Cobb

DIY or Die

Sophisticated glamorous things fall apart, the prosumer will not hold on.

I have lived long enough to know that the good things in our society come and go. There is always somebody gaming your business plan, and all the gains to be made are at the choice points of inflection. Otherwise, basically nobody cares what you think unless you are paying them to.

Today's news is that Google is turning off reader. This is likely to consign the protocol or RSS to the dustbin of history. Which also means that small players can step up and grab market share for something Google finds too miniscule. RSS has hit the Whoopi number. Whoopi Goldberg famously said of network television, it's the only place where people with 1 million friends are called losers. 

In the space between total industrialization and bespoke craftsmanship is a medium sized long tail. This is the place I have decided to approach. I think I can. As I have been cruising the areas of Etsy and EDC and TNP and Atwood, I have found a goodly number of medium sized joints that remain willing to be of service. And it is in this area that we must make our differentiations. You see, I am convinced, having long ago decided to become a Neo-Victorian, that I am liking where my new tastes are taking me. And I am finding less and less disappointment as the mass marketers gradually degrade their products as they sell them to the late adopters...

Once upon a time there were record players. You had one, remember? When the record skipped, youscotch taped a quarter to it and that fixed it. The record was good for about a hundred more plays and then it went to the shelf, hopefully out of the sun's rays. When I started selling radios, I learned all the parts of a record player were actually components that a bunch of different manufacturers could specialize in and the world opened before me. The 'record player' had a tonearm, cartridge, stylus, turntable with either belt or direct drive a variable speed motor you tuned with a strobe against the platter. It's output went to a phono amp of two sorts depending upon wither your cartridge and stylus were moving magnet or moving coil. This went into the control pre-amp and maybe through an equalizer and then to a power amplifier, or several depending upon whether or not your speaker system was bi-amped with large amps for the bass separate from the midrange and tweeters. Let's not forget subwoofers. All of these could be purchased separately mixed and matched and arranged for a price, but the quality was stellar. A long way from a record player.

Once upon a time there were motorcycles and automobilies you could put together and take apart. There were aftermarkets and technical training schools. But today, not so much. And you cannot buy component stereo any longer - not in the mainstream. 

I just purchased a watch repair kit for $15 at Amazon. It doesn't pay to be a jeweler any longer. I remember the last time I sent my best watch to be cleaned, or my wingtips to be resoled. It was about at the turn of the century, both times by men older than my father, grumpy with fascinating hands. I wonder if these are technologies to be hacked and done by self in the future. I reckon that they must be, because who is going to have money for replacement?

Think about it when your smartphone dies.

Gearheads, Hackers and Makers

We live in a built up world. We survive on the detritus of prior generations, we are an augmented species. We are tool designers and tool builders and tool users. And of course some of us pay a bit more attention to the tools, old and new, that help us become what we want to be.

Gearheads
A gearhead is a user, but a gearhead is a special kind of user. The closest thing we talk about is a 'prosumer'. A gearhead is an aesthete of tools. Look at Gilligan in the opening theme of Gilligan's Island. The mate was a mighty sailing man. See how proud he is of that rope and his gear?  That's a gearhead.

There are dysfunctional gearheads too of course. The most common of which is the fanboy. A fanboy says that Stanley Clarke is the greatest bassist on the planet, which may be true, but he doesn't know why and he doesn't know how Stanley plays. He just knows what he likes - that's his side of the story and he's sticking with it. Fanboys are cool, if you're not put off by obnoxious people. At least they care.

Hackers
Hackers are gearheads who take things apart and put them back together again. They (we) are fascinated that a solution exists and they want to figure out how. The hacker is never satisfied just making something work, they want to get inside the black box and figure out how to make it work better, or make it work differently, or even figure out a way to make it stop working altogether. A hacker tries not to trust anything if he can't figure out where its brain is. That's a Harry Potter metaphor for you. DJs who scratch and mix are hackers. Cooks who mess with recipes are hackers. Even kids who pull the pickles out of their hamburgers are hackers.  

Makers
Yes I like threes and I like hierarchies. Makers top off this one. A maker takes an idea and fabricates a solution. A maker builds a tool or a gadget or a song or a poem or a shed or a shim. Makers want to put their names on things they've built - they are bridge builders. They want to own the process and come up with a totally new way. Sometimes makers are combinators. Annie Hall's style was completely made up. Who knew? Wallace and Grommet are makers. Makers can be, but are not always perfectionists. They're about form, but more about function. They are enablers. Oh, yes and obviously on Gilligan's Island, the Professor is a maker.

--

When I think about the distance I've traveled over the past two and a half years in my career, I have had to come to grips with a new set of folks. And within LAMP and Open Source I've had to move from mere gearhead appreciation into hands on hacking and scrutiny. I've done a little making as well. 

Tangential to Neo-Victorianism and Steampunk, I think that the direction of young people is towards these archtypes, with a combination retro and junkyard motif. A lot of things that are manufactured for consumers who are not as aesthtically demanding as gearheads will fail to suffice. Most will be hacked beyond recognition, and those that survive will be the projects of makers.

In some areas, makers of this new sort are completely outclassed. Nobody with a 3D printer is going to make a gun barrel worth beans. Bitcoins will never become real currency even at the level of frequent flyer miles. But in other areas, makers, especially bespoke makers will have a very broad canvas of designs and technologies to draw from. My favorites among these are makers in the automotive sector of the economy. Shops like Deus Ex Machina, the motorcycle builder and ICON, the Toyota truck builder.  

In Which I Describe the Decline of the West to a Russian

(Boris asks..)
Honestly, how in the world did the same-sex marriage happen to appear on the left-wing agenda in the West? Don't they have other things to worry about? It appears to me that this speaks of a serious ideological crisis the Western left are in. Convince me otherwise.

Boris, I share your sentiments.

The way I read this development in the West originates in the nature of rebellion and change during the Post WW2 period of America's growth. As you can imagine there was a certain arrogance that America rightly drew from its victory in Europe and a set of elites quickly formed. The younger Baby Boom generation, to its credit saw some of this as stifling. Nobody wanted to grow up in a Cold War world. But they incorrectly blamed all of their parents shortcomings for everything wrong in the world, and like never before the American Establishment was blamed for everything. The emergence of a genuine Left never really happened, but Marxist ideology was the only framework upon which elements of rebellion and revolution in miniature grew up. 

What was truly original and genuine was the counter-culture. So the American Free Speech, Free Love, Drug Consciousness, Women's Rights, Environmentalist, Civil Rights, Pop Art, Black Nationalist, Chicano Pride and Gay Pride movements all gathered force during the 1960s under the broad Anti-American protests against the War in Vietnam. We have had wars before and since, but never had there been such resonant ferment for change. How much of that was actually, genuinely aiming for Marxist revolution - not much at all. It was only culturally coordinated, not ideologically sound. And yet no doubt, true Marxists took advantage.

My opinion is that this counter-culture, this rejection of nationalism, is the only way most Americans who are not technically educated in the hard sciences know how to organize their sentiments towards improvement of society and the world. They begin with a rejectionist premise and devalue all of the social rules that have evolved in the West before the end of WW2. There is a generation of academics whose joy is revisionist history, and their intellectual framework is the language of French deconstructionists and post-modernists. They have made a fetish of 'other' identity and rejected most forms of conformity. They seek to elevate the abnormal and question the normal. I see them as cultural relativists.

It is thus a convenience that their interests are served by a Socialist state whose rejection of religion and celebration of the common man fulfills Marx's historicism. If the state can provide, then traditions and culture are of no use.

So under the guise of 'social justice' and 'equality' they have sought to give radical autonomy and authority to anyone who is willing to question American tradition and even the Constitution itself. They have repainted America's exceptionalism in the same tiresome diatribes of 'sexism' , 'racism' and now 'homophobia'. These are their transparent weapons of shaming, shunning and silencing. They are Leftists of opportunity, rallying behind candidates 'of color' and advocates of 'victims' of all sorts, who use 'social justice' as a figleaf for whatever government actions they see fit. This brings us to the very edge of fascism in America - a kind of 'whatever works', 'pragmatic' policy with none of the benefits of evolved political philosophy. True Marxists have never been fooled by candidate Obama, but those who would take their tired counter-cultural ideas to the next level seized the day. Now all criticism of America's first black President is reduced to 'racism'. 

America still possesses millions of patriots whose fidelity to the Constitution is unshakeable and whose resistance to the Orwellian levels of doublespeak now accepted as legitimate politics remains strong. But there is no simple way to coordinate their efforts and sentiments. I believe young Americans are impervious to the political overproduction of the 'Left' baby boomers and will see nothing special or energizing about the non-idelological counter-cultural identity politics of their grandparents. In a shrinking economy, they understand and value family and well-thought out structure. The personal failures which mark today's victimology does not stir today's youth to great sympathy, and they are not so eager in a post 9/11 world to trash their homeland.

As you can see, these identity politics have made millions of Americans insular and naive. They have impressed themselves with their ability to aggregate votes and support candidates here at home. The provinciality is stupefying. The great writer Aldous Huxley said 'an intellectual is someone who has found ideas more interesting than sex'. By that standards, we have few intellectuals left, because in America the standards of decency have dropped abysmally. We have more teenage venereal disease than almost ever in our history, and the single mother is yet another abnormal made to be the new 'normal'. Here we have someone defending left politics and exemplifying interracial sex as the great benefit. It is no wonder that such people have no vision in foreign policy and are apt to disengage America from the world. They are navel-gazers of the first degree and that is why they allow great failures of industry, education and economic solvency. They do not wish to elect leaders who solve real-world problems, they wish to elect leaders who make nice speeches and blame others and cry in public. 

The average American is encouraged to think street culture is legitimate and that family traditions and obligations are irrelevant and outdated. They are encouraged to seek sexual liberation at any cost, and to put the value of the life of animals and plants above that of human beings. Such are the people who can listen to rebellious rock and roll into their 50s and 60s and find the very perversion of homosexuality to be inherently interesting. But it is not homosexuality itself, but the socially transgressive political activist sort designed to make everyone else uncomfortable that these people seek out. Think about it. These activists are exploiting the sex lives of their fellow citizens in order to make a swipe at everyone else. Pathetic, but effective.

I live in a country where people are afraid of sugar, and brag about the fact that they are building hospitals instead of steel.

I Never Liked Bioshock

(mid rant)

In Reference To: John Teti

Sideboob: Mercenaries 2

I found the original Bioshock exactly that boorish because of the thin veneer of ideology which was so one dimensional that it failed utterly to give any depth to the excellent art direction. I had hardly taken a step into the world when I get monologued to death by what amounted to an interrupted carnival barker. Hey I opened a door, ooh check that out, uh oh here comes that stupid voice over. It was so ham handed as compared to say.. well the other excellent FPS/RPGs that I just couldn't put up with it. Arriving on the train into City 17 in Half Life 2 was a miracle of immersion. Escaping execution from the burned out town in Skyrim, brilliant. Coming out of genetic rebuilding in Mass Effect, genius.

Infinite never raised my hope much further despite the very cool graphics - it stayed much too close to a politically mythical America to be useful. Nothing about the series has seemed sandboxy enough, and the invented universe simply didn't have enough resonances for me. Considering, for example, the historical verisimilitude of the latest Assassin's Creed, at least there's the net absence of the integral part of a meaningful role of the Assassin in the American Revolution. There's a kind of Groundhog Day irrelevance to all your passion, and Assassin's Creed is OK with that - or at least it is at it's best when not too much is made of the significance of your avatar's murderous rage. The same thing can be said of the deft denouement of Skyrim. Even after you've contributed to solving the world's problems, the world still exists, with new problems. Mass Effect, not so much.

To be fair, these are inordinately complex problems to solve. The narrative has to get you going, especially when your character is too weak to beat up an ordinary policeman or guard. Some successful games ignore the problem altogether. Here is the world, here are the badguys, here's the stereotypical mission and you badass your way through. That can be loads of fun, witness games like Mercenaries 2, or Borderlands.

Deus Ex is rather the exception that proves the rule. Or rather I should say, it's a very well done game that forces you to think differently about FPS/RPGs. As a moral exercise, I simply found it too challenging. There were too many ethically gray areas that I was forced to put my avatar through - and I did find that realistic. It made me feel as though there is no real way to be heroic if you were actually endowed with such powers. It made you feel the limits, and if you are a serious gamer and take what happens to your avatar seriously, Deus Ex will put you through some emotional changes. Lying, cheating, stealing and killing in Deus Ex, takes a toll (or it did on me).

The other game that made me feel something like that was GTA San Andreas. It got really revolting to be the bad guy. It was something -- well I've never had the stomach to watch Clockwork Orange all the way through -- I imagine to being akin to being brainwashed. The rewards for any positive moral behavior in the game are washed out of your system, and it being a sandbox game, you can't even pretend to be motivated by the arc of the story. There was none.

Obviously I see a world of sociological and psychological discussion in the universes that game designers create. And it is that angle that has always struck me as being a blindspot for a lot of the game criticism that gave such high marks to the artistic merits of the BioShock series.

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Bloody Pirates!

A Steampunk Riff

A couple weeks ago I was hanging at Salt Creek with Ted and Tim. Ted asked me if I was going steampunk and I said no, but I should have said yes. The thing is, I'm a Neo-Victorian, a formalist and a stoic, but personally I think a lot of that will get expressed in my evolving style which is somewhat steamy.

I first got a taste of Neo-Victorian ethics from Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age', a decade or so again. I have since reread the book and much of what sounded stunning then made simple sense the next time. My second dousing came from another aesthetic tangent, which was inspired by the assemblage of Tom Sachs. The third pillar of this emerging way came out of my growing attraction for some pop culture, from the original Sherlock Holmes books and then into the two Guy Ritchie films plus a healthy dollop of Downton Abbey with a not inconsequential dose of Stephen Fry's Jeeves & Wooster. Yeah I know it's House but I can't remember his real name. I think the final two nails for me is my growing appreciation for bespoke maker stuff, and finally if not most importantly, the revolution that is for me Dickens' Bleak House. 

What's currently top of mind is filling in the martial education I didn't receive from this society. I would like to have the patience for swords, but carrying is going to be troublesome. So it's going to be short blades and Aikido for the near term, as well as precision rifle. On the daily I am still in the throes of excitement over EDC, and am evolving my kit as appropriate for my gearhead/hacker/maker profession and my Western American sensibilities. I hike. I backpack. I camp. If we'd had game out this way, I'd be a hunter. If we had streams, I'd be a fisherman. As it stands we have ocean, so I'm a body surfer. The bottom line is I'm a regular outdoorsman and that will play into the ultimate style. There's also a heavy streak of intelligence and spycraft in my personality. Cloaks are my style. Obviously I am a writer and coder - so there are my indoor martial skills. 

I think all of this coalesces for me in a kind of Old School Tactical. Finally I have gotten tired of most things carbon fiber and that whole Oakley vibe has soured. I'm more apt to be satisfied with low cost materials and replaceable parts. Except for my iPhone. But a kinetic watch with Zulu straps? Bang on. Repurposed Altoid tins? Yep. Black leather boots? Amen. 

My steampunk idol would be Teddy Roosevelt and although I've not yet read so much of Rudyard Kipling and of adventures in the Raj, I'm expecting some freebooting spirit to be alive in what comes next for me. While I'm currently reading the Aubrey Maturin series as well as my first overview of Kafka (The Castle), there is something about the eras of discovery between those two periods that has my interest. You see in the Age of Sail, most everything made was made bespoke but subject to divine rights. By Kafka's time, the pendulum toward attempting to manufacture everything for the masses and its attendent bureacratic hierarchies had destroyed what was golden. 

This fits for me into the establishment of a new web of trust among the Alternative Slice that will be the foundations of the first post-national collective. The question is how it will manage in a world of sovereign currency. I suppose rather like the black markets. 

Redondo Nike Track Festival - A Great Tradition Begins

(whole cloth)

A special Thank you from Coach Bob Leetch

This past weekend Redondo Union High School played host to one of the finest track meets in the nation. What was one of the largest high school sporting events in the history of the South Bay was also an extremely high calibre meet. We hosted 2,200 athletes from throughout the southland to 3,600 events in the span of two days. EPI Elite marks are a standardized level of excellence used to determine high level track and field marks. They are very hard to obtain. The top performing meet in the country so far had produced 60 EPI Elite marks. Last Friday and Saturday the Redondo Nike Track Festival produce 138 EPI Elite marks! In terms of excellence our meet has quickly jumped to become one of the top 10 invitationals in the United States. Pretty big time stuff.

And this was not produced by a group of paid professionals hired to host a meet like the famous Arcadia Invitational or the Mt. Sac Relays. This was hosted by, set up, built up, broken down, cleaned up, escorted, cooked for, picked up after, announced by and run by us. Parents, coaches, friends, family all of us volunteers somehow connected to this track program. Rich Gonzales, our dear friend, editor of PrepCalTrack.com and Meet Director of the Arcadia Invitational said, "To host this large a meet with that much precision and timeliness was amazing. Hats off to your amazing crew. That is one of the finest meets in the country." 

The size of the meet was impressive. The level of excellence achieved during the meet was astonishing. But the warmth and personal touch from each and every volunteer is what makes this meet special. To hold a high calibre meet with these types of numbers became a vision of mine the moment our school bond to improve our facilities passed. I knew we had the facilities and I also knew we had the type of people that cared about this program and our fine school. But this weekend we exceeded any of my expectations. We ran an amazing meet close to perfection. But it is the friendly, caring manner that every volunteer displays that makes the real difference. Every athlete and coach I spoke with commented on how much fun they were having and how nice they were being treated. Folks, we run a class operation and it shows. One of the best compliments came from the coach at powerhouse Notre Dame High School. He said, "We love this meet. One of the reasons we come here is to show the kids coming out of soccer and football that our sport is Big Time. The Redondo Nike Track Festival makes all our kids feel like stars. After this meet the kids are really fired up. And everyone is so friendly and nice. How do you do it?"

One of the things I determine in a town's 'quality of life,' is it's sense of community. To me this is how involved are we in our own town. Do we try to shop at a local grocery store, buy our morning cup of joe from around the corner. Do we support our little leagues, local charities or even get to know the people who work and live around us? I think all these things that make up a community are very important in our daily lives. This weekend we showed that we have an amazingly strong sense of community that is very active in promoting the lives of so many around us. This was all of us. Everywhere you looked, we were there helping, leading, assisting all with a smile that said, "have fun, run fast, jump far, be strong, I'm here to help." Our kids performed superbly. How could they not, everywhere they turned was a familiar face offering encouragement. One of the real joys of this meet is the look of pride on the faces of our kids when they see a their own parents making a contribution. I see the pride in their eyes and I know it is making an enormous impact on them.

I would like to thank all who helped make the Redondo Nike Track Festival the amazing event it is. Everyone who helped in any way is responsible for our successes.

We could never do this without the substantial financial support from the Nike team, Scott Lash, Vida Rabizedah and Lino Almeida are the key players who have worked behind the scenes for months in the planning stages all the way to helping decorate the track. They are not just our sponsors, they are our friends. Whenever we need a thing this team is first in line to help. Since this meet began I have work closely with Scott and Vida to shape the concept of this unique meet.

Special thanks to Laurie Baker, Melanie and Kevin Sullivan, Leslie Mull, Cathy Herold, Tracy McMartin, Doug Boswell, Wendy and Tony Ulizio, Susan and Kevin Ryan (the voice of Redondo Track & Field), Dave and Mona Dill for taking many of the time consuming lead positions. And my lovely wife Kirsten Leetch for taking the reins and organizing the whole event. They are the real nuts and bolts of our organization. They put in months of work before the first starting gun went off. Thanks to our friends Debbie Brossard, friend of Leslie Mull, who flies out from Scottsdale, Arizona every year to work the lower concessions and my best man Nick Carr and his girlfriend Wendy who fly down from San Francisco every year to help with field management. Those three don't even have any skin in the game!

On behalf of the entire coaching staff, thank you for all your hard work and efforts. Each and every one of you has touched our program and in a simple way made lives a little better and Redondo Beach a finer community.

 

Bob Leetch

Track and Cross Country
Redondo Union HS
1 Seahawk Way
Redondo Beach, CA 90277

Gill/USATF National High School

Coach of the Year

 

Sequestration

It occurs to me that a lot of the sequestered funds (which I haven't paid much attention to) are coming from discretionary spending categories. The double edged sword is that these are most likely to be the sorts of window dressing acronym legislation poofery that are the political equivalent of bread and circuses. Will the American public deal with this well?

Cowboy Up

(catch me in mid rant)

Coates' point:

whitefolks: we feel fear so we want an armed society - therefore our privilege is the asshole's privilege to unconsciously dominate.
blackfolks: we know fear and never have that privilege. 

my point: grr. how long has gangsta rap been praising guns and social domination?

Reference: Korman 

Sideboob: Geras

DeepBackground: Bill Whittle's Grey Tribe

T50: Pinker & Honor Culture

Text:

Coates annoys me because he can't be bothered with his own individuality. Every time he presumes to talk about black society I want smack him upside his peanut head because.. He's a presumptuous dweeb something akin to a ghetto cowboy poet. Cowboy poets are fun to listen to until they start acting like they represent white society, then they become plainly ridiculous. When Coates starts talking like he doesn't have PhDs in sociology, anthropology and political science he'll be a lot less annoying to me, and a lot less interesting to everyone. Except of course, the curious among us - who don't necessarily have to represent racial privilege or it's opposite - as he tends to do all the time. But hey, it's the Atlantic. Good work if you can shit talk your way into it.

I'm on that armed chivalry kick by the way. And my recent trips to the gun stores filled with Coates' experimental subjects, 'whitefolks', never seem to be quite of the same mind as he was projecting last time we were all talking about the Tea Party and redneck social privilege. I see people who consider themselves exceptional among the sheeple trying to represent an America where certain crap just doesn't happen - an armed NIMBY subset of America dragging its heals against the headlong rush towards Idiocracy. 

The recent market phenomenon of shelves bare of ammunition and guns of all sorts is compelling and obvious proof that all of the gun nuts of our traditional fears have never been anything but a minority. But Americans all over the place are having their personal '9/11' moments when they realize things they never thought would happen in their lifetimes are happening with astonishing brazenness. 

For example, it was somewhere around 1992 when I realized that black male and female duets singing love songs simply didn't exist any longer. It's not just no Sammie Davis any longer - the good old days of America are no longer the 50s - they are the 80s. I'll get into that tangent another time. My point is that cities, counties and states are going broke, and this unemployment rate is the new normal. The president who promised unity created polarization. Somebody has to stand up in front of Congress and beg the CIA not to assemble Skynet over America. And just about the only thing you cannot do in the media is call a 9 year old a cunt. Other than that, anything goes. We have met the enemy and it is us. We're not going out like that.

I happen to be one of the ones that doesn't see anything particularly special about ghetto society. My theory is now conformed with Steven Pinker who notes that where the law's norms are rejected - people get accustomed to fighting for personal honor. Tell me which Congressman's honor you would fight for? Exactly. The zombies are everywhere, and it's just a countdown to the apocalypse. Meanwhile captains of the chatting class at the Atlantic keep telling us our mainstream culture is perpetrating a racial fraud on the genuine ethnic street cultures of the Americas - people who don't make the law. So which way does that point? Chivalry, and feudalism as opposed to modernism and patriotism. 

I've got my sword and buckler, you sons of unmarried whores. Maybe I don't represent America. Maybe I don't have any rights worth defending. Maybe everything out of my mouth is racist. But you're going to have to take it from me. Does that make me part of the asshole white society? Nah. It's just me. Cowboy poet.

20 Reasons Why The New Pope Cannot Be Acceptable to Americans

It's all about the nature of the election. It's just not American.

• No billions spent on negative advertising for months on end
• No special interest groups claiming voter fraud
• No bogus debates full of stupid questions.
• No radio talkshow hosts trashing the opposition.
• No music videos, catchy slogans and balloons.
• No social media asking what *you* think.
• No pictures of the candidate with wife and kids.
• No billboard signs with the candidate's name in bold italic fonts.
• No promise to bring home the troops or to send more troops.
• No promise to spend more money or to spend less money.
• No superficial differences exaggerated for effect.
• No interview with Oprah, David Letterman or Jay Leno
• No ghostwritten autobiography.
• No bashing of the prior president.
• No promise to fight against China.
• No promise to fix Detroit once and for all.
• No promise of jobs for any class.
• No weasel words on abortion, death penalty, immigration, or gun control. 
• No complaining about how stupid, fat, bullying & oversexed American high schoolers are.
• No jetting from coast to coast to collect money while telling corny jokes to rich people.

 All that and the decision took less than 15 days. How could any American possibly support the Pope? The Vatican clearly doesn't know a thing about what we expect from leaders. Send Jimmy Carter to examine this process!

 

The Scientific Catholic Church

I found this interesting comparison between Catholics & Protestants on Quora:

Although blessed with diversity, Christian belief generally has some primary, fundamental doctrines that create a backbone from which virtually all other denominations and branches must adhere. Regarding Catholic and Protestant points of departure, I would suggest the following:Catholics tend to believe:

1. The power and primacy of the pope
2. Emphasis on Mary the mother of Jesus
3. Employment and acknowledgment of specific saints
4. Confession of sins to an earthly emissary
5. Increased regard for ritual and human works/effort in attaining salvation

Certainly there are more, but if I had to contain it to five (which I will also do below) it would be those. As for Protestants, I would go back to Martin Luther's language in elucidating the differences: Protestants tend to believe:

1. Sola Scriptura: The Bible is the only authority for Christian belief.
2. Sola Gratia: Grace can only be given by God and is the only way to salvation, not works or personal merit.
3. Sola Fide: Salvation comes through an individual's faith or relationship with Jesus Christ, not through sacraments.
4. Solo Christo: Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man, and only through Christ comes salvation.
5. Soli Deo gloria: Glory and honor goes only to God; no human—however sainted, canonized, or humanly honored—deserves to be religiously praised.

My reading of this gives me an immediate reaction. If you are in any way agnostic, or even atheist, you would have to admit that the Catholic faith is a great deal more practical than the Protestant faith. IE if God actually doesn't exist, or if man isn't inherently able to understand the nature and will of God, then the Catholic church is the one to go to.

In short, if you were a scientist and were to build an institution aimed at determining the mind and will of God, you would build it much more like the Catholic Church than you would the Protestant Church. 

By the way, I never get tired of repeating the fact that I was taught both Biology and Computer Science by men wearing the collar. 

Fate

Secrets of the Bowen Library

I spent some time with Pops yesterday and dared for the first time ever in my adult life to peer into his notebook entitled Nationhood. I was appropriately astonished. 

There is no secret about the fact that I grew up as a Black Nationalist. I think most Cobb readers are aware that I was present at the invention of Kwanzaa and participated in the very first celebrations, some of which were done at my family's house in Los Angeles. I have characterized my father as a scholarly flavor of cultural Nationalist. But I have always noted his unwillingness to talk about those days other than the broad descriptions of the fact that we were preparing to abandon the US back around 1968 and that the FBI had tapped our phone. Robert Bowen founded the Institute for Black Studies and the Redwood Theater Group. Both entities had offices on West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles for a time. I've spoken of this from time to time. As well I have mentioned that I spoke French and Swahili at home as a child and that my father was in touch with many Movement individuals. 

The few pages I read in the Nationhood binder were full of names to whom Mr. Bowen sent letters. These were the names of men and women of significance in the US public affairs. We spoke about this obliquely. I read the names listed on two pages of the binder out loud and listened to his grunting reactions. We children all know our father's grunts, do we not? The correspondance between my father and these individuals was a striking revelation. I do not know the extent to which those letters exist or their original content. There are a few notable individuals with whom I am certain a lengthy correspondance did take place. For example, I do know you can find one at the King Center's online archive. One thing I can say for certain is that there can be little doubt of my father's attitude towards the fate of black Americans in this country, and his saying out loud was certainly heard. He was a radical in no uncertain terms. If I ever doubted that the FBI had been following us, reading a few pages in Nationhood cleared that right up. I am now obligated to find out how much. 

What is only mildly interesting is that my father never taught or expected any of us to hate or dislike whitefolks, so much as to take pride in our own accomplishments. But what is fascinating to me now is the relief into which it puts his life and its influence on my own. Here is a man who has the equivalent of Nazi war medals in his closet, and he must live life in the world which has defeated Nazism. Every thinking man faces the exuberence of his own youth, but he has had to mentally re-integrate himself into the society from which he had exiled himself, and us. Talk about reversal of fortune. He is a man of bold sophistication who has had to turn it all into an appreciation for the simple pleasures of life. I can only see it in the parallels of the lives of ex-Nazi war criminals and fathers of the nuclear age - men in their 70s genuinely interested in talking about everything but the past whose details are the object of our fascination. Here is Edward Teller sipping tea in the garden speaking about what a lovely day it is. Here is my father sitting in his library of Black Nationalist secrets complaining about how fat his dog has become. 

To know anything about Pops today is to know his absolute devotion to the operation of the woman's shelter downtown where he never fails to volunteer, and to doting over us and his 10 grandchildren. His intriguing relationship with his Episcopalian faith, his dogs, his photography, his disgust for Wynton Marsalis and Satchmo, his love for jazz, the city and architecture and his irredeemable puns and goofy alliterations. His inability to keep any public prayer short, his Obama trance (which the two of us have learned to keep out of our conversations).  All of these which make him interesting in the present lie in sharp contrast to the man he used to be.

Pops has over the past 3 years, come into what is now clearly a very comfortable grasp on his mortality. He is slowing down ever so slightly and much more open to talking about his end times, his satisfaction with his time on the planet. Today however, it is clear that his intentions with the Library are to leave them with the family.

I mentioned to him the fact that our old friend Dr. Ligon was singly unable to place his collection anywhere. As far as I know, the proprietor of California's first black bookstore, has a legacy in cardboard boxes that survived the LA Riots that burned down his place of business, but only just. Pops has insisted that the Getty have no parts of his photography and so I have taken the past 12 hours to transfer about 20% of his digital collection into my possession. What is to become of the rest of the Library? Well, we have a very solid connection to the African American Studies Department at Brown. So perhaps I may convince him at length to hand it over to them. Otherwise the secrets will remain in the family as is his current desire. 

My father does not have any hunger, nor in fact is he properly constituted with the ego required for the spotlight his past would shine on him. And I cannot think but that I might exaggerate the importance of his writing and correspondance. He wasn't an attorney, nor a politician. He was in fact a genuine thoughtful man for others, a man of the people - a people whose best interests he believed lied only in their total independence from the United States. And when that possibility was aborted, he immediately turned to the cause of public health and became instrumental in the establishment of MLK Hospital in Watts, a legacy now more brilliant in intent than in realization. 

I think .. no, I know that my father's legacy will be best illuminated through his photography. Some of it should be here at Wellington House. More will be soon. 

Rand Paul Is No Hero

Rand Paul did nothing more than pull an interesting parliamentary trick to give air to an issue of substance. That may be clever, but it is not heoric. And even if he loses his job because of it, it is not heroic. If Rand Paul had anything interesting to say, then the people would be reading it.

But the people *are* reading it and it is their own words. What Rand Paul should have done, and what any Congressman might do, is to filibuster things that the American people do not know already. 

I dare you. 

EDC

I have fallen for a new kind of weird sense of materalism. I cannot tell you how many hours I have tried to make an arrangement that matches the beauty shots at everyday-carry.com but this is about as close as I can get.

This is more than I put in my pockets, but less than I actually leave the house with if I'm going to be gone all day, and certainly a lot less than I pack if I'm taking the computer bag. It is a good representation of some of my absolute favorite material possessions, not including my new eyeglasses. 

Starting at the top left, about 10 o'clock:

• Seiko SKX007
• Hamilton Khaki Field Quartz Chrono
• CRKT M16 13Z
• Fenix LD12
• Paracord Key Ring w/ Flint
• PNY 8GB USB Key
• Xicar Element
• iPhone 4S + Otter Box
• Mophie Juicebox Pro
• Apple EarBuds
• Plantronics Voyager Pro
• Leatherman Juice CS4
• Johnston & Murphy Snap Billfold
• Tungsten Steel Wedding Band
• Tombow Object
• Fisher Bullet Pen
• Pentalic Traveler Sketchbook

 

 

Extreme Death: The Making Of...

I'm not a cynic, I'm a skeptic. Ever since 9-11 I wake up every morning an ask, what blew up while I was asleep. It's not because of any poison nature I have; in fact I have a song in my head every morning when I wake up. If nothing blows up, I can generally remember what that song is. Something blew up today, but yesterday's song was the ILGWU "Look for the Union Label" song. Hand to God.

However when I moved to NYC in 1991, I was fairly accomplished as a road cyclist. The roads in New York suck. So I was forced to ride in Prospect and Central Parks, which at the time were choked to the gills with that human offal known as rollerbladers. We have since gotten rid of them much to our credit, but while they were still a scourge and a blight on civilization I took immense pleasure in watching their blooper videos. 

This is now a skeptical sport amongst most of us. America's Funniest Home Videos has been replaced by YouTube in delivering this lovely dish of schadenfruede. We can watch skaters, boarders, skier, moto jockeys and four wheeling Darwin Awards candidates all damned day. Add to that video from Russian dashboard cams and it's 24/7 slapstick. Who could ask for more?

We could, so we did. And the agency of deliverance is Red Bull.

My wife is trying to cure my addition to Red Bull, and for the moment that means she is fixing me tea in the morning instead of chilling my cans. I must say, Constant Comment is the bomb and I've always loved it. So perhaps this Formula 1 season I might even get over Seb Vettel and all things Red Bull. Nah. But still, I think I am getting my fill of extreme stunts filmed in HD with those ubiquitous GoPro cameras.

It (cynically) occurs to me that the best thing about being a cameraman is that you actually do get to see the extreme sports dudes kill themselves. And since they have adrenaline addictions you will get plenty opportunities to see them try and fail over and over again. You understand that my theory about this phenomenon is that only upper middle class Westerners go in for this sort of mania. People from the ghetto don't go looking for death defying sport, they rather wait until it's intimate and then they invite it in the front door. It's funny now that I think about it, I can remember Chris Brown's name, but not the name of the chick he beat up. Either way, the point stands. Young people who are light in the brains department seek to find ways to cheat death by inches at high speed. Some by making friends with hoodlums and its barbarian culture, others by making friends with cameramen who are willing to film them as they jump off cliffs. Thrillsville, dude!

There is nothing quite so painful as watching some scruffy mook attempt and attempt and attempt a reverse transfer 540 double air against some snow covered wall in Helsinki. But this is what YouTube brings our boredom. And to put yourself (because there is plenty of room) inside the head of such a mook is to realize that ulitmately they are going to pull off the trick or die trying. I believe the philsophy goes something like this:

"I am not afraid to die, I am afraid not to live."

Where 'life' in this case is not the responsibility to one's fellow man, but proving oneself to be a singularly fearless daredevil. It sounds rather excitingly brave and admirable until you consider the question of wheter or not they'd continue such feats without cameras and rock & roll soundtracks. C'mon. You know none of these mooks are fugly. 

Since I have disengaged from the public square, I won't bother to reiterate my old interest in seeing them be good cannon fodder in some nationalist enterprise. I don't suppose I care quite enough. In fact, I am rather feeling good to think that we have so very many such mooks and that their audience is so large. In terms of survival and running from the bear, I console myself with the very existence of such surplus population. Now *that* is being cynical. 

But then why do we watch? 

Libertarianism Is OK

(some rant from somewhere)

Libertarianism may have failed your African Americans, or your vision of them, but it serves me just fine.

The significance of the death of Aaron Schwartz will ring hollow in 'the black community' because there aren't very many black Americans who are employed in the highly entrepreneurial software industry. But for those of us who are, we recognize how much of the progress of this industry - in fact the entirety of Apple's new fortunes exist in spite of government's failure to understand the basic principles enabled by the emergence of new business models. Copyright is a regime solely enforced by a hidebound set of laws which protect sluggish old industries. And yet through Creative Commons, GPL and even no rules, publishing with 'legal' proper attribution, the software industry has grown tremendously with a minimum of friction. But the death of Aaron Schwartz reminds us that zealous political enforcement of old, terrible laws is just a matter of business as usual for government bureaucrats.

Like war, the Civil Rights Movement and those various legislations enacted because of them, tends with the passage of time to take credit for all of the changes in society. And it is generally accepted by everyone on the Left and Right that the Civil Rights Acts of the 60s are wholly responsible for black American economic progress and the destruction of the Jim Crow south. And yet even as we look to black history for stories of inspiration or even to our own family history, we know that greatness has been achieved without the benefit of weak or strong state government. I think too many people are losing a grip on the understanding of what makes people free - it is their own willingness and ability to fight and adapt to change, not their ability to find the proper spot some legal regime creates for them. Many critics of the Speilberg's Lincoln made loud points about 'black agency', that thing that must give credit to many who invent rather than the few who speechify and pass laws.

Most people never consider it, but the highest per capita black American income is found in the state of New Hampshire. New Hampshire has always been a Republican state. My grandparents were the beneficiaries of no particular Civil Rights legislation. By the time those acts were passed, their children had already grown up and left home. They did not live in the Jim Crow South but in New England. My great grandparents knew their fortunes were better served and left North Carolina before the turn of the century. Whenever I am told about the depredations of the Jim Crow South, the Southern Strategy and any of that old news, especially when it involves Barry Goldwater I ask myself the following simple question. If the Jim Crow South was so bad, why didn't black people just leave? We all know the irony of Juneteenth, but did it really take 100 years after the end of the Civil War for black Americans to be free? Yes, if they sat around in Mississippi waiting for a government solution to exercising their Civil Rights it took 100 years. So it comes as no surprise that men like Tiger Woods grew up in a state like California, where no chattel slavery ever existed, or that the first black President of the USA did not grow up in the South. And of course Goldwater's own state of Arizona, like Goldwater takes false blame for racism. Nobody has ever been lynched in Arizona.

My point is simple. You can't have it both ways. You can't call black America itself a nation of millions AND a 'black community'. And guess what, there have been, since 1960 17 million new black Americans added. That's millions and millions and millions of people who don't stay put.

At some point you have to realize that if only 5% of black Americans are happy with Libertarianism, that's 1.85 million people. So I want you to understand that number in a way you never forget. That's 9 times as many people as were on the Mall when MLK did his most famous speech. If 1.85 million black people walked by you and told you you don't know what the hell you're talking about 8 hours a day it would take you more than 6 months to hear them for 3 seconds each. Chances are, however, they would each have as much to say as I do which means you'll grow a beard.

I don't even know anybody from Mississippi.

Bloody Pirates!

Well I just finished Assassin's Creed III and it was fairly enjoyable for a time. And then I killed the last dude but it didn't let me do anything more. Evidently, the whole running around in the present day cave thing had something to do with it. I have to say that the tag team between the ghost women was probably the worst thing I have ever seen in the series. I played the whole putting the power cube into place and watching the cut scene thing on mute and listened the the beginning of my new Alastair Reynolds book. I put in the last block watched one more cutscene and then the whole thing ended. If I never hear another Assassins vs Templars conspiracy theory it will be too soon. Drop that whole thing. 

Here's my suggestion. Let's say that the Animus technology after the murder of whomever it was we killed, fell into the hands of some Anonymous hackers who then open sourced the code and now 3D printed several Animii. Now anybody can go back in time to any period of history filled with bloody violence and intrigue and step into character. Here's the thing, there was no time in this story where that whole premise of synching memories gave me more life bar or anything that I noticed. It was more all about crafting (2/3rds of which I never got around to) and buying better weapons. So really this whole freaking episode was horribly imbalanced as an RPG with levels. What it reminded me of more than anything else was Red Dead Redemption, which was bloody great. AC3 was great because the story was great, the animation was great and the main mission was great.

The fight engine is better than ever - better than Batman, better than in any other RPG even though Bethesda gets awesome props for their taking turn based fighting to the next level. The sea battles were groundbreaking AND awesome. Nobody has anything like it and I want more. The Assassin missions were very good, and the capturing sections of the cities was even more well done than in the previous editions. Climbing up steeples and trees to synch is getting pretty tired, but having oceans, remote islands, cities and wilderness - absolutely spot on. All the other modern day hokum is filler with one exception. Jumping around skyscrapers really does give me the shakes. You feel the fear of heights in AC3's skyscraper piece. I will say this, however. The only thing that could improve Assassins Creed's fighting system would be to add some cover and/or stealth features. That aspect of gameplay just seemed too much out of the control of the character. Give the Assassin a third of Sam Fisher's stealth tricks and you will have filled the fight engine thingy to perfection. 

So drop the hooey and give us more historical shitstorms to drop into and alter with our badassery. And what could be better for that than piracy? Oh perfect. And it just so happens that I watched Treasure Island with Eddie Izzard, and it's probably the best pirate film ever - a great story done in two 90 minute segments. Everything else seems cheesy by comparison - kind of like what Saving Private Ryan did to WW2 movies. It borders on the imagination's rendering of the pirate adventures of Half Cocked Jack Shaftoe in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Series. (Which means Assassin's Creed 5 has to be Mongols and horse, sword & bow battle).  

Watching the preview video today gets me all ready for this. Some maroon at Forbes wants more Animus, but I say it's time to shitcan all the backgroundery and get straight to the intrique of the simulated world. All of that was necessary to setup the universe but the reach of the Templars and Assassins grows more tenuous and unbelievable in each further episoode. OK I think I've made my point. Blackbeard? Great. There's got to be ships of the Line of Battle involved and all that. So I know if any of you Ubi guys are reading this, you're going to want to read David Davies. 

And while I'm at it. let me suggest that you could probably spin off at least one more Master and Commander kind of game. Hey wait, there's a series isn't there? Hmm. I'm now newly  all into naval battles and there must be a huge amount of history to mine. Multiplayer naval battles? That's got to be pretty cool, and replication of wind patterns and all that in recreations of battles? Awesome. I will have to say that having your ship's crew cheer when all of the enemy is sunk is a new kind of exhilaration in video games. I have never played AC multiplayer but something on this nature.. I'd like that very much.

Anyway. Three cheers for Pirates!

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