The Ultimate Mashup

I'm waiting for the mashup between wikipedia, maps.google, flash, amazon and slashdot. But i don't want the government to see it!

Imagine that all information can be integrated, customized and at your fingertips. You're walking down the street and you see a coffee shop. You dip in and on your PDA phone you get a short bio/hist of the store, the owner, its workers (with their consent and input of course) and the uses of the building before the cofee shop. Your phone also beeps when you have someone who fits your dating profile or blog profile in the nearby record store.

So then you walk the rest of the way to the library to do research. You're just a fan of book, you like the texture. So when you get there you link into the system that knows your reading style preferences and it recommends an author or two that are a little outside of your reading style, but they have insights that both support your views and/or oppose your views. This is all thanks to a human-led tagging mission to cross-classify books.

But you're just there to read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. So you take that home and ride your car-share segue to the bus so you can go home.

Isn't life grand?

tenth dimension

Here's a flash movie that explains how to understand dimensions above five. I thought it would be hard, but the explanation is good.

http://tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

El Metaphoro for Iraqo

The promised metaphor that’ll explain my viewpoint (beware, Bush’s spin people will love this, you might hear it later, but you heard it here first).

So America fashions itself as a global cop. We send in troops into hotspots, we give aid to those in need etc. Whether we’re a “good cop” or “bad cop” is besides the point [further is whether we’re policing the right things- what about international corporate crime!]. Until the Iraqi occupation, the self-perception of many Americans is that this country helps to make sure there are no all-out wars. We do what it takes to keep the peace.

Let’s use that metaphor to analyze the Iraqi occupation:

Let’s say that the cops file a bogus warrant to search a house. And then let’s say that when the cops bust the door down, the people inside are relatively co-operative. The people inside the house even look like they want the cops to evict the person running the house. And eventually, the cops search enough that they find the guy running the house, but they don’t find any evidence to arrest or convict him of anything. So they turn the guy over to the people in the house.

By this time, the folks in the house are pulling out daggers and such to go at each other’s throats. Some of the people in the house want the cops to lead so they can get to fighting over who’s going to be the new leader. Unfortunately, the cops are supposedly the peacekeepers. So they stick around when they see the knives come out. So now, some of the people in the house take the side of the ‘police’ and others want to drive the police out.

So now the cops are stuck fighting the people attacking them, and also helping to train the people in the house to keep the peace.

Let’s say this happened next door to you. What do you think the cops should do? Should they exit so the free-for-all royal rumble can begin? Do the cops have a responsibility to protect the people in the house? Do they have a responsibility to repair the damages they caused?

According to my previous post (look up) these questions aren’t a matter of reality, they’re a matter of principle. As onlookers, we don’t know what’s going on in the house. All we know about is what comes up on the police radio, and sometimes we think that that’s propaganda. As onlookers can we really be the judge of whether we should send in more SWAT or have them pull out?

Not until or not unless we have reports from people in the house about what’s going on. So my official position is neither for nor against the war. My official position is that I am not informed enough to develop a sound argument either way. My official position is that I would like more open access to information for me and my fellow Americans so we know what’s going on in the house!

My opposition to “positions on the Iraqi occupation/war”

In line with me being a devil’s advocate by nature, let me say that “this isn’t your moms’ blogged opinion about the ‘war’.” I’m not actually debating whether American forces ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be in Iraq. Rather I’m talking about how ‘sane’ it is or isn’t for people in America to have an opinion about the war. Then at the end, or in the next of my blog entries I’ll explain part of my opinion about the war with use of a metaphor.

I think that what’s in Iraq is more accurately described as an occupation than ‘war’

I think it ludicrous for the American public to have an opinion about whether the war is going ‘well’ or not. I think it’s ludicrous because the American public has very little, if any, unfiltered information about the actual state of the war.

So I’m only 29. But in talking to my father, he mentioned that during the Vietnam War, when over 500,000 troops were in that country, that everyday people got a real sense of the war. He says that you not only knew somebody, but you knew a couple people who were in the war . . . you couldn’t not know anyone who was over there. If you wanted to know about the war, you didn’t have to look at tv, you walked down the street and talked to a vet. But today, that’s not the case.

We as an American people are not getting (enough or quality) information about what’s going on in the war. During the Vietnam War, there was lots of film footage by journalists about what was happening during the war. Today, with more communication capacity (youtube, google video, etc) there is actually less video of what’s happening in Iraq (why do you think?) than happened in Vietnam [and why are the only footages of the first and only Iraqi war of one smartbomb?). With the advent of the worldideweb and so forth why isn’t there more information about the war than daily body-counts? How come we don’t see graphics of Iraqi/US and enemy-held territory? Why don’t we have blogs of Iraqi citizens?

Also, there is not a lot of reporting of the day-to-day living conditions of the ‘common man’ in Iraq, i.e. how violence affects her/his life and her/his daily routine. What’s happening with the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq? What’s happening in the economic sphere? Is the country being developed? Is infrastructure being laid, if so what kind of infrastructure (roads, schools, electric, etc)? What’s going on with the Iraqi government: what are they voting on, what are they fighting about?

With so little information about what’s happening on the ground, why would anyone venture to make a judgment of whether American soldiers and material ‘should’ be in or be withdrawn from Iraqi? Any position is baseless and unfounded.

My problem with people making pronouncements for or against the occupation/war is that they’re doing so based on their values, not based on reality. I mean, do you trust the veracity of information coming from the same government that fought the war based on a less-than-reliable powerpoint presentation?

State of the Union

Apparently there's some guy in washington who talked to a lot of other guys in washington about the state of some union. I say apparently, because from what i heard, that guy wasn't saying anything that had much substance. I can't create that much spin on a backhanded dropshot.

My dad watched it. No wonder he calls it the 'boob toob'. I'm not sure if he's talking about the people watching it or the people on it. Pops said he watches PBS about 90% of the time. I said i'd get cable (jokingly of course) so he could watch the history and discovery channel. Then he said he'd only watch PBS 80% of the time. Touche (pronounced:Twoshay)

I don't know about politics. Seems like a lot of people positioning and frontin and trying to sound good. And really they're not saying anything. Suits on a street corner.

If i were president, all my cabinet people would have some kind of engineering degree. Why? Because at least you have to think rigorously and precisely about what you're studying. I have a history degree. I took other humanities classes. It's mostly drivel. Someone trying to put a slightly different perspective on the same thing. I get more perspectives on things walking down a street than reading a book.

Let's face it, most people write 75% drivel in any kind of writing class, and you can't BS your way through a calculus function. But if I were president . . . more drivel

What else? . . .

Audiophile, . . . well ipodophiles at least

The last post was about visual somethings, this is about the sounds.

Itunes, it is what i live and breathe by.

So i got BeaTunes (www.beatunes.com ) . It's a program that finds all the beats per minute of your songs and puts them in itunes. I had thought that was great back when i had a kilo of songs (a thousand songs for you americans). And i've been pining and pouting about not having that at my now 6kilos of songs (six thousand for you slow americans). Enter stage right, with pyrotechnics BeaTunes.

Not only can it do beats per minute (bpm), it also listens to the song to figure out what other songs it sounds like. So you can do moods that cross genres. However, this sounds a little shaky. I like Pandora, and i know they have professional musicians analyzing songs. i'm not sure that this 6mb program approach, much less reach and surpass that. But as we speak the program is going through my whole itunes library, so we'll see after a week or two. I'll create a couple playlists and burn through them to see what this program's got. I'll admit, it's probably one of the first web-based programs [non-box] i think i'll buy.

The disappointing thing is that i have no real home computer. I juggle a couple different computers, so i don't know how to have it analyze my ipod's songs. I think i'll have to bite the bullet and erase all my ratings and playcount. That should put things back on an even basis, cuz John legend is in heavy rotation and has like 26 plays whereas marvin is hovering around 6-7. I wish there was a way to corret that.

But the re-rating isn't so bad. A few months ago i erased all my 3* (3 star) songs cuz my library was getting bohemouth. And i wanted to re-rate all my stars to more align with the netflix rating system: hated it, 2didn't like it, 3 liked it, 4 really liked it, 5 loved it. I had been rating 2's and 3's together and only listened much to 4's and 5's. But that reduces my listening experience. So this'll give me a fresh start.

Visual Artists Unite, or not

So, i've been on a little bit of an artist kick again. I just bought "art as experience" by John Dewey (which reminds me i lost a library book). This is a pretty cool book but i've only read the first two chapters. It's amazing how people from 100 years ago write so differently from today. It used put me off, i.e. i thought the works were too inaccessible, but now it's kind of seductive of how to put myself in that kind of thinking.

What prompted this book? A comic book no less. A few months ago when i was teaching myself to draw, i bought a book "Perspective! for comic book artists" by Scott McCloud. It was great. Most of the time in drawing books you see either a lot of words about a few pictures, or a lot of pictures with few words. So you're either inndated or starved for explanation. With comics as his medium of explanation, he shows you in frame-by-frame/step-by-step how to do everything you wanted with perspective. Then i realized that comics was simply the perfect medium for such instruction (art- and i say that with tongue in cheek).

So i later read his book (got from the Library- freedom ahoy!) "Understanding Comics" which was a tour-de-force (always wanted to write that) about comics as art, not just art's bastard child. He explored the medium, through the medium. For instance, remember how seductive it was in the Sound of Music when they would sing about music using music? Well, its kinda the same thing, only comics and comics, and the thrill is still there. So he examines comics with a depth and breadth i've never thought about. Apparently he does it with a depth and breadth that most comic artists haven't seen, hence the rave reviews.

So i'm on an art kick. So when i was in the bookstore browsing for something that would tweak my interest, I came upon this book "art as expereince". So far his main point is about how art has been abstracted and bastardized from everyday life. And only in the context of everyday life can we really understand art. Point seems cool, but it's a long book and i hope he has some other insightful stuff to say. incidentally this helps round out my philosophical readings, which has been a kick of mine for a while.

Obama for emperor. . .not

So, what's new?

Obama for Emperor. . . he hath no clothes, no substance, only that politically seductive smile. The only clean guy in the mudslinging fight. I read his second book. He's playing the role of a referee, which is great and what we 'need'. But how is he going to ref the superbowl when he's new to high-school ball? The book is good. But after the first three chapters there isn't any more substance to be had. Rather the book is about outlining his perspective, not his plan. Think of it as a book about the art, not art itself.

What do i think? Gore for president, Obama as vice pres. This would give Gore another run, with a highly seductive candidate on his heels. And this will also give Obama the necessary experience to know what the big house is like.

Beware, watch out for Gingrich. He'll be late in comin, but he'll be blowin full steam ahead when he throws his hat into the race. His late start will place him in the role as a new/fresh face (cough) in a field of people already being criticized.