A luddite I am not: I do not go around smashing technology because I am wedded to things as they are. In fact, I think I've been very welcoming of most of our advances.
I owned a PC in the 1980s when they first became generally available (don't even ask what I paid for it. Hint: I had to take a loan and pay it off over time and I used WordStar and Xywrite word processing programs). I've even done fairly well learning to use the television remote, which looks like it could launch a space shuttle and has buttons so small you need a magnifiying glass to read them. The VCR programmer was another matter, but the less said about that the better.
What I want to talk about is my new cell phone.
All I really want in a cell phone is basic stuff, like store a number, dial it, answer a ring, let me know if there's a message, and shut on and off in a reasonable manner. I started ther service when I was widowed and wanted to be able to call AAA if I got a flat. My first phone, which I kept for many, many moons was just that. I learned the features as I needed them and I was happy as a clam until I forgot the thing in Starbucks outside Flagstaff and no one turned it in. It must have been someone less savvy than I because who else would bother with something so ancient?
Well, there I was in Arizona, six hundred miles from home and no phone. I didn't feel like driving home on long, empty roads without one and I didn't like the idea of waiting outside the restroom in some rest stop pleading with someone to make a call for me. Something clearly had to be done. I headed into the local Radio Shack. That's where I encountered a glittering world of the modern cell phone. It was culture shock.
When I was a child, I used to watch the weekly serials down at the local cinema. Kid's matinee it was called. One favorite was Flash Gordon, sort of a space cowboy who went from planet to planet and was always in some dire strait or another. The new cell phones were worthy of him.
"Do you want internet access?" the clerk asked me. He had this sort of doubtful look on his face as if he didn't believe at my age I knew the difference between ROM and RAM. Since those phones made my TV remote look deprived and required monthly IP access charges, I shook my head. He looked at me with pity.
"I have internet access on my home PC," I said with stiff dignity. "I use Skype long distance calling through my laptop. I just need a basic phone."
"Games and built-in camera? Choice of ring tones?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well," he said, "they come basic with all phones so it's a matter of quality and choice."
"Won't need them," I said.
"Blue tooth?" He asked. I had to think. I remembered that my grandson had a blue tooth on his game set. "I prefer to use a headset in the car," I replied. He looked at me sadly. His eyes said it all.
"Well," he said, "here's our most basic phone." I looked at the gleaming monster he handed me. It sat in the palm of my hand and cost almost $200. I looked at the others. This was indeed the cheapest as they were costing upwards of $500 amd looked like little tvs. He saw me looking at them and took one down. He turned it one way and it was a phone; when he turned it around he could type text onto the screen. He did it quickly using his thumbs. With my arthritic thumbs, it would take me hours to tap anything in.
"Cute," I said. That must not have been the right thing to say. "These are mini computers," he corrected me. "You can watch movies on them." I smiled sheepishly, not able to imagine watching something that small for hours. I would see double at the end.
I finally left with my "basic" call phone. It came "free" with renewing my two-year commitment to T-Mobile, which I would have done anyway since the service works for me. He had to show me how to open the darned thing (it slides instead of flips). I have used the camera once, just to see how it worked and promptly forgot how to do it except when I get into it by mistake--then it's tricky to get out of it. After several weeks I've managed to figure out how to set speed dial and how to change the ring tones. I can get my messages and finally set my PIN. It works. That's all I asked.
But, just to remind me whom these phones are meant for: my grandson grabbed the phone when he saw it, played everyone of the games on it, told me that it would connect to the internet if I ever wanted it, and asked why I wasn't downloading the cool tunes for sale as ring tones. When I explained I wouldn't be doing all that, he looked at me with the same pitying eyes as the Radio Shack clerk.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The Time Before Elections
The few weeks leading up to an election have to be one of the most depressing times around. Those who are all right in their corners--thank you very much, Jack--are worked into fever pitch that something they believe is their "right" (no matter whether it is an entitlement from the government) will be taken from them, and those who are not all right in their corner--why isn't the government doing something for me?--all seem to get worked up into a froth of self-interest and hypocrisy wrapped in the mantle of some ill understood ideology that sounds good because it confirms personal prejudices.
I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored. What I find personally offensive is not the naked self-interest--goes with the territory of being human, I suppose--but the delusional attempts to turn selfishness into something rational (even admirable) by finding some expedient jusitification for it (thank you Ayn Rand and your book on the virtue of selfishness).
For someone who has been reading Aristotle, Plato, and Karl Marx lately(and they're amazing congruent, at least in my viewpoint, which I'll explain later), this whole season is one of the ugliest times around because it exposes much more of my fellow citizens than I really want to know.
To recap a bit: Aristotle said quite objectively that there is a natural conflict between the rich and the poor in a democracy--it's a power struggle as he saw it, the rich wielding money and the poor countering with numbers. The only way to maintain a democracy, he said, was through balance and trust: if you favor the rich, you get revolution; if you favor the poor you get economic reprisals because the rich hoard their money (in our version, banks refuse to give loans). It seems both sides need to be somewhat unhappy for the enterprise to function.
I think the wealthy are more aware of this process than the average citizen but everyone these days seems out for themselves and most political thinkers have historically recognized this.
Plato, for example, decided that balance is all very well but that the poor and undeucated really couldn't be trusted to rule themselves because they are just too--well--poor and uneducated. What was needed was a ruling class of people bred and trained to govern. In other words, he tipped his hat toward the rich and the noble (who else got educated?). Unfortunately, our rich today tend to become civic minded only after they have accumulated more money than God can count. On the way up they are anything but noble. Someone once said that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. That may be a bit too glib for my taste, but it does seem that on the way up they tend to think of the poor as inconvenient in expecting what they consider hand-outs, except, of course, when the poor are useful in some economic way.
Now, Marx went the other way. He agreed with Aristotle that there is inevitable conflict, but he came down on the side of the poor, except he clouded the issue by insisting on calling them the workers and focusing on the means of production to the point that his ideas underpinned an unworkable and destructive system that left out the rich entirely (the only way to wealth was through political corruption), hence destroying Aristotle's thought from the other direction. Jesus Christ, incidentally, falls into this category although he never ventured into economics directly except to castigate the rich and the priests (also rich) for oppressing the poor--see what his thoughts are being used to justify these days: things like using personal wealth as a sign of personal virtue (a good Puritan belief that God rewards those He loves with material benefits). In a fit of his own despondency, Christ once blasted a fig tree because it had no fruit--a metaphor for the rich denying food to the poor; I doubt cutting off unemployment benefits and denying medical care would have appealed much to him either.
I guess the depression I feel is at the gross lack of self-understanding I see around me and, worse, the actual celebration of willful ignorance and disregarding the procession of our past. Our political elections seem designed only to fan the flames of the very qualities that make us less than we can be.
Very few among us even acknowledge the concept of balance as a political goal--I give Obama credit for being one of those few. He's been steering a careful course, trying to restore that balance. But look what he's getting for it. This country has gone overboard for the rich in the past administration, basing such things as tax cuts on the political premise that if the wealthy retain their money and spend, the economy will lift all ships. Well, it hasn't. All it did was unleash the greed and self-interest that Aristotle said it would.
I will vote for any candidate who talks seriously about Balance (and not just of the federal budget, which will inevitably cut programs that serve the poor). But my fears are real and I don't see much beyond mere reacting replacing careful thought. All I know is that if the political pundits are right and we return to the unbalanced emphasis on wealth that set us on our current path, I see trouble ahead.
I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored. What I find personally offensive is not the naked self-interest--goes with the territory of being human, I suppose--but the delusional attempts to turn selfishness into something rational (even admirable) by finding some expedient jusitification for it (thank you Ayn Rand and your book on the virtue of selfishness).
For someone who has been reading Aristotle, Plato, and Karl Marx lately(and they're amazing congruent, at least in my viewpoint, which I'll explain later), this whole season is one of the ugliest times around because it exposes much more of my fellow citizens than I really want to know.
To recap a bit: Aristotle said quite objectively that there is a natural conflict between the rich and the poor in a democracy--it's a power struggle as he saw it, the rich wielding money and the poor countering with numbers. The only way to maintain a democracy, he said, was through balance and trust: if you favor the rich, you get revolution; if you favor the poor you get economic reprisals because the rich hoard their money (in our version, banks refuse to give loans). It seems both sides need to be somewhat unhappy for the enterprise to function.
I think the wealthy are more aware of this process than the average citizen but everyone these days seems out for themselves and most political thinkers have historically recognized this.
Plato, for example, decided that balance is all very well but that the poor and undeucated really couldn't be trusted to rule themselves because they are just too--well--poor and uneducated. What was needed was a ruling class of people bred and trained to govern. In other words, he tipped his hat toward the rich and the noble (who else got educated?). Unfortunately, our rich today tend to become civic minded only after they have accumulated more money than God can count. On the way up they are anything but noble. Someone once said that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. That may be a bit too glib for my taste, but it does seem that on the way up they tend to think of the poor as inconvenient in expecting what they consider hand-outs, except, of course, when the poor are useful in some economic way.
Now, Marx went the other way. He agreed with Aristotle that there is inevitable conflict, but he came down on the side of the poor, except he clouded the issue by insisting on calling them the workers and focusing on the means of production to the point that his ideas underpinned an unworkable and destructive system that left out the rich entirely (the only way to wealth was through political corruption), hence destroying Aristotle's thought from the other direction. Jesus Christ, incidentally, falls into this category although he never ventured into economics directly except to castigate the rich and the priests (also rich) for oppressing the poor--see what his thoughts are being used to justify these days: things like using personal wealth as a sign of personal virtue (a good Puritan belief that God rewards those He loves with material benefits). In a fit of his own despondency, Christ once blasted a fig tree because it had no fruit--a metaphor for the rich denying food to the poor; I doubt cutting off unemployment benefits and denying medical care would have appealed much to him either.
I guess the depression I feel is at the gross lack of self-understanding I see around me and, worse, the actual celebration of willful ignorance and disregarding the procession of our past. Our political elections seem designed only to fan the flames of the very qualities that make us less than we can be.
Very few among us even acknowledge the concept of balance as a political goal--I give Obama credit for being one of those few. He's been steering a careful course, trying to restore that balance. But look what he's getting for it. This country has gone overboard for the rich in the past administration, basing such things as tax cuts on the political premise that if the wealthy retain their money and spend, the economy will lift all ships. Well, it hasn't. All it did was unleash the greed and self-interest that Aristotle said it would.
I will vote for any candidate who talks seriously about Balance (and not just of the federal budget, which will inevitably cut programs that serve the poor). But my fears are real and I don't see much beyond mere reacting replacing careful thought. All I know is that if the political pundits are right and we return to the unbalanced emphasis on wealth that set us on our current path, I see trouble ahead.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Senior Season at Yellowstone
There's nothing like the national parks when it comes to bringing out stupidity. I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe it's just excitement that breeds obliviousness, but it seems seeing a bison or an elk reduces otherwise normal people to quivering bowls of jelly.
We're just back from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks where we encountered all the best that humanity has to offer. It seems, unbeknownst to us that there is a phenomenon called the "senior season." I guess it must be all those seniors (like us) who figure the regular summer season with kids--make that noisy kids who can never walk anywhere--ends with Labor Day thus ushering in a period with fewer cars and available hotel rooms.
Whatever the reasoning, the period between Labor Day and the closing of the park (starts shutting down the end of September to end of October) is now one of the hot times to visit. We couldn't reserve any rooms in the park lodges even a month in advance and paid $140 a night for a Super8 room in Jackson. The Visitor's Bureau told us we were lucky to have found a room at all.
Yellowstone it appears is as popular as the Grand Canyon as a destination, judging by all the tour buses disgorging their Asian visitors and by the two rows of seating packed with spectators that circled around Old Faithful, which faithfully erupted on time. We stayed at West Yellowstone, which is actually fun as far as tourist towns go. All the animals we saw (bison and elk) were along the park road leading to the town, and the bison indeed did walk down the middle of the road. Herein lies some of the stupidity we saw.
For those who care for details, bison (American buffalo) weigh around 500 pounds. They don't see very well and are inclined to lumber along rolling their eyes and looking unimpressed. Each year, one hundred large animals get hit by cars and cause $150,000 in damage, presumably to vehicles. We were stopped on the road to let three rather large bulls walk down between the rows of cars when the very small car in front of us pops the sun roof just as one passes and a woman suddenly pokes her head out to start taking pictures. It startled me so I can't imagine it pleased the bison. The one next to her car started and then veeered away. Good thing it wasn't in a mood to be cranky as the animal was as large as the car and its head was pretty much on a level with hers. Only thing more silly were the occupants of cars up ahead who were running back down the road and trying to get beside the animals for more pictures.
The presence of animals did really strange things to people. Cars stopped in the middle of the road while the occupants got out. Other cars parked under signs that said do not park alongside the road. I saw one SUV parked across three handicapped parking spaces. Maybe you can't get a ticket if you don't park properly?
But it wasn't just animals. The geyser fields were another source of mischief. Apparently, there were those who didn't believe the warnings about unstable ground that can give way into scalding underground cauldrons. One fellow actually lay on his stomach on a slippery boardwalk because he wanted to dip his hand into runoff water to see if it was hot. Since the signs said the water in some locations could range from 160 to 280 degrees, one can only wonder about him. I suspect this is where the Darwin Awards might have originated.
Then there were the drivers--and not just of the trucks and RVs. I discovered in Old Faithful Lodge that power wheelchairs be a powerful extension of personal aggression just like the large trucks, invariably driven by older men possibly trying to recover lost youth and power by driving 25 in a 45 mile zone and refusing to use pullouts.
Ah humanity! Was it worth it? Of course. The national parks always are. But with visits to Yellowstone now at an annual rate of nearly 600,000 a year and all the others equally being loved to death, I would have to think hard about going back. On the other hand--I'd really like to see Yosemite.
We're just back from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks where we encountered all the best that humanity has to offer. It seems, unbeknownst to us that there is a phenomenon called the "senior season." I guess it must be all those seniors (like us) who figure the regular summer season with kids--make that noisy kids who can never walk anywhere--ends with Labor Day thus ushering in a period with fewer cars and available hotel rooms.
Whatever the reasoning, the period between Labor Day and the closing of the park (starts shutting down the end of September to end of October) is now one of the hot times to visit. We couldn't reserve any rooms in the park lodges even a month in advance and paid $140 a night for a Super8 room in Jackson. The Visitor's Bureau told us we were lucky to have found a room at all.
Yellowstone it appears is as popular as the Grand Canyon as a destination, judging by all the tour buses disgorging their Asian visitors and by the two rows of seating packed with spectators that circled around Old Faithful, which faithfully erupted on time. We stayed at West Yellowstone, which is actually fun as far as tourist towns go. All the animals we saw (bison and elk) were along the park road leading to the town, and the bison indeed did walk down the middle of the road. Herein lies some of the stupidity we saw.
For those who care for details, bison (American buffalo) weigh around 500 pounds. They don't see very well and are inclined to lumber along rolling their eyes and looking unimpressed. Each year, one hundred large animals get hit by cars and cause $150,000 in damage, presumably to vehicles. We were stopped on the road to let three rather large bulls walk down between the rows of cars when the very small car in front of us pops the sun roof just as one passes and a woman suddenly pokes her head out to start taking pictures. It startled me so I can't imagine it pleased the bison. The one next to her car started and then veeered away. Good thing it wasn't in a mood to be cranky as the animal was as large as the car and its head was pretty much on a level with hers. Only thing more silly were the occupants of cars up ahead who were running back down the road and trying to get beside the animals for more pictures.
The presence of animals did really strange things to people. Cars stopped in the middle of the road while the occupants got out. Other cars parked under signs that said do not park alongside the road. I saw one SUV parked across three handicapped parking spaces. Maybe you can't get a ticket if you don't park properly?
But it wasn't just animals. The geyser fields were another source of mischief. Apparently, there were those who didn't believe the warnings about unstable ground that can give way into scalding underground cauldrons. One fellow actually lay on his stomach on a slippery boardwalk because he wanted to dip his hand into runoff water to see if it was hot. Since the signs said the water in some locations could range from 160 to 280 degrees, one can only wonder about him. I suspect this is where the Darwin Awards might have originated.
Then there were the drivers--and not just of the trucks and RVs. I discovered in Old Faithful Lodge that power wheelchairs be a powerful extension of personal aggression just like the large trucks, invariably driven by older men possibly trying to recover lost youth and power by driving 25 in a 45 mile zone and refusing to use pullouts.
Ah humanity! Was it worth it? Of course. The national parks always are. But with visits to Yellowstone now at an annual rate of nearly 600,000 a year and all the others equally being loved to death, I would have to think hard about going back. On the other hand--I'd really like to see Yosemite.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Guest commentary: Stephen Hawking, Religion, and the Bus
I am delighted to include a guest commentary--a welcome relief, I'm sure, to readers of my blogging. Ken is British, a WWII vet, former nuclear engineer, and wise observer and commentator--certainly someone deserving of being called cool-old-tech. Comments are welcome and can be attached below or sent to Ken via me at kepad123@aol.com. Diana
I spend much of my time these days trawling the Internet for items that interest me.
Today I read on several web sites that Stephen Hawking has dropped his latest bomb. He has declared that God had no part in the creation of the universe. Some statement eh? and one that is likely to cause more than the occasion murmur within the walls of The Vatican, as well as in a few other places. Of course this was no great surprise to me because I came to this conclusion many moons ago, and I was not a Cambridge scholar.
The statement has such profound and far reaching significance that it totally upsets the apple cart onto the very basis of religion, to such an extent as identifying all brands of religion as being baseless and by doing so puts at risk the employment of all those in the religious community or should I say industry?
Just think, can we now expect to see Rome and the C of E having closing down sales? Expiry of lease? I wonder: Will Hawking now be asked to return the medal he was recently awarded by Obama ? and will Israel now have to change its tune as will Mecca? and will the US mint have to go into overtime to strike new coins? – Should generate some interesting times .
I was writing to a long-standing friend the other day and was pleasantly surprised to receive a very chatty reply in which he touched on our similar ages and the very cynical attitude he has to religion. In fact we seem to have identical views as atheists /agnostics etc., altho in my case I said that I leave the door open just a crack in the unlikely case of someone offering a reasonable argument against. The crack was merely an extension of my caution as a life long engineer to avoid burning ones bridges and regretting it later.
He and the few remaining colleagues that have have at least one thing in common with me. We all have little or no time for the current way of life. It has been usurped by the kids and they have neither the inclination or experience to run it, so we can only blame ourselves. With the end of WW11 we were so exhausted with 5 years of effort and deprivation, that we sat back, believed that it was all over and everything would be fine from now on. How wrong we were, our lack of care created a vacuum and the kids ( aka baby Boomers ) moved in to occupy the space, and the situation is now beyond recovery. The new deity was as obsessed with the new stately pleasure dome as was Kubla Khan, and there was no shortage of help from such as the Beatles of the 50s right up to the Jacksons of recent times
During the first few months of WW11 Neville Chamberlain said when referring to the stalemate in 1940, “Hitler has missed the bus.“ Well, I can modify that to suit myself and say that when referring to the current and dismal situation that Britain and most of the world is in, that I did not miss my bus because I was on it. I got off, way back now after I decided its destination was no longer of interest to me and have little intention of re-boarding it in this world, and I know of no one of my years who thinks otherwise.
However, now that Hawking has kicked my foot from the door, I must say that I am delighted to find someone of academic substance to give credence to my rebellious views, as I have no doubt many other free thinking persons are when getting support from such a quarter. Good for you Stephen!.
I spend much of my time these days trawling the Internet for items that interest me.
Today I read on several web sites that Stephen Hawking has dropped his latest bomb. He has declared that God had no part in the creation of the universe. Some statement eh? and one that is likely to cause more than the occasion murmur within the walls of The Vatican, as well as in a few other places. Of course this was no great surprise to me because I came to this conclusion many moons ago, and I was not a Cambridge scholar.
The statement has such profound and far reaching significance that it totally upsets the apple cart onto the very basis of religion, to such an extent as identifying all brands of religion as being baseless and by doing so puts at risk the employment of all those in the religious community or should I say industry?
Just think, can we now expect to see Rome and the C of E having closing down sales? Expiry of lease? I wonder: Will Hawking now be asked to return the medal he was recently awarded by Obama ? and will Israel now have to change its tune as will Mecca? and will the US mint have to go into overtime to strike new coins? – Should generate some interesting times .
I was writing to a long-standing friend the other day and was pleasantly surprised to receive a very chatty reply in which he touched on our similar ages and the very cynical attitude he has to religion. In fact we seem to have identical views as atheists /agnostics etc., altho in my case I said that I leave the door open just a crack in the unlikely case of someone offering a reasonable argument against. The crack was merely an extension of my caution as a life long engineer to avoid burning ones bridges and regretting it later.
He and the few remaining colleagues that have have at least one thing in common with me. We all have little or no time for the current way of life. It has been usurped by the kids and they have neither the inclination or experience to run it, so we can only blame ourselves. With the end of WW11 we were so exhausted with 5 years of effort and deprivation, that we sat back, believed that it was all over and everything would be fine from now on. How wrong we were, our lack of care created a vacuum and the kids ( aka baby Boomers ) moved in to occupy the space, and the situation is now beyond recovery. The new deity was as obsessed with the new stately pleasure dome as was Kubla Khan, and there was no shortage of help from such as the Beatles of the 50s right up to the Jacksons of recent times
During the first few months of WW11 Neville Chamberlain said when referring to the stalemate in 1940, “Hitler has missed the bus.“ Well, I can modify that to suit myself and say that when referring to the current and dismal situation that Britain and most of the world is in, that I did not miss my bus because I was on it. I got off, way back now after I decided its destination was no longer of interest to me and have little intention of re-boarding it in this world, and I know of no one of my years who thinks otherwise.
However, now that Hawking has kicked my foot from the door, I must say that I am delighted to find someone of academic substance to give credence to my rebellious views, as I have no doubt many other free thinking persons are when getting support from such a quarter. Good for you Stephen!.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)