Now take this subject out of the academy and bring it to the people. Understanding relativism might help us sort through practical issues that confound us:

1. Taking of life: OK at war; not OK at home; OK for self defense; not OK for mercy, maybe or maybe not OK for prisoners…
2. Genital mutiliation of females vs. routine circumcision of males: How are these different?
3. If it’s OK to have single-sex schools, is it OK for private clubs to exclude entire classes of people (gender, race, religion)?

Why now? I sense that Open Source listners, readers and writers are seeking to make sense of the world. We want tools that can be applied in all cases. An understanding of cultural and moral perspectives is one such tool. This could be an installment in the “intellectual toolkit,” which might include future pieces on rationality and reason, language, emotion, persuasion, etc. Once a month or quarter, Open Source can familiarize its constituents with a new tool and help us grow.

I agree Mr. Scarequotes…something is happening.
I see writers fighting back against reality TV
with The Office, Extras, Reno 911,…
but these writers use reality TV (and would’nt work before or without it)
fiction is indeed stranger then truth
or what is truth
I love this blur
(this blur occurs in a different way in works such as Eggers’ Heartbreaking Work or Pamuk’s New Life)

Winston: I can’t find the show you pitched above! Where/what was it?

NHBoy: I think this will be a hard sell. I agree that NH is interesting right now — and could make an engaging story even for a national audience — but I get the sense, both anecdotally and from the number of comments to our last few election shows, that our listeners aren’t ready for more election horse-racing. ‘06 is done. Let’s wait at least a months before ‘08 starts…

But when it does, we’ll do our best not to ignore a fascinating story just north of us.

Vigneron: We’ve done a number of shows about executive power, torture, and detainee rights. Are you suggesting another angle?

Walkerhenry: I’ll check out that article.

Jon: We’re actually working on a show for Thanksgiving Day that might — I’m just guessing here — be more up your alley than “Momma’s Boy.” Chris interviewed Daniel Barenboim when the Maestro was giving his Norton Lectures at Harvard a month and a half ago. I’m still cutting it, but the plan is for the pre-recorded hour on Thanksgiving.

Noel Murray’s done three articles at the Onion’s AV Club about how their natures as serial media undermine some of the artistry of TV and comic books. (Part 1, TV. Parts 2A and 2B, comics.)

There are some things that television will always do better than movies, like building characters and plots over long stretches of time, and playing out premises in different permutations. But it’s still rare to find a TV series that works as a complete, seamless work of art, with no dead spots or false starts.

But at the same time, the persistent pacing problems of comics is in some ways inherent to the way the medium has arranged itself. The art of editing—so crucial to movies and novels—isn’t as easy in comics, where cutting something that’s not working might mean spending days or weeks rearranging and redrawing pages.

Adam Sternbergh in New York has his own analysis of why shows like Lost don’t work, long-term, and argues for the creation of the limited-run show.

More and more of the popular art forms these days — TV, comics, even movies — are episodic by nature. What are the challenges of episodic storytelling, and are there latter-day Dickenses able to produce great art by the episode? (Or was even Dickens himself sometimes stymied by serial publication?)

Susan Casey has an article in the current issue of Best Life magazine — which does not, unfortunately, make it available online — arguing that plastic is going to be a crisis on the scale of AIDS or global warming. Why? Because almost every piece of plastic ever created still exists.

Large pieces have created a miles-wide mass in the Pacific Ocean. Smaller particles are found throughout the sea and on beaches. Animals eat it. We eat it. And it may really wreak havoc on our systems.

Though Casey’s article isn’t online, another blog tracked some related online articles: Plastics, Plastics Everywhere and Drowning in an Ocean of Plastic, among others.

Should we be more concerned about plastic? If so, what do we do — or can we avoid being killed by one of our most convenient creations?

A Bill of Attainder is a law that specifically applies to a group of persons. I’m referring to detainees held by the military, charged with crimes under our domestic law for actions done in a foreign nation.

Ex post facto. Congress has given immunity for crimes committed by our agents against enemies in the field and detainees.

I want my Constitution back!

We just kicked out our two Republican congressmen, affirmed our Democratic governor with overwhelming support, took control of the house, senate, and executive council. We were the only state in the nation to reverse our vote in 2004 (we went for Bush in ‘00 and Kerry in ‘04), again, one step ahead of the electorate that finally caught up in ‘06.

Our economy is changing…in the past month, features in The Union Leader have chronicled the demise of the timber and granite industries and the rise of a federal prison in the northern part of the state. High tech is booming in the south and our exports are up.

In housing, there’s this from a recent Union Leader piece: “The Manchester-Nashua metropolitan area is the eighth-best nationally to invest in a home purchase and will experience 35 percent appreciation over the next five years, according to Business 2.0 magazine.”

Our population is aging, educated, and wealthy. We are the northern MA suburbs, but there’s more to it than just that…

So, how about a post-election show on your northern neighbor? Are we simply the last northeastern state to swap red for blue? Is there something else going on up here that sheds light on the national picture? What will the country find in ‘08 when it returns to New Hampshire for the primary. This ain’t your father’s Granite State…how about it?

Rumsfeld’s departure pleases Arab press
Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
“No tears are being shed over him”

Many Middle East press commentators view what they dub the “fall” of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as symbolic of the perceived failure of US policy in Iraq as a whole.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6138966.stm

http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-0307265439-0

McCarthy is our living American Dostoyevski, or Faulkner at the least. Edna O’Brien is great, but McCarthy is mapping the America we’re all worried over. Who knows, maybe Chris could even get him to come on the show (he’s famously unavailable).

“McGovern to Meet With Congress on War

George McGovern, the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will meet with more than 60 members of Congress next week to recommend a strategy to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by June.
If Democrats don’t take steps to end the war in Iraq soon, they won’t be in power very long, McGovern told reporters before a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “I think the Democratic leadership is wise enough to know that if they’re going to follow the message that election sent, they’re going to have to take steps to bring the war to a conclusion,” he said.”

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/09/D8LA01L00.html

“The face of the new House

The most outspoken member of the U.S. Congress in the Iraq war debate is U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, who aspires to become chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for funding the war.

This powerful position will no doubt enable him to make good on his threats to cut funding for the Iraq war effort, thereby forcing the withdrawal of American troops.”

http://www.cecilwhig.com/articles/2006/11/09/ralph/73.txt

“Troops Fear The Loss Of Rumsfeld

Indeed, some members of the 101st Airborne Division and other troops approached by The Times as they prepared to fly home from Baghdad airport yesterday expressed concern that Robert Gates, Mr Rumsfeld’s successor, and the Democrat-controlled Congress, might seek to wind down their mission before it was finished.”

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008482.php

“Total U.S. Withdrawal

In December 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms. . . . ”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

Effects on US Military

“When all is said and done in connection with the Pentagon management shakeup, the Baker commission report and the Dems actively taking control of the legislative branch, I for one will be watching the reenlistment rate among the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect many troops will opt to return to civilian life if they feel that they no longer have support from the policymakers, rather than be jerked around by people who think like John Kerry. And if the re-up rate goes down, original enlistments will probably decrease, too. Nobody wants to fight in a war that the movers and shakers don’t want to win. That was true in Korea and Vietnam, and it’s true now.

Any new trends should be apparent by March or so, if they are to happen. I guarantee you that any such change will be spun by the lamestream media as Bush’s fault, probably accompanied by NYT and WaPo opinion pieces bemoaning what a dumb thing it was to get rid of Rumsfeld.

It sure would be interesting if Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) idea of reinstating the draft had to be implemented by a Democratic congress in order to maintain military force levels. I wonder what the political fallout from that would be in ‘08.

As an aside, I also think that diminished capacity of our conventional forces, especially the Army and Marines, tends to make nuclear war more likely, because weakness encourages the enemy to attack, and when you must fight, you fight with what you have. The alternative is capitulation.”

http://outoftherace.blogspot.com/2006/11/bellwether.html

“Speak Up, Democrats

Al Qaeda and Iran are both gloating over the U.S. election results. AQ’s chief in Iraq, Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir, actually mocked Bush while praising the Democrats’ victory in the congressional mid-term contests. According to an audio tape message attributed to Al-Mujahir, Americans had “voted for something reasonable in the last elections.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated that the Republican defeat at the polls “is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation.”

The White House has declined to comment on these statements, but what about the Democrats? Doesn’t it behoove the Democrats to correct the claim that their ascension to power is good news for the enemies of the U.S.? Don’t they want to move quickly to disabuse Al Qaeda of the idea that Democrats represent something that these butchers deem “reasonable”?

There’s even a precedent for speaking out right away. Bill Clinton, following his victory in 1992, addressed the enemies of the U.S. in one of his first statements as the new president-elect. Couching his remarks in terms of the transition from one president and party to another, Clinton said, “The greatest mistake any adversary could make would be to doubt America’s resolve” as power changed hands.

Clinton reminded the world that “America has only one president at a time,” and added that, “even as America’s administrations change, America’s fundamental interests do not.”

http://iraqpundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/speak-up-democrats.html

Terror Cells in UK

“What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don’t know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas. The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2447690,00.html

“Blair Says Terrorist Threat to Last ‘a Generation

Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the threat from home-grown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist conspiracies were under surveillance.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/europe/11terrorcnd.html?ex=1320814800&en=c1835b1c5134183c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

WHILE ENGLAND SLEPT : A Survey of World Affairs 1932 – 1938 (BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD)

http://www.amazon.com/WHILE-ENGLAND-SLEPT-Affairs-CHANGED/dp/B000ERQCWE

Why England Slept

Why England Slept (ISBN 0313228744) is the published version of a thesis written by John F. Kennedy while in his senior year at Harvard College. Published in 1940,[1] the book examines the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II and is notable for its uncommon stance of not castigating the appeasement policy of the British government at the time, instead suggesting that an earlier confrontation between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany could well have been more disastrous in the long run. One could consider these to be bold words given that at the time of writing the German army was sweeping across Europe and appeared near-invincible.

Its title was an allusion to Winston Churchill’s 1938 book While England Slept, which also examined the buildup of German power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_England_Slept

How reliable are translations?

We like to think that we that reading “world literature” gets us closer to those cultures whose novels or poetry we read.

This is an illusion since most of us can only read these novels in translation. I just read Turgenev’s “First Love” (19th century Russian novel) and had a distinct sense that many if not most of the allusion to Russian literature didn’t come through. Often the allusions are intimated through puns which are almost impossible to translate.

As I said on another thread the same is true for the Egyptian novelist Mahfouz. To really understand his work one would need to have knowledge of Arabic literature including the Koran which is often alluded to indirectly in the same way as even non religious British or American writers allude to the King James translation of the Bible.

To read a work critically on has to read it in the original as all translations are mere approximations of the original text.

Hence the idea that a show on translation is an urgent matter for us as too many people take translation for granted. As Poe would say (in the Purloined Letter) translations hide in plain sight.

I hope a show on translation can make the invisible a little more visible for most us.

Is this enough to make GR a classic novel.

What is it about the novel that raises it above its historical context and make it relevant to us today? Will it be relevant to readers a hundred years hence?

Fans Still Passionate About Publicity-Shy Thomas Pynchon
http://us.f347.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=28173&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes

Nov. 8 – Zak Smith is a painter, a rebel and an Ivy
Leaguer, a Yale University graduate with a green
mohawk, an apartment of wall-to-wall illustrations and
a passion for comics, classic novels — and Thomas
Pynchon. About 10 years ago, Smith had a feeling that he should
try Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” an instinct
consummated from the very first page. Smith didn’t
just read the book, he reread it, marked it up and
went back to it so many times that his paperback copy
is held together by duct tape.

huff: What’s the hook for this right now? Is anything new happening with this case? Is there a border security angle or something? I don’t think we could make an interesting show about how the US won’t apologize for this instance.

You could invite Wendy Kaminer as well as Stanley Fich to argue out the limits and merits of free speech:

Wendy Kaminer is profiled on this British website:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2031/

‘The left has been infected by the disease of intolerance’

Stanley Fish has an article in the Chronicle on the subject:

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=f2281gdy909q6jfczpj22f7gtkg3cqft

The Trouble With Tolerance
By STANLEY FISH

Is this where I pitch a show? I read “How It Works”. If so, here goes.
If not, I’ll be glad to resend it. Just tell me.

The Show.
What do speech inflections and speech patterns tell us about our leaders.

I’ve listened thrice to GWB’s voice when he announced Rumsfeld resignation. yesterday. It had his usual uncertainty when he speaks about something he knows little about or when he answers a challenging critical question. But this was a bit stranger. There was a little squeak at the end of one sentence. The pauses were more awkward. It should have been a prepared announcement, probably was. (I don’t know how to find that out.) But it hardly sounded that way. What can we learn or conjecture from our leaders’ speech inflections and patterns?

You could be as specific as comparing this announcement with other Presidents who’ve announced reluctant changes in their administration. I suggest GWB, RR and RMN. WJC, JC and LBJ. Or it could compare good news-bad news Presidential statement or confident and unconfident.

Invite one or two speech experts on the show as well as a current or former White House reporter. Helen Thomas would be great.

Is there something else I could do to make it a Radio Open Source Show.

Thanks,

Michael Fosburg
Quality Search, Inc.
978-762-5544
Michael@qualsearch.com

http://www.qualsearch.com

In particular I’m wondering why it is the Rice and the US government absolutely refuses to issue an apology to Arar; is it because it would poke a giant hole in the fabric of foreign policy, or just pure stubborness??

After the previous Presidential shamed us into upgrading our voting systems to 20th Century technology, what will it take to upgrade our systems to 21st Century technologies. Each state spent millions of dollars on proprietary voting systems. In 2001 the Australians used the first ever open source voting system. Why can’t we?

We currently file our taxes online, and register our cars, why can’t we use off-the shelf technology, and open source software to cast our ballots? If it’s secure enough for those transactions, why isn’t it secure enough for voting? We’ve already paid for the computers, they’re sitting in our public libraries and on our desktops at work and at home. Everybody who wants to vote would have easy secure access without the hassle of standing in line, or dealing with expensive (and sometimes broken machinery). Off-The Shelf hardware would insure that we could easily configure, replace or repair the machinery. Open source software would insure that the vote count is accurate and secure.

Here are a few links to get the conversation started:
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/28/1648218&tid=136&tid=132
http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/08/19/0652240&tid=132
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/

And I’ll try another pitch over the plate. A few weeks ago, I’m not sure in which thread, a couple of comments came up having to do with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National and the international popularity of their podcasted shows. There’s an interesting tension, it seems to me, between listening to public radio shows like ROS in, let’s say, the usual or conventional way, tuning in at a certain time, vs. consuming them in the more portable format of an mp3 file, choosing to listen when and where at one’s leisure. Apparently the people down under have been pretty successful negotiating this transition, between having to tune your antenna to a designated public broadcast, and having the piece of media in your own hands, contained and personalized.

Is there a loss, say in the tacit sense of participating in something larger, in the move towards personal convenience and entertainment? I remember having a conversation with a friend, where I was arguing for the communal aspect in actually going out to see a movie in the theater, whereas he was fine with his large screen and sound system at home. And, besides, he said, it’s not like you have a group discussion afterwards. But I think the experience of being part of a community, of experiencing a film with others, is significant, regardless of whether you talk with others after. Plus there’s the social quality of agreeing to be at an event, of meeting someone or something, at a designated time. Is a similar dynamic happening in radio?

I’d suggest having radio personalities from ABC, like Alan Saunders, host of The Philosopher’s Zone:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/

It’s pretty amazing how much he packs into a 25 minute show. It’s a very full and fulfilling half hour. And, in an interesting case of cross pod-ination, he too had a show with Jaron Lanier, with Lanier referring to his experience on ROS.

And perhaps there’s an interesting parallel between America and Australia, both being former British colonies (Australia now technically a commonwealth), each with its own distinct dialects and accents on the Queen’s English.

Sorry- should keep these suggestions shorter. Anyway, there it is.

Potter: Thanks for the link. I’ll read the piece.