, still others “dumb down” coverage with very high deductibles and limited coverage that encourages Vermonters to avoid medical care even for chronic conditions.

Ending the employer-based funding of health care will stimulate economic development by reducing the tendency of employers to offer part-time jobs to avoid health care costs, will give employees the freedom to change jobs without fear of loss of health benefits and will eliminate this contentious issue as a labor-management dispute.

The huge administrative load created by our current "Rube Goldberg" "system" of health care in the USA is absorbing millions of dollars to have patients and medical providers fight with insurance companies for coverage. You get an explanation of benefits that needs a lawyer to interpret and the insurance companies are motivated to deny coverage to increase their profits. It would be one thing if our method of providing health care to our citizens produced the best health care in the world, but it does not.

It is time to scrap employer-funded optional health care and provide everyone with access to health care as a "public good" that is publicly-financed so that everyone pays their fair share and everyone receives top-quality health care. This is really the only solution to health care that is feasible and has been demonstrated to be effective throughout the world. There are 27 industrialized nations in the world and 26 of them provide universal health care. We should be ashamed that the USA is the one that does not.

—Don Mayer, Small Dog Electronics

I found the above piece in Don's "Soapbox" section of his company's e-newsletter, "Kibble and Bytes," which you can subscribe to yourself here. And if you're shopping for a Mac or iPod, by all means buy from smalldog. Mind you, I don't get a dime for this: smalldog doesn't do affiliate advertising. But wouldn't it be nice to buy something from a guy you know is good and has great ideas?

Dear Mr. Hillary: Go Whack a Mole

2007-06-21T18:52:00.000-04:00

Dear Hillary: if I were to get your gender wrong, does that mean we'd be electing Bubba again in 2008? I could think of several worse outcomes than that...But seriously, ma'am: I know that image and theme songs are more important to you than policy and all that stupid wonkish stuff, but sometimes you just have to sweat the details.

I posted a comment to Norm Jenson's excellent blog on the prospect of yet another Ralph Nader presidential bid. Just some common sense advice for a guy who seems to need it...

I have a rare television (well, actually a video) recommendation: Frontline's program Endgame, which aired earlier this week, is now online. One warning: I watched it Wednesday evening, and didn't sleep very well that night. Some of the war scenes are pretty graphic and intense.

But it's important to see that stuff, because the rest of the mass media is busy playing "Whack-a-Mole" with the entire Iraq scene. Watch as Stewart keelhauls their asses for it, as only Stewart can.

Another warning: you might find the Frontline film pretty hard to swallow in some of its message. Are these people seriously trying to raise Condi to the level of neglected military genius—or was I simply imagining things? I must have been imagining it...no wonder I'm quitting this blogging stuff: it's making me whacky as a mole.

A Tribute to Geeks

2007-06-20T21:25:00.000-04:00

Before we get to our tribute to geekdom, here's your daily dose of the Rev. William Sloane Coffin:

People who say "same-sex marriage makes me uncomfortable" should probably remind themselves that comfort has nothing to do with the issue and that, often as not, change is discomforting. I think those of us who are straight people really need to sit down quietly and compare our own discomfort with the discomfort of gays and lesbians who for years have been excluded, isolated, silenced, abused, and even killed.

Geek Wednesday: It's All Geek To Me

Deep Geek Thought of the Day, from ancient Chinese philosopher Txt Tzu: "In my opinion, the "H" in IMHO is unnecessary. Every opinion should be humble."

Better Geek Mousetraps: Ever get sick of trying to read those gray-scrawled "I'm not a robot" verification fields in an online form? Here's the best alternative I've seen so far (thanks to Dr. Vrai for the tip).

We have called this segment of the blog "Geek Wednesday," but not because I am myself a geek. I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, merit that designation.

A geek, after all, is a professional who writes code, administers systems, or manages complex architecture; a geek is a person who can speak and act with expertise on technology. To be a real geek means having a grasp of a technical specialization while also maintaining a broad perspective on the industry—an informed view of the vast landscape of technology.

But a fellow like me, who writes about tech as the news cycle determines and as my admittedly narrow personal experience allows—such a fellow can relate to geeks outside the sphere of zero and one. Guys like me will try to grasp the unique culture of technology and its seemingly infinite range of personalities and voices.

I've come to know geeks by making my living amid their company, and by revealing some enthusiasm and support for their work. I may have also detected a certain social potential of geekery; a potential that reaches past the pabulum of "we're all connected" and the obsession with gear and electronic toys from the Blackberry to the Wii.

I see the geek community as a new grassroots; a foundation upon which the social order at large can be regenerated, in a model that I call The Open Source Society. Whether or not I am right in this is not the point here; I may well be, as I have often been, completely off the mark on that. But one point can be confidently expressed here, and it relates to the overall quality of character among geeks.

The geeks I have known have revealed to me a modesty and light-hearted competence that I haven't seen so commonly among other professional classes such as marketers, managers, and certainly among executives. Where others might encounter a geek and see evidence of a skill or a specialization—a dba, an architect, or a developer—I see a life that also happens to exude talent. Where a corporate executive may perceive a tool whereby profit can be made or a project deadline met, I have seen a glowing orb of personality, a well of humility.

I can assure you, this comes from no special skill of judgment on my part: it comes from the heart of the geek's experience, the common culture that arises from their combined and nearly endlessly variant uniqueness. Geeks, for example, tend not to take themselves as seriously as members of other professional classes do. Maybe they know how quickly, easily, and inexplicably things can go all wrong. Maybe, as the WordPress developers assure us, "code is poetry"; and I know for a fact that any life lived poetically is deeper, richer, more essentially human.

The reasons and the causes matter less than the lived reality. In these little Wednesday columns, I have laughed at the geeks, and they have laughed back. We all know that, in an era of war, genocide, tyranny, and the undermining of democratic principles around the world and especially here in America, the latest Apple toy or Internet gamble is matter for mirth rather than fury—tech often provides a welcome note of comic relief to the unceasing flow of tragedy in all the news besides.

So before we shut down Geek Wednesday in this forum, here's my tip of the silicon to the geeks: you are the most vibrant, amusing, inquisitive, and warm-hearted group of people I've encountered in my quarter-century tour through corporate America. Perhaps, after all, code is poetry. In some future lifetime, I hope to find out for myself.

Thanks to Nearly Redmond Nick and the other geeks who have contributed to this forum. May your every randomly-accessed memory be clear, loving, and pure 64-bit light.

On the Destruction Express

2007-06-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

I'm offering something today that I've had lying around for a little while; it's to eventually appear somewhere in my new book about The Open Source Society. But first, your daily dose of Rev. William Sloane Coffin:

It's not them and us: it's just us. And all of us are careening toward nuclear war. In World War II, six million Jews were herded into boxcars, stripped, shot or gassed, and incinerated in ovens all over Eastern Europe. But on the trains the great majority never guessed their destiny. We're on such a train to an even greater incineration and haven't the eyes to perceive it.

The Ass in the Lion's Skin

AN ASS, having put on the Lion's skin, roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met in his wanderings. At last coming upon a Fox, he tried to frighten him also, but the Fox no sooner heard the sound of his voice than he exclaimed, "I might possibly have been frightened myself, if I had not heard your bray."

Aesop's story of the Ass in the Lion's Skin has something to teach us about how quality is perceived and treated in the corporate culture. Most companies like wearing the skin of quality, but few choose to pursue its substance.

Quality is given the same kind of lip service in corporate America that it receives from advertisers of consumer goods. "Quality is job one," rang the old Ford ad. "The quality goes in...before the name goes on," Zenith assured us in its ads for consumer TVs.

Curiously, though, you would be hard-pressed to find many mentions of the word "quality" in most modern advertising. As in the corporate realm, the image of quality is far more important than its substance. We like to talk about quality, but rarely is it pursued, let alone practiced. Our culture much prefers quantity. How much you have is our benchmark for success, more than the intrinsic value of what you are.

Yet there's even more to the problem than that. For to be defined by one's possessions is misfortune enough; to be measured according to their mere quantity, however, is disaster. Yet we have heard our own President refer proudly to his supporters as "the haves and the have-mores," who he fondly calls his "base." This attitude from the putative leader of the free world represents a painfully regressive step in human evolution.

Still, this is hardly a problem to be blamed on one individual or even a single institution. The underlying attitude is pervasive in our culture, and thus, it can only be successfully addressed at the individual level. You cannot legislate a society to transform its attitudes toward excess; institutional compulsion is more likely to compound the problem than ameliorate it: the history of prohibition in a nutshell.

This being the case, what we need is a broad picture of the problem with quality in our culture, so that we can as individuals discover its traces within ourselves, within our lives. This process in itself frequently points the way toward a transformational solution that will guide the culture. This is, I think, the most natural process: the changes made uniquely within each person lead the society forward.

In our advertising, we are far more likely to find the words "get more" than any term that describes "quality." In America, More is better; Bigger is better. In our current era, we've taken the matter well beyond the point of balance: we speak of "extreme" in everything from sports to drain openers; "ultra-" is one of the most-used prefixes in advertising; and "more" is virtually ubiquitous. We have wrapped ourselves in a cult of More; defined ourselves by Excess. Today, it seems there is no longer any such thing as too much of a good thing. In fact, we frequently don't even bother to ask how "good" the thing may actually be, so long as there is lots of it.

When we conflate excess with success (they sure sound alike, don't they?), then quality becomes an accident, a bonus if present, though more likely a necessary sacrifice to quantity. This is true of consumer goods: why not "get more" by snatching up 3 Wal-Mart personal computers for the same price as you'd pay for one Mac or higher-end PC? If a 30-inch TV screen looks great, then 60-inches must twice as great.

As you might expect, the breath of this cult has also entered the corporate realm. In my own professional arena, Information Technology (IT), there is a domain known as QA (Quality Assurance), which is theoretically responsible for applying thorough, controlled testing of software developed or purchased and customized by the company. In practice, however, QA is usually under-resourced, generally ignored until the last possible moment of a software project, and is allowed laughably brief amounts of time to do its work. This is such a universal state of affairs in corporate America that you can fairly predict the course a conversation with a QA Manager might take, well ahead of time.

For in software development and in consumer products, quality is tested and verified mainly by the end-user. So if you buy a product and find that it doesn't work or is so loaded with bugs or deficiencies as to be essentially useless, welcome to QA in the modern age. This is a model that most corporations adhere to, and is based largely on the unquestionable success of the Microsoft corporation in selling buggy, insecure, hair-pullingly dysfunctional software whose myriad defects are revealed only by the general public that pays a very high price for the stuff.

So, corporate America, when it comes to quality, is the ass that wears the lion's skin: it pays regular lip-service to quality, and will cloak itself in a quality-referenced Mission Statement or advertising slogan. But when it comes to actual practice, your average corporation is very much still an ass. If you listen closely, you can hear the braying before you put your money down.

"Has a Bush the Buddha-Nature?"

2007-06-17T15:16:00.000-04:00

Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

There's a video over at YouTube from Mike Gravel that may cause many Dems to look down their lorgnettes and sneer. To them, I say: get over yourselves. I think the guy fully recognizes he's an outsider with no chance to win in this political culture defined by the obsession with appearances. And guess what? That's a voice we need in the campaign. In short, we need a Zen-candidate: a guy with a serious, eloquent message (if you've heard him speak, you know he's got that), but who also is ready and willing to spit right in the eye of every Madison-Avenue self-image machine out there--Hillary's, McCain's, all of them.

And now, our moment with William Sloane Coffin:

...evil is not so much the work of a few degenerate people or groups of people as it is the result of the indifference and negligence of the many. With spiritual arrogance goes the itch to destroy. History warns that the best is always a hair's breadth from the worst, and that heartless moralists in the corridors of power are those who start inquisitions.

Coffin on Grounding the Demonic

2007-06-16T11:23:00.000-04:00

The residents of my garden mock my landlady's territorial claims

As we continue to prepare for our Kevorkian moment here on the blog, we offer another slice from the wisdom of William Sloane Coffin. Today, a unique interpretation of a famous but oft-neglected piece of Christian teaching.

"If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." This doesn't mean, however, that we're supposed to be doormats for others to walk on with hobnailed boots. It's my experience that people seldom want to walk over you until you lie down, so it's better to stay standing. Turning the other cheek means, "Be a lightning rod; ground the hostility." When you are insulted, call the other's attention to the hurt but do not retaliate in kind. Try--and believe me it is hard--try not even to resent it, for our job is to get to each other, not at each other. You know as well as I do that when enmities dim, lives glow all the stronger.

The Clear Heart of Civil Disobedience

2007-06-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

I can't think of a better way to wind down this blog than with the words of William Sloane Coffin, who died a little over a year ago. What he left behind, in books like Credo, from which the quotes you'll read are taken, is the same kind of insight we've tried to highlight here in our Friday Reflection space, through a variety of voices and genres. Like Martin Luther King, Coffin showed us that social awareness and civil activism are at their brightest and clearest when they arise from that deep mindfulness that is often known as spirituality.

We'll begin with Coffin's reflections on prejudice.

As a man I consider myself at best a recovering chauvinist. As a white person I am a recovering racist, and as a straight person a recovering heterosexist. To women, African Americans, gays, and lesbians, I am deeply grateful for stretching my mind, deepening my heart, and convincing me that no human being should ever be patient with prejudice at the expense of its victims.

In the Granite Forest

2007-06-14T00:49:00.000-04:00

The place is just two hundred yards behind the building where I live. It is called Greenwood, and it's one of the larger of our nation's burial grounds. Of course, it should be called Granite Forest, for there is more of stone than there is of wood in that vast field of bodies.

Every time I walk past Greenwood, I wonder: could people be so lacking in trust of the universe and the realities of the formless, that they must leave behind these massive rocks and tablets in the ground where their dark matter rots, free of the light that now lives in another dimension? Is this as firm a grip as they could take of memory?

2500 years ago, Lao Tzu told us something different:

To live in the Tao means abiding in the eternal—
Perceiving completely, with all one’s being:
Life is never exhausted;
It is only delusion that dies.

Geek Wednesday: The Secret Browser

2007-06-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

Geeks: Comment at will on the following statement:

A pure microprocessor would transcend spatial realms and exist only in the dimension of time.

So...magical, Secret Steve pulled a Windows browser out of his hat yesterday at WWDC. What of it?

Secrecy has its price: when you have kept your enemies in the dark, you also tend to leave your friends unaware. So Safari 3 is showing its security slip, and getting a lot of "incompatible browser" messages in Windows today. I found one in my.yahoo.com--not a good place to be incompatible, if you're a browser.

Too bad, because there's no faster or more efficient browser on the Mac platform than Safari. If Steve had at least let the rumor mill work a little over the past few weeks, enough to let the major sites and services tweak their settings to be ready for a new player in the Wintel online game, then maybe Safari would be getting better press than it's receiving so far. And if he hadn't waited until two weeks ahead of his telephone's big day to let the developers know when and how they can write apps for the thing, then we wouldn't get the storm of half-baked, poorly tested code that bleeding edgers of the iPhone are likely to see in two weeks. I wouldn't touch that thing if you gave me the $500 to buy it with. Well all right, Mark: if it brings world peace and does oral sex, then I'll take one.

But guess which browser that phone will be running? Yep, Safari. Think there's some virus writers and hackers out there getting their knives ready? Here's a tip, Mac users--in fact, a whole group of them:

Camino is the Mozilla Mac-friendly browser, and sports a lovely interface, a multi-layered bookmark bar (which Firefox itself still lacks), and zesty page load times. Very nice.

There's always Firefox itself. In my experience, it runs best in Linux, good in Windows, and fair on the Mac. But it's worth having in your applications folder, because web browsing is no longer a one-trick pony, after all.

Opera is perhaps the most visually pleasing browser, certainly for the Mac, and it has a host of usability features and community applets, such as a blogging portal and excellent forums, that set it apart from the competition. Highly recommended.

Shiira is another really pretty Mac browser with some great usability features and toys built in. Definitely worth a look.

Finally, there's OmniWeb. Costs 15 bucks for an ad-free version, but for the quality, reliability, speed, and features, it's well worth it.

You can always run Safari on your Windows box...if you dare.

Coming Soon: I just installed a 64-bit version of MEPIS Linux onto the MacBook, and will be going through it the rest of this week. While we await a stable version of Vista and the October release of Apple's 64-bit OS, this offering from MEPIS is intriguing: a working 64-bit OS that is ready now. The high res drivers loaded without incident last night, so if I can get Linux to recognize the MacBook's webcam, I should be able to capture some video of MEPIS-64 in action. So check back later this week to see what we came up with. I can tell you so far that it was the fastest install of a full-blown OS that I've seen: under 15 minutes to load the KDE with a full GUI, OpenOffice, GIMP, Firefox, Evolution, a suite of utilities, drivers, games, and miscellaneous productivity packages. Pretty amazing so far.

A Comment from Lao Tzu

2007-06-09T23:04:00.000-04:00

Lao Tzu's remarks on the past six years (Quicktime video, 1.4MB, click to play)

A Fizzling Finish (and Friday Reflection)

2007-06-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

I have worked in technology for a number of years, and really grown to like it. It is a continuing, fascinating lesson in impermanence and human frailty. Servers fail unaccountably; projects lose their direction and momentum just as management is extolling their inevitable benefits; code that worked yesterday sputters and degrades into dysfunction today. So it is perhaps only fitting that a blog should close not with a flourish but a fizzle, which is exactly what this one will be doing over the next few weeks.

A hard drive is known to last an average of 5 years. Statistics on server life show that 10 years is the most that can be expected out of a busy machine that's always on and connected. Chipsets and circuit boards are similarly short-lived.

Meanwhile, silk scrolls from the time of Lao Tzu--some two and half millennia old--are still readable; papyrus rolls from Egyptian and Greek antiquity are legible. Bound books that are hundreds of years old can still be easily read. Even I have a few books that are more than a hundred years old in my library.

I will add, however, that I also have a few floppy disks left that are over 10 years old and still readable. It's just that there aren't any computers made anymore that come equipped with the hardware to read them.

After all, it is not the physical medium of a message that makes it endure. Homer, legend has it, was a blind poet who simply sang his poems out loud to audiences. Someone or other among his listeners found enough of value in those songs of the wrath of Achilles to write them down, and someone else in turn copied these, and so on. It is doubtful that the true author of the Iliad and the Odyssey ever knew or expected that his poems would be read in other languages, thousands of years after him.

More recently, it was Lincoln who claimed that the world would "little know or long remember" the words of what has become one of the most quoted, printed, and memorized pieces of political oratory ever. The words that deserve to endure, somehow do.

Will something--anything--of what we have written here these past three years endure? I would be willing to make a very large wager against it. A blog is, by its very nature, not the kind of writing that is meant to be remembered or cherished long after its time. Its proper voice is the casual voice of today, speaking to the events and for the people of its day. Its very quality comes from its easy digestibility, its smooth brevity and simple takeaway.

A good blog is also designed to lead the reader away from itself. We embed links into our work that we think will better enlarge or illustrate the points we are attempting to make. If you're writing an effective weblog, you are giving readers short and clear statements of fact or opinion, and leading them elsewhere for further research and experience.

Personally, I have used this blog as a laboratory and a gym: it is where I try out ideas, forms, and approaches, or simply exercise my writer's brain. I have always made an effort to do this while also delivering something useful and rewarding for the general reader. It can't be a nice experience to spend your time and energy just watching someone else work out.

Judging by our traffic, which (according to Google Analytics) remains at around a hundred visitors per day, it is possible that I have failed. The comments section is generally left bare, and the financial maintenance of the site has been a slow but continuous leak. If I were to go on walking such a treadmill while pretending there was progress, then wouldn't I be just like Bush and his handlers, or Joe Lieberman in Baghdad the other day—talking up an invisible improvement while wrapped in a flak jacket and a heavily armed squadron of men and equipment?

All right, it is true: I wouldn't. No one will die, no orphans or widows will be made from my futile postings here. So on to the real reasons: there is work to be done, life to be lived, and more books to be written. I'm getting fat, and sad to say, typing 60 words per minute does not equal 60 burnt calories per minute. The older we get, the more do our bodies ask our attention. It is time I started listening.

So I offer a final Friday Reflection, below, and you will no doubt find a sporadic post here and there between now and when the hosting period ends, in August. Like I said, it has been a valuable lesson, which is perhaps as much as we can ask of our experience. My gratitude goes out to my co-writer, Terry McKenna, who I am sure has a future in punditry, should the mainstream media ever decide that a reasoned tone of truth and eloquence would be preferable to the current climate of shrill and demonic ignorance. And I am, of course, very grateful to the few who have come here regularly to read our work.

There is a story told of the Buddha, from one of his many lifetimes before he became the Buddha. In this particular strand of his successive, merit-building reincarnations, he appears as a fellow who encounters a sick lioness with a cub. Both animals are starving and near death. The Buddha, or whatever person he was at the time, feels such compassion for the creatures that he offers his own body as meat for the mother lion. But she is too weak to even bite the arm he offers her. So the Buddha finally picks up a sharp rock, cuts his arm open, and holds it to the lioness's mouth, so she can lap up the blood from the wound. The blood of the Buddha has the desired effect of restoring energy to the mother lion, who soon recovers enough strength to kill and eat the Buddha. And thus the lioness and her cub were saved from death, and the man who gave them his life was carried further up the karmic mountain, to the brink of the summit of supreme realization.

Whether or not any such pinnacle of enlightenment is possible, I do wish for our sick, frail, and benighted democracy a visiting Buddha, who might offer it blood—but not the blood of innocents or children. Just the vital fluid of truth and autonomy.

Friday Reflection: The Message of the Bird

One day last week, during an outdoor press conference, a bird took a shit onto the President. He wiped away the blessing with his bare hand, thus prompting many comedians to marvel anew at this man's talent for the bizarre (Bill Maher wondered how Bush could imagine that he is not descended from apes).

It made me wonder how the Deluder--oops, the Decider, that is--could think that anyone is estranged from the Earth, but instead is a son of that parochial God or a daughter of this insular revolution.

We are all children of the Earth. Food, water, every sustenance and shelter known to us in our lives, comes from the Earth. No matter whether we may credit this God or that Prophet; this Messiah or that Savior; this nation or that Law with our life, there is, after all, no god but the one that lies under your fingernails after you've filled your hands with earth.

We can best love god, our nation or its people, by honoring the Earth upon which all these find their life, from which they all draw sustenance. Every life, every nation, every belief, is nourished on the grain and fruit of Earth.

So it is as our native peoples have taught us: the Earth is our Mother. And our father, and our ancestors. This is all we can be sure of; what we can all agree upon, no matter which god we may follow; what Bible we might read; or what nation's laws we may obey.

Today, our species is on a path to self-annihilation. Scientists, naturalists, and most teachers of Earth-spirit agree that this is so. Some of them have said or written that the universe will not suffer nor the Earth lose by our species' annihilation. I do not agree.

To be sure, the universe will carry on without us; there can be no disagreement on that point. The Earth, in all likelihood, will survive without us as well. But there will be diminishment of the whole, just as there is with the extinction of any species. There will be loss. The Earth-spirit will suffer; for there will be no hands left to touch the Earth, and less consciousness to love it.

The less gravitational attraction there is in the universe, the more entropy will be found. Less love, more chaos. For what reason are we born here but to add to the whole, to endow the cosmic heart with the oxygen of our uniqueness?

Therefore, if you would like to perform a ritual that will nourish god and draw its blessings, try this: dig up a small patch of earth with your bare hands, and then put your religion down in the hole you made. Bury your belief. Then, ask the Earth to complete your sacrifice, and thank it for accepting your offering. Before the end of the year, your blessing will be answered with abundance, as long as you don't wait in expectation.

This is the principle of quantum gravity in action: give ego to god, and accept the blessing of truth in return. It is how love works in the way of Nature. In fact, it works any way you choose to work with it yourself: if you elect to follow the God of the Bomb and the way of death, you may well fool the squealing infants who call themselves journalists. But the birds will not miss you.

Book Review: Cindy Sheehan and the Starfish Movement

2007-05-31T00:01:00.000-04:00

Cindy Sheehan is leaving the anti-war movement to which she gave so much life, energy, and focus. She will be back, no doubt, in some form. I wish her well in restoring herself and renewing her own life. But I firmly disagree (and this is a blue-moon moment) with William R. Pitt that "Anyone glad for her departure from activism is celebrating a disaster."

While I doubt I'd use the word "glad" to describe my own feelings, certainly "relieved" qualifies. At any rate, in no way does "disaster" describe this moment. Quite the contrary: this woman endured everything from divorce to death threats to arrest to public taunting and ridicule from the mass media; it is time she retreated and renewed.

There is also a broader theme to this, which I am going to explain with a book review. Yes, a book review. The book is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. The authors are Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, and they have written one of the most crystalline gems of social insight that I have seen in any non-fiction these past 20 years. In a mere 200 pages of text, these two Stanford grads provide more clarity of perspective on our society, its group psychologies and cultural transformations, than you are likely to get from a shelf full of punditry or a year's worth of television. I do not think I am overstating the case for this book: it is the most important and clarion piece of non-fiction to arise in this first decade of the 21st century. It is a book made for, and by, its era.

The metaphor of the title is a comparison of "top-down", hierarchically-structured groups and organizations, such as we are all familiar with in corporate America and government (that's the spider, who can be made lame from the loss of its legs and dead from decapitation); and the fresh wave of decentralized, leaderless, or non-hierarchical organizations that have become such a force in society over the past decade of the Internet (this is the "starfish," which can be chopped up into numerous pieces, each of which will respond by growing a new organism or member).

The book opens with a heady analysis of how a starfish phenomenon evolved in one particular category: the P2P file sharing services in the Napster/Grokster model. The authors show how the early versions of these spontaneous organizations got stuck in "spider" mode, and were therefore eventually trapped and killed by big corporate media and its legal juggernaut. But these Napster-type experiments benefited from such attacks by a response of ever-increasing differentiation, diversification, and "starfish"-style regrowth. Brafman and Beckstrom finally lead the reader to the eMule service, which took decentralization to the point of anonymity and total leaderlessness. Big Media cannot attack an entity like eMule, because it has no head, no governance, no bank accounts: there is nothing for a legal or corporate machine to assault, except for individual users of the service, who, aside from being virtually innumerable, are mostly children and rarely wealthy.

The authors go on to reveal both the beauty and the danger inherent in the starfish-mode of organizational being, drawing examples as diverse as Wikipedia and al Qaeda. Along the way, they present portraits of environmental groups, activist organizations, online merchants, and Internet services. But if this book stopped with mere sketches of eBay, Alcoholics Anonymous, Apache, craigslist, Goodwill Industries, and IBM, then it would be merely an interesting intellectual snack for the MBA crowd.

The Starfish and the Spider becomes a banquet of cultural insight because it digs past the surface that so many pundits and social commentators stop to admire. Brafman and Beckstrom turn the starfish on its back, examine it in varying light, carry it into vastly disparate environments, and constantly ask questions of it. In doing so, they discover some principles and characteristics common to starfish organizations and the people who inspire and influence their growth.

One of their most fascinating discoveries is in the figure of what they term "the catalyst." It is here that we are brought back to Cindy Sheehan (this is my own connection, so if you think it's a stupid association, don't blame the authors of the book). The catalyst is the person who founds a starfish group, the one who gives it form, ideas, value, focus, and meaning. Examples of catalysts that Brafman and Beckstrom offer are:

Granville Sharp, leader of the abolitionist movement against slavery in England

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who founded the women's suffrage movement that Susan B. Anthony later took up with still greater energy

Craig Newmark of craigslist

Bill Wilson of AA

One thing the authors point out is that

a catalyst is like the architect of a house: he's essential to the long-term structural integrity, but he doesn't move in. In fact, when the catalyst stays around too long and becomes absorbed in his creation, the whole structure becomes more centralized.

So one common feature to the life and health of a growing decentralized movement or organization is that the catalyst almost always leaves or at least recedes into the mesh of the whole, once the group has matured enough to work autonomously and to withstand assault. Whenever a catalyst attempts to assume a traditional, CEO-type of leadership role, the organization loses its dynamism, its life as a starfish, and becomes a centralized, hierarchical spider--much easier to mark, and then suppress or assimilate.

For a corporate entity, this may not necessarily be a bad thing: growth-as-profit, after all, can be nurtured in a traditional corporate management structure. But growth-as-message can become stilled or silenced when there's a top dog in place, approving this, denying that; or simply being a figurehead in a particular place as the focus of activism or just attention.

The anti-war movement has benefited enormously from Cindy Sheehan's presence, personality, experience, and energy. We have admired her from afar for some two years now: I first wrote about her here (note also that the fractiousness and in-fighting that Sheehan noted in her parting statement existed way back then, too).

Since then, however, the movement has grown, thanks largely to Sheehan's example and leadership. But I agree with Brafman and Beckstrom, that a time inevitably comes for every starfish organization when its formative human force must retreat. In our own democracy's formative stage, George Washington had to decline the crown that his followers attempted to place on his head. Other catalysts have had to spurn a crown or a corner office, and always for the good of the whole, for the sake of the movement's continued growth.

Since Sheehan first camped out in George Bush's backyard, Code Pink, IVAW, and hundreds of other "starfish arms and legs" have formed around her and taken on their own life in the anti-war sea. It is time that these organisms were allowed to share in both the light and the tribulation, the accolades and the calumny.

The blogosphere--itself a starfish organization--has benefited from Sheehan's influence and example. I think she recognizes this as well, and thus chose Daily Kos as the forum for her parting message. It is perhaps only seemingly ironic that the world wide web is perhaps the least "spidery" vehicle of communication on earth today. Only on the Internet, for example, could you find a science writer for a stodgy paper like the New York Times writing a scathing indictment of the Bush administration--it happened today.

As Brafman and Beckstrom point out in their book, this kind of seeming chaos is unique to a starfish-style organization: "When you give people freedom, you get chaos, but you also get incredible creativity." Even on the website of a spider organization like the New York Times.

Clearly, we probably need more chaos; and we certainly need more creativity. Congress has failed to carry out the will of the people, because it cannot respond to the fluid movement of the starfish; it is too mired in its own iron-stranded matrix of excess, corruption, deceit, and self-indulgence. As the authors of The Starfish and the Spider indicate, we can only overcome the turgid inertia of Washington politics by redoubling the starfish energy of the anti-war movement. In other words, it is time for a catalyst to step into the background, so that the whole is given renewed life. And so that a long-suffering and heroic Mom can once more feel the quiet joys of private life that the rest of us so often take for granted.

Geek Wednesday: How Much Does Air Cost?

2007-05-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

Geeks, technophiles, gearheads, and webaholics: we've got a new assignment for you, once again courtesy of our friends at Save The Internet. Here's the pitch:

The FCC is on the verge of turning over a large chunk of the public airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed Internet access for more than 96 percent of connected American homes.

This public "spectrum" could revolutionize the Internet in America. Its wireless signal passes through concrete buildings and over mountains; it can connect tens of million of Americans who are being passed over by Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Don't let the FCC give away our wireless Internet to these price-gouging giants. The FCC deadline is fast approaching. Act now!

Remember when Bechtel Corp. "owned" the water of Bolivia--even the rain that fell from the sky, so that you were expected to pay them even if you went outside and opened your mouth in the rain? (to see and hear the whole insane story, rent or buy The Corporation, one of the great documentaries ever made). Well, this is along the same lines: selling the air to Big Telcom so they can charge you megabux for your Wi-fi so that fat corporate trolls are made wealthier, fatter, and more trollish.

Social Networking Update: LinkedIn now has an "Answers" module, where users can post questions to the community and receive intelligent, well-thought responses. I found a question about what is required to be a success as an author or editor, so I posted a response. By the way, the titles of those books in that post are all real: I just sat beside a "Business Motivation" shelf at B&N and copied them out on the MacBook. Amazing.

But LinkedIn is for our professional and not our horny self. For the latter, I recently discovered Orkut, a Google-administered social networking and dating site. The profile entry section is very detailed, though not a total slog to get through; and because it's run by the geeks of the big G, the design and functionality are very cool, sure, and breezy. I'll let you know if it helps me with my HTML (come on, you know what HTML really stands for, right?).

Fire-foxy Lady: In case you don't recognize that lovely lady in the picture, she's the Lizard-Wrangler-in-Chief of Mozilla/Firefox, Mitchell Baker. I've been reading her blog at the Mozillazine, and much of what I see as the potential of open-source modeling for government and mainstream business can be discovered in the writing of this extraordinary woman.

The Geek Groan, or why there are no geek comedians: So the Tux car at the Indy 500 finished last, and one reader of C-Net's story on the disappointing finish commented "It's real hard to get good drivers for Linux hardware."

Dell-buntu ships: You can order one now. Though the savings won't exactly blow your socks off, these units are cheaper than comparable Vista boxes, and marginally less expensive than their counterparts at System76 or Linspire. I put together a Dell desktop box, sans monitor, for $700 that I know would make Ubuntu fly; and my friend Nearly Redmond Nick added a monitor and ended up with $1080 for a box with 2GB RAM, 22" monitor, upgraded processor, video card and 1 year support.

Still, my previous advice stands for any Windows switchers who are contemplating Linux but don't want to stick their head under the hood and spend a lot of time in Synaptic Package Manager (software download utility for Ubuntu) or the Terminal/Console (geek command line): get a flavor of Linux that features a more complete installation with all available third-party drivers, such as Xandros, Linspire, or my own favorite, MEPIS. I have another video demo of MEPIS, below. I'll simply say it again: the more I use this Linux distro, the more I like it.

But as I said last week, I'll slip into a Best Buy one day later this week, once the Dellbuntu boxes are there, and check out what Dell has done with the Feisty Fawn. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a way to install Ubuntu onto your existing hardware but without having to partition your hard drive or jump through any other geek hoops, Wubi may be your best option. It will allow you to run Ubuntu just like any other software application on a Windows box. And Ubuntu running in Wubi will run your Windows applications inside Linux...your computer will be like those Russian dolls, one within another within another...

But what's the big deal about open source software, after all (aside from the fact that it's cheap to run, free to have, exponentially safer than Windows and usually just as functional)? Here's one answer, which I wrote nearly two years ago, in June, 2005:

To me, the Open Source Society represents a return to, and recovery of, Democracy. A democratic society works through its challenges collaboratively, in a spirit of active inquiry, where dissent is both tolerated and even encouraged. In a culture like ours, where the Cult of the Specialist seems to have locked us into inner cubicles of narrow expertise in which one's identity is defined exclusively by one's specialty, the Open Source model offers us some hope of recovering Freedom--especially freedom of the press.

Later in the week I'll have a review of an ingenious book that goes further into this theme. It's called The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by yet another two Stanford geniuses.

But then again, really--who needs open source when Microsoft is constantly innovating on behalf of the people? Yep, the coffee table PC: just think of the possibilities.

"We see this as a multi-billion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Hugo-Not: Crossing the Border of Tyranny

2007-05-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, even those toward whom you are favorably disposed cross a boundary and make you question how you'd ever thought kindly of them.

Granted, I've never felt completely warm and fuzzy about Hugo Chavez. True, I defended his right to live when Pat Robertson was ready to call out the Death Squads of Christ to Venezuela. And I did find Chavez's UN speech, in which he referred to Bush as a "demon" both entertaining and revealing.

But now he has crossed the line from socialist revolutionary to petty despot. He is taking over the businesses and the press of his country and turning them into state organs of profit and propaganda.

However you look at it, this is a brute force example of Stalinism. Hugo Chavez has crossed the line, and he had better step back quickly, or else he has taken the first step on the road to the destruction of his government and his former vision of a better, more just nation.

Who else is blaming the media for all his problems? Our buddy Paul Wolfowitz, who is just returning to his old employer's favorite fallback excuse: the liberal media is to blame for everything we do and for every seeming error we commit.

I've been fired a number of times in my career, and I have never had to sling shit or spit backwards at anyone in public over it. Where does this guy get off? He swung his main squeeze into a corporate cushion so he could more easily slap her up on the desktop whenever he felt like it during the day. And this is the media's fault?

This last one would be as funny as that, except that it's about an author I really do care a lot about. There are reports that the final Harry Potter tome is being printed in secret and amid darkness by employees who are under threat of immediate dismissal if they are caught reading, let alone copying, the text they are printing in a perpetual night of police-state fear.

If this is true (and if it's not, I blame the media), and Ms. Rowling is endorsing this insanity, then she too is setting herself up for a fall. This kind of obsession over plot, this compulsion over suspense, is what makes for bad stories--the kind we have not gotten from Rowling so far. Literature is not about what happens; it is about the meaning that each individual takes away from the story. Before I ever read Arundhati Roy's novel, The God of Small Things, I knew a lot about it, and I knew how it ended. But once I read it, it was just as beautiful and original as if I'd never heard about it before. I also remember seeing The Green Mile well before I read King's novel, and the book was still one of the most moving reads I've had in my life.

The same goes for Harry Potter: if you were to tell me everything that's going to be in this final book, I'd still read it and love it for its messages. In fact, I had seen the first movie before I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and its metaphor fairly leaped off the page at me nonetheless. Two years later, I was writing my own book about the penetrating social and personal messages contained in these stories of wizards and witches.

Ms. Rowling: if you are going to go stir-crazy over information leaks from printers, it will degrade the quality of your future work. Let go and let this phenomenon take its own course, so that you can remain an artist and not lower yourself to the level of a plot-hack. You stand in the forefront of fiction writers today because your work causes affliction to demagogues like this kook. Why do you think Bishop Burke (who, in addition to hating Harry Potter, also hates Ted Kennedy, Sheryl Crow, and Michael J. Fox) wishes to suppress your work, Ms. Rowling? Could it be that when he looks at Lord Voldemort, he sees himself? Could it be that you successfully strip away the purple veneer of piety and reveal the rotting corruption beneath it? Could it have something to do with the way a "Ministry"—either of "magic" (religion) or of state (no KR reporters allowed on our plane)—manipulates and intimidates the press? Yes, you've laid that bare as well, in front of the most dangerous audience of all—the children. Voldemorts like Bush, Burke, and Chavez can't stand that kind of treatment, you know.

So it doesn't matter to me, Ms. Rowling, what we hear or when about the outcome or the plot of the final book. What matters is the meaning, which no one can "spoil," try as they might. I am far less concerned about whether Voldemort dies in Book 7 as I am about whether we can succeed in killing him off in our world, before it's too late.
___________________

And now, your Bush Administration MSE moment. We'll be presenting these quotations from one of the core texts of every psych graduate student's bookbag, The Psychiatric Mental Status Examination, by Paula T. Trzepacz and Robert W. Baker, throughout the coming weeks. Today's comes from page 51, in the "Mood and Affect" section—just think of the Bushian comedic "search" for WMDs at the Correspondents Dinner a few years back:

La Belle Indifference: Lack of the normally expected concern for an apparently serious condition...La belle indifference is associated with conversion disorder (previously known as hysteria) and various neurologic disorders. These patients typically lack insight regarding the emotions or conflict that underlie the conversion.

Monday with McKenna: Gay Marriage

2007-05-28T09:53:00.000-04:00

The images are from APOD; the music is from the Beatles; the movie is from Apple's iSight. Oh, and the blog today is from Terry McKenna.

June is the month of weddings, so as we head into June, it’s time for this blog to consider Gay Marriage.

Gay Marriage is one of those issues that keeps bubbling over (similar to the issue of illegal aliens). One of the guys I know (he’s a member of the church choir where I sing) asked me to sign a petition that demands that our state legislators put the question of gay marriage to an UP or DOWN vote. I said no. He was stunned. Actually nonplussed! (You don’t have many opportunities to use nonplussed, so I thought I’d fit it in).

For gays the issue is simple: they want to join the rest of us in having the right to express a lifelong commitment of love and devotion, and what else but marriage fits the bill? Think about it. Where formerly, gays had been restricted to the shadows of our society, they now want to bring their lives and relationships in from the shadows and make them part of the public record. Quite a change from the closeted world of gay life before the 1970’s. Also different from the androgynous late 70’s where public gay life was marked by hedonism and abandon (a period that came crashing down with the AIDS epidemic).

So gay marriage is a good thing, isn’t it?

Polls are an inaccurate resource, but if you watch the polls, you’ll see that the American people have been both generally for and against gay marriage at different times over the past year. Apparently now is not a good time for gay marriage. According to the most recent CBS News poll, only 34% of Americans support gay marriage, and nearly half believe that gay sex should be illegal. Hmmm….

But despite the polls, most Americans don’t devote much time to the topic of gay marriage as they go about their lives. The issue is really a right wing smokescreen, useful to distract voters from the overall failure of the Bush program. I don’t accept their arguments, but their fear of change is to be expected. Conservatives articulate two concerns: first, that marriage as we practice it now is essentially an unchanged and universal institution - so how dare we alter it? Their second concern is that the restructuring of marriage would somehow threaten all of our marriages.

Before I discuss marriage (briefly) let me first point out that our civil society should concern itself with one thing only – is the change beneficial or harmful? And by the way, despite the polls which suggest otherwise, the shift toward gay marriage has ALREADY HAPPENED. By the time a middle of the road institution like the CBS News Poll is ready to ask the question “should gays be allowed to marry” the societal changes that would allow gay marriage to be accepted have already taken place. All that's left is to bring up the rear – our very conservative South and the mountain states.

Change can be a problem. The 1960’s was a time of vast societal change. The changes in favor of racial civil rights were good. But the era also began a questioning of the rest of our society’s norms, and the intensity of the questioning was accompanied by a drift into permissiveness that became outright abandon. A few middle class kids lost their way in a blizzard of sex, drugs and rock and roll (many more passed safely into and out of their purple haze). The era was troubling to sincere representatives of society. Nixon may have been manipulating us by speaking about the silent majority, but I still remember my parent’s confusion about the pot and LSD that at least one of their kids was using. (He eventually straightened out).

My summary above omits a lot, and sounds like pop sociology, but it serves one purpose: to remind us that when change is occurring, we have a genuine concern – is it ok? Regarding gay marriage, our question should be: does Gay Marriage represent a throwback to wantonness? Or is it something worthy of support?

Before I answer, let me complete my musings about marriage.

On the surface, my parent’s marriage was identical to mine with my wife. But the preconditions for marriage were different. In theUS, from the Federalist era through the early 1960’s, marriage was the only way that women could secure a place in society. Unmarried, a woman remained on the margins. My mother wanted in. She was 32 years old and a practicing RN when she married. Immediately after marriage, she stopped working, and soon after started raising a family (6 births over 10 years). By the time my wife and I married, it was different. She and I had both recently obtained MFA’s and we both expected to work throughout our lives.

But at least my father didn’t purchase my mother’s virginity, and neither did my mother bring a dowry. But dowries continued to be paid in Europe, through the Victorian era and were respected by European law. Before the Victorian era, among property owners, marriages were often brokered and the woman was very much property. If Biblical marriage is at all similar to ours, then what do we make of this passage from Exodus? "If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins." NIV Here is a reference from Wikipedia: One common penalty for the kidnapping and rape of unmarried women was that the abductor or rapist had to provide the woman's dowry. (In either case, the unmarried woman compensated only for the loss of her value on the marriage market.)

So marriage HAS changed. (And I haven’t even mentioned polygamy or concubines). Along with the change, we now expect a man to remain faithful and sexually exclusive – women have always been expected to be faithful. This last change is VERY recent. With marriage being a love match between equals, we expect life long fidelity.

Despite the moralizing of those on the right who deplore moral relativism, in fact, morals are defined differently by different cultures. As culture evolves, morals evolve as well. The people who wrote the Bible did not notice the personhood of women (almost no one did, so the Bible is not alone). In our day, we recognize both woman and gays as persons, so our societal codes and restrictions must change along with our changed perceptions.

So… what of gay marriage?

Conservative’s qualms should be dismissed as nonsense. Marriage is a multifarious institution that has evolved to meet the needs of each age and culture. And as far as impacting straight marriage – it’s hard to imagine how. For myself, I don’t like to see men kiss, but that’s pretty much my only inhibition. When gays want to marry, they are moving in a conservative direction. They want to be part of our social order, and given a place at the table. As such, gay marriage represents moral renewal, not a retreat into degeneracy. Yes, gays still frequent their leather bars; but straight men seek their amusements too. I’m not going to moralize, both sets of amusements are fine as far as they go. But neither is representative of what either straights or gays want from marriage. Again.. Gays want In.

It is time.

--T. McKenna

Painting, President, Planet

2007-05-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

I saw this painting hanging on the wall of my accountant's office (click the graphic to enlarge it), and it was so revealing to me that I snapped a photograph of it. My accountant thought I was simply admiring, as he did, the impressive realism of the painted scene. But what I saw was an artist's rendering of modern culture.

"Can you see what this painting is telling us about our culture, and the relationship between spirituality and commerce?" I asked Peter, my accountant.

He gave me a blank look in response, so I stood beside the painting and explained:

"There's the Stock Market, massive, brightly lit, with a stream of busy blurs of people moving before it. On the right is the Federal Reserve Building, seen in profile as it were. Again, massive, rising out of the steps over which Washington stands in regal, giant splendor. Squished between these two and shoved way into the background, so that it is thrown into near-total shadow, is Trinity Church. It has a narrow, cramped, faded look about it, compared to the bright, white, flag-draped monumentalism of the other two buildings. This is a picture of how the spiritual center has been pushed out of the center, and into a distance of shadowed, pale irrelevance."

The accountant's jaw slowly dropped as I delivered this little speech, and then he muttered that "this used to be my favorite painting..." I told him it still could be, but for a different reason.

Now for the rest of us, the point of all this is not to bewail any supposed morbidity in religion and spirituality. If you've read my writings about fundamentalism at this blog, or my discussion of Lord Voldemort in The Tao of Hogwarts, then you know that the eclipsing of institutional religion is to my mind anything but a subject for regret or lamentation.

So what's the problem, if any? Well, what isn't in the painting? Nature, of course: not a single bush, animal, plant, even a cut flower. Hell, you can't even see the sky! Only the brick and stone monuments of two ideologies: church and commerce, with the suggestion of state in the Federal Reserve Building.

Thus, my point is that we can't reduce this issue to a debate about competing institutions—church and state, spirituality and commerce. We have to transform both by making Nature and the health of the Earth primary, ascendant in our thinking. This, in a nutshell, is the entire message—the mission, if you will—of our blog. We need a new leader within ourselves, before we can think about leaders in our governments and businesses. That leader must be Nature—the nature within us, and the nature around us. There is no separation.

With that point made, maybe you can guess who I'd like to see in the White House. The rightful and duly elected President of the United States. If he decides it's not right for him now, I respect that decision. He will remain a force of sanity and truth in any event. But if he tosses his hat into the ring, I'll hand out leaflets for him in downtown Crawford or at Liberty University. My only advice for him would be: turn within and trust nature, your own true nature, Mr. Gore. It'll lead you right.

Friday Reflection: A Call for Compassion

2007-05-25T11:46:00.000-04:00

How can you hear the voice of the people when you are deaf to yourself?

This goes for calculating cynics like Reid and the yes-Dems as well as for despots like Bush and Cheney (I cannot buy the line that the former are merely spineless cowards--they are cowardly like vultures; otherwise, they are just as calculatingly carniverous as their opponents on the other side of the aisle).

It is times like these when I have to remind myself that all these people, demonic as they may appear to the family members of our military personnel in Iraq or the innocents trapped amid the slaughter, are vibrating strings of energy like me and you. They have stilled their energy, wrapped themselves in a stone shroud of institutional hatred and self-aggrandizement, so they only appear evil, as their cloak of death splinters and drops its murderous fragments onto the lives of the unwilling participants in their crusade of tyranny.

How many more must die; how many more families must be desolated by an irremediable loss, between now and September, or by yearend, or by 2009? How many more social programs and helping extensions of government must suffer or themselves die while our nation continues to fund its cruise into the hell of unremitting destruction?

There are no ready answers to those questions. As I have said before, we can only wish that the proponents of desolation, both Donkeys and Elephants among them, be led to retreat from their greed, the lust for the poison of fame that fuels their connivance and their cynicism; that they be removed from their seats of falsehood and taken into themselves, where they might find the way out of their acculturated ignorance and back to their true nature.

But if you have aligned yourself with inner death, the way back is perilous and often difficult. It must begin with the forced escape from the institutional and the lies with which it covers your true self. This is the way back to a natural compassion--not "compassionate conservatism" or the calculated compassion of group affiliation, but the compassion that comes out of the core of the individual, the heart of uniqueness.

Therefore, we will offer the Friday Reflection space to Mr. David Carson, who presents the symbol of the "Deer Man"* as a metaphor on the path from ignorance to compassion.

Deer Man is keeper of the heart. He embodies the marriage of compassion with wisdom. He has the power to melt every conflict in life...There are many old tales of meetings with Deer Man. One old tale tells of a cruel tyrant who makes life miserable for all those about him. He pillages, murders, and joyfully inflicts pain and sorrow on others. When the tyrant meets with Deer Man, he realizes his own self-loathing and fear. His heart suddenly opens and great compassion is born within him. He does his best to make amends to all he has harmed. The rest of his life is dedicated to service and loving kindness to others...

Compassion streams through the universe riding the thrumming rhythm of life. Time, space, and movement can be collapsed into one universal resonance because it is the first sound of creation--the great Om. Deer Man speaks a common language that links us all...

Compassion is the milk of experience. Compassion is courage to face and fight with yourself until you are rid of false beliefs. It is a self-compassion as well as the compassion for others. Compassion is the courage to find, acknowledge, and love your true self.

Culture traps one in the game of self-importance, to strive, to get to the top. Deer Man is humble even with his great ability and strength. He knows that the intellect can be proud. He knows that true humility is one of the most difficult of all powers to carry. Deer Man knows that he doesn't know within the paradox of knowing. Compassion is beyond belief systems. It is finding your lost heart, realizing your deep love and giving it to all of creation.

__________________________

*My fellow Potter devotees will no doubt notice the parallel between the symbolism of the "Deer Man" and that of Harry's Patronus symbol, the stag. The Carson quote is from the 2013 Oracle, a book based on Mayan and Native American prophecies of a cosmic transformation at the end of 2012 (NOT the end of the world, as many presume these oracles portend). Whatever your view of such teachings, there can, I think, be scarcely any question over the human value of Carson's message.

Roll Over, Tacitus: A Return to Rome

2007-05-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

Olbermann on the "bipartisan betrayal" of the American public (click to view)

I can't stomach the idea of doing the right wing's legwork for them, but I have also been nauseated by some of the punditry on the left recently. Particularly:

Maureen Dowd's Wednesday column in the Times, which reduces a discussion of Al Gore's new book to gossip-tainted rumor-mongering, accompanied by a pathetic rant on weight loss. I sent this complaint to Eric Alterman's blog, which he kindly posted. Incidentally, Dowd's strange surface-obsession with Gore goes way back to the 2000 campaign, which Alterman documented in his book, What Liberal Media? Dowd's better than this; much better. But if she can't, for whatever reason, be reasonably objective or focused about Al Gore, maybe she should just shut up and let others review Gore's new book. In fact, that's what we'll be doing here soon.

Something is wrong, to my mind, when the Huffington Post has to add a gossip column to its front page, just to (presumably) keep up their traffic and revenue stream. I've written about the problem with this before; so I won't go over that ground again. It's disturbing, that's all. And speaking of disturbing...

Roll Over, Tacitus: Back to Ancient Rome

The Monica Goodling testimony before Congress was a reminder to me that we live under the sway of a theocratic oligarchy. An obscure youth with no outstanding credentials (beyond her religious zealotry) for the position she took at DOJ, she basically revealed her own ignorance of the foundational principles of law throughout her testimony.

But Ms. Goodling was not hired to advance the understanding or practice of law at DOJ; she was hired to join in mute conformity with the demagoguery of a cultish state based on the rule of a fundamentalist clique that uses the name of God to enforce and perpetuate oppression. In fact, the basis of it is remarkably polytheistic: several gods, multiple ideologies mixed together, and even a cult of the virgin thrown in (how else are we to interpret "abstinence only"?).

In short, the imperialism of Rome, redux. What they went through under the likes of Nero, Caligula, and Galba. A society defined by excess and the self-indulgence of the ultra-wealthy, employing the tools of belief and oppression under the various names and disguises of God. Now Rome lasted for a long time amid depraved and decadent rulers, because every so often a Hadrian, a Trajan, or a Vespasian would come along to right the ship of state, and persist (and survive) at this long enough for order and prosperity to be restored.

So is this what America needs now? I have nearly boundless admiration for Al Gore: I'd knock on doors and make telemarketing calls (the ultimate sacrifice) to help him get elected to the office he once fairly won. Yet one thing holds me back, and I think it's something that Gore himself recognizes: we don't need an Antoninus or a Marcus Aurelius here now. What we need is a restoration of the individual citizen in a truly participatory democracy. Our mass media continue to look for the Next Big Thing, the New Savior, the next People's King. They thought they had found one some six and a half years ago, and look at what it's turned into. It became what every such undertaking of public vanity and passive dependence inevitably descend to: a failure.

If we are to hope to witness a new morning of democracy, we will need to see, above all, the proper relegation of the President, members of Congress, and all government officials, to servants. Right now, they are all petty rulers, each in his or her domain; intent on carving out the greatest arc of power available to them, until such time as they can comfortably retire into the private sector or the perpetual book tour or media pundit's seat. These people are no more public servants than were Nero or Caligula. They are the devotees of a cult of excess who mouth the platitudes of a defunct religion as they descend further and further away from its original teachings, into a dark pit of opulence, excess, and vanity.

Geek Wednesday: How (Not) to Get Sued by Microsoft

2007-05-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

MEPIS Linux on a widescreen 22" Samsung monitor (click to enlarge; also see our video demo, below)

Before we get to Geek Wednesday proper, I'd like to pass along a little tech/research project that Eric Alterman is starting over at Media Matters. Here's the basics of it:

...make a list -- with source material -- of every effect on the world, whether, um, good or bad, of the invasion of the United States and its "allies" of Iraq. We all know the litany; goodness I wish I had a key on my keyboard that automatically typed in: "cost trillions, killed tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, wounded hundreds of thousands more, increased terrorism, aided Syria and Iran (and China), destroyed a functioning country, increased hatred for the U.S. worldwide, undermined political allies, undermined the U.S. military, etc., etc. But seriously, let's do it systematically, with good sourcing.

So if you have some old bookmarks, downloaded web pages or pdfs, or simply old newspapers showing past evidence of such effects, then by all means write them up and send them to Prof. Alterman. And bookmark that page once it's up there at MM: it will make a fairly compelling case the next time some petty despot like Bush takes it into his feeble mind to start a Crusade with other people's sons and daughters.

Geek Wednesday: Use the Source, Luke!

Perhaps you have wondered why we have a tech column every week here, at a political sort of blog. Well, politics can be boring: there are Democrats and Republicans. No viable third party. Oh, all right: we've got Nader and Liebermann. Like I said, no viable third party; case closed, next case.

But in technology, you have Microsoft, Apple, and Linux. Hey, a viable third party! Don't think so? Well, consider that Dell is soon to start taking orders for Ubuntu machines (for a feature list on these, check here). As we've been saying for awhile here, Linux is on the rise.

So why are open source geeks asking to be sued by MS? If you have a few minutes, check out some of the 700+ listings there (I'm number 447 on page 3)--you'll find some pretty funny stuff. If you want to know what this is all about, just check out last week's post here. As our observer geek Nearly Redmond Nick predicted then, MS isn't drilling down to the details of what MS patents Open Source has violated and how, because they don't intend to sue, nor do they have any grounds to do so.

Why, then, are they pissing off a lot of geeks and technophiles with baseless charges? Because, like the Bush administration, they just take a fiendish pleasure in spawning hatred (it's good publicity, at any rate). And, as we suggested yesterday, it may have something to do with the fact that Ballmer's not really an IT executive but a reject from Jackass. As we've pointed out many times with respect to the Bush administration, there is a certain strain of incompetence that infects every imperial entity, and MS is no different.

Anyway, here's a few links on the MS patent stew and how it's being digested:

Linus Torvalds himself, the inventor of Linux, thinks the violation shoe is quite on the other foot.

Groklaw wonders whether MS is actually infringing on the GPL

And Sam Varghese of IT Wire is having the same thought.

Open Office geek John McCreesh thinks it's simply more MS bullying tactics

But we believe in equal time here at DR. Since we've already featured plenty of Ballmer's foot-shooting antics here, how about a different closed-source proponent? So here's a self-professed cynic (wear it proudly, chum--it means "dog" or "cur"), who will bash open source for you. Open source, he says, is for losers, also-rans: the winners hate open source, and they should. Wow, chief, you must be...a winner! And yes, you are--you get the DR horns for the week!

So what's Apple up to? Oops, getting sued again, this time for false advertising of how many colors show up on their laptop screens. I checked the comments board on this story, just out of curiosity and because I had nothing to do at work. Amazing how people tie their shorts into knots over stuff like this; but I guess if the lawyers do it, then Mac geeks can, too. I learned everything I wanted to know about dithering, and then some. One guy defended Apple and said that they would show how weak the charges are. I countered with this:

Apple wouldn't deny the allegations so quickly, because they don't want the allegations to go away. You see, this is classic Karl Rove, gang. Here's the likely scene inside a recent Apple exec conference:

PR FLAK: Steve, we've got to do something to get the press off our tail over this stockdating mess...my Smart Mailboxes are getting stupid from all the inflow...

STEVE: Don't worry, Flak. We'll give 'em the old BushCo end-around / diversion tactic. Hire a couple geeks to sue us for something really inane but technical-sounding, like...um...the number of colors on our displays. That will get the media off your tail about the stockdating business...

PR FLAK: Jeez, Steve, you're a genius!

Before we leave MS and Apple alone for this week, here's your tip of the week: if you run MS Word for Mac, then you know how long it takes to open. This tip will help some--it involves turning off WYSIWYG font and style menus. Of course, what will really help is if MS shakes its tail on getting MS Office for Mac into universal binary mode. But rest assured, Ballmer will make you wait, because he hates you, Macophiles!

All right, before we go, let's say you've got $1500 burning a hole in your pocket and you need a keyboard. But you have to go haute couture all the way--every key has to be an OLED display, and you must type on a designer label: here you are. Or if you want to shop around a little, try this page. And people think Macs are overpriced...

Our last bit is about geeks who care. Most I've met do: as I've said before, they're not a bunch of horn-rimmed reeds strung out on Red Bull. They're socially aware people who feel and see more clearly than the most powerful people on this planet. Some examples:

Geeks around the world have spoken out and even volunteered to help a woman in Connecticut who's facing prison because IE allowed some porn popup ads to show up on PCs in her elementary school classroom one day. I'm telling you, people, as long as shit like this is allowed to go down, Jerry Falwell is still alive.

The geek press, led by the extraordinary Declan McCullagh of C-Net, is raising red flags again about government instrusion on our private lives.

And Slashdot posted this piece about the Smithsonian Institute's sellout to big oil and fat government in "toning down" an exhibit on climate change—and this isn't the first time they've pulled this shit.

Seen any of these stories in the mass media lately? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now you know why we have a tech column every week here at DR. See ya next week, geeks.
_________________

Pssst....Google—stop buying things and fix the damned Preview link on Blogger in Safari. And while you're at it, get Google Docs working in Safari, too.

The Quality Goes In...Before the Spin Goes On

2007-05-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

No rocks in his head: Mike Gravel talks about his plan for America (found at onegoodmove.org)

Tomorrow, on Geek Wednesday, we'll be asking the most burning question in technology today: is Steve Ballmer really a tech executive or just a former extra from the Jackass program? But today, Part 2 of Terry's discussion of the quality level in public policy. In this section, you Krugman fans may notice that my co-blogger takes up a couple of themes (trade with China and food) visited in Mr. K's Monday column at the Times. I'm here to assure you that I get Terry's posts every Saturday, before anyone has seen Krugman's column; and I've got the email logs to prove it. This is about the fourth time this has happened, by the way, and my opinion is that McKenna and Krugman are on parallel rails of a TGV track of punditry consciousness. Or maybe (since they're both from New Jersey), there's some complex triangle involving Jim McGreevey...

Now while we wait to see how long it takes for Drudge to pick up that rumor and report it as established fact, here's Terry with Part 2 of "Zen and the Art of Blogging".

Think of how often we are confronted with major public policy questions: champions from both sides emerge to do logical battle. Then it is up to us to separate the rhetorical wheat from the chaff. Politics may be trivial in comparison to the larger philosophical questions, but the quality of our lives is very much impacted by the results of politics. So let’s consider the quality angle of a few political questions. I’ll start with the Iraq war. The various arguments that are bandied about vary not according to the arguer’s intelligence, but by his or her political baggage. Thus, persons who typically favor the military have been more likely to argue in favor of the president’s policy (their support is wavering now); persons who are more interested in social policy, generally have been more likely to argue against the war. Logic doesn’t help us sort any of this.

But suppose we ask a new question: is the Iraq War a good or bad experience? Nearly everyone would agree that the Iraq War is a bad experience. If bad, then we can assign it low value. Hmmm… if it has little value, then what? All the arguments in the world can’t make us overlook the low value or Quality.

For Robert Pirsig (as expressed in Lila) his study of Quality began while in college, when he noticed that any number of hypotheses could be developed to explain any problem (and he was working in the hard sciences, so this dilemma was especially troubling). He became so obsessed over the question that he flunked out, but his obsession also led to his eventual enlightenment – and perhaps also to his nervous breakdown. And let me make it clear that I am not an amateur philosopher, but as a layman, I find myself distressed by the inconclusive nature of logical arguments. For what good is logic if it can’t help us sort out the value of various points of view? For both Robert Pirsig and for myself, the arguments (or spin) become just more sound and fury… (and as Shakespeare said, they signify nothing).

My point is to boil Pirsig’s complex thesis into this simple statement: Quality is intellectual job one. Saying that, let’s look at another issue. One that has fewer political overtones than the Iraq war. Consider our trade with China. We’ve abandoned much of our manufacturing sector in favor of buying the same goods from the Chinese (at lower prices); yet in spite of this enormous boon to them, their reward to us has been to ship us worthless animal feed (filled with ground plastic) that proved poisonous. By the way, they have done worse to others: they sell poisonous cough medicines around the world, replacing sugar syrup (expensive) with di-ethylene glycol (a poisonous solvent). It amuses me that anyone would believe that China had sufficient protein to export their excess (animal feed typically includes added protein). Sources of protein include wheat gluten, dry milk, egg powder, fish meal, and so on. It is the Americans and Europeans who possess the most excess protein, especially dairy sources. The Chinese do have poultry, eggs and fish, but they also need to feed a billion citizens, and presumably need to use their protein at home. Still, we bought the feed, and the feed killed a few of our pets – now there is a rising concern about the quality of all Chinese goods. And what do the Chinese buy from us? Their well-to-do citizens import a few of our big cars, but much of what they could purchase from us, they counterfeit instead. So how would you rate our experience with the Chinese so far? Not that good! So of low value, or low Quality.

I hope you see what I’m after. When voices are raised that our trade with China is causing lots of problems, and that we need to use government to correct the abuses, economists argue instead that the unencumbered free market will eventually turn the China trade to our benefit – though just when, they can never tell us.

Let’s look at one more issue – our food. Food is a fairly neutral matter. But consider how food becomes a public policy concern. We have ever more obesity in America, and at younger and younger ages. We also have illnesses such a diabetes and heart disease, also appearing at ever younger ages. But what do we see when we walk around a typical American grocery store? We see that all of the fresh food is placed along the walls. The aisles are devoted to processed foods (and to non foods). We have entire aisles devoted to cookies, or chips. Or soda! And the breakfast cereal section is cluttered with over sweetened and highly processed junk. If we look into the grocery carts at the checkout lines, we see carts full of the same processed junk: brightly colored bags of chips, huge bottles of soda, cookies, and boxes of “diet” meals. So what can we conclude about the quality of our food? Again – it is of low Quality.

And the next time you read a discussion about whether we should ban soda and snack vending machines from our public schools – you should put aside the money the schools get from the vendor and instead consider the value added by making junk food available.

I’ll close by returning to Iraq. This blog has repeatedly argued in favor of leaving. We remain willing to listen to the other side (represented by George Bush and John McCain) but if they want us to hear them, they need to overcome our gut reaction that arguments in favor of staying have no value or quality.

Monday with McKenna: Zen and the Art of Blogging

2007-05-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

It can be one of the truly beautiful things about growing old: the voice becomes clearer, the truth more timely. Thank you, President Carter.

And speaking of the quality that sometimes comes with age, here's Terry McKenna, with the first of a two-part piece on quality and policy.

Quality is Job One. If that is so, why don’t we use Quality to help us determine public policy?

Industry has invented many slogans to suggest that Quality comes first. But how do we know if something is good or bad? Is it by rational analysis, or do we make our judgments in some other way?

The other day I got caught in the rain, and so bought a cheap umbrella from a store on the way to Penn Station. The price was just $3. It’s hard to imagine anything so complicated costing just $3. I examined the umbrella that I bought with a sense of wonder. It had lots of small metal parts, and the fabric of the umbrella, though thin, was water proof. It was probably worth its low price, but even so, it was still a flimsy and cheap umbrella, a piece of junk.

Was my snap judgment typical of how we determine value? I think so. I believe that the value judgments come not from rationalization but from some other mechanism – one that resides outside of logical argument. Think of the manner in which you learn about the people you work with. You don’t make lists of the good and bad traits and then review your lists to assign values, you rely instead on your sense of how your encounters with others go – and based on your Quality sense, you create a private ranking of the folks you work with. I bet that if you compared your rankings with your peers, they would be strikingly similar.

My sudden interest in Quality stems from my reading the novel, Lila by Robert Pirsig. If you don’t know his name, perhaps you've heard of his other book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. ZAMM was released 33 years ago, and was a big hit at the time. Though its title now sounds New Agey, in fact, ZAMM is a novel with a serious work of philosophy contained within. My purpose is not to defend either book, but if you’d like to read about philosophy from a different point of view, read both. And by the way, read ZAMM first. (My son read ZAMM, and felt that it answered a question that is no longer being asked – maybe so.)

As I read Lila (and I’m only about 1/3 the way through) the most important insight is that Quality is central to understanding, AND forms the baseline from which all other characteristics can be understood. If you are familiar with western philosophy, this book moves us away from the subject/object discussions that are the basis for many philosophical ruminations. My intellect is not as sharp as is Mr. Pirsig’s, but from my perspective, his ideas sound compelling. Regardless, it is interesting to consider that value judgments may come first, at the beginning of recognition and understanding – AND NOT LATER.

So what? What's this have to do with politics or culture? Tomorrow, the answer. Or at least, one answer.

--T. McKenna

How to Get Kicked Upstairs: Don't Show Up

2007-05-19T02:22:00.000-04:00

Going from Senator to President would be considered a job promotion of sorts: I think we can all agree on that, left, right, and whatever.

When you are gunning for a promotion, it is expected that you show that you've been able to do your current job well. And if you haven't done it at all, well, that might fairly hurt your chances. We're still agreed on that, Donkeys and Elephants alike?

A Senator is expected to participate in the business of that august body, and regularly vote in its chambers. Part of the job description, you know: something that is simply essential to the basic performance of that work.

OK. Now, John McCain has failed to vote over the last five weeks at his current job--you know, in the Senate.

Well...would you promote him?

Our government: of the people, for the people, and by The Peter Principle.

Friday Reflection: A Force for Healing

2007-05-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

I read Time's excerpt from Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, and my eyes filled with tears of fury, so lucid and wise is his voice. He was supposed to be our President: we elected him. So I say to every one of those Supreme Court justices who voted Bush into office against the will of the American people, and to every mass media pundit and faux-journalist who cheerleaded for Bush (you'll find them listed here): history will condemn you far more than I can here. You have the blood of countless human lives and the stench of a corrupted democracy on your hands. Simply because you refused to do your jobs.

Here's a small slice of the excerpt from Gore's book:

Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people. The Founders took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas so that knowledge could flow freely. Thus they not only protected freedom of assembly, they made a special point—in the First Amendment—of protecting the freedom of the printing press. And yet today, almost 45 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers. Reading itself is in decline. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by the empire of television.

Radio, the Internet, movies, cell phones, iPods, computers, instant messaging, video games and personal digital assistants all now vie for our attention—but it is television that still dominates the flow of information. According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.

In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience." Moreover, the high capital investment required for the ownership and operation of a television station and the centralized nature of broadcast, cable and satellite networks have led to the increasing concentration of ownership by an ever smaller number of larger corporations that now effectively control the majority of television programming in America.

Friday Reflection: A Force for Healing

The source of this week's banner quote would be completely opaque to all but a few specialists, so it may have been a bit unfair to put it up there. The writer is Cheng Yi, an 11th century commentator on the ancient Chinese oracle book, the I Ching. It's proof again that, millennium to millennium, human folly is so constant as to be thoroughly predictable.

The quote in our banner is from Cheng Yi's commentary to Hexagram 7, "The Army":

The course pursued by the army basically should be correct; if you raise an army and mobilize troops in a cause that is not right but just causes the country trouble, the people do not really obey, they are just coerced. Therefore, the guiding principle of the army should be uprightness. But even if the army acts in the right way, the leaders must be mature to obtain good results...If those who are to lead a group are not respected, trusted...how can they get the people to follow willingly? (from Cheng Yi, The Tao of Organization, translated by Thomas Cleary).

The reason that such a message resonates today goes beyond the obvious reference to the misuse of military force. Cheng Yi's warning is a call to every kind of leader--corporate leaders, heads of government, mass media pundits, and of course, military officers. It is a reminder to each of these that, as a leader—whether of people, institutions, or opinion—you are responsible for more than your in-group--your staff, your squad, your stockholders, your advertisers, or your political base or party. You are responsible to a whole that includes and surpasses you, your group, and its mission, however expansive and noble that mission may appear.

There is also a message within the I Ching about a personal use of its insight. The army, for example, can be conceived and felt as a principle of protection within the living personality, distinct to each individual. The best leaders are able to inspire such a personal meaning of their vision, a meaning that is unique to every person who hears it. This, indeed, is how true unity and real motivation are achieved in an organization: through the freedom that is given to the individual to respond to a group message with his unique understanding, and thus add vibrancy and energy to the whole. In my book, Drinking From the Darkness: Living Completely in a Time of Estrangement, I offered two examples of such a message--one from the I Ching, and another from one of the great teachers of modern times.

A Cry in the Wilderness: Ancient and Modern

[The healing of our society] cannot be done all at once—to even entertain such an expectation would be to open the door to despair. Our generation must begin the work of recovery with a resolute cry in the wilderness—the kind of firm and clarion call that induces the sanity of silence. The ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching, contains a description of such a cry for the freezing of ignorance in its 43rd hexagram, titled “Resoluteness/Breakthrough”:

BREAKTHROUGH. One must resolutely make the matter known
At the court of the king.
It must be announced truthfully. Danger.
It is necessary to notify one’s own city.
It does not further to resort to arms.
It furthers one to undertake something.
(from the Richard Wilhem/Carey Baynes translation)

There is a beautiful sense of urgency in this poem, written some five thousand years ago, which can be read at both the societal and the personal level. At the societal level, the cry of “Danger!” and the need for truthfulness in “notifying one’s own city” while avoiding the impulse to opposition or violence (“it does not further to resort to arms”) remind me of the message of another eloquent writer of more recent times:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

These are the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., written from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. He and his ancient counterpart, King Wu of China (the man traditionally credited with having written the I Ching), both endured personal danger and frequent imprisonment for their resolute cries of truth “at the court of the king.” Both were men of spiritual insight and teachers of mindfulness in living; both believed that violence was a resort that “does not further”—as Dr. King said in accepting his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, “nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

Less than five years after writing the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered—perhaps, it must be said, executed—and his voice was stilled. But not silenced: others have, and will, “resolutely make the matter known” before the court of Institutional Authority—in the presence of the world and to all the people who are awake enough to hear and respond. Dr. King’s life and message will enduringly have the deepest, most resonant meaning to people living amid estrangement, because he chose to speak and to act from his heart—his true and undying spark from the fire of the Universe—with the force of insight and clarity, rather than of weaponry and oppression. This, too, is where we can begin, where we must begin.

The Face That Cannot Be Saved

2007-05-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

My blogging partner, Terry McKenna, and I were trading emails this morning about the Comey testimony. I mentioned that it was astonishing to see how Ashcroft comes off as a hero of liberty in all this. Terry replied:

...in the ethical desert that is the Bush administration, Ashcroft's momentary lapse into moral courage stands out, like a single blooming flower in the Sahara.

Of the Face that Cannot--and Should Not--Be Saved

There are more big layoffs coming where I work. They have started already, in fact. They will go for the old ones first, because here we believe that to pass 50 is to enter into senescence. Unless, of course, you're on executive row. The less you need the money, the more surely does it flow to you.

I am safe for the moment, because the corporation targets the full-timers. More bang for the buck, or blood for the axe. We consultants cover fewer lines on the ledger sheet: no insurance, no pension, no vacation, no sick pay, no strings of attachment. Get rid of one of us and you've just cleared a desk and a single line, the hourly rate. Far better to remove that servant who has sat at the same desk for a generation, wearing the same path in the carpet each day. What could he possibly have left to offer the modern company? He is a relic, let him have his pension and go to where relics belong. If he has a family to support, well, that's what Social Security and unemployment insurance are for. The company must go forward.

But if you have started a war that no one seems able or willing to end, and then been discovered in your next job pulling the strings of power to secure your main squeeze a comfortable office with a six-figure salary, you must be allowed your dignity, even as you face the axe. You must be allowed to save face.

But the face of power cannot, and should not, be saved. It must be killed, for this is how we recover the reality behind the face; the truth beneath the image. Wolfowitz, for example, has far greater problems than the loss of a title or a position of power—this loss, in fact, is his only good fortune. He has blood on his hands, flowing up his arms and drowning his heart. It is the blood of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocents.

Yet there is another sacrifice he made when he gave up his true self to a tyranny of connivance. He delivered himself to inner death—the only kind worth fearing. Nothing can bring him back from that death except his own choice to retreat from power.

So it goes for all who choose the delusion of authority or the power to dominate other peoples, other creatures, through violence and oppression. The following links come from today's email.

It is true of Gonzales and Cheney, who have turned America into a police state.

It is true of Bush, who ordered and arranged this tyrannical assault on human liberty.

It is true of our mass media kingpins, who chose to ignore the latest of a long line of impeachable offenses.

It is true of al-Bashir and the Janjaweed, who continue their depredations against humanity.

It is true of those who torture and kill any creature of the Earth.

To fire such people, to say No to their enslavement to death, is to do them the greatest favor. It is to offer these living dead their only chance at recovery. A demon can only be expunged by a forceful removal from his self-made hell. To insist on the impeachment, the disenfranchisement, and the impoverishment of these walking dead is to deliver them their last chance at life. Today and every day that follows, do all you can to give them that chance.
______________________

Footnote: Whether he is fired or resigns, Wolfowitz will receive a severance package of at least $375,000. Now I consider myself a fairly well-paid contractor--and I am far more fortunate than most workers in this nation--but it would take me four and a half years of continuous work to equal that.

Compare it with your own salary; if you think it's a little less than fair that this guy not only gets to negotiate his firing, but receives a fat payout at the end, let the World Bank know.

Geek Wednesday: Attack of the Borg

2007-05-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

Microsoft: hegemony, arrogance, brutishness, surreality. Their latest imperial movement is all over the geek news: they are proposing to attack Linux, Open Office, and various other open source products and providers for violating some 250 MS patents. For some perspective on this, we call on our resident IT guru, Nearly Redmond Nick.

Here's an interesting article:

"Microsoft could have several motives for rattling its patent saber: slowing down open-source rivals, raising fears of open-source legal risks among customers, and winning payment for technology the company believes it deserves from a group that's generally been unwilling to pony up."

Given the company behind all this noise, I am leaning towards the last of the three. Just as Microsoft forced Novell into their deal, I think they're trying to do more of the same here. If this was legitimate and MS wanted a different result, they would be releasing many more details about each and every infringement. The reason they are bundling all of these up instead of fighting each one individually is because of their desired outcome. It's traditional conflict resolution - don't fight about every little thing, find the underlying theme or overall relationship and focus on that. I guess it's almost a compliment to MS that they are doing something well. They are definitely living up to all their nasty stereotypes.

Some good news is coming out of this, at least. The Free Software Foundation is promising to include language in the next version of the GPL that prohibits deals like the MS-Novell pact. That should be a fairly large step forward, given the popularity of the GPL. And, as with any MS announcement, the Open Source troops are riled up. Opponents of Redmond are calling the software giant's bluff. It's not just a legion of intelligent developers you're dealing with, Bill - it's fans of OSS from all professions, including lawyers who are calling "bullshit". You got away with one with Novell. Let's not get too excited now and think this will go much further. Remember, Novell is a corporation with a vulnerable head - the OSS community has many leaders. There is no single weakness, and their low-tech "weaponry" just may be a bigger asset than their high-tech software.

—N.R. Nick

The only point I'd add to that is the potential for a collision with Sun: after all, how different from Open Office is Sun's Star Office? If MS wants to shoot the goose, they'll have to go after the gander, and they might find both more than they bargained for. And they'll have more stuff like this shaken in their face by the geek press. Bottom line here is that David's finally gotten big enough to bother Goliath, and the monster is reacting as all trolls will. In fact, as this writer points out, the goon is getting scared.

Science Watch: Great piece in the Times yesterday on the CERN Hadron Collider, with a slide show and movie.

So what's that fruit vendor from Cupertino up to this week? Ah, romancing Paul McCartney, of course, even as they release a modest upgrade of their MacBook laptops. Very cool, Steve, and good timing on the heels of those questions you had to face at the stockholders' get-together.

I was thinking about doing a review of .mac, Apple's country-club style networking, email, backup, and family website creation offering ($99 a year). But a recent tip I've gotten from one of our regular readers at Geek Wednesday, Mr. D. Vrai, has basically closed the contest on .mac. He told me about Mozy, an online backup solution that comes free with 2GB of storage capacity, with unlimited storage available for a mere $5 a month. So when you put that together with Gmail (free with 2.8GB of storage) and the ability to make your own websites in Google Pages (100MB of content free), along with Picasa Web's photo upload application (1GB free), it would seem that .mac is toast. Here's an idea, Steve: use those fat iPod profits to Google-ize your servers and then just give away a basic .mac subscription, with a charge for a premium edition. You'll soon be watching those new MacBooks jumping off the shelves. Yeah, I know, it's a great idea, and I don't know why you didn't think of it first. You can hire me if you want: just give me a call.

But there are things you can do on a Mac that are just too hard or too clumsy to do on anything else. Next week, we'll show off a few of those. Until then, here's a brief excerpt from my new book, The Open Source Society, and our fractal of the week from Ben Haller's Fracture product.

Technology is supposed to be about innovation, and indeed, it often is. But true innovation happens over time and by degrees. As we will see in Chapter 5, the software development model provides a map of how real innovation occurs. Briefly, it follows these high-level stages:

Ø Vision (the idea, its purpose, potential benefits, and general structure)

Ø Scope (how far a reach this innovation will have; its overall compass of influence)

Ø Requirements (what will be needed, structurally and functionally, for this innovation to fulfill the vision without exceeding its proper scope)

Ø Development (the physical creation of the elements required to make the innovation work; usually this is the writing of computer code and the preparation of systems and physical machines on which the code is to perform)

Ø Testing (trying out the innovation in a controlled, limited environment and under carefully planned test conditions)

Ø Implementation (the delivery of the finished product, after multiple rounds of testing, development, and demonstration of working models to the users or audience for whom the innovation has been made)

You have an idea; you write a proposal; then you create a design and write some code. Finally, you hoist it onto a sandbox or development machine to try it out, take a walk around it. By the time anyone sees a test version of your innovation (for example, an alpha, beta, or release candidate), it has probably changed considerably from its early form and substance. Most live releases of a new product only barely resemble the original concept.

But the corporate advertising/media spin on innovation is different from this reality: it feeds us images of overnight transformation, of revolutions conceived in a boardroom and born the next day, with scarcely a moment's effort or reflection in between.

Such distortions of reality are dangerous, in that they create a false perception of how challenges are most effectively met. When this fantasy-based spin on solving problems is granted broad acceptance within a culture, the results can be positively disastrous. In its sale of the Iraq War, for example, our corporate government followed the same advertising model in its manipulation of the news media: it gave us "shock and awe," a dramatic and patently irrational response to a challenge that was nevertheless uncritically lapped up by the mass media. If we are to hope to prevent the recurrence of such tragic failures as the Iraq War became, we must see to it that we transform our thinking about facing challenges within our businesses, our technologies, and even in our personal lives. It is one goal of this book to contribute toward that transformation of consciousness.

The Flight of the Honeybees

2007-05-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

When you think of the past six years in Washington, do you get an ulcerous feeling in your gut? Do you feel that existential nausea and soul-diarrhea of Irritable Bowel Syndrome? Do you just feel like the entire Earth has got Krohn's disease and is ready to expel us in one violent abdominal retch?

Well, friends, now you know why it's Digestive Diseases Week in our nation's capital. If you have some time to visit and let out some wind with some friends over a Prilosec cocktail or two, check it out. And now, for some more news that may make you want to blow lunch...

Flight of the Honeybees

Ignorance is the fuel of conflict, the force that keeps cruise missiles flying and torture camps operating and aircraft carriers afloat, aimed toward Iran. Ignorance has been the stock-in-trade, the defining mark of the Bush administration, perhaps nowhere more than in its open and malignant contempt for science. We are nearing a pay-the-piper moment on this score.

Science is not conducted on the "shock and awe" model, nor is it an American Idol entertainment, where you can go from a set of alternate hypotheses to a working theory or a practical solution in a single season. Science works according to a gradual process of testing and re-testing experience and refining understanding. Scientists are taught to be skeptical toward the overnight solution, the slam-dunk prediction, the cakewalk conclusion. For they know that understanding (let alone practical application) matures by degrees far larger than the instant fixes of Karl Rove's parallel reality or the six month victories of Dick Cheney's fantasy realm.

Read the conclusion to virtually any research article in a scientific journal, and you'll be likely to find something to this effect: "more research (or repeated study) is required to verify these findings and develop better understanding..."

That reminder, of course, is always ignored by the media who report any scientific findings of public interest or import, such as research into a new drug or the effects of a diet or lifestyle modification. But such a reminder needs to be noted, because it also contains a warning for all of us: the maturity of scientific understanding occurs as gradually as does the maturity of a person. And the problems that have beset us in this age simply can't wait that long.

We should have learned this lesson from the AIDS epidemic. A new disease entity appeared nearly 30 years ago, and it took some time to even understand the etiology (causative factors) and pathology of the illness. It required more than a decade for scientists to begin to develop and apply treatments that offered some hope to sufferers from the disease. It's not that scientists are lazy or lack an appreciation of the urgency of a condition like AIDS; it's simply that they know that the impulsive rush toward success is precisely what opens the door wide to failure. They know that effort, repetition, and above all time are required for understanding to mature and for real, enduring solutions to develop.

Now quite apart from the lesson that this holds for our government and its belief in the drop-kick, mass murder approach to exporting democracy, there is more that we need to take note of here. For one of the themes I've been reading and hearing from the media on the climate change issue (I prefer that term to the misleading or easily distorted phrase "global warming") is that our advanced scientific and technological know-how will doubtless bring us the solutions we need to prevent disaster, and that there is, after all, no need for any urgent, Kyoto-style guidelines from government or the corporate realm.

This reassuring pabulum, that our hi-tech, corporate-funded science will fix everything in time, is an anti-scientific attitude, based on ignorance. Scientists are barely beginning to understand the nature and scope of the problem; the distance from where we are scientifically to the point where a comprehensive solution can even be proposed, let alone achieve consensus, cannot even be estimated today.

A potentially related issue has recently appeared in a segment of the news market: the mysterious disappearance of the honeybee (also see Mark Morford's excellent meditation on the broader meaning of this occurrence). Here's an excerpt from Gerber's article:

90% of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out. Recent studies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have shown that bee diversity is down 80 percent in the sites researched, and that “bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain.” The studies also revealed that the numbers of wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by 70 percent. Which came first, the decline in wildflowers or the decline in pollinators, has yet to be determined. If bees continue to die off so would the crops they support and with that would ensue major economic disruption and possibly famine.

No one, including the world's leading experts on these creatures, their history, and their behavior, has the remotest clue as to what the hell is going on. You could suggest (as Morford does in his piece) that it might be cell towers, and be on equally solid (or shaky) ground with the experts. There isn't even consensus on what is happening, let alone how, or what to do about it. The bees might be dying, they might be traveling to other lands or passing into parallel universes—the only thing that is clearly known is that they are disappearing.

The only other point of agreement for everyone who understands the meaning of this mysterious disappearance of the bees is that it bodes terrible misfortune for every person on this planet, as Gerber pointed out in the passage above.

Yet how dare we suggest that this could be the fault of a single President or an administration that has had barely six years of power? This has obviously been going on for decades. Point taken, and duly noted.

But before we absolve the Bush administration, let's be clear on this: the past six years have seen the hardening of a culture in which the mouth of inquiry was stoppered—in the media, in the halls of Justice, in the military, in Congress, in the inner circle of the White House, and in science. From climate change to stem cell research to AIDS to birth control to the study and management of natural disasters—from sea to shining sea—the spirit of scientific exploration has been quelled, its inquiring voice silenced, its funding cut back or revoked.

So, even if we had been aware (as, it turns out, some in the scientific community were), we would not have been ready to begin to understand the meaning of the disappearance of the bees. When Brittney's addiction or made-up mushroom clouds or Anna Nicole's funeral trump true awareness, there will inevitably be consequences. Perhaps, as Morford concludes, it is the very bed we have made, not just these past six years, but over the entire course of the industrial age:

See, the sweet, sticky ontological truth is nature doesn't really give a damn whether our species lives or dies. It is very possible that we are not nearly as essential or significant as we like to believe. Though I imagine if nature had her druthers, she might very well choose to eliminate us like a bad dream and let the honeybees and the ants and the trees and the whales take over.

Or, as Gerber concludes:

It could also be that our methods centred on mass production and factory farming are in conflict with nature, as we can see in the case of avian flu, we may be creating a world of pestilence having forgotten that we are part of nature and there is a natural order, balance and harmony that needs to be maintained in the dance of life. Like any species in nature that gets out of hand, nature has a way to keep it in check, and humankind may be the next species in line for severe adjustment or even step-by-step eradication.

We won't know until we begin to ask, examine, and understand. For that, we will need leaders who encourage, support, and fund a culture of active scientific inquiry, debate, and exploration--right here on the Earth.
_____________________________

There's more here on the disappearance of the bees. Once you get past the stuff about what the author named her cat, you'll find some valuable information.

Monday with McKenna: The Big Lie

2007-05-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

Click the graphic to sign the petition to Congress

In our culture, we have long suffered from a cult of war-as-entertainment. It is embodied in much of the military's terminology: they speak of "war games" and "theaters" of war. This consciousness affects the media covering war, to the point where we find ourselves with a situation such as we had five years ago: a mass media greedily lapping up the lies of tyrants. Why? Because, to quote George Steinbrenner, it puts fannies in the seats. Fear sells.

One fellow I know who has never been sold on that bill of goods is my co-writer Terry McKenna. From his very first post here at DR, he has repeatedly delivered the admonition about war's unexpected human, material, psychological, and social costs. My point is not to aggrandize this blog, which remains virtually anonymous in its genre after nearly three years. My point is rather that we can't afford to wait through four years of disaster, bloodshed, and irremediable human and economic loss for voices like Terry McKenna's to begin creeping into the opinion pages of newspapers and the punditry stables of the major TV studios. For the next time this is allowed to happen, this nation and its democracy will be toast.

So here's another serving of the insight of Terry McKenna.

The phrase the Big Lie comes with some baggage. It was first used in the West to characterize Hitler’s propaganda. Hitler himself used it to describe what he considered Jewish propaganda. His propaganda minister, Goebbels, used the phrase to describe the Brits. Be that as it may, the BIG LIE has passed into common currency as a way to characterize the manipulation of truth by the powerful, be they one of our large corporations, or a political machine.

For the purposes of this essay, I’m interested in George Bush’s Big Lies. There have been a number of excellent articles about them—one from The Nation, another from Common Dreams. By the way, after you read the Nation’s piece, please subscribe!

Still, when used to describe others, the BIG LIE does have its baggage; much less than it did when I was in college. But it is still a phrase fraught with dark undertones - like a fine wine, or aged cheese.

So let me first point out the lies our corporations tell. Cigarette makers spent decades pretending that smoking wasn’t harmful; when they gave up on that lie, they moved on to lying about the addictiveness of nicotine. And then there is big energy. Exxon spent much of the past 10 years funding false research about climate change. They’ve backed off a little this past year, but they remain part of the problem. Pharmaceutical companies make unconscionable profits by convincing people to buy new drugs that are no better than much cheaper drugs that are already on the market.

And then we have one especially dark undertone, the Big Lie’s Nazi past. Many of Bush’s liars come from a close-knit group of Neo-cons, and many of these are Jewish by heritage. So what to do? For me, I think the phrase has been cleansed enough to allow for its use, even if the subject is one of our Neo-cons. If I blame William Kristol or Richard Perle for helping the Bush team craft their Big Lies (and I do), I don’t mean to imply that they are also Nazis. If you remember the run up to the Iraq war, you’ll see an effort to use lies to create war fever that would have done any dictator proud. Also any demagogue.

What worries me is how our major news outlets have been unable to defend the American people against the Big Lie. Instead, they are enablers. Whether it is members of the White House press corps, or the managing editors at the Sunday morning talk fests (shows like Face the Nation and Meet the Press) the press is in bed with the powerful. Yes, Tim Russert or Bob Schieffer may make their subjects squirm, but after all is said and done, the politician is the winner (with a few notable exceptions). His or her lies are taken at face value and allowed their place on the nation’s biggest stage.

What should be done? Well, not much with the live Sunday broadcasts, but most news interviews are not live. And even with live broadcasts, the footage can be re-edited and deconstructed. Here is an example of a way to edit down a long interview into a forceful presentation. The raw material was a straight up interview of Condoleezza Rice by Charlie Rose. Charlie tried his best to get Condi to admit the truth, but the talking points were too embedded to catch all of them. Think Progress did an edit, which makes the point much better. (And the point is that these folks are unrepentant, and mean never to leave Iraq). Bill Moyers’ Journal also did an excellent job, with Marilyn B. Young providing useful commentary.

Now I don’t expect Charlie Rose to edit all of his interviews, but presenting our leader straight up does a disservice to all of us. Bush only has a year and a half left, but there is still time for big media to begin the process of deconstruction.

Let’s do a bit of our own. Here is a fresh passage from the White House website:

“As we have surged our forces, al Qaeda is responding with their own surge. Al Qaeda is ratcheting up its campaign of high-profile attacks, including deadly suicide bombings carried out by foreign terrorists. America responded, along with coalition forces, to help this young democracy, and a brutal enemy has responded, as well. These attacks are part of a calculated campaign to reignite sectarian violence in Baghdad, and to convince the people here in America that the effort can't succeed. We're also seeing high levels of violence because our forces are entering areas where terrorists and militia once has sanctuary. As they continue to do so, our commanders have made clear that our troops will face more fighting and increased risks in the weeks and months ahead.

As we help Iraqis bring security to their own country, we're also working with Iraqi leaders to secure greater international support for their young democracy. And last week, Secretary Rice attended an international meeting on Iraq and Egypt, and she briefed me and she briefed Secretary Gates...”

If we take the sentences apart, we can break out the lies and evasions. The very word “surge” is a way to avoid admitting that we really don’t have the numbers of available troops that we need. In both WW2 and Viet Nam, the Army was enlarged in order to carry out its mission. That our leaders failed to do so with the Iraq war, AND that this failure is not a full blown scandal, should give us pause!

And what about the continued characterization of the Iraq struggle as being with al-Qaeda? The majority of fighters in Iraq are dissatisfied locals – this is especially true of those fighting in Baghdad. Yet Bush still hopes to sell his Iraq surge by invoking the afterglow of September 11.

"Coalition forces" is another evasion. And so is “young democracy.”

And then there is this phrase “convince the people here in America” … America’s disgust with the Iraq debacle is a valid reaction to a military failure THAT HAS ALREADY OCCURRED.

America is at a crossroads. The stories our teachers told us about America were never completely true, but America’s goal of creating peace around the world, and attaining good government at home, have been genuine. Remember these myths:

American soldiers treat their prisoners of war fairly.

Americans don’t torture.

America don’t start wars.

I don’t see how we can say these things any longer.

Who is at fault? Well, the Bush machine. But we also have our fourth estate, who fiddled while the Bush machine attempted to burn out the gentle soul of the American civilization.

That’s it. The Big Lie.

Do you still worry about the Nazi reference? Well think of this. Our shock and awe tactics are very much as frightening as the Blitzkrieg ever was. If we are to prevent comparing the use of American power to something as dark as the Blitzkrieg, then we must make every effort to maintain the moral underpinnings of our civility. But have we?

—T. McKenna

Peace to all Moms

2007-05-13T17:31:00.000-04:00

Click the graphic for a brief slide-movie. Happy Mothers Day.

*The pictures are all from here in Brooklyn, NY. The music (if it plays for you) is from John Williams.

A Definition of Success

2007-05-12T09:37:00.000-04:00

As Jon Stewart explains (click graphic to view), when you can't even decide what success is, how can you be expected to recognize failure—especially your own?

Murder divides the soul against itself. This is the lesson of J.K. Rowling's story of the "horcruxes" in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You can kill and kill and kill and kill, but you will only be driven farther from success, until you finally don't even know what it means.

Success is not the humiliation of an opponent or the destruction of an enemy. You can call out threats from the belly of an aircraft carrier until your apoplectic heart withers, but you will never have success.

Success is outward movement from a center. In my own life, I've most commonly seen it follow an arc-like course, frequently along a two-steps-forward-and-one-back pattern. For there to be success, the ear must be attuned to the teaching voice of error. This, incidentally, may also be true of Nature, specifically in evolution: two paces outward followed by one regressive step; then a correction and another outward advance.

I suppose it may be theoretically possible to have constant, forward progress, where every step is confident, assured, and regenerative. Yet when I look around me, I see no evidence of such progress, so it may as well be a lie told by tyrants. Where, indeed, do we see such linear advance in practice—even in science or technology, where results can be objectively measured?

So I would prefer that we focus on what we experience, not on what a theory or an ideal may suggest. Awaken yourself to the voice of error; share every mistake as fully and eagerly as you share your triumphs; for experience has taught me that we are more truly led forward by our mistakes than by our victories. To recognize an error is already to advance.

Be grateful, then, for your mistakes; love them for their teaching energy, and your grip upon them will progressively lighten, making them all the easier to release.

Moore Trouble, More Box Office

2007-05-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

Michael Moore needs no defense, least of all from me, but I have to laugh every time I hear something like this:

"I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care," wrote [Republican Sen. Fred]Thompson, the subject of speculation about a possible presidential run. "I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore's talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented."

Every time one of these neocon slime artists makes such a statement, the "well documented" part is never accompanied by...well..documentation. We always get the charges without any accompanying substance. And I won't even raise the question of how these creeps can dare speak about anyone else's "clever falsehoods." Well all right, I will raise it.

Moore's crime, if you could ever get these neocons to tell the truth about their bruised egos (including the media pundits among them), is that he asks too many questions, and often gets very uncomfortable answers. Or that he out-hustles the mainstream media (remember the My Pet Goat video?). After his Oscar acceptance speech in 2003 (for Bowling for Columbine), no one short of the Dixie Chicks was so reviled for public remarks that turned out to be right on target, as more than two-thirds of Americans would now agree.

So let the Bushies go after him, if that's what they think will silence him, or keep people away from his movies. It will have the same effect as the Catholics boycotting Dan Brown's novel or its film version: longer lines at the bookstore and the box office. Once again, as Disney did before Fahrenheit 911 was released, they're playing right into his hands. Our corporate government: a pack of idiots who repeatedly fail to learn from their own mistakes. Moore's films have pointedly brought this reality home, and SiCKO is not likely to be any different in at least that one respect.
_______________________

Friday Reflection: Surpassing Belief

Do you fear you will be forgotten when you die? Among humans, it is true: you will inevitably be forgotten. But in the mind of the formless, you will endure. The cosmic memory has a mind for every one and every thing that has ever taken form in the universe. This is also true, of course, while you are still alive. But do not make this a matter of belief. Let experience guide you instead.

No book, no group, no church, no state can lead you as well as can your heart of uniqueness. Trust this, and discover for yourself the truth that has never been printed in a Bible or a manual; that has never been spoken from a pulpit or a dais; that has never been engraved onto the tablets of Law, Commandment, or Belief.

That discovery is your truth. Accept it in gratitude, but do not grasp it. Instead, pass it around; throw it into the wind and see who else it may touch. Thus does consciousness stretch to infinity, where Death is routed, and Life, affirmed.

A Feast of Arrogance

2007-05-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

Arrogance for breakfast: "Bush would veto any bill drafted by House Democratic leaders that would fund the Iraq war only into the summer months."

Once again, he's shooting his golden goose. The new bill is actually closer to a collapse than a compromise, as UFPJ points out:

The new bill provides $40 billion immediately for the war in Iraq and contains no timeline or goals for troop withdrawal. In addition, the bill attempts to coerce Iraq into opening up its vast oil reserves to U.S. and multi-national oil companies. The bill sets the stage for another confrontation with the Bush Administration on Iraq in July. The President will have to file progress reports to Congress before they will vote to release another $45 billion to extend the war through September.

This is an unacceptable capitulation to White House pressure. While creating new political problems for the President, it allows him to continue the escalation and persist in policies that have already failed. The promise of another Congressional vote in three months is no substitute for effective action to bring the troops home. We cannot stand by while Congress plays games with the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis.

Update: The McGovern Bill

UFPJ just sent out this memo (1:00 PM) to its member groups (DR is one):

McGovern bill to get a vote TODAY.

The Democratic leadership of the House is supporting a revised version of HR746 -- Rep. McGovern's bill for troop withdrawal and to cut off funding for the war. This is a significant victory for the anti-war movement and the anti-war members of congress.

The bill has a new number HR2237 and it would redeploy troops from Iraq quickly and cut off funding for the war. In addition, it requires that all U.S. military bases in Iraq be turned over to the Iraqis. But, some important changes have been made:
- the word 'withdrawal' is replaced with 'redeployment'
- it would go into effect '90 days after enactment' instead of the 30 days in the original bill
- it would withdraw all US troops except for troops engaged in limited operations against al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist, and for training Iraq troops [these are the loopholes UFPJ objected to in the previous supplemental bill -- these exceptions could allow 20,000 to 30,000 troops to be left behind]
- in addition to clarifying that economic and social reconstruction aid for Iraq continues, it adds the word 'diplomatic' as well, so that funding for our embassy personnel is not cut off

This is not the peace movement's perfect bill, but it does mandate a redeployment of troops quickly, and cuts off funding for the war. It also requires tht U.S. military bases be turned over to the Iraqis. A stong yes vote on the bill will also send a powerful signal to the Democratic leadership that there is support in the House for cutting funding for the war. [Note: there will be differences of opinion among UFPJ member groups on whether the quick redeployment date and cut off of war funds outweigh the loopholes allowing so many troops to stay in Iraq -- since the vote is this afternoon, there is not time to come to consensus around this question]

The bill will come up for a vote before the House votes on the supplemental funding bill.

The Progressive and Out of Iraq Caucuses support the McGovern bill, and several of UFPJ national groups are calling for a yes vote on the McGovern bill. The sense of the Conveners of the UFPJ legislative working group is that we should support and mobilize YES votes for this bill.

Arrogance for lunch: "Kick the press out." Glad to see you've gotten over your social phobia, Dick. All this, perhaps, because the soldiers are so lost in the chaos of urban guerilla warfare that many of them have forgotten what we're fighting for in the first place.

Arrogance for dinner: Led by CNN climatologist Glenn Beck, who recently referred to Al Gore as a Nazi (which didn't go over too well with the ADL), the global-warming-is-a-hoax marching chowder society is attacking Democrats for writing legislation to make climate change a national security priority. Never mind that the Pentagon, the Army, several generals, and the U.N. have all said that's exactly what we should be doing.

And here's a little snack: Verizon says that spying is free speech. Another one of those miracles of money and the corporate lawyers it buys: tyrants become saints, corporations become persons, blood is made wine. Top that, Jesus.

Geek Wednesday: Yahoo, Prepare to be Assimilated

2007-05-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

There are two things we know Ballmer and Gates are not short on: money and ego. So, could it happen? Of course it could—it might be Uncle Bill's parting blast of billions as he rides off into the sunset to save humanity and finally sell his software for what it's actually worth.

We are referring, of course to the MS-Yahoo merger/acquisition talks now ongoing (in at least their second year, by the way). So while the New York Post, the WSJ, and other mainstream outlets wet themselves with anticipation, let's take after the cat here and do a nice stretch and yawn. There, don't you feel better? Now, on to some truly current geek news...

Apple's Gone Green: Steve has written it, and Greenpeace is encouraged (not satisfied, but encouraged); so I guess it's a decent start. But the global problem of iWaste is still not abolished, and the odious alliance with child labor tyrant Nike remains: you will not see us touting the iPod yet. But we're getting somewhere.

Granted, there's no arguing with Apple's success with design. They were making increasingly elegant techno-gear back when everyone else was striving to make PC boxes uglier, blander, and cheaper. Apple's secret? They chose to focus on design. (read the entire article here, it's very well done).

"There were three evaluations required at the inception of a product idea: a marketing requirement document, an engineering requirement document, and a user-experience document," Norman recalls. Rolston elaborates: "Marketing is what people want; engineering is what we can do; user experience is 'Here's how people like to do things.'"

Now what about Dell? Are they good for starting to sell boxes with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed? Or are they evil for joining the MS-Novell axis?

Or is it simply your everyday corporate conniving? The payoff will probably lie in how functional these Ubuntu machines are. We know that Ubuntu will fly on most any modern hardware; what we need to see is how Dell's geeks have performed in optimizing the OS, configuring it so that real people can use it out of the box. If that happens, the machines will sell and a certain amount of corporate conniving will be forgiven by happy, Windows-free PC users.

As I've mentioned, they could do worse than to model the setup of their Dell-buntu after MEPIS, which is based on Ubuntu's Dapper Drake (6.06) core, with lots of customization and optimizing of the KDE desktop. Take a look at the brief video here (silent, because I'm a quiet guy and my little camera doesn't have a mic), and watch as I fire up IE 6 in MEPIS, and then open a Word doc in Open Office 2.2. Finally, I start Google Picasa for Linux (from Google Labs).

This is Linux that works. And guess what? It's free. I paid $17 for a disk, because I wanted a good boot disk and I also wanted to support the developers. That 17 bucks allows me to install the OS on as many boxes as I want, with no Gatesian anti-piracy creep show to slow me down. I'm telling you, people: this is the future of home tech, and maybe enterprise tech too. You can start learning it now, or check it out later. In any event, I'm going to put one of those Dell-buntus through its paces once they're out (it's easy, you just go to Best Buy and act like you're interested and want to try the box out). I'll let you know what I find out.

Tailrank not rank: A fairly new blog-news site to check out is Tailrank, where Daily rEv has already made a couple of appearances. You can set up your own feeds, just like a newsreader, and get updates over email. It features live previews of sites and stories, and the content is neatly organized into digestible news categories. I tried out their newsfeed, but it's rather too long for our cramped sidebar, and Newsvine is better. Nevertheless, Tailrank is worth a look, and maybe a bookmark.

Mozilla's Chief Lizard Wrangler makes a point: Firefox CEO Mitchell Baker is one cool lady, and personifies the human appeal of open source software and the vast potential for good in the open source model. She reminds us that MS IE "was vulnerable to attack for 285 days last year, compared with just 9 days for Firefox." Any questions, class?

Opera revisited: The more time I spend with Linux, the more I like Opera. I've even been using it in Windows and, of course, here on the Mac. It's fast, classy, visually appealing, and has some great community features, such as its new blogging interface, which I've tried here. Perhaps its most useful feature is the auto-save: you can crash the machine it's on or just click an X by accident, and when you reopen Opera it will recall all the tabs you had open before the shutdown. They've also recently added a "speed dial" feature, which is a tab window in which you save frequently-visited sites. These are saved as preview thumbnails of the sites, which link to the original when clicked.

Maybe it's something about those Norwegians: they just seem to make their geekery with the same excellence that they make their blondes. If you're looking for a Linux distro and are wondering which way to go, check out this little survey first (guess where it was made?). When I took it, MEPIS came out at the top of my recommended list, closely followed by Linspire and Ubuntu. In other words, it seems to be a very well designed survey.

Stats Revisited: A while back, we did a feature on web stats, and I've since been spending more time examining them. What I've found is that many of the sources for hits to our site are from people stealing our images and posting them elsewhere (one guy in China made one of my graphics his avatar on a discussion board—in other words, every time someone opens a page containing his avatar, my stats package registers a hit to my site). So I've since started relying more on Google's Analytics, which some of you may remember as the Urchin stats package (yep, Google bought them). G-Analytics has additional filters that weed out things like image downloads from your content, so you're not getting a lot of false positives. If you have a blog or site that you want to track accurately for traffic, G-Analytics is the best I've seen so far.

Finally today, a note about our banner redesign: it was made in Apple's Keynote, which is a better presentation package than Powerpoint, for my money. The characters we chose for it are a couple of good friends who hang out here: the bleeding heart plant is the same one I've written about before. The more my landlady tries to kill it, the bigger and more vibrant is its return each spring. The cat, you know: she's Night, a regular blogger here who's a pretty fair geek and the best sleeper I have ever witnessed in action. As for the middle graphic, that's from our favorite screen saver, Fracture, from Ben Haller of Stick Software. If you've got a Mac, you want this stuff gracing your desktop. Ten bucks, which is a pretty fair price for what you get.

And here's your geek haiku for today (more here):

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

The Centipede in the Tub (and Writer's Notebook)

2007-05-08T00:01:00.000-04:00

I was sitting on the can one day, thinking about Bush, and watching. One of those centipedes or millipedes appeared in the bathtub (any creature with more than eight feet may as well have a hundred or a thousand, it is all the same to me). He or she had come out of the drain in the tub, and was attempting to climb up the slick side, by the wall.

Many others in the long history of my bathroom had tried before this one, and all had met the same fate. They would get halfway up the side of the tub and fall backwards, sometimes tipping ass over teakettle, back into the center of the tub.

Why, I thought, did they always try the impossible route, the way of struggle and frustration and inevitable death, when the shower curtain was hanging down the opposite side? If they chose that route, they'd be on a fairly sticky surface well before reaching the tipping point, and would be able to successfully escape. Why did every one of them choose to attempt the impossible, to compulsively pursue the path leading back to the bottom, and to a watery death? Who were these creatures, and what Devil sent them to me?

I concluded that they must be heads of state, or at the least, generals.

Writer's Notebook: Navigating the "Obsese Oceans"

Many of us who write are faced with the same dilemma as your average socially-aware corporate job seeker: we long to be a part of something that we also recognize as a grave problem, the demon of corporatism. In other words, we desire entrance to Hell, in order that we may help to transform it. No wonder we speak of the "horns of a dilemma."

Publishing today is a corporate kingdom. George Tenet fattens his bank account with royalty checks while his former employees look on aghast at the monumental arrogance of it all. Condi brushes aside questions about her mushroom cloud remarks (not to mention Congressional subpoenas) and proclaims that all will be made clear when the time comes to write her book. Apparently, having an oil tanker named after you is simply not enough.

So the rest of us who are writing today ask ourselves, "is the sale of one's soul, the enslavement of my integrity, the necessary price for a moment on the bestseller list? Must I condemn myself to being damned by history for a little comfort today?"

Fortunately, to even ask the question is to open the path to an answer. Perhaps one day, when they are watching death's shroud unfold around them, people like Condi and Tenet will face these realities and ask themselves these questions, when it is too late. To ask them now, while we are reasonably young and strong enough in our ability, is to feed some oxygen to the lungs of hope.

Jeff Herman is one agent who is acutely aware of what writers who care about such things face in our corporate world. In the Introduction to the 17th edition of his massive guide to agents, publishers, and editors, he notes the domination of multi-national publishers, the "small number of obese oceans" that now exist where there were once hundreds of small islands of independent enterprise.

In his Guide, Herman takes the trouble to demarcate the "obese oceans" into their own section, so that authors can see them together and be thus advised: this is the territory of Condi and George and The Secret and whoever Oprah's current favorite happens to be. This is, most likely, not the kind of star by which an unknown author would navigate, even if he wished to.

The problem is that agents like to romance these monsters, because they pay the most; and when you're only getting 15% of the take (as most agents do), the bigger the better. I once went through a year-long ordeal of watching an agent tilt at such windmills on my behalf. Even though I had never published a book in my life, this agent shot straight at the moon for me, with the likes of Random House, Penguin, Harper, and Morrow. Of course, all of them simply said, "Brian who?" and sent him a polite refusal ("we'll pass on this one"). When it was over and the book proposal had gone across every editor's desk in Rockefeller Center, the poor fellow was positively flummoxed by the outcome, while I thought it was entirely to be expected.

If I had it to do over, I would have stopped the guy before he ever got started. But he threw stardust in my eyes at our first meeting: the contract would be in the neighborhood of $200K - $400K, although we may have to refuse the highest bidder in the interest of ensuring future business. He would, of course, have them competing against one another, and we'd soon be sorting through the bids. The only thing I can say in defense of the guy's seemingly foolish strategy was that it must have worked for him with other writers: he had an obviously busy and successful practice in Manhattan, was a memeber of AAR, and had a long list of published titles he'd represented.

But he had no Plan B (sound familiar, Bush-watchers?). When the Goliaths didn't fall for his marketing of my book, he just stopped trying. And I was too ignorant and too breathless, standing at the threshold of writer's heaven, to question, criticize, or recommend a more sensible and modest strategy. He gave up, and I fell back to earth. The book remains unsold, and this is not likely to change.

So what's the lesson? To me, it's this: the moment you stop asking questions, posing alternatives, and offering criticism, that's when you have opened the door to failure. I ceased doing the very thing that I teach in these books I write: asking questions of power, wealth,and authority. I stopped asking because I was scared that a critical breath from me would shoo away the flock of golden geese who were so close, so tanatalizingly within reach, that I was already wondering how and when I would quit my corporate job.

Don't be a self-defeating idiot like me: don't quit on the very activity that defines you as a creative artist, at the very moment when you need it most. If you sign a contract with an agent, that's the time you most need to be a pest. Don't let their airs of authority, their claims of busy-ness, or their bland promises of impending wealth and success put you to sleep. Their success comes in many little bites of 15%; the occasional loss will not crush them. But if you fail to fulfill your artistic promise in this of all relationships, then you will be defeated. If the agent is a real pro, he'll understand that; he'll listen to your questions and adjust accordingly.

At all events, don't be a fool like me: do not be afraid.

Monday with McKenna: Ambition in a Collar: Jim McGreevey

2007-05-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

Nicolas "I've got happy hands" Sarkozy wins French presidency

First off, congratulations to the people of France for showing us some passing resemblance of real democracy: when 85% of your voting public turns out to cast a ballot, something good is happening.

But we also have a warning for our friends of the bouillabaisse persuasion: some six years ago, we—or rather, our Supreme Court—elected a conservative who said he was going to be the President of all the people. Today, he's the President of 28% of us, and in reality, he's the President of the wealthiest 1.1% or so of us. Maybe this guy Sarkozy will be different, but just in case, mes amies, you've been warned...

Now Terry McKenna, our resident New Jersey resident, has been having other problems: his state's governors are on a really bad streak. That job is as cursed as the Defense Against the Dark Arts spot at Hogwarts. What's worse: betraying your family for a closet affair and then being publicly outed, or having half the bones in your body broken? Today, Terry contemplates the misfortunes of the future vicar, Jim McGreevey.

For me, the Jim McGreevey story is local. Both of us are Jersey boys, raised in the crowded northeastern part of our state and both of us came from similarly staunch Catholic households. McGreevey was an altar boy; I never became one, but both of our young lives revolved around the Church and its rituals. We also both excelled in our studies. But after that, we took completely different paths. I rejected the notion that I had to push for money and material success (I spent a decade after college trying to earn my livelihood as an artist before I finally gave in and got a "real" job). Jim McGreevey on the other hand, pushed hard for the sort of achievement that many well educated young men dream of. By age 32 he was elected to the state assembly, and in a little more than a decade, he was our governor (I voted for him twice, first when he lost a close race to Christie Whitman , and then when he won.)

Jim McGreevey's fall from grace has been presented as the story of an identity crisis – it makes good copy, but I disagree. I maintain that he knew exactly what he was doing; that he chose his life in the closet because of the career he wanted. Thus, rather than being a victim, his story is just another example of the sort of failure that comes from the devotion to a false set of values.

Why am I writing about Jim McGreevey? He made the news the week with reports that he plans to enter an Episcopal seminary and eventually become a priest. It's not the biggest of national news, but it was well reported by the big New York City tabloids. What can you say but wow; you can't make this stuff up! But for the life of me, I can't think of anyone who would want him as a pastor. With his admitted past as an adulterer, I don't see him as a credible minister to married couples. Nor do I think that young folks would take him seriously – they've surfed the web and surely read the gossip, so his appearance would generate more snickers that anything else. Just think of this little tidbit – he keeps a large picture of a nude man in his bedroom (don't know if seen from the front or back). I'm sure it's art, but its not the image I have for the bedroom of a man of god. So who is left? A congregation of small children (kids 5 to 10 years old) and gay men.

And if Jim McGreevey wants to study for the priesthood, shouldn't we see evidence that his is a Christian life? Religion may be bunk, but parts of the Christ story are compelling. Who doesn't admire a live devoted to the poor; where any transgression is met by the promise of forgiveness (if penitent). As we've written before, the Bush administration would be much better had it evidenced genuine Christianity. Where is Jim McGreevey's repentance? He may want us to ignore his infidelity, but surely we have the right to expect an admission of sorrow that he betrayed his wife. But is he sorry? The dynamics of self outing are bizarre. The gay man gets to admit his adultery and to his having lived a life of lies (all blamed on sexual repression); the wife gets to admit nothing. At best, she's considered a fool; at worst a knowing conspirator.

I don't think Jim McGreevey is sorry for anything except being caught. Yes, I understand the difficulties for gay men. (One of my high school acquaintances had a brother who became a priest, but also was gay, and sadly died of Aids – so I'm familiar with the personal struggles of gay men). But Jim McGreevey grew up after the gay rights movement began. And he lived just a few dozen miles from Greenwich Village and Christopher Street. And he was well educated and cosmopolitan. It's hard to believe that he was not exposed to gay culture somewhere between Columbia , Harvard and the London School of Economics. Jim McGreevey had a less noble reason for living a lie. He was a hard driving and ambitious careerist. A man shooting for the moon. He masked his sexuality not because of a struggle for identity, but because he knew that his chance at the big prize would have ended as soon as he admitted that he was not the all American boy that he pretended to be. Remember, he married twice, not typical for the repressed homosexual. Jim McGreevey surely knew that he was gay. He knew before his second marriage. He probably knew before his first. His charade of victim hood is just that, a charade.

So let him go ahead and become an Episcopal priest. Maybe he can shoot for what might be considered the triple crown of disappointment. He's disappointed his wife (or wives) and his home state; and maybe after trying his hand at Christian ministry, he'll disappoint his God.

—T. McKenna

Friday Reflection: Harry Potter and the State

2007-05-04T00:01:00.002-04:00

Click here to listen to today's post (AAC/m4a file for iTunes, 7.2MB)

In my book, The Tao of Hogwarts, I ask why it might be that a group of simple children's stories about magicians has inspired such malevolent hatred in our Muggle world. You don't see fundamentalist Christians burning copies of The Wizard of Oz or The Sword in the Stone, or boycotting Eragon. But the Harry Potter stories are among the most banned and reviled books to appear in the recent history of literature. Why?

The partial answer, which I mention in my book, is that the Potter tales reflect the truth of fundamentalism so clearly as to make the devotees of hatred want to smash the mirror.

Another facet of the answer appears in Ms. Rowling's treatment of the government. From the second book forward, she is increasingly acidic in her characterization of the state and its minions. The Potter tales are really startlingly sophisticated stories, full of piercing insight on the lazy arrogance and pandemic corruption within government.

Early on in the Potteriad, Rowling's satire focuses on the fat, wheedling incompetence of Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. He's a John Bolton type: a classic kiss-up, kick-down type of official, who couldn't lead the way out of a wet paper bag, let alone an attack from the consolidated forces of fundamentalist evil.

Further on, in the fifth book, a new functionary of the state is introduced, Dolores Umbridge. She, like Fudge, is corpulent, petty, and always unhinged by any effort to look past appearances. What Umbridge adds to the portrait of government is its threatening, violent face. She injects the corruption of state-driven conformity into the school, and then applies the Kafka-esque needle torture to Harry's very skin.

Book six opens with a political scene featuring two oblique portraits of Tony Blair and George Bush. The characters representing the state are by this point so obsessed with the superficial that they are completely blinded to the glacier of death passing by their windows. The new Minister of Magic is a character named Rufus Scrimgeour, who has a Karl Rove streak in him. He proposes that if we can only improve our advertising message, add a few spotlights to the stage of state, then all will be well, and evil routed, or at least suppressed.

It is this attitude that Harry encounters in a chapter titled "A Very Frosty Christmas," from which our banner quote is drawn. Here is the full passage, from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, presented in context:

They looked at each other, long and hard. Finally Scrimgeour said, with no pretense at warmth, "I see. You prefer--like your hero, Dumbledore--to disassociate yourself from the Ministry?"

"I don't want to be used," said Harry.

"Some would say it's your duty to be used by the Ministry!"

"Yeah, and others might say it's your duty to check that people really are Death Eaters before you chuck them in prison," said Harry, his temper rising now. "You're doing what Barty Crouch did. You never get it right, you people, do you? Either we've got Fudge, pretending everything's lovely while people get murdered right under his nose, or we've got you, chucking the wrong people into jail and trying to pretend you've got 'the Chosen One' working for you!"

"So you're not 'the Chosen One'?" said Scrimgeour.

"I thought you said it didn't matter either way?" said Harry, with a bitter laugh. "Not to you anyway."

"I shouldn't have said that," said Scrimgeour quickly. "It was tactless--"

"No, it was honest," said Harry. "One of the only honest things you've said to me. You don't care whether I live or die, but you do care that I help you convince everyone you're winning the war against Voldemort. I haven't forgotten, Minister...."

He raised his right fist. There, shining white on the back of his cold hand, were the scars which Dolores Umbridge had forced him to carve into his own flesh: I must not tell lies.

"I don't remember you rushing to my defense when I was trying to tell everyone Voldemort was back. The Ministry wasn't so keen to be pals last year."

Extraordinary, isn't it? A pack of kids' stories, overflowing with an urbane and penetrating insight on the tyranny and duplicity of the modern state. In the magical world of Harry Potter, there is a Gitmo (Azkaban), where both the guilty and the innocent are sent, often without charge and with no hope of a fair trial. There is torture (Umbridge), ambition (Fudge), bureaucracy (the Ministry and its offices), the selling of the people's blood and treasure to corporate interests (Lucius Malfoy's bribes to Fudge), and always the unctuous, vain manipulations of the media and truth (Scrimgeour's attempts to purchase Harry's support, and Fudge's own FOX News media plant, Rita Skeeter).

If you happen to think that the Potter tales are a bunch of lame baby stories that benefited from a combination of dumb luck and devious marketing to become a multi-billion dollar phenomenon, I will make no effort to disillusion you (though Professor Moody might). The Potter novels are loved and lavished with popularity for the same reasons that they are banned and burned: they touch a nerve of truth and common experience that helps us to see and feel our own darkness. How the individual's reaction flows from that varies according to whether you are ready to expel your own Voldemort-consciousness--the corrupt knot of belief that was programmed into you before you could discern it as such--or whether you perceive Rowling's insight to be a personal attack upon your in-group's cherished blocks of granite, the belief system of the "Chosen One" of a church or a state. For, as I mention in my book, and as the last six years of the Bush tyranny have revealed, Church and State cannot be truly separated: they are fed by the same delusion.

Rowling's fiction thus recapitulates, with story, character, and metaphor, the lesson of Diderot that we quoted last week: men will never be truly free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Beyond the Numbers

2007-05-03T00:01:00.000-04:00

Stewart catches Olmy napping, and the Israeli people speak out for justice (click to view)

A few weeks ago, I wrote that, no matter what we may think of its government's actions, Israel is a fairly healthy democracy--healthier, in fact, than ours is now. And here's further proof.

Next week, I'm going to take the wraps off some psychological research I've been doing into the leader of the free world. This is the kind of thing I have in mind. However, in case you haven't noticed, he's got plenty of company in the lunacy department: check out this nut and his baseball-is-like-Iraq rant. Do you think Jon Stewart is paying these people to feed him fresh material, right over C-Span?

I paid $25 to help get this ad about the Bush veto on the air; you may wish to have a look at it and decide for yourself.

Small money, indeed, but that's all I'm worth for now. But enough of all that, then. Here's a little piece about big money and statistics.

What can money not buy? It can buy the media; it can buy opinion or reputation; it can purchase a gleaming image, or a floating corporate island green in the middle of Rockefeller Center.

But it cannot buy sanity. In fact, when it comes to that, the more you use money, the further do you tend to drift from sanity. The more you rely on money to open doors around you, the further do you become unhinged within. The greater your dependence on purchase, the higher the cost to your true self. The slavish pursuit and use of money will inevitably trap you within a cage, whose four walls are conflict, conformity, estrangement, and cynicism.

Any one amid 300 million can be an American; any one among tens of thousands can become a representative of a great multi-national corporation; any one of about 2.5 million can be a millionaire; any one of billions can be a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, or a Buddhist. But to become your true self, to fully actualize the destiny that was born within you--that takes more than numbers. And less.
________________________

Tomorrow: Harry Potter and the State

Geek Wednesday: Dell For Human Beings

2007-05-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

I've made myself fairly clear about my lack of tender feelings for Dell, but the news today is all warm and fuzzy: Dell will begin selling computers bundled with Ubuntu Linux, starting later this month.

Or is it? What will happen when Joe WindowsUser decides to buy one of these things, and then finds out that it's not everything he'd bargained for? That the OS will ask him to set up his own browser plugins; that he won't be able to see IE by default; that his beloved Windows games won't play nicely with Ubuntu; that there's no Start menu or taskbar or system tray in there; or that the GNOME music player (Rhythm Box) won't play his m4a files from iTunes without a bit of command line geekery?

This indicates where Dell, as laudable as their intentions may be, might have miscalculated. My experience has been that MEPIS Linux fills most or even all of the missing gaps in Ubuntu, particularly for Windows switchers. Of course, it is reasonable to assume that Dell, with all its money and resources, applied some of their own geeks to the task of making Ubuntu more amenable to Windows switchers, in which case the prospects for success with the Linux machines may be good. We'll have more to say about this in future posts, but a quick look at the graphic below may help to show the differences between Ubuntu and MEPIS (click picture to enlarge). My experience has been that MEPIS has the edge, certainly in terms of helping former Windows users feel more comfortable.

Upate: Extreme Tech has a mixed review of Feisty Fawn, here.

Quote of the day, from MS CEO Steve Ballmer: "...my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune." Wow, Steve, that's so cool: you'll have those Boomers all locked up into Zunes within 20 years, wont' you? Steve, what can I say? You're such a visionary multi-billionaire corporate executive—not like that other guy in Cupertino, who's always designing his products for young urban professionals not living on Social Security...

Update: Our own Nearly Redmond Nick has the following comment on the recent delusions of Barmy Ballmer:

If I had any MS stock, I would have dumped it long ago. There must be someone within that company that realizes the "denial" strategy is not working out. Just like it didn't with Windows v. Linux, and MS Office v. OpenOffice, and IE v. Firefox, and iPod v. Zune, and crappy Windows-based phones v. Blackberry, and Office Live v. Google Apps, and ... well, you get the picture. The past is set to repeat itself.

I posted an update on my Helium experience at my Daily Kos diary. It's titled, "Is the Celebration of Murder Free Speech?" Note in particular the comments to the piece, which reveal that lefties, too, can occasionally be lazy readers and intemperate writers.

The Webby winners have been announced, and, as it was last year, lefty sites and blogs predominate. Salon, Save the Internet, and Truthdig are among the winners.

I happened to revisit the myspace page I'd created a while back. As you can see, things haven't changed there. That graphic of the lady sucking the lollipop is actually a Flash movie. Teach your children well...

Back to software, Panic Software's Coda is a great-looking product for html developers and hard-core Mac geeks. Take a look at the demo and download the trial; we'll do the same here and report back in the near future.

Slashdot, which deserves a Webby every year, has this report on more troubling findings from scientists studying ice patterns in the Antarctic. Incidentally, you can add Al Gore to our earlier list of people being branded as Nazis by mass media pundits.

My experience with geeks has been that, far from being asocial propellor-heads juiced on Red Bull, they are very socially aware, and that they care about what's really going on, a lot more than the so-called leaders of the civilized world do. One such geek is the excellent C-Net journalist Declan McCullagh, whose expose on politicians who fail to take clear positions on tech is a must-read for anyone who follows issues like Net Neutrality.

But then again, we here in the blogosphere are, after all, guilty of a "vituperation toxicity"—just ask Joe and his friends at the American Enterprise Institute. But if you spend five minutes scrolling down this site, I think you'll see where the poison's really coming from.

I'd Rather Whine Than Resign!

2007-05-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

The UN Building, with about 7 stories lopped off the top, in honor of John Bolton (click to enlarge)

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the world of corporate government, where incompetence and inflexibility are directly proportional. You might want to keep the following links bookmarked for the next time you screw up at work and have the pink slip waved in your face.

Olmert: yeah, I killed hundreds of innocents, so what? I'm stayin'!

Wolfowitz: yeah, I handed out a mega-salary job to my main squeeze in clear violation of the rules of my organization, so what? I'm stayin'!

Gonzales: yeah, I might have fired some attorneys for purely political reasons, though I don't exactly recall--so what? I'm stayin'!

And now, our feature piece for today comes from Shady Acres Mike, who we haven't heard from in a while. Today he answers the question, "is a Bush veto of the $124B Iraq Supplemental automatic?"

It appears so. These guys seem to be highly out of touch. Keep in mind though that they do have at least a year to forge a political deal (if it gets to be more than that, no one will deal with them--it will become the next administration's headache). If they are able to foster a political deal they would look somewhat reasonable.

As for the loyal opposition, they cannot lose in the eyes of the reasonable American. Thank God that the forces of reason won both houses because the position the Dems are in now is only because of their ability to set a legislative and oversight agenda.

However, I am not optimistic that a political deal is in the offing. There is no military solution to being an occupying force in the midst of a civil war where neither warring party wants you there. So only a political solution remains. This administration has not done the hard work needed to lay down a path for such a deal. As a matter of fact, they seemed to have done just the opposite by refusing, at least publicly, to deal with the various factions whether inside or outside of Iraq. They have been defiant by taking a unilateral course. They believe that the US no longer needs to be a participant in history-making with others, but rather be THE history maker. It is this hubris that will make it difficult to cut a deal. In effect, they thought they could take a short cut. They initially tried to favor the Shia so that they would hold sway over the country. That backfired and they are still in the process of backing out of that strategy.

In the meantime, no real centralized body or association of various Sunni factions exists. Who represents the Sunnis? The Shia seem split down the middle between two main factions as well. At the same time, this administration has threatened the neighbors who continue to fuel the sectarian violence. No short term political solution looks likely. This will take time, patience, negotiations, and compromise -all things this administration either lacks or has shown no actual ability to afford.

I found myself in rare agreement with Donald Trump the other day. He recently stated that he sees Condi flying all over the world, meeting with many world leaders, but he never sees a deal. What, he asked, is the secretary of state supposed to do other than cut deals? Perhaps it is too late and they have gone too far to be trusted at the negotiating table for any major negotiation, including peace in Iraq. What a mess they have made. What a mess they will most probably be leaving to the next administration.

Have you seen the new poll results form NBC? The Bushies are so out of touch once again. Large majorities of Americans think there should be a timetable - by approximately a twenty percent margin. Only 22% of Americans think we are headed in the right direction as a country. Large majorities of Americans thinks that the surge is not working - again, by approximately a twenty percent margin. This is why anyone associated with the quagmire that is Iraq is being painted with the same brush. McCain has hit free fall, even Hillary is sliding. Obama and Giuliani who did not vote on the subject have risen in their place.

As for the neocons, the noose is tightening around these hoodlums and incompetents: Abramoff and 10 other K Street influence-peddling convictions with three more Congressman to come about to go down, Plamegate and the Libby conviction, Tillman and Lynch, politicizing the Justice and other departments, Katrina, with investigations on torture, spying on the public without warrants, and intelligence manipulation yet to come. It's going to be hard for anyone who supported this administration to survive once it all comes out. Thank God for checks and balances, thank God for karma, for justice, for true oversight, and for the rooster coming home to roost. And the far right are out of touch again, they are simply trying to stall and deceive by making false comparisons with other administrations and by changing the subject.

If property values continue to sink and the economy slows down on top of all of the above, the 30 year trend to the right may be about to be swing the other way. The right could lose the independent vote for a long time to come. Even without the economy taking a slide, rising energy costs, rising health costs, rising education costs, and continued reliance on big oil and foreign carbon based energy at the expense of the very environment we live in could cost the Republicans the middle class independent vote for a long time to come. And the right is out of touch again if they think that can rely on all their past bromides with which they ran America into the ground.

It's time for a new America. Lets see who will be ready to usher that in.

--Shady Acres Mike

Monday with McKenna: President Lab Rat

2007-04-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

I have two links for everyone who watched the Bill Moyers special last Wednesday, Buying the War (viewable here). Moyers featured the work of two young journalists whose work went largely ignored by the MSM. These two journalists, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau, set out to critically examine the deceptions that were being advanced as truth, the lies that were packaged and bought by the rest of the media establishment. You can keep up on the work of these two men by adding their RSS feeds to your news reader:

Warren Strobel

Jonathan Landay

For another example of Landay's truth-seeking-missile approach to journalism, see this post of ours from January, 2006. And now, here's Terry, to explain what a lab rat and the leader of the free world have in common.

Is there anything left to say about Iraq? Troop surge or no, we’re getting nowhere fast! Surely, even the president knows this. Or does he?

It's easy to say that George Bush doesn’t know this, or much of anything – that he’s stupid. We’ve said it in this blog, and it’s a belief that has wide currency. But let’s get serious for a minute. It’s hard to imagine anyone being as stupid as George Bush would have to be to not understand what’s going on with the war.

But if he’s not stupid, then what? One alternative might be that he possesses a unique mix of arrogance, intellectual mediocrity, and stubbornness. In any case, even lab rats can change their behavior when their actions don’t yield results, and certainly George Bush is at least as smart as a lab rat – so he too can’t fail to recognize that however hard we try, we remain stuck in the same Iraqi quagmire.

So yes, George Bush knows.

If there is no chance of winning, then why does he urge America to pour more men and money onto the pile? And here, I must state for the record that it usually is not a good idea to speculate about anyone else’s motives. If someone does something, it’s best to judge the action by its results. With most people, failure begets change, but with George Bush and Iraq, failure begets nothing but a series of repeated failures*. So just this once, let’s try to find out what motivates the decider.

One reason to continue our war effort is that if we leave, Iraq will devolve into complete chaos (as if it hasn’t already). This is in fact one of George Bush’s public explanations for fighting on. It’s also John McCain’s (in McCain’s case, I think he’s in earnest). It could be true, but it’s hard to imagine an even more urgent level of chaos. Still, let’s accept that it is not an unreasonable point of view. But if that’s the concern, then why not begin a regional conference on Iraq’s future? To do so, the US would have to go hat in hand to the Iranians and Syrians, but it is we who are losing lives, not they. To the Democrats' credit, those who fear even more chaos do support a regional conference. But Bush and his allies do not.

If Bush doesn’t want a peace conference, what other reason could he have for staying the course? (Staying the course has suddenly disappeared from the Bush talking points, but that’s what the troop surge is - staying the course).

I believe the reason is pure (and malicious) politics. And here, please remember the old saw that politics stops at the water’s edge, that when it comes to foreign policy, we are Americans first. Republicans keep reminding us about this when Democrats bring up the War’s failure. But it turns out, in this case, Republicans are the worst offenders. Here is the plan: Bush knows he can’t win; he also fears the long-term political damage to the Republican cause, and especially to conservatism if the US leaves Iraq while he is in power. As much as the American people have given up on Iraq, when we leave, the final exit will remain as a stain upon whomever presides over the last days. (Remember the picture of our last days in Saigon). George Bush is stalling for time – hoping to push the sting of his defeat onto his likely Democratic successor. If anyone believes that politics stops at the water’s edge, nonsense. George Bush plans to sacrifice maybe 2000 more Americans lives and spend as much as $200 Billion for what amounts to a small political advantage for his party. Shame on him!

Of course, there is another reason to stay, and that is that Bush never intended for the US to leave Iraq. Iraq was to be the new permanent base for future US military operations in the Middle East (the defense of our vital interests, which are oil and Israel). This is the thesis of Chalmers Johnson, a renowned foreign policy specialist. His notion is simple (not simplistic): US power depends on massive amounts of fuel, which is to say, oil. It takes millions of gallons of jet fuel to provide the air supremacy that allows us to create shock and awe. And our navy also gulps millions of gallons of diesel fuel (think of how much oil it takes to keeps an aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf. With the US having been thrown out of Saudi Arabia, we decided to construct permanent air bases in Iraq (we keep saying that we aren’t doing this, but what we build there has every appearance of permanence). Read this article, written before the Iraq war started. It’s not all that Mr. Johnson has to say on the subject, but it’s a good start. You can also check out his Blowback piece.

Here at Daily revolution, we are often reminded that human folly is not new. If we are conversant with our art and history, we have a chance of avoiding the repetition of human tragedy. George Bush may be closest to Shakespeare’s King Lear. Like Lear, he is pretty much alone now – note how few defenders he has in Congress. Of course, the Bush presidency hasn’t quite devolved into madness, but who knows how the next 19 months will go?

*To all those who urge us to fight on, and remind us that America has fought much harder wars than Iraq; I agree. But if we look at our other difficult wars, in each case, the commander in chief made lots of changes AND admitted mistakes when they occurred. In our revolutionary war, George Washington started out being aggressive, but after a series of disasters in New York, he learned never to jeopardize his army – that his job was to preserve the army and buy time. During our civil war, Lincoln admitted the many failures in the Eastern theater, and as a result, he replaced generals regularly until after three years he put Grant in charge. In WW2, Roosevelt was frank about our early difficulties. He too replaced all the early commanders and by the end of the war, the senior commander in Europe was a man who was a mere colonel when the war started. Bush has neither admitted problems (till way too late) nor made effective changes (also till way too late).

--T. McKenna

Neocon Love: "Like Ordering Pizza"

2007-04-29T11:23:00.000-04:00

TP today has a story on neocon Washington's ready reliance on politics' oldest profession, in which a Bush official compares ordering sex to calling Domino's. It would be a yawner of a story ("huh, there's prostitution in Washington? OK, now give me some news..."), except as it further reveals the hypocrisy that has defined these Bushies from day one. Remember, this is the abstinence-only bunch we're talking about. As we wrote here:

But porn, like online gambling, is a driving force in technology, as well as being a powerful lobbying force in Washington. If you're a Congressman or a member of the press corps at the White House or Capitol Hill, and you're looking for a good time, the porn industry is there to help.

But please...no anchovies...

A Soldier Rebuts His Tyrant Bosses

2007-04-28T19:08:00.000-04:00

This article, by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, has been getting a lot of attention lately—particularly from lefty sites such as Truthout and Think Progress. It richly deserves all the attention it can get: it is a crisply written, orderly, and eminently sane exposure, from an officer who has served in Iraq, of all the managerial incompetence that has defined this war's corporate conduct.

My blogging partner Terry McKenna reminded me of something that helped to put Lt. Col. Yingling's message into context: before the war started, the Army held war games, which were meant to test the military's prevailing combat strategy against an enemy that lacked our resources and firepower. The commander of the "insurgency" in these tactical war games quit before they could conclude, because, once his forces started "winning," the Army told him to stop and play by its rules (Marquis of Queensbury, anyone?). Here's an excerpt; the whole expose—from August, 2002, mind you—is here:

The most elaborate war game the U.S. military has ever held was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing, according to the retired Marine lieutenant general who commanded the game’s Opposing Force.
That general, Paul Van Riper, said he worries the United States will send troops into combat using doctrine and weapons systems based on false conclusions from the recently concluded Millennium Challenge 02. He was so frustrated with the rigged exercise that he said he quit midway through the game.

Friday Reflection: The Ravages of Ego

2007-04-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

The star Gliese, the "sun" around which an Earth-like and possibly habitable planet was recently found revolving (click graphic to learn more)

It was great to see Moyers back on the air Wednesday night, wasn't it? (if you missed it, you can watch it here). Yes, it was very painful to watch, but that's because it was so thoroughly and masterfully done. I thought the scenes with Beinart were particularly compelling: the old teacher, the Socrates of modern journalism, gently but firmly exposing and correcting the peach-faced stripling, one that the I Ching would refer to as "The Young Fool" (Hexagram 4):

Youthful Folly has success.
It is not I who seek the young fool;
The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him.
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.
Perseverance furthers.

But let's turn off the TV, put down the newspaper and leave the knotted ball of conflict that the neocon tyrants have visited upon our world behind for a little. Congress will (one hopes) go on fighting the President; Condi will go on fighting her subpoena; Cheney will go on fighting himself; and McCain will continue to tell jokes and sing songs about the carnage that he helped to bring into the dawn of the 21st century. Let them go on; they are old men (most of them) being dissolved by time and dying further within, every day.

Or is it really time that kills us? Here's an alternative, from my supply of cheap, dime-store New Age fizzdom:

Time does not ravage us. Time is just a cosmic dimension, doing its job. Time does not degrade or destroy life; only ego does that. So if you would like to remain young and beautiful until the day comes for your transformation beyond time, then turn within regularly and kill ego. Kill it, and then discard its corpse, with the help of the cosmic presences (time included). Once you have focused upon your true enemy, then time becomes your friend, your ally in the life of form and the life to come, beyond form.

Everyday elimination:
Your body does it—
Why not your mind?

If you can feel falsehood and expel it,
Your thoughts will ring true.
If you can clear the code of hatred
That was written on your heart
Amid childhood ambivalence,
Then the quantum breath of love
Will fill you, extending outward.

Diderot told us that we will never be truly free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. I would suggest now, that for each of us who turns within and rips the bowel of belief from the dead body of ego, and with it, chokes the voice of authority into stillness, and finally expels it—for each of us who does that within himself, we will more nearly approach the day of true freedom for all.

Swastika Season in Washington

2007-04-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

It's spring, so it must be time to start slinging the swastikas again.

First up, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who compared some European witnesses who were testifying against the supposed value of extreme rendition...to Adolf Eichmann. That jackboot may be on the other foot, don't you think?

Next, our own beloved New York Post, for labeling an Iranian religious leader a "dresstapo" for his punishment of unveiled women. Presumably, this means we can now nuke the bastards. And I bet you didn't know the Post was a feminist rag, did you?

Next in line is Michael Savage, who compared Hillary with Goebbels. Why? Because she dared to question where the Roberts neocon-5 of the Supreme Court might have gotten their medical degrees.

Brownie's former boss steps up to warn us that Iraq and al-Qaeda are as powerful a force as Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and assorted totalitarian regimes.

Finally, a well-known lefty news source is being threatened with a law suit from the Vatican for creating a photo-montage of the Pope as a Nazi. The only problem with that one is that...um...he was.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: and that's just the tip of the swastika—an ancient Sanskrit symbol, by the way, of good fortune, now degraded into the mud of hatred, slung at random by anyone who wishes to kill with words. If you question the reality haze of someone like Rep. Rohrabacher (hmmm....that's an awfully German sounding name you have there, Ms. R), you are a traitor.

In fact, we live in a culture where questions are not permitted. Is it any wonder, then, that science is suppressed or ignored?

The government says, "to question is treason;" the corporation says, "to question is insubordination;" the media tell us, "questions make a bad circus—only conflict delivers profit."

So science—an activity of the human mind based on questioning experience—is moribund today. It is stagnant in our schools, distorted in our think tanks, twisted or suppressed in our research facilities, cherry-picked by our corporations, and blithely ignored in our personal lives, where we most desperately need its guiding hand.

But these are choices that have been made for us, not by us. If we can remember that, and demand of our leaders that we recover the capacity for science, the ability to ask questions of experience, then we have a chance at recovering our democracy.

For once we stop asking questions, we start dying.

Geek Wednesday: Are Geeks Atheists?

2007-04-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

The arch from the Japanese garden at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens (click to enlarge)

Are geeks atheists? That's one of the topics for discussion at Helium, an interesting, if rather poorly edited Wiki-style site for amateur punditry. If you like to read, and especially if you like to write, I'd encourage you to go there and explore. You can set up an account, rate others' work on specified topics, and contribute your own. If your work rises to the higher echelons in the rankings (thus the site's name), then you can even get a little cash.

By the way, you'll find my own spout on the geek-atheism question in there. I've also posted over a dozen other pieces (most of them recycled from my books and this blog), and done at least two hours' worth of rating at Helium. And here's my advice to the site's owners: you've got a great idea and a very good interface; now you need some rules for your writers, and some damned good content editors (I'm available). The problem you have right now is that there's a lot of schlock in there—people scribbling posts into the site as if they're texting their friends. If you don't tighten up your editorial policies and practices a little, I'm afraid Helium could turn into a Hindenburg.

Update: I received the following note this morning from Barbara Whitlock, an editor at Helium:

...you should check out the boards (give us a couple of days to restore this after the board crash two days ago). We have a rich Writing Workshop section that helps educate writers on how to improve their content. Helium is a user-generated site, with an editorial staff that provides minimal filters. The model empowers the community to rank quality and flag inappropriate and meaningless articles. New writing standard guidelines have recently been published; and I'm working on an article today to advertise this more on the site.

That's encouraging, but I'd still suggest a more Wikipedia-style approach to content editing here. For, despite its occasional troubles with misreporting and shoddy fact-checking, Wiki has an excellent record for accuracy, given its enormous size. This comes from well-defined editorial policies and warm, expert bodies in the editors' seats. You can't program good judgment, and you can't have faith in writers to universally honor guidelines. Wikipedia is successful because it monitors its content for journalistic qualities such as fact-checking and professional standards of presentation. This, combined with its open-source, community-driven approach to knowledge, is why Wiki reporting is usually more credible and interesting than the mass media's. Helium would do well to study that model.

That slapping sound you hear is of spontaneous high fives in Redmond. For the Apple stockdating chickens have come home to roost, and an ex-CFO is pointing a finger of complicity at none other than Saint Steve.

Ah well, at least things could scarcely be better on the product side right now. Yeah, there was a delay to the release of OS X Leopard, but guess what, Tiger remains the most reliable, efficient, and fun OS out there. And their hardware is second to none (see below for the tale of how easily I installed Ubuntu Linux onto the MacBook). Apple now offers an 8-core Mac Pro sporting Adobe CS3 and Final Cut Studio 2. The ballyhooed iPhone is less than two months away, and the Beatles look like they're ready to walk down the long and iTuned road.

Tough break, Steve: do they take iCards in prison? I'll ask Martha...

The G's Have IT: We haven't had much to say about Google lately. Maybe it's because there isn't anything to complain about, really. After its usual fashion, Google continues to add and improve, add and improve. What has always been remarkable about them is their ability to actually respond to the needs of their user community, and this has not changed. A few months ago, after the release of Blogger 2, I had some choice words for its performance and overall buginess. Google quietly fixed everything I'd complained about, and then added a few features to boot.

Meanwhile, they've become the number one brand in terms of overall recognition, and positively buried Yahoo on the earnings front. I think I know why, and it has to do with discerning substance from appearance. For while Yahoo continues to obsess over cuteness and glitz, Google focuses on features and performance. Your personalized Google page won't be as pretty or cool-looking as My Yahoo, but it's packed with as much stuff as you'd want to put in there, and it works. Gmail sports one of the plainest-looking interfaces around, but for speed, storage capacity, POP-friendliness (you can run it in almost any desktop client app), and searchability, Gmail kicks Yahoo Mail's butt. When it comes to advertising, Google's text-oriented, clunky-looking approach continues to win, even as Yahoo trips over its own shoelaces with Overture. And for search—well, what do you use?

"Me-Two": And as for Microsoft, who can tell it better today than Charlie Demerjian, in this very funny (and, I think, accurate) analysis of the fate of Vista, courtesy of The Inquirer, which is a frequent must-read for all geeks and technophiles.

Getting Feisty on the Mac

Ubuntu Linux released version 7.04 (that's Y / MM, for those of you who care) last Thursday, so I decided to give it a spin on the MacBook, since I already have a solid Linux setup on the Wintel box in MEPIS.

First, you should be aware that not everyone's applauding. There have been reports of the dreaded "grub error 18" on Feisty installations, and problems with DHCP setups and third-party drivers continue to pester Ubuntu.

But let's focus on the positives, shall we? I downloaded the installation cd onto the MacBook (note for Intel Mac users: you have to take the ISO disk image and drag it over to Disk Utility and burn it there, for Boot Camp to recognize it as a valid bootable disk). Here's what you need to start, if you'd like to try this at home:

the Feisty Fawn cd, burned as per above

rEFIt installed on your Mac. rEFIt is a great utility that's free to download. It works with Boot Camp and your Mac's EFI BIOS to provide the user a gateway at bootup. It manages the various OS installations and allows you to select from them, right at startup.

and of course, a working Intel Mac with the latest firmware drivers installed and Boot Camp enabled. I didn't try this in Parallels or VMware Fusion, so if you'd like to give it a shot there, swing away, but don't blame me if it locks up your Mac.

So once you have rEFIt installed, you need to open Boot Camp (Applications / Utilities / Boot Camp Assistant) and go through its user-friendly guided partitioning steps. Set the "Windows" partition that you'll use for Ubuntu to 10GB, let Boot Camp do its stuff, put the Feisty Fawn disk into the media drive, and restart your Mac. rEFIt will show you the Linux penguin and let you start Ubuntu. Once it's in live cd mode, the Feisty Fawn's desktop will appear, and you can use the handy desktop icon to begin the installation.

The installation of Feisty Fawn, soup to nuts, took less than 45 minutes, and I did do some manual partitioning, more out of choice than compulsion. If you try the auto-partitioning option, just make sure the Fawn isn't wiping out your entire Mac HD (thanks to rEFIt, it should only touch the "Windows" partition that Boot Camp made for you). Manual partitioning is safer, to my mind, and it allows you to specify the sizes for your root and swap partitions (I made my root 9GB and the swap 1GB). The G-Part utility in Ubuntu makes it all easy enough even for a non-geek like me to handle.

Once that was done, the rest was cake. Feisty installed and allowed me to switch over to the KDE desktop from the command line, without even asking for a restart. Everything is there and runs nicely; the OS recognized my Apple keyboard and trackpad; instantly connected via the Ethernet port to my cable modem; and even offered me access to my Mac HD and all the files in it (you may have to change some permissions on the Mac side to get full access). That Open Office window in the graphic above is a Word document I opened from the Mac HD within Linux. Astonishing.

Now, the problems (hey, it's a new release): I tried finding a driver for the Atheros 802.11n WiFi card, but no luck. Then I attempted a command-line setup to the card, which also didn't work. So for now, I have no Wifi access via Linux on the MacBook.

Another problem is the power management, which I suspect can be fixed as soon as I have the time. When I left the MacBook in Ubuntu in sleep mode (power on, lid shut) overnight, I woke up to find its battery exhausted. This never happens with OS X running: sleep in OS X is more like a coma. I can leave it like that all night and lose less than 5% of the battery life.

And the old problems with browser plugin configurations remain in Feisty. This is where MEPIS really shines, because when you install it and open a Firefox window, all your plugins (Shockwave, Flash, Quicktime over M-Player or Kaffeine) are right there, up and running. For this and other usability reasons, I'd still recommend MEPIS for Windows users migrating to Linux and wanting an easy, smooth transition. That said, Feisty Fawn shows considerable improvement over its predecessors for display flexibility (I can get it up to 1280 X 800 now, which wasn't possible in previous versions of Ubuntu), desktop design, file management, and overall performance. On a scale of ten, I'd give Feisty a 7.5, with MEPIS registering an 8.0 by comparison (I'd add that Mac OS X rates a solid 9, and Windows XP a 7—don't even ask me about Vista).

Before we leave that story, one final tip of the cap to San Quentin Steve: the Apple MacBook is a laptop you can love. What a marvelous piece of hardware: ingenious design at both the technical and user-interface levels, and an operating system that takes virtually anything you throw at it. And that Boot Camp was able to recognize, accept, and work with an OS that was released a year after it speaks to the versatility and integrity of these UNIX-based machines. Take a bow, Steve: you'll look great in stripes.
________________

Before we go, a program note for this evening: 9:00 PM, PBS, don't miss it. Bill Moyers tells the truth about the media and the selling of the Iraq War.