Electronic Writer

Now, more than ever, our civilization is in dire need of a dialog about human values. We need to talk about what we are doing, and why we are doing it. If we continue down our current path without even talking about it, our doom is certain.

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a phenomenal collection of essays, presentations, and writings about (go ahead, take a guess) Human Values. The lectures have been delivered by some of the greatest minds to have existed.

Try it out: find something that interests you, and download a lecture or two . . . .

Here’s the link: Tanner Lectures on Human Values

Yesterday afternoon, the Deftones had a free concert in the park in Downtown Sacramento. The music was loud, the photo opportunities were frequent, and the place was packed. I think he was having a good time–don’t ya think?

I have been working quite a bit lately. Much of what I do is NOT interactive. It is getting things through the pipe with moments of interaction–so, basically, I work alone. During my solitude, I cogitate, stew, invent, roil, examine, comprehend, and deconstruct. In short, I think.

Over the past few weeks, I have made a few observations:

1. When I am sleep deprived and hungry, I am much more susceptible to emotions. This is a humorous way to describe it, but in part, is true. I am more wistful, and emotional matter weighs more heavily in my decision making process when certain basics are not being satisfied.

2. Music is terribly important to me. My productivity has dramatically increased with good music playing in the background. If I get to choose the music, my productivity increases even more. On a side-note, if you love GREAT music, go to Paradise Radio, listen, and give them a donation. They are the best radio station of all time.

3. Life is bigger than even the strongest of us.

4. Work is empty. Money is empty. Find other things to make you happy.

It felt like an excommunication. Or, perhaps a better analogy may be that of an exorcism. In a grand ceremony, with all the ritual and splendor, I started.

“Advertisements, I command thee to flee–to come out and be gone.”

And, with the flick of a switch, they obeyed. (Okay, I actually changed the code in my code class and uploaded the revised bugger, but that can be our little secret, can’t it?)

Regardless of which analogy you prefer, I could no longer tolerate the countless services advertising essays for sale, and the blatant smack of Capitalism on the cheek of my pet project.

On a more pratical level, it was a terrible visual clutter. A busy element to the eye. Perhaps they were something that could have been better incorporated into the design, but who really wants to try THAT hard to add the ads?

Anyways, I feel better about this project now that it is not subsidized or funded by anyone or anything except my love for literature and language. The only terms and conditions that I have to follow are my own . . . .

In the future, things may change. I may add a donations page. I may advertise again. But, for right now, my passion is burning brightly enough to fuel my own work in this process.

Fortunately, my passion is a renewable resource. No drilling required.

Each year, while most people are dreading the almighty April 15th deadline, I have a different feeling about the whole thing. For me, getting prepped for my annual visit with the CPA is a nice, long trip down memory lane–one receipt at a time.

So, I am going to quickly recount my last year in receipts:

The first of January in 2005 found me stuffing receipts with the Euro symbol on them in my pockets. I was in Paris for 10 days, and spent another 4 in San Francisco afterwards. There were museum stubs from La Louvre, espresso receipts from the Marais, and a whole collection of Metro tickets. Itemized lists of food printed on tiny white slips of paper was not quite as good as eating those meals, but it was fun for awhile.

A single, handwritten receipt brought me back to docks of my sailing lessons in the early summer.

In the summer time, there were weekly receipts from the Friday afternoon concerts in the park. Oddly enough, they were from the Beer Gardens, and certainly would not qualify as deductible. Regardless of the tax implications (or lack, thereof), they certainly brought back the memories of a summer of Red Hook beer and live music in the maddening Sacramento heat.

Towards the end of the year, there were records of the spawning of my last relationship. There were dinners that her and I had together, coffee receipts, and stubs from an occasional midtown drink. Too bad that more things didn’t survive, but finding these relics certainly left a wonderful taste in my mouth . . . .

The end of the year papertrail recorded Christmas presents, art supplies, new Christmas-time music, and for a moment, I thought I heard the prancing of hooves of reindeer on the roof. Maybe not, but it was festive for just a moment.

I don’t think there is a moral to this story, unless, it is the simple encouragement to NOT keep on top of your tax information all year long. Perhaps you could simply save the work for the couple of days prior to your tax appointment, and take the scenic route (Turn right on Memory Lane) to your CPA’s office . . . .

The jury is still out on the Pay-per-click Advertising on the Electronic Writer Website. We are certainly not getting rich from it, but at the same time, advertisements of some sort are on EVERY website on the internet. It is almost a legitimacy issue: you are NOT a legitimate website unless you have advertisements running down the column or as a part of your search results.

Although the legitimacy issue is interesting and may be a subject for a future post, the more pressing issue is the time requirement. I am spending an inordinate amount of time managing the ads that are displayed on the site. The service calls them “Competitive Ads” and they give you a way to block your competitors from advertising on your site, but I don’t think of companies who sell essays as my competition. I think of them as my Antithesis!

Apparently, this is a hot market because everyone wants to sell essays. Along the fringes of this market, people are selling essay-writing services. Apparently, there is a market for WRITERS–and, they are somehow able to make it affordable to college students. It makes me a little suspect of the writing, as well as a little suspect of the company. Do you think they are actually able to afford staff writers to create your essay?

There are also single-subject essay selling services: you can purchase all of your essays for law school, for example. This has got to be the most idiotic game to play in law school. In an industry where you are being trained to memorize vast portions of documents and recall them during an argument, the last thing I want to do is purchase someone else’s writing and: skip the training that I need, as well as possibly using your instructor’s paper.

My biggest problem with the essay-selling business is an ethical one. I understand, and actually support a fair market economy and capitalism, but there is a point in which you must ask yourself if you are doing good things for your community. Are you making your world a better place? If you are selling essays to students, you are targeting the same marketplace as the tobacco companies. You motto may as well be, “let’s get them while they are young–before they know any better.” And, most likely, those students haven’t taken a college-level course in ethics.

I am unwilling to paint students as shapeless lumps of intellectual clay, but I will say this: college students are in a transitory place. Most students are leaving the comforts of their home and are confronted with new issues such as: feeding myself, and washing my laundry. These are base-level issues that they most likely did not have to address in their homes. And, while these same students are busy worrying about food, clothing, and shelter for the first time in their lives, there simply may not be enough time left to think about ethical issues and consequences.

If there was a disclaimer that said, “Using a plagiarized essay may get you expelled from your University!” on the Website, would you use the service? I would stop and think about it.

I am not lobbying for government intervention, nor am I lobbying for censure (in any form). In fact, I am building this site as part of a response to these services.

There is something else that needs to be said, and it is to the owners, the inventors, the maintainers, the hosters, the writers and everyone else involved. It is an important question that can cascade to all levels of society, as a matter of fact. This is not my own ethical question. In fact, it was originally posed to me by a Nuclear Containment Engineer.

While we are busy asking “Could we,” what about answering a different question–Should we?

Many months of deliberation have expired, and finally the Electronic Writer project is starting to move forward. I have been watching the traffic and people are visiting the Website. They are clicking through the pages. We are starting to gain some momentum.

After a couple of weeks of tinkering, I finally have the Navigation in the right places–at least, I think so. If you have differing opinions, please tell me. The bulletin board will be completed and available sometime today, so register and tell me in the Comments section.

Now that the foundation has been poured, and the walls of the structure has been built, I get to start working on the content. I have already created much of the stuff. You learn so much more when you teach something, and under that premise I have always been trying to teach everything–as a back-handed way to get access to more of the information myself.

In my early 20’s, I composed a poetry-writing course for my own edification. The essay writing information is from a recent English 1a course that I taught at a community college. The fiction writing information is also a spin off of several attempts at teaching fiction writing, in an effort to learn the craft better myself.

I apologize, in advance, because my politics will enter the dialog. I will, however, always make my politics evident and allow you to decide how you want to deal with them. You do not have to agree with me, nor do you have to like my politics. My opinions and views, however, are informed and chosen. None of what I believe have been simply handed to me by peers, parents, church, or instructors. If you have a compelling argument, and it passes my own fact-checking process, perhaps you can change my opinion. I am, after all, always in search of the Truth, or truths, or a better version of the truth . . . .

I expect that if you engage in a dialog, that you respect the opinions of others. Disagreement is a good thing. Destructiveness is not acceptable. My term for it is dissonance. We are all happily NOT agreeing, not trying to break each other down, and yet fully committed to forwarding our own agendas–because we believe they are correct (otherwise why would you believe it?).

Intolerance will not be permitted.

Roland Barthes composed a great theory about language that he called “Joissance”–a derivative of the French word for “playing.” In his theory, he argues that language and the usage of language, and the act of composing sentences and better ways of saying something is a FUN process. Even engaging in the dialog about the usage of language is a FUN, playful process.

While it may be a bit obscure, I have clung to this theory since my first read of it. I believe that language is fun, writing is fun, talking about language is fun, talking about writing is fun, and that it is a dream job to spend the day creating a sentence, and then tinkering with it to get it to say what you wanted it to say better, more descriptively, more succinctly, more accurately, etc.

So, Roland Barthes’ theory will prevail in Electronic Writer. Have fun with this place, and have fun with your writing. More importantly, have fun with the other writers who are here to do the same.

Let’s start today off with a bit of fun . . . . These are GREAT samples of none other than our very President of the United States. Funny stuff. Perhaps my favorite is the “My Generation” clip towards the bottom. Enjoy!

http://www.diymedia.net/collage/gwb-nan.htm

A few weeks ago, I spent the money and bought a ticket to see Steven Spielberg’s latest masterpiece, “Munich.” As I have come to expect, it was a wonderful film: technically superior, with a compelling story, excellent cinematography, and compelling, well-wrought characters (and, NO, I am not promoting Spielberg’s work).

The story details what happened after 11 Israeli Olympians were taken hostage and killed by Black September, and the 5 Israeli men who were chosen to eliminate those responsible. You can read more about it at the IMDB entry.

While I enjoyed the movie complely, my curiosity was aroused. During the course of the movie, a theme is repeated. The main character (and narrator) comes face-to-face with the leader of a Terrorist group on the other side. It is through a series of interesting events how it occurs, but the other leader does not know who both of them are, while the narrator has full awareness.

The conclusion that the narrator reaches is that the two of them are roughly the same person–or, very similar. They are both passionate about their country and their cause. They are both willing to die for their country and their cause. And, they are both in a dangerous place with few people to trust. This interesting exchange is punctuated by the other leader’s death during one of the narrator’s operations.

Later in the movie, another interesting issue arises. There is dissent amongst the group. One of the team members has been hunted and killed. The remaining team knew who did it, and they decided to kill the hired assassin who did it. The dissenting member pleaded with the narrator: This is not the behavior of a good Jew. What we are doing is bad, and there has to be a time for us to draw the line and stop the killing. While the narrator listened to arguments, he was resolute in his decision. And, he gave the dissenting team member time off. While the team was away on this mission, the dissenting member was also killed.

The sentiments expressed by the dissenting member are not knew. I believe it was Neitsche who said, that when fighting the dragon, be fearful of becoming the dragon itself. Albert Camus argued that we, as a civilization, must become murders when we enforce capitol punishment upon murders–and, it is an unacceptable premise to punish and sanction killing in the same action. In this character’s lines, however, we have the same arguments being dramatized in a contemporary setting. One that is both compelling and pertinent to our current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Lastly, after team members have started to die, personalities have started to change, and the mission is nearing the end, another issue arises. The lines of the movie actually articulate perhaps the most important point of the movie. One character says that for every [Black September member] that we kill in retaliation, 10 more of our own die. They agree and admit that their actions are not solving the problem, but rather making it worse.

In our current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, an identical argument has been made about the US military presence and operations in the Middle East. Do you think that Spielberg was applying the same argument in film? Can we, as a nation and as a world, learn something from the Israeli past?

What do you think? I am dying to know . . . .

The Electronic Writer blog has been silent since last September, but that is about to change. There are several reasons for the silence:

1. My writing has been divided amongst venues. I have organized my writing into categories and only my political writing was published on the blog.

2. My efforts towards my business have doubled. Putting more of myself into my work has had trade-offs. The clearest trade-off has involved my time. And, while I have done things to increase productivity, I have just spent more time working.

3. My soul has been divided. I have been distraught with the situation of things both at home and abroad. As a result, the politics of my political blog have been on hold. I have read more poetry than news–and without reading the news, it is hard to be informed, and without being informed, there is nothing to write about.

4. My fire had dwindled.

With this new incarnation of the Electronic Writer blog, the writing is going to be much less specialized. In fact, it will be more representative of myself–diverse, interested in everything, seeking dissonance and the truth, and easily distracted . . . .

Feel free to comment, make requests, or lambast me if you must. Some blogs are intended to be deeply personal and private. This is not one of them. Enjoy.