How free is a flag tied to a pole?

World Cup fans will hear a lot of Wavin' Flag in the next month. And rightly so: it's a great song with catchy lyrics, good rhythm and beautiful melody and harmonies. I fell in love with it as soon as I heard Knaan sing the first soaring lines at the ACL festival last fall.

Please, however, take to heart the song's original message when you hear it. The stanzas have been rewritten for the World Cup, but the song's meaning comes straight from Knaan's childhood on the streets of Mogadishu. It is not the beautiful, soaring notes that it seems at first glance. The sarcasm of the title-line "They'll call me freedom, just like a wavin' flag" struck me the second time I heard the refrain back in October. This is an anthem not of freedom, but of the dream of freedom. It is of pride of one's people, not love of country. When you do see the waving flags in South Africa, while we're watching Knaan, Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto'o, please remember the millions of children who dream to leave villages and ghettos but will never get the chance. They are "struggling, fighting to eat" and are victims of "so many wars, settling scores.... leaving us poor." Those who can only dream of flying away from their abject poverty.

Like billions of others, I will get caught up in the beauty of the game, but let's not forget the billions who will walk miles and miles just to get to a TV to watch it. When you see the waving flags, think of what they really represent.

Thank you, Facebook

It's become a ritual that whenever Facebook changes anything, people throw up their arms and quickly update their status that they'll stop using the site. I laugh at the inherent irony of such posts.

Lately, it's been a lot of anti-privacy stuff, and quite predictable impulsive responses result. This makes me laugh, too, because facebook wouldn't be able to share one, single thing about you if you didn't type it in. Now, if FB were a fee-based site, we could complain and ask for changes, but with FB, we are all getting waaaay more than we pay for. (On this topic, watch Danah Boyd talk about it back in March at SXSW, or better still, read her full text. It's a great speech.)

I'm on the record for being a big facebook lover. I love seeing what friends are up to--especially those of you I don't see regularly. I like that FB has effectively disposed of the FW: FW: FW: chain emails. It has largely become the "home page" for my blog reading. I turn to FB when I want a reference or when seeking travel advice. Odds are, you're reading this after linking through my facebook post. 

So, recently, facebook announced something called the Open Graph. I'm no computer programmer, but it seems that FB is opening up our posts for commercial purposes. I'm cool with this. I'm much more comfortable with FB doing this than Google. Mashable lists 5 ways that this will affect e-commerce. I'm cool with all five of those ways. Seems like FB wants to compete with Google and Amazon, and competition is always good for us normal people. And, if all this results in is more advertising aimed at me for the stuff that I want, so be it. I hate shopping. If FB can make shopping easier for me, then I'm all in.

Why we should pay more for gas

Check out the video at the end of this page from Yahoo's Green Blog. In it, several things strike me. 

First, is the bit on hair soaking up oil. I'd heard about the use of hair-in-nylons to clean up oil spills, but the video here includes a very impressive classroom demo. If only for that demo at the end, please watch the video. But that's not why I'm writing about it. The data cited astonish me.

To start with, much of the waste from our cars and other machines find its way to our ground and ground water to the tune of about 1 million gallons of motor oil every day. The contamination of our drinking water will be a growing problem as freshwater resources dwindle as our populations grow. But that's not all: 726 million gallons of oil are spilled in over 1,200 spills annually! That's about 2 million gallons/day. The Exxon Valdez "disaster" released "only" 11 million gallons, but even more than that spills every week?!? It is outrageous that these numbers exist in our normal world.

The timeliness of this post is, of course, due to the Deepwater Horizon explosion. I have always been wary of the honesty and truthfulness of the corporate world and its environmental consciousness. While BP has met and exceeded all safety regulations, clearly this disaster is testament that further regulation is needed. But regulation cannot be the final solution. 

Demand for energy will continue to drive oil companies to the fartherst, coldest and deepest corners of the earth. We, the billions of consumers in this world are responsible for this. We live in the suburbs. We pay for airlines to take us on vacation. We love our stuff made of plastic. We know the repercussions of our lifestyles, yet we don't change.

What you will never see me do is complain that gasoline and airline tickets are too expensive. The only way that we will fly, drive, and air-condition less is if it costs us more. A lot more. I've supported a comprehensive energy tax ever since the idea was brought to my attention by Al Gore in 1992. If everyone, businesses and government included, had to pay for all of the energy we consume--in any form--then we would all consume so much less, and numbers like those above would start decreasing. The truth of it is that our dollars drive companies to build monsters like Deepwater Horizon, coltan mines in central Africa and more and more roads. As long as we buy more and more stuff, there will be more and more Deepwater Horizons. That's the inconvenient truth we must face.

Update 2014. The first link above is gone to cyber-eternity, but go here for similar videos. 

Coffeetalk

For the past few months, I've gathered every other Friday to get some coffee/tea with some friends and their friends. We're a very worldly bunch, hailing from several countries, and most of the participants having either lived abroad or traveled significantly, especially in Africa and Mexico. The conversations often take a turn outside our American borders.We like democracy, we like foreign aid, we like traveling. And we LOVE ideas that cross cultures.

For example, this Friday, our talk was guided by a couple who are fillmmakers from South Africa who are temporarily working in Austin. We learned of South African politics, investment cooperatives, and the lives and dreams of filmmakers. In the end, we were ready to start a film-making coop and brainstorming ways to get people to chip in, $100 or so, and become the funders of independent films on an ongoing basis. It's a novel idea to us, and we're going to pursue the notion seriously--on Saturday, some internet domains were, in fact, registered.

I don't know, we may be just a bunch of dreamers, but we're not the only ones, right? Anyone have some similar ideas out there? Want to join our discussion as it proceeds?

Support the DREAM Act

    I had a long talk last night with a former student, and her story brought me back to an ethical/political dilemma. To start this discussion, know that I'm largely a rule-follower. However, I have most certainly been know to bend/break them when I feel I've the moral high ground. I certainly realize that said high ground is subject to perspective, but that most certainly does not stop me, and I don't stop those of opposing persuasions who act similarly. I draw the line when someone gets physically or financially hurt.
   The topic here is immigration. I've long felt that those who follow the rules should be allowed in, no exceptions, and the more the merrier, but those who enter illegally shouldn't expect any good graces ('amnesty') later on. Beginning my first year teaching in NYC, however, this argument was seriously challenged, and I think that Thursday night, my mind has changed....
    Here's the student's story, purposely sparing some details.
She arrived in the USA from Central America at the age of 14. Her mom was a legal immigrant beforehand, and today, her mother and two siblings are legal residents, while she and one sibling are illegal even though they applied for residency at the same time as one other sibling who received residency. And that's where the family still stands. Four with green cards and two without--all in basically the same situation. Who the heck thought to say yes to one sibling and no to two others when they had the exact same situation. If the couple of years difference age was the difference-maker, then that is a rule or system that needs to be changed.
    Clearly the student in question (trust me on this one) would make America a better place. Why not bend/break/change rules? The same would be true of all illegal immigrants who, while bearing the burden of an illegal status in which they, as children, did not choose for themselves, graduate high school in the USA and get college acceptance.
    Now cue the proposed legislation called the DREAM Act. I don't know the details, but basically it would grant residency to students, such as my former student who is now an honor-roll college student, paying her own way through because she doesn't have that "nine-digit-number" that would make her eligible for federal financial aid.
   Like the artificial colonial border that I lived along in Senegal, this family is unnecessarily divided by arbitrary imperial law. In this case the law is wrong, and my sense of rule of law is washed away.  The right thing to do is to let these students stay, legally, and give them a path to citizenship. America would be a better place. I wholeheartedly support the Dream Act.

It's Still Happening

   Tonight I went to the fourth in a series of talks by Gary Hoover on the History of Enterprise. I've been to three of the for, and I can't say how impressed I have been with his treasure trove of knowledge and his passion for sharing history as a tool for making the future better. I think that the original plan was to be about an hour, but that's gone by the wayside. Tonight's went nearer to 100 minutes. Mr. Hoover is an asset in any of the many circles in which he walks. Check out past talks on the Big 3 Automakers., airlines, and film (video on the last seems to be down). Coming in June, a history of computer makers!
    Awesome as it was, the defining moment of the evening was on the way out, as I was talking to a pair of MBA students. The conversation nearly ground to a halt when one of them (not the blonde) said "It's amazing how that's all, like, happening right now, too." For a long, awkward moment, I hoped that this was a joke, but it wasn't. By her silence, I think the blonde saw the ignorance of the statement as I did. To end the moment and allow us to move on down the sidewalk, I said, "Yeah, I think you're right" and proceeded to be sure to NOT mention that I'm a history teacher. I think that I then mentioned how Amazon is still only the 25th or so largest retailer in the country. And we talked forgettably until I peeled off to head to my car.
    Really, now, UT. Is this the quality of grad student that you're accepting? I couldn't help but think "Exactly what strings did her dad pull to get her into McCombs?" Upon reflection, I really do hope that that thought isn't far off the mark, because if she is an average MBA student at one of the better business schools, then our country is headed in a bad, bad direction.

The People vs George Lucas

It should go without saying that a large part of the culture of my generation (who are we, the Xers?) was determined by Star Wars. And so it was that on a gorgeous afternoon last week I lined up one hour early for a screening of The People vs George Lucas. The movie wasn't such the diatribe against Mr. Lucas like the title might seem. The main arguments were predictable: the redoing the original trilogy (including Jabba in Star Wars, digitizing some space scenes, etc.) and taking jabs at the prequel trilogy (enter Jar Jar Binks). Going into the movie I was afraid that it would be quite anti-Lucas, but I was relieved that it was pretty good-natured. Sure, it poked fun at him. Of course, he's made some PR blunders, and I really, really, don't like Episode I, but I feel that he's earned the right to do whatever he wants--and I was glad that the film does acknowledge this point. Rather, this movie kindly pokes fun at the personalities of our generation who so venerate the films. And to that, I plead guilty. I laughed wholeheartedly the entire lenght of this film. Rumor on the Austin streets last week was that this will get a release this fall, so keep an eye on the independent theater near you.

Three documentaries

I got to see three documentaries yesterday at the SXSW film festival. They were Good, Better and Best, and I saw them in that order. 

The Best
The Parking Lot Movie was an absolute joy to watch. Periodically over three years, director Meghan Eckman filmed footage at and about the attendants at the Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville, Va. The key to it is how she captured the personalities of the attendants in interviews. I guess it takes a certain personality to pass the time in a booth near a top college campus. At the same time philosophical, witty and insane, the attendants discuss the happenings of the parking lot, their reactions to it and it's impact on their lives. This is a great work of art, and I hope it finds its way to a theater near you.

The Better

11/4/08. A date for the history books, for sure. My own recollection is voting in an old church on Fort Washington Blvd in the morning, then late at night, back home in my apartment watching the President-elect's Victory Speech with tears rolling down my cheeks. I knew that America had finally taken a step toward being respected in the world again, and not for economic and military might, but for our character as a people who choose our own destiny.

And now, 11/4/08 is the title of a documentary showing footage from around the world on Election Day. With scenes NYC, Austin, Chicago, Berlin, Dubai and more, this does a great job of capturing the emotion of that momentous day. And, from the perspective of a year-and-a-half later, it's worth remembering. Let's not get forget what President Obama means to the world. It's too easy to get discouraged by the short-term, day-to-day political mess, but in the bigger picture, President Obama is far more than health care or Guantanamo or Afghanistan. He is the fulfillment of the dream of thousands who fought for rights. And he is the source of dreams of millions of children today who need someone to look up to. 

From the website, it doesn't seem to be scheduled to show anywhere else, but I'd expect it to be in indy-type theaters before this fall's elections.

 

Good

We don't care about music anyways is a portrait of some cutting-edge musicians in Tokyo. Creating amplified sound from turntables, laptops, body parts and, of course, guitars, this film incorporates their music with vibrant images from Tokyo. Recommended especially for music-lovers.

He got lucky, I got bored

I've quite enjoyed the interactive panels that I've been to this year (here, here and here). But for some reason, the overall Interactive Conference isn't pulling me in like before. Perhaps I've changed. Perhaps the entrepreneurs and programmers that are most of the crowd don't engage me like they used to. I don't know, but on Sunday I left for the kite festival, and Monday afternoon I split the Convention Center and went to three movies. (see next post on movies). 

One thing I have to comment on: Evan Williams's discussion was a bore. He is one of the founders of Twitter, so thousands of people gathered yesterday to listen to him with very high expectations. I've never seen him before, so I don't know if it was the setting of the one-on-one interview or what, but people soon started filing out and by the end, maybe 1/3 of the seats were still occupied. I optimistically stayed hoping for a blockbuster ending, but that didn't come. Only repetitions of his message to "be open to new ideas." The most insightful thing he had to say was "I got lucky."  Based on what I saw yesterday, I'd say you got that right, sir.

Michel Gondry

   Saturday night and Sunday morning were Michel Gondry @SXSW time. Thanks to the tenacity of my friend Brian, we actually got to speak with him after his movie & Q&A Saturday night. He is one very intense personality. When Brian asked him to sign his Rubik's cube, Gondry wrote his name on all three sides (12 letters taking up four squares on 3 sides) and something else each of the other sides.... I saw 2010 on one of them. It was all very intentional. 

   I saw that aspect of his personality again in today's panel interview. He once did a project where you could pay him $20, send him a picture and he would sketch a quick portait, sign it and send it back. He then published a book with many of the sketches. It turns out that one of the sketchees was in the audience. Gondry made him come up and they took a couple of minutes to find the photo. The interviewer seemed nervous taking so much time out of the interview, but Gondry insisted. 

  I have no doubt that Gondry's attention to detail and tenacity that he displayed informally is a large part of what make his work successful. I reckon it may drive his actors and other staff crazy, but his patience to do something exactly right shows in his work. Thanks, Michel.

SXSW afternoon

Alright, I'd like to write all night, but that's not wise if I'm going to enjoy tomorrow at all. (Mostly movies tomorrow, btw.) But here's the lowdown:
--Danah Boyd gave a fabulous speech on privacy and social networking. I really wish I'd heard this talk before I taught privacy in February. I will hopefully post her speech when it goes online.
--Next was a discussion about going to the moon. The consensus of the panel seemed to be that private companies will get there before NASA. Amanda Stiles represented the Google XPrize on the panel; I feel she should have stolen the show, but she left that to Dave Masten, himself a former Xprize winner.
--Last panel of the day was a fun discussion title "Big Brother on the Big Screen: Fact or Fiction". Led by the EFF and ACLU), it was a fun way to end the day.
--This evening I got to watch Michel Gondry's beautiful documentary about his Aunt Suzette. It's inspiration to us all to film our families in an effort to record who we really are.

And, after that, I was exhausted from a day of sitting, so I came home. Tomorrow's likely schedule: cartography, zero waste, and movies on Afghanistan, opera and Mr. Nice.

Can you copyright a tweet?

This panel was expertly guided by Fred Benenson and Wendy Selzer. Despite some reading in the past, I'm admittedly not too clear on what Creative Commons Licensing actually is or does, and since it came up a lot I didn't completely follow the conversation.

I had two takeaways, the first was some bits of copyright law, quoted to us. To be copyrighted, it has to occur in a "tangible medium of expression," and courts have ruled that computer RAM counts. Also, it has to be an "original work of authorship" (not facts) and not "expressions so minimal..." ergo many tweets are not eligible for copyright.

However, one mamma is most certainly eligible. Momku was one of the last audience commenters. Her tweets would definitely meet the above criteria. Nonetheless, she said that she does not think her tweets are protected, "however if I get a book deal i might go back on that." Along those lines, Ms. Selzer made a great point at the end, stating that the online community does a better (certainly faster) job of policing itself than any team of lawyers and judges has. "Something other than the law," Selzer said, "is working better than the law. We're doing pretty well with our norms."

Citizen Journalists start the day off right

SXSW is underway and after four interactive panels, one fantastic speech and an introspective movie, my mind is on information overload.

I had a hunch pretty quickly into it, but the first one I attended was going to be one of the better hours of the week. TeamCJ ("Citizen Journalism") consisted of a panel of 6 thirty-ish Dallasites who basically just set the state for a great Salon discussion.

Starting out with the question “What is a citizen journalist?” the discussion first steered around the difference between blogging for pay and blogging for any other reason. Panelist claimed that TMZ can be considered citizen journalists—at least when they were getting started. Several in the audience disagreed, some strongly, arguing that if you make money, you lose the "citizen" part of the title.
The discussion veered, happily in my opinion, away from that and more toward differentiating citizen journalists from, say, the print newspapers. A great story was told about the recent plane crash in Austin, and how web surfers researched information about Joe Stack and Tweeted with #atxplanecrash. Twitter became a news source, faster than any news agency could have done it. Crowdsourcing, in essence, drove the mainstream media.

This can happen in other, slower, ways too. Say through comments on websites or blog responses or even corrections to articles. Or, as was stated in another panel, NASA feels it gets better driving questions—and ideas—from the general public via twitter or blog comments than it does from the mainstream media.

A couple of sites came up in the discussion that are worth mentioning. Demotix takes citizen photos and combines it with the news story. Annarbor.com is apparently a group of journalists who gather in a cafe and run an online newspaper.

This was a fabulous panel, which was a great start to my SXSW interactive conference.

Austin's public transit

The more I learn about Austin buses (& soon to be 1 train line) the more I'm frustrated.
What's been in the news recently is the new trains. However, I find it hard to believe that it's really going to make any kind of impact on life in Austin. There's just not enough service to matter, and certainly not for the price tag the city has had to pick up.
What I would rather see is for there to be many more buses. The sporadic service is so inconvenient as to be non-existent. Today, for example, there are two bus lines that I can choose from, but neither stops more than every 30 minutes, and neither will allow me to stay downtown past midnight.
I'd like to see this cost comparison: for the money that was spent on this new train line, how many buses could have been added to the system? If bus service could be doubled--maybe 70% more daytime buses and run hourly all night--then I bet ridership would quadruple. And I suspect that kind of increase could have happened for the money that's been laid out for this sexy train line.
I'm not one of those who expects public transportation to ever make a profit, but I do expect it to make a difference in the lives of the majority of residents. Austin's Capital Metro fails to do that.

I-nigma

One issue that we had to learn about while working the info booth was the bar codes on everyone's conference badges. Basically, with an app on your phone, you scan/photograph/view your new friends' badge and their profile is available for viewing--at least as much of it as they've made public. Seems creepy, but really it's just the info that's already in the Registrant Directory that everyone receives. I think the cool part of this is that you can view each others' schedules during the conference. Coworkers, say, who want to attend different panels can more easily coordinate. Or if you've lost track of a friend, pull up their schedule instead of having to text/call.

I'll be interested to see how it's usefulness eventually plays out.

SXSW begins

I had a great time last night "working" the info booth during the registration day. The best part is just being with a bunch of cool, friendly people. Working is actually fun at SXSW, and I love being in the info booth--a great way to find out a bunch about what's going on and not going on, who's here and not here, what's working and what's not working. As an inherently curious person, it's cool to have a job where I have to find out stuff. (I have a similar perspective of teaching, too.)

Technology and Elections

The other night a friend was asking some questions about cell phone, and how they have changed behaviors. I think the intention of the question was about how our individual actions have changed, but I was reminded of a story from Senegal which shows about how it affected free, fair elections in an entire nation.

When I was leaving the country in summer of 1997, landlines were available house-to-house only in the 10 or so biggest cities, and large villages (say, pop>2,000) perhaps had a central pay phone available. At the time, cell phones were just becoming available. Fast-forward to 2000, and technological leap-frog had happened. Already no one is building landlines, and cell phones are EVERYWHERE. And there's a presidential election. Incumbent President Abdou Diouf lost, the first such loss of an incumbent president in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason he could not stuff the boxes? An unanticipated presence surprised everyone: the press quietly arranged for a reporter at nearly every polling station, conducting exit polls and calling in real-time results/predictions ON THEIR CELL PHONES from places that had never seen phones before. Perhaps Mr. Diouf would have been completely honest anyways, but he never got the chance. A free press with cell phones prevented any potential box stuffing.

Democracy due to technology?

A Hill of Beans

Way back when I started this 'blog' I called it A Hill of Beans. I don't recall, but that was probably a sleepless night in my little studio at Cabrini and 181st in Washington Heights. It's quite likely that I'd been watching my #1 fave movie Casablanca, and one of my favorite lines from it yields this title.

However, I'd never thought consciously about the phrase until this evening. I love the humility of it. (God bless if anyone besides me is reading this drivel.) However much I would like to think that I'm an insightful writer, I really don't expect to do this regularly or well. Hence, I doubt it'll be worth a hill of beans.

But, why are beans so worthless anyways? Doesn't it follow that the key to a healthy vegetarian diet is beans? "Beans, beans good for your heart...," right? Entire societies were built with the growing of beans as its core. (The Maya, was it?) To me, beans are more raw than other foods, perhaps because I shelled so many as a kid. It seems that in our urban(e) lives, the lack proximity to food sources has devalued the food itself. A worthless hill of beans? Only if you don't use them.

What is Google?

It's a snowy day in Austin and a 7-year-old in NYC has gotten me on a Google kick. I was already headed there after several googledoc files related to SXSW were shared to me and I couldn't read them.

What does it mean to have an online identity? How successfully can you navigate more than one--and keep them separate?

I started with my yahoo id in 1997 and have used it ever since. And I've got two work addresses, and now I'll use this gmail address, too? Have I been left behind the google train because of loyalty to yahoo? Admittedly, I'll never ditch the yahoo address--too many people from many years ago have it. Oh, the confusion of modern technology. I'm sure SXSW will confuse me even more.