Open Thread: Your Ideas
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The Future
We said we wanted your help producing the show, and we mean it. We know you know more than we do, and If you send us story ideas, topics, guest suggestions, (and soon audio, video and pictures) we’ll put them — and you — on the air and on the blog with full credit.
We’re figuring this out from scratch, but here’s how we look at it: the Internet is our beat. We’re looking to capture the way people talk to each other online, the way they record their own stories. The blogs and the podcasts and the Wikipedia are not the story; the people we find through them are.
So what do you want to hear on the radio? What stories are you finding? What obscure but well-written blogs do you read? Leave us ideas — starting with the comment thread below — and we’re serious, we’re putting them on the radio.
download an mp3
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:12 pm
The most interesting current thing I can think of that fits this programme’s remit is the BBC’s Creative Archive: http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/
The archive itself is only open to Brits, but I’m sure a comparative feature can be made of it.
Here’s more on it: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/BBC_launches_the_Creative_Archive
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:04 pm
I have no great ideas right now, but I’m glad that you’re making a point that I’ve wanted to make for a while. The wiki isn’t intrinsically interesting. It’s the conversations that weren’t getting out that are what matter. Sometimes, however, the MSM gets some decent conversations out, and those should still be covered. Not being on the internet doesn’t make something bad.
I’d like to hear more about art and music. Those are things I don’t get much of right now. Maybe I’m reading the wrong blogs. Religion would be good too. We hear so much about the evangelicals, but what about those mainine protestants? Do they have nothing to say about the pressing issues of our time? Why are they being ignored? Is it just their declining numbers?
Religious blogs to check out
http://openpew.blogspot.com
and
slacktivist.typepad.com
May 24th, 2005 at 6:10 am
How about an audio tour behind the scenes so to speak backstage at our Boston Public Library?…
How do things work to produce the public services and collections available to the public?…
Especially, the BPL stacks areas that are not open.
Interview the editors, writers of the library publication The Real Sheet newsletter of the BPLPSA Boston Public Library Staff Association.
Here’s a collaborative blog
a guide to problematical boston public library use
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.buzzword.com
May 24th, 2005 at 7:47 am
I’d like to see a thing about newsgroups. I belong to two groups on the subject of Spiral Dynamics. My daughter is on with fans of her favorite TV shows. I am not currently terribly active but was at one time. The online communities generated, how they regulate themselves, how they try to keep the obnoxious in line… these things interest me.
Also there’s MeetUp.com, which tries to organize actual meetings of kindred spirits…
May 24th, 2005 at 10:10 am
I am sure that you have your eyes on the usual suspects (wonkette, craigslist — enough colorful stories there to make it a regular feature, sixapart, joi ito, gawker, boingboing, dailykos, instapundit, etc.) Here are a few you may not know about.
Jamie Zawinski [www.jwz.org] — “famous” former Netscape hacker now nightclub owner. Always has interesting things to say and has his finger firmly on the pulse of the ‘Net.
David Allen and “Getting Things Done” [http://www.davidco.com/blogs/david/]. To me, this is an interesting thing. David Allen writes a “personal productivity” book and it has really taken off among the technorati. Merlin Mann (who you should definitely have on) creates a blog called 43things.com centered around GTD concepts and “productivity p0rn.” A 43things wiki and Google Group follows. The ability to self-organize around a compelling concept is cool and it makes the book MUCH more meaningful for those participate in this larger community. Importantly, this community is not actually organized/directed by the author himself.
Whole Wheat Radio [www.wholewheatradio.org] — a live ‘Net radio show from Talkeetna, Alaska. The folks who run it are quirky and have quite a story to tell. In addition to the “standard” streaming radio gig, they also do “house concerts” which they broadcast and allow for subsequent download. Peter Mulvey (quick witted and would do well on the air) [www.petermulvey.com] is a musician who played a great concert that was made available via podcast later. As a fan of his music, this was a wonderful, intimate way to experience a show. This opens up themes of how bad commercial radio/music is and how lovely it is for individuals to connect through the ‘Net.
May 25th, 2005 at 9:23 am
I’d like to hear a show about truth-finding on the Internet. The net is choked with opinions and psuedo-facts, but is notoriously without an editorial staff or fact checkers.
Some sites such as snopes.com investigate urban legends. Others, such as epinions, Amazon, and lots of other shopping sites, let visitors review and rank items, in sort of an open-source Consumer Reports.
The larger issue is whether a community of Internet users can tackle a broader range of categories of information. Can the Internet provide a platform for information to heal itself (Wikipedia takes a stab at this)? Can any self-selected group of people performing this type of service be credible to the larger community? Can it work for contentious issues such as political claims or just for relatively unimportant things such as product reviews?
Can such a system/platform be secure from being co-opted by the marketers and spinners?
May 25th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Let’s talk about Google’s nascent effort to improve its news headline service (news.google.com) by assigning a trustworthiness rating to the news sources whose info it presents. Something like this seems necessary (that’s why “old” media has editors, publishers, and the like). But should it be done algorithmically (weighing the company size, age, number or reporters, survey results on trustworthiness, etc.)? Or must there be a human/manual component to assigning trustworthiness?
Can there still be a single arbiter of trustworthiness, or do we need Red and Blue-state versions?
I’m reminded of Lawrence Lessig; the Code that Google chooses will decide what we read, think, and do. In a large algorithmic system, no human can foresee all the consequences — Code, like government, is a blunt instrument.
May 25th, 2005 at 9:47 am
Not a show idea, exactly but a suggestion:
How about putting some photos of Chris, Mary, etc. on the site? It would be good to post a photo of the guest(s) in the studio with Chris for every show. With digital cameras, how tough would this be?
May 25th, 2005 at 4:07 pm
Where are the new technology visionaries?
The Golden age of technology in society has not pasted us by, it is almost upon us (This notion is taken from a podcast about Zopa.com which includes data from ethnographers who report rumbles of a societal shift)!
“Prove it,” you say?
No absolute proof here but early signs of the real revolution are bubbling up around us and there are a few people who seem to see it more clearly than others. Here are a few examples:
Johannes Ernst: Please read what he has to say at:
http://netmesh.info/jernst/2005/05/25#visionary-adam-bosworth
to get a feel for what he is thinking (and include Adam Bosworth too!).
I also recommend a listen to the podcast interview at:
http://www.corante.com/brandshift/archives/2005/04/04/podcast_interview_with_the_founders_of_zopa.php
While the Zopa founders are not building a truly “open” system I believe their vision, when combined with some of the thinking inside Johannes and Adam Bosworth’s minds signal dramatic shifts toward “social network finance”.
The logic which links Johannes/Bosworth to Zopa.com might seem arbitrary but I think if you get them to hear one another sparks will fly!
May 25th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Do a show about academic bloggers. I’m in love with a linguistics blog called Language Log. I’m sure there are great ones for every field.
It’s interesting because academics are almost the opposite of bloggers: they make it very hard for you to become one, their work is (supposedly) rigorously peer-reviewed before publication, they are hierarchical, etc… Yet plenty of academics blog — they do seem to get something out of it. Get a couple of good ones to talk about why.
May 25th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
How about a series of shows dealing with communities that have emerged because of and via the net — communities of brilliant people with indifferent social skills, for instance, have found each other via the internet. What role did chat rooms play in the emergence of Voice of the Faithful, one wonders. The internet has been fundamental in the establishment of support groups for people with Asperger’s syndrome.
May 26th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Chris,
You may find you have two audiences: one fascinated with your “beat”, the other fascinated with you.
Your fans from WBUR have been starved for intelligent radio since your departure – specifically your ability to create that “dinner party” tone and to push guests beyond the obvious which we can glean from the Times, WSJ, KausFiles, et al. We’d like nothing better than you essentially reinventing Connection on GBH and PRI.
And therein lies “the problem.” As a member of the second audience, we’d be happy to hear a show or three on Asperberger’s Net support groups or Drudge’s branding strategy or code from Google – or Gizoogle for that matter.
But day after day? We want Lydon on Iraq exit strategy; the voucher experiment in DC; freakonomics; Boston’s resegregation; the big AFL CIO showdown; a deconstruction of American Idol; bad choices in Korea and Iran; someone to explain the Elegant Universe.
Anyway, looking forward to hearing you on air.
Cheers, Mike G.
May 27th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
I would love to see (hear?) a show about how to cope with the ever growing tidal wave of information from the Web 2.0. It seems that we can find lots of wonderful blogs and links and casts and wikis, but it is easy to spend all your time ingesting without having time to digest, let alone having time to take action. Analysis paralysis would seem to be a potentially serious side effect of the wealth of data that can be tracked and sampled daily. Maybe it is about time managment issues, maybe it is practical organizational how-to’s. But how do you get stuff done, when there is a never ending array of sites to read and links to explore?
May 30th, 2005 at 11:37 pm
I think you should do a show about Robin Good. Robin Good is the name that Luigi Canali De Rossi has assumed to write his English language blog from Rome, Italy. The content is about mastering new media, online collaboration and real time web-based communication. He reviews new technologies, best practices and is an extraordinary web advocate. He is a prolific writer and manages three internet sites:
Mastering New Media: http://www.masternewmedia.org/
Kolabora: http://www.kolabora.com/
Master Views: http://www.masterviews.com/
He was one of the first bloggers I know to record conversations and post them on the web, even before podcasting.
I learn a lot from his work and because he is such a strong presence on the Internet he deserves a moment in “Open Source”.
May 31st, 2005 at 9:01 pm
A very good way to reallllyyy appreciate something critical but taken for granted that it will always be there and get better – is to suddenly take it away (i.e. my drill instructor taking away my boots).
Please do a show on who, why, how:
the great potential of the internet will be ruined.
And what we (voters, consumers, trend-setters, non-sheep pains-in-the-asses freedom fighters) have to do *now* to prevent it.
June 1st, 2005 at 1:04 am
What a great show and idea to marry the web with public radio. Will there be JavaScript modules for us who web produce for a public radio station to forward promote the upcoming shows?
Thank you and have a great day.
June 1st, 2005 at 2:02 am
A few thoughts from a west-coast artist. First, image searching. I want to hear a show about the visual on the internet. I use the Google (etc) “image search� feature constantly as a resource and I am fascinated with the question of how that information is organized, cataloged and used. Millions of personal, professional, paparazzi photos that can be searched as easily as phone numbers, addresses, etc. I imagine Google video is not far off. Even a cursory look at the image search suggests it is mostly about pornography, but that’s interesting too (way too big a part of the internet to ignore, right?). Someday you will have to do a show about pornography, but in the meantime, I think a closer look at image searching might yield an interesting show. As an artist, I am curious about the nascent idea of “web art� too. I’m not sure how to approach this, because it is generally so bad, but there is some out there and the best of it, in my opinion, is usually audio-based, which brings me to a final point that there is so much amazing archived audio on the internet that I have thrown my radio away.
June 1st, 2005 at 10:24 am
OSR is just what the doctor ordered. I do hope that it won’t become a slashdot-of-the-air; we need humanist content more than geek shoptalk.
I’m one too: a technical writer and former high-tech newsletter writer and software developer. Yet, I think it’s both fair and importanr to call into question one of the basic tenants of the high-tech worldview: The Imperative of Innovation.
I have tried and tried to get people to talk about possible downsides of this creed with little succeess; maybe OSR can have a go at it. If you want my take on Innovation, you can head over to http://www.spatial-effects.com/innov, have a look, and haveaniceday.
June 1st, 2005 at 8:12 pm
Poetry. There are tons of poetry websites out there….”official” poetry sites for published poets, personal websited dedicated to published poets….and now – all SORTS of people posting their poetry on blogs! I have a poetry blog, my middle school students who attend the poetry club I run have blogs!
That’s all to my idea right now, but it would certainly interest me!
Amy Kelly
June 1st, 2005 at 8:16 pm
Should add: fictionpress.com is where a lot of my middle school students post.
June 1st, 2005 at 8:24 pm
I don’t know how exhausted you folks {and your guests} are after the shows, but it would be interesting to follow the show with a web based audio live feed {and continued interaction with guests and people on the web} and see what level of participation would result.
June 3rd, 2005 at 9:47 am
How about posting an MP3 of one of your story meetings?
June 5th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Great site – has my juices flowing.
Some ideas
1. Integrate a wiki into this site. Maintain the Blog but use it more as a pointer to the more fluid wiki. I use a product called Trac at work and while a bit of a pain to setup might work well for you. For example here is the trac blog http://www.edgewall.com/blog/trac/ and here is the trac wiki for the development of trac itself http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki Benefits would include an ability to set milestones and tasks for show production itself. Ability for wiki. Self generating rss feeds and iCalendars. Source code handling if you have any of that.
2. Use an irc channel on freenode during shows so people can contribute and chat in real time. And capture it for posting on the website.
Now some ideas for shows.
1. Exploration of the Santa Fe Institute http://www.santafe.edu – maybe with a bent towards the summer school which started today and goes for a month.
2. Joi Ito! with a look at his irc channel on freenode #joiito – around 100 interesting people online all the time discussing everything.
3. http://www.gnomedex.com – June 23-25th 2005.
June 6th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Do you have transcripts of your shows? It would be cool to post them online along with the recorded binary versions. It would be fun to feed them into machine translation engines, and feed the results back into translate back into English. Just for a kick.
June 6th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
Good to hear you back on the air Im Here in San Francisco
Any one else listenening here Lets be in touch.
The book I spoke of on the show today
Maximum City Bombay Lost and Found
Suketu Mehta
A great read
Keep up the good work
Here on the cusp where the spoken and written word meet
Lets get on the same page,get out of the box
and push the envolop
Cast a wide net
find the commen thread
Let life flourish
than dont panic
just keep it
Organic
June 6th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
At some point you WILL have to do women bloggers: to wit,
http://www.alittlepregnant.com/
They’re doing things men bloggers aren’t. These are different forms of expression from Josh and Atrios and Kevin (not to mention Jonah and Andy):
http://www.fussy.org
June 6th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
And let me throw one more blogger phenom on the fire: department store blogging. Not Filene’s or Bloomie’s, but department stores from the original age of material desire, where the one physical store actually housed dozens of merchants. The Talking Points Memo Cafe — “No decaf served!” — is the most venturesome. TAPPED has always been multivoiced but univuncular, and now Max Speaks! (You listen!) features Max’s evil twin. Cynics might note that this multiplicity of voices has not occurred thus far on any so-called conservative blogs.
June 7th, 2005 at 12:05 am
Back in April, the BBC had a great series called “The Power of Nightmares” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm). It talks about the rise (and parallels) of Neo-Conservatism and Muslim Fundamentalism. There are good tidbits in there like how the US made up the name “Al Qaeda” so it could try Ossama in his absence and that he really has very few real followers. It also points out, and this is perhaps the most important part: not a single domestic case of terrorist sleeper cells has lead to a conviction. Oh, also it has several people talking about how “dirty bombs” are really not any more danerous then the conventional explosion they are based on.
I had never heard much of this before, so I’d like it if you and your viewers can help doing a bit of fact checking just to make sure everything claimed is accurate.
June 7th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
I think something on the amazing number of food blogs out there. My foodie friends fall into the camps of having a food blog or hating them with a passion (who cares what you ate for lunch!) But there’s something interesting about the way that the internet is reigniting the traditional social/historical aspect of passing along recipes and the way that it’s adding a component not found in my Aunt Flo’s recipe box – commentary on what those recipes mean to the person cooking them. Also, the complete abandon that bloggers use to describe all things scruptious makes it all too obvious how much of our real life conversation about food in America is negative and souless. Relish and an appreciation of the scrumptulescent in life must be saved for a medium where your subsequent fat rolls cannot be judged.
June 10th, 2005 at 8:20 am
please consider a show with Dorion Sagan, son of the late Dr. Carl Sagan and Prof. Lynn Margulis (UMass Amherst). “Into the Cool” is Sagan’s latest work and explores the second law of thermodynamics. Sounds way too technical, but it isn’t. Here is a sample of what to expect.
“Sunday, June 05, 2005
“Father Spin”: Open Letter to The New Yorker
With regard to the intelligent design (ID)-evolution
“debate,” were there evidence of life after death, my
late father, Carl Sagan, might be found spinning in
his Ithaca grave. Spackling ignorance with the
infinite power of an interventionist deity is classic
pseudoscience. Overlooked in this conflict, however,
is modern thermodynamics, which shows how matter,
including living matter, cycles and becomes more
complex in regions of energy flow. Here the
creationists score: Life is neither random nor
rudderless on a sea of possibility. Rather, it moves
towards more species, cell types, and taxa; increased
area inhabited, respiration efficiency, stored energy,
food, and information; and increase, despite several
mass extinctions (each hundreds of thousands of times
more powerful than all-out nuclear wars), in the
number of chemical elements cycled at Earth’s surface.
Unfortunately for those who want to pin its origin on
Him, however, life is but one of many systems that
measurably exhibit directional tendencies and more
effectively produce entropy than random aggregates of
matter. Complex systems do not require a creator.
Respectfully submitted,
Dorion Sagan
Manhattan ”
You might also want to check out author-nature photographer, Reg Morrison’s “The Spirit in the Gene.” He is in Australia, but would make a fabulous guest to talk about why we humans are the way we are. At the recent History of Astrobiology seminar at the Marine Biological Laboratories, Prof. Margulis called this one of the best books she has ever read. Margulis is the foremost proponent of symbiogenesis as an evolutionary mode (another absolutely fascinating topic) and the “co-author” with James Lovelock of the Gaia Theory (regulation of the Earth’s environment by its biota.
June 10th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
You see them every day as you walk to work, lounging in the shade of the Harvard buildings, sleeping in the parks, badgering pedestrians on the sidewalks. Some look just like you and I, others leave you feeling as filthy as they appear. Some will greet you as you walk by others will curse you for doing so. Come on – bring a few of them into your studio – expose the difference between the homeless and those without housing. Society continues to dwell upon a “solution� for the homeless, often confusing this with poverty housing. Show that there are people who really don’t want to be or can’t be bothered with the hassles of having a roof over their heads. Show that these are very different from those who would love to have as Habitat for Humanity states a “simple, decent, affordable house in which to live with dignity and safety�. Show that they homeless are not the same people who, no matter how many jobs they hold, no matter how many luxuries they forego, no matter how long they work, are lucky to scrape together the dollars necessary to pay the month’s rent and feed the family let alone put a down a deposit on the “America Dream�
June 12th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
Suggestion for a show:
150 years ago it required 90+% of the US population to produce sustinence for all of its citizens. Today, less than 10% of our people are involved in sustaining activities. So what are the rest of us doing, just spinning our wheels? Are we contributing to a better future? Do you feel you are? If not, why do we work so hard?
With that tremendous surplus of labor and creativity, what could we accomplish as a nation? How differnt would our lives be if the majority of Americans felt that their daily work was contributing directly to positive change in the world. Or conversely, how differnt would our lives be if we focused on quality of personal and family life instead of GNP? Could we work less and still live well? Why not?
Thanks, Jere Williams
jeretwilliams@rcn.com
June 13th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
I would love to hear a show on Jere’s topic: I have frequently felt that a vast majority of our labor in the modern world has become a completely abstract exercise in artificial busyness — we cling to ceremonial habits of “work” that have nothing at all to do with our survival. We create artificial “needs” and artificial “jobs” to earn enough to fill those “needs.” When my soul gets a chance to pipe up, it is saying, “This is why I’m unhappy — it’s all pretend, and it’s all unnecessary. I’d like to do something that is connected to the *real* world, but that option isn’t on the table anymore.”
June 14th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Jere, KenLac:
Most of us work just to earn a living. Yes, some of what we spend money on is not particularly valuable (larger houses than we need, better cars than we need, e.g.), but most of what most people earn is necessary to pay for health care and education for the kids. Whether we should as a nation restructure how we pay for health care and education is a great topic. If those were handled more efficiently and universally, it could free up a lot of people to do what they loved rather than just try to maximize their incomes.
Further: Many of us, as individuals, might in fact have to option to downshift right now. But I see two issues with this (both of which might be interesting topics):
1) What does that do to your network of friends and relationships? At what point does your new lifestyle become a rebuke to your friends still on the gerbil wheel?
2) What is the net affect on the economy? Our work provides a level of economic energy that is tapped by others to do things we don’t want to do. If we were all happy subsistence farmers and artists, how would be pull together to economic surplus to build the armed forces we need to stay free from other nations who work harder? Working less might be an example of Economics’ “fallacy of composition” — something might work well for one but fail if everyone does it. (Heck, this could hyperlink to a discussion of Kantian philosophy…)
None of that is an excuse, of course, for inefficient health care, wasteful energy production and consumption, special interest distortion of the free markets, wars of choice, etc.
Let’s talk about these things. I’d like a way out too.
June 16th, 2005 at 8:50 am
Astronomy has benefited perhaps more than any other science by the Internet? Why? Because it has empowered legions of amateur astronomers to become professionals in their own right. With access to the same journals and tools as the pros, many amateurs are making discoveries and getting published side-by-side the pros in the major astrophysical journals. But it goes beyond amateurs using a telescope. Teams of amateur computer scientists are volunteering their programming expertise to help professionals. Computer illustrators are taking the recent images from Saturn and turning them into beautful vistas, sometimes before the project scientists have even seen the data themselves! Much of this is a result of a requirement that all government funded science results have to be placed in the public domain. Astronomy, facing budget cuts like so many other areas, is gearing up to use this new volunteer workforce to fill in the gaps. So far it has worked like gang busters!
Aaron
(Slacker Astronomy podcast: http://www.slackerastronomy.org)
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:40 am
Hello Chris, Mary et al!
From a former collwague at WBUR, good to hear you back on the air.
Here’s a topic I have been chewing on: with all the talk about blogs, fostering intelligent (and otherwise) discussion on the Web (guilty on both counts), what about the blogees? Is there a way to manage your reputation on the Internet?
From the personal standpoint, where is the libel line drawn?
From the corporate perspective, how does one monitor and analyze what is being said about your brand or products? Can they anticipate trends, and problems?
Take, for example, the case of Kryptonite, the bicycle lock company. Bloggers revealed an easy way to pick the ubiquitous locks, and the news spread like an electronic brushfire across the blog world before Kryptonite could react, and perhaps address the problem before their reputation took a savage beating.
There are tools out there to aggregate blog content (I know you are aware of Technorati), but also to monitor and analyze what is being said in them (like Cymfony– http://www.cymfony.com– their CEO Andrew Bernstein has a lot of interesting things to say about blogging from the corporate side), but how does one start? Where does one look, and what should one be looking for? And once you have the info, then what? Do individual bloggers represent corporations entering the blogosphere, or do they welcome the 2-way conversation?
Besides Andrew Bersntein, there are other business blogger/blogee experts out there you could speak with, such as Sam Whitmore (http://www.mediasurvey.com/blog/) and Mike Spataro, Interactive PR/Blogging guru at Weber Shandwick
dough
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:41 am
Sorry, that’s Doug H. (dhaslam@topazpartners.com)
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:44 pm
{show idea}
A discussion about how the internet has changed the way people interact politically would be interesting.
The pluses – networking, meetups, fundraising, and of course, the blogs. Might even require more than one show.
But more importantly, however – as one who remembers demonstrating on the street during the war in Nam – is the internet dulling out street protest?
Has the internet made it all too easy for person like myself to make my voice heard on one level, and not where it really counts – the street?
Where is the motivation for those who blog, for example, to get out an do the civil disobediance thing? Has the ‘ether’ smothered it, or has it drugged us all into a kind of stupor?
June 23rd, 2005 at 10:15 am
One idea: I’m about to go to Toronto for the Int’l Lesbian & Gay Law Ass’n triennial conference (www.ilglaw.org). (Mary, you may remember having me on the show in the past–forgive the presumptuous self-promotion here!) An enormous amount is happening on lgbt rights around the world, with most of the progress happening outside the U.S. However, the American press is usually too parochial to take notice. Want to call me while I’m up there & hear some of the international flavor of gay rights? Let me know–
EJ
June 24th, 2005 at 10:25 am
I frequently miss the evening broadcast and then look for a link to download it the next morning. Is there a way to find links to past shows? I’m a tech person myself, but this site/blog structure is beyond me. Thanks.
June 28th, 2005 at 3:44 pm
Paul here. Bumped into Chris on the Red Line to Harvard this morning, as I have several times in the last few months. Talked about the show (Chris is good about not shooing total strangers away when they come and hassle him on the train). Apologized for sying “blow job” on the air when I called in to the Downing Street Memo show (still feel pretty bad about that). He asked me to write in with story suggestions. Who am I to turn down a chance to shoot off my mouth?
Before talking about the actual suggestions, just a word. The content is less important that the style. What I’m looking for is real CONVERSATION. Terry Gross does good interviews (although she tends to sound a bit like a fifth grader hassling her homeroom teacher when she talks to right wingers). Plenty of “issues” shows (Ashbrook, Conan, etc…). And of course, lots of screaming (pretty much anything on CNN, MSNBC or Fox). What you don’t get a lot of are 2 or 3 really intelligent people, with a really intelligent, unintimidated moderator like Chris, really TALKING about an issue, in-depth, from different points of view. Not debate. Discussion (albeit heated).
SO… having said all that… let’s get Niall Ferguson back on the air. He’s at Harvard now, so shouldn’t be a toughget. Chris had him on TWWW a couple of years ago and he was talking a big game about what a great thing British and US imperialism was during the early days of the Iraq war. Where is he now? And I’d love to hear him talking more with an Irish citizen or an Indian who has quite a different view of the impact of imperialism.
I’d also like to hear a discussion with Thomas Friedman. After making the talk show rounds telling everybody that he supported the US invasion of Iraq, as long as it was done “just right,” Friedman is back telling everyone to hunker down and tighten their belts, the Chinese and Indians are coming to kick our butts. But there was a great piece in the Nation this month by labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan lauding France and Germany for keeping their industrial base and challenging Friedman’s notion that high labor costs are a problem. That would be a great discussion.
How about a discussion of Karl Rove’s recent remarks in Manhattan (after 9/11 conservatives prepared for war; liberals wanted to give the hijackers therapy)? I don’t mean a partisan slugfest. What interests me is, when did peace, negotiation, diplomacy become dirty words? When did gearing up for war become something to brag about?
Rove’s comments bring to mind another topic. Chris was covering the DNC in 2004 and interviewed Norman Mailer, who had a fantastic line: “You can always count on the Democrats to do something anemic.” Their response to Rove’s comments was whiny (He’s being diVISive!!). They rolled over on Iraq, tax cuts and the Patriot Act. They have no program of their own. I’d love to hear a discussion between a progressive, who’s dedicated to the Democratic party, and others who are committed to building a third party.
Bush likes to call himself a conservative, but his actions – tax cuts, deficit spending, big social programs (prescription drug benefit) and foreign policy (the war in Iraq), actually resemble those of the most notorious liberal in US history: Lyndon Johnson. I’d love to hear a discussion with historian Michael Beschloss comparing Johnson and McNamara in the 1960s with Rumsfeld and Bush today.
Social security. Medicare. Medicaid. AFDC. Aid to higher education. These were all great progressive ideas that shaped the way we live and the quality of life for most Americans. So where are TODAY’s great progressive ideas? Robert Reich might have some. Michael Lind too.
Finally, the Times recently did that series on class in America. One of the pieces detailing the widening gap in wealth and income over the last 25 years between the richest Americans and everyone else. Harvard economist and former Bush advisor Greg Mankiw wrote in to the Times to say that the widening of the gap also coincided the economic booms of the last 25 years. This is almost an araticle of faith in the US these days. The only way to create wealth and prosperity is to make sure that the rich do disproportionately better than everyone else. Moreover, anyone who criticizes the strategy is a socialist, or just envious. I’d love to hear a doscussion with Mankiw and Princeton economist Paul Krugman about the wealth gap and its impact on society.
I’ll be listening!
June 29th, 2005 at 9:25 am
If you want to take a break from Iraq etc., how about tackling this question:
“Is a person nuts to take up the saxophone these days?” Let me explain…
How about a show about music in the computer/Internet age that focusses on performing, not consuming, music. The show shouldn’t mention iPods or MP3. The essential issues are:
1) How has technology altered popular music and instrument selection over the years? Think about the impact of low-fi radio (including car radio) on the types (and number and variety) of instruments used in popular music, the affect of sampling and PC-based music creation tools on music creation, etc. Are some instruments all but dead in popular music because they are hard to play compared to an electronic keyboard, or because they are hard to manipulate or simulate on a PC?
2) With music so easy to summon up on a portable player, Internet stream, or satellite radio, is the very idea of performing one’s own music passe? Is someone who spends several hours per week for several years learning an instrument a chump?
3) What exactly ARE we to do when the kids are out of the house and we are left alone with one another? Is the fact that everything is so cheap and easy to consume really an obstacle to anyone trying to create anything themselves? Doesn’t satisfaction come from creating things — is technology taking away something here?
4) Or, are there technology-based music (or art or whatever) teaching tools that open up creative expression (beyond photography and writing) to more people? Can one really learn to play the sax from a computer?
Didn’t Chris take up piano as an adult? He should be able to cast some light on all this.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
I don’t know if this will appeal to your urbane sensibilities, but how about a show about the Appalachian Trail (AT) in particular or hiking in general? The AT was designed by Massachusetts-based conservationist and visionary Benton MacKaye as a nonprofit amateur community (“a retreat from profit”) and it has largely persisted as such. (MacKaye’s original 1921 article proposing the AT is available at a number of sites on the web.) At least in theory, anyone can hike the full length of the 2100-mile trail (the federal government has by now procured the right-of-way of all but a few miles of the route) free of charge; there are no toll booths along the way. There is a thriving subculture of AT “thruhikers,” whose goal is to hike the entire trail; but the majority of AT hikers simply enjoy using the trail in more modest increments.
There are various organizations and groups with websites, including the Appalachian Trail Conference, which in this 80th year of its existence is proposing to change its name to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (the reasons for which consistute a story in itself); an on-line AT forum called Whiteblaze.net; the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association; and others. Other local and regional trail clubs, some with venerable histories, including the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, etc. There is also a vast array of books (not all of them good–and not necessarily including Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”) about the AT experience. Since the passage of the National Trails System
Act of 1968, the National Park Service has had federal oversight authority over the acquisition of the trail route and its management.
Anyway, think about opensourcing the AT.
July 1st, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Sometimes people describe blogs as an alternative to the MSM/press. Most blogs I’ve seen are 90% opinion and 10% facts. Without working journalists to source information, blogging is just bloviating and rumor mongering.
Yet some blogs aeally are primary sources of information, like some of the military blogs that Chris hosted last night. They satisfy my thirst for a sense of the texture of events, the details that MSM filter out. If blogging is ever to supersede MSM outlets, more news needs gathering and somnehow aggregated withou censoring or twisting it.
We don’t get much real news from Iraq because reporters are afraid to get out of the green zone or their hotels to sleuth and mingle. That’s why I was SOOO HAPPY to discover the weblog called “Iraq Burning”, written in impeccable English by a young Iraqi woman, a self-described geek, who lives with her family near the Tigris River: http://www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Her posts have continued for over a year, and are amazing for their clarity and command of language, not to mention how insightful (cynical too) and straightfoward they are in telling it like it is (to her). Her reports help me taste the sand in the air, smell the munitions smoke, feel the anxiety, and hear cursing of the traffic jams and water taps running dry.
Please, opensource, check out the blog, try find this woman and talk with her (but don’t get her into trouble with the people over ther who might like her silenced).
July 1st, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Just a reminder that there was an internet before http://WWW...
Remember usenet? And moo/mud/mush – some of us are still there, GUI-less and happy.
There’s been a bit of discussion about revitalizing the population of Lambda MOO with new blood, and it occurred to me that talking about it on Open Source would be a great way to get the word out that we’re still there, still interesting/interested, and ready to welcome new participants!
July 1st, 2005 at 6:39 pm
with all the Live 8 business going on, perhaps some contribution from africans as what they think of the concerts and sir Geldof? Check out the discussion on http://thinkersroom.blogspot.com/2005/06/live-aid-please.html#comments and on http://bulletsandhoney.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
July 7th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Dear Chris,
Thank you for making the site more user friendly for me. I would like to suggest a program with Amy Goodman from “Democracy Now.” I see her show on Cambridge Community TV; but I find my friends and family in other communities don’t know anything about her or her show. She presents a point of view that the mainstream media reporters don’t even hint at. Perhaps her exposure on your show would encourage other outlets to carry her. Recently Bill Moyers was interviewed on her show and he suggested her audience contact their local TV and radio outlets to carry her. I did this several months ago; but I am a voice in the wilderness. Bill Moyers would also make a good guest for your show.
Sincerely,
Cynthia from Cambridge
July 7th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
I’d build a show around Greil Marcus’ new book “Like a Rolling Stone.” It’s a brilliant jumping-off point for exploring the tectonic shift of American popular music and culture in the mid-1960s through the prism of Bob Dylan’s song.
July 8th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
The physical environment in which we live is a central part of the human experience. Once, not long ago, that environment was a natural one, and we experienced our lives in forests, on river banks, along the seashores, in the mountains, and on the plains. Suddenly it is 2005, and the vast majority of us spend our entire lives in an artificial environment created by city planners, architects, and (egads!) developers. As our country continues to choke on its own growth and as our metropolitain areas sprawl further and further into the virgin countryside, how has the experience of living changed for the American human being, as we eek out an existence is a wolrd of cookie-cutter houses, endless suburbs, strip malls, engineered rivers, and six lane local streets? Will the 21st centrury leave any architectural legacy, or will it be the era in which we figured out how to make plastic look like granite and how to cover styrafoam with stucco? Finally, once the land has been developed, and the country has become a sprawling abomination…then what? Will we care? Could we fix it?
July 11th, 2005 at 9:35 am
There’s an amazing article in Orion Magazine this month by David James Duncan, “What Fundamentalists Need for Their Salvation” (http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-4om/Duncan.html). I’d love to hear him on the show, he is an extraordinary, passionate, wise and articulate person, a philosopher-naturalist and something of a mystic–and he was raised fundamentalist. He is very, very angry at how Christian fundamentalists are
taking America—the American environment, American society, and American
democracy–to hell in a handbasket woven out of specific distortions of
Christian teaching. Two quotes: (on the subject of recurrent language in Bush’s speeches):
“How righteous, how truthful, how Christian is the cunning of speechwriters
who place words meant to praise God, or even Christ’s spilled blood, in the
mouth of a man who instead uses them to exalt an American empire born of the
destruction of America’s own ecosystems, civility, diplomacy, and honesty?�
and
“I see no more crucial tool for diffusing fundamentalist aggression than the
four books of the Gospels, and can think of no more crucial question to keep
asking our crusaders than whether there is anything truly imitative of
Jesus—that is, anything compassionate, self-abnegating, empathetic,
forgiving, and enemy-loving— in their assaults on those they have determined
to be ‘evil.’ �
If that isn’t one of the things we should be talking about on Open Source, I don’t know what is. Thanks for Open Source, Chris and everyone!
July 12th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
I would like to know what the democrats can realy do to defend agains the republican onslaught that is quickly takeing over all aspects of american psyche.
I heard once that it is an act of treason to lie to congress. If that is true why do the democrats not impeach bush? it would not be that hard to show that, in a good deal of his comments to congress, he lied. WMDs, Foreign Aid, Stem-Cells, his plans for Social Security, or even his coments on the 2000 election could get him impeached.
Why are we doing nothing about this republican takeover?
Clinton got hit with impeachment because he got some.
Now Bush might be honestly trying to turn this country into a true empire, and we give him a pat on the back.
What the Hell is going on here?
-Wyall-
July 12th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
Religion and Politics
Tuesday 12 July 2005
audio Listen Real Media | Windows Media
The church has again entered the political fray with Anglican and Catholic church leaders expressing reservations about the Government’s proposed changes to IR laws. Australia is a secular society…but has religion and politics become too closely intertwined?
I think a joint show with Australia Talks Back would be of great interest. If not on this topic than the War, Terrorism, drugs or similar world issue. Phillip Adams of Radio National’s Late Night Live should be a guest. Chris is America’s Phillip Adams if you can not do a joint show with ATB than a least have Phillip as guest on OS when the topic is right
Thanks
July 13th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
Suggest a Show:
I’m the Project Director of the New England ADA & Accessible IT Center, one of 10 Centers located regionally throughout the country and funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research under the Department of Education. All 10 ADA Centers (www.ADATA.org) exist to help Americans understand their rights and responsibilities under the ADA through a national toll-free hotline 1-800-949-4232. We offer free, accurate information to callers in a friendly manner and are funded by tax payer money.
The ADA Centers receive thousands of calls annually answering questions such as: “I have MS, is this a disability?” or “Do I have to allow a service animal in my restaurant?”
The public has incorrect perceptions about the law and who the law protects. The ADA receives a lot of negative press due to focus on law suits. However, there are stories of positive changes made over the past 15 years that have benefited many people, including people without disabilities.
All of us (travelers, senior citizens, new mothers) have benefited from a range of cultural and technological advancements bringing greater convenience to our lives: (EXAMPLES) safety improvements (flashing fire alarms); technology (text messages, closed captioning); ease of movement (sidewalk curb cuts)
US Census (2000) showed that 20% of the population identified a household member as having a disability. With increasing lifespan and life-saving technologies, the ADA may be the law that most of us find useful for full participation in American life.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
I’d like a show focusing on the apparent trend toward decentralization (of which opensource journalism is one example) and which asks the question, “Why not education (on a widespread scale)?” Jame Moffet’s book Universal Schoolhouse first allowed me to see those possbilities….
The Hydrogen Economy (another book) makes the case for a future of decentralized sources of energy; aid progress in Africa and elsewhere demonstrates the effectiveness of foreign aid in the form of micro loans, as discussed recently on NPR; blogging with camera phones (from London, most recently) show us citizen journalism, and the “citizen sector” of social entrepreneurship is epitomized by the Ashoka Foundation and its fellows; consider the MIT-created FabLabs as the most interesting example of how manufacturing could become decentralized; and think of what NASA’s Highway in the Sky could do to shape the future of personal flight.
Against such a backdrop, I’d love to learn about pioneering models for “schools” that are networks of human and material resources, not brick-and-mortar affairs. Who’s thinking about and trying to “do” school along those lines?
July 14th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
How about delving into the inherent narcissism of our society that blogging seems to feed off of? Whether you’re posting a self-obsessive on-line journal or savvy political commentary, it seems like everyone’s going for that 15 minutes of fame, needing to make themselves heard.
Don’t mean to completely negate the value of all blogs, but it does seem to be yet another symptom of an increasing sense of self-importance and need to put oneself front and center (like intrusive cell phone conversations and the plethora of reality shows).
July 15th, 2005 at 7:27 am
The City of Chelsea, MA is about to take a bold step. It will become the first city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to install wired and wireless digital surveillance cameras. Upon the initial implementation to be completed later in 2005, the city’s police department will be able to continuously monitor the city’s entire 1.8 square mile area.
The City of Chelsea made this announcement on June 3, 2005 weeks before the London terrorist bombings on July 7. At that time, the Boston Globe report of the city’s surveillance camera announcement also included a statement from Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Massachusetts. She warned that without written rules limiting who has access to the cameras’ images and for how long they will be stored, “we’re going to a pure surveillance society where the government is watching your every move. I don’t think that’s good law enforcement or consistent with American values.”
The London terrorist bombings really serve to place the issues in this debate into bold type. Law enforcement officials around the world can now observe the swiftness with which London police detectives are discovering the identities of these terrorists in spite of the fact that four of them were suicide bombers whose physical remains have all but vanished. They are doing so with the help of stored images captured by surveillance cameras installed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York City.
Now that we’ve witnessed the horror of the London terrorist attacks, we as a democratic society concerned with personal privacy and security should now determine how to use digital surveillance technology to secure pubic safety without sacrificing personal privacy and security. The alternative security measures available to those people we have made responsible for our public safety include racial profiling – a practice the ACLU would find equally reprehensible.
Here’s the show idea: It is no longer enough for the ACLU to “just say noâ€? to the use of advanced public surveillance technology which could be a powerful, lifesaving protector. What the ACLU should now do is establish guidelines for the acceptable use of this technology by a democracy that is equally concerned with personal privacy as it is with public safety. Don’t wait for local law enforcement officials to do this. That will only result in a patchwork of potentially conflicting rules and regulations. The ACLU have the legal resources to do so. Get them on the show and find out if they’re willing to be mre than simple nay-sayers.
July 20th, 2005 at 10:56 am
if blogging and the proliferation of blogs has trumped the old media
not just in its enabling so much give and take, punch and
counterpunch, call and response, but also in its making possible
(making possible for the first time? or once again finally?) a public
sphere with more than four channels, four or five major dailies, two
magazines and a bag of dunkin’ donuts, a public sphere within which
it’s become almost deliriously easy for the individual with whatever
gorgeous genius of the particular she still holds onto to sound off,
speak her mind, define herself, connect with the like-minded, engage
with the unlike, to open up for herself and then tune to a lowpower
but very, very personal channel of thought, imagining, expression,
then culture already needs to be remapped, east to west, north to
south. who are our new journalists, political pundits, peacekeepers,
philosophers, photographers, poets, mommies, lovers, lawyers, and how
do they see themselves and what it is they’re doing? even if the old
monoculture hadn’t been a material requirement of the old media, most
of this new and rich particularism would have eluded its telemetric
capacities. one has to wonder whether many of our basic
categories–journalist, political pundit, etc.–might not also be now
insufficient. let’s go slow, but let’s get going.
let’s look at how what we used to call parenting is being rethought,
reimagined, refigured inside the new universe of blogging, where the
particular–once the silent anomaly–becomes a node of collective
consciousness.
as a parent who’s blogging, it interests me to realize that i’m, in
effect, trying to return to the old neighborhood. a whole generation
of adults who have aspired to a 5000 square foot house on a two acre,
wooded lot in an excellent school district are now online looking for
all those close neighbors we left behind when we gained that kind of
prosperity; we are in effect inviting everyone who used to live
upstairs and next door (the grandparents, the aunts, uncles, cousins,
the town gossip, the two or three closest friends) and down the street
right back in to the kitchen. this isn’t just about getting an
audience for ourselves, or at least about audience as it’s narrowly
defined. it’s about wanting people to be witness to our lives–the
work we’re doing with our kids and in our homes. it’s also about
needing support. no one’s disputing that contemporary suburban
domestic life is lonely. what’s new is that blogs seem to be filling
part of the vacuum.
here’s what we’re working on:
http://www.materialistfriends.com/thesituationists/
July 21st, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Can we have freedom of speech if we are afraid to listen? Have you ever noticed that totalitarian countries (such as Islamic republics) are very intolerant of freedom of speech? Why? Maybe because they get angry too easily as what people say. Do we not have that same situation here in America with both the Left and the Right? Are not both sides of this question intolerant of religiously or politically incorrect speech?
I have found that by relaxing and the practice of not reacting, I am capable of not just tolerating thoughts outside the box, but actually enjoying it. I have also found that the purpose of all spiritual teachings is to teach us how to relax.
Please use me as a source on this topic.
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:28 am
Beyond Gay Rights
Much like the abortion debate, the more recent gay rights debate is heading toward two polarized views that see no legitimacy in each other:
Is there no legitimacy in opposing gay rights from an ethical perspective?
Is there no legitimacy in supporting gay rights from a civil rights perspective?
So, I would like to hear a show that seeks to frame the gay rights debate in a way the each side can see at least some truth in the other.
July 22nd, 2005 at 1:47 pm
Some topic ideas:
- Get out of the box: Take a canoeing trip on the Merrimac with a naturalist and Thoreau-ite. Visit Plum Island Wildlife Refuge.
- Little League Baseball: get the kids involved.
- The Corporation vs. the Individual: you could do a whole series on this one – bankruptcy, privacy rights, taxation, employment/unions, the concept of corporation, corporate sheltering, shareholder’s rights, etc.
- Iconoclasts: the only private people left.
- Ty Burr: the movie reviewer on the Boston Globe staff – brilliant!
- Fortune cookies: real and computer generated.
- What are the Odds of Dying: http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm Top 2: 1) Car occupant 2) Intentional self-harm by firearm
Gotta go…
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:57 pm
S.O.S. It’s going to take me forever to compile my wishlist but the renewal of the Patriot act is coming upon us, the House of Reps having already had it’s say.
Billmon, Whiskey Bar blog had a post on it: http://billmon.org/archives/002049.html.
The Fourth Amendment. Can we talk about the Fourth Amendment? Maybe Harvey Silverglate would be good on this. We love Harvey Silverglate.
July 24th, 2005 at 7:19 am
Don Beck is one of the founders of Spiral Dynamics. He used this technology, which involves the mapping and development of worldviews, in South Africa around the ending of apartheid, and he has been working with the Dutch around the problems they have encountered with the integration of a large Muslim community. He is very articulate and has quite a lot to say about the world scene. I highly recommend talking with him.
July 25th, 2005 at 10:11 am
Good Morning…
My suggestion for a show (or shows…) is to host author Ronald Wright whose
book “A short History of Progress” comprises the 2004 Massey College Lectures “A Short History of Progress,” broadcast in November 2004 as part of Radio’s Ideas
series. The producer of the series was Philip Coulter; the executive producer
Bernie Lucht. Ronald Wright examines our 5,000,000 year hominid history.
Employing French painter and writer Paul Gauguin three questions “Were do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” the author suggests that this “Great
Experiment” needs direction.
July 25th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Where are the programs on the radio for small children? Take advantage of their imagination and give them a place where there are no cartoon characters, but rather wonderful stories, songs, etc. And, by the way, start early on the next generation of radio listeners.
When I was a child in Los Angeles, a man with a wonderful deep ‘grandfather’ voice used to read the comics in the LA Times comics. I could lay the paper on the floor next to the radio and follow the stories before I could read. I was forever after hooked on the radio and this Sunday morning program was ‘mine’.
There are folk out there who are wonderful story tellers and singers of songs and people who can give small children things to think about (“Free to be You and Me” comes to mind). Maybe library story-tellers could be included.
My 3-year-old grandson is on the web daily but so far has only found Disneyesque sites to push buttons and play games. Good intro but no content. So my imaginary children’s radio program could include web site recommendations, etc.
July 25th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Good Morning, I just became aware of your blog site this morning and think your mission is a noble one. I am an author, speaker, but foremost a broadcaster who found the recent posting a wonderful “blast from the past”. I too am of the generation that grew up with a radio next to my bed and the ultimate theatre of the mind…..with “My Friend Irma, Life of Riley, Arthur Godfrey etc etc…life was good and there was indeed a 4:00 p.m “Comic Book Read’. My love of radio turned into a career in broadcasting…so I am that guy you talk about who would love to read to small children, I too have a grandson close to 3 years old. I would also like to share my present purpose which is to complete a book called “Buddha in the Board Room”- “An Entrepreneurs Guide to Enlightenment complete with Road Map and Truck Stops”. I very much am encouraging input from fellow travellers on the journey of life…so please do visit my blogsite at http://www.buddhaspeaksbiz.blogspot.com. Keep up the great work you are doing and I would love to participate in any way I can.
July 25th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
Did I read right? You have a million dollar budget? If so, where’s the “giving back to the community” section?
Open Studios is a nonprofit organization that assists communities to build and operate community-based recording studios. Any coverage of the topic would be appreciated. There are huge horizons in every direction for the Digital Age, as it is the computer that empowers the individual, just as the printing press empowered the People. If you would consider breaking out a little tiny corner for those who might want to contribute public service announcements related to specific shows, we would be most appreciative.
July 25th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Why Did the Dems Put Dean in Charge?
Have they gone mad?
Are they “testing the waters?”
Didn’t a centrist really want the job?
Do they want to distinguish themselves from the Republicans?
Is it an olive branch to the “left” wing of the party?
Is there a growing sentiment they must try a new approach?
Do they think he knows where the money is?
Do they want to attract more young people, blacks, and ethnics?
Is is part of a defined strategy–or are they playing with fire?
Is this the beginning of the liberal backlash?
July 26th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
I think this would be a good time to talk about the tension, now evident in controversies surrounding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, between assuring adequate pain management and reducing the likelihood of opiate medications (like morphine, Oxycontin, Percocet) being misused, abused or diverted.
For a long time it has been established practice to give narcotics generously to patients with acute pain (i.e. a broken bone) or terminal pain (i.e. cancer). For patients with daily, nonterminal pain, however, the decisions a doctor must make are complicated and colored by uncertainty.
Primary care physicians (like me) struggle to define good care for patients with longstanding pain. In many instances, the continuing month-by-month prescription for narcotic pain medicines can help return a patient to regular functioning, to a life that works. It can be difficult to sort out, as one gets to know a patient, if there is any chance that the patient is in fact misleading the physician, or has criminal intent. For the doctor who has been fooled by one patient, feelings of rage or betrayal can color the decisions that apply to future patients and lead to undertreatment of future patients.
Enter the DEA and its enforcement actions. There are in fact solid data pointing to a rise in the percentage of Americans saying they have misused narcotic pills, i.e. used them for nonmedical purposes. To address this problem, or at least to create the impression of addressing this problem, the DEA has investigated, and in some instances pursued some astounding prosecutions, including that of Dr. Hurwitz, a pain specialist now in federal prison for 25 years to life. Technical changes to how certain narcotic medications may be prescribed also have imposed new barriers to their being offered to patients who need them.
A discussion of these issues might conceivably involve some of the voices who have objected to DEA policies, a substance abuse specialist who deals with pain issues, a physician who has been investigated, the bloggers who are raising questions, and a national authority on pain.
The essential reality is that physicians must face and risk uncertainty in the clinical care of any condition, and self-reported pain is an excellent example of a situation where uncertainty and risk of misrepresentation are inherently part of the equation. The DEA says, essentially, “pshaw, no uncertainty, there is just ‘good practice’ and ‘bad practice’ and we aim to weed out the bad apples”. As others have pointed out, the DEA’s publicized markers of “success” are reductions in the number of opiate pain medicines prescribed (appropriateness, which they can’t evaluate, doesn’t enter into this), and number of doctors put in prison or out of business. What is the effect of this approach? Does this actually reduce drug abuse? How will this influence the care that patients with legitimate pain can expect to receive when they go to the doctor?
Look at this article from Time Magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1083911,00.html
Or the NYT columns by John Tierney in the past week (such as Handcuffs and Stethosocopes, on 7/23/05).
A provocative blog:
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/021071.php
(the writer apparently published a newspaper article that drew a response from the DEA’s head administrator, and this link is his/her point-by-point debunking)
The DEA has some people who likely could comment on enforcement actions.
A pain care authority (respected nationally): Russell Portenoy, MD (Chair, Department of Pain Management and Palliative Care at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, NY)
The following link is to a recent Cato institute report that Tierney and others cite, by Ronald T. Libby “Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA’s War on Prescription Painkillers”
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa545.pdf
In any case, if you need further suggestions Chris and gang, you know how to reach me.
from,
Not-so-random
July 26th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
One would think the citizens of the world would start realizing that essentially all the world’s savagery, misery, blood shed and violent death among innocent people of the world, by far the major victims, is the result of government action on the behalf of a miniscule fraction of the world’s population. One would think people would begin to boycott any and all government agencies not directly involved in creating friendly relations with their own citizens and all others. Only government actions with one’s own agreement should be funded or otherwise supported by each citizen. Earmarked tax payments are the only meaningful vote anyone has in the behavior of their government. It matters not whom the government functionaries are. It is time to wake up and take responsibility for one’s own government, environment and circumstances of government actions affecting the lives of people by being responsible to whom one provides the means to undertake unwanted actions. A government not engaged in making friends for the citizenry instead of making enemies should be starved out of office.
How about a show asking tax paying people why they pay their governments to make enemies for them instead of making friends for them. If the government is making their lives more difficult and worrisome, why do they give them money with which to do it? Why not give to the agencies of government which one perceives as making life more fulfilling with peace of mind? Let the other agencies get paid by their advocates or do without. Such a show should be entertaining to hear people trying to make sense of the reverse.
July 27th, 2005 at 3:16 am
A friend of mine recommended a book on the Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Svendsen. I’d love to hear the author interviewed
July 27th, 2005 at 10:30 am
from today’s Raleigh, (NC) News & Observer–I emphasize, I do NOT know te letter writer–I am interested in people looking further into this matter of timing and efficiency of the Federal TSA at ariports. See letter below.
The News & Observer
Published: Jul 27, 2005
Modified: Jul 27, 2005 8:15 AM
Time for a better measure of RDU lines?
Regarding your July 24 article “Navigating RDU”:
I believe the wait times shown for Raleigh-Durham International Airport in the government data are flawed.
I have, on two occasions, been selected as a “timer.” As I arrive at the security line I’m handed a slip of paper that has been time-stamped. It says “TSA is measuring the time to get through security, in an effort to speed up your trip. Please hand this notice to the TSA officer after you exit security.”
As a frequent traveler, I often leave on Saturday afternoon and return on Saturday mornings (slow air travel times) rather than Friday night. When I was handed the notice, I immediately thought it was “cheating” to do the measurements on a Saturday afternoon rather than a typical weekday, but I dismissed the thought, knowing that they may do measurements every day.
Also, I know that there are two security checkpoints at Terminal A, and since the first one is usually crowded (and was on this Saturday) I went to the farther one. When I was halfway through the line, the TSA officer took the notice back from me and time-stamped it. I didn’t say anything about it at that time. (I have dates and times to back up all my claims).
For the next few weeks, I took notice of the timing system. I never saw it being used at rush hour.
About a month later, again on a Saturday, I was handed a slip, again time-stamped. I was in the line for about 10 minutes and the TSA officer walked over and took it back from me. I said “I’m not through security yet.” She didn’t say anything and then stamped it again. I said, “Hey, that’s not accurate. I’m still in line here.” She said, “Sir, do you want to fly today? Then please mind your own business.” I made a few more complaints and she walked through security to the airport side.
While going through security, I asked a few officers who the lady was. They said she was the supervisor. When I got through (timed as 12 minutes and 15 seconds after the time-stamp) I approached her and said I thought she was “gaming the system” and that doing measurements on a Saturday afternoon and at the shorter of the two Terminal A lines was simply cheating. Further, that taking the time slip away from me before I even entered the security area was simply wrong. I asked that she correct the time to show the additional 12 minutes it took me to get through.
At that point, a police officer approached and told me, “Pal, you don’t tell her how to do her job. And if you say one more word, you are not flying today, and I’ll put you under arrest.” I walked away.
Ben Levitan
Raleigh
(The length limit on letters was waived.)
© Copyright 2005, The News & Observer Publishing Company,
a subsidiary of The McClatchy CompanyMcClatchy Company
July 27th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
ARE FEWER AMERICANS GROWING UP?
Some five years ago, Robert Bly wrote a book called THE SIBLING SOCIETY. It met with mostly negative reviews. With divorce statistics hovering at 50 per cent, and those from divorced homes having a 50 per cent greater likelyhood of divorce than those not from broken homes–more Americans’ are being brought up by their siblings, peers, and televison sets than they are by “adults”.
Divorce is an issue. National maturity is an issue. Why don’t we hear more about it and its possible link to the kind of choices Americans are making politically and culturally? Its mere complexity make it both daunting and worth discussing.
Who are the experts? Can we trust our religious leaders in the matter? The psychological and child rearing experts, what do they have to say that is new and insightful–if anything? What about those legions of divorcees–men and women–do they all still think they made the right choice, or are they having second thoughts given what has transpired in the interim?
It is an issue that cuts across racial, ethnic, and class boundaries. The one group that is mostly exempt are the new arrivals. Far few immigrants, as difficult as their lives may be in a new culture, get divorced than those who supposedly are more secure in their identity as Americans. What does that say about our culture as a whole?
Was Bly right? Have we become a nation of adolescents raising the next generation to be adolescents as well? Wouldn’t this make for a more interesting and valuable discussion than the usual political harrangues that fill the airways?
Ben Sen Dan Foley
July 27th, 2005 at 11:55 pm
SHOW IDEA: AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND COERCION
What causes journalist to short circuit their own stories? Stop midway?
What subtle or not subtle threats have they received to wave them off a story?
How have they found themselves self-censoring?
Did they ever find themselves in the midst of a banal assignment and just ask: “What makes this news?” Or, “Why did I get into this business?”
Guests should include reporters with stories about pressure, coercion, and cries of conscience–and maybe even suggestions about how to change the “pack mentality” of the main stream media.
July 28th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
“The other side of the coin” makes for fascinating, disturbing, provocative writing, reading and writhing. For example-H8rler was evil-what if he were not and treated Jews as did the Kaiser and no Einsteins, Meitners, Bohrs etc-fled Germany and were encouraged by Hitler? What if the mob had not demanded the crucifixtion and Pontius succumed and the Cruccifixion happened-Would we have a Christian Faith today? What if we added to our help for the world’s needy and sick something else besides bags of grain, piles of medicines and billions of grants-what if we considered jobs as a contribution to the betterment of the third world strugglers. Wjat of Ja[an had followed up Pearl with landings?and there are more-many mofe—-
July 28th, 2005 at 9:48 pm
Chris,
I wrote about knitting and how it can inherently lead to community. I heard you fishing for discussion of community this evening. I wanted to get back in there and go there with you. While you’ve just done an hour on knitting and its ‘hipness’, I wonder if there isn’t another discussion on how people in our high-tech, fast-paced, isolating urbanized society find community.
We have a vibrant and profound community here at Circles in JP. I think you’d hear the core of the passion for knitting if you explored the bonds of this community. More than that, you would explore one very healing route toward the expulsion of loneliness that so many people are experiening today: finding ways to get around the walls that keep us from connecting to one another.
Not to mention that I would be thrilled to have an opportunity for a real dialogue with you. I hear you ‘getting’ where I’m going and it was disapointing not to be able to hear your reflections which I am sure would trigger ideas on how to expand my vision. So many people could benefit….
July 29th, 2005 at 4:41 am
If what you have been taking on lately is representative of the broad spectrum you want to cover, I would say that on the whole, you seem to be covering the “latest issues” happening in the world……many of which sre related to the world’s headlines. As far as I can tell, (and judging from the fact that no matter the subject, I am starting to get hooked on the format) you are doing a great job of this by uncovering more than just headline surface issues while you are at it. Thank you. I feel like I am learning things I would have trouble finding out elsewhere. That said, I was glad to see the program on Miles Davis. For all the light that needs to be shed on the truths about misspent money in Iraq, and the horrors of Abu Ghraib, we also need to know about (and keep the flame burning) on the creativity of the human race. I would like to see a higher percentage of shows on the arts….not just for simple balance, but to make a habit of also shedding light on us humans’ inherent ability to manifest our dreams in positive ways.
August 1st, 2005 at 7:58 am
It would be nice to have a show in simplified Learner English, a bit like Voice of America or the audio version of Oxford Bookworms. I guess that speaking in simplified English would make it a lot more difficult to record. If there were shows in simplified English then I agree with frites above that it would be nice – but by no means necessary – to be able to see the transcripts. Such shows might remain listened to for (even) longer. Hence, if you were to make such shows then subject matter which is more cultural than contemporary would be a good idea.
August 1st, 2005 at 3:19 pm
An interesting and controversial show idea:
“Has one of our major religions been hijacked by fringe fundamentalists?”
I’m talking about Christianity.
My reading of the Bible shows that much of what Conservative Christians support is contrary to what Jesus taught. Jesus basically said that rich people won’t go to heaven unless they give up their worldly goods and follow him. How does that comport with Estate Tax elimination, capital gains tax reductions, etc.?
How about relaxing environmental restrictions on mercury, arsenic, and the like?
How about privatization of formerly public functions such as education?
How about the death penalty?
Is there any research on what percentage of Americans have actually read the Bible?
There’s an article along these lines in the recent Harper’s, though I haven’t had time to go through it all: http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptTheChristianParadox.html
August 1st, 2005 at 3:49 pm
After one of Bush’s speeches, I locked onto one of his statements, which included the word sacrifice. Thinking about the statement and then pulling out the dictionary, I realized that the current use of the word is a rather disturbing corruption of its orginal meaning. Riffing on the Bush statement, I came up with this image (fair use, of the content I believe).
Sacrifice – the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something more important or worthy.
August 1st, 2005 at 3:55 pm
Sacrifice – the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something more important or worthy.
The URL stripped above:
http://home.earthlink.net/~michaelpettengill/is_sacrifice_worth_it.jpg
(Not used to being unable to edit myself)
What is the meaning of sacrifice?
Can anything of value be achieved without sacrifice? Without sacrifice, how can America lead? Has Bush found a version of Christianity that does not require sacrifice?
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:54 am
Israel is on a fault line between the west and the east. Israeli society is coming to a boil as the disengagement nears. The conversation on the various web sites reveal a lot of very strong feeling. Haaretz web site has been hosting an opinion-response-sort of blog after some provocative opinions pieces by their own contributors, Akiva Eldar, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Danny Rubinstein, Ari Shavit and others invited for the occasion. I have been reading the heated and sometimes wise comments from all over the world in anticipation of the fireworks. Settlers of the messianic or fundamentalist stripe and their supporters from all over are convinced, it seems, that they have to put on a good show, even if they are going to lose this one, because they know they will be next, or they fear it. If Sharon remains I don’t think so; I think he will not go any further. The zealots are even threatening to form their own nation. To many they seem out of control and blinded by “the will of God” or the messiah’s coming. Clearly Israel has it’s hands full with a problem that has been in the making for many years.
Associated with that whole thing, which I think can’t be ignored, is the underlying issues. I am particularly interested in the subject of trauma , personal and collective, and what that does to individuals and communities of people and how that shapes what is happening in the world. The long history of persecution that Jews have suffered culminating in the Holocaust is close to home for me. But wars in general up to the 9/11 tragedy. How has the trauma of war and now the threat of terrorism effected us all? I am talking about the changes in chemistry that color world views. I have heard Robert Jay Lifton and read Judith Herman (“Trauma and Recovery”).
I think it is very important to gain control of our own fears and demons, and understand others in that light. I guess I want to get deeper to the bottom of what moves the psyche individually and collectively.
Of course civil discourse is a great healer.
So thankful I am for your return Chris and Mary and staff.
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:07 am
Add to my list of traumas, natural disasters like earthquakes/ tsunami’s, and disease/catastrophic illness and add personal traumas like abuse, perhaps born of other and maybe larger catastrophies and handed down through generations. I think of Art Speigelman’s Maus for instance and it’s connection to “In the Shadow of No Towers” and the thread of terror and trauma being handed down from father to son to resurface on 9/11.
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:25 am
The Great depression, (the sequel) coming to your neighborhood soon.
Forget all the political rhetoric being bandied about by both parties: some don’t have a clue. Most are bought and paid for by big money.
Recently I had breakfast with a friend of mine, a major supplier to the Big Three, he owns six manufacturing facilities. He’s been busy planning the relocation of manufacturing to China.
If he didn’t do it, he’d be out of business within 18 months. Relocating to China is the last thing in the world he wants to do. He has no choice.
The only solution to offshoring and H-1B’s is the:
GRIMES LABOR EQUALIZATION ACT
The greed, corruption and ruthlessness of Wall Street and publicly traded Corporate America CEO’s is so well documented it would be redundant and pointless to discuss it here.
Ninety percent of American companies are privately owned and these owners don’t want to relocate offshore. These companies are suppliers to major American corporations and are being pressured to relocate offshore. If they don’t, they’re history.
In the mean time they are being pressured to cut wages and benefits to their existing work force and this will have a dominos effect that will ripple across America and bring down middle class wages and benefits.
Under the Grimes Labor Equalization Act, no product will come into this country unless it meets American Labor Criteria. As an example, Nike: Nike can exploit Chinese Slave Labor until the cows come home. But when that product hits the shores of American it will be taxed at the rate of, up to $52.85 an hour, and no less than $25.00 an hour. So while it actually may cost Nike only $2 to manufacture in China, they’ll pay another $23.00 an hour to sell it here. When there is no cost advantage to go offshore, they won’t go off-shore.
They sure as hell aren’t going to sell those $125 shoes in China, where the worker makes $1.25 an hour.
Now if the objective of the New World Order is to really develop global economies, surely wages will go up globally. Don’t hold your breath. What’s happening now is the brain child of the Wall Street (greedy beyond) belief money changers. I won’t bore you with the mechanics of how they do it, but the vehicles are your 401′s, pension funds and mutual funds.
You invest your savings and receive a statement of net worth. It’s just paper, the money changers take the cash. And they manipulate the paper value of your cash. On the Isle of Manhattan where Wall Street is located, they now sell a $1000.00 egg omelet, haircuts $800.00, shower curtains $6000.00. To put it in perspective, if you earn (net) $1000.00 a week, you could buy an omelet and that’s all. A personal assistant (a gopher) starts at: get this, $250.000 a year.
George Soros: hedge fund manager paid himself $750 million in compensation for the year of 2003. His fund probably employees less than 200 people. General Motors with over 600 thousand men and women on its payroll lost that much in the first quarter of 2005. The George Soros’ of Wall Street are the driving force behind the exodus of American jobs and ultimately the destruction of this economy.
The government claims American income on average is still climbing. That’s true. Lump Soros with 50,000 minimum wage jobs and it look pretty good on average. But the reality sucks.
The 401 is the most ingenious financial scheme ever invented, and I think it was well intended at first. That’s no longer true. For Wall Street it’s a money tree. Here’s why. In most cases some of the cash in your 401 were contributed by your employer. The tax is deferred. You’d be a fool not to invest. But you can’t get out either. If you cash in your 401 you’ll pay a deferred tax. But if you did cash in and pay the tax, where would you put the money, in the bank? I don’t think so, not at less than 1% interest.
The Fed’s keep the interest rate low to protect Wall Street. The paper value of your portfolio may go up and down like a yo-yo, but essentially it isn’t going anywhere.
In order to perpetrate this scam, they need corporate profits to constantly grow, that’s why your jobs are going overseas and H-1B’s are being imported. Because of outsourcing and importing H-1B’s, corporate profits soar because they don’t have the expense of paying you and providing your benefits. You’re toast!
And the new jobs being reported as being created aren’t Americans, there H-1B’s. And in many cases the jobs aren’t even in the United States. Finally many of these newly created jobs are government jobs related to Homeland security, and have nothing to do with the private sector.
The Grimes Labor Equalization Surcharge will equalize the foreign labor rate (using as an average of $1.20 an hour for China, India and Mexico) to a comparable American rate (in the case of the Big Three, $52.85 an hour including benefits, such as health care). A savings to Corporate America: of
$51.65 per man-hour.
Below are the saving per week, month and year for auto manufacturers.
Labor cost savings one week: $2066,00
Labor cost savings cost one month: $8884.00
Labor cost savings one year: $106.608.00
This is only one man, for one year. That’s why your jobs are leaving this country. And they aren’t coming back unless you take action now!
The Labor Equalization Act also applies to foreign workers holding H1-B visas. Bill Gates and the likes can bring in all the H-1B’s they want, and pay them $10 an hour, with no benefits, it’s still going to cost them up to $52.85 an hour. See how long that last.
The same applies to foreign manufacturers such as Toyota. Right now they killing American manufacturers, because they don’t have any legacy expense. Legacy expense is simply this: GM has 600 thousand pensioners they have to provide for, the expense is built into the cost of the car. Toyota doesn’t have it. They will now. Foreign auto manufacturers have a legacy expense on average of $186.00 an advantage of $1237.00 per vehicle built. No longer. The playing field gets leveled.
The Bureau of labor Statistics
In June of 2003 the city of Benton Harbor, Michigan erupted in rioting. Benton Harbor is a black community with 40% unemployment. It’s easy to dismiss that as an isolated incident. But, it isn’t. Unemployment is that high in many urban areas.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t consider these people to be unemployed. They’re euphemistically termed discouraged workers. This is a metaphor for people who would rather live on welfare than flip hamburgers at McDonalds for $7 an hour, $280.00 a week.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics magically eliminate them from the labor force statistically. But, they get can’t get 40 hours a week, because that would entitle them to benefits. The net is approximately $4.90 an hour. Welfare provides more than that. What terrific options.
When your field of expertise becomes an export item, you may be rioting in the streets too. Don’t believe the government statistics for a minute. The government magically creates 50,000 new jobs a week as an assumption. And report that assumption as fact. That’s 2.6 million jobs a year that don’t exist. Except on paper.
Even more outrageous, the Bureau of labor Statistics recap the reported new jobs through a survey of payroll records from 300K businesses like: IBM, Nike and Microsoft. These are hard figures. What isn’t broken out is this: where those jobs are. Many of jobs are held by H-1B’s, employed by a dummy third party company contracted by companies like Microsoft and IBM, in addition to federal and state agencies. They aren’t Americans, and most are working directly from their country of origin. yet, the BLS reports them to be new American jobs.
So technically they’re not lying. Those published reports are worse than useless. They are dangerous!
As an example, when a worker loses his/her $80.000 per year job. And to survive, takes two, twenty hour a week, $9.00 an hour jobs. The BLS correctly reports 2 new jobs created. Unfortunately one person is holding both jobs. And if out of necessity, he’s forced to take a 3rd just to survive, that too, is a new job created
Reporting people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits as employed is criminal. let me illustrate: if all America ( with the exception of one person) were to be laid of tomorrow and drew unemployment for 39 weeks and exhausted their benefits, on the 40th week the Bureau of Labor Statistics would report, those people have returned to full employment. And productivity has reached an all time high. When exactly the opposite would be true
Illegal immigrants
Bush wants to allow 13 million illegal immigrants and their families into the United States with free access to subsidized housing, free health care, food stamps, emergency cash, the list of entitlements are almost endless. What he’s doing is criminal when 40 million American citizens have no health care. None!
Most of these uninsured Americans have paid taxes all their lives. But as a result of off-shoring, contract employment, H1-B’s and illegal immigrants they became victims of corporate (executives) and Wall Street greed and lost their jobs: now they can’t find employment, or if they do, it’s nothing more than unlivable minimum wage employment, with no benefits.
The suggestion that illegal immigrants provide cheap labor is absurd. It is cheap for the corporations that employ them, because they pass the cost of financial assistance, health care, food stamps, subsidized housing, emergency cash on to you and me. And the cost is enormous. In the neighborhood of $25.00 an hour. Corporate American pays $6.00 of this, you and I pay the other $19.00.
It’s a real bargain for Corporate America as they stick it to American taxpayers and unemployed former taxpayers who have no health insurance for themselves or their children. But we’re picking up the tab for illegal immigrants and Bush wants to add 13 million more plus their families.
——————————————————————————–
Privatizing Social Security. “The Goose that will lay the Golden Egg” for Wall Street, a quaint little place where $1000 egg omelets and $350.00 crap meat salads are sold on a regular basis. A low end hair cut is $200.00, a high end hair cut is $800.00. Six thousand dollar shower curtains, ten thousand dollar waste baskets, and fifteen thousand dollar purses. You get a statement saying you’re making or losing money, they get cash. The year end Wall Street bonuses totaled in the billions.
And why? Short terms gains, that produce large executive bonuses. And a money tree for Wall Street.
The act isn’t designed to collect taxes. Its purpose is to end the destruction of American economy.
If this remedy isn’t in effect soon this economy is history. You must act now!
This plan isn’t an act until congress makes it one. With your help, I’ll make it happen.
jimgrimes@wowway.com
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http://www.geocities.com/wittcourt/grimes_labor_equalization_act.htm
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:20 pm
BIBLE INTERPRETATION: WHAT MAKES SENSE?
The current furor in religion can be boiled down to this question. Right now it has become fashionable for the sects and denominations of the major religions to agrue for their literal interpretation. It’s your preacher, priest, rabbi, or imam’s interpretation vs. the next guy’s spiritual leader’s interpretation.
What makes any one of them right? Who is the authority? Does my God demand vengeance–more vengeance than yours? How does anybody even make sense out of it when it all boils down to taking the text literally?
The groups that are profiting from this approach are the arch conservatives and fanatics–convincing more and more gullible and desperate people they have found the truth. What is being done in any substantial way to stem this tide? Few people are even aware any longer there is an entirely different way to look at these texts.
WERE THEY EVER REALLY MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. OR ARE THEY REALLY SYMBOLIC? Aren’t they man’s great stories, metaphores, and indicators of how we are supposed to live? WHO CAN PROVE THEY ARE ANYTHING OTHER THAN THAT? Revelation itself is a belief, nothing more, and nothing less. But is it the only proof that one has a spiritual nature? Does my God really have to be the same as your God?
If a number of well educated and sincere people were brought together, and asked to look at the issue I’ll bet at least some would agree the time has come (once again) to discard the notion of literal interpretation. Many of the great theologians and philosophers of religion went past it over a hundred years ago, and a lot longer in some traditions. The case can be made it demeans the true intention of religion and these documents. Organized religion needs its dogma–but who makes that up–and why do the spiritually minded need to follow them?
Is it possible to believe in God without organized religion? What makes it necessary–if in fact it is necessary? What does God, or at least the notion of “God” have to do with their interpretation? How are they able to be so certain they have found “the truth” when there are so many others, equally convinced, who believe differently?
Isn’t this a problem we all share now that we have entered a time when it seems we have returned to the crusades? Isn’t what is happening in Iraq, for instance, between the Sunni’s and the Shia’s bringing this to light–so more American’s can glimpse the short-sightedness of their views? I am purposely not bringing up Israel because of the passions it ignites.
I am asking questions. Not providing “the answer.” I believe what independant minded people believe in their heart about God is far to personal to make such assumptions, and have real trouble thinking I’m alone.
August 3rd, 2005 at 10:04 am
It may be only 2 days and the but I think I’ve seen enough…. How about doing a show on the new Gore-Hyatt “Current TV”.
Ok the first day was a “We are having technical difficulties please stand by” screen on Directv. I think that’s been the best programming so far. While I can live with the inherently ageist thesis of the “Network”, as an atheist, I found the programming the second day God and Country filled and basically offensive…. I hope the piece, “I’m an American atheist, and its tough ” will soon air…. doubt that got past the ad guys…
But Al, if you’re reading…. You slap that bell curve of consumer demand two standard deviations out and ride those hipster’s sneakers straight to Bank of America… you go boy…you great 57yr 19-35 year old you! Father America Knows Best.
Now your take….
August 3rd, 2005 at 10:26 am
Chris,
This is the most alarming story coming across the wires in the last month, which has to be discussed. Here’s the news article coming from the Associated Press.
I read about this out in California about three weeks ago. It’s finally getting out nationally.
This is clearly one of the early effects of global warming. I would bring in Elizabeth Kolbert who did the three articles in the New Yorker, and a marine biologist.
Here’s the article:
By Terence Chea
Updated: 10:12 a.m. ET Aug. 2, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO – Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton — the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.
Is this just one freak year? Or is this global warming?
Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions are trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures. Yet few are willing to rule it out.
“There are strange things happening, but we don’t really understand how all the pieces fit together,� said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University. “It’s hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening.�
Scientists say things could very well swing back to normal next year. But if the phenomenon proves to be long-lasting, the consequences could be serious for birds, fish and other wildlife.
This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem.
Plankton shortage
Normally, in the spring and summer, winds blow south along the Pacific Coast and push warmer surface waters away from shore. That allows colder, nutrient-rich water to well up from the bottom of the sea and feed microscopic plants called phytoplankton.
Benjamin Saenz / AP
Pacific krill like this one, which was caught near the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in California, are being found in smaller numbers this year off the Pacific Coast.
——————————————————————————–
Phytoplankton are then eaten by zooplankton, tiny marine animals that include shrimp-like crustaceans called krill. Zooplankton, in turn, are eaten by seabirds and by fish and marine mammals ranging from sardines to whales.
But this year, the winds have been unusually weak, failing to generate much upwelling and reducing the amount of phytoplankton.
Off Oregon, for example, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and have yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton, said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore.
“The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there’s just not enough food out there,� said Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Changes in bird patterns
Seabirds are clearly distressed. On the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco, researchers this spring noted a steep decrease in nesting cormorants and a 90 percent drop in Cassin’s auklets — the worst in more than 35 years of monitoring.
On Washington state’s Tatoosh Island, common murres — a species so sensitive to disruptions that scientists consider it a harbinger of ecological change — started breeding nearly a month late. It was the longest delay in 15 years of monitoring.
Researchers have also reported a sharp increase in dead birds washing up in California, Oregon and Washington.
Along Monterey Bay in Central California, there are four times the usual number of dead seabirds, said Hannah Nevins, a scientist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
“Basically, they’re not finding enough food, and they use up the energy that’s stored in their muscles, liver and body fat,� Nevins said.
Salmon impacted as well
Fish appear to be feeling the effects, too. NOAA found a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in juvenile salmon off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in June and July, compared with the average over the previous six years.
And researchers counted the lowest number of juvenile rockfish in more than 20 years of monitoring in Central and Northern California. Fewer than 100 were caught between San Luis Obispo and Fort Bragg this year, compared with several thousand last year.
Scientists have seen some of these strange happenings before during El Nino years, when higher water surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific alter weather patterns worldwide. But the West Coast has not had El Nino conditions this year.
As for the possibility that this is being caused by global warming, scientists are not so sure, since climate change is believed to be a gradual process, and what is happening this year is relatively sudden.
But “if we did see this next year, the notion that global warming plays a role in this carries more weight,� said Nathan Mantua, a climate expert at the University of Washington in Seattle.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
August 4th, 2005 at 10:09 am
I happened to tune into CSpan Sunday whille I was paying bills and got sucked into a FANTASTIC lecture. They are going to repeat this ( and I will be taping) August 14th at 10pm on BookTV CSPAN. This is the thing: aside from the story Nicolas Ostler tells about the history and geography of languages which is fascinating, he actually reads in some of these obscure tongues. Here is the info from the web site:
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Nicholas Ostler
Description: Nicholas Ostler, author of “Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World,” talks about his new book at the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. In it, Mr. Ostler details his investigation into the historical development of languages and culture around the world. During the event Mr. Ostler discusses why some languages more popular then others and discusses the growth rates of lesser-known languages. This event was hosted by the Smithsonian Associates.
Author Bio: Nicholas Ostler is the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, a charity that supports the languages of small communities worldwide. He is an expert on the Chibcha language of South America, a predecessor to the Spanish language of the area.
Publisher: HarperCollins 10 E 53rd St, 12th floor New York, NY 10022
August 4th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
I’m feeling overwhelmed by the nastiness in the world right now and wonder if we (the world, but espec. U.S.) are headed for a major fall. What with bombs going off right and left, the planet’s physical health going down the tubes, our country’s strange slide into conservative religious fanatacism, and last but not least, the possibility of some very scary economic times ahead (fascinating/scary article in The Atlantic Jul/Aug issue) it all seems to be converging into some version of armageddon.
Is there a show in this or do I just need therapy? Probably the latter …
August 4th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Menotomy
Has anyone ever heard of Menotomy? Probably not. Yet it was the name of Arlington long before it became Arlington. But strangely, Menotomy has been left out of the history books.
This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is because there was more going on in Menotomy on April 19, 1775 than in Lexington or Concord. As the English were marching back to thier ship for supplies, minute men all along Mass. Ave. (then Concord Road), in Menotomy, were wreaking all kinds of havoc with the British. In the Jason Russell house (located near Arlington center) bullet holes may still be seen from the first deadly skirmish of the war. In the Russell House 11 colonists lost their lives as compared to 2 British. The house has been restored and tours are conducted every weekend from April to October.
There are other amazing stories that took place on that hot April day in Menotomy. We’d like to advertise and discuss them with all those who have a love for the history of our country.
August 4th, 2005 at 9:09 pm
REPORTER’S BASRASSINATION from http://hammernews.blogspot.com
If you want to do something on great reporter’s Steven Vincent chilling Iraq murder, I got kidnapped at gunpoint in St. Petersburg and almost ambushed by 4 goons at my Moscow apartment 2 years later when I was a reporter there. (I’d criticized the Mafiya gangs, the Communist Parliament, Yeltsin’s crushing of other powers, the rampant corruption). Also had plainclothes “cop” try to drag me into darkness in St. Petersburg when I couldn’t yet speak Russian.
An excerpt of this article (which was supposed to be big front page Providence Journal article and I got pitched by Hollywood producer over) is at end of blog story. Michael Hamerschlag
REPORTER’S BASRASSINATION from http://hammernews.blogspot.com
HIT in BASRA: Intrepid courageous National Review and Christian Science Monitor reporter Steven Vincent went from the height of his profession- a July 31 editorial in NYT- to its bottom- kidnapped and murdered Aug 2 by corrupt or fake police for reporting the extremist Shiite takeover of Basra’s police and universities, and their intimidation of women. He claimed hundreds a month were being assassinated by extremists and police associated with Moqtada al Sadr (75% according to sneering cops), while the Bridge over River Kwai Brits are blithely training them to a fine edge (you want to destroy the bridge??).
His excellent blog describes the chilling encounter with the Muqti cops [Eddie grabbed my arm and, smirking and snorting, shoved his cell phone in my face, where prominently displayed on its call screen was a mini-image of...the Twin Towers burning.], and trying to explain the situation to a decent naive US captain who replied,
“I mean, I’ve always believed that we shouldn’t project American values onto other cultures–that we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?”.
I mentioned this in my Capital Times article OVER THERE (which Bochco just used for his new FX series):
“It’s almost heartbreaking to hear our troops simplistically celebrate the election, but by their sacrifice, help install the Shiite Mullahs that have been the bane of our existence in Iran. Muqtada Al Sadr didn’t stop the violence because he saw the light, but because democracy was soon going to hand him the keys to the kingdom.”
Fake or killer police are deeply terrifying- there is no defense for a reporter or anyone else- this also happened in Russia. This stuff has much resonance for me: from end excerpt of my Putin’s War on Media article, here’s my deeply disturbing take on almost being whacked in Mockba:
[[[ Oct '93 1am, Varshavskaya, Moscow: Walking the 9 minutes home from the metro in a quiet secluded residential area, my worst nightmare became reality. A BMW slowed as it passed me, then continued. Directions, I thought, my brain having returned to its normal complacency after being kidnapped at gunpoint in St. Petersburg 2 years before. Fool. BMW's were the company cars of the Mafiya. 100 ft. from my building door, 4 huge guys appeared on an intersecting course, just as I had known it would happen. This was it- I'd never seen anyone near my building after midnight before. One of them didn't want to do it, though, and angled off from the others. "Where are you going, come on", they exhorted. Speed walking to the door, I sprinted to the 4th floor, caught the elevator to 8, and sent it to 6 to confuse them.. but within 30 seconds they were camped on my landing, loudly chatting for 5 minutes. It was a message.
They could have been sent by Mafiya, Communist, or Government bosses enraged at my articles (I’d criticized the Mafiya gangs, the Communist Parliament, Yeltsin’s crushing of other powers, the rampant corruption); a girlfriend’s other boyfriend; an envious neighbor; or dubiously I was just a random target of opportunity- a rich foreigner. I never knew. Like so many things there it was lost in a miasmic cloud of fear and ignorance. For the next week I circled around, crossing the mud and hills of the train tracks to approach from the other side, where I studied the building carefully. 2 days later a car idled at the entrance (also unprecedented) + I crouched for an hour in the cold, debating alternatives. Complaining to the useless local militsia just could lead to other future risks: for foreigners and journalists safety lay in anonymity. ]]]] – THE NEW EVIL EMPIRE- The Mafiya in Russia
August 5th, 2005 at 11:56 am
There needs to be a show about how intimidated the US press has become, and how the internet is making it easier for all of us to get a different perspective on news stories as we view information that is not filtered to our liking.
It is particularly frustrating that Sibel Edmond’s story has almost totally been blacklisted by the US press, and it takes Vanity Fair, {and a Brit author to boot}, to report on the details of her allegations.
Her repeated muzzling by the US Court system, apparently being done to protect politicians from being embarrassed {or much worse} is a travesty.
August 5th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Terrorism = Open source warfare
August 5th, 2005 at 7:35 pm
Listening now to the interview about “Like a Rolling Stone.”
It makes me hope for a feature about guitars. Guitar history and transitions
from Jazz, Blues, Country, Rock, Classical. Guitar players. Narrowing it down
would be a little like picking out favorite children but maybe you could do
guitar influences in specific genres. Great to hear you back on the radio!
August 6th, 2005 at 4:35 am
The transit bombings in London have brought about a lot of discussion about ‘homegrown’ terrorists, with much of the focus on terrorism springing from religious extremism. I’d like to hear a show about religious extremism in America. I am thinking specifically of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church. While at this time all of the group’s demonstrations are not physically violent and are protected by the First Amendment, it certainly seems that this is a likely source for violent extremists.
What legal power exists to monitor and/or moderate extremist groups in America, especially when they are nominally religious groups? It seems as though any government involvement would be either impossible or fraught with difficulty from the Establishment Clause.
Phelps’s group openly praises the London bombings and the use of improvised explosive devices by terrorists to kill American soldiers in Iraq. Given that the government may be able to do very little and that legislation is not the solution to most social problems, what societal changes can we work toward that might deal with existing extremism and prevent its growth? How does this dialogue work when often, as a friend has said, “Getting through to a fundamentalist is like trying to smash a diamond.�?
One of the scariest parts of Westboro Baptist Church is that it is raising the next generation of hate crime perpetrators. [image] [image]
August 8th, 2005 at 11:56 am
All of these show ideas are great and each carries an appropriate weight. However, I feel that we fail to recognize a problem that is affecting us all, as we speak. How much are you paying for gas these days? Is it just me, or are the weather patterns all distorted? These problems are the direct result of people avoiding serious issues like global warming and the fuel crisis.
I would like to see a show on the subject of sustainable living and how we, as concerned citizens, can make a difference in our communities and environment. Sarah James is the co-author of a recent book on the subject of sustainable living, titled: “The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns can Change to Sustainable Practices” Ms. James is well-respected in her field and has dedicated her life to working with local communities to design the sustainable life they envision.
Can you imagine a community that is a 100% free of fossil fuel? No need to imagine, you can read about this amazing feat and others in “The Natural Step”. Please if you are interested in having Sarah James on your show, contact:
Regina Villa Associates
51 Franklin Street 4th Floor
Boston, MA 02110
617-357-5772
Note: I will be able to provide three other representatives from the three U.S. emerging eco-municipality initiatives.
August 9th, 2005 at 12:38 am
Seedy School Fund Raising Schemes
I learned from my sister-in-law in Aurora, CO of the sad and seedy method by which her son’s public high school is attempting to raise funds for its band program. Students are dispatched to smoke-filled bingo parlors to oversee elderly patrons’ activities late into the night. My sister-in-law described the pathetic atmosphere and the very strong aroma of cigarette smoke that permeates her son’s clothing afterward.
Frankly, I am surprised that a parent would permit this. Since my own children are many years away from attending high school, I have to wonder how bad things will get. I, half humorously, imagine students selling kidneys in the not very distant future. Shucks, a kidney should be worth at least a tuba.
August 9th, 2005 at 8:45 am
“she ran off with a TEXAN from TEXAS”- a lin from either White Christmas or Happy Holidays.
Who are the real Texans? George Bush(from Conneticut),Brendan(born in Texas)
or Cormac McCarthy.
How are they defining our culture. Karen Hughes speaking to the world as underSecretary of State. Alberto Gonzales leading the Patriot Act and reviewing judicial appointments. Has Austin become the HUB of the Universe?
August 9th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Are Americans less intelligent or less informed than the citizens of other Western nations?
While I have seen the results of comparison studies of our school-age population — Amercian kids do not rank well, I wonder about how our adult population would compare with their peers in other nations.
To answer my own question, my guess is that we are simply uninformed, by choice — “actively ignorant”, so to speak.
August 9th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER?!
YEAH- TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER!!!!
Get some weather people who have an understanding of global warming and get these people on the air! Pronto!
See my post to the Climate Change show with Ross Gelbspan on Aug 9.
It will move you.
Call me: 617-818-3675 Mike Fogelberg, Boston MA
August 9th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
I read, more than a year ago, about the Italian ceramic tile manufacturers around Milan, Italy recycling everything, using excess heat from their kilns to heat the city, grinding up old tile to be reused, etc.. The source was their trade office in NYC.
I am pretty sure Johnson& Johnson has a factory off line in California, and I have read that Subaru’s plant in Indiana is very energy conscious. Maybe places to find out about – were the articles real, or hype?
Old buildings, built before central heat – mostly before WWI, (and sometimes those built before a/c) were often energy efficient, designed for passive solar gain, and for summer cooling. We could just learn to look at what is around us, that worked for our ancestors. We don’t always have to rebuild, or reinvent what those who lived without our conveniences had already figured out. I can be much more specific , as needed.
August 10th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
I appreciate the Global warming program – I’ve been afraid it was a “third rail” topic. It makes me HOPE that there may be a possibility of addressing that other big (related) topic.
Could somebody PLEASE get the question of human population on the radar screens?! After all, there are 6.5 BILLION of us, and more on the way!! At some point it won’t take too much more than all of us BREATHING to generate more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed by the environment, especially as more forests are cut, jungles are cleared, and grasslands plowed to provide housing materials, space to build cities, space to grow food, etc., etc., etc.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Not a show suggestion but an underpinnings suggestion: you should fix the script or whatever you’re using to generate the RSS for the podcast (i.e. http://www.radioopensource.org/wp-rss2.php?cat=18) to be more iTunes friendly. Right now, if you subscribe to Open Source via iTunes and then open up “Open Source” inside the program, not only the podcast as a whole but each individual episode has the description “It’s not about the Internet, the Internet’s about the world”, and the summary info “For an hour every day, we’re using the Internet to talk about…” etc. etc.
I’m not an RSS guru, but it looks like you shouldn’t be repeating the namespace elements within each — iTunes picks up the regular element there, but if you have an element that supercedes it.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Fooey, the angle brackets in the previous post got chomped by WordPress. Second paragraph means to say that you should repeat the “itunes:” namespace elements within each <element> — iTunes picks up the regular <description> element there, but if you have an <itunes:summary> element, that supersedes it.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
ARRGH. Correct the preceding to say you should not repeat the “itunes:” namespace elements. (wish there was an “edit comment” feature in WordPress…)
August 10th, 2005 at 4:12 pm
Given all of the hubbub around “Grand Theft Auto,” I’d like to see a show that discuss video gaming and the real future of this form as the next big narrative media form. The Economist just did a nice piece on this:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4246109
and Henry Jenkins at MIT has been writing about this:
http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/converge.html
also http://www.namac.org/community_sub.cfm?catid=38
And Steven Johnson just highlight some great ideas in his book “Everything Bad is Good for You” – http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/
Mark Prensky (http://www.marcprensky.com/) and Michelle Halsell (http://missingpixel.net/v5/index.html) are two other resources.
August 11th, 2005 at 7:58 am
A couple of suggestions for shows:
I enjoyed the show about Dylan’s ” Like a Rolling Stone” and would like to hear an in depth interview with Al Kooper. He’s a local guy and has been a participant in “Rock’n'Roll” since the very early days playing “Who Wears Short Shorts”, starting BS&T, working around the Brill Building, of course recording with Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Zombies and many more, helping to organize the Monterey Pop Festival and much much more. His latest album “Black Coffee” shows he is still on top of the game. He could be a fasinating interview in the right hands.
Also, I recently worked on an independent film entitled “Balloon Hat”. The story really grabbed me and I have thought about it many times since. Information about it can be found at http://www.balloonhat.com/ check it out you may be intrigued as I was.
August 11th, 2005 at 9:19 am
I’d like to suggest a show on “the way back from/for rock and roll”. While I like rock, I feel that valuable parts of popular music have been lost since rock essentially eclipsed all other forms of popular music. Here’s an excerpt from an email I recently sent to some friends on the topic:
“…The problem with the singer-songwriter trend is that is seems to have reduced the complexity of songs. Lots of people can write the music for guitar and drums, but not many can handle a wide range of instruments such as brass, woodwinds, etc. (This was compounded of course by the youth movement that come along with rock; not many twenty year olds have lived long enough to learn to compose and arrange for multiple instruments).
The result is that rock songs tend to be quite simple. Even where a sax is included (in Springsteen songs, e.g.), the sax part is quite simple compared to classical, jazz, or soul (or jump blues). Then, because the songs are simple, the performer distinguishes him/herself on the basis of having a “unique” voice
and attitude/personality/”authenticity”. So we get a bunch of posers with non-traditional whiny voices strutting around, representing the best of modern music.
When a more musically complex song hits the charts, it tends to be a rehashing of old forms, such as the recent mini revival of swing music (Brian Setzer, Squirrel Nut Zippers, e.g.).[, and because it isn't original it doesn't last very long.]
Why can’t we have modern rock songs which happen to feature some more complex instrumentation? I’ve been listening a little to some “jump blues” recently (Louis Jordan); this was a transitional form of music between jazz/bigband and rock. It had a jumping sound, both vocals and instruments, with a party feel. And it used a lot of instuments. I like it. Maybe it, along with a resurgence of outsourced song writing [see Slate article on Euro Tin Pan Alley: http://www.slate.com/id/2123747/ and the better sound quality from iPods and satellite radio, could offer a path back to more varied and interesting rock.”
August 11th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Last night, I met John McPhee, whom I’ve admired for the 30+ years of my own career. Now in his 70s, he’s completing his 31st book. Given his stature among those of us who write nonfiction for a living, and the extraordinary range of his subject matter, I think he’d make a fine subject for a program.
August 12th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
I recently discovered your show and website. I appreciate the forum that you provide for intelligent, open discussion and listener interaction. A show that you MUST have is one on how to best “frame” the political discussion regarding religion. Religion is a subject that the Republicans have successfully hijacked from the Democrats (and the general citizenry). The Democrats, while they acknowledge that they have lost ground on religion and values issues, are approaching the solution all wrong. Rather than enter into the world of who goes to church more (a losing battle), or having conferences on religion in Berkley, CA (who thought of that one?), the Democrats need to learn how to better “frame” the discussion, so that traditional democratic values-help your neighbor, protect the environment, provide emergency services and so forth-are acknowledged, and viewed as correctly in sync with traditional Christian values. In order to do this Democrats need to invite and enlist Evangelicals who share the same passion for humanity. There are plenty out there.
I read Dr. Teresa Whitehurst’s article on the comments parge, regarding The Politics of Climate Change show. As a person who grew up in a fundamentalist environment, and as a person with a psychological background, she would make an ideal guest for a show.
Michael Adamowicz
August 12th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
You may like to do a show on RFID….you can go to http://www.nocards.org/ to find out more about the horrible story. You can also get in touch with these people via website links.
August 14th, 2005 at 10:42 am
Chris, et.al,
I suggest you do a show on Sufism and meditation, which has such a rich, rich tradition, in both the East and in the West. Is not Rumi, currently, one of the most widely read poets?
I just returned from a 5 day meditation retreat with my teachers, Puran and Susanna Bair of Ipswich, MA – who are moving, at the end of the month, to Tucson. They have created the Institute for Applied Meditation, which draws on the teachings of the Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan, to teach meditation and to assist people on their spiritual path. Puran and Susanna have developed Heart Rhythm Meditation, a practice centered on the physical, emotional and spiritual heart. My retreat, the 3rd I have done with my teachers, focused on mystical training, and was quite profound, very loving and attended by a diverse group of contractors, business people, artists, nurses, therapists, homemakers, lawyers, and others – all applying the practice to their daily lives.
I think, if interviewed, Susanna and Puran would provide a fascinating glimpse into the art of applying ancient spiritual teachings to contemporary life – and the potential benefits to self, community, and planet. In fact, in keeping with the thrust of Open Source, they have developed a series of web courses one can take, to learn meditation, aided by a guide, and connected to the other students through online postings. One can get a sense of the scope of their work, teachings and offerings by visiting the Institute’s website: http://www.appliedmeditation.org or by reading Puran Bair’s book, “Living From the Heart,â€? published by Three Rivers Press.
These are trying times in which we live. Sufism, which is not a religion, but rather a mystical, spiritual path, which honors and embraces all religions, can serve as a unifying force in today’s fragmented world. As the mystical branch of Islam, Sufism offers a potential pathway for Judeo-Christian communities and Moslem communities to find common ground.
That being said, Heart Rhythm Meditation – literally, meditating on your heartbeat and synchronizing it with your breath – is a powerful tool for physical, emotional and spiritual health and well-being. It can be practiced by anyone interested in such results, without any emphasis on its mystical lineage.
Or, you could do a show on meditation and include other techniques and traditions in the dialogue, though I think a show dedicated to Sufism and its practical and spiritual applications is a pretty rich topic, and would stand well on its own. I can suggest other Sufi leaders with whom you could speak, to broaden the depth of the show.
August 15th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
One thing is for sure, there are a lot of good ideas up above – and too few outlets. Not enough time!
WBUR just decided {I am sure we all know} to cancel ‘The Connection’ – and WBUR “Boston’s News Station” is becoming more like a ‘magazine’ everyday.
There are already tons of places for arts and culture programming – real news and information is being smothered.
Uncovering what the others are too afraid, too corrupt, too incompetent or too lackadaisical to cover should be priority # one.
I’m counting on “open source” to help set the pace.
August 16th, 2005 at 3:45 am
I’d like to see a show dedicated to the exploration of the development of the Arab world with attention paid to the many misconceptions held by Americans. What follows is an outline of points I feel are important to understanding the Arab world view.
The initial explosion of Islam, and the Arab people, out of the Arabian Peninsula into the Fertile Cresent and Presia across North Africa and into Spain (Andalusia) led to one of the most cosmopolitan and productive civilizations ever known. While Europe was a collection of warring barbarian tribes the Arabs established a high culture of art and science. The invention of the zero was a major accomplishment and led to the adoption of the Arabic numeral system by Europeans, and eventually the world. The tolerance of the Caliphs to other religions kept Jerusalem a city open to all pilgrims. A great flowering of Jewish culture took place in Spain under their rule. It flourished until it’s destruction at the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Astronomy, architecture, economics and every other aspect of society became highly devloped in this period, a legacy that contributed greatly to the European Renaissance.
The Crusades saw the first major threat to the Arabs. The Christian story of the Crusaders’ conquest of Jerusalem is replete with bloody massacres of the Holy Land’s inhabitants and the desecration of Islam’s holy places. The Dome of the Rock was used as a stable by Christian military monks. When Saladin eventually took back the city he made a point of showing his respect for the Christian sites and opened the city once again to all pilgrims. Eventually the Cruader States failed, due more to their own in-fighting than Arab agression.
After these initial centuries of prosperity world events seemed to conspire against the Arab world and would eventually turn it into the zenophobic, conservative culture we live with today. The eastern Caliphates were destroyed by the ruthless predations of the Mongols who converted to Islam and carried their adopted religion to India and beyond. The last Caliph was forced out of Andalusia by the Christian Spaniards and North Africa became the refuge of Arab states.
The next blow to Arab pride came from a group of fellow Muslims, the Ottoman Turks, who conquered and ruled over the Arabs until the conclusion of World War I. It was at this point that European Imperialism got a grip on the Arabs. The British and French divided up the Ottoman Empire and with it its Arab inhabitants. At the close of the Second World War and through the 1960s Arab states gradually gained independence from colonial rule. One legacy of this colonial period was the establishment of the State of Israel, which created a deep seated animosity to Jews in the Arab world, due to percieved injustice towards the Palestinians. An animosity born out of the paronia developed over the preceding era of subjugation, as well as British double dealing, and at odds with the former atmosphere of tolerance and friendship with the Jewish community.
The centuries of rule under a succession of outsiders has led to a fierce nationalism in the Arab world and a deep mistrust of foriegn influence in their affairs. While many aspects of the welcoming and cosmopolitan culture of the Caliphs still exists the Arab world of today is deeply suspicious of ‘the other’. It’s is only by understanding the currents of History that we have any chance of solving the problems of today, such as Wahabism and the need for a Palestinian state. Reliance on polemic and stereotype, such as we hear from too many uninformed commentators today, will only perpetuate the unacceptable status quo.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:49 am
Yesterday the NYTimes ran a piece by Geoffrey Stone, law professor at University of Chicago. They called it “What You Can’t Say Will Hurt You”. The piece was more interesting than the title they put on it. Stone runs through our “long and unfortunate history of overreacting to fears and anxieties of wartime and excessively restricting the freedom of speech”. The distinction is made between passionate speech that *may* incite to violent action and *express* incitement to violaton of the law. Laurence Tribe was making this distinction the other day on the radio as well.
This is a companion “erosion of our freedoms” suggestion to my one above about the 4th amendment.
I would like to hear Harvey Silverglate.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:51 am
Sorry, here is the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/opinion/15stone.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors&pagewanted=print
August 16th, 2005 at 8:18 am
Hanging Out At Haaretz
I am tuning in on the most amazing conversation going on over at the Haaretz site. People from all over the world come into and out of the discussion as the globe turns. The comments are connected to the opinion pieces which lately are extraordinary. In emotional times like this for Israel, a lot of sentiment pours out, Some of it articulate and wise some filled with hate and anger. The amazing thing is that this is a real conversation between folks from all over the world of all different frames of mind: Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews, left and right, Jews to Arabs, Arabs to Jews,Christians, Europeans from Scandanavia to Italy, Australians, Africans living in Europe, doctors, rabbi’s, secular folks, Viet Nam vets, military minds, ordinary folks, anonymous folks from nowhere. It’s a lively conversation that crosses all boundaries. People are finding others that they can talk to- and you can listen in, or contribute,as the globe turns. Tune out, tun in. Haaretz began to do this “talkback” recently and it has really taken off. They appear to be censoring very little and requiring a minimum of information from the posters in order to post.
David Grossman wrote a piece that was up yesterday and, reading the comments, I realized what an incredible cross global conversation it was. ” Something To Mourn” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/612522.html
Only when Chris did his series from Singaport, Jamaica, Ghana etc did I begin to feel this exhiliration from voices that would never be heard here, that I would never hear.
August 16th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
Today’s lesson is:
Check your bitch in at the door
Coming off a not-so-great conversation with my husband, I’m told at work that my next client has arrived. With no money. He’d like to see me, nay, he’s demanding to talk with me, but doesn’t want to pay the $210.00 that it takes to get my big opinion. With a roll of the eyes, I head out to the waiting room to dash his sense of entitlement to shreds.
He’s not a pretty man, but looks healthy and says he twenty-four, so off the bat I can’t figure out why he thinks he gets to do this for free. He’s sitting in the waiting room with his girlfriend, not a pretty lady. Nonetheless, a lady who immediately starts pleading dudes case. I barely register all the words coming out of her mouth and ask them back into my office to at least respect their privacy. No need for them to go through this in front of an audience.
He walks slow and tests my patience. We finally get there, and she does all the talking. “Its court ordered, and it’s bullshit. He doesn’t have a problem. The arrest was wrong, but he got convicted anyway. He has to do this and your agency was the only place that would even give him an appointment without charging him�. Ding Dong an empathy bell goes off….we’re the good guys. I really respond to that and start listening.
“Ummm…ok….so you’re unemployed…since….�
“January�.
“Oh. And the judge says you need this done by…�
“I’m already late. I think he’s going to put a warrant out for my arrest if I don’t get it today�.
Yeh, the judge probably would. And I can stop that by hooking this chap up. My good guy heart starts wrestling with my bad guy head, out for revenge because of trouble at home.
“Alllllriiiiight……..lesee…….ok. I’ll do this. For free. If you smoke, you’ve got time for a cig before we start while I get your paperwork started�
“You’re kidding! Thank you! But I don’t want to get you in trouble…�
And with that, homeboy has landed safely in my bleeding liberal empathetic heart.
“Nope, it’s no problem. My boss demands that we treat people with kindness and do the right thing. This is the right thing�.
That’s totally true. She does. So into the assessment, it turns out there’s a reason my man doesn’t work. He was hit by a car and dragged for a while under it at age fourteen. His legs don’t work so well since then, as he is “all metal from the waist down�. And I thought he was walking slowly to bug me. I mentally kicked myself in the self-righteous face. Ouch.
He was pulled over at 6:00 a.m. one day after dropping his fiancé off at work. He was pulled over because, it sounds like basically he was the only car on the road. The cop thought he was drunk, but he blew all zeros on the breathalyzer. But then the cop found some bottles in his car, empty beer bottles, and took him in. Musta been a slow crime day. Turns out my man had been drinking the night before, all of two beers. But he and his fiancé live with her parents. They’re not allowed to drink in the house. It was December, so they hopped in his car to be warm. He didn’t know it was illegal to have empty beer bottles in his car, so he didn’t sweat keeping them in there. Eight months and several court days and lots of fines later, he knows better. But it doesn’t make him an abuser of alcohol, and my report to the judge says so. Get out of drug and alcohol treatment for free card is handed to my man via me.
But the sweetest thing was when I offered to help him find some resources to get medical care. He’s been unemployed for so long, and in wild amounts of pain so long and hasn’t had access to health care for ten years. He has no idea where to turn, and only has a sixth grade education (because his parents were on the run from the IRS while he was growing up and couldn’t be bothered to keep him in school. Seriously.) So I gave him the number of the State Division of Rehabilitation with the hope that they can guide him to schooling, and some help navigating the treacherous system of Medicaid and Social Security benefits.
The lesson I learned today: I gotta check my bitch in at the door. Client advocacy is why I’m here, and I’m good at it. It kills me to think I may have been another obstacle in this guys way had I not heard him out.
And his fiancé? She was almost in tears when he told her about our interview. She thanked me over and over and over, and shook my hand a whole bunch. It was as if I’d done something amazing. But truly I hadn’t, it took all of an hour. And that makes me sad. I have to wonder how these two have been treated on a daily basis, to be so appreciative of someone treating them fairly.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:33 am
Another suggestion: National Security Democrats.
As the public turns against the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration flip flops its “War on Terror” rhetoric, and the President’s poll numbers take a dive, power brokers in the Democratic party are sounding more hawkish than ever. Hilary Clinton has called for 80,000 more troops and a broad mandate for US intervention abroad. Joe Biden remains a big supporter of the war in Iraq and of the policy of pre-emptive war. And even though pundits like the New Republic’s Peter Beinart and the Times’ Tom Friedman turned out to be almost all wrong about Iraq, they continue to beat the war drum. In the last election, John Kerry, a decorated war hero and supporter of the invasion, lost to George Bush, draft dodger who likely went AWOL. So why are the Democrats telling party faithful they can’t win unless they “give war a chance?”
August 17th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
2 ideas.
One could be a show titled “From offer letter, to lay-off, to life”. [Christopher Lydon voice, with crazy piano song playing] Is corporate america is treating employees like cattle? Or are there enough jobs out there in America to suffice? Are you still laid off now after applying to billions of jobs or have you gone out and become the CEO of your own company?
It would be neat to get psychologists in to talk about how corporate life is in most large/medium/small business, and see if you can match up one laid off person with a job before the show is over.
The other idea could be called “What’s for dinner?”. This show could be about how American culture (long commutes, busy schedules) have reduced a time when family used to gather around the table for supper. Questions Chris would ask in his intro. What’s for supper ma? What did you have for dinner? Was it over conversation with family or friends or was it a wendies hamburger on the way to an errand? Do American’s have time or make time for dinner, or are we just chowing down while watching our favorite tv show?
Ok one more idea. It would be contrasting life in the East vs West vs South vs Midwest. How being American may hint at a melting pot, but has the “stew” settled into the 4 farthest corners, with some left in the middle. The goal of the show is to quilt together what it means to be American.
Peace.
August 18th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
What about a show (or shows) exploring improvisation? You could check out theater, music, debates, sports announcers, and who knows who else and see what they have to say for themselves — what they bring to it, what they try and avoid, who they learn from, what do they react to — about coming up with things on the spot.
August 18th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
that sounds like a good idea. Some of the better shows, plan improv into their script and often times the show is the better for it (i.e.”Curb your Enthusiasm”.)
August 19th, 2005 at 8:24 am
Nobody mentioned the looming of a worldwide Bird Flu Epidemic during the “Birding” show or on the blog. Birds bring such joy and this is such a downer. Yet this horrible virus seems to be threatening not only our migratory bird populations but us as well. It’s alarming of course and one really does not want to read about it of know of it which is part of the problem.
Please read:
“The Coming Avian Flu Pandemic”
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0817-30.htm
August 19th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
In a post-feminist world there is a new underclass “The Divorced Father”….the values and economic realities of pre-60′s America have conspired with the feminist movement to create what is essentially a slave class that is the victim of bias and burden just like any other group that finds itself at the bottom of the socio-economic pile…..except you can’t tell them apart by the color of their skin. The more people are aware of the bias against divorced fathers the better a place the world will be….one step closer to real equality.
THIS is the show I yearn for
August 22nd, 2005 at 1:25 pm
I’d like to hear Chris do a story on “Peak Oil”. If the Houston Chronicle is now writing about it, http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3319770 , Chris should be putting something out.
He could get people like David Goodstein, from Cal Tech who wrote the book: “Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oilâ€? (W.W. Norton), (you might remember him as the Professor in the PBS physics series “The Mechanical Universe”) Get podcaster, Ben Kenny, who does The Watt Weekly Podcast http://www.thewatt.com/ . He is a grad student in Canada working on Solid Oxide Fuel Cell technology. Peak oil is constantly being discussed on his show.
August 22nd, 2005 at 6:34 pm
Here’s a topic which is generally “boycotted” by mainstream media: fluoridation. OK, I know a little movie just started playing in your head of Col Jack D. Ripper in Kubricks’s Dr. Strangelove. Big business and big government have done a great job conning the dentists and everyone else that fluoride is just peachy and anyone that questions it is wacko. I grew up bombarded by Crest commercials and never questioned it until a few years ago. A good place to start is Christopher Bryson’s recent book, based largely on 10 years of research into once-secret government archives: The Fluoride Deception.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1583225269/qid=1124749161/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-1833946-7121753?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
The story has echoes of the story of lead in gasoline, including some of the same key players. As far as a current hook, the Washington Post, the Wall St. J and other mainstream media have finally shown some interest when it was revealed that a Harvard Dental School professor appears to have buried a study which found a strong connection between drinking fluoridated water and a form of bone cancer. The study was funded by the federal government to the tune of more than $1 million yet he reported to the NIH funders that his study had found no connection.
Lots of details available from http://www.fluorideaction.net/. If you type “fluoride” into Google this web site will come out first of more than 2 million hits and it’s been on top for years because it is comprehensive, scientific, and avoids any taint of wackoism. One of it’s directors, Dr. Paul Connett, is a great speaker and would make an excellent guest. Christopher Bryson is as good a speaker as he is a writer and would also make a great guest.
Just this week 11 unions of EPA scientists and technicians representing 7000 EPA employees have called for Congressional investigations into the health risks of fluoridation. They have seen the shenanigans first hand. They are not wackos.
August 23rd, 2005 at 3:28 pm
I second johnbaloney’s request for a show about peak oil. The word has to get out there somehow. I feel like it’s catching steam though, with the recent NY Times article and all of the peak oil discussions in the “blogosphere”.
August 23rd, 2005 at 5:25 pm
I’d like to hear a show about Six Feet Under. Not about the show itself–I think there’s been enough of that–but what the show means as a cultural phenomenon. I think a lot of the show’s fans are having the experience of realizing that tons of people love it (whereas before, they thought it was singular). I’d like to hear folks talk about Six Feet Under as the Anti-Friends.
August 24th, 2005 at 12:21 am
HEALTH CARE COVERAGE IN AMERICA
Efforts to expand coverage at the state level. There are reform efforts in Massachusetts and California. They deserve to be discussed, but the issue of reform and why it’s failed are also fascinating. We spend more money on healthcare than other industrialized nations, not everyone’s covered and under a lot of standard measures our results are worse. Yet we insist on believing that America’s system is the best in the world, or, at least, many of our elites do.
Why are we stuck with the system we have? Can the participatory nature of the internet make political change possible?
August 24th, 2005 at 4:25 pm
School is back in session. How about a show on bullying? Statistics show that approximately 23% of children are bullied in school. This is not just a children’s issue, it’s a social and mental health issue.
Dr. Bob Rich, Ph.D. states: “. . . Many people dismiss bullying as just ‘high spirits’, ‘toughening up’, ‘part of life’. It isn’t. It is a junior version of criminal activity, and it causes immense harm. What’s more, it causes as much harm to the bully as to the victim. Many habitual residents of jails cut their teeth in the school ground, and if they’d been stopped then, they might have grown into law-abiding members of society. So, we all suffer from bullying.”
As an author of children’s books I have written about bullying. This book is in use in schools throughout Canada and many in the U.S. I’ve even shipped an order to Tasmania.
You can view more info at: http://www.thebullybook.com
August 24th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
Just a few of the things that are on my heart to hear more about:
Something about some of the good things Christians do in this country.Food pantries, feeding the hungry, helping the addict, etc.
The real causes of childhood obesity: Look at the books Fast Food Nation and Food politics. Something about empowering parents would be great too.
Amateur star gazing or weather watching.
Something lite. Instead of “what’s your line” how about “What’s your favorite punch line.” Is there a change in the type of comedy people enjoy now.
Where oh where did Fred Astair go? What happen to the great men of the big screen.
(I’m taking suggestions from those around me. We are an eclectic group:O)
August 24th, 2005 at 8:13 pm
the show on fanfic was really interesting. I only knew about this because I’d read Henry Jenkinis’ book on fandom. He runs the comparative media studies program at MIT and has very thoughtful things about video games. This phenomenon is really of great interest and importance. I see my son take a day to play through a very complex and literary game (a “noir” first person shooter story) as his rest from taking his two year medical boards at Harvard Med School. What’s going on with the games and what they are and mean?
August 24th, 2005 at 11:53 pm
Hi,
I am interested in exploring the role of the internet in the doctor patient relationship
I am an orthopedic surgeon in the Dartmouth/New Bedford MA area.
My practice area includes a very broad portion of the socioeconomic spectrum, and
I have many patients that are immigrants and/or non English speakers.
We have come to a time in medicine where many of my patients either come in having attempted to diagnose their own problems via online research, or have literature from online sources suggesting their desired treatment for a known malady.
.
I am interested in how and why patients get medical information from online sources, what information caregivers decide to put online, and what the significance of this information is. Do patients go online because they are embarrassed, overwhelmed or intimidated in my office and therefore don’t ask questions? Are medical practices putting information online as a service to their patients; as advertising; or for some combination of both? How do patients decide what is accurate information and what is fictitious? Should there be any control over what claims can be made by caregivers, equipment manufacturers, and the host of pseudomedical sites selling information or products. In addition it may be interesting to hear from patients about how they feel having sensitive medical information online in an era when many large supposedly secure companies have had information stolen
August 25th, 2005 at 12:04 am
A little suggestion: run this in reverse chronological order. I know it’s nice to scroll through everything everyone has had to suggest for the program, but it takes a long time, and you wouldn’t want to get my bill for time spent getting to the end of the thread.
Programming idea: Whither music?
Radio once was the medium that people turned to to get the latest tunes — I remember staying up late one night in central New York in 1969 to catch an preview of Abbey Road out of Buffalo. I don’t remember the station. Maybe Judge Roberts will — I doubt it, though.
And that thought reminds me of other music experiences via radio — sitting in an old farm house in Ridgefield, CT, listening to a station out of Indiana (Fort Worth?) playing the Four Seasons’ “Big Girls (don’t cry)”. It was AM, but the time was late at night.
Between podcasting and streaming, Howard Stern, Bob Ed., NPR, and Clear Channel, how does anyone encounter the latest music any more? A recent weekend at the beach, and there wasn’t a radio anywhere.
Did someone say “internet”?
August 25th, 2005 at 10:07 am
This could be part of the climate change series, or a stand-alone show: the Cape Wind project. I am very much for it, but it would be fascinating to have people from both sides of the spectrum talk about it — it starts out as a huge environmental story, but in the end the fight comes down to economic issues and the power of people with money.
I spent a week on the Cape last summer and kept seeing signs I thought were real estate for sale signs — when I finally took a closer look I realized they were cleverly designed anti-Cape Wind signs. They say “Save Our Sound” and promote the idea that the wind turbines will be a blight on Nantucket Sound. Of course, the signs are firmly planted on the lawns of the mcmansions that blight the once pristine shores of the Sound, but I guess that doesn’t really matter — even though these huge houses often have pools, a bathroom for each of their numerous bedrooms, vast emerald green lawns that require constant watering, etc., etc., etc.
It’d be interesting to hear from Ted Kennedy or another member of that illustrious clan — usually progressive, he’s caved to his wealthy constituents. Same with Robert Kennedy, an environmentalist with NRDC. Here’s an article from the Providence Journal posted on the Cape Wind site:
http://www.capewind.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=458&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
August 26th, 2005 at 5:44 am
I wouldl like a show about softdrugs legalization.
Why is softdrugs illegal in most of the world while the countrys where there are allowed show that legalizing it makes the problem controllable.
Should someone be jailed for smoking pot while he does no harm to anyone else?
August 26th, 2005 at 11:23 am
Actually Wikipedia SHOULD be a story. It’s an “encyclopedia” that can be edited and changed by anyone. The BBC has used it for viral marketing. Individuals have inserted intentional errors that go undiscovered. During the whole filibuster debate, one WNYC show host went to Wikipedia for an etymology of the word filibuster rather than, say, an etymological dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary.
What effect does and will the use of unreliable information have on future research and information?
Other ideas:
Siva Vaidhyanathan (author of Anarchist in the Library) on copyright and the digital world.
Lawrence Lessig on the Creative Commons!
August 27th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
After hearing the Passion:Candy episode, which was excellent, my husband suggested some of these shows for your passion shows.
Olives- there are a tremendous number of different types
Cheese- What are some excellent cheeses for the mere mortals. Paying 20 dollars a pound is a bit much for the average Joe.
Popcorn- what are peoples favorite ways to eat it.
Just a few thoughts.
August 29th, 2005 at 1:15 am
Homeschooling/Unschooling?
After downloading an online textbook for free a few days ago (Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms by David MacKay) and reading through it while coding up some solutions, I realized that I was engaging in a type of learning completely foriegn to my experiences in school – it was completely driven by curiosity and totally self-directed. The goal was suddenly not about a grade, but about understanding.
I’d like to see a show about how the internet and the easy availability of information is (could be/should be) changing the american educational experience, with an emphasis on homeschooling, unschooling, and other radical approaches to remedying the sickening state of public schools.
The only guest I can suggest would be one to talk about problems in the current school system. He’s a proponent of doing away with compulsory schooling : John Taylor Gatto
August 29th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Chris/Mary et all,
Thinking about your Passion Thursdays — Might I suggest a program on Baseball to coincide with the Playoffs or the World Series. Being in Boston we have our own, unique passion surrounding the Red Sox but I’m interested in passion for the game just as much. We are not the only ones who root root root for the home team.
The internet has spawned numerous blogs about the grand old game and you could explore various national and internatinal baseball customs. Cuba, Japan, The Dominican Republic, Columbia, Puerto Rico, etc.
Hey, I’d even think about calling the show.
August 29th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
Please-please-please
What would I give to hear Chris talking with Stewart Brand about nuclear energy
Stewart Brand: (Whole Earth Catalog, Co-Evolution Quarterly, advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown, future foreteller)
Thanks,
Eugene Levine
August 29th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Still in “Future Shock” – 35 Years Later
Chris,
I did not read Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s “Future Shock” when it was first published, in 1970. However, since then, my professional career has meandered around the topic numerous times, on three continents. Particularly, I long ago arrived at the conclusion that complexity and surprise are the bane of our times. So, I recently I I finally got around to reading “Future Shock”, for the first time. Amazing, simply amazing, how prophetic they were. The Tofflers certainly hit the nail on the head, in terms of describing what the world would look like 35 years later. Toffler Associates (toffer.com), in nearby Manchester, MA, now “help companies and governments create their future in the fast emerging “Third Wave” economy. They appear to be active helping corporations, governments and organizations confront and cope with the present and the future.
I would love to hear the good, the bad and the ugly of what they had to say 35 years ago, versus what they see today, and then to take it one step further. What about the future? Are we converging, diverging, following some sinusoidal wave, or what? Are there some other really big surprises waiting for us?
BTW, it might interest you how I made this “connection”. You keep on saying, “Open Source”, but your site is “radioopensource”. That mismatch is a superb example of artificially induced complexity (ugh!). I have to remember two names for your program/URL. “The Connection” was also “theconnection.org” – couldn’t be simpler. On Point Radio is “onpointradio.org”. Get it? So, I would suggest that either you change your messaging, saying, “Welcome to ‘Radio Open Source’,” in which case you should keep the URL, or alternatively, since you can’t have “opensource.org” (and you probably would not want it, since it would distract you with too much technology specific topics) how about you say, “Welcome to ‘Open Source Radio’,”, and change your web site to be opensourceradio.org (currently available to my knowledge). I recommend the latter, but I’ll leave that to you.
Great to see your terrific comeback. Frequent listener, I was an occasional “connection” caller,
- Neil of Swampscott
August 30th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
The fate of New Orleans
New Orleans may have disappeared beneath the waves. We should ask the question, “should we raise it?”, before we begin an attempt to raise it from the depth.
This is a real world example of the choices ahead for many cities around the world.
We can ask the question in terms of how will we deal with the many voices, the many emotions: pride, nostalgia, determination, rage, hope, patriotism.
We can ask the question in terms of what is the rational busness case for spending too little to resurrect the city only to have the flood repeated, versus the cost of protecting the city for the long term, versus the cost of relocating the city elsewhere.
We can ask the question in terms of global climate change and whether we will acknowledge its reality, or whether we will continue to claim that the many books and articles are “pure misguided bad science” as was Silent Spring. “wrong on all counts, leading to economic waste and bad policy worldwide resulting in massive numbers of unnecessary deaths.”
We can ask the question in terms of politics and economy: who should pay for the past and future folly of building in wetlands on a coastline fraught with hurricanes? Should New Orleans be rebuilt with a massive liberal Democrat style big government boondoggle, or should New Orleans’ reconstruction be purely a matter for free market capitalism?
As an “I LIKE IKE” child-Republican turned Milton Friedman liberal who is whole heartedly a Quaker heritage pacifist, my contrarian, anti-Bush response is: “Where are your conservative free market principles, Mr President? Let the free market capitalists rebuild New Orleans without government welfare.” (He won’t back up his words with actual money no matter what he says, anyway.)
August 31st, 2005 at 7:00 am
Let’s talk about how the internet affects relationships between companies and their customers. Here’s a great starting point: http://www.buzzmachine.com/?tag=dell
August 31st, 2005 at 4:30 pm
What sacrifices can Americans make to deal with the tragic events in the Gulf coast?
This is my posting in http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=35994
A call for immediate cutbacks in oil and gasoline use is desperately needed from President George Bush!
The tight gasoline and heating oil market has just shrunk by 10% and we should expect that the amount available for the next six months will be at least 2% lower than expected. At best. And it could be worse.
Americans MUST CONSERVE and MUST CUT BACK ON UNNCESSARY FUEL USE!
Bush was elected president because he was expected to be a good leader.
Now is the time for Bush to show leadership!
We should also look ways to resettle people from the effected areas to other parts of the US. Perhaps Bush should call on cities nationwide to offer aid to just one tenth of a percent of their population: housing, jobs, clothing and home goods.
Alternatively, Bush could be calling for a massive jobs program that will hire anyone whose employer is unable to use them to do anything they can to clean up the devastation. If nothing elese, they spend time with brooms and shovels cleaning the streets or inside buildings scrubbing walls and floors.
Now is the time to call on Americans to sacrifice for the good of Americans. That means giving up things we value, driving the SUV to the store for the pint of ice cream, or setting the thermostat at a cozy 72 degrees this winter.
I don’t see much in the way of forward looking thinking. An entire city of 475,000 is gone and with it, the homes, businesses, jobs, stores, schools, public services. And less noticed but just as real, 10% of the US gasoline and heating product production is shutdown with no idea when even some of it can be returned to production. Without power, pipelines, and shipping, the refineries can’t operate, but those resources can’t be restored until the needs of people can be addressed. Homeless, hungry, transportationless people can’t rebuild the infrastructure needed to run the refineries.
August 31st, 2005 at 7:16 pm
I’m listening to all this discussion related to Katrina. You always hear the vox pop about the people who are skeptical of the wacky weather man saying, THIS is REALLY gonna be the big one.
When the nightly weathercast has become STORMWATCH and BREAKING NEWS appears when a a woman runs away from a wedding, albeit not ANY wedding, only an EXPENSIVE one… Back in MY day (putting on the grumpy old man voice…) interrupting your TV show meant the President was shot, or a tornado was imminently headed for your county.
How can we TRUST ANYTHING the media says anymore when everything is consistantly over hyped.
Might be enough to talk about to fill an hour.
September 1st, 2005 at 6:08 am
I’m suprised that open source followed suit with NPR (appropriately reported on Katrina for a few days) and continued reporting about Katrina. Something that would have been intersting is a report on the gas price hike that went on. Could there be a story on the connection between crude oil and gas prices? Mabey the US’ top 5 imports? or perhaps following the rabbit trail as to why Pat Robertson “said” he wanted the Venezuelan President assassinated? which was aired a few days after the Venezuelan president said he was considering giving “oil” at a lower price for the americans who needed it most.
September 1st, 2005 at 2:23 pm
I would like to propose additional shows on New Orleans/Hurricane Katrina and on global warming (perhaps get people from Ford, Toyota and BMW on to hear them talk about it).
Also:
-Bike messengers in the age of the internet (Boston and New York being two of the most-cycled cities on the east coast) [cf. William Gibson's Virtual Light]
-RAND corporation: publishes all works available online; devotes money and brain power to a vast array of problems and policies, including terrorism, transportation, Palestine, computer power, even the internet itself
-Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson
-The WELL is up for sale
-Linux today: It’s Google’s flesh and bones, it runs the government and school computers in Andlusia (where it’s given away free), it runs much of the internet, there’s a distribution out managed by one of the first space tourists (Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux), it’s still here after Microsoft’s (and others) attempts to destroy it (partially through software patents), it’s free
-The Long Now Foundation
-Biologist, radically imaginitive realist Daniel Janzen and his work in Costa Rica, making “green,” deeply wise activities operate in the capitalist economy
-Magazines, newspapers, writers who *aren’t* involved with life through the Web
-How far does the Web go — geographically and into the marrow of life? How much of the high talk and praise is just wanking — for egos and for profit?
-Lou Reed
September 1st, 2005 at 3:59 pm
I think we should have more on New Orleans. The above suggestions are good. Will the question even be asked about why we should we rebuild because of all the various interests.
This is the time for voices of reason and vision to be given the microphone.
Why not move the whole operation, the “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!” party to higher ground and save what we can of the French Quarter.
I hear people saying things like “too many people will want to go back home”. What home?
It’s never going to be the same. It will be all new again, why not on better ground.
Would I love to see a wildlife preserve there- and some reverting back to nature.
As a gardener you learn this, when to give in.
September 1st, 2005 at 4:10 pm
I would like some deconstruction or discussion of the 750 changes Bolton is seeking in the UN reform plan and the millennium development goals that “the Guardian” says will leave the plan “in tatters”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1557552,00.html?gusrc=rss
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:17 am
August Wilson is dying apparently. Can we have a show about him and his work?
September 3rd, 2005 at 9:26 am
Let’s assume that suddenly everyone agrees that global warming and energy shortages are inevitable. How about a show discussing the practical steps we can do as a society. Sure, we can mandate more efficient cars and appliances. But how do we deal with existing sprawl? Could we convert suburbs into cities by building infrastructure to greatly increase density? If we did, what would the payback be in energy savings? Can we replace existing lawns with some other vegetation that requires dramatically less water? Can we redesign jobs to allow people to work at home via the internet?
If someone held a gun to our heads, and if we all pulled together, what could we really accomplish in our lifetimes, and would it be enough?
September 3rd, 2005 at 9:49 am
New Orleans: the beginning of the end? It is, if the media continues to ignore the unvarnished truth.
The hundreds of thousand of mostly blacks who were financially unable to leave are the men and women the Bureau Of labor Statistics cease to account for. Here’s how it works: if their unemployment is exhausted and they’re still unemployed: they cease to exist according to the Bureau Of labor Statistics.
How outrageous is this? If every working man and women in this country were to be laid off and exhaust all unemployment benefits, the Bureau Of labor Statistics would report “no unemployment”. None!!! Things just couldn’t be any better!
There are millions, and I mean millions (both black and white) across this country in this category.
Wall Street is the driving force behind the outsourcing of American jobs to drive down corporate America (direct and indirect) labor expense by shipping the manufacturing base and jobs off-shore.
In the short term these greedy money changers are making out like the thieves they Really are.
A $1000.00 egg omelets in Manhattan. Haircuts $800.00: shower curtains $6000.00.
$750 million in compensation for George Soros in 2003: the list is endless.
Corporate American paying millions of dollars in celebrity endorsements: at the same time outsourcing American jobs to curtail corporate expenses.
I’ve researched this for years and written hundreds of pages on this and other abuses; this is just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s the height of ignorance and arrogance when the money changers have a black tie gala charity event to raise money for the poor.
They are the reason we have poverty in this country. And this country is going to go up in flames if the media continues to collectively sit on its butts, doing nothing. Or worse still, continue the cover up. I’m suggesting myself.
Click on/or copy and paste:
http://www.geocities.com/wittcourt/grimes_labor_equalization_act.htm
jimgrimes@wowway.com
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Scientific American has reprinted an article they first published in their October 2001 issue. Don’t let anyone tell you it was not known this was going to happen. But here is a good description of the problem and an awesome plan that was apparently ignored.
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000
September 3rd, 2005 at 11:13 pm
How about a show on class in the United States? Given what we have been watching in New Orleans over the past week and what it has revealed about the rarely-discussed underclass in this country, there is much to be said about the reality of class divisions in the U.S. Consider Thomas Frank as a guest.
September 8th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
New Orleans Jazz Funerals in the wake of Katrina. September 8,2005 NYT artilce”jazz musicians ask if there Scene will Survive?”
Jason Berry,a noted journalist who exposed the Sex Scandals in the Roman
Catholic Church,is writing a book on New Orleans Jazz Funerals. He has just returned home to New Orleans-after moving his family to New Ibernia. He has the beat and tempo of the city. Jason can be reached by email berr167@bellsouth.net
September 8th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
That hundreds of thousands of people had settled in the wrong place in New Orleans has been much discussed. But there are a number of significant U.S. cities located in bad places. Phoenix and Las Vegas are exhausting their water tables. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle are reside along a major fault that will give way one of these days, and Seattle’s hard by a volcano that’s not extinct, merely dormant. Wilmington, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina are particular vulnerable to hurricanes. Open Source could do an interesting program that discusses the human penchant for living in the wrong place, the vulnerability of many big U.S. cities, and what some of them are doing, cognizant of their potential catastrophes. I’m not talking about one more program to scare the bejeezus out of everyone, but more of a historical, sociological, and perhaps ecological discussion about human settlement in the wrong places.
September 8th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
Those are raindrops that are falling on Jeffrey Sachs’s head. Development economist Bill Easterly of NYU is going to rain on the Bono/Sachs parade. My guess is that it will be a downpour. A Sach/Easterly debate would make for fine Radio Open Source. How about it.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/090805H.html
http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/3486
September 8th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
I would like to hear and see a timeline beginning with when the mayor of New Orleans asked for help, when the governor of Louisiana asked the president to declare an emergency and when the president actually acted.
September 9th, 2005 at 7:48 am
-There seems to be ( in the first polls) a sea change in public opinion as we understand the magnitude and meaning of what hurricane Katrina brought us ALL. Priorities are changing according to the Pew poll. The real meaning of “Homeland Security” needs to be examined and understood (especialy at top).
- Incompetency at the top– jobs being given to unqualified as rewards for political support needs to be examined. This ties to the Grover Norquist drown-the-beast of government. perhaps he should be brought back on a better phone. Would Paul Krugman agree to be on the same show?
Can we hear Mark Fischetti ( Scientific American article “Drowning New Orleans” 2001)?
Or someone else to talk about the history of this problem and ideas for the future?
What about disease and toxicity? Let’s get into it. Should the city be condemned? What is contaminated? How do we deal with it? Where will all the debris go? What about the wildlilfe?Someone I was listening to on another radio program said that people who want to get back home asap should be told all this now.
Once all the dust has settled what are we going to do about New Orleans? Are we going to rebuild it? Will the government patch things up and move people back to the same essentially vulnerable situation or will we begin the vast public works program that needs to happen to restore the marshes and move homes to higher grounds?
Right now there is a lot of doling out of money-where is this money going??? Where is this money coming from? Won’t we need vast amounts of money in addition for a huge publlic works project?
How about a program or two devoted to the culture of New Orleans? The history, the architecture, music, the food, the spirit?
How about a program about the effects of the Flood of 1927?
I would like you to follow some of the stories of the evacuees. Have they found their loved ones, their pets? What have they lost? Are they resettling elsewhere? Do they want to go back home? Do they realize the vastness of the problem? Today on the news a holdout was finally taken up in a helicopter ( with dog) and was surprised to see the bigger picture?
I have been very upset that people were being told they had to leave their animals. They would not budge without their animals and so many stayed. What a stupid policy! Anyone who has a beloved pet knows that they are a full member of the family and many would no more leave that dog, cat or iguana than leave a child. Finally we see people are being allowed to take their pets. There are cages and cages of homeless pets. What will happen to these animals?
September 9th, 2005 at 8:18 am
Regarding class in America and cluelessness on the top:
The most emailed article from the New York Times was about a remark by Barbara Bush who said that this disaster is really working out well for the underpriviledged:
“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas,” Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program “Marketplace.” “Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.”
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/07barbara.html?ex=1126411200&en=147cf372dfdfcece&ei=5070
This morning we read that by presidential executive order federal contractors rebuilding after hurricane Katrina will be allowed to pay below prevailing wage.
“Bush’s action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid, and drew rebukes from two of organized labor’s biggest friends in Congress, Rep. George Miller of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats.
“The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities,” Miller said.”
More here:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/08/news/economy/katrina_wages.reut/
September 9th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Here’s a couple of show ideas:
Beauty:the big picture. To get an idea of what I have in mind and who might be a spectacular guest, look at Crispin Sartwell’s Six Names for Beauty. Sartwell is himself a very active blogger, so I think that would be a great connection as well. Here is Sartwell’s webpage: http://www.crispinsartwell.com/
Sartwell’s writing and imagination are wonderful and a program on beauty and the multifarious ways it touches our lives and makes them worth living would be an apt forum for having him as a guest.
September 9th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
I said a couple of ideas. here is the other. “radical democracy”. One of your guests on the Whitman show mentioned a comment by Whitman that democracy is an idea the radical gist of which we haven’t begun to grasp. A show focusing on democracy as theory with a guest like Douglas Lummis (who has a book Radical Democracy) and say Cornel West, or some other political philosophers might offer us better tools with which to think about the more immediate problems with our own democracy.
Any how. There are a couple of ideas.
September 9th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
How about a show about how we can use music as a way to build peace and understanding between ourselves and the Middle East? I’m working with a music group from Syria. We’re touring American churches and giving concerts. I believe listening to music from the Middle East is a good metaphor for what we need to do in regards to that part of the world. We need to listen more closely to what they are saying, instead of forcing our answers as Americans upon then.
My website is http://www.concertsforpeace.net
Mel Lehman ML9612921@aol.com
September 12th, 2005 at 11:46 am
As a response to Hurrican Katrina, many educational orgainizations have offered to provide online courses for the students displaced by the disaster. The organization I work for, Olin College, is home to one of the largest associations of online education providers, the Sloan Consortium, which is offering free online courses for displaced students, funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation. (More info at http://www.sloansemester.org.) How about a program on the power of online learning, which is coming into new prominence as a result of the hurricane?
September 14th, 2005 at 2:56 pm
Hi, I’m suggesting a show – it has nothing to do w/ Katrina, but rather medical ethics issues. Jaon Rothschild, co-founder of the U Mass Lowell Women’s Studies program (now called Gender Studies) will be in Lowell on the 29th at a 30 year celebration of the program – she is author of a fascinating new book, The Dream of a Perfect Child – press info to follow. Would you consider her as a guest on a panel or individually? Anyway, here’s the press release – great topic of interest to anyone pregnant or contemplating it, also to diability rights/issues and med ethics in general…
Dream of the Perfect Child, by Joan Rothschild (June 20) Provides a Feminist Critique of Bioethics and Attitudes toward Reproduction Technologies and the Disabled.
“Others have addressed the societal implications of contemplating “the perfect child” but no one has written about it so poignantly, so compellingly, and so beautifully. . . . The best discussion of bioethics and reproductive practices I’ve seen.” — Carole Browner, University of California, Los Angeles
“Science and technology, medical professionals, and parents meet in the doctor’s office. This privatized setting is the site for individual decisions: whether to test or not, whether to keep a pregnancy or terminate it, and for which diagnosed “defect.” Each decision becomes another judgment as to which conditions, and which children, are acceptable or not. As they aggregate over time, individual decisions add up to a selection process, marking the imperfect, those who may be dispensed with, while certifying those worthy to be born. This process constitutes the discourse of the perfect child.”
– from the Introduction
Every parent wants a healthy, normal child, and scientific and technological advances have now made this increasingly possible to achieve. But progress comes with a price. Tracing its roots from Enlightenment thought through the biological discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries, Joan Rothschild shows how the dream of human perfectibility masks a darker motivation to eliminate all that does not meet its increasingly heightened standards.
Rothschild points to the thousands of decisions about prenatal testing that are made each day by prospective parents and their doctors, the context in which they occur, and how they add up to the discourse of the perfect — and imperfect — child. She argues that the mainstream bioethics community has been ineffective in raising appropriate questions, resulting in support for the status quo.
The Dream of the Perfect Child is the first book to put the practice of prenatal diagnosis into historical, cultural, and ideological contexts, deconstructing the discourse through changing scientific, cultural, and historical moments. Not a matter of conspiracy or plot — as “brave new world” alarmists would have it — the dream of the perfect child arises today in reproductive medical practice, as individual decisions about prenatal diagnosis select and begin to rank which fetuses, and therefore which children, are acceptable or not, reinforcing negative attitudes toward people with disabilities, and setting standards for the perfect. Rothschild places these decisions within the history of negative attitudes toward people with disabilities from the 18th century to the present, as the striving for human perfectibility produced an underside in negative images and eugenics. While predictions — both bad and good — about making perfect babies and people have been the subject of other books and articles, none has offered the kind of historic context that is set forth here.
Drawing on counter-voices from medicine and feminist ethics, as well as from pregnant women and people with disabilities, The Dream of the Perfect Child reevaluates the uses of genetics and prenatal testing. Ultimately, the goal is to change reproductive medical practice and thereby transform the dream.
About the author
JOAN ROTHSCHILD is professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and research associate at the Center for Human Environments, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. The author and editor of numerous articles and books, Rothschild was instrumental in establishing the field known as “gender and technology” with the publication of Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology in 1983. The Dream of the Perfect Child is the culmination of almost two decades of research on this topic.
September 16th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
The Dutch government recently announced that they are going to be tracking their citizens from birth. They will collect health, family information, school and police records.
This is an amazing announcement given the historic Dutch reticence to openly deal with personal data. These feelings arose out of the Second World War where records on their citizenry were used by invading Nazi’s to round up Jews, Communists, homosexuals and potential dissidents.
But the Dutch are not the only ones who are moving towards a National Identity card. The Belgians, and the Brazilians are already there. The US has had a Social Security card for some time now that has served as a defacto identity card, albeit an insecure one.
How are the Dutch going to guarantee security? What kind of authentication mechanisms will they be putting into place? passwords? biometrics?
Given the amount of chaos during Katrina with respect to getting benefits to evacuees, locating family members, getting medication to the right people, etc. A National Identity card makes a lot of sense. Is there an increased impetus behind a National Identity card in the US? What kind of roadblocks did the previous proposals face, what kind of security should it have?
What kind of guarantees would be in place to guard against identity theft, and against governmental abuse?
What kind of security implications does this have in a post-9/11 world?
What are the implications for foreign nationals working within the US?
September 17th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
Salman Rushdie will be in town soon. Can we do an interview with him?
September 27
Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture “Step Across This Line: An Evening with Salman Rushdie.� One of the world’s most successful, celebrated and controversial authors will explore freedom of expression, religion and its relationship to popular culture and modern society, current events at home and abroad and the role of the artist in society. Tickets are free. Tufts students may obtain tickets at the Dowling Hall front desk. Members of the public should call 617-627-2000 for ticket information. Seating is limited. A reception and signing of Rushdie’s latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, will follow. Cohen Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.
http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/calendar/index.shtml
September 18th, 2005 at 12:22 am
Suggestions for your show – some guests that seem to not get heard enough on other press venues
Al Gore – his new media enterprise as well as his views on the internet would make for a fascinating show
Robert F Kennedy Jr
Sibel Edmonds
Colleen Rowley
September 18th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
THE BLOOK
Tom Evslin’s got a blook coming out. What’s a blook, you ask. It’s a book serialized as a blog. Tom’s written a murder mystery set during the dot com era. The difference between a blook and the serialized novels of the 19th century is that this one’s interactive. There are reader forums, a wiki description of the book which allows readers to rewrite the dustjacket blurb and a fake website for the fictional corporation.
His announcement is here.
September 18th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
I would like to suggest you do a show on the red cross. What was and is their role in New Orleans and the surrounding areas? With so many relief agencies involved, including the federal government do we need them? How much money have they received recently and where will it go. I know they received a great deal of money and blood donations after 911 and a lot of it ended up going elsewhere. I’ve heard a lot of negative things about them in the past few years perhaps you could have a look at them and give us an honest assessment. Thank you
September 19th, 2005 at 12:47 am
A conversation between Chris and Stanley Crouch discussing race, jazz, baseball, books, ext…
September 19th, 2005 at 10:23 am
My show suggestion: the CBC lockout. Not just because as a Canadian the lockout is seriously harshing my mellow, but because it’s (another) example of how technology is utterly changing the way things have always been done.
The locked out CBC workers have taken back the means of production in a variety of ways. First, they put up a website (http://www.cbcunplugged.com). There are a whole set of blogs created by locked out workers, and cbcunpluggged acts as a clearning house of sorts. Then the radio personalities started in on the podcasts. There are many of them now. The podcasts are highly political and talk back to management as well as keeping their audience informed. Yesterday CBC Vancouver workers offered up episode one of a sitcom available in .mov format. CBC Toronto morning radio personalities and producers have paid 5 bucks a head to volunteer at CIUT, the Univ. of Toronto campus radio station. The were all locked out by management, but have found their way back to their audience with a vengence, using only the internet and community-based resources. I’m hoping somebody can have a look at this from the point of view of the changing face of labour in an internet world. Are the CBC workers helping or hurting their cause?
September 19th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
I’d like a show on the wealth of the US Senate. Straight forward investigative journalism on how many of them are millionares. Then a discussion on WHY they are millionares and why this kind of class divide–our representative body–is so important. How campaign finance reform might improve the situation. And how this “millionares club” environment contributes to the self congratulatory tone-utterly lacking in intellectual vigor and reflection–that permeates every Senate hearing. most recent exhibit A: the Roberts hearings.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
yes, I misspelled “millionaire”–sorry. suffice to say, I’m not one of them.
September 20th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Just want to say that while I enjoy the show, it doesn’t seem that the name “Open Source” was well thought out. Whenever I hear an add for a segment, it sounds like “Open Sores” and, in my book, there’s no bigger turn-off than that!
September 21st, 2005 at 3:07 am
The news topics are great, but please, more shows on art, jazz, and philosophy. What about a jazz and New Orleans conversation between Chris and Wynton.
What about a Dylan conversation with Scorsese.
My dream show would be a conversation with the Chinese author of “Soul Mountain” and “One Man’s Bible,” Gao Xingjian. Please…Please…Please!
September 22nd, 2005 at 8:00 pm
Talk to Joyce Carol Oates: not in45 years have I been compelled to read EVERTHING a writer has written (D.H.Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, Conrad,etc), but Oates has captured my very heart: read “Foxfire”, “Because it is bitter, and Because it is My Heart”, and her editor’s introduction to the “Essential Dickinson”, and read “The Faith of a Writer”. She is the great American writer: totally brilliant, totally the artist. Oh you must. It is so good to refind you after having lost you when you came to Mystic from Westerly!
September 22nd, 2005 at 8:15 pm
Truck drivers who receive safety training are taught to leave 4 seconds’ worth of “buffer” between themselves and the vehicle they’re following. (This is, they say, the amount of “buffer” needed to stop, assuming the vehicle in front comes to a sudden stop.)
That’s pretty much impossible in rush hour, and difficult the rest of the time – leave a buffer, and a car or truck will jump in to fill it. It’s worse to the rear. Drivers seem not just oblivious of the need for stopping space, but they use tailgating to intimidate, instead of blinking their high-beams, to signal that they want to pass – whether there’s room in the right lane or not.
Has the rate of “pile-ups” increased over the past 15 years, as a result of the increased tendency to tailgate? – any actuaries out there know the answer?
Is there any point in trying to educate drivers to leave a 4-second buffer? What happened to “the courtesy of the road” and “defensive driving”?
September 23rd, 2005 at 12:07 am
While I feel that the government response before, during, and after Katrina’s wake serves as another installment of America’s “Passion Play” around race, I think that the mainstream, “liberal” media has again done a disservice to the issue of economic inequality in our society. The tragedy of New Orleans has been given a black face because predominantly white American society cannot tolerate the images of “white trash” in a serious, sober fashion. While US citizens content themselve to helping “those poor black people” who are always patronizingly portrayed as needy and wanting, white poverty and class inequity is a clear mirror reflecting back upon American society — and it is an extremely uncomfortable sight.
To refocus one of the many conversations that the US will be having about Hurricane Katrina, I would love to hear a show that would compare/contrast the near-destruction of New Orleans with that of the Johnstown Flood of the late 19th century, another human-bred disaster fed by class privilege. David McCullough would be a key interpreter of these events in my mind.
To further explore the impact of race within the socio-economic context of disaster, I would also invite someone like Noel Ignatiev, who has studied the historical development of “whiteness” in the United States.
The issues of class and socio-economic equality is a poorly understood concept among a large majority of US citizens, yet it is obvious that “the system” protects the status quo vigorously (case in point: it may not have been coincidence that both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were assasignated at the time when their political thinking was growing to include issues of economic inequality and the structures which prevented working class people of all races from coming together and promoting real social change). Instead of an “either/or” approach to these issues, a “both/and” offensive would provide for a richer conversation on Katrina’s aftermath.
Keep up the good work, Chris — you are the John Coltrane of talk radio!
September 24th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
show idea: Universal Language.
The word “googled” kind got it started for me, that is, the idea of a universal language. It’s very much an internet term. Is it used in China? Are there other words that have been created from the internet, directly or indirectly, as the term “googled.”
These things I do not know, but I am curious if we as a world of humans are moving closer to being one, and that would mean one language. Right? And I guess for the reason that the internet is “your beat” then how is the internet facilitating the movement towards one language, universal communication, all of us being able to speak to eachother, understand eachother, get along.
Show idea: the internet, the great divider.
Is the internet just giving those with means, however modest, the ability to move at warp speed into the future, leaving behind those without.
I as a 33 year old white male in Seattle, Washington grew up with the idea that if you worked hard you would get rewarded, i.e. the house, the car, the family, the retirement, like what I saw my grandparents had. I am however more and more realizing it’s not so easy. As an example, I have several friends who live in their own homes, but only because of help ($$$) from family to get into those homes. That is one example, but when you think that lots of folks don’t have even that avenue for assistance, the “american dream” may never be.
Back to the internet, what are those without internet access missing? Are they missing anything? What are those people with access gaining? and is it about the internet or computing itself? What are the computer literacy rates of those in the us these days? And what about the US vs other countries? Third world vs. First world? I myself get much info via the internet; I stay informed; I better myself through learning, and it’s easy. So, what are people missing out out on. And conversely, what might those negatives of easily accessible info be for me in the future. What if I loose my internet? How will I easily find info at all hours of the day about almost anything I want?
Cheers
September 24th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
I like Rochelle’s idea about a CBC lockout story. It does seem to be underreported. and the internet angle is right up your beat. The locked out workers become more like bloggers in this instance, don’t they? How does their news chage? What might they report on that’s different then when they are flying the CBC flag?
Related: the daily newspapers here in Seattle went on strike a few years ago and just might have gone online with the news. The strikers did put out a small print version of a paper.
Cheers
September 25th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
Do we need a Niebuhr revival?
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in the New York Times a piece called Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr. Does Katrina remind us that forgetting him was a mistake? Do we need to reconstruct the process by which we created our myth of national innocence? What does it mean when John Danforth invoked Niebuhr and his phrase “the children of the light” when he eulogized Rpnald Reagan, a man whose politics surely diverged from Niebuhr’s in significant ways.
September 26th, 2005 at 10:10 am
Great show, Open Source. Glad it’s on podcast – I get to listen so much more.
Suggestion: Chris Patten, just published (UK) book, Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs. Interesting ideas about America’s role in the world and its relationship with Europe. I’ve no affiliation – his interview on BBC was interesting and I wanted to hear more.
More info at http://www.amazon.co.uk/ and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3965499.stm
–sk
September 27th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
I’d like to hear a show about alternative healing methods. It seems more people are concerned about using traditional methods such as going to a doctor and taking the prescriptions they write. I’ve heard that 75% of the oncologists send family members with cancer to alternative practicioners rather than subject them to chemo and radiation. I don’t know if that figure is accurate or not but I have heard the testimonials of many cancer survivors who rejected the traditional approach and went to people like Tom Tam here in Boston. The testimonials are not proof that his system of healing works but are compelling to hear and makes one stop and think.
September 29th, 2005 at 1:46 am
I sincerely hope, and in fact believe, that this show will not be limited by PC protocol that prevents us from exploring controversial topics. To wit, my friends and I have been discussing recently the possibility that the process of natural selection is being subverted by modern society in the following sense(s): 1. If a certain region is not capable of supporting a large population, is it rational to artificially sustain said population with food aide, medical aide, etc? I would be interested to hear from people in the know about these matters. Perhaps there is an explanation that goes beyond altruism (some might call it guilt) and actually addresses the seeming nonsensical nature of the western attitude toward Africa, especially our apparent need to ‘save’ the people of Africa from their lot.
Tangentially, perhaps we could discuss why the most ardent supporters of teaching evolution (I count myself as one of these) tend to also be ardent supporters of large scale social welfare programs that tend to address the effects of problems such as malnutrition, poor hygiene, lack of education, etc, but do little to nothing about the root causes of these problems. Should we not as rational people, be able to accept that not every group can be successful? Furthermore, should we not accept that nature (or, if you prefer, God) has set the ball in motion, and those who can not or will not adapt will not survive? It becomes something of a sticky wicket for evolutionists when we consider that it would appear that famine in Africa is nature’s way of thinning a population that has not successfully adapted to it’s environment. When we see this sort of natural culling among other species, we applaud nature’s efficiency, even if we cringe at the apparent steely-eyed disregard for life. We acknowledge that though it may seem cruel, nature’s plan is sound and the elimination of the weak preserves the overall viability of the species.
I hope that this topic can be addressed without undue emotion, or a sense that race should be perceived to play any sort of role in the discussion. I assure you that I do not hold the belief that race is at issue in the least. I am sure there are experts in this field that could illuminate the issue in a manner that would make for interesting radio.
September 30th, 2005 at 12:58 am
Once again I’m writing to request you do a show on the red cross. The airways are full of their requests for money and blood. I’ve listened to many different news sources and heard a multitude of interviews with victims of both hurricanes and not once have I heard anyone mention getting help from the red cross. I heard one man in Louisianna say that after a month the red cross and fema finally showed up but neither has done anything. He said that a church group has been feeding them and providing tents etc. Where was the red cross while all those people were suffering in the super dome? All over the country people are donating blood just as they were after 911. Most of thew blood will not be needed by the hurricane victims and will be converted, as it was after 911, to another source of cash. You could also look into what is happening to the people who won’t have work and also no flood insurance. Many people will be loosing their houses to the mortgage companies because they simply won’t have time to reestablish their lives in the 90 days extra they’re given to start making payments again. Instead of wasting money enriching companies like Haliburton why not figure out a way to really help those people? Do you really read these requests? How do we know. I feel very frustrated right now because most people seem so oblivious to some of the real problems facing the peopel own there. Perhaps you could investigate and find some groups that are actually doing something. Maybe you could even come up with some solutions. Thank you.
October 2nd, 2005 at 2:46 pm
This month, Massachusetts became the first government in the world to adopt — and mandate — the OASIS OpenDocument office suite data format (as well as the Adobe PDF). The purpose is to achieve liberation from proprietary formats, which (if changed or discontinued) could leave Massachusetts with all of its data (and the records that relate to you and me as citizens of Massachusetts) trapped and inaccessible. Microsoft refused to change its MS Office software suite, and as a result, Massachusetts agencies will no longer be allowed to save documents using Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint after January 1, 2007.
This has been watched with great care abroad, as many other governments are expected to follow the Commonwealth’s lead. At the same time, the move will be difficult, and has been controversial. With the decision final, the number of stories being written are increasing rather than the opposite, as MS is not pleased with how things came out. As a result, it’s even made FoxNews.com, where the Executive Director of of a trade association with strong Microsoft backing wrote an inaccurate piece calling for retraction of the policy: (the story did not disclose the writer’s affiliation with Microsoft until prompted to do so: ).
If this is of interest, the following (unlike almost all other articles available to date, which are almost all short and often partisan) is meant to be detailed and objective, and is based on interviews with all of the main players involved (including Microsoft): http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/sep05.php#feature As a disclosure myself, I represent OASIS, the standards development organization whose standard was adopted by Massachusetts.
Other articles in the same issue address the action taken from policy, historical and other angles: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/sep05.php
October 4th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
I would like to see a show on MIT Media Lab’s $100 laptop. It’s a sweet idea to those of us who use computers on a daily basis, but I am curious what the folks behind it think it will really do to improve the life of, say, a Cambodian. Or is it simply an attempt to generate a critical mass of some kind and (hope that) something wonderful will arrive?
Thanks for an excellent radio show.
October 4th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
Interesting you refer to Cambodians; Negroponte said a few days ago he was partially inspired to do the initiative while building schools in Cambodia with his wife. He gave the students laptops to bring home, but they came back the next day unused; apparently their parents were terrified the kids might break them. But once he explained that they wouldn’t be responsible for the laptops, the parents encouraged their kids to use them – particularly since they were often the brightest illuminated light source in the house.
I blogged about Negroponte’s presentation here; meanwhile, here’s a podcast I recorded of his presentation, made with permission of the conference organizers.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
Glenn Lowry was very interesting, Near the end, he responded to a question on Kozol’s justified anger about unequal school resourcess. But there is a big issue that Lowry brought up, the “achievement gap: between Afro-America and Laitino school achievement and white/asoam achievement. LKozol has said that thte sole reason for the gap is thesharp inequalit of re4sources. But even in mixed schools, where there is no spending gap (like Cambridge Rindge and Latin School) and where expenditure isi high, the achievement gap persists. It would be usesful to hear a show with Chrisstopher Jencks explaining the ongoing complexity of understandin ghte gap, how much familly and culture matter and so on. Takiing the Kozol positioin would set up a dangerous disappointment, even if, conrary to realism,, the country could be conviinced to equalize at a decent level school outputs for all iindividuals. Jenchs is the best person to have on thhis issue and iss right inthe neighborhood.
October 5th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
I suggest you do a show on Deism and Our Founding Fathers. This comes as a response to last night’s show, 10/4/05, on H. Miers as Bush’s selection to replace Justice O’Conner. One of the guest made a comment that more or less stipulated that Bush should have selected a person who would live up to the ideas of Christianity our Founding Fathers wanted for the nation. This type of comment always cracks me up. Through all the recent encroachment of the religious right influencing national policy, I have not ever heard or read in main stream media the fact that the Constitution’s First Amendment separating the state from the church was based on the majorities Deist view that there is no legitimate church and, for those who have no concept of Deism, is the bombshell fact that even tho T. J. loved to read and scrutinize the bible for facts, he and his pals of reason did not believe in the revelation of a man named Jesus. Sorry I did not catch the guest’s name from the show, but I felt from his voice the evangelical zeal of indignation of recent Supreme Court decisions regarding this separation. Even in main stream media articles regarding Michael Newdow’s suite to remove Under God from the pledge do not delve into Court analysis of the separation clause. One has to read full text court decision’s to get those points. Not many non-law students do that. In conclusion, I’d like to hear a show that does go deep into the Deist belief of the FF’s realization that in order to keep the state equal for all, the separation of religious imposition is necessary. TXS.
October 6th, 2005 at 4:25 am
I would like to listen to a show all about the future of LED lighting. Every year I see the technology become better and better…and now we are in an energy crisis. How come everyone doesn’t have LED lights yet?
October 6th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
I would like to hear a show about FOSS (free and open source software), and GNU (Gnu is not Unix.)
Richard Stallman, its founder, is a local (Cambridge) and a wit — see http://www.stallman.org/.
The Free Software Foundation is in downtown Boston.
This is not just for computer geeks; as noted earlier, Massachusetts has become the first public entity to require documents to be saved in the open source Oasis format, much to the distress and veiled threats of MicroSquish. Developing nations are adopting Linux as their operating system of choice, with all the applications that come with it.
What is the economic model? How do so many talented people justify donating their time to projects for which there is no immediate reward? What about the MIT folks proposing a $100 laptop?
October 7th, 2005 at 10:57 am
I would like to hear a show on how much the republican party has changed. I’m not very old (27) but I remember the Republican party stood for things like small government, state rights, a focus on domestic policy not foreign policy, etc… It seems that during the Bush administration all of those things have changed, not just changed, but turned upside down. I’m a flaming liberal, but I would like to hear what consertatives think about what is going on and how much “their” party has changed with this administration. It seems that there would be quite a large group of consertatives who are feeling betrayed.
October 8th, 2005 at 8:53 am
How about a show on Extreme Cocooning (I just made up this term).
OK, we’ve got bird flu, extreme weather, terrorist attacks, oil shortages, etc. Let’s think aloud about how we’d, individually, weather prolonged periods of confinement in our homes. Should we stock up on water, food, batteries, guns, etc.? During a pandemic, would the internet keep working, so we could work and entertain ourselves? Would the power stay on? Would the toilets work? Would our electronic mutual fund balances be safe? Would we wear masks and plastic smocks when we went outside the house to shop for groceries?
Let’s scare ourselves silly, in time for Halloween!
October 10th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
I agree with the previous comment (avecfrites). The avian flu pandemic show is ripe, and questions abound. This could be turn out to be the biggest news event since 9/11.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:56 am
I suggested a show about bird Flu here above when Chris did the birding show. We have many wild Turkeys that come in the winter and of course many birds at the feeders. Do we stop feeding? They have come to depend on us.
We are starting to stock up, thinking of self-quarantine (“extreme cocooning”).
What will the world look like during and after? It’s frightening.
October 11th, 2005 at 7:11 am
And article in the NYT caught my eye:
Supermarkets are Losing Shoppers to New Rivals
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/business/06grocery.html?pagewanted=print
I was grumbling to myself about why a lemon has to cost 70 cents here in the suburbs of central MA when in a little fruit market in Brooklyn they are selling for 4 for $1 or even 10 for $1. My mother says it’s a “come-on”. But they have a lot of “come-on’s” All their prices are lower.
I always shoppped at little stores and farm stands. The farm stands are seasonal and the little stores have gone out of business and have been replaced by the super supermarkets. You can’t get good meat anymore either– except when you find Coleman’s. Going through to find the few things you want takes time and energy and you wind up a victim. Lately, more and more, I have been going to Trader Joe’s. What a difference! It’s a relatively small place with non-offensive music and smiling faces. Practically everything they sell is good and well-chosen. They have a lot of organic products too. And I am going to trek to Bread & Circus next 20 miles away.
Cards are coming in the mail now from the chains ( Stop & Shop, Shaw’s) offering me percentages off or dollar amounts off every week for the next several weeks. The cards keep coming.
October 11th, 2005 at 10:36 am
Katejlogan:
You might want to check out this show from July about the state of the Republican Party
Two other quick notes for Potter, Avecfrites, and red02472, mjking, and andycarvin:
* we’ll talk in our story meeting today about bird flu — it’s not clear yet what more there is to say about it for the moment
* we’re thinking about the $100 laptop and the digital divide
Keep the ideas coming!
Dave
October 11th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
If you do the $100 laptop, please, please, have someone prepared to talk about how realistic it is. My take is that the device they’ve designed will cost a lot more than $100, for a long time. I’m a bit wary of the Media Lab after a seemingly endless supply of hype from them for the past 10 years.
Along the lines of the digital divide: Remember how over the past 20 years schools have flirted with teaching kids programming? And how that has played into lots of abortive attempts to create easy-to-learn programming tools, to teach teachers how to program so they can create custom teaching tools, etc.? How about discussing the value of teaching programming to non-engineers in light of newer means of producing computer stuff for use by others — blogs, podcasts, apple garage band, etc. Perhaps school kids should be assigned to create blogs, hosted community forums, and similar things using existing tools, rather than learning programming.
I have nothing against teaching programming — I’m a sometime programmer myself. But maybe the key to success for most people is evolving from creating programs to creating content. That would be more fun and also more resistent to being outsourced to non-English speakers less familiar with our culture.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
http://www.lulublookerprize.com/
October 12th, 2005 at 9:55 am
I’d like to send an e-mail directly to Chris Lydon.
I am interested in having him speak at an event which obviously he might like to do as it could provide good publicity for his show.
Would someone let me know how I can contact Chris about something like this?
My e-mail is robert_ayles@msn.com
October 12th, 2005 at 12:17 pm
WGBH is airing a multipart program on world health and this is an idea for a companion show on Open Source.
I work with a Boston Acupunturist, Tom Tam, who has extended acupunture techniques to a very effective form of energy healing that could have a significant impact on world health. The therapy is easily trainable and works for self treatment. It is also very economically applied to groups.
A website that describes the group sessions appears at (yinyanghouse.com/tongren).
If you would like any more information, please feel free to contact me.
DaveG
October 12th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
Hi Chris,
The seduction community (see http://www.fastseduction.com/) is a self-identified community of men (most in their late 20s/early 30s) who have committed large amounts of time and money to studying and developing methods to effectively seduce women. The community is largely Internet based with outposts within urban communities where self-appointed mentors impart their personally-developed methods to students in workshop formats. Men pay $500 and up for instruction over a single weekend at these workshops. The “seductions” rely on a base set of procedures designed to disarm and enchant their “victims” that are discussed amongst the community members using a standard set of acronymns (such as PUA for “pick up artist”, or AFC for “average fucking chump”). And it works; I’ve seen it.
Neil Strauss, a “Rolling Stone” and “NY Times” reporter, recently released a book – The Game – which discusses his two years in the “community”. I’m sure he’d love to talk about it.
I’d love to hear you interview him. The existence of this community – which has been highly profitable for multiple individuals, including Strauss, I’d bet – brings up so many interesting issues of gender and class. Still, I haven’t seen these talked about in the mainstream media when the book is reviewed or Strauss is interviewed. I think that the mainstream media sees this largely as an underground phenomenon, but it’s a powerful testament that 100,000 copies of the hard cover book were pre-released.
Always your admirer,
Lucy
October 13th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
An Upstart Named Gershwin Gets His Shot
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/arts/music/02horo.html?ex=1129348800&en=be8f79c4627946b7&ei=5070
We went to this BSO concert last Friday. The program was an all American one put together by James Levine starting with the music of Charles Ives, Lukas Foss, Elliot Carter and ending with Gershwin’s Concerto in F. This article from the NYT was enlightening. That whole program ( the BSO, James Levine, Dawn Upshaw, Jean-Yves Thibaudet) went on to Carnegie Hall after that weekend of performances here. The reviews I read were ecstatic about it. We sat through 2/3 of this program of mostly ‘boop-smeep” music ( atonal dissonant). Dawn Upshaw looked stunning and her voice was magnificent. But the Foss pieces she sang were a big disappointment. We absolutely love to hear her, but what a waste of her!! And the music did nothing for the lyrics ( prose of Kafka and poetry of Auden, Housmann and Nietzsche.) which were better and more moving simply read in silence. Two of the four Foss pieces were sung in German so it was really about the music for the audience unless you know German.
The audience was polite during all of that “boop-smeep” as we were though I noticed that by the end of the Carter piece my husband, who is always polite enough to at least applaud, was angry enough not to lift his hands at all.
Then the Frenchman Thibaudet came out in his spiked hair and natty ( jazzy) attire ( bright red tie,someone said he had a jeweled belt) and he sat down to give us a very moving performance of the Gershwin piece, “Concerto in F”. Tears welled up in my eyes and my heart was bursting. By the end we were on our feet with most of the audience to give a standing ovation.
We looked forward to James Levine coming to Boston. I have to tell you that we feel at this point that he is pushing too hard with this elitist program. I challenge you to find me one review of this program that is not absolutely fawning as well. No one will say otherwise.
I think this also fits into the discussion of class. Gershwin was snubbed by the Americans while he was revered elsewhere as this superb article tells. One of the factors: he was a Russian Jew and looked down upon by German Jews and of course he was influenced by Jazz:
( from the article) “The critic Paul Rosenfeld, who championed Copland in intellectual circles and whose Jewish lineage was German, detected in Gershwin the Russian Jew a “weakness of spirit, possibly as a consequence of the circumstance that the new world attracted the less stable types.” Rosenfeld’s point was that Gershwin was talented, but vulgar, “a gifted composer of the lower, unpretentious order.”
So my suggestion is a program about American Classical Music. Maybe this is a series. One episode would have to be “Boop-Smeep” Music. I have to say here I am not anti-modern music. I can give you a list of composers whose works have startled and moved me in this genre. But I don’t want it forced down my throat, 2/3 of a program, ( Ozawa used to give us one here and there) before I can get to hear a Gershwin piece. And what about Ellington? What’s wrong with music being accessible and non-elitist?
October 14th, 2005 at 10:39 am
On June 9, 1972 Rapid City South Dakota suffered a horrendous rainstorm, dumping 17 inches of rain on the Black Hills in about four hours. The rush of water down from the hills into the impoundment at Canyon Lake caused the dam to break, and an already terrible situation became catastrophic. A wall of water 12 feet deep swept through the city, washing trees, caras, homes and people down Rapid Creek to the Cheyenne River. When it was over, over 240 people died, and the Rapid City began to rebuild.
In the aftermath, it was discovered that there had been a government sponsored cloud seeding operation at work on the afternoon prior to the storm. The project, called EROS (no sexual connotation) denied that their couud seeding could have had any relationship to the deluge which followed. Since there was no proof, no claims were alowed against the government for damages.
My wife and I spent our first night as citizens of Rapid City helping to evacuate a nursing home, carrying the elderly across a waist deep torrent to a gas station on higher ground.
It’s been 33 years since that event, but I have a hunch there are still some federal fungerprints on that tragedy. It would be interesting to have the issue aired.
October 14th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
I’d like to suggest several themes for shows.
Two of those derive directly from my current occupational pursuits :
The theocratic religious right, and applied social softtware.
Open Source has been covering the rise of the Christian Right with a fair degree of intensity, but I would suggest your show go directly to the source for the clearest understanding of the origins, evolution, and trajectory of the theocratic Christian right.
I’m currently organizing an effort that involves a large number of experts who have observed, studied, wrote on, and organized against the theocratic movement – some for several decades now. One facet of the effort will culminate, in a few weeks, in the launch of a website running on Scoop – the software which drives the DailyKos activist website – and will feature analysis from the largest pool of expertise on the Christian theocratic right on any sustained venue on the Net or off of it.
The participants include Frederick Clarkson, Skip Berlet, Dr. Bruce Prescott, Joan Bokaer, Bill Berkowitz, Esther Kaplan, and a number of others.
Clarkson, Berlet, and Bokaer were featured speakers at the landmark first conference on Dominionism at the CUNY Open Center last May. Clarkson and Berlet will again be fesatured speakers at a 2nd CUNY Conference on the Christian theocratic right being held at the CUNY Open Center this October 21st and 22nd of this month.
Clarkson has advised some of the new efforts launched to combat the Christian right. He is author of the book “Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” and has studied the rise of the theocratic right for over 30 years. Teri Gross had him on her show several months ago, squaring off with D.James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries.
There are a large number of focussed topics that Mr.Clarkson or I could suggest concerning the Christian right.
One of the most salient potential show topics I might mention would concern the proposition – rather unappealing to the American left – that the Christian right has been able to so effectively achieve a political control at the federal level very disproportionate to its actually numbers because of the withdrawal of the American left, beginning even in the early 1970′s, from local and grassroots politics. Architects of the rise of the Christian right – Blackwell and others – studied the best organizing tactics that had been used by the American left in the ’50s and 60′s and applied those to grassroots organizing. The shock at indignation felt by the US left recently concerning allegations of electoral fraud misses a key point : regardless of whether various cases of alleged fraud are true or not, such abuses would never have been possible had not the theocratic right and its allies been building for power for over two decades such that they achieved control of the electoral and other key state political machinery in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.
______________
Another interesting topic would concern the origins of the new theological movement which has been dubbed “Dominionism” and is an outgrowth of the Christian Reconstructionist writings and thoughts of Jonas Rushdooney, Gary North, and others. Christian Reconstructionists seek – among other things – to ground the American legal system in a quite literal interpretation of Mosaic law as expressed in Leviticus.
Domionism is a startling theological development which incorporates elements of dispensationalism and yet is postmillenial ( see Sourcewatch : http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Dominionist ). Furthermore, it has lately begun to emphasize Calvinist or neo-Calvinist theological doctrines of election. ( see: http://acharlie.tripod.com/election.html for a short description of this doctrine )
“Dominionism is a trend in Protestant Christian evangelicalism and fundamentalism that suggests political participation in civic society should extend to attempts to take over and dominate the political process ” ( Sourcewatch previously linked page )
___________________
I could go on.
But to turn to a very different topic : Social software, interactive communities, citizen journalalism, and the new media :
Large scale interactive web communities date at least back the “The Well”, but the software enabling such interactivity has grown steadily more sophisticated.
Sometime in 1998 or 1999, programmer Rusty Foster conceived of “Scoop” – originally a derivation of Slashdot code but now rather different. Foster exchanged many ideas, in writing this Perl-based system with another author who was then creating a mirror or sibling system written in PHP that has come to be known as Drupal and is being developed in the CivicSpace project initiated by Jay Rosen’s son, Jack.
Although there is inevitable rivalry between the two emergent communities using these software systems, there is also a busy back and forth of ideas. What has emerged are fantastically complex and fluid systems for mediating decentralized online collaboration.
Both systems are – by the way – Open Source.
Currently, the Daily Kos – largest activist website on the left but also propbably in the world – runs on Scoop. But nowhere on the internet can one find more than a shadow of an expression of the massively powerful, automated, democratic, and decentralized publishing and organizational capabilities of Scoop or Drupal. Such systems have full capability now to allow a literate, engaged communal creation of news in a far more sophisticated way than traditional Wikis, which eventual triangulate towards truth but tend to be of dubious utility in various areas – notably political reporting.
The truest expression of Scoop as an automated democratic publishing system can be seen at http://www.kuro5hin.org , and both Scoop and Drupal are being turned to political campaigns ( The Corzine campaign uses Scoop ), publishing, the simple creation of massive online communities, and commercial purposes.
Within a very short time, these systems will move beyond mere automated syndication and RSS capability to the integration of rich media, initially via Bittorrent systems and Podcasting it is most likely ( these may indeed have already been done ).
The end result – in short order – will be decentralized, democratic but multilayered – with infinitely defineable subgroups with whatever site permission are desired (administrative and editorial layers, for example) which wll soon be able to replace all of the media functions currently provided by television, radio, and print media but in a communally interactive, decentralized and far more democratic manner than traditional media.
Already, the capabilities of such software has raced out ahead of the conceptual grasp of all but a small number of specialists – but as use and hence comprehension of such systems grows, traditional media will increasingly come under seige. Democracy will likely benefit.
OK, that’s enough. I could spit out about 50 more themes, but I’ll wait to see if I get any interest on these topics.
October 16th, 2005 at 6:58 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-bradley/australia-takes-the-lead-_b_8918.html
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an important story: Australia has become the destination of choice for fee-paying college students. That’s surprising news given that the United States has traditionally held this spot by a wide margin, and did so up until the last such survey, five years ago.
Why does this matter?
(the link has interesting comments and a link to the Chronicle article)
October 16th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
I would really like to hear a discussion of the absolute zero active peace making going on in Iraq. Violence and misunderstanding begets violence and misunderstanding. We need to reach out diplomatically, why is this not being addressed?
October 20th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Let’s gather a psychologist, an anthropologist, an economist, a political analyst, and a marketing expert together and explore why we as a society make all the wrong choices. We spend a huge portion of our time, energy, and money pursuing too-big houses, too-bug cars, too-fancy vacations, too-rich food, too many TV channels, etc. What could we accomplish if we dedicated more of ourselves pursuing health, education, energy independence, community, etc.?
Doesn’t it seem increasingly that the disasters that will hit us are ones we could have prevented our softened, but chose not to? Or made no choice at all despite the availability of enough info to enable us to make the right choices?
The country is increasingly feeling not malaise, but rather a combination of rage and helplessness. How do we start the process of improving things?
October 20th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
I work at a local nonprofit- the Mystic River Watershed Association- and would like to help with a program on stormwater pollution. I’ve put some info below. Basically, it is one of the main pollutants of our waterbodies, but most people don’t know about it or how they can help reduce stormwater pollution. More info is at http://www.mysticriver.org/stormwater
After a storm, stormwater flows over lawns, roads, roofs, and any other impervious surface, collecting pollutants and whisking them into rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, and groundwater. This type of pollution, which comes from many unspecified sources, as opposed to a specific source like a pipe, is called nonpoint source pollution. Examples of pollutants that stormwater transports include: fertilizers containing harmful nutrients, oil, grease, viruses, bacteria, toxic metals, sediment, and salts. These pollutants can harm human health and our fragile ecosystems. In cities with combined sewer overflows, the problem is exacerbated when excessive amounts of stormwater cause raw sewage to be released into the receiving waterbody (many of which we swim, fish, and boat in). The effects of stormwater reach farther than just polluting the waters. As the many residents in the Mystic watershed have seen, stormwater can cause flooding, degradation of habitats, sewage backups, and erosion. The problems related to stormwater runoff are not going to go away, but will only increase. As more and more open space land is developed and covered by impervious surfaces, stormwater cannot infiltrate into the ground and is forced to become runoff.
October 20th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
A show about the Beats of the late 50s could be interesting. When Kerouac, Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and the gang in New York incited a cultural revolution. I’m reading Joyce Johnson’s memoir, Minor Characters. I thought it would bore me, but very well done. Another view from the girls.
October 20th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
P.S. The poetry was great!
October 20th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
Sorry, but I don’t see a place on the home page for non-program suggestions. Jefferson Public Radio has nine transmitters that carry their News & Information service. Some have local community programs part of the day and so may not carry Open Source but most do. Seven are along I – 5 from Mt. Shasta to Eugene and two on the northern CA coast. Someone from Hastings MI called in and may hear you on MSU’s AM service or on one of the two public AM stations in Grand Rapids. If you’re going to have this feature you might want to keep it up to date.
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:41 am
I’m interested in another show as a follow-up ot the “Getting Judith Miller” show. I found that show intriguing in raising the likelihood that a journalistic institution is basically choosing to not report news that it knows, about the Iraq war story, which is the story of the decade (certainly defining of the Bush administration). It is also choosing to employ reporter(s?) who don’t report what they know about this story.
In this context, will the blogosphere have to grow up too fast? Can we count on stories getting broken in big blog diaries faster and more accurately and with better marked biases and with more accountability than in the pages of the New York Times? If so, we’ve moved into a world where amateurs will create the news climate.
October 23rd, 2005 at 12:11 am
Political Reality Digital TV Show
The show trails a community of potential political candidates who want to run for, say, The House of Representative in D.C. Party Affiliations not needed.
The “Community” could be something like Opensource, and is basically holding a competition from which a real challanger emerges. It’s something like the realty tv shows only its interactive. The community creates it leaders.
My underlying assumption here is that a migration of TV Watching and Digital TV watching is accuring now. Any Contenders out there?
October 25th, 2005 at 3:23 am
A show about the abduction of the church in America would be interesting and necessary. While the extreme right gets much of the press in this country, there is a huge portion of the Christian community that is deeply offended by that group and the amount of attention and political power that they get.
October 25th, 2005 at 11:48 am
During the discussion on racism in medical care yesterday some bloggers suggested we need to discuss a single payor universal system. I agree. It won’t solve the problem of racism in health care but is probably necessary in order to do so.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:22 am
You could follow up your New Orleans development show that would tie in the issues of rebuilding New Orleans with the overall issues involved in green building. There’s a great 10-pt action plan put together by a group of people (contributed to by my organization, The Green Roundtable) that’s posted on the Building Green web site:
http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm?fileName=141002a.xml
It ties in the myriad issues involved: smart growth and urban planning, brownfields, systems thinking, wetland/wildlife management, etc., etc., etc.
Could be a good lead in to a future show specific to green building.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
In the initial postings for the dialogue on racism you requested suggestions for guests.
I recently heard a portion of a presentation by Robert Ballard of Clark Atlanta University speaking about environmental racism in Katrinas aftermath, its history in the area, effects on health, racism following other hurricanes etc. I think he would be able to help us extend the conversation about both problems.
I also saw part of a video of Michael Eric Dyson speaking recently but didn’t catch the venue. A former Baptist minister and Avalon Professor of Humanities at Penn State. He is author of a recent book; “Is Bill Cosby Crazy? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost It’s Mind”.
I hope we will hear from them in future discussions.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
Back again so soon …
I just found out about a series of meetings and charrettes taking place at the upcoming US Green Building Council’s GreenBuild conference in Atlanta. They will be bringing together 30 gulf coast community leaders, along with Habitat for Humanity, The Enterprise Foundation, Trust for Public Land, and a whole host of green building and smart growth experts to talk about rebuilding the gulf coast and start creating real plans.
Here’s a link:
http://www.usgbc.org/News/usgbcnews_details.asp?ID=1906
I’ll be at the conference, very excited to attend some of these sessions and see what the outcomes are.
October 28th, 2005 at 2:43 am
I would like to add my encouragement to do a program concerning Peak Oil (as suggested in previous posts by johnbaloney and benk).
One interesting and informed perspective on the issue is provided by Michael C. Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (and the online newsletter From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/)
In a speech titled Five Rules for Survival of the Coming Collapse given on October 5, 2005 at the New York Petrocollapse Conference, Mr. Ruppert said, “The world’s key decision makers have been aware of and planning for this crisis for years…In fact, by understanding clearly that political, economic and business elites have been aware of Peak Oil and its deadly implications, we can see that remedial actions designed to save lives and minimize the effects of collapse can and will only be initiated by individuals working through and as part of local communities…it is foolish to believe that any governmental preparation for Peak Oil will be publicly labeled as such. Most preparations, so as to avoid panic and/or political risk, have been carefully concealed in other documents and legislation such as the PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Actâ€?
Mr. Ruppert went on to say, “Eighteen major [oil] exporting nations or regions including the North Sea, Mexico, Norway and Indonesia are showing steep and ever-increasing rates of decline [in oil production]…[a declassified 1977 CIA report] acknowledged that US domestic production had peaked and entered irreversible decline in 1970.
Mr. Ruppert continued with a quote from Richard Cheney, then CEO of Haliburton, in a speech given in 1999 to the London Petroleum Institute: “We as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you’ve got to turn around and find more or go out of business…For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our 71 million-plus barrel a day of oil depletion [today it's 84 million], but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?… Energy is truly fundamental to the world’s economy. The Gulf War was a reflection of that reality. It is the basic, fundamental building block of the world’s economyâ€?
Of course there is much more, but this post is perhaps too long already. Is there any possibility that peak oil and Operation Iraqi Freedom are related? Does this shed any light on why the Bush administration may have needed to fabricate “reasons� for the invasion/occupation of Iraq?
I have additional ideas for guests that may be of interest. Please let me know if I may be of assistance.
October 29th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
My apologies! I just found the Oct. 18 program The End of the Oil Age.
October 30th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
Halloween – Why are we fascinated with Ghosts and Ghouls?
Plus Hugo Chavez the President of Venezuela has urged his country not to celebrate it. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4391166.stm)
Then there are the Ghost hunters who investigate which are now going mainstream and hitting the air waves, For instance the British TV show ‘Most Haunted’ (http://www.mosthauntedlive.net/) which has gathered an almost cult status and is beaming a live show on Halloween to the States. This time it is investigating ‘Jack the Ripper’ and other haunted London Sites. There are also other programs on Discovery about American ghost hunters.
There are the horror films and stories which get broadcasted and how people loved to be scarred out of their wits.
Also there is tradition, how did it start and why is it celebrated?
Plus there are Wiccan’s who Christians have feared through out the ages who are also going to be out and about tomorrow.
There are loads of different angles from parties to religion. To urban myths and folk lore.
Besides it is tomorrow after all.
October 31st, 2005 at 1:43 pm
First, I agree with a caller the other night when you were discussing the conservative “blogosphere” – it was a highly elitist topic, in my opinion. Granted, your guests are educated and well-spoken, but the show suffered from “Lehrer-itis” (interviewing other talking heads such as academics, writers, analysts, etc.) In short, you need to get out more.
The subject I’d like to toss into the ring is the way people in the U.S. mourn a loss – particularly of a loved one (not some stupid show about people who miss their pets). I am struck that, essentially, we do not grieve – certainly not openly or “candidly.” I remember, in my youth, backpacking through Europe and being struck by the number of elderly women (widows) dressed in black in countries such as Greece. It was a symbol and did not keep the women from going about their daily lives – but try to imagine such a thing here. I think not. (I believe this ties into your idea about how few people in America are truly cognizant of the massive war we are fighting, except the loved ones of those in the Middle East.)
I lost my mom seven months ago and I avoided going to a grief session because most are run by “funeral homes” – which I suppose is a nice try but still not what is needed.
November 30th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
World Aids Day is on 1st December. Could make for a good show. As the virus affects millions of people all around the world.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:25 pm
I havn’t had a chance to read all the above yet, but am I the only one that was floored by how fast Google and Yahoo caved in to China.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:54 pm
the history of revising history with Howard Zinn as guest
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:53 am
HEY FOLKS! – at the top of this page is the link to the current suggestions thread. READ THE UPDATE 2/21. This is the old thread. This is confusing.
February 27th, 2006 at 12:38 am
What about programs about (1) detailed descriptions of techniques of torture used by the US; (2) interviews with terrorists asking why they target civilians instead of military; (3) interviews with nuclear weapons designers and how they like their work; (4) people who smuggle drugs OUT of the US; (5) Americans who have renounced their citizenship and why; or (6) interviews with snipers (this last prompted by an article by Ha’Aretz with an Israeli sniper). Some more: (7) the community life of Ismaeli Shiites in the US (how they resemble/differ from Mormons, their Christian analogues?); (8) differences and similarities between Islam law (Shari’a) and Jewish law (halachah); (9) the theology of Teilhard de Chardin; (10) why Fundamentalist Protestants do not establish religious courts like those of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism, or Islam. There is SO MUCH that is ignored out there!!!!!!!!!
March 6th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Suggested thread: University-run nuclear reactors. At University of Washington (Seattle, Washington) and Oregon State University (Corvallis, Oregon), university-run nuclear reactors are sited adjacent to major pedestrian, bicycle, and motor vehicle routes. I’m sure that there are many other such nuclear facilities on college campuses throughtou the United States. How secure are these facilities with regard to possible terrorist attacks or nuclear accidents? Are they considered in emergency planning?
March 8th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Tonight’s show on global warming from the science point of views is pretty much a settled issue. I’d like to hear from the politicians. What are they doing? Is there any real action in congress to deal with what is probably an issue more vital than terrorism.
March 9th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
I would like to hear a series of shows on the fifty states: one show per state. It’s hard to get a feel for what is going on elsewhere in the country. The “National” news generally runs either to events in Washington, D.C. or to disasters.
So how about fifty shows, one a week, on each of the states? I think that the Seattle show was quite a success and might stand as a model for the series.
Thanks.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:25 am
February 4th marked the 100th aniversary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was one of the first theologians to see what was happening to Germany while most of the church followed Hitler’s God-talk. There are many lessons for us in his teachings, in his political acumen and in his willingness to die as a martyr.
I would like to hear a show that explains his core beliefs and core values and indentifies who in America is following in his pattern.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:38 am
How about a show devoted to defining the optimal leader and whether we’re open to it. We could look at historical examples and check out think tanks on the subject. There are the writing of Robert Greenleaf which include this description of leadership:
http://www.greenleaf.org/leadership/servant-leadership/What-is-Servant-Leadership.html
The question goes beyond what is leadership, to how we can tell if someone embodies a good leader and why we keep opting for bad ones. What needs to happen here so that we look for and hire truly good leaders? Are there any on the horizon?
(I’ll probably keep beating this drum whenever I can, so how about we just go for it…)
March 14th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I suggest a show around the idea or possibility of impeachment of the poodle.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:15 pm
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October 29th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Cao ,
Im new to the forum and just wanted to introduce myself, i’m Eric . I’ve been lurking around the forum for quite some time looking up info but finally decided to make an account.
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Hello everyone,
Im new to the forum and just wanted to introduce myself, my name is Michael and I’m form Australia. I’ve been a long time lurker who has finally decided to make an account and contribute.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Hey everyone,
Im new to the forum and just wanted to introduce myself, i’m Donald form Canada. I look forward too makeing a contribution here.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Hello ,
Im new here and just wanted to stop by and say hi
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Hi all
Xmas holidays are coming soon!
please suggest :
What would be the good gift for guy for these holidays?
I’m totally out of any ideas,tired thinking and i need help!
Im 19F, he is 20
Thanks all
for your
help and advice!