May 2008 Archives

Listen to this! Clear, logical, fact-based, honest, direct talk from a politician! Obama is blowing my socks off!

Personal change is hard. Institutional change is almost impossible.

Influence begets money. Money begets influence. And the cycle begins.

And somehow along the way Congress lost touch with the ordinary American: with you and with me. Moneyed interests have been influencing media, manipulating what Joe and Jane American get to see and hear, and therefore think about. Moneyed interests shape what does and does not get done in Congress.

So now we have a political landscape that forces our attention to issues that are divisive while moneyed interests wield their influence. Wealthy people gain more wealth. And now Joe and Jane's son or daughter goes off to war. Joe and Jane can't afford gas to get to work. Joe and Jane lose their home. Joe and Jane can't afford medical care. Joe and Jane can't afford food. We're way off track here.

And yet our political structures want us to keep our eye on the divisive issues of the day. Why, exactly?

I believe strongly that we need to get government back in the business of the people, of taking care of all of the Joes and Janes of our country.

I came across attorney and professor Lawrence Lessig's work, battling the corporate self-indulgent interests of media owners via copyright law, several years ago. I've been fascinated by this man's keen insight into law, culture, and how technology creates shifting sands at the intersection of both.

Interestingly, to me, this work has led him to attempt a new approach to reforming our Congress. He began Change Congress, which has 4 simple tenets he believes are essential to getting Congress on track so we as a nation can deal better with the larger issues we all face:

1. Congress should accept contributions from individuals only, lobbyists excepted.
2. Congress should abolish "earmarks."
3. We should increase transparency in Congress.
4. We should use public financing of public elections.

I personally support all four of these tenets, but supporting them all is certainly no requirement for participating in lending your support to influence change in the one(s) in which your heart resonates.

If you're interested in learning more about Lawrence Lessig and the Change Congress initiative, this article by Christopher Hayes over at The Nation is a really good place to start.

I just want my government to be more accountable to people and less so to moneyed influence.

Am I asking too much?

Today I am removing my OneBillionBulbs group from my blog. I thank everyone that chose to participate. Maybe we helped our planet! As I mentioned a while back (in this post and in this post), I replaced every bulb in the house in Atlanta. These bulbs, while more expensive than traditional bulbs, all carried a 7 year warranty. They used far less electricity. I wanted (still want) to reduce my carbon footprint.

Well, I'm sad to report that about 20% of the bulbs went out, died, stopped working within a month or two. And then when the house went up for sale, the realtor said that the CFL bulbs all had to go. They would inhibit the sale of the house. And today my OneBillionBulbs blog widget died. The whole OneBillionBulbs site seems to be down (gone?).

So, I'm taking it off of the blog. And, here in California, a state with green on its mind, the house came with CFL bulbs in the kitchen but no place else. I'll leave it at that.

Around the house I get interesting results. I didn't try for effect but rather more for natural looks. Lots to learn about this new technology! (And still using a trial version that watermarks the images)

Jake Mandell has an interesting little test over at his site designed to test a person's ability to associate what you hear musically with with a visual that represents it most accurately. I must confess the test to be a bit of a challenge as I really wasn't sure what it was really testing. The visual shapes were "limited."

I missed one question and contend that none of the visuals represented adequately represented the music that was played. Perhaps I should volunteer to draw one for him? However, I'm pleased to report that I scored 95%--in the "world-class performance, extremely rare" of the scale. I can certainly attest to the part about my being extremely rare!

Give his test a try at this web address.

I've been wanting to try to create a HDR (high dynamic range) photograph, which is really the same shot at multiple exposure settings blending together in a way that extracts the most information from each setting to make one "super" picture. This was just a first attempt. I literally did nothing but shoot the picture and run the images on the default setting with trial software. The results are interesting enough to play with this further when I have some real time.

Here are the three pictures followed by the blended finished product. This first shot is what the camera records when basically set to auto. The sun beaming into the lens shuts down the aperture. This is the typical picture that would make its way into the album.

This shot is under-exposed by 2 stops and therefore is even darker than the one above. The next shot is over-exposed by 2 stops which blows out the detail information in the sky but allows us to see the foreground information.

And when you combine the three together into a default settings HDR image, the results are below. You can click to enlarge it. Interesting. (Since I'm using Photomatix software in trial mode, they stamp their logo on the output image.)

... so loudly she could be heard throughout the neighborhood. Yes, I was sitting out on the bedroom balcony editing a chapter I am contributing to a book project when I heard her yell. Indeed, much to everyone's astonishment, rain drops began to fall from the sky. I was shocked! What is this? It rains in paradise??? I have to go inside?!

Not to worry, it was only a tiny little cloud.

I'm not so sure! I can already get to the internet in my car. Installing an internet device running Windows in an automobile would just invite death and destruction!

With BMW, Chrysler and several other automakers bringing the internet into your car, telemetrics company ATX is pushing for standards to ensure web content fits dashboard screens, safety systems keep you from streaming video at 65 mph and security protocols prevent viruses from taking control of your car.

[Source: Gearing Up for the .Car Era | Autopia from Wired.com]

This is an interesting aggregation of who is commenting about what music.

Every six hours the Sound Index crawls some of the biggest music sites on the internet - Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google and YouTube - to find out what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. It then counts and analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web. The more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are. So, the Sound Index is a music buzz index controlled entirely by the public.

[Source: BBC - What is the Sound Index?]

Want to know what's hot and who is getting the buzz? Check out their top 100. Clever idea. You can also create your own tracking list to keep up with who is saying what about your favorite music.

I'm not so much into the "hip" music scene any more--too old for that really. I rather enjoy melody coupled with rich traditional harmonic textures that have a sense of development versus constant techno-based repetitions. But this would be an interesting way to keep current on what is going on in that scene without my having to be immersed in it.

I actually like Google. (Now that I think about it, I wonder why?!) But do I trust them? They, like any corporate entity, are out to make money. And make money they do.

Now they want to collect the world's health information on a person by person basis? And I'm confident people the world over will give it to them willingly.

How much is our data, data we willingly give away to the great servers in the sky, worth? Why aren't we getting paid gobs for it? They certainly are!

Who is big brother anyway?

Google Health

Because everywhere I go, I see Macs or junk. Now I understand why! And Apple dominates the computer purchases of college students.

NPD is reporting that although Apple only has 14% share of the overall computer market, when it comes to computers over $1000, Apple is king, selling 66% of the total computers sold. It certainly helps that the only computer you can get for less than ten Benjamins is the Mac Mini. But if you upgrade the Mini or buy a monitor, you are up over $1000 pretty fast.

Doing a little bit of fuzzy math, it seems that only around 12% of people even buy a computer that expensive. The price point could be Apple’s biggest competitor. When people are looking for a computer to surf the web, send email, and maybe do some word processing, spending $500 is probably a lot more enticing than double that amount. A Mac around the price of a 16GB iPhone might help Apple’s overall market share really grow.

These numbers are all for brick and mortar stores. It does not include online purchases.

[via eWeek]

[Source: Apple Sold 66% of Computers over $1000]

Oops! Somehow this post (previously attempted on April 28th) didn't include the picture it was supposed to feature:

A couple of weeks ago I saw a bicycle with a top rack on it carrying the biker's surfboard. Not only was it a handy way to carry the large board, it acted as a top to shield the rider from the sun!

Very creative, adding a nice more organic touch to something subconsciously considered cold, hard, and sterile--concrete floors, the "delicate" floral work at Transparent House is clean and very nicely done! Check out their site for more and better pictures.

I don't know if I would be brave enough to get that close to take the picture! Astounding imagery of our earth.

Photo: Carlos Gutierrez/UPI/Landov

Not only is Chile’s long dormant Chaitén volcano now erupting, but it is creating some amazing volcanic lightning storms. All I can think of when I see the picture is “wow”, so here’s a better description of the phenomenon from the article:

“The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a ‘dirty thunderstorm.’

The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms. (More: Volcanic Lightning Sparked by ‘Dirty Thunderstorms,’ Study Finds” [February, 2, 2007].)”

Read the full story and see other photos at National Geographic.

[Source: Neatorama » Blog Archive » Fantastic Photo of a Volcanic Lightning Storm]

In the past two weeks I came across two quick reads and two videos that caused me to make some connections worthy of thought.

Bruce Schneier, writing on May 15, 2008, at Wired, made me stop and think about all of the "free" services I routinely explore for their value-added potential in education. I often just make up absurd information when that information is required of me and I don't want to provide it (like, for an email address: [email protected]). I have never stopped to think about the lifespan or later possible use of this meaningless, inaccurate information. I just don't want any more junk mail. Bruce writes:

Our data is a part of us. It's intimate and personal, and we have basic rights to it. It should be protected from unwanted touch.

[Source: Our Data, Ourselves ]

We teach children about the socially expected behaviors surrounding our personal physical space from casual to intimate. This article really got me to stop and think about the virtual me, my data (from financial, health, social, professional, civic...) and the socially and legally appropriate ways that information should be touched--information, accurate or not, that comes to represent me and affect decisions made about and for me, perhaps without my knowledge about the decisions ever being made. I might not even know the information was aggregated and used.

I also watched Jonathan Zittrain's presentation (from April 11, 2008, at the Tribecca Grand in NYC) about his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. The video of the presentation (about an hour) is graciously made available by the New York Greater Metropolitan Area chapter of the Internet Society at this link. In the presentation Jonathan talks about the generative nature of the internet versus a new push to use "tethered devices" as he calls them--devices that close innovation and are controlled by the manufacturer even after the sale. [I have written briefly about the internet as an operating system before. Jonathan's ideas helped me clarify some of my thinking.]

He mentions several really interesting examples before extending his examples to the FBI paying to have the OnStar system remotely reprogrammed in a car owned by people of interest to the FBI so that everything spoken in the car was transmitted to the FBI through OnStar without anyone in the car being aware. He goes on to say that because of consumer demand we have build an unrivaled infrastructure that could be leveraged for surveillance (by the good guys and the bad): cell phones and other devices.

And then I read this article about the National Cyber Security Initiative by Ryan Singel at Wired:

... would spend billions on unproven, embryonic technology, and possibly illegal or ill-advised projects, according to the analysis ...

While many of the specifics of the plan are classified, U.S. intelligence chief Michael McConnell told the New Yorker in January that he wants the National Security Agency to begin eavesdropping on the internet, and a McConnell aide said the spy agency was prepared to examine the content of e-mails, file transfers and Google searches without a warrant.

[Source: Report: Government's Cyber Security Plan Is Riddled With New Spying Programs]

I'm not really passing any judgement on these examples. Like most everyone else, I want the bad guys caught. I want us to prevent the bad people from doing bad things to good people. But larger issues may be at stake, issues worthy of careful thought and scrutiny. None of us want to wake up one morning and ask, "How in the world did we get here?!"

The rampant pace at which our technologies are developing is vastly outstripping our awareness of the issues that surround that development and our capacity to have informed conversations about those issues to establish public policy and legal frameworks that are both reasonable, fair, and that appropriately safeguard and balance the best interests of a free democratic society, a capitalist economy, and the rights of the individual. And not only is the pace of development rapid, can it also be completely invisible to public scrutiny and democratic oversight? Should it be? These are complex questions!

And during the week I also came across this video interview, on a less weighty, yet more immediately personal level, at Switched with Clay Shirky, adjunct professor teaching New Media in the graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. Clay really informs my thinking about the internet.

The issues broadly touched on in this post are complex and have long term implications for freedom, safety, democracy, privacy, economic sustainability, to name but a few. In order to have more informed conversations with our children about these significant, developing concerns, we need to have greater public and professional conversation about data security, privacy, and ways we can move our social, political, and legal structures to develop policy frameworks that keep pace with the challenges that technology brings to our daily lives.

These are challenging and exciting times!

Somehow I've ended up on an email distribution list from a group in the UK that apparently collaborates on independent global television projects around the world. So I get copied in on all of their email exchanges. (How my email address, under another person's name, got associated with the group, I'll probably never understand––a virus perhaps?) It's really rather entertaining to see what these guys are up to––some utterly fascinating projects. Several of them are associated directly with the BBC.

At any rate, an email from one of them, copied to the group, was just sent that contained this text. All you need to do is add the soundtrack.

President Bush is rehearsing his speech for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

He begins his remarks with "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!"

Immediately his speech writer rushes over and whispers in the President's ear: "Mr. President, those are the Olympic rings. Your speech is on the teleprompter underneath.

The UK seems to think of him as an idiot, too!

If he's correct, our nation will have lost in a way much bigger than "winning" this pointless, absurd, unjustifiable war. Our economy will be completely owned by foreigners. The dollar will be utterly worthless around the world. People will buy and trade oil in Chinese currency. And you and I will be living in the Fourth World, which will make the Third one look prosperous!

Now, he might be correct about Osama being captured in the first term of the new Democrat president. After all, none of the candidates are good personal friends with the bin Laden family!

All Things Considered, May 15, 2008 · In a speech in Columbus, Ohio, on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013 and that he envisions Osama bin Laden will be dead or captured during his first term as president.

[Source: McCain Predicts War Can Be Won by 2013 : NPR]

Finally, cause I've been playin' my one string banjo for years now!

Morning Edition, May 15, 2008 · Americans are feeling pessimistic about the direction the country is heading, a new bipartisan NPR poll suggests. They're increasingly leaning toward alignment with the Democratic Party and divided over their choices for president in the fall.

An unprecedented 80 percent of likely voters surveyed said the United States is on the wrong track — a huge jump from the 68 percent who felt that way in the previous NPR poll in January.

The latest dissatisfaction level is reflected in other polls conducted recently by the Gallup Organization and several newspapers and TV networks.

When asked about the job President Bush is doing, 65 percent of respondents overall said they disapproved and a bare majority, 51 percent, said they disapproved strongly.

That might help explain why, after years of near-equity between the parties, more voters called themselves Democrats than Republicans by a difference of 10 percentage points.

[Source: U.S. Is Headed in the Wrong Direction, Poll Suggests : NPR]

But not as much as do I!

The yard here is actually very small, and most of it is garden space. At present count, 45 roses are in bloom--large, vibrantly colored blooms.

Here is a little picture I shot with my iPhone.

The fresh, cool ocean air is like breathing an elixir concocted someplace out in the Pacific by the gods.

Even on those rare occasions when the weather would allow it, typically Spring or Fall, I rarely ever slept with the windows open in the Southeast--allergies.

Yet, I have slept with windows open here every night since I arrived--with the electric blanket on as the house temperature chills down to the low 60s.

Waking up breathing air that has a clean, cool smell to it is actually amazingly invigorating!

Today Atlanta had its first smog alert for the season.

Tomorrow is trash day, and I must say, I'm delighted! This is the first trash day that hasn't appeared like the Beverly Hillbillies moving to town--just a normal trash day. Previously, every week, the curb was stacked with paper packaging from the movers, collapsed boxes, and things that should never have been moved anyway!

As of today, all of the boxes, except for the ones filled with books in what will eventually become the library, are finally unpacked and discarded. All of the packing paper has been thrown out. I can not adequately express my joy at having an ordinary amount of trash!

Two things here are fascinating to me:

1) I guess cameras actually have their own unique digital fingerprint.
2) A teenager underground is developing to use technology to fight against the explosive growth of our surveillance society.

Check out the article over at boingboing on how to anonymize your pictures (remove their digital finger prints).

I guess everything leaves breadcrumbs if you know how to find them.