Whenever I call my Dad, whether at home or at work, his initial Hello? often inflects downwards, with a bit of tiredness, conveying that this phone-answering business is a bit of a chore. 

But as soon as I say, Hi Dad, the instant he knows it's me and not some customer or telemarketer or divorce lawyer, his voice brightens with a sharp upward slant.  It's all warmth and optimism and love.

That moment, poised between his unknowing Hello? and his cheerful Hello! is one that I've come to anticipate when I dial his number.  It's like I have this secret, for a split second, knowing that he doesn't know his mood is about the be uplifted, in this parental pavlovian reaction, just from the sound of my voice, a mere moment down the line.

Tonight was the first time I told him that I noticed the change in voice tone, and that I appreciated it.  Of course he said "Of course! I'm always glad to hear it's you."


...

I don't think I've ever not appreciated what a wonderful presence my dad has been in my life; for all of the affirmative things he has been to me.

But it's only lately I've thought more, in an internalized way, about how lucky I am about the things he was _not_ to me; about the baggages he and my mom didn't burden me with.

A friend confided in me recently about the troubles in his marriage, and revealed that many of their issues stemmed from sexual abuse each had suffered at some point in childhood at the hands of trusted adults (the wife from her father; the husband from his nanny).  

I've heard similar tales from other friends.  But although my upbringing was not perfect --especially in the unhealthy relationship (non)communication modeled to me through my parents' marriage-- there were enough of the right ingredients, most notably an absolute knowledge of my parents unconditional love for me, that it has taken me a while to really feel through what it would be like not to have that basis in navigating life.  To understand, on a deeper than cognitive level, why people have certain habits or reactions or patterns in their lives.

I am lucky.  And I can pass it on.  I was given much, so I have much to give.

This makes me so happy.  Some of my best early childhood memories are from wandering the endless forest behind my house. 

Waldkindergärten




Germany has about 700 Waldkindergärten, or "forest kindergartens," in which children spend their days outdoors year-round... Only a fraction of German children attend Waldkindergärten, but their numbers have been rising since local parent groups began setting up these programs in the mid-1990s, following the lead of a Danish community. Similar schools exist in smaller numbers in Scandinavia, Switzerland and Austria. The concept is sparking interest far afield -- even in the U.S., whose first Waldkindergarten opened in Portland, Ore., last fall.

Ms. Kluge says no child has ever asked for a toy. The children improvise instead with what the woods have to offer.

It's sad to see that someone has packed up their profile, and left this site.  Goodbye?

.
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Yep, I'm excerpting this article yet again.  But this passage was really helpful to me in understanding how the intellectual foundations for corporatocracy came about.

The defense... of wealth must find a legal manifestation.

...Jacksonian and abolitionist ideas before the Civil War produced a constitutional vision of free labor and free contract. This constitutional vision celebrated the right of ordinary individuals to own their labor. Laissez-faire was defended as a means of keeping government from giving special benefits to the wealthy.

...In what Clinton Rossiter called the “Great Train Robbery of Intellectual History,” laissez-faire conservatives appropriated the words and symbols of early nineteenth-century liberalism— liberty, opportunity, progress, and individualism—and gave them an economic reinterpretation that served corporate interests. They massaged and refitted the existing rhetoric of free labor and the right of ordinary citizens to pursue a calling into a sophisticated defense of corporate power and privilege that smashed labor unions, protected sweatshops, and eviscerated health and safety laws. By the turn of the twentieth century, the best legal minds that money could buy had reshaped the liberal rights rhetoric of the 1830s into a powerful conservative defense of property that they claimed was the rightful heir to the best American traditions of individualism and personal freedom.

Of course, I said to myself while reading this, much of this flows from the idea that corporations have "personhood"-- but wait, this was BEFORE that decision.  This revisionism was what made corporate personhood possible. 

A similar transvaluation of values is overtaking the free speech principle today. The right to speak has been recast as a right to be free from business regulation.

...We are living through a Second Gilded Age, which, like the first Gilded Age, comes complete with its own reconstruction of the meaning of liberty and property. Freedom of speech is becoming a generalized right against economic regulation of the information industries. Property is becoming the right of the information industries to control how ordinary people use digital content. We can no more capitulate to the Second Gilded Age’s construction of these ideas than to the constructions offered in the first Gilded Age. We must offer a critical alternative to this construction, much as progressive thinkers did a century ago.

More from my reading assignment (reminds me of the uniqueness of Gaia's willingness to have a conversation about/alter its terms of service).

New telecommunications networks allow ordinary people to communicate with vast numbers of fellow human beings, routing around existing media gatekeepers and offering competing content. People are no longer simply consumers of prepackaged content from mass media companies that are controlled by a limited number of speakers. Instead, people can use the new telecommunications networks to become active participants in the production of public culture.

But the very same technologies that offer these possibilities also offer media companies ever new ways to advertise, sell products, and push their favored content.  Thus, just as in the case of intellectual property, businesses that control telecommunications networks will seek to limit forms of participation and cultural innovation that are inconsistent with their economic interests. Once again, the goal is not necessarily censorship of unpopular ideas but rather diversion and co-optation of audience attention. Businesses want to direct the Internet user toward increased consumption of their own goods and services as well as the products of their advertising partners. Recognizing that there is money to be made in advertising, sales, and delivery of content, telecommunications companies do not want to be pure conduits for the speech of others, and they do not want too much content competition from their customers.

Instead, they want to use the architecture of the Internet to nudge their customers into planned communities of consumerist experience, to shelter end users into a world that combines everyday activities of communication seamlessly with consumption and entertainment. In some respects, businesses seek to push consumers back into their pre-Internet roles as relatively passive recipients of mass media content. In other respects, however, they openly encourage interactivity, but interactivity on their terms—the sort of interactivity that facilitates or encourages the purchase of goods and services.

[bold added]

Other types of businesses may be able to get away with this more, but I think there will be more pressure for social networking sites to be more responsive and acknowledge user participation in shaping terms of service (as Gaia has).  This has already happened to some degree with those other sites MyBook and FaceSpace, but primarily as isolated incidents regarding specific points (rather than as an ongoing dialogue process).   When Google et al. get the open source social network model up and running, that is likely to shift TOS norms toward user interests, and perhaps towards having more user participation in the drafting of such terms.  Maybe. Possibly. IMHO.

Excerpt from a reading for my Cyberlaw class, in the context of how Telecommunications companies claim that regulations (such as requirements to devote some portion of bandwidth to public broadcasting) violate their First Amendment rights as speakers and editors "to convey they content they wish to as large an audience as possible" (while simultaneously claiming their intellectual property rights trump the freedom of speech rights of users):

Implicit in these arguments is a controversial capitalist theory of freedom of speech. The theory is controversial not because it accepts capitalism as a basic economic ordering principle, but because it subordinates freedom of expression to the protection and defense of capital accumulation in the information economy. The capitalist theory identifies the right to free speech with ownership of distribution networks for digital content.

The argument that structural regulation of telecommunications networks restricts the First Amendment rights of telecommunications companies ties the right to speak ever more closely to ownership of capital. Arguing by analogy to print media, the capitalist theory of free speech
identifies the right to produce and control digital content with ownership of a communications network.

Nevertheless, conflating the right to speak with the right to control a communication network is problematic for two reasons. First, because they are conduits and networks, digital communications networks are designed to provide access to multiple voices. However, under the capitalist theory, these conduits exist primarily to promote the speech of the owner of the conduit, just as newspapers exist to promote the speech of the newspaper’s owner.

The second problem follows from the first: Content providers who also act as conduits have
incentives to favor their content over the content of others. For example, cable companies may be tempted to favor streaming media and digital music coming from the company’s content providers and advertising partners, while slowing down or refusing content coming from competitors, or, for that matter, from subscribers who want to be their own broadcasters. Broadband companies may seek to provide “walled gardens” or “managed content areas” which limit consumer access to that of the company’s proprietary network and its approved content partners.
 
[bold added]

The last few weeks have been tough ones for Kenya and Kenyans. We have seen what started off as a political problem sparked by the December elections turn into violence and tragedy. While I continue to be hopeful that current mediation efforts led by Kofi Annan will lead to a return of some level of normalcy across the country, I also recognize the destructive spiral things are taking in some parts of the country, notably in the Rift Valley. Every passing day without a solution makes this become a longer entrenched conflict that is beyond the elections. And I fear we have turned that corner.

All leaders at all levels need to understand that the current increase in militia activity is just a marriage of convenience. Once the “reason” for the sponsored conflict is resolved, the young men will still be there, hungry, with no incomes, with machetes in their hands. And they now know how to kill and maim.

Current Red Cross numbers indicate about 1000 people dead, and over 300,000 displaced. The conditions in the make-shift camps across the country are simply
heartbreaking, which is why with a growing group of young professionals via the Pamoja Youth Foundation, we have launched “Jaza Lorry!” Literally translating to “Fill the Lorry/Truck!”, the initiative is motivating assistance for those displaced, and channeling it to them through the Kenya Red Cross.

• For individuals in Kenya , you can buy items and
  drop them off in the Jaza Lorry box at every Nakumatt, Uchumi and Tuskys.
• For those outside Kenya ,
  we have partnered with mamamikes (http://www.mamamikes.com)
  Kenya ’s leading online marketplace to channel donations and vouchers.
• For any donations which do not fall into any of the above categories (e.g., in kind donations from companies), feel free to email me back and we can discuss the most appropriate way of channeling them.

Please give what you can.

This is a long road we are on, and it will take quite some work to heal the tears we
have experienced in our social fabric. Let us have the courage to take the first step.

-edwin

macharia2007@gmail.com

Those of you who watched West Wing may remember that the code name for the US President is "POTUS" = President Of The United States. 

Similarly, the acronym of the judicial branch is SCOTUS = Supreme Court Of The United States.

The legislative branch, however, is simply called "Congress".

But wouldn't it be wonderful if it were nicknamed the Legislature Of The United States.

That is, LOTUS?


Imagine if that was the name, the peaceful image, associated with our major governing body.  Wouldn't that be beautiful?

If your state is up at bat tomorrow (like mine!), please do the future proud and BE A PART OF MAKING IT.

Lawrence Lessig gives a great presentation on why he's endorsing Obama here
(even if you don't know who Lessig is, it's a well thought-out appeal)

For pretty much any other information you could want on Obama, my friend (a Precinct Leader for his campaign in San Francisco) has put together a great primer here. (With-- bonus!-- a link to a great interview with Samantha Power, leader of the Save Darfur movement, who has been working on Obama's campaign for the last several years).

See you in the future!