There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth
We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
So I guess it's just
Do unto others before they do it to you
Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out
Is this what God wants us to do
(Repeat Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
Now you probably won't hear this on your radio
Probably not on your local TV
But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined
You can always hear it from me
How much is one picker's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
But don't confuse caring for weakness
You can't put that label on me
The truth is my weapon of mass protection
And I believe truth sets you free
(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:57:57 AM -

Awesome Post !!!
Source: Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment

Yearend fugue
Blogging from me will be light over the holidays. Any spare time I get over the next week will be devoted, weather allowing, to building my kids a swing set in the backyard. But before the eggnog haze descends upon us, a few choice links.

First, Mother Jones has an interview with Tony Kushner in which the "Angels in America" playwright states, with crystalline precision, the essential fact of the 2004 election. This should be etched into the consciousness of everyone who hopes that things in the U.S. can be put back on course:

One light of hope this year is that the citizenry has important and still-underestimated tools at its disposal to egg its leaders on to greatness. If you're keeping up with the blogosphere you may be sick to death by now of reading about the power of many-to-many decentralization, "social software" and the Dean campaign's remarkable online successes. But what if you're stuck inside the Beltway? Frank Rich's Sunday column this week serves as a useful reminder that most of the Washington press corps remains utterly and pathetically clueless about what has already happened during this election cycle. Jay Rosen's annotation of Rich's column is well worth reading, too.

So we're fortunate to live at a moment when the technologies many of us have enthusiastically embraced for two decades are showing signs of achieving social and political ends beyond simply bringing delight to geekdom or fueling the stock market. Cory Doctorow has good words here:

The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It's about realizing that all the really hard problems -- free expression, copyright, due process, social networking -- may have technical dimensions, but they aren't technical problems. The next twenty years are about using our technology to affirm, deny and rewrite our social contracts: all the grandiose visions of e-democracy, universal access to human knowledge and (God help us all) the Semantic Web, are dependent on changes in the law, in the policy, in the sticky, non-quantifiable elements of the world. We can't solve them with technology: the best we can hope for is to use technology to enable the human interaction that will solve them.

(And Kevin Werbach points out that technology and policy are always intertwined.)

Finally, as many of us retreat from the daily grind to take year-end stock, I want to offer you this wonderful passage that Kevin Kelly cited earlier this month on his Cool Tools blog. It's from a book titled "Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking," by David Bayles and Ted Orland, that I will have to add to my 2004 reading list.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group: fifty pound of pots rated an A, forty pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an A. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the quantity group was busily churning out piles of work -- and learning from their mistakes -- the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Which, I suppose, is an anecdotal version of the Nike slogan, "Just do it." But I prefer the Samuel Johnson version: "Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome."

Thanks to Salon's subscribers for keeping us going through these thin years -- and special thanks to all the Salon bloggers for keeping their "quantity" and "quality" fires stoked. Happy holidays to all. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:39:22 PM -

Newsweek's feature on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 4:39:47 PM -

There's no shortage of opportunities to support important causes. Lot of charities are local and community based. Some are more internationally- and future-oriented such as Amnesty International, EFF, Long Now Fondation, World Vision, the AFCLU, and Oxfam to name just a few. Everyone can add their favorite. But let's say you were interested in a "tool" to leverage the least amount of money into the largest measurable effect over time. For that I'd like to recommend a type of giving that multiplies itself. Over the years, these are the criteria I've adopted for this challenge:

1) The help is aimed at the lowest, those with the least, where small makes a huge difference.
2) The gift expands itself, gaining amplitude with each cycle.
3) The range is global.

Think of it as enabling philanthropy: take a minimum of money and aim it at the precise point where it can do the maximum good, multiplied by many generations. Maximum good is measured simply: when you enable someone to enable someone else. That is a virtuous circle. I've found the follow three do-good organizations to meet these criteria. They fund the neediest in the world. They are highly-evolved programs that produce amazing results. And one tangential result is that when we give to these three, we feel optimistic.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 12:55:45 AM -

Refdesk.com has links to every newspaper home page in the world. Very handy. A huge set of lists, though I'm already at least one missing paper: the Independent in North Carolina. Still, a highly impressive compilation.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:57:49 AM -

"Most people have this assumption that magick is all about some kind of 'hocus pocus' or 'eye of newt, tongue of toad' thing or the sort of 'incense and affirmations' school of thought that a lot of New Agers and Wiccans are into. I don't see it that way. When I was a teenager, I read in one of the RE/Search books that a modern magician uses the tools of their time. It was Genesis P-Orridge, the rock star, who said that, and it made a major impression on me. He meant that a modern day "sorcerer" would employ video cameras, printing presses, television, electronic instruments, the Internet and so forth to work their magick and since so much of magick is about INTENT, then it stands to reason that something like the Internet can have magical uses. Advertising, too, is a magical act and so is PR, basically. Advertising allows these big corporations to create a desire in the center of your head that you should run out and buy things you don't need! That is magick, right? Right."

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 1:18:09 PM -

Posted by The Happy Tutor

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:48:32 AM -

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Thought of Doc, David and Cluetrain reading this. Civil Society itself is a many to many conversation. The net and blogging are subsets of civil society.

Non-Profit Quarterly, Fall 2001,The Magic of Dialogue by Daniel Yankelovich 
 
The very process of dialogue has a "civilizing" influence. Dialogue binds us together as communities. To engage in genuine dialogue is to create and strengthen such values of civil society as: building trust in one another; feeling familiar and comfortable together; finding it easy and natural to cooperate with one another and knowing how to create the common ground on which successful cooperation depends; weaving a complex web of working relationships that cut across institutional boundaries; and feeling a sense of identity with those with whom one shares community.

If the values of reciprocity, stewardship, responsibility, citizenship, civic virtue, and love describe various facets of how we take care of one another in a civil society, it matters a great deal whether we like, respect, trust, and understand one another or stereotype, distance, distort, and mistrust one another. Civil society stands or falls on this foundation of feelings. The magic of dialogue is that it really does enhance respect and acceptance of others, thereby creating community and social capital.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:47:18 PM -

Amazing Struggles Episode 1, 28.8MB MP3 Link
Amazing Struggles Episode 2, 29MB MP3 Link
Amazing Struggles Episode 3, 29.4MB MP3 Link
Astonishing Failures Episode 1, 30.1MB MP3 Link
Astonishing Failures Episode 2, 31.2MB MP3 Link
Astonishing Failures Episode 3, 30MB MP3 Link [Boing Boing Blog]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:15:53 PM -

Here's a new thing to worry about
Fear of new things shortens life [New Scientist]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 4:32:32 PM -

From televised presidential aircraft carrier visits to the glut of unreal reality TV shows, "American culture is becoming a culture of pageants," says David Byrne. "We're surrounded by show, just as the Roman Empire turned to bread and circuses to hide other things that were taking place." To examine how the medium shapes the message, the former Talking Head uses Microsoft PowerPoint -- the ubiquitous presentation software -- as a creative tool.

His art presentations make babble of business-speak, and question whether the form of what we communicate can affect its truth: Rebellious flow charts stream backward, screens overflow with clip art gone wild, deliverables and leave-behinds assume surreal new roles, and renegade bullet points assault the viewer in a rapid-fire barrage.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 4:28:23 PM -

Moving on to housing prices, Sir John comments: "Every previous major bear market has been accompanied by a bear market in home prices. . . . This time, home prices have gone up 20%, and this represents a very dangerous situation. When home prices do start down, they will fall remarkably far. In Japan, home prices are down to less than half what they were at the stock market peak." Sir John adds, "A home price decline of as little as 20% would put a lot of people in bankruptcy." Sir John also had a few words about debt -- a four-letter word that folks seem not to care about: "Emphasize in your magazine how big the debt is. . . . The total debt of America is now $31 trillion. That is three times the GNP of the U.S. That is unprecedented in a major nation. No nation has ever had such a big debt as America has, and it's bigger than it was at the peak of the stock market boom. Think of the dangers involved. Almost everyone has a home mortgage, and some are 89% of the value of the home (and yes, some are more). If home prices start down, there will be bankruptcies, and in bankruptcy, houses are sold at lower prices, pushing home prices down further." On that note, he has a word of advice: "After home prices go down to one-tenth of the highest price homeowners paid, then buy."

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 4:08:46 PM -

Smith's entire life is like title="Mohammed Bah ABBA -- A True Human Scientist">Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher who came up with the pot-within-a-pot system. With nothing more than a big terra-cotta bowl, a little pot, some sand and water, Abba created a refrigerator -- the rig uses evaporation rather than electricity to keep vegetables cool. Innovations that target the poorest of the poor don't have to be complicated to make a big difference. The best solution is sometimes the most obvious.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 4:21:33 PM -

Salon has a good article on MoveOn (worth clicking thru the ad). Our complete Baseline package on the Dean campaign, due out next week, has a sidebar about activist Web groups including MoveOn and some of its conservative counterparts.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 4:11:27 PM -