The Predictions Post

In 2009:

Steve Jobs continues running Apple. And Francisco Franco will still be dead. (You're probably over forty if you get the Franco part.)

Cable TV companies will have to start offering a la carte programming seriously, as more people begin watching TV delivered via the 'net. Endless rounds of discussion regarding the "death" of the cable industry. Seriously, they're going to have to start offering different pricing schedules. I'm ready to dump my package for just the basic package required for internet, and I may consider moving to DSL if that's not attractive enough.

Two new models of iPhones. One smaller. The other with better battery life. (This is pretty tough, isn't it?)

The press promotes conflict and drama within the Obama administration. Especially with respect to foreign policy and a certain high-profile power couple.

Scoble achieves two degrees of separation. World peace ensues.

Steve Ballmer does another dance number to establish Microsoft's relevance in the marketplace. Throws chair in exciting finale.

Wikipedia becomes self-aware. Issues internet fatwa against Seth Finkelstein.

Google becomes self-aware. Issues internet fatwa against Nick Carr.

Amazon becomes self-aware. Now we're all in trouble.

Hugh MacLeod does enormous scribble against one side of NASA's Vertical Assembly Building in a co-marketing agreement between MacLeod and the space agency.

The various game networks become self-aware. MS and Sony networks assume world is at war. Nintendo network embraces Italian plumbers.

Facebook becomes self-aware. Locks itself in its room.

MySpace becomes self-aware. Throws tantrum.

RIAA remains obliviously UN-self-aware.

The sphere of purely social relations continues to shrink against the competitive pressures of ubiquitously networked commercial interests. Cluetrain fans rejoice. Sane people sigh.

Okay, that's enough for now. Maybe more later after my crystal ball recharges.

Cheese Sandwich: '08 Round-up: "I still got my feet."

I'm listening to Springsteen's Magic album, which is probably one of the great things I'll note about 2008, but I'm struggling with the conflict between the relative silence I need to compose these tiny morsels of deathless prose, and the energy and pleasure I get listening to The Boss. Any incoherence above normal levels is probably due to inattention, but I'm diggin' it.

2008 has been something of a mixed year for me. In general, '05, '06 and '07 were all major strides forward in reclaiming something that resembled "a life," '08 has seen more modest gains. The broken heart of last year has healed, as they usually seem to do. I can report, without sadness or regret, that I still harbor the same affection; but I'm unburdened by desire. Bittersweet is a good word. She was here tonight. She's in my heart every night. Such is life.

The real estate debacle has affected my little community as it has so many others. We're fortunate in some respects, less than 10% of our units are currently in foreclosure. We have some serious challenges, but I think we're in relatively good shape. Some of my friends and neighbors have been personally affected, and will lose their homes. I keep buying Lotto tickets, kind of hoping I can help out. Living and actively participating in a community involves a bit more friction than I had expected, certainly more than I ever wished for! And, as often seems the case, I was wrong about what, or who, the problems were. As difficult as it may be from time to time, it's worthwhile. It helps me to learn about myself, and it does seem to be the case that I can sometimes make a positive difference. I'm not just taking up space.

Music has been a major positive for me in '08. Among my many blessings is a wonderful friend at work who has introduced me to a large number of new, to me, artists and some fantastic music. As happy as I am about that, the musical highlight of the year for me was seeing The Boss in concert again. An experience that was enhanced by having the opportunity to introduce my wonderful co-worker to Bruce and having her become a new fan. But Melody Gardot, Lizz Wright, (the late) Eva Cassidy, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and more than I can name here, have been new treasures, each and every one.

Professionally, it's been as it has been for the last several years, relatively stagnant. This situation will not endure, but I won't welcome the transition when it comes. I do what I do to pay the bills. The only other rewards are some very nice people with whom I get to work; and it's not possible to overstate how good that is. If my employment survives the Great Reckoning, I'll be grateful, even if there's a twinge of regret. I guess I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up. But I won't borrow trouble. For now, I do what I have to do. When the time comes to do something else, that's what I'll do.

2008 marked the professional retirement of someone I had come to regard more as a friend than as a "professional." Sandy, a licensed clinical social worker employed by the U.S. Navy, retired this year. For the last nine years, it has been my good fortune to have her counsel and guidance, her patient good humor, her wisdom and her faith to sustain me in some very difficult times. It remains a source of some mystery to me how I merited such a gift. She called me the other day to say hello and see how I was doing. I'm doing fine, but only because of what she offered me.

One of the more pleasant surprises of 2008 was that this body that carries "me" around is still capable of things I never thought it was capable of when I was much younger! In truth, I'm grappling with the whole idea of age and how old I am, or seem to be. It's a happy conundrum. Realistically, I know more than half of my life is over, but I "feel" as though it's just beginning. This can be a source of confusion. When women one or two decades junior to me tell me I'm not "old," I struggle to comprehend what that means. It "feels" great, but what's the narrative? I fall back on the idea that "we only have moments to live," and try to live in this moment.

I bought my first DSLR this year, an Olympus E520. I love it and I've learned more about photography in the last few months than I've ever known. I'll never think of myself as a "photographer," I'm just a guy who takes pictures. But I love taking pictures, and I love exploring the ideas behind "photography."

Well, Magic is over, so I guess I should wrap this up. My Lucky Day, (an Amazon exclusive!) just came on.

I decided in 2008 that I was ready to try and join this reconstituted life with that of another, as yet unknown. Not sure how that's going to work out yet, but one thing is for sure: Not how I expect! That's okay. I think I understand that now. I'm not the author of this narrative. I have a part to play, a role, and I intend to embrace that. But I'm going to let the narrative unfold and see where it takes me. "That was Zen, this is Tao." It'll be okay.

Well, we're into Nebraska now, and that's not the mood I wish to convey. So I'll wrap up with a few lines from one of my favorite songs from Magic, Girls In Their Summer Clothes -

She went away, she cut me like a knife

And I ain't got much sense, but I still got my feet

Cheese Omelet: Revise and Extend My Remarks

It occurred to me yesterday that something I wrote with respect to the value of reading blogs might be hurtful to some virtual friends of mine, so I wish to clarify that to avoid misunderstanding.

I've been reading some high attention-earning bloggers for about as long as I've been at this. Far fewer now than at the beginning, but still, too many. From time to time, a few of them have even responded to my comments or criticisms, but nothing productive ever came of it. It's simply not possible to change someone else's mind about anything, particularly if they're emotionally, intellectually and financially invested in it. Which is why we still debate evolution and global warming. The debates are a waste of energy, as they're mostly about each side making themselves feel better about their respective certainty.

Anyway, in spite of the manifest futility of engaging these folks who are absolutely certain they know better (Yes, irony is the fifth fundamental force of the universe. I know. Keep reading.), I persisted with the thought that perhaps some who hadn't made up their minds might be persuaded that the popular ideas of the "thought leaders" were maybe not such great ideas after all. Hence, the "Competing Messages" and "Social Hygiene" categories. But it isn't clear to me how useful even that expenditure of time really is.

As for blogs that are a waste to time to read, they are the high attention-earners, who never have anything new to say, and whose certainty makes them utterly predictable, boring, and a waste of time. It's astonishing to me that so many of them are invited to fly all over the world, dumping copious amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (some of whom have concluded that global climate change is a reality, but it's not because of human activities, like flying to pointless "conferences") in the process, to "confer" with like-minded individuals, where they will utter absolutely predictable remarks. Holy crap! But they'll take lots of pictures and post them to Flickr, they'll have dinner with their sycophants, er, I mean, friends, they'll bitch about the wifi and the airlines and it will all be reported on Twitter! There's your year in blogging in a nutshell.

And while I'm thinking of it, they'll also be trying to copy the presentation styles of the popular presenters, or bitch about Keynote not offering the same animation features as PowerPoint. We've seen it all, over and over and over again.

That, boys and girls, is a complete and utter waste of time.

Now, the much lower ranking bloggers, not to say in "the long tail" to invoke another popular bullshit idea, generally have more interesting things to say, because they're either trying to become high attention-earners and so they have to be interesting to try and garner attention - which sometimes isn't a great plan, but at least isn't utterly predictable in terms of content. The drama is, but not necessarily the content. Or they've abandoned any notion of becoming high attention-earners, so they just blog about the things that interest them, which are vastly more interesting than the contents of the informercials offered by the paradoxically high attention-earners.

So, and you know who you are, I'll either not be reading you anymore, in favor of books by people who actually have something new, to me anyway, to say. Or I'll be reading the blogs of my old "virtual" friends, in whom I am interested.

So, shout out to Dr. James Vornov, Shelley, Karl, Hal, Ethan, Steven, AKMA, (links later, I'm late), and a number of others, I'll still be reading you.

Cheese Omelet: Nine Years After

Tomorrow will mark the ninth anniversary of my effort in this thing called "blogging," or, as I tend to think of it, "ranting into the void to no discernible effect." Not sure if longevity counts for anything, but there it is. Been here longer than Scoble. Go me.

Ran seven miles this morning with M. Fastest pace ever (for us - and I felt it) - 10:32 min/mi for the seven miles. Mile three was the fastest at 10:06, but mile four at 10:15 was surprising because that came after the turn, and I knew I was pushing hard and wanted to slow down a bit. Mile five was 10:35, and we didn't really slow until mile six at 11:01. Not sure how much we'll continue to improve, but I'm happy with our progress.

It's that time of the year when we kind of look back and look forward (as if we're not doing that all the time anyway). I think 2008 was a pretty good year for me, overall. Ran my first 15K and my first half-marathon, which were meaningful achievements for me. Made some new friends and enjoyed some good times with my old friends. Seem to be hanging around with a lot of attractive young women, so maybe I'm doing something right? But '08 was also illuminating in some ways as well. I got back on the condo board and dealt with some fairly high stress in some unproductive ways. While that was difficult and unpleasant, it was also useful because it reminded me of some things I need to keep doing in my life, which is where I've been placing some of my attention lately.

Started doing yoga in '08, and pretty much stopped too. But that's going to be corrected. I found yoga to be very worthwhile as a fitness adjunct and also as a way of helping to maintain mindfulness and equanimity. So that's a priority, along with reestablishing some sort of regular meditation practice. I want to continue trying to contribute to the progress of our little community, but that is very stressful - needlessly so, in my opinion - and so I need to work on my own resilience, which, fortunately, I know how to do. I just need to establish the practice.

Pretty much stopped martial arts practice in '08; but I'm going to reengage with that too, somehow. I realize I'm kind of packing the agenda here, so I need to be somewhat thoughtful in setting my expectations. I want to resume working on my fourth degree, but it may only be a weekly lesson. I also want to work on Krav, and that's likely to be a once a week thing as well.

On my own, I've hung a heavy bag here at home, and I have a 30 minute workout I've been putting together with that. It's much like interval training, wherein there are brief periods of intense activity that elevate my heart rate significantly, followed by brief periods of lesser activity to recover a bit. I'll jump rope for a minute to kind of warm up, then throw some combinations lightly to loosen up, a few kicks, some elbows. Then jump rope again. Then hit the bag for about 100 punches, moving around the bag, but not stopping. Trying to remember to throw them properly, return the jab quickly, keep the elbows in, I can tell when I'm getting the hook wrong because it hurts my hand! - All while counting and throwing. It's hard and I don't do it well. Then rest a minute, do another jump rope segment, follow with hitting the bag for 150 punches, rest a minute and do some lunges. Then 200 punches, which is pretty much an exhaustion drill at that point, but try to finish strong with hard straight punches. Rest. Jump rope. Then 25 knee strikes each leg with a brief rest between. Then wrap it up with some jump rope and go home. Takes about half an hour, and I'm usually soaked by the time I'm done. And my shoulders hurt two days later. Which would be today. And they do.

Wow. That was a pretty dense paragraph. But I like that little workout. Thirty minutes and I don't have to drive anywhere. (And, in case AKMA is reading, I've only just started this - I think Friday was my fourth effort - so it hasn't been a factor in my fitness previously!)

I want to read more books in '09, fewer blogs. I've read some pretty flattering things written by bloggers about other bloggers, but really, those are mostly a waste of time. The same people promote the same ideas over and over again. There's no "conversation," let alone discussion or debate. A blog for most of these folks is just a long informercial - a form of self promotion, not self-discovery. And sometimes the irony is just too much to take. Complaints about condescension from a condescending blogger; praise for someone challenging their own beliefs from a blogger who's never once challenged his own - in fact keeps linking to posts praising something he wrote ten years ago, and which has pretty much proven plainly disastrous! It's all too much. But pretty much in line with human nature.

So I'm reading more books in '09, though I started this week. I have a huge stack I've bought, meaning to read, so now I will. I'm enjoying A mind of its own - How your brain distorts and deceives. It's fairly light, with copious endnotes substantiating most of the assertions, but it's fairly current and a quick and enjoyable read. The aforementioned bloggers would do well to read it themselves, but they're too busy. I will note that I'm reading "book" books, not "e" books. Maybe one day I'll dig the whole e-book thing. But for now I have a stack of atoms I need to get through.

So, is reading Groundhog Day a waste of time? That's not my call, I guess. You get to choose what you care to do with your time. I get to choose what I care to do with mine. And part of mine will be spent here from time to time, "ranting into the void."

Cheese Omelet: Post Solstice Update

Well, the nights will be getting shorter now. At least up here in the top half of the world. Anyway...

Ran yesterday morning with M. We did six, but only two were on the beach because it's about two miles from here to the nearest beach access, even though we live about a mile from the ocean. Go figure. Anyway, it was a beautiful day and we were greeted with a gorgeous sunrise just as we hit the beach. Pace was a respectable 10:53, about four seconds slower than last week's, but not bad considering we had to pause for traffic before crossing A1A, and you really have to slow down to negotiate the dune walkover with its right angles, and the sand does slow you down a bit, even at low tide. Sprinted at the finish and hit 188 on the heart rate monitor and felt good.

Again, for what it's worth, I don't "train" much at all during the week. I walk about four miles at lunchtime three or four times a week, and walk Bodhi about 3.5 miles a day. Last week I worked out on the heavy bag, which usually involves a little rope jumping between sets. But that's about it. I'm still planning on incorporating some interval training, but haven't quite figured out just what yet.

I took that Real Age™ online test the other day. Not sure how legitimate it is, but it sure made me feel nice. They said I was seven years younger than my "real age!" Cool. I guess. I suppose a piano will fall on my head tomorrow.

On a sad note, Dad told me my second cousin Dee-Dee passed away earlier this month. She died in her sleep at 51. I didn't know her well, but I've never forgotten her. My Uncle Ray and Aunt Isabel came out to Michigan to visit family and we came from New York to do the same thing, if I recall correctly, and that's when I met Dee-Dee. We were both in those awkward teenage years, and she made an impression on me. I may have a group photo of all of us around here somewhere. Meant to look for it yesterday, consider this a note to self. Anyway, we only have moments to live, whether we realize it or not.

On a foolish note, I made a rather impulsive purchase yesterday. I've been thinking about getting a Sony PS3, mostly for its impressive Blu-ray Disc™ capabilities, and also for its other media and gaming features. The Navy Exchange has been sending out flyers with scratch-off coupons with some frequency in the run-up to Christmas, and I've mostly used them to buy clothes. The other day I thought about buying an 80GB PS3 and almost did so but decided at the last minute that I really needed to do something more sensible with my money. Well, I changed my mind a couple of days later, but when I got back they were all out of them! So I figured that was just as well.

Then another coupon arrived and I'd already bought all the clothes I was likely to buy (I really need a suit. None of mine fit me at all anymore. They couldn't even be altered, realistically. I tried one on the other day and couldn't believe how big I used to be. Yeesh. But I digress.), so I hadn't planned on using it. Well, on a whim yesterday, just as it was about to expire, I went to the Exchange to see if they had any more PS3s in stock. Turns out they did, but they were the 160GB models, which are, naturally, $100.00 more than the 80GB models. But they have the latest processor cores, supposedly, so they're more energy efficient. In any event, I bought one. I was hoping for 10% off on the coupon, but figured I'd get at least 5%. The latter turned out to be correct, so I saved $25.00 on the thing.

So then you have to spend a bunch more money buying the silly remote and the ridiculous HDMI cable (could have got it cheaper through Amazon, but I didn't do too bad at the Exchange), and a couple of games and movies on Blu-ray. I bought The Fifth Element because I'm familiar with how the movie looks and I have it on standard DVD so I can play it in my upscaling Oppo DVD player and compare that picture to the Blu-ray version. Haven't done the comparison yet, but I did play The Fifth Element last night. The picture is more detailed, and quite pleasing to view; but the most striking thing I hadn't anticipated was the audio seemed much better. I thought perhaps it might be because it was all digital, being conveyed from the PS3 to the Panasonic tv in digital format and then being converted to analog, whereas the Oppo doesn't offer audio through HDMI and I never bought a cable to route the digital audio to the TV, opting for the analog cables I have in abundance around the place. But I played a standard def DVD through the PS3 to see how its upscaler looked (very nice, but not better than the Oppo), and the audio seemed the same as when I played it through the Oppo. So maybe the uncompressed audio on Blu-ray is genuinely better? I'll play around with it some more and see what I think.

I have hundreds of DVDs. It's probably a character flaw of some kind. But there are a few I'd like to get in Blu-ray format, just because I find the movies so beautiful to look at. So I'll probably get dupes of Meet Joe Black, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, King Arthur (maybe on that one), Master and Commander, Open Range, probably a few others.

So, while I am sort of feeling guilty about buying the damn thing (I figure if I lose my job next year, I can probably sell it for not a lot less than the 10% restocking fee would cost me to return it. I.E. about $425.00 - maybe. It's a $500.00 box.), I am pleased with it as a Blu-ray DVD player, and looking forward to an enhanced movie-watching experience. Oh yeah, and playing a few games too!

Anyway, that's enough about all that. Time to go to work.

Cheese Sandwich: Miscellaneous Updates

I'm somewhat chagrined to note that I've imbibed the Facebook Kool-Aid™. What has tipped the balance for me is the iPhone application, and the fact that many of my "meat-space" friends are on Facebook. If you're a regular reader and are also on Facebook, look me up as David Michael Rogers. (I was playing games with Google when I created my account there more than a year ago. I'm the top hit as "Dave Rogers" on the Big G, but I wanted a lower profile on FB. If you were looking for me on Google, you'd be inclined to think I'd have the same name on FB. Or something. Anyway...)

It's also damn convenient to post a link to an article on Facebook, and upload pictures from the iPhone, both of which I've been doing with some frequency. The downside is, I'm less inclined to do so here because of it.

I have some vague plans to incorporate a few new features in Groundhog Day, which will involve mucking about in the html and CSS templates, which scares the bejeezus out of me. But I should be able tie in some facilities afforded MobileMe to allow me to make posts from the iPhone. That will have to wait until I can make some time for it, which, the way I roll, could be quite a long time.

The Match.com thing has slowed significantly. Three "dates" and nothing to write home about, though everyone was very nice. It feels very awkward, and I suspect it always will to some extent, but it's probably mostly a matter of experience and practice, like anything else. I was talking to a guy that I work with about running the half-marathon coming up in February. He mentioned that it was something of a hurdle to make that commitment to really train for it. I agreed, but I pointed out that it was much less of a hurdle than trying to find and develop an intimate relationship with someone! So, important safety tip for all of you already in an intimate relationship with someone: Take good care of it. Probably much easier than making a new one! But anyway, life would be pretty dull if we didn't have things to do.

One of the yin-yang things about actively sort of placing yourself in the "relationship arena," is you get a lot of free advice. Some of it is without a doubt, very useful. But it is also very overwhelming at times, especially when it's conflicting.

But I'm finding that what that's really about is me being comfortable with myself. I'm not inclined to try to make myself appear to be someone that I'm not, because it's not an act I could keep up all the time. But there are aspects of my personality that don't always work to my advantage in being "attractive," and those would be problematic to one degree or another even in an ongoing relationship.

So I'm trying to sort out some things about myself that I'd like to work on to be more "attractive," and also to feel better about myself in terms of who I am as a person regardless of my relationship status. One example, and this is something that I did hear from Sandy, or has been validated by my experience with her, is that I tend to put myself down a lot - usually in the form of self-deprecating humor. Now, a little bit can be funny and maybe even refreshing to some people, but I do it too much. I can do a whole stand-up routine making fun of myself. It's probably a defense mechanism, or a way of dealing with anxiety, but it's not attractive and it isn't good for me either. So that's something I'm trying to be mindful of and trying to change.

Another thing is I tend to be very verbal. Most men are poor communicators. I communicate too much. I am utterly transparent. This is not always a good thing. As one of my friends said to me, "Every little thought that pops up between your ears doesn't have to come flying out your pie-hole." So I'm working on being a little bit less loquacious and a bit more mysterious. (Previously, I would have noted my affinity for alliteration in the "less loquacious" - "more mysterious" construction. But I'm not going to do that. Oh, wait...) (Damn! Was that self-deprecating humor?!) (Wait... Damn!) (Damn!) (See what I mean?)

(Damn!)

Moving right along...

I bought Drive Genius 2 as part of the latest MacUpdate Bundle offer. I used the Drive Slim feature to remove about 1.7GB of extraneous language files from my MacBook. As a safety feature, it archives those files rather than actually deleting them, in case you need them for some reason. But I didn't realize it would archive the actual packages that those files came from. In hindsight, I'm sure that's the only way to do it safely; else, how would you know which file went with which package if you wanted to restore one from the archive?

The only problem is, the compressed disk image of the archive takes up 14GB of disk space! So I lost a net of 12GB! Because the archive is so large, I couldn't transfer it to my external HD because it's formatted in FAT 32 and I guess there's a 4GB file size limit. I'm going to try and use Toast 9 to burn it to a couple of DVDs and see if that might do the trick. Otherwise, I'll just buy another external HD and reformat it to something more appropriate like NTFS or something.

And I wish to note for the record that both Mac OS 10.5.6 and iPhone 2.2 installed without problems for me. Also, I've dropped my iPhone from the bar in my condo to the tiled floor twice, and it is still working. I'm sure I'm going to have to buy a new one before my two-year contract is up, because I'm definitely not babying this thing. But I am impressed with its durability apart from its aversion to immersion.

Cheese Omelet: Slow off the mark...

Had a beautiful, red sunrise this morning. But I'm getting slow in my old age. Either didn't pay attention enough to catch it early, or too slow gettin' out the door. By the time I got out there, this was all that was left:

Cheese Omelet: Sunday Run

Ran five this morning at about a 10:46 pace. Not bad considering I was out last night with some friends celebrating our friend's graduation from law school. Smoking the hookah probably didn't help much! I always try to sprint at the end and see what my max heart rate is, and I only hit 176 this morning. I've hit 190 several times this year, and I'm usually good for 186-188 at the end of the run, but not today. Not sure what, if anything, that means. Also didn't get anywhere near my best max speed at the end either.

I will make sure I get a good night's sleep next Saturday, and see what happens.

Still, not a bad pace. Mile two was the slowest at 11:09, with three, four and five each successively faster. Overall, this was one second faster than my last five mile run, which I ran by myself on the morning of October 31st. I felt pretty good about that run. The pace profiles were similar, with mile two being the slowest, three and four successively faster, but my pace decreased in mile five during that run, while today it increased. Heart rate hit 190 at the end on October 31st, though my max speed was only .2 mph faster than this morning's. And overall, my average heart rate was 10 to 15 bpm slower this morning, from mile two all the way to the end, than the last five miler. So that seems like a good thing.

Ya gotta love having the data!

Six next Sunday.

Social Hygiene: David Brooks

For the most part, I don't read editorial columnists on the left or the right. But during the presidential campaign, I started reading David Brooks just out of curiosity at first, and was kind of surprised by his reasonableness.

The campaign is over, but I still sometimes look to see what he's writing about, and was very pleased to read his current column. I'm not sure infrastructure spending can be targeted the way he suggests, but we do need to look hard at it. Not simply, though I would argue that it was sufficient of itself, to improve the social nature of our physical infrastructure, but also to address what John Robb describes as resilient communities.

We need to start getting smarter about a lot of things, and we can't simply keep supporting the same old agendas of either the left or the right, or "industry" (to include the blogging industry and its "internet agenda").

Competing Messages: Love of Stuff

Humanity has a strange relationship with its artifacts. We "love" them. Naturally, they don't love us back, but they also don't argue with us, walk out on us, develop substance abuse problems, or spend all our money. Except when they do. Which is when we anthropomorphize them. I still chuckle when I read the occasional, "Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."

We write songs of love to pickup trucks, highways, guitars, ships, boats, trains, pretty much anything we make with the possible exception of cereal bowls. If we don't write songs about them, we write loving essays. We certainly write fanboy rants about people who slight our beloved things. And we argue endlessly about which is better, Mac or PC, Nikon or Canon, Ford vs. Chevy, I could go on, but you're reading this in a blog, so you already know what I'm talking about.

Since our artifacts are our own creations, I suppose we see them somehow as a reflection of ourselves, rather than merely as a clever assembly of bits and pieces to achieve a particular purpose. Whatever virtues we perhaps wish to believe are manifest in ourselves, we project onto our artifacts, the better to see ourselves in our stuff.

And since love is related to faith, indeed I believe love is faith in action, the religious aspect is never far from our stuff. We talk about "creating passionate users." We want people to love our stuff so much, they're willing to suffer for it. Yeah, baby. Feel the love. Hurts so good. And since we see ourselves in our stuff, and since God created us in his image, we see God in our stuff, and naturally, some of us worship our stuff, see Paragraph 0 above.

And there hasn't been any stuff as big and emotionally and philosophically freighted as the internet. It spans the worlds, breaks down barriers, empowers people with godlike powers of vision and knowledge, not to say, wisdom. And so the worship of the internet is perhaps the highest form of worship of stuff. Every virtue we'd like to see in ourselves, openness, equality, knowledge, virtue, elegance, we project onto a collection of computers, switches, wires and fibers, as though it were the second coming of Christ Himself. Which is cool, because Religion 1.0™, has been deprecated in favor of Religion 3.0™, whose product codename is Web 2.0™ (beta). Religion 3.0 retires outmoded conventions, like the existence of supernatural entities, in favor of supernatural artifacts, which actually exist. The supernatural powers of man-made artifacts are in fact merely the emergent properties of social networks. It says so, right on the label.

Given enough eyeballs, all miracles are merely card tricks.

And this is all supposedly grand and good. Rolling a snowball of machine worship down a hill. Everybody contributing their little wiki-bits to the wisdom of the crowd. A vast Smart Mob, rapturous in its embrace of the 0 degrees of separation experience, when we are all united in The ("Open") Source. (Anybody actually remember The Source?)

We jet around the world, spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to attend modern day revival meetings we call "conferences," or if we're really hip and trendy, "un-conferences," where we supposedly "confer" with one another about the best ways to feel good about what we're doing, er, I mean, advance the cause of machine worship. It's a totally value-added proposition! And we get to bitch about the airlines, a machine system that is probably the artificial equivalent of hell or at least one of its circles.

That whole thing about getting the FCC and government regulation off the back of the internet? It's all about the separation of church and state, dude! You're totally down with that right? Church and state!

What's not to love?

As for me, I'm an unrepentant heathen. A philistine. I like my stuff, I may even like it a lot. But it's just stuff. I love my family. I love my dog. On a good day, I may love my neighbor. But I don't have enough of those.

Anyway, just some random thoughts on a Tuesday morning. You're strongly encouraged to have your own.

Soon.

Cheese Omelet: Dog Trot

I didn't run this morning because my partner isn't feeling well, and because I was up walking the dog at 3:00 a.m.

Bodhi, like most dogs, will eat almost anything if it in any way smells like food. Recently he threw up a wash cloth I hadn't even seen him consume, and it wasn't one of mine. I mostly try to keep him from eating things off the ground, but it's dark at night and often it's hard to tell the difference between taking a good sniff and scarfing something down. He understands "Leave it!" but if it's something especially appealing, he'll try to get it down before he has to kind of acknowledge the command. I've pried open his jaws to remove things before. Usually I'm too late.

In any event, sometimes the things he eats will upset his digestive system and I get to deal with the consequences, and they're seldom pleasant. So far, in our current ordeal, there hasn't been a problem inside the condo, but I was very aware he had a problem.

Bodhi sleeps in his crate in my room. That way I don't have to worry about him chasing the cats around all night, or getting into their litter box. That's another disgusting dog thing, but what are you going to do? He likes his crate and he goes right to it after the last walk of the night, settles in right away, maybe after humping his blanket for a couple of minutes, not quite sure what's up with that either; but it's pretty much a routine non-event and I don't hear much from him all night unless the cats climb on my back, then he gets upset and stands up and whines. Keeps the cats off my back, anyway. But if he's not feeling well, he'll start panting in the crate, and if he's got a problem, he'll stand up. I'm a pretty light sleeper, so if he starts panting, I usually hear it. I kind of keep an ear open and if I hear him stand up, I know I've got about three minutes to get him outside. We've done this probably a dozen times in the two years I've had him - one or two nights every three or four months it seems. It's never fun, but I'm happy to note that I'm never angry with him when we have to do it. I've cleaned that crate once, and that was enough! So we just get up and go out. It takes a bit longer this time of year because it's cold out, so I need to get a coat or a sweater on, and he's spinning by the door going, "C'mon man! Gotta go, gotta go!"

So we did that last night, and it's about 20 minutes for the walk (there are usually three events) and I'm wide awake by the time we get back. I went back to bed around 4:00 and didn't get up until 7:30. I had thought about running by myself last night, but didn't feel like it this morning. So another Sunday off won't hurt.

But I am a bit grumpy.

Competing Messages: Castles in the Air

It's Sunday, and we have a homily on the virtues of the internet from Doc Searls.

One of the criticisms of conventional religious thought is that it relies, to some extent, on the existence of supernatural phenomena - things that cannot be observed in nature and are taken on the basis of faith.

Those who worship technology and who regard its highest expression to date to be the internet also rely on the existence of supernatural phenomena. Either that, or those who worship technology lack the critical thinking skills it takes to actually create and deploy technology. I'm not sure which is more unsettling.

In his latest appeal to set the chosen people of the internet free from Pharoah, Doc "Moses" Searls points to an essay by Bob Fankston, one of the co-inventers of VisiCalc, the first modern spreadsheet. Frankston's view, which Doc is endorsing, is that the internet should not be regulated by government the way other telecommunications services are regulated. Frankston's essay makes a number of assertions, many of them confusing or contradictory, with little explanation or evidence. "Demand creates supply?" Talk about "magical thinking..." Maybe it's "If you build it, they will come," which was a pretty good movie, Field of Dreams.

Frankston mentions the automobile and the interstate highway system as seemingly favorable precedents in his essay. He doesn't mention government regulatory efforts to set automobile safety standards, exhaust emission standards and fuel economy standards. Nor does he mention >30K deaths in automobile accidents each year, nor the hours wasted and stresses induced in drivers idling in traffic jams around urban centers each and every day, as people commute from their bedroom communities. Not to worry though, I'm sure telecommuting will solve those problems.

Frankston's essay is critically flawed, but one can discern the gist of his intent, and it isn't as overtly or exclusively "faith-based" as Doc's thinking. Doc, on the other hand, offers this:

So look at it this way. What we have inside the free spaces of our own homes is connectivity. What we have outside of our homes, through telco and cable systems, is broadband. The latter may seem desirable, but only in the absence of free (as in liberty, not price) alternatives.

Bob sees the Internet less as a physical infrastructure of CFR (copper, fiber and radios) than as a “bit commons” to which we all contribute. It’s an ocean rather than canals across a desert. Its nature is one of abundance, not scarcity. One can only make it scarce, which is what phone and cable companies do, even as they increase our broadband speeds to larger fractions of what we have at home for free.

Doc always focuses on this fantastical notion of "digital abundance." I think he gets bits confused with atoms and electromagnetic phenomena, the "non-supernatural," reality-based pieces of the internet. "One can only make it scarce?" It starts out scarce! All those bits in that sea of data must rely on scarce physical infrastructure and spectrum resources to make their way from the "cloud" or the "ocean," whatever the metaphor du jour happens to be - or "frame," because we know Doc likes little boxes to neatly contain ideas that are neither little nor neat - to the atoms and spectrum that provide "connectivity" in your home, and finally across the air gap between those infrastructure atoms to the atoms making up one's left and right hemispheres. Where the bits become once again, non-scarce and non-reality-based for far too many.

The physical infrastructure costs money to build, and unlike the financial industry, where they make money literally out of thin air (I think Doc missed his true calling), the telecom industry has to sell atoms to get people to have access to bits. Atoms are not free. And many of those atoms, whether copper or fiber, must traverse through or over atoms that belong to other people - which is the issue of right of way or easement, property rights, and those always involve the potential for disagreement and unfair advantage because they're scarce. And spectrum? While technology always allows us to do more and more with the electromagnetic spectrum, is not at any given moment an unconstrained resource, and the potential for interference always exists, and therefore it is regulated by a central authority so all players can understand the rules, and all users can be assured of having certain expectations met. All those things may be hopelessly imperfect, but that does not make them unnecessary.

And while Frankston is advocating an office of advocacy, I'd like to see him give some thought to the lessons of the automobile, and see if we can't build into the process a mechanism for early identification and mitigation of unintended consequences. Perhaps we might give some consideration to deliberation, contemplation and reflection before we massively roll-out wholesale technological innovations instead of relying on a hazy faith-based notion that "change is good."

We don't do that in a free market. We usually wait for the catastrophes to happen before we step in and say, "Hmmmm... maybe that Thalidomide drug isn't as 'safe and effective' as its manufacturer warranted..." Or, "Should all these people be suffering massive trauma in automobile accidents? Are there some engineering changes we might make to the interiors of automobiles to reduce the risk of massive trauma?"

Can we exhibit some ability to learn from the past here? Instead of merely proselytizing our own cherished beliefs and making government the universal bad guy?

My guess is, probably not.

God save us from the true believers, in whatever cause they believe.

Cheese Omelet: Photo Finish

Okay, last post on the half-marathon. Here are some pictures, which will cost me a small fortune to actually obtain copies, from the event.

This is the group that we kept leapfrogging:

Nice shot here - you can actually tell I seem to be running. Sort of...

The exciting climax. Please recall the time is off by two minutes because they delayed the start of the rest of the runners by two minutes after the official start. (Because, you know, I really care about how fast I run! Or not.)

Nice to see...

After jumping the shark last October, it's very nice to see Merlin Mann's 43 Folders turning into something more substantial than a fetish site.

The Boss: New Album

Very pleased to note that the Boss has a new album set for release next month. Downloaded the single Working on a Dream (the title track for the album) from iTunes when it was available, and another single, My Lucky Day available from Amazon.com (and MySpace, I guess). The video at Amazon was fun to watch.

Cheese Omelet: Wednesday Morning

Where the heck did November go? Never mind. Don't answer that. I guess I wasn't paying attention.

It's time to break out the Christmas decorations and re-check all the Christmas songs in iTunes. (I keep them unchecked so they don't randomly play in some smart playlist or Genius-created playlist.)

The Match.com thing seems to be going better than I expected. I rather thought I'd be the one initiating contact, but I guess that was somewhat chauvinistic of me, as I have received more contacts than I can reasonably meet in the near term. Some are easy to turn down as they're e-mailing from hundreds of miles away. Not sure what's going on there, but a canned "No thanks," reply works well in those cases. But that's probably enough about that!

Anyway, happen see that asterism the other night? The moon, Juipter and Venus? I Tried to get a shot of it. This one turned out the best, though I should have used a tripod. Getting the moon is easy, and it's over-exposed here because Jupiter and Venus are relatively dim compared to the moon. But even with image stabilization, the long end of the 300 mm lens exaggerates any movement at all, so there's a lot of smear there.

And my partner sent me the picture snapped from her cell phone after the half marathon: