I had a wow moment while respond­ing to someone’s blog post today. The writer described the invis­i­ble hand of cap­i­tal­ism as a bet­ter alter­na­tive to hav­ing count­less flawed humans in pub­lic ser­vice scram­bling to enact their indi­vid­ual views of what’s best for every­one. I inter­preted his opin­ion essen­tially as:

The role of per­fect cap­i­tal­ism is to social­ize human frailty.

If cap­i­tal­ism were exe­cuted per­fectly by per­fect humans, with no lobbyist-driven bar­ri­ers to any­one enter­ing the mar­ket with a new 200 MPG car or a shinier pet rock, the invis­i­ble hand would accom­mo­date people’s will­ing­ness to buy either prod­uct, “flawed” or not. In short, cap­i­tal­ism would ensure that we all bask in the glo­ries and share in the pains of our col­lec­tive human decisions.

Okay I get that, but there are no assur­ances that cap­i­tal­ism will ever be per­fectly exe­cuted. Both pub­lic and pri­vate sys­tems hire from the same pool of flawed human­ity, and we have ample evi­dence of what can hap­pen when greed and fear enter the pic­ture, regardless.

Our “flawed” will­ing­ness to buy into the heav­ily pro­tected oil indus­try has cre­ated a sit­u­a­tion where pro­duc­ers can expect the pub­lic to shoul­der their eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters sim­ply as our share of the cost of doing busi­ness, which under pure cap­i­tal­ism could not be fur­ther from the truth. Under pure cap­i­tal­ism, today there would likely be no more BP.

So to me, the big­ger ques­tion is this:

Is capitalism-as-great-equalizer really how we want to con­duct our human affairs? My love of the human spirit tells me there are much bet­ter ways for us to go than by del­e­gat­ing pure cap­i­tal­ism, if we can ever get there, to Gort-like [1] enforcer status.

Ref­er­ences

1. Klaatu (The Day the Earth Stood Still)

Posted on December 4th, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Society | No Comments »

An epic strug­gle between the Titans of Old and New is brew­ing in Hol­ly­wood, with Adobe and Apple cast in star­ring roles.

Ear­lier this year, Apple sur­prised the indus­try with its newest ver­sion of Final Cut Pro X for pro­fes­sional video edi­tors, i.e. moviemak­ers. As is their wont, Apple “thought dif­fer­ent” about what video edit­ing could be and thor­oughly redesigned the work­flow. Many decried their heresy in chal­leng­ing the old metaphor, and Adobe took advan­tage by offer­ing Apple cus­tomers a steep dis­count for switch­ing over to their more tra­di­tional Pre­miere product.

To date, Apple has not backed down, and some open-minded blog­gers [1] have rightly noted Apple’s long his­tory of suc­cess­fully think­ing out­side the box. In fact, the orig­i­nal text from Apple’s Think Dif­fer­ent ad cam­paign from 1997 speaks vol­umes about their most recent announcement:

Beyond this debate about video edit­ing tools, Apple’s quote says a lot about where true inven­tion comes from. Com­pa­nies like Tesla recently achieved recog­ni­tion as America’s 4th automaker (along­side GM, Ford and Chrysler), not by timidly play­ing by old internal-combustion-engine rules, but by tak­ing a big chance with a pricey, electron-sipping con­cept car that caught many peo­ples’ atten­tion. [3]

I think this story can be applied closer to home, in the small deci­sions any of us may make about start­ing a new busi­ness, explor­ing a dif­fer­ent coun­try, choos­ing a col­lege major or even apply­ing paint to can­vas. I like to remem­ber that not so many years ago, in the grand scheme of things, the world was decid­edly flat.

Ref­er­ences

1. For­mer Avid employee on Final Cut Pro X (MacDailyNews)
2. Think Dif­fer­ent (Wikipedia)
3. Tesla Going For Broke Or Big Time (Edmunds)

Posted on July 5th, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Technology | No Comments »

It is very chal­leng­ing to keep gov­ern­ment and faith in proper rela­tion­ship with each other. Our Con­sti­tu­tion man­dates sep­a­ra­tion, while our lead­ers present a tapes­try of faiths — sub­tle per­haps like Lutheran ver­sus Methodist — or vivid like Chris­t­ian, Jew­ish, Islamic, Bud­dhist, Hindu, Deist and so on.

Inde­pen­dent of how one may feel about gay rights issues, the core mes­sage of Steve Simon’s state­ment is one of under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion as manda­tory for our healthy soci­ety, and I whole­heart­edly agree. For per­sonal rea­sons he chose to ref­er­ence his own faith, while deliv­er­ing this truly uni­ver­sal message:

There is a place — and arguably a “pur­pose” — for every­one in our soci­ety that tran­scends any one belief sys­tem that may try to describe it. This to me is what a cel­e­brat­ing won­der­ful life is all about.

Ref­er­ences

Why Does God Keep Mak­ing Gay Peo­ple? | MoveOn.Org

Posted on May 5th, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Spirituality | No Comments »

H.R. 3 is bad enough, but H.R. 358 takes the debate to a whole dif­fer­ent level. In this one, bill spon­sors clearly tar­get all women’s health services:

Pro­tect Life Act — Amends the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA) to pro­hibit fed­eral funds from being to used to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes cov­er­age of abor­tion services.

And while we’re at it, this bill, brought to you by the same repub­li­can party that last year decried government-run health­care and “death pan­els”, offers the following:

Requires any qual­i­fied health ben­e­fit plan offered through an Exchange that includes cov­er­age for abor­tions to also offer a qual­i­fied health ben­e­fit plan through the Exchange that is iden­ti­cal in every respect except that it does not cover abortions.

Does any­one else have a prob­lem with this? The GOP’s ver­sion of big gov­ern­ment would tell insur­ers exactly how they must struc­ture their plans, and in the process cre­ate a real dis­as­ter sce­nario for any indi­vid­ual opt­ing for the plan that includes a legally sanc­tioned pro­ce­dure that the spon­sors per­son­ally dis­agree with.

I can imag­ine an insurer say­ing, “fine, we’ll do it your way but we’re going to allow our sub­scribers to jump between Plan A and Plan B with­out restric­tion.” And I can imag­ine those same mem­bers of Con­gress imme­di­ately draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to pro­hibit indi­vid­u­als jump­ing between Plan A and Plan B. This clearly, painfully points toward the gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence that iron­i­cally the GOP was warn­ing us about.

It is time for all of us to pay close atten­tion to the prover­bial men behind the curtain.

Ref­er­ences

• H.R. 358: Pro­tect Life Act (GovTrack.us)

Posted on February 14th, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Politics | 1 Comment »

Here’s the prob­lem with H.R. 3: No Tax­payer Fund­ing for Abor­tion Act that is pend­ing in the U.S. House. Alright, arguably there are many prob­lems with this, but here’s the big one:

[H.R. 3] dis­al­lows any tax ben­e­fits for amounts paid or incurred for an abor­tion or for a health ben­e­fits plan that includes cov­er­age of abor­tion (my bold), includ­ing any med­ical deduc­tion for such amounts or any credit for such an employer-sponsored plan.

First of all, abor­tion is a legally estab­lished pro­ce­dure that the bill spon­sors seek to penal­ize. Sec­ond, to exclude or limit fund­ing for all health­care ser­vices if the tar­geted orga­ni­za­tion lists legal­ized abor­tion as one of them, whether used or not? No reim­burse­ments for mam­mo­grams, pap smears or other basic services?

That goes way beyond human decency and in my view, way beyond the abor­tion debate, regard­less of which side of the debate you’re on. It’s one thing to per­se­cute a spe­cific action (in this case legal abor­tion) and quite another to pun­ish or ruin an orga­ni­za­tion for offer­ing a legal pro­ce­dure that one doesn’t per­son­ally agree with.

If H.R. 3 man­ages to pass, my heart goes out to those pre­dom­i­nantly fright­ened repub­li­can men who have no busi­ness leg­is­lat­ing women’s per­sonal health choices. If it gets that far, I hope the fed­eral courts very quickly smack down H.R. 3 as the truly mis­guided piece of leg­is­la­tion that it is.

Ref­er­ences

• H.R. 3 — Sum­mary: No Tax­payer Fund­ing for Abor­tion Act (GovTrack.us)

Posted on February 14th, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Politics | No Comments »

Reprint: Pub­lished orig­i­nally on Blogger.com, Sep­tem­ber 2006.

Three years ago I wrote about idyl­lic life in Eugene, Ore­gon, which it was. Now I’m back in Seat­tle, mus­ing and writ­ing about all this con­ta­gious energy. Since leav­ing the cor­po­rate world a few years back, I’ve spent many moments grasp­ing at the del­i­cate bal­ance between nature and com­mu­nity… between sus­tain­abil­ity and energy.
Eugene is the kind of place one can set­tle into. About it I once said, “the basics are all here for com­fort­able, sus­tain­able life.” But it’s hard to set­tle in Seat­tle. This is the place where one has to look both ways just to keep up. In Seat­tle, I’ve sel­dom met any­one who is not totally com­mit­ted to their per­sonal chase scene — pur­su­ing careers and hob­bies to the max.

In Eugene I loped along the bicy­cle trails at 15 miles per hour, dressed a bit bet­ter than most in my ripped cycling shorts and old Bell hel­met. Now in Seat­tle, I’m lapped by seri­ous bik­ers, one after another on the Burke-Gilman, in their high per­for­mance color-coordinated out­fits and 20-pound street bikes. Now I’m push­ing 18 miles per hour with the goal of being passed just a bit less often.

This con­ta­gion may get me to 20 miles per hour some­day. Maybe I’ll trade my old Can­non­dale for a seri­ous bike. But you’ll never see me in color coor­di­nated span­dex. It’s still the bal­ance of nature (this time human) and community.

Posted on February 12th, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Society | 3 Comments »

Rupert Murdoch’s new eMag The Daily launched today for the Apple iPad. So far so good, in my opin­ion. Assum­ing top-notch con­tent, the sub­scrip­tion model looks fairly rea­son­able at $40 per year or $1 per week, espe­cially for devices like the iPad that will even­tu­ally retire the printed mag. But here are three points of cau­tion for this to work in the long run:

1. The pub­lisher must guar­an­tee full access to pre­vi­ously pur­chased con­tent, with rea­son­able guide­lines for Fair Use sim­i­lar to exist­ing paper media. I should be able to save my pur­chased con­tent offline and cut/paste as needed when ref­er­enc­ing an arti­cle in my work, with proper bib­li­o­graphic entry of course.
2. At $40 per year, adver­tis­ing must be kept to a com­fort­able min­i­mum. Like cur­rent paper mags, if it gets to the point that much of the con­tent is adver­tis­ing, I should not have to pay again for this. In other words, if adver­tis­ing goes up, the price goes down.
3. I must have con­trol over how my my per­sonal infor­ma­tion is shared. For exam­ple, my sub­scrip­tion billing and con­tact info must remain pri­vate if I so choose. Also, while it’s rea­son­able for The Daily to col­lect gen­eral view­ing sta­tis­tics to ensure qual­ity con­tent, these should not be asso­ci­ated with a spe­cific sub­scriber. My pref­er­ences in read­ing news, weather or sports are mine alone.

I can only assume that mis­takes will be made along the way. But as a start­ing point, the move from print to screen really is an oppor­tu­nity for pub­lish­ing to evolve — to bring what has worked across the divide while dis­cov­er­ing new and bet­ter ways to do things. I wish Mur­doch and oth­ers much suc­cess in mak­ing a sus­tain­able and respect­ful busi­ness transition.

Ref­er­ences

The Daily for iPad Arrives, New iOS Sub­scrip­tion Billing Included: Apple News

Stan­ford Copy­right & Fair Use — Fair Use

Posted on February 2nd, 2011 by Sky
Filed under: Media | No Comments »

Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing and chal­leng­ing obser­va­tion by Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film­maker Jim Jarmusch:

Noth­ing is orig­i­nal. Steal from any­where that res­onates with inspi­ra­tion or fuels your imag­i­na­tion. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paint­ings, pho­tographs, poems, dreams, ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions, archi­tec­ture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bod­ies of water, light and shad­ows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authen­tic. Authen­tic­ity is invalu­able; orig­i­nal­ity is non-existent. And don’t bother con­ceal­ing your thiev­ery — cel­e­brate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remem­ber what Jean-Luc Godard said, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”

As a long­time com­poser and song­writer, I hes­i­tate to accept Jim’s point with­out ques­tion, but at the same time I do under­stand where he’s com­ing from.

This brings back a con­ver­sa­tion I shared with a fel­low song­writer many years ago. He insisted that he cre­ated his songs, seem­ingly from thin air; I rebutted that I dis­cov­ered my songs, from some mag­i­cal place where all things have existed for eter­nity. I was merely for­tu­nate to be able to rec­og­nize and accept a gift — a snip­pet of melody, a rhyme or a hook, maybe a chord pro­gres­sion. Then off I would go and make it my own.

Whether music, prose, poetry or soft­ware, how do we know when a so-called ‘orig­i­nal work’ is legally a deriva­tion ver­sus just plain steal­ing? Jim’s point about authen­tic­ity ver­sus orig­i­nal­ity may offer an inter­est­ing lit­mus test.

Ref­er­ences

1. Noth­ing is Orig­i­nal — Edi­ble Apple

Posted on November 1st, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Design | No Comments »

A dear friend for­warded me this story about mar­bles, which I’ll share in its entirety. The gist is that each of us gen­er­ally starts with about 3900 of them.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Sat­ur­day morn­ings. Per­haps it’s the quiet soli­tude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not hav­ing to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Sat­ur­day morn­ing are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuf­fling toward the garage with a steam­ing cup of cof­fee in one hand and the morn­ing paper in the other. What began as a typ­i­cal Sat­ur­day morn­ing turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone por­tion of the band on my ham radio in order to lis­ten to a Sat­ur­day morn­ing swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sound­ing chap, with a tremen­dous sig­nal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broad­cast­ing busi­ness. He was telling whom-ever he was talk­ing with some­thing about “a thou­sand mar­bles.” I was intrigued and stopped to lis­ten to what he had to say–

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your fam­ily so much. Hard to believe a young fel­low should have to work sixty or sev­enty hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s “dance recital” he continued.”Let me tell you some­thing that has helped me keep my own pri­or­i­ties.” And that’s when he began to explain his the­ory of a “thou­sand marbles.“

“You see, I sat down one day and did a lit­tle arith­metic. The aver­age per­son lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on aver­age, folks live about seventy-five years.“

“Now then, I mul­ti­plied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the num­ber of Sat­ur­days that the aver­age per­son has in their entire life­time. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m get­ting to the impor­tant part.It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail”, he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hun­dred Saturdays.“

“I got to think­ing that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thou­sand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every sin­gle mar­ble they had. I ended up hav­ing to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 mar­bles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plas­tic con­tainer right here in the shack next to my gear.“

“Every Sat­ur­day since then, I have taken one mar­ble out and thrown it away. I found that by watch­ing the mar­bles dimin­ish, I focused more on the really impor­tant things in life. There is noth­ing like watch­ing your time here on this earth run out to help get your pri­or­i­ties straight .“

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for break­fast. This morn­ing, I took the very last mar­ble out of the con­tainer. I fig­ure that if I make it until next Sat­ur­day then I have been given a lit­tle extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a lit­tle more time.“

“It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your fam­ily, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!“

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fel­low signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morn­ing, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “

C’mon honey, I’m tak­ing you and the kids to breakfast.”“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, noth­ing spe­cial, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Sat­ur­day together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some mar­bles.“

Posted on August 4th, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Spirituality | No Comments »

Sit­ting U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joe Bar­ton (R-TX) today apol­o­gized to BP, appar­ently on behalf of him­self, for the $20 bil­lion dol­lar escrow account that the Admin­is­tra­tion has just set up for Gulf Coast dam­ages and recov­ery. In a con­gres­sional tes­ti­mony with BP exec­u­tives he said:

I’m not speak­ing for any­body in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives but myself. But I’m ashamed of what hap­pened in the White House yes­ter­day. I think it is a tragedy of the first pro­por­tion that a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion can be sub­jected to what I would char­ac­ter­ize as a shake­down, in this case a $20 bil­lion shake­down… what amounts to a $20 bil­lion slush fund that is unprece­dented in our nation’s his­tory, that’s got no legal stand­ing, which I think sets a ter­ri­ble prece­dent for the future. [1]

Really? Joe, you’re apol­o­giz­ing to BP?? On behalf of your­self? As an elected politi­cian? When­ever you open your mouth Joe, you speak for your con­stituency whether you try to sugar coat it or not. You do not speak for me, nor do you speak for thou­sands of your fel­low Tex­ans whose liveli­hoods may now be ruined, espe­cially if one of those under­wa­ter plumes that don’t really exist [2] heads your way.

Okay, so while I am not thrilled with Pres­i­dent Obama’s over­all han­dling of this dis­as­ter, at least he’s respond­ing to a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. And the escrow account is cer­tainly appro­pri­ate under the cir­cum­stances, regard­less of your ques­tion­able loy­al­ties Joe.

I’ll give John Boehner (R-OH) some credit for hav­ing the decency to pub­licly dis­tance him­self from your ridicu­lous com­ments. [3] But oth­ers — Bar­ton (R-TX), Price (R-GA), Bach­mann (R-MN) and any­one else who is try­ing to frame the escrow account as a shake­down? Shame. On. You.

Dear reader, before vot­ing this fall, I hope you’ll do some research and remem­ber those who either vote against escrow leg­is­la­tion or worse, pub­licly smear it. Those peo­ple are not act­ing in your inter­est, and they do not deserve to hold title as your representatives.

Ref­er­ences

1. Rep. Bar­ton apol­o­gizes to BP for Obama ‘shakedown’
2. BP CEO: There aren’t any oil plumes
3. Boehner refuses to endorse Barton’s claim that BP’s escrow fund is a ’shakedown.’

Posted on June 17th, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Politics | No Comments »