March 2008 Archives

I have internet now! Thank goodness! And it is exceedingly fast: 15mps up and down!!

I will probably be in a complete body cast by the end of this week. I ache from head to toe.

The first night here I opened up the sliding glass doors to the balcony off the bedroom to cool down the house. I was simultaneously shocked and mesmerized. I could easily hear the ocean surf! Needless to say, I've enjoyed sleeping with the doors open. Glorious! Just glorious!!

The weather has been cool, very cool with no humidity. Glorious! Just glorious!!

People drive like lunatics on the roads!

People are generally much friendlier here than in Atlanta. Several of the neighbors have already stopped by to chat and express their welcome. People have driven by and just shouted "Welcome!" as they drive down the street. But my favorite has been the three neighborhood children (two seventh graders and one third grader) that rang the doorbell this evening with a large tray of home made cookies they had baked with "Welcome to town!" written on them in icing.

I'm off to Florida tomorrow at 3AM. I just hope I'm still alive when the plane lands!

Increasingly, I hear friends of mine who really have significant levels of wealth discussing "exit strategy"–how they plan to safely shelter their wealth abroad for the impending US economic collapse. Until recently I have always basically ignored their chatter as a necessary, even particularly colorful, prop on the stage of high finance drama. Lately, I'm beginning to wonder if a complete collapse of the dollar is not inevitable.

The fiscally irresponsible behavior of this administration has dramatically reversed the trend of reducing the national debt and presses us alarmingly close to the brink of the dollar's collapse. I do not fault merely the Republicans for this either. I blame all politicians for their poor, short-cited job performance through the years.

The Clinton administration was, perhaps, able to ride the dot com bubble, to pay down the debt to the extent we did. But this was not true wealth creation, this was, in my ill-informed opinion, just like the inflated housing growth (mortgage bust) we are living today--an artifice of wealth creation. The tax generated from this unsustainable economic growth spurt was spent on the war instead of buying down the national debt.

I had an unexpectedly interesting breakfast this morning, one I will post about in more detail later. The ladies, from abroad, that invited me to join them spoke of the ripple effect the serious US economic downturn is having in their own countries: Chile and the United Kingdom. As interest rates drop in the US to keep the dollar afloat, interest rates must rise in foreign countries to avert inflation in their economies. They were asking me if the US economy is really as bad as they hear it is in their countries.

Then I came across this short little YouTube clip– a "documentary" examining the possibility of a US dollar collapse. The prospects are chilling. The speed at which it could happen make my head spin. And why has this administration not placed domestic economic sustainability as a national priority some 7+ years ago? Oh, I forgot, W chose to distract the nation with a war instead so his cronies could spend the nation into oblivion, making a very small number of Americans exceedingly wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

I want to excerpt a short quotation from his speech. It is brilliant, and then I want to articulate some concerns about media. Again, I strongly encourage you to read his entire speech!

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option.

Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools... We want to talk about... This time we want to talk about...

Brilliant! I'm sick of the distractions! When are we going to face the issues--the difficult, hard, substantive, real issues that abound in this land?!

I'm fed up with viewpoint-shaping, opinions and pablum being repeated incessantly and passed off to the American people as a substitute for meaningful news reporting and serious journalism, a substitute for insightful information that breeds critical thinking, analysis, and solution-finding. In my opinion, journalism is all but dead in this nation.

We have no national debate, just arguing, mudslinging, emotional venting encapsulated in tiny sound bytes and video clips repeated over and over to fill the emptiness of our national conscience piously peppered with words like God, ethics, conservative--words made hollow by their lack of engendered authentic actions. We have not just replaced doing with speaking. We have now replaced any meaningful speaking with emotional prods and pokes designed to play on fears, incite divisiveness, perpetuate ignorance, and breed an indolent passivity that keeps the masses in check.

Yes, I am sick of this noise. I want to believe we can as a people demand more from our policy makers. I want to believe we can change this impoverished state of our nation's anemic existence. I want to believe that American capitalism can breed a sustaining economy unfettered by greed and intemperance. I want to believe that good people of faith can focus on compassion, tolerance, and acceptance more than self-serving judgement and hatefulness.

Barack Obama, like John F. Kennedy, makes me think that perhaps, just perhaps... I mean, maybe... Wouldn't it be glorious to have hope once again take flight?!

Well, here I sit in the Crown Room at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. I have no doubt I will be here many times in the future, but this is my official "flight out of town." I'm off to become a resident of California. Over my lifetime I will now have lived in Florida (18 years), South Carolina (6 years), North Carolina (4 years), Illinois (2 years), Georgia (20 years), and California (TBA).

Tidying up loose ends, I took a different route than usual to the airport and saw downtown from the east side (via the Carter Center). I was surprised at how much window damage was done to the skyscrapers by the tornados last Saturday. It was far more significant than I had expected.

The mood in the airport today seems to be very subdued though rather crowded. The weather looks heavily overcast, but the predicted rain and thunder storms have yet to begin.

I never check luggage but did today. The giant suitcase contained the last things not already sent by the movers. It was 62 pounds. The lady at the Delta counter asked, "What do you have in that thing?!" as I strained to lift it on the scales. I said, "Everything I own," and told her of my move.

She was delightful. As there was no line, we chatted for several minutes. She said she was envious, wanting a big change herself. She wished me her "very, very best for a wonderful time in California," and gave me a couple of free drink coupons. I accepted them graciously not having the heart to tell her I don't drink.

I later especially liked an encounter I witnessed in the passenger lines approaching the security checkpoint. An older man was talking on his cell phone, and, as is typical when people are talking on their cell phone, not paying adequate attention to what he was doing--in this case, blocking others ,with his suitcase, from getting to another line.

The TSA lady addressed him, asking him to move his suitcase. He couldn't hear her as he was "busy." She then very nicely walked up to him and said, "Sir, if you can not pay attention to me while you're on the phone, you need to hang up," as she took his suitcase and moved it. As she left, she said with a familiar patience, "Just like my children!"

I have enjoyed my 20 years in the Peach State. While not as hospitable as it was when I first moved here, the people are generally still very nice.

The more I hear, the more impressed I become. I read the speech Barack Obama delivered today. This is a link to the full text (pdf) of the speech. I encourage you to read it for yourself. For me, this speech was much more than an address on race relations in the United States. These are some take-aways that I find important:

• Rather than dumbing down to politically safe rhetoric and the empty sound bytes that have come to characterize professional politics in this nation, he articulates truth about complex issues with deep emotional overtones in a way that inspires unity for a common purpose for everyone's benefit. This alone is bold and utterly refreshing.
• He's willing to stand with people with whom he disagrees to lift them to a better place, not just throw away those with whom he differs.
• He respects the good that is present in those with whom he disagrees.
• He wants to return government to the people, not the narrow-minded, self serving special interest groups and corporate influence.
• He has substance, is articulate, and speaks as I expect a president to speak.
• His words teach, inform, and inspire!

I find this man to be a breath of fresh air in the stale, stagnant land of Washington politics, a land so out of touch with the people of America as to be all but useless. I am impressed! I can agree with a politician! I can sit here and hear the resonance of "Yes!" in my heart as I read his words.

Words matter.

A Hummer on I-285 could run over you and never feel the bump in the road: The Bubble Car!

Source: Oobject
Article about the Brütsch at Wikipedia Brütsch at Wikipedia

How bad will it all get? Remember America, it started with George and his Republican friends in Congress that gave him everything he wanted...

The road to Bear Stearns' collapse — and the Federal Reserve's response to it — began with the housing bubble. As home prices soared to economically unsustainable levels, fewer people could afford to buy. In response, banks and other lenders created new types of mortgages, which made loans affordable to people who normally wouldn't qualify for a conventional 30-year mortgage.

The beauty of these subprime mortgages, at least from a mortgage broker's point of view, was this: Banks and brokers collected fees for closing the deals but faced no risk once they sold the loans to Wall Street.

Wall Street was eager to buy subprime loans, mix them with other types of debt, package them into complex securities and sell them to other investors.

As long as housing prices continued to soar, everything seemed fine. Borrowers in shaky loans could refinance their loans or sell their homes for big gains. Investors in the new securities that Wall Street created could enjoy rich interest payments.

Once the housing market started to fall, though, borrowers started to default on mortgages. As defaults piled up, the complex securities Wall Street had created from those mortgages began to crumble. More and more lenders grew wary of making loans, especially if the collateral was mortgage-backed securities.

Bear Stearns was one of the biggest underwriters of complex investments linked to mortgages. Two of its hedge funds, heavily invested in subprime mortgages, folded in July. Bear's investors became increasingly reluctant to do business with the company. Despite the company's assurances that it had plenty of cash on hand to continue operations, it collapsed Friday.

The story of Bear Stearns isn't just a saga of a spectacular Wall Street failure. The company's failure signals far deeper problems with the nation's economy and raises questions about the consequences of Bear Stearns' problems for ordinary Americans:

[From Red flags in Bear Stearns' collapse - USATODAY.com]

So today is my last day in Atlanta. My list of things to get done is overwhelming, but nothing can be as important as a good last rant from the peach state. I have lived and worked among many extremely conservative folks here in this state over the past 20 years and have become more and more liberal in my thinking about social responsibility and more and more conservative in my thinking about fiscal responsibility--the exact opposite of what is typical in Georgia.

I have become overtly disgusted with the administration's incessant clamoring about moral values while they commit what I believe to be some of the greatest immoral atrocities on humankind I have witnessed in my lifetime: justifying torturing people, and killing tens of thousands of people so easily written off abroad as "terrorists" and leaving the middle class and the poor to rot in the decay of unfettered wealth mongering at home.

I recently asked a person who does far more international traveling than I what the people around the world have to say about our elections, who they want to see win the White House, and what they want to see happen in this country. Answers: Anyone that's not a Republican, and a suggestion for the first thing on America's agenda: "an apology would be nice!"

I can not begin to comprehend why this nation is so fixated on the sexual and personal lives of our politicians to the exclusion of their job performance in public office. Can anyone explain this to me?! Life isn't a soap opera! Despite all of the claims of our president, since he was appointed by the Supreme Court, the nation's economy has been going to hell for the past 6 years, and we can't stop hearing about who's sleeping with who?!

Attention everybody: I just do not care!!!!!

That's their business. If they break the law, prosecute them. Otherwise, I just want adequate job performance. Do you hear that? I'll settle for merely adequate.

I want fiscal responsibility. I don't want wars that are bankrupting the nation and making the oil industry the most profitable it has ever been in its history. And obvious to me that deregulation of the financial institutions just leads to financial corruption and an unsustainable economic model that fosters the wealthy eating the middle class and the poor alive. When middle America can not afford housing and the gas they need to get to work, the nation is in serious trouble!

By the way, this looks like an interesting read when I have time: The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash.

So why am I ranting like a madman on this my last day in the peach state? I guess it probably has something to do with good people supporting bad politicians. Georgia is full of them. Ever so typical: A giant gas-guzzling Hummer at the airport a couple of weeks ago had three "W" stickers on it. Good heavens!

How do you get good people to stop focusing so narrowly on the smaller, less significant issues while surrendering the larger issues that matter so much more--a problem that isn't just epidemic in Georgia.

“If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix ... Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.” - Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis

“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.” - Jonathan Haidt, quoting Sent-ts’an, from 700CE China

“It's important to eave the security of who we are, and go to the place of who we are becoming. I encourage you to let yourself out of any prison you might find yourself in. Because we have to do something now. We have to change now.” - Environmental advocate John Francis, who went 17 years without speaking

"The job of the C is to make the B sad." - Boston Philharmonic Conductor Ben Zander, deconstructing a piece by Chopin

“How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious... If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.” - Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion

“How dare we be pessimistic? Maybe the future is better than it used to be.” - Peter Schwartz, co-founder of the Global Business Network

[From TED2008: Days 3 and 4 in Quotes]

Back in January I came across the CoinCalc. I posted about it here. I used it to estimate the worth of all of the coins in the piggy bank. The CoinCalc suggested the approximate worth of the money in the piggy bank to be $420.53.

Today I took the piggy bank to the Publix coin counter machine and counted the change. I didn't want to lug the filled piggy bank to California in the move.

The piggy bank was heavy to say the least! I could hardly pick it up! In fact, having picked it up to weight it back in January (for the CoinCalc post), I knew I didn't want to deal with that amount of weight in the move.

The piggy bank contained:

• 1,325 pennies ($13.25)
• 511 nickels ($25.55)
• 782 dimes ($78.20)
• 1006 quarters ($251.50)
• 7 dollar coins ($7.00)

Several Norwegian coins as well as a Tunisian coin were in the bank, and the counter spit them back out (so to speak). So the total amount of US currency in the piggy bank was $375.50. If the coin counter at the Publix can be believed, then the CoinCalc was only off by about 10%. My guess? The 10% constituted the weight of the led crystal piggy bank itself.

Unfortunately I only collected $345.46 because Publix gets 8% of the take.

I was a total M*A*S*H head when the show was on TV. This is a really interesting article about what each of the main actors went on to do after the series. Six are deceased. The article also features pictures then and now. A couple are in their 90s!

Interesting! I had heard about this project years ago and lost track of it somehow. Just doing some hit and miss all of the music had redeeming quality--unlike so much of what the industry shovels at us today. I'll spend some time exploring this site.

They also have a podcast series at iTunes.

The Music Genome Project®

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

[From Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music]

A very clever little movie featuring "Amy Walker" introducing herself in 21 rather believable accents from around the world.

I hadn't taken the time to watch this until today...

on what they will deliver?? (At first I was confused by the commercial, then even more confused and taken back by the unexpected, then I got it and had a good laugh.) Don't watch it if you don't have a good sense of humor.

You can now create a computer font from your own handwriting for less than $10! It seems to be easy. Maybe one day I'll have the time. (But my handwriting is illegible!)

“Beauty and truth do not reside in the object themseles, but rather in the nature of the exchange between the object and the viewer,” -Thomas Krens

[From TED2008: Day 2 in Quotes]

From time to time I have mentioned TED. As I posted on my professional site, "This year's conference is coming to a close. As I read blog posts from the attending bloggers, I am often deeply touched by the power of hope, the affirmation of the positive, the actualization of creativity, and the dense, saturating belief that we can change the negative forces that limit us as a species on a delicate planet. The exact opposite of the evening news, the exact opposite of fear-based politics, this conference is transformative: bringing together luminaries that can lift us above our present to see a bright way forward. What greater gift?"

I want to highlight a different TED Prize 2008 winner here: Karen Armstrong. This audio file was created from the notes Bruno Giussani blogged, while at the conference listening to Karen, on his site, Lunch Over IP. I can't wait to see the presentation she gave! (BTW: I've been a great fan of Lunch Over IP for years now!) What she says here, through Bruno's notes, is brilliant, powerful, and completely refreshing!

"A lot of religious people prefer to be right, rather than compassionate." - Religion scholar and TED prize winner Karen Armstrong

I recently had occasion to make a quick trip back to Illinois. I flew in to Chicago. The last time I had been in Illinois was 20 years ago when I defended my dissertation and officially became, Dr. Tim Tyson! I mentioned this while I was there and learned that two people in my company had also known my dissertation advisor, the late Charles Leonard, who was very much a colorful professor and quite the well known character in the whole state of Illinois in his day!

Frequently squinting from his cigarette smoke, he loved to dance with brash, profane, ideology to provoke emotional reactions that spurred deep thought in his students. He was fantastic! Everyone loved him. I will never forget the tirade he launched when they made the university classrooms smoke-free. In blatant defiance he went on a rampage about it in class while smoking, "What are they going to do? [dramatic pause while rocking his head back and forth as he frequently did] Fire my g&* d^%$ fat ass?!" And with that he took a final drag on the finished cigarette and dropped it to the floor and dramatically squashed it with his foot while slowly, deliberately, leisurely lighting his next. "Now, where was I?" he said with a devilish, defiant gleam in his eye. Certainly he was never to be fired. He was, after all, the field of music education itself.

I also recall that when he was in social settings with his wife, he was a completely different person: poised, polished, gracious (but we was always gracious), and well mannered. We always were fascinated by this.

So the trip, though brief, brought back many, many wonderful memories of the 2+ years I spent in Illinois 20 years earlier--the memories of a simple, carefree youth. The snow was fantastic! I had forgotten about the cold and the snow--that I had to plug my Volkswagen diesel Rabbit in every night (with an electric cord hanging from the 2nd floor apartment window) so it would crank in the mornings so I could make it to the library or to class. I regret that back in the day we had no digital cameras to document our life experiences! (On this trip I shot this picture of the snow outside my hotel room.)

I recalled Professor Richard Caldwell frequently closing his eyes in class and quoting word for word from anything he had ever read. I remember his reflecting on the fact that education as a profession had gone through periods of emphasis, each lasting about a decade, listing them for us, and then stating his worries that "The Nation At Risk" report (1984) would propel an accountability agenda as a coming decade of emphasis. He warned that this would all but destroy the fabric of public education as we knew it. He was a visionary! He saw NCLB 20 years before it arrived!

I recalled my shock when returning to the south after having spent two consecutive years in Illinois. I stopped at a fast food drive through in Kentucky and was actually jolted by the sound of the thick southern drawl, an accent which I had grown up around as a child.

I recalled how efficient and precise the people in Illinois are, even now! It is so refreshing!! While at the University of Illinois as a student, one phone call to the administrative offices always resolved my issue--every single time without fail. When I moved to Atlanta I called Georgia State University to inquire about a matter. After over 10 transfers I finally hung up. They didn't even understand what I was asking let alone know who could address the matter. Atlanta operated at a very different pace, with very different expectations for goal attainment.

On this trip the limo service was early, pleasant, and provided a flat-fee service. Everything went as scheduled, like clockwork--so rare. Yes I continue to have very wonderful memories of this place:

• Garcia's Pizza (the 2 locations were better than the pizza itself) and hot air balloon
• 4 way stops at nearly every intersection
• The large old university buildings on the quad
• Stop lights on the side of the road (not over the road)
• The look on the driver's face when his car hit a pot hole and the driver's car door fell off onto the road
• Walking up and down the ice and snow-covered steps
• The dramatic angle of the sunlight as Fall approached
• The palpable excitement in the air during the football season (I lived near the stadium)
• Frequently seeing one of my professors bike everywhere, another always jogging
• Witnessing the birth of sound synthesis in the new university digital labs
• Being in the rich, inquisitive university atmosphere
• Being able to take any classes I wanted to take for free!
• The sticky filth, tracked in from the salted snow, on the tile floors of the university buildings
• The frozen moisture on your scarfs from exhaling
• The kind and friendly elderly handyman at the apartment complex
• The experimental university farms
• The free filet at the steak house on your birthday
• The heater/humidifier saving my life every winter
• The list could go on and on!