Caretaker of the Light

2006-01-25T11:02:00.000-06:00

Save Network Neutrality and Internet Freedom

Over the past several years, there have been rising political battles over the usage of information technology. Now, a new and major battle is brewing between established IT communications corporations and consumers/infoactivists. The major communications companies (such as SBC/AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, among others) want to control what its users are able to access at high speed on the Internet.

Please read this website:

If the nation's largest telephone and cable companies are allowed to limit the fastest services to those who can pay their toll, the rest of us — upstart Web services, consumers, bloggers and new media makers alike — will become blocked from digital-age innovations.

The companies that control the pipes want to discriminate in favor of their own applications, while shutting out or slowing down competing services. These companies have a business incentive to create their own affiliates to compete with the most popular applications — like search engines, voice-over-the-Internet, and streaming video archives.

They now seek to pad their pockets further by becoming gatekeepers to all things digital — deciding what content, applications and services we can use. The telco and cable giants — which dominate 98 percent of the broadband market — not only expect consumers to pay to access the Internet, but they want to charge content producers for using their wires to deliver it.

This will be very terrible to the future of the internet, and of our democratic structure. Consider this:

Using the Internet, we are building a noosphere, a global brain, or a superorganism. Electricity is the lifeblood of this superorganism, while the communications technologies are the nervous system. Cells and organs of the human body are dependent upon blood and communication with the brain and with other cells of the body in order to be in full health. Constricting the flow of blood and communications to any part of the body slowly kills it. The same is true for metaorganisms. When living in a democracy, all humans (which are the cells of the global superorganism) need information in order to make more informed decisions. Cutting the flow of information to and from people will result in a far more ignorant populace as it becomes less possible to know what is going on with more people. As a result, democracy (which is partially a conversation about what is going on with the system) begins to stall and erode. Many of the more depressed areas of the US need this communications technology to stay informed and on top of what is going on in society, and what they need to know to improve conditions in society. So please oppose this new measure by companies to restrict the flow of information around the Internet.

2006-01-24T18:56:00.000-06:00

Are Humans Worthy?

Anyone with an interest in the future, and for possibilities of a better world, will likely come across this question. Perhaps, people will ponder this about their nation, their ethnic group, their religion. This essay will include all of this, and more. Normally, this is a question of good and evil. Are humans basically good, or are they basically evil? Perhaps, this question has been asked ever since humans evolved the ability to talk. When reading history, or looking at current events, the results are often not encouraging.

Most people who read The Communist Manifesto agree that communism is a good idea...on paper. However, the experience of communism is one of the worst nightmares to happen to humans. Communist governments have killed perhaps more than 100 million people (mostly their own citizens) over the course of the 20th century. The Soviet Union is responsible for the death of over 55 million of its own citizens, and Communist China has killed over 35 million of its own citizens. These two nations represent over 90 million people killed from the communist menace. During the years 1975 – 1979, during which Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia, one third of the nation's population was killed. The educated/professional class was eradicated by a regime that wanted to return to 15th century technology, while using communism to rule over people. It can easily be argued that what the governments were practicing was not true communism, but an extremely despotic fascism. But that does not change the fact that not only did leaders use it to kill tens of millions of people, the followers allowed these mass murders to happen.

At the onset of the Great Depression, Weimer Germany, which was a democratic and generally tolerant nation during the 1920s, collapsed, and was replaced by a despotic and genocidal Nazi Germany, responsible for a 6 year genocide that killed 12 million people (half of them Jews), and for fomenting the most destructive war in human history. Again, Germans allowed this to happen. In Rwanda, in a three months period, a genocide killed 800,000 people.

After the fall of the communist menace, Russia has embraced racism and nationalism, and being of a racial minority (especially of African descent) is now very dangerous in Russia. The history of the United States is full of racial atrocities. The United States is responsible for the worst genocide in history against the Native Americans. After the end of slavery with the Civil War, blacks faced widespread discrimination and state-sanctioned terrorism from a majority white supremacist population. A nation that prided itself on freedom and democracy (as did the Soviet Union) is responsible for some of the most horrific acts of barbarism against other humans in history. With the War on Terror, the current US leadership is promoting the usage of torture, building concentration camps, with absolutely no legal rights.

During the 16th century, the Catholic Church was responsible for heinous acts of mass violence and torture in both America, and in the continent of Europe, where the Inquisition was responsible for millions of deaths and gruesome forms of torture. And then there were the crusades a few centuries earlier. Religious extremists are responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history. In this day and age, religious terrorism remains a major problem, with Al Queda leading the way.

While centralized and organized violence are some of the most prolific producers of torture and death, individual humans are responsible for the same. Most people know at least one person who gets off upon seeing someone else suffer. For some reason, a lot of people love to psychologically torture others. Even kids. Children are supposed to be innocent, uncorrupted by the hardships of life. Yet, children routinely visit this kind of torture on other children. If we can't have faith that our kids are good, then how can we have faith in anyone who is an adult? 50 years ago, young black men had to worry about being killed by white supremacists. Today, young black men are far, FAR more likely to be killed by other young black men than by white supremacists. How often it is that you hear about little girls – many of them under 10 – being kidnapped, raped, and slaughtered? You hear about these events, and wonder how anyone could be so sick. For most of us, using the word “sick” vastly understates what we feel about such people. Today, while violence and hatred against minorities is no longer acceptable, this has been replaced by violence and hatred against Muslims and homosexuals. How often is it that come crazed right winger sanctions murder of these people?

It is very easy for religious people to say that those who sanction hatred and violence are not truly following the principles of their religion. However, anyone who reads the holy text of the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jews would find it hard not to believe otherwise. Those who created and maintain the website
GodHatesFags.com (and now GodHatesAmerica.com) justify their hateful preachings because the Bible itself contains many passages in which God hates, and kills, and sanctions the killings of large numbers of people. The same is true for other religions. Religions are a major source for morality and meaning in the world. Obviously, we can't trust our religions and religious text to keep humans from hurting each other.

Aside from diseases and natural disasters (and the occasional death by some animal such as a snake), by far the most suffering humans experience are at the hands of another human. Throughout history, we try to think of ways to alleviate the suffering of people. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, and most other religions were created to end suffering. Political/economic ideologies such as democracy, capitalism, communism, etc. were all created to end suffering of the people. But all of these efforts largely failed. Why? Is it just that humans are evil? Is it just impossible to end suffering because humans are naturally evil? Many people blame civilization, but even those who live primitive existences cause the suffering of others.

To anyone who wishes and dreams of a better future, this question becomes a problem. I am one who constantly dreams and thinks of a better future. I look for political and economic systems that will limit the suffering of humans. I am also very interested in the prospect of space colonization. As Marshall T. Savage – author of The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps -- ponders, “Does the prospect of [quintillions of people scattered throughout the solar system] mean more poetry, art, and love, or more greed, misery, and murder?”

If it really is impossible for humans to improve, then what is the purpose of trying to create a better society? Humans will only corrupt such a society, no matter how perfect the system is. Looked at what happened to communism. Look at how Christianity was corrupted. Capitalism has been corrupted. The democracy of the Romans became very corrupted before the Romans decided that a despotic government would be much better. American democracy has been corrupted by slavery and genocide, and now is being corrupted by the War on Terror and the current US regime. The thought that humans deserve the condition they are in comes to mind. This is nihilism at its best.

To any dreamer disappointed about the current (and past) human condition, nihilism itself is a terror. It is a form of terror that seemingly tries to endarken your mind. Love becomes meaningless, while feelings of hatred try to creep in. You stop caring about the plight of humans, and at the more extreme scale, even think that humans deserve this suffering. During the Great Depression and Second World War, during which despotic governments were on the march throughout the world, during which the world was rocked by social upheaval, and by genocide, Albert Einstein was talking to another person about the threat of global nuclear warfare. Einstein was asked, “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?" Given the times they were living in, it is perfectly understandable why someone would feel that way. This person clearly became nihilistic about humans, experiencing the worst war, the worst governments, the most unspeakable forms of torture and mass murder in the history of mankind.

I am not at that point, and don't think that I will ever get there. But this nihilism is pervasive in the world. If I were to ever become a nihilist, then my entire existence would be meaningless. My very existence prompts me to search for a better future, to find ways to end human suffering, and to work for a better existence for all people.

Also, for all of the evils humans have committed in history, humans have also committed a lot of good too. Although people use religion for destructive purposes, a lot of people use them for very good and humane purposes. For those who use political ideologies for destructive ends, others use them for good. Where the Soviets have used socialism in a horrible way, the Scandinavians have successively used it for very humane purposes. While there is plenty of violence and crime in the US, societies such as Japan and Sweden have very low violence and crime. Where the Jim Crow and slavery supporters used the Bible to justify it, the abolitionists and civil rights activists used the Bible to counteract it.

There is plenty of good in the world. These are the people who give us hope. Hope is the opposite of nihilism. As long as there is hope, then there is a way out of the darkness because we can see the path to the light. And as long as we can see the path to the light, then we will find a way. We have ended legal slavery in the world. We have fought against the exploitation of others, and we have largely prevented nuclear war (so far) and mass murders. As we look at the darkness consuming the world today, we can keep in mind that humans have overcome very dark circumstances, and we can do that today. We can work to create a better world, to rid the human race of many evils. Humans are worth at least that much.

2005-11-06T01:05:00.000-06:00

So, What Exactly is Acting White?

A previous blog entry of mine challenged how the term Sellout is used in the African American community. In popular usage, it is used against African Americans who do not fit the racial stereotype. I blogged an article that disagreed with the usage of the term.

Even so, it is my belief that any notion of "acting black" or "acting white" is very destructive to African Americans because it puts black people in a certain box, and encourages all black people to conform to a certain mindset and lifestyle. This is especially destructive when a disproportionate number of black icons represent the thug, gangsta, irresponsible, anti-intellectual stereotypes. I'm not saying that every black must be an angelic one, as that would also be destructive and would help to foster more interracial division in a world where it is still overabundant. Rather, blacks as a whole should explore the whole of human experience as that will help blacks improve socially, intellectually, and spiritually.

Is there any real "black" way to act? According to this article, what is commonly referred to "acting black" is very similar to "redneck culture." Of course, black conservative Thomas Sowell pointed this out in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Anthony B. Bradley makes a very good case for rethinking what we call "black culture."

What does it mean for a black person to “sell out”? Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Tiger Woods and many more, are often branded as “sell outs” or accused of “acting white” because they speak understandable English, pursue learning and have racially integrated lives. What is overlooked, however, is that much of the hip-hop and rap world represents a different form of “acting white” and “selling out.” That is, hip hop culture can be traced to the urbanization of the southern “redneck,” or to use the more socially offensive term, “cracker” culture of the past.

This makes sense since the vast majority of black Americans have roots in the southern US, as Bradley points out:

Thomas Sowell, in his latest book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, reminds us that what is often construed as urban black culture has striking similarities to the cracker culture of the old South. This cracker culture emerged in the American South through the immigration of culturally lowbrow English immigrants. In the antebellum era, about 90 percent of U.S. blacks were immersed in this expression of southern living. When blacks migrated into major northern cities, beginning in the early twentieth century, Sowell argues that they brought redneck culture with them.

He goes on to compare black ghetto culture with redneck culture:

The dominant social, moral, and cultural values among Southern rednecks that Sowell highlights, and that have been explained in works such as Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, include aversion to work, proclivity for violence, contentment with little to no education, sexual promiscuity, short-term thinking, drunkenness, an anti-entrepreneurial spirit, reckless pursuit of excitement, and wild music and dance. Rednecks had touchy pride, what you might call today a “bling-bling” vanity, a boastfully dramatized sense of self, and little self-control.

This “cracker” ethos of the past has been baptized into the hip-hop world with reckless abandon. When black kids call studious blacks “white,” or when black kids scold other black kids for sounding “white,” they have adopted a ghetto cracker mentality. Only a ghetto cracker would ridicule the pursuit of education, the speaking of correct English, and working hard. They boast of violent activities, sexual promiscuity, and “gettin’ high and drunk,” “acting a fool up in da’ club,” or bumping and grinding on the dance floor. The ghetto cracker celebrates being out of control and spending money instead of saving and investing.

Wow! It looks like no matter what we do, we cannot get away from acting like white people! What should black people do? Black people should explore the diversity of human existence. Even white people are not really acting white, when you go back a few centuries. Europeans learned much of their behavior from Muslims, Asians, Africans, and Amerindians. The same goes for all races and ethnicities. No society developed without the exchange of knowledge, culture, and customs of other societies. Instead of being a "black person", we should strive to be a "universal man." Instead of defining a mindset and lifestyle for a population of heavily pigmented people, it would be best for us to define our individual selves by taking on the best of what all of humanity has to offer.

2005-09-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

Democracy Now 9/12/05 Webcast

Democracy Now is a very good independent news source. The 9/12/05 webcast (which can be streamed as a Real Video file, or downloaded as an mp3 or ogg audio file) is very interesting. You can also find transcripts of the show here.

Malik Rahim is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, and lived in New Orleans. Here are some of his comments from the interview:

New Orleans Police is the worst of the lot. Some of them. I ain't going to say all of them but most of them. We get a more friendly response from the Army. And the National Guard. Than from the New Orleans Police. I have no real respect for them anymore. Because they allowed those white vigilantes to ride through with carte blanche. I mean, if a white person was taking something, he was taking food for his family. But if a black was taking something, he was looting. You know? And you see signs all around: “We kill looters. We shoot looters.” Some of them was even bragging about it. We used to -- for the first week we had truckloads of whites riding around, white vigilantes riding around talking about they're protecting the neighborhood. New Orleans came so close to breaking into a race riot than I ever seen. You know, because even though they were shooting blacks in the Algiers part where I live, Algiers is surrounded by nothing but black communities. And guys were saying that if they hear of anybody else being shot, they are going to shoot any white that comes through their community. It took a lot for us to stop this. But we didn't have no consideration from the government. You know? And that kept on going because again, if whites -- I mean, we sit here and watch them. They ride around in their dump trucks, I mean, pickup trucks with shotguns and high powered rifles. And if a black just showed a knife, it was automatically jumped on. I mean, it was just totally two standards of justice. I mean, that's the part that really got me. You know, that -- because it shouldn't have been. I mean, we didn't, first of all, we didn't have to abandon the 120,000 people that we literally abandoned in the city. I mean, we literally abandoned the poor and told them, “Hey, you fend for yourself.” Then when they fend for themselves, then they was arrested.

This kind of racial animosity could happen anywhere, whether it is Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta, or New York, among other places in this nation. It only takes a disaster for the truth about race relations in the US to come forward. The stories I'm reading do not paint a good picture at all of race in this nation. Many people (particularly whites) believed that racism was no longer a factor in the social life of the nation. Even if you do not believe that the pitiful governmental response to this disaster is due to the fact that most of the victims were black and poor, stories like this show that there is still plenty of racism in this nation, and that we have a LOONG way to go before we heal the racial wounds of the past and present. Watching and reading the mainstream media (especially those right-wing talk shows), one could easily be led to believe that the looters were mainly black. This person who lives in the French Quarter, and is an evacuee holdout, says otherwise:

The store I'm standing in front of is Circle K, it's a local mini market like Stop N' Go.... When I saw people looting this store, and I saw people repeatedly looting it for five days straight, this store was open, maybe not for business, but open for shopping. And people would come in and take out whatever they were going to take out, but what I noticed here is that the vast majority of people looting this store were white and middle class. Okay?

And I saw this one woman take goods out of here, and she definitely lives in a house, a property owner, obviously fairly well to do, about 70, had very much the patrician air about her. And she had been hostile to street entertainers prior to the hurricane. Now this street has a [inaudible] street entertainer, and so she had always been kind of a law and order person, so to speak. But now, I noticed that she was walking outside the store with looted goods, and I walked up to her and just had a little fun, and I said, “Isn't it illegal to take those products?” And she said, “Well, I earned them, and I'm going to keep them.” This was a woman who used to complain about the homeless, the tarot card readers, the street musicians, the young blacks running around. Now, she went back to her $500,000 home with her looted goods. Okay?

On another occasion, a fellow we know, an associate, he’s a retired surgeon, he looks just like Alfred Hitchcock, and we saw him coming out of the store. He turned and looked at us. He said, “I never dreamed I would be a looter, but now I'm a looter.” So just imagine Alfred Hitchcock looting your local Stop N' Go or Mini Mart. That’s what you had. That’s pretty much reflected. We have people from the neighborhood, I guess, looked like people from the neighborhood, going in there and looting.

Now, I know, as far as race there was no – from what I observed, in terms of looting, walking down Rampart Street and other areas, you saw whites and blacks looting alongside one another. And I have yet to hear of any incident where there was any racial problems or antagonism. Everybody was busy doing New Orleans shopping. And so, I think what we see here is what could happen in Santa Monica, California, is what could happen on Long Island, New York. It’s what could happen in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s what could happen along the Gold Coast of Michigan Avenue, if they, people there, felt they were going to run out of food and water.

Clearly, from this interview, whites were doing plenty of looting. Again, it is all about survival. And why not? Most of the food would rot anyways otherwise. Right wingers are even more guilty than people like Jesse Jackson and Kanye West of race-baiting the issue. There are even more ominous stories of what is happening in the disaster striken regions:

And the Blackwater mercenaries became very well known internationally a few years back when four of their men were killed in Fallujah, Iraq. Two of them had their bodied burned and then hung from a bridge. And that resulted in the massive retaliatory onslaught against Fallujah that resulted in tens of thousands of people having to flee the city and scores of people being killed, and now Fallujah has become an international symbol of resistance, and that goes back to those killings of the four Blackwater workers.

This sounds very much like the treatment of Native Americans in the US. When a Native American killed an English colonist, the English colonists often went on a murderous rampage against entire Native American communities. Some people, evidently, have not learned from the shameful history of genocide against Native Americans on this continent. But what are THESE people doing on American soil?

Well, as I was walking with Daniela Crespo through the streets of the French Quarter, we were talking to two New York City police officers when an unmarked vehicle pulled up, and there were three heavily armed men inside dressed in khaki outfits, and they asked the New York police officers, “Do you know where the Blackwaters guys are?” And my ears immediately perked up, because, of course, having covered Iraq for a long time, I know well who the Blackwater mercenaries are. And the New York police officer said, “Well, they're down the street that way. There are lots of them around here.” And then I said to the New York police officer, “Blackwater? You mean, like the guys in Iraq?” And he said, “Yeah. They're all over the place.”

And so, we tracked them down, found them down the street, and just approached the Blackwater mercenaries and began talking to them. Two of the guys that we talked to had served on the personal security details of L. Paul Bremer, the American pro-counsel in Iraq originally, the head of the occupation, as well as the U.S. ambassador -- former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte. One of the guys had just gotten back from Iraq two weeks ago. These are some of the most highly trained killers, professional killers in the world. And they had served in Iraq in a number of cities and in a number of capacities.

...And another key point is that these Blackwater guys said that they were given the authority to use lethal force, as well as the power to make arrests. And when we asked them about this use of them in the United States, they said that they believe that we're going to see a lot more of this and that this is a trend. So, I think that this is a very, very disturbing development that we are seeing here on the streets of New Orleans.

Truely disturbing. We have some of the most highly trained professional killers walking around on American soil, patrolling the streets. Kanye West doesn't sound so loony anymore doesn't he? And this is supposed to be a trend!? Maybe you have heard of death squads on South America. This is really like a death squad in our own back yard. Me thinks that we must rediscover the "spirit of 1776."

For a good article on Blackwater, click here.

2005-09-05T18:38:00.000-05:00

SNES Is The Best System, Ever

I've been an avid gamer my entire life. It started with the Atari 2600 for me when I was four years old, in 1987. The Atari was very fun then; my parents had to pry me away from it. Later on, my parents bought the Atari 7800. Then I played the NES over my neighbor's house when I as six. Playing Super Mario Brothers was like the second coming. I have been a big fan of Nintendo ever since. Back then, I wasn't even aware that the NES had better graphics. However, that game had a certain kind of "magic". Most NES games that I had were magical. There was nothing like playing Contra with someone else. Of course, for that game, we needed to use the Konami Code (if you've forgotten it, it is Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Start) to give us 30 lives, and we STILL had a hard time beating that game. And who can forget the Zelda games? Perhaps, the best game on that system as Super Mario Brothers 3.

In 1991, my parents bought me the SNES. As the title of this blog post says, the SNES is the best system ever created. Apparently, many people agree with me. This article basically hits the nail on the head:

It is my opinion that console gaming peaked with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Though it has just 16-bit graphics and a CPU which can’t even power one of today's cell phones, this is arguably the best console gaming system of all time. After being introduced to the US market in September of 1991 the SNES went on to sell over 48.4 million units by 1999 (though the Nintendo 64 was introduced in 1997). The SNES replaced the aging Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which had been available in the US since 1986...

...The...major strength of the SNES, the one that gives it the lasting power that [it] has, [is]the games. No system before or since has had a set of games on par with the titles (http://www.nintendo.com/doc/snes_games.pdf) offered on this console. Part of being the successor of the NES meant that consumers would be expecting new versions of their favorite titles. They were not disappointed with games like Super Contra, Final Fantasy 3, Mega Man X, or the new Zelda, A Link to the Past. These games had updated graphics and a few new moves, but did not completely forsake the game play or the spirit of the originals to which people had become attached. The SNES was also home to a crop of new games, many of which would not have been possible on earlier systems. These include such legendary titles as Street Fighter 2 and Super Mario Kart.

Amen to that! Super Mario World is a classic. Contra III certainly did not disappoint. The Contra series has always been very good, that is, until the post-16-bit era came with the Playstation. According to reviews of modern (read: post-16-bit) era Contra games, they basically sucked. And what about fighting games? I would say that I enjoy playing the 2D Street Fighter games more than any of the 3D ones. The only 3D fighting game to capture my interest is Mortal Kombat: Deception.

And then the RPGS:

The area of games in which the SNES really took stride was in the role playing game (RPG). The SNES was not the first system to have these games, even NES had a few good ones, but it was on the Super Nintendo that the RPG as we know it today came to be. NES' RPGs, like Dragon Warrior, were long and tedious and offered a very linear story line. Advances were made, such as in the real-time RPG Star Tropics, but only so much could be done with the NES console. The Super Nintendo console, with its 128 Kbytes of RAM and 3.58 MHz CPU, allowed for such memorable games as Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Earth Bound, and Chrono Trigger. These games, some real-time and some turn-based, set the foundation for the modern RPG and though their have been surpassed in a technological sense, it they remain to be some of the finest role playing games of all time.

The SNES RPGs are still some of the best around. IMO, Chrono Trigger beats Chrono Cross, and SNES Final Fantasy games beat the PSX ones. Imagine if the PSX ones have SNES style graphics. Now imagine the SNES ones having FF7 style graphics. The SNES games have better storylines. FF5 has the best battle system of any Final Fantasy game. PSX an PS2 have become the dominant RPG machines in this age, but as for having the best, the SNES still reigns supreme.

Genesis was also a very good system. Not as good as the SNES, but the gaming was solid. During the 16-bit era, I hated Sega with a passion. It was the kind of hatred most had for an opposing sports team. This battle did add to the era, though. Overall, the 16-bit era was the true golden era of gaming, one filled with many memorable and magical titles.

What happened to games? I'm not one to place the blame totally on the move to 3D. 3D still has lots of potential. For the first generation of 3D systems (Saturn, PSX, N64), 3D was still very new, and no one really knew how to utilize it in gameplay. Nintendo ended up leading the way, creating Super Mario 64 and Zelda 64, which set the standard for 3D systems. These games were VERY good. Nintendo, however, made a fatal mistake, which was to stick with cartridges, which were very expensive to produce, and held much less space than CD-ROMs. It was this decision that made the PSX more popular, as developers flocked to that system.

The emergence of the 3D era led to the Hollywoodization of the gaming industry. Now, every game had to have Full Motion Video. It can be said that Square led the way. As game developers began to focus on graphics, they focused less on gameplay. The magic of the 16-bit period had vanished from most games. With FF7, Square went too far at times. The summon spells were unnecessarily long. It's nice to watch the eye candy about a couple of times, but after that, you just want it to hurry up. For the Knights of the Round spell, you could microwave yourself a cup of ramen noodles and return to the game before the spell was even finished.

This website explains the problem. There is also a Power Point Presentation available here. Look at how the cost of producing games has skyrocketed. Game development teams used to be rather small. But now, these graphically intense games require teams of hundreds of people to produce. Games now cost millions of dollars to produce nowadays. The next generation gaming systems such as the PS3 and XBOX 360 are taking this to the next level. Many companies are worried that only giant companies will have the resources to utilize the full power of these machines. The Sony PS3 will use Blu-Ray technology, which alone will add another $100 to the cost of the system. Sony seems to be taking it to the extreme with this. Recently, Xenosaga II was released for te PS2. While the graphics are very good, the reviews were mediocre, as people felt that they were watching a movie instead of playing a game. The new technology will prod developers to focus even more on graphics, and less on gameplay.

Money seems to not only corrupt politics, it corrupts culture too. Most of todays songs, movies, and television shows suck anyway. No wonder people are buying less music, watching less tv, and going to the movies less often.

Looking for real gameplay, people are increasingly turning to retro gaming. More people are also starting indie gaming companies to focus more on gameplay. In fact, the games I am developing will have graphical styles similar to the 16-bit era. I don't have the resources to do 3D. Besides, it would be nice to pay homage to this golden era.

2005-09-04T13:03:00.000-05:00

The Saddest Story

This Katrina disaster has deeply saddened me. That people went for about a week without any kind of aid...and that people are still dying by the dozens or hundreds by the day. Most people on the local and cable news networks, as well as on internet news sites, discussion forums, and the blogosphere have expressed their rage at a government that has been extremely slow and negligent in this hour of Crisis. One story, however, is just beyond any words, from an interview of the president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, Aaron Broussard.

I want to give you one last story and I’ll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.” Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For god’s sakes, just shut up and send us somebody.

Again, beyond words...

2005-08-21T13:20:00.000-05:00

Should the US annex Mexico?

Over the past 25 or so years, there has been an anti-immigration movement aimed primarily at Mexicans who cross the Rio Grande into the US. Along with it has been rising anti-hispanic fervor. Being the leftist that I am, this rise of prejudice is alarming. As my father said, it would make more sense to direct anger at the companies hiring these illegals than to direct anger at immigrants. If I was a poor Mexican with young mouths to feed, I would emigrate to the US as I would want my children to have adequate meals, and more opportunities.

People fear that Mexicans are going to destroy national culture. However, they are adopting American culture, not destroying it. Besides, the assimilation of Mexican cultural concepts and artifacts to US culture only makes our culture richer. The real issue is jobs. Because Mexicans tend to accept lower pay and less union protection (which is a great deal to them, considering the conditions in which they have lived in Mexico), they are gaining more employment. Mexicans and US-born Americans are fighting for a small slice of pie like young siblings.

Is there a solution to this? According to this article, 40% of Mexicans want to move to the US. Perhaps, the best solution would be to annex Mexico. Not by war, however. By annexing Mexico to the US, we would gain more and more workers. Their living standards would rise, which would discourage emigration to the US. That would mean more tax revenue for the US government.

2005-08-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

A Nation Run By Psychopaths

Ever come across someone who is incapable of remorse or empathy? Ever come across someone who is normally charming and nice in public, but is the largest bully or asshole in private? Ever meet someone who seemingly has no conscience? Everyone knows at least one person of this type. This person could be a family member, a (ex) friend, a co-worker, your boss, your teacher, or your politician.

What is a psychopath or a sociopath? This website has a short description:

Callous, deceitful, reckless, guiltless, often intimidating and sometimes violent is the standard description of psychopaths, whose maladaptive patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving impair their daily functioning and disrupt the lives of those around them. Sociopathy in males has more serious implications than in females, and this disorder is found three times more often in men than in women.

The psychopath understands the wishes and concerns of others; he simply does not care. He believes that he has the right to do what he wants and to take what he can. He manipulates others by deception and/or intimidation, has an inflated opinion of himself and seeks out, then uses, the weaknesses he finds in others. There is no fair mindedness, no self doubt, no compassion or true affection.

Another nice page can be found here.

This disorder does not discriminate. It can be found in all ethnicities, classes, occupations, religions, nationalities, etc. When most people think of psychopaths, they think of gang members or serial killers. As much as a quarter of the prison population consists of psychopaths. But they are not only concentrated in the prison population, but also in social leadership positions, especially in corporate leadership. Fast Company has recently posted an article about it:

Hare began...talking about Mafia hit men and sex offenders, whose photos were projected on a large screen behind him. But then those images were replaced by pictures of top executives from WorldCom, which had just declared bankruptcy, and Enron, which imploded only months earlier. The securities frauds would eventually lead to long prison sentences for WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.

For people who have seen the documentary The Corporation, this comes as no surprise. That documentary argues that corporations are themselves psychopathic. The behavior of corporations, the documentary states, fits very well the description that psychologists use to dee a person a psychopath. But as the film states, not everyone who is part of the corporate world is a psychopath. But the structure of corporations encourages and rewards psychopathic behavior on part of both the company and individual. Having a non-psychopath doesn't often help matters, as the moment such a leader decides to use his/her conscience, he/she is overthrown from company leadership.

Psychopaths are also pervasive in the nation's political and moral leadership. The leaders in these fields usually have a similar mindset to business leaders. This isn't surpring, given the pervasive influence corporations have on government and moral institutions. It is well known that special interests dominate these fields, through which corporations install puppet leaders.

Leaders without a conscience use wedge issues to divide the populace. Instead of blaming social ills on the policies of the government or corporations, they channel this anger elsewhere..normally to a segment of the population that people are least likely to defend. Hitler was a master of this tactic. Ethnic nationalists use this tactic as well. During the 1920s, the KKK and Marcus Garvey's UNIA used cultural wedge issues to direct attention away from those running the nation. They committed violence against union activists, and against anyone opposed to the oppressive tactics of corporations. Today, now that attacking racial minorities is no longer acceptable, cultural wedge leaders (such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter) attack homosexuals and Muslims. These people have a large following, called compensated psychopaths:

Individuals approaching the psychopathic extreme are not totally wanting in morality, but they do sense a weakness, an awareness that something is missing, which frightens them. They also suspect that their love is not all it could or should be. In order to adapt they begin to compensate for these deficiencies by becoming morally rigid.

Since compensated psychopaths cannot depend upon eros, their egos work out a moral system which is fool-proof in any and every situation. The result, as paradoxical as it may seem, is usually a well-developed morality with an emphasis upon the ego's role but woefully lacking in love.

Compensated psychopaths have played significant parts in society and in history. The more psychopathic compensated psychopaths are - in other words the more they have to compensate - the more sinister they are. All the Nazi functionaries who administered the concentration camps and supervised the destruction of thousands and thousands of human beings; all of Stalin's subordinates who, during the time of the Soviet purges, directed the arrests and deaths of innumerable individuals; all of Mao's minions who so efficiently effected the disappearance of large portions of the Chinese population -certainly all of these people were compensated psychopaths.

I am reminded of Adolf Eichmann (the German Nazi official who as head of the Gestapo's Jewish section was chiefly responsible as the organizer of the "Final Solution"), a man who was relatively conscientious and dependable. Not a devilish moster, he was rather a classic example of a compensated psychopath whose conscientiousness was greater than that of most individuals. He loyally and admirably carried out the "duty," of exterminating his fellow humans, but his very dedication to "duty," expressing his own alienation in this world, vented so heinously his hate towards all human beings who were not like him. The commandant of a concentration camp wrote in his diary at the close of the war: "It is very sad that I can no longer fill my daily quotas in the gas chambers. I have neither enough staff nor enough supplies. Every night I go to bed with a nagging conscience, because I have been unable to do my duty." We can see how conscientious this man was. A classic, compensated psychopath, he had a strong, rigid, "moral" system but not the slightest sense of eros. The morality which sought to replace the missing eros turned into a farce becoming a caricature.

Compensated psychopaths are probably the most reliable supporters of a dictatorial regime, the emphasis being upon "compensated." A dictator would not function surrounded only with "pure" psychopaths -his regime would achieve nothing, eventually collapsing in utter chaos. A dictator's subordinates have to be conscientious and obedient -in a word, compensated psychopaths.

As many people have figured out, psychopaths are very much against democracy, liberty, equality, and freedom because it takes power and influence from the psychopathic leader and redistributes it among the masses.

Psychopaths can be found everywhere: in our schools, in our workplaces, in church, in the media, in criminal organizations, in high ranking and high prestige occupations, etc. Simply removing the GWBs from political leadership, removing Kenneth Lays from corporate leadership, or removing the Pat Robertsons from moral leadership will not solve the problem. The problem is far too pervasive. What we need are social structures and rules that discourage these types of people, that keep them from power.

2005-08-17T14:45:00.000-05:00

Pleistocene Plains?

Many scientists want to reintroduce many large animals in the Great Plains region of the United States. Animals such as lions, cheetahs, elephants, and camels are thought to reside only in the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. However, these animals used to be very abundant in North America and Europe, that is, until humans hunted them to extinction:

Cheetahs, woolly mammoths and relatives of the camel were just a few of the large mammals that roamed America during the Pleistocene era, which ended 10,000 years ago as the last Ice Age retreated. Studies have shown that their demise was due largely to hunting by humans, not from climate change, as one theory held.

Of course, introducing lions to the US is sure to cause a lot of controversy. But if they are kept within certain park boundaries, then they might be as harmless as the Detroit Lions are in football.

It is hoped that by introducing these animals to the US, the population of weeds would decrease, that the population of rats and other rodents would decrease, and that the economy of the region would improve.

What would happen to the elephants if they were reintroduced to America? Would the bitter winters cause them to evolve new fur? This would be a test of the theory of evolution.

2005-05-30T13:38:00.000-05:00

Secular Revolution in Iran?

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration named three nations (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) as part of the Axis of Evil. In 2003, the secular Iraqi despot Saddam had been overthrown. North Korea, another secular dictatorship, claims to be developing nuclear weapons. Iran, however, is a theocratic dictatorship (yes, I know that's redundant) which was formed during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. However, about 25 years later, the citizens of Iran are increasingly wanting a secular democracy. In recent weeks, as news of the US military desecrating the Koran was published in newsweek, unrest in the Muslim world developed. However, many Iranians started the same practice.

March 15, 2005. Tehran. Somewhere, a Qur'an is burning. It is Tchahr Shanbe Souri, the traditional Persian fire festival, and in major cities throughout the country Iranians are turning the celebration-denounced as pagan by the ruling clerics-into a protest. There are reports of revelers chanting "Down with the Islamic Republic" and casting Islamist literature and even scripture into bonfires. Government militia respond brutally, and violent clashes with demonstrators continue into the night.

After 98% of Iranians supported the theocratic government around 1980, why the change? Part of the reason is generational (and should interest those who are interested in Generations and Turnings Theory).

Twenty-six years ago, 98 percent of Iranians voted in favor of Ayatollah Khomeini's referendum calling for an Islamic republic. Today, half the population is between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. They were not even born at the time of the revolution.

Of course, there are economic and political considerations too.

An August 2002 telephone public-opinion poll found that only 19 percent of Iranians supported a politically active clergy, while 68 percent said their family's financial situation had gotten worse since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.2 An overwhelming majority favor a new referendum, which asks simply: theocracy or democracy?

In 1979, the people of Iran supported a revolution against the US puppet regime of the Shah. Since the 1950s, the US has installed a puppet dictatorship because of its strategic location near the oil fields of the Middle East. Thinking that secularism was the cause of national problems, the people turned towards an Islamic dictatorship. 20 years later, most people realize that their lives had not improved, but only gotten worse under the dictatorship.

"The theocratic regime is nonreformable," says Aryo B. Pirouznia, coordinator of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran or SMCCDI, a Texas-based network of activists inside and outside Iran. According to Pirouznia, SMCCDI represents the orientation of the current generation of activists: pro-Western, media-savvy, anti-"reformist," and explicitly secularist.

Because of the abuses of the religion, Iranians are learning the value of the separation of mosque and state.

Today's activists are secularist in two senses. First, they are convinced that "religion is to go back to the mosques and the hearts of those who want it," says Pirouznia. "Even the Ayatollahs are saying that a majority of Iranians is no longer attending regular services. A lot of young Iranians are changing their Islamic names, like Mohammad, to Persian names. That can give you a very clear indication that they are turning their backs to Islam, rejecting a privilege of having the name of the prophet." The goal is absolute separation of mosque and state: "Islamic democracy is in itself a pure contradiction. What's going to happen to Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and atheists?"

Let this be a lesson to us Americans. During America's founding, the founding fathers and the intellectual class of the time saw the necessity of a secular government, one in which church and state were to remain separate. Fleeing religious persecution in England, the peoples emigrating to America hoped for religious freedom. Today, the party in power wants to merge state with the church. But as the period since the Iranian Revolution shows, merging church and state is a one-way ticket to totalitarianism and lowering living standards.

2005-01-20T13:04:00.000-06:00

Open Source Biology

Wired has a new article that is about the application of the open source model for software development to biology. It is hoped that, as a previous wired article stated, that open source science will do for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production.

There are two companies on the forefront of this revolution:

BIOS is an organization which aims to allow free access to information in the biological sciences, in order to speed up the innovation in biotech, and to also allow the benefits of the advances to spread around the world easily, and inexpensively.

1. Porting the concepts, philosophies, normative behaviours, legal mechanisms and public enthusiasm for Open Source into the vastly more challenging area of patents, and biological research and development.
2. Making new opportunities to engage the worldwide biological R&D community, empowering decentralized innovations and innovators.
3. Cooperatively prioritizing, designing, generating and sharing transformative biological technologies that can improve the ability for locally committed people to solve their own problems, and address low-margin markets or market failures.
4. Creating practical business models that can encourage the development of robust, economically viable small-to-medium enterprise formation to address neglected market opportunities.
5. Creating the social and policy initiatives to make these things happen. This must include constructive engagement in patent law reform, international genetic resource policy, and much more.
6. Generating new software innovations for cooperative technology development - e.g. BioForge - making Sourceforge-like toolkits and enabling environments in which scientists and interested problem-solvers around the world can cooperate to create real and practical innovations that can be preserved for public use, empowering both public and private sector to deliver attractive solutions.
7. Pioneering new, cost-free public access databasing, parsing and informatics-rich technologies to render the massive, complex and opaque world of patents and IP into a transparent and stimulating structure for the public good, as originally intended by framers of patent systems.

The Science Commons is a new project of the Creative Commons project. The purpose of this project is to allow the easy sharing and usage of scientific knowledge, within current copyright law, and inexpensively.

The mission of Science Commons is to encourage scientific innovation by making it easier for scientists, universities, and industries to use literature, data, and other scientific intellectual property and to share their knowledge with others. Science Commons works within current copyright and patent law to promote legal and technical mechanisms that remove barriers to sharing.

For those who are familiar with the development of Linux, and those who worry that the closed-model that dominates in the military and in corporations is hurting technological development and scientific advancement, this is a breath of fresh air. Where the open source model has made it possible to bring Linux to places where Windows would normally be too expensive for most people, or unavailable, it is hoped that the open source model, applied to science, will allow the benefits of science and technology to reach a much broader populace, where there is no market, or where the cost is out of reach for most people.

Jefferson sees open-source biology as part of science's evolution, the next logical step for science after the open access movement, in which organizations like the Public Library of Science made scientific journals freely available to anyone on the internet. Previously, thousands of dollars were charged annually for subscriptions by journals like Nature and Science. Now people will be able to perform the same experiments found in these free online journals and become part of the peer review and research process themselves.

This will bring science into the hands of everyday people. More and more people will be working on technological development, and on the deployment of these technologies. As this happens, the speed of technical innovation will see a large increase. The fruits of this innovation will become more widespread, much more quickly. In a world that demands solutions to today's dire problems, such as the AIDS crisis, the energy crisis, the water crisis, the environmental crisis, etc., this will be a very important tool for the survival of civilization, and for its advancement.

2005-01-17T13:50:00.000-06:00

John Kerry, Put Up Or Shut Up

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Nearly every politician, from the far left, to even the far right, is using this holiday as an opportunity at self aggrandizement. Of course, that includes John Kerry.

According to this article, he invoked MLK while he blasted the voter iregularities of the 2004 election.

It's too little, too late, Kerry. Where were you when people were marching in Ohio against the election results? When people were filing lawsuits, why didn't you support them? And why did you concede the election so quickly on November 3^rd, 2004, when there were widespread reports of voting irregularities? And even as the reports kept coming in, you refused to join the fight, saying that there was not enough evidence to overturn the election.

But now, on January the 17^th of this year, you decide to invoke MLK and use it to blast voting irregularities, three days before the inauguration. If you had done this two months ago, we might've gotten somewhere. Most of us were disappointed when Gore conceded. However, he did fight hard for about a month, something you didn't even do. You reportedly hired 10,000 lawyers, but immediately conceded. If you are intent on invoking the legacy of MLK, you should've been LEADING the protests. You should've been using your base who fought hard to put you into office to the maximum effect. You've should've put money towards the lawsuits. But you didn't do any of this. So please, just save it.

2005-01-16T13:40:00.000-06:00

Martin Luther King Day And Social Justice

If there is something that is as American as apple pie, it is the fight for social justice. From during the colonial days, up until this day, Americans have struggled for social justice. In the late 1600s, with Bacon's Rebellion, and other fights against totalitarianism during the same period, the need for social justice was awakened in America. From then on, the struggle will ebb at times, but it always returns when people sense that it is needed the most. The American Revolution was such a fight for justice. The abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction were periods when people sought social justice. From there, with the labor struggles of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century, to women's suffrage, to various African American movements for social justice, Americans kept the flame alive. During the New Deal, a frenzy of economic and social justice movements inspired and changed a nation. The same thing happened with the Civil Rights Movements, with the Feminist Movements, and various other movements of the second half of the 20th century. While the movements have been going through a lull over the past 2 decades, the thirst for social justice is rising again. Various movements are starting up, keeping the flame alive.

Over the past 50 or so years, there has been no greater symbol of social justice than MLK. It is him, and the Civil Rights Movement that redefined the struggle for social justice for contemporary times. After the movement, various leaders have tried to rekindle the flames, but have failed. A sense of despair has settled over the mood of Americans. With many dreams still unrealized, and with the social divisiveness of the 1960s and 1970s, MLK Day evokes a sense of bitterness on both sides. As Andrews says:

Martin Luther King Jr. day is a melancholy holiday for many black and poor people because King's movement for social justice has been abandoned by the powers that be—both conservative and liberal.

Some of our problems are, to be sure, made worse by our own self-destructive ways. We are sicker than other Americans because we have lousy eating habits and treat our bodies quite badly. We are less safe than we might be because we hurt and kill each other out of anger or spite. Too many of our well-off kids do not achieve in schools because they do not take the academic enterprise seriously. In these and other ways, we disgrace the memory of King and ourselves by not seizing the opportunities made possible by his work and ultimate sacrifice.

Today is a time in which not only liberals claim to follow the legacy of MLK, but even conservatives now claim to follow his legacy. While most blacks do not believe that conservatives follow his legacy, they don't quite think that liberals of today have inherited his legacy, or even understand it.

The conservatives who rule the country despise most blacks, which is not surprising given their forebears and their current public. But the liberals have also abandoned King by concluding that the fight for justice can only be waged when they run the government.

So, what is the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement? The legacy is very complex, but there is a very important piece that people today have lost sight of.

The liberals forget King's most basic lesson: Justice is alive when we treat each other with great love, respect and care. Justice is a collective achievement of people committed to each other's well-being. Without that commitment, justice is nothing more than an election-day slogan or a pleasant, maybe desperate daydream.

Government is a limited tool for realizing real freedom and therefore justice. Too many liberals believe that income redistribution is the substance of justice and equality, not realizing that justice begins with solidarity—real intimacy and trust in daily life—so that all persons see themselves as harmed when any of their countrymen are threatened by fear, deprivation or violence.

The fight for justice is, in the end, a struggle to tear down the barriers that split us from each other, and from our better selves. Governmental power is always less important than the community of men and women who commit themselves to each other's well-being, and fight for each other's freedom.

These are some of the basic lessons of prior social justice movements that have been forgotten. Let's hope that we remember these values, and that we use them to keep the struggle alive. The struggle did not begin with the Civil Rights Movement, and did not end with MLK's assassination. It is an ongoing process. The struggle began during the colonial days, and this old struggle is still going on. Only when we take up the fire of the true struggle will we truly understand the essense of what it means to be an American.

2005-01-13T16:28:00.000-06:00

The Anti-Americans

Well, it's been more than 2 months since I last updated my blog. Well, I think that it is about time to start up again.

Are you sick and tired of hearing right-wing pundits accuse those who describe themselves as liberals, leftists, and progressives of being Anti-American? CommonDreams.Org has an essay that should be sent to every right-winger in this nation. Here are some exerpts:

The right-wing blowhards make no distinctions between Democrats, liberals, and extreme left-wingers who do indeed sometimes espouse values that are out of touch with most people. Thus, Democrats or liberals are called anti-American, and are painted as against common-sense values that ordinarily would unite us all.

But here is the rub: The opposite is what is actually true: The real anti-Americans are the rabid right-wingers who are polluting our airwaves with endless lies and paranoia that are poisoning the nation and its future.

The real anti-Americans are those who, if you will just take a moment to listen to the pundits and observe the policies of this administration, are against the greatest principles upon which this country was founded:

They are against personal liberty, having endorsed government suspension of habeus corpus and having backed the government's power to monitor what books you check out of the library.

They are for big government, wanting a government so invasive that it can monitor your bedroom activities or stop a grandmother from smoking pot to alleviate her cancer pain.

They are against civil liberties, having supported the government's power to spy on our bookstore, credit card and hotel receipts.

They have fought for a weaker military, having compromised the country's military might and harmed our readiness to wage necessary wars, all the while fighting against better benefits for veterans and those in harm's way.

They favor a weaker America, supporting fiscal policies that are emasculating the nation through ruinous deficits and reckless fiscal acts that threaten the dollar and our standard of living, thus compromising our position as the world's greatest power.

They support a secretive government, founded on cronyism and ideological loyalties rather than upon democracy and openness.

They are undermining the United States' leadership as a moral beacon for the world, having ignored many of our allies and sponsored an arrogant foreign policy that encourages terrorism.

They are against basic morals, such as help for the poor, education for all, social security, and universal health care for children, the poor and the unemployed.

They are on the side of the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of the underdog, having redirected tax and regulatory policies that favor the richest among us.

They are against the young and unborn, having enacted policies that increase the number of abortions and the infant mortality rate.

They are against states' rights, having backed judges who favor greater federal power in energy, health care, and electoral policies.

They are for environmental policies that are not conservationist - i.e., are not conservative - but instead reward polluters and promote consumption of resources.

They are anti-capitalist, favoring not a free marketplace but a big government that determines winners and losers through payouts to the biggest contributors to their coffers - i.e., the wealthiest drug, energy, business and military contractors.

They are hypocrites, immoral in their personal conduct - as are we all - but they loudly and happily condemn those on the other side as hypocrites and examples of moral failings.

They are against the greatest of American values - common sense - by offering arguments even the most casual listening reveals are blatantly illogical and prone to fallacy.

They look upon the ordinary people, even those who support them, with contempt, as they speak as demagogues yet condemn those who speak out against them as demagogues.

2004-11-02T10:02:00.000-06:00

Galadriel

Today's election is arguably one of the most important elections in the history of this nation. If the Chinese proverb May you live in interesting times applies to any era, that era is now. These are the best of times, and the worst of times. Angeli, a very gifted writer, writes one of the best commentary I have seen in a while. Please read it and pass along.

This is the last LAC I will write before the 2004
elections, and I must say it I am not simply using the
Tolkien theme because I saw Betty Ballantine speak at
World Fantasy Convention this weekend. Ballantine, for
those of you unfamiliar with her, is one of the people
who brought The Lord of the Rings to the American
paperback. But, since she was actually acquainted with
the professor while he was still alive, it is worth
taking her word for it that he believed that the
message of LotR, if it has one, is that power is
seductive, and power is ultimately corrupting.

Which obviously brings us back to what is about to
happen tomorrow morning.

The thing is, I'm not writing these LACs anymore to
convince anybody of anything. Most of you, if not all
of you, have made up your minds. That's swell. But for
myself, I've been haunted by Galadriel lately. In the
scene with the mirror, when Frodo offers her the One
Ring, she is sorely tempted. Not because Galadriel is
evil, oh no, not at all. In fact, the most compelling
thing about the One Ring is the good that she knows
she could do with it.

And I'm sure the parallel I'm drawing with preemptive
war here is painfully obvious, so I won't drag that
out.

But ... and here's the thing ... there is a cost for
refusing the Ring. There is a cost for refusing to
wield that kind of power. And it is terrible, and it
has many layers.

First, Galadriel cannot act easily against Sauron. She
can't face his force with the same kind of force. She
has to do things much more subtly, and risk terrible
failure to do it. As a result, war is not averted.
Many die in the War of the Ring, and many things that
were beautiful pass away.

But secondly, and more painfully, Galadriel pays the
personal price. "I will diminish, and go into the West
..." she says.

"...and remain Galadriel..."

For after all, isn't that what this election is about?
Aren't we trying to ask ourselves, who are we, as a
nation? What rights do we have? What kind of power do
we want to wield? How do we chose between purity and
power? And is choosing against power, simply another
kind of evil, the kind that lets evil flourish?

And the answer is ... yes, well, maybe it is. The
truth is, if Kerry is elected, nothing that has
happened in the last 4 years will un-happen. None of
our problems will vanish, indeed there will be new
ones. And his notion of multilateral ism, of
internationalism, of using diplomacy and law
enforcement and all that against terrorists ... well
that's a lot like saying, oh, let's put the fate of
the world into the hands of a couple of well-meaning
hobbits. I can't blame people for throwing up their
hands at the idea.

And by refusing to take the easy path, we ... yes ...
we may well diminish. We may well fade into the West,
and cease to be the dominant power on Earth. We may
see other countries rise and challenge us ... no,
sooner or later we *will* see that...

But wouldn't we rather remain ourselves, remain
Galadriel? Remain *america* (little a)? Remain a
people who may honor our ideals more in the breach,
but who eventually pull up our socks and try to fix
our own mistakes. Wouldn't we still like to be the
people that Chinese students look to the way the
Tienanmen Square kids read Thomas Jefferson?

Because when that light goes out, it goes out for
good. When we become the wielders of our own One Ring,
it discredits not only ourselves, but every american
soul that has ever tried, tried, to make things just a
smidgen more fair. We are standing for Jefferson
tomorrow, and Lincoln, and Roosevelt. We are standing
for the men who were shot at Iwo Jima and the Bulge.
We are standing for Harriet Tubman and George
Washington and ... even George Washington Carver, with
his magnificent peanuts. We are Neil Armstrong,
tomorrow. We are Sojourner Truth.

Maybe not in our own eyes, but in the eyes of every
person who comes after us, who wants to think up a
notion of how a society could be more fair, more
enterprising, or more responsible to its citizens.

No, we are not perfect. No, we never were. But we have
tried, by God, and every day ordinary people still
try.

These are perilous times. The Dark Times are all
around us. But if we must, let's take the more
perilous, and more honest road. And if we must, let's
diminish, and fade into the West...

Let's remain Galadriel ...

Your Lawrence Avenue Correspondent
Angeli

2004-10-20T11:20:00.000-05:00

September 1, 1939
by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

2004-10-16T19:42:00.000-05:00

I'm Not In Iraq Morons

The Freeway Blogger strikes again!!

2004-10-16T13:06:00.000-05:00

What is a Sellout in 2004?

I think that this article needs to be sent to all black people living in America today. Charges of being a "sell out" are thrown around in the black community, and have been since the 1960s. But before we get into it, we need a definition of what a "sell out" is:

What is the definition of “selling-out?” Invariably, it must have changed over the years, as the world around us has changed. I guess you could say in a general sense that “selling-out” is sacrificing the goals of the many for the selfish needs of the one.

Or, more to the point:

...the implied question is, “What is being Black?”

With this definition, what kind of behavior is commonly associated with selling out in the black community?

It could mean attending a school that was historically non-Black.

That is one. But there are many others. "Talking white", or in other words, speaking proper english has been commonly defined as selling out. Actually doing your school work and taking education seriously are all commonly defined as selling out. Nevermind that Malcolm X himself said that getting education is "the blackest thing you can do." Getting an education often means that someone wants to be white, wants to move into the suburbs, wants to escape his/her black brothers and sisters. To many people, it also means kissing the ass of the oppressor. It could mean wearing "white clothes." It could mean listening to "white music." By white music, this could mean rock or country, or basically, anything that doesn't fit into the categories of soul, R&B, rap, or hip hop. It could mean dating outside of your race. Many of our most cherished black leaders, including those of the Black Panthers might've disagreed. The author goes on to elaborate in relationships outside your race:

Tiger Woods recently married…a White woman. To some, that’s of little surprise. Yet to most, he’s still a symbol of racial equality in a sport that refused Blacks for decades. The question is…does he carry the torch for African-Americans or has he “sold-out” because he neither actively claims his heritage nor has an African-American wife? Many generations have equated marrying outside the race as an unequivocal sign of “selling-out.”

Using that yardstick, singer James Brown, NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown and composer Quincy Jones for example are all “sell-outs;” if you only look at the women that have traversed their respective lives. Would that really be a fair conclusion given their contributions to Black America? Those men have collectively contributed more to the African-American conscience than any of us standing in ill-informed judgment of them.

Richard Pryor had done more for Black comedy that any before him and arguably more than anyone since…but would any of us dare call him a “sell-out” given the majority of women he dated? The truth is that some would in fact do so.

True. And to the shock of many people, many of our "black leaders" have done the same. Of course, Malcolm X did it early in his life, but after his conversion to Islan, ended that practice. Eric Dyson's book I May Not Get There With You, which is a biography of Martin Luther King, claims that it is known that MLK had at least two extramarital affairs with white women. However, I think it is wrong that he cheated on his wife. Black Panther heroes were also known for dating white women.

Why is the term “sell-out” seemingly only used in conjunction to men who marry outside the race and not women? Does anyone remember actresses Alfré Woodard, Garcelle Beauvais, or models Naomi Campbell and Iman being referred to as “sell-outs?” If so, please refresh my memory. Well, maybe Whoopi Goldberg, I do remember some ‘comments’ about her.

I would have to disagree with this. Black women are attacked for dating white men too. I've heard Whoopi Goldberg and Halle Berry being called sell outs. They, too, have been attacked by black men for stepping across their racial boundaries.

Baltimore Ravens running back Jamal Lewis will be serving time in a federal prison after this season, for his part in a drug buy. Let’s assume he has an African-American woman in his life and considers himself to be African-American. Can we honestly say that he’s less of a “sell-out” than Tiger Woods? In truth, who has done more to the detriment of his people? Who has acted as if they care less about the aggregate welfare of African-Americans? In the strictest of terms, who has done more to “sell-out” his people…i.e. turn his back? Obviously it would be Lewis, but it’s not equally as obvious as to who should be considered more of a “sell-out.” I’m not exactly sure why. Why doesn’t the definition include such random acts of stupidity?

This is the meat of the author's argument. Why would Tiger Woods be considered a sell out, and not Jamal Lewis? To me, people who do acts like this are the REAL sell outs. People who contribute to black on black violence are the sell outs. People who trash their community are sell outs. People who sell crack to children are the real sell outs.

Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, prior to his sexual assault charges lacked the merchandising power that players like Cleveland Cavaliers’ guard LeBron James wielded. Kobe was the established All-Star with 3 championship rings and LeBron at the time was the kid straight out of high school with nothing substantive on his basketball resume. Even today, LeBron can only boast of being Rookie of the Year and not much else.

Yet and still, LeBron had already signed a $90 million dollar endorsement deal with Nike; Kobe’s deal was for less than half of that amount. In effect, Kobe wasn’t ‘Black’ enough and/or didn’t resonate with the majority of kids who lived in the inner cities and purchased shoes. At least, so was the perception.

Allegedly, Kobe lacked ‘street credibility’ and wasn’t as viable as LeBron in selling shoes. Kobe was the one who was ‘educated,’ traveled the world, spoke multiple languages and up until recently had zero dirt on him. To some, Kobe had ‘sold out’…wasn’t true to his roots…Mexican wife and White ‘mistress’ notwithstanding.

I agree with this. However, one could make a case that Kobe Bryant now fits for his random act of stupidity. If he did rape that girl, then he deserves full punishment. If he did not, then he is a dumb ass for cheating on his girl, getting himself into this mess.

Who is the arbiter of “Black”? Who gets to decide which people are in line with the consensus of Black America? No doubt, we are not a homogenous group and hate to be stereotyped or grouped according to preconceived notions. At the same time, there is some sort of ‘understood’ litmus test as to who ‘is’ and who ‘isn’t’ Black. What I want to know is, who wrote the test and who is grading it after we turn it in?

When we say, “keep it real”…what do we really mean? Since when did “real” include the way one talks, walks or chooses to date? It would seem if that’s all it took to be “Black,” Eminem and anyone like him could qualify as “being Black” and not a sell-out.

In my mind, Dr. Cornel West “keeps it real.” It’s more likely though that he doesn’t even make the ‘official’ top-100 list of those “keeping it real.”

Is voting Republican selling-out? Some think so. Is enunciating when you speak, choosing not to use slang a form of selling-out? Some think so.

What I really need to know is this…when are we going to spend less time on determining WHO is a “sell-out,” (especially on superficial levels) and more time “buying-in” to WHAT is essential to us as African-Americans? When are we going to be less concerned with who supposedly exudes “Blackness” and more concerned with uplifting Black people? When are we going to be less concerned with whom Tiger Woods marries and more concerned with what Jamal Lewis is selling?

Thus forms the conclusion of this article. Like he says, we as black people hate to be stereotyped, but we do that to ourselves when we use and enforce standards of blackness. The bad thing about this is that many black people only use the worst stereotypes of blackness to form a definition. Stereotypes that whites themselves have created to sustain white supremacy. Perhaps, we need to get rid of the notion that there are black ways to do things and white ways to do things. This is the kind of mentality that holds many people back. We are not a monolithic group. And we should not perpetuate ourselves as a monolithic group. There are 40 million of us in this nation. It is far better if we are a diversified group. Only when that happens will black people continue to reach new heights. For instance, more politicians, more authors, more engineers, more scientists, etc. When we keep ourselves into boxes of what it means to be black, we are throwing away the sacrifices of those who came before us, who fought and died for the opportunity of black people to do what they want, to achieve, and to contribute to society.

2004-10-14T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Dunce from (Truthout)

Is George W. Bush a dunce? A Harvard professor certainly thinks so.

For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.

"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect - the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."

Wow. That really speaks volumes. After ALL of these years, and the professor remembers Dubya.

Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said.

One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative."

Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people - because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"

If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to challenge that and he would have demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but intellectually."

Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."

This dude can't tell the difference between socialism and communism, and he got into Harvard!? For being a person born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he sure fits the stereotype of an inbred trailer trash.

2004-10-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

Ouch!!

2004-10-12T13:53:00.000-05:00

The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

Will Greider released The Soul of Capitalism last year. Basically, the book is about how reform movements have sprung up, and are already in the process of reforming capitalism. I have not read the book yet, and will place a review once I read it. But from the press release, it looks promising.

Greider examines how the greatest wealth-creation engine in the history of the world is failing most of us, why it must be changed, and how intrepid pioneers are beginning to transform it. Public outrage over crooked corporate officers, the looting of pension funds, the defrauding of stockholders, and the wholesale firing of hard-working employees has reached a new high. Yet Greider argues that our anger actually has much deeper roots, as he analyzes how our relentless pursuit of unprecedented affluence has eroded family life, eaten away at our sense of personal and professional security, corroded our communities, impoverished our spiritual lives, and devastated our natural environment. The solution, Greider contends, will not come from the politics of the past, or from more government regulation, but from a fundamental realignment of power that is already underway on many fronts.

A fundamental realignment of power? Sounds good to me.

We are living in a new historical and economic moment, Greider maintains. Nearly all Americans, with the notable exception of the very poor, have achieved self-sufficiency in basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. We have solved the ancient economic problem of scarcity known to every previous generation. “Yet the United States pushes on,” Greider writes, “like a long-distance runner who has won the race yet keeps running beyond the finish line, not looking back and not quite sure who or what drives him on. . . . The point of overwhelming abundance is now plainly in our face and beyond argument, yet seldom discussed as the new central premise of the economic condition. The incompleteness at the core of American life, I believe, is also about this new fact of history. Our situation is unique — learning how to live amidst endless plenty and, ironically, how to live well in spite of it. Our ancestors never had to face such a struggle. We cannot escape it.” [pp. 9-10]

I agree that we have solved the problems of scarcity here in the US, but then again, we have to remember that much of it is because we take away resources from other parts of the world. I disagree with him that we have achieved self-sufficiency. The reason? De-industrialization. How you can have self-sufficiency when you depend on other nations for your products. We don't produce much anymore. We are even exporting our service (read: high tech) jobs overseas. It has gotten so pathetic that most Christmas trees, and even American flags are produced in China. One effect of this is that money increasingly leaves the nation. While many corporations are getting richer, the workers themselves are getting poorer off of this. This dependency on overseas labor has even more severe consequences. While relations with China are well at this moment, they could sour at any time. Since they manufacture many of our products, imagine what would happen if China, or any other nation which produces our products decides on an embargo against exports to the US for any reason? That would severely damage our economy, and would make war inevitable. As Americans, we will not have achieved true self-sufficiency until we produce our own products.

According to the press release, the social reformers come from a variety of backgrounds.

The reformers in THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM are surprisingly diverse, ranging from conservative business managers to small-town civic leaders, social agitators, ecologists, labor leaders, and ordinary citizens.

Let's look at what the release says about work.

Work. Our current system regularly puts people — even very successful people — in conflict with their personal values and human-scale aspirations. Others simply turn off their brains and do as they’re told. The remedy includes changing the terms of employment so that workers become owners — holding a real stake in the company and participating as insiders in its decision-making, rather than serving as rented tools of production. This reform has already been achieved, albeit unevenly, in thousands of employee-owned companies.

Employee-owned companies? Are these guys advocating Anarcho-syndicalism? Why these pinko commie bastards!! ;-D Ok. I know that this mostly means stock ownership. But the question is, does it produce actual democracy in the workplace? We're not quite there yet, but we are definitely headed in that direction.

Finance capital. The financial system, as front-page stories of recent scandals have demonstrated, concentrates both economic and political power. Using other people’s money, Wall Street makes decisions that vastly alter the terms of American life, yet the great majority of those people are never consulted. Profound changes are beginning to unfold, however, as individuals and new financial institutions figure out how to withdraw their money from standard investment vehicles and use it to target social objectives. Paradoxically, while personal wealth has become more concentrated among the few, the broad ranks of working Americans may now have greater collective leverage through their pension funds. The institutions that hold retirement savings now essentially own the stock market — some 60 percent of the thousand largest companies, for example. And they are gingerly starting to assert their power, championing social values that neither Wall Street nor corporate boardrooms can afford to ignore.

They have to, if they want to maintain the stability of the system.

Consumption. The concept of “more” started with the Pilgrims. Greider traces how our acquisitive values are deeply embedded in the American character, not just American capitalism. Nevertheless, people are beginning to recognize that patterns of consumption have to change, since the destruction of nature they produce is ultimately threatening to life itself. Ecologists argue that nothing short of industrial transformation is required to avert a crisis. Many companies, large and small, are demonstrating how it can be done.

What do these guys mean by industrial transformation? That's why I need to read the book. My thinking of industrial transformation is that we need to use alternative sources of energy to build self-sufficiency. We need to increasingly fund new energy sources, from fusion, to hydrogen, to solar. And we need to develop and deploy these. Also, we should work in producing a zero waste economy. Doing this would help to save our ecosystem while at the same time revitalizing industry.

Corporate power. The modern American corporation is relatively young and ripe for re-invention. Greider examines the privileged legal position of the corporation and how this protected status figured in the recent corporate scandals. He also explores how corporate governance and structure can be reformed while preserving the positive corporate qualities of efficiency and innovation. Resourceful companies show that concentrated, self-aggrandizing power is not required to function profitably and responsively. The challenge is to forge these rare exceptions into a general trend.

I have to read the book for more detail on what he is talking about here. I agree that corporation personhood is a mistake, but how does he want to combat this? And how would corporations be restructured?

Public works. From the earliest canal-building projects, government has always participated in economic development. But the modern state, embraced by corporate political influence, has become a fountain of special indulgences and favors. Most do not actually advance development in any real sense, but merely enhance the profitability of individual firms or sectors. Meanwhile, government subsidy helps to foster many of the same social abuses its regulatory laws are supposed to curb. Greider explores the prospects for a “redevelopment state” that confines itself to long-term investments that authentically promise to reform society.

I can agree with this. I will write more on this later.

2004-10-12T10:52:00.000-05:00

Viacom: Opiate Of The Masses

It's a moment to take a stand against media consolidation and against corporate elites who patronize and dumb-down our generation by trying to screen them from real political content.

Here is the meat of this blog entry:

But here's the thing: becoming an engaged participant in civic life and the political process isn't something you do "just because." It's about formulating and acting upon opinions, and that's about information. Participation starts with making choices based on your (hopefully informed) judgement as to which candidate(s) will best protect and advance your interests, not printing a voter reg form off the internet because a celebrity implied that it was cool. While I'm glad (super glad!) that Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself exist and are registering gobs and gobs of people to vote, they do not in and of themselves express or constitute an informed political consciousness.

Viacom apparently believes that their channels, which reach millions of potential young participants, are not an appropriate forum for additional data which might set their viewers down the path towards forming such a consciousness for themselves.

On the other hand, if an ad promotes getting drunk (Bass, Guiness, Baileys, Coors Light), flashing your tits (Girls Gone Wild), getting regular boners (Enzite), or even just staying in and playing video games it's all good.

So, yeah. The message is clear. Consumerism, intoxication and sex are great, but don't try and spread the raw materials from which people might form some political opinions. We oppose that. We will not take your money to run ads which do this.

Can you think of anything more condescending than that? Anything more patronizing? Anything more un-American? Our future is on the line -- our jobs, our education, our health, the looming spectre of widening warfare and compulsatory military service -- and the corporate masters of our media universe want to keep us in a happy haze. Viacom really wants to be the opiate of the masses.

Very nice entry, I must say.

2004-10-11T14:27:00.000-05:00

In this article from Alternet, Mitch Kapor of the site ofbyandfor.org did an interview, which I hope the future of American politics lies. I'll will post the interview in its entirety here.

"A countervailing force is not going to come from inside the Beltway regardless of who is in office. The bigger challenge beyond winning in November is the restoration of true self-governance and self-determination. It's what the Founders had in mind 200+ years ago, and a Kerry Presidency per se is going to do little to bring it about. So this topic, how we can restore democracy and bring about real reform is going to be subject of the dialog here. Please join in."

So ends Mitch Kapor's first blog entry on his newly founded web site Of, By and For. He has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as the founder of the Lotus Development Corporation, which helped bring personal computers to the business world. He is also an investor, social activist and philanthropist. Mitch has recently turned his attention to his concerns about the state of our republic and the lack of civic participation. He established Of, By and For to give a voice to the problems he sees in our government. AlterNet recently visited his office in San Francisco to learn more about it.

Mitch, what is Of, By and For, and why did you found it?

Of, By and For is a web site that was designed to do several things. One is to be a forum for a forward-looking political discussion. By forward-looking I mean, both beyond the 2004 election, but also trying to ask a different set of questions — not about whether Democrats or Republicans should be elected. Important and as critical as that kind of discussion is, I feel that there are some much more fundamental questions. For instance, what ought to be the nature of self-government in the 21st century? Based on the feeling that we have wandered pretty far from what the Founders of the country had in mind when they set this country up. There is a serious need for a discussion about political reform and the future of the Republic.

So the website was designed to be a place for those discussions to take place. One of the things we’ve done, is try to use different ways of engendering the discussion. We’ve run live streaming broadcast of the discussion group we had with Joe Trippi about restoring the republic, with a chat room going on simultaneously alongside. It seemed to go rather well — the discussion was interesting, and the reader chat rooms buzzed. That was the first one of these we’ve done, but we’ve got another one coming with Bill Greider, author of the "Soul of Capitalism."

You come from a tech background and now you are making the jump to talk about politics in the 21st century.

The first thing is, I've always voted and followed elections quite carefully, but from a captive point of view. And I think, like a lot of tech people and the population in general, there's something about the way that politics is conducted that is a huge turnoff. The amount of spin, the lack of straight information, the negative campaign advertising, the lack of public participation in the process – it all created a kind of tension because I felt very civically-minded, but who wants to follow politics and government in the way it is now? That has been my mindset.

But it was the Dean campaign that began to change the way I thought about it. I wasn't directly involved with the campaign from the start, but I began to participate with Dean's high-tech council shortly before the campaign came to an end. But even as it was falling apart, I recognized that the Dean campaign had a totally different approach. I witnessed the mobilizing of energy of hundreds of thousands of people. The campaign was raising money – huge amounts of it – in ways that defied all predictions. But it wasn't just about raising money. It was about building a community.

To me, the Dean campaign pointed out that if there were a real political alternative, not politics as usual, you could mobilize people – organize a community to advocate and bring about serious reform of our government. The tech side is a big part of it, because without the Internet, you couldn't have had a Dean campaign. The Internet gave the Dean campaign an alternative to broadcast television as its main medium, as well as allow for a bottom-up system that promoted and facilitated grassroots involvement – both of which the campaign relied on. So I recognized that campaign relied on web technology – that the campaign was really on the Internet.

But ultimately my involvement in Of, By and For, and politics for that matter, is as a citizen, more than as a tech guy.

You wrote in a passage I found on Of, By and For that "the whole concept of open and equal access to information could do wonders for our politics. Placing information in the open, allowing people to debate both general and very specific aspects of software, and then creating a process for decision-making about implementation could be very important lessons.... There are many other interesting aspects to the open source community that may very well help define new participatory processes that can help us revitalize our democracy." Is this something you are looking to work on in your projects?

I think public transparency is a huge theme, and will be part of what we end up doing. A lot of where the open source community gets its power is that the source code is freely and fully available to anybody who wants to have access to it. It's also clear that in the political world, so much of our government is going on behind closed doors. And in fact, the more cynical the citizens get about their government, the easier it is for things to go on outside of the public eye. So making the whole government process more transparent is something we want to work on.

In reference to an influential article by Matt Bai for the New York Times Magazine about the rise of new group of influential wealthy liberal donors and their plans for the future, you wrote in Of, By, and For, essentially saying, "Great that the money is there. But what's left hanging is, do these political entrepreneurs have a critical mass of winning ideas?"

Yeah, what I'm saying is, you can have all the venture capital in the world, but you need the ideas to make it work. But the problem I see is that a lot of the ideas I'm hearing about are coming out of a left agenda that is 30 years old. Let me distinguish between the kind of traditional aims and goals of progressives, which in my own unsophisticated understanding, all reach for a "fairer world" in which there is a level playing field that allows for everyone to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's the kind of traditional progressive approach, and I'm fine with it.

But I want to distinguish these ends from the means that are required to bring them about. I think the place to start is trying to answer what the nature of self-governance should be in the 21st century. And that means a serious reform of the process of the way government works today. That is quite a different stance than saying, "What worked in the New Deal still works today, and the progress we seek is just a matter of passing more legislation." At the end of the day, sure, progressive legislation is still going to count for positive change, but it doesn't get at the source of the problems we face in our republic. And I think that means we have to adapt the process of governance to include more civic participation.

So, your approach is about changing the architecture of the republic, not the laws and policies it adopts. And you are also talking about including more people in the process of government.

Yes. Why don't people feel involved or have a stake in the system? That's the key question. There are thousands of activists out there who participate in our democracy, but for the broad masses, their only major participation is every four years when they vote for the president – and only half of those who are eligible in our system do even that. Every four years. That's not real participation. That's the real problem. I'm not saying that the solution for dealing with this should come from on high. I want to foster a national conversation about this that will hash out the discussion and come up with the answer.

What I hope for is a mind-shift about the way people think about their government. This is a huge task, but there have been major shifts in what Americans believe in the past. I think the civil rights movement was the culmination of the view that the way we were looking at each other in this country was fundamentally wrong. This took decades and the hard work of activists to make it happen. But the net result is that what was socially permissible up through the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s – being overtly racist – just stopped being that way. Society for the most part changed what it thought about things. So take one of the largest problems in our country, which our government has been unable to stop, and now has taken a part in encouraging: the business community's unchecked pursuit of profit. There is a public climate that is relatively permissive of businesses to loot and pillage our public coffers and ruin the hell out of the environment. This comes from the public perception that the job of business is to make money. To me, that's kind of like saying, "black people are inferior." We just have it wrong.

Changing that perception is partly political and partly not. But it certainly means we have to have a national conversation about this.

You want to engender a movement to change the national mindset.

Yes, it's fairly ambitious. What Joe Trippi says is that neither major political party has the appetite to deal with the system as a whole. So it's going to take the people to help bring it about.

I will be posting more on the website and the interviewee later.

2004-10-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

Windows XP worm speaks to users as it deletes their files

This is very malicious, but I can't help but find this funny. Sounds like a grade C sci-fi movie plot. Will this start a new trend? Will more virii play sound? Or how about video? I can just picture a new virus playing a video of a computer blowing up as important files are deleted.

2004-10-07T09:57:00.000-05:00

Just in case you missed it, the Ansari X-Prize has been won!!

2004-10-05T10:21:00.000-05:00

Is Anarcho-Syndicalism The Wave Of The Future?

Recenrly, Naomi Klein has released a new documentary called The Take, which is described as a "folk song on film" by this reviewer.

To many people, anarcho-syndicalism is socialism as it was meant to be. For much of the 20th century, socialism has been used by tyrants in order to stem the collective ambitions of the people. From Stalin, to Mao, to Kim, to Pol Pot, their brand of socialism was not very distinguishable from fascism. For the socialists who truly believed in democracy, these regimes represent the most vile corruptions of the ideals of socialism that they can imagine. In the 20th century, there was a hope for true socialism, which was the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s. But the syndicalists lost the war to the fascist Francis Franco in 1939.

For most of that century, there was little reason to hope for a such a revolution, or believe that it could deliver on its promises. More recently, however, there has been more reason for hope. The Zapatistas have recently become a new symbol for organized resistance to corporate plutocracy. For more wealthy nations, Argentina seems to have the right program for freedom. Argentina was, at one time, a wealthy nation. But then the IMF policies have eventually bankrupted it. What followed was a severe economic depression, and eventually, revolution. The things that have led to revolution in Argentina are happening here in the United States. Eventually, the economy of this nation will collapse, and we will be faced with the same hard choices that the Argentinians had to face. Monitor the situation in Argentina closely. If it reverts to a dictatorship, then we shall throw out the model. If, however, it is able to deliver on the promises of liberty and justice, then this will be a good model for us to follow.

2004-10-02T01:26:00.000-05:00

From LiberalsLikeChrist.Org

Are people Liberal just because they belong to a minority and fight for that minority? Or is fighting for one's own class the essence of Conservatism. If we are concerned about liberating only the particular oppressed class that we happen to have been born into, then we are not really Liberal. We are just Conservatives not lucky enough to have been born into a privileged class. True Liberals are concerned about justice and freedom for all mankind, whatever it may cost them to fight for equality for all. They will not allow others to be thrown overboard in their pursuit of liberation for themselves.
Let's keep in mind also what one black sister (let me know if you know who), "All my skin folk ain't my kin folk." Just as minorities cannot put all their trust in all "Democrats" or "Liberals", they shouldn't rely on skin color to determine who their true allies are either.

2004-10-02T01:23:00.000-05:00

From LiberalsLikeChrist.Org

Can women expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for all working people?

Can working people expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for black people?

Can black people expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for Hispanic people?

Can Hispanic people expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for gay people?

Can gay people expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for poor people?

Can poor people expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for the handicapped?

Can handicapped people expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for Native Americans?

Can Native Americans expect justice for themselves,
if they ignore justice for immigrant people?

Can "law-abiding" citizens expect justice for themselves
if they allow their law enforcement agents
to perpetrate crimes on "law-breakers"
in the name of "law-enforcement"?

2004-09-30T13:36:00.000-05:00

Revolution in Iran??

If a democratic regime is installed in Iran, that pretty much erases the need for us to go to war against them doesn't it?

Reports over the past 24 to 48 hours via several important information services such as SMCCDI, Peykeiran, Zagros and direct email reports and phone calls from Iranian citizens is beginning to shine light on what at this time looks to be country-wide fighting and quickly escalating into what could potentially become a freedom revolution.
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Several independent citizen sources have reported the formation of significant crowds throughout the country, and have heard many loud explosions and gun shots, including in the cities of Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz.
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At this time and for several months now, regime security forces have remained heavily deployed in the most strategic areas of Iranian cities in an effort to prevent the spread and growth of any major uprising.

The current situation appears to be quite explosive at this time.

2004-09-30T13:18:00.000-05:00

It's been a looooong time since I last participated in a flame war. That last time such a thing happened was during the previous millennium (I love using that terminology). I go by the name of madscientist here on these boards. Here is how the flame war progressed so far:

JoeNY writes:

Why in your new post about the arctic blast do you stress great lakes and midwest? The arctic blast will wind up leaving the Northeast (as always) seeing the coolest temps once the front passes through the entire northern US and off the coast. If you're going to focus on cold weather at least focus on the coldest areas in the country...cause I used to live out in Minnesota for about 10 years and never once did I ever see anything as far as temps like I see in Upstate NY here...

I, and some others, simply just dont like your bias...the greatlakes is NEVER the big headliner during the winter...the Northeast and Carolinas (for icestorms) have much much MUCH harsher winters than the great lakes...

I mean come on, last year the northeast saw over 4 feet of snow in some areas on december 2nd...it was still in the 50's in the great lakes then...that and come on let's be real, when was the last time anywhere in the great lakes saw a 50 inch snowstorm? ....it's over 90 years guys...and there's been about 5 storms like that in the past 10 in the NE.

p.s....in your new prediction you seem to disagree with the fact that the great lakes and northeast will BOTH see a very cold and snowy winter...you then go on to disagree with that statement (and by doing so disagree with the experts who get paid, as you dont, to forecast the weather) and say that the Northeast will not see big snowstorms...

this is the kind of garbage you pulled last year, and looked very bad when the northeast wound up AGAIN seeing the coldest temps last year and biggest snowstorms...

everyone from around here remember the 3 week period when it never went up 2 degrees F.

So I retort:

You have ONE poster who focuses on the midwest, while everyone else focuses on the Northeast, and here you are whining like a baby. Well tough. Read the other posts that deal with the Northeast, or better yet, do it yourself! Regardless of what you might think, the northeast is not the center of the universe. And as for better winters, although the Northeast gets more snow (with the exception of the snow belt areas), it is the great lakes and midwest that gets the coldest weather.

I'll give you that Upstate NY does see very cold temps. In fact, the combination of very cold temps and lake effect snow makes places like Watertown, NY one of the best places for winter weather fans. But even in terms of snow, a Midwestern city like Marquette, MI has got it beat by leaps and bounds. And in terms of cold, name a city that can beat Tower, MN. Your precious upstate NY is not even in the same league as Tower. The January average low for Watertown is 8 degrees. For Tower, it is -14. The all-time record low for Watertown if -43. Yes, that is cold as hell, and I do have to give the city props. But that does not even some close to the -60 in Tower. So STFU about your center-of-the-universe NY biased ass and read the stuff that actually deals with the Northeast instead of whining because they are not talking about NY.

So there was my answer. But guess what he did next? He attacked me without attacking my argument. That is a big no no in the rules of debate. Why? Because it proves your inability to write a rebuttal to an argument.

did i mention that the people in the midwest are dumb, poor, dirty and smelly?

Wowsers!! What a rebuttal! He certainly smashed my argument! Hell. My reply to this was only slightly better. I resorted to attacking him (or should I say his mother) personally.

Your mama.

Obviously, continuing from his previous argument, he writes:

i mean come on....the MOUNTAINS of stereotypes about you hicks arent there for nothing....obviously alot of people think you are dirty and dumb....or else you wouldnt be notorious for it...

plus, tower is one city...overall, the midwest/great lakes is not a very cold place when compared to the rockies or the northeast. It's just not...you dont see colder temps than us, just like in the summer we dont see warmer temps that you...we're a cooler region.

I'll give him that the Rockies do see colder temperatures. In fact, the record low for Montana is -70, 10 degrees below that of Minnesota, which is -60. But that's only because it is a mountainous region. And even with that, the average temperatures for Northern Minnesota is still colder than anywhere in the Rockies; lower than anywhere else in the lower 48 for that matter. But warmer than the Northeast? Come on! Does this guy just pull information out of his ass or something? I pulled out one piece which, so far, as ended the argument:

Let's get real here. If you want a REAL debate instead of juvenile name calling, let's have a real one. So if Northern Minnesota is warmer in the winter than upstate NY, you should be able to prove it. We'll see who is the bigger retard.

In order to refute my argument, he is going to have to reach really far up his ass. In fact, he will have to reach so far up his ass that his mouth will be tasting like feces.

2004-09-30T09:39:00.000-05:00

2004-09-28T14:40:00.000-05:00

On the heels of the Ansari X Prize comes another prize. The $50,000,000 American Space Prize has just been announced by Robert Bigelow, CEO of Bigelow Aerospace. This prize ups the ante. At the moment, the terms for winning are to create an orbital vehicle capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to an orbital outpost by the end of the decade.

Bigelow has been working on creating inflatable space habitats. It is very possible that his space stations could end up being better than the ISS.

2004-09-28T14:06:00.000-05:00

This autumn, it looks as if the Ansari X Prize will finally be won. The prize is $10,000,000. The terms for winning are simple:

1. Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)

2. Returns safely to Earth

3. Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

There are two teams that could win the prize: Scaled Composites and the da Vinci Project. The Scaled Composites plane, called SpaceShipOne, has already been through several successful test flights, including one that has sent one pilot to the edge of space 60 miles up. Tomorrow, on September 29, 2004 @ ~6:00 AM PST, Scaled Composites will attempt the first flight. Assuming that things go well, the second flight will take place on October 4, 2004. The flight profile for this vehicle can be found here. The da Vinci Project flight was originally scheduled for October 2, 2004, but has been delayed. Godspeed to both!

The St. Louis Post Dispatch has several articles related to the X-Prize which can be found here.

2004-09-28T13:57:00.000-05:00

"Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money, it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered to us but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inauguration Day, 1933

2004-09-28T13:56:00.000-05:00

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams

2004-09-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

"In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for Deliverance." -- Philis Wheatley

2004-09-28T13:43:00.000-05:00

I found this to be a VERY well written piece.

http://unclesamscabin.blogspot.com/2004/08/new-black-freedom-fighter.html

I consider myself progressive on most issues. However, I tend to agree with the Authors John McWhorter and Debra Dickenson in regards to black issues. McWhorter wrote Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America and Dickenson wrote The End of BlacknessThe most important thing for blacks, IMHO, is self-sufficiency. In order for blacks to advance, we need to relearn the values that brought us through our darkest moments in history. That means we need to take education very seriously. There are too few black scientists in this nation. One interesting article I read recently has to do with a new generation of black Americans called the Thrivals.

http://www.mba.wfu.edu/faculty/irvin/thrivals.pdf

2004-09-28T13:30:00.000-05:00

Mount St. Helens and Mauna Loa could Erupt

Both of these volanoes, the former in Washington state and the latter in Hawaii, are both becoming more active. One of two earthquakes a minute rumbled Mount St. Helens, which could be a percursor to the largest eruption since 1980, which killed 57 people.

2004-09-28T11:36:00.000-05:00

From the Instant Replay blog http://instantreplay.blogspot.com/

Stoned Slackers
The Boston Globe reports...

Bill O'Reilly of FOX called the audience of Comedy Central's Daily Show "stoned slackers". The wonks came back with the numbers today:

Viewers of Jon Stewart's [The Daily Show] are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research...

Comedy Central also touted a recent study by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey, which said young viewers of "The Daily Show" were more likely to answer questions about politics correctly than those who don't.

Comedy Central had no statistics on how many people watch "The Daily Show" stoned.

Where do I fit into all of this? I just spent the last hour glued to C-SPAN.

2004-09-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

Fox Hunts Student Voters

Things just get more and more amazing. If students do not rise up against this, our future as a nation and a freedom-loving people is in jeopardy.

2004-09-27T11:05:00.000-05:00

I found this hilarious. But whether or not it is true, it is a display of the nastiness that goes on in politics.

Exerpt from http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/09/25_dogs.html

In his heyday, nobody was better at gettin' down politically than Lone Star Lyndon. In 1948, after 11 years in the House of Representatives where he proved to be a formidable, power-hungry campaigner, LBJ hit fellow Democrat and popular former Texas governor Coke Stevenson with everything he had as they squared off for a run at the Senate.

Legend has it Johnson told one of his aides -- "Go out there and tell 'em Coke was caught having sex with a farm animal."

"But, Lyndon," the aide protested, "you know that's not true!"

"Of course it's not true!" Johnson responded impatiently. "That's not the point. Tell it anyway -- and make him deny it..."

2004-09-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

Runaway Train: The True Story of the U.S. Patriot Act

A new documentary was released, titled Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties. I have not seen this film yet. However, it is definitely long overdue. It's been almost three years since the USA PATRIOT ACT was hastily passed by congress. None of the congressmen even LOOKED at the bill. And if you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11, then you know that congress doesn't read most of the bills it is given. That should be enough to make voters want to toss out most members of congress during the upcoming elections.

Luckily, there is a growing grass-roots movement against the Patriot Act. One of the main groups is the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Hundreds of US towns and cities, as well as four states, have passed resolutions against it. According to a recent article on BBC, conversations like this are popping up in many towns and cities across the US. In fact, the author of the piece "[doubts] if there is anything in contemporary American political life that has generated so much passion." So there is more passion to oppose the Patriot Act in the grass roots than there is in any other issue in this nation.

And this is very good news. No matter how bad things get, Americans must remember that our most basic of rights are non-negotiable. Fighting terrorism does not require that we give up our liberties. Benjamin Franklin himself stated that those who would give up their liberties for security will not get (and will not deserve) neither. This goes far beyond liberal versus conservative, Republican versus Democrat. Remember that the Democrats voted for it too. Whether or not you are a liberal who wants gay marraige, or a conservative who wants to put god in public schools, such a law would make any debate and form of political activism moot, or dangerous. We have fought too hard to too long for these rights. We have spilled so much blood earning and protecting our liberties. So to ALL Americans of all stripes, this is one thing we should be able to agree on. This is the fight worth fighting. If we back down from our rights, it will be our progeny who suffer. We will doom them to a world that existed in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or Pinochet's Argentina. If these measures stay, then even after the War on Terror is won, we will not receive our rights back. We will be forced to go through another revolutionary war to get them back. We need to fight this NOW, or face the consequences later.

2004-09-07T16:22:00.000-05:00

Star Trek: MMOG

According to this article, Viacom has given Perpetual Entertainment a license to develop a massively multiplayer online game for ST:TOS, ST:TNG, ST:DSN, ST:VOY, and ST:ENT. Being a Trek fan myself, I cannot wait. The wait will be very long, as it is not expected to be released until early 2007, meaning it probably won't come until 2008.

From the article:

The game will deliver action, adventure and combat mechanics unique to persistent world games. Its design includes a rich array of solo and multiplayer missions set in space, on planets and in starbases throughout the universe. At launch, it will take place during the 24th century timeline in the series with other aspects of the Star Trek universe to be interwoven and added through expansions.“Players will encounter characters, places, and situations from their favorite Star Trek movies and television series; will explore incredible new worlds; and will cooperate with or battle friendly and hostile races throughout the game,” said Chris McKibbin, President of Perpetual Entertainment.“Fans of Star Trek have been longing for a game that lets them participate in and explore the Star Trek universe,” said Terri Helton, Executive Vice President of Viacom Consumer Products. “We have been searching for the right partnership for our time-honored Star Trek to create a game that not only appeals to fans but a broader audience as well. Perpetual’s experience, technology and vision for this game make them the clear choice.”

2004-09-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the synthesis.

http://63.135.115.158/article.asp?ID=704

One of the most commonly asked questions about the history of the black struggle for justice is: Which is the better leader, Martin or Malcolm? Most people have pondered this question during at least some point in their lives, especially those with living memories of the era. For most people, the debate is centered around the popular image of both leaders. Martin Luther King (MLK) is seen as a non-violent integrationist, while Malcolm X (MX) is seen as an anti-white separatist. As one would expect, the truth is far more complicated than these images. In reality, both leaders were very similar. They were trying to get to the same place, but had different methods. Near the end of their lives, their worldview seemed to converge. One good book about this is Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare?. This is a very good book. This book basically compares the lives and ideology of both leaders.

The images of both leaders stated earlier in this blog entry are mostly from the early 1960s. Since then, they have both changed, radically. Or perhaps, they did not really change, but rather went deeper into their core beliefs.

MX underwent the second major transformation of his life. Before becoming Malcolm X, he was Malcolm Little, a hustler and drug dealer. After being sentenced to prison, the Nation of Islam converted him to the Islamic faith. He quickly became the spokesperson for the NOI after his release from prison. This is the popular image of MX. In the early 1960s, he broke from the organization, and decided to embark on a pilgrimage, which any true Muslim is expected to do at least once in his/her life. There, he saw people of all colors holding hands, drinking from the same cup, praying together as brothers. There, he was given the name El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. He rejected the NOI philosophy, and the racist thinking that went along with it. From then until the end of his life, he rejected racism, and refocused his efforts against imperialism, and for greater class equality in the US and abroad.

MLK, on the other hand, began to change after the Watts riot. He, too, decided to attack imperialism, becoming one of the first anti-war protesters. He worked to unite poor blacks and whites in the struggle for economic justice. In the late 1960s, he became an advocate for the redistribution of wealth throughout society.

These two, determined to bring about a revolution, were shot and killed. They went too far. The NOI is a very orthodox organization, very similar to religious right organizations such as the Christian Coalition. Elijah Muhammad was a very conservative person, more interested in political and social power and control than in transformation. MX became far more powerful than the entire NOI organization, and for that, followers of the NOI killed him. MLK was killed by James Earl Ray, or by the US government depending on what you researched. MLK was alright, as long as he stuck to attacking segregation. For all of his liberalism, it was not shared by everyone in the movement. He was attacked for his anti-war stance by other Civil Rights leaders. Many Civil Rights leaders rejected class politics, wanting to live a very comfortable middle class life. When he began to advocate the redistribution of wealth throughout US society, that's when his life had to end. Ever wonder why Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson are still alive? Because of their orthodoxy. Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan did not push the envelope. They rejected the revolution, and decided to turn their efforts to identity politics.

When MX and MLK were killed, another thing died. Many say that part of America died with them. That is true. Their deaths, along with the deaths of Robert and John Kennedy in 1963 and 1968, tore apart the movement in America. The deaths of RK and MLK mark the death of hope in this nation. All social movements need hope in order to be successful. Hope in times of tumult stem from rising expectations, and it is rising expectations, according to Machiavelli, that lead to revolutions. The death of hope is the birth of cynicism and nihilism, which was been the standard ever since. It is useless to debate about who the better leader is. Both of them help to complete a whole. They complement each other.

Their influence stretches to this day. When looking at the rising social movements of today, such as the Global Justice Movement, you can see some of MX and MLK. Every 40 or so years, hope rises, along with expectations for society and themselves. This happened in the 1960s, the 1930s, the 1890s, the 1860s, the 1830s, the 1770s, the 1730s, and the 1680s. All of these periods belong to social moments, which defined in Generations, is a moment in history lasting a decade or so (in their later book The Fourth Turning, they changed this to about 20 years), in which people perceive, during and after that period in time, when people perceive that historic events are radically altering the social environment. Looking at the decades posted above, you can see that these are important moments in the history of this nation, including such events as the Glorious Revolution which started with Bacon's Rebellion, the Great Awakening, the American Revolution, The rise of romanticism, the Civil War, the rise of labor, and the Civil Rights Movement and the various movements of the 1960s.

If this pattern holds, we are about due for another one. Hope is again starting to rise in society, along with expectations. The influences of MLK and MX are becoming more and more widespread. People are beginning to reject the cynicism and nihilism that characterized the era after the deaths of RK and MLK. Along with this, we can see the rise of a new radicalism that characterized our most treasured moments in this nation's history. More than during any other time, we have to ability to push for social and economic justice for all.

2004-09-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

No doubt, one of the most frightening problems to date is the prospect of peak oil. Currently, hydrogen, solar, and other alternative sources of energy are not yet sufficient to meet our national and global energy needs. Nuclear fission has received a lot of bad press of being harmful to the environment. Yes, that is true, but it is not nearly as harmful as burning fossil fuels. Nuclear power merely requires that we properly dispose of radioactive material. Not to say that we should give up on other energy sources. Nuclear fission will eventually run out. However, this should buy us enough time to perfect hydrogen, solar, or fusion.

2004-07-14T16:24:00.000-05:00

Twice on the blog, I posted an article that listed the 14 basic characteristics of fascism. Today, I will talk about number one.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make
constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other
paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on
clothing and in public displays.

There is no doubt that we have seen this since 9/11. As William Strauss said, the post-9/11 mood revealed a new "reactionary nationalism." God Bless America began the new pseudo-national-anthem for the nation. Citizens put up flags everywhere. Not that there is anything wrong with this. But it is the usage of patriotic symbols that is worrysome. The leaders of the nation were able to take patriotism, and turn it into a dangerous form of nationalism.

Those who are old enough to recall the political and social climate of the first half of the 20th century likely remembers nationalism being a widespread social philosophy during this era. The rise of Mussolini during the early 1920s made nationalism look very attractive worldwide. Nationalism began to spring up everywhere. The Nazi Party began to grow during this period, as did the Ku Klux Klan, and many other pro-fascist regimes.

In all of these fascist regimes, the state is not only above the individual, but above the community, and even the nation itself. It might sound weird to some of you that I say that in a fascist regime, the state is above the nation. But that is exactly what occurs in a fascist regime. All of the decisions made by the leaders are made to benefit the state, and not the people or the communities that make up the society. Since 9/11, there has been a scary power grab by our government. With the amount of power that the federal government has taken, Republicans should be in insurrection against them. But even as they watch Bush destroy whatever was left of the ideal of smaller and limited government, they go along, mainly because they do not want the anti-war crowd to be right. For a long time, conservatives have listened to Republican candidates speak of small and limited government. The Republican ideal of "small government" is fraudulent. The government is growing in size, much more so than any other era since LBJ was president. Some conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, see right through this, and have become anti-Bush agitators. Buchanan's racism, however, is another matter, one that I will discuss in some future blog entry.

When Republicans speak of smaller government, this can be translated into "eliminate social programs that benefit citizens." Ssome think that this may be worth it to "prove a point," and to push laissez-faire economics." This philosophy of limited government does not fit the military. While cutting social programs, neocons want to expand the military. If they get their way, we will soon be in a nation in which the military has become the government, and possibly an Orwellian nightmare. Taxes would be even worse because the vast majority of the populace would be economically worse off (which is already the case now), and corporations would have the political power to shift the entire tax burden upon those who are not within the corporate/political class.

Normally, the state becomes much more powerful, just as the citizens of the nation lose their political power. Roads continue to worsen. Schools, starved of funding, begin to crumble, the quality of education worsens. In the state of New York, schools have become so financially strapped that students have to pay tuition to attend summer school. In Chicago and NYC, schools are starting to drop lower performing students from the rolls because the state is increasingly unable to afford them. This prompted a political upheaval in California with the recall election. All across the nation, states are strapped of cash. But the resources are increasingly going to the state. Not even veterans were safe from relentless tax cuts. Veteran benefits have been dramatically curtailed, in an era of war. Bush has appointed himself the czar of terrorism, just as we have a czar of the drug war.

When you look at the anti-terror measures themselves, you can tell that the Bush adminitration is not totally serious about fighting terrorism. We have satellites that can see the license plate of a car and we can't spot OBL? He is the perfect villain. Kinda like a cartoon villain. You know, the archenemy who always (somehow) gets away when the heroes arrive, to cause more mayhem down the road. How much security is along the Mexico-US border? Not very much. We have fought wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, but what about Saudi Arabia? That will not happen unless either the nation imposes an embargo against the US, or radicals gain control of the nation. After 9/11 the neocons told us to go shopping (let us do all of the work, and you can continue on with your lives as the War on Terror is not happening). The most they ever came up with is the underfunded FreedomCorp, and also measures to protect against bioterror using duct tape and plastic (remember "duck and cover"?). The government told us not to reveal any weaknesses in our security because it might aid the terrorists. If the weakness in security is there, the terrorists, so determined to kill Americans, would find them BEFORE American citizens. And besides, if no one tells of a massive security hole in which the smuggling of nuclear arms would be made easy, then even after the attack happens, the terrorists can keep on using this security hole until it is found out. How many cities could be nuked in such a scenario? I know many people personally who would do a much better job of fighting terrorism than the current regime.

With nationalism, the leaders place the interests of the state above the interests of the nation itself. The condition of the nation worsens and worsens, while nothing is really being done about it. Meanwhile, the state robs the people of whatever political power and wealth they have left, and turn into a monster that is on a consumption binge on the general wealth of the citizens themselves. It is looking like America is veering in this direction. And we must stop it.

Not to say that patriotism is wrong. When used for the right purposes, it can be a benefit to all. Just look at an earlier blog entry in which I posted an article entitled The Progressive Case for Patriotism. This is a patriotism that is far suited better to America than reactionary nationalism. This is the type of patriotism that this nation was founded on. Not blind allegiance to the state, but solidarity with your fellow countrymen. I'm talking about a patriotism that truly defends our values. In the Pledge of Allegiance, the last line reads, "with liberty and justice, for all." That is what we should be striving for. True American patriots are the ones who want to expand this concept of "liberty and justice for all." Instead of a "golden ladder for [your]self," we should push the concept of "a broad highway in which thousands of your fellow countrymen are advancing with you." That is patriotism, not nationalism.

Stay tuned for the second characteristic of fascism.

2004-07-14T11:15:00.000-05:00

According to a recent Newsweek article, the government might be preparing to postpone or cancel elections in the event of a major terrorist attack. If this happens, it would be unprecedented in the United States. Officials often cited the results of the Spanish elections, which cause a large upheaval, putting a Socialist Party member in power. They fear the same could happen here. Nevermind that if the election were held today, Bush would likely lose regardless of whether more attacks happen. But who could really win the election in the case of such an event? The only other person is Kerry. Not even Nader is really in the race. And both Kerry and Bush are staunch supporters of the War on Terrorism, of the Iraqi War, etc. So what if we have Kerry in power? It is likely that he would go on to invade Iran and North Korea. Cancelling the elections will not much change the outcome because either Bush will be reelected, or Kerry will win the election.

Is this a sign of creeping fascism? Recall that General Tommy Franks, in this article, stated that, "if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government."

The postponement of elections could be a step in this direction. In the past, we've experienced much greater war emergencies, such as the Civil War, and World War II. Not even during these periods did the president cancel elections. We have already taken steps with Patriot Acts I and II, and with the opening of concentration camps such as the one at Guantanemo Bay. The Bill of Rights has effectively been eliminated by the Patriot Act.

But going back to Spain, why did they elect a Socialist in power? Was it the right thing to do? Only time will tell. But after the attacks, most Spanish were "tired of the government's lies." Perhaps, the Socialist wasn't the right person to elect. But again, only time will tell. But the Prime-Minister-elect was an alternative to the neo-liberal government that had been in place since the overthrow of dictator Franco during the mid 1970s.

If the elections are cancelled here in the US, then the terrorists have won. The United States will then officially cease to be a democratic republic. The unthinkable would have happened: the US would become a totalitarian state. And once you lose your liberties, don't expect to ever regain them without a fight. Despots do not like to release power. Even after the terrorist threat has passed, which could be decades from now at the extreme latest, do you actually think that the rulers will voluntarily give up power? When has such a thing occurred in history? When despots rule, they never give back power to the people, not without a fight. The communist bloc collapsed only because civilians overthrew the communist governments. In Russia, civilians prevented a communist coup attempt to take back power. Whatever your party affiliation, whether or not you support the War on Terror, please do NOT allow the elections to be cancelled under ANY circumstances. If we do so, America will be no more. It may sound sensible now, but when your friends and family mysteriously disappear into death camps (for real, or even imagined dissent), I bet you will have a change of mind.

2004-07-06T13:13:00.000-05:00

The Progressive Case for Patriotism

http://www.alternet.org/stories/19146/

"Since 9/11, patriotic expressions in public life have dramatically soared. We see displays of the Stars and Stripes on cars, businesses, T-shirts, caps, lapel pins and even tattoos, along with bales of CDs with patriotic songs. During periods of social and political turmoil, America's leaders have always sought to impose rituals of loyalty, civics lessons and other forms of patriotic observance. In that tradition, George W. Bush has tried to define opposition to his war policy as unpatriotic. His first response to 9/11 included the declaration that "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," a comment aimed not only at leaders of other nations but at domestic critics as well. (The misnamed Patriot Act was clearly designed to stigmatize dissent.) And the buildup to the Iraq invasion was framed by endless miles of star-spangled bunting and the continuous looping of "God Bless America."

"This post-9/11 patriotic fervor has revitalized the conventional wisdom that love of country is synonymous with conservatism. Conservatives, we are told, wave the flag. Or wear it on their lapels. Leftists, by contrast, only scorn it. Or burn it. Since the Vietnam War era, many liberals and progressives have been uncomfortable about patriotism. They equate it with jingoism and militarism. They have been reluctant to wave the flag. They weren't sure it was theirs. And George W. Bush's brand of blind "my country right or wrong" jingoism has, on this Fourth of July, only deepened the dilemma."

"Indeed, throughout the nation's history, many American radicals and progressive reformers proudly asserted their patriotism. To them, America stood for basic democratic values – economic and social equality, mass participation in politics, free speech and civil liberties, elimination of the second-class citizenship of women and racial minorities, a welcome mat for the world's oppressed people. The reality of corporate power, right-wing xenophobia, and social injustice only fueled progressives' allegiance to these principles and the struggle to achieve them."

"Most Americans are unaware that much of our patriotic culture – including many of the leading symbols and songs that have become increasingly popular since September 11 – was created by writers of decidedly progressive sympathies."

"The Pledge of Allegiance itself was originally authored and promoted by a leading Christian socialist, Francis Bellamy (cousin of best-selling radical writer Edward Bellamy), who was fired from his Boston ministry for his sermons depicting Jesus as a socialist. Bellamy penned the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America by promoting use of the flag in public schools. He hoped the pledge would promote a moral vision to counter the climate of the Gilded Age, with its robber barons and exploitation of workers. Bellamy intended the line "One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all" to express a more collective and egalitarian vision of America."

"In the Depression years and during World War II, the fusion of populist, egalitarian and anti-racist values with patriotic expression reached full flower. Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "A Lincoln Portrait" are now patriotic musical standards, regularly performed at major civic events, written by a member of a radical composers' collective."

Personally, I think that every progressive needs to read this article. For too long, progressivism has been equated with anti-Americanism. To many people, having love for America means "My nation, right or wrong." If a regime came along that was the equivalent of a Hitler regime, would these people still follow? Perhaps. But many would also come to their senses. For those progressives with an unfavorable view of America, a few will continue down the path of hatred for America, while the rest will reunite with the core American ideals and work to strive them.

The story of America is an ongoing one. The Revolution is still going on. It did not end with the ratification of the constitution in 1789, but stretched through Abolitionism, Reconstruction, Labor movements, gender equity movements, universal suffrage, Civil Rights.

During the 1960s, an interesting thing happened. During that era, hopes and dreams were shattered. The sense of idealism was replaced by cynicism about America as it did not live up to its promises. The progressives who attacked America did not hate it, for the most part, but were disappointed at it. Thus began the long fight against the idealists and the "America, love it or leave it" crowd. Many progressives became cynical of these cynical progressives, and turned to conservatism.

But, as the article states, in times of political and social turmoil, people find a newfound love for their society, and work hard to bring their ideal society about. We are in such times now. Conservatives already have love for their country, and progressives are rediscovering it. The fight for "liberty and justice for all" is not over. Not by a long shot. We have much work to do if this is to be ensured. While practically every progressive is disappointed in America's past and current breaches of the ideal of "liberty and justice for all", these same progressives hold a boundless love of the same ideal, and a wanting to make America live to its promises. Granted, we may not succeed in the next major social movement, but we will move ever closer.

2004-06-30T17:21:00.000-05:00

Repost

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
Free Inquiry

Spring 2003

5-11-3

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler
(Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and
several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make
constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other
paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on
clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of
enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are
persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The
people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to
eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious
minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of
government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to
be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional
gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled
by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and
executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational
tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist
nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to
manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common
from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are
diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders
into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of
labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are
either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia.
It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the
police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are
often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in
the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually
unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always
are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other
to government positions and use governmental power and authority to
protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are
a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear
campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of
legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and
manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

2004-06-30T16:07:00.000-05:00

Have you ever read the book Engines of Creation? If you are interested in the subject of nanotechnology, or with any future technology for that matter, the book is a great read. The book is now available for free online viewing, or for downloading as a PDF file. The URL is: http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html.

2004-06-30T12:43:00.000-05:00

The Cassini mission just keeps getting interesting. Cassini was able to measure jet stream winds in the atmosphere of Titan, which travels up to 470 MPH, about twice the speed of jet stream winds on Earth. Even the stratospheric winds near the equator are as fast as jet stream winds on Earth. This might make for some interesting weather.

Jet stream winds are formed because cold air is more dense than warm air. A vertical column of warm air will rise higher than a column of cool air. When both air masses meet, the warm air will rush over this height gap, with with the rotation of the planet, can reach high speeds. When the jet stream is flowing at a high speed, the point where the winds begin to diverge is where a surface low pressure is likely to form, while a high pressure is likely where the winds converge. Do these fast jet stream winds mean that Titan experiences stormy weather with high winds, heavy precipitation, and possibly thunder? We'll see as the mission progresses.

2004-06-30T12:38:00.000-05:00

For Lunar exploration, mobile Lunar bases may be the way to go. But how would you power a base? Perhaps, the motor of the base can be powered using batteries, with refueling stations on the Moon with stored solar energy. Imagine being able to hook up mobile bases to each other.

I suspect that this same idea will be used for Martian exploration.

2004-06-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

The hour that many of us have been waiting on for seven years is nearly here. The Cassini spacecraft is cruising in the Saturn system. Tomorrow, the spacecraft will do a flyby of the moon Phoebe. The moment that I have been waiting for, which is the dropping of the Huygens probe into Titan, will not happen until January.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04q.html

2004-06-10T00:59:00.000-05:00

Coders like to write comments in the source code for software for many reasons. Comments are blocks of code that the compiler or interpreter totally ignores during compile-time or run-time. The official usage of comments in source code is to document what a particular piece of code does, and to provide any useful information about that code block. When writing large programs, using comments becomes a necessity it you want to understand hundreds of thousands or more lines of code. Another popular usage of comments is called "commenting out." This technique puts an actual piece of code inside a comment block to ignore at compile or run time. This is very useful for debugging and testing code.

One would think that there is very little oversight in what appears in comments, and as this article states, that is often the case.

2004-01-02T12:35:00.000-06:00

Welcome to 2004, people. In about 6 months, the Cassini Spacecraft will enter orbit around Saturn. In one more year, the Huygens probe will be dropped into the atmosphere of Titan. I can barely wait!! So where is Cassini now? According to this pic, looks pretty close.

2003-12-16T17:28:00.000-06:00

"It's disturbing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails into fascism. While we must not allow the fascists to define what the nation is, or who it belongs to, it's worth keeping in mind that nationalism, in all its many avatars - socialist, capitalist and fascist - has been at the root of almost all the genocides of the twentieth century. On the issue of nationalism, it's wise to proceed with caution." -- Arundhati Roy

2003-12-16T17:26:00.000-06:00

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency, and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government, and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principals, the taxpayers will be saving immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master, and become the servant of humanity." -- Abraham Lincoln

2003-12-15T01:13:00.000-06:00

This has been a very exciting NFL season for me partly because I am a Rams fan. After starting the season off at 1-2, the Rams are now 11-3 after getting revenge against the Seahawks. With games against Cincinnati and Detroit remaining, the Rams are continuing their rampage, and are poised to finish the season at 13-3. Philly is right up here with the Rams. If they win their remaining games, they will be the top seed in the playoffs. But if they lose to Miami, it is probable (barring a huge upset against the Rams) that the Rams will have HFA.

Kansas City is the chief team in the AFC. And yes, that pun was intended. In fact, if you see me write (or hear me say) a pun, chances are it was intentional. Even before the season started, I knew that KC had a great change at being the 2004 Superbowl champions. But how could someone like me know this? Simply because of the head coach. Dick Vermeil seems to have a pattern. After his third season of coaching, his teams have a history of making the superbowl. This happened to the Philadelphia Eagles during the 1982 season. This happened to the Rams during the 1999 season, and it seems to be happening again in the 2003 season. I was actually a little disappointed with their first loss; I was hoping they would go 16-0.

Right now, the team to beat in the NFC is the St. Louis Rams. They can still blow you out with a high powered offense, as they proved against the Minnesota Vikings. However, they also proved that they can win without blowing you out of the water. Let me tell you. Some of the games this season were just ugly. Even so, we still thrived. We won most of our close games. Winning by way of blowout is impressive, but it is even more impressive to win almost consistently in close games. That shows that your team has character.

So where am I getting at here? With both the Chiefs and the Rams from Missouri, we could have a Govenor's Superbowl. This would be the most watched superbowl in history in the state of Missouri. This will be a very exciting game all across the world.

If this superbowl happens, it will definitely be marked with intense drama. Not only because both teams are in Missouri but because of a bit of history behind both teams.

The Rams moved to St. Louis from Los Angeles in 1995. The 1995 and 1996 seasons just plain sucked. Dick Vermeil came to St. Louis in 1997, and presided over two even more horrifying seasons. In 1999, however, came the Rams Cinderella season. It began on a very sullen mood as Trent Green, then the Rams new starting quarterback, had a season ending injury during the last preseason game as Chargers safety Rodney Harrison tackled him (Oddly enough, during his 2002 season with the Chiefs, he was injured again after being tackled by the very same guy). The Rams broke a few records, and won the superbowl. After that, Dick Vermeil decided that it was time for him to retire again. Trent Green was traded to the Chiefs in 2001. During that same season, Dick Vermeil was hired by the Chiefs (many Rams fans were angry, seeing this as betrayal). That is the same season the Rams returned to the superbowl, only to be upset by the New England Patriots amid a post-9/11 patriotic (well, that pun was actually unintended) fervor under Mike Martz. The 2002 season turned out to be a disaster as the Rams started off at 0-5. After Kurt Warner was injured, there were two more quarterbacks that sucked. Then Marc Bulger finally got his shot, and won six games that season. After losing in the first game of the 2003 season (and after fans threatened to set afire his family dog {j/k}), Mike Martz decided to bench Bulger. At first, it really didn't look like it was going to be much of a season, but as it went on, people became more and more optimistic. Now, we are probably the top NFC team to reach the superbowl. At the beginning of the season, it was already apparent that the Chiefs were going to be the dominant team in the AFC.

And there is where the drama now becomes more intense. Mike Martz was the offensive coordinator under Dick Vermeil in 1999, but took control of the Rams in 2000 after Vermeil's retirement. Mike Martz again took the team to the superbowl in 2001, but didn't receive a Vince Lombardi trophy. Now, Mike Martz and Dick Vermeil can challenge each other in a clash of the titans. A clash of the coaches. Both know each other pretty well. Trent Green knows the Rams well, and the Rams know Trent Green well. Both are Missouri teams. Kansas City is the easternmost western city in America, while St. Louis is the westernmost eastern city in America. Both cities are on opposite sides of the state. Kansas City proper has the largest population with 426,000 to St. Louis's 342,000, while St. Louis has the largest metro population with 2.6 million to Kansas City's 1.6 million. Both cities compete for the top city in Missouri. The distance between the cities is 254 miles. Just a 5 hour drive down Interstate 70.

Superbowl XXXVIII could be the most exciting, and most intense superbowl in history.

2003-12-14T12:24:00.000-06:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60363-2003Dec12.html

Remember the segregationist Strom Thurmond who died last June at 100? It turns out he has a biracial daughter. Thurmond has been providing financial support since 1941 to his daughter when he acknowledged it.

What I find odd is that during and just after World War II, he seemed more like a progressive, but in 1948, suddenly changed his views to that of an old guard segregationist. According to his daughter, those were not his real views, and he was only pleasing his supporters.

This kind of thing has been going on far more often, and far longer than most people realize. Of course, we all know about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. How many of these politicians have these skeletons in their closets? Probably far more than people can imagine.

Interracial relationships are not new. They are as old as the human race itself. There was a lot of race-mixing in the Egyptian empire, in Rome and Greece, in Persia, and in southern Europe as the Moors were in control until 1492. This carried over into America with the start of indentured servitude and slavery. There is much more mixing today, but there was a lot back in the days of slavery and Jim Crow from the 1600s to the 1960s too. Back then, most of it was underground. People did it, but didn't like to talk about it. White males could talk about it because their power status enabled them to. Back in the days of Jim Crow, it was commonly said by white males (and I paraphrase), "You have not fucked until you've fucked a black female." White females also had relations, but had to be much more secretive about it.

2003-12-14T12:06:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, St. Louis had its first snowstorm. This storm dumped 3.7 inches officially at the airport, with totals ranging from 2 to 5 inches across the area. My neck of the woods received just over 3 inches of snow. This is not a lot of snow, but a nice first snowfall. It was an all day snow event, lasting from about 8 AM Satuday to 2 AM Sunday. For most of the day, the snow was light, but there were periods of moderate snow. Columbia, which is 120 miles to the west, received 7 to 10 inches of snow from this storm. This storm will become a major Nor'easter as it reaches the coast. This will be another blockbuster storm, which is slated to dump 1 - 2 feet of snow in the interior Northeast, with cities like Albany receiving the brunt of it, with an expected 2 feet. For the eastern US, December started on a stormy note.

2003-12-11T19:10:00.000-06:00

Someone gave me these defining characteristics of fascism:

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
Free Inquiry

Spring 2003

5-11-3

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler
(Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and
several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make
constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other
paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on
clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of
enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are
persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The
people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to
eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious
minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of
government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to
be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional
gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled
by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and
executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational
tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist
nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to
manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common
from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are
diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders
into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of
labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are
either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia.
It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the
police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are
often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in
the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually
unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always
are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other
to government positions and use governmental power and authority to
protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are
a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear
campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of
legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and
manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

2003-12-11T18:45:00.000-06:00

The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushes its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks. . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. . . the issuing power should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson

2003-12-11T16:42:00.000-06:00

Leftists have been persecuted since the early 1920s Red Scare. Most especially hard hit were the anarchists...those who believed that all forms of state power were illegitimate. America took a decisive turn from democracy during the 1930s. The election of FDR was not the best thing that could've happened to our nation; neither was it the worst. The attempted fascist coup during the mid 1930s could've succeeded; now THAT would've been the worst that could happen. While some cannot imagine a better outcome of the 1930s and 1940s, I personally believe that it could've been much better. Skolnick wrote that, "In the 1930s, a charming, patrician President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was falsely described by the media fakers as a traitor to his class. In truth, he was the greatest counter-revolutionary in American history. Because of widespread hardships in the Great Depression, America was at the point of Revolution. At that time, however, there was a large number of foreign born---if they had to sleep under bridges when it rains, they preferred to do so in America, not in Europe. By giving a very few benef its to the unemployed, Roosevelt, to aid the Aristocracy, headed off a possibly real revolution. His declaration in 1933 of a Bank Holiday, saved the huge money center bankers while swallowing up the numerous local community banks."

2003-12-10T14:35:00.000-06:00

In other news, Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Al Gore both endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination for the 2004 presidential election. These might be seen as critical events if Dean is elected. Gore has asked the Democrats to unite behind Howard Dean. Hopefully, Jesse Jackson's endorsement will push African Americans to vote for Howard. Both men realize (along with the grass-roots Democratic support) that the number one agenda is unseating the Bush regime. Most grass-roots Democrats will support whichever Democratic candidate will beat Bush. Many will even vote for Lieberman. He'll be better than Bush, many speculate. Many would rather have Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton as president, but no one has faith that they can win. The American citizens are putting their faith and energy into Dean's campaign. On the T4T website, I made a prediction just after the November 2002 election that there would be a grass-roots revolt against the Democratic Party. This has come into fruition. The year 2003 has been exciting for grass-roots Democrats, but 2004 will be better yet.

2003-12-10T12:12:00.000-06:00

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger, and are not fed, those who are cold, and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." -- Dwight Eisenhower

2003-12-09T16:08:00.000-06:00
Sorry for not updating my blog lately. Just been caught up in other tasks, but I will spend more time on this blog.

The latest news is that another tropical cyclone has formed in the Atlantic, making this the second storm to form after the end of the hurricane season. It is already near hurricane strength. It will not hit anywhere in the vicinity of the North American continent. It is expected to strengthen into a hurricane.

2003-11-22T15:52:00.000-06:00
Black Like Me?

Here is a recent account of Joshua Solomon, who altered his racial appearance to see what blacks go through everyday. Solomon states that, "I was confused and angry about the intense emotions that petty indignities stirred in me. I'd hardly started on my journey, but I was already furious, almost to the point of paralysis...I began to cry as I recounted the events of the last two days, the drip-drop of indifference and fear from the white people I had encountered. Their lack of patience, their downright contempt....I was sick of being black. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to throw up...Usually, I'd made friends pretty easily. I was nice to them and they were nice to me. Now people acted like they hated me. Nothing had changed but the color of my skin."

All I have to say is wow!! This hits very close to home for me. Except for the part of being sick of being black. That I wouldn't change for anything. Basically, this is the story of my experience in school. The schools I went to were usually mixed. Almost half of the student body was black, nearly half were white, and maybe up to 10% were Asian. At the time, however, I didn't recognize it for what it was. My childhood was more complicated than this. I felt hated by both black and white kids growing up. From about 4th to 10th grade, what Solomon described above was routine, everyday behavior in the hands of black and whites alike. 6th and 7th grade were the most intense years, and this behavior went on the entire school day. I have to say that my experiences have been more intense than what Solomon described. Imagine what Solomon described above. Now put in there nearly every form of bullying one could muster. Add in being constantly provoked for fights, and endless nasty comments, name calling, and humiliation. Yes, I did have a few black and white friends. Early in life, I wondered why black kids treated me bad. As I look back, maybe I seemed a little "too white". Interestingly, I got along very well with Asians. By the time I became a Junior in high school, this constant humiliation was reduced to zero.

Notice how angry Solomon was at the treatment he received as a black man. Imagine this happening over the course of someone's life. Of course, non-black people experience this behavior too. Remember Columbine? I can totally relate to the rage they felt that caused those murders. Like the main character Jack in Fight Club, those of us who are constantly subjected to this vile treatment have fantasies of "..stalking from office to office with an Armatile AR-10 Carbine-Gas semiautomatic weapon, bitterly pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers..." I can tell you that I fantasized committing a Columbine style murder throughout my 6th and 7th grade years. Obviously, I kept that in the realm of fantasy. But it is a serious rage that affects teenage males. Black males have had to experience this much longer, and are much more used to it.

2003-11-22T12:38:00.000-06:00
According to this article, General Franks does not believe that the US Constitution will survive a WMD attack. The way things are going, I have my doubts too. Not only because the public will demand it, but because of ignorance of the masses. Most likely (as they did with the Patriot Act and other despotic laws), the government will suspend the constitution in secret. By the time we hear about it, the constitution will already be in the trash bin. Perhaps, it is already too late. The Patriot Act already nulllifies the Bill of Rights, and has radically shifted the balance of power to favor the Executive Branch, and dramatically reduced judicial checks on executive powers. What's even worse is that the Patriot Act is being used to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with terrorism; they are using it against everyday crimes. I've read comments on the article, and one of the most common is that the US government is preparing us for martial law, and are planning to suspend the constitution. This is not surprising to me at all. Hell, they've been preparing for this for years.

Whether you like it or not, those in power really hate the concept of popular sovereignty. Most of the founders didn't want a Bill of Rights in the constitution, but the public fought to have it included. Just after the ratification of the constitution, Congress passed the Sedition and Alien Acts, which basically nullified the First Amendment of the Constitution. Jefferson wanted to include two more amendments that put limits on corporate power. We can see the results of the non-inclusion of these amendments today with the control the corporations have over the government. Skolnick writes, "Seldom if ever mentioned there has been no genuine revolution in what is now called the United States of America, or whatever led up to the same. The so-called American Revolutionary War is wrongly-named. It was merely the American business interests sore at the London government about collecting taxes."

2003-11-21T01:02:00.000-06:00
Thom Hartmann states his views on why church and state should be separate.

2003-11-19T12:38:00.000-06:00
What will winter 2003 - 2004 bring to St. Louis?

This could be a memorable one here. Look at this graphic from WxRisk.com.

This graphic is enough to make your mouth water in anticipation. With the polar jet's average position in and around St. Louis, with the subtropical jet just to the south, it is a good bet that we will often be in the line of fire of most winter storms. Plus, a negative NAO will mean an expansion of the polar vortex to the south, meaning we will see some nice arctic outbreaks.

The preliminary data is very exciting. Current snow cover is much above normal in both Asia and Canada. Because snow is reflective, it is the breeding ground for polar air. In fact, after a snowstorm, the snow cover normally lowers the temperature by another 10 to 15 degrees. When the snow cover sticks around, all levels of the atmosphere will cool down. If the snowpack develops enough to the south, then we can expect some major snowstorms. Imagine a molasses thick layer of arctic air near the ground at about 5 degrees. Then allow juicy, gulf air at 50 degrees to overrun this frigid air. These temperature contrasts can mean convective snow squalls, and an increased chance of thundersnow. If this happens I have my video camera ready!!! Last time we had thundersnow here was on March 12, 2000. The storm dumped 6 inches in 3 hours over my neighborhood, while about 30 miles to the northwest, a foot fell in the same amount of time.

This weekend, we will see a blizzard develop over the Northern Plains and Minnesota, and totals of up to 2 feet are not out of the question over the Dakotas. Here in St. Louis, we will likely only see a few snowflakes on Monday from this storm.

2003-10-25T15:19:00.000-05:00

*lancer*

a master of the spear and lance.

quiet; loyal; dedicated

[Final Fantasy Job Class]

2002-10-29T10:39:00.000-06:00
Are you on the Patriotic Left? For many people, the term may seem to be an oxymoron, but rest assured that it exists. In fact, it is the patriotic left that has been the driving force of American history, whether it is Cotton Mather writing his Treatise on Government in the midst of forgotten colonial democratic struggles of the 1680s that led to the Glorious Revolution, or Tom Paine (who was 200 years ahead of his time) distributing his American Crisis pamphlets around the colonies in 1776, or John Brown causing a civil insurrection against the slavers on the eve of Civil War, or the labor activists of the 1930s, or the civil rights protesters of the 1950s and 1960s. Today, anti-war protesters are continuing this tradition. Most of the people against the war are not against it because they are anti-America. Far from it. The protesters have the love for the most fundamental principles of what it is to be an American. They know more than anyone else what our forefathers fought for. Without knowing it, they are heeding the warning of George Washington against entangling foreign alliances, which would definitely subvert democracy. Having fought a destructive war against the British, the colonists sought to put the public interests well above the private interests. In fact, that is what the Boston Tea Party was about. Knowing firsthand the dangers of ultrapowerful private interests, the founders of America posed significant warnings against therise of private interest. As it turns out, they were right, and we are today paying the price.
Unlike other nations, America is based upon an idea, not on geography or ethnicity. It is the idea of the spread of freedom. It is the idea that ordinary citizens are in control of their government rather than the other way around. For those who do not understand, the American Revolution has not ended. You had better hope that it NEVER ends because the end of it means the end of America. It will mean a reversal of all of the reforms of democracy since 1776. While the fight for freedom never ends, it lays dormant at times, such as in the 1990s. However, it always experiences a dramatic revival. This is one of those times. The battles of today are against the Military-Industrial Complex, against Empire (and favoring a restoration of the republic), against global corporatization, and for a society based upon more civilian control over the affairs of society, for economic justice, for social justice, for individual liberty, for "power to the people". We are intent in creating a government "for the people, by the people, and of the people". At the fundamental level, the battles are not new. They have been doing in since the founding of this nation, but in various ways, whether it is the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the drafting of the constitution, Nat Turner's slave rebellion, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the veterans who saved the world from Hitler, or the turbulent 1960s. The battle continues.

2002-10-25T15:05:00.000-05:00
Today is a very sad day for patriots and political liberals alike. Today, Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone and his family were killed in a plane crash. I urge everyone to take 10 minutes to reflect on this.

2002-10-22T13:29:00.000-05:00
The game on Sunday against the Seahawks certainly made me happy. Marshall Faulk was just amazing, gaining more than 180 yards rushing and scoring four touchdowns in the 37-20 rout. Are the Rams back yet? We're getting there, but not quite yet. The biggest difference is that the Rams are playing with lots of intensity. The defense was really fired up. They basically gave up one big play, which was when a Rams blitz opened up the secondary, allowing a 77 yard touchdown pass. The special teams had one mistake when they allowed a kickoff return for a touchdown at the end of the first half. Their final score was nothing more than a fluke. Besides those three very lucky plays, I can say that the Rams just whipped the Seahawks. Hopefully, they can keep this energy up.
Marshall Faulk is just awesome. Even his historic 9 yard run that put him over 10,000 rushing yards was one for the highlight reels! It helps that Seattle had the worst rushing D coming into the game, but they played their butts off trying to contain Faulk. The Quarterback Marc Bulger stated that “They should put him in [The NFL Hall of Fame] already, the first active player. He’s like Superman out there. I’m just glad he’s on our side.” Indeed. :-D
Amid all of this happiness over the win, it did come at a cost. The Rams have lost Aeneas Williams for the season with a broken leg and an ankle sprain. That was a very sad moment for all of us Rams fans...to see such a good warrior go down like that.
The Rams have a bye next week. So after two good wins, the Rams take a week off. When the Rams return the following week, they will face the Arizona Cardinals. This should be an easy win.

2002-10-19T13:14:00.000-05:00
Earlier this month, the largest Kuiper Belt object was found. Thus definitely hurts Pluto's image of a planet. It is looking more and more likely that Pluto is actually a large Kuiper Belt object. The newly discovered object, called Quaoar, is one tenth of the diameter of Earth.
For those of you who are interested in the colonization of the Asteroid Belt, it is becoming more obvious that the Kuiper Belt will prove to be a much better place to colonize in the long term.

2002-10-19T13:07:00.000-05:00
According to this article, the glacier on top of Mount Kilimanjaro formed about 11,700 years ago. I find this very interesting as the most recent glacial period in the northern hemisphere ended roughly 11,500 years ago.

2002-10-19T11:01:00.000-05:00
Hugh Hefner said that GWB is the "dumbest president we've ever had." I have to agree. One would think that we have an ape in office. Don't agree with me? Here is proof. ENJOY!

2002-10-18T18:51:00.000-05:00
There is nothing like Sundays during the fall and winter seasons. The reason for this, of course, is football.

Ever since the Rams came to St. Louis, I've been hooked. The first season (1995) was a very hopeful one. We started out at 4-0. We then play San Francisco and got our butts kicked. We never recovered from that defeat, and ended the season at 7-9. The next three seasons were progressively worse. Then in 1999, a miracle happened. An overhaul of the offense resulted in the addition of Torry Holt, Marshall Faulk, and Kurt Warner. We did the unthinkable by winning the superbowl that year. During the 2000 season, the offense was even better, but the Defense was horrible. Even saying that is an understatement as the Rams had a historically bad defense. We still made it to the playoffs, but lost during the Wild-Card round. The 2001 season was a great one. We totally turned our defense around, and went 14-2. We made the superbowl, but fell apart and lost to the Patriots.

This season was a very odd one. We lost our first five games. In the first three games, we lost close ones. The fifth game, however, was just a pure slaughter by the 49ers. Kurt Warner was injured during the third game, and things really began to look bleak. I kept on saying to myself, "The Rams will pull together." After seeing the game against the 49ers, my hopes were lost. I didn't cease being a Rams fan; I'm not a bandwagoner.

Last Sunday, we played the Raiders. Having scored over 100 points in the two games before with a 52-25 win over Tennessee in week 4 and a 49-31 win over Buffalo in week 5, I fully expected for the Rams game against Buffalo to be a total disaster for the Rams. In fact, I expected that they would make the 49er's slaughter in week 5 look tame. How would a 0-5 team with a third string quaterback beat a 4-0 team with over 300 yards passing in each game, the most offense in the NFL (in both points and yards from scrimmage), and the best run defense in the NFL? But that's exactly what happened. It wasn't just that we beat them, we totally spanked them. We routed them!! Before the Raiders finally scored a touchdown that can be accurately described as "garbage points", the Rams held a 28-6 lead over Oakland. It would've been 35-6 if the RB hadn't fumbled the ball at the goal-line before the half was over. But SIX points!? The same team that scored 101 points in the two games before? What was going on? They were being whipped on both sides of the ball. The third string QB threw 3 touchdowns and ran for a fourth. Faulk ran 158 yards against the best run defense in the NFL. The defense sacked Rich Gannon a few times, and forced a few turnovers. Even the special teams had fun when Wilkens nearly scored on a Kickoff Return. All in all, it was a very nice game to watch, unless you were a Raiders fan hoping to beat the defending NFC champions, and with hopes for a 16-0 season. They were no match for Mad Martz and the Rams.

Now, in week 7, we play the Seahawks. They have the worst run defense in the NFL. Hopefully, we will extend our winning streak. What do other people think?

The official spread has the Rams winning by 5.5 points.
Dan Ceasar of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has the Rams winning with a score of 24-17.
Jay Novak of NBCSports.com has the Rams winning.
HBO's NFL Today has all four picking the Rams.
CNNSI has the Rams winning 28-14.
Dr. Z also has the Rams winning.
There is a consensus that the Rams will get their second win of the season. Can they go 11-5 and make the playoffs? One can only hope...GO RAMS!

2002-10-18T17:51:00.000-05:00
Three of the biggest Linux companies are releasing new versions of the operating system. Mandrake is releasing version 9.0, Red Hat is releasing version 8.0, and SuSE is releasing version 8.1 of their distribution. All three of these received rave reviews.

I use the Mandrake distribution, and yes, I have 9.0. I have to say that this is the best distribution yet. I am able to nearly anything on this distribution that I can do in Windows. The GIMP is a very popular free image editing program that is as good as Adobe Photoshop. It also comes with a free Office Suite called OpenOffice which is very compatible with M$ Office files. I can even play my DVDs now on Linux. For those of you who want an RAD programming environment, there is Kylix, which has a free Open Edition available. If you like Visual Basic, you will LOVE Kylix. And if you are a game programmer, don't forget to download the JEDI-SDL library for it.

Linux is almost ready for the home user. The top distributions already have programs to make configuration easy. Linux needs an InstallShield. RPMs are nice, but can still be complex for the average user. Installing (and uninstalling) a program needs to be as easy, if not easier than doing it on Windows.

KDE 3.0 is a VERY nice Desktop Environment. There is nothing like having translucent menus. Hopefully, you'll be able to make your windows translucent in the future. The only problem I have with KDE 3.0 is that my NVidia drivers only work with KDE 2.x. Hopefully, nVidia will fix this problem very soon.

The last thing Linux needs is games. Linux cannot take off on the home desktop unless it has the popular commercial games. However, things might even be looking up here. The reason is that Unreal Tournament 2003 has been released for Linux. When you buy UT2003, it includes a Linux install on the third CD. This was a VERY good idea, and I hope that this will set a precedent for game developers.

2002-10-16T13:56:00.000-05:00
This article is about one of my favorite hobbies: playing 3D shooters over a network. I used to go to the Gateway High in St. Louis. It had an extensive computer network. During my Junior and Senior years, we played PLENTY of Quake. We got in trouble at times for this, but it was worth it! :-) Nothing like using the Quad Damage and axing each other to death.

Right now, I am playing Soldier of Fortune, Counter-Strike, Quake 3 Arena, and Unreal Tournament. I play UT more than any other game at this moment. No other game has faster kills than this one. This game rewards you for several kills in rapid succession. If you get two kills withing two seconds, you are rewarded with "Double Kills". If you then get another one within 2 seconds, you get "Multi Kill". After that, "Ultra Kill", and for 5 or above, "M-M-M-M-Monster Kill!!" Monster Kills are VERY hard to get. The easiest way to get this is to just use the redeemer, and then use the flak cannon to kill even more people. And then of course, using the sniper is very fun. Continuously getting "Head Shots" is challenging. The best map to practice this is Facing Worlds.

Speaking of sniping, I just hope that someone quickly finds the DC sniper. I would say that using ancient torture methods for the rest of his life might be a nice punishment...but too it would fall under "Cruel and Unusual Punishments". Some people are blaming video games for his violent behavior, but I really bed to differ. If he didn't play these games, then he would still commit murder because he is just a sick individual.

Just can't wait to get my hands on UT2003...

2002-10-16T12:06:00.000-05:00
Hello everyone. My name is Robert Reed. I would like to welcome you to my blog, which you will likely find very interesting.

	lancer a master of the spear and lance. quiet; loyal; dedicated
[Final Fantasy Job Class]