Most viewed: A Christian Guitar Hero Becomes a Reality is, as of this moment, the most viewed post on this blog. It has been featured on the website for the game it mentions, Guitar Praise. So, if I made a greatest hits list, then this would be number 1.

I called it: In Super Sunday, Hurricanes, and, um, Other Stuff, I chose the New York Giants to win the 2008 Super Bowl. Nice stuff right there.

First post: Bloggin' about Stuff: Artists I Wouldn't Like to Hear Again was my first post one year and five days ago. Very short stuff.

Most commented post: The most controversial post I have put up, Forget the Oscars, It's the Princes! showed my affection for 10,000 B.C.  and The Dark Knight. If you read the comments, it is needless to say that my affection for 10,000 B.C. was not well-received.

Highest movie review: It's a tie between The Dark Knight and The Princess Bride. Both are classics.

My favorite blog: My artist profile of Relient K is my favorite blog because it took me the longest to do and its my favorite band. 

That's my blog in a nutshell. View all these things and comment!

http://technologyandsocialchange.wetpaint.com

So what is this wiki all about? This wiki is for those that believe that the internet can be used for socially beneficial purposes!

What makes this particular wiki unique? Simply that it has a very specific focus - to aggregate information and ideas that lie at the intersection technological innovation and Massive Social Change (MSC!!)?

What is Massive Social Change (MSC!!)? Good question! The idea that technology, and most specifically the internet, contributes to social change is not news. Obviously it is transforming our environment in immeasurable ways. What is not being discussed is the role that the internet can play in creating the sort of change that can positively transform the world on a massive scale - the sort of social change that is revolutionary in nature.

That sounds grand, but why bother with Massive Social Change? Well, are you concerned about issues like climate change, poverty, famine, war etc? If those sorts of Global Problems are to be resolved, they will require Massive Social Change.

Do you seriously believe that those sorts of problems can be resolved? Yes I do. I do not believe that it is intrinsic to our nature that we must kill each other, destroy our environment and so on.

If it is not intrinsic to our nature, then why is conflict and misery the story of human history? Things have been as they are due to the fact that the human race has evolved in a very specific way - with specific groups evolving in isolation from each other.

What does the particular pattern of the evolution of human history have to do with the current state of affairs in the world? It is simply a fact that, for example, the hunter-gather tribes in Africa evolved separately from other hunter gather tribes in the Northern hemisphere. As a result of this, they evolved different value systems, customs etc. What is important to note is that the value systems and norms that they evolved were unique to their particular community. The point is that different communities evolved because people were spread out in different parts of the world and therefore had no contact with each other.

So even if it is true that different communities evolved because, historically, people were geographically dispersed across the globe, what does that have to do with the current problems in the world? It is my view that conflict, and the inability to develop solutions that account for all people, is due to perceived differences between communities, people etc. Perceived differences, in turn, are the result of the fact that communities have evolved independently and therefore have formed their own values, customs, religious paradigms and so on. It is this sort of heterogeneity that is an impediment to the formation of the sorts of consensus that are necessary for the resolution of global problems.

If, for example, we want to come together to address the issue of climate change, the underlying ethos must the our commonality not our differences. We must see each other as brothers.

A good example of this idea is played out in science fiction movies like Independence Day, where the threat of annihilation by an alien species causes the world to come together to ward off the enemy. What is interesting in this sort of narrative is there is a collective consciousness of our commonality in the face of something that clearly stands distinct from us. Furthermore, with the collective consciousness of our commonality we are able to do great things!

My contention (at least my hope) is that external threats are not necessary for us to have the sense of our commonality. What is necessary is that we recognize that the differences that we perceive are contingent realities that are the result of the evolution of the species and could have been different. For example, we can certainly imagine that the world consisted of only one small tribe in one location that expanded over time. We can reasonably assume that, if this were the case, we may only speak one language, have one religion etc. I fully recognize that this is an oversimplification, but the overall idea should be clear.

OK, so what does the internet have to do with solving the sorts of problems that you say are the result of the evolution of human history, but could have been otherwise? The answer has been hinted at in the conversation that we have been having. To the extent that the problems are the result of perceived differences, and perceived differences are the result of the formation of different communities, the answer lies in the formation of a singular Global Community.

The idea of a Global Village is not new, but it does not seem to be contributing to the solution. Many people would argue that globalization is part of the problem. It's important to understand that the notion of a global village is still in its infancy. Keep in mind that the birth of the internet as we know it is less than two decades in the making!! What we need to do is to be able to think outside the box and envision how, as the technological infrastructure evolves, the changes that take place will fundamentally impact our lives. We must look further into the future to understand the sorts of things that are possible and then once we can envision the possibilities, we must work towards making them a reality.

So, give me an example of something that we should be thinking about that is not getting the attention that it deserves. Consider the utilization of social networks like Facebook. In most major North American cities and, in particular, in universities, the penetration rates are very high - ranging in some cases to the 75% range. Currently Facebook is used largely to keep in touch with friends, to organize social calendars, to exchange information about music interests and so on. In short, it is used to manage our social processes. The reason that Facebook has exploded in the way that it has is because it provides the best architecture and user experience for those that want to manage their social processes (there is more to be said about this and I have said more in The Concept of Facebook).

The important point is that what is important for the younger generation are their social processes, therefore the success of Facebook can, at least in part, be attributed to solving an important problem for those that are in high school and university. The point is that, for those, that are roughly 15 - 30 years old, there is nothing that a technology platform can do that is more important for them than to provide them with a means to meet people, keep in touch with friends, express themselves to friends etc.

Therefore, first and foremost, the success of social networks is that they solve the problem that people have regarding social contact.

The question that I believe needs to reflected on is: what happens when the user base of social networks gets older, they have families, have careers etc. and making more friends is not their first priority. What then?

Will social networks like Facebook evolve to account for the fact that peoples' priorities in life change?

Will social networks evolve to provide applications that will assist people in making a contribution to their communities when contributing to their communities is more important than making more friends?

This is all very interesting, but it seems that we are digressing. We were talking about the creation of a Global Village for the purpose of resolving global problems. How does the internet contribute to this? In short, the internet changes three things; the Space between each other, the Patterns of Communication between each other, and the structure of Knowledge. It is in understanding these ideas and their interdependence that the solution will reveal itself.

It is not the place to go into this in detail, but if you are interested in more details, please visit my personal blog at suresfernando.wordpress.com. I will, however, give you a few thoughts on these ideas:

Space and Presence: We can think about Space intuitively. If we are both sitting in the same room, then we are both sitting in the same space. But what is it that makes it the same space? The fact that we are Present in relation to each other, where to be present in relation to each other means that there exists the possibility for us to be conscious of each other as a result of the sensory stimuli that we receive from each other. In short we can see and hear each other. In the olden days, in order to be present in relation to each other, we needed to be physically in the same space with each other. Nowadays, presence applications like Twitter make it possible to be present in relation to each other differently and therefore the nature of the space that exists between each other is changing.

The important point is that our presence in relation to each other is now not dependent upon physical proximity!

Communication: Communications technology is introducing a whole new range of possibilities for how we communicate with each other. Traditionally, the most common form of communication happened face to face, which is synchronous (exchange). Once could also send letters, which is an asynchronous exchange. In both cases, we were limited to communicating either to a single person or to a larger group that was confined to a space of restricted size (say a large hall). It is now possible, in theory, to communicate simultaneously with millions of people! It should be apparent that this has implications for the possibility of Massive Mobilization (MM!!).

The important point is that the scope for communication is now not limited by physical constraints.

Knowledge: The evolution of databasing technology, search engines, RSS, spiders etc. have had a huge impact on our capacity to interact with and form knowledge. What is important to note is that, historically, knowledge was something that was created either in isolation, or in small groups. For example, Mozart worked on his compositions alone. At best a team of a few scientists might have worked together on a project. It is now possible to create knowledge collectively like never before and what we must consider are the possibilities for community formation that arise from collective knowledge formation. In other words, we can now create projects that involve millions of people. Consider the implications that this has for bringing people together!!

The important point is that collective enterprise is not limited by physical (or geographic) or temporal constraints.

It is the constraints that I have identified (and that the internet mitigates) that have, over the course of the evolution of history, contributed to the development of community specific ideologies and therefore to the perception of difference.

Well, this is all very interesting and I wish you the best of luck in mobilizing people and resources around this project!!

Thanks very much!! Please circulate information about this project to anyone that you think might be interested.

This was something I used to think, it was something I have uttered inanely whilst drunk! It is the attitude of the Universities, the press, our whole culture! Carpe Diem!

It was only a few days ago when I pondered the meaning of this, 'live for the day', what can it mean? For those who have faith it can mean something quite different from the unbeliever, for this world, it means have sex when you want, with whom you want, whenever you want. It means eat, eat and eat until you turn into a 20 stone blob of living lard! It means swear and curse those who get in your way or who irritate you, it means never forgive, never forget, it means lie if it gets you what you want, it means deceive, cheat and betray if this suits you!

If people really 'lived for the day', what would it look like?

Like some of our city centres on a Saturday night! If one truly lived for the day and you had no faith it would mean one would rape a woman that took one's fancy, it would mean steal instead of work, it would mean murder those whom you hate, it would mean betray those one loved, it would mean chaos, it would look like hell!

The truth is most people don't really believe Carpe Diem, decent people work! Why work? Not for amusement, people work so they can pay their bills, buy a house, support their family and enjoy their lives. Most people remain faithful to their spouse most of the time, why? Love.

Criminals are the people who most closely follow this 'live for the day' lark, and with out God, more do so all the time.

A better phrase would be 'live for tomorrow', for this is what we should be aiming for, we should be bettering ourselves, investing in our families, friends and neighbours. We know from scripture that God hates theft, almost as much as he hates murder, we also know he loves righteousness, but what is righteousness? It is not an absence of theft and murder, it is something positive, it is a litany of good actions that build up to make us who we are, humility in little actions every day, decency toward others, generosity, kindness, faith.

It seems to me that we become who we are; this happens over time, good people are those who do lots of little seemingly irrelevant good things over time, bad people are those who do lots of bad things over time. Selfishness seems to be the root of this and Carpe Diem if taken seriously implies selfishness on a grand scale.

There are of course times when we are presented with an opportunity, which would be foolish to turn down, but this is not the same as self absorbed attitude that we should 'live for the day', this is just part of the wider attitude in the degraded society of ours, that we owe no allegiance to anyone or anything, that we should endulge every desire and damn the consequences.

Sin has consequences, so too does righteousness, we deserve most of the good or bad things that come our way, they are as a result of earlier deeds, its karma!

So forget about Carpe Diem, think Carpe Crastinum!

It’s not pretty, but it’s always helping me to discover things. In its own funky way, it reminds me to pay attention to things I’m usually too busy – and going too fast – to notice.

During the week, the truck sits in a sunny spot by the garage. I have a window screen laid between the dash and seatbacks and dry peppers and tomatoes in it. They’re great seasonings in the depth of winter. As a bonus, the inside of the truck smells great. (see note below.)

The Dakota is more than 20 years old, and shows it, with maybe more than its share of dings, rust, and rattles. It has a v-shaped dent in the top of the tailgate a time when I was showing off my skill at driving in reverse.

When I was younger, I used to name my vehicles. My old Desoto was Hernando, of course. A ‘53 Chevy was Fat Albert, a lima-bean-green ‘54 Plymouth wagon was The Tank, and a Chrysler wagon was Walter, after Walter Cronkite (it’s a long story.) I had a ’63 Chevy wagon for awhile, but one day, both back wheels broke off when I hit the brakes. Never mind what I called it then.

I don’t name them anymore, but at the urging of my friend Tristan, who is 12, The Truck is now Dakota.

When he’s been sitting for awhile, Dakota blows oil smoke like a mosquito fogger for a mile or so before he settles down, so a valve job would be a good idea, but it will have to wait.

Dakota has two-wheel drive, nothing fancy, even when it was new. Manual shift, no A/C., a little chrome trim, but not much.

About the only nod to the silly modern habit of sissyfying trucks into odd hybrids of utility and luxury is blue velour upholstery, which now smells of an amalgam of dried peppers, spilled coffee, mildew, and god knows what else.

My neighbors used to kid me about how much manure I hauled in when I started my garden. I explained that I was a newspaper reporter, and so had an endless supply of it, usually supplied during elections.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without Dakota.

Never mind the utility…Dakota brought me back in touch with some things I had not realized I was missing.

I noticed it the first summer. I had the windows open as I chugged along a back road on my way somewhere, keeping my speed down to 35 or 40, simply because it was the weekend and I wasn’t going to hurry anywhere.

I drove past a cluster of Sweet Olive shrubs in full bloom and was hit by that knock-you-to-your-knees sweetness, like honeysuckle on steroids. It made me realize that as fine as A/C is, it does tend to seal us away from the world as it is.

Like most other things, driving with the windows open in the country can be a mixed blessing. Sure, there are flowers and new-mown hay, burning leaves, somebody grilling steak, rain on the road. But there is also the sinus-slapping odor of aged manure being spread over a field, or a week-dead deer, a furbearing zeppelin, buggy and bloated, hooves heavenward in the gutter.

And the sounds…the high chirp and trill of a redwing, crunch of tires on gravel, peeping of peepers in the spring and buzz saw singing of cicadas in the summer, the faraway stutter of a John Deere tractor, the sticky hiss of my tires on hot tar, rusty chirr of crickets, whirr of grasshoppers, cries of hawks, and the inelegant gronk of the graceful heron, all punctuated by thunder, the lowing of cattle, and snatches of bird song and squirrels scolding the world.

Sometimes, I’ll even pull over and shut down the engine, and just listen. Listening is something Dakota reminded me to do.

I’ve used it to haul furniture, field stone, gravel, sand, soil, mulch and manure. While hauling manure, I learned that it is good practice to close the truck’s back window, as the air currents tend to blow whatever is being hauled into the cab. Flying manure was not something I would stand in line to experience again.

And you thought education had to be expensive.
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Note: Drying veggies in the truck was an idea I got from Val Webb of Mobile, Alabama. She writes The Illustrated Garden blogsite normally at www.ghostrabbitgarden.blogspot.com, which is temporarily on hiatus. Check it out.
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© 2007 Marsh Creek Media,
Gettysburg, Pa.
“Burger to Go” is a product of me and my company, Marsh Creek Media and, as such, I am solely responsible for its content.
Check out the two “Burger to Go” blogsites:
http://burger2go.wordpress.com/
http://burger2goclassics.wordpress.com/

I think the answer is, "It depends". It depends on what the person wants. I've said it before and will repeat it again: many people do NOT want to be happy. I know because I've been one of them. Not only did I not want to be happy, I didn't believe happiness existed. In my worldview, "happiness" was an artificial construct, a simulacrum that's being fed to the miserable "common people" by their evil rulers.

This worldview of mine was rooted deep in Russian culture. One of Pushkin's most famous poems says:

На свете счастья нет, но есть покой и воля.

In this world, there is no happiness, but there is peace and will.

The Russians, traditionally, have not been big on being happy - you can recall characters from Dostoyevsky's novels, or Gogol. The Orthodox Church reveres mucheniki - saint sufferers for the faith. The theme of suffering and self-sacrifice was picked up by the bolsheviks, and growing up in the Soviet Union, we were told that selfishness is the worst thing, and one must always be willing to suffer for something - the Motherland, the communist ideals, or one's kollektiv of comrades.

I remember my uneasy state when I first came to America. The people in Chicago O'Hare airport shocked me. They were overwhelmingly overweight, which was a bit scary, but scarier still were the impressions on their faces. They looked very content, but not happy. They looked like livestock who had just received their daily portion of forage. I thought, "I never want to be like them".

I've looked back and reflected on that moment many times over all these 13 years. My resentment of the kind of faces I saw that day has not disappeared completely. I still find a lot of Americans frighteningly incurious and content; it's the kind of contentment to which I still don't aspire, and for which I have little sympathy. Still, I have changed, and my notions of what's normal have changed, too. I am no longer scared by faces that don't look Slavic. I've learned that you can't love and help others if you don't love and help yourself.

Recognizing that I should love myself was a big step on my way away from depression. It lead me also to recognize that happiness does exist in this world - although perhaps not the kind of happiness that I remembered from childhood, and for which I was hoping in my adolescence. Throughout my teens and twenties and even thirties, I've kept longing for that carefree, ecstatic feeling of boundless joy that I remembered very vividly from the age when I was 2 to 6 years old. I kept longing for the world where there were no worries, no mental torture, no death. And that longing was the most important reason I didn't believe in happiness: I knew that the sweet joy of my childhood was gone forever, and I couldn't imagine any other kind of happiness.

And, the kind of happiness I discovered later in life is indeed different. It knows sorrow, it knows agony of loss, it knows hopelessness and helplessness, it knows death and despair. But, just like the innocent happiness of a four year old, it enables me to feel the joy of being alive, and the rupture of loving the world.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked, wrote Kahlil Gibran.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

These words ring very true to me, and I meditate on this idea quite often. The Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Levi wrote something similar: Health and illness are not two separate substances; they comprise one nature.

So, for all of you suffering from depression, anxiety, ADD, personality disorders, social phobias, alcoholism and drug addiction: do not think of yourself as an ill person, because the division of people onto healthy and ill is misleading and absurd. You have serious problems to deal with - that doesn't make you a deficient person, it makes you a normal human being.

Whereas in Ich-Du the two beings encounter one another, in an Ich-Es relationship the beings do not actually meet. Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object.

I think this is what's happening in our confusing, consumerist times: we treat people as mere objects that are there for our use, and that includes ourselves. We become an object to be enjoyed, used, possessed, admired, and even, hopefully, loved... But, as with all objects, we don't meet our Self. We fail to experience ourselves, perhaps because we are taught, for the most part, to be users, not doers. We would use ourselves, but even that doesn't happen - as a resource, our Self remains neglected, since we have forgotten the Path to it. The "I-It" relationship that we have with ourselves can hardly be called a relationship at all: it is indeed not a dialog but a monologue.

And, as I am absolutely convinced, consciousness is dialogic in its very nature. Failing to have a dialog with your true self means a failure to think. This is why I call my method "Breathing Mind": our body needs to inhale and exhale, and our mind needs to take things in, and put something new out. By treating our Self in the "I-It" manner, we fail to take in perhaps the most important part of the world. When a man is not there for himself, he has a good reason to both pity and hate himself, doesn't he?

When I was starting this blog, I intended to avoid writing about politics; I don't want to get involved in political propaganda. I noticed an interesting thing reading Russian blogs this weekend: almost everybody starts using double standards once they take a side. A similar thing happens in our personal lives: we see straws in our brothers' eyes, as the Bible says, while ignoring rafters in our own. We love to feel we are right. For me, self-righteousness is one of the hardest thing to overcome: sometimes I know it's better for me to forgive somebody, but my pride won't let me do it; my fear says: "don't make up with this person, they will hurt you again". As a Persian poet said, "Pain looks for someone to blame", and it's always easier to blame someone else than yourself.

I don't advocate beating yourself up over every conflict you find yourselves in. There is a fine line between being too hard on yourself, which incapacitates you, and accepting responsibility, which implies taking action. It goes back to two basic attitudes: the attitude of the weak and the attitude of the strong. Sometimes it's very hard to take the latter, but I don't see why one should ever give up trying. I am working on the meditation technique that addresses the transformation from weakness to strength. I've done it myself, but it's far from perfect, so I want to improve it before sharing it with my readers.

It's a fair question to ask: Can someone who never touches a computer truly be in touch with what is happening in the world? The computer industry has worked very hard over the past few decades to cause us to suspect as much. But what about the opposite question: Does anyone who spends all day in front of a PC, forging a river of data posing as information, have any time to think? [...]

If I were the chief of staff at the White House, I would have some sort of computer, not in the Oval Office itself, since it wouldn't match the furniture, but one office away. I'd push the president to spend, say, 20 minutes a day on the machine -- whether he would complain about the limit or about the mandated time. [...]

The severe time rationing is necessary because a computer, far from making you more productive, instead loads you down with things to do, and it's important for the machine to know who is boss. Most people don't have the luxury of off-loading their email-reading chores to a group of competent assistants. It's an office perk that presidents are still important enough to deserve. [...]

Only someone who doesn't the value of the internet as a communication tool could write a column as vapid and useless as this one.  Regardless of whether or not computers inhibit thinking (which I think is sort of a ridiculous claim to make), it's simply the case that you can't function in the modern world without at least a rudimentary understanding of computer technology and the internet.  And yes, that even goes for presidents.

Moreover, just as we've used the internet to redefine many aspects of our lives - interpersonal relationships, research, business, etc. - I think we can use the internet to change the way we interact with our government.  Part of what is fascinating about Obama is how he seems very serious about using the internet to transform the way we think about and perform politics (his campaign is already a great start).  An administration with a savvy understanding of the internet could use it for a whole host of things; chief among them making government a lot more transparent than it is.

Frankly, the fact that John McCain can't even manage his email is as much a strike against him as anything else.

The International Olympic Committee has upheld a ban on Iraqi teams at the Beijing Games, saying Thursday the government missed the deadline to address accusations of political interference.

The IOC decision culminates a drawn-out internal feud in Iraq that many see as an extension of Shiite payback to Sunnis who once held a cozy niche in Saddam Hussein's regime.

So, we will not see any Iraqis in the Olympic Games in Beijing in a week or two. Some will remember the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, when the national soccer team made a Cinderella run to the semifinals, where they lost to Paraguay, 3-1. A native of Iraq who left Baghdad 5 years before who saw the match said afterwards, "They make us forget our situation in Iraq, they make us forget our misery. They make us very happy. We are very proud of them" (from a story in The Washington Post on August 25, 2004). 

This is not the first time that this has occured. In 2000, due to the Taliban's grip on sports, the IOC refused to let Afghanistan participate in the Sydney Olympics. Remember, this was before 9/11.

NOW IT'S TIME FOR MY OPINION!

Let the guys play. You know, it's not their fault that the country's in turmoil. It's 4 people just trying to represent their homeland in archery, judo, rowing and weightlifting. I mean, here in America we let guys who are accused of drunk driving and assault back into the leagues, guys who are arrested, guys who committed actual crimes. They can come back and make millions of dollars for endorsements and contracts (i.e. Kobe Bryant, arrested for sexual assault in 2003, to name one of many). Athletes in Iraq were tortured if they did not do well. For instance, an Iraqi soccer player was jailed for 10 days because he missed a penalty kick. When the US invaded Iraq, they found torture devices in the headquarters of the Iraq Olympic Committee. Ridiculous. These guys probably did nothing to break the law, yet they cannot compete because their governments are too concerned with their own butts to worry about others' hopes and dreams.

I know that we did this in the 1980 Summer Olympics. That's because a guy named Jimmy Carter couldn't handle the pressure of being President and that's why he got booted from office the next year. 62 countries, led by our "example", had their athletes' hopes and dreams destroyed because they couldn't stand something happening hundreds of miles away. By no means am I condoning what the Soviets did. They invaded Afghanistan for almost no reason. But does anyone remember the Roman Empire, who did that kind of thing all the time? It's just because the leader was smart and commandeering and knew what he was doing. Guys like Julius Caesar and Augustus were smart men. We could even look back in Biblical times. King David was a fighting man. It should happen. It's just that Americans were used to freedom and justice. Remember, if I was living back then, I probably would have been ticked off at the Soviets too. But, in retrospect, should we really have hurt hundreds of athletes because we couldn't stand a few tanks moving into across a country's border?

This is a different situation in Iraq. Their Olympic Committee is in shambles. Four of the reps, including the chief, were kidnapped in 2006 and have not been heard from since. One of the guys running the Committee now is the eldest son of the late Sadaam Hussein.

DONE WITH MY OPINION

I've given you my opinion. You can agree, or take your own side. Whose side are you on? Feel free to comment.

In other news...

I don't have too much insight on it, hell, what could I say about it. But there's something that feels amazing about the fact that 21st century or not, art is still happening, the struggle to stand out (which has in fact also caused much pain throughout the years) is present as ever and maybe, just maybe we're not dying out spiritually.

In between flicker, jaiku, twitter, linkedin, facebook and whatnot, people are still getting up from their chairs and doing... something. And it's not short movies, it's not anime or techno music.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a thing for giant buildings in particular. Or for anything giant and artificial as a matter of fact. It's just nice to know that apart from well lit office buildings we're also capable of producing other architecture. And I do believe that collective internal architecture stands out in what's being erected from the surface of the ground.

On the other hand, i really have no clue what I'm really talking about. But come on... just take a look at this:

Standing patiently around the cat’s bowls were three black vultures, an adult and two fledged chicks.

The adult flew away, but the chicks flew only as far as a horizontal beam on the lean-to on the back of the barn and kept their eye on me. I went in to the stall, brought out the cat food, and filled the bowls. The chicks fidgeted a bit. I put the cat food away and walked out, very matter-of-fact and stood still, watching. A couple of the cats came up and started to feed. One of the chicks flew away.

The remaining chick stayed behind, watching me. Maybe sizing me up for a future buffet.

“Don’t start polishing the silver yet, Bozo,” I said. “I feel OK.”

But it got me thinking. I’ll bet that if I came out every day or so, I could eventually have the vultures acclimated to me. I could condition them with food to the point that they would be like pets.

I stood for a few minutes in this sort of Disney fog of universal “the animals are our friends” nonsense, and snapped out of it.

Not that I disparage vultures. They are admirable birds that do important work. Think of them as recyclers. And they fly beautifully, though up close they are, I admit, decidedly homely.

It is tempting to try to get to know the neighbors. Naturalist Loren Eiseley wrote in a poem that he loved forms beyond his own and regretted the borders between them.

But those borders are there for a reason, and erasing them can be fatal to the nations on either side.

Yes, I said nations, referencing another naturalist, Henry Beston, who wrote, in the early decades of the previous century, that “(animals) are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

The other night I watched an ABC News piece on Alaskan Charlie Vandergaw and his bears.

A retired science teacher, Vandergaw gets up close and personal with the black bears and grizzlies found near his summer cabin about 50 miles outside of Anchorage.

Charlie is about 70, bespeckled, bearded, well-spoken, and a sort of outlaw.

He is ignoring some of those borders. Sometimes he has 10 black and grizzly bears wandering around in his yard, poking around in his kitchen. Mama bears allow him to play with their cubs. He says the bears are not pets. He says a lot of things like that. I think he really loves those bears.

God knows what the bears think.

That’s it, you see. Nobody knows what goes on under that great skull. Something, surely; bears are known to be highly intelligent. But, unlike dogs, they are not the product of thousands of years of selective breeding of the kind that makes dogs want to be our buddies. Bears are territorial. They are predators and scavengers. And quick-tempered.

In most of the press stories I have read about him, Charlie said he had never been injured in the years he’s been buddies with the bears. But during the ABC News special, he confessed that a grizzly had put a pretty good hole in one of his hands. An accident, he said.

At one point in the program, though, Charlie, visibly upset, said something had occurred to him as he was watching one of the mama black bears, Annie, rolling on the ground in front of the camera crew.

A real wild bear would never do that. Charlie knew that, and knew that if Annie could be that relaxed in front of strangers because of his fondness for bears, he had put her in danger. The next human Annie walks up to hoping for a handout or even to have her ears rubbed may not be so keen on the idea of having a few hundred pounds of clawed predator trotting their way.

To be honest, I’d love to visit Charlie Vandergaw and his neighborly bruins. I’d love to be able to sit on a tree stump and dig my fingers into the scruff of a grizzly’s neck and say hello. I’d like it to look into my eyes with the kind of kindred recognition that I get when I look into a dog’s eyes.

But that’s the Walt Disney version of bears I am thinking about, isn’t it? Next, I guess, I’d expect him to do a little dance, sing a little song, and try to sell me some toilet paper.

I wish Charlie all the luck in the world with his bears. I hope they are not so conditioned not to fear humans that they wander around and get themselves killed, or killing people themselves. And I hope people will forego their admittedly kindly desire to get friendly with animals. Respecting the borders between us may be the only way to save them.

==============================.

© 2007 Marsh Creek Media,

Gettysburg, Pa.

“Burger to Go” is a product of me and my company, Marsh Creek Media and, as such, I am solely responsible for its content.

Check out the two “Burger to Go” blogsites:

http://burger2go.wordpress.com/

http://burger2goclassics.wordpress.com/

This is the article published in a popular magazine two years ago:

As I went further into the unknown , something seemed to disturb me, but that something, I did not know what it was. So I followed my gut and tried to ignore that gruesome feeling. This land, you see, is a land that a few decades ago was the place of a great civilization. For reasons of confidentiality, I shall not reveal the place, for it would be flooded by robbers, merchants and more; these because I would be revealing a horrendous truth to the world.

The smell is unbearable, it is like death itself lived in this area. But even death is prohibited to enter this land, for she would be terrified by the doings and happenings of this place. Why am I here? Many of you may ask. Simplicity, gentlemen, nothing more.

Three weeks, had I spent in this place, and even then I could not understand what had happened. Everyone seemed to know, but to my impression, they just pretend ended or ignored what had happened. I could not go around enquiring, for it was a dangerous ordeal and the answer was not in them, but with the other ones I was looking for, the vermin.

When I refer to vermin, I do not intend to talk about the gruesome species that inhabit the underworld of our cities, no, I refer it to the ones that live parallel lives in this place, ones who have a knowledge of the other underworld; the ones that know what happened here. But the search, after these three weeks has been in vane, not only have I failed to make contact, but I have failed to even prove their existence.

I do not intend to leave until I have found what I am looking for. And thus, I have asked my fellow local guide and translator to retrieve my findings and my writings in case I disappear.

A month of intensive investigation has finally shed some light on the vermin. I managed to get an interview with one. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of inner realization, but it was soon overshadowed by the initial disturbance I felt when I arrived to this forsaken place.

The meeting was all right, but nothing happened, the vermin talked a lot, but said nothing of importance. He knew what I wanted to know, so he just went around speaking worthless things. But not all hope was lost, for he said he could arrange a small meeting in their headquarters. They said they were going to contact me, and that I should get rid of my fellow translator. I acted according to their wishes, but told my translator that if anything was to happen to me, to get my journals, and send them to the publisher.

Until now, I have not been able to reveal something knew, only that the vermin are willing to receive me. That is no revelation, for everyone knows they exist, but does not know how they operate. I can say this, they transmit pure vile, and although I have no clear idea of their intentions I know they are brutal and cunning. I am about to embark to find out all of that, but my mind is uneasy and I have a feeling that nothing good will come out of these.

The following was all that was written by the journalist a few years ago. The publisher did publish the work, but it was received by skepticism for its confusing and unclear message. It was entitled: The day rats spoke out. And it is left to readers interpretation. One thing was cleared out by the translator months prior to the publication, the place was the city of New York

I picked it up and dropped it into the palm of my right hand. It is Onondaga chert, found from an area that stretches from Albany, New York, west to Detroit. But not here. It is a flake left over from resharpening a spear point, a knife, or a hide-scraper.

I was there to write about an archeological team from the state museum, working on the first exploratory dig of a site discovered in the 1930s.

In the early 1950s, a man named Witthoft combed the surface of the 40-acre site and found more than 400 tools, 53 spear points and approximately 1500 chips from sharpening and making tools.

I got the tip from Brad Miller, one of the volunteers, who emailed me a photo of himself holding a stone hide-scraper.

“Somebody made that,” said Brad, pointing at the flake. “Somebody sat right here and chipped that off a piece of stone, 11,000 years ago.”

Stone tools are sharper than razors when first chipped, but they become dull with use, or break. The archaeologist in charge, Kurt Carr, said he went through about six blades one time when he skinned and butchered a deer. He said it takes about five minutes for an experienced knapper to recreate a new scraper or knife blade.

The theory is that these people were nomadic, following the game, the deer, elk, and possibly caribou.  They seem to have traveled in a circuit from near Buffalo, through New England and south until they reached this place between the kinked and rugged landscape of central Pennsylvania.

I wonder who these people were, and what became of them. What did they look like? Who were their gods? Were their lives as Thomas Hobbes  (1588–1679) said,  “nasty, brutish, and short” as we must imagine they were? In whose veins does their blood now run?

I stood for a bit between interviews, trying to imagine the place as it might have been. It would have been cooler, there at the end of the last ice age. The hardwood forests now covering Peter’s Mountain would have been spruce and hemlock. The glacier’s edge came no closer than a couple of counties north, but I would bet that with the wind blowing from the north, you could smell the ice.

These were modern humans, Carr said. Probably bug-infested, I would imagine, and dressed in hides, but inside, and between the ears, where it counts, it’s you and me, with poorer personal hygiene. Give them all Harleys and they would look like the cast of a 1970s biker film.

So long ago, I thought, and then thought again. Is it really? 11,500 years, that’s fewer than 500 generations. Standing side-by-side, holding hands, they would be about three feet apart. That would make a line only a quarter of a mile long, give or take.

A quarter of a mile. A distance you can cover in a couple of seconds in a fast car. A little shorter than the distance from my little gravel-and-asphalt lane to the main road. On a good day, with a still wind, you might be able to holler loud enough and make the folks at the other end of the line hear you. Maybe not understand what you’re yelling, but at least know you’re there. And at least give a wave.

Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like that long ago. And it makes me want to go back to that field, to be very still and quiet and listen. Well, you never know. A quarter of a mile isn’t too far for neighbors.

==============================.
© 2007 Marsh Creek Media,
Gettysburg, Pa.
“Burger to Go” is a product of me and my company, Marsh Creek Media and, as such, I am solely responsible for its content.
Check out the two “Burger to Go” blogsites:
http://burger2go.wordpress.com/
http://burger2goclassics.wordpress.com/

You can see here a map of Internet (you don't say "the internet" but yes "Internet"). Can you just imagine that it was all created by WE ALL?

So... A small project transformed in a massive-multi-reading-and-texting-producer that englobes all countries, a train of info, A UNIVERSE.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. - B. F. Skinner.

This got me thinking, can we, mere mortals, give birth to a mighty and immortal thing that would eventually destroy us all? The question will remain... or at least it will remain until a bigger tool shows up. This is somehow frightful, imagine, you create things to improve your life, and those things will eventually destroy it! Behold, I present you the paradox of the century: "To enjoy Internet or not to enjoy Internet, that's the question!!". One day we will be able to obtain everything from Internet... And... Goodbye normal life! ;(

Ah yes, normal life... What is for us normal life? I mean, what do we all get to enjoy from fun? We are nothing more than meat and bones... Barged in our thoughts... But HEY! Wake up! In 200 years who will ever remember us? We are all doomed to perish in this floating rock.

The meeting ran a little late. By the time I filed my story and placed something on the paper’s website and made it home, it was around midnight.

I stretched out on a recliner, thinking wryly that the coffee I had drunk to stay awake on the way home was likely to keep working until one or two in the morning. I cranked up the laptop, watching music videos, and replying to emails.

Kitten Kaboodle chewed on my hand, the one that had been keeping time to the music. She’s at that age, when anything that moves is prey. It’s like having an animated cactus for a pet.

She got crazier and crazier and when she started drawing blood I had to slow her down. Not an easy thing with a cat. She spent the next hour boinging and pouncing all over the house, killing furniture, terrorizing the dust bunnies.

In a way, this is my favorite time of the day, after midnight, when the world shrinks to the reflections on the inside of the library windows, and the big ceiling fan whooshes overhead. The world is somehow, briefly, manageable, a bubble of light rimmed with books and a cat or two, my bloodied hand tap-dancing on the keyboard, words, changelings all, stuttering out past the fatigue and caffeine to the world.

==============================.

A blistering hot afternoon on U.S. Route 15, heading north on an errand. In the sky, innocuous, puffy white clouds drift in the hazy blue air.

Suddenly, straight ahead, a bolt of lightning, bright blue-white, cracked the sky and tore the air with its incandescent sound and was gone.

I blinked. Did I just see that?

I looked all around…not a storm cloud in sight.

I had read about “bolts from the blue,” but never seen one before. They’re real enough, and can be deadly, particularly to golfers, who might be standing on a hill ready to tee off, hear thunder in the distance and figure they’re safe as long as the storm is not overhead. And then they raise their driver over their heads and the next – not to say last - thing they know…ZAP.

A "Bolt from the Blue" is a regular, General-Issue lightning bolt with a case of wanderlust. The National Severe Storms Laboratory says that the peripatetic bolts come out of the rear end of a thundercloud and can travel up to 25 miles horizontally before it turns earthward and smites something or someone, rather like an afterthought.

Intellectually, I reject anything that hints of the supernatural, from the Jehovan to the impish. Still, lightning out of a clear, blue sky seems rather like a dirty trick, if you ask me.

==============================.

A good friend who is always making my mind stretch sent me a photo of an amoeba’s house.

Don’t be fooled by the photo. The real thing is the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

This kind of stuff tickles me cross-eyed.

This particular variety of amoeba surrounds its little shapeless body with tee-tiny pebbles and squats happily indoors, doing whatever amoebas do when they’re not eating bits of organic material by wrapping around it and reproducing by splitting in two. Maybe watching Sponge Bob Squarepants re-runs.

Anyway, the little house has a little scalloped doorway and little projections sort of like fins in the back. It’s shaped sort of like a cartoon rocket ship.

This is what Liz said:

“I loved the description of what happens to the second generation - one gets the house and the other gets the pile of building materials that the "parent" saved up to start a new one. It just seemed so humble and simple and fair - and yeah, flabbergasting. It also made me think we probably make too much of our own achievements. We may stack 'em higher, but I've never seen anything cuter or sweeter in a house. Just the right size, safe and cozy, mobile, home-made (I almost said "handmade"), a real masterpiece of folk art by some teeny tiny folk.”

No, there's nothing random about it.”

The “random” remark came about because we both know that Creationists would point at this little house as somehow “proving” that life is way too complicated to have occurred by chance, which is how they misconstrue evolution. But evolution is not a crapshoot. It is perfectly logical – and demonstrable – system of thought. The Creationists might as well argue that the fact that bees wear stripes rather than paisley is proof that god wove the fabric himself.

The little house is a delight, plain and simple, because over billions of years of life on earth, it’s just one of those wonderful surprises that evolved along with the rest of us. And every gasping, wriggling one of us is a freaking miracle.

==============================.

© 2007 Marsh Creek Media,

Gettysburg, Pa.

“Burger to Go” is a product of me and my company, Marsh Creek Media and, as such, I am solely responsible for its content.

Check out the two “Burger to Go” blogsites:

http://burger2go.wordpress.com/

http://burger2goclassics.wordpress.com/

Faith, Hope, Love... let it be enough for it is all we really need

Tired of living in the modern world
Another casual flag left unfurled by love
Tired of living inside my mind
Another casualty out of time for us

Faith hope love,
Be enough

Tired of living in this modern land
Too many ideals to meet with its demands
Tired of looking for sympathy
Got to learn to stand on my own two feet

Faith hope love
(Too much too soon, to see it through, look back at your life with some kind of pride)
Be enough

If I ever let you down
Would you ever feel the ground?

Faith hope love
(Too much too soon, to see it through, look back at your life with some kind of pride)
Be enough

Make up your mind about your tits girls
They can puff em up so no bra will fit girls
Theres only one thing they cant fix
No I wont let u be mislead
And that’s the hole in your head
Cant do nothing about that

hell hell modern world
hell hell to all u boys and girls
hell hell hell the color green
hell hell to what I’ve seen
hell hell hell this modern world

Anouk - Modern World

radio segnali dal cosmo e' tornata a suonare.
stanotte. e io a cantarci su.
i boys and girls si baciano come adolescenti.
ma sono adulti al termine di una giornata terribile e intensa.
sono sguardi, baci, carezze, schiaffi, e ancora baci.
e' la febbre dei sentimenti. che sai di avere ma non vuoi misurare.

Drawing on writers such as James C. Scott, David Abrams, Richard Tarnas, and Albert Borgmann, I critique this "modern worldview" for its seeing the universe as impersonal, its emphasis on dominating nature, and its rationalism--all factors that actually tend to underwrite violence.

Sometimes the greatest acts of heroism come not from the use of weapons and force, but rather in acts of beautiful defiance that are simply breathtaking.

Only recently I learned of Vedran Smailovic, the cellist of Sarajevo.

It was 4 p.m. on May 27, 1992, two months into the three-year war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a nasty war involving more than a half-dozen factions that changed objectives and allegiances several times during the conflict. In short, it was a dog-pile of a mess, and there were no winners. Not there ever really are.

Smailovic, then in his mid-30s and principal cellist with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, was watching from his apartment window as an artillery shell landed amid a bread line in front of The National Library. The explosion killed 22 people, scattering stone, bone, blood and body parts.

The next day, Smailovic, dressed in his tuxedo as though preparing for a performance in one of Europe’s great halls, took his cello and an old stool and sat in the center of the shell crater and began to play. It was exactly 4 p.m.

He played Albinoni’s Adagio in G, music that can make you believe in angels.

He finished playing despite continued shelling and gunfire nearby. And then he left.

The next day, he was back, and played the same piece, paying no mind to the mayhem around him or to the risk.

And the next day. And the next. Until he had played 22 times, once for each of the 22 who had died before his eyes.

He played, not to cheering crowds in their finery, but to cratered streets, rubble, to bone fragments and terror and the smell of smoke and decay. He played for more, I think: To that in us that is better than our familiar role of angels of death, of harrowers of the innocent. He played, perhaps, for what is possible, for what Lincoln called “our better angels.”

A journalist at the time asked him if he thought he was crazy, playing on a battleground.

Smailovic reportedly replied: “You ask me am I crazy for playing the cello, why do you not ask if they are not crazy for shelling Sarajevo?”

He was right, of course. By the end of the slaughter, more than 100,000 were dead, and nearly 2 million had been displaced.

Why is it so hard to see which of those two actions – the destruction of a city and the lives within it, or a sole man defiantly standing up to the insanity and horror – is the act of madmen.

If Vedran Smailovic is crazy, then I say God bless the lunatics, and give us more.

==============================.

© 2007 Marsh Creek Media,

Gettysburg, Pa.

“Burger to Go” is a product of me and my company, Marsh Creek Media and, as such, I am solely responsible for its content.

Check out the two “Burger to Go” blogsites:

http://burger2go.wordpress.com/

http://burger2goclassics.wordpress.com/

…sitting in a room in my house trying to deal with the fact that the floor had opened up and there was a hen sitting comfortably in a stable on a straw nest surrounded by several baby chicks.  One of the little chicks had come up and was scratching around on my bathroom floor.  But there was nothing to eat and the chick was getting thinner and thinner before my eyes… 

At that moment there was a crashing sound and a large pig burst through the hole in the floor taking out a large chunk of wall.  

“What am I to do with all these animals?” I thought. The pig lumbered around my sitting room, dropping straw and breathing heavily… 

I heard a faint sound of cheeping. I ran in and was horrified to see that the chick had jumped into the open commode.  It drowned in the swirling water...  

I felt awful.  “This modern world,” I thought, as I looked bleakly around my sparkling clean bathroom, “is evil. I have murdered a poor defenseless chick…”

Image:  Wikimedia Commons

–Cynthia Haggard writes short stories, novels and poetry.  During the day, she is a medical writer and has recently opened her own business.  For more on her creative writing, go to spunstories.  For more about her medical writing services, go to clarifyingconcepts.  (c) 2008. All rights reserved.