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Like so many other human beings, I am jam-packed full of opinions. And for some reason, I feel like perhaps other people want to hear what I have to say. Now, I was maintaining some sort of diary in my "old" site, which you can reach by clicking here. But I didn't keep up with it. And now I feel the need for a fresh start. So I hereby pledge to write something JUST ABOUT EVERY DAY in this diary. It won't necessarily be long. And it almost certainly won't be very profound, but then at least I can say I did it. Wow...compelling, right? In any case. hopefully you will find some of what I say interesting. For rapid access to the contents of this page:  
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A letter from Puerto Rico

As usual, it has been as much hassle as haven. We are battling with leaking toilets and have gotten pretty good at diagnosing problems, replacing parts and reassembling these big chunks of molded porcelain. The kudzu continues to overwhelm plants and trails that I very much want to preserve. I very much dislike kudzu. It is an absolutely insidious vine with heart shaped leaves that grows on and over everything, blankets entire trees, covers hillsides....I first encountered it in the South of the USA. I don't know where it came from, but it is a terrible, terrible weed. I do battle with it every time I visit, and it seems to be getting worse and worse on the island in general.

Our steep access road/driveway also remains all but un-navigable when the road it wet - which it is an awful lot of the time, since this is the rainy season. So the "new" activity for this trip is to buy gallons of muriatic acid, mix it 50-50 with water, and scrub the driveway to kill the mold that has grown on the concrete strips. The road is often in shade (there are SO many trees....mango, African tulip, ferns, orange, banana, plantain, yes coffee bushes, too) and it doesn't dry out, so the mold grows and that makes it really slippery.

Ah, but right now it is 7:30 PM on Monday. The nearest house is a 1/4 mile away and not visible - even in the sunlight. We are surrounded by a thick black darkness -- and the sounds of thousands of coquis (the frog native to PR that makes a loud sound much like, you guessed it, KO-KEE - many Puerto Ricans rarely ever hear a coqui, since the frogs do not exactly thrive in an urban/developed environment, but we sure get an earful. And I happen to think the noise they make is a bit more like "puh-pee", but that's just me and my ears) and hundreds of thousands of other animals, the vast majority of them insects. Needless to say, it is very noisy, but it is a wonderful noise. There are so many different sounds interacting with one another that as I sit and listen, it is very hard to convince myself that I am not hearing conversations, radio broadcasts, music, rhythms....in fact, I just recorded fifteen seconds of this enveloping sound on my digital camera, so I will post it along with this note when I get it up on the website.

It takes some real getting-used-to, being in a place in which there are no other humans, no sign of human civilization, alone at night....our Puerto Rican friends here just shake their heads, they don't like the idea. And it can be disconcerting. It doesn't take too many flights of fancy to end up thinking about unpleasant scenarios. But then I remind myself: all windows and doors are covered with wrought iron grillwork (not just a security measure, more like a cultural phenomena on the island), which are padlocked shut at night. And inside, I have....a big, sharp machete! And then of course it is virtually impossible to find our place, which is a 1/4 mile off the main road, over a narrow concrete bridge, up a steep hill...so we are undoubtedly much safer here than in Chicago -- but so ALONE....

Now it is Tuesday evening, 7:30. The bugs and frogs and who knows what beckon. I am tired and sore. This afternoon, I cleared the side of one hill that has about 20 pineapple plants growing on it - but was being covered by kudzu. I refuse to let kudzu take over my trees and plants....of course, this is a largely futile effort. Kudzu HAS covered large swathes of our property....but I prioritize keeping our yard and key plants free of the vine.

Well, after the pineapple plants were cleared (only one bore fruit and it wasn't ripe, I found, after I cut it off), I wandered down to the southern end of our land, which borders on a winding river (the water an unfortunate reddish brown from the clay in this area). There are a dozen or so towering pine trees growing here -- sixty to 100 feet high, I would estimate. You don't see a whole lot of pines in Puerto Rico (at least I haven't), so I like to keep the vines (kudzu and who knows what else) off of them. To do this, I have to climb down a steep, wet incline through heavy waist high grass, vines, small trees, brace myself near the big trunk of the pine and hack at the vines, being careful not to slip down to the river. And these trees don't even know I am there, will never thank me. Ah, the things you do for love.

That task done, I wandered over to the small creek that doubles as the eastern border of Finca Silva, running south into the river. To get to our house, we have to cross a concrete bridge  over this creek. "Bridge" is a rather glorified word for this straight slab of concrete set into both sides of the gully surrounding the creek. One side is crumbling away due to relentless pressure of of Puerto Rico's very rainy wet season. The creek normally is perhaps a foot deep. The bridge is some fifteen feet above the creek. But with the torrential rains, the water has at times risen to and over the bridge, washing away lots of the earth that was packed directly under the bridge (the water actually passes through an opening UNDER that dirt created with a concave concrete shell). We are worried that with a few more floods, we could lose the bridge entirely. Now that would be BAD NEWS.

Usually we peer down at the creek from the bridge. But now my afternoon stroll (with machete hacking through the undergrowth) brought me down to the creek itself. And I saw that there was a big log in the water just past the bridge, with lots of debris backed up onto it. I realized that when the water started pouring down off the hills from the rain, sweeping with it many branches, logs, rocks, debris, etc., that this log could quickly build up into a full scale blockage -- the bridge would become a dam, and the water would rise and sweep away more of our precious bridge-supporting earth. So I went back to the house, sharpened my axe, climbed down to the creek again, hacked and hacked and HACKED at the log until I broke it apart. Then I climbed down into the creek to clear the log, move lots of big stones out of the way, and generally clear the path of the water under the bridge. I hope that helps. I came back to the house weary and very wet. I actually squeezed water out of my Timberland boots. They are supposed to waterproof, but I guess it doesn't count when you actually take them under water!

Just so you don't think Puerto Rico is all work and no play....we also went to the beach and enjoyed a fine sunny couple of hours in the AM. Then a storm rolled in and sent heavy tropical rain crashing down. In any case, clearing logs from a creek and battling kudzu definitely count as a form of "play" to me! At least, it doesn't involve staring at a screen and typing.

Thursday....I (and we) did three things today that gave me and will give lots of pleasure. First, the future source of pleasure: we brought our semi-wild dog, Pilla Linda (pretty thief), to the veterinarian to be spayed. She has already had two litters of puppies (something like 12 total), which is an enormous hassle and something that we and Puerto Rico generally do not need. Kenneth, our very enthusiastic caretaker of the finca, must care for them and then find them homes. We do not want a pack of dogs living at the finca. So enough! We brought her in and now she is back, sitting in a side room, very dazed and unhappy. Hopefully she will feel much better tomorrow -- but in the future, no more dog in heat, no pregnancy, no puppies. No male dogs sniffing around and invading the place.

The other two sources of pleasure were more immediate. In the morning, after dropping of Pilla at the vet, we went to the beach and I snorkeled. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to snorkel this time because I have had an upper respiratory illness and stuffed up ears. But I was feeling better and the water was so calm....I swam to the outer edge of the coral reef with waves at times crashing around and over me...it was splendid. So peaceful. Snorkeling is great therapy.

Finally, this afternoon (Friday), I went out in the heat and cleared the vines and saplings and kudzu from three orange trees. We'd cut them back severely last year in hopes of having them grow back in lower, fuller and with more fruit. But they had gotten overrun with vines and they needed a rescue. So I did that, and it was EXHAUSTING...I walked back to the house, and threw myself into a cold, outdoor shower -- at that was my third great pleasure. A cold shower. Wow, did that feel amazingly good!

And now, now, now it is Sunday evening. We are back in Chicago. We have TV and cars rushing by outside the house, and lights, so much light. And our son, close at hand.

So it is back to the "regular" life and back to my software development obsession: Qnxo.

One final note: have you ever heard of Black Spot Sneakers? You will read below an update I just received. Perhaps the idea will appeal to you as much as it did to me.

Warm regards to all...Steven

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Blackspot Sneakers

Subject: Blackspot Sneaker Now in Production
From: Blackspot Sneaker Network <updates@lists.blackspotsneaker.org>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:05:23 -0700 (PDT)

Blackspotters,

We found it! After two years of researching shoe plants in Slovakia, Poland, Indonesia, China and South Korea, the hunt for our factory is over.

When the search started, we found Phil Knight's Nike had plunged sneaker manufacturing into a macabre scene of export processing zones and sweatshop labor. To make a sneaker, all roads led to the Orient, but factories there didn't meet our standards.

Then Robin Webb of Vegetarian Shoes in England suggested a family-owned factory in Portugal's Felgueiras region. Our creative director spent a few days inspecting the facility: it has a union which workers can join, wages that are comparatively high, and gives one month paid vacation - plus two months salary bonus at Christmas. Since it comes from Portugal's centuries old tradition of shoe craftsmanship, it can also make shoes of the highest quality.

Blackspot is vegetarian - we're using no animal products whatsoever. It's made with hemp - good hemp. Our Romanian hemp supplier is an industry leader whose manufacturing process uses no chemicals, and whose hemp is certified organic.

So far, we've received 8,300 pre-orders. As soon as we have pictures of the actual shoe, we'll post them on our site with the official orders form. In the meantime, why not urge your friends to take the plunge by going to blackspot.org to reserve a pair.

When you buy a pair of Blackspots, you get a share that allows you to cast internet votes on the design of future prototypes, factory options, and how to spend the money we make. Eventually, we want to create our own cooperative factory. The Blackspot is an unfolding experiment in bottom-up capitalism.

The Blackspot is an attempt to launch an antilogo, an anticorporation, and a shoe to kick Phil Knight and the avatars of "cool" in the ass. We're going to cut into Nike's market share and change the way the industry is run. When we hit the market early this fall, you can bet the battle will get interesting. Go to www.blackspotsneaker.org for updates. Email <sharon@adbusters.org> if you have questions.

- The Blackspot team

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Destroying democracy in order to save it

The news that the Bush Administration is seeking to formulate the legal basis for postponing the November elections in case of a terror attack reminded me of the Vietnam War.

"We had to destroy the village, in order to save it," some members of our military force were said to believe, and the massacre of My Lai gave that viewpoint a horrible weight.

Today, the Bush Administration misleads the American public into supporting a war of choice, and degrades our civil liberties at the same time that he under-funds homeland security. And now he seeks the authority to put off an election that he is increasingly likely to lose.

Perhaps President Bush believes that "We have to destroy democracy, in order to save it."

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Programming ace, Mideast activist; tech author adheres to his own code

MY TECH
ALEX L. GOLDFAYN
Chicago Tribune
Published June 12, 2004

Social responsibility is the name of Steven Feuerstein's game.

Author of "Oracle PL/SQL Programming," which has sold about 250,000 copies (a mind-boggling number for a technology how-to book), Feuerstein is considered one of the world's leading experts on the database programming language called Oracle PL/SQL (pronounced P-L-sequel).

"In the small community of SQL programmers, people come up to me at conferences and tell me my book changed their lives," Feuerstein said. "They say, `Because of your book, I'm no longer a union engineer, I'm a SQL programmer.'" There are about 2 million such programmers worldwide, according to Feuerstein's estimate.

But he's not content with teaching programmers how to write code. Feuerstein also insists that they note the implications of their work and avoid creating applications that may create negative consequences.

"We should write responsible code so that we don't screw up people's lives," he said. "Programmers have an ethical responsibility for the consequences of the code they write."

As an example, Feuerstein cited Web-based mortgage companies, which take and evaluate applications online. Many of them pull applicants' credit reports during the evaluation, and while applicants are informed of this, they are not told of the ramifications that numerous credit inquiries can have on their credit scores.

"If I sit down and fill out mortgage application from a dozen different Web sites, that will affect my credit rating," said Feuerstein. "The effect of those [credit] inquiries may come back and hurt you badly."

And if a programmer learns that his or her work can result with these kinds of consequences, "developers have an ethical obligation not to write at that point. They have a responsibility to say, `No, I won't write it.'"

Feuerstein's activism extends beyond computer programming, where such activism is generally uncommon, to a realm where it is exponentially more widespread: the Middle East conflict.

He is the president of the board of directors of the Refuser Solidarity Network (www. refusersolidarity.net), a U.S.-based group that builds support for the 1,300 or so Israeli soldiers "who are refusing to fight Palestinians on their [Palestinian] land," Feuerstein said.

Another group he's involved with, called Not in My Name (www.nimn.org), "is for Jews in Chicago to come together to make it clear that what Israel and Ariel Sharon were doing was not in our name and we objected to it."

For the non-profit Web sites, Feuerstein uses a service called eTapestry (www.etapestry.com) to maintain the Web-based SQL database of contacts and donations. The eTapestry software tracks donors and fundraising prospects online.

---------- Contact alex@technologytailor.com. Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

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The other Reagan

Ronald Reagan may have been the Great Communicator, but my memories of his communication skills are different from the glowing tributes I have been reading in the Tribune.

I was one of the tens of thousands of US citizens who protested Reagan's horrible policies in Central America during the 1980s (I was deeply involved with a group called the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador or CISPES, which is still active). My President's amiable exterior and winning smile simply masked an ideological fervor that resulted in misery and death for tens of thousands of people.

He sent a message loud and clear to the death squads that inhabited the military and government of El Salvador throughout the 1980s that it was perfectly fine to murder and torture your own citizens, and even American nuns. "You kill - we send you more military aid," seemed to be his motto, and over 70,000 Salvadorans died under Ronald Reagan's watch.

He sent a message loud and clear to the FBI that my behavior -- though entirely legal -- was unacceptable. Consequently, I (and other activists in CISPES around the country) became the target of an "International Terrorist Investigation" that was itself so illegal that the Director of the FBI actually apologized in Congress. Not only that, we sued the FBI in Chicago for their violation of our first amendment rights -- and we won, with the result that FBI agents were required to take courses on the Bill of Rights, to ensure that they understand the rights granted to US citizens (hey, small victories...).

Ronald Reagan made some people in this country feel good -- and a relative few very rich. But for most US citizens and Central Americans, he was an unmitigated disaster.

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What Are Net Carbs?

A couple weeks ago, I drove out to visit my friend, Rabbi Robert J Marx, a truly remarkable fellow who has spent his whole life fighting for racial and economic justice. Now he is mostly retired to Michigan, and we play a mean game of chess together (ie, we are well-matched). I stopped on the way for gas and walked into one of those multi-franchise boxes that included a Subway. One of their ads caught my eye:

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SUBWAY® Restaurants, the only Quick Service Restaurant to
offer Atkins®-endorsed menu items for the millions of people on
carbohydrate-controlled diets, has introduced the new Atkins-Friendly
Turkey Breast & Ham Wrap, which has 10 grams of Net Carbs.*

*Net carbs is total carbohydrates minus dietary fiber.
================================================

This sign first reminded me of my "good old days" when I worked at McDonald's HQ -- and discovered that McDonald's etc. are not fast food restaurants, nor is McDonald's in the fast food industry. No, no, no -- they are Quick Service Restaurants. Okey, dokey, whatever you say. I also, by the way, learned from working on the inside at McDonald's that it is in reality a REAL ESTATE company, as they buy up the land on which the franchised restaurants are then grown from petri dishes. Between McDonald's and the Vatican, they probably own half the world's surface.

Well, beyond those wonderful memories, I was struck by "Net Carbs". What is this Net Carbs? Now, probably a whole lot of you already know about these things, but it was new to me. So I did a search and found:

http://www.kemps.com/products/carbpromise/docs/net_carbs.html

What Are Net Carbs?

• Low carb diets are based on the premise that certain carbohydrates contribute to blood glucose levels, while other carbohydrates do not.
• Low carb diets consider certain carbs such as fiber and sugar alcohol ìnon-impact carbsî. Non-impact carbs are carbs that you canít metabolize or use, so they donít count, so to speak.
• Net carbs are calculated by taking total carbohydrate grams and subtracting fiber and sugar alcohol grams. The remaining carb grams are considered a given productís net carbs.
• Kemps Carb Promise ice creams contain between 3 ñ 4 net carbs.

To which I say: OY VEY!

Many, many Americans (and apparently lots of people around the world) are overweight. Many, many Americans are terribly out of shape. Many suffer from heart problems, blood pressure problems...essentially lifestyle diseases.

And the solution to all these problems is really pretty simple: exercise regularly, watch very little television, and eat healthily (ie, lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, not too much meat, not too much sweets, ETC). Doing this (exercise and eat well) is largely within the reach and individual choice of at least every middle class American.

Well, I am not going to go on a rant and make anyone feel bad about spending Memorial Day glued to the TV set watching whatever sport is current (when is the next Lakers-Twolves game on, anyway? Man, Kevin Garnett is fun to watch -- and my 17 yr old son, Eli, says that I look like him - go figure!).

But doesn't it seem more than a little ridiculous for us to follow the latest profit-saturated fad to a magical solution to basic lifestyle choices?

Truly, in our (for those reading this note who are a part of this) middle/upper-middle class world of non-physical labor, in which our fingertips move more than all the rest of our body put together, we DO face a challenge: we have to consciously choose to move the other parts of our body. In other words, physical well-being and strength becomes an artificial aspect of our lives, rather than a natural outcome of going about our business. But that doesn't mean we should just give up.

Even if you don't belong to a health club or can't afford it, you can take a brisk walk every evening after dinner. You can lie down on the carpet in front of your tv and to sit ups (watch your lower back), push ups (I keep my knees on the floor to avoid back strain) and basic yoga stretches. All this in 15 minutes and you will feel energized, more alive and over time stronger.

Heck you could even do most of that in your CUBICLE.

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A mother and her four children

My first reaction at hearing of the killing of a Jewish mother and her four daughters in Gaza (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/422652.html) was an intense anger at the Palestinians who pulled the trigger. Without doubt they hold primary responsibility for the murders and I hope that someday they are caught and punished severely.

My second reaction, to which I was initially surprised, was anger at the mother who died, Tali Hatuel, and even more surprising, my own mother. Why would I feel such emotions?

Upon reflection, I became angry at Hatuel because she chose very consciously to become a settler or colonizer in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian land under Israeli military occupation since 1967. I became angry at Hatuel because her fanaticism -- her Jewish fundamentalism -- put her children in danger and ultimately contributed to their tragic deaths.

I became angry at my mother, because she, like so many other Jewish women with whom I have spoken, has expressed disgust with and condemnation of Palestinian mothers who, she believes, willingly send their children out to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, inviting death and martyrdom.

How can my mother really think that Palestinian mothers are so different from her, especially when she has no real understanding of what life is like for Palestinians and what those mothers actually say and think? And how can she refuse to see that, at a minimum, she should apply the same moral judgement against Jewish mothers like Tali Hatuel, who do consciously choose to all but invite attacks on their children in order to follow their faith?

Tali Hatuel did not murder her children, but her fanatical belief that Jews should possess all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, regardless of who resides there now, did make these murders possible. Until such hard truths are acknowledged, Palestinian and Israeli children will continue to die horrible and horribly unnecessary deaths.

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Magazine subscriptions and choosing your buzz

I subscribed to Fast Company this year, for two reasons: first, my niece Danielle was selling magazine subscriptions to raise money for school programs and, second, since I am in startup mode for a new software product (www.swyg.com), I thought it would be good to pay some attention to business-related ideas.

The May 2004 issue has an article called What's the Buzz? that I found fascinating and maybe repulsive -- I can't quite decide. It is about a company that SELLS WORD OF MOUTH, or buzz. It is called Bzzagent (www.bzzagent.com). Essentially, they have created (and are growing) a community of individuals who agree to promote a company's product via word of mouth -- but only (theoretically) if they really like it. Bzzagent Agents (that's what they are called) do not receive monetary compensation; instead, they get to find out about products before others and sometimes get goodies, along with their "bzz kit".

So on the one hand, you don't have a crass situation like a person agreeing to have a Coca Cola logo branded on their forehead. Agents are not required to talk up a product, and can even (and have) trash talk something if they think it is bad news. On the other hand, you still have people "talking up" products as part of a commercial program (Bzzagent certainly gets paid and paid well!), but they do not disclose this fact (at least, I assume they don't).

Overall, it seems like yet another way to absorb even more of a person's time, existence, thinking with products and consumption, rather than political action.

Seems to me that a company will be able to generate substantially more buzz and sales simply by creating a great product -- thereby ensuring that it will be rated very highly by Consumer Reports (www.consumerreports.com).

Consumer Reports is another magazine to which I subscribed. You must have heard of it. It is an entirely independent organization (unlike Underwriters Laboratories or UL.com) that tests products and reports on their results through their magazine and website. No one doubts their integrity and they are dogmatic in the refusal to accept any sort of corporate "underwriting". They also vigorously pursue companies that attempt to use CR findings in their advertising. That is a strict no-no.

But a positive, and especially Best Buy, rating by CR automatically means that a product will sell exceptionally well.

I am thinking these days that the future of political action in the United States is not that done by citizens, but instead action taken by united groups of CONSUMERS. After all, domestic spending (consumption) accounts for 2/3 of all US GDP - or something like that.

Imagine if CR had 50 million members and enough money to exhaustively test and report on virtually anything and everything people might buy. Imagine if CR reported not only on the product itself, but also on ethical issues related to the product -- where it is made, the conditions of workers and what they are paid, etc. I for one would love to be able to make a choice among a variety of products not only on their features but on social and ethical issues related to their creation.

In this way, simply by providing totally unbiased information, CR could help consumers us their buying power to effect positive change.

So I say: forget about buzz. Join Consumer Union (the non-profit organization that puts out the Consumer Reports magazine)!

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Over the Top Foods, Inc.

My wife, Veva, and I sat at the dining room table the other night, me with a bowl of ice cream, she with a box of Triscuits. I glanced at the back of the box and noticed a plug for the above product. Kraft is actually now selling cheese (or is it "cheese product"?) sliced specifically for "your favorite cracker".

How convenient!

A quick search on the Internet found this "news"....

http://www.kraft.com/newsroom/05042003.html

KRAFT FOODS CELEBRATES 100 YEARS OF QUALITY AND INNOVATION WITH THE LAUNCH OF MORE THAN 150 NEW PRODUCTS AT THE FMI SUPERMARKET INDUSTRY CONVENTION

NORTHFIELD, IL, May 4, 2003 - With a commitment to innovation, quality and growth, Kraft Foods is celebrating its 100th anniversary with the introduction of more than 150 new products at the Food Marketing Institute's (FMI's) Supermarket Industry Convention in Chicago May 4 through 6, 2003 - Kraft Booth #1116.

From an innovative frozen pizza to a nutritional lunch on-the-go, plus an all-natural sports drink to fantastic new flavors of whipped topping, Kraft is launching new products this year across all its product categories, including cheese, meals and enhancers; biscuits, snacks and confectionary; beverages, desserts and cereals; and Oscar Mayer and pizza. These delicious new products show Kraft's commitment to delivering food that fits the way consumers live.

"As part of our ongoing product development at Kraft, we constantly stay in touch with the changing needs of consumers," comments Steve Jungmann, Vice President, Category Sales Management and Strategy, Kraft Foods. "Today's consumers are not only looking for taste but for convenience and nutrition as well. As we celebrate our 100th anniversary, we are proud of who we are, how far we have come and where we are headed ... and this year's new product introductions reflect Kraft's dedication to our consumers."

....KRAFTÆ Natural Cracker Cuts - the ultimate in cheese snacking convenience, these pre-cut slices are made to fit perfectly on your favorite cracker and available in Colby & Monterey Jack and Sharp Cheddar 6 oz. bags.
It took only the

Yes, Natural Cracker Cuts. Of course! The addiction to convenience promoted by corporations in this country is, I believe, a reflection of some powerful dysfunction in our society.

But, hell, why fight it? Instead, I will form a new company:

Over the Top Foods, Inc.

This firm will specialize in creating food "products" that celebrates the addiction to convenience, in a totally "over the top" fashion. We will start with a whole line of "Cracker Companions" (I need to get that trademarked FAST!). Cheese is just the beginning. How about round slabs of tuna salad perfect for a Ritz cracker? Of course, they will need to be wrapped in plastic and kept refrigerated. And then there are slices of meat. Of course, cutting things to the correct dimensions will inevitably lead to lots of food waste, but that is a small price to pay for a piece of meat that will fit precisely on our cracker without the need to cut anything ourselves.

Once we establish Cracker Companions as the industry leader for both conceptual and gastronomic convenience, we will move on to bigger and better challenges.

If you would like to work for OTTF, please submit your resume to overthetop@stevenfeuerstein.com.

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Sophisticated monochromatic color, and other TV ad inanities

I don't spend much time watching television; the commercials generally drive me absolutely BATTY. However, South Park's fundamental craziness, outrageous and spot-on critiques of American culture occasionally sustain me through the barren wasteland of corporate assault on my eyes and ears. Such a thing happened this week...and a few ads truly stunned me on a variety of levels.

1. Subaru "show the metal" ad: this commercial showcased the latest Subaru Outback zooming around, looking truly spiffy, with a voice-over describing the features of this wonderful vehicle. The message and images were oozing past my brain, barely making a dent, when these three words suddenly pierced the haze:

"Sophisticated monochromatic color"

Hmmm. Were they serious? Just checking to see if they were listening? I hurried over to www.dictionary.com (which I could NOT do from my television, as I am not fully wired) and found the following:

Sophisticated
Having acquired worldly knowledge or refinement; lacking natural simplicity or naivetÈ.

Monochromatic
Having or appearing to have only one color.

Color
That aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them, definable in terms of the observer or of the light,

Try letting those idiotic words roll over your tongue: Sophisticated monochromatic color, Sophisticated monochromatic color, Sophisticated monochromatic color....

Then think about the decline of empire....

2. Quizno's sub creatures: Buck the System

Veva thinks that many ads on TV resemble the sorts of things people on acid trips might come up with -- no, wait a minute, that is what she says about children's cartoons, particularly Teletubbies. Anyway, we were waiting for South Park to come back on (a great program on "Metrosexuals") when Quizno's graced our screen.

We LIKE Quizno's subs...oven-baked....yum. But we could hardly believe what we were seeing. Quizno's (http://quiznos.com) seems to be using the ugliest, strangest, twisted animated creatures to promote their sandwiches. Check them out. I think maybe they are gerbils, but they are distorted with bizarre eyes and a big toothy mouth showing lots of gums, on the wrong part of their bodies.

I really don't get it at all. Maybe I am missing some cultural connection from previous ads? Please do take a look and tell me what you think. What I was thinking: They actually PAID someone to dream up this stuff?

3. Navy - Accelerate your life....towards?

And then there are the Department of Defense (ahem) commercials: ad after glitzy ad, appealing to young people with a presentation of just how exciting and fun and challenging and really really COOL it is to be in the Army of One or whatever. So the Navy....their commercial tag line seems to be "Accelerate your life". Basically, the idea is "Sure you could spend your time in a cubicle, but is that really living? How about parachuting out of a plane? WOW! Now THAT is LIVING!" And so on.

But that tag line stuck with me: Accelerate your life.

If you are accelerating your life, you are increasing its velocity. The speed of one's life are its passing moments, which (I think we can all agree) lead to...death. So the Navy is saying in its words (but not its all important pictures): we will help you get closer to death faster than you would otherwise experience.

I don't think that is really what they had in mind.

Have you run across any truly awful, scary, bizarre, downright idiotic ads? Let me know!

SF

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On Breasts, Beasts and Principles

I know, I know. It's been so long. And the cold winter is made colder by the lack of my insights, which so warm the soul. Well, time to get toasty!

I have this problem (well, I have several, but I am not about to admit to all of them to all of YOU): I might have an interesting thought, but then feel like I need to write a LOT to justify sharing it. And that is just wrong, so wrong. Because I am busy, so busy, and the result is that I just let those golden nuggets of wisdom pass us all by.

No more of that! From now on, when I have a brilliant insight I will write it down in preparation for sharing it with the world. One paragraph, one sentence, even a few carefully phrased words, could make all the difference. Or maybe not. Maybe I am just a self-important fool. If I am at least entertaining, though...

WARDROBE MALFUNCTION
You gotta love it. Billions of people crowd around the television set to watch grown men earn millions of dollars for simply smashing violently against one other. Television ads run simultaneously that cost $2.5 million for 30 seconds of airtime, many using sexual innuendo to sell products, at the same time that 40 million people cannot afford health care and millions are out of work. And then Janet Jackson, looking too much like her extraordinarily-messed-up and barely-still-human brother to stop me from wincing every time I look at her, has her assets PLUNDERED by a rapacious Justin Timberlake revealing -- OH MY GOD NO - most but not all of her breast. Thank heavens for that "sun-shaped nippled shield" that Jackson fortuitously happened to glue? pin? clip? over her nipple. I would like to know where I can order one.

So, let's see, we have The Breast: Giver of life through precious, incredible breast milk, making children alive, healthy, strong. A beautiful shape. A part of every woman's body.

The Beasts: Enormous men being rewarded in the most glorious fashion for extreme violence (and that violence, I might add, is also famously present in the homes of many pro football players).

Yes, clearly, the showing of a breast during the Super Bowl is a legitimate cause for distress, for a HOWL, a SCREECH from the very tops of the Mountain. Now what does THAT say about our society?

Actually, I am very heartened by the ridiculous stink that Pat Robertson and other vastly hypocritical moral minders of American society have raised.Ý See, the way I figure it, virtually every single male human being who watched the show either publicly or privately delighted in seeing Jackson's breast. They know in their heart of hearts (or another part of their anatomy) that there is nothing wrong with a breast. Many now have new material for their fantasies, and there sure isn't anything wrong with that, either. And this is what encourages me: when the pundits, the media screamers, the moralistic politicians, condemn this "wardrobe malfunction" (sure to be the latest fad phrase! "Hey, Sam, you are a walking wardrobe malfunction.") they actually demonstrate a deep disconnect with the lives and views of most Americans (most humans). In fact, they come across as idiots and are diminished in the eyes of the mass of people. Over time, this disconnect will lead to open displeasure, which will then result in a massive political transformation in this country.

If John Aschcroft knew what was good for him, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake would be arrested immediately for treason, for plotting and taking action to contribute to the overthrow of a government run by the few, for the benefit of the few. Breasts of the world, unite!

STANDING ON PRINCIPLE
The big news recently from the Chicago Tribune on the passing by Congress of a monstrous $822 billion appropriations bill: Opponents mounted enough votes to defeat the bill Tuesday in a symbolic protest. But 16 senators, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who had voted against the bill switched their votes Thursday. The measure passed on a 65-28 vote. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) voted in favor of the bill both times.

Bush praised the bill Thursday, saying it "fulfills important commitments like AIDS relief, education and D.C. school choice, veterans health care, law enforcement, and other priorities . . . I look forward to signing this bill into law." Several Democrats said they voted against the bill originally because they hoped a delay would force Republican leaders to make changes in the legislation. When it became clear that no changes would be made, they voted for the bill because it included, among other things, funding for projects in their home districts.

Joe Shoemaker, Durbin's spokesman, said that when it became clear Republicans would not allow the bill to be changed, the senator had to decide: "Do you stand up and wait for a perfect bill, or do you hold your nose and vote for the bill that's before you? He chose the latter."

Shoemaker added that the bill includes "$220 million of projects for Illinois that Durbin championed. That's a substantial amount of money."

WHEW. These few paragraphs took my breath away. They say so much about the state of American politics today: the weakness at the center of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party (the Republican ideologues who rule the roost today must get a big chuckle at those funny little people protesting "symbolically," as they dismantle the Federal Government more or less wholesale); the role of "pork" to buy the votes of a Congressperson (if you don't bring back benefits to your constituency in the form of millions of federal tax dollars to pay for local projects, you are TOAST in the next election. Talk about narrow self-interest on multiple levels). And then of course there is what's MISSING from the discussion, which are the millions of dollars of bribes -- oh, sorry. No. Bribes are illegal. Instead, they are contributions that do not affect a Congressperson's vote, not at all -- that lobbying groups pay to our elected officials to get them to vote the right way.

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When half the story is no story at all:
response to a Tribune article on Netzarim

Friends,
I opened the Tribune today to find an outrageous article about Netzarim, a settlement in Gaza. You can read my reaction to and analysis of it below. Here is the URL to the story (you will need to register to see it, so I also attach the text of the article to this message after my letter):

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0401110252jan11,1,3498630.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

I encourage you to send letters of protest to both the editors involved and to the Chicago Tribune letters page:

George de Lama, managing news editor gdelama@tribune.com
Colin McMahon, foreign news editor cmcmahon@tribune.com
Timothy McNulty, foreign news editor TMcNulty@tribune.com
Chicago Trib letters ctc-Tribletter@tribune.com

When writing to an editor, please be polite and back up any charge you make with specifics.

SF

Dear Mr. McMahon and Mr. McNulty,

I just read through the above-titled article by Joel Greenberg, in today's Tribune, and I felt compelled to write to you. In general, I find that the Tribune does a better job than most major dailies in the US (certainly FAR better than the Sun-Times) in presenting a balanced view of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Perhaps because of that, I found the Greenberg article to be almost shocking in its incomplete and misleading representation of the situation. I can't help but think after reading this "article" (I cannot, in good conscience, refer to it as an article without quotations, because it is less an article than an opinion piece), in fact, that the unrelenting pressure from hard-liners within the Jewish Community in Chicago may have finally had an impact on your reporting of this conflict.

The focus of this "article" was on the Netzarim settlement. That must be the justification for using up an enormous amount of space with a picture of these two nice soldier boys sitting on a big, lush lawn playing backgammon. You might have used some of that space to show a map of the Gaza Strip, so that readers could understand where Netzarim is located in Gaza, how isolated it is, how in fact all of the settlements and their Jewish-only roads break up Gaza and isolate the Palestinian population. You could also have offered a contrasting photo of the dusty, devastated areas of the Gaza Strip, which are in that condition precisely because of the inhumane diversion of water by Israel from the masses of Palestinians to the tiny Jewish colonies, and because of the persistent attacks by IDF soldiers and bulldozers. Since this was an "article" about the trials and tribulations of the settlers, however, such information was apparently irrelevant to your readers' understanding of the situation.

The focus of this "article" was on the Netzarim settlers. That must be the justification for going into great detail about their security concerns and the presentation of these settlers as victims, while paying little more than lip service to the massive violence carried out against Palestinians by the IDF, violence which has killed many more people and injured many more people and leaves thousands of children homeless, hungry, thirst, uneducated...you name it. All of this devastation, just so these few settlers can enjoy their watered lawns and establish a beachhead for an expanded Israeli state. Is it possible that this devastation of the fabric of life for 1.3 million Palestinians might have something to do with the occasional mortars that drop into Netzarim and do virtually no damage? It is impossible for your readers to know, or even to decide for themselves, since you have left this out entirely from your "article."

The focus of this "article" was on the debate within the Israeli political system. That must be the justification for never once reminding your readers that this settlement, like all the others in the Gaza Strip and West Bank are considered to be ILLEGAL by the United Nations, the United States and virtually every country in the world except for Israel. It certainly does NOT justify, however, the fact that you repeatedly quoted from extremist settlers, but never ONCE quoted an Israeli with a counter-position. You simply stated that there is a debate -- and then gave one extremist, fundamentalist Jew after another a chance to spew their hard-line ideology. This is shoddy journalism, to say the least.

Finally, I am shocked that you would publish an article that ends with the statement that "This [the conflict swirling around Netzarim] is a war for secure Jewish existence in the state of Israel." You feed and stoke deep Jewish fears, provide comfort and support to the most right-wing, pro-violence, anti-peace elements within both Israeli and American-Jewish society.

Greenberg's "article" might have made sense on the op-ed page, though it would have been more honest if it had been signed by the learned Rabbi Tzio Tawii from Netzarim. It should NEVER have appeared on page 2 of the main section of the Chicago Tribune.

Steven Feuerstein

THE TRIBUNE ARTICLE:

Focus of debate and attacks
Isolated settlement in Gaza Strip not worth high price, some Israelis say

By Joel Greenberg
Special to the Tribune
Published January 11, 2004

NETZARIM, Gaza Strip -- Yitzhak Levy, the driver who ferries people in an armored bus to this isolated Jewish settlement, keeps a prayer for a safe journey posted above his seat, an M-16 rifle behind him and a crate of first-aid equipment in the front row of passenger seats.

"I don't think a Jew should be afraid in the land of Israel," he said recently as he guided his yellow bus to Netzarim, a 10-minute ride from the Gaza Strip border on a road that has been the scene of repeated attacks during more than three years of violent conflict with the Palestinians.

The bus, which travels with an army jeep escort, has three bullet holes from a recent shooting, and two passengers were wounded by a roadside bomb in May. But Levy says he has no intention of giving up his job or home in Netzarim, where he has been living for three years.

"You can't let the terrorists decide where you live and work," he said.

Perhaps more than any other Israeli settlement, Netzarim--a cluster of red-roofed homes and brick-paved lanes on the dunes south of Gaza City--has become a focus of debate in Israel about the future of the nearly 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

About 60 families live in Netzarim, a heavily guarded enclave that is the most isolated of the 17 settlements in the Gaza Strip, where 7,800 Israelis live among 1.3 million Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a speech last month that some outlying settlements could be moved and troops pulled back to new lines if the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map fails to make progress. He did not give names, but Israeli news media have mentioned Netzarim as a prime candidate for possible evacuation.

Protected by an army battalion and the target of repeated Palestinian attacks, Netzarim is surrounded by fences, watchtowers and outposts. At the settlement's edge is a military base. Three soldiers were killed there in October by a Palestinian gunman who penetrated the perimeter.

Residents travel to and from the community in protected convoys, riding in the bulletproof bus or armored military trucks or driving their own cars while wearing flak jackets and helmets.

Palestinian attackers have killed 12 Israeli soldiers and two civilians in and around Netzarim during the current conflict, and dozens of Palestinians, gunmen and civilians have been fatally shot by troops.

During heavy clashes at a nearby junction in the early days of the fighting, Netzarim residents were ferried in and out by helicopter. Mortars and rockets fired by Palestinian militants still land regularly in the area.

The road to Netzarim, once flanked by Palestinian-owned homes and orchards, now winds through a furrowed wasteland dotted with gray army watchtowers. The houses and farmland, along with a cement factory and gas station, were bulldozed after attacks in what the army said were measures to deny cover to gunmen.

A wide area around Netzarim has become a forbidden zone for Palestinians, and bystanders have been killed there when troops fired at real or perceived attackers.

In Israel, debate has flared periodically about whether holding on to Netzarim is worth the price. After the fatal October attack, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz of the centrist Shinui party proposed that the settlement be evacuated, leaving soldiers there instead.

No retreat, residents say

For residents of the embattled community, their enclave is a test case. Retreat from Netzarim, they argue, would signal surrender to Palestinian violence and encourage more attacks.

"Netzarim is a symbol," said Rabbi Tzion Tawil, head of the local yeshiva, where students hunched over religious texts on a recent morning, their M-16 rifles within reach. "Leaving such a place would give a prize to terrorism and undermine our position in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv."

"Netzarim is a frontier community. It draws fire," the rabbi continued, calling the settlement a buffer against attacks on Israel proper. "If it is evacuated, the eruption will spread. Netzarim is blocking attacks. Who knows how many lives it has saved?"

Whether it is drawing fire or deflecting it, Netzarim bears the signs of a community under attack. The local school is built like a bomb shelter, with reinforced concrete classrooms and heavy steel window shutters. A gray concrete shelter offers cover near trailer homes nearby. A central siren and an intercom in every house notify residents in the event of an attack.

Outside the home of the Moyal family, the ground was littered recently with pieces of roof shingles and concrete splintered by a mortar round that had crashed days earlier into an overhang near the front door. Efrat Moyal, 9, played hopscotch near the debris.

"We've gotten used to it already," Efrat's 11-year-old sister, Tehiya, said of the occasional mortar attacks on the settlement. "If we lived in fear our lives would be destroyed." Down the block, children rode their bicycles on a cloudless, tranquil afternoon.

Tzurit Yarhi, 34, a mother of seven, said she sleeps soundly at night, despite the dangers.

"I trust in the army, and I believe in God," she said. "I feel at home here."

With quiet conviction, she explained that she and her husband had moved to Netzarim 12 years ago because it was part of the ancient homeland of the Jews.

"Gaza is part of the Land of Israel," she said, citing biblical references to the area. "We believe it's important to live in all parts of our country. Our enemies also want the whole land, but it belongs to us, and they have to recognize that."

Settlement growth

Eyal Vered, 31, a yeshiva teacher, moved to Netzarim a year ago with his wife and three children, part of a growth trend in Jewish settlements that has continued despite the ongoing violence. Government figures released last month showed that the population of Jewish settlements has grown about 16 percent in the last three years, during Sharon's tenure in office.

Netzarim has grown from 321 people to 399, according to the statistics.

"We live a normal life in a complicated envelope," said Vered, whose home has metal grills on the windows to keep out attackers. "This place is on the cutting edge, and that has a price.

"The whole country is dangerous," he added, referring to suicide bombings in Israeli cities. "The problem is not Netzarim. This is a war for secure Jewish existence in the state of Israel."

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

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PoemGate: The President as Poet

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Oh my lump in the bed,
How I've missed you.

Roses are redder,
Bluer am I,
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.

The dogs and the cat,
they missed you too;
Barney's still mad you dropped him,
he ate your shoe.

The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier;
Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

The world was introduced to the poetry of George W. Bush back in October 2003, or so it seemed, when First Lady Laura Bush "recited a poem she said President Bush greeted her with when she returned recently from France, where President Jacques Chirac had kissed her hand twice." (AP article). Reuters reported that "Laura Bush told a gathering at the US Library of Congress marking a weekend celebration of books in the nation's capital that her husband had written the poem while she was away in Russia this week and had presented it to her on her return on Thursday."

I am not going to debate the merits of the poem, itself. For that, I offer the following URL: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/11/13/3fb3793f88b34

It is clearly a very personal, heart-felt message from husband to wife -- or is it? In fact, did our President in actuality write this poem, as was so widely reported and Laura Bush herself said? Just this week, I ran across an article in the Chicago Tribune (actually NY Times content), which lays bare the truth:

First lady urges U.S. vigilance: Laura Bush opens window to private life in interview
New York Times News Service Published December 29, 2003 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0312290248dec29,1,1659032.story

The first lady also said that a "Roses are red, violets are blue" poem she read at a National Book Festival gala in October was not actually written by her husband even though it has been attributed to him. She did not say who wrote the poem.

"But a lot of people really believed that he did," Bush said. "Some woman from across the table said, `You just don't know how great it is to have a husband who would write a poem for you.' "

[END OF NY TIMES CONTENT]

I've got to admit, I found this both intriguing and disturbing. Is there anything but spin and manipulation to the lives of the Bushes? So...we are first led to understand that cuddly-cute Georgie had written a sweet (and simple) poem to his wife. He obviously missed her dearly. To show everyone how much he missed her, it was of course necessary to make sure that this poem and his apparent writing of it becomes global news. Isn't he just the sweetest guy? Then two months later, Laura Bush admits that in fact her husband did NOT write the poem.

This revelation leads to many questions:

• Who did write the poem?
• Can this person be trusted with intimate details of the Bushs' married life?
• Is this person still around?
• When did Laura Bush know it wasn't her husband's work? Probably when she first read it, as in: "George, I KNOW you didn't write this. Who did? They are so sweet!"
• Why would George Bush have someone ELSE write such a simple, oh fine - simplistic - poem that was so personal?
• Is George Bush illiterate? That would explain his extraordinary commitment to the education of our children -- or at least the testing of our children. He probably didn't do very well at all on standardized tests. Maybe he was made fun of by his older brother. So he has decided to take revenge on today's children by forcing them to take more and more tests.

I believe that PoemGate reveals a shocking failure of integrity on the part of the Bush Administration. Congress should demand that an independent investigation be opened, with an unlimited budget. We should engage the services of our Poet Laureate, as well as Poetry Magazine, which recently received $100 million from the estate of the Eli Lilly heiress. That way, the investigation won't cost the taxpayers a dime.

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Reflections on a Terminated Governership

So Arnold the Terminator has now assumed responsibility for the State of California, the "fifth largest economy in the world," as the newspapers like to remind us. He shrugged off an almost bottomless pit of accusations of sexual harassment, charges that might have sunk the candidacy of a lesser human being.

I am very depressed about this outcome, but not perhaps for the reasons one might think. Gray Davis was clearly a disaster for the people of California; I am glad that the state offers a recall mechanism so that "the people" can express their will and make the necessary changes. I am not sad to see Mr. Davis depart from the Governor's Mansion.

I am also not depressed about the fact that Schwarzenegger is a Republican. Who knows? He might turn out to be a fine Governor; he certainly isn't, at least on the surface, as conservative or reactionary as many in the Bush Administration.

No, I am feeling low, very low, about the election results because they demonstrated to be just how ready, willing and able my fellow citizens are to make completely uninformed choices about their leadership. Surely, it is very clear that millions did not vote for the Terminator because they understood and agreed with his policies on, say, how to save the California economy from almost certain disaster (disaster, that is, for social services, education and the poor; I doubt that those in Arnie's circle are going to suffer very much as a result of budget cuts).

How could Californians have chosen Schwarzenegger based on his plans and policies? He didn't have any, or at least he didn't respect the voters enough to share his plans with them.

So what's the big deal? I happen to like democracy. It is a wonderful framework for allowing human beings to live in peace with one another. And the variation of democracy followed in the United States (a very much indirect democracy, in which we elect representatives who supposedly reflect the views of the majority, constrained of course by the Constitution) would also be pretty darned wonderful if -- and this is a big if -- voters are given all the information they need to make informed decisions. And then they use that information to make their choices.

That didn't happen on October 7 in California. It seems to me that many people had already rejected Gray Davis. They now turned to the field of 130+ candidates for their new Governor. And there they saw a big celebrity, bigger than life, really, a hero from the silver screen, an "outsider" (who is obviously very well-connected). He didn't have detailed plans for just about anything, but detailed plans are so BORING. And, really, the whole scene is just SO COOL, isn't it? To be able to elect a guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger to be your Governor. Now, that's something to be talking about for quite awhile. Like that wrestler fellow in Minneapolis. Of course, Jesse Ventura did a terrible job and bailed out as quickly as he could, but Arnie, he's even bigger and tougher than old, washed up Jesse. Arnie will do whatever it takes. And he will do it by commuting in his private jet to the Capitol every single day.

I wonder if he has any idea how much a gallon of milk costs. If he doesn't, surely Maria Shriver, salt of the earth, will be able to fill him in. What a guy! What a family!

Yes, there can be no doubt: this is going to be fun to watch, unless you actually depend on your state government to help you get by or to safeguard your rights.

Good Governor, bad Governor...that's beside the point. What we witnessed yesterday in California is just the latest example of how thoroughly disconnected people are from their own political system, how little we respect the power we have in our grasp, and how carelessly we wield that power. Politics as circus. Politics as entertainment. Celebrities as leaders. Celebrities as saviors.

This may not have been the "original intent" of the "Founding Fathers" of our nation (many of whom, I would imagine, consulted their wives on the momentous matters before them), but it sure is fun!

ARNOLD - TAKE 2

A few days ago, I read a column by Stephen Chapman in the Chicago Tribune ("Bill, Arnold and double standards", reproduced at the end of this message). And it made me realize that my problems with Arnold and his victory were not just centered around an uninformed electorate.

Chapman makes a persuasive argument that "Their [conservatives] new darling is a more aggressive sexual predator than the president they tried to remove from office." Think about it: Clinton obviously had a problem keeping certain organs contained inside his clothing. But what he did with poor Monica was clearly consensual. In Schwarznegger's case, you are looking at multiple, a multitude of, accusations of unwanted and protested physical attacks. These attacks, according to Chapman's reading of the California penal code amounts to "sexual battery."

Putting the legalities aside for a moment, let's dwell on the mindset of a man who seems to feel that virtually any attractive woman on the planet would of course want his big mitts all over her breasts and/or buttocks. Then consider the sort of man who will actually ACT on this delusion -- over and over again, even when he is not doing lots of drugs, even when he is not engaging in orgies, even as he is married to a member of the Kennedy Clan. Is this the sort of man Californians want to be their leader? Looks like it. If the left or liberals have attack dog lawyers anything like Jennifer Flowers' handlers, we are sure to see suits being filed against the Governor-elect (nicknamed "Governor-elect Pinchbottom" by Clarence Page; I like that one) on charges of sexual battery.

Read Responses and Reactions

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0310090279oct09,1,6781191.story

The California recall campaign was a noisy, raucous and often vitriolic affair. But the most striking feature of the final days was the silence. That was what you heard from conservatives on the subject of Arnold Schwarzenegger's sexual escapades.

Here was a guy who, voters learned, told a skin magazine in 1977 that he had a stripper girlfriend, hung out with prostitutes and engaged in group sex. Then last week, The Los Angeles Times reported that six women said he had forced himself on them, grabbing breasts and bottoms and trying to pull off clothing.

The charges clearly had at least some truth. Schwarzenegger didn't admit anything specific, but he didn't exactly proclaim his innocence, either. "Wherever there is smoke, there is fire," he said. "I have behaved badly sometimes." Other women came forward with similar accounts.

When Schwarzenegger insisted that "a lot of these are made-up stories," NBC anchor Tom Brokaw asked him, "So you deny all these stories about grabbing?" Replied Arnold: "No, not all." But he declined to tell which ones were true. Asked by Brokaw to be more specific about his actions, he replied, "As soon as the campaign is over, I will." What's your hurry, Tom? At best, the evidence indicates that Schwarzenegger has a habit of sexual battery--defined in the California Penal Code as touching "an intimate part of another person, if the touching is against the will of the person touched, and is for the specific purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification, or sexual abuse."

This goes beyond the behavior that unleashed a scandal on Bill Clinton. His encounter with Monica Lewinsky was consensual, and his crude alleged proposition to Paula Jones stopped short of using force. Kathleen Willey said Clinton forcibly kissed and fondled her, though he relented when she rebuffed him. (It was not until after he was acquitted in his impeachment trial that another woman went public claiming he had raped her, and that was never proven.)

Clinton's adulterous conduct was enough to outrage conservative moralists. Columnist and former Reagan administration official Linda Chavez said that the actions described by Paula Jones didn't amount to sexual harassment but were "gross and disgusting, and, I think, make Clinton unfit to be president." The Wall Street Journal's shocked editorial writers asked, "What manner of man is it who takes sexual advantage of 21-year-old interns?"

David Frum, writing in the conservative Weekly Standard, asserted that "what's at stake in the Lewinsky scandal" is "the central dogma of the Baby Boomers: the belief that sex, so long as it's consensual, ought never to be subject to moral scrutiny at all." William Bennett, author of several books celebrating old-fashioned values, said Clinton "acted sexually more like an alley cat than an adult."

Maybe the defenders of virtue exhausted themselves so thoroughly attacking Clinton that they have no energy left to find fault with Schwarzenegger. In any event, I have yet to hear a peep of disgust from the major moralists of the right.

The Wall Street Journal admitted in passing that Schwarzenegger's alleged behavior was "crude and insulting"-- which sounds like a great understatement--while crowing that "his candor will strike voters as a welcome contrast to the usual political stonewalling or denials." But his "candor" was of the sort that is now universally known by the term "Clintonesque"--making a vague admission to defuse the issue while denying anything truly incriminating. David Frum, in his regular column for National Review Online, didn't denounce Baby Boomer morality, but simply ignored the whole unpleasant business. Bill Bennett, the go-to guy on matters of morality, was missing in action. The cat got Linda Chavez's tongue.

So consider their double standard. When Clinton submitted to oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, conservatives thought it was morally repugnant. They also thought it disqualified him from remaining in office. As a Wall Street Journal editorial declared, "A business executive or college president caught having sex with an intern less than half his age would today be quickly dismissed." Yet they're happy to have as governor of California someone who, by his own admission, has forced himself on unwilling women. Their new darling is a more aggressive sexual predator than the president they tried to remove from office. Morality? Law? They'll leave it to liberals to fret about such irrelevancies. But if the charges persist and multiply, I predict conservatives will find a way to address Arnold's behavior: They'll blame it on Clinton.

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Human vs. Machine

The sensationally apocalyptic nightmares presented in the (sequels/series) of Terminator and The Matrix might in fact have something to offer us in terms of understanding a possible future relationship between humans and machines. A future where computers become smarter and smarter until, using the terminology of science fiction author Ken Mcleod, a "Singularity" is reached, a moment when all those ubiquitously networked computers break free of the constraints of operations commanded by humans and generate their own commands, their own thoughts, and become in science fiction parlance an Artificial Intelligence or AI.

In Terminator, the AI is called Skynet, a product of the US Department of Defense (whose very own DARPA, in the real world, played an instrumental role in the establishment of the Internet).
Upon achieving “intelligence,” Skynet moves to wipe out the human race, and the battle between human and machine is on. (Thank the heavens for Arnold Schwarzenegger, next Governor of California, and good, old John Connor.) In the Matrix, an even more sinister future unfolds, in which humans are turned into batteries, our bio-electric impulses harvested to feed the machines.

Scary stuff. And every day, every announcement from Intel or AMD about the improvements in CPU speed, makes it seem as though we are coming ever closer to the point when such a development might, in fact, become possible. Yet today, decades after the creation of the first electronic computing machine and almost unthinkably rapid progress in both power and sophistication, computers remain quite dumb.

The fact that even the most powerful computers are still relatively simple-minded explains, in part, why (I believe) it is actually quite easy for humans to learn computer languages. If you are not a computer person, you will scoff at this statement, of course. You look at the gibberish that constitutes code today and can't imagine understanding (much less writing) it. The reality, however, is that it is much, much harder to become functionally literate in a human language, than to "come up to speed" on a computer language. The reason is simple: Computers follow commands really, really quickly (though in many operations their speed still cannot rival that of the human brain), which gives the impression of intelligence and thought, but they don't actually think their own thoughts. You never have a conversation with a computer; you simply tell it what to do.

They simply follow the commands that we, human beings, give to them, whether inside a low-level software program like an operating system or a higher-level set of instructions like eBay.

I spend a lot of my time consulting and training on the Oracle PL/SQL language (Procedural Language extensions to the Structured Query Language, in case you were wondering). I have written nine books on PL/SQL (all published by O'Reilly and Associates). I am, in other words, a computer geek. I have lots of respect for computers and how they have helped -- and could help so much more -- improve the state/conditions of human existence.

Consultants and teachers have an interesting role in society. We provide knowledge services to other humans. As such, we should be -- or more accurately for many us, we have to pretend to be -- a source of knowledge and wisdom to others in our particular field of work. It is a commonplace joke amongst us, however, that we don't have to be experts to teach, and we don't have to be gurus to consult. We just have to know incrementally more than those to whom we consult and lecture.

I look on the race, or possible race, between humans and machines, humans and computers, in the same way. As long as humans know more (and by "know", I mean both knowledge and the ability to manipulate that knowledge using logic, creativity and inspiration), even a little more, than machines, we can and hopefully will maintain control over those machines. We will be able to write software that out-smarts and constrains computers. We will be able to recognize the danger signs of a Singularity (assuming that moment is not just the nightmarish vision of science fiction authors) and head it off. But if at some point the line is crossed and we find ourselves unable to control the bits and bytes flying around in silicon, then the computers gain the advantage and, well, who knows what will happen?

Which brings me back to the dark visions of the Matrix.

I find myself less and less concerned about computers becoming more intelligent, and thereby crossing that line, than by humans becoming less intelligent -- thereby lowering ourselves to the level of computer "thinking" and, in essence, defaulting on our status as the entities of highest intelligence on this planet.

With every passing day we increase our dependence on computers as a medium for communication between human beings. Rather than contact a person directly (seek them out in the real world or call them), we use computers and the Internet. Is data the same as conversation? I think not. This struck me most strongly when I needed to visit a friend in Michigan (some 200 miles away). Rather than ask him for directions, I just went to Mapquest and printed it all out. How convenient! The problem is that the directions really stank when we got close to my friend's house. I realized the utter silliness of choosing Mapquest's database and sophisticated software over my friend's real world experience and knowledge of his own environment. From Mapquest to Google translators to email, humans are communicating less and exchanging data more.

Have you noticed how computer systems are now appearing in every restaurant, no matter how small? Actually, restaurant computerization was the original motivator for this essay. A few weeks ago, I walked into my favorite Chinese restaurant in Chicagoland (a very unpretentious storefront with the best hot and sour soup, broccoli in garlic sauce and General Tsao's I have ever tasted) and found the manager poking a finger at a flat-screen, touch-sensitive monitor, with a deep frown on her face. "Oh, you are computerizing," I commented, neutrally. The frown turned to a scowl. "My partner says this will help." She shook her head. "I don't see the point. I can write things down much faster and my cooks don't have any trouble reading my orders." The monitor quickly became expensive furniture. Why would a tiny little restaurant need such a system? I’ve read about how you can better monitor inventory, keep an eye on bartenders serving too much alcohol in the drinks, improve efficiency, etc. But humans have been running restaurants, particularly small ones, for literally thousands of years, and doing just fine. It seems like so much over-kill -- and, once again, a reduction in the amount of subtle, nuanced communication between humans, to be replaced by pixels flashing on a screen: MOO SHU PORK EXTRA PANCAKES.

Do you have a digital wristwatch? I don't like watches with digital read-outs. Give me an analog, any day, especially ones without numbers. Why? Because it makes my brain work harder. The digital wristwatch leaves nothing to the imagination or, more to the point here, the deductive powers of your brain. It tells you precisely what time it is (well, more or less, but given that time is a totally abstract concept that we impose on the world, the differences really don't matter). With an analog watch, however, your brain is actually getting some exercise with every glance at the watch face. You take in the position of the hands and translate that into a time. In that same moment, the configuration of the little and big hands might also conjure up a childhood or college memory. The neurons fire, pathways are strengthened, restored, established. Not so with a digital watch. The data is passed along to you, and your brain dully accepts it.

[I should mention, at this point, however, that a friend of mine responded to this idea saying, “I have positive childhood memories of the time displayed on digital clocks. Like 11:11 – how trippy is that on a watch with hands? Maybe it’s not even 11:11 – maybe 11:10 or 11:12 – but how can I know, and therefore convince myself, that if I don’t knock on wood before the minute passes that I will be forever cursed with bad luck? I like watches with hands, too, but that 11:11 has made for some intense times!".]

And how about those cash registers that display the correct change for a transaction? Those infernal calculating machines have probably resulted in more of a dumbing-down of humans, particularly teenagers, than anything else I know of. From an employer's perspective, this is a great feature. Humans, with the help of a machine, make fewer mistakes and business/commerce moves along faster. Good for profits, bad for people. I find it so painful to watch a person struggle with basic subtraction and addition if I hand him or her an extra coin over the $20 bill, in order to minimize the coin change. It must be so embarrassing -- with the result that, almost certainly, that person resents me, for putting him in the situation. And so affinity with the machine, which gives all the comfortable answers, grows, while affinity with the fellow human, who makes life difficult, withers.

Computer programming, in general: It really, really bugs me when I tell people that I work with computer software and their eyes widen, they shake their heads and say "Wow, you must be smart. I could never do that." As I mentioned, computer languages are relatively simple, but inflexible. Computer programmers have to train themselves to think and "talk" like machines in order to tell the computer what to do. You don't need to be smart to do this, though you should be good at symbolic logic (a subject that was developed and studied for centuries before the first computer ever showed up). One very good question raised by Theodore Roszak in his book The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking is: what is the damage done to humans, especially children, when they are trained to think like computers (roughly speaking, in a procedural rather than non-linear fashion)? Ironically, it could well turn out that all those "smart" computer programmers are actually leading the way to a degeneration of the human species down to the level of computer "intelligence."

So how do we fight back against this dumbing-down of the human race? First of all, to be perfectly clear: I am not a Luddite. I do not suggest we throw away our computers, turn away from technology. Nothing like that. I own a hybrid car, the Honda Insight, and deeply appreciate all the technology jammed into that 50 MPG vehicle. My laptop is overflowing with hundreds and hundreds of digital photos from my travels. I love to work with computers. I love to write software and, in fact, believe that when done properly, computer programming can be as much art as engineering. That artistic element is the introduction of human creativity into a machine world. Furthermore, I believe that technology in general and computers in particular present us with a wonderful opportunity: I have a gut feeling that these resources may make possible (for the first time and only, of course, with sufficient human will) the establishment of a Utopia on earth, in which masses of people no longer live short, nasty, brutal lives, in which humans live in peaceful co-existence with the rest of the inhabitants of this incredible planet.

That will not happen, however, if we continue our descent to the level of machine. The ideas I offer below for slowing or reversing the descent are activities I have found helpful for keeping the creative/human juices flowing.

I stay away from the television, especially any programs with laugh tracks (the subject for a whole 'nother essay). I trade television time, in fact, for game time -- and one of my favorite games is Set. Set is the most incredible card game I have ever encountered. I play this game with my kids, other peoples' kids, my friends, students in my classes. It shifts my thinking to a whole new level. Visit http://www.setgame.com to purchase the game. Please do not buy the software version!). Mastermind is also a great brain exerciser. If, by the way, you find yourself unable to play Mastermind smoothly and quickly, you probably also have a hard time writing software.

I got rid of my digital watch and replaced it with an analog timepiece (a really cool Seiko Kinetic that doesn't need batteries -- or sun, for that matter). Hey, perhaps we should get rid of our watches entirely and instead use the position of the sun to tell us the time! That way, we'd have to go outside more frequently, feel the sun on our skin and the wind rustling our hair.

I strive at all times to be creative, regardless of the activity. This is our main edge over computers and we need to maintain it. You can be creative through the medium of a computer and software, as I mentioned earlier. You can (and should) be creative in every single aspect of your life, from the way you cook to the way you mow your lawn (as a child, I entertained myself by using the Toro mower to design patterns into the quarter acre of grass my Dad insisted on maintaining in Long Island suburbia).

Most important of all, I seek out direct contact over machine-intermediated contact, whenever possible. I have decided to spend less time on email. Instead, I talk to people, talk directly to people, without using computers. I listen to people, to their voices, watch their mannerisms, enjoy their touch. I encourage you to bring all of your senses into play as you move through your day. Move through your day, don't let it move through you.

If enough of us engage thoroughly and directly with our own lives and those of other humans, we stand a very good chance of avoiding Singularities, Skynets and other monstrosities of a silicon nature.

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Short But Sweet

Seen on Amazon.com...I searched for Books, "the age of information" and that oh-so helpful, incorrigibly cross- and up-selling website offered the following as a source of "advice":

Understand the World, Then Change It or Lead It
by Alex Lightman, writer, CEO, and reliable predictor of the future of the world

I am jealous. I usually get the tag line "one of the world's leading experts on the PL/SQL language," but "reliable predictor of the future of the world" is way more COOL.

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Nephews, Niece, Switzerland and Summer

First, a poem...

"I only have ears..."

Middle-aged couple
Black-skinned
Thickening comfortably around the waist,
sitting on the park bench,
glowing in the afternoon sun.

Her voice is scratchy -
A smoker's lament?
Perhaps she'd been singing
to him
for hours.

Birds cry and circle above,
golf clubs hit golf balls.
Babies cry in strollers, bats hit
baseballs.

His eyes follow the motion
of her lips, the lifting
of her eyes. His smile
blazes in total ignorance of the
skaters, walkers, cyclers passing by.

She leans back,
parcels scattered on her lap.
She looks to the sky,
the clouds, the sun, the world,
and offers her words
up for everyone, but first
they must pass through his ears:

"...for you."

- Steven Feuerstein, after a jog through Warren Park and a passing glance at a park bench

So it's been a busy summer...

Over the past month, we have had two different sets of nieces and nephews visit us, Brian and Michael from Greenville, NC and Ian and Mikaela from San Jose, CA. There were several wonderful consequences of these visits:

* I got to know my niece and nephews much better. It's one thing to talk occasionally with the kids (ranging in age from 10 to 15) on the phone, quite another to spend time, day after day, with them.

* I did all sorts of "tourist" and entertainment activities that I would otherwise not have done. I am, I must admit, a bit of a "stay at home" sort of person (otherwise how could I have written so many books over the last seven years?). I can recall being someone irritated, as a young man in my twenties, to think back over my years of growing up on Long Island, just 50 miles from Manhattan, and realize that my parents almost never took us to the city to enjoy what it had to offer. Now I look at my own way of living in Chicago and see that it is not much different. We rarely go to plays, to the museums, etc.

Ah, but with the kids here, we HAD to "experience" Chicago. So, I took Michael and Brian to ESPN Zone and to Nike Town (where I discovered that Nike sells "retro" sneakers -- their designs from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and I guess they were doing so well with it that they recently bought a retro sneaker company - Converse!). We took all the kids over various visits to two different water parks, Six Flags Great America (roller coaster mania), the Art Institute, the Taste of Chicago and Fourth of July fireworks by the City of Chicago. We went shopping for clothes for the kids, took lots of bicycles rides, played a whole lot of pool and ping pong. It was wonderful...

Some things that stand out for me:

* Standing in an hour-long line for the Demon roller coaster, I realized that for many (especially Middle Class) Americans, this is the experience that most closely resembles living in the 3rd World. In a country like El Salvador in the 1980s for example (when Ronald Reagan and Ollie North helped kill and torture hundreds of thousands of Central Americans to maintain US control there), much of your life is lived in a harsh, tedious struggle for survival. You wake up, work the land, if you have any, or work someone else's land, you scratch together the food to feed your family. And then, at moments you cannot predict, but only live in bone-quivering anticipation of, the death squads and/or the Salvadoran army (not that there was much of a difference) sweep into your village, terrorize you, perhaps kill you or a member of your family, and then move on, leaving you to pick up the pieces of your lives.

At Six Flags Great America, you stand around in long lines, sometimes for two hours if you are obsessed with riding the very newest "attraction" (such as Superman or Vertical Velocity or Deja Vu), with absolutely nothing to do but watch TV screens force-feeding you ads or cartoons or music videos, with the sun often burning down on your head, shuffling along as if you were on your way to a prison cell. And then suddenly you are strapped down tightly, and sent off on a 10 second or 30 second confrontation with death. You trust the machines, so you don't really believe you are going to die, but your brain is receiving visual and other input that tells you otherwise, so your body starts manufacturing adrenaline and endorphins and you are TERRIFIED at a basic physical level, and then you are back where you started, and you get out to stand on another line: Tedium and Terror.

* On July 3rd, we actually took Ian, Michael and Brian down to the Taste of Chicago/July 4th fireworks (in Chicago, you can buy the Sunday paper on Saturday, and they shoot off the July 4th fireworks on July 3rd. Go figure). This is generally the sort of thing that we will pay good money to avoid. The Taste takes the concept of Food Court to its irrational limit: something like 100 restaurants set up booths in Grant Park. You can then buy coupons (believe me, there are no bargains) to purchases different tastes of Chicago restaurants. On an average day, the Taste draws about 250,000 people. On July 3rd, something like 1,000,000 people head downtown. So in reality what you do is join an unbelievable throng of people in the streets and inch your way to the cashier to buy your coupons. Then you shuffle slowly along until you find a vendor whose food looks appetizing. Then you stand on line and inch your way to the point of getting some food. Then you search for a place you can eat your food and end up eating it standing up. You compulsively check and re-check the contents of your pockets to make sure your wallet and phone are still there. Then it gets dark and the fireworks blaze the sky. They were wonderful. Over too quickly. And then, oh my, we joined hundreds of thousands of people oozing slowly towards the trains, buses and parking lots to get away. It WAS an awful lot of fun to see the streets totally taken over by pedestrians. Downtown Chicago, unlike many European city centers, has not created too many "no car zones". But that night, the cars had to wait for US to pass. Cool.

Speaking of European city centers, I spent a week in July in Zurich and Bern (three day seminar for Swisscom, plus visits to friends). Ah, it is SO NICE to get out of the United States, to escape the so-called freedom of life under Dubya, and relax in the social democracies of Europe, where capitalism is prevalent, but citizens also insist that there should and will be a reasonable standard of living for everyone. To me, Europe feels much more free than the United States right now.

Getting off the soapbox, however, I had a great time in Zurich (just a day or two) and then Bern for several days. Both are very old cities, with buildings (mostly churches) dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries. In the city center, houses are crammed together very tightly, but it all has a sense of FITTING together, working together, providing a decent comfortable place for people to live and shop (and, boy, do Europeans like to shop!).

There is a very nice sense of public space in both places. Lots of parks, lots of people out and about and enjoying themselves. One thing that struck me particularly was the broad enjoyment of chess. In Chicago, you can find parks where there are chess boards in concrete tables and people gather to play. In Zurich and Bern there was some of that but there were also giant 20' x 20' chess boards constructed right into the surface of the park or the walkways. And next to these enormous boards were boxes that contained giant chess pieces (and smaller sets as well). They are unlocked. So anyone can come along, drag out these pieces (the king and queen are perhaps 2.5 feet high), and play a game out in public. Even more amazing, the art of kibbitzing seems to be completely condoned and even encouraged. To kibbitz is to comment on someone else's game and, in my experience, it is something very much frowned upon among chess players. In Switzerland, kibbitzers would snort, shout out what seemed to be disgust with the players' moves, and so on. Very entertaining!

Finally, while in Bern, I visited Einstein Haus, which is actually the second floor apartment in which Einstein lived with his family (wife and two children) during what is now called the Miraculous Years. It was very cool to walk around the small apartment (here is a photo of the steps leading up to the apartment) and think about Einstein sitting here late at night, the family asleep, projecting his mind into the most abstract, virtual world of quantum physics. What kind of joy must he have felt to be struggling with complex equations and ways of looking at the world never before attempted -- and then to find that so much of this resolved down to the elegant E = MC(2) (energy = mass times the square of the speed of light). Wow!

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My last book on Oracle PL/SQL

I have decided to write ONE MORE BOOK on PL/SQL. The title is Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming (AOPP). I intend this book to be both a celebration of the PL/SQL language (and what you can do with it) and a truly ADVANCED book, covering non-trivial topics in-depth. I think this book will fill an important gap in the treasure trove of texts on PL/SQL. I bet lots of you feel like my books and others are useful when it comes to your programming efforts, but you have in large part gone beyond them, extracted all the nuggets of wisdom and guidance they have to offer. You need more, and that "more" is both more specialized and more complex.

I will be working closely with Bryn Llewellyn, PL/SQL Product Manager, and hope to make this a co-authored text. Even with his help, however, I have no doubt