We are the revolution.
It doesn't matter who is elected President in November. It doesn't matter if George W. Bush or Dan Glickman (of the MPAA) or Hilary Rosen or Michael Eisner or anyone else in power listens to us. If we do our job, they will have to listen to us. The future is ours to take, and ours to lose. Ask yourself, "How can I change the world - even if just a little - today?" and then go do it; talk about it later.
And don't "do" by yelling and tearing down and whining, but build, create, solve, innovate. (Violence is not only physical, after all.)
If I could live by the above credo, I would be doing well. (And, yes, everything I just said contradicts about 80% of the essence of this journal. But, we only cease changing when we are dead, and hypocrites always make the best critics.)
A young man asked one of the sages, "Mr. _____, though old, is not a wise man. Why should I listen to him just because he is old, even if he knows nothing?"
The wise man answered, "Suppose there is a stand of old oak trees so dense that no light shines through their branches, and suppose that among the oaks is a weak tree not native to that area that is just as large as the old oak trees. Now, suppose an acorn should turn to a seedling, and that that seedling should try to grow into a tree. Now, if a harsh storm comes, will the old weak tree stand?"
"Of course not," said the young man. "But I would wager that the young oak will!"
"You are correct. But suppose that a storm does not come, will the young oak be able to grow in the shade of that old, weak tree?"
"No, because there will not be any light for the young tree because the old tree will block all of the light."
"So it is with men as well," said the wise man. "Therefore show respect even to the weak of mind and character [among your elders], lest you suffer from lack of light."
[Believe it or not, this started as an idea for part of a science fiction story.]
Who would have thought, the Cardigans are actually not bad. I hear their older stuff is much better, but I picked them up through "Lovefool" off of First Band on the Moon - obviously not meant as serious music, and not exactly a masterpiece - which was big back in 1997 (and, oddly enough, one of the first pieces of music I heard while in Latvia), but more so I recently heard "Communication" from their latest album Long Gone Before Daylight. I checked out some of the rest of the album; the reviewers are correct, it is a little too bleak and (worse) "self-pitying." "Please, Sister" is an awesome song though, even if I don't have a clue what it means. A few more songs on my way to collecting all the good pop music ever made! (A dubious goal to be sure... but if I ever start my own radio station, I am set!)
I know no one really cares, but since no one is writing anything useful here anyway...
One major problem with news stories and columns, especially political ones: Lack of citations, especially of primary sources. Inexcusable. If you're going to write a story saying x% of money designated for purpose y ended up for purpose z instead, cite some sources! Sheesh. And stories in the New York Times only count for a fraction of a point. I expect primary sources.
Users need to understand that Internet Explorer is dead and obsolete software. Disclaimer: Microsoft is making security updates for it. But, for everything else, Microsoft has said repeatedly, no updates until the release of Longhorn, which is still months or years out. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer is using years-old (dating to the late nineties in some cases, I believe) technology for the most part. There are many things the average user is unaware of, such as transparency for PNGs (don't worry about it, except to know it drastically holds back web designers, and is technology that is here today). There are workarounds, but, still, it is unnecessary extra work that only works in some cases (e.g. I wanted to use transparent PNG as a background; as far as I know, that cannot be done in IE). And there are so many other things broken in IE in it CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) support, it isn't even funny. I don't mean just outdated, though it definitely is, i mean broken.
Just to make it clear: If you are using IE, you may be missing out, except for some silly pages that insist of cutting off their own right arms to look better on IE. Even more important, IE is holding back the web. Let IE die! There are better (free!) alternatives anyone can download and use. There is no reason to be using outdated IE in any but special situations. My apologies to anyone at MS who does care, but you know it is true, too, I hope. Hopefully, MS will wake up and fix this. In the meantime, users, do the world a favor and enter the twenty-first century.
So beach volleyball is evidently one of the big sports in Athens right now, in part because of the uniforms - or lack thereof. Though one could debate the merits of a decision to continue to promote the sport specifically by trying to bring the appearance of the athletes into it (and despite the classical value of beautiful bodies, in our society it is definitely looked down on), one thing that is less debatable, at least to my understanding, is that this is pretty much along the lines of how the Greeks handled things in the ancient gymnasiums, so it seems appropriate. After all, they seemed to be rather fond of looking at naked male bodies; and lest you doubt that was in part what they were up to, remember Plato having Socrates (I think) complain about the old men showing up to the gymnasium - because of course they were so ugly naked - in The Republic. So, we return to our cultural roots with beach volleyball, I say.
I just came back from California. The significance of that fact is that I made the mistake of renting a car while I was there. I claimed this would give me the independence that would be useful while visiting two completely unrelated groups of people on the same trip (not likely they would want to shuttle me around between houses, that is to say). I also claimed this would give me an opportunity to become more familiar with the area; why that would be helpful still has not occurred to me.
The true reason, I suspect, however, was sheer greed for gratification, I suspect. I like driving. Renting a car would give me a chance to drive in an interesting place I had never driven, and would allow me to drive a car I don't usually get to drive, since I am usually stuck driving my classy but dull Buick Century.
[Remainder of article]Okay, I want a proposal on the following:
(1) A method for delivering video content (a) over the Internet, (b) on demand (i.e. program-by-program and episode-by-episode basis), (c) that will scale with increased demand, and (d) at a quality level competetive with television. [Today we have some that meet the first two conditions, but not really the scalability requirement, and usually not the last one].
(2) A means of financially supporting the use of the technology in (1) in such a way that will not be burdensome to consumers. Especially, the scheme should use no digital rights management. Preferably, this method should not require subscriptions. [Perhaps selling DVDs or film? Or merchandising? Or donations? Or credited sponsorship? I like that last one - credit in the next episode anyone who gave above a certain amount of money.]
Some work is being done on (1), though as mentioned above, nothing is quite there yet. I don't think anyone has really made any general suggestions regarding (2). Obviously, some groups have already found a way to support themselves; will any of these methods distribute money in a useful way when there is a drastically increased supply of programming, and, if so, which is best? Otherwise, we will need a completely new one. Advertising in its current form will likely not be possible, and probably not desirable; product placement is to be despised.
(I think the following is perhaps a little harsh, but I think on the whole it is close to what reality is - despite my penchant for hyperbole. I was tempted to sit on it longer, but I wanted to post it. Perhaps I will revise it to be more coherent and repost it later.)
While the world has grown greatly in complexity since the founding of the United States, not all of our institutions have responded equally well. The press may be the most representative of these.
Although the news today is a booming business - witness CNN, MSNBC, FOX News on the visual side, for example - it shows some distinct immaturity. It has not grown up, but merely grown fat.
I listened tonight to a rebroadcast of a panel of anchors from the major news shows. It was amazing in general how uncritical they wanted to remain toward government and toward politicians. Although they made it clear they had doubted arguments the Bush administration had presented for the invasion of Iraq, at the same time they showed a remarkable amount of trust in the President's and government's word (see my previous post for more thoughts on that). This time, however, it is not the rank naivete that shows, but rather the laziness and weakness it shows. There is no real reason, perhaps other than economic, why the news media should ever be at the mercy of the word of the United States government. The press has largely parrotted the government's take on just about everything in the Middle East except perhaps in Israel and Palestine and even then. There has on occasion been some good investigation performed after the fact on some events in Iraq and elsewhere, but before the fact the press has fairly consistently been caught off guard, playing catch up.
There is no reason why the press should not be anticipating events and currents around the world not just in the Middle East, or at the very minimum ready immediately to provide the information needed by the American public in response to world events or the announcements of our government. How so? In the senate hearings on the September 11 Commission report on July 30, the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission pointed out the importance of "open sources" - which is the intelligence community's term for sources which are, of course, "open," for example foreign news sources, publications by radical organizations - whatever sources can be acquired without actually lying, stealing, or breaking any laws. The point is, if even the United States government (and to a lesser extent the intelligence community, which has done a fairly poor job of using these sources if reports are to be believed) sees the value of this type of information - it has been suggested that the largest part of intelligence work could be done through effective processing of these sources. No one has claimed that all intelligence could be replaces by the largely passive open source intelligence, but if it is even the largest part, that must be something. But the press need not stop there. But the media is harldy at the mercy of foreign journalists and rumors published by others. Many large news organizations have correspondants all over the world gathering this very kind of information themselves.
Regardless of the practicalities, and comprehensive, on-going, anticipatory research - journalistic intelligence - is not likely to be cheap, it is, I believe, what the press should aspire to. Real news does not come from our government, it should be read by our government. A press that waits for crises to arise or, worse, waits for the government's opinions on the world is not really providing any value. We could all just watch the White House's press conferences and spend our time wondering what went wrong that led up to the September 11th attack - which, you might notice, sounds suspiciously like what we do now. What can we do to avert future terrorist events? The press has been silent, except some rather vapid and sensationalistic "fear mongering," lots of talk about dirty bombs and biological attacks by al Qaeda and mentions of "homeland security" - all topics chosen by, and terminology invented by, the United States government. Certainly we must respond to what comes out of our government, but should we really be merely following their docket? Where is the independent thought on these topics?
I am not acquainted with the details of the budgets of large news and media organizations, but I conjecture that the resources are available to make the changes I propose here. Even if they are not available, they should be made available to the greatest extent possible.
Americans are not stupid, they are naive. How many times have you heard people who should know better - Senators, reporters, etc. - say that they supported the war because they trusted the President. This is not criticism of the President, rather those who should have known better but decided that the fallacy of relying on authority did not apply in the tweny-first century.
I am too young to remember the Watergate incident. But none of these people are.
There were some subtleties, but in general, there was plenty of room for doubt. I know because the only time I wavered (or anyway as I recall 18 months later) was after Colin Powell's speech to the UN. And even that was a mistake on my part. Perhaps, as part of the new, young, cynical generation I am programmed to doubt. But again, I point out I missed the Watergate incident. (I do remember some well-known shenanigans involving the truth from the last President though... surely the media should remember that as well.) We need to rethink the idea that just because it came from someone important, it is true.
And by the way, I have an even greater fear that Americans, bitten too many times, may become bitter and disillusioned and hence reactionary, and swing back the other way. Disillusionment has a way of leading to a sort of nihilism, which can be very dangerous. But, in this case, there is no reason for there to be any more disillusionment, if we are just willing to apply some reasonable skepticism.
