NothingWavering.org - LDS Bloggers

Gently Hew Stone: You Are Not a Gadget…Or A Passive, Vacuous Techno-Consumer

noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:32:00 -0700

“It has become appalingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” –Albert Einstein Einstein was mostly talking about the bomb, and how we don’t have the maturity to handle such a powerful weapon wisely. His thought applies equally well to that other insidious invention of the last century, electronic entertainment. I was thinking of this again this week [...]

Reach Upward: The Demise of One of My Childhood Icons

noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:00:00 -0700

As a kid, we would on occasion go to McDonald’s. The drive-in, which was a couple of miles from my home is in my earliest memories of my town. I didn’t realize it, but that place was the first McDonald’s restaurant in Utah.

It was once a white building with a single-plane roof that slanted front to back. The sides of the building were graced with large trademark golden arches that extended above the roofline. The building contained only the kitchen and the retail/delivery counter. There was no indoor space for customers.

If my memory is correct, this McDonald’s was seasonal, so that it was closed during cold weather months. I do remember that they eventually installed outdoor heaters above the retail windows. This helped keep the customers nearest the windows warm in cold weather. A few years later, they added a mostly glass enclosure to shelter customers, but there was still no indoor dining facility.

Sometime during my adolescent years, the entire McDonald’s chain decided to change its look. The white buildings with prominent side arches were replaced with red-brown brick structures. Our local McDonald’s underwent extensive renovation to make the change and to add a dining room. When Ronald McDonald, the corporate mascot was joined by a host of other whacky cartoon-like characters, images of the characters began to grace the place. They added an outdoor playground too.

As a senior in high school, I went looking for work. I had gotten a food handler permit to work at a little joint that was started by the family of one of my Mom’s co-workers. After I went to work twice, it became obvious that these folks had been overly optimistic about the enterprise, so more than half the staff was cut. I applied at various food service businesses and ended up landing a job at McDonald’s.

By this time, there was another McDonald’s at the other end of town, and another one in the south end of the county. I enthusiastically began my short-lived career at McDonald’s, only to discover that working in fast food was not for me. After only a couple of months, I handed in my uniform and went in search of other employment.

During my brief tenure at McDonald’s, I learned several things. Employees at our installation were not permitted to stand around. “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean,” was a common refrain. Many things, even rather arcane matters, required strict compliance with corporate rules.

As far as food quality, the temperature of foods was strictly regulated, as was the amount of time between preparation and delivery of foods. The oil in deep fry vats was changed on a regular schedule to keep it fresh. Back then, we had two kinds of hamburger patties: 10-to-1 and 4-to-1, meaning one-tenth or one-quarter of a pound in a quick frozen state. (A fair amount less in a cooked state.)

I didn’t mind doing the work. I learned the rules fairly quick and rapidly made it to the esteemed rank of head shift cook. But I didn’t like the way our store’s owner dealt with employees. There were lots of other jobs available, so I quit. (The guy was later indicted for embezzling from the franchise.)

As the years went by, I had steadily fewer occasions to go to this McDonald’s store. (For one thing, there are now two stores closer to where I live.) The joint was renovated numerous times. They replaced the outdoor playground with an indoor play place. They expanded the capacity of the drive through. The place seemed to always have plenty of business.

Yesterday afternoon when I drove by the place, it had been demolished. There was a big tractor parked atop the rubble. One of the kids said that he heard that it had been closed for renovations. I have since discovered that they are completely replacing the structure, which was 50 years old.

I don’t mind the progress. But seeing this building torn down also leaves me with a kind of melancholy feeling. I’m not completely sure why. I rarely patronize McDonald’s nowadays anyway. Perhaps it’s because I kind of grew up along with the place and its demise gives me a sense of my own mortality. I’m sure that after the new structure opens nobody will miss the old place much.

Gently Hew Stone: Census Takers In Ancient Rome?

noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:36:00 -0700

Teaching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar this month reminded me of the current brouhaha over the supposed intrusiveness of the 2010 federal census. In Act III, Scene 3, a minor character runs afoul of an angry mob that has been whipped up to a homicidal frenzy by the Machiavellian machinations of Marc Antony. In the following confrontation, the [...]

Connor's Conundrums: The Chameleon-Like Qualities of Mitt Romney’s Conservatism

noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:07:00 -0700

photo credit: ylangredleo73

In the past few years, political opponents of Mitt Romney have accused him of being a so-called “flip flopper” for changing his stances on certain key issues. Others have classified him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”—a “demon sheep” before the fad caught on—as one who wears the “habiliments of the priesthood”, as J. Reuben Clark said, and earns the glowing praise of countless Latter-day Saints, yet who violates one principle after another in pursuit of political power.

The label of “flip-flopper” may very well be appropriate, but an analysis of Romney’s positions across the board and over time lend more support to the critique that he is rather like a political chameleon, changing himself to blend in with whatever environment he happens to be in. Indeed, to determine Romney’s political affiliation at any given moment, one need only determine to which audience he is addressing himself in hopes of winning a popular vote. Thus, his foundation-less platform has morphed as he courted voters first in Massachusetts, then later across the nation.

Much can be said about the man himself: he’s a successful businessman who has accumulated a substantial wealth of at least $200 million; he’s an intelligent individual, graduating with honors from prestigious universities; he’s a member of the LDS Church in good standing, having served as a bishop and stake president a couple decades ago; he has a knack for fixing failing businesses, most notably the 2002 Winter Olympics; and, ironically enough, he was a contributing factor in how I met my wife.

Good people are not necessarily good political leaders, however, and the masses who swarm around this man because of his good looks, Obama-esque parlance fine-tuned to appeal to emotions, and business experience, need to understand a bit more about the man, lest they unwittingly mistake the chameleon’s current color for its true colors. Still worse, members of the LDS Church who support Romney because “he is one of us” are like the sheep who welcome the wolf in sheep’s clothing into their flock merely because his outward appearance resembles their own.

In response to this threat of deceit, Jesus Christ told his flock that they would be able to accurately assess another individual by analyzing their fruits—their actions, decisions, and affiliations.

What are Mitt Romney’s political fruits? In an effort to ascertain the chameleon’s true colors, let’s look at a few.

Gun control

In July of 2004, then-Governor Romney signed into a law a permanent assault weapons ban in Massachusetts. “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,” he declared. His signature continued the 1998 ban that was set to expire, ensuring that so-called “assault weapons” would be entirely banned within the state, regardless of what federal law did or did not ban. Defending his decision during the 2008 presidential race, he justified it by noting that the same bill also relaxed some regulations for gun owners, as if to suggest that adding a little sugar to a rotten egg makes it any more palatable.

This measure was a continuation of a policy he supported as early as his failed 1994 Senate bid, when he backed two gun control bills strongly opposed by the NRA and other related organizations: the Brady Bill and the federal assault weapons ban. “I don’t line up with the NRA,” he said in 1994. Referring to Massachusetts’ gun laws while campaigning for governor in 2002, he stated that “I won’t chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.”

Just a few years later while on the presidential campaign trail, however, Romney said on a radio show that he hoped states would ease regulations on gun owners, and positively referred to guns and hunting. “I have a gun of my own. I go hunting myself. I’m a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms,” Romney said. Not only did he reverse course on his relationship with the NRA (buying a lifetime membership in late 2006, just prior to launching his presidential campaign), but he also stated in one debate that he would not support a federal assault weapons ban.

Pressed further in an attempt to dig below his standard superficial level, reports learned that although Romney said “I have a gun of my own”, he later admitted that he did not own one, and instead was referring to two guns owned by his son, kept at the family’s vacation home in Utah, which he uses “from time to time”. The reference to going hunting turned out to be a reference to only two occasions in his entire life in which he participated in the activity.

Romney also supports federally-mandated background checks for anybody wishing to purchase a gun, almost in the same breath where he said that he “takes seriously” the oath to support and defend the Constitution—a document which gives the federal government no authority to promote his gun control desires.

Health care

While governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney heavily promoted and finally signed into a law a bill that required every citizen of the state to purchase health insurance or be penalized with fines. It was “the ultimate conservative plan”, he later said of it. It was, at the time of its implementation, and in fact still is, the nation’s most aggressive government-mandated health care program.

Shortly after signing the bill, Romney told reporters: “Issues which have long been the province of the Democratic Party to claim as their own will increasingly move to the Republican side of the aisle.” Asked on another occasion what the biggest difference was between his health care plan (“Romneycare”) and Hillary Clinton’s (“Hillarycare”), he stated: “mine got passed and hers didn’t.”

While running for President, he advocated a similar plan of universal health care that would, in his predictive opinion, require no more than four years to ultimately make it possible for every American to have health insurance. “My approach is based on the free enterprise system and personal responsibility,” he argued, betraying his alleged understanding of what free enterprise entails; a system of government mandates, licensed service providers, and heavy regulations do not a free enterprise system make. Romneycare, like all the other government-run programs, relies on an individual mandate—the government’s decree that an individual must participate in the organized health care system. Challenged on this issue during a New Hampshire presidential debate, Romney repeatedly asserted that he “like[s] mandates”. Asked recently about whether he considers such a mandate to be un-constitutional, he dodged the question in a way that only Romney can.

Just before signing Romneycare into law, the Governor stated:

And how did [so many individuals and groups collaborate together]? I think it is because of what this bill can lead to: every citizen with affordable, comprehensive health insurance; small businesses able to conveniently buy insurance for their employees at a cost that’s competitive with big businesses; medical transparency, bringing marketplace dynamics to healthcare, really for the first time; and finally beginning to rein in health inflation.

Despite such allegedly lofty goals, and rather quite predictably, the program has proved itself a failure, and despite some advocating that a national health care program be patterned after Massachusetts, Romney’s “conservative plan” is one more statist creation riddled with abuse and problems. It is dependent upon federal money, pushes its bloated budget onto future citizens and generations, and features at its core a central planning authority to administer, regulate, and otherwise manage the entire program. Despite Romney’s claims to the contrary, nothing about Romneycare is based in the free enterprise system. The plans being touted by Utah Senator Bob Bennett (whom Romney has endorsed) and President Obama are not that different from Romney’s own plan. In fact, President Obama’s Senor Advisor David Axelrod recently admitted that Romneycare was the “template” for Obama’s own plan.

Homosexuals

Campaigning in 1994, Mitt Romney expressed support for federal anti-discrimination legislation to protect homosexuals in the workplace and pledged that he would “provide more effective leadership” than his opponent, Ted Kennedy, on homosexual rights. He also opined that the Boy Scouts of America—a private organization—should allow homosexuals to participate in their organization, saying “I feel that all people should be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.” (When in charge of the Salt Lake City olympics, he banned the BSA from participating.) Further, in his bid for the Senate he was endorsed by the Massachusetts Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual advocacy group.

Campaigning in the governor race a few years later, he courted the same group in a gay bar, promising to “keep [his] head low” in the battle for so-called “gay rights”; he was unanimously endorsed by the group’s members.

During Romney’s tenure as Massachusetts Governor, the state’s Supreme Court issued an opinion stating that it was a violation of the state’s constitution to allow only heterosexual couples to marry. This opinion called on the legislature to “take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion” within 180 days, effectively ordering the legislative branch to create a revised marriage statute. Refusing to let the judiciary infringe upon its power, the legislature did nothing. On day 181, Governor Romney took it upon himself—absent any authority or legal mandate—to order town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples, making Massachusetts the first state in the country to allow them.

For all his subsequent grandstanding—criticizing the Court, participating in pro-traditional marriage rallies, and endorsing changes to the U.S. Constitution to require marriage be between a man and a woman—Romney was either ignorant in regards to his duties as governor, or duplicitous in his actions. Being bound in no way (and having no authority) to issue such an executive order prior to legislative action, the first homosexual marriages—and no doubt the impetus for other states to follow suit—occurred due to Mitt Romney’s actions alone.

Abortion

In the 1994 Senate campaign, Romney repeatedly affirmed that he supported “safe and legal” abortion. He promoted “sustain[ing] and support[ing]” Roe v. Wade since it “[had] been the law for twenty years”. “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard,” he said in one debate. Going so far as to attend at least one Planned Parenthood event, Romney was a clear supporter of abortion.

Consistently citing his own personal beliefs that allegedly conflicted with his public policy positions led Ted Kennedy, his opponent in the Senate race, to call him “multiple choice” as opposed to “pro-choice”. In response, Romney re-affirmed his personal belief that abortion should be safe and legal, saying that “you will not see me wavering on that, or be a multiple choice”. (Until a few years goes by, he surely meant to say.)

During the 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Romney said “Now, I want the voters to know exactly where I’m going to stand as governor, and that is I am not going to change our pro-choice laws in Massachussets in any way. I will preserve them, I will protect them, I will enforce them. And therefore I’m not going to make any changes which would make it more difficult for a woman to make that choice herself.” And yet, during the 2008 presidential campaign, Romney claimed that every action he had taken as governor was “pro-life”. Reversing himself in regards to Roe v. Wade as well, he said in 2007 that “Roe v. Wade continues to work its destructive logic throughout our society. This can’t continue.”

During the presidential campaign, Romney was repeatedly challenged on his shifting support for abortion rights, forcing his campaign spokesman to finally admit: “This is an issue that the governor has changed his position on, that the governor was wrong on in the past and believes he is right on now.” During one debate, Romney said: “I’ve always been personally pro-life, but for me, it was a great question about whether or not government should intrude in that decision.” Framing the termination of a life as a simple personal decision and nothing more shows clearly what (little) understanding Romney had (has?) about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Terrorism

Mitt Romney’s take on foreign policy and war is no different than your average post-9/11, fear-mongering neoconservative. His policy statement on international terrorism from his presidential campaign frames the issue as being a direct byproduct of “radical Islam”:

The defeat of this radical and violent faction of Islam must be achieved through a combination of American resolve, international effort, and the rejection of violence by moderate, modern, mainstream Muslims. An effective strategy will involve both military and diplomatic actions to support modern Muslim nations. America must help lead a broad-based international coalition that promotes secular education, modern financial and economic policies, international trade, and human rights.

Devoid of any references to history or fact, this and similarly shallow positions on weighty issues involving the deaths of untold numbers of individuals show how poorly Romney understands the reasons why America is despised in many parts of the world. Instead of seeking to understand and advocating sound foreign policies such as the just war theory and the golden rule, Romney advocates a jingoistic, imperial campaign against something as loose an affiliation as “radical Islam”.

One example of Romney’s misunderstanding of the military, war, and foreign policy occurred while governor in 2003. He said: “Through their service, National Guard and Reservists play an important role in our efforts to advance democracy, peace and freedom across our nation and around the world.” Of course, the National Guard was never intended to “advance democracy, peace and freedom across our nation and around the world”; National Guards were established and are to be properly used only in the legitimate defense and security of the state in which they reside.

In a 2006 interview, Romney explained his overall assessment of the war effort as follows:

Well, I think it shows a complete lack of understanding of the kind of enemy that we’re facing. This is not a small group of wackos in the hills that all we have to do is go find one person and it suddenly goes away. This is, instead, a movement. It’s a jihadist movement. It’s an extreme wing of Islam. It includes people, hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people throughout the world that are intent on bringing down America, bringing down civilization as we know it. It’s going to be a long-time fight against these people. And that’s why the president has called it a war. Iraq is one front in that war. And there will be other fronts in this war, I’m sure. But the idea that somehow if we just go home and sit back quietly that it’ll all go away is just pollyannish and not realistic. After all, what did we do to deserve 9/11? They attacked us also on the USS Cole, they attacked our embassies and we sat back and negotiated.

Making no apologies for continued warfare, nor showing any understanding of the reasons why America is sometimes attacked and oft-despised, Mitt Romney, in short, favors empire. Undeclared, perpetual warfare against a loosely-organized and poorly supplied rag-tag band of “insurgents” is something to which Romney is eager and willing to commit blood and treasure, with no qualifiers whatsoever. As said earlier, this is a full embrace of the neoconservative promotion of warfare to vanquish whatever enemy may exist. Imperial hubris fuels Romney’s misguided rhetoric on matters of foreign policy, and those who disagree are mocked.

On the issue of Guantanamo, Romney said with excitement during a debate in the presidential campaign that he would favor doubling its size as opposed to shutting it down. On Iran, Romney supports “stopping” the “greatest immediate threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union,” ignoring the fact that the country has no current nuclear weapons and an obsolete military. And on the subject of waterboarding, Romney refused to label it as torture, noting that by making such an admission, he would be prevented as President from using it. (Such a principled stance, is it not?) His defense was as follows: “I just don’t think it’s productive for a president of the United States to lay out a list of what is specifically referred to as ‘torture’.”

Romney’s policies relating to terrorism were best summed up in a 2007 interview, a summary of which reads as follows:

Romney’s responses — not to some of the questions but to every single one of them — are beyond disturbing. The powers he claims the President possesses are definitively — literally — tyrannical, unrecognizable in the pre-2001 American system of government and, in some meaningful ways, even beyond what the Bush/Cheney cadre of authoritarian legal theorists have claimed.

After reviewing those responses, Marty Lederman concluded: “Romney? Let’s put it this way: If you’ve liked Dick Cheney and David Addington, you’re gonna love Mitt Romney.” Anonymous Liberal similarly observed that his responses reveal that “Romney doesn’t believe the president’s power to be subject to any serious constraints.” To say that the President’s powers are not “subject to any serious constraints” — which is exactly what Romney says — is, of course, to posit the President as tyrant, not metaphorically or with hyperbole, but by definition.

As for the restraints on presidential power, Romney further betrayed any understanding of or adherence to the Constitution when asked during a debate in the presidential race whether he would need authorization from Congress to use a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He responded:

You sit down with your attorneys and [they] tell you what you have to do. But obviously the president of the United States has to do what’s in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat. The president did that as he was planning on moving into Iraq and received the authorization of Congress…

Asked whether he thought President Bush needed such authority from Congress, Romney replied: “You know, we’re going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn’t need to do.” Absent any demonstration of personal opinion, declaration of principle, or any substance whatsoever, these answers support the idea that Romney’s political strategy is to always maintain the ability to adapt to circumstance. Such moral cowardice on issues involving the lives of so many people should rightly be deemed offensive.

And on and on…

Other items of note include (but are certainly not limited to):

In an attempt to better understand the base of voters to which he was making an appeal (no doubt to help shape his policies, delivery, and strategy), Romney spent around $1 million during the presidential campaign on polling to gauge voters’ views. Like the nearly $50,000 spent on voter research in the fourth quarter of 2009 by Bob Bennett, whom Romney has endorsed in his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, this money shows an unwillingness to simply advocate one’s beliefs and principles and let the voters decide. To such poll-dependent politicians, campaigns are games in which they must shape themselves to appeal to the electorate.
Though a member of and former leader in the LDS Church, which believes that God communicates with a living prophet (of whom there have now been sixteen), Romney said in an interview during the presidential campaign that “well, I don’t recall God speaking to me. I, I don’t recall God speaking to anyone since, uh, Moses and the [burning] bush, or perhaps some others, but, but I don’t have that frequent of communication.” Perhaps he forgot the apostle Peter’s advice: “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”
During his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney was repeatedly asked about his position on medicinal marijuana. One of his replies, indicative of other statements on the issue, was: “The concern, of course, is that marijuana has become the entry drug of choice and contributing a lot to the drug culture. That’s the concern. And that’s why, as the federal government, and I as a candidate, support keeping marijuana illegal, because I don’t want to encourage more involvement in or allow more people to get involved in the marijuana and the drug culture.” Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, of course, does it give the federal government the authority to wage a drug war, much less conduct federal raids against peaceful individuals using medically-prescribed foliage to alleviate pain. “And if you elect me president,” Romney said on another occasion, “you’re not going to see legalized marijuana. I’m going to fight it tooth and nail.” Favoring a pharmaceutical industry whose artificial drugs kill thousands while using the force of government to annihilate the market for a drug that has never killed a single person is not good public policy.
In an interview late last year with Larry King, Romney was asked if he thought Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should be appointed to a second term. With only mere seconds connecting the statements, he first said that Bernanke had been doing a “good job”, and then said “Look, we’re printing money like crazy, we’re borrowing, and we’re spending money at a rate that is just unconscionable.” Romney obviously understands nothing about how the Fed was created, why it exists, or how it operates. If he did, he would realize that the ability to print and spend money like crazy are directly and primarily attributable to the existence of the Fed. Indeed, his excoriation of printing money is especially disingenuous (or naive) after having made statements that he approves of “the Federal Reserve [taking] the action necessary to provide more liquidity in the market” and that “the action they already took with regards to providing lower [interest] rates was a good move”.
While campaigning for governor, Romney repeatedly assured voters that he would not raise taxes, but after elected proposed three taxes of his own, while passing taxes (also called “fees”) during each of the four years he was in office. Claiming to have passed budget cuts, he actually oversaw an expansion of Massachusetts’ budget to the tune of billions of dollars in just four years’ time. In 2002, the Center for Small Government obtained enough signatures to place an initiative on the ballot that would end the state income tax. Despite a general media blackout and being dismissed and ignored by gubernatorial candidate Romney, the initiative received 45% of the vote. For all his rhetoric about fiscal conservatism, Romney failed to support a key opportunity to prove his colors. Rather than striking at the root, he preferred to hack at the branches by supporting a reduction in the state income tax by a small fraction of one percent.
In his new book, Romney asserts that the recent economic stimulus bill “will accelerate” the nation’s economic recovery, while only months before declaring at a visit in Utah that the stimulus “was a bad miscalculation that’s going to cost the American people a lot.” Romney supported—and still supports—TARP, a horribly un-constitutional bank bailout, declaring “Had we not taken action, you could have seen a real devastation.” However, in September of last year Romney said that when government is trying to bailout banks, “we have every good reason to be alarmed”. Which is it, then?
And on and on…

Commenting after a 1994 senatorial campaign debate, one Massachusetts reporter wrote the following, which could very well be a sound piece of advice in regards to any Mitt Romney political campaign:

[Romney] demonstrated very clearly in the debate last night that he has more in common with liberal Democrats than he does with conservatives… Conservatives should not let their disgust and anger with Ted Kennedy’s big government liberal record blindly lead them to support Mitt Romney.

Again, Mitt Romney’s private life may very well be worthy of respect, praise, or even emulation. His public record and policy advocacy, however, should lead the astute political observer to completely reject him in consideration as a political candidate, conservative commentator, or individual of influence in regards to any policy making.

As is evidenced by the information here provided, Romney’s so-called conservative record is a long history of flip-flops, hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, and superficial rhetoric not supported by any historical or factual basis. He is a statist wolf in a small government sheep’s clothing—a color-changing chameleon with the ability and willingness to adapt to whatever environment he is in.

Voters beware.

***************

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noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:01:00 -0700

Watch this great video about the Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.

For any of you who ever lived in or visited Hong Kong before 1997 and were fortunate to land at the old Kai Tak Airport you will love this. For any of you who missed this experience you may still get an idea of what a high skill level pilots needed to land a large plane on a narrow strip of land that ran out into the Hong Kong harbor. Often we joked that we could look in the window of apartment 39 B and see what they were having for their supper upon our approach. Someone did a fantastic job of compiling different shots of many flights at various times of the day. Good memories.

This approach was my introduction to commercial aviation. I was based in Hong Kong with Pan Am on the DC-6 from 1966 to 1968. We did not have the modern approach aids pictured on the approach plate but we followed approximately the same route. We flew a heading off of the Cheung Chow NDB (non-directional beacon) and descended to our minimum altitude, 1000 feet. If we were lucky we would see the spotlighted checkerboard painted on an 800 foot cliff directly ahead. We watched the runway out of the copilot's side window (and the checkerboard ahead) to know when to initiate our turn to final approach. Once the turn was started, we could no longer see the runway until we rolled out on the runway heading. This explains the undershoots and overshoots you will see in this short film. It really was an adventure. A short time after we left Hong Kong, JAL landed long and put a Convair 880 into the water off the end of this runway.

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noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:34:00 -0700

My son recently showed me the trailer for the upcoming movie Tron Legacy, which is a sequel to the 1982 Disney film Tron. It had been many years since I had seen Tron, but I remembered it as being a pretty great movie.

Tron was the first movie to extensively use computer graphics in an age when green screen technology was in the stone age by today’s standards. Tron captured the interest of the video gaming genre that was burgeoning at the time. It was different, new, and exciting. But it only earned modestly at the box office. The video games it spawned produced more revenue than the movie.

Having been piqued by the trailer for the sequel (to be released just before Christmas 2010), we took an opportunity to sit down and watch the original film again. My oldest son said that he was just a kid the last time he saw it. I told him that he was born years after the last time I saw it.

It turned out that my memory of the movie was much better than the movie itself. Don’t get me wrong. We had fun watching the film. But some of the acting was lousy. Or perhaps some of the direction of the actors was lousy. And of course, the development of technology over the past 28 years makes some of Tron’s erstwhile awesome special effects seem poor, quirky, or even campy. (It is amazing to compare the 1982 Tron technology with what you see in the trailer for the sequel. We’ve come a long way.)

The constant black background in the computer scenes in the old Tron is wearying to me. The dark sets and re-colored monochrome faces sometimes make it difficult to tell which character you are seeing. Some of the film’s transitions are also rough.

The last time I saw Tron, I had not yet begun my career as a software systems engineer. I had to laugh when I saw the boxy monochrome screen computers that were state-of-the art back in those days, because I remember working on such machines. I also laughed at the klunky interfaces. Sure, these things were done for art, but they weren’t that far off from the real thing. My kids were amazed when I pointed out that no computer in the movie had a mouse. To them, computers have always had mice. Except for video games, the only input devices shown were keyboards.

I was reminded that once when my brother and I were in college, we managed to borrow a dumb terminal from a neighbor who had obtained it cheaply when a nearby hospital had shut down. We put this massive thing up in our basement. We’d dial the phone number of the college’s mainframe computer and then put the receiver of the old AT&T rotary phone in a cradle that attached to the monitor. After a series of tones, a login prompt came up on the terminal.

Once logged in, we could write and run our BASIC, COBOL, and Fortran programs from home. The transmission speed was interminably slow, but it was faster than driving to the college and waiting for a terminal in the computer room to become free. And by golly, it beat having to use a keypunch machine (like I did in my first two computer courses).

Back to Tron. As far as acting goes, David Warner does a fairly decent job as all three villains. He’s insidious and tyrannical, but he’s not completely ruthless. He is, after all, a Disney villain. As the human Dillinger, he finds himself unpleasantly subjected to the Master Control Program, a computer program he wrote. In effect, he’s the program’s stooge, but he must never let anyone discover this, lest his career be destroyed. As the computer program Sark, the MPC’s main agent inside the computer, Warner is cold and cruel.

I had not remembered how wooden Bruce Boxleitner (Alan/Tron) is when playing his real world character, Alan. Or how huge the lenses on his 1980s glasses are. At the very beginning of the movie when Alan walks into the bad guy’s office, his acting comes across as stiff as something I’d expect to see in a high school drama production. He’s better as the computer program Tron than as a human. Cindy Morgan’s character (Lora/Yori) is way too simple. She seems almost goofily willing at times. Jeff Bridges (Flynn/Clu) seems more believable, but he has some stupid lines as well.

Several transitions and plot devices in the film are odd. Flynn seems far too willing to tell Alan and Lora about his stymied attempts to illegally hack their company’s computers. When he explains that he is trying to get justice, Lora (who is a scientist with a PhD) immediately and without supporting evidence suggests that they break into the plant so they can infiltrate the computer internally. While they are sneaking around the place, Alan and Lora seem too little concerned with the idea that they could lose their jobs and/or go to jail for their activities. Perhaps the writers assumed that having a PhD doesn’t mean that one has good judgment.

When Ram is dying, the transition from a casual to an intense connection between him and Flynn seems too abrupt. Then the moment lasts too long. Flynn’s willingness to jump into the Master Control Program seems odd. Sure the computer programs he is interacting with have human features and tendencies (in fact they get more human throughout the movie), but even a computer geek isn’t going to kill himself to save bits of data. Maybe Flynn is supposed to know that jumping into the MPC will restore him to the real world, but I don’t think that’s explained in the movie.

Near the end of the film the computer prints off “evidence” that Flynn developed games for which the villain Dillinger has gotten credit. Anybody could print something like that. It hardly seems like enough evidence to result in Flynn becoming the boss of the company. Reportedly, original shots showed more of a database printout, but the film makers worried that audiences wouldn’t get the connection. So they simplified it. Too simple, I think.

The main plot device — man’s fear of technology — is older than history itself. The fear of technology has been a recurring theme ever since humans began to use rudimentary tools. Science fiction in the computer era has frequently focused on machines becoming tyrannically powerful. The hero is usually a fallible human underdog that exploits some hubristic weakness in the machine. Tron’s plot fits nicely into this story line.

As a software developer, I have to laugh at the ongoing superstition about the coming of omnipotent computers. I guess that most people don’t realize the lengths to which we must often go to get computer programs to do things most of them think of as pretty simple. While we are much better at getting applications and computers to communicate than in the old days, the idea of artificially intelligent computing omnipotence seems like extreme fantasy to me. Computers in the real world aren’t that efficient.

Tron has its flaws, but it is still a decent movie to watch. It captures a time a generation ago when video arcades were a popular social phenomenon; before kids could carry around dozens of video games on pocket-size devices. It was an important film in that it opened the eyes of the entertainment world to the possibilities of computer assisted film making. Since then, computers have become essential tools to pretty much all film making.

If you think you might want to watch the Tron Legacy sequel that comes out late this year, I suggest that you first watch the original Tron movie as a refresher. You too might get a few laughs from old technology. Just don’t expect to see any computer mice.

I'd Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson: 7. Fixing Fumbled Sentences [Developing a Personal Voice in Audio]

noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:27:00 -0700

One of my first recommendations for achieving a natural, believable voice is to employ more free narration rather than always reading a script. I recommended this because all the video tutorials on Lynda.com are narrated at the same time as they are recorded, and the less you read, the more natural your voice sounds.

However, I realize that unscripted narration, even just a few sentences, can be problematic. Eddie VanArsdall commented that using this method often results in a lot of mistakes. He says,

I always scripted my narration and sometimes improvised parts of it, but I could never record it in real time. The pressure of recording and multi-tasking seemed to guarantee that I would make mistakes.

Eddie is right. Unscripted narration can result in a lot of mistakes. Even if you’re 100 percent comfortable with the app, even if you have rehearsed exactly what you’ll say, even if you’re fresh and alert and full of energy, if you’re human, you’ll make mistakes — especially when you read a script or outline and narrate and record at the same time.

Making numerous mistakes can be frustrating. And the more frustrated and tense you are, the more mistakes you’ll make. But before you smash your microphone on the floor or burst a blood vessel in your forehead, consider this comparison: when you write a help topic or article, do you write it perfect the first time? From the first word to the last, do you type out the entire concept and task details flawlessly? Of course not.

So why should we expect to do the same in speech? Speech is perhaps a trickier, more nuanced medium, since changing the tone of one word can bend the meaning in multiple ways. In addition to unintended inflections, when you string together words in real time, you’re bound to have poor constructions, fumbled words, and other errors.

You can re-record the sentences that you fumble. And as you re-record the sentences, you can splice them into your original recording, similar to the way you delete some sentences and add other words in written text. The danger here is ending up with a hodgepodge of different sounds. To avoid the hodgepodge effect, consider the following tips for fixing fumbled sentences.

Record in 1024×768px Resolution

Set your monitor’s resolution to 1024×768px and record the full screen. If you do this, the screen recording will be the same each time. If you need to re-record part of the screen, your recording will match the previous screen’s position exactly — each time.

In contrast, if you just position a capture screen at 1024×768px on a higher resolution monitor, such as 1600×1200px (my monitor’s resolution), then you have to guess about where you’re positioning the capture rectangle on the screen. If you need to rerecord an area, you may not reposition the capture screen in exactly the right spot. But if you change the actual resolution of your monitor and always record at full screen, you can splice in multiple recordings in a seamless way. Trust me on this one — it works.

Wait, you say your users can’t view screen dimensions that big? Okay, if you need to use 800×600, be my guest. But you’ll have to implement so many pan and zoom effects to move around the capture window, it will be maddening to produce the video.

Use Dual Monitors as You’re Recording

Use dual monitors when you set up to record. Put the application and capture window on the monitor with the low resolution (1024×768px). The monitor with the high resolution should have your script. I also set the high resolution monitor as my primary monitor. All my pop-ups from email and other apps appear on the high resolution monitor.

Having the ability to look at a script on my right monitor while recording the application on my left monitor reduces the number of mistakes I make. If you’re trying to read a script written on paper, you’ll struggle trying to figure out where to prop the paper up. If you have to look down and then up to your monitor, and then down and up, recording at the same time as you narrate won’t really work.

Also, you may want to make last minute changes to your script, and if you’re stuck with paper, you’ll have to reprint it each time. The dual monitor provides greater ease for fine tuning your script moments before you record.

Keep the Microphone the Same Distance Each Time

Maintaining a consistent distance between your mouth and the microphone is critical for achieving a consistent sound. If you have the mic at varying distances when you record, it will be difficult to reproduce the sentences that you fumbled and splice them in seamlessly. You’ll find that some recordings sound a little louder, others have more depth, others are softer, and so on. Be consistent with your mic distance and you avoid these problems.

Write Out a Script or Outline Beforehand

Although I recommend against completely reading a script from start to finish, if you write out a script, it will help prepare you for the “unscripted” delivery. Knowing what you’re going to say is key to an articulate delivery. Even if you don’t look at your script at all, having written it will put the words in your mind, ready to be recalled at the right time. When I give presentations at conferences, I write out my scripts via blog posts beforehand. I can talk for more than an hour without a carefully detailed list of bullet points to look at. It’s the same concept with recording screencasts.

Hit the Pause and Resume Key Often

Almost every recording software has a pause and resume key. In Camtasia, it’s F9. I often deliver a paragraph or concept, pause, and then rehearse the next part of the script before resuming. Pause and resume works well as a way to reduce mistakes, because you’re not trying to remember a five minute script in one go. You piece together little parts to make a whole.

Fix Errors Immediately After the Recording

As soon as you finish recording, go back and listen to it. Where you make mistakes, re-record those sentences right then, while your tone and mood are still the same. If you wait until another day, chances are it will be harder to reproduce the exact sound. Your voice’s sound is a combination of a lot of variables — how you feel, what time of day it is, what you ate, what room you’re in, the alignment of the stars, and so on. By fixing the fumbled sentences immediately, you increase the likelihood of a seamless patch.

Match the Tone of the Fumbled Sentence By Repeating the Previous Sentences

Before you re-record the fumbled sentence, listen to the previous few sentences. Repeat them several times to get in key with the tone and rhythm. When you record the fumbled sentence, chances are your recording will sound much more seamless.

Repeat Entire Sentences Rather Than Fragments

If you make a mistake while recording, restart the entire sentence from the beginning rather than just the word or phrase you made an error with. If you re-record mid-sentence, you’ll find that some words are blended together in inseparable ways. For example, if you fumbled the sentence “I want more ice cream,” saying instead “I want more axe cream,” don’t just stop your self and re-say “ice cream.” Do you see how the word “more” blends right into the word “ice”? You can’t delete a word from your recording very easily when the words aren’t separate entities. But sentences usually have breaks between them, so they’re much more editable. Also, shifts in tone within the same sentences are more noticeable than shifts in tone between entire sentences.

Try Not to Narrate While Dragging the Mouse

It’s easy to fix fumbled sentences and recordings when you don’t have any mouse movement that takes place while you’re speaking. While it’s not always feasible to leave the mouse stationary as you narrate, you might try to avoid speaking while dragging the mouse around where possible. Fixing those type of recordings can be more difficult, because you can’t chop a second off the timeline without having the mouse jump an inch.

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noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:05:00 -0700

"We may define a republic to be... a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior."

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noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:20:00 -0700

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