Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Music makes time a true "dimension" for us, and might challenge Hawking's view of "no afterlife"
My piano teacher, back in the 1950s, used to say that
a composer’s music lives forever, and essentially gives him a kind of
immortality. I suppose one could say
that about any kind of content – literature, painting, sculpture. But music is different from these in another
sense. One’s experience of music spans time.
The brain relates the sounds at the moment to that which preceded, and
an anticipation of what will follow.
Memory is involved, of course, as experiencing of music is about more
than “living the moment”. It’s very
curious that music therapy is effective against dementia, and in taking the
brain out of its own immediacy.
Actually, one could put the spin of cosmology or
theoretical physics on it. Time is a
dimension, but in our universe, humans can move in only one direction, usually
at a set rate (which decreases with gravity), to avoid paradoxes. However, when listening to music, the mind constantly
spans and replays entire blocks of time, even though one is not aware of doing
that consciously. Try this not just with Mozart or Mahler, but also with Schoenberg’s
“The Golden Calf”! (Actually, as one grows older, the brain experiences time
moving more quickly. When you’re just 17, you really do have more “time” to
solve ten calculus problems on an AP final exam. Jack Andraka has more “time” now for his
medical innovation than he would at my age.)
There’s something else about time that strikes
me. Even after passing – and every
single one of us will pass away eventually, as far as we know, so that isn’t
even controversial – the historical cross-product of a life’s experience still
exists in a cosmological sense. The
whole narrative of one’s life still exists.
It’s possible to imagine that music extends it (and that makes sense,
again, its use for therapy). One cannot
undo a wrongful action or impulsive choice.
One cannot go back and change the facts of one’s past.
In a dimensional sense, that is enough for “eternal
life”, so one can understand why Stephen Hawking says there is no
afterlife. Or it isn’t necessary for the
universe. I would perhaps challenge him
(and in 2015 I’ll read Brian Greene’s book and may have a lot more input). It is a mystery, “why am I me” and not
someone else. Why was I born in 1943 and
why have I lived the “different life” that I have, with an unusual way of
perceiving emotion that only appears aloof to others (in the sense of
relativity) but also affects others (again, the “observer” affects what he
stares at)? Why didn’t I live at the
time of Christ or maybe the Exodus, or maybe in Germany in the 1930s? Why wasn’t I born in poverty in Sierra Leone?
The question may be
self-referential. I am what I am. Factoring in the idea that I am more
fortunate than some others then becomes a moral exercise.
As I’ve grown
older, I have come to respect life as “special” in a way that I didn’t
earlier. Orcas, dogs, and cats, and the
amiable red fox sleeping in the yard, all seem sacred. Yet, when I was younger there was nothing
enticing about the prospect of procreating life with my own seed. I saw fecundity as mundane, something taken
for granted, even vulgar. No more, in a
world with an aging population and falling birth rates in many countries. But my attitude was so focused on the “virtue”
of someone already grown, that I didn’t see myself as having a part in the
process. Submission was more exciting.
I may be “who I am” simply as an existential
tautology. But still, it seems
consciousness, capable of exercising free will (and executing choices that are
irrevocable because of the time arrow) comes into focus gradually, well after
birth, as the child is raised into adulthood (see Book reviews, Hofstader, June
1, 2013). But once it is established,
will it span all remaining eternity, or only its own life-experience block? Is consciousness, developed to the point of free will, a physical elemental that cannot be destroyed, even across time? Maybe. Is there some tie to biological children, that would possibly compromise the afterlife of the childless? It sounds possible.
The Monroe Institute, for example, sees consciousness
as a hierarchy. When you pass, your soul
is in a higher reality. For a while, the
details of the life you led stay in focus, but, just as with a dream, or with a
lost job, they tend to fade away with “time” (which functions very differently,
now, as a real dimension). You are concerned with where you are, as absorbed in
some sort of soul group. Hopefully, you’re
more aware of how the universe (or multi-verse) really works, and how a Creator
really works when setting up a new universe at a singularity, inside a black
hole.
I don’t think that “heaven” in the popular sense can
work for me, because I am not socialized enough. It could not reward me. (I could never be part of an "eternal marriage" indeed.) But being part of a cosmic cycle does. So what I do in remaining years really
matters.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Young adults much more interested in hands-on volunteering than older people, but see "ethical problems" in a less intellectual way; less heed to "individualism"
The Washington Times (on p A3 Tuesday) ran an AP story by Connie Cass “Generation giveback: Those under 30 are no slouches when it comes to volunteering”, link here. There is a striking dichotomy: young people see a duty to become personally involved in issues like homelessness or mental illness and serve “up close and personal” regularly, sometimes in a bureaucratized manner.
Older people (of my generation) may object to
bureaucracy and see the recipients as lacking “personal responsibility” where
as younger people see this as more of a community thing, and something about
where you start out in line in life (especially, sometimes, with respect to
race). The same people are not always as
interested in keeping up with the news or in voting, which is striking,
although that doesn’t comport with my own personal observation.
There is a sentiment, among the young, that seeing regular volunteering by those "able" sends a message that nobody "gets out of things" by being lucky and that being a good person "makes sense". And offering personal attention (when an older person might think "it's none of my business") is a way of ratifying the sanctity of all life.
There is a sentiment, among the young, that seeing regular volunteering by those "able" sends a message that nobody "gets out of things" by being lucky and that being a good person "makes sense". And offering personal attention (when an older person might think "it's none of my business") is a way of ratifying the sanctity of all life.
Cass also has an AP story on ABC “5 Things about
Americans’ slipping sense of duty” here.
As I’ve reported before, I’ve seen film that show
amazing interest in some of today’s young adults to work with others, even
overseas, in a very hands-on way (“The Mission in Belize” short film (see Drama
blog, Nov. 4, 2012).
Picture: The Bronx, NY, from a cab Monday, personal trip, through a moderate income area
Picture: The Bronx, NY, from a cab Monday, personal trip, through a moderate income area
Labels:
hyperindividualism,
volunteerism
Monday, December 29, 2014
Blog covering crime in DC will shut down because it costs too much to run, but there must be other ideas!
In a story Monday in the Washington Post, Annys Shin reports on the shutdown of a local site, Homicide Watch DC,
Laura Amico and her husband had run the site for four years,
despite moving to Massachusetts. It cost
about $60000a year to run, and used the help of long distance interns. Laura had worked as a crime reporter in the
San Francisco Bay Area, and had created a similar job on her own.
The site did very detailed reporting on every homicide case
in Washington, which may explain why it was labor intensive and costly. By way of comparison, my own blogging has
very low cost for the volume of material that it covers.
The couple had approached several local news organizations, all of which had
declined.
A number of similar sites live in some ofher cities. Could
there be some economy of scale and an operation to do many cities in one
company? Maybe John Walsh would take up this project?
There are some unsolved cases in the area, like Kanika
Powell and Sean Green (leate 2008 in Prince Georges County MD). A thorough crime blog could out a lot of pressure to solve these cases.
Can I do anything about this myself? I have to finish my own work first to be of any good to others, I'll elaborate more soon.
Labels:
amateurism issue,
Internet business models
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Amazon Kindle's "all you can eat" buffet for readers not popular with some self-published authors; is "getting published" too easy?
Authors are finding that Amazon’s latest gimmick, “all
you can eat books”, is undermining their potential to make a living from
writing, according to a front page story in the New York Times on Dec. 29 by
David Streitfeld, link here. The gripe is with Kindle Unlimited, which
offers readers unlimited access for $9.99 a month. Another problem, according
to the story, is that Amazon Unlimited requires self-published authors to sell
exclusively through them. I wonder if
that would preclude free display online, which I do with my books, with some
controversy resulting. The article suggests that self-published authors, at
least those who sell on this platform, form a union. But the could work with the National Writers
Union (link) with which
I had some contact while living in Minneapolis (1997-2003), and which tried,
not very successfully, to develop liability insurance for writers.
The article notes whether “getting published” became
too “easy” once the personal computer was invented. You no longer had to type and edit a manuscript
by hand. I had created “only” two
novel-length manuscripts before 1981, when I bought my first TRS-80. I then took off, as I have explained in
detail on my “media” blog on Wordpress. Once I went public about this on the search engines, there was no turning back and deciding on some other second career. Other writers might find the same thing, if they really need to go back to work and manipulate their social media presence to please their employers instead of themselves. There are no double lives anymore, just as there are no victims.
But deciding to “give up the day job” and make a
living as a writer is obviously a questionable undertaking. I got into book publishing not to “make a
living at it”, but because of the double-edged moral dilemma (the way my
college expulsion, Vietnam era draft, and later “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy
for gays in the military) I felt my life demonstrated. I had built up enough financial stability
that I could do this without its “paying its own way”, but that very fact
angers some people.
Labels:
amateurism issue,
self-publishing
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Morality as an individual's problem: the indirect dependence on others
Morality is a property of the individual. Any situation finally drops down to a
question as to how a particular person (I) “should” behave in a particular
situation.
To the libertarian, morality is simple. An act is morally OK if does not harm another
person or violate that (adult) person’s will, or does not break a voluntarily
entered contractual promise. Oh, were it that simple!
At this point, I have to give a context. That is, at first, assume “you” live in a
society that more or less follows the values of democratic capitalism (a term
often thrown around by conservative writers after 9/11 as am owning
abstraction). We say that we respect all
human life as sacred or inviolate, and must respect human rights. The main problem that we run into is that as
individuals we don’t all start at the same place in line, and don’t all have
the opportunity to make choices.
Individualism seems to need some inequality in order to innovate, but
unless individualism gives back, the surrounding world becomes unstable.
It’s useful to recognize at the outset, that you need
a discussion of how to behave when you live in an authoritarian state, or are
threatened by one. But let’s come back
to that later.
The main problem, in an individualistic culture, is
that “I” can often bypass competing with others in manners that used to be
expected in the past, and establish myself in my own mind and in front of
others, but only when the culture is permissive enough to allow circumstances
in which others, in less fortunate circumstances and with more unelected
responsibilities, are likely to become harmed (or to harm themselves
unwittingly). The obvious modern context
comes from the Internet and social media.
Related to this is that modern individualism allows me to avoid the risks
and hardships that others take to make a living. A good example is dependence on products made
overseas at slave wages. This often gets
into typical Left wing arguments about “exploitation of workers” known since
the beginning of communism (even going as far as Maoism).
Note the importance of "permissiveness". Someone who flouts a rule is punished or shunned not because he or she harmed others, but because of contraposition: if the behavior (or avoidance) is allowed to be acceptable, others will follow the example and then people, especially in future generations, may be harmed.
Note the importance of "permissiveness". Someone who flouts a rule is punished or shunned not because he or she harmed others, but because of contraposition: if the behavior (or avoidance) is allowed to be acceptable, others will follow the example and then people, especially in future generations, may be harmed.
So it would seem that a moral foundation would require
recognition of when’s one’s activity depends on the unseen sacrifices of
others, or can result at least indirectly in harm to others. That “indirect nature” would have to filter
out the circular reasoning of others (which accounts for a lot of homophobia
and which dictators love to exploit). A good example of behavior that might fit into
this region is “being a football fan” as Malcolm Galdwell points out (because
of the subtle concussion risk, which seems out of control). The libertarian bedrock has always been
“personal responsibility” (even as the “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut”
movie sees it), yet the realistic capacity to carry out responsibility isn’t
always there. Another question is, who
are “the others?” They would, for
example, include other people’s children (“OPC”), a sensitive issue for the
childless. Would it include future
generations, not only the unborn but the (as yet) unconceived? In most ethical theory, a person who does not
yet exist has no moral standing (hiding inside a clam in an aquarium doesn’t
count). But one could say there is a
chain-link back to “OPC”. If the welfare
of future generations, decades after one has passed away, is a major moral
concern, then behavior that wastes energy or pollutes (maybe my habit of
renting cars alone with unlimited mileage) is morally problematic. Another question is, are the “others” in one’s
own family or community more “important” in moral standing than people in
distant culture? Democratic societies
are having to learn that “taking care of your own first” (common on the
political right as in the gun debate) doesn’t always cut it.
This brings me back to the issue of authoritarian
societies, and their threat to individual liberties, not only in their own
homelands but eventually to “The West”.
One of the most noteworthy features of authoritarian political and
social systems – whether military, statist, fascist, communist, or based on
religion, or some combination of these – is that people are presumed to
“belong” to a nationality, ethnicity (sometimes based on race) or religious
affiliation. The individual “loyalty” to his affinity group takes on primal
moral importance, almost following that of social animals (like the orca in a recent post). An extreme example is
the idea in radical Islam that Muslims are one body, and that one has an
obligation to go to distant lands to fight for other “brothers” who have been
“attacked”. This almost sounds like a
perversion of logical reasoning, by carrying to the greatest possible
extreme. But our own treatment of the
male-only military draft during the Vietnam era, with the “unfair” treatment of
deferments, plays right into this problem. In fact, the debate over gays in the
military, resulting in “don’t ask, don’ t tell”, became a proxy for the whole
question of mandatory socialization when forced intimacy is possible, as often
happens in real life in many contexts. (Indeed, authoritarian societies often look at homosexuality as a treasonous attack on its future population, and ability to reproduce.) So how does one live honorably when one is different, and external powers force one to take on the group's goals as one's own?
The moral paradoxes in the parables in the New Testament deal with these issues. (My favorite is the Parable of the Talents.) Jesus is dealing with the idea that there is no way for life to be both "free" and "fair" at the same time; it's almost like quantum physics. It's true that in "real life" (as Mother used to call it), people often have responsibilities they don't "choose" under "freedom of contract". People often half to take care of others before or without having their own children. It's true that a lot of aspects of my own life and thinking are problematic, even though it's not so clear how these "problems" add up; they are rather like a final examination where you "answer any four" of maybe six questions. One thing is apparent: if you get a benefit you didn't earn, you incur some responsibility to provide for others, at least down the line. Disability or immutability has nothing to do with it. And if your content or skills benefits "humanity" (even on the level of solving "Enigma"), there needs to be the capacity of individuals in your neighborhood or orbit to matter, just because they are people, even if they need sacrifice. When people don't see this, they think no "rule of law" applies to them.
The moral paradoxes in the parables in the New Testament deal with these issues. (My favorite is the Parable of the Talents.) Jesus is dealing with the idea that there is no way for life to be both "free" and "fair" at the same time; it's almost like quantum physics. It's true that in "real life" (as Mother used to call it), people often have responsibilities they don't "choose" under "freedom of contract". People often half to take care of others before or without having their own children. It's true that a lot of aspects of my own life and thinking are problematic, even though it's not so clear how these "problems" add up; they are rather like a final examination where you "answer any four" of maybe six questions. One thing is apparent: if you get a benefit you didn't earn, you incur some responsibility to provide for others, at least down the line. Disability or immutability has nothing to do with it. And if your content or skills benefits "humanity" (even on the level of solving "Enigma"), there needs to be the capacity of individuals in your neighborhood or orbit to matter, just because they are people, even if they need sacrifice. When people don't see this, they think no "rule of law" applies to them.
Labels:
personal ethics,
video sequence 1
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Another music license group makes an existential legal challenge to the way YouTube implements DMCA Safe Harbor
A group called Global Music Rights, under Irving Azoff, has threatened
YouTube with a $1 billion lawsuit if it doesn’t pre-emptively remove about
20,000 videos for music it claims to control.
Artists include Pharrell Williams and John Lennon, and much of the music
is relatively old.
YouTube claims that the plaintiffs are trying to circumvent
the DMCA Safe Harbor process, and that Google has already a legally similar
battle with Viacom in court.
But Azoff still claims that publishers must seek licenses in
advance of posting, even though the Safe Harbor seems to be a post-publication
mechanism.
Hollywood Reporter has a detailed story here and the account includes Scribd PDF’s of the
legal documents.
This can be an important case for protecting the ability of
users (like me) to continue posting UFC.
Service providers don’t know in advance whether a document belongs to
the poster.
The article also discusses the Content ID system (link ) which does give some automated capability for screen for more obvious
copyright infringement. It’s not clear
why this didn’t prevent a confrontation here, except that sublicenses for some
of the songs apparently expired during a group license period. Plaintiffs are claiming thatYouTube's business model is predicated on an expectation of undetected infringement, an argument we've heard before.
It is common for other media to prescreen for licenses. Most commercial films go through a “script
clearance” process and there are plenty of law firms along Santa Monica Blvd
that secure music and video rights for embeds in commercial films in
advance. Again, there is a huge cultural gap between those who depend on huge volumes of actual media sales for a living (the old model) and those for who publish for recognition, like me; some of us are seen as disruptive for those who have to making a living for offering competing products almost for free!
Labels:
copyright law,
DMCA,
safe harbor
Monday, December 22, 2014
NYC police tragedy recalls debate on automated trolling of social media
Again, the violence in Brooklyn, NY this past weekend
is stimulating debate as to whether content service providers (like Facebook,
Twitter, Wordpress, Blogger, YouTube, even conventional web hosts) should be
expected to troll user-generated content for threats.
It’s not so unlike debating the Section 230 issue,
because we couldn’t have the world of UDC today (and the self-promotion that
comes with it sometimes) without downstream liability immunity for providers,
and there is a parallel issue with the DMCA Safe Harbor for copyright.
It also reminds one of the Elonis and Justin Carter
cases that I discussed here Dec. 1 (Elonis is now before the Supreme
Court). When is an angry metaphor a real
threat?
Nevertheless, we know that service providers actually
have done some automated screening.
YouTube can screen for some kinds of copyright infringement, looking for
watermarks. Likewise, YouTube and Gmail can
scan for digital marks for known images of child pornography, as identified by
the NCMEC in Alexandria. And almost all
email providers scan for spam, although it is a fuzzy process, and actual whole
blogs or sites (and submitted comments for moderation) are auto-scanned for
spam or “link farming”, again a bit unreliable.
So it sounds plausible that some providers could scan for some keyword
combinations.
The “screening” issue has surfaced with “demands” that
Sony remove all trailers and materials for “The Interview” from the
Internet. I just checked (6 PM Monday),
a corporate trailer is still there .
No,
I won’t embed it because it might disappear.
But imagine (as I discussed Dec. 19) if service providers were “blackmailed”
into removing all USG that discussed a particular country or dictator or extremist
group, or even a particular user because he or she had somehow insulted a
group. The only real protection against
going down this route is much more reliable security in the first place. Giving in to pressure is an admission you don’t
have good security. I do think that Silicon Valley companies are much better
prepared in this area than Sony “was”.
Labels:
implicit content,
integrity,
Section 230
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Ohio teacher "fired" over Facebook post critical of dairy industry, as part of "vegan" advocacy
A teacher, Keith Allison, was fired (contract renewal refused) as a second grade
teacher in the Green Local School Board in Smithville, OH, for a personal
Facebook page in which he expressed opposition to dairy farming, as connected
to his support of vegan diets (supported by Bill Clinton, by the way). He also defends animal rights. However, the post had a picture of a farm
which the owner, while not named, recognized, and the owner complained. Fox
News in Cleveland reports on the matter here .
This does fit into the discussion of speech and “conflict
of interest” that I have taken up here, as recently on Dec. 16. This issue pertains particularly to employees with authority to make decisions about other stakeholders. In the context I have discussed here before,
there would be no conflict if the post had been restricted to a friends’ or
followers’ list. I’m not sure from the news reports if it was really “public”.
The YouTube report above maintains that the school
system depends on financial support from local farming, and that Allison was
told that if he wants to be a teacher, he can’t advocate vegan lifestyles when
working in an agricultural area. Rather
silly (and illogical), but legally troubling, if you consider other parallel cases
(like mine).
The ACLU says that the post was protected speech from
a public employee, and change.org has circulated an email petition.
Picture: Family farm from own family in Ohio, not
related to case
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Does the orca teach us something about socialization and individualism?
I found a Wordpress blog entry on “The Raptor Lab,
Devouring Science, One Post at a Time”, that makes a very important point about
the “biology” of individualism and, to its opposite, socialization and “the
common good”. The post is “Inside the mind of a killer whale: A Q+A with the
neuroscientist from ‘Blackfish’”, link here. For reference, see the review of the film “Blackfish” on my Movies blog, July
29, 2013. It will air on CNN in early 2015.
The orca, or killer whale is a dolphin, although much
larger than the familiar bottlenose. The orca (as well as some other dolphins)
may be the most intelligent animal on earth besides man, probably outflanking
the chimp. But it comes from the line of
herding animals (that include elephants, also very intelligent). The biological complexity of the orca brain
shows that convergent evolution works:
given the right circumstances, extreme intelligence and sophistication
is likely to evolve in the universe repeatedly in different way. Orcas are the “aliens” among us. We should definitely respect their lives as
if they were human. (And, remember, the 19th Century economy depended on whale oil! No wonder we had a novel like "Moby Dick" which will generate an important film in 2015.)
The interesting point in the article is that the orca
brain seems to have a limbic area processing emotions that has no real
counterpart in humans, or primate or even carnivores. The experience of being an orca is indeed
bizarre to a human (more than “Being Malkovitch”). An orca experiences more than his or her own
individual self; it seems to organically connect to its social group and share
the fate of the group that is indeed alien to humans. Of course, it’s also interest that the sonar
or whales and dolphins have what amounts to a biological telecommunications
network or “Internet”, something that these animals needed to grow biologically
because they don’t have hands to make tools easily (and, no, like competitive
swimmers, they don’t have chest hair).
Some can sleep with one-half of their brain at a time, which sounds weird.
There may be other biological analogues on
socialization: dogs (and wolves) are
much more social than cats (except for lions).
But some insects are very social (bees and ants) to the point that
conscious awareness may exsit in the colony but not the individual. Social loyalty seems to be an important
biological adaptation that helps the species as a whole have a future, and it
raises “moral” questions for humans. For humans, rooting interest in an
athletic team may be a weak analogue to cetacean socialization. So could family
and fellowship, which always creates tension with individualism. Orcas probably have biological genetic variations that make some individuals less "social" (and perceived as weaknesses in the cohesion of the group when facing common threats) just as humans do, so I wonder how pods handle this issue! We could learn a lot from them.
Labels:
hyperindividualism,
personal ethics
Friday, December 19, 2014
Self-publishing, expressed integrity, the pressure to conform, and dealing with enemies
Sometime a couple years after I returned “home” (late
2003) to look after Mother, and during the time I had started substitute
teaching, Mother said I should keep quiet about what happened to me a few
decades before at William and Mary.
I simply ignored her advice. She didn’t really get what was going on, who
I was being found online. The William
and Mary Expulsion (1961) and the sequence that followed became the basis for
my books, and all the activism that followed, the whole second half of my life,
and direction that I was following.
After the incident with my screenplay when I was
substitute teaching (toward the end of 2005), however, I gradually became more
concerned with an “existential” problem:
my online “attention getting”, by someone who did not have the customary
family responsibilities (skin in the game), could attract adversaries and pose
a danger to others connected to me. I,
or my content, could be viewed as a “nuisance”.
There are many angles to this discussion. My mother
was still OK then, but there had already been controversy over my diligence
when she had coronary bypass surgery in 1999.
My attentiveness would become controversial again as she declined
starting in 2007, as eventually I hired round the clock caregivers until she
passed away at the end of 2010. Many
would say that she was my “family”, but I found the idea troubling because I
had not procreated one of my own.
Yet I was being drawn into a “role” as “protector” or
responsibility for others that I had not “chosen”, not having ever had sexual
intercourse with a woman. You get the
point. I could have been perceived as a mooch, since I was no longer working, except more incidentally at lower wages (as a substitute teacher) and my mother did have the money to "live off of" and pay for her care later.
Nevertheless, I knew that other material on my domains
(even before I started using blogger) could conceivably attract the wrong
attention. For example, I had another screenplay
short that demo-ed the issues I faced when my mother did have her surgery. In a worst case scenario, an adversarial
party could have, for example, made threats concerning my mother or her
caregivers. This never happened, but the
idea crossed my mind, and even sometimes became a preoccupation. After all the “West Potomac High School Hoax” at the end
of 2005 (regarding my "gratuitous" or "nuisance" screenplay "The Sub" that I had posted online publicly) had been bizarre enough.
I recall being told once, at around age 20, that I tended to make "enemies", of a certain kind of less intact person. This came up on my first job, and in 1962 when I was a patient at NIH, when therapists said "I didn't get the possible consequences of things I say and do" (admitting latent homosexuality -- "pinning a label on myself" -- to a college dean). without addressing the circular thinking of "enemies". Therapists questioned the wisdom of becoming an "oddball" and attracting ridicule if you couldn't compete normally, especially according to gender norms. Again, circular thinking at the higher levels, going unchallenged (except by me). Even my own father said, "To obey is better than to sacrifice", a proverb with a sting and a double meaning.
I recall being told once, at around age 20, that I tended to make "enemies", of a certain kind of less intact person. This came up on my first job, and in 1962 when I was a patient at NIH, when therapists said "I didn't get the possible consequences of things I say and do" (admitting latent homosexuality -- "pinning a label on myself" -- to a college dean). without addressing the circular thinking of "enemies". Therapists questioned the wisdom of becoming an "oddball" and attracting ridicule if you couldn't compete normally, especially according to gender norms. Again, circular thinking at the higher levels, going unchallenged (except by me). Even my own father said, "To obey is better than to sacrifice", a proverb with a sting and a double meaning.
I’ve had only one hack, back in 2002, on the old
“hppub.com” domain, two files, one discussing nuclear terrorism. It was easily repaired from a backup, and never
recurred. An obvious vulnerability at
the ISP explained it. But the point of
the attack seems troubling. Was it to
make the actual threat, or to threaten an “ordinary” non-Islamic speaker for
his lack of humility? The hack had
bizarre jibberish about Russia and Finland.
Of course, it isn’t hard to see what recent current
event stimulates this “reflection”. The
Sony mess, and what we make of it. There
is a parallel. My screenplay had been
seen as gratuitous, unnecessary, and possibly provoking an unspecified student
into tempting a teacher into illegal behavior, as well as suggesting that I
might be “vulnerable” to an approach.
Why had I been willing online to leak this impression of me? I could say, if it left that kind of
impression, it had been effective and had said something important: older
teachers are more vulnerable and more likely to be drawn into trouble than
anyone wants to admit. It needed to be
said, even if nobody wanted to hear it. All of this constitutes what I call the "implicit content" issue, all the sudden critical in national security and international politics.
Flash-forward.
The Sony film “The Interview” is said to be silly, a satire We’ve seen these before (“The Dictator”,
“Team America”). But the adversary
decided that the mere existence of this film constitutes a threat on that
adversarial country’s "president's" life.
They consider it as part of a threat from the US, and see anyone
participating in making or distributing or even seeing the film as a soldier, a
potential enemy. This doesn’t seem to
make sense to us. It would seem to give
Sony filmmakers credit for a lot more “power” than they really have and give
the movie a lot more credit for influence than it seems to deserve
artistically. It seems to take normal
western thinking about artistic products and flip it around. Likewise, the school back in 2005 gave my
work much more credit for being potentially dangerous or disruptive than one
could reasonably believe (today), in hindsight, that it “deserved”.
We could ponder Islamic extremist attacks or threats on
media (Jylland Posten Muhammad cartoons, Salman Rushdie. and Theo van Gogh’s
“Submission”) in a similar light. But in
this case there is no “threat” in the same light, and no “enticement”; there is, indeed, the idea that if a
religious figure can be “desecrated” in speech anywhere in the world, then the
lives (and those of future generations) of a whole global faith becomes
meaningless.
I think the homophobia of the past works in a similar
way. If male homosexuality, even in
private, were regarded as acceptable, the whole “meaning” of family life that
motivates “straight” people could be undermined. It seems like negative thinking, and seems
self-deprecating today. But it wasn’t
seen that way in 1961 when I was expelled from William and Mary. I wasn’t really a threat to approach people
for unwanted sex. My freedom was a
“threat” to the “meaning” of their entire future heterosexual experience. That’s what happened to Alan Turing.
Yet, I have sometimes been approached with a message
like “conform, keep quiet, don’t make people uncomfortable with themselves or
their own flaws, give up your fantasy world and come join us, get saved and
converted”. Indeed, there is a certain irony: my own “fantasy world” is not
that kind to people who “don’t make it”.
I see all of these threads as interrelated at a
psychological, Dr. Phil level.
You can see where this could be headed. Enemies from radical causes (where states or
rogue, whether communist, fascist, or religious like radical Islam or even
extreme right-wing Christianity) could threaten companies over almost any
content they find somehow offensive – even in the Sony case, the content was
more “provocative” than usual. They
could even target individual artists or citizens, and try to threaten
businesses willing to work with them, as a way to make a point about western or
secular life. One concern that seems to give a particular context is the
concern among many radicals about “unearned” or inherited wealth, as
undermining the idea among the less fortunate that “law and order” even makes
sense. By the way, the notion that very personalized “communist”( or “fascist”)
terrorism could come to our shore has been known since World War II and an idea
in a couple of my earlier novel manuscripts. In Europe, both Hilter and Stalin
made things very personal.
There’s another angle to this. An old essay on self-publishing in “Writers
Digest” had recommended “Write what other people want”. Well, I could be hired to ghost write someone
else’s story (may one of the other “gays in the military cases”), but telling
my own took all the time. One could say,
“you can publish, but don’t talk about THIS” (as a java keyword). Then none of my work would have any
integrity.
But I do get the retort, “but why do we get the news
about this from YOU. There are regular
media outlets. Why don’t you go out, use
your life insurance background, sell, so you can return the favor by raising
someone else’s disabled kid?” I get the
drift on this idea of payback. Sometimes
these ideas have been floated at me almost as hidden threats. But I can’t
provide for anyone else unless my own life and work has integrity.
I do add nuances to stories that I report, that major media outlets might miss, and I will often add a personal perspective based on incidents in my own life, often from the distant past (without identities of people). But I do get the idea that when it comes from "me", the "purpose" of the speech seems to matter to some people, and make them wonder if they are supposed to act in some way, rather than remain alert. That is what "implicit content" means.
I do add nuances to stories that I report, that major media outlets might miss, and I will often add a personal perspective based on incidents in my own life, often from the distant past (without identities of people). But I do get the idea that when it comes from "me", the "purpose" of the speech seems to matter to some people, and make them wonder if they are supposed to act in some way, rather than remain alert. That is what "implicit content" means.
It doesn't make sense for someone to say, "I can still love you" if I have to go along with extortion (direct or subtle -- conformity) for the sake of "Staying Alive" (John Travolta style, another movie), that is, to "protect" myself or others around me. You either have honor or you don't (Joe Steffan's book). You are either worthy or you aren't. As the song by Otto Blucker starts, "Hiding isn't what we do."
In fact, there are some details I don’t publish. I don’t give names and information about
non-public people. There are a few
arcane incidents, like some workplace litigation in the middle 1990s, where I
can’t go into a lot of detail even now, but I don’t avoid subject matter just
because it upsets someone who could become a threat.
There are lines I don’t cross. Imagine some nightmare scenarios (we don’t
need to get carried away, because imagination is endless), like destroy all
copies of my "Do Ask, Do Tell" books because someone’s ideology is trampled or someone somehow
imagines a threat. I would not. I woudn’t be around if I had to. But of course, extortion like that would show that my work really did say something and really did matter to the rest of the wold. Again, think about the paradox.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
If I had become a licensed teacher, could I have gotten around my own "conflict of interest"? I just wanted to see "critical thinking"
I’ll follow up again the issue of the failure of my substitute
teaching experience.
Had I stayed on course, and eventually gotten
licensure and become a regular math teacher in high school, could I have dealt
with my “conflict of interest” problem?
Again, one of the main concerns was that if students
(whom I would have the “power” to grade) had found my “opinions” about other
people embedded in my materials (like
the older movie reviews, where I sometimes made juicy remarks about the
appearance of actors), that could have shown “prejudice” against students in
certain groups.
In the days before modern social media (and Facebook
wasn’t really public until about 2007, and MySpace had come along around 2004),
the main Internet experience was indeed finding specific web pages (including
mine, which included copies of chapters of my book) from search engines. You could, for example, search an actor’s
name in combination with the word “gay”, or even "hairy chest". I often found such searches on my site's Urchin logs.
I can certainly understand, particularly with how
matters were at the time, a belief that it is inappropriate for a teacher to
engage in “gratuitous” online behavior, however legal and innocent and not
actually pornographic in the usual sense, that could “divide” people or make
some people believe they might be less “worthy” in the speaker’s eyes. I had thought at the time that people with
the power to make decisions about others (whether subordinates, students, or
even customers to be underwritten for insurance or loans) should not speak in searchable
public modes without supervision or gatekeepers. That’s where I drew the line. I did not have the authority to grade
students, so I thought I was OK. This
became the “blogging policy” on my “doaskdotell.com” site. There had been a lot of talk about employer
blogging policies in the 2002-2003 period, especially after Heather Armstrong
stirred up the world with her “dooce” site after getting fired for blogging about
work.
Social media came along, with the idea that content
could be restricted to whitelists, and such content usually didn’t get indexed
by search engines, so in my worldview, it wasn’t “published” in the same
sense Of course, whitelisted content
often “leaks” and gets repeated by others – and that became the “Dr. Phil
Problem” in the 2006-2008 period.
Social media also made it impossible to lead “double
lives”, partly because of Facebook’s “real name” policy, so in time, people
became expected to use their entire social media and Internet presence for
their employer’s purpose. I could not
have done today what I did fifteen years ago while still working.
And what’s even more interesting is that, in 1997, I
did a corporate transfer (within ReliaStar, later to become ING and now Voya)
to the Minneapolis location in order to get away from a conflict regarding the
company’s selling to military officers, and my publication of a book and
Internet materials on the military gay ban (“don’t ask don’t tell”). (I have more history on Wordpress here ).
Getting back to teaching, what had been in the back of
my mind was to set up an engine to record and collate “opposing viewpoints”, as
I had explained here Feb. 29, 2012. The
idea was to get others to make the points I had started them making, and then
let the public see the results. This
would be very good for teachings students “critical thinking”. And the opinions are no longer necessarily
mine, so there is no “conflict” or presumption of prejudice. This sort if approach might be particularly
effective with issues like the military gay ban (with its unusual personal
sensitiveness, and potential to affect civilian areas, even like dorm life, as
had been the case in my life and as would be again, as at Rutgers in 2010,
tragically), or with issues like Internet free speech and “barrier to entry”.
I could have worked with Wikipedia. Of course, that’s usually doesn’t result in
public attention for one’s views, and at least there is supervision and
gatekeeping (more now at Wikipedia than used to be). If Wikipedia had actually set up an "opposing viewpoints" database, there would no longer exist a legitimate reason for me to set myself up as a sentinel. I could have been expected to resume "real life", however socially disadvantaged I felt. It all depends on what postulates you make about individual sovereignty, versus the need to belong to a group that faces external challenges.
And I could have continued working offline on my
novel, screenplays and music. In 2004, remember, I had entered Project
Greenlight II with a sci-fi screenplay.
That presented no conflict.
Even so, in the 2004-2005 period, before I got into
today’s blogging platforms and social media, there was reason to think I might
be able to thread my writing career with teaching after all.
Update: Dec. 31
Here's a pitch for Wikipedia "Keep It Free", from Jack Andraka, link. I do make a regular monthly donation with a bank. Wikipedia has become more concerned recently that running the site at a sufficiently professional level, as a non-profit, does take money.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Had I "stepped up" as a sub teaching a middle school band class, I might be doing better now
As I went through some of my Sibelius 7 scores, I
found one for chamber orchestra called “test” and it looked like a few measures
for a jazz quartet. I don’t remember
keying this in, and it might be a sample from Sibelius. The parts look handwritten, as is common in
symphony scores.
The object reminded me of my “failure” when doing a
substitute teaching assignment for a middle school band class in January
2005. I described this on the Drama Blog
on Oct. 17, 2008, and to some extent on this blog on July 25, 2007.
So why should it have been so hard to stand up in
front of the band class, on a conductor’s podium, read an orchestral score (of
the “Prehistoric Suite”) and actually conduct the kids, since the regular
teacher had failed to specify a student conductor for these less mature
classes. I needed to do this nine days
in a row.
Maybe the students would balk when I got it wrong, but
I think my merely standing there would have helped control the situation.
It would have vindicated that my nine years of piano
had meant something, even if band is quite different.
Just look at the score and follow it. And point.
It can’t be that hard.
Had I “stepped up” to the challenge, maybe teaching
would have been a go. History would have
gone differently. I probably would have
toned down my Internet postings, and never pubbed “The Sub”. The whole “implicit content” incident
(related July 27) – the equivalent of mixing the SCOTUS Elonis case (Dec. 1)
with “The Interview” (and raising similar questions about global Internet
broadcast to impressionable, susceptible and easily tempted audience) would
have been sidestepped.
And my own effort to produce my own music now might be
further along. I must say, I wonder about the bizarre emails that sometimes show up asking about a piano teacher (even one cell phone call). If it's a scam, I don't see how it works.
As for the "opportunity" to conduct a student orchestra with zero training, think about it.
It seems ugly, but it’s a lot better than hucksterizing concert tickets
(which some music majors have to do). It’s
better than driving a cab (or now Uber).
It’s better than the physical job of letter carrying.
Only Chairman Mao (and Kim Jong-un, who looks so
foppish in his mug shots) would not have approved. Remember, the Left is usually far more moralistic than the Right.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
DOJ lightens up on letting NY Times reporter and CBS producer protect sources after CIA leak
There is some reassurance for professional (at least)
journalists in the decision by Eric Holder not to subpoena New York Times
reporter James Risen, at least to give confidential sources, in the trial of
Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA official. The story by Sari Horwitz is here. Risen authored the book “State of War”. NBC has a similar story by justice reporter
Pete Williams here.
The story may seem more politically compelling because
of the recent report on CIA abuses, but it isn’t directly related.
Apparently the DOJ also reversed itself and decided
not to subpoena a CBS producer, Richard Bonin.
It is very unlikely that protections would apply to
amateur bloggers, when they somehow come into contact with classified
information, which probably happens more often than is generally realized. I contacted authorities several times on
unsolicited (non-spam) items emailed to me in the years after 9-11.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Do "real men" take foolish risks to "protect" others?
Here’s a little story that says a lot about me, from
Vox: “Men are much more likely than women to take truly idiotic risks that cost
their lives, by Joshua Stromberg, on Vox, here. Case in point, look art the behavior last summer of Washington Nationals's outfielder Jayson Werth, here.
I was very different from this daredevil model as a
boy. I wondered why boys bash themselves
playing football. I did develop a liking
for softball and following baseball because of the physics of the game. I had trouble learning to ride a bicycle,
and today wonder when I see kids riding the wrong way or run lights, making
drivers unable to see them when turning until too late.
My father always noted that I had an unusual objection
to “getting hurt”. That seems
selfish. Boys, in becoming men, were
supposed to join together and fight to protect women and children. You see that
now, overseas. I resented it. Women
seemed privileged.
What caused all this.
Was I “autistic”? Maybe. I was good at my own things, piano and books,
and my brain pruned away all distractions early. I would admire men who were smart but better
at everything. That’s the “Clark Kent” effect (or maybe Ashton Kutcher). All of this would get to be viewed as a moral
and character problem, because, in a world that supported a military draft, I
was leaving the risk taking for others and cheating the system.
Later, when I became self-published, others who used
not to be within my sight horizon and not my “business”, would knock on the
door and try to get me to adopt their goals.
All a very interesting progression.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Abbey House case deals with "contributory infringement" by encouraging removal of DRM, in complicated case embedded in "price fixing"
There is a very complicated case where an e-book
seller Abbey House (once known as Books on Board) got into a dispute with Apple
and several book publishers, including Simon and Shuster, claiming that “price
fixing” effectively drove it out of business.
Antitrust ideas aside (you study that in US History), another
controversy occurred with Abbey House provided consumers with directions as to
how to remove DRM so that consumers could read the books even if the company
went out of business.
The details are in a report in “Courthouse News” by
William Dotinga, here.
The federal judge Denise Cote (New York)
ruled that Abbey had not “induced infringement” or participated in “contributory
infringement”. Users were simply enable to
use something they had paid for on another device. The actual opinion is here. There has been plenty of litigation over
the idea that a business whose model is to promote infringement (most often in
a P2P context) might well be guilty of a contributory infringement tort –
unless there are credible non-infringing uses for the business. Then an interesting moral question is whether
the non-infringing uses could support the business alone. You could extend this kind of thinking into
the “free content” debate.
This whole problem is at least tangentially related to
the controversy involving Amazon, Hachette, and many of its book authors. Keith
Gessen reports (“The War of the Words”) this on page 162 of the December 2014
Vanity Fair, here.
In the meantime, I wonder how many writers really make
a living from just that (see Book reviews blog, Aug. 8, 2014).
Bill
Labels:
copyright law,
DMCA,
Internet business models
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
EFF still critical of possible WIPO treaty that would let broadcasters get around normal copyright law limitations
Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an article by
Jeremy Malcolm, warns that broadcasting companies are still trying to get the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to draft a treaty that would
give broadcasters post-air rights that transcend normal copyright law and fair
use, link here. Among the demands are the right to stop the
use of open source products in watching rebroadcasts or time-shifted.
The latest draft of the proposed treaty is here.
Youtube, however, does contain some videos concerning
helping the disabled use content.
In my own practice, I’ve noticed that video clips from
programs that are authorized on YouTube for embed often go “private” shortly
thereafter. I don’t know why.
Update: Dec 10
The Guardian Australia reports that Australia plans aggressive blocking of overseas sites that facilitate infringement, here.
Update: Dec 10
The Guardian Australia reports that Australia plans aggressive blocking of overseas sites that facilitate infringement, here.
Monday, December 08, 2014
My concern is the loss of "critical thinking" before people "act up" in the streets -- oh, really?
A long series of detailed newspaper accounts, such as
one today in the Washington Post by Marc Fisher and others, “In three minutes,
two lives collide and a nation divides over Ferguson shooting” (link) illustrate some conflicting points.
People tend to see what they want to see or believe they will see, as
witnesses. But this and many other
articles explain how the physical and forensic evidence support the idea that
Michael Brown, while unarmed, really did confront officer Darren Wilson
directly (even "unbelievably"), after behaving aggressively in a retail store. One can believe, as his family reports, that
this is out of character, and wonder why it happened, but it seems clear that
it did happen. (White men, like James
Holmes, have suddenly behaved out of character, too.) One can certainly question whether Wilson’s
action, firing many rounds, was necessary for self-defense. One can question many things. In Brown's case, unusual reaction to THC sounds possible.
It’s also true that some other cases, especially Eric
Garner in New York, as well as other incidents in Ohio, Arizona, and perhaps
Utah may well turn out to be more convincing examples of criminal behavior by
polices officers, possibly racially based, than Wilson’s.
I certainly support the peaceful demonstrations
against police profiling and abuses. But
some of the behavior goes way beyond anything morally connected to the
facts.
In our country, it is unacceptable and unconscionable that
someone (Darren Wilson) should live in hiding when the facts simply don’t support
his guilt or cupability (at least of an intentional crime). Agreed, in other incidents, individual police officers
may be more deserving of accountability, but what has happened in the Missouri
case is simply unbelievable in a civilized nation.
One of my own reasons for writing and blogging
independently is to support critical thinking, not blind emotion and
revenge.
I’ve been around people calling for forceful expropriation
and “revolution”, especially in my young adulthood. I’ve heard people say scary things in
person. I’ve seen people view their own
peers, only slightly better off than them, as “enemies”, instead of the real “carpbetbaggers”. On a
certain psychological level, all “revolutionary” behavior is similar, whether
founded in religion or economics or some combination of both.
And I’m certainly aware of the past, and of the fact
that race often (not always) puts some people “ahead in line” of others. In fact, I’ve seen some segments of the film “American
Lynching” by the late Gode Davis (from Rhode Island), and I am looking into
what it would take to get this film, and some other similarly spirited
projects, commercially produced and completed. The idea of forcing people formerly privileged to "trade places" with others is frankly Maoist (but that's what the communist "cultural revolution" in China in the 1960s was all about).
Yet, when you take the fall for one else’s need for
vengeance, you are paying for the sins of others, perhaps sometimes as a result
of insularity or indifference. There is no point in talking about
victimhood. Yes, I can see how this
leads to a need for Grace.
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