Secret: I have been asleep

Where have I been? I just stumbled upon this gem on Amazon.com: At the beginning of 2005, Frank Warren launched a new blog called PostSecret as an experiment in community art, inviting strangers to mail him anonymous postcards that made art out of their innermost secrets and then posting a selection of the cards every week on his blog. Within a year, his blog was one of the five most popular in the world, and his first book, PostSecret, was one of the surprise bestsellers of 2005. Time Magazine voted his blog as one of the "50 Coolest Websites of 2005." For My Secret, a collectible, paper-over-board book that includes a page of vibrant, decorative stickers, Warren has personally selected never-before-seen anonymous postcards created by teens and college students from across the country. Each card bears an intimate and powerful secret—at turns inspirational, shocking, hilarious, and poetic—that is told through original illustrations, photographs, collages, and other creative means.

Be a Citizen of the World! Donate Now!

Today is the last day to get your donations in to worthy organizations. I can't recommend the International Rescue Committee highly enough. For more than 70 years, the International Rescue Committee has been a leader in humanitarian relief and is a recognized leader in humanitarian emergencies like those in Darfur, Afghanistan, and Uganda. When thousands flee war or repression, the IRC is immediately on the ground to make sure life-saving help gets to those who need it. They provide shelter, clean water, healthcare, and education to displaced people. Most importantly, IRC works with them to make sure they survive their exile in dignity. There work is devoted to Emergency Response, Fighting Gender-based Violence, Anti-trafficking, Health Programs, Post-conflict Development, Programs for Children, and Protection. Of every $1 the IRC spends, 90 cents goes directly to their programs and services that directly benefit refugees and it is consistently ranked as one of the top charitable organizations for efficiency and quality. If you donate now through tomorrow your donation will be doubled.

You mean there's a catch? Sure there's a catch, Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of war has to add more troops.

Remember When Video Killed the Radio Star?

Home(land) and Castle Security

I talked with a buddy of mine who was formerly a cop back east and who now teaches Criminal Justice. He comforted me with these alarming statistics:

The 2nd best "home security weapon" is - by far - a 12 ga. shogun. The 1st best is...NO gun. That's because statistics prove that a "home security" weapon in the home, is - statistically - far more likely to kill (suicide, accident, etc.) the homeowners. That said - and the fact that the home owner/gun owner understands that fact...then, the "self-shoot" statistics drop to nil.

In a comprehensive study of burglars in prison, a "dog" was the number 1 deterrent from home burglary. So much for my two! Also ranking high - number 2 or 3 maybe? - was a car in the driveway.

Also, "cheapo-o" home security stuff -- even FAKE outside cameras -- will send the bad guys to pick on the "house next door." Two fake cameras are around $29.

Cameras and dogs, not guns. Somebody needs to talk to our minutemen boys on the border.

Holiday Spirit from West Valley Denizens

Yesterday my daughter came home to find that someone had kicked in my steel entry door and stolen a bunch of stuff including a laptop computer and accessories, some digital cameras, my journal(!), and some Christmas presents. Turns out that security is all just an illusion. Talking to the guy who repaired the door as best he could on short notice, I was told that really nothing will stop someone who wants to get in. There's a tool that even allows you to rip the front of the lock right off and then easily open the door. You're better off leaving a key so at least you're not out the deductible on your insurance ($500). In this case the perpetrator(s) passed through a gate warning "Beware of Dog"(not even in Latin!) and into a house where two dogs lived, all without a concern. The biggest pain is trying to figure out exactly what was on the laptop and how much further compromising of security it might be. I've just spent two hours changing every single password to every single company I deal with on the web just in case. The thing of it is that when I live on the west side I feel like this stuff shouldn't happen, since clearly I don't have much. Why can't these guys attack the people who can better afford the insurance deductibles? To me this is like a regressive tax on the poor. My children now have to go without because some idiot (idiots?) doesn't want to try to find a job in an economy where it's an employee's market.

Remember to Vote...and why

Beyond a call for impeachment

What does it say about you if you are selected to be the first sitting president ever to be shown being assassinated in a movie?

For a British TV Movie, a Real President Is Shot

By SARAH LYALL
Published: September 2, 2006
LONDON, Sept. 1 — The time is October 2007, and America is in anguish, rent by the war in Iraq and by a combustive restiveness at home. Leaving a hotel in Chicago after making a speech while a huge antiwar protest rages nearby, President Bush is suddenly struck down, killed by a sniper’s bullet.
That is the arresting beginning of “Death of a President,” a 90-minute film to be broadcast here in October on More4, a British digital television station. And while depicting the assassination of a sitting president is provocative in itself, this film is doubly so because it has been made to look like a documentary.

For the rest of the story, click here.

While it is pretty clear that many people do not admire our current President, I personally don't think anything good can come of this. I think it crosses the line.

Demoted

As if being named after the ruler of the dead in the icy wasteland of Hades was not diminution enough, scientists this past week reduced Pluto to the status of {gasp} a "dwarf" planet. I'm not sure how Pluto feels about this status reduction, but I'm certain that dwarves cannot feel at all pleased by the fact that this is the term chosen to suggest something "lesser than."

"According to the new rules a planet meet three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto and Xena, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt.
Dwarf planets only have to be round."

I forsee a rash of similar downgradings: "dwarf SUVs" to refer to things like RAV4s; "dwarf football teams" to refer to college football; "dwarf dogs" for those things Paris Hilton likes to carry around; "dwarf literature" for what used to be called "novelettes"; and perhaps "dwarf Presidents" for when one's ego and one's passionate supporters far exceed one's real capabilities or stature.

Cyborg

My apologies for being away so long, but the online version of the Introduction to Humanities course has taken up, and continues to take up, a fair amount of my technological time. Students in the online environment seem to be, so far, a needier group than those who attend classes. Of course, things aren't helped by the fact that they are provided virtually no information, and certainly no support, by our Office of Information Technology. We have no minimum requirements for their computers, no streamlined processes for getting them set up in the system, and they consistently tell the students "your instructor can help you with that," placing a further burden on us. We're responsible not only for designing, building, and filling the course with content, but also technical support. I now know why people say online teaching requires more time than in the classroom. Now...if I could only figure out how to turn this computer on.

Cher was a goddess

You know, posting that Cher video brought back waves of nostalgia for those simpler times, the Seventies. Life was easier, politics were more simple, and T.V. shows not like those of today which require too much thought. The Sonny and Cher show is a classic, and after the encouragement of friends I've decided to post this tribute. With opening verbal repartee like this, how could you go wrong:

SONNY: "Before we go on I just want to remind you of what day this is. It's a very unlucky day."
CHER: "You mean Tuesday the fourth?"
SONNY: "No, it's Friday the thirteenth. What's Tuesday the fourth?"
CHER: "The day we got married."
SONNY: "C'mon Cher, don't make jokes on Friday the thirteenth. Haven't you ever heard of black cats crossing your path and breaking a mirror and then seven years of bad luck?"
CHER: "It'll be eight Tuesday the fourth."

The End is near...

It's been a week of endings. I finished Hardcore Zen which was often brilliant, sometimes annoying, and occasionally off-base, but worthwhile in the end. Another ending came in the form of getting the online version of the Introduction to Humanities course approved and ready to go. It's officially the end of summer: classes begin on Wednesday, although we're all required by LAW to attend a series of inane seminars on Tuesday. Most significantly we ended the Planet of the Apes series with the fifth film: Battle for the Planet of the Apes. I think I heard a collective sigh of relief at that one. Okay, perhaps it does come under the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Constitution, but I refuse to have children who, like the one at dinner the other night, say something like "I've never seen a John Wayne film," or "What are the Yankees" or other examples of sheer ignorance of previous generations' popular culture (yes, they are both direct quotes). However, my kids balked tonight when I wanted to end our seventies film fest with Return of a Man Called Horse, so I'm going for that one alone I guess.

A.I.M. will never die...

Since most humans act like sheep, why not get a Border Collie?

Cormac

The Lovesac is a little ol' sac, where we can get together...

Ever since watching Lovesac founder and Utahn [yeah, that's the way they spell it here], Shawn Nelson, win the prize on Sir Richard Branson's Rebel Billionaire program (I was rooting for him from day 1), I have coveted one of their oversized sacs (they're not a beanbag!). Their steep price kept me at arm's length. Well, no more! Lovesac is having a pre-school sale that meant I got a Moviesac, 2 covers, plus free Kidsac for less than the price of a normal moviesac. Cool!

Concert in the Garden

I saw Nickel Creek last night at Red Butte Garden, although I must admit that I wasn't able to stay for the whole show. One of the people I went with thought the motto went: "I am the sole musketeer...All for one, and only for me!", so we ended up having to leave well before the set was over. However what I saw was impressive and the ticket was free (although I would have preferred it had it been for the Rosanne Cash concert in two weeks). Nickel Creek have an eclectic mix ranging from quasi-Celtic, to Appalacian folk, to country, to Bluegrass. Their instrumentals are excellent, and definitely worth toe-tapping to. While there were a couple of places where I thought they could use some developing, including lyrically and vocally, overall I'd say they were a very good listen and I recommend them highly. I had to laugh when I was leaving because they did an almost unrecognizable cover of Randy Newman's Short People, whose lyrics I remember still because I used to love the humor of that song. Nickel Creek's latest album Why Should the Fire Die? was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Contemporary Folk category. You can see one of their music videos that won other awards here. On a side note, music has become so commercial and tenuous, especially for the artist, that they were doing quite a bit of hawking their wares which grew tedious and downright embarassing after a while.

Life as a Dog

There are few things more satisfying than saving a dog. Last year I adopted a year-old black labrador retriever, Hailie, who had been scheduled to be euthanized that very day. She has proven to be a wonderful companion, despite her rather juvenile approach to life. My success with her, and her need for a companion of her own, inspired me to acquire this week a stray border collie who the vet puts at about 3 years, and who is now named Cormac after the author Cormac McCarthy. While he has a few emotional problems due to either maltreatment or neglect, he is slowly getting adjusted to his new life as a member of our pack. The last two weeks have been a series of coincidences around the issue of dogs. While preparing for our guest speaker in November, I listened to the podcast of Speaking of Faith where Jennifer Hecht speaks about the Cynics, or Dog Philosophers ("cynic" comes from Greek for "dog"). They were so-called after their penchant for "living like dogs," which did not necessarily have the negative associations (at least in their minds) that we assume today. Their argument was that human beings should live like dogs in so far as accepting what life has to offer and enjoying every moment of every day - a far cry from what we today mean when we call someone a "cynic." Two days later one of our philosophy instructors, upon hearing the rest of us discourse about our dogs, quoted the chief Cynic, Diogenes, as saying "The more I know of men, the more I like dogs" [although I found this quote attributed to a number of other people too]. The philosophy guy said this in the way we read it today, as intending an insult to men, but I think the Cynic, if he said it, was more praising that dogs knew how to live better than men. [The Cynics, of course, were Greeks. The Romans saw dogs differently and many of their mosaics have the phrase cave canem (beware of the dog) alongside a picture of a dog on a leash, usually growling.]


In many ways, the cynical philosophy closely resembles the Buddhist philosophy. For example, both philosophies denied that pleasure was equal to or had anything to do with true happiness. Both philosophies also held as fundamental aspects of their ethics that one should neglect the body for the benefit of the soul. Finally, the common, crucial ingredient in both philosophies was the sufficiency of virtue for the attainment of happiness (enlightenment in Buddhism). -- Jason Merrill

And speaking of Buddhists and dogs, when I told my daughter that she needed to cultivate the Buddhist attitude toward gentleness, she pointed out to me that Buddhists don't have dogs. I'm not sure if that's true, but she did have a good point: dogs can try a person's patience...but also help them learn some.

Finally, when I told a good friend of mine that I was looking for another dog (although at the time I didn't know what kind), she put on order for me a book. It must have been fate. The book arrived the day we picked up Cormac and it was A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me, by Jon Katz. It's about Katz's adoption of a troubled border collie after having lived a few years with two calm, companionable labrador retrievers!

Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog. [Groucho Marx]

Hungering for books

The end of the world is just around the corner. I know this because Harper's Magazine has a feature this month on "Grand Theft Education: Literacy in the Age of Video Games" and it actually doesn't seem to see a problem. According to the article, three fifths of teenagers play video games every week and fully 25% play six hours or more. The purport of the article is to discover ways that this activity can be tapped to teach...wait for it...writing and reading. They discuss how relatively easy it would be to teach grammar, spelling, punctuation, argument, and plot. They only balk when they reach "characterization" which they grudgingly concede could not be handled very well by computer. One of the panelists says, "Honestly, I doubt that video games are capable of dealing with psychological depth at all." To which another, and a teacher at that, responds, "One of my former students told me recently that her favorite books as a child were the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. And the reason she gave me was that the lives of the Wilder's characters were completely different from her own, and yet she felt like she could be there and be them. This is the same thing when we're in the mind of Jane Eyre, or Isabel Archer, or whoever. To replicate that in a video game would be very difficult." [italics mine] The implication was that it was a unfortunate pity.

But think about that. What is being lost when students can no longer expand upon their own experiences by living vicariously through literature? What is happening when young people are cut off from the power that words, and therefore thought, can give them? Richard Wright knew as soon as he finished his first book, after having had literacy denied to him for most of his young life:
"What strange world was this? I concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different....Reading grew into a passion. My first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify him as an American type....I felt I now knew him, that I could feel the very limits of his narrow life. And this had happened because I had read a novel about a mythical man called George F. Babbitt."

Where will students today get that kind of understanding of their enemies...or their friends? And what will it mean when our world is run by people who grew up in the me-centered "virtual revolution," where the world mirrors back what they project?

Snidely Whiplash

Sometimes politeness does not pay. Last night I was letting a car pass through a narrow corridor which could not fit two cars simultaneously when I was fouly struck from behind by a dasterdly young driver of a 15-year old caravan. I was coming back from dropping off my kids to the theater to watch, ironically enough, Taledega Nights - which, as they laughingly told me on the way home, features cars flipping end over end through the air for so long that they go to a commercial break and come back to see the cars still flipping. Yeah, they thought this was all funny. I, however, have whiplash from having my neck snapped forward and back at 30 mph! And, since we live in the Wild West where laws are seen as a hindrance to moral responsibility, the girl had no insurance on her vehicle.