Suggest a Show: November 2005

In House, Uncategorized | brendan, October 31st, 2005

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A suggestion for blouse sizes

Don’t know that we’ll be able to make a show out of it. [tromasbronot / Flickr]

So we saw the 225 or so posts that followed upon our first call for program ideas back in July. We were a little overwhelmed by them, to be honest. You all have a lot of ideas. We’ve been using them, such as when Mark suggested we do a show on Greil Marcus’ new book on Dylan and we did. There are more examples; we’ve been following the threads on intelligent design, religion in America and global warming, and we have a whole list of suggestion-generated shows that we’re going to start putting up on the site.

But I’m masking our failure, which was collecting 225 suggestions in the first place without responding more often. We’re reading those suggestions, but we’re going to put out a new call on the first of every month, so you don’t feel like you’re pressing your notes into the palm of the emperor to be promptly forgotten. And we’ll be weighing in on the comments thread more often. And I am the emperor, by the way.

There’s a list of indictments on the table, the Arctic ice is melting and “The Warriors” has been turned into a video game. What is it you want to talk about?

Update, 11/03

Had a long-ish story meeting today and looked through all these. As always, we are pleased and flattered that you would take the time to suggest these, and as always, we’d be better off to pay closer attention to show suggestions, since we were scooped again this week by one of the comments below.

  • Rochelle wants to talk about the lockout at the Canadian Broadcasting Company. We’ve tried to figure out how to tackle this a couple of times (it’s one of my pet projects) and can’t figure out how to make it more than a media story about a country none of us cares about anyway. [Note, 11/04: This phrasing has offended more than a few Canadians; since the US imports all of its comedians from Canada anyway, I will in the future leave all attempts at irony to the Canadians themselves. For the record, I did not intend to indicate that Open Source is indifferent to Canada, but that Americans -- the majority of our audience -- tend to be. Apologies.] For better coverage of this, try Tod Maffin.
  • Abby asked us to talk about the health care debate in Massachusetts. Abby is right, and this is an important topic, and one about which Mary offers her trademark “I can hear radios turning off all over America.” But we promise to figure it out, and when we do health care we will call John McDonogh as recommended. But it’ll be a national show.
  • Nother tells us “Chris and Camille Paglia, ’nuff said.” This is the EASIEST REQUEST EVER, because Chris had lunch with Camille Paglia in April, and because we’re radio producers, WE RECORDED IT.
    • Chris and Camille Paglia
    Chris intros Camille Paglia
    Brendan embarrasses himself
    And here’s the audio
  • Flow asked about the CPB. We were watching this pretty closely at the time; we tried to get Bill Moyers to talk about it, never made it work. Hard to hit again with Tomlinson gone now, and, to be honest, we could never really figure out how to hit this without it sounding like navel gazing. Which, as you know if you’ve ever tried it, is very quiet.
  • Well, here we kind of screwed up. And here. Both Potter and Seltzer recommended that we talk about the CIA “black sites” in Eastern Europe. We did, but we were prompted to by our own reading. Which means we’re all thinking the same things, but the whole point here is that you recommend things, we see them in time and then do a show about it. Apologies to both for not moving fast enough to credit them with this idea.
  • Jon, we don’t get it. Explain yourself. Seriously. We sat around in a meeting and felt that there was something here, but didn’t really know what it was. By the way, we have taken this liberty with Jon because one of us is related to him.
  • Andy Vance, whose blog comment we read over the air during our show on muscular Wilsonians, suggests that we talk about PR. And I thank him for it. A show about PR has been another pet project of mine since June, and when we do it, we’re going to look to Scot Hugh Mcleod’s excellent Gaping Void to help us.
  • Oolitic wants climate change, and shall have it. Our archives aren’t the easiest to search yet (changes soon), but in the meantime, here:
    • Three Open Source hours on climate change
    Businesses Take on Climate Change
    China and Climate Change
    The Politics of Climate Change
  • And this is awesome: Mulp says we should be on television. Would that it were so, Mulp. Would that it were so. Unfortunately, none of us is very good looking. We huddle, pale and clammy, in the flourescent light of the radio studio where we were chained at birth. Radio is manned by a race of hyperintelligent hobgoblins, none fit for presentation. Sometimes they throw us meat and tins of water.
Update, 11/11

David here. It’s my turn to summarize our story meeting responses to the week’s story suggestions. After last week I have big footsteps to follow. Can I find a way to antagonize a COUNTRY THE SIZE OF A CONTINENT? Read on.

Update, 11/18

Hi — this is Katherine. I posted some thoughts here that came out of our story meeting today on how we work through your show suggestions. And based on that: Scottbenbow (on Ethiopia) and flow (on the 2-party system) and Stankay (on Chernobyl) and Dana (on education) — these are all great questions, and we’d like to know the answers, too — but we’d have to figure out the right moment to take them on. If it makes you feel any better, Mary’s always telling us this, too, when we come in fired up about an idea: “Yeah, start looking into it, the right time for this show will come up.” And Mary, by the way, has finely honed instincts on that front.

Update, 12/2

Hi folks. Robin here. Lucky me, I get to relay the last two weeks of show suggestions, thanks to our Friday-less Thanksgiving week. Woot. Look for a “suggest a show – December” page soon.

  • Ewayland’s Emerson request: in case you haven’t heard it, we already did an hour on Emerson. Hear (here) again for your listening pleasure.
  • UtahOwl, cheesechowmain, and ChrisTover all point to the Al-Jazeera bombing story: we’re watching this story, and we’re also totally taken with it. And trying to figure out how to tackle it. In the meantime, you might want to check out this piece in the UK Guardian by Al-Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar, and this Juan Cole piece published in Salon.
  • diogenes on Sam Harris: we’re looking at this in conjunction with the meaning and morality show. Thanks.
  • Leonplays on hip-hop, international: we love it. Totally great suggestion. We will take your challenge, and make it the second of our two shows on hip-hop. First we’ll look at it domestically, then we’ll tackle your idea!
  • Potter on Hacker and democracy: got it.
    We’ve ordered the Hacker book and we’ll see where it goes from there.
  • Nother on citizen journalism site:
    great suggestion. We might be able to use this. (And I love Laura Mulvey.)
  • Tisha on ID: check out the two ID shows we did with Ken Miller, here and here. He pretty much fits your bill.
  • Avecfrites on the $100 laptop: we hear you on the lap top story. You’re not the first to recommend it. We’re fascinated too, and we’ve put in a request to Negroponte. Stay tuned.
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103 Responses to “Suggest a Show: November 2005”

  1. Rochelle Says:
    October 31st, 2005 at 10:29 pm

    Hey, no talk about “failure”. This is about “experiment”, right?

    And I’m still making a plug for someone somewhere to look at what happened with the CBC lockout in Canada. They got locked out by management, so they kept doing their thing with podcasts, taking over campus radio stations, creating their own alternative news sources. They produced a web sit com. One of the morning hosts went across the country making podcast shows in different cities, hoping she wouldn’t see both coasts by the end (which she did). The lockout lasted seven weeks. And when it was over, management asked them to take it all down. They refused.

    While the on-air folks were literally barred from accessing the means of production, the internet provided another one that couldn’t be muzzled. And through that means they were able to air their grievances, talk about the process, and rabble-rouse sleepy CBC listeners into pushing the government to end the lockout.

    It was an amazing thing to watch and hear, something new in labour history and something that marks the strange conflation of text and broadcast that the internet has become.

    If you’re curious, here’s one of the first podcasts: http://podcast.cmgvancouver.org/cbcunplugged-vancouver_2005_08_22.mp3 (Listen for the wonderful Bill Richardson talking about turning on the radio and hearing himself as a scab; the archives of his own voice being used against him.)

    Just a thought. :)

  2. plaintext Says:
    October 31st, 2005 at 10:44 pm

    Eric Jackson of WGBH Radio is spotlighting Shirley Horn 11/7. A collaboration would be rich indeed.
    http://www.wgbh.org/schedules/program-info?episode_id=2492389&program_id=30367

  3. wellbasically Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 12:06 am

    Is there someplace for us to send money. I never hear the thing on the radio, I download and listen at work.

  4. nother Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 5:03 am

    Chris and Camille Paglia, enough said.

  5. Lisa Williams Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 11:36 am

    Right on, nother.

  6. Abby Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 12:04 pm

    Look, I know that this is a local issue, but please do a show on the health care reform debate in Massachusetts. I’m sure that people in other states would like to know a bit about how the debate is shaping up in Massachusetts. This is a major issue for a lot of people, and it is not getting the kind of coverage it deserves. This is really time sensitive, because the legislature is going to debate this fast

    Suggested guests: John McDonough of Health Care for All, the CEO of Partners HealthCare. Some chamber of commerce guy, somebody from the Massachusetts businesses for affordable quality healthcare coalition.

    ACCESS AND COVERAGE TO HEALTHCARE–beyond Harry and Louise.

  7. flow Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 2:58 pm

    Crisis at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? CPB hijacked by ideologues? Is the CPB being reshaped into a partisan blow horn?
    Timothy Karr writing for Media Citizen in an article titled New Pub-Casting Chief Completes Right-Wing Coup, alleges the new president of the CPB has stacked the agency’s offices with propagandists and White House loyalists in a bold-faced effort to carry forward [a] right-wing crusade against public broadcasting. (http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-pub-casting-chief-completes-right.html)
    DemocracyNow’s Amy Goodman recently (July 12, 2005) hosted a debate featuring David Boaz, Executive Vice-president of the CATO Institute, Bill Reed, President of KCPT in Kansas City and Jeffrey Chester, Executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy on a program segment titled Cato vs. PBS: A Debate on Federal Funding of Public Broadcasting. (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/12/1411218&mode=thread&tid=25)
    What does Bill Moyers have to say concerning the current administration of the CPB and the state of public broadcasting in general? Given the current trend in consolidation of media ownership, what is the value of “public� broadcasting? Is this an appropriate roll for government? Should the Public Broadcasting Act be eliminated? What is the scope of the threat faced by the CPB and should we be concerned? And if so, what can or should be done about it?

  8. Potter Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 3:17 pm

    My webmeister sent me the link to this article today “Guantanamo Desperation seen in suicide attempts”:

    Guantanamo Desperation Seen in Suicide Attempts
    One Incident Was During Lawyer’s Visit
    By Josh White
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Tuesday, November 1, 2005; A01

    Jumah Dossari had to visit the restroom, so the detainee made a quick joke with his American lawyer before military police guards escorted him to a nearby cell with a toilet. The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had taken quite a toll on Dossari over the past four years, but his attorney, who was there to discuss Dossari’s federal court case, noted his good spirits and thought nothing of his bathroom break.

    Minutes later, when Dossari did not return, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan knocked on the cell door, calling out his client’s name. When he did not hear a response, Colangelo-Bryan stepped inside and saw a three-foot pool of blood on the floor. Numb, the lawyer looked up to see Dossari hanging unconscious from a noose tied to the ceiling, his eyes rolled back, his tongue and lips bulging, blood pouring from a gash in his right arm.

    Dossari’s suicide attempt two weeks ago is believed to be the first such event witnessed by an outsider at the prison, and one of several signs that lawyers and human rights advocates contend point to growing desperation among the more than 500 detainees there. Lawyers believe Dossari, who has been in solitary confinement for nearly two years, timed his suicide attempt so that someone other than his guards would witness it, a cry for help meant to reach beyond the base’s walls.

    Two dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees are currently being force-fed in response to a lengthy hunger strike, and the detainees’ lawyers estimate there are dozens more who have not eaten since August. Military officials say there are 27 hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, all of whom are clinically stable, closely monitored by medical personnel and receiving proper nutrition.

    The hunger strikers are protesting their lengthy confinements in the island prison, where some have been kept for nearly four years and most have never been charged with a crime. The most recent hunger strike came after detention officials allegedly failed to honor promises made during a previous hunger strike.

    Read the rest here:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/31/AR2005103101987.html

    I know you did a show on Torture already and it was one of your greats in my opinion. It’s hard to know what to say or do after reading this article though. We should not forget this is being done in our name.

  9. Jon Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 5:18 pm

    Show title: “Red, White and Blue”. In an earlier show there was an intriguing, albeit brief, side discussion as to the consequences of the American Civil War all these years later. Are the “Blue” states now hungering for rights denied them by the presently empowered “Red” states? What are possible ways that a country so divided on a number of vital issues can move forward? Does the “White” in the middle represent a flag of surrender by one group to the other, or are there healthier means available? It would be wonderful if the majority of citizens in both the Red and the Blue states could simultaneously believe that their country were progressing in admirable form, rather than continue to experience what many perceive as a win-lose situation. Perhaps we have to think outside the box to solve this enormous problem–what ideas might be forthcoming from guests and listeners?

  10. joel Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 5:25 pm

    One thing to do is to stop paying them to do it.

  11. joel Says:
    November 1st, 2005 at 5:35 pm

    P.S. I know it is repetitive and redundant and boring and enough already, but how about it? How about an Open Source brain bashing on the “how-to” of earmarking tax dollars? Pay for the services you want and let somebody else, supposedly those who want them, pay for the rest. That’s the way private enterprize does it. The gov’t keeps harping on “privatizing government.” Well, then, instead of meaning giving it away to cronies for their “private” cash cow, let the gov’t compete with private enterprize.

  12. Andy Vance Says:
    November 2nd, 2005 at 1:03 am

    The secret engines that run the world.

    I’m sure messieurs Rampton and Stauber would be game.

  13. oolitic Says:
    November 2nd, 2005 at 10:57 am

    I would be very interested in a show about Climate change.

    Specifically, I think it would be interesting to see the ideas of “Friends of Science” ( http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3 ) which has the appearance of being a scholarly body, debated by someone in the opposition.

    There is one person on the committee that is local — from Harvard.

  14. seltzer Says:
    November 2nd, 2005 at 11:30 am

    After reading this MSN article [ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9890829/ ] and hearing a report on NPR this morning, I can’t think of any more pressing topic to address than the issue of secret prisons created and managed by the CIA. These jails appear to be previously unknown “Gitmos” in Eastern Europe. Such so-called “black sites” are a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, not to mention potentially immoral, unaccountable, and just plain wrong. It appears that members of our intelligence community are at the very least holding suspects without due process and perhaps even torturing or killing those people. This sickening possibility must be discussed openly in the media ASAP. Thank you.

  15. mulp Says:
    November 3rd, 2005 at 1:53 am

    I wish I could spend more time reading through the comments here, but I’m too busy interaction on the PBS NOW forum, reading, listening to NPR, cutting wood for the winter and to improve my lot, and did I mention I should be looking for a job but there are sooooo many issues that need research. I feel your pain!

    Anyway, the show on times select and one on the feedback lunch (and I don’t always catch the show in its entirety), were perculating in my mind when I heard the story about CBS?NBC offering anyone a mere $500,000 a show for anything to fill Saturday night TV slots.

    Bing! a light goes on! Open Source on TV!

    Then as I was looking at the TV schedule and skipping channels to get to my must watch tv that I only listen to while I’m on line (and I have an ever growing stack of VCR tapes of shows I must watch), and I saw Arnie again and saw My TV Prime in the listings….

    I haven’t watched more than three seconds, well maybe nine seconds, but there is Christopher’s soul mate doing it on wzmy, or at least, arnie has that same drive to interact, to connect, and run for office, as I recall.

    My Shows – My TV Prime
    Every weeknight at 9PM, Arnie Arnesen hosts New England’s only live, call in TV talk show. Tell her what you think. You can call in or e-mail Arnie at:MyTVPrime@mytvstation.tv
    (I got there by wzmy.tv…)

    Like I said, I have no idea how My TV Prime operates, but over the years I’ve found arnie almost as good as Chris at moving a discussion along with a handful of guests or regulars. OF course, I’ve never actually made a point to arrange my day around her like I do Chris ;-) For those who are interested in checking it out, wzmy is located in Derry, NH, over the air on channel 50.

    To get arnie as a guest on open source might require being a guest on My TV prime, but I think that is possible with open source on at 7pm and mytv on at 9pm.

    Anyway, my imaginary TV open source has “callers” connecting in over the internet with their webcams. Instead of callers sitting on hold listening, they could be shown waiting to speak with their faces and hands showing their reactions. On the TV, there would be several boxes with faces, switching between one central box, two sidebyside central boxes, with boxes on the side with those on deck or listening to a response. For the online folk, text a la instant messaging could be present in other windows.

    Maybe for nationwide TV it is pre-recorded with the warm-up taking place online helping to identify the resources and key points, then the show is “filmed” with the “callers” tapped before hand, so that the production isn’t a nightmare. Then as the show is aired, the instant messaging gets added live.

    Of course, I’m stuck in 1990, happy, for the most part, with The Connection of olde, and a software program, tens of thousands of DEC employees used called Notes (replicating a feature of the CDC sponsored Plato system). All this fancy internet based multimedia stuff is information and sensory overload. ;-)

  16. mulp Says:
    November 3rd, 2005 at 3:31 am

    Ok, I’m a, or was, a college drop out, and worse yet, a computer geek/hacker of the worst kind – I got in late to the game at least a decade before Bill Gates. And while I worked at the college I dropped out of, and I got to know lots of faculty well, one groups that I didn’t talk turkey with were those who could inform me of western civ or the American Revolution. So, ok, I’m ignorant of some key background needed to understand the Constitution. Worse yet, I played at being a language lawyer, computer languages, that is, because I dealt with what are “bugs” and “crashes” as a test and quality engineer, among other roles, so I dealt with disputes that aren’t any less heated than those of religion and Constitutional law.

    But as I get involved in the “originalist” and “textualist” camps lambasting the evil liberals dominating the Courts who write law from the bench, I was forced to do more and more research into what all this means. Ok, in the computer field, we have used language that is not natural or intuitive because it has a half century of history and tradition behind it, and from one realm to another the meaning of words changes radically.

    But I wasn’t prepared for Constitutional interpretation.

    I was surprised to realize a week ago that I had absolutely no idea what a person was. And as to “We the people”!!! So, as we are still in the middle of the debate over constitutional philosophy, Stephen Breyer has been making the rounds with his book Active Liberty, and while he claims a modest objective, I see a bigger one that his book addresses in a subtle and respectful manner, and thus very difficult to comprehend, teaching We the People about the Constitution.

    So, a possible, likely guest is Stephen Breyer. And my question to him would be
    “How do we make the Constitution accessible to We the People?”

    On the the other hand, I’m seldom subtle. I may make the subtle point “you don’t know what you’re talking about” through 20lb hammer blows in Socratic fashion that results in people hating me for forcing them into absurdly contradictory positions, something that is only possible with the typical extremist.

    So, failing to find a real plain language Constitution, but only a kids version that I fear is the usual America the gift to God we are so pure pablum, I think in terms of a plain language Constitution in the originalist tradition.

    I’ve been working on the first sentence, but as this is so critical, I am still unhappy with my first plain language phrase:
    We, the superior genius of European English men of the somewhat United States, order to form a more perfect Union of taxation and compromise, establish Justice for white men, ….

    Well, you get the idea. Btw, I take the “superior genius of European” from a Supreme Court decision based on stare decisis found in Blackwell’s Commentary on the Laws of England, a four volume set publish in 1784-86, that might have been more widely read in the former American colonies than in Britain. That phrase is probably the least offensive of many in that decision for today’s ears.

    The essential debate about judicial philosophy can be most dramatically illustrated with two discussions:

    What is a person under the Constitution?

    For the originalist, a person was originally a white male, tho that is too simple, as it is more appropriately a European English freeman, but that still won’t quite explain things for the modern as it fails to capture the essence of freeman as one who is free because he possesses the means of freedom, or liberty: land. But there was optimism that a man in the United States might obtain land and thus become worthy of being a person deserving citizenship.

    The matters of slavery, and of men without land who might get land, and those men without land that are unlikely to get land, which was certainly the negros, so with the poor, and the negros, being incapable of being freemen, in other words, able to manage the land to attain liberty, the specifics of women and children were hardly a matter of debate – how was it possible for them to be freemen?

    So, we have “We the People”, also called a “citizen” which was a more perfect “person” and then there were those who were definitely not suited to be citizen and were perhaps more of a burden than a person should be: women, children, indians, and negros.

    While the nature of citizen has definitely been changed with the 15th and 19th amendments, and the bondage of the less-than-child negro outlawed, the nature of the change in what is a person far less clear.

    Some claim that the 14th extended personhood to all, but I have yet to find someone who can claim how this is done within the modern originalist tradition, eg., Scalia and Thomas. Perhaps one can argue that by preventing discrimination based on race and sex for citizenship, where citizen is in the original we-the-people meaning, (not the citizen as American being a superset of State citizen meaning), meaning voter, then person must now be defined to include all races and women. But what is a person or people in the fourth and fifth amendment?

    The Constitution has been lauded for being in plain language and only four thousand words long. But in reality, the Constitution is in code and understanding the code requires one to comprehend at least a hundred thousand words. And the most complex idea is figuring out what a person is, and what a person’s rights are, what a citizen is, and what additional rights a citizen has, and then who can be part of We-the-People.

    Then there is the question of what is the meaning of the 9th? What are rights? Some divide rights into positive rights and negative rights, others into inalienable and natural.

    Clearly the mythology is that the USA is so superior because our Constitution and Bill of Rights protects individual liberty, yet those who most loudly proclaim this virtue and the ones least willing to grant the person his liberty. How would Scalia and Thomas respond to the question of what are the inalienable rights? And then, what are the rights granted by the Constitution in either positive or negative terms.

    Is a person really secure in his person in the understanding of Scalia and Thomas?

    John Phillip Reid in Authority of rights identified ten types of rights debated by we-the-people in the late 18th century. The Bill of Rights was added at the insistence of we-the-people, not by the good graces of the authors of the Constitution.

    To argue that there is an original intent, strict constructionist view of Constitutional Rights is un-American. For the conservatives to demand a strict interpretation of the Constitution means that they are ignorant of our history, or they desire a totalitarian rule (of course, by conservatives).

    With that as the setup, what is the solution for informing we-the-people of the nature of the Constitution and its interpretation?

  17. Abby Says:
    November 4th, 2005 at 10:36 am

    I want to recommend a blog for your reading pleasure, the Health Care Blog by Matthew Holt. It provides an excellent overview of health policy and business developments in health care with a bit of snark. He’ll give you quick and dirty summaries of Health Affairs articles.

  18. Rochelle Says:
    November 4th, 2005 at 11:39 pm

    can’t figure out how to make it more than a media story about a country none of us cares about anyway.

    Wow. Way to go on your international focus. I’m going to have to try really hard to think of a reason to continue listening ot this program.

  19. Random Access Mazar » Radio Open Source doesn’t Care about Canada Says:
    November 5th, 2005 at 1:00 am

    [...] sult to frustration today. Because today they responded to my little show idea with this: So: not only were my comments barely noted and responded to, now I come from a coun [...]

  20. Bonnie B Says:
    November 5th, 2005 at 10:37 am

    about a country none of us cares about anyway

    I assume you also don’t care about Mexico, Europe, Asia, or any of those other places where hundreds of millions of English-speaking non-Americans with internet connections and mp3 players live. Way to be proactive in increasing your international presence!! – kicking your nearest non-US audience in the teeth seems like a really smart way to encourage loyalty and new listenership. Good job, that. *clap clap clap*

  21. fred02472 Says:
    November 5th, 2005 at 11:40 am

    Grist.org links to an excerpt from a new book by Stephanie Hendricks (http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0544/051102_news_divine.php) that documents a disturbing link between organized anti-environmentalism and the Christian Right. She shows how the so-called Wise Use movement, a pro-business anti-regulatory faction, has aligned itself with radical Christians who believe that the Bible grants man “dominion” over the earth, and thereby the right to exploit it resources without restraint. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this is that these two forces both find a sympathetic ear in the current administration. This would make a fascinating and important program.

  22. elevine Says:
    November 5th, 2005 at 3:17 pm

    Hello All!

    Here’s a repeat request from a loyal podcast listener (VPR only broadcasts you once a week, and I can’t always get to my XM radio in time).

    Chris–I loved you on the 10 o’clock News, listened every morning to The Connection, and listen to you 4 days a week running on Kingdom Trails in East Burke.

    —————-
    Please broadcast a conversation with Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog and Truck Store, Co-Evolution Quarterly, advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown, future foreteller, the Long Now Foundation).

    After convincing a generation that community and conservation would save us, he has recently made the news as surrendering to nuclear energy. He is also the semi-official guru and documenter of the personal computer/cybernetic revolution.

    Thanks,
    Gene
    elevine@kingcon.com

  23. Potter Says:
    November 6th, 2005 at 8:18 am

    Regarding mulp’s suggestion about the constitution. Add to this list of non-person’s-become-person the fetus. When does a life or potential life become a citizen or a person (a non-voting one at that) that the state has an interest in protecting?

    Regarding my suggestion realting to the torture issue. The article I posted above was in regard to the current hunger strike and many suicide attempts at Guantanamo. Dossari planned his suicide when a reporter was there. UN and human rights groups have been denied private access to these increasingly desperate prisoners.

    My comment about Poland and Romania was on the ‘Torture, Still Again” thread. That was news just in the day of the program- now more widely reported. So I do not deserve credit for the “black sites” suggestion.

  24. Potter Says:
    November 6th, 2005 at 9:56 am

    I came across this excellent lecture by Helen Vendler. I remember her on The Connection speaking about the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Maybe she would come and talk about her essay on how the arts help us to live.

    The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar

    http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/vendler/lecture.html

    Here are a few quotes from the beginning of the essay:

    “I want to propose that the humanities should take, as their central objects of study, not the texts of historians or philosophers, but the products of aesthetic endeavor: art, dance, music, literature, theater, architecture, and so on. After all, it is by their arts that cultures are principally remembered. For every person who has read a Platonic dialogue, there are probably ten who have seen a Greek marble in a museum; or if not a Greek marble, at least a Roman copy; or if not a Roman copy, at least a photograph. Around the arts there exist, in orbit, the commentaries on art produced by scholars: musicology and music criticism, art history and art criticism, literary and linguistic studies. At the periphery we might set the other humanistic disciplines–philosophy, history, the study of religion. The arts would justify a broad philosophical interest in ontology, phenomenology, and ethics; they would bring in their train a richer history than one which, in its treatment of mass phenomena, can lose sight of individual human uniqueness–the quality most prized in artists, and most salient, and most valued, in the arts. “

    “The arts present the whole uncensored human person–in emotional, physical, and intellectual being, and in single and collective form–as no other branch of human accomplishment does. In the arts we see both the nature of human predicaments–in Job, in Lear, in Isabel Archer–and the evolution of representation over long spans of time (as the taste for the Gothic replaces the taste for the Romanesque, as the composition of opera replaces the composition of plainchant). The arts bring into play historical and philosophical questions without implying the prevalence of a single system or of universal solutions. Artworks embody the individuality that fades into insignificance in the massive canvas of history and is suppressed in philosophy by the desire for impersonal assertion. The arts are true to the way we are and were, to the way we actually live and have lived–as singular persons swept by drives and affections, not as collective entities or sociological paradigms.â€?

    In her essay, Vendler is the scholar of course, Wallace is the artist. Vendler says:

    “Stevens was a democratic author, and he expected his experience, and his reflections on it, to apply widely. For him, as for any other artist, “to live our lives” means to live in the body as well as in the mind, on the sensual earth as well as in the celestial clouds. The arts exist to relocate us in the body by means of the work of the mind in aesthetic creation; they situate us on the earth, paradoxically, by means of a mental paradigm of experience embodied, with symbolic concision, in a physical medium. It distressed Stevens that most of the human beings he saw walked about blankly, scarcely seeing the earth on which they lived, filtering it out from their pragmatic urban consciousness. Even when he was only in his twenties, Stevens was perplexed by the narrowness of the way in which people inhabit the Earth:â€?

    [She quotes from Wallace Stevens:]

    “I thought, on the train, how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes & barrens & wilds. It still dwarfs & terrifies & crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens & orchards & fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.�

  25. garym Says:
    November 6th, 2005 at 7:56 pm

    Back in the late 90s I seem to remember Chris did a show on The Connection on the X-Files. Much of the show dealt with American culture and why it had an appetite for such a show.

    In my opinion it was due to those heady years between the Cold War and our present “war”; more specifically, our lack of real enemy allowed us to foster more obscure enemies in the form of conspiracies and the supernatural.

    I was thinking about that show recently and I was comparing television of today, (at least very generally, as I am no expert, just a consumer). Why are most of shows of today reality based? Be it the multitude of shows in the genre of the same name or the many CSIs, Law and Orders, 24 that create supposed realities? Is there a correlation to the fear based society we have had since 9/11?

    Anyway, I think it would be really interesting to compare the last 2.5 decades worth of TV and see if the national mood can be defined by the shows that are popular.

    By the way, can you get any of those 90s Connections?

  26. Potter Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 9:02 am

    garym: Go to WBUR.org and search “Christopher Lydon Connection”. I have been meaning to go through all of these to see what I want that I do not have on audiotape while it is still available..

  27. rcman Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 11:01 am

    How about a show on the Emperor’s new clothes quality on the coverage of the Plamegate affair. President Bush is never mentioned in any articles or news accounts. Its as if the whole thing took place in North Dakota or Mississippi and not thirty feet from the oval office. Even the NYT says [While] there has been no suggestion that Mr. Bush did anything wrong…”.

    Are we to believe that the outing and the aftermath occured without any knowledge or involvment by the President ? How can he continue to justify his arms length approach when his own spokeman told the entire press corps that Rove had no involvement. There are even accounts that Rove LIED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. — And he still has a job ?

    Why isn’t this a story ? The silence of the MSM on this aspect of the story speaks volumes on how they are becoming increasingly toothless and irrelevant.

  28. garym Says:
    November 8th, 2005 at 10:35 am

    Potter: BUR only archives from 2000 on unless I am missinging something.

  29. Trazillion Says:
    November 8th, 2005 at 9:28 pm

    Please talk about the Italian newcast accusing the U.S. of using chemical weapons in Fallujah. You can get the piece from [1] (WARNING: graphic content). There are also several stories about it in international papers, but only marginal news sources (Democracy Now, Indymedia, etc) here. In fact I saw exactly zero mention of it in “main-stream media” (Reuters posted it, but no newspaper or TV station picked it up, as far as I can tell).

    The U.S. military of course denies it, but somehow nobody pushed them to explain the pictures, then. They do acknowledge the use of MK77, and say it’s different from napalm in chemical composition (which is sidestepping that outcome is the same).

    The American people have the right to know what their military is up to, and the media have a responsibilty to get that information to them, given their privleged access.

    WARNING: Graphic Content. But don’t not watch it. You must know.
    [1] http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/video/fallujah_ING.wmv

  30. allison Says:
    November 9th, 2005 at 4:13 pm

    TV? You could do it. I beg to differ about the good looks. You should have heard all the comments after you left her Brendan. And we all know what Chris looks like. He’s been on TV before. He’s more than presentable and he’ll be cute til the day he dies. Its in his personality. Don’t underestimate the potential of the audience to allow the intellectual curiosity, the humor, and the passion of the host to create an incredibly attractive ‘aura’ (for lack of a better word.)

    That said, there’s something very sexy about a disembodied voice. Email exchanges that touch you and leave a mystery of what it would be like to meet in person. More than TV, radio feels like you’ve invited someone into your space. Radio can feed that insatiable appetite for a bit of desire that may never be attained…

  31. matthew Says:
    November 9th, 2005 at 7:18 pm

    How about “Where’s the Outrage?!” as a topic? You know what I’m talking about. The tax cuts, the tangle between Church and State, the war profiteering, the hypocrisy of our nuclear (bunker buster) weapon policies, the condition of our infrastructure, the GAS prices and the $10b one oil company made in a single quarter, the. . . .

    I’m also interested in Christopher getting his Q and A on Chalmers Johnson. Are we entering the dark phase of the American Empire, ala the fall of the Roman Empire? What’s going to be the blowback in 10 years? In 20 years? How long will it take to regain our footing? To repair our reputation in the world? How much damage has He done?

  32. nother Says:
    November 10th, 2005 at 4:00 pm

    What about a show examining the good old American Flag. I’ve been thinking about examining this topic through a documentary. My interest really peaked during one of my classes in graduate school. We were discussing the use of American flags after 9/11. The class was upset with the jingoistic uses of flag, and rightly so. The problem I had was that they quickly came to a consensus that anyone showing the flag on their house or car was involved in jingoism. Immediately, a memory popped in my head of standing on the flight deck of my ship during the first Gulf War. As this massive ship cut through the serene Gulf water, my crewmates and I stood at attention and saluted our American Flag. Watching the wind whip the flag, a visceral sense of pride came to me, I felt like we were standing above time. I felt a sublime connection to all the men and women who have saluted that flag in the past, many in the last moments of their life. I felt sick that it had come to this, the Right Wing having co-opted our flag.
    I want to know what this flag symbolize exactly, what are the representations that we all can agree on.
    I would also like to know who is making all these flags, including the novelty flags. Are there low-wage workers in third-world countries gluing together red white and blue trinkets.
    There is the 1st amendment issue with respect to flag burning. Incidentally, would that law apply to those tiny little flags? What if I stepped on one of these fashionable flag pins, is that desecrating the flag.
    Will the leader of every country now put their flag on their suit, like Bush.
    What about “The Pledge of Allegiance.� What about adding the words “under God� in 1954
    What about Fox news still waving the flag on their screen.
    The bumper sticker of my show suggestion is, Where does patriotism end and Jingoism begin, and let’s mark that spot with a flag.

  33. cece Says:
    November 10th, 2005 at 9:39 pm

    Boston has one of the most active protest groups against the war -Veterans for Peace. Some of the members were the first people with Cindy Sheehan walking the ditch in Texas. Right now, this group of very brave retired Navy, ARmy and Marine warriors (some of them decorated heros) including Green Berets and an Israli tank commander are trying to take part in the Veterans Day Commerations tomorrow. The VFW and the American Legion have cancelled the parade and elected for just the ceremony in order to keep the VFP from participating. These are intelligent, caring soldiers who are devastated by the current policies and what is happening in the services. If you would like a timely discussion with actual facts, this would be a great show. You can email imtaptalk@aol.com to reach the group. He is on Fox25 news tonight.

  34. flow Says:
    November 10th, 2005 at 11:36 pm

    What’s brewing in Latin America? What is the scoop on Hugo Chavez? What is operation Balboa? What does it mean when ” leaked internal Pentagon documents have identifie[s] Venezuela as a “post-Iraq threat” requiring “full spectrum” planning? For answers to some of these questions please see The Rise of America’s New Enemy by John Pilger.

  35. flow Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 12:10 am

    America’s housing bubble. We’ve heard Alan Greenspan warn congress about it. What does it mean for our economy? What does it mean for consumers? What happens when the bubble pops? We have recently witnessed a steady rise in interest rates, but a recent article published bythe Economist magizine suggests that “Interest rates and related woes are one problem. Tax reform is another. The rather odd clutch of recommendations that George Bush’s tax-reform commission came out with last week goes a little way towards a flat tax, a little way towards a consumption-based tax and quite a long way towards roiling the housing market…Leaving aside possible changes in mortgage-interest deductibility, are house prices set to fall or just to rise less quickly? The latter looks more likely, but even that would be bad news for the economy. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of growth these days, so closing down even part way the home-equity cash machine that has fed consumption would put the economic brakes on sharpish.”

  36. jimbob3450 Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 12:14 am

    To continue with your Iraq theme, I would like to see a show on the reasons why the Bush administration chose the particular time it did to start pushing for the war. I have made more detailed comments under the “What were the Neo-cons thinking?” thread but I think that it is obvious that the timing of the war was intended to influence the US mid-term elections.

    There was no “new” intelligence cited in any of the arguments for war, there was nothing to indicate that a crisis was brewing. The real crisis was the administration’s fears that their control of the American public was slipping away as talk turned to domestic issues like the economy and health-care. The Iraq war may be a direct consequence of the desire of conservatives to maintain a majority and accomplish their domestic agenda (although that is certainly not the only reason it may be the most important). The “drums of war” certainly drowned out all other issues at the time. As to actually going to war, that may be the result of the kind of incestuous thinking that the administration indulges in. Rejection of outside opinion, starting to believe in their own propaganda as they repeat it etc. The momentum and public statements may also have caused the administration to believe that it had to go through with it to “save face”.

    I would like to see this phase of the whole issue brought under closer scrutiny. While I am sceptical that this forum can reach “mainstream America” I do wonder how the average voter would feel knowing that their children and many more Iraqis died so that conservatives could get Supreme Court justices, dismantle environmental protections and give tax-breaks to the rich.

  37. allison Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 1:15 am

    On the “where’s the outrage’ idea, I would be interested to discuss whether people feel like they are being politically active when they are posting on blogs, forums, etc.

    Also, would it take a draft to spur people to action? Was the political action during the Vietnam Conflict really just motivated by the self-serving desire to avoid being sent to war?

    But that didn’t fuel the Civil Rights movement. Was there another self-serving driver there? Or can we look at that era of political action and learn something from it?

  38. allison Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 1:20 am

    Another topic of interest is the basic concept of marriage as the only course of establishing a non-blood related family status between adults.

    What am I talking about? All of our culture and laws are designed to support the concept of marriage. We seem to have it ingrained that as social creatures, it is difficult to manage a life solo. So, what if you want to establish a family relationship, not as a couple, but as two or more adults that want to be considered family so that they have the legal rights of families? Can you adopt one another?

    Can we scrap the whole idea that civil laws have anything to do with marriage? Let’s leave that to the churches. Can’t we have a civil system that certifies a family relationship amongst any pair or group that would like to be deemed family? Is this such a crazy idea? Wouldn’t it stop the debate about who can get married?

    Just something I’ve been thinking about….

  39. David Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 4:34 pm

    Our Friday suggestion wrap-up has been posted above. Two weeks in a row, folks — we’re on a roll. Keep the suggestions coming.

  40. Potter Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 5:19 pm

    Garym: You are right- there are only a few pages of shows from 2000 until the beginning of 2001. Sorry. I am disappointed too.

  41. scottbenbow Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 6:51 pm

    In 1991, Meles Zenawi replaced Mengistu Haile Mariam, Ethiopia’s dictator for the previous 17 years. Meles promised positive change for the people of Ethiopia. In 2005, it’s clear that Meles has not lived up to his promises. The war with Eritrea in the late 1990s was a disaster that left Meles in charge of the largest landlocked country. His jails hold political prisoners. His forces evict Eritreans from the country. All the while, Meles seems to be the darling of the United States. A show about lost opportunities, failed promises, and human rights atrocities in Ethiopia would be very interesting.

  42. flow Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 8:27 pm

    Concerning a program regarding current events and social movements in Latin America, I suggest considering author and journalist James Petras as a guest. He recently appeared on a Democracy Now! segment concerning Bush’s visit to Argentina.
    Any examination of the currents of transformation in Latin America would be inadequate without placing Hugo Chavez within a historical context and then examining his political actions and economic policies, his distrust of the U.S. and other economic powers, and his visions for the future of Venezuela and the region. Perhaps David Deutschmann or Javier Salado (editors of Chavez: Venezuela and the New Latin America) would provide some informed and insightful comment on the man his mission and vision. As might Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuelan ambassador to U.S. But certainly Chavez isn’t the whole story. The struggles of the indigenous peoples of Bolivia versus transnational corporations (and the related political fallout) are also very interesting. I’m wondering if the echoes of war abroad and the dizzying spin of domestic scandal are overwhelming our senses and distracting us from developments that merit our attention and understanding? Is it true we’re exporting democracy to the middle east while quashing it in “our backyard”. What’s the status of the Monroe doctrine in the 21st century? Is China (the dollar-fat-cat) increasingly peddling influence in the south while our heads are cranked east? As Fred Kaplan writing last December for the New York Times reveals, “Last month, China’s president, Hu Jintao, embarked on a 12-day tour of Latin America, and wound up making commitments to invest $30 billion in the region. China is now Brazil’s second largest trading partner and Chile’s largest export market. In trade, technology, investment, education and culture, China has been displacing the United States all across Asia, and is now starting to do the same in America’s backyard”. Or are other forces at play such as neoliberal blowback? Plenty of ground to cover, thanks for considering it.

  43. flow Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 10:36 pm

    For an interesting perspective on U.S. policy concerning Venezuela, Eva Golinger is a Venezuelan-American attorney specializing in immigration and international human rights law and author of The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela. She uncovered some interesting documents concerning the alleged involvement of the U.S. in the 2002 coup against Chavez.
    Concerning Bolivia, I recommend Jim Shultz, Executive Director of the Democracy Center in Cochabama, Bolivia. He writes a blog on the situation in Bolivia.
    And finally please consider including Tom Hayden. “Tom Hayden changed America,” wrote Nicholas Lemann, national correspondent for The Atlantic, of Hayden’s role in the 1960s. Richard Goodwin, former speechwriter for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, said that Hayden, “without even knowing it, inspired the Great Society.” But it is his extraordinary work at The Nation that makes him relevant to any discussion concerning the forces of transformation, U.S. foreign policy and current events in Latin America.

  44. Potter Says:
    November 13th, 2005 at 8:40 pm

    You have just done a couple of shows with the basic premise: Okay we’re in Iraq, now what? How do we get out?

    I am still in the anger stage about how we were taken into this, or allowed ourselves to be talen into this. Two contributor op-eds in the New York Times articulated my feelings about this very well. On was by Andrew Bacevich War Powers in the Age of Terror and the other by Anthony Lewis License to Torture.

    Bacevich points out that Bush expanded further the already expanded war powers of the executive. It should be frightening to all of us that Bush has commited us to an “open ended war on a global scale”. As a first step he has us knee deep into a situation where there is no clear good exit in the near future. And it is not clear that we are accomplishing anything near the evolved stated goals- to the contrary. Bacevich is calling for the Congress to reclaim authority and curb the president’s ability to declare war. No president should be able to do this to us unilaterally unchecked again.

    Lewis argues that Bush (and his lawyers) have taken “extraordinary unilateral power” in this “war on terror” specifically in designating enemy combatants, American citizens included, and holding them without trial. Lewis reminds us as though we needed reminding that the framers divided powers among the branches so that they could check each other. But war powers somehow have evolved to exempt the executive from these checks as well as treaty obligations.

    So I am alarmed that we are unraveling or going to unless we take hold. I feel that this war is really about us more than anything else (terror, oil, democracy in the ME etc.)

  45. Dana Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 12:57 pm

    I think a show on the cost of higher education in this country, lack of student aid, and pending change in the aid laws, is very warrented. I think it is a crisis. My tuition has gone up 7 percent every year for the past 3 years at one of the largest schools in the country. My student fees have doubled in three years but what I receive has not. Now, I hear, there is about to be a law passed that is going to make loans more expensive (by making it more difficult for the lenders) and I would love to have a show that could explain all these changes and educate the public. If public universities are unaffordable to middle or lower class people, where do we go to better ourselves and contribute positively to our communities?

  46. farreDV Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 4:01 pm

    Hi Chris, with the recent Dover,PA case on Intelligent Design now up to the judge, this might be a good time to talk about some of the ID movement’s rhetorical tactics. For example, and this touches on my book on Lemaitre and Einstein, Michael Behe is claiming that Intelligent Design is similar to the Big Bang theory; he is careful only to focus on how the theory’s implications were received by scientists. He doesn’t point out how much scientific research the theory generated–in stark contrast to his own work. This is another tactic the IDers use to get around the lack of any predictive power or data of their own theory.

    Anyway, this might be a good show.

  47. nother Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 8:57 pm

    Just want to say that the Podcast system has been great. I listen to shows at the gym and in my car, nothing is better than stimulating conversation on demand!

  48. flow Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 9:17 pm

    The two party system.

    Is our democracy best served by the two party system? In a heterogeneous nation such as ours is democracy optimized or constrained under the of two party system? What are the pros and cons? The arguments for and against? The cost and benefits? To what degree are the problems plaguing and perplexing America a consequence of institutional rigidity in the political superstructure? If there are alternative approaches that might better provide government “of the people, by the people, for the people�, whose interest are advanced and (whose diminished) under the current system? What was the intent of the founding fathers concerning political parties? And what are the historical forces and circumstance that gave rise to (and seem to have cemented in) our current system? If rigorous debate and the market place of ideas are the vital life blood of democracy, are too many voices sidelined, stifled or marginalized with power concentrated in two parties? In a poll conducted by yourdebate.com only 35% percent of respondents felt the two party system was best for America. Does this accurately reflect the sentiment of most Americans? And if so what can or should be done about it?

  49. nother Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 9:58 pm

    Race and Class and TV. What if we look at the demographics and find out what Black America is watching and how different is it from what White America is watching. To take it further, who is producing these programs, what is their race and class. I know Stanley Crouch has had harch words for the BET Network, but it is still going strong. I would be interested to find out what programs have a diverse viewership. I have a feeling that their are not many black families gathering around the TV set to watch Everybody Loves Raymond.
    It would be nice to delve more into the Pop Culture aspect of Race and Class.

    Does America’s fixation on materialism suppress the lower class by inticing them to live beyond their means. We all seem to live beyond our means in this country, but it seems to have worse consequeses for the lower class. They do not have the credit umbrella that the higher classes have. When I was a bartender in New Orleans, I would work the Hip Hop nights where the crowd was almost all Black and they would exclusively by the high-end Liquor. I’m talking $10 for a shot of Hennesy in a plastic cup. and $70 to walk around with a bottle of Moet in their hands. It would really bother me, I knew most could not afford it, I don’t know many people who could.

  50. bstenger Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 2:03 am

    I’m reading the NYTimes online and listening to Open Source on KUOW, and there’s a sports page article on steroids by Murray Chass, Congress Blows Smoke and Ignores Real Killers. The subject seems pretty meaty–politics, science, children, media, money, and of course, sports. And journalists like Will Carroll and Harold Bryant have done great work with it. It seems like time for a good public airing out.

  51. flow Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 2:29 am

    Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005′s referenda defeats? Or did it happen sometime before? its a sorry day for democracy, but at least we’ll live under dictaors that appear to have been legitimatley elected. So we’ll have that going for us.

  52. mjking Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 10:23 am

    There’s quite a hubub about the $100 laptop. I would very much like to hear a show with Mr. Negroponte and, say, Clifford Stoll. I am not convinced that distributing laptops all over the world will improve much. Of course, I have used a computer since I was fairly young, but I am not sure what good it’s done me. Are they really an aid to learning, or one that’s worth investing in? Do they replace reading, discussion, critical thinking and generally operating in the material world?

    I find myself sounding a bit cranky about this, but I am leery of technological “fixes” for ethical problems. In a nutshell, why not skip the laptops, raise and enforce global labor standards (to improve incomes) and enforce human rights around the world to improve the character of peoples’ lives? A computer is a tool, much like a hammer: it can be used to build a house or to do violence to a person. I don’t think that they offer grace in themselves.

    Nevertheless, I would like to hear more and I hope that you will consider a show on the $100 laptop.

    Thanks.

  53. bicyclemark Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 2:43 pm

    You guys did such an excellent job with the Dresden Dolls… my suggestion is to do more with unique local music groups in the boston area. More specifically.. can you PLEASE bring the Mighty Mighty Bosstones into the studio and sit down and talk about their incredible career which has remained just below the radar yet attracted such a large fanbase worldwide. (plus talk about the ska scene in the early nineties which was championed in that area by the Bosttones)

  54. DebbieR Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 6:48 pm

    I often here that Americans are incredibly charitable. Which sounds nice, except for the fact that Americans are also deeply in debt. Should people who are paying interest on their credit cards be giving money to charity at all? If you can’t live within your means, then what business do you have giving money to others?

    The conservatives would like us to become a society that relies more on charitable giving, then on government programs. One question is – who does the giving? What good does it do to get money from people who really need it for themselves? For example, how many of us have enough saved up to assure that we can maintain some dignity as we age? Are Americans being realistic in terms of what they need? How much money do you need in order to live well?

    Why have so many people bought into the notion that the rich are entitled to keep their money and spend it as they want? How can we be abolishing the estate tax?

    How about having Robert Reich on you show?

  55. margaret lamb Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 10:14 pm

    No planes on 9/11. Check out this website. Thank you. Best, Margaret
    http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eholmgren/manufactured.html

  56. margaret lamb Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 10:18 pm

    Also, a show in EFT (emotional freedom therapy — tapping on acupuncture points for emotional relief). Here’s one site: http://www.emofree.com. Thanks much. Best, Margaret

  57. jgershman Says:
    November 16th, 2005 at 10:21 am

    How about a show on the issue of U.S. policy towards Asia, either a general show or one that explores specifically the debate on how to address the issue of a rising China. .the latter is an interesting debate because the positions cut across traditional partisan lines and therefore don’t devolve into a general bash the Bush administration.. ,

    Another possibility with a China focus would be the environmental issues of a rising China, both internally (within China), of which Elizabrth Economy’s new book is excellent, and then the broader debates on China’s impact globally (energy, green house, etc).

  58. javalizard Says:
    November 16th, 2005 at 1:29 pm

    I recently purchased a fine hot sauce and used it on my sandwich today. IT BURNS AND I LOVE IT.

    I think you should do a passion show on salsa and hot sauces. There is a yearly hot sauce contest which could be uding on the show. Those of us who love hot sauces really are a group. I’ve been looking for other hot sauce lovers here in indianapolis. My measure of how hot things are is how many times i need to blow my nose. :)

    My favorite salsa is the Desert Pepper Trading company Salsa Diablo. It’s quite hot, the flavor is immaculate and the texture is to die for. The hottest salsa i’ve had is also from the desert pepper trading company. It is listed as xxxxhot. It is their habanero salsa. The two other hot sauces that I’m fond of is “Da Bomb” the 200k version and Dave’s Insanity Sauce. These two are nearly purely for the burn. (as I write this my lips are turning numb from the insanity sauce)

    Let me close by saying that some of these hot sauces… well, they only require the tiniest bit on the top of a tong of a fork to make most people cry.

    Some like it hot. others like it deadly. can you take the heat?

  59. rpmcestmoi Says:
    November 16th, 2005 at 8:09 pm

    I see mentions of god all over the place on the site, much less real than hot sauces, yet always spoken of as EXISTING!!

  60. rpmcestmoi Says:
    November 16th, 2005 at 8:17 pm

    So, as to complete the thought, which abberantly decided to leave (was it an act of god?) before I was finished, I thought that perhaps a program on the absurdity of man’s invention of god would be useful. “There has to be something more,” is one of the weakest notions ever conceived by man, and yet we have scientists as well as clergy allowing that primitive need for completion of the presently inexplicable, which leads to specifying the aspects of that god, which leads to sects, whuich leads to…well, live as we see it in all its squalor and violence.

  61. flow Says:
    November 16th, 2005 at 9:53 pm

    The recent posting of a of a paper by Physics and AstronomyProfessor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University lends credence to margaret lamb’s recommendation of a program examining the evidence of incongruities between the official story and the readily observable events (and facts) of 9/11.

    A November 10 article by Elaine Jarvik in The Deseret News (a prominent Salt Lake City daily) titled Professor Thinks Bombs, Not Planes, Toppled WTC reports, “The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong…

    “In a paper posted online Tuesday and accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, Jones adds his voice to those of previous skeptics, including the authors of the Web site http://www.wtc7.net, whose research Jones quotes. Jones’ article can be found at http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html…

    “Previous investigations, including those of FEMA, the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and Technology), ignore the physics and chemistry of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, to the Twin Towers and the 47-story building known as WTC 7, he says. The official explanation — that fires caused structural damage that caused the buildings to collapse — can’t be backed up by either testing or history, [he says}…

    “Jones acknowledges that there have been “junk science” conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11, but “the explosive demolition hypothesis better satisfies tests of repeatability and parsimony and therefore is not ‘junk science.’”

    The conventional wisdom is that no media outlet (mainstream or otherwise) will touch this. Is this true of ROS? What are the bloggers saying? Thanks.

    http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/slides.html
    http://batr.org/911/
    http://www.snowshoefilms.com/911coverup.html

  62. stankay Says:
    November 17th, 2005 at 2:22 pm

    With so many natural and man-made disasters to report, the world has mostly forgotten about the Chernobyl disaster. I came across a web site hosted by a young Ukrainian woman, Elena Filatova, that has some compelling photos and stories that are worth the time to read and study. Here is a link:
    http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

    Here is a section from her web site that recounts in photos and narrative her original motorcycle trip there: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

    Perhaps a show that revisits this disaster, and its aftermath may be timely, since there is a renewed interest in nuclear power as an alternative to oil and gas as an energy source.

  63. pecos Says:
    November 17th, 2005 at 3:49 pm

    With habeas corpus under assault from Senate Republicans on two fronts– Sen. Lindsay Graham’s legislation to prohibit it’s use by Guantamamo inmates, and the Streamlined Procedures Act, which would restrict its use by death row inmates, it seem like it’s time for a program about the Great Writ.

    The case of the Guantanamo inmates is especially poignant at this moment. Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights and pro bono advocates like Boston’s Sabin Willett, have managed to get a small number of cases into the federal courts. Even this limited success has been too much for the Bush Administration, which insists on unfettered power to hold inmates, most without charges, for as long as it wants, and under the conditions it dictates, at Guantanamo.

    Guests on the program might include Willett, who has a powerful story to tell (he had an op ed piece inthe WaPo on Nov. 14, I’m sorry I can’t find the link), Anthony Lewis, (of course) and there’s no shortage of other articulate, passsionate, defenders of human rights. As for the other side, the Republican congressional bench is deep.

  64. Katherine Says:
    November 18th, 2005 at 7:01 pm

    Just posted a Friday Show Suggestion Wrap-Up above (here, in the body of the post). Have a good weekend!

  65. Potter Says:
    November 18th, 2005 at 9:27 pm

    Hi Katherine. I read your response to mine which you titled “how we ended up in Iraq” a transposition of my “how we were taken into this or how we allowed ourselves to be taken into this”. My suggestion is about examining the president’s war powers as suggested by Basevich and A. Lewis and how these have been expanded and abused. Another aspect of this is that I add here is about the atmosphere of fear post 9/11.

  66. Loay Says:
    November 20th, 2005 at 12:48 am

    Robert Fisk has just published “The Great War for Civilization: The conquest of the Middle East” and it is a master work. He must be interviewed on the show if the show is to have any claim to being valid and honest. He is the outstanding western reporter on the middle east, whose honesty, integrity and fluency in Arabic has made him respected throughout the region. He is the only reporter to have interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times. One can read his reporting if one is willing to pay from the London Independents web site or for free on http://www.robert-fisk.com

  67. ewayland Says:
    November 20th, 2005 at 2:07 am

    I am listening as I write this to Harold Bloom talking about God, and thoroughly enjoying it as I always do when he and Chris get together. One of the reasons I love it is that, inevitably, they talk about Emerson at some point. Emerson is my own no. 1 literary hero and I’m always eager to hear Bloom and Chris quote him and comment on him. Which … is my rough idea for a show. Just once I’d like to hear a whole hour of Harold Bloom and Chris discussing Emerson — his place in American letters, his place in American culture…something(I’d suggest asking Bloom himself what he’d like to discuss), instead of waiting for them to find an excuse to bring hiim up while discussing another topic altogether.

  68. Potter Says:
    November 20th, 2005 at 8:45 am

    I second ewayland’s above.

  69. smtcapecod Says:
    November 21st, 2005 at 10:41 am

    Not to drag us back over broken glass…or perhaps to do just that after all.

    Your piece Torture, Still, Again was timely and thought provoking.

    I tend to have visceral responses whenever I hear of such conduct. I was stuck during one television news broadcast, however. The commentator was going on about the alleged use of torture by U.S. forces. Then, a representation of a CIA handbook was presented as supposed corroboration. The specific actions cited in the handbook included an ‘attention slap’, ‘belly slap’, sleep deprivation and a few others.

    To me this drives us right back to the elephant in the room- why can’t we gain (international, policy) consensus on a definition of torture? A show featuring the politic and philosophy of that question could be quite interesting. While the administration (through Gonzales, if I remember correctly?) did provide some framework based on percieved moral jeopardy, the international and human dimensions of the term are still largely undefined. Are actions such as those described in the CIA manual reallly torture? How do such measures- which deviate from good care- falll on the continuum of national security and public safety?

  70. Katherine Says:
    November 21st, 2005 at 2:20 pm

    Potter: thanks for setting me straight on your war powers idea — just went back and reread your original suggestion.

  71. UtahOwl Says:
    November 22nd, 2005 at 12:04 am

    Regarding the Italian so-called documentary on the US Forces’ use of phosphorus ( which called it a chemical weapon)…well, everything is chemical, including gunpowder..and napalm…My spin on it is, under the Current MalAdministration, the State Department has a propaganda arm ( designed acc to the Heritage Foundation’s plan – see http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=40419
    ) which is called the “Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy” division. If this division were functioning properly, it would have already put out a “push-back” to the Italian documentary, which ran on Italian TV and is a topic of much discussion in Europe. (After all, why should we think Europeans are any more critical than American audiences…). And BTW, the folks that used to be in this division at State are now ensconced in Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where they can corrupt and consume one of the few semi-functional news organizations in the US.

  72. oolitic Says:
    November 22nd, 2005 at 11:02 am

    With Iran being in the news of late, as well as the recent debate in Mass. regarding Armenian genocide or non-genocide, it would be interesting to look at some Sufi Poetry. Sufis were branded as heritcs by other Muslims and very poorly treated indeed, but from this mess produced truely amazing poetry about love that stiill resonates beautifully today.

    If somehow you could get Coleman Barks http://www.sufism.org/books/barks.html
    that would be fantastic! He has a book called Open Secret (a sign perhaps OpenXXX :-) )

    I would imagine that Chris L’s Rolodex already has a Coleman Barks card anyway :-)

    This We Have Now

    from Out Beyond Ideas

    This we have now is not imagination
    This is not grief or joy.
    Not a judging state, or an elation,
    or sadness, those come and go.

    This is the presence that doesn’t.
    This is the presence that doesn’t.

    When grapes turn to wine
    they’re wanting this
    When the night sky pours by
    it’s really a crowd of beggars
    and they all want some of this.
    This we have now.

    Jalaludin Rumi

    Translated by: Coleman Barks
    From: The Essential Rumi, 1985, Copyright Coleman Barks

  73. ChrisTover Says:
    November 22nd, 2005 at 1:49 pm

    I am utterly appalled by a story that appeared today in The Daily Mirror of London. A memo leaked from the office of Prime Minister Tony Blair disclosed that President Bush wanted to bomb the offices of Aljazeera in Qatar. this matter was discussed by Bush and Blair at a meeting on April 16 last year. Tony Blair vehemently opposed the bombing of Alazeera.

    It is uninmaginable that any sane president could ever entertain such an idea, let alone discuss it with another leader. After all, Qatar is an ally in the struggle against Al Qaida’s terrorism. An attack upon Qatar would have alienated friends and allies throughout the world and radicalized moderate Muslims. It would have been a huge victory for Al Qaida.

    It is a fact that the U.S. bombed the offiuces of Aljazeera in both Kabul in Afganistan and Bagdad in Iraq. Our government has claimed these bombings were made through ‘military error’. However, the memo from 10 Downing Street casts doubts upon the explanation of military error. The deliberate bombing of facilities of Aljazeera would constitute an act of war against Qatar and a war crime.

    This matter manifests the hypocrisy of the Bush administration. Bush has taken a public stance of promoting freedom throughout the world. Then he turns around and advocates the destruction of a news organization that exercises that freedom.

    Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job in the Oval Office. But at least, no one was injured and no one was killed. What should we do with a president who used bogus intelligence to start a war that cost the lives more than 100,000 people? It is time to impeach President Bush and remove him from office. Better that, than to let him start another misbegotten misadventure that will cost many thousands of lives

    ———————————————–

    For more information see:

    http://www.mirror.co.uk

    http://english.aljazeera.net (no ‘www.’)

    —————————————————–

    this is a copy of my blog posting on eatingtheapple.blogspot.com

    My real name is Chris Billings

  74. pmassari Says:
    November 22nd, 2005 at 4:26 pm

    I’m at the end of a long string of entries here, so this will probably never get read. But then again, neither does my blog (www.pandachews.blogspot.com).

    My suggestions relate not so much to show topics but rather to the way these topics are presented. Let me explain.

    Opensource does a wonderful job of nailing the Zeitgeist. The show topics are usually precisely what’s on my mind (alright, maybe not the one about candy). The problem is that, while the guests are usually both brilliant and articulate, they tend to be mostly from a left-leaning perspective. The guest him/herself may even be a conservative or a soldier, but their position for the purposes of the show will fall in line with progressive politics. I’m sorry to say I agree with lasitter’s entry on the blog for “Neocons: what were they thinking?� when he wrote:

    “You erect a straw man for neocon thinking, and then trash it.�

    Now, I often agree with what people like George Packer have to say. But the fact that the show’s guests often see things in similar ways tends to reinforce the dynamic, so prevalent in our culture, of people talking only to those who agree with them. There are shouting matches, to be sure, but that’s actually an indication of the fact that people spend most of their time talking to like-minded folks. It follows that they would feel both shocked and offended that anyone else saw things differently than they. There’s really nothing on the radio that helps us understand each other.

    For instance, I was listening to Terry Gross interview Bill Kristol a couple of weeks ago and I was simply flabbergasted by his view of the war in Iraq. According to Kristol, the invasion was justified because the intelligence indicated Saddam was a threat. That the intelligence was completely inaccurate is certainly not the fault of the Bush Administration, and anyway the rest of the world believed Saddam was in possession of WMD. The Iraqis mostly have seen us as liberators. We could have used some more boots on the ground, but the White House is correcting past errors and will be able to establish a stable democracy in Iraq. As far as the human cost goes, well, if an omelet is worth making, it’s worth the eggs you have to break.

    How could Kristol and the neo-cons see things so differently, even after all we now know from Dick Clarke, Paul O’Neil, the Downing Street Memo, Abu Ghraib and Lawrence Wilkerson? Who knows, because it’s virtually impossible to find a respectful conversation between articulate, well-informed people on different sides of an issue. Even on public radio, an exchange of fact rather than opinion is almost impossible to find. I thought it might happen when Opensource had Grover Norquist on after Katrina, but Norquist’s cell phone connection was bad, and the other guest seemed interested primarily in attack rather than discussion. As a result, we learned nothing.

    Rarer still is a conversation in which the best minds work together to suggest real solutions to a problem. The pottery barn show would have been a terrific opportunity to get people on from left and right to talk about a way out of the mess in Iraq.

    The lack of thoughtful debate and discussion from different perspectives does a tremendous disservice to the listener. I don’t want to be spoon-fed a perspective with the facts cherry-picked for support. (Hmmm… where have we seen that before?) I want to hear smart people who respect each other laying out the FACTS and making a case. How else am I supposed to decide what I believe?

  75. diogenes Says:
    November 23rd, 2005 at 6:19 pm

    How about getting Sam Harris on. In his book “The End of Faith” which is entering its fifth week on the paperback best seller list Harris argues “that in the presence of weapons of mass destruction we cannot expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely.” More controversialy he argues that “moderation in religion poses considerable dangers of its own, as the accommodation we have made to religious faith in our society now blinds us to the role that faith plays in perpetuating human confilct.” We need Sam Harris.

  76. leonplays Says:
    November 25th, 2005 at 3:52 pm

    I was interested in the idea od hip-hop music as a kind of cross-cultural glue for the marginalized immigrant experience. Karl Libanus touched on it during a recent show on Muslim Immigration in Europe, but I want to hear lots more. Europe, Brazil, Asia…hip hop music has been taken in by everyone, with many different interpretations but a common sense of identity. Can an arabic 18 yr olf in a French ghetto identify more with 2-Pac or Snoop Dogg than French cultural icons? Why do oppressed people all over identify with the story of Black American ideas of struggle and success? What message is mainstream hip-hop music selling to the world? I would love a future show on these kinds of questions. Are you up for it Chris?

  77. dwarnersaklad Says:
    November 25th, 2005 at 10:51 pm

    Boston City Hall, Boston City Council, Boston City Clerks, even the city public library department routinely flout sunshine open public meetings, FOI Freedom of Information public records, open government principles. Boston City Hall is a good example of a bad example of local observance of these important principles.

    Take a look at the all to brief, too spare so called Boston City Council Minutes at http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil

    Council Minutes are prepared from stenographic machine output, transcripts of the stenographic machine output. The Council stenographer will not make the stenographic machine output available.

  78. dwarnersaklad Says:
    November 25th, 2005 at 10:53 pm

    Develop a presentation around the practices of local sunshine principles at Boston City Hall.

  79. cheesechowmain Says:
    November 27th, 2005 at 12:02 am

    An interview with James Bamford and/or John Rendon with respect to the following article:

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1132253345109&has-player=false

    I think this sort of dove tails into the recent allegations about the topic of bombing Al Jazeera. Some of the British and Al Jazeera folks involved might have some information to add. Since there have been incidents involving the death of journalists, a discussion is probably in order about the nature of the press as propaganda weapon.

  80. cheesechowmain Says:
    November 27th, 2005 at 12:14 am

    I want to follow up my previous post and mention that Frank Gaffney is promolgating the idea of media property and personnel as military assets; thus, they can be active targets within or outside a theatre of operation. Getting Frank Gaffney on to explain this position might make for some fireworks. Always a lightening rod that Gaffney; sure to raise some blood pressure…

  81. cheesechowmain Says:
    November 27th, 2005 at 12:18 am

    er…promulgating that is…

  82. dwarnersaklad Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 2:27 am

    by Richard M. Stallman
    http://www.stallman.org/harry-potter.html

  83. Potter Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 10:16 am

    The honesty of our elections and therefore the integrity of our democracy is still very much in question. This topic seems to have slipped from our attention at least until the next election when it will once again will rise and be too late. The issue is apparently radioactive in the main stream media perhaps because those who are pursuing this are vulnerable to being cast as sore-losers of the opposing party.

    Can anyone argue that this is a not a serious threat to our democracy? So please bravely shine a light.

    See:
    Democracy in America Has Officially Become a Privatized Circus

    The people on Bev Harris’ team http://www.blackboxvoting.org./ would be excellent people to interview.

  84. suzzy Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 10:37 am

    The recording of a police search of a Chinese woman in Malaysia
    has caused a fuss, primarily because of the possible rude treatment of the woman by a possibly male officer.
    http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2005/11/25/phone_video_of_.html
    http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,517/Itemid,1/
    http://www.youtube.com/?v=Abz2jSdOwvs
    http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Monday/Frontpage/20051128081739/Article/indexb_html

    This case is relevant to ROS because it was caused by a citizen-journalist submitting the video. What I find particularly facsinating are the outraged responses of the Malay people to the incident. Don’t these Mohammedans realize the consquences of passing draconian laws by fanatical Islamic states (like their own) or fanatical Xtian states (like many in the miodwest and southern USA) is that these laws are implemented by their policer, with predictable results?
    If the stripping of the woman was done in a “kind and usual manner” (to borrow Jessica Mitford’s memorable phrase) the only differences would have been the officer conducting the search. Would they have approved then?

    Just as Americans had to be shocked by pictures of nasty things that had been reported in the print media for months, and were completely predictable by those familar with history, so have the
    Malays.
    What will be the effect open source citizen journalism on brutal repressive countries Like Malaysia and the USA?

  85. nother Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 7:34 pm

    A great example of open source journalism is the group http://www.witness.org
    A non-profit group that puts cameras in the hands of third-world citizens. These people know the terrain they are there for the long-haul.

    Blogs may be shaking the windows and rattling the walls of print journalism, but how much will that carry over to broadcast journalism. Is it possible that the accessibility of small cameras will enable a type of broadcast blog. Imagine if ROS could post a video blog from an average citizen in Iraq.

    Blogs have leveled the field, extracted the elitism, given voice to us common folk. We now have the ability to do the same with video. The nightly news could incorporate short video blogs from bloggers around the world.

    Daniel Chandler and Laura Mulvey wrote extensively on “The Gaze.� We all watch a lot of video and most of it was shot and directed by western white males. The “gaze� of the eye that looks through the lens of all these cameras on CNN, Fox, PBS, MTV, Hollywood, ext. is, for the most part, a western white guy. We have all grown up influenced by this “gaze.� Video blogs will help eliminate the “other� from the “gaze.�

    Incidentally, this idea of putting the camera in the hands of the “other� came from a project by Sol Worth and John Adair. Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology. Originally published in 1972, this book has become a classic in visual anthropology. Worth and Adair set out to answer the question, What would happen if someone from a culture that makes and uses motion pictures taught people who have never made or used motion pictures to do so for the first time? They taught filmmaking and editing to a group of six Navajos in Pinetree, Arizona and came away with seven short documentaries. I love how Worth and Adair’s idea connects to idea of blogging and giving a voice to the previously unheard, it’s a nother cool circle. �

  86. flow Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 11:24 pm

    Please consider spending an hour with former president Jimmy Carter concerning his recently published book Our Endangered Values : America’s Moral Crisis.

    To what degree is there a consensus around his thesis of moral crisis in these United States of America? What is driving it? Is there a historical precedent to suggest we might recover from it? As the ranking elder statesman of our democracy, his unique perspective and insight may weave gainfully with a wide variety of other Recently Aired and Warming Up program threads.

  87. flow Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 11:29 pm

    Please pardon the over italicized previous post

  88. Erica Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 11:55 pm

    Hey guys,

    This is a tech suggestion. Back in August I talked to Brendan a bit about audio blogging/audio commenting, and recommended that you folks check out Livejournal’s phonepost system for ideas. LJ just updated their phonepost system to include a VoIP option (an open standards one, no less!). Might be worth checking out.

  89. Potter Says:
    November 29th, 2005 at 8:57 am

    The elusive Moyers:

    Moyers Has His Say

  90. Somerville Says:
    November 29th, 2005 at 9:11 pm

    I’d like to hear a show about the continuing genocide in Darfur–it’s the oddest thing how under-reported this story is. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has been tremendous in his brave reporting from this violent region of Africa, making sure the world hasn’t forgotten about this crisis. Thousands of women and children have been killed by the marauding janjaweed, with support from the Sudanese government (I think the deaths have gone over the million mark by this point), and women and girls are being raped constantly. We all hear about the latest bombing in Iraq, and to be sure, this is tragic news–but surely Darfur commands just as much, if not more attention. My fear is that a couple of years from now, we’ll see the extent of this genocide and ask ourselves “how could this have happened”–exactly what we did after the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990′s. Kristof’s reporting spurred me to write to my senators, representatives, the president and the secretary of state about this situation–I got back the standard chin music about the Darfur Accountability Act, which doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect. The conversation about this crisis could bring up some very interesting questions, including the moral obligation we (the United States, Europe, whatever political/national entity you can think of) have to end such humanitarian crises. I imagine Kristof would jump at the chance to be on Open Source and talk about what he’s seen over there in Sudan, and ask why the world hasn’t done more to stop it.

    p.s. If anyone’s interested, Jonathan Glover’s “Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century” is an excellent book about the worst crimes against humanity in the last century (including the Holocaust, Stalin’s purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution)—not just describing the events, but asking how they were allowed to happen, and what can be done to prevent such events in the future (i.e., we’ve got a chance to stop what’s happening in Darfur right now).

  91. Tisha Says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 12:10 pm

    I find discussions about Intelligent Design are completely polarized with a Darwinist or Separation of Church and State activist pitted against an ID believer. What I would like to hear would be people with solid religious credentials who also accept the theory of evolution discuss how they reconcile their religious beliefs with Darwinism. I would like to have a Buddhist monk or teacher, a Rabbi, a Christian priest or minister, an Imam or teacher of Islam on the program. Perhaps this approach would help to bridge the differences on American society on this topic.

  92. avecfrites Says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 2:31 pm

    Update on the $100 laptop:
    http://www.slate.com/id/2131201/

    I’m very skeptical. First, it will be a long time before costs drop enough to enable building a laptop for $100. Second, how long will it be before the machines are infected with viruses, spyware, etc., and become unstable?

    A better solution would be to place inexpensive thin client machines in public areas. In a thin client architecture, pretty much nothing except a browser runs on the machine, so it is easy to keep running. And documents and apps are kept on a central server, so the user doesn’t have to worry about backups, upgrades, etc. To make this work, the rollout process (the real value-added effort) is to get high-speed internet connections in the villages (one location per, to start), with several shared thin client units. This is a more workable plan than getting a complex multi-function machine in the hands of lots of untrained people, without support, etc.

  93. tpl1212 Says:
    December 1st, 2005 at 10:25 am

    Late to the party here, but I would love to hear a discussion with Thomas Barnett. I just got through listening to his Blueprint for Action : A Future Worth Creating interview on IT Conversations’ “Technometria with Phil Windley” show…fascinating stuff.

    He paints an admittedly optimistic view of the future…mainly from an economic standpoint (overly simplified…the more of the world gets rolled into this concept of the global economy, the less strife there will be). Some of his ideas seem fairly radical (mostly because they seem quite anti-doom-and-gloom).

    He’s got a blog, as well (which I haven’t checked out fully, yet).

  94. A little yellow bird Says:
    December 1st, 2005 at 8:54 pm

    “Andy Vance”‘s suggestion of a discussion of the world of public relations made me think of the book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins, which was top of the pops at the NY Times in ’04. The author will be signing books and speaking at the Harvard Coop on January 12th, 2006 and so will be in Boston, then… hint, hint. If y’all haven’t read the book yet, please don’t. It’ll make your skin crawl. The man is reformed now and is trying to help undo some of the damage he helped wreak on our irreplaceable world. And his own soul. Please visit his site: http://www.dreamchange.org/. Peace

  95. Potter Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 7:49 am

    Bill Bozworth, executive director of Common Cause Georgia was on the Al Franken show the other day (Franken was broadcasting from Georgia) and he was talking about the state’s voter ID law. Apparently there is a charge to get ID’s from the state if you do not have one, mostly for thoses who have no driver’s license for instance, mostly the poor. The argument is that this amounts to a poll tax on poor people. Bozworth also suggested talking to the league of Women Voters on this subject. I would like to suggest that we focus on this and other ways that people, the poor especially are discouraged or prevented from voting. In the last election, in Ohio’s poorer districts, there were not enough voting machines and we saw video tape of lines of people waiting to vote.

    This could be part of the Race and Class series… related to my above suggestion about the honesty of our elections.

  96. Potter Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 8:16 am

    Can anyone give a good reason why there should not be a paper trail?

    from the link below:

    ……A nonpartisan coalition representing 25 California election integrity groups held a press conference Monday outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento, where the “Voting Systems Testing Summit” was convened by Republican California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

    The State appears to have skewed presentations in favor of electronic voting, with advocates far outnumbering critics. Some panels contain exclusively vendors of electronic voting equipment and representatives of testing labs chosen by these vendors.

    ……”Diebold and other vendors selling electronic voting equipment have been invited to attend, along with all 400 members of the California Association of Election Officials,” she said. “It costs one hundred and seventy five dollars a ticket and will be picked up by the state.”

    …….Some of the conference’s other panels are also weighted in favor of e-voting advocates. A presentation of state election officials titled “What Happens Now” includes Paul Craft, Nick Handy, Dr. Brit Williams, and Connie Schmidt.

    Craft, an officer in the Florida Secretary of State’s office, previously headed Florida’s Bureau of Voting Systems Certification and was responsible for ensuring accuracy of new voting machines during the 2000 presidential election debacle.

    Craft resigned from the state’s Division of Elections to start his own consulting company, which advises other states on purchase of election equipment. He has also served on a Technology Guidance Committee appointed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), where he solicited testimony from vendor engineers resulting in a vote to delete new standards.

    Williams has been an outspoken defender of electronic voting. As an NIST participant, he stated that “adding a paper ‘receipt’ could have an adverse effect.” He also served as a state evaluator of Diebold machines in Georgia, where he allowed installation of a patch not certified by testing labs. BBV later revealed a “rob-georgia” file which contained “3,700 files of instructions to replace files that were on the machines.” Williams later admitted, “Some of the things we did, we probably compromised security a little bit.”

    More here:
    a California summit

  97. Potter Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 8:30 am

    I know I am loading you down here and sorry but where else? And you asked.

    Listening to your esteemed colleague Terri Gross yesterday as she interviewed Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson on their book “Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy”, I could not help but wish that you too would have these guys on. They are very articulate but more importantly I think this is not just another issue. We are witnessing the destruction of our democracy. The people are not being represented;our government is losing it’s checks and balances. The two party system is not working because one party has managed to grab the power.

    “The Destruction of Our Democracy” as depressing as that sounds, would be a good series.

    Also I second the suggestion about Jimmy Carter on his new book. I know he is all over the media now— but so what when it’s good.

  98. Robin Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 5:12 pm

    hey all. Check up top for weekly roundup of feedback on your most excellent suggestions. Look for December thread coming soon! thanks!

  99. ewayland Says:
    December 4th, 2005 at 3:30 pm

    Thanks, Robin. I obviously had missed your July 5 show on Emerson However, I stand by my show suggestion. Harold Bloom was not heard from in your Emerson documentary and, as I said before, he and Chris obviously enjoy bringing Emerson up whenever they get together. I think a show with Harold Blom focusing on Emerson would be terrific radio. Having said that, thanks again for the link to a very enjoyable show.

  100. cheesechowmain Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 9:07 pm

    Howdy all. In light of what just happened with the thread shutdown regarding the To Iran, Like Nixon to China?, may I recommend you post a clear, crisp, short code of conduct policy and rules for removing folks off the threads, shut a thread down, etc. Something along the “No shirt, no shoes, no service” lines. Maybe improvisation is the best approach. You guys are the pros.

    I enjoy the effort you folks make. Chris, the staff, and the guests are always excellent.

    Best…

  101. LeeJudt Says:
    December 7th, 2005 at 1:11 am

    Here is a show that’s waiting to be produced:

    Muslim Jew hatred. Some of the material can be very funny in a weird sort of way. For example:

    “Denmark’s offensive Jewish cookies

    By Yigal Romm in Copenhagen Updated: 06/Dec/2005 19:09″

    http://www.ejpress.org/article/news/4479

    “A group of Danish Muslims refuse to eat traditional “Jewishâ€? cookies because they feel offended by the name.”

  102. andy b Says:
    December 7th, 2005 at 3:27 am

    2006 is the centenary year of my favorite author, Samuel Beckett. April 13 is his birthday. Plenty of critics, scholars, writers, actors, directors to invite as guests for a show. (You recently had Alvin Epstein on–I wish he had talked about performing Beckett…and the relation to Shakespeare.)

    I heard an excellent podcast of “On Point” last year that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the debut of Waiting for Godot, and they had actors performing scenes as audio interludes. It was very effectively done.

    really happy to hear Chris again, and thankful for podcast (no broadcast in Bay Area)

  103. Robin Says:
    December 7th, 2005 at 3:06 pm

    andy b – we’re on in the Bay Area! KPFA in San Francisco carries us at 1am…kinda late, and not live, but you can hear us on the radio there.