June 2003 Archives
Tony Byrne has an interesting article at CMS-watch: Open-Source CMS: Prohibitively Fractured?. In it he tries to come to terms with a common problem in open source development, the proliferation of projects that address the same problem but with a different programming language or design.
What appears to have happened is that development resources have become dissipated among so many different initiatives that seemingly none of them is achieving critical velocity. Moreover, an emphasis on technical elegance over end-user features goes against what the CMS marketplace is looking for today.
Another link took me to an article about Microsoft Sharepoint 2003 and hinted at what the new program will look like. My initial impression of Sharepoint has not been good. It seems like nothing more than a web browser interface to a file system used to store documents. Some of the integration planned with the next version of Office may begin to change my mind.
Both of the links above came via High Context.
Here are some clearinghouses for listing open source content management systems.
I watched Star Trek: Nemesis a few nights ago on video. The greatest fun was counting the cliches as they went by: a love scene with Riker and Troi, the personal heart-to-heart chat between Picard and Crusher, Data questing to discover what it means to be human, the obligatory final-desperate-act in the middle of a space battle (which in most recent Star Trek movies seems to mean ramming the Enterprise into some large object, either deliberately or accidently, it certainly gives the special effects artists something to do).
But there was something even more intersting I realized after the movie was done and after my last entry on liberals and children. Of the four TNG movies that have been made, three of them (the fourth one I don't remember well enough) have had a character or plot device that focuses on aging and death. In the first Generations movie it was Kirk and Picard in the matrix or whatever it was called, you know the magical area where you lived inside of an eternal dream of bliss, free from aging and death. Then in Insurrection there was the evil bad guy who was trying to monopolize the immortality secret of the people on the plot planet du jour. Finally, the main nemesis of Nemesis is a genetic clone of Picard who is raised on Romulus and wants to drink Picard's blood in order to prevent his clone body from decaying into old age before he can destroy Earth.
Just what the hell is going on here? I don't remember the TV series being nearly as obsessed with aging as the feature films have been. Is this an indication that the writing staff is getting older? I mean the cliches within the Star Trek franchise have become more important than anything else since the series went into permanent production in the early 1990s. Maybe this is some kind of hidden unconcious realiziation that the whole Star Trek universe is entering its doddage.
Salon has an excerpt from Dispatches From the Culture Wars by Danny Goldberg. He complains about the usual lack of will among the Democrats and their astonishing capitulation to the political manipulations of the Republicans. But then he links this all to a very interesting thesis: the Democrats have lost touch with young people, or as the subtitle says "How the Left Lost Teen Spirit"
One problem seems to be that many members of my generation, the generation now in power, have a basic resentment toward young people. This is a particularly foolish position for people to the left of center, since no progressive change has ever occurred anywhere in the world without the energy and inspiration of young people, who traditionally have provided the shock troops for the left. Liberal snobs and cultural conservatives alike often are what free speech activist Marjorie Heins calls "metaphorically challenged." Usually educated in law, journalism, political science, or sociology, politicians and pundits spend decades viewing human behavior in a linear, literalistic way. They frequently interpret art and entertainment as if they were devoid of metaphor, humor, irony, or Aristotelian catharsis. Looked at through this lens, neither fairy tales nor Greek tragedies nor classic opera would pass moral muster.The same snobbery and insensitivity to young people that drives culture bashing has created a Democratic party and a public-interest left whose leaders appear unwilling or unable to communicate with the "unwashed" masses who do not read newspaper op-ed pages or watch public television. This isn't exactly a culture war so much as a disconnect between progressive political leaders and the culture of the people they want to lead.
This meshes with an attitude I've often seen in communitarian liturature by Amitai Etzioni and others. Although not strictly a progressive, Etzioni responds at length about the cultural corruption that has taken over America since the 1960s. It also has an interesting correlation with the 13th generation propaganda that was being pumped out during the early 1990s. As someone from that generation who read the commentary I had to wonder what was all the complaining about. Baby boomers demanded freedom for themselves when they were young but don't seem to care about giving that same benefit of the doubt to the young people of today.
Bill Moyers recently spoke at the Take Back America conference in acceptence of a lifetime achievment award
Pessimism:
It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I'll be frank with you: I simply don't understand it – or the malice in which it is steeped. Many people are nostalgic for a golden age. These people seem to long for the Gilded Age. That I can grasp. They measure America only by their place on the material spectrum and they bask in the company of the new corporate aristocracy, as privileged a class as we have seen since the plantation owners of antebellum America and the court of Louis IV. What I can't explain is the rage of the counter-revolutionaries to dismantle every last brick of the social contract. At this advanced age I simply have to accept the fact that the tension between haves and have-nots is built into human psychology and society itself – it's ever with us. However, I'm just as puzzled as to why, with right wing wrecking crews blasting away at social benefits once considered invulnerable, Democrats are fearful of being branded "class warriors" in a war the other side started and is determined to win. I don't get why conceding your opponent's premises and fighting on his turf isn't the sure-fire prescription for irrelevance and ultimately obsolescence. But I confess as well that I don't know how to resolve the social issues that have driven wedges into your ranks. And I don't know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of soundbites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame.
Optimism:
So go for it. Never mind the odds. Remember what the progressives faced. Karl Rove isn't tougher than Mark Hanna was in his time and a hundred years from now some historian will be wondering how it was that Norquist and Company got away with it as long as they did – how they waged war almost unopposed on the infrastructure of social justice, on the arrangements that make life fair, on the mutual rights and responsibilities that offer opportunity, civil liberties, and a decent standard of living to the least among us."Democracy is not a lie" – I first learned that from Henry Demarest Lloyd, the progressive journalist whose book, "Wealth against Commonwealth," laid open the Standard trust a century ago. Lloyd came to the conclusion to "Regenerate the individual is a half truth. The reorganization of the society which he makes and which makes him is the other part. The love of liberty became liberty in America by clothing itself in the complicated group of strengths known as the government of the United States." And it was then he said: "Democracy is not a lie. There live(s) in the body of the commonality unexhausted virtue and the ever-refreshed strength which can rise equal to any problems of progress. In the hope of tapping some reserve of their power of self-help," he said, "this story is told to the people."
This is your story – the progressive story of America.
Pass it on
Listening to the news today that another suicide bomber has attacked Israel and that another missile has been fired at the Palestinians made me shake my head and wonder whether we will ever see peace in the Middle East. The event prompted more thoughts about the fine differences between ambition and fanaticism. When do our beliefs and the actions we are willing to take to defend those beliefs become fanatic or even lunatic?
In college I met a number of people who seemed filled with clarity about their future. Whether it be the study of medicine, music, physics, or the law, they seemed to have a quality that I was missing. They knew what they were going to do when they grew up. I started college thinking I might be an astronomer but then turned away from that and studied English and philosophy. When I was done with college I expected to go onto graduate school and become a professor. But life has taken a different path. Ten years after graduating I'm working as a technology project manager for a financial printing company. But even now the uncertainty about my future remains. Last fall I almost completed an application for graduate school but held back at the last moment and I'm still asking myself whether that is the right choice for me.
Even some of the people I knew in college who seemed to have the determination and ambition to make their avocation into a vocation have taken different paths. Inevitably our dreams run up against the hard reality of the world. What makes some people accept these disconnections between their beliefs and the world, while others are willing to die for them? Is it a matter of opportunity, freedom, education or some other unknown factor? For every explanation put forth there seems to be a counterexample. The reasons for fanaticism, fundamentalism, and other insanities seems to be as diverse as the human race.
What then can be done? Can we really hope for a better world? I think that the distances between the edges of sanity and insanity are growing. Today the gaps between rich and poor worldwide are larger than they have ever been. And the very technology that allows the rich to succeed can be turned against us on a cataclysmic scale.
And yet that certainty that comes from absolute belief is very tempting and necessary for all of us to succeed. Sometimes we have to plunge onward despite what the rest of the world tries to tell us. Those of us who are filled with doubt about the correctness of our actions need to reject the fanaticism we see around us. This is probably the biggest weakness of liberals versus conservatives in today's political climate. The conservatives seem to be convinced they know the truth, while the liberals are stuck offering questions and caveats.
I read Thomas Friedman's recent column, The real reason (and 3 others) for war on Iraq with some consternation. As I read it the logic seems to make a lot of sense. There is a very real truth that we cannot let the terrorists rule our lives. Sometimes force may be the only alternative. An exemplary demonstration of force may make terrorists think twice. And yet...
I was watching part of a BookTV interview with Noam Chomsky over the weekend and he was citing many examples of how America has acted badly in the world throughout its history. And it is true that many things have been done in the name of our country for which I am ashamed. Most of the time the events seem far enough from my life to be safely ignored, either they took place in the past or very far away. Rationally that is not an excuse.
One thing I do like about Friedman's reasons is the 'moral' reason: the need to partner with Iraqis to build a better country. This is an idealism I can accept, but why did it take 30 years for us to act.
For my notes and observations about the futility of argument some citations for Godwin's Law: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
Two examples:
From a meta-review of The Clinton Wars, published at Salon.
Even before the Lewinsky story broke, Murdoch's outlets remorselessly hyped malevolent stories about the Clintons -- from Whitewater to Travelgate -- even after they were proven to be false. In 1998 and 1999, their slanted coverage of the impeachment drama performed a singular disservice to the truth. They have never corrected their numerous false reports, let alone apologized for them. Yet the Murdoch empire is now flourishing. Thanks to Bush administration rulings, its control over an increasingly concentrated and centralized media is likely to grow.
From an Andrew Sullivan column at Salon.
As to the critics -- the Riches and Conasons who hyped reports they couldn't confirm in order to trash the administration? A correction would be nice, wouldn't it? Just because Maureen Dowd can get away with untruths and distortions with no corrections, why should Rich? Howell Raines has now left the building. Some kind of factual accountability should now be restored. Rich needs to correct, explain and apologize. But I won't hold my breath.
And thus the winds of contending opinion continue to do battle. No one ever admits a mistake but each is ever ready to pounce on their opponents missteps.
So I'm watching the online stream of the Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken and Molly Ivins dustup at Bookexpo America, which was aired on C-Span2 BookTV. In just the first 5 minutes Bill answers two phone callers by immediately going into ad hominem attacks on the liberal cabal, and then calls Todd Gitlin a "pinhead" academic. As the caller said this is O'Reilly's constant M.O. - he talks right over the caller or whoever he is talking to.
But why is it that the most penetrating commentators on the left, such as Al Franken, Molly Ivins, Jon Stewart at the Daily Show are comedians? But the right is full of pompous blowhards like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Savage. I especially like the sourgrape expression Bill wears while Franken is listing out his errors and lies. Franken accuses O'Reilly of lying about Inside Edition winning a Peabody award and then Bill rips into Al for a "vicious" attack and daring to "call me a liar." This is vicious? Citing Bill for lying about what awards his program is small potatoes compared to the attacks Bill routinely launches on his programs.
At the conclusion of the program an audience member asks the three authors what they think about the poisoned political discourse of contemporary media. Ivins rejects Grover Norquist's call for partisanship in the state governments. O'Reilly says that it's not his job to civilize the discourse, he is there as a watchdog, looking out for the little guy. Franken says that he is tired of liberals refusing to fight. He says that you need to call people on the lying that takes place on the right. I especially like the very end of the show, as Pat Schroeder thanks the audience you can see Bill O'Reilly, already standing, thank Molly Ivins and then he immediately walks off stage. Then Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly thank each other. The incivility in politics is that neither O'Reilly nor Franken thank each other. There is no sense today that once the arguing is over you can still respect the other person for having different views.
