Month: January 2007

Yay! Snow!

Sometime about seven years ago, during a discussion of Tiger Woods, the pro golfer, I made the off-hand, but angry, comment, “That’s just what the world needs; another Black sports hero.”

Tracy, who at that time was a co-worker and not yet my close friend, made note of that comment, and it disturbed her. After a day or two had passed, she came to me and mentioned my statement, and asked me what, exactly, I had meant by it. She saw my words as being a condemnation of all Black heroes, sports or otherwise.

I had not meant it that way at all, but I can see why it seemed so at the time. I had meant that it seemed to me that almost all Black public figures fell into one of two categories – sports figure or religious figure – and that helped to stereotype minorities as being only worth what their physical labor would earn them, or what their passion for imaginary beliefs urge them to do.

Today, as I was listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” and “Why I am opposed to the Vietnam War” speeches, in commemoration of his birthday, I thought back to that off-hand comment of mine. And I realized several things.

First, that I do respect Dr. King’s work on behalf of civil rights, and his speaking out about the Vietnam War, but that I do so in spite of his religious beliefs, and not because of them. In his case, alone, I am willing to overlook his ties to a dogma that has become a method for authority to control and hoodwink the population. Dr. King understood very well that Jesus of Nazareth’s words, as nearly as we can understand them, were about helping the least among us, and not about building million-dollar churches and funnelling money to political movements whose goals are oppression, torture, and war. And Dr. King saw that poverty in America had dark skin far more often than not.

Second, and following directly from that personal epiphany, for the most part my personal heroes are not men or women of religious beliefs. They are people who either have a wonderful and expressive relationship to words and language, and who use that facility in the service of creating truthful models of the world and the universe in which we live. I’ve talked briefly about some of them in the past: Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, James Randi, for example. Sad to say, my heroes are largely white men. I can’t sit here and blame society or the culture in which I was brought up for this obvious lack on my part.

If asked right now, I can name exactly one person whom I respect for the twin virtues of love of language and willingness to speak it truthfully, who is also not a white man: Representative John Conyers of Michigan. In commemoration of Dr. King’s dream that men and women be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, I resolve to keep in mind my blind spot in regards to my list of heroes.

And, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I salute Rep. John Conyers as one of my intellectual heroes. Let me give you a brief introduction to this great American politician.

Although Rep. Conyers has served in Congress since 1965, which is nearly my entire life, I first encountered him in Michael Moore’s documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11”. Conyers’ ironic tone as he lectured Moore about how most of our representatives don’t read the bills they vote on, stoked my curiousity and led me to dig a little deeper into who this honest Congressman was.

Rep. Conyers is the second-longest-serving member of Congress. Four days after Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, it was Rep. Conyers who introduced the bill to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday. That bill was not signed into law until 2 November 1983, an astonishing fifteen years later, and then only after Congress passed the bill with a veto-proof majority, forcing President Reagan’s hand.

Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks, served as a member of Conyers’ staff from 1965 to 1988, when she retired. Ms. Parks, of course, became the mother of the American Civil Rights movement when she refused to move from her seat in the front of the city bus in Montgomery, Alabama so that a white person could sit down.

Conyers is the founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, which he started in 1969.

Conyers has also authored several studies during the Bush-Cheney years about the abuses of the Federal Government that our current president has presided over, notably the “The Constitution In Crisis”, a study of the colusion between the White House and the UK’s #10 Downing Street in the lead-up to the Iraq War/Occuption; and “What Went Wrong In Ohio”, which covers the 2004 Presidential election and documents all of the various ways in which minorities and the poor, typically Democratic voters, were disenfranchised and systematically prevented from participating in the most basic of (small-“d”) democratic acts.

Now, with the Democratic Party taking control of Congress, Conyers has been appointed to the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the arm of Congress that provides oversight of the administration of the Federal courts and law enforcement, specifically the Justice Department. This standing committee is also the one most involved with the few times in our country’s history that articles of impeachment have been brought against the Executive Branch… Which surely has George W. Bush and Richard Cheney worried…

So that I may highlight another aspect of intellectual honesty, one of the other virtues that I respect, may I point out that Rep. Conyers cooperated and admitted to mistakes in violating House ethics rules. Two former aides of Conyers accused him of using them to chaffeur and baby-sit his children, and of having them work on state and local political campaigns. Rep. Conyers worked with the Ethics Committee and because of his admission of wrong-doing and his cooperation, the Ethics Committee considered the matter closed. My heroes admit their mistakes, in public.

It’s at times like these, when the weather is sofreakin’cold, that I wish my phone had less metal on it.

CulturePulp is a local (Portland, OR) blog by Mike Russell, an artist and writer and geek (I mean that in a good way). I found him a while back when I discovered the comic-slash-fan fiction Jaxxon’s 11, a Star Wars-flavored Ocean’s 11 parody.

Wow, that’s a lot of explanation… I’ve blogged about CulturePulp before, and linked to the site.

The actual CulturePulp comics kinda stopped coming this summer. Russell kept posting his movie reviews and other items of note but the titular comics weren’t there.

Turns out the artist has been working on another project, one that predated CulturePulp, which he explains and links to in a post tonight. I’d hoped it was J11, which has been languishing in mid-story, but no. However, any minor disappointment I might feel at that is soothed by the fact that Mike held a mini-contest when he teased the return of CulturePulp.

And I won! I must have just checked his site at the right time.

At any rate, thanks Mike! I’m looking forward to “Sacred to the Memory”!

What’s all the worry over whether or not Apple is going to allow people to install their own apps on the iPhone (drool…). Both TUAW’s Dan Lurie and the folks at Gizmodo are reporting on Apple’s intentions to keep the iPhone a closed system. And via TUAW I see that Wolf Rentzsch is encouraging developers to file bug reports on the topic.

Right. It’s a bug that Apple won’t allow third party developers to develop applications for the product the company is betting their future on.

First, maybe Apple is able to make the iPhone “just work” because they’re tightly controlling the software and the hardware? Steve Jobs’ quoted Alan Kay, a computer scientist, Apple Fellow, and head of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group in the ’80s, yesterday:

“”People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

While this is an obvious dig at Microsoft (they didn’t start making their own hardware until the XBox and now the Zune), in the context of the iPhone, it’s obvious to me that, with the exclusive partnership with one phone carrier, and the amazing integration Apple’s done with it, that they’re going to want to keep the user’s experience as smooth and easy as possible.

And, even so, that brings me to my second, and main, point. Assuming that Apple’s not using weasel words about having “a full browser” on the iPhone – what’s stopping the user from making use of one of the many web-based applications out there? Or developing new web-based versions of the apps they’d like to see on the iPhone?

Word processing? Spreadsheet? Why not just use Docs, Google’s web-based word processor and spreadsheet, for example?

Say… isn’t Google a partner with Apple on the iPhone? Gee, do you think that’s a freakin’ coincidence?

I know, I know… there are some apps that people just can’t live without. But even if Apple doesn’t let developers explicitly program for the platform, and take advantage of the overall user interface (John Gruber thinks that Apple is making a distinction between Mac OS X and the “OS X” that runs on the iPhone), there are still ways to get the apps on an iPhone. And as a side benefit, allow lots more people to get to the apps, too.

Wait… developers might not see that as a benefit, huh? I guess I’m an optimist.

The only thing better than Stevemas, when Steve Jobs unveils the new sexy…

…is the day after, when every tube on the internets is filled with trucks bearing delicious commentary on the new sexy.

• Brent’s reaction could almost be my own…
• Gabe’s inconsistency, however, is not mine, but that part about having credit card in hand sounds familiar to me.
• Jason Kotke, who was unable to attend the keynote in person, mocked up an iPhone using cardboard, just to get an idea of how big it is.
• John Gruber takes a stab at Palm CEO Ed Colligan after yesterday’s announcement: “Guess what? They’re just walking in.”
• Even Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, as passionate about Apple as he is about politics, appended a quick note about the iPhone to the bottom of a list of political news yesterday, shortly after the keynote.

My first MP3 player was, perhaps contrary to expectations, not an iPod. I had a Diamond Rio MP500 back in the days of our ancestors, before there were iPods, strange as it may seem now. And even then, when I would stuff my laptop, my Palm PDA, my cell phone, and my MP3 player into various pockets and bags, in preparation for a visit into the light of the Daystar outside of my cave, I would think to myself, “self, what I need is something that is this [pointing to my cell phone] form factor, but does all of this. Surely there will come a day when I can get one device that will do this for me.” And after I made the required joke about calling myself Shirley, I would pause a moment and genuflect towards Cupertino in the hopes of hastening that day.

Bottom line for me: there’s a zero percent chance that I won’t get one. However, I’m on contract to T*Mobile until November, and the iPhone is Cingular-only. So I’ll have to figure something out between now and then.

But, c’mon. So. Damned. Sexy.

Anyone who liked (or at least read with interest, even if they disagreed) my posts (and here and here) about my views on religion and God*, may be interested in a couple of other blogs on the topic.

First is Church of the Churchless. Brian (no relation) and Laurel write about faith and spirituality in a way that I find fascinating and un-controversial. There’s much to think about in their posts. I don’t want to summarize their beliefs at all, since I’ve only been reading them for a short while, but I like their style and approach. They suggest a new reader start with their introductory post.

From Church of the Churchless I found another blogger, writing at patzivota.com. The author wrote a mathematically-logical post about the non-existence of God that is splendid in its rigor.

I’m adding these two to my blogroll.

* And since my traffic doubled on those days, it seems a lot of you did.

Right before Christmas, I broke down and purchased a new TV. My old one, which was built during the Carter Administration (I believe) and was a hand-me-down many times over, had finally died. Sort of. Well, it had died enough to let me rationalize buying a new one, anyway.

This week, now that Christmas is behind me, and basically paid-for, I decided to upgrade my cable service. Earlier in the week I called Comcast, found out that they’ve priced digital cable with Digital Video Recorder capabilities at slightly less than the analog package. So I took the leap.

When I told my sister about it, she assured me that having TiVo-like abilities would forever change my relationship to the teevee. I wasn’t sure; I didn’t really watch that much teevee, but it would be nice to have the ability to time-shift the few shows I do watch; The Simpsons, American Dad, Family Guy (I’m a sucker for Fox’s Sunday night lineup), Mythbusters (the best science show ever; and Kari Byron is a totally hot geek girl), The Office… Just those. Mostly.

Honestly, the internets tubes are filled with an almost infinite amount of entertainment. Why vege out in front of the teevee when I can surf forever and ever?

I scheduled the cable guy to come out and “un-cap” my digital signal today, and picked up the DVR (a Motorola box with intriguging outputs on the back: SATA, USB, Firewire, along with HDMI, component video, and S/PDIF audio) on Friday.

After a mis-communication about the home visit (which I confirmed with a phone call to Comcast was the fault of Comcast, not mine, and which was quickly straightened out in my favor (thanks, Kyle!) without me having to get upset at all), this afternoon I found myself with digital cable.

Blah, blah, surfing the channels. I saw that “Wayne’s World” was on HBO, and even though I hadn’t ordered HBO, I tried that channel. And a quick message about it being a subscription channel popped up, went away, and I found myself watching Wayne and Cassandra (the amazing Tia Carerre, rowr).

Then, while still playing with the remote, I hit the “up arrow” – and the picture paused! At first, I thought I’d done something wrong. I started hitting the other buttons, to un-stick it, and when I hit the “left arrow” – the movie started rewinding!

Oh. Your. God.

I can pause and rewind teevee?! That’s almost better than sex. Seriously. I searched my brain trying to remember if Tia Carerre had any nude or topless scenes in this movie…

I texted Tracy to share this wonderful news, and she agreed that it was The. Best. Thing. Ever. She said that once you’ve got this, you never want to be without it.

I replied that I’ve only had it for less than a half-hour and I already don’t want to be without it.

And, yes, Lisa – this will almost assuredly change the way I watch teevee.

When my tax refund comes back I’m definitely buying an HDTV…

Picture stolen shamelessly from Digby’s post on Hullabaloo.

Picture stolen shamelessly from KagroX’s post on dKos.


I’m proud to be a liberal, progressive, Democrat today.

This was the first vacation in a long time where I my debts did not increase significantly.

In fact, my total debt only increased by $38.00 because of my vacation.

The rest of the money I spent was all cash I’d saved for the trip. Or, like the plane tickets I “purchased” with frequent flyer miles, wasn’t even out-of-pocket money at all.

Through it all my bills and other expenses all continued to be paid on time and in full.

And I have money for my day-to-day expenses until my next paycheck.

Is this all a sign of financial health? At the least it means, to me, that I’m well on my way to finally getting the whole “money problem” solved. 42 isn’t too late to learn this stuff, is it?