Auxiliary Memory

The Conservatives Are Confusing Me

Usually it’s wise not to argue politics or religion, but things are getting weird, and I’m having trouble keeping score on which team is pursuing which ideals. The Republicans claim to be pro God, and swear the Democrats are godless, and at first glance this seems so because conservatives go to church. But yesterday I saw a car driving in stop and go traffic with a huge sign that totally confused me. It said to the best of my recollection:

The government is not God,

Obama is not Christ,

Democrats are Satan,

America is going to Hell

What’s with the conservatives and their Biblical slogans?

Since I have a tendency to rewrite everything to be more logical, I thought about offering to rewrite their slogan, which is absurd too, since I’m a godless liberal.

How could they improve their metaphors. What if we replaced the first line with “The government is not Moses.” Think about it, conservatives demand fewer laws and Moses only provided ten.

But wait, if you’re read The Old Testament, you’ll know it’s not about spiritual development but God relentless nagging the chosen people to build a great nation. The book is bursting its binding with laws and more laws. If conservatives are worried about federal government making too many laws they ought to read the Old Testament, God was far more demanding. The New Testament is more libertarian, it gets down to just one law, the Golden Rule.

Maybe these guys are mad because the federal government is making as many laws as God, butting into God’s territory? Could the original line really be far more subtle than I think. So are these guys really saying the federal government should not be like God, and make fewer laws?

Obama is not Christ? Ummm? Jesus was big on healing people and Obama is big on healthcare reform. I do see the connection they are making, but what are they protesting? Wouldn’t Jesus want universal healthcare? Wasn’t healing his profession? Are they wanting a President that doesn’t act like Christ? Wouldn’t that be the anti-Christ?

Dealing with negative implications are hard. Luckily, the next line is straight forward, Democrats are Satan. Satan is the bad guy, so obviously they mean the Democrats are the bad guys. But the Democrats are for healing people, helping the downtrodden, aiding the poor, just like Jesus taught. And, the democrats love the meek. Jesus also wanted to see the good in criminals and prostitutes, which sounds more liberal than conservative to me. So why is the party trying to do what Jesus taught called Satanic? I’m confused again.

And why is America going to hell? The satanic democratic party wants healthcare for all, to clean up the environment, educate children and make them wise, become less gluttonous with natural resources, share the wealth, and so on. And most of all, they want to end global warming! Which sounds like an anti-hell agenda to me. The democrats seem to be seeking the same goals preached in the New Testament. Well, I’m just an ignorant heathen, who does not understand the subtle wisdom of the righteous.

I know the guys in the car are pro Republicans, and they want to tie their cause to Christianity. But the Republicans are pro money, pro war, pro guns, pro greed, pro waste, pro destroy the Earth, hell bent to make all animals extinct, and they absolutely, positively, hate the meek. This really doesn’t compute. It doesn’t seem to be what I learned in Sunday School before I dropped out to become a heretic. Did they change lessons plans after I left?

Some conservatives see a new Jesus that will return to kill off the unbelieving like a rampaging Rambo holding two machine guns. But wouldn’t that be the anti-Christ they keep talking about?

I am reminded of an old short story by Robert Sheckley about Armageddon. The world is ending, and two great armies are fighting the war of Armageddon, but it’s all fought with machines and robots, and when God opens the sky, its the robots that rise up to heaven. Wouldn’t it be strange if the rapture arrives and God takes up all the Democrats and leaves all the Republicans?

JWH – 4/22/10

The Senior Sleuth’s Guide to Technology for Seniors by David Peterka

The common joke is if you need help with technology, find a kid. Well, David Peterka wants us older folk to be our own tech gurus with his book The Senior Sleuth’s Guide to Technology for Seniors. His book covers a spectrum of technology, not just computers, like robotic lawn mowers, cell phones, iPod, GPSes, remote controls, medical alert necklaces, home entertainment systems, pill reminders, medical monitoring and so on. Peterka also covers social networking, texting and all the trendy communication systems kids embrace. You don’t have to be a senior to find this book useful.

I help older people with their computers all the time and I know they often get stressed by technology. Some just flatly refused to embrace it. And that’s too bad because technology is enabling by its very nature. This book is a quick overview for people new to gadgets and computers.

Recently I help a woman about to retire who likes to do oral history interviews. For years she had been relying on a cassette recorder and just typing up transcripts, but she wanted to be able to give people MP3s and CDs of edited and cleaned up copies of the original recordings. For awhile she relied on the kindness of tech strangers to help her, but I’m the kind of person who likes to teach people to fish rather than just giving them away.

So I showed this lady how to install, configure and use Audacity. At first she was hesitant and afraid to try stuff, but since I wasn’t offering to do the job for her, she stuck with it. I’d come back every week to see how she was doing. At one point she explained her interviewee cough frequently. I showed her how to remove the coughs. She mentioned some of the tapes had hiss. I told her Audacity had a noise-reduction feature and sent her a link with instructions. She figured it out. She’s learned a lot, and now she’s confidently producing digital recordings of her interviews.

I’m in an online book club for audio books and one of the members is a guy who lives in a retirement home but he has become an Internet expert on MP3 players, helping hordes of online users to play digital audio books, collect music and old time radio, converting and watching movies, and other handy tasks for small players. He’s in several online groups, include some for the blind. His knowledge and willingness to help other people, many seniors, is a tremendous resource. He proves that if you gain a skill, pass it on, and he also proves you don’t need to be a youngster to be a tech whiz.

I’m not sure how big the market is for Mr. Peterka’s book because old people are jumping online fast. Ronni Bennett after she retired started Times Goes By, a web site for elder bloggers that is a wonderful resource for wise people wanting to share their experiences online. I wished David Peterka had a supporting website to help his readers once they get beyond the book. This 2009 book is still current, but technology books age fast, so Mr. Peterka will need to keep coming out with new editions until everyone is up to speed.

The advice in David Peterka book for seniors is quite broad and a good place to start if you’re nervous about gadgets and electronic doodads. He provides a wealth of URLs to find additional knowledge, plus he teaches about how to find your own solutions online. The print in the book is nice and large, easy to read.

At work people are amazed I know so much about technology, but often when I meet a new tech problem, I just search on Google. So this Senior Sleuth volume will be best for complete newbie’s who haven’t learn that trick. It nicely distills lots of information in one handbook, and is a good volume for older children helping their aging parents.

It’s a Catch-22 situation. If you had more knowledge, you’d use it to find the same information online. So David Peterka book is a stepping stone. Like I said, I wished he had an web site devoted to the same subject because having all of this information in one convenient location would make a very useful web site.

I’m hoping, as I get older there will be more and more technology solutions for aging. In fact, I hope by the time I get frail there will be robotic caretakers.

JWH – 4/22/10

He’s No Hitler

I don’t know why some Tea Party protestors want to compare President Obama to Hitler. I never liked it when liberals compared President Bush to Hitler either. Why do angry, political powerless, protestors feel they are using their trump card when linking their enemies to Hitler? The protest placards are far more damning to their makers than those they target. Few leaders in history can be compared to Hitler. His evil qualities are so extreme that its simple-minded to use Hitler as any kind of measuring stick to gauge the average politician. It’s like comparing firecrackers to H-bombs.

If the Tea Party people want to make comparisons they should compare Obama to a previous President they think pursued the same goals they hate. I would imagine that would be Lyndon Johnson, or even FDR. Strangely, the reason why I didn’t like President Bush was because his Iraq War was a whole lot like LBJ’s Vietnam War. Our political landscape needs no comparison to Germany, Russia or China, we’ve been fighting our own unique issues since George Washington became President. What’s sad is the Tea Party people scream so much about 1776 but they can’t see how we got from then to now and why we can’t go backwards.

The political right’s seeing red over Obama actually has little to with the man, but is just a continuation of a long term Hatfield and McCoy like feud. Obama is just the liberal figurehead that sits in the Oval Office at the moment. The righteous indignation of the conservatives always thinks liberal leaders, especially strong ones, are as evil as Hitler or Stalin. Conversely, extreme liberals compare strong conservatives to Hitler when they are in office. We need to analyze why? (And who was the ultimate evil bad guy before WWII used in insults?)

Shouting the name Hitler is about as creative as people who use both phrases: “that’s some good shit” and “that’s some bad shit” in their day-to-day lives. Comparing people to Hitler is only meaningful is you’re talking about Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Idi Amin and to a lesser degree, Saddam Hussein.

The Tea Party movement is really just sore losers crying over spilt milk. Sarah Palin has nothing constructive to say politically. What Obama has done while he is in office is not significantly different from what a conservative President would have done except for the healthcare bill, and if Republicans won the White House every term even they would have had to passed healthcare reform sooner or later, and it might not have been that much different from what the Democrats created. The healthcare bill had no public option and is built around private insurance, an idea originating with Republicans. Changing times force political changes, not ideology.

The momentum of economic reality rolls on no matter which party is in the White House. So far we’ve been lucky and had no real Hitlers. If Obama was like Hitler, Fox News would be shut down, and all their commentators dead. Also, if any of our Presidents had really been like Hitler, the U.S.A. would have collapsed. Our diversity could not support such extremism.

It’s much too early to tell how good or bad a President Obama will be. Anyone blaming Obama for our present situation really needs to blame hordes of politicians, from both parties, going back decades.

What we have to worry about is the educational level of people comparing any of our Presidents to Hitler. In fact, I think we should discount any political protestor or commentator who can’t reference a realistic comparison to past American political leaders and policies, and make reasonable links to previous problems and solutions. People who use the name Hitler in protest are just people who have forgotten history, or never really knew it in the first place.

Evoking the name of Hitler is a kind of terrorist tactic, or Chicken Little exclaiming that the sky is falling. It depresses me. I’ve seen TV coverage where Tea Party people are outrage at the media coverage they get, and are even becoming critical of their own who go to extremes. They don’t like being call racists or crackpots, and who can blame them, but it’s the extreme protest signs and rhetoric that get them on the news. I’d take their protests more seriously as a third party if they didn’t make those extreme attacks on President Obama.

The policies of any President are always open to criticism, but comparing any President to Hitler or Stalin is low IQ. I’ve always hated Michael Moore political tactics too. People have really sunk to a low point if they use Sacha Cohen’s tactics to attack one another. It’s strange when conservatives follow in the footsteps of Abbie Hoffman, but then I’m sure there have always been mean spirited, underhanded, attackers protesting the power holders in Washington.

I guess I’m just overly sensitive to hot blooded, emotionally charged people. I found it amusing the other day on the news when a roving reporter asked a Tea Party protestor about his sign comparing Obama to Hitler. The guy said quietly that he meant no disrespect. I wondered if he was actually embarrassed. I bet he’d wished he had created a more creative slogan, equal to “Don’t tread on me” or “No taxation without representation.” I guess the Tea Party has yet to find their Tom Paine or Ben Franklin. It’s a shame the best they can do is a brunette Ann Coulter.

JWH – 4/17/10

The Cat, The Dog, The Robot and The Soul

Since before Biblical times men and women believed that human beings were unique, superior to the other animals that inhabited the Earth. Later theologians would claim we had souls and animals didn’t. Actually, the idea of an immortal soul only seems to arise after the New Testament, because in the Old Testament, life after death is barely hinted at. It was man and woman that got special attention in Genesis, giving them dominion over all the animals, and God eventually told Noah we could eat them. So we hunted and killed anything that swam, crawled, flew, leaped and ran. We sacrificed them by the thousands in honor of God for many chapters of the Bible after that. We justified our dominion by writing off the other beings in our environment as soulless creatures, unable to feel and know, and unworthy of love, empathy and compassion.

Well science is starting to take a second look at the lives of animals. Either we are closer to them, or they are closer to us. If we have souls, maybe they do too, or at least some of them. It’s hard to imagine all the cockroaches having unique identities, personalities and desires, but maybe we just don’t examine their lives long enough before we step on them.

The wonderful science writer Natalie Angier wrote in her NY Times “Basics” column, “Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers,” where she tells us about animal personality research. She has a significant quote that I like:

“There are low information processors who don’t attend much to their environment and bulldoze through life,” said David Sloan Wilson of the State University of New York at Binghamton. “Then there are the sensitive ones who are always taking things in, which can be good because information is valuable, but it can also be overwhelming.”

I guess I’m one of those sensitive creatures that are overwhelmed by input, and that’s why I take the time to worry about cruelty to pigs and cows, rather than being the kind of person that just gobbles down the barbecue. But that quote, based on animal studies, is very revealing. Does it explain the foundation of conservatives and liberals? Can we see the seeds of human traits like bravery, leadership, cruelty, compassion, creativity, and so on in animals? It’s natural to assume so if you believe in evolution. If our eyes are a product of continual evolution, why not our individual personality traits?

Would we see this more dramatically if other animals had evolved bigger brains like us and could tell us what they felt? I recently read a story about an uplifted chimp that can talk. Read or listen to the very moving short story “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal. I think the narrated version has more impact and it will only take six minutes.

Anyone who lives with pets knows they have personalities. People who love their animals want them to have souls too. If you search on the quoted phrase “do animals have souls” on Google you’ll find 6,580 replies, many of which that look for theological justification that will give them hope they will see their pets again in heaven.

I don’t think we have souls, being an atheist, but I believe animals have a kind of self-awareness that make them more than animated meat. I’ve always been fascinated by robots, and believe we’ll one day have intelligent machines that are smarter than us humans. They will have to evolve just like us, and I think we’ll see them go through developmental stages equal to various animals. I doubt we have a machine as smart as an ant yet, but it won’t be long before we’ll see machines with personality traits, and soon after that we’ll have machines equal to dogs and cats. Through robotic studies, we’ll eventually understand how much awareness an animal has.

However, we shouldn’t need to wait until then to understand our unethical relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom. We need more animal observers like Jane Goodall. Can you imagine what compassionate observers could report about living among chickens, pigs and cows in factory farms? Are their inhabitants all identical soulless creatures, or do they each have a personality struggling to survive in monstrous living conditions? Maybe I’m wrong about souls. But I’d like to be believe if we have souls its because we earned them. Who knows, maybe in the far future vast AI intelligences will observe mankind and note they come in two kinds, those with empathy, and those without.

JWH – 4/11/10

Will Internet TV Make Cable and Satellite TV Extinct?

There are two kinds of TV, live and recorded. Internet TV sites like Hulu have already proven how well they can handle recorded TV shows. Internet TV even does away with the need for a digital video recorder (DVR). Think of a show, find it, watch it. Internet TV like Hulu is even better than broadcast, cable or satellite for sponsors because viewers are required to watch the commercials. And as long as they have such limited commercials as they do now, I don’t mind watching them. Otherwise I’ll pay for streaming services like Netflix to be commercial free.

Where Internet TV is weak is for live broadcasts, like for sports and 24/7 news. The infrastructure of cable and satellite systems have far more bandwidth for handling live television. That won’t always be so, because I’m sure some kind of broadcast Internet technology will emerge to solve that problem and people will be watching live TV on their iPhones, iPads, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, HTPCs and Internet TV sets.

Digital technology ate the music industry, and is about to eat the book, newspaper, magazine and television industries. I gave up cable TV months ago and for recorded shows I’m in hog heaven by using the Internet TV, which includes streaming Netflix. I also supplement by viewing diet with snail-mail Netflix discs, but I see where that habit could be phased out too. The only reason to get a disc now is for the picture quality of Bluray. Future bandwidth will wipe out that technology too.

Owning music CDs and video DVDs seem so pointless now. I wonder how that’s going to impact the economy and effect the entertainment business. It also makes me wonder about my efforts of building an easy to use HTPC. I’m struggling to get perfect Bluray playback through my HTPC computer, wondering if I should spend $80 for better software, knowing full well in the not too distance future I’ll phase out Bluray too. The HTPC has phased out the LG BD390 Bluray player I bought just last year, and an Internet TV set could phase out my HTPC.

Last night my friend Janis had us watch Bigger Than Life on Bluray because NPR had praised this old James Mason movie so highly. The flick wasn’t very entertaining, but it was fascinating. The Bluray presentation of this 1956 CinemaScope production was stunning in 1080p high definition, showing intricate shadows and vivid colors. Internet TV and streaming Netflix can’t provide that kind of resolution right now, but I imagine it will before 2015.

Technology is moving so fast that we buy devices we want to throw away in a year or two. Growing up my folks wanted appliances and TVs that would last 15 years. I remember Ma Bell phones lasting over twenty years. I’ve had my 52” inch high definition TV for only three years and I’m already lusting for a new set. Will technology ever settle down again so we can buy something that will last a generation? I think it might. Of course it will be terrible for the economy, but I can imagine TV technology that would satisfy me and take the ants out of my pants to have something better.

My perfect TV will still be a 1080p HDTV like we have today. I’m pretty sure we can go decades without changing the broadcast standards again. It will have a digital tuner to handle over-the-air broadcasts (in case the net goes down) and an Ethernet jack and WiFi for Internet TV. It will have two removable bays. One for a computer brain that can be upgraded, and another for a SSD hard drive. As Internet TV is perfected the need for a local DVR will be diminished. That will also be true for an upgradable CPU. There will be no cable or satellite TV. Everything will come to us by TCP/IP. Broadcast will remain for the poor and for when the Internet fails. Cable and satellite TV will go the way of the record store. I also assume all Internet access will be wireless, but it will take 5-10 years to phase out wires. Now that doesn’t mean cable and satellite companies will go under. I expect them to buy into the Internet TV revolution. I do get my internet access from Comcast.

Most people will think I’m crazy by predicting the extinction of cable and satellite TV. They can’t picture living without all that choice. That’s because of the channel switching mindset. We have always thought of what’s on TV by flipping through the channels, even though very little TV is live. Most of TV is recorded, and we fake immediate diversity by offering 200 concurrent channels to watch. Eventually the only channels to watch will be live, because other technology makes it easier to find recorded shows ourselves.

Live TV will go through a renaissance. Cable and satellite TV systems are still the best technology for live TV, and they will hang on to their audiences for another ten or twenty years as Internet broadcast TV is perfected. However, guerrilla TV is emerging on the net, and micro audiences are evolving. For the big networks, how many Today like morning shows will we need for live TV? How many channels to promote sports? How many to 24/7 talking head news and reality shows do we need? How many live PBS networks will we need? Will audience gather around central networks or seek out specialized Internet broadcasters catering to their personal interests?

Ultimately, how much TV really needs to be live? Even 24/7 news shows spend a lot of time repeating themselves. Live TV is leisurely. The hours of the Today show are filled with just minutes of quality content, most of the time is fluff and commercials. And if an opera is filmed live for PBS does it really need to be seen live? Survivor and Amazing Race would be tedious if live.

When the flipping the channels metaphor dies out, and library checkout metaphor gains popularity, TV viewing will change. People love football, war and car chases live, but will even that change too? If you were sitting with you iPad killing some time, will you think, “Hey let’s watch the game in Miami,” or will you want to play a game or watch something recorded? I can easily imagine sites of “WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW!” start showing up, listing thousands of events going on around the world. TCP/IP technology will work better to provide that kind of service than cable or satellite.

Until you play with Internet TV you won’t understand what I’m saying. You’ve got to sleep with the pods or drink the Kool-Aid to buy in. Start with streaming Netflix and Hulu.

And if people love cell phones, Facebook and Twitter to stay in constant contact won’t they love live TV from their friends. Instead of watching the crew of the Today show have fun, why not video link all your friends and create your own morning show? And the emergence of spy networks will also change viewing habits. If every daycare and classroom had web cams, wouldn’t parents spend more time watching them? Won’t all the web cams in the world grabbing eyeballs destroy the audiences of the 200 channels of national networks?

We can’t predict the future. Growing up in the 1960s I never imagined anything like the Internet. All I can predict is change and more of it. But I’m also going to predict that once the Internet and digital upheaval is over, we might settle down to a slower pace of change. Well, until artificial intelligence arrives or we make SETI contact with distant civilizations.