The Cat on the CRT

A haiku on death, inspired by Chapter 35 of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Young leaves, old pavement:
Is there a life after death?
At rest by these tracks.

This is a selection from a book I wrote in 2005, titled Drinking From the Darkness: Living Completely in a Time of Estrangement.

Ours is a culture of violence: we breed it, export it, sow it and reap it, aggrandize it, and turn to it in every crisis. Our governmental leaders speak blandly of their peaceful aims as they spread the pall of war across the globe. A respected scientific journal in Europe recently estimated that the United States military has killed upwards of 100,000 people in Iraq over the past two years, even as the putative justification for that slaughter has been proved illusory. The mass media mouthpiece of our government gratefully exalts the cult of violence, and for the most transparent of reasons: violence sells. Ask any news reporter whether he'd rather be at a murder scene or an art opening, and if he knows where his bread is buttered, he'll pick the murder every time. In his epochal films, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, director Michael Moore exposes this violence-infatuation on the part of the mass media by revealing news reporters and newsmakers in the act of preening and preparing themselves to announce the violence of the day to a ravenous audience hungry for news of death and depredation.

This is the substance of the learning our children are exposed to, even before they enter their first day of school: a government that condones and actively practices torture, murder, occupation, and thievery, and a mass media that gleefully reports the destruction in the most minute detail allowable by the authorities; and then creates fictional or semi-fictional variations on the theme in the form of action dramas, reality TV and "extreme sport." It has reached such a point now that it's crossed traditional boundaries of gender: it is now reasonable to expect that a female shooter will soon turn up in some high school, now that women GI's have been observed flaunting violence and perversion in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

But there is even more to this than the perpetuation of violence as a panacea for personal or international crisis, or the hypocrisy of the pharmaceutical balm as a response to a behavioral challenge. What is truly disturbing about this societal trend is the fundamental prejudice it belies against our own future-the children. The extraordinary American poet, Robert Bly, speaks of this pervasive racism against children that is developing in our culture, in his Preface to News of the Universe:

The United States, during World War II, found that by dint of the practical intellect it could produce a hundred tanks a day and twenty B-52s; by doing so, the U.S. established itself as a world power. Something new was born, but if you don't invite Nature to your baptism, the baby will be cursed.

Saints say that if we could only take one step beyond the practical intellect-to the spiritual intellect-we could honor Nature because we then would realize that the whole universe is shot through with some sort of generous and luminous consciousness.

Certainly many people in our country do respect the spiritual intellect in these last decades. But in the meantime, business has effectively become the government and now rules American life on all levels, even to choosing the presidential candidates and allowing them currency. Business derives from the practical intellect, works out of it, judges by it; and our government shows less evidence of generosity now than at anytime in American history.

Much of the literature that the United States produces in 1995 is not generous. The culture reveals a huge anger against children. It is as if the adults envy children their closeness to the Nature we have rejected. Every year the government and private attitude toward children is meaner.

European culture in the seventeenth century dug a cellar into which the messy parts of the universe, among them pagans, Asians, Africans, and women, could be put. Now we have to say that the United States has put children in that cellar as well.1

We cannot drag our children out of the cellar described by Robert Bly and expect success: what often goes under the heading of "tough love" is merely another form of regimentation. It is the force that creates the marines who are returned to us in secret from Iraq and Afghanistan in flag-draped coffins. Even less can we expect our children to leave the cellar if we remain there ourselves. We have to be sure that we ourselves are free of the darkness; then, perhaps, the children will follow us out. Every other approach that I see in this culture is the social equivalent of applying a band aid to a stab wound. If we ourselves cannot live with modesty toward Nature and responsibility toward one another, then our children will carry our race further into the darkness of delusion, and each passing generation will bring us another step closer to extinction.

So the recommendations that follow are to be applied personally-by parents and grandparents, teachers and babysitters, school administrators and government officials-as the starting points on a path leading out of the abyss of self-hatred, conflict, and estrangement. But if you imagine that you can do this alone-either for yourself or for your child-then you will probably slide back into despair after a brief and furious struggle. As with any other life process or transformative movement, there are guiding energies that lead the way forward. They must be called with a voice of humility and mindfulness. You may give this energy whatever name seems natural and meaningful to you: call on the Parenting Helper, the Teaching Spirit, the Transformation Guide, or another name that resonates with your true self. In a regular meditation, ask this Presence to lead you and your child out of fear and into strength; out of oppression and into independence; out of error and into clarity; out of arrogance and into modesty; out of poverty and into abundance; out of conflict and into love. Let this become a daily meditation that you can practice under almost any waking circumstances, for as brief or as long a session as feels right in the moment. As you go, see how the following suggestions fit into the personal understanding that develops as your connection with your Guides deepens.

Call upon the guiding energy of a Discipline Helper. Enforcing good behavior in children through the kinds of fear-based allegiance referred to earlier in this chapter is a military practice that is doomed to failure in the raising and teaching of children (and frankly, it doesn't work very well for soldiers either). To rely upon your own or your culture's means or instruments of discipline is to place yourself and your child under an impossible burden. Learn instead to abandon power-based solutions and ask for help from the guiding currents of invisible help that can successfully engage a child's natural sense of discipline and order. If you doubt that there is such a thing ("my kid wasn't in that line," is an oft-heard lament of parents), look at how Nature arranges things: those senses of order, boundary, and self-maintenance are readily apparent in the animal realm. Our problem is in our myopic obsession with appearances: there might be a two-ton truck sitting in our driveway, waiting to be driven, but if we can't kick its tires then it doesn't exist. But perhaps you have tried the way of forced order and iron discipline and found it terribly wanting for enduring results: so let go of your learned skepticism long enough to try something different. If you're having difficulty with conflict or behavioral problems in your child (this would account for about 99% of parents' experience at one time or another), let your meditations include a call to the Discipline Guide, and an earnest request that the natural energies of self-awareness and order arise and grow within your kid. Give it time and persistent, modest effort, and you may be amazed at the results.

Say a firm inner No to the notion of fixed "phases and stages" in your child's growth. I find myself having to do this on a regular basis with regard to my daughter. It's not about anything that she says or does, but rather about what others-even other parents-tell me about what to expect from her. It seems with every passing birthday and the nearer approach of the beginning of adolescence, I am told to expect to be made a stranger, an enemy, a source of embarrassment, to my kid. It is inevitable, I hear: everyone must go through it. Where, I often wonder, does this stack of horsefeathers come from? Where do people get these aberrant notions, these self-fulfilling prophecies of estrangement? From college textbooks? From some self-appointed expert on Good Morning America? Or merely from the insidious and unquestioning breath of group belief? Any phrases or images that arise to you in this respect should be noted and treated with the same inner No practice that we've discussed in the previous two chapters. Children have lived and grown long before Freud, Melanie Klein, or Piaget built their respective architectures of theoretical molds. Approach your child's life as if it were a unique exception to every rule that's ever been written-you will find, in fact, that it is.

Ask for help in applying the outer corrections that will further your child's (and your own) growth. Such a request is necessary because the insight that will guide you is likely to be both fluid and personal to your family's circumstances and challenges; and you cannot receive that fluidity and uniqueness of response from a fixed system of belief-you can only get it through the quantum reality of feeling-receptivity. You need to be aware of the cultural threats that surround you and your kids; then you have to ask to be guided by invisible teaching Presences in successfully encountering those dangers. For many of us, a big one is television: in The Sibling Society2, Robert Bly calls it "the thalidomide of the 1990s." He then cites a 1995 survey which revealed that kids spent on average a third of their waking lives watching TV. The main point is that we cannot restrict our kids from television if we are slaves to the box ourselves-and the same observation applies to overeating, junk food addiction, video games, and telephone usage (especially the cellular phones-how many people, both children and adults, spend hours per week talking on a device that was probably originally purchased "just for emergencies"?). In all such arenas of habit and addiction, we must be guided by patience, and a persevering attention to the invisible teaching Voices of the universe. Simply call for help in this regularly, and then open your awareness to the signs that appear before you. They often come in forms that we are trained to overlook or deny in annoyance, such as temporary power failures; breakdowns or defects in appliances or software; disturbing images that appear at seemingly inopportune moments; "lost" devices such as remotes; or simply a cascade of conflict over permissions and usage. When you attend to the messages that these seemingly random coincidences bear within them, then you will find that they recur more often, teaching, nourishing, and inspiring both you and your kid. It will help if you talk about such events with your child whenever they appear to you, and you may be amazed after a while at how receptive kids are by nature to this kind of learning.


1 Robert Bly, News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980/1995), pp. 1-2. Another book by Robert Bly that is of direct interest to the topic of this chapter is The Sibling Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1977/1996).
2 The Sibling Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1977/1996), p. 139. Especially in this book, Bly's voice is firm and strong, even to a point bordering on harshness. To any who can recall the tragedy of thalidomide, his identification of that drug with TV will seem excessive; yet, his violent metaphor notwithstanding, Bly's underlying point must be heard by every parent in our culture-and indeed, he offers sound support for this view in his book.

The new Harry Potter game: Non-violent, engaging, fun, visually and sonically beautiful. Available for both Mac and Windows. Can't go wrong with this one, Moms and Dads. (Quicktime, 23MB, click to view)

The Communication Declension:

iPhone
uCrackBerries
heSidekicks
sheTreos
weXpress
theyRAZR

Since when do people have so much to talk about, so endlessly? Are we turning into a giant and ceaseless session of Congress, sliding into a vortex of Sunday spout-show on a collapse into C-Span hell?

Maybe that's why I love geeks and musicians: they work in languages that can't easily be spoken, but only understood.

Anyway, the big news from last week is this: another corporate devil has climbed into bed with Uncle Steve. AT&T (your world, delivered...to the NSA) now joins Nike. But if you'd like to try out the iPhone as a WiFi device and iPod, you can, thanks to some code from reverse-engineering uber-geek Jon Lech Johansen, who writes one of the more entertaining and informative geek blogs I've read.

Yet the Apple momentum is now in juggernaut force: later this month, expect to see new iMacs—arguably the best desktop hardware out there. And we're 3 months away from Leopard, with its new previewing, file management, backup, and workspace features. All dizzyingly cool, but let me add a few admittedly petty recommendations:

click graphic to enlarge

Can we fix the traffic light? You know, the window control buttons that correspond to Windows' dash-square-X protocol? I don't care that Apple has them on the left side of the window (anyone who knows me knows I lean left, anyway), but should I need a Geiger counter to find them on a laptop display? Make them big and easy to get to...not like in Windows, but more like Linux/KDE.

Here's a lesson straight from Windows: for god's sake, can't we have the ability to resize a window in all corners/sides? Apple gives you one (lower right).

Re-naming files: This is a big one, because we do it all the time, especially those of us who take a lot of pictures. You unload your camera's contents into iPhoto and want to give the files unique names. Here's how it works now:

You drag the picture to the desktop.
You select the file "P7004305839045.jpg" or whatever, and hit Enter. You're ready to edit.
But the whole file name is overwritten as soon as you start typing, so you have to remember to put the correct extension in at the end.

Why not set the default so you're overwriting only the file name prefix, but not the extension? The current one (in this case .jpg) can remain, and if the user wants to change the format, he can but doesn't have to. Make sense?

Make friends with the Penguin: OS X has a UNIX / BSD core and runs X11. Google has a Linux version of Picasa (and now, of Desktop); Firefox, Opera, Real, and other major software providers make Linux versions of their major products. So how about a Linux-friendly version of the Boot Camp drivers? And can't Apple make Linux versions of Safari, Quicktime, and iTunes? They're all free for Windows users: what's the problem, Steve? Can't afford the geeks to do it with? The day I see a Linux version of iTunes, I'll know you're serious and sincere in what you say about DRM.

Death by a thousand charges: Two dollars to get an 802.11n driver; $30 for Quicktime Pro every time there's an upgrade (I've paid that twice so far, for v6 and v7, in the space of less than two years); $100 for dot-mac when Google gives me equal or better features NC; $100 a year to get to the front of the line at the Genius Bar. Do your shareholders have you handcuffed to continue this money-bleed, in exchange for them looking the other way when someone on exec row fiddles with dates on stock prices? Be careful, Steve: it could alienate people who might otherwise be attracted to your good stuff.

I can say for a certainty that it's beginning to alienate this one-time Mac fanboy. Much as I love Apple hardware and OS X, and as much as I'll take a long, close look at those new iMacs later this month, the likelihood is that my next desktop machine will be a PC running Linux.

Geeks, technophiles, gearheads, and webaholics: we've got a new assignment for you, once again courtesy of our friends at Save The Internet. Here's the pitch:

The FCC is on the verge of turning over a large chunk of the public airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed Internet access for more than 96 percent of connected American homes.

This public "spectrum" could revolutionize the Internet in America. Its wireless signal passes through concrete buildings and over mountains; it can connect tens of million of Americans who are being passed over by Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Don't let the FCC give away our wireless Internet to these price-gouging giants. The FCC deadline is fast approaching. Act now!

Remember when Bechtel Corp. "owned" the water of Bolivia--even the rain that fell from the sky, so that you were expected to pay them even if you went outside and opened your mouth in the rain? (to see and hear the whole insane story, rent or buy The Corporation, one of the great documentaries ever made). Well, this is along the same lines: selling the air to Big Telcom so they can charge you megabux for your Wi-fi so that fat corporate trolls are made wealthier, fatter, and more trollish.



Social Networking Update: LinkedIn now has an "Answers" module, where users can post questions to the community and receive intelligent, well-thought responses. I found a question about what is required to be a success as an author or editor, so I posted a response. By the way, the titles of those books in that post are all real: I just sat beside a "Business Motivation" shelf at B&N and copied them out on the MacBook. Amazing.

But LinkedIn is for our professional and not our horny self. For the latter, I recently discovered Orkut, a Google-administered social networking and dating site. The profile entry section is very detailed, though not a total slog to get through; and because it's run by the geeks of the big G, the design and functionality are very cool, sure, and breezy. I'll let you know if it helps me with my HTML (come on, you know what HTML really stands for, right?).

Fire-foxy Lady: In case you don't recognize that lovely lady in the picture, she's the Lizard-Wrangler-in-Chief of Mozilla/Firefox, Mitchell Baker. I've been reading her blog at the Mozillazine, and much of what I see as the potential of open-source modeling for government and mainstream business can be discovered in the writing of this extraordinary woman.


The Geek Groan, or why there are no geek comedians: So the Tux car at the Indy 500 finished last, and one reader of C-Net's story on the disappointing finish commented "It's real hard to get good drivers for Linux hardware."

Dell-buntu ships: You can order one now. Though the savings won't exactly blow your socks off, these units are cheaper than comparable Vista boxes, and marginally less expensive than their counterparts at System76 or Linspire. I put together a Dell desktop box, sans monitor, for $700 that I know would make Ubuntu fly; and my friend Nearly Redmond Nick added a monitor and ended up with $1080 for a box with 2GB RAM, 22" monitor, upgraded processor, video card and 1 year support.

Still, my previous advice stands for any Windows switchers who are contemplating Linux but don't want to stick their head under the hood and spend a lot of time in Synaptic Package Manager (software download utility for Ubuntu) or the Terminal/Console (geek command line): get a flavor of Linux that features a more complete installation with all available third-party drivers, such as Xandros, Linspire, or my own favorite, MEPIS. I have another video demo of MEPIS, below. I'll simply say it again: the more I use this Linux distro, the more I like it.

But as I said last week, I'll slip into a Best Buy one day later this week, once the Dellbuntu boxes are there, and check out what Dell has done with the Feisty Fawn. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a way to install Ubuntu onto your existing hardware but without having to partition your hard drive or jump through any other geek hoops, Wubi may be your best option. It will allow you to run Ubuntu just like any other software application on a Windows box. And Ubuntu running in Wubi will run your Windows applications inside Linux...your computer will be like those Russian dolls, one within another within another...


But what's the big deal about open source software, after all (aside from the fact that it's cheap to run, free to have, exponentially safer than Windows and usually just as functional)? Here's one answer, which I wrote nearly two years ago, in June, 2005:

To me, the Open Source Society represents a return to, and recovery of, Democracy. A democratic society works through its challenges collaboratively, in a spirit of active inquiry, where dissent is both tolerated and even encouraged. In a culture like ours, where the Cult of the Specialist seems to have locked us into inner cubicles of narrow expertise in which one's identity is defined exclusively by one's specialty, the Open Source model offers us some hope of recovering Freedom--especially freedom of the press.

Later in the week I'll have a review of an ingenious book that goes further into this theme. It's called The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by yet another two Stanford geniuses.

But then again, really--who needs open source when Microsoft is constantly innovating on behalf of the people? Yep, the coffee table PC: just think of the possibilities.

"We see this as a multi-billion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

MEPIS Linux on a widescreen 22" Samsung monitor (click to enlarge; also see our video demo, below)



Before we get to Geek Wednesday proper, I'd like to pass along a little tech/research project that Eric Alterman is starting over at Media Matters. Here's the basics of it:

...make a list -- with source material -- of every effect on the world

, whether, um, good or bad, of the invasion of the United States and its "allies" of Iraq. We all know the litany; goodness I wish I had a key on my keyboard that automatically typed in: "cost trillions, killed tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, wounded hundreds of thousands more, increased terrorism, aided Syria and Iran (and China), destroyed a functioning country, increased hatred for the U.S. worldwide, undermined political allies, undermined the U.S. military, etc., etc. But seriously, let's do it systematically, with good sourcing.

So if you have some old bookmarks, downloaded web pages or pdfs, or simply old newspapers showing past evidence of such effects, then by all means write them up and send them to Prof. Alterman. And bookmark that page once it's up there at MM: it will make a fairly compelling case the next time some petty despot like Bush takes it into his feeble mind to start a Crusade with other people's sons and daughters.



Geek Wednesday: Use the Source, Luke!



Perhaps you have wondered why we have a tech column every week here, at a political sort of blog. Well, politics can be boring: there are Democrats and Republicans. No viable third party. Oh, all right: we've got Nader and Liebermann. Like I said, no viable third party; case closed, next case.

But in technology, you have Microsoft, Apple, and Linux. Hey, a viable third party! Don't think so? Well, consider that Dell is soon to start taking orders for Ubuntu machines (for a feature list on these, check here). As we've been saying for awhile here, Linux is on the rise.

So why are open source geeks asking to be sued by MS? If you have a few minutes, check out some of the 700+ listings there (I'm number 447 on page 3)--you'll find some pretty funny stuff. If you want to know what this is all about, just check out last week's post here. As our observer geek Nearly Redmond Nick predicted then, MS isn't drilling down to the details of what MS patents Open Source has violated and how, because they don't intend to sue, nor do they have any grounds to do so.

Why, then, are they pissing off a lot of geeks and technophiles with baseless charges? Because, like the Bush administration, they just take a fiendish pleasure in spawning hatred (it's good publicity, at any rate). And, as we suggested yesterday, it may have something to do with the fact that Ballmer's not really an IT executive but a reject from Jackass. As we've pointed out many times with respect to the Bush administration, there is a certain strain of incompetence that infects every imperial entity, and MS is no different.

Anyway, here's a few links on the MS patent stew and how it's being digested:

Linus Torvalds himself, the inventor of Linux, thinks the violation shoe is quite on the other foot.

Groklaw wonders whether MS is actually infringing on the GPL

And Sam Varghese of IT Wire is having the same thought.

Open Office geek John McCreesh thinks it's simply more MS bullying tactics

But we believe in equal time here at DR. Since we've already featured plenty of Ballmer's foot-shooting antics here, how about a different closed-source proponent? So here's a self-professed cynic (wear it proudly, chum--it means "dog" or "cur"), who will bash open source for you. Open source, he says, is for losers, also-rans: the winners hate open source, and they should. Wow, chief, you must be...a winner! And yes, you are--you get the DR horns for the week!

So what's Apple up to? Oops, getting sued again, this time for false advertising of how many colors show up on their laptop screens. I checked the comments board on this story, just out of curiosity and because I had nothing to do at work. Amazing how people tie their shorts into knots over stuff like this; but I guess if the lawyers do it, then Mac geeks can, too. I learned everything I wanted to know about dithering, and then some. One guy defended Apple and said that they would show how weak the charges are. I countered with this:

Apple wouldn't deny the allegations so quickly, because they don't want the allegations to go away. You see, this is classic Karl Rove, gang. Here's the likely scene inside a recent Apple exec conference:

PR FLAK: Steve, we've got to do something to get the press off our tail over this stockdating mess...my Smart Mailboxes are getting stupid from all the inflow...

STEVE: Don't worry, Flak. We'll give 'em the old BushCo end-around / diversion tactic. Hire a couple geeks to sue us for something really inane but technical-sounding, like...um...the number of colors on our displays. That will get the media off your tail about the stockdating business...

PR FLAK: Jeez, Steve, you're a genius!

Before we leave MS and Apple alone for this week, here's your tip of the week: if you run MS Word for Mac, then you know how long it takes to open. This tip will help some--it involves turning off WYSIWYG font and style menus. Of course, what will really help is if MS shakes its tail on getting MS Office for Mac into universal binary mode. But rest assured, Ballmer will make you wait, because he hates you, Macophiles!

All right, before we go, let's say you've got $1500 burning a hole in your pocket and you need a keyboard. But you have to go haute couture all the way--every key has to be an OLED display, and you must type on a designer label: here you are. Or if you want to shop around a little, try this page. And people think Macs are overpriced...

Our last bit is about geeks who care. Most I've met do: as I've said before, they're not a bunch of horn-rimmed reeds strung out on Red Bull. They're socially aware people who feel and see more clearly than the most powerful people on this planet. Some examples:

Geeks around the world have spoken out and even volunteered to help a woman in Connecticut who's facing prison because IE allowed some porn popup ads to show up on PCs in her elementary school classroom one day. I'm telling you, people, as long as shit like this is allowed to go down, Jerry Falwell is still alive.

The geek press, led by the extraordinary Declan McCullagh of C-Net, is raising red flags again about government instrusion on our private lives.

And Slashdot posted this piece about the Smithsonian Institute's sellout to big oil and fat government in "toning down" an exhibit on climate change—and this isn't the first time they've pulled this shit.

Seen any of these stories in the mass media lately? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now you know why we have a tech column every week here at DR. See ya next week, geeks.
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Pssst....Google—stop buying things and fix the damned Preview link on Blogger in Safari. And while you're at it, get Google Docs working in Safari, too.