Unlucky roll

Graphic NYT 1/5/15

After watching one of my best friends chopped down by intestinal cancer 17 months after diagnosis, I can vouch that it is truly a crap shoot. He got a really frickin' unlucky roll. There are 7 different mutations of his type of cancer and he got one of the most therapy-resistant ones. It wasn't the very worst mutation, but it sure was bad enough.

Make no mistake, we have world class cancer therapy and research here, mostly at the University of PA. My man did everything he should have done, sought out the most advanced experimental interventional radiology, exercised, researched, took an active role in his care, yet didn't even live out the stingy 2 year prognosis the original oncologists gave him. Cancer care pros like my wife talk about cancer care evolving as chronic disease management, but there was nothing chronic about this. This was as acute, random and brutal as the grim reaper gets. I now wonder if he would have had any less time or better quality of life, if instead of going through chemo, he just opted for palliative care at the end. Flip of the coin.

The internet is full of wonderful, hopeful breast cancer survivor stories. I know a handful of survivors. And I also knew two women who were dead months after their diagnoses. I knew another new mother who was told 18 years ago to make her final arrangements. She got to see her daughter's 15th birthday before she passed. Flip of the coin.

So, I liked the article "Cancer's Random Assault," but I'm amazed by the vitriol of the responses. People seem to need a cause/solution construct for everything. We anthropomorphize entropy--put a black hooded cloak on it and give it a scythe. We treat it like something or someone we can blame, fight or bargain with.
 

However complex the causalities, however deep the science goes in search of them, there is still an unseen, quantum aspect of life that you can't put a face on.  The numbers tell a story, but it's not a story about individuals, but about aggregate populations and statistical probability. In our vanity we are deeply uncomfortable "just being a number" but the truth is that sometimes we are just dots on a curve.

To my friends who are survivors, I salute you. Whatever hell you went through, you're still with us. You are lucky and we are lucky to still have you. To those who've passed and to those who grieve them; you did nothing wrong. Life and death are mostly like that. Just pure dumb random luck.

Midlife Coursing and Cognitive Dissonance

A West coast friend of many decades, (same age as me) skyped me yesterday and among our mutual ruminations about what the future holds for us, she advised me to identify and follow my passion. That’s easy, I told her. Lately my passion has been education reform and tonight, it paid off for our school.

"The SRC also voted to renew three schools' charters. Two - Planet Abacus and Laboratory Charter - are strong academic performers whose renewals had been held up because their founder, Dorothy June Brown, was on trial on federal fraud charges.

Brown was acquitted on six counts and will be retried on 54, but officials were satisfied that both schools had met several conditions, including severing ties to Brown."

3D or not to D

I saw “Gravity” in 3D on Saturday night with one of my BFFs, having just seen it the night before with my son. How that came about was my perfectly boneheaded move after a long day’s work, click-buying too fast without reading the small print, aided by some less than stellar user navigation by Moviefone.com, but Spencer and I found ourselves headed to the 2D version of Alfonso Cuarón’s space opera, “Gravity” on Friday instead of the 3D version we really wanted to see.

Once I realized that the tickets were non-refundable, we each made our own flavor of lemonade if you catch the drift. Spencer, who is prone to vertigo, thought the 2D version might be safer and I told myself that this would be the perfect acid test of whether the film was worth seeing twice, simply to resolve whether Real 3D is integral to the storyline or just a gimmick.

To be sure, the film is stunning in standard format 2D. We thoroughly enjoyed it. But by the end of my viewing, I had no doubt I needed to see it again to test the question. When I asked my 13 year old if he felt the same way, he said he did, but I could tell from the lack of commitment in his voice that he didn’t really share the same zeal I did.

When All Around You Go Short, It Pays to Go Long

http://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/

Democrats vilify Republicans as arithmetically-impaired, fundamentalist Randian social Darwinists. Republicans cast Democrats as godless, spendthrift, entitlement-sucking socialists. The extremes of both parties flame each other with such withering intensity that moderates are incinerated in the crossfire.

Independents went to the dance, kissed both boys, listened to their promises, but are playing coy as to which one (if either) they'll go home with. There's a very impolite word for that kind of date. I'm not going to use it, but do keep it in mind.

Independents are angry that the conventions offered them so little specificity and exact detail to make up their minds. What are they expecting? Paul Ryan found out just how draconian specifics can be when the fact-checker zombies come back to feast on his flesh. So has President Obama when he extemporaneously gotcha'ed himself in the "you didn't build this" line. Unpinch your nostrils my rabbity independent friends and inhale the partisan air. It may stink a bit, but it won't kill you. It is in fact, the best we have to breathe. A short guide to full bodied respiration follows ...

Is anybody surprised to learn that presidents don't dig ditches?

Presidents don’t perform “the mission” any more than Barack Obama pulled the trigger on Osama bin Laden.  But presidents DO make big things happen. They say go and Seal Team Six went. They are executive change agents. They paint with broad brushes, create mandates, which they hand over to the legislative, judicial and military branches to execute the details. That’s their jobs, even after they are on the job. That’s our system.

On the campaign trail or the Oval Office, the president is Preacher One. That’s our process. Expecting anything else is like asking for Christ to climb on the cross for a repeat performance. Human history, not just American history, offers poor job security for messiahs. We need to grow up, stop expecting them and definitely, we need to stop throwing them under the bus as soon as we grow the least bit impatient with their progress. We need to start thinking more longterm and allow history, economics and law to unfold in their own time. If we keep making midcourse corrections to molify the "election-deciding independents," if we keep jerking the rudder every two years, we’ll get nowhere anybody wants to be. 

Which is exactly where we are now. And it's all thanks to you.

Random Olympic closing observations

In no particular order:

Whether you found the opening and closing ceremonies quirkily entertaining or insufferably pompous and my FBF's already know where I stand, the Brits did an amazingly good job.

Brit pop music rocks. It has from the '60's when I was a kid and still does. Continue to invade at will, lads and lasses.

I don't know how they did from a budgeting/profit/loss standpoint, but they pulled the games off without Chinese overkill and with no major delays, no scandals, NO TERRORISM and all in one of the world's largest, busiest, most diverse cities. Well done, London!

This (or something like it) is what Mitt Romney should have said, but we already know he's no statesman or spokesman for American anything. Whatever he was asked when he made his infamous comment, he should have realized that his job wasn't to consult as a former Olympic organizer, but as an American dignitary. The hubris of the man. Epic fail on his part. Mr. PM and Mr. Mayor of London--well-said sirs!

It ain't necessarily so ... Political commentary

All I know is what I have words for.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953

Time Magazine called the Protestor "Person of the Year." The first New Yorker of 2012, on my desk today shows Old Man 2011 eying Newt prancing about as the 1994 baby. Already, given the peripatetic nature of the Republican race, the New Yorker cover is obsolete before its cover date. I'm afraid the Time cover is too.

It ain't necessarily so

The t'ings dat yo' li'ble

To read in de Bible,

It ain't necessarily so.

Perhaps it's fitting to revisit this George Gershwin composition that has been recorded by so many of the greats. Like most things Gershwin, it was really quite before it's time. This song's time is now. Even the statement "these are cynical times" sounds breathlessly naïve. These are way beyond cynical times. These are times I have no better words for. What's more cynical than cynicism? Fatalism. Both assume the worst of inputs. The latter affixes inevitability to outcomes. As much as I abhor predetermination, there's only so long you can drive along saying, it's a wall, up ahead, coming closer, it's a wall, it's a wall, before you smack into something.

Let's play history rematch. I re-pair Ronnie Reagan, the Teflon optimist and Jimmy Carter, the one term president who preached austerity, mano e mano 2011 and wonder whether Carter would have been so convincingly trounced. We've got your New American Century right here, Ron. How do you like it?

While our president gets to play hail the conquering heroes to soldier boys and girls on airbases and transport ships coming home from Iraq, worldclass skeptic Trudy Rubin writes how profoundly and non-partisanly we've failed that country and the region.  It doesn't take a skeptic to see that wherever in the world we (mis)adventure, we unerringly make the wrong moves.  It makes some of what libertarian skeptic Ron Paul says make sense. Not the John Bircher stuff, but the "we should keep to ourselves stuff."

Once we invaded Iraq was there ever any positive exit to be had? Whatever happens there next, civil war, Armageddon, Iranian puppet statehood, Muslim sects running after each other with power tools, etc. ... America's first and biggest folly was to ever go there and we should never forget this. For a writer, that's like starting a sentence with a period. I see a lot of revisionist media about Iraq and it sickens me. Not so much because of the disinformation fed our own people, but the false hope stirred up in the Iraqis. We have abandoned the few secular, progressive Iraqis we've encouraged in our short stint there. Once branded American sympathizers, their fates are double-sealed. They should notice that the American dream did not flower in Iraq and flee their country while they can. This sort of abandonment happens with some regularity. Ask the Kurds under Saddam.

In Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, et.al, we hail "the will of the people," the triumph of the protest movement over multi-decade dictatorships but worry about what has replaced them. In America, we automatically assume that our way is the best and brightest beacon the world has to offer.  I'm less convinced than ever that the world wants what we offer. I'm not even so sure we ourselves still want it.

We watched our Congress bring the economy to the brink over the deficit limit, watched in horror as Standard and Poors downgraded U.S. Bonds from AAA to AA+ and decided, as individual investors and en masse that it really didn't matter. Congress doesn't matter. The Tea Party doesn't matter. The OWS doesn't seem to matter.  None of the Republican candidates matter. They all surface briefly like blips on the radar, then fade into the murk. Why? Because they appeal to our craving for novelty more than our desire for hard work and lasting solutions.

What matters? I say this to the Republican presidential wannabees as I say it to the Democratic president I voted for. Failed. All failed. What makes you worthy of another chance? Unbelievably enough, I'm going to give you one if only because I'm not yet a fatalist, but a failed fatalist, I'm reluctantly willing to listen. But I know that you're lying to me. Your lips are moving I know you're telling me what you think I want to hear.

Never has cynicism seemed like such a requisite and important virtue.

Wadoo, zim bam boddle-oo,

Hoodle ah da wa da,

Scatty wah !

Oh yeah !...

It ain't necessarily so. Happy New Year.

In defense of the (revised) liberal education

"This is a tough time to graduate from college. While unemployment is high across the board, recent grads face a brutal 9.3% unemployment rate -- the highest that statistic has been for them since the Great Recession began. Worse yet, studies have shown that fewer than half of recent college students are finding jobs that relate to their majors, and just more than half felt their jobs made use of what they learned as undergrads."

I came across this article by DailyFinance.com's Bruce Watson, thanks to an FBF and it made me think about how much things have changed since I was a starry-eyed student.

The old saw when we didn't have gray hair was that college was less valuable for what you learned and more valuable that you "learned how to learn." As a grad of communications, back further than I care to say, the attrition rate was appallingly high. Maybe 1 in 10 still working in the field. The one thing I got right back in my youth was that "you really have to want it" and I did. And I do. So here I am, still working in a field that is every bit as tough as it was when I got out of school, if not tougher.

Naked Scarlett Johansson Pictures

This isn't about one middle-aged man's hopeless infatuation with the sexy Scarlett starlet. It's something scarier that you and the pretty and pretty smart young actress probably don't think about enough. Ms. Johannson sent some nudies to her then husband. In her own words, "Nothing wrong with that."

Despite about a billion drooling fanboys craving a better look, any look, she hasn't willingly shared all of her voluptuous curves with the global filmgoing public. Good for her. It should (have been) her decision to do it or not. She obviously has strong personal or business reasons for keeping the full-frontal stuff private. When you get to Ms. J's place in the world, your body is a commodity. Still, you're a person and you deserve to have your wishes respected. Or so you'd think..

And that's where she and you, if you feel the same way, are in error.
Some geek, with shockingly little effort got her password and is off to the races. Now, he's going to spend a lot of time in jail doing a less senstive version of the shower scene from "Midnight Express." Maybe that is some consolation to Ms. J and her well-wishers. But to me, it's a sad case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, run down the road and been sold to the glue factory by your evil neighbor.

I am not a network expert. But I know (and you know) that everything you see, send and do on the Internet is available if somebody is smart enough, motivated enough and puerile enough to make hacking you their business, be they government, divorce lawyer or pathetic fanboy.

People use their damned smartphones as cameras. People think of email the same way they thought of private letters. What Scarlett and the rest of the world seem to forget with shocking regularity is that every sext, every candid, every incriminating thing you write and send resides somewhere on some server that even the strongest password is only a pathetic bandaid on.

So what should Scarlett or you do if you want to share something sexy, provocative or incriminating with your paramour or fellow conspirator? Use a non-internet connected camera. Save the sexy private stuff for face-to-face. Keep in mind that the more public you are, the less private you are. And Scarlett, love, you are a smart, sexy and very talented woman. I respect you. But if and when you do decide to bare all for the camera, I'll be right in line with all the other pathetic fanboys. I don't care if you are reading a phone book.

OMG, did I really just put that out on the Net?

ARE WE NOT MEN -- Mainly on Masculinity, Learning and "Anti-Social" Media

Last month I spent a marvelous weekend in the company of two of my best friends and their sons. It was a multigenerational, manly weekend, full of beef, beer, boasting, boating and blasting the open road in my friend's Porsche 914.

Manly stuff, including long reminiscent and forward-looking conversations wherein we expressed fears, concerns, hopes for our boys. On the whole, they are like the children of Lake Woebegone, above average lads, and nearly all labor with some degree of academic challenge.


Two speakers at Ted Talks intelligently and eloquently spoke to "boy issues" in academia.



Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons. He stops short of solutions. He tells the audience that it's their job. And no doubt it is – their job and ours.


So what the heck do we do?

Reflections of a Walker #3

Volt for me and I'll set you free!

(warning: high geekspeak index)


Goodbye, good old friend.
Hello, good new (more gently used) friend.

 Back, last winter, I was stepping into a cab in my trenchcoat, closed the door and heard a sickening crunch. Result, house left. I was heartbroken, for this old friend had accompanied me on all walks, rain and shine for six years. Perhaps it was the striding gods punishing me for abandoning my pedestrian ways.

I know there are tons of fancypants MP3 players out there, most with Apple logos, big flash drives, video, all manners of "Swiss Army" hoohah, but this old school iRiver H320 player still holds more than a candle to them all. Maybe I'm an old school throwback, but the idea of watching a movie on a 3" screen is absurd. Hell, my 27" screen is too small for optimal viewing. Let music players be music players.

This South Korean manufactured playa sports a comfortable 20G drive, room enough for 2800 songs, most ripped at minimum 256k bitrate, decent radio, great recorder ... plug it in USB to your computer and it functions as another agnostic USB drive, no fuss over DRM or bizarre Apple music file structure. (Music, music, which directory is my $$$'ing music in?)

So unlike wetware friends who are irreplaceable, this new old friend (house right) was $60 on Ebay. If you like this oldschool player, just understand that it has a fiercely devoted fanbase (http://www.misticriver.com/) and can be hard to find. I was damned lucky. The one I'd bid on previously topped out at over $200. Once new friend arrived, I dragged and dropped my 18G portable music directory to the new friend, stripped off the old friend's silicon skin and plugged my musician quality Shure SCL4 sound isolating earbuds in and good to go.

Some folks take me to task, asking "is it safe to walk with earbuds in?" I'd ask them, especially if they're city dwellers, if you really need to hear city noise at normal db levels? The headphones' sound is so clean 109db (S/N) on the SCL4 (EC4 replacement), that you don't need to and shouldn't overdrive them for risk of damaging your hearing. Clean, normal volume sound, exterior sound reduced 60-80% and one's own head is a concert hall. One only need pretend you're hearing impaired and pay extra attention when crossing streets.

This iRiver player/recorder sports a 1.8" 20G Toshiba minidrive found in netbooks and mini-laptops, but Toshiba discontinued the more capacious upgrade drives with the old CF interface in favor of the newer ZIF interface. There are converters out there, but there's some question in my mind if it can all be crammed into the tiny space in my H320. So for now, I guess I'm stuck with only 2800 tunes at a time. A quality problem.

What's this have to do with walking? All I can say is it's my life and it's sometimes life needs a soundtrack of one's own choosing. Urban ambience can be interesting but I prefer to roll my playlist when I hit the streets. The aural joy and peace of mind/soul it brings me was well worth the investment.

For earlier Reflections of a Walker posts, just scroll down or visit my FB posts at:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32729666&l=a7efec5c26&id=1338279946
and
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32676077&l=b4c64e24e4&id=1338279946

Happy trails.

Signed the Walking Man.

Appropriation

Every day before we go out into the world, we stand naked in our bedrooms and make choices. Most times we put no more mindfulness into these choices than “gotta get dressed.” but because our clothing choices are the most visible aspect of our appearance, they define us perhaps more than we’d wish .

The shoes are New Balance. The half-socks are Hanes, as are the briefs. My shorts are Spaulding. The shirt is UnderArmour. The water bottle is SubZero. The phone is an ancient Treo and the MP3 is an ancient but serviceable iRiver.

I am good to go. I am a walking billboard for other people’s brands.

Except for the hat. Sorry Toyota, but it’s my brand now. It is no longer stands for a large, richly-appointed gas-guzzler. It means something more pedestrian.

It is me. It is mine. I have appropriated the logo and words to stand for my own decisions and behaviors. I am the Land Rover.

I began roving about seven years ago when I was 80 pounds heavier, hypertensive and had HBA1c values in the high 7’s. A diabetic son of diabetic parents. My last six HBA1c levels have been in the low, mid 5’s. This is accomplished by my near daily ritual and smart(er) food choices. I am no paragon of virtue. But I am a bit better than I was before.

It's good to have a vision. I told my physician and diet therapist that mine is of a spry 90 year old stepping into a canoe with my grandkids. These health advisors helped lay out a lifestyle that would bring me to that goal.

I had and have to make the “micro-decisions” necessary to reach it.
“Just do it.”

I used to say that I didn’t have time to make these commitments. That they were unfair. That evolutionary biology was stacked against me. Boo frickin hoo. The time of feeling sorry is past. I have too much roving left to do.

I'm not a huge fan of ballcaps, but you can't exactly go strolling in 90 degree heat in a Stetson. Maybe that's why those Texas politicians are all so … nevermind!

I am my cap. I am branded. There are many like it, but this brand is mine. It's sweet when that happens.

Take a hike!

Face to Face

A recent freewheeling FB chat I had with my brother who is a teacher in the Chicago Public School System on the subjects of privacy, "friending," "defriending," kids and personal technology and the up/downsides of all:

10:16pmMe
are you still home?

10:17pmGreg
yes if you mean Pgh.

10:17pmMe
just got K's msg about defriending ###### for Mom. I can't do that. Would need access to her account and pw to do that. So perhaps you can while there.

This is one area where Mom and I disagree, but she has the right to her own opinions and "friends"

10:18pmGreg
I can handle it...think I'll just hide ###  for her...that way #### won't hound her and won't know that she isn't seeing ####'s posts unless ### posts to her directly

10:19pmMe
I thought of that and while I'd advocate hiding too, I think if she looks at her friends list, then she'll know ### is still there.

10:19pmGreg
it's a more "polite" way to ignore
we already talked about that

chances are real good ### won't
talk to her any more on FB than #### does already

10:20pmMe
abso, as long as she agrees
I've spam foldered ##### already. The crap I get from her isn't even personal email.
Just lame and stupid jokes.
The last series of Obama "cartoons" are positively racist, some of them, so off to spam she goes.

10:21pmGreg
I haven't received a single post from ### --to me, since friending.

#### is no more a part of my life now than before FB
no surprise

10:23pmMe
I am one for maintaining congeniality. which fb is a great way to do
friendship/contact but without the sticky stuff.

10:24pmGreg
I am no more/less congenial...like I said, the connection is the same as before.
I think ###, like most "collects" friends...
something I am not interested in doing

I only have about 150 people
on my list
not several hundred

10:25pmMe
I've had marvelous time reconnecting with bricks and mortar friends, some from as many as 30 years ago.

10:25pmGreg
did that with 1-2 people
most are people I already am in steady contact with on a regular basis

10:26pmMe
had a great discussion with 10 people over a photo from the early 90's ITVA. Might even inspire a reunion. Social media at its best.

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.

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