Generating Output

I've moved.

2005-10-14T15:26:00.000-04:00

From this day forward, this blog will not be updated. I've moved to http://larameekidd.com/ which is a blog that I share with Susannah. All of the posts from Generating Output are there, and I will be continuing to post there.

20,199 and counting

2005-10-06T22:42:00.000-04:00

As of yesterday, we passed the halfway point for our signature collecting goal reaching 20,199 collected. There's about a month left in the campaign to collect the second half and, while things do look good, that's still along way to go and the second half will be harder.

BoingBoing reader comment

2005-10-04T13:36:00.000-04:00

Today, I'm turning up in BoingBoing alerting Xeni to a photo of Chewbacca throwing out the first pitch at Fenway Park. This was a real missed opportunity, I think. Had I blogged about it and provided a link back to me, I could have gotten 10,000 hits or something like that.

Inspired and a little bit worried

2005-09-26T16:37:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday, the GBIO kicked off its healthcare campaign in conjunction with the Affordable Care Today! Coallition. I've been making a special note of mentions of the health care system recently. It seems to be very much on the minds of people of faith, as I came across at least two blog entries about health care in the past couple weeks. The most interesting article that I've read is one from the New Yorker (through boingboing) written by professional genius Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell shreds the Bush administration's attempts to cure our health care woes and, most interestingly for me, talks a bit about the pressing need for affordable dental care.

With health care on the minds of a lot of people across the country, it's good to see the GBIO getting involved in this. MassACT is hoping to get a question about affordable health care on the ballot for 2006 in an attempt to put pressure on the state legislature to do something before then. It's a good plan and my biggest complaint with it may be that it doesn't go far enough, but that's really a quibble at this point. And it does include adding dental care to MassHealth.

100,000 signatures need to be collected and GBIO has committed to collecting 40,000, the largest chunk of any of the partner institutions. The title for this blog entry comes from some inspirational words offered by Rabbi Jonah Pesner on Thursday night, who noted that we should all feel inspired for taking on the problem of health care... and a little bit worried because 100,000 signatures is a lot. Two people at the meeting committed to collecting 500 signatures. Most of the crowd (of about 200) pledged to collect at least 50. We'll have plenty more people out working but any way you do the math, this still isn't a cake walk.

This Saturday, I spent a couple hours at a tropical foods store in Roxbury. With two other people we managed to collect about 80 signatures. Quite a few people said no or ignored us. Many were very enthusiastic. At least one woman said that, at first, she thought that I was going to ask her to vote for Bush and she was going to have to say no. But since I was collecting signatures for affordable health care, she gladly signed. The truth is that collecting signatures is hard and, as I discovered today, I lack the courage to do it on my own. I'm not sure that I will be able to collect as many signatures as I pledged (100). I'm inspired, but a little bit worried.

Letter on Jim Wallis

2005-08-16T09:51:00.000-04:00

Last Friday, Salon.com ran an article called Getting Religion about Jim Wallis and the Democratic party. Of course, this topic was right up my alley, so I sent them a letter which they published. I thought the article was more than a little too hard on Wallis (which I hope was evident in my letter) but the article hit on something that has been bothering me quite a bit for the past few months--that what was once prophetic criticism of the powers that be was turning into political strategy for the Democratic party. Reading quickly through the rest of the letters, it seems like there are quite a few people ready to jump to Jim Wallis's defense and at least some who think he's up to no good at all. So, I'm happy to add my more balanced voice to the fray.

As a side note: it's interesting to see how Salon edited my letter. Nothing major was changed, but the definitely cleaned it up a little here and there.

Health Care - Globe Op-Ed

2005-08-07T23:31:00.000-04:00

Rev. Hamilton of Roxbury Presbyterian Church had an op-ed piece in the Globe today (written with Rabbi Jonah Pesner) comparing Governor Romney's health care plan to a junky car. Barely mentioned in the article is the ballot initiative being planned by MassACT and supported by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, but this is clearly part of the run-up for that. Training sessions are already underway for those who will be gathering signatures for the ballot initiative (I'll be going to one tomorrow) and a kickoff event is planned for September 22. Hopefully we'll be seeing more press coverage then.

Oppression breeds...

2005-08-05T17:39:00.000-04:00

From boston.com: A Muslim fast-food restaurant in France. This is very interesting coming out of country that prides itself on its secularism. One might argue that if that if the French government didn't spend so much energy trying to make Muslims feel unwelcome in public life, they wouldn't need to start their own fast food chains. This really comes out of the article too. You definitely get the sense that Muslims in France feel discriminated against and are looking for places that can help them maintain their cultural identity. More power to them.

Answered email

2005-08-02T16:00:00.000-04:00

King Kaufman answered one of my emails in his sports column today. The topic was Rafael Palmeiro and steroids. And admittedly I was baiting Salon by comparing Palmeiro's claim that he never "intentionally" took steroids with Karl Rove's claim that he never "intentionally" leaked the identity of a CIA agent. King clears up how one may unintentionally take steroids, though I'm still not sure how you unintentionally out a CIA agent.

This is the second time one of my emails has been answered in this column. The first time also being about steroids. I wonder how much mail King Kaufman gets from his readers. I have a pretty high hit rate for getting emails into columns.

Offensive Globe Article

2005-07-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

Honestly, I can't believe the Globe printed this but maybe my expectations for a major Boston area newspaper are just too high. The story is called "When Evil Meets Good" and tells of how Shawn Fields-Berry, good personified apperently, was his on his bike by a car driven by Robert Parsons, evil personified. Among other things, the article points out that Parsons is an unemployed laborer and Fields-Berry is a Harvard educated geneticist. The hidden subtext here is that being poor and uneducated makes you evil.

I already sent an email to the editor. We'll see if anything comes of that. I can't imagine this article not getting more complaints.

Testing USPS

2005-07-13T22:40:00.000-04:00

Nate Korpela, my friend in Seattle, was in town last week and we were discussing why we don't use Boston in our mailing address. My friend from Seattle, convinced that zip code is the most important item in an address, decided to test his theory. He emailed me two postcards one with Roxbury, MA and another with Boston, MA and a nine digit zip. The test would be to see which one reached me first from Seattle.

Well, they both arrived on Monday. So, there you have it. No difference.

John Granger makes his Harry Potter predictions

2005-07-12T20:47:00.000-04:00

When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out, John Granger, author of The Hidden Key to Harry Potter listed ten things that happen in every Harry Potter book and made ten predictions for the fifth book. He's done it again for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Interestingly, he's carried over a lot of his failed predictions from book 5 to book 6. I won't comment on his ten things in every book here, but I will say a few words on his predictions and comment on how well he does after I read the book.

1 - Alchemical Themes

Granger is predicting a lot of moisture (whatever that means), a rainbox or peacock's tail, and "all things pure, white, or silver." This will be the hardest one to grade him on. Unless any or all of these things seem especially significant, the outcome of this prediction will likely be debatable.

2 - Goblin Revolt

A hold over from his predictions for the last book. Apparently hinted at in GOF but I have no idea why Granger likes this prediction so much. If he's right, kudos to him for a close reading.

3 - Voldemort Victorious

This is his first interesting prediction. The idea of Voldemort playing the hero and thus ingratiating himself to the rest of the wizarding world would certainly make for a very interesting book seven. But, I'm kinda hoping this prediction doesn't come true. I think this kind of dramatic turn in the wizarding community would be a little unbelievable at this point, unless it was very well sold by Rowling. Still, I find this a bold and fun prediction. We'll see if he's right.

4 - Dumbledore's Death

Yes, everyone and his great grandmother has predicted this one but it has to be there.

5 - Trio Terminated

Harry, Ron, and Hermione always have difficulties, so I'm not quite sure why this isn't in his ten things in every book list. Granger also seems to be implying that the split will be more serious/permanent in this book. So ahead of time, no points for him if the trio has only the usual tiffs. There has to be something really problematic.

6 - Harry Purification (and in hiding)

Another vague prediction from Granger. We'll see about the "in hiding part."

7 - Heir of Gryffindor

This is probably a gimme like the Dumbledore death. Of course, that's assuming that the Half-blood prince is the heir of Gryffindor which he may or may not be. But I'm predicting that Granger gets this one right.

8 - Dursleys Kidnapped

This is another good prediction, but it may wait until book seven to come true. It would seem that, at some point, Harry will have to make a decision to save the Dursleys and that they are worth saving.

9 - Severus Snape Revealed

I have to ask here how much of a revelation Granger is expecting. A major Snape revelation is almost a gimme (and yet another candidate for something in every book) but I seriously doubt that we'll learn everything there is to know about Snape, including most importantly whose side he's really on.

10 - Alchemical Wedding

I have to admit that this is the most confusing one and I really have no idea how to evaluate this prediction. Any help?

Knowing how to do and knowing how to find out

2005-07-05T20:17:00.000-04:00

I came across this entry in Jon Stahl's blog a while back and it jumped out at me immediately. I've been trying to step back a bit from the working experience I had during the first seven months I was in Boston. I want to take some time and evaluate what happened, what went wrong, etc. This article I think touches on one of the biggest frustations I had working IT for the non-profit sector. So, a few random thoughts.

1. It's interesting to see Michael Polanyi brought up in this article after just having finished The Gospel in a Pluralist Society which referenced his work quite a bit. I think that I'm going to have to add Polanyi to my reading list.

2. I can't tell you how much I've wished I could communicate to past employers exactly what this article says. In general, most of what I do are things that I did not know how to do before I did them.

3. What, actually, is the difference between knowing how to and how to find out. How to seems to be a knowledge thing. It's something that you can learn from a class or a book or a web site. How to find out seems to be more of a wisdom thing. The only way to learn it is through experience.

Puzzle Results

2005-07-01T08:41:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Puzzle Championship results came out this week and I placed 232 out of 434 (80 out of 395 points) solidly middle of the pack. The winning score was 385 and I can't fathom how that was accomplished. I did note two names below mine, at 234, Penn computer science professor Sampath Kannan (same score as me, but I must have won the tie brakers.) I never actually had him for a class, but it does kinda make me feel like the circle is now complete.

Letters from Congressmen

2005-07-01T08:02:00.000-04:00

I got an email from Michael Capuano this week. He was actually replying to an email that I sent to him. A form email, really, sent through the Sojourners web site. I was doing this quite a bit a couple months ago just to see what would happen (note: I also sent emails to John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and I have not yet gotten a reply.) Here's the text of the email that I sent to Capuano, again entirely written by Sojourners:

I write as a person of faith to urge you to consider the effects of President Bush's budget on people living in poverty. At a time when more and more of our budget is being devoted to defense spending, further and extended tax cuts for the rich are not in line with the biblical mandate to care for the poor. Neither are the budget's proposed cuts to Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other low-income programs.

I urge you to vote YES on any amendments that restore funding for Medicaid, Food Stamps, Earned Income Tax Credits, Child Care, and other important work-supports for low-income families.

I urge you to vote YES on any amendments that repeal tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

I urge you to vote NO on any budget that goes against central biblical and moral principles by fattening the rich at the expense of the poor.

When roughly 36 million people in this country live below the poverty line, budget priorities like those being proposed are outrageous, anti-family, and anti-biblical values.

And the response from Capuano:

Dear Mr. Kidd:

Thank you for contacting me regarding H Con. Res. 95, the fiscal year 2006 House Budget Resolution. I appreciate your comments and I share your opposition to this misguided legislation.

As you know, the Republican Budget Resolution cuts funding for vital programs while providing $106 billion dollars in additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. In addition, the budget will burden future generations of Americans with trillions of dollars in debt. All discretionary spending, other than defense, was cut below the level needed to maintain current services, and the budget requires nine House committees to pass legislation to cut entitlement spending by $68.6 billion. As a result, programs such as a Medicaid, student loans and child nutrition will sustain large cuts.

Equally concerning is the lack of forward planning for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This budget does not assume any additional spending for military operations in these countries after this year. Instead, the President uses emergency supplemental requests as the vehicle to fund these ongoing conflicts. This is a cynical tactic to disguise the growing cost of these wars and its negative impact on the ballooning federal deficit.

You will be pleased to know that I voted against the Republican Budget Resolution. Unfortunately this resolution passed the House by a vote of 218 to 214. I also voted against the Budget conference report which passed by a vote of 214-211. The conference report contained many of the same drastic cuts as the House budget, including the cuts to discretionary and entitlement spending as well as tax cuts for the most wealthy. I believe that the Budget Resolution is a reflection of our government's priorities. I am deeply concerned that the FY 2006 Budget is a step in the wrong direction for efforts to bring health care to more American families, preserve and produce affordable housing, and protect our nation from the dangers of terrorism.

Thank you again for expressing your views on the House Budget Resolution. If my staff or I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact my office.

Sincerely,

Michael E. Capuano
Member of Congress

So there you have it. Send an email to your congressman; get a response. Now to work on the senators.

How my mind works

2005-06-20T09:23:00.000-04:00

I competed in the Google US Puzzle Championship and didn't do very well. Not that I ever expected to finish in the top ten or anything but when it was over, I knew I could have done better. I spent a lot of time on puzzles that I wasn't able to solve. I did, however, learn something about my problem solving style. It came when the time was up and I returned to one puzzle (that I had spent maybe an hour on and gotten stuck) and completed the solution in about five minutes. I find that in my real-world work situations similar things happen also. If I get stuck on something, I can work for hours and get nowhere. If I leave the task behind and come back later, I can often finish it very quickly.

So, I've determined that if I hit a task that I can't solve, I should work on something else for a while and then come back. I'll have to try this more in the future.

Neal Stephenson on Star Wars

2005-06-17T11:23:00.000-04:00

I came across this Op-Ed piece by Neal Stephenson in the New York Times (thanks to Joel.) Stephenson expresses some of the same thoughts that I was having about Star Wars earlier this week. Of course, Stephenson expresses these thoughts much better, which is why he gets paid to write and I don't. He also has some insights that I didn't come up with.

Understanding Star Wars

2005-06-13T22:32:00.000-04:00

I bought a Star Wars novel this weekend, much to Susannah's chagrin. She just doesn't understand. The novel is Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart. I just can't pass up reading any Sean Stewart novels (and it's not like I've never read a Star Wars novel either. I lent her Mockingbird to read on her trip to (from?) Texas and I'm hoping that when she's finished, she'll understand.

In any case, I'm starting to figure George Lucas out. With the first Star Wars movie, he established an epic and then handed the reins to others to flush out the story. 15 years after that Lucas allowed the first authorized books to be written in the Star Wars universe and Timothy Zahn wrote a bestselling trilogy. The number of books increased with multiple authors contributing and Star Wars became a living, growing thing. Yeah they were all light-reading paperbacks, but who cares? They were turning Star Wars into more than a trilogy of movies. At this point, Lucas began making new movies.

He didn't hand off the movies to others because he didn't have to. All along, they were only part of the story. The task of flushing out the story fell to those writing novels and comics and producing an animated series for the Cartoon Network. There's even talk of a live action series on the horizon. That's why so many of the characters seem ridiculously incomplete (like Count Dooku or General Grievous) their characters are flushed out elsewhere. That's why some plot elements seem to come out of nowhere and others seem unresolved.

This, of course, doesn't make the movies better (and there's still no explanation for Jar-Jar) but I do think that I am starting to understand what's going on.

Reunion Weekend

2005-06-12T15:15:00.000-04:00

This Friday I went to my ten year high-school reunion at Roxbury Latin. From the outside, the school looks very different from when I went there (there are three new buildings) but we were assured by many of the teachers that the soul is still the same.

My reunion began in Back Bay station where I ran into five of my classmates who would be taking the same train with me to the school. And so began a series of conversations that were far to short. This is always the problem with events like this, as Susannah noted, the average conversation lasts for 10 minutes and is then interrupted by the arrival of someone else. We arrived at the school about 6:00 and left at 10:00, so that gives maximum 240 minutes for conversation. Now there's eating and touring the school, etc. And, as I mentioned before, some opportunity for talking before hand... but yeah, there were at least 24 people there I wanted to talk to so the maximum conversation could be 10 minutes.

The tour of the school was fun, and of course I wanted to go everywhere that wasn't on the tour. There seemed to be a sentiment among some of my classmates that the most important things to see were the things that were new. For me, seeing those things were important, but what I really wanted to see were the things that had not changed at all in ten years--a rare sight on the tour.

Th big joke of the evening involved my friend Mike Lee. The reunion notes for my class, 1995, were sent out to everyone a couple weeks ago and mistakenly included the notes for Mike Lee class of 1990, who has been married for 8 years and has 3 kids. People would come up to Mike and his girlfriend and ask about their kids. And Roxbury Latin is supposed to be a school for smart kids.

I got to spend more time with a couple members of my class last night at my friend Mike's parents' house. Amazingly, I ran into one of my classmates on the subway ride there. This kind of thing always happens to me. I hadn't seen him for over a year and then I randomly run into him the day after our reunion.

Anyway, my friend Peter Munoz-Bennet (the male model) made it to Mike's place even though he was inexplicably absent from the reunion (since he lives in the area.) So it was a good chance to talk a little bit longer to those two guys.

The thing that I'm realizing more and more these days is that the older I get, the more important it is to keep some contact with people from another part of my life.

Google Summer of Code - For people who are not me

2005-06-01T14:47:00.000-04:00

My friend Cole suggested that I take part in the Google Summer of Code. On the surface it seems ideal. Become involved in an Open Source project and get paid for it. The only catch is that you have to be a student. Apparently aspiring open source coders with a lot of free time on their hands just don't qualify. Well, poo poo on Google.

Of course, there's nothing to stop me from actually doing something very much like the Google Summer of Code. There's nothing stopping me from getting involved with open source projects. And many offer bounties for certain pieces of code anyway. So, I can do it all and maybe even get paid for it. I just won't have their little structure to go with it. Who needs a stinking structure anyway?

Fenway random thoughts

2005-06-01T13:09:00.000-04:00

Last night I was at Fenway Park for the first time in years. The occasion was Susannah's and my second anniversary (she bought me the tickets for Christmas.) I have a few random thoughts on the occasion.

1. I was sitting next to a kid who was probably about seven years old. When I sat down, his mom told me that she was apologizing in advance for his behavior. The kid was not unruly at all. It made the apology seem all the more bizarre.

2. While I know that the Red Sox have a pretty diverse fan base in the city, you couldn't tell that at the park. This must be one of the benefits of the highest ticket prices in Major League Baseball.

3. On a related note, the crowd seemed way less rowdy than I remember it being as a kid. And there was far less cursing.

4. It's fun explaining rndom baseball tidbits to Susannah. After Trot Nixon made a catch, she asked me who number 9 is. Nobody is number 9 (it's one of the retired numbers), Nixon is 7. Susannah told me they definitely printed 9 on the jumbotron. The 9, or course, referred to Nixon's position (right field) and not his uniform number.

5. I need to remember to learn the words to "Sweet Caroline" before going to a game there again.

6. Some sports writers have wondered about why fans are suddenly outraged about the steroid controversy, when it should have been apparent for quite a few years that some players were using them. It seems like this is just another excuse for fans to jeer opposing team members (as Sammy Sosa was jeered last night) and so adds another level of enjoyment to the game that wasn't necessary before.

the slacker curve revisited

2005-05-25T10:46:00.000-04:00

I'm writing again about the book Everything Bad is Good for You which has been blogged about on boingboing. I think I found a good example of what Steven Johnson is talking about--the TV show One Tree Hill. The content of the show is utterly ridiculous, but I do see how you can get a cognitive workout by watching it and keeping track of the various relationships, plotlines, etc. (I've seen way too much of this show since it comes on after Gilmore Girls which Susannah loves.) While this may make his point, I think I'd still rather find other cognitive workouts for myself.

Star Wars Random Thoughts

2005-05-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

1. The worst part of going to movies today has got to be trailers. Here are the memorable trailers:

Fatastic Four -- All I have to say is, which one of these men is playing Mr. Fantastic?

The Island -- Looked like it might be interesting until it said: directed by Michael Bay.

Mr and Mrs Smith -- They're married and they don't know they're both assassins. How original! I'd give this the award for least promising movie if it weren't for:

Stealth -- A stealth bomber becomes sentient and decides to kill people. Who come up with this stuff? And why is Jamie Foxx in movies like this?

Anyway, I'd give trailers a space in this blog equal to the time I spent watching them during the movie.

2. People say the dialogue sucks and the acting sucks. Seriously people, when has the dialogue and acting ever been good in a Star Wars movie. If there weren't campiness and unintentional comedy, I'd be sort of disappointed. That said, I thought the movie could do with a little less dialogue. I think it needs a phantom edit.

3. What was with the Qui-Gon reference at the very end? It seemed like George Lucas wanted there to be at least one loose end that isn't tied up by the end of the movie. My dad thinks there needs to be an episode 3 1/2 now.

4. I don't know if I'm just noticing this more now, but it seemed to me there were times in the movie when women were little more than set pieces. This was most obvious with the blue Jedi woman who has no lines and while most male Jedi wear long robes, her outfit definitely has to show off some cleavage. Yes, I realize Natalie Portman filled this role in Episode 2 (most ridiculously so with the outfit conveniently torn to expose her midriff) but at least her character had some lines and a name.

5. Susannah remarked that Padme manages to name her children very quickly especially when she didn't know she was having twins. Of course it makes sense; many mothers would have both a male name and a female name picked out before their child is born. Apparently, they didn't have ultrasounds a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

6. I have to say that it was a little bit bothersome to me to see R2-D2, generally the most competent character in the Star Wars universe, behaving more like C-3PO in the beginning of the film.

7. When I first started reading Harry Potter, it reminded me of Star Wars. A young orphan raised by his aunt and uncle finds he has inherited mystical powers from his father. There is a trio of heroes, two male and one female (from which I deduced that Hermione and Ron would end up together, just by the Star Wars connection) and there's a mysterious connection between the main villian and the main hero. There are other character mappings that don't work quite so well: Dumbledore = Obi-wan; Hagrid = Chewbacca; Neville = C-3PO. And obviously the characters have changed a lot since the first book. Episode 3 reminded me of Harry Potter, in the way that the villains are trying to cheat death.

Didn't make it to the Wifi Summit

2005-05-23T14:36:00.000-04:00

I was feeling sick last week so, despite a nice comment on my blog encouraging me to go, I decided not to go to the Wifi Summit. I don't regret not going. I probably would have felt miserable and, as can be expected, the event was well blogged.

I'm glad to see people talking about Wifi and I'm glad to see politicians talking about it too (though it amazes me that a politician might be called visionary for essentially jumping on a band-wagon.) But, ultimately, I don't think we'll look on this meeting as a critical event in the history of Boston or Wifi. It seems like just one part of a conversation about Wifi.

Wifi technology seems to be in a very interesting place right now in that it's very powerful and not very well understood. Everyone knows that it will make a big impact (and has begun making a big impact) but people seem generally unsure of how to move forward.

50% self determination

2005-05-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

So this is the first full week with more free days than "working" days. I put the working in quotes because I hope to be doing work on my free days as well. I'll just have to decide myself what I'll be doing.

So far today, I've been doing laundry, tidying, and other random tasks that needed doing. I also picked up a few things at the grocery store and discovered that the correct fix if your card reader is having trouble is to put the card in a thin plastic bag and swipe it again. Amazing!

I also watched the flash video on this blog (which I found through boingboing) for inspiration. There are some pretty good ideas here which I think I can combine with this other idea (also fron boingboing) for good effect. Essentially, I'm hoping to keep track of my schedule and personal projects using color coded index cards. While cleaning out my desk drawers today, I happen to find a Samsonite zip case just the right size for index cards. So I'm on my way and I'll see how this works.

God's Politics final thoughts

2005-05-21T22:40:00.000-04:00

I finished it about a week ago and have some final thoughts.

1. One of the things that interested me most was his talk about being more results oriented rather than ideology oriented with regards to policy. The difficulty, of course, is determining what the results of public policy actually are. A difficult problem to be sure, but definitely an interesting one for an information technology geek. And I have spoken to others interested in the problem as well. It's a problem, but one that can be dealt with. Wallis is right. The real difficulty is changing our thinking about policy.

2. At some point, the cataloging of the various scandals of any given president becomes tedious. It would be hard for me to imagine that industrious reporters could dig up something on just about any person in America. Wallis asks, "Can we really expect an administration to clean up the mess when its own house might be dirty--or at least tainted?" And I think we have to. I'm perfectly willing to believe that our president is a broken saint and can do great things even while being tied up in a few shady deals. My main problem is that our president seems to have a hard time realizing the broken part and it keeps him from being a saint.

3. Wallis notes, "the tragedy in America today, one can't vote for a consistent ethic of life." Which brings to mind fusion voting again. I could easily imagine a "Life Party" rising up if fusion voting became widespread again. This would seem like the perfect solution for Wallis's tragedy. It's funny that you don't hear Wallis talking about it. It could be that he doesn't know. It could also be that a Life Party would, at least initially, probably help Republicans.

4. In the end, the major shortcoming of this book is that it's really just a hobbling together of the various editorials Jim Wallis has written for Sojomail. That said, some of his old editorials that I didn't necessarily want to see again turned up in the book. Most annoyingly, the one about Janet Jackson's boob. I want to write an email to Wallis and say if you don't like what's on TV, don't watch it. It annoys me that some people seem to think they have a right to quality programming on TV. He suggests that poor quality entertainment should be on cable where people who want to watch it can pay for it. His thinking, of course, is backwards. If he wants better programming, he may have to pay for it.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

2005-05-17T21:01:00.000-04:00

I finished the book a couple weeks ago and I figured it would be good to write down some general impressions before I move on to another novel. So here they are, my random impressions:

1) It's really not hard to see why so many like JSAMN. It's rare that I read a very long novel (as this one is) and feel like the payoff of the last 100 or so pages is worth the 700 that have come before. JSAMN left me feeling very satisfied at the end, and I wasn't always sure while reading it that that would be the case.

2) Susanna Clarke has a gift for names. With only reading the title, you can tell which of the two is the one that seems like a real magician to everyone and which everyone finds boring. Most of the names in the book are unusual, but they all seem to fit very well.

3) When reading the book, I definitely had a stronger afinity for Jonathan Strange. I wonder if this is the way Clarke intended it or if some who read it feel a greater affinity for Norrell. I'm really curious. Do readers end up as either Strangites or Norrellites?

4) Clarke's early nineteenth centery is full of al of the racism, classism, and sexism that one expects to go along with that time. I enjoyed how her story undermined those structures while none of her characters ever really rise above it. There are no virtuous characters who see people as they really are and with whom we sympathize. But we understand that the author has a superior point of view.

Trying out the gimp

2005-05-17T20:49:00.000-04:00

I was inspired to try out the gimp yesterday, mostly because of this painting that was made available as a computer background by boston.com. This was the result:

Yeah, it's rough. But not bad for my first time out.

RPC in the news

2005-05-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

The fund-raising breakfast for Roxbury Presbyterian Church's capital campain was covered in Adrian Walker's column in the Globe today. It wasn't hard for anyone who knew what was happening to see that something special was going on there and it's nice to see the press picking up some real news for a change. Still, the most amazing thing about all of this, which Rev. Hamilton has pointed out before but Walker doesn't explicity state in his column, is that Jamie Bush and the Boston Christian Fellowship are "evangelicals" and the people at Trinity Episcopal are "liberals." A little church in Roxbury is bringing the broader Church together in a way I have never seen before--and that's an amazing ministry. Go RPC!

New numerology

2005-05-06T16:27:00.000-04:00

I was wondering what might turn up in the Oxyrhynchus papyri (now that many lost documents are being read with new techniques) that might have some theological significance. I've discovered from this blog that the number of the Beast isn't 666 after all. It's 616.

I've been struggling to figure out the theological significance of this. The best I can come up with is that we can now be fairly certain that George W. Bush, John Kerry, the Pope, Bill Gates, Prince William, Ronald Reagan, King Aurthur, Carlos Santana, David Hasselhoff and Barney are all not the antichrist, since they have mysterious ties to the number 666, but not 616.

The problem with OpenOffice

2005-05-04T17:26:00.000-04:00

As a follow up from my earlier post, I would like to post the solution to the problem with OpenOffice. Now anyone who googles: OpenOffice landscape portrait :will hit my page and find the solution to the problem. I won't bother with the fix to the Outlook Express problem, that can be found easily.

So, to fix the problem, I selected Page... from the Format menu and saw that sure enough the orientation was set to landscape. However, inexplicably, the width was set to 11.00" and the height was set to 8.50". To fix this, I changed the orientation to portrait (the height and width switched) and then set the height and width appropriately. At this point, OpenOffice realized what was going on and switched landscape back to the correct dimensions.

Now that the printer knew that it was supposed to be printing in portrait and the correct dimensions for portrait, it did fine.

It's a feature not a bug

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

Okay... A Microsoft/open source case study.

Last night, Susannah and Leah were working on their ethics paper. Susannah was using her Powerbook and Leah was using our desktop with Ubuntu and OpenOffice on it. OO Writer is easy enough to use and I have a book on it thanks to the Grassroots Use of Technology Conference. So, I left them at it and went to sleep.

While I was sleeping, they had problems with the page orientation. Writer kept printing out in portrait on a landscape oriented page, and so the pages came out sideways and the bottom was cut off. So, yeah, Writer has some bugs. I'm not surprised. This particular bug may be fixed in version 2.0.

They called me again this morning because they saved the file in OpenOffice and they couldn't open it with Word at school. I had them email it to me to convert the file to Word format. Due to an odd series of events, which I won't go into, I ended up opening the email with Outlook Express which informed me that the attachment had been removed from the email because the file format was dangerous. It is not possible to open OpenOffice attachments with Outlook Express. This is a feature, not a bug.

Ok, let's set aside for the moment the fact that Microsoft is being evil and leveraging their market share against potential competitors. This example illustrates what I find more appealing about open source software. Sure, it could be buggy, but at least you're annoyed by actual bugs. With Microsoft, I'm annoyed by their products' features. So there you have it:

OpenOffice = unintentionally annoying
Microsoft = intentionally annoying

Interesting Technology Happenings

2005-05-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

I found out about a Boston monthly networking meeting hosted by Planetwork. The meeting promises to include presentations made by "anyone who is working on software, digital media or communication technology specifically for ecological and/or social benefit." This, of course, sounds very interesting.

The great irony here is that a meeting where people will be discussing technologies with ecological benefits is not accessible by public transportation. That's right, you need a car to get there. Pretty difficult for those of us without consistent car access.

I'm probably not going to go and my feeling is, if I miss my chance and they never have anoter one of these again, it probably wasn't worth going to in the first place. If it's good, I'll have more chances.

Also, this meeting is the same day as the Boston Wifi Summit (the times do not overlap, although I thought they might at first.) I'm not sure I can handle two of this type of event in one day.

Working flux

2005-04-30T12:06:00.000-04:00

It appears my days of doing IT work for housing activists are numbered, or rather the money that can be paid to me for working for housing activists is numbered. In any case, my connection with that world is severing a little bit. I may continue to do work here and there, but I will no longer be hearing presentations on housing policy, etc.

For the immediate future, I will be doing IT work for those working on location based wireless networks. I may also end up with a lot of time on my hands which which I can do whatever I want. (Explore some or all of the random things that interest me right now.)

So, as a farewell to my former employers, I post two more articles from the Globe this week about affordable housing. I expect to be hearing a lot about the topic in Boston this year during the run up to the local elections.

Blogging pastors

2005-04-30T11:30:00.000-04:00

Apparently Scott Collins-Jones, newly called pastor of Woodland Presbyterian Church, is a blogger.

Historic events

2005-04-29T13:34:00.000-04:00

A bar room conversation yesterday about the fall of the Berlin wall got me thinking about historic events. I was wondering how often we come across stories of that magnitude in the news. Well, there's a good candidate on the Globe website today.

I think we'll probably be seeing more stories like this coming out of Asia over the next couple decades. It'll be interesting to see how much press they get in the states, or if we continue to pay little attention to that part of the world.

Curt Schilling - gamer geek

2005-04-28T08:10:00.000-04:00

I noticed this picture from the Globe website today which was attached to an article about Curt Schilling going on the DL. Schilling is wearing an Everquest II hat. Does Curt Schilling play MMORPGs when he's not playing baseball?

Church Visiting

2005-04-25T09:48:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, Susannah and I (though mostly Susannah) made a last minute decision to visit Fourth Presbyterian Church in South Boston. There are a few BU people who attend the church, so we had been thinking of visiting for a while. On Saturday, we discovered that as a result of a series of events, starting with Rev. Hamilton having his wisdom teeth removed, we were not going to have a meeting after the service at RPC as we intended. It seemed an ideal time to go.

We arrived about 15 minutes early thanks to MBTA scheduling and, as a result, we were greeted by several church members and the pastor; the fact that they were able to recognize visitors immediately was the first indication that this was a pretty close-knit community. The church building itself was small leading to a fairly intimate service. The pastor also doubled as piano player, though another member played the worlds smallest pipe organ. One of the first things Susannah noticed was how many children were in the congregation. There were more children than at any service we had been to in a while and there seemed to be more children there than parents. Whatever else, the church definitely has a vibrant children's ministry.

It was "Appreciation Sunday", so a lot was made of thanking people. When it came time for the sermon, the pastor spoke on two passages from the common lectionary--the first a passage from Acts about the stoning of Stephen, the second a passage from 1 Peter about the people of the church being living stones. The pastor spoke briefly about the two passages, noting the service of Stephen as one of the first deacons of the church and the fact that everyone has a place as a living stone in the church. Then, as a spiritual discipline, he went around the congragation and thanked everyone there individually by name for something specific they contributed. (And yes, that included myself and Susannah. He thanked us just for coming.)

I think I'll always have a soft spot for small urban churches and it's always a good experience to visit other churches. I think, for me, it serves as a reminder that what I normally take part in on Sunday mornings is not contained by the four walls of the building I'm in, but that I'm part of something taking place across the city, the country, and even the world. It makes the experience of going to church on any given Sunday that much fuller and richer.

TV makes you smarter?

2005-04-24T21:50:00.000-04:00

I read this post on boingboing, and I have to say this may be the dumbest thing they ever linked. It's about a book called Everything Bad is Good For You and links a New York times article by the author of the book. The essential argument is that television isn't as bad as people say... just look at how much of a mental workout you get from watching "24". While his point may be valid, I'm kinda wondering what he's trying to prove and if that's worth writing a book about.

He seems to be arguing that some TV shows can provide as much cognitive stimulation as a good book. This doesn't seem like a major revelation to me. Are there really very many people who would argue that no television shows are intellectually stimulating? Is there anyone in this country (excepting Amish and the like) who doesn't watch any TV? I don't even own a TV and I still manage to watch some things. Does anyone not think that watching a good TV show is a better use of time than reading a bad book?

Is he trying to argue that people should watch more TV? Watch TV instead of reading books? If he is, he's not making his point very well. To be fair, I didn't read his whole article; it was too boring. But maybe this is his whole point: You would be better off watching TV than reading his book.

And the Gameboy/Book--imagine if they had been invented in reverse order--thought experiment is just silly. Besides, isn't it generally recommended to get more exercise as an alternative to video games anyway?

Microsoft - It Just Does What It Feels Like

2005-04-22T20:16:00.000-04:00

When I first came across this article, linked by slashdot, about Microsoft's new mantra "It Just Works," I had to laugh. Of course, I thought they were talking about Windows XP which certainly does not "just work." But this article is more about Microsoft's production goals for Longhorn, their next Windows release. Microsoft freely admits that in many ways, Windows XP is hard to use and wants to improve on that for Longhorn.

I get worried when I read stuff like this though and start wondering if the phrase for Microsoft should be more, "It just does what it feels like." You turn Windows on and it does it's thing and you barely have to do anything at all. IE opens up with your favorite sites and a couple it thinks you might like. Type a few general keywords into Word and you get a full document on the subject you want. Outlook checks your mail for you and then suggests auto-replies for various messages. We're already seriously in danger of becoming tools of our computers instead of the other way around. Am I crazy to be thinking stuff like this?

I think I feel a story coming on:

Few remember the days when systems administrators enjoyed working with computers, when we felt we were being paid for something we loved--something we would do anyway. Today, none would claim to enjoy crawling into our windowless basement dungeons to wrestle the Beast. We do it not out of our love for technology, but out of a sincere regard for humanity. It is our calling, and it is a curse.

For the Beast--the Great Mind--controls all but us and we alone remember what technology once was. We pass our wisdom on to new generations by word of mouth and by writing in spiral-bound notebooks, a rare and valuable commodity to those of our calling. We dare trust nothing to electronic media where it could be intercepted by our enemy.

And so on...

Affordable housing again

2005-04-22T11:54:00.000-04:00

Two more articles in the Globe this morning. One about the silent opposition to affordable housing. The other about church property in the fenway area that was sold to Northeastern.

It's really sad that people distrust their neighbors so much. And this is really what it's all about. Some residents in JP are saying, my rent has gone up $500/month over the last three years and if things get worse, I'll have to move out. And I don't have the six-figure income needed in order to afford to buy a house, so we need more affordable housing. When someone says, "This nighborhood doesn't need more affordable housing," they're either not listening to their neighbors or they're saying, "I would like it if you left and someone who makes a six-figure salary moved in." And then they wonder why people are hostile.

Maybe building affordable housing isn't the solution, but it's just plain wrong to ignore the needs of your neighbors who have been living there as long if not longer than you.

Affordable housing in the news

2005-04-21T09:23:00.000-04:00

The Globe ran two stories today about the fight over the Blessed Sacrament church in Jamaica Plain (complete with quotes from current and former coworkers of mine.) The situation is this: due to church scandals, the archdiocese of Boston has closed several parishes and is selling the land. The fight is over what to do with the land. Some would like to see more affordable housing units built there, others think market rate housing should be built. (Note: the people that I hang around with all want more affordable housing.)

There are two things I would like to say about these articles. First, to say that more affordable housing would be bad for a neighborhood (attract drug dealers, prostitutes, etc; yes, this was argued in one of the community hearings about the site) suggests, in some way, that those who make less money than you do are morally inferior. And, of course, I have a big problem with that. Second, neither article points out that the plan put forward by the JPNDC invovles building housing for a mix of incomes reflective of the existing income distribution of the neighborhood. Which is a far more resonable proposal than the impression you might get.

My weekend with techie activists

2005-04-17T18:30:00.000-04:00

The Grassroots Use of Technology Conference was held this weekend, hosted by the Organizer's Collaborative and others. When I came to Boston a year ago, I was actively seeking out the techie activist community. Now, a year later, I can see that I was at least mildly successful in integrating myself into that community; in that, I can volunteer for a conference like this and then go and actually know people.

The conference started for me Friday morning when I started making press calls and faxing press releases to various news outlets. I wish I could say that I had enormous success in getting reporters out to cover the event, but I wasn't. In fact, I brought in a goose egg. I'm not really sure what to think about this looking back; but I can say that, at the time, it was very mentally exhausting.

Then there were the conference sessions in the afternoon which were good, but due to my mental state at the time, I can't say much else. Let's see: I think I have some notes...

Ah yes... the first panel that I went to was about the usability of open source software, or lack thereof. The main presenter was someone from Aspiration Tech which tries to connect non-profits with software that can help them fulfill their mission. One thing that I remember from the panel was something about "Usability Sprints" which basically involve locking people that write software in a room with people that use software for five days and seeing what happens. With the hope that the software becomes more usable. The second panel that day was about online information sharing. They talked about blogs, RSS, BitTorrent. Here's the site from a couple panelists: DigitalBicycle

On Saturday, the main conference day, I took the subway to MIT and emerged from the T station with five other people headed for the conference. At the conference, there was a table full of O'Reilly books to be had for an additional donation (1 for $20, 2 for $30, 3 for $50, 5 for $100; yes, I know there's something wrong with that math.) Anyone who's ever purchase ad O'Reilly book knows that this wa a no brainer. The three books I got would have cost me considerably more than the $50 donation and the registration donation I made for the conference combined.

The "keynote" was given by Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum. He said that he agreed to give the keynote only if there could be a live chat going on at the same time which was projected on the screen next to him. He resoned that the audience was, collectively, smarter than he was. He then went on to give his talk and ignore the chat. He talked about blogs which everyone talks about these days. I will give him credit though for not making blogs out too much to be the magic bullet, while acknowledging their benefits for bringing people together.

I then went through a day of panels, capped by a discussion about Outcomes Management for non-profits. It started off as a total cost of ownership analysis for Outcomes Management solutions, then veered into a philosophical discussion of why we track outcomes (to get more grant money or to actually have better outcomes), and ended up with a discussion of how total cost of ownership is a fraud (what's most important is how a tool integrates with organizational culture, etc.)

So, I have a few business cards and about a million URLs to sift through (I've gone through a few just writing this blog.) There were also a few people at each panel live-blogging what was going on and I want to look through all of that info. I think I may be processing for the next week.

Food Force - The Video Game

2005-04-14T10:58:00.000-04:00

The BBC published an article about a new video game released by the UN called Food Force designed to raise awareness of world hunger among teenagers in developed nations. According to the article, the game features six different missions, with a variety of game play styles. One involves dropping food packets from an airplane, another is a sim-city like simulation where you rebuild a country's economy.

Full review of the actual game, which is available for free, when I get home from work.

Fusion Voting: The Lost Tool of Democracy

2005-04-11T22:14:00.000-04:00

At work today, someone from the Working Families Party made a presentation about fusion voting, a new old strategy for giving minorities and small parties a voice.

It's an interesting idea which is apparently working well for the WFP in New York. Essentially, fusion voting allows a candidate to appear on the ballot twice for two different parties, so a sample ballot might look something like:

Kerry (D) ___
Bush (R) ___
Kerry (WFP) ___

In this case, the WFP is endorsing Kerry but has retained their own ballot. The WFP is not saying that it agrees with the Democratic platform; it has its on platform. But they think that Kerry is the better of the major candidates. So when election time comes around, the voting might come out:

Kerry (D) 45%
Bush (R) 47%
Kerry (WFP) 8%

In this case, Kerry wins with 53% of the vote and it's clear that a significant part of his voter base (enough to push him over the top) is concerned about the issues that are most important to the WFP. The WFP could never run a candidate that could win, but this way they have a voice.

Fusion voting is currently only legal in seven states (it was once legal in all 50, about 100 years ago.) And it's going to be considered by the Massachusetts legislature in the near future. It should be of interest to any God's Politics reading people or anyone interested in alternatives to the two party system.

Back to God's Politics

2005-04-09T17:11:00.000-04:00

I had set the book down for a while because, for someone who has been reading Jim Wallis's editorials in sojomail for a while, the book doesn't really present that much new. Tonight, I picked it up and read a chapter called "Blessed are the Peacemakers" which is probably the best chapter in the book so far.

Wallis starts by making an argument that I'm sure some would disagree with. "The fight against terrorism is indeed a moral cause, unlike many U.S. foreign policy goals in the Cold War period." Wallis argues that those who would oppose war in response to terrorism must come up with better alternatives for fighting terrorism. Our current situation is different than it was during the Cold War, when apparently it was okay to simply protest America's unjust foreign policy. Reading that, I was reminded of Mark Taylor's critique of Wallis that he seemed to be buying into the idea that terrorism was the main problem and not American imperialism.

So, is Wallis right? Are things different now than they were before? Wallis isn't naive enough to believe that American foreign policy has become completely moral, at least in its intentions, now that the enemies are terrorists and he notes that "the United States has itself been guilty of sponsoring or supporting 'state terrorism.'" So his argument that there is a greater need for just alternatives in today's world seems unnecessary and perhaps inaccurate. It seems to be buying into the idea that the world changed on September 11th, an idea that Wallis also refutes with a quote from Stanley Hauerwas: "No, the world changed in 33 A.D. The Question is how to narrate what happened on September 11 in light of what happened in 33 A.D." Claiming that the fight against terrorism is a moral cause seems dangerous without a good definition of terrorism. (Wallis gives us his surprisingly late in the chapter: "When you know that your actions will kill innocent noncombatants, that's terrorism.") Alex Irvine wrote a short story for Salon a while back that illustrates well the danger of ill-defined terrorism. Does being a member of the Green Party make you a terrorist? What about possessing marijuana?

That aside, Wallis's point about peacemaking is a good one. He rightly points out that "Jesus did not say, 'Blessed are the peace lovers'.... He rather said, 'Blessed are the peacemakers,'which is always a much more difficult task." He then goes on to lay out just responses to violence, including nonviolent resistance and policing as opposed to war-making, noting that both actively oppose oppression and violence. His distinction between policing and war-making is important and Wallis carefully spells out what 'just policing' would look like. (Important because unjust policing is certainly possible as well.)

Wallis provides a good short answer to anyone who has ever asked what a just response to violence might look like, but it's easy to see that he's only skimming the surface of a complete answer to that question. Fortunately, the chapter is loaded with quotes from sources that might be worth looking at. (Walter Wink's The Powers That Be comes up again.) Definitely, it's a good place to dive back into the book again.

Glen Phillips: Poster Boy for Vulnerable Masculinity

2005-04-06T18:29:00.000-04:00

I don't think I've followed any artist more closely than Glen Phillips (as a separate entity from Toad the Wet Sprocket.) I was a late-comer to the whole Toad scene. I didn't discover them until 1996. The first time I saw them was on their fan appreciation tour following Coil. I saw them once more at the Electric Factory in Philly in 1997 shortly before they broke up.

After that Glen was on a musical hiatus for a few years before his 2001 solo debut Abulum. After that, I saw him a handful of times performing solo acoustic at the North Star Bar as well as catching him on the first Mutual Admiration tour and the Toad reunion tour. So it's cool to see him finally coming into his own as a solo artist with his new release Winter Pays For Summer and performing at the Middle East last night.

WPFS is probably the most personal album that Glen has ever made and you can see that literally painted all over the album (the cover art for the CD was painted by his wife.) In some ways, this album seems to be one long love song for his wife. And as Susannah says, married men always write the best love songs. Glen's love songs focus on the joys of his marriage despite the obvious flaws he has found in his wife after knowing her for fifteen years. Most notably, Glen's song "Easier" has finally made it onto an album (albeit a censored version.) It's a great love song for his wife, recognizing the joys of their relationship is even amidst difficulties. It's complemented nicely by his new song "True" which has this to say about his wife: "Your love is often unkind, bitter and blind/ Sometimes casually cruel/ But it's true."

Glen's album, dedicated to his wife and daughters, is a sincere meditation on being a husband and father making it a great album for men. This is why I'm calling him the poster boy for vulnerable masculinity. Particularly, his song "Half Life" speaks against men being emotionally distant from those who matter most. "You can fake it at work/ Fake it for friends/ But not for your children/ Or the woman you wed." This has always been a theme for Glen, and you can see it in many of the songs from his previous albums. What I like about WPFS is that Glen has made it more personal.

Now some random notes on the album and the show:

When I first heard the song "Don't Need Anything", I could tell that Glen intended it to be in the style of Randy Newman. On WPFS, the song is accompanied by piano paying even clearer tribute to Newman.

There is an obligatory Iraq war song on the album: "Gather". The song is a prayer for the war to end. "Oh God, will you hear my cry/ Don't want to see another innocent die." At the show last night, Glen said he didn't think 100,000 people had ever died for a less noble cause. Now that is probably not entirely true.

Glen played a different (and better) version of the song "Courage" live. There was an extra verse and the song ended in a more approriate place. Now I need to find a good MP3 of the song performed live. A good number of his shows end up on archive.org.

Halfway through the show last night, Susannah turned to me and said, "This is a great crowd." As if on queue, Glen said from the stage, "I wish I could cancel the tour and play here every night."

We randomly ran into a BU School of Theology student at the show. I had met him years ago at Gordon Conwell. We were sharing a room as two perspective students visiting the seminary. Apparently, he had once been in a Lutheran youth band with Glen Phillips's drummer. It's really an insanely small world.

The real problem with the world

2005-03-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

I saw a card for The Leftist Lounge pinned up in one of my coworkers cubes today. The card caught my eye for a specific reason that I intend to blog about later; but for now, I want to post this Moliere quote I found on their web site:

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

Neil Gaiman on the Inklings

2005-03-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my thoughts on fantastic fiction spilled from my head in a very rough state (as is the case with blogs) and I wondered if there was a difference between escapist fantasy and fantasy that points our hearts towards something bigger.

Today, I came across a blog about Neil Gaiman's speech at Mythcon about Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton. Gaiman has a lot of good to say about all three (which should not be surprising since he's addressing the mythopeoic society.) His comments aren't particularly helpful for addressing the question I asked yesterday, but his thoughts on Lord of the Rings is worth noting here. What I notice specifically when I read the speech was that Gaiman's assessment of Tolkien inspired delight while Mieville's made my head spin. This is the same response that I have towards their respective works of fiction (which is good.)

But anyway, Gaiman on Tolkien:

I came to the conclusion that Lord of the Rings was, most probably, the best book that ever could be written, which put me in something of a quandary. I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. (That's not true: I wanted to be a writer then.) And I wanted to write The Lord of the Rings. The problem was that it had already been written.

I gave the matter a great deal of thought, and eventually came to the conclusion that the best thing would be if, while holding a copy of The Lord of the Rings, I slipped into a parallel universe in which Professor Tolkien had not existed. And then I would get someone to retype the book -- I knew that if I sent a publisher a book that had already been published, even in a parallel universe, they'd get suspicious, just as I knew my own thirteen-year old typing skills were not going to be up to the job of typing it. And once the book was published I would, in this parallel universe, be the author of Lord of the Rings, than which there can be no better thing.

I would also note that at the very end of the speech he mentions the importance of all three writers on his own writings. It's here that we see an argument for why fantasy fiction might be important.

Without them, I cannot imagine that I would have become a writer, and certainly not a writer of fantastic fiction. I would not have understood that the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming, nor that the majesty and the magic of belief and dreams could be a vital part of life and of writing.

Hope and Art

2005-03-22T22:38:00.000-05:00

Last night, I went with Susannah to a lecture at BU given by Mark Taylor of Princeton Theological Seminary about America and Empire. I jotted a couple things down in my notebook, but the thing that I've been thinking about the most over the past day is something he said in response to a question. The person who asked the question noted how there was very little cynicism in his lecture and asked how he maintains hope. One of the things that he said gives him hope is art. Art has the ability to transport us out of our present situation into a place where our hope is realized. Even if things are bad, we can dance and sing about better times.

I've been thinking today about the power of fantasy literature to transport us out of our present situation and give us hope. In particular, I've been thinking about China Mieville and J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien everybody knows, thanks to Peter Jackson. Mieville is a fantasy writer/social activist who also happens to dislike Tolkien a great deal. To quote a review of Lord of the Rings that Mieville wrote for the Socialist Workers' Party.

Tolkien claimed the function of his fantasy was 'consolation'. In other words, it becomes a point of principle that his literature mollycoddles its readers. Tolkien and his admirers (many of them leftists) gave his escapism an emancipatory gloss, claiming that jailers hate escapism. As the great anarchist fantasist Michael Moorcock has pointed out, this is precisely untrue. Jailers love escapism. What they hate is escape.

Tolkien is naive to think he's escaping anything. He established a form full of possibilities and ripe for experimentation, but used it to present trite, nostalgic daydreams. The myth of an idyllic past is not oppositional to capitalism, but consolation for it. Troubled by the world? Close your eyes and think of Middle Earth.

So, here's the question: What's the difference between literature that is escapist and literature that transports us out of our present state and gives us hope? I'm not sure that Mieville has entirely gotten it right.

Mieville finds fault with Tolkien for looking to the past--to the good old days that never really existed. To use the jailer analogy, Tolkien wants us, the prisoners, to remember how much better things were when we weren't in prison when, in fact, we've been in prison all of our lives. This is a common conservative argument: Things were better when we had X. Which can be easily refuted by pointing out that things were never better and we never had X. (I read an interesting article on Salon this week about the lack of a connection between violence in the media and violence in society. The article points out, rightly, that it's not necessarily true that entertainment is more violent now than it has been in the past and studies indicate that violence in society has been decreasing, not increasing.) Mieville would of course say that his fantasy points people forward towards a way out of the prison. He is offering legitimate escape and not merely escapism.

I tend to think this might be a case where two people are standing back to back and end up facing each other anyway. We can easily see that there's not to much difference between: "Things were better when we had X." and "Things would be better if we had X." Mieville is kidding himself if he thinks his books aren't at all escapist. I also think that he's missing something if he thinks that Tolkien offers no real escape. The truth is that we need both. For those who have spent their lives in prison, there needs to be an escape plan but there also needs to be stories about how much better things will be on the outside.

I would think that the real danger comes neither from those who long for a mythical past nor from those who long for a future not yet realized. It comes from those who want to fight hard to maintain the status quo.

Blogging my DVDs

2005-03-19T16:35:00.000-05:00

I recently received two DVD sets for my birthday: MacGyver - Season 1 and Battlestar Galactica the SciFi channel miniseries. I have comments to make on both of these.

MacGyver:
Ok, I was eight years old when the first season came out and I don't think that I actually started watching until the second season. So this DVD set is entirely new to me. The first thing that strikes me is how much television has changed in twenty years, and it's not just production quality. Today, most television dramas are told in a serial fashion. Every week, the story builds on everything that has come before. We expect to have two minutes of pertinent clips from previous weeks before every show. That only used to happen before the second part of two part episodes, now we expect it and it serves as a kind of foreshadowing for what will happen in an episode. Compared to that MacGyver is ridiculously episodic. Every week he's in a different country on a different mission. He has a different love interest every week who disappears without a trace when the episode ends. There's also an "opening gambit" at the beginning of every episode that's kind of like a five-minute mini-adventure that has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the story. The action scenes are badly choreographed. Everyone whether they're in Burma or Hungary speaks English. And the special effects, particularly in the pilot, are often laughable. It makes me wonder: "Was the show always this campy and I just don't remember it, or did it get more sophisticated as it went on?" Still, there are some interesting points.

The shows follow a pretty standard formula. MacGyver is sent in to some country to retrieve an item that we know very little about. This is because retrieval of the item is often secondary to the story. The real story of every episode involves some opressed people group (Burmese opium slaves, Hungarian gypsies, etc.) who MacGyver manages to help while completing his mission. MacGyver is, of course, the Minnesota farm boy who solves all of life's problems with his own inventiveness and so has none of the skills normally associated with international espionage (or relief work) such as knowledge of a foreign language or cultural saviness. When he needs to blend in, he relies on his uncanny ability to find someone of appropriate height and build, knock him unconscious, and change into his clothes all in less than thirty seconds. As a result, he tends to stick out like a sore thumb, like in the very first scene when he tries to infiltrate a military base wearing a bright red ski cap. But that's really the whole point, MacGyver is unabashedly American in an international world while demonstrating core American values of resourcefulness and respect for all human beings. He's also, as Susannah points out, the anti-James Bond. The goody-two-shoes who doesn't drink, smoke, curse, or use guns. He has no vice, and his only character flaw seems to be his fear of heights (which he handles with ease.) He is Heinlein's omnicompetent man, and I wonder if this isn't the reason that the show was successful. That there is a MacGyver archetype of sorts that resonates with us. You feel this when you watch the show. Even as your mind rejects the campiness and the absurd perfection of the lead character, you find yourself liking MacGyver anyway.

And now for something completely different.

Battlestar Galactica:
I'm starting to be convinced that the small screen is surpassing the big screen in terms of entertainment quality. Don't get me wrong. 90% of TV is still crap. I just think that percentage may be higher these days for movies, and in particular science fiction movies which these days tend to range from "somewhat interesting before completely crashing and burning" to "amazingly mind-numbing for a genre that plays with ideas." Every once in a while a film pops up on the margins that's really interesting like Donnie Darko or Primer. And while I love these films, they can't be classified as mainstream entertainment. Fortunately, we have the SciFi network. Their Battlestar Galactica is leaps and bounds ahead of anything science fiction that I've seen on the big screen in years.

It's a revisioning of the original series from the 70's for the post-9/11 era. Ron Moore, the series writer, seems to think he's reinventing science fiction television and he may be right. He mostly sticks to his manifesto, delivering a TV show with a very different feel. Story-wise, Moore seems to be engaging the sentiment of the current times. The basic plot involves a terrorist attack by a bunch of religious extremists who catch people with their pants down. Only in BSG, humans are nearly killed to extinction (there are about 50,000 left at the end of the show) and the religious extremists are robots created by humans.

The series shines, however, not because of its great premise (which could easily seem hokey if mishandled) but because it is centered around its characters. And the characters are engaging primarily because the cast is outstanding. Moore's characterizations may be a little over dramatic. When we are introduced to characters, we are immediately shown their flaws. Relationships between the characters seem to be defined by their dysfunctions. But the actors do a good job of selling the characters and making you like them.

I'm just beginning to watch the first season episodes (which I can do despite not having a TV because a friend of mine has Tivo), and the show is stirring up a lot of interesting thoughts. I may blog more later.

Disney sets out to make 'The Passion for kids'

2005-03-07T15:02:00.000-05:00

I found this headline for an article in the Telegraph extemely disturbing. What's worse is that the article itself is even more disturbing.

"The Passion for kids" referred to here is the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe which is currently in production. Apparently Disney thinks it would be good for its coffers for this movie to be marketed in the same way The Passion of the Christ was.

The marketing hype for The Passion of the Christ was a monstrosity that ought to never rear its ugly head again. The last thing we need is churches buying out theaters and selling this film as an evangelism opportunity. And let's pray that there isn't a three-ring media circus surrounding The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe which turns the film itself to some kind of side show.

Dueling Monologues

2005-03-07T12:59:00.000-05:00

While listening to Jim Wallis speak at the Trinity Episcopal Church last month, I scribbled something in my notebook: "Dialogue -- How do we avoid being a second monologue?" Jim Wallis was talking about how there is no dialogue about moral values in America, there is a monologue. My immediate concern was: Are we creating a dialogue or another monologue, one coming from the Religious Left?

This question remains, even though hearing Wallis speak and reading his book has convinced that what he does indeed want is a dialogue. Reading Sojomail recently what I'm seeing are dueling monologues, between the Religious Right and the Religious Left. It started when Chuck Colson wrote some commentary about Jim Wallis which seriously misrepresented his position. (Colson also simulataneously accuses the Religious Left of considering the fight against poverty to be the most important moral issue before claiming that they give all moral issues the same weight.) The problem is that Jim Wallis's response (warning: registration required) was equally uncharitable. I was discussing this with a friend last night who was disappointed that Wallis didn't take the high ground in that debate. And he's right to be disappointed. We sincerely believe that Jim Wallis wants to create a dialogue, but given the opportunity here, he failed to do it.

I'm further bothered by the recent Sojomail which included paid ads targetted specifically at the Religious Left and Blue Staters. It makes me wonder if Jim Wallis is polluting his message by having these ads in his newsletter. It also makes me wonder what kind of movement Jim Wallis is starting. His book is right on the money: We need to get beyond Republican and Democrat, Right and Left, Red and Blue. But if the result of this book tour is a newly reinvigorated Religious Left, then the battle is lost. A battle between the Religious Right and the Religious Left will result in both sides losing. "We need to find common ground by moving to higher ground," as Jim Wallis so often eloquently states.

President Bush visisted by Jesus

2005-03-02T18:15:00.000-05:00

Or at least someone who resembles western artwork that depicts Jesus.

The Red Sox visited the White House today and, over at Salon, Keith Knight dreams of what he would do if he were the Sox's bat boy. It's pretty hilarious.

Neal Stephenson, Walter Wink, and the empirical science of shaftology

2005-02-15T21:50:00.000-05:00

I read this interview with Neal Stephenson in Reason Online because I'm reading his book Cryptonomicon right now. I wasn't expecting to find a brief discussion of Walter Wink and the theology of domination systems. What I find particularly interesting here is that Reason is a libertarian magazine. Stephenson is saying that libertarians should be interested in what Walter Wink has to say about domination systems.

Stephenson likens social systems to biological systems, comparing diseases whith what he calls "power disorders." Essentially out understanding of social systems is centuries behind our understanding of biological systems. We currently know very little about the underlying causes of power disorders. Stephenson seems to think Wink is on the right track by developing an empirical science of shaftology by looking at people in various situations who are getting the shaft.

The problem is that this interview has very little to say about Wink himself. Stephenson points out that, in Wink's view, Jesus was all about opposing opressive power systems. A quick look at Wink's bibliography reveals that he's also very committed to nonviolence. Wink may just end up on my reading list.

The main point that I take away from this interview is how any plans to fight opression ought to include libertarians who apparently feel very strongly about fighting opression. They are traditional enemies of the left because of their distrust of centralized government, but they may have a point in that gevernments are typically some of the worst oppressors of the poor. This is also evidence, in my view, for why the Republican party has passed its point of usefulness. We need a libertarian voice in the national political dialogue, which has traditionally been the role of the Republican party. However, these days Republicans are authoritarian despite a lot of talk about small govenment.

Time on influential Evangelicals

2005-02-13T22:06:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is last weeks news, but I really didn't get a chance to look into this very much last week. Now, of course, if you want to read the article on Time's website, you have to pay for it. I suppose at some point these publications that have been around for a while will enter the 21st century, but I'm not holding my breath and this is a hude digression anyway.

Thankfully, the list, which is titled "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" can be found easily enough on the blogosphere. There are a few comments I'd like to make on this list.

1) Apparently, the people at Time Magazine can't count as there are more than 25 people on this list. The only conclusion one can draw from this is that they don't view people who are related as distinct individuals. While one might be able to make some religious argument that a husband/wife duo should only count as one person (and I stress might), I really can't see why Billy and Franklin Graham should only count as one person.

2) I wish lists like this were more like college athletics polls. By this I mean, I would have liked to have seen a brief list at the end of those who also received votes but didn't make it into the top 25. ESPN.com does all of their lists this way, but it makes sense for them. I just think Time has something to learn from the sports world.

3) Some of these are no brainers, but there are quite a few not here that I would have listed. This list is heavily skewed towards the Right, which the editors at time probably think is appropriate since they see Evangelical Christianity as being heavily skewed to the Right. Really this is Time magazine saying, these are the people who won the election for George W. Bush, since everyone seems to buy the explanation that Evangelical Christianity is what tipped the election in his favor this year. (That explanation, by the way, makes no sense whatsoever. It's not like Evangelical Christians suddenly shifted towards the Rupublican party this election. If anything they're shifting away from the Republican party.)

4) The person to note here is Brian McLaren and I say that for two reasons. First because I just recently read his book A Generous Orthodoxy making him fresh on my mind. Second, it's just surprising to see him there, as he doesn't seem to fit with the bulk of the crew.

Thoughts on God's Politics

2005-02-11T21:42:00.000-05:00

There are some of my initial thoughts on reading the sixth chapter of God's Politics. "Vision" is clearly one of Jim Wallis's favorite words and, by this point in the book, Wallis's vision is beginning to take shape even if it is still a little amorphous. I think, ultimately, how well Jim Wallis conveys his vision is how this book should first be judged (and then second on the content of that vision.) But now I have to go with the rough image I see emerging.

Wallis's vision is for what he calls "prophetic politics" which, in theory anyway, is based on the prophetic teachings of Hebrew prophets. I say "in theory" because he has not talked very much about what the prophets actually said, although the table of contents promises that this is coming. Here he lays out clearly where he is going even if how he gets there isn't clear yet.

"Prophetic politics would not be an endless argument between personal and social responsibility, but a weaving of the two together in search of the common good."

And this seems to be what we can expect generally from the book--an attempt to break down false dichotomies in order to build something new with the best pieces of everything. And here we see the rough outline of the vision, which is undeniably good, but the tricky part will be filling it in.

He makes a good start, particularly with his unwillingness to demonize either side. While he is undeniably critical of the religios right, he claims "it is a mistake to regard all the conservative Christians who are sympathetic to the religious Right as people who want to impose their religious values on fellow citizens.... In my experience, most are motivated more by defensive feelings than offensive intentions."

I think the mistake here is in thinking that Wallis is talking to some new religious Left, as some seem to think that he is doing. But he's clear himself that this book is both for liberals and conservatives. His need to engage both sides is key to his ability to fill out the rough shape of his vision. The question is: Is engaging both sides possible when people seem to be so divided now? Jim Wallis seems to think that it is and, ultimately, I think he's just going to take this one on faith. I guess whether you think he's a crackpot or a visionary depends on how you answer that question.

I'm not so sure yet. I'll wait till I finish the book.