connecting*the*dots

Artist: Momus
Song: The Age Of Information

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This is a public service announcement

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering
The age of information
It’s perfectly safe
If we all take a few basic precautions
May I make some observations?

Axiom 1 for the world we’ve begun:

Your reputation used to depend on
What you concealed
Now it depends on what you reveal

The age of secretive mandarins who creep on heels of tact is dead:
We are all players now in the great game of fact instead
So since you can’t keep your cards to your chest
I’d suggest you think a few moves ahead
As one does when playing a game of chess

Axiom 2 to make the world new:

Paranoia’s simply a word for seeing things as they are
Act as you wish to be seen to act
Or leave for some other star

Somebody is prying through your files, probably
Somebody’s hand is in your tin of Netscape magic cookies
But relax: if you’re an interesting person
Morally good in your acts
You have nothing to fear from facts

Axiom 3 for transparency:

In the age of information the only way to hide facts
Is with interpretations, there is no way to stop the free exchange
Of idle speculations

In the days before communication privacy meant staying at home
Sitting in the dark with the curtains shut unsure whether to answer the phone
But these are different times, now the bottom line
Is that everyone should prepare to be known
Most of your friends will still like you fine

X said to Y what A said to B
B wrote an E-mail and sent it to me
I showed C and C wrote to A:
Flaming world war three

Cut, paste, forward, copy
CC, go with the flow
Our ambition should be to love what we finally know
Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go

Axiom 4 for this world I adore:

Our loyalties should shift in view
According to what we know
And who we are speaking to

Once I was loyal to you, and prepared to be against information
Now I am loyal to information, maybe I’m disloyal to you
My loyalty becomes more complex and cubist with every new fact I learn
It depends who I’m speaking to
And who they speak to in turn

Axiom 5 for information workers who wish to stay alive:

Supply, never withhold, the information requested
With total disregard for interests
Personal and vested

Chinese whispers was an analogue game
Where the signal degraded between brain and brain
Digital whispers is the same in reverse
The word we spread gets better, not worse
Better, not worse

X said to Y what A said to B
B wrote an E-mail and sent it to me
I showed C and C wrote to A:
Flaming world war three

Cut, paste, forward, copy
CC, go with the flow
Our ambition should be to love what we finally know
Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go

(from courtney)

From Authentic Jobs:

Giuliani Campaign Web Designer and Developer
at Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee

Freelance | 11 January 2007
(Anywhere) The Giuliani campaign is looking to hire additional team members on its web developing team, including a part-time developer (15-20 hrs/wk) with experience in Php, MySQL, AJAX and ASP/.NET, as well as a part-time designer (15-20 hrs/wk) with experience in XHTML/CSS and Flash/Actionscript. Employees are free to work from home most days of the week but must come in to Boston, MA at least once a week for staff meetings.

Apply: Candidates must be in the greater Boston area. Please email Brian Feinstein at brian.feinstein@gmail.com to set up an interview.

Why would Steve be the perfect fit? Oh, I don’t know. Call it intuition.

I had stopped shooting once I came across the funnel cake (luckily for my arteries, I didn’t have any cash), but then I turned to check out the parade and low and behold, there was an effigy of George W. Bush in a make-shift jail cell float, pulled by a United For Peace truck with a sign that read, “Impeach Bush for his Crimes Against Humanity.”

That received the loudest cheer of the day — even more than the HS girls doing the tootsie roll.

From cronic’d neighbors wishing MLK a happy birthday to High School marching bands to revved up hot rods to funnel cake… Mmm, funnel cake.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, enjoy!

Molly McGinn has a wonderful story of song and struggle that ties closely to this interesting quilt.

(originally uploaded by slight clutter)

From the handling of Katrina to the Sean Bell shooting, it’s a safe bet to say that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he’d still be a busy man. Now, what if he were here and once again dipped into the part of his ministry that really scared the FBI and US government — his take on US foreign policy?

What do you think his perspective would be on the Iraq occupation? Personally speaking, I don’t think he’d acquiesce to it fitting neatly within the context of the War on Terror.

From “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” a speech delivered on April 4th, 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City… with a few alterations:

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Iraq. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Iraq.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Iraq, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate — leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Baghdad or to the insurgents. It is not addressed to Iran or to Syria.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Iraq. Neither is it an attempt to make the Sadr loyalists or the Sunni insurgents paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Baghdad and the insurgents, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

[…]

Listen to the complete, original speech.

My father sent me an email the other day, encouraging my brother and I to go see Children of Men. Apparently, both the premise and the art direction of the film — shot in twisted, bleak, monochromatic settings — reminded my dad of Picasso’s Guernica.

When he mentioned the reference, he did so in a way as if I had no understanding of its impact as a piece of art. I responded that I’ve always admired the painting as extremely powerful. This was his response in turn:

A Note About GUERNICA:

As you must know, when Picasso finished this painting he gave it to the Modern in NYC with the understanding that it would be returned to Spain after Franco was no longer in power. When I came to New York in the late 50’s, I rediscovered this painting for I only had seen slides of it in art history when I was in college. The painting had its own room on the first floor… with many sketches on the other walls. I fell in love with the power of that painting. I studied its structure in-depth and I spent hours just sitting in that room, looking at every detail of the work.

In the 60’s when in the city on gallery visits I would go to the Modern JUST to visit with GUERNICA. I can’t imagine how many times I paid the entrance fee to the museum for that reason alone. I knew the painting so well that I could close my eyes and see certain brush strokes… it was like my GOOD friend. And, you know what happened… Franco was gone and the Modern living up to its promise shipped the work to Spain. Certainly, I missed the painting on my further visits to MOMA.

Eventually, we visited Spain… and Madrid… and the Prado. GUERNICA had its own room there with very special installation… it seemed to float in that space. When I entered that room, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the sight of the painting… I think I stopped breathing… I had to use all my skills NOT to weep for I was at that point. It was a powerful emotional experience for me. WOW, and after leaving the Prado, it took quite a while before I was really part of my surroundings.

I’ve looked back at that experience over time and I know that it wasn’t GUERNICA per se… it was the culmination of all my other visits and my study of the work… and the anticipation… as well as the painting itself… and it just all came together for me at that moment in the Prado. And that’s my note about GUERNICA.

-DAD

As always, thanks, Dad.

Jill Williams was nice enough to send me a number of photographs from yesterday’s anti-surge protest in downtown Greensboro.

If I could’ve made the protest (I was/am as sick as a dog), my sign would’ve been, well, a little different. It probably would’ve read something like this:

20,000 more soldiers for what?
A death-wish assault on Sadr City?
Training a United Iraqi Army?
Guarding more Halliburton convoys?
Or to buff W’s huge ego and faded legacy?

I need to work on my brevity… and incorporating links into signs, somehow.

UPDATE: Joe Killian has a great behind-the-scenes take on the protest, including the moronic signs of the day.

Look, I want the iPhone (more accurately, I want to give up my Treo 650), but there’s no way I can justify spending $500 on this beauty until these three features — in the very least — are added in a next generation:

• A tactile qwerty keyboard: I cannot go backwards in text messaging functionality, which is the definition of touchscreen qwerty. No way, Jose.
• Real battery life: My iPod battery died after less than a year and it never played for more than a few hours in the first place. The Treo 650 specs show 6hrs talk time and 300 hours standby (both are accurate from my experience); the iPhone specs are up to 5hrs talk, browse or video and up to 6hrs audio. If I’m buying this for its multi-functionality — essentially giving up my other gadgets — then those figures are completely unacceptable.
• More Gigs: Again, if this is to replace my iPod, 4gig and 8gig models are pretty weak options. Direct market me once you pass the 20gig threshold.

See you in a few years, baby.

UPDATE: In the comments, Deanna explains that this is a margarine commercial, running in Canada for the past year or so. Lethargic due to butter consumption = lethargic due to government employment in my book. ;)