Archive for the “Life notes” Category

Good news for bloggers and forum owners: According to the American Constitution Blog (did you know there was such a blog? Doing research for a client I found a blog dedicated to painting finger and toe nails so there should be at least one devoted to the Constitution), blog and forum owners are not responsible for the comments or posts left by others. From the post:

Examining the impact of Sec. 230 on this case, the court noted that “Congress intended that, within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,” adding that allowing bloggers and message board operators to be sued for the statements of commenters on their sites would have an “obvious chilling effect” on speech. Accordingly, the court dismissed the complaint against Lycos.

Amen brothers! Or Bretheren. Let freedom of speech ring!

Bear with me. I will get to why this is relevant to this blog in a moment. But first I want to explain why the new TV show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip sucks.

I have watched 2.2 episodes of the new series. Last night, I tried to watch episode 3 but I had a cold and after taking some heavily narcotic over the counter drug, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That’s OK. I had already pretty much established my perspective on the show. I am not a HUGE TV fan. I don’t have the time or the energy to watch a lot of TV. Although I try not to miss the Daily Show or the Colbert Report.

I have to say I can get hooked on some shows on network TV. I was a big fan of the The West Wing, especially the first couple years. So, I was really looking forward to this new show that’s being created by Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme the team that produced the best of the The West Wing. And it stars Bradley Whitford who played a big part in the old show. So I was primed. Eager to get drawn in to a new diversion.

But here’s the thing: It’s about a TV show. So, unlike The West Wing which had revolved around political and social issues like war, poverty, government corruption, etc., the people on this new show are stressing about whether or not the next episode of their COMEDY gets good reviews, ratings, and retains its advertisers. So, what’s at stake? Nothing, but their own hides. Who cares?

The show is full of talented people. The writers, directors and actors are all good. Though I have to say, the casting is a little too pretty.

But set aside comparison to The West Wing. What’s really working on TV? Shows about crime, shows about people in hospitals facing horrendous disease and death, shows about terrorists, survival. In other words shows where something we can relate to is at stake. Do we really care if comedian X gets enough good lines in a sketch or if detergent maker Y hangs in there as a sponsor of the show? Also, I am a little tired of the visual style where everything is dark, deeply shadowed. As if chiaroscuro will deepen the meaning of every seen.

So, how does this relate to technology? I just got to thinking, this show seems to be directed at a younger audience. One that thinks Saturday Night Live is hip (is there such a demographic anymore?). Maybe there is an audience out there for this show. But when I look at the overall TV panoply I wonder why there is not a single show about the Internet…one that has the Internet as a central theme.

So here is my proposal to Hollywood: Stop making movies and shows that only use the Internet as a foil, full of geeks and perverts (often the same person to these folks). Instead, why not create a story enmeshed in the networked culture, one that is subject to the pressures of ever excellerating change, one that touches all parts of the world, not just the insular world of entertainment in the United States. Wouldn’t that attract the young audience they say they are after? Where is that young audience? On the Internet, increasingly aware of the power of the network (the computer network, not the broadcasting network), increasingly excited by the ability to be the producers of content and not the passive recipients.

They probably don’t embrace the Internet out of fear. They are afraid of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Web 2.0, the blogoshphere. The fear will make traditional entertainment increasingly irrelevant. Get on the bus, people!

So, yesterday I did about 10 minutes in front of the Eureka Rotary. I’m a member. I was part of a presentation about the Redwood Technology Consortium. I am President of the Board! And before I got in to technology, I spent about 20 years in professional and academic theater doing everything from circus to Shakespeare.

When I used to do theater I was extremely confident. I could walk out on stage and make the audience laugh with my entrance. I felt the power of the spotlight. I thought I could do the same with this crowd. I thought I knew the material (RTC and local telecom issues). I had a joke ready. But I blew it.
I said ‘uh’ in front of every sentence. I was uncomfortabale. I was nervous. I felt the audience staring at me waiting for something interesting or funny and I couldn’t deliver. I wanted to get off stage as quickly as possible.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad. But I felt horrible. Where did that guy go who could hold an audience just by looking at them? He’s been buried for 10 years. At least my cat and dog think I’m still fascinating. One reason to have pets I guess.

This morning while running (and breathing heavily) I listened to a fascintating story on NPR about a facility that cares for the elderly using a very sophisticated monitoring system. The clients in this care home wear a badge that transmits minute by minute data about what they are doing, what they have eaten, their heart rate, their breath rate, God only know what other data this badge collects.

This story brought out a lot of thoughts as I trudged around my usual route dragging my lazy yellow lab over the last mile.

The first was that I predicted this kind of data gathering and monitoring at least 10 years ago when I used to teach web design for the College of the Redwoods Community Education Program. What seemed self-evident to me at the time, must have sounded crackpot to the students trying to learn the basics of HTML. I said back then that the Internet would become a conduit for all kinds of data and that the web sites they wanted to build would be just a tiny slice. I didn’t think it would take this long. And I didn’t imagine the first real world application of this this concept would flourish among the elderly. Now, though it makes sense. It’s only a matter of time until we are all wearing clothes that monitor our vital signs, our slightest activities, the data gathered in some vast database monitored by the NSA and powered by solar panels woven in to the sleeves and back panels of our shirts and jackets. We are moving to a world connected everywhere and through everything at all time to the greater network.

Is this a good thing or bad? What freedoms do we give up? Gosh, remember Richard Brautigan?:

“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

We can be swaddled in technology, but do we really want that? Do we have a choice?

My mother died of Alzheimer’s last year. She lived in a care home right up until she died. It was a lovely, comforting place with a good staff. Still, I never felt I had enough information about her condition. Though the home was only a 6 minute drive from where I lived, I still couldn’t get over there often enough. And when I did, I never felt I had the whole story. In the NPR story, one of the people profiled cut his daughter off from receiving his data because she was using it to interfere with his daily life.

So enough about others. Again, my thoughts turn back to…me. What will I want when I need to have 24 hour care? Will I want the comfort of knowing someone is monitoring every heartbeat, each step, each breath? Or will I wish to toss off the the web of care and fade off in to oblivion? If I would accept this level of attention then, why not now in case I develop something way before I need to go to a care home. And what about the children? What level of scrutiny will they accept? What level of monitoring will we permit in the name of safety?

These questions aren’t future based. They are immediate. They go to heart of the government’s arguement over warrantless wiretapping and wholesale gathering of phone call data. All necessary to protect us from terrorists they say.

Nike and Apple are teaming up to give runners and walkers more data on how far they have moved and how many calories they have burned. This article intrigued me because it seemed to claim that running is “…Really Worth It”.

Now I’ve been ‘running’ off and on for many years. I still jog 2-3 miles nearly every day. My dog makes me. But I remember reading The Complete Book of Running over 25 years ago. I carried it with me when I moved about the country. Back then I really ran - miles and miles in heat and freeing rain. And then, in 1984, the author, Jim Fixx, died of a heart attack WHILE RUNNING! That tended to dampen my spirtits for a while.
So, I was really interested in this article about Nike and Apple and how they were going to tell me that all the pain and sweat was really worth it. But, they don’t. All they are really giving is some real time statistics. Kinda cool. But not enough to get me to buy $100 shoes and a $30 gadget for my IPod. And it still doesn’t tell me if all the running is really worth it. Will I live longer? Does it matter if the pain in my hips keeps me up all night?

Warning: This post not related to technology or the north coast of California. Skip at your own risk.

The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. That could be considered a statement of fact in spite of the author’s assertions that the story is based on historical accuracy. The movie of the novel by the same name is, then, clearly a work of fiction. So why all the controversy about the book and the movie? Why are so many religious folks so upset?

Let’s put aside the ‘fact’ that the book is a piece of trash as I have already said, and the majority of critics have said as much about the movie.

At the risk of being denounced as a blasphemer (that has happened before), I think it’s because the very basis of Christianity, the stories in the Bible, have clearly been revealed as works of fiction themselves. It’s not that they were based on fictional characters. It’s quite possible that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Peter, Judas and all the other characters we know really existed in some form. But the people who wrote about them didn’t know them first hand. They wrote down stories they had heard and which had been passed down over many years. The canon (the group of books that have come to be known as the Bible) were selected from a large number of texts over many years in a cultural and political climate that we can barely comprehend at this distance. The defenders of the canon violently excluded other versions of the stories we have come to accept as factual.

So, I profess the virulent denounciations of The Da Vinci Code, both the novel and movie arise out of defensiveness. Of course, the stories in The Da Vinci Code are fiction. No one has proclaimed otherwise. But because the alternative reality they have put forth has captured the popular imagination, people who believe in the stories of the Bible suddenly feel that belief undermined. If the fictions of the book and the movie are so popular, doesn’t that call in to question the reality of the biblical stories? Especially since we now already have numerous alternate interpretations of the life of Jesus that are only considered ‘fiction’ because a group of men in the early centuries of the Christian movement declared them so.

To understand why Christians are feeling so defensive, see the books by Elaine Pagels which chronicle how the canon was formed, and the recenlty revealed ‘Gospel of Judas‘. These revelations undermine the absolute authority of the canon. Their influence is limited to a small minority of readers. But they have plowed the fields in preparation for the more popular and fast spreading shcock of The Da Vinci Code.

This may seem like a shameless attempt to get traffic to my blog, but it’s not. Ok, maybe it is a little. Instead of writing about really important things like Net Neutrality, if I have a lot of references to the “Da Vinci Code” I’m sure I’ll get a lot more traffick.

But I have been honestly been thinking a about writing about the “The Da Vinci Code” for quite some time. With the advent of the movie and all the hub bub about the Catholic Church’s oppostion to it, I thought now would be an appropriate time.

I read the book well over a year ago. I like thillers and mysteries. And a mystery about one of the great mysteries in history sounded fascintating. I loved “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco, for example.

But I have to be honest. I think the book sucks. I had to force myself to read it all the way through. I bought it before it had come out in paperback so I wanted to be sure I got my money’s worth. While the premise of the story is intriguing I thought the plot was stupid, the characterization shallow and the writing style awkward and amateurish. I said this at the time I was reading it and I continue to be baffled by all the excitement over this thing. I refuse to read any other Dan Brown book because I don’t think he is a good writer.

Maybe the movie will be better. I think the thinness of the story is more fitting for a movie anyway. I certainly won’t bother to go see it at the theater. I hardly ever go to the movie theater anyway, and this certainly won’t draw me in.

In case you’re confused, there really are two Earth Days: One, held on the Spring Equinox, was started in 1970 and is recognized by the U.N.; the other, more popular in the U.S., and also first celebrated in 1970 is held on April 22. You can read about the two versions at Wikipedia. I think what’s most important is focusing on the health of the Earth today, and every day.

Of course there is the huge issue of global warming that seems to be moving ever slowly and inevitably like, well, like a glacier. Looked at up closely in our every day lives we can’t really see it moving. Looked at from a greater distance and over time we can see it moving toward us with increasing velocity and unstoppable force.

Reading about global warming does make it feel unstoppable, overwhelming. But is it? Are we already too late, past the tipping point? According to Elizabeth Kolbert who wrote an excellent 3 part series in the the New Yorker (unfortunately, no longer on line)  says in this interview, we can’t reverse global warming, but we “…can mitigate climate change by reducing emissions.”

So what can we do here on the North Coast to help mitigate the climage change? With gas well over $3.00 per gallon already here, one obvious action would be to drive less. Walk more, bicycle more, plan better.

We can also support efforts for the development of alternative energy sources. We can be more concientious about how we treat our waste. The Humboldt Recycler’s page by fellow blogger Fred Mangels provides a lot of resources for alternatives to just throwing things out.

You can also just get outside and enjoy the sun in this gorgeous world of ours to highten your appreciation and will to help save it. You might even do it this weekend in an organized way say, at Godwit Days.

This is more of a personal post not really tech related, so be warned.

I just got done doing my Easter celebration. I went for a run with my dog while the moon was still shining over the bay and the sun was just starting rise. After so much foul weather the beautiful Spring morning in freshly scrubbed air felt sacred. But I was also listening to a discussion on my IPod from one of my favorite NPR programs Open Source Radio. My IPod lets me time shift lots of audio content. There. That’s my tech talk for today.

Specifically, I listened to a discussion of the book “What Jesus Meant” with the author Garry Wills and others. It was an ‘enlightening’ discussion and gave me a great deal to think about regarding Jesus and religion in general.

I am a recovering Catholic. That is, I was raised Catholic, attended catechism and Catholic summer school with the nuns (there was no regular Catholic school in the small town were I grew up). But for many years I have been among what polls have indicated is the small minority of people who do not consider themselves to be Christian in this country. I am surrounded, then by people who take the Christian faith seriously. My wife and daughter belong to a large evangelical church. Even so, I remain highly skeptical of organized religion of any kind.

On the other hand, I have always been highly curious about spirituality and the history of religion. I have read widely on a variety of Eastern and Western religions and spiritual practices. I’m not a scholar by any means. More of a dilettante. Regarding the Christian tradition, though, I have read enough about the history of the bible and the formation of the religion to understand how much human politics have muddied the waters in attempting to appreciate the teachings of Jesus.

But on days like this (not religious holidays, necessarily, just days where the world and my soul feel united if only for a few moments) I feel connected to something spiritual. I feel it physically and I feel a lifting and brightening of what I can only describe as spirit. And that is enough for me. Except for this post (which is highly uncharacterisitc for me) I do not talk about my spirituality with others, and feel highly uncomfortable with public displays of religious beliefs (as when I occasionally attend a church service).

So, this brings me roundabout back to the show on “What Jesus Meant” - and did not mean. According to Wills, Jesus was about transcendant spirituality. He was not about using religious affiliation as a political cudgel. And it is only in this private and transcendant tradition that can I feel a direct connection to Christ on this day that celebrates his personal transcendance.

Technorati Tags: easter jesus garry wills

I love my IPod. Mostly I listen to Podcasts of news and tech shows. It’s actually a video IPod so sometimes I watch things on it as well. But that inhibits multitasking. Like right now I am listening to a podcast from Open Source Radio on the confilict in Iraq while I type. I don’t really listen to much music on it. I am thinking of getting the new FM Tuner that lets you switch between stored shows and using the IPod as an FM radio. Now, if only Apple would allow the IPod to be a recording device.

In any case, I wonder if the Pope will have as much fun and get as much use out of his new IPod as I do. It appears he, too, will be listening mostly to podcasts, though it did come preloaded with “musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky.” When he received the IPod the Pope remarked, “Computer technology is the future.”. Indeed. Will the Pope log on to ITunes and download some Pink, just to check it out?

Yesterday (Saturday) was one of those near-perfect days in Humboldt County that makes me so happy and grateful to be living here.
It started out with a kayak excursion on Trinidad Bay. I joined a group of about 15 kayakers, all members of Explore Northcoast, a club devoted to paddling adventures. The air was clear and crisp, the water was calm, and in spite of the chill, I felt wonderfully warm and cozy as we paddled along the the rock gardens, through the passage at Prisoner’s Rock and out and around Pilot Rock. Along the way we paddled through kelp forests, stopped to watch tidepools on the Trinidad head and gazed from a respectful distance as a river otter chomped on a mussle while warming its fur in morning sun.

Because of an early start, I got home in time for a quick lunch, did a few chores (I did say it was a near-perfect day), took a nap and then headed for the Bayside Grange where I joined about 450 other people at a benefit for Don Wolski. Don is a beloved community member who has touched a lot lives through his participation in various local projects, including being one of the founders of the Redwood Technology Consortium. He is battling a brain tumor, and, in spite of two surgeries and lots of medication, seemed strong and happy last night, as people partied in his honor.

A lot of people know Don and his wife Maggie Gainer and many of them turned out to help Don, eat a great tamale dinner and enjoy music from a string of wonderful local bands. Many thanks to Larry Goldberg who worked like a demon to pull this off.

One kind of tech note: The event was web cast for anyone who wished they could be there but could not. It as a little bit of a duct taped operation that went down for a while when someone kicked the plug out of its socket by mistake and the router had to be rebooted. But it was clear lots of people were joining the party remotely and leaving messages in the chat function. It was high-tech Humboldt style.

The perfect weekend seemed to continue today as I went out for my run at dawn in another crystal clear monring. A bright half-moon still hung over the bay and the rising sun dusted the fog bank offshore in a soft rose color.