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Rules of the Road

2008-09-07T02:24:46Z

Road Runner and Wile E Coyote may have seemed to be living in a perpetual state of anarchy and road rage, but it also appears that they lived (or were animated anyway) by a strict set of rules (or suggestions anyway). This from Wikipedia: In Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times Of An Animated Cartoonist, it is claimed that Chuck Jones and the artists behind the Road Runner and Wile E. cartoons adhered to some simple but strict rules:

Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "beep, beep".
No outside force can harm the Coyote -- only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.
The Coyote could stop anytime -- IF he was not a fanatic. (Repeat: "A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim." --George Santayana).
No dialogue ever, except "beep, beep".
Road Runner must stay on the road -- for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner.
All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters -- the southwest American desert.
All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.
The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.

These rules were not always followed, and in an interview[2] years after the series was made writer Michael Maltese said he had never heard of the "Rules".

Mending Wall Now a Renting Wall

2008-08-24T16:14:36Z

A recent piece in The Washington Post epitomizes much of what is glaringly wrongheaded about our "homeland security". The story highlights the plight of some folks in the border town of Derby Line, Vermont - a town that culturally and in all sorts of everyday ways straddles the border between the US and Canada. The "line" separating the US and Canada bisects neighborhoods, and in a few cases even houses. According to Post's writer, Keith Richburg:

First was the white, painted lettering on the pavement on three little side streets -- "Canada" on one side, "U.S.A." on the other. Then came the white pylons denoting which side of the border was which. After that, signboards were erected on some streets, ordering drivers to turn back and use an officially designated entry point.

And with these unwelcomed changes of course came an influx of American Border Patrol personnel. These residents are "good Americans" living in a "post 9-11 world". Yet they live in a state whose motto is "Freedom and Unity". They now live in a nation that seems to demand they give up their freedom and unity in order to guarantee our security. These Americans were willing to make those compromises, if it would make the Republic safer. Eventually, they have came to see the one inevitability that occurs when the national conversation shifts from the complex interplay between security and liberty to the more simplistic one between security and more security. That inevitability is... fences.

For longtime residents accustomed to a simpler life that flowed freely across a largely invisible border, the final shock -- and what made most people really take notice -- was a proposal by the border agents last year to erect fences on the small streets to officially barricade the United States from Canada, and neighbor from neighbor. "They're stirring up a little hate and discontent with that deal," said Claire Currier, who grew up in this border area and works at Brown's Drug Store, which has operated on the same spot since 1884. "It's like putting up a barrier. We've all intermingled for years."

Instead of focusing on real suspects determined to do harm, border agents seem more concerned with their response to an errant Frisbee tossed across the line through a neighborhood.

[The border patrol agent in charge] Beltran said he instructs his agents to use discretion and "common sense." It goes like this: "If a kid [on the Canada side] throws a Frisbee over here, he can come and get it. But if he got the Frisbee and kept walking down to the Arby's to get a soda, we're going to stop you." "We can't be wrong once," Beltran added. "If we're wrong once, that could be devastating to the whole country."

Actually, they can be wrong once - or more than once in this case. The alterative is to get to know that kid, buy him a soda at the Arby's and ask him to let you know if he sees anything suspicious happening in his neighborhood. That would be "common" sense. Real security in places like Derby Line, Vermont lies in the fact that they know their Canadian neighbors so well. They are the ones who can be most vigilant, and would know if interlopers were to try to come across their border through their neighborhoods and past their general store. It is the fact that they have developed such strong bonds of friendship and familial ties that this part of the border is probably more secure than most. And these bonds are the very ones that our overzealous government is hell-bent on severing. Instead of encouraging citizens on both sides of that imaginary line to stay connected with each other, to continue to worship together, and socialize, and work with each other to sustain their way of life that has held fast for generations, we are making those connections difficult to sustain and making our republic just that much more vulnerable. And it is precisely in towns like Derby Line, Vermont where the shortsightedness of the Department of Homeland Security comes into highest relief. Because these government officials see "the border" as a static object set in stone, then they are hard pressed to see any other way to increase their security than with more stones, more brick and mortar, and perhaps one day with razor wire. It is as if leaders in our government have spent the past seven years in a paranoid haze, and the last two weeks seeing pictures on television during the Olympics of the Great Wall in China without noticing that in the end it failed both to keep to barbarians out and native Chinese in. Maybe our fellow citizens who are so eager to "secure the homeland" by building fences might want to revisit something that the poet, Robert Frost, who lived in Ripton, Vermont - about a hundred miles south of that border - once wrote in his poem, Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast... Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

California's Sierra-Nevada: Is It Hot Up Here, Or Is It Just Me?

2008-08-03T22:46:59Z

There is a very graphic, and very effective interactive map of the Sierra-Nevada in the Sacramento Bee showing the impact of global climate change on this complex eco-system that is crucial for the health of a goodly portion of the left edge of the North America Plate (or at least until it chips off into the Pacific after the next "Big One"). Of all the photos and graphs of rising average temperatures, disappearing snowpack, and dying pine trees, there was one piece about the Alpine chipmunk (Tamias alpinus) that was particular disturbing. Here is what it says:

This rare chipmunk has undergone a dramatic reduction in Yosemite. Found in lodgepole pine forests, it now lives in the talus slopes above the tree line. Its range has shifted upslope 1,900 feet. Population is collapsing.

The devastation of these small creatures is a harbinger of things to come. Yet, we humans seem impervious to the simple and clear assertion that as Tamis alpinus goes, so goes Homo sapiens.

OPINION: Solving the "Off-Shore Oil Drilling" Political Impasse

2008-08-02T17:14:32Z

Hammering away at the need for new offshore drilling sites, conservatives believe they finally have an issue that will give them traction in the fall election. They have precious few issues working for them right now, and even fewer ideas about dealing with the fallout from the last seven years of incompetence, ineptness and corruption. And it just might work...if the Democrats cave in again to the bully in the playground. But it doesn't have to. The conservative argument is based on the fact that most Americans have only a rudimentary understanding about how the global oil market works. By implying that allowing offshore drilling will have any measurable impact on gas prices is a shrewd way to get those oil rights back into the national energy conversation. Something they have wanted to do for some time now. The first fact to consider is that it takes years, and sometimes even decades, from the time oil companies first begin to explore for oil before even a single drop of oil makes it to the refinery. But more to the point the market is a global one, and once the oil is extracted from beneath the sea, these companies will sell the oil where they can get the best price. Currently, that is Japan and China, where gas is $8 to $10 per gallon, and not the US where it is less than half that. Also, refinery capacity in the US - about 98% - is well beyond what is normally considered "full", and oil from the US continental shelf will have no impact on the amount of oil refined into gasoline or jet fuel in the short term. One political solution would be for the Democrats to allow the oil drilling, but with this caveat - all the oil extracted from American sites must be shipped, stored, refined, sold and consumed in America by Americans. This, of course, would be impossible for the oil companies and the conservatives to agree to. In fact given how the global shipping and supply chain for oil works, it could not happen. It would, however, open the conversation wide enough so that average Americans would begin to see that the oil market doesn't work in the simplistic way they have been led to believe it does. A restriction in such legislation would also highlight for the American people that US multi-national energy companies are just that - multi-national. The assumption that energy companies with American sounding names will necessarily act in this country's best interests is a flawed one. That is not to say that these companies are anti-American. Far from it in most cases. It is to say, though, that they will act in their own best interests and in the interests of their shareholders - every time. Including this time. Update: Here is a link to a YouTube video that sums things up rather nicely in a bit over a minute.

Designing Mad Men

2008-07-07T21:42:38Z

Michael Bierut over at Design Observer has a wonderful piece on the cable television show, Mad Men. Well on the first season anyway. Season Two begins later this month. Bierut writes from the perspective of a designer. About his own early career he writes:

One of my first bosses taught me an important lesson.

Good designers are a dime a dozen, he said. Coming up with a great design solution is the easy part. The hard part, he said, is getting the client to accept the solution.

"But if the work is good, don't the clients know it when they see it?" I asked.

My boss just looked at me silently for a long time. And then, with gentleness and no small amount of pity, he reached out and patted me on the head: Poor kid.

His comments on the main character über Mad Man, Don Draper, are just fabulous:

Don: It's okay, Kenny. I don't think there's much else to do here but call it a day. [Rises and extends his hand.] Gentlemen, thank you for your time.
Client: [Baffled.] Is that all?

Don: You're a nonbeliever. Why should we waste time on kabuki?

Client: I don't know what that means.

Don: It means that you've already tried your plan, and you're number four. You've enlisted my expertise and you've rejected it to go on the way you've been going. I'm not interested in that. You can understand.

Client: I don't think your three months or however many thousands of dollars entitles you to refocus the core of our business --

Don: Listen. I'm not here to tell you about Jesus. You already know about Jesus. He either lives in your heart or He doesn't. [Cut to Don's colleagues, who look alarmed. Don bears down with his argument. He never raises his voice.] Every woman wants choices. But in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box. She's unique. She makes the choices and she's chosen him. She wants to tell the world, he's mine. He belongs to me, not you. She marks her man with her lips. He is her possession. You've given every girl that wears your lipstick the gift of total ownership.

[Pause. The client looks at Don, then at the ads, then at Don again.]

Client: [Quietly.] Sit down.

Don: No. [Evenly.] Not until I know I'm not wasting my time.

Client: [Conceding.] Sit down.

Jesus God in heaven! Not until I know I'm not wasting my time! From the minute Don launched his this-meeting-is-over bluff, I was on the edge of my seat, and my lovely wife Dorothy will tell you that I literally clapped my hands at that line. For me, this sequence is as close to pornography as I ever get to see on basic cable.

The kabuki line was pretty good too.

Good stuff...dished up HERE.

Is 350 The Magic Number?

2008-06-18T00:05:01Z

Seems so. That's the number of parts per million of CO2 that the planet can handle reasonably safely. We are not there. We are somewhere above that number. The higher we go, the more stress on the planet - more global warming, more Al Gore movies, more apocalyptic scenes from the bible...

Seriously, there is a site that is dedicated to educating the population and creating pressure on thought leaders around the world to bring that number down. Bill McKibben and his colleagues are serious people with the hard data of science and the soft power of persuasion backing them up.

Take a look HERE at 350.org. Help get that number down.

Faces and Voices

2008-06-16T19:44:46Z

The Impact of Time and Place on Our Understanding of Child Sexual Abuse Philadelphia, PA Last week I happened to find myself sitting in the audience listening to the closing arguments in the case involving Charles Bennison, the Episcopal bishop who is before a tribunal investigating allegations that he did nothing to intervene when his brother (a youth minister at the time) was sexually involved with a fourteen-year old girl. I decided to attend because I was intrigued to see what it is like for a bishop, rather than a priest, to be in this situation. Curiosity perhaps. To see what it is like for one with so much power to be humbled. At least that is what I thought as I sat there waiting for the tribunal to begin the afternoon session. The judges processed in - all in purple robes - and walked up the steps of the dais at the front of the room. They sat in their assigned seats and settled themselves, as the one presiding called on the church's attorney to begin his closing arguments. It occurred to me that the bishop was probably more accustomed to that view from above than he was from his seat at the defense table. I tried to get a good look at him, but he only allowed a partial view of his face as he sat with his gaze fixed a bit to one side. I did get a clear enough view to see a rather unremarkable face. Grandfatherly perhaps. Not a particularly wise face. Ordinary actually. The attorney representing the church began his summation with studied precision. This was well within his comfort zone. No doubt he had seen many a courtroom, and has delivered more than his share of closing arguments. I sat amazed at the sight of a lawyer for the church actually prosecuting a bishop for "acts unbecoming a member of the clergy". I thought such lawyers were the ones who defended bishops like him. In any event he seemed skilled enough as he began to summarize his case by revisiting previous testimony. I didn't pay close attention until he began to speak about the woman - now fifty - who was the target of those sexual acts thirty-six years ago. He quoted a portion of her testimony in which she said, When you are not protected, you begin to believe that you are not worth protecting. The simple and profound truth of that statement, of that universal belief of children who are abused, hit me with the force of a hammer on an anvil. It was so clear, and so precise. It is just the way it is for children. So why, I began to wonder, is it so difficult for some adults to really understand the horrifying impact that such abuse had on children when it happened years ago, an impact that may last for their entire lives. And the answer immediately seemed obvious from the very context of this tribunal. It is all about faces and voices. The faces and voices in the room were the wrong ones. The faces were too old. Too many lines creased with the cares of the world. The voices too muted - unable to articulate the unvoiced screams that have lingered for so long in the corners of memory. Yet not muted enough, too practiced in the ways of the law to capture the child's psyche frozen with terror in those moments when the images, the sounds and the voices all return uninvited, as they are want to do. Abusing children is a secretive business, and children often get caught up in the secrecy. Years later, when they are well into adulthood, they are finally able to give voice to those traumatic experiences. But the voice they give is their adult one - the child's voice long ago silenced. And the face they present also is their adult one. The same is true of the predator (or in this case the enabler). When the violence occurred, he was a man in his prime, not the wizened grandfatherly type at the defense table staring off into space. Not the old, retired priests so often pictured in stories about such abuse. Then he was a man with both physical power and positional authority - a corporate player tending to his career ladder, as he keeps the violence to the level of a whisper, no more than a vague rumor about possible sexual indiscretions. The antidote to this unfortunate reality lies in the imagination. The next time you hear of such abuse that occurred decades ago, picture a child you know - either a boy or girl. Imagine the smooth face, the sheen of the hair, the slightly pitched voice, the eyes wide open and inviting to the world. And then imagine a man in his thirties or forties with soft hands and a seeming gentle manner, dark hair perhaps, a soothing - even pastoral - voice. Those were the people present when the crimes occurred. And they are only present again in the tribunal for a few fleeting moments. They are present when the bishop once again becomes the corporate suit worried about advancing his career, and how the truth of this violence, how the revelations of these illicit and illegal acts on a child, might dash his hopes for that coveted promotion. But more than that, those who were really present at the crime scene emerge when the child's voice returns with one simple, direct and irrefutable truth: When you are not protected, you begin to believe that you are not worth protecting. It is just as true today as it was forty years ago.

The Gutenberg Press on YouTube -- God Bless the BBC and Stephen Fry

2008-04-20T22:06:19Z

The BBC has a wonderful program tracing history of Mr Gutenberg, his printing press, and of course his famous bible. Stephen Fry has produced a wonderful piece for the BBC (in six parts here on YouTube) that brings to life the invention that, as Mr Fry says, does more to define us as a civilization than anything since.

And the growth of the moveable-type technology rivaled even the growth of the Internets - in just a few decades after the first book was printed... as Fry says, "...from zero books to 50 million in twenty years..."

No small irony in the fact that this blog is based on software called MoveableType. Literally, there would be no Internet without the one thing we all take for granted in our world - the printed word.

Wonderful program.

Alert The Media... Nine-Year Old Rides NYC Subway Alone

2008-04-06T23:21:44Z

Oh, the media is already alerted. It seems that a columnist for the New York Sun gave her nine-year old boy a MetroCard, a subway map and twenty bucks and said I'll see you at home. This caused quite a kafuffle. Some even accused the mother of child abuse.

True, there were some who wrote to her to tell her about their first adventures alone in the city, and how important they were. Most, though, and even some experts, seem to think it too dangerous. This in spite of the data that shows New York to be safer now than even fifty years or so ago.

When did we become such a fearful culture? Oh yeah, when the media began to alert us... about every possible danger. Enough already.

Here is the link to the article. Oh and the map is there too for your kids.

Cool... if not a little creepy

2008-04-01T03:45:08Z

This is a bit hard to describe. Just click on the site and move the mouse around. Kind of mesmerizing at first... then it harkens back to those paintings that seemed like the eyes followed the viewer around the room. From motionportrait - like they say, creepy girl.

Click here. All will be clear.

Obama and Truman -- Two Politicians Two Machines

2008-03-24T11:26:12Z

The Washington Independent has an interesting commentary by Ben Joravsky, a local Chicago journalist, about the remarkably similar parallel political between two seemingly dissimilar pols - Senator Obama and President Truman. In a nutshell he describes how both of them were products of good old fashion Democratic machines. Truman owed much of his political success to the notorious Kansas City mayor, "Boss Tom" Pendergast. Obama from the less notorious (and probably less corrupt) Daley machine in Chicago. Heends his piece on a hopeful note:

What everyone is hoping is that once in the White House, Obama, like Truman, will have the courage to stand up for what he believes. Presumably, his alliance with Daley is the price Obama paid for the right to be in a position to achieve national health care. Something even Truman couldn't pull off.

Again here is the link.

A How-To That Really Works

2008-03-11T01:58:39Z

Every once in a while a "how-to" comes along that is really useful. Such is the case with this one from Wired about how to breeze through airport security. Even the most experienced frequent flier might pick up a point or two from this marvel of simplicity and efficiency.

Perfection on YouTube

2008-03-07T14:19:51Z

One of our HigherPortalians from Canada, RuthAnne, e-mailed this the other day. Ya just never know what can happen when you find yourself on YouTube. She wrote:

My neighbor draws a perfect circle. Go on Google and search how to draw the perfect circle, second hit, will see the video of Alex. He's a math teacher, done this for years, made up a story about being the international free hand circle drawing champion (coincidentally, I've known him for years, from my hometown and was married to a good friend of mine). The kids at the neighbourhood highschool get a big kick out of it, the story he tells, the circle, the spectacle. A video gets taken last spring by one of his students and gets on YouTube. He's been invited to a million and one places to speak and draw his circle. Tomorrow, he's leaving for Portugal to be in a movie by a rather famous director there. The movie is called "How To Draw A Perfect Circle."

Go ahead. Do a Google search. Or just click here.

(Thx RA)

Star Wars Movie Review is Child's Play

2008-03-07T02:49:28Z

Just in case you are also one of the last people on this planet to have missed this synopsis of Star Wars Episode IV offered by a three-year old, here it is:

Has Social Networking Finally (or Already) Peaked?

2008-02-11T17:37:50Z

Well, according to this article in BusinessWeek, the answer apparently is: yes.

Here are some telling numbers from the article:

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore. MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December, ComScore says. The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that's down sharply from past growth rates. "What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising," says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.

It seems that the more ads there are on these pages, the fewer eyeballs there are reading them, and the fewer fingers clicking on all those mice out there in the non-virtual world.