Will Washington shape the Internet?
July 12, 2006
Anything written by a “futurist” is automatically suspect, but this article does address a current hot topic: regulation of the Internet.
How Washington will shape the Internet - The Practical Futurist - MSNBC.com
After years of benign neglect, the Federal government is finally involved in the Internet — big time. And the decisions being made over the next few months will impact not just the future of the Web, but that of mass media and consumer electronics as well. Yet it’s safe to say that far more Americans have heard about flag burning than the laws that may soon reshape cyberspace.
A couple of observations come to mind. First, we might look at China’s efforts to regulate the Internet, which, after all, is a global phenomenon. In China, as I understand it, the Internet experience has been messed up for Chinese users without much impact on the rest of the globe. When governments intervene, the result is fairly predictable.
Second, Government meddling with the Internet in the U.S. is likely to have one heap of unintended consequences. Political and economic powerhouses are involved (think Google and the telcos), which means the war may quickly get messy. Fun to watch, maybe, but the result will no doubt hit our pocketbooks and put a crimp in the Net’s further expansion.
Dave, starting to sound like a futurist hisself.
The Dangerfield Economy
July 11, 2006
Why is there so much talk about our failing economy, mostly coming from Congress and the media, when the eyeballs at the Wall Street Journal see it so differently? Who to believe?
WSJ.com - Good Jobs at Good Wages
I wonder if part of the reason is that the gap between those near the bottom of the economic ladder and those near the top is widening. Pundits with populist leanings can find ample grist for their sky-is-falling mill. The business and financial community sees mostly the middle to upper part of the economy and concludes that there are good jobs at good wages.
The balanced view would seem to involve awareness of both viewpoints.
Dave, pontificating a bit again.
Ephesians 6:21-24
July 9, 2006
Farewell Comments6:21 Tychicus, my dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will make everything known to you, so that you too may know about my circumstances, how I am doing. 6:22 I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts.
6:23 Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 6:24 Grace be with all of those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.
This brings Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus to an end. Tuchicus will be the bearer of the letter, and he will be a first hand source of information about how Paul is getting along. The Ephesians and Paul share their love for the Lord Jesus Christ, and this results in a strong bond of mutual love between Paul and the Ephesians. We are reminded that we love because He first loved us. -sdg-
Happy birthday to me
July 9, 2006
Wasn’t it only yesterday that I was celebrating the beginning of my seventh decade with Bros. Don and Tom in the sunny Napa Valley of California, way out on the left coast? Then how come today I’m kicking off my 76th year? Fortunately no one is planning to “do” my birthday, and I will be more than content to open a few cards, pinch my wife and go to bed at ten as usual.
Of course I sometimes wonder how long I will be allowed to string out this chain of birthdays. Maybe tyromancy would help. My Forgotten English Calendar told me on the 29th of June that this is divining by the coagulation of cheese. Do you suppose my lunch-time cottage cheese would work?
I subscribe to the theory that we all have some grim disease within us that is just waiting for an opportunity to spring up and say, “Boo!I really don’t much care what it is that eventually will scare me to death. I am told that the human being is more or less hard-wired to last until age 85, give or take. I am hoping to stay spry until a month or so before my 85th birthday, at the end of which I will retire as usual at ten and die in my sleep.
I’ve talked to God about that, but He is noncommittal. He usually is about anything more than a few minutes in the future, but if He decides not to honor my modest request, that’s OK with me. I long ago reached the point where It’s OK however he engineers my circumstances, even if I don’t like it. Now, isn’t that magnanimous of me? I thought so.
So… happy birthday to me and let’s wrap this up for another year.
Dave, still on the downwind approach.
Pokeweed religion
July 8, 2006
Now here is a forgotten English term that comes from our own Missouri Ozarks. It means the sort of religious excitement that springs up rapidly and seems impressive, but has no permanent value. The term lightnin’-bug revival carries the same meaning. This definition comes from a book that I would like to read some day: Vance Randolph’s Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech, 1953. It may still be in print.
On the same calendar page was a squib about John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism. After his death, an English sea captain and novelist named Frederick Marryat said, “The fact is that there is little or no healthy religion in [America's] most numerous and influential churches - it is all excitement.” He also believed that there was a species of bronchitis peculiar to ministers in the United States because they yelled too much. “I have already observed that the zeal of the minister is even unto death.”
Dave, usually not too excitable.
Did Ken Lay die of a broken heart?
July 7, 2006
Peggy Noonan thinks so. Read her opinion at:
It’s hard to think rationally about Ken Lay and his career, but it’s not hard to think of him as a human being and family man, and now that he’s gone I prefer to think of him as a grandfather. (I wonder why?) Anyway, Noonan wrote a thoughtful piece.
Lay came from nowhere, rose high, messed up, fell.
Dave, turning philosophical again.
New look
July 6, 2006
I’m tinkering again, experimenting with a new theme for the Orlop. It may be a while before I get the kinks out, so give me a week or so before yelling at me.
Dave, not knowing enough to leave well enough alone.
Reflections on growing old
July 6, 2006
Thanks to Michael Kruse for passing this on, although he is still too young to really get it. Maybe, like Satch Paige, he “is afraid to look back, because something may be gaining on me.”
Anyway, check out one Ben Witherington’s reflections.
‘Lord grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.’
Dave, beginning to get it.
Tango anyone?
July 6, 2006
My email friend Bill Bonner may have the right of it when he says (from his sojourn in Argentina),
Whatever direction we take, we trip over a contradiction. Things always seem to be black and white at the same time.
That is why we took up tango, dear reader. People who dance the tango or write poems don’t let contradictions bother them. They glide across the floor and enjoy themselves. As far as we know, no serious tango dancer has ever committed suicide. It’s the mathematicians and engineers who blow their brains out.
Fortunately, I’m no mathematician and have forgotten how to spell engineer, so I plan on being around a while yet to see how this crazy old world sorts itself out.
Liberals and Babies and Trust Cues
July 5, 2006
My interest in the Christian vs. Darwinian worldviews led me to this interesting review of a book by Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn.
Wade tells his readers other disturbing facts. Genetic analysis strongly suggests that all men are descended from a single male, and all women from a single female. On top of that, race is clearly genetic in origin, and not a “social construct” as the American Sociological Association insists.
With all this unwelcome news to print, Wade and his publisher did the sensible thing. They put a Darwinian devotional at the top of every chapter. They knew that even though their readers proudly read The New York Times Science Tuesday every week, they really don’t like science once it moves out of the tenured university laboratory into reality. They are all for science until it interferes with their politics. But they all believe in Darwin.
How can we demand peace and justice if every man living has the instinctive need to conduct a nice little border raid next week? How can we stamp out racism if race is imprinted in the genes? And how can we justify tossing pushy Jews like Larry Summers out of their Harvard presidencies if there really are physical, measurable brain differences between men and women?
These are inconvenient truths, and good reasons to put comforting “trust cues” into Before the Dawn to remind readers that you are really on their side.
After talking about “trust cues” and “the rational calculation to have a baby,” the review ends with this thought:
Nicholas Wade writes:
“Human societies long ago devised an antidote to the freeloader problem… It is religion.”
Now it’s a curious thing, is it not, that in our current secular society, in particular at the epicenter of secularity, Western Europe, we are having a real problem persuading people to have babies. Why would that be, do you think?
Perhaps in the low-trust society of secular Europe people just don’t get the trust cues they need before they will take the risk of having children.
Dave, for whom Christianity is the rational choice.
