Be Afraid?

In New Contract, Newt Goes Green

At ten o'clock today, Newt Gingrich will be debating John Kerry on the climate crisis.

"Terry and I wrote A Contract With the Earth to push conservatives back to their environmental roots vis-à-vis Teddy Roosevelt," Gingrich tells us.
Like his 1994 Contract With America, Gingrich's book will highlight a 10-point plan that the publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press, says "promotes ingenuity over rhetoric" and calls for a "bipartisan environmentalism." It's already received endorsements from Nature Conservancy President Steve McCormick and Wildlife Society Executive Director Michael Hutchins.

Ingenuity over rhetoric? It is rather ingenious; like when Clinton lifted the boards off the Republican platform, leaving them with nothing to stand on. Can Newt pull it off? Can he sell Americans on a 'Contract for the 21st Century?' God I hope not.

I want to do some digging on the word contract. It doesn't sound like a 21st Century word to me. Barely sounds like the 20th Century. All I can think of is tenement stories like, Will Eisner's A Contract with God.

I still hold to my conviction that it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, then for a Republican to enter the White House in January 2009. But as Jesus amends, "with God all things are possible." (Mathew 19:26)

If 2008 is 1968, and Gore is Nixon, then let Gingrich can be Hubert Humphrey. Look forward to more historical analysis. I haven't even had time to read the 1968 election wiki. Questions for a later date: who will be the George Wallace vote splitter? Will there be a Robert Kennedy? The anti-war protests of the Summer of '07 will pale in comparison to the Summer of '08; so, will the conventions go as smoothly as they did in 1968? Mmm, history.

Mensaje de Newt Gingrich

I have never believed that Spanish
is a language of people of low income
nor a language without beauty

~ Newt Gingrich from HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL. {wtf}

n.gingrich joined youtube July 11, 2006, and since then has posted 17 videos to his channel, known as "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America." His viewership started is now in the low thousands, but his most recent video, Mensaje de Newt Gingrich, has received almost 60,000 views in only a day. But that's what happens when the Old Media covers the Internet; they throw the seeds of their readership into nooks the readers could never find alone. And eventually the readers don't need the papers to filter their Newt Gingrich updates.

But the seed of readership has only just been planted. It might not survive phenomena section. Currently, he has 217 subscribers, including this guy. Newt has no friends. And not is do you no longer need a filter to Newt, now Newt will filter for you too.

Since typing the above, Newt now has 222 subscribers, and one of those new ones is me.

Another Massachusetts Flip-Flopper

Campaigning in New Hampshire this week, the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination told an audience that he is a "lifelong hunter," according to the Associated Press. "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life," the news service reported.

But the campaign now acknowledges that the former governor has been hunting twice in his life -- once when he was young and lived on a ranch in Idaho, and more recently on a quail-hunting trip in Georgia with GOP donors.

"I wouldn't describe the governor as an avid hunter," spokesman Kevin Madden said. "I don't think if we were sitting around the hunting lodge, he would have a lot of stories to tell about big game."

Giuliani, however, has lots of great hunting stories; like that time him and Bernie Kerik went hunting for prostitutes, or when he spent six hours stalking this one homeless guy, before taking him down with a crossbow, just before the sun rose over pristine streets of New York City.

Poetria Nova

The air in this region of art may seem murky and the pathway rugged, the doors locked and the theory itself entangled with knots. Since that is so, the words that follow will serve as physicians for that disorder. Scan them well: here you will find a light to dispel the darkness, safe footing to traverse rugged ground, a key to unlock the doors, a finger to loose the knots. The way is thrown open; guide the reins of your mind as the nature of your course demands.

Geoffrey of Vinsauf

Take a Chance

The two episode pilot of Space Above and Beyond is now on TV Links, along with four scattered episodes of the shows first and only season. These episodes give good feel for what the world is like in 2063. The show has really great story arcs and I recommend watching the whole thing through, on DVD, or perhaps TV Links in a few days.
Watch Space Above and Beyond

read about the 1990s

I hadn't thought of this before, but wikipedia tells me that 2063 is the year, in Star Trek, when humans made contact with their first extraterrestrials, the Vulcans. But the first contact in Space Above and Beyond is more Heinleinian than that socialist clap trap.

$150 a Hive

Honeybees are going missing. Starts funny, ends sad.

Colbert's Bears and Balls On Bees
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on Bees [mp3]

Wikipedia on Bees
Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is the name of the phenomenon that describes the massive die-off affecting an entire beehive or bee colony.
~
Theories include environmental change-related stresses, malnutrition, unknown pathogens, mites, pesticides, disease, or genetically modified (GM) crops.
~
Honey bees are not native to the Americas, therefore their necessity as pollinators in the US is limited to strictly agricultural uses. They are responsible for pollination of approximately one third of the United States' crop species, including such species as: almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, and strawberries; many but not all of these plants can be (and often are) pollinated by other insects, including other kinds of bees, in the U.S., but typically not on a commercial scale.

OLPC Reality Check

There have been quite a lot of people trying to impose reality checks on those of us who have put all our eggs in the OLPC basket. OLPCNews has been dutifully covering the praise with the criticism, and as Vernor Vinge said in his recent Long Now speech, it is important to remain open to counter-scenarios, and the signs of their arrival. Here's a slice of negativity pie from Eduardo Villanueva Mansilla, in Lima Peru. Originally written on November 16, 2005, but posted on OLPCNews today.

This new tool, in the best possible scenario, will force a poor country's whole educational system into becoming a very different animal, without consideration of the goals looked after and the possibility of reaching them through lesser, although cheaper and locally produced and locally enabling, means. And in the worst possible scenario, this gadget will end up changing nothing, and the poor will get the chance to receive the worst education possible in full color.

Without doubting for a minute the good intentions of those involved in the project, it is impossible not to think about the whole idea as a world-changing attempt just like many that the computer has brought, and a sort of good intentioned but massive ego trip.

The computer has changed the world in so many different ways but for those imagined by the apostles of computing. This could be the final proof required to make the entire computers-will-change-the- world meme finally moot? I certainly hope so.

Mansilla's main contention is that a computer is not a substitute for an education, and the local environments; the schools and towns, will bend to serve the laptop, not to be served by it. Mansilla is guided by a principle that at times makes me question any technological revolution; wait, how are computers going to make things easier, when they have only ever made things more complicated? Isn't the shadow of every machine a mountain of troubleshooting?

But the death of schools at the hands of OLPC? Eh. So what. Like most people who enjoy tv-links, gmail, and blogging, I never got much out of school. To see the classroom replaced with something else, does not fill me with fear. I hope the next evolution in education is a real one, a good one, and inherently linked to the Internet. And this is where people misunderstand the $100 laptop. It's not an education project and it's not a laptop project, it's an Internet project. Once we give everyone the Internet, nothings going to matter. Adapting Vinge, the Internet must swallow all bureaucracies, within the century, if mankind hopes to survive and to thrive. It's kind of like the opposite of privatization.

However, will the Internet alone be enough to educate the children? In a recent video of the OLPC design team on OLPCNews, a top Engineer revealed a secret goal of the project; to indoctrinate a generation in the open source philosophy. Sounds plausible, possible, and a great first step in tearing down all known businesses and governments. But will there be any benchmarks for it? As I write, Chief Executive Bush is getting ready to veto a Democratic budget for Iraq that has benchmarks for measuring success. Similarly, Chief Negroponte has denied the need for benchmarks or even trials of the system with children. At times Negroponte's stubbornness has seemed frightening, but also strangely reassuring.

When will we know if this is working? Within the year. How will we know if this is working? Trust us, it will be so big, no one will be able to miss it.

Portuguese Wikipedia, April 3, 2006 - 248 907 artigos