Militainment, Inc. 2.0

Check out the finished version of:

Militainment, Inc.

The film, in 9 parts, is posted and ready for convenient screening online. Right now, the film is being reviewed by potential distributers, but you get a sneak peek. Feel free to use this in your classrooms.

Going Into Iran in Seven Weeks

Here we go. Large scale military deployments to Iran are happening right now. And it's not just being alleged by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. This time it's on CNN and in Time Magazine. Not only are Special Forces on the ground in Iran - as they have been for over a year - now the executive is going ahead with large naval deployments. Recently, Karl Rove bragged to RNC insiders that he had an "October surprise" waiting to maintain a neo-con majority in congress. Wonder how he's going to pull the fear strings this time. Um... if my math is correct...

Watch this fascinating CNN interview with a retired Air Force colonel. When large news organization does a story like this, we have passed the point of no return in the eyes of the administration. Perhaps we should listen to former CIA specialist Ray McGovern who said on September 17th that “We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening.”

The Fall of the Wall

In trying to set up a decent server to host downloads of my new documentary, I have become an accidental Linux convert. Microsoft, you see, has undertaken a disasterous policy regarding its Windows platform recently. In order to curb casual piracy of Windows XP (letting one's friend borrow the installation disk), Microsoft has implemented the Windows Product Activation (WPA) scheme. This plan only allows one copy of Windows per installation of Windows. These days if you want to use Windows, you have to hook into Microsoft's database to receive updates and security software. Now Microsoft is keeping a massive database of serial numbers. If yours appears twice in their database, even if it's just a reinstallation, you are up a creek. A big notification that you might be a "victim of software piracy" flashes on the screen. In reality, you are a victim of Microsoft's new policy of stonewalling anything suspicious. The problem is that reinstallation of Windows becomes a major headache and the policy is even affecting people using Windows fresh from the box.

I predict that this policy is going to push massive numbers of people toward platform alternatives like open-source Linux. And not just because I believe the world revolves around me. The problems with WPA are so significant and the Linux alternatives so appealing and sophisticated (and FREE!) at this point, that Microsoft is in for a surprise.

I have been experimenting with two of the more user-friendly "distributions" (operating system and software packages) available: Ark Linux and Freespire. Compared with the last time I looked at Linux - in 1998 when they released their first off-the-shelf platform, Caldera - things have changed quite a bit. The interface is gorgeous for both of these. It feels great. It's also much leaner and quicker. One major change is a panel that accesses a database of free Linux open source software. You just find what you want to install of 1000 programs organized nicely, click it, and it installs. That can't be done with proprietary software, where you have to hunt down each program, download it individually, wonder if it has malware, and (for me) find a crack for it. Now I don't feel like such a criminal. Plus, Linux is virtually spyware and virus free, a big, big plus.

Enough of my sales pitch. My point here is that Microsoft is making a big business mistake (one likely to be made by big business). Their strong suit is that Windows is so ubiquitous that it seems there is no alternative. And for very sophisticated programs - like music and video production - there isn't (outside of Mac). Windows still has 95% of the operating systems. Probably half of these are pirated. So Microsoft is going to squeeze this lemon a bit. The problem is that Microsoft's power lies in the fact that theirs is the default operating system, whether people are pirating it or not. With the new WPA policy, Microsoft is threatening the very thing that allows it monopoly power. Microsoft is tempting people to switch paradigms. The company should be giving Windows away for free if they want to keep their platform hegemony.

I think a big boom has got to happen sooner or later. A critical mass of people-friendly Linux platforms will form and Microsoft is going to do something to ignite it. I think it's happening right now.

An Intoxicating Truth

This article in The Independent is perhaps the best condensation of the impact that greenhouse climate change is having worldwide. It amazes me how near the issue is. Switzerland is watching its alpine skyline change before its eyes as mountains calve large chunks of rock held in place by millennia of ice-glue. They're even having trouble drilling for oil in Alaska because the number of permafrost days (when heavy equipment can travel) have shrunk from 150 days per year to 75.

Apart from the brand new barley fields in Greenland and the prediction that garden plots will be impossible in England in 20 years, the wine industry in California may be next to see the effects of climate change. Grapes are a very temperature sensitive crop, and they predict that in the next few (less than five) years, the industry will be hit very hard. I heard this story on NPR when I returned from California this summer. I thought, "What a perfect story for the effete NPR aficionado, choking on his pinot and staring wide-eyed at his radio." Kate and I were staying on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, and we took a short tour through the outer fringes of Napa Valley where the tastings are still free and relatively untouristed. We had scheduled the trip during the hottest day in a notable summer heat wave that killed 130 people. Try drinking red wine and wandering the desert. It's like sweating phosphate-laced delirium. When the day was over, we found ourselves a cold diner and a blueberry malt. I remember a woman rushing in the front door, her white blouse soaked with what appeared to be an entire glass of Napa's finest, dripping with sweat and tears, slipping across the greasy floor toward the bathroom in the back of the diner. That could have been me, I thought. And it probably was.

I have often puzzled about the evolutionary mechanisms that allow a species to slow-cook itself, to foul its nest as we have. Certainly there ought to be an adaptive principle that can pull us out of this mess. But then I think of grapes and wine, and the fact that the last of the yeasties to dine on the grape sugars eventually drowns in its own waste when the alcoholic brew reaches that magical 12% mark. It probably makes perfect sense at the time. Blind to the signs of the end, the process predictably runs its course. Perhaps God is preparing for a party at his great winery in the sky.

Arrival: Militainment, Inc.

I'm dusting it off the ol' apocalicious board to announce the completion of Militainment, Inc. - at least a rough cut. See previous post if you need context. Right now the thing is in eight sections, but it will soon have an opening bumper with theme song and all the accoutrements.

I'll be cleaning these up and updating them soon, so there's a version 2.0 on the way. Each is anywhere from 11-20min in length; about 110 minutes total. I welcome comments as I'm cleaning them up, especially picky little things. We are looking at several potential distribution routes. Any suggestions in this regard would be welcomed as well. Thanks and enjoy.

download

A Flag to Burn

Last night I attended a flag burning. Athens' most interesting gallery had an opening featuring anti-authoritarian themed works from a variety of artists. This included a charred corpse in the sand manufactured out of melted green army men, a 15-foot high mushroom cloud with a rope ladder hanging out of it (presumably a cross-reference to heaven), and a performance of a eulogy mourning the death of America (and our aspirations of human rights) at the hands of a primitive authoritarian element.

Later on in the night, the attendees were invited outside to listen to an a capella Star Spangled Banner and the burning of a lighter fluid soaked flag - "as a celebration of the freedom that we have to do so...for now." Others were invited to throw smaller flags in the fire. The reactions were varied. The crowd stood in silence. Some people left. One lady said that it brought tears to her eyes. The event was marked with a strange anticlimax, though.

The sense was due, I think, to a broader process of the banalization of the flag in the larger culture. On one hand, the post-911 flag is ubiquitous - stamped on everything but the toilet paper. This might signal the increased importance of the flag as an object of veneration. But this use has diluting effect, too. No longer is the family flag flown and taken down each night, folded, and burned ceremoniously at the end of its life. Now every SUV is marked with a series of magnetic "loyalties," one of which is probably the US flag. (Another might be one's favorite sports team logo. At Penn State, they managed to conserve space on the tailgate by merging the two.) A million tattered plastic car window flags have flown into roadside ditches. I find them there all the time on my walks. Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren have most successfully wringed the recognizability capital out of the flag, but they are certainly not the only ones.

In the famous Texas v. Johnson flag burning case, which ruled against the vague Texas statute prohibiting flag burning, the justices debated the idea of descecration. They came to agree that that descecration required something venerable in the first place. Makes sense. The problem now is that the flag burning amendment debated in congress every Flag Day is in danger of becoming increasingly meaningless. I wouldn't be surprised if the issue goes away completely. This is not for lack of veneration, but rather a change in the relationship between flag and citizen. The new relationship is a symptom of the corporatization of civil life - that a flag exists not as a object that symbolizes a set of common values, but rather an object of consumption that expresses the most primitive (go, team) kind of loyalty. In short, the flag, that symbol of both the greatest (of democratic aspirations) and the worst (of nationalist imperialism), has been all but bled dry of its significance.

When the last bit of charred flag dropped off the pole, the person with the candle said very matter-of-factly, "This flag was made in China." For better or worse, I long for the days when we had a flag worth burning.

Serious Rock N Roll

The art of tongue in cheek. Jaik Willis. I met this guy about a year ago. A friend of a friend of a wife. Seemed nice enough. Listen to this song.