Annuals and Decimals--Notes on the Passing Decade

Sweet dreams are made of these

At age 10, I had a dream about my fifth grade class going on a field trip to the moon. I actually entered the gleaming rocket ship and settled into my launch chair, but I never made it. The nuns discovered I'd forgotten my lunch money, so I was kicked off the space ship and left behind. I'd never forgotten that dream, but the last place I expected to be reminded of it was at the premiere of "Tron" this week.

My 16 year old and I settled in for the trailers and I found myself watching this theatrical Kia Optima commercial: "Sweet Dreams"  with a mixture of joy, wonderment and the feeling expressed best by Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly." It felt like some evil mf copywriter genius at Park Pictures reached inside my head, extracted the glowing filament that best distilled all my most cherished fantasies and unfulfilled dreams and splashed them on the screen with a tagline "No one ever dreamt of driving a midsized sedan… until now.” The boy driving his bed through his fantasies turned into a driving man who watches in awe as the rocket ship of his dreams lifts off into the cosmos. He's happy in his sleek midsized sedan, but to me, it seems like a poor consolation prize.

Worker Rights Extend to Facebook, Labor Board Says - NYTimes.com

Worker Rights Extend to Facebook, Labor Board Says - NYTimes.com: "Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: November 8, 2010
In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page. This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements."

This is going to be big, not just from a worker/social media context but in a labor relations context as well. I'm watching this. We all should be.

Post-Midterms

Republicans meet your new boss. Scarier than the old boss.

GOP Leaders: Sarah Palin Must be Stopped - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "GOP Leaders: Sarah Palin Must be Stopped"
This is going to be great political theater and it's culmination will be the Republican National Convention. Bad news if you're one of those rarest of birds, i.e., a Republican and a moderate. Either way, you lose.

Chatter astride the Social Network Divide, Halloween Edition

c.010101 is in your "face" for Halloween

Today, folks my (middle) age are split right down the middle. Half are FB junkies, half are still poleaxed by the social networks, their triviality, their meteoric rise in popularity (in direct proportion to that triviality). To both halves, the haves, the have nots, the "likes" and the "like nots" this is my final apologia.

I like having a tab on my 16 year old son and knowing who his friends are through FB. I like catching up with my nephews in college and my own friends from 20-30 years ago. I like knowing that my brave friend MN is a master woodworker and though she has breast cancer I can "like" her post in which she tells all, that I can offer her support and encouragement along with dozens of others of her friends. I'm sure she'll carry a little positive buzz into her next chemo session. I love the rolicking political debates I have with farflung friends in FL, PA, CA and all over on issues as diverse as "the meaning of tolerance" "abortion" the "Tea Party." I like bating my old TU classmate who is both a Republican media consultant and though he might howl at the label, a closet liberal. One guy from FL has a real knack for throwing out a debate topic and watching people pounce all over it like wolves. This makes for lots of freewheeling intellectual interplay and just plain fun on a purely social level. If you post about what you had for lunch and that you're at work and bored, chances are I'm not going to care or answer you. It takes less than a second to engage or dismiss a trivial post, but for the rest of us, there is discourse, real intelligence out there. You don't have to look very hard for it. I have a wife, two tech-savvy boys, a business and a pretty active "non-virtual" social life.

I am done justifying the value of being an online social networker. I'm not turning into a socially maladjusted hermit for using it but you may be turning into a socially maladjusted hermit if you don't use it. Many people are saying that the social platform is rapidly becoming not just the next communications platform, but the next communications, computational do everything platform. So whatever you say about the intrusion of the media into our private lives, social media are/is here to stay and some of us have stopped puzzling over what it says about us (as a society) and started wondering what it says next.

Facebook needs some work as a "cloud ap." Doing some things on it still takes too much guesswork and clicking about. That's all about to make a radical leap.   


Form Factor Follies

From geek ...

Computers. We have always been slaves to their form factors. When I was a teen wolf, they were as big as libraries, and now you can slip one in your pocket and carry it everywhere. One of my standard jokes is that as a tween geek I always dreamed about owning a pocket computer and now that I have one (a 5 year old Palm Treo) I'm old enough to need glasses to read it it. The joke loses something without my scintillating delivery, but the Treo, mature tech, fits handily in my pocket. So the problem with mobile computing is no longer size, but two other issues. Better imaging and input. We've all seen people walking down the street staring and clicking away at tiny screens until they walk into walls or other people. They're mobile, but the tiny screen and finger input sucks. It requires that you absent yourself from your surroundings. In the case of texting and driving to disastrous results. Wearable, discrete, heads up displays built into glasses or contact lenses and corneal sensors and the next phase dataglove-finger/hand-whatever thingy sensors will solve this issue. That's just current/breaking tech. Who knows what kind of cool, weird body-integrated computing interface is being dreamed up by the bright boys and girls in Silicon Valley and MIT.  



To chic!



The form factor change of computers drives the very definition of "computer" and "computer user." It's changed and will continue to. Computers used to be computational devices. They solved mathematical problems. Like the payload to get men to the moon and back. Then they shrunk down onto people's desks and became personal problem solvers. Business machines. Users changed from scientist to teenagers. Now our personal communications machines are social machines. And they are rapidly becoming ubiquitously portable.

Here's what the next big leap will look like.

It's more of the same.

It's everwhere.

It's in your face, introducing ...

facespace-3D



FaceSpace 3D Live--What, you think it won't happen?

 Imagine, Facebook 3D and other non-virtual platforms where social networks run amock and becoming completely equally untethered and mobile. Whether I want to or not, I'll be wading through endless streams of social data. Ron in Florida is stirring up his conservative friends. My sister in Virginia is posting the Steelers jerseys she knitted for the lab puppies. Here in Philly, I take a moment and friend the Art Museum as I run up its steps and do my Rocky victory dance.

The Rocky Statue, already my friend, says, go ahead, friend both the museums too. When I get to the top, I'll let you all know. Heck. You'll all be watching. We'll share likes and posts from the restaurants, galleries, service stations and CVS's I pass on foot or you drive by in your car. You think we live in a media-cluttered world now. Man, just wait.

I don't know how I feel about that. Ten years from now, I'll no doubt be nostalgic for the relative simplicity of these our current times. That's just the way it works. We will all walk around endlessly distracted by our personal technology and our personal enviroment and its global extensions. Soon our environment and our technology will merge. And we will merge. I just hope I can keep up with all of it.

Off to get some Halloween candy with "Tween Wolf." Live from the trenches.

The kind of discussion about the Ground Zero mosque you wish our leaders were having

The most interesting discussion on the "Ground Zero Mosque" I've ever seen, doesn't come from any political discourse, but from a Facebook conversation. It all started when a writer friend posted this:

Chris Jones
“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.” JFK

September 20 at 8:03pm · Comment ·LikeUnlike

2 people like this..

Richard M Weiss
Or as my 8th grade social studies teacher, Audrey "Dragon Lady" Bourgeois often said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Thought it was a Audrey original, but who knew from Voltaire in 8th grade."

Rebecca Gant Bryden
Huh? Both statements are a stretch. If JFK really believed that's what tolerance means, he needed a better speech writer or a better word to make his point.

September 20 at 11:56pm · LikeUnlike.

Richard M Weiss
My quote, with further research actually comes from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing about Voltaire and his "Treatise on Tolerance." Freedom of speech, religion, association, the great democratic principles all spring from it. It's the virtue best defined by the absence of a negative. JFK got it right, but here's another interesting and supportive take from a citizen soldier in Afghanistan.

Tuesday at 1:05am · LikeUnlike.

Lori O'Konek
Cool discussion. Liked the article you posted Richard. Intriguing.

Tuesday at 6:32pm · LikeUnlike.

Rebecca Gant Bryden

I also appreciated the article, Richard. Thank you. These days tolerance is considered a virtue, while intolerance is a pejorative term. My main concern over the JFK quote is with the word "condemns." I don't think that the word 'toleran...ce' automatically implies condemnation of oppression of anything or anyone except perhaps, passively. I can be tolerant of others, without actually condemning those who are intolerant or persecuting same. To me, condemnation suggests ACTION. It also depends on context. I think that "tolerance" is like the word "brave." If, during WW II, someone had said the German and the Japanese soldiers are "brave," many people at the time would have disagreed and said, "No, Allied soldiers are brave; the enemy soldiers are "fanatics." What may be tolerance or bravery to one person might be intolerance or fanatical to another.

Tuesday at 9:58pm · LikeUnlike.

Richard M Weiss ‎
@Lori, he writes well, that citizen soldier. @Rebecca, I (finally) see your point, but I think JFK was talking about tolerance on two different levels. You as a private citizen in the worlds greatest democracy, can be tolerant and accept diversity without condemning anything. Perhaps that's enough. But in Nazi Germany, many ordinary burghers tolerated the Nazis. It was enough to create systemic intolerance. So yes, context is important.

The second level, as per Voltaire, a government or a leader who doesn't actively condemn oppression tacitly allows intolerance to flourish. As a private citizen in theocratic, monarchistic Europe, Voltaire, a private citizen felt it his clear duty to actively condemn. His writings are at the very core of democratic thinking and he paid a high price for his bravery which the church and several heads of state called treason and heresy.
 
The second level, as per Voltaire, a government or a leader who doesn't actively condemn oppression tacitly allows intolerance to flourish. As a private citizen in theocratic, monarchistic Europe, Voltaire, a private citizen felt it his clear duty to actively condemn. His writings are at the very core of democratic thinking and he paid a high price for his bravery which the church and several heads of state called treason and heresy.
Tuesday at 10:51pm · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading....

Chris Jones
When I posted it I was thinking of tolerance for a mosque near ground zero in NYC. FYI.
Tuesday at 11:20pm · LikeUnlike.

Chris Jones
And I love having a thoughtful discussion about the meaning of a word. :-)
Tuesday at 11:26pm · LikeUnlike.

Richard M Weiss
 I knew that's where you were going CJ. I'm not crazy about the Cordoba Center's location, but in the spirit of JFK, Voltaire and EB Hall, I can not just tolerate it, but insist that it must be built, if only because such tolerance tests, defines and strengthens a democracy.

Rebecca Gant Bryden
Richard; Chris, I’ve appreciated this discussion. In 1930s Germany, good people tolerated the evil inflicted by Nazis out of fear for their lives if they protested. That’s understandable, but the price for them and the world was very high.... I also thought of the mosque issue during this discussion. Obviously, if the mosque is built, people must be tolerant of it, but just because someone has the right to do something, which in this case is not disputed, it doesn't follow that it's a good, kind, wise, or moral thing to do.

Aside from questions about source funding for the mosque as well as inflammatory past statements made by the imam, I think that building a mosque so close to GZ is an immoral provocation because it inflicts needless additional pain on survivors, families, a city, and a country. Frankly, I don’t think that intolerance of Islam has much to do with it, given that there are over 100 mosques in NYC and hundreds more throughout the country that people are not protesting.

That pastor in Florida who threatened to burn the Quran was within his constitutional right of freedom of speech, but I didn’t hear pleas for tolerance of his rights by anyone. Most people rightly saw it as a very bad and destructive idea and not representative of the vast majority of Christians, let alone Americans. Not everything that is a constitutional right is moral. It’s always a judgment and most often a political call and good people can disagree. But people have a constitutional right to protest decisions, and unfortunately the common practice of labeling others one disagrees with as “intolerant,” or “Islamaphobic,” or “bigoted” or “un-American” or “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobic”—depending on the issue—also smacks of intolerance. If people seem intolerant about a public policy, there could be valid and debatable reasons for it.
Wednesday at 6:20pm · LikeUnlike.

Chris Jones
I just believe that people should be able to build their church/synagogue/mosque/chapel wherever they want (if they can afford it).

I am not into labels. I would hope that 9/11 survivor families can separate radical Islam from real Islam. A...nd I hope that Muslims can separate the real Christians from the nut job church pastor who wanted to burn the Quran. Same. Same.See More

Wednesday at 9:53pm · LikeUnlike.

Richard M Weiss
At what point do you stop being good if you passively tolerate systemic evil? This is why Kennedy's definition of tolerance is on the money, because being good and tolerant, at some point, involve action against evil. Toleration is passive in the face of evil where tolerance is active. Thomas Paine said 'It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.' and "'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." The Tea Partiers who love Payne, grossly misunderstand him and distort his intent.

Imam Rauf has shown himself to be the poster boy of moderate, inclusive Islam, but I think he represents the leading/liberal edge of Islam, not its center and certainly not its extreme. Islam as a whole has a lot of growing up to do and Rauf is the rare guy to lead that charge. His stated intention is inclusion, not provocation. Cordoba hearkens back to Cordoba, Spain, where all 3 faiths flourished/pre-Crusades, in harmony. His brand of Islam deserves American support because its compatible with our values of tolerance.

Pastor Terry Jones (no relation, right cj?) has shown himself to be a extremist crackpot. We are tolerant when we allow him free speech from his dwindling pulpit. Nazis marched in Skokie, IL. KKK congregated throughout the South. Don't have to like them to be tolerant of their right to free speech and peaceable assembly. But society has a right to recourse when they shit on Torahs or burn black churches. The Constitution sprung from moral principles which convey moral standing to our rights, but not to every exercise of them.

If we tolerated Jone's holy book burning, it would be like tolerating the nut who yells fire in a theater. His intent was to anger and insult. Nothing peaceable about it. Yet he was not arrested or thrown in jail. I wonder who bought him off.

Wednesday at 10:57pm · LikeUnlike.

Chris Jones
You should have been a lawyer. ;-)

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike.

Richard M Weiss
Which one of us CJ? I'm just a liberal, patriot and closet semanticist. Okay, I guess out of the closet ;-) I'll bet Rebecca shares at least two of those three qualities. I think one thing we can all agree on is that these are the kinds of thoughtful conversations we wish our "leaders" were having, instead of the mass hysteria sound biting that serves as public discourse. Gotta love FB. Gotta see the movie. Cheers all!

2 minutes ago · LikeUnlike

Baby Steps-A religious walker recovers from knee surgery

When I first started to write this I was 5 days post-arthroscopy. In late March I'd come downstairs in the wee hours of the morning, head half-fogged by sleepiness and the fugue calculus of character arc for a short story I'd been working on. I needed a glass of water before bed. In my reverie I missed the last step on our ancient stairs and ended up on my ass with my left leg twisted under me. It didn't feel great but after a quick self-assessment, assuring myself I'd been careless, but had broken nothing or had done no permanent damage, I rose gingerly, shook it off and continued my walking regimen in the days that followed. After each workout, I typically paid a little in pain premium the next day but I didn't think much of it. With exercise, once I got going, my reliable endorphins kicked in and I'd be fine.

Then three weeks later in April came "the afternoon of the big backpack." Typically I meet my youngest son after school two to three days a week. We walk the 2.5 miles home and I shoulder his 18 pound backpack, brimming with textbooks. I have strong concerns about a 10 year old back shouldering that kind of weight, so I cheerfully relieve him of it. That night I was a bit more ginger than usual.

The next day, when I awoke, I could barely walk.

Stiegless in Seattle, Stockholm, Philadelphia and Everywhere

At the end of last week, I finished reading "The Girl that Kicked the Hornet's Nest," the third book in Stieg Larsson's startling trilogy. I'd first heard about Larsson in 2008 on NPR in one of Martha Corrigan's erudite but effortlessly seductive book reviews. Corrigan, a writer, lecturer at Georgetown, is one of NPR's jewels, the type you sit in the car with the engine off, just to hear the end of her latest installment. Don't know if it’s the timbre of the voice or the whip smart things it says, but I remember exactly where I was, when I first learned about Stieg, Blomkvist and Salander, (heading north on 11th, turning on Arch Street. I remember exactly what I thought, (that though I'm not much of one for mystery novels, this sounds just off-kilter enough for my tastes).

Perhaps, I was more receptive because I'd just finished reading Eliot Patttison's brilliant Skull Mantra, itself an offbeat murder mystery set in post-occupation Tibet. So okay, okay, I've found my "MM niche." Give me a tale of culture totally alien to mine own, kill off some characters in a grizzly fashion and let me follow the trail of a whip-smart investigator and I will read and read …

Overheard on Meredith St.: They should'a known better

(Sidewalk Society HQ, in colder times)


The TV has been off here for awhile. People have been sending links to the BP disaster and I've been avoiding them. I've got a strong stomach, but it does not include live executions. I can't watch live executions.

I couldn't go to the movie The Stoning of Soraya M or A Mighty Heart and couldn't watch internet video of Daniel Pearl. I've avoided everything BP related like the wife in the famous Isaac Asimov sci fi story who decided she could no longer look at the sun after her astronaut husband fell into it.  Mel Gibson's necro-p*rn depictions of death in Brave Heart and Passion of the Christ pushed limits I don't want pushed. It physically sickens me. It diminishes my optimism for the survival of our species.

But nobody can live in a media-saturated world like ours and not get some of the ooze on you. So satellite images of slick swirls and undersea plumes along with the usual oil drenched herons and dead fishies have been washing up on my shores. I won't bore you. You've seen them.  Predictably, it's been eating at me, so last night I took it outside for a confab with two of the charter members of our Meredith St. Sidewalk Society. (So dubbed par moi.) 

A questioned "how could they not have planned for this." She believed that with stakes as high as these, an ultimate cork, a kill switch should have been in place from the start and should have been triggered immediately. How could they not have foreseen this? A is a social worker. She is well-versed in society's rhetorical questions.

G, who works as a corporate buyer said that it is a systemic management problem. Somewhere along the line some technical person filed a report or expressed a reservation that he or she sent up the line. The techs, the engineers expect their bosses to champion and air their concerns to their bosses. But the reality is that contrarian voices are always quashed in favor of consensus and group think, which G says is very powerful.

For the corporate animal--life, income, future depend on going along. Projects must move to completion or heads will roll. You better think long and hard before you stand up and say "halt the presses." I said that from Challenger to 911 to Exxon Valdez, decisionmakers have historically devalued their internal watchdogs in favor of expedience. It is in our nature to do so. It isn't until truly large catastrophic failure that we wise up. For the oil industry, the Exxon Valdez wasn't enough. Maybe there aren't as many double-hulled tankers out there as used to be but the industry's tepid response shows they didn't get it then. They do now. This industry has shown itself as failure-ready as any.

A pointed out that given the ecological disaster they cause that it should be different. That they should be held to a higher standard. How could I disagree when it is the shame of our generation, yo Boomers, that we didn't suck it up for the next generation. Back in the 70's when we had another oil crisis and a president telling us that we needed to make some sacrifices, if we'd started investing hard capital in clean energy, then our kids wouldn't have to suck it up.  Even investing in post-3 Mile Island nuclear power is a sober choice we should've done a long time ago.

The old peanut farmer was right, but what he was saying was too damned unpleasant. Our solution was to kick out the farmer and hire the actor. The actor had a much more upbeat message. Our kids will pay for the expedient choices we've made in the last 30 years. We won't be alive to see it. G disagreed with that last statement. He said ecological collapse is happening so fast, that we might. He smiled wryly as he said it.

It is human nature to ignore our watchdogs until it is too late. Global warming and more grotesque ecological disasters will kick our butts.  Whether we'll pull them out of the fire in time to save our species is anybody's guess. I don't like this guessing game.  A couple of years ago, I had to write an intro to astronaut John W. Young who was the keynote speaker for a big corporate meeting.  Young's NASA bio page tells why he remains so adamant about space exploration.

"He [Young] will continue to advocate the development of the technologies that will allow us to live and work on the Moon and Mars. Those technologies over the long (or short) haul will save civilization on Earth." What he's saying is that he thinks we'll "screw the pooch" here on our homeworld and our ability to colonize other worlds will determine our outcome as a species. This is an astronaut, not an end of the world crackpot.

The oil company execs in this Reuter's article are shocked. They didn't anticipate this. Some commenters say that you can't lay this on the desk of the CEO, that the blame is as diffuse as an undersea plume. G, A and I think that's dead wrong. Every CEO's job is to protect and nurture their watchdogs and contrarions. They are often the only people making real sense. I say if you are a CEO, your lack of disaster management is your personal disaster. That's the job. Suck it up.

Is crisis preventable? Not 100%. Is it manageable? How could we do any worse than we do now? Hope hangs on a thread, (but she wasn't at last night's meeting). It's coming on summer here at Sidewalk Society headquarters, (shown above in colder times). Is it winter in America? Increasingly, serious and sober people are saying it is. We damned well need to start listening to them.

LaptopGate--Privacy v. Intrusion in Lower Merion, PA

Somewhere, in the basement of a top secret Homeland Security NSA computer lab, a former hacker is beta-testing a super-sniffer, call it WebSnoop 1.0, that can be deployed over the public net to track cookies, view histories, download files and activate webcams, microphones and keyboards. The new release of "Snoopy" will have modules to scrape passwords and change private files and directories into networked and viewable ones. It can create and send incriminating email from your account. It can track your every move via your cellphone and log all your ATM and credit transactions. It won't only know each stick of gum you buy, but how long you take to chew it and where you throw it away. Paranoid fantasy? Hollywood science fiction? You wish cats and kitties.

You wish.

Today, Tuesday, a rainy day with no prospect of sunlight in sight, I head over to my Facebook wall in search of inspiration. I clip a lot of links and stick them on Facebook sometimes to get the pulse of my online friends; but usually just because something interests me and I plan to get back to it later.  Since it broke yesterday, I’ve been following the very interesting scandal that rocked the sleepy borough of Lower Merion, PA. It may be coming soon to a laptop near you. Perhaps nearer and sooner than you think.

Lower Merion is a well-heeled, progressive community whose teens are issued Macbooks for schoolwork. Laudable, but one young lad decided to engage in some unscholarly activity in his bedroom, with only his  laptop for company. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure the sort of activity a troubled teen male might be engaged in. The real trouble began when the school’s vice principal remotely turned on his webcam, snapped a picture of him in his bedroom and sent it, with warning to him and his parents.

Now there’s a lawsuit brewing and Lower Merion finds itself in a Scheißesturm of unwanted, daily press coverage. As I said, I’ve been tracking this in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Here are the links, in sequence:

• The story breaks
• Next day follow-up
• The following day's coverage (today)

The notoriety has gotten so great that the lawsuit already has its own Wikipedia page.

Also check out this gizmodo link, this blog from the NY Times and the FBI investigation that has ensued.

That’s the kind of publicity that nobody wants, but we need, now more than ever.

"Heirlooming" and the Family Network

Looking into the Future

A friend of mine in the biz sent the above link to a very interesting article by David Pogue, tech maven of The Times on the perils of "data rot" as they pertain, here to family videos.

Pogue writes:

As you may be aware, we're about to enter a whole new era of data rot, one of the biggest and most personal of all: consumer videotape is going away. At the Consumer Electronics Show last month, I was astounded to see that Canon, for example, has only one MiniDV (tape) camcorder model left—which hasn't been updated for several years. The other companies are following suit. It's all about built-in hard drives or memory cards now. That development hit me especially hard, because I've always loved documenting my family.

It got me thinking about the work I've done to establish our own clan's Family Media Network but as you can see, I take a different tack than Pogue. I've read his column and don’t always know what to make of him. If he’s such a tech maven, why should he be stymied by, or even surprised with the phasing out of tape as a storage medium? Tape? Take it from somebody who used to thread portapaks and 1” Ampex machines by hand with it. I won’t miss it!!!! No siree.

Wanna talk about classical media formats? Okay. I collected all my Dad’s super 8 films and Mom’s Bell and Howell projector to transfer my family’s heirlooms to Digital 8 and then from there, straight to the family network drive. Probably the same cheap 2Tb one that Pogue picked up. Last year, I picked up a BVU-800 for a $125 (on Ebay) last year to transfer the handful of ¾” projects I want to keep. I have a handful of portapak tapes, but most of those I’m sure I transferred to ¾” back in the 80’s. Mom just gave me 4 milkcrates with of 78’s from the 20's-40’s. Big Band and lots of RCA Victor classical pressings. Most of them pristine. Haven’t quite figured what I’m going to do with them yet, but my turntable is up and operating again after a 10 year hiatus. I've never had it on the '78 setting before, but it might be fun to rip some of that old wax to mp3.

Bennett interviewed my Dad about his mother over the phone for a school project. I have about 15 minutes of Dad reminiscing about his mother's anti-child labor marching days. This gem will be easy to deal with. I don't have to do anything. It's already an MP3 file.

Lists, Advice and the joys of reading aloud.

A writer on one of the writers' groups I follow posted this link to the 100 Greatest Opening Lines for a novel. In some respect such lists are meaningless, but I am reading Huckleberry Finn to my 10 year old for his bedtime reading and this line appears as #12 of the "Greatest Opening Lines":

"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter." —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

This is the second child I've read aloud to from this, perhaps the most important American work of fiction by arguably the greatest American author. I tell him its for his erudition, but it's really for me. I maintain a "selfish selflessness" when it comes to reading to the boys. I only read works I love, so as best to communicate my enthusiasm for the work and for reading in general. Huckleberry Finn is perhaps my favorite novel of all time. Such a ripping adventure yarn, so simply written, in such a compelling voice on so many complex subjects. Racism, slavery, morality, identity, personal loyalty, the relationships of fathers and sons ... layers and layers, on and on.

That said, imho, the line is only memorable because the book is so damned good. But does that make it great? I always thought the line was a bit of a "throw-away," an understated device Twain used to quickly move readers from A to B. He gives permission to read Huck (his masterpiece) without having first read TS (his great work). Huck Finn is chockfull of amazing lines, all far more memorable than its first line.

How about this passage from Chapter 16, where we stopped last night:
Setup--Huck is bedeviled by his conscience, having had an opportunity to do the "right thing" and give Jim up. But for reasons he doesn't fully understand yet, he doesn't.

"I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show -- when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad -- I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. "

What makes a great opening line? Is it the great poetic resonance that presages the story like a bolt of lightning? Is it how in a single brushstroke, it intros a memorable protagonist or sets the stage for the work's central conflict?

What virtue is inherent in a novel's first line that we as writers should study, know and emulate?

I always thought that the first lines of short stories were more "important" because of the economy of short stories v novels. Novels are about slow-cooking, delicate, complex nuanced flavors, while short stories offer sharper, faster brighter flavors but by necessity, less complexity. The short story format only allows you to hint at complexity, i.e., negative space, rather than develop it. In cooking, a good reduction, water is all that boils off. In a good short work or a good long work, there is no excess water. So, I'd argue that it's not possible to retain ALL the flavors of a long work in a short work, no matter how skilled or brutal an editor you are.

To wit, this link from Writer's Digest for those of us considering, editing or pulling our hairs out over a novel in progress. Some solid advice within, which I'm taking to heart:

Writer’s Digest - Take Your Novel to the Finish Line

 

Here's again is the link to an essay I did on Twain while reading Tom Sawyer with Son 1. 

My how I roam and ramble. Twain would have me set on a raft without a paddle. 

My Review of Roku HD-XR Player

Originally submitted at Roku

Extended range wireless (WiFi N) delivers the best quality video virtually anywhere in your home.

Roku HD-XR Player

TV Nirvana

By TridentPro from Philadelphia, PA on 1/4/2010

 

5out of 5

Pros: Compact, Great value, Built in Wi-Fi, Reliability, High quality picture, Video selection, Easy to use, Easy to set up

Cons: Want more video choices

Best Uses: Primary TV

Describe Yourself: Media professional, Power User, Early adopter, Home entertainment enthusiast, Technophile, Netflix fan

I am a video producer and the Roku was a Christmas present to family and self. As we don't yet have hardwire network access to the family room I had to hope that our 3Mbps DSL wireless bandwidth was enough to feed the box an acceptible signal. Setup took ten minutes and I was immediately delighted with the image quality and the speed with which movies downloaded and played. Who needs cable for movies when you have your Netflix account and one of these cool Roku boxes? What a great investment!

I only have one request/suggestion. Roku meet Hulu. Hulu, meet Roku. Make it happen guys and you both will be unstoppable.

(legalese)