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I had a blast playing with Richard and Jason at the Radio Cafe Friday night. Great crowd. Great performances also by Colin Wade Monk and Hitchcock Circus. Richard’s songs are smart pop-rock numbers with unforgettable hooks and clever storylines. The ‘Nots’ sound has quickly evolved into Uncle Tupelo meets early Replacements, with the rawness and sponetnaeity of the latter, and the melodic sensibility of the former.

According to scene veterans, it was a somewhat historic evening too: Colin Wade Monk and Richard Dubois shared the same bill in over a decade. Both were members of the now infamous mid to late 80s Murfreesboro band ‘Shamalam.’ Seeing Colin play for the first time, the mutual influences were obvious: both he and DuBois share similar melodic form, and style.

Read more in Jim Ridley’s Nashville Cream here.

My brother, Adam emailed me this morning about a whopping hospital bill he received for a recent visit to the ER…

“Eighteen-Hundred freaking dollars for an IV and a gurney???”

Absurd, isn’t it? We all know horror stories like this. A simple visit to the hospital because of a real emergency (like severe dehydration, in this case) can put you out thousands of dollars.

For those lucky folks who just sign the $50 insurance co-pay and walk out with your happy face sticker, congratulations. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people who don’t have insurance at all. Most of them are younger, and feel like they can go without, but others are in their 30’s and are taking a big risk.

They are not necessarily irresponsible, they simply can’t afford it. Employee health insurance is sometimes hard to come by in this job market, and for self-employed folks out there like myself, I have no choice but to provide my own insurance out of pocket.

I took advantage of one of those HSA (health savings accounts) that Bush signed into action in 2003. I have a massive deductible of $5000.00, but I can stash away that amount tax free in a special savings account. If I don’t get sick, that means I have sheltered 5k from Uncle Sam.

Not only am I a cheapskate who is taking a risk if my savings dwindles, but I avoid visiting the physician unless my leg is falling off, where I used to throw antibiotics at a papercut when I was covered on my parents plan.

Perhaps this illustrates a bigger problem in our culture of health care: costs are astronomical, yet people and physicians who dance the tango in the great hall of health insurance will spend thousands of dollars every year on the latest “breakthrough” treatments, even though what the patient needed all along was a decent exercise program and to stop eating fast food.

I know perfectly healthy individuals who are on 5-10 types of expensive, and often unecessary medication, especially the over prescribed legal amphetamines (adderall, ritalin), and happy pills (seratonin re-uptake inhibitors). There is nothing wrong with taking medications when you need them, but our culture is as pill-crazed as Elvis on a 76′ Vegas weekend.

Well, a brilliant study by a young economics professor at MIT has essentially determined that this fundamental phenomenon of waste is behind our collapsing public health care infrastructure. It’s not rocket science, folks, but the statistical analysis is there (and we’ll get to that in just a moment).

There are a lot of ’solutions’ out there for ‘fixing’ healthcare. One camp wants to do what the rest of the civilized world does: create regulated, universal care. The other camp wants to get to the bottom of what is screwing up the natural market mechanisms that should allow everyone to afford some-kind of health care.

I’ll let you be the judge of which camp you’re in, but despite my former socialist leanings, I’m a lot more into the latter approach; if there is a demand for low-cost McDoctor’s Offices, then damnit, somebody is going to figure out a way to do it, because it is profitable!

The problem is that there aren’t ‘natural’ market forces at work in this country. Laws of supply and demand are astronomically exaggerated by health insurance.

Read on:

After studying data going back to the 60s, Amy N. Finkelstein of MIT has determined in an in-depth analysis that the real cause of rapidly rising costs is the massive expansion of medical insurance over the past 40 years.

Keep in mind, that the expenses of new technologies play a big role, but doctors, hospitals, and consumers adopt them so freely largely because insurance foots the bill.

If Finkelstein is right, her work could change the way people and the employers/insurers pay for your medical bills think about costs. For example, if individuals have to pay more for their care through high-deductible health plans, they may cut spending. Her theory could also spur the drive for evidence-based medicine, the effort of some reformers to encourage the use of only those treatments that have been proven to work.

Why is insurance such a big factor? Finkelstein thinks that consumers opt for more care if someone else pays for it. But the bigger demand-based factor is that insurance guarantees a steady source of cash for hospitals and doctors. So, they build new super-high-tech marble and granite cardiac-care centers and stock up on the latest high-tech equipment, knowing it will be paid for.

“If you produce expensive new things for medical care, people will buy them,” says Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for the Study of Health System Change in Washington. He has found results similar to Finkelstein’s by looking at medical spending patterns in 12 U.S. cities (Business Week).

Another interesting find in the study was that hospital spending soared after the federal Medicare program began in 1966. In regions such as the South, where most seniors had no insurance, health spending soared after Medicare. But in New England, where many already had coverage, Medicare had much less impact on costs.

Of course, the upside in this is that medicine has progressed light years ahead of the state-of-the art in the 60’s. But what does it matter if only 30% of the population has access to it because costs are so out of control?

Why do we need a drug for every possible condition you can think of? Because insurance will foot the bill. The money is there, and medical companies are swimming in it.

I believe in incentives. Right now the incentives are such that it is still profitable for medical providers, and medical supply companies to charge absurd prices, because there are hospitals out there that will pay it. Furthermore, malpractice law is such that doctors have to pay out huge sums for insurance against it.

How do we correct these problems? The HSA plan I have is one approach (clearly a conservative one, politically). Employers and government agencies could start providing high-deductible plans that give employees an option to pay deductible expenses out of pocket, or perhaps take them out of their 401k, or even finance them through payroll.

I know it’s terrible, but employers are facing such absurd costs, that your lucky to get any freaking care at all!

When you have a $5k deductible like I do, you look at doctor visits a lot differently, and that fundamental shift in consumer attitude means you tend get back to the way it used to be: putting emphasis on taking care of yourself, and only going to the doctor when you really need it. This means that all those decisions made by doctors and patients about treatment options, will bring cost-effectiveness back into the picture.

Instead of 1 treatment you really need, 3 extra treatments you probably don’t need, and a round of antibiotics just in case of any chance of secondary infection — you just get that one treatment you REALLY need.

Of course, many people are so accustomed to having everything taken care of for them, that the side-effect would be deaths from un-treated ailments.

One last option that I haven’t covered much here is government intervention: a secondary health care system that is subsidized would certainly have a powerful impact on our markets. The canadian free system is not as good as the US, but it is “free.” Free is a very attractive offer, but it would be prone to the discusting mismanagement of tax dollars.

Remember the $100 screwdriver? The $210 toilet seat?

But since I despise taxes, like most blue-blood US citizens, rue the day that happens!

What do you think?

Socialized medicine?

Heavy regulation?

Kill the politicians?

After feeling like such a brooding nag in my last post about a cliff-notes depth look at the sacred texts in Islam, I thought I’d follow up with a nice 1-2 combo on something equally dour and that matters to you and just about everyone you know: the future of your economy.

Yeah, I know, we’ve seen bubbles come and go, even in recent years, and no doubt we’re still standing here. Yet, paranoia is a healthy instinct: it means the difference between a proactive and reactive existence — between thriving — and just plain surviving.

The bottom line: I’m a bit concerned about what the slowdown in the housing market means for us folks without the gold-plated cellphones.

I am a homeowner, but I don’t lose sleep at night worrying about my equity, or if I’m going to be able to flip this property in 5 years for a huge profit. We paid too much for our house, probably, but got a smart fixed rate mortgage, and I don’t mind staying here: it’s a cool town and I like the people. In short - I’m no investor or speculator. However, I do sometimes lose sleep over the health of my business — and like many businesses, my little web development company depends on customers who have a demand for our services.

When I drive through Nashville, I see a lot of people working in the housing industry. The housing industry is more than Realtors, builders, contractors, plumbers, landscapers, architects, mortgage brokers, and investors. The housing economy is a massive force that employs people who buy cars, toys, expensive steak dinners, and websites. Especially websites. Real Estate agents and builders know that they need a website these days to be competitive, and that has meant good times for our company.

But just because my livelihood is not in thanks to a large corporation, or great bureacratic institution, doesn’t mean that big slides in the housing market can’t effect everyone.

The scope of our booming housing-related job market varies regionally, and from town to town. Here in Nashville, it seems monolithic — just about everyone has a close friend or family member who works as a broker, builder, or somewhere in-between. A lot of boys put on tool belts in the morning ’round these here parts. Sale signs are around every corner in every nieghborhood. New developments have spread like wildfire through the beautiful farmlands around the Metro area.

On the other hand, in my hometown of Kingsport, TN. the boom is not such a significant part of a relatively stable industrial economy - not a lot of volatility there.

Florida is a different story. One estimate claims that 1-5 jobs are housing related! Many areas of California are similar. Even beyond the direct impact in hot markets, a housing crash will influence general demand for goods across all sectors, which will influence the bottom lines of manufacturers and big business too.

Yadda yadda, sure, the bubble talk is old hat, I know, but this time it really is different — look at the numbers: last week the gubment report on new homes sales came in at a solid 35% drop [thump!&^#], and that is only part of it.

A report in US News and World Report says, “the market for new homes may be in worse shape than the government’s figures show because they don’t take into account rising cancellations reported by many home builders in recent weeks.”

The numbers for pre-existing homes are similar, for obvious reasons, and it looks like the market is finally hit the top of the proverbial roller-coaster. But the point here is not to make you freak out about your real-esate investments, but to point to bigger problem: the fact that all these housing-related jobs have hidden a general trend in our labor economy. If not for the housing industry, Americans would have to do something else for a living. What?

As a report in The Economist notes that the recent housing boom, driven by unusually low federal rates, has propped up our economy more than any other factor, and such a ‘crutch’ is not something we’ve tried before historically. This new approach to monetary policy was a “theory” by Mr. Alan Greenspan, an Ayn Rand Objectivist who claimed in an early 60’s era dissertation that mortgage re-financing, driven by low fed rates could act as a safe buffer for the normal boom-bust cycles of capitalism.

We’ll see.

Just consider the statistics: the Economist states that over the past five years, consumer spending and residential construction have together accounted for 90% of the total growth in GDP. And over two-fifths of all private-sector jobs created since 2001 have been in housing-related sectors, such as construction, real estate and mortgage broking. Without going out on a limb, I think it is a reasonable assertion that consumer spending was driven by second mortgages and a burst of liquidity thanks to ‘cheap money.’

A study done by the International Monetary Fund looked at housing busts in recent modern economic history and thier long-term effects on national economies. Analysing house prices in 14 countries during 1970-2001, it identified 20 examples of “busts”, when real prices fell by almost 30% on average. All but one of those housing busts led to a recession, with GDP after three years falling to an average of 8% below its previous growth trend. America was the only country to avoid a boom and bust during that period.

However, the face of America’s economy is changing. Manufacturing is all but outsourced to China, and high-tech jobs are finding increasing competition overseas as well. Much of the US economy is based in some aspect of retail, but dependence on a wave of consumer spending can only go so far: and as we just noted, much of the irrational exuberance and low per-capita savings in the U.S. was fueled by housing or mortgage refinancing.

In short, there are many factors at play in your marketplace that are startlingly different than those of the 20th century.

What happens when all that equity shrinks? When there is a massive shakeout in the realty, mortgage, and building industries? Consumer spending will follow suit, sending many retail and consumer-based businesses into damage-control mode, or bankruptcy.

Think of it in employment terms: some folks will be taking a bath.. a bubble bath. And we will all have to adapt.

Perhaps the way to keep yourself ahead of the curve is to shift focus to savings (bad for consumer spending trends, I know), smart investing through inflation-proof hedges (not boxwoods), and if you aren’t in a sure-bet occupation, look to take advantage of the situation with a second income that preys on desperation from the fallout.

And please, run to your nearest mortgage company and dump that ARM, if you have one.

Myself?  Uhh.. well, I plan on getting into the “make money from home (with a website)” seminar circuit. Yes, not unlike Sally Struthers. All those poor bastards facing bankruptcy who can’t find work are going to be suckers for the whole “make money from home” show.

[menacing laughter goes here]

Is the housing market is something to worry about in the US?

What do you think?

When most Americans are children, they are told by their parents to avoid questioning another about religion. In the south, at least, it is increasingly uncommon to hear someone say,

“What Church do you go to?”

Most of the time such a question comes from someone who either is banking on a hunch that the other person is a Christian, or is oblivious and ignorant of the fact that a significant percentage of people find such a question to be uncomfortable or awkward.

In Urban areas, especially among the educated, and in business circles, such questions are generally understood as taboo. In public school systems it has traditionally been the practice to avoid discussion of religion. So, most children who come through these schools understand that religiosity varies from family to family, and culture to culture. Furthermore, university education emphasizes equality of viewpoints, and makes great strides to avoid ethnocentrism through practice of “cultural relativism.”

It is for this reason that most Americans are completely ignorant about the teachings and practices of Islam, despite it being one of the most important aspects of human civilization. While many college educated people could provide enough of a thumbnail sketch of Buddhism or Taoism to fake it through cocktail conversation, Islam is just another religion that is about “Allah,” and a guy named “Mohammed.”

My experience with Islam probably began with Spike Lee’s movie Malcolm X, about the revolutionary African American activist of the mid-20th century. The movie depicted Islam as a highly disciplined and virtuous experience that transformed Malcolm into the provocative infamous political leader. Little to nothing is mentioned about the sacred writings that inform the practice of Islam: The Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith. All I knew after seeing the film was that Muslims didn’t eat pork, drink alcohol, and women usually had to cover their heads. I also noted that Angela Bassett was a whole lot better looking and charismatic that Malcolm’s real wife was.

Good and well meaning people all over the world practice Islam. Many come from devout families whose very life is integrated into some variant of organized Islam. I’ve known and befriended Muslims to a limited degree, but admittedly, most were not devout, and probably were more concerned about tradition than the actual doctrine espoused by the sacred texts.

One of the assumptions I made about Islam (until recently) was that it was a religion that followed the original Torah, or Old Testament, and supplemented its teachings with the Koran, which was revealed to the prophet Mohammed. For this reason I also assumed that the basic tenets of Islam were similar to those of the Christianity and Judaism, especially those of the Ten Commandments that prohibit murder, adultery, etc.

Recently, I stumbled into some work for a company known as the “Center for The Study of Political Islam” here in Nashville, who has recently published a series of books that explain the sacred texts: the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sira in plain english. Each paragraph is painstakingly referenced to the original texts for verity, and heavily condensed and reordered to eliminate the confusing repetition and lack of chronological order that make the originals so difficult to understand to the modern reader.

Granted, since these books are the only source I have, there is no way to know if there is significant context that is being left out: I admit that my following conclusions could be premature.

However, knowing the way in which the The Torah and the New Testament is used by churches and practicing Christians, the context itself is interpreted on a case-by-case basis. That is, it is not an uncommon practice to pick a verse from scripture and apply it to whatever you want to illustrate or prove a point, whether or not that meaning corresponds neatly with the original intent of the author thousands of years ago — especially considering that if the bible could be put on “debug” mode to remove any logical statements that were inconsistent or contradictory, a good chunk of it would go to /dev_null/.

Apparently, the same incongruities and logical/literal inconsistencies occur throughout the Koran.

That said, after reading the first volume, Mohammed and the Unbelievers: A Polictical Life — which is a highly condensed translation of the Sira, or, the sacred text that describes the life and actions of Mohammed — my perspective on Islam has been utterly turned upside down.

Jihad, which has been painted by the media and apologists of relativism as an aberration or perversion of Islam by extremists, is exactly what you think it is: a physical war of violence on un-believers who refuse to “submit” to Allah.

No if, ands, or buts about it.

There are two general phases of Mohammed’s life; the early days in Mecca as a religious leader with a meager following of just hundred or so, where he preached a somewhat tolerant brand of monotheism; and the second phase beginning in the mostly Jewish town of Medina, where he commanded his followers to attack and murder those who resisted submission to Allah and his teachings as revealed to the Prophet. The second phase led to Mohammed’s eventual military domination of Arabia, and the eradication of the open practice of the Christian and Jewish religions from much of the region.

This is best illustrated by Mohammed’s approval of public beheading of hundreds of Jewish soldiers who were defending thier village, following their surrender in a Siege. Not surprising as an act of war, but certainly not what you would expect from a Prohet. So, I guess the Taliban was really just practicing good ol’ fashioned Islam after all.
This first caliph was the beginning of a long saga — the first civilization war that led to the Crusades, the Moorish invasion of Egypt and Southern Europe, up to the destruction of the world trade center.

Once you read the actual actions of Mohammed in the Sira, and the literal word that Islam follows, there is simply no more dispute about whether or not murder is categorically acceptable: it is not only acceptable, but virtuous, categorically. Furthermore, the highest honor IS to die for Allah in war against unbelievers. Paradise waits for those who perish in Jihad. Suicide is not only acceptable in Jihad, but considered a certain path to immortality in heaven.

Jihad is specifically a proactive and perpetual state of the true Muslim — not a reactionary, or defensive position to preserve the faith. Thus, to be a Muslim is to be in a proactive state of violent struggle against those who refuse to believe. For this reason, Islam is easily and readily co-opted by any revolutionary political movement, since Islam itself is a revolutionary political movement. The mechanisms of social upheaval and revolution against any perceived “oppressor” are conveniently inherent in Islam, especially as applied to any fatalistic population (i.e. unemployed men between 16-35).

All this is right there in black and white — there are “competing interpretations” among Muslims about what Mohammed proscribed during his life, perhaps taking adopting an alegorical view of the bloodshed that abounds the sacred texts. Admittedly though, there seems to be a very straightforward literal advocacy of violence throughout the sacred texts — you have to read it for yourself.

These attributes have been implied by the media since 9/11, I suppose, but there was always a simultaneous dialogue coming from the “moderate Muslim world,” and by the cultural relativists that gave me the impression that the majority of Muslims didn’t really take all that murder stuff seriously, and that it was a perversion of an otherwise peaceful religion.

For this to be true, this means that there must exist a “reformed” Islam that has modified its dictates to contradict those of Mohammed.

Islam, as a cultural institution that closely follows the dictates of the sacred texts, is opposed to freedom of belief, self-interest, logic, and empiricism. I have always thought that world-transcendent theodicies of all kinds weakened the minds of men, corrupted our potential to survive as the most intelligent life form on earth, and subjugated the meek — but the literal teachings of Islam, unlike most other religions, go against the very fundamental humanistic instinct to preserve human life. Murder of an Infidel is acceptable. And like other world-transcendent theodicies, it lays siege to causality, and replaces it with a dualistic, incoherent “divine will.”

The Jews established a new kind of “people of the book” capable of passing down a complex and overarching social superstructure. The apostles of Jesus created a powerful variant of this social phenomenon with a more aggressive stance on tolerance and proselytizing.

Islam goes to the furthest extreme of “the people of the book” tradition of that era of civilization (no doubt Mohammed was keen to the power of written law) and creates a longitudinal, intergenerational, virulent culture that perpetuates itself through proselytizing (like Christianity) and adds the teeth of violence (jihad).

Furthermore, inherent in Islam are highly specific modes of daily practice and law that prevent the tradition from adapting to new situations and technologies, unlike the constantly reforming and relatively malleable protestant traditions of Europe and the Americas.

So why do “good” people follow these teachings? Why are there apologists for this cult? Quite simply, Islam is simultaneously a beautiful, peaceful, utopian teaching of love for those who subscribe to it: that is, it is an inside / outside game that goes way beyond the dirty looks you get from Christians when you order a neat whiskey at Appelbee’s on Sunday. The tradition of behavior between Muslim brothers and sisters is idealized, utopian in nature, and strikingly similar to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, a global caliphate, devoid of the unbelievers is a peaceful world of kindness, brotherhood, and prosperity on the way to paradise.

Your down with it, or not.

Establishing this utopia, this Caliphate, by means of murder and mass destruction of Infidels (and brothers), if necessary, is the raison d’etre of Islam. And like Christians, eternal life is not on this earth — thus physical causality and immanent justice on this plane of existence is secondary to the final reckoning.

In my humble opinion, that last part alone should be enough to make you nervous; especially if it in anyway impedes on your survival (my raison d’etre).

All religions have a posture towards non-believers. The difference between say, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Islam, is that if you tell the Muslim that you’re an athiest, and not at all interested in his pamplet, he can cut your head off, and it’s ok with his God.

8:12 Then your Lord spoke to His angels and said, “I will be with you. Give strength to the believers. I will send terror into the unbelievers’ hearts, cut off their heads and even the tips of their fingers!” This was because they opposed Allah and His messenger. Ones who oppose Allah and His messenger will be severely punished by Allah. We said, “This for you! Taste it and know that the unbelievers will receive the torment of the Fire.”

Net Neutrality: there has been a lot of talk about this movement recently and an equal amount of misunderstanding. 

When I first heard about the NN bill, it was after it had already been voted down in the house.  The same newspaper report also explained that the defeated bill was trying to prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from restricting the bandwidth of certain websites and activity on the Internet.  In layman’s terms this means that website A will be artificially throttled to download faster than website B.

For example, let’s say that an ISP is owned by a parent corporation who also owns a company that sells guitars.  In the interest of the parent company, the ISP could restrict bandwidth to all guitar merchant websites except for the their sister company’s site, as to provide a superior experience and give leverage to that website.

CRIMINAL!  HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE LEGAL???

Well, before we jump the gun and go into a rant about the first amendment, let’s look at this a bit closer, and consider the realistic implications:

In the early days of the Internet, networks were relatively primitive.  Network routers and switches did their jobs with total neutrality: the data was simply routed to where it wanted to go and nobody had a problem.  Furthermore, the amount of data that was passing through the pipes wasn’t a big issue, being a moderate amount of web traffic and email.

Today things are different.  The Internet has become the defacto pipeline for just about everything.  Where companies used to have to invest millions in private interoffice data lines, now they just encrypt it and send it over the existing net. Internet telephony is an exploding business, and people are coming up with new ways of exploiting these networks every day.

Recently, the majority of our networks are controlled by hubs owned by larger ISPs such as the Cable and Telephone companies.  As revenues have expanded for these companies, they have invested in intelligent routing technology that has more control over the way data is transferred.  This has given them the power to selectively monitor and control the flow of data. 

Why would they want to do this?

Simple: usage habits vary vastly between users;  Let’s say we have Jack, a 55 year old consultant on one node, and Jeremy, a 21 year old student on another node.  Jack spends most of his time online checking email and doing low bandwidth research from websites.  Jeremy spends hours everyday as a “super node” on a peer to peer network, essentially transferring gigabytes upon gigabytes of data everyday so that he and others can illegally share music and video files over the net.

There is not an unlimited amount of bandwidth that the modern high speed networks can handle, and people like Jeremy end up taking up 80% of the space that the rest of us are trying to use.  If a Jeremy moved into your neighborhood and used the same ISP, you would suddenly see a massive drop in bandwidth.  Previously blazing fast websites would drop back to dial-up levels and you would call your ISP and demand better service.  The ISP would examine the network and realize that for some reason there was a sudden spike in usage on the same neighborhood node and the only way they could solve the problem would be to add more wires: and that costs money.

However, that’s just half of it. 

High-Speed networks are also constantly expanding across the United States - both up (in already wired areas) and out (into new areas).  The cost of building these networks is up to the private  telecommunications companies who already own the lines.  This is the part that gets a little weird: due to the nature of cable and telephone, local municipal governments grant a sort of monopoly or exclusive contract to one company to operate local phone lines, or cable lines.   This mean that only two companies more or less eat the cost of network construction and maintenance in any given area.

The way it pans out now, some websites and online services use a significantly larger amount of bandwidth that others.  For example Apple iTunes and Google eat up a huge amount of bandwidth, whereas your local mom and pop quilting website use a few megs a month.  iTunes, for example just started offering downloads of TV shows - which are HUGE files.  I recently bought the entire season pass to ABC’s LOST and proceeded to suck down several gigs of TV episodes all at once.

The ISP’s are allowing these huge bandwidth hogs to pay the same price to provide their products as the mom and pop website.  The way the ISP’s are handling this is by setting up bandwidth monitors and throttles on these websites to essentially restrict them to a certain amount of data.  If Apple wants to increase this bandwidth, and thus the quality of the service, then they have to pay local ISP charges to deliver the content. 

The reasoning is: if they are getting the traffic, then business must be good for them, and they can afford the cost.

The ISP’s will in turn take this money and… well.. they say they will invest the badly needed cash  in expanding the network infrastructure, but I think it’s a good bet that they will keep a few bucks too.

So, let’s go back to our original rant: if the liberal notion of “Freedom” is supposed to be more of less keeping the gubment out of everybody’s business, then how could a regulation on ISPs (the Net Neutrality Law) really be a good thing?  Regulation is regulation right?

The fuzzy part is in the potential abuse by local ISPs to arbitrarily limit certain sites that they don’t like, or consider to be against their interests.  Furthermore, they could kick off a paying user who is abusing the service (Jeremy).  The blogosphere has been resonating with this debate for some time, with the majority of people arguing that all this is just another part of the slippery slope to the dismantling of the first amendment. 

I partially disagree: the ISPs are generally a customer-centric private enterprise, and competition is intense between phone and cable, now offering essentially the same services across the board.  Cable took the first dialup users from phone, and then DSL started winning back broadband usage from cable, then cable started stealing phone users via VOIP, and now DSL is threatening cable through downloadable TV and video programming.

This competition is a good thing, and in my opinion, will keep the bastards relatively honest while they duke it out for your bucks. 

That’s America!

If it does get out of hand, we can be sure that we will see this eventually settled where it should be: in the judicial system.

In 1982, my father took me to a coworkers home to examine an electronic device called the TI-99/4A home computer. The coworker was a reseller of these systems and Dad was interested in purchasing one. I recall going down into the tan and brown decor finished basement of the man’s home, complete with wood paneling and no windows. In another room, that served as an office, the man had the computer setup on a desk with a monitor and several other peripheral devices. The computer itself was an attractive, compact, low-profile keyboard case made of brushed steel and black plastic.

We watched as the man demonstrated the machine. He moved a slider switch on the front corner and a red light came on. The screen flickered and seconds later, there was a blocky image of the TI logo against a blue background with rainbow patterns in horizontal stripes on the top and bottom. The screen read: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS HOME COMPUTER
READY-PRESS ANY KEY TO BEGIN.

The man pressed the space bar on the keyboard, and then the computer gave a simple menu with one option: “TI Basic.” When he clicked it, we saw what I would later recognize as a “command prompt” appeared on the bottom right of an otherwise blank blue screen.

He explained some things to my father, and then proceeded to insert a black cartridge into the right side of the keyboard. The screen suddenly went dark, and then the words TI-INVADERS appeared on the screen, along with blocky moving aliens dancing across the screen. I was familiar with Space Invaders from the ATARI 2600 systems that were prevalence in most homes of the day, but we could immediately recognize the superior graphics of this version. He proceeded to hit a button on the keyboard, and then using a small joystick, move and shoot the attacking aliens.

I was so excited that I practically peed in my pants. My Dad seemed mildly impressed. The man continued to load other games, and even perhaps a few rudimentary financial applications. After talking for a time that seemed like hours, my dad asking questions and likely negotiating price, we finally left without a computer in hand.

Some time later, Dad would come home with a large box. I immediately recognized the TI logo and jumped for joy. We took the box downstairs, carefully removed the Styrofoam packaging, and laid out all the parts. It came with the main computer assembled, power cord, and an RF adapter for use with our existing TV set, a couple of blue bound paperback manuals, one entitled TI-BASIC. The computer also came with the complimentary game “TI Invaders.”

That evening we stayed up late, playing the Space Invaders knockoff, playing in two player mode, and then competing in single player. We would make this a nightly ritual for a few more weeks before the game got boring. Dad and I looked at the manuals and we read the introduction to TI-BASIC. We typed:

PRINT “HELLO ERN!”

Then hit enter. The screen showed:

HELLO ERN!

We messed around with that some more, but it wasn’t incredibly exciting. We ordered a few more game cartridges, including a ridiculous Pac-Man knockoff called munch man. Otherwise, Dad had better things to do with his time. He probably considered it a bad investment. Given the state of the art at the time, I don’t blame him. Many people viewed that first “boom” in the computer market as a novelty. The machines were only useful to bored kids and the true geeks of the day.

That summer, with a lack of interest in the 2 or three miserable games we had purchased and way too much time on my hands, I began to read more about TI-BASIC. I discovered that information could be saved using a “string” based on user input and then compared to other variables using a conditional statement. Using this rudimentary principle, I spent interminable hours writing question-based games. Little did I know, there was already a substantial body of such games being produced as the ZORK series, dating back to the late 70’s. The computer nerds of the day considered ZORK some of the best games available, and are still a lot of fun to play. Being very small and all text based, they have been ported to most handheld devices at the time of this writing.

The terrible problem with the TI was that we had purchased the central processor, but there was no writeable media. I remember being forced to keep the computer on to save my programs that I had spent hours on, and then being outraged if there was a power outage, or my parents turned it off. The entire system was moved into my bedroom for use with my new 10″ black & white TV set so I could leave it on without my parents knowing it.

I eventually found the solution to my problem in a TI promotional catalog. There was a special cable that allowed you to load and save data into the computer from a standard cassette recorder, which I had gotten for Christmas from my grandmother a few years before. I begged and begged, and finally got the adapter in the mail.

It came with a manual that was probably a bit too complex for my 3rd grade mind, but I did figure out that my cassette machine lacked the required 8″ pause/cue jack necessary for the computer to control the device. I labored for days, even weeks to get it to work to no avail. I even recall considering stealing one from a neighbors house that I saw one day and hiding it from my parents. Every time I see an old desktop cassette machine, I look still look for that damn cue jack.

Finally, I discovered a method of timing the machine from the beginning of the tape after consulting with a high school student up the road. I was then able to save! It often didn’t work, though, and was very frustrating. I spent days writing a very long interactive program that I let my mom and dad play, even using basic to render primitive images. It only took them about 5 minutes to complete the final version.

It was my first lesson on the labors of programming with slow fingers.

Most of my other friends and most US school systems had acquired the famed APPLE II series by 83-84, which loaded data from 5 inch floppy drives, and remained the standard for the computing world as late as 1990. With two drives, people were able to copy games and data, and I immediately understood the beauty of illegal digital bootlegging.

TI had lost millions on the 99/4A in a price war with Commodore and Apple, having to sell the superior hardware of the TI at a loss. They left the personal computer business permanently in 83. Problems with the RF adapter and the cartridge contacts sent mine into the closet for good.

Realizing the uselessness of my computer, I lost interest in programming until I moved to Kingsport. My new friend Ben Roosevelt had an APPLE II and a vast collection of disk based strategy games that I found to be mind-blowing at the time: ZORK series, Ultima, and many more historic titles. On my request, and thanks to a mutual interest in logic, we also spent a lot of time eating refined sugar and working with APPLE basic, which despite minor syntactic differences, was pretty much the same. But we could save to disk. Wow.

My family wouldn’t own another significant computer until the 90’s, and I was generally more interested in girls and music by then anyway. I worked as an assistant in our high school computer lab in 92-93, and my experience came in handy on the DOS-based PC’s running WordPerfect.

It wouldn’t be until 1998 that I would buy my own PC, telnet into my university’s UNIX system, and discover the decades of mainframe, usenet, networked architecture that I missed due to ignorance and lack of peer influence. It was only a matter of months before I was speaking Bash, writing HTML in emacs, and only a year before I started teaching myself PERL for web.

But that is another story.

Tornadoes and strong storms flattened homes and businesses across Sumner county, leaving a trail of destruction several miles long, and at least 167 homes were destroyed in the Gallatin area alone. 

At least seven people injured in the storm were being treated at Hendersonville Medical Center. Hospital spokeswoman Marissa Murphy said the hospital was operating on emergency power because its regular electric service had been knocked out.

My company’s office is located in Gallatin.  Fortunately, we are in the basement of president Larry Cunningham’s home.  East Nashville was spared damage beyond strong winds and large hail.  Christy and I were driving downtown to the farmer’s market when a report on the local radio said that a tornado hook pattern was forming directly over downtown and could touch down in a matter of minutes.  We did an abrupt u-turn and got back to the house.

After a few minutes of wathcing tv, there were reports of golf-ball sized hail happening all over the area.  I went outside and quickly parked our good car in the garage that we had just recently cleaned out (it was being used to store friend’s furniture).

As soon as I hit the garage door button to close the car safely inside, hail started pelting our property.

We waited indoors for awhile longer.  The rain and hail subsided, and our cat came out from hiding: a good indicator that danger had passed.  Nashville remained on alert for the rest of  evening.

In 2002, the organization known as “One Laptop Per Child” set out to do what many thought was impossible or impractical: build a mass-production laptop with a price tag under $100 that is incredibly durable, can surf the web, and even run without electrical outlets via a hand-crank power supply.

The concept is targeted at emerging markets (think Sudan), or just about any school system on planet earth that wants an extremely flexible, durable, low cost computing solution. 

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of One Laptop Per Child, said in a keynote at LinuxWorld here that OLPC is preparing to deliver its first 5 million to 10 million machines late this year or early in 2007. The machines will come with 7-inch screens and a 500MHz processor from Advanced Micro Devices, will use flash memory in lieu of a hard drive, and will run a Linux operating system.

By using a stripped-down version of Linux and older but still powerful microprocessors, the machine will use less than 2 watts of electricity, compared with 40 watts for the typical laptop. That means the computer can be powered by a hand crank or foot pedal attached to its power adapter, which can also be plugged into a wall socket when electricity is available.

Each laptop contains a Wi-Fi wireless networking chip that would automatically link the machine to every other laptop in range. Thus users could communicate with one another over long distances, by bouncing the messages from machine to machine (think Napster).

Each laptop’s networking chip would continue to operate for up to 24 hours on battery power, even when the rest of the computer was shut down.

The laptop will feature a dual-mode screen. During daylight, it would have a high-resolution black-and-white screen; at night, when many poor families live in darkness, the laptop would display low-resolution color images, with a backlight for illumination.

My idealist sensibililties find this concept to be absolutely revolutionary, not just from the standpoint of charity, but as a brilliliant example of “design revolution” in the sense of Buckminster Fuller.  Here we have a web-appliance that can operate on human power, and is capable of instantly creating a peer-to-peer wireless network when in the presence of other machines, at an absurdly cheap mass-production cost of $50 (the company marks it up to $100).

But what is most intriguing about this little gem is what it doesn’t have: bloat.  The company has faced criticism from the Windows camp that the streamlined Linux Os won’t allow users to load ubiquitous PC applications, or the massive MS Office applications that dominate the world of word processing, spreadsheets, and beyond.  However, this is machine’s greatest asset.

The windows operating system would have made the low price impossible, especially if it was expected to run the upcoming Vista OS, which contains 80% more code than the already absurdly overweight XP Os. This highlights two major trends in the world of information systems today:  One trend is to build bigger, faster machines that can run bigger and bulkier operating systems and applications; the other movement is to build smaller, faster, web-based code that can run on any internet capable machine with a modern browser.  The latter movement is commonly referred to as Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate, and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages.

In fact, most computer users are already deeply rooted in the realm of Web 2.0.  Your average person ignores desktop applications altogether in favor of using web-based internet portals like Hotmail or Gmail to do just about everything from mail to word processing, to data storage.  Larger organizations often opt to build intranet applications that run off of a central server for accounting, collaboration, and beyond.

In the world of word processing, the days of MS Word’s domination of general document production are numbered.  While Microsoft is gearing up to provide online versions of word that work through your browser and allow you to keep your documents online, Google has one-upped them by recently acquiring “Writely,” the small silicon valley upstart that already has a fully functional online word processing/ collaboration / document storage suite that can open, edit, and publish all popular document formats.

This will soon be incorporated into Gmail, the greatest free email service in history with over 2 gigabytes of free centralized storage for every user.

So clearly, the $100 laptop doesn’t seem so puny after all.  Especially when you consider the meta-trends of your average user.  Having a free laptop in the hands of every child also means that this human being is going to be exposed to the global community, have access to the biggest library in history, and the ability to communicate with everyone…

…even if they have to crank the handle to boot it up.  God forbid they get some exercise.

They say what goes around comes around, and in this case, I believe the “karma” is good.  After nearly six years, I have created a memorial website for the Murfreesboro drum&bass project Junk Buddha.  It features an ongoing history from members, downloadable music in the mp3 format, as well a variety photos from the period.

The circle of folks who supported the Junk Buddha project have moved on to lives all over the US.  Surprisingly, these good people have come out of the woodwork and contributed a wealth of memories and photos to the website.  The photo gallery is also functioning as an ongoing photo collection for friends of the band.

Check out the new Junk Buddha Website!

Have you ever noticed that the east side of a city is usually where the artists, wierdos, and progressive folk like to hang out?  A fellow East Nashvillian pointed this out to me the other day while enjoying a pint of Guiness at the Family Wash. Hmm, maybe there is something to that.  East village New York, five points in Atlanta… well, I don’t know about many other places, but I’ll take this guy’s word for it.

Since we moved to Nashville six months ago, my wife and I have been adapting to a rapidly changing, insular area that likes to think of it self as “The Island.”  We live just outside of the “hip” zip code 37206, in an area that has seen the positive effects of the low-interest rate “regentrification,” but not to the degree that the trendy five-points area off of Main street has.

East End began in 1876 as an addition or outgrowth of the fashionable Edgefield community. It was originally called the East Edgefield addition, but became known as East End because it was located on the eastern edge of the city limits. By the turn of the century, East End’s population was in the hundreds. Families bought or built homes which showcased the Victorian love of craftsmanship, intricate design and numerous decorative elements.

During the early 20th century, the East End neighborhood evolved into a stable, picturesque, and conveniently located inner city neighborhood. East End is typical of inner city neighborhoods, a well-preserved neighborhood with a high degree of visual integrity.

You can find out more about East End at http://www.eastendnashville.org

East Nashville clubs are about three miles away from the glitzy, booty-grinding, Wet Seal-wearing crowds of Second Avenue, but they might as well be 3,000 miles away.

The Second Avenue and Demonbreun strip crowds wear fabulous clothes, hang with fabulous friends and usually won’t put down cell phones unless the person in front of them is really, really fabulous — read: physically attractive and rich.

In east Nashville, folks (and most of them are folks) tend to have actual conversations face to face. In normal clothes. Without the desperate fear of going home alone — or the desperate fear of going home with the wrong person.

In fact, racially mixed east Nashvillians — artists, musicians, gays, bohemians, hippies and other, well, ‘’liberals'’ — are well aware of this distinction and often wear it as proud badges on their tattered vintage blazers, ’70s rock concert T-shirts and hoodies. In fact, they’re so into their laid-back inclusiveness that they’re exclusive.

But if you’re not out looking to hook up with brainless hotties, and you wanna have real conversations, this is the place to do it. And don’t worry, crime ain’t all that.

There has been a mini-explosion of new places, and restaurants and clubs have a deeper draw, but they remain more denizens for the locals than city-wide magnets for the bar-trolling crowds.

And east Nashvillians like it that way.