LUDDITES LAST STAND

I think it will be interesting to see what happens when all over-the-air television broadcasts become digital. Even though there have been innumerable public service announcements and a concerted ad campaign by the FCC I think there will be a huge uproar. The same people who are still watching TV with rabbit ears are (by and large) the same people who are on the wrong side of the "digital divide". There are simply two kinds of people in this country: those who are at least somewhat comfortable with computers and who are linked to the greater society via the Internet and those who either can't afford a computer or are unwilling to embrace the future. Time is running out for the Luddites. When their screens fill with snow and they are finally totally cut off will they accept the inevitable or will they get in their wagons and trot to Washington en masse and demand a return to simpler times?

SUNSHINE

I was playing trivia at Molly Malone's Irish Pub in Louisville on election night 2000. I vividly remember when Florida was mistakenly put in Gore's win column and it was assumed that he would be our next president. A month later in a hotel room in Chicago I watched a resigned and fatalistic Al Gore concede to he who shall never be named again. Eight years later after thousands of our soldiers have needlessly died, after our constitution has been mangled, after the reputation and mystique of this country has been degraded to perhaps its lowest ebb in many generations, we have come out of this fugue state of hatred, denial, and division. The sun has shone on this nation once again.

BRAINS!!!

As we take a shambling lurch toward my favorite holiday, a little gore flecked reading is in order. I suggest World War Z by Max Brooks, a surprisingly serious and well written take on the whole flesh eating corpse genere.

A Few Carefully Chosen Words

Great political and social change in this country is greeted with suspicion, distrust, and often, downright hatred. The New Deal was a communist plot, Civil Rights legislation was socialist, Martin Luther King was an enemy of the state. Geoff Nunberg's commentary today on NPR's Fresh Air confirms what I have often thought about the current state of political discourse in this country.
Call it what you want but progress is coming regardless of what our reactionary friends on the right want us to believe.

ONLY 7 MORE DAYS....

Nervous? Who me? Well, maybe a little. Everyone must vote because this thing is not over yet.
Can you imagine a president that doesn't make you cringe? Who knows what he is talking about and who has the respect of his peers around the world? I can.

7 1/2 Habits of note

I will have the most trouble with Habit #3:
View problems as challenges. Everyday life is "challenging" enough as it is.

On the flip side, I plan to continue following Habit #6:
Use technology to your advantage. I like to think that advances in technology can be used as tools to make life easier and more fulfilling. What would we do without our DVR's and text messaging?

Than a frontal lobotomy

Death to all conservatives, (or at least a really painful itch). Not to be derivative but a change is a comin' and you best get on the train or get run over.