A President Who Can Think on his Feet

In a speech that reminded me of some of the strongest moments from the film The American President (full script here, I’ll add a sample below), Barack Obama demonstrated that he can inspire, that he can be tough, that he has an open mind, that he values fairness and American values in all their diversity and, most encouragingly, that he can articulate these points without fumbling; that he can give a 45 minute speech without veering off into incoherent sentence structures and without inadvertently flipping what he means to say into its own opposite. George W. Bush can’t do it and I have yet to see John McCain get passionate and stay coherent on any topic.

Some quick quotes (full speech text is online here too):

“This, too, is part of America 's promise -- the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.”

"That's why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors - found the courage to keep it alive."

“You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq .”

"I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it."

“ -- that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington . Change comes to Washington ”

Sure, the speech was pre-written and well-rehearsed and not so different from the one I saw months ago in Birmingham (Alabama), but he delivered it with interest, on tempo, with vitality and with sincerity. A President we can believe in.

Here’s a bit of Michael Douglas as Alan Shepherd in The American President:

“Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. Nobody has ever won an election by talking about what I was just talking about. This is a country made up of people with hard jobs that they're terrified of losing. The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment. We are a nation afraid to go out at night. We're a society that has assigned low priority to education and has looked the other way while our public schools have been decimated. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

I hope we all stay in touch with this inspirational vision and that we elect Obama and reject the continuity offered by John McCain as he has moved closer to George W’s policies of war for oil’s sake and gotten tighter with the closed minds of ultra-conservative religious minorities.

Let’s bring a fresh quick mind with a powerful vision to the Presidency – we should never settle for anything less.

McCain’s Desperate Gambit

Sarah who? Governor of which state? For how long? John McCain’s running mate is in her second year as Governor of one of the least populous states in the country, Alaska . It’s not lost on me that Alaska is an oil state, too; although apparently she’s been a critic of big oil to some extent, still her state receives a big pile of oil money every year. So McCain wanted a woman, one with “maverick credentials”, to me that’s because he’s lost his own set. He began losing his independent voice sometime before 2006 when he visited Alabama and cozied up to some very right-wing religious groups, some with ties to white-supremacy and other hate groups; and shredded the rest as he has backed George W. Bush’s plays in Iraq and the former Soviet Union. But I can see why he picked a woman, and why he didn’t want her name out in the media on his short list. He wanted to let Obama pick a non-woman, i.e. someone other than Hillary Clinton, and then he’s hoping to swoop in and pick up the disenfranchised Hillary supporters, particularly in the large swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania , where Hillary did better than Obama. I’m sure most of the Clinton-ites will see right through this. Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton. She is not a statesman the way Hillary grew to be as First Lady and has carried on now as a 10 year veteran of the U.S. Senate. We know Hillary’s passions and foibles. Sarah Palin is an unknown and there is not enough time now for the American public to ensure that she is qualified to be one heart beat away from the Presidency. She is younger than Obama, but we know that he can handle pressure, we’ve seen him on the campaign trail for 18 months; we saw him at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. What was Sarah Palin doing in 2004? Can she stand up to the pressure of the office that she now seeks, or the one that might be bequeathed to her suddenly? We can’t find out in the next 68 days, but we would need to in order to be swayed to their ticket. It’s a desperate gambit by a man seeking an office where desperate gambits can put us all in harm’s way.

Preamble Rambling

My daughter just started seventh grade. They’re studying US history, presently The U.S. Constitution. It’s heady stuff. She’s had to memorize the Preamble, and while there is some uncommon language it’s all pretty straight-forward – and powerful. I was going to just point to a copy on the web at, say, http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html, but it’s worth duplicating it here (and copyright should not be an issue, :-) ):

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

That’s about as strong an opening on as serious of a topic as there is in our civil life, yet our general citizenry in this day and age only really pays attention to it when they’re in secondary school. “… secure the Blessings of Liberty”, not just for the framers (who were largely regular citizens) and their contemporaries, but for their posterity (that’d be us, now). And they were sure to include tantamount precepts like separation and balance of powers and the Bill of Rights for individuals.

Just to take one example from that Bill, the first amendment, again is strong stuff:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In the face of that founding right, how do we have stories like the one coming out of Minneapolis today where 3 videographers had their cameras, equipment and notes confiscated by police (Minneapolis cops confiscate cameras)? Prima facie it flies against the most basic tenets of our government and I don’t understand why it’s not the top news story of the day. Maybe someday my daughter will explain it to me.

An honor to know the Honorable…

I’ve gotten more familiar with our hometown mayor, Sandy Kirkendall, over the past four years – he’s up for re-election today. I voted for him, and I’ve had his sign in my yard and his magnet on my car for a couple months now as his campaign heated up. We’re invited to his victory party this evening, although I don’t think his victory is assured. As near as I can tell he’s a fine small-and-growing town mayor – we’ve certainly had worse in the past 15 years. He’s down-to-earth yet very sharp and not a hint of impropriety in his administration; he’s a frequent customer at Bruegger’s Bagels where my wife works and he awarded my son the Madison Mayor’s Scholarship a couple years ago. My daughter recently doodled his campaign logo . He stopped by our house during his canvassing and he planted our yard sign himself. This morning he was out in front of city hall, in the drizzling rain, greeting all who came to vote, for him or not. He’s a model politician – if only his style would catch on for higher office holders.

Drivin' on Dylan Time

New review of Bob Dylan autobiography wherein I am seen to say "his hipster-speak is not self-conscious and the prose is packed with metaphor".

Cataloged Odd

They finally got my donation of Odd and The Frost Giants cataloged at the library.

We Can Solve It and Warm as the New Status Quo

I haven't checked out either what T. Boone Pickens is proposing on energy (I've just seen his TV commercial suggesting we can do a lot with renewables like wind power) nor have I checked out WeCanSolveIt.org, the new effort from Al Gore (but I caught part of his speech to the NetRoots Nation conference on CSPAN), but I like that these things are popping up and gaining some traction. Would it be catastrophic if half of Florida ended up slowly submerging under water, or if upstate New York had milder winters? Probably not, the Earth has changed climates and surface area over the millenia a bunch of times, and we'll adapt. But we risk a collapse of our society and a slip into pestilence and feudalism; into disease and subsistence living rather than the society of opportunity that we have now, where many people can live long, safe, healthy lives in the pursuit of their own fulfillment, if we don't handle the energy situation and its fallout into food production and climate change.

I saw this article on the tenuousness of ice at the north pole. I already know that my children are growing up when there was always an Internet, when everyone has a phone, and most people have one on their belt or in their purse; when there is air-conditioning if it's hot out and heat if it's cold and cars and planes take us everywhere. I knew that technology was ubiquitous. But I also thought that they would grow up with basically the same planet as I did. But it seems that now it may be the easiest way for my kids to get to the North Pole is to just take a boat -- no dog sleds or snowmobiles needed, just sail up there and watch the sun circle around you. And that there will be no snow in Africa, not even on Kilimanjaro. I've lived half as long at this point as my maternal grandmother lived, and she saw the growth of the automobile and the birth of the airplane and television and, toward the end, the Internet. I didn't think I would be, but I may be in for a span just as wide.

Avoiding Lloyd Bentsen's quote.

I understand the pressure on Obama to move to the center during the general election cycle and I'm sure his advisors are telling him to appear strong on foreign affairs and terrorism, but Hillary Clinton managed to vote against the new FISA and it's retroactive-and-prima-facie-unconstitutional retroactive telecom companies immunity. But that's not the leader that had me excited about public service in America again. That's not the leader that voted against the Iraq war (Hillary Clinton didn't manage to vote against that, when Barack Obama did.)

It's a disappointment when I find that an inspiring leader is on the opposite side of an issue from the ACLU. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against this new FISA; from their complaint: "...supplies none of the safeguards that the Constitution demands. It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents without identifying the people to be surveilled; without specifying the facilities, places, premises, or property to be monitored; ...; without obtaining individualized warrants based on ... probable cause".

I find myself largely agreeing again with Dave Winer here and here and I will similarly be redirecting my donations henceforth (but not my vote). I'm also disappointed in Obama's non-acceptance of public campaign funds and a couple other reversals; I think the other party can make more hay out of his flip-flops than his progressive positions; "Change You Can Believe In" -- do You believe in it, Mr. Obama? I would hate to think that we could apply Llyod Bentsen's most famous quote. I hope Obama gets back on point, and stays there.

Marigolds and I do, too

"...the 'p' stands for 'pigeon'...." I've posted my brief review of the book, Once Upon a Marigold.

Rawson Reviews Music for 2007

As in recent years, I recognize some of the artists but not many of the songs or albums, but my friend David performs a painstaking process to distill down the 40 best albums and 100 most worthy songs for 2007. See his fresh lists here.

Just because you have the right...

Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito. It's a pretty odd day when I find myself in agreement with this crowd of U.S. Supreme Court Justices and disaligned, at least in underlying principle, with this list: Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens and Breyer. I had briefly thought to say "I applaud the Court's recent Second Amendment ruling" but I quickly thought better of it; it's not something to cheer about the way the NRA is cheering. I do think it is correct; I think free adults should have the right to own weapons.

It's a right that carries an awesome responsibility that many people just can't live up to, and that creates real problems and real tragedies. Guns (and other weapons) are meant for situations where justice, law and order have broken down or are unavailable at that moment. They can really level a playing field when a couple of thugs invade a home.

I wish we didn't live in a society where that, and other more insideous threats, still exist, but we do, and now our right to arm ourselves, should we feel the need, is more clear. To be sure it's not crystal clear; the Second Amendment is probably the most obtusely worded of any of them. It's worth looking at some of the contemporaneous provisions from the English Bill of Rights and from some of the early states -- there are more radical notions there, like the fact that standing armies are dangerous to Liberty in times of peace and that it is up to "the people" to provide for the common defense. And it is up to the people to exercise their rights responsibly -- or not to: you also have the right to not own a hand gun, and to push for a society where others don't feel a need to own one either. That's the homeland I want to protect.

Bunko Part Deux

I've resurrected my iPod after it languished for several months in my top bureau drawer. It's because the iTunes podcast interface is finally usable; that, and the "digital rights media" calamity seems to be abating somewhat, i.e. you can download and play mp3's from disparate sources like Amazon and Apple and use the same player.

Anyway, I had the good fortune to catch a Dan Pink / Cory Doctorow conversation coming off BookExpoCast wherein Dan plugs his new book "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko (the last career guide you'll ever need)". It's a good talk where Dan describes the difference between making career decisions for "instrumental" reasons versus "fundamental" ones. Instrumental reasons are practical reasons, fundamental reasons are more what you just want to do and then try to make it work out. I've never thought it responsible enough for me to just let go and follow some whim into the weeds. I've tried to strike something of a balance -- I enjoy computers and programming so I make my career with them -- I'm not that crazy about corporate America, but that's where the steady work is, benefits, etc.

Dan "I'm not self-actualizing fast enough so I'm quitting my job" Pink is working on convincing me otherwise (maybe by the time I'm 65; LOL). He says to look at anyone who is making a difference, doing something that matters, and ask them how they got to doing what they are doing. The answer is invariably, "Well, it's a long story." He says instrumental reasons don't work. Life and careers are too complex these days. I don't not believe him.

I still haven't read "Bunko", but the talk was fun enough to inspire me to buy my second copy, this one also sent directly to one of my nephews in another state. Maybe someday I'll get to read a copy.

Werewolves in Nocturne City

Posted my review of Caitlin Kittredge's first novel.

New Coke with a Bizarre Bit

We visited the new "World of Coca-Cola" in Atlanta this weekend. It's now next to Centenial Olympic Park and the Georgia Aquarium (which we also visited). We'd been to the old Coke World a few times since it opened and it was getting a bit dated, with the history only coming up into the 1990's. The exhibits have been updated but it's pretty similar and the free tasting is always a treat -- there's great international and cross-cultural comaraderie in trying 60+ flavors of soft drink. More fun than any wine tasting I've ever attended.

There is a new video that they show before you enter the exhibits and I found it more than a little bit bizarre. It's called "The Happiness Factory", and it's happy in some kind of a zen serial killer kind of way. It's animated with upbeat music but there are some disturbing images. For example: a number of animated snowmen are pushed into a meat grinder; a cheerleader with long eyelashes but no eyes sits down in a chair to be interviewed and then in a scene reminiscent of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct", low camera angle and such, she crosses and uncrosses her legs; also interviewed, but while hovering, is a chubby tandem rotor helicopter that looks a bit piggish with what are ostensibly six sling load tie points on its belly but that appear more like teats with nipple rings. Those are just a few that I remembered -- it's a montage of fringe characters and odd behaviors, all to produce a joyously frigid bottle of coke.

Okay, Montana, You're Up.

You know I'm talking to you there with the cowboy spirit, big open sky over yer head, and to the few open-minded folks from the right coast that have been imported . Let's get 'er done and let Hillary get some rest....

You, too, South Dakota, with your monuments to great presidents past. I know Obama said his ears are too big to be carved in big stone but I still think he can fit the qualifications: "...that certain Presidents transcend partisanship into monumental granite... Father of our country. Author of our Constitution. Creator of our National Park System. (Leader through) our Civil War."

Let's see if we can put this long march into the win column and get Barack Obama home to the nomination.

The Unwelcome Candidate

For the past couple of months I've been writing to the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President (via their Contact Us page) about once a week to suggest that it is time for her to give up the fight. I have no illusion that she will listen to my plebian voice, nor even that she will personally ever read my messages. Nonetheless, I endeavor to present compelling and concise arguments detailing why she should cease and desist from her crusade. I do hope, however, that whatever zealous staffer reads my missives is, at least a little bit, demoralized by it -- by hearing from those of us with kindred values that we decry her distracting efforts. It's time, Ms. Clinton, to let the spotlight illuminate your distinguished colleague from Illinois.

I have given time, my voice and cash money to the Barack Obama campaign and I regret it not, but in recent days I've also begun to wonder if there might be a more efficient use of that cash portion of my support, paltry as it is. My meager funds are a mere tumbler-full in the tide and, particularly at this ebb in the process, that is, between locking up the nomination and beginning his deconstruction of the candidate from the other major party, I am inclined to think that small donations might make more difference to a fledgling campaign. The newly announced national candidate of whom I'm thinking, is likely, in my estimation, to take votes away from the Republican candidate, particularly in the South. While votes that swing from Republican to Libertarian are only half as good as those that swing from there to Democratic in this year, they may be considerably more than twice as easy to move. I'm referring to Bob Barr, former U.S. Congressman from Georgia and freshly minted nominee from the Libertarian Party. Give it some thought, won't you?

Of Radishes and Presidents

Our row of radishes grew from dirt to food, from seed to leafy leftovers, and still Barack and Hillary raced on. Three weeks from first watering to first nibbling, a double row about 5 feet long flourished while there wasn't so much as a primary, until Pennsylvania broke the drought. They were the usual mixed success (the radishes, not the candidates, I find Obama unusual, in a good way), about half went to all green with barely a bulge below ground, most of the others were small, from dime sized to about quarter sized, with only a couple growing any bigger and not much even then. But I ate any that rounded, 3 or more dozens. My family cares for them not. In any case they are gone now, and the peas are starting. Not enough for a pot, or even soup, but enough to crack a pod or two and share the sweet contents with the kids. By the time the first tomato turns red our candidate from Illinois will be ripened on to his own competition with the Republican presumptive nominee. I'm looking forward to both.

Sweet Home Scotland

Tonight I saw a new movie in a rather sparsely attended theater. The film is a Patrick Dempsey vehicle, a bit of a chick flick, Made of Honor. He gets to be the MOH, i.e. the Maid of Honor, to his (so far) platonic girl friend. The gender reversal unexpectedly provides some decent laughs. And some of the Scottish scenery is gorgeous, I'm thinking it might be worth a visit. But what I kept thinking through the film is that this storyline isn't really closest to My Best Friend's Wedding, the Julia Roberts romp where she tries to spoil her long time friend's wedding, but more like another Dempsey film, Sweet Home Alabama, but in that one he's the hapless newcomer in a long term boy-girl friendship with Reese Witherspoon as the leading lady. Pleasant enough if you have someone to share it with, as I did. (BTW, beware of Kevin Sussman in MOH, he steals at least a corner of the show as "Tiny Shorts Guy".)

Best Ex-VP and Obama for your Stocks

I've said that Jimmy Carter is the best ex-President of my lifetime, now I'm thinking that Al Gore is our best ex-Vice President. Not that he has a whole heckuvalot of competition.

I was never a big Al Gore fan while Bill Clinton was in office, nor while he was running for President, but I finally watched his movie this weekend, An Inconvenient Truth. I tend to steer away from this type of films, like I haven't seen any of Michael Moore's films since Roger and Me. (I know someone with an editting credit on that one, though he doesn't show up on IMDB.) They tend to make my blood boil or make me feel like I'm wasting my career, or both. But I watched and it was compelling, and somniferous at the same time. Al Gore himself is the dull part, although there are spotty bits of true humor. His presentation though is strong. Like comparing the current denials and "balanced reporting" on global warming to the counter-propaganda of 40 years ago from the cigarette companies. He debunks the "balance" with facts like that in a survey of 968 peer reviewed scientific papers on global warming, exactly zero of them found that humans were not a cause. That, yes, there have been historic "warm" periods as recently as the middle ages, but there has never been carbon dioxide at its current level in the atmosphere, never above 300 parts per million, it's currently above 370 ppm. Ouch. And he squeezes the current administration on twisting the arms of scientists and editting their reports. That's something I hope the next White House reverses.

Which leads me to point at an interesting editorial from Ken Fisher, a self made billionaire and fiscal conservative who sees an Obama Presidency as not necessarily bad for Wall Street in his latest article (since these tend to disappear after a few weeks, here's the salient quote: "First, years in which Democrats capture the White House are usually bullish years for the stock market. Second, inaugural years following a Democratic win in November are better than Republican inaugural years.")

To Kill a Butterfly

The other day, mid-morning, I was walking between buildings on the campus where I work and I chanced to observe a mockingbird in very erratic flight. It caught my eye and I stopped walking to watch. It was chasing a smallish yellow butterfly, trying to mimic the halting, bouncy pattern of the insect. The bird was not graceful, but it was skillful, and they lowered toward the ground as the tumbling bird closed the distance. It managed to knock the butterfly to the ground, I think with its wing, not so much on purpose as that that just happened to be the appendage that made contact. It quickly snapped the butterfly out of the grass. I didn't think that birds often ate butterflies (I'd heard they taste bad), much less that they pursue them in flight. This one sure did. It flew off more normally, consuming its lunch on the way.

Post It!

Last month my wife and I participated in the River City Run, she won the Women's Masters division of the 10K race and was awarded the nice platter in this picture along with a box full of the other stuff in the picture -- all from 3M who was a major sponsor. I managed second place in my age division, winning the "invisible man" trophy seen here.

BOb', the President

As you likely know, "W" is the cutesy, ultra-short nickname for our current President. On the eve of the next primaries to end this quadrennial's primary season I'm getting worn out with the long names and the false formalities; I'm wondering if we could just call Barack Obama BOb'. It's sort of like HyperActive Bob -- a generic American name for a complex individual. HyperActive Bob is the flagship product from my old company, HyperActive Technologies (foolishly they have an anti-linking policy so you'll have to do your own search to see what they sell at HaT (see, they have one of those oddly capitalized ultra-short nicknames and it serves me well when I reference them)).

Here's hoping that Obama rolls through Indiana and North Carolina and we can move on to the next phase of this biathlon, defeating the incumbent party.

May Pennsylvania Have Mercy on Us All

On the eve of Primary, after a six week hiatus, "I see a lot of parallels between Wallis's crusade in favor of what is right and just and Christian -- like working to alleviate poverty, and Obama's push for fundamental change in the orientation of our government...."
-- from my latest review of God's Politics by Reverend Jim Wallis

Water World Tomato Plants

I bought some beautiful tomato plants yesterday. They're much better than, but remind me still, of the one Kevin Costner toted around in his Water World film. Tomorrow I will plant them in the ground, after today's thunderstorms and some fresh lime that I'll put down in the a.m. Goodnight.

The Meaning of Older

Today I came across these concept lines in a poem by Li-Young Lee:

"Between two unknowns, I live my life.
Between my mother's hopes, older than I am
by coming before me. And my child's wishes, older than
I am
by outliving me. And what's it like?"
(from The Hammock, in Book of My Nights)

Bethpage Black Open

"This book almost makes you want to watch golf." Here's my review of John Feinstein's soon-to-be-relevant-again audio book on the US Open.

The Serendipity of the Sorrows of Empire

From the declination of American Imperialism through Fast Food Nation to the Sierra Club, it's all in my new review of Chalmers Johnson's non-fiction horror story The Sorrows of Empire.

Frost Giants and the Odd Review

The book is Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman. From my review: "at one point Odd says 'Whee!' just like in the Jason Webley song"

Red Herrings Don't Nest in Trees...

I didn't think that wild turkeys built nests in trees, but something that looks like them does; and they do so right in the very middle of Tennessee. The trees were along a large creek at this spot, where the new TN route 840 crosses it, a few miles east of I-65. It's a tad south of Nashville.

We were driving up from Huntsville, AL on our way to the Cedars of Lebanon State Park. My wife had signed herself up to run a half marathon there and it turned out to be a good choice. I don't generally think of cedar trees as making a good woodland -- they're a bit small and ragged, but with a bunch of old and younger ones mixed with a few hardwoods they can make a remarkably lovely woods. My daughter and I discovered this for ourselves, and we learned that Dixon Lanier Merritt already knew it. (I didn't know about him, either, or didn't know I knew, he was a poet, a journalist and a naturalist and you know his work, too. He taught us all that a pelican's beak can hold more than its bellican.) We saw split cedar rail fences made with nothing but the rails and a bit of wire and we found some fresh and some not so fresh woodpecker holes in living cedars. It was just cool enough that we appreciated the burning fireplace and the hot chocolate in the lodge while we waited for the runners. We didn't have all that long after our short walk. My wife finished first in her age group and I think was the second Master female overall.

After the race we checked into the Sleep Inn and took a dip in the indoor pool, ate a pleasant dinner at Painturo's Pizza and Italian restaurant and did a little shopping before heading back toward Alabama, and back past those mysterious nests.

When we drove up on Saturday it was mid morning, 9-ish. The large hardwood trees are along the creek bed and beside a cleared field, probably a crop field in the growing season. 4 or 5 trees contain 15 or 20 total nests: big, messy nests. I'd guess a couple feet in diameter. Some of the nests had large dark birds sitting or standing on them. I tried to make them look white -- snowy egrets would be about the right size and I know they are somewhat communal, although this would be a bit far north for them. Great blue herons were another possibility but I almost always see them alone and think of them as solitary birds. Whatever these were on their nests Saturday morning were just far enough away and just dark enough not to be identified as we drove by at 65 mph.

I was determined to get a better look on Sunday afternoon. When at last we approached the spot, we saw the nests in the trees clear enough -- the light was better somehow and we were ready. But now they were clearly empty. No roosting birds. We were disappointed, but then we spotted something on the ground in the adjacent field. Pretty definitely a flock of wild turkeys, a dozen or more. Too big and fat for vultures, they were black with a bit of metallic bronze reflecting the hazy sunshine. They were only a couple hundred yards from the nest trees. So they were turkey nests? I thought it must be so until I checked the internet -- of course turkeys nest on the ground. Turkey vultures mostly do, too, and even black vultures prefer rocky outcroppings or cliffs but will settle for trees in a pinch. But I did find a photo online that looks much like what we saw: a great blue heron rookery.

Some Days Are Like Others

Some days just feel like other times and places. Like today feels like yesterday, which was raining and cool toward cold, not quite freezing, but with a premature promise of Spring lurking somewhere ahead of us on our journey toward tomorrow. And today's yesterday feels like hanging outdoors in hooded sweatshirts around the picnic table between Johnson Hall and O'Connor Hall dormitories in Dickinson at Binghamton University in 1982. We were cold, enough to be uncomfortable, but it was warmer than the prior week, a bunch warmer, and nobody wanted to go in, to our own rooms, lest we might miss a happening moment, there with our fellow students, with people we were closer to than we would become conscious of until years later; but our unconscious knew, and we stayed, and chilled.

And it feels, in a connected yet completely different way, like considering taking a lunch break from work in 2000, in twenty double naught, from the pressure of the Internet start-up business, out to one of the fast food places down McKnight Road, in the North Hills, north of Pittsburgh; maybe the McDonald's, before they tore it down, razed it all the way to the asphalt, and rebuilt it with white brick that looked all wrong for a McDonald's. But on that day it was still the traditional McD's I had mostly grown up with, those with the integrated arches, not the big out front arches from the 60's, and the red brick. Was it red? It certainly wasn't white. And the food on such a day was fresh but somehow damp, like the air, but not in an oppressive way, just in a suspending way. A way that makes you wait; the green is under there, and the moisture will hasten the departure of the dormancy and the green will be arriving, in all it's vibrancy, but not now, not today. Wait. Go back to work. The sap will flow again, have patience.

Barack Obama: Hope's Audacious Author

On the eve of the "Potomac Primaries", I finished listening to Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, and have provided a brief review here: "He also has a good voice -- both literally and figuratively."

John Sayles into Alabama, Honeydripping

Friday night I attended, along with about 300 of the more eclectic denizens of Huntsville and its surrounds, the Huntsville Premiere and Party for John Sayles' new film, Honeydripper. Filmed in small towns in Alabama like Greenville, Georgiana and Midway they didn't need to do a lot to make these towns fit into the 1950's movie: clear some modern cars off the streets and swap out some of the merchandise in the store front windows. Standing around in the theater lobby with some of us before the showing, Maggie Renzi, the producer, told us that they are organizing a number of these film co-op parties around the country because they just don't have the 20 million dollars to mount a commercial marketing campaign.

John Sayles was also mingling before the show and at the party afterwards at the new location of the Flying Monkey Arts Center. He is very personable and loves to talk about his craft. I was introduced to Sayles' filmmaking in the early 80's at college by my housemates who were taking film classes. We saw The Brother from Another Planet (1984) and Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980). Maggie Renzi is in both these earlier films. Sayles has Writer and song writing credits to go with his directing credit on Honeydripper.

And this film is really about the music, although we have to build to it through some great dialog and a bit of slow moving slice-of-tough-life drama. None of the big star actors came to our premiere (not Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Vondie Curtis-Hall, etc.). But a couple of the musicians came to the party and sat in with Microwave Dave and the Nukes. Henderson Huggins only plays Danny Glovers' hands at the piano in the film, but he can sing and go to town on the keyboard. Eddie Shaw is the other cast member who sat in. I'm not a sax nut but this transported you to the best of another era and culture. After an hour or so I started to feel bad for Microwave Dave's regular saxist who was standing around the edges of the audience with his instrument dangling at his side, just in case Shaw got tired. That wasn't happening.

It was a powerful evening and a worthy film. Mr. Sayles asked us to ask our friends to see it. Simple enough. Go. Enjoy.

A Caralynetry Critique

First you should read the poem, (if you click the title it should come up in a new browser window for easy reference): " (Twelve Lines Minimum)".

At first blush this poem with its parenthetical title and the varying line lengths seems a bit ragged. And is there a rhyming scheme here or not? But with an opener mind (or "a more open mind", if you want to be grammatically correct, but you may re-think that in just a moment here...) the more freeform rhyme and meter scheme better reflects the uncongealed mind of a blossoming child. Or put more simply: in the end, it works.

What I really like about this piece, though, is the pacing. The way it really accelerates in the last two lines, up until you have to put the brakes on at "plead" since the "p - p" alliteration ("power plead") is tough even on a mental tongue. But the pacing magic starts earlier, right from the first couplet. It feels like it's going to be nursery rhyme sing song-y:

"Patience is an important skill.
La-dee-da, jack and jill."

Instead we get the commanding word "attention," with a pausing comma, before the first rhyme ever kicks in. (I can't help but hit the syllables of "attention" hard, like Chrissie Hynde sang it for The Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket" back in 1979.) And, by the way, it's not a first couplet, but an (unexpected) triplet!

Then here comes "torture". What kind of child's poem is this? Well, I already know that it's a punishment poem, an extra assignment that must be a minimum of twelve lines long; and is in fact exactly twelve lines long, the shortest of which is just the one 3 letter word "you". But it needed to be its own line -- it wasn't put by itself only as an "Up yours!" to the assigner, but the dig is delivered all the same.

It's a line by itself because the forced rhyme using the made-up-but-fitting word "scorcher" precedes it. ("Don't let it scorcher you;" as in don't let them burn your butt -- another sentiment along the lines of "Question Authority" or "Illegitimi non Carborundum"). That one word line, "you." forms a bridge to the second half of the poem, like the instrumental interlude of a 1960's pop song. One more quick verse, again with the twist away from the nursery rhyme couplet, to a strong rhyme of "very rude" and "altitude" with a nice metaphor rising ("Lower your altitude"), rather than the would've-been-trite "Adjust your attitude." Then we build steam like the little-engine-that-could: "I can try, I can succeed. Just let your will power plead" That is, it's gonna take some fortitude, but it's in you, if you'll only listen to yourself.

(Okay so I'm a little biased as the father and privy to extra insights, but hey.)
(Also, in writing this I learned that "Illegitimi non Carborundum" is not really Latin, but an example of what has been termed a "mock-Latin aphorism". And me with two semesters of Latin at University. Oh well. Carpe diem!)

Alobama

In the spirit of Dave Winer's I'm a California Voter for Obama, I'm an Alabama Voter for Obama.

I stopped by the Huntsville Obama Headquarters at lunch and picked up a couple bumper stickers. There was a lot of buzz a-happening there this afternoon. Tomorrow should be a banner day.

D'You Know Juno? And the Sound of August Rush?

I don't remember buying a "soundtrack album" since Pretty in Pink, until recently that is, and I've bought two in the last couple months. The music opens up Juno and I caught myself thinking thinking that it's going to be a loooonnng movie if we have to listen to this low rent folk for 2 hours, but even that first tune (All I Want Is You by Barry Louis Polisar) quickly grows on you as you realize that it gloves the movie.

Back to the first soundtrack, which was August Rush, I got it for my wife for Christmas. (I wrote about the film here.) Van Morrison's "Moondance" is the classic here but it's the interplay of the music and the world and the world of the film that makes this one special. It's rich and symphonic and Irish rock and experimental; ethereal then cathartic.

Juno's got The Kinks, Mott the Hoople and The Velvet Underground providing classics (and Sonic Youth's cover of The Carpenters' "Superstar" which I hadn't heard before and it's pretty devo). But it's The Moldy Peaches and Kimya Dawson that rule the film and set the tone. The simple arrangements and acoustics sucked me in to the characters. Not that I identify with Juno herself much, at least not with her predicament (Uh, teen, pregnant). I didn't feel any parallels with Bleeker either (Hmm. What'd'ya think, Cindy?). Maybe high school was just too long ago. I did empathize with Juno's dad (J.K. Simmons); and with the Would-Be-Adoptive-Father-Wishes-He-Still-Rock-n-Rolled (Jason Bateman).

And the Juno soundtrack has Liner Notes! They're written by the Director, Jason Reitman and provide nice insights, just like Liner Notes of old!

Come to think of it, my son did buy the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? when it was fresh (2000) and these are in that same vein.

(I only see one soundtrack album on David Rawson's top album lists (1996's Trainspotting came it at #72 and he usually only takes the top 40), but there are more individual songs scattered among his top 100 songs lists so maybe there's something here to his liking....)

Dem's L.A. Love Fest

I caught a few minutes of the Democratic “debate” last night, and some of the analysis on NPR this morning on my drive to work. I was glad to see that the candidates refused to take any serious snipes at each other. I suspect that what precipitated that is that McCain is now the presumptive nominee for the Republicans. He is the strongest opponent, precisely because I’m not alone in thinking that among the Republican candidates, he is the one I would prefer if we had to have another Republican President next. That is, a lot of moderate Republicans and Independents won’t cross away from him the way they would from Romney, Giuliani, or Huckabee. (We don’t, by the way. Have to have another Republican next in the White House, that is.)

So Obama and Clinton cooled the hostilities, and even didn’t dismiss a ticket pairing the two of them as P and VP.

McCain won’t energize the evangelical Christians, so that will cost the Rep’s some votes, unless Hillary is at the top of the Dem ticket, then they’ll come out just to vote against her. I suppose it’s also possible that a third party far right Christian could appear and split some vote off from McCain, but they may be too savvy at this point for that (unlike the liberals, where Nader would still like to jump in).

If Obama is on the Dem. ticket at all I think he will energize a lot of young people and a lot of African Americans – both groups with a lot of folks who might not vote at all otherwise, so it is just a net gain, not a double gain where the votes are actually pulled away from the other party. To do that he needs to be at the top of the ticket, then the Religious Right may stay home on Election Day. That combination could swing some of the southern “red” states to the Dems, enough to counter the loss of a big swing state like Ohio or Florida should that happen, and it could if McCain picks up a bunch of independent middle-aged and older white male votes.

Hopefully Edwards will continue to pull energy into the Democratic electorate. He still needs a job, and while he isn’t exactly Bobby Kennedy, I’ve already heard speculation of his being appointed Attorney General.

Software Career Timeline Posted

It's not a resume, just a few highlights, and it needs some fleshing out, but I wanted to provide something of a roadmap for anyone digging into the professional "me".

You can find it here.

Obama in 'Bama

Today I drove down to Birmingham to see and hear U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the Bartow Arena on the UAB campus. It was a capacity crowd with a lot of young people; I guess that should be expected in a university setting, but it still took me a little off guard. He is erudite and personable; a realistic idealistic pragmatist. And I believe I feel the same way that Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, said she felt in her endorsement yesterday of Obama. She said that he is the first candidate to ever make her feel the way people tell her that her father made them feel about a Presidential candidate.

(Click on the links to see the snapshots that I took.) He was introduced by the local congressman, Artur Davis. Davis, representing Alabama's seventh district which includes Birmingham, is currently the only African American Congressman (or Senator) from Alabama. The historic relevance of this Congressman and this Candidate sharing the spotlight in this city did not go unremarked. All the same, it was a diverse crowd that cheered plans for ending the war in Iraq, increasing the national focus on education and healthcare, for open honesty in Washington D.C. and for an end to the era of George W. Bush and his cronies.

Obama spoke for almost an hour. And I listened to half of his audio book on the drive to and from Birmingham, "The Audacity of Hope". I enjoy listening to him talk; he has a Rod Serling-esque cadence and has an excellent command of the English language. He does not do the bumbling good ole boy that our current President does, yet he's still friendly and he can joke and tell a story: "...and everybody loves my wife Michelle. Yes, everybody loves Michelle! Hey, friend, don't be grinning THAT much...." And he riffed on "Hope": he hopes to have an Enviromental Protection Agency that protects the environment; and he hopes to have a Federal Emergency Management Agency that knows something about managing federal emergencies. And right now I hope he gets the chance.

My View of "Watchmen"

From my freshly minted review: "...an epic story, original in its juxtapositions..."

Cheaters Review

I've just posted a Current Reading List page and linked it off my Reviews page. I'm sure I'm not diligent enough to keep it up to date, rather it's just a sneaky way of being able to flog some books that I may well never get all the way through. Not that I wouldn't like to, it's just that one thing drives out another and my day job drains a certain amount of my mental and eyeball energies. And some of this stuff is relevant, with the elections upcoming and all.

A Review is not a Fragile Thing

Posted a brief review of Neil Gaiman's "Fragile Things". From the review:
"...a story about a story and still Neil gives us the back-story...".

Pink McFactoid

Author Dan Pink posted a McFactoid yesterday, about which I have to say:

That’s generally true across the Quick Serve Restaurant spectrum (that most of their business is via the drive-thru), from Arby’s to Zaxby’s, which is one thing that makes HyperActive Technologies’ “Bob” product so interesting. From the gohyper.com web site:

“During busy meal times, no task is more difficult than anticipating your food production needs. Our flagship product, HyperActive Bob, actually sees the flow of customers coming into your lot and takes over the task of making real-time cooking decisions…”

Similar real time “Impending Demand” systems are being employed for such things as managing elevator usage in office towers.

(Disclosure: I was a founding employee at HaT, but have moved on.)

Pollsters? Pooey

Having recently become more of a fan of Barack Obama and his run for the Presidency (I was impressed by his Google interview), I wasn't thrilled to see his second place finish in the New Hampshire primary this week. But I was thrilled to see the pollsters get it wrong.

One pundit tried to explain away the unrealized Obama victory prediction by saying that New Hampshire voters don't like to follow suit to the Iowa voters. I think it is just as likely that the New Hampshire folks don't like their outcomes to be predicted and treated as a fait d'accompli before the fact -- that is, they just liked messing with the polls. More power to them.

Constitutional Convention in Iowa!

I watched just a few minutes of the Iowa Caucuses on TV last night. While I was interested to some extent in which candidates came out on top, what was more heartening was the process, at least in the one Democratic party precinct that I caught. They were seriously, and with decent debate, considering whether to send proposed amendments to the U. S. Constitution to become part of the Democratic Party platform. These were good, average Americans from our heartland and here they were having a serious discussion about amending the Constitution, and now with emotionally charged things like flag burning, but with practical and serious matters. The one I watched mostly was a proposal to strip corporations of the rights of actual citizens, i.e. those things guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Apparently case law has built up to where corporations have protection like free speech that make it difficult to limit things like billboard placements. I don't remember the exact wording of the amendment but it included something to the effect that corporations needed to be doing a preponderance of societal good in order to maintain the liability protection that they enjoy. The debate got down to where the liability should land, e.g. should the board of directors become personally liable? Should the common shareholders? the corporate officers? I think the idea has merit as a way to hold corporations, including multi-national corporations operating in the U.S., more responsible for their actions. But the big point is that typical Americans are still capable and interested in addressing issues at this fundamental level. It was good to see.

Elf Power Follow-up

Apparently Elf Power is an old Favorite for some folks .
It's actually not too surprising that my good friend and former WHRW DJ David Rawson was already well aware of the band. The embarassing part is that my own web site has had an Elf Power song listed on it for years. I host David's top music lists for each year, and you have to go all the way back to 1999 to find Elf Power's, "Will My Feet Still Carry Me Home", as his number six song in his Top 100 Songs of 1999.

Elf Power Discovered at Kohl's Department Store

While shopping the post-Christmas sales at Kohl's I noticed they were playing a better brand of muzak on the in-store sound system. The one song that I captured into my memory enough to look up on the web is a nice sing-songy chant-a-long called "All the World is Waiting" by a band I'd never heard of: Elf Power. They're one of these new-fangled lo-fi indie bands, this time from the hallowed alternative haven of Athens, Ga. The video is here on YouTube, it's composed mostly of a "long tracking shot" (that's film-speak) of the singer and his guitar walking through a party (directed by Nick Canada & Tim Nackashi). It's not exactly the Ray Liotta / Lorraine Bracco Copacabana entrance in Good Fellas (Martin Scorsese, director), but it's pretty swell for lo-fi/indie. Check it out.

Microthrilling beats trainspotting

"I love the concept in the title / sub-title..." from today's brief review of Micro Thrills: True Stories from a Life of Small Highs.

Mobiles on Her Own

Over the Thanksgiving holiday my daughter did four more "mobiles", mostly on her own: an ice rink theme, a fenced area, a sun/cloud scene and a Christmas heap.

August Rush in November

Three of us went to see August Rush the movie this evening. It was unexpectedly good. Kind of a realist fairytale about the magic of music, Cider House Rules meets Stardust. The actors for the three main characters were pretty new to me and so they were fresh: the kid (Freddie Highmore) and the star-crossed parents (Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Myers). But there's a supporting cast of more familiar faces like Robin Williams as a character reminscent of The Fisher King and Terrence Howard as a very likable social worker.

The film moves a bit fast in parts -- I would've liked to savor some of the kid's musical awakening a bit more as well as his teachers'/discovers' amazement. Maybe a book version could have dwelled on these more, but what couldn't happen in a book is the magical musical integration, like where the film shows cutbacks between his mother's solo cello and his father's Irish rock band singing and guitar while the two songs play simultaneously and are interwoven. It's a nice effect. So is turning the everyday motions of wind on wheat, and people and traffic in New York City first into a symphony of joy and then into a cacophony of confusion. It's cool.

Pleasantly Robin Williams doesn't steal the show; the music does. We're already talking about picking up the soundtrack.

Richard Bach's Illusions Reviewed

I recently re-read this classic. Click my quote for my review.

"That the loss of my corporeal self would simply set my ethereal self free...."

November Tree

Mid-November and a tree
stands alone,
in the rough between what will be a YMCA
and what almost is a savings bank.
But today the tree stands alone,
a hundred feet from anything
made by man and it doesn't care.
Nor do I at the moment.
There is no weather here, now;
the air is calm but not dead,
the sky has a high haze;
though it is mid-morning
there is no visible sun,
no light and shade.
It's not overcast
in any noticeable way,
no oppressant cloudbase.
The temperature is just right.
In my full sleeves and pants I
am not cool (much less cold) and I
am not warm (much less hot).
No leaves fall.
No people pass.
A tree stands alone.

Guiltless

Yesterday, a Saturday, I ignored the pile of mail that had built up over the past couple weeks. I ignored my club duties. I paid no heed to the abundance of items on my "to do" list and the other adult pursuits or lazinesses that I might have indulged in on any given Saturday. Instead I spent much of the day with my daughter creating "mobiles". She had made one during the week in her art class and wanted to do more. First we ventured to Hobby Lobby for supplies and then we warmed up the glue gun. Using that gun may be her favorite part, but that's fine, this is the first time she's been allowed to use one. It was great to spend a few hours with someone who is old enough to use a heated tool but also young enough to treat a pound of plastic beads like a chest full of treasure . There are a couple photos. The one with the green base and the doves she did in class. The white based one we did at home -- the concept was all hers, you cross under the arch to get to the glory and riches from the "poor" side. We spent hours on transient art and I don't feel guilty one whit about the time.

Just Discovered! Poem Published Three Years Ago!

I was googling myself for the usual narcissistic reasons, this time in the guise of "C. R. Patton Jr.", when I found something unexpected. The top hit was to one of my poems, "Kramer's Clone Dance", but not on my ChipsterZone web site, but rather on the website of our local arts, nightlife and entertainment magazine, Valley Planet (here's the current issue). Apparently they'd published it a few issues after I sent it in but they never let me know. (Submissions to "The Deep End", the section where it ran, are unpaid.)

I wrote Kramer's Clone Dance back in 2002 with a little help from my uncle, Rev. C. Reynolds. I submitted it to Valley Planet in early 2004 and it ran in the July 15, 2004 issue. (We were also credited on the end-of-year Thank You page in the same issue. Other poems from the same issue: Anonymous is My Favorite Author by Jeremy Bradford; Slumbering by Nancy Compton Williams; untitled by Michelle P.; and untitled by Mary Susan Cannon.)

A published poet. Who knew?

First Figs

I was out in our yard yesterday, innocently killing fire ant mounds, when I noticed that some of the figs on our fig tree were turning purple. Hurray! These are the first figs to actually ripen. We've have quite a few that just got tough while still green and eventually fell off -- some last year and some during this long hot summer. It hasn't been any wetter lately but I guess the cooler temperatures agree with the fig tree.

Any way I picked 3 and ate one and it was quite good. Moist and reasonably sweet. I planted the tree almost a year and a half ago. The late hard frost this spring killed it right to the ground but it grew back quickly and is now about 5 feet tall.

Here are some pictures. This may be the first real fruit that I've planted and eaten. (Yes, I realize that tomatoes and many other things that grow in vegetable gardens are technically fruit, but here I mean traditional fruits. Like, er, figs, I guess.)

Free OCR

(Warning: Geek post, little entertainment value) Once upon a time the Xerox Textbridge Classic computer program for doing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) worked for me. Even more than that it had worked recently, but it was finicky and this week I couldn't get it to work at all. It kept complaining about my C: drive being full. It wasn't. I had defragmented my C: drive recently. Maybe that was the culprit. Windows Explorer was also having issues: if I right clicked on the C drive and hit properties (e.g. to check how full the disk was), Explorer said it experienced a problem and had to close; and when it did it restarted the Windows desktop in order to recover. Swell. I did solve that problem, but it didn't help Textbridge. (When Explorer had its problem it offered to let me debug it, so I tried and that told me that there had been an access violation in neroshx.dll. I uninstalled the Nero CD burning software and that solved that -- I hadn't used Ahead Software's Nero in a good while anyway).

Textbridge had never worked that well, anyway.(For those who don't know OCR software can process a picture of some text and turn it into editable text for use in a program like Microsoft Word or Notepad. It's very handy if you only have a printout or old typewriter copy of something (and a scanner).) Textbridge tended to interpret things as all different fonts and very odd characters even when the digital image text was in one non-proportional font like Courier. But the last time I'd searched, several months ago, I hadn't found any freeware alternatives. That changed this time. I found Softi Software's FreeOCR on the ZDNet download site. It's based on the Tesseract OCR engine which is apparently Open Source (I think I found that last time I searched, but wasn't about to write my own application around the engine.). FreeOCR looks to have been posted in the last couple months. And the really good news is that it just works. At least on my old typewriter copies of text (see "The Little Wanderer" on The Chipster Zone web site).

Avocado Tips

I enjoy eating avocado on occasion. Generally I prefer it as it comes: just peel it and pit it as it is ripening -- not too hard, not too mushy. I like to slice it on sandwiches or chunk it on tacos, in wraps, etc. As you may know, however, leftover avocado has a bad habit of quickly turning brown making it a bit unsightly. It seems to be the exposure to air that is the culprit. So short of eating it all up, which is a bit gluttonous, I've found a couple things to be helpful. The first is to leave the peel on a portion of the avocodo. I just slice off as many rings as I think I'm likely to eat; leaving the pit in helps, too. But if you still have leftovers, you can put them in a rubbermaid-type container and add enough salsa to cover the avocado. This seems to prevent it from turning, at least for a day or two. Later you can just chunk up the leftovers and it becomes part of the salsa. Enjoy with your favorite tortilla chips. Yum.

Lunch Run with Eagle

Since it was only 72 degrees and overcast I decided to run outside at lunch. I started out about 50 yards ahead of a group of 3 guys – they caught me after about a quarter mile, but I chatted with them for a minute and then stayed about as close behind them as I do my wife a lot of the time, 20 feet or so back, for the first 15 minutes. They said they were going 6 or 8 miles. I said I wasn’t going that far, maybe 4 or 5. I stayed with them as far as Lady Anne Lake at the back of Edgewater – they went straight on the roads and I turned right to go around the lake. I thought I’d at least go across the dam and see what wildlife I could see – maybe a great blue heron or a water snake. I only saw the more common animals: turtles, fish and ducks (including a coot) until I crossed the second bridge. I was just noticing how really low the water was when I saw a head sticking up in the shallows that wasn’t quite a turtle. When I got closer I could see it was a snake about 3 feet long. It wasn’t a Banded Water Snake, which is what I usually think I see, because I could tell that the markings didn’t go all the way around in nice bands. I looked it up later on the internet, identifying it as a Midland Water Snake. A few yards later I was still memorizing the snake pattern as I started to bend right with the edge of the lake, in the corner of my left eye I caught something swooping toward the center of the lake, maybe 100 yards from me. It was a large bird of prey that dipped its feet in the water and then flew back up with lazy but powerful strokes of some very large wings. It wasn’t a heron – all the wrong build for that, although the wingspan was about right; it was too big for any hawk and with the white head and neck and pure white fan of tail feathers this was no turkey buzzard, not that they swoop over water anyway; it was a bald eagle. Its talons were empty but it kept rising and flew off northwards over the trees leaving me just hoping it would turn around and take another pass at the fish it missed. Uplifted by the sighting, I kept going on around the whole lake and ended up with almost 6 miles under my feet.

"Why Software Sucks..." Book Review

Just finished this and here's what I think.

Stardust Cuts Guessed Right

Back on August 13 in the Stardust Memories entry I said: "I wish the dead princes would have been used more as a greek chorus -- my guess is you can find a fair amount of that on the cutting room floor." And now Mr. Gaiman has confirmed it on his blog: "I'm sure there will be some stuff that was cut, but I have no idea what... (ghosts I hope. Lots of really funny ghost bits went away.)" (referring to the eventual DVD release of Stardust).

In Which Toads and Fairies Begin to Appear At Home

I made a quick trip to my parents over Labor Day, flying alone into Cleveland and driving a rental car to western New York. (For the second time in a row at CLE's Dollar Rental Car they were low on vehicles and I received an interesting car, above the class I'd reserved, this time a Jeep Liberty, again with Sirius satellite radio which is nice for the 2 1/2 hour drive). I flew up Saturday and back on Monday. I made the effort because my uncle and aunt were in from Arizona for a couple weeks and it had been too long since I spent any time with them. We had walks in the woods, chats by the vegetable garden, home-cooked meals and other fellowship.

Thinking back, once I arrived at the house the only excursion I made during the two days that went off property was the one to "Garden Image". They have great stepping stones and concrete lawn ornaments at unbelievable prices. Apparently they ship them, which is tough to imagine because they are (obviously) pretty heavy. I've looked a couple places here in north Alabama but so far haven't found anyplace with near the quality (or price); makes me think I should have tried to bring one of their lizards home on the plane . I would've liked to get one for my wife's birthday (I did get one for Mom's shrubbery garden). I settled for a life size painted toad with glass eyes and a couple terra-cotta fairies that are about 4 inches tall. I planted a purple pansy among some of our bushes a few days ago and let her know that it might attract toads and other small creatures; and then the toad appeared on her birthday. The fairies showed up over the weekend.

Twelve Years On the Internet Is Still Cool...

... and a force to be reckoned with:

Slashdot quotes Roger Whittaker: "The Internet still seems to regard censorship as damage and route around it."

Power to the People!

Singular Mind Reading

I hadn’t heard of these folks, The Singularity Institute before they held their recent “Summit” (Sept 8-9 in San Francisco), although I’ve seen other envelope-is-expanding indicators, such as the recent prediction that Man will create “wet artificial life” within the next 3 to 10 years.

Of course I read Colossus (1966, D. F. Jones) in my early teens, and it was a decade old then (two giant computers hook up, go sentient and try to control the world). And I read Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1986) several years after it was published, too (computer hackers meld hardware into their brains and otherwise technologically enhance their bodies and minds). These two science fiction books cover a couple of the future paths toward “the singularity” – and here is my chief complaint now that I’ve typed it. Ironically there isn’t just one “singularity”. A singularity is a type of a thing, like a pinnacle or a sphere. There isn’t just one, every mountain is (or has) a pinnacle. All playground balls are spheres; now maybe you could say that the Earth is the sphere; but I can make a heliocentric argument that our sun is the sphere. Saying that this topic comprises the singularity is dangerous hubris, and again with some irony, it’s cyclically indicative of why humans may not be so easily subjugated in terms of the universal intelligence rankings.

And I’m using a lot of fancy words, another thing that bothered me about the Singularity folks' manifesto. There isn’t nearly enough academia-speak. Sure there are some long words, but once you’re comfortable with “singularity” and “artificial intelligence” there aren’t many mind bending concepts. Even an introductory text to such an audacious topic should be rife with the pretentious use of multi-syllabic and obscure terms.

But back to my science fiction reading: these two books covered, respectively, “artificial intelligence” and “brain-computer interfaces”; apparently the primary technology pathways to the smarter-than-human singularity.

The Introduction does eventually get around to the question of what does it mean to be a smarter-than-human brain – but at this point they throw up their hands and say that we’re not smart enough to know – it’s the singularity, get it? And I half-expect someone to elbow me in the ribs, nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Why is this impossible to measure? We’ve devised all sorts of tests to measure our own intelligence, and those of animals. I’m not sure we’ve been particularly successful at it, but I don’t think we’d be particularly less successful at measuring something smarter than we are than we are at measuring beings less smart. I clearly understand what it means to run at 25 miles per hour. I can’t do it but I can measure it and observe it without blowing any neurons.

In fact, how smart are we? I’ve learned that some researchers say that adult chimps are about as smart as the average human toddler. Of course I don’t know any toddlers that can survive on the African savannah, even without predators; but I guess that’s not the kind of smart they mean. How smart are people? Some are clearly more smart than others, by orders of magnitude. So does passing this singularity mean that something has to exist in our environment that is smarter than the smartest person ever? Or smarter than the smartest potential person, that is, one who knows how to use all of their brain (the Introduction discounts as an “urban legend” the widely held belief that we only effectively use a small portion of our brain; but I’ve been taught some of the research of people learning to use undamaged portions of their brain to replace damaged portions without further loss. The conclusion consistently is that portions of the brain were previously underutilized. The Introduction also makes a big deal out of brain size. Sure people have bigger brains than mammals of comparable size – but we don’t have really big brains in an absolute sense. Check out the brain size of elephants. Also brain size is not a good predictor of intelligence among other mammals, or animals at large. Are house cats smarter than squirrel monkeys? Their brains are considerably larger so they must be.

I’m going to contend that in the same way we could recognize the smartest guy in Algebra class in seventh grade, we can recognize something that is smarter than all people. But just like most of us can’t comprehend quantum physics, or gene therapy, we won’t grok the super-brain. Should we panic? These Singularity Summit folks seem to think it’s a good idea to get to that point; that it’s some grand adventure and inevitable so let’s find out what happens in that next chapter ASAP. I’m a bit more cautious. Peter Thiel thinks it’s an investment opportunity. I agree that if we hit the singularity and the bad thing happens that losing your life savings will be a secondary concern. We may be better served by pondering how one should go about swimming in that world before we dive into it.

So what allowed humans to dominate the current environment? I propose that there are 3 pillars, 3 strengths that, in fairly equal measure, have really allowed us to rise to the top (and I’m ignoring any religious angles here; it’s not too difficult to be propelled to the top of the heap if some omnipotent deity is pushing you).
Our brain. Okay, we’re comparatively smart. Most other animals just don’t measure up (neither do today’s computers); but there are a few animals who may, or have even been argued to be, smarter in some raw measure of brain power, speed and size. Dolphins spring to mind, elephants compete here too.
Our ability to communicate. A language with a large vocabulary is a fairly recent commodity for human kind, but we had pretty indicative grunts long before that. None of the animals seem to have quite our knack for self-expression. Sure whales, dolphins, chimps and insects in some odd hive/colony way are remarkably communicative.
Our dexterity. Remember that opposable thumb you have? Right; actually you’ve probably got 2 of them, most of us do. It’s a big deal. Dolphins fall out here, they can’t manipulate their environment and build tools the way we can. Apes and monkeys almost can. Evolutionists will tell you that we’re just better apes – this is a big way we’re better. Watch out for the elephants in this category though, its trunk has more than 40,000 muscles. If they had two of them we might still be living in caves watching Dumbo pave over our habitat.

So what about a smarter-than-human artificial mind? It trumps us on number one, by definition. Number two follows suit pretty well with the internet and cell phones and radio technology it wouldn’t have any trouble talking to its neighbors. Number three is a bit more dicey. As I recall that’s where Colossus fell down; people are just very maneuverable. And we can act autonomously or in concert as a huge mother-loving team. The wet-wear singularity might have us in trouble – I see that as farther off and less significant at least initially; a second singularity and an evolutionary one. The Bionic Woman is coming back to TV on September 26; I don’t see her, even if she were real, shattering our society. Not in our lifetime.

Of course the singularists spout off about the positive feedback loop that ensues after the singularity. An artificial intelligence may be self-improving, able to “rewrite its own source code”. And that’s intriguing (again though, see pillar #3 to retain some composure). Humans aren’t done yet, not even after this singularity, but we could become more akin to pets, or beasts of burden; simple slaves, and that is a scary contemplation. Or we may be able to harness smarter minds with weaker bodies the same way we used horses through the ages with their stronger bodies but weaker minds (and weaker communications). We already do it with computers with their faster number crunching and algorithmic abilities. Just the same I think I’m going to start storing my Roomba in the pantry, safely separated from my stationary computer from now on.

"California grower recalls salmonella- tainted spinach"

California grower recalls salmonella- tainted spinach - LOS ANGELES (Reuters) "It was a long, crinkly-leafed, robust and verdant varietal that grew heartily in the moist, loose loams of the western vale -- but it's gone now; harvested, you know; every bit of it just harvested and put on the truck," sighed the grower, reminiscently.

(Okay, everything after "(Reuters)" I made up.)

Exhausting

The light was out, the light was on; the light was out, the light was on. It was annoying. You've only read the cycle twice and I bet it's wearing on your nerves already. But finally, after almost three years of unpredicatability the light was out -- and wouldn't come back on. The light is in an exhaust fan in the ceiling in my master bathroom in my house in suburbia.

The fixture rattled intermittently; even after I had my builder come back and check it -- he just pushed it up a little so that the wedges on the edges gained some friction on the ceiling sheetrock. That lasted a few weeks. So we didn't use the fan much, but the light we used.

When it went out with no sign of coming back on I figured the bulb; a regular incandescent 60 watt light bulb, had blown. Testing it in my bedside lamp this proved to be the case. Replacing the bulb with a new one didn't help, though. The fan worked, the light didn't. (The fan and the light are separately switched.) Maybe the new bulb was bad, too? Okay, the exhaust fan is above the toilet -- a good place for it, except that you have to stand on the commode to reach the ceiling. It's a little short for comfort, but not bad the first time. But now it's the third time... (once to take the old bulb out, once to put the new bulb in and now a third time to take the new bulb out to test it someplace else, and of course that means a fourth time up in order to put the new bulb back in, assuming it works). Yes, it works; of course it works, it's a brand-spanking-new bulb fresh from GE. I put it back in the fan fixture: no dice.

Now what? Well, maybe the vibration of the fan loosened the wiring, or caused a short or something. So I broke out the step ladder, but it won't quite fit in the space where the toilet is, so it has to sit in front of the porcelain. A little better than standing on the toilet seat, but still an awkward reach. I removed the whole fixture, uncoupling the wire nuts and all -- but first I shut the circuit off at the fuse panel. Removing the fixture is a multi-step process: remove the plastic light cover, remove the light bulb, unscrew the cap nut from a bolt sticking down in the middle of the fixture (hey, the cap nut doesn't make the fixture fit snug against anything -- more on that later), then remove the fan grill and finally unwire the whole thing from the house. Oh, I had to go up into the attic to unwire the fan, couldn't reach it from the bathroom. So I had to crawl to the corner of the attic, careful not to hit my head on the nail points sticking down from through the roof, and reach across the open insulation and unscrew the fan wiring from its ground and wire nuts. Whew. (And just by the way, the "dryer duct" tubing on the back of the fan housing doesn't, as it should, vent over to the soffit under the eaves, it just exhausts the bathroom air up into the attic.... Oh, well.)

Conveniently, the light portion of the fixture actually plugs into the fan portion with a crude but standard sized plug. I put the bulb back in, plugged the light portion of the fixture into an extension cord and, voila, the light works fine. So it's something to do with the fan portion of the fixture -- or the wiring from the switches to the fixture, or....

So I break out my multi-tester and a spool of wire and start checking circuits. I open up the switch box and uncouple and recouple the switches, checking circuits as I go. I'm no electrician so I'm pretty grateful when I find that Lowe's has some nice online help for just my situation. I've got the "three wire with ground" case. But everything checks out. No electrical shorts, the switches close and open the circuits just like the diagrams say.

So maybe something was just loose. I guess I'll put it all back together and see what happens. Nada, that's what happens. Aaaargh. But I noticed, as I was screwing the fan fixture back into place that the bolt that the light portion screws onto, the one with the not snug cap nut, is just the shaft of a bolt, no head. This shaft is itself screwed into a piece of the fan housing. It's a set screw. Well, it may not have anything to do with my light problem (and it didn't, really), but at least the damn fan isn't going to rattle anymore. So I unscrewed the bulb, removed the cap nut, took down the light fixture (okay, I think I let it dangle by the cord plugged into the fan, so sue me) and adjusted the set screw so that the fixture was now snug against the ceiling and the cap nut was snug against the fixture.

This time as I screwed the bulb back in I paid more attention to the fact that the bulb was hitting the cap nut when it got nearly screwed in. I'd noticed this before but since the nut is metal there was no fire danger, but it was putting pressure on the bulb as I tightened it down. No different from before, but with my new knowledge of fans, wiring and set screws I think I had learned to learn about electrical fixtures. Anyway, even though a light bulb still didn't go on over my head, I had an idea: could the bulb just not be getting properly seated in the socket? Let's try a smaller bulb, shall we? I happened to have a couple dozen appliance size light bulbs (A15 size, I think they are) that I had ordered off the Internet. I stuck one of these puppies in the fan/light fixture in the ceiling in my bathroom in my house in suburbia and, ta-da, there was light. Yeah!

Now I'm wondering if the previous bulb had been an A19 and the new one I tried was an A21 or whether someone had just jammed the old one in enough to make good contact or what. I don't care enough to open the fixture back up and figure it out. I've got plenty of smaller bulbs, and I plan to use them.

TDISMDFTG Reviewed, And it's not even Friday

I finally figured out why I'd had trouble finding The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish at our local library and it wasn't because the children's picture book section tends to be a mess, even though it does. It was because "TDISMDFTG" was shelved, or rather hanged (too much gallows imagery, make that:), or rather hung, in a bag with the audio CD of the writer, Neil Gaimain, reading the book. I just now listened and read along. It's a good, new children's book (2003), with enough repetition and things happening that you don't quite know about at first (like Nathan's little sister saying "Mumf" a few times before we know that she has been tied and gagged (by Nathan)). And engaging pictures drawn by Dave McKean. Be sure to read the "Afterword" if you're at all curious about how authorship happens (maybe you're an aspiring writer yourself), or if you've ever been to Galveston, Texas (I have). I think you'll find it interesting.

Stardust Memories

I'd like to say it was a real cross-over, mainstream kind of crowd that sat with us at the early-evening, opening night showing of Stardust on Friday, but even in this geek-tilted town where rocket scientists and their sons and daughters abound, I'm afraid there was a disproportionate lot of cerebral and slightly socially fringed attendees. And more daughters than sons. Not that I really think Stardust is a chick-flick, I just think that Neil Gaiman's fan base turned out in strength here. Groups of girls from their teens to their thirties dominated the theater, some with a couple of male companions, the kind of young men that are especially glad to be hanging out with women, any women (not that these were unattractive girls, just ones with a separate sense of fashion).

At any rate, either Neil's fan base is bigger than thought or more than his fans turned out across the country since Reuters pegged a 4th place box office pull for Stardust, not bad at all.

Early in the film I had misgivings, thinking the treatment seemed very matter-of-fact, if well staged; but by the second half of the film, as the threads began to pull together and seeds planted in the early dialogue blossomed into cause and effect, I started to identify with the characters. It was my mistake to listen to the comparisons with The Princess Bride, that caused expectations for farcical wit. While a suitably broad genre may encompass both TPB and Stardust, Stardust takes itself a bit more seriously, even if its world is a bit more fantastical. There are unicorns here but no badly animated Rodents of Unusual Size, and not many one-liners. Only Claire Danes deadpan heroine performance matches Robin Wright's Princess Buttercup, other parallels don't exist. For example, Robert De Niro's Captain Shakespeare is no Dread Pirate Roberts. De Niro does nearly steal the show, but the strength of the rest of the ensemble cast holds together and Tristran's transformation (largely at the hand's of Shakespeare's shears) is both quaint and powerful. Michelle Pfeiffer well plays scary and evil; I wish the dead princes would have been used more as a greek chorus -- my guess you can find a fair amount of that on the cutting room floor. Imperfections aside (and there aren't any more here than in any movie where you've already read the book), it's a beautifully-shot feel- good film.

Kid Prep

This one is for the teachers I know on this TGIF (and the parents, and the business leaders, and...):

Check out Dan Pink’s Quote of the Week.

All I ever wanted...

You don't make a left turn in North Jersey when you want to turn left, not off a main thoroughfare at any rate. Instead you bear right onto a little one way piece of road and that makes a little "U" turn or "T's" into a side street that you can turn left on and then you go straight across the thoroughfare that you were on thus completing a left turn, capiche? This is a bit confusing when you haven't done it lately, and I hadn't (done it lately, that is) a couple weeks ago when we were spending a Friday night in northern New Jersey prior to hitting New York City on the weekend. How-some-ever, it turned out to be a fortunate happenstance when I semi-panicked and made my right-to-turn-left one ramp too soon...

We'd driven down from upstate New York and arrived at our hotel-with-heated-pool in the late afternoon. The pool was a hit and we swam until past dinnertime and then had to scramble for someplace open past 9:00 PM, we were hoping for local Italian fare but were hungry enough not to be picky when I made my too-early right-left; we looped across an overpass and came face-to-face with a little Italian establishment -- with the lights still on.

The door said 10:00 PM was closing time and as it was coming up on 9:40 we entered a bit haltingly in case the kitchen was already cleaning up, but they welcomed us enthusiastically and ushered us into the small dining room. We were the only diners at first but as we ate a large table in the corner slowly filled up with staff and family of the restaurant. A large man conversed loudly with everyone in an authoritative voice. He didn't look like Tony Soprano, but he called people "paisan" and had a roll of greenbacks as big as my fist. He peeled off a couple and handed them out as staff left for the evening. The service was excellent, my manicotti was very nice and we all ate plenty.

Brisk and early Saturday morning found us down-slope from the Staten Island Zoo, visiting the final resting place of my in-laws. The sun shined, the breeze blew and the peacocks hollered on a gorgeous 70 degree morning. Our rented Dodge Magnum would certainly have been mistaken for a hearse had it been black instead of white. It was serene and somber; maybe a bit surreal. We reflected and then fled for breakfast (bagels and strawberries) at Island Girl's pad: very hip, very Web 2.0. The beaded doorways, the narrow kitchen with scavenged school desk, all accommodated us because we were family and the place was filled with grace and spunk.

Off again, we parked next on a residential block of Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn where my college friend, his wife and young son are doing their part to gentrify the neighborhood. They've bought a row house there. Walking toward their place my 10 year old suburbanite daughter intoned: "This is insane!". She was incredulous that anyone lived like that, where were the yards, the mailboxes, the driveways, the garages? The houses were close enough on Staten Island to touch your neighbors house with a broom stick held out a side window, but here the houses actually touch each other? Pretty cool, huh, my girl? She didn't think so -- but she warmed up when on the inside it was a real house, even if an old and rather ornate one.

We walked through Prospect Park, another amazing sight for the unitiated: real streets but no cars, only walkers, joggers, bicycles and the occasional rollerblader, and plenty of trees and softball fields, right there in the middle of so much city. We walked through to Park Slope for brunch where we had to wait outside for a table at Dizzy's Coffee Shop but the host offered us gratis iced coffees and the extra time offered us a look down below the streets at the F-train stop. The walk back was just as pleasant and the talk back at the house was too short. It felt comfortably intellectual to sit in Brooklyn with shelves full of literature and modern music and my friends, and to meet their son after too long; but they were off to Long Island for the evening and we were headed up to Croton-on-Hudson for a cookout.

Our drive through Queens and the Bronx, mostly on the BQE (a misnomer where the "E" stands for "expressway") was not as bad as such drives can be. We were only nearly squashed a couple times and came to a parking lot stop on elevated highway only a few more times than that. Besides, we got a nice view of Manhattan and of Yankee Stadium. Mark's house up-the-Hudson is a great old Tudor with a slate roof, but at the moment about half the slate is missing -- seems they got hit by a microburst during a thunderstorm and 5 or 6 of his grand old trees lost their tops right onto his house and patio furniture. The cookout was cool though, they concocted some kind of grilled chicken/shrimp/vegetable and feta cheese on grilled pizza crust stuff that was delicious.

Another high school friend and family dropped by to share and so did Mark's doctoral-student-tenant, Julie. Mark and Tina have 3 kids of their own and on this Saturday night a handful of Tina's nephews were staying, too. The house is a rambler and well lived in (not only by the family, but by 1 dog, 2 cats, 3 rats, a hamster and 2 aquariums full of aquatic life forms). There are innumerable remodeling projects in process; one that has been successfully completed is the insertion of a spiral staircase at the end of the hall which now grants a second access to the upstairs, and to the loft that has a shuttered window down to the family room. Again I felt very comfortable hanging out with the nooks and crannies and our hosts' lack of formality. In the morning Mark, Julie, my wife and I ran across the nearby aqueduct and rounded back to the neighborhood through a long stretch of woods, about a 4 mile loop.

Tina shares my love of fine dark chocolate and gifted me with a box of Gustaux French Chocolate Truffles, which were delectable -- coated with baking cocoa powder they are smooth and strong. (I think that is the right brand -- I had to ditch the box when I packed for the airplane, not realizing that the inner foil had no brand information!) After breakfasting on the rest of Island Girl's bagels, plenty of OJ, some Trix and a truffle, I piled the family and a couple of the old slate shingles into the Magnum and headed west under the late morning sun.

Another Character Name

Another Character Name: "Auburn Bill"

Review: trashy, brashy boldness

Today I reviewed "I'll Take Manhattan", the audio book, read by Adrienne Barbeau. It didn't fare well.