Green Debate Update

Last week I wrote about Sunday's Green Party debate hosted by the Alameda County Greens. Well the debate happened yesterday and here is the update from their site: ...

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!

It was a brilliant event! 800 attendees, nearly a full house, in one of the nicest venues in San Francisco, the historic Herbst. All the candidates appeared at their best, and were exceptional on stage. All great spokespersons, and fine examples of the Green movement. The Great Green Debate made the local TV news and newspapers, and will be shown in part on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now this coming week. Thanks to Mike Feinstein’s crew, it will soon (in one or two days) be available in documentary format on YouTube. And KPFA radio’s full 3-hour taping of the event, with Green MC Aimee Allison and political analyst Larry Bensky will air Tuesday night, 7 pm (Pacific Time), on 94.1 FM in the Bay Area, and live streaming for the world online at www.kpfa.org . Listen in and see for yourself what the Green Party can look like, in the proper setting. Superb!

First round of photos can be seen at www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/13/18472234.php

We hope to have a full audio track available on this site by Monday evening, for those who want a downloadable file for rebroadcast. Stay tuned... we are just getting started!

Once the audio file and youTube documentary are available I will make sure to post them here.

The case for debate reform

One of the things that led me to purchasing the domain name votedifferent.org was that I was fed up with only having two parties to choose from. Sure, some places third parties have access to the ballots and some even get elected( like this guy ). However, for the most part the political machine in the United States of America is set up to only have two parties to elect from. I'll admit, I hadn't been paying attention in 2000 and 2004 when Ralph Nader ran for president so I didn't have any clue about what happened with regards to debates. The following is a clip from a documentary on Ralph Nader called,"An Unreasonable Man." ...

In the past week taking a look at third party candidates, such as Ralph Nader, I've learned about how the presidential debates aren't run by the news media or even the government itself but rather a corporation run by former chairs of the Republican and Democratic national committees. The corporation is called the commission on presidential debates and in 2000 they not only banned him from the debates but they kept him from even being on the grounds where the debates were being held.

We live in a time when we can listen to these third party candidates and share this information easily. Make sure you keep paying attention.

He's out

If you have been watching my blog for a while you know that, even though I tried to remain unbiased I really liked Bill Richardson as a candidate for President of the USA. Yesterday I got an email that let me know that he was officially getting out of the race for president. Watching the presidential campaign I can understand it. In this day and age it is difficult to keep up momentum when the press have already made their decisions and the general public have accepted it. He wrote a great thank you for your support letter, and an edited version of it is available on his website. ...

One of the things that is missing from the email on his site is what he said about some of the other candidates:

Originally posted by Governor Bill Richardson:

Running for president brings out the best in everyone who graces the stage, and I have learned much from the other candidates running. They have all brought great talents and abilities to the campaign.

Senator Biden's passion and intellect are remarkable.

Senator Dodd is the epitome of selfless dedication to public service and the Democratic Party.

Senator Edwards is a singular voice for the most downtrodden and forgotten among us.

Senator Obama is a bright light of hope and optimism at a time of great national unease, yet he is also grounded in thoughtful wisdom beyond his years.

Senator Clinton's poise in the face of adversity is matched only by her lifetime of achievement and deep understanding of the challenges we face.

Representative Kucinich is a man of great decency and dedication who will faithfully soldier on no matter how great the odds.

And all of us in the Democratic Party owe Senator Mike Gravel our appreciation for his leadership during the national turmoil of Vietnam.

I am honored to have shared the stage with each of these Democrats. And I am enormously grateful to all of my supporters who chose to stand with me despite so many other candidates of accomplishment and potential.

While his departure from the race no longer leaves much of a wild card in the mix, I'm still glad to see Dennis Kucinich running. My wife and I agree, Kucinich doesn't run because he thinks people will vote for him enough to get elected. He runs to make sure people are paying attention to the values he considers important. I hope he runs right up until the convention, he's says some very good stuff.

A Different Debate - January 13th

One of the many things that bugs me about politics in the US is that we focus on such a small group of people who are running. Not only does the media pay most of its attention to the front runners in the Democratic and Republican parties but barely a whisper is heard about anything else. There is something else out there. In fact there are many other parties to look at. I've been looking a lot lately at the Green Party, whose ten key values I can easily stand by. Today I got an email that there will be a debate on January 13th in San Francisco, CA. ...

The scheduled debaters are:
- Ralph Nader
- Cynthia McKinney
- Jared Ball
- Kent Mesplay
- Jesse Johnson
and they are waiting to hear from Kat Swift.

This is pretty exciting except that there doesn't appear to be any live broadcast of the event. I think this would be a great thing for NPR/PBS to be on top of. It does appear that an audio recording of the event will be available at the event's webpage after the debate.

Being that it is in the bay area, you think they could find someone who could videotape it with decent quality and upload the video(s) to youtube( or some other service ) and create a playlist so it could be watchable after the fact. Let's hope that happens as we live in a day and age of visual media. People want to see their candidates.

What's a caucus?

For a long time we heard about the Iowa caucuses and how important it is to the election. However, I just thought it was another type of election in a booth. Well it's not and I found out more by reading some of the comments on the Bill Richardson for President Iowa Caucuses open thread. In the comments there is a great post titled "From Precinct 1, Boone County Iowa" that describes the process quite well. It sounds very exciting to be a part of that! ...

Here is a taste of the post that really explains how a caucus works. Make sure to check out the actual post.

We quickly got organized, did a head count, and had 39 supporters. WOW! A viable group that would take 2 of the 10 delegates from our precinct.

Now comes the fun part. There are 20 for Biden, 8 for Dodd, 4 for Kucinich and a hand full of undecideds. It's time to get to work.

This is sooooo what a democracy is all about. Thoughtful participation by citizens taking time to have their voice heard. A caucus requires much more time and effort than a primary or general election. You have to want to be involved and committed.

Manufactured Beauty

I just saw this short film today and it is beautiful. A true look at the world of beauty and how fake it is. It takes a lot of people to make one person look that good. Maybe our definition of good looks just needs to be changed?

DRM is out of hand

This morning I ran into an article about the latest problems with DRM implementation. It seems Netflix has a new way for you to download and watch HD Movies that are in your video queue without having to wait for the disc to hit your home. What a great idea, and it should work better across different operating systems( and browsers ) than the Silverlight streaming service. Well thanks to the MPAA and COPP digital rights restrictions management developed by Microsoft this proprietary system doesn't play well with others. ...

The current netflix situation would probably work fine for people who purchase videos only from netflix, but as in the case of the article any unbox videos would be deemed unplayable. Of course if you have all the right hardware that follows the standards of the COPP DRM then it also might work without incident. But after making all the hardware choices to select and/or build your computer you may have missed that one little specification.

The whole thing reminded me of the DRM used on some albums, but most prominently on the Velvet Revolver "Contraband" album. Interesting title considering that they consider you a criminal if you bought the CD.

Then later today I noticed an article on the Motley Fool regarding the RIAA. The article is titled "We're all thieves to the RIAA". From a business perspective, it is saying that when a company would rather litigate than innovate it is a good time for investors to steer clear. Perhaps by involving the companies investors we can start to make these companies listen to reason.

All of this reminds me again and again of Larry Lessig's very logical TED talk on the topic of intellectual property rights. So I have included the talk here:

I'm with Larry on this one. I don't condone piracy of media, but when the media outlets start looking at us all as criminals they start to do things that make us into criminals. Of course the other alternative is to only use stuff that is not restrictive, public domain, open source and creative commons.

If DRM is going to work, and I hope it doesn't, the media distributors are going to have to hire some useability experts to make sure their actual customers aren't hindered by DRM. Especially since the pirates never are.

Creating Myself in the New Year

Once again it is the beginning of a new year. At least for those of us that consider this New Year's Day and consider the passing of one day to be a good time to look into the new year. Often the new year brings both celebration and resolutions. Resolutions are those things we plan on doing in the new year. Instead of doing something this year I decided to be something this year. Instead of creating a resolution I decided to create myself as a possibility for the year. ...

Last year I did have a resolution. Like many new year's resolutions, I didn't do what I said I would do. Looking back at last year's resolution I realize that I am out of integrity and decided that the reason was in my being.

My being around last years resolution was that getting back in the wrestling ring would be a good idea and that I would have some fun doing it. However, that isn't far off from my being in most of life. So for the past few weeks I have been doing some digging around inside of myself trying to find a being that excites me and would call me to be the true me who often gets covered up by being reasonable.

Today, I am creating myself as the possibility of love, being extraordinary in the face of no agreement. For many people who have not taken some of the ontological courses and seminars put on by Landmark Education this might make very little sense so let's take it apart. Though it is very possible you can understand this from your own life experiences.

Creating myself...
Often times we think to ourselves,"I am who I am". When asked to explain who we are it requires us to use words. Different people might use different words to describe us. So to different people who use words other than those we would use, we are actually different people. Sometimes, other people's perspectives on who we are can change our own perspective on ourselves. In that way, other people create who we are. For me to create myself I just declare who I am with words for other people to read.

...as the possibility...
To be a possibility allows you to not only be something( i.e. generous, loving, compassionate ) but to also be a space for it. Being a possibility calls you into being and yet makes it okay if sometimes you forget yourself. Other people around you are often times drawn into your possibility.

...of love,
I've heard love described many ways. I've watched a lot of romantic comedies and heard all of the cliches about love. When I say love it means accepting people for who they are and for who they are not. This is what some people who do not use this definition might call unconditional love because by its very nature it can not be conditional. Acceptance is a powerful possibility to stand in.

being extraordinary...
This could also be said "being unreasonable( with myself )." I use being extraordinary because it calls to me more powerfully. Often in life the only thing that stops us is ourselves. We make up reasons that don't really matter to keep ourselves from taking actions that could have a positive impact on our lives. Being reasonable keeps us from making the simplest of requests. To be extraordinary I am required to be unreasonable, especially with myself.

...in the face of no agreement
In being a new possibility we find that people in our lives often act as roadblocks. They say words like no, can't, impossible and that can be pretty difficult to deal with. So its important to remember all the ways we can move forward in the face of no agreement. One way is to do it yourself. This is the most difficult way to get things done but sometimes it is the only way to go. Another way to move forward is to find people who agree with whatever it is you are trying to do. This is a good option as well. You could listen to the people saying no and find out why. Perhaps they can support your possibility in some other way. The most powerful way to move forward is to enroll other people in your possibility. Make other people believe in your dreams. Then they will be driven forward even when you are not around. While this may be the easiest way to get things done( related to your possibility ) it can also be the most difficult to accomplish. However, by being a powerful possibility you can be the space for amazing things to occur.

Originally posted by Socrates:

To be is to do

Who I am is the possibility of love, being extraordinary in the face of no agreement

LOCs Lifelong Literacy Campaign

Originally posted by http://www.loc.gov/literacy/about/:

In an effort to inspire young people to become lifelong learners and encourage reading, the Ad Council and the Library of Congress have launched a new series of public service advertisements (PSAs) to promote the Lifelong Literacy campaign.Created pro bono by The Geppetto Group, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and the Brigham Young University (BYU) Ad Lab, the new TV and web PSAs encourage children to “explore new worlds” and visit www.Literacy.gov.

When I first saw one of these advertisements, I thought it was wonderful. Truly expressing the magic that can be found in books. Being in media development I have a great respect for powerful commercials. Being a parent who likes book I have an great respect for these. Especially since the one I saw today almost made me cry. ...

The Narnia one was one that almost made me cry, and I think it was the choice of music for them. The first one I saw was the Oz Public Service Announcement and it is just as great so here it is:

And finally there is the one based on Camelot

These are beautiful pieces that will hopefully spark the imaginations of kids and set them up to be stronger readers. The full videos are also available for higher quality download at the Lifelong Literacy About page.

Friday Humor with LOL cats?

I think the whole lolcats phenomenon is silly. It's kind of funny and some of the parodies are much better than the originals. However I think the following lol cat sums up the phenomenom quite well. ...