Then the years began to slip by and the world continued, such as it was, some years not so great and other years pretty good. I know that Chuck Smith and others continued to talk about these being the Last Days, but we started growing up and having families and setting different priorities than our own personal salvation. It wasn’t that the world had change as much as that my relationship to it and to life had changed. I began to see each year as a gift and my friends as connections, instead of as sinners in need of salvation. Salvation was what we did with each day, accepting the challenges and set-backs and looking for the best in ourselves and bring it out in our neighbors. I didn’t know any better as a teenager and young person, to not know that the world is a pretty big place and that living in fear of Divine judgment or the anxious expectation of Divine intervention wasn’t a very constructive way to live one’s life. It sadden’s me that an 89-year-old former engineer hasn’t figure that out.

Worse than that Harold Camping, president of Family Radio and chief proponent of the May 21st Rapture Date, is changing the course of many, many lives with his numerological nonsense. There’s the couple, Adrienne & Joel Martinez, quoted in the NPR article, saying that they quit their jobs and moved here to Orlando to spend the last days handing out pamphlets, reading their bible and spending time with their two-year-old. And they say that they have just enough money to get to May 21st and none should there be a next day for them. Oh and Adrienne is pregnant with a little one that’s set to arrive in June. Camping has lived his life and when May 22nd comes he’ll come up with another reason why his calculations were off (he previously predicted the Rapture for September 6, 1994). The Martinez family and possibly hundreds of others will probably have a bigger problem to deal with.

Imagine how different the world would be if all of this energy spent on ripping families apart, moving to different cities and days spent on the streets harassing strangers with a false gospel of fear and foolishness; what if that energy was spent on getting to know our neighbors and listening to them when they are lonely or sharing a meal with them when they are hungry, how different would the world be. Too bad Camping hasn’t used his numerology and wealth to feed the hungry, clothe the needy and visit those in dire straits. Maybe, instead of counting the years in books that know nothing of the Gregorian calendar, he should have read what was in the books, the stories about compassion and mercy and love. Engineers [sigh]. I’ve heard whispers on Twitter from some jokesters who are planning on Saturday to leave articles of clothing all over their cities for the laughs. This isn’t funny. That people would buy this stuff and leave their jobs, homes and families, speaks to level of their needs to be loved and heard. This is, in fact, something that we all need. Jesus was all about meeting people at that level. Too bad nobody listened to him until he was killed. Too bad these troubled seekers aren’t listening to him right now (in that he said quite plainly that no one knows the day or the hour of his return). We could all use with strong dose of compassion and connection right about now. May 21st be damned, the only day that counts is the one you are living right now.

Sources:
Is The End Nigh? We’ll Know Soon Enough by BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, http://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136053462/is-the-end-nigh-well-know-soon-enough?ps=cprs, retrieved May 19th, 2011.

Believers Sound The Alarm: Judgment Day Is May 21, NPR Talk of the Nation,
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136432488/believers-sound-the-alarm-judgment-day-is-may-21, retrieved May 19th, 2011.

I love this subway commercial. The boy’s “this is too good to be true,” reaction when the beautiful girl asks him if he wants her to be his girlfriend and then the disappointment when he realized it’s just a rouse to steal his lunch is priceless. Ain’t life grand. Reflecting some of that innocent realization, I had a wonderful conversation recently with a high-school girlfriend. The conversation with Peggy drifted back to the first time I asked her out and for all of the years that we’ve known each other I was surprised at how differently she remembered this particular event.

I think I even began by saying that I usually pride myself at having very vivid memories. Well, that was until another conversation we had years ago when she surprised me with a few stories about us that I had absolutely no memory of. That said, you’d still think that I’d remember something like asking her out the first time with a bit more clarity. Ha. So, the story goes that my wonderful girlfriend at the time, not Peggy, decided toward the end of our senior year that “we should see other people.” Perfect. Senior prom, grad night and I’m left to hustle to find a date after being with said girlfriend since our sophomore year. Ack. I did end up going with the old not-girlfriend to prom but was determined to not repeat that underwhelming experience for grad night. Okay, to be fair it was an okay but more than a bit awkward to share with someone who has decided to “see other people.” [fail trombone].

Anyway, I knew Peggy because she was a good friend of a girlfriend of one of my football buddies. I do vividly remember walking up behind her in a crowd as we were all shuffling to get to our afternoon classes, touching her on her shoulder and when she turned around asking her if she’s like to go with me to grad night. There was a bit of an expected blank stare on her part and then she said that she’d have to ask her parents first. She is still embarrassed that she had to ask her parents because she was only 15 and her mom had said that she couldn’t date until she was 16. I remember being happy because she didn’t say “No” outright or laugh. But what I didn’t remember, and what Peggy told me in the recent conversation, was that me asking her out was the very first time that we’d actually ever spoken to each other. I was flabbergasted. I assumed that we’d talked at least a few times because, if this were true, than this had to be the one and only time that I can ever remember (which clearly isn’t as reliable as it used to be) ever walking up to someone that I wasn’t first friends with and asking them out. Wow. After all these years, I was stunned.

Grad Nite 1976 - Two Very Young Kids

What was it that enabled me to break out of what would become a life-long pattern just this once? In that that version of myself is over 30-years in the past, I was kind’a impressed with that version and wondered what happened to that guy. Oh yeah, life and experience intervened. In all fairness, life is different in ones hometown in that I may not have talked to Peggy before that fateful day but I knew who she was, so she was not a completely random stranger. So, to continue the tale, we went to grad night and dated a little that summer and then in the Fall I moved to Los Angeles to attend Loyola Marymount University and we stopped dating. Well, not quite, but that’s a tale for another time (and probably another phone call so that I don’t get the detail too screwed up). Ah, memories of youth. I love the boy’s last line, that no one hears, “ah, I don’t think this is working out…”

P.S., Peggy recently had a monumental birthday and her lovely daughter wanted to get a lot of her friends together. I wasn’t able to make it to the party but I sent the link to the following video to her. It’s good to have friends.

It’s something that the computer geeks don’t get. It’s part of why Microsoft’s efforts to promote Tablet PCs for the past ten years has completely failed. It’s not about the hardware or the feature list. It’s about the books, magazines, newspapers, and movies I can connect to and my access to my stuff stored on the cloud. In typical Apple fashion they are at least a good five to ten years ahead of the curve and this is resulting in more than a few disconnects. The geeks are thinking GBs storage, USB ports and processor speeds and old media are thinking pay-walls and DRM. And both of them are so dead wrong, it’s embarrassing.

On the media end I should be able able to click on any book and get an electronic or audio version for less than the price of going to my local Borders for a dead tree version. But the publishers have got their heads so far up their asses that they want to charge me a hard cover price or more for a version that doesn’t cost them one physical cent to produce or ship. They would rather sell 1,000 copies for $25 than 1,000,000 copies for $5. Or worse, there’s no e-version available because they can’t figure out how to make a digital version (though I remember a Harry Potter fan copying a 500 page book in less time than it took for the dead tree version to make it to his country).

Here’s the deal, we want to pay for the story, movie, song. The career of Jonathan Coulton should be proof of this. What should also be clear is that we’re not interested in paying for all of the middle managers and flunkies who don’t add one wit to the product. Yes it’s a business, and there are lots of important folks who make it happen But we’re not going to pay $25 for a book when we know that the pricing structure was built around creating a physical book that isn’t getting created. And the scarcity model, where only so many books/song/videos can be made every year, isn’t going to work in the era of almost infinite artists freely sharing their works on the Internet (remember Jonathan Coulton?).

Free Background Old newspaper by ShironekoEuro

So, getting back to the iPad, I was really hoping on the first day to subscribe to my local papers and national voices from the first day and buy any book like Michener’s The Source from the 1970s or even older tomes like The Idea of the Holy. Over the past month the only books I’ve bought were from the amazon app because the ones I wanted weren’t available on the Apple iBook app and I haven’t found a single newspaper to subscribe to that was any better than what I can get on an RSS reader. Fail. But in the last couple of days I’ve been encouraged by the iPad version of National Geographic (offered by Zinio) that not only mimics the magazine format but also offers unpublished photos and videos not available in the dead tree version.

My thing is that technology is so expensive, so, except for the geeks, it’s got to deliver something more than what can be had without the device. And that extra stuff has got to be the music, books, magazines, newspapers, media that is cheap, instantly available and brings something “more” than the analog versions. The Achilles heel is whether the media companies can wrap their heads around the game changing nature of this new model. If Apple loses the tablet war it’ll be because the public lost interest while the media companies fiddle with their business model and fail to deliver. jbb

I’ve noted in my eclectic twitter and facebook feeds a slight trend that I first noticed this past week, before Easter, during which someone commented that they are tired of being, or that they shouldn’t be ashamed of their faith and wanted to shout it out. Then, of course, someone quoted the verses where Jesus said, if you are ashamed to acknowledge me in this life then I won’t acknowledge you in the next life. That was a bit of a buzz-kill, but I still saw a few “He Lives!” that seemed to come from this initial thought that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our Faith. Is this the Christian version of the “I love you, man” that guys say to each other after watching a good football game and a few round of beer?

In Bad Faith, Part 9: He Lives … In the example of Your Day-to-Day Lives

My Jesus-Freak high school self

I poke fun because I’m that guy in high school who, with my dear Christian friends, decided one beautiful, sunny lunch break, probably around Easter time, that we needed to not be ashamed of our faith and confronted our non-believing fellow students and got all verbal with them about the gospel. I’m so thankful (and hopeful) that my fellow students might remember said incidents as just another silly adolescent not-thought-out moment. I mean, I forgive them for wanting to and/or throwing stuff at our little group after those incidents. I’ve never been particularly fond of Confrontational Christianity since then. Of course, mom would remind me that words are cheap and that actions speak louder than words. Thanks mom. Love mom’s obviousness.

Our culture is so weird where politicians feel the need to prove how qualified they are for the job by parading their family and faith out to the public, where we’re either over-sensitive or oblivious to whether we should talk about our beliefs with our neighbors, but doing anything about the disenfranchised all around us isn’t even on the agenda. I mean, part of the reason some of us go to church is to not be part of the disenfranchised and unconsciously we make such people uncomfortable to walk in the door and stink up our plush pews. We’re not mean. We just prefer an impersonal way of “dealing with those people,” through our tithes… assuming that any of that money goes any further than the pastor’s latest building project or salary. I don’t mean to be mean. I’m writing mostly to myself, in that I was a serious tither, giving my 10 percent (after taxes) from the time I first started working many many decades ago and wonder whether that money really did anyone any good. And why is god always running out of money?

I love my brother’s approach:

Too many glasses of wine, feeling love for all mankind. I know we don’t deserve this, we are all so flawed, but that is the real message of Easter. That we are lovable despite all of all of our problems. Have a wonderful Easter. Jesus is Risen, now go hide some eggs.

And as my mom would probably say, it really is all about how we treat one another, not during the special moments, but in the day-to-day moments. Now go out and hug someone who needs a hug today.

“When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?” And the King shall answer and say unto them, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25: 38-40 KJV

It shouldn’t be too surprising that in an era and place of unbridled abundance and wealth (that is the US in the 1970s and following) that these verses would be seen as part of the claim that we deserve good things and God has to give us what we want. Of the many mistakes I’ve made in my walk of faith, having a sense of entitlement, that God owes me something, was no small source of confusion and probably one of the worst ways that I could have envisioned a relationship with the Divine. Funny that I seem to get mostly what I needed, but almost never what I wanted.

In Bad Faith, Part 7: Entitlement

The stark finger of God by altemark

It might be interesting to see the tel-evangelist and the religious huckster try to preach this gospel of entitlement to villagers in a developing spot in the world where their village is routinely wiped out every year by monsoons and flooding. Or in some South American desert community where there’s no electricity or indoor plumbing, how would they spin their message there? How does this gospel of entitlement translate in parts of the world where children catch the measles and die or where they don’t have enough food to feed them and have to watch them slowly starve to death. Conversely, how about hard-working folk who are laid-off or fired because the CEO needs to cut the budget so that he can still get his quarter-million dollar. The CEO got what he wanted, but the thousands and possibly millions who are dependent on that paycheck for their daily bread certainly didn’t. Does God only listen to the prayers of CEOs, or rich Americans?

I’m currently listening to Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, and it seems pretty clear that one mistake I made was to assume a quid pro quo relationship with the Divine and second to that was an assumption that I could have a relationship with the Divine that was a kind of mystical parallel to having a relationship with a really powerful, important buddy. I thought I had VIP access to all the good that there was to offer because God and Jesus were my buddies. “No really, check again, my name is on the VIP list. My buddy, Jesus, said he put it there,” I say to the heavenly bouncer. Imagine my disappointment and embarrassment as I’m forced to leave the line while the bouncer lets all the hot chicks in first. Damn. Story of my life…

I know that it was confusing to my mom, a devout Catholic, that I had this expectation that not only did God hear my prayers, but that He had to give me what I wanted and also that He was in control of every aspect of my life, right down to the long hairs on my shaggy head. I’d had this “experience” as a 15-year-old and blam! I was ushered into the inner sanctum and I was privy to a level of understanding that the stupid ol’ theologians couldn’t begin to imagine. Well, 15-year-olds are always over-estimating their importance and understanding, and I wasn’t any different in that department. Sad thing was that as I grew up and began to understand that I did NOT know the mysteries of the universe, that I was unable to integrate this in a meaningful way when it came to understanding my relationship with God and the Bible. In a sense Dawkins was right, while I understood more and more of the complexity of life, my relationship with God was mostly undeveloped beyond the moment of recognition and wonder.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. (1st Corinthians 13:11-12 ASV)

Well, it’s probably an overstatement to say that it went undeveloped because from that moment forward I struggled with my growing rational understanding of the world and this moment that changed my life. Like the Episcopal priest that my brother spoke to in my last entry, I couldn’t fully reconcile the two and instead just alternated between the two worlds and not always very gracefully. While Dawkins might say that my struggle was an irrational residual of my upbringing, Armstrong might say that my problem was that my definition of God was just too narrow and too primitive.

I’d seen a glimpse of it at Loyola Marymount when I read The Idea of the Holy, but never really moved too far beyond the “buddy in the sky” motif when I did my B.A. in Biblical Studies at Biola University. Then when I started an M.A. in Theology at Fuller Seminary it was an interesting blend between the rational and religious, but it all got cut short when I got divorced. It didn’t help that I was already too academic for my Calvary Chapel heritage, getting divorced completely knocked the wheels off of my vision for myself and ministry. And thus I abandoned all of it and except for occasionally listening to some Mark Heard or Sam Phillips I never opened my Bible or went back to church for fifteen years following the divorce.

During my fifteen year Agnostic phase I attempted to find a balance between these unmet expectations, my sense of my own responsibility for the way things turned out and trying to figure out who I was. I’d love to say that I figured it out, but that would be even more delusional than any of the foolish things I’d done as a Christian. Something was missing. A lot of time past. I had my work but… I don’t know. There was something more.

Then through an unexplainable series of events I found myself back at church, back to reading my bible and back to trying to figure everything out with my old buddy Jesus. Simply put, I’d fallen in love and there wasn’t a single damn thing about it that was right and when it all came crashing down on my head (over a Valentine’s Day weekend) I had a moment of transcendence and understanding. God was in control again and I didn’t care how anything turned out because I understood that nothing happened by chance. And I really did go through a number of “self-renovation” projects. The previous 15-years felt like I’d been standing still or asleep the whole time. I knew I had to be my best self. I knew I had to be my best self because… well, that was the problem. There was something, or actually someone who, I wanted in my life and it wasn’t happening. Christian friends repeated the verses like the ones above about how God knew my heart and wanted to give me… good things. Great, I was all for that. I knew what that meant to me, but things got a lot darker and unlike any other time in my life I learned what it meant to be completely vulnerable, to the point where a sunset would make me cry because I couldn’t be with the one I’d fallen in love with. This went on for years.

Friends and enemies around me were falling in love and getting married (and getting divorced) and I was still trying to figure out why it wasn’t happening for me. I kept the thought close to my heart that God knew what I wanted. And time continued to pass on by. It was beginning to feel like those bad old days when I began to believe that I must be doing something wrong or that there was something wrong with me. I didn’t really expect it all to be handed to me on a silver platter, but Jesus, after five years… Clearly, I’d misjudged more than a few things. Clearly I was still seeing things through a glass, darkly… So, for the second time, I closed the Book and walked away.

I know a lot of people who feel like they were rescued from horrible lives because they found God. For them life would be completely meaningless and cruelly random if it weren’t for God making everything right and loving them. I respect that. I miss that sense of knowing. I miss that sense of being connected. I don’t want to live what’s left of my life like I did during my 15-year of random wandering. I’ve learned so much, it’d be a shame for it all to be lost because it’s gone unshared and unremembered. There’s still something left undone.

Maybe the verses aren’t about some quid pro quo relationship with the Divine expressed with gifts of fishes or stones. Maybe the verses aren’t about a big buddy in the sky who wants to spoil you. Maybe it’s all meant to be an allegory about being loved and being connected to something greater than ones self. Maybe it was enough that I was loved and that in those moments I saw into Eternity, that I’m one of these weirdos who can take simple human contact and see something bigger, something that makes thoughts of entitlement feel like immature children complaining about fish and stones.

Sources:
image: Dollar sign, Microsoft.com/clipart

image: The stark finger of God by altemark. http://www.flickr.com/photos/altemark/46732233/ retrieved on 3/5/2010.

image: heart candle by joe bustillos. http://joebustillos.com/images/heartcandle.jpg retrieved on 3/5/2010

YouTube video: Sheryl Crow – Letter To God – Live. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2dwWHCc2Ak retrieved on 3/5/2010

Then there’s this excellent example of the tech news analysis by Tom Merritt and Rafe Needleman in CNET’s “Real Deal” podcast. The two put the iPad announcement into the historical context, looking at many of the previous, mostly failed, attempts to popularize the tablet/handheld class of computer. Make sure to visit the podcast website, these guys have excellent show notes and links to all of the gadgets mentioned in the video/podcast.

Then there’s this speculative editorial that wants to pass itself off as news reporting. Molly Wood is a smart, funny journalist, but she’s definitely from the media personality school of thought where snarky strong opinions are pushed to the front, generating huge positive or negative responses. I can’t watch this video without getting pissed-off. Ack. Moving on.

Discounting the noise being made by those who flat out hate all things Apple, iPhone or Steve Jobs, I’ve noted at least two trends between the fanboys and the haters. The first trend seems to be that pretty much none of the haters have actually touched the device and are making their vitriolic pronouncements based on the videos and the device spec sheet. This leads to the second observation: all of the haters are freaking out about all of the things the device doesn’t have. Oh my god, it doesn’t have a walk-in closet! Perhaps you missed that opening slide in the keynote where Jobs placed the device between a smart phone and a laptop. The idea is that the device will have things missing in the smart phone and won’t have things found on the laptop, like a three-car garage (crap, now I’m sounding like Molly Wood). Moving on.

In the Real Deal podcast, Needleman said that the Newton failed because it tried to do too much given the technology limitations of the time, whereas the Palm succeeded because it focused on a few things that needed to get done: contact list, calendar, notes and successfully syncing the three with one’s PC. Years later the iPhone successfully followed that path by focusing on being a great phone, being a great media player and being a great internet device. AND they had the wisdom to NOT try to boot-strap the Windows/OSX mouse/keyboard based user-interface to the thing. They broke with the past and focused on what needed to get done (a la Palm). Conversely, Microsoft had already been churning away in the smartphone space for years when the iPhone was introduced, but all they kept doing was trying to cram the Windows desktop (that was meant for big desktop LCD screens) onto tiny 2-inch screens and it did not take hold because Window-Mobile required seven-menu choices to do anything. Anyone remember this video from a few years ago on what it might have been like if Microsoft had produced the first iPod box?

Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Time Columnist, said it best in his initial reflection on the device, writing that the device is not something that can easily be assessed by a feature list or an illustration. I think the reason that the iPad is more than a dumbed-down tablet or giant-iTouch is that it’s not meant to be a stand-alone do-everything desktop computer replacement. In fact, it’s greatest feature might be something that has nothing to do with it’s beautiful design or the list of things it doesn’t have. The revolution that the iPhone started, of having useful Internet connectivity in the palm of your hand… maybe the iPad represents the next step as far as having an even better experience playing ones media, a more immersive experience interacting with “print” journalism in a way that books, newspapers and magazine could never deliver, and in a form-factor that’s much more natural than a keyboard and mouse. It’s not the thing, it’s what the thing connects you to. The word Portal comes to mind.

OLPC-meet-Taco-Beach by Joe Bustillos

Who needs it? asks all of the haters and most of the pundits. It’s not for the PC hardware tweakers or the hardcore gamers. Leo Laporte says it’s not for content creators, but I think that depends on what kind of content one is creating. I have begun blog entries and other correspondence on my iPhone. The idea that I can have the same access anywhere at any time and have more screen space to work with (and I can choose to use a real keyboard!), I’m in. I wrote a few weeks ago about the difference it would make having a smaller footprint than my 15′ laptop while enjoying those long afternoons cheering on my teams in my local pubs while grading papers and/or writing my blog. In fact, not long after I got my OLPC-XO netbook-sized $100 I took it to my local pub to enjoy the evening. I loved the size but the machine was just too underpowered and UI was too weird to be useful. That’s one of the things that’s kept me from buying one of the cheap netbooks, the prospect that it’d be too underpowered to do the things that I want to do. I watched the videos from CES of IdeaPad U1 hybrid, and when they used the touch and swipe gestures, the device lagged behind the finger. Two Processors and still underpowered. Boo! the The other thing that stopped me was that I wanted always-connected G3 service without having to dish out another $60 a month. I want to be able to grab my small device and write or play with my blogs while out and about. When I need to break-out the Final Cut Pro or need to spread my Dreamweaver layouts across three large monitors I have my macbook pro or my 27″ iMac to get the job down. But lately I’ve been choosing to compose and edit work while on my treadmill or on the couch. So, I guess I must be one of those “no ones” that Molly Wood was talking about (did she actually predict that there’s a market of only 2800 people for this thing? Maybe she confused this for the Palm Pre or her beloved Droid…[snark]).

You know who else this device might be for? My mom. She does email and loves getting photos of her grandchildren. I gave her a mac mini a few years ago but the combination of me living too far away to help her when the Internet breaks and the fact that she uses the computer just infrequently enough to never be very good at it makes me wonder if something like the iPad might work for her. Besides being a simplified device that’s always connected (saving her probably $30 a month to drop her DSL service!), she can use the thing anywhere she wants to, making the “computer” something that she doesn’t have to go to a special room (their spare bedroom) to do and maybe she’ll do it frequently enough to enjoy it more. Only downside (besides the price) is that I’d worry that if it fell off the couch she or dad would step on it and break it. Damn. Having a camera for video-chat would be great too (the OLPC-XO had that!). My siblings and I just bought mom a new 19″ LCD because the old CRT was … old. I think she need to break out of that room and grab the Internet with both hands, but I’m probably the only one who thinks that.

The device might not be meant for content creators, except for us text-jockeys and bloggers who like to roam when we write. But content creators, especially the vanishing “print” media, better be paying attention because this might open up a real platform to re-imagine what they could be producing and marketing. It could completely blur the lines between what used to be called Print and Audio and Video. Add social networking and citizen journalism and you have something completely different. I already have a plug-in that make my blog more iPhone-friendly, I’d love to see a WordPress plug-in that would retain more of my magazine-style blog layout. Then there’s the problem that I like posting flash videos in my posts and Adobe and Apple aren’t getting along. Damn. If they don’t fix it, then someone will because we want our videos and we’re not going to wait for h.264 Quicktime downloads. Well, Time, Inc. understands the potential. Question is whether they’ll join up or try to lash-up their own walled garden. I wonder if this might help Mad Magazine go back to being a monthly instead of a quarterly. I’d subscribe to Mad Magazine on my iPad. Too bad only 2800 posers will be buying this thing ’cause it doesn’t include a fire-alarm or any self-sealing stem bolts. Damn.

Sources:

YouTube video: Jobs Unveils “iPad” by CBSNewsOnline. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poaUbmdUcCY retrieved on 2/15/2010

Real Deal Podcast 195: Tablet computers. http://www.cnet.com/8301-17920_1-10443889-84.html retrieved on 2/15/2010

YouTube video: CNET Buzz Report: Special iPad Edition by CNETTV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggww65cg2FM retrieved on 2/15/2010

YouTube video: Microsoft iPod by romph. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0 retrieved on 2/15/2010

Apple gives every other reader reason to be nervous with iPad by By ANDY IHNATKO, Sun-Times Columnist. http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2015552,ihnatko-ipad-apple-launch-jobs-012710.article retrieved on 2/15/2010

image: OLPC Goes to Taco Beach by Joe Bustillos. http://joebustillos.com/2008/03/29/olpc-goes-to-taco-beach/ retrieved on 2/15/2010

IdeaPad U1 Hybrid Hands-On: Meet Voltron. He Could Be Amazing by Brian Barrett. http://gizmodo.com/5440922/ideapad-u1-hybrid-hands+on-meet-voltron-he-could-be-amazing retrieved on 2/15/2010

YouTube video: Sports Illustrated – Tablet Demo 1.5 by thewonderfactoryny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk retrieved on 2/15/2010

info: self-sealing stem bolts. http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Self-sealing_stem_bolt retrieved on STARDATE -313125.89 (2/15/2010)

"May I axe you a question?" Astro's Got an Axe! by tohoscope

Bob is still looking for his A

Grades in middle school are controversial, especially now that students earn credits to be promoted to the next grade level. Ask a teacher at my school to “give an ‘A’” and their response is likely to be one of confusion, disbelief, laughter, or even anger. Administrators will tell you that grades should be used to measure student success and communicate progress. Unfortunately, many teachers use grades to communicate a very bad message and focus on “principle.” “Its the principle of the matter,” exclaims a colleague. “If you give an ‘A’ to a student who does nothing in your class, what kind of message are you sending the kid who works their butt off?”

So it goes back to measure and comparison (see chapter 2). Giving an A is not about allowing students a free ride and telling hard working students that it is all for nothing. Rather, it is eliminating the “anticipation of failure” and allowing the class to focus on what is more important; learning. It’s all about placing everyone on a level playing field (pardon the competitive sports analogy) and saying, “you already have the grade, what’s next?” It’s likely that the response will involve a feeling of relief and willingness to explore.

Ashley’s always reaching for an ‘A.’

However, I think the next step of giving an ‘A’ is just as important as giving the ‘A’ itself. Teachers who feel that giving an ‘A’ would eliminate student accountability will like this step the most. Requiring that students predict how they have earned the A before they have actually received it, helps them develop goals and builds intrinsic motivation. It also helps them see the possibility of being successful, something many have given up on.

Interested in seeing how I felt about this in October, click here. – Noel Nehrig

And my erudite response:

Grades are a bit like religion. There may have been a point at some time but it’s gotten lost in all of the noise and people are very scared to consider what to do if grades/religion had never existed. In the classroom, has the point of all the effort gotten lost to pursuing a grade? I mean, just like religion, isn’t all of this effort suppose to amount to something intrinsic, some good that goes beyond measure?

Grades are institution solution to communicating student progress and/or position in the A-to-F continuum within the classroom. There the measure, not the point. But i’ve seen instructors at all level quibble looking to seal up any possible loophole that a student might use to game the grading system. At best a grade is an approximation that may or may not be related to student progress fulfilling course requirements. In the end, it’s what we carry in our heads and hearts that matters more than this imperfect approximation. Funny how only those who excel and those who feel besmirched care so much about grades. What’s up with that?

Sources:
Wk 1 Reading- “A” is for Ax Murderer by Noel Nehrig. http://web.me.com/noelnehrig/The_Blog_Prince_for_EMDTMS_MAC/2010_MAC_OCD_Wk1/Entries/2010/2/6_Wk_1_Reading-_%E2%80%9CA%E2%80%9D_is_for_Ax_Murderer.html retrieved on 2/9/2010

Astro’s Got an Axe! by tohoscope. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tohoscope/182444838/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

Stone mason by sk8geek. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sk8geek/3917647300/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

Pretty Princess Picking Her Nose by Pink Sherbet Photography. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3295969599/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

I’ve been watching Leo since the early ZD-TV days. It feels like it was early Internet, but it really wasn’t. Here was a guy and a show that was part of this tech world that I was a part of, that no one else understood. So for their last podcast for 2009, TWiT 228, they got a bit nostalgic (and funny). Good times. This was not the case several weeks ago when Leo and John C. Dvorak made fun of the NASA Tweet-up and totally forgot about what Twitter really means. Basically they took the low road and made jokes about what the hell are you going to say in 140 characters except, “I just peed in my diaper.” Twitter isn’t about the 140 characters or what one has for lunch. It’s about the community and connections that happen over time. So, sometime Leo gets it, and other times he goes for the cheap shot. Surprise, he’s human.

It is a bit strange to feel a connection with an Internet personality (who was a Cable-TV personality from a small network before that) and then discover that there’s a whole community of weirdos like me who work in tech. Following is a short documentary featuring Leo talking about the moment we’re at right now where it’s possible for a small media company can compete with giant corporations and get their message out without all the filters imposed in the past. It’s about the individual and the community and the message. It’s not about 140-characters.

Bonus video: Here’s a video circa 1996 during which Leo Laporte predicts the future. Given next week’s Apple announcement, Leo’s talk about the power of the Newton in 1996 might be all the more interesting:

Sources:
* YouTube video: TWiT 228: The TWiT Of The Decade posted by TWiT. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaq_FoA8jmo retrieved on 1/19/2010
* The Spark Series, Part 3: OPEN by Michael Sean Wright and Marc Ostrick. http://www.eguiders.com/exclusive/the-spark-series-part-3-open retrieved on 1/19/2010
* Of Mouse and Man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzIV8BxlaQs retrieved on 1/19/2010

Sources:
youtube video: “Christian Side Hug” by 1337ven0m07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91J37qcRfI retrieved on 12/13/2009

CNN.com

Beck continued, “We had at least three major world governments as active participants in this year’s event. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight on the 15th, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama’s White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.” So, in all Beck felt like it was a great success in that it sparked conversations about climate change.

Sources:

Image & article “Bloggers unite on climate change” By Matthew Knight/CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/14/blog.action.day.climate/ retrieved on 10/16/2009

Peteca toma seu banho by elbragon

Then Brother Matt mentioned during his recent Florida visit that my current and persistent lack of a girlfriend was causing mom to openly worry whether I’ve changed my gender preferences. Thanks mom. The truth is I’m beginning to wonder: have I become lazy, too cautious or too picky when it comes to dating?

This is hardly a new phenomenon. I went through a pretty long dry spell after breaking up with a live-in girlfriend in the early 90s. One friend spoke up at the time and said that he and my other friends were worried that I’d given up on having someone in my life. I was just beginning my teaching career and pretty much every waking hour and ounce of emotional energy was being poured into surviving those first few years. I thought I was, for the first time, being smart and acting like an adult. Apparently not. Damn.

past girlfriends by joe bustillos

Another friend, who knew that I’d been very fortunate with the level of attractiveness of my former girlfriends and female friends, said that I needed to expand my preferences beyond curvy playboy playmates. Out of frustration she quipped that at our age all the good ones were already taken anyway.That one left a scar. I mean, if all the good ones are taken and I’m not taken then does this mean that I’m not one of the “good ones?” Shit. That didn’t leave me with a particularly hopeful sense of having a future with someone I found attractive.

So at least one part of moving across the continent over a year ago was to get a new start on social things. And as much as I’d been warned to not have high expectations by two very good friends who have lived in the area (I mean, after all I’ve spent a lifetime spoiled by all the pretty people in Southern California), my dateless-state is not for a lack of attractive women where ever one goes. So, again, am I being lazy, overly cautious or just too picky? Sitting here staring at these words reminds me that the fact that I reflect and try to think through all of this is just not normal for guys, so my well-meaning friends say. Ack.

When I was in the process of moving here one friend suggested a couple websites, like meetup.com, where one could easily meet like-minded individuals centered on common interests. I signed up but never got off my butt. Another avenue to meet new people would have been to join a church. I used to inwardly chuckle when someone suggested that I should check in to see the size of the singles group before getting involved. But I couldn’t see making my choice of church based on some babe-meter. I had other issues about churches, so I never really even considered this as a meaningful option. In fact, being as busy as I’ve been over the past year, getting involved with anything for the purpose of meeting women hasn’t been enough. Put another way, there has to be a value to the thing beyond just meeting women. I am the complete inverse of several of my good buddies who’s main reason for doing anything is to meet women. That’s just not me. Don’t get me wrong, I love meeting new people and I generally find the people I encounter fascinating, but given how busy I am there are scant few hours dedicated to meeting these fascinating people.

One of the take-aways of my last relationship was how much better things seemed to come together for me when I’m in a relationship just in terms of energy and a sense of purpose. It’s not that I need someone for these things as much as having the benefit of someone to share the journey with, just in terms of bouncing ideas off of and getting outside of my own head on a regular ongoing basis. At the same time I do have a very full life with my career and writing and just the stuff that fills each day that I’m not entirely convinced that having as much freedom as I have isn’t much better than the complications of letting another voice into my life. Part of the problem is that I am very good at adapting to living all on my own and convincing myself that I really don’t need anyone. Too lazy, overly cautious or just too picky? I think I need to work the “friends” angle and just get out more to be with other people and find the joy there. No pretenses, no props, no re-inventions, nothing that’s not really a part of my life and passions. I’ll dare to go to the park without the borrowed dog and see what happens. jbb

Jessica at Laguna Lake by TravOC

Sources:
Image: Peteca toma seu banho by elbragon, http://www.flickr.com/photos/elbragon/3183246877/ retrieved on 10/15/2009, Creative commons/attribution license.
Image: Past Girlfriends by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/mygirls-1.gif retrieved 10/15/2009. Creative Commons/attribution license.
image: Jessica at Laguna Lake by TravOC, http://www.flickr.com/photos/travoc/89394031/ retrieved on 10/15/2009, Creative Commons/attribution license.

So, let’s be entirely clear about what might contribute to this person’s state of doubt. We in the “Developed West” believe that the most important entity is the individual and we darn near worship the independent individual. Government, community, family, culture, they have some importance, but the most important thing in all of the universe is the individual. I before thee or we. Period. Somewhere in there is a twisted interpretation of the commission in the book of Genesis that man should go forth and conquer the world and do with it what he pleases. Man, individual, conquer, seems pretty clear.

Of course, up until this last century very very few individuals could even hope to survive a single year without the intervention or assistance of others. Forget that part. What we have here is the result of decades of individual-worship and the inability to recognize that we are, in fact, inter-connected and that everything we do has some ripple-effect across the world. The fact that we don’t “see” this, like watching dominoes knocking one another over on a table, only reveals the gross limitations to our powers of perception. Add to this that our lifespans are so pathetically short, too short for an individual to experience the changes wrought by ones actions. So, because we don’t see the changes very easily we assume that we can do whatever we please with no concern for the results of our behaviors. To me this shows how little we understand of this world we would presume to conquer. The scariest part is that those who have the need to lead and grasp at the reins of power may be most susceptible to the delusion that they as individual leaders are more important than those they represent or lead, and take no responsibility for their actions. So whether you are a five-year-old secretly coloring on the walls in your bedroom or a governor of a bankrupt state, or the former president of a religious denomination, every choice, no matter how small will effect us all on some level. We are all connected.

“Wherefore whatsoever ye have said in the darkness shall be heard in the light; and what ye have spoken in the ear in the inner chambers shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.” Luke 12: 3 (ASV)

How about we do something good with all of this power.

Sources:

image: “the heat is on” by jenny downing, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenny-pics/3800586843/ retrieved on 10/14/2009.

An open letter to my emdt co-workers, co-conspirators & creativity enablers,

On one level or another I’ve been teaching communication and writing since I took my first teaching assignment 15-years ago. One thing that I learned right away was that it seemed to be a big function of the education system to take the eagerness of our little learners to share their every creation and over time crush it down to nothing, such that every fourth grader knows that no one wants hear what they have to say and even less what they think. The smart ones, in this system, are the ones who learn to speak and write in the language of their teachers, and that it’s critically important to not make any mistakes in spelling or grammar. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the ones who might suffer the most from this fear of writing are the ones who are part of the system that enforces this approach to writing, our masters students. But what they may not know, which I learned from my second-language 6th graders, is that they’ll never get any better at writing without working at it on an ongoing basis and that requires that I release them from the system that says that they can only write about things that the teacher cares about and only in the style set by the teacher. You have to work against a lifetime of “correction” and just get them to write before you can help them to write “better.”

As we begin to make blogging a bigger part of our process, please consider the learning process and that putting thoughts down in writing for others to read takes something more than can be expressed in a check-list (though a check-list can be very helpful in the beginning). What prompted this concern is the following exchange between two of my current students about having to do a blog in my course:

edm613 student blog entry:
“I must admit, I disliked blogging in the last class in which it was a requirement. I am really not sure why- I like to write- but it just never gelled for me. I did, however, revisit the idea of blogging after losing my job at the end of the last school year. I thought I would chronicle the ups and downs of my lack of job, talk about the new and exciting things I would encounter and boast about my new accomplishments. I would fill the pages with salsa lessons, daily musings and funny anecdotes. I think I actually managed to write a paragraph once or twice and it consisted of me complaining and moaning about emotional drudgery. I have a difficult enough time sounding interesting in one line on Twitter- I couldn’t possibly blog about my life- or lack there of.

“So here we go again.

“I decided not to re-purpose my last blog but start a new one. It will be chock full of fresh and new ideas, brilliant insight and astute observations. Words will flow from my mind, through my fingers and dance onto the page. I will be clever and captivating. What does this have to do with anything in class? Nothing, but every blog has to start somewhere. Welcome.”

Second students comment:
“I agree with you about blogging in our last class. The requirements were very limiting and seemed to hold me back. The blog became a chore and I dreaded each and every post for fear that I wouldn’t get a good grade or I would make some simple mistake and have to redo everything. I am very excited to get to share with everyone and express my thoughts more freely again. I like that you have brought a great sense of positivity into your new blog. I like your new point of view…you think you can assist me in bringing back my light?”

Standards of excellence and creativity will never be found where one doesn’t have the freedom to make a thousand mistakes first. I should know. jbb

Sources:
image: keyboard – clipart.com/jupiter graphics
thanks to jolene t. & joann s. for your thoughts and comments on blogging and giving it “one more try.”

Long Beach studio circa 1999 - image by joe bustillos

So I packed books and everything in the bedroom and started taking apart my home office, disconnecting all the monitors (three) and gadgets. I decide to set up a temporary office on the dining table in the front room with one external monitor, keyboard and mouse. When I went to bed that first night in the office-less bedroom I was really surprised at how dark that room was. I had to turn on a nightstand light to safely navigate the room. Next surprise was how soundly I seemed to sleep that night. Duh.

This isn’t rocket science, I’d been sleeping in rooms bathed in the continual glow of blue, red and green LEDs, and four monitors showing an earth in space screen saver for as long as I could remember. Of course once I took my glasses off it was all an undefinable glow, but I guess the glow was enough for my brain to not fully “shut off” when I slept. The difference in my sleep before and after removing the office was remarkable. It was remarkable enough that I decided that I was going to forego the bedroom TV or other technology when I move to the townhouse.

I know for many this a “duh” thing, but for me this really is a change in thinking. For years I’ve maintained no difference between my working life writing on the computer while watching some TV and pushing up to and past the point of exhaustion and then just staggering to bed my head still very full of the things I’d been working on. Now I am going to have to be much more deliberate and intentional as I get up from my office chair and walk down the hall to go to sleep. Hell, maybe I’ll develop the habit of doing some reading or talking to late night friends before drifting off to slumberland. A technology-free zone was not something I would have guessed would have come out of this move. Wow.