Author: Carl Setzer

Tom Cruise Madness: The Tom Cruise Scientology Indoctrination Video

Mr. Cruise has excelled at devolving into the creepiest, freakish caricature possible. Sad…

Parade's cover story questioned — chicagotribune.com

Parade magazine attempts to justify their decision to publish a grossly out-of-date article about Bhutto after her assignation. If nothing else, they have lost serious credibility as journalists. I was quite shocked to see this in Sunday’s paper. It’s another sign, really, of the weaknesses of the traditional media model. News organizations must find ways to publish timely and relevant content. Perhaps print based news is truly dead.

First post and the most recent post, here.

Scoble’s incident with Facebook does show a critical issue with the brave new world we live in. The surrounding debate has brought up all kinds of issues, which is good for the meta-debate about technology. There is one (right now) that feel compelled to consider: the social network piece. Mostly, this is related to his most recent post on this thread here.

Particularly, he notes that:

I’ve gotten dozens of messages from people who claim to have been erased by Facebook who DID NOT run a script (or so they say). They were just erased for some perceived slight and because they aren’t a famous blogger they haven’t gotten their accounts turned back on.

So, this is a company you want to trust your private details to? A company that can not just block access to your account, but can erase every last detail about you.

I’ve seen these claims, too. There are enough of them that makes me give credence to them (at least some of them). This is the piece that should give us pause: Facebook has the ability to completely erase you from their system. To be clear, so does MySpace, et al. For so many years, your network was key, for long before Plaxo, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. It’s become even more so no. I have several friends who found their current positions through these tools, and several more who utilized them as part of their strategy. The ability to become arbitrarily disengaged should be deeply troubling.

For me, this is not so much a debate about the evils of Facebook as it is about how one should manage their all critical network. For Scoble, I doubt that all of his 5,000 (or whatever that number is) Facebook friends are that critical to his social life (I’m lumping career into that “social” category). However, some percentage of them are absolutely essential. We all have a few contacts that are deeply critical to various functions of our life. However, it’s hard to determine that criticalness in advance. With my background, I find redundancy to be the most effective answer. I utilize various sources to manage this network: Plaxo, Linkedin, Facebook, as well as a few Google and Yahoo groups. This way, if I’m severed from any one part, I’m not lost to the social Zeigeist.

Full story
This says it all.
“So what life lesson did Bartoszewicz learn from her ordeal? ‘Always take your cell phone with you,'”

» 2008: Linux’s year on the desktop | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com

Some interesting speculation on what’s to come in the PC market. I don’t know how much credence to give this, but it’s certainly worth a look…and some reflection. Particularly his observation about the introduction of new computing platforms every 10 years. I’ve fiddled with Linux, and will, most likely, turn my old Compaq laptop into a dual (duel?) boot machine soon.

Google SketchUp – Home

Another tool from the Google toolbox, which seems to just keep on giving. A free gadget that let’s you produce basic drawings and other renderings. Reading the review, it seems to be akin to Visio. I’ve downloaded it and will play around with it shortly.

I Think in Pictures, You Teach in Words

Quite an interesting article, illuminating my own experiences. This was forwarded to me by a friend, for which I am much obliged. It explains a lot of my own misery.

I just watched a speech by the Heritage Foundation. It’s interesting to see those so solidly committed to conservatism speak. They seem quite disconnected from me. One of the more interesting statements was the reiteration of their committment to the free market as well as traditional values (i.e.: the importance of family) without any sense of irony. Are they blind to the corrosive affect of the free market on family? Do they completely ignore the late 18th and early 20th centuries? Unfettered markets are destructive, they devalue the human existance and exacerbate suffering.

There are several places I find myself aligned with conservative ideas. For instance, I’m no fan of welfare. However, it’s not out of any sense of rage that there are people gaining subsistence without adequate effort. My concern is one of human dignity. The way most US welfare systems were constructed did not provide for getting oneself off the dole. The system actually resisted efforts to improve one’s marketability and find more then simple employment but a career. I didn’t, and still don’t, see that as a failure of the individual but of the system.

Perhaps the most central place I depart from most conservatives is in the notion of the "ideal" human. Classic liberal thinking has the individual as the natural or ideal state of humanity. I disagree. People have a need for society. Humans in isolation die (in extremes, and suffer egregious mental damage in lesser doses). I see humanity existing on a social continuum. There are times we need others, and times we need isolation. We all exist in a tension between social influences and individual directives.

Another piece I find interesting is how they don’t see how most Americans have a distrust for Capital. Much of conservatism is viewed as simple justification for the rich continuing exploitation. They don’t see that many believe that there is a tyranny by the rich, that we of more modest means are inherently disempowered, that the only way to have influence is with money. The rich are viewed as having undue favor, quite corrosive to social cohesion.

I have nothing against a strong defence, however that is quite different that bullying the rest of the world. We may ramble on about bringing freedom to the rest of the world, but a good many of the rest of the world sees our international (extra-national?) activities as being in our narrow self interest. It’s important to note that a it doesn’t take a deep dive into the US history to see solid examples. Not very many people see our actions in Iraq, for instance, as the efforts to depose a dangerous dictator. Instead, our actions have been viewed as an attempt to secure our grip on the world’s most valuable commodity.

Though I’ve grown weary over the past few years of this need to define oneself in such polar terms, and in ways that really misuse the classic definitions of "conservative" and "liberal", I still exist in this system. I thus find myself more "liberal" in this context. Perhaps, someday, I’ll be able to define myself in more valuable detail, such as saying I’m a "progressive traditionalist". Perhaps. And, perhaps, the thing I grow the most weary is the currency of rage that both extremes spend with glee.