Valleywag picked up a FriendFeed discussion between a few of us yesterday regarding the bailout bill within which Scoble blames “people like [me]” for the coming “breadlines”.  It rings a little hollow considering where I’ve been on all this and where he’s been (i.e. nowhere), but it brings a much more important issue to the fore.

To the thread in particular, I realize how acerbic my tone can be when discussing such things and try to be cognizant of that every time I write.  Sometimes my frustration – the result of a bit too much anguish about our national slumber – gets the best of me.  But Americans sat mostly silent as international and domestic crimes were perpetrated in their names and their economy was wrecked – choosing to glide along as if they had far more important things to think about.

Robert is right to describe the financial mess as the result of our collective idiocy.  The bill for one or two generations of stupidity has now come due and our remaining credit cards have been declined.  And for the moment, the social media characters participating in the specific tendril of web masturbation that is Robert’s “what to do” post have come up substantially empty.  So, I’ll see what I can come up with.

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Every American should sit through (and actually digest) this interview in its entirety [Part 1] | [Part 2].  Whether you watch or listen, please take the time to do so with open ears and an open mind.  It is probably the most powerful and sobering assessment of the American condition I have heard in years.

Bacevich’s 2007 op ed in the Washington Post provides some sad but interesting background.  His new book is here.

Growing up, there was a book that first got me excited about computers.  I’d never really forgotten it, but over the years it had faded deep into memory.  And fond memories they were – the book was whimsical, full of strange artwork and far-out metaphors.  It really helped me – a middle-school kid in the middle of nowhere trying desperately to think big – to see outside my small world and into a universe of infinite technological possibility.  I was probably 12 or 13, just starting to tinker with TRS-80s and early Apples and really having my mind opened up by these strange little boxes.

A few months ago – for some reason – that book popped back into my mind.  Who was that guy?  What was that book?  And off I went to figure it out.

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Associated Press has this gem.

Seth Godin offers Apple (and other marketers) some great advice.

Robert Scoble suggested today that if he could make one rule about the Internet, it would be “no anonymity.”  I like Robert but I don’t like his idea.

Laura Fitton asked: “What one ‘rule’ would you make about the Internet?”, and in the thread that resulted, Robert replied that he’d eliminate anonymity. Read the rest of this entry »

Another great column from pilot Patrick Smith on TSA stupidity.

A year ago I wrote about the findings in the Johns Hopkins psilocybin study:

“a third of the participants in the study described the psilocybin experience as the single most significant experience of their lives and about three-quarters ranked it in the top 5″.

Pretty remarkable stuff.  Even more remarkable is that a year later, the experience has “stuck:”

“Even at the 14-month follow-up, 58 percent of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67 percent rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives..”

And I’m again pleased to see the mainstream press giving it fair, non-hysterical coverage here and here.  [Thanks, Chris.]

Now, we all know Americans’ waistlines aren’t shrinking – but the products they buy in the store are.  The main thing that bugs me about this is that companies are again making a calculation based on consumer stupidity.  The idea is, people will notice higher prices on the package, but they won’t notice that the package is shrinking.  A Tropicana spinster prefers to describe it as a “value-added redesign.”  Sigh.

Carlin was inspirational to me, in some ways, as a teen.  He had a biting wit and was more a social commentator than comedian.  I saw him live a couple of times – once at the University of Maine where he autographed a dollar bill for me.  The fact that it took me several months to spend that money was as much about my respect for him as my flat-broke-ness.

One of my favorite Carlin rants is here – Carlin on Politicians – and I’ll miss that penetrating side of him.  He could make us laugh so hard that our guts hurt, and not always because what he said was funny, exactly – but because it was so sadly true.  In his later years, I was sad to see him move more toward aimless anger and jokes about death and poop, but I suppose that’s how things go.

He died at Saint John’s in Santa Monica – just a mile or two from my place -  at the age of 71.