I dislike the high prices and general tone of the site, but this is as close to what I've done with paper planners for myself.
http://www.harvardplanner.com
The salient features are: not only do you get structured (down to 15 min. or less) planning, but also space for weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks, as well as a place for a mission statement. It helps sometimes, if you have space for the larger picture, so to speak.
Also, for a personal organizer, I've always wanted one that integrates expense tracking as well (H.P. doesn't): it's a lot easier to write down "Lunch, $4.95" while you're eating lunch, rather than have to flip over to another section/use a different program. Just a suggestion...
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail." --Erich Fromm.
From the description given, this book more than amply illustrates this quotation. Since the end of the Cold War, any number of pundits have desperately clung to the memory of the world when Adam toiled in his field, Eve span in the cotton mill, and intellectuals played the gentleman, whose wise direction alone could rout the Serpent from the garden and keep the forbidden fruit from ignorant hands.
Back in those days (1920-1950), they rhapsodize, it was easy to recognize the American Working Class as selfless, hard-working, and naturally communitarian, the kind of guys who were actually happy to be cogs in the machine, tied to their jobs, families, and small towns or city neighborhoods. Abused by Wall Street, and given hope by the New Deal, they would have emerged triumphant under an American Soviet that would utilize the emerging infrastructures of mass transportation, apartment living, lunch-counter or cafeteria meals, radio and movies, to run the country in a humane and completely controlled manner, feeding, clothing, housing, transporting, and amusing people with the precision and efficiency of a Ford assembly line (Huxley fans take note!). Of course, in order to do this, there would have to be an educated planning elite, with two houses and cars (town and country) per family, gourmet food on the table, tailored clothing, original art on the walls, a horse, pool, or sailboat, and subscription tickets to the ballet and opera -- but let's not quibble.
Unfortunately, the Fifties and Sixties happened. In ways that they have yet to explain satisfactorily, working-class people began to ask for, and then, demand, individuality in the form of customized tract houses, cars with chrome tail fins, TV's (and TV dinners), consumer goods galore (in 14 decorator colors), and so forth. All of a sudden, the Noble Worker, young, brawny, and good-hearted, became the bloated and bigoted Archie Bunker, and the main thrust of Marxism in this country shifted away from unionism and the pie-in-the-sky world of Marxist equitable distribution, but to college students, whose concerns were such things as the end of the arms race and the war in Vietnam. For a while, they had a enthusiastic following, as most young men didn't want to get drafted, but it soon became apparent that even the most highminded Marxist movements of the third world were no better than local despots in insuring even minimal standards of living for its people, and even sooner, the war ended. While, for a stretch, the Reagan/Bush administration's sword-rattling against the Russians and Chinese allowed for an extension of the peace movement, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc left most would-be Marxists with no mass movement at all.
Ah, but there was one last hope: the collapse of Reaganomics left many with little money, and less faith in the market. Surely it seemed fitting that the capitalist world would fade away as the the communist one did: when the smoke cleared, we'd be left at zero, free to remake society in the mold of...well, it wouldn't be Adam Smith, would it? Besides, there was always the evil power of technology, especially that "Internet" that threatened to be a private hegemony of the wealthy and powerful, that would turn people against the Market and towards the benign world of the Hammer and Sickle....but no.....
Hence the almost frantic scrambling to ascribe Marxist longings onto Native Americans, Third World villagers, farmers in the heartland, anyone, in short whose motives have gone unpublicized enough to be co-opted by outsiders. Scratch a ghetto hip-hopper, they intimate, and beyond the shallow longings for Adidas, Karl Kani pants, and unlimited coke and bitches, they'll find a true-blue Red longing to put in a full eight-hour day working at a collective farm, perhaps even taking time to sing a spiritual, or some other musical form beloved of the American Negro, as he swings his hoe for the zillionth time gandy-dancing the rows of beans. Ah, yes, it's sooo nice to watch them, while relaxing with an amusing Chardonnay by the pool...I would even join them, except...I have to do a little research...
I live here and now in an apartment in one of those "idyllic" working-class neighborhoods, in the city of New Haven, where the compassionate intelligensia meets the hardscrabble ethnics who would be ruled by them. And I see two things. First, the ethnics hate the intellectuals, big time, and unionization is just another way to get a retirement fund. Second, the ethnics aren't as dumb as everyone wants to think. I work as a Johnny Cyberseed in my community: almost everyone I talk to wants a computer if they don't have one, Internet access if they do, and Linux if they want a career-oriented skill. People ask me about websites, and are astounded when they find out they don't need to pay to have one. I may not, in the long run, create the kind of center of Internet activity I see in San Francisco or New York. But I can see that if any kind of Internet company were to start now, it would not be tied even to centers of people, but to constellations of people.
Let's try something new.
In the Salon article about the original two books. Apparently some lesbian-in-codependency-recovery (aren't they all?--bad Teleny! bad, bad, Teleny!) decided to talk to Card about the book, and how much of a "healing experience" it was to read it.
Bad mistake. Card is a Mormon and takes a very dim view of lesbians. The l-in-c-r took a dim view of war (being politically correct and all). The resulting deadlock was hilarious, as Card sounded incredibly sensible (albeit a bit conservative) and the l-in-c-r sounded increasingly hysterical.
Don't miss this one. WWF RAW is WAR was never so vehement. Really!
...look up the April 1999 issue, crypto fans.
It contains an article about "The Voynich MS", a book (we THINK it's a medical textbook) from the Renaissance that NO ONE has been able to decypher. Solve this one, and you'll have one doozy of a line in your resume (and maybe, we'll find out something really neat in medicine!) Oh, yes, the illustrations are way-kewl, too: wild flowers, Terry Gilliam-style plumbing, and LOTS of naked women.
The translation project has been on the net since 1991, and is WAY underpublicized, so I'm throwing this in to help out. Good Hunting!
One of the most interesting discussions of this phenomenon in my experience came when I was trying to perusade a local prog intellectual bookstore/community org. to have a website. While I'd been on the 'net since 1992 or thereabouts, and thought a web site (that I'd do free) was a natural for such an enterprise, the owner saw 'net participation as bending over to the Man. I replied that the 'net was the voice of the voiceless, the recourse for those who'd otherwise be shut out by Time/Life/Warner, Rupert Murdoch, & Co...that there were any number of progressive organizations, local groups, and even Third Worlders that were testing the waters and finding the 'net a godsend. (Bhutan, which is rumored to come online--real soon now--with cheap solar-powered NC's, came to mind....)
"So, there're aborigines in Australia who whip out laptops?" (Like, right....)
"Dunno about Australia. But they do talk about tribal villages in the Amazon who regularly check the prices their handicrafts fetch in the galleries of New York."
Total incredulity."They care?"
"And they aren't at all pleased by what they've seen...so far. They're really pissed at all the tourist gringoes who've ripped them off, getting artifacts that represent weeks of good work for almost free."
Strange guilty look....
Point is, one of the things that globalization, including 'net access, is going to do, what it is doing, is destroying much of the romantic notions that the urban progressive intellgensia (of which New Haven has a large community) has had about the rest of the world. Their world is split into three: themselves, a thick shell around them of hostile know-nothings (and their controllers), and a huge world of female/ Third World/ of color/ poor/ lesbian/ non-Christian/ etc. "authentic" peoples, who despite not having access to the academic journals detailing the latest fads in intellectual discourse, think exactly like themselves.
Back in the 1930's and '40's, there was a romantic notion that America's working poor were somehow all unconscious Marxists: that, given half a chance, they'd renounce nationalist fervor in favor of the "Internationale", and superstitious Judeo-Christianity for the spiritual consolations of the progress of history. These diamonds in the rough would have much rather had an functionally spare apartment in a housing project rather than a baroque Victorian castle, simple, clean, clothes rather than ruffly froufrou, and good fellowship rather than material ambitions -- it simply stands to reason that they'd be vegetarians by choice, and appreciate Beethoven. Given a good income, it was argued, a sharecropper would prefer to live like a professor in an Eastern university over the life of a tycoon.
This myth was shattered, not by McCarthy's Red-baiting, but by historical events. Even without a Marxist revolution, the American working class rose in income and real wealth enormously over the 50's and 60's....and what did they buy? Televisions with which to watch, not Shakespeare, but Milton Berle. Tract houses with lawn flamingoes. Gaudy cars from which milady emerged clad, not in elegant homespun, but in loud polyester. Suddenly, the Enemy wasn't the fat guy in the top hat, but Archie Bunker, who wanted no truck with communism, or even communitarianism: he looked out for No. 1. Blacks were even worse: the granddaughters of Southern poverty proudly bedecked themselves with gold chains, designer logos, and platform shoes, and heaped scorn on the affluent whites who were now wearing sneakers, T-shirts, and jeans. It's hard to maintain that the rural poor of Middle America value musical integrity above all else in the face of Dolly Parton. Most of these people above didn't care about communism...they didn't even feel terribly upset by Vietnam!
Since then, this romantic image has become more and more removed from reality as it focuses on more and more inaccessible people, who have progressively come forward to debunk it: Eastern Asians (the same who gave you MSG and Pokemon, perhaps?), Hindus and Moslems (like the clerk at the 24 store?), Native Americans (who operate casinos like Mohegan Sun?), and so forth. About the last refuge they have are the native healers like the (safely dead) historical witches of the Celtic fringe (who --despite being unable to prevent the deforestation of highland Scotland, losing one out of three children at birth, and coming from a society that practised slave-taking and serfdom before Christianity-- were ob/gyn geniuses and identical in ideology to affluent American ecofeminist deconstructionists), and the sainted tribes of the Amazon, whose mastery of lifegiving common- but- neglected- by- the- blinkered- FDA herbs (that cure everything from the common cold to cancer) is equalled only by their supreme indifference to material wealth and scorn of technology.
Bruce Sterling, from "Involution Ocean" onward, has consistently shown himself to be one of the dourest writers on the planet. Personally, he may be a nice guy. I liked "The Hacker Crackdown", very very much, and "The Difference Engine" is a real classic.
However, he seems not to be able to imagine anything like a future that works, or even works imperfectly, enmired as he is in the culture of despair that has gripped progressive intellectuals from about 1970 onward. Up till then, progressivism could point to a more-or-less standard set of benchmarks, say, X acres of swampland drained to produce X acres of land to house X new factories employing X number of people, all due to the wise central planning of a board of men working in the public interest. The hippie left, on the other hand, never could decide whether its ultimate Paradise was a city or a garden, a jungle or a void. (Not every hippie was keen on going up the country to work on Maggie's farm, or any farm, for that matter. For many, the Future was about lazily writing poetry while robots took care of the housework.) Their adoption of "the environment" as a cause (which heretofore, had been the province of dotty old ladies, deer hunters, and Barry Goldwater) meant that the situation was always lose-lose: no matter how well things were going, it would always have to be measured against an ideal state in which human beings were entirely absent. Finding out that Communism wasn't not merely sometimes, but most of the time harmful to developing (and even developed) countries, that even socialism wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, and that even current Soviet states were crumbling worsened the situation: while America, capitalism, and wearing suits and wing-tips were all still anathema, there seemed fewer and fewer alternatives. Nowadays, if you hear any progressive intellectual describe a desirable social order, it's usually with a fantasy element: a total abandonment of technology, communities of magic-using pantheists, descriptions of hypothetically "unspoiled" hunter-gatherer communities, Latino communites stripped of political unrest, machismo, or any but the most benign forms of Catholicism. Or else...nothing.
Mr. Sterling is a firm believer in nothing. If we'd been a little more careful, his authorial voice warns, we wouldn't have this mess. What we'd have otherwise doesn't seem to interest him:having more than seven billion people in the world is awful, but he also cites the lack of children around as a tragedy. Innovation is ultimately boring, but so is its lack: his all-business, all the time society isn't any less or more uninspiring than the progressive vision of turning all human endeavor into a form of politics. As for the environmental prognostications, it's almost a truism nowadays that eco-apocalypse is just as often predicted and often averted as the other kind. We didn't see it coming? And just what have we been hearing about all these years?
From what I've been able to figure out, Mr. Sterling was given an assignment to write about "the future of business", couldn't see one, and ended up trotting out the same old songs and dances. Sad.
I'm skeptical that anything Wiccan is any more of a "tradition" than the cutesy "traditional legends" attached to candy canes and sea shells in gift shops, claiming that the dogwood tree, for instance, is a symbol of the Crucifixion, or that Blue Willow China commemorates a Chinese love story.
Very little of "Wicca" corresponds to what is known about European pagan practices, anthropology, history, or even historical writings by witches themselves. It's very much like Creation Science, or the nutcases who try to prove the existence of Noah's Ark: they tend to quote each other, but never come up with any hard evidence. If it's part of current Wicca, it's "ancient"; if there is no evidence, it's been "suppressed", if it's contrary to evidence, it's a "defamation". (Contrariwise, mainstream Christianity has for two centuries tried to place their beliefs in historical perspective, no matter how much it hurts, and we've had this little thing called "science" that is supposed to be completely outside the loop.) Yes, there were people called witches, who were accused and often executed in the 14th-17th centuries for the crime of Christian heresy, at about the same time of the Protestant Reformation and many other schisms; the Catholic Church was actually much weaker then than it had ever been since Roman times. We have many court records, we have a few manuals detailing exactly what to look for in a "heretic", we have more than a few compendia of spells.
There is no mention in these anywhere of a Goddess. There is no "Blessed be."
"As above, so below" is a line from a Greek poem, and doesn't appear there, either.
"Do what thou wilt" was the motto of a monastery, in a humorous book written by a monk, in a country where witches were tolerated even less than in the British Isles, and no, he wasn't tried or executed for witchcraft.
There is no "Book of Shadows".
They were introduced by Gerald Gardner in the nineteen-forties, when he claimed them all to be the work of a "Dorothy Clutterbuck", who had blabbed her "family secrets", which were reputed to date from prehistoric Europe. No one has ever found any outside evidence for this venerable lady existing, not even by witches themselves. We do, however, have a great deal of evidence that the "Book of Shadows" was largely drawn from Crowley. If there are any authenticated documents you can quote about this practise that date from before say, 1960, I'd be willing to believe you.
But all this is beside the point. It may not be rebellious within Wicca to handfast, or whatever, but it's certainly rebellious for children of Christian parents to do so. It's rebellious for children of Christian parents to reject their confirmation, and become witches, even if they're doing it with the best intentions. I strongly doubt whether most of these young folks are hereditary witches, or are doing all this for any reason other than what I gave in my previous post. It's a Wedding Lite, adopted by people who aren't of the faith, but want something other than (their own and their families') tradition, which "doesn't count", but is exotic, and fun, and a little wicked (pardon the pun)-seeming. And that is my point.
...Seems as if lovers are always reinventing the wheel. Since what they're feeling isn't like anything else, they figure that their relationship must be different than that of mere mortals (like their parents, maybe?) So we get all these little rituals -- We're engaged to be engaged!" (with ring and everything but their parents' approval),"We're having a handfasting!" (which means something like the old 60's "we don't need a ring to show our love" and "we're not together forever, but for now" but you get a kewl ceremony anyway and it's not binding until some sweet thing decides to sue.)
Almost everyone who undergoes a nontrad wedding ends up trying to Do It Right after the divorce, or at least goes in for a renewal of vows where everything is according to Emily Post. A Quake wedding is cute, but....
One of the most appealing thing about the old logo was that the cham's tail helix was indicated by a spiral of dots, in the manner of Aubrey Beardsley. Don't ask me why, but it always looked intreguingly cool and even a little mysterious: it always made me want to delve into the product a bit more. The new logo just doesn't pack the same punch.
That said, "Suzy" sounds like Tux's grilfriend. How about Dr. Lizardo, or Cham E. Leon, or Cham? People on this side of the Atlantic seem to be universally confused as to the cute lil thing's species.
As a matter of fact, bioengineered Frankenfood is mostly just a smokescreen issue. What has gone unspoken is that for a century or more, "inborn" has meant the same thing as "divinely ordained". If people who are addicts, mentally ill, deformed, homosexual, and so on are "born that way", we must, as a society, accept this else we fall into the trap of Nazi eugenics. Unfortunates thus affected should likewise accept their fate and accept their place in society as a proud, but perhaps differently-abled minority. Imagine the repercussions, then, if it suddenly became possible that alcoholics could suddenly shed their addiction, or gay males suddenly be able to lead heterosexual lives -- at their choice. Even leaving aside the issue of forced "nomalization", there is the question of whether it's moral to keep being an alcoholic, even a recovering one, if treatment is available. Given that gay culture is mostly a response to social censure, and that even the most privileged of gay men and women born into the most tolerant communities experience some hardship due to their sexual orientation, would it be moral to destroy gay culture as a whole in order to insure individual children a better chance of success? Start offering the chance for parents to choose whether their children would carry the genes for the features characteristic of their respective ethnic groups, and the issues become explosive. How can they throw away their heritage? How can we? How dare we? Having a potato with real "eyes" pales in comparison.
If you look over these examples, you can see a pattern: here again, scientific advance is not an expression of God(dess)'s favor, but any and all disasters, even those which are not immediately apparent to the unscientific eye, are a measure of His/Her Divine Wrath. We don't, for instance, see penicillin a measure of divine reprieve from disease, even if it proves to be only temporary. No, it is our hubris in thinking that we can triumph over germs that is now being punished by the development of resistant strains. Instead, some alternative healers claim we must learn to lovingly "talk to" our illnesses, and see what they have to "tell us" in terms of spiritual and moral lessons. If this were generally followed, they theorize, we would live far more harmonious lives, even spontaneously healing when Nature wants us to. (Pardon me, but I'd rather have a pill, please.) Certain cancers were once thought of as being caused by sexual repression, now, we are more likely to point out that cervical cancer is caused by a virus spread by underage sex. While many posit AIDS as being a punishment for sodomy, if and when the cure is found, no one will likely interpret this news as a divine message to screw around and take drugs.
It's examples like these that plague science both within and without. It might seem futile that any kind of progress is made at all, but I have hope. If scientific method can rise from medieval theology, then I can only see improvement over the next thousand years. My apologies to the author I stole these ideas from, but I stand behind every one of them. My further apologies to anyone I haven't offended...Let the flamage begin!
Here's a point to ponder: Science came before religion. If a tree falls, you get out of its way. If you don't, you die. Fish go from swimming in the river to being stiffly immobile while their skin crackles over a fire because people catch and cook them. Large carnivores stalk and eat people, unless they're distracted by offerings of other animals. Rain falls and rivers rise, in some places predictably enough to be correlated with the stars. But in many places, there are unforseen earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes, and brushfires.
If the Universe behaves in mysterious ways, you explain them by unseen uber-beings in various forms. In the public eye, the legacy of German romanticism sentimentalizes primitive religions by reducing all their myriad mythologies to one or two gently loving, completely nonjudgmental super-Deities (Earth and/or Sky), but this isn't even close to the truth. Most indigenes have historically posited a range of deities, sprites, demons, spirits, and totems, whose relationship to their faithful can only be described as moody. Bluntly, disaster is natural, good-fortune can only be achieved by some kind of intervention: folk magicks of all nations are the application of human psychology to these beings, who must be flattered, bribed, tricked, or even threatened into providing for the supplicant. Even if the Gods decree that all buffalo in a herd must be killed at once, or every beaver in a dam, or irregation ditches are dug in alkali flats, if the proper formulae are said, if the taboos are observed, the Gods will provide.
Evangelical Christianity is a prime example of this. Although, in theory, the message is one of salvation and peace of mind, one need only read a Jack Chick tract to realize that the true message is that God the Father can and will visit humanity with earthly doom en masse and supernatural torments individually if he is not placated by the interference of his Son. (It's interesting to deconstruct John 3:16 in this regard: it's almost as if God cannot prevent humanity from perishing on His own...) Traditionally, evangelicals have been drawn from the poorer strata of society, the ones who are most likely to be devastated by an unforseen illness or stroke of bad luck, who live in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and who see the worst of life, and it's for this reason that they'll cling to Creation Science with the militancy of an anti-WTO rioter: Jesus is the only bulwark against a world they see as spiralling wildly out of control. It make no difference if you try to show them fossils, explain natural selection, or even point to the various ecological niches of birds in the Galapagos: it's all outside their ken, while proof is to be found of their hypothesis on every street corner. (At the same time, there is a strong love/hate relationship with the wealthy, who are alternately seen as being blessed and as false prophets: how else can one explain the near-veneration of such people as Princess Diana and Michael Jordan, or the strange ambivalence accorded Bill Gates?) If and only if humanity, individually and as a mass, understands this and is willing to accede to His promptings, then, we may pass through the coming Tribulation without harm and live forevermore in a fantastic City where everyone is healthy and rich beyond all comprehension. (cont'd)
Speaking from the ecological aspect, "cute" animals are actually using a very interesting evolutionary strategy called "commensalism", where a species shares food with another, unrelated one, and both profit. For instance, there is no earthly reason to have an Ethiopian desert cat in my living room: I don't live anywhere near Ethiopia, they eat meat (as do I), and they have their own agendas in life -- the perfect beast to be put on a stamp, and only thought about when someone makes a plea to Save Endangered Species. But as "housecats", these little beasts have made their homes on six continents and every place ships go, sleep in our beds, eat our leftovers, and enjoy the admiration of millions of humans, who are only too happy to keep the species going. In return, we have the company of beasts that sound and behave like little human children, and we, well, just can't resist.
The same is true of most other species we consider "cute": "Babe" wouldn't have half its resonance if it were about a wild boar raised by a wolf pack who learns wolflike methods of hunting rams. Up until the century just passed, most children's stories, either "Western", or traditional, rarely cast wild animals as sympathetic characters: they were usually cast, even in vegetarian India and hunter-gatherer tribes, as being caricatures of humanity's gross and ignoble nature. A hundred years ago, educators warned parents that buying their daughters "Roosevelt's cubs" would pervert their maternal instinct away from their future roles as wives and mothers. (Sorry, guys, you're about 90,000 years too late...) Today, teddy bears share their toy chests with such perverse beasts as mandrills, owl-like Furbies, seals, and even (gasp!) penguins with Linuxmall buttons on them, as concerns as diverse as The Nature Conservancy and Mc Donald's find that the best way to popularize the plight of endangered species is to make plush animals in their image. Deer are now a problem in many suburban neighborhoods -- no one wants to shoot Bambi's mother. (Mice, which eat everything, crap everywhere, and spread fleas and microbes, are a sore point with many people, thanks to the same concern -- we now project our disgust on rats.) Bears are dangerous, destructive, beasts, who also invade human settlements -- who wants to draw a bead on Pooh?
True, there aren't many ways of cutesifying snail darters. Most of the animals who occupy an important position in the food chain aren't all that glamorous (with the exception of rodents). But who wants to read zoological data to their kids at bedtime, or snuggle up to an ecocensus report at the end of the day?
In keeping with the communitarian spirit of Linux, perhaps there ought to be a permanent Penguin fund set up with the Audubon Society, with contributions from Linux-minded people and groups. Such proposal has been made before, and would do much to popularize both causes in a way that would be truly commensal.
"'Cause penguins are so sensitive, to my needs." --Lyle Lovett.
Well, the jury is still out on this one. Worst case, the era of treatable bacterial infections is just a flash in the pan. With no further feasible avenues of antibiotic research, we're back in the 19th century, when people could die of a scratch. A setback, but less than catastrophic -- we'll have to be extra-careful about antisepsis and care of the human immune system, and we might be able to attack the problem in that way. Better case: we learn more about what makes the antibiotic drugs lethal to parasitic bacteria. We crack their DNA, and the development of antibtiotics becomes a two-way hacker game whereby humanity is always competing against the nearly-infinite possibilities of blind and random evolution. And most of the people who would do the research very likely would not have been here without someone using penicillin.
Recently, I was reading David Packard's book, "the H-P Way", and there is something here I find quite apropos. You see, Bill Hewlett sometimes had the delicate task of deciding which inventions were worthy of funding. He devised a process known as the "Three Hats".
First, there was the enthusiastic hat. He would meet with the inventor, express general interest and encouragement, enthusiasm when merited, and shared in the inventor's general euphoria in a completed creation. He'd ask questions, but mostly of a general, non-probing, nature, to feel out what the new widget would do.
Then, came the inquisition hat. He'd wait a few days, come back, and ask as many questions he could: upsides, downsides, potential problems, potential benefits, and so forth and so on. He would appear as dispassionate as possible: it might be something, it might be nothing, let me find out.
Last, came the decision hat. He'd wait a bit more, make a decision, and confront the inventor with his choice as gently as possible.
"Even when the decision went against the inventor" marveled Packard, "it never disappointed anyone."
I believe that this is because the process mimicked the way that innovations are received in the real world: there is a period of enthusiasm ("Ever cook a turkey dinner in five minutes? You will!" Wow!), a period of inquisition ("I can't use foil, cake comes out rubbery, and nothing browns..."), and one of decision ("I love my microwave, but I wouldn't want my gas turned off, either..."). The truth is that all three hats are as necessary as they are inevitable. Some innovations stay and become universal (electrical service, automobiles, radio), some, after a period of enthusiasm, become a part of the American scene, but remain limited to specialized niches (helicopters, geodesic and other prefab buildings, paper clothing) and some simply slip out of sight and mind (eight-track tapes, record players with synchronized slide shows, amphicars). If it weren't for the "Gee whiz!" phase, home computers wouldn't have caught on at all: there are still people out there who can't understand why they need a word processor/web browser/game machine when there are typewriters, TV's, and decks of cards out there. If it weren't for the decision phase, audio formats would be in even more of a mess than they are now: we would have to deal with everything from wax cylinders to DAT tapes at the same time. And if it weren't for the probing phase, we wouldn't know the capabilities of all of them (there are advantages to pinhole cameras, Pixel videos, and analog computers, but only in very small niches.) However, because we're in an age where we have both blind faith and cynicism, but not rational doubt, this tends to get overlooked.
I don't regret having bought Mondo 2000, or even having kept them, even if some of their predictions were way off. I don't regret having kept some of the stuff I read in the Seventies, either, or having been awed by Bell Labs films (the ultimate in whiz bangery) that showed fingernail-sized IC's and punched cards as being "futuristic". I also don't regret tossing out my ZX-81 for a Performa, or realizing that Multiples will never catch on as ordinary clothing, or that they'll never sell "Meals for Millions" in the grocery.
Considering that I've often spent five days doing little more than computing, his story seems more than a little ingenuous (and he's a CANADIAN?? I would have thought that someone from the land of Glenn Gould would have been more resourceful...). Eating Domino's pizza, chatting with my friends on Lambdamoo, writing letters like this one, I could easily spend five days, and hardly miss "the watercooler" or whatever he's bitching about.
What all these news stories all seem to miss is that "human contact" is not the kind of thing you can get easily outside either: they all seem to have the idea that you can just walk outside, buttonhole a random stranger, and have a deeply meaningful interchange of souls far better than you can have over the evil box. Maybe you can if you're 25, attractive, and socially adept. But what if you're fat and 40, or 15 and awkward, or 70 and really, really, interested in technotribal music? It's far more likely that you'll be able to talk about your favorite doll online than sitting around at the local Starbuck's, if you don't know anyone who already is interested. You can find someone who's interested in your lifelong passion for Josie and the Pussycats or your interest in 17th century erotic poems, or whatever, online more often than you can at your local pub....
I've been a PG fan from about 7 years ago, when I still thought of using Gopher as "hacking". (The fact that I was doing it through a semilegal tapline into Yale U. is probably part of it.) I remember the pleasure of reading "Alice in Wonderland" (I wanted that first book I read off a screen to COUNT) sitting upright in bed with a PowerBook perched on my lap, and wires strung all around.
I never thought of it as needing any more publicity than it gets (after all, I know about it.) I spent a summer doing RC5 when Bovine pledged $8K to the Project; and I've often toyed with the notion of sending some of my favorite old novels there. ("Three Weeks", by Elinor Glynn, the uncut"Pelham", by Bulwer-Lytton.) I've often used it to make gift versions of "Agrippa", by William Gibson for friends, as well as my BBS Housewarming Kit (Agrippa, The Hacker Crackdown, and a Blue Box plan), which I've used to get file points for boardz all over the local dialing area and beyond.
So, I guess you might say I'm a fan. I think that what's necessary is a bit of pizzazz. It was OK when it was one of the only things out there, but nowadays, it's not at all thrilling for people who expect anything on the Web to jump, flash, and leap off the screen. It needs to play up the fact that it's not just classic novels: there are movies in there, music, pictures...there are quite a few childrens' books, a truly classic cookbook or two...a treasury of literature on every reading level for people who might want to learn English, or empower themselves with a knowlege of Western Culture in general.( I don't think that it's bigoted to point out that it's a lot more empowering to learn a foreign culture associated with technology, than it is to try to reinvent the wheel as it pertains to one's own. The West has had to do this several times.) Perhaps a small M$ Bookshelf-like selection included with Linux distros? This is one of the most inspiring things to be put out on the web: I'm sad that it doesn't get eyeballs.
Re:My favorite millenial musing...
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A turkey. Better yet, a cheap turkey. Like 8 pounds for $3 US.....
Re:My favorite millenial musing...
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The Year 1000
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One out of six is a LOT better than one out of 10,000 or more. Also, the other five billion are beginning to move up....
My favorite millenial musing...
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...is Umberto Eco's Postscript to The Name of the Rose. In it, he tenders an interesting reading of the Book of Revelations: there will be a great deal of trouble, Christianity will spread all over the world, and then will be a thousand years of wonders and marvels, after which we will live in Paradise.
Well? Don't we? In the late Roman period, glass was counted as a precious stone, and vessels made of it were thought of the same way we would a piece of pure jade today. We make walls of glass today, and if it breaks, we toss it out. I'm sitting here topless, while the wind howls outside, and a nice hot bath is drawing in the tub. I've got a roast fowl for my gnawing pleasure, an Oriental rug underfoot, scented candles, music playing at my beck and call, and the Magic Loom sends messangers of pure light to carry my words to the ends of the earth....and I live under the poverty level!
My other favorite Millenial topic is the identity of the Beast. As detailed in the thirteenth chapter of Revelations, there is not one, but two beasts, the 666 guy, and the Master of Illusions. Disaster strikes 666, and he looks dead, but his collegue MoI makes him look alive again. (Whether he is or not, is a Good Question.) This would point to someone in a database field, and to someone who can rig SFX, especially digitally. The largest database company in the world is Oracle, which keeps records for the CIA, among other worthies. Larry Ellison is notoriously accident-prone: he nearly lost an arm while falling off a bicycle. His best friend is Steve Jobs, who runs Pixar. This would mean that BillG. is on the side of the angels. Of course, this is being written by someone who likes angels....
Funny you should mention this...I was about to write a column about it on my Netscape site, enlarging on remarks I made on alt.callahans.
First, let's look at extremes. The smallest number of children born/woman is Italy. We shall call this woman Paola. The largest number of children born/woman is in sub-saharan Africa. Since I'm no great scholar of African languages, I'll take a name from Philip Jose Farmer and call her Kuta. Both are are in their late twenties.
Paola's husband is a white-collar worker: perhaps an industrial designer, named um...Angelo. She also works, for the city, let's make it Milan, in the building and zoning board. They have a five room apartment, kitchen, living, dining, and two bedrooms, that Paola is proud of having snagged in a renovated 18th century palazzo, and one daughter, Lucia (pronounced "Lew-sha".)
Kuta lives in a traditionally-styled compound with her husband and four children, although she has given birth six times. One died soon after birth, and is therefore according to tradition, nameless, and one at the age of three. To be fair, she has two boys and two girls. She, and her husband, work a family farm, as well as occasional hunting and foraging for delicacies.
Paola's biggest concern, day in day out, is where Lucia is. Even though she has employer-sponsored daycare, and Lucia is almost ready to start school, there are times when Paola can't be sure that someone is looking after her. Her mother is living in another part of town, and is concerned with her own life, and it's often the case that she has to drop Lucia off before daycare starts and pick her up after it ends. When she starts school next year, she'll have to navigate through heavy traffic to come home, and have a full two hours unsupervised....simply unimaginable, even though she's been little trouble...it's enough keeping track of her shopping, much less trust her to walk home alone.
Kuta's greatest problem is keeping everyone "well-mannered" -- that is, not greedy at table, obedient, and respectful of tradition. Although she, too, is busy all day, the bulk of childrearing doesn't fall on her: there are always sisters-in-law, mothers-in-law, and other relatives to take care of the children, who all look after each other. Even when the clan goes to market in the truck once a week, it never occurs to anyone that someone might get lost....everyone "in town" knows whose kids belong to whom.
Paola and her husband wonder about whether they should give Lucia a brother. In modern Italy, as in ancient patrician Rome, children are expensive. Two thousand years ago, the main expense for a son was a toga, a huge hand-loomed piece of wool twenty feet long and eight wide, which could cost as much as a modest villa, and a horse, which cost as much as a luxury automobile today, with much greater upkeep, and several slaves. In modern Italy, it's more the little things: a room apiece, clothing for each child, education, whether state-sponsored or private, further education at a university, and for girls, their eventual wedding. Paola doesn't want to have to move; the dining room is not suitable as a bedroom, and to get a comparable apartment calls for at least a two-year waiting list. Scholars are still divided as to why the birth rate in patrician Rome fell: Paola has her own theory. At any rate, even without child labor laws, it would be difficult for Lucia to help her parents out economically: there's little place in a modern office for someone who can't read or type, and even to understand what her parents are doing is beyond six year old comprehension.
Kuta has no such problem. Although it's sometimes true that there isn't enough for everyone to fill their bellies at once, everyone helps out as well as they can. As soon as they can walk, the children run errands and work beside their parents; her oldest son, at the age of fifteen, is able to do everything his father does, both in the fields and in the forest. Everyone sleeps together at night -- when things get too crowded, as it does during the rainy season, a new adjoining hut is constructed over a few days. Her older daughter is an eager seamstress and gatherer, and does what she can towards keeping things going -- she sees herself as doing what everyone else does. Education in tribal ways is free and ongoing: everyone is quick to correct the young'uns.
Even though Paola's brother (a priest) jokes about them getting a dog, so that they can have a domini-cane in the family to carry on the tradition of having one child take Holy Orders, Paola isn't all that concerned that she's going against Catholic doctrine in using birth control. "It's a political thing." she says. Kuta would like to take advantage of the local free clinic, as well as the local school, but is afraid that enrolling in one or the other will alert the authorities that she has sons old enough to be soldiers in the ongoing border dispute. As for birth control, she's of two minds: while she's heard it's a good idea, her cousin died after an abortion (performed in the traditional manner, with a sharp stick and many rituals). It's true that city women have fewer children, but she's not at all convinced that education and city living will make a difference in their lives. Neither one of them, therefore, has much faith in the government or other authorities to make informed decisions over their lives.
Let's go on from these extremes to a society in transition: Mei, who is an ethnic Chinese living in southeast Asia. She is a stay-at-home mother, having three children, living in a city apartment of three rooms. All day, she works hard to cook, clean, and look after her children, who range from two to ten, while occasionally making money out of her house, sewing and doing other chores. She sees nothing wrong in putting her daughter to work, sewing beside her: after all, a five-year-old girl is "hard to raise", and it's good that she's learning a trade. As they work, they watch TV: their favorite shows are talk shows and soap operas depicting Europeanized women in expensive clothes who almost never have more than one or two children apiece. Mei remembers living with her five siblings in a tiny farmhouse, and is determined to make a better life for her children in the city -- perhaps like the women on TV, whose kids all go to college. Actual college students in her country hate these programs, since they're leading women to abandon their age-old ways -- however, few of them seem likely to go back to the farm and raise large families either.
Mei's country is growing, but less and less quickly over time. Kuta's is growing explosively. Paola's is shrinking. I, an American woman of forty, have no children, and cannot figure out a way to afford any. The twenty-first century awaits.
Slashdot Mirror
I dislike the high prices and general tone of the site, but this is as close to what I've done with paper planners for myself. http://www.harvardplanner.com The salient features are: not only do you get structured (down to 15 min. or less) planning, but also space for weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks, as well as a place for a mission statement. It helps sometimes, if you have space for the larger picture, so to speak. Also, for a personal organizer, I've always wanted one that integrates expense tracking as well (H.P. doesn't): it's a lot easier to write down "Lunch, $4.95" while you're eating lunch, rather than have to flip over to another section/use a different program. Just a suggestion...
From the description given, this book more than amply illustrates this quotation. Since the end of the Cold War, any number of pundits have desperately clung to the memory of the world when Adam toiled in his field, Eve span in the cotton mill, and intellectuals played the gentleman, whose wise direction alone could rout the Serpent from the garden and keep the forbidden fruit from ignorant hands.
Back in those days (1920-1950), they rhapsodize, it was easy to recognize the American Working Class as selfless, hard-working, and naturally communitarian, the kind of guys who were actually happy to be cogs in the machine, tied to their jobs, families, and small towns or city neighborhoods. Abused by Wall Street, and given hope by the New Deal, they would have emerged triumphant under an American Soviet that would utilize the emerging infrastructures of mass transportation, apartment living, lunch-counter or cafeteria meals, radio and movies, to run the country in a humane and completely controlled manner, feeding, clothing, housing, transporting, and amusing people with the precision and efficiency of a Ford assembly line (Huxley fans take note!). Of course, in order to do this, there would have to be an educated planning elite, with two houses and cars (town and country) per family, gourmet food on the table, tailored clothing, original art on the walls, a horse, pool, or sailboat, and subscription tickets to the ballet and opera -- but let's not quibble.
Unfortunately, the Fifties and Sixties happened. In ways that they have yet to explain satisfactorily, working-class people began to ask for, and then, demand, individuality in the form of customized tract houses, cars with chrome tail fins, TV's (and TV dinners), consumer goods galore (in 14 decorator colors), and so forth. All of a sudden, the Noble Worker, young, brawny, and good-hearted, became the bloated and bigoted Archie Bunker, and the main thrust of Marxism in this country shifted away from unionism and the pie-in-the-sky world of Marxist equitable distribution, but to college students, whose concerns were such things as the end of the arms race and the war in Vietnam. For a while, they had a enthusiastic following, as most young men didn't want to get drafted, but it soon became apparent that even the most highminded Marxist movements of the third world were no better than local despots in insuring even minimal standards of living for its people, and even sooner, the war ended. While, for a stretch, the Reagan/Bush administration's sword-rattling against the Russians and Chinese allowed for an extension of the peace movement, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc left most would-be Marxists with no mass movement at all.
Ah, but there was one last hope: the collapse of Reaganomics left many with little money, and less faith in the market. Surely it seemed fitting that the capitalist world would fade away as the the communist one did: when the smoke cleared, we'd be left at zero, free to remake society in the mold of...well, it wouldn't be Adam Smith, would it? Besides, there was always the evil power of technology, especially that "Internet" that threatened to be a private hegemony of the wealthy and powerful, that would turn people against the Market and towards the benign world of the Hammer and Sickle....but no.....
Hence the almost frantic scrambling to ascribe Marxist longings onto Native Americans, Third World villagers, farmers in the heartland, anyone, in short whose motives have gone unpublicized enough to be co-opted by outsiders. Scratch a ghetto hip-hopper, they intimate, and beyond the shallow longings for Adidas, Karl Kani pants, and unlimited coke and bitches, they'll find a true-blue Red longing to put in a full eight-hour day working at a collective farm, perhaps even taking time to sing a spiritual, or some other musical form beloved of the American Negro, as he swings his hoe for the zillionth time gandy-dancing the rows of beans. Ah, yes, it's sooo nice to watch them, while relaxing with an amusing Chardonnay by the pool...I would even join them, except...I have to do a little research...
I live here and now in an apartment in one of those "idyllic" working-class neighborhoods, in the city of New Haven, where the compassionate intelligensia meets the hardscrabble ethnics who would be ruled by them. And I see two things. First, the ethnics hate the intellectuals, big time, and unionization is just another way to get a retirement fund. Second, the ethnics aren't as dumb as everyone wants to think. I work as a Johnny Cyberseed in my community: almost everyone I talk to wants a computer if they don't have one, Internet access if they do, and Linux if they want a career-oriented skill. People ask me about websites, and are astounded when they find out they don't need to pay to have one. I may not, in the long run, create the kind of center of Internet activity I see in San Francisco or New York. But I can see that if any kind of Internet company were to start now, it would not be tied even to centers of people, but to constellations of people. Let's try something new.
In the Salon article about the original two books. Apparently some lesbian-in-codependency-recovery (aren't they all?--bad Teleny! bad, bad, Teleny!) decided to talk to Card about the book, and how much of a "healing experience" it was to read it. Bad mistake. Card is a Mormon and takes a very dim view of lesbians. The l-in-c-r took a dim view of war (being politically correct and all). The resulting deadlock was hilarious, as Card sounded incredibly sensible (albeit a bit conservative) and the l-in-c-r sounded increasingly hysterical. Don't miss this one. WWF RAW is WAR was never so vehement. Really!
...look up the April 1999 issue, crypto fans. It contains an article about "The Voynich MS", a book (we THINK it's a medical textbook) from the Renaissance that NO ONE has been able to decypher. Solve this one, and you'll have one doozy of a line in your resume (and maybe, we'll find out something really neat in medicine!) Oh, yes, the illustrations are way-kewl, too: wild flowers, Terry Gilliam-style plumbing, and LOTS of naked women. The translation project has been on the net since 1991, and is WAY underpublicized, so I'm throwing this in to help out. Good Hunting!
It was such fun...until it expired. We need more good stuff like that for Macs.
They only fear children because they'll be competition before you know it!
But then, I am a round and decadent cybergoddess!
"So, there're aborigines in Australia who whip out laptops?" (Like, right....)
"Dunno about Australia. But they do talk about tribal villages in the Amazon who regularly check the prices their handicrafts fetch in the galleries of New York."
Total incredulity."They care?"
"And they aren't at all pleased by what they've seen...so far. They're really pissed at all the tourist gringoes who've ripped them off, getting artifacts that represent weeks of good work for almost free."
Strange guilty look....
Point is, one of the things that globalization, including 'net access, is going to do, what it is doing, is destroying much of the romantic notions that the urban progressive intellgensia (of which New Haven has a large community) has had about the rest of the world. Their world is split into three: themselves, a thick shell around them of hostile know-nothings (and their controllers), and a huge world of female/ Third World/ of color/ poor/ lesbian/ non-Christian/ etc. "authentic" peoples, who despite not having access to the academic journals detailing the latest fads in intellectual discourse, think exactly like themselves.
Back in the 1930's and '40's, there was a romantic notion that America's working poor were somehow all unconscious Marxists: that, given half a chance, they'd renounce nationalist fervor in favor of the "Internationale", and superstitious Judeo-Christianity for the spiritual consolations of the progress of history. These diamonds in the rough would have much rather had an functionally spare apartment in a housing project rather than a baroque Victorian castle, simple, clean, clothes rather than ruffly froufrou, and good fellowship rather than material ambitions -- it simply stands to reason that they'd be vegetarians by choice, and appreciate Beethoven. Given a good income, it was argued, a sharecropper would prefer to live like a professor in an Eastern university over the life of a tycoon.
This myth was shattered, not by McCarthy's Red-baiting, but by historical events. Even without a Marxist revolution, the American working class rose in income and real wealth enormously over the 50's and 60's....and what did they buy? Televisions with which to watch, not Shakespeare, but Milton Berle. Tract houses with lawn flamingoes. Gaudy cars from which milady emerged clad, not in elegant homespun, but in loud polyester. Suddenly, the Enemy wasn't the fat guy in the top hat, but Archie Bunker, who wanted no truck with communism, or even communitarianism: he looked out for No. 1. Blacks were even worse: the granddaughters of Southern poverty proudly bedecked themselves with gold chains, designer logos, and platform shoes, and heaped scorn on the affluent whites who were now wearing sneakers, T-shirts, and jeans. It's hard to maintain that the rural poor of Middle America value musical integrity above all else in the face of Dolly Parton. Most of these people above didn't care about communism...they didn't even feel terribly upset by Vietnam!
Since then, this romantic image has become more and more removed from reality as it focuses on more and more inaccessible people, who have progressively come forward to debunk it: Eastern Asians (the same who gave you MSG and Pokemon, perhaps?), Hindus and Moslems (like the clerk at the 24 store?), Native Americans (who operate casinos like Mohegan Sun?), and so forth. About the last refuge they have are the native healers like the (safely dead) historical witches of the Celtic fringe (who --despite being unable to prevent the deforestation of highland Scotland, losing one out of three children at birth, and coming from a society that practised slave-taking and serfdom before Christianity-- were ob/gyn geniuses and identical in ideology to affluent American ecofeminist deconstructionists), and the sainted tribes of the Amazon, whose mastery of lifegiving common- but- neglected- by- the- blinkered- FDA herbs (that cure everything from the common cold to cancer) is equalled only by their supreme indifference to material wealth and scorn of technology.
Hang on, folks, we're in for a very bumpy ride.
However, he seems not to be able to imagine anything like a future that works, or even works imperfectly, enmired as he is in the culture of despair that has gripped progressive intellectuals from about 1970 onward. Up till then, progressivism could point to a more-or-less standard set of benchmarks, say, X acres of swampland drained to produce X acres of land to house X new factories employing X number of people, all due to the wise central planning of a board of men working in the public interest. The hippie left, on the other hand, never could decide whether its ultimate Paradise was a city or a garden, a jungle or a void. (Not every hippie was keen on going up the country to work on Maggie's farm, or any farm, for that matter. For many, the Future was about lazily writing poetry while robots took care of the housework.) Their adoption of "the environment" as a cause (which heretofore, had been the province of dotty old ladies, deer hunters, and Barry Goldwater) meant that the situation was always lose-lose: no matter how well things were going, it would always have to be measured against an ideal state in which human beings were entirely absent. Finding out that Communism wasn't not merely sometimes, but most of the time harmful to developing (and even developed) countries, that even socialism wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, and that even current Soviet states were crumbling worsened the situation: while America, capitalism, and wearing suits and wing-tips were all still anathema, there seemed fewer and fewer alternatives. Nowadays, if you hear any progressive intellectual describe a desirable social order, it's usually with a fantasy element: a total abandonment of technology, communities of magic-using pantheists, descriptions of hypothetically "unspoiled" hunter-gatherer communities, Latino communites stripped of political unrest, machismo, or any but the most benign forms of Catholicism. Or else...nothing.
Mr. Sterling is a firm believer in nothing. If we'd been a little more careful, his authorial voice warns, we wouldn't have this mess. What we'd have otherwise doesn't seem to interest him:having more than seven billion people in the world is awful, but he also cites the lack of children around as a tragedy. Innovation is ultimately boring, but so is its lack: his all-business, all the time society isn't any less or more uninspiring than the progressive vision of turning all human endeavor into a form of politics. As for the environmental prognostications, it's almost a truism nowadays that eco-apocalypse is just as often predicted and often averted as the other kind. We didn't see it coming? And just what have we been hearing about all these years?
From what I've been able to figure out, Mr. Sterling was given an assignment to write about "the future of business", couldn't see one, and ended up trotting out the same old songs and dances. Sad.
Very little of "Wicca" corresponds to what is known about European pagan practices, anthropology, history, or even historical writings by witches themselves. It's very much like Creation Science, or the nutcases who try to prove the existence of Noah's Ark: they tend to quote each other, but never come up with any hard evidence. If it's part of current Wicca, it's "ancient"; if there is no evidence, it's been "suppressed", if it's contrary to evidence, it's a "defamation". (Contrariwise, mainstream Christianity has for two centuries tried to place their beliefs in historical perspective, no matter how much it hurts, and we've had this little thing called "science" that is supposed to be completely outside the loop.) Yes, there were people called witches, who were accused and often executed in the 14th-17th centuries for the crime of Christian heresy, at about the same time of the Protestant Reformation and many other schisms; the Catholic Church was actually much weaker then than it had ever been since Roman times. We have many court records, we have a few manuals detailing exactly what to look for in a "heretic", we have more than a few compendia of spells.
There is no mention in these anywhere of a Goddess. There is no "Blessed be."
"As above, so below" is a line from a Greek poem, and doesn't appear there, either.
"Do what thou wilt" was the motto of a monastery, in a humorous book written by a monk, in a country where witches were tolerated even less than in the British Isles, and no, he wasn't tried or executed for witchcraft.
There is no "Book of Shadows".
They were introduced by Gerald Gardner in the nineteen-forties, when he claimed them all to be the work of a "Dorothy Clutterbuck", who had blabbed her "family secrets", which were reputed to date from prehistoric Europe. No one has ever found any outside evidence for this venerable lady existing, not even by witches themselves. We do, however, have a great deal of evidence that the "Book of Shadows" was largely drawn from Crowley. If there are any authenticated documents you can quote about this practise that date from before say, 1960, I'd be willing to believe you.
But all this is beside the point. It may not be rebellious within Wicca to handfast, or whatever, but it's certainly rebellious for children of Christian parents to do so. It's rebellious for children of Christian parents to reject their confirmation, and become witches, even if they're doing it with the best intentions. I strongly doubt whether most of these young folks are hereditary witches, or are doing all this for any reason other than what I gave in my previous post. It's a Wedding Lite, adopted by people who aren't of the faith, but want something other than (their own and their families') tradition, which "doesn't count", but is exotic, and fun, and a little wicked (pardon the pun)-seeming. And that is my point.
Almost everyone who undergoes a nontrad wedding ends up trying to Do It Right after the divorce, or at least goes in for a renewal of vows where everything is according to Emily Post. A Quake wedding is cute, but....
That said, "Suzy" sounds like Tux's grilfriend. How about Dr. Lizardo, or Cham E. Leon, or Cham? People on this side of the Atlantic seem to be universally confused as to the cute lil thing's species.
If you look over these examples, you can see a pattern: here again, scientific advance is not an expression of God(dess)'s favor, but any and all disasters, even those which are not immediately apparent to the unscientific eye, are a measure of His/Her Divine Wrath. We don't, for instance, see penicillin a measure of divine reprieve from disease, even if it proves to be only temporary. No, it is our hubris in thinking that we can triumph over germs that is now being punished by the development of resistant strains. Instead, some alternative healers claim we must learn to lovingly "talk to" our illnesses, and see what they have to "tell us" in terms of spiritual and moral lessons. If this were generally followed, they theorize, we would live far more harmonious lives, even spontaneously healing when Nature wants us to. (Pardon me, but I'd rather have a pill, please.) Certain cancers were once thought of as being caused by sexual repression, now, we are more likely to point out that cervical cancer is caused by a virus spread by underage sex. While many posit AIDS as being a punishment for sodomy, if and when the cure is found, no one will likely interpret this news as a divine message to screw around and take drugs.
It's examples like these that plague science both within and without. It might seem futile that any kind of progress is made at all, but I have hope. If scientific method can rise from medieval theology, then I can only see improvement over the next thousand years. My apologies to the author I stole these ideas from, but I stand behind every one of them. My further apologies to anyone I haven't offended...Let the flamage begin!
If the Universe behaves in mysterious ways, you explain them by unseen uber-beings in various forms. In the public eye, the legacy of German romanticism sentimentalizes primitive religions by reducing all their myriad mythologies to one or two gently loving, completely nonjudgmental super-Deities (Earth and/or Sky), but this isn't even close to the truth. Most indigenes have historically posited a range of deities, sprites, demons, spirits, and totems, whose relationship to their faithful can only be described as moody. Bluntly, disaster is natural, good-fortune can only be achieved by some kind of intervention: folk magicks of all nations are the application of human psychology to these beings, who must be flattered, bribed, tricked, or even threatened into providing for the supplicant. Even if the Gods decree that all buffalo in a herd must be killed at once, or every beaver in a dam, or irregation ditches are dug in alkali flats, if the proper formulae are said, if the taboos are observed, the Gods will provide.
Evangelical Christianity is a prime example of this. Although, in theory, the message is one of salvation and peace of mind, one need only read a Jack Chick tract to realize that the true message is that God the Father can and will visit humanity with earthly doom en masse and supernatural torments individually if he is not placated by the interference of his Son. (It's interesting to deconstruct John 3:16 in this regard: it's almost as if God cannot prevent humanity from perishing on His own...) Traditionally, evangelicals have been drawn from the poorer strata of society, the ones who are most likely to be devastated by an unforseen illness or stroke of bad luck, who live in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and who see the worst of life, and it's for this reason that they'll cling to Creation Science with the militancy of an anti-WTO rioter: Jesus is the only bulwark against a world they see as spiralling wildly out of control. It make no difference if you try to show them fossils, explain natural selection, or even point to the various ecological niches of birds in the Galapagos: it's all outside their ken, while proof is to be found of their hypothesis on every street corner. (At the same time, there is a strong love/hate relationship with the wealthy, who are alternately seen as being blessed and as false prophets: how else can one explain the near-veneration of such people as Princess Diana and Michael Jordan, or the strange ambivalence accorded Bill Gates?) If and only if humanity, individually and as a mass, understands this and is willing to accede to His promptings, then, we may pass through the coming Tribulation without harm and live forevermore in a fantastic City where everyone is healthy and rich beyond all comprehension. (cont'd)
The same is true of most other species we consider "cute": "Babe" wouldn't have half its resonance if it were about a wild boar raised by a wolf pack who learns wolflike methods of hunting rams. Up until the century just passed, most children's stories, either "Western", or traditional, rarely cast wild animals as sympathetic characters: they were usually cast, even in vegetarian India and hunter-gatherer tribes, as being caricatures of humanity's gross and ignoble nature. A hundred years ago, educators warned parents that buying their daughters "Roosevelt's cubs" would pervert their maternal instinct away from their future roles as wives and mothers. (Sorry, guys, you're about 90,000 years too late...) Today, teddy bears share their toy chests with such perverse beasts as mandrills, owl-like Furbies, seals, and even (gasp!) penguins with Linuxmall buttons on them, as concerns as diverse as The Nature Conservancy and Mc Donald's find that the best way to popularize the plight of endangered species is to make plush animals in their image. Deer are now a problem in many suburban neighborhoods -- no one wants to shoot Bambi's mother. (Mice, which eat everything, crap everywhere, and spread fleas and microbes, are a sore point with many people, thanks to the same concern -- we now project our disgust on rats.) Bears are dangerous, destructive, beasts, who also invade human settlements -- who wants to draw a bead on Pooh?
True, there aren't many ways of cutesifying snail darters. Most of the animals who occupy an important position in the food chain aren't all that glamorous (with the exception of rodents). But who wants to read zoological data to their kids at bedtime, or snuggle up to an ecocensus report at the end of the day?
In keeping with the communitarian spirit of Linux, perhaps there ought to be a permanent Penguin fund set up with the Audubon Society, with contributions from Linux-minded people and groups. Such proposal has been made before, and would do much to popularize both causes in a way that would be truly commensal.
"'Cause penguins are so sensitive, to my needs." --Lyle Lovett.
Well, the jury is still out on this one. Worst case, the era of treatable bacterial infections is just a flash in the pan. With no further feasible avenues of antibiotic research, we're back in the 19th century, when people could die of a scratch. A setback, but less than catastrophic -- we'll have to be extra-careful about antisepsis and care of the human immune system, and we might be able to attack the problem in that way. Better case: we learn more about what makes the antibiotic drugs lethal to parasitic bacteria. We crack their DNA, and the development of antibtiotics becomes a two-way hacker game whereby humanity is always competing against the nearly-infinite possibilities of blind and random evolution. And most of the people who would do the research very likely would not have been here without someone using penicillin.
What? AppleWorks wasn't enough for you?
First, there was the enthusiastic hat. He would meet with the inventor, express general interest and encouragement, enthusiasm when merited, and shared in the inventor's general euphoria in a completed creation. He'd ask questions, but mostly of a general, non-probing, nature, to feel out what the new widget would do.
Then, came the inquisition hat. He'd wait a few days, come back, and ask as many questions he could: upsides, downsides, potential problems, potential benefits, and so forth and so on. He would appear as dispassionate as possible: it might be something, it might be nothing, let me find out.
Last, came the decision hat. He'd wait a bit more, make a decision, and confront the inventor with his choice as gently as possible.
"Even when the decision went against the inventor" marveled Packard, "it never disappointed anyone."
I believe that this is because the process mimicked the way that innovations are received in the real world: there is a period of enthusiasm ("Ever cook a turkey dinner in five minutes? You will!" Wow!), a period of inquisition ("I can't use foil, cake comes out rubbery, and nothing browns..."), and one of decision ("I love my microwave, but I wouldn't want my gas turned off, either..."). The truth is that all three hats are as necessary as they are inevitable. Some innovations stay and become universal (electrical service, automobiles, radio), some, after a period of enthusiasm, become a part of the American scene, but remain limited to specialized niches (helicopters, geodesic and other prefab buildings, paper clothing) and some simply slip out of sight and mind (eight-track tapes, record players with synchronized slide shows, amphicars). If it weren't for the "Gee whiz!" phase, home computers wouldn't have caught on at all: there are still people out there who can't understand why they need a word processor/web browser/game machine when there are typewriters, TV's, and decks of cards out there. If it weren't for the decision phase, audio formats would be in even more of a mess than they are now: we would have to deal with everything from wax cylinders to DAT tapes at the same time. And if it weren't for the probing phase, we wouldn't know the capabilities of all of them (there are advantages to pinhole cameras, Pixel videos, and analog computers, but only in very small niches.) However, because we're in an age where we have both blind faith and cynicism, but not rational doubt, this tends to get overlooked.
I don't regret having bought Mondo 2000, or even having kept them, even if some of their predictions were way off. I don't regret having kept some of the stuff I read in the Seventies, either, or having been awed by Bell Labs films (the ultimate in whiz bangery) that showed fingernail-sized IC's and punched cards as being "futuristic". I also don't regret tossing out my ZX-81 for a Performa, or realizing that Multiples will never catch on as ordinary clothing, or that they'll never sell "Meals for Millions" in the grocery.
But I'll never lose my sense of wonder....
Ah, Larry! He a) worships Japan, b) hates Microsoft with a passion, and c) runs Oracle. He must have been WAITING for this....
What all these news stories all seem to miss is that "human contact" is not the kind of thing you can get easily outside either: they all seem to have the idea that you can just walk outside, buttonhole a random stranger, and have a deeply meaningful interchange of souls far better than you can have over the evil box. Maybe you can if you're 25, attractive, and socially adept. But what if you're fat and 40, or 15 and awkward, or 70 and really, really, interested in technotribal music? It's far more likely that you'll be able to talk about your favorite doll online than sitting around at the local Starbuck's, if you don't know anyone who already is interested. You can find someone who's interested in your lifelong passion for Josie and the Pussycats or your interest in 17th century erotic poems, or whatever, online more often than you can at your local pub....
I never thought of it as needing any more publicity than it gets (after all, I know about it.) I spent a summer doing RC5 when Bovine pledged $8K to the Project; and I've often toyed with the notion of sending some of my favorite old novels there. ("Three Weeks", by Elinor Glynn, the uncut"Pelham", by Bulwer-Lytton.) I've often used it to make gift versions of "Agrippa", by William Gibson for friends, as well as my BBS Housewarming Kit (Agrippa, The Hacker Crackdown, and a Blue Box plan), which I've used to get file points for boardz all over the local dialing area and beyond.
So, I guess you might say I'm a fan. I think that what's necessary is a bit of pizzazz. It was OK when it was one of the only things out there, but nowadays, it's not at all thrilling for people who expect anything on the Web to jump, flash, and leap off the screen. It needs to play up the fact that it's not just classic novels: there are movies in there, music, pictures...there are quite a few childrens' books, a truly classic cookbook or two...a treasury of literature on every reading level for people who might want to learn English, or empower themselves with a knowlege of Western Culture in general.( I don't think that it's bigoted to point out that it's a lot more empowering to learn a foreign culture associated with technology, than it is to try to reinvent the wheel as it pertains to one's own. The West has had to do this several times.) Perhaps a small M$ Bookshelf-like selection included with Linux distros? This is one of the most inspiring things to be put out on the web: I'm sad that it doesn't get eyeballs.
A turkey. Better yet, a cheap turkey. Like 8 pounds for $3 US.....
One out of six is a LOT better than one out of 10,000 or more. Also, the other five billion are beginning to move up....
Well? Don't we? In the late Roman period, glass was counted as a precious stone, and vessels made of it were thought of the same way we would a piece of pure jade today. We make walls of glass today, and if it breaks, we toss it out. I'm sitting here topless, while the wind howls outside, and a nice hot bath is drawing in the tub. I've got a roast fowl for my gnawing pleasure, an Oriental rug underfoot, scented candles, music playing at my beck and call, and the Magic Loom sends messangers of pure light to carry my words to the ends of the earth....and I live under the poverty level!
My other favorite Millenial topic is the identity of the Beast. As detailed in the thirteenth chapter of Revelations, there is not one, but two beasts, the 666 guy, and the Master of Illusions. Disaster strikes 666, and he looks dead, but his collegue MoI makes him look alive again. (Whether he is or not, is a Good Question.) This would point to someone in a database field, and to someone who can rig SFX, especially digitally. The largest database company in the world is Oracle, which keeps records for the CIA, among other worthies. Larry Ellison is notoriously accident-prone: he nearly lost an arm while falling off a bicycle. His best friend is Steve Jobs, who runs Pixar. This would mean that BillG. is on the side of the angels. Of course, this is being written by someone who likes angels....
First, let's look at extremes. The smallest number of children born/woman is Italy. We shall call this woman Paola. The largest number of children born/woman is in sub-saharan Africa. Since I'm no great scholar of African languages, I'll take a name from Philip Jose Farmer and call her Kuta. Both are are in their late twenties.
Paola's husband is a white-collar worker: perhaps an industrial designer, named um...Angelo. She also works, for the city, let's make it Milan, in the building and zoning board. They have a five room apartment, kitchen, living, dining, and two bedrooms, that Paola is proud of having snagged in a renovated 18th century palazzo, and one daughter, Lucia (pronounced "Lew-sha".)
Kuta lives in a traditionally-styled compound with her husband and four children, although she has given birth six times. One died soon after birth, and is therefore according to tradition, nameless, and one at the age of three. To be fair, she has two boys and two girls. She, and her husband, work a family farm, as well as occasional hunting and foraging for delicacies.
Paola's biggest concern, day in day out, is where Lucia is. Even though she has employer-sponsored daycare, and Lucia is almost ready to start school, there are times when Paola can't be sure that someone is looking after her. Her mother is living in another part of town, and is concerned with her own life, and it's often the case that she has to drop Lucia off before daycare starts and pick her up after it ends. When she starts school next year, she'll have to navigate through heavy traffic to come home, and have a full two hours unsupervised....simply unimaginable, even though she's been little trouble...it's enough keeping track of her shopping, much less trust her to walk home alone.
Kuta's greatest problem is keeping everyone "well-mannered" -- that is, not greedy at table, obedient, and respectful of tradition. Although she, too, is busy all day, the bulk of childrearing doesn't fall on her: there are always sisters-in-law, mothers-in-law, and other relatives to take care of the children, who all look after each other. Even when the clan goes to market in the truck once a week, it never occurs to anyone that someone might get lost....everyone "in town" knows whose kids belong to whom.
Paola and her husband wonder about whether they should give Lucia a brother. In modern Italy, as in ancient patrician Rome, children are expensive. Two thousand years ago, the main expense for a son was a toga, a huge hand-loomed piece of wool twenty feet long and eight wide, which could cost as much as a modest villa, and a horse, which cost as much as a luxury automobile today, with much greater upkeep, and several slaves. In modern Italy, it's more the little things: a room apiece, clothing for each child, education, whether state-sponsored or private, further education at a university, and for girls, their eventual wedding. Paola doesn't want to have to move; the dining room is not suitable as a bedroom, and to get a comparable apartment calls for at least a two-year waiting list. Scholars are still divided as to why the birth rate in patrician Rome fell: Paola has her own theory. At any rate, even without child labor laws, it would be difficult for Lucia to help her parents out economically: there's little place in a modern office for someone who can't read or type, and even to understand what her parents are doing is beyond six year old comprehension.
Kuta has no such problem. Although it's sometimes true that there isn't enough for everyone to fill their bellies at once, everyone helps out as well as they can. As soon as they can walk, the children run errands and work beside their parents; her oldest son, at the age of fifteen, is able to do everything his father does, both in the fields and in the forest. Everyone sleeps together at night -- when things get too crowded, as it does during the rainy season, a new adjoining hut is constructed over a few days. Her older daughter is an eager seamstress and gatherer, and does what she can towards keeping things going -- she sees herself as doing what everyone else does. Education in tribal ways is free and ongoing: everyone is quick to correct the young'uns.
Even though Paola's brother (a priest) jokes about them getting a dog, so that they can have a domini-cane in the family to carry on the tradition of having one child take Holy Orders, Paola isn't all that concerned that she's going against Catholic doctrine in using birth control. "It's a political thing." she says. Kuta would like to take advantage of the local free clinic, as well as the local school, but is afraid that enrolling in one or the other will alert the authorities that she has sons old enough to be soldiers in the ongoing border dispute. As for birth control, she's of two minds: while she's heard it's a good idea, her cousin died after an abortion (performed in the traditional manner, with a sharp stick and many rituals). It's true that city women have fewer children, but she's not at all convinced that education and city living will make a difference in their lives. Neither one of them, therefore, has much faith in the government or other authorities to make informed decisions over their lives.
Let's go on from these extremes to a society in transition: Mei, who is an ethnic Chinese living in southeast Asia. She is a stay-at-home mother, having three children, living in a city apartment of three rooms. All day, she works hard to cook, clean, and look after her children, who range from two to ten, while occasionally making money out of her house, sewing and doing other chores. She sees nothing wrong in putting her daughter to work, sewing beside her: after all, a five-year-old girl is "hard to raise", and it's good that she's learning a trade. As they work, they watch TV: their favorite shows are talk shows and soap operas depicting Europeanized women in expensive clothes who almost never have more than one or two children apiece. Mei remembers living with her five siblings in a tiny farmhouse, and is determined to make a better life for her children in the city -- perhaps like the women on TV, whose kids all go to college. Actual college students in her country hate these programs, since they're leading women to abandon their age-old ways -- however, few of them seem likely to go back to the farm and raise large families either.
Mei's country is growing, but less and less quickly over time. Kuta's is growing explosively. Paola's is shrinking. I, an American woman of forty, have no children, and cannot figure out a way to afford any. The twenty-first century awaits.