The Texas Legislature wants to continue to prohibit municipalities from providing network services to citizens. I say continue, because that's been the law since '95. In an overhaul of telecom legislation, they seek to make the prohibition even stronger. Their argument is that cities shouldn't compete with private industry. Rep. Phil King, chair of the House Regulated Industries Committee, made a strange analogy during last week's testimony. He asked of more than one person testifying against the bill, if there was no grocery store in a town or city, would they expect the city to open one? What was strange about that analogy is that there is no law on the books prohibiting cities from opening grocery stores, and none proposed.

Other analogies come to mind:

• Private companies sell water, therefore cities shouldn't offer water service to citizens.
• Private companies operate taxi services and bus lines, so cities shouldn't provide or fund transit services.
• Private companies can build and maintain roads, so the city should stop competing; all roads should be private toll roads. (Austinites would love that, right?)
• Private companies can build commercial swimming environments, so cities should stop operating public pools. (After all, every community should have its mini-Schlitterbahn, no?)

In fact, the reason municipal public network projects are popping up around Texas and elsewhere is because they make perfect sense to dang near everybody... except for large companies, many of them incumbent telcos (aka "baby bells"), who were hoping to limit competition and control pricing. They definitely don't want cities in the mix. They especially don't want to have to compete with projects that are subsidized by tax dollars and are not necessarily priced for profit maximization. That's mighty tough competiton.

However I would argue that the cities that are their natural markets won't try to compete in a big way, because those cities will already have robust advanced service offerings from multiple sources, as in Austin we have SBC, Time Warner, Verizon, and various smaller ISPs. From an economic development perspective, a city would want these companies to succeed, and would offer limited public service where it makes sense (libraries, parks, publid events, economic zones, etc.)

Though some cities may offer broader network access (e.g. the Corpus Christi Wireless Project) because it fits specific needs and/or supports their plans for economic development, and they shouldn't be constrained from doing so.

However the only communities likely to offer substantial advanced wireless services to most if not all citizens are smaller rural communities that are outside the market focus of big telcos. There are some parts of rural Texas where even dialup won't work – and I hear there are areas where there's no basic phone service at all. The larger providers suggest that they'll address these markets, but they don't tell you what level and quality of service they'll provide. As Consumers Union says at the just-launched hearusnow.org,

Throughout the U.S., a growing number of Americans are tired of the cable and telephone company bottlenecks to Internet access. What's at stake are people's ability to come together to offer alternative ways to connect themselves and their neighbors to the Internet. Policymakers, industry groups and community activists will continue to debate these network opportunities, and whether or not sufficient spectrum is available for them to expand. (http://www.hearusnow.org/index.php?id=401)

Texas and other states shouldn't constrain municipalities from deploying networks to protect corporate profits. A better way to frame the issue is not that municipalities will create unfair competition, but that they will lay the groundwork for competition where there was none, in traditionally underserved markets. Where information services are concerned, "underserved" means excluded from the evolving network economy and society. Legislation that constrains municipal networks will inherently support and grow the "digital divide."

See "Save Muni Wireless" for more information.

Those radio bursts from the center of the galaxy that astronomers have been monitoring "may have come from a previously unknown type of space object." [Link]

FREE Tom Fulp Presentation at SXSW Interactive on Friday, March 11

The SXSW Interactive Festival is hosting a FREE presentation from Alien Hominid developer Tom Fulp at 7:30 pm on Friday, March 13. This presentation occurs on the top floor of the annex of the Austin Convention Center. Enter at the 4th and Trinity corner of the building.

Introduced in August of 2002 on the entertainment website Newgrounds.com, Alien Hominid was one of the most advanced Flash games of the day and a huge online success. Artist Dan Paladin and programmer Tom Fulp never had aspirations for much beyond the Web, until one of Paladin's co-workers had the ambitious idea of taking the game to consoles. People thought they were crazy for trying to release a 2D hand-drawn game in a market obsessed with 3D realism, but 19 months and several mortgages later, Alien Hominid hit shelves and was praised by fans and critics alike. Take a journey through the development of the first Web-born game to cross over to the console market.

The SXSW Interactive Festival runs Friday, March 11 through Tuesday, March 15. Keynote speakers include best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell and Ana Marie Cox of wonkette.com. For more information on the the 2005 event, see http://www.sxsw.com/interactive.

FREE One-Day Pass to SXSW Interactive Trade Show & Exhibition

Can't afford to attend all of the SXSW Interactive Festival -- but still want to get a taste of the excitement of the event? Then sign up online at http://www.sxsw.com/if_pass for a FREE one-day pass to the Interactive / Film (iF!) Trade Show + Exhibition.

In addition to scores of top national and international technology companies, the iF! Trade Show & Exhibition hosts a number of other exciting activities. For instance, the Day Stage features panels such as "Future of Podcasting" and "Blogging vs. Journalism." Also, top speakers from the Interactive Festival will be interviewed at StudioSX. Meanwhile, the SouthByBookstore is the spot for book-signing from authors such as Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, Malcolm Gladwell, Neal Pollack and Al Franken. Finally, the Digital Media Academy offers refresher courses on popular software programs such as Final Cut Pro and Photoshop.

For complete information on the iF! Trade Show + Exhibition, see http://www.sxsw.com/tradeshow. Located on the top floor of the Austin Convention Center, iF! opens at noon on Sunday, March 13 and runs through 4:00 pm on Tuesday, March 15.

Yow, and we thought Blue Bell was diverse! "Having succeeded globally with cars, electronics and even fashion, it was only natural the Japanese turned their hand to trying to surpass the West with one of its favorite culinary delights - ice cream." Some of the flavors are ... interesting ... (Thanks, Maida!) [Link]

A new stem cell research project will create a mouse with a brain composed of human cells. This is one in a series of chimeras that scientists are developing as part of their research into potential cures for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. [Link]

Last week, however, the university's ethics committee approved the research, under certain conditions. Prof Henry Greely, the head of the committee, said: "If the mouse shows human-like behaviours, like improved memory or problem-solving, it's time to stop."

He accepted that the project might seem "a little creepy", but insisted: "It's not going to get up and say 'Hi, I'm Mickey'. Our brains are far more complicated."

Spring, and an old phart's fancy turns to SXSW Interactive, where various communities will meet in hopefully Dionysian collision - WorldChanging bloggers, open standards hackers, wireless mavens, technopolitical activists, plus wonkette (sans glasses) and Malcolm Gladwell. It's gonna be a good one. Needless to say, I expect to be blogging bits and pieces of the conference, given some combination of physical, mental, and electrical energy.

Working through unsorted files on my hard drive, I found this piece that I wrote March 29, 2004. Might as well blog it!

A history of multimedia should probably start with the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. The printing press was the first technology for replicating information so that it could be distributed to the masses, one consequence of which was a broader distribution of literacy and sharing of knowledge. Other communication technologies followed: the inventions of the telegraph, the telephone, radio; the first uses of photography and the creation of motion picture technologies and the convergence with sound recording to make “talkies”; the advent and broad adoption of television; the evolution of computing from massive mainframes to today’s personal computers and palmtop devices; the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web. If you look at a timeline for development of these various technologies, you can see that their evolution accelerated as communication capabilities advanced. Much of the development, definition, and refining of these technologies occurred in the last century; over the last couple of decades we’ve seen a convergence of technologies in multimedia.

Multimedia is the seamless integration of diverse technologies for delivering information and entertainment. We think of multimedia as a digital phenomenon – computers enable the integration of various media. Originally computers were number crunchers, data processing machines. In the mid-1980s, however, our conception of computers expanded with the introduction of the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and the mass deployment of the mouse for efficient interaction with visual data. The GUI and mouse were first demonstrated by Doug Engelbart in 1968 as part of the NLS (oNLine System) developed at Stanford Research Institute beginning in 1962. This system included many of the components of today’s digital multimedia systems: GUI, mouse, hypertext, manipulation of graphics, hierarchical controls, etc. Doug described NLS as "an instrument for helping humans operate within the domain of complex information structures." Within the NLS environment, users could compose, study and modify conceptual content, and handle complexity and cognition beyond the normal limitations of human endeavor.

The visual interface model proposed by Engelbart and others is now widely implemented as an inherent part of computing systems, which have become sophisticated media processors. Audiovisual development was driven to a great extent by the development of increasingly sophisticated computer games with 3D graphical environments and high-end audio requirements. As processor speeds have escalated and media content increasingly produced in digital formats, computers have become tools of choice for delivering various kinds of media, and media formats (text, graphics, audio, video) have converged into a seamless mix. At the same time broad implementation of broadband networks facilitate the delivery of high-bandwidth digital services. This is changing the way that media are distributed. Users can download books, records, television programs and films and play them on high quality audio and video systems.

Improved handling of multimedia has resulted in increasingly robust presentation packages, the most dominant of which is Microsoft PowerPoint. Originally launched under the name "Presenter" by a company called Forethought, the program that became the first version of PowerPoint was built with a “slideshow” metaphor where the slides were similar to in layout and presentation to transparencies created for overhead projectors. Microsoft acquired Forethought in 1987, meanwhile similar products appeared (e.g. Lotus Freelance, Aldus Persuasion, and Harvard Graphics). The Mac version of the program included color, and version 2 in 1990 added support for 256-color systems and a "WYSIWYG" ("What You See Is What You Get") interface. The next version included sound and video along with outlining and drawing tools – i.e. PowerPoint was evolving into a true multimedia product.

PowerPoint has evolved to become a standard for presentation as competing products have fallen away. The tool has become a popular, flexible multimedia platform that includes animation, broad selection of aliased fonts, and an ability to save as a web-based presentation. Critics of PowerPoint include Edward Tufte, a leading authority on the graphical presentation of information, who says that “slideware” is insufficiently robust for the presentation of complex information, Tufte has written an essay called "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" that is critical of the system. According to Tufte, "In day-to-day practice, PowerPoint templates may improve 10% or 20% of all presentations by organizing inept, extremely disorganized speakers at a cost of intellectual damage to 80%." In an article called "PowerPoint is Evil" (Wired 11.09, September 2003) Tufte is a bit more charitable: "PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it."

Tufte’s critique of PowerPoint has implications for multimedia: media convergence implies increasingly complex media environments, the value of which is lost if presentation and interface are poorly designed. Multimedia applications should be designed around clearly articulated goals, with attention to usability principles: keeping the interface as simple as possible, reducing memory load by providing memory aids or cues, reducing information overload, etc.

PowerPoint is just one example of an application or environment integrating various media. Another obvious example is the World Wide Web, a set of protocols and standards which revolutionized content delivery over the Internet. Formerly text-based, the Internet became a multimedia environment based on the publishing metaphor of the page. Web pages combined text, graphics, and layout, and the hypertext markup language (html) evolved quickly to accommodate increasingly sophisticated layout options, background colors, and embedded media. Web browsers integrated more and more plugins for various kinds of presentation, including audio, video, virtual reality, and interactive communications through asynchronous or realtime messaging. As bandwidth has increased and high-speed broadband connectivity has become widely available, network multimedia applications have become more robust.

The character of the Internet and the World Wide Web is social. The vast global system is a network for interactive communication, therefore operating on a different paradigm from broadcast models like television and radio. Network users will not be passive consumers of media. The net-based multimedia applications of the future will be interactive, facilitating a high degree of user involvement. Online games are one natural form of collaborative multimedia entertainment that will become increasingly popular in the near future, especially with mobile interactive games designed for wireless systems. Games have always been a force driving development of computers as media devices with increasingly sophisticated display and sound, and in the future games will also guide the development of computers as collaborative technologies. Already popular massively multiplayer user games such as Ultima Online and Everquest offer virtual environments where players are represented by graphical avatars that can construct alternative lives and realities interactively with other players – these are more fully realized forms of virtual community, and as they grow and evolve, they will inspire innovations that will be adopted for applications that serve other purposes: collaborative work, or simulations for education and training. The military already uses virtual reality combat simulations, and the University of Texas hosts a project called Entertech that uses digital media simulation training for workforce development.

If you want to get a powerful sense of the state of digital multimedia convergence today, wander through a large urban Best Buy store and try to find something that is not related to digital media. All the television sets have digital components, especially the HDTV sets. DVDs have all but replaced videotape, and CDs are the medium of choice for music. Digital cameras are everywhere now. And computers are displayed as platforms for multimedia, even the Palm top computers and digital cellphones. Eventually with wireless these devices can be interconnected as pieces of media systems for interactive information and entertainment. The interactive aspect is important: it means that users will create as well as consume content.

This isn’t exactly a utopian vision; there are obvious potential downsides – information overload, too much content with too little quality, invasive technologies (sort of like email span, but on a grander multimedia scale). There are still technical and policy issues to be considered, and the "digital divide." But it’s an exciting time, and the promise of the future is, as ever, ongoing innovation.

I haven't slowed down enough to organize thoughts and post about SXSW Interactive; yesterday was full and illuminating, and I'm still trying to sort it all out.

A diverse group of netheads met in the morning for breakfast with Gerfried Stocker of Ars Electronica. Much of the conversation was about sustainable cities and the impact of emerging technologies on specific regions. Emily Gertz and I brought up leapfrogging, a concept we stress at worldchanging.com – developing nations are relatively unconstrained by legacy infrastructures that, in developed nations, may slow implementation of new tech. David Deans often cites the example of Korea, which has made been more effective than the U.S. in deployment of broadband services because there was no existing telephone/cable duopoly to contend with. We also talked about the principle of the ecological footprint, and how the typical consumption-based U.S. standard of living would consume many planets' worth of resources if it was a universal standard - so we have to think how to become more sustainable in the U.S., and build toward high global standards that are not driven by consumption. We're needing a paradigm shift, and if we don't find ways to drive it now, necessity will crash down on us like a ton of bricks. Global warming driven in part by fossil-fuel consumption is already looking like significant disruption, especially for the Inuit, for instance, whose environment is changing radically as the ice melts.

At the conference I was part of a couple of Studio SX interviews. I interviewed Dan Gillmor about his blog history and the concept of citizen journalism that he discusses in his book We the Media. Dan's been traveling to several conferences partly as an evangelist and partly as a participant of the apparent revolution in the way we form, share, and interpret reflective information with so many more writers and observers in the mix. I also had a taped conversation with Jonas Luster, where we talked about projects like Blogging with Borders, Global Voices, and Blogger Corps and their potential impact on the global extension of the blogosphere.

Here's an image gallery for SXSW 2005.

Tim Jones of EchoDitto caught Jock Gill and I for a SpotCast... [Link]

Technorati's David Sifry is tracking blogosphere growth based on Technorati stats.

Dawn Danby, Emily Gertz and I posted a Worldchanging.com summmary of the Bruce Sterling/Alex Steffen keynote at SXSW Interactive. [Link]

We're on a continuum, heading for a world that's either unimaginable or one that's unthinkable. On the continnuum between these two points, we need to aggressively promote the vision of a future as close to unimaginable and far from unthinkable as possible. We need to define our victory condition: an unimaginably positive outcome. A time in which the world's most creative people can get up every morning, apply their highest talents to the world's most pressing problems, and their prize the next morning will be a better set of problems to work on.

Nancy White did a great job scribing/blogging the Activist Technology discussions at SXSW Interactive:

• Activist Technology
• Deliberative Democracy
• Are Political Parties Obsolete?
• How to Think About Democracy and Technology?

Steven Levy writes in Newsweek about a blogosphere "dominated by white males," but he's really talking about the so-called "A-list bloggers," not the however many millions of bloggers who could be predominantly women, as far as anyone really knows - I don't think there's been a study to say otherwise. Levy, a terrific journalist, clarifies his focus, so the article's not really misleading.

My one quibble would be that members of the supposed "A-list," who may be using the blog format, tend to speak with mainstream media voices. I don't exactly think of them as bloggers. I'd really like to know more about the demographics of the larger blogosphere.

Yahoo acquired a Weblogsky favorite, Flickr, the best photo site and a great piece of social software, too. I remember thinking it was a bit klunky when Stewart was showing us the alpha at etech, but it just needed robust servers and tighter code, which it got. The acquisition seems to be good news for Flickr devotees.

Robert Louis Stevenson's famous "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was evidently influenced by his experience with ergotine, which is like LSD a derivative of ergot, and which has side effects similar to the effects of LSD. A couple of British professors believe that ergotine injections created a transformation similar to Dr. Jekyll's. [Link]

In the letter, dated “end of August, early September 1885”, Stevenson’s wife wrote to William Henley, her husband’s friend and literary agent: “Louis’s mad behaviour . . . I think it must be the ergotine that affects his brain at such time.

“He is quite rational now, I am thankful to say, but he has just giving up insisting that he should be lifted into bed in a kneeling position, his face to the pillow.”

Two weeks later Stevenson began writing his famous work about the duality of human nature. The story recounts the adventures of Dr Jekyll, who takes drugs that separate the good and evil in his psyche. Although the doctor is purified, the evil Mr Hyde is created as a terrible side-effect.

ourmedia, an "open media" project instigated by Marc Canter and JD Lasica, launched an alpha web site; it's looking pretty good. [Link] From the FAQ:

The idea is pretty simple: People who create video, music, photos, audio clips and other personal media can store their stuff for free on Ourmedia's servers forever, as long as they're willing to share their works with a global audience.

Ourmedia's goal is to expose, advance and preserve digital creativity at the grassroots level. The site serves as a central gathering spot where professionals and amateurs come together to share works, offer tips and tutorials, and interact in a combination community space and virtual library that will preserve these works for future generations. We want to enable people anywhere in the world to tap into this rich repository of media and create image albums, movie and music jukeboxes and more.

Hanging out at PC Forum, Marc Canter captured a great photo of Doc (with Dick Hardt, left). [Link]

Believe 'em or not, conspiracy theories are big business, and postmodern culture is riddled with a profusion of mind-blowing alternative belief systems that are, just incidentally, very saleable. [Link]

Conspiracy theories have pervaded every facet of our modern life. A.H. Barbee describes in "Making Money the Telefunding Way" (published on the Web site of the Institute for First Amendment Studies) how conspiracy theorists make use of non-profit "para-churches".

They deploy television, radio, and direct mail to raise billions of dollars from their followers through "telefunding". Under section 170 of the IRS code, they are tax-exempt and not obliged even to report their income. The Federal Trade commission estimates that 10% of the $143 billion donated to charity each year may be solicited fraudulently.

Lawyers represent victims of the Gulf Syndrome for hefty sums. Agencies in the USA debug bodies - they "remove" brain "implants" clandestinely placed by the CIA during the Cold War. They charge thousands of dollars a pop. Cranks and whackos - many of them religious fundamentalists - use inexpensive desktop publishing technology to issue scaremongering newsletters (remember Mel Gibson in the movie "Conspiracy Theory"?).

Tabloids and talk shows - the only source of information for nine tenths of the American population - propagate these "news". Museums - the UFO museum in New Mexico or the Kennedy Assassination museum in Dallas, for instance - immortalize them. Memorabilia are sold through auction sites and auction houses for thousands of dollars an item.

I want to second Chip's note of thanks to Todd Baxter, who showed by his questions in today's wranging over the muni wireless question that he totally understands why no source of broadband connectivity, including network services operated by cities, should be constrained, because broadband is essential infrastructure for Texas' future.

Joi posted about his Doors of Perception experience (I was going to link to the conference web site, but it seems to be broken at the moment), and his realization that his integrity can be compromised when he's speaking ("I realized that I was compromising and in fact evening softening my words assuming that the video of my presentation might end up on the Internet and that I would have to defend any hardline positions I took."). I feel his pain. So many of us want to improve the state of the world, but we really don't know the world at all. We see slices of the world, our perceptions colored by class biases that we never see; we have a blind spot. Our life style is probably doomed, because the 21st Century world has no room for wealth or privilege. I'm pretty well off now, compared to the rest of the world. I have a six-planet ecological footprint. I really don't *think* I'm that well off, much of the time, because I take so much for granted. If there is a leveling effect, if the rest of the world, including developing nations, gets something like an equal share of the planet's limited resources, I'll have to change my life style, radically.

And so will you.

Joi asks What would Gandhi do?, and I confess that I have no idea. Perhaps he would blog. Perhaps he would tell me, and Joi, and so many others, that the life we've made for ourselves is a lie, that we should look inward and cultivate silence. [Link]

In his sci fi novel Good News from Outer Space, John Kessel has dadaist punks breaking into cars to install new sound systems. In a similar kind of prank, British graffiti artist Banksy smuggled his own art into the New York Museum of Modern Art, where it hung for three days before before anybody noticed. He also smuggled art into other museums as a coordinated detournement of art institutions. Banksy's run is documented at the Wooster Collective.

Rebekah Miracle is blogging from Egypt, where she's working on the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, Mark Lehner's study explained in "Who Built the Pyramids", a 2003 Harvard Magazine article. Lehner's found evidence that the pyramids were built, not by slaves as we've come to believe via Hollywood epics, but by skilled workers who were treated like near-royalty. This archeological study appears to be a fascinating bit of analysis. Rebecca's blog is a ground-level account of the work as well as a bit of play, as in her latest post, which is about sneaking into the light show at the pyramids. [Link]

... we hid out in one of the tents until it got dark and then snuck back onto the Wall of Crow ninja-style, hiding from the camel-mounted security guards. While archaeologists are poor and cheap, mostly this was just done out of principle and because it is way more fun to do anything when it's illicit. So we crouched behind the rocks on the top of the wall and watched the show. Towards the end, the night-time call to prayer went out...and suddenly the usual five-times daily cacophony of competing prayer-callers (some better than others) was joined by the howling of the dogs that prowl the pyramids after dark. The call to prayers is eerie under any circumstances (Farrah thinks it sounds like something out of Night of the Living Dead), but especially so when you're laying under the stars, in the cold desert night air, giggling and hiding from the guards.

Austin pointers from Mark Petrakis aka Spoonman, a Bay Area Weblogsky pal and showman extraordinaire:

I'm spreading the word on a show (two in fact) coming to your neighborhood soon.

The first one is one the most amazing performers I've seen in a looong spoon epoch.

His name is Kid Beyond and he's coming to Austin this Thursday night (March 31) to perform at Habana Calle 6.

He is a beatboxer, meaning all the sound starts with his mouth. Where it goes from there is pretty hard to describe. He's smart guy and has his electronic looping down and he's a helluva good performer.

Catch him if you can, or pass the word to others more inclined.

No way anyone will be disappointed.

THU, MAR 31 -- 11pm
KID BEYOND
HABANA CALLE 6
709 E. Sixth, Austin TX
(512) 443-4252
all ages ~ free

And as long as I'm passing on recommendations... don't miss this either...

The YARD DOGS ROAD SHOW Daredevils of Vaudeville NATION TOUR!

Burlesque inspired, hair on fire, electrified cartoon music played by a well dressed jug band in a dark circus tent with a man swallowing swords and hobo rambling poetry . Oh yeah, and did I mention the dancing girls, dancing girls, dancing girls!

April 24th
Austin, Texas
Emos
603 Red River
7 Dollars
Doors 9pm
Show 10pm
512 477 EMOS

Clever humans have found so many ways to grow, build, and put resources to destructive use that we've managed to use up two-thirds of the planet and imperil ten million other species, along with our own. This according to a report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries, which is certain to be controversial, especially in the U.S., where we don't dare put on the brakes for fear of economic losses (thinking of Bush's position on the Kyoto treaty). However it's not the end of the world – without pesky life-forms to muck it up, the planet should do very well, eventually. [Link]

"That is what this assessment has done, and it is a sobering statement with much more red than black on the balance sheet," the scientists warn. "In many cases, it is literally a matter of living on borrowed time. By using up supplies of fresh groundwater faster than they can be recharged, for example, we are depleting assets at the expense of our children."

Flow from rivers has been reduced dramatically. For parts of the year, the Yellow River in China, the Nile in Africa and the Colorado in North America dry up before they reach the ocean. An estimated 90% of the total weight of the ocean's large predators - tuna, swordfish and sharks - has disappeared in recent years. An estimated 12% of bird species, 25% of mammals and more than 30% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction within the next century. Some of them are threatened by invaders.

This is a followup to my last bleak post. Nicole Boyer pointed me to a new piece by Bill Moyers, "Welcome to Doomsday", which, she says in her a post on her blog, Fuzzy Signals, "describes chillingly well the antagonistic relationship between the evangelicalism of the American Christian Right variety and environmentalism." While some of us plan to stay around for a while on an earth that will hopefully remain viable for human and other life, some evangelical Christians have an exit strategy, "the rapture". Why would they worry about any future beyond the apocalypse, which should be any minute now....

I had a series of emails today the subject of which was "Terri Schiavo is finally dead." Tonight I saw an unbelievably tasteless web site on the subject, which I won't credit with a link. I was feeling cranky about this stuff, but I realize that Terri Schiavo is no longer a real person. She's a political weapon, and having been deployed in service of politicians (with no real principle involved, other than ink), she's invited dismissal by cynics who deplore the ongoing political circus. There's a lot of bad actors in this - coopting Terri Schiavo's life for political purpses is depraved; dismissing her life as a reaction is just as depraved. The whole day's been depressing enough, and the Pope's near the end, as well. I can only imagine what his death will bring to the surface.

Forgive the cranky mood, but I think we're all in a dangerously bad place right now.